Veteran’s Day has often felt awkward and ambiguous to me, because I don’t support so much of my nation’s military action. But this old World War II song got stuck in my head last year, and it seemed fitting to make a video for Veteran’s Day this year.
Sifting through thousands of public domain images of veterans throughout America’s warring history, I pushed the politics aside and saw the faces and bodies of humans who have put themselves on the front lines for their people. I don’t always believe in their cause, but then, I expect that they don’t always either – which makes doing their job that much more difficult.
What I do wholeheartedly believe, is that war wounds soldiers. And so, I wanted to sing to them today.
This right here. After 38.5 years of living and on my 16th wedding anniversary (happy day, Lover!), I deeply resonate with Seth Godin’s post about the infinite game.
In Tolstoy’s War and Peace (which took me the past year to read!), Pierre – a Russian aristocrat taken captive by the French – discovered the same thing after being freed.
(Aw, go ahead, sit down and read this little passage! I’ve highlighted my favorite parts for you skimmers, and added a couple explanatory notes in brackets. And I acknowledge that this passage also uses sexist language.)
A joyous feeling of freedom- that complete inalienable freedom natural to man which he had first experienced at the first halt outside Moscow- filled Pierre’s soul during his convalescence. He was surprised to find that this inner freedom, which was independent of external conditions, now had as it were an additional setting of external liberty. He was alone in a strange town, without acquaintances. No one demanded anything of him or sent him anywhere. He had all he wanted: the thought of his wife which had been a continual torment to him was no longer there, since she was no more [it hadn’t been a happy marriage, and his wife had died while he was in captivity].
“Oh, how good! How splendid!” said he to himself when a cleanly laid table was moved up to him with savory beef tea, or when he lay down for the night on a soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the French had gone and that his wife was no more. “Oh, how good, how splendid!”
And by old habit he asked himself the question: “Well, and what then? What am I going to do?” And he immediately gave himself the answer: “Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!”
The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he had continually sought to find- the aim of life- no longer existed for him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared temporarily- he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at this time.
He could not see an aim, for he now had faith- not faith in any kind of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living, ever-manifest God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set himself. That search for an aim had been simply a search for God, and suddenly in his captivity he had learned not by words or reasoning but by direct feeling what his nurse had told him long ago: that God is here and everywhere. In his captivity he had learned that in Karataev [a peasant who had befriended Pierre in his captivity] God was greater, more infinite and unfathomable than in the Architect of the Universe recognized by the Freemasons. He felt like a man who after straining his eyes to see into the far distance finds what he sought at his very feet. All his life he had looked over the heads of the men around him, when he should have merely looked in front of him without straining his eyes.
In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space, where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed to him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen. And such had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and philanthropy seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness. Now, however, he had learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything, and therefore- to see it and enjoy its contemplation- he naturally threw away the telescope through which he had till now gazed over men’s heads, and gladly regarded the ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil and happy he became. That dreadful question, “What for?” which had formerly destroyed all his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that question, “What for?” a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: “Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from a man’s head.”
“Yes, I love technology; but not as much as you, you see; but I still love technology, always and forever . . .” – Kip Dynamite
I am typing this post on a small plastic box with a shiny screen. I have no idea how the pressure of my fingers on the small squares in front of me ultimately sends my thoughts out to you, who are also looking at something plastic and shiny.
This stuff just works, and most of us use it every day with little to no knowledge of how it works. We leave it up to the wizards to design it, fix it, replace it.
Which has me wondering – how much of this is progress?
There was a time when our tools were understandable. Hand tools like chisels, hammers, and my favorite, the pen. Mechanization improved our tools, making them more powerful, but less easily understood by common users. Still, the moving parts were observable enough, and with a little demonstration and hands-on learning, a user could understand how something worked, and repair it if something went wrong.
Then came electronics, and ultimately, digital technology – which is almost completely beyond my level of understanding. Not because I lack a decent education, but because I don’t have a college degree in electrical engineering.
Now, when my smart phone or laptop has troubles, I might do a little research on repairing it myself, but if the fix involves physical work rather than changing something in the settings or some other point-and-click maneuver, I need a wizard. Slash brain surgeon.
I live and work in a world of magic. I accomplish many of my everyday tasks and a good part of my creative work using fantastically powerful and almost completely inscrutable talismanic machines.
The Internet itself comes to us not only through the masterminding of engineers, but the hands-on labor of everyday people, as Andrew Blum reminds us here:
Most of the humans I know are born, live, and die in captivity. We don’t know how our technology works but we would not survive without it. Drop me in the wilderness alone and without a cell phone and my chances for survival are slim.
But add 50 people, still without cell phones, and my chances rise. We are smarter together (though we are also capable of doing terrible things to one another).
This Lent I am fasting from Facebook. The very first day of not browsing the news feed noticeably quieted my spirit, ironically widened my world.
I miss everyday photos and adorable moments from the lives of my brother’s children. I miss interesting thoughts and news from my friends and family who live all over the world.
But here are some things I don’t miss (things I didn’t even realize were part of my Facebook experience until I shut it off for a while): the urgency to form and express an opinion about each day’s big controversy. The concern to appropriately “like” or respond to comments people make on my posts, so no one feels ignored or left out. The compulsion to snap a photo or record the daily minutiae of my life.
In short, I feel less like a performer on a virtual stage and more like a living breathing person, free to think my own thoughts, spend my own time, in the peace and quiet of my own physical world. My mind feels more expansive, less bogged down with processing all the bits and bytes streaming through it as I scroll the news feed.
My Facebook fast coincides with my reading of Susan Cain’s book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. I had heard a lot about this book, watched her TED Talk, figured I got the gist of it. But when the e-book went on sale for $2.99 while I was at a conference and burned out on interacting with people, I snatched it up.
I’ve known for years that I am an introvert, but this book pushes beyond basic identification, to affirmation, even normalization – of people like me. Not only is there an explanation for my love of solitude, my consistent mode of taking a long time to build friendships and not feeling a need for lots of social interaction – even my tendency to jump at loud noises, my lower threshold for disturbing smells and the way a poem or song or painting can emotionally knock me out – but Cain shows that this is completely normal for a good percentage of the population. It’s not something I need to fix in order to become a legitimate person.
Dear Facebook friends, I’ll be back, but with a more deliberate perspective after this fast. And I am not judging anyone else’s social media use. Simply noticing that for me, a confirmed introvert and highly sensitive person, too much social interaction (even virtual!) and everyday buzz interferes with me being my best self, and doing my best work.
*Note: You may be reading this post through a link you found on Facebook. That’s because my blog automatically displays new posts on my Facebook wall. So, if you comment about this post on Facebook, you’ll understand if I don’t respond, right? 🙂
Julia Bloom 