The Event

When I talk about “the event,” my narrative sounds strangely like Kevin Spacey’s “there was a lawyer…” yarn in The Usual Suspects. Unlike Verbal Kint’s tale, my event was as real as a Kobayashi coffee mug. You see… there was an event in April of this year that changed me. The event’s catalyst doesn’t matter, or even where the event happened. What does matter is I was someplace on a Sunday afternoon, and I began to sob. We’re talking at the funeral of everyone you’ve ever known boohooing. Had I been a professional mourner, this performance would have gotten me callbacks for the next couple of years. Through the black tears that were leaching off my equally dark feeling soul, I concluded I had made some grave mistakes in my life.

The life foibles weren’t the classic mid-life, “oh shit I haven’t…” realizations. Years before now, I knew I would be immune to the dude bro buy a Corvette and chase an age-inappropriate woman internal monologue pissing contest. Hell, I’ve jumped out of helicopters, backpacked hundreds of miles days away from civilization, written 11 books, paid off my house, and traveled. I had done all those things by forty-five and scoffed at the bullshit of a mid-life crisis. The problem that late April day, as I cried like a fat, balding, goatee-sporting baby, was that I was at the beginnings of the mid-life crisis I’d never seen coming.

I saw myself during the event as I indeed was—a guy who didn’t like himself much. That self-loathing came out pear-shaped enough I was going to lose something dear to me if I didn’t change. All the stuff and things packed into the event still don’t matter as much as the realization I had a choice. I could live the second half of his life (knock on wood that I’ll reach 90) as he had been the past few years. The external rot would accelerate to the same rate as the decay of my soul, and I’d be dead in a few years. Alternately, I could wipe the scales from my eyes and become a post-postmodern Saul turned Paul without all the creepy Christianie dogma that was force fed me as a youth.

I got off my knees and made the decision the old me wasn’t working out. It was time to do something different. What or how different that refinement of me was, I had very few clues. There were behaviors and emotional patterns I wanted to change or weed out of my existence. Even though I didn’t know what the process would involve, somewhere along the way I started an inside joke with those closest to me. When I caught myself falling into an old pattern, I’d say aloud, “I’m not going to say (or do) that because I’m growing as a human.” Those closest to me picked up on the turn of phrase, and it’s become the code for my evolution/mid-life crisis bullshit/hero’s journey/rediscovery/whatever guys my age who would never buy a motorcycle call this cosmic awakening rodeo. Growing as a human has been painful to me and some of those around me, but I can’t turn back now.

Part of the growing as a human process I’ve decided is writing about it. What do our experiences matter if we don’t have the strength to share with the hope my path makes someone else’s road a little easier? I use to give a fart in a whirlwind what everyone else thinks of me, so I’d hide my experiences. Why? Why do I care if someone living in their mom’s basement thinks I’m weak because of a few tears and betting butt-hurt while doing life? You’ll still be a troll and I’ll be out finding amazing things to write about in this space.

Since this has been a few months in the making, some of my experiences have been chronicling on Instagram @kannardbrian with the hashtags #AmazingThings and #GrowingAsAHuman. If you need to grow as a human, or just dig my column, drop me a line here or on Instagram. One never knows what contact can bring.