everyone has infinite value

a piece of bread
with the potential energy
of 100 calories
has the value of a few cents

your mind
has the potential energy
of infinite ideas
of infinite words
of infinite power
of infinite value

why do you allow others
to treat you as less than infinite
why do you allow yourself
to treat you as less than infinite

I see your infinite value
it blinds me
this world of billions
of supernova

how different the world looks
when you see everyone’s value
like stars in daytime
as no one is worthless

do not let anyone give you
nothing for you
you are worth infinite value
you are worth living

you say, “how can we be
worth infinite value
we are common
like sand”

I say, “water is infinite value
in a desert
your mind has infinite value
in this universe”

you say, “what of the ones
who treat me as less
than infinite
what of them”

I say, “why believe them
they believe you are worthless
believe my infinity
as I believe in yours”

...

Interesting Study

This makes sense, considering our evolutionary heritage.

Our brains are crazy interconnected masses of gelatinous goop. I'd highly suspect that there is more overlap between different mental functions than we realize. I doubt there is a strict divide between physical and emotional pain, just as I distrust the separation of logic from emotion, or any other interrelated abstract system.

Our brains are delicate places, and the troubadours have known all along that heartache feels like being punched in the gut.

RE: 3pm Happiness Updates

I'm happy that I prayed to God today for the second time since I was in my early teens.

The first time was a week ago, and it surprised me: that deep down, underneath all the intellectual garbage, I really am a theist.

Before that, I think I hadn't really prayed to God since my pipe-smoking grandpa had died, one uncle died to a brain tumor, and the other uncle was struck by lightning. I've been gripped in the "why pray to a God that doesn't care about you?" type mentality for about twenty years now, and the dam just broke last week.

Now I'm not really talking about a corporeal deity that floats around on clouds, or any other version that mankind has cooked up over our convoluted history. The God I am talking to is a personal, yet universal Good. Maybe universal is the wrong word, since I mean ever-present, but not necessarily absolute in the rigid sense of the word.

What I prayed about is private, as is any conversation I have with myself, but one thing that specifically stands out in my mind is that I no longer care whether I logically believe in a God, or if there is or is not proof of his existence. What I do care about is that I need to believe in an influence for Good in the world. I need to believe in Love, and Patience, and Compassion, and Tolerance, and Honesty, and Hope. At the core of my being, I absolutely want these things to exist, and I would like the resolution to help make these abstract concepts a reality. I feel that the universe is a place where these things can and should exist, and if that means I need to talk the crazy person talk by talking to myself, then so be it.

So I prayed, and I'm happy about that.

Fat Buddha Said Play Hooky

What he really said was, "Screw you guys," but I interpreted that to mean, "Stay home, take a break, and don't bother with the rest of the world. At least for today."

So I will not shave, though I will probably take a shower, and I will sleep in, and when I do bother to get up, I will not change out of my scrubby clothing, and I will feed the kids Hostess donuts for breakfast. The kids will veg out on video games and T.V. all day, and I will not miss the looks and cold shoulders from the moms and grandparents of the world (the grandmas are the worst, it's like I'm going to eat their grandkids).

Except I will do the dishes. That needs to get done, and I think Fat Buddha can let me at least do that. I also will feed the kids, though I'll let the five year old stand in front of the refrigerator and let out all the cold air. To hell with it! Take five minutes to figure out what you want! Yes, I am cooling down the whole world!

So my kid is not going to school today. He's playing Wolverine, and the two year old is singing and eating a chocolate donut. We are all a mess, and Monday will be our day of rest.

Fat Buddha said so.

A Kind of Immortality

I get haunted by ghosts all the time.

Now before you call Ghost Hunters, I'm talking about the abstract kind. These are the empty husks of memories that follow me around and punch me in the gut when I'm doing something else. I'll be minding my own business, driving to breakfast while listening to my wife and kids, and I'll see a soccer field, and all of a sudden I'm possessed, and apparitions from when I was a scrawny kid with acne will bombard me. I'll be back in time when I was a wallflower, and I'd avoid the ball, until the coach told me to get more aggressive. With sweaty phantoms of blue and yellow all around me, I will growl, just like I did on that grass. I will be angry. I will be an animal, and I will kick that goddamn spiritual soccer ball in that goddamn ethereal goal.

Until with a jolt, I must stop the car, just like how the referee said, "Hey kid, you can't growl, that's a warning. You do it again I'll kick you off the field." I am no longer bewitched, and the ghosts have faded.

Though I can still feel them, as they swarm beneath the surface, and all of the people I've known, who are dead and gone to me now, who are just figments of my imagination, will continue to live on through me. Perhaps there is not a heaven. Perhaps there is not a hell. Perhaps there is no where we truly go when we die, and everything we've ever done will mean nothing in the far distant future.

For now, however, those who have passed on from my life exist in me, and one day, when my physical form is gone, just as I have been haunted, perhaps others will be haunted by me.

Contentment Defined

Happiness <---> Unhappiness

As I alluded to in my last post on the subject, the above sliding scale is wrong. By this I mean, ineffective, counterproductive, and unlikely to make anyone anything other than ticking time bombs of self-destruction. For if you are not happy, then you must be unhappy, and since there are so few moments in your life when you are happy, then you must be unhappy the rest of the time.

Remember, I'm using these definitions:

Happiness = Pleasure + Triumph
Unhappiness = Pain + Grief

My prediction for everyone on the planet (and if I can't make that assumption, which is a fair objection, then I can at least make it for myself) is that there are relatively a few moments in our day to day lives where we are feeling true pleasure or triumph. So if you aren't happy, then by all accounts, if you only use the happiness/unhappiness scale, then you must be unhappy. You might not feel it, you might be doing your daily routines, wondering what is wrong with your life, your job, your kids, your hobbies, yourself: why you don't feel happy, and if that means you really are unhappy, underneath it all.

I propose that your life is not wrong, and that you are just fine, because your spectrum should look like this:

Happiness <---> CONTENTMENT <---> Unhappiness

I have put the middle term in all caps, because 90% of your life is smack dab in the middle. You are only up in the clouds 5% of the time, and you are only down in the dirt 5% of the time. The rest of your life is in that middle ground, where everything tastes like water, where you aren't too hot, aren't too cold, where you might not get what you want, but you might just get what you need.

Once you reorient yourself, once you stop seeking out the fleeting wisps of happiness, or rolling with the hard knocks, then you can perceive that who you are, no matter what you do, is an invisible path. Your life is the intangible middle ground. You will not remember it tomorrow, and you will not notice it all around you, until you stop, and pay attention to your contentment.

What is contentment? Well, let's define it further:

Physical Contentment = Flow

What is this? Flow? That sounds dumb. And yet, when an athlete is acting and reacting, without thought of failure, when they move like water, when they flow, then they are truly content. They are in the zone. When you are brushing your teeth, or vacuuming your carpet, or cleaning your toilet, or driving, or eating, or watching your kids play, or whatever concrete action you are doing when your life is moving on and on and on into the future, you are flowing with it and around it and through it, without thought, with and without effort, and you are water. Your life is mostly flow. It goes on, and you only notice the rapids and rocks in the river, while you ignore the river itself.

Abstract Contentment = Meditation

Huh? So we are all monks now? Do we have to sit cross-legged and chant "oooom?" If it helps you, sure, but I'm talking more the general use of the term, where your brain is occupied, but neither filled with triumph or grief. This is the place where daydreams go, or where you might think about the task at hand, or you might not be thinking at all. Your brain might be in idle, or it might be supercharged, working on your doctorate thesis. The key thing to notice here, is that we are talking about your day to day thoughts, combined with where your brain is when it is not thinking at all.

So where do we go from here? Now that we have a framework for contentment, we can notice it, and strive for it. We do not need to buy that car, or fuck that person, or wallow in our misery. Our goals can be a sustainable self, with contentment as our goal, and while the ups and downs of happiness and unhappiness might frame our lives, we are secure in the knowledge that we are content, and that everything is just fine after all.

Blue Monday

No wonder I've been having a difficult time writing anything. I've been down all day, and didn't know why. I'm going to play with my little girl, maybe that will make me feel better.

Seven Ways to Fail at Twitter

I felt the need to provide a counterpoint to this.

Since I'm an introvert, I have a knack for ticking people off. Through much trial and error, I have found the best ways to ostracize myself, not only from Twitter, but pretty much any gathering of humans. I currently have 23 followers and falling, and will probably have even less after this post. Huzzah!

If you wish to retain your reclusive nature, here are the seven best ways to fail utterly at Twitter:

1) Don't care about other people. This seems obvious, but it can be deceivingly difficult to have complete apathy for other humans. (Notice I'm not talking about antipathy here. This is indifference, not disgust.) Don't take an interest in anyone else, and hopefully, they will take the hint and get their attention elsewhere.

2) Don't read tweets/posts/blogs by anyone else. People only care about themselves, and if you start reading about what they think, then they are more likely to think you care about them.
See 1).

3) Never respond to anyone by name. People like attention, and if you give it to them, they might stick around, which is appalling in the grand scheme of things. In other words, if you do read what other people write, then for Pete's sake, don't tell them you did so. Though it is far better to only write about yourself, and preferably in abstract ways that mean little to anyone but yourself.

4) Talk about your cat/kids/poetry. Besides caring about themselves, people only really like controversy. Think train wrecks or beautiful people doing dumb things, and do something absolutely the opposite. I suggest linking pictures of waterfalls. Like so.

5) Never ever use "#". Using a hashtag is like an indoctrination tattoo that brands you as a member of a tribe. And tribes are made of people. And people are bad.

6) Play the Devil's advocate. Argue...I mean, debate people about everything they care about. Preferably if you can maintain a cool composure. Everyone hates a hothead troll, but people loathe the guy who never insults everyone, who reasonably shreds everything you care about to ribbons, and who always seems to be right, while making you look and feel like an idiot.

7) Never ask for the opinions of other people. If you ask for comments, that implies you will read what they write, which goes against 2).

Hopefully this post will be helpful to the frustrated introverts among us who have been doing this thing all wrong from the beginning, and will teach them the fundamental tools to sever interpersonal relationships, so that we can find fulfillment with our intrapersonal communication.

Dragon Age and the Tea Cups

Whenever you make a character for a roleplaying game, it's a part of you. You pick a name, you generally pick the appearance, and you might even go so far as to pick the personality or profession of the character. This means you are emotionally invested right out the gate, unlike a movie or book where you have to learn to care about the characters involved.

So when I played Dragon Age: Origins (yes, I'm a cheapskate and waited until Steam had the "Complete Edition" for $25) and my male elf mage was able to choose to have sex with a male elf rogue, it effected me more than I thought it would.

I mean, a part of me chose to have sex with a virtual male. That is a pretty big deal for me. I mean, I have no choice when the dudes in Brokeback Mountain get in on, because I'm a passive observer, but here I am, actively choosing a virtual homosexual relationship. Here's an analogy:

Say we are at Disneyland. I don't like the Tea Cups. Don't get me wrong, if other people ride the Tea Cups, that's fine with me. That's their business. It doesn't hurt me when they ride the Tea Cups, and it doesn't seem to hurt them, so I respect it. I don't hate the Tea Cups, I just don't like them. Vice versa, if I like the Matterhorn, I wouldn't expect the people who like the Tea Cups to absolutely like the Matterhorn, but I would expect them to respect that I do.

So here I am, playing a game, and bam, a part of me chooses to ride the Tea Cups. (Of course, it's not the same thing, since it was more akin to watching a home video of someone who snuck a camera on the ride, but you get the picture.)

While I was watching two male elves have sex (one of whom was me!), I felt aversion. Now don't get me wrong. This wasn't hatred. I just didn't like it. In the same way that I would get nausea from riding the Tea Cups, and not like that experience, I also did not like this experience.

However, I am not the type to start carrying torches and berate Bioware and Electronic Arts for putting homosexuality in their game. Far from it. I'm self-reflexive enough to wonder why I felt the way I did. Here are the two points I took away from that experience:

• If a part of me chooses to be homosexual, and I don't like it, then that means I'm not homosexual. Which sounds obvious, but we are treading into the future, and these virtual spaces we have set up can blur the lines, and it is better to explore these concepts, rather than ignore the elephant in the room. Especially when other fellow heterosexuals often turn their aversion for homosexuality into hatred, which is counterproductive to society.
  
• Second, I wonder if homosexuals feel the same aversion whenever they make an RPG character and choose to have a heterosexual relationship. If that is the case, then I'm sorry that there are an overabundance of heterosexual relationships in RPGs, and I wish for a future where there are more games like Dragon Age, not less.

Fish and Religion

In Texas, there is a church on every street corner. I would even guess that there are more churches than schools. In neighborhoods where people live in shacks, the house of God is a mansion.

Now before I get too far into this post, I'd like to be clear about my intent. I'm not trying to be judgmental about this. I don't want to get into a war over religion, at least not with this particular thought. This is not a criticism on religion, but an observation and hypothesis of why I think Texas is overflowing with it.

It's really quite simple: Texas is a huge, flat place. The sky seems like it goes on forever and ever, and in any direction you look, all you see is land and more land, that goes on forever and ever and ever. I've now traveled up and down southeastern Texas and it is mile after mile after mile of horizontalness. It's exactly like living in Flatland. (Granted, south and east Texas isn't all of Texas, but it's where most of the people are. Also, west Texas looks pretty flat when you fly over it.)

Contrast this to where I live, Silicon Valley. The most obvious thing is that I am bounded by hills. I see limits, the sky is diminutive in comparison. If I want to, I can actually reach a mountain without much effort. I have the option to get somewhere, and I am never ever lost.

Just imagine the psychological ramifications of this:

• In one land, a person is insignificant, with no end in sight, with limitless surroundings, and where it is pointless to go anywhere because everything is exactly the same, no matter where you go. The smaller you are, the more likely you are to notice how colossal everything else is, and be more inclined to prioritize the observance of an infinite being.
  
• In the other, a person can easily reach landmarks, goals are achievable, and the sky does not intimidate. Horizons are varied, and thus things may change. The bigger you are, the more likely you believe that the heavens are in your grasp, and be more inclined to neglect the observance of an infinite being.
  

In essence, in Texas, you are a small fish in a big fish bowl, and in California, you are a big fish in a small fish bowl.

Happiness Defined

I recently wrote a reply to someone else's Facebook post that said:

"The source of modern unhappiness is, as it always has been, the belief in happiness."

Which is pretty much wrong.

I mean, there is an element of truth in there, because to a certain extent what you believe matters, however, there are also other ways to be unhappy that have nothing to do with your mindset, for example, (and this is something you can test) you can stub your toe. You could also break a leg, fall off a cliff, or convince someone to punch you in the face, all of which can be pretty unhappy.

Regardless of your mental outlook, pain is unhappy.

(For most people. Yes, there are people that have mismatched wires that think pain is super, but there are also all sorts of people with mental health issues, so for sake of argument, let's just assume that pain is a type of unhappiness.)

So let's define a couple of relationships then:

• Physical Happiness = Pleasure
• Physical Unhappiness = Pain

Seems pretty straightforward. Of course, this begs the question, what about the converse relationships? What about the non-physical realm? Well first off, let's use a better term for "non-physical;" I'm partial to "abstract." So what would we call the flip sides of these coins?

• Abstract Happiness = Triumph
• Abstract Unhappiness = Grief

Let's give these a closer look so that it's absolutely clear what I mean by these words. When I say "triumph," I am using that word to describe any situation where you have some sort of abstract happiness, like if you just got a great new job, you made a bunch of money, or you just graduated college. Maybe you just solved a problem that had been irking you, or wrote an excellent poem. Your baby nephew might have just been born, your favorite football team just won the Super Bowl, you just became President, or one of an infinite number of abstract situations that you feel victorious about.

On the flip side, grief is a mental unhappiness, from the loss of a great job, to losing it all in the stock market, to getting kicked out of college. Maybe you gave up on that problem because it was too difficult, or you just realized your poetry is horrendous. Your nephew might have just been killed in a car crash, your team went 0-16, you lost the election for class president, or one of an infinite number of abstract situations that you feel terrible about.

(I am aware that situations that can cause triumph and grief can and often do invoke pleasure or pain. For example, if a loved one dies, not only do you feel the mental anguish of them passing, but you also feel physical pain from that grief. This is because these labels are not mutually exclusive, meaning you can take pleasure and triumph from something, just as you can take pain and grief from something. Just be aware that because there is a link between the physical world and our minds, so too is there a connection between these emotional states.)

Let's add one more piece to the puzzle:

Assumption #1: There is nothing outside of Physical + Abstract.

What this means is that I am assuming that there is nothing outside of our existence that matters for the purpose of this discussion. I'm pretty much saying, "If you can't sense it or comprehend it, then who cares?" So that said, let's add up what we've thought about so far:

Happiness = Physical Happiness + Abstract Happiness
Happiness = Pleasure + Triumph

and

Unhappiness = Physical Unhappiness + Abstract Unhappiness
Unhappiness = Pain + Grief

...

Now, you may be saying, so what? What's the point?

Well, for starters, I can fix my Facebook post to mean something more truthful. Something like:

"The source of modern unhappiness is, as it always has been, pain, and the belief in triumph."

Which leads me to the third state of being, which I will leave for another post.

How to Detect Equilibrium

I've been thinking about water, and how it has no taste.

I mean that's weird right, something that covers about 70% of the surface of the Earth, that is absolutely inseparable from life as we know it, and we are even made of it, or at least 50-60% of us is made of it, and the sense capable of detecting things that we ingest is incapable of identifying it?

I mean, if something was so important, don't you think we would have evolved to notice it? Sure, we can distinguish other substances in the water, like sugar, salt, or alcohol, but the actual water flavor remains elusive.

On a similar note, what does air taste like? Sure, we can detect a lot of poisonous gases, mostly fumes we may have experienced in the wild, like smoke or methane, things that could have been dangerous had we stayed in them for too long, but the air we breathe, moment to moment, is an undetectable phantasm.

So water and air, two substances that we are 100% dependent on, we cannot sense. Isn't that completely counterintuitive? I would think that we would be able to detect both of those, in addition to everything else, not everything else minus those two things.

Granted, we can see and touch water. However, the simple explanation for that one is that we've evolved to fit in another environment, one that is surrounded by air. We can't see air, and we can't feel air unless we move or the air moves. If we were fish, I'd wager we couldn't see or feel water either.

So once we moved on land, and being surrounded by water became a hazard for us, we quickly evolved to sense water by sight and touch, but we remained blissfully ignorant to how water tastes.

Now that I mentioned environment, let's move on to something that isn't a substance. Let's talk about temperature. Can you feel heat and cold? Certainly. Can you feel what a comfortable temperature is? No way. In fact, we don't even have a word for what that would be. Is it warm? Cool? Lukewarm? Nope. All of those indicate some amount of either positive or negative from your base temperature.

So we can't taste water or air, we can't feel motionless air or an ideal temperature, and we can't see air. What does this tell us about ourselves? When we can't physically notice the things that are most essential to us, when the fundamental structure of our perception excludes perceiving the very nature of our existence?

What ramifications does this have? I mean, we can only experience gravity if we jump. So what about space? What about time? Can we ever see, taste, or touch either of those? Would we have to be a fish out of water, or rather a person out of space and time in order to sense those? These yardsticks that we consider intrinsic to our nature, can we only ever truly sense them if we transcend those dimensions?

Leaping from philosophy to psychology, can we ever genuinely experience contentment? Notice, I'm not talking happiness here, but the type of personal equilibrium that is the equivalent of not tasting water. Is that state of being the enlightenment that many have searched for, but few have ever found? Is this what the Buddha meant when he talked about the void?

Does the path to true enlightenment (or contentment, or fulfillment, or whatever word you want to call it) require realizing that everything tastes like water?

How to Dissolve a Brain

My mind is pretty melty at the moment.

I mean, I spend every waking moment in the company of children, and by "children" I mean cute yet stupid little monkeys. Here are a few examples from Justin (4.5 years old) and Harmony (almost 2):

Justin: "Harmony, stop sticking your shoe in your butt."

Harmony: "Here's booger." (wipes it in my hand)

Justin: (while in the hot tub) "Dada, when I stick my penis in the bubbles it feels funny. Try it!"

Harmony: (fully nude except for sandals) "Ready to go!"

Everything I thought about in college is gone. Whenever I repeat "Eat at the table" or "Come here" or "Keep your hands to yourself" or "Look with your eyes, not with your hands" over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, I can feel my brain leaking out the edges: my skull is a glazed donut, and the filling is squishing through the cracks.

I keep thinking that when I talk with other adults that they can see my brain oozing out. I feel like rationalizing it to them, "Sorry, don't mind me, apparently you don't need that particular organ to survive. Who knew all of that grey matter was a waste of space? I thought for sure I'd have psychokinesis or telepathy by now, but instead I can barely remember what I did two days ago. See ya, I'm going to disintegrate further!"

A dormant part of me wonders if there is some evolutionary reason for children being so annoying, as if the repetition has developed over millions of years to kill the parent, one brain cell and heart attack at a time. I mean, these things I've spawned are going to replace me, by any means necessary.

Hell, at least while they're liquefying my consciousness they're cute too.

Can I Come Out Now?

Since it's nearly June, and my nerves have kicked into full gear, I suppose it's time to write something. The stewpot has been simmering, and what were once ashes have rekindled into a roaring fire.

The little one is bigger, the big one is bigger, I've lost more hair. An almost two year old is hanging off her chair, with her sunglasses on and no pants, and she's saying over and over again, "Need flower, need flower, need flower," which I suppose is code for happiness in toddlerspeak.

I yell at her as she draws on the chair. She looks like she's about to cry, and as I turn my head, she draws on the chair again. I yell again, "Don't. Draw. On. The. Chair." She's got a pouting lower lip, and I'm the bad guy. I laugh at her. She points at me and says, "No!"

"You can't draw on the chair." I notice her paper is full of scribbles. "Do you need more paper?"

"Yes, please." I give her another sheet of paper, and everything is happy again. All it takes is a sheet of paper.

Sad about SAD

It's been a week since my last confession...er blog post, and I don't know why I've been negligent.

Every fall my mood shifts from opportunity to gloom. I feel like I want to find a cave and fall into it for three months, until my ravenous hunger drives me to find the opening and the glorious spring beyond. It's also stressful that we are slowly moving into our new condo, which means that we are painting it red and green and purple. (Artists! Go figure.)

Also, the kids really are kids now. They aren't little babies that sleep most of the day. If I'm not keeping them entertained from morning until night, then they are parked in front of a T.V. or they will play together, and I'll be drawn into it eventually by the screams.

I realize that it sounds hypochondriacal (yes, that's a word, blogger) to say it, but I've always felt that I've had Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which is another way of saying that I get depressed in the winter. I'm not a doctor, so I tend to shy away from diagnosing myself of anything, however in this case it seems to fit. I always get reclusive during the winter, and my energy levels plummet. I want to sleep in, eat too much, and do nothing.

The reverse is also true. Come spring, I will bounce around the house, start projects (that I most likely won't finish), and ingest only air and water.

Now the danger here is that I use this as an excuse for not doing anything. I don't want to wake up tomorrow and say to myself, "I have SAD, so I'm not doing a damn thing," because that's a surefire way to never do anything.

Meditation is Boring

I've noticed that I tend not to write about things going on in my life on this blog. Sure, you see the occasional photo of my kids, or something tangentially related that deals with a comprehensive universal theme, however, I really try not to make these posts read something like:

9:05-9:16 The kids jumped on me until I got up.
9:16-9:45 I shaved and took a shower while the kids watched and Justin told me about insects.
9:45-10:35 I dressed myself and the kids. Justin wore a skeleton long sleeve shirt, and Harmony had a rainbow sweater.
10:35-11:25 I took the kids to Hawaiian BBQ as a treat. Justin ate noodles and Harmony had rice stuck up her nose.

And so on...

I'm assuming the reason why I don't write like that is because I'm by and large bored with reality. I tend to live in my head, and there is generally a disconnect between what I want to think about when given a blank canvas, and what I am forced react to when the tangible world is thrust upon me.

I've had an entire lifetime dealing with ennui. I take the kids to the playground, and my brain is idle as I stare at the branches of trees. I'm reminded of my youth, when I hid in the shelter of my room (or else my mom would make me do some tedious chore), lay back on my upper bunk bed, and stare at the asbestos on the ceiling.

It's not so much that I see visions and hallucinations as I'm dealing with the real world, it's more that I don't, and my brain gets grumpy. I would prefer to have something to think about that's like, "I wonder what rocket boots would look like," and less like, "Man, I'm wiping boogers off a kid's nose again."

Don't get me wrong, I love my kids. I find contentment in taking care of them the majority of the time, especially when we are on an adventure, or they do something relatively cute. However, they are not really what I'm talking about: I'm describing my global aversion to the cosmos of perception. I would much prefer to live inside my head, with a steady stream of new ideas and thoughts, while churning out my own conclusions.

Though if I ever got what I wanted, and found myself as a brain in a jar, I might reconsider, especially when one thinks of quadriplegics like Stephen Hawking that would give anything to go for a stroll. Perhaps I am being too hasty in dismissing this existence, particularly those spaces in time when I can stop and watch the breeze at the park.

I Take Care of Kids, Honest!

I take care of kids all day, and I'm a guy.

I change diapers, fix food, wash dishes, vacuum the carpet, read kid's books, get them dressed, take them outside: everything that comes with watching children for ten hours a day. I experience the same boredom and loneliness associated with tending to, let's face it, the mentally disabled. Sure, children are cute and all, but when one of them is babbling and throwing noodles on the floor, and the other is wiping sauce on her forehead, it's a little hard not to make that connection.

So when I go to the park, I'm not there to molest people. Be unafraid, women that veer their kids out of my way and fail to include me in your conversations. I am the reverse result of feminism. If women can do a man's job, so too is the reverse true. After all, someone has to take care of the kids, and since we don't want every child to be raised in a daycare vat, someone has to stay home full-time during those early years. (In my case, my wife is better at working a job, I'm better at working with our kids.)

You don't need to flee from me. Sure, I am 6'1", wear glasses, and am balding, and yes that fits the physical profile of every crappy T.V. movie you've watched where some whackjob stalks a family to death, but I'd like to inform you that I'm harmless. I'm odd, true, but that's because I'm breaking a stereotype here.

So please don't consciously or unconsciously prejudice me. I'm not going to eat your kids. If you are standing around in a circle of women, and I happen to be playing with my kids on the slide, talk to me. Include me please, because I have the same feelings of inadequacy and lack of adult connections that anyone who does this job has.

Taming the Wild Thing

Since I take care of a three year old boy, I need a working strategy on how to discipline him when he does something naughty, like push his sister, dump all the crackers on the floor, or throw a tantrum when he doesn't get his way. Because he can't sit in a chair for longer than one minute without fidgeting, my wife and I considered that he may have ADHD, even though neither of us have any real understanding of what that is except through lists of imprecise "symptoms." When we compared his behavior to his girl cousin, who is particular and polite, and far more reserved, we noticed a huge divide between them.

Fortunately, we found this book. I generally have a hard time recommending books about parenting, because of the twofold reasons that they tend to be very self-helpish and authoritative, qualities which elicit my skepticism. When I saw that my wife had bought this book on a whim I thought, "Great, use time outs and positive discipline. I've heard it all before."

This is different though, because instead of applying a one size fits all approach, where the obvious differences between most boys and girls are swept aside due to politically correct ideology, the author instead explores the issue from a practical standpoint using studies to support his evidence. One critique I have is that this lengthy reference section at the end of the book should have been integrated into the rest of it, so that his conclusions are more transparent, but whatever. As if I'm seriously going to follow up on scientific papers anyway.

However, I had already been using exercise and the outdoors as a way to calm Justin. Instead of timeouts, I replaced them with "long walks" as in, if you keep doing what you are doing, I'm going to take you for a one to two mile stroll around our neighborhood. This is the first book I've found that specifically recommends this, though not as a punishment. (Which I realized at the time was counter to what I wanted long term, but I didn't see a choice, since time outs weren't working. He'd just sit and laugh at me.)

The most important thing I took away from this book is how to immediately apply consequences, then after he's calmed down, get him to explain to me what he did wrong, and what he can do differently next time. For example, if he's hitting his sister with a book, I take the book away, then he looks at me, tells me that he hit his sister with the book, and that next time, he could choose not to hit his sister.

The second thing was the idea that time-outs where he's sitting in the same room as me are counterproductive, and not really a "punishment", because he's getting my attention that entire time by screaming, squirming, throwing pillows, or just getting up and walking around. The author instead replaces a time-out with a "time-away" in which the kid is sent to a safe room where you can shut the door, and keep the door shut regardless of what they do (as long as they don't have a history of self-destructive behavior, like self-biting or jumping out of windows).

This has worked like a charm on Justin, and not only gives him time to calm down and reflect on what he's done, it also has dramatically reduced yelling in our household. Instead of lecturing him, or screaming at him that he's not listening, I can silently pick him up and stick him in the bedroom, and let him freak out on his own, not unlike this boy.

When he's calmed down, he can tell me what he did wrong, and what he can do differently next time. Also, this means I get to be a better parent, because instead of flipping out, I can remain calm and collected, and be the type of parent I want to be.

Perhaps there are two wild things that need to be tamed.

A Deal With The Starbucks

I'm of many minds when it comes to Starbucks.

The underdog in me wants them to be malevolent just because they are colossal, which is not really fair on my part. I'm only concerned with the size of an institution when it also uses unfair business practices and exploits its workers. However, I'm also not alarmist, and I haven't seen any legitimate proof of corruption in excess, and like Microsoft and McDonald's, sometimes the negativity tends to be just a tad overblown.

I'm also not concerned with overpriced drinks, because this is the new version of a soda fountain, and a caffeine version of a bar. The Renaissance began with the switch from alcohol to coffee, Jane Austin's characters hang out at coffee bars, so I am at home with the idea that people can sit around and drink expensive snobbish concoctions while indulging in voyeurism. They occasionally play the Beatles, and if I'm lucky, I can sit on a couch with my honey, while she blathers at me about something she's thinking about.

Do I like the Mom-and-Pop alternatives? Absolutely. But Coffee Society is five miles away, and Emily's is in Santa Cruz. In contrast, I can walk the kids the two blocks to Starbucks.

In addition, I've always gotten nothing less than perfect quality from a Starbucks, while other places have been less than good. (Not the ones mentioned, but other places. Not naming names, but my wife can't stand your hot chocolate. You know who you are.)

So all in all, I enjoy going to Starbucks, though I feel a tad guilty every time I go, especially when I think about all of the hippies sleeping in trees as I throw away my paper cup, and when I see that the barista has a headset for the drive through.

Then I shudder, if only for a moment.

Buddha Got It Backwards

In Buddhism, the Second Noble Truth (out of Four) is that desire causes suffering.

"Suffering is caused by craving or attachments to worldly pleasures of all kinds. This is often expressed as a deluded clinging to a certain sense of existence, to selfhood, or to the things or phenomena that we consider the cause of happiness or unhappiness."

I'm sorry, but I think suffering causes desire.

If I am born, I age, I am sick or near death, if I am filled with sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair, I am involved in something displeasing, or I am separate from something pleasing, or I am not getting what I want, then I am Suffering, and my next state of being is to Desire to end the Suffering.

Thus, the pursuit to cease all desires is fruitless, because it does not end suffering, it only suppresses the body's natural warning system that something is amiss. It is the same as if a doctor treated your symptoms, and didn't cure the disease.

...

This is not to say that desire should run rampant, and that hedonism is good. Instead, I assert that desire should exactly equal the amount of suffering. If you desire for more than you suffer, then you are as unwise as someone that desires less than they suffer. If you are sick, you should desire medicine, not a mansion or a yacht.

The enlightened one knows themselves perfectly, and equates every suffering they feel with an equal amount of desire, and acts accordingly.