Seeing Things

                                                                Seeing Things

                                                            By Marco M. Pardi

                                                                 mpardi.com

“As a rule we perceive what we want to perceive…The unexpected is usually not received at all. It is not seen or heard, but ignored. Or it is misunderstood.” Peter F. Drucker

1974

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A few nights ago a Cosmically insignificant event occurred: a tiny speck of dirty rock, variegated with water and gasses, completed another orbit around its mediocre star.  There is no evidence the Cosmos noted this event.  Nor is there evidence any but one of the multitude of living species residing on this speck noticed.  Not all members of the one species that did notice, the apex predator/parasite species, marked the occasion the same way though many of them shared one behavioral characteristic.  Many continued their efforts to fend off death by quick attack or slow starvation. Others continued their efforts to bring about death through quick attack or slow starvation.  Many gathered in groups to participate in ritualized behavior such as counting down the dropping of a ball or watching fireworks climbing into the skies. And almost all in this world wide group shared the characteristic of mentally displacing themselves into an imagined better future while attending the possibility of being denied that future by bullets or bombs provided by the previous year’s terrorist, military, paramilitary, or police groups.

What I find interesting is the perception that New Year’s Day is some kind of religious event or, perhaps, simply an event generated as an artifact of the calendar.   No religion can claim this day.  In fact, no calendar can claim its parentage. It is simply one of countless trillions of such events constantly occurring throughout the Cosmos, from aeons before the advent of the Apex Predator on this speck to long after this ignorant, self absorbed creature destroys itself, taking most or all fellow species with it.  

I was pondering this in the days leading up to and surrounding this yearly event as I underwent surgeries to remove occluded lenses from my eyes. The surgeries themselves did not clarify what was in my mind. But the “down time” provided time for thought, especially as I chose “monovision” for my new lenses. But I’ll explain.

Ordinarily there are 5 levels of possible lens implants one may choose from. And, two options I’ll explain in a moment. I chose the implant level which puts a lens for close up – reading, computer, seeing what you’re kissing, etc. – in one eye and a lens for distance – driving, avoiding people before they see you, and shooting someone who otherwise had a chance to flee – in the other eye.  The options offered were: lenses that enable X-ray vision to see through everyone’s clothes; or, lenses that ensured you would see everything your wife’s way.

Not anticipating a position with the TSA, I declined the first option. The second one, marketed as “Domestic Tranquility”, was briefly tempting but I also declined that. Mustn’t let my powers of deception atrophy.

The first of the two procedures was preceded by an interview which felt more appropriate to a heart transplant. The nurse asked questions such as, “Do you have any anxiety about the surgery?”  “What, you mean about some masked guy coming at my eye with a knife? Gosh, no. Happens every day.” Perhaps she read something into that; the propofol was injected into my IV tube out of my sight. So, I was here. Then I was here. “Where’d everybody go?” I didn’t get to count down. I didn’t get to see the fluid go in the tube. I had no idea how much time had passed. Perhaps worst of all, I had no idea where I was relative to the mediocre star we call “The Sun”.

And so, as I weaved my way out of the hospital with a mini colander taped over the first eye operated on I began to ponder the importance we place on the passage of time.  Some aspects of the recovery period did take time to adjust. Things like the first few mornings awakening with that colander and fearing that overnight I had begun morphing into THE FLY.  After the second procedure my mind is still adjusting to clear vision in one eye and blurry vision in the other, depending on the distance I am from an object.

But my mind’s eye is also looking at the transition from “last year” to “this year”. What’s the big deal? In recent years I’ve been around increasingly fewer people, and those people are older.  My brother is still 3 ½ years older, and it seems unlikely I’ll catch up. So, I’m hearing far fewer New Year’s resolutions. These always amused me.  It seems to me that if there’s one sure way to drag the past around with you it’s the resolution to change in the future. You have identified something in the past that displeased you, so you march into the future with Mr Past Monkey on your back, always chattering in your ear to not do or to do something relevant to the past. I wrote in an earlier piece the example of the two monks and the girl crossing a muddy street: “I put her down on the other side. It is you who are still carrying her.”

Certainly some resolutions do some good. If nothing else, they fill in the days.  I’ve heard several end-stage patients describe the last days as “just passing time”.  But what happens when efforts to enact the resolutions fail?  In the interim between college and graduate school I worked briefly with a State agency charged with rehabilitating incarcerated minors convicted of crimes, not just awaiting trial.  One particular young man could truly have been a “textbook case”.  Serving yet another in a string of sentences, this time in a maximum security juvenile lock-up, he told me of the many times he had resolved to change his ways. But his monkey had him by the throat. Every time he did even something minor, as in putting a pen that wasn’t his in his pocket he jumped all the way to the conclusion he was a born criminal, and he acted out on that conclusion.

Another insight came from a former colleague, an Anthropologist at SAMHSA – Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration. She told me caseworkers and therapists had begun trying to break the deeply held notion that success in fighting addiction was measured as total and ongoing abstinence. SAMHSA had come to realize this was counter-productive in the same way that young man’s inflexibility was throwing him into a deadly game of Either/Or. People will “slip, fall off the wagon” or whatever you want to call it. The issue was not whether one falls; it’s whether one gets up.

And, I’ve often seen what I felt was an egocentric view of the world and its events. Western culture worships personal responsibility, it is characterized as a “guilt culture” versus a “shame culture”. That is, the individual, the guilty party, must be identified. It rejects the influence of the surrounding culture and certainly “The Fates”.  A discourse of Fate versus Free Will would be, even for me, unbearable here.  

And so, when I hear a person declaring a New Year’s resolution I wonder what they will do and how they will feel when they do not live up to it.  I suppose I’m fortunate in never having been a resolution person. Analysts can make of that what they will. Perhaps low self esteem caused me to predict my own failure.  Perhaps high self esteem caused me to be overly self-forgiving.  Or maybe I was always lazy.

I would resolve to keep writing this blog, or maybe not. Tomorrow is another day. No use dragging today into it. As the saying goes, When you stand with one foot in the past and one foot in the future you wind up pissing on the present. With my better eyesight now, I hope to keep my shoes dry.