Thirty Years On

I recently heard an interview with a black comedian in which he described a situation in which he, in 2015, was asked to leave a coffee shop.

In 1985, as a freshman in college, I boarded a Greyhound in Terre Haute, Indiana. Stepping in just behind me was a young, nicely dressed, and attractive black lady. I looked the long length of the bus and saw only two empty seats: one was in the front row next to an older, grey-haired woman, and the other, about three-quarters of the way back, was next to a middle-aged black gentleman in a suit. I was torn but I don't know if I should credit my parents or my classmates that the race of my soon-to-be seat-mate was not part of the equation. My parents never uttered a bad word about other races; although, to be honest, because of where we lived, I didn't hear any words at all. On the other hand, owing to my bad experiences with growing up a runt riding school buses, I didn't feel like I wanted to make that walk and I didn't like the idea of riding in so conspicuous a place as the front. Little did I know, the decision was not mine to make. It became a decision made by my elders.

Barely had I begun to consider the situation when the black lady moved to sit in the front seat. The older woman stood up and confidently asserted that she should not sit there and that this nice young man (indicating me) would sit next to her while she (indicating the black lady) could sit near the rear. This prompted the black gentleman to rise and counter that, no, I would sit next to him and the black lady could sit where she liked. 

I paused...wavered...and then I sat next to the black gentleman. I knew that he was right and I like to think that was part of the reason I made that choice. But it would be self-serving to say that I fancied myself a "reverse Rosa Parks." I was a deer in the headlights. In reality, I was too young and self-conscious to make any decision at all. The black gentleman was more forceful and assertive in his claim to my companionship and so I did as I was told.

I've thought a lot about this experience over the years. Although it happened very fast, it has not been lost on me that it happened at all and that no-one other than the two people already listed as wanting the company of my derriere made any move to weigh in. Was everyone else on the bus as caught off guard as I was? I doubt it. Surely some were surprised by the older woman being so brazen as to show her pre-civil-rights-era sensibilities in so public a way. Others were probably too embarrassed to speak up and since someone else was already handling it... But it is just as likely that many people agreed with the older woman yet knew better than to say anything and had I made the other choice would have inwardly believed that I had made the righteous one.

And so when I heard this black comedian tell his story about being asked to leave a coffee shop, not because he was black, but because he was assumed to be a panhandler, I had to wonder, thirty years on, "How far have we come?"

Those Wacky Kids

I read another article today about how we are doing a poor job of raising our children. These articles come in a few different flavors. Some say that Helicopter Parenting is robbing our children of their childhood by not providing them a chance, through unstructured play, to explore their world and their own abilities and limitations. Others argue that children are treated too much like peers to the adults in their lives bestowing them with an undeserved sense of superiority. And yet others claim that we heap too much praise on them resulting in feelings of entitlement. This particular article took an interesting tack in suggesting that such praise resulted in a perception of conditional love which can't be a good thing.

Do I agree with these arguments? The first, definitely; the rest, not so much. 

However, they all make the same basic claim. They put forward the thesis that we are not providing our children with the tools to answer the call, rise to the occasion, and meet the challenge of adulthood. And, even worse, that we are not preparing them to be happy in the doing of it.

But I have been thinking lately that this might all be hogwash; that this sounds like a familiar refrain. How can we possibly prepare our children for what their world will be like when we have no idea what form that world will take? Did our parents prepare us for the information age: for a world with a 24-hour news cycle, a global economy, and a level of connectedness around the globe the likes of which had never been dreamed?

And what tools could the parents of the Greatest Generation possibly have given them to prepare them to land on the beaches of Normandy and do that job? Sickles and Hoes? And were they happy in the doing of it? God, I hope not!

Ben was half right. When the first certainty comes for my generation, the second will be that the current generation of youth will answer the call, rise to the occasion, and meet the challenge, and then, in some as yet unforeseen reality, complain about the next.

Lists

I'm a list maker. I make lists to help me focus on the things I feel I need to do. And while it helps at work it doesn't help in my personal life. I have a daily list:

• Write
• Exercise
• Practice piano
• Read

It's not long and yet I never seem to do each thing every day.

It's not lost on me that these are mostly creative things and I feel creativity is lacking in my life. I have no doubt that part of the cause of my lack of motivation is fatigue. With three kids, there is homework and bedtime routines and general chaos. It's like my batteries get so drained that I don't have the energy to do the things that would recharge them.

So I've decided to attack them one by one and get them into my routine. This blog was my attempt to do the first item. I'll admit it's been slow going largely because I don't have a lot of ideas. But, as I've heard so often, one of the best cures for writer's block is to write. So here I am rambling on and inflicting the result on any unfortunate soul who happens by.

I also write a poetry blog (Time for a Poem) and have used Three Word Wednesday as a prompt for that and I suppose I could do the same here. I suppose it is a rather docile approach to the problem but there's nothing wrong with going with the tried and true.

The last item on the list has been tough because I have started a book that I'm not particularly enjoying and yet it is hard for me to quit a book in the middle. The book is The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens. I really expected to like it more. I loved Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol is probably my favorite novel and yet I feel that compared with the bang of those works, this one is just a whimper.

Maybe I should rearrange the list into a better order of attack as in:

• Write
• Read
• Practice piano
• Exercise

And then just drop TPP in favor of something else once the play is complete. I do have an enormous list of books I would like to read and I am open to suggestions if anyone has them.

Low Momentum

The day I wrote the first blog post I had a thousand ideas going through my head about what to write and do. But then, as so often happens, "life got in the way." Or, more specifically, I got busy. I am in a play right now (Picasso at the Lapin Agile with Middletown Lyric Theater) which means I do have a creative outlet.

The play and rehearsals are going well but I'll admit I don't get as much out of the experience as I once did. I think the primary reason is that the last few plays I've been in have lacked the kind of cast bonding I'd grown to rely on for my social outlet. When I was first involved in community theater there was something compelling about the group working to produce the play. The cast and crew would form an almost family bond. This was as true of the small shows (3-5 people) as of the large ones (over 100). When I think back on them, I am reminded of the Catholic Church's description of a sacrament as an outward sign of an inward change. The play was a tangible outward sign of an inward change that this group of people had undergone together. This inward change was, for want of a less cliche term, the formation of a community.

And, at the heart of it, that is what I feel is missing from my spiritual life: community. I have come to find that what religion really provides us is not so much a sense of purpose or an answer to the "universal questions" but a belonging to a community. The resurgence of religion in America, especially the non-denominational variety, is likely not an answer to our sense of fear or a backlash against our materialistic society as a response to our abandonment of community. Nearly all of the institutions that were the outward sign of the American Sacrament of Community have either been torn down from without or within. Couple that with our ever growing drive to be productive at work and micro-manage the raising of our children and we find ourselves thirsting to be part of something that was, in other times, a pervasive part of the human experience. And so we flock in droves to mega churches in the belief that Belief is is what we lack.

I'm reminded of the quote by the character Lewis Rothschild in the movie The American President. To paraphrase: "People want community, and in the absence of genuine community, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want community. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand."

Well, since I refuse to drink the sand, I'm still crawling.

Day 1

Well here goes nothing. Or something. As indicated in the description, I feel like my life has become stale. I used to do so many creative things and now, not so much ... unless you consider web surfing creative.

I still do some creative things: my job has aspects of creativity and I perform in community theater once a year but I used to write more (both prose and poetry) and play and write for the piano.

I'm also interested in expanding my spiritually. And by that I don't mean religion per se but a better understanding of this thing we call life and our place in it. To aid myself in that, I've been consuming a fair amount of podcast material on my daily commute. My favorites are This American Life, On Being, and Serial. I've also been following the work of Carlton Pearson. (If you are interested in podcasts, I highly recommend the Podcast Addict app.)

So this blog is going to be a rambling examination of many things but will mostly consist of my personal experiences in these areas. I encourage comments and hope people start to join the conversation and thereby join the journey.

Stay tuned.