Beautiful, Maureen, glad you chose Door Number One. Great topic, great post, great premise. Happy Birthday Gemini! (from a fellow twin). Enjoy your summer.
That’s the go-to phrase, right? The nagging ongoing audit of your life. And I do it all the time—whether it’s morning, midday, or 3 a.m. (my habitual favorite), I’ll run an internal audit of my life’s accomplishments, dredging up the good, the bad, and the truly ugly of it all. And like that 2 a.m. line of coke with a tequila chaser, I know it’s a really bad idea, but at the same time, it’s oh so self-indulgent. And the not-so-funny thing is, it’s often easier to dredge up the debits than it is the credits of my life. Whether it’s the dysfunctional home life, the drugs that carried me through the ’80s, the booze that carried me through the ’90s and 2000s, the lost opportunities, the lost relationships, the loss of potential, and the loss of time—these shadows have all spent a lot of time in my head.
But you know, everyone has a balance sheet of sorts. Everyone has a mental list of accounts that they reconcile. However, in my maturing (said cheekily) years, I’ve discovered that the trick is in developing a [mental] Controller who can cook the books. Meaning, bring in that resource in your head that dampens all the terrible shit you dredge up and instead makes room for you to focus on what has gone right in your life either by design or pure luck. A wise manager once told me that the most powerful person in the company was the Controller (and I believe it).
Life is a pizza party.
I’ll use this analogy in the context of motorcycling. On a bike, you depend on several factors: the condition of the bike, engine, tires, weather, road conditions, travel speed and, importantly, skill. You imagine that you are throwing a pizza party and have invited all the aforementioned dependencies for dinner. The rule for this dinner, however, is that you can never run out of pizza. To run out of pizza means that one of the dependencies goes hungry—and you may crash. So always have enough pizza left over in the box to accommodate that unexpected guest: the gravel in the road, the car that turns out in front of you, the dog that runs across the road. Accordingly, never ride to 100% of your (or the bike’s) limits, as you need to be able to take on that unforeseen party crasher.
And if you extend that to how we deal with our past, present, and uncertain futures, then the same analogy applies. Make sure your party has enough pizza to accommodate all of it, in addition to everything that’s yet to happen. All the abuse, all the failures, death, loves lost, the things that can never be reconciled, wasted time… take it all and force it on an Atkins diet. Then get that same Controller to invite the guests you actually want to feed: the loves of your life, your kids, the friends who are still with you, the adventures, all the things that actually went right—and focus on those guests instead. Feed them lots of pizza (but don’t forget to leave some left in the box— you never know who’s about to show up).
Such great wisdom and a fabulous analogy- given that I have Italian heritage and my nightmare is having people over and running out of food - the don’t run out of pizza analogy hits home. The weird irony is that in the moment weirdly the “bad” decisions like the 2 am lines of coke seem luck such a good idea. It’s only in hindsight sight that we consider WTF was I thinking. Maybe that’s the salve knowing that if we could have made better decisions we would have because we kinda thought we weee anyway.
Every prospective alteration leads this path astray from its current unfolding. Despite this current path's challenges, I can't imagine it being better some other way.
That’s the peace we have to come to isn’t it - that the alternate path might have some “better” but it will also inevitably have some worse as well because after all that’s life.
Beautiful, Maureen, glad you chose Door Number One. Great topic, great post, great premise. Happy Birthday Gemini! (from a fellow twin). Enjoy your summer.
What date is yours? HBD to you too 🫶🏻
Life’s balance sheet.
That’s the go-to phrase, right? The nagging ongoing audit of your life. And I do it all the time—whether it’s morning, midday, or 3 a.m. (my habitual favorite), I’ll run an internal audit of my life’s accomplishments, dredging up the good, the bad, and the truly ugly of it all. And like that 2 a.m. line of coke with a tequila chaser, I know it’s a really bad idea, but at the same time, it’s oh so self-indulgent. And the not-so-funny thing is, it’s often easier to dredge up the debits than it is the credits of my life. Whether it’s the dysfunctional home life, the drugs that carried me through the ’80s, the booze that carried me through the ’90s and 2000s, the lost opportunities, the lost relationships, the loss of potential, and the loss of time—these shadows have all spent a lot of time in my head.
But you know, everyone has a balance sheet of sorts. Everyone has a mental list of accounts that they reconcile. However, in my maturing (said cheekily) years, I’ve discovered that the trick is in developing a [mental] Controller who can cook the books. Meaning, bring in that resource in your head that dampens all the terrible shit you dredge up and instead makes room for you to focus on what has gone right in your life either by design or pure luck. A wise manager once told me that the most powerful person in the company was the Controller (and I believe it).
Life is a pizza party.
I’ll use this analogy in the context of motorcycling. On a bike, you depend on several factors: the condition of the bike, engine, tires, weather, road conditions, travel speed and, importantly, skill. You imagine that you are throwing a pizza party and have invited all the aforementioned dependencies for dinner. The rule for this dinner, however, is that you can never run out of pizza. To run out of pizza means that one of the dependencies goes hungry—and you may crash. So always have enough pizza left over in the box to accommodate that unexpected guest: the gravel in the road, the car that turns out in front of you, the dog that runs across the road. Accordingly, never ride to 100% of your (or the bike’s) limits, as you need to be able to take on that unforeseen party crasher.
And if you extend that to how we deal with our past, present, and uncertain futures, then the same analogy applies. Make sure your party has enough pizza to accommodate all of it, in addition to everything that’s yet to happen. All the abuse, all the failures, death, loves lost, the things that can never be reconciled, wasted time… take it all and force it on an Atkins diet. Then get that same Controller to invite the guests you actually want to feed: the loves of your life, your kids, the friends who are still with you, the adventures, all the things that actually went right—and focus on those guests instead. Feed them lots of pizza (but don’t forget to leave some left in the box— you never know who’s about to show up).
Such great wisdom and a fabulous analogy- given that I have Italian heritage and my nightmare is having people over and running out of food - the don’t run out of pizza analogy hits home. The weird irony is that in the moment weirdly the “bad” decisions like the 2 am lines of coke seem luck such a good idea. It’s only in hindsight sight that we consider WTF was I thinking. Maybe that’s the salve knowing that if we could have made better decisions we would have because we kinda thought we weee anyway.
So much to contemplate! Happy Birthday Maureen. Trust me, it gets a LOT better from here onwards. Mostly.
PS: "Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now." (Maya Angelou)
Thanks Anne and I’ll have to trust you on the getting better part 🙏🏻🤪
Every prospective alteration leads this path astray from its current unfolding. Despite this current path's challenges, I can't imagine it being better some other way.
Happy Maureenday, BTW.
That’s the peace we have to come to isn’t it - that the alternate path might have some “better” but it will also inevitably have some worse as well because after all that’s life.
And as the Indigo Girls so wisely taught us, "It's only life after all." 🙃
That song is serious medicine!
I would do it all again, even the worst parts. All the twists and turns, bumps and bruises, joy and grief --made me... me. Happy birthday to you!
Then you have achieved enlightenment 🙌