I knew the word paradox, and always had vague notions of what it meant--a puzzle or riddle of some sort. I made one up: “The greatest truth is that there is no greatest truth.” I went along for years holding the notion that a paradox is neat little word game. Then a couple years ago I read something that changed my mind. The following is a bit of science, but if you bear with it, I promise I’ll tie it in.
Atoms are made of smaller parts, and these parts act as waves, repeating in cycles, rather than as positioned points of mass. For instance, an electron, the part that zings around the nucleus, exists in all its theoretically possible positions, all at once. Every possible outcome--up/down/right/left--exist simultaneously, in a superposition, until an outside force acts upon it, where it then sticks to one of the two contradictory states. Although the rule applies at small scales, nobody had seen evidence on a large scale, apparently because when things are bigger, outside influences more easily alter that fragile state where all possibilities exist at once.
Early spring 2010 scientists took a tiny metal paddle, cooled it to its “ground state,” and connected it to an electrical circuit. The team verified it had no vibration, then used the circuit to give it a “push,” and saw it move.They put it into a superposition of push and don't push, and through a series of measurements were able to show the paddle both vibrating and not vibrating simultaneously. What this means is that the physical world itself is a paradox. What I thought was a neat little mind game was actually an indicator of the nature of reality--that it’s really true, life is but a dream. Every moment, every move, every utterance, everything is all melting into a ceaseless beginning that’s contradictory in nature.
There’s this phenomenon called lucid dreaming, where some people can act in their dreams. For most a dream is a crazy, trippy thing where things happen to you, or you seem unable to act. I experienced lucid dreaming once and only once, years ago, where I was in a boxing ring against a white guy with dark eyes/hair, and I suddenly realized that because I was dreaming I could kick his ass even though he was bigger. The point is, because physical reality itself is a paradox, means that living is the real lucid dreaming. When you wake up, you’re no longer involved in sleeping dreams, but in the real dream, where you’re able to act. Living is the real lucid dreaming. Or maybe, real living is lucid dreaming. Lucid living is really, really dreaming--something like that.
Anyway, I told the two muses I’d write something great for them, to see if they might forgive me for being a bonehead. It really was painful, but it was illuminating. Made me see how a part of me is very possessive of the overall me. Jung would say it’s the Anima archetype, and I’d say he’s right. In a way I practically need to be taken hostage by who I love. Once there, it’s been nice the couple times I’ve had it. I’ve never had a real ménage a trios, and of course because I’m not god, I have no idea if we’d have our tongues and such in each other right now had I not sent the message. I asked if I could at least have a chance to persuade them. I said I’d write something really beautiful and human, and if they liked it they might consider forgiving me, and keep being my muses.
I knew I had stuff from last year I needed to revise/add to, I could present that to persuade them; it’s human and beautiful, but not in the way I meant. Plus I wanted to write something new, something deserving of their spirits and beauties. I was afraid I wouldn’t find something grand enough, but it turns out the story to frame it is from my own family. It happened over Super Bowl weekend, and it had drama, screaming and yelling, and it articulates a bigger idea that I think is very human.
My family is like most families in that it has a certain degree of dysfunction and estrangement. I don’t know what the average dysfunction/estrangement is, but I’d bet ours is a little above average, like maybe sixty-five percent, who knows. Anyway, it was planned that I’d drive my dad to my older brother’s in the east
My older brother’s daughters, two of my nieces: T is nine, P is six, and they have lots of pets--chickens, chics, turtles, rats, rabbits, cats, dogs, horses, and a goldfish. I was surprised when we went out to the hen house to check eggs. One had been pecked open by the little brown birds which had snuck under the netting. The girls were very clinical in their approach to the not completely formed baby chick, and examined it before throwing it onto a nearby pile of dirt and burying it. We watched their mom do some horse stuff in her ring, then I asked if we could go hiking. T and P were stoked to, just like they were to walk the shore when we were at the beach house over Thanksgiving. My other brother’s kids don’t like to hike, and my sister doesn’t let my nephew out of her sight, so one of the things I found out this year is that finally, at family gatherings I have someone to go hiking with. I feel that at least some of the family should go hiking or surfing or something on holidays. That way there’s good stories for dinner. Anyway, we walked around their ranch and checked out some of the adjoining fields. Then later I wanted to go explore some more, and only P wanted to go. So we went, and then T and her dad chased us down with quads. T commanded her quad very competently while I sat on the back, even having to back it up to turn around when we ran into a dead end. Then we went to the local museum, checked out a little history, did a little shopping, and had a great dinner.
The first bump was after dinner when P asked me to play a game on wii. You need these wand-like things, and we were getting ready to play, and T decided she wanted to play, took the wand from P, and made her cry. I showed no favoritism, because there wasn’t any, but I remember in the past, T squeezing P out of the way for my attention. While T was getting scolded for making P cry, I thought to say something to T. I wanted to let her know that it was embarrassing to me when she was inconsiderate to her sister like that. She was in our presence, she knew we were about to play, and she should’ve just called for next game. I decided to let it go.
Near when it was their bedtime they got a little squirley, nothing too bad I didn’t think, but their mom got in her mode that I had seen before, and a couple times that day, and started scolding them in their rooms, and not screaming but loud enough that I heard it, she said she’d slap their face. I think slapping a child’s face is wrong, I don’t think it should ever happen. I was slapped in the face plenty as a child, I even had stuff broken across my back more than a few times, and I understand parenting has evolved a lot since the sixties and seventies--maybe a swat on the butt and send them to their room, or extra chores or something? But no slapping the faces of children.
So I’m uncomfortable, and a little tired, and my dad starts up conversation with my brother about what traffic might be like. In other words, he didn’t want to sleep at the ranch but wanted to drive to the beach house. It had been a long day, and I was irritated, and I didn’t mind the idea of waking up at the beach house either. So I didn’t say anything, and listened to my dad lead my brother into the notion of us leaving that night. My brother says OK, and now it’s about telling the mom and kids. T starts crying, the mom goes ballistic.
My dad is in his eighties and showing signs of his second childhood. He’s more fussy about things than say twenty years ago. One of the most kind, gentle people I’ve ever known, but a little more bumbling, a little more fussy these days, as is to be expected. When my brother implied we’d be staying with him that night, one of us should’ve said something. Now that my dad was wanting to leave, I should’ve said that we had to stay at that point, and that it would be OK, we’d just drive in the morning. In that sense the whole screaming and yelling was my fault, because staying would’ve prevented it, and I could’ve got my dad to see that. But as I said, I was irritated, and there really was a concern about the drive in the morning. If we left then, the traffic equation was totally different. Anyway, it turned into this big deal where she was screaming we broke the kid’s hearts, and how they wanted to make us breakfast an all. I finally had to yell to tell her to be quiet, to explain that we didn’t know we were meant to stay, and that she had scolded the kids in a manner I didn’t care for. They told me I couldn’t tell them how to parent their kids. We patched it up best we could before we left, it wasn’t a peeling out of the driveway in anger type thing.
So I thought about what happened, and realized I wasn’t asking them to parent differently, what I wanted was the courtesy of them not doing it while I was there. Polite people say to their kid, “We’ll be discussing this matter later,” or something like that. I’m very much against corporal punishment of children. I don’t think a child’s face should be slapped under any circumstance. Plenty of reasons for an adult to have their face slapped, but not children. So do I endure the discomfort of them disciplining their kids in the manner that they do, or do they wait till I’m gone? I think the reasonable thing would be the latter, but I wish that somehow my brother and sister-in-law would realize it’s not OK to slap a kid’s face, and that if they ever saw someone else do it, they could let them know it's somehting they used to do, but no longer.
