Self-Help Yourself

There is this scene in Apollo 13 where a group of physicists back in Huston are asked to make a filter by fitting a table's worth of tubes and shiny science-thingys into a small box. They look at the box with furrowed brows, knowing that the task is almost impossible, they stare catatonic and daunted by where to begin. The brilliant minds eventually fit everything into the box, relay the message to space, and Tom Hanks survives.

I actually found the clip on Youtube and will defend the internet for as long as I live:


I was taking with coworkers about Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist and this other book about mice called Who Moved My Cheese. A genre of books and audio tapes all meant to inspire and show us what we already knew but we just couldn't see until we saw ourselves as animals. It is biblical and Aesopical and proverbial. And I just contributed Apollo 13 to this trope. However, I'm going with it. I can't pinpoint when, but along the way people told me I could legit go to the moon if I wanted and I believed them. I was probably 5 or 7 or a senior in high school. I want to write to all the authority figures and public service announcements from my youth and demand to know where my goddamned lunar landing is. And, in order to survive the trip back to earth, I have to fit into a round hole when I am actually square.

(Here we arrive at some of the holes in this metaphor. For example wouldn't it be more appropriate for me to the the round peg in a square hole, because of the connotations that square and round have? I am definitely not square. Also, what is my role? Am I one of the scientists or am I an astronaut? Are the scientists representing aspects of my personality and logic working together to let the 'outside' me survive? Like something out of Jung? Or perhaps it is me working with other people to try to get this life thing worked out together. Like something out of Public Television and Sesame Street. Who is on my team? Definitely Lauren and Jill. We need a villian. My Mom is the coordinator that keeps calling. Boys? Should I invite boys?)

Here I am, holding shiny 1960s NASA junk, considering self-help books. Trying to appreciate things around me and let go of it all at the same time. Opposition. Yoga. Buddhism. Loss. Elizabeth Bishop. One Art.

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.




We can find inspiration in the most quiet of places.