Real life revisited

A wonderful friend of mine made some great comments that I'd like to share with you. I've paraphrased them somewhat, but I find these words inspiring, challenging, and important.

Make your blog about 'real life.' Life is life, and all of it is real.  There are definitely stages like childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, and on and on, but there is no part that can be separated from the rest.  I think it all has to be acknowledged and accepted as part of what we have experienced; part of what has made us who we are.  "Real life," as you use it, has no meaning for me.  I remember as a student, probably in college, but possibly still in high school, reading that the poet Goethe in later life was ashamed of some of his earlier writings and disavowed these.  I always considered that strange.  I note you say the same thing about your earlier blog.  Now both you and Goethe are much, much more creative than I can ever hope to be, and perhaps that's the difference, but I do wonder about disavowing parts of one's life as later stages overtake us.

I may look at things this way because of my experience in AA and alcohol and drug abuse.  Part of what is called the promises of AA states that we shall come to a point in our lives where "we shall neither regret the past, nor wish to close the door on it."  To me that means that, if we understand and are contented with what has gotten us to where we are in life, then we have a chance at contentment at present.  Contentment here does not mean 'happiness.'  Rather it signifies that we are at peace with what has led us to where we are.  Even though the past may be filled with tragedy, embarrassment, and pain, if we learn from all this and accept it, we are better armed to confront our present circumstances and perhaps even the future.  That is reason enough to be content.

We are all in some ways at the same point.  We are still learning from our experiences and making necessary adjustments in our lives, just as we did when we were five and entered school, 13/14 and entered high school, 17/18 and entered college, and on and on.  All those points were/are very real, and all part of our lives.

So I suppose I should say this: to be completely honest, one of the main reasons I decided to start this blog, the major life event that gave me permission (I suppose) to begin again, is the recent breakup I went through. It was an extremely loving, long, dare I say perfect relationship. Why did it have to end? I have already learned a great deal about myself and the nature of love and life from that heartbreaking experience, and I plan on sharing -- from the heart -- more and more as I feel able.

Χαλεπον δε το φιλησαι

χαλεπον το μη φιλησαι

χαλεποτερον δε το παντων

αποτυγχανειν φιλοντα

Open Communication

Happy Black Friday and belated Thanksgiving greetings to you all. Just woke up from a nap after my eight-hour shopping marathon (12am-8am). Just kidding. I hope you enjoyed some good food and company yesterday.

My conversations at the Thanksgiving dinner table yesterday have prompted me to write about our (i.e. human beings') need to share ourselves with each other. We are inherently social creatures, and the world continues to shrink thanks to the advent of technologies such as the internet and the cell phone. Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Tumblr, OkCupid, text messages and many more have all made intercommunication a snap. Literally.

In a lot of ways, this is really great. I can log onto facebook and instantly see the statuses of all 951 of my friends. (Godspell opens tonight at Turtle Lane!) I can look at recent photos of the wedding or party that I missed and comment on them.  (Glad I didn't go to that one...) I can instantly see what's going on inside my friend's head even though he lives in California. (What kind of presents do you open on Thanksgiving, though??) I can meet tons of people online, learn about them, and then perhaps even meet them in person. (Cool or creepy?) I could go on and on. These are all wonderful distractions.

What worries me is that everything is designed to happen quickly, and people seem to be losing patience for anything that might be more time-consuming, such as writing a thoughtful and well-composed e-mail to a friend. Much easier to go to that person's facebook wall and write a quick remark. E-mail is literally overwhelming these days. Between my two main jobs, list serves, extracurricular groups and automated stuff I receive from Barnes and Noble, Macy's, Groupon, E-Bay, United Airlines (even though I try to unsubscribe from these services, they still send me e-mails!), I easily read between 50 and 100 emails a day, and I have to respond to and keep track of the majority. Madness! You need to write this course description. When can you meet to record the Christmas music? When are you free to rehearse? Please update me on my child's performance in your class. I can't be at choir this Sunday. Can you come to my party?

I thought getting a BlackBerry would help me keep up with it, but it turns out that I've just become addicted. I have no excuse now not to respond almost immediately. See? Just as I wrote that sentence, I just checked to see if someone had responded yet to an important email I wrote. Nope. BUT he did respond to another email that I sent around the same time. Why not to both? And of course, some people are just horrible communicators, and this trait is virtually unacceptable now in an age where all you need to do is press a few buttons and *BAM* you've communicated. Patience wears thin much more quickly than it used to.

So these technologies add unnecessary aggravation and stress to our lives in addition to making them simpler. And there are more philosophical questions here that intrigue me a great deal:

1) What do we choose to share with each other, and why? Is anything too private?
2) Does our online life affect the way we interact with people offline?
3) How does what we see and do online shape our perception of people?
4) What constitutes a "friend"?
5) How did we survive before, and could we go back?

The truth is that people are so complex that they are impossible to circumscribe in categories (likes, dislikes, favorites), yet our culture loves to categorize because doing so purportedly makes things easier to understand. Oversimplification is problematic! There's not a lot of room for change anymore. Once we say it, whatever "it" is, it's out there, and it's hard to take back. And it's too easy. Online media create the impression that people are mere snapshots of themselves. Snapshots are like statues. They aren't real. No one has it all figured out. Everything is a process. Everyone has issues they struggle with, questions without clear-cut answers, uncertainty... You might think that all of this newfangled technology should help us open up and talk, let each other know that we're not alone, but I think it just helps us hide more easily.

I still participate in all of this online hubbub. I just wonder if I'm warier than most.

What do you think?

New Beginnings

I used to write a blog. It's now rather archaic, and I'm quite embarrassed by it. I used it as a journal that anyone on the internet could read. I suppose this was back when blogs were just nascent, so I can't be judged too harshly.

I'm at a much different stage in my life now. You could call it a renaissance of sorts. I'm rediscovering a great deal - myself, the world, meaning, family, friends, lovers - and unfortunately for me, these revelations get me down from time to time. I often feel a general malaise about my current condition, and this feeling is relatively new to me. I always used to consider myself an optimistic, lighthearted person who could let things slide off his shoulders and thus seldom worry. I guess "real life" has set in.

And that's exactly what I want to blog about: my life. Certainly not in the way my first blog worked -- a day-to-day accounting of events -- but rather through an amalgam of musings that are hopefully a bit more analytical, and perhaps more meaningful. I would guess I'm not alone with these thoughts. Therefore, I welcome comments and discussion. I hope my writing will prove thought-provoking and perhaps even inspiring, although that is not my purpose. I invite you to comment, discuss, and ponder along with me! I've been told that I have interesting things to say. I don't pretend to be wise, because wisdom can only come with age, but I am definitely a deep thinker. This gets me into trouble. Maybe I'll write about that someday.

But right now, since I'm just starting anew ... again ... I find it only fitting to write a bit about Life. The meaning of human life for me? Society. Relationships. Learning, discovering, creating in tandem with others, hopefully for the better. Life ultimately means what you want it to mean. The more you give, the more you get. Its inherent value comes from our ignorance of whether or not there is more to life than what we have here in front of our eyes. So do something great with your life if you can. You might only have one chance.

When does "real life" start? When I was younger, it seemed to me that life would start after school ended, and that was always a ways off. This was a magical time when everything became clear. The future would be much more certain. Actual decisions would be made. Things would happen. A lot of people postpone that time by attending graduate school, earning higher degrees, staying in academia as long as possible, living with ideas and scholars and research and books. I don't know if I'd ever have the patience to earn anything greater than a Master's Degree. I also don't know for what end I would do so. Prestige? Intellectual fulfillment?

But even after college and graduate school and post-docs and residencies and clerkships (all of these things seem to postpone life), "real life" still may not start. Will we ever really know what we want to do? I definitely do not. I thought I did. I thought I had it all figured out (twice), and then, as they say, life intervened. Things happened. Turned out I wasn't so sure about everything. Clarity disappeared. I lost faith in a lot of people and things. Is this what it means to grow up? Is this when life begins -- when you discover that there is no clear cut answer to anything?

There is no magic moment when "real life" begins. Life started a long time ago, and it's going on right now! Seize the present moment and do something grand with it. All those clichés mean something: carpe diem; no time like the present; yesterday is history and tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift; etc. The only time we can control (if we can control anything... but free will is a whole other issue) is right now, so take advantage of every moment you possibly can. "Real life" starts when you are there marred in it, conscious that it's happening as you breathe. During life, nothing is ever completely finished or decided. There are always second chances. Life begins anew every day, every hour, every moment. We seem to lose sight of this very easily, and to our detriment.

We also have this notion that we are the same people from birth until death. We have the same name, same family, same (immutable?) personality, same interests, same basic abilities... But in reality, we are necessarily different people over the span of life! We learn, we grow, we change, we have new thoughts and experiences, we meet new people, we move around... If we let ourselves, that is.

So if "real life" never actually starts (at least not in the way we think it should because of social constructs or the media or whatever foists this fallacy upon us), we have to realize that we can do basically anything we want to do, and at any time. That's at once exhilarating and mortifying. There is no one out there giving you permission to go ahead with your scheme. Why should I stay [ever] at my current job? Why should I [ever] stay in my current city? Complacency is easy, but it's also dangerous because it can be extremely comforting and thus enticing. But when you can finally see that life starts again with every decision you make, you start to look at complacency and comfort in a different light. As much as I love being comfortable, I am not willing to let life happen to me. I want to make life happen for me.

So let's begin. Let's make it happen!