Damocles.

Several years after my Grandfather died, my Grandmother remarried.  He unfortunately suffers from late onset Alzheimer's and his personality is irrevocably altered.  I feel the need to mention this because I was about to write that he was a really nice man from Buffalo who took really great care of my Grandmother... that sort of makes it sound like he's not around anymore.  He is, yet, sadly, he's not the same all the time.  He had this saying that he frequented when he was asked, "How you doing, Paul?"

"If I was any better, I would be worried."

What's great about Paul is that he's an unending optimist.  Even in his periods where he's a little foggy, he constantly sees the opportunity for things to improve.  He strikes up conversations with utter strangers, admittedly to the point were I feel like he's a bit out of line in his instant familiarity (I have my own issues with those sorts of things so my supposed bar for other people's tolerance of that sort of thing is a bit low), but typically leaves the stranger with a smile on his or her face.  It's incredibly admirable.

"If I was any better, I would be worried."

At the same time, there has always been this great sense of foreboding in that statement.  I think that it resects the natural peaks and valleys of the human thought process, the fact that, not everything can be amazingly, fantastically, wondrously great all of the time.  I'm a big believer that we shape our own experience and that, if we choose, our experience can hover in the realm of "good" for as long as we wish it to.  Events can become stressful; rough; trying, but remain all in all on the up and up.  It's all about perspective.  But... yeah... foreboding.  That last paragraph got away from me...

"If I was any better, I would be worried."

Everything in my life right now is pretty grand.  I am where I want to be.  I get to do what I want to do.  My friends are amazing.  My family is supportive.  I try not to get too personal in these writings, but I hope this will suffice in writing that there are moments in my day, frequently, where I am so filled with this... concentrated sensation of pure joy that each breath I take feels as if it realigns every cell in my body and polarizes each one North-to-South towards magnetic bliss.

And LIFE is really fucking amazing.

"If I was any better, I would be worried." 

 

I am worried.  Is this peaking?  Can I , in fact, get any better?  I mean, we're treading into uncharted territory here. These are the outliers of jocundity, and there's this growing fear in my mind that this can't possibly last.  Somehow I'm going to slip, blow it, and quail as my feet are thrown up from underneath me.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

It may be utterly silly, but it is in my mind.  I half tempted to take a breath and hold it in.  Make the moment last as long as possible.  I know it's not possible, but still...  it's that good.  Despite this pestilent disquiet in the back of my mind, everything just happens to be brilliant.  In writing this I've begun to wonder to myself, "Maybe the sword isn't dangling from a thread above my head, maybe it's in my hand and all I have to remember is not to willingly fall on it."

I think I'm back to enjoying the now.

NEXT WEEK!: we begin the new semester and there will be less blogging as a chronicle for a wandering mind and more blogging as a record of things of actual import: namely the happenings of The Fourteen.  Thank you to those of you who (ir)regularly read and thank you to all of you who have brought me this sense of elation.  Despite my best efforts, I think I might actually be enjoying it!

"Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes."

- Miguel de Cervantes

-R