The Tao of Popeye

It wasn't supposed to go this way, and I don't know where it went awry. Or, more honestly, I do know, but don't want to admit it, even to myself.

I was supposed to have gotten it together by now, grown up, done something that would count as a life well spent.  A good novel, a thriving, creative community of friends, travel, food, a full social calendar, talks, people wanting my time.

Mine was supposed to look like the life of those pharmaceutical commercials where youngish Boomers frolic on beaches, in the mountains, on road trips in vintage cars. Sports cars wind along coastal roads when they aren't parked outside a remote cabin next to a panting black leopard. These models of living well show us how it should be; they smile and fish and have the smugness of having done it all right.

Their lives are full and balanced. Families gather around big tables and smile in honey light. You know the food is perfect, that love flows, there are no hatchets that need to be buried. No doubt they have great sex, discretionary cash, cars that don't break down, houses that are always clean.

But, my reality, while sharing some of the ideal, especially the good people, is a bit of a mess. Confusion, exhaustion, wrong turns, flat tires. Wrinkles and sags tell the truth of time passing while the things I have to show for having been here amount to little or nothing. I have taken up so much time and so many resources and produced so little. Instead of a sleek panther, my life is more like a tired buffalo -- out of juice and hunted to near extinction.

Others, surely, have done a better job, made more of their time, but when I look around, we're all pretty much in the same boat: below expectations.

I guess part of growing up means growing out of idealistic dreams and accepting what will be possible. That means being human, a bit ugly, and, to an honest eye, a grotesque parody of some advertising ideal. I have to settle for the fact that mine will not be the life portrayed in the Cialis commercials.

Still, I can't shake this nagging sense of lack. Something isn't good enough. Life should look like those commercials.

Does that discontent lead to healthy striving or does it poison living the life one is given? Probably a mix of both.

A while back I wanted to be a competitive runner, to turn in six minutes miles over 10K runs, maybe place in my age group. I talked to a running coach and went for a run. He listened as I spilled my goals all over the track.

Being the kindly type, he listened well and matched my strides with beautiful strides of his own, though he was breathing with far greater ease than I was. When I was done, he said simply "You can't be anywhere other than where you are."

He referred, of course to running, to heart rate, fitness, ligaments, VO2 max, and other running specific measures of performance, but I took it to be a larger truth.

That moment it went awry was the moment I gave up my life for some ideal that I saw in a mythological ideal. The requirements of work, focus, and time were replaced by an unrealistic belief that it would just "happen." The box car of reality was uncoupled from the engine of fantasy. Rather than a real life of struggle and imperfection I opted for a life of the mind that didn't require hard work and a bit of ego death. 

Yes, I can't be anywhere other than where I am, and that is the starting point for where I want to go, or stay. Hard to admit, but the middle-aged, sun-spotted, sagging, under-whelming writer is where I am. Bummer or bliss, that's the way it is. 

I look to our pantheon visionaries for guidance, and there I find my teacher, Popeye. I hear him humbly proclaiming "I am what I yam."

Yes, dear Mentor, you and me both. I am what I yam, and likely might still surprise myself with what I yam becoming.