Adaptive Delusions

In the Matrix movies there was a pill they gave so you could see through the delusion of the artificial reality in which we live.  They didn’t give it to fogies; their minds couldn’t handle it. 

These days, people are talking about adaptive delusions -- those unrealistic beliefs that help us get through life.  “The sun’ll come out tomorrow,” sang Little Orphan Annie.  The soldier fights on aided by his good luck charm.  Dumbo can fly so long as he holds the magic feather.

I’ve always thought of myself as a hard-minded seeker of reality.  This, itself, may have been an adaptive delusion, protecting the little fantasies that got me through the day.  Having achieved fogiedom, I now suspect reality is overrated.  Phooey on Socrates; the examined life is not worth living. 

Take religion.  I quote Martin Luther, who said, “Here I stand, I can do no other.”  I used to be a great believer in reason and logic.  Now I say, if you can do no other and must worship the goddess Chandi with her eighteen arms, I’m not about to argue. 

The other day I visited my granddaughter Katie’s pre-k school, where the pupils did a dance.  The girl next to her was really into it, swinging her arms, tossing her head so her hair flew, and grinning with pleasure.  Katie’s mouth was a straight line, and her movements were controlled.  I knew why.  She was determined to get it right. 

In twenty years the other girl will be out boogying on a Saturday night, while Katie is home working on next year’s budget.  She comes by it honestly.  Annette and I are like that, and so are Katie’s mother and father.  Four years old, and we’ve ruined her! 

The idea that you can make a household budget for the coming year is as delusional as not having a care in the world.  We should pick our delusions carefully in the hope they’ll be adaptive.  But there I go trying to be rational again.  Most of our delusions are picked for us.      

I give up. Alas, I too must strive to get everything right. Despite my admiration for that dancing child, feeling the music and moving with abandon; despite my yearning for the bliss of the unexamined life, I can’t get there. I don’t know where I went wrong.  I suspect it may have been Unitarian Sunday School at the First Parish.  I confess I have severe doubts about Chandi’s eighteen arms – I’ll consider six at the absolute most.  Reason and logic may not lead me to Truth, but I can do no other. They’re all I’ve got. 

Journalism

Annette, the brains of the family, was scanning her Phi Beta Kappa newsletter and suggested I might enjoy a blog by William Zinsser on the American Scholar website. Take a look for yourself if you like.

In one of his posts, Zinsser writes about his days at the Herald Tribune, and the “vast and grimy city room” where giants of post World War II journalism came daily to work.  It made me think of my arrival at the Old Colony Memorial.  The newsroom was roomy, if not vast. It was at least disheveled, if not actually grimy; and if the people there weren’t giants, they definitely impressed me. 

My publisher was the late Phyllis Hughes, and my editor was Nan Anastasia who I still count as a friend.  They delighted in excellence, and I tried to give it to them.  In return they taught me, corrected me, and, best of all, allowed me the freedom to work in my own way.  

Nan hired me as I was walking down Main Street in Plymouth about two weeks after I sold my insurance agency. I’d been writing a food column for years, but now I felt like part of the staff.  I even got to exercise my other craft, which was photography.  I had real assignments and came back with usable copy. I learned that people generally love to be interviewed.  How often does a person really listen to you and write down what you have to say? 

Writing gave me an excuse to make an appointment with a business owner and be shown around. I spent a day with a lobsterman, and rode in a flat-bottomed boat upon the icy waters of a scallop farm in Fairhaven. I was usually welcomed, although I couldn’t wangle a tour of the Grandmother’s Mincemeat factory in Natick, and the owner of a shop on the Plymouth waterfront was so averse to being written about I suspected his tee shirt emporium might be some sort of front. 

All in all, I had so much fun, I wondered if I shouldn’t have started in some vast and grimy city room directly upon my graduation from college.  I harbored ill thoughts about the head of the Bates College English Department, who felt I had no aptitude for the subject and suggested I major in something else.  If it hadn’t been for him, I might have ended up like Zinsser and have a blog of my own. 

Wait a minute…

March 12, 2011

Grumping at bumps

And fussing at mess,

I take my lumps

In gracelessness.

To fight my ills I’m gearing up

Grim-faced and sober-sided. 

I really should be cheering up

With all my ills abided.

Bouncing along upon life’s rubble

Wailing with woe and moaning, “Ah me!”

I ought to look at others' trouble

Thankful I’m facing no tsunami.