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We spend so much of our time waiting. Yesterday, I stood in a line for almost an hour at the DMV only to be told that I was one form shy of getting what I needed. It would have been a complete waste of time if I hadn't brought a book to read.
It's frustrating, though. I once saw film footage of the 405 in Los Angeles - probably the busiest freeway in the country. The local government is debating whether to turn the 8-lane highway into a 16-lane highway by building another highway on top of it. Double-decking. It seems like the most dangerous plan of all time.
The great thing about it this film footage of the 405 shows it in the morning - packed to the gills - and in the time just before noon - completely barren. We are all, essentially, trying to get to the same place at the same time. Or at least headed in the same direction all at once.
I always knew I was made for a big city. Growing up in a town of 300,000, I was one of the few people who recognized it as a small town. Now, living in a decently sized place, I find myself equally exhilarated and exhausted by the urban problem of population. This wolf in sheep's clothing offers incredible social opportunities, a sprawling music scene, life of every walk - anything you could really want at fingertip's reach. It also offers the crowded metro system, the red tape of dealing with so many with so few resources, and, of course, our friend the one-hour wait at the DMV.
The plan is evolving into one of becoming decently wealthy and moving to the outskirts of some far off place. Central Texas would be great. I've always liked the hill country. I imagine I'll become a corn farmer in my spare time. I'll spend the rest of it with my loved ones. Visitors will come and go as they please, spending the night or the month in my spare rooms. My main interests will be whittling, filling my children's heads with nonsense, and writing haiku about the animals that stop by to graze in my front yard.
Every now and again I'll foray into the city to remember what life was like. To enjoy the comforts of the busker playing saxophone on the street corner, to dive headfirst into a pint at the local hipster bar, to seek refuge from all of my serenity.
Maybe I'll even wait in a line to see what all the fuss is about.
I can't wait to be an old, farmhand by age thirty. I guess it's the only thing I am willing to wait for though. Call me impatient, but the way our large lives are structured involves far too much inactivity - waiting in long lines for the simplest of tasks; the bank, the grocery store, the metro station. The biggest problem? All that waiting makes us hurry during the parts of life we should be slowing down for.
So what are you waiting for?
28 September 2007
The Pitch
So it's as simple as it could be.
Since high school I've been able to play right wing defense on a soccer team with fair capability. I have the speed there when I need it, the attack, and the wisdom to simply contain when that's all that's needed. Basically, I'm decent. Passable.
Last night, with a team short on players, under the bright lights of the George Mason High School of Falls Church, VA, I was told to play left back instead of right.
My league is a co-ed one, decently competitive, but mostly just fun. With one player short, we were actually fairing pretty well, and the most surprising thing was - I play better left side than I do right. I had just never tried it before.
You'd be surprised how simple that switch can be. When I took my place on the field, there was no awkwardness. I had a different view, but I ended up liking it better. I was able to use my body a lot better based on the angles of attack that their offense was using. It was a great feeling. I played better than I ever have.
Sometimes that's all it takes.
We are dead set in our ways most of the time. We're stubborn. We assume our point of view is correct, so why should there be room to argue? Then, by a fluke chance you get placed on the other side of the field and like it better.
A writer that I know once told me that he would often take a side of an issue that opposed his viewpoint and defend it just to test his writing skills. I have also taken up that mantle, arguing when I can for something I don't believe in just to give myself the proper perspective - one of 360 degrees.
We won our game last night. We communicated well with each other and benefited from it. Where the extended metaphor ends, though, is that there are not just two sides to beliefs or opinions like there are on the filed. That would be too easy to say, too cliched. A debate isn't as easy as one side vs. the other. In most things, there are multiple viewpoints that we have to seek out, that we have to be way of, that we should defend from time to time for no other reason than to imbue a modicum of wisdom into our normally stubborn minds.
What could you switch sides on? It's not necessary that you stay there permanently, but last night I got the chance to have a different perspective, and I found that the grass was greener.
For those worried about me resting on my laurels about last night's win, I spent the entire morning at the DC DMV - which can dampen anyone's spirits. I'm back down to humble.
Since high school I've been able to play right wing defense on a soccer team with fair capability. I have the speed there when I need it, the attack, and the wisdom to simply contain when that's all that's needed. Basically, I'm decent. Passable.
Last night, with a team short on players, under the bright lights of the George Mason High School of Falls Church, VA, I was told to play left back instead of right.
My league is a co-ed one, decently competitive, but mostly just fun. With one player short, we were actually fairing pretty well, and the most surprising thing was - I play better left side than I do right. I had just never tried it before.
You'd be surprised how simple that switch can be. When I took my place on the field, there was no awkwardness. I had a different view, but I ended up liking it better. I was able to use my body a lot better based on the angles of attack that their offense was using. It was a great feeling. I played better than I ever have.
Sometimes that's all it takes.
We are dead set in our ways most of the time. We're stubborn. We assume our point of view is correct, so why should there be room to argue? Then, by a fluke chance you get placed on the other side of the field and like it better.
A writer that I know once told me that he would often take a side of an issue that opposed his viewpoint and defend it just to test his writing skills. I have also taken up that mantle, arguing when I can for something I don't believe in just to give myself the proper perspective - one of 360 degrees.
We won our game last night. We communicated well with each other and benefited from it. Where the extended metaphor ends, though, is that there are not just two sides to beliefs or opinions like there are on the filed. That would be too easy to say, too cliched. A debate isn't as easy as one side vs. the other. In most things, there are multiple viewpoints that we have to seek out, that we have to be way of, that we should defend from time to time for no other reason than to imbue a modicum of wisdom into our normally stubborn minds.
What could you switch sides on? It's not necessary that you stay there permanently, but last night I got the chance to have a different perspective, and I found that the grass was greener.
For those worried about me resting on my laurels about last night's win, I spent the entire morning at the DC DMV - which can dampen anyone's spirits. I'm back down to humble.
27 September 2007
Personal Capital
A recent occurrence has had me thinking about integrity. Without going into much detail, I'll say that out of all the things in the professional (and the personal world, too) world, the one thing that counts the most is something loosely tied to how others view you.
I would never say that integrity is how others see you. Integrity is first how you see yourself. It's something you project onto others' opinion of you. You, first and foremost are in control of your integrity. You are decidedly not in control, for the most part, of how other people see you. People come with their own hang ups, pre-made, handled with care, and should they decide to project them on you, there's not much you can do besides the usual humanity that is out of reach for most.
Integrity on the other hand is a much stricter code. Ben Franklin could be called an authority on the subject, writing in his autobiography about only spending what you need; not hanging out in the bars with women of ill-repute; being genuinely kind to others. Your reputation should walk ahead of you. People should meet it before they meet you. Depending on what career you choose, your integrity may be all you have on which to stand.
And yet, our personal and professional integrity are not things we often think about or take stock of. Where do you stand? Is integrity important in your job? Dealing with money all day, I only have my integrity and my left-brain to prove myself with. If I did something questionable, my entire position would be questioned. Even the act of being open to question-ability (even if you're innocent) is sometimes enough to sink integrity. And what about with your friends? Are you beyond repute with them?
Why don't we think about this more often? For something so important to our lives, why do we not sit down every week and rethink our activities to see if they've built up or torn down our stock and integrity? Perhaps it's so important that we're afraid to take stock of it (like my bank account). Maybe we refuse to believe in its importance. Peradventure, we simply forget.
(Sorry about using 'peradventure'. I ran out of synonyms for 'maybe'. Ah, who am I kidding? I wanted to use 'peradventure' all along.)
The key is to live a life as cleanly as possible. To be above reproach. To be looked upon by our projection of ourself, for when we project our own image, there is less room for others to fill us up with their own. It solves the problem of having others' opinions of us be suspect, and leaves us less vulnerable to others influencing us with ease on how to be human.
I would never say that integrity is how others see you. Integrity is first how you see yourself. It's something you project onto others' opinion of you. You, first and foremost are in control of your integrity. You are decidedly not in control, for the most part, of how other people see you. People come with their own hang ups, pre-made, handled with care, and should they decide to project them on you, there's not much you can do besides the usual humanity that is out of reach for most.
Integrity on the other hand is a much stricter code. Ben Franklin could be called an authority on the subject, writing in his autobiography about only spending what you need; not hanging out in the bars with women of ill-repute; being genuinely kind to others. Your reputation should walk ahead of you. People should meet it before they meet you. Depending on what career you choose, your integrity may be all you have on which to stand.
And yet, our personal and professional integrity are not things we often think about or take stock of. Where do you stand? Is integrity important in your job? Dealing with money all day, I only have my integrity and my left-brain to prove myself with. If I did something questionable, my entire position would be questioned. Even the act of being open to question-ability (even if you're innocent) is sometimes enough to sink integrity. And what about with your friends? Are you beyond repute with them?
Why don't we think about this more often? For something so important to our lives, why do we not sit down every week and rethink our activities to see if they've built up or torn down our stock and integrity? Perhaps it's so important that we're afraid to take stock of it (like my bank account). Maybe we refuse to believe in its importance. Peradventure, we simply forget.
(Sorry about using 'peradventure'. I ran out of synonyms for 'maybe'. Ah, who am I kidding? I wanted to use 'peradventure' all along.)
The key is to live a life as cleanly as possible. To be above reproach. To be looked upon by our projection of ourself, for when we project our own image, there is less room for others to fill us up with their own. It solves the problem of having others' opinions of us be suspect, and leaves us less vulnerable to others influencing us with ease on how to be human.
25 September 2007
The Victory March
You should treat this life like it's the only one you have. A fairly common critique of religion (and sorry if I'm on a religious tip lately) is that the ease of an afterlife calms the ability to live in the present. Augustine wrote to admonish Christians to act as ambassadors from Heaven - their place on Earth simply being a vacation. To act as a tourist in this life. Muslim jihadists are quick to suicide because it will usher them away from this life and onto the next. Even Buddhist monks strive to reach enlightenment - a realm far beyond this one.
It would seem as though religionists are obsessed with things out of this world. It doesn't feel that way most of the time, though, does it? It feels like you're planted firmly here on the planet.
After a victory, Roman generals would parade the streets, but they always had a slave march next to them, whispering in their ear above the crowd, "Memento Mori". Remember that you're mortal. Remember that even though you are the winner today, tomorrow is a new day. This is probably the darker side of Carpe Diem. Instead of remembering how great today is, it points out that you might not get a tomorrow.
And, Augustine be damned, I'm not sure that living for the moment doesn't fall in line with Theology. "Eat, Drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!" might be a Dave Matthews Band lyric, but it's also from Isaiah (22:13 for sticklers).
I took some allergy medication near the end of work yesterday (only I would have a bad reaction to some sushi served at an event on Chinese Food Safety), and it made me so drowsy that I ended up going home and crashing immediately. I woke up in the middle of the night only to go back to sleep.
In the morning, I wondered if I continued on that path, then I would end up working or sleeping at any one point in my day. Only two activities. One soulless, the other unconscious.
Yesterday was very much a wasted day, and I should only be getting around 26,280 of them. Every one of them should count. Taking stock at the end of the day should be about how alive you are. I failed at being alive yesterday. Yes - it is possible to fail at life. It doesn't have to be exciting, but you still have to live.
Respice post te! Hominem te esse memento!
I love dead languages.
It would seem as though religionists are obsessed with things out of this world. It doesn't feel that way most of the time, though, does it? It feels like you're planted firmly here on the planet.
After a victory, Roman generals would parade the streets, but they always had a slave march next to them, whispering in their ear above the crowd, "Memento Mori". Remember that you're mortal. Remember that even though you are the winner today, tomorrow is a new day. This is probably the darker side of Carpe Diem. Instead of remembering how great today is, it points out that you might not get a tomorrow.
And, Augustine be damned, I'm not sure that living for the moment doesn't fall in line with Theology. "Eat, Drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!" might be a Dave Matthews Band lyric, but it's also from Isaiah (22:13 for sticklers).
I took some allergy medication near the end of work yesterday (only I would have a bad reaction to some sushi served at an event on Chinese Food Safety), and it made me so drowsy that I ended up going home and crashing immediately. I woke up in the middle of the night only to go back to sleep.
In the morning, I wondered if I continued on that path, then I would end up working or sleeping at any one point in my day. Only two activities. One soulless, the other unconscious.
Yesterday was very much a wasted day, and I should only be getting around 26,280 of them. Every one of them should count. Taking stock at the end of the day should be about how alive you are. I failed at being alive yesterday. Yes - it is possible to fail at life. It doesn't have to be exciting, but you still have to live.
Respice post te! Hominem te esse memento!
I love dead languages.
24 September 2007
Solve for X
Let's suppose for a second that God exists. I'm willing to play that game. It's, afterall, a fun one. Let's work under the assumption that he,she,it,X exists.
Now that we have that out of the way - it is my firm belief that the only way to know God is not by reveling in His/Hers/Its/X's triumphs. I believe that the only way to know God is to have your heart be broken by the things that break God's heart.
It's a concept attributed to Bob Pierce. I don't agree with a lot of what his organization does, but I do agree with him on the theological level. I've spoken about suffering defining who we are before and questioned why it's given such a premium spot in our development. I think, concerning group dynamics, the answer is simple.
Those that want to be there to celebrate fail to see something those that want to be there to mourn do.
On any team, there are those who wear the bright smiles of success, that seem to appear only for the trophy ceremony or when the cameras turn on for an interview. Are they still around, making pensive faces on the bench when the team is behind? Are they doing the hard work of rebuilding during a tough season? In a group dynamic, suffering matters because it defines character. It's easy to win. It's much, much harder to lose.
And what if the ultimate what as stake?
Do you have the strength of character to not only love your creator, but to empathize with Him? It's odd to think of an omnipotent, omniscient being as needing our empathizing, but I offer an easy illustration.
Intelligence is a curse. You don't even need to look beyond Genesis if you'd like scriptural back up. Ignorance is where it's at. Learning only makes us open our eyes to social injustice, man-made horror, sickness, disease, poverty, famine. When we were younger, everything was Golden. So if increasing knowledge increases sadness, shouldn't a being with complete knowledge have complete sadness?
Plus, God has exhibited other emotions in the past (if we're staying Biblical here) - anger, jealousy, and certainly love.
As a people we pray constantly to God for Him to comfort us. When was the last time you comforted God? Wouldn't it be comforting to Him to see your heart break at the things that break his heart? And to act on it?
How can you cheer God up today?
Alright friends, back to assuming God doesn't exist. That can be a pretty fun game, too.
Now that we have that out of the way - it is my firm belief that the only way to know God is not by reveling in His/Hers/Its/X's triumphs. I believe that the only way to know God is to have your heart be broken by the things that break God's heart.
It's a concept attributed to Bob Pierce. I don't agree with a lot of what his organization does, but I do agree with him on the theological level. I've spoken about suffering defining who we are before and questioned why it's given such a premium spot in our development. I think, concerning group dynamics, the answer is simple.
Those that want to be there to celebrate fail to see something those that want to be there to mourn do.
On any team, there are those who wear the bright smiles of success, that seem to appear only for the trophy ceremony or when the cameras turn on for an interview. Are they still around, making pensive faces on the bench when the team is behind? Are they doing the hard work of rebuilding during a tough season? In a group dynamic, suffering matters because it defines character. It's easy to win. It's much, much harder to lose.
And what if the ultimate what as stake?
Do you have the strength of character to not only love your creator, but to empathize with Him? It's odd to think of an omnipotent, omniscient being as needing our empathizing, but I offer an easy illustration.
Intelligence is a curse. You don't even need to look beyond Genesis if you'd like scriptural back up. Ignorance is where it's at. Learning only makes us open our eyes to social injustice, man-made horror, sickness, disease, poverty, famine. When we were younger, everything was Golden. So if increasing knowledge increases sadness, shouldn't a being with complete knowledge have complete sadness?
Plus, God has exhibited other emotions in the past (if we're staying Biblical here) - anger, jealousy, and certainly love.
As a people we pray constantly to God for Him to comfort us. When was the last time you comforted God? Wouldn't it be comforting to Him to see your heart break at the things that break his heart? And to act on it?
How can you cheer God up today?
Alright friends, back to assuming God doesn't exist. That can be a pretty fun game, too.
A Familiar Theme
I tried to get that thought about the empty cup out of my system over the weekend, but I'm still stuck on it today.
I have to admit that I was really surprised by Hunter's response. Talk about walking into something with my cup half-full - I did not at all expect it. However, I'd like to think that even during the times when I'm guilty of having a full cup, if someone comes along with something better to fill it with, I have no remorse about splashing the current contents out on the side of the road.
And then I read Lewis.
At the recommendation of one of my wiser friends, I read C.S. Lewis's Obstinancy of Belief (a free online version can be found here through the Free Republic website). After all that pondering over whether doubt can be healthy part of faith, Lewis - amongst other things - mucks it all up.
I'll gladly send out my two-pager on the essay (I just can't escape doing things the way I did in undergrad) to anyone that wants it, although you should all definitely read it. One of the aspects of belief, though, for Lewis involves that the question already be answered. The essay deals primarily with the way a scientist views his craft and the way a Christian both 1) ascends to belief and 2) carries out that belief in the face of possible contradictions.
Lewis more than admits that a crucial difference between the modes of thought are that, for the Christian, the question of God's existence is already answered. To clarify, he notes that God's existence is not so much a matter of knowledge (as the term "belief" does not deal with knowledge) but that Christianity uses the belief in God as a starting point. I think to question that belief is to start from somewhere else.
I'm still not sure as to whether this deals with doubt in anyway. It seems to me that even the most steadfast in belief - let's take my own for example - can doubt the very premise of their belief-structure. Don't worry - I usually, quickly come to my senses.
I'm thinking more and more that even the sage author of the Tao Te King - where the Empty Cup comes from - had to have at least a little something in his cup. It's no way to live life where every morning you wake up a clean slate, ready to be filled by the new knowledge of the day. Basically, I feel like you can not continue to be in doubt of certain things in your life.
Then again, perhaps the cup only applies to knowledge, where certain questions in life only apply to belief. The difference between the two, if not obvious, is stamped out in that Lewis piece.
I'll be the first to admit that this life question has me puzzled and that perhaps the Agnostic is the only one with a truly empty cup - but what is that to live your life?
I have to admit that I was really surprised by Hunter's response. Talk about walking into something with my cup half-full - I did not at all expect it. However, I'd like to think that even during the times when I'm guilty of having a full cup, if someone comes along with something better to fill it with, I have no remorse about splashing the current contents out on the side of the road.
And then I read Lewis.
At the recommendation of one of my wiser friends, I read C.S. Lewis's Obstinancy of Belief (a free online version can be found here through the Free Republic website). After all that pondering over whether doubt can be healthy part of faith, Lewis - amongst other things - mucks it all up.
I'll gladly send out my two-pager on the essay (I just can't escape doing things the way I did in undergrad) to anyone that wants it, although you should all definitely read it. One of the aspects of belief, though, for Lewis involves that the question already be answered. The essay deals primarily with the way a scientist views his craft and the way a Christian both 1) ascends to belief and 2) carries out that belief in the face of possible contradictions.
Lewis more than admits that a crucial difference between the modes of thought are that, for the Christian, the question of God's existence is already answered. To clarify, he notes that God's existence is not so much a matter of knowledge (as the term "belief" does not deal with knowledge) but that Christianity uses the belief in God as a starting point. I think to question that belief is to start from somewhere else.
I'm still not sure as to whether this deals with doubt in anyway. It seems to me that even the most steadfast in belief - let's take my own for example - can doubt the very premise of their belief-structure. Don't worry - I usually, quickly come to my senses.
I'm thinking more and more that even the sage author of the Tao Te King - where the Empty Cup comes from - had to have at least a little something in his cup. It's no way to live life where every morning you wake up a clean slate, ready to be filled by the new knowledge of the day. Basically, I feel like you can not continue to be in doubt of certain things in your life.
Then again, perhaps the cup only applies to knowledge, where certain questions in life only apply to belief. The difference between the two, if not obvious, is stamped out in that Lewis piece.
I'll be the first to admit that this life question has me puzzled and that perhaps the Agnostic is the only one with a truly empty cup - but what is that to live your life?
19 September 2007
Lao Tzu
Can you have faith and still doubt?
After a pretty severe discussion last night with an atheist friend of mine, I started thinking about the concept of the empty cup. In Eastern philosophy, the empty cup is how you must approach all things before you can become enlightened. It makes a lot of practical sense. You cannot come into the room to learn with your cup already full, for to fill it, it must be empty. My friend's cup seemed decidedly full before we began talking.
I'm a natural skeptic. I like to keep things in focus long enough to make a tentative decision on them. In the end, the things I cannot know, I admit to, and the things I can, I strive for a deeper knowledge of. This leaves me with good ideas, but not ones etched in stone. So of course for last night's discussion, I played devil's advocate as the Christian apologetist (never thought I'd combine those two things).
Some of you know that I've done it before, successfully. Last night, I wouldn't consider a triumph. I took the side of religion in order to facilitate questions that never came. It was absurd for God to exist. It was laughable that people would believe in something. It was cruel that religion had ruled with such an iron fist. At any rate, her mind was made up on the subject.
Most notably, she had a problem with Evil (a pretty standard complaint) and she felt that if something was unprovable and undisprovable, then it must not exist. I'll admit I got frustrated.
But I was more frustrated that someone wouldn't come into a conversation as an empty cup.
The more I think about it though, the more I feel like its a luxury only afforded to the atheist. Some don't use it, which is sad, but others, I feel, don't even have the choice. Can you walk into an argument openly questioning the existence of God and still have faith in Him? Can you call yourself a person of faith and still ask that fundamental question alone in your room? In short, can you not completely be sold on His existence and still believe in Him?
I've said before that one of my biggest complaints with religiosity is its closed mindedness. No matter how free some thinkers are, they are still bound to be closed on that one fundamental. Most Christians that I've spoken with won't even have a discussion on whether God exists or not. He does. End of story. Next question. When you start from that base, you begin the discussion with your cup at least partially full.
I find this odd, especially considering that faith is not a question of the Mind but of the Heart. So is it possible to have your heart made up on something, and your mind not? Are Faith and Doubt mutually exclusive?
The crux of the question is whether someone can openly say, "I believe in a higher power, but sometimes I don't know if that belief is correct." Of course we never know if our belief is correct, but I've yet to hear a Christian profess this. I feel like this could be due, in part, to a fear of the abyss. Staring into the chasm of doubt, opening up a Pandora's box of questioning God's existence is something that the believer might not come back from. I certainly haven't. At least not yet.
So I went to bat for Christianity last night. I swung out considering the goal, but as always, looking at things from a separate perspective gave me insight. I'm wondering if a Christian arguing for Atheism could benefit in the same way. Perhaps it would strengthen that belief in earnest. Maybe it would wash off the dust of the soul. Maybe it could make them just uncomfortable enough to really feel the joys of their ethos again.
It is my sincere hope that you approach today with an empty cup (and everyday, frankly) ready to be filled. Carrying a full cup makes the walk harder, and you inevitably end up spilling it on others who may or may not have a Tide To Go Pen handy. Before bed, take a look down, and you'll notice that your cup probably filled to the brim. There's not left at that point but to drink it down, breathe it in before a good night's sleep and leave it empty for the next day.
After a pretty severe discussion last night with an atheist friend of mine, I started thinking about the concept of the empty cup. In Eastern philosophy, the empty cup is how you must approach all things before you can become enlightened. It makes a lot of practical sense. You cannot come into the room to learn with your cup already full, for to fill it, it must be empty. My friend's cup seemed decidedly full before we began talking.
I'm a natural skeptic. I like to keep things in focus long enough to make a tentative decision on them. In the end, the things I cannot know, I admit to, and the things I can, I strive for a deeper knowledge of. This leaves me with good ideas, but not ones etched in stone. So of course for last night's discussion, I played devil's advocate as the Christian apologetist (never thought I'd combine those two things).
Some of you know that I've done it before, successfully. Last night, I wouldn't consider a triumph. I took the side of religion in order to facilitate questions that never came. It was absurd for God to exist. It was laughable that people would believe in something. It was cruel that religion had ruled with such an iron fist. At any rate, her mind was made up on the subject.
Most notably, she had a problem with Evil (a pretty standard complaint) and she felt that if something was unprovable and undisprovable, then it must not exist. I'll admit I got frustrated.
But I was more frustrated that someone wouldn't come into a conversation as an empty cup.
The more I think about it though, the more I feel like its a luxury only afforded to the atheist. Some don't use it, which is sad, but others, I feel, don't even have the choice. Can you walk into an argument openly questioning the existence of God and still have faith in Him? Can you call yourself a person of faith and still ask that fundamental question alone in your room? In short, can you not completely be sold on His existence and still believe in Him?
I've said before that one of my biggest complaints with religiosity is its closed mindedness. No matter how free some thinkers are, they are still bound to be closed on that one fundamental. Most Christians that I've spoken with won't even have a discussion on whether God exists or not. He does. End of story. Next question. When you start from that base, you begin the discussion with your cup at least partially full.
I find this odd, especially considering that faith is not a question of the Mind but of the Heart. So is it possible to have your heart made up on something, and your mind not? Are Faith and Doubt mutually exclusive?
The crux of the question is whether someone can openly say, "I believe in a higher power, but sometimes I don't know if that belief is correct." Of course we never know if our belief is correct, but I've yet to hear a Christian profess this. I feel like this could be due, in part, to a fear of the abyss. Staring into the chasm of doubt, opening up a Pandora's box of questioning God's existence is something that the believer might not come back from. I certainly haven't. At least not yet.
So I went to bat for Christianity last night. I swung out considering the goal, but as always, looking at things from a separate perspective gave me insight. I'm wondering if a Christian arguing for Atheism could benefit in the same way. Perhaps it would strengthen that belief in earnest. Maybe it would wash off the dust of the soul. Maybe it could make them just uncomfortable enough to really feel the joys of their ethos again.
It is my sincere hope that you approach today with an empty cup (and everyday, frankly) ready to be filled. Carrying a full cup makes the walk harder, and you inevitably end up spilling it on others who may or may not have a Tide To Go Pen handy. Before bed, take a look down, and you'll notice that your cup probably filled to the brim. There's not left at that point but to drink it down, breathe it in before a good night's sleep and leave it empty for the next day.
Here in Status Symbol Land
We tend to bow down to a lot of people.
With the hustle and bustle of having an event, we put on our best faces - bright smiles, warm welcomes, polite vestiges invented ages before our grand-parents were born. We go out of our way to become someone else in front of someone we think is important.
When I was working for the Oscars, we were told not to make eye contact with any celebrities if we crossed paths. It made me wonder, would it make the situation more awkward to walk normally - possibly making eye contact - or to avert my eyes to the ground if I turned a corner and saw Anne Hathaway walking toward me? I didn't get a chance to test this hypothesis (I passed Anne Hathaway and made eye contact but didn't get a chance to replicate the scenario in which I avert my eyes as scientific testing would necessitate). Even without testing, though, I'm pretty sure that treating people normally is, well, normal.
I think I'm stuck in the middle on this one. It seems like their are justifiable cases where we should hold people in reverence. Other times, I revert back to my high school days when I refused to call my Vice Principal, "Dr. Whateverhernamewas" because I felt that titles created inequality. I'm not as hippie-esque about titles these days, but I still feel the same way about the paths in life we take that lead us there.
My thought back then was always a question of why certain life paths should grant us sobriquets in front of our names. Why does going to a higher education institution for a few more years give us a title? I know the mechanics behind it - because that's how academics have always worked - but I question the true value of it. The root of this very small problem is in expertise. We seem to allot expertise to a select few with noticeable titles while ignoring the housewife who might as well have a PhD in juggling budgets, making dinners, and running the household - the janitor who might as well have a PhD in cleaning (and probably humility) - and countless others who are experts at what they do without being granted a swell set of letters next to their surname.
My two questions stem from this, sort of, at least in the way that my thoughts usually work. Should we be bowing down to certain people in life? And if so, what is the proper way to do this?
We bow down to people because we want to be them or we want something they can give us (or something we delude ourselves into thinking they can give us). That Hollywood director that could read our script if we just sucked up enough; that law school professor that could pass us if we brown nosed; the mentor whose attention we crave like the sun. We want to become them someday, and we want to remain in the favor in case they are feeling generous one day. I've definitely fawned all over some people. Afterward, it felt disgusting, but I can't quit doing it. Part of me believes that they deserve this reverence - so why do I feel so guilty for doing it?
One group of people that I find myself doing this to on occasion - that doesn't actually have any celebrity status: girls that I like. It's not so much that I become a big dope in front of them, but I definitely find myself treating them differently. They have something that I want, and instead of acting like a calm, rational human being, I let my emotions take over the helm for a bit. This has mixed results.
I've watched girls do it to guys as well. For some reason, I'm fairly in the dark when girls are acting that way toward me, though.
Let's assume for a second, that certain people do deserve to be held in reverence. How do we do that? I feel like the normal sort of ass kissing that is done feels disgusting because it's incorrect. The fact that most people do it lead me to believe that it's the easy route, the uncreative way of handling the situation. At the end of the day, are we really holding someone in reverence if we are acting false to them? If we put up a mask, a smiling face to handle their needs? Why don't we feel that these people deserve our true selves? Shouldn't we honor them with who we are?
In every relationship, there are two people at fault for mistakes. It would be easy to watch people tripping over themselves to be sugary while getting Mr. Important's third cup of coffee and blame Mr. Important. He must be a real piece of work to want to be waited on hand and foot. On the other hand (and foot) there's the obsequious servant that allows this person to act that way. (The argument there is that if one person refuses his demands, there will be a thousand other applications waiting for the job. The myth, of course, is that holding the job is actually a gateway into somewhere important. Most of the times, you're better off trying to make real opportunities happen. Since when did getting someone coffee teach you how to do with greater skill what you're passionate about?)
I guess in the end, I'm unsure where to draw the line on being impressed by people. For the most part, I feel like holding people in high regard isn't a bad thing. Unless it is. Perhaps there are simply lines of demarcation that I'm missing. Degrees to which something is acceptable or not. The only thing I know, is that if I get my PhD, you can all still just call me Scott.
Or Dr. Awesome.
Whichever you prefer.
With the hustle and bustle of having an event, we put on our best faces - bright smiles, warm welcomes, polite vestiges invented ages before our grand-parents were born. We go out of our way to become someone else in front of someone we think is important.
When I was working for the Oscars, we were told not to make eye contact with any celebrities if we crossed paths. It made me wonder, would it make the situation more awkward to walk normally - possibly making eye contact - or to avert my eyes to the ground if I turned a corner and saw Anne Hathaway walking toward me? I didn't get a chance to test this hypothesis (I passed Anne Hathaway and made eye contact but didn't get a chance to replicate the scenario in which I avert my eyes as scientific testing would necessitate). Even without testing, though, I'm pretty sure that treating people normally is, well, normal.
I think I'm stuck in the middle on this one. It seems like their are justifiable cases where we should hold people in reverence. Other times, I revert back to my high school days when I refused to call my Vice Principal, "Dr. Whateverhernamewas" because I felt that titles created inequality. I'm not as hippie-esque about titles these days, but I still feel the same way about the paths in life we take that lead us there.
My thought back then was always a question of why certain life paths should grant us sobriquets in front of our names. Why does going to a higher education institution for a few more years give us a title? I know the mechanics behind it - because that's how academics have always worked - but I question the true value of it. The root of this very small problem is in expertise. We seem to allot expertise to a select few with noticeable titles while ignoring the housewife who might as well have a PhD in juggling budgets, making dinners, and running the household - the janitor who might as well have a PhD in cleaning (and probably humility) - and countless others who are experts at what they do without being granted a swell set of letters next to their surname.
My two questions stem from this, sort of, at least in the way that my thoughts usually work. Should we be bowing down to certain people in life? And if so, what is the proper way to do this?
We bow down to people because we want to be them or we want something they can give us (or something we delude ourselves into thinking they can give us). That Hollywood director that could read our script if we just sucked up enough; that law school professor that could pass us if we brown nosed; the mentor whose attention we crave like the sun. We want to become them someday, and we want to remain in the favor in case they are feeling generous one day. I've definitely fawned all over some people. Afterward, it felt disgusting, but I can't quit doing it. Part of me believes that they deserve this reverence - so why do I feel so guilty for doing it?
One group of people that I find myself doing this to on occasion - that doesn't actually have any celebrity status: girls that I like. It's not so much that I become a big dope in front of them, but I definitely find myself treating them differently. They have something that I want, and instead of acting like a calm, rational human being, I let my emotions take over the helm for a bit. This has mixed results.
I've watched girls do it to guys as well. For some reason, I'm fairly in the dark when girls are acting that way toward me, though.
Let's assume for a second, that certain people do deserve to be held in reverence. How do we do that? I feel like the normal sort of ass kissing that is done feels disgusting because it's incorrect. The fact that most people do it lead me to believe that it's the easy route, the uncreative way of handling the situation. At the end of the day, are we really holding someone in reverence if we are acting false to them? If we put up a mask, a smiling face to handle their needs? Why don't we feel that these people deserve our true selves? Shouldn't we honor them with who we are?
In every relationship, there are two people at fault for mistakes. It would be easy to watch people tripping over themselves to be sugary while getting Mr. Important's third cup of coffee and blame Mr. Important. He must be a real piece of work to want to be waited on hand and foot. On the other hand (and foot) there's the obsequious servant that allows this person to act that way. (The argument there is that if one person refuses his demands, there will be a thousand other applications waiting for the job. The myth, of course, is that holding the job is actually a gateway into somewhere important. Most of the times, you're better off trying to make real opportunities happen. Since when did getting someone coffee teach you how to do with greater skill what you're passionate about?)
I guess in the end, I'm unsure where to draw the line on being impressed by people. For the most part, I feel like holding people in high regard isn't a bad thing. Unless it is. Perhaps there are simply lines of demarcation that I'm missing. Degrees to which something is acceptable or not. The only thing I know, is that if I get my PhD, you can all still just call me Scott.
Or Dr. Awesome.
Whichever you prefer.
18 September 2007
To the Shores of Tripoli
There is a battle of intelligence. It has and will be waged in the social circles, and its soldiers will take refuge in the halls of academia and the isolation of the unknown. We are all trained to do what we must do.
I'm sure it's pretty obvious the distinction. This revolution of science and enlightenment has been growing for so long that some of its followers believe its just always been around. And it makes sense. With such an upsurge in popularity, it's easy to accept its credibility without any other real test. It's also easy to see how those who don't follow it would be labeled 'stupid' or 'backward' or (my favorite English word) 'antediluvian'.
It is a war between Free thinkers and those Shackled by an ethos. Science sets us free. Religion makes us slaves. There's been a steady fine line between these concepts of freedom for quite some time. This whole argument comes with a sort of haughtiness about it - an assumption that to be religious, one must be incredibly stupid. Too stupid to listen to reason. So blindly naive.
This is true. There is a certain foolishness in religion. But I would think that followers would relish that foolishness - it's a unique attribute to life, and it certainly makes it more colorful. I think the fault of the fight lies with those religious people who don't know how to respond to the allegations. Instead of being comfortable in their own foolishness, they get defensive and make the mistake of trying to play "science" in order to receive credibility. Intelligent design (and any other programs like it) actually weaken the religious argument by weakening the role of faith. The only response to science's onslaught for the religious person should be, "Isn't it a lovely day? I think I'll go for a walk."
But a defense mechanism kicks in - perhaps to prove their faith to themselves a bit? - and the argument is already lost.
I think about soldiers.
There are people who would say that soldiers are like robots, obeying blindly the orders of someone higher up. This is not a flattering view - it's meant to dehumanize, make them out to be stupid, to create automatons from them. I think they are just efficient human beings. We are all trained to do what we must do.
Soldiers are not unthinking. They've already done the thinking so that when the time comes for quick action, they can handle it. Some might argue that the thinking has been done for them, but not so much more so than any other person's thinking is handled for them somewhere in life. Their friends. Trends. Television. Books. Our thinking is so collective, that it's hard to separate anyone, really, from robots.
But we don't live that way. The day to day is a beautiful portrait of humanity. We are all still soldiers, but the fight is one that is going on outside of us if we think about it the right way. When the fight comes to our doorsteps, we can get on the defensive or deny completely to fight. Mental pacifism wins the day. In not joining in on a meaningless debate - one of whether religion is foolish - we are free to explore other rich, dynamic debates. Or take a nice long nap, secure in our own beliefs.
After all, isn't alright not to fight sometimes? To leave yourself out of it? How many times have you been egged on to fight only to realize that its a waste of your time? Your intellect?
Those who would draw you into the trap of this type of argument are probably so insecure in their own position that any critical view of it would be devastating. Wouldn't it be better not to ruin their view for them? To retreat into the isolation of the unknown and let them scurry back to the halls of academia?
Waving the white flag, I think I'll try to live somewhere in the middle.
I'm sure it's pretty obvious the distinction. This revolution of science and enlightenment has been growing for so long that some of its followers believe its just always been around. And it makes sense. With such an upsurge in popularity, it's easy to accept its credibility without any other real test. It's also easy to see how those who don't follow it would be labeled 'stupid' or 'backward' or (my favorite English word) 'antediluvian'.
It is a war between Free thinkers and those Shackled by an ethos. Science sets us free. Religion makes us slaves. There's been a steady fine line between these concepts of freedom for quite some time. This whole argument comes with a sort of haughtiness about it - an assumption that to be religious, one must be incredibly stupid. Too stupid to listen to reason. So blindly naive.
This is true. There is a certain foolishness in religion. But I would think that followers would relish that foolishness - it's a unique attribute to life, and it certainly makes it more colorful. I think the fault of the fight lies with those religious people who don't know how to respond to the allegations. Instead of being comfortable in their own foolishness, they get defensive and make the mistake of trying to play "science" in order to receive credibility. Intelligent design (and any other programs like it) actually weaken the religious argument by weakening the role of faith. The only response to science's onslaught for the religious person should be, "Isn't it a lovely day? I think I'll go for a walk."
But a defense mechanism kicks in - perhaps to prove their faith to themselves a bit? - and the argument is already lost.
I think about soldiers.
There are people who would say that soldiers are like robots, obeying blindly the orders of someone higher up. This is not a flattering view - it's meant to dehumanize, make them out to be stupid, to create automatons from them. I think they are just efficient human beings. We are all trained to do what we must do.
Soldiers are not unthinking. They've already done the thinking so that when the time comes for quick action, they can handle it. Some might argue that the thinking has been done for them, but not so much more so than any other person's thinking is handled for them somewhere in life. Their friends. Trends. Television. Books. Our thinking is so collective, that it's hard to separate anyone, really, from robots.
But we don't live that way. The day to day is a beautiful portrait of humanity. We are all still soldiers, but the fight is one that is going on outside of us if we think about it the right way. When the fight comes to our doorsteps, we can get on the defensive or deny completely to fight. Mental pacifism wins the day. In not joining in on a meaningless debate - one of whether religion is foolish - we are free to explore other rich, dynamic debates. Or take a nice long nap, secure in our own beliefs.
After all, isn't alright not to fight sometimes? To leave yourself out of it? How many times have you been egged on to fight only to realize that its a waste of your time? Your intellect?
Those who would draw you into the trap of this type of argument are probably so insecure in their own position that any critical view of it would be devastating. Wouldn't it be better not to ruin their view for them? To retreat into the isolation of the unknown and let them scurry back to the halls of academia?
Waving the white flag, I think I'll try to live somewhere in the middle.
17 September 2007
The Devil May Care
The people in your life will never be completely gone. We live in stages, and especially in the newer form of school-aged upbringing, we follow a path that leads us directly into the arms of new people every few years. From elementary school (5 years) through middle school (3 years) to high school (4 years) - this is by my South Texas model - we have a fair chance of meeting new friends every year. Odds are, and this is just personal anecdotes speaking, we won't really make many new friends. We cling tightly to those that we've adhered to since the beginning.
And at that time in life, making friends seems natural. It's a matter of which Saturday Morning cartoon you like the best and whether you're going to go swing or play freeze tag at recess. Once those friendships are in place, there's a solid chance that you will - for school districting purposes - be with those same friends (for better or worse) through your graduation.
This is when the upheaval commences.
After a lifetime of connecting to the same people, we have to leave them. We move off, chart new territory, and make new friends through our dorm levels, classes, frats, sororities, chess club meetings and facebook. You get four years. Five if you're really good at it. Then, you're thrown out again into a different environment to try to make it.
All the while, you have to work hard to make the relationships stick. Time and distance wreak havoc on friendships, and modern technology is a double-edged sword of ease and laziness. But sometimes, life throws you a curveball.
Sometimes someone you went to elementary school ends up moving to your town and getting a job in your company or a guy you barely talked to in middle school met a mutual college friend of yours and wanted to catch up after all these years. Sometimes an old flame gets relit. Enemies can become friends. Old friends can become enemies.
We are in constant flux in relationships. The changes are small, but they can explode, and turn our social life around. And without the social vomit of middle school and high school - those petty people that used to sneer at you might have turned into decent human adults, ready to form a strong relationship with you.
You can never count people out. You live long enough, and people you've left behind come sailing back through. Maybe you've been one of those that randomly sailed through yourself.
When they do come back into your life, try to remember their names.
Or just Big Time them.
And at that time in life, making friends seems natural. It's a matter of which Saturday Morning cartoon you like the best and whether you're going to go swing or play freeze tag at recess. Once those friendships are in place, there's a solid chance that you will - for school districting purposes - be with those same friends (for better or worse) through your graduation.
This is when the upheaval commences.
After a lifetime of connecting to the same people, we have to leave them. We move off, chart new territory, and make new friends through our dorm levels, classes, frats, sororities, chess club meetings and facebook. You get four years. Five if you're really good at it. Then, you're thrown out again into a different environment to try to make it.
All the while, you have to work hard to make the relationships stick. Time and distance wreak havoc on friendships, and modern technology is a double-edged sword of ease and laziness. But sometimes, life throws you a curveball.
Sometimes someone you went to elementary school ends up moving to your town and getting a job in your company or a guy you barely talked to in middle school met a mutual college friend of yours and wanted to catch up after all these years. Sometimes an old flame gets relit. Enemies can become friends. Old friends can become enemies.
We are in constant flux in relationships. The changes are small, but they can explode, and turn our social life around. And without the social vomit of middle school and high school - those petty people that used to sneer at you might have turned into decent human adults, ready to form a strong relationship with you.
You can never count people out. You live long enough, and people you've left behind come sailing back through. Maybe you've been one of those that randomly sailed through yourself.
When they do come back into your life, try to remember their names.
Or just Big Time them.
14 September 2007
Time On
Vacations might as well be the enemy.
If you really think about a vacation, it's a terrible thing. It's something we relish, worship, long for. This small amount of time that get to have away from our lives and either enjoy it idly or actively. There are two types of vacationers. Those that plan to go somewhere and do something - people with a schedule and a list of to-dos. And those that want to do nothing at all. They may go somewhere, but they'll be napping under an umbrella somewhere, thank you very much. The two types have one thing in common, though.
They're both being duped.
Vacations shouldn't be longed-for. They should hated and despised for what they really are - medicine for the disease of life. Instead of treating the virus, we seek to numb our minds from it, taking a week off like we'd take any other pill that we hope can cure whatever ails us. The problem is that it won't. There is no cure for a bad life except to cut out the bad parts. You can take this morally (the bad life being the opposite of the goal of ethics) or humanely (the bad life is the torture of the 9-5 world and must be ended).
The vacation gives us just enough adventure, that we don't long for it in our daily lives. Instead of worshiping at the altar of adventure (just using a metaphor, not blaspheming) we lay down offerings to the god of the three-day weekend. In an ideal world, every day would be the weekend.
Of course this isn't feasible for a society to run itself. We need workers. Cogs. But who says you have to be one of them? Does it seem unfair to everyone else? Sure, but they could free themselves, too, if they wanted to. It just takes a little courage.
Are you tired after the day in that unfulfilled sort of way? There's nothing wrong with a 9-5 office job if it's your passion. I basically solve puzzles all day - and often I come home exhausted from accomplishment. I feel a sense of intellectual pride. My frustration is a healthy one and my triumph is hard-fought and appreciated. If you come home exhausted, but unfulfilled, what was it worth? I'm talking about that feeling you get after a serious workout or after finishing a 30-page exegeses on Augustine's Call for Chastity. You're sweating, but you've won. That ache in your muscles tells you you've done something greater, pushed yourself beyond a limit. You joke that you'll never "do that again!", but you will. Because it feels great to feel that exhaustion.
If your exhaustion is just enough to carry you to the sofa to watch reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond (and who doesn't?), you're doing something wrong. And I'd wager my salary that you long achingly for that vacation time.
If you're doing it right, you shouldn't have to have a vacation. Your exhaustion should energize you. It's a shame at how difficult living that life can be - obviously money is the root of the problem - but we should be hunting that life down with full force. Never complacent. Never resting until we can move on to doing what we are passionate about. I mean, what real excuse do we have for not doing what we love? If that's the big cosmic joke, if that's the question that they ask at the end of life - Why didn't you do what you loved? - what would your answer be? Would any answer suffice?
I would hope not. Enjoy your three-day weekend.
If you really think about a vacation, it's a terrible thing. It's something we relish, worship, long for. This small amount of time that get to have away from our lives and either enjoy it idly or actively. There are two types of vacationers. Those that plan to go somewhere and do something - people with a schedule and a list of to-dos. And those that want to do nothing at all. They may go somewhere, but they'll be napping under an umbrella somewhere, thank you very much. The two types have one thing in common, though.
They're both being duped.
Vacations shouldn't be longed-for. They should hated and despised for what they really are - medicine for the disease of life. Instead of treating the virus, we seek to numb our minds from it, taking a week off like we'd take any other pill that we hope can cure whatever ails us. The problem is that it won't. There is no cure for a bad life except to cut out the bad parts. You can take this morally (the bad life being the opposite of the goal of ethics) or humanely (the bad life is the torture of the 9-5 world and must be ended).
The vacation gives us just enough adventure, that we don't long for it in our daily lives. Instead of worshiping at the altar of adventure (just using a metaphor, not blaspheming) we lay down offerings to the god of the three-day weekend. In an ideal world, every day would be the weekend.
Of course this isn't feasible for a society to run itself. We need workers. Cogs. But who says you have to be one of them? Does it seem unfair to everyone else? Sure, but they could free themselves, too, if they wanted to. It just takes a little courage.
Are you tired after the day in that unfulfilled sort of way? There's nothing wrong with a 9-5 office job if it's your passion. I basically solve puzzles all day - and often I come home exhausted from accomplishment. I feel a sense of intellectual pride. My frustration is a healthy one and my triumph is hard-fought and appreciated. If you come home exhausted, but unfulfilled, what was it worth? I'm talking about that feeling you get after a serious workout or after finishing a 30-page exegeses on Augustine's Call for Chastity. You're sweating, but you've won. That ache in your muscles tells you you've done something greater, pushed yourself beyond a limit. You joke that you'll never "do that again!", but you will. Because it feels great to feel that exhaustion.
If your exhaustion is just enough to carry you to the sofa to watch reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond (and who doesn't?), you're doing something wrong. And I'd wager my salary that you long achingly for that vacation time.
If you're doing it right, you shouldn't have to have a vacation. Your exhaustion should energize you. It's a shame at how difficult living that life can be - obviously money is the root of the problem - but we should be hunting that life down with full force. Never complacent. Never resting until we can move on to doing what we are passionate about. I mean, what real excuse do we have for not doing what we love? If that's the big cosmic joke, if that's the question that they ask at the end of life - Why didn't you do what you loved? - what would your answer be? Would any answer suffice?
I would hope not. Enjoy your three-day weekend.
13 September 2007
In With the Old
You can't judge a book by it's cover.
That's putting the cart before the horse.
One in the hand is worth two in the bush.
We're undergoing a silent crisis of culture. This viral attack is brought about mostly by laziness and these common phrases. They are automated responses to complex situations - and they make sense. They are so prevalent in our lingua franca that I've heard at least one of them every day for the entire week. I even heard the one about books and their covers three times since Sunday. So if they do their job so well that they've become cliche, what's the problem?
We need new ones.
These old ones are so boring and trite. And besides, why shouldn't we be making our own aphorisms? Why shouldn't we cast aside the sayings of old in place of fresher sounding tidbits of wisdom? I'd be willing to bet that the people who originally started spreading these saying are all dead and buried, so I doubt they will care much if we replace their legacy.
The challenge, as I see it, is that 1) the sayings are so common and B) they work so well. They explain things so succinctly, and maybe that's the sickening part about them. I have an aversion to letting ancient, dead people tell me how to live my life. Maybe I can judge a book by its cover, and the old farts who first enlisted this sage catch-phrase were too dull to. Maybe we've risen above them.
But even if we haven't, we should reword them in our image. Recast the die. We shouldn't just sit back complacent and say, "Well that aphorism issue's been taken care of. Who wants ice cream?" Besides, we can always get ice cream after we come up with new phrases.
Here are some possible replacements:
You can't judge a movie by its trailer.
If you stereotype things, you're an idiot.
You can't make a value-assessment concerning a collection of words based solely upon the frontal decorations of their encasement.
Are these any good? Of course not. But they are a start. The point is that we need to shuffle off the cobwebs of the past (when's the last time you saw a ton of horse-drawn carts crowing the streets?). We shouldn't sit idly by and allow our ancestors to speak for us - or even to phrase thoughts that we agree with for us. Besides, some of these sayings aren't even true (see: An apple a day keeps the doctor away. It doesn't. Trust me.)
We need new lessons for our time, and new dressings for the old ones. We need phrases that will pertain to us in a dynamic, significant way. Imagine a few generations from now when a father tells a son, "Aren't you putting the cart before the horse?" and the son replies, "Dad, what the hell is a cart?" This is an inevitability. There may even come a day when children have to be told what horses were. The future is not static, after all.
My first thought email was one line: Life is not something to be taken lightly.
I feel like that might be a good candidate for a new aphorism. I imagine the day, several years from now, when a daughter approaches here mother while she's reprogramming the dish-washer-robot to speed dry, and she'll say, "Mother, I feel like sitting around all day inside instead of going out to play with my friends," and the mother will say, "Why Andromeda-5, you should take every opportunity to have an adventure. Life isn't something to be taken lightly, you know."
I also imagine that the little girl will mouth the last few words of the statement, having heard it so many times. Plus, Andromeda-5 is sort of a brat, I bet.
That's putting the cart before the horse.
One in the hand is worth two in the bush.
We're undergoing a silent crisis of culture. This viral attack is brought about mostly by laziness and these common phrases. They are automated responses to complex situations - and they make sense. They are so prevalent in our lingua franca that I've heard at least one of them every day for the entire week. I even heard the one about books and their covers three times since Sunday. So if they do their job so well that they've become cliche, what's the problem?
We need new ones.
These old ones are so boring and trite. And besides, why shouldn't we be making our own aphorisms? Why shouldn't we cast aside the sayings of old in place of fresher sounding tidbits of wisdom? I'd be willing to bet that the people who originally started spreading these saying are all dead and buried, so I doubt they will care much if we replace their legacy.
The challenge, as I see it, is that 1) the sayings are so common and B) they work so well. They explain things so succinctly, and maybe that's the sickening part about them. I have an aversion to letting ancient, dead people tell me how to live my life. Maybe I can judge a book by its cover, and the old farts who first enlisted this sage catch-phrase were too dull to. Maybe we've risen above them.
But even if we haven't, we should reword them in our image. Recast the die. We shouldn't just sit back complacent and say, "Well that aphorism issue's been taken care of. Who wants ice cream?" Besides, we can always get ice cream after we come up with new phrases.
Here are some possible replacements:
You can't judge a movie by its trailer.
If you stereotype things, you're an idiot.
You can't make a value-assessment concerning a collection of words based solely upon the frontal decorations of their encasement.
Are these any good? Of course not. But they are a start. The point is that we need to shuffle off the cobwebs of the past (when's the last time you saw a ton of horse-drawn carts crowing the streets?). We shouldn't sit idly by and allow our ancestors to speak for us - or even to phrase thoughts that we agree with for us. Besides, some of these sayings aren't even true (see: An apple a day keeps the doctor away. It doesn't. Trust me.)
We need new lessons for our time, and new dressings for the old ones. We need phrases that will pertain to us in a dynamic, significant way. Imagine a few generations from now when a father tells a son, "Aren't you putting the cart before the horse?" and the son replies, "Dad, what the hell is a cart?" This is an inevitability. There may even come a day when children have to be told what horses were. The future is not static, after all.
My first thought email was one line: Life is not something to be taken lightly.
I feel like that might be a good candidate for a new aphorism. I imagine the day, several years from now, when a daughter approaches here mother while she's reprogramming the dish-washer-robot to speed dry, and she'll say, "Mother, I feel like sitting around all day inside instead of going out to play with my friends," and the mother will say, "Why Andromeda-5, you should take every opportunity to have an adventure. Life isn't something to be taken lightly, you know."
I also imagine that the little girl will mouth the last few words of the statement, having heard it so many times. Plus, Andromeda-5 is sort of a brat, I bet.
Creaking Knees
It's something to worry about for the rest of your life.
Every year beyond, say, 20, you'll see it. You'll lost a little bit more hair, your metabolism will slow down without telling you, you'll start getting that heart burn (or what you'd hope is just heart burn) more frequently. It's enough to make you lose your mind - which will, on its own, happen eventually.
Everything we do medically is a failure. Nothing can really save us biologically. But the one prospect even more feared than death is getting old. We fear it, misunderstand it, needlessly worry about slipping down the slick hill of time unable to pull ourselves back up out of the mire.
This is, of course, the doomsday version.
Most people claim that the Golden Years are their best. They feel more independent, able to stable, and, thus, more free to live as they would choose. Of course this isn't the picture for everyone, but retirement is what it's supposed to be - you're suddenly free of the responsibilities of life, you hopefully have a decent cash flow, and you're armed with the knowledge and will to go out and truly live.
I see growing old as becoming more and more comfortable with being a child.
We are all, behind the ties and dress skirts, big children. We never escape that segment of our lives simply because its what we remember as the best. We start out with it. We have the most fun possible, and then school starts. Who wouldn't want to hold on to at least the tiniest piece of that lifestyle?
But as we grow older, most of us flip a switch and go from holding on to that small piece, to denying it - to ridiculing the idea of it, to claiming that we would never hold dear such an atrocity. We're more dignified than all that.
For the most part though, we're not. I think it goes back to what I was saying about being alone. When you're all alone - with no audience - don't you feel just a few years younger? If you haven't experienced this phenomenon already, I want you to really think about it the next time you get more than an hour all alone. With the house/apartment empty, no one coming home for hours, aren't you more willing to act like a child? Don't you feel like you've shed a few cumbersome years off your life?
And we do. Strip away the suit and tie, the 9 to 6 job, the law school, the sorority, the pearl necklace, the world traveling, the job hunting - and we end up alone in our rooms ready to hop in our PJs and stay up later than we should to watch SNL. We sing out loud. We dance around to bad 80s music. And you think you're ever going to get more adult-like than you are right now?
The truth is, after we make that switch, to start denying our childness, we end up making another switch somewhere down the line - I would imagine when we start having children of our own and the similarities are right in our faces - to start relishing those childlike qualities. I'm sure when a father reads a story to his son at bedtime, part of him is reading to himself, trying to remember what it was like. Could it ever be that good again? And it can. And as he grows older, he starts to accept more and more the idea of being what he truly is - what we all truly are - a child.
He becomes comfortable letting other people deal with things for him, wearing comfortable clothes in exchange for these terrible dressy rags, spending more leisure time and less worrying about money.
Some people have theorized that life is a timeline that begins at childhood and ends at childhood with this long run of adulthood in the middle. I don't have to repeat the similarities between the very young and the very old, but I think the adulthood in the middle is just denial. We're never really adults. Beyond our social strata (and who came up with this crap anyway?) we act like ourselves. We are loose. Free. We dance. We sing. We're children.
One of my favorite web comics is done by this physics guy that worked for NASA. His comics are very simple and decry the outlook of someone who grew up watching Say Anything. I would try to retell you the particular comic I have in mind for this thought, but retelling comics is impossible. The impact is just lost. So here's a link to it. You go here.
Hope you're having a happy childhood.
Every year beyond, say, 20, you'll see it. You'll lost a little bit more hair, your metabolism will slow down without telling you, you'll start getting that heart burn (or what you'd hope is just heart burn) more frequently. It's enough to make you lose your mind - which will, on its own, happen eventually.
Everything we do medically is a failure. Nothing can really save us biologically. But the one prospect even more feared than death is getting old. We fear it, misunderstand it, needlessly worry about slipping down the slick hill of time unable to pull ourselves back up out of the mire.
This is, of course, the doomsday version.
Most people claim that the Golden Years are their best. They feel more independent, able to stable, and, thus, more free to live as they would choose. Of course this isn't the picture for everyone, but retirement is what it's supposed to be - you're suddenly free of the responsibilities of life, you hopefully have a decent cash flow, and you're armed with the knowledge and will to go out and truly live.
I see growing old as becoming more and more comfortable with being a child.
We are all, behind the ties and dress skirts, big children. We never escape that segment of our lives simply because its what we remember as the best. We start out with it. We have the most fun possible, and then school starts. Who wouldn't want to hold on to at least the tiniest piece of that lifestyle?
But as we grow older, most of us flip a switch and go from holding on to that small piece, to denying it - to ridiculing the idea of it, to claiming that we would never hold dear such an atrocity. We're more dignified than all that.
For the most part though, we're not. I think it goes back to what I was saying about being alone. When you're all alone - with no audience - don't you feel just a few years younger? If you haven't experienced this phenomenon already, I want you to really think about it the next time you get more than an hour all alone. With the house/apartment empty, no one coming home for hours, aren't you more willing to act like a child? Don't you feel like you've shed a few cumbersome years off your life?
And we do. Strip away the suit and tie, the 9 to 6 job, the law school, the sorority, the pearl necklace, the world traveling, the job hunting - and we end up alone in our rooms ready to hop in our PJs and stay up later than we should to watch SNL. We sing out loud. We dance around to bad 80s music. And you think you're ever going to get more adult-like than you are right now?
The truth is, after we make that switch, to start denying our childness, we end up making another switch somewhere down the line - I would imagine when we start having children of our own and the similarities are right in our faces - to start relishing those childlike qualities. I'm sure when a father reads a story to his son at bedtime, part of him is reading to himself, trying to remember what it was like. Could it ever be that good again? And it can. And as he grows older, he starts to accept more and more the idea of being what he truly is - what we all truly are - a child.
He becomes comfortable letting other people deal with things for him, wearing comfortable clothes in exchange for these terrible dressy rags, spending more leisure time and less worrying about money.
Some people have theorized that life is a timeline that begins at childhood and ends at childhood with this long run of adulthood in the middle. I don't have to repeat the similarities between the very young and the very old, but I think the adulthood in the middle is just denial. We're never really adults. Beyond our social strata (and who came up with this crap anyway?) we act like ourselves. We are loose. Free. We dance. We sing. We're children.
One of my favorite web comics is done by this physics guy that worked for NASA. His comics are very simple and decry the outlook of someone who grew up watching Say Anything. I would try to retell you the particular comic I have in mind for this thought, but retelling comics is impossible. The impact is just lost. So here's a link to it. You go here.
Hope you're having a happy childhood.
12 September 2007
Where it Began
Nothing really matters.
In the novel Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, the main character Victor is a (not so) recovering sex addict who had to drop out of medical school in order to work at a Colonial Recreation Village to pay for his delusional mother's exorbitant care-clinic bills. Admittedly, he's a bit bitter. Especially since his mother was in and out of jail for his childhood, kidnapping him back from whatever foster parents he was with from time to time.
He's an anti-hero.
There are certainly nihilistic themes in the book - in all of Palahniuk's work. The concept that what we do is out of our control, that nothing we do or achieve will last or matter, there's no real, good reason to do anything.
Like Tyler Durden from Palahniuk's novel Fight Club says, "Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart." Nothing Gold can stay. For Victor, its the threat of never getting out of particular cycle. He's desperately needy, and this manifests itself in his side business - choking to death in restaurants. He learned from a very early age that people seem to love you, pay attention to you when you're choking to death. You have to go all the way to the edge to ever be saved. So he goes to restaurants and chokes, waiting until the hero of the night saves him again. From that point on, they send cards, money, etc. to make sure that he's still doing alright.
But they need him, too. He's a kind of savior for these people, a heroic story they can tell their kids, something that gives their life meaning. The night that they saved another persons life. By being saved, he saves them.
Most find his work to be too gloomy, too new age, too nihilistic, too dark, too visceral. But I find a certain hopefulness in his writing. Nihilism is one of those buzz words that gets people's heads shaking even if they don't understand what it means. It seems spooky, mysterious, and there's an air of death about it. People need reasons to live. They need to understand things they can't understand. Nihilism doesn't offer that.
I think the lesson is less about things meaning nothing, and more about returning to the magic of life. In Fight Club, the main character's life something to float through - going to work, getting Starbucks, eating out, living alone, collecting junk he won't need, becoming the anti-evolution of man. It's depressing, especially to see so much of it happening in real life. But the thing that most don't see is that while his life is numbed, there is still incredible beauty in it. In the details. How often do we think of breathing as beautiful? Or the way the human heart works? We do it several thousand times a day, so its standard. It's boring. It's a rerun. But when you concentrate on it - the sound of air rushing in through the echo cavern of your nose, the feeling of oxygen spreading through your body, the mini-melodrama being played out in each cell in your system. When you slow it down and pay attention, it's like a symphony.
I tend to find hope within nihilism, and within Palahniuk's work, although it's counter-intuitive. When nothing matters, can't we pretty much do anything? Aren't we free to describe something as beautiful just because we think it is? Aren't we free to look at life how we'd like to see it? Aren't we free?
At the end of Choke, Victor's life is reaching the end of a downward spiral. He's devastated, in ruin. Countering that, his friend Denny has been becoming more at peace with himself by collecting huge rocks and has started building them into a structure on a small plot of land he owns. The people of the neighborhood are furious. They want to know what it is. They have to know why he's building it. He doesn't have an answer. He explains that he won't know what it is until it's finished. That he's just building it to build. The process is more important than the outcome.
They destroy it.
Denny, with the help of Victor, simply starts rebuilding. The beauty of the entire book - the entire gut-wrenching life that Victor and his friend Denny live - is that on the last pages, they are standing atop a ruined structure, happy just to start building again even if they don't know what the structure is. And in the darkness of the night, with the rocks piled up reaching toward the sky, it could be anything.
Same goes for you.
In the novel Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, the main character Victor is a (not so) recovering sex addict who had to drop out of medical school in order to work at a Colonial Recreation Village to pay for his delusional mother's exorbitant care-clinic bills. Admittedly, he's a bit bitter. Especially since his mother was in and out of jail for his childhood, kidnapping him back from whatever foster parents he was with from time to time.
He's an anti-hero.
There are certainly nihilistic themes in the book - in all of Palahniuk's work. The concept that what we do is out of our control, that nothing we do or achieve will last or matter, there's no real, good reason to do anything.
Like Tyler Durden from Palahniuk's novel Fight Club says, "Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart." Nothing Gold can stay. For Victor, its the threat of never getting out of particular cycle. He's desperately needy, and this manifests itself in his side business - choking to death in restaurants. He learned from a very early age that people seem to love you, pay attention to you when you're choking to death. You have to go all the way to the edge to ever be saved. So he goes to restaurants and chokes, waiting until the hero of the night saves him again. From that point on, they send cards, money, etc. to make sure that he's still doing alright.
But they need him, too. He's a kind of savior for these people, a heroic story they can tell their kids, something that gives their life meaning. The night that they saved another persons life. By being saved, he saves them.
Most find his work to be too gloomy, too new age, too nihilistic, too dark, too visceral. But I find a certain hopefulness in his writing. Nihilism is one of those buzz words that gets people's heads shaking even if they don't understand what it means. It seems spooky, mysterious, and there's an air of death about it. People need reasons to live. They need to understand things they can't understand. Nihilism doesn't offer that.
I think the lesson is less about things meaning nothing, and more about returning to the magic of life. In Fight Club, the main character's life something to float through - going to work, getting Starbucks, eating out, living alone, collecting junk he won't need, becoming the anti-evolution of man. It's depressing, especially to see so much of it happening in real life. But the thing that most don't see is that while his life is numbed, there is still incredible beauty in it. In the details. How often do we think of breathing as beautiful? Or the way the human heart works? We do it several thousand times a day, so its standard. It's boring. It's a rerun. But when you concentrate on it - the sound of air rushing in through the echo cavern of your nose, the feeling of oxygen spreading through your body, the mini-melodrama being played out in each cell in your system. When you slow it down and pay attention, it's like a symphony.
I tend to find hope within nihilism, and within Palahniuk's work, although it's counter-intuitive. When nothing matters, can't we pretty much do anything? Aren't we free to describe something as beautiful just because we think it is? Aren't we free to look at life how we'd like to see it? Aren't we free?
At the end of Choke, Victor's life is reaching the end of a downward spiral. He's devastated, in ruin. Countering that, his friend Denny has been becoming more at peace with himself by collecting huge rocks and has started building them into a structure on a small plot of land he owns. The people of the neighborhood are furious. They want to know what it is. They have to know why he's building it. He doesn't have an answer. He explains that he won't know what it is until it's finished. That he's just building it to build. The process is more important than the outcome.
They destroy it.
Denny, with the help of Victor, simply starts rebuilding. The beauty of the entire book - the entire gut-wrenching life that Victor and his friend Denny live - is that on the last pages, they are standing atop a ruined structure, happy just to start building again even if they don't know what the structure is. And in the darkness of the night, with the rocks piled up reaching toward the sky, it could be anything.
Same goes for you.
This is not a Very Good Title
This is a meta-thought.
There's a huge wave of humor that has been cresting for the last decade or so. It started coming in and out of popular fashion in the 1960s when Monty Python burst onto the scene. For the first time, comedy was not about normal people in strange situations ( e.g. I Love Lucy, Dick Van Dyke) but about strange people in normal situations. So much of humor afterward has been an attempt at blending the two. The wave that I mentioned is one of meta-humor - specifically, jokes about humor. About the crafting of humor. Jokes about jokes. About set ups, about punch lines, about why we make them.
In a mild sense of what meta-humor is, it could be described as self-aware. This happens in almost all other mediums of art:
A novel written about a novel writer. Self-portraits. Songs with lyrics about writing songs. I'll go one step further:
A novel written about the process of writing that particular novel. A self-portrait of the artist as he paints the self-portrait. Songs with lyrics about the song that they are in. These are the standards of post-modern art. Self-reflection. Self-awareness.
The "joke" part of the joke is usually the punch-line. The ending. The reason for telling the story. One of my favorite versions of meta-humor is the Shaggy Dog Story. It can be any story that is incredibly dull, that shoots off into tangents, that has no point. It's all in the mastery of telling it. The joke is not the joke itself, but the way the joke is told - and eventually, the joke becomes the audience, the fact that they are still listening intently waiting for a joke that will never come.
Here's where I need you to follow me a bit. Just for a little while.
Have you ever met someone who spoke about reading the Bible as if it were some great achievement? As if they'd climbed Everest by slogging through to Revelation? Like he's dashed himself upon the very rocks of literary challenge to sit down for a few hours a night? It's pretty absurd to think about. It's, after all, just a book. Just a few hundred pages to read. It's really not a difficult task to undertake. Yet there are programs that help people read the thing in a year. A year. Seriously. There is, to my knowledge, no such program for War and Peace, and it's longer.
So how many times have you read it?
(Imagine my haughty philosopher voice) In my philosophical training, I was forced to engage the ancients through their writing. To do so, we had to read and re-read what they wrote several times. One of the funniest things to me when someone learns my degree is in philosophy is when they ask if I've read such-and-such book. "Have you read Locke's Second Treatise?" In my head I'm thinking, "Yes. 8 times. And I've underlined 1/3 of it. And written in all the margins." I usually just nod my head.
The thing is, that most of us (definitely myself) don't re-read the things we need to. Just like our friend who thinks he's done because he's finished the Bible - we feel like we've assimilated the knowledge, and we can move on. The truth is, we need to return to writings from time to time to refresh our understanding of them. I went back and re-read some of my older thought emails, and (other than the spelling errors) I was actually surprised at what I was thinking or that I was thinking it. I even learned a few things from myself.
The same can be said, I think, about most personal writings. Journals, old term papers, letters and notes to friends, emails long forgotten. Remember that report you did on the heart in 5th grade? Can you tell me the chambers? Of course not. It was 87 years ago that you did that project, and you haven't gone back to relearn from it.
So (how's this for meta-analysis) I'm going to go back and revisit this very email and critique it. It's long winded. Rambling. It has some interesting facts about the history of American comedy that seem not at all relevant to the greater point of learning by returning to old knowledge. The transition to the part about the Bible is a little slapdash. The author seems to really think highly of his own opinion, though, and what's more troubling is that there's a critique of the email embedded in the email itself. Perhaps even more strange than that is the mention of the critique within the critique. A critique on the critique during the critique.
And now, some fun facts about this email:
1) Meta is the Greek word for "after", meaning that the first sentence of the email labels it as an "after thought". Thus, it is both the primary and secondary thought.
2) Because it's rambling, you have to wonder whether the email itself is a Shaggy Dog Story. Thus, making the readers, the joke. Plus, since the author is also a reader, the joke teller is also the joke.
3) Congratulations on making it this far.
4) There are at six Biblical references slyly hidden in the email. I'm just glad I'm not the Publican who seeks to find them all. Alright, that's seven. Or does the fact that there are seven references count as a reference itself? Thus making it eight references and negating the whole seven thing in the first place?
5) There is an inordinate amount of lists in this email. I would make a list of all the lists, but that would lead to infinite regression.
6) The true main point of it, is that we should all be incredibly self-aware.
There's a huge wave of humor that has been cresting for the last decade or so. It started coming in and out of popular fashion in the 1960s when Monty Python burst onto the scene. For the first time, comedy was not about normal people in strange situations ( e.g. I Love Lucy, Dick Van Dyke) but about strange people in normal situations. So much of humor afterward has been an attempt at blending the two. The wave that I mentioned is one of meta-humor - specifically, jokes about humor. About the crafting of humor. Jokes about jokes. About set ups, about punch lines, about why we make them.
In a mild sense of what meta-humor is, it could be described as self-aware. This happens in almost all other mediums of art:
A novel written about a novel writer. Self-portraits. Songs with lyrics about writing songs. I'll go one step further:
A novel written about the process of writing that particular novel. A self-portrait of the artist as he paints the self-portrait. Songs with lyrics about the song that they are in. These are the standards of post-modern art. Self-reflection. Self-awareness.
The "joke" part of the joke is usually the punch-line. The ending. The reason for telling the story. One of my favorite versions of meta-humor is the Shaggy Dog Story. It can be any story that is incredibly dull, that shoots off into tangents, that has no point. It's all in the mastery of telling it. The joke is not the joke itself, but the way the joke is told - and eventually, the joke becomes the audience, the fact that they are still listening intently waiting for a joke that will never come.
Here's where I need you to follow me a bit. Just for a little while.
Have you ever met someone who spoke about reading the Bible as if it were some great achievement? As if they'd climbed Everest by slogging through to Revelation? Like he's dashed himself upon the very rocks of literary challenge to sit down for a few hours a night? It's pretty absurd to think about. It's, after all, just a book. Just a few hundred pages to read. It's really not a difficult task to undertake. Yet there are programs that help people read the thing in a year. A year. Seriously. There is, to my knowledge, no such program for War and Peace, and it's longer.
So how many times have you read it?
(Imagine my haughty philosopher voice) In my philosophical training, I was forced to engage the ancients through their writing. To do so, we had to read and re-read what they wrote several times. One of the funniest things to me when someone learns my degree is in philosophy is when they ask if I've read such-and-such book. "Have you read Locke's Second Treatise?" In my head I'm thinking, "Yes. 8 times. And I've underlined 1/3 of it. And written in all the margins." I usually just nod my head.
The thing is, that most of us (definitely myself) don't re-read the things we need to. Just like our friend who thinks he's done because he's finished the Bible - we feel like we've assimilated the knowledge, and we can move on. The truth is, we need to return to writings from time to time to refresh our understanding of them. I went back and re-read some of my older thought emails, and (other than the spelling errors) I was actually surprised at what I was thinking or that I was thinking it. I even learned a few things from myself.
The same can be said, I think, about most personal writings. Journals, old term papers, letters and notes to friends, emails long forgotten. Remember that report you did on the heart in 5th grade? Can you tell me the chambers? Of course not. It was 87 years ago that you did that project, and you haven't gone back to relearn from it.
So (how's this for meta-analysis) I'm going to go back and revisit this very email and critique it. It's long winded. Rambling. It has some interesting facts about the history of American comedy that seem not at all relevant to the greater point of learning by returning to old knowledge. The transition to the part about the Bible is a little slapdash. The author seems to really think highly of his own opinion, though, and what's more troubling is that there's a critique of the email embedded in the email itself. Perhaps even more strange than that is the mention of the critique within the critique. A critique on the critique during the critique.
And now, some fun facts about this email:
1) Meta is the Greek word for "after", meaning that the first sentence of the email labels it as an "after thought". Thus, it is both the primary and secondary thought.
2) Because it's rambling, you have to wonder whether the email itself is a Shaggy Dog Story. Thus, making the readers, the joke. Plus, since the author is also a reader, the joke teller is also the joke.
3) Congratulations on making it this far.
4) There are at six Biblical references slyly hidden in the email. I'm just glad I'm not the Publican who seeks to find them all. Alright, that's seven. Or does the fact that there are seven references count as a reference itself? Thus making it eight references and negating the whole seven thing in the first place?
5) There is an inordinate amount of lists in this email. I would make a list of all the lists, but that would lead to infinite regression.
6) The true main point of it, is that we should all be incredibly self-aware.
11 September 2007
Approaching a Continuum
We tend to connect to things on the micro more than the macro. Things need to be personal in order for us to care or remember them.
Think back one hundred years. What would you have been doing? What would have been important to you?
The year is 1907. The Kingston Earthquake that kills over 1,000. The weeks worth of financial crisis until a few of America's richest saved the stock market. The Boy Scouts are founded. Oklahoma becomes a state. A coal mine explosion takes the lives of over 200.
How can something so important, not be important? Think honestly about your reaction to some of these events. Do they really matter to you? Would you have ever thought about them unprompted on a daily basis? Did you even know about them?
And yet they were important, status-changing events for that year. The people close to those in Jamaica and in the mines of Virginia remember. Those who nearly lost everything on the markets remember.
Does anyone still remember? For us, they are just words on a page, maybe not even important enough for a general history class. But what about other major events? How do we really respond to reading about the first Great War, Pearl Harbor, the invention of the Printing Press, The Battle of Hastings, The Boxer Rebellion?
Sympathy? Probably. But a meaningful connection? I have to admit I don't have one. I can listen to my grandfather talk about fighting in the Korean War, but since it didn't affect me on a micro level, I have trouble really concerning myself with it.
Part of it is the past - we humans deal more in the present and future than the past. We do not strive to learn the lessons of the past because they are too large for us. They involve too much abstract. Too much foresight. It's much easier to deal with the tasks of today, of this week, of this month even than to deal with the tasks of the year, or what we need to accomplish in 50 years.
We can't even imagine what we need to achieve in 50 years - not in any tangible, concrete way.
These events that I've listed were important in the moment they occurred. They were tragedies, triumphs, and they've been forgotten or marginalized. We just can't live our lives thinking about the past in a significant way.
It all makes me wonder what people will be thinking about on Sept. 11, 2101.
Think back one hundred years. What would you have been doing? What would have been important to you?
The year is 1907. The Kingston Earthquake that kills over 1,000. The weeks worth of financial crisis until a few of America's richest saved the stock market. The Boy Scouts are founded. Oklahoma becomes a state. A coal mine explosion takes the lives of over 200.
How can something so important, not be important? Think honestly about your reaction to some of these events. Do they really matter to you? Would you have ever thought about them unprompted on a daily basis? Did you even know about them?
And yet they were important, status-changing events for that year. The people close to those in Jamaica and in the mines of Virginia remember. Those who nearly lost everything on the markets remember.
Does anyone still remember? For us, they are just words on a page, maybe not even important enough for a general history class. But what about other major events? How do we really respond to reading about the first Great War, Pearl Harbor, the invention of the Printing Press, The Battle of Hastings, The Boxer Rebellion?
Sympathy? Probably. But a meaningful connection? I have to admit I don't have one. I can listen to my grandfather talk about fighting in the Korean War, but since it didn't affect me on a micro level, I have trouble really concerning myself with it.
Part of it is the past - we humans deal more in the present and future than the past. We do not strive to learn the lessons of the past because they are too large for us. They involve too much abstract. Too much foresight. It's much easier to deal with the tasks of today, of this week, of this month even than to deal with the tasks of the year, or what we need to accomplish in 50 years.
We can't even imagine what we need to achieve in 50 years - not in any tangible, concrete way.
These events that I've listed were important in the moment they occurred. They were tragedies, triumphs, and they've been forgotten or marginalized. We just can't live our lives thinking about the past in a significant way.
It all makes me wonder what people will be thinking about on Sept. 11, 2101.
On Laurels
We don't learn very much from our mistakes. It's only the wisest of us who actually dwells in their own errors without being consumed by them and without losing focus of the lesson held inside.
Most of us avoid our errors at all costs. It's much easier to walk through life with the sunshine of our achievements beaming down on our shoulders. The problem with that sunshine to our backs is that it does little to illuminate the way ahead. It provides us with a lot of warmth, though, and that's much easier to live in than the cold shadow of our own inequity.
But triumphs don't teach us anything. At their most basic, they are actually successful exhibitions of what we already know. The difficulty of a test is directly proportionate to the amount of information we don't know. Some tests allow us to use prior knowledge to deduce the solution - others are simple tests of whether we know the correct response or not. None of us ever scores perfectly, though. Not in any meaningful way.
A friend of mine from high school named Eli almost threw himself a party when he broke the 1500 mark on the SATs. He was beaming, and rightfully so. It was a major accomplishment and he worked hard for it. He ended up going to a state school instead of the Ivy league for whatever reason (the graduating class before me sent top students to Yale, Harvard, Princeton, UPenn, while my class sent top students to ATM, UT, and Tech. I'll never understand it), so it's been easy for me to keep in touch with him.
Eli and I spent some time together in Corpus right at the tail end of college - the usual sort of get-together for people entering the 16th grade. There was some alcohol, a random old friend strumming aimlessly on a guitar somewhere and the string of conversation that flowed around the room like the smoke from our cigarettes. And somehow, John managed to steer the conversation toward the SATs and his triumphant score. We'd talked a lot about what we'd done in college - I was about to start my term as student body VP, another friend was rounding out his med school applications and crossing his fingers, but Eli hadn't really done much of anything.
He'd been resting on the laurels of his past. If I had had the foresight then, I would have asked him what he'd failed at over the years we'd been apart. I'm guessing, now, that the answer would have been nothing. I'm sure he sailed through most of his classes, and it seemed like he just hadn't tried anything to fail at. And he still wanted to talk about those SATs.
Achievements can become a ball and chain. They can weigh us down more than help us. The sound of applause and the feel of a pat on the back do little to further who we are as people. On the flip side, though, failure only works as a teacher if we're a willing student.
If we dwell in our failure - truly mire ourselves into the horror of imperfection, we can lose sight of the lesson. If we avoid the memory of our failure, we will never have that sight to begin with.
What's the last triumph you had? How long ago was it? Are you still resting on its laurels? Are you still tied down by it?
Dare to fail. Life will become a lot more clear when you do.
Most of us avoid our errors at all costs. It's much easier to walk through life with the sunshine of our achievements beaming down on our shoulders. The problem with that sunshine to our backs is that it does little to illuminate the way ahead. It provides us with a lot of warmth, though, and that's much easier to live in than the cold shadow of our own inequity.
But triumphs don't teach us anything. At their most basic, they are actually successful exhibitions of what we already know. The difficulty of a test is directly proportionate to the amount of information we don't know. Some tests allow us to use prior knowledge to deduce the solution - others are simple tests of whether we know the correct response or not. None of us ever scores perfectly, though. Not in any meaningful way.
A friend of mine from high school named Eli almost threw himself a party when he broke the 1500 mark on the SATs. He was beaming, and rightfully so. It was a major accomplishment and he worked hard for it. He ended up going to a state school instead of the Ivy league for whatever reason (the graduating class before me sent top students to Yale, Harvard, Princeton, UPenn, while my class sent top students to ATM, UT, and Tech. I'll never understand it), so it's been easy for me to keep in touch with him.
Eli and I spent some time together in Corpus right at the tail end of college - the usual sort of get-together for people entering the 16th grade. There was some alcohol, a random old friend strumming aimlessly on a guitar somewhere and the string of conversation that flowed around the room like the smoke from our cigarettes. And somehow, John managed to steer the conversation toward the SATs and his triumphant score. We'd talked a lot about what we'd done in college - I was about to start my term as student body VP, another friend was rounding out his med school applications and crossing his fingers, but Eli hadn't really done much of anything.
He'd been resting on the laurels of his past. If I had had the foresight then, I would have asked him what he'd failed at over the years we'd been apart. I'm guessing, now, that the answer would have been nothing. I'm sure he sailed through most of his classes, and it seemed like he just hadn't tried anything to fail at. And he still wanted to talk about those SATs.
Achievements can become a ball and chain. They can weigh us down more than help us. The sound of applause and the feel of a pat on the back do little to further who we are as people. On the flip side, though, failure only works as a teacher if we're a willing student.
If we dwell in our failure - truly mire ourselves into the horror of imperfection, we can lose sight of the lesson. If we avoid the memory of our failure, we will never have that sight to begin with.
What's the last triumph you had? How long ago was it? Are you still resting on its laurels? Are you still tied down by it?
Dare to fail. Life will become a lot more clear when you do.
07 September 2007
I Saw Your Message that You Wrote in the Sand
You might not like that I'm going in these directions.
I've been thinking about the big questions. The biggest ones, lately. Some of them are tricky subjects - like death and love.
As a rider to my thought yesterday: no one really knows why we die. There are a ton of theories, scientific ones that is, dealing with cell death, the loss of telomeres or chromosome caps, etc. More interesting though, is the ecological phenomenon of heart beats. I've been joking for years that everyone gets an allotted amount of heartbeats per lifetime to show that working out - a process that speeds up the heart rate - will actually kill you faster since you'll use up those beats faster. It's a good joke that keeps me on the couch, and it's not completely untrue. The part about working out killing you is, but the standard amount of heartbeats isn't.
It seems that all animals get approximately the same number of heartbeats in a lifetime - something just over 100 million. Small animals' heart beat like crazy. Gigantic animals - like elephants - have much slower heart rates. Thus, it takes about 2 years for a mice to use its allotted beats and takes a whale something like 80. There's no proof of cause-and-effect here, but there is proof of a correlation. Humans, even though we're smaller than elephants, get to live longer because (no one really knows) we are so evolutionarily awesome. We're the most advanced animal, we create medicines, we don't have any really predators, etc.
I've been thinking a lot about love lately as well. From a chemical standpoint, love is an addiction to another person (that doesn't seem too far off from other definitions of love, either). When we meet a person that we connect with on that level, the brain makes a note of it and releases awesome amounts of drugs into our system - dopamine, serotonin, etc. that increase the activity in our brain's pleasure-center (that's what it's really called) and raise our heart rate (which may or may not be killing us faster). It's what makes our heart beat flutter (thanks John) when she calls or he smiles or she winks or he holds your hand or she wears cute shorts or he opens the door for you.
The chemicals make you irritable, excited, lose your appetite, lose sleep, crave the person's attention. When we see the person again, we get that rush of chemicals again, and we get dependent.
All this to say - in my usual roundabout way of getting to things - that scientifically showing the backdrop of death and love does nothing to take away from the romanticism of either. Science is interested in the "how", not the "why" so the big questions still remain. Where do we go when we die? What happens to us? Why do we fall in love with whom we fall in love with? How we get them to love us? Even if we can explain what's going on with us physically, how does that factor into the creation behind the action? To the plan behind it?
Some of you may notice that my facebook profile under religious views reads: Second Law of Thermodynamics. It's a bit of a joke, but it actually applies to two concepts here. One, death is the second law of thermodynamics. Heat and energy cannot travel from a colder to a warmer body. That's why the ice melts in your warm drink. Nature is irreversible. Once a cell begins dying, or a person, they will reach that goal. And we start that process from minute one.
But I also see it as a way to deal with other people - thus, why it's my religious view - heat cannot travel from a colder body to a warmer body. I think it's important to always strive to be that warmer body to pass energy onto others. Energy and heat are just scientific ways of saying love, friendship, kindness, warmth. You cannot emit love if you are not imbued with love; you can't energize others if you aren't energized yourself; you cannot give kindness without having it to give. Where you get your energy from, your love from, your sense of kindness is one of the bigger questions - does it come from God? surroundings? nature? DNA? but I think it's important to be aware of that need.
And maybe sometimes it's alright to be the one that takes some energy and warmth away from someone else. We can't, after all, always be the shining light in the room.
I've been thinking about the big questions. The biggest ones, lately. Some of them are tricky subjects - like death and love.
As a rider to my thought yesterday: no one really knows why we die. There are a ton of theories, scientific ones that is, dealing with cell death, the loss of telomeres or chromosome caps, etc. More interesting though, is the ecological phenomenon of heart beats. I've been joking for years that everyone gets an allotted amount of heartbeats per lifetime to show that working out - a process that speeds up the heart rate - will actually kill you faster since you'll use up those beats faster. It's a good joke that keeps me on the couch, and it's not completely untrue. The part about working out killing you is, but the standard amount of heartbeats isn't.
It seems that all animals get approximately the same number of heartbeats in a lifetime - something just over 100 million. Small animals' heart beat like crazy. Gigantic animals - like elephants - have much slower heart rates. Thus, it takes about 2 years for a mice to use its allotted beats and takes a whale something like 80. There's no proof of cause-and-effect here, but there is proof of a correlation. Humans, even though we're smaller than elephants, get to live longer because (no one really knows) we are so evolutionarily awesome. We're the most advanced animal, we create medicines, we don't have any really predators, etc.
I've been thinking a lot about love lately as well. From a chemical standpoint, love is an addiction to another person (that doesn't seem too far off from other definitions of love, either). When we meet a person that we connect with on that level, the brain makes a note of it and releases awesome amounts of drugs into our system - dopamine, serotonin, etc. that increase the activity in our brain's pleasure-center (that's what it's really called) and raise our heart rate (which may or may not be killing us faster). It's what makes our heart beat flutter (thanks John) when she calls or he smiles or she winks or he holds your hand or she wears cute shorts or he opens the door for you.
The chemicals make you irritable, excited, lose your appetite, lose sleep, crave the person's attention. When we see the person again, we get that rush of chemicals again, and we get dependent.
All this to say - in my usual roundabout way of getting to things - that scientifically showing the backdrop of death and love does nothing to take away from the romanticism of either. Science is interested in the "how", not the "why" so the big questions still remain. Where do we go when we die? What happens to us? Why do we fall in love with whom we fall in love with? How we get them to love us? Even if we can explain what's going on with us physically, how does that factor into the creation behind the action? To the plan behind it?
Some of you may notice that my facebook profile under religious views reads: Second Law of Thermodynamics. It's a bit of a joke, but it actually applies to two concepts here. One, death is the second law of thermodynamics. Heat and energy cannot travel from a colder to a warmer body. That's why the ice melts in your warm drink. Nature is irreversible. Once a cell begins dying, or a person, they will reach that goal. And we start that process from minute one.
But I also see it as a way to deal with other people - thus, why it's my religious view - heat cannot travel from a colder body to a warmer body. I think it's important to always strive to be that warmer body to pass energy onto others. Energy and heat are just scientific ways of saying love, friendship, kindness, warmth. You cannot emit love if you are not imbued with love; you can't energize others if you aren't energized yourself; you cannot give kindness without having it to give. Where you get your energy from, your love from, your sense of kindness is one of the bigger questions - does it come from God? surroundings? nature? DNA? but I think it's important to be aware of that need.
And maybe sometimes it's alright to be the one that takes some energy and warmth away from someone else. We can't, after all, always be the shining light in the room.
I'll Take the Million in Pennies, Please
No one knows why we sleep.
After all the scientific advancements that we've made as a species - like the robot that can grab a wine bottle from a human and learns from it's mistakes, mapping the genome, etc. - there are still a whole host of questions that seem incredibly easy, but aren't. Sleep is just one of them.
But we sleep to rest, right? Well, yes and no. Your body can undergo the same amount of resting while watching the television as it does while sleeping. Plus, that fitful rest that you achieve during sleep is always broken up by the long periods of hyper-activity known as REM - the dreaming stage. So perhaps dreaming is important. It's been suggested that dreaming aids in long term memory storage, but studies have also shown that people who's REM is inhibited have no loss in ability for such storage. So we're back at the drawing board.
At the end of the day, we have ideas, but just don't know at all why we sleep. Plus, not sleeping will kill us - faster than not eating or not drinking water - so it must be crucial to our being. We just don't know what we achieve by doing it. I know this all sounds silly in the face of common sense. I sleep when I'm tired, and I feel refreshed. It seems easy to explain sleep. It just isn't.
Some other things we can't explain:
How did the universe begin?
How does the brain produce consciousness? (some of you may know this is one of my favorites; the brain is literally just meat; meat + electricity = who we are; crazy right?)
What causes gravity?
There are many others. Things that we experience everyday that we just do not know. Maybe cannot know. Cannot figure out. Think about how that applies to your daily life. How much you leave to chance, to faith. How much you accept without knowing. Even in a non-religious sense, the list of things we have faith about is incredible. We have no choice but to live lives of faith every time we go to sleep, drive a car, get on a plane (no one understands turbulence yet), have blood pump through our veins (turbulence, again), experience time, give birth (no one quite understands how an egg turns into a human), and the list goes on and on.
We basically, don't know much of anything.
Oh, and if you have some spare time, try to solve (prove or disprove) the Riemann Hypothesis. It has implications for prime numbers - the building blocks of all numbers since all numbers can be created by multiplying primes together - and will net you a cool million dollars if proven (or disproven). Plus, the fame and adulation of math nerds everywhere.
Who wouldn't want that?
After all the scientific advancements that we've made as a species - like the robot that can grab a wine bottle from a human and learns from it's mistakes, mapping the genome, etc. - there are still a whole host of questions that seem incredibly easy, but aren't. Sleep is just one of them.
But we sleep to rest, right? Well, yes and no. Your body can undergo the same amount of resting while watching the television as it does while sleeping. Plus, that fitful rest that you achieve during sleep is always broken up by the long periods of hyper-activity known as REM - the dreaming stage. So perhaps dreaming is important. It's been suggested that dreaming aids in long term memory storage, but studies have also shown that people who's REM is inhibited have no loss in ability for such storage. So we're back at the drawing board.
At the end of the day, we have ideas, but just don't know at all why we sleep. Plus, not sleeping will kill us - faster than not eating or not drinking water - so it must be crucial to our being. We just don't know what we achieve by doing it. I know this all sounds silly in the face of common sense. I sleep when I'm tired, and I feel refreshed. It seems easy to explain sleep. It just isn't.
Some other things we can't explain:
How did the universe begin?
How does the brain produce consciousness? (some of you may know this is one of my favorites; the brain is literally just meat; meat + electricity = who we are; crazy right?)
What causes gravity?
There are many others. Things that we experience everyday that we just do not know. Maybe cannot know. Cannot figure out. Think about how that applies to your daily life. How much you leave to chance, to faith. How much you accept without knowing. Even in a non-religious sense, the list of things we have faith about is incredible. We have no choice but to live lives of faith every time we go to sleep, drive a car, get on a plane (no one understands turbulence yet), have blood pump through our veins (turbulence, again), experience time, give birth (no one quite understands how an egg turns into a human), and the list goes on and on.
We basically, don't know much of anything.
Oh, and if you have some spare time, try to solve (prove or disprove) the Riemann Hypothesis. It has implications for prime numbers - the building blocks of all numbers since all numbers can be created by multiplying primes together - and will net you a cool million dollars if proven (or disproven). Plus, the fame and adulation of math nerds everywhere.
Who wouldn't want that?
06 September 2007
Taking Another Pass at It
I was once told to make a list of things that I would never accomplish. A sort of anti-to-do list. It was an exercise in honesty and limitation.
To the outside world, we are unstoppable. Especially us. Those of us who walked into our middle school guidance counselor's office to ringing endorsements or have had the benefit of rising just far enough above the average to be marveled at. It's interesting how our culture does that. Raises us up constantly. As an interest side note (whether or not I ever have side notes is up for debate) the concept of self-esteem didn't really enter into the public consciousness until the 1970's - meaning we've lived all but 40 years of our existence as humans without it. Now it seems impossible to throw away.
Before it existed, there was work ethic, the public eye. How good a person you were rested on how others in polite society viewed you. Oddly enough, it basically still does with the twist that we can always fall back on our own self esteem. And have you ever noticed how much "self esteem" is formed from the opinions of others? The bottom line is, we feel good ourselves because of outside forces. It's an incredible feat to feel strong about yourself without having any back-up. Without facts. Without "proof".
This leads me in two directions. I'll head in both of them if you don't mind.
For one, what's going to happen at the end of the day when we head home? What's going to happen when we get back from our jobs or our schools to a one-bedroom apartment and no one there to exist for? I've lived alone several times in my life, and after the first few months of awkwardness, it's one of the few truly liberating things on this earth. To be truly alone. So much of our lives is made up of acting. Scenes. Lines of dialog that we rehearse in our heads just moments before speaking them. But there can be no play without an audience. So who are we when we're alone? I would be surprised to find that we're much more uninhibited alone. I'm pretty sure we basically act the same way save for a little outlandish singing in the car/shower or dancing like nobody's watching.
My second direction may seem more direct, or at least more fruitful.
How hard is it to believe that we're loved for no reason other than we are?
To the outside world, we are unstoppable. Especially us. Those of us who walked into our middle school guidance counselor's office to ringing endorsements or have had the benefit of rising just far enough above the average to be marveled at. It's interesting how our culture does that. Raises us up constantly. As an interest side note (whether or not I ever have side notes is up for debate) the concept of self-esteem didn't really enter into the public consciousness until the 1970's - meaning we've lived all but 40 years of our existence as humans without it. Now it seems impossible to throw away.
Before it existed, there was work ethic, the public eye. How good a person you were rested on how others in polite society viewed you. Oddly enough, it basically still does with the twist that we can always fall back on our own self esteem. And have you ever noticed how much "self esteem" is formed from the opinions of others? The bottom line is, we feel good ourselves because of outside forces. It's an incredible feat to feel strong about yourself without having any back-up. Without facts. Without "proof".
This leads me in two directions. I'll head in both of them if you don't mind.
For one, what's going to happen at the end of the day when we head home? What's going to happen when we get back from our jobs or our schools to a one-bedroom apartment and no one there to exist for? I've lived alone several times in my life, and after the first few months of awkwardness, it's one of the few truly liberating things on this earth. To be truly alone. So much of our lives is made up of acting. Scenes. Lines of dialog that we rehearse in our heads just moments before speaking them. But there can be no play without an audience. So who are we when we're alone? I would be surprised to find that we're much more uninhibited alone. I'm pretty sure we basically act the same way save for a little outlandish singing in the car/shower or dancing like nobody's watching.
My second direction may seem more direct, or at least more fruitful.
How hard is it to believe that we're loved for no reason other than we are?
05 September 2007
Franny Glass
"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
The Jesus Prayer. The Prayer of the Heart. It comes in different forms, one as short as simply saying the name "Jesus", "Lord have mercy" or the longest version that appears above. It's a staple of Eastern Christianity, and incredibly seductive force, the purpose of which is to create a lasting, constant prayer within the heart of the believer.
It's featured in Franny and Zooey (probably my least favorite book from one of my favorite authors) when Franny decides to give up her normal middle-class life for one involving the mystic Jesus Prayer.
It stems from 1 Thessalonians 5:17 where Paul tells followers to "pray without ceasing", and takes the comment quite literally. The prayer works like this:
The follower utters the prayer as a mantra, over and over until she gets into the natural rhythm of the words. This could take days, weeks, months, years. The follower has to pray without ceasing until the prayer matches her heartbeat - a sort of "feeling", a nirvana of sorts - and then, the follower's heart continues the prayer on its own with every beat, thus making the follower pray with every breath and every new burst of blood traveling through the body.
It's a way to be constantly mindful of God's presence.
I was thinking about this in terms of every adopted ethos. It certainly raises question for Christianity - are you as consistent and mindful of your chosen faith? Is your life itself a prayer to God? Does your heart beat the words "Jesus Christ" or is prayer a quiet time half-an-hour a day before bedtime?
But it could be applied to any way of life. The fact is, most people just don't adhere to the principles they aspire to with any consistency. Most are content to live their lives on auto-pilot. Some have never even thought of the driving factors that move their lives along. Why are they here? What direction are they heading? For the most part, they get into a car, start her up, and have no clue what their destination is. Or the route.
How many of us keep the grand scheme of things within sight on a daily basis? on an hourly basis? every minute? every heartbeat? Who among us lives with an eye constantly pointed toward the guiding principles of humane existence?
Repeating a single phrase until it's tattooed on our heart seems a bit radical. But isn't life pretty radical?
The Jesus Prayer. The Prayer of the Heart. It comes in different forms, one as short as simply saying the name "Jesus", "Lord have mercy" or the longest version that appears above. It's a staple of Eastern Christianity, and incredibly seductive force, the purpose of which is to create a lasting, constant prayer within the heart of the believer.
It's featured in Franny and Zooey (probably my least favorite book from one of my favorite authors) when Franny decides to give up her normal middle-class life for one involving the mystic Jesus Prayer.
It stems from 1 Thessalonians 5:17 where Paul tells followers to "pray without ceasing", and takes the comment quite literally. The prayer works like this:
The follower utters the prayer as a mantra, over and over until she gets into the natural rhythm of the words. This could take days, weeks, months, years. The follower has to pray without ceasing until the prayer matches her heartbeat - a sort of "feeling", a nirvana of sorts - and then, the follower's heart continues the prayer on its own with every beat, thus making the follower pray with every breath and every new burst of blood traveling through the body.
It's a way to be constantly mindful of God's presence.
I was thinking about this in terms of every adopted ethos. It certainly raises question for Christianity - are you as consistent and mindful of your chosen faith? Is your life itself a prayer to God? Does your heart beat the words "Jesus Christ" or is prayer a quiet time half-an-hour a day before bedtime?
But it could be applied to any way of life. The fact is, most people just don't adhere to the principles they aspire to with any consistency. Most are content to live their lives on auto-pilot. Some have never even thought of the driving factors that move their lives along. Why are they here? What direction are they heading? For the most part, they get into a car, start her up, and have no clue what their destination is. Or the route.
How many of us keep the grand scheme of things within sight on a daily basis? on an hourly basis? every minute? every heartbeat? Who among us lives with an eye constantly pointed toward the guiding principles of humane existence?
Repeating a single phrase until it's tattooed on our heart seems a bit radical. But isn't life pretty radical?
The Space Between
Have you ever looked up, almost woken up from a waking dream, and wondered how you got somewhere? Tried to trace the footsteps that led you to where you stand?
Our lives aren't as linear as we'd like to believe - at least we don't experience them that way. We have moments where we zone out, where aren't paying attention, just going through the motions, or just in full-fledged sleep mode. Our brains are not capable of taking in everything that our surroundings have to offer.
My father cites this phenomenon as his reason to stop drinking (alcohol is certainly a purveyor or "lost time"). When he was in college, he drank fairly heavily - not out of the ordinary for any collegiate, let alone one at UT Austin - but it wasn't the antics of a wild night that made him stop. It was when he woke up one morning, safe in his bed. The sun was creeping into the room in soft beams through the blinds, and my father opened his eyes without a hangover. Feeling more than fine, he got dressed, went outside, and saw his car parked in the driveway. Everything was as it should be.
But he didn't remember how he got there.
The fact that he couldn't remember driving home spooked him. Everything was fine, but the night could have had a far different outcome. To this day, he still can't link together the events between the party and waking up the next day. What could have happened on the drive home? Had anyone else been in the car with him? Had he endangered himself and others?
I think you'll find that there are many times in life that exist in the unconscious that aren't ruined by alcohol or other drugs. Our minds work primitively some times. We break down things into mindless routines in order to make them simpler. How many times have you woken up, showered, gotten dressed, etc. without even "thinking" about it? How many other things do you do the same way every time?
The two points I'm making with this illustration are that 1) we go through life unconsciously about some things that should be given great consideration. Our friendships. Our families. Perhaps even your relationship to God. We get so used to them, that we do them all without really thinking about them. We have no idea how we got where we are. Looking back, tracing the steps is one good way to be mindful of how and why we do what we do.
and B) doing things in a new way - like brushing your teeth with your left hand (right hand for lefties) - opens up new neuro-paths in your brain. Challenging yourself to do things differently makes you smarter.
Like waking up from a dream, we can wake up from being awake. Regain consciousness after zoning out. Look around and realize we've been half-heartedly living.
I'd be curious to know how you got where you are. What road you took. I think you'd be curious to find that out, too.
Our lives aren't as linear as we'd like to believe - at least we don't experience them that way. We have moments where we zone out, where aren't paying attention, just going through the motions, or just in full-fledged sleep mode. Our brains are not capable of taking in everything that our surroundings have to offer.
My father cites this phenomenon as his reason to stop drinking (alcohol is certainly a purveyor or "lost time"). When he was in college, he drank fairly heavily - not out of the ordinary for any collegiate, let alone one at UT Austin - but it wasn't the antics of a wild night that made him stop. It was when he woke up one morning, safe in his bed. The sun was creeping into the room in soft beams through the blinds, and my father opened his eyes without a hangover. Feeling more than fine, he got dressed, went outside, and saw his car parked in the driveway. Everything was as it should be.
But he didn't remember how he got there.
The fact that he couldn't remember driving home spooked him. Everything was fine, but the night could have had a far different outcome. To this day, he still can't link together the events between the party and waking up the next day. What could have happened on the drive home? Had anyone else been in the car with him? Had he endangered himself and others?
I think you'll find that there are many times in life that exist in the unconscious that aren't ruined by alcohol or other drugs. Our minds work primitively some times. We break down things into mindless routines in order to make them simpler. How many times have you woken up, showered, gotten dressed, etc. without even "thinking" about it? How many other things do you do the same way every time?
The two points I'm making with this illustration are that 1) we go through life unconsciously about some things that should be given great consideration. Our friendships. Our families. Perhaps even your relationship to God. We get so used to them, that we do them all without really thinking about them. We have no idea how we got where we are. Looking back, tracing the steps is one good way to be mindful of how and why we do what we do.
and B) doing things in a new way - like brushing your teeth with your left hand (right hand for lefties) - opens up new neuro-paths in your brain. Challenging yourself to do things differently makes you smarter.
Like waking up from a dream, we can wake up from being awake. Regain consciousness after zoning out. Look around and realize we've been half-heartedly living.
I'd be curious to know how you got where you are. What road you took. I think you'd be curious to find that out, too.
04 September 2007
Without a Net
First times.
I'm fascinated by them. The incarnation of someone testing something out and either failing or discovering something new about their world or themselves is an unmatchable feat.
Think of all the inane things humans do. The things beyond nature - the things beyond our evolutionary need to survive. Some examples: The Trapeze: Who was the first person (or persons) to build a contraption that could kill you or make you soar through the air with exhilaration? What would drive someone to invent such a thing? And then make it an everyday thing?
Drinking cow's milk: Who was the first person to go up to a cow and say, "Whatever comes out of these things when i squeeze 'em. . .i'm drinking." ?
There are more examples of course, but the main point is one of human indulgence. We've gotten so far beyond the need for food, water, and shelter (most of us anyway) that we've begun inventing ways to entertain ourselves that seem to go against our own survival. Think about crack cocaine...there are over 20 steps in the process for making it. How did someone figure that out? Trial and error? It's not like brewing beer, where it took centuries to create and melded from one thing to the next. It took less than a decade and all the steps in between lead to something that can kill instantly. How does something like that get made?
We are endless beings. Completely creative.
Mankind (read: man and womankind) is so incredible.
What are some other things that humans do (or that you do) that seem ridiculous or against our survivalism?
I'm fascinated by them. The incarnation of someone testing something out and either failing or discovering something new about their world or themselves is an unmatchable feat.
Think of all the inane things humans do. The things beyond nature - the things beyond our evolutionary need to survive. Some examples: The Trapeze: Who was the first person (or persons) to build a contraption that could kill you or make you soar through the air with exhilaration? What would drive someone to invent such a thing? And then make it an everyday thing?
Drinking cow's milk: Who was the first person to go up to a cow and say, "Whatever comes out of these things when i squeeze 'em. . .i'm drinking." ?
There are more examples of course, but the main point is one of human indulgence. We've gotten so far beyond the need for food, water, and shelter (most of us anyway) that we've begun inventing ways to entertain ourselves that seem to go against our own survival. Think about crack cocaine...there are over 20 steps in the process for making it. How did someone figure that out? Trial and error? It's not like brewing beer, where it took centuries to create and melded from one thing to the next. It took less than a decade and all the steps in between lead to something that can kill instantly. How does something like that get made?
We are endless beings. Completely creative.
Mankind (read: man and womankind) is so incredible.
What are some other things that humans do (or that you do) that seem ridiculous or against our survivalism?
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