Raptitude.com

Why should you be forced to help someone else?

I’m sick. I don’t get sick much. Somehow I still don’t quite believe I will ever get really sick but the statistics say there is a 100% chance I will die of something. So that means it’s either a violent end, or one day I get really sick.

Statistics also say over 70% of my readers are American, and some other statistics say that one-seventh of them do not have health insurance.

I’m making this statistic up, but for those without health coverage, probably a good 50% of their fellow Americans believe that their lack of health insurance is deserved. If they get sick they deserve no medical attention, because they didn’t tend their own garden well enough.

In America, you’re free to seek and acquire everything you need. Somehow, many people think this means the same as: if you don’t have everything you need, then you don’t deserve everything you need. No health insurance? Didn’t work hard enough. Simple.

My sinuses are blocking some of my brain right now so maybe I’m oversimpifying it, but isn’t that the basic philosophy, for many, many people?

The population contains two hundred million self-professed followers of Christ and most of them believe that it is absurd to pay a dime for someone else to see a doctor.

Makes me think of a joke:

How many Ayn Rand objectivists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

None. The market will sort it out.

I generally don’t talk about single political issues here. And I’m not right now. This post isn’t about health care. Or Capitalism. It’s about something way bigger, as always. Read More

by David on November 21, 2011

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Two methods for dealing with negative people

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A recurring question I get from readers is, “How do you deal with negative people?” I’ve never directly written about it because I’m not always sure whether they’re asking how *I* deal with negative people, or how one ought to deal with negative people. I can only tell you how I do it.

There are actually two ways I deal with negative people.

Method 1

When someone makes a needless negative comment, I feel a spike of contempt somewhere in my lungs, and my eyes probably narrow for a second. I give a terse answer, if one is required. My mind says to the person, “Why do you have to be such a dick about it?” but I don’t actually say that.

Then once I’m out of their presence I tell stories in my head about how wrong they are, I play out imaginary confrontations, I might make a speech that nobody will hear. Or I think of what I should have said right then, George Costanza style. “Well the jerk store called, and…”

This kind of internal dialogue/monologue can go on until I’m interrupted by real life, but even then it sometimes resurfaces later. It sometimes makes the day a bad day.

With this method, the one thing I don’t do is do something. I do think a lot though. I think with great force and anger. I think up a storm, a real impressive one. I inventory my reasons for how right I am, several letters-to-the-editor’s worth. My body doesn’t do anything except maybe make involuntary faces. It’s possible my tongue moves, I don’t know.

In other words, the first of the two methods I have for dealing with negative people is to become one.

Method 2

It starts out the same: person says something negative, and I feel that contempt feeling, but for whatever reason it triggers a different thought process. I do feel the impulse to go on an internal tirade, but I don’t. Instead I find myself recognizing that the offensive party is having a bad day or a bad moment that could just as easily be happening to me. Even if they’re having a bad life, that could just as easily be happening to me too.

It’s not quite forgiveness, it’s more like, “Ah I’ve been there. Frustrated and unreasonable. Directing it at people who don’t deserve it.”

Even though my knee-jerk response is to stare daggers, I’m reminded that people get negative when they’re unconscious, in pain or trying to protect themselves from pain. All human activity can be boiled down to a combintion of seeking pleasure and avoiding suffering. Negativity tends to come from avoiding suffering, and if I’m being fair, it helps neither of us to blame them for it.

Pessimism shields people from despair because it keeps expectations low. Blame shields people from the threats of having to be responsible for a problem they don’t think should be happening. I have been caught up in both, at times today even.

When I use method two I end up feeling almost good towards the negative party. It’s a weird feeling if you’re not used to it. The pain of others suddenly becomes directly relevant to you, yet it remains theirs. Read More

by David on November 14, 2011

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Why do you do what you don’t love?

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When I arrived at the conservation office I was absurdly early, like I am for everything that’s important. At 9:30 a bus would take me and 39 others to a ferry, which would drop us at the beginning of the Milford Track. From there I’d hike four days through cavernous glacial valleys, living out of my backpack.

After a day of scrambling to get all the right supplies: quick-drying clothes, sandfly repellant, cooking gear, matches, and food that didn’t take up much space, I was ready. Just early.

I sat down on the grass next to another traveler. We had the typical backpacker exchange: names, home countries, and current destinations. He was a German, about 20, headed to the Kepler track.

Our customary exchange ran its course quickly and soon there didn’t seem to be anything else to say, so we just sat against our packs, enjoying the day. It was sunny, and especially quiet. Te Anau is a little town at the edge of the civilization, so there was no background drone of highway traffic. Nothing happening in the foreground either.

Neither of us had said anything in a minute or two, when he turned to me and asked with a straightforwardness that only a German could muster:

“So,” he said, “What are your dreams?”

Having met new people almost every single day of my trip, I had reflexive answers for almost every question a near-stranger could ask, but this one caught me off guard. Nothing came out.

It’s not that I didn’t know what I wanted in life. In fact I’ve got a life list, and I started trying to recall what was on it, but nothing was jumping out at me and I knew that after thinking about it so long, no answer I could give would be very convincing.

A few items from my bucket list were beginning to materialize: Learn my wines. Speak French fluently. Ride a Harley. These are things I want to do, but clearly none of them consume me enough that they’re right there in the foreground of my mind whenever somebody brings up the topic of dreams.

I was self-conscious about how I seemed to have to rake my brain for what should be more important than anything. I didn’t have a clear idea of my dreams, and I knew I was talking to somebody who did.

Finally I laughed and said I didn’t know.

“What are your dreams?” I asked.

“I want to have a boat and I want to go to Iceland.”

“In your boat?”

“No, my boat will not be that kind of boat. It is two different dreams.”

“Why did you come to New Zealand when you could have gone to Iceland first?”

“It is not the time. I am too young.”

I have 150 items on my bucket list. Looking at it, pretty much anyone could tease out a few values that are important to me. What I want is a life that embodies those values.

One of the items on my list was the thing I was there to do: hike the Milford Track. But I knew he was looking for a more definite, more resounding answer. Not just one of dozens of arbitrary items I want to get to, but the experience I couldn’t die without. The Milford is a truly unbelievable hike, but my interest in it didn’t exactly define me as a person. It only hinted at what did. Read More

by David on November 7, 2011

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Ordinary things every mother has seen

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Look in almost anyone’s shoebox of family photos and you’ll find mostly smiles. Some real, some given on command. Kids standing like sticks in front of the cabin or Epcot Center. Days at the pool, days at the beach, birthday parties and Halloweens.

In the mid 1980s Sally Mann set out to photograph her children growing up. But she did something unusual. She consciously decided to include the ugly and awkward parts that many people want to exclude from their image of childhood. Bleeding noses, wet beds, black eyes, bad moods. Hints of vulnerability and danger.

Her collection, called Immediate Family, didn’t obsess with the disturbing parts of childhood. There are shots of goofing off, dressing up, and playing board games. But it’s obvious she made a point of including shots that suggest that childhood isn’t squeaky clean, that it’s also riddled with moments of awkwardness, shame, fear and confusion.

I couldn’t figure exactly what it was about these images that I loved so much, until I read what filmmaker Steven Cantor had said about them:

“I was so moved by Sally’s expression of childhood the way I remembered it — as a complex and enigmatic time — and not the innocent and naive period adults often project it to be.”

Yes! Bingo. Childhood isn’t simple at all, except to adults. It’s confusing and awesome, sometimes traumatic, sometimes dark, sometimes absurd.

Those typical shoebox photos cherrypick the sanitary moments and ignore the rest, as if only the light and easy parts have value. They suggest that kids spend their days playing because they don’t have to take anything seriously yet. But in reality kids explore and play because they need to learn about the world, fast. They need those black eyes and awful moments, and they need to have curiosity and low inhibitions to get them.

So if we’re going to take the value of childhood seriously, we can’t pretend it consists only of birthdays and school plays and trips to Grandma’s. Sally Mann saw that childhood play isn’t actually frivolous, it’s a vital learning process, and the unsettling parts of it are absolutely necessary. And because they are so vital, they’re beautiful too. Read More

by David on October 30, 2011

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7 High-leverage life skills they should teach in grade school

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They don’t need to take up too much math or science time, maybe just a single two-hour class for each, covering two a year. Plant a few seeds and leave them alone. They’ll grow, in in the minds of certain kids where the conditions are right, and their progress will be gradual but unstoppable.

These skills aren’t easy. I suck at most of them, but I know they’re all I really need to know how to do. Simply introduce them and they’ll lead a person to anything else he needs to know. In me, the seeds have germinated, no question about that. I am gradually getting better at them. They take years, so I wish I’d started in grade school.

1) Letting people misunderstand and dislike you

I used to really believe that somebody getting the wrong idea about me was some kind of problem that had to be fixed. This is the kind of fear that would prevent me from, say, renting “Heavenly Creatures” because everyone knows it has Kate Winslet’s boobs in it and the Blockbuster girl would think I’m renting it only because I’m a huge perv and not because it’s a good movie. It’s a tiny example, but that’s a genuine wall I built there. One of thousands.

It takes an enormous amount of energy to try and manipulate people’s knee-jerk impressions of you, and it makes you into a fearful, pandering creature. It’s completely impossible anyway, and there’s so little to gain even when you pull it off. Instead of someone getting a baseless negative impression of you, they get a baseless positive one.

The amount of pain suffered in vain by people trying to be liked by everyone is unimaginable. It drives people crazy. It makes people kill themselves.

Make no apologies or explanations for what you want, and let the unknown faces dislike or distrust you. Study your fear of leaving bad impressions, and practice doing what you want anyway. I bet you’ll become not just more comfortable, but more likable.

Elaine Benes: Who cares if she doesn’t like you? Does everyone have to like you?
George Costanza: Yes! Everyone has to like me!

2) Talking to strangers

School taught me strangers were at worst bad people, and at best irrelevant people. It took me a while to recognize that they were indeed people at all — that they have family members and friends to whom they are not strangers. It took even longer to realize that I am a stranger.

They had an explicit rule about it: Don’t talk to strangers! Stranger is clearly a pejorative word, and they told us to use that word to describe anyone we didn’t know. And don’t let them talk to you!

I am still getting over the idea that people I don’t know are “strange.” Some of the most rewarding moments of my life have happened while breaking this rule.

Kids can still be taught to keep themselves safe without instilling such a damaging view of the casual passer-by.

Imagine if nobody regarded anybody as a stranger, but rather a person they didn’t know. You can’t have wars without strangers. For that and other atrocities, we need a group of people so alien and blank to us that we don’t care what happens to them. Read More

by David on October 24, 2011

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Mold and The Law

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My house is moldy and Parkinson’s Law is mostly responsible. If you’re not familiar, the Law is usually spelled out like this: “The time required for a task expands to fill the time available for its completion.” It works for money too.

So when you’ve settled into a schedule filled with recurring tasks, they each have a tendency to expand until they press up against the next one, and then they don’t move around very easily. Without much variation (a day job does this quickly) the parts get dusty, then mold grows between them, and you begin to forget that they can move at all. Instead of a series of independent tasks, a routine can come to look to the mind like it’s one solid, familiar ring, seven days in circumference, studded with the odd unexpected task or birthday party.

I’m doing some house cleaning and I still have some mold problems, so I’m giving a large part of a routine a quarter-turn by dialing my regular article forward to Mondays for a while. I’ll see where the other bits reassemble around that. It’s like defragging my schedule, for you computer geeks. Call it a mini-experiment.

Certain important things (namely reading books and meditating — probably the two most wholesome things I do) have been flung out of the ring due to substantial G-forces, and there are no obvious gaps for them to jump back in safely.

I’m aware it’s more of an internal adjustment that isn’t really meant to interest you, but I thought I’d say something today because I don’t like to be a mysterious no-show. You might also want to try this kind of defrag in your own routine and see how it settles out.

And while I have you here for a moment, there are a few interviews I’ve done with other bloggers that I never had a good chance to share.

Sui from Cynosure asked me about self-love and hard times.

Nicki from The Veggie Tales talked to me about food.

And (quite a while ago) my friend Srinivas from BlogcastFM interviewed me about blogging in this podcast.

Anyway, see you Monday.

-D.

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Photo by Monster Pete

by David on October 19, 2011

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How to avoid terrible curses

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In April I told you people that an established publisher had contacted me wanting to know if I’d considered writing a book. I was naturally very flattered but unsure of what angle to take on it, so I appealed to you for feedback and you delivered. Thank you.

What I didn’t mention is that I had been contacted almost six months earlier, and I’d been stuck on it since then. I didn’t really know what kind of book I wanted to write. My post was intended to get me moving by creating public accountability and stirring up some ideas.

It didn’t, really. I pecked at it over the months, and a clearer outline began to emerge. I wasn’t in love with it, but it was something that could be built on. Yeah, I could pull this off, I thought sometimes.

Two weeks ago a literary agent contacted me, unaware that a publisher had already expressed interest, and it looked like it was a sign that now is the time. After avoiding it a bit more, I dug out my notes and got to work again. I ignored my doubts and kept putting words down.

What quickly happened surprised me. Saturday morning, on my 31st birthday, I had my first moment of clarity about what I should do. It hit me like a truck:

I have no desire at all to write a book right now. None.

And just like that, a yearlong spell of uncertainty dissolved. In hindsight it had been that way from the beginning, but I felt like that shouldn’t matter — the opportunity was so great. But there is no opportunity if the author isn’t interested. Read More

by David on October 11, 2011

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Let’s use the C-word more often, and really mean it

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Someone wrote in with a comment that almost made me clap:

“You use the word compassion sometimes. I like the *idea* of compassion, but I don’t know, it irritates me. I’m not saying I’m not compassionate, I think I am. I just hear it used by a lot of people I don’t like. Not you, other people. Fluffy people who have all the Chicken Soup for the Soul books. I hate that word but I still think it’s a good thing, whatever it is exactly…”

I added capital letters and removed an LOL or two, but he captured my thoughts exactly.

I avoid it too because it has undeserved connotations about sissiness and self-importance. But I guess I have let the C-word slip a few times, sorry.

Compassion, as a word, hasn’t really found a widely-accepted role in our culture. Not everyone is comfortable with it. I think part of its problem is that it contains the dubious word “passion.” Part of the ick-quality of this word comes from its shameless overuse in marketing this last decade (along with fellow bad words “dreams” and “excellence”) of everything from DeBeers diamonds to mortgage brokers.

I think it might help to clarify that the “passion” part of compassion actually refers to suffering, not to enthusiasm for watercolors or for the Allman Brothers Band. Think The Passion of the Christ, not “I have a passion for 1960s girl groups.” The “com” part refers to “with another.”

Politicians conspicuously avoid it, because it sounds like they support a welfare state. Too risky to bust out the C-word in a forum where you’re pandering for the widest and shallowest approval possible. Too many people don’t know what it means. The C-word is a bad word outside the Green Party.

Compassion is associated with bleeding heart socialists, self-help junkies, hippies who sob over dead trees, pasty-faced emos and any other people who suffer from throes of uncontrollable sympathy — even the misguided commies who want to give away health care! (Can you imagine?! Helping people without demanding their money! Some people are sick.)

The C-word has been relegated to these weak and senseless groups, when really it’s something that everyone would be in favor of it if they knew what it was and understood what its implications are. Read More

by David on October 4, 2011

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You and your friends are all going to die, and that’s beautiful

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And then he started using words like nyingma and shentong and I became more interested in my beer than anything else. Zen is a neato thing to talk about but depending on who’s doing the talking, it can get a bit too stiff for me.

But I perked up when he said the most rewarding thing he’s ever done in all his years is to sit and contemplate his own death.

I was in an expat bar in Chiang Mai on trivia night and an informal lecture had broken out. Half the room was shouting out answers to sports history questions, and the other half was gathered around a once-American philosophy professor, listening to him talk about Zen. I was trying to do both.

We chatted on the balcony later, and I asked him about what he said about death. I drank and nodded as he talked and smoked cigarettes.

“When you’re sitting there long enough that you finally see that unbroken line between here and your grave, that you really are that grave every bit as much as you are sitting here… you’ll never feel as free as that.”

The night was long (three bars long) and full of conversations, but that’s the one that was in my head when I was nodding off that night, and in the shower the next morning.

For the next few weeks I kept having these spells where I’d see something super ordinary — a stranger yawning at a bus stop, or something — and I’d get the sensation that I was looking back on it, as if I was visiting it from a place where that doesn’t happen.

It culminated on a beach in New Zealand a few weeks later. I had another spell, and realized what was happening. I was being repeatedly overcome by the simple fact that I was here. That doesn’t sound like an astonishing revelation, but it was, and that had something to do with being simultaneously aware that I will one day not be here.

Understanding those two insultingly simple facts — that you’re definitely here, and that you will definitely one day not be here — combine to form something beautiful. The professor called it anicca but we can call it impermanence. It’s irrefutable, and we kill ourselves trying to refute it all the time. Things change constantly, and when you insist they don’t, you suffer. When you can learn to go along for the ride, ordinary moments become compelling. Read More

by David on September 27, 2011

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A Day in the Life

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The day began without my permission, at around 4am when I awoke to the unmistakable sensation of a person getting into bed with me. I whipped myself around to see the lanky Irishman who normally sleeps in the far corner, pulling my blanket over his legs as if it were his own bed.

It was so absurdly inappropriate my body sprung to life and gave him a hard shove that almost sent him over the side.

He regained his balance and gave me a puzzled look, like I was being rude to him and he was genuinely hurt.

“Calm down,” he urged, as if he were the voice of reason.

“What?! Are you insane? This is my bed!”

He sprang up and marched back to his own bed. “English wanker!” he snapped, then dropped into the fetal position on his mattress.

It took a few moments before I realized that it wasn’t a dream, and there was no hope of getting back to sleep. I wasn’t exactly frightened, just completely stunned. I will never know what he was thinking.

I sat out on the hostel’s porch and read my book until sunrise. Read More

by David on September 21, 2011

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Why should you be forced to help someone else?