This is ridiculous

“We’re getting more ridiculous all the time.”

I jotted that line down a little while ago after it whizzed by my ears as I listened to an audiobook; it was a character’s assessment of what was going on in the world, of course. I can’t remember if it was a recent novel or one of the old 19-teens or 1930s books I like to peruse.

It would be comforting if it was an older book, because then the silliness of our contemporary era wouldn’t be so disconcerting. If people had said, “We’re getting more ridiculous all the time,” 90 years ago, then we could be comforted to know that people have always been ridiculous. It feels as if things are getting more ridiculous lately, but maybe it’s because I don’t take anything as seriously as I once did, and so it’s easier for me to find the silliness in our great debates.

In The Wizard of Oz film, 83 years ago, Oz The Great and Powerful was revealed to be a buffoon spinning wheels behind a curtain, which was pretty ridiculous — and surely the men and women behind the curtain nowadays are buffoons, if we examine them carefully enough.

I’m glad the myths about our great and powerful wizards have long ago been exposed as such. Imagine what it would be like to be ruled by greedy, grasping folks who have no greater ambition than to win the next election. That would be, well, ridiculous.

Turn it off – well, not ALL of it

Just for a few minutes before I invite the outside world into the house electronically in the morning, I wish to scribble a few words that are free from that stimulus. Habits are hard to break, and it’s especially hard these days to break the habit of zooming online first thing in the morning and several times a day.

They want us addicted, they want us binging, whoever “they” are — these are the bread and circuses the Roman emperor spoke of, honed to a sharp edge and carving our brains up for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Head cheese.

So what do I have to say now, when my brain is still clear and stimulated by little more than a brisk late-summer morning? “Turn it off and leave it off!” is the first exhortation that springs to mind, although I release the words for consumption into my web log, and so the advice is counterproductive and disappears into the white noise of other electronic voices.

I’m left to hope and pray that some will hear some truth in what I say. Like all advice givers, I am a hypocrite, crying to anyone who will hear, “Turn off your electronic stimulants, all of them, and turn your ears and eyes to the sights and sounds of nature. Of course, don’t turn ME off.”

Switch

“As a writer, I need to relax and let the words flow.”

“No, no, quite the opposite. You need to focus, which requires intensity.”

“You’re both wrong. You need to relax, intensely!”

Don’t you just love being pulled in several different directions? How do golfers concentrate on keeping the right grip, keeping this elbow straight and that knee crooked? They have to pay attention to a half-dozen things simultaneously while relaxing and going with the flow of the shot.

How do you do that?

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice, man, practice!

Concentrate on the grip, swing after swing, practice getting the grip right. Concentrate on the grip AND keeping that elbow straight, swing after swing, until you can do both. Then add the knee thing, over and over, and the other half-dozen things, until you can do it all at once.

It happens by practicing, and practicing until you can do it, and practicing until you can do it well, and practicing until you reach the next level after that.

It never happens by getting it right the first time. It never happens by trying it a few times and then deciding you can’t do it. It happens by trying it as many times as it takes to get it right.

It begins with turning a little switch in your mind to the setting that says, “I will do this.” It’s how a concert violinist gets to the concert hall, it’s how the golfer perfects the swing, it’s how Luke Skywalker lifts the X-wing out of the swamp with his brain.

What is it that you’re trying to do? Are you trying it every day, over and over? You know the answer to that because if you ARE, then you’re doing it better every day.

And if you’re NOT doing it better every day, then you need to find that little switch in your mind and flip it.