C I P R I A N I

My son is learning to dress himself. According to Esquire, GQ and several of my friends, I still haven’t quite mastered this particular skill myself, but I’m confident the boy will get to where he needs to be soon enough – with the help of his mother. However, something hit me a few days ago while he was attempting to put his shirt on.

The Young Man got his arm stuck in his sleeve – as he often does – and he got a little worried. I told him to stay calm, that it was OK – “keep trying” – and he just replied, misty eyed:

“It’s too hard.”

The poor tyke was panicking, looking up at me with his big brown eyes, uncertain if he’d ever see his hand again. He was just looking for some help. He needed his father to lend him a hand.

I refused.

For a brief moment I felt a little like The Great Santini. This was a difficult moment. I am not The Great Santini. At least I don’t think. More often than not I feel more like The Below Average Cipriani. However, my hope is that the little guy will pan out a little better than his father, so I do my best to teach him what I can and one of those things is how to dress himself.

This isn’t easy. Not so much because of the whole “watching them struggle/they have to learn for themselves” kind of thing, but more so because what should take a few seconds can sometimes take hours and we were just trying to get outside before lunch. And besides, I only doled out the tough love because I was pretty sure he was going to figure it out anyway and get his arm to the other side soon enough – which he eventually did.

He accomplished his task, I gave him a high five, he gave me a smile along with a triumphant, two year old: “I did it!”

He did it. It had tried his patience, but he did it. It had frightened him a little, but he did it. It had taken him almost an hour and it was now indeed time for lunch and his sister was fast asleep in the swing and we weren’t going to make it outside, but he did it.

The Two-Year Old dressed himself and I was so happy, I let him have cookies for lunch, gave him half of my beer and later we watched The Magnificent Seven. But almost immediately –

NO, he didn’t just have cookies for lunch –

…but almost immediately after he said “too hard”, I thought to myself “How on earth did that phrase ever even make it into the American lexicon?”

This simple task, getting dressed, something that eventually becomes so automatic after time, illuminated an obvious metaphor for the value of practice, perseverance, and patience, of course, but it was the words – or more specifically word, “too”, that struck me.

While some things are certainly extremely difficult, like molecular physics and getting republicans to agree that women should be paid the same amount as men – they’re hard, but they’re not “too” hard.

“Too hard” seems to suggest something that can’t be done, ever, right? “Too hard for me, now” maybe might be more appropriate. Heck, “I can’t lift it because it’s ‘too big’” makes perfect, logical sense. But “too hard”?

There are solutions.

There are a number of things I can’t do, far too numerous to list here, but really most things one can learn given enough time and practice. How well they do it is another matter. Many of these things are hard. In some cases, very hard and still in others very, very, hard – but “too” hard? Meaning, impossible?

Now, it’s certainly fair to say that some people ultimately aren’t capable of certain things. But “too” hard probably isn’t the best description of that – telekinesis aside. Of course, everyone can’t be a rocket scientist, but I think given the same amount of passion and practice, quite a few more people could be if they chose to pursue it. And had the time and resources.

Time travel, I think it’s safe to say, might be too hard. Curing cancer seems hard, but I feel like we can crack that one. Maybe not in my lifetime, but at some point. Not to make light of it – I’m sure that curing cancer is very, very, hard. But I don’t want to say that’s too hard.

I mean, often a lot of this stuff – flying for example, is not unlike getting dressed. I mean in the beginning we looked with awe at the birds in the sky that inspired Us to take to the air. And now we don’t really give it a second thought when a tube made of steel enters the stratosphere and – well, this brilliant man puts it so much better:

But my point – and I certainly hate to complain after that clip – is that a lot of the really cool stuff we’ve done lately seems to have only made it easier for us to sit on our ass and stay home.

From iTunes to iPads to Amazon to big screen TVs – it’s no coincidence that all this talk about this being the Golden Age of Television is also the Golden Age of The Couch Potato. Now, of course, this might just be me – I do sit on my ass and stay home quite a bit, but I’m speaking more to the collective.

A little over forty years ago, we went to the moon. It’s been too damn long since we’ve done something with an optic that big. Something, in short that so many people said was just too hard.

However, I am inspired, like a caveman staring at a bird flying through the sky, by the likes of Elon Musk.

It’s pretty apparent now that the government isn’t going to get us to an impressive distance anytime soon. I do find that one of the great ironies of American History is that we landed on the moon during the Nixon administration. I don’t know if that’s only reason so many conspiracy theories surround the Moon Landing, but it’s got to be at least one of them.

It’s awesome that public places require ramps for wheelchairs and that we have e-mail and that gay folks can get married and more people can buy health insurance. Smoking pot isn’t a crime any more in some places (as I said, The Couch Potato’s Golden Age). But the Big Wow like the airplane, the computer – and people on Mars, is probably going to come from some guy in his garage…or a multi-billionaire with his own spaceship.

I wasn’t alive when we went to the moon and only as I grow older and reflect upon history do I realize how magnificent that must have been. And, of course, I do look at all these “smaller” things today with wonder. I marvel at being able to talk to my parents 3000 miles away on the computer and love seeing them smile at their grandchildren even if I also do take the technology for granted. Just like I often take for granted the water that spills forth from my faucet.

In so many ways, even if you’re not a Couch Potato, we are living in a Golden Age, though there are big problems – unemployment, inequality, poverty, hunger, disease – none of these are “too hard” to solve, but ultimately those problems too are probably going to be solved by some guy in his garage … or a billionaire with his own spaceship.

We are often bombarded with bad news, especially if one watches a lot of FOX news – and there’s certainly a lot of bad out there, but there’s also quite a bit of wonder and good stuff and numerous opportunities for even bigger and better things.

We probably don’t remember learning to put our shirts on and getting dressed as children, but we should never forget that we’re also able to roll up our sleeves and get to work as adults.