So, this morning I was working in a McDonalds in DC between appointments, something I also do because they have wi-fi and I can connect to my office in Atlanta and get stuff done. As I sat typing away on a cover letter for a proposal, a man came out of the men’s bathroom, looking, well… a little desperate. It seems that the stall in the men’s bathroom was locked and no one was in it and he needed that stall, evidently in a bad way. I watched him go to the McDonalds employee cleaning the restaurant and tell her what the problem was.

She didn’t have a key. So she went into the office and came out with the manger, who it seems also didn’t have a key. The poor man, an elderly gent, was getting a bit green around the gills.

So I asked the two women if they had a nail file and a bobby pin. The manager had both, held them out to me. I went in and in about 20 seconds had the door open. The elderly gentleman ran in, shut it behind him and I returned the makeshift lock picks to the woman who had loaned them to me.

I learned how to pick locks when I was in high school. For two summers I worked apartment maintenance in the days, and while they had no intention of turning a 17 year old boy with a set of master keys, the head of maintenance had no qualms about teaching that same 17 year old boy how to pick every lock in the place, both to the apartments, to the office and all the bathrooms.

People there were always locking themselves out of the apartments and they were ever so grateful when I could let them in again. But then, almost as soon as their doors were open, it hit them what I had done – I had, albeit with their permission, broken into their apartments. I quickly went from savior to suspicious. You could see it in their eyes.

I was reminded of that ancient history when I came out of the bathroom, and handed the nail file and bobby pin back to the manger. Both women at first were effusive in their thanks. And then, like a light bulb went off and you could see it in their eyes: “How did he learn to do that? What kind of guy is this?”

Mixed emotions.

I hate mixed emotions. I hate having them and I hate having them applied to me. Frankly, I don’t handle them well. I want things to be pretty clear. I want love to be love and hate to be hate. I don’t want a sliding scale between the two. Trust/mistrust. Confidence/No Confidence. On and on it goes. Rarely a pure emotion among them. Instead we live in this roiling kettle of emotions stewing in an ever changing mix.

And I just don’t like it. I hate the constant sorting out of feelings. I hate having to make choices between the feelings, weighing them, thinking about which ones are winning, and which ones SHOULD be winning. I just want it simple. Because I like simple.

But we rarely are. As I get older, I have come to realize that simple emotions, or simple spirituality are a rare, rare thing.

For instance. My father is fading away. Part of me loves my dad very much. I learned a lot at his tutelage. I learned toughness from him, a much needed commodity that did not come naturally. I learned refinishing furniture and electrifying lamps and a host of other restoration kinds of things that I love to do. I learned to sail. I learned to lose myself in the things I love, even if they are different than the things he loved. I learned persistence when I don’t want to be persistent.

But for much of his life, my father was not a nice man. To me. To my mom, to many others if you were different than him. He was an alcoholic. You never knew when he would explode and when he would be charming. He was utterly oblivious to the feelings of others around him.

Love. Hate.

And now that he’s fading away, I could be torn. In fact, in the months just after my mom’s death last spring, I WAS torn with mixed emotions. And I didn’t like it. I don’t do torn well. It’s not who or what I wanted to be. It took time and some hard internal work and a ton of prayer to get to get myself to a place where I could release the past, and simply love him in these last months of his life.

It’s a much better place.

I wish I could do as good a job on myself. I’d like to be all good, all the time. But like most people I manage to do most things well, and some things poorly. I blow the mission sometimes. I’ve learned not to beat myself up over it. But dang, it would be a lot easier if I could just be perfect. Or even occasionally perfect. So what’s left? How do I deal with my mixed self. My sacred and profane self? My introverted public speaking self? My disciplined undisciplined self?

I do the best I can.

Sounds stupid simple doesn’t it? But you see, no one can judge whether I have done my best except me. If I have, I can live in peace. If I haven’t, I can’t.

And Peace is good. It’s simple. It keeps the inner critic at bay. I makes it possible for me to do my best the next day. It doesn’t depend on the results as much as it depends on the effort, the intentions, the stuff I can control. And I can say, at the end of the day – I did good. I sleep well.

I was in my fifties before I figured it out. Which is pretty dumb, considering I’ve been telling my kids that for 20 years. But it took a down period nearly a decade ago and Don Miguel Ruiz’s book “The Four Agreements” to finally get through me. But that’s OK. My mom was 50 before she learned to say “No” and not let herself get overwhelmed. Best lesson she ever learned. So perhaps I am right on track.

I still wrestle with mixed emotions. I still hate them. But at least, when it comes to whether I am doing OK, I have a clear yardstick. I don’t have to have mixed emotions. I don’ t have to listen to all the voices, mine or others. I can just be.

As in “Be good enough.”.

Works for me.

Be well. Travel Wisely,

Tom