Troy age:19

Life's Little Lessons

Ya Gotta Know Where You're Goin'

by Denis Boyles

Life is a big navigation problem.  To get the answer, first figure out where you are, then where you want to go.

Indulge me, if you will, as I try to make sense of what has happened to me of late, for my dilemma has a little lesson in it, which means that there may be something in this for you.

In most respects, we all live the same lives, prisoners, as it were, of the human declension.  That is, every morning, I get up, you get up, they get up.  It's what we do next that makes the difference, and that's where my situation may or may not differ from yours but certainly, absolutely and profoundly differs from any situation I ever expected.

It's like this: I was having a perfectly good time writing books about Africa when I made a temporary stop in New York.  I met a girl there.  We dated, then we broke up, then she sued me for breach of contract, then I found myself living in a motel in downtown Spokane, not getting out of bed until the horse track opened, when one morning the telephone rang.  It was my friend Waldman.  He wished to run for a city councilman's seat in Baltimore and wanted me to help run his campaign.  I am very fond of Waldman, but I love Baltimore more, so I quickly packed, hopped a flight and, with his eager cooperation (he was prone to statements like "It's time this city broke through its consciousness"), helped engineer his defeat.  You with me so far?  Because this is where the turn comes.

I arrived in Baltimore with two suitcases.  Two years later, I left town in two moving vans, with a wife, a daughter, and a mortgage on a farm.

How did this happen?  Beats me.  I got up every morning, same as you, but I guess I didn't pay attention to the details, because now when I get up, she gets up and they get up.  Suddenly, the details are astonishing.  I look around and see a world I never thought existed.  It's as if I boarded a flight to Newark, fell asleep on take-off, and woke up just before landing in Sri Lanka.

All of which brings me to my little dilemma.  It is, as I say, one which I never expected to have to face.  But it's my problem, as so, in the spirit of modern politics, I'm passing it on to you: This morning, after I got up, my wife informed me that it was not possible, even with her best efforts, to make three baby seats fit on the back seat of the Isuzu.

Depending on your reproductive status, the limitations on the number of baby chairs that will fit comfortably side by side on the back seat of your car may be, to you, only a mildly interesting observation on automotive design.  To me, however, and I dare say to a few more of us out there, this problem isn't one of the cart seats or even cars.  It's a navigation problem: I'm in a room and a women is telling me she can't get three kiddie-chairs on the back seat of a car.  How did I ever get here?  And where am I, anyway?  Nobody ever thinks of life as a walk in the woods until he finds himself in the dark, surrounded by trees.

There are many time-honored ways to keep track of where you are at any given time.  Drop crumbs as you walk, or unroll some twine.  My suggestion: Map as you go.  men and maps where made for each other.

First, get the lay of the land.  There are some obvious landmarks out there, and if you squint you can see most of them from where you're standing.  There's the Great Falls of Love, The Mountains of Marriage, the Plains of Poverty, the mighty River of Reproduction, the trackless Dunes of Divorce.  And someplace, way, way off in the purple haze, are the fabulous Fields of Fulfillment.

You can tell where you are in relation to any of these landmarks by simply paying attention to the figurative flora, fauna and topographic oddities around you.  For example, if last month you were buying lunch lunch for all your unemployed friends and this month people who can't pronounce your last name are calling you at home at 7:30 in the morning to ask where the payment is, chances are pretty good that you're in some sort of income-to-debt-ratio type thing--or, to be blunt, you got lost on the way to the bank.

Second, mark your trail.  One well-trod path to self-location is to keep a journal.  No, no, no, not some weepy account of field trips you've taken with your inner child.  Just a straightforward accounting on a daily basis, of where you were, who you saw, what they said, what you paid and how much it rained.  There's no right or wrong way to keep a journal: Make your entries as stark as you please.  If you don't feel like a florid kind of guy on, say March 21, just get down the facts: Ate, worked, ate, TV, sleep, rain.  If, however, the very next day the sex fairy leaves a prize for you under your pillow, and you suddenly feel compelled to drop your feelings a little line, go ahead and do it--by May 12 you'll look back at that fateful day with some interest.  Journals, kept faithfully for a year will cause two things to happen.  First, your life will magically focus itself so that decisions will come easier and self evaluations will increase in accuracy.  Second, you'll become a better writer.

Dyslexic? Lazy? That's what Polaroids are for.  A snap a day keeps confusion away.  it doesn't really mater what you take pictures of.  If you limit yourself to one a day, eventually some sort of prioritizing spirit will capture the enterprise and you'll end up with a big snapshot of a year.

Another way out of the woods is to ignore the passing trees.  What I mean here is that many of the things that were important to you when you were, say, 27 aren't the same things that are important when you're 40.  So one reason why you may suddenly wake up one morning and feel lost is that you went to sleep as an entirely different person.  The stuff that was important to you when you dozed off disappeared in the dark and was replaced by the morning's first light by a different set of priorities.  Bingo. Lost.

What's happening here is obvious: The world is passing you by, as if you were doing a psychic moonwalk.  Prescription?  Turn off the TV, open a hard-to-read book---Moby Dick, Madame Bovary, something by Henry James---and listen to some smart chap provide a little perspective on life.  Or check out Aquinas or Maimonides.  This kind of activity will also make you a rarity among men, in that intellectual reflection--as opposed to semi-psychological analysis--is something almost nobody does these days.  Most of us would much rather carry a heavy object up two flights than carry a heavy thought through to a conclusion.

Third, know where you want to go.  This is the hard part.  Maps are useless unless you know two things: Where you are and where you want to go.  Let's just say, for example, that you're living in a motel in Spokane and happily spending your days at the racetrack and you have no wish to squeeze three child-restraint chairs onto the back seat of an IsuzuTrooper.  Suddenly, the phone rings.  What do you do?

Answer: Check your map.  If you want to play the ponies, don't answer the phone.