Eternity

The prospect of eternal life doesn’t sound all that appealing to me.  

Does it to you?

When I’m dead and gone, I’m pretty sure I will prefer to be gone.  I don’t want to spend forever (which is a really long time) figuring out what to do with myself.

I realize that eternal bliss typically goes along with eternal life (unless you’re in Hell, in which case it’s eternal damnation), but even that seems like it would get old.  (Admittedly, this is from someone who has found himself—unlike those around him—getting a little bored during the third hour of a Grateful Dead concert, but I don’t think I’m entirely alone here.)

And sure.  We’re made of matter and matter cannot be destroyed, so technically (as the Mansplainer always puts it) our atoms last forever, but, for me, it would be a great shame if this particular arrangement of them, that identifies with this particular arrangement of them, continued identifying with this particular arrangement of them after this particular arrangement of them ceases to be.

Even sitting at the right hand of God would get tiresome, wouldn’t it?  I’m sure it would be awesome (in the old-fashioned sense of awesome) to see His Mighty Mightiness in action, making Universes or helping the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series or whatever, but at some point, you’ve seen something emerging from nothing or another miraculous game-saving catch once, you’ve seen them all, right?

Life is made meaningful (and sure, also incredibly sad and frustrating) because it’s ephemeral.  If Being-ness goes on and on without end, wouldn’t that meaning be lost?

Don’t get me wrong: I would like to live a long—and healthy—life.  I’m not in a tearing hurry to arrive at the end of my existence.  But I do want to arrive at such an end.

But it’s like this little piece of writing.  Maybe nice while it lasts, but better that it stops here.

Inside

As reported by the late-great Roger Angell in his brilliant essay, “This Old Man: Life in the Nineties,” the actor Laurence Olivier, reflecting on aging, once said in an interview. “Inside, we’re all seventeen, with red lips.”

Maybe, but I think that’s more poetry than reality.

For someone my age (five and sixty as I write this), it’s more like “Inside, we’re all 35, with full heads of hair.”

When I close my eyes and imagine who I am, I don’t feel like a teenager.

But I do see myself as no different really, than the young man I was in my prime—physical prime, that is.  I’m still mostly wrinkle-free, with a pretty flat stomach, and a hairline that doesn’t start in the middle of my cranium.

The face that stares back at me these days from the mirror or even worse, the Zoom call, isn’t who I am.  That’s some old guy masquerading as me.  He’s okay, I guess, but I can’t help thinking that whoever sees him, doesn’t really see me.  Even when I look his way, I can’t really make the connection to my true self.

No doubt this will continue to become more pronounced with each passing year.  By the time I’m eighty or so, the difference between my outward appearance and my inward self-conception will be half a century apart.  Maybe that’s what ultimately leads to death: your immaterial homunculus becomes so detached from your physical body that you just slip away to nothingness, leaving a dried-up husk of what you looked like but really weren’t.

I don’t mind aging; as mom always said, the alternative is much worse.  But it’s sort of confounding because to some extent, what’s aging isn’t me.  Not to get all Cartesian, but, since I  can imagine my being without my body, then my body can’t be me.

So, I probably shouldn’t worry that the container is past its “best by” date; what’s inside remains fresh.

Humbled

 Isn’t it marvelous how the Universe arranges itself to create you and me?

How fantastic is it that all of the atoms that exist configure themselves in a manner that results in our Sun, the Earth, and eventually, me, here, writing this and you, there, reading it?

Can you believe how incredible it is that somehow, the informational structure of everything that is leads ultimately, from the very beginning of time, through all eternity, to these ephemeral moments in which you and I find ourselves and each other?

That the vastness pinpoints like this, that the infinite focuses this way, that endless possibilities emerge as such singular unlikeliness is mind-boggling, heart-opening, and absolutely humbling.

I know that it’s not at all all for me (or you, or anyone), so that we get to experience it like this—or even, indeed, at all—is something we need to be aware of and grateful for every second of every day, especially in those moments we’re unaware and ungrateful—that is, most of the time.

Picture yourself in relationship to the globe and recognize what an infinitesimal spot each of us is on Mother Earth, and then remember that she is an incomprehensibly smaller spot on our galaxy, which is even a tinier spot on the Universe; if that doesn’t put into perspective getting cut off in traffic or having your favorite team lose, then something is surely amiss.

Complaining about anything is a wonderful privilege; merely existing in order to be able to do so is such an unlikely concurrence of events that every time we even think about being upset, we should get down on our knees and thank our lucky stars (and atoms) for the opportunity.

This isn’t to say that some people don’t have legitimate beef; the world is often a terrible, awful place, with tragic amounts of suffering.

However.

As I sit here  observing all that allows me to observe, I humbly observe: wow. Wow.  And more wow.

Ignorance

 There are so many things I just don’t understand.

For instance, how is it possible to simultaneously believe that an all-powerful God puts an immaterial soul into a zygote while also believing that that it’s morally imperative that this zygote be carried to birth by the woman whether she wants to or not?  If what matters is this immaterial soul, then why should the zygote matter at all?  Can’t God just put the soul into another zygote, no questions asked?  I don’t get it.

Or, why do some cars (or, that is, the people driving them) just have to pass me on my bike when I’m going downhill at the speed limit?  Would they feel the same way if I were in a small car?  Is it really just the pace I’m traveling at or is it something about being behind a bicycle that just makes them crazy?

Or, what’s the fascination with prepping a survivalist bunker for the apocalypse?  Who wants to live underground eating canned food after the nuclear holocaust or whatever?  Just let me die along with the rest of humanity when the asteroid hits.

And, on a related note, I’m sorry, I can’t see the point of pursuing immortality, or even, like all these Silicon Valley billionaires, wanting to live to be 200 years old or so.  It’s hard enough to make a meaningful life into one’s eighties (or, hell, even one’s thirties!), much less forever.  So, count me out.

Speaking of billionaires, I'm still puzzled about a hu-manned mission to Mars,  Just go to Burning Man for two weeks; it’s essentially the same environment, only with more sequins and glowsticks.

I don’t really get Soylent, either.  If you don’t have time to eat food, it seems like time to change your lifestyle, not your diet, if you ask me.

Finally, the most puzzling thing of all: why are so many people so mean to others?  What's so hard to understand about the Golden Rule?

Entropy

 Everything’s falling apart.  Always.

And it’s not just the shoddy workpersonship on those Ikea light fixtures; it’s everything, everywhere, all over the Universe.

Entropy is just time made manifest. And time is just God expressed through our experience of the natural world.

So, entropy and God are ultimately the same force.  No need for the guy with the beard and the book to hurl down lightning bolts in order to destroy things; it all happens naturally due to the fundamental laws of physics.

Unfortunately, this means that my jeans eventually get holes in them, my bicycle chains stretch to the point new ones are necessary, and no matter how many times I vacuum the rug, it gets covered in crumbs and dog hair sooner rather than later.

Our sun will use up all of its hydrogen in a couple of billion years and expand out to somewhere near the orbit of Jupiter; thankfully, no human beings will be around to observe this, but our A.I. sentient cockroach ancestors may want to scurry under whatever is analogous at that point to the kitchen stove if they hope to make it any further than that.

Science—well, Wikipedia—tells us that the entire Universe will essentially collapse in on itself as all the available energy is used up some google or so years in the future.  Sort of puts a losing season by the Pittsburgh Steelers in perspective, but still, when you think about it, both of those events are a product of entropy, as well.  

“Things fall apart,” as Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe put it in the title of his brilliant first novel, and while, to some extent, he was referring to societies and individual identities, it also applies to everything else, especially, the aforementioned Ikea products.

Our bodies offer perhaps the best illustration of all this in action; things falling apart is basically the story from about age 25 on.  So, let's embrace entropy while it embraces us!

Atoms

Here’s how scientist, Paul Fleischman, M.D., puts it in his monograph Vipassana Meditation and the Scientific Worldview: “All the sensuousness or pain of our bodies, all the delights or turmoil of our minds, are transformation within the atomic molecular substrate of the body.”

And further: “Our bodies are collections of atoms, that are organized into molecules, that function in the activities of cells, that cohere to form tissues, which interrelate to create an organism.  Our bodies are not solid, but are molecules suspended in realms of other molecules, all of which are undergoing continuous biotransformation.”

Crazy, isn’t it?

All of this, all of us, everything in the Universe, from stars to bicycles to toast with peanut butter and jelly, is made of atoms, all of which are whirring around, constantly in motion, and what’s really crazy is that the atoms that are “me” can observe this and by having atoms move around in my brain, think and write about it like this, so that the atoms that are “you” can read what I’ve written by having atoms move around in your brain, too!

So, maybe what’s craziest of all is to imagine that there is a “me” and a “you” at all, when, in fact, all we are—all that anything is—is “just” a collection of atoms that are all made of the same thing as everything else in the Universe—those very same atoms, that is.

This doesn’t mean, I realize, that my atoms don’t identify with themselves in a manner that make “me” identify them as “me,” nor that your atoms don’t do the same thing when it comes to “you.”  Still, if we think about things atomically, it sure does make is strange that there’s so much strife and conflict in the world, since everything, after all, is all the same thing.

But that’s just atoms being atoms, spinning and fluctuating endlessly; I guess we'll blame it on the protons, neutrons, electrons, and quarks.

Words

Consider the Mount Rushmore of human inventions: fire (of course—although this may have been more of discovery than an invention); the wheel (this choice no doubt informed by images of creative cave people from endless numbers of New Yorker cartoons); music (not including, for sure, the “Cars for Kids” song); and my favorite, the written word (in general, not necessarily what you’re reading right here.)

It's the height of human ingenuity, if you ask me, to be able to convert simple shapes—on cave walls, papyrus, palm leaves, rag bond paper, a computer screen, etc.—into words, which then can convey ideas and events, which later can be read and (sometimes) understood by another person or groups of people sometime—even centuries—afterwards for their edification, enjoyment, and consternation, sometimes all at once.

How did this happen?  Which came first, reading or writing?  Did one of our proto-human ancestors scratch something out on a rock, say to him or herself, “Boy, I wish I could read this?”, and then figure out how to decipher it?  Or did they have something they wanted to communicate already in mind and scratch out the words for it afterwards?

Or maybe some of both.  (I know, by way of analogy, that I often don’t know what I want to say until I write it down; case in point, this very idea!)

What’s especially amazing about the written word is how pervasive it is.  Once you have the ability to read, you can’t avoid it.  Suppose I write these words: Don’t read this!

Oops!  Too late!

So, as soon as our prehistoric ancestor put their words down on that rock, it was all over; there was no turning back into species-wide illiteracy.  The road from scratching on the cave walls to contemporary post-modern literature was set and the inevitable result of it would inevitably include this very page of words you are reading; even if you try to stop, too late!

Future

The future is our Number One Enemy.  Obviously.

Everything bad that will happen to us will happen at some point in the future.  So, if we could just eliminate the time after this time right now, we’d be fine.

Climate change, nuclear war, economic depression, yet another tour by the Rolling Stones—it’s all stuff that hasn’t happened yet (or, at least to the most dire degree); consequently, the best way to prevent those events from coming about would be to simply cancel what’s upcoming.  Then, we wouldn’t have to worry about what might be—or probably will—since it wouldn’t.

Simple, yes?

Of course, as they say, the devil is in the details and the specifics of eradicating the future are devilish, indeed.

First among these is the difficulty of planning.  After all, the very act of doing so assumes the future, which is the very thing we’re trying to eliminate.  Clearly, no less paradoxical than being opposed to abortion but in favor of “stand your ground” laws.

But, maybe we could just wing it.  You know, excise the future without preparing for it—kind of like how you undertook a camping trip as a teenager.

But what would a today without tomorrow be like?  And how would we even experience it?

Perhaps the alternative is to go backwards, not forwards.  This isn’t to say that the past is all rosy (I’m pretty sure the Stones toured all through the 90s and “Aughts,” as well), but at least we’d know what we’re in for.  Humanity has already made it through the environmental, political, and economic crisis that we’ve already made it through and so we’d surely be successful with them again.

It's the ones we haven’t faced so far that will do us in; those are the ones to avoid.

So, starting today, let’s all have yesterday be the first day of the rest of our lives.  

The past is our only hope for the future.

 

Living

 I have a pretty great life and hardly a day goes by when I don’t thank my lucky stars and express my gratitude (usually silently) for being alive.

But I’ll be ready to go when it’s my time to go (I hope) and it’s my firm intention not to cling to this mortal coil any longer than necessary, especially if doing so is burdensome to my family, friends, and loved ones.

Life is swell, no doubt about it, but I also want to keep in mind that I was perfectly satisfied before I was born and I expect to be just as content after I’m gone.  So, no need to be miserable and/or to make others miserable just to hang around for a little longer—even if it means being alive if and when the Mariners finally win the World Series (not holding my breath for that one, to be sure.)

I say (that is, write) this now, recognizing that I might not feel the same way when death becomes more immanent, but I hope that in doing so, my future self may be more apt to take the advice of my current instantiation, but we shall see.

It’s not entirely unlikely, given my family medical history and my own current relative good health, that what will do me in—or at least, precipitate my final exit—will be some sort of stroke.  My fear about that (apart from paralysis, loss of bowel function, and drooling) is that I’ll be unable to remember or communicate my original desires and so will be kept alive by well-meaning medical professionals in spite of my wishes. (Not so worried about my family and friends; they know me better and are, I hope, less amenable to changing my diapers.)

In the meantime, then, there’s not much to do, I suspect, other than letting my perspective be known (like this) and trying to live life fully.  Also, drool as little as possible.

Ennui

I’m reading Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert and man, the lady is bored.  The way I read it, that’s her main complaint.  

Her husband bores her, her child bores her, the sleepy village she lives in bores her, even her dinner bores her: “But it was most of all at mealtimes that she could not bear it any longer, in that little room on the ground floor, with the stove that smoked, the door that squeaked, the wall that seeped, the damp flagstones; all the bitterness of life seemed to be serve up on her plate, and with the steam from the boiled meat, there rose from the depth of her soul other gusts of revulsion.” (56)

I get it; the routine of life is oppressive: eating, sleeping, waking, breathing—it’s a drag to be sure, day after day, month after month, year after year.  Filling the empty hours (or even the full ones) can seem a depressing chore, especially when you have aspirations, like Madame B., for a life of glamor, art, and culture.

But honestly, what else is there?  We’re all going to be dead soon enough, and so, in the meantime, what’s the alternative to living our lives, however boring they might seem at the time?

Besides isn’t being bored the most boring thing of all?  Mom always said that only boring people are bored and while as a bored eight year-old on a rainy afternoon, I didn’t want to believe her, now, as a potentially bored sixty-five year-old on an overcast day, I see her point.

Pretty much anything can be interesting if you decide to be interested in it.  For instance, I’m quite enjoying Madame Bovary’s boredom; I find it fascinating how contemporary are her feelings in spite of her story being set in a time almost two hundred years ago.  

I’m pretty sure things won’t end well; I’m not at all bored to see how it will turn out for her.

 

Judgment

 “Don’t be judgmental” is what popular opinion advises, but I judge that to be mistaken.  It’s good to make judgments.  (See?  I just did!)  

It’s not judgment which is the problem, but rather the actions one takes in response to those judgments.  It seems perfectly legitimate to make the reasonable determination that, say, world leaders who launch military attacks on sovereign nations are doing something awful, but that doesn’t mean you have to drop an atomic bomb on their heads.  

Similarly, I believe I’m justified in judging that a homemade beet salad with fresh feta cheese is better than a Swanson’s TV dinner; this doesn’t give me the right, however, to barge into the frozen food aisle at Safeway and destroy all the packages of Salisbury Steak I can get my hands on.

That said, I think there’s much to be said for withholding judgment to the degree that it’s possible in many, if not most, cases.  Instead of rushing immediately into one’s own personal Yelp review at every opportunity, how about simply observing without evaluating?  

When I listen to some new music or taste some new dish or read about the actions of some celebrity or politician how about not jumping immediately into “It Rocks!” or “It Sucks!” mode?  How about instead of thumbs up or thumbs down, I just go “Hmmm?”

To clarify, I’m not advocating this for everything.  The aforementioned military incursion, for instance, does merit an immediate injunction.  It’s just that the vast majority of things I could conceivably judge, from the performance of some professional athlete to the taste of the scrambled eggs at some local diner don’t necessarily call for my personal imprimatur (or lack thereof), so why offer it?

Of course, we live in a time in which everyone feels entitled to offer their perspective on everything.  (Case in point, yours truly and this.)

So maybe, to really distinguish oneself, the most unusual opinion would be no opinion at all.

Sportsball

 I wish I didn’t care about sports.  

I wish I didn’t experience a little lift when my favorite professional sports teams win.  Even more, I wish I didn’t feel a little annoyed or saddened when they lose.

As Roger Angell put it so well: “It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team.”

But I can’t help it.  

(Well, I guess I could, with the right amount of effort; perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I’m unable, at the present time, to bring myself to devote the energy needed to change my perspective.)

Anyway.

With the Mariners (who I’ve come to root for after more than a quarter century in Seattle) finally in contention for a playoff spot this year, I find myself being a little too emotionally invested in their success (or failure).  It’s dumb, of course, to feel this way, but there you have it: a little lift when they win, a little pinch when they lose.

What’s really weird and troubling is that I can concurrently read the news and learn about thousands of civilian deaths in war-torn countries around the world or melting glaciers in the Arctic or corruption and deceit at the highest level of government and hardly bat an eye.  Checking out the box score of a Mariners’ loss makes me feel crummier than perusing the list of dead from the Covid pandemic.

That’s fucked up.

I blame my upbringing and the cultural forces brought to bear on a boy in America during the latter part of the 20th century.  We learned to bond with our friends and fathers through sports.  (Sharing the success of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1970s as one of the few ways my dad and I were able to connect during my somewhat troubled adolescence.)

So, oh well, I suck, but at least the Mariners don’t!

Downhill

 I “raced” in this year’s 26th annual Dead Baby Downhill; according to my t-shirt stash, this is the 17th time I’ve done so.  (“Racing” for me entails trying to get going as quickly as possible after the Roman candle explosions mark the start of the event, so I can be near the front at first and enjoy being passed by racer after racer after rider, thereby enjoying seeing as many friends and acquaintances as possible along the way.)

As always, the event was a blast, the high point of the summer bicycle social scene (such as it is—or isn’t) and as is not unprecedented, I think I was a little too overexuberant in my celebrations, so that for a good part of the evening, I merely sat quietly by my bicycle, with eyes closed waiting until I felt confident in my ability to make it home safely—which, I’m pleased to say, I did—for the 17th time running (or, that is, riding).

Kudos to the organizers and all the volunteers, and the Chaotic Noise Brigade and other performers for pulling it off with such joy and aplomb.  The world may be going to hell in the proverbial handbasket, but it’s nice to know that, along the way, there can still be times like this when collective action by disparate individuals makes for shared delight all around.  

Perhaps it is, as they say, a case of merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but you’ve got to admire how lovingly those chairs have been set up and how joyous is the musical accompaniment.  If it comes to it, I’ll go down with this ship, no problem.

The weather was ideal, the route spectacular, and the hilltop starting point under the airport flight path accessible via light rail without climbing at all.   Is there any way things could have been better?  

Maybe only if I’d have stayed awake a little longer and seen a little more.

Body

 I’m not always crazy about my body.  

I could do without the way my old man potbelly makes my favorite jeans so tight and pushes them down beneath my navel.  And those jowls that dominate the face of the guy I’m always in Zoom meetings with are a source of ongoing dismay.  And howcome with every passing year, I look more and more like one of Middle Earth’s hobbits and less like one of its elves?

But it’s sort of ridiculous, isn’t it, to feel bad about one’s physical form.  After all, if it weren’t for your body, you wouldn’t be able to feel bad—or for that matter, anything—so, really, we ought to continually celebrate our corporeal being since without it, we’d have no ability to do anything, anyway, at least not on this plane of existence.

It’s natural, I suppose, to experience some dissatisfaction sometimes about one’s physique.  It’s easy enough to compare the current form you inhabit to the one you went around in say, thirty years and twenty pounds ago, and thanks to dominant cultural norms and the power of advertising feel like your something less for being something more than you used to be.

But it’s kind of self-indulgent to do so, wouldn’t you say?

I mean, again, it’s only the existence of your body that makes not liking your body possible, so, at the very least, you—that is, I—should recognize how lucky you are to have a body—any body—and stop making a fuss.

This doesn’t mean one ought not to eat healthy and exercise; we should treat our bodies with respect and act accordingly, but part of that respect, as well, is to be satisfied with our body the way it is, since the way it is, (however that is), makes everything—including healthy eating and exercise—possible. 

My body’s not a temple; it’s an amusement park.  Everyday I buy a ticket and take the ride.

Ignorant

I’m a fully grown-ass person—officially a Senior Citizen!—with loads of life experience and an advanced degree in Philosophy, but there’s still much about the world I don’t understand.

For instance, what’s the point of a humanned mission to Mars?  Seems like an incredible amount of money and resources for not that much payoff.  I suppose it would be sort of cool to be the first human on another planet, but the scientific knowledge to be gained from such an enterprise couldn’t possibly be worth it—unless, of course, there really are little green men up there, which, guess what?  There aren’t.  And we don’t need space boots on the Martian ground to prove it.

Or why, in this day and age, do so many world leaders still feel it necessary to command their military to kill people in other countries?  I understand their rationale—national security or whatever—but I don’t understand why their rationale could be considered rational enough to justify killing people.

I’m also puzzled by the phenomenon of stuffed crust pizza.  Isn’t the point of pizza crust to be the respite from cheese?  Why not just not have a crust and go for double-cheese?

And, of course, this marks me as an old person, (but if the shoe fits, you know), but why do people have to record some much of their concert-going experiences on their phones?  Doesn’t it make more sense to be more present in the present rather than having the present experience be a way to present it to the future?

Also, I’d be lying if I said I understood why anyone needs a superyacht.  If it’s just a way for billionaires to spend money and employ people, then, okay, I guess, but why not just a regular yacht?  If it was good enough for J.P. Morgan, shouldn’t it be good enough for Sergy Brin?

Finally, why is anyone compelled to rant to strangers online?  That, I’ll never get.

War

 I sure hope we’re not headed into World War III.  Or even WWII.5, for that matter.

I get it; national sovereignty important, but honestly, when it comes right down to it, wouldn’t you rather be a living resident of a foreign country than a dead citizen of your original one?  (Especially when the boundaries of those millennia-old countries are an artifact of colonial imperialism that hardly goes back a hundred years?)

Seattle would be a likely military target and so it’s entirely plausible that the whole place would be vaporized in the first fifteen minutes of nuclear war.  I suppose that’s preferable to a protracted siege that would result in death by famine and pestilence.  On the other hand, couldn’t we just avoid the whole calamity through diplomacy and compromise?

The real problem, if you ask me, is metonymy.  

We say “the White House wants this” or “the Kremlin wants that,” when what’s really the case is that Joe Biden wants this or Vladimir Putin wants that; thus individual preferences assume the status of national priorities.  Then, all of a sudden, what a single person desires (usually a man, usually an old one) becomes tantamount to what an entire country desires and when you combine that with nuclear arsenals large enough to destroy every living thing on the planet multiple times over, you’ve got a perfect recipe for disaster.

It's terrifying to consider that the fate of humanity ultimately depends upon the degree to which one old white dude with his fingers on his country’s nuclear codes feels as if he’s been dissed by another old white dude with similar access to weapons of mass destruction.  When my grandfather was embarrassed, he’d go off and kill an entire half-gallon of Gallo Hearty Burgundy, not half of the entire population of the world!

Does my attitude here paint me yellow as a coward?  Perhaps, but if discretion is the better part of valor, then at least I’m half-brave.

Kindness

 Is there anything more important than being kind?

When I’m dead and gone (and, for that matter, while I still live), I want, above all, to be seen as a person who treated others kindly.  Sure, I’d like to considered a creative genius, a spiritual inspiration, and a brutally-handsome heartthrob, but compared to being kind, those don’t matter at all (even if they were real possibilities.)

I’m always dismayed by rich and powerful (or, for that matter, poor and weak) people who enjoy being heartless and cruel.  What’s the point being rich and powerful (or, for that matter, poor and weak) if it means you have to be mean?  I know Machiavelli said that it’s better to be feared than loved, but that’s just for princes in the 16th century, and even then, I’ll bet, the kind prince (or princess) slept better than the cruel one.

Singer-songwriter, Nick Lowe, made the musical point that you’ve got to be cruel to be kind but be that as it may (or may not), the goal is still kindness.  Perhaps I do have to be just a little bit harsh from time to time in my aspiration to be compassionate, but surely, that’s just in small doses, not like all Simon LeGree or anything.

I realize that the danger of valorizing kindness so highly is that, as a parent, or educator, or citizen, I may sometimes emphasize mercy over justice; or I may make compassionate exceptions that undermine the principle of fairness; or I may simply be taken advantage of by those who care less about kindness than I do.

But, so be it; and if it means that I’m something of a failure as a parent, educator, or citizen, then perhaps it’s an opportunity to practice kindness to myself and allow for those failings.

Better to be Jackie Robinson than Ty Cobb; Thich Hnat Hanh than Genghis Khan; Ferdinand than those other bulls; me, I hope, than Mitch McConnell.

Ordinary

There are about nine billion people on the planet, so even if you’re one in a million, that means there are still at least nine thousand people just like you.  Or, as wise counsel counsels us, “You’re not special and no one cares.”

Of course, there are some people who are special: Greta Thunberg, Beyoncé, Julio Rodriguez, for instance, but, for the rest of us, we’re just the rest of us. 

This used to bother me and resulted in my inability to accept the truth of the matter.  I tended towards a kind of solipsistic perspective which put me at the center of all things.  If I didn’t exist, then nothing would; therefore, I had to be special—in fact, the most special of things in the entire Universe.

Now, however, I’m comfortable with my ordinariness; I’m glad that I’m just another random human being going about their day.  Granted, I’m a good deal more fortunate than many, but this doesn’t confer upon me any distinction; it just makes me one of many who ought to be grateful for what they have.

Perhaps surprisingly, accepting all that I’m not doesn’t make me less likely to act in ways that define me as an individual: I still try to be creative; I continue to have my “ways;” and I haven’t given up the pretension that what I do or don’t do matters in some way.  It’s just that I realize that I’m not the only one who’s just like this, and no doubt there are many others just like this who do it better than me.

I’m not even the special edition version of me, in other words.

But that’s cool, because it means that instead of having to be one in nine billion, I get to be one of nine billion.  Rather than having to stand out, I get to stand with.  I’m a member of the biggest team in the world: Team Ordinary.

And that’s special.

Nothing

What do you do when you have nothing to do?

You could meditate, of course.  Or medicate, for that matter.  Or, if you were 13 years old, something else that begins with “m” and ends with “ate.”  (“Micturate!”  Of course; that’s what you were thinking, right?)

Certainly, there’s no end of tasks you could undertake: cleaning, gardening, Bible study, re-organizing your sock drawer, learning Spanish, volunteering at the local food bank, writing letters to your Congresspersons, making potato salad, even taking the dog for a walk, and on and on.

But, naah.

As the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Zeno of Elea reminds us, doing something requires first doing it halfway, and before that doing it a quarter-way, and before that, an eighth, etc., etc., so since there’s an infinite number of steps to finally accomplishing anything, that means we can never do so, so why begin at all?

Or, as the contemporary philosopher Homer Simpson put it, “Trying is the first step towards failure.”  Again, may as well, therefore, do nothing.

Unfortunately, doing nothing is doing something, so once again, we find ourselves faced with the original question posed at the beginning of this piece.

I suppose you could think.  But think about what?  Might as well try thinking about nothing and get yourself all tied up in the same loop all over again.

Eating seems to be the default.  If all else fails, make yourself a sandwich, or even better, stand over the sink shoveling food into your mouth harvested from leftover containers tucked in the back of the refrigerator.

The problem is: all of these endeavors are relatively short-lived and so you soon find yourself with nothing to do once more.  And since you, yourself, are relatively long-lived (at least in comparison to over-the-sink-eating), you’ll still have many a year with nothing to do for many a year.

Oh well, there’s always writing; so you could do that and eventually end up with something like this.

 

Lucky

 How in the world did I ever get to be so lucky?

How come I can ride my bike down the hill to Lake Washington, relax in the sun with a book and a beer, take a few swims, and then, catch a bus—for only a dollar, Senior fare!—back up the hill as my afternoon entertainment, when all over the world, even in our fair city, people are suffering all the time?

Why is it that my complaints merely include a favorite sports team losing three games in a row or that someone has underlined passages in a book that I’ve checked out from the university library at which I have unlimited borrowing privileges whereas millions and millions of my fellow human beings have far more pressing concerns, like where their next meal is coming from (if at all), and if they’ll be able to find a safe place to sleep?

Why have I been spared serious health challenges (so far, and let’s hope this doesn’t jinx it) even into my mid-sixties, when countless babies, children, and young adults have had to deal with life-threatening diseases and debilitating conditions all their lives?

I thank my lucky stars to be sure and try to live with gratitude and kindness, but it’s surely not fair.  I’ve done nothing, really, more crucial to my good fortune than being born in the right place to the right parents; I got lucky in the genetic lottery, that’s the main thing.

A simple reading of some spiritual perspectives might suggest that I did some things right in previous incarnations to have ended up where I did, but that just kicks the can down the road, doesn’t it?  How come I was lucky enough in those earlier lives to be able to improve my lot those times around?

It’s a mystery and/or perhaps just pure random chance; in any event, I open these arms to the Universe and offer my eternal gratitude.

Stats

Major League baseball players are judged according to their statistics.  A player who gets a hit three out of every ten times he comes to bat, for a .300 batting average is a star, while a player who only gets a hit ever two out of ten times, for a .200 average, is a bum—unless he’s a catcher and hits a fair number of home runs, in which case, he starts for the Mariners.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if those of us who don’t make our livings by wearing pajamas in public were likewise assessed on numerical scale like this?  Imagine the possibilities for self-understanding and interpersonal communication if we all had our performance in life made clearer with statistics that helped us to see more accurately who we are and to share that information with others.

So, for instance, politicians and other public figures might have a statistic for how often (or infrequently) they tell the truth.  It’s unlikely any of them would score a perfect 1.000, but falling below the proverbial “Mendoza line” (.200) would mark them as someone not to be trusted—(not that this would prevent them from being elected to the highest office in the land.)

Good fielders in professional baseball routinely have a fielding percentage about .990; this would be a reasonable standard to shoot for when it came to one’s statistic for being kind to strangers.  Nearly everyone occasionally makes an error, but anyone who isn’t close to perfect in this stat should probably be sent down so to speak.

The top sluggers in the game have an on-base plus slugging percentage of over 1.  Seems like a stat which combined the percentage of times a person tips well plus the percentage of instances in which an apology is called for that they say they’re sorry should yield a number over 1.0 for the best of us, as well.

Gives a whole new meaning to asking for someone’s number.

Things

There are so many things in the world: houses, tables, dishes, lovingly-built model cars, electric vehicles, watercolor and pen sketches, boots, journals written in almost daily, hubcaps, mirrors, public artworks, tanks, surface-to-air missiles, socks and underwear, bathing suits, and on and on and on and on.

Probably most of what’s most admirable about human beings is the things that we’ve made, especially works of art and devotional structures like churches, synagogues, and sports stadiums.  But it’s all too much, isn’t it?  

Every tangible item that human beings have created, from a washer to washing machine or a pencil point to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, is the natural world converted to artifact.  All the wealth you see, whether riding your bike through the toniest neighborhood in your fair city or standing awestruck beneath that Sistine Chapel ceiling, is Mother Nature turned into money.

Remarkable to be sure, but it makes you want to just stop—and stop making anything ever again.

Another successful city dump run earlier this week, but that only scratches the surface of all that’s accumulated and doesn’t even begin to take on the hard choices like what to do with all the handmade stuff, the stuff that contains memories of your own and your loved one’s creative activities.  

Like what IS going be the fate of all those journals, birthday cards, and, for that matter, lovingly-built model cars?

If everyone stopped making things today, there would still be centuries of things remaining and while I seem to recall Elizabeth Kolbert writing that our entire civilization, in the strata of the geologic record, will, in hundreds of millions of years, be no thicker than a postage stamp, that’s still, in the next decade or two, on overwhelming amount of stuff to deal with and an even more daunting number of decisions to make.

So, I guess I’ll stick to the electronic written word: takes up no physical space and so easy to delete!

Appetite

The problem with having an appetite is that it needs to be filled.

Whether you’re hungry for food, sex, power, or even another vintage Pendleton Board shirt solid-patterned size medium, that hunger will drive you to eat, fuck, win, buy, or whatever until it’s satisfied.

And then, of course, as soon as it is satisfied, you won’t be satisfied anymore and the cycle will happen all over again.  Which is why you’re fatter, more dissipated, exhausted, and broke than ever before.

And why, as the Buddhists remind us, life is suffering, the cause of which is desire.

Now, supposedly, you can overcome this condition of suffering by eliminating desire through following the Noble Eightfold path.  But unless you’re Buddha himself, that probably won’t happen since somewhere along that path—like right around the first or second step on it—you’ll be distracted by something shiny and desirable and by right back where you started, albeit slightly older and more disillusioned than where you were when you started.

The reasonable response to this, I suppose, is simply to observe your behavior with equanimity and continue in the ongoing attempt to accept the inevitability of the human condition with grace and humor.  And maybe have one fewer shot glass full of cashews as a snack during the day.

You don’t want to deprive yourself, since that just leads to overindulgence.  But at the same time, indulging in every desire, in the name of eliminating the tendency to cling to whatever feels good doesn’t work either; nor is it an effective strategy for fitting into last season’s jeans or Pendleton Board shirt.

One thing’s for certain: there will come a time in all our lives when desire is eliminated.  The problem is, as Wittgenstein pointed out, it won’t really be a time in our lives, since death, as he said, isn’t an event in life.

When you’re dead, you won’t have desires, so presumably that means no suffering, either.  

Yum.

Commentary

Science has proven that the absolute best way to raise your blood pressure and increase the likelihood of getting ulcers is to read the “comments” section on your preferred internet news source.  Doing so will make your blood boil and make you wonder why people have to be so mean.

Didn’t Mom always say that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all?

Of course, I’m essentially violating that maxim right here, so I guess I don’t really have a right to complain.  Because as soon as I do complain, I’m doing the very thing I’m complaining about!

I just wonder if it’s possible for people to be a little kinder.  Why do we have to lead with attacking another person’s viewpoint or even their choice to share their viewpoint at all?

It seems like we regularly define ourselves by what we don’t like.  By posting a nasty comment about something that upsets me, I get a better sense of who I am, and let others know that I’m a person to be reckoned with.  Good for me by being bad for you!

One of the more puzzling aspects of this phenomenon is that often the commentors are complaining about the provider of the article they’re commenting on, for instance, ranting about the editorial policies of the Washington Post on the Washington Post site.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply not read the Post?  Isn’t there something strange about blaming the publisher of an article that makes you mad?  Why not just not read the article?

Readers of this site (if there are any), face a similar dilemma.  However, it’s far easier to ignore the writings of someone who is so easy to ignore.  So, perhaps, I’m providing an important public service here by having a website that is so undersubscribed.  But publishing blog posts that no one reads, I’m showing people how not to read what they don’t need to.

Worthwhile

What do you have to do to justify your existence?  

Is it enough to merely awake and perform the usual human functions?  Or do you have to make the world a better place and leverage disruptive technologies or something like that in order to count as a human being?

I was raised by ambitious parents who inculcated in me the message that “You are what you do.”  Consequently, the less I do, the less I am.  And if I don’t do anything, then, well, I’m nothing.

Sartre made a similar point: since we’re condemned to be free, then we have no excuse for not being the person we want to be and the only way to do that is through one’s actions.  If I claim to be a poet, but never write poetry because I’m too busy making a living as a waiter, then I’m acting in bad faith, which is another of saying I’m just a poseur, a wannabe poet who isn’t a poet at all.

If I write a short essay every day, does that make me a writer?  Perhaps, but perhaps just a lazy one.

If I cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner, am I therefore a cook?  Maybe, but maybe just a hungry one.

When I do math, am I a mathematician?  When I philosophize, am I a philosopher?  When I waste time scrolling around the internet, I’m a loser, aren’t I?

If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem; not being anti-racist is racist, for sure.  But can’t a person be good enough simply by not being bad?

Think of all the things you didn’t do today: steal candy from a baby; start World War III; stick a piece of chewed gum underneath a table at the library.  Those ought to count for something, shouldn’t they?

Sure, I’m just taking up space on the planet, but it’s a nice little space, which is plenty enough for today, all right?

Napping

Most people think the know how to nap.  You lie down on a couch or bed and doze off, ideally in the middle of the day.

Sure.

But that’s not real napping.

Real napping happens when one is sitting up, in a chair, ideally while reading a book, especially a non-fiction book.

One minute, you’re learning about how the brain works or getting new information as to the causes of World War I.  The next, you’re drooling on yourself, dropping your book on the floor, and nodding off.

It takes some effort to develop this skill, but with practice, even the most restless person can succeed.  It helps to choose a book with really dense text; the fewer paragraph breaks, the better.  Research has shown that analytical philosophy, especially the works of Alfred North Whitehead, are particularly effective.

Another time-honored tip is to choose a chair that’s soft, has solid armrests, and allows you to put your feet up on an ottoman or coffee table.  That nearly-prone position might be considered cheating by some traditionalists, but as long as one doesn’t recline fully, even the International Society of Afternoon Nappers approves.

That’s another point, by the way: afternoon naps are fine, but represent only Junior Varsity level napping.  The truly accomplished napper naps throughout the day, even before lunch.

For guidance on napping, refer to my dog.  She manages to nap after breakfast, before lunch, after lunch, mid-afternoon, at teatime, before dinner, and right before bed.  That’s impressive!

Some might contend that such behavior is really just sleeping away the day, but again, as long as you’ve got a book on your lap, it counts as napping, and one need not worry that what’s really going on is incipient or extant depression.

After all, if I can nap four to six or even eight hours a day, what do I have to be depressed about?  A good question, to be sure; I think I’ll sleep on it.

Trinity

Pick your favorite trinity: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu.  Body, mind, and spirit.  Manny, Moe, and Jack.  

They’re all good, and perhaps, all essentially the same.  So, have at the one that works best for you and experience your own experience of each in your own divine way.

As for me, I’ll take the holy trinity of yoga, cycling, and pot as the central organizing principle for my life.  It’s yoga that feeds by spirit, cycling, for my body, and cannabis, for the mind.  

Alternately, you can correlate them with the three gunas, the energetic principles that give rise to the Universe, according to the Samkhya darshana, one of the six “orthodox” schools of Vedic philosophy.  These are rajas, the active, restless principle, tamas, the principle of inertia and solidity, and sattva, the principle of purity and light.  It’s the eternal interplay among these three that bring the Universe into existence and sustains it.

Cycling is rajas, pot is tamas, and yoga is sattva.  Bike-riding is active; weed-smoking is passive; and doing yoga purifies.  The combination of the three, emphasizing one over the other two depending on the situation, makes for a life that is full and fulfilling.  And plenty fun, too!

I’ve been doing yoga asana almost every day for more than 24 years now.  I’ve smoked (and eaten, sometimes) marijuana with some regularity (not every day, though!) since I was fifteen, half a century ago.  And I’ve ridden a bicycle pretty much every chance I’ve had (often on the way to or from a yoga class and also pretty often while being stoned) since I first learned to work a two-wheeler by careening down Ravencrest Road in the Pittsburgh suburb, O’Hara Township back in 1965.

So, no doubt I’ve had plenty of experience in all three, and it’s certain that I wouldn’t be who I am today without those experiences. 

Yoga, cycling and pot = me, myself, and I.