Brother Blue

It is amazing the number of people who I went to high school with who made it home this year. It is to the point that so many have families, jobs and responsibility getting home is much harder. It has been a lot of fun. Not as much spending time talking about old times (though some of that has happened), but more talking about the people we have turned into. Definition of adult success at 18 is different from adult success when you are an adult. We have all turned into things we never dreamed of, but most of us have turned into things that make sense for who we are. We have become teachers, chefs, dancers, sound techs, and journalists.
I think back to what my 18 year old self thought my thirties were going to be like. I know it is not what I have become. Even if I could have imaged this was a possibility, I never would have dreamed I would be this joyful about my life. It is hard because the 18 year old me seems to be a completely different person in so many ways. At 18 people in their thirties seemed so old, so serious, so foreign.
As an 18 year old my definition of success was wide panoramic water color. Covering lots of space with muted colors and un-crisp edges. Now success is a much tighter shot. It is not the whole world, but my world (which keeps growing and changing). The colors are much more vivid. There is much more precision. From the outside it would be easy to accuse me of shrinking my dreams because it would look like my definition of adult success has shrunk. I think as time passes we know ourselves more. My definition of success at 18 now looks like a silly guess. It wasn’t any more or less a guess than today because it was the best I could do at the time. It is not silly because I believed it. I am sure (or at least I hope) 12 years from now I will look at today’s definition of my successful life and think it is incomplete, vague, and needing growth.

Christmas eve we (my family) sat around the tree and exchanged gifts. As I was given each gift I would say, “I don’t want anything.” I never created a gift list. I ended up with socks and undershirts and toothpaste. All great because it was what I needed.
My two favorite gifts were:

Huggy Jesus
I did get in trouble for saying “Great, it is in the original packaging so I will be able to get more on eBay for it.”
It was a joke!

A goat from Heifer Interantional

I have always believed that what happens to us doesn’t matter. What is important is how we respond. This is true for things good or bad. There is nothing we control in this world. Except how we respond. How we respond to the world is the only true illustration of our character, of who we are. We can fill many hours about this belief or that, but none of our words mater when we have to respond. Then we show our true colors.
Right now, like every moment of my life, I am revealing my character. I am not too proud of what I am revealing.
Loss, let down, and failure are part of life. Again, what is import is how we respond. Right now I am choosing to respond by throwing a hissy fit. Now, mind you at this point the hissy fit is only in my head. If all goes well that is where it is going to stay. But, it is not healthy. It is not the way I would like to respond.
About a year ago I was explaining my hopes and desire for the book I was working on. The person I was talking to is someone who I revere professionally and adore personally. As I was brimming over with childlike giddiness, he just looked at me, smiled, and said “That so nice.” He didn’t do it physically, but with his words he patted me on the head, as if to say, “That is just so cute, you’re writing a little book.”
The way I responded to that was to throw a hissy fit in my head, then turn that anger in to motivation. “I’ll show him!” was my rallying cry many times in the writing process. Which would be a fine way to respond, except that isn’t the only way I have responded. Our friendship isn’t the same. I don’t see him often, so I am sure he has no idea, but when we do see each other from time to time, I remember. I think, “You don’t trust me. You think I am just a kid.”
It has happened again (the current situation I have chosen to over react to). I have asked a professional peer for help, and have been rebuffed. Which is their prerogative. This is someone who I have goon out of my way in the past to help out (giving up a good chunk of time over a vacation to help them with a task). Not that I did that expecting anything in return. I was happy help. I was just surprised that I was dismissed on merit. I didn’t expect help as a personal favor, but had thought in the past through our other work together I had proved myself professionally.
I am not taking it well. (melodramatic overstatement, frustration is more accurate)
It is not the end of the world, much less the end of my ability to share my current work. It is just one missed opportunity. To reach my goals, it is going to force me to work a little harder (which isn’t a bad thing).
The disappointment of the missed opportunity is going to pass. The worry is the personal baggage I have picked up today The worry is I am not going to be able to interact as an open, genuine person on our next encounter.
If
If you can keep you head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired of waiting,
Or, be lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And you don’t look too good, nor talk to wise;
If you can dream–and not make dreams your master;
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bare to hear the truth you have spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and -toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force you heart and never and sinew
To serve you long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings–nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes not loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run–
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
—Rudyard Kipling

This past week one of my dear friends from college got married. It was, as all wedding should be, a wonderful celebration. But, as with all weddings and funerals, it has caused some self indulgent retrospection. Sorry if some of this is a bit melodramatic, but what good is self indulgent retrospective if it can’t be a little over the top. Things I (re)realized (in no particular order):
1) It is a wonderful thing to be at a wedding of two people who are getting married for all the right reasons. My boy cried last week as he was saying his vows. It was really cool.
2) With the possible exception of my own wedding I will never be in another wedding, and I will never be the best man at a wedding. Not that I mourn either of these facts. They are just that facts. I wonder if it is a reasonable way to keep score, the number of weddings one is in. Not that we or anyone is keeping score, or that it would be healthy to do so. But at some point you ask what a man’s life is worth. How you are connected to others is part of that. Is it possible to have meaningful connections when spend most of your life passing through?
3) It is still culturally unacceptable to be 30 years old and single. It is amazing how many times in the last month people have tried to set me, or the second or third question out of their mouth is about my personal life. I am flattered people care, and understand that when others are trying to fix me up, it is only because they want the best for me. When I explain, that for now I am a pilgrim and where I need to be, I can almost see in their eyes disbelief. “What is wrong with him?” “What is he running from?”
4) It is much easier to go against the gain when you are doing it. When I am in the midst of my wacky daily life, nothing could be more natural. The life I live makes perfect sense to me. When I step out of that life is when it gets weird. I found myself at the wedding catching up with a bunch of old college friends who are teachers, and lawyers, and physical therapists, and parents, and homeowners. Standing next to them I feel like a baffon. It reminds me of the time I saw a clown drive by me on the interstate in a minivan. He looked so out of place. So unnatural. In the middle the big top he looks right at home, in the bright light of day he looks like a cartoon. There is a set of paintings by Picaso of circus performers, but none of them are of performance. Instead they are of them just off stage, still in costume, getting ready to load up. They all look so acuward and out of place. Its fine to be a clown in the circus, it just feels weird being the clown surrounded by adults at a cocktail party.

“There is no use trying,” said Alice. “One can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

If you or someone you love enjoyed The Incredibles, then you have to check out The Iron Giant. They were both directed by Brad Bird. It is the last movie I can remember crying at.
[Official site | Buy]

I was riding on the rental car shuttle at Denver’s airport and realized I don’t live normal life.
Tonight at a party in Denver
Saturday at a wedding in DC
Sunday perform in Phoenix

From my friend Jerry Goebel:
It is easy to do what Jesus would do when you are not where Jesus would be. The question is not ‘What would Jesus do?’ but instead, ‘Where would Jesus be?’

As we were setting up the booth space to sell books and share information at the conference this weekend I looked down and saw a paper bag which had its handle tied with a bow. I stopped the woman who was slinking away from the booth to tell her she left her bag. She sheepishly turned around to tell me it was a gift for me. She said she had been poking around the web page for the conference and some how made it to this page. She decided to bring me a gift to wish me well with the debut of the book.
I was very excited. I opened the bag to find a box of Cinnamon Life. She hesitantly asked, “Is that still your favorite food?” Of course it is. After reading my bio she decided it would be the prefect gift.
To do list for tomorrow: Update bio to include favorite car (Jaguar), favorite gem stone (The Hope Diamond), and favorite type of currency (cash).