The lifeguard's existance is action packed. Unless you work at the YWCA, in which case your existance entails watching people swim back and forth, 25 maddening yards at a time. It does however, afford interesting opportunities to watch just how frequently and perniciously the silly people of the world make things so much harder than they actually are. I mean, I watch swimmers every day emerge from the pool visibly flushed and exhausted after swimming a distance that I could easily have done while smoking a pack of cigarettes (suspend this disbelief at how one smokes underwater, but the point is there). And it is not as though these people are hopeless, or amputees, or [insert your own thing that would hinder swimming here], they merely have leapt before they looked, and now battle against the water when they could soon be sliding through it, like a child down a waterslide.
The issue does not end there. Sports aside, I watch people struggle at many various tasks, be it making a pass at the opposite gender, cooking dinner or even smoking a cigarette. I mean, we must be in need of a pretty good overhaul when I can walk past a smoker and worry if they are going to hurt themselves actually smoking it. This post isn't about cancer though, so I'll leave that aside: it is about effort, more importantly the misplacement of our mental and physical energies such that at the end of the day we would rather throw our loved ones out of the nearest window than give them some welcome home affection.
I'll take as the beginning of our need for simplicity from the universe itself. Think of our seasons, the cycle of the moon, even watching the leaves fall. Although I cannot actually ask a tree, I'm pretty sure it does not stress about losing its leaves until spring, or attempt in vain to continue providing nutrients for leaves that no longer want/are able to get it. Yet take a look at humanity: anyone who has dated has put in a nights worth of effort without the reward we seek only to find a better option when we have given up hope, or suffered through a difficult problem (I always enjoyed advanced logic suffering personally) only to solve it in your sleep, in the bathroom, suing David Copperfield (I'll explain later) whatever. The path of least resistance often turns out to be the quick route between problem and solution.
And by least resistance I mean most efficient. Solving the Theory of Everything requires a little more than a bubble bath and the new issue of Scientific American. But what it does require is the realization we only have so much energy to use in thought before other thoughts drift in (like how the days of the week got their names). Thus worrying about whether or not you will get that job interview while you are still writing the cover letter is severly counterproductive: not only are you distracted from writing the cover, but you actually are distracted from worrying, if that is actually what you want to do with your life.
I don't quite know where this need for complification comes from. It could come from society, where we are taught by TV commercials that we are not good enough (at least without that new terrible looking bottled mixed drink -- with that hot women will have sex with us, regardless of gender and whether we knew we wanted it or not), movies an other media. Or perhaps it is the education system, with the unintended consequence of teaching certain children things their minds just can't handle (remember the kids that failed math, or were held back a grade in Kindergarten and so on) which teach children that the way to progress is paved with obstacles. Or perhaps we learn it from our parents and the various unconcious ways that they let us know that we are destined for a future of unfullfilling employment. Even the popular conception of marriage, which should be the most rewarding option two people can choose, get lambasted in such terrible programs as the War at Home (f*%^ you Michael Rappaport), letting us know that even when we are 'happy', we will inevitably have to deal with trauma. Or it could even be as simple as boredom: as my roomate says 'People without enough to do do it to make their lives have meaning'.
I'm not sure what the actual answer is, potentially it is the conjuction of all of the things I mentioned earlier. I do think now that it is another negative function of the domestication that we all go through. From early childhood most of us receive the notion that we have to scratch tooth and nail for everything that we have, and if you really want something you may have to leave a trail of destruction in you wake to get it. To all you folks I bite my thumb. If no one has noticed (and I think I have mentioned this before) is that the things that happen just do: they do not come assigned with value; we create the value. Thus the idea of look out for #1 is one reason (I am almost positive) why we can now turn on the Weather Channel to watch news as terrifying as anything on the major networks at 5 but that is a question for another day.
I will admit that our rationality seems to also provide us the feelings that complicate our lives: it is hard to be rational when one is love, or broken hearted, or just depressed. Not even rational, it is hard to believe that the world isn't in black and white. To this I would suggest that the only real way out of this is to see one's self as another member of the world. That is, the way we feel is just another thing that happends in the world, and it is up to us to choose how we feel about it. Thus, the next time you feel down, admit you feel down: accepting your feelings as opposed to feeling bad about it, or fighting it: it is that underlying current of desperation, the feeling of resolution now, that saps the mental strength just like living in inefficient life does.
My apologies if this ever smacked of a self help seminar, but the point is that keeping it as simple as possible is not only refreshing, but it will make you a much more pleasant person to be around. I mean seriously, if I have to look at more people with slightly downturned mouths as permamant expressions I will not hesitate to start kicking ass.
If there is anything to try today, it is what is called the Alexander Technique. This technique teaches the use of the appropriate amount of force for a particular activity, giving you more energy for all your other activities. This is a 100 year old method which helps a person discover a new balance in the body by releasing unnecessary tension (For more info, check out http://www.alexandertechnique.com/). Even if you think the technique is claptrap, the point of the concept is one that we can all use.
Before I go, close the plothole in today's post about suing Dacid Copperfield. Christopher Roller, a Burnsville MN man (it just makes such sense that he is Minnesotan) has decided that both Davids Copperfield and Blaine perform ungodly tricks. So in true American style his answer: the lawsuit. Roller says that if Blaine and Copperfield show him their tricks "with scientific principals [sic] that don't defy laws of physics" -- and allow him to "imitate/copy in slow motion" as they do it -- and, if in his judgement there is a "worldly" explanation for their tricks, he will drop the suits. But he's fairly confident that they cannot do the tricks with mere worldly power, because they are surely using "godly" powers to do their tricks. And that, he says, is the basis for his suits, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota this summer. I won't blow the whole story, but if you have some free time, please visit http://www.mytrumanshow.com/. It makes me fully aware that the world is coming to an end, but if it is at the hands of this man, I at least will go out laughing pretty hard. Be sure to check out his thoughts on fathering 1,000,000 children, with two of the parents being Katie Couric and Celene Dion. Enjoy.
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