Steve Braunias
Steve Braunias reflects on the passage of time
End of the year, end of the decade, start of God knows what comes next in my dumb and wayward life. 2020! It can’t be any worse than my 2019 but there’s no guarantees. I’m open to some new sadness, some fresh shattering of my nerves, some unexpected and upsetting development with a you-get-what-you-deserve twist. Happy New Year to you, too.
“You never know your luck in a small town,” a friend of mine used to say over a drink; gosh she was a wonderful person to know, so funny and reckless, and completely loyal. And so optimistic! What a talent she had for optimism — and it was contagious. I only ever felt good about life and my prospects within in it when I was with her. We’d sit and drink for hours. She had a talent for drinking, too.
But I’ve always been more of a pessimist. No doubt there are fascinating reasons for that dating back to the usual murks and nightmares of childhood and maybe it was something I could have explored with a shrink. I made two or three calls this year to try and secure an appointment. The last attempt was in October but it was really difficult to find someone who could make the time.
“We’re constantly in demand, the sad truth is there are a lot of unhappy people in our society,” emailed one shrink. I replied, “God, so many losers! Lol I feel better already — I’m not the only one.” I didn’t hear back from him.
A different counsellor managed to squeeze me in an hour. A friend had said she’d catch up with me only if I promised to make an appointment. We caught up, and she said, “How did it go?” I told her I’d cancelled it. She was a bit taken aback — I’d welshed on the deal — but I said that I was feeling a lot better and couldn’t be bothered going through with an hour of having to dredge up whatever issues, problems, histories etc in someone’s office. The sun was out, we went for a walk. It was nice.
Happiness made cameo appearances throughout the year. There was an afternoon of it during Easter — the sun was out, we went for a walk, it was so nice to spend time as a family. I mentioned that someone who really doesn’t like me very much had sent a text that morning, saying it made him happy (“HA-HA-HA, scumbag”) to hear that my personal circumstances had gone south and that I would be spending a miserable Easter, alone and dejected. Like I say, the guy isn’t a fan. “But here we all are,” said our daughter, “and we’re on a lovely nature walk.” It was a good joke: we were walking beside a mangrove creek at low tide, always a dismal sight, with a thin trickle of water and litter lying about on the exposed mud.
Afterwards, alone but not actually dejected, I thought back to our family holidays in the sun in exotic locations — Rarotonga, Hong Kong, South Africa. I remembered the good times all too well. But it’s not ideal to prefer the past to the future and in the meantime there’s a ton of present to get through. New Year’s Eve, summer holidays, back to school, Easter …
2020 beckons, it’s any day now. A new year, a new decade. God. Good luck to us all. There are so many threats to our existence on Earth — climate change, terrorism, Trump — that sometimes it feels that just hanging on in there is a wild and crazy ambition.
You dread the worst but hope for the best, you just have to see it out, get on with it, and make an effort to make the lives of others as good as you can. There was another thing my talented drinking friend always used to say with real sincerity and conviction:
“Everything’s going to be all right.” I totally believed her. I still kind of do. Happy New Year. Here’s to optimism.
JANUARY 11: Ashleigh Young