Tag Archives: Introspective

A Theatre of Memory

A few years ago, Karen and I were on vacation, and she took me on a tour of her alma mater. I remember that being the most special of times, because seeing where she had studied and grown as a woman during those formative years helped me to know her better. I loved hearing her adventures and tales of that time of her life.

This past weekend, we were visiting family out of town, and I decided spontaneously, as our anniversary fell on the weekend and because we were in easy driving distance to my own alma mater, to return the favor. Off we went for the quick tour.

Oh, how that campus had changed! I have read about various changes in the alumni magazine, of course, but to see the changes for myself…which were so drastic that I had difficulty navigating around the campus in the car…was simultaneously wonderful and disquieting. New buildings existed, and locations that I thought that I remembered (like the student center) had been re-located to the new buildings. Streets had been turned to sidewalks, and hillsides to streets. Then, however, I found our way back to the fine arts building…the building in which I essentially lived for most of my four-year education. The fine arts building was notoriously confusing, and we used to joke that one would occasionally find the skeleton of a freshman that never made it out. All that said, though, I found my way around it with ease. And, while were on an unofficial visit and thus couldn’t get access to the main theatre stage on which so many of my designs came to fruition, or to the studio theatre where I directed my first scene, the memories of that building were overwhelming. I learned theatre there, as I learned other disciplines.

Moreover, I learned life there.

Beyond the blissful nostalgia, though, is a forward-looking effect of considering where our daughter might go to school one day, what disciplines she will study, and what career(s) she will choose. This is so important to think about, because my four years at that school shaped my perspectives and my life in so many ways, just as Karen’s four years at hers shaped her…and yours shaped you.

One of the major changes that have occurred at my alma mater is that the technology building adjacent to the fine arts building has received a complete make-over. I love that the two have always been connected, there…literally connected, as in a hallway from one building opens into the other. Many of my fellow theatre students (mostly scenic design students) would migrate over periodically to take architectural design courses. I love how the arts and technology meld together…you know, interdisciplinary studies again. This is really important to me now, because it is shaping an upcoming move and career change, as well as future research interests.

I want our daughter to have a lucid connection between things in this way, to see life holistically, not in compartmentalized fragments…something I have learned to do myself all too recently, and that I wish that I had done all along.

Being a father has taken my looks backward at life, and pointed them forward in an odd and interconnected way. It’s still sort of strange, honestly, but I’m loving every moment of it.

Curmudgeon

Every now and again, someone brings up my actual age and I become a bit surprised. I think that this is mostly because I don’t feel nearly as old as I am. It’s not even that I’m old, per se, just…well, a bit more chronologically advanced than you would imagine at first blush.

Normally, the fact that I don’t perceive myself as being as old as I am is a good thing. There are times when I should be more conservative with things than I am because of my age, but in general my self-perception treats me well. Where I actually feel my age, more often than not, is in the fact that I’m a bit of a curmudgeon at times.

Well, let’s just be honest: I can be cranky.

Of course, I’ve given up negativity for Lent for two consecutive years now, and that has helped a great deal. Karen even acknowledges that I am much more intentional about being positive about things. She points out, though, that if certain hopeful events that are drawing near on the horizon were removed, I would be back to being cranky again.

Of course, if you remove our hope, anyone can become irritable. You know…in my defense…

The reason that this is ricocheting about in my brain is because I often catch myself considering topics to write about here, and one of two things happen: either the topics are something that frustrate me or that I want to disprove, or else it’s a more neutral topic that I have difficulty writing about without sounding negative.

In short, I don’t want to sound or be negative in my writing all the time, because I’m really not such a negative guy. Well, at least not in my own self-perception.

About two years ago, I tweeted about how excited I was about something. A close friend replied with a remark indicating how happy she was to see a positive tweet…the unwritten message being that this apparently didn’t happen very often. I took that to heart. I cut back on my news reading, because it tended to make me frustrated. I tried in general to distance myself from things about which I have difficulty being positive.

That’s a trend that is continuing, and a move that will be happening very soon will assist me in that process. In the meantime, I’m going to keep trying to not be so negative. Because, being curmudgeonly is fun and all…but people tend to not want to hang around you for long.

Uneventful Events

There’s a lot to be said for relaxing…even when the relaxation is sort of forced on you.

Perhaps I’m beginning to feel as old as I actually am, but lately I’ve noticed myself being quite tired in the evenings. I refuse to accept the fact that I could be transforming into a morning person, so something else must be at work. I’m beginning to suspect that I simply can’t keep the schedule that I used to. Or, perhaps it’s been the heat wave that’s been oppressing the South East with 100 degree temperatures for over a week. I think I’ll blame it on the latter, but whatever the case…I’ve gotten home in the afternoons frequently of late, and all I’ve wanted to do is take a nap.

Karen and I survived the destructive storm that rattled our area last weekend largely without incident (although when our fourth floor apartment began moving as our building swayed, I did get nervous for a moment). The most significant thing that we suffered…and this is absolutely insignificant compared to most of the rest of our city, mind you…was that one of the household Macs didn’t make it through the flickering power unscathed. As it has been in for repairs this week, I found myself without everything that I needed to keep up what had been an excellent pace on the novel…while I have working backups of the actual manuscript, I don’t have easy access to the outline until we have that computer again. So, I’ve sort of had a forced break from working on that project.

Of course, there are at least three other ideas for projects that I could have started, and didn’t, because I found myself enjoying taking a breather. Suddenly freed from self-imposed deadlines that had to be altered due to unforeseen circumstances, I’ve spent more time reading and watching some television that I’ve been meaning to see. More time was spent staying at home with our daughter and having friends and family who were without power for days on end come over to soak up our air conditioning and do laundry.

Being forced out of my to-do-list and deadline obsession was actually quite refreshing for a week. We even re-scheduled a trip for this weekend to stay in and take care of other things that need to happen before the move. I’m bummed to be behind on the novel, but I’ve enjoyed taking a break this week.

I hope your weekend is cool, storm-free, and relaxing.

Self-Obsessed

Karen likes Monk, and is prone to stream old re-runs on Netflix when bored. At one point, she even kept an episode or two on her iPhone. And, I can’t blame her. It’s a clever little show.

The thing about Monk is that it presents a picture of obsessive-compulsive disorder that is actually pretty accurate. The reason that this is interesting to me is that I have a nice little touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder myself.

(A disclaimer: I’m self-diagnosed. However, behavioral health has also been my profession for nearly twelve years, so that diagnosis isn’t off-the-cuff.)

For me, it manifests a lot with fixating on whether or not I’ve turned the stove burners off or locked the front door when I leave. I’ve been known to return to the front door three times and make myself late for work in order to confirm that the door is, in fact, secured. I think that this is partly a learned behavior from my father, because I watched him exhibit similar behaviors through childhood.

The problem also manifests…or, at least, it used to…with germs. Rather, with my perception of germs. If I am introduced to someone and shake their hand, I am acutely aware that my hand is now “contaminated” until I have a chance to wash it. When washing my hands, there’s a specific way in which I have to wash. And the ritual that is required in a public restroom can be quite time-consuming.

As a positive, though, I’m really great with minute details. I jokingly say that my disorder makes me great at writing, so I choose not to treat it. A professor in grad school joked that every graduate student has a bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or they wouldn’t be in grad school.

Whatever the case, I will say that having our daughter has treated my problem with a sort of “immersion therapy.” Part of this is due to the fact that I reached a point (relatively early) in which I was so completely exhausted as I watched her place her fingers in her mouth after crawling around on the floor that I couldn’t get up to clean her hands, and finally concluded that every other baby in the world does this with no ill effects, and that perhaps it was time to see reason.

What’s interesting about my disorder is that I’ve become much less concerned about my own exposure to germs than to my daughter’s. Previous observation about crawling around on the floor notwithstanding, I noticed that I picked a dropped piece of food up off of the floor a few days ago and ate it. This would have been unthinkable for me a year ago. What I found myself thinking, however, was that it doesn’t really matter what happens to me, as long as our daughter is okay.

So, in my addled OCD pseudo-logic, if I’m harmed by consuming germs it’s no big deal, as long as I can prevent our daughter from being harmed.

This led to a conversation over the weekend about how, in true integrationist fashion, a definite link can be found between obsessive-compulsive disorder and selfishness. Ultimately, the anxiety of OCD (which is classified as an anxiety disorder in the DSM-IV TR) is, from a spiritual perspective, the result of an overly self-focused perspective. Of course, it’s easy to draw a connection between sociological theories of how American individualism is a breeding ground for sociopathy, and it’s no great leap in logic to conclude that it’s a breeding ground for psychological dysfunction, as well.  From a holistic perspective, psychological dysfunction is tied closely to spiritual dysfunction. So, seeing a connection between an anxiety disorder and being overly self-focused isn’t a stretch.

Instead of pursuing the typical American treatment strategy, then, of giving everyone a pill to help their symptoms go away without encouraging any actual change in perspective or lifestyle, I wonder if encouraging ourselves…and by extension our culture…to step outside of ourselves and look out for others at the expense of our own best interest may actually be in our greatest best interest.

Counter-intuitive, I know. I’ve found that spiritual truths are frequently found in the inverse of our own logic, however. Perhaps a bit of a counter-intuitive approach would do all of us a world of good.

Photo Attribution: Sheila Tostes under Creative Commons

Downsizing

So, besides causing me to look askance at the number of magnets currently adorning the outside of our refrigerator, this interview makes the book in question sound quite interesting. I suppose because I find myself well in the middle of that typical American family that the book promises to discuss.

As we are preparing for a move in the near future, Karen and I are entering the phase of preparation that I find the most beneifical: downsizing. We’ve made it a routine in the two moves we’ve made since marriage…and I hope it will continue…that we go through our stuff and start paring down various items that we just no longer need. Clothing is among the first things to go: if we haven’t worn it in a year, off to a clothing bank it goes. Furniture? If we’ve been saying that we could live without it, it’s time to take a photo for Craigslist.

This is partly a practical exercise in the sense that, whether you’re moving up or downsizing, moving is easier with less stuff. It’s also partly a spiritual exercise, because the more stuff we accumulate, the more of a position it can assume to use us instead of being used by us.

This is difficult, though, because Americans love our stuff. We accumulate it to make ourselves feel good (as the interview suggests), we accumulate it to indicate status and success to others, we accumulate it out of a desire to keep up with the proverbial Jonses. We accumulate it because we all seem to partially buy into the notion that “he who dies with the most toys wins.” All of that, and more, results in the fact that we accumulate too much stuff.

As much as we like our toys, I’m convinced that we should at least have a practical use for the items that we purchase. When we discover that we haven’t used something for an extended period of time, we need to part ways with that item. Because, when we hold onto things too tightly, they become a barrier between us and each other, between us and ourselves, between us and the Divine.

A few months ago, Karen spilled a glass of juice on our coffee table. She called for help, and I came running with towels. The first thing I scooped up was the iPad laying on the table. I did this despite the fact that the juice dripping down to the floor was landing on papers that were important to Karen. I justified this by saying that I was logically trying to preserve the most expensive item first, but the reality is that I didn’t act to preserve what I knew was important to her first. I really like my iPad, but it prevented me from seeing the most important thing in the picture.

I think that therein lies the ugly truth: our stuff does make our lives easier and more functional in a lot of ways. They also obscure more important things. They do it by nature, because the material realm is such a small portion of our existence, even though we focus on it almost exclusively.

Here’s to downsizing.

Photo Attribution: Surprise Truck under Creative Commons