Oh the Places We’ll Go

It’s very possible I don’t know a damn thing. I spout off a lot. And with technology making the world small, I spout off and some people who know me listen and even people who don’t know me listen. Some of what I write is universal. I write it, but anyone could have. Some of what I write is very personal, that’s the part that I’m pretty sure is most universal. I read once that what we feel most basically, most essentially, is what is most common among people. I think that’s probably true. I like to believe that my special skill is in dissecting the intricacies of the feeling or thought or whatever. Finally my over analyzation is useful.

However, it is possible, that I don’t know anything at all and that my dissection, my analysis is absolutely wrong. This is something that troubles me a little. It’s a 40Something problem, a very you need some real problems trouble, I know, but it is something I think about. It stalls my writing. I occasionally get an email or a comment from someone who enjoyed something I wrote, someone feeling like they came to some conclusion of their own based on something they read. Freaks me out a little. Because I know what we all know which is inside my head, in the dark, dark corners of my subconscious, I know me and I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about a very large part of the time. So now you know.

This reality and my public acknowledgement of it, is freeing somehow. And it’s my Lesson from 40Something.

If you haven’t had the day that your entire foundation was ripped out from under you and up was down and black was white and oh my god I don’t even know what I like anymore, well you just haven’t lived. It’s that recognition that the things that we think we know for sure, the stuff we depend on to build on for the rest of it, can change in an instant.

I watched Felix Baumgartner fall from the sky. I’m fairly certain you shouldn’t put yourself in a situation where you might actually fall from the sky. Who knew? Regardless, it was fascinating because well, anytime you might watch someone do something really amazing or really stupid it’s hard to turn off. However, because I watched it with my two young kids (I know, not a highlight as a mom, “yes boys, he may splatter right in front of us, cool huh?”), anyway because of them I realized that something I would have known to be impossible was about to be shattered right in front of me. Which is when I was reminded, I don’t know much of anything really.

That brings me to an unintended advantage of being over 40: it’s okay to be completely wrong and to change your mind. Fundamentally change. Or just a surface change. Some things aren’t even worth you forming an opinion. Phew. What a relief.

My 20Something has an opinion. On anything. Many things. Big things, small things, it’s very Dr. Seuss. Every time I hear him state without hesitation how he knows what he knows based on his vast thought process, I hear Dr. Seuss sigh Oh, the places you’ll go. It’s a wild ride to get to the place where you realize that what you have is an opinion; it’s not a tattoo, it can be removed easily and without lasers.

The reality, I think, is that we’re all doing a little Felix-like falling from the sky. We think we know some things, we’re prepared for the occasional mishap, we have enough experience (we hope) to make alterations on the fly (get that, see what I did there?). But we’re also aware that if we’re just wrong, we won’t literally splatter like Felix might have. We can just learn what we need to know and move on. So I may be wrong about something, anything, but it’s not that I don’t know a damn thing, it’s that I don’t know all of it and that is normal. Which is just an excuse for me to continue the over analyzation and my continued ramblings.

It’s true I don’t know anything about falling from the sky. At 40Something, it’s just a relief that I can be wrong and that even if I splatter in front of the whole world, I can still get up in time to be wrong again. Oh, the places I’ll go.