12-9-2010

Life does not throw buses.

I really think its the movies that encourage an attitude to the contrary.  Every fiction you've ever seen in the theater had a main character undergoing some huge life-changing challenge and, usually, emerging on top.  Even if they lost(a degree of realism that rarely survives Hollywood), they were still the victim of some huge and intimidating trial.  The lesson conveyed, in either case, is, "I could handle that!"  Movies are good at this, giving us a perspective so clear and objective that solutions seem simple and obvious.

In reality, however, challenges are neither so remarkable nor so occasional; life throws, not buses, but breakups, and uncomfortable shoes, and annoying coworkers.  Its easy to discount such small fry as incidental, to keep focused on getting ready for whatever life throws at you.  But those big, heroic monsters on the horizon are ephemeral; its easy to get worn down by inches holding out for that final battle, losing all the little wars.

Life is in no part a prelude to anything else.  Look back over the last hundred or so hours you've experienced; that is exactly what you've got to be prepared to deal with.  Trouble getting out of bed, a weirdly pulled muscle in your back, someone cutting you in line for coffee: these are the best trials we're likely to get, and they are what we must learn from if we are to grow as people.

You could get hit by a bus.  Your parent's could die, though not very often.  Someone could blow up your place of work, killing thousands of people on the day you called in sick.  Or didn't.  Historically speaking, big things do happen; statistically, they just don't.  You die, you stop existing; someone else dies, you take a week of bereavement leave from work and go bury them.  But you won't crash a plane in the wilderness and get hunted by a bloodthirsty bear.  A psychopath isn't going to kidnap and torture you.  You aren't going to meet an interesting stranger on a train through France who turns out to be a witch, or possibly Satan.

You might, however, spend five years watching a parent with Alzheimer's fall apart and try not to hate them for it.  That bus, if it ever shows up, might leave you a quadriplegic; not yet thirty, and already looking forward to a lifetime of home care and soft foods.  You could get cancer, and spend two years in radiation therapy.

I guess what I'm getting at is, bad things happen, but not all at once; those big, life-changing milestones that take a day or two in movies last for years  in real life.  If you want to prepare for that, learn not to let the little things hurt you; the biggest tragedies in life are just seemingly endless strings of petty annoyances and discomforts.