What does it take to make a profound change in one’s life? Good intention? Standing back and objectively seeing what you’re doing wrong and announcing, “Oh, I get it…I’ll do X instead.” Unfortunately, for most of us the mother-of-all wake-up call comes in the form of something traumatic happening to a loved one or a threat to our own mortality.
I remember one particular movie, “The End” in which Burt Reynolds plays a terminally ill man trying to commit suicide but something botches every attempt. Since he’s determined to end it all, he hires a schizophrenic hit man to do him in, played by Dom DeLuise. Not trusting that DeLuise’s character can pull it off, he decides to drown himself by swimming out far enough where he can just relax and drown. But as he’s floating there waiting to drown, he starts thinking about all the reasons he wants to live, even if for only a few more days. So he begins to swim to the shore, a seemingly impossible distance away, and as he swims begs God to help him make the distance. The funny part is he promises anything at first to God if he’ll only let him make it back, pledging huge donations and promising to attend church every week, etc. But as he gets closer and closer to shore he keeps modifying what he’ll do if God will help him make it back. And by the time he drags himself up on the beach, his promises are down to a singular “maybe I’ll go to church once in a while.” I won’t spoil the end, so rent this wacky, black comedy if you want to know.
That’s how a lot of people act when they get a true wake-up call: either make promises they’ll never keep, or roll over and figuratively hit the snooze button. It’s not always easy to understand why a wake up call happens, but easy to recognize one when it happens. The body has a way of finally getting your attention when the mind has missed the hints through the years.
So what does it take to see a wake-up call as a harbinger of change? In my case, I’d already been in the process of mulling over some significant changes and beginning to understand how important they were when my wake-up call resounded what my body was trying to communicate: do it now or pay dearly. After the ringing in my ears stops from the wake-up call (my euphemism for what I’m going through now), I know pretty well what and where I need to change, although it’s not a simple process. But unlike Sonny, Burt Reynold’s character in “The End,” I won’t be altering my commitment as I get nearer to the shore. This time I know I need to just do it.
Ah, springtime. I love watching the new, lush green vegetation come out…those wildflowers blooming forth from a winter’s slumber…frisky squirrels and birds preparing for the mating season…and then there’s the lawn. I hate yard work, and more specifically, mowing lawns. I did enough of that in my youth to feel like I should have a lifetime exemption from that dreaded chore. It’s not that I don’t like the process, its that the process doesn’t like me or more precisely, my allergies.
What I do, or rather, did enjoy was working the rough areas of the yard, cleaning out old undergrowth and making our lot looked like lived-in wilderness. We only have grass along the front curb, while the rest of the lot is forest floor. But even natural forest floor surrounding a human residence requires maintenance to a degree. If I’m not keeping the 3′ barrier around the house cleaned and poisoned to keep the insects out of the house, I’m sweeping pine needles off the roof or gathering up storm-felled branches from the many tall pine trees that grace our lot.
I’ve never reacted to p.i. before, but in doing research about the plant I learned that most of what people think about poison ivy is not true. For starters, no one is naturally immune to the reaction-causing oils of this lovely green ivy, which yields very pretty purple berries in the spring. You can go for years and years and never have a reaction then BAM, one time and you’re singing the calamine lotion blues. In fact, our first summer here I cleaned out the side yard and pulled up bags of this stuff from around the deck with nary a blister.
Got a couple of fins for a sawbuck? That kind of change we deal with easily; but change as a disrupter in our daily lives is not quite so simple. Yet change is as constant in our existence as the breaths we take and the mists they make upon exit.
True freedom is a life lived in full control over one’s choices. But when you think about how this really works, it becomes obvious that few of us enjoy freedom to that extreme. Attached to every “choice” is a parasite called “consequence,” that tangible aftermath of any choice, good or bad. Want your neighbor’s new Cadillac? You can choose to simply steal it, but the obvious consequence of that choice — a charge of grand theft auto — is not particularly pleasant.