My one thing.
I have a working theory that every person has one primary pump that drives their engine - one passion, one great love, one aspect of their life that sets them on fire. That not indulging said thing is moving away from themselves for the mishmash of other social expectations. Working in retail nearly my whole life has afforded me thousands of human interactions to quench my curiosity; a cultural anthropology experiment only I know I’m running** where I can get to the bottom of what someones passion is. You know you’ve struck it when you see a glimmer in their eye, a subtle twitch of a smile. They stand up a little straighter, get chattier, come to life. I believe true connection begins if you can mine for strangers one thing then just listen fully, asking questions, and witness the magic, the beauty, the delight of humanity.
A mall, especially in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, was an ecosystem and if you worked there it was like a play with a full cast of characters, think Cheers but with a Hot Topic. Seen here is my friend/co-worker Candace and I staging a scene with the mall “security guard” when we should have been working. Classic.
The thing about that one thing is if you or I are being true to our purpose then that one thing should sit at the top spot of priorities in our lives. Ahh, can you feel this getting gooey now? If your one thing is your work, what happens when your partner/friend/kids/family tug you away from that? If your one thing is family, how do you drudge through a workday? Most important of all questions, do you know what your one thing even is, or has it gotten all tangled up in what you should do or be or say, what Instagram tells you to buy, or podcast tells you what to believe that YOU are? Does your partner know that work is your one thing? Can they support that and, if not, are they the right partner? What can be lost by being that honest? Maybe the scarier question, what can be gained? It’s certainly easier not to go down this road at all, to not think on such things.
I have a friend, Wayne, who does massage for hospice patients. To do this job is to be intimately connected to the thoughts of people facing the end of their life. I asked him once to distill down the theme of what his client friends were thinking about. “This is easy,” he shared, “all that really matters is did I love and was I loved.” He went on to tell true stories of those interactions that have stuck with them and I recognized these stories immediately. These are one thing stories. To be loved and to love was directly tied to that singular, top of the heap calling of the person. The lover of work was loved for that work. The lover of family, loved by the family. The lover of travel explored, the lover of food ate and cooked, the lover of cars has them scattered joyfully around their property. The most peaceful in the end knew themselves and gave themselves over to living it out, consequences and all.
I am closer to death than ever before. YOLO means something very fucking real now. It takes my breath away. But you know what? I know my one thing and in knowing it I feel cooled down, less afraid. My one thing is this, it’s what I’m doing right now and have been for 25 years. It’s listening to others, watching them come alive in their joy, basking in that joy, and feeding off them to learn more myself. My life is about the great love of exactly what is in front of me, of going inward and becoming an expert on me. I’ve been told by many people my whole life that this is a selfish pursuit. This is when I stop listening. I know where my light resides. Whatever time I have left I’ll be spending in the relentless pursuit of finding that same light in others and myself.
Be brave dear ones. Find your thing and have no mercy in making space for it to bloom. Oh, and always tip 20%+, be nice to anyone serving you, and choose your closest people based on how they do the same.
Arbitrary footnote: to maintain joy and mental health working with the gen pop for 25 years, you 1. have to already be a little crazy 2. generally like people, and 3. play your own games. My favorite job was selling cellphones in the late ’90s at the Lindale Mall kiosk in Cedar Rapids, IA where my co-worker friends and I would choose a word of the day and get points for saying that word the most in sales transactions. Word: Marshmellow. Example: “We’re adding insurance to that phone today, the Nokia 5100 is no marshmallow and will shatter on impact.” We also ‘gifted’ ourselves lots of light-up antennas and faceplates for said Nokia. Ooph. Kids today just don’t know.
The RP Communications dream team, me, John, and Candace, circa 2000. The best job of my life. We all should have been fired.