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Category: perspective

Riding the Elephant

Riding the Elephant

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Today I’m thinking about the two minds with which most of us navigate the world. One of them is rational and cool; it checks facts and weighs options. The other is emotional and warm-blooded; facts slip through its fingers. There are different ways of describing these entities: reasoning and intuition, higher brain and lower brain, the elephant and the rider.

It’s the last one that sticks in my mind. I first learned about the elephant and rider in Jonathan Haidt’s The RIghteous Mind, which did more to explain our political polarization than any book I’ve read.

Yesterday, I was riding the elephant. I climbed aboard midday and didn’t dismount for several hours. It’s tempting now to second-guess every action I took during that fraught time, but I will try to avoid that trap. I’ll focus instead on the perils of elephant riding. Today, I promise to keep my feet on the ground.

(Photo: A bull elephant in Kruger National Park. Rob Hooft, Wikimedia Commons)

All in This Together

All in This Together

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My classes are winding down. The final projects await, looming like giant icebergs on the horizon, but I can count remaining class meetings on the fingers of one hand. Which gave last night’s words the ring of finality.

We were talking about the responsibility the Global North has for the Global South. We might think it’s not our problem if climate change drives residents of densely populated, low-lying Bangladesh to leave their homes and families. But these people must go somewhere.

None of us brought up the meeting taking place in Azerbaijan even as we spoke. But COP 29, the United Nations climate change meeting, is in its final days and there is still much work to do. How will developing countries help less developed ones?

Most of the world’s migrants are being driven from their homes by weather, hunger, violence and civil unrest. We can’t think these issues are someone else’s problem, the professor said. Meaning we’re all in this together. Meaning it’s a smaller world than we might think.

It’s a frightening thought … but also an exhilarating one.

Mind Bending

Mind Bending

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By now most of us recognize the Blue Marble photograph. Even if we don’t know it’s called the Blue Marble photograph, we’ve seen this picture.

It was a meta moment for our planet, as the Apollo 17 astronauts looked out their window and snapped a shot of our globe floating like a blue-and-white dream in a sea of darkness. The first time Earth was viewed from space.

What I didn’t know, but only learned by reviewing a new book, is that the raw image originally submitted to NASA placed the southern hemisphere at the top of the frame. (Those weightless astronauts didn’t know which way was up!) NASA flipped the image before releasing it to the public. It would have been mind-bending otherwise.

To learn why North landed on top, you’ll need to read the book. But isn’t it interesting to ponder a world where what’s up is down and what’s down is up? Kind of puts us in our place, doesn’t it?

A Martian Morning

A Martian Morning

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Up early, I creep into my office, journal and book in hand. There is homework, committee work, a presentation, two papers. Plenty to do, in other words. But here, in this warm sanctuary, at this apple-green desk, all I want to do is look out the window at the dark sky.

Is that a star? A planet? Some quick googling tells me that it’s Mars, visible in the southern sky before dawn.

As long as I’m looking, I read about the Red Planet. Though its years are almost twice as long as ours, its days are almost exactly the same.

Here on Earth, the days are long but the years are short. On Mars, perhaps we could reverse that — or at least tweak it a bit.

(Photo of Mars courtesy Wikipedia.)

Stopping for Sunset

Stopping for Sunset

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A late walk, not timed for sunset but finding it anyway. There at the end of the street, the end of the neighborhood, the end of the day.

It was not an untrammeled view. Lines and lights and poles obscured it. But maybe, I thought as I snapped, they were the point. Stop, say the red lights. Savor the colors, the clouds, the setting sun. Make time for them as often as you can.  
Sock it to Me

Sock it to Me

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The newspaper headline caught my eye: “Your Socks are Showing Your Age.” The accompanying photo shows two people who both look young to me, one wearing ankle socks barely visible above their shoes and the other wearing crew socks. 

Apparently, Gen Z is embracing the sort of tall, dorky socks that everyone wanted to leave behind two decades ago, the kind you see on old guys mowing the lawn. Young folks now sport crew socks with sneakers and even with high heels. Take that, Millennials, they say as they flaunt their now-trendy tube socks. 

How old do you have to be before you start seeing fashion as a game? Not very. The youngest Millennials are turning 30. 

As a walker in the suburbs, it only figures that I would have an opinion on socks. They are, after all, the interface between foot and shoe. A well-fitting pair puts a bounce in my step; an ill-fitting pair drives me crazy. With socks, as with so much of life, the best approach is one of moderation: neither too high nor too low is the recipe for happiness.

(Photo from Wikipedia’s page on Socks and sandals, considered a “fashion faux pas” in some places)

Circle of Life

Circle of Life

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Yesterday felt more like a weekend with a daughter and two granddaughters here. At a visit to a nearby farm park, I found myself on the merry-go-round with Bernadette (pictured here with her mama a year and a half ago).

Yesterday I was the one holding way too tightly to the rider, too tightly being a relative term, I suppose. Bernadette will be 4 in October, but hold tight I did. And as we made endless rotations to patriotic favorites like “Stars and Stripes forever,” I thought about how many times I took Bernadette’s mother on carousel rides, and how particular she was about her mounts — her favorite being the rainbow pony at the National Mall carousel.

Now Suzanne was standing on the sidelines with her newborn, and I was back on duty. The circle of carousels. The circle of life. 

Blooming Where Planted

Blooming Where Planted

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For so long this has been a loaded phrase for me — “blooming where planted.” It carries with it more than a hint of compromise. Or maybe it’s wistfulness, that I didn’t stay where I was planted but moved several times as a young adult before settling where I did. 

And then there’s the fact that I’ve ended up in the suburbs. Heaven knows I carp enough about that.

But today, the angle of the light striking the grass on the lawns I passed, the scent of the air, rich with loam and honeysuckle, made me think that there could not be a much better place to be planted. And that whatever the mixed emotions with which I’ve traditionally viewed the saying, there is a nobility in trying to flourish wherever you are, in contenting yourself with the situation at hand. 

(Pebble people frolic along one of my favorite routes.)

Golden Stroll

Golden Stroll

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Back from a long drive, I take to the road. Not as a motorist but a pedestrian. I’m not often walking during the “golden hour,” when the sun slants low and bathes the landscape in soft light, but I was yesterday, and I reveled in it.

I first learned of the golden hour traveling with photographers. While writers can ply their trade at any hour (observing, interviewing, soaking up the local color), photographers prefer mornings and evenings to snap their shots. I see why. The world looks better then, and so do the photographs.

I didn’t intend to stroll during the golden hour yesterday; that was just the time available. But once I was walking through it I realized my good fortune. Here was beauty to soothe the nerves and still the mind. 

(The golden hour in Khulna, Bangladesh.)

Still Life

Still Life

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Walks lately have been wedged between errands and hospital visits, brief escapes into light and motion. Still, they have worked their magic, have loosened muscles and mind.

A photo I snapped on Tuesday’s stroll captures a truth. A sky that seemed mostly cloudy, I see now, was bluer than I remembered. 

Isn’t that the way of life, the way of survival? We leave the hospital or nursing home, and we want to shout hallelujah. Yes, we are sad, but we are still here, still walking upright, and the ones we love, they don’t blame us for rejoicing.