So What's Up With This 'Blog's Name, Anyway?

If you've read much of this 'blog, you've already figured out that it isn't particularly humorous. Mostly, it's snapshots of my internal life or bits of my personal philosophy or occasionally rants and raves. Serious topics, in other words, so "One Foot On a Banana Peel" may strike you as a bit frivolous.

But "One Foot On a Banana Peel" is a pretty good metaphor for those topics. I write about life (as I know it), and life (as I know it) is uncertain and precarious.

I think that at least occasionally, all of us feel that unsteadiness. Maybe it's when we are waiting for a job interview, or we're proposing marriage to the love of our life. Maybe it's before we get on an airplane, or when we move to a new city. Maybe it's when we see a newborn baby, or when we say our final farewell to a beloved parent. In those moments we have our noses rubbed in the unknown country that is the future, and it can tip us off balance.

The thing is, the future is always unknowable, and we always stand with "one foot on a banana peel." I don't say this to scare anyone; I say it because it's true, and living with the truth is better—more realistic, more fulfilling, more rewarding, and ultimately more joyful—than living with a convenient and comfortable fiction.

Even as I make plans for the future—and I do, make no mistake about that—I try to be mindful of where I'm standing: one foot on a banana peel. I try not to focus too much on that nebulous future at the expense of the tangible present, because I am well aware that the present is all I've really got.

Take, for example, my current (somewhat embryonic) five year plan to move to Kaua'i. I'm planning for a future I cannot depend on—any number of circumstances could derail that plan, and many of those circumstances would be just fine with me. So the things I'm planning are things that don't trap me on that train and no other. They're things that enrich me now, as well as empower me to move if, when the time comes, that's still what I want to do.

The trick to standing with one foot on a banana peel is knowing that you are. If you know you're standing on a slippery service, you stand differently: weight forward, alert and aware, ready for shifting footing. And if you're ready, you can adapt to it when it happens.