“I couldn’t because ...”

People tell me that line all the time, and I always wondered why. Let’s say you planned a party and invited your friends. One of the friends who didn’t show up told you the next day, “I couldn’t make it to your party because I had to prepare for a class and then work on my project.” Let’s say again that instead he said, “I couldn’t make it. Did I miss a fun party?” Which answer do you prefer and why?

I prefer the later. It would make me feel that he wanted to come but he couldn’t. But the first answer would make me think he had better things to do than come to my party, and he is giving me excuses so I would keep inviting him in he future. Granted the reason someone misses anything (when they have a choice) is because they had something better to do. But actually saying them will only draw emphasis to that fact, and not to the feeling of wanting to come to the party. I would much rather hear that he wanted to come instead of the reasons why he didn’t. I think it’s more positive and affirming. But then I do sound a little like a curmudgeon whining about nothing.

Stress and short sightedness

I know quite a few people who are stressed all the time. One of them went to a stress management class and heard that there are three types of people when it comes to stress: the turtle, the hare, and the thoroughbred. The turtle can only do one thing at a time at his own pace. The hare jumps from task to task, completing some but distracted away from others, and so becomes stressed. The thoroughbred completes a task at a time while avoiding getting distracted by other tasks and thus doesn’t get too stressed. So the hare exemplify my friends who are stressed all the time.
I think I belong to the thoroughbred category. I can even do more than one things at a time and not get stressed. Sometimes I even enjoy the pressure of the deadline. But this isn’t because I’m some kind of a super animal like the thoroughbred. This is because I’m short sighted.
One of the stressed ones puts pressure on her self. Like the others, it is a self-imposed stress, and she does so because she wants to get to where she wants to go in life. She has a rough idea of the path she wants take and what she needs to do get there. That’s why she gets stressed. The stakes can’t be any bigger! I on the other hand spend very little time thinking about what I want to do in the future. I think a lot about how I want to feel and what kind of person I want to be, but not about a career path. When it comes to a career, I’m short sighted. I simply don’t think about it that far into the future.
This is not a virtue but a flaw. Though thoroughbred best describes how I handle stress, there should be a different category to describe someone like me: the donkey. It handles the stress just like a thoroughbred but it sure won’t get to the goal any faster. It might not even know there is a goal.
Now, can the donkey become the thoroughbred any easier than the hare? I doubt it. The later transition requires refinement only in method, whereas the former requires a change of philosophy. But then the donkey isn’t too bad of a position to be. I heard they are very dreamy and romantic animals.

Need not Save the Earth

The good people who care about the environment, animals, and nature in general tend to speak of Earth in emotional and anthropomorphic way, I think, to the detriment of their cause. “Save the Earth”, or “fragile Earth” are common phrases I hear, and I think people use them to elicit protective feeling in the audience. Not only does this strategy fail to capture the true sate of Earth as a complex system, it distracts from the true victims of the changing environment: people.

I am not denying that the environment is changing. It is in fact changing at unprecedented speed, and we are causing it. But the change we are causing is a minor one for Earth as a whole. What’s living on it today might not in the future, but something else will surely thrive on it. Once it gets going, life is very very hard to extinguish. Even if 99.9% of all life dies, given time the remaining 0.1% will re-colonize Earth. Each individual or each species may be fragile, but Earth and life as a whole is not.

Nor does Earth need saving. “Saving” requires a trajectory toward “bad”. In order for Earth to be saved, it has to be moving towards something bad. But there is no value in changing Earth. Let’s say the Earth is changing the way it is now but there are no humans on it. Will it be bad? Will the Earth need saving then? It’s really not the Earth that heads toward something bad, it is the human beings. It is not the Earth who needs saving, it is we.

The Team I Coach

I'm coaching a kids basketball team. We are actually pretty good. One of kids is probably the best player in the league's age group. He has a lot to do with why we play well, but we also hustle and play tough. I just love to describe the way we play as "like a pack of wolves". And I like to think I had something to do with it, but most of it is the make-up of the team. We have few kids who play the game like it's football, and the rest just gets caught up in it. The kids love to play and play hard, so I really have an easy job. Only if I can get them to block-out on consistently...

Being a Laker Fan

I am a Lakers fan, and it feels like almost everyone hates the Lakers. When I tell people that I am a Lakers fan, they often question if and how long I have lived in southern California or proceed to tell me that they hate the Lakers.

First of all, it is absurd to illegitimatize a fan for not being from or living near a team. This is the United States of America. You are absolutely free to be a fan of any team for whatever reason. Regional rivalries are there to promote interest in the NBA, and to be caught up too much in it is kind of like pledging an allegiance to Coke over Pepsi. The difference is in how people perceive them, but there’s very little difference in the products themselves.

This leads to my second point. I really don’t see why anyone who likes basketball could hate the Lakers as a basketball product. They play a beautiful and entertaining brand of basketball. The triangle offence they employ creates ball and player movement leading to good plays with high offensive efficiency rate (first in the league). They play a team defense based on a mix of fundamental one on one defense and more extreme brand of zone defense (though it is not as good as say the Spurs’ or the Rockets’). They really are truly a fun team to watch. I think it’s a better brand of basketball than the fast paced teams like the Suns, Knicks, or the Warriors. You have to at least appreciate a team like the Lakers if you like basketball.

I guess you can appreciate the Lakers and hate them at the same time. I appreciate the Celtics for the way they play, but I sure hate them. The Lakers will be waiting for them in the finals to spank them like a newborn baby.

Death and Trees

I came across a couple of research articles about stress and aging in trees. They read surprisingly well for articles about tree physiology. One on stress proposed that trees die from disease, predation, cold, wind, etc. when they lose vigor due to stress. The other on aging showed some evidences that trees don’t age. Apparently we know very little about how trees die. Trees are long-lived (the oldest known tree is close to 10,000 years old) and that makes them hard to study. Much more data exist on mammal aging and death, especially on human beings. But do we really know how we die in the way these articles tried to understand tree death? They were looking for a defining characteristic. The accumulating data on human death and aging on the other hand seems to just accumulate without revealing anything defining. It might be because death and aging are so intimate and central to our existence as human beings. I think about it a lot, and I’m pretty sure everyone does too. I feel my death ultimately determines who I am as a human being. Most of my decisions can be traced back to me dying, but I just don’t know if I’ll ever be able to understand it. Trees may be harder to study, but their death is certainly easier to comprehend.