Divine rituals of the daily routine

My children remind me of the importance of ritual that stems from daily routines. If things don't happen in pretty much the same way every morning, there is a ripple in the force that turns into a Tsunami by their bedtime. Sometimes it is the ruts that keep us on track.

It is not that I don't like variety. But there is something soothing about sameness uninterrupted by the unexpected. As a public transit commuter, I take the same train at the same time every day and try to sit in the same car (if not the same seat) for each trip. I follow the same path from the train station to my office and turn on the lights in my office in more or less the same pattern each day.

My rituals are not so rigid that I would classify myself as OCD, but they are fixed enough that I get agitated if they are disrupted. For example if for some reason I can not take my usual train home because of a meeting and have to take a later train it snowballs into a major routine shift that messes with my psyche. For one it puts my ritual stop at the gym on the way home from the train station in jeopardy. I must then decide whether to skip the workout (which messes with another ongoing routine), cut it short (which reduces the effectiveness of the routine) or workout as long and then mess up the routine at home with my children (which ripples into the dinner and bedtime rituals they are ingrained in).

Everything is connected.

I know rationally that there is no cause and effective connection between the rituals of routine and reality. Stepping on a crack really doesn't break your mother's back, but who wants to do it intentionally just in case there is something to it? We learn as children that there is magic in ritual. You get a good grade on a test because you had your lucky rock in your pocket, not because you studied or have a good memory.

Churches know there is magic in ritual. It bolsters faith much more than miracles. And even miracles usually have their root in ritual or routine.

There is even routine to how I break up my routine. For example, I alternate the color clothing I wear from day to day. If I wear black slacks and shoes one day, I need to wear brown the next. I have one belt, but it is reversible black and brown.

Television is fraught with ritual and routine. How many people build their schedules around a favorite program? Okay, DVRs are changing that, but still you need to record "your shows" and watch them at "your time" to find that peace that a routine provides.

Movies, television and books repeat the same plots over and over because that is what comforts people. Villains lose and heroes win. If some rebel writer comes along and reverses the role, they are merely following the ritual of rebellion. Doing the opposite of a routine is simply another routine. Being consciously different is the no different than being subconsciously the same.

Perhaps it is nature that is the source of our need for ritual and routine. Everything in nature comes in waves and patterns that repeat and cycle like clockwork. Don't get me started on Fibonacci numbers (a numbering system based on the rate at which rabbits reproduce). Perhaps our daily routines and rituals are our macroscopic mimicking of the microscopic world of the atom and subatomic particles. We are pulled along the orbit of our lives by the gravity of our routines.

So give us this day, our daily routine and forgive us our rituals. For they etched on our DNA and keep us going down that middle road I've been harping on, to enlightenment.

Sometimes you're the dog and sometimes you're the flea

It's debatable whether it is better to be the dog or the flea. Personally, I think the flea has the advantage in most cases. He is smaller than the dog and pretty much flies under the radar. The dog may think he is in control of things, but the flea is the one that makes him stop and scratch ever now and then. And the bigger the dog, the more fleas and the more the dog has to stop and scratch. If you are a smart enough flea, you bite and move, bite and move. That's the key to survival.

It's a pretty basic philosophy that you can apply to most business situations. It's very similar to the philosophy that the soldier who sticks his head to far out of a foxhole has the greater likelyhood of getting it shot off.

I've embraced this philosophy pretty much my entire career. Going unnoticed has always worked for me. I have climbed the corporate ladder in a zig zag pattern that has to date avoided snipers. It hasn't showered me with a great deal of prestige or respect, but there has been a certain amount of stability. There' s always food on the table and a big screen television to watch.

Oh, there was a time that I considered being successful. But I weighed all of the pros and cons and figured being mediocre was a more realistic ambition. Sometimes you just have to lower the bar to achieve your goals.

I know this philosophy goes counter to most of the inspirational mumbo jumbo you are bombarded with on a daily basis by mass media. I'm just here to ask you to consider that maybe, just maybe the glass really is half empty. And just considering that possibility frees you of all of that pressure to put a positive spin on all of the crap floating around you.

So next time you are tempted to say, "Have a nice day," to someone (which is pretty much like rubbing their face in the fact that they won't) why not simply say, "Hey, have whatever kind of day you can." Just those few simple words of indifference could make a difference. Or not.

Peace.

Bad habits

I suppose "bad habits" is a bit over stated. It just seemed to match the photo better. I was just thinking this morning about how easy it is to become set in my ways about doing things a certain way.

I have been riding the train to work for about a month now and already I have got into the habit of parking in the same spot at the station, standing at the same spot on the platform and rushing in when the train doors open to sit in the same seat. The other day someone was sitting in "my" seat and I almost screamed at them. If I was a dog, I think I would have lifted my leg and marked the damned seat right then and there.

But I am a civilized individual. I just muttered and glared and slunk off to find another seat that I'm sure belonged to someone else as well.

I think we cling to our petty little patterns because there are very few things we can actually control in our lives. And I've never been an individual who embraced change for change's sake.
This is ironic since I also get bored easily.

This is not to say that it is impossible for me to change or break habits. I chewed my fingernails for almost 45 years and then stopped last spring before my wedding because I was ashamed of how my fingers would have looked in the wedding photos of our hands and rings. I haven't chewed them since.

I also used to be a notorious packrat. I couldn't throw anything away. The past six months or so of merging households and moving into a new house has really changed that. And it's not just circumstances that have changed. I don't want tons of stuff anymore. Proof: on my recent trip to Reno, I didn't buy a single tacky souvenir. In the past I would have come home with at least two t-shirts and a clock with dice on the dials.

Maybe it's an age thing. My priorities are shifting along with my body parts. But at least I think I'm proving that, although you may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, you can at least paper train him.

The future is tomorrow's past

That title is just trite enough to make it on a bumpersticker. I'm not really big in predictions of the future anyway. Being a proponent of the theory that we live in a universe of many universes in which an infinite number of realities are taking place simultaneously, I don't think predicting the future makes sense. Even if you could predict the future, who is to say it would be for the world you are living in at the time.

This is not to say that I think that what happens in the future is random. I think you can have a pretty good idea what is going to happen next based on what happened last. We build our lives progressively based on what actions we've taken before. So, this argues for planning for the future but accepting that we can't really control it completely.

I suppose this discussion is a pretty good follow up to my blog about discovering the meaning of life. There was one section in the meaning of life Web site that addressed the question of why bad stuff happens to "good" people. You could simply say, "shit happens" and shrug it off or you could start looking for meaning behind it. Someone inevitably says, "things happen for a reason." I would humbly suggest that there is a reason why things happen, but they don't necessarily happen for a reason.

For example, several years ago an acquaintance of mine's brother was sitting at a stop light in downtown Seattle in a Volkswagon bug. Before the light changed a Chevy sedan crashed through the side of a fifth floor parking garage and fell on the Volkswagon bug, killing the unfortunately driver. The reason the Chevy sedan flew off the parking garage was that the driver had a heart attack and lost control of the car. A few seconds earlier or later and the Volkswagon would likely have been on it's way and the driver would have been unaware of the tragedy.

The point: it didn't happen for a reason. There was no moral judgement being cast. As far as we know, neither driver was a bad person. Oh, perhaps the person who had the heart attack could have taken better care of themselves. Or maybe the driver of the Volkswagon could have chosen to take the bus, but there was no supernatural malice involved.

It makes you think, though. Despite your best planning efforts for the future, you never know when a car (or a house as the "wicked" witch of the East discovered) will fall on you and change your future. But you can't plan for the unexepected or you would be afraid to leave your house. And even if you never left your house, who is to say it won't be the house that falls on the wicked witch?

So to use as many cliches as I can, that's life. You play the cards you are dealt. You got to know when to hold and know when to fold. If life gives you lemons, squeeze them. Or something like that.

The important thing is to keep going. Then again, we are all going to die eventually. But what is death? Death, my friends, is the topic of another blog entry...in the future.

Face it...

Think of all of the faces we all have (no this is not another koan about showing me the face you had before you were born or what is the sound of one hand clapping). If you live in a city of any size, you know what putting on a sidewalk face is. You know that you have to have a certain face available for riding public transit, a certain face when you are shopping at a mall, a certain face for work, a certain face for a job interview, a certain face for a date and yet another face when you look in the mirror. But which face is the real one?

The face I hate to put on the most is the one I have to wear if I’m at an event, trade show or presentation. That’s one reason I hate going to business conventions like the one I was at in Atlanta. There is nothing worse than my super fake face. I hate smiling unless something is genuinely making me happy.

Much as I love going on cruises, one of the most painful things about them is having your photo taken every ten minutes so they can coerce you into buying them. They are rarely very good photographers so you find yourself painfully holding a frozen smile for agonizing minutes before they snap the stinking photo. Often I catch myself automatically going into a Sears Catalogue model pose when the cruise photographers show up.

Many times I am tempted to buy cruise photos because they are so bad that I cringe at the thought of them being on display throughout the cruise. But in a way, the photo gallery on a cruise ship is part of the entertainment. Because, as you browse through other people’s hideous photos, you realize that perhaps you aren’t as ugly as you think you are.

Does that make me a bad person?

Dorian Gray had the right idea. Put on your best face, have a portrait done and then let the photo age and take on all the ugliness while you stay young and unblemished by time and experience.

As I write this, the mechanical monkey is staring at me and I realize that he has only one face. I guess it would be a bummer going through one life with one face (though I’d opt for going through life with one chin).

Maybe that is why the monkey always has that grimace on his face.

But at least I always know it’s his real face.

Ye Olde Curiosity Shop

There is a tourist shop on Seattle's waterfront that has always fascinated me: Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. Perhaps it is because it looks like my office. Or perhaps my office looks like the Ye Olde Curiosity Shop because of the stuff I used to buy from them. For example, the genuine shrunken head fashioned out of goat skin that is perched on my flashing plastic crow on a skull shown above is from the Curiosity Shop (the skull is actually from Big Lots...my favorite store when I am in the mood to buy useless, cheap crap that I usually end up immediately sending to Good Will). The head is pretty darned realistic looking. But if you go into the Olde Curiosity Shop, you can view real shrunken heads from the Amazon and two genuine mummies...Sylvester and Sylvia.

There's lots of weird stuff like that at the Olde Curiosity Shop. Problem is, it's pretty cramped and almost always full of tourists just dying to buy a t-shirt that says something about all the rain in Seattle. So, I don't really go there much anymore. I mean, after you've bought one shrunken head, what else is left.

Thinking back to childhood, I was always fascinated by weird stuff. My favorite part of field trips to the Idaho Historical Museum in grade school was this stuffed two-headed calf that they had. I thought that was pretty cool. I was never sure what it said about Idaho's history, but I think it had something to do with the dangers of inbreeding. I could have pretty much learned that lesson by looking at the way many of my cousins turned out. My mom came from a family of 13 kids and some of the younger ones pretty much showed what happened when you start scrapping the bottom of the DNA pool. And lord I have some butt ugly cousins.

But, I digress.

I've always figured I keep odd stuff around because they are conversation pieces. Essentially this means I spend a great deal of time explaining why I have a warthog skull on my coffee table. Oh, and that doughnut in the tape dispenser is just about nine years old. It was my own little experiment in mummification. Plus it is practical. I figure if push comes to shove in an emergency, dipped in a little coffee that sucker will be as good as new.

Nevertheless, as I get older, I find myself less drawn to collecting weird crap just for the sake of having it. One, the clutter is really getting to me and two, I don't want to end up like a friend of mine's aunt who collected tons of these porcelain figurines and would superglue them to shelves so they would be easier to dust and wouldn't fall over in the event of an earthquake. Of course, they discovered she had a brain tumor, so that could have contributed to that line of thinking in her case.

Oh well...

Mirror, mirror...

My last night in Atlanta I glanced in this mirror outside the elevators as you turned to go into the circular hallway. There was this funky wall sconce on the opposite wall that sent out this lines of light like a laser. Having just returned from dinner at the Hard Rock and infused with the uplifting light of the King's stain glass image, I decided to snap this self portrait with my digital camera. Of course, it's altered a bit with the help of software and a few accidental clicks of the mouse. I kind of like the results. Has that Erasurehead look I always try to achieve.

But it reminds me of standing on tiptoe as a kid trying to see my reflection in the toaster that sat on the kitchen counter. And when I could finally catch a glimpse of my own reflection in the mirror, I always felt a bit shocked. Because the face in the toaster was never the face I saw inside. As a boy, inside I always pictured my mature face and wondered who this boy was.

Now, as I age and look in the mirror, I still feel a bit shocked. Because now the face I see in the mirror is still not the face I see inside. Now as the lines on my face increase and my skin sags, I feel the younger face inside wondering who this stranger is staring back at me.

Reminds me of the koan: Show me the face you had before you were born.

Mirrors are odd that way.

My own theory of relativity

All theories must be backed up by a mathematical formula. So I'll just get that little formality out of the way:

PPBO=PN2

My theory is that the number of times people pass by my office (PPBO) is directly proportional to the number of times I am about to pick my nose (PN). And I'm not talking about about a digit to the knuckle up the nostril pick. I'm referring to the more casual, minor pick at something just to the edge of the nostril. More of a brush away than serious dig. I believe Seinfeld called it a "pick" versus a "dig." I just wanted to clarify this before you get the impression that I am crude and sit around blatantly picking my nose at the office. Everyone knows that should be reserved for the privacy of the home.

This formula can just about apply to anything in life that you subconsciously do that may not be construed as acceptable to do when you have company. Farting would constitute a subformula PPBO=FOL2 (people passing by my office proportion to the number of times I fart out loud). Scratching various body parts and having the boss walk by also is explained by this theory.

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone who read my blog about Fibonacci numbers. Everything in the universe is connected in some way. Oh, Einstein touted his "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" and "Energy can neither be created nor destroy," and everyone thought he was a genius. The same "genius" would get so preoccupied by his theories that he would forget to go to the bathroom and crap in his pants. But I'm willing to bet someone always passed by his office door at the precise moment he would lighten his load, if you catch my drift and are catching on to my theory. So who is the real genius here?

And Thomas Edison with his "genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." Give me a break. Real genius is coming up with ideas and having someone else make them work. Even better is having someone else come up with the ideas, make them work and you get the credit and money for them. Even Tom Sawyer recognized that.

Not to diss on Stephen Hawkin, but he may be able to explain black holes and the expanding and contracting universe, but can he put any of it to practical use other than write books about it that most of us read, nod and then go back to staring at our lava lamps? Now if he could harvest the power of the black holes and sell their naming rights to a major corporation, that would be something.

When you come down to it, we really don't appreciate genius. It makes us feel inadequate. Perhaps that is why we are more comfortable with people like Rain Man and Forest Gump. You've got to admire a slow but special person who can tell you how many toothpicks were dropped on the floor or be successful despite having the IQ of a parsnip. And that is probably the the best explanation for why GW is our president and is so popular. I swear that, as a kid, he played in the banjo scene from Deliverance.

But that's just my theory.