The Alps

One of the frequent events on the way of one’s life is disillusionment form our old believes. We construct mental models of how certain things are, and what to expect of them, while the truth may unfold in a very different way. I’ve had my own share of these kinds of mirages rather frequently in my own experience of life. One of them is associated with the profession that I have chosen and its reality.

A long time ago, around the time that I was an undergraduate student, I started to think that academic job is a very suitable one for me, and I knew that I wanted to pursue a higher degree. when time passed by, I started believing in the idea more and more. As an introverted person, I knew that I am not good in presenting myself well in the context of an engineering or consulting firm, since my introversion and sparse talking would eventually stop my growth in these places. I started to believe that academia is a place for true research and exploration and the pushing frontier of the sciences. The idealized form of this thought was formed in my mind sometime when I was in Iran. After coming to the U.S more than ten years ago for graduate studies, I still kept the thought alive. I would see some signs contrary to my mental model, but I hold on to the old thoughts. Four years ago after graduation, I started my job as an academic.

My time is divided between long hours of sitting in administrative meetings, a never ending effort of writing various academic proposals, traveling which is always in a rush for presenting something and heading back right after that, and teaching and grading. What was truly lacking was the research and scholarly work, which was my only reason for heading to academia. In its current form in academia, you don’t have the time to do the research yourself, we are providers of fund for students to do the research. my disillusionment and discontentment started shortly after.

My father in-law has been an academic person in Chemistry for almost 40 years in Iran. The other day, he shared a beautiful example of his own understanding of the dilemma, which I ought to share.

He said, imagine all your life you wanted so desperately and passionately to travel to Alps and see the magnificent mountains, so you got a job as a cook’s helper or dishwasher in a wagon of a train that travels though the Alps for several days. You are trapped in a service car, with a small hole on one side, with a view of the mountains. Every now and then, you find sometime between toiling at work and washing dishes, to go to the hole on the wall and watch the mountains. After a couple of minutes, the next order arrives in the kitchen and off you go to work! He said, this has been my life. Toiling in the kitchen, for the hope of a glimpse of the wonder and magnificence of what science and knowledge had to offer. Every now and then, I could watch the scene from that hole of crack in the wall, but I never had the opportunity to be the passenger. I never had the opportunity to even get out the train in the next stop and ponder. I was always so busy working. Don’t live like me, he said. Be a passenger instead.

I realized that I’ve also been working in that kitchen for the past four years for a hope of occasional glimpse of the Alps. I need to rethink my future direction of my life. I think we shouldn’t forget for what purpose we are spending our vital energy source in our life.

Turning point

This morning, despite the heavy rain and deep grey clouds, I feel that after a long time, I have the energy and the enthusiasm to pick up my old projects that have been on hold for a long time. It happened to me this morning, after almost two years of fatigue and lack of energy to create.

I tried to analyze my condition and find the reason for this shift, since I believe that if I don't have enough understanding of what is happening to me, then I won't be able to improve my life in the future, repeat or understand the experience. According to my personal experience, I think our lives are a collection of all experience that we have since our early childhood. all positive, negative, and neutral experience are accumulated in us over our lifetime. Some fade away as time passes by and partially disappear, while the others (for example certain traumas) don't lose their taste and color and stay with us for a long time. This sum, this accumulation of all neutral, positive, and negative experience with all their relative weights determine (most of the time) how we feel and how much energy do we have.

In my case, I had a very difficult two years. Not being satisfied with my job, difficult pregnancy and a traumatic C-section, stress of moving to a new home shortly after, and not being able to sleep well for the past 16 months:), have left me with lack of energy for a long time. At the same time, the positive experience of Demian growing up has been a source of positive energy, but I had still so much fatigue to compensate for. After two months of leave from my job, this morning I felt that I have passed the turning point, I have moved from the negative energy domain to the positive side of the curve. Then, I started thinking about all my postponed projects, the unwritten short stories that I have the plots in my notebook, and the non-fiction book that I have the outline of the chapters. They are waiting for me to visit them again.

Vignettes of life

children grow up and learn with a fascinating rate. There are recurring periods of continuous growth and every now and then, there is a huge jump in the way they learn.
Before last week, Demian was using several single word to communicate. Since 3-4 days a go, he has been making sentences all of a sudden (not very frequently though) and tells me some word that I haven't taught him deliberately. He probably picked them up when we were taking.
It is very interesting that he know that he can only talk to us in Farsi, while he talks to other people in English. Yesterday I heard him talking to a lady in coffee shop, telling her "yes, please!"

On the meaning of life, Will Durant -2

This book is so far one of the best ones that I have read in past several years, and I have to warn you, despite the thin look, it takes a long time to read it. I realized that sometimes I have stopped on a page for an hour and reflecting on the content. Some times it happens that I need a walk to think about the paragraph that I read and reflect on it. It is deep, touches your inner person, and makes you look at the problem from different glasses.
Will Durant was an agnostic scholar with a systemic mind and I have admired him since I was exposed to his Story of Civilization years ago. As a system's thinker, he organizes the book into two parts: Problem definition, and a collection of answers to the problem. Finally he states his own opinion on what could possibly be the meaning of life from his own perspective.

He breaks down the problem definition into several parts which provide various perspectives on the question. These divisions are:
1- The letter he wrote, problem definition from Will's point of view
2 -The problem and religion
3- The problem and science
4- The problem and history
5- The problem and Utopias
6- Suicide of the Intellect
As a writer and philosopher, he puts the questions in beautiful words. I will try to write some quotations from his books every now and then.

1- The letter

...Astronomers have told us that human affairs constitute but a moment in the trajectory of a star; geologist have told us that civilization is but a precarious interlude between ice ages; biologists have told us that all life is but war, a struggle for existence among individuals, groups, nations, alliances, and species; historians have told us that " progress" is a delusion, whose glory end in inevitable decay; psychologists have told us that the will and the self are the helpless instruments of heredity and environment, and once the incorruptible soul is but a transient incandescence of the brain...

Will goes on in this letter to present the problem of meaning from the other points of view such as religion, industrial revolution, etc. In other part, he writes:

...the greatest mistake in human history was the discovery of "truth." It has not made us free, except from delusions that comforted us and restraints that comforted us. It has not made us happy, for truth is not beautiful, and didn't deserved to be so passionately chased...

He continues to put the problem in perspective and then asks the recipients to write back to him and tell him where they find meaning, consolation and happiness and where in the last resort their treasure lies.

Personally I see lots of similarity between our current times and Will Durant's time (1930), however with a difference. His time was the golden age of science and modernism, science was providing explanations and answers to several of humanity's questions. At that time, we thought that science (vs. religion and as a replacement for religion) can also provide us with answers to our existential questions. When I was a younger person, I also thought with enough search in science and enough progress, we will eventually reach at the answer for the ultimate questions. That, was my major motivation for pursuing science and immersing myself in the boundless beauty of the science. But in the process of growing older, I realize that I haven't found a satisfying answer for my existential questions either. we are in the age of disillusionment from science; old religions are becoming stronger and new age faiths are flourishing. We keep ourselves extremely over-worked, and the technology at our service has made us its slave. We keep flipping channels late at night in front of TV to carry our half-dead brain and body alive to the next day. The architecture and structure of our current society that we live in, is not giving us any chance and time to think and pursue our vital questions.

(To be continued...)

On the meaning of life, Will Durant -1

The fall season is showing its signs in the City. The leaves are turning yellow and red gradually and a cold breeze has started. After dropping off my son in his Kindergarten, I arrive at the coffee shop to get my morning coffee and I have an hour free to myself before going through my day. I unwrap my new book carefully and begin to read. " On The meaning of life" by Will Durant.
In my whole life, no matter if my life was going relatively well or I was going though very difficult times and hell, I never could stop thinking about this question. It has a certain attraction to me. I though about this question many times, I found some reasons to myself which are collected in a bag: every now and then I open it up and look at them again. Some reasons are old and expired so I get rid of them, then I (hopefully) add new reasons to this pile. But thinking about The Question, always puts me in pain and euphoria in an alternating way. I found the title of the book when I started reading The Story of Civilization of Durant. I came across the title, and couldn't resist not buying the book.

The book has an attractive opening story. In the autumn of 1930, Will Durant, was cleaning the autumn leaves outside of his home in New York, when a well dressed man approaches him and tells him with a calm voice to provide him some reasons to live, or he is planning to commit suicide. Will, tries really hard to come up with several answers to his question on the spot. The man leaves and will never sees him again. This strange encounter stays on his mind and makes him unsettled when time passes by. He begins drafting a letter, stating his question and asking others to write back to him the motivation and drives for living, and what they have figured out about the meaning of their lives. He send the letters to 100 individuals, ranging from Nehru to Bertrand Russell , covering a range of scientists, spirituals, writers, leaders, spiritual peoples, etc. The gathers the responses, organizes them in a book which I am currently reading.
I will write about the interesting ideas and thoughts that I read in the book and will write them here gradually.

Seize the day...

My 15 months old son

Ephemeral

In an attempt to distract my mind for a while and refresh my day in the local bookstore, I pick up a visual history of New York City. I sip my coffee and turn the first page. Four hundred images from New York City, from the initial sketches that go back to more than 300 years ago, to the current time.I see an island and the surrounding lands covered with shades of green. Forests and rocks. The first settlements take shape. I turn pages one by one. I speed up the passage of time. Manhattan resembles a land that is fertilized by seeds of industrial revolution: buildings, thousands of them start growing from the land and take roots. Fast forward in time to the current century, buildings grow out of the soil, skyscrapers become taller and reach for the sky. Population rushes into this small piece of land. I look at the faces of the individuals in the pictures. Young and old fellows, infants in the old-fashioned strollers in Central park (which was rather a little bald and tree-less land at the turn of the century). I stare at a picture of an infant girl, sitting on the lap of her mother who is wearing a winter velvet dress and a fashionable hat of the time. I realize that the infant girl must be dead for decades now. I don't know of her life story, did she pass away as a child, a young girl, at child birth, or as a very old woman, but I know that she is dead now for a while and is a part of history. All fellows in the picture, young and healthy, smart, brave and full of energy are now buried for years in the history.

The face of the city is changing. I can feel it since four years ago that I arrived in this place. Some old buildings in the city keep the memory of the residents in themselves for a while, but after a short time, all these memories fade away like the ephemeral smell of a dried rose which has been a living flower some day. New buildings are built on the spot of old ones. People come and leave and take the history by themselves. Shops open up and close. The face of the city is extremely dynamic and ever changing. I realize that I, we, are becoming a part of history. Like the young lady with the velvet dress, I am also becoming a part of history. I will die some day. I will be forgotten as the time passes by. What would stay behind of us?
I always wonder.