12:09 pm - Sun 10/31/04
A Life Too Small

Sun 10/31/04 (11:10 a.m.)

I give a lot of credit to the conversation I had with Jane, years back--where she idly said, "We're always going to complain about our lives and never do anything about it"--as the spur that got me out here to L.A.

And it's true�that rather light-hearted, off-handed comment hit me hard. I didn't want to be the type of person she was describing (To me, "complaining about your life and never doing anything about it" basically makes you a loser), so I moved out to L.A. essentially to prove Jane wrong.

But of course, that's not the whole story, because no one�at least not this someone�moves halfway across the country based on one idle comment made by a friend.

Obviously, I was primed to go, and just needed someone to "push the button".

And recently, it struck me: One of the things that "primed the pump" was another comment, made by another friend years before the conversation with Jane, that I've been thinking about a lot of late.

Rick Copen, one of my former therapists (who became something of a friend in the years afterwards), told me the reason I was experiencing "chronic low-level depression", was that, in his view, my life was too small for me.

I think it's interesting that the huge compliment inherent in that statement�that I was meant for a "bigger" life than the one I was leading�still wasn't enough to really get me moving, but the perceived insult of Jane's comment had me out of Lansing and here in L.A., wondering what the hell I was doing, by the next year.

But I never forgot that comment�My life was too small for me. A "poor fit", as it were. I was built for bigger things.

Looking over those two comments, what I see is that, in both cases, someone said out loud what I really already knew.

I was living a life that was "too small for me". I was "complaining about my life without doing anything about it".

And as I go forward, I think I need to keep those things in mind, and not settle anymore for a life that's "too small for me". And if I feel unhappy about my life, if my heart aches for something more, then I can't just sit on my hands and hope for divine intervention�I have to do something about it.

I don't want to be the guy whose life started out badly, and could never quite manage to "get out from under".

I don't want to be a loser, a whiner, one of the people who "always complain about their lives and never do anything about it".

I don't want this small life I've allowed myself up till now. I want a life that befits my intelligence, my talent, my heart.

I don't want this life that "just anyone" could lead.

I want my life.

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