Yesterday I saw the worst bumper sticker I have ever seen in my life. I was driving down John Street, minding my own business, when I saw a message on the back of a Ford sedan in front of me. It was a plain black rectangular sticker with a message in white script font that said:
If you're not having fun, it's your own fault
What? Excuse me? What kind of message is that, to broadcast to everyone that drives a car? As it turns out, I had just had a rather not-fun night and anticipated a not-fun follow up conversation about it at the end of my drive (nothing dramatic or life-threatening, but something serious and mature). And certainly I'd had worse days than this, and what if I was following this car on one of those days? Maybe coming from the hospital, or going to the hospital, or coming home from having been let go from my job and panicking about how I would make ends meet, or coming home from the airport where I'd gone to volunteer to help people who had lost everything in the hurricane, or going to the airport to do that?
You never know what people are going through, I thought to this person driving this Ford sedan. You never know what heavy weight anybody is carrying. How dare you put this message on your car!
It was all I could do not to speed up and crash into them. I hope somebody with less self-control than I have doesn't do it one day. But if that does happen, and they don't find that fun, I guess it's their own fault.
Sunday, September 8, 2019
Saturday, January 6, 2018
Knowing That and Knowing How
A big theme of the last year for me was the idea of gifts, and the responsibility we have to use them to the fullest.
Part of my contemplation of this topic was the realization that I have, maybe always, lived with a lot of pressure on this topic, and a constant feeling that I was not living up to my potential and therefore to my obligations to the world.
I know that, as a late-20th Century American person, I grew up with a steady stream of biographies of successful geniuses. You don't hear someone interviewed by Terry Gross or Marc Maron if they haven't worked hard throughout their life, with focus, and achieved something extraordinary in their field. I remember as a very young person, enjoying the tremendous treat that was staying up late to watch the Johnny Carson show, that as I wanted his interviews with the accomplished and famous, I was constantly preparing for my own interview, what I would wear, what I would say.
How did I, at the age of 8 or 9, develop the expectation of myself that I would of course eventually be interviewed by Johnny Carson? Was that just me, or is it an oldest child type of thing, or is it an American child type of thing?
Only recently have I viewed this expectation as an unreasonable pressure on myself. And only in adulthood, where you are performing for a judgement or grade far less than you are performing as a way of communicating with others or enjoying community, have I realized that this expectation reflects all the wrong reasons for performing.
On a recent international trip, I had another revelation, based on a jet-laggy moment of confusion. I used to travel across seas frequently, one of the longest journeys possible in the world, the flight between the West Coast of the US (either LAX or SFO airports), to Sydney in Australia. Over the years, I developed all kinds of skills that helped me survive the long trip. I used to describe it as similar to a lizard in the freezer - I could slow all my metabolic processes way down, so that the flight didn't seem long at all. This is a skill that has been very useful in many tedious circumstances in my life.
So last month, after not travelling over a sea since something like 2013, I learned that I would travel from Wisconsin to Gothenburg, in Sweden. As I packed for the trip, I could feel all those skills kicking in. I knew to pack light socks to change into on the plane so the flight attendants didn't run into my feet with their carts while the lights were dimmed for sleeping. I knew to buy a big bottle of water after going through Security, to take on the plane with me. I knew to bring a neck pillow, and a fleece jacket with pockets for easily finding tissues and lip balm in the dark.
It turns out my skills served me well. The flight between the US and Europe is less than half the time of the LAX-SYD flight, so it was over before I got the least bit uncomfortable. It turns out I missed a connection at Heathrow, so I used my skills surviving the six hours of ghosting around the terminal and staying awake until my rescheduled connection (that time now, looking back, seems like it was quite short).
Once I finally got to Gothenburg, I had a day to explore and get my bearings. I found a train station across the street from the hotel, which went to our company's office in only one stop - pretty idiot-proof. I decided to travel that way on Monday, when my first meeting was at 9:00 am.
On that Monday, walking down into the station to the platform, there was a powerfully reminiscent smell of electric urban train that met me. I used to commute every day by train in Sydney, it must have been for about three years, so I had done my time building experience with this form of transportation (and I know it wasn't obvious how it worked from the start, because I remember some difficult and vertiginous experiences on my first few rides, where I didn't know how to buy a ticket, or couldn't find the right platform, or missed a stop, or didn't know that you're supposed to get off the train before the new passengers come on and got caught up in the current).
And my jet-laggy brain thought to myself, what are you doing with this expertise in the knowledge of this train smell?
I had a vivid sense of it as something I had spent time and practiced over the years of my life, and somehow it got conflated with the years of practice that, say, a professional violinist does, building up to virtuosic expertise later in life.
I did notice the absurdity of this thought, and later it occurred to me that my jet-laggy brain was conflating knowing how - the knowledge of a trade or practice or artistic ability - with knowing that - that is, acquaintance, familiarity. There are two different words for these two types of knowing in Spanish, and if I remember correctly in Latin too, but in English they can be mixed up.
At home I told this story, and someone praised me for my hard-won knowledge of how to navigate an urban train, and I do feel proud of that, but the knowing of my confused experience was the knowing of the smell. That's just an acquaintance, nonetheless developed over long time from lots of practice. But I don't know that I can do anything useful with the acquaintance with that smell.
I realize that I also don't feel pressure to use the gift of the knowledge of that smell to serve the world or reach my full potential. It's just something I have, from being, and from walking the particular path through the world that I have walked.
Part of my contemplation of this topic was the realization that I have, maybe always, lived with a lot of pressure on this topic, and a constant feeling that I was not living up to my potential and therefore to my obligations to the world.
I know that, as a late-20th Century American person, I grew up with a steady stream of biographies of successful geniuses. You don't hear someone interviewed by Terry Gross or Marc Maron if they haven't worked hard throughout their life, with focus, and achieved something extraordinary in their field. I remember as a very young person, enjoying the tremendous treat that was staying up late to watch the Johnny Carson show, that as I wanted his interviews with the accomplished and famous, I was constantly preparing for my own interview, what I would wear, what I would say.
How did I, at the age of 8 or 9, develop the expectation of myself that I would of course eventually be interviewed by Johnny Carson? Was that just me, or is it an oldest child type of thing, or is it an American child type of thing?
Only recently have I viewed this expectation as an unreasonable pressure on myself. And only in adulthood, where you are performing for a judgement or grade far less than you are performing as a way of communicating with others or enjoying community, have I realized that this expectation reflects all the wrong reasons for performing.
On a recent international trip, I had another revelation, based on a jet-laggy moment of confusion. I used to travel across seas frequently, one of the longest journeys possible in the world, the flight between the West Coast of the US (either LAX or SFO airports), to Sydney in Australia. Over the years, I developed all kinds of skills that helped me survive the long trip. I used to describe it as similar to a lizard in the freezer - I could slow all my metabolic processes way down, so that the flight didn't seem long at all. This is a skill that has been very useful in many tedious circumstances in my life.
So last month, after not travelling over a sea since something like 2013, I learned that I would travel from Wisconsin to Gothenburg, in Sweden. As I packed for the trip, I could feel all those skills kicking in. I knew to pack light socks to change into on the plane so the flight attendants didn't run into my feet with their carts while the lights were dimmed for sleeping. I knew to buy a big bottle of water after going through Security, to take on the plane with me. I knew to bring a neck pillow, and a fleece jacket with pockets for easily finding tissues and lip balm in the dark.
It turns out my skills served me well. The flight between the US and Europe is less than half the time of the LAX-SYD flight, so it was over before I got the least bit uncomfortable. It turns out I missed a connection at Heathrow, so I used my skills surviving the six hours of ghosting around the terminal and staying awake until my rescheduled connection (that time now, looking back, seems like it was quite short).
Once I finally got to Gothenburg, I had a day to explore and get my bearings. I found a train station across the street from the hotel, which went to our company's office in only one stop - pretty idiot-proof. I decided to travel that way on Monday, when my first meeting was at 9:00 am.
On that Monday, walking down into the station to the platform, there was a powerfully reminiscent smell of electric urban train that met me. I used to commute every day by train in Sydney, it must have been for about three years, so I had done my time building experience with this form of transportation (and I know it wasn't obvious how it worked from the start, because I remember some difficult and vertiginous experiences on my first few rides, where I didn't know how to buy a ticket, or couldn't find the right platform, or missed a stop, or didn't know that you're supposed to get off the train before the new passengers come on and got caught up in the current).
And my jet-laggy brain thought to myself, what are you doing with this expertise in the knowledge of this train smell?
I had a vivid sense of it as something I had spent time and practiced over the years of my life, and somehow it got conflated with the years of practice that, say, a professional violinist does, building up to virtuosic expertise later in life.
I did notice the absurdity of this thought, and later it occurred to me that my jet-laggy brain was conflating knowing how - the knowledge of a trade or practice or artistic ability - with knowing that - that is, acquaintance, familiarity. There are two different words for these two types of knowing in Spanish, and if I remember correctly in Latin too, but in English they can be mixed up.
At home I told this story, and someone praised me for my hard-won knowledge of how to navigate an urban train, and I do feel proud of that, but the knowing of my confused experience was the knowing of the smell. That's just an acquaintance, nonetheless developed over long time from lots of practice. But I don't know that I can do anything useful with the acquaintance with that smell.
I realize that I also don't feel pressure to use the gift of the knowledge of that smell to serve the world or reach my full potential. It's just something I have, from being, and from walking the particular path through the world that I have walked.
Liseberg Station from Wikipedia
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
We Are All One Tribe
Two weekends ago, I got to see a talk and performance by the very influential Free Improvisational musicial Fred Frith, who was in town as part of an Improvisation Festival organized by a student group at Lawrence Univeristy. In his talk he addressed themes of composition vs. improvisation, which he has been exploring through his work since the 1960's, and he also gave some instruction for how to perform with other people - how to listen, how to contribute, how to end a piece. The audience was comprised of about 20 music students, all male, as it happened, and three of us members of the community, two of whom were the only women in the room. The performance that night was also attended by a select audience, mostly students, mostly male. Many members of the Music faculty did not attend. Free Improvisation is challenging to almost all ears, and requires some repeated exposure and hard thinking to find your way in. Once you've done the work, though, you can't help but regret that more people can't share in the experience.
In conversation around the festival, someone made a comment that improvised music tradionally comes from groups that don't have the money - Blues musicians, musicians in Africa. Composed music, like Symphonies, comes from the upper classes in Europe. People traditionally dressed up in their white tie and evening gowns, put on all their jewelry, travelled to ornate concert houses. The instruments, for example Stradivarius violins, are astronomically high in value.
The following Wednesday, I attended the gala opening of the 50th anniversary season of the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra, with special guest Itzhak Perlman, the greatest living violinist. Everyone was dressed up, and there were decorations and cupcakes all in gold in the lobby, for the golden anniversary.
While I was watching the orchestra perform, I thought about the traditions of European Symphony orchestra music and free improvisation (sometimes on found or handmade instruments). The fact is, I was able to attend both, and appreciate both.
Then a week later I watched again the punk documentary The Decline of Western Civilization. I did not fully embrace the punk lifestyle back in the early 1980's (I spent the time in an elite liberal arts college in a bucolic setting in rural Ohio). But this was the music with which I identified. And because of that, I had to hate hippies, had to turn my back on bloated 1970's album rock, and had to hate Disco. I hated Disco with a burning passion.
Thinking about those tribal allegiances at this distance, I'm struck now with the race implications, which I'm sure were at play. Disco emerged out of a number of musical traditions that featured mostly black performers, like soul, like the Philadelphia sound. Punk rock maybe started in the Blues and always had adjacency with Reggae, but in my experience really came from England, and was popular with suburban white kids. Like myself.
People bemoan the fragmentation of the music industry in this internet age, when everyone can listen to anything ever recorded and compile their own playlists. We do not all listen to the same records any more, as a culture. And my own listening has lately gone all Local and Artisanal - I think every single CD I've purchased in the past 6 months has been directly from the hands of a performer who I just saw perform. I remember a sentence in a Stephen King short story set in the 1960's, where he's setting the scene of a character in college, tying the action to one particular summer, and finishes his description with, "...and Hey Jude played, everywhere, everywhere." We don't have generational anthems like that any more, but we also don't have radio stations that everyone listens to, or record stores that only stock what's selling.
As I sat and watched the Symphony playing, I thought, but the good result of fragmentation is the erosion of tribalism. I can listen to Free Improv and Symphony music, I can listen to punk and Disco, and appreciate it all as music, on a spectrum. Once, going to the Symphony would have been a direct attack on the values of those trying to write new music, it would have been supporting the Bourgeoisie and the power elite, it would be a stab in the heart of the revolution and probably exiled me from that group. That music would be against the music the others were trying to create. The same with Punks and Hippies or Disco fans - even listening to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, or a Moody Blues record, would be a demonstration that you were siding with the enemy.
As I sat and watched the Symphony playing, I thought, the positive result of the fragmentation of music is the democratization of music. If no one musical form dominates the upper classes or the power elite, everyone is free to listen to and appreciate everything, for what it is, on an equal playing field. Music tribalism becomes music appreciation. European Symphony music can be appreciated as the quaint ethic folk traditional art form that it is, no better than anything else, not trying to say that it's better than anything else. This has got to be a good thing.
On the Monday night, instead of watching the first Presidential Debate, the same three community members who had gone to see Fred Frith's talk were in the front row for a performance by Huun Huur Tu, a quartet of Tuvan Throat Singers. The music is deeply rooted in the local history of the Russian province of Tuva. The singing style to us sounds otherwordly. They played instruments made of roots and skins - the leader had to ask for the stage lights to be turned down because their instruments are sensitive to temperature and kept going out of tune. I was astonished at the sounds and the skills of the players. I was reminded of the big world. I was reminded that when you think about loving everybody, equally, it includes people with experiences that are extremely remote from yours, not just the people who live across the street who you've never met.
Monday, September 26, 2016
Three Top-10 Love Songs
Wicked Game - Chris Isaak
I heard a Mile of Music band cover this recently. What I hope is to put it in a time capsule and have some future person discover it for the first time. It has the power to stop you in your tracks so that an ocean of feeling can flow through you from earth to the starry heavens (or am I just thinking of an ocean because of the cheesy video? but there is something watery about the blend of lust-drunk but hopeless and melancholy feeling that the song inspired). But for me it is still too recently associated with a particular time in my life that is just far enough past to seem quaint and childish, and so I react with that simple nostalgia and not with the stunned immediacy any more. But I'll bet that future person, when they open up the time capsule and hear this for the first time, feels the powerful ocean-feeling.
Kiss From a Rose - Seal
This was an "our song" for a particular relationship that was just new when it initially came out, but I've been surprised how adaptable it has been, staying a favorite and speaking romantically to me, long after that particular rose died and lost all its petals.
Magic Bus - The Who
This one was discovered in High School, during I guess a Who phase when I was feeling profound 17 year old thoughts while lying on my bed listening to the Quadrophenia soundtrack in big puffy headphones. The polyrhythms in the second half make your insides want to dance in several different directions at once, but it's the words that I think make this song romantic. I said as much one time when I was radio dj'ing in college, during Finals week of the first semester, when I had signed up for a show outside of my usual time. Much later that year, I was sitting with a boy two or three years younger than me who I typed term papers for, it was also during Finals I think, just hanging out, and I can't remember why but I think I launched into an explanation of some philosphical concept and so my hanging out voice turned into my lecturing voice, and he jumped, and pointed at me, and said, "That's where I know you from!" He said, "You were on the radio, and you played the song Magic Bus, and you said, '"Here's the most romantic song on earth, because it's about someone who wants to buy a bus, to go and see his girlfriend. I don't know, you decide.'" I could exactly remember giving that introduction, and it was funny because I still believed it, still do now and can't really see why anyone else can't, but I don't think he could, and he thought my introduction was hilarious, which is why it stuck with him.
Is it the most romantic song on earth? I don't know, you decide :-)
I heard a Mile of Music band cover this recently. What I hope is to put it in a time capsule and have some future person discover it for the first time. It has the power to stop you in your tracks so that an ocean of feeling can flow through you from earth to the starry heavens (or am I just thinking of an ocean because of the cheesy video? but there is something watery about the blend of lust-drunk but hopeless and melancholy feeling that the song inspired). But for me it is still too recently associated with a particular time in my life that is just far enough past to seem quaint and childish, and so I react with that simple nostalgia and not with the stunned immediacy any more. But I'll bet that future person, when they open up the time capsule and hear this for the first time, feels the powerful ocean-feeling.
Kiss From a Rose - Seal
This was an "our song" for a particular relationship that was just new when it initially came out, but I've been surprised how adaptable it has been, staying a favorite and speaking romantically to me, long after that particular rose died and lost all its petals.
Magic Bus - The Who
This one was discovered in High School, during I guess a Who phase when I was feeling profound 17 year old thoughts while lying on my bed listening to the Quadrophenia soundtrack in big puffy headphones. The polyrhythms in the second half make your insides want to dance in several different directions at once, but it's the words that I think make this song romantic. I said as much one time when I was radio dj'ing in college, during Finals week of the first semester, when I had signed up for a show outside of my usual time. Much later that year, I was sitting with a boy two or three years younger than me who I typed term papers for, it was also during Finals I think, just hanging out, and I can't remember why but I think I launched into an explanation of some philosphical concept and so my hanging out voice turned into my lecturing voice, and he jumped, and pointed at me, and said, "That's where I know you from!" He said, "You were on the radio, and you played the song Magic Bus, and you said, '"Here's the most romantic song on earth, because it's about someone who wants to buy a bus, to go and see his girlfriend. I don't know, you decide.'" I could exactly remember giving that introduction, and it was funny because I still believed it, still do now and can't really see why anyone else can't, but I don't think he could, and he thought my introduction was hilarious, which is why it stuck with him.
Is it the most romantic song on earth? I don't know, you decide :-)
Contemplation of Some Terms around Discernment
Yesterday was the first meeting of my Circles of Light group, a 10-session, 6 or 9 month process of discernment for a small group.
We spent some time talking about what Discernment is and what Discernment is not. Our moderator wrote our words up on large post-its as we said them, forming helpful real-life word clouds. This, of course, was right in my wheelhouse, being not just a Verbal Learning but a Written Word Learner.
Several of them sparked a desire to delve deeper, to do some further explanation.
(I am writing all day today, just doing it. Perhaps this is what it is like to write all day, in which case, I like it!)
(9-5, instead of 11:30 to whenever?) (We'll continue to see what I can organize here.)(And investigate where you can actually get remunerated for this)
One component of What Discernment Is that resonated with me was the notion that when you discover a call, or choose a path, you are also choosing to let other things go. (Strange memory of walking by the Broadway building in Sydney, just now. Before its renovation and the grocery store being there, when it was known to be occupied by squatters) (Hm. Home, money, mortgage, maintenance of home, those types of themes) (You know, the whole New Testament, in some ways, is just all about money.)
I had just, just been thinking, it came back to me, the Counselling, Mental Health, Healthy Boundaries whatever phrase - You need to learn to say No.
A recognition in myself that instead of saying no, I just don't do the thing.
"Guilt" came up in our "What Discernment is Not" and plays a large part in this same theme.
"Editing" was added to the What Discernment Is board,
(There is enough blogging space for anyone, for all the words you want to say. There is more or less infinite space, for everyone.) (A song I heard on the car radio on the way home from this first meeting was a reggae sort of song with the refrain, "There is room enough at the table for every one.")
-- I reacted against Editing. I think my comment was that it felt like it was cheating, and I'm not sure if that really explains it, but it certainly goes against the "Yes, and" stance. It seems like it's cheating in the sense that your job is to put the puzzle together, the Ikea bookshelf from the flatpack box, with no pieces left over. You need to look at ALL the pieces of you, and all the possible components in the world, all the pursuits, all the talents, all the subject matter (places to live, degrees to get, whatever), leave nothing out, and then arrange it all into a whole that makes sense, that makes a picture that you can easily interpret, you know what it is at a glance, like a pointillist painting that resolves into a picture (like my splatter style painting hanging downstairs, brought to America with considerable trouble and expense). The problem is when you keep your focus too narrow. The problem is when you pick one path too hastily and ignore all the important things it leaves out.
Maybe this rule is derived from philosophical analysis, and definition of terms. Finding of counterexamples. You could easily define the word "chair" as "four-legged, wooden object on which to sit", if you forgot to expand your gaze and range and consider the other things that perfectly well qualify as chairs but aren't wood, or have three legs, or one leg or none but more of a base. I used to love that exercise. You don't just look at the dictionary, because that's just the fossil record of these activities by speakers and thinkers of language. What's in, what's out? Can we draw the lines more finely around this concept? Do we need a new word altogether? It illustrated what it is that analytical philosophers do, and I hope showed that it's doable, and worth doing, and needing doing.
Is Discernment Decision? Our moderator laughed when I asked this question, and said, "Of course, the philosopher!" But is it? They seem different. And it seems worthwhile to explore the difference. Ha - to try to discern the difference.
So, back to editing - after my reaction, the professional magazine editor in the room said that she didn't think of it as cutting things out, as going through with the red pen, she was thinking about editing the magazine, deciding what to call on, what article to commission to include. Curation. Trendy word, but powerful word. Is that what we do with our lives, is that what it is to live a life? What would it mean if it were? Why does editing or curation seem so different from existing yourself into the next moment, one at a time?
I have the same feeling as I do when people talk about how to have a job, one job in a career - you should the thinking, at that job, what do I need to learn from this job to get me to my next step? That always seemed super odd to me, and I know I've never done it.
Maybe the idea that life is a magazine feels inappropriate because it relies on your knowing how many pages you have to work with, that a back cover exists and that you can plan it, that an overview is possible while you're still at a moment in time along the compilation process.
That feels like just a lie, an illusion, too conservative, arrogant in a way. It ignores the chaos and terror but also the radical possibility of actually living forward into time. Really, EVERYTHING is possible. Lateral solutions are available. Orthogonal change.
Walk across the lines of the labyrinth. Stomp them out, what the heck. Punk rock anarchy comes to the medieval meditation walk.
Editing and saying no. Choosing for and therefore choosing to leave out or leave behind. Editing as compiling, commissioning, curating. No vs yes. Boundaries vs limitations. Fully existing as a whole self in community vs blowing off favors to people.
Confidence, was another weird word that struck me. The end result of this process is that we should be able to move forward confidently in the next steps on our path. With all the other mush about what we should expect - it won't happen in a certain time frame, you can't determine in advance what it will be, you may not have a single illumination at the end or indeed any, blah blah blah, then the idea that we can expect confidence seemed not to fit with that. Confidence and Confirm start the same, do they have similar roots? Confirmation - it's the name of a big step in a Christian/Episcopalian life, it's also the name for getting more support for what you already think.
That's sort of comforting, that the end result might be confirmation of something you already feel, supporting evidence, removal of doubt. So, you don't have to come up with a new future from whole cloth, you should be braced for dramatic reversals or orthogonal zags, but maybe you'll just know that you know. Test what you feel and find that it is strong and holds up. That possibility is exciting to me.
(Somehow I feel that I will only be driving back to my chosen career from practical necessity, that it doesn't have enough to it (enough authentic voice, right? working in a corporate context) that it could be the thing calling. This is my suspicion, and we'll let things roll and see if I'm right)
Another participant sounds like she's also struggling with pursuing gift vs selling out to practicality, and it was interesting to hear that we both use the job of Bank Teller as the symbol of the worst, most empty and meaningless way to spend ones time. No insult intended to all the wonderful bank tellers out there, who have served me throughout my life. But seriously, you're basically all being replaced by machines now, right?
I wonder, though, if her struggle is with doing what she has been told she should do, vs having ambition.
I should schedule another walk to maybe pursue these things with her further. Chica, you have permission to be/become a big deal!
We spent some time talking about what Discernment is and what Discernment is not. Our moderator wrote our words up on large post-its as we said them, forming helpful real-life word clouds. This, of course, was right in my wheelhouse, being not just a Verbal Learning but a Written Word Learner.
Several of them sparked a desire to delve deeper, to do some further explanation.
(I am writing all day today, just doing it. Perhaps this is what it is like to write all day, in which case, I like it!)
(9-5, instead of 11:30 to whenever?) (We'll continue to see what I can organize here.)(And investigate where you can actually get remunerated for this)
One component of What Discernment Is that resonated with me was the notion that when you discover a call, or choose a path, you are also choosing to let other things go. (Strange memory of walking by the Broadway building in Sydney, just now. Before its renovation and the grocery store being there, when it was known to be occupied by squatters) (Hm. Home, money, mortgage, maintenance of home, those types of themes) (You know, the whole New Testament, in some ways, is just all about money.)
I had just, just been thinking, it came back to me, the Counselling, Mental Health, Healthy Boundaries whatever phrase - You need to learn to say No.
A recognition in myself that instead of saying no, I just don't do the thing.
"Guilt" came up in our "What Discernment is Not" and plays a large part in this same theme.
"Editing" was added to the What Discernment Is board,
(There is enough blogging space for anyone, for all the words you want to say. There is more or less infinite space, for everyone.) (A song I heard on the car radio on the way home from this first meeting was a reggae sort of song with the refrain, "There is room enough at the table for every one.")
-- I reacted against Editing. I think my comment was that it felt like it was cheating, and I'm not sure if that really explains it, but it certainly goes against the "Yes, and" stance. It seems like it's cheating in the sense that your job is to put the puzzle together, the Ikea bookshelf from the flatpack box, with no pieces left over. You need to look at ALL the pieces of you, and all the possible components in the world, all the pursuits, all the talents, all the subject matter (places to live, degrees to get, whatever), leave nothing out, and then arrange it all into a whole that makes sense, that makes a picture that you can easily interpret, you know what it is at a glance, like a pointillist painting that resolves into a picture (like my splatter style painting hanging downstairs, brought to America with considerable trouble and expense). The problem is when you keep your focus too narrow. The problem is when you pick one path too hastily and ignore all the important things it leaves out.
Maybe this rule is derived from philosophical analysis, and definition of terms. Finding of counterexamples. You could easily define the word "chair" as "four-legged, wooden object on which to sit", if you forgot to expand your gaze and range and consider the other things that perfectly well qualify as chairs but aren't wood, or have three legs, or one leg or none but more of a base. I used to love that exercise. You don't just look at the dictionary, because that's just the fossil record of these activities by speakers and thinkers of language. What's in, what's out? Can we draw the lines more finely around this concept? Do we need a new word altogether? It illustrated what it is that analytical philosophers do, and I hope showed that it's doable, and worth doing, and needing doing.
Is Discernment Decision? Our moderator laughed when I asked this question, and said, "Of course, the philosopher!" But is it? They seem different. And it seems worthwhile to explore the difference. Ha - to try to discern the difference.
So, back to editing - after my reaction, the professional magazine editor in the room said that she didn't think of it as cutting things out, as going through with the red pen, she was thinking about editing the magazine, deciding what to call on, what article to commission to include. Curation. Trendy word, but powerful word. Is that what we do with our lives, is that what it is to live a life? What would it mean if it were? Why does editing or curation seem so different from existing yourself into the next moment, one at a time?
I have the same feeling as I do when people talk about how to have a job, one job in a career - you should the thinking, at that job, what do I need to learn from this job to get me to my next step? That always seemed super odd to me, and I know I've never done it.
Maybe the idea that life is a magazine feels inappropriate because it relies on your knowing how many pages you have to work with, that a back cover exists and that you can plan it, that an overview is possible while you're still at a moment in time along the compilation process.
That feels like just a lie, an illusion, too conservative, arrogant in a way. It ignores the chaos and terror but also the radical possibility of actually living forward into time. Really, EVERYTHING is possible. Lateral solutions are available. Orthogonal change.
Walk across the lines of the labyrinth. Stomp them out, what the heck. Punk rock anarchy comes to the medieval meditation walk.
Editing and saying no. Choosing for and therefore choosing to leave out or leave behind. Editing as compiling, commissioning, curating. No vs yes. Boundaries vs limitations. Fully existing as a whole self in community vs blowing off favors to people.
Confidence, was another weird word that struck me. The end result of this process is that we should be able to move forward confidently in the next steps on our path. With all the other mush about what we should expect - it won't happen in a certain time frame, you can't determine in advance what it will be, you may not have a single illumination at the end or indeed any, blah blah blah, then the idea that we can expect confidence seemed not to fit with that. Confidence and Confirm start the same, do they have similar roots? Confirmation - it's the name of a big step in a Christian/Episcopalian life, it's also the name for getting more support for what you already think.
That's sort of comforting, that the end result might be confirmation of something you already feel, supporting evidence, removal of doubt. So, you don't have to come up with a new future from whole cloth, you should be braced for dramatic reversals or orthogonal zags, but maybe you'll just know that you know. Test what you feel and find that it is strong and holds up. That possibility is exciting to me.
(Somehow I feel that I will only be driving back to my chosen career from practical necessity, that it doesn't have enough to it (enough authentic voice, right? working in a corporate context) that it could be the thing calling. This is my suspicion, and we'll let things roll and see if I'm right)
Another participant sounds like she's also struggling with pursuing gift vs selling out to practicality, and it was interesting to hear that we both use the job of Bank Teller as the symbol of the worst, most empty and meaningless way to spend ones time. No insult intended to all the wonderful bank tellers out there, who have served me throughout my life. But seriously, you're basically all being replaced by machines now, right?
I wonder, though, if her struggle is with doing what she has been told she should do, vs having ambition.
I should schedule another walk to maybe pursue these things with her further. Chica, you have permission to be/become a big deal!
More on Exercise Fear
Again I catch myself procrastinating instead of starting my intended morning exercise routine, again I feel a strong tug and longing to do something fun instead, something that has to do with words and communication, and not with moving around and pushing my body past comfort.
Today I recognize in the procrastination a version of the fear I feel when I have to start a long or hard project. The second type of fear is always much more acute and debilitating. Imagine having a long report to write, or a presentation to complete, or some kind of dry business task that will require looking lots of tedious numbers up in different places, that kind of thing, you estimate that it will take about four hours, but might go to five or six, and you have four hours cleared, and you simply cannot make yourself sit down and start. That fear is stronger and more paralyzing, but I recognized an echo of it in my dawdling today, and I recognized it as a fear of failing. What if I start, and do it, but I fail?
Why would I have a fear of failing at an exercize routine that is completely under my own grown-up control, chosen by me, being done in my own house, observed by no one, accountable to no one, no grades, no having to do this as a prerequisite for something else I really want to do later. I have a perfectly fit, young enough, fully functioning body to do it with. Why is this not an occasion to live in and experience that body, in motion, rather than some test to which I don't feel up? (that I don't feel up to) (up to which I don't feel)
The answer is easy and stunningly obvious. Gym class was a perpetual opportunity to fail, for me, back in elementary school. I really couldn't do anything. I wasn't good with dribbling basketballs. I couldn't climb the rope, really at all, not even one hand over hand. I couldn't do a pull up. I couldn't do a handstand or a flip. I shook too hard to balance on the balance beam. I was slow on the obstacle courses. I made the boys afraid when we did square dancing, and I had a wart on my hand that I was terrified the would feel, and be grossed out by, and view me as an agent of contagion. I can't think of a single success at gym class. Well, one - in about fourth grade, somehow I decided to work on Long Jump, and I got good enough to win a Fourth Place ribbon at our end of year field day. Good enough to place, which astonished me. You'd think I would have learned the lesson that when you work on something and practice, you can improve and realize success. I remember thinking that very thing out loud to myself at the time. But I didn't really go on in sports.
Actually, I did find that I had an aptitude for downhill skiing, and in my first lesson got to go up the lift with the kids who were getting it, rather than the kids who were still working on Snowplow. I was the only girl in this advanced group. The instructor flirted with me shamelessly, which probably added incentive (I remember riding up the lift sharing the chair with him, hanging high over the pine trees frosted with snow highlighted by the sun from the bright blue sky, and he burst into the song - "What a day this has been, what a rare mood I'm in! Why it's almost like being in love.") I skiied a number of times since then, a handful of times, but I always picked it right up. I even had some lessons at one point to tune up my turning ability. There is a real possibility that I will never ski again, never have the opportunity, and also that I can't do it now because of my ankle injury, but I did do it, and I can do it really well, and I really liked it.
If playing a musical instrument is a kind of athletic skill, then I have always shown an aptitude for that as well. I was a pretty competent cello player, it was always just assumed that I would be first chair. I didn't work on it enough to ever be very musical, but I could do it. I'm a pretty okay singer, because I can read and can match pitches. I had a pretty quick aptitude for drums because I have good rhythm. I was nearly a guitar prodigy, for a while there, because it just came easily and I immersed myself in it so thoroughly. I plateaued and didn't get beyond beginner prodigy level, but that part had a very quick curve. If these are types of athleticism, I was good at those right away, those count as successes.
Morning calisthenics to increase strength and cardio fitness, those are in the wheelhouse of the things I'm terrible at. Like baseball - on the last two days of school when we went outside to play softball, many times they had to bring the stand out to balance the wiffle ball so I could even connect with it, and my friends would gather around 3rd base and shout together, Easy Out! One year I was sick on the last day of school and did not have to attend softball day, and that remains one of the great strokes of good fortune I can recall in my life.
You know, when I think back on all those things I couldn't do in grade school gym class, why were they having us do any of those things at all? What kid needs to be able to do ten pull ups, or climb a rope to the gym ceiling? Are these basic abilities that every functioning human being needs? No. No! So why weren't there any smaller, intermediate goals, achievable goals, presented to me and praised and celebrated? What was that all about? Hey, gym teachers of my past, a message from the Ninja Warriors of my present - Everybody falls! Where was that zen acceptance, that repetition, that additional chance, that acknowledgement of Personal Best, that celebration of what I could do rather than only opportunities to be judged on what I couldn't? Where was that, "Wow! You're awesome! You're amazing! Good job!" that I now get for even the most rudimentary musical performance in a teaching setting, and watch all others give and get the same?
There was one day in High School, I had signed up for tennis, but since the weather was bad regularly that year, we had to stay inside and instead play volleyball, a sport for which I never in a million years would have signed up to voluntarily play. After many weeks of this, we were still inside, and lined up for a drill to practice serving. My arm was already puffed up and red. I was trying to look down and be invisible. When it was my turn at the front of the line, the ball would go everywhere, random, uncontrollable directions. Then I'd bow my head and walk around to the end of the line again, and brace myself to endure whatever time was left in the class, when it would stop and I could go back to the arenas of my success - AP English, speech team practice. Back in line, bravely braced to endure. Then the teacher, Ms. Luce, came over and gently pulled me aside, and said, "Has anyone ever actually showed you how to do this?" I almost didn't understand the question, because gym class had never come with instructions, just impossible challenges and the idea that we all instinctively would know how to achieve them. I shook my head no. She pulled me to the side, to the boundary area outside the basketball court outline on the floor, and explained to me how the ball was bouncing of the surface that I made, and how that geometry was steering it, and she showed me where to hit on my hand so it wouldn't hurt, and she stayed with me tossing the ball my way until I was getting it.
That is the only, only, one, single time I can remember receiving any instruction or coaching in a gym class in my whole life. Thank you, Miss Luce, for that.
How could my life be different if I'd had her for every gym class, every week of my childhood? There is no changing what has gone before. But I can change now. I can restore these past gaps, and I can coach and nurture myself now, in the way that will help me, what, improve, flourish, find hidden talents, improve my personal best, better live in my body, become a Ninja?
Addendum:
I only just unearthed this early traumatic cause of my current exercise aversion, but look! I am not alone: http://www.sbnation.com/2015/7/31/9038201/the-sad-sad-stories-of-the-presidential-fitness-test
And for reference, here are the standards. Looking at the row for a 17 year old girl, there is no way I could achieve these today. 34 sit ups within a minute? a 10 minute mile?
If to win the red badge you had to be in the top 50th percentile, that means half of kids also failed at this test. Why did anyone think that was a good idea?
Today I recognize in the procrastination a version of the fear I feel when I have to start a long or hard project. The second type of fear is always much more acute and debilitating. Imagine having a long report to write, or a presentation to complete, or some kind of dry business task that will require looking lots of tedious numbers up in different places, that kind of thing, you estimate that it will take about four hours, but might go to five or six, and you have four hours cleared, and you simply cannot make yourself sit down and start. That fear is stronger and more paralyzing, but I recognized an echo of it in my dawdling today, and I recognized it as a fear of failing. What if I start, and do it, but I fail?
Why would I have a fear of failing at an exercize routine that is completely under my own grown-up control, chosen by me, being done in my own house, observed by no one, accountable to no one, no grades, no having to do this as a prerequisite for something else I really want to do later. I have a perfectly fit, young enough, fully functioning body to do it with. Why is this not an occasion to live in and experience that body, in motion, rather than some test to which I don't feel up? (that I don't feel up to) (up to which I don't feel)
The answer is easy and stunningly obvious. Gym class was a perpetual opportunity to fail, for me, back in elementary school. I really couldn't do anything. I wasn't good with dribbling basketballs. I couldn't climb the rope, really at all, not even one hand over hand. I couldn't do a pull up. I couldn't do a handstand or a flip. I shook too hard to balance on the balance beam. I was slow on the obstacle courses. I made the boys afraid when we did square dancing, and I had a wart on my hand that I was terrified the would feel, and be grossed out by, and view me as an agent of contagion. I can't think of a single success at gym class. Well, one - in about fourth grade, somehow I decided to work on Long Jump, and I got good enough to win a Fourth Place ribbon at our end of year field day. Good enough to place, which astonished me. You'd think I would have learned the lesson that when you work on something and practice, you can improve and realize success. I remember thinking that very thing out loud to myself at the time. But I didn't really go on in sports.
Actually, I did find that I had an aptitude for downhill skiing, and in my first lesson got to go up the lift with the kids who were getting it, rather than the kids who were still working on Snowplow. I was the only girl in this advanced group. The instructor flirted with me shamelessly, which probably added incentive (I remember riding up the lift sharing the chair with him, hanging high over the pine trees frosted with snow highlighted by the sun from the bright blue sky, and he burst into the song - "What a day this has been, what a rare mood I'm in! Why it's almost like being in love.") I skiied a number of times since then, a handful of times, but I always picked it right up. I even had some lessons at one point to tune up my turning ability. There is a real possibility that I will never ski again, never have the opportunity, and also that I can't do it now because of my ankle injury, but I did do it, and I can do it really well, and I really liked it.
If playing a musical instrument is a kind of athletic skill, then I have always shown an aptitude for that as well. I was a pretty competent cello player, it was always just assumed that I would be first chair. I didn't work on it enough to ever be very musical, but I could do it. I'm a pretty okay singer, because I can read and can match pitches. I had a pretty quick aptitude for drums because I have good rhythm. I was nearly a guitar prodigy, for a while there, because it just came easily and I immersed myself in it so thoroughly. I plateaued and didn't get beyond beginner prodigy level, but that part had a very quick curve. If these are types of athleticism, I was good at those right away, those count as successes.
Morning calisthenics to increase strength and cardio fitness, those are in the wheelhouse of the things I'm terrible at. Like baseball - on the last two days of school when we went outside to play softball, many times they had to bring the stand out to balance the wiffle ball so I could even connect with it, and my friends would gather around 3rd base and shout together, Easy Out! One year I was sick on the last day of school and did not have to attend softball day, and that remains one of the great strokes of good fortune I can recall in my life.
You know, when I think back on all those things I couldn't do in grade school gym class, why were they having us do any of those things at all? What kid needs to be able to do ten pull ups, or climb a rope to the gym ceiling? Are these basic abilities that every functioning human being needs? No. No! So why weren't there any smaller, intermediate goals, achievable goals, presented to me and praised and celebrated? What was that all about? Hey, gym teachers of my past, a message from the Ninja Warriors of my present - Everybody falls! Where was that zen acceptance, that repetition, that additional chance, that acknowledgement of Personal Best, that celebration of what I could do rather than only opportunities to be judged on what I couldn't? Where was that, "Wow! You're awesome! You're amazing! Good job!" that I now get for even the most rudimentary musical performance in a teaching setting, and watch all others give and get the same?
There was one day in High School, I had signed up for tennis, but since the weather was bad regularly that year, we had to stay inside and instead play volleyball, a sport for which I never in a million years would have signed up to voluntarily play. After many weeks of this, we were still inside, and lined up for a drill to practice serving. My arm was already puffed up and red. I was trying to look down and be invisible. When it was my turn at the front of the line, the ball would go everywhere, random, uncontrollable directions. Then I'd bow my head and walk around to the end of the line again, and brace myself to endure whatever time was left in the class, when it would stop and I could go back to the arenas of my success - AP English, speech team practice. Back in line, bravely braced to endure. Then the teacher, Ms. Luce, came over and gently pulled me aside, and said, "Has anyone ever actually showed you how to do this?" I almost didn't understand the question, because gym class had never come with instructions, just impossible challenges and the idea that we all instinctively would know how to achieve them. I shook my head no. She pulled me to the side, to the boundary area outside the basketball court outline on the floor, and explained to me how the ball was bouncing of the surface that I made, and how that geometry was steering it, and she showed me where to hit on my hand so it wouldn't hurt, and she stayed with me tossing the ball my way until I was getting it.
That is the only, only, one, single time I can remember receiving any instruction or coaching in a gym class in my whole life. Thank you, Miss Luce, for that.
How could my life be different if I'd had her for every gym class, every week of my childhood? There is no changing what has gone before. But I can change now. I can restore these past gaps, and I can coach and nurture myself now, in the way that will help me, what, improve, flourish, find hidden talents, improve my personal best, better live in my body, become a Ninja?
Addendum:
I only just unearthed this early traumatic cause of my current exercise aversion, but look! I am not alone: http://www.sbnation.com/2015/7/31/9038201/the-sad-sad-stories-of-the-presidential-fitness-test
And for reference, here are the standards. Looking at the row for a 17 year old girl, there is no way I could achieve these today. 34 sit ups within a minute? a 10 minute mile?
If to win the red badge you had to be in the top 50th percentile, that means half of kids also failed at this test. Why did anyone think that was a good idea?
Friday, September 23, 2016
Gratitude and Ideas
Yesterday I ran across a post, via a link on Facebook, about setting up a positive morning routine, which is very timely because yesterday (or was it Wednesday) I was plotting out one for myself. (I have found over time that I do best when the routine is fixed, and set in a certain order, because I save time in between activities making decisions about what to do next.)
This post suggested spending some time Free Writing, which is more or less the Morning Pages idea, which I have already been trying to do, although not immediately on waking and while still in bed, because I split my time between my house and my boyfriend's house and often wake up with someone else, and then need to get dressed and get home before I can take on any activities. I suppose I could probably adjust that, but so far the Breakfast Pages are working well enough.
And also, subpoint, the Morning Pages are more or less a letter to myself, whereas I know that Free Writing is a different thing. When I have tried free writing in the past, it turns out to be poetry, in the sense that it is all about the sounds of the words, or maybe I should say percussion, because the semantic meaning becomes irrelevant, I just put together strings of consonants and internal rhymes and rhythms. I should really try that, it's a flow from a different part of the brain.
But beyond the Free Writing/Morning Pages idea, the post also recommended two additional things. First, they recommended writing a short Gratitude list, a list of things for which one is grateful, as a great way to start the day in positivity and a stance of appreciation to the world. Three or four or five things, bulleted. Then, after the Free Writing, they recommended you write a list of 10 Ideas. They said this helps you become an idea generator. The author reported that he came up with 10 ideas for Amazon and called and sold them to them, and came up with an idea for an online series of classes and posted then and generated all kinds of leads for his business. YMMV, as they say.
In fact, I don't think I have any problem with being an Idea Generator. My problem is probably too many ideas, and a lack of focus and practical action. "Do the next right thing" is probably better advice for me.
But nonetheless, I wrote out both lists this morning, my Gratitude List and my Idea List. Gratitude was all about the health and well-being of my immediate family. Probably no surprise there. I worry about all of them, constantly, but right now, so far so good, knock wood. The Idea list, I decided to write around the notion of a Feeling of Abundance. This is another exercise from the Artist's Way book, and her example is to buy oneself a punnet of raspberries, so that's always my go-to accessible luxury, and so item 1 on my list this morning was Raspberries. But I was surprised how many of the other items had to do with cleaning and sorting and tidying and inventorying what I have. I spend exactly zero time on this, because it benefits no one but me, being inside of my own home behind closed doors and within these walls, and also because it will bring no immediate profit. But maybe I should build in some more time for that, especially if it makes me feel more wealthy and secure.
Any other suggestions for things to add to the morning routine, please feel free to comment below.
This post suggested spending some time Free Writing, which is more or less the Morning Pages idea, which I have already been trying to do, although not immediately on waking and while still in bed, because I split my time between my house and my boyfriend's house and often wake up with someone else, and then need to get dressed and get home before I can take on any activities. I suppose I could probably adjust that, but so far the Breakfast Pages are working well enough.
And also, subpoint, the Morning Pages are more or less a letter to myself, whereas I know that Free Writing is a different thing. When I have tried free writing in the past, it turns out to be poetry, in the sense that it is all about the sounds of the words, or maybe I should say percussion, because the semantic meaning becomes irrelevant, I just put together strings of consonants and internal rhymes and rhythms. I should really try that, it's a flow from a different part of the brain.
But beyond the Free Writing/Morning Pages idea, the post also recommended two additional things. First, they recommended writing a short Gratitude list, a list of things for which one is grateful, as a great way to start the day in positivity and a stance of appreciation to the world. Three or four or five things, bulleted. Then, after the Free Writing, they recommended you write a list of 10 Ideas. They said this helps you become an idea generator. The author reported that he came up with 10 ideas for Amazon and called and sold them to them, and came up with an idea for an online series of classes and posted then and generated all kinds of leads for his business. YMMV, as they say.
In fact, I don't think I have any problem with being an Idea Generator. My problem is probably too many ideas, and a lack of focus and practical action. "Do the next right thing" is probably better advice for me.
But nonetheless, I wrote out both lists this morning, my Gratitude List and my Idea List. Gratitude was all about the health and well-being of my immediate family. Probably no surprise there. I worry about all of them, constantly, but right now, so far so good, knock wood. The Idea list, I decided to write around the notion of a Feeling of Abundance. This is another exercise from the Artist's Way book, and her example is to buy oneself a punnet of raspberries, so that's always my go-to accessible luxury, and so item 1 on my list this morning was Raspberries. But I was surprised how many of the other items had to do with cleaning and sorting and tidying and inventorying what I have. I spend exactly zero time on this, because it benefits no one but me, being inside of my own home behind closed doors and within these walls, and also because it will bring no immediate profit. But maybe I should build in some more time for that, especially if it makes me feel more wealthy and secure.
Any other suggestions for things to add to the morning routine, please feel free to comment below.
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