3 Very Random Life Lessons

1.     Mental baggage weighs more than physical baggage. I learned this lesson from two people. My first teacher was a drunk woman in the Port Authority in New York. My second teacher was my sober 6 year old.

First the drunk lady. I noticed her as I walked toward the bus loading area. She was dragging two large duffel bags behind her. Rather than holding the bag handles together – as most people would – she grasped just one handle for each bag. This allowed the bags to open and turn sideways and even upside down.  At this point, you must know, that I had no idea she was drunk. I just thought that her bags must be really super heavy. After all, no person in their right mind would allow any bag she was even remotely attached to to slide along the likes of the Port Authority floor. She was trudging forward as if she were a soldier coming home from a very long war. She stopped at the steps that lead down to the bus area. She sighed deeply and then sat down dramatically with a thump, splaying her legs out to the sides. It was when she started talking to herself loudly about the peculiar absence of an escalator that I figured she was drunk.

My suitcase happened to be loaded with 20 books, so it weighed about 80 pounds if not 150. I thought about helping the poor lady with her bags, but I figured I’d carry my own down the steps first. As I neared the bottom of the steps, however, I heard one nice gentleman after another ask her if she wanted help with her bags. She refused. When I looked up, she was slowly walking down the steps, dragging the bags behind her and muttering about the tragedy of it all.

I thought it all was a bit peculiar, but lots of peculiar things tend to take place at the New York Port Authority, so I soon moved onto other thoughts.

It wasn’t until this morning when I was walking my daughter to school that I thought of the bag lady again. You must know that my daughter claims to hate walking to school. Each morning she begs me to drive her, and each morning I say what I always say, “Driving is for lazy people who want to destroy the planet.” The entire way to school, she then says the following lines over and over again in a whiny voice: Why do we have to walk to school? No one else has to walk to school! I hate walking to school. My legs hurt. I can’t do this. You know I’m only 6 years old. You should know that 6 year olds aren’t big enough to walk to school. It’s too cold. I’m freezing. If we were in the car, I wouldn’t be cold. Carry me! Why won’t you carry me? I hate walking to school. Tomorrow you are driving me. I am going to make you drive me. That’s it. I’m not walking any farther. I am going to sit here. Why did you keep walking?! I can’t believe you kept walking! That hurt my feelings. You know my feelings are sensitive!

Well, this morning, she was happier than usual and was walking quite nicely and without complaint. For some reason I decided to comment on how nicely she was walking to school. That’s when her entire demeanor changed. She whined and complained the rest of the way.

At one point I said, “You are making this harder on yourself than it is. Walking to school is neither good nor bad. It’s your mind that is making it bad. If you stop thinking about it, you won’t mind walking so much. You might even be able to enjoy it. It’s your mental resistance that is making this so hard on you.”

I thought it was rather deep and smart of me to say that. She replied, “I can’t do that! You’re not making any sense!”

Maybe I’ll say it again tomorrow and see if it makes more sense then. Did you think it made sense?

2.     Failure is a state of mind. So is success. I learned this as I attempted to help my kid create a storm trooper out of trash. It was part of her gifted homework. We couldn’t use any old trash either. It all had to be recyclable. At first, I thought we could just cut cardboard into the shape of a storm trooper outfit and then paint it all white. But then my husband suggested that we use old bleach containers, and then he promptly was able to materialize 5 of them. I asked him if he would be willing to cut the containers into the correct shapes because 1) this obviously was a job that we couldn’t give to the kid for safety reasons 2) I’m not the most detail-oriented person. If you ever get a holiday gift that I’ve wrapped myself, you will be able to see my detail deficits first hand. My husband knows this about me. That’s why he never allows me to wrap gifts for his family members. At any rate, he agreed to cut the bleach bottles up, and then he promptly got sick and took to his bed for a few days before he had a chance to execute this plan.

So I did what any normal person would do. I took all of the bleach bottles and other trash, put them in a bag, and drove 1.5 hours to my parent’s house. My dad is an incredibly good detail oriented person. That’s why I always ask him to hang my pictures and paint walls for me. He’s good at things that require precision. If you need, for instance, to nail 600 things into a wall and have them all line up and all be at exactly the same depth and eventually form some sort of intricate shape, he is your guy.

I made the whole project out to be this fun thing that the grandparents would do with their granddaughter. Everything was going really well, too. But then I accidentally got my dad involved with spray-painting this old mesh fruit bag. It took him about 6 hours to do this because he’s very precise about things. People who are precise about things tend to take a long time because it takes a long time to get something just right. People who are not precise can do things really quickly because it doesn’t take long to make a complete mess out of something.

Anyway, this meant that I was going to have to be the person who cut up the bleach containers. After all, I couldn’t ask my mom to do it. Her lack of precision is just as bad as mine, if not worse. I believe she will laugh when she reads that line. I really hope I am right about that.

So I took a deep breath and I started cutting.

My shapes were anything but precise. No two were exactly the same. One shin plate, for instance, was about three times larger than the other. And none of them really turned out the way I had envisioned, either. All in all, I was able to make a complete mess out of all of the bleach bottles in just 10 minutes. I’m pretty sure that I started and finished the cutting before my dad even found the spray paint.

When I saw my little piles of white plastic, my first thought was, “Uh Oh. My kid is going to get an F and it’s going to be my fault. If I had been a little more patient, I could have waited for my dad to finish painting the mesh and I could have had him do it.”

But you know what? They didn’t look all that bad once I messily taped them to the garbage bag that my daughter was wearing. You agree?

This led me to realize that my fear of failure was what was causing me to think that someone else should cut up the bottles. In the end, however, I had nothing to fear. After all, I could be a precise person if I wanted to be. I just choose not to be this sort of person most of the time because I’d rather make a mess. If it were really important to me, I’m sure I could eventually make the best trashy storm trooper ever.

We all have the ingredients for success within us. The question is whether we have the fortitude and drive to make a mess, start over, make a mess, start over, and then eventually get it done without making a mess.

3.     People don’t need to be micromanaged. About a week ago, Sossa Starshine, a regular reader here, offered to make and bring a cake to my book reading Monday. As it turns out, she’s a pastry chef who specializes in making these really cool cakes. (Her bakery is called Starshine’s Sweets and you really ought to hire her for all of your cake needs.) I told her that I would be delighted. She asked me what kind of a cake she should bring. I told her anything with a romance theme would work. She asked me what flavor. I said I was partial to them all, but that red velvet might be nice. That’s all I told her. See what she made based on those scant instructions? It was awesome, and it tasted as orgasmically good as it looks. She didn’t need any more direction from me than what I gave her. She’s a cake expert, not me. By getting myself out of her way, she was able to do what she does best.

What are your random life lessons?