Trying to cut some slack

I admire the type of person who can handle stress. I have always appreciated those who have so many aspirations that they cram activities into every minute of every day.

I do question their motives... and I wonder at their emotional happiness. But people generally seem to be happy with their frantic lives. As if to say... they wouldn't know what to do with spare time.

That's always been a fascinating line to me too. But here's a thing...

I've never been that way. And I don't really know why, and I haven't been able to accurately articulate it besides telling people that I enjoy my free time. Which I do - but I am proud to say I now have a reason that hopefully transcends the former:

I never want to be so consumed in my own life that I can't care about other peoples' lives. And not that I don't want to care about others' lives.. but that I wouldn't be able to. That I literally couldn't.

And it may seem like a stretch to say that busy people can't care about other people's lives... but I honestly think that's the case sometimes. Because always somewhere in the back of their minds they are consumed with all they have to get done and do next and be about and make sure not to miss. How can you possibly push past all that to engage someone else fully?

I never. ever. want to be like that. And I see myself get like that when I'm at church running from the youth room to practice music and back again to the copier because I forgot about the bassist. I zoom by people. Even people I do care about - but when I'm busy I literally cannot care in that moment. It would have to take a conscious effort.

And this is narcissism at it's finest. But not because people are bad or selfish. But because they just can't not be.

I love ellipses ...

I know I run the risk of turning this blog into a complete breakdown on social neuroscience.. and that is precisely what this post is going to be about. Let's take a look at a dichotomy!

Yay!

For simplicity's sake I'm not going to go into detail about this widely researched conundrum... but we humans have two basic selves in a certain sense. We have that self that experiences, and we have that self that remembers. And these two selves have very different reports on those experiences themselves.

And so, we remember experiences we have differently than we actually feel during those experiences. One major reason for this is that the brain cannot possibly store all the emotions from an event so thus we only remember a significantly tiny bit of our experiences (e.g. key moments, vernacular description, and endings). Another interesting result of this dichotomy is that we end up making decisions about our future based on our remembering selves - which acts based on a severely limited amount of stored information.

Seems odd. Doesn't it?

So all that background is to get to the beef of this post. What is more important? Our remembering selves or our experiencing selves? Which one do we focus on feeding more? Because our experiencing selves tell us all how happy or dissatisfied we are in the moment... (which is all we really have right?) but our remembering selves tell us everything we need to know about how happy we are with our lives thus far (which is often how we interpret how happy we have been as people when our days are few). And the correlation between the two is low.

I reference a previous post on conflict to illustrate this discrepancy. Conflict makes for a better story in our lives - but during it.. we feel less happy than we do when all is well. So it seems that our interpretation on our lives is not so much a sum of our experiences. For if that were true.. you would see people who had a greater number of happy experiences rate their lives as happier and more meaningful. But so often people who go through conflict that ends well report more meaningful lives and more reported happiness as a result. Because so much of what matters to our remembering selves is how things end and not necessarily the emotions during.

So is there a way to maximize both experiential and memory satisfaction? If not.. which one is more important? Or... does worrying about it do nothing but rob us of experiences in the first place? Or will not worrying about it cause us to make ill-advised decisions about our futures?

I do not have an answer yet dear reader(s). But check back soon...

Someone stole my bicycle.

I am not an anomaly. I'm aware of this. And especially not when it comes to being a victim of theft. People have been stealing stuff from each other ever since other people started having stuff.

Stealing is wrong.* Why?

I want to let my reader(s) in on a fundamental secret of life:

..................................................................

You are not the only person who exists.

And no, I'm actually serious. That is a secret to most people. Not a fun kind of secret to share at slumber parties... but the kind that all of a sudden hits you one day... And that day has come.

Want an example? Sure you do. Question: How many times do you get upset at being stuck at a red light when you're running late for something? Answer: Often. Second question: How many times are you excited and happy for those for whom the light turns green at your misfortune? Answer: umm.. what do you mean?

Exactly.

We tend to think our own story is the only one being told and everyone else is just a bunch of characters in "my story"

We all label people as: my wife, my captain, my professor, my shrink, my pimp, my defense attorney, etc... Everyone else plays a role in "my life" you see? Most of the time we only ever really care about other peoples' happiness if it doesn't come at the expense of our own. Which often it does.

Learn to see the bigger picture. And you'll feel less entitled. And when you feel less entitled, you'll be much happier much more often.

* Hoping to change a lot of lives with this post.

Oh melancholy day

Lots of things are happening. I get the privilege and honor really to play for a wedding rehearsal today and the ceremony tomorrow. One of my friends has decided to spend their life with someone, and apparently they both know without a shadow of a doubt that this is the right move. Except I don't really believe in a "without a shadow of a doubt" mentality. At some point however, people decide to push through the doubts they have. It has less to do with knowing, and more to do with deciding. I'm beginning to feel I'm real bad at the relationship game. I can't seem to hold one together or keep one happy and well nurtured. Heard an interesting quote the other day by a speaker who was talking about Marriage and relationships and he was addressing the often made assumption that the grass is greener on the other side... somewhere... there is greener grass. And he went on to say that green is not an irrefutable constant grass property. Not all grass is green, and that greenness is nothing more than potential. But you have to water it. You have to nurture it and treat it right. So instead of wasting your time going on green grass hunts, take that time to water the lawn you have. Because odds are.. you're gonna go screw that grass up over there too once you get there.

I don't know much about lawn care. But I know he's right.

I met a woman yesterday. And I say met even though I've known this woman my whole life. But I saw her for the first time as an adult - capable of adult conversations and adult meaning and insight. I asked her about her marriage and watched her eyes sink and she laughed away at how awful things were. I watched her throw up whatever defense she had to keep herself from breaking down in complete shame and vulnerability. She started talking about all the red flags she saw going into the marriage... and even though hindsight is 20/20, present vision is sometimes just as good. But we trick ourselves into thinking things will change.

I heard later that her husband had just slept with someone else he met on the internet. And not only that but told his wife by saying, "yeah you probably need to go get tested for such and such STD's." Heard about how he has a temper that could tame a lion. Heard about how he told her if she divorced him there was no way he was supporting those kids. They have 5. The youngest is starting 1st grade. And what is a woman to do who is a full-time mother? How the hell do you nurture that god-awful grass? This grass maintenance has to be a team effort it's too much to tend to by yourself. And it makes me fucking sick how much people get walked on in life. And why it's not fair that every heart wrenching moment I encounter will lead me to be a better parent and husband. Because it's not fair. It's not fair for her that some people can't learn from others' mistakes. That some people we get involved with will be nothing but self-serving and scared awful excuses for humanity. It's not fair that my kids will have a father whose life will no longer be about himself but rather entrenched in enriching their lives.

And yet... I continue to struggle with humility today. And I've become less humble in the past year because I keep seeing other people who aren't willing to change or take a good hard look at their own flaws. And I think... "hell, if they aren't willing to, then why on earth should I be the bigger man?" It's so hard to keep that up. And that's not okay.

It's not a happy day. But it is for someone... and maybe that'll help.

Dinner and a Movie

For as little as most people (and by most people I mean me and an unfair projection) actually get accomplished in a day... it's amazing how much can change in such an ordinarily insignificant amount of time.

"If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn't cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers."

You wouldn't tell your friends to go see that movie. In fact I'm not entirely sure what would have possessed me to see that movie to begin with. The funny point that my boy Donald Miller goes on to make here is that while no one is inspired by such a 'story', people spend most of their lives living stories like this. This is the mundane life we're living. And for the most part it feels fine... and comfortable. And it ruins my day to think that at the end of my life the most prized story of my life I might be able to share will be a movie that nobody cares to see.

The essence here is story. And what draws people to story? two things: dreams and conflict. Without a dream the story has no premise and hence has nowhere to go. Without conflict, the story is boring.

But who sits around and dreams up a life that is filled with conflict for the sake of the story? I'll leave myself some wiggle room and say that 1 person does that. Not sure who the guy is... but he'll probably live a more interesting life than me. See we don't embrace conflict in our lives as anything but an annoyance. But that conflict makes our lives. It helps make our stories worth telling. Because a comfortable life is hardly the work of a poet. It's more like the work I produced in 4th grade as I was being taught the structure of a paragraph.

The age old adage that proclaims, "nothing worth having in life comes easy" may not be true... That shiny Volvo my parents bought me may serve as a great source of joy and functionality and safety for that matter (after all it is a volvo) ...but the ease with which it came will kill the story.

So... it's time to go stir up some trouble. But I'll tell you about it later.