Everyone is a number in this dystopian near-future where cameras track your every move. Score above 90 and your set for life. Score below 75 and you’re on your own, kid.
The Cycler Series
The Cyler Series: What would you do if you woke up one day as a member of the opposite sex? For Jill McTeague, this is no hypothetical question. It’s real life!
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While I await the sage advice of my editor, who will either savage my novel or gently nudge it toward something even finer that it already is, I’ve had the time to ponder some things. I do most of my pondering while I’m out running. This keeps my mind off the running, which, if I really stop to dwell on it, is kind of painful and unpleasant. Overall, I’m underwhelmed by the quality of my own thoughts when they’re not tuned specifically to the task of writing novels. I think in the absence of this career I might have turned out rather flabby in the thinking department, and, worse still, a whiner. But there have been a few keepers among the detritus my vacationing mind has thrown up on the shores of consciousness. Here’s one: Has an increase in mobility terminally frayed the ties that once kept us connected to one another? Would we all be better off if we lived and died in the same place, connected to the same people, rather than flinging ourselves all over the globe in search of adventure/excitement/enlightenment/cash, etc.? Or is this wanderlust part of our human nature? I ask this not because I have any regrets. After all, I met my husband in a town neither of us grew up in and we adopted our daughter from yet another one. We are a full-blown transatlantic family and there is not a single member of this extended clan I could imagine living without. But… I am almost always in the unpleasant state of missing someone. Missing a lot of people, in fact. And it bothers me that my daughter will not have the same kind of upbringing I had. Her grandparents won’t pop over every weekend for a visit, because they live far away. Nor will she gather for cake and ice cream for every single cousin’s, aunt’s, uncle’s, and grandparent’s birthday. Instead, she’ll see members of her extended clan occasionally and, if she’s anything like her mother, spend the rest of her time missing them. I don’t believe we can go back. I know I can’t. I think we are a mobile species and will continue to be so. Certainly email, video iChat, Facebook and youTube make the separations more bearable. But is bearable good enough? Or can we do better? 5 Responses to “Thoughts from a Vacationing Mind”Leave a Reply |
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I think we (I) probably need a fundamentally different attitude to meeting and making friends, getting close to people, and accepting when they are and aren’t there. I’m still working on getting that new attitude. As I prepare for my second transatlantic move, and contemplate the fact that I’ve kept contact with almost nobody from the first.
i was drawn to check on your site because, you guessed it, i missed u! am intrigued by your topic…yet although i am a person prone to wander, like yourself, i have nonetheless found myself to be deeply connected to a few communities: 1.) my family – not the whole extended lot, but a few key family members & friends, 2.) my work community – friends who share the same passion & values across the globe, and 3.) my dance friends – again, just a handful.
it doesn’t replace what we had growing up…my friends from kenya don’t drop by for coffee. but i feel like the connections, though harder to maintain, are more meaningful.
i like richard’s comment about a “fundamentally different attitude.” would be interested to hear more.
I miss you too, Egipsey! I too would like to hear more about Richard’s “fundamentally different attitude.” I have one much-traveled friend who says he just accepts the reality of his pinball existence and enjoys the people he happens to be with at the time. I think I’d like to aim for that. But, in the meantime, I wish video skype was better.
I was just yesterday or so sitting in my creative writing class trying to think of the few books I’ve read most recently to fulfill my part of the obligatory introduce-yourself-to-the-class icebreaker, and since I don’t actually read very much, one of the books I ended up mentioning was (RE)CYCLER (which I read a year ago when it came out), and that got me all nostalgic and wanting to re-visit your blog to see if you were still full of interesting things to say. And, it looks like you are. C3
Accepting the reality of a pinball existence seems like a nice way to go, if you can do it, but then again, is it really the right thing to do? I don’t know if you’re acquainted with THE SECRET, this sort of new-age, law-of-attraction philosophy that’s been popular lately, but one thing I read recently as a tip from THE SECRET is that “attachment” is detrimental to a person’s happiness because attachment implies fear of loss. THE SECRET would argue that “appreciation” would be a better substitute for “attachment” because it doesn’t imply that element of fear–we can appreciate things even while we accept their absence.
I don’t know how I feel about that theory, though. I do agree that “appreciation” is an overall less-negative feeling than “attachment”, but I’m not sure that the complete absence of negativity is what we should strive for. After all, while “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,” the very concepts of “good” and “bad” are only defined as opposites of each other. I mean, there is no such thing as “good” unless there is a “bad” to compare it to, right? So, in a way, removing all “bad” from our existence to leave only “good” behind sort of negates the whole concept of what is “good” in the first place.
So, thank you, THE SECRET, but I think I might enjoy my sense of attachment a bit too much right now to do away with it. I don’t care if it’s a negative feeling; I need some negativity in my life, to offset and heighten all the positivity.
So, yeah, I understand the pain that comes with your constantly missing people, but maybe, in some roundabout way, it’s good for you to feel it? (I think what I’m trying to do is offer some words of encouragement. ^^;)
I do think that our hyper-mobile, hyper-connected modern-day lives are probably less socially and emotionally valuable (and less preferable) than the good ol’ days of making friends across the street, knocking on doors to visit, and growing up attached to our communities and families, but, yeah…what am I to do about it? I’m a product of the new millennium: I love the internet, I often find texting easier than calling, and I’m not likely to build my career in any town anywhere near my family. I guess the best I can do now is cherish those good, close times I’ve lost and just keep trying to live the happiest, most productive life I’m able.
Ultimately, I just have faith that everything will always work out in the end.
Thanks, Sandra. I’m with you. Attachment can be difficult but I wouldn’t live without it. Appreciation only goes so far. There’s something much more rewarding about needing someone. Despite all the pain of missing them when they’re gone (or when you’re gone), it’s well worth it. And it’s good to remember the advantages of our pinball existence too.