I went in to get my every-four-weeks haircut yesterday. I have a rather-delightful young woman who does a great job for me every time (and for what she charges, it’s only fair). Of course, during the haircut, it’s not really typical to “just sit there.” Talking to each other is normal and expected.
This time, I started out the conversation by asking whether or not she’d watched the vice-presidential debate. And I offered up some of my own strongly-worded observations about the entire Palin debacle. Additionally, I included a description of the interactive manner in which I’d participated in the event (“Hack the Debate”), remarking that one of my comments (“tweets”) had appeared onscreen (on the Current television network).
During our chat, I discovered that she’s one of those rare “undecided” voters we keep hearing about. (Which was amazing news to me. I didn’t even know I knew anyone like that.)
It was only when we were just about finished up with the haircut that she asked me about work…to which, I sighed. And said that things were about the same.
She then made a remark that I found quite curious: namely her observation and question that “work really consumes you, doesn’t it?”
I found that so strange! I had just spent over a half-hour talking about national politics, my health issues and progress, the weather, and so on…never once mentioning work. And she still came up with the opinion that work consumes me.
I have no idea how I had transmitted that message. For over a year now, I have talked with her at length about my relationships, photography, blogging, health ups and downs, chronic pain, travel, cell-phone users, the state of Oregon, my impressions of Marin County and its bicyclists…well, you get the picture. I even remember one appointment when she asked about work and I suggested we talk about something else.
That she would identify me as someone “consumed” with work entirely baffles me. And I told her so. I countered with the belief that my job is one with a high-difficulty level, but that I aimed to have a balanced life – engaging in many interests outside of work. For example, I had just finished describing for her the routines I engage in every day to focus on my physical health.
This has set me to wondering about, again: what I say, how I say it, and how it’s received.
Communication. It’s such a mysterious process. Truly it is.
Update on October 9, 2008:
An anonymous reader, a very close friend, writes in affirmation:
I don't think work consumes you. I think society consumes you. And your desire to understand it, cope with your understanding, and help make it right...
Within these pages, I continue to visit and revisit the themes of our culture’s relationship to cell phones and the general level of noise pollution we’re all subjected to on a daily basis. There are precious few places to go, it seems, to escape and find some peace and quiet.
I suppose part of my personal issue here is that I am a rather quiet guy myself…a quality that happens to go along with my reputation as a good listener. Everyone says so. For example, when we talk, I look you in the eye. And I pay close attention. I don’t interrupt. I strive to really grasp the meaning of what you’re trying to say to me. I ask questions of you to help deepen my understanding. I try not to insert my opinions where they’re inappropriate or unwanted. I really hope I don’t say anything to discount your ideas and/or feelings. And then: I’m just plain silent and attentive while you’re speaking.
Simply put, I’m a highly-skilled active listener. My training as a counselor, years ago now, has served me well in developing and maintaining a healthy set of communication skills. In fact, I have even been characterized as “scary” in this area. A female friend of mine once told me that I likely frighten other women away…since people are generally not very accustomed to being paid attention to so intensely. “Your ability to be present is very rare and actually a little scary,” she said.
Today, in the Sunday edition of the Marin Independent Journal, I found a reprint of an article from the Vallejo Times-Herald. The headline is “Performers Confront Cell Phone Offenders,” and the piece talks about entertainers’ issues with folks who show up to performances (plays, musical events, stand-up comedians, etc.) without turning off their phones. This is, of course, maddening for all concerned. For example, as an actor, how do you continue in your rhythm if a cell phone rings during a dramatic moment of a live on-stage performance?
My question for the day is: how does this very dynamic play out all the time in our own lives? How are we supposed to keep our personal rhythm when all anyone wants to do is pay attention to those electronic devices hanging from their belt, rattling around in their jacket pocket, or buried in their purse?
If we, as human beings, ever had the ability to really pay attention to each other, it seems to have totally evaporated. The article I read today contains a quote from comic Johnny Steele who characterizes this as a “national discourtesy epidemic.”
I absolutely agree. For all our gadgets that supposedly keep us connected, we are, in reality, totally disconnected. I submit that we just do not know how to be present with others: how to be present withjust one other person. I believe we’re always paying attention to something else.
I was having dinner the other night with a long-time friend who I hadn’t seen in a few years. I was trying to explain the stresses related to employment changes, and the physical challenges of my life, in recent times. I was unsuccessful in my communication efforts. During the conversation, I needed to halt at one point as the cell phone on his belt apparently vibrated: he held up his finger and then checked a test message that had just come in. And then, while trying to convey my mood and worries about these challenges, the message I got? My feelings don’t really matter: all I need to do is think of all the poor folks in Bangladesh who have it worse than me…and I should perk right up.
Truly, I believe, we’re a disconnected society, unable to care about or pay attention to each other. And I know it’s probably not the fault of cell phones, or TVs or computers. But regarding keeping us connected? They do just the opposite.
Turning 60 is not an insignificant milestone. It sure has me thinking a lot lately, given that I’m now about three months into my seventh decade.
And it appears that I’m not the only one with the implications of baby-boomer aging on my mind.
Last month, in an op-ed piece entitled “Second Acts,” Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman told a small part of the Al Gore story…in essence arguing that, in the aftermath of his loss to George W. Bush, Gore was able to rediscover his true calling. Goodman believes that he “found himself by losing himself – literally losing – and being liberated from ambition.”
Further, Goodman suggests that Gore is blazing a new trail for the baby-boomer generation. “Consider the new sixtysomethings,” she says…
…Next Friday, Hillary Clinton turns 60 and her second act is running for president. And when the new Harvard president, Drew Gilpin Faust, 60, met with her Bryn Mawr classmates last summer? Many were talking about leaving their “extreme jobs” just as she was installed in hers.
Baby boomers are the first generation that can look forward to such a lengthy and (fingers crossed) healthy stage of later life. They are as likely to be talking about what they want to do next as about where they want to retire. Never mind all those declarations that 60 is the new 40. In fact, 60 is the new 60.
For me, at age 60, it’s certainly not the case that I’m talking about retirement. As always, in my life, it’s about what to do next.
Not that the question of “what to do next” is, I hope, going to come up very soon (given that I’ve, just recently, totally changed my life yet again). It’s just that, like Gore, in losing, I seem to have found a new direction. Hopefully one that will sustain me for some time to come.
As I’ve written about before, I was forced to reconsider my life almost from the moment the Governor of Oregon dismissed the entire State Board of Higher Education on November 13, 2003. With that single act, after nine years as a policy-wonk type, I needed to find someplace else to land, something else to do. As with our former Vice President, who found a different ladder to climb after some time in the wilderness (how’s that for mixing metaphors?!), I too spent some years out there in the wild, trying to come to grips with the realities of loss and seeking to find a way to let go. Specifically, my path of soul-searching consisted of three years and two temporary jobs at different dysfunctional institutions. Although they took a high personal toll, the growth-providing experiences I had from 2004 to 2007 laid the foundation for finding my version of the “extreme job” …which ultimately came within a month of my 60th birthday.
Not that my current place is the be-all and end-all. Surely it isn’t. When I was recently providing an outline of my non-linear, wayward life to the young woman who now cuts my hair, she seemed genuinely curious about all those twists and turns. At one point, I disclosed that I had very few regrets, but that “if I had it all to do over again,” I might try to focus my life more on writing and photography. When she suggested that “it’s not too late…”, I balked. I indicated that I can write and do photography and pursue my current professional path: that changing directions entirely, at this point, might just take more energy than I have.
But, who knows? I don’t know how long I’ll live. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned thus far, it’s that you can never know what tomorrow will bring. As Ellen Goodman states, “…under the old compact, sixtysomethings were supposed to get out of the way and out of work. They were encouraged by financial incentives and prodded by discrimination. Now we are drawing blueprints for people who see themselves more as citizens than seniors.”
In all honesty, I don’t have any idea when the next fork in the road will present itself to me. For now, though, despite all those aches and pains, I am a citizen, not a senior.
Shortly after I posted this article, I received an email asking for permission to reprint it. The request came from Frédéric Serrière, editor of theMatureMarket.com website. I gave the green light, and today I discovered that this piece had, indeed, been published. You may find it by clicking here.
What if I had been born with more imagination, talent, artistic ability or intellectual capacity than was granted to me? What if I’d grown up to have more wisdom than is mine?
What if I had more depth as a human being?
What if I hadn’t been born working-class in the Midwest but rather to wealth in mid-town Manhattan? Or to college professors in Berkeley?
What if I’d not been so slight in stature that I was typically the last kid picked for a team? What if I were tall and strong, with perfect teeth and an infectious, extraverted personality? What if I’d had charismatic good looks in this life?
What if I’d lived one of the great love stories? How would my life be different if I’d found my soulmate early in life and had a loving, devoted partner by my side through all my struggles?
What if I’d not had to cope with chronic pain for most of my life?
What would my life be like today if even one of these things had been different?
These are thoughts I have on occasion. Typically, I’ll go down this path when I’m feeling a little sorry for myself or things are just generally not going well. That’s not really the case at this moment, though, because what currently brings on such mental meanderings is that I’m wondering how it is that I ended up here. After 37 years an Oregonian, here I am, all of a sudden, a Californian.
I guess the most terrible thing that’s going on right now is that I’m missing “home.”
I was on the phone yesterday with a friend who was, herself, 19 years an Oregonian — and has just moved to Pennsylvania to take on a new job. At the other end of the line I heard her teenage daughter come into the room and ask who she was talking to, to which she replied, “my friend Jim, in California.”
Jim. In California.
How weird to hear those words.
How could this possibly be?
Earlier this year I was a finalist for a position that would have landed me in one of my favorite little college towns on the planet: Corvallis, Oregon. From the moment I discovered the announcement, I pictured myself there, living back in Corvallis: my home for a full twenty years (1970-90).
What if I’d gotten that job?
I guess in a parallel universe, I wowed them at the interview and ended up there. But in this version of reality, I experienced another outcome: needing to move on from the rejection and continue with the interviews. I subsequently traveled to places like Burlington, Vermont; Palm Desert, California; Vancouver, Washington; and Kentfield, California…ending up with the job offer that landed me in my current location.
So here I am: now a Bay Area Golden Stater…wondering what life has in store for me in this place…and having an ache in my heart for a land I call home.
If you’ve been checking in here and wondering what’s up, it’s pretty much the same ol’ same ol’…I’m still spending an incredible amount of time and energy devoted to the job search (…and I don’t have nearly enough of those commodities to devote to photography, writing & blogging!). There is a little time to wander around during my travels, though, and I took this photo (I like the curve) while up in Portland last Monday. Even though Mt. Tabor was not exactly in the neighborhood of my hotel or interview, I still made some space on a balmy Monday evening to take a stroll around one of my favorite Portland parks.
One of the “time-out” activities I did this weekend was to watch the DVD entitled “The Secret.” In case you haven’t heard of this production, it’s one of the latest vehicles for promoting the new-agey kind of belief system (the “law of attraction”) that “like attracts like” or “thoughts become things.”
