Beauty Is

Your light's reflected now, reflected from afar
We were but stones, your light made us stars

Pearl Jam

It has been a month and I still have Pat Tillman on my mind. After reading and writing about the Jon Kraukaur book about his life, I have been unable to rid myself of the weight of his life. I recently read, Boots on the Ground By Dusk, another book about Pat written this time by his mother. This post, however, is not meant to be a review of the book, although it was beautiful and intimately written. This post is not even meant to be a deeper look at Pat’s life, although I will touch on it to springboard my thoughts.

I want to write about the impact learning about Pat Tillman’s life has had my life. Or better put, how I hope it will affect my life. There is a chapter in the book, where Mary Tillman transcribes the various speeches given at Pat’s memorial service. As I was reading, with tears in my eyes, I began to think about what kinds of things my friends and family would say about me at my service.

Reading about Tillman’s life has made me realize that life is too short to spend being apathetic and bored. The last three years have been rough on me. I can already see people shaking their heads, my wife included. Why would I complain about spending the last three years watching my two amazing daughters grow each day? I am not saying it has been all bad, but living here in Qatar has been one of the most difficult things I have ever done. It may be hyperbole to say that a part of me has died after living here, but it is not an exaggeration to say that I have had to spend much of my days on auto-pilot in order to stay sane. I have been a productive teacher, a loving father, a good friend, and I hope a reliable husband, but the part of my spirit that burns bright and fuels my creative spirit and those around me, the Pat Tillman in me, has been bidding his time. I am not sure if the moping, tired, withdrawn person who enters the rooms here in Doha is the same person that I could be. I am not sure that I am this guy anymore:

The single best thing about Pat’s life is that he made you feel alive…He made you challenge things, he made you appreciate everything every day, he made you appreciate your family and friends and respect them, he made you laugh, he made you think and made you want to be a better person.

Maybe, I am being to hard on myself or on Doha. Maybe this slowing down is all part of growing up. But I hope that after reading Tillman’s story and moving away from the desert, both literately and figuratively, I can focus more of my energy on spreading the light that I know still burns inside me. I have written enough posts about various things I want to do to become more like the person I want to be, so I will spare you reader a fresh manifesto. I simply want to say that I feel like the flame that has been flickering inside me for the last three years has had a fresh breath of air. Thanks to Pat Tillman, I hope that I can begin to appreciate the words spoken by Jake Plummer at Tillman’s memorial service:

To me beauty is living life to a higher standard, stronger morals and ethics and believing in them, whether people tell you are right or wrong. Beauty is not wasting a day. Beauty is noticing life’s little intricacies and taking time out of your busy day to really enjoy those little intricacies. Beauty is being real, being genuine, being pure with no façade-what you see is what you get. Beauty is expanding your mind, always seeking knowledge, nit being content, always going after something and challenging yourself.

Poltical Wilderness

My friend Ari, has his own blog, but for whatever reason he has yet to catch the blogging bug. He hasn't written a post in months and his blog is gathering dust. He does however have a series of people he corresponds with through email, and he occasionally forwards me his exchanges.

They are often filled with nuggets of wisdom and insight. Here is a recent one that I felt like sharing.

I've been in the wilderness politically (to sort of riff off your forest/trees metaphor), and my journey away from the political fray taught me a lot. or maybe just one thing, but it is a huge thing: political discourse (rhetoric) and critical thinking are diametrically opposed to one another....to wit: if we are asked what is the hallmark of critical thought...most of us would say something about a type of thinking that can see multiple dimensions on a single theme, even if those dimensions are disparate, conflicted, contradictory. in short, an advanced pro-con list. ...in politics, however, law makers and media hacks (glenn beck, rush limbaugh, dobson, et al--insert the left wingers you hate here) speak in absolutes. dick armey is a perfect example. and so is rand paul. there is NEVER any discussion about...say, how the free market needs to allow individuals to buy and sell products, and agree on a price, without outside intrusion...AS WELL AS there needs to be some regulations placed on the so-called free market in order to ensure the values of america--social welfare, personal liberties, maximization of freedoms are protected. in short, politicians and hack(neyed) pundits ALWAYS speak in absolutes and NEVER in on-the-one-hand-this-but-on-the-other-hand-that.

...so what? you ask. A LOT. because politics (as it exists in this country) forces us to be partisans...to ONLY see our side of the issue, and to denigrate the other side, totally refusing to see the veracity of the other side(s). and thats just not how the human brain works, or at least, works best.

...our particular gift as primates is the ability to hold competing ideas in our minds at the same time....politics doesnt allow for this...again, by politics, i am talking about political discourse...which drives/fractures our country into blue states and red states...into people who believe their issue/party is always right and the other side is always wrong.

...heres the thing: take the iraq war. the way our political leaders have set up the system of debate...its you are either for it or against. recall bush saying: "with us or against us." genius. ...because that negates any philosophical debate on the issue, and instead turns it into an ideological foodfight where its waring camps who scream at each other in absolutes. but a fair-minded person, as i like to think of myself, would think the following about the iraq invasion: "i am against war, but i do believe in protecting myself and country. it seems we have intelligence that saddam has WMDs...so i'd be in support of getting rid of those, but i also believe in the sovereignty of nations, so i dont think we can get rid of their govt, and even if i think i might support it, at what cost--both financial and human? ...i do think the president should be given the benefit of the doubt, but i also think citizens are the last defense against tyranny. america has a right to defend itself against a clear and present threat, but perhaps we can use NATO or the U.N. to ensure peace through strength."
...or something like that. instead, dan, i get called anti-military, or anti-american.

please please PLEASE dont respond to my minor points or examples. my main thesis is politics is a big, epic fail in this country because it traffics in absolutes and disallows the idea that a person can, say, believe in environmental protection AND economic growth.
no. one is either a tree hugging commie...or a callous cost-benefit pig who puts profits before people.

coda: the more our nation continues this foodfight of ideological absolutes, the more we slouch toward idiocracy.

imagine if we lived our life the way we live our politics. for me it would look something like this: the lakers are ALWAYS good and any other team is ALWAYS bad. cycling is ALWAYS good and any other for transportation is ALWAYS bad. fruits, veggies, diary is ALWAYS better than eating animals. non-fiction is ALWAYS better than fiction. woody allen ALWAYS makes good movies (hardly).

you get the idea. the only way to make sense of the world, the issues, and who you are in this world is to step outside of the maelstrom of political warfare...and rediscover how your brain really likes to think--namely a person who can see the benefits of something but still, in the final analysis, choose to vote against--with your vote, dollar, etc.

Value

I recently received this email from a really good friend. One I have known for twenty years.

random question: something ive been journaling on lately is How do i derive my sense of of personal worth? i'm having a hard time answering this. i would have hit this answer out of the park at 25, but now i realize those answers would have been blustery and thin and platitudinous--and proffered in the hopes of masking the frightening idea that, at bottom, i really didnt know. How do you derive personal worth?

I have been thinking about this question for a few days and have also had a difficult time answering it, much less knowing where to start and what direction to take, so I will simply jump in and hope that when we reach the end there will be at least a nugget of wisdom or meaning.

The first thing I felt when faced with the question of my personal worth, was an overpowering sense of worthlessness and insignificance. Rather than face my inconsequentiality with dread, I gained a subtle sense of freedom from knowing that no matter how I feel, I don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. But if I had to pin my worth down more accurately it would look something like this:

I see my personal worth as a set of ever changing self-righteous platitudes I try to maintain. Sometimes I succeed, but more often a fail. I do my best to stay true to these shifting values and self-imposed expectations. However, I am one of the biggest hypocrites I know. I say love mankind, yet I drive around in this desert seething with an uncontrollable rage. I speak about protecting the earth and animals, yet I produce enough garbage to build my own landfill mountain, and I ignore the cat I have had for seven years.

What I am trying to say is that I try to lead an ethical life, but often find myself mired in guilt and shame, because I fall short. I guess my self worth is derived in the times when the person I am most closely resembles the person I want to be. This is difficult since both versions are constantly in flux. So in no particular order the following are the ways I try to find value in my self, my family and the lives that happen to fall into my orbit:

I want to be the best father I can be. This is my most important job. I want to love, guide, inspire, and ignite a fire in the hearts and minds of my girls. I want to expose them to everything the world has to offer. I want to make them to feel free to take risks and fail.
Truth be told, I want to be the best father I can be to everyone I meet. You can call me by different names: teacher, husband, friend, son, network node, or stranger, but all I want to do is connect and inspire people to take their lives less seriously and enjoy the simple things: a bean plant anchored in a pot of soil, a great song, a camera angle in a film, a passage from a book.

Not sure if this answered your question, but it is as close as I can get at this time. I derive my personal worth by how I see myself in the people around me and how I let them enter me. Guess it could look something like this:

Goodbye Facebook

I’ve been putting a lot of thought into quitting my Facebook account in the last few days. Which is strange that I feel the need to justify, even to myself, why I am choosing to no longer use a tool. At the end of the day that is all Facebook is- a tool that I no longer find useful, so why the extended manifesto on why I am done? I should just delete the damn thing and move on. However, like many others on the web, I’ve mentally been writing this post for days to explain to my friends and anyone else willing to listen, why I have chosen to no longer harangue them with photos of my kids and a litany of other cyber-activist news article that I happen to be reading when I am bored and alone at my house. Maybe I am just being trendy. Or maybe the latest shenanigans at Facebook have finally broken this camels back, whatever the reason, unfortunately, I don’t really have a clear profound existential reason for getting out. I have some loose strands, zygote ideas and you can find them below:

1. The main reason, or at least the first that comes to mind is that it has grown stale. No offense to the 256 friends I interact with everyday. Really I am not dealing with 256 people, but a small group pf very active users. The conversations have dried up to only about five or six people and they are usually not that compelling. At first I too loved getting photos of friends from around the globe and knowing what everyone was doing on their vacations and their everyday lives, but that personal aspect of Facebook seems to have been replaced by updates on which witty groups my friends have joined.

2. All this nonsense about privacy. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in an open web. My Twitter bio reads: I want to share as much as I can with as many people as I can as often as I can. And I still believe that. I am spread across the web: Videos, Photos, Blogs, Blogs, Music, Books, web links, you name it. I believe in sharing my thoughts, feelings, and ideas, but I am not too pleased with how Facebook is claiming my life as its personal marketing tool. I will put my life out there and license it Creative Commons for others to see, use, share, and learn from, but I will not have my life turned into some ever changing nefarious web of privacy terms of service. Something about the new Facebook is untrustworthy and makes me uncomfortable. The fact that I can’t put my finger on it makes me want to opt out. I've read enough to know I am not happy. Read this and this.

3. I like to quit things that become burdensome and habitual. After surviving the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, I vowed to write 100 haikus. One a day for 100 days. I ended up writing 475 and posted each one on a Dreamweaver created website. Once day, I felt heavy and obligated to continue. The very practice I had started to help me carve out a time of my day to breath and reconnect with myself and the world had become a noose. I deleted every single poem without leaving a trace. Like a sand mandala I simply freed myself from the attachment. Five years ago, after a lifetime of building my identity around my relationship to alcohol, I quit drinking cold turkey and have never looked back. There is a very liberating feeling in breaking your habits. Facebook has become a habit, an unsatisfying one at that. I have grown too attached to the comfort of "being in touch" that I think perhaps I need to disconnect to learn more about myself, my friends, and my relationships.

I do not want my experiences on the web to become habitual. I want each interaction on the web to be authentic, dynamic, new and exciting. I want to create content and wait for someone to find it and connect with me. If that takes months, years, a lifetime that is fine with me. I am here in my corner of the web. I don’t not want my web experience to only be defined by Facebook and by the people who are there. I hope that my Facebook friends will venture out of the safe confines of Facebook and find me elsewhere. One of the main reasons I loved Facebook was that it allowed me to connect with people that were not very active on the web. But now, I hope that as a whole, users are more comfortable with web tools so that they can begin to move beyond Facebook as well. I would much rather have a conversation on a blog comment than a Facebook like button.

So friends, this is not the end of the line. If you find what I do, say, and think interesting then come join me out here on the true worldwide web, do not allow Facebook to determine where you view photographs or read news stories. Do not allow Facebook to control your content or your web experience.

I am saying good bye. Just like that! If you were a friend on Facebook whether an old friend, a random high school acquaintance I have recently gotten back in touch with, or a neighbor and you enjoyed my Facebook presence, I encourage you to follow my blogs. Now that I am not spending time reading my Facebook threads, I may actually be creating some worthwhile content. Goodbye Facebook, hello World Wide Web.

Leave me a comment. Don't be shy. No need to be anonymous. I am not asking you to quit Facebook, just asking that you come out here with me from time to time and share your thoughts.