Merry and I's wedding has come and gone. And how? In Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, one character asks another, "How did you go bankrupt?" His answer: "Gradually, then suddenly." I would say the wedding weekend arrived the same way, first drifting slowly closer in the fog of the indefinite future, then rushing by in a blur.
At this age, I find myself in agreement with the adage, "anything worth doing is worth doing well." And so, if we were going to have a wedding, my thoughts went, I wanted us to do it on our own terms. But weddings are complicated things, made more so by the pull of tradition, and the expectations of other people. My aim was perfection, and as the date approached, and time grew more scarce, a different reality came into focus. I tried to accept this, with imperfect results, but all I could do is try. It passed, and somewhere along the way, I came into a state of peace.
Again, I might take the time to stress, at this age. Who have I become? Does time make everyone a pragmatist? Perhaps. Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, said, "If you're not making mistakes, you're not moving fast enough." I had always applied that quote to my life on the basis of my daily, even hourly productivity. Now I am starting to see it detached from time, attached instead to my progress as a human being. Inner refinement, that is, rather than outer movement - action for action's sake. Who cares when the lawn waits a couple extra days to get mowed? Nobody should hasten to accomplish busywork faster, but everyone should hasten to become the best, most fully-actualized person they can, while they can.
And so our wedding day has come and gone. Mistakes were made, yet it worked - all of it - and so if the mistakes did not harm it, then are they mistakes? I now don't think so - they were just some things that happened, amongst many things that happened, which added up to our wedding weekend. The biggest "mistake" of all, by the standards I would have judged it even a week before, were our vows. After all, if the ceremony is the core of the weekend, and the vows the core of the ceremony, then what could be more important to get right? We both wrote hasty vows near the last minute. Blasphemy!, I might have responded to the thought, even just a week earlier.
I told Merry a few weeks before the wedding that I suspected she saw the guests as the metaphorical anchor to the event, while I saw the ceremony as the anchor. It took the experience of the thing itself for me to see her viewpoint (though I still hold onto mine, as well). I simply cannot deny that almost all of the most important pieces of the weekend were shared with, and dependent on, friends and family. Those friends and family helped and supported us in dozens of ways, even as we may have failed to write vows until the day we would recite them, and then to a lesser quality than we might have with more time - our faults alone, and yet not something I can view as mistakes. After all, what vows could be more appropriate, given that we both understand that vows, by the nature of a living relationship, are always being written and re-written? Every time I promise myself to make myself better in some way for Merry's sake, I am writing a vow. As we conquer our limitations, and as we encounter new challenges, our sentiments will change, though hopefully our intention to serve each other as friends and partners will not. And so the vows we recited last Saturday are neither the first nor the last vows we will make to each other, but merely one day's snapshot of our intentions for that small, hazy portion of the future that we have tried to discern from here.
Monday, October 6, 2014
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Fear of Airports
I have a strange sort of fear that comes about in airports - a nameless anxiety that is independent of subject or circumstance. It comes, I believe, from a notion that as events occur in my life, and as time passes, I am succeeding or failing by some absolute measure. Whatever that measure might be, it consists of terms that I do not detect or concern myself with in any ordinary day or place. It is difficult but necessary, perhaps, to realize that the discrepancy should not exist - airports may be a reminder for me of the nature of time, but they do not indicate in any sense that some days should be treated differently than others. If I am correct regarding the source and nature of this feeling, then it should be felt always, or never. But which?
Remarkably, I have retained very few memories of airports, and even amongst those, none seem to inform the impression that airports give me today. Aside from some particular travel difficulties (customs in Morocco, an overnight in Detroit), nothing particular of any consequence strikes my memory. And yet I have certainly experienced hundreds of things in airports, and spent an inordinate amount of time drifting in thought through those spare hours, whether daydreaming, or meditating on how I am choosing, at any given moment, to live my life.
Perhaps the closest thing I have to an archetypal memory of airports is my layover after a trans-Atlantic flight to Stockholm, before connecting to Helsinki. I was irreversibly far down the road of quitting work, going not only back to school but going to school a third of the way around the world, preparing to plunge myself into a situation that would force me to meet people, and in doing so, succeed or fail on absolute terms. The terminal was empty and the first light of dawn spilled across the horizon as I sat thinking - mostly about my checking account, which is perhaps weird for me to note after what I’ve said so far. The reason I find it notable, though, is that it represents a more general focus on how circumstance comes to be - how we might decide things for ourselves, or drift through life with an innate sense of trust, or an innate sense of rudderlessness. A checking account is not a profound thing, but I had not worried about my checking account in years. What I was doing was examining the process of change, which is another way of saying meditating on how I am choosing, at any given moment, to live my life.
I can be confident in saying that many similar, though smaller, moments have occurred in airports. I had several of them today alone. But they do not much register - not for too long, anyway - and I do not remember them as individual things.
I have carried a fear of forgetting for as long as I can remember - I was fixated even when I was young on an idea of cataloging the world that I experienced, to keep all my memories as possessions, as if there would be further use for them tomorrow. I was fearful of forgetting and sought all the traditional tools to help me remember. I took photos, and journaled each day. When my family decided to move, I videotaped the layout and composition of the house, as if such information would prove not only useful, but critical for something critical, to be accomplished later.
What I did not understand then is that even when we have forgotten particulars, we retain essences - patterns on top of patterns, becoming ultimately what I abuse the term “archetype” to describe - a sense independent of the thing - its common nature.
Before I knew the experience of air travel, I knew the loneliness of airports through random visits and the music of Brian Eno and Radiohead. There was an alienation and sadness expressed in OK Computer, both literal (the cover art, the song Let Down: “Airports, motorways and tramlines, starting and then stopping, the emptiest of feelings.”) and figurative (placidness covering profound depth of feelings, good and bad, in songs like No Surprises and Lucky). For all the calmness of Discrete Music and Music for Airports, what I heard personally was the terror of man-made empty spaces, where we vacuum away the soul of nature to achieve profound impersonality. Those feelings no doubt color what I feel today, but how much?
I believe that periodic reflections on my life have brought me a great deal of sadness, because life is unavoidably difficult, and complicated, and frustrating, in different degrees and in different ways as we age. There has also been a tremendous amount of joy and satisfaction, but it can be hard to remember, because our nature is to bask in the positives each day, absorbing the satisfaction they give and draining them of any novelty.
The trip I am completing now has been important - I am certain of that. But that is a different proposition from memory. Still, I wonder what my memories of this trip will be, ten years from now. I know from experience that just as the particulars will fade, the essence of what the trip was about will likely grow clearer, and in that process, I will see how it fits into the arc of my life. All of life is like that - perhaps what I described earlier as an archetype may simply be a misdiagnosis of a certain sort of experience, or wisdom.
Remarkably, I have retained very few memories of airports, and even amongst those, none seem to inform the impression that airports give me today. Aside from some particular travel difficulties (customs in Morocco, an overnight in Detroit), nothing particular of any consequence strikes my memory. And yet I have certainly experienced hundreds of things in airports, and spent an inordinate amount of time drifting in thought through those spare hours, whether daydreaming, or meditating on how I am choosing, at any given moment, to live my life.
Perhaps the closest thing I have to an archetypal memory of airports is my layover after a trans-Atlantic flight to Stockholm, before connecting to Helsinki. I was irreversibly far down the road of quitting work, going not only back to school but going to school a third of the way around the world, preparing to plunge myself into a situation that would force me to meet people, and in doing so, succeed or fail on absolute terms. The terminal was empty and the first light of dawn spilled across the horizon as I sat thinking - mostly about my checking account, which is perhaps weird for me to note after what I’ve said so far. The reason I find it notable, though, is that it represents a more general focus on how circumstance comes to be - how we might decide things for ourselves, or drift through life with an innate sense of trust, or an innate sense of rudderlessness. A checking account is not a profound thing, but I had not worried about my checking account in years. What I was doing was examining the process of change, which is another way of saying meditating on how I am choosing, at any given moment, to live my life.
I can be confident in saying that many similar, though smaller, moments have occurred in airports. I had several of them today alone. But they do not much register - not for too long, anyway - and I do not remember them as individual things.
I have carried a fear of forgetting for as long as I can remember - I was fixated even when I was young on an idea of cataloging the world that I experienced, to keep all my memories as possessions, as if there would be further use for them tomorrow. I was fearful of forgetting and sought all the traditional tools to help me remember. I took photos, and journaled each day. When my family decided to move, I videotaped the layout and composition of the house, as if such information would prove not only useful, but critical for something critical, to be accomplished later.
What I did not understand then is that even when we have forgotten particulars, we retain essences - patterns on top of patterns, becoming ultimately what I abuse the term “archetype” to describe - a sense independent of the thing - its common nature.
Before I knew the experience of air travel, I knew the loneliness of airports through random visits and the music of Brian Eno and Radiohead. There was an alienation and sadness expressed in OK Computer, both literal (the cover art, the song Let Down: “Airports, motorways and tramlines, starting and then stopping, the emptiest of feelings.”) and figurative (placidness covering profound depth of feelings, good and bad, in songs like No Surprises and Lucky). For all the calmness of Discrete Music and Music for Airports, what I heard personally was the terror of man-made empty spaces, where we vacuum away the soul of nature to achieve profound impersonality. Those feelings no doubt color what I feel today, but how much?
I believe that periodic reflections on my life have brought me a great deal of sadness, because life is unavoidably difficult, and complicated, and frustrating, in different degrees and in different ways as we age. There has also been a tremendous amount of joy and satisfaction, but it can be hard to remember, because our nature is to bask in the positives each day, absorbing the satisfaction they give and draining them of any novelty.
The trip I am completing now has been important - I am certain of that. But that is a different proposition from memory. Still, I wonder what my memories of this trip will be, ten years from now. I know from experience that just as the particulars will fade, the essence of what the trip was about will likely grow clearer, and in that process, I will see how it fits into the arc of my life. All of life is like that - perhaps what I described earlier as an archetype may simply be a misdiagnosis of a certain sort of experience, or wisdom.
"Through Hollow Lands"
I frequently find myself confounded in trying to put my present - the past few years - into the context of the past.
One practical way might be to view my current condition against my evolving past condition through the lens of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In better regarding my own needs, and meeting someone that I care about and trust, and learning to eat healthy, and hell, getting sleep, I have removed or eased constraints on the lower levels, and sure enough, I find myself only increasing my desire for some sort of self-actualization (which was, admittedly, always there). My writing might even come from a need to express myself, be understood, and most of all, touch something universal.
It is that final point that I often come back to. It may have been different when I was young, when I thought the self was an act of differentiation. When did I get old enough that I started seeing the role of the self opposite - to integrate, elegant and harmonious, into what already exists, what is eternal?
Two years ago, I listened to Brian Eno in the last evening light at Chesler Park in Canyonlands. It was "Through Hollow Lands", what might otherwise be an innocuous track, but one of five songs in a row I consider perfect that end that album, when the elation of the three songs before settled into my soul and I had something like an out-of-body experience (not to put it too dramatically - I think some people would describe what I felt as "light-headedness"). I was out there searching for something in addition to solitude - meaning, connection, trying to link my past to my future. My grandmother loved the southwest, and I loved her. What of her - her values, her spirit, her mistakes - could I honor through my actions?
She died, what, seven years ago? That morning, I woke after a night out like a thousand others, strangely elated. I was lightheaded, hungover, but the morning light was upon me through the window, and I relented to it, rising early. Like some other rare mornings, the air felt full of magic, and I didn't want my walk to the convenience store, or my spell listening to the birds on the porch, to end. I called my dad that morning to ask if they were going to go see my grandma that day in the hospice, because I wanted to as well. I caught him at an awkward time - she had just died, but he hadn't called to tell us yet.
I know, among other things, that I managed to hurt him that day - the guilt of having not informed me, for they had seen it coming for hours. But I would not have wanted to be there. I might have tried to break the air in half, or the sunlight, for the feeling of cosmic frustration that must come with watching someone you love sliding into death. In failing to come to terms, I may have hurt myself (the way I used to dream of doing so).
In retrospect, there was no doubt the luck of time and circumstance on all scales involved, that she had the profound effect on me that she did. Not only that my day went that way, but that I was lost in my own life, and that I happened to reflect on hers amidst the haze of my prolonged adolescence, and understand in some dim way what was to be done. Most broadly of all, that I had the chance to know her - that the universe sat us down in such close proximity of time and space.
In the years since, I have grown into much more than I was then. More than once I have wished she could see me as I am now, for I want her to be proud of me - but what kind of contradiction would that be? And before I skip away down this road, perhaps it is wise to ask - when I say I have grown into more than I was, am I right? What does it mean? Does it matter?
When I look into the mirror today, I finally see some of the man I had been expecting to wake up as tomorrow for every day of the last 20 years - evolving though that image has been. And it is not in the wrinkle lines, or the hurt of my past that I see every time I am brave enough to catch my own gaze - but in the recognition of the collective past that I can see that I am finally there, at least in some way.
One practical way might be to view my current condition against my evolving past condition through the lens of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In better regarding my own needs, and meeting someone that I care about and trust, and learning to eat healthy, and hell, getting sleep, I have removed or eased constraints on the lower levels, and sure enough, I find myself only increasing my desire for some sort of self-actualization (which was, admittedly, always there). My writing might even come from a need to express myself, be understood, and most of all, touch something universal.
It is that final point that I often come back to. It may have been different when I was young, when I thought the self was an act of differentiation. When did I get old enough that I started seeing the role of the self opposite - to integrate, elegant and harmonious, into what already exists, what is eternal?
Two years ago, I listened to Brian Eno in the last evening light at Chesler Park in Canyonlands. It was "Through Hollow Lands", what might otherwise be an innocuous track, but one of five songs in a row I consider perfect that end that album, when the elation of the three songs before settled into my soul and I had something like an out-of-body experience (not to put it too dramatically - I think some people would describe what I felt as "light-headedness"). I was out there searching for something in addition to solitude - meaning, connection, trying to link my past to my future. My grandmother loved the southwest, and I loved her. What of her - her values, her spirit, her mistakes - could I honor through my actions?
She died, what, seven years ago? That morning, I woke after a night out like a thousand others, strangely elated. I was lightheaded, hungover, but the morning light was upon me through the window, and I relented to it, rising early. Like some other rare mornings, the air felt full of magic, and I didn't want my walk to the convenience store, or my spell listening to the birds on the porch, to end. I called my dad that morning to ask if they were going to go see my grandma that day in the hospice, because I wanted to as well. I caught him at an awkward time - she had just died, but he hadn't called to tell us yet.
I know, among other things, that I managed to hurt him that day - the guilt of having not informed me, for they had seen it coming for hours. But I would not have wanted to be there. I might have tried to break the air in half, or the sunlight, for the feeling of cosmic frustration that must come with watching someone you love sliding into death. In failing to come to terms, I may have hurt myself (the way I used to dream of doing so).
In retrospect, there was no doubt the luck of time and circumstance on all scales involved, that she had the profound effect on me that she did. Not only that my day went that way, but that I was lost in my own life, and that I happened to reflect on hers amidst the haze of my prolonged adolescence, and understand in some dim way what was to be done. Most broadly of all, that I had the chance to know her - that the universe sat us down in such close proximity of time and space.
In the years since, I have grown into much more than I was then. More than once I have wished she could see me as I am now, for I want her to be proud of me - but what kind of contradiction would that be? And before I skip away down this road, perhaps it is wise to ask - when I say I have grown into more than I was, am I right? What does it mean? Does it matter?
When I look into the mirror today, I finally see some of the man I had been expecting to wake up as tomorrow for every day of the last 20 years - evolving though that image has been. And it is not in the wrinkle lines, or the hurt of my past that I see every time I am brave enough to catch my own gaze - but in the recognition of the collective past that I can see that I am finally there, at least in some way.
Change
I read a story about New York. Then I thought about the movie Quiet City.
And, I thought that even though these two things describe, and show, the same general condition in the same place - in the same city, that is (wow, the world is changing every day) - the former is so much more recent than the latter, and I can sense that in the differing conditions they express, no matter how secondhand, or distant.
Once upon a time, I had an innate vision of the world that was one of stasis.
As with most life lessons, I was slow to realize that I was wrong. But, even in the span of the many intervening years since, I had not yet done a full 180, I think, until now.
The nature of the world is change; all stasis is an illusion.
Once upon a time, I thought the right delusions could be keys to comfort, happiness, salvation.
Nowadays, that notion itself is dissolving, and I understand that delusions of comfort are really missed opportunities to grow through deeper understanding. And now, I look back at those years and feel a terrible pain for the opportunities I sacrificed, blindly, by default, by my actions. My comfort, my satisfaction in my own bubble, offer little consolation against the loss of decades.
There is that old saying: "God is in charge of the content of life; the devil is in charge of the timing."
I think a heuristic for detecting wisdom might be: lessons we are predisposed, though not condemned, to learn the hard way.
That's life.
And, I thought that even though these two things describe, and show, the same general condition in the same place - in the same city, that is (wow, the world is changing every day) - the former is so much more recent than the latter, and I can sense that in the differing conditions they express, no matter how secondhand, or distant.
Once upon a time, I had an innate vision of the world that was one of stasis.
As with most life lessons, I was slow to realize that I was wrong. But, even in the span of the many intervening years since, I had not yet done a full 180, I think, until now.
The nature of the world is change; all stasis is an illusion.
Once upon a time, I thought the right delusions could be keys to comfort, happiness, salvation.
Nowadays, that notion itself is dissolving, and I understand that delusions of comfort are really missed opportunities to grow through deeper understanding. And now, I look back at those years and feel a terrible pain for the opportunities I sacrificed, blindly, by default, by my actions. My comfort, my satisfaction in my own bubble, offer little consolation against the loss of decades.
There is that old saying: "God is in charge of the content of life; the devil is in charge of the timing."
I think a heuristic for detecting wisdom might be: lessons we are predisposed, though not condemned, to learn the hard way.
That's life.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Fifty Mile Point
I have started a new blog - or created the container for one, perhaps I should say. To state something that seldom needs stated about physical things, but is often forgotten with intangibles, the proper intent for creating something new is to service a different necessity. That is the case here. Anyway, it's not a case of overflow, certainly, given how infrequently I have been posting here.
Rather, I have found my blogging constrained by that most ancient of obligations - to reality - where even my more drifting thoughts anchor to some post set in the real world. What I have discovered is that my desire to write has changed over time, from expressing a clear reality of a circumstance to expressing a clear essence of a circumstance. These are very different things, and whereas I once finished most of the posts I began, nowadays my batting average might be 25%. The most common cause of these failures is an acute frustration, caused by a desire to break free of the bounds of reality within a format where I feel compelled to tell a literal truth. This compulsion extends even into the subjective, and feelings - I could not so much as claim a feeling I do not feel in this format.
Fifty Mile Point will be a place formally detached from this narrow constraint, though I don't believe this means necessarily that the content of the blog will strictly resemble self-contained fiction. Though I often do write fiction, I also find inspiration by starting from some memory and taking creative license with it. This process of exploration is really an artistic endeavor - to uncover some broader truth within it. In theory (and maybe in practice - we shall see), it is just as likely that a post there would resemble one here - if it does, it will be nevertheless detached from literal reality to some degree.
I have moved one prior post from here to there - the single time I posted something here that now belongs there - a creative license that I never repeated. I will provide the warning that I feel no special obligation to finish fiction - not because it is not an important goal, but because I will never get anything released if I hold myself up to that standard (by which I would have a whopping one thing to show for 2+ years of writing). They will be better thought of as sketches, or brushstrokes. Some will be bad. I am certain many of them will resonate only with me. For all the challenges of fiction, the most elusive to me is the means by which something that speaks to me is judged on its appeal to others. I have no such talent.
I hope this doesn't mean this blog is done, although as long as I am using writing to express things that are meaningful to me, I will be satisfied that I have this hobby.
Rather, I have found my blogging constrained by that most ancient of obligations - to reality - where even my more drifting thoughts anchor to some post set in the real world. What I have discovered is that my desire to write has changed over time, from expressing a clear reality of a circumstance to expressing a clear essence of a circumstance. These are very different things, and whereas I once finished most of the posts I began, nowadays my batting average might be 25%. The most common cause of these failures is an acute frustration, caused by a desire to break free of the bounds of reality within a format where I feel compelled to tell a literal truth. This compulsion extends even into the subjective, and feelings - I could not so much as claim a feeling I do not feel in this format.
Fifty Mile Point will be a place formally detached from this narrow constraint, though I don't believe this means necessarily that the content of the blog will strictly resemble self-contained fiction. Though I often do write fiction, I also find inspiration by starting from some memory and taking creative license with it. This process of exploration is really an artistic endeavor - to uncover some broader truth within it. In theory (and maybe in practice - we shall see), it is just as likely that a post there would resemble one here - if it does, it will be nevertheless detached from literal reality to some degree.
I have moved one prior post from here to there - the single time I posted something here that now belongs there - a creative license that I never repeated. I will provide the warning that I feel no special obligation to finish fiction - not because it is not an important goal, but because I will never get anything released if I hold myself up to that standard (by which I would have a whopping one thing to show for 2+ years of writing). They will be better thought of as sketches, or brushstrokes. Some will be bad. I am certain many of them will resonate only with me. For all the challenges of fiction, the most elusive to me is the means by which something that speaks to me is judged on its appeal to others. I have no such talent.
I hope this doesn't mean this blog is done, although as long as I am using writing to express things that are meaningful to me, I will be satisfied that I have this hobby.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
The Richness of Life
As I have slowly become more educated on nutrition, and slowly come to eat healthier (and one and the other again, in a virtuous cycle), I have come across the concept of the Omega 6:3 ratio as a causative factor for predicting general health, and especially brain health. The basic theory is that the ideal ratio (and the one we would have received before modern times) is 3:1. However, due to modern methods of raising livestock, fowl, and fish, combined with the average person's diet (higher in flour, sugar, and processed foods and lower in these natural sources of protein), today the average ratio is 20:1.
When I was chronically depressed, I was prescribed and tried between 10-12 different anti-depressant and AD/HD medications. Usually the medicine had an effect, and in fact, it usually helped, at some point between 48 hours and two weeks after I started taking it. Some of them had side-effects that made me stop taking them, while others were only temporarily effective. I took one thing or another for almost nine years, until I left for Finland (I took a big bottle of Wellbutrin and Strattera with me, but never used any of it). Somewhere early on (year two or three), my dad suggested I try taking Omega 3 supplements, because he had read some research that indicated it could alleviate symptoms of depression. I took a capsule one morning and spent the rest of the day unable to function. It was a stronger and more immediate reaction than I had to any prescription. I think I may have even taken a second one that next morning. I couldn't read, or write, or concentrate. My mind was all over the place, uncontrollably and all at once. This was a bizarre feeling for someone who had been living mostly in a haze the past couple years. It was shocking, and without a sense of nuance to interpret my own reaction, it was merely "bad", and so I never revisited Omega 3 supplements as a treatment for depression.
During my depression, I explored all the common explanations for what I was going through: I was unequipped for life; I had unrealistic expectations for life; life was traumatic by its nature; I wasn't tough enough; I wasn't smart enough; I had treated someone bad and this was karma; I had made a mistake and this was bad luck; I had taken what I had for granted and this result was inevitable; I was out of spiritual balance; I was out of existential balance; I had been a child and now I was an adult and didn't know how to deal with life, and this was only the beginning. I could go on. And on. Nor were these passing thoughts - one or two at a time, they inhabited me for weeks, months. Strangely, if the psychological explanations were far-sighted, then the physiological explanations were unforgivably near-sighted: it was a chemical imbalance, and the cause of that cause need not be identified.
This does, at least, explain the narrow class of solutions that were attempted.
My diet after high school was fast food, bread, candy, soda, alcohol, occasional home-cooked meals. I would guess my Omega 6:3 ratio was at LEAST 20:1, but who knows, and what's in a number, anyway? I didn't eat fish, seldom ate eggs, and seldom ate meat except on fast food.
By the time I went to Finland, I had been going to the gym consistently for a couple years, had started eating more meat, and fruits and vegetables, had stopped drinking soda and eating candy, had mostly stopped eating fast food. I still drank alcohol and certainly didn't always eat good, but I consistently ate far better. And, once I was there, I ate better yet, because the cafeteria at school served meat and vegetables for lunch almost exclusively. I went to the gym because it was across the street and I walked at least an hour a day, to and from school, and the city square, and if I was traveling (which I did often), I would walk far more - two or three or five hours a day.
I recount all of this because only now, years later, has it finally occurred to me that the most likely explanation for my experience of chronic depression - the descent, and persistence, and eventual surfacing - was this simple Omega 6:3 ratio, and the simplest fix was Omega 3, the nearest miss that I did not persist in taking Omega 3 supplements for a few more days until my mind had acclimated itself to them.
Within the world of mistaken explanations and unforeseeable regrets - guesses practical and absurd, the haze of ignorance - exist strange and surprising colors, as real a part of the richness of life as anything else. I existed within that haze for years, weak, lost, but I wouldn't take it back. I am too satisfied with myself for surviving, and learning, and being a person today who continues to learn. Quite frankly, it does not matter to me that such a simple thing took me so long - I could wait a lifetime to learn a lesson, so long as I retained all along the experience of traveling the road of learning. I have never particularly liked the knowing, itself - to know something is for that lasting magic that preceded understanding to be extinguished, but the satisfaction of knowing is too fleeting, and too self-centered to enjoy.
I am too satisfied, too, to find that I am still a person with flaws - large and small - who cannot conquer the world the way I sensed (the way we all sense?) that I would when I was a child. Perhaps I have become incapable of imagining myself living a different life. That's okay. When I ask myself what I would change, my mind goes only to the future. There are so many worse things. Maybe there is nothing better. I have heard of people on their deathbed that feel that way, that deep sense of gratitude. I wish I knew if I will always feel this way. I suspect not, but I am grateful to feel this way here and now.
When I was chronically depressed, I was prescribed and tried between 10-12 different anti-depressant and AD/HD medications. Usually the medicine had an effect, and in fact, it usually helped, at some point between 48 hours and two weeks after I started taking it. Some of them had side-effects that made me stop taking them, while others were only temporarily effective. I took one thing or another for almost nine years, until I left for Finland (I took a big bottle of Wellbutrin and Strattera with me, but never used any of it). Somewhere early on (year two or three), my dad suggested I try taking Omega 3 supplements, because he had read some research that indicated it could alleviate symptoms of depression. I took a capsule one morning and spent the rest of the day unable to function. It was a stronger and more immediate reaction than I had to any prescription. I think I may have even taken a second one that next morning. I couldn't read, or write, or concentrate. My mind was all over the place, uncontrollably and all at once. This was a bizarre feeling for someone who had been living mostly in a haze the past couple years. It was shocking, and without a sense of nuance to interpret my own reaction, it was merely "bad", and so I never revisited Omega 3 supplements as a treatment for depression.
During my depression, I explored all the common explanations for what I was going through: I was unequipped for life; I had unrealistic expectations for life; life was traumatic by its nature; I wasn't tough enough; I wasn't smart enough; I had treated someone bad and this was karma; I had made a mistake and this was bad luck; I had taken what I had for granted and this result was inevitable; I was out of spiritual balance; I was out of existential balance; I had been a child and now I was an adult and didn't know how to deal with life, and this was only the beginning. I could go on. And on. Nor were these passing thoughts - one or two at a time, they inhabited me for weeks, months. Strangely, if the psychological explanations were far-sighted, then the physiological explanations were unforgivably near-sighted: it was a chemical imbalance, and the cause of that cause need not be identified.
This does, at least, explain the narrow class of solutions that were attempted.
My diet after high school was fast food, bread, candy, soda, alcohol, occasional home-cooked meals. I would guess my Omega 6:3 ratio was at LEAST 20:1, but who knows, and what's in a number, anyway? I didn't eat fish, seldom ate eggs, and seldom ate meat except on fast food.
By the time I went to Finland, I had been going to the gym consistently for a couple years, had started eating more meat, and fruits and vegetables, had stopped drinking soda and eating candy, had mostly stopped eating fast food. I still drank alcohol and certainly didn't always eat good, but I consistently ate far better. And, once I was there, I ate better yet, because the cafeteria at school served meat and vegetables for lunch almost exclusively. I went to the gym because it was across the street and I walked at least an hour a day, to and from school, and the city square, and if I was traveling (which I did often), I would walk far more - two or three or five hours a day.
I recount all of this because only now, years later, has it finally occurred to me that the most likely explanation for my experience of chronic depression - the descent, and persistence, and eventual surfacing - was this simple Omega 6:3 ratio, and the simplest fix was Omega 3, the nearest miss that I did not persist in taking Omega 3 supplements for a few more days until my mind had acclimated itself to them.
Within the world of mistaken explanations and unforeseeable regrets - guesses practical and absurd, the haze of ignorance - exist strange and surprising colors, as real a part of the richness of life as anything else. I existed within that haze for years, weak, lost, but I wouldn't take it back. I am too satisfied with myself for surviving, and learning, and being a person today who continues to learn. Quite frankly, it does not matter to me that such a simple thing took me so long - I could wait a lifetime to learn a lesson, so long as I retained all along the experience of traveling the road of learning. I have never particularly liked the knowing, itself - to know something is for that lasting magic that preceded understanding to be extinguished, but the satisfaction of knowing is too fleeting, and too self-centered to enjoy.
I am too satisfied, too, to find that I am still a person with flaws - large and small - who cannot conquer the world the way I sensed (the way we all sense?) that I would when I was a child. Perhaps I have become incapable of imagining myself living a different life. That's okay. When I ask myself what I would change, my mind goes only to the future. There are so many worse things. Maybe there is nothing better. I have heard of people on their deathbed that feel that way, that deep sense of gratitude. I wish I knew if I will always feel this way. I suspect not, but I am grateful to feel this way here and now.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
What is Lost?
My experience of growing older has largely been to gain traction on progress, and learn (terribly slowly) to improve that traction, and identify and minimize whatever lessens or breaks the cycle of learning, and adapt those processes to problems in different domains. This progress (solving problems) not only occurs slowly, and the second-order progress (solving for solving problems) not only occurs slowly, but they both occur selectively, so that we are left with hard problems (first order), and hard types of problems (second order).
I sloppily transition the implied "I" into the explicit "we" so soon in this post because neither order of problem is unique to me, nor is the outcome described above. But even if we accept that we will solve easy problems, and then lose some momentum (though hopefully not altogether) on our way to solving gradually harder problems, then we can resign ourselves to the process, and proceed knowingly towards the task at hand. Maybe we are even lucky enough that such sober resignation will instill in us an appreciation for putting one foot in front of the other (in lieu of the quantum leaps forward we all dream of) - in other words, a work ethic.
Perhaps well and good, but I lament what is lost in this process.
Progress is seldom unequivocal, and many times we gain with one thing at the cost of another. In other words, progress is seldom as great as it seems, though it is hopefully still represents progress on balance. It is fairly uninteresting to make this point about the unseen effect of the aforementioned "first-order" type of process - i.e., we start locking the door to protect against burglars but then one day we lock ourselves out of the house on accident. But there are several other ways we can classify what we lose.
The hidden drawbacks of the "second-order" processes are troubling because their very nature makes they, themselves more likely to be hard problems. If it takes us time to learn to change our environment, then it is more difficult to intentionally and meaningfully change the way we go about changing our environment. If we were rational about this, we would step into the world of "second-order" problems with great reservation and care for this reason alone.
I really have two concerns, then.
The first is that we lose our aesthetic sensibility as we instill rationality onto our own thought processes. But, maybe losing our aesthetic sensibility is just part of growing older, regardless. I punt that one.
The second is the risk we run of ruining what is working in our life as we attempt to fix what is not working. The other, implied risks in that scenario are that it would be so difficult to know, until it is too late, and the possibility that it could not be undone.
Until now, I did not grasp how dispassionate, and distracted, and irritable, and unforgiving I have become, simply by being fixated on solving problems. This is both the unforeseeable and inevitable effect of learning to see problems everywhere, which I alone am responsible for. I learned to see problems everywhere when I discovered that I could fix [certain] problems systematically, but I did not have the foresight to see the dominoes that I was preparing to knock over, nor did I have the wisdom nor the grace to see that using a hammer on something besides a nail invites domain risk that should be considered carefully, and attempted carefully, and with low expectations, lest anomalous positive results be extrapolated with tragic results.
Unfortunately, the idea that fixing (or in this case, undoing) bad behavior requires only self-awareness, and some sort of internal passion is tragically incorrect. Separately, I have spent years, decades, my whole life, with myriad bad behaviors that I despise, that I would scream with rage for the persistence of - if only that same persistence hadn't dulled their company into something quietly tolerable. I have to remind myself that this is the world - that we all grow up with some deeply-ingrained habits that we will likely never shake, and that they will probably be a mixed bag. The rest is just a race of our ego versus our wisdom, though only our wisdom will stop before acting to ask, "What is lost?"
Maybe I can fix up the machine that got me here well enough to fly me home. I suppose that is the real test. Did I learn the right lesson - indeed, any lesson - from this?
I sloppily transition the implied "I" into the explicit "we" so soon in this post because neither order of problem is unique to me, nor is the outcome described above. But even if we accept that we will solve easy problems, and then lose some momentum (though hopefully not altogether) on our way to solving gradually harder problems, then we can resign ourselves to the process, and proceed knowingly towards the task at hand. Maybe we are even lucky enough that such sober resignation will instill in us an appreciation for putting one foot in front of the other (in lieu of the quantum leaps forward we all dream of) - in other words, a work ethic.
Perhaps well and good, but I lament what is lost in this process.
Progress is seldom unequivocal, and many times we gain with one thing at the cost of another. In other words, progress is seldom as great as it seems, though it is hopefully still represents progress on balance. It is fairly uninteresting to make this point about the unseen effect of the aforementioned "first-order" type of process - i.e., we start locking the door to protect against burglars but then one day we lock ourselves out of the house on accident. But there are several other ways we can classify what we lose.
The hidden drawbacks of the "second-order" processes are troubling because their very nature makes they, themselves more likely to be hard problems. If it takes us time to learn to change our environment, then it is more difficult to intentionally and meaningfully change the way we go about changing our environment. If we were rational about this, we would step into the world of "second-order" problems with great reservation and care for this reason alone.
I really have two concerns, then.
The first is that we lose our aesthetic sensibility as we instill rationality onto our own thought processes. But, maybe losing our aesthetic sensibility is just part of growing older, regardless. I punt that one.
The second is the risk we run of ruining what is working in our life as we attempt to fix what is not working. The other, implied risks in that scenario are that it would be so difficult to know, until it is too late, and the possibility that it could not be undone.
Until now, I did not grasp how dispassionate, and distracted, and irritable, and unforgiving I have become, simply by being fixated on solving problems. This is both the unforeseeable and inevitable effect of learning to see problems everywhere, which I alone am responsible for. I learned to see problems everywhere when I discovered that I could fix [certain] problems systematically, but I did not have the foresight to see the dominoes that I was preparing to knock over, nor did I have the wisdom nor the grace to see that using a hammer on something besides a nail invites domain risk that should be considered carefully, and attempted carefully, and with low expectations, lest anomalous positive results be extrapolated with tragic results.
Unfortunately, the idea that fixing (or in this case, undoing) bad behavior requires only self-awareness, and some sort of internal passion is tragically incorrect. Separately, I have spent years, decades, my whole life, with myriad bad behaviors that I despise, that I would scream with rage for the persistence of - if only that same persistence hadn't dulled their company into something quietly tolerable. I have to remind myself that this is the world - that we all grow up with some deeply-ingrained habits that we will likely never shake, and that they will probably be a mixed bag. The rest is just a race of our ego versus our wisdom, though only our wisdom will stop before acting to ask, "What is lost?"
Maybe I can fix up the machine that got me here well enough to fly me home. I suppose that is the real test. Did I learn the right lesson - indeed, any lesson - from this?
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