I need a wipe

I know the feeling of a breaker going off. Uncertainty somehow kicks in my neck and shoulders. Things seem to be going south. I hadn’t felt that in a long time. Not that I have a particularly sunny predisposition. I’ve historically bounced back fast and easy. So much so I used to feed entertainingly morbid thoughts semi-intentionally. When I was on a temporary visa, I contemplated how being deported back to France would not be that bad.

If poor judgement made me do something truly regrettable, I would have had a pretty good run.

That same thought experiment fueled my travels, dating, side projects, cardio workouts, and more broadly the sunk-cost fallacy that is my career. The famous opening lines from the 1967 soul classic hit hard: “Am I a good man? Am I a fool? Am I weak or just playing cool?”. I hope I’m a pretty typical fool trying to be intellectually rigorous.

Marriage wasn't hard conceptually. It’s a very reasonable investment. So is a career. Like every investment, the holding is the hard part. Torture comes in wondering how much forgetfulness, forgiveness, and grace a thing can absorb before it becomes something else. I’m starting to regularly contemplate how my short memory might be a direct physiological response to my shitty self. “I don’t remember” sounds way too convenient. I drop so many balls. I dance.

So far I think I’m only 49% wrong at worst. That 1% really messes with me though.

I never wake up on the same foot. Like how one never steps in the same river twice. And yet it’s often familiar. Like the Ship of Theseus. Whatever my feelings and decisions, it feels like more of the same. It’s the same boat. But when I pay attention, and through others, I can feel the new wood, subtle layout changes, the patches in the sail…

My oldest has always liked pants and sweaters whatever the weather. A safety thing, I think. He also needs to hold some random nicnac. Inevitably he gets sweaty, soiled, unstable. Eventually comes the meltdown and the request: “I need a wipe.” His little brother mostly communicates in cute tonal grunts. I prefer those.

Somehow “I need a wipe” lodged itself in my head. I’m trying to do roughly the same thing with words. It barely works, but that’s all I’ve got until I fully understand that the way up is down.

Acknowledgments

Much of my thinking on the matter of personal (spiritual?) growth is the product of rumination induced by the savage mentorship of this, mantra-like, nugget of wisdom: Nothing ever goes away without teaching you what you need to know - Pema Chödrön. Which sounds like the equivalent of “God works in mysterious ways”. Or what the Buddhists call Samsara. I wish that kind of deep insights came to me while meditating, or something intentional. Truth is that it hits me while stressed out at my desk, on walks, in grocery stores.