Returning to the Scene of the Crime

It's been 20 years since I graduated from university. I don't know about other college graduates, but I left school thinking that I'd finally arrived. I knew I was inexperienced, but I also assumed that I had the knowledge and learning required to go forth and make a successful life and career.

Canoe U. Satellite Antenna

It turns out that there remained a whole world worth of learning to accomplish along the winding path that I took over the subsequent two decades. A short an far from comprehensive list of things I've learned since then include:

1. If you find yourself in a situation where you dislike someone because their job seems easier or more fulfilling or less tiresome than yours, maybe you should look into how you can get that job.

2. The value of persistence. I thought I was pretty bright. It turns out that there are quite a few witty, smart, charismatic folks out there in the wide world. What sets folks apart are the ones that make just a little more effort. You don't have to give 110%. That's horseshit, and I don't even really know how that would work. If you would have success, you'll work just a little bit harder than the person next to you. My hypothesis is that it only takes about 2%-4% more effort, but that effort needs to be over the long haul. I didn't really learn this facet of life early enough. If you're young and just getting started, just take my word for it. The value of compounding persistence is similar to the value of compounding interest. It's not really that difficult on any given day, but at the end of a decade you'll find yourself miles ahead.

3. If you find yourself in a situation where you think someone may be crazy, you'd do well to examine whether you might be the one who is crazy. This is especially true if the majority of the folks around you also think the one individual is crazy and the rest of you are sane. The parable of Saddam The Cat (which is a story for a different day) applies here.

Severn River Bridge - Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard - From Hospital Point - USNA

4. Every moment of your life is change. There is zero value in saying that you don't like change because fundamentally the smallest increment of time is empirically different from every other moment anyone has ever experienced. We're not living life. We're creating it every step of the way. Things rhyme of course, but living in the past is foolish and living in the fantasies of the future is equally ill informed. The only thing that exists is right now, and it lasts like a vapor until you invent the next small increment of the new now. This is important because NOTHING is ever as good or as bad as it seems. There is not permanence to anything, so if you find yourself having a terrible day, take a breath. Focus on the moment. Now...right now is your life really crashing down around your ears. Probably not. No matter what is happening, the air is probably sweet(ish), the ground under your feet is probably solid. Gravity still works, and there's another moment just around a quick corner that is an opportunity to invent a new reality. If you think something is bad, it's likely to be either fear (future looking) or regret (past looking). Since neither of these things actually exist, focusing on the moment will find you in a much better place than you IMAGINED you were experiencing.

5. Patience, forgiveness, and love are NEVER over rated. More on this later, but take my word for it in the interim.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow from a very good place right now.

Contemplating Conciousness

Earlier this evening, I wondered a bit about the apparent magic that constitutes life and consciousness. It's not a new pondering for humans. My thoughts represent nothing particularly creative. I wondered if my body is merely the armor that surrounds and sustains a dream. We have science and religion, but I don't think that either of those areas of study really get to the heart of what it means to be alive. To experience this dream.

Is it a firing of electrons due to chemical reactions, or does it have a more supernatural origin. If life is a dream or imagination or work of art, what is behind any of these explanation of my individual experience of the world? I don't know.

I know that I feel grateful I can experience the unfolding of living and loss. I'm grateful I can bear witness to the ever present change that gives every appearance of progressing toward something that is greater than anything that has come before now. To understand both the sadness and the hope when familiar locations move through time and space and vanish as if they were never there in the first place.

USS Barry on the Anacostia - Aft Mast Removed

The slow transition of the Barry is an example of the relentless march of change. The hopes, dreams, work, angst, tears, joy, sunrises, sunsets, wind, calm, heat, cold, dark, and burning light that has passed over and through this great ship, this magnificent monument to the ingenuity and determination of humans is almost unfathomable. The ship gives the impression of solidity, but molecular science tells us that it's mostly empty space. With all that the ship has witnessed, she's slowing being undone by time and change.  Today, her aft mast had been removed in preparation for her last trip down the Potomac. The work was done by a crane that I last crossed paths with over ten years ago in another time, another place, another set of feelings. Venice, LA had been wrecked by Hurricane Katrina. Our group butted heads with the sheriff of  Plaquemines Parish. The crane moved the mangled shrimp boats out of the bayou and back to the river so folks could start rebuilding their lives. We worked and laughed and saw everyday the grim reminder of our powerlessness in the universe. We persisted, and things got a little better.

Today was the twelfth day of moving things out of my life that I no longer value in the same way that I once valued them.

Minimalism Day 12

Some clothes and some books that all meant something special to me at one time have suffered the same march of change that's happening to the USS Barry. These things have passed through me and with me in my travels in time and space. I carry the memories of the text in my dreams. The thoughts on the page continue to spark my imaginings of the future.

In the final accounting, I suspect that the best any of us can hope for is to bear witness to the wonder that is unfolding around us in every moment. These things were, at one time, a tangible part of that great unfolding, but for me those moments have passed.

Like the sailors who walked the decks of the Barry, time, tide, and formation have shifted. The young man in the gun came back and visited to see the place that had shaped his life a long time ago and a world away on the gunline off the coast of Vietnam or quarantine enforcement in the Caribbean Sea during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I'm not sure what change tomorrow may bring, but I hope to be ready for whatever the sunrise may reveal.