Life checks
I remember growing up hearing from my parents about distant relatives suddenly going crazy, and wondered, how does that even happen? I mean, if you are a regular person with a regular life it seems really hard to lose your mind point blank. At least that’s what I thought as a naive kid.
Then as a grown man, you get your fair share of what I call “life checks,” a series of unforeseeable events that totally fuck up your life, and suddenly it all becomes crystal clear. What’s worse is that it all seems to happen at the same time as well, like in the movie Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
The only difference is I don’t have a nefarious Count Olaf to defeat, but more like a cosmic entity with a sick sense of joy at poking at me. You get poked at a little too often, a little too hard, and you lose it.
Never mind relationships or your work going down the gutter, which is obviously terrible, but at least you can explain it, given the choices you made. But it’s the random kicks in the nuts that really get under your skin. Like saving up for months to buy a nice present for your parents, only to have it stolen by some porch pirate. Or coming home from a long day and finding out that someone broke into your place and made a mess, forever messing with your sense of safety that you once associated with home.
And the most cartoonish one, going on a trip in the middle of nowhere deep in the countryside of Tuscany to see a bunch of trees for some reason (don’t ask me why), and having someone break into your car. That was some goofy Peter Griffin-level type of bullshit, I’ll tell you that! Just to name a few.
It really feels like being in the eye of the perfect storm. You try to think back to other dark moments and how you got through them, but being a man with a fixing-stuff mentality, it’s really frustrating when there is no clear solution. It keeps you up at night and makes you think if you’ve done anything to deserve it.
At some point during a late-night drive home, I had to come to terms with the fact that sometimes bad things happen to good people for no apparent reason, and that’s just life. The best course of action sometimes is just to hold on tight and let the storm pass.
At any given time we’re all just a few “checks” away from losing it, and this realization gave me a new level of empathy toward people who are struggling, and gratitude when things are peaceful.
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