How Am I? Don't Ask!

I remember reading somewhere that in cultures where there is no word for stuttering, people don't stutter.  Please don't run and google this statistic.  It doesn't matter if my memory is totally flawed.  What matters is the idea that if you don't apply the label, the condition might not exist.  For those factoid wonks who demand accuracy, I'll re-pose my theory in the form of a familiar philosophical query: If a tree falls in the forest and nobody asks if it made a sound, would the tree even know it fell? (I didn't say it would be a great philosophical query.)

That's what I'm wondering these days as I make my way through the quotidian morass of paperwork, drudgery of homemaking, stress of our declining economy and fact of my advancing age.  If I never asked myself "Am I happy?" would I ever doubt that I was? 

Another aphorism I've heard, but can't remember where, claims that "nothing is work unless you'd rather be doing something else."  This philosophy can readily be applied to all sorts of undesireable situations: Fifty is great as long as you wouldn't rather be forty.  Cooked beets are tasty unless you think of chocolate cake.  Your spouse is gorgeous as long as you don't look at Brangelina.  Ergo, I am happy until I compare my mental state to, oh, the way I felt on my wedding day, when I was thirty-five, was literally forced to eat cake and slept with a man who could give Brad Pitt a run for his hearthrob money.

So yes, these days I find it helpful to walk through my duties with mental blinders on and caution tape around my brain's pleasure centers.  Nothing to see over here, just keep walking.  My motivational catchphrase is much more in line with the Nike slogan, "Just do it."  (However I might preface that with "You don't have to like it.")

So, how am I?  Who cares?  It's enough that I simply "am."

In conclusion, I would like to lay to rest one final pithy adage.  With apologies to Socrates, the unexamined life might actually have something going for it.

Remembering My Brother on 2/14/11

I have now lost three members of my immediate family and I can say with total honesty that the specific dates of their deaths have never been any kind of emotional trigger for me.  (As a matter of fact, it has always kind of amused me that my father died on the third of September… which the Temptations unknowingly predicted in song.)  Where annual milestones were concerned, I found that I missed my loved ones the same every day, and tried to honor their memory with equal daily consistency.  To focus on any one date seemed rather arbitrary.  But Doug died on Valentine’s Day, a very high-profile date that demands acknowledgement (not a surprising exit for those who knew my brother.)

Again, however, I have to confess that Valentine’s Day was never a big deal for me.  I always felt it was artificial and commercial.  Other than the annual heartbreak I may have suffered in high school if the right boy didn’t deliver the right card/box of candy/flowers, the day has held very little significance for me; much to the relief of my husband, I’m sure.

But I do know that Doug did not feel quite the same as I did in this regard.  February 14^th is a day that purports to celebrate love, and Love was a gospel Doug preached.  He even got married on Valentine’s Day.  I’m talking about his third marriage!  If that doesn’t prove he was a romantic, then how about this:

Fading as he was, one of the last requests Doug made of me was that I go out and buy a Valentine’s Day card for him to give all the women who were taking care of him in those days.  He was having trouble remembering how to work his iPod, but he sure as hell wouldn’t forget what date was fast approaching.  One of the most gut-wrenching things I have ever had to do was deliver those cards that afternoon, after Doug was already gone.

So now I have this memory of Doug and his legacy of love, coupled with a date that is highlighted on every calendar across the country.  I find that indifference is impossible.  Thanks to Doug, Valentine’s Day will forever now have meaning for me.

Thanks to Doug, every Valentine’s Day I will remember how deeply it is possible to love somebody.