Thursday, March 17, 2005
WHAT I WISH FOR YOU
In the heat of a Phnom Penh afternoon my mind flashes back, way back, to when I was eight or nine years old, to a night spent crawling along, and through, and between, the emerald green grass that lined the grounds of Muskie Bay cottages, somewhere in Ontario, all of us there, in that place, some looking for me, some hiding like me, as we played the game, that game that children play almost against their will, and I remember the moonlight, and I remember the shadings of the shadows, I do, and the blades of grass scratching against my face as I crawled along the edge of the fence, and right now, at this moment, there's nothing more I would wish for you than the sudden emergence of an insignificant childhood memory, if only for an instant, so you could feel what I feel, this surprising but welcome snapshot of who I was then, at that moment, in that place, there and then, no other time, no other when, this respite from reality that makes me pause, forces me to smile, before the sunlight comes back and the present is returned, against my will.
HOW TO END POVERTY IN ONE EASY STEP: MORE MONEY!
"A man is only as faithful as his options."
-- Chris Rock
Something struck me the other day when I read about Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's oil company in Iraq, overcharging some of their projects to the princely sum of a hundred some odd million bucks. (It was a baseball that struck me, actually, and a hard one, too. Note to self: Keep your head up more.)
It reminded me of an incident at work, where I proofread a letter directed to a certain government agency that was in cahoots with a local photocopy shop in town; the government department submitted an invoice to my NGO that stated that the photocopies had cost sixty dollars, when they should only have cost around thirty -- they'd pocketed the rest, and neglected to mention that fact in the fake receipt they had the shop write up (with a promise of future business, I'm sure.)
A hundred million bucks in Iraq; thirty bucks in Cambodia. But who's counting, really.
And yet there it is, the sly, not-so-subtle way that corruption works. You pocket the change when nobody's looking. You overcharge photocopies by ten, fifteen cents a sheet; in Iraq, you overcharge an oil pipeline by ten, fifteen thousand a pipe. That's how it's all done -- this siphoning away of money from one person's pocket to another. In stages.
The current cover of Time/Asia highlights an upcoming book by economist Jeffrey Sachs, the guru for ending poverty in the new millenium. He's obviously highly qualified, knows his stuff much better than I do, but still -- I don't trust the validity of his theory.
His solution to ending poverty is more bucks -- more bucks, more bucks, more bucks. You pump the money into these developing countries, spend it judiciously, and change will happen; change will emerge.
All well and good. But how do we do that? In the Time article, he briefly sidesteps the problem of corruption, stating that countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan are enormously corrupt, and look how well they've done, and they're proof that this excuse of 'corruption' is little more than protracted, emphatic whining, and so what we need is more, extended, committed action by the world's elite. We need more of your cash, in other words.
I've no doubt that the central tenet of his theory is true. Just because a country is corrupt doesn't mean that it can't progress and chip away at the global scourge that is poverty.
But his reasoning is flawed. It's like saying that smoking is good for you because my 105 year old grandfather has smoked six packs of cigarettes a day since he was 11, and he's still alive, so there you go.
The exceptions do not prove the rule in this case.Just because some countries have gotten around it, that doesn't mean that others will. Or can.
I admit: I'm a novice at this stuff, this economist stuff, this poverty stuff. I know not what I speak.
But I do know what I've seen firsthand here in Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in the world. I know the number of Mercedes Benzes I see barrelling around the capital. I know the reports I've checked that highlight the teeny-tiny discrepancies between what something should have cost, and what the government has said it cost.
Twenty bucks here. Forty bucks there. That's the Cambodian style.
Fifteen thousand here, thirty thousand there. That's the how the big boys at Halliburton do it.
No doubt, Jeffrey Sachs knows more than I will ever know. But it seems like he bops in and out of a country, visits the poor villages, thinks up solutions, writes them down, then implores the world to take action.
More money is the answer, yes.
But people are people. And new clothes need to be bought. And school tuition has to be paid. And that Landrover looks very, very tempting. And that summer cottage in Maine, the one near Kennebunkport, is a bit pricey.
Humans are humans are humans. When no one's looking, they do what they do.
When examining how to rationally, sensibly eliminate poverty, to deny the ramifications of that simple statement is to enter into realm of eternal academia, where the answers are clear and pristine, and the day-to-day reality of implementation are someone else's problem, to be solved on another, distant day.
-- Chris Rock
Something struck me the other day when I read about Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's oil company in Iraq, overcharging some of their projects to the princely sum of a hundred some odd million bucks. (It was a baseball that struck me, actually, and a hard one, too. Note to self: Keep your head up more.)
It reminded me of an incident at work, where I proofread a letter directed to a certain government agency that was in cahoots with a local photocopy shop in town; the government department submitted an invoice to my NGO that stated that the photocopies had cost sixty dollars, when they should only have cost around thirty -- they'd pocketed the rest, and neglected to mention that fact in the fake receipt they had the shop write up (with a promise of future business, I'm sure.)
A hundred million bucks in Iraq; thirty bucks in Cambodia. But who's counting, really.
And yet there it is, the sly, not-so-subtle way that corruption works. You pocket the change when nobody's looking. You overcharge photocopies by ten, fifteen cents a sheet; in Iraq, you overcharge an oil pipeline by ten, fifteen thousand a pipe. That's how it's all done -- this siphoning away of money from one person's pocket to another. In stages.
The current cover of Time/Asia highlights an upcoming book by economist Jeffrey Sachs, the guru for ending poverty in the new millenium. He's obviously highly qualified, knows his stuff much better than I do, but still -- I don't trust the validity of his theory.
His solution to ending poverty is more bucks -- more bucks, more bucks, more bucks. You pump the money into these developing countries, spend it judiciously, and change will happen; change will emerge.
All well and good. But how do we do that? In the Time article, he briefly sidesteps the problem of corruption, stating that countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan are enormously corrupt, and look how well they've done, and they're proof that this excuse of 'corruption' is little more than protracted, emphatic whining, and so what we need is more, extended, committed action by the world's elite. We need more of your cash, in other words.
I've no doubt that the central tenet of his theory is true. Just because a country is corrupt doesn't mean that it can't progress and chip away at the global scourge that is poverty.
But his reasoning is flawed. It's like saying that smoking is good for you because my 105 year old grandfather has smoked six packs of cigarettes a day since he was 11, and he's still alive, so there you go.
The exceptions do not prove the rule in this case.Just because some countries have gotten around it, that doesn't mean that others will. Or can.
I admit: I'm a novice at this stuff, this economist stuff, this poverty stuff. I know not what I speak.
But I do know what I've seen firsthand here in Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in the world. I know the number of Mercedes Benzes I see barrelling around the capital. I know the reports I've checked that highlight the teeny-tiny discrepancies between what something should have cost, and what the government has said it cost.
Twenty bucks here. Forty bucks there. That's the Cambodian style.
Fifteen thousand here, thirty thousand there. That's the how the big boys at Halliburton do it.
No doubt, Jeffrey Sachs knows more than I will ever know. But it seems like he bops in and out of a country, visits the poor villages, thinks up solutions, writes them down, then implores the world to take action.
More money is the answer, yes.
But people are people. And new clothes need to be bought. And school tuition has to be paid. And that Landrover looks very, very tempting. And that summer cottage in Maine, the one near Kennebunkport, is a bit pricey.
Humans are humans are humans. When no one's looking, they do what they do.
When examining how to rationally, sensibly eliminate poverty, to deny the ramifications of that simple statement is to enter into realm of eternal academia, where the answers are clear and pristine, and the day-to-day reality of implementation are someone else's problem, to be solved on another, distant day.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
FREUD, BURGER KING, THE ODAKYU LINE TRAIN, AND ALL THOSE NEW, UNEXPLORED PLACES, SO SHINING AND COMPLETE
"Everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me."
-- Freud
When you travel someplace new, whether it's to Southeast Asia or to the new Burger King downtown (the one that used to be a dry-cleaning place, back in the day), there's the tendency to believe that this unseen-until-now location has emerged, shining and complete, for you and you alone.
In a way, it has.
Things don't come into existence until we experience them for ourselves. You and I and President Bush and Prime Minister Martin can read about Iraq, its people and its problems, until our eyes start to fall out of their sockets, but until we go there, and talk to the people, and examine their problems, it's not real, not authentic, not solid.
The thing of it is, when we actually do go to these new places, the inverse occurs, thus completely screwing up our view of the world. Meaning, we find out: 1) That this is place has never before revealed itself to our innocent eyes; and 2) that it has, however, revealed itself to a lot of other eyes. The Burger King that is new for us, the customer, ready for a Double Whopper and fries at the opening-day sale, is most definitely not new for the fast-food manager, who has spent the past two weeks hiring teenagers, firing teenagers, hiring them again, and trying to figure out just how much ketchup is needed on a daily basis. (My estimation: a lot.)
Look at it it this way. I travel to Japan, a hick kid from Canada, and for me, each and every subway stop, not to mention buildings, elevators, even rooms, are fascinating, somewhat inexplicable adventures. For the salaryman standing next to me on the Odakyu line train as it rumbles and tumbles towards my stop, there's nothing transcendent going on. This is life, and he is living it, and his stop is just up ahead, could you kindly please step aside, thank you and I'm sorry. (Japanese are polite.)
Or I can come to Cambodia and immerse myself in a word that is poor, and corrupt, and filled with street children and teenage prostitutes. The mind reels; the jaw drops. For Cambodians? To them, um, it's Wednesday.
What is new for me is blase to you, and vice versa.
The trick of life is encountering the new, learning from it, burrowing deep, and then moving on. (Or, if you stay put, keep burrowing.) Both in Japan and Cambodia, the moment I arrived, I started reading about these completely, totally foreign places -- memoirs, biographies, history books, travel books. Just to make sense of the place. Just to allow myself a taste of
what these places were all about, written by people who lived there and loved them.
Freud was right. (Yeah, yeah, I know Freud doesn't need the props, but let's give credit where credit is due, shall we?) As the world gets smaller, as the Lonely Planet guidebooks continue to multiply like randy rabbits, so much of the world's mystery is being steadily, tragically eroded. Everywhere has been chronicled, examined, even blogged; everywhere has been held up to scrutiny, enjoyed, reviled. Poems have been written, books have been written, songs have been written -- about everywhere, really.
But don't despair.
Because I'm betting that there's places you haven't been. Others may have been there, yes, even poets, but you haven't.
Maybe it's Iceland. Or Germany. Or Quebec. Or St.Petersburg.
Or it might be the new Italian place, the one that your sister loved and your best friend hated. The one next to the new Burger King. The one whose door is always being held open by the smiling, pudgy owner.
They're all there, these places, so thoroughly trod upon by others and utterly uncontaminated by you. Shining. Complete.
What are you waiting for?
-- Freud
When you travel someplace new, whether it's to Southeast Asia or to the new Burger King downtown (the one that used to be a dry-cleaning place, back in the day), there's the tendency to believe that this unseen-until-now location has emerged, shining and complete, for you and you alone.
In a way, it has.
Things don't come into existence until we experience them for ourselves. You and I and President Bush and Prime Minister Martin can read about Iraq, its people and its problems, until our eyes start to fall out of their sockets, but until we go there, and talk to the people, and examine their problems, it's not real, not authentic, not solid.
The thing of it is, when we actually do go to these new places, the inverse occurs, thus completely screwing up our view of the world. Meaning, we find out: 1) That this is place has never before revealed itself to our innocent eyes; and 2) that it has, however, revealed itself to a lot of other eyes. The Burger King that is new for us, the customer, ready for a Double Whopper and fries at the opening-day sale, is most definitely not new for the fast-food manager, who has spent the past two weeks hiring teenagers, firing teenagers, hiring them again, and trying to figure out just how much ketchup is needed on a daily basis. (My estimation: a lot.)
Look at it it this way. I travel to Japan, a hick kid from Canada, and for me, each and every subway stop, not to mention buildings, elevators, even rooms, are fascinating, somewhat inexplicable adventures. For the salaryman standing next to me on the Odakyu line train as it rumbles and tumbles towards my stop, there's nothing transcendent going on. This is life, and he is living it, and his stop is just up ahead, could you kindly please step aside, thank you and I'm sorry. (Japanese are polite.)
Or I can come to Cambodia and immerse myself in a word that is poor, and corrupt, and filled with street children and teenage prostitutes. The mind reels; the jaw drops. For Cambodians? To them, um, it's Wednesday.
What is new for me is blase to you, and vice versa.
The trick of life is encountering the new, learning from it, burrowing deep, and then moving on. (Or, if you stay put, keep burrowing.) Both in Japan and Cambodia, the moment I arrived, I started reading about these completely, totally foreign places -- memoirs, biographies, history books, travel books. Just to make sense of the place. Just to allow myself a taste of
what these places were all about, written by people who lived there and loved them.
Freud was right. (Yeah, yeah, I know Freud doesn't need the props, but let's give credit where credit is due, shall we?) As the world gets smaller, as the Lonely Planet guidebooks continue to multiply like randy rabbits, so much of the world's mystery is being steadily, tragically eroded. Everywhere has been chronicled, examined, even blogged; everywhere has been held up to scrutiny, enjoyed, reviled. Poems have been written, books have been written, songs have been written -- about everywhere, really.
But don't despair.
Because I'm betting that there's places you haven't been. Others may have been there, yes, even poets, but you haven't.
Maybe it's Iceland. Or Germany. Or Quebec. Or St.Petersburg.
Or it might be the new Italian place, the one that your sister loved and your best friend hated. The one next to the new Burger King. The one whose door is always being held open by the smiling, pudgy owner.
They're all there, these places, so thoroughly trod upon by others and utterly uncontaminated by you. Shining. Complete.
What are you waiting for?
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
WHY CALLING IN SICK TO YOUR FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN IS THE KEY TO A HAPPY LIFE
"Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem."
-- Henry Kissinger
That's why I never liked school as a kid. Because once you start, whether it's from nursery school or pre-kindergarten or kindergarten or whenever, the train ain't stopping. Each grade is progressively more difficult than the one before it; Grade 5 is harder than Grade 6, Grade 7 is harder than Grade 8, and so on and so on, all the way up until the end of university.
And what's the reward for all of our academic all-nighters?
Real life!
That ain't right. We study, we slave, we go without Springer on a daily, even weekly basis, only to be rewarded by the reality of having to find an actual paying job in the world outside of academia.
Oh, but it doesn't stop there, either.
Once we get a job, if we're any good at it, we eventually get a better job. And what does 'better' actually mean?
More responsibility.
More workload.
More headaches.
Just a few years ago, Bush was chilling as owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, trying to figure out who to trade and who to keep. Trying to line up which beer company would sell the suds at his Texas stadium, probably. And now? Now he carries around a suitcase that contains the secret codes that can launch nuclear weapons at a moment's notice.
Think about it.
Kind of a leap in responsibility, no?
Do we want all that added pressure in our lives? (Not that we all carry around nuclear launch codes, no, but some of us do.)
Maybe yes.
Maybe our reward for all of our hard work in school and on the job is more work, work that allows us to, hopefully, challenge ourselves, achieve our potential, reach for the top and possibly cure a major disease, if we're lucky. (Or even a minor one.)
Still.
Underachievement is underrated, in my book.
And kids need to know what's coming.
I think it's incumbent on every parent to sit their child down the evening before their first day of kindergarten and say:
"Tonight is the last night of your life. Stay in the bath a little longer, play with the rubber duckie, read The Cat In The Hat one more time. I'll even let you stay up late. Because after tomorrow morning, it ain't gonna get any easier."
Or maybe it's better to keep that particular speech to yourself.
If I knew at four what I know now, I might have played sick that first day of school.
And the next, too.
And the next...
-- Henry Kissinger
That's why I never liked school as a kid. Because once you start, whether it's from nursery school or pre-kindergarten or kindergarten or whenever, the train ain't stopping. Each grade is progressively more difficult than the one before it; Grade 5 is harder than Grade 6, Grade 7 is harder than Grade 8, and so on and so on, all the way up until the end of university.
And what's the reward for all of our academic all-nighters?
Real life!
That ain't right. We study, we slave, we go without Springer on a daily, even weekly basis, only to be rewarded by the reality of having to find an actual paying job in the world outside of academia.
Oh, but it doesn't stop there, either.
Once we get a job, if we're any good at it, we eventually get a better job. And what does 'better' actually mean?
More responsibility.
More workload.
More headaches.
Just a few years ago, Bush was chilling as owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, trying to figure out who to trade and who to keep. Trying to line up which beer company would sell the suds at his Texas stadium, probably. And now? Now he carries around a suitcase that contains the secret codes that can launch nuclear weapons at a moment's notice.
Think about it.
Kind of a leap in responsibility, no?
Do we want all that added pressure in our lives? (Not that we all carry around nuclear launch codes, no, but some of us do.)
Maybe yes.
Maybe our reward for all of our hard work in school and on the job is more work, work that allows us to, hopefully, challenge ourselves, achieve our potential, reach for the top and possibly cure a major disease, if we're lucky. (Or even a minor one.)
Still.
Underachievement is underrated, in my book.
And kids need to know what's coming.
I think it's incumbent on every parent to sit their child down the evening before their first day of kindergarten and say:
"Tonight is the last night of your life. Stay in the bath a little longer, play with the rubber duckie, read The Cat In The Hat one more time. I'll even let you stay up late. Because after tomorrow morning, it ain't gonna get any easier."
Or maybe it's better to keep that particular speech to yourself.
If I knew at four what I know now, I might have played sick that first day of school.
And the next, too.
And the next...
ACCIDENTAL INSERTS
I found a photo in my desk at work. Never noticed it before. It's a man and a woman who I don't know, seated at a table I've never sat at. Strangers, in other words. They're smiling. Probably at a party. They are white and the people behind them are brown. Everybody looks like they're having a good time; everybody looks happy.
It made me feel lonely -- for me, for them, for the person who took the photo. Don't know why, really. There's something about a photo that's been abandoned that has a somewhat tragic feel to it. A photo should be in a photobook, or someone's wallet, or pinned on a fridge, next to the grocery list and little Becky's slightly skewed portrait of Granny. Not lying forgotten in a grey desk.
And who are the people in the photo? Are they married? Still together? Is one of them dead, while the other is alive, grieving? They've gone on and lived a life but this portrait of them, this piece of them, lay in a drawer in my desk, covered in dust. They've moved on, but this memory, this tactile projection, has remained static. Glimpsed only belatedly, by me, a stranger.
Whenever I look at old photos I've taken, I always notice the strangers, the people passing behind the people I've photographed. Where are all those strangers right now, those accidental inserts? Are they dead or alive? Content or miserable? Fed up with life or thrilled with the days they have left? And they don't know that they're in a photo of mine; nobody told them.
And how many photos am I in that I don't know about? Has somebody snapped a picture of me, unknowingly, aiming for their friend? Maybe somewhere in Canada, or Japan, or even Cambodia, there's a part of me -- a finger, a left foot, the back of my head -- that exists only in the corner of a stranger's photo.
Another me, incidental but still there, nonetheless.
It made me feel lonely -- for me, for them, for the person who took the photo. Don't know why, really. There's something about a photo that's been abandoned that has a somewhat tragic feel to it. A photo should be in a photobook, or someone's wallet, or pinned on a fridge, next to the grocery list and little Becky's slightly skewed portrait of Granny. Not lying forgotten in a grey desk.
And who are the people in the photo? Are they married? Still together? Is one of them dead, while the other is alive, grieving? They've gone on and lived a life but this portrait of them, this piece of them, lay in a drawer in my desk, covered in dust. They've moved on, but this memory, this tactile projection, has remained static. Glimpsed only belatedly, by me, a stranger.
Whenever I look at old photos I've taken, I always notice the strangers, the people passing behind the people I've photographed. Where are all those strangers right now, those accidental inserts? Are they dead or alive? Content or miserable? Fed up with life or thrilled with the days they have left? And they don't know that they're in a photo of mine; nobody told them.
And how many photos am I in that I don't know about? Has somebody snapped a picture of me, unknowingly, aiming for their friend? Maybe somewhere in Canada, or Japan, or even Cambodia, there's a part of me -- a finger, a left foot, the back of my head -- that exists only in the corner of a stranger's photo.
Another me, incidental but still there, nonetheless.
Monday, March 14, 2005
DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY
I will be happy when I get the job. When I pass the test. When I find my wallet. When I eat that pizza. When _____ loves me. When I go on vacation to Club Med this summer. When I buy that new couch, the blue one, the one for the living room. When I lose the twenty pounds. When Kirstie Alley loses forty pounds. When peace comes to the Middle East. When we follow Rodney King's advice and all get along. When the bumper on my Buick finally gets fixed. When the baby stops crying. When my lotto numbers fall into place, one glorious ping-pong ball at a time.
The other night I watched this British show hosted by a dude named Parkinson (unknown to me), and one of his guests was a very famous female cooking writer/host, Nigella Lawson (also unknown to me; I'm not up on my British celebrities, I guess). Apparently, her first husband had died a long and lingering death, and she married her second one less than two years later. When questioned about the British press's rather unsympathetic reaction to this turn of events, Lawson basically said: "I've always been a believer that if you get the chance to have a little happiness in your life, you have to take it, no matter where or when you are."
Which got me thinking.
(Flashback to the final episode of Cheers, where Sam tells Woody: "Thanks, Woody, you've given me something to think about there." And Woody says: "Ah, I'm sorry, Sam, I hate when somebody does that to me.")
Is happiness something to be grabbed, taken, possibly stored? Is it our human right, or a privilege?Can get we get it? Hold on to it? Is it a state of mind or an actual, physical state?
I don't know. I do know that happiness always seems to be over there somewhere -- up ahead, around the corner, second light on the right. Can't miss it.
And yet we do miss it, don't we? All the time, constantly. We think we're happy, and then the moment passes. (That moment can last for five seconds or five years, depending on the person.) We look at others thinking, I wish I were that happy, not realizing that they are looking at us and thinking the exact same thing.
Perhaps it's a class thing, this notion of 'happiness' being something we deserve, something we can wield and clutch. I don't think the poor of Cambodia think about 'happiness' all that much; they are too busy trying to survive. This is not saying that they don't want all the good things that we want. (Wow, that's a double negative sentence for you.) Of course they do. But I don't think that they put such a premium on their happiness. If they have money for today, food for today, they are happy. Genuinely, demonstrably happy. You can see it in their smiles, smiles that we've lost, or never had. If there exists the possibililty that tomorrow there will be no money, no food, well, so be it. That's tomorrow. For today, all is fine.
I'm simplifying things, I'm sure, but it just seems that we in the west crave happiness more than ever, with less and less people actually getting it. Everybody back home seems to be either drugged up or shooting up, looking for a state of medicinal, chemical bliss that will endure.
Maybe it's not supposed to endure, this happiness. Maybe those moments when we catch ourselves thinking 'I'm happy' are what happiness is all about -- an instant, a certain place in time, not directly connected to anything long-term, or even lasting. Maybe it just means recognizing that we're here, alive, breathing. Waiting for the day's twilight, and knowing that's enough.
The other night I watched this British show hosted by a dude named Parkinson (unknown to me), and one of his guests was a very famous female cooking writer/host, Nigella Lawson (also unknown to me; I'm not up on my British celebrities, I guess). Apparently, her first husband had died a long and lingering death, and she married her second one less than two years later. When questioned about the British press's rather unsympathetic reaction to this turn of events, Lawson basically said: "I've always been a believer that if you get the chance to have a little happiness in your life, you have to take it, no matter where or when you are."
Which got me thinking.
(Flashback to the final episode of Cheers, where Sam tells Woody: "Thanks, Woody, you've given me something to think about there." And Woody says: "Ah, I'm sorry, Sam, I hate when somebody does that to me.")
Is happiness something to be grabbed, taken, possibly stored? Is it our human right, or a privilege?Can get we get it? Hold on to it? Is it a state of mind or an actual, physical state?
I don't know. I do know that happiness always seems to be over there somewhere -- up ahead, around the corner, second light on the right. Can't miss it.
And yet we do miss it, don't we? All the time, constantly. We think we're happy, and then the moment passes. (That moment can last for five seconds or five years, depending on the person.) We look at others thinking, I wish I were that happy, not realizing that they are looking at us and thinking the exact same thing.
Perhaps it's a class thing, this notion of 'happiness' being something we deserve, something we can wield and clutch. I don't think the poor of Cambodia think about 'happiness' all that much; they are too busy trying to survive. This is not saying that they don't want all the good things that we want. (Wow, that's a double negative sentence for you.) Of course they do. But I don't think that they put such a premium on their happiness. If they have money for today, food for today, they are happy. Genuinely, demonstrably happy. You can see it in their smiles, smiles that we've lost, or never had. If there exists the possibililty that tomorrow there will be no money, no food, well, so be it. That's tomorrow. For today, all is fine.
I'm simplifying things, I'm sure, but it just seems that we in the west crave happiness more than ever, with less and less people actually getting it. Everybody back home seems to be either drugged up or shooting up, looking for a state of medicinal, chemical bliss that will endure.
Maybe it's not supposed to endure, this happiness. Maybe those moments when we catch ourselves thinking 'I'm happy' are what happiness is all about -- an instant, a certain place in time, not directly connected to anything long-term, or even lasting. Maybe it just means recognizing that we're here, alive, breathing. Waiting for the day's twilight, and knowing that's enough.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
THE 'SOAP BUBBLE THINGEE' THEORY OF LIFE
I once thought of writing a book called My Alternative Lives, using the conventions of space fiction, some of whose ideas are the same as those on the frontiers of physics. But the plot here would be that the lives of the doctor, the animal doctor, the farmer, the explorer would run concurrently with my life, set in other parallel universes or 'realities', continually influencing mine. As in those cases of multiple personalities, where only slowly do the personalities inside a woman or man become aware of each other, the heroine of this book -- me for argument's sake-- would slowly come to know that multiples of herself are living these other lives...
-- Doris Lessing,
Under My Skin
Aha! So Lessing voices something I've always suspected, that physicists are also now starting to toy with, this notion of parallel universes, parallel lives.
For example: Let's just say that you went to the high school downtown rather than the one closest to you. The moment, the instant you made that decision, another, divergent path of your life opened up. There was, in effect, two of you, travelling parallel paths that never meet.
But it could be more than that.
The you that chose chocolate ice cream over vanilla. The you that went to the dance versus the you that stayed home and watched Perfect Strangers. The you that decided to stay in high school a year longer because you were a young, pimple-faced, scared little kid who didn't know what to do in life (and still don't -- welcome to the club.)
What if, at each and every moment, we split, diverge, separate into alternate selves in alternate universes? This could be a comforting notion; soothing, even. It means that that which we have lost is not really lost at all, just diverted to a different stream of space and time. It means that our unfulfilled dreams have in fact, been fulfilled -- just by a different edition of ourselves.
Maybe our lives are like those soap-bubble thingees we played with as kids, where you dip the ring into the gloop, hold the hole up to your lips, and blow out the bubble. What begins as one big bubble soon, almost instantly, multiplies into more and more. All different, all originating from the same source.
And who knows? Maybe right now there's another version of myself discounting this same theory, in another blog, in another realm.
And maybe one day we'll be able to meet.
-- Doris Lessing,
Under My Skin
Aha! So Lessing voices something I've always suspected, that physicists are also now starting to toy with, this notion of parallel universes, parallel lives.
For example: Let's just say that you went to the high school downtown rather than the one closest to you. The moment, the instant you made that decision, another, divergent path of your life opened up. There was, in effect, two of you, travelling parallel paths that never meet.
But it could be more than that.
The you that chose chocolate ice cream over vanilla. The you that went to the dance versus the you that stayed home and watched Perfect Strangers. The you that decided to stay in high school a year longer because you were a young, pimple-faced, scared little kid who didn't know what to do in life (and still don't -- welcome to the club.)
What if, at each and every moment, we split, diverge, separate into alternate selves in alternate universes? This could be a comforting notion; soothing, even. It means that that which we have lost is not really lost at all, just diverted to a different stream of space and time. It means that our unfulfilled dreams have in fact, been fulfilled -- just by a different edition of ourselves.
Maybe our lives are like those soap-bubble thingees we played with as kids, where you dip the ring into the gloop, hold the hole up to your lips, and blow out the bubble. What begins as one big bubble soon, almost instantly, multiplies into more and more. All different, all originating from the same source.
And who knows? Maybe right now there's another version of myself discounting this same theory, in another blog, in another realm.
And maybe one day we'll be able to meet.
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