Last Leaves

On Sharks

You know what the scary thing about sharks is?  It's not their size or speed.  It's not their rows of razor sharp teeth.  It's not even their black, soulless eyes.  It's the fact that they can't be reasoned with.  In a situation where you come up against a shark you can't talk your way out of it.  You can't trick the shark into not attacking.  It all comes down to whether or not it feels like you're food.  A shark is almost like a force of nature in that you couldn't stop it from doing what it's going to do anymore than you could convince a tornado to stop tearing through a trailer park.  Now don't get me wrong the teeth and idea of being eaten are all very frightening because we've spent so much time at the top of the food chain that there are very few things out there, besides ourselves, that are really a threat.  It's when we come up against something that doesn't care one way or another what we think, feel, or do that we really get that sense of dread.  It's a primal fear that we've held onto since man was living in a cave, hiding from things bigger than him.  Man is, for the most part, a rational being, who just happens to do a lot of irrational things from time to time.  We have serious problems with anything that completely disregards the rules of a rational world.

The thing is that in today's world we've started to come up against people who may as well be a shark when it comes to rational thought.  At least from our own perspective.  We can't even begin to understand how "those people" could think that way.  They seem determined to destroy us or at the very least damage our way of life.  I'm guessing from their side we're the ones who are alien in our beliefs.  So that fear comes sneaking back up and we're back in the cave all over again.  A lot of horror movies tap into that with the faceless juggernaut that won't stop killing everyone in its path.  Sure no one wants to be torn apart with a chainsaw, but it's the fact that the bad guy is going to kill you regardless of if you try and reason with them.  So many times in movies the victim will ask "Why are you doing this?"  Sometimes the bad guy will give some kind of cold or heartless answer designed for shock value, but more often than not the killer says nothing.  They kill because they're a killer.  There may be a back story of how they became what they are, but in the end it really doesn't matter.  We could understand what causes an earthquake to shake the ground.  That doesn't change the outcome one way or another.  The damage has been done.

So how do we deal with these fears?  Many of us are fortunate enough to not have to worry about being chased through the woods by a machete-wielding lunatic or coming face to face with a hungry shark.  Still it can be almost paralyzing to know that forces way beyond our control are at work with no regard to how it could slam through our little lives.  Some would argue that when faced with any danger, no matter the source, we're going to default to one of two reactions.  The fight or flight.  While I agree this is essentially true, there is a lot of nuance to these reactions.  Especially since we're just starting to grasp the fact that our bodies are aware of the danger and fear surrounding a situation before our minds have processed the whole situation.  Does that mean we're going to constantly be at war internally with our rational minds against the physical reaction our bodies have to threats?  If we believe that reason and logic aren't an option to be used to deal with something or someone who can't be reasoned with then is it our only option to respond without reason?  At that point do we stop being a human and turn into just another shark?

Red Carpet

On Surrounded by Associations

I hate the desert. It's hot, coarse, and generally uninviting. It's the Earth's way of saying "Get out!" And yet there are so many people out there that find the desert to be something more than a bunch of rocks and sand. For them it speaks to something deeper inside. Having grown up in very forested areas, I feel more at home with trees around me. So a place like the desert does the opposite of speak to me, it repels me. So it's understandable why I wouldn't like the desert. It's someplace foreign to me. The really strange part is that this feeling of being at home in the desert doesn't only occur to people who grew up in the desert. Someone living in Chicago could have this unexplainable calling to a place they've only seen in pictures. Somehow how though that's where they would feel the most at home. What is it about these different environments that awaken something inside of us?

I've talked about places that feel like home because of the people who live there. I've even acknowledged that there are people themselves who feel like home. What is it about certain surroundings that makes us feel more at home than others? Obviously we're all individuals and have our own specific desires, but for a lot of people it's hard to fully quantify why one place, like the desert, is more suited for them than another. I have a friend who grew up in Phoenix and now can only go back for special occasions. The idea of living there is out of the question. For as long as he can remember he felt this need to be near the mountains of Colorado. When he first went there he knew it was where he wanted to live, even though it took him several years to make it happen. In that time that feeling never diminished, like so many flights of fancy that come and go throughout our lives.

How is it that some places are colored by seemingly unrelated associations?  When I first moved to the desert it was completely different from anything I had known.  For a time it was fine because it took me forward in life.  Eventually though I found that it was not even close to where I wanted or needed to be.  Combined with several unpleasant experiences over the course of my time there has forever created a negative association with the desert as a whole.  Even the place I currently live has connotations towards very specific aspects of my life, some of which alter how I look at this place.  It's hard to say if we can ever really look at a place without being influenced by the surrounding associations we've built.

Have you ever walked into a room and known something was missing? At first glance you may not be able to immediately spot that thing that's out of place, but somehow the whole room feels wrong due to its absence. Your brain is aware of the change, even if you haven't quite caught up to realizing it. It's interesting how a lot of life can be the same way. A part of us knows that something isn't there. It's figuring out that which is absence that's not always easy. There are some aspects of our lives that when left unfulfilled become painfully apparent. The absence of food, sleep, or even love all make themselves known almost immediately. The complete lack of any of those leaves an obvious gaping hole in our lives. It's when we lose pieces of something a little bit at a time that it becomes easier to overlook their absence or at least not notice until it has become glaringly apparent.  When you're driving down a dark road at night you have to be looking for what you can see, but you also have to be looking for what you can't. Having grown up in a place where large animals could wander out in front of you it got to be second nature to be on the lookout for the absence of what was in front of you. Sometimes what you can't see is more important.  There are places in our lives that seem to supply us with everything we feel we need, while there are places which feel like something is missing.  The question really becomes is it something real that's missing or just those old associations creeping in and painting a picture that may not really exist except in our mind?

The Crags

On the March Forward

Not all that long ago your grandparents were your age. And not that long before that they were just children, with no concept of you even existing. The world around them was the newest it had ever been. They probably looked back at their own grandparents as ancient reminders of a simpler time. As with anything, what was once new is now considered a relic. Once again today's generation sees what they've created as the best there's ever been. Now I'm not trying to take away from the accomplishments of those who have put their hard work into making today the best it can be. Still, if you think about it we've only really been "technologically advanced" for a little over a hundred years. While that may be a long time in the span of our individual lives, it's a little more than a blink in the span of our species existence. Really we've only just scratched the surface of what we could accomplish.

There was a time when a computer that fit in your pocket was something you'd see in a science fiction movie. I wonder if the people who dreamed up that idea knew what was coming or if the people who watched those movies decided they'd do whatever it took to make it a reality. Today we have our own science fiction, some of which is slowly becoming actual science, while some of it only leads to other ideas. Whatever happens there will come a time when the most advanced thinking will become obsolete. It's sometimes hard to not think that what we do today is futile considering how tomorrow it will seem like such an old concept.  As we progress forward our current notions are changed and sometimes revealed to be completely incorrect.  We're only going on what we know at the time, so it stands to reason that the more we know the more we realize just how much we don't know.  That may be the only constant in this universe.  Some people would like to believe that eventually we'll reach a point of complete understanding, but it seems next to impossible given how big and ancient everything is.  Maybe we're not supposed to know it all.  Maybe we're always supposed to learn so that we know what's next for us to learn.

The world was old when you were young.  Sometimes it's hard for me to really get my head around that fact.  Fourteen billion years is just a number and I know that it's really big.  Still the only way I can really start to understand it is if I went outside and considered each grain of sand as a year.  In order to come close to having all the sand I need to show how old the universe is, I would have a desert.  Considering how short our time is it's not surprising to feel a little insignificant when thinking about how only in the last third of known existence did our planet even exist.  What will it be like when twice that much time has passed again?  Will we all just be some galactic afterthought?  Maybe all that means is that since our duration in this world is so limited that everything we do matters.  Some might argue the opposite, that we're just a blip in time.  Our galaxy isn't in a good neighborhood.  It's out in the middle of nowhere compared to what we know is out there.  If that's the case then what does it matter what we do because in the grand scheme of things we'll just be forgotten or lost.  That's a bit of a hopeless outlook on life.  Maybe the universe won't notice when we're gone, but we'll notice while we're here.  Today we're here and we're alive.  Tomorrow we may go back to being space dust floating out in the abyss, but that shouldn't stop us from screaming to the heavens "We are here and we matter!", even if we're the only ones who hear.  If this is all going to be long forgotten then there is nothing to lose in trying to accomplish everything while we're here.

Corral

On A Dynamic World

I play a lot of video games and one of the major limiting factors in games today and really from their inception, is the fact that no matter how pretty the world is, it's ultimately scripted.  The creatures and characters within the world move along a predefined path, even if that path is very wide.  You'll notice it whenever you try to do something out of bounds of what the programmers intended.  Sometimes you'll find the thing you're interacting with to repeat itself because it simply doesn't know how to respond beyond what it's been told to accept.  With artificial intelligence there is a test to see if a machine has the ability to think for itself.  So far no computer system has completely passed this test, although many have tried.  It's hard to say just when we'll find ourselves surrounded by machines that think.  The question is though, if we were to turn a test like that on ourselves how well would we actually do given a long enough testing period.

Each of us lives our life based on the experiences we've gained over time.  We have the capability to learn from these experiences and with any luck our mistakes in the past help prevent mistakes in the future.  If you're anything like me though, it doesn't really stop the mistakes from happening though.  Instead it's just a variation on a theme over and over again.  Could this be because we ourselves are limited by life parameters?  A computer has no idea how to respond to a question about theoretical physics if it has no experience with it.  It has to be programmed into its system for it to have any understanding.  Our brains are very much the same way.  If you were to ask me a question about theoretical physics I'd do roughly as well as a computer that could speak.  So let's say both the computer and I are given some experience and we're now able to respond to questions regarding the theory of everything.  Our answers would again be limited to the knowledge we've been given combined with our previous experiences.  As a rational creature, I may be able to make intuitive leaps in logic based on seemingly unrelated fields of study.  The computer would also be able answer in its own way.  Given time though, eventually we'd both come to the upper limit of our knowledge and experience.

When we meet new people for the first time we may find them refreshing and interesting because at least initially, they are outside our experience.  What they say or do may seem like a mystery until we get to know them better.  As we get to know them we can start to predict how they'll react to certain situations.  If we spend a really long time with them we may start to know them better than they know themselves.  The things they do become almost repetitive.  That's not exactly a bad thing either.  No person has endless experience, even if we wish we did.  On a long enough timeline everyone will come to a point where the well is dry.  If that's the case then just how dynamic are we compared to some video game character or robot that's being tested for its ability to think on its own?  We look a computer system and decide through a complex series of tests that it doesn't think and yet if we were to extend the same kind of test to ourselves it's likely we'd eventually come to a point where we'd be hard pressed to say if we have intelligent behavior.  What if there is something else out there in the universe that has its own standards of determining if something is intelligent?  Something with standards so far beyond what we can comprehend that we'd be looked at roughly the same way we look at a calculator.  Yes we can do simple tasks, but we can't "think".  Does that call into question our abilities or our standards?  Just how sure can we be when our only basis for intelligent thought is how everything compares to our own minds?

The Machine

On Changing Horses

For many of us our path through life is set before we really have much say in it. That's not to say we have no choice but there is a lot of factors beyond our ability to change. Let's say you grew up wanting to be a robotics designer because it seemed like something wonderful. You live in a rural area where the majority of people around you go into trades rather than high tech industries. It's not impossible to follow the path, it's just that you're going to have more influences that steer you towards something else. Possibly something you didn't even think of in the first place.

It's seems that everyone has goals for their life and that's good because it gives you something to strive for. It creates purpose beyond simply existing for the sake of existing. These goals could be as common as graduating, getting married, or finding a job that pays you a lot of money. They could be noble like moving to Africa to help those in need or searching for a cure to a cruel disease. What do you do if you don't have goals? I'm not talking about lazy people who are content with doing nothing for as long as possible. I'm talking about those who just don't know what they want. For them trying to figure out what they want from life is like a baby trying to express the fact that it's hungry, they don't even know how to ask. Looking around it may seem like everyone else has it figured out or at least is on the path to figuring it out. They have things they're working towards or they've accomplished already, meanwhile your own life seems to be stalled as you try and figure out which direction you're supposed to be pointed in.

So you're on your road of life that was set out for you and you start to wonder if where you're going is really the place for you. Everything up until that point could have been working towards something that is now in question. Is it possible to step off the path and go somewhere else? It seems that it's very hard to make the change once you've committed to something. There are those out there who would say something about making a bed and sleeping in it but this life where it's entirely possible there isn't anything afterwards. We don't know how long we're here for so shouldn't every attempt be made to get the most out of it? For some they don't get to change direction until they've already spent a lifetime going down another road. After thirty years they can finally retire from the choices they made a long time ago. That can't be the only option though. So how do we change horses midstream without falling in?

Pirate Cove

On Escape

I love television. There are many times where I hate that I love it. For as long as I can remember it was this wonderful other world where anything could happen. Well happen within budget for television. When I was little I would wake up early to watch Saturday morning cartoons. Even though it was Saturday and the sun wouldn't be up for hours, I was awake and excited to see what would happen on this week's episode. Thinking about it, I can tie specific television shows to the various times of my life. The Flintstones are forever associated with summer in Wisconsin, where I had to barter with my grandmother over just how much television time I could have before it "rotted my eyes." Happy Days kept me company right after I moved away for college. It's probably not exactly healthy to have television shows be so inherently embedded in my life, but they are my escape. That got me thinking about how just about everything in our lives are a form of escape from something.

I should preface this whole idea with the fact that I don't exactly believe that escape is a bad thing. It's most likely something we all need at various times in our lives. It can almost be equated to sleep, a necessary recharging in order to maintain any semblance of normalcy. Sleep itself could be considered an inescapable escape from reality. So is it possible that everything is just a means to get away from something else? As I've mentioned before life requires death in order to live. Maybe we need to constantly be escaping from something in order to maintain some kind of balance. Television is an escape into another world. One that's funnier, or scarier, or more interesting, or at least better lit than my own life. Music is there to drown out the silence. Children help us outlive our own mortality. Vacations allow us to leave our every day lives.

The thing about escapes is that they are our chance to break free, even if it's only for a little while. Most of the time we have to come back. Back to the silence. Back to the reality that some day we will die. Back to our daily life. And to be honest maybe it's not such a bad thing to have to return. In a strange way the fleetingness of any escape makes it that much sweeter while it does last. Although what would life be like if there was no need for escape?

Midnight Leaves

The Essence of Life

What makes something alive? How do you measure that exactly? I'm alive. The tree over there is alive. Those things seem easy to label but why? You cut off a branch or my arm and at what point does the severed limb stop being alive? Maybe it's when the life's blood literally drains out of it. It could be the moment it's separated from the body that it's no longer truly alive. That only brings up the question then of how much of something would have to be cut away before the body dies as well?

Our body is just a biomechnical means to transport our consciousness around. At least that's what it seems like. We may be no better than viruses that adapt to continue their spread. They infect other lifeforms so they can keep living. I guess one could ask what's the point of living if your whole purpose is to keep living? So maybe our bodies aren't designed to carry around our minds. Maybe our minds were developed to help protect our body while it works out ways to keep spreading its own genes as much as it can before the clock runs out.

Going back to the original point, what makes something alive? Is it the same spark that animates our blood and bone as that which brings growth to a blade of grass? Are we alive in the same sense? I suppose if the answer is no then are there degrees of living? It could be argued that no life is more important than another. The life of an ant is as important as that of a blue whale. They are both holding something inside that may not be easy to quantify.

So maybe life is just energy. Somehow that energy has taken the form of something that provides a driving force for otherwise inanimate objects to move about to continue the spread of more energy. If life is just energy though wouldn't that means there are other forms of it that we may not perceive or even comprehend? When the light goes out in something where does that supposed energy go? Some believe that it's transferred to another vessel. In most cases, another person. To me that sounds a lot like a metaphysical virus, constantly jumping from host to host, using it up along the way. If that's the case then maybe the universe is using the Earth as a quarantine zone to halt the spread. It would help explain why there isn't anything else like us or the life on our planet in the immediate few hundred billion miles surrounding us. Maybe we are the infection that has evolved.

And Another Thing...

Gasoline for the daily commute is one of the biggest things people spend their money on. Many of us have no choice but to drive because there simply aren't any other reasonable options. The cost of gas isn't going down anytime soon and it's eating up more and more of our paychecks each year. One might wonder if the reason why no alternatives have been found isn't just greed, but more because if there was an inexpensive alternative then wouldn't that free up our dependence on our jobs? Most of us work to live. The jobs we do are a means to pay for everything in our life. Making sure that only a finite amount of money actually reaches our hands is very similar to a parent giving a child an allowance small enough to still maintain some level of control. Are the inherent costs to things in life just a means to make sure we don't break free?

The Fall

On the Cost of Living

It's been said that there is a cost to everything. That freedom isn't free. Everything we do in life has some kind of price fixed to it, even if we can't see it right away. Our society has this drive to want more, no matter the cost. Sometimes that's a good thing. It forces us to reach for what's next rather than simply accept what is. On the other hand it's almost like we're constantly making deals with the devil, not realizing how much it will cost us in the end.

I grew up with the idea that if you wanted to get anywhere in this world you needed an education. Not just a regular education, but a high tech education. The kind of knowledge I thought was necessary couldn't just be found in a book at the library. You had to go to that far off and almost magical place called College. Once you get there though you realize that while it's somewhat better than say high school or the last job you had, it's not all that different from the world you just left. It just costs a lot more. I'm not just talking about the money, although I'll get to that. The first thing you pay for is your freedom. Sure you may get away from mom and dad for the first time in your life, but more often than not the price of that freedom is something intangible. Right away you'll probably notice all the things that you took for granted while living at home. Your new freedom means just that, you're free to flounder on your own while you look for a way to pay for both food and possibly rent. The other thing you might find yourself paying for is your own identity. For many of us we spend years living in a very specific role because that's just how the world has always been up until that point. Leaving all that behind means that you don't have to be the jock, the nerd, or clown. You don't even have to be brother or daughter anymore. You get to choose what you want to be. Though in doing so you could potentially lose what you once were.

Let's not forget the cost in money either. Society has forced it into our heads that you need a college education. Sure you could skip college and just go find a job or a trade. There's nothing wrong with that except that we're made to believe that in ten or twenty years all our experience won't mean anything because we don't have a piece of paper that says we graduated from college. I believe that education is the silver bullet for many of our problems. Better educated people theoretically can create a better society. The problem with the system today is that in getting that education we're immediately digging ourselves into a pit of debt. Student loans are both a great and terrible thing. Without them I wouldn't have been able to go to school. Without school I wouldn't have the job I have now. On the flip side without student loans I wouldn't have been thousands of dollars in debt before I was thirty. Maybe I wouldn't be making as much money as I am now, but without having to hand over a large portion of my paycheck each month would it just be a wash?

I'm not entirely sure what the American Dream is. I do know that it's not something you can just buy on the weekend. It takes years of payments. At any time everything you worked for could be thrown out the window. At least that's the fear many people have these days. Years of work edging closer towards the end of that balance could be for nothing if the wind shifts the wrong way. The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if perhaps that's how they want it. If people didn't owe lots of money that they had to pay back then how could they be controlled? Don't pay your student loans, they'll just take them out of your paycheck. Don't pay your mortgage, they'll kick you out of your house. One way or another the majority of your money isn't really yours. I wouldn't go so far as to say we're wage slaves, but one has to wonder what an outsider would think of our society. In order to get that high paying job we have to borrow a lot of money to be allowed to work hard so we can pay back the money we borrowed for the high paying job. It seems almost like insanity when you think about it.

As I mentioned before, we pay not just in money for things. Take a look at our national security and what we have to pay in order to maintain even the illusion of safety. In order for us to be safe from harm then someone else has to be in harm's way. Somewhere someone is going to get hurt so the most we can hope for is that we decide when and where that's going to happen. If we want inexpensive food then we often have to compromise quality for quantity. Something that's good and good for you has a higher cost than the prepackaged slop that could be bought for half the price. It takes time for quality and time is becoming more and more valuable for people who make a living in shorter and shorter increments of it. So that extra cost has to go somewhere.

Now it can be argued that it's just the cost of doing business. If you want to be something more then you have to play the game. You have to pay the price. They say that energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed. I wonder if the cost of something is the same way. No matter what happens, someone is going to deal with that cost eventually.

The Old Sea

On Scars

I cut my finger today doing something generally stupid. It wasn't a bad cut or anything, but it's in the perfect place to be a constant reminder of my foolishness for the next several days. Looking down at my hands and arms I noticed all kind of various scars that crisscross their way over my skin. For some of the scars I can remember what caused them. For others the memory has faded almost as much as the scar has. Still it's like a visual record of my life's physical traumas, even if they only resulted in the smallest of imprint. The thing is I know I've been hurt more often than I have scars to prove. So why is it that only a select few...I was going to say make the cut. Now I know that physically speaking there is a very good reason why certain injuries leave a mark while others leave no trace. Maybe it's something more though. Maybe it's our body's way of remembering something in a physical way so that we can try our best to avoid having it happen again.

If you're a drinker then there's probably a time you can remember when you had a little too much fun and made yourself sick. It could be strawberry margaritas or just plain light beer, there was that one time you had too much of it and wish you hadn't. Of course by the time you figured this out it was already too late. The memory of that lesson may to this day still bring a slight shudder as you look back on it. While you can't see it, wouldn't that also be just another scar? Maybe somewhere in our brain there is a physical marker that indicates where the memory lives. Other memories from that same time period may have long since drifted away, but that one stays with you because of the pain associated with. It could be that pain retains.

There are plenty of people out there who have experienced something so traumatizing that they can't just walk away from it. I used to wonder why people couldn't simply get over it. I mean it happened and was horrible, but why dwell on it? Why couldn't they just get past it and move on with their lives? Wouldn't they be happier if they let go of that pain? The thing I didn't understand was that the mental scarring is so much that it won't simply heal on its own. At least not anytime soon. It would be like trying to run a marathon on a broken leg and wondering why each step hurts. Now granted there are some people who prefer to wallow in their own misery. It's strangely comforting to them for some reason. Others though want to heal, but just can't. If your tooth was hurting the smart thing to do would be to go see a dentist. They're trained to work on teeth that hurt. So if your mind is hurting why would anyone think about trying to fix it themselves? Sure you may be mentally strong, but that might not be enough to heal those scars. When I cut my finger today I could have wished it to stop bleeding through sheer willpower. The smarter thing to do was to take action and stop it myself. There's only so much I can do at this point though. I don't know if it will become yet another scar. Maybe all scars are just lessons we couldn't learn without a physical reminder of our own frailty. Then again maybe they're reminders of our ability to recover from nearly anything and be stronger for it, if only for the fact that the next time that situation comes around we know we can survive it.

Sea Sky

On the Beaten Path

As of right now mankind is at the top of the food chain. We have been for longer than anyone can remember. Most organisms on this planet have to adapt to their environment, but we've taken a different route and make the environment adapt to us. We use tools and technology to overcome our physical limitations when it comes to the world. An anteater developed a long snout and tongue in order to continue feeding on ants that built burrows that were tall and narrow. One could argue the easier or at least more direct method of dealing with this problem wouldn't have been to alter their physical appearance, but instead to simply knock down the anthills. Instead their method ensures that they can continue eating ants and the ants can continue building their hills. In a strange way it's almost like the path of least resistance. Really it's a long way around to come a short way back. I'm not saying that man doesn't come up with some ingenious ways to overcome problems, but our methods are often based on changing the situation to suit our needs. In a sense we've stopped evolving, at least on any quantifiable level. Sure our technology has gotten better, but we're no better capable of living in sub arctic temperatures than we were a thousand years ago. If the world's clean water literally dried up tomorrow we wouldn't be able to live in the desert to any degree better than those who live there now, which is focused more on survival than anything else.

Now I know a sudden and drastic change would likely limit any species ability to survive, at least in the short term. Still we can visibly observe how so many creatures on this planet have altered their very bodies in order to keep up with the changes in this world. Meanwhile we're roughly the same way we've been for thousands of years. We may live longer and be larger than those who came before us, but that's because we've made advances in medicine and generally have more food to eat. For the most part we don't have any incentive to evolve because we feel like we've got this place mastered. The world supposedly bends to our will so why should we change when things are obviously working so well for us as they are?

For a long time I used to wonder if reality was the same for me as it was for everyone else. Was the color orange I saw really the same color orange someone else saw? How would we ever know that we were seeing different things? Along with this there seemed to be a set way to do things. If you wanted to write a sentence in English you had to follow a certain structure. If you wanted to throw a free throw and not have it drop like a useless brick on the basketball court, you had to throw it in an established manner. If you wanted to earn money you had to follow the rules decided beforehand on what services or products were worth something, otherwise you wouldn't earn enough to rub two dimes together. Basically if you want to do really anything then you have to follow what those have proven to be successful in the past. Sticking with what's tested and true means that for the most part you know what your chances of success will be, at least to some varying degree.

Every so often someone wanders off the beaten path and tries something radically different. Sometimes this abrupt departure results in an expected failure, but there are those rare times when it works beyond all imagination. Without those people who are willing to stray from the pack we might never have the society we do today. I wonder if these offshoots are the way modern man evolves in a situation where evolution is almost unneeded. Galileo changed the way people perceived the world. Monet changed the way people perceived art. Stephen Hawking changed the way we perceived the universe. Each went counter to what was already established and by doing so took mankind beyond what they thought they knew to something more. Now those people made significant changes to our shared perception, but every day there are tiny little variations on the conventional, some of which are quickly discarded and others that become the new standard. It's not always easy to recognize when you should stick what works or step off the path.

Pepper

On Behind Closed Doors

I used to be really jealous of other people having fun without me. It didn't even matter if I myself was already having a good time without them. When I would hear later about what others were doing I'd get the equivalent of order envy. Sure my good time was good, but in comparison it didn't seem as good. This was worst in high school. I would hear about people off drinking or having sex and I'd think about how I spent my evening playing video games or hanging with my friends, talking about whatever we liked, just wasn't as cool. Sometimes it felt downright childish. I wish I could say that I'm completely over that type of thinking, but every so often it comes back and I question how I spent my time compared to others, who seem to be off doing adult things. Part of that comes from the fact that for most of my life I've been on my own in some form or another. Living on my own. No significant relationships to speak of. Not only capable of being alone, but preferring it to company. The problem with that was that while I wanted to be alone, I didn't exactly want to be isolated from the world. I wanted to experience things. I wanted to experience the things I assumed other people were doing all the time, without me. Life seemed like this exclusive party and I wasn't invited.

There will always be curiosity about what goes on behind closed doors. No matter how well we think we know someone, there is always a part of them that's hidden. The friend from work goes home and does who-knows-what when no one is looking. It's very likely they go home and watch TV like most bored people. Still there is that shadow of a doubt that maybe, just maybe they're doing something exciting and telling no one about it. At least not until much later. Have you ever been talking to friends, revealing little pieces of information about yourself and someone exclaims that they didn't know that about you? Or on the flip side someone drops a bomb on you that you had no idea was possible. Someone was arrested. Someone was in a threesome. Someone once did hardcore drugs on more than one occasion. Someone nearly died doing something incredible or stupid or both. The person telling the story may not think anything of it because for them it's just another aspect of their life's journey. It happened and that doesn't necessarily mean that the same behavior is still going on. Still it makes one wonder when they did whatever did the people in their life have any idea that it was happening.

With most people in our lives we're coming in most of the way through the movie. There are exceptions to this of course, but unless you're still friends with the people you grew up with and never were apart for significant periods of your life, there are going to be serious gaps in knowledge about the people we choose as friends. Most of my friends are relatively late additions to my life, arriving at the last third of the story. Others who have been around for longer have been far enough away that they too may as well have shown up after things have already gotten started. That doesn't make either of them any less my friends, but it shows that even the people closest to us have plenty of things in their lives we don't know anything about. With most of the people I know, I couldn't tell you what they do with their spare time. There are some who I'm sure lead fairly mundane lives and are perfectly happy with the occasional burst of excitement. In fact I'm pretty sure that if we were able to examine each others lives we'd find that they are about as eventful as our own. As I said though, there is still that bit of doubt, that possibly someone out there is experiencing more than us and in doing so that means we may be missing out.

People always talk about their privacy as though it's a right. Then those same people who feel it's no one's business what they do behind closed doors are the first to rail about their right to know what someone else is doing. Be it a celebrity, or politician, or even neighbor. There is this sense of entitlement that seems to be spreading with the information age. The person who gets scared at the thought of someone seeing their internet search history is also the person who feels they should be informed who that politician slept with. We want to know what everyone else is up to, but would rather no one know what we're doing, even if it's nothing special. Sometimes our fears of what other people may think are justified because no one likes to be judged. Still if you figure that just about everyone in the world has something they do which could be embarrassing if viewed by a third party, then what does it matter what someone else thinks? There was a Stephen King story about a town on an island that ran into a force of evil. This evil had a single ultimatum: give him what he wants and he'll go away. Until he got what he wanted he was going to reveal everyone's dark secrets in front of the whole town. Of course everyone gasped when they heard someone's secret and felt somewhat morally superior. At least until their own secret was revealed. It was an interesting examination of what we try to hide away behind a locked door. Those doors give us just enough protection to feel that can be ourselves, without fear of judgement. The problem is those same doors can perpetuate the illusion that what's happening behind them is more interesting than it really is. So which is better, seeing what's on the other side regardless of what's there or forever wondering exactly what's happening just out of sight?

Cloud River

On Missing

It's a strange thing when something you own goes missing. While it may in fact still exist in some way, the fact that you can't find it makes one wonder where it goes until you find it. As a kid some of my favorite things were lost forever. For what seemed like an eternity I wished that I could get a specific Transformer. This Transformer changed from a cassette tape into a black panther. Now I know it's not the most logical choice for a robot trying to maintain a disguise, but the heart wants what the heart wants. Finally I was able to get my hands on one. I played with it endlessly until one day I did something terrible. Our house had floor vents where the heat came up. They were slatted in such a way that they could be closed to stop air from coming in, but on this day they were wide open. The thing with a slat and something shaped like a cassette is that my child brain couldn't stop itself from inserting the toy into it. I still remember the horror of realization of what I had done as the Transformer leaped from my fingers and slid into the ventilation system. I immediately tore the cover off and stuffed my little arm as far down the vent as it could go, but it was no use. My toy was lost. For weeks I would periodically check that vent, in hopes that maybe by some miracle my toy would return to me, but it never did. For all I know it's still rattling around somewhere in the old house, waiting to be discovered. Another part of me thinks that maybe at some point it simply ceased to exist and no amount of searching would ever find it.

I loaned my favorite GI Joe to someone, going against my better judgement, and when I asked for it back he said he "lost" it. Now while it's true I think he was lying in order to keep what was mine, I often wonder if that action figure exists anymore. Sure there were probably thousands of that kind made back in the day, but what happened to mine? Where did it go? With energy it's believed that it cannot be destroyed. It can only be transformed. I doubt the same rules apply to toys from my childhood. Maybe they're both sitting in some landfill. Maybe somewhere someone has them and is thankful someone like me lost them in the first place. Maybe they somehow managed to get recycled in such a way that they became something else. That's the problem with things that go missing and are never found, we just don't know. For us their existence simply stops.

If you think about all the things you've ever owned in your life and how much of it is no longer with you. Old toys, old clothes, old furniture. Things that once were so important to us are gone, usually to make way for something new. As I've gotten older I've made a point to try and give away things rather than throw away what I no longer have a need for. I'd like to believe that someone out there got a little bit more use out of it before finally having to pitch it into the garbage. I've talked about heirlooms before, which seem to fall into their own category of item, even if that classification would be hard to describe. What about older letters or old photos? At one point it was important enough to put pen to paper and record the thoughts of the moment. The moment is gone and all that remains are those words on some crumpled paper. If that paper is lost what happens to the thoughts that were associated with it? Are they both lost into that endless void where all lost things seem to go?

Maybe it's a little arrogant to think that just because we can't see something it doesn't exist anymore. Then again our reality is the only one we know so until proven otherwise we are bound by what we can interact with, so on some level it doesn't matter where it is if we can't perceive it. It's entirely possible that we're not meant to find certain things once they go missing. It's also possible that there are things in our lives that we're only meant to have for a short while before they move on to wherever they're headed. It's very much like the people who pass through our lives. They don't cease to be when they leave our lives. Maybe those inanimate objects that tumble from our grasp are off living a whole other life beyond us. I'd like to think that's possible.

Icicle

On Chaos

"You know the thing about chaos? It's fair." I was driving the other day and saw there was roadwork being done on the side of the road. There was a sign that said a flagman may be present to help direct traffic, but when I got there it was just three guys standing by the side of the road, looking up at the fourth man in the cherry picker doing whatever he needed to. They were standing to the side of the road and it was apparent they were banking on the assumption that no one would go out of their way to disrupt their work. In that moment it made me realize just how many different aspects of our lives are being gambled on. The gamble is that since the past has shown the situation to be safe that it will continue to be safe. That and most rational people aren't interested in throwing the world into chaos. With a simple jerk of the wheel I could have disrupted the quiet order of the world. Not just their world, but everyone associated would have been affected because when others heard about it, they would have realized safety is an illusion.

There are a lot of assumptions when it comes to the rules. We assume that for the most part that everyone is going to play along with the rules that society has set out. Only those on the fringes will disregard the laws. In a way there is an assumption there too. Drug dealers will deal drugs and eventually get into fights with other drug dealers or the cops. If you don't take or sell drugs then it's assumed that your world will never bump into that one. We hear about crime, but for the most part that's all it is, something we hear about. It's when it comes wandering into our backyard that we see the rules are only for those who choose to follow them. It's a strange thing to know that we even have rules of engagement when it comes to war. We'd like to believe that we're more civilized that those that came before us. It's alright to shoot this person, but not that person. They blew this up so we're allowed to respond by blowing up that. It's expected. It's how we're supposed to behave, assuming everyone is in agreement.

I think that is part of the thrill we get from post apocalyptic stories. It shows us a world where the rules have been thrown out. Society is only polite as long as the lights stay on and there is food on the table. In those stories people only worry about one thing and that's to survive, regardless of what's necessary to get through to tomorrow. You can feel guilty about it later, but they know that you have to be alive in order to feel anything. There are times in our lives when it seems like the rules are put in place to hold us back or keep us down. There are times too when we'd like nothing more than to rage against the system. The rational part of our mind may understand that it won't help anything in the long run, but the part of us that's still behaves like a three year old wants what we want and anything less deserves to get smashed into a million pieces as we stomp our feet in anger. Every day we go out into the world and live by the unspoken rules where we're not going to rock the boat so that everyone around us can continue to go about their lives without incident. It's when there is a complete disregard for those rules that really scares us. Could it be that the next time it's easier to continue that disregard? Or could it escalate into complete anarchy?

Stairs

On Being Ready

How do you know when you're ready? Ready for anything really. What does it take for you to finally get to a place mentally that feels like you're prepared? There are so many things in this world that are beyond our control. Things that seem to jump out at us when we least expect it. If you're reading this then you've managed to overcome those things whether you were ready for them or not. Sure there are things in our lives that we may hesitate in doing until everything is ideal, but all too often we don't have that luxury. In some cases we are at our best when situations are thrust upon us. We behave like a muscle being forced to lift a heavy weight. We must grow stronger to overcome. Being prepared may have allowed us time to assess the situation fully, but there are times when we simply have to act without a fully formed planned to refer back to. Could it be argued that some of the best things in our lives are those that are sprung on us?

There have been many opportunities in my life that I've let go by because I've talked myself out of being ready. I reminds me a bit of Casey at the Bat, where waiting for the ideal pitch just means you've left yourself with a single chance to succeed or fail. It makes me wonder though if my hesitation has lead me down the path of where I'm supposed to be. If I didn't feel ready for something does that mean I wasn't? It's possible if I had been forced to go forward not feeling 100% committed to the decision that I may have fallen on my face, but is that any worse than watching an opportunity sail by because you didn't want to swing at it? I suppose both could be considering failures in their own right.

As with many things, the picture becomes clear as we look back on it. Our decisions may seem irrational or erratic when we view them along with the eventual outcome of it all. Sometimes I think it would be better if we could know our future to some degree. To know that if you take Option A that things will turn out alright. You may not get the details of how you'll get there, but you know in the end that things will be fine. That kind of peace of mind would make decisions so much easier. It's obviously not an option though. That sense of not knowing can leave us paralyzed in such a way that it seems better to stay put, even if we know it's not what we want. A known bad situation is better than a potentially worse one. The chance for a reward doesn't justify the gamble. As we get older though we start to see all the miss opportunities. We see all the times that we could have taken that leap, but instead chose to be cautious. Being cautious isn't always a bad thing. It can lead to regret for a life not lived. Still the question remains: How do you know when you're ready? Do you wait for a sign? Do you prepare yourself as much as possible and when the time comes make that jump regardless of if things are perfect? Maybe there is a limit to the amount of readiness we can have for anything. After that we're just stalling. I guess it comes down to which you'd rather live with; an opportunity that has a chance of failure or a missed opportunity that means you can't possible fail, but you have no chance at success either?

Painted Dogwood

On the First Time

We put a lot of value on firsts. A child's first birthday. Our first love. Our first broken bone. The first job we get. The first time we lose a job. As we go through life it seems like our chances at firsts go down. That's not to say we're missing out on new experiences. Life is a constantly changing series of experiences, each of which is unique because we're different when they happen. So even the same event done a second or third time could almost be thought of as the first time because up until that moment it couldn't have taken place in that exact way until it did. The first time something happens to us it tends to leave a permanent impression on us though. In some cases the first becomes the standard in which others are judged. That can be both a gift and a curse since it's not always fair to compare what has happened with what could happen. Like with many first time sexual experiences they can be awkward, painful, and ultimately a poor indicator of how future experiences will be.

Many of us may still remember our first love. The ones between the first love and today's could be a jumbled mess of memories, but that first one will always be with us in some way. I think a good part of that is because our body and mind hadn't been exposed to that emotion up until that point. Never having experienced something like that before only makes it that much more intense. Combined with the fact that when we're young everything is already more intense. As with many things in life, that level of intensity can't be sustained for very long. Eventually it fades to more manageable levels and we'd like to think that with age and experience we're better suited to handle it as we get older. Try spending some time with someone who's just gotten into a relationship. If you're lucky you may get to talk to them in about six months when things cool down from be white hot to just smoldering. In a way that so-called honeymoon period is a chance to try and recapture that intensity we first felt years ago. As I mentioned, it's just not something that can be maintained and when it passes that's when we can start to see the other person with unclouded eyes. One could argue that's when the relationship really begins.

I've talked about the different kinds of friends we have in our lives. As children our standard for allowing someone to be our friend is much looser than it is when we're adults. Sure we may know a lot of people. We may have a ton of online "friends" who we know through various aspects of our lives, but how many people in your life are actual friends? I've moved around a lot in my life and I have different friends from different places in my life. As I've gotten older some of those friends are so engrained in my life that I can't really remember a time without them. Still there was a time for all of us when the people we call friend today were nothing more than strangers. I've come up with a name for a category of friend that many of us may not even think about. I call them The First People. When you move to a new town or start a new job you often don't know anyone there. The First People are the first ones that come into our lives. In a way we lower our defenses slightly to allow for new people. Think about it, when you're firmly established in a town or job how many new people do you let into your life? You may already have a group of friends so the desire to add someone else may be minimal at best. When we're alone in a new situation it's natural to look for someone to be a companion, even if that means accepting someone we may have overlooked had we been somewhere within our comfort zone. That's not meant to say that these First People are substandard in anyway. In fact it's just the opposite. These people are in our lives almost out of necessity. Because we need them we may be exposed to a different type of person than we're used to. This can be a good thing, especially since the older we get the fewer chances we may get at experiencing something new. These First People are somewhat unique because while they're late comers to our lives, they're also the first ones to be established within whatever new venture we're on.

As I mentioned at the beginning, we put great value on the first time something happens. Anniversaries are really just a yearly celebration of something's first time. It's entirely possible that many of our first experiences are when we get hardwired a certain way. So when we're young and it seems like there are firsts around every corner, we're essentially being shaped into the person we're going to become based on how those firsts turn out. If our first job is terrible then we may be inclined to think that work in general aren't going to be much fun. While it's possible for new experiences to come along and reshape our perception of how something could be, will we always be influenced by what came first? If that's the case should we strive to make each first the best or the worst so that anything that comes afterwards has a chance of living up to what came before it?

Purple Maze

Tangled Flowers

On the Disconnect

There seems to be two types of disconnect going on in today's world. As I've mentioned the world has become so interconnected in some ways that it's nearly impossible for us to do anything without someone else being involved. At the same time we may find ourselves disassociated from those people around us. It's not just the people either. The whole world around has become filtered in such a way that we've willingly disconnected various aspects for the sake of others. I've mentioned how the internet is full of information. There's so much of it that we create custom views of it, filtering out everything unwanted. We all do it. We pay attention only to what interests us. I've found myself going weeks or months without really knowing what's going on the in the world around me. Sure I could tell you about the latest video game developments or which movies are coming out, but I couldn't tell you why those people in Wisconsin were so upset or the impact of the natural disasters around the world. The ability to filter information means the potential for a complete disconnect goes up as time goes on.

Several years ago I moved to a new town for a job. I had never lived there before and only knew the person who recommended me for the job. The company had this policy that after six months of work you would be eligible to work from home one to two days a week. Since the position was a lot of talking on the phone with customers, it was the kind of work that could be done from really anywhere. When I heard about it I was very excited to get to the point where I could telecommute multiple days a week. The idea is great in theory. You save on time by not having to fight traffic either on the way to or from the office. You save money on the gas you would have used on that trip. There was the added benefit that it allowed you to create a better balance between your life and job so that you wouldn't feel shackled to your desk. It also could potentially save the company money on resources by not having an employee come into the office. Those are all good reasons to have a policy and as I said, in theory it's a very good idea all around.

Somewhere along the way the employees started to push past the two days and make it three days. There were even some people who lived far enough away that they were able to negotiate working from home permanently. This meant that in a given work week you would spend more time away from the office than you would spend in it. For many people this started off as a good thing. We each have our own lives to live. We have responsibilities and interests that go beyond what we do at our jobs. In fact for a lot of us our jobs are simply a means to generate income to support our life outside of work. For me it was a chance to keep people constantly at arm's length why maintaining the appearance of being a part of something. Now by the time they started going to three days a week I had been with the company for several years and had become established in what was once a new town. Even still I found myself drifting further away from people. It became easier to let myself be isolated by essentially hiding in my apartment. Now sure I still had to go into the office two days a week, but the way it worked out on the days that I came into the office others were spending their working from home. It got to the point that weeks could go by without really seeing certain people. There are some people who would love nothing more than to be on their own. They want to do their job and be left alone. Now these people may be personable outside of work, but it's such a slippery slope that disconnecting from one thing may trigger a disconnect from something else.

Our society is very individualistic, which in a lot of ways is a good thing. It has allowed certain people to achieve greatness because they are not hindered by the group. In other ways though it has created a society of trees, but not a forest. I once had to give a friend a ride to another friend's apartment. My friend made the comment that the apartment complex looked like honeycomb in a bee hive, which was an interesting analogy since he was saying it in the fact that each of us went into our little hole and was completely isolated from everyone, even the person next to us. It's true though that we maintain these invisible barriers around us. I lived in a single apartment complex for nearly six years and I couldn't tell you the name of any of the people who lived next door. Sure I had seen them coming and going. I'd said hi, but like them, I never went any further than that. Maybe a part of it is a fear of having someone so close to home that turns out to be unfriendly. So instead it's better to keep the people as an unknown quantity. From a strictly safety perspective I guess I can see its validity, but on the immediate flip side it meant you allowed yourself to be surrounded by strangers. In an emergency could you even ask the person standing next to you for help?

Even with all that self-imposed isolation from people we still find ourselves saying we need to disconnect for a little bit. We need time to be alone with ourselves or with only the people we really care about. It's not easy always being 'on' and having to maintain our outside persona. There are times when we need to just be ourselves. The version that doesn't have to be polite or considerate because we're alone. It also allows us to break away from the constant barrage of information that it coming at us. It's usually at this point that we put those filters back up. We reevaluate what we want in our lives and in some cases make a conscious effort to limit things even further. It's strange that for many of us the duration we can go outside in the world gets shorter and shorter even though we spend so much time trying to separate ourselves from everyone else. Maybe it's a perpetuating cycle, the more time we spend disconnected the easier it becomes to stay that way. If it stays that way then won't we all just be a bunch of strangers?

Spring Canopy

On Between the Raindrops

When we're young many of us believe that the world should be a certain way. As we get older we start to realize that our vision of this idealistic world doesn't always match up with how the world really is. Eventually given enough time we start to give in and accept the reality of how the world works. Sometimes we go even farther and come to expect the worst because our experiences haven't proven that it may be otherwise. While it's easy to become cynical and apathetic in this world, one has to wonder if doing so only helps perpetuate the problem. Sure seeing the world with the eyes of a cynic is a strangely protective way to operate. If the situation miraculously turns out better than we expected, then we're surprised, but we've invested nothing of ourselves and in that way wouldn't lose anything if the world lived down to our expectations. I've talked before about how reality tends to be somewhat dynamic and wholly based on our shared perception of the events around us. If that's true then wouldn't it stand to reason that a cynical person by their very nature is creating a cynical world around them? If reality is shared then those around cynicism can't help but be affected by it. Each of us influences the world around us. We are like pebbles dropped into a lake, the ripples we make eventually reach every part of the water.

Age can either soften or harden us. When I was younger I felt compelled to live by my ideals. Those who didn't share in them were something to rage against. So many aspects of my life turned into a battlefield as I fought to make sure that I didn't give in. The problem with that is that not everything needs to be a fight. It's not always true that if you're not with something that means you're against it, which may be contrary to what certain people would like you to believe. As I've gotten older I've found the intensity of my ideals has faded, but the ideals themselves are still there. With time it becomes easier to accept that the world doesn't always behave the way we'd like. Accepting that doesn't automatically mean you have to embrace that which goes against what you believe. This world is large and there can be a seemingly endless amount of things that we can't control. Even within ourselves there tends to be a certain level of chaos. With that there is still a piece of the world that we can control, which is our reaction to it all.

Some people never lose their ideals. They never become cynical, even in the face of overwhelming opposition. They go through life with that wide-eyed sense of wonder that seems reserved only for young children. They're often mistaken for being naive because how can anyone who's spent more than five minutes in this world not be jaded? Our past is always with us even though we do our best to stay at least one step ahead of it. For some of us the past weighs us down and makes it next to impossible to move forward without constantly looking back at what just happened and assuming it will be what will happen. It's easy to fall into that trap, but today does not equal tomorrow. Some people are able to move through this world without being brought down by it. The past is something that has happened. It's something that is to be learned from, but that's all it is. While most of us carry around baggage from throughout our lives, they tend to travel light. That's not to say they aren't affected by the world around them. It's just that they realize there is a finite amount of energy each of us is given. Why waste it on something that can't be changed? We've all met these kind of people before. They seem to be almost blessed in life. Is that because the universe favors them more? Or is it because if each of us creates our own version of reality they choose to create the best possible version? Now there are no delusions about the way the world works sometimes. There will be times when it seems like everything is working against you and the only thing you can hope to do is keep your head down and keep trudging forward. It's when we make it through those moments and onto the other side that we're in charge of how we move beyond it. It's our choice if we want to contribute to an already cynical world that seems intent on beating us down or if we want to work for something better.

Jungle Fire

Coastal Storm

On Need to Know

Do you know how a CD works? Even if you know how it works is it something you think you could make by yourself? Try something even simpler. Do you know how you would make a pencil? Or how to make the paper to write on if you managed to figure out the pencil?

Our society and most of the world in general has become very interdependent on each other. It's a strange dichotomy that our society is so individualistic and yet we're totally reliant on everyone around us for nearly everything. Each of us has knowledge, but it seems to be isolated to specifically what we need to do for our individual lives. We know our jobs. We know our role and where we fit. We know this because that's all we need to know. Sure some of us may know how to program a computer and build a house. We may know pieces and parts to various things outside our need-to-know lives, but look at all the aspects of modern life and you can see how many holes there are in our knowledge. It's not exactly a bad thing either because not needing to know everything means we're allowed to fill our minds and our time with non-essential things like sports and art. Maybe it's the fact that we stopped requiring each of us to know everything that goes into surviving that we've progressed as far as we have. The theoretical physicist shouldn't have to worry about where her organic bananas come from when she goes to the grocery store. The banana farmer doesn't need to think about the complex computer code that goes into the banking software that tracks his family's finances.

I wonder when it all started. At what point did man start breaking up certain tasks to specific individuals? I would imagine as the groups of people got larger the more granular the tasks became until it got to a point where some people never knew exactly what the others were doing. In fact it's gotten to where we hardly know what kind of effort is put into keeping our society running. So much so that we take it for granted that things will just continue working because someone somewhere is taking care of it. They do their part while we do ours. With that there sometimes comes the assumption that what someone else does must not be that hard to do. How many times have you found yourself sarcastically asking "How hard is it to do this job?" when the power goes out or when something stops working? Just remember before you ask that question know that when something stops working that you're responsible for there may be someone asking the same thing about you.

Some of us may never experience that need to know more than our little part of the puzzle. We hope that things will continue on as they have been, with people knowing what they want to know. Part of me wonders though if we're not due for a reversal where our knowledge isn't so compartmentalized. If that were to happen could you rely on yourself to catch your own food? Could you sew your own clothes? More to the point, is the knowledge you currently have enough to help you beyond your own specific life?

White Flowers

On Stopping

How often do you notice when you stop doing something? Sure sometimes it may be very apparent and even a conscious effort to discontinue something, but in a lot of cases it's not so overly abrupt. In fact sometimes we don't even know that we've stopped something until we force ourselves to think about it. Life may be a bunch of stops and starts, some of which are harder to do than others.

It's been said that it can take anywhere from three weeks to two months to firmly develop a habit. Of course those habits of ours that we dislike feel like they're easier to pick up in a shorter amount of time. The ones we're focused on though may feel like an uphill battle. Think about all the diets or workout plans that never stuck. In the beginning we're determined to make the change. We're conscious of our need to do something and make the effort to implement it. For many of us that focus starts to drift before too long. Without constant diligence we don't even realize we've stopped trying to form a new habit and have gone back to the old behavior.

Starting may be the uphill battle in some cases. Stopping can sometimes be more of a downhill thing. I've talked about all the various people in our lives and how only a very small fraction of them are still in our lives today. We may remember we met someone because it was the start of something. How often do we remember when we stopped knowing someone? There are situations which physically pull people away from each other, but with life there are times when there doesn't need to be any more of a barrier than a forgotten phone call. We may notice that we missed a phone call or a gathering and feel bad the first time. The more times we let it happen though, the easier it becomes to keep letting it happen. The next thing we know it's been six months since you've spoken and you find yourself realizing that overall your life has hardly been affected.

It makes me wonder if we all have a sort of default behavior built into us? If left to our own devices would we simply go back to a baseline set of habits that are essentially hardwired into our minds and bodies? If we are taken from our natural environment for an extended period of time we are forced to stop doing certain things because they're simply not an option. We as a species can be very adaptable. What happens though when we return back to our natural environment? Do we go back to what we used to do? One might think we are bound by that old saying "Out of sight. Out of mind" How much of the things we do would we simply stop doing if we didn't somehow feel they were required or didn't know life could go on without them? Does that mean would could stop anything at anytime?

Fern Forest

On Games

Is life one giant game? We'd like to believe that life is much more serious than some activity we play for entertainment, but if you think about it, life is a lot more like a game than we'd probably want to admit. Look at our day to day lives. We are held in check by a certain set of rules, which at times may seem arbitrary. Or there could be situations where it seems as though there are those who are cheating and managing to gain an unfair advantage. Are the games we play just methods used to prepare us for the real thing? They teach us about following the rules. They show us how to work together towards a common goal. They also let us see other strategies that we may have not thought of before, which forces us to adapt if we want to succeed.

I love all kinds of games. Video games, board games, even mind games are all endless fascinating to me. For as long as I can remember I've been the kind of person who is more concerned with having fun when it comes to a game rather than winning. Some people just can't wrap their head around that idea. If they're going to do something, then they have to be the best at it. They have to win, otherwise what's the point of playing? I suppose I can sort of understand it, but it's just never been something I've concerned myself with too much. If you don't have fun playing then doesn't that defeat the purpose of the game?

Of course I have a feeling that the people who must win at even a simple game also think of life as an elaborate game where they are keeping score against everyone else. While I think it's true that we're all playing the game of life, it becomes fairly obvious very quickly that we're all not playing the same exact version. Take the person next to you and try to compare yourself to them. On the surface you may see things that you can easily compare. How much money they make. How big is their house. How good they look. For some people that is the only criteria needed to believe their "score" is higher than someone else. So for their set of game rules they are the winner or at least winning. The thing is that it's next to impossible to truly compare yourself to someone else in all the ways that matter because different things matter to different people. The nuances of life tend to be so complex that it's hard to do a straight comparison of two lives. Even if we know that in our heads, it's still hard to not compare ourselves to those around us. At the very least we want to confirm that what we're doing is somewhat on track. Otherwise we look back and find out that we've been playing Candyland while everyone else has been playing Chess.

For all my love of games, I don't actually like playing games when it comes to life. Some people enjoy going through life with a strategy where it's them versus everyone else. They treat the world around them as the board and everyone is some form of opponent. You've probably met people like this. They're the ones who hoard their knowledge, afraid that if they share it they won't be in the lead anymore. They are constantly jockeying for power, be it in business, sex, or otherwise. If they don't always have the upper hand then they are in a fight to get it. I'm fine with competition. Without it we have a tendency to stagnate. Competition is what forces us to be better. In that way competition can be healthy for both sides. There are times though when it seems that the competition becomes more important than the end result. It's at that point when people stop caring about being better and only care about winning through any means necessary. You've probably met these people as well. They're the ones who can't open their mouths without twisting things to suit their purpose. As I've gotten older my patience with insinuations and double speak has lowered. I'm a very simple person when it comes to communication. Say what you mean. Say what you want. Be direct if you want direction. If life is a game then aren't we the only player? There will be those who help us and those who hurt us. There will be those that join our team and those who are put in our way for us to overcome. Everyone is playing their own game and we each have our own definitions of winning. The game ends the same way for everyone though. We remove our piece from the board and our score no longer matters, at least not to us because we've moved onto a different game.

White Tree

Coastal Painting

On Boredom

It was once said that if you find yourself bored then maybe it's you who are boring and not the situation. While that may be true some of the time, I'm not sure I completely agree with it. There are going to be times when the world seems mundane. We've all had those situations where nothing seems to hold our interest and to make things worse, nothing seems interesting enough to pursue. So it becomes this self-perpetuating cycle. Now it could be at that particular moment there is nothing happening that can hold our attention. Maybe it's just a passing lull in events and given enough time, like most things, it will pass. There are times though when it's possible there is something else going on.

It can be a strange feeling to be bored. To an outside observer it may seem strange that a person could be bored in a particular situation. We surround ourselves with various pieces of stimulation and entertainment. No matter how exciting something may be, there may eventually come a time when it doesn't hold the same value as it used to. A hundred channels on television and nothing is on. A thousand songs and none of them are anything that needs to be heard again. It even happens with food, where you know you're hungry, but nothing actually sounds good enough to actually eat. In those situations we tend to just settle for something in order to get past it. We eat a piece of chicken. We play the album we've heard a dozen times. We turn to the channel with something well known.

I've noticed that boredom has a strange way of sneaking up on you. Everything may seem fine before and after boredom takes hold. You're sitting around trying to think of what you want to do and it hits you that nothing sounds good. Today's society seems to be so fast paced that our time has gotten to be even more precious. The day can be broken up into thirds and we really only get one of them to do what we want. That's our time, even if it gets sliced up before we can even say "freedom". Strangely enough though our tiny bit of time isn't always used in the best possible way. We find ourselves watching television or surfing the web for almost mindless things to hold our attention. All this is done until it's time to go to sleep and start the day over again. When was the last time you sat in a room without any external stimulation? No television, internet, music, or even written words. It's hard to do because there seems to be a steady stream of information being thrown at us all the time. We've gotten to a point where it's next to impossible to go without something else invading our thoughts.

Going back to the original statement, maybe it's not just the situation that's boring, but in fact ourselves. What if there are times when our brains require that we don't acknowledge outside stimulation? Every night we're essentially required to shut down our brains so that we can rest and refresh. While we're sleeping our mind is busy sorting through various thoughts without us. What if some of our boredom stems from this strange bit of mental limbo where our brain is trying to go through a period of rest, but we just happen to be awake while it's in progress? In that situation it doesn't matter what we try and do because our mind is attempting to do something that can only be accomplished in isolation. If that's the case then maybe boredom comes in two different flavors. One that comes from an outside situation that lacks the ability to hold our attention. And another that comes from within that is really our mind trying to be at rest. The next time you're bored maybe there is a reason for it.

Sky Painting

Words Fail Me

I need a word that describes when you've been thinking about a song all day and it suddenly starts playing randomly somewhere for you.

Dying Light

On the Whole Story

The internet can be a wonderful thing. There is so much information out there that at times it can be overwhelming. The sheer amount of information can often trick us into believing that it's more complete than it really is. Many of us use the internet as our main source. Our search to an answer may begin and end with a few keystrokes into our favorite search engine. There will be several times when what you find is the answer to your question, but is it the whole story? The world is moving so fast and information has become just another commodity so we take what we can get while we can get it and move on towards the next thing. We tend to forget that the internet isn't the alpha and omega as far as information is concerned. It's just another piece of it.

For all the millions of webpages out there that hold the minute details on seemingly any subject, there are millions more that just don't exist. Your favorite show as a child may have a dozen fan sites. That little-known painter has several blogs being written about their work. It seems that no matter how obscure something is, there is a webpage dedicated to it where someone believes it to be the most underrated thing in existence. The thing is though that no matter how detailed a website may be, there will always be pieces missing. No single location has all the information, regardless of the claims that websites like to make. The reason for this is simple. There are just sometimes that haven't been translated to the digital age.

I was at a used bookstore recently and there was a note on one of the shelves that stated ninety percent of all the books that have been written are no longer in print. In 2008 there were around 550,000 books published. Now ten percent of those still being in print is a large number, but it's obviously a small fraction of what was once available. The internet is able to keep information on those books that have long since been out of print, however, it's clear that not every book ever published in getting its own webpage. As the years go by it becomes more difficult to gather that information in the first place because the source is harder to find. Eventually the book written in 1984 that had a small publishing run will become all but forgotten except by those who had a part in it. For the rest of us it's as though it never existed. That small gap in knowledge may seem insignificant at first glance, but what if that book had the information you were looking for? What if it clarified an answer you had already found somewhere else? That's just a single book written in a single year that was overlooked. Think about what other holes are out there that the internet hasn't gotten around to filling because people simply don't know about them.

When I was young the internet was still a new idea so when I was in school and we had to research a topic it meant going to the library. You would look up every book or article on whatever you happened to be researching and used it as the basis for your project. Today you may be lucky enough to type something in and have a dedicated Wikipedia article written about it, complete with sources that most of us don't bother to check. In you look really hard you may even find the subject of your paper already written out in a way that requires very little work on your part. Strangely enough the differences between going to your local library and using the internet are small. There is a basic assumption that the information you're getting is both correct and complete. Using the internet as the sole source is the same as using your local library as singular place to get your information. While they both may be full of useful knowledge, it's hard to know what you're missing. The library may just be too small to hold all the books you'd need. Or the internet article you found may have been written by someone who only had access to their local library. Or the writer used the internet as their sole source and distilled down already watered down information even further. Using just the internet as the primary source is no different than going to the local library and figuring every book needed is within its walls.

True research is probably hard and time consuming. Reading every book. Viewing every internet page. Digging up dissertations and unpublished papers. Finding the book that has been out of print for decades. Talking to someone who has first or second hand knowledge of whatever you're looking for. All of these help to fill in the gaps, but there may always be that little bit of lingering doubt that something is missing. How can you ever know that you have the whole story unless you were there?