Charting

I posted a blog yesterday after several months of blog inactivity.  I felt bad not posting for so long because it is my personal goal to have a more awesome blog than my friend Martin Greenblat who keeps me in stitches with his posts from Brazil.  Now, the approval seeking persona in me always goes to the blog stats and anxiously checks to see how many "views" my blog has had.  I normally just pay attention to the hard numbers.  (30 yesterday, by the way).  But the chart caught my attention for some reason yesterday and I thought "Wow, just like my life"

It's strange how life can be charted with it's peaks and valleys and moments of complete and utter evenness.  Which is best?

Gut instinct says Peaks Rock.  Those moments of overwhelming excitement.  The stories that you laugh with your college roommate about year after year after mundane year.  Two Hendrix friends wondering how they could have for one moment believed that the UCA guys they'd met were from England and the detail you remember of the hills and darkness and lights from the dashboard twinkling with the stars .  The way you laughed inside every time your best pal Tim would slide into the lobby "rocking out" to Pour Some Sugar On Me in his white socks (knee socks, I'm sure) and his fresh starched jeans, button down shirt and glasses like only a good Catholic boy from Searcy could.  The trip to Alma, Arkansas with JJ over Christmas to visit his girlfriend.  Knowing that somehow, JJ was the one and only friend you'd ever had that had actually managed to impress your mother when he showed up.  And the sight of your first grandchild.  That bond that got created that runs from your toes to the top of your head and simply out shadows any other feeling you have ever experienced in your life.

But each peak has a corresponding valley it seems.  The friend of the fake English guys that you ended up dating for months before you and his fiancee realized he was patient zero in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders definition of a narcissistic psycho.  That pull in your heart every time you hear an 80' hair band and remember that you haven't talked to Tim in over 20 years but hope each time you think of him that he's got hardwood floors, a great iPod playlist and enough knee socks to keep him sliding for years.  Blowing bubbles on the bleachers with your buddies at Hendrix the next year when you'd hijacked the car and driven back to Conway to visit the school you'd never grace the dorms of again. The thought of Red - that first grandchild, that wakes you up in the middle of the night - wondering, panicked if everything in her life will always and forever be happy and content.  Wishing for a life of only peaks for her.

And the moments of evenness, when you've settled into a routine and life just chugs along, half speed, half steam.  No real effort needed.  Not too happy, not too sad, just contentment.  The routine of packing kids up in the morning and making the rounds from high school to junior high to middle school and back again.   The brunches with friends on your porch with the antique blue dinnerware.  Holiday routines, Christmas Eve at Aunt Rita's. Christmas brunch of breakfast casserole and raisin bran muffins at your home and Christmas Dinner at Momma's where the furniture will be moved against her will for the annual photo and Bobbie Jean will parade the cake into to living room only to be scolded.

So - life must be a graph to be enjoyed.  The peaks exhilarate you and give you those moments of pure joy that make life grand.  The valleys give you contrast.  A dark background upon which the brightness of the peaks appears more vibrant and vivid.  And the evenness, it prepares you.  Gives your body, mind, soul time to rest up for the energy that both the peaks and valleys drain from you.