Control

The other night I was invited to a friend’s house.  Out of the blue.  The kind of invitation that makes you think, “Who canceled and how far down on the I-guess-we-could-invite-her list was I?”  Still, I was free and so were the drinks, so I went.  It was a small gathering – the kind of gathering that evokes Jordan Baker’s Gatsby musing:  “At small parties there’s never any privacy.”  Indeed there wasn't, but we were an amiable group and all of the people (dog and baby included) chatted and enjoyed shared company for the evening.

At one point a woman began extolling the virtues and coolness of a new gadget she had been using, the UP by Jawbone.  This bracelet-like device that tracks exercise and sleep habits, calories burned, and probably a few more things that I’m forgetting right now.  It is sleek looking and plugs directly into your iPhone or iPad to convert its data into charts and graphs.  She demonstrated her new device for about thirty minutes, then she wandered off to make loud and uncomfortably intimate inquiries of her teenage son who was busying himself with reruns of The Big Bang Theory on television.

The next day, I recalled that my friend Kathy has a Jawbone device; I proceeded to text her, inquiring about it usefulness.  Kathy thought the device was interesting and useful, but she doesn't always wear it as a matter of fashion.  Next was my sister, a trainer and a person who, unless under extreme duress, has not missed a day of exercise since 1982.  Her response to the capabilities of this device:  just eat a little, exercise a little, sleep a little.  In short, why buy a device to track or remind you to do this?  She posed this question:  if someone told you they wanted to read 20 minutes a day and had purchased a device to help them do this, what would you say?  She went on to assert that all one really needs to do is put it in one’s calendar, and do it.

My sister isn’t wrong, but people feel the need to control things.  The modern person seems to think that controlling everything is best. If people didn’t feel this way, the Jawbone, helicopter parenting, and these house alarms with cameras that you can access from your phone would not have been invented.  Despite such advances (not including the helicopter parenting), people are at a loss as to how to control their worlds.  The idea of self-control does not seem to apply here, so the idea that one can simply put it on the calendar and do it goes out the window.  This has to do with the inundation of information that people receive.  Surface information.  We hear about things, or we see them in our Facebook feeds, or we skim a headline, and voila! we are “informed.”  The more we are informed, the more we feel that we must do.  We must eat organic and local; we must exercise 30 minutes a day; we must spend 20 minutes a day reading with our child; we must call our parents daily; we must track our sleep patterns; we must know our cholesterol.   It’s all a bit much.  Add to this that we need to be informed about current events and bake cupcakes for the fund-raiser tomorrow, top it all off with remembering usernames and passwords, and it gets hard to breathe. It is a bastardized keeping up with the Joneses. 

Once we have information and perceived requirements for living, we must get everything scheduled and organized and planned.  And, then once that’s done, we are in control.  Whew.  We can relax and follow the schedule.  Except.  Except the information is ever-changing.  So are circumstances.  Who hasn’t gotten the week planned when a beloved spouse throws a wrench into the plans with a business trip or a wild hair to finally fix the bathroom tile?  Maybe an illness or a broken toe curtails our planned dog-walking.  Perhaps a long-lost friend calls.  A child comes home with a half-frozen, starving kitten that needs to be nursed through the night.  Such occurrences madden so many people and stress so many relationships because such occurrences are not the calendar.  The thing is: human beings want to be in control.    The ever-changing refuses to be controlled.  People don’t like that.  If I don’t know what’s going to happen next, I can’t be in control, and if I am not in control, then things might get hairy, and if things get hairy, I may react in an unpredicted way, and if I react in an unpredicted way people may see the real, deep-heart me, and if people see the real me…  Aha!  Perhaps the heart of this control issue is here: have human beings become afraid of being human?  Would we like to be slightly agitated or a sniveling mess?  Can we go to work overly tired because we spent the night on the phone with an old friend in distress?  Is it okay to skip a workout to meet a new friend?  If it’s not in the plan, then perhaps we shouldn't.   If you stick to your carefully planned day, then you will know what is going to happen and avoid unforeseen emotions or stresses.

Real, human responses to crises and opportunities are not planned ahead of time.  But we don’t want to be vulnerable to forces outside of ourselves.  Our school motto is “To be rather than to seem.”  But, that isn’t the real world‘s motto.  The real world would like things to seem okay, because if everything seems okay, then the seeming has to eventually become reality, right?  In order for things to seem okay, we need to control many of those things – preferably all of them.  But, being in control is exhausting even with a smart phone and a sleep-tracking bracelet.

I am particularly good at getting organized, especially at the start of a new school year, but I sometimes stink at the follow-through.  I have a smart phone to help me get and stay organized, but let me be honest, sometimes I just play Ruzzle and text friends…okay, most often I just do that. If whatever devices, from jotting things down on the calendar to tracking your sleep and steps with a mini-computer, help you to make plans and live the life you want to live, then “it’s all good.”  Still, rather than using such things for control, perhaps we should use them for organization, and maybe we can all remember to embrace this messy, unplannable life that is at its happiest when unannounced guests come by and the best laid plans and sleep patterns get thrown out the window. 

E-volution

Is it possible to be invited to a dinner party -  know what to bring, when to arrive, how to get there, who else is going to be there, and what time the event will end without ever talking to the hosts?  Yes.  People send e-vites or create Facebook events for everything from christenings to bachelor parties to wakes.  And, one can get the vital information, mapquest directions, and arrive on time (or fashionably late) without ever talking to anyone else planning to attend.  Very convenient.  How much easier could the whole thing be?  Well, we could all just skype a party and not ever have to leave our own homes.  That's probably been done, but unless you live across the world from your entire social network, I don't want to know about it.

A commercial for one of the for-profit colleges boasts, "You can go to college in your pajamas!"  Great.  How valuable is that?  The best part of college was just removed from the equation.  Well, if you can get a degree in your pjs, why not attend social gatherings, conferences, or even funerals via our monitors?  It certainly would take the pressure off - the never ending questions of what to wear, how to tactfully leave when the host's neighbor turns boorish, and how to navigate the twisty-turny subdivision roads are all eliminated if we can just pop up our laptop screens. 

Jeans or a skirt?  Just put on a nice top and focus your camera correctly, and you can have sweats and bunny slippers on from waist down.  Mort's drunk too much again?  Just fake an internet snafu; then, pop in a movie and order a pizza online.  Too hard to drive 20 minutes to socialize?  No problem - you can attend from your living room.  Heck, you can even be in bed.

About two months ago AJ was writing a scholarship essay that asked what the greatest difference between his generation and my generation is.  He pondered for a while, and ended up with a paragraph that asserted that his generation does not know how to communicate well or effectively face-to-face.  They can type, text, and email until the cows come home, but meaningful human-based communication is being marginalized, and may eventually lead to a generation of socially inept, even socially panicked human beings.

Apocolyptic?  Perhaps.  But, there is some truth here.  Events in the past month have had students texting me (ah, the irony!) about how to deal with death and helping their friends deal with it.  In essence, the great equalizer called the cyber-hermits out into the sunshine of face-to-tear-streaked-face communication.  To everyone's credit, they did wonderfully when crying together, comforting each other, and holding hands.  Perhaps these skills are not learned, but actually hard-wired into human beings?

I'd like to think so.  But, I would like to see more face-to-face events, communication, and hand-holding.  Doesn't it mean so much more to have a friend say to you, "I love you,"  rather than sending  <3 over a text?  I don't consider myself a troglodyte - as evidenced by this blog, as well as my Facebook page and smart phone.  I do think, however, that those of us over the age of, say 35, have an obligation to teach those that come after us the ways of the human world.  Let them choose our ringtones and desktop backgrounds, and we can show them how to comfort a friend, throw a party without Facebook, take a hike without a GPS for directions, and give a hug that is more than {{}}.  

It's spring time - get out there and meet people.  Have a picnic with no phones or ipods.  One of my friends had this by her Facebook profile picture (yes, I appreciate the irony of this reference):  "Quit staring at my picture and get out there and live your life."

So, let's all live our lives - use our computers, sync our ipods -  but never forget that the most important things in life are not things that have a battery life of 6-10 hours.