Jeff - Living

Jeff
Week 3

I visited a friend in his new home a few days after he moved and I was completely amazed by what I saw. As I rang the bell, I noticed a vase of fresh flowers in the window of the softly lit entry hall. My friend later told me that he had picked the flowers the day before from the back yard. The front yard had been cleared of weeds and debris and potted plants found a home on the steps leading to the front porch. My friend greeted me at the door and was dressed comfortably and was relaxed. As he walked me through the first floor, he said that he was brewing hot tea for us to enjoy a little later. His daughter’s room, located in the front of the house, featured some of her recent art and was soft and feminine. His son’s room was also set up with the belongings of a teenage boy placed around the room as if he had lived there for years. Velvet curtains hung in both rooms.

Next, he showed me to a sun porch with lots of windows that overlooked the backyard. Bette Midler was playing on the fully functional computer. The hot water was boiling in the kitchen so my friend tended to our tea. Clearly, the kitchen was completely operational. I opened a short door on the other side of the eating area and found the pantry stocked. I noticed that the china and silver had already been unwrapped and neatly arranged in a cabinet in the far corner of the room. He served our tea in the living room, which was in the center of the house. The walls were a warm, dark reddish color. There were lamps with interesting, beaded shades that softly illuminated his living room. We sank into the sofa and chatted while our tea cooled. Two cats ran from room to room, hissing and making guttural cat sounds. The cat fighting disturbed me so my friend put one of them in his daughter’s room and closed the door. As we sat and talked, I began to feel uneasy, bothered, edgy. These feelings had begun soon after I arrived but intensified once I was settled in the living room.

After a couple sips of tea, which was delicious, we toured the second floor which turned out to be as set up and lived in as the first floor. Back down stairs in the entry hall, my friend sat at the piano and played for me. I enjoyed the sounds of the piano and noted how relaxed he was playing for me for the first time. The piano was an obvious pleasure for him and his talent showed years of practice. Again, I noticed that I was feeling bothered and even a little agitated.

The house was warm so we moved to the front porch. Then it happened. As my friend sat across from me feeling proud of his new home, my uneasiness, my envy, my admiration, my jealousy, my helplessness, my selfishness started to pour out of me. “Our lives are so different”, I told him. I don’t think he knew how to take that statement. I continued, “You decided to move about a week ago, moved in three days ago…but as I walked through the house tonight, I felt like you have lived here for years…everything was set up, curtains and pictures were hanging, music was playing, the kitchen was working…YOU EVEN MADE TEA”. How had he done all that in such a short period of time? How had he managed to create such a warm, inviting, comfortable home in such a short time? Why wasn’t he exhausted instead of making hot tea and playing the piano?

Me? I couldn’t decide to move and then actually move a few days later. It would take weeks or months of processing…mental infighting…where, when, how, who, what, where, when, how, who, what, where, when, how, who, what? Where would I move? When? How could I be ready by then? Who would pack me up? Who would move me? What needed to be changed? How much would the remodeling cost? Who would do the work? What about paint? What color? I can’t even continue listing all of the questions…how could I do any of this?

When I move, it’s a long process. I pack for weeks, every box carefully labeled and stacked out of the way. As the packing goes on, I reorganize the stack at least three or four times. Once I have moved, it takes months to unpack. Some boxes just remain in a corner of the room. Or I find a use for the boxes. I used boxes that were still full of stuff as a desk one time. I set up the computer, phone, etc., on top of these boxes and sat down and worked as if it was a real desk. At that time I worked from home two days a week. Those boxes functioned as my work space for months. If the telecommuting committee at my company saw how unergonomically correct “home office” was, they would have yanked my telecommuting status in a heartbeat.

I could go on and on which would make reading this as painful a process as moving is for me. The bottom line is that I can’t “just do it”. I turn even the simplest of tasks into impossible ordeals. And there are many things that I just won’t even attempt because I deem them to be undoable for me. Or, I’ll spend my time planning something and never doing it…like training and training and training and never entering the race. It’s not just procrastination, although that’s part of it. It’s also fear of getting started or being unable to participate until I can be the best I can be.

Living? I am and I’m not. I spend most of my time thinking about it, preparing for it or withdrawing from it. The rest of the time, I’m sleeping through it or am just too exhausted to do anything anyway. My friend is living…he doesn’t allow a move to slow him down or to stop him from living…he “just does it”. He’s really living, he’s happy, he’s peaceful, he’s satisfied, he’s participating. Yes, there are parts of his life that are challenging, his life isn’t perfect. But he’s living.

“Our lives are so different”, I said again. My friend listened to me and wanted to understand. As I talked, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes to stop the tears several times. Finally, and abruptly, I stood up and said that I needed to go home. My friend was reluctant for me to leave but walked me to my car anyway. As I kissed him on the cheek, I whispered, “I’m going to buy some of that tea that you made, but I’ll never make it. I’ll even buy a book that explains how to make the tea, but I’ll never read it”.