Midlife Meditation

News from the world of science: conservatives (and liberals too, let's be inclusive here) are hard-wired to hold their political beliefs. According to the research quoted in this article, conservatives have a much higher "negativity bias": stimuli that they find annoying, disgusting, threatening cause them to shrink away. The article speculates on possible evolutionary roots to this tendency, notes that this distaste for the other actually creates happier people who are more content with the status quo, while liberals tend to be more neurotic, and conclude with a plea for liberals and conservatives to stop trying to convert each other and make peace so Congress can go back to getting things done. My first reaction to these ideas was simply this: Vindication! I've been saying something like this for decades. My experience of butting heads with conservatives long ago taught me that arguments are only persuasive to people who are already sympathetic to the ideas bein...

This showed up on my Facebook feed this morning, liked by a friend who has a decidedly conservative bent. It's a Youtube of a teenager delivering testimony to a state legislative committee as they consider a gun control bill. Here's the headline attached to it by conservativepost.com: "It only took this 15-year-old 3 minutes to silence all liberals in the room." Apart from what I'm about to say concerning this clip, there's no way to verify whether anyone was silenced, as there's no video of their reaction, if any, by the committee. I encourage you to take a look at it yourself. Here's the link: http://conservativepost.com/it-only-took-this-15-year-old-3-minutes-to-silence-all-liberals-in-the-room/ Listening to the clip, I had just one reaction, over and over again: really? This is supposed to blow me away? This is supposed to silence me with its stunning logic, brilliant rhetoric, moving delivery? What I heard was boilerplate: a list of tal...

"Life is on the wire, the rest is just waiting." (Karl Wallenda) I doubt that the great Wallenda was talking about ambivalence, the condition of balancing two contradictory positions while working toward a decision. Most likely he was talking about the supreme focus required to move across a cable suspended in the air, a focus which, once obtained, renders the height of that cable irrelevant. I've never attempted such a thing--my balance has never been very good to begin with, and I have no desire to subject myself to the countless bruises it would require for me to teach my body otherwise--but I can certainly relate to the idea that to be utterly focused on a task is to be truly, powerfully alive. Writing, composing, performing, running, I have locked into a level of concentration that disengages me from clock-time, yet has me utterly aware of every relevant stimulus around me. I stop thinking, and simply act. Life on the wire is orders of magnitude better than life ...