In which I get a firm talking-to from my iPod

I have been feeling very sorry for myself. Every single day this week, I have felt progressively more pessimistic, lost, and just totally dejected; what the fuck am I doing?!

It culminated in a massive cry fest yesterday morning, after which I decided to go for a walk, so I grabbed my iPod, strapped on the ol’ tennis shoes, and headed down to the shore. I walked east, toward the downtown and False Creek; I hadn’t gone that direction yet.

I followed a flight of stairs toward the seashore and found myself unexpectedly at Kits Beach and Hadden Park, looking out across the water at Stanley Park and the city. It was a warm, clear day with a brisk breeze coming off of the bay. The scene looked like a casting call for a diversity song on Sesame Street, and it seemed like everyone was out walking, jogging, picnicking, flying kites, biking, playing, sitting, tai chiing, sunbathing, or strolling along the water – seizing hungrily the sunshine, the fresh air, the dwindling days until fall and winter… none of that end-of-summer melancholy anywhere in sight! The gratitude was infectious.

And in that brief moment of appreciation, my iPod had a few choice words for me in the form of Billy Joel. I have an admittedly very silly walking mix, which includes We Didn’t Start the Fire, and in the first few bars, I felt a shift. The little raincloud that had been blotting out the sunny day everyone else seemed to be enjoying lightened a bit…

…and then blew away.

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Zhou Enlai, Bridge On The River Kwai
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California Baseball,
Starkweather homicide, Children of Thalidomide

My life isn’t unfair.

Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land,
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion

Mine are not extraordinary circumstances.

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline
Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan

There may be no such thing as “unfair” or “extraordinary.”

Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide
Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law
Rock and Roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore

Every historical moment, period, and event has consequences for real people – strange coincidences, changed plans, disappointments, triumphs, mistaken identities, opportunities, biases, missed meetings, births, deaths, revelations…

And in my situation, all that’s happening is that I am living history… presently. Just like everyone who ever came before me. And like everyone who ever lived history presently before me, I have no idea how any of this will turn out.

Some have been vindicated, others villainized, and most passed on without securing so much as a footnote in the annals.

As much as I want to stomp and shout and throw a general tantrum, I am neither the first person nor the last to find myself at the mercy of the zeitgeist. That’s the whole of history, really. And while some people manage to live utterly mundane lives in even the most unusual, turbulent, and trying of times, others get caught in the torrents of record, either swept in by a rogue wave or else because they dared to wade a little deeper. At that point, they do their best to keep their heads above water; some swim the Olympic butterfly, some catch a buoy, some nearly drown, and some go under.

Perhaps this moment is unique, fleeting, and critical. Perhaps we are all extraordinary and singular beings. But obviously we’re neither as exceptional as we might like to be nor is this moment as significant as we think. And that’s not a terrible thing. If every nanosecond in the experience of each of the 6 billion people on this planet produced an existential earthquake and had been doing so since time immemorial, there’d be nothing left but rubble. Sometimes there’s mess and jumble; sometimes life’s like a sunny day at Kits Beach; and sometimes life is nothing more than existing without much to say one way or another. It’s been like that for everyone – forever, in both good times and bad.

This isn’t a moment of nihilism; it’s a pardon – for myself and everyone else.

Maybe it’s the Vancouver granola talking, but for the first time in a very long time, everything feels alright.

…maybe not the way I want it, but (certainly after everything that’s ever happened) maybe not like the end of the world…