So, you wanna be a city kid?

Big-City Living Checklist

• Spend lavishly on eccentric restaurants
• Quickly realize you can’t afford to do that…but keep trying to anyway
• the growing feeling of wanting to undergo a massive upheaval of all material and monetary possessions 
• However, still scrambling to find and hold multiple jobs, so as not to feel broke
• Fill every inch of free time with all of the events/classes/workshops/sights you can muster
• Simultaneously crave just one minute of peaceful, quiet wilderness
• Curse your fellow human beings at least once a day in the midst of bumper-to-bumper traffic
• Collect anecdotal momentos of exhilarating social snippets with your fellow human beings - meaningful smiles, small courtesies, discoveries of shared interests - which make you feel like you can actually find friends and connections as you navigate this new place
• Collect anecdotal momentos of social eccentricities that you can use later to bond over the absurdity of your fellow human beings and this giant zoo that you find yourself in 
• Feign creative productivity in a hipster coffee shop on a regular basis
• Discover that you have a steep learning curve in regards to your naive trust
• common Big-City situations in this educational lesson: 
• being harassed on the street
• vandalism of private property
• Theft and break-ins

I am making great progress. And last night, I got to cross off number 11. Thank you, to the stranger who shattered my car window and made off with my backpack. 

My emotions roller-coastered, while my expression and poise remained in some paralyzed equilibrium. I’d been on my way to meet Leo and Champagne for the evening, and when I found that I could not leave my car unattended in the middle of Downtown Portland, I called them to follow me back to the house so I could drop it off. While I waited for them to arrive, my body breathed long and heavy, while my mind just sort of drifted in a pool. First, I was just confused. I’d had my computer sitting completely out in the open on the back seat, my iPod between the two front seats, my winter coat, my tent, all easily accessible. And so, while I lamented the loss of some favorite clothing items, the good fortune of all things considered was not lost on me. I was doubly thankful to have the support and immediate assistance from nearby friends. But amongst the silver linings, I felt the battering of life’s demanding gavel beat down once again. Sentences out of my control, punishment it felt, for just trying to navigate and survive. Continued failure at this thing called adulthood. Leo reminded me that it is of course, not my fault that this shitty thing occurred - one should obviously be able to expect that a locked car is safe on a public street - but its the cumulative effect that these things have on me. I’ve been recently dealing with the inability to pay for any large bills/expenses, outstanding health care bills from some other time, unsuspecting roadblocks to obtaining a driver’s license here, and now another car problem (which seems I’m due to have at least once a month). And who knows, if I were one to take more preventative measures like hiding my valuables out of sight or making less of a point to give my car an incongruous appearance, maybe I’d still have four windows and a backpack. In my symbolic outlook on life, I tend to surmise that this sequence of events build a pattern indicative of some greater direction needing re-evaluation. Its a rather melodramatic outlook, but it’s hard not to ignore when I feel out my paths so intuitively. It’s hard to remember that even on the right path, things can still go out of whack. 

And finally, in that pool of thought, I landed on my reflection. In it was not the energy of anger or locks or fear. There was not the need to build up walls or hide away. 

It is in these situations in life, that we take pause to acknowledge who we are. Are we the ones that allow actions of malice to fester our own anger and spite? Are we the ones to allow it to corner us into boxes and build walls of fear and distrust? Or are we the ones to breathe through it all, and recognize that this one moment of misfortune does not have to change the million moments of beauty and bounty that life has presented to us, that has allowed us to cultivate trust, openness and understanding to begin with? 

It is one thing to learn from our mistakes, and to correct what we can to prevent further hardship from the same things in the future. But perhaps the greatest mistake we make, is to think that we are at fault when we run into one we can’t control, because we’ve become so hardened to that trope of correction, that expectation that we must fix and find ways to avoid hardship. We see these as mistakes, and yet can’t really pinpoint any action of control, because they are things that life throws at us despite our best self. The only mistake in this instance, would be to allow these moments to compromise our best selves. 

So, I am still here. Trusting, open, and trying to be understanding about the whole ordeal: I guess someone desperately needed a backpack, and I hope that they get worthwhile use out of it.