Sputterpub's Blog

I hated the powerlessness of childhood. My parents tried to determine what I ate and what I wore and when I slept, peed, or felt angry. At least one of them answered most of my why questions with that button-pushing unsatisfactory declaration: “Because I told you so.”

When I complained, the other one assured me that childhood was going to be the good time in my life, the carefree years before I had to work hard and pay bills.

They couldn’t have been more wrong. “Because I told you so,” is despotic. Passive/aggressive even. Hard work is often its own reward; it generates a solid feeling of ability and accomplishment. Paying the bills isn’t nearly as obnoxious as being sent to bed before you’re tired.

I have loved the power of maturity. I’ve spent most of my adulthood in charge of what’s around me: myself, kids, pets, home, business. I have thrived. And yet …

I’ve learned how taxing decisions are. I try to limit mine. I don’t drive, seldom shop, opt out of coupons.

I’ve learned that making a choice is a creative opportunity. No matter how mundane, it’s an occasion to bring integrity to the subject, to select with sense, clarity, balance and an avoidance of chaos. I try to face my decisions head on and walk through the process with interest.

I’ve learned that the best vacation for me is one where I don’t have to make decisions. I like cruises and small tours and some all-inclusive arrangements. I’m on a break, and I don’t want to pick a restaurant. Heck, when I’m on a decision break kind of vacation, I don’t even care if inconvenience occurs. I can roll with it all. It’s not my problem. I’m not in charge.

“Dinner time!”

“Just a minute Ma.”

“No. Now. Your food’s going to get cold.”

“But Mom, the show’s about to …”

“Get in here now! You can watch the show when they rerun it.”

I came, I ate, and I never saw the rest of that show.

It was Superman. I think we were still in New York; if in California it was shortly after our move, so I’d set this vignette around 1958. I was 8 and my mother was 33.

My parents insisted that we eat dinner as a family, every night. I didn’t like the practice then, and I’m still not sure I agree with it. I mean, it makes obvious sense: time together, hearing about each other’s day, settling disputes, making plans, eating well. But the truth of my experience was that I and my brothers got plenty of those ingredients, on weekends and vacations but also as we intersected with our parents every day. The custom of waiting, hungry, till Dad got home from work so we could sit down together tired and irritated … that didn’t actually produce any of the memories and lessons I’m now recording.

Anyway, that evening in probably 1958, I was summoned away from a Superman episode, to dinner. I recall the show scene – Kryptonite fingerprints on a classic black telephone, black-and-white of course, because even if the show had color our television didn’t.

My mother was wrong. Perhaps not about the value of family dinners, but about me ever seeing that episode of Superman again. Because I’ve occasionally tuned into 24-hour marathons of the old show, and I’ve never caught the end of that one.

I started to tell Otto this memory about a month ago. He was ignoring his parents’ invitations to the dinner table and I began to describe my missed Superman. Katie and Sean stopped me. They pointed out that Otto didn’t need to learn that by listening to his parents he’d in fact miss out on exactly what he wanted to experience. Which seemed kind of no duh to me at first, which is why it so effectively shut me up.

I wish I’d had the wit to describe why I was trying to tell the story then, but it took me awhile to figure that out myself. See, the thing I learned from missing Superman is that missing it wasn’t a tragedy. I flourished even without it. And in some ways, that unfinished Superman episode is my favorite.

Three days ago I put up a post about a show I watched. The program refuted the idea that there’s a balance in nature, and I was puzzled. I don’t see enduring balance in nature. I don’t think there is an argument to refute.

But there’s something. I call it arrogance. We people sometimes fall into the myth that we know what we’re doing.

The reason to refrain from clear-cutting forests or burning now the carbon that was buried eons ago is not about upsetting some comprehensive balance. Instead, it’s about acknowledging that we know not what we’re about to do.

I understand that we’re an impulsive species and culture, but the best way to make a choice when you don’t have enough data is to refrain from choosing as long as you can.

The reason to not degrade an environment is we don’t understand enough about the consequences of that strategy.

It’s similar to why you should avoid the doctor. He knows a lot but not enough. He’s more likely to interfere with your body’s own wisdom and slow things down or complicate them, than he is to cure you.

The reason to avoid dietary supplements is we don’t know enough about how the ingredients work and about what other elements should be present to make them work best.

The reason to resist the death penalty is we don’t know enough, really, about the witnesses, about the convicted, about the future.

The reason to be a nonviolent anarchist is because we need to view laws like they’re necessary evils, or lucky charms that have perverse effects, and limit them as often and as seriously as possible.

This is not about balance. It’s about the appropriate, literal humility that comes with having our feet on this earth.