Remembering Epiphanies

It's amazing how impotent philosophical epiphanies can be. Like, they are not enough. They are the moments when we decide to plant the tree. They are the energy behind digging the hole and dropping in the seed and covering it up. Plants, however, need to be watered, or they die.

I'm talking about issues as straight-forward as weight-loss: "Today I am going to begin exercising and eating properly because I don't want to die..." But I am also talking about deeper ideas. Those ideas that we know are a key to our personal happiness; a realization that we need to have in order to make sense out of existence. For instance, in 2011, I wrote a song called "Kaleidoscope." This is the chorus:

Could it be the soul is a kaleidoscope,
Changing shape and shifting colors --
Lit by different kinds of light
From one day to another?

In subsequent verses, "day" turns into "year" and then into "...one decade to another..." You get the picture.

It's based on the realization that we humans tend to look for that thing that fulfills us in life, as if is (or will be) one constant thing. As if even if it were a few things, that those few things would please us equally at all stages of life. It seemed to me, when this occurred to me, that the soul (human spirit; mid -- however you want to say it) must be too complex to respond to the same thing forever and (especially) at all times. Sure, there must be truths to what pleases us, but, even if we are deeply pleased by, say, swimming, swimming might not always please us -- not forever and not every day.

Seems like a solid idea. But the key is to remember it and to call it to memory at the right times; or before it is too late. (One must water the tree.) If one finds himself doing the same thing that used to give him joy, will he do it for months or a year or for a decade in dissatisfaction before it occurs to him that the kaleidoscope that is his soul might have shifted? That he needs to seek a different light? Will he make adjustments before he concludes that life, itself, is unfulfilling?

The epiphany is one thing, but one must remind himself to act when it proves true. That's harder.

(Here is "Kaleidoscope," if you care for a listen.)

Tunnel-vision Writing

I've heard countless old people complain about being "forgotten about" in various ways; sometimes literally and sometimes in terms of "the world." As I transition into my fifties, I begin to understand more what they mean.

A guy you might not have grown up with.

I just read an article online and it referenced Jessica Biel. It said something about "the girl we all grew up watching on 7th Heaven."  I don't know about you, but I was twenty-eight when that show came out. (I was also in a stage of life at which TV almost didn't exist for me...but that is not relevant to my point here.)

So, the the thing is, "we all" did not "grow up" watching 7th Heaven.

Now, I am no Yale student who needs to be made to feel comfortable and cozy and "included" in everything and I am sure not going to call for an end to exclusionary writing and the resignation of the writer because he bwoke my widdle hawt, but I sure as heck am going point out the tunnel vision of many writers, especially when it comes to popular culture.

I could use this as an opportunity to lambast the self-indulgence and self-centeredness of "kids today," but I won't. [Insert sly grin.] But I do wonder if young writers are thinking, at all, of "audience" when they write. Because they are doing one of two things: 1) not thinking and being short-sighted enough to not imagine an audience outside of their peers or 2) deliberately excluding a wider (and older or younger audience). Number two really makes no sense. Why would any online writer deliberately limit his audience unless he or she were writing a very focused blog -- like a blog for ham radio enthusiasts? (Granted, though, that certain sites cultivate a certain demographic...but when a subject could be universal, what's the point of limiting things?)

If I wrote a piece about Happy Days, I sure would not refer to it as a show "we all grew up watching" -- not if my blog wasn't called, Middle-aged Daily.

I'll be okay. Don't worry about me. But writing, unless it is in a personal journal, should not be an intellectual form of intellectual auto-erotica. Either writing teachers are doing a lousy job of teaching "audience" or parents are churning out kids who think only of themselves. You decide.

The Value of Ugly Christmas Trees

Here's an idea for the parents of young kids. I blew my chance. I could do it now, but my boys are a little old to get the full impact.

It's not a new idea, exactly. Charles Schulz presented it to the world in his Charlie Brown Christmas episode, but in the episode, it happened sort of by accident: Charlie Brown messed up and got an ugly little tree (though, he did intentionally choose a real tree in a sea of aluminium ones). The Peanuts characters discovered, as a result of this accident, that they could make the ugly beautiful.

How great an idea would it be, though, for parents of young kids to purposefully pick out the ugliest Christmas tree on the lot and to bring it home to make beautiful?

I wish we had done it. I can see us standing on the lot, the boys' little eyes searching around. I can see myself saying, "So, what about this tree? It has a big hole on one side...it's crooked on top...it's kind of a weak green. No one is going to buy it, but I'll bet we can make it beautiful..."

Imagine the educational value; the creative power it would have given the boys; the visible evidence of what a family can do together; the acceptance of the idea that life is never perfect but that is can be made more perfect; the lesson in the value of optimism; the conveyance of the message that there is beauty in difference and that there is even beauty in ugliness. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," after all.

In my mind, I see, nestled in a branch-less gap turned unashamedly toward the front, a little cluster of Nativity figures, gently lit to a buttery yellow by surrounding string lights and I wish that our tree, this year, had such a deformity in it.

Alas. Maybe you can do it with your kids.

Either/Or Stupidity

Maybe it is because I am currently teaching the American transcendentalists,  but it occurs to me that there is a space between faith-based thinking and pure intellectualism, and, that this place is the right place to be. Sadly, few people seem to live there because the idea of not committing to either "realism" or "faith" has been made to seem weak.

The famous skeptic and illusionist, James Randi, once said: "I have absolutely no belief in an afterlife...I am a realist." On the other end of things, there are those who quote the old saying by Stuart Chase: "For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible." I'm not sure of the exact context of Chase's quotation, but I have seen it used by religious folk as a defense of faith. Used in that context, I think both Chase's quotation and Randi's are equally foolish.

I have addressed the idea of fence-sitting before. There is an extreme anger toward those who wait to declare an opinion until they had thoroughly reasoned it through. While eternal fence-sitting is non-productive, the view from the fence is the best one to serve as a prelude to the drawing of a conclusion.

Octave Taessaert

I have spent a lifetime, for instance, considering the subject of abortion. I have never written about it because I'm not sure what to say. I know how I feel, but how I feel is not as important as what I understand, when it comes to arguing. And one must not speak until his words are in perfect order and all possible arguments and counter-arguments have been considered. I feel I am almost ready to write about abortion. Almost. I'm 47.

The assumption that the unexplainable is untrue is not realism; it's stupidity. As I have said before, there are a lot of things in quantum physics that can't be explained, yet they are. Granted, I don't believe people sit on clouds and play the harp in heaven, but for one to write off a belief in the afterlife while living in a world full of scientists who believe in the probability of alternate universes just strikes me as asinine.

The transcendentalists believed that intuition was the path to truth -- that it overcame the limitations of the senses. They did not believe that reason through observation was useless, but that it can only take us so far. Intuition was the way to the deepest of truths. Intuition does for the understanding of the natural world what poetry does for the understanding of the human condition: It does not tell us how the joints of existence are connected, but gives us an emotional understanding of its life-force.

The world should not be an either-or place. James Randi has done some great work, but it's as foolish to say that being a realist precludes the idea of an afterlife (of any kind) as it is to say that heaven is a big cartoon full of people lying around on cumulus chaise-lounges.

Identity and Reality

There is a famous adage made even more famous by Star Trek: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one." Many take this to be incontrovertible. Morally, most agree that it is better to, for instance, save the lives of five people rather than to save one, given the choice.

Of course, given circumstances, if I had to choose between saving one of my sons or five other people, I know that I would save my son. Is that right? Maybe not. Maybe many people would say that is a selfish decision. Selfish or not, I know what I would do. All this goes to prove is that sometimes instinct -- especially the paternal instinct -- drives us harder than social morality does.

Regardless, I would argue that the adage above is, at least logically and ethically, pretty true. If I were a fire chief, I would hesitate to send fifteen of my firefighters into an out-of-control inferno in order to save one man who was probably doomed. (Of course, if I were a fireman and the person inside were, say, a small child, my instincts might -- as they have done for many a heroic fireman -- send me headlong into the blaze, regardless of orders...)

So, it is clear that the idea of the many being more important than the one does have its "hinge," so to speak. Nevertheless, because it has become a generally accepted adage, many people who are in the extreme minority have been (sometimes unbeknownst to the rest of society) pushed to the fringes of social existence. We seem to have, in the past, adopted the notion (unconsciously) that those who are different are inconsequential; even (and this is a conscious thing, when it happens) loathsome.

Recently, we started lauding sensitivity toward those who do not fit the mold of what it ordinary --which is an unqualified good thing. No one should have to feel worthless or completely outcast, or, at worst, depressed and/or suicidal... But, have we lost the valuable anchor of the old adage? Have we begun acting as if the needs of the "one" outweigh the needs of the many? Are we overcompensating? Has the pendulum swung too far?

I recently heard a news report, on NPR, of a school situation in Illinois, in which U.S. Department of Education has decided that a district:

...is violating the rights of a student who identifies as female by not allowing her unrestricted use of the girls' locker room. The district now has a month to change its policy or risk losing millions of federal dollars. 

One study indicates that 0.3 percent of the total population are transgender. Other studies seem to fall in a similar range. (These studies are of adults, but, it gives us, at least, a sense of the range.) 

With this in mind -- with this tiny percentage -- how far should we go to make transgender folks feel comfortable? Is it discrimination to tell a person who was born male that he needs to change in a private room rather than among young women? That he can't play on a girls' team?

Is it okay just to say: If you are uncomfortable changing clothes in front of boys/girls, then use the bathroom to change? Is it okay to say that, because you are physically male, you need to play on male teams (for gender-divided sports)? 

I think the number of girls who would be made uncomfortable by a biological male having "unrestricted use of the girls' locker room" is much greater than the number of those who might be comfortable with it. I admit it: this is me guessing. I think it is a reasonable guess, though. (Anecdotally, in discussion with a class of high school seniors, of mine, not one girl said she would be comfortable with a biological male changing in the girls' locker room.)

I also believe that every human deserves respect, friendship, love and dignity: gay, straight, transgender, Muslim, Catholic, Jew, disabled, etc.  I do not, however, think every human always deserves for the circumstances to be changed in order to make him or her feel comfortable; therefore, I think it is okay for a boy who identifies as a girl to have to change in the bathroom. I really do. I don't think, however, that that boy needs to be tortured as a result of his sexual identification. If a reader thinks that making that boy change in a bathroom is torture, we must agree to disagree. 

We all want to fit into society, somewhere, but it is equally important to embrace our own differences. In doing so, one must, it seems to me, accept certain levels of inconvenience (and, perhaps, even, some pain) as a result. Maybe it is okay for a boy who identifies as female to have to deal with changing in the bathroom until he is able to (or decides to) make the physical transition. 

In the end, it amounts to a question: How much do we change for a group that is at an (estimated) 0.3% of our population? I would truly love for every person to be happy, but we all know that can never be. We have come very far and I hope we will go farther, but perfect social harmony is impossible. 

We have proven that society's attitudes can change. Only a few decades ago, interracial marriage was a real issue of contention. Now gay marriage is legal and homosexuality (though still not "mainstream" in its overall acceptance) is no longer a life relegated to the shadows. These things resulted from a change in ideology; from a wider acceptance on both a personal and social level. 

To me, though, simply shoehorning someone into "the norm" is not real acceptance. To that boy who identifies as a girl, I would say: "I don't want you to change in the same room as my daughter. Sorry. I do, however, want you to know that this does not mean I don't value you as a human being. You are welcome to eat at my house and be friends with my kids, but, if you are uncomfortable in the boys' locker room, I'd rather you change in private than undress in front high school girls. Unlimited access to whatever you want can be an infringement on the rights of others. If it comes down to an infringement on the rights of 0.3% of the population, I will err on the side of the majority, as long as the majority treats you with sensitivity and respect."

This is, of course, attack-able. I know it full well. It's easy for someone to say that what I said above contradicts the notion that I value the person in question as a human. Again, I simply disagree. I think, at some point, the comfort of the many needs to outweigh the comfort of the one...as long as the one is safe and is treated with civility. 

Another possible counterpoint to this is that I am downgrading by using words like "comfortable" and "convenient" and "inconvenient" -- that a transgender boy having to change separate from all of the other kids is more than an "inconvenience." If humans treat each other well, though, these words are really all it would come down to if a transgender boy had to change in a bathroom. If the reality is that kids would give him a hard time, then insensitive parenting is to blame...which seems always to be at the base of every problem.