Posts Tagged ‘Perceptions’
Grammy Hangover
I watched the Grammy Awards show last night. I can’t decide if it is my age that makes a show about currently popular music uninspiring or if it is the natural evolution of the industry and this event that leaves it appearing to be a forced effort, wanting to be more monumental than it really is. I don’t blame it. The whole thing is mind boggling, really.
The Grammy Awards, are presented annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States. They were first established in 1958. Think back to that time and how limited the music was that could be heard on the radio or purchased on record albums. Compare that to the explosion of recorded music available through digital technology and the internet today. I can’t imagine what the nominating process must involve.
The impression I get from so many of the currently popular performing artists and their over the top productions is that they want every song to project the culminating energy of a final encore of their greatest performance ever. It’s as if they were inspired by seeing such a moment when it was achieved by one of their favorite artists and then decided that’s what they wanted to do, only bigger. But, contrary to what they hope to accomplish, when every moment is BIG, then that becomes the normal and it is nye on impossible to employ the fine art of dynamic range. The result, even though there are strobe lights, pyrotechnics, and confetti throughout, comes across more boring than exciting.
Or maybe I’m just showing my age.
Change Perspective
I am always amazed by the insights I gain from simply getting airborne. When the day is dreary gray down here on the ground, it often feels as if the sunshine doesn’t even exist. When you climb through the clouds and realize how thin they can be and how brilliant the sunshine is on the top side, the difference is startling. Even though we know better, knowing and seeing really are different things. It is amazingly sunny just above that water vapor cloud that materializes overhead.
I noticed something else during my weekend trip to Chicago. On a normal day in my life, I see a very small and predictable number of people. And that gets repeated again and again for days and months. Other than the days I go to the club to play soccer, where I do see a relatively broad number of strangers –over and over each week– I normally just see the small number of people I work with, and my wife at home in the evenings. Being in Chicago over the weekend and using public transportation, walking the streets, going to shows and restaurants and bars, seeing such a wide variety of people, revealed to me how small my world has become of late.
I think it is a good exercise to become aware of such things. We form a lot of opinions based on our perspective of the world, but it behooves us to consider how often our perspective is limited in scope. In that case, it would be wise that we not make our judgments about issues of the world any wider than the actual scope of our perspectives.
A Day After
‘Twas the day after Christmas, and all through my house, I’m not quite sure what has happened or what the heck to do next. I expect it has already been done several times over, but you could write a book about the myriad experiences relating to the day after. I’ve already written about feeling that anticipating an event is better for me than the actual event. I think what that sets up is an even bigger letdown when the day after the event arrives.
There is a component of ‘I should’ in the perceptions I have. I should feel more fulfilled from all the giving and feasting and laughing. I should have given more attention to someone at last night’s gathering. At the same time, there are some really great interactions that do paint the overall experience and provide a pleasing afterglow of the communing with other souls. So I end up with an odd mixture of feeling satisfied, and a bit empty at the same time. Yet, in the end, it’s not so odd. It’s life, after all. Life is not “either/or” it is “both/and.” We get both the highs and the lows in all things we do.
If we are insightful enough to navigate it, the result is all good. Both the highs and the lows. It’s all good. Just gotta discover the tricks of finding it as such. Become enlightened. It’s a pretty good view.
* composed while hearing Joni Mitchell sing “River” in the background.
Lyrics to River :
It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
But it don’t snow here
It stays pretty green
I’m going to make a lot of money
Then I’m going to quit this crazy scene
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I made my baby cry
He tried hard to help me
You know, he put me at ease
And he loved me so naughty
Made me weak in the knees
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I’m so hard to handle
I’m selfish and I’m sad
Now I’ve gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I made my baby say goodbye
It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
Being Grateful
It seems a shame that I should need to muster the resources to be grateful. It ought to just rise up over me to overflowing for all that I have. I should be thankful to be gainfully employed, and to have the chance to work extra hours, when others can’t even find a job. But I don’t want to be at work on Saturday morning. I don’t want to work so many hours in a day that I never see daylight and by the time I get home, it is after my dinner hour and I don’t want to eat. I arrive home so exhausted that I just want to lay down and sleep. Then I get up early the next morning to hustle back into the workplace. It feels like I just left, and I’m back for more.
We are experiencing a boom in business. I should be grateful.
I do appreciate the opportunity, to a certain degree, to rise to the challenge and give the extra effort and energy in response to the bounty of orders placed with our company. It reflects a confidence our customers have in us. We are proud to respond rapidly to the demands made on us and to provide the short turn-around sought by both our loyal businesses and the newer companies that hold potential for becoming regulars. Too bad that all of a sudden, everyone is wanting our services at the very same, short time.
There is a small level of adrenaline in response to the heavy pace of business and all the challenges that come with it, and it can be exciting. But in my case, it comes at the expense of other aspects of my life that I value more highly. I just don’t have the reserves to accomplish the tasks and passions of my non-work related life. So at this time of year when non-work life activity is peaking, this year I am finding my work load at the day job is also at a peak. At least, we think it is a peak. There has been no indication when and if it might let up. Very soon we will be faced with making a decision as to whether we are being forced to grow the company, or not.
I should be grateful.
Is there a difference between feeling grateful and being grateful?
Arbitrary Lines
I’m guessing there wouldn’t be much argument to the idea that people perceive they have limitations even when no actual limitation exists. Some versions may even present as common phobias. We often hear people admit to a fear of something that is not necessarily a threat that deserves such focus. It is my belief that we each have the ability to make a decision that alters these limitations we allow to exist.
When I was young, I drank milk with pretty much anything I ate. Some foods, I felt it essential to have milk. Toast with peanut butter comes to mind. Then I suffered an episode of a kidney stone. Seems I wasn’t practicing advisable levels of hydration, especially given the high level of dairy products I consumed. I must say, pain is one heck of a motivator for change. I was advised to reduce my intake of all things calcium, and to drink more water. At the time, I literally believed it not possible to eat peanut butter toast without milk. I was wrong. In the end, I found the adjustment to be rather easy.
For much of my life, I wore a wrist watch. After I returned from a week of vacation one year, where I had been without my watch the whole wonderful time, I decided to try going without it when I resumed my regular routine. I found this change to be a little more difficult than not drinking milk with certain foods, but not by much. I used to believe that I could not get along without my wrist watch. Now I realize I can, and I do just fine sans wrist watch.
I used to be a pretty regular viewer of television news broadcasts. I grew up in a house where we watched the news to get a sense of things. I recall the dramatic feeling of being lost when I first moved out of the house where I grew up, to a place with no television. We solved that within days, and I maintained my fixation with television news for decades. Then, in similar fashion to my changing the habit of having worn a wrist watch, I came home from a vacation where I had not seen news for over a week and realized I was doing just fine without it. As a matter of fact, I felt a little bit better without it. The newscasters used to feel like part of my family. We watched their hairstyles change and listened to their chit-chat between stories, as if they were people we knew. I really like not knowing about them any more, and I don’t feel lost at all.
I seriously felt the possibility of changing these things was not only unlikely, but even ill-advised. But these were artificial boundaries I allowed myself to claim. And as such, I have all the power to choose to move and change them at any time. Next time you notice yourself clinging to something a little tighter than makes logical sense, consider the possibility it is a product of your own construct. You have the power to change those arbitrary lines to move yourself to a different place. Shoot, you could even obliterate them altogether.
When people talk about coloring outside the lines, the first thought is of the lines that are presented to us. But we also can choose to color outside the lines we create for ourselves. What would it take for you to become aware of the limits you are choosing to live within? They might not be as limiting as they seem, after all.
Are We There Yet?
Is this it? Is this what we have been waiting for? Have we painted our masterpiece yet? There are a few memorable milestones in our lives that get closely identified by age. Turning 16 seems to be pretty dramatic for the eligibility to earn a driver’s license. Reaching 18 and 21 years of age also mark specific privileges to be bestowed. Beyond that, many of the markers associated with the accumulating decades are rather intangible, until you hit an eligible age for medicare benefits or collecting social security.
During those in-between years, do you think there is bound to be a defining moment? If so, is it really something we will recognize? Logically, it makes sense to consider the wide range of events in a lifetime as having varying levels of significance. Many of the events may change us forever. Will one of them earn more attention than all the others? Maybe only in the movies. It is clear that we can’t all become the President, or King, or leader of our respective communities. So what will that ultimate accomplishment be for the rest of us?
When I was growing up, as the 5th of 6 kids, I had older siblings to watch, admire, and emulate. I was always impressed by their friends and the behaviors and accomplishments of the upper classes in high school. When I finally reached my Senior year in high school, it didn’t seem to correlate at all with the perceptions from my youth. It certainly didn’t feel like I “had arrived.” I just figured, then, that such a sensation must probably occur later in life.
One of those less tangible markers of increasing age that I noticed, occurred as a spectator of professional sports. For some reason, it seems to appear all at once, and suddenly the athletes for the teams I’ve been following my whole life, are younger than I am. That was a shocker. Then, like a baby boom of the baby boom, it happens again at the next level. Now, it is the coaches that are younger than I am. How the heck did that happen? Life is what happens while you are waiting for the defining moment to arrive.
Are we there yet?
.
.
This Moment, Anyway
Sometimes I find myself surprised by the dichotomies I come to realize about myself. I don’t know why it should surprise me. I have been known to express a belief that all things are balanced with a polar opposite, in one way or another. When I become aware of it within my own personality or behavior, why does it surprise me? Go figure. As I write this, I am feeling a new awareness about the different ways I actually do live in the moment, regardless my more obvious pattern of usually allowing myself to be more focused on either my past, or the future.
One easily recognizable aspect of this part of me which resides in the moment, is related to my writing. I really struggle to comfortably write for publication deadlines that are months or years into the future. Heck, even emails leave my computer with me wanting them to be read as fast as they arrive at their destination. It’s not that I produce anything that is particularly time sensitive; no, it’s more that my having created some message at a particular moment in time is most closely associated with my mind at that moment. Maybe that reveals something about me. Does my mind really change all that much that the things I write about might not stand the test of time? Probably not. I’ll rack that one up to the possibility of a lack of confidence.
Yesterday, I spent some time engaged in projects in the garage that likely spawned some of the thinking about how I behave more in the moment than I am aware. I make all these attempts, year after year, to arrange things in an organized manner to facilitate a logical and efficient future use. All for naught. For the most part, I don’t retain any functional recollection of the places I store things, or for that matter, even remember what the things are that I have. When I set about tending to some chore, I take on whatever task appears before me with whatever tool I can locate in the moment. Rarely, if ever, do I benefit from some plan I had in mind at some motivated, constructive phase of my past.
So, in a way, I am both organized, and randomly spontaneous all at the same time.
Silver Lining
Why is the sound of another person chewing, so discomforting to hear sometimes? It doesn’t always come across as extremely irritating, but when it does happen –and I’m guessing it is when an ambient quiet allows it to become particularly noticeable– it is torture to endure. Personally, I find it very difficult to complain to the offending ‘person’ (who else other than my spouse do I find myself with, in a quiet situation where only one of us is eating?), because it could just as often be me masticating while my partner suffers the onslaught of offensive sounds. Quite frankly, she has been much too forgiving about pointing it out to me when I am the one doing the chewing.
I don’t know what it is about the crunching and smacking sounds resonating from within someone else’s head, that seems to strike such a nerve within me. One aspect that confuses me is why it can sound so amplified at times. It’s as if it is being artificially enhanced somehow. It doesn’t really matter what the food ends up being when the situation arises. I’ve noticed it to occur whether it is soft food or something more obviously crunchy. It is just plain unappealing to listen to food getting processed inside the mouth. It seems like all of a sudden I’m hearing fingers scratching a blackboard.
I wonder why I never get that feeling when I am the one eating. Obviously, everything sounds different from inside our own heads. But I would think that the munching sounds would be that much louder and thus more reason to be annoying inside our own head. Whatever it is that makes it such an irritant, I can see a silver lining nestled within the whole phenomenon. It provides a wonderful opportunity for me to practice the kind of diplomacy that maintaining a long-term relationship truly requires.
Balance of Passions
Speaking of something relative, where does one choose a point of reference to judge a life to be appropriately balanced? There are many ways a person could view my level of activity as broad, and as many, or more, ways to perceive it as limited. I occasionally ponder what it would be like to play my guitar for hours every day. I could say the same thing about cycling, pursuing photography, creating sculptures, making jewelry, writing poetry, reading and consuming movies to my fill, backpack camping, landscaping my property, composing and recording songs, creating videos, researching genealogy, balancing rocks, all the while practicing being a husband, father and employee. None of my passions receive the attention they deserve. I live the concept of being skilled at a variety of things, master of none.
One of the most tactile examples for me is with regard to playing guitar. For every extended spell of days where I enjoy prolonged opportunities to practice and explore playing my guitars, there are equal, and usually longer, dry spells where I don’t even pick one up. Days are just too full and each one flies by without space that gets claimed by the guitar-playing compartment of me. The ever so valuable callouses that develop on my finger tips will peel away, leaving me with the need to rebuild them again next time I play. That’s really a bummer. I wonder what my playing would be like if I had been able to play for hours a day. I wonder what it would feel like to master something.
I am discovering that as much as I thought I knew about being a father, I have been overlooking that you don’t stop being a father just because your children reach the age of adulthood. I still need to learn what kind of dad I am going to be to adult children. Trial and error, same as I did the previous 23 years. Now that would be something to master: the art of continuing to learn from my errors. I certainly get plenty of opportunities to practice.
Make Believe
I enjoyed the pleasure of not seeing the news that was overly dominated with gloom yesterday, but I did happen upon a discussion detailing the fact of how morbid the focus was. As a result of having not seen it, things don’t appear so dark to me right now. Certainly not as dark as it must appear to someone who read all the horrifying headlines. At the same time, someone could read only bliss-filled happy news and come to see the world as unrealistically sanitized by all-encompassing goodness. For every terrible story, there is a wonderful story. I believe there must be some middle ground that somehow people deserve to discover.
I fantasize about an instant when everyone in the world suddenly runs to that middle ground, slamming the door on the militant vitriol of either extreme, and sits down long enough to find their breathing calm to normal. Then my mind has them discovering the revelation that the planet doesn’t explode as a result. None of the worst fears the people had imagined actually happen. But then, everyone would live happily ever after, and that’s where my fantasy breaks down. I just can’t seem to suspend my disbelief long enough.
Relative Something 