“Karma owes you a talking puppy, wings, and an extra birthday.”
- a friend, October 2009“Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness.”
- Dar Williams
One day last fall a woman was waiting for me when I came home from walking with Sawyer. She used to be my neighbor but had moved away months prior, and we had seldom even exchanged pleasantries, though I did at one point jump-start her car. After an uncomfortably long stretch of small talk she asked if I’d drive with her to Raleigh to pick up a couch and bring it back to her new apartment. Right then. Now, I’m used to being asked to haul things in my truck, and I have trouble saying no when anyone asks for my help, but random and immediate solicitations by relative strangers pinged even my this-lady-might-be-crazy radar.
I declined, but offered to help on a day when this woman wasn’t showing up unannounced on my doorstep and making absurd requests. That’s how I found myself in a sketchy part of Durham at a perpetual yard sale, waiting on my former neighbor to show up (half an hour late), then waiting for her to pick a couch (the one she’d seen on Craigslist wasn’t up to snuff), then waiting for her to haggle in broken English (she borrowed the guy’s laptop to look for a better deal online), then watching her nearly walk away because she wasn’t sure she wanted any of the couches. I won’t say I was rewarded for my patience, but she did pop a button off her pants as we finally unloaded the couch at her apartment and tried for a comically long time to pretend nothing had happened. It’s hard, I noted, to hold up your end of a couch when one arm is preoccupied with holding your pants up.
When I tell this story, I am sometimes scolded for being too kind. It has been suggested, in jest and in earnest, that I am due some cosmic reward. I don’t like to think about karma because if there’s a Thumb on the scales I don’t want to end up resenting It. It’s hard enough figuring out the right thing to do without trying to keep an eye on a ledger that I have no hope of understanding. I don’t want to coast on the goodwill from good deeds any more than I want to ask “Why me?” when struck by random tragedy. Besides, by my own measure I tend to fall short of what it takes to be a decent human being, and that wouldn’t bode well for me in the karma department, would it?
Hold It High For Me
In January I applied for a job. The one I had was soul-crushing and had sapped just about all of the creative energy that I had to spare, and the one I applied for was forwarded to me by several friends, all saying how perfect a match I was for it. Even I had to admit that I was pretty amazingly qualified for it: the ideal candidate, according to the job description, “speaks geek as well as Chicago and is fond of both pencils and pixels.” I wrote a stirring cover letter, beginning a months-long courtship.
Four months, three interviews, two editorial tests, and about 5,000 words later, I was offered the job. It felt like winning the lottery. Like learning to fly. Like going to college all over again. Like I was in over my head. If there’s a jackpot, I hit it. Karma puppy has licked my face. I am lucky. I am blessed.
Maybe my last job took more out of me than I thought, or maybe The Sun puts something in the water, or maybe I was always deficient in certain vitamins of the spirit, but change is afoot beyond spending my days in a new office full of amazing people doing important work.
People say, “You look younger.” Or, “Have you met someone?” Or, “If you keep looking younger every time I see you it’s gonna get weird in a few years.” I don’t know what to tell them, except that it’s hard not to live a little more fully when you spend a lot of time with ideas that are begging you to do so. I don’t attribute this just to a change of workplace, however compelling; I don’t have a name for whatever else is at play, either. My engine was primed…there just wasn’t any gas in the tank.
I have always been, I think, the quiet, deliberative, self-effacing person you know (if you know me). The kind of engagement I crave has shaped the kinds of interactions I’m comfortable with–an intimate dinner party, yes; a rock concert, not so much. Establishing capital-R Relationships has also been tricky. I don’t go to church, and I find online dating a soulless prospect lacking the inherent mystery, beauty, and chaos of life (and of relationships). Nor am I going to approach someone in a bar: for one thing, it’s too loud to have a conversation; beyond that, I think the navigation of social expectations in that setting is lousy with the kind of potential misinterpretations that I find excruciating and excruciatingly boring. I resist putting people in a position where they have to say no to me. So I don’t ask for help a lot, or for things that I might really want. I can talk myself out of almost anything involving another person by persuading myself that there’s likely no reciprocity.
Of late, though, some of these anxieties have eased. I am more receptive to new opportunities than I’ve been since I started college in 1997. My life is joyous. It takes some getting used to. It’s discomfiting for an introvert to not find his inner workings familiar. With this comes a tremendous urge to share this energy, to be kinder to my friends, to share my happiness, to pay it forward, as they say. So I’ve been saying “yes” to every opportunity that’s offered–routine social engagements like dinner parties, or movies, or drinks with friends that I often felt too drained to participate in over the last couple years. All that activity feels like it’s a correction of balance, a restoration of equilibrium long out of whack. Like the mermaid sings, “I want to be where the people are.” It seems I’ve figured out how to short-circuit the habit of second-guessing myself that usually keeps me confined to a teensier box.
It is exhilarating, of course, but it also feels a little more unrestrained than I am typically comfortable with. I’m not really worried about myself–I’m due a few lumps, and to maintain balance this joy has to be leavened with some new pain. But because I have become somewhat unpredictable to myself, I worry that I might be more capable of doing or saying things that could harm other people. It’s foolproof to be the wallflower, always observing, never engaging; it’s risky to reach out and touch people without knowing how fragile they are or how a twitch of my finger might inflict unintentional harm.
I realize I’m describing the way humans interact as if it’s a new and unique condition: late-onset humanity, maybe. I’ll get used to it. For several weeks I suspected that this is all just the first blush of a new job, a new opportunity, and that I’d settle back into a routine, maybe a little perkier for my trouble but not significantly changed. But I’m beginning to think of it all as a pipe that got unclogged and now flows with a fiercely won, indomitable energy, not a box whose clasp got broken and could be re-sealed.
I don’t know whether this is all a long-building wave of good intention that finally crested or just a random point in a random cycle. The thing about mystery is once you try to name it, it’s a little less magic. In my new boss’s office is a sign that says “Be Kinder Than Necessary.” If this is a wave, I’m trying to do my part to help the next person catch it. All I know is, it’s nice to see you again, world. I’ll try to keep my head above water.
Acoustic footnotes:





