Final exams were last week, and a few days ago I was contemplating a post to bookend the back to school diatribe I wrote nine months ago. It would have detailed the fundamental and visible ways that the end of the academic year differs from its start. The mood on a rapidly emptying campus is a mix of elation and indifference born of exhaustion. There are no novices on campus now, no wasted steps, and virtually no one is in a hurry. Traffic is practically bearable. Summer's oppressive heat has been replaced with Spring breezes.
This is where it all went wrong. By the next day, when I got serious about writing, it was 89 degrees and humid. The magical state of inspiration was shattered. My disillusionment was beyond what the change in weather alone would dictate. I groused like my grumpiest Facebook friend.
I think this is one reason that grownups can't often achieve the same unabashed happiness that kids get out of five minutes on the merry-go-round.* Adults have complicated lives, with too many degrees of freedom in their bliss equations. Kids don't worry about tomorrow, or regret the road not taken. They are zen, unstable and uncaring. The rest of us bind our happiness to innumerable threads of achievement, entangled and often pulling against each other. Food, shelter, career success, happy and well adjusted children, regard of our peers, romantic bliss, must all coexist before we allow ourselves untainted joy. We must scale to the top of Maslow's pyramid to be unburdened, while an 8 year old is good with a hot dog and 15 minutes in the pool.
The playground may be rubber, but at least none of these kids are texting.
Image from here
I am not sure how much of this behavior is learned, and how much is a natural consequence of the way we are wired. There is a lot of gray matter surrounding the happy place in our brain. I'm sure it's there for some reason. And there is definitely a hormonal component. Self doubt and regret seem to come with puberty.
The good news is that I think the capacity for simple pleasure returns with age. Ask an eighty year old what makes them happy, and they are likely to say a good bowel movement, or a day in the garden. Our family gatherings used to devolve into stress-filled group therapy sessions. These days my family laughs through most of our time together. I have watched my mother's happiness threshold for holidays like Mothers Day moderate from -- unachievable, really -- to lunch and a call from her kids.
So it seems there is hope for us all, even my grumpy Facebook friend. Have a simply happy Mother's Day, everyone.
* I realize merry-go-rounds are much too dangerous for today's children. Do iPad games and Disney shows produce the same giggling elation? A question for another day -- and someone with kids -- I suppose.
My personal laptop suffered a massive stroke this past weekend. It is not completely dead, at least not yet. It powers on and the little Apple shows up, but not much productive happens after that. I am doing what I can to make it comfortable and save what memories remain, but it's only a matter of time before we pull the life support.
While tragic, this doesn't exactly leave me cut off from the virtual world. I have an embarrassing number of computers and tablets at work, and a few more at the house. But this is the machine that I commune with early in the morning, that keeps me company while I watch TV, and that sits with me when I am sick. It has been my near-constant companion since -- apparently -- mid 2009. Plus, it knows a lot of my passwords.
I have already learned something from the experience, though. I don't have the same relationship with my phone that the young people do, and the laptop has been my go-to device for killing time. Over the years, I have used the big machine more like kids use their phones, as a cure for boredom and an habitual source of distraction. Without it, I feel more focused, and I am spending more time out of my chair.
Much of my professional work involves Tangible Computing, and the Internet of Things, concepts so powerful that they defy explanation. Seriously, I can't explain them. I have been trying for years. What they promise is a future where -- let's say a decade from now -- Google will use your habits at home to adjust the thermostat in your office. They might even tweak the temperature based on what clothes you put on before you left the house. Your coffee cup will tell the robot at Starbucks what you want, and pay for the transaction. Your car may inform you that the restaurant you entered as a destination is frequented by your ex, and there is a 42% chance that they are there. And you won't have to do anything! It will all happen automatically. In fact, you won't be able to stop it.
If you are much over 30, this probably all sounds terrifying and horrible. Much younger, and your attitude is likely to be more positive. Either way, the future is coming, ready or not. The idea of computing as an activity one does with a machine will be as much a part of the past as talking on the phone in a specific room, tethered by a curly cord. The world of Star Trek will be with us much earlier than anyone believed, at least where technology is concerned. The social justice and peace thing will probably take much longer.
I was going to add an image of the inside of a computer, but this seems infinitely more appropriate. Image from here
What is unclear is what this will do to the way people think. It is possible that technology will sink naturally into the background, allowing us to live a more intentional life. Some of our current research is in this direction, creating environments that change subtly with conditions, the way the sky changes color due to time and weather. Given society's history, it is more likely that our connected environment will attract and manipulate us in ways subtle and profane, and that we will become even more distracted than the kids who walk in front of my car every day, never looking up from their iPhones. Maybe that thermostat will cool the room an extra couple of degrees during the morning, so that I am a little more susceptible to the suggestion of a vente mochaccino.
My intellectual interest is in making sure all of this works together in some reasonable way. If my refrigerator is going to catch me up on my [insert favorite social media platform here] feed, then it damn well better remember what I came into the kitchen to do, because I certainly won't. I think this post is a good example of that phenomenon.
Which brings me to what will have to serve as the point of all this. I am going to fix or replace my laptop, but I don't think I will keep it so close to me. I need to understand this brave new world to the extent I will participate, and my MacBook is no more a part of it than a rotary phone, or cable TV.
The last football game I attended with my father was a little over 20 years ago on the day after Thanksgiving. The home state Hogs were playing the Tigers of my alma mater in my home town. Dad had two extra tickets, and my brother and I jumped at the chance to see a game with the old man, even though both teams were terrible that year, and the game was essentially meaningless.
The temperature was in the mid-30s with a cold drizzle at game time, and it was raining hard by the end of the first quarter. The game was not going well for the home team, and the situation was plainly not going to improve in the second half. Soaked, freezing, and miserable, my brother and I decided that a hot shower and a cold drink were called for, so at half time we told Dad we were leaving. "All right, then," he growled from under his poncho, showing no inclination to join us. He didn't call us pussies out loud, but it was clearly implied. He stayed until the bitter (30-7) end, and never mentioned the game to us again.
This is a long way of saying that football is important in my family. We all played growing up. My parents had season tickets most years. When other girls were hanging David Cassidy posters, my sister kept an autographed picture of Joe Ferguson on her bedroom wall. I think Archie Manning was on my mother's list. She still watches football every Fall weekend between naps, and both of my brothers are active on the sports blogs.
The trouble started when they moved the game indoors. Image from here.
So it's not a trivial thing for me to skip the Super Bowl. I have watched them all* since Super Bowl -1 (the 1965 NFL Championship game). I saw a few epic games, and more than a few I could have done without. I watched the Packers, Colts, Cowboys, Dolphins, Cowboys again, Steelers, 49ers, da Bears, Broncos, and the rest put it all together and grab the big prize. I suffered with the Bills through four straight Super Bowl losses. I even lived long enough to see my Saints make it to the big dance and win.
I have been falling out of love with big time football for a while now, but I seem to have passed my personal tipping point. It's not just the concussions and other health problems. A lot of people work jobs that are every bit as dangerous for way less than $10 million a year, though when Ditka says the game is not worth the risk, that gets my attention. It's not even the animal abuse, domestic violence, and murders. They select these people for aggressiveness and violent tendencies, then pump them full of drugs and give them more money at one time than most of us would earn in three lifetimes. Am I the only one who is not surprised when some of them don't act like model citizens?
No, the camelback straw for me was watching the Patriots clearly think it was funny that someone caught them cheating. Worse, I found myself laughing along with them.** It seems to have finally dawned on me that the NFL owners not only don't care about the players or the fans, they don't have any respect for the game. Through scandal after embarrassment, the league shoots a big finger at the fans, lights another cigar with a billion dollar bill, and watch the money-machine keep cranking.
I am not trying to start a movement or anything. I expect everyone I know to watch the game, and I wouldn't expect them to choose differently. I know that neither the sponsors nor the league will notice me gone. My personal choices are the only way I have to shape my world, so I am making this one. Who knows, maybe I'll be back next year.
My father loved football for what it taught young men about leadership, teamwork, sportsmanship, and perseverance through pain and heartbreak. He liked how the game brought families together, and gave manly men some way to express emotions. He loved the game itself. I don't think he would like how professional football is being run. He would probably still watch, and while everyone else was standing around eating snacks and discussing commercials, he would be glued to the biggest television in the house, watching every play to the bitter end. But he would definitely grumble about the erosion of respect for his favorite sport.
All right, then.
* I may have missed one or two being on the road or working, but if I did I don't remember, so they must not have been important. I am also a little fuzzy on the particulars of the 1965 NFL Championship game, other than that it was in color.
** I'm not picking on the Patriots especially. I wasn't particularly enamored of Marshawn Lynch's eloquent defense of his personal right to privacy, either. There is not a team in the league with clean hands. New England are just the latest, and their "what's the big deal" attitude is particular galling to me.
