Wise Men and Other Stories (6 page)

My sister called me for advice. She said “hello” to a guy at work, and now he keeps pestering her for a date. “I was just being friendly,” she said.

“That’s the difference between men and women,” I told her. “Women are friendly; men are obsessed.”

I hate to sound so cynical, but it’s true. Many otherwise intelligent and worldly women don’t seem to understand that if you make eye contact with a guy, he thinks you want to sleep with him. If you smile at him, he thinks you really want to sleep with him. And if you actually talk to him or laugh at one of his jokes... you don’t want to know what he’s thinking.

It might sound like you’re just telling him that you want to use the copier. Or that he has mustard on his chin. Or maybe you’re just a nice person who believes in saying “hello” to people when you see them. It doesn’t matter. No matter how innocent your comment might seem to you, the guy will automatically analyze the encounter in terms of where you stand on the scale of desire to sleep with him.

Unfortunately, none of us are above this sort of thinking. I pride myself on being aware of this difference between men and women, yet when a coworker smiled at me recently, I sensed her desire and made a mental note to stay away from her in the future. I don’t need that kind of trouble.

None of this is meant to imply that men should change. That’s a moot point anyway. We fear change and are, for the most part, incapable of it. Nor should women change. But the next time you see a guy, you might want to start off with this disclaimer: “In no way does what I’m about to say imply that I have any desire whatsoever to sleep with you. I’m just being friendly.” After that, it should be safe to go ahead and say “hello.” He may still think you want to sleep with him, but he’ll be so confused that you might actually be able to have a normal conversation while you’re waiting to use the copier.

I don’t make resolutions on New Year’s Eve anymore.

Now before you categorize me as a New Year’s “Scrooge,” allow me to add that it’s not because I think resolutions are a bad thing. For the most part, I think they may be a good thing. They give people goals, and goals help us live our lives in an orderly fashion.

But we also need hope, and my concern is that too many goals—especially goals in the form of New Year’s resolutions—can have a bad effect on hope.

All too often, we rush blindly from one goal to another or from one project to another without really examining what we’re doing. I’ve been guilty of this on more than one occasion. I love to take on household projects—paint the living room, build some new shelves in the basement, refinish that old table—all of which give me some degree of pleasure and satisfaction, but all of which, if taken on in quick succession, ultimately serve as distractions and diversions from our real purpose here.

What is our real purpose here? I won’t pretend to be able to answer that question. Our purpose—and whatever meaning there is to our lives—is something we have to discover for ourselves. Some think meaning comes through the pursuit of knowledge. Others feel art and self expression hold the meaning of life. Still others feel that to leave behind a healthy, well
-
adjusted child is no small feat.

Whatever the meaning of life may be, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have to do with a fresh coat of paint on the living room wall. Not, as I said, that there’s anything wrong with doing a little home improvement—I personally find it relaxing at times—but we have to guard against letting such projects take on lives of their own.

So I don’t make resolutions any more. I have enough things I’m trying to do in my life without putting more pressure on myself. Instead, what I do is to sit down sometime before the end of the year—and ideally, a few times during the year, too—and think about why I’m here and what I’m doing with my life. I figure that if I keep working on home improvements, I’m eventually going to have a pretty nice house. When that time comes, I want to make sure there’s a pretty nice human being to occupy that house.

My father has lived in southern California for many years. He tells me the best time to be in southern California is on New Year’s Day. And the best place to be is in Pasadena watching the Rose Parade.

There may be something to what he says. Some demographers have theorized that the Rose Parade may single-handedly be responsible for an influx on the order of 100,000 people into southern California every year. It seems that a lot of people all over the country watch the Rose Parade (and later in the day, the Rose Bowl football game) on television, and that gives them the final impetus to say, “The hell with the cold and the snow and the wind; California here I come.” This seems to happen especially with fans of Big Ten teams—people who just happen to be watching the Rose Parade from the frigid environs of places like Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

I’ve watched the Rose Parade on television, but I’ve never seen it in person. I doubt if I’ll ever bother. However, on more than one occasion, I’ve looked at apartments along the parade route on Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena. That’s an experience.

If you’ve only watched the Rose Parade on television, you may not have an appreciation for what a grand thoroughfare Orange Grove Boulevard is. Orange Grove Boulevard is a wide street lined on both sides with palm trees. It’s also lined with some multi
-
million dollar homes and some pretty nice luxury apartments—many of which provide spectacular views of the sun setting over downtown Los Angeles.

I first looked at an apartment on Orange Grove Boulevard (and first learned that I would never be able to afford such an apartment) in 1980. I had just graduated from college, and I had come to Los Angeles to look for a job. I sent out dozens of resumes but received only a handful of interviews—and no job offers. It was very frustrating. It was only later that I learned that, as a recent graduate with only a bachelors degree in business administration, I had no business applying for jobs like Vice President of Finance, Treasurer, or Controller.

What I did have was lots of time to kill. So one day, while driving from downtown Los Angeles back to my father’s house, I saw a sign saying “apartment for rent” on Orange Grove Boulevard. I decided to stop and look.

The apartment was open so I went in and looked around. To put it bluntly, it was the most spectacular apartment I had ever seen. The rooms were huge. And there was one long wall—it had to be 40 feet long—with a full
-
length picture window facing west, overlooking a pool, and beyond that, downtown Los Angeles and the Hollywood hills. There were also some guys there doing some painting. I asked them about the rent. They told me it was $700 a month.

That may not seem terribly outrageous now. But this was 1980. What were you paying for rent back then? I was paying $175 a month for an apartment in Illinois. And that included all my utilities!

I eventually gave up on finding a job in Los Angeles and went back to Illinois where I finally found my first job (which paid a whopping $12,000 per year!). But as fate would have it, I ended up with a job in Los Angeles in 1987. I moved out there with my wife, who was pregnant at the time, and we settled into a little apartment east of Pasadena.

We were not particularly pleased with our accommodations, but it was all we could afford at the time. We stuck it out for a year there, my wife had our daughter, and we came to a crucial moment in our lives when we had to decide whether we would stay in southern California or move back to the Midwest.

This was not a simple process. And not one that could be resolved by taking in the Rose Parade. We mulled this decision over for several weeks.

During that time, we decided to look at other accommodations. If we stayed in southern California, we were not going to stay in our apartment. We quickly realized that it would be years before we could afford a house in the Los Angeles area (a two bedroom fixer
-
upper with a small lot was going for about ten times my salary at the time), so we started looking at other apartments.

And lo and behold, I found myself on Orange Grove Boulevard again. It also just so happened that the same apartment I had looked at in 1980 was again vacant. I couldn’t resist looking at it—this time with my wife and infant daughter in tow. It was still spectacular. It had also gone up in price—to $1,700 per month.

We went on down the street to another apartment building, still on Orange Grove Boulevard, but slightly more modest for the vicinity. The second apartment we looked at was also very large and well appointed. It lacked the spectacular view, but it was also $600 less per month. My wife and I liked it so much, we started talking about what we would have to do to be able to afford an $1,100 per month rent payment. We realized we could pull it off, but that it would take a lot of sacrifice and hard work. We’d have to take the money we were putting into savings and put it toward rent. My wife would have to go to work sooner than she planned, which meant finding day care for our daughter. In the meantime, I could do some freelance work evenings and weekends.

But somewhere along the way, sanity prevailed. We realized that we wanted more than a better apartment. We wanted a better life.

And that’s the problem with looking at big, expensive apartments on streets like Orange Grove Boulevard. Things like that throw us off track. You look at a big, new house, or a luxury apartment, or a new car, or a big screen television, and you realize that all those things could be yours with more money. So you immediately start looking for ways to get more money.

And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with having money to provide for your family or to do things you enjoy, none of those things in themselves are the answer. A bigger apartment isn’t going to make you happy. And once you’ve covered your basic needs, more money isn’t necessarily going to make you happy either.

Fortunately, my wife and I realized all of that before we got in too deep. (Actually, there was not a moment of epiphany. It was more instinctual than anything.) We moved back to the Midwest where we could live comfortably within our means, and where we worked at strengthening our marriage and raising a family. Not that those things can’t be done in southern California. But I would argue that there are so many competing priorities that maintaining a marriage and healthy family is definitely more difficult there.

I’ve still never been to the Rose Parade in person. And I don’t usually watch it on television either. But once in a while, I’ll catch a glimpse of it on New Year’s morning, and I’m reminded of the spectacular apartment and the prestigious address that could have been mine. But at the same time, I realize that I don’t want the fancy apartment anymore. I never really did. All I really wanted was a good place to raise my daughter. And more important, I wanted to be able to spend time with her. And here in the cold, snowy environs of Illinois in January, I have all the time in the world.

At the end of each year, everybody scrambles to come up with the “Top Ten.” The top ten songs. Top ten movies. Top ten news stories. On New Year’s Eve 1999, somebody even came up with a list of the top ten historical events of the 20th Century. Pretty heady stuff.

I would like to propose a more modest list. A personal top ten. What would you list among your own top ten accomplishments last year? What were the ten nicest things that happened to you? What were the ten strangest things? What were your ten best days?

The first time I tried to come up with a personal top ten list, I had trouble thinking up ten of anything. It seemed not much had happened in my life. And of course, despite the fact that not much had happened, it also seemed that I had been busier than heck.

I was tempted at that point to make a “to do” list, but we always end up carrying those around like so much excess baggage. Instead, I just made a list of ten things that were going on in my life at the time. Sort of a personal balance sheet to describe where I was and what I was doing.

Back then, I was trying to finish work on a graduate degree. I had some debts to pay off. I wasn’t getting along very well with my boss. I wasn’t getting along very well with my wife. I had a number of household projects that I had been putting off. I wrote it all down, then folded the list up and tucked it in my wallet.

When I pulled out my list a year later, I was amazed how much things had changed in my life. Some of my problems were gone. Some new problems had taken their place. But overall, I had accomplished much more than I would have imagined.

Since then, I have produced a balance sheet and a list of accomplishments every year. Some of the things that made my list this year: I did more writing last year. I also argued less with my wife. (I’m sure the two are related.) I paid off some debts, saved some money, started one new friendship, and renewed an old one. I even started piano lessons again—something I had started and stopped years ago.

Among my ten best days, I’d count any of the dozen or so that I took my daughter to the playground so she could play, after which we sat and watched the evening sky turn orange, red, pink, and purple.

In the strange category, I was asked to join a group of local citizens who are campaigning against substance abuse. That’s strange because when I was younger, I probably could have served as their poster boy. So I had ambiguous feelings about joining this group. But in the end, I realized they were primarily against “abuse” (as opposed to “substance”), so I joined their cause.