Shoulder Angel

I secretly have a shoulder angel. Metaphorically, of course. That little voice in my head that constantly reminds me of the things that I should be doing, nagging me to make right choices, all that fun business. Sure, some people might call it their "conscience", their "gut instinct"--there are a lot of names for it, but I just like calling it my shoulder angel. Partially because of the great scenes in Disney's The Emperor's New Groove where Kronk has arguments with his little shoulder angel and devil. That scene really cracks me up. I also feel that it is accurate, for me at least. Sometimes it feels like there are two parts of me that want me to go in different directions. One side tells me to get my homework done, the other side says to procrastinate it a little longer. Since I am obviously not doing my homework right now, it is rather obvious that I don't always listen to just one side or the other--though life would be much simpler if I could just tune one of the two voices out. 

Image Copyright Disney

In the end, however, I have always found that the times in my life when I am the most miserable are when I'm not listening to that little shoulder angel nearly as much as I should be. If I'm feeling empty inside and down, I've pretty much always found that it was because I was either doing something that I shouldn't, or that I wasn't doing something that I should have been. In other words, I wasn't listening to my shoulder angel. Of course, there are always things that just happen in life that throw off your groove, and can cause you to be unhappy--the unexpected death of a loved one, an unfortunate accident, or even just when you make a good decision and are persecuted for it. There are plenty of things in this word to get you down, without you even making a single mistake. Pile all of your shortcomings and blunders on top of that, and pretty quick you're up to your neck in emotional quicksand. 

So what can you do? How can you rise above all this nasty business and actually feel good about yourself? The way I see it, there are two possible solutions. Firstly, you can numb yourself to the pokings and proddings of that little shoulder angel of yours. After a while, you won't notice the constant nagging at all, and you won't feel one teensy bit sorry when you do something that you know you shouldn't have. Sure, you might feel a little empty inside, but at least you won't always feel like someone has a tug-of-war going over your decisions, right? You can just do what you want and call it good. I like to think of it as an emotional callous. Just by nature, our bodies can create these callouses--both physically and emotionally. A great example of an emotional callous would be the one that my brother is developing by working in a call center. He told me that there isn't a single expletive under the sun that he hasn't had screamed at him over the phone, and he's developing an emotional callous against angry people yelling at him. It just doesn't bother him as much as it used to. The same applies with the shoulder angel. If you get used to brushing him off and ignoring him, before long you don't even notice him.

The second thing that you can do, seems only natural--just listen to the little shoulder angel. Sure, sometimes that angel nudges you to do things that are hard and painful, but in the end you can have the satisfaction of knowing that you did what you thought was right. People are imperfect, and all of us are going to make mistakes. Of course we won't always listen to our shoulder angels perfectly, and we will know it when we aren't. In my experience, however, the best thing you can possibly do is never numb your conscience. Don't allow the wool to be pulled over your eyes just so that your shoulder angel will shut up for a while. In the long run it will only cause you more grief and pain. 

Dealing with the Unexpected

       I have long debated over whether it is better to be a pessimist or an optimist. By default, it is always easier for me to look at the crappy side of things--expect the worst to happen. If we're going on a hiking trip on a weekend, it's going to rain. Or if it doesn't rain, we'll end up forgetting water, and spending the entire time thirsty and hot. Something is just bound to go wrong, isn't it? In my mind, this way I can--in a way--avoid disappointment.

       This means that when bad stuff happens, I can just say "Ha! I knew it," and have a weird sense of satisfaction from being proved right. If all goes well, then oh well--I was wrong. I can then enjoy the satisfaction of expecting things to go wrong, and having everything go smoothly. I am proved wrong, in one of the most pleasing ways possible. This sort of attitude is easy--and to some degree infectious. It can often lead to a lazy outlook at life. Because something might go wrong, why bother doing it in the first place? Why even bother? This sort of apathy is quite easy to fall into for even the most skilled of pessimists.

       In spite of my pessimism, there are a few things in my life where I choose to remain firmly optimistic, such as with my marriage. Certainly, there was apprehension at first on my part. It's kind of a big decision to decide who you spend the rest of your life with, and it would be silly for me to be pessimistic and assume that your spouse will just end up divorcing you anyway--at least from my standpoint. This probably comes from a decision I made long ago--that I wasn't going to be another one of those divorce statistics. This is a part of my life where I just downright don't want to be a pessimist, honestly because I would be driven mad by just telling myself that something will come along and smash my happy marriage to pieces. That's just no fun. I may be a pessimist, but I'm not a masochist.

       There are, however, some parts of my life where I'm not quite sure which side of the fence to sit on. The first thing I can think of, is that my wife and I have been trying to get pregnant for a couple of months now. On the one hand, I am very much excited to be a father, so the prospect of having a kid is wonderful. Then I can try and be as awesome of a father as my dad was for me. I guess you could say that the "I want to be like my dad when I grow up" mentality didn't wear off too much from when I was a kid.To these kind of thoughts, my pessimistic side wants to say that it won't work out anyway. One of us won't be fertile, and we won't be able to have kids at all.

       On the other hand, however, I'm scared out of my mind to be a father. I've just barely made it into adulthood myself--it's certainly not like I know what  I'm doing. I don't have the faintest idea of how to be a dad. The things that I (either purposefully or inadvertently) teach our child(ren) will stick with them for the rest of their lives. Can I even handle that kind of pressure? What if we have a problem child that drives me insane? The pessimistic side of me wants to say, to these thoughts, that we'll get pregnant without even trying. That before I know it, I'll be stressed out of my mind with a high-maintenance child that I wasn't prepared to handle.

       Due to the contradicting nature of my thoughts on this matter, it was really difficult to listen to my pessimistic side in this case. It's like having a little man inside my head that yells at me to sit down and stand up at the same time. After a few moments, you just ignore him because he's so obnoxious and doesn't really know what he wants.

       I am happy to report that neither of the pessimistic extremes ended up being true, in this case. We didn't conceive the first time we tried, but we aren't infertile either. We do have a little baby girl on the way though! She is due in December around Christmastime, and we are both very excited and happy. So pessimism didn't really help me prepare for the unexpected here, it seems. Maybe I will have to try out this optimism thing a bit more often. Who knows--it might actually work better for me. 

       On a sadder note, there was something else I was optimistically trying to reach. I applied to get into the Animation program at my university. It is a very competitive program, and only about 20% of the applicants actually make it in each year. I tried to be as optimistic as possible, is spite of brooding  doubts of my artistic talents. I scraped together as much as I could and sent off my portfolio a couple of months ago, keeping my fingers crossed.

       Sadly, not long after sending my portfolio, I received a letter telling me that I didn't make the cut. They said that I could always beef up my portfolio and try again next year, but I'm not quite sure what to do at this point. I knew from the start how hard it was to get in, but I still secretly hoped that I would make it. I will have to take careful thought and consideration before deciding how to proceed--another year of trying to chase my dreams could end up being rather expensive, considering how much school costs these days.

       In spite of this, I am still happy that I at least tried to be optimistic about it. Heck, if I had kept a strictly pessimistic point of view I probably wouldn't have even tried--which would have definitely been the saddest thing I could have done. It isn't the end of the world, and my life will still go on, and I've managed to learn a thing or two on my way--and that's what counts in the end.

The Road

      Sometimes, life takes you to very much unexpected places. A year ago from today, I certainly wouldn't have guessed that I would be where I am today. Sometimes when we look towards the future, it is somewhat like a road. There are some stretches where we feel like we can see everything that's coming, and from quite a ways off. Once we actually hit that stretch of road, however, it may be much rougher than we thought--filled with potholes, maybe even stinky roadkill. It can be somewhat disheartening to realize just how much we don't know about the road ahead.

      At other times, it is almost as if there is a blizzard, thick fog, and it's the dead of night and your headlights just went out. You have no idea what is up ahead, or even how you can keep on going. For some of us, this could be a time when a loved one is lost, or when a natural disaster strikes. This happened to my parents years ago--their first son (namely my oldest brother) died when he was about a month old, due to complications of my mother becoming seriously ill during her pregnancy. It very nearly ripped my family's world apart, and honestly I don't know how my parents got through it. Just from the stories they've told me about it, it was a very difficult and dark time for them both. But they managed to pull  together, stay strong, and they kept on trying to have a family. This is a most fortunate thing for me, since I wouldn't be here otherwise. 

      Yet at other times, like I am now experiencing, you can see that there is a bend coming up in the road. What lies beyond that bend, however, is really anyone's guess. It could be a fork in the road, a sheer cliff, or even a pack of rabid wildebeest. You really don't know, and the only way to find out is to just keep pressing forward. In just a few short weeks, I will be applying to a program at my university that is extremely competitive--and if I'm not accepted, I will have to completely reevaluate what I want to study in college. Which, further down the road, would ultimately change what I do for a living. There is no concrete way that I can peek into the future and see for sure if I will make it in to the program or not, as comforting as that would be. But what I can do, is keep doing my best to stay optimistic and not let life get me down. Life is certainly depressing enough to weigh you down if you focus on the negative aspects. The tough thing is that the negative things are the easy ones to notice--it's all too often the great and wonderful things in life that we take for granted. 

Of Groundhogs and Heart-throbs

       Wow, February is already upon us--and almost behind us. At the beginning of this frosty month, there is a holiday that is often overlooked. To be honest, I completely forgot about it this year.  No, not to worry, it wasn't Valentine's Day...it was Groundhog Day. When I was younger, this holiday had very little meaning to me, especially due to the fact that I still had to go to school. No holiday was really worth noticing unless I got to miss school for it--or at least do something fun and exciting because of it. Days such as Groundhog Day, Columbus Day and the like just never really excited or inspired me like some of the more commercialized holidays.

       A few years back, however, I discovered a film that changed the way I looked at Groundhog Day forever--yep, you probably guessed it. The movie is called Groundhog Day. It is the somewhat sad, somewhat comical story of a News Reporter who is rather cynical and jaded about life, who somehow gets trapped replaying the same day over and over again--that day being groundhog day. Absolutely nothing that he tries manages to change the cycle. He tries everything--even committing suicide--and the next day he wakes up, and it's groundhog day all over again.

       This story really captivated me, because I was at a point in my life where I felt I was stuck in a cycle--a routine that didn't seem to have an end in sight. Granted, I never went as far as the character in Groundhog Day--suicide doesn't much appeal to me, honestly. But I wanted to change things up. Of course, because I was so young when I was first captivated by this idea, things have changed a lot for me now since i'm no longer a teenage hermit living in my parents' basement. That's my younger brother now.

        Probably the biggest cycle that bothered me, though, had to do with a slightly more well known holiday in February--Valentines Day (or single's awareness day, as I knew it for most of my life). When I was a little kid, this holiday was mostly about giving and getting tasty candy, with lovey dovey overtones that I didn't really care about. But once I hit the 'teenager' stage, Valentines Day wasn't the same. I didn't care about the candy anymore--what I wanted more was to not be alone. Year after year, however, relationship after relationship would fail or end prematurely, or just blow up in my face. Valentines Day would always just be a reminder to me that I was once again alone.

       I know, my life is a tragic sob story (insert sarcasm here). Everyone has their love troubles, especially in the teenage years. I still didn't understand what love really was, so there was really no realistic way that the relationships I was trying to form could ever last. In a way, I felt like my love life was stuck in this cycle of doom, like in Groundhog Day. Luckily for me, this year was different. This was the first year where I forgot about Groundhog Day, and the cycle that it reminded me of in my life--and I could only think of Valentines Day, where I could be all mushy and romantic with my wife. What a wonderful change!

        What I realized this year, however, is that just like Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day, I had to work hard to bust myself out of the cycle that was driving me mad. These days, though, holding a marriage together seems to be a herculean feat in and of itself. Just because I've found the love of my life that I want to spend forever with, certainly doesn't mean that everything'll be all peaches and cream from here on out. But as they say, you can accomplish anything if you have your goal your sights.

         I think that there are times in everyone's lives when they feel like they're stuck in a rut, like there's nowhere to go because you're stuck doing the same thing over and over again. But you're never stuck! This life is a short one--far too short to go through being moody and brooding all the time. There is always something that you can do to make your situation better--even if it's something as small as having a positive, cheerful attitude and trying your best to put a smile on. Oftentimes it's the little things that make a big difference.