I’m motivated to write this because frankly, I’m running into too much fear lately. I’m running into so many questioning, non-understanding faces that it’s ridiculous. And it frustrates me, because I want to shake so many people and say “LISTEN, just LIVE your freakin’ life!” Seriously.

But first, let me tell you how my sister and I got the Mary Poppins show canceled last Saturday.

We did. I can tell you how. Drum roll please…. O’Neal’s Law™ strikes again!! YAY! Yippeee! WoooooHOOOOOO!! For those unfamiliar with O’Neal’s Law™, let me state again: Murphy’s Law says “what can go wrong, will”. Neato. BOOORRRRRINNNGGG. O’Neal’s Law™ says “what can go wrong, will, but will go wrong in a very spectacular, quite possibly dramatic, and in the very least, entertaining fashion. Also, whatever has go wrong, will go wrong specifically because everything else was going oh-so-gloriously.”

There. Now you know. For instance, Murphy’s Law™ would have your car break down in the middle of the night, when you’re only 30 minutes from your sister’s house in Nashville. O’Neal’s Law™ has the car break down as you’re driving 55mph at 2am around a curve at the top of a small mountain pass with only a concrete wall and a grassy area ahead of you and because the car is completely electric you have no brakes, no steering, and no lights. And your sister is out of town, somewhere in Georgia. And your cell phone just died.

See? Two totally different cases of experience.

Supercalifragilisticexpi – - STOP PLEASE. STOP PLEASE.

So my sister came up for my birthday weekend and she took me to see Dave Brubeck who is celebrating the 50th anniversary of a most awesome tune called Take Five and also the album it was recorded for and that was super cool. Dude is old. Dude can play. I also had lots o’ beer at my favorite place, and then proceeded to have conversations with my sister I don’t remember. But she was laughing the next day, so I guess they were fun.

Saturday was The Perfect Chicago Day™. Low 80s, breeze off the lake, clear blue sky, holy cow I live for this. And we had an awesome day. Went to a couple cafes, went shopping, went for a tandem ride. Evelyn is still alive, thankyouverymuch.

And then I decided to surprise my sister with tickets to see Mary Poppins. And I was going to do it right. I was going to get floor seats, the good kind, not the ones behind the speaker/rope/technician/curtain. No, no, real. Frackin’. Good. Seats. How good? Ninth row, center section, aisle good. Awesome. Evelyn was stoked, super excited, and “chiding” me because it was MY birthday weekend. Whatever. She’s my sister, she’s my LITTLE sister, and dangit, I gotta do stuff like that for her. Done.

We go to see the show. It is still beautiful out.

The show starts, and it is awesome. The singing is good, the set creative in its transitions and there ya go. We see/hear/enjoy two songs and then the third one starts and Bert is singing, painting in the park and then some lady all in black steps from stage left and says “STOP. STOP PLEASE.”

Curtain down. House lights up. Ms. Announcer Voice™ saying “We apologize to you for the interruption, but we are having technical difficulties and will resume as soon as this is fixed. Again, apologies for the interruption.”

20 minutes go by. And I realize, O’Neal’s Law™ has just struck me down. In fact, I’m SO sure that O’Neal’s Law™ is striking that I make a bet with Ev, for $1.00, that the show will be canceled. Evelyn immediately realizes that this is unfair, she’s just lost a bet, but I force her to shake my hand anyway. Done.

Another 20 minutes and I realize, just as a watched pot won’t boil, a watched curtained stage isn’t going to do jack. So I decide to help it along, and excuse myself for a smoke.

I go outside, and it’s raining. I roll a new one, light it, and just as I’m getting ready to enjoy my time of vice, whaddayaknow I get a text from my dearest sister that yes, indeed, “CANCELED”.

I won a dollar.

And there you have it, another splendid example of what happens when you put us two together and things are going swimmingly. Sooner or later, it will all crash down and there is nothing, NOTHING you can do against it. You can only go with it. And laugh. Which we did. A lot.

Which brings me to the title, the real subject for today: how do you live with the “unknowns”?

For those of you in denial, you think you DO know. You’ve got a great plan. You’re going to work tomorrow. You’re going to buy a house in the future. You’re going to get a new car, or a new computer, or go on that trip or hell, run errands this weekend and hopefully find that cool piece of clothing at the store you saw on sale two days ago. And they’ll still have it in your size.

Really? You know all that? No you don’t. You don’t even know if there’s a random small, but vicious blood clot running through your system this very minute just itching to get stuck in the wrong place and suddenly place you in a position of life or death.

You don’t know next week, you don’t know tomorrow, and you certainly don’t know the next minute.

So how is it that I find so many people living in fear of the unknown? It’s not like we’re not familiar with it. It’s not like it’s some stranger who just knocked on our house of life and said “Hello, I’m Unknown, and I’ve come to visit! Do let me in, and do you have pickle soup?”

No. Our unknowns exist beyond as small a span a time as the next minute, around the corner merely five feet ahead, or just over there, ten feet, in Aisle 10, next to the orange juice.

I have people wondering how I’m sane, not knowing where I’m going to live in a month or so, or what job I’ll have or what the hee haw is going on with such-and-such and isn’t that driving you mad?

Sure, it’ll drive me mad, if I insist on KNOWING. And it’ll drive you mad too. Certifiably.

Instead, I insist on living. I take the moments as they come, the days as they unfold, and the nights as they linger.

That doesn’t mean I don’t make plans. That doesn’t mean I’m a wish-wash of Charlie Brown indecisiveness. It doesn’t mean I don’t have hopes, dreams, and big ideas of which I’d like to see tangible evidence of progress in the future.

But what it does mean is that I don’t live in fear of the unknown. I don’t shirk away from something new, a “what if” or a “but it might…”. If there’s something that I think I will enjoy, and the experience presents itself, then I step forward. If I find that stepping forward gets me struck by lightening because I happen to be the same height as Pikachu, then I try stepping back and see what happens.

And, quite often, I find myself laughing.