Concepts in life, by the numbers.

4: Hours spent apart before you need to greet someone again.

When someone leaves after having hung out with you, the need to greet them begins recharging immediately.  If you see them within four hours, no need to regreet is necessary.  There has not been enough experience in-between greets for another full greeting to be appropriate.  Sometimes I will be in the same building with people and they will greet me again minutes after our original greeting.  That is called greeding: being greedy for greetings. 

5: Max amount of hours in a nap.

I have been considering this one for some time, and I have weighed the arguments for every prospective hour.  Five I think is the most tenable cutoff point.  You can live a day happily on six hours of sleep, but below that it gets kind of fishy.  Even as a career level 8.9 napper, I can take a five hour nap and still get to bed by 1 AM and sleep for another seven.  Not that I’m usually in bed by 1, but I’m just saying it’s possible.

(Also, I know this isn’t a post about nap philosophy, but I would like to point out that there is nothing inherent to the nap that makes it by nature a half-hearted venture.  Naps can be just as sweet a spiritual feast as a full night of sleep; their defining characteristic is their length.  So enough of this foofaraw about naps intrinsically lacking the existential zing of a full night’s rest. Yes, you heard me, foofaraw!)

60 seconds, 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 6 hours:  Versions of your life story you should have rehearsed. 

Sixty seconds is for over coffee with an acquaintance, or that acquaintance’s friend.  Five minutes is for at a bus stop.  Thirty minutes is for a car ride to somewhere else in the city; possibly a round trip.  Six hours is for being trapped in an elevator with someone.  Also, some plane rides.

6: The average amount of months it takes a movie to recharge.

Like greetings, movies take time to recharge before you can watch them again.  This one is highly subjective and the average means practically nothing.  Some movies recharge after two days, like Ocean’s Eleven or The Emperor’s New Groove.  Others, perhaps serious movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Braveheart, will take longer to recharge, maybe six months or a year.  Still other movies, like Brothers Bloom and Toy Story 3, were ok, and therefore might take awhile to recharge because they were nothing special.

There is actually a word for the last time you watch a movie.  You enjoyed the movie, but you know you won’t watch it again, because it’s just its time.  ‘Nosam’ (pronounced no-sam) is a verb meaning ‘To reach the peak of watching a particular movie; the act of watching a movie for the last time’.  The etymology of this word comes from Lord of the Rings when Frodo says to Sam, who wants to follow him to Mordor, ‘No Sam, not this time’.  Frodo has realized that while Sam has been great, the time for them is over.   So I nosammed Office Space the last time I watched it.  You have probably nosammed movies recently without even knowing it.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  Sam does eventually go with Frodo to Mordor.  But then, in our lives we watch a lot of movies again that we really shouldn’t.  So it all works out.

Here is a graph of people using the phrase ‘was like’ as opposed to ‘said’ over time:

Well, that’s all.  Join us on the next By the Numbers segment to see how many hours spent on facebook per day equals a meaningless life.  So long! 

We talked late in the night and I felt like a kid but I knew I was an adult.  And that’s when I said, you know how in high school you are still a kid?  All you have to do in high school is pull grades.  That’s the main thing you do.  Even if you do other things, there’s still the idea that there are other people out there who are making sure things go right, who are looking out for your health and what you need to do.  But then you go to college and it goes from needing to pulling grades to needing to do . . .everything.  Suddenly you realize that you own your body and the food you put into it is all it’s going to get.  You’re the one that’s responsible for it.  And for how you treat everyone and for sleeping and working and everything.  All at once, right there when you get to college.  That seems so fast.

People say ‘you can be whatever you want to be’ but that’s not true because you have to be a human.  And humans have certain inbuilt tendencies, like how they need other people, and they want to be respected and to accomplish things, and to feel like they have a meaningful life.  Or have you ever felt envious?  Maybe you suppressed it, but it still happened inside you in that first moment.  That’s because you’re a human because you have to be.  Our free will is thus narrower than we imagine.  Our choices come as reactions to these spurts of feelings inside us, when we feel unloved or like we need to accomplish something. 

Sometimes though our desires can be in conflict, like the need to be loved and the need to accomplish something big.  In War and Peace Nikolay loves Sonya but he also wants to see the world.  And so he must make a choice, and in that moment his freedom is still a very real thing.

Sometimes I don’t want to write, because I think, no, if I write it down it won’t make sense, and then I’ll just be upset.  But when you write something down and it makes sense, gosh that feels good.

Today the air felt clean and suggestive of eternity, like life is real, that my past isn’t just a figment of my imagination, but it really happened, and I’m here at the end of all of it.  The feeling that this moment is happening but has no connection to past or future is a horrible feeling.  But I smelt something that sent me back and crawled under my skin, a feeling I had forgotten I once had.  I longed for the sea, to be where the air is open and no one would think to make crass jokes.  I dreamt in a single moment of a life really lived. 

There is so much pressure to not forget things, for forgetting things is a great evil.  When good things happen you want to hold onto them forever because they are so good.  And if later you think ‘What good has happened in my life?’ how awful it is if you can’t remember things, even though they are there to remember. 

It’s so unfair that it’s just inside our heads, that we have to pull all the weight by ourselves.  No one can get inside to that spot and make sure I remember everything.  It’s just up to me to try really hard, and how much power do I have against the world that’s quickly passing by, as a bee vanishes from a garden?  And you have to remember things to make connections between things in life, otherwise you won’t even know what life you’re living, or even worse you won’t even be living it.  You’ll just live in this moment and that moment and that other moment, but not all those moments combined.  Maybe there’s a connection between that one girl and that one idea that that one guy said and that one paragraph in that book, and it would make you realize a great secret, one of the things Emerson says it’s impossible to teach to others.  But if you don’t remember you’ll just be floating by, and the horizons on either side of you will be inches away.

People’s heads fall over when they sleep because that’s how heavy life is. 

You think you’re a good person but you rate people in your head as they talk and no one can tell the difference.  Maybe you seem like a great guy, waving and smiling, and saying all the proper greetings and don’t say outright to anyone ‘You’re completely uninteresting to me’.  It’s a quiet tide, but in your mind you drift away from those who don’t entertain you, who you feel have nothing to give you.  We rate other people in our heads, and it’s so soft, it’s so secret, not even we know we’re doing it, until we listen and we realize that seeming like a good person is much different than actually being one.

There are so many things we could say, but it’s such a specific thing we end up saying.  It’s crazy that we come out of nowhere. 

At church I couldn’t help but realize my insignificance and my sinfulness and how there is so much ugliness in that place where I create myself, the things I freely choose to do, the place where I let my ratings of people affect what I eventually say and where I’m not hoping in the people with low ratings because I’ve learned from other people not to.  And it is an enchanting and overwhelming thing to be loved by God, and to realize that you can make other people happy, if you just choose to try. 

It’s crazy that you only get one shot to explain yourself.  Some situation will come up and you have to explain your thoughts on it, and you get that one try.  If what you say doesn’t click, then people move on and you don’t get understood.  But if that place where you choose to say things suddenly works and you put things right, people know who you are and you feel affirmed and loved just like humans want.  But it seems so unfair how fast it all happens and how there are no do-overs and how so many people walk away from conversations with you with ideas about you that are wrong and weird almost like they are thinking about another person, and not you.  But that’s what happens when you live in such a specific place, that narrow space where you choose what to say. 

I want to be everywhere and everyone and do everything.  But I can’t and so I just have to live with it.  But while I was driving I thought maybe there’s something that only me in my circumstance can do and I should do that thing.  But I am still sad that I can’t do everything, a life where I know everything that goes on and make all the right connections between it all, and so I don’t feel ready to lift a very specific life.  But to lift that specific life, maybe that’s what becoming deeper is.  At first, of course, you can think about how much potential value there is in the world, lives that are lead that are meaningful and great and beautiful.  But if you live your whole life wanting those other lives, and not living your own, you are not deep, you are the shallowest person there is and have not faced the very real task of life.  You must walk away from all the possibility and do something in the real world, where your body moves and breathes.

Maybe, I thought during church, maybe you are not supposed to be some great person, a person who utilizes the ability you naturally have.  Maybe what’s beautiful is when you are only ever in situations you can’t control and couldn’t predict, that you are always being stretched and reacting to new things coming your way.  It would be a beautiful life for someone to lay down the thing they love for the sake of the people they saw in need.  It could be that other life, the one they imagined, is buried deep, deep down, and they smile at the past thought, but it’s really in being stretched, in being forced to give up that dream, that you do what’s actually important, that you become a person who is more interested in what’s good than in what you want, that you live in the world and not just your head. 

It is a good thing to live with and be around people you couldn’t predict, people who will stretch you, who will anger you so much you are forced to become a holy person. 

It’s only in that sort of trying situation, one where you feel such pulls between those things, that you would have the freedom to choose between love of self and love of others, that you would choose in that narrow space who you wanted to be, what you wanted to love.

And see, all this was in my head today, occurring at different times, and I barely remembered that these thoughts happened until I was reminded of one.  And now I’ve written them down and made connections between various ones, connections I hadn’t see before.  But how many times is that not done?  How many thoughts just fly across my mind’s sky, and then vanish into the horizon?  Am I alive unless I write?  But what about when it doesn’t work?  Do I only work sometimes?  Did I fail in that one mad initial dash to live an explained and understood life, one where people give you the space you wish to have, where they say the things you want to talk about, because they somewhat see the importance of those things, because you have shown them the importance of them?  But I guess I haven’t done very well, and so I vanish every day, and the days stream into nothing, until I’m simply left alone and confused and with the feeling that I have missed something very big.  I get that feeling a lot, like I’m supposed to be remembering something but I don’t know what.  Some great thought I’m supposed to share with everyone, like that we’re all here for the first time and we only pretend that love isn’t important in public because we’ve been deceived into a false way of being.  But everyone in their private moments believes it, and why can’t we just summon those private feelings out of people whenever we talk? 

But he’s there in that place where we choose what to say, patiently waiting, wishing and encouraging for us to grow, for me to quiet those lofty thoughts, ones that paralyze and don’t move, ones of a life that I could never live, that no one could live. 

I have a theory that being busy is a function of being stressed.  Sometimes when a person asks you to hang out with them but you say you can’t because you’re too busy, you actually just don’t want to because with how stressed you are it would be that much more stressful to add one more thing. 

You’re only busy in your head.  Your body has the time, your mind just doesn’t have the effort.

I want to move into an Age of Accessibility, where I’m not busy in my head, where I’m ready to connect with people fully when they talk to me.  I’ve long held the view you should be intimate with everyone.  You should let people know you.  I think this really makes things go best.

When you are stressed all the time it is probably because you are working for something down the road.  But when you are stressed about a thing like that, it eventually creates in you the feeling that something big in your life is going to happen.  You feel like the result must be something huge, for all the stress it is causing.  This makes a whole group of people who are waiting for something to happen in their life that will never happen.  The big thing will never come, and they will feel bitter that they didn’t live their life in the past that they already had or in the future they had imagined that never came.

When I talk to people who are like this, people who have a whole platter of stressed items in their minds always with them, I feel like they are staring through me.  For they aren’t looking at me, they’re looking at the life they want to have, the life they’re working for.  It’s a horrible feeling.  And it makes me think I don’t want to look through other people.  I want to be accessible, I don’t want them to think there is some huge secret about me that I would never tell them because they aren’t good enough for it.

Mostly every situation could be made into something great, if people just believed in it.  But most people don’t believe in the present moment.  Their thoughts are in grief for the past, or hope for the future.  But hope for the present and you will often be instantly rewarded. 

Things are shifting, I can feel it inside me.  I went through an Age of Simplicity and got rid of everything I don’t need.  I am trying to grow without becoming that idea of an adult that scares me, a dispassionate tower high above everything that has only search lights to try to find other forms of life.  And for right now that means being accessible, being ready to spend time with people, and not trying to orchestrate some future life that I may never live. 

You can be too stressed.  And maybe there are sometimes when you just need to let go, otherwise everything else will drown completely.

One of my strongest principles is that I only buy honey if its container is shaped like a bear. 

I used to always find parking tickets on my windshield when I walked back to my car.  But I took off my windshield wipers and now I can park wherever I want.

I like to pretend that I work my job because someone dared me to.  In any other case I would quit, but I’m not really one to lose dares.

Saying “Rest in Peace” is a very ominous way to wish someone a good night’s rest.

I searched the whole convent but found no one.  That could only mean one thing. Nunjas.

They say to not go shopping hungry because of all the things you’ll buy.  So I started to shop full and they must be on to something because sure enough, I didn’t buy anything.  But now that I didn’t buy anything I am very hungry . . . but I can’t go shopping. 

People get all happy when they kill two birds with one stone, which means they accomplished two goals with one action.  But in my life thus far I’ve killed 7,838,961 birds using 3,142,371 stones for a total average of 2.49 birds killed/stone.  People need to learn what’s impressive.

I have a theory that we only properly see a certain kind of person. 

At my job I have to categorize customers away because there are so many to deal with; I can’t possibly put a terrible amount of thought into each one.  Those people, ones you have to categorize away into the crowd, are very far from you.  Then there are your friends that are very close.  But in a way you have a certain set interpretation of your good friends, one that misses certain things in them, things you don’t have the capacity to see given who you are; and so their good-friend-to-you status is based on that angled interpretation of them, but you still rely on it, because that’s how the friendship moves forward.  And finally there are people that you have met, and you have a minimal relation to from having seen and briefly talked to them, and that is the person you have a piercing sense of wonder about.  They are a totally independent entity, they have a life, you can see the suggestion in a single laugh or brow-knitted nod that they are complicated, that you don’t know how they work, that there is so much more to know.  It’s that wonder, that deep, serious, momentarily experienced wonder about someone that is the most proper attitude you can have about another person, and it happens to people that are at that middle-distance from you, the people you haven’t yet interpreted into having a certain role.

But most people we shovel away, or we have a set interpretation of.  We rarely see people as they are, radically, wholly others that see the world – they really do – through their own voluntarily rotating eyes.

It’s probably easier to keep hope about your dreams of improving your life and the lives around you when you live by an ocean, or cliffs that overlook the woods, or where the stars clutter the black night sky like evidence of a giant cackling fire hidden deep in space.  Because with just one look at those you think, ‘Oh yeah, there’s a bigger picture, and it’s beautiful and worth fighting for.’  But when the city is your head you can only think as far as the smog allows. 

In the secretest part of you there’s a death that needs to happen, and only you can do it.  No one else can kill it for you.  The truth would be a kind of death.  We think only of rewards and not of the costs of things; we divorce many more things than just our wives once we find out how difficult they are.

I have to think out loud, otherwise I don’t think at all.  It’s a disease.  People who don’t talk have been cured of a rabid infection. 

It’s a big risk to reveal your brokenness, your sinfulness. The real stuff, not the fluff words we use as empty references. When you say what you really do wrong, and how you can’t help it, man, that feels awful. But when the someone you tell listens to it and looks past it to see the good you you want to be, gosh, that feels great, like everything else you worry about will work out too.

A few weeks ago I looked up and saw a slew of crisscrossing contrails streaking the sky like a batch of uncooked spaghetti on a plate.  The city suddenly shrank to the size of a thimble, and I could relate to them, being just travelers in the great blue sky crossing other travelers, going to a place where all these skyscrapers mean nothing and the trail you left on the way means everything.  The sky is my context, not the city.  

But the gray days will come, and that’s what friends and tea and books are for.

For the next week you are banned from answering ‘How are you?’ with Good, Ok, or Fine. Here are a list of other candidates for you to consider.

Salvageable – Things are down, but there’s still hope. You’ll find a way to make it work, maybe. Say this one with a look of skepticism.

Gobbleable – This is when you are at your last straw. Just about anything could gobble you up.

Doldrummy – Feeling pretty down.

Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – You made pancakes with nutella on them for breakfast, won Super Smash Brothers, and got a birthday card with a fifty dollar check in it . . . and now you’re sitting on your throne, the Fresh Brince of Bel-Air.

Sprightly – For when you’re talking fast, moving fast, and thinking fast.

Giggly – This one must be said while giggling.

Bonkers – Everything in your life has spun so far out of control that it’s accumulated into a humorous effect. You begin laughing and stop being stressed because at this point things are just bonkers. My life is bonkers about twice a week.

Petrified – Because once you’re petrified, there’s no coming unpetrified.

Indefatigable – Really this is just to see if you can say the word. It’s one of those words it is terrific to successfully execute. And if you do, you’ll probably be feeling pretty Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Ethereal – This is for when you dream about how important it is to love other people, and you realize how much you’ve overlooked the people you see every day, and all day all you want to do is talk about all the things people never talk about.

Lackadaisical – This could either mean that you’re feeling blasé or that you’re feeling languid. In either case I recommend it because it’s more whimsical.

Cobwebby – This is how I was feeling in my last post. We want to be water in a clay jar, not a thin flood stretched over a plain a mile wide.

Resurrected – For those days his mercy is especially bright.

Now add your own! The only way out of our wards is through our words.