Nancy's Musings

Interesting things rarely happen to me. Yay! This means that 1) I'm the most interesting thing in my life, and 2) less anxiety. I mean, there was that one time, the Static Cling Fiasco, and then the classic Bus Stop Slush Splash. But today was funny. So, it's April. Forecast said rain, but mostly we just had wind. Lots of wind. The sky was a brilliant blue for most of the morning, and then the dust filled the air so you couldn't see the sky. The world turned sepia. I have been trying to master a crochet pattern for a service project at the end of the month, so when I finished work I climbed straight to the enclosed bus stop (end of the line) and pulled out my yarn. I had just finished a few rounds when the bus pulled up, so I tucked my project in my bag and walked a dozen yards or so to the bus. I tapped my pass on the pad, walked to the back of the bus, and sat down. Then I noticed the oddest thing. My yarn must have snagged somewhere, because it stretched the entire lengt...

In German, the word for compassion is "Mitleid": a compound word: mit = with, and leid = suffer.*  It's also sometimes translated as "pity." I'm sure I've blogged about pity: standing above a person and feeling sorry for them. Have you ever felt that instinct - when we see somebody who is uncomfortable or suffering - to think "It's her fault" or "He brought this on himself" or "This is their choice"? When someone returns from volunteering at the soup kitchen, it's how they express frustration that the people they give their time, money, and goods to are wandering around with nothing to do, smoking cigarettes, sporting new tattoos, or otherwise not using their scant means to the volunteer's approval. It's when we meet somebody who's depressed, and tell them to "cheer up!" It's when we treat our neighbor's cold with more coldness, as if a person were no more than their germs. I once told a...

The Wizard of Grad School said something profound that has stuck with me for most of a week through all kinds of situations: she said that to get the best results from employees, listen to them and lower the stakes. I'm an academic, and am constantly being asked "What are the stakes?" whenever I propose a paper or book. It's necessary in some ways, to fit my work into the larger cultural conversations, to make my writing aware that it does not exist in a vacuum. Stakes become more ethically problematic when I'm under pressure to explain them to a non-academic, who is not only critical of my work but of my entire field - a pressure I never escape, even in my own head. And so I need to raise the stakes, because what's tacitly at stake in all of my scholarship is everything I love about the world. I'm also a fiction writer, and if you want people to get excited about the action in your books, you have to raise the stakes. Sometimes, this results in "stak...

It's my instinct to be deeply hurt and totally dismissive of what used to be called "fair-weather" friends. By that, I mean friends that hang around as long as you're fun and independent, but who disappear or back out when it gets difficult. Look, I can't even describe them without getting all judgy. How is being a Fair Weather Friend different than distancing yourself from toxic people? I know a lot of people who don't know the difference at all - who think they just want to surround themselves with positive people, when what they're doing is moving on as soon as (or when) the friendship asks for more than you're used to, or more than you're comfortable with. How often do depression sufferers hear that they're just too depressing to be around? I think every person has the right to choose who they spend time with, or give friendship to. For any reason at all. Nobody has to justify their decisions to anybody else. In a flash of gratifying irony,...

Antoine de St. Exupery was an amazing soul, and he wrote the most beautiful book in the universe called  The Little Prince . I have read it in three languages, but it's best in the original French. The most fascinating passage to me is the chapter where the little prince meets the fox, and the fox asks the little prince to tame him. "My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Thin...

Have you ever scrolled down your Facebook feed and run into one of  those posts. . . you know, the click-bait "articles" titled things like "10 things totally awesome people do" or "15 thoughts awesome people never have" in the style of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People ? They aren't written by psychologists, and they aren't backed up by anything other than photos of attractive celebrities. They seem like harmless motivational advice, like the kind you get on free calendars, or you find framed in black and hanging on every wall in that call center where you work. These articles make a serious transgression, and I would encourage anyone reading this to mitigate the damage by not re-posting. Not all of the articles transgress in this way, but if you can't read critically with this idea in mind, remember that somebody will, and your carelessness can hurt them.  So, uh, Happy Galentine's Day. I'll talk more about the context I think ...

I have been seriously considering recently if (and if so, when) it is ever okay to consider one's self above or before others. It seems like a stupid question, but I work on the assumption that the universe is logical, if complex, and that rules exist in a hierarchy. The most obedient person is one who has the rules appropriately prioritized. By this amusingly simplistic rubric, getting into heaven begins with designing and running an algorithm. After that, it's a hardware problem. Well, why not? But what about selfishness. Is it ever okay to think of myself first? Contemporary thought would suggest that we dress and accoutre ourselves for ourselves as a thinking and creative subject, rather than thinking of ourselves as objects of a critical gaze. That is, we decide how to clothe or make up ourselves because of how it makes us feel, rather than what other people (either for arousal or judgment) think/feel. But isn't that selfish? If we were selfless, wouldn't we care t...