You Are Here

Chag Sameach, Happy Easter, and Ramadan Kareem, everybody. I’m too scattered to focus on one thing this Easter Sunday, so I’ll just share some mental spring cleaning.

Note #1: Howdy, Stranger

“We imagine that we represent the end of history.”
—Shandar Vedantam, You don't actually know what your future self wants

When I want to shirk a self-care chore—something that will benefit me later—it helps to think of my future self as a different person. Future “me” is a phantom, while present me is palpably tired and would rather watch House. I’m not there; I’m here. So I think something like, “She’ll appreciate a clean sink in the morning.” Then it’s not self-care; it’s hospitality.

That might not be as weird as it sounds. A few months from now, the stranger I presume to call “me” will have 30 trillion new cells. Not only will she be biologically new, but she may know and want things that I can’t imagine. As Shandar Vedantam says, continuity of the self is a retrospective illusion. My present “I” feels like the pinnacle of my past and the architect of my future; but somewhere up ahead, I’m just a slipstream in the rear view.

Mysterious stranger, what do you want? I know a few things. You prefer not to wake to a sink full of dirty dishes or, say, a burning authoritarian dystopia. You care about family, friends, and cats. P.S. Be sure to give P.B. his pills on time. I set the bottle at a safe distance from your thyroid meds because, well, we both know how you are in the morning before coffee. You’re welcome. As for all those desserts, I’m sorry to leave you with the consequences, just as my generation is sorry to leave a burning planet for the next. We thought we were the end of history.

Note to Self: It’s not too late to decide what you want to be a running start on.

Note #2: Moral Arc or Hamster Wheel?

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” —Martin Luther King

In 1853, a Unitarian minister and abolitionist named Theodore Parker delivered the sermon on which Martin Luther King’s famous line was based.

Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery and remembered that God is just. Ere long all America will tremble.

I’m comforted by the metaphor of an arc that bends upward. I’m reassured by the thought that the curve is just too big to see, like the surface of the earth. But the more I work on American history lessons, the more I fear we’re on a hamster wheel. In many ways, MAGA Republicans seem like the rebirth of Jacksonian Democrats. On the other hand, the latter smashed stuff up when they were happy.

But two hundred years is very short time—a bump in the road—and we can learn from the past at any given moment. The deliberate omission and distortion of history are what worry me most. If there is an arc, it “bends” whatever way the most powerful among us bend it, unless we push back.

Note to Self: Revisit Bonhoeffer on stupidity.

Note #3: Is That Where the Socks Go?

I need to learn about quantum tunneling. It sounds mysterious and important. What would a quantum tunnel through stupidity look like?

Note to Self: Don’t use a thing as a metaphor until you actually understand it.

Note #4: It Was No Different from the Other Nights

I didn’t celebrate Passover this year, though my low-carb cabinets were incidentally free of leavening. I was not a slave in Egypt, even metaphorically. However, I remember a progressive Haggadah (guide to the Passover seder) that spoke to me one year—one that reached beyond the tribal lore and focused on empathy with enslaved and oppressed people everywhere.

What does that look like in practice? Slavery is a remote, hidden thing now. Everything conspires to insulate us from the supply chains of our purchases. How did we get to this place where children slave away in choking dust to give us cheap electronics? I’m not sure what to do, except make my next phone a Nokia. Big whoop.

Note to Self: Kick a mineral acquisitions executive in the shins. Metaphorically.

Note #5: Is This the Good Place or the Bad Place?

Things are both very good and very bad at the same time.
—Etty Hillesum, 29-year-old Dutch Diarist and Holocaust victim

Human horrors are so ubiquitous that it’s easy to grow numb to them. But I’m still reeling from the discovery that smiley, fuzzy quokka moms will drop their babies in the dust to distract a predator while they run away. Seriously, what kind of planet is this?

Obvious Answer #1: One on which both beautiful and terrible things happen.

Obvious Answer #2: The only one we have.

Note to Self: You are here. You have moral agency and the ability to act. Go wash the dishes. Then you or someone else can peddle off past desserts while watching Hugh Laurie.