I’d been trying to call my wife every night while she was in Italy to see how things were going. I know she was at a hotel called something like the Baglion or Falioni (great memory) so I’d wait until I was sure she’d be back from working which might be late sometimes. Apparently I had the wrong phone number, but I couldn’t tell because the guy answering the phone every night at 1 AM in Milan couldn’t help me a bit
because I couldn’t understand a word he was saying (rapidly spewing forth random sounds as far as I could tell) and I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a clue what I wanted. I’m like “Hello is this the Hotel Baglion?” Right off the bat the communication was zip between us and I kept asking questions and getting long involved Italian sentences back.
I really wanted to find out how things were going and how my wife was doing so I kept at it, thinking I really DO have the right number and that it’s all just some miscommunication somehow. After the fourth night of my calling, waking this poor guy up, he really let me have it….at least I’m pretty sure that’s what he was doing because he changed from a nice guy to an angry tyrannical cartoon Italian guy wearing a strap T, having to get up before the sun and go to the damn bakery again and here’s this stupid, stupid American idiot ruining his sleep over and over and he’s going to get on a boat and come to America and kill me.
That’s when I finally realized what a complete dork I am. Jeez, that’s definition of insanity, dude, doing the same thing over and over even though it doesn’t work, hoping that eventually it will.
Well that’s the story of our lives, isn’t it? At least in some situations….we keep on doing the same things over and over hoping that it will get fixed or get better. When there is something that needs improvement in our day-to-day we don’t really hop out of our little cloud and get down to the next step that will move us forward. I don’t know why, for sure, but it seems to revolve around ‘stuff that we know’. Letting go of what we know and having the faith to reach out to what-we-don’t-know-for-sure takes an act of courage. Sometimes I think, maybe selfishly, that part of my job in this life is to help others move forward and experience the things they’ve always wanted to achieve. I’m really pretty good at doing that and hope to help do some cloud busting this year.
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