Unsustainability and moral bankruptcy of US business
The story we tell ourselves about ourselves shapes our lives (narrative therapy)
Media overload
Materialism
Here’s one quote I liked:
We’re not really taught how to recreate constructively. We
need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore
and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too
often to plop down in front of the television set and let
its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the
thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a
car battery—it recharges by running.
I also liked this:
You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see
your politics and religion become matters of habit rather
than thought and inquiry.
Don’t go on autopilot, don’t coast, don’t put a box around ideas you have and petrify your beliefs. Finally:
Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies
your soul is a rare achievement.
Oh, I almost forgot: you may recognize the name Kenyon College from another famous address: the singular David Foster Wallace spoke at their 2005 commencement.
Their selection committee must be well-connected.
While skimming it to find the passage I always remember, I again realized that Wallace’s narrative is ostensibly rambling but in actuality, tightly woven. I have trouble writing about him, because I’m sure my prose is exactly the type that would cause him to tear his hair out. So, I’ll try to get to the crux of the speech with a quote, but I feel a little guilty snipping a piece out to reproduce here. All I can hear in my head is DFW: “You’ll find me a truculent editee.” Anyways. Here:
But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a
choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat,
dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid
in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this.
Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand
of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this
very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle
department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve
a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some
small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of
this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just
depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically
sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating
on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t
consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable.
But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you
will know there are other options. It will actually be
within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow,
consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but
sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars:
love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep
down.
Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only
thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how
you’re gonna try to see it.
I’ve been thinking about how lucky I am. Please understand that I am not using the word “lucky” as shorthand to describe the idea of ‘fortunate’ or ‘secure’ or ‘genetic lottery winner’. I am lucky. I’ll explain why.
“Ya see, this one lady is persistent, but the other’s the only one I want to date.” At Lifetime, I found myself inadvertently eavesdropping on a conversation between two men, one in his late 40s, the other in his 30s. The one talking was the older of the two, and from the way he was speaking, I couldn’t decide if he’d been through a difficult divorce or simply never married. It didn’t matter, though, he was describing how interested he was in this woman in his life.
“I called her and I asked if she wanted to get something to eat tomorrow night.”
“That’s New Year’s Eve.”
“I know; I thought, ‘what the heck’.”
“So, you asked her out?”
“Well, not really. I mean, I didn’t ask her out specifically, but I asked her about dinner… I said I knew it was last minute, and all.”
“So, you asked her out.”
Here was someone halfway through his life, tentatively testing the path forward in relationships. It got me thinking: none of us are far from his position. No matter how (consciously or unconsciously) smug someone in a successful relationship may feel, it is humbling to consider that we can never insure ourselves against loneliness.
Nearly two week ago, I was working during my last day as the student dentist at a local nursing home. Here, the average age of patients is 78 years. Most need a lot of help getting from their chair to the dental chair. Some can not move much at all, and must be transferred using a special sheet. Having been there for a month, I fancied myself desensitized to the maladies of the population. There was still plenty to surprise me, though.
Mrs. C. came in for a routine cleaning with her husband and daughter. Suffering from chronic Parkinson’s and dosed with Ativan to make her experience easier, there was no question I’d be treating her in her wheelchair. Her daughter showed me the controls for tipping her mother back. “It’ll lean back quite far, actually” she said, surprising me with the rapidity with which the adjustments were made.
C. gave no indication that she understood anything I was saying, and had quite a lot of trouble cooperating with the cleaning. We got through it. When I wheeled her back to the waiting area, her husband lit up. “There she is!” he exclaimed, taking the handlebars of the wheelchair from me, the inexperienced driver. He kissed her tenderly on her head, knowing full well she didn’t know who he was, and would never be capable of reciprocating, even if she did.
It isn’t even possible to imagine all the ways we can lose the people we love. The moment you start seeing your relationships as routine, static, rigid things is the same moment you abandon them to decay. Our connections to others live and breathe just as much as we do, and they need the same amount of care. I’m just starting to learn this.
I don’t have really many screenshots, mock-ups, etc. at all of what this website has looked like through the years. I do have a 9-year-old desktop computer that probably still contains those things; perhaps I will compile them sometime. Anyhow, this lack of documentation is somewhat ironic, because I run tumbledry to write about my life. Apparently, writing about myself is enough navel gazing for one place; adding another layer by contemplating the tool I’ve written for contemplation would be quite narcissistic, wouldn’t it? All that said, here’s a screenshot of how tumbledry looked not too long ago:
I hate it less than I thought I would. In all honesty, I’m simply posting this to test the JavaScript I wrote that lets me add images to posts without leaving the posting page. Seems to be working!
I haven’t learned a lot, but I think I’ve learned this: the things that preoccupy us, worry us, stress us, aren’t the things on which we should be wasting energy.
I recently found out that the famous Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen designed the sanctuary for Christ Church Lutheran, right here in my backyard of Minneapolis. Turns out Saarinen’s son, the world-famous Eero Saarinen (of St. Louis Gateway Arch fame, designed a lovely addition to the original building. Here’s a picture, by the local Pete Sieger:
Now, I’m speaking as a huge fan of the Gothic architecture of Cathedrals in Europe, but I still like this style. Somehow (and I don’t have the architectural terms to express how), the Saarinen’s take these materials, large spaces, unadorned planes of space, and make them warm, even transcendent.
I’m looking forward to touring this space this January.
“My whole life, I had been doing everything everybody
told me. I went to the right school. I got really good
grades. I got all the internships. Then, I couldn’t do
anything.”
Mykala and I’ve been thinking a lot about raising healthy children. After those discussions, I can certainly say I believe in the long term value of teaching children about hard work, but I can’t yet figure out how best to motivate children to do it based on an internal locus. The quote above speaks to someone subjected to external motives — they’re effective, but also artificial and unreliable.
Here’s a problem I have: I fear disagreement. Just in the past month, I finally realized how desperately I try to center all my conversations around agreement. Think back to any conversation I’ve had with you — I was subconsciously aiming at agreement. Then, there are times when I consciously aim at agreement: I’ll make a semi-strong statement, and the person with whom I’m speaking will disagree. Inevitably, I’ll do a series of linguistic backflips and contortions to align our just-stated viewpoints.
I understand you’ve got to disagree, it’s the only way to resolve conflicts. I’m just not good at it.
