The Quotidian Mythic

I am a maintenance worker at an upscale retirement home. It's a good job and I'm very blessed to have it. Before this I was a maintenance worker at a Catholic church and K-8 school; before that I was a maintenance worker at a grocery store, and before that I was sort of an all-around "go do something useful" employee at a hardware store. Easy enough to see how I've ended up in my current job, but there's a funny twist.

Over the years, I've known some extremely intelligent people who suffer from dyslexia. I'm grateful that I don't have that particular affliction; but I don't need to use my imagination to empathize. To read the same passage over and over, have someone explain it, read it again, and still just not get it: I know what it's like, because that's how tools and machines are to me.

I can read the instructions, listen to the explanation, watch my coworker do it. Plug it in. Hit the on button. Bam, it turns on. He leaves the room. I plug it in, I hit the on button. Nothing happens. I do it fifty times, harder and harder, till I gash my hand on the corner. Then I call for help, he comes back in and pushes the button, and it turns on.

Then I do whatever I'm doing for as long as I can. Pray I can finish before I have to go to lunch or help someone move a shelf or recalibrate the capacitor or whatever. But eventually I have to turn it off, and I'm not quite done, so then I have to turn it back on. Please, just this once, let it work. Please, God, please, just this one time. Plug it in. Hit the button. Nothing. I try very hard not to blaspheme, but these are the moments when I fail.

So how have I wound up working with tools and machines for the last twelve years? Dunno. I'm really hoping it's some kind of installment program to help me get through a big chunk of Purgatory while I'm still on Earth.

When I was young, I wanted so badly to live a life of adventure. I wanted to jump away from explosions, swing over pits on well-placed ropes, rescue attractive and interesting people from villains who were deeply committed to nunchuck-based villainy. So I went looking for those things, and because a lot of good-hearted people were looking out for me, including my insanely badass Guardian Angel, I never happened to get knifed or imprisoned or raped. But I did, very slowly, get huge red nails of knowledge and understanding pushed through the sockets of my eyes.

All of this—the labor, the lostness—this is my adventure. I don't get to punch ninjas or vault over velociraptors, because you don't get what you expect or what you think you want. You get what will get make you into a saint. I see now that being a super action hero would have made me arrogant and insufferable, stone-deaf to the weakness of men and to the still small voice of God. My hero's journey is no less arduous than (say) Frodo's to Mount Doom—and neither is yours, friend reader—but we may not get the fireworks on this side of the Vale of Tears. It's okay. They're waiting for us, just across the way.

This small, humble, day-by-day adventure story of the common life is what I'm trying to accept as my own legendary quest, my own long quiet crucifixion. I call it The Quotidian Mythic, because I find it validating to make up pompous names for things. And if you, good friend, should ever feel that Christian life is boring—just remember that the excruciating dullness is all part of the trial, and therefore part of the quest. Schlepping across mile after dreary, dusty mile of Mordor was not exciting for the schleppers. Being a hero, being a saint, is not about you and me having a cool, exciting time. It's about saving the fucking day.