Life Lessons

I've been re-watching a television show called Being Erica for a second time and trying to catch and write down the pithy lessons from each show.  If you haven't seen it, it's a Canadian-based show that apparently aired on Soap.net (or airs, I haven't seen the most recent season) and can be found on Hulu.com, which is where I watch it.  It's just a wee bit science fiction in that it combines therapy with time travel.  Erica begins the show recognizing that where she is at in her life is due to a series of - in her words - bad decisions and bad choices.  So, she meets Dr. Tom, and has a chance to write down this list of bad choices throughout her life, and is given an opportunity via his therapy to literally go back and do it differently. 

Ironically, often things don't actually change even though she's tried to do it differently. There's quite a bit of fatalistic irony in that which I draw.  But that is my opinion of the show. 

But in addition to trying to draw life lessons ("The path that you are on and the choices you make define who you are") from the show, it has made me think about my life and lessons I've learned and how.

We search for the trite and simple answers to life.  On the internet, in books, on television, in magazines, in church.  Everywhere we go, we are often looking for The Answer.

I have already made quite clear in this blog that I am a big fan and follower of the Dalai Lama.  I also go to church every Sunday. I try to seek spiritual guidance where I can.

But I recognize that the stuff that sticks, the stuff that resonates most for me are lessons I have already learned through life experience.  The rest of the stuff sounds good - and probably is good - but it is hard to really learn and absorb through words alone. 

It is true that I don't need to touch a hot stove to accept someone else's warning that it's hot.  But I am much more likely to remember it after I've burned myself.  Stoves are tough examples, because it seems like common sense, stove = hot.  But think of an example that is not so obvious, that the reality is that you won't really get it until you get it.

Now, not all of life lessons have to be learned the hard way.  In my opinion.  But I find until we are approaching the situation, we often are not ready to hear or learn the lessons.

How often on the sitcom have you seen two characters talking, and character A is bemoaning his or her problem, and Character B gives him or her sound advice that doesn't quite seem to stick?  Enter Character C with all of his or her charisma, and have him or her repeat the same things, and suddenly a light bulb goes off.  It seems silly and obvious when done on a sit com, but the reality is that it happens to us all the time.  We need to be ready and open to hear guidance or information about a situation before we're able to hear it and comprehend it. 

But the good news is that we can get our life lessons anywhere.  Off a bumper sticker, off a tweet, off a sit com, off a rom com, out of a book, from an advice columnist, from a comic strip, from a shampoo bottle (hey, sometimes lather, rinse, repeat is the answer to the question!). 

We just need to be open to the message.  It helps me to take time, sometimes, to think about what is being said and figure out a specific situation to which it applies.  Create an analogy in my life.  Although sometimes when reading it, something just clicks.  Automatic synapse connection.  Keep yourself open to the lessons life presents to you.   And don't forget to revisit them. They may mean something completely new the next time around.

Please share with me some unlikely places you found life lessons and what you learned.

 Resistance is futile.



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Assimilation

From the dictionary.com iPhone app:

4. Sociol. the merging of cultural traits from previously distinct cultural groups, not involving biological amalgamation.

Of course, anyone who has watched the Borg from Star Trek know that they involve biological amalgamation... but that's a distraction.

In the past, I have been afraid of putting too much personal detail in an anonymous blog because I am afraid that somebody somewhere will figure out it's me.  And then I might feel the need to censor myself.  Ironically, ignoring, of course, that I was already censoring myself, but we'll put that aside for the moment.

I have a friend who blogs regularly who doesn't use his real name as his handle, refers to his wife as Mrs. Handle (or for this, for example, it would be Mrs.BorgBlog), and tries to call his kids by different names to protect their privacy.  But he has been sloppy, and I don't know if he even thinks he has any reasonable modicum of anonymity.

Recently, though, I have found a few blogs where if I didn't know better, I would swear they were written by friends.  And, frankly, the definitive reason why I know that they weren't, on some occasions, because we can all change the details to protect the innocent, was knowing that they were spending time with me when they would otherwise supposedly be blogging.  (Yes, I know you can time delay posts, but, really there were other details that confirmed it). 

I have also found a message board where I have started sharing information, again, very conscious not to give too many incriminating details so that someone might realize it was ME. 

(And we'll just ignore the huge ego issues that I've just raised that anyone really cares it's ME or whatever....)

On the message board, I have seen and I have written: "I could have written that".  We find our experiences to be so similar.  Where we might otherwise have felt alone, we now find comfort in realizing we are not.  My fears that someone who knows me and knows my issue bringing me to the message board would be able to pick me out of the crowd is unfounded. 

I've also fallen in love with The Bloggess.  I am most definitely not her.  But there are several entries (usually NOT the ones involving taxidermied animals) where I think, WOW, I could have written that. 

And so I realize, that even if you think you know who this is, you're probably wrong.  I may remind you of your hysterical neighbor (as in funny, I hope, and not crazy) down the street, the girl you grew up with, a former lover, a best friend, a woman you really hated, but that's probably someone else.  It's probably not me. 

Our experiences while seeming unique to ourselves are also universal. 

Some have said that there are no new stories to write.  I don't know whether that is true or not.  Fortunately, I'm not in the fiction business.  I just finished reading John Grisham's The Confession, and I found it quite thought-provoking.  And then I picked up a recent Scott Turow book and decided to take a quick review of his other books to remind me of the potential connections, because usually his books connect to each other in some way.  And I was reminded of the book Reversible Errors which I have read, and re-reading the plot summary realized it was the same basic underlying plot as I had just read in Grisham's book.

Okay - that was a detour.

When one becomes assimilated into the Collective, they become one with another, and all of their memories are now part of the collective.  There is no unique "I" in Borg.  There is just Borg.

 So while you think you may know me, you probably don't.  Or rather you may know me, because my experiences are similar to yours or those you do know.  But you do not know my identity. 

You can simply call me Seven of Nine. 

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If you like this, stick around and read other entries. Hit a few on the right that are favorites, or go to the home page of the blog, and read from beginning to end. Take a moment to send me some feedback. Thanks for coming. Please come back soon.

Resistance is Futile

Despite the title, this will not be a blog about science fiction. 

Well, not totally. 

I have discovered, to my surprise, that I am apparently a science fiction fan.  In college, special interest groups would be allowed to gather together to pool housing priority points and get suites where people of like interests could live together.  On the floor I lived on my freshman year, the Sci Fi club had a suite.  I became best friends with many of those folks, but never identified myself as part of the Science Fiction group. 

Until recently. 

Facebook is a part of my life.  I resisted it for awhile.  I originally only went on to try and find someone for a client of mine from a Google search, but then found old friends.  I got hooked.  Recently, I found a cache of folks from college.  Frankly, if you'd asked me before the Facebook age, I wouldn't have said I kept many friends from college - just a handful.  But last night I created a group of just my friends from college to pass along a reference to our school in pop-culture, and discovered I have 20 Facebook friends - or over 10% of my "friends" - from college. 

At least half of these are recent entries and reconnects in the past year.  Someone from the Sci Fi group found me, and then invited me to their private page.  And then others found me.  I discovered - quite belatedly - that I did belong.  I may never have been a card-carrying member.    But when I looked at the posted pictures from college, I was in over half of them.  I cannot tell you who have been all of the Dr. Whos (what is the grammatical formation of the plural of Dr. Who?), and I do NOT (I repeat, I DO NOT) speak Klingon. 

But I am a fan of science fiction.  I couldn't help but be with my brother enjoying it himself as a youngster.  He was a great Star Trek fan, and I saw Star Wars for the first time in the theater with him and his friends.  They tried to scare me by telling my father was Darth Vader (and this was the original - *before* we learned that he was Luke's father).  My Hulu playlist will show that I am a fan of Warehouse 13, Eureka, Misfits, Firefly, Quantum Leap, and Being Erica, amongst others.  My college house-mates and I would religiously gather to watch the weekly broadcast of ST:TNG, and caught up where we had missed on the regular daily re-runs. 

I cannot hide.  Resistance is futile.