Month: March 2013
Running, not walking
Isn’t it weird that kids run just as often as they walk? And it’s not odd for a kid to skip (once that skill is learned) or twirl or hop or jump to get from point A to point B.
Let me rephrase my opening question. Isn’t it weird that adults hardly ever run or skip or hop or twirl when moving towards a destination? Sure, I know adults go jogging and running, and here and there a person sprints when being chased or playing laser tag or whatever.
But, generally, we adults tend to walk. We may walk briskly, we may amble along, we may go solo or with another adult or two, but we walk.
I have had two exceptions to this walking rule over the last few years.
1. I find myself sprinting to my car on occasion at the end of the day because I’m late leaving for home. Why do I run late sometimes? Well, sometimes it’s because I run (!) into someone as I’m leaving my office and I get involved in a conversation. And sometimes it’s because I have underestimated the time it will take for me to complete just one more task.
But, in general, I run late because I follow Newton’s Laws of Motion: If I’m at rest, I tend to stay at rest, and if I’m moving along in a particular direction, I have trouble transitioning to a new direction.
At any rate, I often run (!) late. And I thus sprint down corridors and through double doors, moving to my car in a click-clack-of-my-heels whirling fury.
2. This winter, I have been freezing, so I run from one building to another or between my car and a building in an attempt to be cold for as short a time period as possible.
One night, I was leaving an event on campus and I started running to my car, and I overtook a family who was also heading to the parking lot. The parents were walking behind while their three children ran ahead. I booked right past those adults and passed the kids (I don’t run fast, but their legs were way shorter than mind), and the kids sped up as they saw that I was beating them. The kids and I were all having a good time! and the parents seemed to enjoy my weirdness on some level, though neither one joined in.
It was that event that made me really notice how often kids run and how infrequently adults do. But it is fun to run. It’s even more fun to skip and hop and twirl. I don’t know that I’ll do any of the latter regularly because they don’t really help me when I’m late and they don’t help when I’m cold. But they do seem like ways of enjoying the journey as much as the destination–which is cliche, I know, but which might occasionally be worth it.
Like when I’m heading to the dentist, it might be good to hop all the way in. Or when the day is a lovely shade of gold and misty, some twirling might be in order when I’m walking from one building to another building.
I don’t think I’m ready to peer pressure anyone into running from point A to point B with me, so that’s a solo activity for now, but I’d consider suggesting hops, twirls, or skips to my friends. It’s making me smile just thinking about it. I’ll see how it goes, and if you try it–well, toss out a comment so you can inspire the rest of us! I can’t think of a better way to move into spring. (Get it? spring?? as in “hop”? hahaha!)
Lines about lines and 4Cs
I love lines.
That’s sorta a lie. I regularly talk myself into being at peace with the lines on my face. Loving those lines is not easy for me.
I love and hate the blank lines on a page depending on whether I feel pressure to fill them up or whether they feel like
an oPpoRtunIty
And there’s that whole debate about whether it’s good to color inside the lines or not. You know, the one that’s been raging among 5-year olds since the beginning of time? …or at least since the beginning of coloring books.
One year, my parents bought me an Un-Coloring book, with lots of pages to create your own things with some inspirations provided. I hated that thing. That same year, my sister was given a coloring book of patterns, with all kinds of lines moving and overlapping in all kinds of mind-boggling ways, and she shared it with me. We both colored inside the lines with meditative care. We were super-creative with how we colored the patterns, and that made all the difference. It’s not that I’d force anyone else to color those pattern books, but I’d do it again right now if one were sitting in front of me and I had some nice markers to play with.
You know why I’m thinking about lines? It’s not because I have a coloring book. If I did, I’d probably be coloring instead of writing.
It’s because I’m at this conference with a whole bunch of academics like me. Well, they’re not just like me, but they’re like me in that they came to this conference, and most people here have thought about writing and reading and teaching a lot, and a whole bunch of us are familiar with at least some of the same books and ideas and whatnot.
And I love standing in lines here.
I want to be fair: It’s not just lines I’m loving. I also love the elevator, and the space where we wait for an elevator (I suppose that’s called the “elevator lobby”? or does it have another name?). And I also love the barstool.
The reason why I love lines—even long lines—as well as the elevator and the space where we wait for an elevator and the barstool—is because these are spaces that allow for lives to touch one another, for connections to happen, for a calling out and a responding.
My first night here, I ate dinner at a pub, and another academic sat next to me. We so easily and immediately connected that the bartender thought we were together and asked whether we wanted separate checks or not. We laughed and said separate was probably best since we didn’t really even know each other.
But, of course, we did know each other, at least to a degree.
And this morning I stood in an incredibly long line for coffee and a bagel. I considered going elsewhere, but then I figured I’d just enjoy the line. For awhile I people-watched. And eventually I started talking with the academic ahead of me. I asked if she had been to the Bedford party the night before (she had), and I told her I had been on the Insanity ride. Here’s what it looks like:
The two of us ended up talking about risk-taking—our own risk-taking, our attitudes towards fear, and what we hoped for our kids and for our students.
The woman (I don’t think I ever got her name) told me she had heard it’s good to do one thing you’re afraid of every day. It might not mean riding the Insanity 105 floors above the city of Las Vegas. But doing something out of our comfort zone on a regular basis is healthy for us.
It was her turn to order. We said our good-byes. She gave me a hug. She told me she was proud of me for riding the Insanity.
I’m telling you: I love lines. At least lines at conferences where our nerdy name-tags identify us as part of a community.
And sometimes, in our risk-taking moments, we might find connections in lines even without name-tags hinting at some common bond.
PS I want to end there because it sounds like an ending. But I also want to say that some people suck at making conversation. I will ask: “What sessions did you attend? What did you think of them? Are you presenting? Where are you from? How long have you been there?” etc etc. And most people will make similar conversation, and sometimes our conversation will be about our pasts or our kids or the fact that the elevators are designed wrong because you can’t tell whether they’re going up or down except when you’re inside the elevator (which is really too late, right?) or that we feel like celebrities at the Bedford party or that we have a terrible sense of direction.
All of that is great.
But some people don’t ask any questions, so I find out about their interests and past and future, and they express no interest in what I’m up to. Granted, a lot of us academics are socially awkward (just like a lot of us have issues with our sense of direction). Still, it’s not like I’m asking for the world. Just some genuine interest in my interests or background or whatever. Or somebody else’s. Get over the social awkwardness enough to stop seeming like a rude ass. Really.
But I only say that for your own good (if you feel like I’m talking to you). Because doing something out of your comfort zone every day is healthy for you. And it would be good for the rest of us, too!
White-Washing the Fence
Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer first influenced me when I was 12 or 13. After reading about Tom and Becky being lost in the cave and seeing it depicted on a TV movie, I decided I ought to be prepared. I began carrying a lighter or matches in my purse and my jacket pockets. I haven’t been lost in a cave (yet), but I have enabled quite a few smokers over the years.
I read the full text of Tom Sawyer only once as an adult, when I was teaching a Children’s Literature class several years ago. I was struck by Twain’s understanding of economics. The entire book seems to play with the concepts of supply and demand.
When there’s too much of Tom, he is not appreciated.
When Tom is believed dead, everyone loves him.
The best example, however, is whitewashing the fence. Aunt Polly assigns Tom the chore of whitewashing the fence, and Tom complies begrudgingly. However, when Ben comes along and says that he is going swimming, Tom acts as if whitewashing the fence is much more fun. When Ben asks for a turn whitewashing, Tom says “no” because
“Aunt Polly’s awful particular about this fence …. I reckon there ain’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it’s got to be done.”
Tom is a master. He creates a world in which whitewashing the fence is an uncommon pleasure and the supply of boys is so large that only the luckiest and most careful of boys will have the opportunity to whitewash.
Needless to say, Tom takes a boatload of treasures off his friends as they pay him in order to have a turn whitewashing the fence.
And the narrator explains, just in case we readers are too stupid to figure it out:
“In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing,
it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain….
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and
Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
I think about this point regularly. I wrote about education in such a way for Marywood’s student newspaper a couple years ago, with the reminder that reading and writing are regularly forbidden for oppressed people; we need to remember this fact to help us appreciate reading and writing as gifts rather than burdens.
I regularly have work I do not want to do. Part of the reason I do not want to do it is because it is work. I am obliged to do it.
Often I procrastinate until the due date is so close that I cannot put it off any longer, and I go ahead and get my work done.
But sometimes I play Tom Sawyer. Sometimes when I have some work that must be done and other work that is not immediate or even completely necessary, I use the less-pressing work to avoid the necessary work. Really! The less-necessary or less-immediate work becomes play.
That’s what I’m doing right now. I have done a lot of work over the last week because it has been spring break. I have also done a lot of goofing off over the last week because it has been spring break. And now I have three writing tasks on my “to do” list. Writing this blog post is not one of them.
I am writing for pleasure to avoid the writing I must do today. And I will eventually do the work that must be done, but I will see if I can somehow make it feel more like play than like work. I will see how well I can channel my inner-Tom Sawyer.
White-washing the fence is connected to MOOCs, too. But I will write about that on another day. Most likely, it will be another day when I’m avoiding work that I’m obliged to complete.
On turning 44
Usually on my birthday, I sing that 4 Non-Blondes song, “What’s Up,” substituting “25-years” for whatever number of years I’ve been alive.
But this year, for some reason, I’m really into “Hello Twelve Hello Thirteen Hello Love” from A Chorus Line.
Yeah, I know it’s weird to enjoy a song about moving into adolescence when I’m fully into middle age. But I like the synchronicity of age-12/age-13/love and my current progression: age-42/age-43/???. It makes me want to fill in that last blank, maybe. If “love” is what comes after age 13, what is it that comes after age 43?
I don’t really know the answer, anymore than someone turning 14 really knows what’s coming.
But I do know that back when I was 22 (yes, 22 years ago!), I was one of three undergrads invited to join a research group focused on aging and development. (One of the other undergrads has an impressive career that continues this work, which is pretty cool: Hayden Bosworth. The other undergrad was named Ari, but I didn’t know him well and cannot recall his last name for the life of me.) One of my psychology professors at the time, Margie Lachman, organized the group.
Each time we met, one of the participants would share research they were involved in, and we’d chat about it.
During the meeting that has remained with me most strongly, one of the participants (I believe she was a psych prof from a school in the Boston area, but I don’t remember any details about her) shared research about women reaching mid-life. These women may have been in their 30s rather than their 40s….I’m not really sure. But the research showed that these women were embracing their lives in middle-age. They were full of energy and excited with possibilities. They were strong and confident. They had a sense of new beginnings.
That didn’t mean too much to me at the time, except it was interesting, and maybe reassuring in a distant kind of way.
And now I wonder about the women who participated in the study, and whether they were caught on a good day, or whether they were women with very good lives, or whether the research was actually capturing a real trend.
Yesterday, I woke up, and I felt kinda crummy. Not sick-crummy, but crummy about who/what I am and blah blah blah. But then that Chorus Line song started playing in my head, and I danced around the living room, and I became one of those women in that research study from back in 1991.
That seems to be the quality of life right here, right now, for me. I move between a kind of malaise that comes from moving through everyday life where “screws fall out all the time” because “the world is an imperfect place” and feeling at peace and even energized with possibility.
Malaise: the days when I identify with the mom at the beginning of Michael Cunningham’s book The Hours. She has a neighbor babysit her son so she can go to a hotel and…read a book. I didn’t understand that scene before having kids. I thought she must be meeting a lover. But, no. Just a book and a space to herself…a space with no obligations.
Peace: the days when I feel like I’ve already done everything I needed to do in this lifetime. Everything from here on out is extra, is frosting. Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not checking out. I’m still doing stuff. But I’m doing stuff with the sense that I’ve already met life’s minimum requirements. I’ve earned my grade, and I’m more free than ever before to choose what more I want to contribute.
Energy: the days when I feel like it’s now, at this point, that life really begins. I don’t know what’s coming next. But I’m ready to step up. I’m ready to find out.
Laurie Mac Reads 