Peter Pan Advice

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 3, Verse 21

"Have two goals: wisdom-- that is, knowing and doing right-- and common sense."

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

I don't have to write a snide and sardonic post about how New Year's Resolutions are junk and bunk and baloney and bullshit.  That won't get me any props or pussy or points.  It just isn't necessary.  You know.  I once "resolved" that, when my old dog died, I would get a dog that wouldn't shed.  In April, we brought home a Basset Hound and, every week, our vacuum cleaner sucks up enough dog to make a canine shag carpet for the set of "That '70s Show," so I think we all speak the same language here.  

I've never been too good with goals, either.  For three years, I ran a group called "Community Meeting" from 9:30-10:00 where patients were made to come up with their two goals and their "method to achieve."  Most mornings, for most men, the goal was "go to groups" and the method was "just go" and going around the room of fifteen men took approximately four minutes.  It took me longer to read out the schedule of activities for the day.  Some days, if I was feeling frisky, I would try to drag it out by trying to extract more substantive goals from the moderately less recalcitrant in the room, or try to spark conversation among the group.  But, most mornings, I let it go, and group ended in under fifteen minutes.  It was embarrassing for me, but nobody seemed to care.

I remember one Community Meeting not too long before I left the unit where a patient and I were talking about his goals.  He was being discharged that morning and I mentioned that his goals were all the more important because he was leaving the structured environment of the hospital, and I talked about how discharge isn't really the end of something, it's the beginning, and a particularly psychotic and physically imposing patient stood up and started screaming at me, getting inches away from my face, roaring about my "PETER PAN ADVICE" and I just stared at him, waiting for the crushing blow to my jaw, not because I had balls, but because I didn't know anything else to do at that particular moment.  Some patients started telling the trouble-making patient to shut the fuck up and leave the room.  When he didn't, many of them did.  Some of my colleagues eventually came in and escorted him out.  Something I couldn't do myself.  As I tried to keep my trembling internal, I continued the meeting for the "benefit" of the three or four patients still left in the room.  For my own benefit.  For my own pride.

I had no business being in that room, not on that day, or any other.  My goal was the same every day, just like theirs.  My goal was to get out without being found out.  Without getting knocked the fuck out.

Getting out.  

Come to think of it, I don't exactly know how I've done with aspirations either.  I'm not sure I know to what I aspire.  I don't know what I'm reaching for, or striving for.  Ascending towards.  What is that, exactly?  My aspiration was never to own fifteen-or-so cars roughly as many years, but it turned out that way.  I never aspired to write grants, but I did want to be a professional writer.  So I guess this is the funny, not-so-funny way of that particular aspiration getting worked out while getting gummed up in the works.  I never sat around dreaming about having twins, but here we are.

Here we go.

Wishes are another thing.  Whenever I find myself before a birthday cake, I'm always closing my eyes and wishing for no harm to come to me or anybody I love.  The people whom I love.  I wish I loved more people, or I wish the people I loved knew how ardently I love them.  You can't let people know how much you love them, even if you love them hard and hot and feverishly and fiendishly, because people don't understand it when you tell them and if you try to make them understand it just comes out all bungled, like Clouseau trying to walk importantly into a room.  It just doesn't work.  Because there's a trick step and Cato's always around the corner and there's a vase on the floor and a there's a bermb and it's going to blow your little yellow skin off and I'd take a bullet for you but that sounds ridiculous and silly and you're Tess and I'm always guarding Tess.  

Always.

I guess all I can say is that, in 2014, I'm going to try to be more tolerant.  Of white people.  Because, Jesus Christ; they say some really fucking stupid shit.  You know?