I haven’t spent many years of my life living alone, but I enjoyed the few years that I did. Two of those years were spent in the early 1990s in a one-bedroom apartment above a design studio on Thoma Street near downtown Reno, Nevada. It was a dream of a little apartment, with a big deck looking to the west toward the Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance.
I loved that little apartment — and enjoyed making it my own.
For the first year I lived there, I did not have a television. However, an old boyfriend gave me a 6-inch color television that I put in a corner and rarely used. (I used to remember it being a black-and-white television, but there’s a detail I’ll share in a moment that proves otherwise).
I’ve never been much of a housekeeper, but one day I decided to go all-in on cleaning my little home. I turned on the television to keep me company. A redheaded comedian was telling a series of stories on TV. (The fact that I remember he had red hair is what has convinced me that the television was color).
He began to tell one story about a guy who got a parking ticket in San Francisco. It was a story that completely changed my life.
The comedian said he saw a man walk out of his home to find a parking ticket on his Jeep Cherokee. Even before he got to the ticket pinned beneath his windshield wiper, the man started yelling and cursing. Finally, he picked it up and continued to rant and rave and yell and curse, flailing the ticket in the air and generally having a fit.
This man lived on a big hill, and a skateboarder was coming down the hill, watching the scene unfold.
The man with the parking ticket continued to wail.
The skateboarder continued to ride down the hill. Eventually, the two were side by side, and the skateboarder said to the man with the parking ticket, “Acknowledge, man, and move on.”
The comedian then said, and I’m paraphrasing here from more than 30 years of memory, “I mean, what’s the man going to do? Is he going to stay in that frenzied state forever? No, he’s not. If he’s even remotely mentally and emotionally healthy, he’s going to get over it eventually. So why not do it now?”
Those words stopped me in my tracks.
I had never thought about anything like that. I grew up in a time and place watching most of the adults around me hold on to any perceived wrongs against them like badges of honor. The comedian’s idea made complete sense to me. Why not just let it go from the start and move on?
And that’s what I started trying to do right then.
My life since has been profoundly better and more enjoyable.
Until then, I had operated on the belief that my anger or frustration, or whatever negative emotion I was embracing, would somehow empower or vindicate me. Or that it would serve to prove that I was right.
What good does being both right and unhappy serve?
Simply letting the gunk go and moving directly into the “what-to-do-to-fix-this” phase has changed everything.
Of course, I am not always able to immediately just let something go. Sometimes, I still have to wallow in it a bit — or talk it through several times. However, for the most part, I have been practicing “Acknowledge and move on,” since that day.
It has been my mantra.
Through the years, I’ve searched for the comedian to no avail. I would love to tell him how that story changed everything for me. Watching our home burn a few weeks ago and the days and weeks since has given me plenty of opportunity to continue the practice.
There have certainly been some moments of despair, but trying to approach the whole experience from a “this-is-so-interesting” perspective has made this time much easier to bear — like the small hole burned into the original painting of my hometown in Mississippi.
“Let’s turn it into a manhole cover,” my husband and I said to each other.
Having that attitude has been made easier by all the love we’ve experienced from so many.
This last week, I’ve said repeatedly, “If anyone going through trauma had the kind of love and support that we’ve had, this world would be a very different place.”
Meanwhile, we’re acknowledging, moving on and holding hope for what’s ahead.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nola.com ’
