How quickly time flies when you are having fun. Not having fun? Too bad, it’s flying anyway.
The ever plodding forward momentum of time, the insoluble nature of it, is very much on my mind this morning as I ride the morning train into LA. I’m thinking about where I was precisely one year ago.
Exactly in the same place I am now.
Let me clarify. Physically, I am in the same place. I am riding the exact same morning train, heading to the exact destination. One year ago it’s likely that I would be sitting in this exact same seat.
But let me tell you sister, for everything else we’re miles away.
One year ago I was newly arrived in Southern California, destitute from bad choices and crippled by hubris. I had arrived firmly and most definitively at a crossroads and rather than gather the rubble of my life around me, cling to the shadows that remained as I had so many times in the past, I gave away the vast majority of my possessions and packed the few things that remained. With my backpack and single suitcase, I flew out to join my family in Southern California.
Go west young man.
Gone was the big screen HDTV, The PlayStation 3, the electronics, the furniture, the miscellaneous shit that I had been hoarding for years. I spent my last three dollars in an airport Wendy’s. Like so many before me I was heading west hoping to find gold, and I couldn’t even afford a sifting pan.
And that was then. If I were to go back and find that man, that other me, one year ago on this train, I doubt I would recognize him. If I were to speak to man, I wouldn’t know his thoughts. He would be a stranger wearing my face.
A few years ago I was on vacation with some friends and, spur of the moment, we wandered into a mirror maze. I had recently made drastic changes in my life, losing over sixty pounds being one of them. I was finding myself again, it took another three years and more than a few extremely bad decisions to actually do it, but I digress. At that time I was first beginning to feel glimmers of who I really was.
So there we were in this mirror maze. The mirrors throw all sense of direction and spatial understanding out the door. You can be standing right next to your friend and the mirrors make it seem like they are at the end of the hall and vice versa. We’re making our way through, slowly, laughing as we bumble into the mirrors, the walls, each other. I’m walking down a hall and I see a man coming my way. He’s got shorter brown hair, a hint of stubble. Just some guy, you know? We’re walking directly toward each other.
I step to my right to let him pass. He does the same. I laugh, apologize, and step to my left. He does the same.
It’s me. The man I’m trying to step around is me. I looked myself dead in the face, made eye contact, and didn’t even know it. You look at yourself in the mirror every day, but how many times do you actually see.
Today, as I sit in this familiar seat, watching the sun spill over the Southern California hills, I look back at where I’ve come from, and where I am now. One year ago I was directionless. Today, I know where I’m going.
On Monday I received word that I had passed the audition to get into The Second City’s graduating ensemble, an audition that a good many of my extremely talented class mates did not pass. I’m flabbergasted, honored, confused, elated, humbled.
I found love when and where I least expected. And it’s good, it’s pure. It has a clarity, honesty, and vastness that I never thought possible, but always dreamed for.
I get asked to write scripts. I get to perform and make people laugh almost every day. I get to be me and I am loved for it. I am doing exactly what I want to do and the universe is allowing me to make a living doing it. How cool is that.
The universe swept ever onward. It wasn’t until I just let go and let it carry me along that I found my course. You struggle and suffer and push when sometimes all you need is time. Trust it and things will have changed without you even noticing.
Time flies, you might as well have fun.
Weasel Tea 