Me, Gramps, Brooklyn, and the boundaries of family and place

One of the things I learned, living in Mississippi during the late 90s, was the importance of a sense of place. As humans, we need to belong. But to what do we belong--a family, tribe, nationality, race, or something bigger?

When a native Mississippian asked, "Where are you from?," he didn't mean "Where have you most recently lived?" He didn't even mean, "Where were you born?" He meant, "What town are your ancestors from?"

Their sense of place blew me away, but it also resonated with me. I grew up in the woods and hills of a small town called Brooklyn, Connecticut, tucked into the northeast corner of the tiny state, right in the heart of "Swamp Yankee" country. As far as I knew, that was my nationality--Swamp Yankee, because that's what my grandpa Green always said when we asked him what nationality we were.

He had grown up in Canterbury, a town just south of us, and moved to Brooklyn as a young newly-wed. He cleared the pines on this hill in big valley of the Quinebaug River, and started raising dairy cows on its sandy glacial soil. His love of the land was so much a part of him that he spent most of his free time, after he retired from a career in politics, working it, clearing it, and tending it. He dug a big pond out back, the one that Long Brook runs through and locals fish in.

But back then it was a rough start for he and my grandmother. Stories tell of the two of them driving a car without a wind shield and sawing wood in their living room in order to make ends meet in the early days. I have often imagined grandma in her kitchen, after her morning milking duties, serving up what she called "flap jacks" to a crew of a dozen or more children, farm hands, and foster kids. It's easy to imagine, because she did the same for us, my dozen or so cousins, brother, sisters and me, later on.

Grandma and Grandpa came from a very different time. A great aunt on Grandpa's side, who hunted and cut wood well into her 70s, told me stories of growing up on that Canterbury farm. She told me how my ancestors made  apple liquor called "rot gut," in their still, steam billowing out the door of the shed. They hid the bottles behind the seat of the car in order to deliver it to a local funeral home, where it was sold in secret during the days of the Prohibition.

This is where I'm from, and it became a part of me as I grew up and worked weekends and afternoons for the family business. The dairy had morphed into a construction business that thrived for decades, and I spent my childhood digging trenches, sweeping floors, spreading loam, planting grass, and washing trucks. I can still here my grandfather saying, "If you're gonna do something, do it right," and I can still see him inspecting his car after I washed it, in his old, worn shoes and work shirt. I have him and my dad and uncles to thank for the work ethic that is rooted so deeply into my bones.

This place and these people became a part of me as I spent holidays with so many aunts, uncles, and cousins I have trouble counting them, shooting dart guns at each other, playing tag, sledding, riding snowmobiles, Big Wheels and bikes.

It became ingrained in my soul as I walked in the woods every day, setting crude animal traps, building shelters, making pine tea, camping, dipping my hands into sand springs and soaking up the earth and life around me.

It all became such a part of me that I could never separate myself from it for long. I identified so strongly with it that it always pulled me back. After spending 5 years away in graduate school, I felt that magnetism again and returned for good in 1998, dragging my patient wife back here with me. I'm glad she hasn't felt as strong a pull as I have toward her place in central Illinois and her memories of walking beans, raising sheep, and helping with the corn harvest.

Our kids were young when I was at college in Illinois and Mississippi, and my daughter's cute little southern accent didn't last long after we returned north. Now, I think, this place is almost as much a part of them as it is of me. It's been such a privilege to be able to raise them with this kind of stability.

I wonder what it would be like not to have this sense of place--this physical identity with the land and people. It seems very primal and natural--a close-knit people tied to a place with it's plants, soils and geology. I'm grateful for it, and that I could raise my kids with it.

But I know I'm lucky. I know there are millions born into millions of little Hells-on-earth, and I was lucky enough to be born into a little Eden. I just started listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me. My childhood was far from perfect and painless, but it was heaven compared with his, and there are millions who make his look like a paradise. For them, their sense of place, the culture of their childhood is more a source of pain and poison than security and strength.

And then I wonder what will happen as more and more people are displaced, living increasingly mobile lives, increasingly removed from family and homeland. Can we replace physical places with digital ones and biological families with virtual ones?

Or will it just mean adjusting to the reality that we are all family, and that the whole earth is our home? Because, after all, that's the truth. Being human means belonging to something bigger than yourself--the whole human race and the whole earth. I love what Neil deGrasse Tyson said in an interview a little while ago:

"We are all genetically related, every human being. Any two humans on Earth have a common ancestor if you go back far enough in the family tree. So the fact that you draw a circle this big around family and say 'That's my family and outside the circle it's not'--that's an arbitrary circle. That's biologically arbitrary. You've decided for yourself that inside the circle's my family, outside it's not, when we have genetic links among all human beings."

I wonder what the world would be like if we could all draw our circles larger? What if I could develop the same attachment, the same sense of identity with the whole Earth and human race that I have with my family and place here in Brooklyn?

I may have been born into a family of Swamp Yankees in the Quinebaug Valley, but I could just as easily have been born in the ghetto or worse. And more than that, this circle of family really is arbitrary, as are these boundaries of town and state and country. I really am related to everyone, and I really don't belong to this piece of land any more than any other.


I picked up pieces of Illinois and Mississipi along the way, and 15 years as a teacher in Mansfield has changed me more than I could have imagined. I am a work in progress, an amalgam of every person and place I've spent significant time with, worked with, related to. Our lives are intertwined.

It's exciting to think of the potential for absorbing pieces of other places and peoples, broadening our "circles." That's what I liked so much about Ramez Naam's awesome book, Nexus, in which he envisioned a drug that could connect people's minds, breaking down the ultimate barrier between people.

As important as family and village and tribe are, we need to somehow move those boundaries and circles out until they encompass it all. Though I am thankful for all my ancestors and homeland instilled in me, I am a citizen of Earth and a member of the human family.

That's also where I'm from.

Dealing with the human race's bad decisions

Did you ever make a decision that you regretted later, but could not undo?

I'm guessing we all have, and at that point we have to just adapt. It's no useshould-coulda-woulda-ing our way into depression. Time to accept the things we cannot change, as the old prayer says.

The more I study the history of our species, the more I am starting to feel like humanity made one of these bad decisions a long time ago--actually, a series of bad decisions that stretch right into the present.

And it all started with agriculture, a "decision" that Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel has called "The worst mistake in the history of the human race." It was the first step in a long series of unfortunate and irreversible events that have brought us far from our evolutionary heritage and left us out of sync with human nature.

For one thing, we are not well adapted to the high carbohydrate diet that agriculture introduced. And according to Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, authors of Sex at Dawn, the agricultural revolution led to fundamental shifts in the way we live and relate to each other. Hunter-gather societies are almost exclusively communal and egalitarian, and agriculture led to private property, which had ripple effects even into our sex lives (women as property, for example).

And the industrial revolution was the agricultural revolution on steroids. And now we find ourselves sedentary, isolated, stressed-out, war-like, competitive and possessive workaholics while our genes are better suited to an active yet relaxed communal existence.

And it's not like we can just turn back the clock and start over. Like a species of bird that finds itself blown to a new island without familiar food, we must adapt or die. Or in our case, adapt or die of stress-induced cariovascular disease or diet induced cancer.

We can either change ourselves (and this isn't possible--yet) or we change our circumstances to better fit our genes. A better fit is what I'm shooting for. Ideally, not some boring compromise, but a new, out-of-the-box, ideas-having-sex strategy for living that gets the primal/ancestral gene thing going in the modern world. I'll keep you posted.

Whadda you wanna do with your life?

"I wanna rock."

That's what the kid in the Twisted Sister video said after the teacher screamed at him, "Whadda you wanna do with your life?." I wonder how many former 80's teens followed through with that "rocking" plan. Though I think there are a few musicians among us, most of my fellow Ellis Tech High School graduates became stonemasons, carpenters, auto mechanics, salesmen, computer engineers, and a I'm teacher. So what happened to our big dreams or rocking and rolling?

But I'm serious about the big dreams. Not that I care about being a rock star, but what if the Twisted Sister dream was just about having fun & enjoying life? What if it was about seeing our parents trapped in a boring rat race of work and hoping there was something more?

While I wouldn't go so far as to write "I wanna rock!" as my life's goal, I'm more hesitant these days to try to focus myself, my students and my children on goals that emphasize achievement or security and some ever retreating-into-the-distance-like-that-door-at-the-end-of-the-hallway-in-Poltergeist goal of "success."


One of my favorite songs at the Steve Aoki concert earlier this month was Back to Earth with Fall Out Boy. I love the chorus: "Are you living your life or just waiting to die?"

Maybe it's because I'm approaching middle-age that I'm wondering about all of this, trying to practice more mindfulness, flow, and find some balance between ambition and contentment. But in any case, I've been thinking that balance should have a bit more rocking and rolling than I've been tending to include.


Not that achievement can't be rocking. It certainly can, but what I'm shooting for here is not losing sight of the real end goal--a fulfilling life, and not letting it get cluttered up and clouded with confusing-the-end-with-the-means and missing out on what's really important because I was chasing what some ad or cultural norm or inner compulsion said I should. Achievement is great, as long as it's meaningful to you.

What I'm going for here is a better fit. A better fit between my life and what it means to be human. :-)

And I'm pretty sure having fun is part of that.

Our intertwined lives

So how about a little balance to that last post about being who I am?

Because who I am has a lot to do with the relationships I've been a part of for the past few decades. And those relationships have put down roots into my own life, my own mind, and my personality.

So to imagine that who I am is somehow separate from them is a big mistake.

We are, after all, eminently social beings, perhaps only out-socialized by the ants, bees, wasps, and termites. According to Christopher Ryan, it's possible that our big brains, which many seem to think our most distiguishing characteristic, are only a consequence of our hypersociality. He goes so far as to say that our closest relative, in terms of behavior, is the bonobo, an ape known for its intensely interwoven, egalitarian communities.

And I think I've often overlooked the implications of this. While I've often seen how an individual ant or bee doesn't have much identity apart from the hive, I miss the extent to which our lives are interwoven with those we interact with.

And I doubt we can really be happy with an overly individualistic approach to the pursuit of happiness.

In short, while I'll stand by the goal of integrity, transparency, and being true to myself, I prefer my earlier approach: 

THIS is a goal worth striving for. A better match, a better fit between the world and us.

In other words, our goal has to be to help move us all forward towards greater integrity as humans, not trying to be someone entirely self-defined. I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to say, but that's OK. Suffice it to say, we is at least as important than I, because they're intertwined.

On being myself

Integrity.

The word gets thrown out a lot, and probably means different things almost every time, so I may as well add my definition.

To me, it's about being true to yourself. It's the antonym of hypocrisy.

And it's really hard.

It's hard because there are so many pressures and forces trying to shape us into their mold: other peoples demands, expectations, and imaginations, a whole slough of rules and regulations, traditions and social mores, and our own notions of what we are supposed to be and do.

And some of them seem good--like what we're supposed to do, supposed to be. And some of the people are really important to us. And we so want to be accepted and important to others.

And the path of least resistance is to take on the shape they want us to.

And maybe this is OK sometimes.

But I think it's usually just painful. It usually just holds us down--makes us into something we really don't want to be, a shape we really just don't fit.

In a previous post, I decided this was a worthy goal: A better match, a better fit between the world and us. 

Here, I'll make it a bit more personal: A better fit between me and what I really am.

The Mary Poppins principle

I've been resisting this, but I can escape it's necessity.

I felt like it was giving into boredom, shirking my responsibility to myself to enjoy every moment to the fullest extent possible. I preferred the two options that would enable me to bypass boredom altogether.

But I have this nagging feeling that the coin of hedonism has two sides: enjoying every moment and enjoying as many moments as possible.

Problem is, that flip side--enjoying as many moments as possible, sometimes seems push us toward doing boring things. Sometimes we can't just not do it (Option 1) or even transform it into something interesting (Option 2).

In other words, I am open to the possibility that some tasks that are irrereparably boring are also unavoidable, given the goal of maximizing our long-term enjoyment of life.

But let's not take this too far.

For one thing, I may be wrong: I'm still not convinced Options 1 and 2 can't handle everything.

And secondly, I think Options 1 and 2 are by far the best choice.

But as a last resort, break this glass.

It's called the Mary Poppins Principle (Option 3, for short).

And it's simple: a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

Frankly, I'm a bit concerned that this was the whole theme of my life strategy not long ago. (And I was actually pretty proud of that post, too.)

But my current thinking is this: that strategy is, at best, a bit of a band aid. At worst, it's a waste of precious time.

But if you must use it in an emergency, here's how it works: do the boring task, 50 minutes a at a time with 10 minute breaks, and do it while enjoying something else. That doesn't mean multitasking, it means enjoying your favorite music, food, or beverage (or location--doing work at a picnic table in a park, for example) while completing the boring task.

Voilà. The medicine goes down.

But next time, how about this? Reorder your life to fit better with human nature. Order your life so you don't need the medicine.

A better fit between humanity and the modern world

There are several things about the modern world that do not seem to fit well with the biological and psychological make-up we have inherited from our ancestors, and this leads to a dilemma.

For one, the advent of agricultural and large scale grain production led to a diet that is dominated by carbohydrates, and there are some (including myself) who believe that we're really not built for this kind of diet. (I switched to a primal-paleo diet more than two years ago, and it has made a huge difference in my health and well-being.)

And this is about more than just diet. There are many incongruencies between modern life and the lives under which our bodies and minds evolved. Take exercise, for example, diurnal sleep cycles, and the structure of leisure time. And some even point to major incongruities in sexual norms as a source of modern discord.

All of this highlights that same tension I've wrestled with in these posts before: the tension between contentment and improvement, between primitive simplicity and the worries of the complex, modern world, between getting back to our ancestral roots and expanding our horizons through technology. (I sometimes wonder if it comes down to choosing between quality of life and longevity, but that's a discussion for another time.)

The point is, it's easy to see how we might well be happier, at least in some ways, if life were simpler and more attuned with our evolutionary environment. It's easy to see how the complexities of modern life, education, and employment, the busyness, the countless potential threats to keep track of, and the barrage of distractions and information are all causes of trouble.

And it's easy to see how our ancestors probably got lots more exercise, were better attuned to their bodies natural rhythms and in general, were better attuned to the social rhythms of their tribe, and generally lived lives more suited to human nature.

But it's also easy to see the advantages of the modern world. Medicine tops the list for me, but I also appreciate heat, bedding, a stable food supply, electricity, modern transportation, and the internet.

And then there's the fact that, were it not for modern technology and science, we would not know our ancestral heritage in the first place.

And of course, the development of modern technology was probably inevitable.


But still, I have to wonder, do we have to choose between the two? Do we have to sacrifice optimal conditions for humans in order to embrace technological advance?

It's almost as if, through the process of evolution and technological development, our species finally woke up and become self aware, but not until after it put itself into a rather difficult situation, and now the question is what to do about it.

We can't very well go back. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyiput put it near the end of his classic book on the psychology of optimal experience:

"Few would argue that a simpler consciousness, no matter how harmonious, is preferable to a more complex one. While we might admire the serenity of the lion in repose, the tribesman's untroubled acceptance of his fate, or a child's wholehearted involvement in the present, they cannot offer a model for resolving our predicament. The order based on innocence is now beyond our grasp. Once the fruit is plucked from the tree of knowledge, the way back to Eden is barred forever."

So what's an exile to do? 

What if, through science and technology and her own ingenuity, humanity was able to solve this problem, as she has done so many problems in the past, and find a way to tailor all of this modern complexity to her own ancestral nature? Or maybe she could change her own nature to fit the technology: Hack the world or hack human nature. Neither is out of reach.

And either way, THIS is a goal worth striving for. A better match, a better fit between the world and us.

Life's too short for boring tasks

Sometimes a task looms so boring in my mind that I simply can't bring myself to do it.

This often stresses me out, because I feel like it's something I have to do and I can't get it done, and I guess deep down I fear something bad is going to happen as a result, like one of those dreams where something's trying to get me and I can't move or open my eyes.

But guess what, Bill? That's not happening.

In fact, that's exactly the point. This task looms so boringly in front of you exactly because it is exactly NOT a lion trying to get you. In fact, it is just the opposite of anything that meaningful or important. That's what boring means.

So, what's a person to do when faced with/weighed down with/bullied by boredom?

The wise words of Rosie from Never Cry Wolf may have the answer for us. As their plane sputters in flight somewhere over Alaska, Rosie has this little discussion with Tyler about boredom:

"How do you beat boredom, Tyler?

Adventure.

Adventure, Tyler."

And Tyler's words at the end of the movie are even better:

"I wonder why it was that long ago I became a watcher of things. Always watching others do and feel things I wouldn’t or couldn’t do myself. Always standing off at a distance, isolated, detached. I envy the wolves for how they experience the world. Always in such direct contact with their environment, travelling through their territories, alert and attuned to all the signs coming in through their senses, telling them where a rabbit recently passed or the sweet water lay, revealing a whole universe to them that we can never really know. But I sit behind glass lenses, filling up notebooks and triplicate forms…"

Tyler's answer: Engagement. Immersion in the grittiness of life. Mindfulness.

So this oppressive task that's stalking me--these "triplicate forms"? There are two things I can do with them:

1) Not do them. Go snowshoeing instead: Drink in the wind and blowing snow and feel the snow give way beneath your feet. Do something fun, challenging, real, even if it means the "forms" don't get done, because life's just too short. But triplicate forms are necessary if you want to live an enjoyable life in the future, aren't they? Hmmm... but what if the future is now? (And what if a future that requires forms means a future filled with forms? Hint: It does.)

2) Transform the boring task to make it a challenging, flow-generating experience, make the forms into a work of art, or a game. Make that boring essay into something that interests me.

So, what will it be, Bill? Will you be a watcher of things, a filler of forms, a slave to the boredom bogeyman, or will choose to actually live instead?

Still analog after all these years

As a tech junkie, it's sometimes hard for me to admit that the technology is just not there yet to totally replace the real world. 

Don't get me wrong, the day may come, and it may even be soon, when computers can do pretty much everything we can do, and better (watch this short video about algorithms that can author blog posts).

And though I very much enjoy the real, physical, dirt, sweat (and snow) world, I must say I feel like reality leaves plenty of room for improvement. I wouldn't mind being able to adjust certain settings on my brain at certain times, for example (and then there are things like cancer...).

But though we're progressing at breakneck speed, we don't want to embrace tech for tech's sake. For one thing, history is strewn with examples of humanity biting off more technology than it (or the environment) can chew at the time. And though I love the internet and mobile tech, we don't fully understand the potential impacts on our brains.

But that's not my main point. I'm willing to take a few risks for the sake of the advantages of early adoption. I'm more concerned about the practicalities. 

Case in point: Bullet Journal.

I'm a planner/to-do-list type, and was never able to find an app that could do everything I needed (though I love Google Calendar). Then I found Bullet Journal. Only it's not an app--it's a paper-based system designed by an art director named Ryder Carroll. And it's awesome. Even as a tech addict, I'm not ashamed to say I use a paper planner and journal when it's a brilliantly elegant system like this. The computer-based technology is simply not there yet. It hasn't reached the multi-faceted flexibility of this analog system.

And of course there are countless similar examples, most of which are much more significant than planners: Real human relationships, for example. They are still analog, of course, and I imagine it will be a while before they are replaced by a 100% digital version. And it will be a while before there's a digital replacement for hiking the Great Gulf Wilderness.

The problem comes when we try to jump the gun, when we think the tech is there and it's not, or when we jump in without looking first, or when we adopt without understanding the consequences, or are caught off guard. Social media are an awesome way to increase our connections with others, for example, but they easily become a distracting or addictive. Google is an awesome resource, but it can lull us into intellectual laziness if we're not careful.

The answer is not a Luddite knee-jerk rejection of tech, but nor is it blind immersion. It's about intentional and careful experimentation and thoughtful adoption. And patience. And for techies like me, willingness to admit that sometimes (often times?) the pen and paper, flesh-and-bones, or face-to-face method is still better. 

The question is, what's really the best way to do what we need (or want) to do.

Drawing without an eraser

On a Twitter chat (#satchat) this morning, a friend (@ShiftParadigm)
posted this powerful pic that summed up so much of what I've been thinking and feeling lately.

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser."

Every moment is a new beginning, but we have to work with what all of the previous moments have produced for us. Every moment is a new opportunity to make something beautiful and awesome out of the my past.

Sometimes I wish I had that eraser.

But then again, it's more of a challenge this way. And maybe there's a special beauty to this kind of art.

It means facing the brutal facts, yet moving forward with faith and optimism. I don't deny my mistakes, but I use them as the foundation for my future successes. I don't deny what is ugly or wrong in my past, but I transform it into power and beauty.

Relationships, decisions, events, bad and good become the raw material. My decision, now, determine what the next stage will look like.

Like a story that's being written while you're writing. Each day a new chapter..

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

Proof it's not all about me?

Did you think this was all about you?

If some evolutionary biologists are correct, the simple fact that you are aging is evidence to the contrary.

I caught this blog post from Josh Mittledorf yesterday. He explains his view that the aging process itself evolved as a mechanism for shutting our bodies down after we got past reproductive age:

"Diseases of aging have been treated as if they were something that goes wrong, something we have to help the body to fix. But in fact, the evidence accumulating in recent decades is that aging is not something that goes wrong, and the body is not trying to fix it. Aging is natural. It is the body shutting itself down, putting itself out of the way after it has done its job, finished reproduction."

This makes sense. It's kind of like the leaves falling off an oak tree every fall--senescence, a kind of hard-wired altruism.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that humans would be driven by two primal motivations: reproduction and sustenance of our offspring (and by extension, society, and that means we are all motivated by compassion and love). If Mittledorf and others are right (and their views are controversial), that just lends more with to the concept that we reall are not here for ourselves.

I have two things to say at this point:

1. This shut-down mechanism seems to be a bit, shall we say, outdated at this point in time, which is why I'm totally OK with treating it as something that needs to be fixed. As I mentioned in my last post, older folks have a lot to offer.

2. #1 raises a question about Mittledorf's theory: Why wouldn't it be beneficial to have a bunch of healthy, more experienced, wiser individuals around to support their offspring? Why not skip this whole shut-down thing. I'm sure there's a lot I/we don't understand about resource allocation, environmental considerations,  and so on (why do oak leaves fall every fall?) and not all species age the same way. How about that oak tree? It is just as reproductively active (more so) at 100 than it was at 18. So we clearly don't have enough info at this point.

But I have a hunch that the basic gist will hold true: Being human is not about being for me--it's about being for others, my own offspring, theirs, extended family, friends, and beyond--the whole race (and beyond?).

What if the "goal" of human life was simply to expand the reach and success of humanity as a whole?

How would that change our lives, our governments, our schools, our classrooms?

Thoughts on aging

“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”

                                                                  ― Robert Frost

I've been thinking a lot about aging lately.

Not that I'm really that old. In many ways, I still feel very young. (To many folks, I still am, I suppose.)

But still, it's tough if you see it as a steady decline over time, time that's running out on your unfulfilled hopes and dreams. Or if you focus on young competitors catching up and overtaking you, or all of your past failures and mistakes--greener grass you missed out on.

But what if, instead, you focus on where you are now, what you can do to help people now, what you do have to offer the world, now.

Because though the young may have a touch more energy, strength, attractiveness, time, potential, and perhaps creativity, they could probably use your experience, perspective, wisdom, insight, and capital. And they could definitely use your support, smile, compassion, and encouragement.

The day may come when you really do have little to offer--when you can't do anything but breathe. Then you can rest, as after a job well done.

But today is not that day, and you've still got work to do.

A rough sketch of balance...

I wrote this week about this annoying tension between contentment and ambition, mindfulness and achievement and I think I may be getting somewhere. 

First.. from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that humans would be driven by two primal motivations: reproduction and sustenance of our offspring (and by extension, society,and that means we are all motivated by compassion and love).

It does not make sense that sitting around doing nothing, content to just watch the eddies flow by in the stream would bring fulfillment. Sorry Lao Tzu.

Of course, zebras don't get ulcers, and that's because they don't worry about things that are not immediate threats. But that's because zebras don't have much for a cerebral cortex. And that's where the tension comes from: Zebras can't even imagine that lion-that's-not-there-yet. So the trick is how to be a zebra with a massive cerebral cortex.

So let's make an amalgam of all this:

Enjoy the present,

be content with what you've got,

enjoy the people in your life,

don't worry about the future,

but imagine a better one,

prepare for it,

and create it.

And when it doesn't happen the way you planned, chill. Enjoy whatever did happen. Then plan "Plan B." And enjoy the planning, and anticipation, and preparation, and thrill as you attempt it...

And always, enjoy the people you're with the whole time, because that's actually the biggest part of it all--that's what makes it most enjoyable (see previous explanation of evolutionary perspective).

Be the river that flows over rock, boulder and stone, but flow uphill (and the hill is about people).

Writing your own story

“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

-Bast, in The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

If you could write your own story--your own life, what would it be like?

What would happen tomorrow?

What would happen this year? Next?

What would you be like 10 years from now?

These are good questions to ponder, because they might tell us something about ourselves. They might help clear through some of the confusion we accumulate in our minds every day about who we are and what we want out of life.

But more than that, I think Bast may be right. We do write our own lives.

Each day, a new chapter.

#Flow in relationships

There's this one short, steep slope on the trail where the underlying sand and gravel is exposed and the gnarled roots of old white pines form stairs and keep it all from slumping down to the bottom. Half way up, there's a yellow birch about six inches in diameter. It's roots mingle with the white pine--no, mingle is not the right word, they are tangled like the interlocking scaly fingers of of a couple of old dragons. In fact, they are growing together--growing into and around each other.

It made me think of the way relationships are like that. Our lives grow together over time, and we have to be careful with other people, because we're inextricably linked together. And the longer we've been in a relationship, the closer the ties, and the harder it is to tell where one of us ends and the other begins.

I remember Ray Kurzweil talking in How to Create a Mind about how our loved ones end up such a part of our minds that when a person's partner dies, it leaves a sort of gaping hole.

But I think this goes beyond our significant others, spouses and family members. We are all, of course, interconnected, especially with those we interact with the most--students, friends, colleagues.. We have to be so careful, but it's more than being careful. It's more than avoiding short-sightedness. It's more than being mindful of others... and compassionate. This interconnection means we are not alone. I'm not even sure we're separate at all.

But it's not easy, is it? When I'm on the trail, obstacles--rocks, mud, water, make the hike enjoyable. The challenge is part of the fun. But challenging relationships often don't seem the same way. Instead, those gnarly roots and boulders are often a just a source of stress.


But if rocks on the trail are sources of exercise and flow, why not these other obstacles? No doubt, navigating a few boulders on the trail is usually easier than relationship challenges: The wilderness of minds is much more complex than Wolf Den. But the fact remains, it's all in the approach.

Csikszentmihalyi hits on this in Flow, explaining how family relationships can be a source of flow experiences. There are certainly rules that govern relationships like these (like monogamy and societal expectation about childrearing) and as long as you have clear rules, clear goals, clear and immediate feedback, and just the right balance of challenge and skill, you've got flow.

And what about other relationships? What about our relationships with students and colleagues? Can my classroom be flow experience, just by virtue of my relationships with my students? Why not?

Of course, this takes lots of work. Csikszentmihalyi again:

"To play the trumpet well, a musician cannot let more than a few days pass without practicing. An athlete who does not run regularly will soon be out of shape, and will no longer enjoy running. Any manager knows that his company will start falling apart of his attention wanders. In each case, without concentration, a complex activity breaks down into chaos. Why shuld the family be different? Unconditional acceptance, the complete trust family members ought to have for one another, is meaningful only when it is accompanied by an unstinting investment of attention."

So let's go. Time to pay more attention to these relationships (#mindful) and take advantage of their flow-producing potential.

Thoughts on Gravity and humanity

Can't believe it took me this long to see this mind-blowing movie full of (not perfect) physics and plenty of hard-core survivalism, but I'm glad I did (thanks to my son's request). The survival-in-space theme reminded me of one of my all-time favorite books (The Martian by Andy Weir--soon to be a movie--can't wait--def. see that one in theatre--should have seen Gravity in theatre, too), and it made me think of a few things:

1. It's amazing how adaptable humans are. I mean, they're floating around in space, for goodness sake. Simply amazing. I can't wait till humans get to Mars (2023, hopefully). Can't imagine setting foot in that red dust. To adapt and expand our horizons is part of what makes us human, I think.
2. The drive to survive is powerful, but it's really not just about surviving, it's about really living. In fact, the drive to survive is trumped by the need to enjoy life, I think. As Viktor Frankl wrote in that life-changing book: “Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”

The paradox of work

He calls it the paradox of work.

According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, people report more flow at work than during leisure, yet they're much more likely to wish they were somewhere else while at work than while at leisure. In other words, most of us don't like being at work, even though we're actually happier there. Funny.

We obviously don't know ourselves very well, or what makes us happy. And according to Csikszentmihalyi, that's flow--that state of being focussed on a task just challenging enough to match our current mastery. It brings order to our consciousness, he says, and leads to the feeling of enjoyment.


For me, the concept of flow solves a dilemma I've been mulling over for several months. I'm a big fan of Tim Ferris (4-Hour Workweek), who advocates spending as little time as possible at work so you can enjoy more leisure time. But I'm also a fan of Seth Godin (Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us), who says there's no reason to worry about boundaries between work and personal life if you find your passion and fulfilment in your work.

These two seemed to contradict each other until I noticed how Ferriss spends his leisure time: he systematically masters activities like kickboxing, tango dancing, Japanese language, and gourmet cooking. Both Ferriss and Godin are simply advocating filling your time with flow experiences.

The take home message is this: Don't spend your time doing something that's not challenging and enjoyable. Either find ways to find flow in what you currently have to do, or do something else.

Why I like to perform at our annual holiday show

Today was our annual holiday show at the high school.

A bunch of teachers put together a show every year--a variety show with singing acts, dancing, and just downright silliness.

We have a blast, and many students seem to appreciate it.

For me, it's about relating to students, and sending a message.

I love to dance. For me it's a sort of celebration of life, and it's a privilege to share this with them, even if it means wearing an elf suit and tights. And I want them to know it's OK to make a fool of yourself.

And I love to sing. Music is a language that penetrates deeply into whatever it is that makes us human. When I sing, I like to pick songs I think they'll relate to. This year was Apollo. I can't hold a candle to Amba Shepherd, but I love the lyrics, and I love to see them listening intently as I sing.

And I really am singing to them. Sometimes as I sing, I'll look out into the audience at a student listening intently, and I wonder if they are taking this message personally. I hope they are. I want them to know that I'm human just like them, imperfect, struggling, just like them. I want them to know I'm their equal, their friend, that we're in this together, and that I care.

And I want to encourage them:

Just one day in the life
So I can understand
Fighting just to survive
But you taught me I can
We are the lucky ones
We are, we are
Oh we are the lucky ones
We are, we are

Holiday busyness is not the real problem

Me having fun playing the "elf-off-the-shelf"

Why are the holidays so stressful?

Is it just that there's so much to do, or the stress of tense extended family situations? Is it connected with seasonal affective disorder, or just the effect of adding a bunch of social events and obligations to an already packed schedule?

Probably a combination of all of these, and more.

Last night was the second annual holiday bash we've hosted our our house. I noticed myself getting really stressed out yesterday preparing for it--a by-product of a packed week with no time to prep until the last minute (and an embodiment of holiday stress syndrome).

But, you know what? It was worth it. I can't wait to do it again next year. It was so much fun to catch up with family and friends I haven't seen for months or more, spend quality time with those I see often, and just celebrate and have a blast with everyone.

The things that make me busy over the holidays are not the problem. It's just that I have too much other, less important stuff in my schedule.

What looks like laziness...

"What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity...
What looks like laziness is often exhaustion...
What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem."

-Chip & Dan Heath, Switch

These three keys to driving change have become my mantra as a teacher.

And number 2 comes home especially strongly every Friday.

When I find myself reacting to students' apparent lack of motivation, especially on Fridays, I have to remind myself how ready I am for the weekend. I have to ask myself if it's realistic for me to expect them to be as driven as I am.

I have to ask myself if it's realistic to be as driven as I am, period.