try to remember

Well, there goes September.......

People always say that each year seems to go by faster and faster and whenever someone says that to me, I always respond that it actually is going by faster because as we get older and add another year to our list of years gone by, we have more years to compare each year too and so it really does go by more rapidly. Then people always look at me like I’m talking about time travel or something or like I’m crazy. I know that technically, time is always moving at the same pace but relatively, it’s going faster. I mean you can remember right? When you were little? Summer was long. A school year was long. The wait until each Christmas, glacial. Now it’s like Christmas, Fourth of July, Christmas, Fourth of July, Christmas Fourth of July YOU’RE DEAD.

I always imagine it must slow down again once you become an old person though.

In New York, in most places but especially in New York, the two best months out of the entire year are June and September. Just such a lovely time to live in the city. Here I am at the end of September, one of the two very best months and I’m asking myself, “Have you enjoyed yourself as much as you could have?” The answer is no of course. Of course I have been up in my head, making plans, reliving regretful moments, beating myself up about useless crap. I have had moments of being in it, of appreciating it but not enough. The good news is, I still have five days left! And October, well October ain’t half bad. I’m really going to try and appreciate the rest of Fall ’06 because, after all, there will not be another one.

Something great happened last week. My dear friend the Gallivanting Monkey helped remind me of something that I have been slowly forgetting over the past four years or so and it’s been pretty huge to me. I want to try and explain it but I’m afraid it will either be too abstract and esoteric to explain or it will just be really obvious and embarrassing but I’m going to try and put it into words anyway because it’s just really helped me so much and I wanted to share it.

It has to do with perception, and this balance between getting what I want and what I deserve. Mostly it has to do with hope.

My positive outlook has been a bit dulled over the past few years by my own desire to be realistic. It really began with me not getting into grad school and me pinning my entire acting career on if I got in or if I didn’t get in. I wanted to get in so badly but I think, deep down I didn’t think I deserved it and because I didn’t think I deserved it, I couldn’t believe in myself enough to do what I needed to do to get in.

I’ve been in mourning for my artistic self over the past year and a half and I’m getting through it and accepting it’s death and looking for a re-birth down the road but there are other things I hope for and I’m beginning to notice something that has slowly become very intrinsic in my personality.

The thing I’m noticing is this new propensity towards choosing defeat. It’s not something that I’ve always done. It’s come to me in adulthood and it’s not something I welcome. It has to do partially with not being able to STAND BEING IN LIMBO. I’ve talked about this difficulty many times on this blog. I just have so little patience and I feel so uncomfortable when I don’t have control over a situation and I’m waiting for life to hand me my fate. I feel so uncomfortable in these situations that it is sometimes much easier for me to just accept defeat. To concede, like John Kerry, too soon. It’s easier to do this because then, at least I know what I’m dealing with. I can move on. I may still be waiting for an answer but I know in my heart that I’ve lost, I’m not going to get what I want and then, of course I don’t. I don’t get what I want and I feel that in the end it’s because I didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t my fate.

Sorry, I’m going to try and reel this in a bit.

So the thing I’ve been struggling with is hope and faith. Where does it come from? It’s so intangible. People like George Michael say, “You gotta have faith.”: Ok, yes. I agree, you do gotta have it for sure but you can’t just fake faith. You can’t pull some faith out of your ass or squeeze it out of your heart for that matter. Faith has to be real in order to work its magic, really, really real. So where does it come from?

Here’s where the monkey pointed something out to me:

Faith comes from the absence of fear.

It comes from being brave. Isn’t that great?

I’ve been thinking about it the wrong way. I’ve been waiting for hope to be bestowed upon me. For life to decide that I’m worthy of trusting, worthy of a positive outcome. But it’s not that, well ok it is that a little bit but if I can just stop being afraid of not getting what I want. Maybe then, I can have it. Just don’t be afraid of hoping for it. Just fucking do it anyway. Go ahead and hope. Hope it up. Hope a whole bunch.

I know you might not get it la Ketch. You might not get what you want. And it might really, really hurt when you don’t get it. And the more you let yourself want it, the more it will hurt. The more you believe that you will get it, the more it will rip you apart when you don’t. But you can take it. Fuck yes. You have been ripped apart before and you survived. You will always survive it. So be brave because life without hope, life without faith..... it’s so much worse.

I’m making a wish now. I’m hoping for it so strongly that I just know. I just know that it will be. It will be true. There is no faltering. There is no lack of anything. It’s happening. I’m not afraid anymore.

Thank you monkey.

Oh and while I'm at it. If you are getting married and you need someone who is awesome to be the officiant, someone very articulate and spiritual and smart and funny and a really good writer and orator who will make your experience unique to you and accessible to all of your family and friends. Well, then you should really think about hiring the gallivanting monkey. She married the duper and I and look at us. We just had our 2 year anniversary and we're still like a coupla newlyweds. For real though. She is pure magic. Do you want your marriage to last? Ask her. You won't regret it.