Wally is wearing his glasses today. That usually means he is going to be a bit more pressing than usual. And by 'pressing', I obviously mean 'annoying'. As I sit in silence, I can feel him looking over me. It makes my already crackling nerves twinge with anxiety. My heart begins to beat faster, trying to out run the uncomfortable silence. Finally, he speaks.
"You look tired," he states.
"I am, Wally. I am." I reply.
"Have you been sleeping?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. I try, I really do. I lie down, seemingly exhausted, then my mind just starts racing. I can't turn it off. It just goes and goes."
"What do you think about?"
"I don't know. Different things. Just depends on the day, I suppose."
"Is there anything in particular troubling you?"
"I don't think so."
"Would you consider yourself an anxious person?"
Here we go...
"Spare me, Wally. I know I have anxiety issues."
"What are you so anxious about?"
My heart beats faster at the question.
"What do you mean?"
"You seem to have a general anxiety. I just wanted to know if you had any insight as to what may be making you anxious?"
"What's making me anxious? Are you kidding me right now, Wally? What's making me anxious!?"
"Would you care to elaborate?"
"Actually, Wally, since you asked, yes, I would care to elaborate. What's making me anxious? Well, let's see. For starters, we live in a fallen world full of chaos, corruption, hatred, injustice, intolerance, suffering and pain. We have no clue how we got here, nor do we have any idea as to WHY we are here. The only thing we know for certain in life is that someday we are going to die and it won't be pleasant. We're considered lucky if it's a full seventy or eighty years before we die, but realistically, it can happen at any given moment and in any given way. Even if one does live a long life, it is guaranteed to be filled with hardships, difficulties, illnesses, loss, suffering, physical pain, emotional pain and abuse. and those are just the everyday occurrences of a GOOD life. That doesn't even include massive atrocities such as poverty, murder, rape, child molestation, war, genocide, famine, natural disasters, holocausts, corporate corruption, secret societies, police brutality, the media, the Kardashians and an entire host of other evil throughout the world."
"I see."
"And that's not even scratching the surface of all of the problems OUT THERE. That's not even getting to all of the problems IN HERE, which, let's face it, are probably just as vast and far-reaching...though, admittedly, far less important."
"That is a rather bleak worldview, but I won't deny that, yes, those things do in fact exist. However, I can't do anything about those worldly problems within this room. But, I can try to help you with the 'in here' problems that you referenced. The problems within yourself."
"But, what if they're not separate? What if the world and everyone in it is all just tiny microcosms of one giant consciousness. What if in every human being, billions the world over, lies as many problems as are in the outside world? Every human being contains within themselves enough problems...emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually...to match the number of problems in the outside physical world. We're all walking around, day after day, festering in the same globally unified and tragically flawed conscious existence."
"Perhaps we're getting a bit heady, here," Wally replied. "Do you ever give thought to your own perspective?"
"Of course I do. Did you not here what I just said?"
"No, I mean the root of your perspective."
"How so?"
"For every action the is a reaction. For every heads there is a tails. So, yes, these things you mentioned certainly do exist. However, you can't ignore the fact that they're opposites also exist. Goodness. Beauty. There is war, but in every war there are heroes. People who sacrifice their very lives everyday for other human beings. In times of natural disasters, people instinctively come together to donate their time, money and efforts to helping those in need. There is genocide and mass murder. On nine eleven, many people died in those towers and many others ran away from them as they collapsed. But, a lot of people ran toward them, too. Many people sifted through the rubble and clawed through the chaos to help, save and protect. We do live in a world of pain and suffering, but it is also a world of wonder and healing. Someone dies, a baby is born. Someone in despair falls down, someone enlightened holds out their hand and offers hope. We grow old and sick and hopefully our children return the love and care once given to them. There are dictators, murderers, rapists, liars, thieves and every assortment of wrongdoers. There are also doctors and nurses, caregivers, volunteers, missionaries, artists, charity workers, firemen and an entire host of people striving to make the world a better place."
A large part of me sat there wanting to intellectually combat everything he was saying. I certainly could have. But, I didn't. I just sat there. I suppose some part of me wanted to believe him in that moment, in that room. I suppose the part of me that sat there and wanted to believe him was the same part of me that knew that as soon as I left his office, that black cloud would follow me home, casting out all of those golden California sunbeams, the way that it does.
"I want you to try something for me this week," Wally continued. "Every time something in your life happens or something you see or feel, anytime negative thoughts or feelings begin to come over you, I want you to pause and take a few moments and really make a conscience effort to see whatever it may be, from a positive aspect. From the most mundane observations to the most dramatic actions...anytime you feel negativity creeping in, just take a moment and breath, then try to see the situation from a positive light."
"Like the glass half full rather than half empty type of thing."
"Yes, I suppose, if you want to look at it that way. I'm not saying it will be easy. It won't be and it certainly won't happen over night. But like any muscle, our own perspectives need to be worked and exercised constantly in order to be developed. It's hard work, but we can never underestimate the power of positive thinking in our lives."
I thought about Wally's words as I walked the bustling, lonely streets home. I looked all around. There are so many people, so many stories, so much pain, so much poverty and loneliness. How could anyone if make sense out of all this mess, let alone think positively about it?
As I walked the streets, the concrete essence and it's inhabitants tip-toed in and made their impressions, the way that they often do.
Directly across the street, a man sat, presumably homeless. I use the word presumably because in Los Angeles, a beggar on the street could be absolutely destitute, or they could drive their sports car back to their condo in the hills, or it could be a kid from the mid-west, trying to prepare his 'homeless guy' characterization for his over-priced acting class.
This man sat on the sidewalk and watched the people passing by with a glaze in his eyes. Not glazed over from substances, but the kind of glaze that hard worn years produces in the soul when you just don't have enough heart to care anymore. Underneath a baseball cap, his hair was matted from weeks of neglect. His face was chapped under a beard full grown. Shoes untied, laces shredded. He held a sign that read: 'Wife got the better lawyer'. I guess she got the car and the condo. I certainly give him points for originality and sense of humor.
I cut south a couple of blocks to hike up Fountain. On Wilcox, I passed an elderly woman in a wheelchair. She was across the street and after I passes, a low grumble made me turn to look back toward her. One of the wheels of her chair was caught in a rut in the crumbling sidewalk. Tattered, her clothes hung from her skeletal frame as her frail hands reached downward. She fumbled with the wheel with the only might she could muster, but it wasn't enough to make a bulge. Back and forth, she began to shift her weight in the chair, but the chair only slightly tilted. She couldn't have weighed more than eighty pounds soaking wet. Hopeless, she looked around to find someone from the neighborhood, perhaps someone that she knew, that could come help her. There was no one. An older gentlemen stood in his yard, watering a brown patch of dirt with a water hose. Three teenagers walked by laughing loudly and bouncing a basketball. They approached her on the sidewalk and even split to move around her, like she were some jaggedly annoying pebble in the smooth and effortless flow of their stream. They divided and walked around her, without breaking in conversation, without skipping a beat. They divided and walked around her.
After a break in traffic, I made my way across the street. As I approached her, she looked frightened. I assured her, then grabbed the arms of the wheelchair and gently rocked it from the wedge.
"Do you need some help getting somewhere," I asked her.
"No, I'm fine," she grumbled, almost under her breath as her frail hands began wheeling the chair down the broken sidewalk, yet again. As I watched her roll away, I silently wondered how many times that scenario had happened in her life and what event was the final straw that soured her gratitude.
As the sun was setting I headed up Fountain. Nearing my apartment, I noticed a man tucked only slightly in an alleyway. He was more than noticeably inebriated on one or more substances as was evident by his swaying and the slurring of his speech as he rambled to himself or possibly the brick wall adjacent from him. Trying to urinate on the wall, he stumbled and cursed as his pants slid down around his ankles. Like the horrific car accident, everything in my being screamed turn and run, but I just couldn't look away. As he finally began to urinate, he apparently lost control as excrement fell from him and he stumbled downward, downward until he hit the ground and garbled incoherently to himself. There was a part of me that wanted to go over and help him, but the larger and more disgusted part of me simply could not bear the thought. I turned and walked steadily in the direction of my studio.
It was nearly dark by the time I reached my front stoop. The evening air was crisp and asked me to sit for a moment. I sat down on the steps and lit up a smoke. As I sat there, smoke drifting up into the nearly night sky, I couldn't help but reflect on Wally's words. They say when it rains it pours. I had absolutely nothing positive to think or say about my walk home. Exercise number one, failure. Baby steps, I suppose. It can't rain all the time, Wally says. Funny, we live in southern California, a desert. A place where it rains less than fifteen inches per year. We live in Los Angeles, a place that is so known for its perpetual sunshine that people have written songs about it. We live in a barren landscape drying up more everyday and thirsting for rainfall, yet here in the City of Angels, it pours. It pours every single day.