It’s been a couple of months..
…since I last blogged. Jumping back into full-time employment has consumed my attention and time, and I’ve written almost nothing. I’m not surprised by that – when I accepted my current position I sort of figured that was going to happen. I spent some time annoyed that I was back in the corporate rat race, but then I got paid. And then I got paid two weeks after that. And again two weeks after that. Life is always trade-offs, isn’t it? And sometimes, they’re hard to argue with.
So my wife and I watched the final three episodes of Oprah. They were something to see, and after we’d turned the DVR off after the final show, I was brushing my teeth before jumping into bed and the following dialogue ran through my head. That’s how the process works for me – when I’m concentrating on something else, dialogue will find me. A lot of times it can lead to short stories, or if I’m writing a novel it will move the story forward. Anyway, here’s what I “heard” after watching Oprah’s final show:
She glanced over at him behind the wheel, thinking he was unusually quiet this morning. He wasn’t looking at the car in front of them, he was looking past it into some vision of the future or past that was making him frown. She looked back at her laptop and started typing before breaking the silence.
“Something on your mind this morning?”
“Hmm? Oh, I was just thinking that James Bond probably never had to sit on a freeway entrance ramp waiting for a green light to get into his job at MI-6.”
“He never went into the office, did he? What’s the problem?” she asked.
“Wife and I watched the Oprah finale last night. You know, the one where Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise and Stevie Wonder showed up to tell her how amazing she was? It totally depressed me.”
“How can that even be? Oprah is second only to God in the amount of benevolence shown to mankind.”
“That’s just it. Compared to her, how can you not feel like you’re just taking up space?”
“Of course you’re just taking up space. Right now, you’re taking up space on a freeway ramp like everyone else, helping to create this traffic jam.”
“I mean,” he continued, ignoring her, “being employed as a middle manager at an insurance company is exactly nowhere in terms of having an impact on anything. Oprah came from nothing and created the largest media empire owned and run by a black woman in the history of the free world. I came from middle class America and am now working my ass off to try and stay there.”
“Maybe you’d have been better off being born in the inner city,” she said absently, reading an email from a colleague.
“That’s another thing. Unless you’re a victim of a horrible personal tragedy, an uneducated black person in the South or in Africa, or you get tickets to one of her ‘favorite things’ shows, you’re invisible to Oprah.”
“Hey, don’t be hating on Oprah. The woman has done more to help humanity since we began this conversation than you’ll do in your entire life.”
“My point exactly. I’m not hating on Oprah. I can’t help loving her like everyone else on Earth. But I felt completely irrelevant after seeing everyone she’s helped go to college, how she’s filled libraries with books, inspired parents who’ve lost children, and on and on and on. What am I doing? Working a job every day to support my wife and child, and trying to figure out how many push-ups I have to do to stay out of a nursing home in thirty years. It’s pathetic.”
“Your wife and child may not feel that way.”
He sighed loudly. ”Of course they don’t. I just wish, I don’t know, that I was able to do more, be more, somehow.”
“Yeah,” she said vaguely, pressing ‘Enter’ and shaking her head. Then she looked over at him brightly. ”Hey, did you see ‘Dancing with the Stars’ last night?”
He gave her a withering look.
“Oh come on, Roger, lighten up. It’s some people’s job to change the world. It’s other’s job just to hold it together.”
He looked at her with surprise. ”Did you make that up?”
“No,” she shook her head, “I heard Bruce Springsteen say it during an interview once.”
He rolled his eyes. ”Great.”
“Hey, it doesn’t mean it’s not true. Light’s green.”
And then I went to bed.
If nothing else, it’s good to know the machinery is still working on some level. Thanks for reading. -Jon
