2ndchance

Maladjustment II

IN 1967, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed the American Psychological Association.  Among his remarks are included the following:

I am sure that we will recognize that there are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which we should never be adjusted.  There are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will.  Men and women should be as maladjusted as. . . .Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery, could scratch across the pages of history, words lifted to cosmic proportions, 'We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.  That they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.  And that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' And through such creative maladjustment, we may be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.

Go with the flow, people say.  Get used to it, don't rock the boat, accept things the way they are.

I think not.  We need 'creative maladjustment' to be a norm in our interactions with the world.  How can change for the better be precipitated if we don't rock the boat a little.  Let's go out and rock our world today.

Maladjustment I

J. Krishnamurti once said:

It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

We can not be content with the way things are in our world.  We can not simply adjust to the status quo and live out our lives as if everything was fine and dandy.  So if we are a bit off-kilter and maladjusted to life, is that such a bad thing?

An Old Letter

What follows is a letter I wrote to a kid in 1993.  I was working both for a church and for a local supermarket chain at that time.  So I had 60hr weeks and no free time, but lots of happy time with families and kids and co-workers.

I had totally forgotten this particular letter and the circumstances surrounding it.  For anyone that knows my recent history, the irony of what the letter says is apparent.  But I want to let it stand on its own without too much preamble:

Dear JR:

Leveling Up

Yes I admit that I'm still playing World of Warcraft.   Along with several million other people from around the world.  One of the goals of the game is to 'level up' through 70 different 'rungs on the ladder'.  The more experience points you get, the higher level you get to, the cooler gear you can get, and the harder the game seems to get.  Except when you get to the higher level, it somehow doesn't feel all that cool.

Sound familiar?

Questions

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. . .try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign tongue.

Do not seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

~Rainer Marie Rilke

The psychology of hockey fans

I went to a hockey game with some friends Friday night.  It been over a year since I had been to see our local team play.  And although I enjoyed myself, there is one thing I have to say.

Hockey fans are messed up.

Irony

In the news on NBC tonight was a story about the rampant rise of prescription drug abuse. . .specifically with Vicodin.  The story included a sad tale about an 18-year-old who OD'd on Vicodin, and highlighted how people have easy access to meds via the internet.

Directly after the story aired, during the commercial break, I counted four ads for meds. . .ranging from Tylenol to Boniva.  Curiosity peaked, I decided to count the remaining ads during the news that were medication related.  The total was no less than nine.

We teach our kids, via television, that the answer to any ailment can be found in a pill.

And we wonder why.

Way out

When I was in college, my friends and I used to do a skit where one of us was stuck in a trash barrel. Various people would come by to help/not help, and there was always moral to the story though the plot would often change.

Here is a variation on the basic story that I stole from a SpiritWorks brochure I got from a conference I am attending. (yes, another conference):

A man falls into a hole.  It is very deep and the walls are so steep that he can't get out.

A doctor walks by, and the man calls out "Can you help me?".  The doctor writes a prescription and throws it in the hole.

Then a priest walks by, and the man yells, "Can you please help me?". The priest writes a prayer and throws it into the hole.

A few minutes later, a therapist walks by, and the man screams "Help me, please help me!"  The therapist sits beside the hole and listens to the man for a time then moves on.

Finally, a friend walks by, and the man in the hole again asks for help.  The friend jumps into the hole with him, and the startled man says, " why the hell did you do that?  Now we are both in the hole."

"Yes, I know," the friend replies. "But I've been in this hole before and I know the way out."

Get out what you put in

School is winding down.  Only three more classes left, with three exams and one project due.  I'm ready for it to be over and ready to return home.

I got a little peeved this  past week.  I had been working hard, over three days and for many hours, with two other students to put together a project for presentation in class.  We put in the work, and ended up doing a good job with our presentation.  Another team threw their project together at the last minute and BS'd their way through class.  All the time I had been working on my project, they had been goofing off or sleeping.

What do I care?

Edit the Video

Classes continue to be good, and we students are staying busy with tests, papers, group projects, etc.  We will start our practicums in about two weeks, and I will be glad to have some 'hands on' learning.

Quite often in my classes, there is material which is of benefit to me personally.  Last week, one of my teachers was giving us an image of how people deal with the past.

"Your lives are not simply pictures. . .they are videos"