The Business Of Survival
It has been a rough couple of months at work. Lots of ups and downs and what feels like a tremendous weight on my shoulders. Sure, sure… The usual rollercoaster that is small business. However, it has been intense lately and I have felt at the end of my tether a couple of times. During times of stress and upheaval, I let my personal health go to shit. Too much fast food, empty calories and the release valve of wine and more food at the end of a long day. I can never seem to find the time to fit in exercise and it all rolls on a vicious cycle.
So this weekend I decided to turn my brain off and reset the cycle. Leave my laptop in my work bag. Enjoy the sunshine and finish some long overdue tasks around the house. The realities of next week could wait until Monday and I gave myself some time to relax. Sunday night I crept into bed early and set some tangible goals for the coming week, to wake up before dawn, go for a run, eat a proper breakfast, to avoid Instagram…
After a night of feverish dreams and restless sleep I got out of bed at 4:45, pulled on my running clothes and drove up the coast to the esplanade to hit the pavement. I felt pretty good, the weather is warming up and there was some surf in the gulf, perhaps I could catch a few waves after my run. I jumped out of the car, it was still dark and I was the only soul on the street. A large cat jumped out from behind a bush, on the side of the road. I said ‘ Hello Kitty’ and it looked back at me, the way cats do. We shared a moment, just two early birds. A car came around the corner, approaching the cat, who was still staring at me. In that second it lunged sideways under the car — directly under both wheels. The car sped off. Death throes. Horror.
This is not an analogy…
Standing in the dark I felt sick. I love cats and thought of our two at home and them suffering the same terrible fate. I got back in my car and could not bring myself to look behind at the mess on the road. Everything positive I had woken up with left my body and all I wanted to do was drive home, crawl back into bed and stay there. Surely this was an omen? I tried to call my wife but it was 5 am and she didn’t pick up. I sat and breathed and looked out over the dark ocean in front of me. Ignore the horror in the rearview? Deal with it? Continue on my run? I put my headphones in and got out of the car and started sprinting… Sprinting and thinking. I felt hard done by, having had to witness the scene. Why of all mornings would the universe put me there? I am not really superstitious but sometimes I get that feeling in my stomach like there is more at play in the world than we know. Like a robot glimpsing at the reality that they have been programmed. I love the Mckenna line.
“The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we can”
But what did it mean? I could see the cats death and me, having had to witness it, as just another unfair reality thrust upon me by the universe. Go back to bed, forget the run, don’t worry about the fried chicken and beer for dinner, the world is, after all, a cruel place! Part of me really wanted to use it as ammunition in a ‘woe is me narrative’. Damn it, sometimes it is all just too hard, but as I ran and got into a solid groove, the momentum started to feel good. The pain in my legs reminding me it had been too long since they did this. I needed to move. That bloody cat was stupid. It could have turned left towards me and continued on its merry way, alive. It chose to run under the car. Its hand was dealt and it busted, done, dusted. Looking out over the dark coast was I now not in a similar scenario?
A new day was dawning behind the hills and I was just another shmuck in Lululemon running down along the road. At any instance, I could veer left and plunge 25 metres to the dark rocks below, or take a sharp right into traffic and join the cat… Or I could keep running forward (cue the analogy). The cat was dead. I was alive. I could use the cats’ death as continued ammo in my ‘woe is me’ story. Or I could keep moving and embrace the fact that life is short and painful and miserable and chaotic but also full of hope and wonder and opportunities at every corner. As the sun peaked out over the suburbs and started lighting the gulf I knew it would be wrong to dwell on the negative. My job was to keep trucking. In the vast scheme of the universe, nobody likes hearing a spoilt brat winge about dead pets.
Baby steps, Bob. Baby Steps.
