Humpty's V-Day

Did Humpty Dumpty wish he had a time machine, so he could go back to that perfectly poised state before The Fall? No matter. Time doesn’t stop, much less go backwards. Being a grown-up means accepting the new cracks and being patient with the long mending.

Still, I was more resilient several years ago.

I’m in a bad place right now (to be overly dramatic, heh heh). But seriously, I know that other people have it worse, and that I myself have had worse. This realization is the invisible glue between the fissures. In that sense, I’m okay.

But let me expound a little on the “bad place.” I’ve never had such a difficult time balancing things. Apart from dealing with my inner Humpty Dumpty, I find myself having to do so many things I no longer want to do anymore. As icing on this pity cake, there's the unacceptably childish sentiment that I just want to go AWOL in my job and be Dr. E.’s full-time student.

Obviously, that’s not going to happen, so I tell myself to grow up. Some of my friends, fellow stressed-out folks, accomplish so much more than I do, even though I probably have half their workload (and no family of my own). I wondered how they do that. Then I realized that unlike me, they’ve found their center. They’re in a place they want to be, doing what they love, for people who are important to them. Loving so much of what’s outside of you, you get loved in return, which increases your energy exponentially.

Somehow, I have to find a wellspring of love in my desert of meaningless obligations. It has to be somewhere under the pile of broken things.

I’ll find it.

* * * *

On to lighter things. On Valentine’s Day, a girl with a violin came into my classroom and said someone had a message for me. She read a short poem by Pablo Neruda. It’s so lovely, I have to quote the entire thing here:

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Then the girl took her violin and started to play the first few strains of a song I recognized as “More Than You’ll Ever Know.” (By this time, some of my students were going wild and singing along.) Seriously, it was very romantic. And my friends—who, as it turned out, were behind all this—could probably launch a lucrative enterprise thinking of romantic things to inflict on susceptible people. Kudos to my friend Mike, the one who directed this touching surprise. You should do my wedding if I’ll ever have one, heh heh heh! Special thanks to Boom who put up with all this—fortunately, you have an understanding wife. ;P

We capped off the day by hanging out at a relatively new place called Bo’s Coffee just across Taft—stuffing our faces with pastries and fraps, making corny or off-color jokes we dare not share in class, and basically, de-stressing. Thinking about that now, I’m reminded of the theme song from Friends, that sitcom about pretend grown-ups. It might be cheesy, but it’s nice to know that at the end of the day, someone’s going to be there for you.