The Great Birth Lottery

I've been home for the last week visiting my family in celebration of my thirty-first birthday. It's always a a joy come to home and see my family and friends and to be reminded of what's important to me. The contrast in my own behavior (namely my sense of urgency and desire to crank through chores) is astounding, but that's a topic for another post. 

What's giving me reason to pause today seems especially appropriate given the current flare up in The West Bank - the great birth lottery. The notion that the tribe you're born into and the parents who birth you are  completely out of your control but often the most defining facts about your life. I don't have the perspective to make this argument as well as the great Rawls (nor am I really thinking about how we ensure equal opportunity), but I like to think he and I share heavy hearts over how the great birth lottery brands one with an identity and, at that level, undermines the notion of individual agency.

Ali Rizvi of Huffpo writes, "There are now at least two or three generations of Israelis [And Palestinians] who were born and raised in this land, to whom it really is a home, and who are often held accountable and made to pay for for historical atrocities that are no fault of their own."

I couldn't have said it any better myself. The same sentiment holds true for race relations in the US, the India/Pakistan boondoggle, and every family descended from crotchety, old world thinkers (so basically every family). Tribal loyalty and the walls (both literal and emotional) we erect to maintain a distinct (often superior) sense of identity have never seemed so misdirected to me as they do now.

In the context of my own life, I look at how birth parents and generations old arguments play such a large role in family relations. And bums me out like Israel/Palestine bums me out.

Sea Change

I remember spending the better part of 2007 listening to Sea Change. Begrudgingly, at first.

The Requisite Audacity

Maintaining the shell of the inner self is a necessary component of a healthy state of mind.

Trying things is a necessary part of feeling like you're taking advantage of being alive.

Not doing things you disagree with is a prerequisite to self respect.

When you take a step back and stop trying to actively manage all of these things and just play your role, you realize that most people around you are just playing the roles they've selected for themselves.

I sometimes wonder how others justify their double standards.

Then I think, I wonder how many and what specific double standards I ignore.

I used to then say, "Let's sit down and discuss." The correct course of action is not paying it much mind.

A Million Lives to Live

Only one worth living.

The Viscera Don't Lie: Everything But "It"

I am, from time to time, plagued by the thought that I might trapped by my experiences. Despite my knowledge, though mostly secondary, of what many things are like, I cannot say that I have any sensory data on them. I know that sounds very clinical, and that my intuition and sensory memory of what many other things are like provides baseline or comparative information, but it is absolutely true for all the reasons that support the general argument that there is no substitute for experience.

I have had much, perhaps too much, experience, or perhaps time, in the last week that leads me to believe that familiarity, meaning experience with, is a prerequisite for comparison. I know this runs contrary to the very real growth of experience. People do new things all the time. I myself guess and/or stumble into new experiences everyday. On the contrary, I rely on my sense for "what it has been and therefore must be like" to answer questions related to:

-Problem Solving
-All Forms of Measurement
-Romance
-The Psychedelic
-Respect
-Religion

I think there is a very distinct etching upon your neural pathways, an imprinting, as it were, that guides your ability to manage things on an ongoing basis. The compounding computation and live management of many things requires the transcendence of certain things from an active "doing" to a passive "being". This may appear over-analyzed. I would think that you could relate. I could be wrong.

The notion that they might not be universal lessens my respect for others' experiences and forces me to take an offensive, as opposed to defensive, by which I mean conforming and adapting, mindset. I find this both saddening, as it decreases the ways in which I can relate to my fellow (wo)man, and gladdening, as it justifies my desire to do as I please and impose, both subtly and explicitly.

Yes and No

"I've been single for seven years and as I get older, I think all I want is to be loved. The world becomes a place where you think, let everyone else have it. Let them all fight over jobs and money... You want things in life that are lovely."
-Alec Baldwin

Yeah man. Forrealz.

I have neither put in the hard work nor achieved nearly the same things as Mr. Baldwin, but I can certainly sympathize. On one hand, maybe I'm just lazy and weak. I am relatively young after all and have not passed on (or been offered) many promises of happiness and adoration. And when I have passed, it has certainly not been for promises of wealth or status. It has been the result of fear and uncertainty, which are more common and less despicable in my eyes. Shit, at five years, my bacheloredom does not even come close to Baldwin's seven.

All that said, I've been bleeding affection for months now and can't help but feel a little embarrassed. I'm not running around with random peeps or anything, but I have a hard time managing the other 95% of life that grinds to a halt every time my mind wanders off to play in fantastical and semi-fictional worlds for a few hours.

I know the only solution I'll be able to look back at and be happy with is staying focused on performing my duties in life, staying hungry in my work, and letting things unfold naturally.

That said, I can't help but want to disappear every time I see a couple holding hands. What can I say? I love handholding.

Be Like This One. Be Like This Way.

So I had a Comp Sci teacher in high school who was very well educated, having had a graduate degree in the field, but spoke broken English. It was a pretty disastrous class. The students were disrespectful. He was constantly frustrated and harped on seemingly irrelevant details and examples. He even called me by someone else's last name until the very end of the year.

I arrived at his memory this morning in the indirect way that has become typical of me. This past week has been momentous. Not many things actually took place, but I spent a lot of time in my head and I went to bed last night with this feeling of enlightenment. You see, romance has become a black hole in my life in the past year. No amount of thinking or action has been enough to satisfy a lingering and (somehow) impending sense of failure. In reality, I haven't really met anyone or spent enough time around anyone or been interested enough in spending all my time with a particular person. Those seem like harsh things to say, but they're mostly the result of needing time to find satisfaction in my work and my own life... and are also the result of the luck/chance that shade all things, of course. Over the past few years (I jokingly refer to it as 'the better part of a decade' at pity parties), I have shied from inquiries (of varying degrees) and have stayed "out of the game." I have spent (I'll call it an investment when I come to believe that I did anything more than spin my wheels) countless hours worrying about qualification and proper perspective. I have wasted many hours trying to understand and measure the ever-widening gap between expectations (theirs' and mine). I have spent a lot of time investigating and analyzing the circumstances under which others have found their mates and thinking about my own experiences. And while none of these things have been enough to scratch the itch, I believe they have been instrumental in my own maturation and my own acceptance (a - I could just as eagerly call acceptance resignation here; b - maturation and acceptance are the same thing here) of how romance works.

Romance works like everything else in life works. You approach it with great excitement and proper respect and you're 90% of the way to success. The other 10% comes from the sense of astonishment and adventure that accompany a two-person endeavor into uncharted territory. Sure, you're not necessarily making history for the world, but it still feels historic.

I remember now, quite vividly, talking to a friend late in high school about what amazing an experience it is to look across a room and to know you share this private, effectively secret world with someone else. I also remember, in as incidental, impersonal a way as possible, that this observation holds true. I know what a stretch it might be to believe that this single thought and its associated visceral activities were enough to inspire me, but they were. It's the fine details that distinguish and define things after all. Knowing that I am capable of finding pure excitement and happiness in a common experience that is universally enjoyed regardless of variations in physical, spiritual, or material qualities means that I, in my own eyes, am ready. To paraphrase my old teacher, if I can "be like that one" or "be like that way", then I have nothing to worry to about. I can trust my intentions because I know where I want to go and I know why I want to go there.

So that's my story. Now that I've prattled on for bit and said all the things I wanted to say in the way I wanted to say them, let me get to the bullet points.

1) There are two sides to every coin. Every lens is built in such a way that it simultaneously focuses and scatters. Be happy.
2) One's story lives almost entirely in other people. There's something incredibly heavy and worthy of appreciation in this fact. Be kind.
3) You can respect someone while making fun of them so long as you've made it clear to them that your mockery is an integral part of demonstrating impact.