Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 585

The comments are more compelling than the actual question

In this week's episode of Manners in the Digital Age, Farhad Manjoo and Emily Yoffe debate whether and when it's acceptable to scrap the paper wedding invitation and use digital invitations instead.

Just for the record, I fully support the use of evites for weddings and wish my wife and I had gone this route.

Our invitations were lovely and incredibly expensive.   

A few comments from this podcast that I thought were interesting.

First, in posing the question about the acceptability of an electronic invitation for their child's wedding, the listener writes:

"I'm worried that guests receiving an evite will chuckle derisively…"

I'm always surprised to hear from adults who are still so concerned about the opinions of others when it comes to something so trivial, trite and ultimately forgettable as a wedding invitation. 

I think Manjoo says it best in the podcast:

"For a guest to scoff or chuckle at the medium someone uses to invite you to a wedding is rude."

As uncouth, improper, ill mannered or cheap as a person may seem, it is always more disgusting and rude to actually talk about these perceived flaws behind the person's back.

I know many people who think quite highly of their manners and sense of decorum who could benefit from this lesson.     

Not surprising, the very traditional Emily Yoffe does not support electronic invitations for weddings, but she says a couple very important things during the podcast that I admire:

1.  She acknowledges that her opinion will probably change in 5-10 years.

2.  She tells the concerned parents who have posed this question that once they have stated their opinion regarding the invitations, they need to step back and allow the adults who are getting married to make the final decision without any protest or pleas for reconsideration.

I cannot tell you how often the parents of brides and/or grooms place their own concerns for image and taste over their child's desires for their wedding day. 

Some parents are downright rotten when it comes to their child's wedding, and I will never understand it.

When and if Clara gets married someday, the last thing I will be worried about is what my friends think about my daughter's wedding.  Clara can do as she pleases, as long as she is happy.      

3.  When asked what she would think if she received an evite to a wedding, Yoffe answered, "I'd think I'm really old."

She wouldn't think that the senders are cheap or stupid or ill mannered.  As traditional as Yoffe tends to be, she is also flexible in her thinking, adaptive in her attitudes and relatively open minded. 

She'd probably make a great mother-in-law. 

The curse of the hyper productive

A friend of mine included the following paragraph in an email about productivity and our mutual inability to relax:

The irony is that people like us will not have a deathbed in which to reflect upon our lives.  We will keel over sweeping the kitchen floor or cleaning the litter box, typing a blog, or unpacking grocery bags.  At most we will have a fleeting moment to realize that the task we are in the middle of will go unfinished.  And as our last act, we will probably make arrangements for it to be completed.

Never before have I read something that sounds so accurate and so depressing and yet so good, too.

Such joy!

A new hat, a pair of red rain boots and a plethora of puddles and pebbles.

If only I could find as much joy in the simple things of life.

Juggling?

While Clara was taking her bath last night, she handed me three rubber balls and demanded that I juggle.

Juggle?

Who taught her that word?

When I tried to ignore her request, she demanded I juggle again. "Juggle, Daddy! Juggle! Please!" 

So I juggled. 

Except I can't juggle, so I tossed two balls in the air at a time while holding the third, assuming this would placate her.

"No," she said.  "Three balls. Juggle, Daddy. Juggle with three balls!"

I tried. I failed. The rubber balls bounced on the bathroom floor.

Clara stared at me for a minute.  She looked disgusted with me.  Disgusted with me for the first time in your life.

It was not my finest moment.

Who the hell taught this girl about juggling?

More important, who led her to believe that everyone should be able to juggle?

Homework blues start early

My daughter was given the first homework assignment of her life last week.

She had to decorate a "Me Doll" in a way that reflected aspects of her character.

I thought it would be a silly waste of time, but it turns out that the assignment was actually fun and fairly productive.

Still, a two-year old doing homework?

  

I loved kickboxing, but kickboxing did not love me

In 2002 I took kickboxing lessons for about six months.

I was excited about the lessons.  I thought the sport was going to be a lot of fun.

I like to punch things.  

But the class was all-female with the exception of me, so the instructors structured the class such that it was 80% kicking and 20% punching.

The ladies, it was explained to me, were more interested in working on their legs and butts than their shoulders and biceps.  

But I stuck with the class anyway, learning to take pleasure in kicking the hell out of things almost as much as punching, until the day that we were allowed to finally spar with an opponent.

Since the class was all-female with the exception of me, I was forced to spar against a male instructor.  After donning head gear and gloves, we met in the middle of the room.

About ten seconds later, the instructor was removing his head gear, informing me that he would no longer be sparring against me. 

"You don't understand the definition of sparring," he said. "You're not supposed to try to kill me."

I had landed a couple jabs, an uppercut and a clumsy but effective roundhouse kick before he knew what hit him.

In fairness, I don't think he ever expected the vicious assault that I launched upon him.  He had his gloves up, but had lifted them a second prior to my first jab. 

That was my last kickboxing class.   

Cracked ribs, cracked shmibs

Much has been made about Tony Romo's return to the football game on Sunday and leading his team to victory with broken ribs.

Words like courage and heroic have been bandied about quite a bit when describing Romo's performance. 

The last time I played flag football with my buddies, I suffered a concussion and my friend, Shep, broke two ribs. 

The only difference is we kept playing despite the pain, and no one called us heroes. 

Shep didn't even realize that his ribs were broken until a few days later. 

Just sayin'.

An addendum to my list of flaws and shortcomings

Last week I posted a list of my shortcomings and flaws and asked for any other suggested additions to the list.

Not surprising, there were plenty of suggestions. 

One of my friends from high school, who is now a licensed clinical psychologist, analyzed my list of flaws and made this comment:

Starts off with a strong hint of Asperger's (and Feeding Disorder), moves into a touch of Oppositional Defiant Disorder, then gives us probably the most likely DSM diagnosis - Simple Phobia (needles).

To be honest, that analysis hit a little too close to home for me.   

And when I read the comment to my wife, she was uncomfortably agreeable to all of my friend's comments as well.

Nevertheless, I offer you five additional flaws to add to the list.  Each of these have been vetted and approved by the committee of two who know me best:

My wife and my best friend of 25 years. 

The additions to the list are:

Bees kill me dead. I am incapable of carrying on small talk for any length of time and become extremely irritable when forced to do so.  I pout and become sullen and sometimes inconsolable when the New England Patriots lose a football game. I lack compassion and empathy for adults who are not very smart or resourceful.  While some might argue that this flaw was already covered by item #6 of the original post, it was agreed by all that this is an important distinction. I can be judgmental about things that I have limited knowledge of and are inconsequential to me.

While this last item survived the vetting process and made the list, it is the suggested flaw that I disagree with the most. 

I find nothing wrong with formulating an opinion on a subject based upon the information that a person possesses, even if the person's understanding of the subject is incomplete, as long as the person is flexible in his or her thinking as more information is acquired.

The example cited by my friend was my opinion of yoga.

No, I have never attempted yoga, but yes, I think it's kind of stupid based upon what I have been told by people who do yoga. 

Am I really supposed reserve all judgment on yoga until more data is obtained? 

Is there something wrong with formulating an opinion based upon the data I  have already acquired?

Must every opinion be based upon a full and complete analysis of a subject?

If this is the standard, how can we have opinions about anything unless we are experts in the field?

When I try yoga and discover that it is not stupid or am convinced by someone that it is not stupid, I will be more than willing to alter my opinion.

In fact, I have paid for 20 yoga lessons via a recent Groupon that I am just waiting for the opportunity to use.  So although I have already formulated an opinion on yoga, I am also aware that there is more to learn on the subject and that my opinion may be flawed. 

But still, can't I have an opinion on the subject?

It should also be noted that this flaw only seems to apply to negatively-held beliefs.  If my opinion of yoga was positive despite my lack of personal experience, I don't think my friend would consider my ill informed opinion to be a shortcoming.

Only when the opinion is critical do people complain.      

I find this intellectually inconsistent and stupid.

But I'm willing to hear more on the subject.

An acceptable alternative to everlasting life

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I am both slightly obsessed with and terrified of my own death. Having come so close to death on several occasions (including two in which my heart actually stopped), I am keenly aware of the fragility of life.

As a result, the possibility that I could die at any moment almost never leaves my consciousness.  It is like an omnipresent balloon, floating just about my head, its string visible to me at all times.

It's a difficult reality in which to constantly live, but it has also served as the impetus for much of my productivity, efficiency and drive to succeed.

In that way, it has served as both a blessing and a curse.

A friend recently told me that he knows a person who approaches life in the same way I do.  Eerily similar, in fact.  And she is also the survivor of a near-death experience.   

In describing our remarkable similarities, my friend lamented that he hadn't been fortunate enough to almost died as well.

His comment sounded ridiculous, but then again, I wouldn't change my past if given the chance.  Living with the specter of death looming over me at all times isn't fun, and years of suffering with PTSD  before seeking help were difficult, but I suspect that I would be a very different and far less successful person had I not endured those struggles.

Still, the constant awareness of death can be distressing at times.

If we could just solve the problem of death before I actually die and grant eternal life to all (or at least me), I could not die a happy man.

Is that too much to ask?

But there is an alternative, at least in Kurt Vonnegut's mind.  In rereading SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, I came upon the Tralfamadorians, a race of alien beings that have the ability to experience reality in four dimensions; meaning, roughly, that they have total access to past, present, and future. They are able to perceive any point in time at will.

Able to see along the timeline of the universe, the Tralfamadorians know the exact time and place of its accidental annihilation as the result of a Tralfamadorian experiment, but are powerless to prevent it. Because they believe that when a being dies, it continues to live in other times and places, their response to death is, "So it goes."

Most important to my purposes, Tralfamadorians may die, but they never cease to exist, because they exist at all points of their lives simultaneously.

I could live with this. 

Or not live with it, to be more precise.

And the appeal of the Tralfamadorian powers made me realize something very important:

I am not afraid of death.  I am afraid of not existing. 

While this distinction may seem like one and the same, it's not. 

Though never dying is certainly preferable, it is the loss of everything that has passed and everything that is to come that I feat the most.  The complete erasure of all word and deed, both past and present, with the end of my existence. 

But if I were able to continue to live in those past moments, re-experience them as the Tralfamadorians do, while simultaneously watching the future unfold from a detached state, that would be an acceptable alternative to everlasting life. 

A damn good alternative, in fact. 

While I would love to be able to live into the distant future, the ability to see it unfold, even if I am not a part of it, would be fine by me.

So it's simple.  I just need to learn to perceive the world in four dimensions.

I'll Google it. 

Google knows everything.

Dinner and a fashion statement

I did not see my family much over the past three days. 

A late night wedding on Friday followed by an all-day wedding on Saturday, followed by the Patriots opening day at Gillette Stadium kept me away for much of the weekend.

My wife sends me lots of photos and videos on days like these, to help curb the pain of being away from my girls, but occasionally I receive a video like this that makes me wonder what is going on at home.

I've heard of dressing for dinner, but this seems a little much.