The high feasts are always something to look forward to, as we dress in nice clothes and bring out our finest dishes and even the servingware – servingware! – to heap mounds of all the best foods we can manage to cook, always in excess, upon. We bring distant and disparate families together from our extended family network and try to keep it as civil and pleasant as possible as we sit and gossip about each other behind no one’s backs. Inevitably, some skeletons are dragged from the closets and dusted off – to the embarrassment and chagrin of the closet owner. If the gathering is with the right family group, it stays civil. If it’s my side of the family, it escalates into drunken fisticuffs.

You see, in life, as I see it, you only ever have two things to worry about. Will it be the civil gathering, or will it be the fisticuffs? If it’s a polite gathering, you have nothing to worry about. If it’s fisticuffs you’re having, then you only have two things to worry about. Are you involved, or are you not? If you’re not in the fight, you have nothing to worry about. If you are, you only have two things to worry about. Whether you win or you lose. If you win, then there’s nothing left to worry about. If you lose, there are only two things to worry about. Will you live, or will you die? If you’ll survive, then there’s nothing to worry about. But if you’re going to die, then you’ve got two things to worry about. Will you go to heaven or hell? If it be heaven you’re headed to, then you’re not to worry. If it’s hell you’re destined for, you’ve got nothing to worry about there, either. 

You’ll be too busy shaking hands to worry.