David’s Journal

Oct
18
2008

Just What You Wanted

I was watching an old episode of Mad About You.

It’s a hot New York summer afternoon. Their air conditioner breaks. Paul and Jamie go to their usual and familiar local restaurant, and on the spur of the moment, decide to borrow a friend’s car, get out of the city, and go to an old favorite seafood restaurant on the Jersey shore that served their favorite clams.

As is bound to happen in TV sitcoms and real life, they ran into a few problems and misadventures along the way, searching for the restaurant — whose name they can’t quite recall — where they had so many happy memories from their early days as a young couple.

Finally they find it — Clamenza’s — only to discover the restaurant has closed and relocated.

Tired, hungry, and exhausted from the heat and long day, they return home.

At the door to their apartment, hung on the handle, is an advertisement for a local restaurant. They almost miss it, completely ignoring it as mere junk mail. But then Jamie notices something on the ad. Wait. It’s Clamenza’s! At their new location, right around the corner from Paul and Jamie’s own apartment! And best of all, they deliver too!

And so the young couple ends their day, sitting outside on their fire escape balcony, enjoying the very food they spent all day searching and fighting for. And it was so close the entire time.

What I loved about this episode was a line Jamie asked, a simple small question slipped in near the end of their journey, shortly before turning around to go back home. “Do you think we’re trying too hard?” Throughout the episode they had faced issues related to their work and career, starting a family, and other things important to them. “Do you think we’re trying to hard?” she asked about it all.

Then she expressed a genuine feeling I could relate to.

It seemed like everybody else had things coming together for them. Career, money, relationships, new opportunities… But they, she said, seemed like they just kept moving in circles.

Trying hard, but getting nowhere.

It was then in the story they found the old restaurant — only to find it was closed. Another dead end. Another circle without any progress.

So they returned home.

And found out that what they really wanted all along had been so close the entire time.

They almost missed it.

It makes me wonder. Is life like that sometimes? Can life be like that all the time? Do we really have to try so hard? Are we already trying too hard? Could what we want really just be outside our door? The things we want in life, the things that bring us joy and satisfaction — do we really need to go out of the way, search long and hard, only to find a dead end? Could that joy and satisfaction we desire — the real thing, with no compromises — really be within immediate and easy reach for us the entire time? But we just don’t see it? Or we almost miss it?

Are we trained, are we taught, to make things bigger and harder and longer than they need to be?