I’ve never been to Spain

Stop me if I have told you this one before.  I got it from a “This American Life” episode.  They were talking about applying laws of physics to human relationships, generally accepted in the scientific community as a bad idea but a hell of a lot of fun for the rest of us.  Sort of like carbon emissions, I reckon.  Anyway, there was one law of physics that struck me in particular: the mediocrity principle.  It kind of goes like, if the universe is always expanding, out to infinity, then there is no one place that is any more special than any other.  This is as good as it gets.

This is a good thing for me to be reminded of from time to time.   I tend to think that “it” is happening “there” while I am “here.”  (There is an inherent problem in that if I were to go “there” then “there” would become “here” and I would have missed “it.”  cf. “Spaceballs”)  Last Saturday was the 15th Annual James Brown Oktoberfest which I once again missed.  I had just had another hell of a week, that making two or three of them in a row, and my presence would have added little or nothing to the brew ha ha.  But I would have liked to have been there.

And while I protested, with some grounds however shaky, that it was not mere Fear of Missing Out that had me down, that I really wanted to support my friends’ annual rager, there is some truth in the accusation.  It has gotten worse over the course of the week.  Having not been busy every second of the day, I have had some time to thing.  Never a good thing.  At least not the brooding comparative type of thinking I am so apt at.

Judging myself against other people can only lead to disaster.  On the one hand, I’ll see myself coming out on top and then have to worry about how I am going to stay on top, followed by the guilt of being an arrogant bastard.  On the other hand, I’ll see how I don’t measure up and wallow around in that crap for as long as I can take the stench.  In the end, my score card always comes out mixed anyway.  Somethings I do badly, other things I do fine.  And where all these things get me is right here, a place no better or worse than any other place.  And, I suspect, just where I am supposed to be.