The Moth is hosting another Seattle soiree. If you don’t know what The Moth is, it is all about storytelling, the oral tradition. There’s no technology. Your story has to be true. It can’t be read or rehearsed. And it has to follow the theme of the evening.
Whether I ever decide to get on stage to do my five minutes remains to be seen. But I am certainly interested in the concept. As I’ve said here many times, telling stories is what makes the world go round, and if we didn’t have stories, we would simply grind to a halt as a civilization.
The Moth is what the younger set is doing these days. True, others go to Moth sessions. Martin Scorcese was one storyteller in a New York session.
But this isn’t so much about The Moth as it is about the topic of this particular event: Unintended. Their description of what is Unintended was so good I’m not even going to try to top it:
Prepare a five-minute story about accidental outcomes. Best laid plans with unexpected twists. Wrong turns, faulty assumptions, felicitous missteps and silver linings. Good intentions that get lost in translation, or cruel ones that boomerang and backfire. Great expectations dashed to the ground, or a dreaded forecast with a happy ending.
I admit that I was a bit stumped as to what story I would tell. Nothing came to mind. That was until the Janmeister said, “But your whole life has been unintended.”
Ouch. But yet, she is right. My life has been a series of best laid plans gone awry, fatal assumptions, legendary missteps, misguided intentions and grand expectations, with often dreaded results.
And still I managed to have a happy ending. Well, I can’t say ending really, since this life of mine is still chugging right along. But I can say happy.
For the most part, my unintended life has been pretty good. Sure, I’ve had a few episodes of temporary homelessness, had my mother slap me in the face when I divorced my first ex, stacked a few other exes up like cordwood, lost jobs, had really crappy cars that left me on the side of the road, ruined perfectly good relationships, pissed off some really close friends, made some really stupid investment decisions and yet, I’m still here. Life hasn’t gotten the best of me, even though the bulk of it has indeed been very unintended.
It’s only been 24 hours since that word came into my view, but I really like the idea of the unintended life. First, it removes all sorts of pressure to plan your life down to a “T”. I learned a while ago that the whole idea of being able to plan your life is just an illusion. Control is an illusion, too. You can’t control what happens in your life, you can only control your response to it.
Good and bad is just part of life. Sure, it’s easy to make it through the good times. Who doesn’t love success, money, power or prestige? But life, that whacky unintended part, the part where things seem to go horribly wrong, that’s the true test of what kind of person you are.
I haven’t let life beat me, even when it has kicked the ever living crap out of me and left me in the gutter of despair, bruised and battered. Every single time I have picked myself up, dusted myself off and jump back into the game once again.
Frankly, I don’t think anyone would blame me if I just decided to go it alone in my life, given my rocky history of relationships. I know people who’ve had just one relationship go south and give up on ever being in love again, let alone taking a dive into the deep end of the marital pool again.
But that just sounds like I let life beat me up and gave into it. Screw that. While my life has indeed be unintended for the most part, that doesn’t mean that it can ever get the best of me.
I think that most of us actually live a life unintended. I don’t know many people who dreamed of being a doctor or a fireman when they were a child who actually stayed the course. In fact, I don’t think I know anyone who made all their dreams come true in our world, instead, stumbling along on an often unexpected and largely unintended life.
There’s a lot of truth in John Lennon’s statement: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
I think that’s what makes life worth living. I’ve often thought what my life would have been like if it had gone as planned. I’d still be in Renton, married to my first wife, working at some dead end job, having low self-esteem and wishing I were dead.
Happy, happy, joy joy. Instead, all the unintended aspects of my life pushed me in entirely new directions, propelling me to have some grand adventures, some famously good times, lots of laughs and coming across some amazing people. I have lived a couple of lifetimes in this one short one, and I still get to wonder what comes next, good, bad or indifferent.
I hope for your sake that you’re life is just as unintended. If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands for the unexpected! You’re one of the lucky ones. And if life at the moment is a pile of crap, this too shall pass. Just pick yourself up out of that gutter of despair and jump right back into the frackas once again. Your life really is what you make of it, even it is entirely unintended.
In the Emerald City, still making it up as I go along,
– Robb