J is for Jokes and What You Can Learn from Them

Are you into philosphy? Me neither. Too obscure. Yawn.

But...

Ever thought that jokes could clarify philosophy? I didn't either until I picked up Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes.
Makes it sound more interesting and fun, doesn't it?



Here are some examples:

Here's a joke to explain essentialism. What attributes make things what they are, or as philosophers put it, what attributes make things not what they aren't (Whew!)
"Why is an elephant big, gray and wrinkled?"
"Because if he were small, white and round, he'd be an aspirin."


Philosophers struggle with the concepts of eternity and infinity. Also relativity.
Here's a joke that explains two of them:
A woman is told by her doctor that she has six months to live. "Is there anything I can do?" she asks.
"Yes." says the doctor. "You could marry a tax accountant."
"How will that help my illness?" she asks.
"Oh, it won't help your illness," says the doctor,"but it will make that six months seem like an eternity."
(Sorry, tax accountants.)

Deductive logic is reasoning from the general to the particular. for example, using the famous syllogism: All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; Socrates is mortal. That's fine, unless you screw up the logic as in: All men are mortal; my kid's hamster is mortal; therefore my kid's hamster is a man.
Or you could srgue from a false premise:
An old cowboy goes into a bar. A young lady sits down next to him and asks, "Are you a real cowboy?"
He says, "Well, I've spent my whole life on a ranch, herding horses, mending fences and branding cattle, so I guess I am."
She says, "I'm a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about women. When I go to work or watch TV, everything makes me think about women."
She wanders off, and a couple sits down. They turn to the old guy and ask, "Are you a real cowboy?"
He replies, "I always thought I was, but I just found out I'm a lesbian."


Analogies are often used in arguments, but sometimes they just don't work. Here are a few that failed:
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
Or:
The little boat drifted gently across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

Stoicism involved emotional disengagement from life, acting from reason, never from passion. Here is a modern Stoic-by-proxy:
Mr. Cooper told the dentist he was in a big hurry. "No fancy stuff," he ordered. "No gas or needles or any of that stuff. Just pull the tooth and get it over with."
"I wish more of my patients were as stoic as you," said the dentist. "Which tooth is it?"
Mr. Cooper turned to his wife. "Open your mouth, honey."

The philosophy of language addresses the concept of "fuzziness," or vagueness in language as in the joke that follows:
A woman bursts into the men's day-room at the retirement home. Holding her clenched fist in the air, she announces, "Anyone who can guess what I have in my hand cam have sex with me tonight."
An old man shouts, "An elephant."
The woman things for a moment and says, "Close enough."

Check on Amazon for Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar. By the way, when it was published in 2008, it became a best seller. It's still #18,153 on Amazon's list. And remember, they have over a million books for sale.

I is for Interview with Author Susan Lieberman

Today I'm interviewing Susan Lieberman, author of Getting Old is a Full Time Job.



I've known Susan for several years and admire her very much. She's one of the founders of the Houston chapter of The Transition Network. She leads most of our monthly "conversations", makes us think with her provocative questions, and also leads our subgroup, Death, Dying and Dessert. So when Susan's latest book came out, I bought one immediately (after all, I'm getting older every minute). Here is my interview with Susan:


In Getting Old is a Full Time Job, you broke retirement into 12 jobs. What inspired you to do that (and by the way, I loved it) Would you list the jobs so readers will get an idea of how the book is structured.


You are right...I talk about 12 "jobs" in this book, but, in fact, they are all part of the same JOB or challenge, which is using this stage of our lives to grow into our still-better-selves. I use the language of work for a couple reasons. First, Freud suggested that love and work are the two central tenants of our adult lives, And I wanted this book to appeal to both men and women. As Dick Goldberg, National Director of Coming of Age, noted, "We men like jobs."

Many of us worry about what will replace our work when we retire. The point of the book is that there is plenty of "work" waiting for us when we have the time to take it on. However, it is different from most of the work we do in our mainstream years. This time, we are working just for us, on our own time frame. Here are the 12 jobs I discuss, each in a chapter of the book:


Strategist
Script Writer/Editor
Director of Physical Planning
Training and Development Manager
Residential Relocation Expert
Office Manager
Money Manager
Relationship Coach
Demolition Expert
Purveyor of Pleasure
Soul Searcher
By the way, I am not suggesting we do all twelve of these jobs, certainly not at once. Pick and choose as you wish.


What was the hardest job for you personally to take on? The easiest?

The hardest job for me is Purveyor of Pleasure. I know how to work. I'm really good at it and before I retired, I did it 50 or 60 hours a week for money and another bunch of hours running the enterprise called Lieberman. I wasn't so good at playing. I'm better now, but I'm still learning.

Director of Physical Planning is also hard. I do go to the gym and work out with a trainer three times a week and walk with a walking buddy...but I don't like it, and it is still a struggle to make myself show up consistently. I give myself stars for doing it even if I don't want to.

My easiest job will, I suspect, sound strange to many. It is Demolition Expert. I started a business, Y Collaborative, to talk with healthy people about end-of-life issues as a result of my mother's failing health and then death. I have been immersed in learning about death and dying for over three years. There is so much to learn and none of it strikes me as morbid . It seems to me much more morbid to live in denial and find myself suddenly in circumstances I don't understand and don't have a clue how to manage or to leave my family without guidance and support. Another Freud quote: If you want peace, prepare for war. If you want life, prepare for death. I know many of us know we will die but hope it doesn't happen in our lifetime. A diet of delusion is not so healthy, I think.




I feel these "jobs"apply to everyone at this stage in life, retired or not. Do you agree?

I do agree. It doesn't matter if we are retired or not. What we need is time in our lives to focus on these issues, many of them more internal than external. If our external work so absorbs us all the time, then it is hard to take on this challenge. If we keep working but find that we have shifted the importance of that work in our lives, which does not mean doing shoddy work, then we can take on some of these jobs.


In our Transition Network group we talked about attachments and detaching from things, activities, etc. that are no longer meaningful. I'd like to hear your comments on that.

Really, retirement is about detaching from work as we generally knew it. If we detach, either wholly or partially, it leaves a gap. Sometimes, leaving a job means we also detach from people--or they detach from us--, from habits, from patterns. So many of the jobs in this book are about deciding how/when/where and to whom we might want new attachments. This also raises for us the question of whether our old attachments are still working and providing satisfaction. For example. we may live in a house we loved when our kids were young but now, if we look closely, we find it more burden than pleasure. Our brains are a bit like tracks. We slip into behavior tracks and just keep driving in those familiar synaptic tracks.

I had to learn to engage in conscious reflection about what old tracks I really liked and where I wanted to lay down some new tracks. I also found it challenging to think about the tracks others told me I should put down, but in fact, in truth, I really had no interest in.

Work as we know it in our middle years can be hard, but there is a kind of comfort in having others decide how we should spend our time and energy. It is a different kind of work when we get decide anew for ourselves...every day.




Would you share your writing process with readers?

I love writing. It is my therapy. This is how I clarify my own thinking and figure out what I really think. I am not a scheduled person so sometimes, I can work ten hours a day for several days and then get distracted by other things in my life and not work on the book for days. When I try to work, and I don't make any progress, it is usually because my thinking is not clear. I believe good writing grows out of good thinking. Sometimes, even if I don't want it to be this way, I have to germinate, gestate, muddle around until I get clear. That may involve lots of pages that get deleted and lots of grumbling, but I have learned that, in time I find my way to a place that makes sense for me. If it doesn't make sense for me, I don't expect it to make sense for anyone else.

I am an extrovert so talking helps my thinking. I love to interview people. Every book I have written, and this is the seventh, has involved interviewing. I am always smarter as a team than alone. And over the years, I have found that I have become a better writer because I have become a better editor. After I wrote dozens of drafts of this book and thought I was finished, I went through it and removed 9,000 words. I am interesting, perhaps, but I am not endlessly interesting.

One thought: it doesn't matter how, when, where you write. There is no RIGHT way. But if you want to be a writer, you do have to write!





Where is the book available?

Ah, great question. It's on Amazon, in print and on kindle. And it can be bought on the www.Ycollaborative.com website. I doubt it can be found in a bookstore.

H is for Houston

<<
Houston, my home town, is a hard city to love. Unless you enjoy clogged freeways, brutally hot and humid summers, springs and falls that last about 3 days, cockroaches, no scenery, miles of strip malls, and professional sports teams that habitually lose. Last year the Astros set a record by losing 106 games; this year they lost their opener so apparently they're on track for another record breaking season.



On the other hand...we have

The Texas Medical Center, the world's largest, which includes the #1 cancer hospital in the country;


The Houston Museum of Natural Science, which in recent years has brought us Lucy, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Lois the corpse flower which brought such huge crowds that you sometimes had to wait in line half the night to get a whiff of her;


The Astrodome, which opened in 1963, and in its day was touted as the Eighth Wonder of the World. Now, sadly, it stands empty and decrepit, but we still love the memories. I gave birth to my son on the day it opened and saw the last baseball game played there.

Where else could you visit these off-beat spots?
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A house decorated all over with beer cans;

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A museum dedicated to the orange;


One of the nation's busiest ports...located 50 miles from the coast.

Yes, despite it's drawbacks, Houston is a great city to live and to visit. Come on down.

G is for Glasses

I started wearing glasses when I was four. Little round gold-rimmed glasses with thick, thick lenses. I was far-sighted and had severe astigmatism. My left eye was worse, so I tended to use my right for sighting, which was a problem because I am left-handed. Years later, I realized that was why I was probably so lousy at sports like baseball and kickball.



I grew up and wore glasses with plastic frames. Still thick though, but by then, so much a part of me, I rarely thought about them. In fact, I even wore them in the shower. I tried contacts several times but could never adjust to them. They hurt, they itched, I couldn't get them in. I threw them away and went on with my life.



Marriage, motherhood, divorce, grad school, work--the glasses accompanied me through every crisis and every triumph. When I was 36, they became bifocals.



As I got older, cataracts appeared. For years, they didn't intefere with my vision, but finally in the winter of 2008, my eye doctor said it was time to remove them. I had the two surgeries over winter break. Surprise! Colors were so much brighter than I had thought. Another surprise! I could see without my glasses. Wouldn't people be amazed to see me without my coke bottle glasses! In early January I strode into the school I consult with. I expected people to stop me in the hall and exlaim about the new glassesless Me. Not a word. The only person who noticed was the janitor.

The other day my daughter remarked that she has had trouble getting used to me without the glasses. "You don't look like my mother without them," she said.
On the other hand, I am thoroughly used to Life Without Glasses. At first I felt undressed. For months after the surgery I reached up to take them off at night, groped for them in the morning when I woke up. But now I'm completely comfortable without them, my vision is great, and someone even told me recently I have pretty eyes. For me, that's the ultimate compliment.

F is for Fears

Besides dying, which I imagine is a universal fear, I am afraid of bugs and birds.


Look at these bugs. What could be grosser--more gross?--than a picture of a bunch of insects. I'm sure they fill important niches in the world, but I can't relate to them. If you live along the Gulf Coast, you are visited by cockroaches--the large, outside kind--no matter how squeaky clean your house is. You can squash them, but that grosses me out. A friend of mine used to drop the phone book on them and wait for her husband to come home and dispose of the corpse. That strikes me as too "helpless little princess", and besides I no longer have a husband to act as hired killer, so I spray them with bug spray until they are dead. Once I discovered an enormous roach crawling lazily across my ceiling as if he owned the territory. I couldn't reach him with the spray but I finally sort of guided him in the right direction and then spritzed him. He dropped to the floor and I put a newspaper over him, planning to get rid of him later. A few minutes passed and then the newspaper started to move. I lifted a corner and sprayed again. The paper kept moving, I kept spraying until finally, finally he expired. As I scooped up the paper, I thought of Rasputin, the Russian monk who was supposedly shot repeatedly, survived, then clubbed, survived, and finally drowned. Perhaps the evil monk was actually a giant cockroach.


My fear of birds began with an incident in my childhood. One evening I walked down our hallway and started to open the glass door into the living room. To my surprise, I saw a small black bird. It was madly circling the room, I suppose trying to get out. I screamed and our housekeeper came running. Grabbing a broom, she opened the outside door and eventually chased the bird outside. By this time, I was sitting on the floor crying. "Where did it come from?" I howled. "Must have flown in through the chimney," she said and patted my shoulder. But I was not comforted. I wanted my mother but she was in the hospital, giving birth to my sister. I had always wanted a sister and had saved up money in my bank because Daddy had told me it cost $100 to pay for a baby. Now I wasn't so sure about this baby business. This little creature would probably usurp my spot in the family. She'd already taken Mommy away when I needed her.

I did learn to love my sister, and eventually I learned to walk past the fireplace without cringing (Daddy had a screen put over the top of the chinmney). Still, I've never gotten over my distaste for birds or my fear that one will fly at me someday and peck me on the head.

What about you? Do you have irrational fears, or is it just me?

E is for the Prophet Elijah

Passover begins tomorrow night. The holiday commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. At the beginning of the seder meal, the youngest child asks four questions, beginning with, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" The story of the Exodus is recounted with everyone in turn reading a passage, symbolic foods are eaten, and four cups of wine are drunk. At the end of the meal a fifth cup of wine is poured. According to tradition, this cup is for the prophet Elijah, who visits every home during the seder. The children open the door and usually gather round with excitement. Is Elijah really there? Is the liquid in the glass moving just the tiniest bit? For most kids, it's the favorite part of the evening.




But what is the meaning of Elijah's visit? There are various answers, any of which might be true. One is that the fifth cup, which is never drunk, symbolizes the final redemption of the Jewish people, when they are gathered into the Land of Israel. Another is that the door is opened and left unguarded to symbolize faith in God's protection.




In very recent times, a new tradition has been introduced by feminists: Miriam's cup. Miriam was the sister of Moses, and it is said that when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea safely, she led the women in dance. It's also said that Miriam brought water during the years in the desert, that water followed her wherever she went; thus, Miriam's cup is filled, not with wine, but with water.



One of my favorite books for middle grade children, The Devil's Artithmetic by Jane Yolen begins with a seder. The girl, who has been grumbling about being there, is asked to open the door for Elijah and when she does, she steps back in time to the world of the Holocaust.



And if you'd like a really ireverent seder sketch, check out the archives of Saturday Night Live and find Jerry Seinfeld as Elijah.

D is for Dystechnia

Dyslexia: reading disorder. Dysgraphia: handwriting disorder. Dystechnia: technology disorder. Okay, it's not a real word. I heard it at a conference and decided it's a perfect description of me.


This is me, or this is me if I were blonde. I love my computer when it's working well, but when something goes wrong, I'm completely at sea. I have a wonderful computer guy, appropriately named Angel Eden, who rescues me when I have a serious emergency, but for everyday glitches, I'm still a mess. I'm scared to try anything because I know I'll screw up and my laptop will disintegrate in front of my eyes.




I'd love to have a really sexy blog with all kinds of moving parts, bells and whistles, but it's beyond me. Do I make use of all the great social media? Not enough. Yes, I'm on facebook and linkedin but I don't often use them. Twitter? I don't get it.

This would be me if I were a man.

Technology, of course, isn't limited to computers. There's the cell phone which I use for phone calls (how Twentieth Century of me), the IPad (I don't have one), the Kindle (I use mine only for reading books). What I need is a live-in technoogy handyperson. Anyone interested?