Life can Change in an Instant

I am 37 years old and when I look back at how my life has changed to get me to where I am today. I realize that my life took different turns based on a few short moments of time. It’s funny how a few weeks, or a few minutes can complete alter the direction of your life.

I think this kind of perspective only happens when you reach a certain age and have a certain number of experiences. I’m sure me at 50 or 60 will have more experiences to add to this list. But here are a few.

1. Pope Francis becoming pope changed my life even though I don’t go to church because I don’t particularly like American Catholic’s strictness. I used to enjoy going to church as a kid but then I moved and the Catholic priests in the new town I was in began using the pulpit as a political soap box. I mean don’t use your position as a priest and messenger of the Lord as a way of trying to get the public to vote one way or another. That’s just unethical and wrong in my humble opinion.
   1. But that doesn’t mean that being a catholic hasn’t changed my political stance on some issues. About 10-12 years ago soon after Pope Francis came into power I decided to give something up for Lindt in 2014. I was also reading a lot of self help books at the time and made the decision to give up a psychological thing for Lindt. Usually, people give up something relatively easy, such as stop rolling through stop signs, stop excessively speeding, stop eating chocolate and candy (that’s probably why we have chocolate easter bunnies and candy on easter).
      1. But in 2014 I decided to do a little psychoanalysis on myself and it took about 10 minutes of meditation to contemplate something within my psychology that I was doing that I needed to give up. I concluded that my psychology was too easily influenced by unchecked facts from other people and stuff I see on social media. I was becoming a mirror of what other people believed and thought instead of expressing what I believed and thought. So I decided to give that up for Lindt in 2014… but how?
         2. I decided that I would fact check stuff I see on social media that I thought sounded off, or untrue. And I would voice my opinion instead. This created a disaster for my social media life, but psychologically was perhaps the best gift I have ever given myself. For 40 days instead of just repeating talking points or whatever I saw from people on social media, I would do 2-3 minutes of fact checking on google, come up with a belief as to what I was reading was true or not, and then voice my own opinion on the matter. After Easter I decided that I enjoyed this, and continued to do so ever since. I have learned so much along the way that it has just become my nature to not take on what other people say or believe when it comes to opinions on society or politics.
         3. Any way that 10-15 minute personal decision I made 10 years ago changed a decade of my life for the better.
      2. In 2015 I traveled to Paris France for a couple weeks. A lot of people come back from their first time in Paris being in love with France and start learning French or something. But I recall about 30 seconds at Versailles that made me realize my own relationship with English. I had forgotten my Paris Museum Pass, and realized this as I was trying to find it at the gates of Versailles. So I needed a ticket. I walked to the ticket booth and asked the man behind the counter if he spoke English because I knew absolutely no French.
         1. I asked “I forgot my museum pass, where do I go to get a ticket?” Which I thought was good enough English. But this guy behind the counter learned English in School so he spoke English back to me as if I was a member of British Royalty because I guess they teach the King’s English in French Schools.
         2. “You can purchase a daily pass by proceeding out that door, and around the corner and following the roped off area.”
         3. So I looked to my right and saw a sign that said “Tickets” and an arrow to the left. And I thought, “Apparently I can’t read either, damn dude I would never get that response in America”
         4. But what I said was “Oh, Thank you.”
         5. And he said “You are welcome sir.”
         6. And it was at that exact moment I realized I may not know how to speak English that well.
      3. On my way out of Paris I ordered a shuttle from my hotel to the airport. I recall talking to the cab driver before we left for about 5 minutes because we had to wait for street cleaning to finish early in the morning. He asked “did you enjoy your trip?”
         1. And I replied “Yea, Paris was good to me, I think I got “That’s Paris” whatever that is.”
         2. The cab driver responded with “That’s interesting, what do you mean?”
         3. And said. “Well my first night here I went down the street and got a lap dance because I’m only ever going to have one first night in Paris in my lifetime and I couldn’t really think of any better way to spend it. Then I learned something about my hometown at the Orsay, realized I don’t speak English well at Versailles (I told the story you just read) and oddly after a couple weeks I somehow think I understand French even though I know absolutely no French.”
         4. The cab driver then said “What do you mean you feel like you know French without knowing it?”
         5. And I said “Well is know Spanish, and I didn’t know so many English words are French words until I came here, I have a decent ear, I don’t know maybe one day I learn French and it’s just in my psychology. Try me out, speak 20-30 seconds in French just about what your day is going be like today, and I’ll respond in English and you can test me if I am right or wrong.”
         6. So he was like “Okay, (20-30 seconds of French I didn’t understand but sorta figured out anyway)
         7. I responded with “So your shift ends around noon today and then you are going to have lunch with your friend, and afterward call your girlfriend and see if she is available to do something tonight?”
         8. And then cab driver said “NO, well yea that’s close to what I said, I mean that’s freakishly close to what I said for someone who says they know no French. Are you lying to me? Did you date a French girl? Or take French in school?”
         9. So we talked some more about English and phrases Americans use, There is one thing that I feel like it’s important for me to point out. This random Parisian cab driver I had 9 years ago was annoyed when Americans use lines from movie or T.V. to make some bigger point about something and do this odd thing of “He’s being….(insert name of someone else)”
            1. This “He’s being (insert name of someone else)” or “channeling” is an oddity I experienced in high up circles in Sacramento about 15 years ago. And to be honest I had absolutely no idea what those women in Sacramento mean by this, or what kind of feminism they are trying to accomplish by saying that stuff. “Channel” is either something on T.V., or the English Channel between France and England. Psychically channeling dead relatives or the supernatural is just a mentally ill English that is odd and it doesn’t quite make sense to this American or to this other average French cab driver who drove me to the Airport that morning in December 2015.
            2. I returned to America with a new found sense of direction in my life. I realized art and creativity were extremely important to me. I realized I knew almost nothing about History, and even less about where the English language comes from and how and why we use the words we use. I made another Lindt like how to improve on these parts of my psychology I did not like. To sum up I decided to give up being a dumb American getting by on other people’s work. A couple years later Trump got elected, I got to writing and learning new things and have not stopped over the last 8 years. I am a far better version of myself today because of the week or so I spent in Paris in December of 2015. 
      4. With all that said, I was a dumb American tourist at Katz deli not knowing how that place worked, or where to go to pay. While ordering and getting my sandwich I felt as if I was at Versailles all over again. But then I took my first bite of that sandwich and realized my life is just not going to be the same again. I figured out how to pay and left. That was about 30 minutes of my life that changed me forever, because now every awesome bite of food I will have will be measured against a Katz Pastrami. When I go to Rome in a couple weeks I’m going to be asking myself “is this life changing in way that will ruin pasta for me forever the same way Katz has ruined pastrami for me?”
         1. I’m 100% okay with that being a part of my life now.