Saturday, August 20, 2011

LIFE RULES

Thanks for your rules of life. I think it’s worthwhile to ponder how we live and what we’re trying to do in this world. Of course, right living is probably far too complicated to be reduced to three rules, though I do like Mary’s suggestion that it might be reducible to one. I suppose that’s what John was getting at when he said “God is love.” (1 John 4:16) Nevertheless, here are my three suggestions:

Be humble. – We human beings are infinitesimally small, live only an instant, and know almost nothing. So it seems only reasonable that we strive to be as modest as possible about everything we think we know. In fact, come to think of it, we may be bigger, live longer, and know more than we think. And that’s one of the really cool things about humility; it allows us to revise.

Be worshipful. – I don’t particularly mean the kind of thing we do in church, though it happens even there on occasion. I mean an attitude to life that springs from humility and issues forth in wonder, gratitude and praise. Whatever we imagine is behind all this, even if nothing at all, existence is amazing. It would be a shame to be here for a lifetime and miss that.

Don’t be afraid. – Fear has its place in the evolutionary scheme of things but, beyond helping us stay around long enough to transfer our genes from our parents to our children, it’s mostly a problem. Fear makes it hard to love and trust, and without love and trust what’s the point? I believe that one of the greatest philosophical and psychological insights ever made happened when the Apostle John talked of love as opposed to fear rather than hate. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear... 1 John 4:18

Fear is a great motivator, which is why it’s a favourite theme of preachers, politicians, and so many who seek to have influence over people. But they are playing with fire. People who are afraid will do the most horrific things. But the best things in the world are done by people who make up their minds to not be afraid.

Supplementary comment:

I was watching an interview with Wendell Berry, a very down-home, humble, Kentucky farmer and philosopher who writes about life and the world around him. Toward the end of the discussion he was asked what he would say if he could sum up everything in a “last word”; similar to what we’ve been doing here I suppose. His response was thoughtful, as all his responses tend to be, and quite consistent, I hope, with the spirit of our discussion.

“I don’t think I know anything that’s reducible to a ‘last word’... What really interests me is the possibility that we humans can make sense... We’ve had two generations of college-bred people now who have been indoctrinated with the idea that every big problem has a big solution. And I just don’t believe it. The big problems we have now are going to be solved, if they ever are solved, by hundreds of people accepting local responsibility for small problems... People who make simple solutions always make trouble, and they’re always surprised by the trouble they make. So, to hell with the last words. Let’s try to make one sentence that’s rightly positioned within a manageable context so that we can utter it to somebody else and they’ll understand it. And we’ll be, then, on the way to defining a job that we can actually do.”

Again, thanks for your thoughts.


Monday, August 15, 2011

MISSED ME AGAIN.

For some time now I’ve been going on about the census form and saying I had no intention of answering all the questions this year. I won’t go over it all, since a few of you expressed a fair amount of weariness with the subject, and one got fed up enough to tell me off in no uncertain terms. Nevertheless, I expect a few may be wondering what actually happened when I came to fill out the form. Well, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but nothing at all happened.

When the census came out this year we were in transition from our home in Edmonton to our new home in North Bay. We were visiting with my wife’s sister in Victoria, but on the actual day the form was to be filled out we were away in Parksville. When my sister-in-law filled out the form, because we weren’t actually there, she didn’t include us. So we are numbered among the thousands of Canadians who didn’t get numbered this year.

It’s all pretty anticlimactic, but it does make my point that all the fuss about the long form census this year, and the fear that the data would be compromised, was a lot of political hot air.

The census is of great value, not because it’s a perfect picture of the make-up of the country, but because, as a survey, it is hundreds of orders of magnitude more exhaustive than any other survey of the population. But, in the end, it is an approximation. Misinformation, disinformation and no information are just realities of life in the survey world.

If it bothers anyone that the census was a few ciphers out this year don’t worry about it. Nothing’s perfect. I know a man who has voted in every federal election for decades even though he’s never been a Canadian citizen. He says he’s just covering for one of the thousands of Canadian citizens who fails to vote. For every goofball like me who didn’t get counted someone who shouldn’t have been probably did. And once again we have a picture of the Canadian population that’s approximately perfect. That’s stats.


Monday, August 8, 2011

THREE RULES OF LIFE


A while back I was watching an interview with Jerry Seinfeld. People tend to love him or hate him. Personally I’ve thought he was very funny ever since I first saw him in the early 80s. But my point isn’t really that Seinfeld’s funny, but that he had some interesting things to say in this interview. People who think about things for a living, writer’s and comedians in particular, generally have interesting things to say if you can get them to stop “performing” even a little. Robin Williams interviews are, predictably, a waste of time.

Anyway, Seinfeld was asked about a graduation speech he’d given, and he said he’d tried to come up with three life rules. (Enough Rope with Andrew Denton part 3 – for those of you who are not Seinfeld fans it’s bout 7 minutes in.) His were: (1) bust your ass, (2) pay attention, (3) fall in love.

By “bust your ass” he said he really just meant, whatever you do, do it as hard as you can. In his opinion nothing bad can come of hard work. Sounds good to me but what would I know?

By “pay attention” he meant, just make it a practice to notice what’s going on around you. Similar, I suppose, to what Satchel Paige meant when he said, “It’s amazing what you can see by just looking.”

And by “fall in love” he didn’t particularly mean romantic love, but that capacity to give yourself to a moment; a really fantastic cup of coffee for example. To not be afraid to really love the beautiful things of life, no matter how small they may seem.

I think these are interesting suggestions, but I wonder what your rules might be. Please click on comment and share your three rules of life. Of course, you probably don't have three right now, so just make them up. It's what I'm going to do, but not till a few others have had a chance.