Non-zero Sum Life

A tap on the shoulder, "Dean-san, sorry to bother you during this busy time."

I turned from my PC monitor and found my coworker standing beside me with an ornate box of biscuits.

She offered the box, "It's my last day today, thank you for all the times you helped me out with our project."

"Thank you as well, for being patient with me and my complicated explanations," I said with an earnest smile as I reached into the box and picked out a carefully wrapped morsel.

Apologetically, she explained that she will be trying something new in another company, and I rejoined with some nostalgic comments about her hard work and contributions to our project.

She is "majime", for sure: a Japanese quality she proved time-and-time again with her attention to detail, and thorough output. She was all that, as well as a warm presence in our team in her polite and ever cheerful manner.

I will miss her. And I am also jealous.

I, too, want to find within me that wellspring of casual joy that can carry me through the endless days of deadlines and troubles. I want to knock those goals one after another with a real smile on my face. That's a good life, I think.

But nowadays, each step forward with one goal feels like 2 steps backward with another goal: finish the laundry, forget to take-out the trash; submit the revised specs, miss the project roadmap planning session; get some gym-time in, end up eating everything in the fridge.

Is life teaching me that you can't have everything? I refuse to believe it. There must be some combination of prioritization and scheduling(not to mention copious amounts of coffee) that will let me have that life well-lived. Maybe if I keep trying, each day, slowly increase my endurance, my tolerance, stretch out time, push my own limits, maybe, just maybe, I might. I've got the rest of my life to keep trying.

Just keep at it, and life can be sweet--exhausting, but sweet.

I unwrap the biscuit and take a hearty bite. I taste the rich fudge bits that complement the flakey maple crust that graze my teeth with a satisfying crunch. Another bite, also amazing, and then suddenly it's all gone

Photo credit: Biscuit
BGM: "Riu Riu Chiu" by King's College Choir, Cambridge

Order. Design. Tension. Composition. Balance. Light. And Harmony.

"It is good to see you, George. Not that I ever forgot you. You gave me so much." 

"What did I give you?"

"You taught me about concentration. At first I thought that meant just being still, but I was to understand, it meant much more. You meant to tell me to be where I was, not some place in the past or future. I worried too much about tomorrow.

What about you, are you working on something new?"

For the past few months, I've been obsessing about the perfect week--and by perfect, I don't mean the sexscapade. Instead, I imagined my 30's would feel like those weekly TV sitcoms I grew up with.

And by sitcom standards, life was an eclectic apartment, spontaneous visits from friends and family, a fit body, work that sorted itself out, and the weekly event that drove the storyline of my life gradually, inevitably forward.

It feels naive when I idealise fiction, but it was the best model I could find at the time. From my side of the TV screen, there weren't many exemplars to choose from. In real life, most people I knew had a less than picture-perfect home, or complicated friends, and that one difficult relative, or that tenacious love-handle, plus the daily dosage of blood-pressure medicine. And when it came to their jobs, everyone had their own unique miasma of work grievances.

But as if part of good storytelling, everyone eked out a living somehow despite the un-ideal. In my young mind I thought, "That must be what being an adult was about: always moving on."

Nowadays, my life hasn't been moving on as much as I'd like it to. Most mornings I wake up to the question, "Am I OK to repeat the same old yesterday until the day I die? Is this what feeling mature is like?" No, I just feel old.

The solution to this rut, I thought, was to fashion the perfect week: maintain a clean apartment, a few drinks with friends, an intimate call with family, two or three sweaty workouts, and work deftly managed.

Maybe if I get all that done, I'll feel like I'm moving again, and with luck, one morning wake up renewed.

"Stop worrying if your vision is new

Let others make that decision, they usually do

You keep moving on

Just keep moving on

Anything you do

Let it come from you

Then it will be new

Give us more to see"

Photo Credit: Musical Theatre Repertory at USC
BGM: "Move On" by Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford from "Sunday in the Park with George"