Not who, but what are you?

By popular request (as in 1 person...) here is a post about some of the work I have been doing lately.

Life is often busy.  Because of that I, like probably all of us, resort to quick, impersonal interactions with people.  When waiting in line at the grocery store I look at magazine covers and stuff like that, rarely acknowledging and even more rarely interacting with others in line.  When I get to the front of the line, I engage the clerk in a friendly, and largely meaningless conversation.

I struggle with this, however, because if you think about it none of these interactions mean anything.  None of them actually need another person.  For this reason for some time now I make the attempt to force their humanity upon those I interact with.  By that I mean that when I resort to depersonalized interactions with other people, they are doing the same thing.  In other words, both of us treat the other as an object of necessity and not a person, thereby also reducing our self to an object and not a human being.  So, when I interact with others, I try to avoid allowing them to reduce their self and force more than a mindless, automatic exchange with them.  When I say hello back to them and ask how their day is I always try to mean it.  I try to use their name.  I try to do something to pull them out of their automatic interaction, thereby also trying to pull them out of their automatic self objectification.

This same process happens in medicine.  It is not uncommon for a physician to interact with a patient and focus only on the symptoms of an illness that they have with a complete disregard for the patient's understanding of or experiences of those symptoms.  The patient is often reduced to a biological machine that is broken and needs to be tweaked in some way.  Patients also tend to learn this and so they will supply the information they think the Dr wants and act how they think the Dr wants them to - which often means they at that point see their self as a laundry list of broken biological processes and veil their self, their humanity.

Religious beliefs are very common in the United States, and as such, religious beliefs often undergird people's understanding of the world.  Those beliefs provide the meaning and color for their reality.  If a physician were to try and connect with a patient on a more personal level, beliefs and values may be one such personal dimension.  I have been finding, however, that how religious the patient population is actually has nothing to do with how often the physician talks about religion with patients or prays with them.  We could be talking about a physician who is in the middle of the Bible Belt and a majority of their patients are strongly religious or a physician on the west coast with a patient population who is largely non-religious.  It won't matter - neither impacts how often the Dr talks about religion and in some cases the more often a physician reports that their patient population speaks to them about religion the less often they reciprocate.  In other words, some dimensions of the patient's personal identity may not matter at all in clinical interactions and in some cases may be actively avoided by the Dr.  It is hard to avoid habitual, automatic, time saving interactions with others, but this may be costly on a personal level for both the patient and the physician in the long term.

Pruning Roses

Ever since this past fall I have thought our rose bushes out front needed a trim, and pruning is usually best done before it gets too warm outside.  So in a brief period of productive procrastination on a pleasantly warm afternoon a few weeks back I decided I should prune them.  Now, pruning is serious business.  First you need a sharp tool because you don't want to crush or tear the stalk; this invites problems.  Clean cuts are best for most things like life, whether it be plants, flesh or even emotions.  Second, you should probably allow for some time - don't rush it.  Third, know how and where to cut.  Cut the stalk at an angle - not straight if you can avoid it; above and near new or potentially new growth.  

Fourth, and hardest, you need to know what you want your rose bush to look like.  Lastly, related to this point, you need foresight - you don't need to know, or care for that matter, what you want the bush to look like at the end of that day, nor even the end of that week.  You need to know what you want that bush to look like for the remainder of its life.  In this, as I stared at the bush with on again and off again indecision, I was thinking about what it is I do with purpose that creates the 'me' not of today or next Friday but of years from now.  This got me to thinking about raising kids.  I wondered if I would have the same struggle choosing where to trim and prune for the purpose of shape, direction and growth with children as I did with my rose bush.  After all, what I trim today stops one potential bush from coming into being and brings another to life.  Years from now.  

Just then a neighbor walked by, returning home for lunch.  She said hello and said she couldn't believe I was pruning rose bushes without gloves on.  While it was a short, passing comment, I thought about this for a bit and decided that I liked doing it without gloves more than with gloves.  If for no other reason than that they seem to get in the way.  Just then I was brought back to the job at hand as I was stuck, for the fourth time, by a thorn.  Seemed somewhat poetic that the bush I was pruning stuck it to me again despite my best efforts.  But then again, they are not people or children lacking the foresight to the pruner.  They are rose bushes.   

Professional socialization, status and service

I thought about making this more than one post, but figured few might read this anyways so length probably doesn't matter, ha.  Also thought it was about time a post like this gets put up.  Cheers. 

I think that one of the biggest challenges in life is figuring out how we can pull ourselves out of our own insular daily lives that have very little, if any, impact on those outside of our direct circles of interaction.  How do we make our 'mark'?  This problem (maybe) is more challenging with professions that require a lot of training that is then repaid with more money and prestige   Like de Botton says, we will always struggle with status anxiety, and those with more status both have more to gain (a bigger continuum) and more to lose (higher ledge from which to fall).

One way to avoid the preoccupation with status attainment is to pair life with service - to intentionally and regularly expand our circle of interaction to include those different than ourselves and in need of something.  I used to (may still... jury is out) think that some professions have a much easier time solving this status/service issue than others.  Physicians are an easy example.  The work that they do is directly tied to serving other people.  Academics are also an easy example for the opposite reason - there is almost no connection at all between the work we do and serving other people, typically.  So the solution to insular status anxiety for academics makes it much harder to bridge passions, training and knowledge with helping others.  It almost forces academics to bifurcate their lives into profession and service which does not really fix the problem of connecting with other people because how can one connect with others when they are in that very attempt disconnecting with their self?

But it occurred to me over this past week as I have been thinking through part of the dissertation that this may be overly simplistic.  All professions have beliefs and values that are socialized into the professionals to different degrees.  For physicians, one of the strongest beliefs/values in that socialization process is that of valuing scientific thought and processes which naturally is linked with detaching people from the diseases and health problems that they have.  This detachment is at odds, in a sense, to empathetic and compassionate care for the person coming to see the physician.  It also tends to be at odds with the religious beliefs of the physician because the one puts compassion and empathy at the front and the other devalues and at times even ignores compassion because machines and science have no need for empathy -  even getting in the way at times.

So, like the academic struggling to connect their skills and passions with service to others, the physician in serving others struggles to connect two different socializations, two different modes of thinking and feeling, that contribute to how they think and feel - professional detachment and religious compassion.  Some feel the tension more than others.  Some ignore the tension and bifurcate their lives.  Others uncritically (I don't mean this in a negative sense) accept both professional and religious socializations as they are and the tension never comes to the surface - similar to Gould's non-overlapping magisteria.  

I think that many people struggle with some of this stuff when they think about what they want to do and accomplish in life.  How can my life make a difference?  How can I help people best?  Pretty much any profession has processes of socialization in place and these will also relate to these struggles in different ways.  At what point will one's religious beliefs overpower their professional socialization (if we can think of them in those terms)?  How can they happily work with one another?  Should they?

Despair re-defined

This past week at out Bible study we were talking about New Year's resolutions, so I have been thinking about that this past week.  Last night I was thinking about how it is interesting that we tend to phrase our resolutions in negatives - lose weight - or in thinly veiled positives - be more productive (stop being lazy), be more organized (stop being sloppy), eat healthy (stop eating junk).  What would it mean, instead, to think of resolutions that were indeed positive ones.  'Productive' ones.

We talked about the verse in Ephesians (2:10) that says, "we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."  In this sense, having a productive resolution then relates back to our identity in Christ.  For the longest time I thought identity issues were interesting but at the end of the day had nearly no meaning for me.  I always thought, 'yes, I agree that my identity is in Christ,' but this carried no real impact, no real change it seemed.  It was a statement that sounded Christian, warm and fuzzy.  

Then I came across a statement in Kierkegaard once about despair.  He thought that one is thrown into despair when they come to the realization that they cannot be better, cannot change, or cannot fix something.  We all have habits we get into, things we do, talk about, think about or whatever that is not in line with who we 'are' or want to be.  This is the whole point of the resolution almost.  But Kierkegaard had it right, I think.  We must see, at some point, that those failings are endemic to who we are, and this realization shifts how we see ourself not only now, but also who we see our self becoming and even re-defines who we thought we were in the past.  It changes all.  Even that statement is hard to grasp without having had the realization; having had the veneer over despair ripped off.  That is despair, and it cannot be shaken off.  It can, however, be taken from us.  This is what it means to have our identity in Christ.  He takes the identity of despair from us and gives us his own identity of being right before God.  It is only in this way that, for me, 'identity in Christ' is not only a fuzzy little Christian saying, but a reality that changes all.  Who I am, who I can be, and who I have been.  

So, the resolution.  It is, can be or should be positive because it is first rooted in an identity that allows one to be productive in life.  To do what God intends for our life.  This is only possible because we are able to really be that person created by God and not someone who tries, fails and gives up, or forgets and deviates.  Yes we do forget and we do fail, but we do not despair and be overcome by lassitude.  This is why forgiveness is not once and done, it is frequent and redefining.  

Peeps during the Reformation talked about vocation in a new way.  Before them, it was seen as a cloistered life and they changed it to be a life of meaning.  The work we do matters and does something real of worth in the world.  They talked about how we are God's mask in the world doing his work.  That is how the work we do can take on a much deeper meaning and be 'productive'.

So, the question remains then.  What positive resolution, direction or path is there for us this year and in life?  Probably a good thing to think about and struggle with.  I actually think the struggle is central to the staying 'on path.'  Maybe we should be like the old Rabbi Akiva, who wanted to pay a soldier to stand outside his door and ask him every time he passed, "Who are you, and why are you here?"

consistency and society

This is what happens when you think and study something a lot.  You see it everywhere.  I went and talked to a friend's high school class two days this week and I was trying to get them to think about how we internalize 'social stuff' and then that gets generalized over all our interactions so that our 'social worlds' are much more consistent and predictable.  This all happens unconsciously, seamlessly, and nearly instantaneously.  

Yesterday I was driving home from my impromptu office for the day at a coffee shop and was waiting at a stop light next to a fast food restaurant.  A guy walked out, wearing a shirt and tie underneath a somewhat over-sized sweater.  He was carrying a file folder with him, and as he left he crossed himself.  It caught my attention, because, I thought to myself, why would one cross their self as they leave a fast food joint?  Hope they don't get sick?  Nah, I bet he just applied for a job there.

At that point I stopped.  I think I was right, but the fact that I may be right about some random dude I have never seen or met is amazing.  Think about it.  I noticed him because he crossed himself, basically, in a setting that is not typical for that symbol.  This in and of itself takes an amazing amount of generalized social experience.  That is, I have accumulated a certain amount of experiences in my past that I noticed it, knew it was out of place, and potentially figured out what he was doing at that moment.  And that knowledge was unconsciously applied, without thought, to make sense of a new experience.  

I had to know what it means to cross one's self.  When, where and why crossing one's self usually happens, and that fast food is not the primary association for it.  Knowing what crossing one's self means in the right setting, I am able to figure out what it may mean in this setting.  Additional 'cues' were that people do not usually carry file folders with them, wearing what he was wearing, which was obviously not his typical clothing.  

All of this nearly random background information is instantaneously merged together, without thought, to give meaning to this experience.  Our ability to internalize 'society' brings consistency to my world.  It decreases unpleasant surprises or the feeling of being 'lost.'  It literally makes the world a meaningful place for me (yep, and you).  In other words, my expectations for what will happen is what brings meaning to my life.  Without our ability to 'expect' things and link the past to the present we would be unable to have the experience of a life characterized by coherence and consistency.  

'friends'

Recently a facebook 'friend' went through his entire friend list and wrote something about each person.  This is one of those friends that I never got to know very well but we had some meetings because of a project we were working on together.  Great guy.  Anyways, he did this with his whole list of facebook friends and my first thought was that I was really impressed he was able to do that.  Then my second thought was that it is very sad that I was impressed he could say something about all of his 'friends.'

I hope that the facebook meaning of 'friend' only becomes a term for something specific - a network connection on facebook - and not something more general - real life friends.  Sometimes technology has a tendency to shift our values and perceptions of reality, but I hope that I never am impressed that a friend of mine is able to give a short one sentence description of who I am.

Economics and moral boundaries

We all see ourself as being a certain kind of person.  We all want to be a certain kind of person.  This person is always juxtaposed with something else that is 'not me,' and being or becoming what we want to be always requires the use of actions and symbols to communicate it.  So, for example, I want to be a nice person so I may try to smile and say hello to people as I pass them.  Action.  I may want people to know and think of me as a Christian so I may leave a Bible in a visible place in the house - even if it is not read (ahh, mine isn't really visible and I do try to read it...).  Symbols.

It is for this reason that some theorists talk about the economy in terms of its inherent moral dimension.  What we buy and spend our money on, or don't for that matter, also says something about us as people.  It says something about who we are and what is important to us.  It isn't even just a by-product of purchasing things, sometimes it is a deliberate purchase made in order to reflect who I think I am.  It seems to me that this is something that is becoming even more prevelant, but that could just be me.  I bought a Mac because they were finally usable and because I perceived Apple as a smaller and a less domineering and controlling company that Microsoft.  Next I will probably buy a PC for the same reason.

This is just the beginning, however.  Social entrepreneurship has become something of a fad lately.  Now there is mircrofinancing that will help people in need put money to use and seems to make clear moral claims all the while still allowing one to invest money (such as these peeps).  Fair trade coffee allows us to still buy coffee, but at the same time make a moral demarcation that people deserve fair pay for their work - and I am able to make that happen.  (some friends roast some HERE)  The RED campaign also allows me to spend my money while also communicating to others that I am aware of problems in the world and concerned about them.  I can buy a pair of shoes while giving a pair to someone who needs them - the TOMS one-for-one idea.  Hey you need shoes and have the money to buy them, but in doing so can provide for someone who needs some.  Everyone wins and we all know what TOMS look like so we can know who is 'like us.'  It is a moral symbol that says something to me about who they are as a person.  You can buy a T-shirt, for a good price, that provides a dress shirt and tie for an ex-prisoner to help them get a job once they get out (HERE).  Or you can get an affordable pair of glasses - Warby Parker - that are stylish, sometimes too much it is true, and also provide a pair to someone who needs them.  You can give a 'goat' for a present, or other things like soap to help build wells and the economy (and the gift/project changes quarterly!).  There are also products out there specifically aimed to help people who need jobs.  For example, you can buy a laptop over anywhere, but if you buy one of these, you can help someone who has/is struggling with sex trafficking.

I think I like this trend.  What we buy and how we buy does do something.  It is more a question of whether it does what we want/think it does or not.  We may not think about what our purchases say about us, but I wonder if this lack of thought also correlates with who we are on some level as well.  Do we not think about it because it doen'st occure to us, or do we not think about it because it really ins't that important to us?

inconspicuous consumption

I have been thinking about how I/we buy things this week.  It mainly started after reading this article about books and publishing after Amazon.  Now, I buy a lot of books and Amazon makes it so easy to find them, order them, get them for cheap, and they offered my free shipping on any purchase no matter the total price because I am a student.  Mainly because of this last part, they have received a lot of money from me this past year.

It is easy to consume, but hard be consume well.  Responsibly.  Maybe even morally.  Emile Durkheim was a French sociologist back in the day and he worried about the effects of modernization on society.  In the pre-industrial revolution days, he saw society as being defined by mechanical solidarity - people are socialized and bound to one another because they were in community with each other and interacted or were aware of one another regularly.  After society modernized, this changed to what he called organic solidarity.  This was defined by a removed dependence on others.  I don't know who provides my gas for the car, but I need them, and so on.  We are all still connected, but in a different way; often unnoticed but still 'organically' needing each other.

I have mentioned before that I like Wendell Berry.  He is a critic of short-sighted modernization.  Being a farmer, this typically is aimed at agriculture, but he is aware of and talks about the wider implications.  This is a point of a great essay, where he argues that we try to solve problems by immediate and short-sighted solutions, or try to get unrealistic gains that don't take into account long-terms results.  (Solve problems with solutions that are the next problem to be solved.)  He thinks that we do not think about the fact that everything is connected in some way and changes, or failings, affect the entire system for better or worse.  (other related Berry posts talking about implications of this here and here... if interested)

My consumption is no different.  It is easy to not think about the authors, publishers, book seller, and all the other people involved with each of my purchases.  Amazon is arguably a less than responsible way for me to spend money, and my spending has implications for many other people out there that it is easy to forget about.  The other day I spent a bunch of time trying to find more responsible ways to purchase books because I think it is important for me to be cognizant of the effects of my spending.  This is the same reason we only buy fair trade coffee (I know, this list should be longer...).  My spending DOES do something, it is just a matter of whether that something is in line with how I ought to live or not.  We are blessed to be a society that has the option to consume; we are cursed to be a society habituated into doing it blindly.  And that is costly.

creation's groove

Alright, three posts in one day.  This is crazy.  I wanted to put this up though.  Put it somewhere so this thought can 'arrive' and make way for another in a way.  It is a bit long so, ehh.  I realize that we may not be able to actually talk directly with many that read this, so it may be a bit bewildering.  Sorry 'bout that.  More for the unknowing than the bewildering.  word.
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Life is such a roller coaster. Over the years there are ups and downs. Even over a matter of weeks or days. There are downs.

A while back I was walking on campus and had one of the more surreal experiences of my life. I was walking with my headphones in, listening to a favorite song. I have long had a soft spot for music’s ability to connect deeply to emotions, memories, and experiences. Because of this, I think music is able to take us to a place where memories, emotions, and desires in life can all crash together in a cacophony of thoughts.

It was beautiful out.  As I walked, I had the sudden feeling of isolation. There were people all around me that didn’t interact with or notice me at all and I didn’t interact with them. They all had their thoughts, feeling, emotions and desires - all of which were completely isolated and separated from me. It was deepened by the fact that I couldn’t hear them because of the music, but hearing only gives the impression of connection. Isolation is the reality; connection is the desire that doesn’t actually exist.

I think this is true.  We are all isolated.  There can be truths, philosophically cogent arguments, and Reality (with a big 'R') and other universalizing stuff, but in the end none of that matters. Experience is king and it is both rational and irrational. Connection is deeply related to the ability to connect, which is necessarily related to identities. Identities are endlessly individual specific and so each connection is going to be, to some degree, disconnected.

Disconnection is the problem.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer had an amazing lecture on creation and the fall. He talked about how the tree of life was in the middle of the Garden of Eden, and so life flowed from the middle of the Garden. This life of the middle was supplied by God. The middle, supplying life, was in tension with the limit of life that stood next to it - the tree of knowledge. In the fall, Adam and Eve ran from the life of the middle to the knowledge of the limit of man that was embodied by death. They pulled back and disconnected from God, and no longer knew each other. But God did not leave them in their broken and disconnected state, but sought them out and brought them back to himself.

Christ is now our middle, our life, pulling us away from the limits - the disconnection.

Life is a roller coaster with crazy ups and downs. Elation and tragedy. The temptation is to pull back, disconnect, question, and stew. But disconnection and isolation flows out of living from the self at the limit all the while our history is re-written by the re-centering of Christ. The struggles will continue, but Christ is determined to stop us from brooding at the limits of the dead-end road. The real answer to the pain is not necessarily an answer, but a connection.

Invisible.

Phenomenology is, I think, what got me interested in academics.  Phenomenology is the study of people and groups that focuses on their psychological states, cognitive dispositions, and how they see the world around them.  To put this in another way, it is a study of what world people see.  Bracketing the question of what Reality is (that is, with a 'big' R), this is essentially trying to figure out what reality people live in and what it looks like to them.  We all have differing views of what this is and as a result, genuinely different experiences of the big 'R' Reality.  We don't merely understand our experiences differently, we have different experiences; different realities are taken in.

Now, with that base laid out there (and I can guarantee both that it will likely not be the last time I write about that one and that this is actually going somewhere), I had an interesting conversation last night that got me to thinking a bit.  Baylor, like most places, has people who come in and clean the building after people leave for the night.  The lady who cleans our (the graduate students) office is a really nice lady who holds three different jobs to 'make it'.  I try to talk to her a bit whenever I see her in the hallway or when she comes into the office here to clean up.  There are a few other people in the room here that also talk with her, and last night when I got back from working out there was a note for her on the chalk board that they had left to get dinner and that she should come back later to talk.

She and I were talking about the note and she said that it was really nice of us to take the time to talk to her a bit and that it makes her feel appreciated and 'wanted'.  I told her that is how she should feel and so we got to talking a bit about how she feels working here at Baylor.  She was saying that most people here do not talk to her and most of the time pretend that she is not even there - even when in the same room as her.

Now, I am giving everyone that does not 'see' her the benefit of the doubt and am saying that they are not mean or purposely giving her the distinct impression that they are, as she put it, "better than her."  I am thinking that we genuinely live in different words from hers.  We live in a world that is distinctly removed from her life, her experiences, and more specifically, the work that she does.  So it comes down to invisibility.  She is, in a literal way, invisible.  Not seen.  Not noticed.  All three of her jobs are 'service' jobs, and I couldn't help but think that it is ironic that she is invisible to the very people that she serves.

This same idea applies to more than just people, but also to circumstances or situations in our society/world.  What do I not see that is and should not be?  This is and should be the challenge.  To both see and strive to make 'not be.'

The problem of belonging

I am not sure if this is a part of our generation, or our phase of our generation's life, but I think we have an interesting problem of belonging. We struggle to make connections with our direct community (that is, those linked to us through spacial relations - live close by, work with us, so on).

For example, sara and I typically go to one church where we don't know anyone and no one knows us. At the start some people came up and met us, asked for our numbers, and said we should have dinner together an what not. At first this sounded great - they were nice and maybe we could be friends. Turns out this didn't happen and I think they generally were nice people, but they were looking to create a welcoming church and not looking to make friends. After all, I am sure they already had some. Somewhere.

In addition to this we go (kind of) to this home bible study that is from a different church. There we don't really fit in too well with the people, but thought they must be cool because the church is interested in doing cool things (like be active in their community). Here, too, we seem to be unable to make connections.

All of this being said, we are almost completely unattached to the things that we are a 'part' of. We are freeloaders of the things they have to offer. We use their chairs for church, we use their cool/warm building as we listen to them talk/sing during the services - we sap vitality by not being actively engaged members. Our mere inactive presence makes, however small the amount, their general vitality decrease.

Three interesting things likely play into this. One, older generations tend to have a smaller radius of interaction. That is, they tend to shop closer to their home, have friends closer to their home, go to church closer to their home, and so on. Sometimes this difference is a little bit less pronounced in suburban places because everyone is a bit less concentrated in what they do. But, all in all, we tend to look less around us for the things we need. Second, we are much more likely to have multi-layered relationships to things. The first thing that I think of is church. It used to be that you went to one church, were committed to that church, and were active in that church. It is a bit more common now to go to different churches for different things and to be generally less involved in all of them. Naturally this leads to a decrease in general community and connectedness.

Third is the rule of homophily. People tend to seek out and relate to people similar to their self. When thrust into a situation where there are fewer people who are like you, you will likely interact and relate to them less. Maybe this also plays into why crazy people like us go to different church things with different churches and are generally still not involved. An interacting issue that plays into this also is the evolution of communication. It used to be that if you wanted any kind of interaction you would have to accept an increased number of deviations from your ideal 'type' of person to talk to (again, we like those like us). But now with cell phones, video chat, email, text messaging, facebook, and so on, we are able to cling to more homophilous relationships - even when those relationships are not ideal as far as spacial considerations go. We don't know our neighbors, but we sure do enjoy facebook-stalking people we have not talked to in years (some people probably do this more than others, but you know what I am saying).

All of this being said, many of us have a problem of belonging. It seems like I have heard more of my friends talk about not knowing many people or not having friends more lately and it just got me to thinking a bit. I hope that we all can become more 'embedded' in our communities (in a spacial sense), but I am a bit skeptical that this will ever happen to the extent that our parents have experienced. Or maybe some of our parents don't have it either and we just complain more. Who knows, but belonging seems to be so much harder work now than it used to be...

And nice work if you made it this far. :)

Snot and S.O.'s

I had the day off today. I felt a little spoiled as I had Friday and Saturday off as well though occupied by our intern retreat. All 34 interns had 2 days off to go hang out at a nice hotel together with our "SO's" (significant others) as they called them and each other. It was a really fun time of hanging out with each other, relaxing, and reflecting on our intern year thus far in residency and how we can work toward making the program better for ourselves, those that will come after us, and for our patients. Aaron also enjoyed hanging out with the other SO's and learning that random post-call confusion (see prior post) is common to most interns, haha. I feel better knowing that I am not the only one who wakes up thinking I need to make meatloaf for my patients.

So back to today. Two things on my mind. The first is motivated by a recent bad cold I've had since last Thursday. My nose was constantly running all weekend (and still is) and someone told me I should try to avoid blowing it, because then i would just produce more snot to fill in the room I'd just created. Now this came from another doctor, and it sorta makes sense, so I (the dork that I am) did a literature search about it. Couldn't really find much, although there is research that shows blowing your nose forcefully can create high pressures that forces the snot backwards into your sinuses and may lengthen or worsen your illness, so you should plug one nostril at a time and blow gently. I've been trying to limit my nose blowing, but sometimes you just can't help it. I'll see what else I can find.

Second thing on my mind as I was reading at a coffee shop relates to my anal retentiveness. Sometimes I find it hard to read things for fun. I feel like i should spend my spare time reading journal articles and text books to become a better doctor. I know that I do need to take time for myself, but I also know that I will be a better and more knowledgeable doctor the more I read, so therefore find myself sometimes feeling guilty when I am not reading enough. What struck me though is that I don't have the same guilt about not spending enough time in the Bible or in prayer. I know I should spend more time doing these things and know that I will be a better Christian and person in general if I do, but sadly I don't feel that same weight on me. Maybe it is because of the freedom we have in Christ or maybe because my patients in front of me are a more acute reminder to be better. Regardless, I hope that my drive to be a better doctor by reading more also turns into a drive to be a better person and Christ-follower by spending more time doing the things that will help that! A 46 day belated New Year's resolution I suppose.

Mompou!

Last night a few other kids in the department and I went to this piano 'concert.' It was a bit funny because we were expecting some Cuban and Spanish piano solo stuff and it turned out to be like a 45 min talk about complete boring randomness and how anyone can go to grad school. I think the guy was trying to inspire the undergrad kids to go on for more schoolin'. After fighting off a nap for 45 minutes, the dude played some music for us.

It was awesome. I love to watch people that are really good at music play. More than that, I love to watch solo performances. A lot of the time the piano is the best to watch, too. So much of the time they play these complex pieces totally from memory, and when they are playing, they are so enveloped into the music. Mompou is a Spanish dude that is know for his delicate and intimate compositions. The guy playing was super awesome. His expressions as he played made it all the more better because he would have these expressions that made it seems as though he was as surprised as I was at where the music was taking him. He looking like he wasn't sure what to expect from moment to moment.

I guess that is how Mompou wanted his music to be. He wanted his intimate composition to be carried through each time it was played. He didn't put measures on his sheet music to tell the musician the time count because he wanted the music to be a bit more open and inviting each time it was played. There was some influence of Flamenco music mixed in as well, which is heavily influenced by improvisation - another thing that Mompou tried to retain. So, maybe the guy last night really was waiting moment to moment to see what would happen.

Either way, I think it is always interesting all of the different way that people are able to, or at least try to convey their life to those around them. Many of us (if you are like me at all!) struggle to convey everything that is going on inside and experientially to those around us that we want to share these things with. I love to see when people are able to do this successfully in whatever manner they find fitting - music, art, photography, writing, ect. Maybe this is one reason why I have a love/hate relationship with photography. I may have something in my mind, but am rarely, if ever, able to share that. The love is in the potential, the hate is in the failings and frustration. Maybe it takes more time than I give it, too......

my friends live in my computer

I have been thinking of how we (I?) understand community now with the proliferation of technology in our world lately. It is funny that Hannah just wrote a blog about basically the same thing just the other day and beat me to it (and i totally stole this blog's title from her picture... i love that!). i admit that this post feels a little more negative, but i think there is still a happy ending. anyways, i think i have thought more about this since sara was out for the latest round of traveling because she didn't really have a reliable way to communicate with me while gone.

technological changes have always had a rather dramatic impact on how we see and interpret the world around us. i mean, one of the first dramatic and jarring changes was the onset of the printing press, without which there very likely never would have been the Reformation, let alone many other massive political and social movements that there was around that time. Then, there was the onset of the radio which allowed people to stay in touch with the rest of the world much easier and broaden their available entertainment. Then there were telephones, then cell phones, then the internet, then iPhones and smart phones, and churches with remote (?!) locations/'communities'.

I think in large part what most of this has done is to actually decrease community and connectedness to those around us rather than increase it in some ways. We now maintain connections with people that are based on relationships rather than proximity. In one way, I suppose, this has increased community because it has allowed ties to friends and family to remain stronger at a distance than they had in that past. but at the same time, i think it has decreased natural community. the connections in our communities, i think, in the end are actually weaker. now people can (and do) go to the grocery store and both not talk to anyone or even make eye contact in a filled store of people. it is 'acceptable' to be on the phone in a check-out line or something, staying connected with someone at a distance, while there is a living person standing in one's presence that is not even acknowledged (that one drives me crazy). both the person on the phone and their friend are feeling connected while connections are diminished and destroyed all around them.

it is a double edged sword, really. it is 'normal' and accepted and thereby becomes more common. maybe it is the result of our 'post-modern' society where reality is based upon, built by, and reinforced through communal relations. Maybe we build a world in which we live through our community, and when that community's context is changed by our physical location we tend to latch on to the old one because it is in that community that we make sense of the world around us and not within the new context. maybe that shift is too hard, or just plain doesn't 'fit' into our understanding of the world and clinging to the old is so much simpler than it ever has been in the past.

maybe this is part of the church's struggle today as well. social theorists say that one will convert to a new belief when the connections to the new group overpower the connections that they had maintained with another prior group or community. maybe now we have all of these people that go to church, but do not base their understanding of community upon the church but else where. thus, they go to church on sunday or whatever and then go back out into the world and do not live the identity that the church and Christ is working to build within them. identity will never change when there is a stronger relation elsewhere that reinforces something different.

alright, this is getting way too long way too fast so i will stop there! but these are just some thoughts that i had on community in the technological age while sara was out, and i really for one of the first time ever really felt the distance. really felt the community of two severed by absence. it was startlingly lonely, inducing a small feeling of being lost, and really made me feel a deeper longing for our relationship than on her other trips. i wonder how much of my relationships is based more on technology as the mediator rather than real authenticity. I am dependent. I do hope, and for the most part feel, that in the midst dependency there is also real, deep authenticity as well. actually, i know there is authenticity, but i do think i will pay more attention to the mediator from now on than i have in the past.

let's go fishing

Sorry the posts have been pretty infrequent lately. Lots of things goin on at our place, but then again some of you probably have more going on so who knows.

Anyways, I sometimes think about a quote from the movie, The Great Debaters, where the father of one of the characters says to his son, "We do what we have to do so that we can do what we want to do." I think that we all often need to have that something that we are working towards or that thing (or things) that keep us going or motivated. When that is missing, I think everything just gets that much harder because there is some kind of negative correlation to felt purpose in life.

The other day at work, I was talking to the guy who cleans the office as he was taking away my trash. His name is James. Ok, I don't know his name, but I am pretty sure it is James. Just looks like one. We always talk for a couple of minutes when he comes around because the guy just loves to talk. I think he is a bit on the slow side, but just seems to love life and is always happy. The other day it was nice out and he was super excited because he would soon be able to quit this job and go back to mowing lawns all summer (he is in like his 20s or 30s). This way he is able to work when he wants to and then spend all of the rest of the time fishing.

He has talked to me multiple times now about fishing and has even offered to take me and show me some 'spots.' I was a bit struck by the fact that there are so many people out there (ok, truth be told, I thought of me and not 'so many people') who do jobs that they don't really like and can often feel trapped by them. Here was James, super happy guy, doing a job that most people would hate, and being happy in it. I am working on having a better attitude about many of the things going on in our life, even if what I am doing at this very time isn't really something that I am interested in. It isn't fishing, but I do hope to move on to the fishing soon. After all, it is spring time in our lives and I think summer is on its way.