*
RED LICORICE
Turns out the universe is an accordion.
I take this as vindication of the polka.
If it began with the Big Bang
will it end with the Big Suck?
I like physics more than psychics.
These days there are psychics all night on TV.
Nostradamus would be ashamed.
Why predict sexual dysfunction
when there are tidal waves in the offing?
If we didn’t die we wouldn’t care about time.
We’d make and break
appointments with a shrug.
The top half of calendars with pretty pictures
would be enough. Ansel Adams
aimed a slow exposure at the Rockies
but didn’t know they were running away.
Maybe all matter is shy. This hubbub
makes me stay at home.
Stop signs have no effect on entropy.
I’m saddened by the eventual demise of red licorice
but not black. Yet consider how often
you’ve wanted a second chance.
Nietzsche said we do the whole thing
again and again. That life’s
an endless waltz to a patient band.
If I come back I hope gravity’s
reversed. To fall up.
To be with my wife but not have to shop
for shoes. Somewhere is the first atom
that existed. The next time
you feel nostalgic wait your turn.
~ Bob Hicok
Now and then Bob Hicok comes up with an irresistible poem.The first two lines of course —
Turns out the universe is an accordion.
I take this as vindication of the polka.
And then: ”If we didn't die we wouldn't care about time . . . The top half of calendars with pretty pictures would be enough.”
And:
These days there are psychics all night on TV.
Nostradamus would be ashamed.
. . .
Nietzsche said we do the whole thing
again and again. That life’s
an endless waltz to a patient band.
If I come back I hope gravity’s
reversed. To fall up.
To be with my wife but not have to shop
for shoes.
Yes, maybe one's life happens again and again, but perhaps with variations, reversals. This is certainly more appealing than Nietzsche’s amor fati and the eternal return of the same (I personally could not say Yes to that). But a “timeless” life in which only the pretty pictures in calendars seems appealing. Or at least a very long life. But I do wonder if our sense of urgency about making a good use of life would disappear if our literal “deadline” either disappeared or existed only vaguely, a long time off. As for artists, even they might get tired of their work — the problem of repeating yourself, especially if you are restating what you said twenty years ago, except better the first time (a crushing perception), exists already, within our limited lifetime. But there would be the joy of sampling many disciplines — whereas now we are acutely aware of having developed an exceptional skill in one of them, and being a beginner again, starting to take piano lessons, say, with not enough time left in life to become a virtuoso, might not be all that fulfilling.
Time scarcity governs our attitudes. It would be marvelous to simply have time for everything we love.
“Yet consider how often you wanted a second chance” — true. I guess I’d never turn down a chance to live longer — even with all manner of aches and pains and dysfunctions that flesh is heir to. Even so — because just sunsets are enough.
Mary:
I absolutely love the poem you opened with..the universe as accordion, all the galaxies spinning to the polka!!
Oriana:
Those first two lines are a masterpiece. And finally — the kind of astrophysics that really speaks to me!
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Tatra Mountains, Poland, Valley of Five Ponds (I love the name, but only in Polish — it's magical)*
THOMAS MOORE ON WHY IT’S SO DIFFICULT TO HAVE A HARMONIOUS RELATIONSHIP
~ “Human beings are not moved by reasonable motives but by unsettled emotions. We call a human being homo sapiens — a knowing, intelligent, and conscious being. But, in fact, we are all unconscious. Often we have no idea why we do and say the things we do. We might be better off expecting irrational behavior and enjoying the occasional rational act.
We are mysterious creatures of infinite depth, and we can never fully know ourselves and our motives. In your interactions you may assume that the other person knows what is going on, but in fact her feelings are as mysterious to her as they are to you. Again, you might be better off assuming that the other doesn’t know herself any better than you know her.
Much of our behavior is an expression of past and often very early childhood experiences. Childhood and life experiences don’t come and go. They happen and then they stay with us. The stories of childhood and family continue to play out as important themes in our very identity. The problem is, we don’t know that they are in the background of our continuing adult interactions.
Human life is not rational and controlled but daimonic. Daimonic means that we have urges that come out of nowhere and can take us over. We do things we wouldn’t normally choose to do and say things that just come out of mouths. Think of a daimon, as many philosopher and psychologists have described it, as a mysterious but powerful urge toward love, anger, creative expression, or even violence. Jung used the term complex to name the overwhelming urges we all have that get in the way of a rational and controlled life. ~ Thomas Moore, Ageless Soul, 2017
Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. This fragmentary head makes me muse, “That's all that remains of the Goddess of Reason.” “I never do anything for just one reason and it never has just one effect. Life is like playing piano with oven mitts on.” ~ Jeremy Sherman
MARRIAGE 101: THERE ARE NO SOULMATES
~ “The Marriage 101 (at Northwestern University) professors believe college is the perfect time for students to learn about relationships. “Developmentally, this is what the college years are all about: Students are thinking about who they are as people, how they love, who they love, and who they want as a partner,” says Alexandra Solomon, a professor and family therapist who will be teaching the course along with a team of four other faculty, all affiliated with Northwestern University’s Family Institute, and 11 teaching assistants. “We’re all really passionate about talking about what makes a healthy relationship.” The professors see the course—which requires journaling exercises, interviews with married couples, and several term papers—as a kind of inoculation against potential life trauma.
Historians tell us that marriage education in America began as a way to keep women’s sexuality in check. “Marriage education has been for hundreds of years aimed at women. It was considered their responsibility to keep the marriage going,” Stephanie Coontz, co-chairwoman of the Council on Contemporary Families and author of Marriage: A History, tells me. During the 1920s and 1930s, Coontz explains in her book, fears about sexual liberation and the future of marriage led eugenics proponents like Paul Popenoe to become enthusiastic about marriage counseling. “If we were going to promote a sound population, we would not have to get the right kind of people married, but we would have to keep them married,” Popenoe wrote.
College-level marriage courses became even more popular during the post-World War II period, when marriage rates were at an all-time high and women were encouraged to embrace a new role as happy homemakers. Marriage education during that time, Coontz explains, was similarly driven by a strong emphasis on stereotypical gender, race, and class ideas about how a marriage should ideally be conducted. “The received wisdom of the day was that the only way to have a happy marriage was for the woman to give up any aspirations that might threaten the man’s sense of superiority, to make his interests hers, and to never ask for help around the house.” In one case, cited in Rebecca Davis’s book More Perfect Unions, a young wife became convinced, after a series of sessions at Ohio State University’s marriage clinic, that her husband’s straying was a result of her failing to do her duty by taking care of her looks and keeping a proper home. And New York University’s College of Engineering presented “Good Wife Awards” to women who put their spouses first, providing the domestic support that allowed their husbands to concentrate on their studies.
Nowadays, when colleges and universities offer courses on the topic of marriage, rather than explicitly offering practical marriage advice, they often survey the institution of marriage from a historical point of view or look at larger sociological trends.
Northwestern’s Marriage 101 is unique among liberal arts universities in offering a course that is comprehensively and directly focused on the experiential, on self-exploration: on walking students through the actual practice of learning to love well.
Self-understanding is the first step to having a good relationship
“The foundation of our course is based on correcting a misconception: that to make a marriage work, you have to find the right person. The fact is, you have to be the right person,” Solomon declares. “Our message is countercultural: Our focus is on whether you are the right person. Given that we’re dealing with 19-, 20-, 21-year olds, we think the best thing to do at this stage in the game, rather than look for the right partner, is do the work they need to understand who they are, where they are, where they came from, so they can then invite in a compatible suitable partner.”
To that end, students keep a journal, interview friends about their own weaknesses, and discuss what triggers their own reactions and behaviors in order to understand their own issues, hot buttons, and values. “Being blind to these causes people to experience problems as due to someone else—not to themselves,” Solomon explains. “We all have triggers, blind spots, growing edges, vulnerabilities. The best thing we can do is be aware of them, take responsibility for them, and learn how to work with them effectively.”
You can’t avoid marital conflict, but you can learn how to handle it better
The instructors teach that self-discovery is impossible without knowing where you came from. “Understanding your past and the family you grew up in helps you to understand who you are now and what you value,” Solomon says. To help students recognize what has shaped their views on love, she and her colleagues have students extensively interview their own parents about their own relationship. Many find this to be the most demanding and yet the most rewarding assignment of the course. Maddy Bloch, who took the course two years ago along with her boyfriend at the time, learned a lot when she interviewed her own parents about their own marriage, despite the fact that they are divorced. “I learned that in an intimate relationship each person holds a tremendous amount of power that you can easily turn on someone,” she says. “This is why relationships require a lot of mutual trust and vulnerability.”
Once you have a sound, objective sense of why you behave the way you do, you are better equipped to deal with conflicts—inevitable in any long-term relationship—with the appropriate tincture of self-awareness so that you avoid behaving in ways that make your partner defensive. The class instructors teach their students that blaming, oversimplifying, and seeing themselves as victims are all common traits of unhappy couples and failed marriages. They aim to teach students that rather than viewing conflicts from a zero-sum position, where one wins and one loses, they would benefit from a paradigm shift that allows them to see a couple as “two people standing shoulder to shoulder looking together at the problem.”
Thus, one of many concrete conflict-resolution skills that they teach is to frame statements as “X, Y, Z” statements, rather than finger pointing: When you did X, in situation Y, I felt Z. In other words, calmly telling my husband that when he left his clothes on the bathroom floor in the morning because he was late for a meeting, I felt resentful because I felt he didn’t notice that I was busy too, would lead to a better outcome than if I were to reactively lash out and accuse him of being a messy and careless slob. “‘You’ statements,” Solomon explains, “invite the other partner’s defensiveness, inviting them to put their walls up.” So too do words (tempting though they may sound in the moment) such as “always” or “never.”
A good marriage takes skill
There’s no doubt that the largest takeaway from the course is that fostering good relationships takes skills. “We’re a very romantic culture,” Solomon says, “and it seems a little unromantic to talk about skill building and communication skills. But it’s important.” One of our more beloved cultural myths about marriage is that it should be easy. The reality is that most of us don’t have adequate communication skills going into marriage. That’s why Marriage 101 students are required to interview another couple in addition to their own parents: a mentor couple (typically a local couple who has been married anywhere from several years to several decades). The professors hand out a list of more than 80 suggested questions and tell their students to think of the interview as a sort of lab experiment, a chance to observe the theoretical concepts they’ve been learning in a real-life context. During a 90-minute interview, a pair of students asks each couple questions such as what most attracted them to the other at the start of their relationship, which moments stand out as the best ones of their marriage, how they’ve weathered severe stresses, whether they ever thought about divorce, and what their sex life has been like over time. They watch the couple interact and engage in good couple skills: bringing a spouse a glass of water, for instance, as an unspoken gesture of caretaking. The interview is itself also a chance to observe a couple doing something that research shows is good for marriage: reminisce together as they look back on their relationship.
You and your partner need a similar worldview
Yet, despite how often we hear about the importance of good communication, even the best communication skills won’t help a couple that sees the world completely differently. One of the texts used in the course, Will Our Love Last? by Sam R. Hamburg, argues that people can be incredibly proficient communicators, yet never see eye to eye because they simply can’t understand how their partner can hold a position they see as untenable. “For people to be happy in their marriage they must be able to understand not just what their partner is saying, but the experience behind the words,” writes Hamburg. If partners are unable to do that, “they cannot understand what it’s like to be their partner—to understand their partner empathically—and the best communication in the world won’t help.”
The instructors teach students that once they learn to identify what is important to them, what values they hold, what they like to do on a daily basis, and what their sexual preferences are—in other words, once they know who they are—they will then be in a much stronger position to be able to recognize when they are with a partner who is compatible and shares their worldview. “How similarly you spend your day, your money, how you view the world, greatly affects that day-to-day happiness with your partner, more than whether you have initial attraction.”
Love is a lot of work, but it’s worth it if you put the work in.” ~
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-first-lesson-of-marriage-101-there-are-no-soul-mates
Chagall: Laid Table with View of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 1968Oriana:
No soulmates, but some people are more compatible than others. The article gets to this in the end, but relatively feebly.
Finally, there is no evading the fact that no matter how much you come to understand yourself in your twenties, you’re still too young (I think) to cope with the difficulties of marriage. Another fact is that we change, sometimes dramatically. Even partners who were initially compatible may grow apart — and it’s not their fault.
Thinking back to the ugly relationships portrayed in Cold War, perhaps the main problem is lack of respect. At least at first, Wiktor doesn’t seem to respect Zula — who hasn’t experienced much in way of being respected before meeting him either. She realizes that men want to use her, and she takes her revenge by using them. On another plane, the Soviet-imposed government doesn’t respect the citizens; justifiably, the citizens despise the government.
Romantic love happens or it doesn’t happen, but relationships need to be built on respect. A marriage may be far from ideal in terms of compatibility, but is there is deep mutual respect, it will keep the marriage quite endurable, thank you, and at least partly satisfying.
But, as Thomas Moore points out, we are not rational but rather act out of unresolved emotions. We can be taken over by overwhelming urges. “Nobody’s perfect” is one of the most important human discoveries about being human. It applies to you and me and to everyone else.
I also like the advice to “grow a little deaf” — pretend not to hear everything your partner says. You don’t have to react. You never heard it! You start talking about something else — the weather will do. A selective deafness saves so much energy and prevents quarrels and ill feelings.
Mutual respect, a little deafness, letting the partner be himself or herself “as is” since nobody’s perfect, and also because we wouldn’t dream of trying to force a cat to behave like a dog or vice versa — it may not sound very exciting, but it’s all priceless. To have someone always be there for you in a time of need is also priceless — and usually it has been earned over the years with their storms and magical moments as well — “for better and for worse, for richer, for poorer, in illness and in health.”
PS.
Aren’t we overdoing this “love is a lot of work” stuff? Sure, ideally we need the “people skills” it takes decades to acquire. And it takes at least some self-knowledge — if you are the kind of person who requires a lot of privacy and solitude, don’t have a joint household (this, too, it takes some time to figure out, sometimes the hard way). But we have to start somewhere, and the pleasure usually eclipses the sacrifice.
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to be thy lips is a sweet thing
and small.
Death, thee i call rich beyond wishing
if this thou catch,
else missing.
(though love be a day
and life be nothing, it shall not stop kissing).
~ e e cummings
Chagall: Bride and Bridegroom with the Eiffel Tower*
No, there are no soulmates, and that old romantic idea causes a lot of trouble. Maybe it's why the idea of "marriage education" makes sense. People still think and dream and talk in terms of "The One”... that other half that will fulfill and complete them. That kind of expectation places an enormous and impossible burden on anyone and any relationship. If you expect another person to fill every need, be the answer to every question, complete and satisfy you in every way — well, that's not going to happen. It's like a prescription for disappointment, heartbreak, failure, bitterness, that whole chain of disasters that follows this narrative of the exclusive romantic union.
It is interesting and enlightening to note that key in avoiding such failures is self knowledge, knowing who you are and how your history has shaped you, what you want, what you fear, what you know and don’t know, what you expect. Love is not necessarily such "hard work," but without understanding yourself you can’t see clearly, and it will seem all is chaos and confusion, both your own feelings and reactions and those of the other.
I think we do know the basics, and they aren't mysterious: kindness, patience, respect, and I would add courage and humor. You don’t need to love all the same things, think all the same ways, share every bit of everything. No matter what any of the stories say, you will always be separate individuals, not some fusion into one where division disappears. You can’t expect the other to answer every question, fill every need. How static that would be! How dull! Why would you even want that? To be absorbed in another is too close to being absorbed by another. To disappear.
A tragedy. Remember Cathy's declaration: "I am Heathcliff." And we saw how that turned out. And their story still reverberates with us, even if its lesson doesn't.
Oriana:
I am especially struck by your brilliant use of Cathy’s “I AM Heathcliff.” She isn’t. Yet we’ve been fed the concept that ideally the “right person” IS you, what you would be if born a man instead of a woman or vice versa. It’s very common for young (and even not so young) lovers to make that mistake of seeing nothing but similarities — or at least greatly exaggerating those similarities.
That’s one of the classic marks of the infatuation stage, which is doomed to come to an end. True love begins when we begin to see the differences and fall in love all over again, but now with the real person, not the god or goddess we made up. And it’s not just about accepting the flaws — sometimes in our initial blindness we miss the actual good traits, too. Our perception needs to become more complex, and that can happen only with time.
Another delusion we often start with is the belief that “she/he REALLY understands me.” No one can fully understand us, and that includes ourselves. And besides, both we and our partner keep changing. Every five-seven years, it’s a different marriage — I speak of reasonably good marriages now, not those in which the couple are truly stuck in a destructive pattern, and need serious help — or a divorce. In a good-enough marriage, we need to count our blessings, and not overanalyze the relationship to death (I’ve seen women do that — for a few it actually seemed more important to talk about relationship than to be experiencing it).
That someone cherishes us even if we have an occasional bad day, have a meltdown, act irrational, forget something important — it’s a miracle for which we can never be grateful enough.
Besides, once in a while it’s not unusual for spouses to wish they could just flush the partner down the toilet. There is no ideal marriage, just as there is no THE ONE, the soulmate destined for us since we were born. We have to adapt to reality and, again, count our blessings. Our irritation will pass — and we are likely to learn from it.
Oriana:
I am especially struck by your brilliant use of Cathy’s “I AM Heathcliff.” She isn’t. Yet we’ve been fed the concept that ideally the “right person” IS you, what you would be if born a man instead of a woman or vice versa. It’s very common for young (and even not so young) lovers to make that mistake of seeing nothing but similarities — or at least greatly exaggerating those similarities.
That’s one of the classic marks of the infatuation stage, which is doomed to come to an end. True love begins when we begin to see the differences and fall in love all over again, but now with the real person, not the god or goddess we made up. And it’s not just about accepting the flaws — sometimes in our initial blindness we miss the actual good traits, too. Our perception needs to become more complex, and that can happen only with time.
Another delusion we often start with is the belief that “she/he REALLY understands me.” No one can fully understand us, and that includes ourselves. And besides, both we and our partner keep changing. Every five-seven years, it’s a different marriage — I speak of reasonably good marriages now, not those in which the couple are truly stuck in a destructive pattern, and need serious help — or a divorce. In a good-enough marriage, we need to count our blessings, and not overanalyze the relationship to death (I’ve seen women do that — for a few it actually seemed more important to talk about relationship than to be experiencing it).
That someone cherishes us even if we have an occasional bad day, have a meltdown, act irrational, forget something important — it’s a miracle for which we can never be grateful enough.
Besides, once in a while it’s not unusual for spouses to wish they could just flush the partner down the toilet. There is no ideal marriage, just as there is no THE ONE, the soulmate destined for us since we were born. We have to adapt to reality and, again, count our blessings. Our irritation will pass — and we are likely to learn from it.
PS. Greater self-knowledge helps, but what no “Marriage 101” can impart is the knowledge of life and relationships. We learn a lot from each relationship — even from a bad one (arguably especially from a bad one). Reading about how difficult love is may discourage some young people from connecting — that’s why I repeat that we shouldn’t overdo the angle that “love is hard work.” It’s also one of life’s greatest gifts — and it doesn’t have to be perfect to be a source of joy.
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“When marrying, ask yourself this question ’Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age?’ Everything else in marriage is transitory.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
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WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHERS SHARE “RED FLAGS” ABOUT COUPLES (some surprises here)
~ “One of the partners is completely uninterested in photographs.
Not everyone is interested in photography. In fact, I sometimes meet clients whose fiancés are interested in everything except being photographed on their wedding day. Luckily, most reluctant subjects know that photography is important to their partner and so they participate willingly. I think that a willingness to happily consider the needs of your partner is key to a fulfilling, long-term relationship. And that includes embracing photography even if being photographed isn’t your favorite thing.
The couple has more than a 20 percent rejection rate on their RSVPs.
It is very common to have about 10-15 percent of your guests unable to attend a wedding, but when you get above 20-25 percent, you should start looking deeper. It’s a telltale sign that your friends and family know that the couple is never going to work out!
The chemistry feels forced.
It’s a bad sign when I’m photographing the couple and one of them overcompensates for the lack of interest from the other person. Maybe they have looked through hundreds of online photos and want their wedding images to look exactly like their Pinterest boards. Unfortunately, they didn’t consider their relationship dynamics in their ‘vision.’ Sometimes, they just lack the natural chemistry and emotional connection.
The couple isn’t on the same page about finances.
I’ll call this couple T & M, so we don’t mention their names. As they walked into my studio for me to present my pitch for why they should choose me as their photographer, T asks for a bathroom break. As she walks away, M says to me, ‘This wedding is taking me to the cleaners. Our budget is double what it was at the beginning.’ Money is an important factor in all marriages and often plays a part in why they fail. It was definitely true for this couple. Six months after their fabulous wedding with over 150 guests, they separated.
The couple makes sarcastic digs at each other while taking photos.
I have captured well over 1000 weddings in my career and I know when I see a couple fighting or bickering throughout the day, it will only get worse and most likely lead to a split. Some couples say they’re just joking with each other but there’s usually some truth behind each dig or joking statement. The worst I have seen was a bride telling my staff, ‘I’m done kissing him.’
The couple hardly spends any time together at the reception.
After the wedding ceremony, most couples are excited about the reception. The stress of the wedding day is behind them and it’s time to have fun and relax. Couples normally spend the evening greeting guests, dancing the night away, and celebrating their new marital status. When a couple separates to talk to guests or leaves the other alone on the dance floor for hours at a time, it always raises concerns. I have photographed an entire reception and only captured a handful of images of the the couple together ― that’s a very bad sign.” ~
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/signs-a-marriage-wont-last-according-to-wedding-photographers_n_5a871dfee4b05c2bcaca8db9
“WORKISM”: THE NEW RELIGION OF THE WELL-EDUCATED
~ “Rich, college-educated people—especially men—work more than they did many decades ago. They are reared from their teenage years to make their passion their career and, if they don’t have a calling, told not to yield until they find one.
The economists of the early 20th century did not foresee that work might evolve from a means of material production to a means of identity production. They failed to anticipate that, for the poor and middle class, work would remain a necessity; but for the college-educated elite, it would morph into a kind of religion, promising identity, transcendence, and community. Call it workism.
What is workism? It is the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work.
Homo industrious is not new to the American landscape. The American dream—that hoary mythology that hard work always guarantees upward mobility—has for more than a century made the U.S. obsessed with material success and the exhaustive striving required to earn it.
No large country in the world as productive as the United States averages more hours of work a year. And the gap between the U.S. and other countries is growing. Between 1950 and 2012, annual hours worked per employee fell by about 40 percent in Germany and the Netherlands—but by only 10 percent in the United States. Americans “work longer hours, have shorter vacations, get less in unemployment, disability, and retirement benefits, and retire later, than people in comparably rich societies,” wrote Samuel P. Huntington in his 2005 book Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity.
One group has led the widening of the workist gap: rich men.
In 1980, the highest-earning men actually worked fewer hours per week than middle-class and low-income men, according to a survey by the Minneapolis Fed. But that’s changed. By 2005, the richest 10 percent of married men had the longest average workweek. In that same time, college-educated men reduced their leisure time more than any other group. Today, it is fair to say that elite American men have transformed themselves into the world’s premier workaholics, toiling longer hours than both poorer men in the U.S. and rich men in similarly rich countries.
This shift defies economic logic—and economic history. The rich have always worked less than the poor, because they could afford to. The landed gentry of preindustrial Europe dined, danced, and gossiped, while serfs toiled without end. In the early 20th century, rich Americans used their ample downtime to buy weekly movie tickets and dabble in sports. Today’s rich American men can afford vastly more downtime. But they have used their wealth to buy the strangest of prizes: more work!
Maybe the logic here isn’t economic at all. It’s emotional—even spiritual. The best-educated and highest-earning Americans, who can have whatever they want, have chosen the office for the same reason that devout Christians attend church on Sundays: It’s where they feel most themselves. “For many of today’s rich there is no such thing as ‘leisure’; in the classic sense—work is their play,” the economist Robert Frank wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “Building wealth to them is a creative process, and the closest thing they have to fun.”
Workism may have started with rich men, but the ethos is spreading—across gender and age. In a 2018 paper on elite universities, researchers found that for women, the most important benefit of attending a selective college isn’t higher wages, but more hours at the office. In other words, our elite institutions are minting coed workists. What’s more, in a recent Pew Research report on the epidemic of youth anxiety, 95 percent of teens said “having a job or career they enjoy” would be “extremely or very important” to them as an adult. This ranked higher than any other priority, including “helping other people who are in need” (81 percent) or getting married (47 percent). Finding meaning at work beats family and kindness as the top ambition of today’s young people.
There is nothing wrong with work, when work must be done. And there is no question that an elite obsession with meaningful work will produce a handful of winners who hit the workist lottery: busy, rich, and deeply fulfilled. But a culture that funnels its dreams of self-actualization into salaried jobs is setting itself up for collective anxiety, mass disappointment, and inevitable burnout.
In the past century, the American conception of work has shifted from jobs to careers to callings—from necessity to status to meaning. In an agrarian or early-manufacturing economy, where tens of millions of people perform similar routinized tasks, there are no delusions about the higher purpose of, say, planting corn or screwing bolts: It’s just a job.
Our desks were never meant to be our altars. The modern labor force evolved to serve the needs of consumers and capitalists, not to satisfy tens of millions of people seeking transcendence at the office. It’s hard to self-actualize on the job if you’re a cashier—one of the most common occupations in the U.S.—and even the best white-collar roles have long periods of stasis, boredom, or busywork. This mismatch between expectations and reality is a recipe for severe disappointment, if not outright misery, and it might explain why rates of depression and anxiety in the U.S. are “substantially higher” than they were in the 1980s, according to a 2014 study.
[Nevertheless,] there is new enthusiasm for universal policies—like universal basic income, parental leave, subsidized child care, and a child allowance—which would make long working hours less necessary for all Americans. These changes alone might not be enough to reduce Americans’ devotion to work for work’s sake, since it’s the rich who are most devoted. But they would spare the vast majority of the public from the pathological workaholism that grips today’s elites, and perhaps create a bottom-up movement to displace work as the centerpiece of the secular American identity.” ~
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/?fbclid=IwAR3xOUVVJRp1bXpcZX9wUznOw17UnjAo093SSs0Bzcn6ERV4Q_2Fadu6Iaw
Oriana:
Just doing the work you love is its own reward. But simply being dedicated to the work you do, even if it’s not so great by objective standards, will make it more rewarding. And yes, I’ve seen cheerful cashiers and happy waitresses. You don’t have to be rich to feel fulfilled.
At the same time, there are certain kinds of work that are just miserable drudgery. Fortunately, machines have made that kind of work less frequent than in the past. Here’s Monet’s depiction of “coal men” (les charbonniers) unloading coal from a barge:
ASTROPHYSICS AS MIND-BLOWING POETRY
~ “Black holes were predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which showed that when a massive star dies, it leaves behind a small, dense remnant core. If the core's mass is more than about three times the mass of the Sun, the equations showed, the force of gravity overwhelms all other forces and produces a black hole.
However, as the star collapses, a strange thing occurs. As the surface of the star nears an imaginary surface called the "event horizon," time on the star slows relative to the time kept by observers far away. When the surface reaches the event horizon, time stands still, and the star can collapse no more — it is a frozen collapsing object.” ~
https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/black-holes
Some theorize that the universe is shaped like a torus. ~ “Now that I’ve become a humanist, I no longer believe I am the center of the universe (despite the fact that Christian apologists keep mischaracterizing us as if we do). I don’t even assume that my planet is particularly unique among the possibly millions of other habitable planets orbiting the suns of other galaxies. I am just one specimen of one organism among millions on a single planet among, what…billions? Who knows?
The open-ended-ness of the question is precisely what makes it so fascinating. Not knowing exactly how big the universe is only fills it with exciting possibility, because questions are far more interesting than answers. Religious people have their worship, and the non-religious have our wonder. The emotion is essentially the same. We seem driven by a need for connection to something larger than our own lives, something that lies just beyond the horizon of our current reality.
But I no longer cling to the belief that everything that happens is for a reason. Sometimes things just happen and they have so many random, unrelated causes that you cannot really make sense of it all. That’s maddening, and it leads many to seek out conspiracy theories since those tend to simplify complex series of events by attributing them all to a handful of powerful people or groups.
When you think about it, religion is the ultimate conspiracy theory because it takes hundreds or even thousands of unrelated causes and reduces them all down to just one: God did it…and he did it for us. I won’t deny that this makes life seem a lot easier to wrap our heads around, but it’s mentally lazy and we should be beyond this by now as a species.
It’s not all about us.” ~
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/2019/02/05/no-longer-the-center-of-the-universe/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=share_bar&fbclid=IwAR2lQwZyiw5TfbLtbMgHo2XsfkBozk0tXeSkjNL9ZAKStG89jO1I-4jk9M4#3yQjJBwGGkdMAybw.01
Oriana:
If the universe were about us, why would it have a billion galaxies, each with billions of stars? This seems so excessive.
THE BENEFITS OF DGL (Deglycyrrhizinated Licorice)
~ “Glycyrrhizin is an active compound in licorice with several health benefits, as well as significant side effects like hypertension.
Deglycyrrhizinated licorice (DGL) has glycyrrhizin removed, thus preventing its side effects. DGL is available in chewable tablets, capsules, liquids, and lozenges.
Without glycyrrhizin, DGL is not associated with any adverse effects but still retains some of its beneficial properties. Treatment with DGL can help avoid the side effects of glycyrrhizin and glycyrrhizic acid. DGL is typically used to treat stomach ulcers and other digestive problems.
DGL Licorice Helps Reduce Risks of Cardiovascular Diseases
In patients with high cholesterol, a year of deglycyrrhizinated licorice consumption decreased total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and blood pressure levels.
In a mouse model of heart attack, the anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative effects of licorice help mitigate damage to the heart tissue and also facilitate faster recovery.
However, regular licorice that contains glycyrrhizin and glycyrrhizic acid can cause the body to excrete more potassium and increase blood pressure, which can worsen heart conditions.” ~
https://selfhacked.com/blog/licorice/
DGL FOR PEPTIC ULCERS
~ “DGL is short for deglycyrrhizinated licorice, but I tell people that it stands for Darn Good Licorice. DGL is produced by removing glycyrrhetinic acid from a concentrated licorice extract. This particular compound is removed from the herb because it can raise blood pressure in some individuals.
My fondness for DGL is the result of having used it effectively in treating even the most severe peptic ulcers. In fact, I cannot think of a case where DGL did not work. Rather than inhibit the release of acid, DGL stimulates the normal defense mechanisms that prevent ulcer formation. It improves both the quality and quantity of the protective substances that line the intestinal tract, increases the lifespan of the intestinal cells, and improves blood supply to the intestinal lining. There’s also some evidence that it inhibits growth of H. pylori bacteria.
Numerous clinical studies support the use of DGL as an effective anti-ulcer compound. In several head-to-head studies, DGL has been shown to be more effective than Tagamet, Zantac, or antacids in both short-term treatment and maintenance therapy of peptic ulcers.
The standard dosage is 2–4 chewable tablets (380 mg), taken at least 20 minutes before meals. Taking DGL after meals is associated with poor results. DGL should be continued for at least 8–16 weeks after there is a full therapeutic response. Most people experience significant relief of ulcer symptoms with DGL licorice, which comes from the herb’s root, within 30 days of use.” ~
https://amazingwellnessmag.com/conditions-wellness/digestion-and-aging
Black licorice wheels and roots*
ending on beauty:
I tell you this
no eternal reward will forgive us now
for wasting the dawn
~ Jim Morrison
River at dawn; Trey Ratcliff
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