Margie Clayman

Have you ever watched Jim Henson’s The Labyrinth before? It’s the one starring David Bowie wearing pants that are distractingly too tight. And white. Ehem. Anyway…throughout the movie, a very young, very whiny Jennifer Connelly repeats the phrase, “It’s not fair!” Towards the end of the movie, David Bowie, the goblin king Jareth, retorts, “You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is.”

We are often admonished not to compare ourselves to other people. We’re all on our own journey, etc etc. But sometimes I think comparisons can be helpful and even healthy, at least in terms of keeping things in perspective. You might not feel it’s fair that you have a job that you don’t like, but then there are folks who would gladly do any job just to get some security for their families. In turn, there are people who look at what those people have and they might think, “It’s not fair I live in a place where I’m not allowed to work.” Someone who is facing a terrible illness may look at all of you and say, “Gee, at least you all have your health.”

Everything is relative.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t feel mad or sad on occasion. Sometimes things happen that really do seem unfair. Whether they are fair or unfair from the perspective of other people hardly matters. And anyway, we have only the cards we’re dealt. We can’t worry about every other person on the planet every day. I get that.

However, I would posit that some of us, like Sarah from The Labyrinth, call “unfair” more often than perhaps we should. If you hear those words coming out of your mouth or coming into your head on a regular basis, infuse a little Jareth into your sub-conscience. Er, in a healthy way, of course. Ask yourself what your basis for comparison is. Is your situation unfair compared to someone you don’t really know? Well, you might not know the whole story there. Is your story unfair compared to that person you just passed on the street? Maybe not.

Truthfully, I don’t really believe in “fair” and “unfair” unless a person acts as the murderer did in Colorado. When your life is impacted by the random and cruel behavior of others, that’s not fair. But generally speaking, fair and unfair is about perspective. I think “fair” comes form a feeling of entitlement. Sarah felt entitled to make it through the labyrinth quickly and easily and when obstacles stood in her way, she cried foul. When we don’t get what we want, we similarly pout. That doesn’t really do much though. Whether it’s fair or not, it is what it is. Giving it a name will not change it. A rose by any other name…

So don’t worry about fair or unfair. Worry about what you can do to improve things you don’t like. Work hard. I think that’s fair. Don’t you?

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This past Saturday night, my family and I watched the American Classics special on Johnny Carson. It was a pretty riveting tale. As it turns out, Carson was the ultimate clown with sadness to hide. For most of the documentary, Carson’s mother, Ruth, was pitted as the core of all of his problems. When he was a child, Ruth showed a visible preference for her daughter. As Carson achieved one amazing thing after another, his mother remained unmoved. In an interview with a magazine, after watching one of Johnny’s monologues, Ruth said, “That wasn’t funny,” then got up and left. When he won a major award for all of his achievements in television he called her and all she said was, “Well, I guess they know what they’re doing.” Biographers interviewed for the documentary said Johnny may have womanized because he was looking for some kind of female approval in the absence of his mother’s support.

Then, towards the end of the documentary, Ruth’s death was discussed. As her possessions were being sorted, a box was found that contained newspaper and magazine clippings dating all the way to the beginning of Johnny’s career. It was noted that Johnny kept that box for the rest of his life.

This story infuriated me. All that time, Ruth Carson couldn’t bring herself to offer any positive word to her son. She must have known how much he craved it. Forget about saying she was proud of him – she couldn’t even say congratulations. All that time, when a kind word from her would have meant so much, she held back.

Would Johnny Carson’s life have been totally different if he had gotten positive reinforcement from his mom? I kind of doubt it, but I bet he would have been at least a bit more content.

I think we often assume that people just know stuff. People KNOW we love them. People KNOW we think they did a great job. People KNOW that if we offer criticism it’s only for their own good. Right? I mean, you’ve gotta know I care. It’s obvious, isn’t it?

Here’s a challenge for you for today, and I want to hear how it goes. I want you to tell one person something you THINK they know but that you’ve never actually said to them. Have you admired the way they dress for a long time? Do you admire their smarts? Do you think they did a great job leading a project? Do you love them? Just go ahead and say it. If you’re so certain they know already, it can’t do any harm, right? On the other hand, if they might not know, you could make a huge difference in their day. Heck – you could make a huge difference in their life.

That’s worth a small verbalized statement, don’t you think?

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I admit, there is a problem that has haunted me my entire life. Well, ok, a few. But one in particular has been on my mind of late. I have always wanted to push myself, usually too hard, too fast, too much. When I was a kid and our driveway would be covered with snow, I’d drive my parents nuts because I’d always go grab for the biggest shovel we had. In school I wanted to get straight As, then I wanted to be valedictorian (mostly succeeded on the former, not on the latter).

My latest adventure, which you may have heard or read about if you hang around me much, is that I wanted to try to do a marathon. Twenty-six miles. I knew my time would stink. I knew it would probably be mostly walking, but I wanted to see if I could start at the starting line and end at the finish line while remaining alive. Bear in mind, I’ve never been an athlete before. I’ve been training since January, rather aggressively. Even as it became apparent that a half-marathon would still be a heckuva challenge, I kept working at it.

A few weeks ago, I started waking up with this pain in the arch of my left foot. It went away after a few minutes, so I didn’t think much about it. Then last week it didn’t go away all day, and by this weekend I could barely walk on my foot. I’m still limping around. The common response to this predicament has been almost unanimous. I pushed myself too hard. Trying to go from 0 to 26 in nine months is ridiculous. Had I done it, it would have been miraculous, of course. But having tried it, I have now taken many steps backwards.

Kind of silly, right? But I think we all do this in one way or another. Are you working 17 hours a day and sleeping 2 hours a day so that you can build your business? Are you trying to write a book in 3 months, sacrificing what used to be your exercise time or your relaxation time? Are you trying to get all of your speaking engagements done by such and such a date so you can do something else?

I bet you are. And my left foot would like to tell you that this is most decidedly not a good idea. Eventually, it catches up with you. It might not always be something as relatively benign as plantar fasciitis either. Check out this story from Tinu Abayomi-Paul, which I found thanks to Shelly Kramer and Allen Mireles. She pushed herself too hard and ended up with a serious case of pneumonia that landed her in the ICU.

You don’t want that, I’m fairly certain.

We all need to slow down and look at the big picture. Today, my advice is for myself as much as it is for you. Embrace the day, don’t race the day.

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One thing that Jamie Sams teaches (and I think a lot of other philosophers teach this as well) is that during our own particular journeys in life, we meet people as we’re supposed to meet them – as we need their help. They might not have any idea that they are helping us in that regard, and indeed, if the lesson we have to learn is unpleasant we might not think of it as very helpful either. But if you start thinking about it, we all seem to happen upon new friends or new enemies at just the right moment in life. Similarly, we weave in and out of other peoples’ lives to help them with their lessons. All we can do is hope that we serve everyone well. Since we don’t even know what it is we’re supposed to do, this can be a lot to live up to, but I think it’s possible.

Have I ever noticed that I met people when I was supposed to? Yes, actually. When I was going through the hardest time in my life, I was a bit loose-lipped about some of the health stuff I was enduring at the time. There was one friend in particular who I really felt deserved an explanation for my clearly crazy behavior, so I opted to write one of those confessional emails that you kind of wish you could pull back as soon as you hit send. A few hours later I checked my email and guess what? They had an almost identical issue. From that point until we sort of drifted away from each other, there was an unspoken undercurrent to our friendship. We didn’t have to talk about it or ask how the other was doing. It was just an understanding. At that time, when I felt quite isolated, that person helped fill a giant hole.

In the online world over just the last two years (how is that POSSIBLE?) I have met all kinds of people just at the right time. I learn from these people every day, it seems like, and I can only hope that I serve the same purpose for other people. I hope I can offer guidance by example like Gini Dietrich does for me. I hope I can offer good counsel like Sam Parrotto, Sherree Worrell,  and Jill Manty do. Folks like Geoff Livingston, Danny Brown, and Olivier Blanchard have shown me how to hold your own in the online world and be sure of yourself – most certainly needed that after my first year online. Ken Mueller , Jack Steiner and Bill Dorman have shown me how to mix great wisdom with great humor. Lily Zjac, Ellen Bremen, and Brian Vickery all helped me on my running journey just at the right time. And there are people who have taught me lessons the hard way too (oddly I’m not going to name them), but those lessons were valuable. Painful, but valuable. I might even say necessary.

I hope that I have come into your life at a good time if you read here regularly. I hope that you have met people who taught you happy lessons more often than you met people who taught you lessons the hard way. But I want you to give some thought to the people who are woven into your life. What lessons have they taught you? What might you have taught them?

It’s a good way to remember that we are all connected like puddles in a pond, for better or worse. What we do makes an impact. We can only choose to make that impact for good or for ill.

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Over this last weekend I watched the movie 50/50, starring Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I won’t give away too much about the film except to say that it can be a tear jerker, but the general idea is that Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been diagnosed with a cancer that has a 50/50 survival rating. The movie traces his struggle with that news along with how the people around him react.

The movie, however, just barely touched on a point that I think would have made a good movie into a truly great movie. See, the fact is, every day we all have a 50/50 chance of survival. We’ll either make it or we won’t. You might think that’s overstating it, but truly, life is that fragile and that unpredictable. You’ll either wake up or you won’t. You’ll be able to go to bed comfortably or you won’t. The same holds true for your friends, your family – every one you see.

Given that, we should be far more grateful when we wake up every day, don’t you think? And given that, we should be far more grateful when we crawl into bed. We made it through another day. We were lucky.

In the movie, Adam, the main character, contemplates things he’s never done. I’m thinking when we wake up, our first thoughts should be things we want to accomplish today, and it shouldn’t all be work or tasks. “I want to spend some time reading outside.” “I want to spend some time just lying on my back listening to the locusts and tree frogs and crickets that have all started their late summer songs.” And just before we go to sleep, I think we should take a step back and see what we can be grateful for, apart from the fact that we made it through another day. Does everyone we love know we love them? Have burnt bridges been rebuilt? Have we said something that needed to be said? Did we enjoy our lives, even if it was a poopy day?

Every day, our chances are 50/50. It’s like the comedians say – life is a sexually transmitted disease for which there is no cure. At some point, our roads will end. Isn’t it great that our roads haven’t ended yet? We have a whole day stretching out before us when we wake up. A day full of opportunities, time, chances, and who knows what else. And when we get ready to sleep, we can reflect on all of that and think, “Geeze, what a miracle.” We can do all of that, but I’m not sure we really do. I don’t, not enough.

Your chances are 50/50. What are you going to do about it?

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Over the last year or so especially, as Instagram has really taken off, I’ve noticed a phenomenon. Maybe you’ve seen it too. It goes something like this.

You’re scanning your Twitter or Facebook feed and you see an update like, “Out to dinner with my wonderful spouse to celebrate our anniversary.” And then there’s a picture. Then a few minutes later there’s another picture showing the appetizer they got. Then another picture pops up with the updater’s main course and that of their spouse. Then pictures of dessert.

To be honest, these kinds of things really make me sad. They really do. Because what it signifies is that the person who is doing all of that posting is really not focusing on that special person they’re with. Every time you see a tweet or a Facebook update with a picture, that’s a moment where that special someone is sitting there while the updater is looking at his or her phone. It means that the person doing those updates is thinking about the social network more than the person they’re with. If you’re out with a truly special person, I feel like these actions really must be hurtful to that person, especially if it’s an anniversary.

We all love to share these days, and I get that. But I make a conscientious effort to keep my phone buried in my purse when I’m out with someone. I have never (to the best of my knowledge) taken and posted a picture of food while I’ve been out with a friend or a family member. In fact, and you’re going to think this is really wacky, I sometimes go out to eat with a person and don’t even take a picture of us together. Why? Because when I’m out with a person (and I don’t want you all to take this the wrong way) I’m actually wanting to be WITH that person. I love you all but feel certain you can survive a brief absence on my part.

With all of that being said, I have an experiment I want you to try. Are you ready?

The next time you go out to eat with a friend or family member at a restaurant, I want you to keep your phone in your pocket or in your purse. In fact, if no one will likely need to reach you for an hour or so, leave the phone entirely at home. Don’t think about how good that martini would look with a tinted Instagram look to it. Don’t think about how awesome a time you’re having and how you should probably tell your 5,000 closest friends about it. Enjoy the person you’re with. Converse with them without interruption. Enjoy the food not as it looks on your phone, but rather how it tastes in your mouth. Go a whole meal without posting to your networks.

I suspect you will find that you enjoy yourself much more than usual.

If you do this experiment, come back and tell me how it went. Did you survive a whole meal without your phone? Was it fun? I’m looking forward to hearing about it!

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