My boss always puts a Chinese herbal supplement called Gan Mao Ling down in the greenroom of the theater because she swears it helps people not get sick (and sick actors are a big pain in the showbiz-making ass of a theater company). Last winter I started taking some when I felt like I was starting to get sick, and damn if the stuff doesn't actually seem to help. For me, the effect is kind of like taking an ibuprofen or two and drinking a third of a Coke. So now I buy my own Gan Mao Ling and I have an industrial sized bottle that I keep in my car and try to take every morning. I think they help with my mood.
U2 has a new song out and I was listening to it at the gym last night (my daughter likes to go to the YMCA with me because she gets to walk on an elliptical machine and watch Youtube shorts) over and over while I ran and I felt pretty exhilerated.
Does this Blogger platform not have a spellcheck? I don't know how to spell exhilerated! How can this not have a spellcheck?
Anyway, I was at the gym, and running, and listening to this U2 song (yes, I know that I should not still be listening to U2, that they are way past their prime, that they are annoying, and rich assholes, and hipocrites [another need for spellcheck here], etc. etc. etc, but I still do. And actually I love some of their most recent music) and feeling exhilerated, and the point is that I think the exhileration was about 30% due to the running, and about 30% due to the music, and about 40% due to the Gan Mao Ling.
I today I thought that Gan Mao Ling would be a good subject for a blog post. We all now know that I was horribly, horribly, wrong.
After returning from the gym, I went for a walk with Sam, and it was absolutely perfect. Every year I love my kids more and more. He was making an argument to me (that humanity should go back to caveman times. That we've lost our connection to everything that gives human life meaning and purpose) that I used to make. I don't believe it anymore, but it made me smile, and I loved to hear his reasoning and passion as he argued. I reminded him that he liked to eat 3 meals a day, and is not so big on the the killing of things or the farming. And I gently pointed out that, while his argument isn't water tight (because of the aforementioned love of 3 squares a day and the aversion to killing/farming) it IS pointing him in the direction of his own understanding of what's important to him. What does he think is important that humanity has lost? How can he try and get it back in his own, modern, life? And that, if he understands what's important to him, that will help point him in the direction of a life he loves. And then I said we should switch sides and argue again. An old trick of my dad's whenever we used to argue: "Don't hold on to your beliefs so tightly that you lose sight of the other side."
