Maturity, or the lack thereof

In my daily work, the majority of my colleagues are older than me, some by decades. Some of them have been working here since I was in diapers.

Yet, of course I am expected to behave at the same level of maturity that they do. It is sometimes fascinating to me, and sometimes disturbing, when someone with silver hair who could be my grandmother, comes into my office to ask me a question with full confidence that I will know the answer.

It's not just a workplace thing. Now that I am legally a grown-up -- and have been for some time -- it's as if I have joined a club, all of whose members, whether they are 25, 55 or 85, expect certain standards of each other and even pretend to the fiction that we are at something of the same level of general competence or mental acuity.

But looking back over the months and years of my life, I cringe at things I did six months ago, as well as six years ago. There are times when my brain could not comprehend something, or I acted a certain way -- and yet, just a short time later, the light clicked on and I recognized that I have matured just a little bit more since then.

The process, I think, will proceed at its own pace, no matter how much I might wish to kick it into overdrive. I might flatter myself to think that I am quite mature for my age -- but check back with me in a few months and the me that is then will disagree mightily with the verdict of the me that is now.

The faith of a smart man

A friend recently bought me a DVD of the late C.S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia.'

It's not the type of movie I would have sought out on my own. But I watched it, mostly to humor them.

It's very much a Christian allegory -- which allegory, except for the final sacrifice of the Lion, probably passed right over the heads of most of the general public.

The movie did inspire me to pull "Surprised by Joy," off my bookshelf and blow the dust off it for a read. That's Lewis' autobiography.

You see, his life story intrigues me. Here is a very smart, very well-educated man, who passes from naive childhood belief, to complete atheism, then reasons his way back to faith.

More than ever now, with great doubts gnawing at me, I want to know HOW that happened. How did a man, a smart man, a logical, reasonable man, whose faith was shattered on the shoals of scholarship, as happens to so many, rebuild his vessel and sail on, which happens to very few.

Things you find in the woods

This is the time of year when smart people are very careful as they wander through East Coast woods -- which are well-stocked with ticks, mosquitoes and poisonous snakes.

Smarter people just stay out of the woods altogether, I suppose.

But not being very smart, I went wandering on Memorial Day, sweeping the swampy ground before me with my well-worn walking stick to give myself fair warning if a grouchy cottonmouth might be napping nearby.

I saw no snakes. I never do. It's very odd, for surely they are there, somewhere, watching the woodland through serpentine eyes. But I did photog this awesome little spider on a berry bush. (Not shown are the hordes of mosquitoes that siphoned my vital fluids while I attempted to get this shot. Atheists get one point against God for the existence of mosquitoes.)

It happened in a pizza shop

So I was watching some useless, gratuitous, voyeuristic tv last night ...

... A show of the footage from a surveillance camera at some pizza place.

This creature comes in the place, not worthy to be called a woman, and cuts to the front of the line. Some dude in that unfortunate line is yakking on his cell phone and mentions the line-cutter to whoever was on the other end of his phone.

The creature goes berserk. He ignores it. That makes it madder so it spits at the cashier and goes outside and returns with The Boyfriend From Hell. TBFH is a 300 pound ex con, looks like two NFL linebackers glued together. TBFH then proceeds to pound the crap out of Cell Phone Guy, who put away his phone and paid attention a little too late. Everybody else in the pizza shop just stands and watches TBFH unload on him until the cops show up. Sickening, crunching sounds are heard meanwhile, as bones shatter and Cell Phone Guy is reshaped into a bloody mannequin.

TBFH gets four more years in the slammer. The creature gets probation.

Any lessons to be learned?

To Cell Phone Guy: Assume all creatures such as that, no matter how skanky and repulsive, probably have a boyfriend, a large, unpleasant boyfriend. Don't assume that your fellow humans will stand up for you. However, if you do find yourself being mauled by such a beast, try not to die, so that you can sue the bastard later.

To BFH: Don't date Creature or anyone like it, unless you really want to end up back in the slammer again. Big and buff as you are, you can probably afford to be a little more choosey.

To Pathetic Spectators: You'd better hope that if you ever end up in the shoes of Cell Phone Guy, you're not in the company of other people like you.

To Creature: Didn't your mother ever teach you ANYTHING at all about what it means to be a lady?

To Me: You just wasted a half hour of your life that you will never get back.

The dying art of humor

A hundred years ago or so, you could laugh at anyone or anything -- a Jewish person, an African-American, a "dwarf," an epileptic, etc.

Yes, we know that wasn't good. Not good at all. Hurtful, hateful and wrong.

Today, however, we have gone so far overboard, we have become so hypersensitive, that I'm afraid some trendy locale will soon pass a law against laughing about anything at all.

I was having a discussion on a certain webgroup the other day about a certain religious holiday. I was asked whether I was relying upon a secular calendar or one provided by Religion XYZ.

Trying to lighten the situation, I noted that my calendar was a secular production and that it featured a nice picture of a tropical frog. Frogs, I stated, are not kosher but they are also non-denominational.

Obviously, it was a joke. An attempt at breaking tension. At least, I thought the joke was obvious. But I was promptly taken to task on the specifics of kosher, etc., etc., by someone so obviously humor-impaired as to probably have cobwebs wrapped around his/her smile.

People like that win no friends for their viewpoints. And they certainly can't be any fun to be around.

Your happy place

"Show not a Phoenician the desert, nor a Bedouin the sea, for their ways are different."

So goes an ancient proverb, contrasting a people who thrived in the perils of the sea with a people who thrived in the perils of the desert.

My lunchtime commute was graced with an old song by Little River Band, kind of a boring melody but the words are poignant. The singer longs to be alone again, sailing on "the bright, clear water."

Me, sailing alone on the bright, clear water -- I'd be freaked out, wondering what beasts lurked beneath me in the blue waiting for my craft to capsize.

To some men (and women), happiness is clinging to the side of some lofty mountain, with only a petard to prevent their grisly death. Others thrive in the throng of a busy city, weaving their way through homicidal traffic.

One man's pleasure is another man's terror.