September 6: How Many Roads, Long Week, Faking It

Frankie and Benjy mouse are trying to come up with the Ultimate Question about life, the universe, and everything (they already have the answer--42) . . .

"Difficult," said Frankie.  He thought.  "How about What's yellow and dangerous?"

Benjy considered this for a moment.

"No, no good," he said.  "Doesn't fit the answer."

They sank into silence for a few seconds.

"All right," said Benjy.  "What do you get if you multiply six by seven?"

"No, no, too literal, too factual," said Frankie, "wouldn't sustain the punters' interest."

Again they thought.

Then Frankie said, "Here's a thought.  How many roads must a man walk down?"

"Ah, said Benjy.  "Aha, now that does sound promising!"  He rolled the phrase around a little.  "Yes," he said, "that's excellent!  Sounds very significant without actually tying you down to meaning anything at all.  How many roads must a man walk down?  Forty-two   Excellent, excellent, that'll fox 'em.  Frankie, baby, we are made!"

They performed a scampering dance in their excitement.

Searching for answers in life is difficult.  Questions are a little easier.  I'm sure that, if I put my mind to work, I would be able to come up with a list of questions that plague most people, starting with Why do good people have to suffer? to How do I live a meaningful life? to What happens to all the matching socks that I put in the dryer?  Frankie and Benjy don't really care about the Ultimate Question or its answer.  They care about themselves.  That's it.  Their happiness is about becoming rich and famous.

It has been a very long week.  I'm plain exhausted right now.  Today, I worked about ten hours, came home, and then cleaned at church for a few hours (another job I have now).   My feet are sore.  My eyes are burning.  And my mind is Jell-O.  I'm too tired to get much deeper than that. 

Despite working 16 or 17 hours, however, I've had a good day.  It wasn't complicated or stressful.  Sure, I'm tired, but that's a cumulative tiredness that comes from the week's activities.  Right now, I'm sitting in my living room, typing this blog post (something I love to do), and I don't have a deadline.  Don't have any lessons to plan or quizzes to worry about.  I even get to sleep late tomorrow.

So, my answer tonight to What makes you happy? is pretty simple:  Friday night.  I am more relaxed than I've been in days.  Of course, there are worries still hovering around my head like hummingbirds, but I'm not letting them take over.  Not tonight.  Instead, I'm going to pretend that I'm completely content and happy.  My therapist friend has a saying for this:  "Fake it 'til you make it."  It's pretty simple advice.  Sometimes, when your life is falling apart, you just have to act as though everything is okay.  You keep doing that, over and over.  It's called survival.

So, for the next ten or eleven hours, my life is going to be perfect.  I'm going to eat well.  Write well.  Love well.  Sleep well.

Who knows?  Maybe Saint Marty's life will be perfect when he wakes up tomorrow morning.

Some perfect reading to end the night with . . .

September 5: Fake a Question, Small Miracles, New Shoes

An emergency has just begun on Magrathea . . .

The two mice sniffed irritably round the fragments of their glass transports where they lay shattered on the floor.  "Damnation," muttered Frankie mouse, "all that fuss over two pounds of Earthling brain."  He scuttled round and about, his pink eyes flashing, his fine white coat bristling with static.  "The only thing we can do now," said Benjy, crouching and stroking his whiskers in thought, "is to try and fake a question, invent one that will sound plausible."

What do you do when life doesn't necessarily go your way?  Well, if you're two white mice from another dimension, you decide to fabricate a story (and a question to the Ultimate Answer) that will save face.  Yes, even aliens will lie through their whiskers to get what they want.

My life has gone a little off course in the last four or so months.  I'm not not living the dream at the moment.  I've been pretty forthright about that with my friends and family and the disciples of this blog.  The summer of 2019 will not go down in the record books of Saint Marty as being particularly happy.  In fact, if I could fast forward to December 31st right now, I would.  Bring on "Auld Lang Syne."  Of course, because I'm not an interdimensional rodent, I am not able to time leap, which is disappointing.

So, what to do?

I was having a text conversation with a friend a little while ago.  He, also, has been dealing with some personal struggles, and he told me that he has been going for long morning walks to combat depression and anxiety.  On those walks, he tries to take note of the small miracles he encounters.  Birds.  Trees.  People.  Landmarks.  Every step on these walks, my friend said, is a step toward recovery and wholeness.

I love the idea of these walks.  They're an exercise in awareness.  Keeping your eyes and heart open in order to encounter God's grace.  Because, in reality, I think we all go through most of our days with blinders on, passing the miracles God sends our way without even noticing.

One of the things that I did recently that still makes me really happy is not quite so . . . unselfish.  In fact, I think you could call the pleasure I experience almost materialistic and silly.  However, for some reason, this one act gives me joy on a daily basis.  I bought a new pair of shoes.

I spoke to my therapist about the pleasure I derive from these shoes, and she laughed.  She said it was an act of self-care.  "You were doing something for you," she said.  "There's nothing wrong with that.  And if it involves shoes, all the better."  My therapist has a thing for shoes, just like me.

So, tonight, I'm going to tell you that shoes can be a source of joy.  The pair I purchased were on clearance, and, when I walk in them, they somehow remind me not to be so serious.  To take care of myself.  To find happiness and blessings every day in my life.

Saint Marty is walking his way toward wholeness, in a really nice, comfortable, dressy tennis shoes.

September 4: Emergency, Difficult Decisions, Miracles

Emergency alarms are sounding . . .

"Emergency!  Emergency!" blared the klaxons throughout Magrathea.  "Hostile ship has landed on planet.  Armed intruders in section SA.  Defense stations, defense stations!"

Sometimes, emergencies can be huge--armed intruders.  Sometimes emergencies can be small--tomato sauce on your favorite shirt.  Nonetheless, when something bad happens or is about to happen, it can seem overwhelming.  Like the end of the world.  Some emergencies are simply out of our control.  Hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards.  And some emergencies--personal, private emergencies--force us to make difficult decisions with lasting implications.

I am not a person who rushes things.  I tend to ruminate.  Brood.  Dwell.  If I'm faced with a difficult decision, I prefer to take my time and think about it.  A lot.  I have been thinking about a certain decision a lot recently.  (No, I will not go into detail about this decision.  Suffice to say, it's a difficult decision that is causing me sleepless nights.)  It's a decision I do not want to make, but, over the last few weeks/months, I've been slowly backed into it.

I hate being in my current position.  No matter what choice I make, it will be painful, and I will feel like the bad guy for a very long time.  I don't like being the bad guy.  I like being the loving guy.  The funny guy.  The guy you can count on, no matter what.  I want to be known, in the end, as a good friend, a good brother, a good son, a good father, and a good husband.  If I'm also known as a good poet, even better. 

I've been praying a lot.  Meditating a lot.  I'm not done praying and meditating.  I'm hoping to see some kind of miracle happen.  A good, happy miracle.  I believe in miracles, despite living in a pretty cynical world.  I have been the recipient of miracles, in just the last few weeks, thanks to people who love me.

So, here's to miracles and difficult decisions this evening.  Saint Marty is hoping that a miracle happens soon, so he doesn't have to make a difficult decision.

One of the biggest miracles in my life . . .

September 2: Earsplitting Din, Labor Day, Surrender

Arthur is about to be de-brained . . .

"Yes, an electronic brain," said Frankie, "a simple one would suffice."

"A simple one!" wailed Arthur.

"Yeah," said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea?  Who'd know the difference?"

"What?" cried Arthur, backing away still farther.

"See what I mean?" said Zaphod, and howled with pain because of something that Trillian did at that moment.

"I'd notice the difference," said Arthur.

"No, you wouldn't," said Frankie mouse, "you'd be programmed not to."

Ford made for the door.

"Look, I'm sorry, mice, old lads," he said.  "I don't think we've got a deal."

"I rather think we have to have a deal," said the mice in chorus, all the charm vanishing from their piping little voices in an instant.  With a tiny whining shriek their two glass transports lifted themselves off the table, and swung through the air toward Arthur, who stumbled farther backward into a blind corner, utterly unable to cope or think of anything.

Trillian grabbed him desperately by the arm and tried to drag him toward the door, which Ford and Zaphod were struggling to open, but Arthur was deadweight--he seemed hypnotized by the airborne rodents swooping toward him.

She screamed at him, but he just gaped.

With one more yank, Ford and Zaphod got the door open.  On the other side of it was a small pack of rather ugly men who they could only assume were the heavy mob of Magrathea.  Not only were they ugly themselves, but the medical equipment they carried with them was also far from pretty.  They charged.

So--Arthur was about to have his head cut open, Trillian was unable to help him and Ford and Zaphod were about to be set upon by several thugs a great deal heavier and more sharply armed than they were.

All in all it was extremely fortunate that at that moment every alarm on the planet burst into an earsplitting din.

Arthur is still, understandably, in a state of complete panic.  Benjy and Frankie want to remove and dice his brain.  Zaphod seems all for the idea, but Zaphod also performed surgery on his own brain some time in the past.  Things seem to be reaching a crisis point in the book.  What will our heroes do?  Will they escape the bloodthirsty white mice?  Will Arthur be able to save his brain?  Or get his tea?  Stay tuned.

It is Labor Day in the United States, a Monday set aside to celebrate the contributions of the labor movement and unions in the United States.  Of course, few people actually even think about organized labor history on this day.  Mostly, it's about having a three-day weekend and barbecuing one last time before we admit that autumn has arrived.

There usually isn't a whole lot of panic on Labor Day (certainly not on the scale of battling brain-hungry mice).  It's a lazy time.  Unless you're like me.  I just spent several hours preparing for teaching this week.  Lesson planning.  E-mailing.  Tidying up my online course materials.  Labor Day has been about actual labor for me.

Now, however, I feel very prepared for the coming work days.  I don't have to spend hours this evening getting my shit together, which is normally my style.  I tend to procrastinate.  A lot.  This character flaw usually gets me in a lot of trouble during the academic year.  I am determined not to let that happen this semester.  We will see if I'm able to stick to it.

Writing my post last night (actually, early this morning), I said that I felt a real sense of peace in my heart, something that I haven't experienced in a while.  Of course, as I said last night, that kind of peace only comes when you've really reached the end of your rope.  You've exhausted all of your energies to try to change things.  That's when you throw up your arms and surrender.

And that's where I was last night.  Waving the white flag at God and submitting to His will.  God always wins this battle.  Yet, it's a very human thing, trying to take control and run the show.  We all like to believe that we're in charge of our own lives.  In a way, we are.  We make choices which determine the courses of our lives.  Some of those choices are good.  Some of those choices are bad.

God doesn't interfere with freewill.  He just takes the mess that we make of things and transforms it into something beautiful, if we let Him.  Of course, if we continue to make bad choices, God's work is a lot harder.  Some people are more stubborn than others.  They hold onto their "power," refusing to admit their mistakes.  In a situation like that, God doesn't have much to work with.  He has to sit back, watch everything fall apart, and then start putting the pieces back together again.

God doesn't give up on anyone, though.  He may stand back and shake His head when you sneak out at night like a teenager to get drunk or meet up with a girlfriend/boyfriend.  Yet, He will always welcome you home, when you make the choice to return.  Ask the prodigal son.  God's love and forgiveness are infinite.

People make mistakes.  Lots of them.  Including me, believe it or not.  Early this morning, as I was sitting at my laptop, typing a blog post about loneliness, I felt overwhelmingly comforted.  As if God was sitting in the chair beside me, nodding His head, putting His arm around my shoulders.  Before that moment, I had been tired, a little beaten down, and I said aloud, "I give up.  I can't do this anymore.  It's in Your hands, God."  Everyone else was in bed, asleep, and I was sitting at the kitchen table at one in the morning.  Yet, I didn't feel alone anymore. 

I'm sure that I'm not done with despair, or despair's not done with me.  Tonight, though, I hold on to that peace of complete surrender.  I'm going to read a good book this evening.  Maybe play a game with my son before he goes to bed.  Then, when the house is asleep, I will say a prayer of surrender for everyone I love.  I will give them over to God.  My son for his first day of school tomorrow.  My daughter for her second week of college.  My wife for her struggles with mental illness and addiction.  And myself.

As Psalm 55 instructs, Saint Marty is casting all his burdens on the Lord, and the Lord will sustain Saint Marty and everyone he loves.