EMERGENCY!!!!!

I’ve been such a tool lately. Everything has been so serious.  And so heavy.  And SOOOO boring.  I’ve been in this funk with my anxiety and my body and my bank account and my self-pity.  It’s really exhausting to be so disenchanted by everything.  Ironically, my new year’s resolution, which I never would have shared with anyone at the New Year, was to get out of the funk.  To get right with myself and with my kid and with my creditors and with the universe.  Also, it included laughing more.  I know, those are a lot of really lofty ambitions, but that’s what I told myself I would do.  When I wrote it down, as I do every year, while making cynical comments at other’s resolutions, I actually wrote “Get yer shit together.  And laugh.   You’ve done it before.  You can do it again.”  -Angela Padgett

So.  Anyway, I started wondering when life got so fucking serious.  Then, during a day long conversation with my girlfriend, who is currently underway, somewhere between here and Panama and American Samoa and Nome.  I realized, we are so serious, because everything is an emergency.  All the time.  Fires.  Floods.  Headaches.  Snow below the Mason-Dixon line.  Commercial television on Coast Guard Cutters patrolling the oceans for migrant operations and drug intervention and fisheries patrols.  Shaving waivers.  Wait.  What?   Where’s the line?  Where does comfort turn into necessity.  Where does necessity become emergency? 

I think this is why we don’t laugh as much anymore.  This is why we are so critical of ourselves and the people around us.  Because we have no concept of what is serious and what should just be accepted as discomfort or inconstancy or LIFE.  When did the fires and floods become internet outages and snow days?  And I’m not trying to be overly judgmental, but let’s be honest. Fifteen years ago, internet access wasn’t a commodity, it was a luxury.  Only to be provided to the very wealthy.  Nine years ago, New Orleans was under water, as the result of one of the most horrific natural disasters in United States history.  But still, losing cable and a dusting of snow are the most important things we have to worry about. 

Back to my day-long  email conversation, with my girlfriend who is floating on a lightning rod in the middle of some ocean, just waiting for shit to get real.  She can email me.  From the middle of the ocean, to air her grievances.  I laughed when she apologized to me for venting.  I said “SISTER!!!  There was a time, not too long ago that internet didn’t exist underway at all!  Now you and I can talk as if we were  just a building away!”  She said, “that’s the problem, losing the internet is an emergency now.   The internet.   Is an emergency.” 

So, again, back to laughing.  Let’s laugh at “emergencies.”  Because we have completely lost perspective.  Internet and cable are not important.  Motrin and razor blades are not emergencies.  You can buy Tylenol at Safeway or Target or 7-11.  You can get after shave at any of those places, as well.  If you aren’t connected to the internet, you don’t’ need to scream through the phone at your provider’s call center.  You shouldn’t have to visit your therapist because you are out of touch with the rest of the world.  In fact, maybe you should revel in not being connected or not having easy access to Tramadol when you turn your ankle.  

Maybe, just sitting with your thoughts and your discomfort will make you think more about the things that are actually important.  Maybe, being less reliant on other people will, in turn, make you more self reliant.   MAYBE, being self reliant, will help you survive an actual emergency. 

-Inner Peas