Category Archives: Philosophy

The five things that matter

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I’ve been feeling a little ancient lately, but Halley Suitt reminds me that’s not one of the five things that matter. Five for five.

Some days, I feel so so so so old. I feel a bit like Methuselah, who, if you recall, lived 900 years. Being old, you forget sometimes what it’s like to be young. You just don’t get it.

I feel old when I talk to people who are something like 18 or 23 or 36 and they are all caught up in stupid stuff that doesn’t matter and once you’re a little aged like me, you want to tell them … “but, that thing, … that thing you’re worrying about, … see, you don’t get it yet, … but that doesn’t matter. Just doesn’t matter at all.”

Of course it would be rude and annoying to say that kind of comment, so you keep it to yourself.

So the good part of being old is knowing what really doesn’t matter. And that what does matter, you can count on the fingers of one hand. You know they would have given us hands with 17 fingers if all that stupid stuff counted.

There really are only about five things that matter:

Thumb: You love someone.

Pointer: Someone loves you.

Middle Finger: Your work: you have the bravery to do what you love and really become yourself and screw what anyone else thinks about it.

Ring Finger: Connection to people, family, friends

Pinky: Eat, drink, be merry.

I am not a team player

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I think I cooperate and collaborate well, but I’m not good at being on The Team. Coaches and Team Leaders tell us, “Come on! We can accomplish so much more if we work together as a Team. We gotta pull together!” Once a Team is formed, one of the first orders of business is to choose a “team captain” who tells the rest of the Team what to do. They tend to have the greatest appreciation for the need for “teamwork.” This is exactly the kind of thinking that makes me a poor team player.

Team JacketBut I love to play the game. Hated Little League…loved playing Indian Ball in the field in front of our house. Hated varsity basketball…loved pick-up games at the park. We had teams but they were temporary. We’d play a couple of games and then switch up sides. If the game was too one-sided, we’d adjust the teams to get a closer game. It was about having a good game, see? Not which team won.

Religion has teams (Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, etc.) and leagues (Christians; Jews; Muslims; etc.). If you are “on” a team, it’s okay to hate –and sometimes kill– members of the other team. Usually God (yours, not theirs) says it’s okay to do this. Sometimes you even have to die for your team.

There are only two teams in the game of politics: Republicans and Democrats. If you want to play, you have to be on one of those teams. Recently, politics has gotten all mixed up with religion. The star player for the Republican team is a dim-witted good old boy with a rich daddy, but very religious. If you believe the polls, almost nobody –including the folks on his own team– thinks this guy is doing a good job. If the other team (in this case, the Democrats) wasn’t waiting in the dugout to say “we told you so,” most people on the Republican team would send W and his pals back to Texas where he couldn’t do much harm.

The United States Congress is hopelessly fucked up and it’s all because of the teams. Is there even anything in our constitution about Republicans and Democrats? I don’t think so. So here’s what I’d do. At the beginning of every session of congress, we divide up into two groups, by random drawing. Instead of parties or teams, we’ll call one group the Chipmunks and the other the Ground Squirrels (so they won’t take themselves so seriously). If you get reelected and come back next year, you might be in the other group so there’s no point in fucking them over this year. Since we’re reshuffling the deck every year and you don’t have any permanent “team members,” it becomes more about the game than the teams.

All of which explains why I was always chosen last.

Dave Winer: Are we more than our stories?

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Could it be that our purpose is to tell a story, and that the better lived a life is, the better the story that survives after you’re gone?

An intriguing question posed by Dave Winer (a couple of years ago). If I read the post correctly, he’s wondering if there is really more to us than the stories we tell. For those of us that attempt to share our hopes and fears, successes and failures (in journals like this one)…is there really more to us than our blogs? Reminds me of a great T-Shirt David (Brazeal) found on someone’s blog: Enough about me. Let’s talk about my blog.

George Carlin on future of the planet

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“We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.”

— George Carlin rant on why the planet is fine

World Peace Conference

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A Hollywood director with a reputation for making violent, bizarre films is headlining what’s billed as a world peace conference in southeast Iowa this weekend. Known for movies like “Mulholland Drive,” “Blue Velvet” and the T-V series “Twin Peaks,” David Lynch is also on the board of directors at Maharishi University in Fairfield. He says perpetual world peace will result by assembling eight-thousand people to continuously practice transcendental meditation. Lynch says “It brings peace, real peace, and peace is not just the absence of war. This real peace, being enlivened, drives negativity away like light drives darkness away.”

Worst day. Best day.

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What –if anything– does it say about you if you can instantly recall the worst day of your life but have to think a while to come up with a few contenders for the best day? One would hope this is because you’ve had a lot more really good days than bad. Or, maybe it’s because it’s easier to peg the misery-meter than to get a good reading on the happyometer. Or, does joy fade quickly while pain lingers like the smell of burned popcorn? What we need is a way to record every day, sort of like the security camera at the convenience store. Just recycle the tapes every few days unless you get one so good (we’re only interested in the good ones) it’s a keeper. I’m still wrestling with whether or not I’d take that little pill that would erase the past 12 or 24 hours. For those that might be wondering, I do have enough empathy and imagination to understand that my Worst Day would be a walk in the park for someone else. Or for some future me. Just a little navel-gazing on a beautiful summer day.

“Americans face forward”

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“The greatest country in history. We can do so much. We will do so much. This country was, after all, founded to move into the future, not to hold onto the habits and ideas of the past. For most countries, if you ask them what they are, what’s unique and defining about them, they’ll point to their past. Not us. Americans have always pointed to the future. If you want to understand us, look at what we’re going to do. Americans face forward.”

A speech that David Weinberger wrote but never gave.

Halley Suitt: Life in a box

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“…about how we all spend so much time having a life that seems to be the kind of life other people have — get up, get breakfast, get dressed, go to work, get there at 9:00, leave there at 5:00 or 6:00 or whatever, come home, eat dinner, watch TV — and I suddenly found this really sad. That we come to this earth and that’s all we can come up with for a life. I don’t want to be the fire-eating woman in the circus or something, but I think I want more of a life than a person who lives in a box, leaves their box in the morning, gets in their box-with-wheels, drives to another office box, sits in that box for 8 hours, their butt spreading a little wider every day from just sitting there, goes home to their box, sits in front of the box, eats a frozen dinner out of a box, goes to sleep on their mattress and box spring.”

— Halley Suitt

Pick one memory

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Jonathon Delacour on the movie After Life.

“The premise of After Life is simple. Every Monday, people who have died walk through an open doorway suffused with pale light into what looks like a derelict boarding school. Each is issued with an ID number and assigned to a counselor who will assist them in preparing for the journey to the other side. Much of the film is taken up with these counseling sessions, which commence with an explanation of the rules:”

You’re going to stay here for a week. Everyone gets a private room. Please feel at home. But while you’re here there’s one thing you must do.

Out of the __ years of your life, we’d like to ask you to choose one memory, the one you remember and cherish most. There is a time limit. You have three days to decide.

After you choose your memory, our staff will recreate it on film as exactly as possible.
On Saturday we’ll show the films to everyone. The moment the memory comes back to you most vividly, you’ll go on to the other side, taking only that memory.

Via Halley’s Comment