Step One: Carry On

A funny thing about divorce is that by the time it typically enters the public domain of knowledge, the players, though not having fully moved past it, have become well aware of its bite and sting. So while new to friends, family, and gawkers, it has been a reality for months and even years for those intimately involved. So it is no surprise that people will read in doom and gloom into my current mental and emotion state. Several months or even years ago, they may have been right. But not so much now. And that is what I want to write about today... carrying on.

A few months after starting my first job out of law school 9/11 hit. The economy constricted and work in my law firm began to diminish.  By the following August, I found myself standing on the street curb at noon with my office packed up in three boxes waiting for my father to come pick me up because I car pooled that day... I had been laid off. I had bought a house the year before, I bought a car the night before, and had baby no. 3 due in two months.  I was shellshocked to say the least. Part of me wanted to cry and curl up into a ball in the corner, but I also knew there is no crying in baseball or law firms.

After waiting on the curb for nearly a half hour, feeling like I was being stared at by every passerby, my father arrived.  I sheepishly said hello and loaded my work belongings into his car. On the long drive home he proceeded to give me some good advice. Having worked at a company that laid off all but three people out of thousands (excluding him), he had seen this kind of adversity up close before. He said that some of these people would lock themselves in a dark room for weeks, morning their loss... and consume copious amounts of alcohol (they didn't have seasons of TV shows on Netflix back then). He said that the ones who succeeded were the ones who got up the next day and carried on. They got up early, dressed for work, and went on putting their life back in order.

I took my father's advice. I got up the next day, put my suit back on, and started making calls. Within three weeks, I was back in a job with a pay raise and insurance to pay for the shortly arriving baby. I have to admit, I wasn't excited about getting out there, but there was no other way to solve this little problem but by getting my butt in gear and getting out the door.

I am now more and more convinced that none of us gets through this life unscathed. We surely won't make it out alive. There will be something in life - a death of a loved one, an unfulfilled dream, a career in shambles, a divorce - that will leave a gaping gap in our hearts and lives. It'll hurt on a deeply personal level. No one will understand it, but you. It may haunt you. And in the end, it is your pain. It is your problem to deal with. And only you can solve that problem.

I know I believe this philosophy, but after my divorce could I actually practice it? My divorce was finalized on a Thursday while I was traveling in New England, returning late Friday night meant that Saturday was my first official day in this new life. I asked myself, how was I going to carry on?  So I gritted myself, found a dance in the area, and ventured out into the dark. Admittedly, upon arrival I thought I was watching a reenactment of the movie Cocoon, but I stayed.  I did not want to talk to anybody, but I did. And out of that dance I met what have become some very dear friends who have brought laughter, fun, adventure, and the sense of belonging back to my life.  I would not have made these friendships by letting fear overcome me, by sitting in the dark, by morning my past.

The past is the past; let it be. You cannot go back, you cannot redo what has happened, you cannot recast a prior choice.  "You can never go back there again." You are where you are as you sit. And though your past may cast constraints upon your future, it is still unwritten. It has as much hope in it as you choose to find. There are opportunities all around. This world is made of success stories of people who were knocked down again and again, only to stand up and succeed. But the way they succeeded was not to stay put dumbstruck on the ground, they succeeded by the way they got up again.  To quote, well myself, from a prior blog post (again, the egocentricity of blogging):

"Life will knock you flat on your butt time and time again - stand up spit in its eye and ask 'more please.'  Then when life gives you 'more please' and when you are on your butt again it is acceptable to cry for a moment (except in baseball), but you still must stand up once more."

So may we all carry on; for whatever ails us, haunts us, and hurts us will be in the past but moments later. So go kick its butt. And to help us all long, how about a little theme song: