Live! For one night only

Some of my co-workers took this to mean that I was either a) quitting or b) depressed. No worries, I'm fine and sticking around for now. It was just one of those weeks.

The main motivation in most people's lives is leaving. They want to leave town, leave their job for a better one, or leave their circumstances. Sometimes they're afraid someone will make them leave something they're not ready to. We refer to this as firing, dumping or eviction. Those are all big time motivators.

Sometimes people leave. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. Someone is always leaving, and everyone leaves sometime, and you pretty much just hope like hell that the people you like best leave after you do, except when they're not supposed to. The hard part is figuring out when that's the case. Working out and accepting the fact someone probably ought to leave is a big part of life.

Often people know that time has run out for them in a given endeavor, whether that endeavor is college, politics, marriage, or breathing. There's a demeanor that accompanies the realization, and it can be awful to see someone develop it — people are naturally freaked out to see things end because they start wondering what (or who) might be next.

Leaving usually sucks at first. Sometimes it sucks forever. Given a choice, most folks won't leave anything until it's too late. It's so easy get greedy and cling to what you have. That's why people have entire careers in fields they hate, why kids hang out with "friends" they no longer like, why couples forgive each other beyond all reason and try to resurrect feelings that belong six feet deep. Most people I know can name specific situations where they would have saved themselves a world of hurt if they'd known when to eject rather than ride a flaming wreck straight into the ground. Some of us may be smelling smoke even as we speak. It doesn't matter; anything seems better than sailing out into space and finding nothing there.

Still, there's a big difference between reaching the natural end of something and simply packing it in when things get rough. There's not much honor in giving up, but you can respect a self-aware person who has the guts to say, "Well, we gave it a shot, but this thing just isn't working out." Scary as it can be, leaving is often a positive thing, because in order to leave, you have to go somewhere else. And who knows, it might be nice there.

For most people, the struggle is between wanting everything to change and wanting everything to stay the same. I'm willing to bet that even the most adventurous, confident folks on the planet occasionally consider hunkering down and playing it safe for a while, because, hey, things are actually pretty nice today, and who wants to screw it up? Then they realize that standing still only means the gods know exactly where to find you when it's time to hand out some pain. But no matter how hard they try to keep moving, nobody is a true emotional nomad. We're not made that way.

Everyone's the ringmaster of their own circus. But while you have a frightening amount of control over how long the fire-eater's act runs or how high the trapeze swings, the curtain can fall on any or all of your performers with no notice. The clowns might get sick and the crowd may riot. The bicycle-riding bear may escape from his cage and ruin the whole second act and you may never for the rest of your life figure out how the hell it happened. The details don't matter. The important thing is that you put on the best show you can, muster all your courage to take a bow at the appropriate time and always leave them wanting more.

•••

Here's the thing. Relationships are like people, I guess. They begin, they have adventures, they grow old and they die. Me and Mo both made it to old age, but we let our friendship die way too young. And that was really stupid of us. Mo thought I was good at saying deep things. But I'm not. Mfarley@register-pajaronian.com, say somethin' deep.