Wanderlust & The Next C.O.

I listened to the voice of a dead man yesterday at work. His wife, a new widow, called our client helpline to ask some questions. I took the call. She told me she had some questions about a bill she was getting for her late husband. In the health care industry, consumers call helplines to get answers. Sometimes their circumstances are not great. Sometimes they are very fragile. The really hard ones are the moms who have lost newborns and those who have lost spouses.

I needed to research the issue about which she called. I asked her for her phone number and told her I'd get back to her shortly. After getting the information I needed, I dialed her number. The next thing I heard was her husband's voice, explaining that they were not able to take my call, and that if I would leave my name and number, they would get back to me. He sounded happy enough, like a pretty regular guy. I thought about how hard it would be for that man's mother (he was only in his early fifties) or son or neighbor to hear the familiar voice, and how it mocked reality by providing a hollow, bogus return to the recent days when that return call just might come from him. I thought about life and circumstances and fortune. Luck. Dreams. And wishes. And then I remembered something I had learned several years ago about wishing for things to be different.

My first real job out of graduate school was as a trainer for a large county agency in Central California. It was my privilege to work with a chap who was, and remains, wise, funny, caring and very experienced. The Chief (he spent at least 30 years in our beloved U.S. Navy and had retired as a Command Master Chief--never mind his two master's degrees) taught me a valuable lesson during our time together. He talked about C.O.s (commanding officers) he'd had in the service. Some of them were good. Some of them weren't as good. He explained to me that no matter how bad someone thought his C.O. was, it was risky to look forward to the day when that C.O. was to be replaced. The reason? Perhaps the new C.O. would actually be worse than the one who was replaced.

So........life. I can't say just how many times I've wished I had a different job. That whole thought pattern goes all the way back to my days at KFC as a gourmet chef. I think what it has come down to has been a mindset that tends to look at negatives around me rather than positives. I bet there are negatives to most jobs. Just as there are negatives to many places one could live. I have heard it called wanderlust. It's a condition typically found in men. Hey, there's land in .... who knows where for really cheap. Hey, there are lots of government jobs in Wisconsin. Hey, I hear that such and such is a really nice place to live.

Any of this sound familiar? I know that the men in my family are guilty. Guilty! And the women I know--my wife, my mom, my sister, my brother's wife--seem a bit more grounded and less likely to cave to wanderlust. I think men are restless, generally speaking. I've been working on becoming more grounded. More content with things the way they are. That way, I don't spend my life thinking about what another job would be like. What another place of residence would be like. It's not a really productive way to live. Plus you miss out on so much that is happening around you. And like wishing for a new commanding officer, how can it be guaranteed that the new situation will, in fact, be better than what is there already?

I hope that when my bell tolls, when it's my turn to take the big exit, I will have been living a content life instead of having been preoccupied with wanderlust. If my voice is the one someone hears on the voicemail greeting when they call my home after I'm gone, I will sound happy. That's the plan.