Day 296

Thanksgiving Day.

And just what do I have to be thankful for? Well for starters I was able to walk around Disneyland with my wife's extended family for three full days last week and watch the joy and amazement in the wide eyes of my two beautiful girls as they soaked up all of the magic and mystery that Walt and his friends had to offer. It was wonderful. I struggled with a stairway or two during our short vacation but overall my knee, thanks in large part to continuing physical therapy, held up well.

Of course I'm also thankful for my loving family and a select handful of exceptional friends and the fact that I still have a great job and can comfortably provide for the basic needs of my family. If you're currently in this condition or better, now's a good time to stop and consider that many people are not.

Take for example, the thieves that robbed my house a couple of weeks ago. They probably don't even have decent health insurance. What they do have unfortunately is more than ten thousand dollars of what was until recently my family's stuff. At around 11am, in broad daylight, with about an 18 minute window between the time my wife left the house and I returned from PT, the heist was complete. It can take longer than that to get through the goddam express lane at Safeway. Apparently it's just not all that difficult to invade someone's home entirely unnoticed and walk out with as much as you can carry.

The real problem of course is that it's not just "things" that get taken. It is personal privacy, a carefully cultivated and highly imaginary sense of security, and perhaps most importantly, any feeling of control. All gone. In the past couple of weeks since the theft, I have been flooded with many of the same emotions that I had in those first few days after my knee injury - anger, despair, frustration, helplessness, an overwhelming desire for prescription narcotics. What I have finally come to realize is that loss is loss. Whether it is the loss of some healthy part of ourselves or the loss of material possessions, our reactions always seem to contain, in varying degrees, similar elements. Most notably, the primary component of any loss we incur is naturally accompanied by a renewed awareness that we are in fact not in control. Of course this lack of control always exists, but it does so in direct contrast with our (ok, my) inherent need to feel in control. Without a strong belief that my future is a direct result of my own focus and dedication and effort, I wonder if some of my self-generated motivation is in danger of being precariously relocated beyond the frayed edges of my character. If you can't turn the ship, why bother steering?

I now more fully realize something that I suppose deep down I already knew - that in this, as in all areas of life, there is a balance. No, we are not in control. Far from it. But at the same time our inability to control our future is balanced by the fact that we are also not entirely unable to affect the outcome. The reality lies somewhere in the middle - in an ability to have the effect of our input considered in the results. The obvious fact is, any bit of effect we can muster is always mixed with and sometimes superseded by the effect of outside forces, like other people and sheer luck - both good and bad. I suppose real character includes the ability to continue to strive to do the right thing, to work with unwavering dedication at improving and making a positive difference within ourselves and for the people around us, even while maintaining a conscious awareness that our efforts may at any time be counteracted by a random act of man or nature, or an unexpected dance move.

As part of my recovery and general goal of optimal health, I have recently increased my focus on vitamins and supplements. I haven't gotten around to any fun stuff like EPO or Viagra but I do now have a daily regimen that includes a highly nutritional meal replacement shake, a scoop of some sort of thoroughly disgusting veggie powder concentrate, Chinese green tea, a multi-vitamin, fish oils, glucosamine, MSM, chondroiten, and extra C and E supplements. By now I must be the healthiest person on the planet. Or maybe all of this is actually having no affect at all. Then again, maybe I will eventually become as healthy as I can be only to be hit by the crosstown bus. I guess I'm still struggling with this whole destiny control issue just a bit.


Speaking of vitamins, late for work a few days ago I tossed my daily handful of morning pills into the pocket of my jeans and headed to the office. Unfortunately in my haste I failed to consider that the aforementioned pocket may not have been entirely empty to begin with. After I arrived at my desk and got my computer started up I opened a bottle of water and thoughtlessly started gulping down the contents, tossing in a few pills with each swallow as I read through my email. Thankfully, a small but critical part of my consciousness apparently reserved for such things managed to notice the soft pliable texture of a foam earplug as it lodged against my tonsil and I was able through a skillfully executed combination of forced gagging and heaving bodily contortions to violently choke the wayward plug back out and onto my desk, much, I'm sure, to the enjoyment of my coworkers. Medical crisis averted, my immediate surroundings subjected to a freshly expelled mixture of spit bubbles and vitamin drool, I slowly checked the remaining contents of my pocket. The other earplug was, alas, already gone. Swallowed. Ingested, as it were, along with any false belief that I had long since matured beyond such an episode.

Turns out, we never outgrow the benefits of paying attention. Be careful out there.