The Art of Getting On With It
It was a moment out of my own timeline. It was an event that happened as if it were happening parallel to my own linear trajectory, like suddenly there were two of me, one going through my life as I have been for the last 29 years, and another me, walking the same road as the First Me, only with the frame of mind of an outsider looking in. Second Me sat in the passenger seat of my two-door coupe, observing with astonishment and mild amusement, as First Me had a complete meltdown in the driver seat over an inability to find the right activity to do to ‘relax.’ First Me gripped the steering wheel, tears streaming from the inside corners of my eyes, and cried if for no better reason than to release the tension that pressed down too hard on my sternum, making it hard to breathe and impossible to think. Second Me said out loud, “I do not think any of those activities will be relaxing at this point.” First Me choked a laugh. Second Me continued, “Maybe let’s not set our expectations so high next time.” First Me released the steering wheel, moved the car from ‘reverse’ to ‘park’ and sat back.
“That sounds fair,” I said out loud. It had been a long week.
I have a friend who is properly British. That is to say, he is from England, has a solid understanding of Doctor Who, knows how to drink beer in excess without getting sloppy, and can use the word ‘cheers’ in a way that sounds friendly and congenial and not annoying and overly-hip. My properly British friend often remarks that he finds me amusing, but tends to amend the sentiment with the qualification of, “but I’m British, so I get it,” which only further supports my steadfast belief that my charm, which is often is described as ‘sparky’ or ‘disagreeable,’ is simply wasted on the United States, and that were I to improve in other necessary areas, I, too, could be destined for more properly British pastures. As it were, though, every so often, my friend and I meet up at an American bar, drink steadily for a few hours, spend the first bit catching up, and the rest of the time (read: the majority of the time) discussing things we find unsatisfactory or generally displeasing, like say, for instance, my aversion to running long distances.
“Why are you dressed for the gym right now?” I asked, moving the ice around a nearly-empty tumbler with my straw.
“I’m training for a half-marathon,” he said, pushing his blonde hair back from his face, “I went for a run before this.”
Now, it's hard to criticize someone for exercising. Not to say I don’t do it all the time, but when I do, I’m just being difficult. Or, actually, I'm projecting my guilt from hundreds of my own missed workouts on to someone else because it looks better to me that way. Shame really DOES look better on someone else.
In the instance, my argument went thusly. “Ugh. Running.”
He laughed. “It’s one of the more ridiculous things I’ve decided to do,” he continued. “I mean, I ran the lake yesterday…”
I stopped him. “What? No. Yesterday it was raining. You’re telling me you ran in the rain?”
I’m going to describe what he said next as being ‘one of the most British things ever.’ I’ve gathered approximately zero data points on this claim, though I will take this moment to recount the fact that I watch a lot of British television and have traveled to Britain twice now. This either qualifies me or radically un-qualifies me from making this claim, but I don’t care - this is my essay and I’m going to do it. Here I go. It was one of the most British things ever.
“Of course. I grew up in London. What, am I going to drop everything I’m doing when it rains and wait for it to stop? Do you know how frequently it rains in London? No. It rains, and you get on with it.”
So British, right? I told him as much and he laughed and didn’t argue, which just puts another point in the ‘qualified’ column, if you ask me.
He went for another round of drinks, and I mulled over ‘getting on with it.’ See, I’m not terribly good at 'getting on' with things, it's one of the most un-British things about me. Rather, my forte is to 'dwell on' or 'hyper-analyze on' or 'pull apart and reassemble on' a thing until that thing is no longer recognizable as the thing it originally was, if it ever was a thing at all. By the end this process, I can rarely tell. Now, in his comment about the rain, of course it made sense that the weather shouldn’t be an impediment - but in life, with life-y things, it was different, right? In life, when things didn’t go as you planned, surely you were allowed to be thrown off course or completely stalled.
Ugh. Look what he’d gone and done now. I was reflecting. I hate that. I had half a mind to tell him that, if he was so keen on ‘getting on with things’ he should just get on with getting back to London and his stupid rain and his stupid carrying on, like the loyalist that he was. This is AH-MER-IH-CAH, we don’t like to reflect on our own shortcomings - we prefer to be right, preferably from a moral high ground if one is available. But see, all this transpired while he was away from the table, and when he came back, he had a gin and tonic for me and so I let the whole thing go. Because this is America and we’re easily distracted.
I've thought a lot about what happens when it rains. When something doesn’t go the way I wanted, when something unexpected and unpleasant crops up from no where, when difficult, trying hours turn into difficult, trying days, and I let myself down on more than one occasion - what do I do when it rains? Well, first I get mad at the rain. I go to my friends and I say, “Can you believe this rain? I mean, how could it do this to me? Look at it - and it has the audacity to just - keep raining!? What nerve.” Then when I tire of rallying against the rain, I stare at the rain and plead my case. “I can’t take any more rain, can’t you see that? Everything is soaked through and ruined and what if it’s never dry again, ever?” Then when I realize how silly it is to try to fight or bargain with the rain, I simply turn away. “If I don’t look at it, there is no rain.” And I clean my house or read a book, and I wait.
My favorite part about writing is when you take something abstract and break it down into a practical metaphor, and instantly it makes you sound like a crazy person. That person up there, the one who is yelling at the weather, is a real wacko - one with an exceedingly poor understanding of how the Earth’s climate works, at that. But when you think about it in the way that she handles her life, you think, well, life is complicated and hard and everyone copes differently. But no! Well I mean yes, but also, no! It doesn’t have to always be complicated and hard. Actually, it can be just like the rain. Actually, it can be just about getting on with things.
First Me, sitting in the driver seat, crying over not being able to relax, was really tired of the rain. It had rained all week at work. It had rained all week at home. And now it was raining on the day she had set aside intentionally to avoid the rain. Second Me, sitting in the passenger seat, was far enough outside local weather patterns to know that I can’t change the rain - and sometimes the rain makes me sad and that life is complicated and hard, and it’s okay to be sad about the rain, but it’s not okay to let the rain be all I am. Part of the Art of Getting On With It means you have to accept that even on a day that the experts said would be sunny and dry, it can rain. And if and when it does, because life is complicated and hard, it doesn’t mean you can't train for your race. It doesn’t mean you can’t relax. It means that you put on different clothes, or map a new route, or change up the plan or the music or your company, and you get to the getting on with it.
Maybe my willingness to embrace the Art of Getting On With It is really just part of my desire to further shape myself in the image of a properly British person. Growing up in the United States, I don't know what it's like to know that my nation spent hundreds of years building an empire - only to watch it eventually either fall away in rebellion or crumble to pieces. When we're talking about rain - that's a real monsoon to try to wait out. And maybe for a while, they did try to fight the rain - or plead with it to stop - and maybe it took them a while, too, to figure out that the rain was going to come and go as it pleased and life just sort of has to carry on. I don't really know - I'm an American. We're sort of used to guessing right on the first or second try. Getting on with things, keeping calm and carrying on - these classic Britishisms - seem to come from generations of inherited experience. Sometimes you win a bunch of wars, sometimes you lose a bunch of wars. Sometimes it rains. Either way, if you don't go to work, you will lose your job. So best get a move on, then.
The Art of Getting On With It isn’t about being impervious to the rain. It’s the knowledge that while it’s raining now, it won’t rain forever. And that, sure - you can sit and wait it out, but whenever it stops you’ll still be in the same place. However, by moving through the rain, if you just get on with getting on with things, inevitably you'll be somewhere new, or be someone new, when it does, finally, let up.
Image Credit: SFGate
