Alternate Endings

When I was 5, my family took a trip to Hawaii. I was very excited. I had no idea what the fuck Hawaii was but everyone else seemed pumped so I was too.

My dad, a life long karate teacher was going to be doing some training there with the figure head of the school, Shihan Hirano. Shihan Hirano was an old Japanese karate badass that had moved to Hawaii in the 60’s and built a karate empire that eventually reached all the way to my little corner of the south. I was looking forward to meeting him.

In my kid mind, I just assumed that we were going to hike up the side profile of a mountain, and of course Shihan would be in a little hut, wearing long robes that covered his hands, long white beard, and he would be approximiately 1000 years old and waiting on us.

Imagine my shock when this important meeting happened not on cartoon Mt. Fuji but in a shopping mall karate school, and they hadn’t even turned the lights on.

I met Shihan, he was not wearing robes and he wasn’t ancient. He was probably in his late 40’s, big smile, little bit of a paunch, and most jarring of all, was wearing shorts and flip flops like a regular guy.

I think this was the first time in my life that I recall the reality of a thing and the preconception of a thing not aligning.

I wish there was a word for this phenomena. Maybe there is, in one of those dorky word a day vocab builder books.

To me, this type of mild shock is so ingrained into life, it must have been there from the beginning of time. The first creatures that crawled out of the ocean were probably shocked by land. They probably just expected more ocean, or predators, or in their wildest dreams, other creatures like them with big ole tittles.

As common as this is, as many times as I have experienced this, it is never not a surprise. As I have gotten older, I try to train my mind to anticipate it, but its harder than it sounds.

The future is a conversation happening nearby that you can only hear through the wall.

One of my favorite jokes is from a long time friend and comics Hunter Gardener. Hunter has a super chipper tone of voice and he does a bit about being invited to hear a showcase of local bands. in the bit he says “so it turns out..most bands..are bad”

Its such a silly and simple line but I think about this all the time.

Many times the inconsistencies between what we thought and what we became or what we thought and what we experience are bad.

But they aren’t always. The bad ones are the ones that are easiest to understand.

The trickiest ones are the times where its not bad, its just a different form of good, but not the good you wanted.

How many versions of you got lost along the way in the pursuit of who you are now.

I don’t know if I believe in the multiverse theory, because I think life, and the billions of decisions included in it is its own multiverse.

There is a version of me that grew up with both parents, took over the family karate school, and lived a very stable if not way less interesting life. Theres. a version of me that is still married, still in the church, still leading worship. There is a version of me that made the national team in karate and saw the world competing. There is. aversion of me that moved back to Denmark to pursue a woman and it worked or it imploded, there is a me that wrote the right song at the right time for the right producer and everything changed, there is a me with different brain wiring that would be happy to live and die in Charleston and feel grateful for everything I had there and never want more than the love I had.

And now, most improbable of all, there is a version of me living in nyc, pursuing comedy albeit haphazardly.

What does it mean, what will it mean, who is watching, and how will I feel when I get where I am going.

Age and time and loss has a corraling affect. It bottlenecks you. Sometimes thats wisdom. Sometimes thats dissapointment in a wig.

The older you get, life squeezes you. the gravity is harder and the air is thinner. It gets harder to remember why you came in the first place.

What do you want?

How do you want to feel when you get it?

What feelings do you hope to take with you forever?

I think I came here to learn the answers to these self imposed questions.