Atlas Shrugged

A quintessential picture: Its Sunday morning. Dad has his bathrobe on and his face is buried deep in a paper. Or maybe his face is aglow in the light of google news. Fast forward to a week night. It's 8pm and Mom and Dad deny little Willy the Fresh Prince of Bell-Air (or the OC) because its time to "watch the news". Whether its Barnum and
Bailey's Fox News or "so-boring-it-will-make-you-crash-your-car" NPR, the news belongs to the "adult world"--the world of bills, insurance, gas prices, home improvement, polite jokes, and bathrobes. A few kids might follow the news but as a general rule most don't. Perhaps that is because kids don't have to worry about "adult world"; the adults worry about that for them.

The news (referring to "the media") can certainly act as a valuable tool for keeping people informed of significant events. The media also can provide accountability for large organizations (governments, etc). But the media can also increase stress and stifle creativity. The media encourages us to "grow up", "be serious", "start worrying now!" by constantly presenting us with major concerns and dire situations. The media encourages the distillation of life into bare facts. It encourages the slanting of bare facts into a particular agenda. In helps create the picture that if you want to be an adult, you have to be Atlas, stuck in one posture with the world on your shoulders. If you take the day off; it all comes crashing down.

Of course, that is both true and false. If you take the day off some things will come crashing down. However, if you never look up from your newspaper, or bills, or polite jokes, then you might miss the rest of the family sitting around the table eating French toast; you might miss the fact that you would rather make a weird face than tell a polite joke; you might miss the fact that you are needlessly Atlas when you could be Hermes--the god of boundaries and of travelers who cross them, of shepherds, orators, literature, poets, of athletics; the god of interpreting hidden meanings.

Or perhaps that is just idealist babble. What is your take on the media? Does it seem that it has a bearing on our picture of "the adult"? How best can an individual interact with the news?

ANDDNA

Current Theme: R
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Instructions:

Step 1: The Test Kit contains: two collection swabs, two bar-coded envelopes, and a set of Terms and Conditions.

Step 2: You must agree to the Terms and Conditions in order to have your test kit processed. Please keep them for your records.

Step 3: Rinse out your mouth twice with water. Do not use mouthwash or toothpaste. It is also important that you do not drink coffee or smoke for at least THREE hours prior to swabbing your cheeks.

Step 4: Remove one swab from packaging.

Step 5: To collect cheek cells: roll swab firmly along inside of EACH of your cheeks, approximately twenty times per cheek.

Step 6: Place swab directly into one bar-coded envelope. Let swabs dry in envelope for 30 minutes before sealing envelope.

Step 7: Repeat steps 5 – 7 with the second swab.

Step 8: There should only be one swab in each bar-coded envelope. Seal each bar-coded envelope. Place both bar-coded envelopes back inside Test Kit.

Step 9: Seal Test Kit. Place the Test Kit envelope in the pre-paid FedEx mailer. Seal mailing envelope. No postage is necessary in the U.S.

Step 10: Mail the envelope at any FedEx drop box or FedEx location.


And presto! You have just mailed off your DNA for scientists to analyze in order to determine your ancestry. These are the instructions listed on the African Ancestry website. At $350 a pop African ancestry offers both paternal ancestry tests (tracing the Y-chromosome) and maternal ancestry tests (tracing the mitochondrial DNA). African Ancestry is not the only organization that offers this service but it has attracted national attention by appearing on the Oprah show.

Many people who use African Ancestry rave about the results. For instance, Gary Payne took the test and found out that his ancestry is not just African but Chinese as well. Payne finds this revelation liberating and uses it to explain his attraction to Buddhism, his tai-chi classes, and his daughters name--China. But not everyone who takes the DNA tests has a positive reaction. Some people are severely disappointed when they find out that they do not have the ancestry that they thought they did--it is like having something special taken away.

What are your roots? How do they inform the way you live your life? In the end does it really matter where we come from?

Every Era Has A Currency That Buys Souls

Current theme: Materialism

Please share your comments regarding the poem below or regarding materialism in general.

Once there was . . . just matter.
Then music rang when formed the forms
and awoke The Dance.
death and life and up and down and near and far
and then and now--
10,000 dancers with identical steps until
light dawned high consciousness;
i and you and they and us began
the most intricate movement.

But we danced too far and fast and shut
our eyes to twirl;
and when we opened our eyes we were afraid--
strangers to the world
and out of step.
Then it mattered--
more and most and better and best and take and
keep. We moved against the movement,
we stood upon our partners,
we shut our ears.

Ever since that day the music still plays
but we are too petrified to hear
that we are matter
and still dance (though out of step)
with life and death and up and down and
near and far and now and then.
But it matters most that we are partners and cannot dance
alone.

The more we try
the more we die as
strangers
in our home.

Where it Counts

Current theme: Peace.

When I was in third grade I fell in love. The choices: confess my love to the sassy blond in the third row (social suicide) or bottle my crush and remain tight with my dodge ball crew (the Thundercats). Passion won the day. Right before recess I walked up to Alicia and uncorked, "I love you." I stood firm--amid gasps, titters, and the Thundercats' derisive hoots--staring into her blue eyes and waiting . . . and then she kicked me right where it counts. I have to say that to this day I don't regret my decision.

Often we use the word "peace" to describe a situation free from external troubles or worries--an oasis. But that place does not exist anywhere in perpetuum. Sooner or later we all get kicked where it counts. So if lasting peace is a state of mind--not a physical location--and there is no such thing as exemption from hardship then maybe a key to achieving peace is letting go of our illusory sense of safety and allowing ourselves to take meaningful risks.

After all, though risks can lead us directely into turmoil they also lead us directly into life. Peace does not mean the safety of what we cling to, but the safety of knowing that even if all we cling to gets stripped away we have lived our lives in such a way that ultimately that is OK. We can have peace where it counts

As a community blog, we relish your comments and reactions. What has your experience been with peace? What recommendations would you give for living a peaceful life?

The Kick-off: kicking the bucket

Welcome to Day in the Life's first blog!
Current Theme: Death.

It seems a bit odd that this blog's birth and the theme of "death" would come together. But rather than take this as an evil omen, we admirably choose to see it as a microcosm of the human experience--daily life and death. I have always been impressed by theologian Paul Tillich's capacity for expressing the human experience. What follows are some of his thoughts on death and its affect on life. This blog exists for discussion, so comment away--all voices welcome.

"The image of the future produces contrasting feelings in man. The expectation of the future gives one a feeling of joy. It is a great thing to have a future in which one can actualize one's possibilities . . . but this feeling struggles with other ones: the anxiety about what is hidden in the future, the ambiguity of everything it will bring us, the shortness of its duration that . . . becomes shorter the nearer we come to the unavoidable end. And finally the end itself, with its impenetrable darkness and the threat that one's whole existence in time will be judged as failure.
How do men, how do you, react to this image of the future with its hope and threat and inescapable end? Probably most of us react by looking at the immediate future, anticipating it, working for it, hoping for it, being anxious about it, while cutting off from our awareness the future which is farther away, and above all, by cutting off from our consciousness the end, the last moment of our future. Perhaps we could not live without doing so most of our time. But perhaps we will not be able to die if we always do so. And if one is not able to die, is he really able to live?"