The Human Condition

Musings

ORTIYKMWOYBNTO

Balancing Act: The Newsletter

(No. 241, September 2019)

Balancing act is in four sections this month:

Strange Stuff (At Least to Me)
The Human Condition: Okay
Musings
ORTIYKMWOYBNTO

I can’t remember the last artistic performance I attended where there was not a standing ovation, irrespective of the quality of the performance.
Why do golf and tennis demand total silence during play, but not football or lacrosse or hockey or boxing?
I can find, agree to, and record an appointment faster using my Filofax and a pen than anyone else can on their electronic gizmos.
We’re astounded at recognizing someone we know in another city or on a plane, but we never consider how many of those people have been near us and we’ve never noticed because our noses are stuck in a smart phone.
If you’re going to take 15 minutes every time negotiating with the server about food allergies, intolerances, and special combinations, you should buy me my martini first to make the circus tolerable. (Unless you have celiac disease, refraining fastidiously from gluten is simple an affectation.)
Do they teach loquaciousness in dental school?
Most of the people whose habits and behaviors we detest are enabled by us because we refuse to confront them to avoid the pain of conflict. So instead we tolerate long-term pain.
The only thing tougher being a parent in this environment today is being a child.
Dogs have a great time at the beach and the water is never too cold for them, but it’s the people who dig all those holes, not the dogs.
The British managed to fund two aircraft carriers, but the compromise to allocate the funds meant that they couldn’t afford to build or buy any planes. Perhaps the word aircraft before “carrier” should have been a clue?
Every captain’s welcome on an airplane includes the fact that there is a “great cabin crew” today. But in their announcements, the flight attendants never mention that there is a “great cockpit crew.” That’s always concerned me a bit.

There’s a clever commercial on TV about not settling for “just okay” in your insurance coverage. There are doctors, tattoo artists, and others who are proud to be “okay,” which disturbs the customers and patients greatly. One doctor asks a patient prior to an operation, “Are you nervous?” When the patient acknowledges that he is, the doctor says, “So am I.” (He was just reinstated by the medical board.) It’s a funny bit.

Yet the search for perfection—and even excellence—can be dysfunctional. I don’t need the very best screwdriver, just one that can screw and unscrew. I can enjoy a movie without being in the best seats, and I’ve never demanded that my music be so pure that only dogs can hear C above high C.

Most of my domestic airline seats, even in first class, are okay. My cable and satellite TV connections are okay most of the time. Fast food is almost always okay, but I’m not taking clients there for lunch.

My cell phone reception is okay.

All that is good enough. I’m not saying that we should always settle and never select, but I am saying that we need perspective and not always waste our time and stress ourselves seeking better than okay when it’s not needed.

I don’t expect great airline food. I expect planes and trains to be somewhat late some of the time. I know my cars will flash warning lights sometimes that simply confuse me until I can plow through the owner’s manual. I understand that some people don’t meet their commitments.

I don’t want an okay surgeon or lawyer or even designer. But an okay day on the beach is still pretty damn good.

I have no idea where you end up if you simply go straight up. I know you’ll go into the stratosphere, and into the solar system, and eventually out of our galaxy. But what then? What is the limit of the universe? Can there be simply limitless, infinite space?

Is there life out there? The only three responses I know of are yes, no, and I don’t know. All three are staggering. There may be life we one day encounter, or we may be alone in the cosmos, or we may be faced with the unknowable forever.

What’s at the bottom of the sea? We’re really not so sure. We can spend an hour or so entombed in a bathyscaph that allows small glimpses. We think there are animals that can live in incredible heat vents at astounding pressures. Scientists think some can live without oxygen altogether.

We pride ourselves on scant photos of the giant squid, which is a sperm whale’s primary food source, because we otherwise know nothing at all about them. It lives, breeds, and is successful at terrific depths.

In the 1930s, fisherman off the Comoros islands netted a strange fish, unlike anything ever seen. After experts became involved it was identified as a coelacanth, thought to have been extinct for 65 million years. That is not a misprint. We now know that they are flourishing off Indonesia and other Asian islands unchanged from their antecedents.

We are arrogant. We think we know much more than we actually do, and think we can influence much more than we actually can. We can’t even stop from killing each other, something the coelacanths don’t engage in.

There’s a reciprocity in life, the world influences us and we influence the world. But as much as we’d prefer to think so, it’s not tilted in our direction.

I was speaking to the National Steel Foundation at the Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island. As is my custom, I visited the room at 7:30 am, well before the 9:00 am start. It’s a good thing I did, because it was set up incorrectly.

I picked up the white phone on the wall and found the manager on duty. A crew was there in five minutes and by 8:00 am had changed the entire room from theater style to classroom, altered the sight lines, raised the stage, and so forth.

I said to the manager, “You folks have been terrific, I intend to tell the Steel Foundation people how great you’ve been.”

“Steel Foundation?” he asked. “This room is for the American Auto Dealers.”

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