A friend asked me the other day how I manage to stay so composed. Initially I was going to snort; I don’t stay very composed. I guess I do present composure. I mean 99 percent of y’all only know me through on-line journals, not so much here, but, then again, nobody came from here, did they? I rant and cause trouble and poke bears in on-line journals, again, not so much here, but, you know …
The context was basically a winter, or rather a three month period of time, where neither one of us were in good health. Whereas my on-line persona may be mole like, some white worm who blinks by candle light at his LED screen in the back of the cave, I’m actually usually in good shape. I know, I’ve bitched about injurys, chronic ones, for years, but, I’m actually used to being in pretty good shape.
I’m blessed or, you know, lucky if the phrase blessed has too many supernatural connotations for you (um, so does lucky it just seems non-denominational). That’s a piece of why I’m composed, things work out for me, eventually, cyclically, my pony goes round the carousal , and I never ever suspect that I will always miss the brass ring, it’s more the exception than the rule (it’s an arcane reference I know, almost reduced to a myth or metaphor, but there used to be brass rings that hung, and if you had the nerve and strength and/or height and length, you could lean from your carousal animal and detach the ring from the hanging post).
There are much better people that have much worse things happen to them, me, I have a patch of rough road followed by a patch of road with free lemonade stands. No matter how many times I think I’ve hit my last cycle it all comes around again. So, that’s one answer on why I present as composed. The other is that if had to admit to being frightened of one thing, a thing that could actually happen (as opposed to being eaten by a dragon) it would be losing my shit, or, for lack of a more precise analogy, my composure.
I refuse to go back and look but I’m sure one of my earliest entries on this site was —I can’t lose my shit, not here, not now. If it wasn’t an early entry here, it was a late entry, maybe the last, at OD, or an email back to the mythical Oregon, far west and in the clouds. I used to thrive on crisis, I don’t mean the adrenaline, I mean the calm, the easy way I would slip into beatific composure as others lost their shit.
Hmmm, and that’s also what I mean by ‘Better people’ and ‘(who’ve) had worse shit happen’. It’s not humility, self-deprecation, false modesty. A lot of people who are stand up morally clean folks haven’t had to face many moral delimmas, haven’t had to chose between the lesser of two evils, take direct action to make the lesser of two evils happen. The words are easy to understand, the concept not so much. I have made too many such choices, took too many such actions to be considered the high end of ‘good’ man (or woman if you are one). The only graceful way to wear that is composure. I mean you can’t blame other people for not weighing in on those decisions, it’s better that they hadn’t, just like a solidier can’t blame the citizens for not protecting themselves; we are us. Ideally that’s how you want your kids life to be, without moral dilemmas, without war.
Composure. Conduct yourself as if that’s how you meant to be. And if you have to pretend a little perhaps you should consider actually being who you pretend to be. I don’t know, I look forward to being active again, pro-active even; I’ve been laid low by mild congestion and what is always known as “That? Oh yeah, that’s going around.”
Hmmmm, I was hoping to be articulate, I guess I’m still pretty fuzzy.
Loading comments...