At any rate, one day I was sitting with my Book of Many Questions spread in front of me, and it said, “Clear benefits that you offer: ” And I froze, like a deer caught in headlights. Benefits. Of education that doesn’t come with a degree that allows you to participate in the ongoing education process… what is the intrinsic benefit of education? What are the instrumental benefits? What is education for, anyway? (1b)

Fortunately (I guess), I have already spent several years considering that set of questions. So I had a starting point, at least. (2)

Let me start at the top of my one-page mindmap that resulted from “Thinking about Education: In which I attempt to answer the question, why should anybody pay me to teach them something in the first place?”, (3) on which is written “Heuristics” and “Hermeneutics”. I invoke the sociological concept of “ideology” as a failure to recognize that a worldview is a temporary model, an interpretation (if you will) of the universe (the text). It includes a portion that compares Fractals, Emergence, and Entropy to the transmission and memory of stories, and George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory. Human needs appear on a spectrum from “staying alive” to “being whole”, there is a comparison of consciousness and reactivity… Myth. Spiritual Materialism. Communities of practice. Problems of translation. “Physicists speak math.” Neil Postman’s point that as teachers we must necessarily sacrifice comprehensiveness for coherence… and it ends with the following statement:

The purpose of education is to communicate (as clearly as we can) the stories and models that (in our experience) provide effective means of predicting and influencing the patterns of the universe (1) of which we are a part, (2) which we can affect, and (3) to which we are subject.

And then I sat back, and thought, “Well, then, what does it mean that we’ve made it a private good?” (4) and then I went to Toronto for a week and wrote poems instead of coming up with an answer.

To be continued…

1. That joke is one of the fringe benefits of a physics education.
1b. I also don’t know who my target market is. Really, what I’ve learned is that I don’t think like a marketer. Or possibly that marketing is harder than rocket science. Or maybe that I’m better at rocket science than I am at marketing.
2. Honestly? This would be easier if I knew less. Then I’d be able to take a side, dig my heels in, and puff smoke at anyone who took a contrary position.
3. You are in no way expected to follow and/or believe the free-association that follows.
4. As you can see, I wandered away from the marketing problem and back to the one that I was writing about five years ago, which falls into the “important, but not urgent” category.

Sometimes, The Wind

Sometimes when I leave my home
Triumphant,
With six things perfectly balanced,
The door is torn from my hand
And I rail.

The wind, the wind!

It is a character in our little dramas,
Played out at the hardware store,
Fingers tracing the lines
Of coveted outdoor objects.
But. The Wind. (he reminds me)
And dreams are left unpurchased,
Unbuilt, unfulfilled,
The trappings of another life.
One unconstrained by. All. This. Wind.

Resentment builds.

Later that day,
Gazing out upon the whitecaps at play
Upon the river,
Wondering in silence how long it will be before
we lose so many pieces of the roof that we can’t ignore it
any longer,
I ask,
“Is it the Mistral that is said to drive people
Mad?”
I know the answer.
It is not a new conversation.

“Yes,” he says,
And puts his arms around me from behind,
Gazing out upon
The whitecaps at play.

At the point of urgency,
The call to action,
When I Know that
Everything I’ve done until Now
Has been mere Preparation for this
Moment

It happens that I Stop.

And I realize that

Those moments of mere
Preparation, were
(in their time)
the Most Important Thing.

My daughter requested them, but really, I like them just as much.

At the end of the first day, I went home and I cried. I felt so lonely, and I said to my friends that nobody ever touches one another, and there is no body in Buddhism. We’re open to the suffering of the world, stripped bare, and I really want a hug!

I was bereft.

And the next day I went back. In the morning, the teaching was on the importance of embodiment. Worthiness, embodiment, and feelings. Like somebody had looked inside my mind and brought back exactly what I needed. Near the end of the lunch break, I was talking with a friend about the Buddha’s teachings on metaphysics (which questions he refused to answer, much to the irritation of his students). And I said, “The existence or non-existence of god, the exact nature of soul/atman/anatman, whether emptiness has form or is just…” I trailed off, and looked out the window. I would like to say that in this moment of epiphany, I was articulate and wise, but what I actually said was, “Oh. Shit.”

And I went to the cushion, and I sat for 20 minutes, and the chatter had ceased. Nothing. Sometimes that happens for a breath or two, but after a couple of minutes of it, I managed to drum up the thought, “This is kind of weird,” which usually triggers the cascade of thoughts. Still nothing. So I sat in actual silence for about another 10 minutes, and I thought, “Yeah. This would be hard to teach. I can’t even imagine how to explain this.” And then it went silent again.

In the afternoon, we talked about enlightened society… as something to be worked for, not a utopian ideal. Once again, exactly what I needed.

At the end of the day, I mentioned to our teacher that I had had this experience in meditation. “Ah,” he said, “No-thought. You’re not in New York yet.” I tilted my head to one side. He said, “Chogyam Trungpa used to liken that to finding a signpost. You’re going in the right direction, but a lot of people think they are at the destination, so they see this signpost that says, ‘New York: 72′ and they sit down under it.” I nodded. We stood in companionable silence. Before I left for the day, he gave me a hug.

And I was not bereft any more.

The end.

Click for a detailed view.

I particularly like the fluffy slippers with rhinestones. Nice touch for the lab.

Examining. Something.

"Now, look thoughtful," she said.

My husband said, “Maybe this would be a good time to get that electric kettle we’ve been talking about [for the last several years, on account of electric kettles are more efficient, I've heard.]“

“Sure,” I said. “But I think I’ve got a handle that will do the job around here somewhere.”

And I did:

The reason that I had this spare handle is that when I put new handles on my dresser, I accidentally ordered two extra. The rest of them are being used thus:

So I showed it to my husband, said, “Ooooh, ahhh… isn’t it pretty? Now it matches my dresser.”

There was a moment of self-congratulation on my resourcefulness, and the fact that I had managed to put my hands on the spare knob, on account of it’s been sitting on top of my dresser for the last several years while I figured out what to do with it. And then I sighed. “You know that this is going to make things worse, right? Because now every time I try to get rid of something, my mind will throw this at me: Oh, but what about that knob? That turned out to be useful eventually. Better hold onto it, just in case.“

But it really does look nice on the kettle.

It is amazing how much time can pass with a bookshelf tucked into a corner until I decide where to actually place it. How many years can go by while we attempt to save enough money to replace the thing that is currently “weatherproofed” with a plastic bag taped over it.

“No!” I snarl at my partner, “Don’t you dare put that there! It’ll sit there for years!”

“But…”

“Somewhere else. Somewhere I don’t have to look at it, reminding me that we still haven’t solved that problem.”

***

We got a new faucet. Another new faucet. And by some minor miracle, it was available in Sydney, and was on the clearance rack! So we “solved” our problem for $60, and there was much rejoicing.

But the real problem in our kitchen is that we need a double sink. We cook all the time, we generate 18 meals plus another 10 – 12 snacks a day. The stove is in use while the dishes are being washed, there is always somebody carrying things to the bathroom to get water or to wash things in the sink. The sink that we have is an odd size (34 inches long) with a (mumbledy-snarrgly) draining rack where the second sink should be… which means that to replace the sink, we need to replace the counter. And to replace the counter, the sink and the faucet is more like a $800 – $1000 project… and would probably leave us without a kitchen for several days-to-weeks if our previous experience with home renovations is anything to go by… which is why it still hasn’t been done after nearly 6 years of owning the house.

And these are the snarly types of first world problems. They cause irritation on a daily basis, because the solution is so obvious. But we slap on “temporary” solutions and then live with them for years.

What I have learned from this is… if you are going to create a temporary solution, it better be something that you’re prepared to live with for a really long time. Because once the temporary solution has been implemented, the problem is downgraded from urgent to irritating. And something else (like the car going “boing! thunk” around corners… for a completely random example) will be more pressing. Possibly forever.

Or at least until it’s time to sell the house and you have to fix all the things that nobody in their right mind would be willing to live with.

That phrase, “first world problem” has been kicking around my social media streams for a while. I *think* it started out as a reminder that whatever it was that was bugging you, you should have a bit of perspective on it. “Can’t get my phone to connect to my internet and my library books are due so I’m going to have to phone to get them to renew in person.” “First world problem.”

But then it became (as these things are wont to do) dismissive. People started making up mocking fake “problems” and adding, “Wah!” to it. “Bought a latte this morning and they were all out of cinnamon so I had to use *already ground* nutmeg.” Things like that.

This seems like an ideal time to link to an xkcd comic:

This morning, I found myself standing in a partially disassembled kitchen, unable to remove the faucet, unable to get the faucet to stop dripping, (and by dripping, I mean coming out of the counter and spraying water in a never-ending fountain) and with the drawers removed so that I could reach the cut-off valve because they did something profoundly weird when they installed the plumbing. No running water in the kitchen, can’t find the o-rings, child hanging around saying, “Mummy!” every two minutes, and due to a strange choice of the previous home-owner, I can’t just replace the faucet because… oh, it’s a long and drawn-out story. And then I thought, “I guess this is still a first-world problem.”

This is, however, where I draw the line on perspective. That’s it, right there. Running water. Hot and cold. On demand. I demand running water.

Any solution to the world’s problems must include running potable water in the kitchens of the world. Heated, so that we can keep our homes sanitary without having to drag water from the pump to the stove. I add those as parameters to my “ideal world”.

***

A couple of weeks ago, I told somebody I was going to write a post and call it “First World Problems”. I was going to start it like so: “Dead of a stress-induced heart attack at 46 is still dead.” Because there are problems of the industrialized world that are real problems. Alienation. Disaffectation. Disconnection from nature and the life-giving aspects of labour. Chronic high levels of stress and anxiety. Diabetes. Pollution, loneliness, the industrialization of everything including love. You know. Problems.

This morning’s experience gave me (as all my experiences tend to) another moment of insight. “First world problem,” I thought, as I struggled to get the water running in my kitchen again. Meaning, “all my habits are entirely reliant on technology, and when the technology fails, my ability to cope with the world around me deteriorates rapidly.” I kept finding myself turning the tap even when I was in the middle of fixing it. “Right. Still no running water. Just like 2 minutes ago.”

This reality applies not only to our lattes and information technology, but also to our water, food, transportation, energy, and to our ability to heat and cool ourselves as necessary. During the 2003 blackout, we discovered that our phone didn’t work when the power went out, so I had no way of calling home to say where I was. Another first-world problem, caused by the fact that I was working 100 km from home on a daily basis. And the gas pumps in between were also powered by the missing electricity. And the traffic lights weren’t working, so traversing the intervening city was a major undertaking. Our “world” is full of these unseen systems that allow things to happen magically.

It comes down to this: We are entirely dependent for the basic necessities of life on systems that are incomprehensible, unfeeling, and entirely outside of our control. We have no direct relationship with our life systems and no back up plan. And then… our life systems and our lifestyle systems are entirely enmeshed. This is how my car gets all my money. Even though I know it isn’t my priority, I can’t get at the things that are unless I maintain it… but then I can’t afford to get at the things that are my priority. And on and on and on.

First world problem.

And when I thought of it that way, the levels of anxiety that these (even minor) failures cause become more transparent. We live in a giant black box with a zillion points of contact, and all we know about it is the stories we’ve been told. At any time, the machinations of strangers in suits, playing dice games with dodgy mortgages could strip us of our live savings and eliminate our carefully planned retirements. Our security is illusory, and we are enraged to discover the cracks. A good time to remind ourselves, but for perspective, not dismissal.

First World Problem redux (1)

One day a few months ago my mother was visiting. (Hi, Mom!) I don’t remember what the topic was, but we were sitting on couches in a heated room, and the lights were on, and the water was not disconnected. It was probably a money thing. And she sighed, and said, “Oh, it’s a hard life.” (2) And I thought about it a moment, and said, “No. A hard life is when you have to live on a garbage dump and spend your days digging for enough plastic to buy some rice to feed your children. This is just an irritating life.” Which she conceded. But whatever it was, it really was irritating.

Here’s the deal: we’re still living in these bodies, and these technologies we have come to rely on are the only way we really know how to take care of them.

Water? Tap!
Food? Grocery store! (or sometimes garden, but if you’ve been reading along, you know that when the zombies come, I’m still in trouble.)
Money? Uh. If you solve this one, let me know. (3)

So, let us not use the phrase to pretend that there are no problems in the first world. Because those problems, these problems, these are the things that are causing the BIG problems. (4) We have lost perspective, yes. But we are still alive, and we still have needs. So if you catch yourself saying, “first world problem” under your breath, check in. Is it really not a problem? Are you using the phrase to gain a sense of scale, reality? Or are you trying to dismiss a need of your body or spirit, because you think you “should be” better than that? You know, don’t be too hard on yourself. But you might be willing to concede the small points as just not worth getting your knickers in a knot.

But running water? I stand by my requirement for running water. Even in more than one room in my house. (5)

1. That means restored/brought back, not summed up. Because every good blog post should have a glossary.
2. One of my favourite mom quotes is, “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.” Hmmm… Things I learned from my Mom. Good blog post, no?
3. Traditionally, at least ’round these parts, it used to involve these things they called “jobs”, but those things are as scarce as hen’s teeth. I hear they were a recent (and apparently ephemeral) phenomenon, anyway.
4. That’s another entire post about consumerism as a balm for anxiety. Let’s not go there this time.
5. I also have a goal of donating at least $500 to UNICEF this year. Currently at about $105. Because I want safe potable running water for everybody, not just me.