From the Editor’s Desk: Can’t Complain (Premium)

I was on the elliptical machine at the gym watching a how-to video on YouTube on my phone recently when a guy I often speak with there, George, walked through the door, smiled at me, and waved. I returned the salute. I don’t really need any more friends at this point in my life. But I could be friends with George.

George and I see each other 2-3 times per week at the gym and we chat briefly each time. He’s always very friendly and, alien to me and thus fascinating, is always in a good mood. I don’t get jealous very often. But I am jealous of that.

It was perhaps inevitable that I would eventually blurt out something to that effect.

“How’s it going?” I asked, taking out my right earbud and thus pausing the video as he walked up to the elliptical after checking in at the front desk.

“I can’t complain,” he responded.

“That sentiment has never even crossed my mind, let alone my lips,” I replied, laughing but not laughing. God, I admire this guy: he’s centered, healthy, and recently retired. We chatted for a bit, and then we moved on with our days.

Which in my case involved recording Windows Weekly later in the day. Richard Campbell joined the show in recent weeks, and it’s an interesting way to spend more time with a long-time friend I don’t otherwise get to see enough. Anyway, before the show, Richard and I jumped on a Zoom call to chat.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“I’ve got nothing to complain about,” he responded.

Oh, come on.

Richard, like George, is one of those really centered people who are always in a good mood and has a positive outlook. But I also know Richard better than George and I’ve long felt that he’s onto something. He’s figured it out. It being life, I guess. And yeah, not a jealous guy per se, but I am jealous of that too.

More to the point, I want to be like that. Not jealous. Just centered. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

And yet it is. I get upset about dumb things, small things. I don’t always understand, let alone agree with, the decisions others make. I don’t know why this is problematic for me, but it is. And I get stressed easily. We have a lot going on right now, and there is an air of uncertainty surrounding the future. I’ve been sleeping poorly, all the usual problems.

This past weekend, my wife and I visited the Boston area for a long-planned event involving 6 other couples. Pre-pandemic, I had been driving back about once a quarter for get-togethers with my friends, but this one included everyone’s wives as well, and so it needed to be scheduled well in advance. With everything going on, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to go now, but … we did. And, as is so often the case, it wasn’t just fine, it was great. I really enjoyed catching up with everyone.

And I found myself, once again, in a strange situation, talking to a friend from high school who, perhaps not surprisingly, has a much more positive outlook on life than I do.

A bit of background: among our group of friends, there’s one who cancels on our normal guys-only events so regularly that it’s become a bitter joke for the rest of us. And this time, he predictably canceled less than an hour before the start of the couples’ event. So it was a source of humor for the rest of us who actually showed up. I drove there from Pennsylvania, for crying out loud. It’s easy to feel slighted by what feels like insensitive selfishness.

But this other friend I was speaking with Saturday offered a different view, noting that social anxiety was a real problem and was something that he had experience with in his own family. And this other friend’s family, he added, has a history of issues that might help explain his behavior. Instead of ripping on the guy, he said, we should simply understand what’s wrong with him and support him.

As I was pondering this, wondering at this, really, we moved on to a discussion about our similar recent experiences: he and his wife coincidentally bought a fixer-upper in the depths of the Maine woods right around the time that my wife and I had bought the apartment in Mexico City. We both surprised ourselves by diving into something that was uncharacteristically risky, for us, and both of us are thinking about what this means and what the future looks like.

This is the kind of thing I obsess over. But my friend’s viewpoint was interesting: his kids are going to be starting their own families at some point too, and having this getaway, this potential primary residence, is something he and his wife want to do now. When the grandkids inevitably arrive, maybe they’ll feel differently about how and where they spend their time. But for now, this is what they want. And they have a clear view of how this place could pay for itself via Airbnb, VRBO, or similar services if things change and it comes to that. Whatever: to him, this was a no-brainer, and not something to stress over.

This is not how I view things. But I at least have the self-awareness to know that stressing over something—or stressing over everything—only gets in the way. After all, what’s going to happen is going to happen regardless. The issue for me is that I don’t know how to change this. I know it’s bad, and I have examples of people with better attitudes, people who I admire for that quality. But this is one I can’t solve.

I’d like to solve this one.