Day 2 - What is Good

Learning how to be a good person sounds at first like too basic a question. Like something you should know already, that you were supposed to learn in Kindergarten.

Truthfully though, when I was that age I didn't think critically about what I was being taught. I was able to regurgitate other people's ideas self-righteously if someone asked the questions, but I was in such a hurry to repeat what was fed to me that I never truly took the time to digest it.

It is my habit to do what I am told, to trust that the guiding voice, whether it be my mother, my professors, or other superiors, are right. I expect them to be right because that was the nature of my world growing up. People who were older knew better and could be trusted to guide and lead you. For a person with authority not to do that was a failure on their part, an inability to carry out their assigned role.

My mom took her responsibility as a parent when she was younger so seriously that she was the final word on many things. She instilled a strong sense of justice in me. The problem with that was that I came to expect that from the world, and to judge when it was not so. The other consequence, of course, was that sometimes I did not wrestle enough with big questions on my own, and that I did not think enough for myself.

Certainly there were things which I questioned, and it is in my nature to enjoy new ideas and argumentation. To challenge, and debate. Unfortunately I don't think that I did this enough with some very basic but very important questions. Perhaps until now there was no need.

It is too ambitious for me to attempt to answer the question "how to be a good person." Implicit in this question is the quandry of how to answer this question- to define the scope of what parts of this question can be answered and how. A list of good behaviors? Behaviors to avoid? No. I think the real tricky part of this is teaching yourself how to evaluate your own behavior and other people's. It cannot be a blanket list of rules. There are two many situations and details in reality for a list to name each situation and address its remedy. To define how to be good you must first determine what you believe is good.

Turning 27 - Message in a Bottle

I'm turning 27 in a month and I need to write about it.
25 is exciting because it's a quarter century. You're still swinging from your "early" twenties at that point and so there is nothing to stop and think about. 26 comes around like a shadow still clinging to 25. Like 25's afterthought. Not really its own separate entity. And then 27.

27 is unlike its two predecessors. It cannot claim to be 25's shadow because it is too far removed. It has none of the glamour or excitement of 25. It is neither here nor there. It is an age of transition. Transition from the twenties, and the much debated descent to 30. I was going to say "climb" or "ascent" to make aging sound less grim, but frankly time passes so quickly I cannot in good conscience attribute too much effort to aging. Though life can certainly throw plenty of hardballs at you as you get older... so perhaps "climb" or "ascent" are actually quite justified.

I don't know if anyone at all will read this, but I think I feel the need to throw this out into the open. Like a message in a bottle. It might remain floating at sea, sealed and unopened forever, but at least it's a message.

3 Great Women, and What They Accomplished at 27

They were on the cusp. Georgia O'Keefe taught art and had her first show 3 years later. Jane Austen cut her teeth on works like 'Susan' and 'The Watsons,' and tackled 'Sense and Sensibility' 6 years later. Lucy went from show to show along with small roles in movies, and met Desi Arnaz 2 years later.

27 is on the cusp. Am I on the cusp of anything big? I wish and hope for it.

~~~

1914 Georgia O'Keefe moves to New York City to attend Columbia Teachers College. Three years later she has her first show at a NY gallery.

1802 Jane Austen receives her only proposal of marriage from Harris Bigg-Wither, an unattractive Oxford educated young man and childhood friend and heir to a large family estate. Jane accepts the proposal for practical reasons. The very next day, however, Jane withdraws her acceptance, feeling it to be a mistake. Jane works on revising Susan.

1938 Lucile Ball joined the cast of The Wonder Show starring future Wizard of Oz tin man Jack Haley and began her fifty year professional relationship with Gale Gordon, who served as the show's announcer. In 1940, Ball met Cuban-born bandleader Desi Arnaz while filming the film version of the Rodgers and Hart stage hit Too Many Girls. Ball and Arnaz connected immediately and eloped the same year, garnering much press attention.