Category Archives: bookworthy

TRUE LOVE

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This weekend I completed my plan for getting a job in LA by packing up all my stuff and moving it to my new LA apartment.

When I started this process, I didn’t think too much about moving my things. I have moved a lot in my life, most of it as an adult. While it is difficult, I know it’s possible. I just put it out of my mind; I had enough other things to worry about.

But the day arrived, and I was faced with my piles of boxed and unboxed belongings. I had called upon my family and friends to help me, and I had rented a Uhaul truck.

After filling out the meandering paperwork and listening to all the dire warnings designed to sell the extra trip insurance, I was presented with the keys to a vast, lumbering, scraped and dented truck. After examining this land leviathan, I bought the extra insurance.

Then I drove the 2 miles to my apartment and all my things. This massive truck was the truck that I would be driving 400 miles that day. Lord have mercy. Best not think about that, one ought not hyperventilate while driving a Uhaul.

Parking the car, I noticed that some of my friends were already there. This helped take my mind off the doom of driving the truck over Highway 5, and made me think about all the things that needed to be packed.

We went inside, and all of us immediately set to work. Cheerfully, in the blazing heat, my friends set to work moving my stuff.

The incredible part of it was, as I looked at all of my things, I began to be pit-of-the-stomach afraid that, as cavernous as my beast of a truck seemed, all my stuff might not fit.

It also began to dawn on me that I was not as packed as I had thought I was. I had a lot left to cram into bags and boxes.

And my amazing friends and family packed cheerfully, like intelligent ants, moving my belongings into the space of the truck carefully, plotting out how to use the space efficiently.

I didn’t have to direct anything, which was good, because I had to pack all my loose stuff and toss the stuff I couldn’t keep.

All the while the others were packing. And when they noticed my rising panic, they reassured me that everything would be okay. Things would fit– I shouldn’t worry.

What incredible people! I could barely believe that I knew these incredibly nice people, let alone that they cared about me so much that they would work in the scorching heat to pack all of my pitiful stuff into a truck with care.

I should never have asked them to do such a thing! These fabulous people should not be doing this! I should rather have taken them out to nice restaurant and treated them to dinner, counting it a bargain because I could just spend the time in conversation and good company.

But here they were, doing this arduous task, because I needed help.

I really needed help.

There was no way I could have done all that work on my own.

I had asked for help, because I was pitiful and needy. But there was no obligation on their part to give it. Really, they could have said “no.” Any reason would have sufficed, or no reason at all. It would not have been rude or wrong. Certainly, a million things might have been more important or pleasant.

But they went one phenomenal step further and said “yes.” I didn’t deserve it. Perhaps I should have been responsible for my own crap, and hired movers to take care of it, instead of burdening my dear friends.

But I had not done that, and the time was too short now. I needed their help, and though I didn’t really deserve it, it was given.

As that realization dawned upon me, I felt truly humbled. And then God revealed himself to me in that space.

Jesus was packing my truck.

Because isn’t undeserved grace the gift of Christ Himself? And when these beloved people came to help me—they didn’t have to—they became the arms and legs and strong back of Jesus. Their actions were pure shining Christian love, pouring out from God through them to me.

Did I mention feeling humbled?

As with all of God’s gifts, there is no adequate way I can pay them back. If they had been hired movers, I could have given them my MasterCard and kept my pride. But I am not supposed to hold on to pride, anyway. The Truth reveals that I have nothing to be so proud of—I have only to rejoice in the fact that God loves me whether I deserve it or not.

And so, apparently, do Bonnie, Alex/Steve, Bryan, Chris, Dad and my brother Chris. I sincerely thank you all so much for your help. It meant a lot to me.

God bless you.

thE dUMP

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As I have previously mentioned, I am getting ready to move. To Los Angeles.

My Parents are getting ready to move to Sacramento

My Brother is finishing moving to a new, cheaper apartment.

My other brother is trying starting to move into an old, cheaper apartment.

Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.

Green family on the move!

Anyway, this creates a problem, or at least a difficulty. We are ALL moving, and we would all normally help each other with the moves. But it’s a little difficult choreographing everybody’s different moves. I mean, when it comes down to it, you are responsible for your own stuff. And when it really comes down to it, you are Liable for your own lease. So you can’t wait on everybody else to be done.

Well, we are doing our best to help each other out, and all of us are suffering extended bouts of sore moving-muscles. There is so much to be done!

Dad, the man for the job, has been making multiple trips IN ONE DAY to Sacramento, getting all his stuff taken over there. My brother has been coming to terms with the excessive amount of personal possessions he owns.

And there are the inevitable trips to the DUMP.

Ah, the dump. I remember the dump as a child. Dumps in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s in Alaska were a big pit in the ground. I am sure that many people bypassed the dump altogether and just threw their stuff in a ravine, on or off their property, whatever. But we did not do that. Keep America clean! or something…There were a lot of signs up on the way to the dump:

“Watch out for bears.”

Bears were very attracted to the dump. It was a smorgasbord for them. But the reason that you had to be careful of the bears is that there was absolutely no separation of the trash. No separation of YOU from the trash, and no separation of the trash from amongst itself. There was simply a huge pile, or a huge amount of trash in a hole. The bears would go through it, tossing aside balls of disposable diapers to get at that lovely bit of uneaten cheeseburger. I knew of and knew personally many people who also sorted through the trash for treasures. I myself could not help glancing at the strange items mixed in with the nasty cans and plastic. There could very well be perfectly good items in this pile. If I recall correctly, there were posted days when people were allowed in to scavenge. Why not?

The dump in Santa Clara was not this type of bear-friendly free-for-all dump. It made me think of some kind of industrial-age hell nightmare.

The stench was quite amazing. I am not sure if all dumps are this smelly–I know that all dumps are odorous–but it was stinky. This one had the added benefit of having a sewage treatment plant next door. Why not? Good city planning to put the two together, if you ask me.
Have one big ball of stink instead of two.

Wow, it was stinky.

But it wasn’t enough just to dump it and run. NO! There were types and classifications of trash, and each had to be handled in its special way. Concrete was special, it must be put THERE. Dirt is something else, and must go over THERE. Cardboard goes here, and paper there. Ordinary trash goes in a different place. And, oh my goodness! Nothing toxic. You are only allowed to throw away poisonous things once a month, between 8:00 AM and 1:00 PM on a Saturday.

Regular trash had to be put in a different place from all of these.

And they couldn’t leave any of the trash alone! There were huge bulldozers pushing it around, and scooping it up to move it to a whole nother place. For a reason that I could not understand, there was a complicated trash blower, that took the regular trash from a hidden area down below and brought it up through a tube, blowing it out of the open mouth about 40 feet in the air. The trash shot out in an arc, landing on a pile that the bulldozer could then play with.

The wood trash section was run through a gigantic chipper; a big pile of damp-looking wood mulch lay around the back.

It was mysterious, appalling and impressive.

So was the stench. Because of the difficulty of understanding their sorting system, we had to be there a long time, dropping off the multitude of different kinds of trash in all of its correct drop-off receptacles. It was powerful. I really wished I had an Altoid. That might have helped.

But it descended into your stomach through your nose and mouth and sat there evilly.
It was quite a place. It took me half the day to recover.

POISONWOOD BIBLE

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My last year, the last semester of my last year of college, about to graduate, I was struck with a need to know what it was all for. I was studying ENGLISH. Beautiful, meaningful books, collected and dissected for students. And I loved every minute of it, only frustrated with not having enough time to talk more in the classes. These books and scenes and characters walked with me, as real as the students sitting next to me in class. MORE real. I did not know much about what my neighbors were doing, but I knew about Tess and Deerslayer and Song Liling.

Yet. As wonderful as it was to contemplate all of these people, and the people who created these people, I felt as if I were merely amusing myself. What purpose did this exercise serve? What for is this examination of scene and plot and character and inevitability? Yes, I loved it more than a sunny day, but there are many things that people love—it does not follow that you pursue what you love for love’s sake only.

No. There must be a purpose, a product, a reason, a destination. Perhaps, after all those classes, I had missed the point, the most important point, of why I was taking the classes at all.

Naturally, I had to ask. I went to most of my professors, maybe all of my professors, and said, “What is the purpose of studying literature?”

And I found that I had to say it again, differently. I have learned to do this. In Russia, when I was speaking the listeners’ language badly, or speaking my language for a hard-of-understanding listener, I learned to do this. I call it “learning the other person’s vocabulary.”

I thought that my professors had better vocabularies than I did. Perhaps they do, but vocabularies also have the underpinnings of ideas; if the ideas you express in a familiar vocabulary are foreign, even using well-known words won’t help you.

Surprisingly, my idea was foreign. It seemed to verge on blasphemy. Maybe like an upstart Galilean fisherman telling the educated elite than they missed a spot, I pointed at a hole in the fabric of my education.

Why study literature? What product is expected? What end result? What is the point? “Well, if you don’t know, perhaps you should not be studying in this field.”

Oh no…I have heard these kinds of question-parries before. The man I respect least in the world, the pastor of my childhood church, gave me those kinds of replies to hard questions. The ones that say, “By asking the question, you have betrayed yourself as unworthy of the answer.”

I am a question asker. I find no shame in betraying my ignorance. For me, the greatest shame is willfully sustained ignorance, and the best cure for that foul state is a question.

No, I know about the glory of books and words. I know how amazing they are, how they can be. That was not my question, Dr. Squelch.

I was reminded of that conversation, perhaps still stinging from the accusation that I did not really appreciate literature deeply, when I was listening to Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible on tape this weekend.

I had a long road trip to get through, and I love listening to a good story as I drive. This was my chosen tale.

The story pulled me in, with the strangest familial recognition, like meeting a cousin after forever and comparing the eerily identical stories of childhood memories with someone who was basically a stranger. I knew these people; I knew them because I had been them—and in ways that most of the universe never had been. As I was looking at myself by hearing the story of someone else, the process began. The first papery, painless layers of my onion-self peeled off easily, with the revealed experience-truth of the story women. I was there, unarmored, hearing and knowing what the women said. I smiled as I listened, a wry, knowing smile.

But the book did not stop at the shallow layers; it went on. It peeled away more, taking me further into their lives and my own than I had bargained for. In this story that I was now a part of, more and more was stripped away. It was painful, I felt the pulling away of live heart from the center. I was crying out loud long before the end or even the middle.

I was slain; this book made me look at places I didn’t even know were they to look at before. At first, I would have sworn that this book must have been autobiographical, it was that true. But then, I saw that it was fiction, and was truer than any true story. It could be nothing else.

This is what the beauty of literature is about. This kind of self-revelation that can be done by a total stranger. Telling a story in a way that makes it so true it changes your life.

WOMAN WARRIOR FA MU LAN

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I mentioned it already, but I just finished reading “The woman warrior: Memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts” by Maxine Hong Kingston. The story, like many stories about English-as-a-second-language immigrants, talks about the difficulty of her voice. She has trouble talking, knowing what to say. She even is told that her voice is wrong, like a squeaking duck.

At one point, she attacks a fellow Chinese American schoolmate for not talking.

A persons’ voice is a tricky thing. I speak English as a first language. Lucky me! It should be easy for me. But I remember, I remember so well, how difficult it was growing up. I knew so clearly in my head what I wanted to say, what I wanted to have or to be given, and how impossible it seemed to convey that information.

I believe that the Chinese girl in the book was burdened with so much meaning, she felt it impossible to express in mere words. So many layers of complications and luck ramifications that the flimsy container of English words could never contain the meaning required.

I so often feel that way now. When I look at a certain juxtaposition of ideas or objects, I can see the meaning created by those particular things being in that arrangement. Each person, idea, or object has its own meaning, but perfectly aligned with those individual meaning, a new meaning is showing itself in how those things came together.

Sometimes the new meaning is so incredible I catch my breath with excitement. Revelation!

But how to show the pattern to others? It would seem to require the invention of a new language to tell.

Industrious people that we are, we human beings have indeed invented a new language. We have developed complicated symbology to express the relationship of things to themselves and to other things. We have words for mathematical concepts like integers and square roots. We have symbols for chemistry like the periodic table of elements. Computer science has 3letter acronyms for everything!

Each discipline has a steep slope of specialized words to communicate their ideas. The higher you climb this mountain, the more you know. You will be able to communicate in tight, terse language huge complex ideas, but you will be understood by fewer and fewer people.

How sad. It takes another person understanding what you say to make saying things worthwhile. Speaking and being heard are connected. It is important that speech be comprehensible.

So often I have felt my tongue turn numb, as I try to say something important to a person who does not understand. As I speak and begin to explain concepts that I worked hard to order in my own head, the person who hears looks at me blankly or stares at me as if I were a raving lunatic. All reason leaves my speech, and my mouth fumbles on into a final “Never mind.”

Is reason and order so fragile that a look can destroy it? Another person’s immovable block of understanding, or even their refusal to understand can scatter the carefully arranged thoughts with so little care.

Of course, the thoughts are not destroyed. They simply need regrouping. But what power people hold over one another. Even pretended disinterest can destroy thought, or pretended interest can give room for ideas to coalesce.

“WHY” IS A BEAUTIFUL WORD

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“WHY” IS A BEAUTIFUL WORD

CSPAN has this cool American Writers series.
Cable hasn’t turned off my CSPAN yet. I thought CSPAN was free, but no. You have to pay for it, and I am being ascetic.

But Cable is lazy in following through with my order to turn off my decadent TV programming. So today I got to learn more about Ayn Rand.

I first read Ayn Rand in the summer of ’93. What a momentous summer that was! I loved The Fountainhead so much that I read it at stoplights while driving. I couldn’t put it down!

Rand is interesting, because she is different than just a writer. She is a PHILOSPHER. She started this whole idea of OBJECTIVISM.

I don’t know that much about objectivism, but the essence of Rand’s philosophies is given all throughout her books. It’s a PHILOSOPHY, don’t bother about being realistic.

I had encountered the idea of philosophy once before I read Rand. I had read Francis Schaeffer’s book He is There and He is Not Silent. This was a Christian Apologetic book. That means, it was a book explaining why Christianity is right and true. Previous to my reading Schaeffer’s book, I had never really heard anyone address Christian apologetics. I had gone to chapel every school morning, twice on Wednesday, and then there were the regular church services on Sunday morning and Wednesday night. I had gone to our denomination’s seminary for a year. No apologetics. Just believe!

But Schaeffer…He should have been so over my head, but he wasn’t. He actually had read philosophy, and not just Aristotle. An educated Christian man! I had not encountered such a thing. I was 19 years old, and I was reading this man holding up the bible to the philosophies of Plata, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre and Camus. I had never once heard of ANY OF THESE PEOPLE. But Schaeffer was bringing up their questions and addressing them as if they were important. I ate the book like a lit match eats gasoline.

When I look at it now, I understand it differently than I did then. Sometimes, you don’t know the answer, but just formulating the question can be so satisfying that you almost forget about finding the answer.

I was changed. The world became Eden once again. I laugh now, because I was in a Soviet era town in Yakutia Russia. I was surrounded by grim blank nine-story concrete apartment houses and grim blank grocery stores. I should have been terrified, but I was cherishing every snowflake and sunbeam, because I finally understood that I had a right to question the world and find out why. Everything was fascinating and beautiful, because I could fearlessly examine it.

That was ’92. The next summer, I encountered Rand, my first taste of Philosophy, directly experienced. I loved it. I did not entirely agree, which I also cherished, because I COULD disagree. But I loved her vision of personal strength and no barriers to achievement.

I didn’t want any barriers to my achievement, now that I was back in America. America is SUPPOSED to be a land of no horizons for the brave individual.

Later, when I got to go to the University again (how I love universities!) I took a philosophy class. It filled a slot in my schedule. My education has largely been determined by the convenient time scheduling of class times.

It was also beautiful experience. I remember enjoying the class so much, I thought of it as a lovely faceted diamond. All these beautiful questions and answers, lined up in contiguous sparkling symmetry. They were not perfect, but so much of them were, that you could forgive the flaws.

It was in that survey class that I met Anselm; he had derived the ontological proof of GOD. Philosophies worry about God a lot.

Anselm was from Britain, and he was the head of a monastery. His little monks were asking him questions about God, like “How do we know that God exists?”

Anselm did not bitch-slap them and tell them to have faith. He thought about it. He came up with a well-thought out answer. It is not a fully satisfactory answer, but it’s a pretty good answer. And it was an ANSWER to a question. He respected questions.

I love him for that. In the 11th century, in Britain, Anselm said, “That’s a good question. I will have to think about it.” I am so grateful to his respect of questions, I can never forget about Anselm. I have heard something about some people getting out of hand with the answers, but I will not blame later followers mistakes on the founder

Years later, when I visited Canterbury Cathedral in England, I sought out his grave. I wanted to reverence him.

“Daily pay for Daily work-$$$”

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As I was at the library today, I stopped and picked up a Career Helper newspaper. That’s not its true name, I don’t remember what its name really was. It was filled with advertisements for getting training to be a dental assistant, and for jobs with “unlimited earning potential—all from your own home!”

There were ads that said “Tired of your dead end job? Become a truck driver!”

“We’re hiring! Join a Security Team in your area! $9.15 an hour starting!”

There are a lot of jobs out there.

“Daily pay for Daily work! $$$$”

The American dream again. Maybe. Daily pay for Daily work. An honest day’s work and an honest day’s pay.

I wonder if I am being a snob because I am horrified and frightened by these $$$$ jobs.

I have a friend who worked at a bookstore as a clerk, and lived happy and free in San Jose at less than ten thousand a year. Her six-figure-earning friend had trouble making ends meet.

I went to the library to get more books to read. Happy happy me, reading books like a mad person now that I can. And I am such a serious little scholar that I’ve taken to making little synopsis notes of what I read, for future reference.

I was laughing at myself as I walked through the biography section. What does this really matter, anyway? Maybe I just need to be networking as hard as I can, to get a job $$$. But after I saw that newspaper, I thought, What’s the job for either?

Maybe I should be like my bookstore friend. I could sell my car, get three roommates and live with joy in between the covers of the beautiful books.

Just live with joy, somehow, I think.

TO YOU, MY FRIEND

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As I’m shaking my hand out, to loosen it up at the end of the umpteenth essay exam, some of the earlier finishers slip out the door. School is finishing, and the people that I’ve shared my classes with are finishing and leaving. I feel a little wrench as I realize I will not see these people again.

We’ve learned so much about each other, while talking about the books we all read together. I feel the loss of their company as soon as they leave.

Then I feel silly, because after all, I didn’t REALLY know these people. We were just in a class together. The world is full of strangers that brush against me and pass– on the bus, in the stores, all around. They have nothing to do with me. Yet…It’s so amazing that I can get to know some of them, interact and talk and learn about them, and have the joy of telling them about me…And it works! They are strangers, but we are all tied together.

The tenuousness of human relationships astounds me. They feel so solid and permanent in the middle of that marvelous time or conversation you are sharing, when understanding is easy and quick. But small changes and the passage of time take those people far away, and perhaps they will never cross you path again.

People who you thought were a part of you are utterly gone, out of your life. They could be anywhere in the world, happy sad or indifferent.

When September 11th came, it occurred to me that some of the people who had meant a lot to me might even be dead. How would I know? There would be no mutual friend to call me and let me know. It’s a frightening thought.

And yet, though many people that I’ve shared great moments with, who have impacted my life just by allowing me to know them, wherever they are, are still very much a part of me. I remember them. I will not forget the times we shared. Even if I lose sight of that particular memory, I know because my life was impacted and I became a better person because of all those friends.

NO WAY TO GET DONE

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Well, I get to wear a loose-fitting black student robe for the first time. Graduation is Saturday! I will be a college graduate. It took me 12 years. I had started to think it would never happen.

Only 26 % of Americans over age 25 have “completed a Bachelor’s degree or more” according to the Census Bureau. I am one of those educated elite, now. As it happens, though, there is a higher percentage of young females that complete a bachelor’s degree or mare than any other group. Go girlfriends!

It did take me a long time to finish. You are “Supposed to” go to college straight out of high school and go through to finish, right? In some ways, I feel very odd about this circuitious route I took to the graduation ceremony. Like, maybe I took a wrong turn and had to backtrack to get to the place I should have been at age 22. Like I went three and a half years down a path, figured out I was mistaken and then had to walk three and a half years to get back to where I was supposed to have gone.

And yet…Those seven years were not erased. HUGE portions, seminal experiences we might call them in one of my lit classes, occurred during those times. I am a much better student for what I learned as a corporate consultant. I have a wealth of experience, and even some distance from that experience, to draw upon as I interpret the stories I love so much. I have a lot of…I don’t know if I would call it self-confidence…I guess I know myself enough to know that I must do what needs to be done, because no one else will do it, and no one is asking if I can, it simply must be done. I therefore do it. Whatever it is.

Some of my little early 20’s classmates are looking around nervously, asking what they are going to do with their lives now. “What kind of job will I be able to get? What should I do?” It is a scary question. I at least know that I will be okay. These poor little ones don’t trust that yet. I’ve been through the bad times, and I know I can handle it. I also know that there are many things worth more than security, although I have to remind myself of that a lot when I am low on security.

I want to tell these young English majors, “If you wanted security and money, you should have studied something else.” Maybe they didn’t know what that meant when they chose their major.

I at least knew it.

There is a new professor in the department. He went straight through, the way you are “supposed to”. He has his shiny PhD and all the awards. He was a fabulous student, 4.0 all the way. He is now about to be the head of the Shakespeare department. He’s the same age as me. And yet…I watch him, and often I want to take him aside and give him advice. He knows more than I will ever know about Shakespeare and literature of that period; his expertise is unquestionable. But sometimes, I really think I could help him by telling him a few things. Life is way more than what you can read in books.

I learned a few things sitting silently at corporate staff meetings, then sitting more vocally at meetings. Life skills are often like riding a bike; you can’t explain it, you just have to do it.

So I have learned to do a few things in my starting-out life. But I know that it’s not as much as I am going to need to know, not nearly as much. I have a lot to learn. And I’m excited to get going.

Now that I’m done with my BA, I feel like I will finally have the free time to study the authors and the periods that I really want to learn. I am anxious to get going.

There is just no way I’m going to get done.

WISDOM UNDERSTANDING AND COURAGE

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Still busy. Here’s another old journal entry on this subject:

WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING AND COURAGE

So I need to understand the heroic imperative for repose.

I need to have a better understanding of the difference between wisdom and understanding.

Understanding is knowing things. Wisdom is knowing what to do with the things you know.

I can know something. Like, I can know that my best friend’s husband is cheating on her. But I need wisdom to know what to do with that knowledge.

[Editor’s note: this is a theoretical situation!]

So in life, we first have to get the understanding. We have to know what is going on, what the pieces are. We have to know how it works. Then we can take that knowledge, that understanding, and find the wisdom to use it.

The problem is, we can never have full understanding. And life goes on. We can wait for understanding, try harder to look for it, and know more and more. But the moment of wisdom passes us by. There are times when we have to act on the understanding we have. We have to go forward, make a decision, take action. DO what we need to do. But we are acting on incomplete information!
Always.
It takes wisdom to know when to make a move.

Then there are times, when action is not yet required. When the right and proper thing to do is wait for the wisdom to come. Or the wise thing to do is nothing.

In the first case, doing nothing is a form of cowardice, not facing that fact that something needs to be done. It’s a smoke screen, saying, “I don’t understand, I don’t understand.” Really, you need to act, to move forward on what you do understand.

But the second case takes courage too. It’s very scary to wait, when you want to take action. To pause. To see what others will do. To let God work out a situation. I have found that I want to rush in, and fix and solve, and do whatever it takes to make it happen. But there are things that are out of my control. I can’t make them happen. When I try, I beat myself senseless against a brick wall. I am frustrated, worried, upset. I work myself into a frenzy over something that I cannot control.

How absurd!

This is not the way God intended things to be.

But how do I know when I am supposed to wait, and when I am supposed to move?
It seems to me that I can’t always know. I am destined to make mistakes.
I don’t want to makes mistakes. I want to do it correctly all the time.

But the setup is such that I’m not perfect. Even if I wanted to be (and I do!), I can’t be. Not yet anyway. It takes a process to become more perfect. I don’t think I can attain it in my lifetime, but I think that every right choice I make leads to a better life for me. So I keep trying.

UNDERSTANDING AND WISDOM

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I have dredged up an old journal entry on the subject, from about 3 years ago…It’s a little disjointed, but can start the process of exploring the idea.

UNDERSTANDING AND WISDOM

So there is a combination of time and understanding that leads to wisdom.

I want so much to do the right thing. I want to look at any given situation and see through all the details and confusion to the perfect action. I love to take action. I love to take up my sword and shield and attack the dragon, kill it, and impress the whole village. It feels so GOOD to conquer evil and fight entropy. Sometimes I fight things that don’t even need killing. And sometimes I fight things that can’t be killed.

But I am finding that taking action is best done after I take a look at the situation. I have discovered that I need to gather some data before I run off half-cocked. I need to stop and take stock of the situation. I need to know that I understand the problem.

I also find that while I can sometimes define the problem, I can’t necessarily figure out the solution to the problem.

So I suppose the first step in understanding is understanding what it is that I’m even trying to understand. I have to stop and define the problem.. I have to pin down what it is that is really going on. I see all sorts of symptoms of a problem, but that doesn”t mean that I am aware of the cause of this problem. Often, it takes a lot of digging and contemplation and discussion with friends and writing and despair to find the root.

Sometimes, I think I have found the symptoms, the root and the solution all at once. Then I go to sleep, wake up and discover that I was completely off base. And I have to start again. I’ve begun to tell myself, “Hey, that’s what you ar thinking NOW, but tomorrow you will think something completely different. And next month will be totally changed again.”

So, finding the cause is really hard. And then, it isn’t even always useful, to pursue finding the cause. There are certain things, problems whose symptoms are the problem, and it doesn’t matter in the least what the root of the problem is.

Like when I was 8. I sucked my thumb. I was far too old to suck my thumb. Now, my parents could have had me psycho-analysed to discover the root cause of my thumb-sucking habit. But what happened was, one day, at eight years old, I decided to stop. Just like that. I never sucked my thumb again.

In that case, the cause was more or less unimportant. I just needed to stop.

Sometimes, though, digging deep to find and understand the cause is really important. Sometimes, you aren’t able to ‘just stop.’ Sometimes, the symptoms are complicated and spring out in odd angles that you can’t predict, and you need to have a firm grasp on the source of these outbreaks, so that you can head them off. It is then that serious head work is required, to find and isolate the root.

Defining it is hard sometimes. It takes courage to look at some things we have hidden from ourselves as too painful. Because we hide these painful things because we truly believe that we will be irreparably harmed by letting them out. And just because they’ve been aging like wine doesn’t mean that they will feel LESS scary and painful and life-threatening now than they did when we first repressed them.

We are stronger than we think we are, though. And those things need to be brought out to light, so they don’t crop up at odd angles and screw up our lives.

So then, sometimes, after some time has passed, we get to the root, and find a way of explaining it to ourselves, to put handles on it, so we can grasp it. Then comes the part where we have to do something about it. Just because you know what a problem is doen’st mean you can solve it.

There are some situations and some individuals who “Just say no” works great for. And there are some that aren’t so easy. Then you also have to think and talk and discuss and pray and read and hope and beat your head against walls to find a way to surmount the problem. That’s another level of understanding.

And then comes the part of wisdom. After all that information gathering, you have amassed a certain amount of understanding. You have some measure more of understanding than you had in the beginning.

Wisdom is the part where you take all the understanding you can get, and look at the timing of the thing, and decide what to do.

Sometimes, wisdom is not taking any action at all. That’s very hard. But there are times when you look at the situation, and you realize there is nothing you can do to change it. That the wisest thing to do is conserve your energy.