Do-Over

I sit in the back of an old Upper East Side diner. In front of me is a hal-empty cup of stale coffee, a few crumbs of dropped corn bread.

"I hope I never taught you that our community actually lives up to the ideals it preaches," the man sitting across from me says with a tone of sympathy, mixed with the slightest bit of remorse.

He, of all people, knows this game all too well. He knows what it feels like to be stabbed in the back, to, overnight become a leper of the community, to feel so sad and dissolusioned because the gap between our aspirations and actual situations is too wide.

So I sit in the booth, and listen to his stories. I hear his struggle, his story, and am myself redeemed.

Life goes on. Things fall apart, but people are there to put them back together. And in putting things back together, they end up being improved beyond what once seemed like mere fantasy.

That's the part of it all that involves our insatiable need for change - a constant struggle for improvement, for near-perfection. This I've learned from the best. Walking around each day I do all I can to be a maverick, to be an instigator and an inspiration, a motivator and a mover.

I can't help it; I will never be happy in any other role.

Sometimes it leaves to deep pain and disilussionment, feelings of loneliness and ineptitude. But the world is to broken to accept anything less; there are too many others ready for a fight.

The coffee is getting cold, it's now time to go on my way. "You ever see 'City Slickers?'" my breakfast partner asks. I haven't.

But I soon learn what I've missed. It involves a man, transplanted to the desert, pulled out of an unhappy marriage and suddenly able to start again from scratch.

"The best part in the film is the advce this man gets," my partner tells me. "How many times do we get to start over in Ife?" He paraphrases the scene to me. "It's a blessing! Be happy, enjoy it - you're lucky!"

He's right. Do-over's never happen in real life. And then they do. And as hard as it can sometimes be to see them as such, they're almost always a gift.

The hard part is just figuring out what to do with your unexpected present.

Comments

[David A.M. Wilensky]

You're no leper. So some higher-ups have rejected you. It wasn't for ideological reasons ans you still have a loyal group of students out there who now what you're worth.

[Josh]

At least your an attractive leper, not one of those people with the arms dangling off...think about it...

Oh, and I agree with David, you still have many a follower who know or are beginning to learn how to think for themselves and not settle with what their Rabbis spoon feed and force them to know.

[Ben F]

I'd still eat you... In a burrito. I don't eat lepers.

[Counsel]

Life is pleasant at times, leaving you "surprises." It has been almost two years since your post, I'd love to see a "follow-up" to this post about how you have moved along to find your "one thing."

How about it?