Do Overs, Kapra, and Kurosawa

I'm trying to figure out the theme for today's post, Do Over is the GBE2 topic this week and I will work that in somehow, but I also want to post on the general topic of social media and how and why I the various forms of it that I do.  In keeping with the NaBloPoMo monthly theme of Relative, I will throw in some thoughts on that topic, too. And I will probably work in a topic I've wanted to bitch about for quite some time.  And I will do all of this while cleaning house and doing laundry.  Am I amazing, or what?

There are no do overs in life.  Sometimes we are offered the chance of doing something again, but it is never and can never be the same thing.  The context, time, our attitudes, and the experience we bring to it, whatever it may be, will have changed everything.  At the same time I sometimes wish there were such things as do overs, or at least I wish so until I realize that everything, truly everything, would change.

My favorite movie is Kapra's It's A Wonderful Life; that is closely followed by Kurosawa's Rashomon.   Both were made well before I was born. Life's "truths" have been around for ages it seems.   These movies are nothing alike on the surface, but they are both very much alike when it comes to being an movies that intimately examine perspective and "truth."  Maybe in a game of marbles there can be do overs, but nothing else in life allows it, and I wouldn't want there to be.  However that is not to say I do not have regrets.  I never, ever will say that I have no regrets.  The two people I have heard say that phrase specifically to me in private conversation are both dead.  One died of cancer he probably could have prevented, the other died without a doubt by his own hand.  Death will always be associated with, "No regrets."  It is what people say before they die, at least it is for me. 

There are things I wish that both I and others had not done or had done differently.  But I will never know what else in my life outside of that tiny, narrow window of regret might come undone.  Good things that I cherish might not have come to be on another timeline in an alternate universe.  In my lifetime thus far I have managed to do and produce good things, a few at least, that make a difference in the world.  What more could I ask for?  Nothing.

I know I will never understand what other people truly think and feel, I know I will never know truth, I know that my perspective will always differ from every other individual who has ever lived.  But this does not make me feel lonely, or wish for do overs, or a different universe.  Every day I marvel that we can communicate at all given all the differences that exist in the world.  I continue to look for what we share and not how we differ.   It is all relative.  We are all the centers of our own perceptual worlds.  The fun is in expanding from that center and in finding similarity.  Sure, I've made mistakes.  No I wouldn't want a do over.

Part Two - Tomorrow:  Do Overs and Social Media.

TV and Smoothies Help with Recovery from Outpatient Surgery.

Friday was a unique day.  Woke up at 5 AM and was at the surgery reception desk at the University Med Center signing in at 6 AM for out patient septoplasmy, which is surgery on the septum.  Yawn.  I know, boarrrr-ring (Does anyone remember Jo Anne Worley on Laugh-In, or is my age showing?)  Check-in paperwork, wrist bands, possession stuffed into a plastic bag and given to my husband,  open air "gowns," intravenous catheter in hand,    I was wheeled into surgery exactly at 7:30AM where the last thing I remember is being asked to scoot over on to the narrow operating table.  I remember starting to brace myself with my hands and elbows so I could lift and scoot.... and then nothing until I regained consciousness in the recovery area. 

I'm still amazed by how different my perception of surgery is each time when I prepare to go under the knife.  This time I was thinking things like how much more trust I have in the facility after seeing how amazing UMC was as they treated the January 8th mass shooting victims.  The surgeon came in pre-op, glanced at my blood pressure, looked up a bit surprised, and said that I was the most relaxed person (this was pre-drugs) out of everyone in the pre-op area.  It is amazing how calming deep breathing a la yoga can be, that and far greater levels of trust.  The only thought I had that was negative was the thought that drug with which they put me under was probably the same thing that killed Michael Jackson.

Anyway, I'm surprised at how well I'm doing.   I basically just have plastic tubes in each nostril's airway to keep the airway open (sort of open, everything is sort of swollen  now) and there isn't a bunch of cotton shoved up each nostril.  I'm not bruised that I can see.  I was not nauseous after surgery and was home by 10:30 AM.

I'm so glad the recovery is going to be far less terrible than I had thought it would be.  Cuddling with my cats and drinking smoothies is not so bad.  My husband and daughter are taking great care of me and I love having my great aunt's antique brass school bell with which to summon them.  And there was great junk TV on to watch and chuckle over on the History Channel.   Some of the stuff that is said about Nostradamus and the Winter Solstice of 2012  is a hoot even without the perspective provided by oxycodone.

I cannot wait until I can breathe again without obstruction!