Just because of who I am, I tend to confront problems by seeing what has to be done, putting my head down, and just getting on with it. It's probably the residual British in me--just get on with it and don't make a fuss, as my mum used to say.
I used to believe this grim sense of determination was how I made my way through a doctoral program while teaching full time and keeping up my end of family life. I just kept plodding until I was there. The race, in this case, nopt going to the swift, who may have won the initial prizes, but to the steady and persistent.
From the vantage point now of an approaching birthday, however, things seem more complex and in some ways more poignant. I find myself asking sbout human motivation and how the impact of a single life is to measured.
When I was in the president's office at the University of Hawaii, one of the regents told me to advise my workaholic boss to take more care of himself. "Institutions have no memory and no gratitude," he told me. Many people would agree with him, and it's almsot a truism to repeat the observation that no one on their deathbed wishes they had spent more time at work. Yet I'm not at all sure that my boss would or could have agreed with him.
The reasons why people behave as they do are myriad and complex, which makes me wonder whether the behavioral research really has the universal application with which it is presented to us. I'm not sure my boss would have been happy kicking back at that time of his life. He was in a drive to succeed mode, building a university legacy. He needed to accomplish great things (which he did) and he had the family and staff around him to support him. Whether the university remembered what he did was immaterial. He had an intrinsic drive to achieve that he measured by his own standards. In other words, he was in control empowered by what he needed to do at that time in his life.
It seems to me that we have constantly shifting needs and reward structures throughout our lives. Those who later regret their efforts at work might have confused their need for respect with the trappings of their career. As King Lear was to find out, "a dog's obeyed in office." Once they left the job, there was no basis for their public authority. But that doesn't mean what they did in their career was unimportant; it just means that the validation of their career did not last for a lifetime and they are stuck in a rut.
It reminds me of the old public relations mantra that when faced with a media blowup (frequent in a university president's office), a good response was to "bump it up a level." For example, when faced with a protest march on the president's residence, talk to the media about freedom of speech. Politicians do this all the time, except they also manage to drop in something about this being a great country.
Bumping it up is probably a good idea when it comes to human motivation. The most profitable question is not necessarily "Am I identifying too much with my work?" but "How is the work I do at this moment and the way I do it an important part of my progress as a human being?" Not "How important am I?" but "How important is this experience in my life?"
For some reason, I must have needed to plod my way to that advanced degree, possibly involving some element of competition. It must have fulfilled an intrinsic need because once I had earned the doctorate, only my assistant ever used doctor in front of my name. Whatever part of me was stirred by earning the degree apparently had been satisfied by completing it.
As I read him, John Milton was dealing with the need for self-examination and self-validation when he talked about the need to test our "virtues": "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat."
Perhaps that's what we are all here for: to place ourselves out there in the race for the immoratal garland, whatever that may be for us.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Moving
I remember reading somewhere that a fire is as good as a three moves. At the time I thought that draconian—after all, who could possibly want to lose all one’s possessions, not to mention a house, in a set of indiscriminate flames? After weeks of packing in preparation for putting the house on the market, I have a better appreciation of the sentiment.
Packing is extreme weightlifting for the soul. It’s not just the physical part of finding, packing, and storing boxes that’s the challenge, but the intellectual and emotional workout of deciding just how much of the past is indispensable, how much of the present is worth keeping, and how much the future might have need of anything from the other two.
Of the three, parting with the past is the most fraught because of the emotional baggage that attaches to every little souvenir or memento, particularly if it belonged to departed family members. Getting rid of Mum’s thimble and salt and pepper shaker collection, for example, became akin to rejecting her. She wouldn’t have had any trouble saying 'Oh for heavens sakes get rid of it' if something was worn out, but I struggled with letting go of anything. Once or twice I dumped something and then went and took it back from the trash.
I guess it’s just me. When Mum’s things were delivered to me after her death, I found she’d thrown out my brother’s Hornby train set, something I was never allowed to play with and would have liked to have. Apparently, she didn't have any trouble parting with it where I would have agonized. I was upset because getting rid of his things felt as if she’d shut me out of his brief life yet again. I used my perturbed feelings to finally put the thimbles and salt and pepper sets out for Goodwill, so I guess downsizing can also be a way of settling old scores. I still have plenty of her things, you understand, but my final criteria became keeping the things with happy, mutual memories. It was hard, but I did manage to get beyond keeping things just because they were hers.
Almost as challenging is parting with the present because the memorabilia is connected to lives as they have been lived: family, education, hobbies, marriage, children, career, friendships and everything else. It devolves into “What won’t be missed?” Well—as it turns out--it depends. For us it became three questions: “Is it replaceable? Does it have value?” but most important “Are we willing to pack this and pay for it to be shipped across the country?”
Under this rubric, every object had to prove its own worthiness, even art projects left over from the children’s school years. Of course, certain things had defenders and many times Sid said “It doesn’t eat much,” meaning that it’s something small enough, easy enough to transport, and—dammit he wants it—to slide into some packing box somewhere. In my experience, this part of moving generated the most discussions. We had an ongoing one over a TV table with sixties pointed legs that Sid had had for twenty-five years; our compromise was that it went as long as he was prepared to make the case he would use it in his workshop. Parting with a shabby kitchen storage unit became easier when it was presented as either this or that (that being a favorite kitchen table with a cutting board top).
Which brings me to packing for the future. This part requires clairvoyance. “What kind of life are we going to lead where we are going?” This begs the further questions of who are we? and what are we becoming? The danger here is to assume that moving automatically means we change as people. Probably not. For a time the skiing equipment was in danger, but cooler heads prevailed since we liked the idea of having it regardless of whether we used it as much as we have in Colorado. On the other hand, given my years, I think I can predict safely that I will not be using my ice skates again—white, size 10 ladies, hardly used, anyone need them?) Sid has finally parted with his technical climbing gear in recognition that he and I will probably lowland hike rather than try charging up fourteeners. Similarly, I got rid of a lot of baking pans—cake decorating is not in my future—and a bunch of cookbooks—who am I kidding about how much I plan to entertain?
Yep, moving is fraught. But the difference between it and a fire is vital. I get to choose what we keep. A fire makes the decision without any knowledge of me or what I value. So I’ll take the packing boxes any day although they’ll have to carry me out of wherever we move to—I’m not doing this again anytime soon.
Packing is extreme weightlifting for the soul. It’s not just the physical part of finding, packing, and storing boxes that’s the challenge, but the intellectual and emotional workout of deciding just how much of the past is indispensable, how much of the present is worth keeping, and how much the future might have need of anything from the other two.
Of the three, parting with the past is the most fraught because of the emotional baggage that attaches to every little souvenir or memento, particularly if it belonged to departed family members. Getting rid of Mum’s thimble and salt and pepper shaker collection, for example, became akin to rejecting her. She wouldn’t have had any trouble saying 'Oh for heavens sakes get rid of it' if something was worn out, but I struggled with letting go of anything. Once or twice I dumped something and then went and took it back from the trash.
I guess it’s just me. When Mum’s things were delivered to me after her death, I found she’d thrown out my brother’s Hornby train set, something I was never allowed to play with and would have liked to have. Apparently, she didn't have any trouble parting with it where I would have agonized. I was upset because getting rid of his things felt as if she’d shut me out of his brief life yet again. I used my perturbed feelings to finally put the thimbles and salt and pepper sets out for Goodwill, so I guess downsizing can also be a way of settling old scores. I still have plenty of her things, you understand, but my final criteria became keeping the things with happy, mutual memories. It was hard, but I did manage to get beyond keeping things just because they were hers.
Almost as challenging is parting with the present because the memorabilia is connected to lives as they have been lived: family, education, hobbies, marriage, children, career, friendships and everything else. It devolves into “What won’t be missed?” Well—as it turns out--it depends. For us it became three questions: “Is it replaceable? Does it have value?” but most important “Are we willing to pack this and pay for it to be shipped across the country?”
Under this rubric, every object had to prove its own worthiness, even art projects left over from the children’s school years. Of course, certain things had defenders and many times Sid said “It doesn’t eat much,” meaning that it’s something small enough, easy enough to transport, and—dammit he wants it—to slide into some packing box somewhere. In my experience, this part of moving generated the most discussions. We had an ongoing one over a TV table with sixties pointed legs that Sid had had for twenty-five years; our compromise was that it went as long as he was prepared to make the case he would use it in his workshop. Parting with a shabby kitchen storage unit became easier when it was presented as either this or that (that being a favorite kitchen table with a cutting board top).
Which brings me to packing for the future. This part requires clairvoyance. “What kind of life are we going to lead where we are going?” This begs the further questions of who are we? and what are we becoming? The danger here is to assume that moving automatically means we change as people. Probably not. For a time the skiing equipment was in danger, but cooler heads prevailed since we liked the idea of having it regardless of whether we used it as much as we have in Colorado. On the other hand, given my years, I think I can predict safely that I will not be using my ice skates again—white, size 10 ladies, hardly used, anyone need them?) Sid has finally parted with his technical climbing gear in recognition that he and I will probably lowland hike rather than try charging up fourteeners. Similarly, I got rid of a lot of baking pans—cake decorating is not in my future—and a bunch of cookbooks—who am I kidding about how much I plan to entertain?
Yep, moving is fraught. But the difference between it and a fire is vital. I get to choose what we keep. A fire makes the decision without any knowledge of me or what I value. So I’ll take the packing boxes any day although they’ll have to carry me out of wherever we move to—I’m not doing this again anytime soon.
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