Life and people are incredibly interesting and sometimes I feel I’d just like to sit back and watch. Such inactivity is, of course, a luxury in a world as frantic as ours, meaning that the closest I come to studying people is watching them at the supermarket. This particular indulgence is both a guilty pleasure and instructive because it allows me to imagine who these people are and what they may think about while they have no idea what I am up to (or so I think).
Leaning heavily on my shopping cart the other day (my knee is giving me the last little drop of trouble until surgery next week)I found myself confronted by a whole spectrum of people. There was one gentleman wearing a dark suit who I took to be some kind of accountant. Then he turned around to reveal he was wearing a wide tie with a rather large star of David printed on it. It was Saturday and I imagined he was probably a rabbi come from services. But then I was confused. If I remember correctly, no one is supposed to be lifting things on the Sabbath and here he was definitely lifting groceries and paying the cashier. Must be from a Reform congregation, I decided.
Then there was the relatively young woman whose rather large buttocks were straining her jeans. I hoped I wasn’t behind her when the fabric gave out. I could imagine her promising herself that one day she’d work on retaining her girlish figure until she stopped at the in-store Starbucks and ordered a venti frappaccino with extra whipped cream. Wow. Even I was impressed. I usually order a grande decaf Americano and for a moment I was tempted to order a non-fat decaf latte as a splurge. Watching the action at Starbucks is always informative. I had absolutely no idea there were so many ways to order a coffee experience or pay $5 for it.
I hopped my way over to the produce department where the aisles were ridiculously narrow and found myself trapped behind a bearded man with well groomed hair, wearing Bermuda shorts and a button-down shirt. He had a cabbage in each hand and was thoughtfully hefting them. Since the cabbage was sold by weight rather than by the piece, I couldn’t figure out why size was such an issue. When I smiled and asked him, he looked at me as if I were insane, put both of them back, and walked away. I guess I ruined his communion with the cabbage.
The deli counter is another study in human behavior. My local store doesn’t have paper numbers, so it’s on the honor system as to who gets there in what order. The rules of precedence are very strict. One man apparently tried to jump the line and got a very sharp correction from the woman who thought she was there first. I just stood back and waited, but both the man and the woman glanced at me with suspicion as if they thought I was going to stake my claim. I could see that they were prepared to unite to defeat me should I be so bold. At the deli counter, there is possible warfare in the counter clerk’s bored question of “Who’s Next?”
My King Soopers has self-checkout stands which are a study in traffic control. The rush is to get to one of the six check-outs but having once laid claim, it is completely permissible to dawdle. Suicidal drivers are not only the highways. I was aced by a young couple with a cart loaded with more than the fifteen item limit. Once they had claimed the check-out, they didn’t look my way once. I hobbled back to the line and could see that the cart that might have been next was quite disappointed to see me return. There’s something special about being the next one in line. I know that because I feel that way in the bank. After a long wait—it’s almost an adrenaline rush to be next in line, trying to guess which counter will open. It’s a let down when someone comes back and resumes their place ahead of you.
Ah human beings. We’re all territorial and we’re all afraid that our rights will not be respected. It’s really a wonder that we get along as well as we do.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Everybody's Fantasy
If you’re one of the very few people who don’t know about Susan Boyle, the 47-year-old who dared to enter herself onto the British talent show (39 million hits over a couple of days on U-Tube—a record), follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY
She came out on stage to hoots and derisive wolf-whistles since she is a bit plain and a bit dumpy and a bit like what you’d expect a self-proclaimed non-married, never-been-kissed, lady from a small town in West Lothian to look like. Even the judges rolled their eyes or looked very tentative about her. She just didn’t LOOK like someone who would be worth hearing. People sat back in their seats ready to boo her off the stage,
Then she opened her mouth and sang “I had a Dream,” from Les Miserables. From the first few notes, the audience jumped and started roaring approval, and the judge’s eyebrows shot up. She sounded like Elaine Paige, her idol, and her rendition clearly belonged right up there on the stages of the West End and Broadway. An audience that was opposed to her at the start, based only her appearance, became putty in her hands as she reached the climactic high notes of the emotional song. What a night for her. I, like many others, have been watching and rewatching the clip, still feeling the electric moment when she entered into the song and completely forgot all the naysayers around her.
I’m sure we’re going to learn a lot more about her in the weeks ahead. This is a major talent that has captured the world’s imagination. I can almost predict we’ll learn she never promoted herself because she was taking care of family. Women so often do this. Countering that is why I walked the picket line for women’s rights in my youth. We’ve been deprived of her voice for far too long and I wonder how many others are waiting to be discovered even though I doubt that few will have the impact she has had.
She has captured the heart of everyone who has ever been an underdog. How many of us have wished for that one defining moment when we have the chance to show who we are and what we can do? And not only show it but have it recognized as something not just adequate but brilliant. How many of us, just because we are older, have been brushed aside as she was initially? How pitifully few of us get the chance to completely turn around the mad dash for youth and make the case that we older people still have our songs and some of them are beautiful and some of them cannot be sung by those who haven’t lived them. Just because we look older does not mean that we all are.
I wish her well in the next part of the competition but it doesn’t matter whether she wins or not. Her beautiful voice speaks not only for her but for all the rest of us. For those who worry that she is late in starting a career, I’d say she has another twenty years at least. And that’s a lot of pleasure.
She came out on stage to hoots and derisive wolf-whistles since she is a bit plain and a bit dumpy and a bit like what you’d expect a self-proclaimed non-married, never-been-kissed, lady from a small town in West Lothian to look like. Even the judges rolled their eyes or looked very tentative about her. She just didn’t LOOK like someone who would be worth hearing. People sat back in their seats ready to boo her off the stage,
Then she opened her mouth and sang “I had a Dream,” from Les Miserables. From the first few notes, the audience jumped and started roaring approval, and the judge’s eyebrows shot up. She sounded like Elaine Paige, her idol, and her rendition clearly belonged right up there on the stages of the West End and Broadway. An audience that was opposed to her at the start, based only her appearance, became putty in her hands as she reached the climactic high notes of the emotional song. What a night for her. I, like many others, have been watching and rewatching the clip, still feeling the electric moment when she entered into the song and completely forgot all the naysayers around her.
I’m sure we’re going to learn a lot more about her in the weeks ahead. This is a major talent that has captured the world’s imagination. I can almost predict we’ll learn she never promoted herself because she was taking care of family. Women so often do this. Countering that is why I walked the picket line for women’s rights in my youth. We’ve been deprived of her voice for far too long and I wonder how many others are waiting to be discovered even though I doubt that few will have the impact she has had.
She has captured the heart of everyone who has ever been an underdog. How many of us have wished for that one defining moment when we have the chance to show who we are and what we can do? And not only show it but have it recognized as something not just adequate but brilliant. How many of us, just because we are older, have been brushed aside as she was initially? How pitifully few of us get the chance to completely turn around the mad dash for youth and make the case that we older people still have our songs and some of them are beautiful and some of them cannot be sung by those who haven’t lived them. Just because we look older does not mean that we all are.
I wish her well in the next part of the competition but it doesn’t matter whether she wins or not. Her beautiful voice speaks not only for her but for all the rest of us. For those who worry that she is late in starting a career, I’d say she has another twenty years at least. And that’s a lot of pleasure.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Songs Sung to Us in Childhood
It’s amazing how so many times the things we think we know about ourselves are things we were told as children. They can be completely wrong, yet they will play in our minds like Windows Platform in the background while we write our life in Microsoft Word. The platform is pervasive. Even though we may think we’ve outgrown it, it lurks there as a silent censor. We unconsciously measure things against it, particularly if the things we learn contradict things that flatter us. Finding a discrepancy from the familiar songs of childhood is a time when we may start to doubt ourselves or even, among the people who don’t like change, entrench our opinions in defiance of the evidence. It’s never an easy time.
There’s a lot of this silent censorship going around these days. For example, there are many in this country who don’t like the change that’s happening to America’s place in the world. They are angry because America is no longer accepted as the unquestioned paragon of virtue and upright values that she likes to think herself. Certainly, America has been generous and altruistic, and deserves appreciation for the amazing competence and energy with which she accepted the people of the world and built a new nation with them. But now, after two hundred years, the self-congratulation has been wearing thin in the face of a world that says, “Have you looked in the mirror lately?” What they might tell America is that independence and self-reliance appear to have shaded into greed and self-regard, competition and can-do into ruthlessness, and national pride into judgement and a demand for conformity.
Admittedly, it’s probably easier for someone from outside the country to see all this. I was raised in post-war Britain and watched as that country was forced to accept itself as a post-imperial power. It was burdened with debt from WWII, much of it in loans to America (later repaid). Former colonies had slipped away, gaining the independence promised for their cooperation in the ruinous war. Many things were still rationed long after the war, and any British traveling abroad were severely restricted as to how much money they could take out of the country. When we went to France, my mother and I either rode bicycles or hitchhiked. Still, I watched my mother and her friends cling rather pathetically to the notion of still being a powerful nation. In fact, Britain was making the transition from being powerful and feared into being respected. But Mum couldn’t see that something positive was happening.
Transition isn’t easy. Being respected, for example, has different requirements from being feared. The latter is easy if the nation is willing to pour all its national treasure into maintaining a massive army and developing unpleasant weapons that kill people in ugly ways. Being respected, on the other hand, requires self-awareness, honesty, tact, and, perhaps even more important, a degree of humility. It’s downright hard work. Britain had her re-vision forced upon her through the megalomania of a European madman, who was very probably the product of his own childhood. America’s re-vision seems to be coming from the emergence of a developing world with its own agendas and also from the ultimate fatigue of her own founding principles. Strident individualism may not be the best way to govern—or even possible—in a country of 300 million.
John Stuart Mill defined liberty by saying that it existed except where the government had a legitimate reason to curb it as in causing other people harm. The problem here is the word, harm. Over time, the cultural and political meaning of language can change. Second-hand smoke is now considered harm and regulated accordingly. I think most of us might agree that the result of unregulated derivative trading is harm, given what has happened to the US economy—yet, there are still many who would not agree.
I’d love to see a national debate over this concept of harm and the role of government. I think it would be a major step out of national childhood and into statesmanship. But I’m not going to hold my breath. It’s far too easy to send teabags rather than engage in profound and fundamental thinking.
There’s a lot of this silent censorship going around these days. For example, there are many in this country who don’t like the change that’s happening to America’s place in the world. They are angry because America is no longer accepted as the unquestioned paragon of virtue and upright values that she likes to think herself. Certainly, America has been generous and altruistic, and deserves appreciation for the amazing competence and energy with which she accepted the people of the world and built a new nation with them. But now, after two hundred years, the self-congratulation has been wearing thin in the face of a world that says, “Have you looked in the mirror lately?” What they might tell America is that independence and self-reliance appear to have shaded into greed and self-regard, competition and can-do into ruthlessness, and national pride into judgement and a demand for conformity.
Admittedly, it’s probably easier for someone from outside the country to see all this. I was raised in post-war Britain and watched as that country was forced to accept itself as a post-imperial power. It was burdened with debt from WWII, much of it in loans to America (later repaid). Former colonies had slipped away, gaining the independence promised for their cooperation in the ruinous war. Many things were still rationed long after the war, and any British traveling abroad were severely restricted as to how much money they could take out of the country. When we went to France, my mother and I either rode bicycles or hitchhiked. Still, I watched my mother and her friends cling rather pathetically to the notion of still being a powerful nation. In fact, Britain was making the transition from being powerful and feared into being respected. But Mum couldn’t see that something positive was happening.
Transition isn’t easy. Being respected, for example, has different requirements from being feared. The latter is easy if the nation is willing to pour all its national treasure into maintaining a massive army and developing unpleasant weapons that kill people in ugly ways. Being respected, on the other hand, requires self-awareness, honesty, tact, and, perhaps even more important, a degree of humility. It’s downright hard work. Britain had her re-vision forced upon her through the megalomania of a European madman, who was very probably the product of his own childhood. America’s re-vision seems to be coming from the emergence of a developing world with its own agendas and also from the ultimate fatigue of her own founding principles. Strident individualism may not be the best way to govern—or even possible—in a country of 300 million.
John Stuart Mill defined liberty by saying that it existed except where the government had a legitimate reason to curb it as in causing other people harm. The problem here is the word, harm. Over time, the cultural and political meaning of language can change. Second-hand smoke is now considered harm and regulated accordingly. I think most of us might agree that the result of unregulated derivative trading is harm, given what has happened to the US economy—yet, there are still many who would not agree.
I’d love to see a national debate over this concept of harm and the role of government. I think it would be a major step out of national childhood and into statesmanship. But I’m not going to hold my breath. It’s far too easy to send teabags rather than engage in profound and fundamental thinking.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)