Saturday, September 26, 1998

Make a grab for the jazz in your life

By KEN GARFIELD

Knight Ridder Newspapers

What do you say to 100 big-hearted folks who participated in Habitat for Humanity's building blitz this week in Charlotte? Here's the longer version of what I said when invited Thursday to lead the devotional before the sweat started pouring.

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When I was young and I'd watch my dad leave for work at 7 a.m. and trudge home 12 hours later, a song by the Kinks struck a nerve inside me:

"Well he gets up in the morning and he goes to work at 9.

"Comes back home at 5:30, takes the same train every time.

"He's a well-respected man about town, doing the best things so conservatively."

I was 15 or so at the time the song was playing on the radio, and I wondered whether I was going to be doomed to a "well-respected" existence. Was my life going to be an endless cycle of putting on a tie, fighting traffic, making money, coming home, dozing off in front of the TV and then waking up to start all over again?

Thirty years later, I can still hear The Kinks singing about emptiness. I can see my dad walk in the door with his tie loosened and a rumpled New York Post under his arm. I can still feel the unease it stirred in my heart as a kid.

Even now, 45 years into life and 23 years into a career, I worry about becoming the Kinks' "well-respected man."

As it turned out, my dad loved his work as an optometrist and found still more roads to fulfillment through family, travel, culture, synagogue and social action. In my own life, I've found passion and fulfillment in family and career. Journalism has allowed me to explore the inspiring, surprising world of faith -- and I rarely have to put on a tie to take the trip.

But what about all of you?

Are you living the life of "the well-respected man who does things so conservatively," and then ends each day flopped on the couch with only the TV remote for excitement?

Or are you grabbing for the jazz in life, the stuff that can bring change to the routine and surprise to the ordinary?

I'm not sure what your jazz is. It's different for each person, and only you know deep down what it is. But when you find the jazz -- even when you just start looking for it -- life can take on a whole new color. Dull gray can become bright red.

Maybe you can find the jazz by leaving work early -- in midmemo even -- and going home to play touch football with your kids. Maybe you'll hear the jazz when you decide to change jobs or even careers because you finally heeded that whisper of discontent ringing in your ear.

Maybe your jazz can come in joining a house of worship and finding a family to add to the one you've already got at home. Or changing congregations because your faith family isn't speaking to you like you think it should. Or staying with that family and working harder to make it better.

Maybe the jazz isn't that complicated. Maybe all you have to do is take up a new hobby, volunteer somewhere, put down those office reports and pick up a novel, turn off talk radio and turn on country.

Just do something different because different is good.

So today, I wish you the best that life has to offer.

May your hammer never hit your thumb.

May the people who don't know Spackle from a screwdriver be assigned landscaping.

May you always hear the Kinks warning us about "the well-respected man about town, doing the best things so conservatively."

And may you spend your life always looking for the jazz.

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(Ken Garfield is the religion editor at The Charlotte Observer. Write to him at: The Charlotte Observer, 600 S. Tryon St., Charlotte, NC 28232.)

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(c) 1998, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).

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