An Afternoon's Perspective Shot

A few weeks ago, I had conversations with two different people about what's going on with my mom.

The first one was with a man I had known as a boy in grade school. We sat on his front porch while he held his baby daughter in his lap, and he asked me how I was doing. I told him I thought I'd completely lost the ability to panic. If it wasn't leaking plutonium, I said, it wasn't a problem-- and if it was leaking plutonium, I knew who to call. He said, basically, that he thought I had my head on pretty straight.

The second conversation was with my best friend Denise, who I've known "only" since college. We sat in her car while she drove westward in rush hour traffic and I told her how stressed I was getting. Just because I'm not panicking doesn't mean I'm not stressing. She said, basically, that if I tried to mortgage my future to take care of my mom's present, she was going to kick my ass.

Now-- on one hand, having a cancer patient in the family will stretch your resources to the breaking point and beyond. You will run out of money. You will run out of time. You may run out of the room screaming as you finally lose your temper and pull everyone else down with you. No one gets out for free. But on the other hand, I'm doing the best I can to marshall my current resources properly. I'm working to get out of debt. I'm eating more healthfully and exercising more often. I average 8 hrs of sleep a night. My friends and my employers are both in the loop and both quite supportive. And when I think of my future-future, that place where I hope to be in a couple of years, it looks the same from today as it did from six months ago, only without my mom in it. I'll cry a river when the time comes, but I'm not ready to do it yet. So if I'm being so responsible, why did she make the comment? Because, just like everybody else, I tend to prioritize the "urgent" over the "important".

Just to clarify: "urgent" is when you're sprinting for the bus because you don't want to be an hour late getting home. "Important" is when you decide that the lost hour is not worth sprinting across four lanes of oncoming traffic. Urgent things are usually one-time expenditures of time and resources; there is some pressing need to do them right now. Important things are usually long-term commitments that require constant care and vigilance, but don't normally create a feeling of immediate need. We neglect them because either we figure that they're big enough to take care of themselves for a day or a year at a time without our input, or we assume that they're too big for our puny efforts to make any difference at all. And down we go in the Hellevator.

In my particular case, I think Denise was talking about money. My immediate financial goals are fairly modest: I want to save up to pay in-state tuition for the fall semester and to get a good used car. Both of these things are out of my current price range. Both of these are things I've managed to get along well for over a decade without having. So it's easy enough to say, "Well, I sure can't buy a car with thirty bucks, so if that's all I've got, I might as well give it to my mom." At which point, Denise would most assuredly kick my ass.

You see, for all my comment about, "...and if it is leaking plutonium, I know who to call," that assumes that I know it's leaking plutonium. And when it comes to ourselves, we often don't. That feeling of urgency can override even our best attempts at self-governance, in the same way that a magician's patter can distract us from catching his sleight-of-hand.

And even with help, it's still a slow process. Thirty bucks this paycheck and thirty bucks next pay check don't add up very quickly. At that rate, it would take me 43 months to earn one semester's tuition, and another 86 months to pay cash for a thoroughly modest used car. That's a total of 10 years, 9 months, for those keeping score. It seems a bit like rush-hour traffic sometimes-- lots of stop-and-go while facing other people's rear ends and making very little progress. But at least, it seems I have good companions for the trip.