Learning is Change

Everything changes and it isn’t a hyperbole to say so. My experience of the mall in the days up to Christmas has been roughly similar, but the people I am with and the things that I am interested in are in stark contrast. Never before have I felt the need to rent a two-seater car to push around in the mall so that my children are entertained as my wife looks for purses and I search out coupons on my phone. The stores are mostly the same, but I don’t feel the need to go into Brookstone and see the “coolest toy” setup. I want to go to the bookstore and find gift sets of Harry Potter so that my children will know them in a way I never could (having grown up before most of them had been written).

I can’t compare my experiences apples to apples. The family of four has no equivalent in my days before marriage and children. I can’t compare working from home with teaching directly. They are completely different disciplines. Furthermore, I have no way to compare my value to those around me at this point to my value in the past. It is my conclusion that comparing apples is impossible because the moment you have picked one off of a tree, the tree ceases to exist.

Metaphors are the only solace we have for these inadequate comparisons.

The moon is a folded napkin, waiting for me to wipe my mouth after the most satisfying day.

My family is a never-ending piggy back ride where no one is sure who is carrying whom at any given time.

My world is a sandbox and in it I play in it. Always.

My wife just got rid of her Facebook account. She had been threatening to do it for the last year or so. She claims that she was not using it for the right reasons. Sure, she wanted to keep up with what was going on with her close circle of friends, but she does that on the phone and through text messages on a daily basis. She also wanted to continue keep up her non-profit’s presence, but now that she no longer works there, it hardly seems like much a draw to go and lurk. In fact, she considered most of what she was doing to be lurking. She would look at photographs of old friends or see status updates from people she only “befriended” out of obligation. In essence, there was no good reason to keep using facebook for her. And other than trying to tell her that she will need an account one day to sign up for other services because Facebook connect may be the defacto login of the future, I wasn’t able to come up with anything compelling to persuade her otherwise.

Social networking is not a requirement, yet.

For those of us that work in social networks and our livelihoods depend upon making connections and cultivating communities, Facebook and Twitter are essential. For those that cannot (or will not) keep up with their friends through more conventional means, social networks are the bedrock of our contact with the outside world. For everyone else, they are a luxury. They are the thing that we do to pass the time. They are entertainment. They are a slightly more active version of television. Status updates and infinite pictures and movies are the things that we do while we are waiting in line, for something else better to happen in “real life.”

And I like that my wife still has a choice. I like that she can go in and delete her account (even if her profile picture and “likes” will probably never fully be deleted from the memory of the internet. I like that she can quit Facebook and feel no lingering effects of disconnect because she has all that she needs outside of those “friends.”

She is more open to what is in front of her than I am right now. She can dial someone on the phone and feel as though she has someone on the other end that really wants to hear from her rather than someone that is just eavesdropping on a wall posting that doesn’t seem to have a beginning or end. No one is going to “poke” her or tag her into a list of nonsense. No one is going to look her up after 15 years of non-connection and rekindle a small friendship that was doomed once she left Kansas City.

I am proud of her for quitting Facebook. It is much more than I could ever do. The connections I have on that social network are split into Former Students, High School Acquaintances, Internet Colleagues that I already connect with through Twitter, email or Skype, and my family. While I like seeing how my former students have turned out, most of the time I end up checking in just to tell one of them to take down a picture of them drinking (so they can get a job in the future). The three people I still talk to from high school I call on the phone and send emails to regularly. The internet colleagues I have collected over the years have more ways to contact me than I care to list. There is nothing that Facebook presents other than a way for my family to post pictures of our gatherings in one place. And I don’t post anything other than notes of Facebook because I don’t own anything that I put up there.

Of what value is this silo of connections?

The only thing that I can think to answer is that I don’t YET know. I am so intrigued by the singularity of Facebook. It is the only service that consumes over 500 million active users. Its potential is so amazing that I want to stick it out until I find it useful. I want to be there when they come up with the thing that connects us all together in a more meaningful way than what we like or where we went to college. But, they better do it soon. Otherwise, I might have to join my wife in the land of the Facebookless.

I love when other people parent my children well. I’m glad when my brother feels empowered enough to put my son in timeout. I’m glad when family friends get my children milk. I don’t think twice about letting other people we have chosen to share our house with take a central role in talking with my children and listening, and giving them attention.

I am not afraid of passing off my parenting duties for a few minutes when others are so willing. It is not an abdication. It is a righteous choice. I am supposed to let the village around me take part in bringing up my kids. Not because I need a break or can’t handle my own children, but because my children need to see that their are other responsible adults that care deeply for them. They need to see love from everyone and not just an insular view of it from me. They need to see the diverse ways that people can live and experience the world. And they need to see it work in their favor.

It is the same with anyone seeing things for the first time. The newbies in any community need to see that the community cares for them even if their primary mentors are unavailable. They need to know they are taken care of and will be ushered through their rites of passage.

And events that measure time, like birthdays, holidays and anniversaries must be observed. The years of use and the number of connections within a community matter. They should not be take lightly. We should know how much you have grown since the last time we saw you. We should mark when the newbie is no longer new. We should move them from the kids table. They should be able to speak intelligently about the things that were formerly out of reach.

That will allow our communities to progress, to change over time and adapt to the needs of its members. My children will one day host Thanksgiving, and I hope that by letting them know their community they will never forget just how important it is.

One younger brother, one older brother, two sisters-in-law, one family friend, one family of friends (two adults and three children),and one family of the family of friends (two adults and two children).

As it turns out, it actually requires two houses to cook for one full house. Who knew?

It feels like nothing else. Like pursuing a truth for so long and finding your every move validated.

It feels like seeing the lifetime of your ideas every day. You see them be born, grow into their awkwardness and then retire into a comfortable home.

Every day I see the changes I am making. I am not taking meetings, I am changing the way people connect with one another. I see the difference. It is me.

And there is nothing like it.

My wife got me four beautiful lowball (Old Fashioned) glasses yesterday. They have spiral lines and large circle patterns that match our wine glasses perfectly. It was a conscious attempt to bring my love for an occasional scotch into the fold. It makes it more acceptable to pass out drinks if you feel as though you aren’t just picking glassware out of the back of the cupboard. If there is some theme, some design to the glasses, it makes it feel as though you are purposeful, as if you aren’t trying to hide what you are drinking. And I most definitely am not.

It has taken me years to finally find something that is worthy of drinking slowly and pondering with others. It has taken me just as long to finally appreciate the complexity of alcohol and a disinterest with feeling the affects of it. I would rather feel the heavy based glass in my hand and hear the good conversation around me than stumble up the stairs at the end of the night. So, sometimes I use these glasses for egg nog. Sometimes they are for a little bit of orange juice. Sometimes, the Old Fashioned glasses are the perfect amount of water to soothe my palette.

It is the heavy base that makes it for me. You know that it isn’t going anywhere and that no child passing by is going to knock it over. You know as you hold it in your hand that the words you say are extra weighty and you choose them with purpose. You use the glass as a part of your gestures because it makes your point all the more. The heavy base makes the most satisfying sound as it hits the table for the last time and the ice settles against the side of the glass. The clink of putting your glasses together to toast a friend is even more pronounced because of how comfortable it is in your hand. It isn’t overgrown or awkward as a Tom Collins or wine glass can be. You don’t have to make up new ways to hold it as you might a snifter. There is a but a single comforting way of gripping a lowball and it feels like returning home every time that you do.

This small but undeniable comfort is overly sentimental. It is taking an inanimate object and placing emotions on top of it that are clearly more meaningful to me because of the experiences I have had while the glass is in my hand. I have found deeper friends and started new endeavors. I have thought about my future and wrestled with my past. They are inconsequential for everyone else in the room, but for me they are essential.

These glasses are the prop that I would like to use to advance the plot of my story. It isn’t what is in them that matters. It is their use that beckons the story forward. They are the ones begging the question, “What’s next?” They are the ones giving courage to tackle the conversations that we must have. Not because they are magical, but because they are mine.

My wife gave me glasses yesterday. Today, I thank her for all of the conversations I will have with them.