Flow State

One of my favorite Korean dramas is Because This Is My First Life. The title always struck me as odd until one of the characters explains it:

“This life… is everyone’s first.”

Such a simple idea. We’ve never been this age before. We’ve never had this exact collection of experiences before. Every new chapter of life is, by definition, the first time we’ve lived it.  It’s a great way to think about life as we live it.

That’s what I was thinking about today.

I’ve never been laid off before. I know people who have. I’ve read about it. I’ve certainly imagined what it might feel like. But imagining something and experiencing it are two different things.

It’s strange. Not because I don’t know what’s next. Not because I’m panicked. Just because my brain keeps saying, “Huh… so this is what this feels like.”   We expect ourselves to have the proper emotional response to every situation, but why would we? When we’re doing something for the first time, we’re making it up as we go.

The first day of high school.

The first date.

The first child.

The first funeral of someone close to us.

The first time we watch our parents grow old.

The first layoff.

None of us has a script.

Looking back, every chapter of my life that once felt unfamiliar eventually became normal. Somewhere along the way, I stopped being the new lawyer. I stopped being the new teacher. I stopped feeling like I had no idea what I was doing. This chapter will probably be the same.

Maybe that’s what I like so much about that line from the show. It reminds me to give myself a little grace.

After all, this is my first layoff.

Just like everything else in life, I’ve never been here before.

I cleaned out my classroom today.

Not much drama. A few books, some photos, my coffee mug, posters, and some other personal items.

The strange part wasn’t packing up.

It was realizing how routine the whole thing is.

Big organizations just keep moving. People come. People go. The machine rolls on.

I remember a great Onion article about a guy who returned to the restaurant where he used to work, expecting some emotional reunion, only to discover everyone basically shrugged because half the staff had turned over and nobody knew who he was. That’s life.

My school was there before I arrived seven years ago. It’ll be there after I’m gone. During my time there, plenty of teachers left. New ones arrived. Administrators changed. Students graduated. Freshmen showed up. The school kept humming along.

It was the same in the Army Reserve. New commanders. New NCOs. Different soldiers.

Same thing at the State’s Attorney’s Office. New State’s Attorneys. New assistant state’s attorneys. New investigators.

Nobody’s indispensable. The world is surprisingly good at continuing without asking our permission.

It’s a little unsettling, though.

It feels like one of those parallel-universe science fiction movies. Somewhere there’s the universe where I still teach at my school. In this universe, someone else will eventually be in my room, sitting at my desk, wondering why the previous teacher left so many paper clips.

Give it a few years and there will probably be only a handful of people there who even remember I worked there.

Oddly enough, that’s also a pretty good description of life.

The world got along just fine for billions of years before I showed up. I’ll get my little blip. A couple of generations after I’m gone, I’ll mostly be a name on a family tree. Eventually, probably not even that. Meanwhile, the planet will keep spinning, kids will keep going to school, somebody else will teach AP Government, and somebody else will inherit the office chair I left behind.

You can find that depressing if you want.

I actually find it freeing.

It reminds me not to take myself quite so seriously.

Tonight I’m going to my music lesson. Then I’ll come home, spend time with my wife, probably make myself a martini, and be grateful for another ordinary evening.

Because that’s the deal.

We don’t get forever.

We get the blip.

Might as well enjoy the hell out of it.