Oh Well

A few years ago, I agreed to help produce a segment of the Los Angeles gay pride parade for an AIDS organization.  Our concept was based around giant 12-foot letters on casters spelling L I F E. About two blocks into the parade, the F fell over because it was so top heavy, and it broke into a million pieces.

Everyone enthusiastically wanted to go on, but there was something very wrong about marching in a parade representing an AIDS organization with the word L I E.  I quickly made a decision to pull us out of the parade, and I spent the next two hours sitting on the bottom of the L and waiting for a truck to come get us.  Mostly I was happy to be out of the parade, but saddened that all that hard work was wasted.

I could make many deep-thought analogies here about "rolling down the street of LIFE," or marching to a different bummer, but I won't go there.  Instead, I just want to make the point that sometimes we start out doing things that are very intensely important, and they only end up being a funny story.  I call it the "Oh well" syndrome.  As an event producer, the "Oh well" syndrome happens often.  Best laid plans don't always work.  In an event, just like life in general, the one thing you can count on is that something will go wrong.  So when it does, let it roll off your shoulders and simply say "Oh well" and move on.

Almost every wedding has a story of something that went wrong.  Ironically, that always becomes the best story from the wedding.

"Move on" is a difficult concept for some.  They tend to get stuck in the drama of the pain.  They talk about it constantly, they sue, they write a book.  Not to say that some causes are not worthy of pursuit and extremely justified.  I applaud those who fight for an injustice.  But wallowing in the misery and agony of something that just happened out of misfortune hurts no one except the person who chooses to be in the pain.

I still like referring to the parade incident as "the F word" because that is the first thing we want to shout when something like that goes wrong.  Dragging my cancer back into this (after all, that's what this blog is about), my F fell down and smashed, but so what.  This time I'm getting back into the parade of L I F E and I can't wait to start marching again!