flux

It comes in waves. I have so much to say and then so little. I think everything is perfectly beautiful, and then I can hardly look at a flower or happy couple or our dog without getting angry. I think everything has worked itself out, and then a situation blows up. Do we ever have anything figured out? Is everything always just in flux?

I'm wondering today about whether I should make a separate, but related and linked, travel blog for my time in Thailand. I originally started this blog solely for that purpose, but in just a week or two it has morphed into a (rather public) journal of sorts. Clearly there are many things I don't say here that I might say in a more private forum, but writing on here has helped me work out some things that otherwise might have remained nascent in my mind, but which I might not want everyone who would be interested in the travel portion reading and knowing about me. I'm normally a fiercely private person, and this blog, as much as I adore it in certain ways as ones does their own creation, makes me feel exposed too. More exposed than I'm comfortable with, and definitely more exposed than I am on a day-to-day basis, even with those close to me. So I'm thinking about it. I think it would make the travel bit more accessible; people wouldn't need to wade through my random analyses and thoughts about whatever life topic I was obsessed with that day in order to see my pictures and read about the chronology of my time and travels in Southeast Asia.

A friend told me yesterday that when he has children, he won't allow them to watch TV but instead will make them play outside, learn the violin, read and talk and craft. As I've gotten older, I've realized that almost nothing in life lends itself to such a black-and-white, good-and-evil analysis; practically everything worth analyzing is nuanced and complex and ranges, from person to person, from day to day, from situation to situation. It got me thinking, though, about the relative worth of TV in my life, because I don't think it's all nonsense, or useless, or destructive. Certainly I wouldn't be the same person without all those years spent watching the Simpsons, and I can name at least two friendships in which our individual love for that show formed the foundation of our union. But aside from that, TV informs some aspect of our understanding of social dynamics, how people treat each other, how those different from us live, our roles in this society and in the world. Are these all susceptible to stereotyping and misinformation and hyperbole? Of course. My point isn't that TV is perfect, or even essential; just that, taking it with a grain of salt, I think that in moderation it can be beneficial. Kids should still be playing outside, of course; kids should be encouraged to read books and play instruments and learn to cook and sew and hammer and garden - basic life skills. But TV has taught me things; yes, it's biased. Yes, it's limited and doesn't do it all - nor should it. Reading the news doesn't either, though. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Progressive, Slate.com, the New Republic - all these sources are biased and limited. I believe TV should be one element - albeit a circumscribed one - of our lives and of children's lives. The problems really foment when TV is abused and used to babysit, or to substitute for a social life, or to be our sole source of news and media. I've learned many important things from TV that stick with me to this day, months or years after I first watched them, not the least of which included Kiva, the microloan program helping people in developing countries, who otherwise wouldn't be able to secure loans, start their own businesses; the One Laptop Per Child program, providing a better education to children in impoverished nations; or any of the super interesting stories around the globe on WHYY's World Focus series. Oh how wonderfully my life changed when I first saw the Jon Stewart show! And then again when Colbert launched his Report. What end is achieved by sheltering kids from this hilarious and valuable aspect of our culture?

In a sense, the value of television is a lesson in moderation. Too much of a good thing can be many different things: wonderful, according to Mae West; stifling, drowning, overwhelming; or just right. More than any one of those answers, I think it just depends. On what it is, on where you are, on who or what is giving it. Every good thing has an edge; nearly every bad thing seems to have a silver lining. Perhaps it all comes down to a matter of perspective.

Which reminds me of a lesson I learned today about perspective. Often I ride one of five or six elevators up to the 8th floor of a large 20-story building. Normally I take one of the middle ones, or if not, one left of the middle as you face them. Today, though, I rode in the one furthest to the right, and as the doors opened onto the hallway, I thought it was the wrong floor! I was so convinced I stepped back into the elevator to check which number was illuminated. It was 8, but it took me about 5 seconds of looking around to recognize it as the correct floor. I almost missed it because I had become so set in my viewpoint, my angle, my reference point that my brain literally couldn't acknowledge that, simply because I wasn't familiar with it, wasn't indicative of its wrongness. But, if something so minute and trivial can trip me up, will I be able to discern the situations in which the only thing real problem is my perspective? What if that is the source of most of the pain and suffering in life, in general? Our inability to accept and diverge from what's expected and familiar and previously vouched for. What's strange about that to me though is that we do it over and over in the course of our lives: we try something new, we take a leap, we challenge ourselves, only to find a new happy medium from which we then retreat into fear of the unknown again! Why do we never seem to learn, and internalize, that the unfamiliar isn't necessarily something to dread; that perhaps what's more frightening is the atrophying of our minds and hearts that results from staying the same, only confronting the habitual? I think on some level that is the case, and it's certainly more true in some situations than others. Perhaps, then, because the more minor trifles, the less serious snafus, are less apt to ruffle us, when a significant one comes, it appears smaller because our threshold is emptier; it hasn't been collecting slights all day, and this new perspective is able to transform such petty indignities into barely memorable affronts that are unable to stick to us.

I'm going to try to try this. This new lense, this different angle. We'll see how practicable it is when life gets stuck in my hair like gum, and I've just run out of peanut butter.

And to my babe, "giant proclamations are all very well, but our love is louder than words" - Sunday, by Bloc Party. I love you in the morning.