Not A Headache But A "Conceptual Emergency"

On my recent holiday, I was on staying on one of my favorite islands off the West coast of Scotland. Not many people live on the island, and the ones who do appear to breathe life in deeply, push their lives forward without much strain, and always say hello or make a friendly wave when one car passes by another on one of the island’s narrow roads. Over the years, I have returned again and again to the island to be reminded of how much more important mono-tasking is for the soul than multi-tasking ever will be.

In one of the towns on the island, there is a combined gift shop and book store, and we were meandering around, trying to look hard enough so that we could take in what we liked visually and thereby avoid buying it and lugging it home to have another "objet" to dust.

My habits took me into the book part of the shop, and one section – the one emphasizing Scotland, and especially its islands, is very small, U shaped, with one chair squeezed into it, so I sat down and had lots of books within arm’s reach.

My eyes fell on one, a little (they would say “wee”) paperback titled, “Ten Things To Do In A Conceptual Emergency,” and when the bells ringing in my head slowed down, I picked it up, read a few pages (of its fewer than forty), and decided that this was definitely worth taking home.

One thing about traveling to another country is that it allows more time for rumination about the country you’re from; one is not surrounded by the amazingly syncopated drumbeats from the mass media, the distance is not just geographical, it is emotional and psychological. Things…life…your own personality seem clearer or at least outlined in a way which never happens at home. ( Unless you’re in middle of a long, hot, contemplative shower, and that’s a topic for another time. )

I guess I reacted to the title because for a long time I have felt that we Americans are trying to deal with or are trying not to deal with some sort of continuing emergency in our lives. It might be governmental, attitudinal, diplomatic, societal, or all of them, if one has to start thinking about it, maybe conceptual is a good place to start.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the book’s introduction so that you get a flavor of it:

This is a new world. It is raising fundamental questions about our competence in key areas of governance, economy, sustainability and consciousness. We are struggling as professionals and in our private lives to meet the demands it is placing on traditional models of organization, understanding and action. We are losing our bearings. This is a conceptual emergency.

One very human reaction is to give up the struggle to make sense of what is going on and to lapse into short term hedonism or longer term despair. Another is to strive mightily to regain the comfort of control by reasserting old truths with more conviction, stressing fundamentals, interpreting complexity in simple terms. [Page 5]

Issues we need to consider include...

Design For Transition To A New World
Give Up On The Myth of Control
Trust Subjective Experience
Take The Long View
Form And Nurture Integrities
Practise Social Acupuncture
Sutain Networks of Hope
Converge Ideas and Action

If you are tantalized by some of this, then you should visit the source for the book, The International Futures Forum by clicking here. (The Forum is located in St. Andrews, Scotland, and is associated with St Andrews University.)

This is the sort of book which can be read in a single sitting and would make for good discussion in homes, and schools, and other informal communities. And it might help. Us. Now.

Medicare Is Just Around The Corner

Recently I’ve been giving some thought to the subject of birthdays; the primary reason was that I was approaching the birthday where you hear from our government about your new health coverage and the direct monthly deposit of S***** S******* checks. I knew I was about to arrive at that station in life’s journey – I’d begun to laminate membership cards and the like and realized that an interest in lamination is an indication of some Impending significant shift.

This was not a birthday to look forward to, either for chronological or attitudinal reasons: I don’t like getting old, at least by other people’s definition, and I think age depends much more on attitude than mere counting like growth rings on a tree.

In my youth, there were birthday parties, or so I have been told. They were fun, full of candles and cake, and I have learned that I enjoyed myself at these events. It may be true, but I don’t remember, to be honest about it.

On my 21st birthday, after I had righted myself following an academic misadventure, my mother presented me with an envelope, more in it than a card….cash, perhaps?

No, it was nothing that trivial. Inside were a pair of apron strings – honest to God, cut apron strings. I was on my own, trembling but - at last.

The next birthday I remember was my 50th, when Karen persuaded me to go on a breakfast picnic, followed by, perhaps a dog show in Saint Paul, and a visit to her Mother who was in the hospital after hip surgery.

Controlling person that I am, I had invited a small group to the house, cooked the chicken in advance, and by mid-afternoon, I had to get home. Running so late, that I didn’t have time to get ice to keep the beer cold, I came down the road vexed, no, frustrated.

When we turned into the driveway, there were all kinds of friends from the worlds I’ve inhabited, meandering about, a tent had been erected, a whole pig was being roasted, musicians were playing Swedish music, and I was embarrassed at how easily fooled I had been, angry at the same thing, and amazed that such a conspiracy had been cooked up by several friends months in advance, and I hadn’t gotten wind of it, not even a slight rustling of the leaves. In spite of all, to be cosseted in that way was, ulitimately, a delight.

And with that birthday, I declared an end to such celebrations – please. OK, send me the cards with really old guys in wheelchairs, with walking sticks, no teeth…even the one I got this year with a man in his hospital gown lying face down on a gurney in the company of a nurse and doctor who are looking at the patient’s fanny from which is…well, let me paraphrase the punch line by the nurse, “He says the instructions on the tube are to squeeze from the bottom.” I laughed and laughed, until I opened the next card which was identical to the first. Then I began to wonder, not about my friends and relations, but about me.

This year I wiggled and feinted and managed to have my birthday at home with Karen; we explored some of the finest from my favorite Scottish distillery, and it made for a fine celebration.

I still don’t like, in the words of Curt Gowdy, once a broadcaster of The Boston Red Sox, to be thought of as “rounding third and heading for home,” in spite of the stark reality which the obituary pages display every day.

There is a business to run, a house to be managed, remodeling projects to be worked on, trips to be taken, genealogies to be updated, a basement to be organized.

No more birthday celebrations, no retirement in view, just a modest change in gears.

If I’m careening toward the abyss, I would like to be driving a clown car, with a bunch of my pals jammed in along side me, telling wonderfully raunchy stories as we go – good friends and good fun, that’s the gear for m