The Sense of an Ending

IF YOU were to tell your life story, how would you prove it is true?  In his moving new book, The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes grapples to answer this question with a twisting and mysterious tale.

The crisp 163 page novella is divided into two parts.  In the first part, the book’s narrator and protagonist, Tony Webster, recounts a time from his school days when he spent an uncomfortable weekend at his girlfriend’s parent’s house and when his overly clever philosopher friend commits suicide.  Webster ruminates on these memories some 40 years later in the book’s second part.  In piecing together his past, Webster finds that his life story is not as obvious and easily told as he might have imagined.

Webster identifies two different standards of time he can use to tell his story: an objective timeline and a subjective timeline.  In the objective sense, his life is a series of cause-and-effect events that pass regularly to the tick-tock of a universal clock.  But in subjective time his past is composed of his personal memories, which he learns are malleable and warped by emotion and pleasure.

Ultimately he discovers that a paradox arises in choosing which measure best captures his life.  The objective standard is too impersonal; it lacks a human quality.  The subjective standard, on the other hand, is too personal; his memories are too skewed by his own personal biases to give a trustworthy account of his life. To be sure, Webster concludes that the best measure of his past is where the two meet: it is where his personal memories are corroborated by physical evidence.

For me, this realization explains why I cherish mementos so much.  I cannot rely solely on my memories to accurately explain my history.  But the love letter I wrote my wife shortly after we began dating is proof that the butterflies I remember feeling then were real.  The crumpled boutonnière locked in a chest in the attic is evidence that my homecoming date was not imagined.  And the picture of my wife and daughter on my desk at work corroborates my belief that family matters.

Mementos, if the fictional character Tony Webster were asked, would likely explain them as a concrete manifestation of the place that objective and subjective time meet.  For me they’re proof that the life I remember having lived actually happened.  And I keep my mementos close because if you lose a piece of your past you lose a piece of yourself.

Kill The People

During this past weekend’s Northwest Bookfest, Mitchell Maxwell, a Tony Award winning Broadway producer spoke at Kirkland’s Performance Center about his new book “Little Did I Know.”  Maxwell is an imposing man: he stands over six feet tall and his confidence makes him seem just as wide.  He is a former high school football star who turned down a college scholarship to produce plays at Tufts University.  The decision was a wise one: to highlight only a few of his accomplishments, he is the imaginative producer behind Stomp! and the popular revival of Damn Yankees.


It is this seasoned 35-year theatrical life Maxwell has lived that gives shape to his book’s protagonist Samuel August.  In the story we watch August’s dreams of producing theatrical musicals unfold during a 1976 season of summer stock.  And though it is a work of fiction, August’s maxims are Maxwell’s own.


One of which, “Kill the people,” means “Knock ‘em dead.”  It is a standard by which the success (or failure) of a musical or play is judged.  Part of Samuel August’s coming of age story – as was Maxwell’s – includes learning how to judge not only the success of a show’s production, but also the success of your life.


Maxwell writes on his website “Success, as it’s measured by society, is a fleeting condition.”  It is hard to resist seeking society’s approval when, as Shakespeare saw it, “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”  But resist we must because those who judge the worth of their life’s performance by the whimsical standards of life’s audience will never be pleased with their performance.  Shakespeare may be right that all the world’s a stage, but it is also true that everyone’s a critic and there will always be bad reviews.


A better idiom to follow, also one of Maxwell’s, is “When you look into the abyss you find your character.”  Put another way, when blinded by darkness, our internal character lights our path through the void.  It is when all external standards of judgment are erased that we truly shine. 


Do your best in all that you do, Maxwell advises, and then you will be successful.  Also, don’t read the reviews.

Simply Slip ‘n Slide

As a kid I loved Wham-O’s Slip ‘n Slide.  Each summer my father retrieved that long tattered piece of banana colored plastic from some dusty corner of our attic.  My brothers and I ran the hose full blast and washed off the rust colored sludge that had accumulated from three seasons of hibernation. 

That first slide was always the sweetest.  The sudden rush of cold water would paralyze our bodies and shock our senses; a deep gasp would follow.  Our bodies were fleshy Hydroplane racers spraying water high into the air and far across the lawn.  Then, as quickly as it began, the ride was over.  Our bodies would slow to a stop in the mushy, soggy backstop of grass.  Newly laid spring bark from the rose bed stuck on our wet backs slathered with waterproof sunscreen.

Once, my brothers and I tried to extend our ride.  We laid down the blue tarpaulin at the end of our slide that my father used on the garage floor when he changed the car’s oil.  We splashed through the rainbow oil streaks that danced in the tarp’s water puddles.  But our youthful attempt to extend the summer ride just complicated the fun:  the longer scratchy blue surface didn’t compare to the short, sweet, super slick hyper-drive slide machine.

We always imagined that when we were adults we would buy “a million Slip ‘n Slides,” lay them all end-to-end, and slide so fast that we’d break the sound barrier.  When we daydreamed about our future summers we pictured, not adult versions of ourselves, but our kid-selves only with the endless resources we assumed all adults were privy to.  We imagined ourselves as larger children with the freedom to slide around on wet plastic all summer long.  

But as adults we don’t slide around on plastic all day (and we now take note of the emblazoned WARNING stickers on the box).  Our adult bodies are not the flexible bendable speed boats they once were.  Slip ‘n Slides make us sorer than the sunburn we get playing on them. 

But that doesn’t mean we should trash our youthful ability to see the greatness in something simple.  Sometimes all it takes to have a memorable summer is a garden hose and a long piece of canary yellow plastic.

Kirkland: Seattle's Bedroom

A 1966 Seattle Times article quoted one then-Kirkland-housewife as saying, “Kirkland really is a glorified bedroom for Bellevue, Renton and Seattle and it probably always will be.”  That Kirkland “housewife” was Janet Livengood, wife to Gordon Livengood, a deceased Kirkland lawyer and founding member of the still-existing Kirkland law firm Livengood, Fitzgerald & Alskog.

Ms. Livengood’s statement (“…and it probably always will be”) made forty-five years ago was a prophesy for my current situation.  Here it is 2011 and I am an attorney who lives in Kirkland and who works in Seattle.  And I am not alone: I sit next to several other professionals who, on the 255 King County Metro Bus, each morning make their way to the Concrete Jungle that is Seattle.

Janet Livengood maintained an active interest in improving local affairs until her death in 1998.  Yet there is a plaintive and degrading tone in Ms. Livengood’s quote.  “Many of our husbands work outside Kirkland,” she continued, “and we do most of our shopping in Bellevue or Seattle.  You just can’t get everything you need in a small town like this,” she said speaking of Kirkland.  It is as though Ms. Livengood disliked her bedroom; it is as though she longed for a life lived in the living room: in Seattle, not Kirkland.   

But why should she have lamented living in Kirkland, even if it was Seattle’s bedroom?  A bedroom is an intimate place. It is a fun place for family; it is a place where life changing decisions are made after thoughtful late night discussions; it is a place where couples laugh during pillow talk and share secrets from the past; it is a place where children jump into bed with their parents after sleeping late into a Saturday morning; it is where we get dressed for church. A bedroom is a place where you seek clarity from the ever changing and hectic outside world.  It’s a personal place clear from trouble.

And so goes Kirkland.  Having lived in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, I can attest to the trials (and triumphs) of urban living.  But for all that urban living has to offer – and it truly does have much to offer for the people who relish every moment of it – urban life cannot compete with the quaint intimacy of Kirkland’s pillow talk.

If nothing else – even if Kirkland is just a “bedroom” to a bigger and what the mainstream may call “better” metropolis Seattle – then at least there is one heck of a view out Kirkland’s bedroom window.  A view I happily indulge. 

Hopeful Thinking: How Simple Optimism Can Ensure A Better Future

Communities across our country are riddled with holes: empty store fronts that are peepholes through which you can see a once thriving business destination.  When I see these vacant spaces, I get depressed.  And we all probably (understandably) get depressed thinking about the tough economic times we face.  Thankfully, we may be genetically inclined to hope for a better future, hopeful thinking which in turn can have realistic benefits for our community.

Tali Sharot, neuroscientist and author of the new book The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain, argues that we are more optimistic (even if irrational) than we are realistic.  What Sharot calls the “Optimism Bias” is our cognitive predisposition to believe that the future will be better than the past or the present.  We are more likely to see the glass half full.

Sharot believes the optimism bias protects and inspires us.  “To make progress,” Sharot writes in a May 28, 2011 Time article, “we need to be able to imagine alternative realities — better ones — and we need to believe that we can achieve them. Such faith helps motivate us to pursue our goals.”  In fact, Sharot argues that without this bias our ancestors may not have taken the risks necessary to carry civilization forward. 

More importantly than the bias itself, is the potential for the bias to improve our reality.  In the same Time article, Sharot explains that our hopeful expectations “become self-fulfilling by altering our performance and actions, which ultimately affects what happens in the future.”  Put another way, our actual future depends on our hopes for the future.

For our local communities, this means that our personal individual psychological expectations – even if seemingly irrational and lofty optimistic ones – have realistic actual consequences for our community.  If we imagine our communities’ downtown thriving, we are more likely to fulfill that vision by shopping there instead of, say, on Amazon.com.  Likewise, if we imagine our own children receiving a diverse and rewarding education, then we are more likely to vote to increase funding for free education for all.  Or if we imagine less traffic, we may very well find ourselves taking public transit more frequently.

 

Staying hopeful is not always easy.  But doing so will have a real impact on the future in which we live.  Our realized community will only be as great as the one we can realize.

Our Education

As many high school students across the country receive their diplomas, we can debate whether our education system has provided the best education possible.  But as valuable as formalized education is, we cannot discount the tremendous value of self-education.

Having the initiative to educate oneself is, in many important ways, a paramount duty.  Henry Adams, in his The Education of Henry Adams, argues that where traditional and organized education fails us, our capacity for self-education does not.  Reading, having new experiences, and holding friendships above all else is, in Adams’ mind, the true path to enlightenment. 

In The Education Adams speaks of the people in his life as having “values only as educators” and his surroundings being important “only so far as they affect education.” Adams emphasizes that how we remember our experiences is often more important than the experience itself.  He delves deep into self exploration and resurfaces with the realization that it is the life lessons he chooses for himself that ultimately mean the most. 

We learn from reading The Education that formalized education can in some ways stifle, instead of foster, educational growth.  The habits imposed by institutional structures can place a detrimental emphasis on arbitrary academic achievement instead of moral attainment and personal integrity.  The conclusion from The Education is that there is profound and sometimes life changing value in an ambition to educate oneself.  Self-education is valuable education.

The influential psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (whose name I’m sure you can’t say three times fast) explains in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience that people who consistently report living happy and satisfied lives are people who, among other things, “keep on learning until the day they die.”  

Csikszentmihalyi provides an example in Flow of how personal objectives can be a catalyst for attaining private wisdom:  “Again the importance of personally taking control of the direction of learning from the very first steps cannot be stressed enough.  If a person feels coerced to read a certain book, to follow a given course because that is supposed to be the way to do it, learning will go against the grain.  But if the decision is to take that same route because of an inner feeling of rightness, the learning will be relatively effortless and enjoyable.” 

I am by no means encouraging high school grads to tear up their college acceptance letters.  In fact, I am an attorney with many years of higher education under my belt and so I personally owe much to formalized education. 

I mean, however, to highlight the importance of our self-directed educational pursuits in the fulfillment of our lives.  Picking up a book to read what interests you personally or writing a letter to the editor on a topic that motivates you, for example, is also an education.

Self-education, whether we are college-bound high school grads or adults well beyond the days of standardized tests, is as important as the value we receive from our formal degrees.  We should cultivate our own educational well-roundedness as a means of enriching our own cultural identity.  Step outside students: Class is in session.

Are We Still Here

It’s not always clear when I’m in my own city and when I’m not.  On my way home from work, or out and about with my wife and daughter, I find myself skirting the city limits and I often wonder, “am I still in my city?”

This question makes me think about an engaging problem in modern philosophy known as The Problem of the Many.  The problem poses the following question: how do you define an object that does not have clearly distinguished borders?  How do you define fuzzy things? 

In his 1993 essay “Many, but Almost One,” the philosopher David Lewis uses a cloud as an illustrative means of presenting the puzzle.  Think of a cloud, Lewis instructs.  From the ground, the cloud appears to be one object with a clear, outlined boundary.  On closer inspection, however, the cloud is a mere collection of many individual water droplets; its edges are vague, indistinguishable and not as apparent (if at all obvious) as you at first concluded.  

Now, imagine – hovering there in midair – that you flick one water droplet from the cloud’s edge down to earth.  Without that single drop of water, are you left with the same cloud?  Flick away another droplet.  Still the same cloud?  Do this again and again (and again…) until eventually you are left with a single water droplet: is that single droplet the same cloud?  If it is, were you in fact gazing up from the ground at many small clouds and not just the one you thought?  And if not, at which point did the one cloud cease being what you thought was a single object drifting through the sky? 

Western Washington University’s philosophy professor Hud Hudson surveys many attempts to answer The Problem of the Many with wonderful clarity in his book A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person.  Hudson, however, applies the problem to human persons. How do we identify the “person,” Hudson inquires, among the world’s fuzzy material pieces?  Greater than the solutions to the puzzle Hudson presents is his ability to persuade us that The Problem of the Many is a problem that needs an answer.  We need to know who we are.   

The Problem of the Many aptly applies to the way we understand our community.  How do we define the community in which we live?  An easy answer lies on a city map.  That answer, however, is not very meaningful (or interesting for that matter).  Rather, the bigger question that is filled with meaning is how do we define the rich sense of community that we think of as our town? 

In Hudson’s words, there are “Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many.”  But simply thinking about the issues it poses – regardless of the ultimate answers reached – reveals deeper truths about how we define our community and how we live in it.  Understanding the characteristics of our community enables us to salvage essential aspects of the community that might otherwise fade without our noticing. Likewise, we can nourish those fledgling features of our growing community that promise to define, for the better, our communities of tomorrow. Either way, just asking the question, “where are the margins of our community?,” keeps us from falling off its edge.