Saturday Rain: A Metaphor

***Originally written sometime in the fall of 2014***


Originally, the forecast called for intermittent showers for today... but in a wonderful turn of meteorological events it has basically been steady rain since about midday!  Nice!

**Please don't misunderstand what is to follow: I am not an unhappy man.  The following words are NOT a veiled attempt to wring unhappiness from my life through the guise of longing.  It's merely the exploration of insecurities, self doubt, and wonder about the various stages of my life**

I'm not nostalgic- I don't yearn for yesteryear like many people do.  I don't pine for original Nintendo, afternoons after school, or one piece pajamas with feet, or "good ol' days" in general!  
However, sometimes I feel lost in a chaotic and ever-pressing-forward world, a world that has no interest in pausing to wait for me or wait for me to catch a full and deep breath.  Through the years, I feel like I've spent too much time waiting, wishing, and passing time to get to....  what?  To get to what?

If remembered correctly, I yearned as a child to be a teenager, and then as a teenager to be 18, and then from there to be 21...  you understand the progression.  What happens when I crave to go back?  I don't just want to go back and relive the glory of past experiences, but also to relish and cherish those moments that I can certainly never get back.  These notions are certainly not unique to me...  and I won't spend time illuminating those depths here.

What I would like to probe is the notion that I wish to go back and learn from my younger self- learn how to be a better man.  

Learn from my younger self to be a better man???  What???  The following verse is something that's been kicking around my head for some time, and I think it helps kick off what I'm going to attempt to explain thereafter:

"Sometimes I urge to go back
To the man I was
When I thought I wasn't yet
The man I longed to be."

I agree, it's shrouded in double speak and conflicting statements. But it works for me. Essentially it's my attempt to describe how there are large parts of me that feel I was a better man at times in the past. There are a few specific checkpoints where I would grab the good that resided within me and deliver it to current day me. In a roundabout way, I think what I feel is that I've lost some good qualities along the way.... or that they've been obscured or tempered by a world that constantly needs more of me.  The pace quickens, and with that it seems my throat thickens.  Sometimes it seems (several exceptions, of course) that almost everyone I have contact with requires something from me.  Both of those scenarios rob me of my purity...  and the struggle that ensues to keep hold of my true self usually ends with me sacrificing my truest self.
So why then would I think my 18 year old self was a better man?  Why would I think so, considering the chaos of graduating high school and looking out over an incoming collegiate experience, that I would be better equipped to stay true to myself.  Though my parents may disagree, I remember being less selfish during those moments.  I remember being more present in the moments with friends, family, and other loved ones.  I remember having more time to enjoy the falling leaves, or a warm embrace from a loved one, or even the flickering candlelight during an evening of romance.

Am I lamenting the current culture we inhabit, and the way it sucks away precious time from our grasp?  For instance- am I ridiculing cell phones, social networking, 24-hour infotainment, brightly illuminated screens, and the constant murmur of immediate analysis of everything that happens in the world; or am I lamenting my inability to come to grips with who I've come to be? Am I unhappy with my current slate of indelible qualities- restlessness, selfishness, quickness to judge and argue, incapacity to empathize with loved ones and respected fellows, or even my penchant for living in the next moment rather than in the present.

Maybe it's simply the burden of succeeding in this world?  Maybe it's the price to pay for having a pretty good life!  Maybe that's the hook- that we have this constant struggle to achieve our authentic self- even if that means learning from our 20 year younger self.  Just maybe it is possible to have realized certain qualities at an earlier age, and then lost them.  Perhaps it has something to do with a certain freedom and youthful exuberance felt at that age that I was able to better assert myself and my true personality.  Maybe I can get that back?  To do so, will I have to garner more self confidence and sense of myself and my place in this world?  Will it come at some serious introspection, self criticism, and soul searching?  Do I need the world to sort of "get out of the way" a bit so I can feel freer to be me?  Are these expectations realistic or am I longing for something that can never happen?
Could it be that I was better at being me a long time ago? Does life currently have me preoccupied and unable to stay present within it?  Am I naive to think that I even did have it better figured out when I was younger. Maybe I wasn't aware enough to know where my faults lied. Maybe, as Bill Parcells is quoted, "When you don't know that you don't know, it's a lot different than when you do know that you don't know".  This quote, though applied towards rookie NFL players, could possibly apply to 18 year old me in the sense that I wasn't even aware of how I was acting or representing myself.  Now that I know that I'm weak in certain areas, maybe there's hope that I can improve....

One foot in front of the other....  looking back to appreciate, but not wishing away the future either.... here I come!

Seeya,
AM Son

Change

In the past several weeks I've had the pleasure to read and evaluate a few articles that deal with two disparate topics that encompass the same spirit: cultural change and how it is affecting or being affected by entertainment.

 I'm not going to commit a lot of time expounding on each individual article, but I'll offer a few thoughts about the state of adulthood in general.  My goal is to write about how these two ideas may be pointing to the same hypothesis and ancient proverb- "the more things change, the more they stay the same".  That is to say; we're always ready to criticize change and "progress", no matter the shape it takes.

The Death of Adulthood in American Culture

This article was all the rage a few weeks back when it was published.  I spent quite a bit of my free time first reading the article, and subsequently listening to analysis of it on podcasts, and then reading (indirect) responses to the original.


One of the large premises made by the author is that adulthood may be dying due to the loss of patriarchal leading roles on popular tv shows.  While I agree with the overall premise, I don't know about the thesis.  There seems to be a conflation of adulthood with parenthood...  of which I do not agree.  Our current culture certainly can point to cases of adults who are childless and parents who are certainly not considered adults...

The observation relies on the assertion that Tony Soprano et al are long gone and no male character is readily filling their shoes.  If the assertion relies on a "larger than life" character portraying violence, chaos, mystery, and/ or misogyny then it may be correct.  However, what about leading males like Frank Reagan (Blue Bloods) who portrays a strong family based role model, or Eric Taylor (Friday Night Lights) who encompasses the same role yet also becomes a mentor to adolescent football players and young men.  (To quibble about a small point, Friday Night Lights is no longer on TV, having ended in 2011, but the point remains the same.)  These roles are almost by definition more "adult" than either Tony Soprano, Walter White, or Don Draper.  What do either of those three do other than cheat, kill, evade, and promote immaturity?  Shouldn't "adulthood" be the promotion of compassion, responsibility, community, and empathy?  Shouldn't we then- by that definition- be stepping into a "more adult" era?  I don't get the premise, especially when considered against this line from the article:
"A society that was exclusive and repressive is now freer and more open".  This, to me, represents that we're closer to an adult based society, albeit with severe caveats and contradictions and a long way to go before we're firmly into adulthood.

What saved this article for me is certainly the overt self-awareness, made obvious by the last line.  Well done there!  Though I largely agree with this premise overall, I feel the thesis was lost somewhere between comparing "yesteryear", patriarchs, the current slate of "bro comedies" and also by inserting the sexist bent...  all of which Scott delves into with his paragraph which includes a comparison of Lenny Bruce and Adam Sandler.  To me, the reason for the loss of adulthood is the propensity to revel in gutter humor, silly amateur sexism/ misogyny, and the basic apathy for world at large, not because we've lost patriarchal heads of (TV) state.  These days, there is a cultural ambivalence for anything outside of ones own sphere, and a casual dismissal of intellect as nerdy, geeky, and loser-ish.  This is what pains me and makes me think we've lost our adulthood as a society and culture, not the loss of mob boss fathers and secret drug lord science teachers.

The point about women playing prominent roles also loses me for this reason- they're simply playing the same roles that men have inhabited for years now.  They're debased, they're goofy, they're overly sexualized, they're crude, they're immature, they're stupid....  dealing with the same sophomoric and topical subjects the bros are lamented for.  If women were stepping up (we may be seeing this with "Madame Secretary") and playing strong, responsible, caring, deep characters like Reagan and Taylor mentioned above, then I'd agree that women were beginning to assert themselves.  But when it's the same ol' romantic comedy and same ol' nasty comedy skit, I just can't believe that there's much different going on.  All of this is exemplified in the line, "Maybe nobody grows up anymore, but everyone grows older."


The author also asserts that the rise of young adult novels and reading material are responsible for the loss of adulthood in our culture, which in some ways is a tenuous point.  So what if writers are writing material that is of a superficial, supernatural, or immature nature?  We've always lamented that kids should read more, right?  We've always wanted our children to engage in something other than tv, pop music, or fashion, right?  I'm not saying that reading, especially if it is primarily of the Twilight, Harry Potter, or Hunger Games variety will cure all that ails, but I'm saying it's a start.  My only caveat here is that if these subjects are to pervade then what are we left with?  What will come of deeper, truer, more realistic tales and novels...  will they be left for another segment of the population entirely?  Maybe this stuff will be left for "true adults", those that are wearing gray hair and living in empty nests.  If so, it's sad because actual adulthood comes at us so much more quickly in these times, I'd had to see most of our young adults wasting away their early adult years consuming the same old trite fiction which focuses on hotness, vampires, magic, and irresponsibility. (Note- blanket statements aside, some of the stuff they're reading now is certainly quite complex, and stuff I find myself drawn to as well!)

There is a certainly conversation to be had that urges all of us to foster a depth and breadth of conversation, reading, and media consumption that goes beyond the "bro comedies", "hot or not", and "slapstick humor" that pervades the national cultural landscape.  That is probably never more true than it is today, and in that sense adulthood may be extinct.  However, I don't assert that the loss of Soprano, Draper, et al are the sole determining reason for this.  I hazard a guess that it has more to do with the "stupification" of our culture in general, not necessarily the entertainment zeitgeist that has lost its way.  As a general rule, we're a more immature society now than ever before.  Yes, we need to grow up, but not because we're enjoying the things we identify with as pleasurable, but because we need to pay attention to more of the world at large.  Weather it's wars, politics, ecology, history, or science and math, our current crop of young adults simply care less about what's happening in the world around them.  They're tied intimately into youtube, their iphones, snapchat, facebook, instagram, twitter, ESPN, etc, but they've got even less perspective than ever before.  Jon Stewart is trying, but there's just too much titillation elsewhere for any of them to bother...

As I said, just a few words here haha!  At the end of the day I agree with Scott's assertion, however I disagree with his reasoning.  Yep, we're Soprano-less and Draper-less today, but they were never the arbiters of adulthood anyway...  they inhabited a fantasy land that we lost ourselves inside of.  As for today, be it male or female, there are no takers for the throne of adult role model- period.

------

What Happens to Literacy When the Internet Turns Into a Giant TV Station?

This one is less a cultural touchstone and more a one-off take from a tech perspective- almost too heavy from the tech angle.

My inclination is to agree that the web is turning us into more voracious "viewers" than "readers"...  I know that I sometimes gravitate to videos over articles, especially when researching a product, game, or theory.  However, I still enjoy the pull of a great web-based written article that takes its topic seriously.  This idea is reflected in this line from the article, "communication in the 21st century has become increasingly multimodal".  I certainly can attest to that- as asserted above- but is this notion positive or negative overall?  I don't think the article does a great job of proving or disproving the idea, but it's a conversation starter for sure.  It also plays into the theme of this blog post- change.

Change is evident in all our lives.  As discussed above, change comes in the form of our media consumption as a culture.  The first article/ topic makes a more direct assault on maturity as it relates to media consumption and our personal foundations, and the second posits more a "topic to discuss" about the specific means with which we consume that media.

While I agree that our culture has become a bit more immature and less "adult-like" in many ways, I don't agree with many of Scott's reasons for it.  My observations indicate that we're simply less concerned with larger matters at hand and would rather concern ourselves with our own sphere as much as possible.  In relation to that note, I think we also seek out media that is "easy" and entertaining, rather than information that begets deep thinking, conversation, and/or self evaluation.

Life, society, culture, and media are evolving and dynamic.... I'm sure we will get there.  However, just as potholes litter a the literal road on a physical adventure, the theoretical potholes of media rabbit holes are still obstacles to maneuver within and around.

Seeya,
AM Son

Allegiance

"They say that when it comes to choosing heroes,

It's best to pick the ones who aren't around.

If you choose among the living,

You tend to have misgivings

When your hero lets you down.

He might have a bad night in your town"              
     --Heroes (John Gorka)




There is value in the above song lyric. I see it as a reminder to tread carefully when hitching my wagon to anything. Having reason for why I "back" something is prudent, practical, and allows for a change of opinion in the future...


The above song lyric is applicable not just to "heroes", "idols", etc. but also to things, people, or enterprises we choose to champion, look up to, follow, support, or fanaticize over.


We can't expect all products we buy, causes we support, people we associate with, or *ahem* teams we root for to be squeaky clean and have no skeletons hanging in their closets. I know I certainly don't live in a glass house.


So, I will continue to support the things that I do for the reasons I choose. If and when I see fit to discontinue support for a certain thing, I will have my reasons.


Unfortunately, we don't always have the luxury of "picking the ones who aren't around"...




In a poem titled "Song of Myself", Walt Whitman wrote,



"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

This thought is brilliant. It allows for thought to be a living and breathing mechanism of ones soul. It allows for growth, learning, and improvement. So, I say to myself... "have your reasons- be able to explain yourself, and be ready to change your mind if you feel genuine reason to do so". Until then, stay the course and do not let others sway you from that path. Do not let the white noise distract, or the haters hate.

I've always told myself, when presented with situations like these:
"what does one see when looking at the world through a microscope...?  -small things."



Sounds good!



Seeya,

AM Son



Written while listening to the Boyhood Motion Picture Soundtrack (Summer Noon- Jeff Tweedy)