Here's to Monday!

I have been on vacation for nine days now.  Nine out of the last nine days have been filled with not working and a lot of food.  Many celebrations and a lot of baked goods.  It has been wonderful, but like everything good or bad it is coming to an end.  And in true Megan form I am bereft; devastated by the inevitable return to all things ordinary and routine.  I am stunned by the fact that time kept passing and this week, like all of the weeks before and after, had a beginning and now has an end.  I am stunned almost silent by this. Almost. There was possibly a little....there may have been a slight bit....I may have taken part in a modicum of......complaining.

Now, I know better than to complain.  I was raised in part by a Dad who, other than being perfect, was also something of the "perspective police".  He had a neat way of letting you know that complaining about things like having to get up for school or work, putting the dishes away, even the car breaking down, was kind of an asshole way to exist in the world.  I will never forget the "it's not fair" discussion (verbal-ass-kicking), circa 1988 when I learned that if you want to see my Dad literally unravel with irritation, all you have to do is point out how unfair it is to be fourteen in white-upper-middle-class California, where your biggest issue is the horror of generic hair products.  Then to add insult to injury, point your generic hair-product horror out to someone who knows the gravity of the rest of the world.  Someone who made life decisions based on a war.  Someone whose friends died in a jungle.  Someone who was raised....well let's just say it wasn't soft.

There is a Doonesbury cartoon from a million years ago that my Dad likes to quote from time to time.  It is of one of the characters sitting in his bedroom surrounded by stuff....Christmas gifts, new skis, clothes, thing-a-ma-bobs and do-hickeys and he is super-underwhelmed. Or maybe overwhelmed by his lack of whelm....but either way, he is sad and probably can't figure out why.  Then his friend calls from a much smaller space with joy in his voice and he wishes melancholy-dude a Merry Christmas.  Melancholy-dude thanks him and asks him the proverbial privileged question of what he got for Christmas.  With absolute joy in his voice grateful-dude declares: "A number two pencil....With an Eraser!!!!"  The last image is of melancholy-dude with his head hung in shame.

I am the proverbial melancholy-dude.  I wish humility came more naturally to me but it never has so I have to Keith-myself on a regular basis.  I try to remind myself that while yes, vacation is over, I have a job to take a vacation (and a paid one at that) from.  I went on vacation from a place and to a place with running water and food (way, way too much food).  No one blew anything up around me while I was on vacation and when I got home, there were no air-raid sirens.  I don't have to get up tomorrow.  I get to get up.  I am having a test run first thing in the morning and it will be clean and well-staffed at the clinic so the chances that I will be exposed to the Ebola virus are really, really slim. Whatever comes my way, I will probably survive it and at the end of the day I will be loved and cared for, fed and clothed, and  all of my basic needs will be more than met. I bet if I look closely there will be a lot of number two pencils and a lot of opportunities for joy.

Now that I am in my forties and even more wise than four days ago when I was just turning forty, I realize that what my Dad has been trying to teach me all along was to exist first and foremost from a place of humility and gratitude.  I see these things on Facebook all of the time about trying to go through a day without complaining.....which I interpret as trying to go through a day without being an asshole. I've never tried it, and in fact I have been known to quietly complain about the posts because I think: "I know you and trust me the next thing out of your mouth is going to be a complaint."  But I think that is probably just me looking in the mirror and not liking what I am seeing about myself.

I wanted to spend all day today complaining about vacation being over.  But I have decided I just can't do it, not with any conscience.  Until I am trapped on a mountain top in Iraq hoping that the German planes can get the food to me, or falling from the sky to my death because I was on the wrong plane at the wrong time....no matter what my first day back from vacation throws at me or the day after that or really on just about any day of my white-upper-middle-class-pretty-privileged life?  There is nothing, absolutely nothing, less than nothing, really ever to complain about.

So, I accept the challenge and I am not going to complain.  Gratitude-check.  Asshole-check.  Here's to Monday. Get Keithed.   xoxoxo