Possessions

A couple weeks ago I attended a speaking tour by Rob Bell, the pastor of the church that my fellow blogger Alex and his fiancee attend. The subject discussed was the link between suffering and creativity. In the discussion Mr. Bell said something that struck me, and relates to something that has consumed much of my thoughts recently. He said "you can own something, but not possess it, and you can possess something, but not own it." We own things we don't necessarily use as we should. Either we don't respect the function they provide (like admitting technology is incredible but we are not entitled - see last posting), or we simply don't need them. Basically, we misuse many of the things we own, and should reevaluate our possessions.

Moving across the country a few weeks ago put the subject of "stuff" square on my mind, and it has persisted. Packing everything up in Boston forced me to confront the physical items I call my own in the harshest way - as basically a chore. And while standing in my room before I started packing I could have told you with confidence that I didn't really have much stuff, when it came time to pack it all up I swear items were being materialized every minute. Stuff just came out of the woodwork, and I really had to evaluate why I own the things I do and if I really need them.

Clothes are a good example. There are so many shirts that I have that I like owning. But I never wear most of them. I pulled some of them aside into a bag I would potentially donate, including some shirts that I was really on the fence about. And after weeks I didn't notice their absence one bit, and I don't imagine I will. We have these attachments to things that cause us to hold on to them much after they have expended their utility. Another example is my former mp3 player. I loved that thing. I bought it together with my brother, it came with me to Ecuador and had photos on it to prove it, and it picked me up when feeling down. And I sold it on eBay a month or so ago. I never used it. It was bulky, and I have an ipod shuffle I use now because I like the simplicity of not really having to spend time choosing exactly what to listen to. But when I packed up that player and had to erase all the data, it was hard. I second guessed my decision big time. I felt like I was losing a part of me, like I was giving up my past. Now, months later, I don't miss it one bit.

I think we put parts of our selves in the items we call our own. And sentimentality isn't necessarily a bad thing, don't get me wrong. But when we hang on to things long after we stop using them, all of a sudden our stuff becomes a burden. One more thing to carry, to worry about, to protect, to defend.

There is something simple and serene about having few material possessions. Thoreau said it best; "Simplify, simplify, simplify!" I am not advocating swearing off all material possessions. Quite the contrary, I am advocating being conscious of everything you own. Make the distinction between things you simply own and things you possess. The story Rob Bell told to illustrate this point came from a poverty stricken village he visited in Rwanda. He had just finished talking with a family devastated by AIDS, in a community ravaged by the disease, as well as war, when he walked out of a hut to the sound of a loud ruckus nearby. He followed the sound to an old, run down building. Inside, members of the community were dancing like it was their last moment on Earth, hands and faces to the sky, singing, pouring their hearts out. Rob turned to a man nearby and asked "what are they doing? Why are they doing this today?" And the man responded, "oh, they do this everyday at lunchtime." Perfect. As Rob said, they had been given this moment, why wouldn't they dance. Ravaged by unimaginable suffering, they created something beautiful, everyday. As he said, none of them owned the building, but they all possessed it. They gave it life.

What do you own but you don't possess. What do you hold on to long after it has lost its utility. And what do you possess? What do you give life to.

Technology

We are very reliant on our technology. Not only that, we feel entitled to it, without stopping to realize how amazing it is today. Sure it's great to hear about the newest technology or think of ways it can make our lives easier in the future, but if we don't also appreciate how amazing it is today, what's the point? With that attitude, we will never be satisfied with what we already have. Watch this youtube clip of Louis CK explain this concept in a much funnier way than I just did. He makes some good points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGYx35ypus

Energy Crisis

Before I get into the bulk of my post, there are a few items of business to attend to. First, sincere apologies for the long breaks between posts. For 10 of the 20-some days between posts I was on a road trip and was unable to post. However, it is our intention to post closer to once a week as opposed to once every three weeks, so an apology is in order. The second item of business is the issue of reformatting. At the onset of this blog, Alex and I discussed a desire to have it be less a one way conversation and more an open dialogue, with our readers responding to our posts, challenging our assumptions and offering counterpoints. Thank you for all the comments we have received so far. However, there is some concern that we are still approaching each new subject as a diagnosis and prescription for problems we perceive to be important. We'd like to shy away from that, promoting more of a question and answer format. We hope that all our readers will offer their own answers and critique the answers we offer in our posts. An exchange of ideas and opinions will help us come to better solutions, as opposed to Alex or me decreeing them from our couches and keyboards. So, here it goes.

The question for this post was inspired by my aforementioned road trip, where we woke up most mornings at 5:30am for the days drive, and ran on drinks and foods we perceived would deliver quick cheap energy. So my question has to do with our expectations of our diet, and the energy it provides us with, as well as the marketing that surrounds the food we buy. The question is as follows; are we all more tired than we should be, and is it because of our diet or something else?

If you look at food marketing these days it seems to all be focused on energy. At least food marketing on the road. Energy drinks seem to be ubiquitous at this point, and if you haven't had one today you've probably had one at some point. I don't even need to mention how popular coffee is these days. And beyond that, you have foods from Quaker Oats to candy bars such as Snickers to vitamin waters to water itself claiming that each product will give you "more energy." Where did this concept of "more energy" come from and why do we feel we have such a deficit? When talking to someone a couple of months ago about the fact that I was a vegetarian his immediate reaction was "oh so you must have loads of energy, eating all those veggies." Do I have more energy? What is this baseline that everyone seems to be comparing their current lack of energy to.

I think one obvious answer for whatever lack of energy one may perceive would be lack of sleep. But of course that's not marketable. If pillows were disposable and you needed a new one every night then maybe marketers in gas stations and supermarkets would be targeting sleep as a factor for energy. But then again, with our culture of overworking and overscheduling, it isn't popular for any of us in our own calculations to look at the time spent horizontal last night as a reason why we are fighting sleep today, because hey, I'm busy, I can't sleep 8 hours every night. However, if we are being honest with ourselves and really don't have as much energy as we should, I would put a lot of weight on sleep.

If diet does play a factor, which I think it certainly does, then the products marketed to give you energy are probably not ultimately the key. At least that's how it felt on the road trip. If you've ever been on a road trip you know how easy it is to eat horrendous food. When the majority of your contact with food becomes rest stops, with a plethora of gas stations and fast food chains, then you are bound to make some questionable choices about food. But the worst part is that you actually start to believe the marketers, buying drinks and candy bars "designed" to give you more energy and keep you up when driving. Yeah I felt more comfortable sipping a green tea drink while driving, putting my faith in the caffeine to keep me alert, when really I was plenty alert before my shift, I just wanted the drink as an insurance policy, a "just in case." I think all of this energy marketing, including moderate amounts of caffeine, become placebo. I think we trick ourselves into thinking we could have even more energy, and if we could have more energy, it must mean we currently don't have enough. And if we don't have enough, we simply need these products to keep us alert and give us elevated energy levels, when really the whole time we have stayed at an even level, with our perceptions of our energy level fluctuating below and above the line based on our consumption of whatever foods we convince ourselves will affect this level.

It seems like such a recent trend to re-frame our food in terms of energy. Don't we get energy from anything we eat? That's the nature of calories - ultimately a unit of energy content of food. So couldn't we say that a twinkie is an energy bar, because it has a lot of calories in it? No one would buy that, of course, because it is refined sugar and carbohydrates that provides quick energy but offers a crash just as sure. But Quaker Oats, whole grains, offer longer lasting energy, and also nutritional benefits beyond simple energy. Yet a new ad campaign, at least in NYC, frames these oats as units for delivering energy to propel humans through life. I think we miss something by looking for food solely for energy. We are not cars and food is not gasoline. We get more from food than just its caloric content. Otherwise the "ice cream diet" would be perfectly acceptable.

Next time you are in a supermarket, pay attention to food marketing. The next time you stop for coffee, consider if you are actually getting more energy than you would have had if you hadn't relied on coffee for energy for so long. I don't drink coffee so I can't answer that question. If you do really get more energy, maybe I will have to get to know my local barista. But ultimately I would like to know what you all think. Do we have a personal energy crisis? Do foods and drinks help us acheive a level of energy we wouldn't already be at if we didn't choose foods based on energy claims? Are there other factors to our energy level (like maybe drinking high fructose corn syrup and consuming nutritionally deficient foods actually lower our energy level, and fresh produce instead will deliver more energy)? You know what I think, but I want to know what you think. After all, this is just my opinion, hashed out during a Celtics game, as tenuous and as open to revision as any other argument I could make.

Touch

Now, even though it has been over three weeks since my last entry, some of you might remember that I was talking about media and communication. Throughout that entry I was holding to the ideal that there is no substitute for direct, physical human interaction. In this age of widespread 'enlightenment', we pride ourselves on knowing better than to consider ourselves purely physical beings. We have learned to pay lots of attention to our thoughts and emotions because we have discovered the important roles they play in life. I don't know if this is really a new thing, I have only been around for about 23 years myself, but I am noticing a tendency to overlook the importance of our physicality whether it be in communication, relationships, religion etc. Health issues aside (but certainly to be addressed in a later entry), we need to start giving our physical nature more credit. To that end, I will share a little thought I had this week.

I was listening to public radio and an astrophysicist from the University of Chicago was talking about her book Einstein's Telescope, about how the gravitational pull of dark matter creates curves in space-time that act as lenses to magnify objects much further away than we used to be able to look. Interesting stuff, but to jump to the relevant portion, she mentioned how we can see stars that are 14 billion lightyears away from earth. That means when we look at these stars, we are seeing them as they were 14 billion years ago. That is very interesting to scientists because that is around the time the universe seems to have started expanding, give or take a billion years maybe. As much as there is to be learned from such sights, and as cool as it is to look back in time, they are so old I can't help but feel like they are a little irrelevant. If we want to know anything about what those stars are doing right now, we will have to wait a long time. But by then, it will have become very old news once again.

This sense of disappointment, like we can't see the real star as it actually is right now, applies to other things as well. Our own sun for example. We always see it as it was about 8 minutes ago, never how it actually is right now. And when light is used to transmit data through fiberoptic cables or between satellites, well, we all know how awkward it is when someone being interviewed in Iraq pauses for 5 seconds before answering Matt Lauer's questions. Even over much shorter distances, like when you see your own little image in the corner of a videochat screen, there is very visible delay. And if you haven't ever thought of this before, the images you see of yourself in real mirrors even have a delay so slight you could never perceive it. Not only mirrors, but light and sound from the person across the table from you. We may be three feet from each other, but I am still interacting with a person who existed some fraction of a nanosecond ago. All this made me think that the closest I will ever come to interacting with someone completely in the present is to be physically touching them. Nerve signaling and brain function speeds may be circumvented someday, but until then physical contact is the most effective way to engage with someone in the present moment.

Physical contact is relatively rare in daily life and has a lot of mystique about it. What is more personal and private than touch? What is more comforting in the right context? Few things can send a louder message than how you touch someone. Or how you don't touch them.

So hug someone you care about today. And maybe kiss them too.

Combined Action

So for no apparent reason, at the beginning of last year I decided that I would do something almost no one does - stick to a New Year's resolution. It's always such a funny thing. People are so hopeful, so eager to identify the areas of their lives that need improving. Maybe its the euphoria of the holiday season still wearing off, but everyone believes that this year will be the year they do it. Then winter drags on too long and they forget about it as easily as the idea came. I am not claiming to be better than these people because I stuck with mine. It was actually sort of a fluke. I somehow picked something I ended up finding an incredible passion for. My resolution was to learn how to cook, and a year later I think I have succeeded, at least to the extent I had hoped (at the very least I've moved beyond mac and cheese and chicken nuggets).

With my recent success I was a bit more ambitious this year with three resolutions. I have dropped one, I hate to say, but I am chugging along with the other two. They take on the form of a strategy that is the subject for this post - combined, sustained action. But let me first tell you why I think many resolutions fail so quickly. Let's take one goal people strive for all the time (especially come resolution time); to exercise more. But what does that really mean? I think many people fail because "more" just simply isn't an easy concept to manifest. For example, if you go from never exercising to doing it once a month, technically you are exercising more, but I'd wager your goal was a bit loftier than that. Likewise, exercising 6 hours a day is more than anyone currently exercises (I hope), but that's because it isn't feasible, and also not what you were going for. Thus, setting an easily divisible, daily goal creates a digestible target focus on.

In light of this approach, the two resolutions I have stuck with have come in this form. They are as follows; 1. to exercise daily, and 2. to read 10 pages daily. This has given me very attainable and easily targeted goals. For example, when I go to bed at night an ambiguous answer is not possible to the question of whether or not I exercised or read 10 pages. I can't argue with myself about whether or not I did it, I simply know, throwing vague concepts of "more" or "less" out the window. I have to make a concerted effort to accomplish each task. Because of this daily sense of accomplishment, I also get daily reinforcement, and have ultimately looked forward to both activities.

Now, I think the ultimate concern when identifying a useful New Year's resolution is its effectiveness. And with my resolutions, effectiveness ultimately comes from scope. If you look at my day's activities, reading 10 pages takes me maybe 20-30 minutes, and exercising takes me less than that (so far it has been sit-ups and push-ups before bed). What is the impact of these actions? Not much. "Oooh, big deal, 10 whopping pages," right? Well, that depends on your scope, and is ultimately what makes each goal so attainable. In the course of a day, each activity doesn't take much extra effort and ultimately doesn't accomplish all that much on its own. But combined, well, there is your proper scope, for over the course of the month I will have read an average length book and done somewhere around 2000 sit-ups and 500 push-ups. Over a year that's at least 12 books and a meaningless number of sit-ups and push-ups. Now there's your impact. And I actually stick with it because again, on their own, each activity is not particularly challenging. But they are all part of a larger strategy. Combining small, repetitive actions to reach a larger goal.

I think this concept of combined action applies to many other aspects of life. For an individual, combined action involves the aggregation of these daily choices that add up to something meaningful (eating one extra serving of fruit on any given day is a good choice, but ultimately wont cure cancer. But, done every day for the rest of your life, well, now we're talking. Small, simple, positive choices - added). Likewise, for a society, the combined actions of its citizens add up to something impactful. For example, when faced with an opportunity to help, maybe volunteer, you may find yourself asking "what difference can I really make, I am only one person." Or you've heard the argument against voting; "what's my one vote really gonna matter?" Baad attitudes, right? (though I cannot exempt myself from thinking along these lines from time to time) Because we all know that the combined effect of voting is an election, with winners and losers, and progress. But the combined effects of lending a helping hand, in any way you can, are no less obvious, no less important. If all of us chip in more, we all start to make a difference, with our combined action. It's like those refer-a-friend programs. Bring someone along and you've doubled your impact. So, just like reading 10 pages or doing a few sit-ups, the task itself is relatively easy on its own, the result relatively limited in its impact. But over time, my abs get rock hard, and more people get a warm meal, clothes for their back, or maybe the neighborhood gets a little cleaner, or you take a car off of the road for a day when you bike to work, or more waste gets recycled, or simply more smiles and genuine connections are spread throughout the world. It ALL adds up.

So maybe Gandhi was right after all, with his seemingly oversimplified answer to how to make a difference. In the end, we all simply must "be the change we wish to see in the world."

Waking the Watch Dog

One of my favorite parts of managing my Facebook profile is the section where I can list my favorite quotations. Some of them are funny, others rather serious, and some you wouldn't understand unless you were there. There is one quotation that I think has a lot to of depth to it, worth unpacking for you here.

I first heard this quote in a sermon about a year ago, and it is from the man who brought us the familiar phrase "The Medium is the Message", Marshall Mcclune. The quote of his that I have on my profile is basically a more interesting way of saying that:

"The content of all media is merely the juicy piece of meat held by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind"

It is quite the claim. There is so much fun, educational and useful content conveyed through media, how could it all just be a distraction? And what is it a distraction from? How is media like a burglar? What a negative metaphor for him to choose. What I usually think about media is something more along the lines of "There is nothing inherently wrong with [insert media], its just how you use it that can be good or bad." Marshall Mcclune heard people saying this and he thought that sort of thinking was "the numb stance of the technological idiot." Harsh.

So what's his deal?

One answer to this question is found way back in human history. All the way back when we had languages, but no formal writing system had been developed yet. Human relationships and the preservation of societal knowledge could only take place when people were physically in the same place. Then the medium of writing was introduced. It was no longer necessary to interact with another person to exchange information with them. Communication could take place over much greater distances in time and space. When telephones, radio and television each arrived, they brought with them the ability to exchange more and more information while allowing each individual communicator to stay closer and closer to their own living room. Now the internet, combined with cell phones and the 3G network, has time, space, and our own bodies playing less of a role in communication than ever.

Comparing the early state of human communication to its present state reveals a paradox. Long ago, human communication required physical presence, and so demanded full attention and a considerable amount of time to carry out, thereby limiting the number of events one could participate in during a given day. Today we have an abundance of communication events in our lives every day, each requiring very little time, and therefore less of our attention, and usually no physical presence at all. The paradox here is that as human communication grew, human interactions shrank.

I don't personally find this paradoxical trend to be appealing, but I have a hard time denying it is there. So how did it develop? Mcclune would say that while news stories, phone conversations, TV programs and wikipedia articles captivated us, the media that conveyed them went about the business of changing the way we live. The content of our media distracted our minds while part of our humanity was burgled away.

Now, Mcclune didn't mean to say that media are purely a negative force in society. There is no denying the incredible benefits of our communication technology. There are probably even many human relationships that are stronger today only because modern technology exists. The convenience of typing a short message to someone lengthens the list of people I am keeping up with, but every time I post on someone's Facebook wall, it also comes with the message "this is the way I relate to you." I have to admit that in my life I let these hidden messages be sent far too often. A may not see a friend who lives 20 minutes away from me for months at a time, even though I send them regular messages online, usually about how we should 'totally hang out soon'. The pressure to actually show up at their door and spend some of my time and energy enjoying our relationship is diminished by the soft, perpetual message from Facebook telling me "you are already staying close to them, thanks to me." I disappoint myself, but even worse, I have alreadt passed up several opportunities to make my life richer.

You can probably imagine other messages various forms of media are sending beneath the surface of their content. Most of them encouraging us to do more things, and to do them alone. And media are not only the obvious forms of communication that I have been discussing so far.
Clothing, furniture, buildings, food...they are all media, and they are all messages. What does a frozen dinner say? A glass skyscraper? A compact fluorescent light bulb? We do not acknowledge these messages very often, but it doesn't mean we aren't responding to them.

I think all we can hope to about this is be more aware of what we may unintentionally hear or say with media. We can keep the benefits without letting ourselves wander into the pitfalls. And this awareness can even be expanded into all areas of life, because after all, it is impossible to ever be doing just one thing. Which is actually another one of my favorite Facebook quotes...



P.S. I borrowed heavily from the sermon I mentioned earlier. Its awesome, so if you want it, let me know and I will send it to you.

Uncertainty

I think I know what we're after. And I think we are misguided. After reading and rereading some of our posts, and more importantly the comments left (thank you all!), I think Alex and I are after something specific, something that needs reconsideration. I shouldn't speak for Alex. But based on conversations with him and with many of my other friends, all in the same position as I find myself (with that daunting question of "what do you want to do with your life" hanging over our heads), I think we are all desperately seeking an answer to that question. I mean, how great would it be, if someone asked you, a relative, a coworker, a classmate or friend, what you wanted to do with your life, and you actually had an answer! How incredible! And what if you not only had an answer, but you had a plan. Well then you are going places in life. Right?

Wrong. I am generally in favor of listening to our elders, and usually do it with great respect. After all, they've been through some things, and have a better grasp on how life works than I do (even if I build myself up from time to time thinking otherwise). On top of that, they have no reason to mislead me, and instead have a strong desire to advise me. I know I enjoy advising my younger brother on college and how it all works. We all want to help. However, there is a huge piece of advice that I have neglected. It came in many forms over the past couple of months, from many sources. From my commencement speaker, from my parents, from books I've read and stories I've heard. The nugget I've avoided, with faulty reasoning, is the virtue of going with the flow of life, that you never know where it will take you and no matter how much you plan, life will carry you where you never expected it would. As my Dad said in a comment, and Alex alluded to in his post on our generation, the decisions we make today will not affect our lives as profoundly as we think. To put it another way, if we can't answer that question tomorrow or even in a year, we are not destined for unhappiness.

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves, to choose correctly, and more importantly to have it all figured out. I have this misconception about careers that once you choose one you are stuck with it. That if I want to work in environmental policy then I am stuck on that track for the rest of my life and I can never deviate, that I have to pick an organization and work my way up. That if I want to be successful, I have to lay out my goals for my career now. I think its easy for us to look at someone who is very successful and think, "Oh, that must have been their goal. They must have planned on writing that book at this point in their career, and they must have planned on that speech at that point." We think this because it is very easy to look at the past events of their career and see how it lead them to where they are today (success, prestige, influence). But how hard would it have been for them, 20 years ago, to pinpoint where they'd be today, and more importantly how they'd get there? Impossible, for most. There are the exceptions, long-term careers that people can be quite content with; doctors, teachers, etc, where they may very well be in one hospital or school the rest of their lives. But for the rest of us, we will move, change companies or even fields. How boring would it be if we didn't? I think it's questions like "what do you want to do with your life" or "where do you see yourself in 10 years" that imply an answer is necessary. What is wrong with a simple "I don't know?"

I am reading "Dreams From My Father," by Barack Obama right now. This book has really been the final kick to get me to come to the other side, to jump in the river, or at least not view the river with such disdain. In the introduction to his book, Obama speaks about how it was some friends in Chicago who convinced him to run for State Senator. About a hundred pages in, he talks about how he slacked off his last few years in high school and even experimented with drugs. To hear his voice as a young man (written when he was 33) talking about himself as an even younger man, it sounds like a very different person. I think the ultimate delusion that is so easy to fall into, at least for me, is the notion that if nothing else, the Presidents of the United States simply must have had that as their goal. They must have been working their whole careers toward that. And even if not all of them did, Barack Obama, possibly the most driven and hard working person on the face of the earth (sorry for the hyperbole) simply must have been working hard since he was born to get to this point in his life, right? Wrong! A friend convinced him to get into politics. And look where he is now! When he was 22, do you think he knew where he'd be at age 48? No. Life took him to where he is. Instead of working toward the presidency as a goal, he did something better. He prepared himself for opportunity. When his friend urged him to run for State Senate, he was prepared, through his education and past experience, to seize that opportunity. Same for his US Senate run, and finally his latest achievement. And he said "yes" when presented with that opportunity.

So instead of grasping for something we can't have, something we ultimately don't want, let us prepare ourselves for opportunity, and be ready to say "yes!" when it comes. Let us embrace the uncertainty of life, and honor it for the joy that it brings. How boring would life be, if we knew where we were going to be when we were 40, or even in 10 years! Would it really be worth living, if we saw it coming so clearly? I'd rather not know. Instead, I'd rather be prepared for the next stage of my life and take opportunity when I see it. I can't answer what I want to do with my life, but I can answer what I want to do in the next year. Let's start there. The fear is that it will lead to unhappiness, to go with the flow without control. But happiness is ultimately much more about your perspective on life and much less about the things you actually do. And the most beautiful thing of all is the ability to change your circumstances. If the flow of life leaves you unsatisfied, you can change it! So maybe, insead of attempting to re-route the course of the river by diverting its flow to fit your plan (nature always wins, anyway), AND, instead of jumping in with nothing, lets bring a paddle, just in case. But in the meantime, enjoy the ride.

The next time someone asks me "what do you want to do with your life?" or any variation on that question, I think I will smile, and say "I don't know; and isn't that great?!"