Notianalism

Britons vote to “take their country back” by exiting the European Union; Donald Trump and his supporters promise to “make American great again;” even the Scots, who hardly seem the sort to get their kilts in a twist, tried recently to secede from Great Britain.

Frankly, I don’t get it; what’s the big deal with having your own country?  It’s hard enough as it is just to keep one’s own lawn mowed.

I always thought that by the 21st century, nationalism would be dead and we’d all be “citizens of the world.”  Historical boundaries and allegiances would be cast off and humanity would unite under a single flag.  No doubt the failure of the space aliens to attack and provide earthlings with a common enemy is part of the reason that hasn’t happened, but still…

Americans are taught that the USA is the greatest country on earth; Dutch children are told that Holland is number one; even countries like Canada where the name of the people who live there, Canadians, is based on the name of the country, are brainwashed to love their homeland above all others.  This all seems about as silly as being trained up to root for your hometown sports team above the rest; sillier, even since there’s no way America is ever going to win the Superbowl.

Civic pride is a fine thing, surely; we should all feel good about where we come from and the qualities we share with our neighbors, but ultimately, we’re all homo sapiens; let’s take back our species and secede from the phylum Cordata if anything.

Nationalism has been the cause of countless armed conflicts, untold numbers of international incidents, and some of the ugliest outfits ever designed for Olympic competition.  It’s time for the human race to set aside tribal loyalties and pledge fidelity to the entire family of man—not just national brother and sisters.

That way, we’ll actually be ready when the space aliens invade.

Ideas

I want to invent the machine that turns my ideas into reality.  The problem is that  I need the machine in order to do that.

Ideas are much easier than execution.  If just merely conceiving of something could bring it into being, I’d have a stack of best-sellers under my belt to go along with several successful companies and a coffee shop that looked like a science lab where caffeine was dispensed in scientifically-measured doses.

“Genius,” said Thomas Edison, “is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration;” if only the numbers were reversed, I could be a genius.

If you’ve got an active mind, it’s hard to carry out your ideas.  It’s not that I get bored exactly; it’s more that once I’ve thought of something, the really interesting part is over.  “I always wanted to be a writer, but I couldn’t stand the paperwork,” is how Lily Tomlin put it.

To paraphrase Stephen King: just because something is hard is a terrible reason not to do it.  He’s surely right, but then again, terrible reasons are, in practice, just as compelling as good reasons.  Just because a reason is lousy doesn’t mean it doesn’t motivate; just look at all the things we’ve done in the name of pride, or fear, or boredom.

If I had three wishes, I’d naturally wish for more wishes.  Duh. 

But after that, I’d wish that by writing down an idea for a book would bring it into being.  Like this: here’s a book about how a gang of teenagers saves the world from invaders from another dimension by taking psychedelic drugs secretly given to them by their physician fathers during the 1970s that ultimately derails the lives of each of the young people and breaks the hearts of the parents who had no other choice if the human race was to survive.

The story runs to 600 pages and intertwines the lives of dozens; it practically writes itself.  Unfortunately, only practically.

Sports

I wish I didn’t care about sports.

It’s annoying, not to mention embarrassing, petty, and incredibly stupid to be made happy or sad by whether your preferred team of highly-paid grown men in pajamas prevails in a child’s game on television.

But there you have it.

When the Mariners—or the Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, even sometimes the Dodgers—win, I experience a little shot of dopamine that cheers me up more or less depending on the nature of the contest and how it played out.  When those same teams lose, especially after enjoying a lead, it’s like a little poke in the ribs or tweak in the nose; I really don’t like it.

It bothers me that my reaction is quite inconsistent with the importance of the event; I’ve been known to feel worse about seeing the Mariners losing in the bottom of the ninth than reading news reports of another mass shooting or stock market crash.  And then I feel worse that I feel bad, and so on, and so on.

I assume it’s possible to wean myself from this predicament; all I’d have to do is simply stop investing so much psychic energy in whether “my” teams wins or not.  It shouldn’t be any harder than stopping biting my nails or giving up milk in my coffee.

And yet.

Here I sit, watching the Mariners blow another lead and damn if I’m not having a worse day than I was when they were winning.  This surely makes no more sense than being displeased that Romeo and Juliet didn’t live happily ever after: for one thing, I can’t do anything about it and even if I could, so what?  It’s not like my health, wealth, or general well-being is affected by the outcome.

Nevertheless, after well more than a half-century of this, I’m apparently stuck.  I see only one way to not feel bad after this game: the M’s had better just come back and win.

Patience

Perhaps the best advice my yoga teacher, David Garrigues, ever gave me was “don’t panic.”  He offered this counsel as I pressed up into a backbend and immediately began gritting my teeth and hyperventilating.  Not surprisingly, neither of these did anything to improve the pose, hence David’s admonition.  Thanks to his words, however, I was able to slow my breathing down and relax, at least a bit.

Point being: most of us are very impatient, especially when it comes to experiencing discomfort.  At the first sign of something uncomfortable, we begin frantically searching for an escape; it’s our biological “flight” mechanism in action.  And while this probably served us well when that discomfort was a saber-toothed tiger with designs on us for dinner, it’s not so useful when all that threatens us is a little physical challenge, or boredom, or a problem whose solution isn’t readily apparent.

Take, for example, what routinely happens during the writing process.  I find myself stuck halfway down a problematic sentence; immediately, I incline towards surfing the internet or opening the refrigerator to graze for carrots—anything to avoid feeling the uncomfortable feelings I’m feeling: self-doubt, embarrassment, and fear, a low-level panic that raises the hairs on the back of my neck and has me shouting inwardly, “Get out now! Run, you fool, run!” although not in those words.

Usually, I respond to these feelings as expected, which is why it typically takes me all morning to write two paragraphs and why we go through carrots so quickly in our household.

What’s sad is that I know if I just allow myself to sit for a moment with the feelings, they’ll pass.  If I refrain from panicking, I’ll eventually find my way out of the corner I’ve backed myself into.  Instead of wildly seeking solace via the internet or refrigerator, I just need to look within. 

Of course, that means confronting my panic head-on, but if I’m patient, I can do so.

Indifferent

All of the football teams I root for lost this weekend, and you know what?  So what!

“Football is life,” goes one of the NFL’s marketing slogans, but, as a matter of fact, it isn’t.  Life is pretty much everything else, from walking around the block to helping take care of your aging father-in-law; it’s certainly not three-hundred pound men in plastic outfits banging into each other for the entertainment of mainly beer-drinking high-fiving white guys.

Perhaps I wouldn’t be so down on the sport had any of “my” teams won; on the other hand, their losing surely puts things into perspective.  In light of these failures, I can see far more clearly how silly it is to get worked up over the contests' outcomes.  It makes about as much sense as being emotionally invested in whether a flipped coin comes up heads or tails, especially if who receives isn't even riding on it.

I have, of course, invested no small measure of emotion in various sporting events; it’s weird, though, and rather unbecoming for a man of my advanced years and professional standing.  Do I really want my obituary to note that I was an avid Pittsburgh Steelers fan?  Wouldn’t it be even less embarrassing to point out that I raised orchids or painted water colors?

Truth be told, I wasted approximately twelve hours this weekend viewing football on TV.  Had I spent even a tenth of that, say, knitting, I’d have a lovely scarf to show for it.  As it is, all I’ve got is a bit of dyspepsia from beer and tortilla chips and a healthy case of self-recrimination for being such a slug.

I hereby vow, therefore, to swear off being a football fan from this point forward.  No longer will I give a damn whether one group of steroid-enhanced behemoths prevails over another.  From here on out, my Sundays are devoted to more important pursuits, stuff that really matters, like baseball!

Nest

Here’s a cliché observation: you spend the first two decades, more or less, of your child’s life trying to get a moment’s peace from them, but then, all of a sudden, the tables are turned and you’re trying to get them to hang out with you for even a minute.

Cue the cheesy Harry Chapin song: “Cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon…”

Of course, it’s not all bad; there are increased opportunities for day drinking and you can extend that practice into the evening with impunity.  Also, no more having to attend Curriculum Night at their school.

But it is a little lonely to be sure.  After all, you’ve spent countless hours just being their for your young one and now they no longer need you; what to do with all this time on your hands?

You could take up needlepoint or model airplane building.  You could help out at the local soup kitchen.  You could write short essays about your experience that few may ever read.

Traditionally, I believe, one takes this opportunity to begin nagging one’s child to have children; you start pushing hard for grandkids.  I’m not quite ready for that, although I’m sure I’ll be an ace grandparent; I already have the collection of Pendleton wool shirts needed for the job.

One of the main things about this new phase of life is how clearly it illustrates the futility of all existence.  If you’ve done your job as a parent halfway decently, you’ve effectively worked yourself out of the picture. 

The whole point of the exercise is to render yourself superfluous.  And for those of us who have long harbored suspicions about the essential absurd pointlessness of the human condition, it really brings it home: perhaps the entire reason any of us are here on planet earth is to be done with the whole thing.

Admittedly, I’m being slightly morbid here; but why not?  I certainly have the time for it.

Weird

Human beings are strange creatures.  We congregate in places where we can pay to derange our consciousness slightly and watch images move around a flat screen as proof positive of an artificial reality, and then we care about what happens as if it really matters.

What?

I know, from days of watching football like this, that no one really determines the outcomes; we are all an expression of a huge tidal wave that could be construed as an expression of the eternal intermingling of various forces. 

It’s nice when your team wins, but rooting for that to happen is kind of like cheering for the sun to rise—not necessarily something to be frowned upon, but surely something that has no more effect upon the outcome than does wishing for tomorrow to come.

How strange it is to be so powerfully motivated by pictures of mere ideas; nearly none of it matters in the least, and yet so much of it seems like that’s all there is.

When you juxtapose what you really care about with what’s only a slight preference, it’s easier to see that the former only differs from the latter in your own heart; you can observe others being ridiculously excited by what you disdain; that’s both reassuring and humiliating, depending on your sense of humor about yourself.

Change is inevitable and yet, what qualifies as change keeps changing as well.  Just when you think you have something figured out, you realize that you don’t, which means that you do, which means that you don’t, get it?

The idea that it would be better not to have been born at all seems correct here, but given that we have been, then what is one to do?  May as well make the best of things, even if what is, in fact, superior, remains a logical possibility.

It ends up being what people care for, weird as those all things that we care for may be.