Don’t boil the ocean. A friend of mine said this the other night. At the time he was referring to a mutual friend being teased because his favorite football team lost the big playoff game. Yeah, there’s playful trash talk but then there’s kicking someone while they’re down.
Don’t boil the ocean–don’t stir things up when unnecessary (like throwing salt on the wound of your already dejected friend), don’t rile things up when you know you won’t get anywhere and especially don’t make waves just to be a dick.
Besides those circumstances though, I say boil away.
Not enough people boil the ocean. “Don’t make waves”–too common a sentiment in my family. I hate it. Not enough people say what they feel and do what they truly want. At times, I can be superbly guilty of that.
Do you do enough to churn up your life, or do you just let it perpetually stay a still, stagnant pond?
Oddly enough, the day after my eloquent friend bestowed his great proverb on me, another friend of mine asked me this mindbender: “do you think about the future?” Um, excuse me what?
That question should be the label on a can of worms. Do worms come in cans?
Anyway, I said of course I think about the future. Being a gold medalist in rumination, I think about the past, present, future and everything in between. He said he wonders where he’ll be in ten years. Ten years seems like a lifetime from now. But it’s really only the blink of an eye. Something maybe you wish your ten-years-ago-self knew.
Would your ten-years-ago-self be proud of where today-you is?
A few years ago I caught up with a high school friend I hadn’t seen in 30 years. He’s married, two kids, 9-5 job, house in the suburbs, you know the deal. The complete opposite of my life. He said probably the most inspiring thing I think anyone has ever said to me: “the best thing I like about you is you’ve lived the life I was too scared to live.”
How can you not throw up from happiness when someone says that to you? I’m incredibly touched he admires me in that way, yet sad he has regret. Don’t get me wrong, he’s happy with his life as it is, but I could sense the twinge of “what could have been” stirring beneath. Yes, my life has taken a different path than most, and yes that has been mostly by my own design, my own wave-making.
He was too scared to live my life? Maybe I was too scared to live his.
Too scared to surrender myself to one person, just one person til death do us part. Freedom! William Wallace. C’mon, you get it. So free, so great, I can do whatever I want, yeah yeah yeah.
Maybe now what I want is someone to kiss me goodbye as Charlie Brown would say. Someone to make me want to get off the choppy waters and enjoy the serene stillness of a pond. How much is my freedom worth?
My high school friend envies my freedom. I envy his security.
Maybe what I really envy isn’t a what but a who. Maybe my friend’s wife stirs his heart so much that he didn’t need to live any other way. Maybe I haven’t met such a person yet. Or maybe I have.
Is today-you happy with the waters of your life? What can you do to make sure ten-years-from-now-you is proud, happy, regretless?
You always have a choice.
It’s never too late to boil the ocean.
CM
2/2/23
