Lesson 9 - The Thing About Pants

Do you know what’s great about pants?

Everything.

They are warm, if chosen properly they look good, they cover my naughty bits...

Well, I suppose that’s not “everything”, but you get the idea.

Something else I like about pants is that they are the great equalizer.  Everyone has to wear them.  At least, they do in our culture.

Yes, I know skirts and dresses aren’t pants, but that would ruin my analogy so pretend you didn’t notice.  Oh, and shorts are close enough.

So as I was saying, everyone has to wear them.  Rich, old, young, poor, man, or woman.  Everyone puts them on one leg at a time.  Actually, that’s not really true. You can put your pants on both legs at a time, but it doesn’t work quite as well.  However, everyone DOES have to put both legs in.  See?  They ARE universal.  Don’t judge me.

Because of these and many other reasons, I like pants.  I don’t do skirts because, well, I’m a dude.  I don’t do shorts as often because I have fantastically scrawny chicken legs.  Although I’ve been told they do look good in a dress or skirt.

Don’t ask.

Something else I like that is a great equalizer is time.  We all live in it.  We all live with it.  We all succumb to it.  It guides us, gives us parameters within which to work and gives us a measure with which to help us all get to things at the same time.

And I do like to be on time for things.  This does not mean that I always am, mind you, only that I try to be as often as possible.

I also like to think that everyone else likes this as well, but I’m pretty confident that is not true.  Some people are either so disorganized or so laid back, that they are never on time for anything, ever.  I am so glad I’m better than all of them.

Or at least, that is often what we are thinking when we find ourselves waiting around for someone to show up when we got there on time, and they are 40 minutes late, and we are brainstorming the words with which we will filet them like a piece of meat before punting them through a random window because it would serve them right.

Maybe i’m the only one who’s had that fantasy...

Have you ever done that?  Had major anger fantasies at someone because of some random and ultimately unimportant thing they did or didn’t do which ended with you righteously and justifiably pummeling them into humiliating submission and everyone cheers your name, realizing you are the virtuous one and that your victim is formed from raw evil?

It is a curious thing how we are capable of taking even the most unimportant of occurrences and making it personal, turning it into major drama.

Us:  “...and then I kicked him repeatedly in the junk followed by a samurai ninja kung fu strike to the heart, stopping it for an entire minute before striking him again to restart it, just to show him who he’s messing with!”

Random person forced to listen to our story:  “All of that because he slipped on the ice and accidentally jostled your coffee?”

There is a reason it’s called “blind rage”.  When we have it, we can’t see anything else.  Not the person, the context, ourselves... only the need to satiate the rage.

This often ends with us embarrassing ourselves in terrible ways without ever realizing we have done so.  Humans can justify anything, it seems.

So, as I said earlier, I like to be on time for things.  Especially if I am key to the events taking place to which I am going.  Like, for example, if I am going to church and I am the one preaching.  Being late to your own sermon is what is referred to as “unprofessional.”  Actually, you will probably be lucky if that’s all they say about you.  Sometimes Christians aren’t very... christian.

On one particular morning, my wife was running late.  Now, let me be clear.  My wife is NOT always late.  She’s not even USUALLY late.  But sometimes stuff happens and alarm clocks go afoul and blowdryers don’t blow and previous evening’s dinners don’t sit well by morning.

I was up and ready in plenty of time.  Made sure the potluck food was ready to go.  Made sure my sermon notes were snuggly safe inside my bible.  Made sure my cereal dish was washed and dried.  Made sure my bladder was empty.  Twice.

Then I sat and waited very patiently for my lovely wife.  And waited.  And waited.  I waited an entire 30... 40... seconds, at least, before I became frustrated with her slow prep and departure schedule for the morning.

Finally, I could wait no more.  I got up, told her I was going to be in the car waiting (hoping that would encourage her to hurry up and not make me late), double checked my tie in the full length mirror, put on my suit jacket and checked it’s straightness in the same full length mirror, grabbed my shoes, sat in the chair by the garage door and proceded to put on said shoes.

I was half way through tying the first shoe when I noticed something very important.

I had no pants on.

I had sat waiting on my wife, doing nothing.  I had checked myself in the full length mirror not once, but twice.  I had even noticed at one point how the kitchen was feeling very “drafty” for some reason.

Did I mention the full length mirror?  Checked twice?

How did I not notice that I was not wearing pants?  I promise you, this is not something I do on any regular basis.  I can be forgetful and even absent minded, but I am not THAT bad.

To say that I felt stupid would be a gross insult to the word “stupid”.  But the real question is why did I do that in the first place?

The answer is simple.  I was frustrated with my wife.  I was so frustrated and cranky that she was possibly going to make me late(notice the word “possibly” there), I was so focused on her that I didn’t see me.

I was blinded by my own anger.

As it turned out, by the time I took off my one shoe, went and found my pants, put them on, and got to the car, my wife was already sitting inside it, patiently waiting for  me with her always beautiful smile.

In the end, I was the one who made us late.  Not a lot late, only enough to annoy me.

Focusing on the faults of others only allows us to ignore our own problems.  It definitely doesn’t solve theirs.  Growth and change only happen after we take responsibility for our own issues and stop worrying about everybody else's issues.

It’s much harder to get angry with someone when we recognize that we do stuff that’s even dumber than someone else and, in fact, we are the same as them and no better.  Otherwise, we can blind ourselves to our weakness and not see that it is truly there.

And no one likes getting caught with their pants down.

Lesson 8 - The Brazier Entanglement Theory

You know what I hate about change?  It’s so frustratingly hard and completely lacking in fun.  It seems like it should be simple, right?  Decide what needs to happen, and then just do it.

Easy peezy.

Of course, it never is.

You know what else should be easy?  Doing the laundry.  It’s a simple process.  Water on, soap in, cloths in, door closed, wait till the buzzer makes that annoying sound, cloths out, put in dryer, put fabric softener dryer sheet thingy in dryer, clean out lint trap, close door, set timer, turn on, wait till buzzer makes that annoying sound, pull out cloths, put in basket, carry to bedroom, dump on bed, fold cloths, put in proper cloths holding place.

Easy peezy.

But it never is.  There is always the one sock you can’t find.  The pair of underwear that fell between the washer and dryer during the transition phase that you just can’t reach because your arm is one inch too short and you have to get a hanger or a stick or a tree fairy or anything else small that can reach in and grab it.  The shirt that will not iron out smooth even if you used a steam roller on it.  The stack of cloths you had finally folded perfect for a change that you accidently knocked off the bed as you reached for another item of clothing and had to refold all over again.

Between that and picking out all the remnants of the tissue that I had left in my pocket that shredded itself onto every item of clothing, or trying to get the grease stains off my favorite shirt because my wife left her chapstick in her jeans and neither one of us bothered to check before sticking it in the wash machine.

But you know what I hate most?

Washing my wife’s bras.  

I don’t hate the bras.  I like them.  Actually, I pretty much only like what they are designed to hold.  I don’t actually have any feelings about the bras themselves.  But I have developed a theory about bras.

It’s called the Brazier Entanglement Theory and it goes like this.

If you put one bra in the wash, it will some how wrap itself around itself and some random long sleeve shirt, tying both into a wrinkled mess.

If you put two or more bras in the wash, no matter how you separate them in the layers of clothing, they will find each other and knot themselves together, along with at least three other pieces of clothing, so tightly that only God himself has any chance at all of getting them apart without tearing a hole in the fabric of space and time.

None of the other clothing items do this.  Only braziers.  It defies all logic and reason.  I’m convinced it’s a fundamental law of quantum mechanics distinct, but closely related to, quantum entanglement.

Just not nearly as cool or as useful.

And it happens every time.  Every.  Single.  Time.

No amount of clever arranging or organizing the clothing in the machine makes any difference at all.

I’ve told lots of people this theory.  One lady responded that if I would simply clasp them together in the wash, this wouldn’t happen.

“Please… what does she know???” I said in my head as I pretended to take her advice seriously and thanked her for the suggestion.

I mean really, a woman knowing how to properly take care of womanly garments?  Better than me?  A man?  Who doesn’t wear them?

Ignoring her completely, I went back home and continued to kick the laundry tire for a long time.  One day they had so knotted together with every other piece of clothing in the laundry, I was literally able to grab one item of clothing and pull out the entire load.  I stood there over the wash machine and spent half an hour pulling everything apart.

It was at that moment that it occurred to me…

“What if I clasp them before I put them in the wash?” as if it had been my own very clever idea and not stolen from the nice lady who had kindly tried to help me.

So the next time, I did that very thing.

Not a single item of clothing was tangled.  No shirts in a bra.  No bra-on-bra action.  In fact, since I’ve started doing that, I’ve only had a couple minor episodes of entanglement.

If only I’d known sooner.

Pride is such a fickle thing.  Our ego wants so hard to keep us from change that it blinds us through our pride to alternative avenues to anything.  It makes change not just hard, but completely undesirable.

I didn’t want to listen to that lady, because then I would have to admit that she had considered something that I hadn’t.  And if I took her advise, and it worked, then I would have to admit that she was also correct and I wasn’t.  That her way was better than mine.

And I hate to be wrong.  Being wrong suggests that I am less capable than I thought I was.  It makes me look less than I am and my ego wants to keep me puffed up and looking sharp.  Never letting me look bad, and never letting me appear to be flawed and in need of help.

Change is hard because in order to become a better person, or remove flawed habits and patterns of behavior, we have to recognize these very things, and believe them.  Be willing to admit to ourselves that I was my own problem.  I have to be willing to see that I don’t have to be better and smarter than everyone else at everything every time.

But more importantly, I have to be ok with it.  I have to be ok with it and have it not bother me at all when someone else succeeds faster than me, or succeeds where I failed, without making excuses or putting down their success.

Change requires the complete destruction of our hubris and egoist desires.  If we were to examine every time we showed evident flaws of character, we would see that every event was a direct result of extreme selfishness on our part.  Our selfish need to be seen a specific way, or to be a specific thing that just isn’t true or real.

Recognizing that these perceptions just don’t matter removes such a huge burden from our lives.  So much stress and angst just disappears.

And the thing is, once the change happens, we look back and wonder why that was so hard and ask ourselves why we didn’t do this sooner.  We can be so close to the problem that we can’t see the solution.  We can be so close to the problem that we can’t see that, usually, we are the problem and the answers were right there the whole time waiting to be clasped together.

Lesson 7 - Shoulder Surgery Sucks (A.K.A The Story of Stupid)

I don’t know why I do stupid things.  No, wait, I do know.  I’m an idiot.

I think we covered that already.

But, have you ever noticed when you do something stupid, it never seems stupid at the time?  You never stand there and say to yourself, “Alright.  Let’s do something stupid that will guarantee I get my leg torn right off.”

It’s only after the fact, looking back at the carnage of our decisions, do we see more clearly our ability to choose poorly.  Only at that moment do we stop and say, “Ah yes.  So this is what stupid looks like.”

One day I was getting my masters degree (only one day…?), and a buddy of mine said, “Hey, let’s go help this professor move all of his earthly possessions into a giant truck.”

I said, “No.”

He said, “It’s ten dollars an hour.”

I said, “Sounds like fun, when do we start?”

So off we went to do great and selfless things in the name of money.  And do we did.  There were boxes packed, giant clocks wrapped, and furniture moved.  Fortunately, this man used only furniture made entirely of solid oak and other fantastically heavy materials.

…

It was a long day.

At one point, my friend and I were moving a particularly large, solid oak, dresser from the upstairs bedroom to the downstairs waiting truck.

I mentioned the stairs, right?

This dresser was heavy and the staircase was too narrow for more than two people to carry it.  But being the manly youngish men we were, we looked at the dresser, the stairs, then each other… giving that “lets git er dun” look… grabbed hold, and off we went shedding pieces of our spine all the way.

All went well till we got to the stairs.  Before we descended, my buddy needed to change his grip.  This was horribly inconvenient because my grip was quite great.  So we set it down, letting him alter his grip, all the while I was not releasing my grip at all.

This would have been fine, except that I still needed to pick it back up.  You see, picking up awkward furniture usually requires at least two different grips.  One that allows for easier lifting, and then one that allows for easier carrying.  I had a great carrying grip, but not a great lifting grip.

But hey, I was young, and strong, and made of man parts.  So I decided to do what everyone says you should do, which is lift with your legs.

This is great and all, except it doesn’t matter if you lift with your legs if your grip is bad creating terrible shoulder torque.

About six inches into that lift, my left shoulder went “pop.”  Not in the good fun way that makes your mom squirm uncomfortably when you crack your neck or fingers.  But in that expensive way that surgeons and physical therapists really enjoy.

What makes it bad is that I knew better.  I actually stood there before we lifted and calculated the risk.  I calculated the inconvenience of shifting grip and then re-shifting once lifted vs. lifting it awkwardly and punting my spine through my rib-cage.  I knew that what I was about to do was a bad idea.  But I chose it anyway.

I chose poorly.

Except, that wasn’t the really stupid part.  The stupid part was how I didn’t stop working.  I didn’t even set the thing down.  I just went, “um, ouch… I think something bad just happened…” and continued carrying the thing down the stairs, as well as all the other stuff we needed to carry.

Except, that wasn’t the really stupid part, either.

The really stupid part was how I convinced myself it wasn’t anything major and that it would get better in a few days or weeks, and then proceeded to do nothing about it for 6 months.

Even though it wasn’t getting better.

Right.

After 6 months when I couldn’t tolerate my useless arm anymore, I saw a doctor, who had it scanned, or pictured, or drawn, or whatever it is doctors really do when they check you out, and declared that I’d torn my Labrum.

That’s the cartilage in your shoulder joint that your bicep muscle attaches to.  Obviously, it wasn’t completely detached.  I would have known that immediately as my bicep muscle snapped like a rubber band and coiled up into a ball by my elbow.

Instead, it was only a partial tear which just made it really really unstable.

And instead of going to a doctor right away, I just sort of pretended that it was going to be fine.

Shoulder surgery sucks.  The recovery is unpleasant as well.  You can’t move your arm for many many days.  Which makes it hard to dress, undress, bath… my wife had to help me there.  (I was actually pretty ok with that last one.)

Sleeping was next to impossible.  Moving just right was very painful.  And this doesn’t even get you to the rehab part.

Physical therapy was unpleasant.  Important and good, but unpleasant.

It’s been almost 5 (8 now?  I think?) years since then.  My shoulder is weaker than it probably should be, and it doesn’t have 100% of the flexibility that it once had.  I still work it, and it still slooooowly continues to get better.  But I suspect it’s about as close as it’s going to get.

All because I was stupid.

I convinced myself that something was smart that actually wasn’t.  I didn’t want to acknowledge that I could hurt myself.  I didn’t want to consider the ramifications of my actions.  I just wanted to be done.

I find that, often, the obvious is staring us in the face, but we refuse to acknowledge its presence.  When what we want and what is true are side by side, we lie to ourselves and chose poorly.  It’s like playing Russian Roulette and thinking those are good odds.

Have you ever notice how often we use the word “ignorant” incorrectly? It doesn’t mean someone is stupid.  It just means someone doesn’t know something.

If I had been ignorant of the dangers, it wouldn’t make me stupid.  It was in knowing the dangers and ignoring their reality that made me stupid.

There are so many things we come to believe as individuals.  Some of which are true, some of which are not.  Maybe what we believe that is incorrect is a product of legitimate ignorance.  However, I’ve found that with most people, there are some things that they know to be one thing and they pretend that it isn’t so.  It isn’t ignorance.  It’s a desire to believe what they want regardless of reality.

I have a friend who likes to jokingly say, “don’t confuse me with the facts.”

Learning isn’t about ego.  Change isn’t about ego.  Growth isn’t about ego.  Ego is an illusion, and yet often we make everything in life about our ego.

And that’s just stupid.

Lesson 6 - Cancer Saves Lives

        I want to be very clear about something.

Cancer isn’t funny.

It is a horrible and deadly disease.  The only people who can make jokes about cancer are people who’ve actually had cancer.  They can because they have lived the disease and have therefore earned the right to say anything they want about it.  No one else gets that right and privilege unless it is conferred upon them by someone who has had it.

Ok, I realize that’s not some sort of official ruling.  It’s sort of an understood rule that I’ve tried to put words to, and possibly made up just now.  I tell you all that so that if I happen to seemingly make light of cancer in some way, you’ll understand the context and the ruling.

The ruling is stated above.

The context is… I’ve had cancer.

Twice.

No no, I’m fine.  I’m not currently dying.  In fact, I may be in the best shape of life.  Or at least close to it.

And I have cancer to thank for it.  

No, cancer didn’t make me healthy.  It didn’t give me superpowers.  I had to earn my health the hard way just like every one else.

Although that reminds me of a funny story.

Back in college, I played a lot of role playing games.  Dungeon & Dragons type of role playing, except we rarely played D&D.  What we played was the Marvel Super Heroes Role Playing Game.  Everyone makes a hero, gives him stats and powers, and then a GM (game master) runs you through a story based adventure or campaign.  I realize this has become the definition of nerdery and geekery, but hey, it’s a lot of fun, so don’t nock it till you’ve tried it.

Well, I made a bunch of different characters over the years we played, with different powers and stories.  But they all had one thing in common.  They all sucked.  Not because the characters were bad, but because it seems I had discovered one of my real super powers.  

The ability to role dice badly.

When the game relies on you being able to role dice well in order to do well, and you can role dice below average as a general rule, the game gets hard very quickly.

That was my first real life superpower that I discovered that I had.

The second was actually unintentionally predicted when I made my first character.

Twice.

I had never made a character before.  Well, I had made ONE before, so I guess this technically was my second.  But I don’t count the other one because it was made through random rolling instead of any sort of creative intent.

So, this SECOND character was tricky.  I wasn’t sure what to do.  I wanted something original.  I didn’t want to make another Spiderman or Captain America.  As we were tossing ideas around as a group we eventually started talking about what powers we would like to have in real life.  At this point the conversation becomes very philosophical.  What power would you have?  What would you do with it?  How would it affect the world and thought and Jesus and babies?  

Or any number of other semi ridiculous discussions.  And by “semi ridiculous”, I mean “totally sweet.”

Finally, one of us said, and I don’t remember which for sure, maybe me, “You know, if I ever had a power, it would probably be something really lame.”  At which point another of my friends said something to the effect of, “Ya, that’s probably more like it.  Your power (he said to me) would probably be the incredible ability to replicate your body’s cells at an increased and uncontrolled rate.  In real world terms, we’ll call that ‘Cancer’.”  

We all laughed.  Yes, this was technically before I had cancer and therefore violated the rule I outlined above.  But it was just so ridiculous and the power of irony was strong.  If I ever were to get a superpower, it would be a horrible and often deadly disease.

That was predictor number one, which was followed immediately by my friend and I going, “Hey, that’s not a bad idea.  What if your character has cancer, and…”  

And there it was.  History was made and one of the greatest characters I ever made was created.  

It was also predictor number two.

Now, don’t misunderstand.  I don’t actually believe these things were predicting my future as a cancer patient.  I’m not that nutty.  And if they were, I clearly didn’t pick up on it.

It did, however, become sort of a running joke amongst my friends.  They would all get cool powers, and I would be the guy who got cancer.

And it was pretty funny, not because cancer is funny, but because of the irony.  Because I was the guy who couldn’t roll dice well.  I could roll two 10 sided die, which gives me 1-100 in terms of possible results (as the game limited the rolls)… and I could roll them 10 times in a row.  In those ten times, 9 of them would be below 40 and 7 below 10.  That’s what we call “bad rolling.”

So, therefore, if any of us got shafted on the powers, it would be me.

It was the running joke.

Till one day my doctor told me I had cancer.  In that moment it stopped being funny.  I actually had one of my friends tell me how bad they felt that we had made the joke for all those years.

In the end, it’s still funny.  I can laugh and make fun of it now.  It doesn’t bother me anymore.  Life is life and it happens sometimes.  But at the time, it wasn’t so funny.  It suddenly became the awkward joke.  We tried to be cool about it, but it didn’t always work.  In fact the second time I was diagnosed with cancer I informed one of my friends by telling him, “So, hey.  Guess what?  My superpowers came back.”

He responded, “Oh ya?  Ha!  Good for you, bud.  (then long pause as the meaning sunk in)… Oh.  OOOOooohhh… oh… (awkward silence).”

It had seemed clever in my head.

What do I know?

It’s been almost four (seven now) years now since that second diagnosis.  And now, I can make jokes and he can make jokes.  The current joke is that I am the jar in which God keeps all his diseases.  “Tony, could you pass the herpes, please?  Thank you.”

No, I don’t have herpes.

It was really the only way we as friends could deal with the awful reality that one of us could die in some sort of untimely and horrible fashion.

And don’t get me started on the realities of chemotherapy.  It’s just… well, it’s just bad.

Instead, let’s talk about how cancer made me a better person.

I was living a relatively isolated life at the time.  My job made it easy for that to happen.  Neither my wife nor myself particularly liked that part of my work.  We were pretty out of touch and secluded from many of the people we used to know.

Once I was in chemo, however, I couldn’t work anymore.  I didn’t have the energy or strength.  At best, I could sit in front of my computer.  Which is when I decided to do a few things.  I started a MySpace page.  Then eventually a Facebook page.  I started a blog that shares the same name as this book.  In fact, this book wouldn’t exist at all had I not came down with the cancer.

Don’t you love it when people put the word “the” in front of a disease name that doesn’t grammatically require the word “the” there?  

It amuses me.

Anyway, I started getting in touch with all these people I hadn’t seen or talked to in years.  Hundreds of them.  And in the process I made some new friends as well.

I was writing in my blog because it allowed me to say what was on my mind and help some people at the same time.  Maybe not much, but a little.

I discovered that there were all these people who were hurting in life for one reason or another, and maybe they didn’t have cancer, but maybe their life was worse.

Through this whole process, I realized I was to able help people in ways I couldn’t have before.  I wouldn’t have known how.  What I should say, or what I shouldn’t say… being able to empathize even if I couldn’t sympathize… knowing how horrible disease could be…

Once I was strong enough, I started visiting the cancer center I was treated at.  I would talk to the patients.  Find out how they were doing, if there was anything I could do for them, or if they just needed someone to talk to.

Chemo completely screws with your head.  On top of having poison pumped through your body, you are dealing with all the emotional trauma of a life threatening illness.  For some of these people, it was a direct death sentence.  There are some people I used to visit with and take treatments with who didn’t make it.  

There was the 30 year old mother of three.

There was the 18 year old high school football star.

I lived and they didn’t.

I was forced to start seeing my life very differently.  I started seeing my purpose and place in the world differently.  My priorities shifted and juggled and changed.

I’m pretty sure cancer saved my life.

I’ve come to realize what a selfish person I had been before.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m still selfish.  But I’m trying harder now.

I’ve also tried to stop lying to myself about who I am and what my place in life is.  My illusions were shattered.  I was always the healthy guy.  All the kids who did drugs in school are all healthy.  I was clean and sober my whole life and I got cancer.

Of course, it’s not that simple.  That’s one of the illusions that shattered.

If I hadn’t had cancer, I might not be as healthy as I am now.  I probably wouldn’t have tried very hard.  But now, every moment of good health matters.  Because now I know what bad health is like.  I don’t want to feel that again.

Although, I also know that I have no control over it.  I can be as healthy as I want, but it’s no guarantee.

And maybe that’s the greatest illusion that was shattered.  I have no control.

I have no control.

I have NO control.

Keep saying it.  Maybe it will sink in.  Everyone intellectually will agree that so much of life is out of our control.

But we really don’t believe it.  We have tricked ourselves for so long into thinking that we can control it all that we don’t know how to think any differently.

We think we need control.  We grasp at it with all our strength.  It’s how we deal with life and the things around us.  We create a view of the world that allows us to shape it any way we wish.  And while we do have a say over our lives and we can do so much more than we think, that’s not the part of our view that we cling to.

We cling to the part that brings comfort.  We cling to the illusion of safety.  We cling to illusion of comfort.  The illusion of happiness.  Things are so simple in our illusion.  The danger and risk are minimal.

Everyone remembers 9/11.  It was a horrible day.  So many people died needlessly.  There were so many things wrong with what happened, but do you know what most people took from that experience?

Flying is dangerous.

Seriously.  Flying is dangerous.

Specifically, flying is now MORE dangerous.

Tell me, did flying get more dangerous?  Or had the danger always been the same and now we just realized it wasn’t what we thought?

Those terrorists exploited dangers that had always been there.  Those dangers weren’t new.  They had just never been used that way.

Flying wasn’t and isn’t any more dangerous than it had been before.  We just started realizing that we didn’t know what we were talking about.

In the end, we are like the guy in the move The Matix who wanted to get put back in.  He saw reality for what it was and couldn’t handle it, so he fought to cling to his illusion by being put back in and having his memory erased so he wouldn’t have to know what reality was truly like.

Tell me, were the jokes we made about cancer in school suddenly more offensive when I had cancer?  Or were the jokes always of poor taste and WE changed?

Or maybe it’s not the jokes that were wrong, but maybe it was our perception of the reality surrounding the humor?

I’m not offended by my friends joking about my disease.  I joke about it all the time.  I’ve realized cancer is just a thing that happens that I have no control over.

But real cancer isn’t the tumor you grow in our body.

Real cancer is the illusion that grows in our mind.  It keeps us from seeing the way things really are.  It keeps us from finding the flaws in our world view.  It keeps us from even wanting to find the flaws in our world view.

It keeps us from wanting to change.

It keeps us from being honest with ourselves about ourselves and from desiring to do anything about it.  It deceives us into thinking everything is fine and there is nothing wrong, or that the things that are wrong are something pointless and irrelevant and not the real problems in our life and views.

It keeps us from seeing the truth.

The truth is, physical cancer could still kill me one day, but no matter what, it has already saved me.

The truth is, it’s not the physical cancer I fear(although I do) as much as the mental and spiritual cancer that will most certainly kill me if I don’t allow my self to see it and destroy it.

Lesson 5 - Sports Cars are Fast

Right.

So, listen.  At this point you are probably catching on to the fact that I like to state the obvious.

Captain Obvious.  That’s me.

Ha.  Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was so aptly named?  Like, Commander Klepto.  Professor Halitosis.  Captain Vulnerable to Peanuts.

At the very least, comic books would be different.  But it sure would be useful in dating.  Captain Hammered McDrunken, or Princess Cottage Cheese Bum.

Ok, so, it’s probably better not to do that with our names.  We would make too many assumptions too quickly.  Because, really, nothing is ever how it appears to be at face value anyway.

It’s funny.  As people, we think we know all about something just by its name.  But there can be so many variations on an object or concept.  Let’s talk about cars.

Why?  Mostly because I like cars and, darn it, this is my book.

=)  (There is that emoticon again.  Persistent little bugger…)

You know how people say a person knows too little to be useful and just enough to be dangerous?  Did you know that saying was coined because of me?  Ok, so, that’s probably a lie.  Ok, I’m sure it’s a lie.  But that doesn’t make it apply any less.  Here is what I mean.

I grew up on muscle cars.  My dad was, and still is, really into old school hotrods and old cars in general.  Therefore, so was I.  I love them.  I wanted to own one.  (still do…)  I grew up in the garage with my dad turning the wrench on one project or another, dreaming about the day when I would get to be the guy behind the wheel of a car way to powerful for me to be driving.

The possibilities of trouble that lay before me were endless.

And then finally, the day came.  I got my driver’s license.  Oh the joy!  Oh the bliss!  Oh the horror!

Yes, horror.  If you were my parents, it was most definitely horror.  I mean, think about it.  Handing the keys to any car, especially a powerful one, to me, the kid who had dreamed about driving something fast and awesome all his life… it was sort of like taking a shiny new grenade, pulling the pin, and handing it to a toddler.

Well, the first car that I was allowed to drive on a regular basis as “my own”, was a 1978 Dodge Aspen ex-police car.  It had the whole squad car package.  Beefed up suspension, 360 cubic inch v8 with more power than I needed.  (admittedly, by today’s standards, it wasn’t that much power.  But still…)

I thought I was invincible.  I thought I knew everything about cars and driving.  And in my defense, I was quite knowledgeable for someone my age.  I knew all the facts and figures and how to work on them, and I wasn’t even a half bad driver.  Pretty good, even.  

The problem wasn’t my driving skill, however.

I used to go out on to barren roads and empty parking lots just to “test out” the car and “get used to its handling” and “do stupid crap.”  

I suppose we didn’t need to use code on that last one.

Well, there was this one road that I drove all the time.  It was a frontage road to the main highway that went past where I grew up.  It had a 55mph speed limit, but it had a tight curve near the end of it that was rated at 25mph.  But as every teenager knows, speed limits are merely suggestions (cough cough), and are meant to be ignored (please don’t take me to jail nice mister police man.)

I had practiced enough that I could toss that old squad car into fish tail turns and four wheel drifts.  I had learned how it handled and was pretty confident.  So, to test that out, I figured I could straighten that curve Dukes of Hazard style and live to brag about it.

Long story short, I hit that curve going close to 70mph.  And you know what happened? 

Nothing.  Absolutely nothing, except total and complete awesomeness.

I drifted that bad boy all the way through the curve like some sort of road racing demon of, um… road racing.

I didn’t crash, I didn’t get a ticket… it wasn’t even close.  In my mind, I had proven to myself that I was in fact the superior driver and that my superior understanding of cars and driving had won the day.

Fast forward a few months.

My mom had a fun little car.  It was a 1989 Dodge Shadow ES Turbo.  It really was a pretty fun little car.  Five speed, 150hp, and it handled like a go-kart.  Well, at least it did compared to that old heavy squad car I was driving.  It was lighter, peppier, and just more fun to drive.

One day while dropping off a friend at his home after school, I was going down that same road.  I decided I was going to show him how amazing my mom’s car was and, more importantly, how amazing my driving skills were.

We hit 120mph on the highway, got off, hit the frontage road, and where nearing triple digit speeds again.  However, I had the good sense to slow down for that curve.  I figured it like this.  That squad car made the curve at 70, and this car handled better.  Therefore, if I wanted, I should be able to take the curve faster.  However, I decided to slow it down to 55mph instead.  It was still crazy fast for that curve, but slower than before.  It should be a cake walk.

I threw that car into the curve and the next thing I knew was that we were upside down in a ditch hanging from our seat belts.  The car slid off the road (can we say I blew a tire?  For my ego?  Please?), hit the dirt embankment, and basically flipped corner to corner in some part barrel-roll, part end over end style of flipping.  Honestly, I’ll probably never know for sure what it looked like.  All I know is that car no longer exists.  It didn’t have a straight piece left on it.  Every window was broken.  Except for one, which my friend kicked out getting out of the car.  (that’s another story…)  Fortunately, though, we were fine.

Now, besides the fact that I’m stupid, what went wrong?  Was my analysis wrong?  Well, the Dodge Shadow was indeed the better handling car.  So if you are doing straight-forward logic, it should have worked.

What I didn’t account for was the fact that the Shadow was a front wheel drive car, and the Aspen a rear wheel drive car.  Anyone who knows anything about cars, knows that a front wheel drive car handles very differently than a rear wheel drive car.  That is where the flaw in my logic was.  I didn’t anticipate that fact.  I did not even know that fact.  For all my knowledge and “experience”, it had never occurred to me that it would matter.  It didn’t occur to me that which tires were providing the motion and struggling for traction would matter.  It never occurred to me that having the same tires steering AND driving the car, would cause grip to be different.  It never occurred to me that the car wouldn’t want to tail slide just like my other car.

Any truly experienced driver would know this.  I however, was not a truly experienced driver.  I just thought I was.

Unfortunately, reality and truth were sort of scaled and relative.

My facts were correct, but it didn’t occur to me that they were only correct within a certain context.  Fast for one car was even faster for another in certain situations.  Not that the speed was different, but the limits were.  The techniques for handling the limits were different.

As I’ve gotten older and driven other cars and faster cars, I’ve come to learn that fast and slow are relative to the vehicle.  If you are driving a Corvette, fast is pretty fast before it becomes too fast for the cars ability.  But if you are driving a boat like Buick slow can still be pretty fast when it comes to the cars ability.

It’s all about the context.

So is our world view.

Remember that from last chapter?  Our view is based on “facts.”  But the facts are sometimes relative.  They can be contextual.  A thing can be true, but not always true.

In America, giving someone the “thumbs up” gesture means “good job” or something similar.  But in some countries, the “thumbs up” is a very offensive gesture that definitely does not mean “good job.”

In one context it’s good, in another it’s very bad.

What facts do we use to shape our view of things?  What truths make up our perception of reality?  And, more importantly, how many of those truths are actually true?  And even more importantly, would we ever be willing to admit that any of those truths aren’t so true?

Without that flexibility, our world view will always be stunted, and therefore incomplete.  The only way to have that flexibility is through personal honesty.  The recognition that I don’t know what I’m talking about, or that I’m full of poo.

That recognition is super important.  It’s that recognition that teaches me that my car accident had nothing to do with the Shadow handling different than the Aspen.  It wasn’t that the car was incapable.  It was that I was incapable.  A professional driver would have been just fine.  I was the problem.  I was the one who didn’t know better, but more importantly I was the one who would never admit that he didn’t know better.

If I had, I would have been able to alter my view and therefore my actions.  I would have been able to recognize the fallacy in my mind before it was too late.

I would have understood that fast cars can feel slow, and that sometimes slow is still way too fast.