With over 8 billion people on Earth today, the chances of me being the best are infinitesimal. The chances of me bring the worst are just as unlikely. But with the almost INFINITE ways you could define “best” and “worst” it’s a moot calculation. Financially speaking, emotionally speaking, talent, beauty, age, charisma, finger dexterity and physical health – though I know there’s no scale other than “robness” on which I’m in the top tiers, there’s probably no other scale that really matters in the long run.
But there’s days where it’s hard to remember that.
Today I’ve got a lot of worries, a lot of stressors. I’m not playing my guitar as much as I ought to and my back hurts more than it should. But I had a wonderful day yesterday with my friends, we ate wonderful food and we played with the cat, and there’s an awful lot to be said for the Life of relative leisure we lead that allows for this. I’ll be diving into my taxes next week and that’ll give me some quantitative numbers with which I could try to compare myself to the rest of the world, but I’ll try to resist the urge of lining it all up to see where I compete with the rest of my species.
I hear an article about how I probably should have at least a million dollars in the bank to ever retire and I laugh and weep at the same time. On the other hand, what is retiring in MY context? On the other OTHER hand the news wanders on to it’s next article which is about the savings of America and about how less than 50% of the country’s growed ups don’t have a thousand dollars in their savings account, which is terrifying to me – and by THAT metric I’m better off than half of America! [it’s important to note that nerdwallet’s math appears to be based on ALL Americans, not just, for example, all growed ups, so they’re including newborn babies as part of the 65% of Americans that don’t have a thousand dollars in the bank, which is a slightly disingenuous way of doing the math – especially since they claim that 89% of Americans regularly put money in savings accounts and the average amount is almost a thousand dollars a month, which dwarfs my own savings, and again, shows there’s a lot more to these numbers than the headlines…. )
Being the best rob *I* can be is such a loaded concept. Should it take WILL into account? I’m suffering a lot of lack of will recently – relaxing into just Living and plugging along. It’s not as satisfying as suffering and accomplishing and struggling can be, but it’s also a lot less torturous than suffering and accomplishing and struggling can be. The placidity of my late forties will no doubt soon be shattered by the encroaching complications of getting older. Tragedy is sniffing around the edges of my Life and I’ve Lived too long without it to continue beating the averages on THAT front, but it’s not keeping me up at night.
Yet.
This morning is more adventure than I’m usually up for because this morning involves CHILDREN. I went to pick up Sharif’s new mead because… we should have Sharif’s new mead… and ended up playing with the kids for a bit. “Uncle rob” gets very calm around Sharif and Joanna’s kids, but even with my chill, slow-moving kid-response persona they get really riled. I was treated to Battleship and a shark show. I cleaned their ears with a kiwi and probably left them far more excited than I should’ve.
And now we have mead! For our breakfast cereal! Or… or maybe for dinner.
