End of the calendar year and I realize that
we look forward and backward a lot as human beings.
what was the best music this year
when is that movie coming out
when did these pants last fit
how long will these shoes last
didn’t I used to and
how are we ever going to be able to
Around this time, we become, each one of us
historians, yet futurists
classical archeologists and inventor engineers
But what is the term for being now? What's the term for being when we are?In the middle of what-is-to-come and what-has-been?
Smack between “What was that??” and “What IS that??”
Riding the razor’s edge between carefully analyzing steps taken and squinting into tomorrow’s glare to plot where next to tread?
I’ve always found surfing the best metaphor.
You can’t really plan surfing; the water does whatever it does: what it just did doesn’t matter and you can’t really figure out entirely what it going to do. One must shift to steer. One must balance.
I don’t know why they call it “riding” a surfboard… that’s an impossibly passive verb for the action of not falling off something unstable.
Now there are Red Bull™ sponsorships with quick-cut GoPro™ videos that really make it appear as hard as it must be to do, but in the past, the entire surfing brand image was deceptively mellow for the literally death-defying skill it takes to surf.
The Beach Boys should have been a hardcore punk rock band.
I digress in order to focus: we may, all of us, be standing on ground which increasingly feels both liquid and turbulent, in total oppostition with our natural attraction to equilibrium. The floor is lava and we can’t make it to the couch, we are roller skating on an ice rink, we are juggling chainsaws in the back of a flatbed truck that is rolling down a mountain. It’s hard to plan chaos; and very difficult to know what to wear.
But total uncertainty means freedom, in some aspects, because if we can’t figure out what just happened and we can’t figure what’s going to happen then we simply must live moment to moment, second to second, re-adjusting and shifting weight to navigate because we have absolutely no control over the moving-dangerously-forward part, like in a video game or a conversation with your in-laws.
Surfing.
And so I say Happy New Year.
You know what tomorrow will bring? Tomorrow. And yesterday, no matter what happened, is over. So Happy New Year, honestly.
It has no idea what it’s going to be yet, but at least we know who we are, so if the rules are off, then it’s on. Starting January 1st, I’m gonna do those three and a half weeks of push-ups I do every year and get ready to hang ten. Or 365 or whatever. Not fall off the board or get eaten by sharks. It’s the surfing metaphor.
Sigh.
Thanks for reading, enjoy your Holiday, and I’ll see you there.
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