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The Past Is Never Dead. It Isn't Even Past.

In my current position, I'm tasked with the goal of convincing highly distracted, unconfident college students to write effective, argumentative essays over a variety of topics. Some days, that task is more enjoyable than others. Admittedly, I could make my job much easier by employing topics of discussion that are more accessible to a group of inexperienced 19 year-olds. I could talk about current events. I could design units around high-stakes-but-well-worn topics like abortion, gay marriage, and legalizing marijuana. I could even look to appropriate the work of my colleagues and simply try out curricular flavors of the month. I don't, though. I ask students to write about topics that produce papers I'm interested to read.

Yesterday, we framed a discussion in around the misplaced presence of revisionism in certain historical accounts, thus calling those accounts' veracity or academic usefulness into question. I'm not going to bore you with the details, but the bulk of the lesson involved discussing two wildly divergent accounts for the origin of "the separation of church and state," in the hopes that the students might see these accounts as politically motivated narratives as much as they see them as important records of the past.

What made the lesson fun for me was that we eventually worked our way around to a discussion of one of my favorite topics: nostalgia. Nostalgia comes from two Greek root words, nostos and algia, which almost literally translates into "an ache or pain to return home" or "homesick." Originally coined as a term to describe the specific sadness that soldiers felt after having spent too much time away from home, the term has broader connotations now.

In essence, nostalgia describes a bittersweet longing for things, people, and situations of the past. These constantly fall from the immediacy of the present into a vast, deep pool of memories from which most never reemerge. The ones that do are fawned over, polished, repaired, restored, and worn smooth by the constant tracing of our fingers on their bodies. Our minds are amazing in their capacity to recall, but they're still faulty when asked to reliably and completely record important moments. Our memories are incomplete, not at all safe from alteration, or sometimes even pointlessly clung to, despite having no useful purpose. Maybe that's why I remember most of the lyrics to "Mr. Wendal" by Arrested Development, but I often can't remember what I was going to the store to buy.

"Aiaiaiaiahhhaiaiaiaiahaa!" I forget the rest.

I'm fascinated by nostalgia and the romanticized past, not simply because I see it commodified all around me, but also because I feel it with greater frequency as I grow older. I'm old enough now to have remarked grimly when I saw a familiar building razed or when I endured a pop metal concert and realized how out of place I was in that scene. But there's more to nostalgia than the simple, innocuous romanticization of 90's music or old McDonaldland playgrounds.

Over Spring Break, I spent a few days back in my hometown, doing some yard work for my aging father and trying to catch up with my ever-evolving mother during her busy weekend. I don't live far from home, just a little over two and a half hours away, and yet I only return once or twice a year. After returning home from a failed attempt at college in December of 1998, I left town permanently in the fall of 1999, never to reside there again. It isn't that I hate my hometown. It's a strangely beautiful and charming place. Like most young people though, the need to venture forth was overwhelming and I couldn't resist the call away.

I fled from this place to spend the next two years with a bunch of backsliding baptists

 in the unquestionable cultural mecca that is Shawnee, OK.

Usually, I'm accompanied on these trips by my own family and my sense of nostalgia is muted and tolerated, so long as it takes the form of "taking the scenic route" so I can drive by a few familiar places on the way to our intended destination. This time, the universe saw fit to send me on my own, which allowed for a different experience than I would normally have had. Most visits back home feel like tiptoeing through a graveyard, where everything seems incredibly familiar and irreducibly out of reach. Seeing my childhood house always stings more than I'd care to admit, mostly because it was leveled in the late 80's and the land sold to a neighbor who used it to build a garage.

Happier, less complicated times, where bellies could protrude unapologetically.

And yes, I'm on the wrong side of the garden fencing. 

  What the lot looks like today. There's a little pile of bricks in the back left corner.

They're the same ones you see in the picture above. Sad-face.

It isn't that the house was particularly wonderful or worth saving. It wasn't. It was small, stuffy, and had a terribly leaky roof. There was an old attic fan for cooling parts of the house, but it was so incredibly loud and unsettling that I hated having it turned on. When we finally left the house, it was quickly condemned and razed by the bank because of its uninhabitable condition. The land itself was literally worth more than the structure built upon it and yet, every time I see the the lot, nostalgia floods my mind.

When I can, I try to take stock of whatever situation I'm in. It leads to a great deal of awkward, highly personal recollection and second guessing myself. You would think that with as often as I do that, both in the flow of life and here on this blog, I'd make more affirmative, smart personal decisions, but you'd be wrong. Usually, reflecting on nostalgia leads me to a sort of omphaloskeptical loop, where the value of the insight is inversely correlated to the time spent seeking it. I felt like this time needed to be different. While it's true that I did my share of driving about and even a little bit of aimless walking after seeing the old lot, I mostly took the time to engage in a different type of quiet, solitary reflection.

Nostalgia is dangerous. It makes us believe that the past was better and brighter than it truly might have been. Time passes and our shifting contexts lead us to the idea that there was some better time, back in the expanding fog of our past, that marked a high point. Over time, we come to hold that idea to dearly that it becomes a belief. A brick, stolen in the dead of night in the summer of 1999, takes on almost magical qualities as it becomes a focal point of a mistaken belief in a golden age, a paradise lost in the painfully unfair process of growing up. A process which, to many, feels final and irreversible.

The first task my students had in class today was to respond to a famous Faulkner quote, from Requiem for a Nun, that states "The past is never dead. It isn't even past." Most students responded by saying that the past is a part of each of us individually because we're built from our past experiences. A smaller percentage of students responded with notions about the past always being an active part of how we make decisions in the present, thus keeping it from passing, being irrelevant, or truly dying. This response also makes a great deal of sense and I'm proud of their insight. In nearly every class, there's always one student that reads the aforementioned quote and reaches a different conclusion about the past not being dead.

 Faulkner, on the other hand, is as dead as disco. But onward, dear reader.

Instead of the past being built into our emotional genetics or an omnipresent phantom guiding our decisions, they see the past as always available for revision and alteration. Because of nostalgia and our need to inscribe upon the past our current reevaluation of it, our recollection is always subject to change and reinterpretation. This doesn't necessarily mean that individuals are given free reign to fabricate an entire past that has only the most tenuous connection to reality, but it does mean that the past is open to new understanding and therefore, transformation.


For just as much as we can revisit the past and feel its bittersweet venom poison our ability to enjoy living while we can, We're also able to use nostalgia to rescue ourselves from being stuck with solely one version of our past. The only story of my past doesn't have to be one marked by homesickness and longing for the good ol' days. There's another story, a brighter past, one that doesn't sting as badly at times. There's a story of trying to sell old socks and random junk to passersby on an old card table, as if I were a little misguided entrepreneur. There's a story of how I consistently ate roly-poly bugs off the sidewalk or climbed on top of the house, only to jump off and land in the soft, green grass that awaited me. There's a story of how my bell bottom jeans became entangled in the chain of my bike, which turned my first solo ride around the block into a spectacular and painful crash. There's even a story about how I vividly and sincerely believed that King Kong was just behind the trees in my backyard and if I was too loud, he'd hear me and come eat me.

There are a thousand other stories, all equally nostalgic, and all equally infused with the power to save the past from its solitary confinement behind the walls of one single, bittersweet recounting of events that didn't even originate in my own mind. Perhaps, instead of all this indulgent electronic reflection, it's time to tell a few of those stories and reanimate the past.

The Opposite of Hate Is Indifference

It's not necessarily the domain of this particular blog to weigh in on political or current event issues. I usually post reflective, long winded, superfluous assessments  on the events that punctuate my weird life. The reasoning behind this isn't that I don't have opinions on such issues. I do. In fact, I often obsess over current issues and events.

A few weeks ago, I found myself lost in exploration of reports that helium was escaping from the ground all over Yellowstone National Park, which might be a precursor to a supervolcano that would fundamentally alter the course of human history. Last week, when I should have been constantly grading, I found my attention drawn away by the Gordian Knot of confusion surrounding the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which is still an ongoing mystery and a raw wound for the families of all those involved. Between taking part in crowdsourced scanning of satellite images and reading about wild, speculative theories, I was as wrapped up in the drama as anyone could be.

Some current events are interesting, not for their content, but for they reactions the elicit from the masses. One event that is unfolding as we speak involves the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps, who is reportedly on his death bed. Reactions have been varied and swift. Even Grumpy Cat, the now-passé internet meme, had a predictable reaction.

Eloquent, timely, and full of compassion.

What else would you expect from the internet?

Phelps' former congregant, Lauren Drain released a statement, claiming that "that every man [and] woman deserves the right to make peace with themselves, their family [and] their God on their death bed." Some have called for massive donations to Gay Rights groups  in Phelps' memory. George Takei, who has become far more famous as a cultural gadfly than he ever was as Star Trek's Sulu, called for taking the high road by informing his fans that  "I take no solace or joy in this man's passing. We will not dance upon his grave, nor stand vigil at his funeral holding "God Hates Freds" signs, tempting as it may be."

This view was echoed by Equality Kansas, a GLBTQ rights organization, who issued a statement that "He and his followers showed utter disregard for the privacy and grief of others for many years. This is our moment as a community to rise above the sorrow, anger, and strife he sowed, and to show the world we are caring and compassionate people who respect the privacy and dignity of all.” Meanwhile, other Facebook pages have endorsed less restraint.

The poster boy for endorsing less restraint.

I understand why certain people would advocate taking the high road. Turning the other cheek and showing greater moral composure than your hateful opponent exhibits a mind freed from the petty and destructive thoughts that lead someone to exact revenge. There are literally hundreds of clever maxims and sayings arguing that "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" or how those feelings are "like drinking poison and hoping it will kill your enemies."

The normal blog post I'd share would end with a warm, mildly articulate thought on how we should all meet hate with love, thus balancing out the world. Not this week.

Last night, I attended a rock show with my oldest daughter. The band was a weird blend of metal, emo, and a Hot Topic employee style guide. They were too loud and clearly not meant to appeal to someone of my demographic cohort. I'm fine with that. A thousand sweaty millennials, full of disappointment and angst, flung themselves around, threw their hands up, took pictures of the concert on their phones, or bobbed their heads arrhythmically to the music.

There were a variety of reactions, each with their own degree of validity to the person experiencing the moment. Within certain basic confines, such as "it's wrong to hurt others who wish not to be harmed" and "it is wrong to willfully damage the property of others," most reactions are understandable. The same idea holds true for the passing of Fred Phelps. For a man whose fame is predicated on hateful, insensitive, cruel rhetoric, a cemetery full of signs and boisterous picketers might finally cause the WBC to register shame at what they've wrought. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.  To a large number of people, the reaction seems valid.

I, for one, do not think the WBC will even attend his funeral. They're unethical people, but they're not idiots. Rather than being hoisted on their own petard, they'll likely decline attending and claim that he had become an untrue Scotsman at the end of his life. Ironically, the only people connected to Phelps who attend will likely be those estranged from him, which are not the people picketers should target.

Composing eulogies about hate only bringing forth hate are valid reactions as well, which can bring both a sense of closure and finality to the life of a misguided human. These kinds of codas also bear with them a strong sense of moral satisfaction, bordering on smugness, at having won by never stooping to the level of the departed. Whether we admit it or not, this is common response to the death of an enemy.

Some will rejoice, dedicating anthemic modern, GLBTQ-friendly songs like Philadelphia Freedom or Same Love to Phelps. There might even be a public celebration surrounding Phelps' actual burial. I suspect that his grave will become a sort of dark, depressing tourist destination, similar to the way that Jim Morrison's grave is in Paris. Though, I don't see many people celebrating in quite the same way (that's the same Lucien Greaves behind the Satanist statue at the Oklahoma Capitol complex, by the way).

Ultimately, I think the way I'll observe the passing of this person is the way that I observed his life: cold indifference, coupled with a healthy awareness. I firmly believe that ignoring the WBC protests and not giving them network coverage was the best possible course of action we could have taken. I believe that not reacting out of anger or resisting being drawn to them like flies to a picnic would have been better than trying to engage them directly. I believe that they would have eventually intensified their activities to such a point that they violated a law, thus inviting lawsuits and eventually, a cessation of their efforts. Perhaps we'll learn that sensationalized news brings out this kind of rhetoric and instead opt to avoid legitimizing it with coverage.

Elie Wiesel had it half right. The opposite of hate isn't love. The opposite of hate is also indifference. Because Phelps preached in favor of the violation of basic confines that protect us all, my reaction is not to enshrine him as an Ozymandias of a dying ideology or as a martyr of a lost-cause theology gone wrong. My reaction is to make no effort to conserve or preserve his world view, beyond reaching the conclusion for myself that it is irrelevant and of no value.

But that's just my reaction and it's only one of many possible reactions.
Have a good week out there. Stay positive. I promise I'll try to get back to doing the same.

I Wonder If I've Made a Huge Mistake

It's been a long week. I know that with the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, it's technically been a shorter week than the other 51 weeks of the year. That doesn't mean it hasn't felt like a much longer week. I've had fever off and on during the week, a stomach firmly set on revolting against me, and strange muscular twitches in my arms that are probably due to stress. I've been grading a lot of papers and tending to a lot of other tasks.

There are plenty of stressors in my life. I don't feel particularly inclined to list them all here because I don't feel like being bluntly honest about all of them at the moment to anyone that might be reading this. Blunt honesty is incredibly powerful when handled carelessly. Much like the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark, heedlessly cracking into it at any given time can be incredibly dumb.

 Also incredibly dumb, but also kind of adorable.

One of the biggest sources of stress in my life involves my career. At the moment, I'm neither in a graduate program nor moving towards applying to join one. I hit a crossroads in 2011, after I finished my M.A., and decided to not continue down the road I was on at that time. It wasn't because I was struggling, exhausted, or burned out by the process.

I stopped because I wasn't ready to stay here and do PhD work, which would have involved changing my focus. I wasn't ready to uproot everything and move to a different region of the country for further work in the same subject. There's a variety of reasons for that, not the least of which are the endless stream of spirit-crushing articles warning the uncertain applicant to run screaming in the other direction.

So, I stood pat and signed up to teach a few classes as an adjunct. What was meant to be a short term layover has turned into quite a bit more. I teach eight sections a semester at three different colleges, which nets me a little more than the pay that I would receive if I had landed a job at a large public school district, teaching English to middle schoolers obsessed with Miley Cyrus, making Vines, and each other's farts. That's not what I chose, however. I chose to teach college and professionalize, while networking and building collaborative relationships with colleagues in a variety of positions.

I believed that I could become a much better instructor by committing to this work for a few years. If I didn't earn a position at a smaller school, I could always return to graduate studies with  much more experience and skill in teaching than virtually any other peer. To some extent, I've done that. My evaluation ratings are extremely high, on average. Since graduating in the Spring of 2011, I've taught 41 courses in First Year Composition. That's more than many graduate students teach in their entire journey through graduate school. The workload I once thought was overwhelmingly large now seems attractively moderate and fascinating.

When I tell people how many courses I teach, their reaction is generally dependent on how well they can relate to my circumstances. Most people who don't truly understand academia are proud of me, but think I work too much. Their concern is kind and the pride they express helps me to feel much better about the other two types of reactions. Most colleagues who are near my level on the academic ladder respond with a bizarre mix of revulsion, pity, and morbid curiosity. They read articles about adjuncts in overworked or exploited situations and it's all very abstract until we meet. Then, I'm suddenly the afflicted one in the midst. Debates swirl, not when I'm present of course, about how it shouldn't be that way or how awful my life sounds. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of being bitten in a zombie apocalypse.

Should we offer him a Contingent Faculty contract or bash in his noggin?

The third reaction, which typically comes from those on higher rungs than I, politely reminds me that I constitute an ever-increasing problem. Much like the second set of reactions, why I'm doing this isn't logical, reasonable, or even clear. Unlike the second set of reactions, which are focused on concern for me, the third set are focused on concern about me.

It doesn't feel good to be an embodiment of a problem, nor does it feel good to feel like one's decisions aren't just personally catastrophic, but are also systemically destructive in large enough numbers. At times, when the cacophony of being overly busy dies down long enough for me to hear the doubt-filled whispers in my head, I wonder if I made a huge mistake.

 

Maybe I should have been a magician? They're taken seriously, right?

A few years back, I ran into an old hometown friend while I was walking across the OU campus. We exchanged pleasantries and caught up on what the other had been doing in the eight years since we had last seen each other. I told him I was wrapping up an M.A. in English, which prompted him to hug me and admit that "... if I could do it over, I'd love to get a degree in something impractical like that."

Seriously?

I still won't run up the white flag and admit that it was stupid of me to study literature. I've always been slow to change course when I've clearly gone the wrong way. I'm not even ready to fully admit that about this decision, though. I've met wonderful people, become much better at what I do, and I've legitimately inspired a few disaffected, cynical college students to enjoy the arduous process of essay writing. 

I want to be secure and comfortable as much as anyone does but I'm also not one to be a slave to mammon like so many good people, including some of my best friends, become over the course of their lives. It's more than just some principled stand against greed, though. There's a deeper reason that eliminates my regret.

You see, time and space are unimaginably enormous. So enormous, in fact, that they are immeasurable. Even if you believe that this small planet is the only example of life in the practically infinite universe, you're still dealing with impossibly large numbers. There are some 7.2 billion people alive on the planet, right now. There have been billions before us and billions will come after.

I've written before about the importance of recognizing the perspectives  of others and those same thoughts come back into play here. Each of the countless billions of humans had their own unique perspectives on the world and experienced a life that no one else can ever lay claim to have fully known.

Most people are content to live their lives without recognizing the infinite diversity and the rich, vibrant, and discomforting tapestry woven by humanity's continued existence. We only experience one lifetime, and even if one believes in reincarnation, that next life isn't the same one that passed before. Life is short, rough, overwhelming at times, and incomprehensibly beautiful at others.

For a species endowed with such a deep and insatiable curiosity, it is nothing short of tragic that we spend so many years of our short lives either unable to understand or unable to remember the world around us. We are only allowed such a brief time to take it all in that it seems terribly unjust and cruel. To fill the intervening years with dull, monotonous drudgery is an incredible insult to the limitless possibility available, yet we all do it.

We do it because we recognize, on some level, the intimidating vastness of it all. The universe might have created humans so that it could know itself, but the awareness of the boundlessness of existence is made bitter by how little of it we're capable of sampling in such a short time. We have to work because we have to eat. We have to eat so that we can remain alive. We have to remain alive so that we can pass on life to others, who will in turn have to work to propagate the species. Along the way, we're given the chance to indulge our curiosity, but the never-ending variety paradoxically pushes us to view the world so narrowly that we believe we can comprehend it all at once.

And this is why studying literature is something I do not regret. Humans love to tell stories about ourselves and our experiences and those perspectives are captured in time by our writing. By reading those texts, we're granted access to another level of consciousness that transcends time and circumstance. We're able to hear the invisible man speaking to us on the lower frequencies. We feel the castrated, confused futility in Benjy Compson's wailing, full of sound and fury. We see the poet's consciousness emerge from the endlessly rocking cradle. The unnumbered perspectives into which our minds are transported are as uncountable as the stars in the sky.

 7,036,540... 7,036, 541... 7,036, 542...

In a stolen moment, our experience of the inexhaustible, eternal universe is broadened. We can sample those lives and be moved by them. Without literature, we have only one life, deadened by the dreary realization of its limits and fragility. Literature gives us a weapon against mortality, against having to unlock all of life's mysteries over again, and against the yawning indifference of time to our hopes and desires.

I don't regret studying it. I'm better for it. I could be wealthier had I done something else. I could have less stress or have grabbed hold of a different tiger's tail had I not chosen this. Even without the crowning academic glory of a PhD and a tenured, endowed chair from which to pontificate ex nihilo, the journey was not a waste. I don't feel like a growing problem, a systemic cancer, or an all-around navel-gazing fool, even if that's what the world around me often declares.

Maybe it's time to make a few major changes in my life. It may be time to cut my losses and move on to a new path. Perhaps not. I'm 35 and still uncertain of what lies ahead. What I won't worry about any longer is whether or not I've done something of value while on this path.

Have a good week out there. Read something,  let it carry your mind elsewhere, and be sure to enjoy the trip.

The Best Friends Are Honest Friends

When I'm on campus in Norman, students come by my humble office on a regular basis. They're usually seeking advice or an unflinching evaluation of their draft. Because of my position and my relative value to the department, my office is rather small. The students are always surprised by the state of my professorial domicile. It's a 7 x 7 cell, with peeling baby blue paint on thick concrete walls and two large windows looking out onto a parking lot. I have virtually no art or posters on the walls and only one bookshelf, ironically containing very few books. I don't mind it though. The space is primarily meant to use to meet with students or catch up on a little work in between classes. I'm lucky to have it and the space functions precisely as I need it to, with little embellishment.

One of my four walls isn't actually a wall at all. The office opens up to another, slightly smaller room occupied by my office mate. He carefully decorates his half of the office with desk ornaments, student-made art, and a bookshelf overloaded with a variety of texts that he doesn't have room for in his apartment. Papers are scattered around, there's usually a derelict container or open book on his desk, casually left behind for the night. We're something of an odd couple and we've shared an office four out of the 5 years I've been teaching at OU.

Most days, two other colleagues stop by our office and shoot the bull while enjoying brown-bag lunches in each other's company. It's a nice time to socialize with other adults while not having to perform the role of exuberant, enthusiastic adjunct professor in front of a classroom full of cynical, disaffected students. Our conversations range from bitching about grading essays to the odd similarity between raising small children and house pets. Make sure they don't break anything, make sure they eat something that isn't garbage, and be sure to help them use the bathroom periodically.

The other day, my office mate posted a picture to his Facebook timeline. The picture featured seven cardinal rules by which one should live their life. These kinds of things appear in my news feed often and they're largely unremarkable, but well-meaning. Most of the rules made sense, with the exception of #2- "What other people think of you is none of your business."

#8- Never, under any circumstances, should you ever

 be in the bathroom while your spouse is pooping.

For some reason, this rule didn't sit well with me. Why can't I know what other people think of me? This is my life. I'm the central character in my own journey. How oblivious of a life would it be if I never knew where I stood with people? I'd miss out on tremendous opportunities to learn about what behaviors sit well with folks and which ones might need rethinking.

Now, I think I understand the spirit of the rule. Essentially, I shouldn't live my life worried about seeking the approval of others. A life spent trying to please everyone else is a wasted life, full of insincerity and a constant fear of rejection even from those closest to us. Even if I could have special access to the inner space of my friends' minds, would I really want to know what feelings were locked away? I would hope most of the thoughts were positive, but what if they weren't? Wouldn't it be better to know than to live in a delusional state? I can't help but be curious what my friends and loved ones think of me.

Bleak truth #67- Reading too much Calvin and Hobbes 

 as a kid may have warped my mind.

On some level, we're all this way, whether our pride allows us to admit it or not. We carefully craft a reputation over the course of our lives, even if our reputation is desperately posing ourselves as someone who doesn't care what others think of them. To be sure, the opinions we value most are those belonging to the people closest to us. So, what about these three people who laugh, eat, and complain with me? They're my good friends. I know their successes and struggles. I know I value their opinion, but what if their opinion of me isn't obvious? This sensation to know, despite the risks, can be overwhelming at times.

A month ago or so, I heard a story on This American Life about a young man who set out to discover what his friends truly thought of him. You can read the transcript (Act II: The Hole Truth) here. The young man had a suspicion that all his friends thought he was "an asshole." If you're worried that label might apply to you, read my earlier post on the matter. The transcript above has a lot of great insights about reputation and confronting one's effect on others. One particular insight stuck with me. In one telling exchange, the young man asks his best friend why they're still friends, to which his friend coolly responds, "I don't know. Inertia?"

Apply liberally to the affected area as often as necessary until your wittle feelers don't hurt.

To be totally honest, hearing that from one of my friends would be crushing. But what would happen of we lived in a world where such honesty was practically impossible, except when it was in the form of a positive, glowing assessment? No one would ever know that their bigoted, hateful world view alienated others; they would just be "a product of their circumstances." Our overly opinionated friends who humiliate or scold us constantly wouldn't be called out for being "domineering assholes;" they would be referred to as "big personalities" with "a lot to say about most any topic." Irresponsible friends making bad personal decisions would be dismissed with a simple "she's just going her own way and she has to live her own life." Months and years would pass between friends and couples while resentment would build up because "Your selfish behavior hurts and upsets me," would be consistently muffled by neutral and ambivalent justifications of "We have a lot of history," and "he is who he is."

On the other hand, we live in a society where politeness and grace tend to save friendships more often than they're given credit. Discretion is the better part of valor and this is certainly true between friends and loved ones. Friends and loved ones often mask their feelings for us because of the ugliness that they predict would follow, or the fact that they still care about us, in spite of our egregious flaws. Perhaps they just can't find anyone better to spend time with. When someone has a tendency to drop the veil of politeness, we treat those people like they're time bombs that we have to hurriedly flee from or defuse. But should we? Or should we seek out healthy, honest evaluations from people who can provide valid assessments?

Maybe I'm missing out on my true calling here.

We can't compel those nearest and dearest to us to say anything they don't wish to say, positive or negative in nature, and there are plenty of thoughts that need never breathe the air of an open conversation. Our right to know doesn't trump their right to keep certain thoughts private. Nor should we encourage those "big personalities" in our lives to make a cottage industry of dressing-down their friends and partners.

What we should strive for is a balance between both being incisively and mercifully forthcoming with those we care about, while also being edifying and intuitively positive to the same. When the latter outweighs the former on the scales of our interactions with others, we live out a superficial, shallow sort of kindness that vanishes in a stiff breeze like a pile of dead leaves. When the former outweighs the latter, we bash others with our metaphorical hammers of criticism until our loved ones aren't much but a pile of dust, in our eyes.

Of equal importance, we shouldn't be afraid to know what other people think of us. We should avoid living our lives in constant search for their approval, as that too is a superficial, sad sort of way to exist. To be terrified of what our friends and loved ones truly think of us is like preferring the misshapen, false images of a fun-house mirror to seeing our own true selves, simply because living in an illusion is more enjoyable than facing reality.

Good luck out there this week. Perhaps you should ask someone close to you what they think of you -what they really think of you- and why you have the relationship that you have with them. Who knows what their answer might be? It might be deeply encouraging. It might be discomforting. It might just be inertia.

Shake, Shake, Shake, Señora!

I enjoy the fact that my professional life is punctuated by new beginnings every few months. Each semester promises a new tableau of faces and perspectives against which my successes and failures will play out. This sort of continual change suits me well. At times, I've had difficulty in maintaining close relationships over long periods of time, but I thrive in new and uncertain social situations. It brings out the adaptive, improvisational, relatable parts of myself that are positively magnetic.

It should go without saying that there's a slight period of adjustment at the beginning of any new semester. I teach a lot of classes, eight this semester, and I have a variety of other self-imposed obligations to balance. That explains why I haven't posted in a while. It takes a few weeks to learn the routine. There's no obligation this semester to which that adjustment period applies to better than my fitness course.

Starting last summer, I've made a concerted effort to work a sort of fitness activity into my weekly schedule. I have a sedentary occupation, which involves a great deal of sitting on my b.w.a. I'm also not the healthiest eater, so it's important that I do something to resist my body's genetic tendency towards being "big and tall."

 You're not going to like the way you look. I guarantee it.

This semester, I signed up for a group cardio fitness course, but it was cancelled due to low enrollment. I don't have a lot of free time to work fitness into my schedule, so I signed up for a different class at the same time of day. That, dear readers, is how I ended up in a Zumba course with a throng of middle-aged women.

At first, I thought "How embarrassing could it possibly be?" There's going to be several other people like me who probably lack a natural sense of rhythm or shame, so I might just blend into a sea of sweaty, awkward, graceless bodies. Like I do with most things, I went to the internet to read and research more about being a man in a Zumba class.

As it turns out, there's a phenomenon in psychology known as the Spotlight Effect. Basically, we're each obsessed with ourselves and how we're perceived by others. We assume that our missteps, such as clumsily twirling while dancing, will be noticed and mocked by those around us. The irony of the Spotlight Effect is that research shows the opposite. Because most people are obsessed with their own perception, they pay less attention to our mistakes because they're too busy thinking of their own. This is compounded when one finds oneself in a room full of people dancing and twirling about like drunken giraffes with equilibrium disorders.

Armed with this knowledge, I went and danced bravely. The workout itself wasn't all that bad. My heart rate was up, I was sweaty, and I felt like I worked a variety of different parts of my body. Everyone, save the instructor, was as bad at the dance steps as I was. So long as I focused on extending my range of motion to get more out of the moves, this seemed like it might be better than I initially thought.

A few nights in, we were going through our usual steps. The instructor added a few steps, including a few pelvic gyrations and floor slaps. There's no such thing as a subtle pelvic gyration, but this step involved putting both hands behind my head and swinging my midsection left, then right, then back to the left, like I'm some kind of afternoon-shift reject at a ladies' club dedicated to reenacting The Full Monty, five days a week with five shows a day. Or even worse, I might have created a passing resemblance to this:

To compound the awkwardness, we were also meant to stop, mid gyration, bend over, and slap the floor with both hands. As I said earlier, I have no sense of shame. If I do, it's easily brushed aside like a tiny crumb on a my sweater, clinging to its last few moments of life as edible food. Like a good little student, I dutifully bent over, hung my butt out for everyone behind me to behold, and slapped the floor with all the style and lightheartedness that I could muster.

We went through this same series of steps a few times, giving me a chance to truly perfect my obscene thrusts, wiggles, and bodily flops. I was at the peak of my "dance like no one's watching" delusional delight. The world around me didn't matter and despite the fact that I'm a 6'0", 240 lb. man with a beard, I felt like I fit right in.

While bent over, slapping the floor demonstratively, I made the mistake of looking back between my legs at whatever was behind me.

Inverted and slightly dizzy, my eyes made contact with the face of the middle-aged woman behind me, who was staring straight at my abyss. She smiled and winked at me, just as the instructor directed us to fling our torsos back up into their full and upright positions. I felt the embarrassment sweep across my face and my eyes widen, unsure of what to make of what had just transpired.

Was she being friendly, confident, and platonic? Am I so ridiculous looking from behind, bent over and red-faced, that the only appropriate response is to flash an equally silly face back at me? Was I *gasp* being ogled?

The questions swirled through my mind as we prepared to complete the same set of moves one more time. I put both hands behind my head, thrusted my pelvis left-right-left, and decided to keep my face forward this time. No awkward second looks, no reestablished eye-contact, no problem.

Hands up, legs out, bend over, slap floor, look forward. There should have been no problem, except that the woman in front of me also chose that exact moment to look back between her legs and make eye contact with me. Once again, I found myself in the crosshairs of group fitness faux-pas.

Did she think I was checking her out? Am I going to have to awkwardly apologize for making eye contact later? Will I have to look at the ground in front of me for the rest of the course, terrified that my male gaze will be horribly misinterpreted? Why do people keep looking at me, through legs or not?

As quickly as the questions came, new moves forced me to remember which foot should go forward, which leg should go out, which arm should go up, or which foot I should be bouncing on next. I had no time to obsess over my mistakes.

The class ended and, thankfully, there were no awkward conversations about eye contact or backsides. Yet, I had to ask myself if this was truly something I wanted to do. I have enough feminist friends that I'm now acutely aware of how much my maleness can affect a situation. I try to stay on this side of being a creepy, stereotypical male, but we're all subject to the vicissitudes of awkward moments and wild misinterpretations.

Awkward moments are sort of my specialty. I have them all the time. My humor is predicated upon them and I'm exceptionally good at causing them with my friends, acquaintances, and loved ones. They're going to happen. It's inevitable. What's important is how I respond to them. I haven't always done this well, mind you.

Because of the nature of my job, with all the seasonal reshuffling of faces and scenarios,  awkward moments pop up often. Each time, I try to remember how I responded the time before. If it worked well, then I go with that response. If it didn't, I'll try something different. Most of the time, I'm left with the realization that there are far more bad responses to choose from than good ones.

It can take time to figure out the best way to navigate the strangeness of human social interaction. I'm 35 and I should probably be a bit further down the road to being cool as a cucumber, but I'm not. I'm a work in progress. I'll always be a work in progress, trying to evolve into a better, less painfully awkward, more effective version of myself.

Perhaps you are as well. The truth of the matter is that no one pays as much attention to our missteps as we do. We're our own worst critics and we believe that the world around us is constantly watching our endless comedy of errors. They're not. They're all too busy starring in their own versions to notice every mistake we make. Enjoy your own performance. Try to make your short time on center stage a memorable performance. If you miss a line or miss a step, jump back in the line and try it differently the next time.

If you feel up to it, click "play" on the video below (sorry, not for mobile users), get up, and wiggle what the good lord gave ya. After all, what's the worst that could happen?

If You Blink, You Might Miss it

If you ever find yourself driving north out of Tulsa on U.S. 75, the last Okie town you'll see before crossing the Kansas state line is a tiny little hamlet called Copan. Copan is one of those much-maligned small prairie towns quickly being bled dry by population shifts and the aging of its citizens. There's nothing there to speak of, except for a few hundred good ol' folks and a dam-created lake. In fact, you can barely see Copan from the highway. As the old idiomatic expression goes, if you blink, you might miss it.

Beautiful downtown Copan, OK.

Personally, tiny little Copan has a few important memories for me. My mother taught there for a few years and my brother lived a few of his formative early years there. Though I don't remember it, my parents brought infant Kyle home from the hospital on a snowy January day to a small trailer park on the outskirts of Copan.

I find myself thinking about Copan today, not only because it's my birthday, but also because it's a time deep in my past, hard to remember and pieced together from incomplete recollections or yellowing photographs. 35 years isn't that long of a stretch of time though, relatively speaking. Many of my friends and colleagues are older than that and a few small decades are practically insignificant in the context of human history. 

With all that mind, it's still true that I don't have any meaningful recollection of living in Copan. There's a few photos reminding me that it happened, but that's the only link I have to that time and place. It's irrevocably in the past, ungraspable and increasingly hard to see clearly. It's like that because that's what time does to all of our memories. What seems unforgettable and overwhelmingly vivid at the time becomes as distant and muted as the snapshots of my infancy have become.

My childhood, once so easy to recall and ponder, grows a bit more dim with each passing January. My teen years, soaked in awkward coming-of-age regret, are less and less important to my current identity. Even my memories of my daughters as toddlers seem somehow less vibrant, which is more than a little depressing. For some, such feelings might bring with them a sense of dread. After all, we're nothing but a slowly degrading body containing a set of lessons and experiences. If those experiences fade, aren't we losing parts of ourselves?

Perhaps. We might also lose the vibrancy of the past because there are fresh memories forming that are far more relevant to who we are now. Humans are always caught between cycles of decomposition and regeneration. Our bodies do it at the cellular level. It's only fitting that our minds dwell in the same narrow boundary zone.

Thinking about it doesn't make me sad, though. I feel lucky, actually. Lucky to have lived and experienced so much. I'm grateful that I remember the squeak of my bare skin against the long, oddly angled playground slide at the now-closed Will Rogers Elementary. I'm grateful that I vividly remember the unconstrained swell of pride I felt at winning the spelling bee in 5th grade. I remember the terrifying feeling of fist fighting one of my close friends in 9th grade over a girl because he told her to "drop the zero and get with the hero." 

I remember how badly my hands shook for hours and days after very nearly rolling my truck over a concrete guard rail on the I-40 crosstown bridge in 1998. Just one more half roll and I'd have fallen over a hundred feet to my inevitable death. I am grateful to remember the sinking feeling, ten years later, watching my best friend drive his truck away from a Marie Callender's in Norman, knowing that I might not ever see him again.

There are so many other more important moments that are seared onto my mind and so many other less relevant memories fading away into nothing. I'm grateful for every one of them, whether it stings to recall them or not. The memories I'm allowed to hold onto constitute an ever-evolving, ever-transforming identity and it's the only one I've got.

Each one that passes makes room for a new one to take it's place. One day, hopefully far in the future, there won't be any new memories being made. My mind will stop and so will my body. Everyone that knows me, has ever spoken to me, hugged me, or kissed me will also stop being. Those memories made will all eventually fade into nothing. This is natural and beautiful and there is never a reason to fear our collective, common fate.

This year, my birthday wish is to enjoy the memories I can make and not fear losing some of them to inevitability. I want to savor them while I can and allow them to come and go naturally. I want to enjoy the tiny parade of small, miraculous memories as they pass by and begin to yellow with age, however imperceptibly. I want to keep my eyes open as often as I can and allow them to take in as much light as they possibly can so that I miss very little that goes by.

Being grateful to be alive another year is a wonderful feeling and it passes far too quickly. It's just like that small town off U.S. 75. If you blink, you might miss it. Have a great week out there and be good to each other.

Aim Low, Shoot High

I used to love the first day of school after Christmas break. The cool, crisp winter days coupled with residual happiness from the holidays to inflate my optimism about the new year. I'd meticulously set out an outfit of new clothes and lie in bed, resisting sleep with all the excited anticipation of being dealt a new hand of good cards after having lost big with the previous one.

This time things would be different. This year, I'd transcend my inborn awkwardness with a previously untapped sense of savoir-faire. I'd walk through the hallways with new-found swagger, overcoming my oversized nose, ears, and mouth with unassailable cool. This year, I'd come out on top. Eventually I'd fall asleep, drifting away on a sea of baseless optimism and elevated expectation, only to soon run aground on the grim shores of the uncaring, unfeeling reality of the universe.

Today marks the beginning of my fourteenth semester as a college instructor. In a few days, I'll also turn 35. I'm fast approaching the midpoint of average life expectancy for an American male and I'm acutely aware of the fact that my most elastic and energetic days are probably behind me. Consequently, I've long since abandoned that heedless hopefulness that lulled me to the sleep of bright, expectant dreamers.

First days after Christmas break are now exercises in anxiety. I'll meet approximately160 new faces whose names I need to memorize for my classroom ethos. I'll go through the next round of conversations in which I explain how little I accomplished over the break and how delightful it was to do nothing at all. Because of my body's psychosomatic peculiarity, I'll perspire during the first few class sessions like I'm Miss Teen South Carolina on an episode of Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?

The new beginnings are now anxious affairs because I spend too much time thinking about how I can do better, be more organized, and achieve more than I did during the last go-round. Like most people, I wrap up this anxiety in a narrative of relentless self-improvement. The real truth has nothing to do with Jay Gatsby-eqsue plans for personal improvement. In all honesty, it's the accumulating weight of past disappointments that pushes me to strain harder against failure.

The problem isn't that I'm so deeply flawed that I can't meet the relatively unimpressive expectations I might set for myself. We're all guilty of feeling that way about ourselves from time to time. There's something to be said for having the appropriate discipline, but that rhetoric is as guilty of discouraging as many people as it motivates. The real problem lies in the foolishness of thinking that I can attain a perfect outcome or that I can even get close to perfection. I can't. You can't. None of us can. 

The horrifying reality is that in either possible outcome, you're still going to asphyxiate and die. 

Take that, adorable little aphorism.

Year after year, the optimism of early January failed to translate into reality. Year after year, the disappointments stung a little more. I'd resolve to lose weight and fail to do so because of a lack of discipline or an abundance of delicious warm donuts. I'd make a resolution to be more organized and marvel at a new system of categorizing daily activities, only to forget to transcribe what was in my head onto the planner page. The inevitable let down consequently felt even more disappointing because I was likely on the third, fourth, or fifteenth attempt at achieving perfection.

This year, I want to stop cloud jumping. I want to set realistic, attainable goals that don't require anything approximating perfection. I don't want to inherit a new batch of stress from failing to succeed in running down perfection. I don't want to constantly beat myself up because I didn't put forth my best effort on a particular day.

I don't want to be afraid that I'm falling short of an ideal I could never have attained. I'm not even going to trick myself by aiming just below perfection and hoping that I'm satisfied with that result. Knowing you came close and fell short always feels worse than anyone admits.

I want to accumulate an entire bookshelf full of participation awards and be thrilled to have them. I don't want to make a goal to be a consummate professional at all times. I'm doomed to fall short of that on a weekly basis. Instead, I aim to dress a bit nicer, grade a bit more efficiently, and be more articulate than clever in my speech. I don't want to be the idealized wise and inspiring father. I'm instead aspiring to raise my voice less often and ignore a few more eye-rolls. I'm going slowly come to grips with the fact that my daughters are not only no longer my little girls, but that they also no longer want to be little girls at all.

You might say that I'm surrendering to mediocrity. You might think to yourself that I'm moving goalposts so that I can feel better about my feeble sense of personal discipline. You might be right.

I'm going to aim low and shoot high. I'm not going to to obsess about how I've fallen short of my goals. I'm going to set reasonable, attainable goals, maintain a reasonable level of effort, and enjoy knowing that everything above and beyond meeting my goal is a extra reward. I'm going to strive less and savor more. This year, I'm not going to wallow in the disappointment of falling short. I'm going to revel in the satisfaction of no longer fearing perfection.