It occurred to me today that we’d be happier if we could just enjoy the journey.
I actually started writing this post months ago, after a conversation with a close friend of mine about people being too goal-oriented, rather than having an interest in the journey. I was telling this friend, at the time, about my attempts to get back on the treadmill and how difficult it was, after a period of being away, to get back into the habit. We talked about how I was wanting to build stamina and lose weight, but I was frustrated, not seeing any results.
Then, just the other day, I was talking to a different friend of mine about writing and wanting to be a famous writer but not wanting to have to do the work of writing everyday in order to become the successful writer that I dream of being.
Both of these conversations point to something in me that is so laser-focused on the goal that I am unable to appreciate the journey in getting to the goal. I think that there are many reasons for why I have such a hard problem with this (and I know that I’m not the only one), but these are probably the big three reasons.
1) We have been conditioned, as a society, to avoid difficult things. Things that are easy, quick, and pain-free have been served to us on the silver platter of the advertising machine for decades. I wrote about the easiness problem just recently, so I’m not going to beat that dead horse right here and now.
For example, they say diet and exercise are the steps to be taken to lose weight, but very few people are interested in committing long-term to this kind of lifestyle. So, instead we have diet shakes and New Year’s Resolutions and none of it really amounts to much. Why not, instead, commit to the idea of a journey –an hourly, daily, weekly devotion– that will forevermore include these hard things.
Life is supposed to be hard. If it were supposed to be otherwise, novels wouldn’t be three-hundred pages long, detailing the arduous journey of the protagonist.
2) Another part of the problem is that we don’t get recognition, or give recognition, for the individual steps of progress that are always part of any journey toward a goal. I know this is a problem of mine when I sit down to read some pages in the novel that I’m reading at any particular time, and I berate myself afterward if I didn’t get enough pages read. I hardly ever congratulate myself for having read a decent number of pages, and I am never proud of progress of even lesser consequence.
I saw a meme on Pinterest that said the we should be proud of every step in the right direction, rather than just being proud upon some final accomplishment. But, it really is a mind-shift for us to be self-congratulatory as we take each of our steps. I am always excited when I finish a novel, but I am rarely thus during the process of progress.
3) I think an additional part of the problem, maybe even a bigger part, is that we are too busy to be able to make changes. That’s a lesson I’m taking away from the COVID-19 quarantine; so many of the things that have made my life so damn busy in the past have been cancelled for the last several weeks. With those things out of the way, I have been able to do more writing and to be more faithful in my exercise routine. These changes in what I’m doing with my time, because of the freedom of having your “life” ripped away, they are resulting in changes in the way that I look at myself. I have to admit, I like what I’m spending my time doing these days more than I liked what I was spending my time doing before.
When we pack our lives with busy-ness, it makes it harder to be able to make changes when we discover that we don’t like the way that things are going. If you are looking at your life and you’re unhappy with the direction that it’s taking, you’re the captain of the ship, are you not?
What could you stop doing to make room for what it is that you want to be doing? Will it take a global pandemic to free you from the cage of that to which you’ve become accustomed?
Of course, once everything goes back to normal and I am going to be expected to go back to normal with it, I will have to fight some battles, I think, to be able to hold on to the changes that I’ve made. The world is going to expect me to pick up the load that they’d placed on me before all of this, and I’m not sure that I’m willing to pick that load back up.
***
It should have become obvious to you, during this post, that I think about story-telling when I think about journeys. For me, one of the most enjoyable parts of reading any story is to be a witness to a journey undertaken. When the main character is transformed at the end of the story, for better often, but sometimes for worse, it is enjoyable to have been a part of watching that happen.
When it comes to me, and my transformation, I have unfortunately been far too pre-occupied with the last few pages of the story. As unholy and wrong as it would seem to open a new novel, to flip to the last five pages, and to read it as if it were the only part of the story worth any consideration, it would be even more inappropriate because of what little I would understand, having skipped what came before.
Our stories only makes sense –we only make sense– when we consider the whole of each of our stories. How I end up wherever I end up is only going to make sense, only going to be enjoyable, in the larger context of the whole story.
And yet, this is what I so often do. In my mind, I think that the story leading up to the finale is worthless. The part of my mind that is interested in being a world-class runner and a New York Times best-seller, isn’t at all interested in the journey of getting there.
Thankfully, the avid reader in me understands what my mind does not: it’s all about the journey.
It occurred to me today that there are Spocks and there are Kirks, and I’m a Spock.
Of course, if you haven’t watched the original episodes of the Star Trek television show, circa 1966-1969, or the original movies (Star Trek 1 through Star Trek 6), then you might not have any idea what I’m talking about. So, let me catch you up as quickly as possible.
The captain of the Starship Enterprise was one James Tiberius Kirk, played by William Shatner in the original series (TOS). His right hand man was Commander Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy. These two, and their interactions with each other, were illustrative to the extent that Captain Kirk was regularly a passionate leader, emotional, sometimes prone to hysterics. Commander Spock, on the other hand, was logical, intellectual, and reasoned in his responses. To watch the two of them, working together to solve problems and to “save the day” in the short one-hour time frame that they had, you often got to see the importance of looking at problems from different points of view.
The relationship between Kirk and Spock was a little more complicated than that, especially when you consider that Spock was half-Vulcan. The Vulcans were an alien race, dedicated to logic and reason and self-discipline, and that Spock’s mother was a human…
But, I don’t really need to go into that.
As often as it was the case that Kirk’s human emotions were chastised by Spock as “illogical”, they were what made Kirk’s character endearing. Kirk was a great leader because of the compassion that he had for those in need of assistance and rescue. Spock was often cold and methodical, incapable of understanding why emotional empathy would ever be of value.
Needless to say, the two of these characters, together, encapsulated the totality of the human mental experience –> emotion and passion fighting with reason and logic to try to equate to an integrated thought process that would have appealed to Goldilocks; not too cold and aloof, but not too emotionally charged and impassioned, but rather, just right.
And so, all of that is to say that all people tend to fall somewhere on this spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, you have people who are ruled by logic and reason and intellect, while on the other end you have people who are ruled by passion and emotion and feelings. Of course, as I am a fan of the middle ground as much as possible, we should (I suppose) be striving for a measured combination of the two approaches. I struggle against my inner Spock to try to be a little bit more Kirk.
However, I just can’t abide by people who seem to be emotional all the time. The highs and lows of life are just so numerous and the roller coaster that would ride each of those highs and each of those lows is a ride on which I would prefer not to be a passenger.
I saw a meme the other day that had a picture of a heartbeat (you know, the little jagged heartbeat reading on the otherwise flat-line readout) and the meme said, “If your life doesn’t have ups and downs, then you’re dead”. While the meme is intended as a play on the imagery of the heartbeat reading, the deeper meaning is somewhat alarming. To a certain extent, I suppose I agree with the meme. However, I have known people who voluntarily –subconsciously, but voluntarily– decide that they are going to ride every high and every low that there is to ride, to get excited about things of no consequence and to get upset about things of equally little consequence.
It has always seemed to me, maybe because of my upbringing, maybe because of my preference for logic, maybe because I have always thought that Spock was cooler than Kirk, that such emotional roller coaster rides are pointless and –dare I say– extremist. But, I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the other extreme to be avoided here. You can’t go through your whole life being cold and aloof and disconnected from the relationships with the people around you, the people around you that matter the most. As easy as it would be to not get our hands dirty with the emotions and feelings of the people in our lives, we have to embrace that as part of the human experience. People have feelings, and those feelings have a legitimacy because the people who are feeling them have legitimacy.
Spock without Kirk is just as bad as Kirk without Spock.
P.S. I am just now realizing that this post is set to drop on May the 4th. It makes me laugh out loud to think that I have inadvertently stepped on Star Wars day with this Star Trek post. A true sci-fi fan appreciates both of these wonderful worlds of sci-fi fun. May the 4th be with you.
It occurred to me today that our current political system it’s kind of like a s’more.
If you’ve ever made more than a few s’mores –and trust me, I’ve made hundreds– then you know what the issue is. If you end up making the perfect s’more with the perfectly roasted marshmallow and the chocolate and the graham cracker and everything seems like it’s going according to plan, and then you smoosh it, to encourage the chocolate and the melted marshmallow to become this magical melted confection in your mouth. And, when you smoosh it, here’s what happens –> the extra squirts out of the sides and it gets on your fingers.
And the problem with melted s’more on your fingers is that it’s a sloppy mess. If you’re not careful, it could even end up ruining the whole experience.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about party politics in America, and how it has (either recently or maybe not so recently) become very contentious and hate-filled and disgusting. I’ve been thinking about my party affiliations throughout my life and how I feel like those are changing because of the way that things are developing in our country and because of movements within these political parties.
I’ve been thinking a lot about extremism, as well.
I think of how wonderful a perfectly constructed s’more can be. I think about how the vast majority of Americans are probably more moderate than extremist. The pressure that you put on the s’more to get the chocolate and the marshmallow to mix is what causes things, if you’re not careful, to squirt out the sides.
From what I understand, liberals and conservatives all have had their problems recently with the most extreme members of their parties, in much the same way that I hate getting s’more shmutz on my fingers.
The party that I’ve voted for most of my life has recently run away from me, and so I find myself wondering what to do about that. I’ve thought, at certain points, that the two-party system is the problem, but at other times, I wonder if we just need more cooperation and less bitter division.
It’s the squeeze that causes the s’more to smoosh out of the sides. So, if we can ride this metaphor for another mile, I wonder about the pressure that is causing the extremism in American politics. What is causing extremist liberals to head toward socialism? What is causing extremist conservatives to head toward fascism? Why do people feel like these positions are worth occupying, and in light of what current social pressures are these changes occurring?
Why can’t I just squeeze down on my s’more and not have the goop shooting out the sides?
I guess, when I think about it, this is how things usually go down: I squeeze, I get the shmutz, and then I have to wipe it off of my hands. I use a napkin to clean my hands and then I toss that napkin, covered in the shmutz, into the fire.
I would hope that a reasonable citizenry would do the same thing –> recognize that extremism is to be avoided and abhorred, discard it as so much pointless inconvenience, and move forward with enjoying your s’more. Don’t let it ruin the experience for you. Don’t focus it on it or become consumed by it or even be surprised when it happens. Just deal with it, get past it, and move on.
It occurred to me today that there’s too much talking.
They say, “actions speak louder than words” and “talk is cheap”, but it doesn’t seem to keep people from talking so much.
Where did we lose an appreciation for silence?
It’s not that I have a problem with people talking. Communication is necessary for people to share information with each other. My wife and I try to talk with each other as much as we can to maintain our connection and to maintain the flow of information that we have to share with each other to be effective in our life together, just as an example.
However, there are probably many different types of talking going on these days that are pointless. As a matter of fact, I think that most of us could probably do with a lot less talking coming from our mouths and end up being just fine. Some of the people I respect and admire most in the world speak rarely. When these people do speak, their words have weight and meaning, rather than just being another drop in the very large bucket of drivel that most talkers generate regularly.
But the type of talking that has been irritating me recently is complaining.
If you say that there’s a problem (complain), but you’re not willing to do anything about it (take action), you’re adding to the noise.
I saw a commercial the other night for the census, and this socially-activist couple was talking about all of the change in which they desire to be involved, and the census came up. And the point of the commercial, more or less, was that completing the census is a simple action that one can take toward social change. The verbage in the commercial went something like, “don’t talk about change, be about change”.
I thought the commercial was pretty cool (I filled out the census weeks ago, so it wasn’t really speaking to me), and it got me to thinking.
I think the problem with people talking so much and acting so rarely is a question of effort. It doesn’t cost us anything to complain. But, action is this whole big thing where I have to get up and get organized to plan a response to an issue that’s really bothering me and that just seems like so much work, so maybe I’ll just sit here and complain instead.
You get the idea.
So, naturally, we need to make complaining more expensive than action. I propose a tax.
We will call it the grumble tax. Whenever someone complains about something, they will have to pay the grumble tax. It will be so expensive that people will stop complaining. Rather, they will, either, 1) realize that they aren’t that upset about the things that they were prepared to complain about, at least not upset enough to pay the grumble tax, and end up just keeping their mouth shut, or 2) just get up and go about fixing the things that they were going to complain about because it would be less expensive in the long-term than paying the grumble tax.
Sure, my plan has some flaws, but it also has MERIT.
In my hypothetical world where it is now hypothetically expensive to pay the hypothetical grumble tax, it would be interesting to see, hypothetically, whether this tax would result in sweeping social, political, moral, and/or economic changes –imagine, people just running around fixing all of the things that are so broken– or if it would just lead to less noise.
I suspect we would probably see the latter.
Are the things that we tend to complain about really that bad? Are they even within our control to change? Are we really being significantly impacted by the injustices on our lips?
Maybe things aren’t that bad. Maybe there really isn’t that much that cries out for change in the world around us. Maybe we complain because it gives us something to say, a viewpoint to express in this world where it seems to be increasingly more and more important that we 1) have an opinion on something, and 2) express it to others.
Maybe we just complain because we are uncomfortable in the silence.
It occurred to me today that practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect.
W. E. Hickson and Thomas H. Palmer are credited with being responsible for the phrase, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Is it any wonder that these two were authors in the field of education?!?! But, despite having heard that phrase many, many times during my childhood, and having uttered it many, many more times in my classroom, I think it bears some deeper thought.
The phrase is an ode to persistence, of course, especially in the face of failure. Persistence, and the lack of it in society, result, in my opinion, from our tendency as a society to seek the easiest paths. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t learn how rewarding it can be to try something hard, to persist at it and to wrestle with it, and then to eventually succeed, until well into my adult life. Probably about the time that I started questioning some of what’s going on in the world around me.
I see this lack of persistence in my classroom all the time. As a teacher, I am often frustrated by students who seem to lack the persistence to succeed at anything that is harder than a “gimme”. Just this year, I began teaching a very rigorous course in Computer Science and Coding, and my students are very often incapable of persisting toward success. After only a modicum of effort, they throw up their hands and look at me like, “I’m not working any harder than I have, so I guess this is over.”
So frustrating!
One of my favorites quotes about persistence is the one from Thomas Edison: “Many of life’s failures are [people] who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Edison, one of the famed inventors in America’s history, is reported to have had a monumental level of persistence. And, how many times have we ended up being successful at something with the thought running in the back of our head, “I’ll get it with just a couple more tries.”
However, we’d be foolish to think that the only thing that needs to happen in order for a person to be successful is that they would try at something X number of times. If I knock my head against the cinder block wall once and I hear my mother’s voice in my head saying, “If at first you don’t succeed…”, it doesn’t change the fact that knocking my head against that wall 100,000 more times isn’t going to bring down the wall.
So, instead, we alter our approaches. We tweak. I stop using my head against that wall and start using a tack hammer. And when I notice that a tack hammer does a better job, but still isn’t cutting it, I use a sledge hammer or a wrecking ball. These result in the success as much as the persistence does.
So, there’s a triad then –> an inter-connectivity between persistence and improvement and success. Practice doesn’t make perfect, but perfect practice will, eventually.
So, why does any of this matter? Why is it important for us to know?
Well, for one thing, we need to stop doing things the same way that we’ve always done them if we aren’t getting to success. It’s the tweaking that helps where sheer persistence fails. How many times should we knock our head against the cinder block wall before we alter our approach? Ten times? A hundred times? If you take intelligence out of the equation (intelligence that tells us that it is not possible to knock down a cinder block wall with one’s forehead), even a moron should be able to determine, after a good old college try, that change is necessary.
Now, don’t get me wrong on this, we ought not change our approaches to things without a proper trail run at success. Like Mr. Edison reminds us, our breakthrough might be just around the corner. But, we also have to be realistic. That voice inside that says, “This isn’t working” is our notification that a different approach might be in order, especially as that voice gets louder.
And, a fear of change should never be a determiner when it comes to whether or not we change tack.
If persistence and improvements, when paired together, lead to success, and the vast majority of people in our society, have something that they want to be successful at, why are more people realizing those goals.
A final example before I go:
I will never forget a conversation that I had once with a student of mine named Andre. Andre and I would always go back and forth about how important it was for him to pay attention in class, for him to do his work, for him to try his best to understand the material. Eventually, one day, as class let out, I held Andre behind and I asked him what his plan was for life, if he was so sure that he wasn’t going to be needing an education. Andre told me that he was going to be going to college to play basketball, and then he was going to end up going pro.
So, I fostered this conversation with Andre by asking him questions like, “How often do you practice your free throw shooting?” and “How many hours do you spend on the fundamentals every week? and “Do you practice year-round, or only during the basketball season?” It occurred to me very quickly that Andre wasn’t a persistent basketball player.
What should you start to become persistent at doing?
It occurred to me today that we should have blinders on, like they used to put on horses.
I happen to believe that we do too much looking around. We lack focus. The blinders on the horse’s bridle are meant to keep the horse looking forward. Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t be restricted in what we’re looking at as well.
Let’s think of some examples:
1) The past, the present, and the future. Putting the scant wisdom of a) planning for the future and b) learning from the past to the side for a moment, let’s think about all of the human effort and time that has been wasted when we lose our focus on the present. Worriers worry about futures that never come and the high school quarterback who never went to college and works in the local factory can’t stop thinking about what could’ve been. You get the idea. We need blinders! Today is the day that you have. Tomorrow is gone (wave goodbye and walk away) and tomorrow may not be coming (so stop your intricate planning), but we have the RIGHT NOW and we usually spend the RIGHT NOW looking backward or forward. What a waste!
2) Looking at each other. The significant amount of comparison work that we do when we look at others and think things like, “Man, if only I made as much money as that guy”, or “I wish I was as pretty as she is”, or “Yeah, I’m a drunk, but at least I don’t beat my wife like that drunk down the street”. We need blinders! Comparing ourselves to each other, the vast majority of the time, DOES NOT LEAD TO ANYTHING POSITIVE. I could try to blame social media for this, but this problem has been around for a lot longer than the internet (although our inter-connectivity isn’t making it any better). The pretty people and the funny people and the popular people and the talented people and the rich people –> they’re all still people!! Broken and hurting and incomplete and lacking and our wasted time looking at them and wishing to be them is the height of futility.
3) The news, especially as it relates to matter of little or no consequence. And yes, I’m speaking of politics. I’m becoming more and more convinced that the three-ring-circus of 1) the mass media, 2) party politics, and 3) the advertising machine is nothing but a distraction that keeps us from doing the things that we ought to be doing. We need blinders! I myself have recently decided, as much as possible, to stick with local news sources and as little mass media as possible. Of course, we’ll see how that works out. Have you ever wondered whether or not this particular set of distractions is being used as a tool to keep Americans, who have the energy and drive and creativity to start moving our world forward again, so distracted that we can’t rock the boat.
Horses, as you’re probably aware, have an eye on each lateral side of their face. Because of this, and because of a little thing called peripheral vision, horses GET DISTRACTED BY WHAT’S GOING ON AROUND THEM if they don’t have blinders on. When a horse is pulling a plow or pulling a carriage, we need to keep them from getting distracted for the safety of the people behind the horse.
Of course, I’m not really suggesting that we be made to wear blinders to keep our vision focused in the right direction –> this is metaphorical. We do get distracted and sidetracked and we lose productivity and time when it happens. When I go into my phone to check my account balance on my bank account, but twenty minutes later, I still haven’t checked my account balance but I’ve scrolled Facebook and I’ve checked the national news outlets and I’ve posted on Reddit; then I realize what has happened and I get back on track so I can check my account balance.
You know you do it, too.
The crooner John Mayer had a popular song, “Waiting on the World to Change”. I don’t see that happening here –> our world is heading in the wrong direction in a lot of ways and the myriad options that we have for getting distracted isn’t going to go down anytime soon. So, instead, we are going to have to tackle this particular issue ourselves. You must decide that you are going to carve out some of the distractions in your life. Uninstall the apps on your phone that encourage you to compare yourselves to others for no particular constructive purpose, stop spending time thinking about what could have been rather than using that time for a purpose today, take back the control that you give away to mass media and decided that you are going to focus on what is important rather than what’s not.
And, if you figure out how to do these things, reach out and clue me in.
It occurred to me today that I need to choose grace more often.
We should default to grace, instead of to judgment. Why? Because we don’t know the whole story. We don’t know what’s going on in other people’s lives. Even when we think we know, because we believe ourselves to be close to a particular person, we don’t really know. And so, whatever story is behind whatever it is that people around you are doing, you should chose grace.
A couple of years ago, I had a friend that we will call Tyler. This friend and I weren’t terribly close, but we were friends. Tyler committed suicide. In the moments immediately after his death, we were all scratching our heads and wondering why and wanting to ask the questions for which there are no answers. But, as the hours and days turned into weeks and months, we started to discover many of the contributing factors that lead Tyler to a place of absolute despair and darkness. Many of these factors were a mystery to Tyler’s own wife and children. Even they, who certainly would have thought that they knew Tyler, were unaware of the story that lead him to that most desperate of choices.
So, choose grace. You don’t know the whole story.
That guy who cut you off on the highway on your way in to work was just told by his wife that she is filing for divorce and he is trying to get in to work as fast as he possibly can just so he can close the door to his office and bury himself in his work to keep from having to deal with the awful reality of his life.
That woman at the grocery store, the one that saw you going for the last loaf of bread on the rack and took it right out from under you, has three children at home who haven’t eaten for three days and the loaf she took is the only one that she can afford with the money that she has and she needs that bread for her children to be able to make sandwiches for their lunches.
That dude that left the negative comment on your social media post was fired today by his boss because he found out that the boss and the boss’s secretary are sleeping together and the boss doesn’t want anyone to know so he got fired for no reason at all and he took it out on you online.
–> Now, let’s be honest, if you’re anything like me, even in the above situations, you felt it was necessary to pass a little judgment. I think we are programmed to do it at some point. Sometimes, it’s so automatic for me and it shouldn’t be.
Regardless, choose grace. You don’t know the whole story.
Additionally, another reason for choosing grace is this: you make a bad judge. Here’s why:
Humans are constantly in an emotional flux which is the result of all manner of different things (for example –> when you last ate, what level of satisfaction you are getting from your love life, the levels of endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin in your bloodstream, how successful you feel at work, the relative volatility of your circumstances, how much sleep we got last night, etc., etc., etc.), some of which we can control and other factors that are beyond us. This emotional flux causes us to look at things differently at different points in time, even when we are considering different situations that are relatively similar. In fact, it is probably unreasonable to expect that a person, without some set of guidelines, would ever be able to judge the same situation similarly at different points in time, since it is highly unlikely that the myriad of factors that are part of the equation that adds up to our emotional state, would ever be the same twice.
But, since most of us are unaware of the fact that we happen to be very different people, emotionally speaking, at different points in time, we imagine that we are perfectly capable of passing judgment on others. But, it’s simply not true. What you might consider egregious one day could just be inappropriate on a different day.
Finally, one of the best reason for choosing grace is this –> it’s what you would want people to do to you.
And don’t try to lie by telling me that you wouldn’t want that at all. Don’t pretend that you would want people to disregard your circumstances in their decisions to pass judgment on you. No one likes to be judged, and we certainly don’t like it when the person passing judgment on us doesn’t have all of the facts.
To sum up, there isn’t enough grace in the world. I am certainly to blame when it comes to being quick to judge others. Instead, we should offer the grace to our fellow humans that we would want them to offer to us in the complicated circumstances of our lives.
It occurred to me today that extremism is starting to become a prevalent problem.
My daughter Lilly will paraphrase two pages of text in thirteen words. My daughter Sarah will paraphrase two pages of text in 1.99 pages.
My Sunday School teacher from childhood told me once that the only appropriate sexual position is the missionary position. My best friend from college believes that all approaches to sexual gratification are acceptable.
Wayward Muslims with hate in their hearts flew planes into the Twin Towers in New York City and wayward Protestant supremacists with hate in their hearts lynched thousands of people in America in the 20th century.
You know what these all have in common, of course. They’re extremists.
The Oxford Dictionary defines the extremist as “a person who holds extreme or fanatical political or religious views, especially one who resorts to or advocates extreme action.” Because extremism is something that has, so many times throughout history, been demonstrably bad, you would think we would stop doing it. But, I wonder about a society that has yet to discover extremism as patently bad and to be avoided.
I have been noticing it a lot lately in the news: people occupying extremist positions in our society and actually having an audience of those who would agree with them. This must be the way that it has always been and I’ve just not noticed until now? I recently had to make changes in my own political party affiliations, because the party that I’ve been associated with for all of my life has recently been hijacked by extremists and I can’t abide by their philosophies and figurehead choices anymore.
Maybe this is just a part of the societal pendulum swing of which I have not lived long enough to be able to witness a full cycle? Maybe political parties have always had this motion in them, wherein people who would identify themselves with a certain party at a certain point would not be able to have the same affinity at a different point because of the motion of the party? Have the Democrats always been this leftist and have the Republicans always been so right-wing?
Maybe the problem is that we don’t know when we are occupying an extremist position, as individuals or in groups. And, moreover, who would we rely on to tell us? If my neighbor hears me going off about something and realizes that I am being an extremist, could he tell me so? Would I listen to him? If I reach out to my political party to let them know that they’ve gone a little too far off the rails for me to be comfortable, would it even matter?
I guess one of the ways that people tend to determine whether or not they are occupying an extremist position is to look around and compare themselves with those around them to see whether or not they are being extreme. First off, since extremists tend to surround themselves with other people that believe the same things, it would be hard for the one extremist to look at the other extremists around and say to them, “Hey, aren’t we being a little extreme, here?”
And I don’t want to get started on all of the problems that result from us looking around and comparing ourselves with each other. For all of the tears and misery that have been caused throughout history by this particular racket, it is a delicate endeavor for me to suggest that this is the way that we should go about determining whether or not we are as bad (or as good) as we think we are.
Another problem that we have here is that the scale is sliding. Those positions that would have been considered extremist in our society two or three decades ago are no longer so, because –as the societal views shift– the scale is moving.
Are you noticing that part of the problem here is all of the damn movement! Not only is my party moving its positions, and my society is moving its positions, but I end up moving my positions in response to the movements of my party and my society?!?! Why can’t we all just occupy a certain middle ground and stay there? If we could all just agree that…
Wait!
Before I write another word of that previous thought, I must say that I have come to an epiphany. For all of us to be able to avoid extremist positions, we would have to be able to agree to join up in the middle, together.
What would it take for that to happen?
This is another place where I think that the two party political system fails us as a society (don’t get me started on this topic, please!). When I look across the way at that group of people that I don’t agree with and I see what they are up to, it just burns my hide! So, I will react by doing something extremist in response. SO THERE! THAT’LL SHOW ‘EM!
During my undergraduate studies, I remember a philosophy class where I learned that Aristotle used to say, “In medio stat virtus”, which is to say the virtue lies in the middle. We all recognize that extremist positions are problematic. Can’t we agree to stop being so “out there”?
It occurred to me today that there are several problems with our societal preference for easiness.
One of my favorite science fiction novels of all time is The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. I don’t love it because of the sci-fi in it, because there’s not a whole lot. In fact, anyone who knows about Herbert George Wells, and his background, understands that the novel is more about class conflict than it is about sci-fi. In the novel, Wells’s main character is able to travel into a far distant future where he encounters the human race, evolved over time into two different species of “people”. Wells paints two different evolutionary pictures of these two different species –> one species is the evolutionary descendants of the proletariat working class (the Morlocks) and the other, the evolutionary descendant of the bourgeoisie elite (the Eloi). As the time traveler interacts with these two groups in the far future, he ends up (as a scientist)
One of the greatest things, in my mind, that H.G. Wells is able to establish in this book is that, throughout time, those who able to do difficult things stand a better chance at a more decent future than the rest of us. There is no question that, after the novel is over, the Morlocks are those that are to be revered, as they have maintained a strength of body and mind that the Eloi end up losing –> through their easiness of life.
I will never forget the first time that I read that novel and I thought to myself about what it means to do the hard things in life.
I’m not sure how far back you would have to go to try to find the place in Western society when we started preferring the easy things. I can’t help but think, whenever I am pondering this issue, about the infomercials that always tout how a thing can make your life easier. Maybe we have mass media and mass advertising to thank for this obsession that we have, looking for the easiest way.
Here’s another example: I am a semi-avid runner, which is to say that I 1) run, and 2) never look forward to it. I do also, have to say, that there is something to be said about the joy of doing hard things. Running, for me, ends up usually being that thing that I didn’t want to do that I enjoyed much more than I would have thought had you asked me before I was to begin.
I can tell you that it is by far easier for me to sit on my couch than it is for me to go out and run a few miles. But, I hope that this more difficult thing is coming with some advantages for my health that sitting on the couch won’t be able to offer me.
The problem with seeking easy and avoiding hard is that it makes us weak.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t have any problem with things being easy. But, it is unfortunately the case that we have been picking “easy” rather than picking “right”. By all means, choose easy if it doesn’t have a significantly higher cost than a harder alternative might have.
But, are there any easy alternatives that don’t have a cost? I wonder.
I’ve seen motivational posters (hate those things) that say on them, “Do the hard thing.” And, as incorrect as it is for us to chase after the easy thing every single time, costs be damned, it must also be wrong for us to just assume that, because something is hard, it is the right thing to do. There are certainly times when we make things difficult for ourselves unnecessarily.
So, where’s the median? The middle ground between becoming mental and physical weaklings because we’ve worked so hard to avoid anything hard vs. the burden of always doing things the hard way, even when an easier and smarter way exists?
It occurred to me today that blame has become a poison in the bloodstream of our society.
I can’t think of very many situations at all where blame is something that is even necessary. Can you? Think of any necessary blame scenarios, I mean?
I think that we have become interested in blame as a society because we work psychologically to avoid responsibility, to avoid any stress to our fragile egos. In fact, if you ever manage to meet anyone who is, like me, trying to avoid blame in their life as much as possible, those people tend to be those with a strong sense of self that can stand a ding or two, brought about by taking responsibility every once and a while.
And so, instead of self-blame, we attribute the situations around us to others, because it maintains the integrity of our “selves”. We blame because it’s easier than taking responsibility. We blame because it’s easier than keeping our mouths shut (does that sting a little?).
The unfortunate truth is this: we are to blame for everything.
WHAT?!?!?!
I’m not saying that we are, each of us, universal scapegoats, responsible for global warming and the Holocaust and the world-wide hunger epidemic. Rather, what I mean is this: each of us has responsibility to bear in each of these –in fact, in every– situation(s).
The problem of gang violence in under-privileged inner-city communities is my fault. Now, is it really? A middle-class teacher in a rural farming county in the mid-west? Yes, it is my fault.
Because, you see, I haven’t done anything to fix it.
So, before I go blaming the parents of those gang members and the government who doesn’t offer the right hand-outs and the educational system that has failed those gang members, maybe I should just consider the fact that I haven’t done anything to fix things.
Imagine, if no one was able to blame anyone unless they’d demonstrably put their skin in the game. I think that would deal a mortal blow to the blame situation in our society right there.
A favorite quote of mine goes, “If you have no will to change it, you have no right to criticize it.”
It Occurred To Me Today 