As countless people descend headlong into the throes of global chaos it is worth pointing out that those of you who have jumped or who intend to jump with both feet on the panic button until your legs give out would be well-served to follow the teachings of the Pop Pop Rules.
Your presumed unfamiliarity with them is understandable, seeing how
only a few dozen copies of my crowning achievement have been sold. Since the ship has long since sailed on my career as an author serving as the linchpin of my retirement plan, I shall share a couple of the thirteen Pop Pop Rules with you free of charge. Think of it as my gift to you. Really, I mean it. When your birthday next rolls around, or Christmas (if your birthday has already happened this year), I want you to remember this gift. It will hopefully soften the blow of an otherwise present-free occasion.
Too many people, far too often, fail to appreciate the distinction between Fear and Panic. Wanting to make sure that neither the Franchise nor any of the grandchildren following in her footsteps fall into that same trap, I devoted three of the thirteen Pop Pop Rules to explaining, exploring, and understanding the difference between the concepts.
Rule
Number Six
Never be afraid to be afraid.
Fear is a healthy thing. Fear is a wonderful motivator. It would seem to me that it is safe to
presume that you know when you possess something you cherish, such as a
relationship, the moment you fear what it might feel like to have to learn to
live without it. Fear can keep you
focused and can help you live a purpose-driven life. It is your friend.
Rule
Number Seven
Never panic. Ever.
Panic is the most wasteful of all
emotions. Sometimes, a person mistakes
panic for fear. They are not
synonyms. Fear motivates. Panic paralyzes. Do not panic.
Panic accomplishes nothing. It
does not keep you focused. It does not
keep you on the path to a purpose-driven life.
It destroys you.
It destroys you because it consumes
you. Once you let panic overtake you, it
overwhelms your senses and freezes you in place. And here is the thing. In all likelihood, whatever it is that had
caused you to panic will be at least as bad – if not worse – after your panic
attack as it was before it began.
Learn from Pop Pop. While I am an asshole, I am also a person
without a “Panic” button. I was fourteen
when my father, an irredeemable asshole of a magnitude far worse than Pop Pop,
died in his sleep. He earned
approximately 85% of our family’s income.
He had a bad heart and died with no life insurance. He also died with no will. Your great grandmother, Joanie K., and Pop
Pop ate bologna sandwiches and scrambled eggs three nights a week in order to
keep our heads above water. It was not
easy. In fact, at times it was
terrifying. But Grandma Joan never panicked. And her refusal to panic was contagious. It grew inside of me.
Panic robs you of your ability to think
and your ability to reason. It can rob
you of the ability to save yourself.
When you feel life beginning to get away from you – and it will, believe
me – do not panic. Take a step back.
Slow everything down. Assess what is actually happening at that moment and not
everything you fear could happen in the next few moments. Breathe deep.
You will survive. I promise.
Rule
Number Nine
WIN
TODAY.
As you may have detected by now – and I
am confident that you have – being that you are a genius, many of Pop Pop’s
Rules connect with one another. That is
by deliberate design. Life is a journey,
not a destination. The proper tools are
necessary to ensure that your journey is as stress-free as possible.
People defeat themselves in life as
often, if not more often, than outside circumstances do. They do so – in no small part – because they
fail to appreciate the difference between Fear (Rule Number Six) and Panic (Rule
Number Seven). Worse still, they
treat the two concepts as if they are identical and, therefore,
interchangeable. It is a common mistake
– at least as common as the one many people make with Eagerness and
Anxiety.
But I digress.
Fear can be a
beautiful and inspirational thing. It fuels you. It drives
you. It hones your commitment to the task at hand. You want to know
a good, short cheat test for whether you love the most important people in your
life: Ask yourself if it scares you - even for an eye-blink - to
envision your life without them in it. See, this is not calculus. If it was, Pop Pop could not do it. This stuff, unlike calculus, is easy. Also, unlike calculus, you will actually use
this stuff in your day-to-day.
Panic, on the other
hand, is an unhealthy thing. It is an emotion that can kill you - and
will if you let it. It deprives you of your ability to think clearly and
cogently. More importantly, it turns off the logic and common sense part
of your brain, which (whether you realize it or not) you likely rely upon
countless times every day. It reduces you to a stimulus/response approach to
life, for which you are ill-suited. Worst of all, you stop acting and
start reacting. As your panic level ratchets up, and a solution to your
problem seems to be disappearing along the horizon line, you realize you are no
longer standing where you once were. You are now in quicksand. The
more you struggle, the faster you sink.
Best way to avoid
such a nightmare scenario? Remove panic from your day-to-day. To
steal a line from the great John Lennon, "It's easy if you
try."
Here’s the
thing. Life is broken up into
readily-digestible single-serve pieces. I do not know who decided upon
the concept of the "DAY" or determined that its length would be
"24 HOURS". I do not know who decided upon the recipe for Clams
Oreganato at Uncle Vinnie's in Raritan either. So
what? I know that they taste incredible. A friendly tip from Pop
Pop, your favorite curmudgeon: You do
not have to go through life trying to find the meaning of every damn
thing. Whoever it is who fashioned the day as life's primary unit of
measurement completed the task before I got here and well before you got here.
I need to know nothing else on the subject. Neither do you.
As it turns out, a
day is the ideal unit of measurement for life. For while there are days
that feel as if they last forever and there are days that feel as if they race
past us at an almost-incomprehensible speed, the fact of the matter is that
each essentially mirrors the one that came before it and the one that shall
come immediately after it in terms of its length. That, as it turns out,
is a critically important feature.
Generally speaking,
none of us knows precisely when our life will end. It is something akin
to hopping onto the bumper cars ride at Jenkinson's. The ride lasts for
as long as the youngster working it permits electricity to travel to the antennae
on the cars. "Switch on" and a-bumping we go.
"Switch off" and no more bumpity bump for my baby and me.
When you ride the
bumper cars, you can either spend the ride fretting over how long it shall last
or you can spend it mercilessly terrorizing the ten-year-old kids to whom you
were talking trash while all of you were waiting in line for your turn.
Irrespective of your approach, at some point the ride ends.
You have every
right to go through life worrying yourself to the point of panic about the
countless things in our day-to-day over which none of us has a smidgen of
control. Or, you can apply what I refer to as the "shampoo
principle", although the operative concept is not "rinse and
repeat" but rather "compete and repeat". Simply put, you
focus all of your attention and all of your energy on one thing: WIN
TODAY. At day's end, you do whatever you have to do to muster the
strength and the resolve to repeat the process the next day. That is it.
Nothing more.
Here's the damn
thing about it, you cannot solve tomorrow's problems, known or unknown,
today. You see, today, you have today's problems and travails with which
to concern yourself. That is more than enough for anyone. Trust
me.
The enormity of any
task becomes more manageable when broken down into smaller increments.
While I am not particularly fleet of foot, at some point in my early to
mid-40’s, Pop Pop took up the hobby of running in marathons. As I write this, I have completed nine
marathons, including two each in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Running a
marathon, and even more so for me, training for a marathon, is a massive
undertaking. To complete the task, which is after all the goal once you
have signed up for the race, I do not think about having to run 26.2
miles. I simply think about running a mile. Once I have completed
that task, I repeat it. I continue to repeat it until I have run out of miles
that I need to run. Again, this is not calculus. This is easy stuff.
Believe me. I could not do it if it was not.
#WINTODAY. Do that,
and nothing more, and you have achieved as much in one day as anyone ever has
and as much as anyone ever will. Then, get up tomorrow and do it
again. Do it until - well - do it until the kid flips the "OFF"
switch and your bumper car moves no more. At that point for you, as it
will for us all, the Boardwalk life will be through.
Until then, give
'em hell...
...after all, your
ticket is already paid for, right?
The life lessons I imparted to Maggie, while written for her, do not apply solely to her...although it might appear so since no one but her seems to have purchased the book. I live my life according to them, paying particularly close attention to those regarding panic and why you should never, ever do it. Not pushing the panic button does not equate to living life irresponsibly or arrogantly. It equates simply to living life intelligently and reacting and responding appropriately when confronted by a less-than-hoped for development in your day-to-day. It equates to living life assertively so that you do all you can do to be as well-prepared as you can be to respond to what happens to you.
The late, great John Wooden, a man significantly wiser than Yours truly, once famously observed that "failing to prepare is preparing to fail." Preparation permits spontaneity. More than that, it steels your spine. It gives you the strength you need to tamp down panic.
And these days that strength is something all of us need.
-AK
