Petition interruption

A while ago I was walking and talking with a friend who is of Russian extraction. We were approached by a girl gathering signatures for a petition. I don’t remember the cause—stop coal, improve salmon self-esteem, elect Jesus, whatever. She asked us if we were interested in helping it. “Oh, I already signed that one,” I lied. Seemed like an easy way to get out of hearing about it. My friend had a more interesting response. “Sorry,” he said, gesturing toward me and obviously a bit put out, “but we’re in the middle of a conversation right now.”

I can’t imagine many Americans being that frank. It was refreshing. He was right that we were in the middle of a conversation, and that it’s rude to interrupt two people conversing. Until he pointed it out like that, I had never realized how often these petitioners violate basic manners. Nor had I realized how accustomed Americans are to it. We accept intrusive cause-hawkers the way we accept bad weather.

Maybe it’s worse in the Northwest than it is in other places. We have many causes. The environment is a big deal—there being rather more of it here than other places—and we have more college degrees than we probably need. It’s a recipe for lots of street-corner activism.

People like me only encourage the petitioners in their bad manners. I’ve been educated against my will to believe that causes and activism and awareness-building are endeavors to be solemnly admired. I’ve been programmed to feel ashamed to admit in public that I consider my own business more important than that of stopping squirrel poachers. So I wimp out and avoid telling the signature-collectors they’re intruding. “I already signed it” or “No, thanks” are about the best I ever do.

I wish I could be more like my friend and tell these people—politely and correctly—why they can go ahead and kiss off. Maybe it’s that Russians are raised on more traditional values. My impression has always been that they’re much more friend- and family-centered than Americans. They tend to get really involved in their conversations. For a stranger to insinuate that his pet political project is more important than two Russian men’s discussion of Moscow women versus Petersburg women? Highly insulting.

Most petitioners would probably counter that their interruptions are really for the benefit of the people they’re interrupting: “Invasive plant species affect you.” That may be true (though I take it all with a grain of salt), but it doesn’t excuse the interruption. Stopping people on the street is just bad marketing. It’s door-to-door sales and cold-calling and spam. Sophisticated sellers don’t use those methods. 

It doesn’t matter what the content of the interruption is. If I stopped two people in the park and started recounting one of my hilarious anecdotes, they would immediately find it rude (crazy, too) and maybe even call it out as such. Why should they react differently when an environmental science major tells them the sky is falling without their signatures?

Getting and getting rid

I got rid of some stuff a couple weeks ago. Clothes, old shoes, a few other things. Now that all that stuff is gone, I can’t remember why I ever had it. I can’t even remember what it all was. If you asked me to list the contents of the four bags I took to Value Village, I probably couldn’t come up with even half of them. 

 A lot of the stuff we have is like that—stuff we wouldn’t even notice being gone. Yet most of us have a hard time getting rid of it. Even if it’s something we haven’t used in a year and don’t plan to use anytime soon (or something that never had a use to begin with), we convince ourselves we will someday regret getting rid of it. When we come to the moment of truth—throwing it away, giving it away, selling it on Craigslist—we falter.

We get anxious thinking about discarding possessions. It feels like throwing away money. Even if we plan to sell these things, we worry that we’ll get a disappointing price. Easier to just hang on to them and lie that they still have value in our lives. Easier to avoid the distressing feeling that when we toss something, it’s forever. 

Getting rid of stuff is emotionally fraught. But being rid of it is easy. I now feel nothing about the stuff I donated recently—it wasn’t a meaningful part of my routine. I don’t go absentmindedly reaching for that stuff and find the shelf empty. Not having it is a non-experience. 

There’s a similar contrast between getting and having. Getting something, either a gift or a purchase, is a thrill. Having it is boring. Of all the things in your home you were excited to get, how many do you actually find fun to own? The answer—for me—is only a handful. If you took my bike or my computer, I would notice within a day. If you took my kettlebells, I would notice within a week. But if you took my copy of On the Road—which I didn’t like that much and never plan to reread—I might not notice ever. For stuff like this, owning and not owning are equal states.

Getting and getting rid—charged with feeling. Having and not having—as humdrum as flossing. We love hellos and hate goodbyes. But the stuff in between and after, we barely notice. 

When you wish upon a lottery

A few months ago I had a conversation with two older coworkers about what we would do if we won the lottery. They started the conversation, not I. Everyone was talking about the lottery at the time. The jackpot had gotten huge, and the numbers were going to be drawn in a few days.

My coworkers mentioned the typical dreams: sail to some island, build some big house, move someplace where the sun always shines and the water tastes like rose nectar. They seemed pretty well convinced that if you won the lottery you would have it made.

I presented the heretical idea that maybe having a huge lump of cash wouldn’t be that great. Maybe, I suggested, what makes life good is having something meaningful with which to occupy yourself. Maybe people need to produce something with their lives in order to feel fulfilled. Maybe, if you feel lost when you have little money, you would feel just as lost with lots of it.  

They wouldn’t have it. They laughed and implied that I must be over-complicated: “Well I wouldn’t have any problem just sitting in Fiji for the rest of my life!”   

Lots of people say things like that. I think they’re mistaken. People want to believe they would be content living off a massive nest egg with a Mai Tai in hand and no worries in their heads. But that kind of contentment can’t last very long. Passive pleasure is not in itself a reason to live. Any thoughtful person who has spent a continuous stretch of time pursuing it can attest to that fact.

I once took a chunk of savings and spent over four months traveling with no obligations. I remember many long days. Sixteen hours is a lot of time to spend with nothing productive to do. After only a few weeks, the pleasure and excitement had become routine.

My coworkers turned the discussion to less selfish aspects of lottery winnings. They thought this might be more rhetorically persuasive. “Think of all the people you could help,” one of them said. 

It’s true, to a small extent. If I had ten million dollars sitting around, I could give it to the hospital and pay for every cancer patient’s chemo. But the thing is, you can help people with just ten thousand dollars. Or even one hundred. Or even with nothing more than your time. Most of us don’t do so—at least not very often. It’s just not a strong desire.

So unless you’re someone who gives every last spare cent to charities and causes—and loves doing it—you probably wouldn’t be made that happy by giving away millions. And even if giving away millions was a happy experience, how long could that single experience sustain you? Five years later, would you be looking out the window with a cup of coffee in hand thinking, Boy, I sure do feel good about giving that money to those needy strangers half a decade ago? Would you ruminate on that one thought for six hours straight and go to bed that night feeling satisfied with yourself?

Again, count me doubtful. Giving money to the needy may be an admirable thing to do, but as an experience it’s boring. There’s no creativity in it.

This discussion with my coworkers didn’t bring up a single money-enabled thing that sounded to me like it could make me happy long-term. Maybe for a month, or two, or even a year—but not for life. 

I realized how rarely money is a solution to anything. Some of our problems can indeed be solved with cash. You need a knee replacement. Your basement flooded. Your car won’t start. But these aren’t the kinds of problems people are thinking about when they dream of winning the lottery. 

The problems people really hope money can solve are a lot more serious. Things like aimlessness. Loneliness. Confusion. Money doesn’t help with these things. 

In fact, a big sum of money that you simply won might actually be detrimental to solving these problems. The daily necessity of making a living gives shape to our lives. If approached mindfully, it may be in that process that we have the best hope of finding our true direction. And the best hope of connecting with others. And maybe also the best hope of seeing clearly. 

The dinosaur method

Five years ago, when I was 20, I found a way you could teach someone to like eating vegetables—or teach yourself how to like them more. That is, if you know you should eat more vegetables, you want to eat more of them, but you just can’t get very excited about them—this is the method. All you have to do is pretend you’re a dinosaur when you’re eating them.

Wash a whole leaf of lettuce and hold it in two hands. Bend at the waist a bit to mimic a more horizontal spine. Imagine you’re some bipedal herbivorous dinosaur, like a parasaurolophus, iguanodon, or pachycephalosaurus. Rip a huge mouthful of vegetation out of your hands. Don’t be afraid to really put your neck into it. Chew extravagantly. Steal furtive glances from side to side as you watch for predators.

Go ahead and do it right now. I promise you it will be the funnest god damned leaf of lettuce you ever eat in your life.

Even if you only do it a few times, the dinosaur method works. It gives you the idea of vegetables as something precious and coveted. I never hated vegetables, but doing a bit of dinosauring a few years back took my appreciation of them to the next level. Even when not eating like a dinosaur, per se, I can still keep the idea in the back of my mind that hey—fuck it—I’m just a tenontosaurus, and munchin’ on salad is what I do. 

I learned the dinosaur method—in a different form—when I was six or seven. Like all right-thinking boys of that age, I was obsessed with dinosaurs. When I would leave class to use the bathroom or drinking fountain I would—as discreetly as possible—walk in the gait and posture of my favorite dinosaurs. I would put my hands right up against my pecs with my fingers curved and facing outward like claws. Two fingers meant I was a tyrannosaurus. Three fingers—and a bit more forearm extending from my chest—meant I was a velociraptor.

(I had one friend who got even more into character than I did. He really didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought if they saw him. He would walk in lumbering, menacing steps and look at you with the possessed eyes of a predator. His posture was such that you would swear he had a tail. He’d even snarl a bit and refuse to respond in words if you said anything to him. Damn, he was good.)

The dinosaur method helped alleviate some of the boredom of school—and other parts of life. I would do it whenever I needed to. The physicality of it made the imagining more intense. (Again—just try it. It can’t not make you feel good.) 

I guess when I was about nine, though, I decided acting like a dinosaur was no longer an appropriate way to spice up my life. It was over a decade later—as I looked at a head of lettuce—that I rediscovered its effectiveness.    

Adults need more fantasy in their lives.