The Bigger Picture

No one likes feel good stories, except for when they're depressed - and even then there can only be a certain level of "feel good" in the story, or it becomes sappy...

Or it becomes "The Pursuit of Happiness" starring Will Smith.

Anyway, this story has a little, small, four-minute-half-life of feel good to it, so I hope you enjoy.

I was feeling pretty shitty all day, (see post below) and the RM picked up on it. He's somewhat intuitive like that, like a puppy. A puppy will know when something's bothering it's master, and my RM is no different than a beleagured puppy.

It started off when I was on watch earlier today and he wandered in to the Comm Center and looked at me behind all the monitors. He kinda cocks his head to the side and goes,

"What's wrong dude?"

"Nothing," I say dismissively. He presses me.

"Dude, something's bothering you,"

"Nothing's bothering me, I'm fine, leave me alone."

"No dude, you got that look on your face... like the fucking... your eyebrows are all pushed together in the middle of your face and it looks like you have a long dook stain across your face," This gets a small smile out of me.

"Get out of my watch room, RM"

"You need to open up more, bro, you'll die from a heart attack if you don't." And he leaves. He's right, I do need to open up more, but not to him, not to no one, not any time soon.

So fast forward to later in the day. The RM is out raking up some crap from in front of the building and he's cursing. I'm listening to my ipod and standing over him, supervising his raking and nit-picking it like a prick. He looks up at me, stops working and pulls out a cigarette.

"You know what I can't stand?" He says as he lights.

"What's that?"

"Hypocrits,"

"Hypocrits?" I repeat. He looks over my shoulder back towards the main building.

"Like certain people tell you one thing, and then they themselves go and do what they just told you what you couldn't do,"

"I know what being hypocritical means," I tell him. He goes on to tell me that he's been told he can only smoke twice a day for intervals that last roughly fifteen minutes. This was told to him by my chain smoking twenty-one year old dickheaded boss. "Welcome to the military," I tell him again. He gets frustrated and slams his rake to the ground.

"It's bullshit,"

"Dude, seriously, given everything in life, if being told when you can and can't smoke is the biggest thing eating you, you've got shit pretty well under control. Cuz ..." and I trail off for a second and he reads my face like a book in big type. "Cuz," I continue, "There's a bigger picture, people all around you can be dealing with shit that makes what you've got eating you seem rather insignificant. You gotta try to see everything," and as I'm speaking these words, I actually listen to myself talk and take some of my own goddamn advice for once.

There's a lot more going on out there than my own little petrie dish of an exsistance. And my problems are somewhat minor considering the state of the world we live in. I have my legs, I have my health, I can still get up most mornings next to a beautiful woman who simply adores me, there's a lot of things going good for me. I have no real excuse to get down on myself for anything.

I tell my roommate all the time that he needs to find something he can take confidence in; to think about when he's being challenged, that would give him a pyschological advantage over his advisary.

For instance, when I'm feeling like I'm being pinned down, I think of the times I've had sex with two women at the same time. Not many people can boast that, and I look the other guy in the face and know that he hasn't. It's not a "well maybe he has" because well, maybe he has, it's a "no he hasn't," that I focus on, and I ended up crushing my enemy. I think about being a cop, because not too many people can say they were a fully sworn police officer at the age of twenty-one. I just find things that make me unique and use them to my advantage.

An example of this went down the other day: The Lady took me to her favorite coffee place a few towns over, where her former paramour frequents. We're outside, enjoying the Spring Cape Cod afternoon weather and cigarettes when this blue Honda CRX650 rolls up. It's her last guy she fucked, a total douchetard with big hands and a bigger head. He walks over, and it's very awkward scene for everyone. Awkward for me not because this guy was once sticking it to my girlfriend, but because the last time they were together he got grabby with her... and I wanted to take his head off. We stood there, face to face very briefly sizing each other up, sharing one of those weird awkward handshakes where neither one of you gets a decent grip on the other guys hand and it comes out all gay. And the whole time in my mind (aside from the fact that in a flash I would export him to a beyond mortal existance) was that she, The Lady, was with me now, and I was a harder, better, faster, stronger version of what she wanted in him. And beneath his steady exterior I could hear him seethe.

Yeah motherfucker, seethe all night.

I get word about a day later from The Lady where she ran into the guy again about a day later. He was allegedly scared that I'd fuck with his bike. I don't blame him, it's a nice bike and I look like a bad enough motherfucker to do something that stupid, but I won't.

I have the pyschological advantage. I see the bigger picture.