COVID BOREDOM

Grounded Delta Jets, PTI Greensboro, NC

There’s an old but not so subtle saying that death is nature’s reminder for us to slow down.  Perhaps a more contemporary version would be to substitute COVID-19 for the word death even though this pandemic has resulted in thousands of deaths in almost every community on the planet.  The subsequent social isolation, both mandated and self-imposed for us seniors, has me at least going full circle to my childhood days.  I still can remember rainy summer days when I must have made my mother crazy to hear me winning about being bored as I stared out at the rain drops on a window pane.  She generally let me sort out my boredom which wasn’t always such a good idea!  Fortunately, I learned to read early on and books took me and Toto to exotic places that weren’t in Kansas anymore.  When it comes to boredom and Covid-19, it would seem we need to learn to accommodate them since it looks like we’re in it for the long haul.  We need to take heart that Isaac Newton invented calculus during the plague.  Now that’s getting into a deep state of boredom!  Of course, social isolating for some folks is more like living the dream!  And boredom isn’t always a bad thing.  

This pandemic has given me the quarantine time to clear out my closet and open space for more stuff reclaimed from the eighty percent of the clothes I will never wear again, restore tranquility in my sock drawer and get all those singles together again, thoroughly clean the house including the eviction of all those mold farms in the refrigerator, really detail my vehicle so that even the inside of the windshield is clear for the first time in ages, upend overgrown bushes and trees in the yard to make space for more plants, toss out the eighty percent of canned goods in the pantry whose expiration dates start with 19, confirm that there are about 7,500 grains of rice in a package, put up thirty quarts of spicy salsa from my Covid victory garden (Actually I made one that up.  I only make reservations.), practice putting inside to keep golf strokes on the green to one or two but forget about correcting the driver slice, finish a book on neuroscience that’s been a work in progress for months, write a new blog post, and increase my time arguing with strangers about politics on social media.  Perhaps I still need to work on that last item!  

Neuroscientists now understand that boredom is the gateway to creative thinking and pondering the direction of our lives.  Just like today, Covid Boredom has prompted me to exercise my flow of mind creativeness.  Calming our unconscious chatter and observing our conscious mind clears the way to some very insightful thinking, especially once we’ve cleared the “to do list” that we’ve been ignoring for way too long!  Use boredom time to creatively insert some joy and fun into those habits and activities that create the boredom.

I appreciate that it can be very difficult for some folks to stop the merry-go-round of life and hit the pause button.  But at least Covid Boredom has resolved that for us!     

INVASIVE INCIVILITY

Graffiti and Kudzu, Jamestown, NC

INDEPENDENCE DAY 2020

I was returning home from my traditional Saturday morning drive to nowhere in particular with my coffee container on empty.  I use these weekly morning drives to clear my head, seek inspiration and sort out recent events.  And this year the drive is even more appreciated in this unprecedented time of an extended pandemic lockdown amid protests and too many destructive riots.  Rioting that has included the destruction of historical statues and many small businesses across our major cities.  I’ve watched this unrest unfold with disdain, sadness and a growing concern for the lawlessness and incivility that it birthed in my country, America.  I watched in disbelief as mayors and governors obviously had our law enforcement stand down and let criminals destroy fellow citizens’ lives.

Yes, there has always been a certain irony and concern about our founding fathers who declared independence from a taxing foreign power 244 years ago, while many were slave owners themselves.  Slavery has been with humanity for all time and still exists in many facets as a serious social issue.  Some later freed those slaves and hundreds of thousands died in a civil war to grant all people freedom.  However, simply reversing a social wrong may be a good start but it generally doesn’t alleviate the problem.  Martin Luther King, Jr. studied history and Gandhi’s struggles in India from foreign rulers and understood that violence only tends to stir up the hornets’ nest.  America is humanity’s great hope for peaceful civil protests and freedom from oppression.

As I approached home this morning, I passed a scene that is all too common in America’s southeast.  An invasive stand of smothering Kudzu vines had already covered a wide section of newly accessed trees near the bypass.  It is native to China and was innocently introduced in America to control erosion and serve as an ornamental shade plant.  However, it also absorbs all the sunlight for the plants under the canopy, suffocating them.  It now occupies an estimated 3,000,000 hectares and is destroying the environment at a rate of 50,000 baseball fields per year! Kudzu transposes living organisms into lifeless topiary support structures.  I was then forced to stop for a passing freight train whose cars were covered in graffiti.  I witnessed similar spray-painted graffiti being used to desecrate our national property and fellow citizens’ communities.  Both the Kudzu and lawless violence are a smothering scourge on our country.  And both are indications of more underlying problems for the future.

As an American citizen, I fully support needed social change and righting wrongs.  That’s the promise and job description of America.  But freedom is not the right to do as we please.  It’s the opportunity to do what is right!  I believe in the premise that love, not hate, is the most powerful force for personal change and for changing the world.  As an individual, I intend to do whatever I can to build a better world.  And I plan to exercise my lawful right to vote! 

GUT FEELINGS

Hand Pump, Internet Domain

Now that another voting season has rolled around for the now infamous year 2020, it would be time once again to remind folks of the priming effect—priming your brain like a pump.  It’s been said that if it’s happening in Washington during a major election year, its political!  Unbeknownst to our explicit conscious awareness, our brains can be subtly manipulated to change our behavior.  The term subliminal advertising comes to mind where a word may be quickly flashed on a screen so fast that your conscious explicit memory doesn’t even notice it, but your implicit memory locks it in the vault.  I remember a study years ago where the word Coke was flashed repeatedly on a movie screen and Coke sales increased during the subsequent intermission.  David Eagleman in his book Incognito calls this the “mere exposure effect which illustrates the worrisome fact that your implicit memory influences your interpretation of the world”.  And we generally don’t even know what’s stored deep within our unconscious.

Eagleman notes that merely exposing our implicit memory multiple times to a product brand, celebrity, movement or political ad will entice us to prefer it more.  Even bad press is considered better than no press, especially if “they spell my name right”!  The “illusion of truth” effect is especially troubling because we are more likely to believe something if we hear it repeatedly whether or not it is true.  We’ve all witnessed this effect lately during protests and political inquiries!  Fact checking can’t happen enough during this election year if we want to hold folks accountable.

And when we have a “hunch” or a “gut feeling” about something, our implicit memory is tickling our consciousness to make the right choice.      

WHAT'S POSSIBLE

Pure White Magnolia Bloom, Jamestown, NC

He who looks outside sees the imperfect world

and what's broken.

He who looks inside sees the perfect image of God

and what's possible.

THE BUTTON

THE RESET BUTTON

EMOTIONAL VS RATIONAL

I think one of the reasons we golfers keep returning to the course is that no one can ever conquer the game.  A handful of humans have dominated their competitors, but never attained Nirvana on all shots.  I’ve hit many bad golf shots in my day and I like the advice of Tiger Wood’s father to take ten steps after a bad shot before doing anything else.  Its kinda like hitting the Reset button.

We sort of have a Reset button on today’s e-mail messages in the form of “Send Later” instead of pushing the Send button.  But there are many other forms of social media that don’t have that ability.  Its been said that arguing politics with total strangers on the Internet is like wrestling in the mud with a pig.  You both get muddy but the pig actually enjoys it!

Present technology now enables us to distance ourselves and create all sorts of human tragedy while pushing impersonal buttons.  One contemporary example is the use of military drones to destroy property and lives clear across the globe from the operator.  A human now pushes a drone Send button that kills an opponent and he then drives home to his family for dinner.  An operator can push a Send button that releases missiles to all parts of the world without being anywhere near the intended target that often includes “collateral damage”.  And then there’s the infamous “Red Button” that has the potential to release a nuclear holocaust.

The examples above have worldwide implications, but the line between good and evil metaphorically runs through the heart and brain of every human being.  David Eagleman in his book Incognito illustrates the battle between emotional and rational networks in the brain with a paraphrased version of a short story titled “Button, Button” which was later scripted as a Twilight Zone television episode.

A stranger arrives at the door of a man with a very tempting deal.  He tells the man who is experiencing financial hardship that all he needs to do is press the button in a small box and he will pay him one thousand dollars.  The man obviously asks “What will happen if I do this?”  The stranger replies “When you press the button, someone far away, someone you don’t even know, will die.”  The stranger leaves the man agonizing profusely over the decision for quite some time until he finally lunges to the box and pushes the button.  Nothing happens in the subsequent silence.  Then there’s another knock on his door.  The stranger enters and hands the man one thousand dollars, takes the box and turns to leave.  The man nervously shouts “Wait, what happens now?”  The stranger replies “Now I take the box and give it to the next person.  Someone far away, someone you don’t even know.”  (And therefore, someone that doesn’t know you). 

Are we now engaged in a tragic shell game of harming others with an impersonal decision to act in an instant gratification zeal that seemingly keeps people Teflon?  Are we unwittingly being drawn into and immersed in a circular firing squad in America?  You decide.  We are better than that and we have the instruction manual to fix the problem that contains centuries of wisdom and teachings.  Its time to start pushing the Reset button.

THE TROLLEY DILEMMA

1890 SAN FRANCISCO STREET CAR

PERSONAL OR IMPERSONAL

I was sitting in a relatively secluded section of my auto dealership this morning with the time to finally open a book I had purchased at O’Hare airport.  It is brilliantly written by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, and titled Incognito, The Secret Lives of the Brain.  It’s a read that will give you a prefrontal workout illuminating the realization that “Our brains run mostly on autopilot, and the conscious mind has little access to the giant and mysterious factory that runs below it”

Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be an invisible force in this world today whose primary purpose is to sew division, hate and fear among our society these days.  Names and labels are being floated in the air with the rapidity of a balloon release at a political convention.  Eagleman posits the existence of competing rational and emotional subsystems within our human brains and explains how philosophers have fleshed them out with a scenario called the Trolley Dilemma.  He sets the stage of a runaway trolley barreling towards five track repairmen.  You have the quick decision to throw a switch that will divert the trolley to another track where only one repairman will be killed.  Most people would throw the switch.  I was actually in a similar situation during college on a summer job as a Santa Fe gandydancer repairing railroad tracks and switches, but that’s another story.    

Now we’re presented with an alternative scenario where you are on a footbridge over the tracks next to an obese man.  You could push him over onto the tracks with both hands to derail the trolley and save the five workers.  Most people would not push the man.  Don’t both scenarios save five men and sacrifice one man?  Eagleman writes “It changes the problem from an abstract, impersonal math problem to a personal, emotional decision.   

My point in writing this post is that I’ve had the wide experience in my lifetime to work beside a wide swath of human beings of all colors and persuasions.  That experience has enabled me to see the world from the perspective of establishing a personal relationship with a whole lot of diverse folks.  I can never walk in their shoes, but I can hopefully empathize with their lives on a more personal level.  I sincerely believe that we can work together in brotherhood to form a more perfect union by simply getting to know one another better. 

MONEY AND TIME

Day Lily Time, Jamestown, NC

MONEY AND TIME

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

I’ve always liked the response of John D. Rockefeller, America’s first billionaire in the early 1900’s, when a reporter asked him “How much money is enough?”  The world’s richest man at the time replied “Just a little bit more.”  Inquiring minds would also like to know “How much time is enough?  And we’d probably get the same answer!  A Day Lily’s time to shine is very limited, but it is time enough to fulfill its destiny.  Have you noticed that everything on this planet has an expiration date?  We don’t want to get so caught up in chasing the money that we overlook the reality that our time on this planet is limited.  Once we stop the merry-go-round and step aside, we can begin to appreciate the short time span we have in the here and now. 

 

Money can do extraordinary things in this world for good to help others and facilitate social change.  And there will always be some sparkling bling that sings a siren song beckoning us to pull out the old charge card.  But we have to sober up and come to terms with our financial realities and aspirations to keep life in balance.  Money is primarily obtained in exchange for our life hours.  It can buy a house but not a home and many other material things that can actually become an anchor on our life.  Its pursuit can enslave anyone who trades their time with others for more of it.  We have to be cautious that the pursuit of freedom to do as we desire doesn’t result in the chains that demand all of our time and well-being in the pursuit. 

 

And no one has ever been heard to utter with their last breath that they wish they had spent more time at the office.  Many wished they had taken the time to cherish relationships.