Magic in a Bottle

July 7, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

I recently exchanged emails with someone I knew from a writers’ group several years ago. We’d had great fun sharing stories with a lively, imaginative circle of friends. Even the silliest stuff usually found an appreciative audience who understood it in the playful spirit it was intended. But after a while, we just got busy with other things and drifted away. We talked about how much we’d enjoyed the group and how we missed those days.

“Sometimes my husband asks if I’m ever going to get back into it,” my friend told me, “but I don’t know that it’s possible to recapture magic in a bottle.”

After the conversation ended, I thought about all the moments that we don’t fully appreciate until after they have gone by. We chase around after our kids when they’re young, and we feel exasperated because they’re so noisy and they make such a mess. Maybe we snap at them, “Grow up!”—and then they do, and we’re left looking at their empty places across the quiet dinner table.

Or we complain about trivial annoyances at work, even though it’s a pretty good job and we get along well with our coworkers. We let the small stuff get blown totally out of proportion, and we grumble about every careless or inconsiderate thing someone does. We fantasize about how much better a new job would be. But after we’ve moved on, we don’t remember the little annoyances; it’s the good times that stick in our minds.

Of course, we learn something every time our circumstances change. Our perspective broadens, and we become more resilient. Even though change is stressful, we’ve come to expect it, as creatures of our busy modern society. If we stayed in the same place doing the same things all our lives, as most of our ancestors did, we’d get bored and restless. Besides, we have much longer lives than our ancestors, so naturally we’re going to fill them with a greater variety of experiences.

The way I look at it, those magic-in-a-bottle moments aren’t really lost. They just get moved farther back on what I envision as a memory shelf, as present-day moments take their place. We write more stories and find other groups of readers who enjoy our creations. When our kids are grown, we still have conversations with them, even though they live somewhere else and we talk about different topics. Maybe we become grandparents, as more time passes. We find new jobs that challenge us to develop our skills in unforeseen ways, and after a while we discover that we’re pretty good at them.

Before we know it, we’ve built up a lovely collection of antique bottles sitting proudly on the imaginary polished hardwood of the memory shelf. They sparkle in different colors, glowing inside with fragments of the magic they once held. Here’s one that gleams softly in warm green-brown hues, holding memories of a beautiful summer morning at the river. There’s another, flickering a bright fiery yellow like the candles on a birthday cake. And look at that perfect red—it’s just the color of the roses around grandma’s porch, fragrant and humming with bees on a Sunday afternoon.

The magical moments we encounter in our daily lives can easily go unnoticed. We rush from one activity to another, worried about completing our tasks and staying on schedule. Often we don’t pause to be mindful of the dazzling sunlight coming through the window after a dark gray morning, the soft comfortable fabric of a new pair of blue jeans, or the affection in a loved one’s voice greeting us when we return from an errand. So many little details don’t find their way into our conscious awareness until many years later, when a scent or sound unexpectedly triggers a wonderful memory.

When we take the time to notice life’s small details as they unfold around us, we’re opening a door to invite the magic into the present.

Breaking the Ice: Fledgling

July 2, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Stories

Three pale blue speckled eggs filled a bird’s nest on the wall calendar in the classroom. Their smooth ovals contrasted with the long, straight twigs that formed the circle of the nest… [This is Part 6. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]

Breaking the Ice: Buttercup

June 13, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Stories

Protest banners, rippling in a stiff wind, filled the large screen on the dining room wall. The camera angle panned out to show thousands of chanting marchers… [This is Part 5. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]

Interruptions

June 1, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

We’re always busy doing something, or at least it seems that way. When we’re not at work, we’re running errands or doing household chores. On top of that, many of us regularly work out at the gym, watch our kids’ soccer games, attend religious services, volunteer with a charity, or fill our schedules with other obligations. Even the things people do to relax—such as watching TV, going to the movies or a sporting event, and playing video games—often take up distinct chunks of time too.

Because most of us have so little unscheduled, free-flowing time in our lives, we feel like we’re always being interrupted. We let the phone go to voicemail because we’re in the middle of something, no matter when we get a call. We feel annoyed when a coworker asks a question because it breaks our train of thought. When a family member wants help around the house, it’s a nuisance because we have to put aside whatever we were doing. Even if it’s nothing but Facebook or a mindless video game, we’re still getting interrupted, and we don’t like it.

In today’s society, interruptions often are described as wasting time, which in turn causes us to resent people who interrupt us. A common cultural script goes like this: “How inconsiderate they’re being! Don’t they know our time is valuable? We’ll never get anything done if they keep bothering us!”

When I’ve had a day with a lot of interruptions and start feeling annoyed, I find it helpful to remind myself that it’s not really a natural instinct to react this way, even though that’s what it may seem like. Getting angry when we’re interrupted is a culturally conditioned response—or, in other words, a collective bad habit. We can change how we react to interruptions by reframing them in our minds. When our coworkers or family members ask us something, it’s probably not because they want to waste our time. On the contrary, if they didn’t value our input, they wouldn’t be asking for it.

Living in such a busy world gives us both opportunities and challenges. Every year we have more choices about how to spend our time, and we can put together a schedule better suited to our needs and interests. We have far more opportunities than at any time in the past. But the more choices we have, the more mental energy it takes to navigate them effectively. We don’t have much left over for dealing with unexpected changes. Without predictable routines, we’re likely to get overwhelmed by stress. So when someone interrupts us, we may perceive it as a threat to our fragile coping ability. As such, it triggers the fight-or-flight response. We may snap at the person or storm off in a huff before we even stop to think about it.

Because so much of how we respond to interruptions takes place on a subconscious level, if we want to respond differently, we have to change our subconscious perceptions of what an interruption is. Put another way, we have to tell ourselves different stories. Humans are by nature storytelling creatures, and we filter all of our experiences through the narratives we use to explain them. Therefore, if we don’t want to get stressed out by interruptions, we have to convince ourselves that the interruptions are not really a problem.

Parents do this as a routine matter when teaching children good time management habits. We might, for instance, tell our kids that it’s time to do their homework now, and they can just pause the cartoon or the video game—it’ll still be there afterward. But often we don’t think about applying this simple lesson to our own busy schedules. When we get interrupted at work or while we’re doing something around the house, we’re likely to react without thinking and get annoyed about it. We’d do better to remind ourselves that the task isn’t urgent (which it usually isn’t) and can get done later.

As with many of the things we do, taking control of the interruptions in our lives is chiefly about developing better habits.

Surly Peasants

May 13, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags:

Back in the 1990s, my favorite computer game was an empire-building game called Lords of the Realm. Players began with a small medieval fiefdom and had to grow its economy, raise an army, and build a castle. As the game progressed, players could build stronger castles. Armies invaded nearby lands and conquered them through battles for control of the castle. Different prices had to be paid to equip soldiers of various types, and peasants could be conscripted. Although peasants got killed quickly going into battle with their pitchforks, they were useful for digging when a moat around an enemy’s castle needed to be filled in.

I enjoyed the sound effects for the battles, which included dialogue. Professional soldiers such as knights or pikemen replied with an eager “Yes, my lord!” or “Right away, sir!” when sent into battle. The peasants, however, made their lack of enthusiasm abundantly clear. When they were selected, they grumbled something surly like “What now?” or “Where to this time?”

I don’t suppose the authors of the game had in mind today’s employment practices when they composed that dialogue, but it struck me as an amusing and very apt bit of social commentary. Modern corporations no longer expect to keep employees for a lifetime, or indeed for any amount of time. Company pension plans are vanishing. Instead of training young workers, which was once common practice, managers insist that new hires must already have all skills required for the job. If no applicants can be found who have the perfect background, work goes undone or is contracted out. Very little thought is given to the long-term effects of cutting costs; only the next quarter’s profit matters.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone in management, under these circumstances, when the employees grumble like surly peasants. Corporate executives give rah-rah speeches and bestow small perks such as letting employees wear jeans to work, but that doesn’t change anything. When their decisions reflect the attitude that any worker can be replaced at any time by someone who comes cheaper, they can’t reasonably expect to enjoy the steadfast loyalty that a medieval knight would give to his liege lord.

Eventually, as globalization progresses, the multinational corporations will exhaust their supply of low-wage workers in underdeveloped nations. I estimate that in less than two decades, companies will be faced with widespread labor shortages. Thereafter, advances in automation won’t keep pace with a shrinking labor force and an increased demand for better-trained workers. When that happens, the most successful companies will be those willing to invest the money needed to retain skilled employees. Competitive pressure will force employers to raise wages, improve benefits, hire the most qualified applicants without discrimination, and generally treat their workers with more respect.

Many executives won’t like it, of course, because they’ve gotten so accustomed to treating their employees like peons. They’ll have no choice but to face the facts, however. If they don’t… well, another feature of the Lords of the Realm game was that if the peasants got too unhappy they’d revolt. They would abandon their fields and go marauding across the countryside. If the revolt wasn’t put down quickly and the peasants’ happiness level raised, the castle would be lost. Those who want to manage the corporations of the future would be wise to take a lesson from that.

Breaking the Ice: Amethyst

April 30, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Stories

Mark Woods woke from a dream of flying. The rhythmic sound of his wingbeats as he soared over blood-red cliffs and a dark ocean faded… [This is Part 4. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]

Defining Values

April 23, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: ,

What are you?

The answer most of us would give, according to the customary social script, is an occupation: truck driver, teacher, sales clerk, or whatever we might happen to be doing for our paycheck. If we’re older and no longer working, then the answer changes to retired, perhaps with our previous career description tacked on. As students who haven’t yet entered the workforce, we might talk about our particular course of study and a career plan based on it. When we’re married and spending our days taking care of small children, we occupy a traditional niche in society as a stay-at-home parent.

But there are no good answers in this script for those without jobs who don’t fit the categories of retiree, student, or homemaker. Unemployment doesn’t just leave a person with no money—to a large extent, it also strips away his or her identity. Our society has plenty of words to describe the jobless, but that lexicon is viciously pejorative: bums, slackers, moochers, takers, lazy, useless, and a burden to others. So when we’re unemployed, that means we’re not only faced with the stress of looking for a job, not finding one right away, and going through our savings (if we’re lucky enough to have some). We also have to deal with the perception that anyone who doesn’t have a job is a worthless social failure.

And right now, although things are slowly improving, there are a lot of people who don’t have a job. We live in a society that is struggling to adjust to the massive impacts of globalization and modern technology. At present, the world’s economy is fragile and all too easily disrupted. There are many more people looking for work than the number of jobs available.

It’s not always going to be like this. As the world becomes fully industrialized and birthrates continue to fall, we can expect that many industries will face chronic labor shortages. People who are looking for jobs will have no problem finding them. But we’re not there yet; and in the meanwhile, we have to ask ourselves—on both a collective and an individual level—how we’re going to deal with today’s difficult job market.

Without getting into the political debate about whether the government ought to focus on job-creation programs or tax cuts, I’ll simply note that both sides recognize there is more involved than money. Politicians, whatever their party affiliation, commonly talk about work in terms of a person’s dignity and ability to contribute to society. Work is generally understood to make up a large part of our identity.

Before the modern era, when there was very little social mobility, defining people’s identity in terms of their occupations made a lot of sense. If your father was a blacksmith or a carter, you probably were too, if you were male; and you would never do anything else, unless you had the bad luck to get conscripted by a passing army. Everyone in your town would refer to you as John the smith or Tom the carter. A man’s occupation was a quick and easy way to distinguish him from others who had the same given name, back when common folks didn’t have surnames.

Now we live in a complex, unpredictable society where most workers will change jobs many times. Career retraining has become commonplace as old industries shrink and new ones emerge. It’s not unusual to get a college or university degree in one field and then end up employed in another. Modern workers are more likely to migrate to another city or country, and we have more diversity in our personal characteristics and interests. As a consequence, a person’s job says less about his or her identity than at any time in history.

And yet, we still ask children what they’re going to be when they grow up. The dominant cultural narrative is much the same as it was centuries ago, defining our personal identity and value in terms of how we earn our pay. If we get laid off and can’t find another job, or if we’re stuck in a low-paying job and have had no luck applying elsewhere, it’s hard to look at the situation objectively and not feel like we’ve been rejected by society in general. Our culture takes it for granted that a person’s dignity and value depend on employment status.

There are many variables that go into determining that status, however, and often they’re not under our control. We can’t reasonably be expected to predict an economic downturn that causes our company to go bankrupt or a technological advance that makes our work experience obsolete. Prejudice or nepotism can cause a less qualified applicant to get hired instead of us. Maybe our employer decides to cut costs by moving production overseas. We can’t prevent any of these things from happening, so why do we allow them to change how we feel about ourselves and about other people in our community? We might do better to think about redefining our values, in more ways than one.

Breaking the Ice: Cliffs in the Sky

March 31, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Stories

The little boy ran through the office, not watching where he was going, his gaze fixed on the bright sunlit mass of late-afternoon clouds shining like great red cliffs in the sky. He ignored the more mundane view of Baltimore’s streets in December 2003… [This is Part 3. Continue reading this installment, or read the story from the beginning.]

What We Say About Ourselves

March 27, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Musings · Tags: , ,

Researchers have found that people who often complain about being old or fat have more health problems than others of the same age or weight. And when older people leave their usual environment and go somewhere that they associate with youth and physical activity, their health improves. For example, blood pressure might be significantly lower after spending a few weeks at a hotel in the mountains, surrounded by hiking trails and furnished with dated décor reminiscent of one’s younger years.

When articles describing these studies appear on news websites, readers often post skeptical comments downplaying the effects of attitude. People complain more because they’re in worse health, not the other way around, the commenters suggest. And they argue that when someone’s health improves during a vacation, it has nothing to do with feeling younger—it’s simply because of a better diet and more exercise.

Some readers gripe that the scientists are being unethical by conducting studies that have the effect of encouraging people to lie to themselves. After all, if someone is old or fat, that’s the truth. It’s nonsensical to pretend otherwise, they say; and it gives people false hope that magical thinking will cure serious medical problems.

My take on it is that categories like “old” and “fat” are chiefly matters of opinion. Their boundaries can and do change as our cultural expectations shift over time. A century ago, when the average lifespan was much shorter than it is today, people thought of themselves as growing old earlier in their lives. And before the modern era, when food was much harder to get, a substantial waistline often was thought desirable—both because it was a sign of prosperity and because it improved survival odds in times of famine.

We also differ in how we sort ourselves into categories based on our life experiences. For instance, I would call myself middle-aged because both of my children are grown and are close to getting their university degrees. To my mind, it wouldn’t make any sense to describe myself as a young adult when my kids are now young adults. But nowadays, because of second marriages and fertility treatments, there are plenty of people my age who started their families just recently. They are likely to spend much of their time associating with young parents of toddlers and, as a result, to think of themselves as being nowhere near middle age.

Another factor in how we classify ourselves, which is even more individual, has to do with the connotations that we attach to the words. One person might despair upon approaching middle age, believing that it means the best part of life is over. A more optimistic person might view it as having many more years of a long and happy life remaining. Although they’re both using the same term to describe themselves, what they mean by it is totally different.

As to the health effects of what we say about ourselves, I believe the skeptics have a valid point that there’s more to it than positive or negative thinking. When someone is in better health after a vacation, it probably has to do with being more active than usual. The person isn’t just sitting around the whole time repeating affirmations, visualizing a younger and healthier self, and so forth.

That said, however, it’s all interrelated. When we think of ourselves as healthy people in the prime of our lives, we’re likely to act accordingly, getting regular exercise and taking better care of ourselves. To a large extent, humans are creatures of habit. What we say about ourselves is a strong factor influencing what habits we form, which in turn goes a long way toward shaping our circumstances.

Grand Adventures

March 15, 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Stories

Rupert carried his cup of strong black coffee to the kitchen table. Outside the window, in the pale light of an early March morning, the bare snow-dusted fields stretched toward the southern horizon. Soon it would be time for planting corn and soybeans; but this year, someone else would be doing it. Last fall, after the harvest, he had sold out to one of the agribusiness corporations buying up farmland all over the Midwest.

This land had been in his family for many generations, going back to prairie settlers in log cabins. He never would have given it up if his children had shown any interest in farming. Even after all three of his daughters had moved to the city, he had expected to pass the farm on to his son, the youngest of his children. Gilbert always had been fascinated with machinery; even as a small boy, he had asked endless questions about how a tractor or a combine worked, his big blue eyes wide and eager in his tanned face. Now, with his broad shoulders and strong arms, Gil looked just like his grandfather, for whom he was named.

When Gil had decided to study mechanical engineering instead of agriculture at the state university, Rupert hadn’t been overly concerned. After all, teenagers often had notions of one sort or another before they settled down to farming. In his own youth, Rupert had dreamed of traveling to Central America and working to save the rainforest. He’d picked up Spanish fairly well from the migrant workers as a boy. What an adventure it would be, to live and work in another country! But his dreams never had reached the point of action. Like his father before him, Rupert had ended up marrying his high school sweetheart and raising a family in the old farmhouse.

Selling the land felt like betraying his ancestors, but there had been nothing else to do. After Gil graduated with his degree in mechanical engineering and took a job in the auto industry, Rupert didn’t even have any cousins interested in farming the land. They had all sold out to the big corporations, too.

He had gotten a fair price, and now he could look forward to a comfortable retirement. By most people’s standards, he ought to count himself lucky, having become a man of leisure when he wasn’t yet sixty. But it just didn’t feel right to him, somehow. His pioneer ancestors hadn’t put in all that backbreaking labor so that he could spend the next few decades idly lounging around, with no concerns beyond his golf score.

Besides, he didn’t even like golf.

Soft footsteps interrupted his brooding as his wife, Helen, padded into the kitchen in her pink robe and slippers. She poured herself some coffee and cream, stirring absently as she, too, gazed out the window. Helen’s golden-brown hair still looked much as it had in her youth, kept that way with regular visits to the beauty shop. There wasn’t much left of Rupert’s hair, which was a short, iron-gray fringe.

Helen put her coffee on the table and sat to his right. “A lot of good years,” she said quietly. She was looking at him now, rather than at the farmland; but he knew that she meant both.

Rupert put his hand on top of hers, thinking that at least Helen had a regular schedule to keep her busy in retirement. She played bridge twice a week and volunteered with the church. Sometimes she tutored children after school, though there weren’t many children left in town. Every year more of the small shops along Main Street closed down for lack of customers. Helen now had to drive twenty miles to get her hair done.

“I was remembering when we were in high school,” he told her, revealing only some of his thoughts. “Back when I wanted to save the world by doing conservation work in Central America. I thought it would be a grand adventure. Gil feels the same way about his job, designing small cars to save energy and cut down on pollution. The only difference is, he actually went and did it.”

Helen sipped her coffee slowly, holding the cup in her right hand while her left hand remained in Rupert’s grasp. He expected that she would say something about Gil, or the farm, or raising children in general. As far as he knew, Helen had no dreams of saving the world, or even exploring it. She was conservative and always had been content with life on the farm. The most adventurous she’d gotten was when she started using fingernail polish a few years ago, having grown frustrated with how often her aging nails chipped and cracked without it.

But instead of the ordinary conversation he’d been expecting, Helen asked, in a calm, reflective tone, “Are you thinking that we could go somewhere and do conservation work now? There’s nothing to keep us here, with the land sold and the children grown.”

Taken by surprise, Rupert struggled for words, his thoughts full of those imagined journeys from so long ago. Surely Helen hadn’t dreamed of anything similar? No, she must have said it only to make him happy. He couldn’t take her away from the community she always had loved.

“But your friends,” he began, “the church, all the things you do…”

Helen laughed, a sound more unexpected than her words. Soft, musical, and filled with joy, it reminded him all over again of why he had married her.

“Rupe, if I didn’t have anything else to do for the rest of my life besides listen to the church ladies gossip at the bake sales, I’d surely die of boredom.”

In answer, he clasped her hand more tightly where it lay under his. Both of them had farmers’ hands, roughened by many years of hard physical work. These hands never had been meant for a quiet retirement. When the light glinting off the snowy fields drew Rupert’s gaze to the window again, he saw not just the farmland left behind, but all the possibilities that the future still held.

« Older articles
Newer articles »