Order of service for daily departure from the house. May be used for departure from Day Care or Preschool as well, as needed. Intended for daily observation.
L: Daddy, I need to say my words.
C: Okay.
L: Daddy, I love you.
C: I love you, too.
L: I'll miss you.
C: I'll miss you.
L: Don't forget to lock your door when you're done at church.
C: I won't.
L: Don't forget to unlock your door when you get to church.
C: I won't.
L: Hug, kiss.
The Hug of Anxiety shall be exchanged at this time. The hug may be followed by a kiss on the head. On especially sweet days, a kiss on the lips may be substituted.
L: I love you.
C: You already said that.
L: I'll miss you.
C: You already said that.
L: Bye.
C: Bye. Go watch me through the window.
Blown kisses and waves may be exchanged through the window as the congregation drives away. Failing to follow this order of service will result in the entire litany being repeated many times.
Breakfast today was coffee (Dunkin Donuts whole bean), generic frosted flakes with milk, strawberry banana yogurt, and stale toasted English muffin with Promise.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
indifference
During a discussion the other day I brought up a bit of pop wisdom, possibly attributable to Elie Wiesel: "The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference."
Yes, this is the kind of thing I talk about at work. On good days, anyway.
Aside from the pleasurable way it illustrates the slippery nature of the word "opposite" (whence much of my frustration with standardized testing), this quote has some truth to it, at least for high-temperature-emotion folks.
I insert that last qualification about emotional temperature to be fair to a colleague who approached me after the discussion. He wanted to dispute the opposition of love and indifference. He wanted to claim that some forms of love do not have strong opinions. Perhaps he even wanted to imply that a benign indifference can be the most enlightened form of love.
This got me thinking about Buddhism, and the concept of Nirvana, which has been characterized as "detachment" or "non-attachment." What brings freedom from suffering, by the Buddha's Third Noble Truth, is the cessation/destruction of craving/attachment to things that will fade away.
As a teenager raised in the Christian tradition, I heard this as a cop-out. Detaching from the world means ignoring the goodness of creation, right? It means an end to love and passsion and activism, right? After watching "Gone With the Wind" I decided to make my mission statement: "Give a darn" (or variously more vulgar forms of that basic idea--probably not the right idea to get from the movie, but that Scarlett was GORGEOUS).
Well, as I got older I came more to appreciate emotional restraint again. And as I got to know more actual Buddhists, and not just what I imagined about them from superficial reading, I came to see that there could be such a thing as peaceful, non-grasping love which authentically is unashamed to be who I am, and also unanxious to let the beloved be whomever they might happen or need to be without trying to fix them. Infinitely curious, and infinitely generous, but not heated or needy.
This is not what my colleague is like.
He claims to have no fixed opinions and to be willing to go where people need him to be in a Zen-without-being-aware-of-it sort of way, but it is so inauthentic. He is an anxious person who is never seems to listen to others who don't already agree with him. He is unable to understand anything that is not already inside his head. And he appears so wounded when you contradict him in the least possible way that a nice person is inclined to avoid contradicting him at all. So he gets to avoid all conflict.
I remember, at a time in my life when I was extremely inexperienced with relationships and with leadership of all sorts, that I felt a sense of smug superiority over folks who had to have things their own way, or who had such strong opinions that they could not fully participate in a discussion by being persuadable. I felt pride in my flexibility. I have since come to learn that while this attitude has distinct advantages, it also manifests itself as poor leadership or a failure to engage fully in conversation. If I just claim that anything goes, then there is nothing to say, or to do. And the pushy jerks always win.
And my worst sin was this: I didn't know that many of my opinions were just as rigid and fixed as the ones in others that I complained about. And I was so inauthentic about it. This is what I see as the soul of "emotional dimwittage" (to bowlderize Bridget Jones): to be so unaware of oneself and one's baggage as to see it as an advantage, and to attempt to recruit others to the same crippled lack of self-understanding that you are a victim of, or to run others' lives by your baggage, as if you alone know the One True Path to happiness when you in fact don't even know how to make yourself happy without damaging others along the way.
Much better, then, to seek to know oneself, to seek to express oneself, and to stand for things one is actually passionate about. As long as you don't clench them in a destructively rigid way.
Non-attachment is not the same thing as indifference, and not-caring is not love. Of course, hot passion is not the only game in town, either. Why not wry amusement, generous attentiveness, and play?
Lunch was multiple courses of fast food: I fed my boys McDonalds Happy Meals so they could have the Spider-Man toys before school began. I had a grilled honey mustard snack wrap for myself and mooched a few fries and nuggets from them. Then I met more of my family at Culver's, where I had a double Butterburger with everything, including cheese and endless drippings of finger-lickin' condiments, crinkle fries, ketchup, Diet Pepsi, and finally as dessert a scoop of the flavor of the day custard: chocolate caramel nut.
Yes, this is the kind of thing I talk about at work. On good days, anyway.
Aside from the pleasurable way it illustrates the slippery nature of the word "opposite" (whence much of my frustration with standardized testing), this quote has some truth to it, at least for high-temperature-emotion folks.
I insert that last qualification about emotional temperature to be fair to a colleague who approached me after the discussion. He wanted to dispute the opposition of love and indifference. He wanted to claim that some forms of love do not have strong opinions. Perhaps he even wanted to imply that a benign indifference can be the most enlightened form of love.
This got me thinking about Buddhism, and the concept of Nirvana, which has been characterized as "detachment" or "non-attachment." What brings freedom from suffering, by the Buddha's Third Noble Truth, is the cessation/destruction of craving/attachment to things that will fade away.
As a teenager raised in the Christian tradition, I heard this as a cop-out. Detaching from the world means ignoring the goodness of creation, right? It means an end to love and passsion and activism, right? After watching "Gone With the Wind" I decided to make my mission statement: "Give a darn" (or variously more vulgar forms of that basic idea--probably not the right idea to get from the movie, but that Scarlett was GORGEOUS).
Well, as I got older I came more to appreciate emotional restraint again. And as I got to know more actual Buddhists, and not just what I imagined about them from superficial reading, I came to see that there could be such a thing as peaceful, non-grasping love which authentically is unashamed to be who I am, and also unanxious to let the beloved be whomever they might happen or need to be without trying to fix them. Infinitely curious, and infinitely generous, but not heated or needy.
This is not what my colleague is like.
He claims to have no fixed opinions and to be willing to go where people need him to be in a Zen-without-being-aware-of-it sort of way, but it is so inauthentic. He is an anxious person who is never seems to listen to others who don't already agree with him. He is unable to understand anything that is not already inside his head. And he appears so wounded when you contradict him in the least possible way that a nice person is inclined to avoid contradicting him at all. So he gets to avoid all conflict.
I remember, at a time in my life when I was extremely inexperienced with relationships and with leadership of all sorts, that I felt a sense of smug superiority over folks who had to have things their own way, or who had such strong opinions that they could not fully participate in a discussion by being persuadable. I felt pride in my flexibility. I have since come to learn that while this attitude has distinct advantages, it also manifests itself as poor leadership or a failure to engage fully in conversation. If I just claim that anything goes, then there is nothing to say, or to do. And the pushy jerks always win.
And my worst sin was this: I didn't know that many of my opinions were just as rigid and fixed as the ones in others that I complained about. And I was so inauthentic about it. This is what I see as the soul of "emotional dimwittage" (to bowlderize Bridget Jones): to be so unaware of oneself and one's baggage as to see it as an advantage, and to attempt to recruit others to the same crippled lack of self-understanding that you are a victim of, or to run others' lives by your baggage, as if you alone know the One True Path to happiness when you in fact don't even know how to make yourself happy without damaging others along the way.
Much better, then, to seek to know oneself, to seek to express oneself, and to stand for things one is actually passionate about. As long as you don't clench them in a destructively rigid way.
Non-attachment is not the same thing as indifference, and not-caring is not love. Of course, hot passion is not the only game in town, either. Why not wry amusement, generous attentiveness, and play?
Lunch was multiple courses of fast food: I fed my boys McDonalds Happy Meals so they could have the Spider-Man toys before school began. I had a grilled honey mustard snack wrap for myself and mooched a few fries and nuggets from them. Then I met more of my family at Culver's, where I had a double Butterburger with everything, including cheese and endless drippings of finger-lickin' condiments, crinkle fries, ketchup, Diet Pepsi, and finally as dessert a scoop of the flavor of the day custard: chocolate caramel nut.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Clearing the pipes
I don't write enough. There I said it. I don't write enough.
I am not only talking about this blog. There are vast swaths of my existence that are unexplored, unrecorded, lost to the ages. And some (few) of them just might be interesting. But do I write them down? Do I share my knowledge/experience/views? No.
All my life, I have imagined myself to be a writer. My therapist once told me that the greatest hope of my recovery/destiny/calling would have something to do with my writing, and I do not write.
I compose an intentionally low-threshold theme for a blog--Random Ignorant Musings and What Had At Lunch--with the explicit goal of simply getting myself to write--and I don't write. People who love me ask me to write, and I do not write.
Meanwhile people all over Facebook and the Blogopia are all writing 25 random things about themselves willy-nilly. A friend, just for the heck of it, writes 50 random things. And they were interesting. I was glad to read them.
And this introverted intimacy-phobe who doesn't let anyone get to know him except strangers craves an even more anonymous form of writing. But then, I never write in my blank bound journal either.
I come up with themes, I write a few hundred words, and I throw them away because my expectations are too high.
Well, that is enough. I am self-indulgent. I am writing something. I don't care.
Okay, I do care. And I already feel guilty for writing this whiny screed, but I am not letting the voices in my head win.
Onward and upward!
Lunch today was Visiting Parents Sandwiches: we never eat plain lunchmeat sandwiches unless my parents are visiting, because we are much more self-indulgent than that with our food choices. But my parents help us to live simply: bread from the corner convenience store, two extra wide slices of turkey, one extra-wide slice of ham, processed cheese, butter, and mustard. Generic Lays-equivalent chips. Diet Coke. And a snickerdoodle, home-baked from a refrigerator pull-apart package, so that the cinnamon makes this square on top of the round cookie. Oh, and my sandwich got the guilty lettuce--no one else would take the last slice that Mom had brought all the way from home. It sat in the cooler in her trunk for days, but it was quite well refrigerated by all the miserable weather.
I am not only talking about this blog. There are vast swaths of my existence that are unexplored, unrecorded, lost to the ages. And some (few) of them just might be interesting. But do I write them down? Do I share my knowledge/experience/views? No.
All my life, I have imagined myself to be a writer. My therapist once told me that the greatest hope of my recovery/destiny/calling would have something to do with my writing, and I do not write.
I compose an intentionally low-threshold theme for a blog--Random Ignorant Musings and What Had At Lunch--with the explicit goal of simply getting myself to write--and I don't write. People who love me ask me to write, and I do not write.
Meanwhile people all over Facebook and the Blogopia are all writing 25 random things about themselves willy-nilly. A friend, just for the heck of it, writes 50 random things. And they were interesting. I was glad to read them.
And this introverted intimacy-phobe who doesn't let anyone get to know him except strangers craves an even more anonymous form of writing. But then, I never write in my blank bound journal either.
I come up with themes, I write a few hundred words, and I throw them away because my expectations are too high.
Well, that is enough. I am self-indulgent. I am writing something. I don't care.
Okay, I do care. And I already feel guilty for writing this whiny screed, but I am not letting the voices in my head win.
Onward and upward!
Lunch today was Visiting Parents Sandwiches: we never eat plain lunchmeat sandwiches unless my parents are visiting, because we are much more self-indulgent than that with our food choices. But my parents help us to live simply: bread from the corner convenience store, two extra wide slices of turkey, one extra-wide slice of ham, processed cheese, butter, and mustard. Generic Lays-equivalent chips. Diet Coke. And a snickerdoodle, home-baked from a refrigerator pull-apart package, so that the cinnamon makes this square on top of the round cookie. Oh, and my sandwich got the guilty lettuce--no one else would take the last slice that Mom had brought all the way from home. It sat in the cooler in her trunk for days, but it was quite well refrigerated by all the miserable weather.
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