penfist

stories are the bones of everything

Essays

Adam Sandler molested me

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A lot of people are doing a lot of talking recently. They’re talking about something that is long overdue. Non-consensual and inappropriate treatment of females (and sometimes also males) by men with privilege and power.

Adam Sandler didn’t molest me. What Adam Sandler did do, is put his hand on an actress’ knee. Sandler did it without asking. An innocuous and possibly harmless action. It doesn’t rise to the level of many of the other bad behaviors being discussed recently. Why am even talking about Adam Sandler at all? Why am I bringing up this minor incident? I bring it up because of how technology works and how quick people are to notice inappropriate behavior and call it out. Go on Twitter and type in Adam Sandler. Take note of how many people called him out for putting his hand on a woman’s knee.

Conversations about culture are changing. Sandler may have been oblivious to the way his hand made Claire Foy uncomfortable, but the Twitterverse was not. The uproar was immediate. Nearly ubiquitous connectedness is changing the way all of us think and act, to one degree or another. Sometimes it’s for the worse but I think more often it’s for the better. What’s undeniably changed permanently is the speed at which community cultures change. As long as everyone’s connected together this way, there are always going to be new voices emerging out of the crowd chaos, helping the collective grow and improve as a community, sometimes, like now, seemingly overnight. The crowd doesn’t always get it exactly right, but crowds never have. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t collectively changing for the better.

Community outrage and constant connectedness are messy, but I’m all for them if the end result is bringing down powerful, privileged consent abusers, and preventing possible future abusers from spending decades getting away with criminal behavior. I don’t care how rich and powerful you are, it’s never okay to touch someone without asking first, and it’s definitely not okay to pressure them because of your position in life into giving you something they don’t want to give.

The era of non-consensual patriarchy dominating the political and spiritual realms of our lives is dying on the vine. It is dying messily, but that’s generally how entrenched cultural memes go out. Being defended by morons who say they represent the will of various gods, that the old ways are good enough, that they’ve done nothing wrong. Bullshit to all of that, and good riddance to each and every abuser who loses power, prestige, or privilege because of their past behavior.

Ask before you touch. Don’t be a bully. Stop abusing people just because you think you can get away with it. You won’t anymore. That era is coming to a close. We all have a voice now.

Dinner in Kabul

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I spent some time in Afghanistan working for NATO. There are many places in the world that have a high quotient of misery, and I have lived in a few of them. Where we happen to be born, and also when, largely determines the kind of opportunities that will or will not present themselves during our individual lifetime.

He had no legs below the knees. I do not know how he learned the words of English that he said to me.

“Mister, mister, please help me.”

I had seen him coming. Our whole group had seen him coming. He pulled himself towards us on a piece of wood with wheels bolted to the underside. His ragged jeans were rolled up and pinned where his legs ended abruptly. We were on our way to a dinner hosted by our military bosses. It was inside a heavily fortified area we had no parking clearance for. He picked me, out of our group of more than a dozen.

I was in a bad mood. My back hurt, and we had spent several hours fighting Kabul’s insane traffic, moving across the city from our hotel to this base for a dinner I didn’t really want to be a part of.

“I need medicine. I need doctor.” His outstretched hands grasped up at me. He tried to hold onto my pants. Black eyes pleading for something, anything better than his current existence.

I pushed him away with my own functional legs.

He tried again. “Mister, mister.”

“Yawazi mee pregda! Leave me alone.”

He didn’t leave me alone. He visits me often when I sleep, rolling towards me, saying, “Mister, mister, please help me.”

My quotient of misery, on his rolling board, always pulling on my pant legs. Reminding me to be a little better than I am next time.

I don’t remember what dinner tasted like.

default state of hate

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I often don’t sleep well. This morning I woke up at zero dark thirty because nightmares. They vary, and they are unimportant. Often I cannot return to slumber, as was the case this morning. I find myself surfing, or thinking through a plot twist, or trying to write. This morning it was surfing.

The electronic crumbs people leave often take me to places I would rather not go. This morning, I found myself reading a rant that began, “Shut up cuckold” and continued, “We want our country to be white.” Let’s explore that idea, as reprehensible as it is, for a moment.

What would change for this particular person in a country that was racially homogeneous? Would his personal problems go away? Of course not. The psychology of racism is pretty simple: blame all your life’s problems on a group that you aren’t part of. Racism gives small-minded, often perceptually disenfranchised people an excuse for why they aren’t doing anything great with their own existence. Some people inherit racism from their family, but a lot of them pick up the banner later in life.

It fascinates me when people blame the problems in their life on anyone but themself. The kind of weak-minded thinking that believes life would be utopia if only (insert external factors) is the kind of weak-minded thinking that makes a place worse, not better. There is no science to support racial superiority of any kind. Thankfully, we are all individuals. Special snowflakes, if you will.

Scientists tell us that diversity makes us smarter. We become better at problem-solving the more diverse we become. Being exposed to, and being open to considering, people who aren’t like you, offers many opportunities to grow and changes the way you think, often in positive ways. The most successful organizations are also the most diverse, which is why a default state of hate is a stupid way to live. It’s also why racists have increasingly been pushed to the fringes of society (where they belong).

When you encounter someone who thinks that a particular group doesn’t contribute as much as their own, remind them that:

  • All of us originated in the same place, Africa
  • The ancient Egyptians first came up with surgery and concrete, which was then refined by an Englishman and again by a Frenchman
  • The Arabs invented mathematics
  • The wheel comes from Mesopotamia
  • The compass comes from China
  • The Germans came up with the concept of the automobile
  • An Italian invented the telescope
  • Two American brothers came up with the airplane

If you know someone who lives in a default state of hate, remind them of that. Tell them they belong on the fringes unless they are willing to see the world through a wider-angle lens.

All of us are stronger than some of us. Exceptional tribalism is exceptionally stupid.

Photo by marksdk

One cigarette

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I wake up in hell. My back hurts. My back always hurts since I came here. Something happened in Kuwait when I was dragging equipment through the sand in a windstorm. A ripping in the muscles I think. Now the endless hurt. Groaning, I rise from the bed, pull on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. I grab the pack off the night stand. Cheap Iraqi cigarettes. I find it ironic that I am pulling little streams of smoky death into my lungs daily that are marked with the brand name Miami.

This trailer park I live in is a very different world from Miami. Nothing I’ve seen in Iraq resembles Miami. Here I sit, pulling on my cigarette named Miami. All I can think about is the nature of death. In the months I’ve been here, I’ve seen it fall from the sky at random. The realization that there is no god becomes stronger with every moment I spend in this place.

I take a drag and ponder it. The idea of a just and loving god is ridiculous to me. The idea of any intercessory supernatural force is asinine. Here I am, in the middle of a war, trying to make sense of the universe. Fatalistically pondering the blue sky above and the waves of heat radiating off the paving blocks under my feet. The world around me is peaceful for the moment. I am keenly aware of how deceptive the moment is.

We are fragile. I am surrounded by chaos and a city in which slow, murderous retribution is playing out on a daily basis. Murder squads roam the streets at night. Men in trucks position themselves as close as they can to where I live and lob mortars into the neighborhood, hoping to kill.
They don’t know I exist, but they hate me nonetheless. If they could take a drill to my head and make me suffer, they would. Every day I am exposed to the savage effects of the worst behavior that humanity can dream up. Rape. Torture. Outright murder. Most of it is being done in the name of god.
The cigarette’s vapors fill my lungs. I relish the calm, this sanctuary of reflection under a sun we all share, and upon whose light we depend for continued survival. I think about how humans used to worship that sun and call it a god. There have been many gods in the history of this species. As far as I can tell, every one was invented to fulfill a desire to be more important than the inventor actually is or was.

This planet is a backwater in the universe. The universe is a cold, uncaring place.

All the good and bad things that happen on Sol are either cause by natural phenomena or humans. There is no supernatural force manipulating anything. Miami is only a fleeting state of mind, and I am not important.

They taught me about Jesus, who came to die for my sins, and in whom I have no faith. Legends say Jesus was hung on a cross at 33. My cross is this place, a cigarette named Miami, and the uncertainty I feel about this war that surrounds me. I can never come back from here.
I will never be the same. It is already harder to laugh. Harder to talk. Harder to care about what happens next. I am numb, but the cigarette that is my cross reminds me I am still human. It is making the fingers I hold it with warm. The cigarette is almost done serving the purpose it was made for while I am still pondering whether I was made for any purpose at all.

I stub it out on the paving blocks, blow out the last cloud of smoke, and suck in another breath of Baghdad. I wonder if there is any growth I can find in existing today. Surely, there must be.
My back hurts. It always hurts now. One cigarette is never enough. Life is a series of addictions.

I think about how, at some point, somewhere nearby, someone else must have been caught up in a narrative opposite mine. One that felt like heaven. I hope to myself they can hold on.

A memory for Raya.

Mapping life

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“Life without a design is erratic. As soon as one is in place, principles become necessary. I think you’ll concede that nothing is more shameful than uncertain and wavering conduct, and beating a cowardly retreat. This will happen in all our affairs unless we remove the faults that seize and detain our spirits, preventing them from pushing forward and making an all-out effort.” –Seneca, Moral Letters

Always have a plan. I plan using mind maps. The plans don’t always work out. That’s okay. The framework was there, and I knew what it was that I was trying to achieve. Below is an excerpt from my short book, [easyazon_link identifier=”1496124162″ locale=”US” nw=”y” tag=”penfist-20″]Kick Ass: Take Control of Your Life[/easyazon_link].

“Getting where you want to go can be accomplished in any number of ways, but I find that one of the best is to create a visualization. The simplest way to set goals is to start by picking the dreams you want to achieve and visualizing them. I use mind mapping software for this purpose.   Concept-mapping and mind-mapping software are used to create diagrams of relationships between concepts, ideas or other pieces of information. It has been suggested that the mind mapping technique can improve learning/ study efficiency up to 15% over conventional note taking.

It is more than worth a few hours of your time to develop a mind map. You can use a mind map for anything. There are a variety of free tools for creating mind maps. I use Freemind, which is available for several computing platforms. As the name suggests, Freemind is completely free of charge. It produces output that looks like the images below, but it can be formatted to your own needs. With such visualization tools, you can map out your life in just a few minutes or hours, depending on how much detail you want to visualize. Road maps don’t need to be pretty although you can spend time making them that way. A road map should be functional and should tell you the basics of what you want out of life.”

If you’ve never used a mind mapping tool, why not take a second to try one out? You might find that a map of where you are and where you want to be is a useful tool.

More than a selfie

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“You are not your body and hair-style, but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.”
—Epictetus, Discourses, 3.1.39b– 40a

Every little choice adds up. It may not seem like there is a huge difference whether you spend the next half hour watching TV or going outside to find something beautiful to photograph. Twenty years from now you won’t remember the TV show. If you took the picture and framed it to hang on the wall, chances are that you will have an anchor point in time that draws you right back into whatever moment it was that you captured two decades ago. Those little anchor points are what determine whether your life has real meaning.

If you ask 100 people what gives their life meaning you will likely get 100 answers. In order to create meaning in your life, a sense of purpose is key. Meaning doesn’t just happen. It is created through narratives. You are in control of the narrative of your life, and that control is represented in thousands of choices that your brain makes every day. What you put in your mouth and what you put in your head determine who you become, and what the arc of your existence looks like.

Modern life tends to present too many choices, most of which are like fast food. They taste great but ultimately leave you feeling unsatisfied because the content isn’t healthy. It isn’t healthy because it generates no meaningful sense of purpose. The online game World of Warcraft is an example. The game allows you to create characters who inhabit a fantasy universe that is fun to explore and full of interesting creatures you can kill or be killed by. The game has its own economy and system for ranking players. Creating an avatar is fun. Entering a massive world full of other people who are exploring it along with you using their own avatars is fun. You even have a sense of purpose at first. Your avatar grows in power and gains skills. You can buy magic armor and weapons to aid you in completing quests throughout the game’s imaginary world. The problem with World of Warcraft is that the more you give, the more it takes. To get your avatar to the highest level possible takes an investment of hundreds if not thousands of hours of your life, as well as paying the fees to continue playing month after month. Let’s say you have the time, funds and motivation to climb the game’s ladder all the way to the top. What now? Your reward is that you’ve sunk hundreds to thousands of hours into becoming…what exactly?

You’ve solved no problems in your real world life. You’ve solved no one else’s problems in your real world life. The return on investment is that you are able to defeat powerful imaginary foes in an imaginary world. You may have made friends in the game, but most likely, you’ve never met them in the real world. That means you can’t hug them or share a cup of coffee, or go to an art gallery together. Fantasy can be a healthy escape, but in a modern implementation such as World of Warcraft it is more likely to become a debilitating distraction. Type ‘World of Warcraft addiction’ into Google and browse through the 4 million plus results.

Modern choices trade real meaning for instant gratification. Look around you next time you are in a restaurant. Chances are that many of the people you see will be looking into tiny glass screens instead of interacting with the real world. They are making a choice. Choosing a simulated world where everything is poised and posed over one the one that engages all five senses. One day maybe the simulated worlds we humans and our machines construct will have more depth than the real one, but that time has not arrived. If you are choosing the artificial worlds available in 2017, you are missing a great deal.

Life’s meaning cannot be boiled down to a single meme, or even all the memes you will be exposed to on Facebook during a year. Those memes are not beautiful choices. They distill complex real-world issues into easy to digest bites of information that will ultimately cause brain indigestion.

If you live an existence connected to the Internet, you live in the information age. Unfortunately, a great deal of the information that pops up each time you log on masquerades as something it is not: valuable to finding meaning.

The words you are reading right now are a narrative. There are armies of people motivated by different beliefs churning out millions of narratives at every minute of every hour of every day in the world I inhabit as I type out these words. Most of those narratives will not stand the test of time. They are the equivalent of your current haircut. Haircuts don’t age well. Ten years from now you will probably wonder why you wasted all that time. Choose well, because there are beautiful choices hiding in plain sight. Most of them involve getting out of bed and having an adventure. In real life, with people you can physically touch. That’s the essence of being human.

Next time you have dinner, power off your phone and look into the eyes of each person around the table. Tell them what you want to become and listen when they tell you what they dream of becoming. You’re not a Kardashian, and that’s a good thing. All those choices add up.