Monthly Archives: June 2014

Growing pains and the pain of change

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Moving is hard. I’ve talked to people lately who say that the prospect of picking up and just going somewhere new — solo — is exciting to them. I’m not sure I believe it. Maybe I’m not that kind of a person. I hope that excitement and anticipation of new things to explore will come greet me sometime before I leave, but for the moment, I am feeling a lot of grief for what I’m leaving behind.

They say that depressed people don’t see the world more negatively than others. In fact, studies have shown that depressed people see the world more clearly and realistically than others. What does that say about the world?! I’m one of those people, and I don’t want to give up seeing the world realistically, but I spend a lot of time trying to focus on happy things and things I am grateful for so that I’m not sad all the time.

Sometimes it just overtakes you, no matter how much you wish it wouldn’t.

It’s hard going through my things. Get rid of things. I haven’t looked at that in years. I haven’t worn that in years. I don’t want to let go, but keeping things to keep them doesn’t always make sense either. Let go, let go, let go, let go.

Change is inevitable. We don’t get to stay still, and I know this. We can love what we love about now or about the past. We can keep in touch with our friends when we move. We can accept that some people will drift away, but that the ones who really matter will keep in touch. Maybe not often, but they will. We will make new friends, and find new things to do.

Growing pains. We say that for a reason. Change is hard, but necessary.

I am grateful for the new opportunity.
I am even grateful to be forced to sort through my crap.
I am grateful for the support and help of many friends.
I am grateful for the boxes.
I am grateful to have lived in this beautiful house for over 10 years.
I am grateful to have been able to make so many friends here.
I am grateful to have been able to contribute to the community here for the past 12 years.
I am looking forward to making new friends and trying new things.
I am looking forward to a lighter life after I’ve gone through so many of my things!
I will be very glad when this move is over.

Sitting in Judgment

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I was on a hearing panel that suspended a student yesterday.

It’s funny how everyone says, “This isn’t me.” Guess what? This is you. This isn’t all of you, but this is part of you. We are the sum of all of our actions. The kindnesses, the cruelties, the lies, the truths, the intentions, the regrets, the results. All.

I am no exception to this. I have done things I am ashamed of. I have hurt people, with intentional and unintentional cruelty. I have helped people, sometimes intentionally. Sometimes not. I have stolen, taking that which I knew was not mine. I have been scared of consequences, and chosen an action that I knew was not correct, and hoped that no ill would come of it. I have had moments of grace. I have had moments of failure. And all these things are the sum of me.

What I have learned is to try to keep myself out of the situations where I might be tempted do wrong. I have learned to be more mindful of the impact my actions have on others. I have learned that my intent and the result I obtain are not always the same, and so I must be cautious with my intent, cautious in my action, and aware, always, of what is going on around me. I don’t often succeed to the extent I wish I would.

When we suspend a student, we confront someone who has done wrong. Several wrongs. Rare does a student get suspended on a first offense. If one is, it means the actions were both premeditated and egregious. The student stands before the council and faces their least honorable self often with words of denial, ‘This isn’t me.’ Often with apologies. Often claiming to respect the honor code they have broken.

I don’t want to hurt them more, but I do want to say, “Yes, it is you.” But this is not the sum of what you are. You can take this experience, the darkness you’ve found inside yourself, and you can accept it. Learn from it. Learn to avoid putting yourself in a position where you will make a bad decision again. Learn how to put/keep yourself in positions to make good decisions. And you are greater, and will be greater than this one thing you did. No matter how horrible this one thing was. Let it motivate you to do better in the future.

And let it open you to compassion when you are confronted with others who wrong you. Remember this darkness is in all of us, but so is the ability to learn, change and reach for light.

Essentialism

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On the advice of a friend, I recently read Essentialism by Greg McKeown. It’s a book on a common theme: getting more out of life, getting more out of less. The type of advice your average overscheduled, over busy, overly responsible person needs, and that certainly includes me.

One point made is to get enough sleep. Sleep allows us to function at our best. One point made is that we have to protect our ability to prioritize. And getting enough sleep is a big part of this.

Guess what I’ve been failing at in the worst possible way since reading the book?

I hope I have some other priorities in order. Some. Certainly not all. This is definitely a work in progress, and I hope I get better at it.

Father’s Day

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Dear Dad,

I wish I could call you today to wish you a happy Father’s Day and to have a talk about all the things going on in my life. I learned to take your advice on some matters with a grain of salt, but with others you had good insights for me. Moving, selling my house, making plans for the future — there are times I feel so overwhelmed with it all, and I wish I could talk it over with my Dad.

But we can’t talk on the phone easily anymore, and I had to make due with letters. I sent you two last week. I forgot it was going to be Father’s Day at the beginning of the week, and so I just sent you a note from Washington. I knew I missed the week before, so I hope it helped make up for that. Wednesday, after I returned to Texas, Father’s Day was on my mind, and I sent you another card specifically for it. I posted it that day, but I don’t think it will arrive until next week. I hope that will be okay. I will send you another note today; your regular weekly letter since phone calls, like I said, don’t work well anymore.

I would imagine that the sister who is taking care of you will visit today. Maybe she will even take you out somewhere. I wonder if my other siblings will mark the day in any way. There are two who could easily visit. There are two more who could at least send a card. But that’s not my business nor my problem. I don’t control anyone else’s relationship to you, only my own. I know I could do better; I just hope I do good enough.

Good enough to let you know you are loved. Good enough to let you know I’m in your corner and would do what I can for you. Good enough to let you know that whatever has happened with my siblings, that I’m not blaming you for that.

There’s been a lot of water under the bridge, Dad. Sometimes I wish you had been a different, stronger person, with more integrity. But I got what I got, and you are the only Dad I will ever have. One thing I know is that while you often didn’t understand me, you loved me beyond reason, you were proud of me. Sometimes you wanted to protect me, even if you didn’t know how. Sometimes you did know how.

I will always remember how, after that bad car accident, you bought a car for me and drove it out to me from California. It wasn’t the type of car I would have picked out. Then again, we aren’t the type of family where parents buy cars for their kids. I knew that you were doing your best to take care of me. I washed that car, and I took care of that car, and I appreciated that car knowing how it represented your love for me.

We’ve had some rough patches along the way. I wish I could go back and find a better way through some of them; you don’t realize how precious time is until it is gone. I know, I know, you aren’t dead yet. And I will love you in my actions through to the end.

One thing I’ve come to understand is that even when the parent-child bond is damaged or broken, whatever things that happen to sunder the two, just what a powerful force it is that pulls our hearts toward each other. Wanting your parent’s love and approval is one of the most powerful forces on earth.

I love you Dad. I wish I could make you better. I wish I could make you as sharp as a tack. I wish I could redo some things from the past. I know I will do my best to write you every week though I expect I’ll miss a few. And I will visit at least twice a year, through to the end. I will do my best to be there when that end comes.

Love,

Dr. Jinx

Being Different from Everyone Else

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Last post, I mentioned my atheism. This is something that sets me apart from the vast majority of my friends and colleagues. It makes people uncomfortable. This is no surprise; when religion teaches that unbelievers are evil and horribly mistaken, where religion gives comfort to those in pain, when many believers disbelieve for a time because they are angry with God, what is a believer to think of another who rejects the faith?

When I was 10 or 11 years old I had a friend ask me why it was I believed in God. I had never considered this a question before. I think many people never consider the question unless they are angry and in pain — i.e. mad at God for some circumstance. For me it was just a completely new thought, an entirely reasonable thought, and I spent a long time with it. I have spent the last 34-35 years thinking on this on and off. When I was younger, I asked this of the adults around me, and I certainly didn’t get a satisfactory answer. I asked my parents, the preachers and teachers in the church, and I didn’t get a satisfactory answer. I read the bible, and I didn’t find that convincing either.

For a while, as a distressed teenager from a troubled home, I tried to follow the prescription of religious friends. To ask for faith and faith would be given to me. I asked, I prayed, I read the Bible some more, but the harder I tried, the more I learned, the more doubt filled my mind. Faith was not given to me. Again, I turned my critical faculties on the question of the existence of God, any God.

The arguments for atheism made a lot more sense. And let me say to those who are reading this who believe. I believe in exactly one fewer god than you do. Why don’t you believe in the Greek gods, or the Roman gods, or the Hindu gods or any of the rest? What makes the one you believe in special is usually that you were raised in that church or are surrounded by that culture. Think of all the gods you have rejected, and remember, I have rejected just one more.

Some say we need God to explain the existence of the universe, but I’d reply by asking why don’t we then need something to explain the existence of God? I stop one step earlier in the process that these believers do. The argument about intelligent design also did not do much for me; yes, there is much about the world that is complicated and elegant, but to claim that this must be created an intelligent designer is to fail to understand fully the theory of evolution and the power of small changes over long periods of time. There are other arguments. I will spare you even a short review of them. I am sure you can go find more information if you are curious.

Another thing. We certainly don’t see any God influencing our day to day life — though some people like to claim they’ve seen it or seen miracles — I believe that people are often experts at fooling themselves and seeing what they want to see. Even me, and I try to be diligent on this issue.

I’ve been in the minority for most of my life with this lack of belief; having other people disagree with me on this point is hardly upsetting. I don’t always like what others say — when people claim it takes faith to be an atheist, that just gets my dander up. The burden of proof is on the person asserting the positive. I am not asserting a positive. When people wonder whether I have a moral code, I have to often bite my tongue in the course of employing it.

I wonder how people can believe what some of the crazy things that the Bible and churches teach, yet be otherwise rational human beings. I am sure they think the exact same of me! One thing being in the minority teaches you is just how rude it would be to express that thought aloud. And unproductive. People that I do respect believe these things. They have reasons I do not understand. It is not my job to convince them, it is my job to live my life authentically and to celebrate when I see others do the same, even if their way is different from mine.

My favorite character from literature, my heart’s favorite at least, is Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan from Lois McMaster Bujold’s works Shards of Honor and Barrayar, collected in the single volume Cordelia’s Honor. While a religious person might ask “what would Jesus do?” my question is “what would Cordelia do?” Cordelia is definitely a theist. I am definitely not. Sometimes my respect and love and admiration for this fictional character is what reminds me that we are all different, and what helps me see, just a little bit, of the perspective from the other side.

It is never easy to go against the flow. My integrity demands this of me. You may not agree; you may want to argue. Please keep in mind that I have, indeed heard it all before. More than once. I hope you can try to respect that, as I also try to respect your beliefs. We won’t always succeed, but at least we can be civilized about our disagreement.

Death and purpose

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Last night I found a geocache in a cemetery, and this sparked a conversation about death. Or, rather, about what my friend wants to have happen to her when she dies. She’d opt for cremation, and has plans for friends to help her husband with her collectibles. Such a calm, reasoned plan in the face of the inevitable, and I envy her equanimity.

Me? I don’t even like to think about it. Thinking about death, most specifically mine, still has the power to provoke an anxiety attack. I’m not ready to face it. I believe in real death; that you disappear from this world. We will leave it and be forgotten entirely. Not immediately, but certainly by the time the sun dies its death. By that time, no living being will remember us and whatever influence we had will long have faded into nothingness.

Religious adherents may be tempted to argue with me at this point, or tell me to find God and find comfort. I’ve spent years thinking about that aspect of the situation. If that works for you, great. That line of argumentation has never worked for me nor resonated true with me. I don’t believe, and I’m not going to sacrifice a heart-felt truth for comfort. Do you prefer comfortable lies or uncomfortable truths? I prefer uncomfortable truths.

Except that, when I can, I would avoid thinking about this one.

But even believing that in the end we disappear, there is still the question of what is my purpose in this here and now. I do not choose to live a purposeless existence. Even if every act is eventually erased.

Certainly part of it is to do my best by my students. To teach them not only about math but to try to give them wisdom and strength to get through life. An idea or a thought, source forgotten, that helps them find their path and their purpose.

Another part of my purpose is to write. Here, this blog, this is practice. I don’t know what exactly it is I have to say yet, but writing here, day by day, I hone my craft and tune my voice. And wait, and watch and think. I will find my message and my way of writing it.

A last part is certainly in human connection, but this part has me lost. It is something I should write about at a future time. Suffice for now to say that I find myself in middle life, alone, but for family of choice (and some by birth that I am less close to). Not a path I chose for myself, but one that circumstances thrust upon me. It gets to me sometimes, though I have found much comfort this past year in focusing on the love I can give rather than the love I wanted to find. Focus on what you can control, and keep moving forward.