Life Camp

In many ways it seems that we are doing well. The house, the career, the kids, health and a pension plan. At times I can spot envy when the relatives are over. Friends, however, know better because they listen and they are smart enough to know that in the end we are all in the same boat, barely scraping over the rocks that lie beneath the surface. Our lives, like those of most families in today’s world, are stretched thin. With long hours spent at work and in traffic and weekends cut short by work commitments, it’s like ships passing in the night. All along, we are led to believe that eventually it is all going to get easier. Our baby boomer parents believed that and those who cashed in on their savings in time probably will keep telling us that. What they conveniently overlook is that since then, salaries have stagnated for the large majority of us and across many sectors they have gone down, while those that find work in today’s struggling economies have no leverage left to negotiate. They work longer hours in exchange for less job security and fewer benefits than ever. Yet, afraid that things could get even worse, we keep plodding on. We throw our lives back on the Interstate every morning and stop by Best Buy on the way home. After all, we are told that consumer spending needs to go up in order to secure jobs...right? Nonsense. Consumer spending needs to stay up to keep us in bondage and the dividends flowing. It is what has turned life into one big work camp where day after day, empty spaces are filled by the anonymous new face. At least with blogspot, twitter and facebook we can wine about it when we find a moment. See, I already feel better. Let’s get on with it then, shall we?

Round Table

I often write from a feeling of unease. I throw my frustration onto the keyboard and see it form words on the monitor which I then hurl into cyberspace. There. I have said it! At times, I wonder whether there is another way that I could say it? There is the language of symbols and analogies, archetypical scenes wrapped into fiction. But somehow I lose myself in the woods whenever I venture that way. Then there is art, music, movement, but that never gripped me. There are those who temper with philosophy or theology, but I prefer a more earthy approach. Dialogue over teaching or preaching. The question is, whether we can get everyone to the table.

Stretching

One thing which you will have to get good at fast, when you become a parent, is stretching! But while the physical side of stretching can be really helpful in order to strap on infant carriers onto your front or back and fastening those ever evasive car seat buckles, the most useful ingredient to peaceful parenting is mental stretching. Because you may suddenly find yourself doing things that weren't part of your "100 Things to do before you Die" like wearing nipple cups and monitoring bowel movements. Not to mention all the waiting. Waiting for the babe to wake, waiting for the milk to warm, waiting for the babe to sleep, waiting for the help to come, waiting for the rain to stop, waiting for the kid to grow waiting for your life to start. And all the time, you will tell yourself that all of this is really good, because you know eventually it will all be over and what then? For that there is Yoga.

an organized life

Is it that we are stuck in some kind of obsessive compulsive overdrive? Like a battery powered teeth clattering bunny, we frantically run increasingly tight circles, faster and faster as if trying to outrun the battery. Our lives resemble a big carnival with us in the midst staggering from one dizzying adrenaline hype to another. More, bigger, better, faster...as if there was no tomorrow. And maybe that is indeed what we are secretly afraid of. It's the ever greater accomplishments, victories, successes, experiences, stories to tell, that count. Life has turned into a monitored experience.

What's Your Wallpaper

After one year of Blackberry hell, I give up. The damn thing is asking me for a long list of bogus entries such as nicknames and birthdays when all I want to do is to add a name and phone number to my contact list. More curious even, the last time I tried to add a contact, it wouldn’t even do that! When I click on options, now it wants to know whether I want to change my wallpaper. How am I supposed to understand the “smart” in smartphone, I wonder...? Since then, I have had several very patient friends try to figure out why my Blackberry has gone bunkers and whether there is still hope and although their diagnosis was as dire as mine, they didn’t know what made it take a turn to the worse. But then, the thing was never all together well. The more relevant question is: Are we?

Caught in the Fog

Political convictions usually run deep. In fact, I remember a US study a few years ago that claimed to have found the “Republican gene” - something like the one distinguishing genetic code that at some point in the life of a particular person will switch on an array of convoluted thought - I like to call it “the fog” - which includes denying women access to abortion while handing out guns to young angry men. Whether this kind of thinking is indeed genetic or not, however, matters less than the fact that in a country where people habitually confuse Fox News with news reporting and where outrageous opinions are sold as facts, this sort of convoluted thinking is wrapped in pro-life propaganda with broad mass appeal. It makes US politics that much more trite and boring and I have to admit that I am glad to be mailing in my absentee vote again this time.

Who needs it?

With high youth unemployment across most of Europe and the US, college career advisers must feel just a bit stupid when adjusting margins and adding a few semi-colons to their seniors’ curricula. After all, their advice will be as good as any other, as even graduates with impressive grade point averages and a list of extra curricular activities may find themselves begging for one unpaid internship after another to keep at least their CVs cheery while disappointingly remaining on the parental payroll....Good luck! Study the right thing, study biotechnology, was Fred’s advice recently. True, in the day and age where life-prolonging drugs and machines continue to make millions because our fear of death has been turned into a winning ticket for the medical, pharmaceutical and insurance industries, this may indeed be a good idea. Who cares whether we truly need the stuff, believe in its social benefit, or are interested in contributing to its development! It used to be information technology, now it’s bio tech, next maybe robotics, anything really that gets us away from the humanities. After all, who wants to ponder human output in the arts and literature, who wants to speculate on ethics when one can outsource this to a clean user surface who feeds us only as much as we can stomach. Life, after all, would be so much easier, if it weren’t for us messy humans...