“Dear me,” he said. “`The Right One.’ Yes, I can see how it might be difficult to find that one. Who knows, for instance, if she is anywhere near us as we speak? She could be in Louisiana, or in Rangoon, or Yemen. Perhaps we are even in the wrong century. She could have lived during the Age of Enlightenment and passed from the world forever. Or perhaps she will not be born for another hundred years.”
I was dumfounded.
“What are you babbling about?” I said.
“I am merely saying that you speak of The Right One as if there is only one, and if you don’t find her you will just have to do without.”
Finnegan could be so pig-headed. True, he was right much of the time, but he was so pig-headed.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all,” I protested. “It’s just that the women I go out with aren’t appropriate. If one is intelligent, she’s not very good-looking. If one likes the kind of music I like, she drives me crazy by not showing up on time. If one is both intelligent and good-looking, she’s into her career so much that she doesn’t pay enough attention to me.”
Finnegan was listening to all this very seriously. “And how do you deal with all these ‘inappropriate’ women?”
I hope I didn’t sound testy, but I reacted immediately: “Why, I drop them. One date, and then I’m off. Why waste time on them?”
“Why, indeed?” replied Finnegan. “It is obvious that you are a quality man when it comes to relationships. Nothing but the best.”
He was looking at me in a certain way, and I knew what was coming.
“Oh, no,” I said. “Surely you aren’t going to tell me to date badly and keep on doing it. That’s crazy.”
“Is it?” said Finnegan. “Then why did you come up with it on your own?” He cocked his head. “Surely not through my poor influence during all these weeks of trying to improve your life?”
“But this is different,” I said. “I can’t apply principles that are successful in the workplace to my relationships with women. My personal life is just so much more. . .personal.”
“You may be right,” said Finnegan. “But let’s examine the situation and see if you are. When we talk about helping people in the workplace by permitting them to do badly, what are we doing?”
“Well,” I said. “I guess we are giving them a chance.”
“And what are we doing when we free them up from our rigid expectations of what they are or should be?”
I thought about it. “We are allowing them to be who they really are and make the most out of it. Humanity beats conformity.”
“And what happens when we trust them and give them a chance?”
“We are allowing them to be creative and to have fun, to get excited about what they are doing.”
Finnegan took a drink of coffee and looked around him at the various customers inside the shop and those he could see through the windows. They presented quite a variety.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but the type of women I enjoy are those who feel free to show me who they really are, who are creative and involved in life, who are able to get excited about me and about everyone and everything else around them.” He looked upward speculatively and nodded to himself. “It is quite amazing how many women are like that. Of course, they don’t always show it. Not if men are measuring them against a yardstick of supposed perfection.”
“Hmmm,” I said. “Like a boss that won’t give his workers a chance.”
“Yes,” said Finnegan. “Just like that.”
He reached into his lap, and removed a Panama hat that I hadn’t noticed when I first came in. Its appearance surprised me. I had never seen him wear a hat. But he seemed quite comfortable with it. He settled it on his head, tilting the brim with a deft hand.
“I’m sorry to leave you so abruptly,” he said with a wink. “But I have a date for lunch.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Life is Struggle, but Struggle is Life
I HAD NEVER ASKED FINNEGAN about the little book that he carried, and he never mentioned it. But I was sure it was not just some novel or biography, or a travelogue that he particularly enjoyed.
In time, I came to suspect it must be a compilation of his own or some other person’s wisdom. I particularly believed so when his discussions took a philosophical turn.
One November day, when the coffee shop and the tables out in the sun were busy with winter visitors, I noticed him reading with special intensity.
Right then, I decided I would delve more deeply into his commitment to doing things badly.
When I approached, the book disappeared into his pocket, as it always did.
But as we settled into our usual conversation, I purposely asked sweeping questions, hoping to draw him into revealing the underpinnings of his mode of thought, or to induce him to mention something he had gotten from this book.
“I’ve never asked you why your methods work,” I said, shifting my coffee cup this way and that and not looking at him, because I felt I might be moving into unwelcome territory. “I mean, there must be hidden principles that cause them to be so effective.”
When he responded, his voice was as cheery as ever.
“I’ve been wondering why you haven’t asked,” he said. “With your inquiring mind, you must be eager for that sort of information. And it is valuable.”
I looked up, saw his usual genial expression, and hurried to assure him.
“It’s not that I’m prying. You have been so generous with me and others. I don’t want to presume to demand your deepest secrets.”
His smile seemed just for me. I felt a profound sense of companionship, and I was grateful.
“My deepest secrets, indeed,” Finnegan said. “Well, my deepest secret is that I have no secrets. The principles of my methods are open for all to see. The world around us shows us their worth every day.”
I was a bit put off by this. In fact, I thought he was trying to be evasive, though I felt guilty for thinking so.
“How can that be?” I asked. “I wasn’t aware of them until you told me. And I still need your guidance to refine and practice your techniques.”
“You are a good friend,” he told me warmly. “But you are giving me far too much credit. I am not a touchstone of wisdom, revealing arcane knowledge. The value of doing things badly is obvious. Only those who get bogged down in the details of life cannot see it. If you believe one mediocre performance defines a person, you are bogging yourself down. If you see doing badly as part of a process that in time will lead to good things, you have gained understanding.”
“Then a failure to understand is simply a failure to look?”
“Yes, certainly,” replied Finnegan. “Arthur Conan Doyle, the famed author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, said that all women are beautiful. What did he mean by that? That there is beauty in the essence of being a woman. That there is beauty not only in the physical nature of women, but in the way they approach life, their reactions to it, what they give back to it.
“Sherlock Holmes once chided his friend Watson, saying, ‘You see, but you do not perceive.’ This is a failure of many people. It is not that they don’t see beauty, but that they do not look for it. To find beauty, you must look into the nature of people. If you look keenly enough, you will find it.”
I was absorbing all this, picking my way carefully.
“Then you are saying that people fall short in their efforts to gain happiness because they are poor observers of the world around them?”
Finnegan put up a hand. “Not only that. They fall short also because they do not engage that world.”
“You mean that they spend too much time on the sidelines?”
“Some spend all their time on the sidelines,” he replied. “In a world bombarded with media, many let the world happen to them rather than going out after it.”
“Are you saying they are not working hard enough for success?”
“They are not working hard enough for anything,” said Finnegan. “Success,
after all, is not the pinnacle of life. Especially since, to many, it means only financial success. We sometimes say that someone who has achieved financial success has `arrived.’ What does that expression mean, anyway? Where could you possible arrive in this world that you would want to stay and never leave? Who ever really makes enough money, or attracts enough love, or gains enough power? No, the aim must simply be to keep moving forward in life. If you were never to ‘succeed’ but kept moving forward toward your goals, you would have an enormously enjoyable life.”
At this point, Finnegan unconsciously placed his hand on the coat pocket that held his book.
“Look at the basketball player, Michael Jordan,” he said. “The best basketball player in the history of the world. In mid-career, he decided to play professional baseball! Now, he certainly intended to play baseball well, but he must have known he would never play it as well as he played basketball. And, in fact, he was a mediocre baseball player, at least by his standards. But what a challenge! Once again, as he had when he first learned basketball, he experienced the thrill of improving little by little, of struggling, of being engaged! This is the mark of someone who is not afraid, who understands the glory of the struggle itself.”
“So that is the basic principle,” I said.
“Yes!” said Finnegan. “Life is struggle, but struggle is life. Happiness, as near as we can approach it in this world, is simply getting up each day and doing something. Badly, well, or some other way. Feeling the blood pulsing in your veins and arteries, brushing the sweat from your brow, hearing the cogs in your brain clicking and whirring. Being in the fight. Slapping your companions on the back, thrusting your fist in the air, giving a hell of a cheer. And then enjoying a wonderful laugh.”
At this, he jumped upright, both his fists shooting upward.
“Don’t spend your life on the couch!” he exclaimed. “Get out there and do things badly! You’ll never regret it.”
CHAPTER TWELVE: Where’s Finnegan?
THE FOLLOWING DAY I WENT to the Starbucks and Finnegan wasn’t there. I didn’t think much about it. He sometimes skipped mornings, and I didn’t have anything pressing to ask him. I would see him the next day, or the next. There was no real hurry.
The fact was, I had run out of things to ask him. He’d already given me advice that applied to every part of my life. I got my coffee and went out into the winter sunlight. Settling down, I made an accounting of all he had done for me.
My fitness had improved. I was doing ten bad push-ups and ten bad sit-ups a day, and it was so easy. I knew I’d fallen into a habit that would be hard to break, so I was considering doubling the number of repetitions. Why not? It would be better for me. But I was definitely not going to push myself. I wasn’t going to get to the point where I was thinking too much about what I was doing. Why bother, when I could do so much good for myself by exercising badly?
Same thing with my diet. I kept fruit and fresh vegetables around, but I made a point of munching on them when I was watching TV and my thoughts were otherwise occupied. Unconsciously, I was putting away a lot of good stuff, so much so that sometimes when I considered an ice-cream sundae, I just wasn’t hungry for it. When I really wanted that sundae, of course, I had it. Otherwise, I would have been risking eating too well, and I certainly didn’t want to do that. I’d done so well eating badly (relatively speaking), that I didn’t want to risk flipping over to a hard-nosed regimen I knew I couldn’t follow.
My business was booming. The woman staff writer handling the binding problem had taken care of that issue, and she and my other employees had never seemed happier. Given the option of working badly, they were doing incredibly well.
My romantic life had improved, too. Since I had started dating badly, I’d noticed something. Many of those women I thought weren’t pretty enough or fashionable enough or successful enough were terrific company. Instead of putting every woman I saw on a personal yardstick, I just went with my instincts.
If there was anything about a woman I liked—her smile, the deft way she handled a work situation, her interest in a particular kind of book or movie—I’d ask her out for coffee. And if that worked out halfway well, I’d ask her to dinner. I made a lot of wonderful friends, and began dating one of them steadily, a woman I never would have considered in the past.
When I finally realized that no woman was perfect, I began to see little perfections in all of them.
As I left the coffee shop that day, I was excited. I was brimming over with gratitude to Finnegan, and I was eager to see him so I could tell him.
I made a point of hitting the Starbucks every day, hoping to catch him. Each day, I’d approach the glass door with anticipation, already peering through the bright sun-glow, hoping to catch sight of him at his corner table. But each day as I entered, I’d glance toward the corner, and the table would be empty.
After a couple of days, I began asking the coffee server if he had seen Finnegan. The first day I asked, the coffee server was the same one who had originally pointed out Finnegan to me. He just shook his head. Then he shrugged and smiled, as if Finnegan’s absence didn’t matter all that much.
The next day that server was gone and he never appeared again. When I asked the replacement servers about Finnegan, and even when I asked about the previous coffee server, they seemed not to know what I was talking about.
I was mystified. But I kept going to the shop on the off chance that I’d see Finnegan. I made it every day for two straight weeks and he wasn’t there.
But on the fourteenth day, when I looked at his table, I realized a very strange thing. No-one had been at that table for two weeks. The whole shop was crowded, and it had been almost this crowded every day, but no-one had used that table.
That day, after I ordered my double espresso, I went and sat at the table myself. I felt like relaxing and, in truth, I had time to relax. Things were going very well at work. I wouldn’t be needed there for several hours, perhaps not for the whole morning.
I sat there sipping my coffee, taking care not to spill any of it on my white linen suit, or on the mahogany polish of my cap-toed shoes. After a while, the newest coffee server passed the table on his way outside to sweep the sidewalk, and he smiled and nodded at me, as if he was very glad I was there.
I was glad I was there, too. This was quite a friendly place, and the warmth coming through the windows was comfortable. In a way, it was as if Finnegan were still here. After a while, I removed a slim volume from my pocket, a volume bound in rich cloth, and began to read it.
I was thoroughly enjoying myself when a troubled-looking man approached me. There was something wrong in his life, I could tell. He nodded at me, then at the coffee server, and said, “Sorry to disturb you, but the man over there said you could give me some good advice.”
I smiled at him and slipped the slim volume into my pocket, making no particular effort to hide its title.
I waved toward the chair across from me.
“I’ll certainly try,” I said. “Though I’m afraid I might do it badly.”
He settled down, looking relieved.
“From what I hear, that will be just fine,” he replied.
And it was.
Charles Kelly doesn’t look anything like Finnegan, correct? Or perhaps you think he does.
In any case, if you liked this book, you can write and tell him so at [email protected]. Or visit his website, hardboiledjournalist.com. And, please, review this book on Amazon!
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright ©2011 by Charles Kelly. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This book was edited by Patrick Millikin. Author photo by Michael Ging. Cover design and illustration by Kee Rash.
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