There is a line in LA Story in which Steve Martin’s character shares a thought that has always resonated with me.
“Why is it that we don’t always recognize the moment when love begins but we always know when it ends?”
I thought about it during the CBI hostage standoff. Not sure what led me to it but I know it was tied into thinking about what the hostages were feeling like.
In concept we always know whenever we leave our homes it could be the last time we do so.
Most of us have no reason to think about it or wonder if when we say “I love you” to those we care about if that is the last time they’ll hear it from us or we from them.
We live our lives and keep moving forward or that is the theory.
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One of the guys once told me that his Tevye and Golda moment is what convinced him they needed to get divorced.
“I don’t want to be in a relationship where I have to ask myself if I love her or she loves me.”
We talked about it a bit and he said he couldn’t remember that feeling anymore.
“We mostly raised our kids, now what.”
I told him he sounded like a hundred other fifty somethings who were asking that same question, “now what.”
Write A Letter
I let the words hang in the air and then answered my own question for him.
“Write a letter. Write down your thoughts. Could be to yourself or you could write someone else.”
“Have you done it?”
“I write all the time and I have written letters to people. Don’t necessarily have to send them either. Sometimes I just put them out there and let fate, destiny, karma and luck do whatever they will with them.”
He thought that was ridiculous and I chuckled.
“What works for one doesn’t always work for another.”
“What if the letters you have written aren’t read?”
“What if? I tend not to spend much time worrying about it. If I want them to read immediately I make sure they are sent to whomever is supposed to see them or make sure they are informed.
I believe there is a little magic out there and if some things are meant to be they will. Life operates on a different schedule than ours. Kind of sucks sometimes, but it is reality.”
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A couple of people verbally assaulted my son and I have been quietly seething. He handled it quite well so I have tried to let it lie.
No reason for him to get fired up because I am still irked about it, not if he is ok and he is.
He feels good about what he did and that brings a certain amount of pride.
I shared that John Keats quote with him and asked him to remember the scars from good and bad experiences are what we use to educate ourselves.
These are the experiences that help to make us into the people we are and refine our focus on who we want to be.
I told him what they did could almost be consider a פיגוע and told him to remember what our family says.
“You can’t screw an old head on young shoulders” and added “your shoulders aren’t as young as they once were.
And then I thought about how young my own still are in some ways and yet how ancient they sometimes feel.
Your Rock
Some of you may not admit that you want and or need a rock but it doesn’t go unnoticed.
Or so the theories go and those only work if you use the right facts to support them.
As your unofficial, didn’t attend medical school blog doctor I would and will still argue we all want at least one rock.
One person we can trust to be there in the good and the bad times. Those people are invaluable, especially when the unexpected crisis appears and you need another to help keep you centered.
This life is a hell of a ride and sometimes the road gets more than a little bumpy. But those bumps don’t last forever and if you can push through them you can probably push through most anything.
And if you can’t, well that is part of why your rock is there, to give you something to plant your feet upon so that you can push off.
Been saying that I can feel life changing for quite some time now and yesterday certainly proved that, though I wish it hadn’t.
