Project 35

9:00AM The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and spring is arriving. Today is May. We spent all of April in our houses on lockdown, doing our best to …

9:00AM

The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and spring is arriving. Today is May. We spent all of April in our houses on lockdown, doing our best to try to help keep ourselves and our neighbors safe. Now May is here and I hope we stay safe.

With the weather warming up here in Michigan, I imagine many of us will want to go out—it’s easy to stay locked up when it’s cold and dreary outside. I can see us wanting to go to parks, hang out with friends, play sports, go on boats, and do many of the Michigan spring/summer activities. I mean, here in Michigan we typically only get maybe 3-5 months of weather where we want to be outside. If you’re a person who doesn’t like extreme heat, then it’s really just maybe May, June (maybe) and September. Other than that, it’s can be too hot or too cold. I personally love the heat, so June, July, and August bring me so much warmth, physically and spiritually.

I keep reading things from good friends of mine saying that they’re going to protest the stay-at-home orders and I at first glance, I feel angry. I want to shout at them that the problem is not the stay-at-home orders, the problem is that we don’t have testing and tracing to open back up again. Right now, I pause and realize these people may be experiencing a level of stress that I can’t imagine. While I’ve grown used to staying at home with my parents and even though I’ve not always felt very present being here, I’ve felt safe. I can imagine there are so many out there who don’t feel safe at home, or worse, feel endangered. That these people don’t have an escape, don’t have a way to flee the conflict at home, are afraid they might escalate it, and don’t know how to resolve it. I want to hear more of these stories so I can better feel it.

I think of my friend who fled her husband and left behind her three or four kids because he threatened to kill her. I think of friends who have been raped. I think of friends who have spouses who berate them and blame everything on them. I think of all of the pain that is happening and how little I know about it.

I want us to open up again. I want us to open up physically and I want us to open up emotionally. I fear it and I’m sure many others do as well. I don’t like feeling open when the other person isn’t. I fear the power in us both being open. And yet I’ve seen baring our souls and opening our hearts to one another can be the fastest way to resolve conflict, bring us closer together, and help us solve the problems in the world.

Here’s to opening up.

9:10AM

5:00PM I wonder what society would look like if it had more reconciliation and less retribution? More healing and less vengeance? If I feel hurt by something and I think …

5:00PM

I wonder what society would look like if it had more reconciliation and less retribution? More healing and less vengeance?

If I feel hurt by something and I think the other person is feeling good, there are two main strategies I can employ to change that: 1) I can make the other person hurt, so that we both feel hurt or 2) I can heal my hurt, so that we both feel good.

I think the first strategy is the foundation for many societies, especially the American society. If someone hurts me, I hurt them back, and we’re “even.” I believe the justice system that we have is strongly based in this act of retribution—an updated version of Hammurabi’s code, an eye for an eye, etc. If I commit a crime (hurting someone physically, emotionally, financially, etc.), then I will be punished (hurt) to teach me not to do it again.

I think this not only applies to our justice system but our social system as well. More and more, we are growing into a “cancel culture,” where people are being blacklisted for what they’ve done in the present or the past. If someone says something online that hurts a lot of people, that person is shunned and banned, again, causing punishment (hurt) to that person for their actions.

I wonder what it would look like if we had more reconciliation—if instead of punching back, we healed in. What if we realized that if we resolve our own pain, we can again join them in pleasure? More often than not, I believe the other person caused us pain because they were feeling pain and were seeing it as some act of retribution to even the score. What if we could break that train by healing ourselves?

I believe this is a more effective strategy. I remember reading about people who have forgiven people for murdering their relatives, and when asked why, they say, “What will putting him in prison for the rest of his life do? It won’t bring back my baby.”

I wonder how much more free we would feel if we could communicate publicly without fearing that we would say or do one wrong thing and be punished harshly for it? I wonder how much more healthy we would feel if we focused on healing ourselves more than focused on punishing the other?

I believe we all make mistakes—some by accident and some intentional. I believe that even many of our “intentional” actions that hurt others are coming from a long and complex history of us feeling hurt and not processing it. I hope that as we move forward, we start to see the efficiency in healing ourselves first. While it may not heal the other person, punching them rarely heals us in the long term.

5:10PM

1:00PM I really appreciate when someone is good at what they do. I was just reading an essay about social networks and the inherent status-seeking competition that the popular ones …

1:00PM

I really appreciate when someone is good at what they do. I was just reading an essay about social networks and the inherent status-seeking competition that the popular ones create and I just kept feeling so much admiration for the author who wrote it. It felt as if sentence after sentence I was hitting a new epiphany. I also enjoyed reading the way the author strung the words together, with the syntax, cadence, and cultural references. In a way, it challenged me and soothed me at the same time.

I think how sometimes when someone does something well, I shake my head and bask in the glow of a genius at work. I think how other times I will stew, grumble, and ruminate on the jealousy that I feel but don’t admit. I wonder sometimes why it’s one way or the other.

Regardless, how this person wrote had me glued to the seat (as if I would be doing anything else sitting behind a computer?). It really opened my eyes to how social networks are places for social competition, for status seeking, for proving to other how good one is at a particular task. Twitter’s task is crafting witty 140-280 character messages. TikTok’s task is crafting playful and creative lip-synching videos. Vine’s task (back in the day) was creating short, often comical, videos. Podcast’s task is to create, I believe, profound, funny, and/or raw long-form audio.

Perhaps, as the author says, status seeking is just part of being a human and that it will happen no matter where we go. A part of me really feels tired when I think about playing these games online, or the adult versions where we boast about our jobs, houses, awards, etc. I feel annoyed when I think about bragging to the world about how many places I’ve worked, how many countries I’ve seen, how many widgets I’ve produced. I kind of shrug my shoulders and don’t see the point. And yet, I love when I come across someone who is very good at what they do, and admittedly, sometimes use those third-party credentials as a way to verify their skills and trustworthiness.

I’m likely to follow this author and read a lot more of their stuff. In that way, perhaps I boost their social status, adding them another follower. Maybe social status and the game for it is not a bad thing, it’s just a thing, and we can see it as good or bad, when really it’s good and bad. That’s a topic for another day.

1:10PM

9:00AM Many people in the US are now calling for the shelter-at-home/stay-at-home orders to be lifted, saying that forcing someone to stay home is fascism and that this country is …

9:00AM

Many people in the US are now calling for the shelter-at-home/stay-at-home orders to be lifted, saying that forcing someone to stay home is fascism and that this country is built on freedom. I’m not sure how I feel about this.

On one hand, I agree with them—that the government should not tell people what to do, that people should be free to move about as they please. On the other hand, I see how such freedom of movement is likely to disproportionately hurt some more than others.

Maybe it’s not about whether people move freely but whether the government restricts them from doing so. What if we told ourselves, without any forceful government intervention, that we want to stay at home to save so many others? I think this may work for most people. The problem is, I think most government interventions happened because people weren’t staying at home, weren’t voluntarily abiding. I believe it becomes really difficult to voluntarily comply: if I choose to stay at home but my employer says that I need to work, staying at home means I will lose my job. I’m not sure that’s a decision most people want to make.

However, let’s assume that the government opens it up and people move about freely. Let’s also assume there aren’t that many tests and not much contact tracing, as it doesn’t seem to be happening or being coordinated at a federal level. I imagine what would happen is what happened before: the virus would grow exponentially and then hospitals would be overwhelmed. If hospitals are overwhelmed, that means doctors and nurses are working 12-14 hour shifts (or longer), with inadequate personal protection equipment (PPE), and likely seeing people die one after the other. I can’t imagine what they are going through now, as the virus is slowing down because everyone is staying at home, to what they would be going through if we open up, and how many waves of devastation they can handle before they give up. And this is assuming they don’t contract the virus and either die from it or spread it to their loved ones. I can’t imagine the suffering they must be experiencing.

So when I think about that, I wonder if the people who are shouting at the government to open up are considering the impact it will have on the doctors and nurses. I imagine they won’t be the only people overwhelmed with this. What about the other people who interact with lots of people on a daily basis? The supermarket workers, the flight attendants, the store clerks, etc. While they may not die from the virus, they may get very sick, or even pass it on to someone they love who will die.

I understand that being locked at home has its downsides—plenty of them. I just hope that as we open up more, we do it more responsibly (with tests, contact tracing, and other proven epidemiological tactics), so that we protect as many as we can.

9:10AM

5:00PM I like cover songs. I really enjoy when an individual or a band will take a song from the past and reinterpret it, adding their own personality and flavor …

5:00PM

I like cover songs. I really enjoy when an individual or a band will take a song from the past and reinterpret it, adding their own personality and flavor to it.

Why am I writing about this? One, I realized that I often write here about the things that scare me or worry me and I wanted something a little more light-hearted. Two, I was just listening to a rendition of Mr. Brightside by Run River North and have it stuck in my head.

There’s just something about the cover song, the hybrid of an old song that brings me so many feelings and vivid memories, blended with the soul of a new singer. It plays with my heart and tickles my spirit, in a totally platonic way.

Some of my favorite songs are actually cover songs. I love Jason Mraz’s rendition of Rocket Man, originally sung by Elton John. It doesn’t mean I love the original any less, just in different ways.

Some cover songs I don’t even know are cover songs until maybe even years later. Dave Matthews Band sang All Along the Watchtower and up until recently, I believed it was theirs (it’s not, Jimi Hendrix played it, and apparently, I think it was originally from Bob Dylan).

I guess what I love about them is the ability to maintain a cultural element and adapt it for new times. It allows people to play, recreate, respect, and bring others into the journey. I wonder what impact copyright has had on the creation of cover songs—do we have fewer or more since the publishing industry began? Actually, before there were intellectual property rights on songs, could there even have been something called a cover song? Doesn’t a cover song imply that one person originally came up with it and owns it?

I smile and laugh sometimes when I think about how we define intellectual property. Isn’t learning just taking different elements from other parts of society and putting it together? Once I’ve learned something and it’s in my head, how do I tease out who owns what and give credit (or money) to those people?

I don’t know too much about copyright and intellectual property. Sometimes I think it’s just a story we tell ourselves to pretend as if we have more control and ownership over the world than we do.

Regardless, I’m grateful to be listening to a band and hear them cover a different song, to hear them add their spin, to hear them meld my two worlds together. Plus, it’s easier to sing along to it.

5:10PM