Thursday, December 17, 2015

Sheep don't surf.

My 15 year-old daughter was crying and it was my fault. It was ten to seven in the morning and she had just told me to hurry up and take her to school. She was way early; and I was not ready to go. "Did you eat?" I asked.

"No, but I’ll get some cereal."

She, of the "let’s go" a moment earlier, then filled a bowl with cereal and milk and sat down to spoon frosted flakes into her mouth while operating her i-phone with the other hand.

"What the heck?" I said. "You just told me to hurry up and now you are sitting down looking at Snapchat! Do we need to go or what?" She started crying.

"I’m stressed out and failing. Stop it!"

I was mortified. I forgot she had two semester exams that day; in algebra II and history. Both were honors classes and the math was super tough. She had been studying hard and was spent. My angry tone was too much for her.

I quickly apologized. She stopped crying and finished her food. I dropped her off at school went back home to finish my coffee (we live close). I’ve been listening to an audio book. It’s titled Excellent Sheep. The author is an Ivy League graduate and former admissions official and professor at Yale. He believes the educating and parenting paths that many Americans follow is a mistake. He says that the insidious pressure to keep up with the Joneses has motivated us to wrongfully push our kids to follow a poisonous path we’ve been told leads to lifetime success and happiness. I think he is right.

We may not be Ivy Leaguers ourselves, and we may be happy with our lives. Ecstatic even. Nonetheless, we are urged by a tsunami of media influences to believe that only if our children are straight-A, activity-fueled, community-serving, multi- lingual, club-forming leaders accepted to Harvard will they ever be happy. My wife and I have at times pushed that vision on our children.

Baa. Baa. Baa.

Warren Buffet went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business - for two years. Then he returned to the University of Nebraska. Now he’s one of the wealthiest people on the planet and seems content with his life.

Mark Cuban went to college at the University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University. Not the Ivies in any way. He has always been a business owner and entrepreneur and would likely be successful, college or not.

Apple’s creator, Steve Jobs, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates both dropped out of college. Higher education is sometimes necessary, but it is NOT a prerequisite to financial or emotional satisfaction.

Look at the other end of the wealth spectrum: the professional surfer. I follow several on Instagram. They never seem to have a bad day. How could they? They are always near beaches and are directly connected to nature. They are all tanned, toned, and smiling. But they aren’t usually rich in money. I envy their visible lives anyway. Wake, eat, surf, eat, sleep, repeat. Bliss.

Honestly, we can’t know how happy or unhappy anyone really is. It’s impossible to know what they  carry in their trunks. But you can’t deny that people the world over appear happy even though they never scrambled for admission to a prestige college.

My children (like yours) are smart, talented, and capable. I can see that one may take to being herded better than the other. But if they decide they are not following the same path as the rest of the flock, and I will let them decide, and instead take up acting, writing, Ebay commerce, or even big-wave surfing, then I may be the one crying. Not out of sadness or pain, but with joy.

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Stars in the dark

Do it now. Limited time only. This deal won’t last. There has never been a better time to buy.


Why do we take this bait? Why does anyone?

There is no limit to time. There is always another opportunity coming. There will always be a time to buy, or sell, or jump, or eat or sleep, or even fall in love.

As long as you are alive there is opportunity to act. It’s okay if you don’t squeeze the juice out of every moment. Even the guys who cheat death for RedBull videos on YouTube spend countless boring hours planning, arranging and practicing for their 30-90 seconds of fame.

Often we act as mice in a maze, bouncing against walls of our own making, scrambling from event to deadline to event, until we stop, exhausted, and sometimes without ever having eaten the cheese. (Cheese, glorious cheese).

Many of us feel we have to be "productive" at home, on days off, even on vacation at the beach (Maria), anytime when we aren’t working for someone else. This is when we desperately need to slow down and live. Breathe in, breathe out. Just float in the water, catch a wave, look up at the stars and wonder just where you are, just for the sake of wondering.

Looking at the night sky is one of my favorite pastimes. I’ve found that if I can see some stars, I can focus on a point between two or three, in what appears to be dark emptiness, and just try to see as far as I can imagine seeing, then, to my delight, a pin-point of light will materialize where I am looking.

The stars are there, in what seems to be darkness. They are always there. Just like opportunities. Take a moment. Breathe. Look. See.

Friday, December 11, 2015

Life. Bulbs.

First blackness and calm, then crackling and pulsing alertness.



Everyone in the circle is awake and glowing. There are hundreds of them, six or seven different outlooks, but all connected for the same bright purpose.



They don’t live on their own. It’s the shared energy that animates them. The same force that propels thoughts, movement and light. It gives life to them, maybe to all of us.



One of them stops. It no longer participates in the group. Its family stops and stares, still glowing and feeling. What can they do for this one?



Evolution of their kind allows them to live and work all together on the same wavelength, and to continue even when one of them departs. Earlier families would live until their weakest member passed. Then they would all die together, as one.



Now they try to recover their own. They make a fuss. They crackle and hiss. None wants to believe there is no way back for one.



But there isn’t a way. Sometimes darkness is all there is.



So they go on beaming and gleaming, until it’s time to sleep, and the switch is flipped.