GOT AN EVICTION NOTICE AND RELAXED

          Friday, February 10^th. I hear a knock on my door at about 8:30 in the morning and decide to ignore it. I’m thinking it’s probably just the building management notifying me of more maintenance or something. They always leave a message posted on the door for things like that though so I don’t really need to get up. Sure enough the knock doesn’t return and I turn over and fall back asleep.

            Several hours later I wake again. Feels like it’s time to get up. And when I look out the window I’m pleasantly surprised to see that it’s a nice looking afternoon. As I shamble over to my kitchen to make breakfast my curiosity gets the better of me and I open my front door to see if I’ve been left anything. There I find a harmless looking piece of folded paper taped to my door.

            Taking it inside and opening it I smile sarcastically at what I’m reading. I have ten days to pack my things and get out.  Wow. Seems kind of harsh. I mean, they didn’t even let me know that there was a problem with the rent before giving me notice. However  I’m not shocked by their behavior: let’s just say that I’ve lived in the building long enough now to know them pretty well. And if you’re already dead there’s really no point in screaming.

            As I write this I’m picturing a man in a very nice suit falling through the sky thousands of feet in the air. He’s plummeting to his death, he knows it. So what does he do? He gets on his cell phone and calls his lawyer. To settle up his estate of course, to tie up all the loose ends of his life.

            That said, there’s another way to respond to catastrophe. Go crazy. Anger, sorrow, whatever. This is the preferred choice of a lot of people. When something bad happens they react with emotional abandon. I suppose there’s a certain amount of momentary satisfaction in this but I’m trying to think of a scenario where reacting this way would ever help the situation and I can’t come up with a single one. There’s just no benefit as far as I can tell.

            Makes sense though. After all, how could irrational behavior ever help a person? If life is like a maze you might get lucky once in a while and take a good turn by just choosing at random but to actually navigate a maze definitely requires a clarity of mind and, let’s say, a sort of strategic approach. So to get the most out of life I guess you have to try and be as smart as you can. Try and figure things out. Try and find your advantages.

            Of course it’s much harder to do this when one is in the grips of extreme emotions. Logic usually takes a dive out the nearest window in such instances. Which is not to say that I think people should never be emotional. I’m not talking about the whole of life here: just the business parts of it. Life is full of practical realities bursting with practical problems that can only be addressed with practical solutions. No amount of wishful thinking will change that.

            Life though I think is mostly unfair. Most of the worst things in this world happen to people who don’t deserve it. And I’ve got to believe that every person who has ever lived has had to cope with being treated unfairly at some point in their lives. Successful people I suspect generally deal with such instances of unfairness by accepting the reality of their situation and simply making their next move as good as possible. After all, if a boulder rolls into the middle of the street while you’re driving your car, there’s no point in honking your horn at it and giving it the middle finger because you’ve got right of way. Just swerve around it.

            So back to my housing crisis. I couldn’t get in touch by phone with my building manager and as such I was left with leaving her messages. Obviously I had a choice here. I could have gotten mad and gone out of my way to tell her what a horrible person I thought she was. Right? I could have left a message for my building manager calling her as many nasty things as I could conjure up but… even if I actually felt that way, would it have been a good idea? Well, what could I have possibly achieved by doing that? Nothing as far as I can tell.

            Accordingly I left very polite messages asking for clarification regarding what was going on. And my building manager responded with a voice mail later that day explaining that apparently it was all just a misunderstanding. So, clearly I made the right decision. But what if I had been getting evicted anyways? Still can’t see how anger would have helped. And for me at least, there’s a certain pride I take in not allowing people to manipulate how I feel whether or not they are consciously intending to do so. Or even just random events. I’d rather not be the puppet of any force: human or otherwise. Because then it’s not even really my life anymore.