Going the Distance

Heavens!  I've done enough whining about running that even the occasional reader of this blog or a casual Facebook friend probably knows it is not my favorite thing.  It is hard to say exactly WHY I don't like running, but it remains a fact that I don't.

However, I have long had the goal of completing a triathon.  It goes back to high school when I read about the Hawaiian Ironman.  Those Ironmen are some tough cookies;  they complete a grueling course which includes a 2.4 mile ocean swim, a 112 mile bike ride and then, to top it off,  they run a  full 26.2 mile marathon.  I was probably 15 when decided that I wanted to participate in an Ironman competition.  This was clearly the folly of youth.  I was not at all athletic.  While I have always loved swimming, I did not take up bicycling until my mid-twenties and as for that running... well, as I have lamented numerous times... I'm workin' on it.  But as a teenager, the allure of the Ironman was so compelling that I resolved that at some point in my life, I would complete a triathlon.

Of course, I was also going to be a Hollywood actress.

Clearly, not all of my high school ambitions will come to fruition.  Nor should they.

But that triathlon has stuck with me.  Even through the soft years of my 30's and 40's.  Even now.   There is something that compels me to push myself to do this and I promised  it would be by the time I was 55.

That will be next January.

I guess it is now or never.

After a month or so of tentative training, I registered for the Tawas Sprint Triathon.  This is scaled down significantly from the Ironman competitions that initially inspired my goal.  It is "only"  a 500 m lake swim, 20 km (12 mile) bike ride and a 5 km (3 mile) run.

I went out for a 5K practice run yesterday.  It was early in the morning, but the sun was already hot and the route I chose had little shade.  Physically, I was doing all right- I was huffing and puffing a little, and yes, it was hot- but really I was fine.  I knew it too, but nonetheless, I really wanted to stop.  I wanted to walk.  I wanted that run to be over. It was really hard for me to just keep running.

I know I am not a very good runner and I don't hesitate to regularly remind myself of that fact while I am running.  In truth, I am not actually fully confident that I CAN complete the triathon, and it is the running that worries me most.  It is  so very hard to persist at something when faced with feelings of incompetence and insecurity.  There is a mental resistance that makes every step difficult, like running through quicksand.

I tried to push these negative thoughts out of my head and  think of other things.  My mind, naturally enough, wandered to the new academic year, which formally begins tomorrow.   I had the opportunity to meet a bunch of new freshmen and their parents during the move-in days last week.  The students are both excited and nervous.  Excited, because they have been waiting forever to be on their own and make their first foray into the adult world.  Nervous, because they are worried about social adjustments and the intellectual demands of higher education.

As I struggled to keep running, I was reminded that many of these students will struggle academically.  Nonetheless, we will expect them to attend classes, listen to lectures, solve problems, write papers, do projects, read and analyze difficult texts, have insightful discussions, and study for examinations.  We tell them they should expect to spend about 10 hours per week on each course they take, and if the subject is difficult for them, it will require more time.   Yes, the harder they find it, the more time they will need to endure that horrible feeling of incompetence and insecurity that I feel while running.  Like me, they will want to stop and spend that time doing something - anything- else.  Of course, as educators we know that there are no shortcuts; if they are going to be successful, they have to stick with it and push through that resistance.  It is a steep learning curve, but as educators, we know that once the students have some level of competence, it gets easier and they sometimes even start to enjoy the subject.

I have a general rule that I don't ask anyone to do anything I won't do myself.  So, I will not ask students to face their challenges with persistence unless I can face my own with that same persistence.

My head filled with these thoughts, I kept running.  I finished the 5K and did not give in to the temptation to walk or rest.  It was all right.  Not so bad, really.  Maybe, if I keep at it, like with many difficult things, I will reach a level of competence where I can actually enjoy it.

It's possible you know.

Athletic endeavors are not my natural strength, although stubborn persistence might be.  I don't expect to get an "A" in triathlon, but I do plan on passing the course on September 8.

Today I am grateful for inspiration that pushes me to do more and think harder, and for the support of those who seem to have more confidence in me than I have in myself.

Illuminating Texts

Every once in a while at Christmas or my birthday, I am the pleased recipient of a beautiful leather-bound journal.  My close friends and family know how I love the idea of writing and keeping a journal-- you know,  the old fashioned kind on real paper-- to record my thoughts and  ideas before they escape  the sieve that is my memory.

But as much as I love these books and appreciate the gifts, I must admit that I have not used them well.  Oh, I start out with good intentions, making a couple of entries, but soon I am overcome with the sense that my silly day-to-day thinking does not warrant a beautiful leather-bound volume.  The leather-bound books seem too special for shaky first drafts and ill-formed incomplete thoughts. A blank word document or even one of the cheap  tape-bound composition books that I buy in bulk during the August back-to-school sales seem more than adequate.  

But what to do with my beautiful journals?

I had an idea while visiting a museum at Shanghai Normal University in China.  The collection included numerous scrolls of meticulous calligraphy copied from ancient texts by Chinese officials and scholars.  If I understood the docent correctly, the scholars copied the texts as a way of preserving the texts, honoring the original authors,and gaining deep knowledge of the content.  The calligraphy reminded me of the beautiful illuminated biblical texts that medieval monks copied, for similar reasons.

Of course, we live in a different world now.  There is no need to preserve any written material by hand-copying.  We've had printing presses for quite some time now and at this stage, most texts are digitized anyway.  An enormous amount of written material is available to us instantly through the wonder that is the internet, and what is not immediately available for free can often be downloaded or ordered within a matter of a couple of hours, days at most. The incredible volume of material published these days coupled with easy access puts us in the midst of an information glut.

No, preservation is not an issue.

In today's educational and technological world, the concept of copying texts to assist in learning seems both quaint and wrong.  Learning by copying is just memorization  and we all know that such "rote learning" isn't "real learning" and that our goals should be to foster critical thinking and creativity.

There is nothing creative about copying.

But, here is where I think we are missing something important.

No one can think critically and creatively in the absence of knowledge.  Having ready access to vast stores of information is not the same as having knowledge. Knowledge is information that does not have to be looked up- information imprinted into our brains.  Information itself is not particularly useful until it is transformed into knowledge, a process that requires active attention, review, and internalization.

I call that transformation learning.

For me, learning is facilitated by writing things down.  Not underlining. Not highlighting.  Writing them down.  If it is a scientific or scholarly work, I make notes in my own words, perhaps quoting particularly concise phrases or key concepts. In these cases paraphrasing confirms understanding.  These are just notes, kept at various levels of organization in my cheap composition books.

When text is fiction, poetry, or ancient, I copy the exact words of the author or translator.  This practice allows me to internalize the the cadence and imagery and begin, hopefully, to know the work.

So, even though I have really bad handwriting and do not know any form of calligraphy, and even though it is out of fashion from a educational perspective, I use my leather-bound journals for copying texts, both ancient and modern, in order to honor the original author and gain a deeper knowledge of the work.  Just like the Chinese scholars.  Just like the medieval monks.  Well, not quite.  There is that little issue of illegible  handwriting!

In the process, I have discovered and rediscovered some wonderful words. I have been relearning T.S. Eliot's Preludes and other poems.  Langston Hughes, Psalms.  Words that are worthy of the beautiful journals into which I transcribe them.

Here is a fun little poem I came across on  our return trip from the Stratford Shakespeare Festival last Sunday.  The poem is by E.B. White, author of my first favorite chapter book (Stuart Little) and the wonderful tale of another clever spider (Charlotte's Web).  It is called Natural History.

Natural History
(A letter to Katherine from the King Edward Hotel, Toronto)
The spider, dropping down from twig,

Unwinds a thread of her devising:
A thin, premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all the journey down through space,
In cool descent, and loyal-hearted,
She builds a ladder to the place
From which she started.

This I, gone forth, as spiders do,
In spider's web a truth discerning,
Attach a silken thread to you
For my returning.



As my family has been scattered over the globe this summer,  I am grateful for the silken threads guiding us all home.

Miracles Emergent

The facts:

Sunrise on Lake Huron.  

I am not a morning person.  Never have been.     I have tried to shift my internal clock to better accommodate the demands of my working life, but except when I am assisted by jet lag, I can’t seem to do so.  I tend to stay up too late and am sleepy in the morning.  For me, mornings are bad.

I have never enjoyed running.  I have tried many times to develop a more amicable relationship with the sport, but it is just not my thing.  For me, running is bad.

But, strangely enough,

Running at 6:30 in the morning is glorious. 

I get up, run in the cool morning air accompanied by the ever goofy ZigZag and I love it.  Not only that, I feel great all day long.

Huh?  Say what?

It’s like a miracle.

I have often remarked that as a scientist, I don’t believe in magic, but that I do believe in miracles.  After making such a remark, I deftly avoid further discussion of what constitutes a miracle, although a backwards look through this blog provides a few hints.  For instance, I talked about the miracle of how ordinary rhythms and rituals ground us and help keep us centered.  I also talked about the miracle of how a a couple of regular people can create a  new and perfect child and how a mass of undifferentiated cells somehow becomes a highly organized living organism.  I was talking about human life, but really, earthworms are pretty miraculous too, when you stop to think about it. 

Another time I wrote about the miracle of contentedness that I feel on a summer day, like today.  I feel an overwhelming sense of  well-being while sitting on the back deck, fresh brewed coffee in hand, dog and cat asleep in the sun, flowers in bloom, with birds at the feeders.  Conversely, when the weather is awful-- bitter cold, driving rains, or blistering heat-- when I would not want to be outside for very long, even though I love being outside, I look around my warm and comfortable home and am glad for the miracle of a safe and secure life.  I am very aware that for most of the world’s people, this miracle is beyond reach.   I feel both grateful and a little guilty for the miracle of my good fortune. 

I see miracles in the generosity of people who volunteer their time or other resources selflessly to help others.  I think about inner city after school programs,  community food banks and so on, often run by people who simply want to make things better for others.    I think it is a miracle when, in the face of all the things that could go wrong, things go right.  I think it is a miracle that there is life, joy, satisfaction, and happiness because there is no guarantee that those things have to exist.

I have another definition of miracle that is perhaps somewhat related, but not directly.  This is when things combine in unpredicted and unpredictable ways to create something new and radically different.  I learned recently that this idea has another name—strong emergence.  The idea is that the whole is not only greater than the sum of the parts, it is fundamentally different than the sum of the parts.

The concept of strong emergence is not accepted in the sciences; it is seen as too magical and is contrary to the premise that the physical world behaves predictably, at least on the large scale.  Science relies on the idea that we can observe, understand, and predict the workings of the universe.  (To any scientists reading this, I am not forgetting the indeterminacy of quantum physics, but rather thinking on a macroscopic scale).  Scientists fundamentally believe that if we know enough about the parts, we can predict the outcome of their interactions at least statistically.  I think that in the realms of the physical universe that is true.  For example, the properties of water ARE predictable from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen even though water has little in common with its constituents.   Certainly, it would have been difficult and even unlikely for scientists to predict, a priori, the properties of water from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen.  But difficult or not,  it COULD have been done and in hindsight, it is clear how water’s properties emerge from those of hydrogen and oxygen.   When things get much more complex, like biological systems, it seems impossible to predict how the same building blocks could lead to the known diversity of life.  But, I don’t think it’s impossible.  Impossibly difficult maybe, but not theoretically impossible.   

Where the idea of strong emergence feels right to me is in the area of human perception and creativity.  In the prologue to this excellent biography of Richard Feynman, titled “Genius,”  James Gleick quotes Mark Kac, a Polish mathematician, who worked with Feynman in the early 1960’s.

"There are two kinds of geniuses: the 'ordinary' and the 'magicians'. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians… Even after we understand what they have done,  the process by which they have done it, is completely dark. Richard Feynman was a magician of the highest order.

Kac calls this magic; I call it a miracle.  Epistemologists call it strong emergence.  Whatever, it is the unpredictable, non-understandable, emergence of something radically new.  The ideas don’t come out of a vacuum, but the type II genius, the ‘magician,’ draws connections in ways that no one else can.  It is the difference between mere excellence, to which many can aspire with ordinary talent and extraordinary hard work and the miracle of real genius. 

The miracle of strong emergence creates soul-nourishing awe from the mere pile of rocks and pool of water that are Mount Hood reflected in Mirror Lake, especially if you are there to breathe the sweet air and feel the warm sunshine.

And, strong emergence is at play when a no-good-awful-sport like running at a terrible-horrible-miserable time of day like early morning combine to create a splendid experience.

It kind of makes me wonder if parsnips and liver might be tasty when combined together.

Nah.  There are limits!

Today I am grateful for the sunshine after a lot of badly needed rain.  I was glad for the rain, but my mood soared today when the sun came back out.

Shabbat

I was suffering from a severe case of missing-the-kids, so I was delighted to find that Eric was free for dinner last night.  Al and I drove to Ann Arbor to meet him and after a delicious Mexican dinner, the three of us stopped by the Wolverine State Brewing Company for a brewski.  If you know me at all, you know that I am much more a wine girl than a beer girl, but I do make exceptions.  Anyway, over beer, our conversations ranged far and wide, but at one point, I told the boys that I really wished that I could set aside one day each weekend to unplug, to refocus and to live slowly-- thinking, reading, writing, maybe doing some photography.  To spend time on the things I love but usually push to the back burner as the demands of our busy lives take precedence.

Nodding, Eric said, “What you want is a Shabbat.”  I looked at him quizzically, and he said, “You know, a Sabbath.”  I actually do know that Shabbat is Hebrew for Sabbath, it just hadn’t occurred to me that I wanted one.

It seems like such an archaic idea.  Even quaint.  It has been a long time since we, as a society, have recognized a Sabbath as a significant part of our culture.  I am old enough to remember when most stores were closed on Sunday,  and a few, on Saturday, in recognition of the Christian and Jewish Sabbaths. Today, we can get pretty much any thing at pretty much any time; we have created a culture of convenience. Our  24/7 mentality  gives us very little downtime.

I don’t know about you, but I crave downtime once in a while.  Not so much blob-on-the-couch downtime, but high quality downtime, time apart from my day-to-day distractions and demands, time when I can take a deep breath and just think.  Time when I can hold an idea in my head for more than a few seconds, long enough to see it from different perspectives and let it develop and grow. 

A few weeks ago I declared my first and so far, only, “No-Surf Sunday;” I did not check email, Facebook, or any other internet site from 9 am until 9 pm.   I managed to stay away from the computer that one day, but not again since.  Not even today as I write about the need to stay away.

I think Eric is right.  I need a Shabbat.

Al has a different take on this.  He thinks I need “Funday Sunday” where I get to define fun anyway I want.  Of course, he knows that I am likely to define it in terms of doing the things I don’t normally make time for- reading, writing, photography, and so on. 

Whatever you want to call it, I took today as sort of a trial run. Among other things, I did some reading, wrote this blog, explored the difference between satisfaction and complacency, listened to Sidney Bechet, made focaccia bread and cherry crisp, walked the dog, and resisted the urge to run errands or go shopping.

(I am definitely not a recreational shopper, but I do have a weakness for office and school supplies.  I keep hinking my Sunday experiment would be improved with new notebooks and  pens.  After all, maybe  new thoughts would flow better through new pens into unsullied notebooks.   And maybe I need one of those lap desks so I can record my thoughts in comfort wherever I happen to be sitting. 

Ok. Maybe not.)

Shabbat or Funday Sunday, I think Eric and Al may be saying the same thing.  Either way, I think I have been given explicit permission to claim Sundays as my own.  For this, I am grateful.  Just for the record, I plan to take full advantage of it!

I mainly resisted the lures of the internet, but not entirely.  I dropped in on Facebook briefly and came upon a post about the horrible mass killing in Wisconsin, the second in as many weeks.  I don’t understand this violence.  I just don’t understand.