I almost skipped the blog post tonight because… well, because it would be easier to skip it. Instead I decided to keep it brief and Public Service Announcement-like. I feel like if I plotted my stress levels lately, it would look like those graphs of atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the past thousand or so years, with the past month or two being the onset of the Industrial Age. Too science geeky? Okay, how about this…

When I was in college, and for whatever reason started running around like a crazy person, there was a guy who would, in Lloyd fashion (John Cusack in Say Anything), grab me by the shoulders and say, “You must chill! I have hidden your keys!” (The difference being this guy was an ass, and Lloyd was the quintessential nice guy, I mean, man; Lloyd was at least aspiring to be a man.)

Sometimes that’s what we need. Someone to be the Keymaster, to briefly make us relinquish responsibility and just tell us to chill. Not everyone has someone who can do that for them. If you’re lucky, you have that someone (or someones) and you switch off, each recognizing for the other when it’s time to take a step back. Of course, all of our lives are really that moment without the keys. We like to think we’re in control, but we’re not, and when that illusion of control starts slipping away, we freak out. We’re like children playing with a toy steering wheel (a plastic steering wheel, not the fancy driving simulators adults pay money to play with even though they have a real car in the driveway). We all sit behind our plastic steering wheels making vroom noises, acting like that’s why the world is moving, but we all kinda know deep down that we’re playing the same game.

So maybe for just an evening, before the chaos of stress and dysfunction that is The Holidays descends upon us, pretend like there’s nothing else you can do except be. For just an evening, I’ll be your Keymaster. Dude, you must chill. I’ve hidden your keys, and there’s no AAA here. I have their keys too. Now get some sleep.

[Stock photo Keys by Elwood W. McKay III at freedigitalphotos.net]