New Year Resolutions
Getting older has its advantages. I don’t just mean the older and wiser issue, though there is plenty of truth to that. What I really mean is that there is a degree of reality and truth that stems from a clarity that escapes us when we are younger. I’m sure there are people who cannot help but delude themselves in their dotage so as not to spend their waning moments wallowing in regrets, but for me it is the exact opposite. I see no point in deluding myself and find that there is simply no time left for denial. I am what I am and I have done what I will mostly do. And for the most part, I am satisfied with all of that. To be very Descartes-oriented, I still think, therefore I must still be, but most of my time is spent in relatively minor pursuits and lots of recollection (which I define as the better half of regrets).
I have come to the realization that not everyone thinks like I do…thank God for that, right? But that is less about agreeing with what I believe and more about the manner in which the thought process occurs. I have previously observed that there are random thinkers versus my sequential thinking approach. But also, some people like me gravitate to an array of pursuits, a portfolio of activities, to stay engaged and busy. The agility that forces on my brain is perhaps the biggest benefit of that approach. Having been a person who recognized and valued the power of focus, I have now come to understand that focus has an intensity that works less well for me as I try to find more serenity in my existence. Focus still has its place, but I feel I can toggle that on only when needed and spend most of my time blissfully hopping from one task to another, giving me both some variety and simultaneously acting like a flexibility drill for my mind.
Men like to make fun of women in their multi-tasking ways, but maybe women have been getting stronger through multi-tasking than men realize. Where men have traditionally had one major task of providing for their families, women have often had the “all other” categories of tasks to undertake since the complexity of life has simply made day-to-day life multi-faceted while making many of those activities less optional than not. Now I find myself having a broader and broader array of things that I need to do on any given day. It’s funny, it all makes me think about why humans pair up by nature to get themselves through the struggles of life. Most of the western world pairs up in twos as the optimal configuration. Obviously, some cultures have preferred polygamy, but its unclear if that is driven by efficiency or is just a function of excessive procreation drive. In modern life, I would argue that self-actualization demands have risen to the point where it is hard enough to reconcile two people’s wants and dreams, that adding in more psyches to the mix is more of a suboptimal complication than a benefit.
I think that may be behind the de-nuclearization of the modern family. The tug and pull is characterized as the need for a support network in a tougher world versus a tendency for everyone to have enough awareness of their options to find conformity in a family unit to be too difficult to achieve. When in the Arab Middle East, I learned that families build their homes vertically with each new level put in to accommodate the next generation, built on the foundation of the underlying family home. Then think about a show like Everybody Loves Raymond, where Ray Romano’s parent’s proximity (across the street) is the basis of most of the family sit-com. In contrast, think of the Amish. They generally find a larger family that can jointly work the farm as the best way to prosper, which is similar to many other more fundamentalist followers from any religious sect. But those family members are mostly unaware, presumably mostly by choice, of the options offered by the modern world and are thus less torn by the pull of divergent self-actualization desires.
Like all things, too much of a good thing is not always such a good thing. Its hard to say where the limits exist for what we like to call inalienable rights, which is where most of us would place self-actualization. Is there a limit to the value of freedom or liberty for instance? At one time or another, we have all had those “thanks, I needed that” moments when we realize that some constraints can be better than no constraints. Discipline is a dual-edged sword. Too much or too little make for sub-optimal outcomes. This is all made more complicated for people because we all mature at different paces and to different degrees. And what I consider maturity is the level of awareness of reality that allows one to become self-sufficient What level of “maturity” is optimal is itself a valid question since excess maturity can be easily conflated to being inflexible, unyielding and perhaps even stagnating. The world is made up of a vast array of people with an equally vast array of developmental characteristics. The spectrum of practicality and whimsy is such that it too deserves some respect for a balanced approach. There are times when I want to be more practical and there are times when I wish I could abandon those ties that bind and be more footloose and fancy free. Who among us does not sit on that fence occasionally?
We just watched the new season of White Lotus on HBO. I wondered aloud to Kim last night why exactly we find this sort of series interesting. The plot is pre-established and the paths of the various character sets in getting to that conclusion are little more than mundane and recognizable from our own experiences. And perhaps therein lies the answer. We are all faced with the balancing act or conundrum of how much practicality and how much freedom our lives can and should tolerate. What are the trade-offs between realism and dreams and how do we all reach those conclusions and suffer those consequences. When Ralph Edwards came up with the idea for the radio game show Truth or Consequences in 1940, he may or may not have realized that it would become one of the foundational prime-time programs of the new-fangled media called television in 1950. The juxtapositioning of truth and consequences in a game format is very telling about how people in modern life must organize their worlds. You can take it all very seriously (there is money involved, alter all) or you can treat it like a frivolous game that is a mere distraction. Everyone will approach that differently and react differently to the situations posed. I suppose that is what made it all such a good piece of programming that drew a loyal TV audience for the first 38 years of the art form. Since Bob Barker hosted the show for 21 of those 38 years, and his name is the essence of the come-hither promotional approach to television, it is interesting that he went from that platform to The Price is Right for a run of an added 35 years, which almost perfectly delineates the shift in modern man from being existential to being economic in his natural state.
As I inch my way towards 2023, I find myself thinking about how I live my life of the mind now in “retirement” and I find that I am drifting gradually away from the economic and more towards the existential. I cannot decide if this is some advanced enlightenment that has overcome me or some natural aging process that has simply overtaken me. Either way, I am resolved to find more balance and less excess in all aspects of my self-actualizing existence…whatever in hell that means.