Ray

After 0200, sleep has been hard to come by lately. I wake up in the middle of the night, grab my nightstand flashlight so I don’t trip on Arvid if he happens to be sprawled out on the floor, and groggily make my way to the bathroom. Once my business is done, I climb back into bed and start spiraling about stupid work crap and other stressors. Full-on shouting matches take place in my head as I lay into my boss and my boss’s boss, silently proclaiming my frustrations and grievances, only to have all the internally generated cacophony rattle around the walls of my brain, a veritable echo chamber that has already heard it a million times before.

Am I doing it right? This life, I mean. Am I on the right path, doing the right things, focusing my time where I should?

Given that I’m not a unique or special snowflake, the answer is probably…sometimes.

It reminds me of something Ray Jutila told me once. Allow me to explain.

Twenty years ago, I got to know my dad’s friend Ray, a sweet and hilarious guy with a whip-quick wit and enough years on this planet to get away with saying pretty much anything to anybody.

“Imagine being old enough to get away with that.” That’s what my buddy Lance said on a motorcycle trip after we stopped at a rest area and Ray, noticing two young ladies posing for a picture, ran up and stood in between them with an arm around each woman, laughing and flirting the entire time.

Ray’s mouth, largely hidden by a huge white mustache, emitted an endless gravelly stream of good-natured banter and ball-busting. It would be easy to misjudge Ray and think he’s some elderly dude who never left the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but Ray had traveled around the world as a sailor in the U.S. Navy and could go off on tangential stories with experiences and insights from all corners of the world. One time, Ray, my dad, and I were on a motorcycle trip, and we were staying in this little motel room over in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. Ray had been in the bathroom getting ready for bed, and when he came out of the bathroom in his shorts and t-shirt sleep attire, there were visible old school Navy tattoos all over his arms and legs. Having never seen Ray in anything other than jeans and a long sleeve button down shirt, it was an eye opening lesson in the old cliche of not judging a book by its cover.

On that same trip, a routine gas and coffee stop (Ray loved Holiday stations because they gave a senior discount on coffee) turned into Ray standing by his bike and pontificating about religion. Ray told me that he didn’t worry too much about God, church, or his eternal soul.

“I’m just a human being doing the best I can in this world. That’s all a person can do, really. No sense worrying about the rest.”

As someone who is a natural and lifelong worrywart, that statement had a major impact on me and the way I think about religion and life in general. The whole religion topic is a story for another time. For now, all I can do is try my best and accept myself as just a human being in the world.