All things are relative

So recently (recently being a relative term) I was in one of those, "what is the most fundamentally true statement you can make about the nature of the universe", conversations that are always popping up at parties. The best answer I could come up with was that, "all things are relative". As an aside, the second best answer I could think of was, " nothing is certain, however all things converge in large numbers". Anyway as I was walking down the street today I was thinking about that, not in large scientific ways, but just in my life.

Much of yesterday, today, tomorrow and the next day I have absolutely no commitments whatsoever. I get to wake up and every morning decide how I want to spend that day. Sure I need to eat, and I've got some plans, but these things are up to me, I can eat where and when I want, and change or cancel the plans if I so choose. This may not seem like a particularly big deal. In fact most of you that are reading this have days all the time that are like this, or if not days, large portions of days. For me however, this is an amazing thing. It is amazing because for the past 3 months I have not had a 30 hour period in which I didn't have to be somewhere or doing something. Sure my job is considered to be one of a great deal of freedom, but that is relative to the counselors. The work I do involves a lot of freedom but that doesn't change the fact that every day I have to eat breakfast lunch and dinner at a specific place, sleep in a specific place every night, and largely stay in one place for an entire summer. Strange as this may sound this is one of the great things about camp. It makes me appreciate so many things about my life that I take for granted. You can't truly appreciate the simple joy of sleeping in until 10am, going for a run during the middle of the day, or sitting down to decide how you wish to spend your time for the next 3 days until you haven't really been able to do these things for a while. When I expressed this a long time ago to my uncle Howard, he asked if that wasn't similar to the statement, "I love beating my head against the wall because when I stop it feels so good". He made a point but it was flawed, here the difference; I love camp. Hitting your head against the wall and then stopping implies a relief of pain, but camp isn't painful. I don't really dwell on the things I can't do there because I love the things I am doing. It doesn't change the positive feeling I get from having those things back.

Much like right before camp I am staying with my friend and former camp colleague, Mike 'Ice' Eckberg. He shares a house in St. Paul. It's a nice neighborhood. A lot of modest, but nice homes with mostly young families (lot's of plastic Playschool type furniture around), small backwards which face each other with alleys in between, and tree lined streets. I've really grown the like the twin cities. If one day I come to my senses and get a 9-5 job, a mortgage, 2.3 kids, and a Toyota Camry, this is one of the places on my shortlist right now. I should note that although I have been here during winter I have not lived through a Minnesota winter. There are nice neighborhoods, a quality culture, actual seasons (something I have never had), and rather friendly people. It is the last two I wanted to hit on.

As much as I hear about how people leave cold places to escape the winters I think they may be missing something. There is something that is part of the reason that more people go to baseball games in St. Louis than Florida, parks are vacant during the best parts of the year in Phoenix but packed in Minneapolis, and why more restaurants are built to accommodate outdoor seating in Germany than California. I think without bad weather you just can't appreciate good weather. It is those times of the year in which people in places that get cold are held up in the their homes that sends them outside in droves when the weather is good. There is a sense of urgency and appreciation that you don't get in places with year round good weather. In the end, I think that people in the colder places end up enjoying the good weather that do have more than those who get it all the time. The only exception is people that move from cold places to year round warm places, but even that only lasts a few years. Eventually it becomes normal and you settle down like everyone else.

Midwestern people have a reputation for simplicity that I think is underserved. I think it may come from a missinterpritation of people's friendliness. People do seem more friendly out here, it isn't a huge difference; people just say thank you more, smile at you more, things like that. Somewhere along the line we got this image that to be a member of the would be intelligentsia/hipster/coked out sexpot set that can really just be summarized as 'cool', you had to be stoic, cynical, and far too deep to subject yourself to pedestrian things like friendly waves. I personally am very cool and (a unstoppoble mixture of intelligentsia, hipster, and sexpot of course) yet I like waving to people and smiling, it feels good to be waved at and smiled to. Now I am not implying that people in other places in the US are unfriendly, in fact far from it. In general the United States is a strikingly friendly place. So many friends of mine from other countries comment on it and most like it. (though apparently NZ and OZ give us a run for our money, I suppose I'll find out). I've also noticed this, especially when I lived in CPH. The Danes are supposedly the happiest people on earth http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5224306.stm . Still they aren't an especially friendly people, except when they are drunk, which is fortunate considering how often this is the case. When I would go running and wave to other runners (a ubiquitous practice throughout the US in my experience) I would get nothing but confused looks. I eventually stopped doing it. So LA can be considered a friendly or unfriendly place I suppose, it just depends of your frame of reference.

The human brain has evolved to deal with the relative nature of the universe. It only really cares about things that change. This is why 'white noise' such as the fans that help my mother sleep work or why what once seems like complete darkness can quickly become full of things to see as soon as your eyes and your brain adjust to the situation. We are designed to detect change or difference. That is what new experience is all about. Maybe that is what I am trying to right now, see enough different stuff that my brain has to keep guessing and won't fall asleep.

3 days until I leave for Europe

Joey

Just Finished: Love, Stargirl
Currently Reading: A Short History of Nearly Everything
Up Next: Lonesome Dove, The Tipping Point, and Lonely Planet's guide to New Zealand.