Bring It

You will recall that yesterday I took a trip, yes a Bussman’s Holiday, down to Tigard, Oregon. There was some adventure, as anyone departing on a 200 mile drive at 0200 knows, but matched against last week’s 2,500 miles it seemed tame. And doable. Plus the timing of the opportunity was such that it required a ‘do or die’ decision. I choose do. 

I always chose do. I would rather do and fail than to never have done at all. While this sounds dangerously close to my views on love as well, thank you Paul Simon, it is the main criteria I use when formulating a strategy, working a plan or busting a move. Have you ever tried to worm your way out of something? You know, invent a cheap and barely passage excuse for not doing something? In cycling we ask ‘are you hiding or riding?’. You get the idea. 

When an opportunity knocks, I immediately do tho things, 1) Look at the master calendar and 2) Check in with my attitude. I want to do. I want to go, I want to use every verb known to Oxford’s, Webster’s and the Urban Dictionary. For the rather simple and obvious reason THAT I AM RUNNING OUT OF TIME. So are you. 

The days of practicing the pathetic procrastination of a ‘do it tomorrow’ mentality are over, replaced by the urgency and power of RIGHT FUCKING NOW. 

Everybody talks about how they wish they would have done this, done that, gone there, visited, seen, experienced, risked. I do not want to be in that group. It gets more and more urgent with the passing of each day. When we were kids (growing up in the sixties) this type of rationale never occurred to us. When we were in school (in the seventies) life seems an endless merry-go-round of self discovery. Even later when the ‘real world’ demanded the responsibilities if a job, mortgage and parenting skills, it never felt like we were officially in the red zone of ‘use it or lose it’. 

That is all history. The sixties are over, and while the efforts we led to bring about social reform seem to be challenging our morality and spiritual evolution once again, those jobs are now (in some cases) paying secure dividends of social security as our kids repeat the patterns they lived through under the roods we provided and maintained. 

To be sure, the ways and means have changed, the parts have worn and our sense of urgency slowed along with our agility and endurance, but the attitude, the sense of adventure and wanderlust, the basic desire for exploration, should never dull. 

Yes, you can find this in a book, reading beside a warn fire with a cup of Earl Grey, or presented in dramatic form in your media cave on the big screen (with Dolby surround 5.0) but those spectator verbs pale in comparison with the active participatory thrill of walking onto the stage of life with a firm declaration of intent. 

BRING IT.