Tag: self-reflection

Decide Who You Want to Be and How You Want to Live

Who do you want to be

I’m incredibly busy right now.  (That’s one of the reasons I sometimes don’t publish here as often as I’d like.)  I work full-time as the director of a writing center and I help my wife run her small business.  On top of all that, I’m a writer and an artist—one who is in the process of restarting his art career after recently selling, almost without even trying, several Prismacolor pencil on paper drawings.  As you might guess after reading all this, my biggest challenge is finding a way to do all these things and still eat and sleep.

As luck would have it, I had an important conversation with a very interesting woman—I’ll call her Mathilda—this past weekend.  Our conversation began with her telling me about how she’d immigrated from Germany to American several decades ago and about her unconventional views on just about every subject one might think of.  It then very quickly morphed into her sharing her thoughts about where so many people go wrong in how they live their lives.

She told me that people can learn a lot by observing animals.  Animals, it seems, live very simply and thus intelligently.  They prize shelter, sufficient food, and being part of a herd or swarm or gaggle or whatnot.  Because they have no concept of what it means to engage in conspicuous consumption, they do not waste or behave frivolously.  There was a time when humans were a lot wiser than they are now, a lot more “animal” in other words.  Somehow, though, human beings have been seduced by things, like status and the accumulation of things (especially money).  These accumulators believe that being wealthy is the key to happiness despite there being lots of evidence to the contrary.

She told me that she is now retired and lives with her American husband who is just as unconventional as she is.  (She told me that they met in an ashram in India quite a few years ago.)  She said the house they currently live in meets their needs, meaning that it isn’t grand, nor do they have air conditioning because they want to live naturally, as the animals do, so they open their windows and doors to let in the breeze.  During the hot parts of the day they nap.  During the cool parts they get active.  They also produce all their own food and live very intuitively and instinctively.  She said they own no TV and that they live as the Spartans did.  She stressed, throughout her telling of all this, that these were choices they’d made based on what they value and the kind of people they want to be.  Many (or even most) let circumstances dictate how they live and are fairly powerless.  My friend, on the other hand, said that she and her husband are consciously in control of their lives.

My conversation with Mathilda revealed to me that I needed to think about how I’ve been living and what my lifestyle is doing to me.  I needed to sit down and make a list of my priorities.  It occurs that many people today don’t really know who they are, want they want, where they want to go, and thus how to get there.  They don’t even know what they value.  This is shame.  This keeps people from deciding what’s important and what’s not.

In my own case, I want to be a good husband, a just and caring person, and very creative.  These are the things that matter to me.  How much money do I really need to be a good husband and caring person?  Absolutely nothing.  And what do I need to be creative?  I need time and enough money to keep a stock of art supplies.  That means I have to look very critically at how I’ve been living.  Am I throwing money away needlessly?  Am I wasting my time by watching TV and the like?  How many hours per week do I spend staring at my mobile phone and twiddling my thumbs?  The answers:  yes and too many.

My conversation with Mathilda made me do some self-examination and take stock.  What I found was a bit painful.  Even though I knew what was important to me, I was not being focused and self-disciplined enough.

What are those things that you most value?  What are your priorities?  What sort of person do you want to be?  What changes is it going to take in how you live for you to become your ideal self?  I’d like to hear your thoughts to these extremely important and personal questions.

This piece originally appeared in Pointless Overthinking.

 

November 27, 2018

jacky and johnnie

This past Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, my wife and I drove—south to north—up Interstate 35.  We started in San Antonio and ended up in the beautiful village of Georgetown, Texas, my hometown and the place my father and stepmother live their idyllic lives as retirees.

Of course, there was food—they don’t refer to Thanksgiving as “turkey day” for nothing—so we ate it.  And we drank.  And we sat around long after the vittles had been consumed and were snaking through our digestive systems.  And while we sat and let the nutrients do what nutrients do, we talked and laughed and reminisced and smiled at one another across the dining room table.

Off and on, between gorging ourselves in ways that distended our already distended bellies, we watched football and took discreet naps while sitting heavily on a couple of large L-shaped sofas.

We woke up Saturday morning and Janie, my stepmother, suggested that we drive up to Burnet, a town located in what Texans call “the Hill Country,” to visit Jacky, my dad’s youngest brother, and Johnnie, his wife and survivor of cancer, a disease that had caused her to lose her hair but none of her spunk.  Everyone thought it was a great idea.

Everyone in the family knows and openly talks about how Jacky has become something of an eccentric.  He doesn’t like to leave his house very often except to hunt and fish.  He gets up at 4 a.m. every morning and is obsessively clean to the nth degree and beyond.  In fact, he has a large workshop behind his house and those who’ve seen it jokingly say that a person could eat a meal off its concrete floor.

The result of all this was that I expected our visit to be somewhat awkward.  This expectation was exacerbated by the fact that this would only be the second time I’d seen my aunt and uncle in the last twenty years.  So I sort of knew what to expect but sort of didn’t too.

After an hour of driving, we found ourselves in a wooded area not far from Lake Buchanan.  We parked in the driveway, were met by Jacky and Johnnie in the front yard, and then were escorted through the house and out the back door where we all took seats on a lovely screened back porch.  I spotted a rustic rocking chair and made a beeline toward it.  We all took our seats and then began to ooh and ah about our surroundings.

The backyard was huge with several large cottonwoods and oaks, all of them shedding leaves in the autumnal breeze.  Johnnie said something about how this was their favorite place to sit and be still and quiet.  She also mentioned how this was medicine for her psyche.  She said they ate out here and even slept out here when the conditions were right.  I understood how all this could be true as I felt myself decompressing and unwinding.

There was a large and melodious wind chime hanging next to me and I mentioned how pretty it sounded.  Johnnie then told the story of how they’d come to own it.  According to her, on the day they were coming home from her mother’s funeral, Jackie, knowing that his wife was feeling profoundly sad, stopped at a roadside market and bought it while she sat in the car.  Upon returning to the vehicle, he handed it to his wife and said, “This is a little something from me.  I hope you’ll think of your mother when you hear it.”

So, on the afternoon of our visit, we sat and listened to the chime while Johnnie told this story.  One or two times, during her telling, she paused and wiped, using the back of her hand, a tear a two that had rolled down her cheeks.

It was a sad story but a beautiful day, made even more so by wonderful fellowship among kin and kindred spirits.

 

 

 

 

 

November 8, 2018

old-man-watch-time-160975

I always arrive at work at 7:50 a.m.  That’s ten minutes before I have to officially unlock the writing center door, turn on the lights, and open up for business.

This morning, at approximately 7:55, I made a quick trip to the men’s restroom.  Actually, I’m pretty lucky in that it’s located just a few feet away from our center.  (There’s a lot to be said for convenience.)  Anyway, when I stepped into the place, there was a man just finishing up his business at one of the urinals.  As soon as he zipped up and turned toward me, I noticed that he had a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth.  Seeing this prompted me to ask, “Multitasking are you?”  He found my question humorous.  I know this because he began to smile when I put it to him.  He then walked to the sink, spit a wad of froth from his mouth, and thoroughly washed his hands, face, and brush.

This rather inconsequential encounter in the john got me thinking about how busy our lives are.  It was both a little humorous and a little sad that this fellow couldn’t focus on either peeing or brushing and found himself having to do them simultaneously.  I hope it doesn’t come to the point that we have to carry around little pocket-sized planners to schedule our bowel movements.

Having lived in other countries I can say for a fact—at least it seems certain enough that it feels factual—that life in America is more hectic than in other places.  There’s always someplace to be, some call to make, a bundle of bills to pay, a job that needs doing.  The rich manage all this by hiring secretaries, managers, publicists, maids, nannies, and so on.  The poor manage this by going insane.  Those that don’t go crazy turn to the bottle or some other form of escapism that’s bound to be at least a little self-destructive.

I haven’t entirely figured it out yet, but I feel pretty certain that there’s some sort of relationship between living under a pretty hardcore capitalist economic system and the sort of panicky feeling I often have.  I’m not sure why that’s the case.  (Maybe it’s because we say that time is money in America?)  I wonder if people who live in more socialistic countries aren’t just a little calmer.  My guess is that they are.

I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon—after I get all this stuff done that needs doing—thinking about this question of capitalism and anxiety.  There certainly has to be a connection.  I’m positively sure there must be.

 

The Resolve to Evolve

I am a learner. And a teacher. This video reminded me of these facts about my life. It also reminded me what learning is all about and how important it is—or how important it should be—to each one of us, individually, and to the nation, as a collective.

I grew up in small towns in Texas. My upbringing was “typical,” meaning that my family, those people who got first shot at shaping me, were fairly conventional in their thinking and behavior. When I got old enough, I was sent to public schools and had an early education that was structured around official state curricula. I did well, made top grades, and was recognized as a young person with potential. This recognition meant nothing more than I had successfully acquired the knowledge and skills the authorities had wanted me to acquire.

I graduated and went off to a little school called Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. I enrolled in the normal courses students are supposed to take. Then, in my second year, I did something that would change my life forever. I had a chance to choose an elective, so I registered for a class called Introduction to Philosophy.

Taking that first philosophy course was the beginning of the end of my childhood. Up until that moment, my intellect had been carefully managed by all sorts of authority figures, none of whom were interested in exposing me to anything more than mainstream thinking, which is another way of saying “conventional wisdom.” As a child, I had been led to believe that the world of ideas was only so big, when, in fact, it was actually infinitely large. It’s like I had spent my entire lifetime locked in a little room and had been led to believe that that there was nothing more than this tiny space. Philosophy showed me the door leading out of that room. Once I opened it, I could see how imprisoned I had been.

America, in its political thinking, is a bit like I was before I was exposed to philosophy. Too many of its citizens believe that the way things have always been done is the only way things can be done. These worshippers at the altar of the status quo are holding the nation back.

In the upcoming election, Bernie Sanders is playing the role my first philosophy teacher played. He is exposing the nation to ideas and truths that are certain to make some people uncomfortable. But America needs someone to drag it into the twenty-first century. The nation needs to grow and expand its thinking in many areas. Bernie Sanders appears to be the person with enough insight, courage, and conviction to accomplish this noble task.

Thom Hartmann used the term “revolution” in the introduction to the clip I’ve included, but I think “evolution” is the more appropriate word. Sanders is trying to help the nation evolve in its thinking. Of course, once this evolution occurs, a revolution is bound to follow.