This morning I was thinking that for some reason that I can’t explain, I have a pretty good life. The world is a mess. We have a mad man in the White House. The economy hasn’t been this bad since the Reagan years. The high price of gas has affected everything along the line, and the cost of living is skyrocketing while unemployment rises. As a community I can see we’ve made a little progress, but the current political climate will make the going slower and rougher. Plus, I’ve had another birthday. So there’s no reason that I can see for this optimism. Maybe it was the great bowl of cereal with a sliced banana that I was eating for breakfast. It tasted good. Or maybe happiness truly is an inside job.

This semester I taught an Intro to Drama class. As usual I learned a lot. After reading several dramas, I decided we needed a comedy and the only one I could get enough copies of was Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple. As I read the play I found several references to The Wizard of Oz. Since it wouldn’t have been there if it didn’t mean something, I put it to the class. "How are these stories similar? How does the story of Dorothy and her friends add another dimension to this seemingly straightforward comedy?" Here’s what we came up with. After a catastrophic event (tornado) four friends band together for a journey to Oz. Each character wants the one thing that will make him or her whole. The lion needs courage, the scarecrow needs a brain, the tin man needs a heart and Dorothy needs to get back to Kansas. In the end, when they reach Oz, they discover that they each had what they needed all along. So Felix and Oscar come together as a result of a catastrophic event—Felix’s divorce. They travel together each seeking their own missing part. And in the end, they both discover that they had that part all along—they just didn’t know it. (Oscar’s part may have been lost in his messy apartment. He needed Felix to help him find it.)

I think that must be what getting older is all about. We simply find out all the things we’ve had all along but didn’t know we had them. When I look at the last year, I can see it was a rough one personally. Adversity is often a teacher. So what did I learn in 2004? I learned that picking up a kitten in the rain means I have another pet because I get emotionally attached quickly. I learned to be good to my mother and to keep my focus a little closer to home. I learned that when I DON’T help my adult children out of a jam, I end up helping them the most. I learned that doing a favor for the powers that be at my job doesn’t mean reciprocation. I learned that at this point in my life it doesn’t matter whether people think well of me or not—as a matter of fact, I’m rarely interested. And I learned that cutting someone some slack is risky, but not doing so is small.

I could make a list of all the things that are wrong with the world—starting with reality TV—but I can do little about most of it anyway. The important thing is that I do the best with what is put in front of me. I learned more than the meaning of The Wizard of Oz in that class. You see, I always wanted to be one of those slim blondes who seem to have things easy. Right now I am thinking of a particular one that at the end of the fall semester sat in my class room crying because during a bad break up her boyfriend had stolen her laptop and reformatted the hard drive. All she had left of her final paper were the notes. It turns out that the kids who had it easy in high school—the jocks and cheerleaders—the prom queens—find that college isn’t at all like high school and real life is less so. It seems that the kids who do the best are the ones who have learned to tolerate humiliation and accept that someone is always prettier, smarter, or luckier than they are. Those are the kids who have the skills to survive. Those are the ones who are driven to succeed and go on to have fascinating lives, while the "popular" kids waste a lot of time waiting for the world to be laid at their feet.

I think about that other Martha a lot these days. I find it ironic that she is in jail and Osama bin Laden is still free. In fact, the world is not in very good shape. The evidence is everywhere. But these days I am doing something that Ray Bradbury suggested in a lecture at a writing conference I attended a few years ago. I’ve been skipping the ten o’clock news and reading a poem before I go to sleep. I’ve been focusing on all the things I have rather on all the things I want. And you know what? This morning I felt like I have a pretty good life. So I’m thinking, maybe, like Dorothy, I’ve been in Kansas all along.