I Hate Good Examples!
Stop trying to inspire me
Mark Twain wrote, “Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.” He got that right, especially good examples that are supposed to inspire me in my old age.
Like Ernie Andrus, 89 years old, who ran a 200-mile overnight race! Or Fauja Singh, who ran in the Mumbai Marathon at age 104? Or Betty Goedhart, who started on the trapeze at age 78.
I feel really inspired to do her favorite trick, the “razzle-dazzle” — jump off a platform, turn around on the bar, fly back over the platform, swing back and forth one more time, flip in the air, and land.
Are you kidding? For me the “razzle dazzle” is getting out of bed, walking to the end of the driveway, picking up the paper, and walking back, all without doing a face plant, walking into a wall, or tripping.
These people (who are clearly from another galaxy) do not arouse me to superhuman effort. I cannot run a marathon. I can’t run a mile. A friend once tried to get me to participate in a 5K (3.3 miles) “fun run.” For me, a fun run is from my bed to the bathroom.
Aside from geriatric super-athletes, I’m mocked by zealots who want to yank me from my “comfort zone.” In an AARP Magazine article, Ken Budd rhapsodizes over cooking pasta for 42 children in Kenya, ripping off a thumbnail in the Andes, and getting a spider bite the “size of a golf ball” in Costa Rica.
All of this “busting out of my comfort zone,” Ken assures me, will make me “healthier and happier.”
No, Ken. It won’t.
Sweating in a miasmic jungle while being munched on by spiders, or tearing off body parts in the Andes would not improve my health or happiness. I don’t enjoy cooking pasta for myself, let alone 42 children!
And I don’t want to leave my comfort zone. It’s comfortable. I left my comfort zone a few times during my nearly eight decades and each time my life was nearly destroyed.
And then there are those sweet old couples who retire and open a Bed & Breakfast. He was a successful investment counselor and she ran has run a high-profile ad agency. So not only were they way more successful than me before retirement but they will now be more successful than me again!
The mystery for me is Why would anybody want to own a Bed & Breakfast?
So every day I can strip and remake 12 beds, do tons of laundry, dust, vacuum, and wash 12 bedrooms, cook for 36 guests, wash hundreds of dishes and flatware pieces three times a day, weed, prune, spray, and otherwise maintain two acres of gardens, and …
Okay, enough. I’m suffering nervous exhaustion just from writing this stuff down! These “good examples” just make me want to curl up in a ball and whimper.
Do you want to show me a good example? Show me an old guy who goes to the bathroom only four times a night. That’s an example that can inspire me to greater effort.
