I Am Like SO Sure

It started with a yada yada conversation about week-end plans with JE.  In the world of baseball and post-season play, everything is scheduled around The Game(s).  He began with, "When do the Angels and Yankees play?"

I took another swig of my Corona.(in the tradition of Seniors Citizens--which is my new club--we were at a Happy Hour when drinks are cheaper and occasionally there are free snacks.)

Sometimes I worry about him.  "What game?" The Angels had lost a fourth game, American League playoffs were over and it was time to move on.  Hoping for the Yankees to get their pinstriped butts kicked, but nonetheless time to get to "acceptance" already.

"The fifth game."

"There is no fifth game--the Angels lost."  I could see their stiff upper lipped I'm too big a boy to cry faces headed toward the clubhouse.

Another thing I've learned in this new Senior Club is that anxious looks from people around you are not uncommon.  Lose your keys.  Misplace a coffee cup or the date, forget a kid's name when the kid is yours--forget your own name--and people look...worried.

We were giving each other The Look.  JE is older than I am and a little hard of hearing, while my hearing is adequate and it's the vision going.  (Now Bush the Elder just showed up in my head which is not an unusual event--not Bush but the whole pinball thought process --nd he's going on about the vision thing. Never mind, though.  Really.)   Being as JE sometimes misses things, occasionally I have to set him straight--gently and with great respect for his feelings.

"Bet you five bucks, " I said.

He raised.  We'll skip the details but it was the kind of stake where no matter who loses both people win.

A handshake and we went back to our beers.  Nibbling veggie spring rolls and barbecued ribs--which were NOT free but were (in theory) at a reduced price.  I kept looking sideways at him--frankly a little worried.  How could he be so confused?

Of course he was giving me the same looks and asked me several times: "You really are sure about this, aren't you.?"

"Wouldn't bet the rent money, but, yeah, I am."  Wondering how he would take the inevitable news that he was wrong.

Naturally, you know what happened--or otherwise I wouldn't be writing this, now would I?  He was right  I had commingled the defeat of my team--the Dodgers--at the bats and gloves of the Phillies with the hard fought Angels' win over the Yankees in game four.  I had ended up with two sad stories when the second one hadn't happened yet.  (It did.) Right about the saddened faces, wrong about the team.

We watched the game and the Angels lost.  But the whole incident "gave me furiously to think," as Hercule Poirot would say.  (I have to drop these things here because most of the time nobody I'm talking to would get the reference and I don't have to worry if you get it or not.  Or even if I've misquoted it.)

I had had absolutely no doubt that I was right.  Not a speck, not a scintilla, not a crumb.  None.

With the  kind of certainty I had had , I might have risked the gallows.  Or at least mockery on the Drudge Report.

And I was wrong.  Completely, no excuse, and no shading wrong.  The only thing I had right were the names of the teams and there's no prize for that.

My point?  The strength of your conviction has nothing to do with being right.  And this brilliant insight is applicable in all kinds of ways.  Really.

First of all, I find my certainty unnerving.  I SAW the Angels win.  True, just on television,  but I saw it and then managed to flush it completely out of my mind.  I was almost literally blind--there was something I couldn't "see,," no matter how clear and plain it was.

That kind of scary wrong certainty makes me wonder about other things I'm damn sure about.

One of the arguments I've heard from both pulpits to religious books of varying academic weight actually rests on the whole strength of conviction argument.  Why would the disciples been fired with evangelical zeal, if they didn't know that Jesus was the resurrected, living Messiah? Early Christians faced the lions (who just about always won), torture, stoning, crucifixion--only a crazy person would endure that if they weren't absolutely, heart and soul deep convinced.

I have no argument with this assumption until it's taken to the next step which is to claim that this passionate belief proves that the tenets of Christianity are fact, well, fact.

The one has nothing to do with the other, any more than a suicide bomber's willingness to die proves anything about the "facts" of his/her belief.in whatever religion or ideology the dying is for.

I was so very sure about what I KNEW I knew that not one bit of doubt crept in--not one. I was only "concerned" over JE's feelings when the poor darling found out he was wrong.

These days in self-help lit and in political arguments, religious arguments, and on and on and on, doubt is of the devil.  You shouldn't ever doubt yourself, your abilities, and the in reachness of your dreams.  Don't waver or wobble in your faith, your ideas, your solutions.  Don't even waver on what you say you said--even if those damn lying words are on video--because strength of conviction is all.

One of my favorite sayings--going back to the days when I wrote advice for parents of teens--is "choose the hill you're going to die on."  Not every issue is the apocalypse and if you treat it as such--well, by the time the real thing shows up all your ammo and your credibility will be gone.

The trouble is that I think the real issue is becoming not what hill will you die on--but the various hills you will kill for.  Lord knows we've all seen more than enough of that--the World Trade Center is an obvious one, along with the Pentagon, suicide bombers, Oklahoma City, and acceptable "collateral damage" nearly everywhere.  Woops, my bad's are everywhere.  Didn't know that was a school, hospital, wedding party.  Sorry for the babies blown to pieces in daycare in Oklahoma, but they probably shouldn't have been in a government building anyway.  I could--and usually do--go on and on.  Health care, stalled budgets, hating your neighbor and sending your dog to poop in the middle of his/her lawn....

However, my daughter, KM, pointed out to me that most people want to read something short in a blog.  If they wanted a book, they'd buy one.

She has a point.

But I want to bring this around to my barefoot on the ground and mindful moments--even if  that epiphany at Happy Hour and home is old, cliche, and hardly even new to me. I mean, like wow: I can be wrong.  Facts can be not only discounted and ignored, but erased. My mind--your mind, anyone's mind--can try to reinvent reality to suit our desires and never register a conscious thought.

Believing really, really hard doesn't make anything so. Wishing doesn't make it so. Saying "make it so" isn't a guarantee either, unless, perhaps, you are a deity. And, if you are, why are you reading this?

Mindfulness is being present, present in the world as it is, not as I want it to be.  (That's another blog entirely.)  If I am present in the moment, PAYING ATTENTION, I might be less likely to delude myself.

If I am trying to be aware, I might be able to perceive the desires that I am focusing on that are simply that: desires.  Acknowledge them and let them pass. I wanted the Dodgers to win.  I'm not actually that fond of the Angels even though I want to be.

I can check my facts.

And, in matters of faith and belief where facts as we know them do not exist, humility would seem to be in order

We Have to Talk

Should I give you my car keys now?

There are things no one expects besides the Spanish Inquisition. Being served with divorce papers right after your spouse kissed you good-bye to go to work. Unfriendly rottweilers running amok in your backyard, snarling and snapping at the windows,on what was supposed to be a quiet Sunday morning. And you don't even own a dog. (Let's not go into what brought these particular illustrations to mind.)

Then there are the things you expect like taxes and laundry. Hardly ever disappointed there.

Oh and by the way you may have already picked up the theme that this is about UNPLEASANT things. No surprise parties, sticky kisses from doe-eyed toddlers, not a rainbow in sight and the unicorns have left the building.

But then there are the events and conversations that you know are coming someday--but you always hope someday is tomorrow and not today. Car repairs. The overflowing toilet five minutes before the guests arrive. Having to put your old and sick dog to sleep.

And then there's We have to talk, I've been meaning to talk to you about that conversations. They're never you're getting promoted, I'm taking you to Paris, your kid just got a full ride scholarship to Very Impressive Ivy School, the tests came back negative.

No. The only question is which shoe, where, and how hard.

I'm 63 years old. Lord knows, I've had my share of all those events and the conversations. Whether your role on the conversation is as the verb or the object.your stomach is pretty well guaranteed to hurt.

So when my oldest son (the one who ALWAYS gets deputized to do the face-to-face on the subjects everyone is worrying about and no one wants to talk about) brought up a been meaning to talk to you subject while we were sitting in a hospital waiting room--I gave him props.

You gotta shoot the ducks when they're flying (although actually we never shoot anything) and the subject of driving came up.

"You know, I'm getting more uncomfortable with driving at night," I remarked. An apropos comment since the surgery we were waiting on had been pushed back and pushed back until it was now after 9:00. At night.

Carpe noctem and he did.

"I've been meaning to bring that up. Your driving. People are worried...." He hesitated, looking to me for my reaction.

Two things you need to know about me before this cliche conversation goes any farther. !). I have macular degeneration, primarily in my left eye. It was identified before I was fifty and--see "degenerative"--it has been doing so at a slow and steady pace over the years. 2). I try to be a decent person. I also quite frequently pitch my tent on the moral high ground.

I've always said that when my kids came to me about my driving, I would hand over my keys without question. Risk lives just because I wanted to maintain my "independence"? Never. No, I would hand over the keys and give the car to someone who needed it.

I lied like a rug

Not now. This conversation was supposed to happen when I was like eighty.

I had a LOT of questions.

And I didn't really ask if he wanted my car keys although I don't think I would have actually fought him for them. The questions tumbled out--after all, if "people" were mainly his dad, my ex-husband, I was prepared to discount them by 50%. The ex worries. He gets anxious. He thinks my vision is worse than it is.

The look was kind, sympathetic, but he was very direct. "Practically everybody."

"Oh."

"Mostly about the night driving? And that time with Elizabeth?" (Elizabeth is my niece. I drove her to the airport a few weeks ago. " "But that was meds--I didn't know they would make me sleepy. And I pulled off and let her drive."

"No." A head shake. "Night's a bigger worry, yeah. But even the day time...."

Shit.

Before I could ask, he told me. ( I really think he was afraid I would start crying. Not good in the surgery waiting room.) "Drifting in the lane. Getting too close to other cars on the side. Missing turns. Things like that. It's a little...scary sometimes."

Double shit.

"How am I going to get to work?" I'm sure Iwas wailing. Maybe that's when I asked, "Do you mean--do you think I should quit now?" My mind was scrambling for Plan B and I realized I didn't have one.

"Probably not yet. But you knew this day was coming."

"I know. I know." But not yet. And I was going to be the first to notice. That's how I'd planned it.

I was embarrassed. Ashamed. Humiliated. . People had been coming to Scott worrying over me? I'd scared people when I was driving?

In my head I apologized to every person I had judged for clinging to their keys and that trip to the grocery store. Children and the elderly get driven places. At least here in California, the land of No Real Public Transportation, adults drive. I. Am. An. Adult.

Being a grown-up sucks. Mortality sucks even more. A grown-up knows that however you may feel, you can't risk other people's lives if you're a danger on the road. Even risking your own life is thoughtless. And takes you back to that whole mortality thing.

I'm not sure if I'm afraid to die. Of course I want to live, to live long and prosper, if possible. Watch the grandchildren grow up, maybe even know a great-grandchild. See how (or if) the world keeps turning.

I also know I don't want to be the brain-damaged body lying in a bed, incontinent and without thought or volition. Knowing no one. Just...there. Sort of like that ugly silver vase Aunt Sally gave you and you feel obligated to keep dusting and polishing.

A car wreck is a helluva good way to get there.

We agreed that I would curtail my driving NOW--at night and in unfamiliar places. I'm looking at "Refresher Classes" for seniors. Oh, god, I'm a senior. Not near as cool as being a senior in high school. I promised to be extra careful and very, very mindful when I drive.

Mindfulness again.

Originally there was a Plan B. I live with my vision. I knew the give up the car keys day was coming even if I didn't really believe it. My mantra was that I didn't want to be either a danger to everyone on the road OR a burden to my kids and friends. So, before that day arrived, I had planned to be living in a New Urban/Old Brooklyn type environment. A place I could walk to everything I needed, maybe even to public transportation. (Hey, it could happen--even in Southern California.)

Instead, I fell in love with a man whose house is near the top of a hill and within walking distance of nothing. I suppose, if I knew the neighbors and they were amenable, I could borrow the occasional egg or cup of milk. Maybe even coffee.

But I don't know the neighbors and they really can't be my convenience store anyway.

Hitchhiking is probably not the best option either.

I practice saying, "Could you take me to the grocery store? I need to pick up a few things. My prescriptions are ready--would you mind stopping by...?"

Mortality sucks. Big time.