Nat

Another great piece in The New Yorker describes the effects on people with long commutes. The article characterizes people who travel 90 minutes or more each direction as “extreme commuters.” Under this definition, I am just under the limit, thanks to my company’s moving 20 minutes closer to my house last year.

In a nutshell, the article quotes research by several social scientists, which asserts that most long-distance commuters eventually suffer from social isolation for two basic reasons: first, the time they spend commuting is time they can’t spend socializing with their friends, and second, if where a person lives, works, and shops are too far from one another, it’s harder to establish a single community.

The article also points out that humans tend to have a hard time comparing the relative advantages and disadvantages of the material things we gain from a job and the more intangible costs the job inflicts. So we don’t know how to make a healthier emotional choice.

The article made me really sad and anxious, because I’ve been feeling after 10 years commuting more than 30,000 miles a year that I can’t bear to do it any more. Sometimes I think it’s less painful to be ignorant of the imperfections in one’s life, and today, I realized I didn’t want to ignore this frustration any more.

The author also stated that most people stick with a difficult commute not because they love the job, but because they either don’t see an option or don’t have the energy to pursue one. I want to find the energy to have options. Don’t we all?

What’s your secret for storing up that energy?

I’ve been feeling a little sorry for myself over the last few days, but my friend Gilda found a great way to pick me up. She reminded me that electrons need to gather precisely the right amount of energy before they can make the leap to the next level–the quantum leap, in other words.

So, she said, think of yourself as waiting where you are to gather the energy to make the leap to the next level.

It sounds simple, but it was exactly what I needed to hear to believe that there was a good reason why things seem to be the way they are right now. I’m so grateful to have friends and family who know me well enough to say just the right thing. To be understood and reassured is both a relief and a joy.

If you know of anyone who needs this kind of pick-me-up from you right now, please pick up the phone or sit down at your keyboard and let them know. They may be desperate for it.

I was.

I often have Saturdays like today: I wait all week to tackle something I really want to do (clean up my study, write a poem, do a little work when there’s no time pressure), and instead I fritter away the time napping and watching TV. At my age that can seem like a giant game of chicken with one’s future.

People I know or used to know have achieved great things, while I’ve been treading water, and it’s taken me the better part of two years to come to terms with that. Even so, taking the step forward requires knowing what that step is.

Really this is about figuring out how to take uncertainty and transform it into decisive action. Hard work is one approach, and so is understanding what you really care about. It could be reading, or planting a garden, or taking a walk alone. It could be social–planning a dinner party, playing a sport, going on a trip with friends. Tonight all I really want is to go to sleep and wake up with a resolution to do something meaningful tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.

What’s your secret for doing that? I’m sure lots of people would like to know.

I’m a big fan of Don Imus’s show, Imus in the Morning. The radio host is under blistering and well deserved attack for grotesquely racist remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. But I’m torn by this on many levels.

For starters, I love the radio program, which consistently attracts some of the country’s most important politicians and journalists to comment on issues of the day. I devour the news from many outlets, but I think I get more analysis on the Imus program than anywhere else.

Then there’s the issue of all of the charitable works Imus uses his show to promote: recreation for children with cancer, fundraising for wounded veterans, and donations for research into many different children’s diseases. The man clearly uses his power to find solutions to problems.

But over and over again, the show makes horribly bigoted and homophobic remarks, even though it’s clear that Imus has friends of color and gay friends. So the question is, why does he do it, and does the worst of his offense invalidate all of the good he does.

I hope not, but I’m torn over this one. When I don’t like the personality or politics of a radio host, I’m the first to complain about his vulgarity or cruelty. I like Imus and his show. I would know less about important news and political issues with him off the air. It would be nice to think he will reform.

Still, an apology has to be judged by the sincerity of the person to change his behavior. Mr. Imus has apologized before. I’d like to know if he still finds this kind of humor funny. I believe he has a good heart. I’m hoping he’ll think of a brialliant way out of this incident.

I had another air travel mis-adventure with my boss yesterday. It started with a weird canceled flight, halfway through a one-stop journey. Then, there was a rush to fly standby, with no tickets because of a computer difficulty. When we had to leave security in DC to get to our transfer gate after arriving from Charlotte, we couldn’t get to our departure gate (no tickets, right?). Sorted that out, missed the plane anyway by two minutes. 3 hour layover. Home 5 hours late.

But here’s the thing. We went to fill the 3 hours in Reagan National by having dinner at Legal Seafoods. When dinner came, they had scrambled my order and forgotten my appetizer. In stunning contrast to the harried and largely ineffective service from the airline, the restaurant manager at Legal Seafoods immediately came to the table and comped the entire meal, for both of us! The revised order was perfect, and I left the restaurant feeling better about the chain than I ever did after a great meal there. I left a generous tip and felt great about the entire experience.

The lesson for me is that one person who sees a problem and jumps in to fix it means more to me than 10 people who don’t. I want us all to be that one person, starting with me. It’s not that hard.

I am feeling lighthearted today. I spent several hours at work brainstorming new product ideas with some of the best minds in my company. Great fun to be surrounded by such firepower.

Michael sent a comment on grief, though, which I’ve been mulling over. He observes that loss of a loved one naturally inspires grief, but it shouldn’t last for weeks or months. Frankly, that doesn’t seem long to me, certainly weeks doesn’t.

There have been times when I grew accustomed to working while very sad, like running with weights around my ankles. It’s a challenge, but in a strange way, it feels as if it’s making you stronger.

I don’t know if relief from suffering means letting it go or learning to adapt to its presence. It’s possible that you can learn to focus on what is hopeful and good to such a degree that you simply cease to notice whatever has you sad. Isn’t that just as good?

My wife and I watched “Four Weddings and a Funeral” on television yesterday. It must be the eighth or ninth time I’ve seen the movie, which I love. Every time, my favorite scene is the funeral scene in which the character Matthew eulogizes his lover by reading W. H. Auden’s “Stop All the Clocks.”

Every time, even knowing the poem is coming, I am stunned by its beauty, especially as recited by the actor for this scene. “He was my North, and South, my East and West/My working week, and my Sunday rest.”

If you don’t know the poem, buy a collection and read it. It’s heartbreaking and gorgeous.

Which brings me to grief. It’s a horrible emotion, but it has brought us some of the great art in human history: poems, songs, paintings. Which begs the question, “Do we want to be relieved of grief?” Even if that would mean we lose an essential experience of our humanity?

I wrestle with this as I think about how to make us all happier. I want for grief to remain, at least as a memory or benchmark to remind us how spectacular joy is in its face. It’s a delicate balance.

In the January 29, 2007, issue of The New Yorker magazine, Ben McGrath profiled former New York Giants star football player Tiki Barber and his decision to retire from football. In Walking Away, McGrath describes Barber’s outstanding career, calling him the greatest offensive player in Giants history.

Barber is enormously talented, good looking, well spoken, and he decided this year to quit before suffering a devastating injury. Disturbingly, the piece quotes radio sports talk show hosts from WFAN who have criticized Barber for walking away when he still has plenty to contribute. Barber angered some fans by saying that he “was a business major who happened to play football.”

Yet he comes across to me as a well adjusted person who knows what he wants next from life and who has a plan to get there. I admire utterly his determination to take the path toward his dreams and to ignore the people who insist that he should do what they want him to do.

We should all have the conviction to do the same.

My not-so-secret guilty pleasure is that I love lots of mediocre TV. Tonight’s rerun of “Men in Trees” has a great bit of dialogue. Anne Heche’s character tells how troubled she is by small, short earthquakes in Alaska, and she asks on her character’s radio show, “How do you people deal with living on shaky ground?”

It’s an absolutely great question, since that’s what we all have to do eventually. Or always. When I lived through two very large earthquakes in California in 1987 and 1989, I found the experience very odd and unsettling. For starters, all of the car alarms go off at once.

But metaphorically, it’s an even harder question. How do you learn to handle finding out that things in life are not as durable or solid as they appear to be?

So tell me, How do you deal with living on shaky ground?

Here’s another great quote from Happiness, by Matthieu Ricard:

We all have the ability to study the causes of suffering and gradually to free ourselves from them. We all have the potential to sweep away the veils of ignorance, to free ourselves of the selfishness and misplaced desires that trigger unhappiness, to work for the good of others and extract the essence from our human condition. It’s not the magnitude of the task that matters, it’s the magnitude of our courage (p. 65).

The courage, that is to confront our suffering by facing our own minds. According to the Buddha and Ricard, the external examples of suffering (poverty, war, hatred, loss), can give way to our individual ability to see the causes of our suffering and correct them.

More on this.