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RED SKIES  This is a shot taken outside the building where I work at 3:30pm today. The fires have been burning for three days now. When they started, up north, on Saturday night, we had no idea. We were entertaining twelve people down by the pool, having bbq and enjoying the hot tub. Sunday morning, Jake woke up to find some ashes on my bikini, on the balcony, and we could smell quite a bit of smoke. We figured it must be a small fire down the street. Jake went to get some bagels and the New York Times and told me to turn on the TV. By this point, hell had broken loose. I don't know many people in San Diego, yet. I called and emailed the one person I knew in Scripps Ranch. She had taken her cats, a few belongings and evacuated her house just in case. I told her she could come here anytime and asked her to keep in touch. Everyone else I knew seemed safe and sound in their home. We had out of town guests who ended up spending most of the day holed up with us. The restaurants shut down, the air smelled too bad to take a walk. People called with rumors that they were evacuating our neighborhood. I kept wondering if I should pack up. I couldn't even figure out what I would take with me if the situation arose. The experience of being glued and horrified by TV brought back unpleasent memories of September 2001. The more I watched, the more depressed and scared I became. The fires are still raging on. The quality of air declines every day. Cars are covered with ash and it's pointless to try to clean them. Today, I watched the sun set behind a wall of dark smoke. The sky was black and the sun firey red. The word eerie comes to mind. I know that I am incredibly lucky to still have my house and my job and my loved ones. I know that the fires are moving the other way and the chances of anything hitting my home are reduced. Yet, I still feel uneasy. The sky isn't supposed to be red or black in the middle of the day.  FIXING OTHERS' LIVES My question of the day is: Do you help a friend who's walking down the wrong path? A few years ago, I would have said, "Absolutely." Assuming this was a friend whom I feel close to and can be honest with, I would do anything necessary to 'save' my friend. I'm not so sure anymore. First of all, who makes me the judge of whether a path is right or wrong? How do I know what path is better for my friend? I feel like it's conceded of me to assume I know what's best for someone else. I can't even be entirely sure what's best for my own self. 'Fixing' my friend, besides implying that she's broken also implies that I am qualified to fix her. Am I willing to take the responsibility that my way may not work out for her? Am I sure my solution will actually work? While I am now willing to admit that telling my friend he is fucking up his life is a very cocky assumption, I still don't know the best course of action. What if my friend has a habit that might cause her to permanently harm herself physically? What if my friend is putting her life at risk? What if he's putting other people's lives at risk? Where is the line? When should I move from 'supporting-mode' to 'meddling-mode'? Is it ever really okay to meddle? I understand the how presumptuous it sounds to say that I can 'fix' someone's life. I understand that people have different past. Different personalities. Different priorities. Different paths. I understand that something that looks one way from the outside may be completely different from the inside. I get all that. At the same time, I wonder if there's a point where, as a friend, it is my place to take action. To give more than support. To stop waiting. Is there such a point? Or is it always best to wholeheartedly and non-judgmentally support your friends regardless of the paths they take or the decisions they make? And do these rules change if it's a family member as opposed to a friend? What about a sibling? I simply don't know the answers anymore. PARTIAL ATTENTION My favorite, though, was that we now live in an age of what a Microsoft researcher, Linda Stone, called continuous partial attention. I love that phrase. It means that while you are answering your e-mail and talking to your kid, your cell phone rings and you have a conversation. You are now involved in a continuous flow of interactions in which you can only partially concentrate on each. -Thomas Friedman These words struck a chord with me on Saturday. As a person who's always multi-processing, I've often wondered if I don't listen wholeheartedly enough. I took a class on Theories of Personality class last year and I remember learning about Carl Rogers and how he listened to each patient with full attention. He emphasized empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard for his clients. The has a reputation for fully concentrating on the patient. That level of attention is so rare. Most people listen half the time and even when they are listening, they don't entirely hear what the other person is saying. They are busy thinking "what does this mean to me" or they are making a list of their daily to-dos. We do hold several conversations simultaneously. We do write email as we speak. We do interrupt conversations as the cell phone rings or as the beeper goes off. I am personally guilty of simultaneously executing several processes in my brain. I am almost always doing something else while I talk on the phone. I write email as I watch TV. Even if I don't answer my cell, I certainly glance at the screen to see who it is. Some of that doesn't bother me too much. Some conversations don't need my full attention. Nor do some emails. But then there are those who do. The question is, am I able to tell the difference each time? When I'm in the same room with a person, I can tell when the conversation shifts from being superficial to substantial. I can tell if the person is upset or is seeking someone with whom to converse. It's much harder over the phone, especially the cell phone, which can catch me at any moment, in any location. Is it better that I am not accessible at all or that I am there but not able to fully focus on the conversation at hand? Before technology, if my friend was feeling upset and wanted to talk, she couldn't even find me. Now she can but she runs the chance of having partial attention. What's worse? I strongly believe in the power of full attention. Next time someone comes to you for advice or an ear, try dropping everything you do and listening them. Fully. See if you can tell the difference. Memory Lane I save all my email. I'm not exactly sure why but I have emails going back to my Freshman year in college, my first email account ever. The first email I can find is dated September 16, 1992. Every now and then, I decide to go back and read some of the thousands of messages I've exchanged during four years of college. Today was one of those days. Each time I read them, I'm amazed at how many friends I've completely lost touch with over the years. Some, I fell out of touch with before graduation, others soon after. A few of the emails are from people I can't even remember. Some of the people I remember, I have no idea why the emails stop so abruptly. Did something happen? Did one of us piss the other off somehow? I imagine I'd remember if someone had hurt my feelings and caused me to discontinue our conversation so I am assuming that one of us got lazy and didn't keep up with the correspondence and the other didn't follow up. The emails and then the friendship just tapered off. The funny thing is, many of those emails bring me fond memories today and I am always tempted to track down and contact those individuals. This, of course, opens a can of worms: Would they remember me? Would they respond back or think I am a weirdo for contacting them after ten years? Would they get freaked out by the fact that I tracked them down? If I think about it for long enough, I figure I have nothing to lose (besides the precious time it will take to track them down). If people are weirded out by my contacting them, they simply won't write back and that's that. If, on the other hand, one of them does remember me and wants to get back in touch, I get the chance to reunite with an old friend. Doesn't sound like too much of a risk to take. I go through this thought-process each time I read my archive of mails. I am always amazed at how many people were an important part of my life at one time and today I can't even tell you where they live. How many people's emails still make me smile today. How many memories are fresh on my mind. How much fun college really was. And, of course, how much I've changed since I came to the United States. These people are a tie to my past; they had a part in my becoming who I am. No wonder a part of me craves to find them again. |
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