My Tony Robbins Moment (or, “Forgive Me While I Wax Philosophically For a Minute, the Normal Routine Resumes Soon”)

I just had coffee with my friend Johanna, and we spent the afternoon sitting outside and catching each other up on our lives (because, as my friends know, I’m horrible about staying in touch).  As we got up to leave, I said something to her that would have been so ridiculous coming out of my mouth six months ago: I told her that I’ve realized that we can’t get everything in life immediately and that we should “enjoy the process” on the way.

Sure, this sounds like typical new-age bullshit, but it marks such a tremendous personal paradigm shift.  It took me a long time to even acknowledge that while I’m patient with a lot of things in life, I’m very impatient with myself – I wanted to be a master teacher before starting my student teaching, I wanted to be over a broken heart as soon as possible, I wanted to have my life figured out right this minute (you get the idea).  I wanted the end result before I even knew what the desired ending would be! This sounds completely ridiculous at this point, but I can assure you that it’s true.  For example, from the moment I started my masters’ degree, I wanted to be done and working.

One of my mentors this spring kept telling me that I needed to “respect the process.”  At the time, I knew what she meant but had no idea of how to achieve it.  It took a few awful days, including a semi-breakdown one morning (something that I think two people knew about before I wrote this, one of which being me) to accept that life is a work in progress, be it personal, professional, or whatever.  Most importantly, it involved letting go of those unrealistic goals I set for myself.  I think it’s part of my personality to instinctively think of the future – I envision things, hedge my bets, and minimize risk like nobody’s buisness.  I think the thing that I understand now is that by doing so, I’ve narrowed the spectrum of possibilities.  There’s a difference between making smart, rational decisions that set you up for success and making choices that simply reduce any tragic failures, embarassments, or rejections.

So through the course of the summer (which, as Johanna pointed out several times, is still a work in progress – I have a couple more weeks of the Summer of Brian), I’ve increasingly found that I’m happy with my place in the world – I’m about to start a job that I will be excited to show up for each day, I’m connecting (and re-connecting) with friends that inspire me (in particular a wonderfully caring and supportive girlfriend who makes me happy simply by just spending time together), and finding pleasures in simple, everyday moments in life.  While these are all wonderful, they’re all direct results of me letting go of the reins just enough to make life something to experience rather than something to plot out, dissect, and plan against.  Simply put, I think that by learning to accept that life isn’t perfect, I’ve found so many other things that make it wonderful.

At the first R.E.M. show I went to in June, I spent the entire night in sonic rapture; however, the single moment that still sends chills up my spine came during “Electrolite,” when Michael Stipe sang the line “Don’t be scared, you are alive.”  I’m not one for crying, but even just thinking about it makes my eyes a little moist.  I’m not saying that I was scared of anything in particular (not that I can articulate consciously at least), and that’s not to say that I’m completely changed either.  I just know that since I bottomed out in late February, I’ve been making progress towards living each day as it comes, rather than looking forward to the distant future and/or shielding myself until that moment.  This too, appropriately enough, is a work in progress.

So as soon as those words – “enjoy the process” came out of my mouth, I immediately thought that I should e-mail my mentor (which I will do as soon as I post this) because I think I’m on my way to “understanding” it.  Then, as I walked to my car, I had a twitter message from a friend that suggested that I’ve “made the most” of my summer and asking what the fall will yield.  This prompted two thoughts; first, I agreed with her.  Sure, there’s always things that we run out of time for, but overall I’m happy with my summer and with myself.  Second, I can tell her that I have no idea what the fall holds for me, and that for the first time in my life, it doesn’t matter.  Whatever happens I will deal with the best I can, with the support of my friends, family, and colleagues, and I’ll enjoy the highs and lows as they come along.

So, forgive me for being somewhat philosophical, but I think I needed to see this in writing.  I’m actually in the middle of my Lollapalooza post on my laptop, but that can wait, because sometimes there’s more important things happening to you right now.