A couple of weeks ago I started this 3-part series about easy and
hard places after a midnight conversation with a friend half a world away. Of course, for me it was midnight, for him it
was midday. It started after he made a
comment about how living in a different part of the planet isn’t as easy now as
it was when he was younger. I told him
if it was easy, he wouldn’t be doing it.
It just wouldn’t be worth it.
That was less than three weeks ago when he suggested that maybe I write
about easy vs. hard.
When I started writing the next day, I knew it was going to be a
three part blog. Which, objectively,
seems a little illogical. Why write
THREE parts for TWO topics? Somehow, I
just knew that I was going to need more than two. Probably because there are more hard places
than easy places. And finding a way to
write about “easy” places would be harder than writing about “hard”
places. See? The whole thing got far more complicated that
I even realized it would. Because when
your drinking wine at midnight, talking to someone who has already been up for
five hours, things seem easy, but are actually much more difficult than you
imagine in those late night hours.
“Hard” was easy, because it’s common. Easy was much tougher. I had to start thinking about the easiest
times of my life. Being 6 and climbing
hills with my friends and going to the beach with my family. Being 18 and scrubbing bilges in 41’ utility
boats. Being 24 and in college on the GI
Bill’s dime and taking out student loans to pay for books and rent. It was the old Montgomery GI Bill; not the
new, good one. Those were the easiest
times I can remember in my whole life.
At this point, I thought I would give anything to go back to those
places. They were carefree and
restless. They were places without responsibility
or retribution. They were the easy places. Or so I thought.
Now, I sit watching my own 6-year old grow up. I am reminded of how hard it is it find your
direction at that age. How difficult it
is to understand your own emotions without even factoring in other the actions
of others. How hard it is to learn to be
responsible for yourself and your stuff.
Growing up is really hard.
Climbing hills and beach trips may be easy when you are six. But that’s not all that being six is about;
maybe we forget that after we are too far removed from 6.
I am now trying to remember those days I sat scrubbing bilges with
a wire brush, season after season, in the engine room of that 41’. 41381 likely had the shiniest bilges in the
entire Coast Guard. It’s where I went
when I needed to appear productive and out of sight. It was a time when I spent half of my month
with 14 men and the other half completely alone. It was a time when I longed for liberty after
48 hours of duty, but felt alone after a few hours away. It was 3:AM for me. You know that Matchbox 20 song? The one with the girl who said “It’s 3:AM, I
must be lonely.” And that she “can’t
help but be scared a little sometimes.” And
in the end, it turned out that “the clock on the wall had been stuck on three
for days…and happiness is a mat that sits on her doorway” She was lonely all the time, and didn’t have
the sense, or the will, to check the goddamned batteries in the clock? Remember that song? That’s what scrubbing bilges was to me.
I don’t even know if I can go back to 24, with all the emotion I
had in college. All of my fire and
sass. The desire to make the world a
better place, the need to have my voice heard.
I had the answers. I had the
solutions. I had the words. That was in college, though. Somebody is always listening in college. You always have the possibility of changing
the world in college. You also always
have the possibility of getting drunk and breaking into a public swimming pool
and getting arrested for DUI on the way home from such an expedition. Then after that, you have to deal with your
student loans and arrest record and wasting that idealism and expensive
education on a job that barely pays the bills. But the memories of jumping off the cabana
into the deep-end at 2:AM remain. That
was easy.
When you are having a hard time, people always say “It’ll get
better.” Or “It won’t be like this
forever.” And they are right. It won’t be like that forever, but I’m not
convinced that it will ever get easier.
I think we might just get more accustomed too and more acclimated to dealing
with the hard places. The fact remains,
if it’s easy, it’s probably not worth it.
Sometimes, I look over the fence at those million dollar homes and
think “it’s probably a lot easier over there.”
Then I remember, everyone is fighting a battle I know nothing
about. It might be 3:AM over there,
too.
-Inner Peas
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