(This post was originally published in November, 2007. I must be getting so old that my brain is frozen -- I still feel the same way.)
By now the mass turkeycide is over and our kitchens are filled with plump, stuffed (tasteless) birds, oceans of gravy are undergoing their own private global warming, and millions of pies sit under ceramic covers, representing billions of sugar and fat calories yet to be consumed.
Our annual National Feast Day has arrived...one single day dedicated to collective gluttony, though it may masquerade as a Day of Thanks, or even the prelude to a weekend of football, family reunion and celebration.
As it does every year, I'm sure the news Thursday night will be chock full of stories of stranded travelers whose only goal in life (The Meal) has been thwarted by crowded skies and cold-hearted airlines. We'll view the standard video of Good Samaritans, giving up their own holiday to feed the homeless sixty kazillion pounds of turkey and potatoes.
Possibly somewhere, in an effort to highlight the obesity epidemic in the U.S., some news reporter will break down the typical dinner's calories for us, and we'll see more video of those faceless, jello-tummied people who are always used to illustrate these stories. This segment will, no doubt, be sandwiched in between recipes for pumpkin delight and turkey leftovers, or instructions on how to carve The Bird.
I'm equally sure that every 90 seconds commercial interruptions will disturb the Macy's parade, every football game and everything else aired on cable and satellite TV in order to hawk the beginnings of holiday sales. For that matter, I've already seen ads for department store openings at 4 a.m. Friday morning. That's even before the turkey et al will have had time to sail through our digestive processes!
Aaaarggghh!!! Can you tell Thanksgiving isn't one of my favorite holidays?
Never do I hear anything the least bit inspirational about truly giving thanks related to this day. It's all about food, airlines, food, discount sales, food, the impending holidays and the GNP, and more food.
I like tradition as much as the next person... maybe more, considering I'm Catholic and tradition is very big with us. (Show me any process or experience and I'll find a way to ritualize it every time.) There's just something about this particular tradition that rankles me. Maybe if I'd grown up in the Midwest, or maybe if my family had been larger, or closer...or maybe if I didn't dislike turkey or didn't feel guilty about eating pie...or if the traditional dinner didn't take so damn long to prepare and then disappear so quickly and leave such a MESS... maybe then I'd feel more positive about this day.
Frankly, Thanksgiving Day annoys me with its dishonesty and hypocrisy.
If this is truly a national day to give thanks, why isn't it for us religious-minded folk a huge church-going day like Christmas and Easter (are supposed to be)? For those not involved in religion, why isn't more emphasis placed on enumerating the incredible and very real blessings that we Americans enjoy as our assumed right?
If, perhaps, this thanks-giving is done at home with extended family around the bounty of a table laden with excess, this particular devotion is rarely, if ever mentioned or portrayed by our scrupulously secular media. (Of course, giving thanks implies Someone whom one is thanking. God forbid we acknowledge the existence of that Person, no matter what the historical origin of this holiday may be -- no matter what the Presidential Proclamation may say!)
If we made a list of the things we have to be thankful for and compared that list to one that a citizen of any third-world country might make...the contrasts would be both stunning and sickening.
But instead all we can find to do on this day is EAT? I just don't get it. I guess since Christmas and Easter have been corrupted into mostly commercial events, I shouldn't expect anything different from Thanksgiving Day. So shoot me with a bow and arrow for still being idealistic.
From my healthy and loving family and friends to the contentment of living in an abundance of silence and solitude, from the freedoms I enjoy that have been safeguarded through others' sacrifices to the embarrassing riches of my comfort-filled, peaceful life, I'm aware of my own personal blessings every single day. I think about them every day and (honestly) give thanks for them every day... and I surely don't need a dead bird in the oven to do it.
But, far be it that I flout hundreds of years of tradition... Happy Thanksgiving, Gentle Readers.
So...33 days until Christmas. Got gifts?
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Monday, November 16, 2009
Monday, December 3, 2007
The National Hamster Wheel
Compared to the last 3000 years of documented civilization, our American culture runs at nearly the speed of light. We are obsessed with the instantaneous "now," and we seem, in general, to have lost both all tolerance for waiting and the virtue of patience.
Only warp speed will do for us in every instance, and our impatience has warped our relationship to natural time. Do these sound familiar?
I have to wonder how much of the beauty and wonder of Life we miss by living at this breakneck pace. How can we savor the joy or learn from the pain of each experience if we've moved onto the next before we've reflected on and assimilated THIS one?
Certainly in America we've reduced the pleasure of sweet anticipation to a flash and a flurry of to-do lists. Actually, in the case of the Christmas season, we've become so impatient that the celebration itself pre-empts the time of anticipation.
I've done my share of complaining about the Catholic church (notably HERE), but this is one facet of life they've gotten right. The church year is divided into liturgical seasons, each with its allotted time, purpose and flavor. This past Sunday marked both the beginning of the church year and the start of the season of Advent -- four Sundays of thoughtful and prayerful preparation before Christmas -- NOT to be confused with the 20+ remaining shopping days.
We all know that our American Christmas celebration (or holiday season, if you prefer) has become an orgiastic exercise in decorating/buying/giving/singing/partying that has little to do with any religious celebration. In fact, any religious connection is officially and vehemently prohibited by all levels of government -- rightly or wrongly. Just as the ancient winter solstice celebration was co-opted by the Christian Christmas, that season of celebration has been twisted and tortured into the Festival of Spending and Santa so dear to our national heart.
Our calendars are so filled with activities this time of year that by necessity we begin to celebrate "Christmas" immediately after Thanksgiving in order to fit everything in...(and Thanksgiving tumbled into our lives still dressed in Halloween costume, which fell into our laps right after Labor Day, which exploded from the sky the fifth of July, which was still colored red, white and blue from Memorial Day, when we were still eating leftover Cadbury bunny eggs....). To be sure, this frantic pace is fueled by retail marketing and a ravenous economy, but we fall in line like the good little credit-card-wielding robots we all are... and whatever meaning each holiday contains is reverenced for a full five minutes before we turn to the next. (Does the "day after Christmas sale beginning at 5 a.m." OR "buy a new car for the New Year" ring a chime with you?) In traditional terms, there really ARE 12 days of Christmas, 40 days of Lent, 50 days of Easter, and these four beautiful weeks of Advent.
To my knowledge, every major world religion -- and most of the contemporary, trendy feel-good, I-love-ME spirituality/pseudo-philosophies -- center around or at least include in their practice some form of meditation, contemplation, prayer or thoughtful silence. Whether these movements encourage union with an Other, with the "universe," with our own subconscious or linty little navel, the purpose is certainly to withdraw for a time FROM time and reflect on Someone/something deeper than the hamster wheel that is our life.
Short-term and long-term memory differ greatly in physiologic function and results and are still under investigation. My friend Wikipedia has a few interesting things to say about it HERE.
Briefly, short-term memory, our "working" memory, has very limited capacity and really IS short in duration (under a minute). It is used as both a collection point for new data and the retrieval mechanism for old data. Long-term memory requires "the process of rehearsal and meaningful association." In other words, we need to both anticipate an event then reflect on our experience of it in order to preserve it.
In my view, we have been so thoroughly indoctrinated to "live in the now" that we've lost touch with the thrill of anticipating the future. We're so eager to turn to the next event that we rarely have time to savor what we just experienced. We've come to rely on home video and thousands of photos to serve as our memories, instead of letting each lovely minute gently build a permanent mosaic of sight, sound, scent and scene -- with those stories of remembrance passed on to succeeding generations. Instead of creating that permanent mosaic, however, we're settling for a kaleidoscope of fleeting impressions that will fade all too soon, leaving only a flicker of colored light behind.
This refusal to anticipate and reflect doesn't apply to only the celebrations of our American culture but also to our refusal to learn from history -- to think that we are each inventing ourselves, our life, moment by moment, disassociated from anything previous and giving nothing to those who toddle in our footsteps. I see our culture as trying to consciously break its bonds with our collective past and unkown, risky future in favor of the new and the now.
One of the most obvious and hackle-raising cliches from the sixties is "stop and smell the roses." Even Ringo Starr sang (badly) about it HERE. It may be the phrase with the most overworked 20 letters in the English language, but it also contains one of the most powerful and enduring concepts of our human past and future.
So...happy Advent. Stop and smell the pine, the cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg, and think for a minute (or hour) what this season may mean to you. Slow down your own little hamster wheel and remember past holidays -- the good and the bad of them -- and anticipate whatever joy you expect to find in this one to come.
I'm forced by my family's calendars to celebrate an early grandkids' Christmas party this Friday, but I promise I'm putting away my hamster wheel just as soon as those dishes are done.
Only warp speed will do for us in every instance, and our impatience has warped our relationship to natural time. Do these sound familiar?
- Internet connections - fast, faster, fastest, please.
- Immediate communication by texting, faxing, phoning, emailing.
- Global jet travel in a day.
- Overnight delivery service to/from anywhere.
- Drive-through coffee, meals, laundry, funeral homes and churches.
- "Slow" lanes of traffic racing at 75 mph.
- Digital technology displaying photos in one nanosecond.
- Instant music via downloads, instant Googled information on any subject, instant location via GPS.
- "Vacations" that take us to 7 countries in 10 days and leave us confused, lagged, exhausted (and broke).
I have to wonder how much of the beauty and wonder of Life we miss by living at this breakneck pace. How can we savor the joy or learn from the pain of each experience if we've moved onto the next before we've reflected on and assimilated THIS one?
Certainly in America we've reduced the pleasure of sweet anticipation to a flash and a flurry of to-do lists. Actually, in the case of the Christmas season, we've become so impatient that the celebration itself pre-empts the time of anticipation.
I've done my share of complaining about the Catholic church (notably HERE), but this is one facet of life they've gotten right. The church year is divided into liturgical seasons, each with its allotted time, purpose and flavor. This past Sunday marked both the beginning of the church year and the start of the season of Advent -- four Sundays of thoughtful and prayerful preparation before Christmas -- NOT to be confused with the 20+ remaining shopping days.
We all know that our American Christmas celebration (or holiday season, if you prefer) has become an orgiastic exercise in decorating/buying/giving/singing/partying that has little to do with any religious celebration. In fact, any religious connection is officially and vehemently prohibited by all levels of government -- rightly or wrongly. Just as the ancient winter solstice celebration was co-opted by the Christian Christmas, that season of celebration has been twisted and tortured into the Festival of Spending and Santa so dear to our national heart.
Our calendars are so filled with activities this time of year that by necessity we begin to celebrate "Christmas" immediately after Thanksgiving in order to fit everything in...(and Thanksgiving tumbled into our lives still dressed in Halloween costume, which fell into our laps right after Labor Day, which exploded from the sky the fifth of July, which was still colored red, white and blue from Memorial Day, when we were still eating leftover Cadbury bunny eggs....). To be sure, this frantic pace is fueled by retail marketing and a ravenous economy, but we fall in line like the good little credit-card-wielding robots we all are... and whatever meaning each holiday contains is reverenced for a full five minutes before we turn to the next. (Does the "day after Christmas sale beginning at 5 a.m." OR "buy a new car for the New Year" ring a chime with you?) In traditional terms, there really ARE 12 days of Christmas, 40 days of Lent, 50 days of Easter, and these four beautiful weeks of Advent.
To my knowledge, every major world religion -- and most of the contemporary, trendy feel-good, I-love-ME spirituality/pseudo-philosophies -- center around or at least include in their practice some form of meditation, contemplation, prayer or thoughtful silence. Whether these movements encourage union with an Other, with the "universe," with our own subconscious or linty little navel, the purpose is certainly to withdraw for a time FROM time and reflect on Someone/something deeper than the hamster wheel that is our life.
Short-term and long-term memory differ greatly in physiologic function and results and are still under investigation. My friend Wikipedia has a few interesting things to say about it HERE.
Briefly, short-term memory, our "working" memory, has very limited capacity and really IS short in duration (under a minute). It is used as both a collection point for new data and the retrieval mechanism for old data. Long-term memory requires "the process of rehearsal and meaningful association." In other words, we need to both anticipate an event then reflect on our experience of it in order to preserve it.
In my view, we have been so thoroughly indoctrinated to "live in the now" that we've lost touch with the thrill of anticipating the future. We're so eager to turn to the next event that we rarely have time to savor what we just experienced. We've come to rely on home video and thousands of photos to serve as our memories, instead of letting each lovely minute gently build a permanent mosaic of sight, sound, scent and scene -- with those stories of remembrance passed on to succeeding generations. Instead of creating that permanent mosaic, however, we're settling for a kaleidoscope of fleeting impressions that will fade all too soon, leaving only a flicker of colored light behind.
This refusal to anticipate and reflect doesn't apply to only the celebrations of our American culture but also to our refusal to learn from history -- to think that we are each inventing ourselves, our life, moment by moment, disassociated from anything previous and giving nothing to those who toddle in our footsteps. I see our culture as trying to consciously break its bonds with our collective past and unkown, risky future in favor of the new and the now.
One of the most obvious and hackle-raising cliches from the sixties is "stop and smell the roses." Even Ringo Starr sang (badly) about it HERE. It may be the phrase with the most overworked 20 letters in the English language, but it also contains one of the most powerful and enduring concepts of our human past and future.
So...happy Advent. Stop and smell the pine, the cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg, and think for a minute (or hour) what this season may mean to you. Slow down your own little hamster wheel and remember past holidays -- the good and the bad of them -- and anticipate whatever joy you expect to find in this one to come.
I'm forced by my family's calendars to celebrate an early grandkids' Christmas party this Friday, but I promise I'm putting away my hamster wheel just as soon as those dishes are done.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Tough Stuff
I've just slogged through a terrible biography of FDR, written by by Ted Morgan. The 742 pages had a zillion arcane details, divined private thoughts and assigned motives... and plenty of just plain bad writing. Some of the highlights of the book, however, were these quotes regarding Roosevelt's triumph over, in all but the physical sense, his affliction by polio and subsequent crippling.
Eleanor Roosevelt was once asked the question, "Do you think your husband's illness has affected his mentality?" She said, "...yes. Anyone who has gone through great suffering is bound to have a greater sympathy and understanding of the problems of mankind." Morgan goes on to say that Eleanor felt his years of convalescence had taught him patience.
Francis Perkins, the first woman to serve in the Cabinet, was appointed by FDR as Secretary of Labor in 1932 and served in that post until 1947. She is quoted as saying, "I would like to think that he would have done the things he did even without his paralysis, but knowing the streak of vanity and insincerity that there was in him, I don't think he would have unless somebody had dealt him a blow between the eyes..."
Steve Early, who went from AP reporter to FDR's White House secretary in charge of press relations (later serving as Deputy then Under Secretary of Defense) remarked, "If it hadn't been for his affliction, he never would have been President of the United States. In those earlier years, he was just a playboy...During his long illness, he began to read deeply and study public questions."
Adore or despise him, one can't discount the positive impact that FDR had on this country reeling from the effects of the Great Depression, and the impact he had on the world battling the evils of the war years. Life today would be immeasurably different had FDR not been our President from 1932 to 1945. FDR himself was immeasurably different because of his struggle with his disease and its effects.
The principle that adversity builds character, that we grow only through times of challenge and suffering, never through periods of ease and "being comfortable," is a basic truth of the human condition, yet it seems that in today's culture there's almost a conspiracy to ignore this fact, or at least a wish to deny it.
It makes me wonder and worry about our general trend to make and keep our lives, and our kids' lives, as bland as flan. Of course we don't want to suffer and certainly hope to keep our kids from ever suffering, but we also seem to shield our families from half of the choices life offers with both hands...in one, the fun, the easy, the pleasant; in the other, the good/bad news of character growth and strengthening.
I'm a relatively involved grandma, participating in many of the little kids' school, sports and art activities. While I certainly can't generalize about ALL kids, I have drawn some conclusions about the kids of middle class California yuppies.
In this group health care isn't a concern, family incomes allow nannys, McMansions and McBMW's. Peer pressure includes whose mom can come up with the most elaborate birthday party (the details would make you gag,) and the cutest designer clothes, and it's not unusual to send the family pet to doggy camp for the day.
The children I'm around are being reared with solid moral values, and most of these families are stable. That isn't my worry.
I've never seen a generation of kids who are so coddled, so protected, so babied (and so spoiled) -- if any of them ever reach any kind of independence, I'll be astonished. We read a lot about families who still shelter and support young adults long after college graduation as they have yet to make any kind of solid career move and just don't seem to mature as have previous generations -- and those kids are 15 years older than the children I see. I can't imagine what this next crop will be like.
I know there are safety issues involved today that I didn't have to deal with 25 years ago. I also know I was in a completely different economic class than these families (single mom, with a management position some years off,) but for the life of me, I can't see one of these little princes or princesses learning how to cook a real dinner at age nine, washing a dish with detergent and water, doing the family laundry at age ten or walking a mile or two to school daily. The hardest thing most of these kids face is a five-minute time out as discipline, the loss of a turtle, or an occasional difficult homework assignment. Wait...there are ready turtle replacements at Reptiles R Us and tutors standing by for the homework, and five minutes is...just five minutes.
In insulating these kids with money, with private schools, with 24-hour attention by overindulgent parents and nannies, with a lack of any real responsibility other than MAYBE tidying their professionally-decorated rooms, the kids are being denied one real opportunity for growth. They don't have to struggle for a damn thing now, nor will they in their rosy futures. I'll wager that they will be handed keys to their own baby BMW the day they get their driver's license and not one will ever work a day through high school or college.
All of these parents appear to know more about child-rearing than any expert on TV. What they seemed to have missed, however, is the truth that struggle, challenge, adversity and hardship really form the child's character. Everyone, sooner or later, gets their share of these. If they haven't had to deal with them in some minor form as kids, how will they survive their harsh lessons later? If they don't learn consequences and independence as kids... will they ever learn them as adults?
I hope I'm wrong about this. I hope that the security that comes from a solid financial foundation, that the parenting knowledge and values these kids are growing up with are enough to allow them to reach their potential as productive, independent adults. Coming from my own background, however, and seeing what strength of character a few years of hardship and necessity produced in my own sons, I have to wonder...and I worry.
I'm a relatively involved grandma, participating in many of the little kids' school, sports and art activities. While I certainly can't generalize about ALL kids, I have drawn some conclusions about the kids of middle class California yuppies.
In this group health care isn't a concern, family incomes allow nannys, McMansions and McBMW's. Peer pressure includes whose mom can come up with the most elaborate birthday party (the details would make you gag,) and the cutest designer clothes, and it's not unusual to send the family pet to doggy camp for the day.
The children I'm around are being reared with solid moral values, and most of these families are stable. That isn't my worry.
I've never seen a generation of kids who are so coddled, so protected, so babied (and so spoiled) -- if any of them ever reach any kind of independence, I'll be astonished. We read a lot about families who still shelter and support young adults long after college graduation as they have yet to make any kind of solid career move and just don't seem to mature as have previous generations -- and those kids are 15 years older than the children I see. I can't imagine what this next crop will be like.
I know there are safety issues involved today that I didn't have to deal with 25 years ago. I also know I was in a completely different economic class than these families (single mom, with a management position some years off,) but for the life of me, I can't see one of these little princes or princesses learning how to cook a real dinner at age nine, washing a dish with detergent and water, doing the family laundry at age ten or walking a mile or two to school daily. The hardest thing most of these kids face is a five-minute time out as discipline, the loss of a turtle, or an occasional difficult homework assignment. Wait...there are ready turtle replacements at Reptiles R Us and tutors standing by for the homework, and five minutes is...just five minutes.
In insulating these kids with money, with private schools, with 24-hour attention by overindulgent parents and nannies, with a lack of any real responsibility other than MAYBE tidying their professionally-decorated rooms, the kids are being denied one real opportunity for growth. They don't have to struggle for a damn thing now, nor will they in their rosy futures. I'll wager that they will be handed keys to their own baby BMW the day they get their driver's license and not one will ever work a day through high school or college.
All of these parents appear to know more about child-rearing than any expert on TV. What they seemed to have missed, however, is the truth that struggle, challenge, adversity and hardship really form the child's character. Everyone, sooner or later, gets their share of these. If they haven't had to deal with them in some minor form as kids, how will they survive their harsh lessons later? If they don't learn consequences and independence as kids... will they ever learn them as adults?
I hope I'm wrong about this. I hope that the security that comes from a solid financial foundation, that the parenting knowledge and values these kids are growing up with are enough to allow them to reach their potential as productive, independent adults. Coming from my own background, however, and seeing what strength of character a few years of hardship and necessity produced in my own sons, I have to wonder...and I worry.
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