The Socratic Method...

Socrates, the father of modern philosophy, once said "The wise man knows that there is much that he does not know." I've always added the addendum "...and in that respect, I am very wise." But, recently I've found a lot of the things that I've taken for granted in the arena of "things that I know" to be quite different in the light of reality. The states of physical health in some of my friends that I thought far surpassed my own have been shaken to their core. The relationship status of other friends who I thought were made for each other have been ripped asunder before my very eyes. I always thought that as you get older, you learn more, and become smarter. What I'm finding is that as you grow older, you re-learn things that you already thought that you knew, and end up feeling dumber. 

I've always been told that I'm a smart kind of guy. My teachers have said it, my family have said it, my friends have said it, but I've never really felt that way. After hearing it so often, it was just easy enough not to try to argue the point, so I gave into all the "labeling." I'll agree that I'm smart, but I don't believe it or see myself in that way. I've always just seen myself as a relatively unremarkable kind of guy. I'm a bit more outgoing and unapologetic about my opinion than your average person, but "smart" has never been a word that I'd default to in an autobiographical sense.

What does that word really mean anyway? I've often said that I'm a "compendium of useless information" because a lot of the facts that I remember aren't very useful throughout the course of a given day. The quadratic formula, all seven modes of a major scale, my phone number from when I was 12 years old, these have all simply been insects caught in the fly paper of my brains memory banks. None of these are useful to me in any real sense.

But, society is all about that far-too-over-utilized "Bell Curve." If you're to the left, then you're "Below Average." If you're on the hump, then you're "Average." If you're to the right, then you're "Above Average." Personally, I've found that either by my unwillingness to conform or my ability to memorize useless data like an interactive, user-friendly thumb-drive, that I've been thrown into the last category for better or for worse. I guess that the best thing to do is simply to make use of what I have been given to the best of my ability and to the most beneficial outcome for humankind. Although, as I say this, I find another quote from Albert Einstein echoing through my mind "I want to know God's thoughts; everything else is just details."

Heart Conditions...

What is the heart? Is it the shape we all too often see on Valentine's Day cards? Is it the center of all human compassion and emotion? Or, is it a muscle that pumps oxygenated blood throughout the veins, arteries, and capillaries that make up the human cardiopulmonary system? All three of these things are thought of as true, but there is an interesting correlation that I have notices among my friends recently. The metaphorical heart seems to affect the status of the physical heart.

As some of you that read this may already know, a good friend of mine Kirk Parker recently passed from this mortal coil due to a heart attack that he had in his sleep. For those of you that did not know Kirk, he was one of the most compassionate people that I have ever known. I'm 28 years old, and many have called me "jaded" which is a more accurate assessment than I feel comfortable admitting to, but Kirk (who was nearly double my age) had no such sharpness in his personality. My volatility was often countered by his temperance. Thus is not only the wisdom of greater years but also the amiability of Kirk Parker. Though we both saw the world through the eyes of a poet, his outlook was far more upbeat than mine and just as much if not more so valid for maintaining it despite all the additional years of empirical evidence. In a nutshell, he's the type of poet I want to be when I finish growing up some day. 

Now, I have heard that another man who I consider a good friend Derek Martinez has recently had to have open heart surgery in order to repair an aortic aneurysm (he has all my best wishes for a speedy recovery), and the proximity of these two amazing people having two related physical maladies has made me ponder a few questions. What link does the emotional heart have to the physical one? Why are those emotionally "good-hearted" people suffering from physical heart issues? What does this mean for my own heart's health?

I'm not a doctor, and I don't have all of the answers to these questions. If there is some metaphysical/physical link between the two, then it seems rather unfair that those kind-hearted people should have these problems. I'm a Daoist, and I believe in the principles of balance, one good thing must be weighed against one bad thing on the other side of the scale, but, for the life of me, I fail to see the balance here. I won't encourage "prayer" for Derek and Religious "Heaven" for Kirk as they defy my spiritual beliefs, but what I will ask of those who read this is that they send "good thoughts" Derek's way, and realize (much like I did) that the world lost a brilliant light with Kirk's passing, and that the night sky now shines all the brighter for it.

The "Secret Best Kept" in Sacramento...

What are all you stoners hiding from anyway?! I ask this because I'm finding that "Cannabis Clubs" in downtown are very anonymous about what sort of business they conduct behind closed (and often purposefully opaque) doors. In the past week, I've found myself passing by buildings that have little signage and a very steady flow of customers. My curiosity peaked, I've further investigated and found out that they are cannabis dispensaries.

Okay, I fully admit that I am a straight-edge, so this is probably coming from a place with some amount of bias in it, but how seriously can the "non-partaking" members of our collective society take stoners when you refuse even to conduct your business in the "open?" I 'll concede the point that there are some patients with legitimate medical reasons for marijuana therapy, but stoners have to concede the counter-point that a lot of the "clients" at these locations are not among those with a legitimate medical reason. Still, Sacramento County has yet to clamp down on these shops, so I say "live and let live." In fact, I'll go so far as to say that these establishments should come out of their "hiding in plain sight" mentality and stand up for what they believe in. Because whether you believe the propaganda touted in the movie "Reefer Madness" or not, if nothing else taxing marijuana sales could at the very least help to stimulate our local economy and get us out of this recession, and I think that we can all agree THAT is a good thing.

So, let the stoners have their shops, and let the straight-edges like me have my freedom to identify and walk passed them without the overwhelming aroma of "sticky-icky" having to invade my nostrils upon entering them to find out what the hell they are in the first place. Hiding is reserved for those who have something to hide, and if stoners are not afraid of "partaking," then why should they be afraid of "uncloaking?"

Choice Overload vs. Indivduality Theft

We live in a world where individuality is overloading us with more choices than we could ever possibly need. The simple mathematical permutation of how many different combinations of pizza toppings alone is enough to make anybody's head spin. Our society conditions us to think that individuality is bad. The cover of every women's magazine tells people that unless you look exactly like the person on the cover you will not be "cool." As a result, teenage girls end up with eating disorders, self-esteem issues, and a lack of appreciation for the uniquely wonderful person that they can be. The same is true of men's magazines. The message is "If you're not 6-pack abbed, 6' 2" tall, have darkly tanned skinned, and enough musculature to compete in the Mr. Universe contest, then you just don't make the cut."

All this serves to do is to confuse the mind of an adolescent into equating being different with being wrong. Yet, we still cling to the individuality with all of the choices we're faced with in the mundane every day activities that we do. You go to a bagel shop, and you order a bagel. You look through the case at about a dozen or more different varieties to choose from: whole wheat, blueberry, chocolate chip, asiago cheese, sesame seed, onion, and for those that cannot decide the "everything" bagel which is a collection of all of them, and how good can that taste really? And, once you do choose a bagel flavor, you're left with what to put on it: strawberry shmear, blueberry shmear, garlic shmear, salmon shmear, or just plain butter. Isn't it kind of cruel to make someone think this hard when they haven't even eaten breakfast yet?

And Starbucks is no help. You know that you want coffee. You go in to look at their overwhelming menu, and you have to figure out even more choices: macchiatto, frappaccino, mocha, cafe au lait. Then you have to contend with: French roast, Sumatran blend, Ethiopian, etc. Then you have to figure out whether you want
a "venti," "grande," or whatever that other one is and god forbid they just use "small," "medium," and "large" because then they couldn't be pretentious and trendy. So you finally get you coffee after having waded through an ocean of choices, and you go to put some sugar into it, and here we go again. Raw sugar, plain sugar, liquid sugar, Splenda, Sweet 'N' Low, ad infinitum. By this point, who has the strength left to even drink that damned thing? I recently asked a barista "Isn't it somewhat ridiculous how many choices we have in society nowadays?" He answered, "Considering that I have to ask every customer the same 12 questions every time they order a drink, I think that I agree with you."

So on the one hand, we have way too many choices, and on the other we're trained to not think in the first place. Personally, just trying to figure out which is better is causing me mental stress. I think that the solution is one of scope. If we lived in a world where we conditioned adolescents to think that when it comes to things talked about in all of those health magazines (body type, clothing brand, muscle tone) that you could choose whatever you want to have and be, and for the more mundane choices (bagel flavor, coffee flavor, and sugar preference) you only had about half of the options that you do right now, then I think that we'd strike a much better balance between preserving our self-esteem during those turbulent teenage years and maintaining our sanity in the adult years by keeping the "Fast" in "Fast-Food" as ringing true.