The Direction of Intention

610. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

It is election night and the wind is roaring off the Sound. We are saving daylight now so the sun sets early. It was only this weekend that we turned back the clocks so I am disoriented each evening; “What time is it!” I exclaim looking at the clock, realizing that although it feels like midnight it is actually only 7:00. When I was a kid I’d ride the merry-go-round, spinning and spinning until my inner compass was so bamboozled that I walked like a drunken sailor. Daylight saving time is like a merry-go-round.

Although at this fine age I have no intention of spinning myself into perplexity, I’ve once again decided that being disoriented is not so bad (when I am deep in thought I am perfectly capable of walking into poles or going in the opposite direction of my intention). In fact, so fond am I of being disoriented that I’m considering spinning disorientation into a philosophy so future generations might reasonably aim at utter confusion.

This is the proof for my new philosophy: we spend so much time trying to be found, how could we be anything but lost. A variation on the theme: we spend so much time trying to be right, that we must certainly be continually proving that we are wrong. Another variation: we put so much energy justifying our position that we must be secretly convinced that we have no position. So rather than whip up the illusion of knowing, wouldn’t it make more sense to fully embrace not-knowing? Good heavens, I’m on the verge of writing a syllogism! My inner philosopher is tugging at his beard with cigar stained fingers, muttering, “hmmmmmm. A book, perhaps?” Ominous deep staring eyes will dominate the book jacket design, the teaser will read: there is no map for your soul! The first chapter will be a single sentence: It is all made up.

When puffer-academics ask me for proof of disorientation I will point to American election cycles. So inundated are we with months of campaign advertising, pundits tugging on our perceptual rope, “facts” spun into tasty delirium cotton candy, “truth” slandered and slander twisted into licorice tasting “truth;” we must certainly be on the merry-go-round all of the time. Chapter one: it is all made up. Chapter two: in order to be oriented you have to have something solid to orient to. Chapter three: If it is all made up, then nothing is solid. If nothing is solid, then orientation is impossible. If orientation is impossible, then you better make something up. A near syllogism! My inner philosopher hoots with satisfaction!

No wonder I’m dizzy.

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601. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Sometimes I worry myself. Last week I was flying through O’Hare airport. I had a fairly long lay over (and isn’t THAT an interesting term!). I was tired. It was dark outside; in airports during the winter 6:00pm and midnight feel like the same thing, just as in old age homes prunes and iced tea taste the same. It’s odd. So, it was midnight or something. My eyes were fried so I couldn’t read. Besides, I was the kind of tired that, if I lay down during my lay over, I’d wake up and my flight would have left me behind. So I was walking and looking at stuff.

Here’s the part that worries me: I saw a sandwich. I wasn’t hungry but I knew my flight was approximately 5 hours long and I could imagine myself getting hungry before the plane landed. And what if the plane never landed? I should have a sandwich. Here’s more of the part that worries me: at the Airport Fresh food stand, where nothing is really fresh, where I saw the sandwich, the sandwich I saw, the sandwich I chose was sitting all alone. There were others further down the shelf, but this one, this lonely little sandwich, sat all alone. It was too small to compete. The other sandwiches were muscly things wrapped tightly in plastic; they were bursting to get out of their wrappers. My sandwich was the runt of the litter, sliced chicken breast with red bell pepper. It was destined to be an engineer. And since no one was talking to it, since it had been abandoned by the in-crowd, I bought it.

As I walked away from Airport Fresh, I had a realization: I am Charlie Brown! My ghost costume has too many holes! On this day of All Hallows Eve I will get rocks instead of candy in my plastic pumpkin head trick-or-treat candy bucket because I projected a story (my story?) on a lonely sub-standard sandwich that a host of other discerning travelers were wise enough to leave behind. I chose the Christmas tree with few branches and no needles because I thought it needed a home. Or, an alternate narrative: mainstream sandwiches bore me and I am much more interested in the deviants in society. More projection perhaps but one with a healthier turn: I chose that narrative.

After all of that, I will not tell you what horrors I suffered when I actually got hungry on my flight. That sandwich pleaded with me for a long time and I had to explain that it had a purpose to fulfill. And, as difficult as the path might seem now, it would thank me later. It went quietly. So I think – all in all – it was a very worrisome affair. Spooky even. Ghoulish when you consider what happened to that poor lonely sandwich.

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553. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

My inner sociologist awoke with a start. He is a sleepy fellow and enjoys his nap more than most folks. I was crossing the courtyard of the apartment complex next door; it has been my shortcut to the other side of the peninsula for more than a decade, a shortcut that I have taken 5 times a week, every week, for 10 years. I am on a first name basis with the caretaker of the property. Today, as I crossed the courtyard I passed a man on talking on a cell phone. He was angry and shouting at the person on the other end. As I passed he snapped shut his phone and called out to me, “Hey! Do you live here?” I stopped and told him I lived in the apartments next door. He responded, “You’re walking on our sidewalk!” That was the moment my inner sociologist woke up and rubbed his eyes, “Huh? Wha…?” His hair was a mess; nap head.

“These are our sidewalks!” the angry man sneered, “I live here. We have to protect our privacy.”

My inner sociologist rolled his eyes and said, “Why are test cases always so predictable.” I cautioned him to watch, to make no assumptions. I said to the angry man, “My name’s David. I’m your neighbor. I pass this way everyday.” My inner sociologist took out his notepad and a blunt pencil, grudgingly poised to write notes about the encounter.

The angry man opened his phone. He did not dial a number so my inner sociologist wrote, “Avoids eye contact.” While staring at his phone, Angry Man said, “We’ve had a rash of vandalism and have to know who’s on our property.”

I said, “Well, I’ll keep my eyes open for any suspicious characters.” My inner sociologist rolled his eyes and called me a manipulator, taking a note about my less-than-subtle status game.

Still staring at his phone, Angry Man repeated emphatically, “These are our sidewalks,” and turned his back and quickly walked away, disappearing around a corner.

My inner sociologist snapped closed his notepad and sighed with disgust, “You woke me up for this? Another angry person finding things to fear is not worthy of my study! You interrupted my nap for a game of guard-the-sidewalk!”

“It justifies his anger.” I said. “Guarding the sidewalk gives him a sense of power and purpose. Plus, didn’t you see how he used his phone as a place to disappear?” I asked. Isn’t that interesting to you?”

“Old News!” shouted my inner sociologist! “Blame and disappear, blame and disappear! Claiming territory that does not matter – it’s an old song and it bores me. Besides, who’s not hiding inside their technology these days?” he seethed, crawling back onto his couch, adjusting his pillow. “I find it depressing,” he sighed, closing his eyes.

“Well, I thought it was interesting precisely because it is so normal.” I said. “Isn’t his need to mark territory and defend it against his neighbor, me, a possible ally, a potential friend, isn’t that worth studying? Isn’t it worth talking about?” He was already snoring – or making snoring noises so I’d leave him alone. “Well, I think it’s interesting.” I said, slightly wounded, suddenly more aware of the sidewalk than I had been before meeting the Angry Man.

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544. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Talking with my peers who, like me, identify as young but our conversations are sounding suspiciously like the conversations our parents used to have (“my body hurts…,” “I don’t have the energy for it…,” “We were never like that…”), our topic turned to “young people plugged into their ear buds who seem to be lost in a world of their own.” Good contrarian that I am, I had another point of view on the “young” escapees.

Nobutoshi Kihara developed the Sony Walkman way back in the 1970’s and the catalyst for the technology was to create a way for people to listen to their music without disturbing others. It was an invention born from consideration, a distinctly Japanese idea. Translated to an American consumer it morphed into a way for people to tune out the noise and chaos of contemporary life. I offered this notion to my pals: most of us now live in an urban environment, we can’t walk down the street without advertisements competing for our attention no matter where we turn (a boat is now trolling the Puget Sound beaches pulling a with a billboard…nothing is sacred), our world is plagued by a non-stop political campaign defined by ugly accusations, political parties that are either useless or crazy and certainly no longer interested in compromise or governing, news organizations that gave up their mission decades ago and now believe their job is to entertain (so they shout and organize fights), bankers that no longer serve their communities but instead pillage from them, schools driven by the one thing we know that impedes education (a focus on an outcome instead creating a process of discovery), cops with guns, crooks with guns, moms with guns, an economic machine that needs war to be healthy, terror, terror everywhere,…who wouldn’t want to put in ear buds and play a different soundtrack? I suggested that the sanest people on the street are the ones who are refusing to listen to the noise and instead are at least proactive enough to take care of themselves.

When I asked my pals how much television they watched each day, they grumbled knowing what I was implying. There are many ways to tune out. There are many forms of complacency.

Yesterday I took a short hike on a forest trail and it only took a few minutes for me to get quiet inside. With no one screaming for my attention, with no one screaming at others or honking or emailing or proclaiming, pontificating, threatening, inflating, running to get there, racing to get here, I was amazed at how much I wanted to tune in to my surroundings. I wanted nothing between me and the natural rhythm; my pace slowed, my senses opened and I breathed a deep sigh of relief.

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