I Played Cello in the Bobo Orchestra

IN CASE anyone (i.e. either one of you) is wondering, I had a nice time out on the town on Wednesday night. I saw the sorts of people that I wanted to see, and none that I didn't, and I suppose I'm not the first person in history to realize that stuffing is one of the best hangover cures of all time, but I sure do feel like I am. Anyway.

ON BEING HUMAN: I was listening to NPR today and I heard a segment about a famous trumpet player. When asked whether he still practiced, he said that he practices every single day. Have you ever tried to list the things that you know for certain you have done every single day of your adult life? Mine is a rather sparse, mundane collection of tasks. It reads kind of like a human's list of the biological and physiological necessities for life.

Every day of my adult life, I know I have done the following:

• Drank water
  
• Breathed
• Eaten food (well, maybe there was the occasional stomach virus/prom)
• Clothed myself
• Sheltered myself
• Spoken (maybe sometimes to nobody in particular)
  
• Walked from one place to another
  

Why can't the list be longer? I wish it were. I wish I could say that I did something "meaningful" each day, like looked at the stars or wrote in my journal or called home, but I would be lying. Looking at that measly list makes me wonder about the human capacity for doing anything with any semblance of predictability or, dare I say, fidelity, besides the absolute basics.

We leave our childhood homes in the suburbs to move into apartments far away, but only until we can afford houses in suburbs different from the ones we grew up in. We quit our jobs for better jobs, and then leave those a few years later. We end our relationships with boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, and start over again with someone new. Even the permanency we bring upon ourselves - tattoos, scars, implants - can be removed when they become unwanted reminders that conjure regret.

What if the trumpet player needs to play the trumpet the way you or I need to eat or breathe, and is there something else that each of us non-trumpet players is meant to do other than just survive? If we could find that thing, that one thing we are each meant to do, would we stop all of our running around?

MAYBE, THOUGH, being an ordinary human is not as bleak as I've made it out to be here. I do sometimes derive a sense of comfort in knowing that my list is the same as so many other peoples' lists - the 275 pound NFL linebacker I'm watching on my TV right now, the 50-something year old woman with braces who bagged my groceries yesterday, my stripper neighbor who sleeps until 2:30pm most weekdays - however different our lives might in every other way.

And there is something poignant in knowing that there are people who do not or cannot do those basic things that most people do every day, almost without thinking. Walking home from the gym tonight, the bitterly cold wind whipping through my wool coat, I envisioned my toasty warm apartment and the two slices of leftover homemade pizza waiting for me in the fridge. Then I passed a man outside of the 7-11, the same man I see every day in that same spot. He can't be more than 10 years older than I am. And there he was again, laying on his side, his bare face pressed against the icy pavement, brown bagged bottle still in his hand. What I have, he does not.

I wonder if, each time he wakes up in that spot, the air in his lungs comes as a surprise to him, and I wonder how alive he must feel every morning when the sun bleeds through his eyelids and coaxes him into a new day. I walked past him tonight and thanked God for the simple things in my life that make the sheer act of living easier for me. I wonder if the man on the sidewalk gives thanks, too, for his human-sized rectangle of land, for his cup full of coins and the tattered clothes on his back. Perhaps today, that gratitude is what he and I have in common.