Didn't

Consider all I failed to do this summer:

•    I didn’t practice the Ashtanga Yoga Second Series with any regularity.

•    I never got around to writing my novel; I didn’t even write a piece for my weblog every day.

•    I didn’t clean out the scary storage area in my basement.

•    I hardly gardened; the potatoes were planted and harvested, but the tomatoes pretty much languished for lack of water.

•    I didn’t overhaul any of my bikes.

•    I only took one load of stuff to Goodwill; I still have many untouched piles of books, clothing, and odds and ends I could take.

•    I didn’t ride my bike to Portland.

•    I only did a cursory read of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos: Why the Neo-Darwinian Materialist Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, in spite of my desire to set up a philosophy reading group with several of my colleagues to explore it in-depth.

•    I left the roof of my bike shed untouched, even though it’s obvious that the moss is taking over.

•    I didn’t hire anyone to put solar panels on our outside studio roof.

•    I failed to really address the inevitable problem of water collecting in my home’s basement during the rainy season.

•    I didn’t go to the horse-racing track with my family.

•    I didn’t study the Yoga Sutras; hardly anyways.

•    I never made pesto.

•    I didn’t once go out to see a band play at a bar by myself.

•    I never found time to take mushrooms.

•    I failed to bring about peace in the Middle East, justice in Ferguson, Missouri, or aesthetic taste in Las Vegas, Nevada.

•    I didn’t bake dill scones.

•    I never volunteered at the local soup kitchen.

•    I didn’t swim in Lake Washington more than half a dozen times.

•    I didn’t lose those five pounds.

•    I didn’t win a Stranger Genius Award, a MacArthur, or the Nobel Peace Prize; the few times I bought lottery tickets, I had no luck either.

However, I did write this!

Nothing

Fifty or sixty years from now, I’ll be dead and, almost certainly, a century from today, everybody who knows me will be gone, too.

It’s not out of the question that human beings—or at least the particular version we’re familiar with—will be extinct in a couple of millennia, and, as everybody knows, it’s only a matter of time before a giant asteroid hits the planet or climate change does us in and all traces of homo sapiens are eradicated from the earth.

So, it seems sort of silly to be worried about accomplishing anything.

Whatever I do is not going to make any difference in the long run; it’s only a matter of time until no one will be around to appreciate my efforts.  Why not save myself the effort and just stop trying to be creative or productive since who cares anyway after all?

Now, presumably, one could argue that what I do—or anyone does—matters to people who are around right now, including, I suppose, me, too. 

But I don’t know.

When I reflect upon my accomplishments, such as they are, I’m singularly unimpressed.  It’s hard for me to care about anything I’ve done unless somebody else does. 

And since it’s not obvious that any of my efforts mean anything to anyone, how can I possibly maintain the illusion that any of it is worthwhile? 

Consequently, the sensible thing to do, for me, and, I would argue, pretty much everyone else, is to do nothing.

Well, nap, maybe.

After all, when all is said and done, we may as well just be done with it.  No more senseless striving after unachievable goals.  No more rat-racing among one’s fellow rats.  No more worrying about what we have to do and what will happen if we don’t.

Finally, we can all stop pretending that anything anyone does means anything at all. 

And, we can all stretch out on the couch and take a nap.

Reviews

I just finished reading former National Book Award winner Michael Cunningham’s newest novel, The Snow Queen.  Lovely, lyrical writing; beautifully-drawn characters; and at the center, a metaphysical mystery that makes you wonder about the supernatural and whether miracles are possible; still, it wasn’t my favorite of his books; I’d take The Hours or A Home At the End of the World over it in a heartbeat.

But so what?  Why listen to me?  Read it yourself and make your own decision.

The accelerating phenomenon of first-person reviews of pretty much everything, from books to movies to restaurants to lawnmowers, gas grills, or food processors has not improved the world, nor even provided much truly useful information for prospective consumers of said items.  It’s just an opportunity (not unlike this one here) for some opinionated loudmouth to hold forth on his or her own preferences as if those subjective perspectives carried any weight or meaning.

I’m sure the people who write reviews on Amazon, Yelp, Urban Spoon, or wherever believe they are making a positive contribution to world: they’re convinced that they are spreading knowledge and saving people from the terrible prospect of reading a book or having a meal or purchasing an item that fails to meet their own high standards of excellence.

Big deal.

No doubt they’re also preventing any number of gullible souls an opportunity to experience the unknown, the unexpected, the serendipitous, or even the awful, (which isn’t such a terrible thing after all.)

Are we so frightened by our own judgments that we need to validate them beforehand with the opinions of strangers? 

Or is it simply that we’re too lazy to form our own opinions without some context or corroboration from the unseen masses?

The conceit is that by researching reviews, we save time and money by avoiding the less-than-ideal; in fact, what usually happens is we spend so much energy reading reviews, we never even get to experience what’s being reviewed.