Fundamental observations, part 3

Learn to accept change, because it almost always beats stagnation.

This is probably easiest to recognize, as I first did, with respect to your favorite bands.  In my case, the most convincing demonstration was a double-bill of two of my favorite 60s folk bands.  The first set was taken by The Limeliters, who had gone through multiple changes of membership; substantially reshaped their musical style; and didn’t hesitate to showcase new material rather than the old.  The second set was taken by The Chad Mitchell Trio, who had not been touring regularly, and who brought back their classic line-up for this one-time concert.  They were playing mostly their classic repertoire, with a few updated songs, and are still consumate musicians, so the music sounded just like the classic albums.  This turned out to be the problem — I could just as easily have listened to the albums, since there didn’t seem to be any spark to it.  The music was solid, polished — and disappointingly stale.  (A note, just in case this post should reach any members of the band — I still love the music, and if the band wants to get back together and keep developing based on their classic style, I’ll gladly stand in line for the tickets.)  As for The Limeliters, I had to spend a few minutes adapting to the fact that it had actually changed over a 30 year period, and wasn’t the band I grew up with, but it didn’t take long to learn to love their new style as well as the old.

Okay, that’s a long-winded anecdote, and not a fundamental observation.  However, since that concert I’ve gone to other concerts (or picked up new CDs) and noticed many favorite bands evolving in surprising and sometimes dissapointing ways.  However, I assume that (music execs notwithstanding) these evolutions occur because the artists themselves are changing, growing, and evolving.  If we were to insist that they keep churning out the exact style that we’re used to, they can’t be true to themselves, and this is going to show.  Ultimately, I’d rather have an artist stay true to his art, whether or not I can appreciate the subtleties, rather than to turn to hack-work because that’s what the audiences demand. 

Now lets get away from music, and think about our own day-to-day lives.  The phrase "You’re not the man I married" is common enough to become a cliché, and for good reason — it’s guaranteed to be true.  Any relationship which lasts long enough to be interesting is going to see both (or, more liberally, all) parties age and evolve as they discover who they are.  This change can be difficult and, in some cases, can rightly lead to separation.  However, if the basis of the relationship is strong enough, then the fact that all parties evolve to (hopefully) more truly reflect their core nature should be something to celebrate, and should be worth adapting to.  More importantly, telling someone that he shouldn’t be true to him/herself is a recipe for a disastrous relationship, and is highly dis-recommended.  (But play fair, guys — leaving socks on the floor and empty beer cans on the table probably isn’t part of your core identity, and you can give those things up for the sake of harmony.)

Mouse, house, grouse, souse….

Ok, now I’m really confused.  I posted recently about the much reported story of the mouse that got revenge by torching the house of the man who set it on fire.  Cheryl of Out of the Box nicely pointed out that Snopes has reported the story as fraud.  However, the primary quotes used to rebut the story come from exactly the same man (i.e. the homeowner) who was quoted as the primary source in the original article.  Finally, just a few minutes ago, we get another article which goes back to the same original source that is quoted in the other two articles, saying that he stands by his original story.  It’s kind of like watching a man play ping-pong against himself — no matter how hard he plays, you kind if figure it’s going to come out as a tie.

Never set the mouse on fire

Okay, this isn’t my normal subject matter, but sometimes it seems that the whole "karma" thing works.  If you are going to be cruel enough to set a live mouse on fire, don’t be surprised when it runs into your house and burns it down.

And as for the post title — Frank Hayes told it to us years ago in song, only his advice was to Never Set the Cat on Fire.

PS: Kudos to bariau at livejournal for posting the link.

Fundamental observations, part 2

When your hobby becomes an obligation, it is no longer a leisure activity.

As with my previous fundamental observation, I’d be tempted to call this obvious, except that it took me several years to figure it out.  Now, maybe I’m just slow, but there’s probably at least one other person out there who has been so busy having a good time that they’ve failed to notice that that they weren’t actually having a good time.  (I suspect it has something to do with this whole "forests vs. trees" thing, but I haven’t managed to find the transcripts for that court case.)

There are several points I’m making here:

1. Your interests can change over time without your noticing.
2. The organizations and formal activities that grow up around a hobby may not reflect the aspects of that hobby that appeal to you.
3. No matter how worthy, it is possible to have too many hobbies and too little leisure time to keep up with them.

If, as has happened to me at several times in my life, you find that you are generally exhausted and that you are not actually looking forward to your nights out, it’s probably time to stop and re-evaluate your interests.  Consider narrowing down to the ones that are most interesting to you, or switch to something entirely new, or keep the same interests but do them on your own time rather than in a formally organized setting.  You may find that it will breathe new life into your leisure time.  It certainly has for me.

Fundamental observations, part 1

There’s a trick to it.

Perhaps this seems obvious.  Most basic truths are, in retrospect, but this one took me a long while to notice.  Perhaps you, too, may have failed to notice how universal this rule really is.  Whether you are talking about making a sandwich or cleaning a blackboard, there is some secret method that will make the result much better or the process much easier.  You can spend weeks studying the problem and discover those hidden secrets, and this is a good thing.  It sharpens the mind and gives you an appreciation for the complexity of the "every day world".  Alternatively, you can go out and find an expert to teach you the arcane secrets.  Again, you’ll be glad you did.  Your day-to-day life will become easier, and your chosen expert will gain the satisfaction of knowing that he has improved the world by passing on his hard-won knowledge.  (Likewise, once you become an expert, don’t be selfish.  Spread the trick around and we all become richer.)

An interesting related example is the process of tying shoes.  A large fraction of the population knows the secret of tying a bow knot that will stay tied, while a substantial fraction has never learned the simple trick.  The strange thing in this case is that the folks who know the secret generally don’t know that they are doing something special — they just got lucky.  It took me 25 years till I found someone to tell me the secret, but you can get it now by visiting Ian’s Shoelace Site.  My thanks to Ian for revealing the trick in such a clear and complete manner.

Update: My first version of this post managed to imply (somewhat condescendingly) that I was the only person ever to have noticed this phenomenon.  That wasn’t my intent — I may well have been the last person in the world to catch on — so I’ve updated the text.

Pain is a funny thing….

Pain is a funny thing.  Once you live with it a little while, you forget it is there.  You just feel tired and out of sorts, but you don’t really notice anymore and you don’t really know why.  Pain is boring.  And then the cessation of it comes as an epiphany, almost stunning—like falling in love.

(Hammered by Elizabeth Bear, page 171.)

This strikes me as a profound quote, and could spark many different essays.  For me, it brings to mind a marginally related issue which will then lead me off on a completely unrelated tangent.  Since this is my nature, I ask that you indulge my rambling, and appreciate the above quote even if it doesn’t prove entirely relevant to the post it inspired.

I suffer from migraines headaches.  As best I can determine, I have suffered from them for most of my life, and first missed school because of them at age 11.  However, I didn’t realize this, and was not formally diagnosed, for some 25 years.  The primary reason for this is the dozens of well meaning people who echoed variations on the phrase: "If you had a migraine headache, you’d know it."  The implication was always that a migraine was always an overwhelmingly painful headache that made you want to split your head open with a rock to escape.  I didn’t have that.  Yes, I occasionally felt like someone was putting an icepick through the back of my skull, but it wasn’t that painful.  And mostly what I felt was mild vertigo, nausea, hypersensity to sound, aphasia, etc.  Nobody told me that all of these were associated with migraine aura and that you could experience them without the headache and still be suffering from migraines.  Instead it was "Don’t worry, you’d know." 

As in the initial quote, you don’t necessarily even notice when you are suffering.  When I snap at my lady after she makes a reasonable suggestion, I have to explicitly stop and say "Oh!  I must have a headache."  And then, more importantly, I must beg her forgiveness — since the headache is an explanation, not an excuse.  When I find myself talking at twice my normal speed and at an unacceptably high volume, I excuse myself for a moment and go take an Advil, because I figure I’ll notice the headache sooner or later.  (I highly recommend the liqui-gels — they really do seem to work faster.)  In both cases, my point is that I’m not conciously aware that I’m suffering from a headache or associated migraine symptoms.  I have to notice the secondary or even tertiary effects and then work back to noticing the primary cause.

Some days I feel like I’m blessed, because I can work through these migraines, rather than having to immediately stop everything I’m doing to lie down.  Other days, not so much:  25 years of ignoring a treatable condition because it wasn’t bad enough, or because nobody could put the right name to it — that kinda sucks.

I’ve dealt with the same thing when I started developing kidney stones.  I got exactly the same line.  "If you ever have kidney stones, you’ll know."  Actually I didn’t.  I felt a severe pain in my lower back, and I presumed it was muscular cramping.  After trying every measure I could think of to relieve the cramping, I asked my lady for advice (very reluctantly, since it was 5am, and she was sound asleep).  My lady, luckily, has more sense than I do, and suggested that it might be a kidney stone.  I then promptly contacted my father, who was quite familiar with the symptoms and who doesn’t think that 5am is a particularly obscene time to be awake, and he was able to confirmed that the symptoms matched.  I had also learned the interesting lesson that it was not the intensity of the pain that made it unbearable, but the fact that it never let up.  Thus the significance of the initial quote: my clearest memory of my time in the emergency room is when the medicines finally kicked in and the pain stopped — what joy!

By the second and third stones, I thought I had everything sorted out, and went straight to the emergency room (which is another story — don’t get me started on emergency rooms) to get appropriate pain-killers and make sure there were no side-effects.  It seemed like conventional wisdom was almost correct.  "Once you’ve had one, you’ll know."  Then, my fourth kidney stone hit, and all the conventional wisdom went out the window.  There was no severe pain; no warning; and no emergency room visit.  There was just a very odd sensation, and a "ping" as the stone hit the side of the toilet.  (I still scheduled a follow-up to make sure there were no complications.  Kidney stones are usually benign, and do no damage to the kidneys, but complications are possible and can be dangerous.)  It was definitely a kidney stone, and I had the physical evidence to prove it, but everything I thought I knew about them suddenly proved unreliable.  Had this happened the first time, I might have scoffed at all the stories and been truly unprepared for a sudden back pain at 5am.

What lesson do we learn from this second story?  Again, we learn that common wisdom is not always to be trusted.  More importantly, we learn that every person and every case is different, and that "one size fits all" medical advice should be treated with suspicion.