A Nice Place to Visit

If my life was being presented as a film, I often think of the times where whoever was presenting it would pause the film, circle me with a dry erase marker and say, “See class? That’s exactly what she should NOT have done!”

We’ve all had these moments. The moments that as the words are coming out of your mouth, as your body is taking action, your brain is saying “Stop! Just stop it!” But you don’t listen. You can’t listen. Something else takes over. And I’m not talking about those I-carried-a-watermelon moments, where you are simply embarrassed, or just made a insignificant bad choice. I’m talking about those moments that change you forever. The actions that change the course of your life. The words you said that you could never take back. The words that change a relationship between you and a friend, lover, or family member. The words you want to suck up, swallow, drop in the toilet and flush away. But you can’t. The ones you replay in your mind over and over thinking “Why didn’t I just…?”, “If I had only…”

Yet, why can’t we control it when it’s happening? I guess the answer is because we are human. If we never acted on impulse, if we thought everything through and followed all the rules, would we really be living? If such events didn’t occur, the world would be pretty uncanny. Like “Brave New World” uncanny. And we all know how utopias turn out. Someone always needs to be human. Someone’s human tendencies have to break the “peace”. So then, do we not really want peace? I mean world peace, sure. But I’m talking no-challenge-everything-goes-your-way peace.

I’ll never forget the episode of The Twilight Zone (A Nice Place to Visit), where a man, Mr. Valentine, dies and he thinks he has gone to Heaven, because he gets everything he’s ever wanted. He is surrounded by beautiful women, he wins every game he plays at the casino, etc. Things all just come to him, anything he wants. After a month, he tells his “guardian angel” that he wants to go to “the other place” because he’s so bored and unhappy that he is going crazy.

"If I stay one more day, I'm going to go nuts! I don't belong in Heaven, see? I want to go to the other place!". The angel responds, "Heaven, Mr. Valentine? Whatever gave you the idea that you were in Heaven? This IS the other place!!" Hell is having no challenge, no fights, no struggles, no emotion.

So, I think about those over emotional moments in my life that were filled with struggle. Yes, I could have made choices that could have changed everything. But then I say, if I had everything I wanted, like Mr. Valentine, what reason would I have to get out of bed? How long can we agonize over those moments we so desperately wish we could change? How many ways can you play out the scenarios in your head before you go crazy? And would we really be happy if we could change those moments, or would we act on impulse in another aspect of our lives and equally live with regret? We know in our heads that we can’t have perfection, that we wouldn’t even want perfection, yet we all torture ourselves, wondering. Or maybe that’s just me. Because for me, chalking it up to fate is never good enough.

So my question is, how do we find balance? Can we struggle within peace? Find peace within struggle? Or can we only have struggle, because without it, there’s simply nothing to live for.