The Excitement Within

I wanted to run down the streets, bombed out of my mind, through the snow, crying out, "Hello, mailbox! Hello, streetlamp! Hello, nice men in white coats with tasers!" To me, there is no greater display of the sheer insanity of excitement than the scene near the end of Its A Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart realizes that he's not dead and that Bedford Falls is back to normal again. But think about that... who else in their right mind could ever understand what Jimmy Stewart found exciting? "You're excited to be alive... and to find that nothing's changed?"

Excitement is such a personal thing. It comes from within like a spring that bubbles up and overflows its banks - a geyser of energy and endorphins and all sorts of instant insanity. It makes us want to sing, and smile, and act foolish. We can't help ourselves. It is probably the greatest feeling in the whole world. We seek thrills to try and recreate the feeling. But the problem with excitement is that it is such a personal thing - one man's thrills are another man's yawns. The guy who leaps off perfectly good buildings can't understand the guy who spends his entire weekend looking for a particularly rare bird out in the woods so that he can observe it and catalog it. And yet, both feel the exact same kind of excitement. Even internally, sometimes we have no idea what causes us to be excited. We try and recreate those things that made us excited in the past, only to discover that we're not excited any more.

I've come to realize long ago that life, in and of itself, is quite exciting enough without looking for more. Who needs to look for death and danger when that particular gruesome twosome will surely come knocking on your door soon enough? Romantic escapades, thrilling job promotions, exciting days of family life come to all of us sooner or later. We are on a roller coaster already - some milder than others - and we can't get off the ride.

Yesterday, I went to the eye exam and I was giddy to discover all the new machines that go whirr and ping! I've been getting eye exams for more than 20 years and I thought I knew it all. Yet, they sat me in front of a new machine and it checked my vision in seconds (all computer controlled). The Glaucoma test was as simple as two gentle puffs of air (no more water drops full of gravel and laser beams poking your eyeballs!). What a delight! I picked out a new pair of glasses and paid for them and thought for sure that this would be the highlight of my day.

When I came home, though, I whipped out my credit card and went online and paid for my Disney World trip in September. All visions of running around the parks with my niece and nephew and family filled me with exuberant joy! I called my sister (twice) to gloat that I had paid off my trip. I called my Mom and told her as well. I thought for sure that this would be the highlight of my day.

But what kept me up last night, into the wee hours, had nothing to do with either of these things. Instead, as I switched off my computer at 1 AM, I was ready to go running through the streets of Pacifica professing my love for inanimate objects because I had finished editing three more chapters of the Novel. That was what I found the most exciting thing of the entire day! It was remarkable! On a day of so much excitment and thrills, the mundane task of writing was what filled me with joy and excitement! As I finished my journal entry last night, I chuckled to myself as I realized that the entire entry was about writing and not a single word had been spilt about new glasses or my trip to WDW. What a crazy thing excitement is - exuberant beyond measure and completely unpredictable!