If You Blink, You Might Miss it

If you ever find yourself driving north out of Tulsa on U.S. 75, the last Okie town you'll see before crossing the Kansas state line is a tiny little hamlet called Copan. Copan is one of those much-maligned small prairie towns quickly being bled dry by population shifts and the aging of its citizens. There's nothing there to speak of, except for a few hundred good ol' folks and a dam-created lake. In fact, you can barely see Copan from the highway. As the old idiomatic expression goes, if you blink, you might miss it.

Beautiful downtown Copan, OK.

Personally, tiny little Copan has a few important memories for me. My mother taught there for a few years and my brother lived a few of his formative early years there. Though I don't remember it, my parents brought infant Kyle home from the hospital on a snowy January day to a small trailer park on the outskirts of Copan.

I find myself thinking about Copan today, not only because it's my birthday, but also because it's a time deep in my past, hard to remember and pieced together from incomplete recollections or yellowing photographs. 35 years isn't that long of a stretch of time though, relatively speaking. Many of my friends and colleagues are older than that and a few small decades are practically insignificant in the context of human history. 

With all that mind, it's still true that I don't have any meaningful recollection of living in Copan. There's a few photos reminding me that it happened, but that's the only link I have to that time and place. It's irrevocably in the past, ungraspable and increasingly hard to see clearly. It's like that because that's what time does to all of our memories. What seems unforgettable and overwhelmingly vivid at the time becomes as distant and muted as the snapshots of my infancy have become.

My childhood, once so easy to recall and ponder, grows a bit more dim with each passing January. My teen years, soaked in awkward coming-of-age regret, are less and less important to my current identity. Even my memories of my daughters as toddlers seem somehow less vibrant, which is more than a little depressing. For some, such feelings might bring with them a sense of dread. After all, we're nothing but a slowly degrading body containing a set of lessons and experiences. If those experiences fade, aren't we losing parts of ourselves?

Perhaps. We might also lose the vibrancy of the past because there are fresh memories forming that are far more relevant to who we are now. Humans are always caught between cycles of decomposition and regeneration. Our bodies do it at the cellular level. It's only fitting that our minds dwell in the same narrow boundary zone.

Thinking about it doesn't make me sad, though. I feel lucky, actually. Lucky to have lived and experienced so much. I'm grateful that I remember the squeak of my bare skin against the long, oddly angled playground slide at the now-closed Will Rogers Elementary. I'm grateful that I vividly remember the unconstrained swell of pride I felt at winning the spelling bee in 5th grade. I remember the terrifying feeling of fist fighting one of my close friends in 9th grade over a girl because he told her to "drop the zero and get with the hero." 

I remember how badly my hands shook for hours and days after very nearly rolling my truck over a concrete guard rail on the I-40 crosstown bridge in 1998. Just one more half roll and I'd have fallen over a hundred feet to my inevitable death. I am grateful to remember the sinking feeling, ten years later, watching my best friend drive his truck away from a Marie Callender's in Norman, knowing that I might not ever see him again.

There are so many other more important moments that are seared onto my mind and so many other less relevant memories fading away into nothing. I'm grateful for every one of them, whether it stings to recall them or not. The memories I'm allowed to hold onto constitute an ever-evolving, ever-transforming identity and it's the only one I've got.

Each one that passes makes room for a new one to take it's place. One day, hopefully far in the future, there won't be any new memories being made. My mind will stop and so will my body. Everyone that knows me, has ever spoken to me, hugged me, or kissed me will also stop being. Those memories made will all eventually fade into nothing. This is natural and beautiful and there is never a reason to fear our collective, common fate.

This year, my birthday wish is to enjoy the memories I can make and not fear losing some of them to inevitability. I want to savor them while I can and allow them to come and go naturally. I want to enjoy the tiny parade of small, miraculous memories as they pass by and begin to yellow with age, however imperceptibly. I want to keep my eyes open as often as I can and allow them to take in as much light as they possibly can so that I miss very little that goes by.

Being grateful to be alive another year is a wonderful feeling and it passes far too quickly. It's just like that small town off U.S. 75. If you blink, you might miss it. Have a great week out there and be good to each other.

Aim Low, Shoot High

I used to love the first day of school after Christmas break. The cool, crisp winter days coupled with residual happiness from the holidays to inflate my optimism about the new year. I'd meticulously set out an outfit of new clothes and lie in bed, resisting sleep with all the excited anticipation of being dealt a new hand of good cards after having lost big with the previous one.

This time things would be different. This year, I'd transcend my inborn awkwardness with a previously untapped sense of savoir-faire. I'd walk through the hallways with new-found swagger, overcoming my oversized nose, ears, and mouth with unassailable cool. This year, I'd come out on top. Eventually I'd fall asleep, drifting away on a sea of baseless optimism and elevated expectation, only to soon run aground on the grim shores of the uncaring, unfeeling reality of the universe.

Today marks the beginning of my fourteenth semester as a college instructor. In a few days, I'll also turn 35. I'm fast approaching the midpoint of average life expectancy for an American male and I'm acutely aware of the fact that my most elastic and energetic days are probably behind me. Consequently, I've long since abandoned that heedless hopefulness that lulled me to the sleep of bright, expectant dreamers.

First days after Christmas break are now exercises in anxiety. I'll meet approximately160 new faces whose names I need to memorize for my classroom ethos. I'll go through the next round of conversations in which I explain how little I accomplished over the break and how delightful it was to do nothing at all. Because of my body's psychosomatic peculiarity, I'll perspire during the first few class sessions like I'm Miss Teen South Carolina on an episode of Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?

The new beginnings are now anxious affairs because I spend too much time thinking about how I can do better, be more organized, and achieve more than I did during the last go-round. Like most people, I wrap up this anxiety in a narrative of relentless self-improvement. The real truth has nothing to do with Jay Gatsby-eqsue plans for personal improvement. In all honesty, it's the accumulating weight of past disappointments that pushes me to strain harder against failure.

The problem isn't that I'm so deeply flawed that I can't meet the relatively unimpressive expectations I might set for myself. We're all guilty of feeling that way about ourselves from time to time. There's something to be said for having the appropriate discipline, but that rhetoric is as guilty of discouraging as many people as it motivates. The real problem lies in the foolishness of thinking that I can attain a perfect outcome or that I can even get close to perfection. I can't. You can't. None of us can. 

The horrifying reality is that in either possible outcome, you're still going to asphyxiate and die. 

Take that, adorable little aphorism.

Year after year, the optimism of early January failed to translate into reality. Year after year, the disappointments stung a little more. I'd resolve to lose weight and fail to do so because of a lack of discipline or an abundance of delicious warm donuts. I'd make a resolution to be more organized and marvel at a new system of categorizing daily activities, only to forget to transcribe what was in my head onto the planner page. The inevitable let down consequently felt even more disappointing because I was likely on the third, fourth, or fifteenth attempt at achieving perfection.

This year, I want to stop cloud jumping. I want to set realistic, attainable goals that don't require anything approximating perfection. I don't want to inherit a new batch of stress from failing to succeed in running down perfection. I don't want to constantly beat myself up because I didn't put forth my best effort on a particular day.

I don't want to be afraid that I'm falling short of an ideal I could never have attained. I'm not even going to trick myself by aiming just below perfection and hoping that I'm satisfied with that result. Knowing you came close and fell short always feels worse than anyone admits.

I want to accumulate an entire bookshelf full of participation awards and be thrilled to have them. I don't want to make a goal to be a consummate professional at all times. I'm doomed to fall short of that on a weekly basis. Instead, I aim to dress a bit nicer, grade a bit more efficiently, and be more articulate than clever in my speech. I don't want to be the idealized wise and inspiring father. I'm instead aspiring to raise my voice less often and ignore a few more eye-rolls. I'm going slowly come to grips with the fact that my daughters are not only no longer my little girls, but that they also no longer want to be little girls at all.

You might say that I'm surrendering to mediocrity. You might think to yourself that I'm moving goalposts so that I can feel better about my feeble sense of personal discipline. You might be right.

I'm going to aim low and shoot high. I'm not going to to obsess about how I've fallen short of my goals. I'm going to set reasonable, attainable goals, maintain a reasonable level of effort, and enjoy knowing that everything above and beyond meeting my goal is a extra reward. I'm going to strive less and savor more. This year, I'm not going to wallow in the disappointment of falling short. I'm going to revel in the satisfaction of no longer fearing perfection.