Some of you, I won't name names... Cam... complained that my last post was a bit depressing. Especially, I assume, the part about how the house always has the odds. But I maintain it was not depressing. It was empowering. Hear me out.
Maybe I should've ended that section with a sentence along the lines of:
"You Can Do It!" said in thick Romanian accent, like a gymnastics coach who will carry his lame little gymnast.
Or I could've gone all Stuart Smalley on your bum, and forced you to repeat: "I deserve good things, I am entitled to my share of happiness. I refuse to beat myself up. I am an attractive person. I am fun to be with."
Or, we could choose those immortal words Han Solo uttered in Empire Strikes Back: "Never tell me the odds!"
But that doesn't change the fact that the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1.
Oh man, there I go again. You see, I'm sorta in a position in which the odds are comforting. It's a formidable river, where the currents are working their hardest to pull me under, and sometimes they do. And each time the river wins, it helps for me to acknowledge the fierceness of my competitor.
How embarrassing it would be if I kept being pulled under by a white fluffy bunny.
But I call myself a writer. Okay, really I call myself a typist. I write. And even though the river has had it's fair share of victories, I've made some distance across it. And one of these days, if the weather holds, and my boat is yar, I'll make it to the other side and the victory will be that much sweeter.
The only people that will make it across, are the ones who dare. Everyone, at one point, has dipped their toe in to test the temperature. Will you shiver and back away? Or will you kiss your loved ones good-bye, and dive in?
Anne Lamott points to a poem in her book on writing "Bird by Bird". If you haven't read it, it's worth a perusal. Anyway, Bill Holm says it much more eloquently than I.
"August in Waterton, Alberta":
Above me, wind does its best
to blow leaves off
the aspen tree a month too soon.
No use wind. All you succeed
in doing is making music, the noise
of failure growing beautiful.
And this applies to anything you're doing in life, but I'll use writers as an example. Writers are mad as snakes. But it's the "mad" who go up against the rivers and win.
Ummm, so... go you.
