Truth

Nothing is as hard to hunt down as the truth. Like the elusive South Dakota jackalope, it's impossible to spot in the wild, and the ones people try to sell you are fakes, cobbled together from bits and pieces of reality.

When you want the truth about something, where do you look?

Where is the truth regarding government and public employee unions? One side says the unions are milking the states dry; the other says union members are underpaid. And both sides are convinced, or at least want us to be, that the very future of the Republic depends on what happens in Wisconsin. I'm disturbed that we left the future of the Republic laying around where Packer fans could get their hands on it, but no one else seems alarmed so it's probably OK.

What's the truth about Halliburton - evil corporate money-grubbers or courageous humanitarians? Depends if Dick Cheney is actually as wicked/wonderful as your party portrays him. Can health care reform work? Are Libyans capable of democracy? Will the iPad 2 make me happier?

The truth is hard, because it seems so subjective. I see tan, my wife says taupe. But next time it's not taupe, it's ecru. Or, in the case of hosiery, nude, which is a color you'd think guys would recognize immediately and women would disapprove of. You can measure all of them with a computer and place them precisely in the color space, but that means we're reduced to taking a computer's word for it. That's only slightly better than believing our spouses.

More than that, sometimes the truth seems unknowable. Yeah, FatSecret says an apple has 71 calories, but some apples are bigger, but then sometimes I don't eat as close to the core, so . . . .  And did I really burn 450 calories on that run? I'm in pretty good shape, and that distance should be easier for me than some fat guy who's been on the Lazyboy workout plan for the last decade, so when they say it should burn X, which of us are they talking about? In the end, did I have a calorie deficit or surplus yesterday? How do I really know?

Yet some people seem to know. Rush Limbaugh is pretty confident he does; so is Charlie Sheen. How do those people know? How could celebrities tweet the "truth" about Bahrain when reporters couldn't get into the country? How can Westboro Baptist Church know without doubt what God is doing?

Most of the time, except for a few things that are absolute, I'm not confident I know what the truth really is. But I am confident that there is objective, unequivocal truth. I'm not supposed to be. I'm supposed to believe we're all free to find our own truth; I'm supposed to tolerate whatever nonsense anyone else wants to put out there.

Well, folks, here's a tip: Denying the truth doesn't change it. He can say Obama isn't an American citizen, she can believe chupacabras are killing motorists in Texas, you can claim the Masons control a secret world government, I can call cookies health food. I can say it, swear to it, and believe it to my dying day but that will not change the truth, no matter how many people I point to who claim to have lost 45 pounds and cured their diabetes with an all-Keeblers diet.

The truth is out there. I believe Jesus when he said he is the way, the truth and the life; a lot of people don't. That just proves that relativism doesn't work: if we believe mutually-exclusive things then we can't both have found the truth. Alternate reality was cool on The Matrix, but life doesn't work that way.

I guess I'm suggesting that we should all be seekers for truth. Instead of thoughtlessly re-tweeting or forwarding the chain e-mails or propagating any of the propaganda that pollutes our conversational space, let's take the time to be informed of the facts and to examine the data. And then let's discuss. I promise to listen before I decide; I hope you'll do the same.

Doors

[Disclaimer for brother Eric, on the off chance he might actually check this out: This is not about a classic rock band, or any Jim Morrison conspiracy theories.]

I photograph doors. Proportionately, a lot of them.

This quirk became evident recently, when I spent part of a sick day flipping through electronic photo files. I noticed that in almost all my folders, be they of Europe or Texas or family or even just downtown, tucked between snaps of the beefeaters and Lady Di's fountain would be an image of some random door or gate. Since I rarely take the time to label things, I have only the foggiest recollection of where these doors are, but I still find them compelling. 

I wonder why. I'd like to say it reveals something deep and significant, like maybe that I embrace change, or I'm always ready to pass on to that next stage in life. I suspect the truth to be something less positive (nosiness?).

There's a certain sense of mystery to doors. An unfamiliar door shields unknown things, possibly treasures, maybe horrors, maybe something interesting, probably just the mundane detritus of a life not much different than mine. But until the door is opened, it could be anything, and sometimes its fun to imagine what it might be. I felt this very strongly outside a residential gate in Lucerne, for instance; for some reason it seemed that those who lived there must be fascinating people doing fascinating things, and I wanted to meet them. Another time, I considered for a long time a worn door to an interior room in an old Spanish mission and imagined a selfless Jesuit on his knees or maybe a Native American child being punished for his waywardness. These are the entrances pictured here.

The mystery is enhanced by the interesting appearance of the doors I photograph. Many are rustic, some are ornate, but all are, to me anyway, aesthetically interesting. There is artistry here; some craftsman steeped in the lore of fine door-making wrought this. Surely a door so out of the ordinary must conceal extraordinary things! They suggest to me hippie communes, Tolkein-esque villages, Japanese tea gardens, Monte Cassino in an old war movie starring John Wayne back when he was still lean.

And then there's the functional nature of doors: They are, alternately, barriers or protection. They keep us safe from things like ax murderers and siding salesmen. They can also bar us from entry, an annoying trait I associate with the faculty door at the Rowenhorst Student Center where I work out; it's just across the street but often locked, necessitating a hike of a block or more to get to a public entrance.

An unlocked door, on the other hand, is permission. It is access granted, an invitation, inclusion. Where a locked door is a limitation, an unlocked door represents possibility, even opportunity. That's why I choose to believe that the doors I photograph are all unlocked, and why I never check - I suspect very few of them actually are. Probably they lock them when they see me coming.

If I did open one of these doors, what would I hope to find on the other side? What wondrous thing, what amazing experience, what wise person or beautiful sight or decadent treat would live up to the promise of the door? To speculate about such things is to think about who I am, why I believe I'm here, and what holes are still empty in my life. It's kind of scary, and potentially discouraging -- what if, after all that soul-searching, I discover that my fondest dream, the wonder I hope lies on the other side, is an all-meat pizza, a micro-brew, and the Twins beating the White Sox on a big-screen TV? 

It makes me think about my own doors, physical and spiritual. Too often, I fear, I have them tightly locked, a means of keeping my self to myself. I want my family and friends see my doors as invitations to something we will share, but do they? Do they see opportunity and the promise of memorable things, or are they too accustomed disappointment and a long trudge around to the public entrance?

Mental meanderings such as this are why it's amazing I'm still married -- this is the point where Dawn's eyes are usually glazed and she's struggling to find a polite response. Dad would say a door is just a door, you need one to keep the snow and neighbors from blowing in, that's all. I have rightfully been accused of thinking too much.

A vibrant thought life can be a handicap, especially in Northwest Iowa, where Dutchmen, farmers and Republicans tend to dominate -- pragmatic groups all, who don't normally put a high value on deep thinking. But I think if we take time to wonder, and wander, about the world, we find ourselves continually encountering the One who made it. That's a good enough reason for me.

Enough

I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea of "enough." Actually, I've been thinking about this off and on for years, ever since we paid off the house and everyone immediately assumed we'd turn around and buy a bigger one. We looked - having friends in real estate is like having family members who sell financial instruments, they're always pitching something - but we found we didn't want any of those big houses. So now, years later, we're still blissfully unaware of how miserable we are in our little house.

The funny thing is, a lot of folks think it's because we don't have enough money. We just think this is enough house for two people. And we're left with this shameful problem of money in the bank, and a lot of well-intentioned advisors telling us that we need some debt. Because paying taxes is bad but paying Citibank is good? At least I get something for my taxes.

The same thing happens with cars (I guess a half-ton pickup should embarass me enough that I'll eagerly take on another three years of payments just to avoid the death blow to my image) and vacations. And a huge industry has sprung up just to address the sensitivity men have about the size of their TV sets.

And how about food? If an eight-ounce steak is good, a 10-ounce steak is better, and best of all is that two-pound monster you get for free if you can finish it all. The best restaurants are buffets, right? European friends say only in America is the quality of a meal judged by it's quantity. No such thing as eating enough; all our best celebrations involve food comas.

The truth is, I guess, that for most of us enough isn't. We need more . . . than we have now, than the other guy has, whatever. After all, isn't that what Nelson Rockefeller is supposed to have said when asked how much money is enough - just a little bit more?

It's an important question, because until we have enough, everything we get goes to feeding our own insatiable need. There's more than enough wealth in this country to end poverty, stamp out hunger, fix education, put people back to work. There are so many digits to the left of the decimal point of our collective worth that we can't really comprehend it, yet each individual one of us still thinks we don't have enough. So all that money goes up in interest-payment smoke, or gets locked into the IRA.

At least, though, we're all a lot happier. Oh, you're not?

Then let me suggest that you think a little bit about enough. Because there's a lot of happiness, in a weird sort of way, in giving away 15% of what you earn and then finding out you managed to save even more than that. In backing your bought-for-cash truck out of your paid-for garage and realizing you haven't paid a dime of interest to anyone in over a decade. In helping three families get into homes because your credit is not only golden, it's completely unencumbered.

There is such a thing as enough. And figuring out what it is is half the fun.

Confusion

I like to think that I have one of those cooler heads they always talk about (maybe it’s just because not much work gets done in there) but I’m beginning to be concerned at the direction this country is taking.
It started with the wussification of coffee. No longer is it the great American beverage that fueled cattle drives and kept soldiers alert through the dark hours of their watch. Thanks to Starbucks, Caribou and all their frilly little friends, coffee has been yuppified beyond recognition. For one thing, you can’t even get a regular cup, you have to start with tall and go from there to sizes that don’t even exist in English. And then you can’t fill the cup with actual coffee without the barista (huh, she’s barely 18 and can’t make change but she’s a barista?) letting you know through the same facial expression she uses when she hears the word “curfew” that you are hopelessly not cool and old. You’re supposed to order a frappucino or some sort of candy beverage with five words in the name. I mean, a venti white chocolate mocha cappuccino has more sugar, more syllables and almost as much solid matter as two pieces of tiramisu, with less coffee flavor. So if you learned to love coffee by waking up at zero-dark-thirty only two hours after you came in off patrol, and you want it black and hot even if it is July, there aren’t a lot of places where you’re welcome anymore.
The next thing I noticed was that our young people can no longer discern the differences in our political parties. Just look: the voice of the Young Republicans is a woman who loves burlesque shows, tweets her bra size, and supports tolerance for gay marriage, while the kid credited for the Internet –based social networking that got Obama elected is a graduate of Harvard Business School with solid venture capital creds. C’mon, you two, how’d you wander into the wrong party? Can’t you tell the difference between an elephant and a donkey? Well, it is getting harder. With the substitution of a few key words like “renewable energy” for “oil company,” the rhetoric is a lot the same. The Democrats have their own war now, and bought a chunk of General Motors. The Republicans are screaming about the deficit and proposing taxes. They have become each other. In fact, we really have a one-party system with two distinct camps, just like most church denominations.
And now we’re playing baseball in the winter. Games are postponed because of snow, and the talking heads are buzzing about what will happen if the Angels or Dodgers have to play in 40-degree weather. And the Twins have abandoned the Dome for a new outdoor park.
Now that I’ve spelled it out, can you see it? Our most sacred institutions – coffee, politics and baseball – have fallen victim to the creeping liberalization of our age. It’s time to swallow our pride and admit what we have denied for too long: Al Gore is right. It’s all due to global warming.
In retrospect, the progression is obvious. Once women started demanding we wear deodorant, our over-use of spray cans caused a hole in the ozone layer which allowed solar radiation to begin warming our climate. No, I don’t know why, since the hole is over the South Pole, Antarctica didn’t melt first but just shut up. So then, it got maybe two degrees warmer in the last 20 years except for the places where it got colder, like Gore’s hometown, and more parts of the world turned to desert except where we now have green grass seven months of the year instead of brown crunchy lawns in August. All this global warming led to the collapse of the “stuff we like when it’s cold” industry, like hot chocolate (except at Starbucks where you can get more kinds of chocolate than actual coffee) and studded snow tires. All those hot-chocolate factory workers who were suddenly un-employed could no longer make the payments on the million-dollar homes in Florida they bought as investments, so the government gave a bunch of money to some banks, bought into the car business and is going to get the money back by paying for health care for everyone. If you follow the obvious trends, this all can only lead to . . . hrmm, Al Sharpton freaking out about Rush Limbaugh owning an NFL team? No, that’s too weird, even for America.
Fortunately, there is someone in charge of this funny farm, and Psalm 2 says He’s just watching us and laughing. He’s going to make something good out of this mess, and I for one think it’s going to be kind of fun to watch.

With

I don’t hate running alone, but I don’t love it either.
I used to prefer it alone, back in the days when it was all about time and getting better and companions tended to screw up my race with the clock. These days, I pretty much settle in at the same relaxed pace no matter how far I go, so I like it a lot better if there’s someone along to chat with. (OK, now you know how much my pace has lagged over the years.)
In social terms, there’s something really powerful about the word “with.” Maybe a few grumpy curmudgeons prefer isolation (I’m not thinking about Dad here, really I’m not) but think of all the things in life that are better with.
- Movies. I’ve watched a lot of movies alone, which does not make me as desperate as it sounds. I’ve just spent way too many nights in motel rooms and Bachelor Officer Quarters, and between cable TV and laptops with DVD players movies are a natural default for time-killing, and a better one than the lobby bar. The advantage, of course, is I can always watch what I want. But there’s no one to laugh with, marvel with, criticize with. Yell at the screen with a buddy and you’re bonding; same thing alone just is kind of sad.
- Chores. Who doesn’t like a helping hand when there’s work to be done? Even if the other person is weeding while you clean gutters, or maybe standing there talking to you while you clean gutters, that’s better than cleaning gutters alone. It’s way better than cleaning gutters knowing the other person is in the house eating ice cream.
- Sightseeing. I toured Valley Forge alone one Sunday afternoon because the alternative was more motel time. All those families and couples having picnics or roller-blading or tossing Frisbees, and me wandering around by myself reading signs. Other times it was Chickamauga National Battlefield, Independence Hall, the shopping district in Osan, South Korea, a country hamlet in Wales. Cool places, but no joy in any of it because I had no one to share it with.
- Adversity. Don’t think I really need to explain this one, nobody likes facing bad stuff solo.
Of course the ultimate question of “with” is that significant relationship. Teenagers, spinsters and widowers all know that not being “with” someone in the sense of some sort of deeper life commitment is not only lonely, it puts you in a whole different social category. Our paradigm is built around pairs; singles have a tough time finding their place.
It’s a sad fact that we tend to make negative judgments about people who are alone. On the flip side, we have a certain admiration for the person who can be with anyone they want, and who is with a different person every Friday night.
That’s pretty screwed up, though. Date 50 different people and in the end you’ve had 50 first dates. Date one person 50 times and you have the unique and (usually) joyful experience of an acquaintance who turns into a friend, of a friendship that becomes something more.
I have a little secret for all you young people out there: You can only learn about love by dedicated application of the art with a single person over a long period of time.
[Flashback: Teenage son in despair over not being able to see a girl he just met, yelling at father who recently celebrated his 20th wedding anniversary – “You don’t know anything about love!” Was I the son or the father? Likely happened both ways.]
The sorry truth is, if you take the swinging single approach to your social life, your relationship experience will wind up being a mile wide and an inch deep, which means you’ve seen one inch of topsoil. A dedicated relationship gives you experience an inch wide and a mile deep, and then you’ll go through soil to bedrock, all the strata beneath, maybe an aquifer, probably see a few fossils, find some gemstones, and possibly strike oil.
This is true in the emotional sense; it’s also true for physical intimacy, as any couple married 50 years will tell you. My grandparents lived out that “till-death-do-us-part” vow, decades of experience and experiments with just the two of them, so you know they knew more about sex, and way more about love, than Casanova ever did. Hard to get more “with” than that.

Happiness

iPhone offers an app to track your happiness? Seriously? That is wrong in so many ways.

First off, one good way to destroy happiness is to try to measure it. “Hmm, I’m five percent less happy than yesterday. Wonder what went wrong? Ah, I’ll bet it’s because . . . Yep, that really makes me mad. Wait, down another ten points!” C’mon, who really thinks that’s going to work?

And even if that didn’t get you down, how about the simple act of having to log the data? That’s why fantasy sports geeks are the most miserable fans on the planet – they took a fun pastime and turned it into record-keeping, stat-tracking drudgery. So to make sure we’re happier let’s add a requirement for periodic data capture to our day? Doesn’t look like a glide path to success to me.

The problem here is everyone wants to be happy but we’re so screwed up we don’t even know what it really is, much less how to get there. We equate happiness with comfort and pleasure. Ain’t gonna work, because pleasure ends when the stimulus stops, which means for every moment of pleasure-induced happiness there is a corresponding moment of sadness when the pleasure is over. And guess which comes last?

And too much comfort gets uncomfortable. Don’t believe me? Go kick back in your recliner and put your feet up. Comfortable? Good, now stay there for eight hours and tell me how you feel.

I’m no genius but I’m as good as anyone at being unhappy, so I have a lot of experience treating the condition. There’s only one thing that really works.

First, a caveat: this side of heaven you won’t be happy all the time. Some things, like a bad CAT scan, should make you unhappy. If they don’t, that’s not happiness, that’s good meds.

So what we’re talking about here is why so often we’re unhappy with no particular reason, and I know what causes that.

That happens when you know, deep in your heart of hearts, that you aren’t worth the air you’re breathing. The equation is pretty simple – every day I’m alive I consume x amount of resources, whether that’s the water I use in the shower or the time it takes my wife to fix me a meal. We’re all sharing this planet, and I’m using stuff up, so it’s only right that I give something back. When I don’t, I can’t feel good about myself – I’m just another blood-sucking parasite. A lot of job-related unhappiness comes from knowing that some days we don’t earn our pay.

Flip it around, give value commensurate to what you cost, and you can be happy, because you can feel good about it. People like you, and you like yourself, when you’re a contributor. That’s why unearned leisure isn’t any fun. It’s also why a cold beer tastes best after a hard day’s work.

All of that is true no matter what your world view is. If you’re one who chooses to recognize the truth, then you know that these things are true because God wired us to be like Him, which is to say our purpose is all wrapped up with doing good and serving other people. Bottom line – the only way really to be happy is to be doing what we were made to do. The iPhone needs an app for that.

Plaid shorts

I envy guys who can wear plaid shorts.
So far, I haven’t been able to make myself do it. It’s just not me. Sigh . . .
When I see a guy wearing plaid shorts in public, with no hint of self-consciousness, I have to admit that, barring any unfortunate clash of colors/patterns or the presence of long dark socks, it looks pretty good. In fact, that’s a look that says, “I’m with it, I’m confident in who I am, and I like to have fun more than I like to be cool even though I‘m still way cooler than you.”
I like that. I want to be like that. I don’t really want to wear plaid shorts, because I don’t like them, but I want to look like that.
My problem is, I already have a well-established look. It consists of khakis on workdays, cargo shorts or jeans on the weekends, all of which I wear like I wish I was still wearing a uniform. The most charitable thing you can say about this look is, old school. In truth, it screams, “Retired army officer whose idea of fun probably involves discomfort for others, who would rather shoot someone than dance in public.”
And there-in lies the difference: Stupid is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The very fact of being worried about looking stupid makes you look stupid. If you could care less how you look, you just look fun. And I invariably look stupid when I do anything but walk. I can’t just act as the spirit moves, go with the flow, move with the groove. I have to calculate, consider effects, mull over possible outcomes. And when you do that, that fleeing moment where you can look smooth and natural passes while you’re still stuck on, “Hey, maybe if I . . .”
Somehow, plaid shorts have come to epitomize in my mind this basic inability I have to be naturally fun. For one thing, my knee jerk reaction when I see them on a manikin is, “Never in a hundred thousand years.” Give me earth tones or denim. But then, if I ever work up the courage to point out a pair to Dawn, she wrinkles up her nose and says, “Never in a hundred thousand years.”
It’s not that she hates plaid. She just instantly processes all the factors and reaches the fashion-attuned and socially-aware conclusion that anyone who knows me, upon seeing me in plaid shorts, would immediately assume I was having a mid-life crisis with possible alternative-lifestyle overtones. Which would be not so good.
So I’m stuck wondering if there’s a way to project that fun attitude while wearing khakis. And I realize that, yeah, the guy in the plaid shorts could, but I can’t. Because it’s not the shorts’ fault that I look like the third-least fun guy on the planet, after G. Gordon Liddy and Dick Cheney.
To fix that, I’d have to go back to the first day of kindergarten, when I was scared and shy and lay under a table sucking my thumb because Jack and the Bean Stalk was too intense. That start to my social career pretty much defenestrated any chance of being cool or fun.
I guess I’ll just have to live with the fact that even though strangers will think I’m gruff and unbending, those who know me understand that I’m really just a grouch who on his best day on earth didn’t have as much fun as that guy in the plaid shorts has just walking to the coffee shop. Not that I’m bitter.
So, new resolution: I’m going to be fun if I die in the attempt. I will try so hard I might sprain something. I will work at it until people who see me think “fun” even if I have to choke it out of them.
Or, maybe, I could just relax, be who God made me to be, and have fun watching the cool people have fun, and maybe join in a little if invited. Since all the people I love are cool, that should work out OK.
I think doing it that way may not make me fun, but it could give me joy, at least as I think God means the word. That would be the ultimate cool. Yeah, think I’ll try that.