Staying Strong

I have often said that I wished my life could be comprised largely of music/movie montages, because so many great things are accomplished in such a short time that it makes life look just that easy.

The first time I remembered seeing one was in the 1984 piece of cinematic gold, Revenge of the Nerds. The nerds were unable to find acceptance in traditional fraternities, so they bought a dilapidated house, and, in roughly 30 seconds, transformed it into a respectable and completely livable frat house they could call their very own.

From that point forth, I was sold. I wanted all the hard work to be accomplished, with none of the hard work actually visible. I wanted to accomplish great things, but with an absolute minimum amount of effort. I wanted to reap all of the benefits, with none of the actual sweat equity.

As you can imagine, I have been disappointed repeatedly. It still doesn't dim my hope that, one day, I can make it happen. Of course, it will take a lot of hard work, and no montages, so actually, it won't happen. But I'm still going to hope, because I'm slow on the uptake a lot of times.

There are a couple of things that I'm dealing with right now that are very, very difficult. I have bemoaned both the lack of montage and the lack of a fast-forward button that I can use on my life. I have good days and then I have what feels like many, many bad days. More accurately, I have amazing moments followed by ever-darkening pockets of time.

And in those amazing moments, I feel like I'm in a montage. Like everything is going to happen in the best way imaginable. I'm filled with resolve. I'm filled with strength and with light and with enough good feelings to power the world. I'm made of smiles. I'm all of the things to all of the people.

In those moments, I'm going to be just fine, because why wouldn't I be? I'm an incredible person with a lot going for me, right? What could go wrong?

Turns out, part of what makes me ME is my brain. And it's a bit of an asshole sometimes.

"You still haven't gained all of that weight back. Eat the rest of that salted caramel spread. It'll be fiiiiine."

"Let's think of every bad decision you ever made and torture yourself about everything you could have done differently, want to?"

"It wasn't that bad really, was it? It was good sometimes. Why are you such a quitter? No point in starting over now."

And on and on.

That's the magic of the montage. It encompasses all of the good and none of the bad (well, maybe a total of 10 seconds of the bad, but that's still overwhelmingly schooled by 20 seconds of the good, so that's a 1:3 ratio or something because I don't math, and good still kicks the ass and everyone is happy), and that's what we WANT to see. We want to see the good. We want to see good win, because it gives us hope that it's the way it will be always.

In the case of the non-montage life, however, there is plenty of bad. There are plenty of salted-caramel-spread-meets-spoon-meets-mouth nights. There are plenty of hasty decisions followed by massive regrets. It's a shower-rinse-repeat cycle, the bad decision.

And then there are those even worse moments, when both decisions have good and bad aspects. The decisions when there really isn't a clear-cut answer. And only you know the truth about those. You can get all the advice in the world, but YOU are the only one who knows the WHOLE story. Let's face it, even when we confide in someone, sometimes we leave out the parts that make us look bad. Case in point:

"Oh, he is so mean to me and I did nothing wrong, I was his everything, I dropped everything to tend to his needs all the time, girl, I don't even know why he's acting like this, it wasn't my fault!"

Maybe you didn't ever make him his favorite meal, or any meal. Maybe you ignored him, maybe you cheated on him, maybe you called him names and belittled him. But that's not exactly highlight-reel stuff, is it? You want sympathy, not somebody saying,

"Well, you kind of suck, did you ever think about that part?"

So, while the montage is a glossy, amazing snippet of a crappy situation made light, real life is light and dark. Often far more of one than the other. And I regret to inform you that I have not, in 39 years, found that fast-forward button.

And I regret to inform you that I have not, in 39 years, come up with the right answer.

We ride waves. Waves of good feelings, terrifying drops into bad. There are storms, and there is sun. There are long stretches of calm, in which we find smugness, and look at others as if they're all a bunch of suckers because WE figured it out, what's wrong with you? And then BAM, the storm is back, and we're left capsized and bewildered.

So find that sun when you can. Seek out the rays in your life. And when those rays seem too far away, sink into the storm. Hold on tight and feel the feels. But please, please don't stop paddling back to the light. And when you get through it, when you fight the rain and the wind and the lightning for what feels like forever, and want to sink because it's just too much, it is, you didn't sign up for this, when you break through it and realize you're back in the sun, well, THAT is a montage-worthy moment.