Theory of Tubes

Every time my friends and I sit around the campfire on the first night of a backpacking trip, the subject of tubes enters the conversation. I quickly recognize my que to briefly discuss the theory of tubes for all to enjoy. My friends quickly roll their eyes and move on to another subject. Here is the theory.

Life is about tubes. Everything we do is about tubes.

In the morning we get out of bed. What is a bed? A blanket shaped like a tube which we put ourselves in each night. We get up, walk into the bathroom and turn on the shower. The water comes right out of a tube. We squeeze out the shampoo, which is in a tube. Next we might even relieve ourselves by pushing liquid waste through a tube or something else that is solid (see my blog about pooping). All this stuff gets flushed down a tube. I like brush my teeth with a thing shaped like a tube after I squeeze tooth paste (out of a tube) onto the brush.

Next I walk into the kitchen and open up a fridge, which contains all kinds of things packaged in tubes. I might open the milk and poor it into a glass. The milk bottle and glass are both tubes. I might then drink the milk and feel it go down a tube into my stomach compartment.

A few mornings ago, I drove to the airport in my car. What is a car if it isn't a tube on wheels? And an airplane? Definitely a tube with wings. Have you ever been in a large airport like Atlanta? The only way to get from terminal A to terminal B? Go underground and get on a tube-like train that goes through a tube-like tunnel.

Most of the stuff we use comes in a package. I was once told that a banana is the most effective package ever designed. You peel off the peel and eat the banana. A banana is contained inside of a tube. But that's a natural package. What about all the stuff we manufacture? We often unpackage subcomponents and assemble them with other subcomponents and then package them again into a component that is worth consumption. These are distruted in trucks that have a large square tube attached.

As you can see, this theory can go on and on and on and on ....

Since life is about tubes, all you have to do is talk about life and a tube will be part of the conversation.

I Voted Early

It was Friday afternoon and I found myself without transportation 2 blocks from an early voting booth. So I high tailed my unprepared self to the place, filled out the form, showed my ID, and voted. If you have read any of the previous blogs you may get the idea that McCain was my man. However, when it came right down to pushing the button, Obama became my President.

It seems to me that the poor economic conditions are so blown out of proportion by the media and politicians that we will all be so surprised when it springs back to life just like oil prices have dropped. Soon the soldiers will return from a long fought war, we can concentrate on the aspects of life that are more important.

I'm hoping to get my right to affordable health care under the Obama regime. God knows I've worked far too long for "the man" who has provided it to me at the cost of enslaving me to a corporate culture so warped that the only thing that saved my mind was a prescription to an anti-depressant.

When the election is over and we crown Obama as our new King and Savior, all of us may be able to rest more easy at night knowing that we will have our needs secure, options open, and bank accounts in tact.

Four Doors

Wearing a tattered yet comfortable knit bathrobe, Grant walked towards the front door of his stylish high rise apartment. It is a daily ritual to retrieve the morning paper. His hair was gray and bushy, perhaps the time for a trim. His long successful business career was now only a memory. And yet, as if by instinct, his curiosity to keep up with the times had not been quenched. Today, although he never knew it, would be the beginning of something new for him.

The locks on the door snapped as he turned them to the open position. The sounds seem to echo through the entire apartment. The marble tile floors were smooth and clean, yet cold. He'd forgotten to put on his slippers which were normally waiting on the edge of his bed each morning. The cold floor felt good to his callused covered strong yet aging feet. He didn't need the weather forecast to know that it was going to be an unusually cold day. He'd left the room temperature down during the night. Breathing the crisp air was how he preferred to sleep. He opened the door like usual according to the daily ritual.

The morning paper, which usually lay atop the door mat, was not to be seen. Very unusual indeed were his thoughts. This inconvenient detail was enough to make his mind wander over the possibilities of its disappearance. In his younger days, such a kink in his daily expectations may have triggered a sharp disappointing emotional disturbance. And yet now, due to the long hard lessons of life, he had learned to see unexpected events as opportunities or challenges. This morning it gave him a mission.

He stepped out into the hallway to begin his investigation. According to his cracker jack memory, each paper at his corresponding neighbor's door way was properly in place. Door 702, 753, 790, and 787 do not have the papers delivered he thought to himself. It was one of those details that most people never notice. Yet for him, this detail was easily brought out to his conscience mind to use when needed. His was the only paper missing. He is the first one up in the morning and perhaps nobody would notice if he snatched theirs. Most of his neighbors didn't have the time to read the morning paper during the week. His mind quickly calculated which neighbors were most likely to leave their paper abandoned on the door mat.

Probability can sometimes seem definitive at times. This was one of those times. Directly across from him, lived a young traveling news corespondant. He and Matt often drank together in the hot pool on the roof. It was friendship built on mutual respect. Matt often asked Grant about his political opinions. Grant was never shy about discussing them. He was also not afraid to walk over and snatch Matt's morning paper.

Suddenly Matt's Room 701 door opened. Quickly Grant was knocked over the head by an unseen assailant. Grant was stunned. As he went to the floor, he managed to catch a glimpse of the perpetrator. His mind became blurred. Soon his body gave in to the lack of consciousness.

His limp sleepy body laid for 2 hours at Matt's door. The paper was in his hand when Sandy discovered him. Both their apartment doors were open. Sandy was concerned yet annoyed. This situation did not fit in to her morning stress.

Worthy

This is a photo of James Worthy. He is a Hall of Fame NBA basketball player now long retired. As a teenager, I watched him play for the LA Lakers, protective goggles and all. This picture shows him closely followed by Kurt Rambis, another one of my all time favorite players. James has an interesting last name. Somehow it makes me wonder where his last name Worthy came from.

Wiktionary defines worthy as worth, merit, or value. One is honorable or admirable if one is worthy. If you were worthy, you might think of yourself as deserving or having sufficient worth. Long ago I thought it meant that I was somehow distinguished or that I was an eminent person.

How do we define worth? Nowadays, our worth is most likely decided by the size of our bank account. But there are many other ways to define worth or value. If you are in school, your teacher sees your potential worth as a good student. If you are at work, your boss determines your worth based on the number of tasks you can complete or by how good you make him/her look. There are many societies and sub-societies that define the merits of a person based on what some may seem as distorted or irrational values.

Are you worthy? It's a question I was asked many times by distinguished religious leaders who defined the word by a list of about 16 questions. The questions were defined to give value to a set of ideas that would support a person's loyalty to a religion. There were a few questions about belief, one must believe a certain dogma to be worthy. Another set of questions centered around sacrificing one's self by following rules not normally seen as valuable by most of the "outside" society. These were a way of setting you apart from the outsiders. There was also a question that I could never understand how to answer. It went something like this... Are you honest? How does one answer such a question? The last question of all was again, are you worthy?

Why would a person want to give up the definition of their worth to another person? Is there such a concept as self-worth? Who defines what a person feels within himself as held in high esteem? I believe that one must be true to himself and determine one's own esteem thus ignoring the merits or values that are attempted to be laid on their shoulders.

How does one do this? Perhaps it is by years of experience in becoming knowledgeable about yourself and finding value despite what others may see as a weakness. Are we made of strengths or weaknesses or are we must made up of tendancies? My old religion defined my blind faith as a strength and my doubts as a weakness. Could it actually be that I just tended to believe in the beginning and found out differently as more study was required? And yet some may say I had given into the weakness of doubt. Or is it actually possible that my doubt was a strength and that by choosing no longer to believe, I became more true to who I was, thus making myself more valuable and more worthy?

Is one required to believe in something? I've often been told that this is the case. If I don't believe in religion A, my other options are religions B, C, or D. And yet, like most others, I choose "none of the above". I know many who choose A because they think it is the best possible choice even though it doesn't quite match "in reality" what it is defined to be by the "A" authorities.

How many circles can we spin off of this subject? My only hope is that somehow some person may read this and begin to believe in themselves. It is a long hard road to go down but oh so worth it. There's that word worth again. Here I am starting my own belief system defining religious doubt and self introspection as having merit. So how about it? Anybody want to join in?

If you have a question that you'd like to discussion I will try to pick the top 16. We can then begin to measure everyone in our tribe against the bar. Once in a while, we may want to raise the bar by adding clarification to one of the question or looking at something that may set us apart from the rest of society.

By What Criteria Do We Judge?

This polished metalic red Nissan Altima, with all the trimmings, zoomed passed yesterday. It seemed like some sort of modern chariot. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the comfortable leather seats. Immediately I imagined a cool young professional behind the wheel. But when I looked, it was a surprise to find an elderly man hunched over the steering wheel. Don't get me wrong, I don't hold prejudice against old people. It's just that it wasn't what I expected. Then I began to wonder. Is this old man driving the hot car to make up for the youth he no longer has?

The next thing that flashed through my mind was the old cliche saying, "If you don't have your health, you don't have anything at all." So if that's the case, and it's most likely the old guy in the flashy Nissan wasn't in the best of health, what exactly does he have? Is the car what he has? And he's gonna go out of this world in style?

Then I pictured myself walking through the the glacier cut valleys in the high mountain peaks of Utah last summer. It became painfully obvious to me after day 2 that no matter how much my pack, gear, and outdoor clothing had cost, it was my physical endurance and mind that was gonna get me up the trail. Most people away from the mountain would say I've got my life together. From the outside looking in, they might say something like, "Smart, financially sound, good job, stable, clean, polite, aware of his surroundings ... " Yet in that moment I knew there was something wrong with the way I was being judged. In the mountains, none of these criteria for having it together meant anything. The physical pain was teaching me what was really important. Physical conditioning is what nature demands and I was not prepared to learn this.

So we passed by a couple of Mexican sheep herders living in a make shift cabin protected by a home-made tent. It was filled with supplies, enough to last through the season. They were rounding up horses and walking up and down the steep terrain like it was a walk in the park. They were truly a picture of physical health. And yet, they have nothing as far as material goods is concerned. They may not have even had American citizenship, a social security number, health insurance, savings plan, or anything resembling the old man's metalic red object of desire. And yet, they had more than me or the old man did in that moment.

The next thought racing through my mind is gonna surprise you. Thoughts raced towards a fantasy of an alien spaceship landing in the middle of this crazy scene where middle aged, 401K rich, out of shape, weekend hikers passed by two young, physically fit, poor, minority sheep herders. So, in that moment, I knew that the aliens were gonna have to choose who it was that would be best to abduct. And it wasn't going to me and I was pretty disappointed about it. Most likely the aliens were going to choose a more physically fit specimen. I'd lost out.

To tell you the truth, I'm not really sure what criteria the space aliens would have used to choose their specimen. It seems, however, that these two vastly different experiences were bound to stir up my thinking as to all the crazy things our society uses to judge people. And it's a very confusing thing indeed.

May I list a few examples? And I hope that anyone who reads this will comment about a few more. Here they are.

If you are trying out for American Idol? What matters most is your voice, second is appearance. If you want to win, you need charisma.

If you are religious? You need to dress modestly, not smoke or drink, go to church on Sunday, and it helps if your vocabulary is full of seldom used biblical phrases. But these are only the outward things. To a Saint, physical attributes have very little meaning compared to unselfish acts of kindness and goodness that qualify one for a rich eternal life.

If you are in college? Only two things matter to be successful in getting good grades. Good study habits and/or a high IQ. These forces sometimes seem to oppose one another. But if grades are not important? How much can you drink or do you have a car or .... might be the most important criteria.

If you are rich? The amount of money you have is very imortant.

If you are smart? Intelligence means the most.

If you are dressed well? Clothes mean the most.

If you are healthy? Health means the most.

Is anyone getting the picture? It seems to me that the more I think about this, the more confusing it gets. A person who has it all would be healthy, beautiful, smart, dressed to the nines, rich, have a great singing voice, and ofcourse be charismatic. They would bless other people's lives by quiet unselfish acts of kindness. But if they are all of these things, and don't have health? They don't have much.

Note: Religious peeps have something to look forward to... Mansions in the sky.

Favorite City Spot in Salt Lake City

One of my favorite spots in the city is on Main Street between 2nd and 3rd South. There is a Trax stop, beautiful buildings, and cool places to shop. Sam Weller's bookstore with the Coffee Garden is second to none in my book as a place to sip coffee, have conversation, and stimulate myself intellectually. I took the picture, at left, on a winter January 2008 evening, just a week or so before writing this blog. The Wells Fargo building, it is mis-shaped, is in the background. There's a tree to the right with no leaves and the street lamp bringing light to the people that walk by. The sky is still blue.