WHAT LIFE ON THE ROAD FOR A YEAR HAS TAUGHT ME. My best friend since I was a kid, a guy I worked with in a sandwich shop in Irving, Texas, in 1977, and who was much more intelligent than I (back then), asked me the other day what living on the road had taught me.
"So, what have you learned about yourself?" asked Bill, who is to be commended for putting up with me even longer than my wife. It was a question he posed shortly before we stopped in Colorado, one of our final stops before we return to Texas.
What have I learned?
Hmm.
OK …well, first …
'Automatic slideout' does not always mean 'automatic' slideout.
Don't forget the wrench.
Listen to your wife.
Be patient with your wife (especially after asking her to move from a five-bedroom house to a 400-square foot travel trailer).
PBD (Pray before Driving)
The novel will not write itself.
If an RV park web site posts multiple pictures of its billiard and laundry facilities, it may not be the most memorable place to stay for the night.
When the sink gurgles, open the gray tanks.
And this: You can't go anywhere in this country without the complexities and difficulties of life riding shotgun. Like Texas flies and Georgia gnats and Minnesota mosquitoes, huge challenges and annoying little problems never fail to saddle up for the ride as if they've actually been invited.
Life's problems, while likely never receiving an engraved invitation, should at least be anticipated, trip or no trip. The not-all-bad part, though, is that the crazy ins and outs and ups and downs of life can have their positives: Like helping us enjoy the good times all the more, deepening our joy, and keeping us from getting too cocky about our station in life.
And they keep us grounded. For every success and all our up moments, life is always right there, ready to stick a big green piece of lettuce between our two front teeth without even telling us about it (Funny, God! Haha).
I walked into a meeting in Fort Collins, Colorado this week. When I did, I realized I was, at that moment, joyful. At least part of the reason I felt that way was because of other people. I had received a positive email, a welcome phone call, and a couple of pleasant exchanges with people I did not know. Their attitudes and actions fed into me — all in a positive way. Still I wondered, what if all of that had been turned around: what if I had received a terse, smelly email with bad news, and a phone call from a telemarketer, and what if, on my way to the gathering, I had been cut off in traffic and found myself on the blunt end of a honk and a middle finger. I could have just as easily walked into the same gathering with hunched shoulders and a scowl. Crappy Jimmy instead of Happy Jimmy. Despite the actions of others, good or bad, it was really all up to me.
Yet whether we like it or not, or think we can control them or not, other people affect the course of our day. Our week. Our year. We think we have mastery over how we feel about these people and their impact on us, but too often we don't. Can't. Won't.
And so what I have relearned this past year is this: Life will always be a mixture of angels on the shoulder and devilish thorns in the backside. Knowing how to entertain the angels for longer stretches and how to minimize the damage from the thorns is the key. Because there's no way the thorns ain't comin' along shotgun. Aggravating as they are, they enjoy the view of the Tetons in the morning sun just as much as you do.
When we left Texas earlier this year we were certain all our days would be filled with choirs of angels (or at least Broadway chorus lines) providing the soundtrack for our trip. But the reality has been we've had more than our share of days that have sounded more like Yoko Ono singing every part of the 'Hamilton' soundtrack.
Not to argue with a beloved American cultural icon, but life really isn't like a box of chocolates. While it's true we don't know what we're going to get, it was still all chocolate for Forrest. For the rest of us, life is more like Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans in the Harry Potter books: one day you get the red velvet cake and the next you reach in and pull out the vomit bean.
But then comes tomorrow … and you reach back in the jar - and, voila! - you pull out the caramel-corn bean. Or maybe the Peanut M&M Bean. Putting your hand back in the jar the day after you draw the vomit bean — being willing to take whatever you grab even though today sucked really bad — is what makes the journey worth taking, whether it's a trip around the country or eighty-five trips around the sun.
In her new book, "Almost Everything: Notes on Hope," Anne Lamott writes that "Grace meets us exactly where we are, at our most pathetic and hopeless, and it loads you into its wheelbarrow and then it tips you out somewhere else in ever so slightly better shape."
Our lives are filled with uncertainties and challenges every day, no matter where we are, who we are or what we are doing in life. First there's good, then there's bad. Then comes good again. And even when life is bad it's good, that's what the preachers and other experts tell us (and rightly so). Sometimes, the two will bestow themselves upon us in abundance and sometimes on the same day or even the same hour or moment.
One day this week, as Karen and I gazed out on the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies, we learned that a family member had tested positive for cancer. But the good news was this: He will be cancer free and he will be fine. We learned both almost at the same instant, while standing in front of one of God's greatest spectacles. Grace overload? Misfortune overload? Both? Probably.
It is grace that gets us through the days filled with vomit beans. And faith that gets us to tomorrow.
So, that's what I have learned this year.
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Jimmy and Karen Patterson left Midland, Texas in December 2017 in pursuit of the All-American RV Dream. They have found it and are ready to go home to Texas. Karen is a photographer and Jimmy writes. They are working on a book of their travels together.
