exploring edges

Fathers and the lessons they teach...

Yesterday I was cleaning up some papers in my office and came across a piece I wrote exactly a year ago. It seems fitting to post it on Father's Day Eve...

In the early 1980s, I started thinking that my father had “gone soft.” He wasn’t as achievement oriented or hard-driving as I knew him to be, and I was wondering what had happened. I didn’t have the courage, gumption, or wherewithal to ask Dad what had changed before he died in 1985 at age 55, and I have often wondered what he would have said had I asked.

So, I had a field day reading “Aging Well—Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life.” The author, George Vaillant, describes in great detail the adult development process. The data and anecdotes are drawn from the Harvard Study of Adult Development—the longest running longitudinal study in the world. Comprising three different cohorts, the ongoing study includes members of the study were born in 1910, 1920, and in the 1930s.

Many findings in the book are surprising—for example, the results suggest that what goes right in childhood predicts the future far better than what goes wrong. Wow. Imagine the effect this idea could have in the courtrooms of the U.S. Another finding, by the time you are 50, the factors that predict successful aging (aside from your genes…) are within your control. The early life factors are no longer relevant. It seems that those who age successfully are masters at re-inventing themselves and at different times in life different adjustments and adaptations are appropriate.

Particularly interesting, I thought, was the detailed description of adult development. Vaillant expands Erik Erikson’s model and suggests that unlike child development,
which is for the most part sequential and predictable, where stage 1 must occur and be completed before stage 2, adult development is a set of six tasks that can be worked on in any order and concurrently. During early adulthood, the three primary tasks are:

Identity—developing a sense of one’s self

Intimacy—developing an interdependent reciprocal committed relationship that lasts for a decade or more

Career consolidation—establishing a social identity

In later adulthood the tasks are:

Generativity—Guiding and caring for specific individuals in the next generation, while respecting their autonomy

Keeping the meaning—Conserving the principles of the past

Integrity—Accepting one’s life as it is and as it was even in the face of death

I think what I observed in my father was his working on those last three tasks. And I think I’m observing myself working on those same tasks now. And I wouldn't have understood any of this twenty years ago.

Beautiful Thoughts for a Sunday

This morning I was listening to John O'Donohue's Beauty: The Invisible Embrace. Much of what I heard made me catch my breath. Yet when I hear John's lilting, soothing voice discuss four ideas from Crossing Unmarked Snow, I had to find a paper and pen, and hit the repeat button. Here are the ideas--beautiful thoughts for a Sunday (and every day).

The things you do not have to say, make you rich.
Saying the things you do not have to say, weakens your talk.

Hearing the things you do not have to hear, dulls your hearing.

And the things you know before you hear them, these are you, and this is why you are in the world.

Blogs, privacy, and selfishness

David Hochman recently wrote an article for the New York Times called Mommy (and Me). At first, I thought it was a light piece about blogging parents describe how blogging can help stem the feelings of isolation that I remember experiencing as a new mother more than twenty years ago. But about 2/3 of the way through, the article turned dark.

And this being an age in which publicizing the private has never been more rewarded, a fair number of parents are hoping their blogs will attract the attention of book publishers.
...
And of course the more parents blog, the less likely they are to get the attention and validation they seem to crave.

Hochman's conclusion seems to be that blogging parents are selfish individuals seeking attention and validation and a generous book deal. I think there are many reasons that people blog and there are many different senses of propriety. And I think calling someone selfish is oh, so boring and juvenile. Read getupgrrl's excellent post about Selfishness: A Brief Analysis of a Puzzling Pattern.

Tool for Thought: A Thinking Partner

Steven Johnson, author of Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software and Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life, recently wrote an essay for the New York Times called Tool for Thought. He says:

[This tool] "... can create almost lyrical connections between ideas. I'm now working on a project that involves the history of the London sewers. The other day I ran a search that included the word ''sewage'' several times. Because the software knows the word ''waste'' is often used alongside ''sewage'' it directed me to a quote that explained the way bones evolved in vertebrate bodies: by repurposing the calcium waste products created by the metabolism of cells.

That might seem like an errant result, but it sent me off on a long and fruitful tangent into the way complex systems -- whether cities or bodies -- find productive uses for the waste they create. It's still early, but I may well get an entire chapter out of that little spark of an idea.

Now, strictly speaking, who is responsible for that initial idea? Was it me or the software? It sounds like a facetious question, but I mean it seriously. Obviously, the computer wasn't conscious of the idea taking shape, and I supplied the conceptual glue that linked the London sewers to cell metabolism. But I'm not at all confident I would have made the initial connection without the help of the software. The idea was a true collaboration, two very different kinds of intelligence playing off each other, one carbon-based, the other silicon.

Steven's description of the genesis of a new chapter as the result of a seemingly loose connection between disparate ideas reminds me of how Mary and I "think" together. At the end of an hour or two together, we are often surprised at the many tacks we have taken, the many tangents we have followed, and the many connections we have made. Sometimes we have something coherent and tangible to show for our thinking together; sometimes not. In all cases, it is a true collaboration, two very different kinds of intelligence playing off each other, both carbon-based.

Identity and Integration

Mary wrote yesterday about Evelyn Rodriguez. One of the passages Mary quoted from Evelyn contained the phrase "an individual's digital identity." I began to wonder if one developed one's "digital identity" would one also have to develop one's "analog identity?" And if so, how might they compare? And might there be other identities one would develop or create?

Dictionary.com defines identity as

The collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known.

So, I guess one would need to develop as many identities as one would need to be "definitively recognizable or known" in each domain of one's life. When I was younger, I made myself definitively recognizable by differentiating myself from others who were in the same domain. As I've gotten older, I've tended toward integrating all aspects of myself and to showing up as a whole person in all domains. Sometimes it's easier than others to show up as a whole; and I hope that over time my being my whole, integrated self (warts, shadow-side, and all!) is how I will be definitively recognized and known.