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.