Monday morning, alas, brings the return of the grey and wet. The forecast calls for a redundancy of weather icons as far forward as the forecast reaches. Sure enough, a fine mist materializes on the windshield as I drive in this morning, wipers occasionally pushing the tiny drops into a merged stream running away to my vision's periphery.
This morning's commute shuffle-playlist is smoothly varied. It switches gears from a lively piano jazz rhumba to Rod Steward trying to croon, from R&B in both Spanish and English to Booker T. Jone's Crazy.
Listening to the latter, a series of thoughts/connections dash through my head (the commute is slow moving, traffic is heavy, lots of waiting at traffic lights, time for part of the mind to wander). Crazy; crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result; heading into the campus again on a Monday morning; working to effect change; "Why," as Bruce Cockburn sings, "does history take such a long, long time?"
Cynicism! Fresh on a Monday morning after a beautiful and satisfyingly productive weekend, cynicism. Really? So readily to hand? This brings me up short and causes me to take a quick mental inventory.
Hmmmm... I don't feel cynical about my life, my work, my commute, the college I am commuting to. So why did a simple train of thoughts deliver me so quickly to that spot? Maybe because cynicism is the low-hanging fruit of intellectual reasoning. It is like the Island of Conclusions in Norton Juster's wonderful children’s book, The Phantom Tollbooth. You reach it’s stranding shores simply by making a mental jump (thus the phrase, jumping to conclusions). Cynicism works much the same way, and is dangerously easy to fall into.
And cynicism begets more cynicism. Worse, sometimes it seems witty and even smart, which makes it acceptable in polite society as an entertaining substitute for a bad attitude. But, a monkey in silk, a sow's-ear purse, or, to use the variant that saw more recent political usage, so much lipstick on a pig.
Cynicism also fails to present either a real vision of the world or a meaningful path forward. It often creates a justification for doing nothing and going nowhere. It could be the subject of this passage from The Phantom Tollbooth: "...if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That’s why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones." And as Juster also points out in the same book, "The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort."
By now, the Weepies are singing, startlingly presciently:
Guess I'm getting old wandering this way
Wondering what's wrong and right
You try to move along but the traffic holds you still
Or did I lose the will to fight?
Monday come like Tuesday
You were something else, I will admit
I remember what you told me
Only I wish I could forget
Only I wish I could forget
[I tell you, somedays I swear there is something sentient about the iPod's shuffle of music.]
I purpose, then, to forget to be cynical, to focus instead on the reasons I do the many things I do each day, and to be thankful for the opportunity to do them. I purpose to walk with my eyes open and to ignore the things best seen through closed eyes. It takes very little more effort to do.
As one of the Tollbooth's characters points, out, "...it's not just learning that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn the things that matter."
Today's full playlist:
- Michael Camilo: Armando's Rhumba
- Rod Stewart: The Way You Look Tonight
- Raymond Castellon: Tu No Me Quieres Na
- Traveling Wilburys: Cool Dry Place
- Booker T. Jones: Crazy
- The Weepies: Wish I Could Forget
- Posted via Hermes.
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