Thought That Came Unbidden

…that no one has ever sucessfully explained to me why, if she didn’t work outside the home, Louise Jefferson needed a maid?

…between settling and accepting limitations?

Does how much we can control the circumstances make the difference or is it how we react to what we can’t control that determines whether we’re settling for less than that to which we’re entitled or merely accepting what is as fact and adjusting appropriately?

Job hunting gives you a very clear idea of what is out of your control and what isn’t. Plain and simple truth, a good portion of the process is just not under the job seeker’s influence. Yes, you can do many things to affect how a potential employer sees you (make sure your resume is accurate, your cover letter topical to the particular position rather than obviously out of a book, spell check and proof read everything before you send it off, follow up with a thank you note, etc) but once you’ve done all that it’s really out of your hands.

All this got me to thinking how much of our lives truly are out of our hands and how much of our lives can be changed by how we react to those circumstances. My mother told me recently that at some point there would be a barely audible click and I’d just stop giving a shit about what other people think about me. She turned 61 last June and she’s already working the “old lady” vibe; you know, I can be eccentric and slightly rude but I’m a little old lady so I’ll just smile sweetly and you’ll give me what I want .

It’s also got me thinking about how much of my life has been about doing what I perceived to be “what was expected of me” rather than what I wanted to do at the time. I’m not talking about taking out the trash or doing chores. I’m talking about the whole concept of duty, doing what is necessary simply because it needs to be done.

I’m thinking a lot these days and not drawing very many conclusions.

Funny what can get me to thinking about something. Paycheck was a ghastly movie, probably not worth the $6.25 I paid to see it, but it got me to thinking about memory and what constitutes “a good life.”

Early on in the film Michael Jennings (Ben Affleck) is conversing with his friend and all-around assistant Shorty (Paul Giamatti) after having had two months worth of memories erased upon completion of a project. In response to a question about whether or not he’s ever curious about what gets erased Jennings replies to the effect that his life is a highlight reel. He remembers the good stuff, baseball games, birthday parties, dinners with friends, and the boring stuff (work) just falls away; what could be better is Jennings’ attitude. On its face it sounds like a good deal: only remember the good stuff. I don’t think it’s quite that simple.

Life is, to a greater or lesser degree, both logistically and emotionally complex for most people. Would it really be easier if we could only remember the good stuff? Or is the reality that we actually learn more from the things that are painful, learn about our limits, learn our likes and dislikes, test our mettle, than we do from the joyous events in our lives?

Maybe it’s just me, my particular outlook on life, but most of the “lessons” I’ve ever learned have been a direct result of some painful event. This is not to say that everything I’ve ever learned has some sort of pain attached to it (how horrible would that be?), but a lot of the really important stuff does. Or maybe it’s just that I remember those lessons, that those observations about how human society works stuck so much harder simply because they had pain attached to them. After all, Skinner and his plates proved that pain aversion is a learned response. Wouldn’t it then, make sense, for us to remember things that were painful more vividly than we remember things that are pleasant?

I’ve had my own brush with memory loss and you know what, it’s probably the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced. The not knowing what went on even though, I’m told, I interacted coherently with a number of people. Twenty or so minutes of my life just gone. Would I want the memory of that time if I could have it? Absolutely, pain and all. After all, it was my experience and I deserve to learn from it.

So I guess the real question is: Is a life more than the sum of its parts (memories)?

Just something to entertain me while Ben Affleck looked bored.

Spending New Year’s Eve as I usually do, laid out on my mother’s living room floor eating snacks and watching about six hours worth of movies, just enough to carry us through to that final ten minutes of Dick Clark’s show and the ball drop in Times Square (some day I swear that man will age decades before our very eyes), the thought occurs to me: does anyone actually put gloves in a glove compartment any more?

Very useful little space when we were all motoring around in the Model-T, which was mostly open to the elements; not so useful now that you can just heave stuff over your shoulder into the back seat (quick snapshot of what’s in my backseat:

• one mitten (the other is in the trunk…don’t ask),
• cassette tape case (hey, the car’s 13 years old; no in-dash CD player for me),
• an empty Dr. Pepper can,
• and the rock used to break the window the last time someone tried to steal the car (I inherited this from the guy I bought the car from)).

What’s in my glove compartment:

• Small flash light
• tire pressure guage
• registration and insurance papers
• cheap pair of sunglasses
• and a pair of rubber gloves (really don’t ask)

So, if the actual use of something has evolved beyond its name, why does its name persist?

Random thoughts from during my viewing of The Recruit

Happy New Year!

In case you’re one of the five people in the U.S. who doesn’t read the news, we finally have our first confirmed case of Mad Cow Disease (more properly known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE) in the United States. In response the USDA has changed the rules for the treatment of cattle that are to be part of the food supply. The one I really love is this, direct from the press release on the USDA’s web site:

Product Holding.
USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service inspectors will no longer mark cattle tested for BSE as “inspected and passed” until confirmation is received that the animals have, in fact, tested negative for BSE. This new policy will be in the form of an interpretive rule that will be published in the Federal Register.

OK…wait a minute…unless I’m misreading this, which I’m not because I’ve read it several times to weed out the Da-Da factor, prior to this recent uproar USDA inspectors have been marking cattle as having passed the test for BSE before they had the test results back. And this was deemed “safe” and “OK” ?!?!?!?

And just think how bad off we’d all be if the government weren’t so diligent about protecting our health and welfare.