Raising an Underachiever

It's funny how you start to recognize your child.

At first, Judah was a colicky, demanding baby. A total stranger to me in every way.

And then his personality slowly emerged as he was more able to express his inner world of thoughts and feelings. Until now, at age 5, I have fully realized that Judah is exactly me (on the inside).

He is extremely sensitive.

He is driven by fear that others will be mad at him.

He is utterly embarrassed by any attention whatsoever.

And in a nutshell, he is a people-pleaser extrordinaire.

My sweet, (extremely) anxious, (overly) sensitive mini-me.

It's pretty freaky how much we're alike. Every posture and inclination he has finds complete resonance in my own heart. I'm now a big believer in Nature over Nurture.

So when Judah complains about going to school, I tell him things I'm pretty sure most parents would never tell their own kids.

I instruct him often: Don't try your best Judah.
And he objects: But Mrs. Hawkins will get mad at me if I don't do my best work!

It's especially hard to convince him to ease-up when his school actually recites a pledge every day, which includes a promise to do "your personal best."

But I know Judah.

I know the pressure of perfectionism is sucking all the joy out of school. I know his extreme efforts at forming the perfect upper and lower case letters completely stress him out. I know he kills himself to color intricately within the lines for fear. I know the kid who LOVED preschool doesn't want to go to kindergarten anymore because it's become a place of unbearably high anxiety born out of his desire to please his teacher, whom he loves.

So I implore him daily to NOT try his best.

But I can tell Judah is utterly confused by the blatant contradiction between my instructions and his teacher's mantras. And sometimes I wonder if I'm giving Judah the right message - don't try too hard, relax...I literally told him just to put in "HALF your best effort" because I didn't think he understood any other percentages.

Did I just basically tell my kid to half-ass everything at school? Does this make me a bad parent?

MIShandled

I perused the cover of Self and saw the lovely Ms. Washington and this caption:

Body, baby, kickass career, "It's handled."

Uh...I love me some Kerry-fabulosity as much as the next person, but, I think we're missing some full disclosure here.

I would like to suggest a more accurate caption:

Body, baby, kickass career, "It's handled...by my giant entourage of household help that includes a personal chef, personal trainer, stylist, day-time nanny, night nanny, and weekend nanny."

Inside, Kerry reveals that she likes to start her day with "stretching and meditation."

Uh, no mother of a 5 month old starts her day with stretching and meditation. It's more like, stretching (out my arms to reach my wailing baby) and lac-tation cuz every baby I've known demands to gulp down morning milk between 5:30 and 6:30 am.

But Ms. Washington's night nanny probably doesn't clock-out until 8 am so "it's handled."

But can we just stop??

Can we just stop with the fake baby-mama celebrity glorification? (I'm looking at all you uber-wealthy moms too, ahem, Sherly Sandberg and Marissa Meyer). Can we stop giving young women a distorted expectation that bodies, careers, and life in general will get handled smoothly along with a new baby?

Can we stop making real moms who are not part of the 1% feel crappy because it's NOT all handled? And maybe it never will be ever again?

How about some reality checks like:
--the horrible statistics on failing marriages when babies come in the picture
--the real nightmare costs of quality childcare
--the complete lack of meaningful jobs that don't demand 50+ hours per week
--the severe lack of sleep that verges on CIA torture technique territory
--the body and skin elasticity that will NEVER be the same again...without ahem, some "medical procedures"
--the overwhelming, crushing, unceasing, weight of it all

Can someone PLEASE just tell it like it IS about raising young kids in this world when you don't have a fleet of helpers (paid or unpaid)? Now that's an article that would actually do society some good.

Dear media world: please handle that.

Holidays Schmolidays

The only way to be happy in life, in my opinion, is to have low expectations.  The lower the better.  In that light, Christmas is always going to lose.

I mean, how can one day possibly live up to the mantle "It's the most wonderful time of the year!"?

In all fairness, we had a really great Christmas.

Twas the night before Christmas when all the gifts finally got wrapped!

Our friends and family overwhelmed us with love and cheer in the form of piles of awesome presents for the kids and these--my new favorite ornaments:

One of the sweetest, most thoughtful and most treasured presents we've ever gotten.

Everything about this picture says we are blessed beyond measure.

Got to love Judah's perfunctory smile--let's get this over with so I can open gifts!

And yet...

And yet, Christmas was a let down.  It just couldn't, once again, live up to its own hype.  I don't really know what I was expecting...unicorns pooping out rainbows (or maybe more appropriately, flying reindeer pooping out candy canes)?

It's just that Christmas promises so much...so much warmth, so much cheer, so much...magic.  But in the end, it was really just a regular day.  Actually, worse than a regular day--no stores or restaurants were open to offer us some easy diversion.

As for the kids, Judah had fun opening about 3 gifts before his eyes glazed over from over-stimulation.  We actually had to save the rest for another day since it was clear he was way too overwhelmed to appreciate any more.

Judah, before his eyes glazed over from too much awesome.

Noah, on the other hand, decided to continue his napping-strike.  The whole day was soured by his grumpiness and the 45+ minutes of soul-shattering wailing he emitted while being nap-trained.  The dude is just too alert now to be surreptitiously put down in his crib.  Argh.

Hey Santa Baby, why don't you give yourself the gift of sleep, huh?

All I can say is thank the newborn baby Jesus that we live in sunny California where we can always go outside, even in the dead of winter.  And that is just what we did.

Christmas in July?  Nope, just Christmas in paradise, i.e., California.

On our hike we met quite a few other people who must have been just as desperate to get out of the house, but man were they cranky.  I said hello to a few passersby and every single one of them gave me a frown.  So much for that Christmas cheer.

And the whole day I couldn't for the life of me find my ipod charger to play some Christmas music.

A day without music, without kindness from strangers, and without naps.  Bah humbug!

At the very least, I thought the spouse and I would have some meaningful conversations after we put the kids to bed.  Talking about Christmas, about the paradox of an incarnate deity, about family traditions...  But nope, we were both so completely wiped out, we just popped in a DVD about the corrupt underhanded politics of Washington (House of Cards).

Maybe I should just tell myself to lower my expectations for next year.  But I know I can't and I won't.  I've told myself to do just that every year for at least a decade.  And here's proof.  But come the first of December my hopes can't help but rise.  And then come the twenty-fifth of December, they can't help but be dashed.

At least next year I'm going to find that darn ipod charger ahead of time and watch my hopes go up in smoke with awesome Christmas music in the background!

Take that, Scrooge!

Trying and Failing

I've wanted to blog for a long time on the unhappy topic of infertility.

It seems like such a plague for my generation.  I've known so many friends who've tried and failed and tried and failed and went through months or years of heart-aching inability to conceive and/or carry to term.

No one tells you that trying to get pregnant in your 30's is hard.  No one tells you that fertility peaks around 20-24 and it's a long, slow but ever steady decline from there.  And if anyone ever were to say these things, they would be pilloried by the media as oppressively misogynistic--trying to keep women barefoot and pregnant and out of the circle of power.

Society tells us to be independent women.  To compete with the boys.  To go to college and grad school.  And then to throw ourselves into brilliant careers because, what the heck was all that schooling for after all?

And then our hearts tell us to make families.  And our bodies try and fail us.

Eventually, most of us do have kids.  But it wasn't/isn't an easy, straightforward path.  Facebook status updates are full of success announcements, but show none of the failures.

For every update that says--there's a bun in the oven!  There are hundreds of unwritten updates that should say--Year 2 of trying, still no bun!  And for every birth announcement, sadly, there are many and more unwritten miscarriage announcements.

And sometimes the first baby is not so hard to come by, but subsequent ones may be much much harder.  I was totally caught off guard when it took 5x longer to conceive this 2nd baby than the first.  I'd never heard of second child infertility until I started googling around for answers.  You always hear that once the fertility spigot has been opened, so to speak, it just keeps comin'!  But if you google that phrase, you'll see that's far from the truth.

Just yesterday a friend told me her 4-year old son is dying to have a sibling and she's been trying forever to get him just that.  My heart totally went out to her.  I could see the conflicted look of pain in her eyes as she noted my belly bump.  A look I know all too well.  I no longer joke with people about their plans for having 2nd kids because you never know how hard or how long they've been trying...and failing.

I hate writing about this topic.  I hate bumping up against the hard realities of natural laws.  And I hate the sour, bitter taste of trying and failing.  But I feel like it's a major diservice to women not to let them know.  To not say something.  Our society already does a heckuva job covering up these hard truths.

May you never be too soon old and too late wise.

P.S. This is a great, but sadly too rare article on a personal fertility crisis from the WSJ.

High Careers and Babies Don't Mix, Part IV: Asking the Question

Hi Anonymous Commenter--Thanks for the fun article read: Why There's No Such Thing as Having it All by Lori Gottlieb (response piece to the infamous Slaughter article).

I think Gottlieb made some excellent points (dare I say she even echoed my own sentiments about the destructive corporate culture of 24-7 connectivity that is tearing the fabric of our souls to shreds?) and I've always loved her insights and writing.  Full disclosure--LOVED her book--Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough (or something like that).

But what's with all the b*tchiness?

Her tone was just so mean.

I admit Slaughter's proffered solutions to the problem of 'work-life' balance were unrealistic and totally ripped apart by Gottlieb's rapier-sharp logic.  But man, chill out.

Slaughter made at least a few good points and presented one very profound question:

Is there significant societal value in having mothers proportionately represented in top professional positions?

Right now, working moms face the problem that Slaughter and Gottlieb both admit to--they can NOT have it all.  They can not be 'present' mothers AND hold top-level demanding positions (in the majority of fields) simply because of the nature of the job.

Right now women have a choice--be a mom OR get that top title.  And a lot of people (perhaps Gottlieb as well) say that's all fine and dandy.  Everyone faces choices.  Be grateful you have a choice.  Women have choices!!!  Feminism won.

But I think Slaughter is asking the next big question--are we okay with this?  As a society, do we lose out if women have to make this kind of choice?  If society IS better off with having moms represented in top positions, then what can we possibly do from a policy perspective to create this better world?

And the answer might very well be--nothing.  There's nothing we can do.  That's just the way things are.  We cannot grow wings.  A leopard cannot change its spots.  Mothers of children under 18 can not be top policy advisors to the president.  And as Gottlieb would say--we all have limitations--live with it, suck it up.

But I think it's at least a discussion worth having.

High Careers and Babies Don't Mix, Part III: An Unfolding Case Study

The first thing I noticed about Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo, is that she's hot.  Really hot.  It's amazing how hot she is.  Not just by CEO standards, but by any standards.

The second thing is that she's six months pregnant.

Wow.  That's even more amazing than the first attribute.

So, is Mayer a poster-child for the quintessential feminist?  Or a cray-cray recipe for disaster?  (Either way, her news comes at a perfect time for Anne Marie-Slaughter's publicists as it makes her recent article freshly relevant).

Mayer has already said that she's going to only take a few weeks of maternity leave and work the entire time.  Kinda already sounds high-stress cray-cray to me.

I have no doubt she can physically do it.  This woman is worth hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to Google stock.  She can hire an entire fleet of household help.  Night nanny, live-in nanny, baby nurses, cooks, house-cleaners, butlers, personal umbrella holders, whatever she and the baby needs.

But can she do it emotionally?  Preggo and post-natal hormones are a powerful drug cocktail.  It usually makes women totally weepy and "hyper-clingy" to their baby.

But more than that, all new moms I know WANT to spend time with their baby.  They WANT to bond with their baby.  And they feel totally crappy if they don't get to do that.

I've known moms who couldn't bond much with their baby either because of health reasons or work demands and they feel/felt awful about it.  It's crushing to have your baby cry when you hold him/her and stretch out their hands to their true primary caregiver, looking for comfort in the cuddle and coos of another person.  Have you ever been rejected by a baby?  It hurts like heck.  But I can't imagine the sting of the rejection when it's your own child!

But even more crushing is when that baby gets older and starts calling that other person "Mommy" while being pretty much indifferent to your presence.  And then that toddler grows into a child and has all his/her moral instruction from another person.  And then that child grows into a teen and you wonder why you have no moral authority over him/her--oh yeah, it's because I was barely in his/her life.  But I get ahead of myself.

In all stages of life, if you want to bond with your child and have a 'real' relationship with him/her, that necessitates time.  And time is not something CEO's (let alone any full-time working mom) have a lot of to spare.

So there you have it.  The One Million Dollar Question (unadjusted for inflation) for high-career feminists--to bond or not to bond?

Time (and the development of a child's psyche) waits for no one.

Philosophers Against Procreation

Speaking of not having kids, here's a provocative article I came across today:

The Case Against Kids: Is procreation immoral?

Haven't given it a thorough read, but from just glancing at it, looks spicy.  I guess my blog is also a pinterest board for articles I'll save to read later.

High Careers and Babies Don't Mix, Part II

So now there's a media firestorm over this article (see my last blog post for the link cuz I'm too lazy to link it again).  I just want to say 2 things about it.

First, thank you Anne-Marie Slaughter for publically voicing my own thoughts about the supposed awesomeness of women on the Supreme Court.  It's not that awesome when you consider that 2 of the 3 do not have families.

Second, I completely agree that “Having control over your schedule is the only way that women who want to have a career and a family can make it work” (quote from the article, which quotes Mary Matalin).

The reason Ms. Slaughter could be so happy in her career and parenting (prior to her stint in government) was because she worked in academia, that beautiful edenic paradise which allows you to set your own hours for most of the time.  If you want to go home at 5pm and resume work at 9pm, no problem.  Academia will let you do that.

But enter the big bad world of client demands and client-set timelines, and you are in a world of hurt.  And there is no more ruthless client than the corporate law client.  Our clients, Fortune 500 companies, wait for no man or woman.  They call you at 5pm Friday evening and demand a 30 hour work-product to be completed by 7 am Monday morning.

They schedule 10 am Sunday morning conference calls.

They make you work over Thanksgiving and Christmas.

They could care less that the new deadline falls right smack in the middle of your vacation plans.

And they have no qualms about asking you to work through the night.

But the BEST part of it all is not the sheer number of crazy-hours required--it's that it's all completely unplanned ahead of time.  It's all a wonderful surprise!  You thought you'd be free this weekend, but *surprise*!  Your client calls you Friday evening with some lovely change of plans.

Recently a male partner and I were talking about how unreasonable client demands can be.  He had just finished a major deal for Microsoft and was pretty annoyed at all the sudden all-nighters it required.  It was especially annoying because he kept having to cancel plans with his kids that really disappointed them.

It's great to have partners that honestly vent about these kind of frustrations.  But in the end, we both shrugged our shoulders cuz watchagonnado?  This is the reality and expectation in the business climate of today.  Technology has made our culture a 24-7 beast of constant connectivity.

Not only are lawyers expected to work around the clock at the drop of a hat, but in-house employees are being squeezed into the strait-jacket of constant availability.

There is really no more 'sacred' time.


And that's not just unhealthy for parenting, but for everyone.

High Careers and Babies Don't Mix?

Within minutes of each other, 3 people 'sent' this article to me today:

Why Women Still Can't Have it All by Anne-Marie Slaughter (first woman director of policy planning at the State Department and Dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs)

Well, technically, only my hubby sent it to me.

The other 2 people (female law school classmates) 'shared' it on Facebook.

It's basically about her reflections on how motherhood and professional career success are incompatible, and perhaps irreconciliably so (yeah, I may have made up that word). I don't have time to write much on this right now, but talk amongst yourselves.

Women can NOT have it all...yes? No?

How I Know I Married the Right Guy

Recently I heard about a new phenomenon that neurotic suburban parents do to give their kid an extra advantage in life--redshirting.

Redshirting is when you hold your kid back from kindergarten so that he or she will be one of the oldest kids in the class (and thereby one of the smartest and most developed kids as well, so the theory goes).  This practice is spreading like wildfire across suburbs in the US such that the median age for a lot of kindergarteners is now 6 instead of 5.  Pretty soon they'll have to move it back to 7, then 8, and then we'll see boys shaving in kindergarten!  Just kidding.

But seriously, this kind of advantage is pretty well supported, most recently by pop-academic Malcom Gladwell in his book Outliers.  Gladwell writes about how a small edge gives a kid a bigger edge the next year, which gives him an even bigger edge the next, etc. until it snowballs into a great advantage--this is what Gladwell terms "cumulative advantage."

The more developed kindergartener gets a bit more attention from the coach, who will develop him a little more, and becomes the better player in 1st grade, and 2nd grade, and eventually the star player in little league. 

Although it works in sports, most parents who 'redshirt' do it for social reasons.  They want their kids to be the leaders, the popular ones, the alpha dog.  They want their kid to go from success to success, snowballing their sense of confidence and esteem in themselves.

Spouse and I recently watched a 60 Minutes episode on Redshirting and looked at each other in disbelief.  After we clicked off the TV, he turns to me and says:

"I don't want Judah to be a winner, or the most popular kid, or the top dog.  What I want most is for him to be kind, and compassionate, and gracious, and charitable."

"Wow," I thought to myself, "I sure married the right guy.  Those are exactly my values too."

But then I said, "So...you want Judah to be an anti-jerk.  That's basically the opposite of you.  Ha ha."

Hey, we all want our kids to be better than ourselves!

The Other Baby

As many of you know, Judah is not our only baby.

We have another baby that just recently turned 1 in May, our church plant, Indelible Grace Church.

Being the wife of a planter, it's inevitable that you consider the 'success' or 'failure' of the plant since your whole lives are very much wrapped up in the church.

One thing that has always bothered me about church plants, and churches in general, is that the de facto way people measure 'success' is almost always about numeric growth. How many people attend? How many visitors stay? How much is the budget?

But as Piper would say, Brothers we are not professionals.

We should not measure things the way the 'professional' or 'corporate' world does. Bottom lines, efficiencies, revenue, numerical growth, polish and pizazz, etc. Those external measures have nothing to do with the values we hold nearest--self-sacrifice, humility, death to ourselves, and inner transformation--namely, the gospel of a God who emptied himself of all but love to save the lowest and the least.

That's why my heart lept with joy when I read this excerpt from Reb Bradley, another church planter:

"Shortly after I first planted Hope Chapel in 1987 we were visited by Pastor Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand. (They both had been tortured for years in communist prison camps and are the godliest people I have ever known.) During their visit Sabina asked me how the church plant was going. I responded, saying that I believed I was in obedience to God to be in Sacramento planting the church, so anticipated that the church would be a success. For that statement she firmly rebuked me. She looked me in the eye and declared, “Obedience is the highest success!”

I think our young plant is doing well, by external measures, but that is hardly the point. Since our Lord "failed" in a most spectacular and public way, we must therefore redefine our measure of success.

Let us only follow Him.

Women in High Places

Elena Kagan will be the 4th woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court.

Apparently, it's significant that she's a woman. But I'm not entirely sure why.

Is her appointment supposed to symbolize some kind of "equality" or advancement of women in society? Is it supposed to signal to little girls everywhere--you too can aspire to the highest pinnacle of worldly achievement?


I suppose those messages are being sent by Kagan's ascension to the high court. But I also hear another message that isn't quite so "empowering". I hear--If you want to climb the ranks to the top, you have to give up on healthy relationships (and a family in particular)--especially if you're a woman. At least that seems to be how it is in the legal field.

The legal profession has seen required work hours climbing ever higher for decades, crowding out any opportunity for legal careerists to do anything other than work and take care of their hygiene and health (which too many unfortunately forgo).

I think it's telling and chilling that the only women justices who've ever had families were born in the early 30's--when times were slower-paced. Men, however, still benefit from the bias of traditional gender roles within the family. And being an absentee father is and has always been more acceptable than an absentee mother.

What Kagan and Sotomayor (both unmarried and childless) represent to me is The Choice. The Fork in the Road. In the legal profession, you can climb higher, or you can have a family.

But cheer up ladies, at least you have a choice! (spoken with only mild sarcasm intended)

Four Entries for the Price of One

So I've had some random-ish thoughts lately, which apparently, I just HAVE to share:

Random Thought #1: How I Lost Out on Making Thousands of Dollars on Sunday

Stupid me. Stupid, stupid, uninitiative, passive me. Why oh why can’t I think more like Warren Buffet and less like, well, like my unambitious self. Once again, for the 2nd time in my life, I’ve passed up on a sure bet. A Sure Bet.

I know that sounds like a Vegas-junkie talking to his rehab counselor, but seriously, it was a sure bet. I just saw Roger Ebert on Oprah give his predictions for the Oscar winners TWO days before the awards show and he said it was the easiest Oscars for him to predict, ever. EVER. The man has been doing this for a very long time. And of course, every single one of his predictions came true--best supporting actress, best supporting actor, best actor, best actress, best director, and best picture.

I’m tearing up as I type this. I could’ve bet money on each of these categories and become a pretty rich lady. Sigh.

Random side note--Did you know Ebert married a wonderful black lady named Chaz? They are the cutest couple.

Random Thought #2: Will Gabourey Ever Work (as a lead) Again?

Howard Stern says Gabourey is “enormous” and will never be in another movie. As crass and unnecessarily vicious as Stern sounds (trust me, I did not quote the worst of it), weren’t we all wondering that same thing? What kind of roles will she get in the future? Starring roles? Best actress nomination roles? I’m not saying she’ll never work as an actress again, but she won’t be up for the lead role.


Sadly, I think the most she may be nominated for again is best supporting actress. Since when has a plump girl ever been nominated for best actress? Even the slightly fluffy ones don’t get lead roles--Jennifer Hudson, Mo’nique (okay, Kathy Bates is an exception), but you get the idea. But maybe, just maybe they’ll make Precious, the sequel.

Random Thought #3: The Right to Know Who We Are

There are 2 shows about to premier featuring celebrities tracing their ancestry and tearing up in front of the camera, so moved are they to find out their lineage. Although, at first, such detective work seems like the ultimate act of narcissism, I’ve now come to appreciate how strongly our identity is linked to the family members who came before us. We are not an island, shaping our identities from a tabula rasa. We have histories and traits and imprints that have begun shaping us before we even grew to be self-aware. That’s why people universally want to know and are so moved when they find out about their family histories. They are finding out about themselves. I imagine it is the burning question of all adopted children at some point in their lives--who are my birth parents?

Which makes having children through anonymous sperm donation all the more tragic and heartbreaking. Out of ignorance (at best) and delusion (at worst), the women who choose to have kids through anonymous donors are cheating their children out of a fundamental human right--to know who they are. It made me think of this story I read years ago, written by a child of just such a union.

(Not So) Random Thought #4: Name Pains

So, naturally, people have been asking the spouse and I if we have any names picked out for the child. At first we blithely blabbed the names we liked (well, the one name we liked) to anyone. But after being given faces of discouragement (ranging from confusion to down right disgust, DISGUST I tell you) we’ve given up.

Not on the name, but on telling people. Of course it’s a bit of a Catch-22. Maybe everyone’s right and the name we picked does suck. If we don’t take into account the critical comments we might end up damning our kid forever with a bad name. But if we do take into account all the criticism we’ll, well, get an earful of criticism that is just plain annoying.

Actually, people can change their names, so I’m not so concerned about saddling my kid with a bad name from birth.

My Team, My Self

Whenever the spouse meets an Asian American, he likes to use this litmus test for national identity to find out if the AA considers himself or herself more Asian or more American--Which team do you cheer for in the Olympics?

For me, I find myself innately cheering for team USA, and then, if there are no US athletes, team China.

For the spouse, it's team Korea all the way. US can take silver.

It's natural for the Olympics to be a proxy for national pride--countries battle it out to be the best in somewhat healthy (at least nonviolent) competition.

Which makes it all the wierder when athletes compete for countries they do not call home. I just read about the Reed Family, which has 3 Winter Olympic siblings. Although they grew up in the US and live in New Jersey, 2 kids ice-dance for Japan and 1 for the Republic of Georgia!

The Japanese connection is not so far-fetched as the mom is Japanese. But Georgia? What the...?


Allison Reed started training with her Georgian partner last May and now holds dual citizenship with the foreign country, to which she has no other ties.

Doesn't that defeat the whole point of the Olympics? I realize that athletes just want to compete at the highest level they can, but so much for representing your country!

Tiger 'Cheetah' Woods and Friends

The title of the newest issue of Newsweek offends me. It has a huge picture of Tiger Woods on the cover (so big that I couldn’t even recognize that it was him for a while) and the words--Why Can’t We Look Away?

I got news for YOU, Newsweek. I CAN look away. I’d love to look away. But you and your media friends won’t let me! Everywhere I turn, stories about Tiger are splashed around. And I could care less. I have no fascination with the best golfer in the world. That really means nothing to me. I’m not interested in a man who is the best at putting a small ball into a small hole on a large field of grass.

And while we’re on the subject of celebrities and tragedy, I have to say I just don’t understand why the general public cares so much.

Like, Michael Jackson’s death. People all over the world were swooning and sobbing over the news. It’s like, really? Wasn’t his career effectively dead for decades? He had morphed into such a sad, bizarre creature that I wasn’t sure there was anything to mourn. I would sooner mourn his adorable younger face un-mauled by the horrors of plastic surgery.

I remember when I was in junior high and Kurt Cobain had died. People came to school teary-eyed and depressed. I guess I just didn’t connect to his angsty lyrics all that much.

In fact, I can’t imagine feeling miserable at the death of any celebrity. And there are some I wish would die (at least whose publicity would die). Can a popular icon touch your life so profoundly that you would feel such a tremendous sense of loss without him or her?

I can’t imagine.

Although, if I were very hard pressed, I guess I would feel kinda sad if we lost Tim Gunn.

From Homeless to Harvard

I'm not sure what to make of this incredible story about Khadijah Williams, a homeless 18 year old girl who grew up on skid row and was raised by a single mother who had her at age 14. Williams overcame seemingly insurmountable odds (she has "attended" 12 schools in 12 years--and that's "attended" in the loosest sense of the word) to end up accepted at Harvard College in the Fall.

Obviously it's great and amazing.

But I'm worred about a couple things.

First, I'm worried about bootstrap-pulling ideologues who may point to Khadijah to prove their delusion that poor people are poor because they just don't work hard enough. Look at Khadijah--if you just try hard like her, you too can succeed.

That's poppycock. Khadijah is an incredible individual with exceptional talent and the good fortune to have counselors and teachers who supported and believed in her potential. Khadijah was also lucky in that her mother, however homeless and indigent, never smoked, drank or did drugs. Hopefully this exception will not be abused as the rule.

Second, I'm worried about Khadijah. Among all the cultural differences she will have to adjust to, there is a greater shock that she's in for--her pride. Khadijah has always been proud of the fact that she is, in her own words, in the 99th percentile. She has found esteem in her academic abilities and significance in her scores.

But what happens when she's surrounded by people just as smart, or smarter, than her? How will her ego survive being in the 50th percentile of the ivory tower? I hope that she will learn how to find worth, significance and esteem in something more abiding and less relative than achievement.

After all she's been through, I hope she does not go from the oppression of poverty to the oppression of a culture of overachievement. For that would truly be jumping out of the pot and into the fire.

The Self-Sufficiency of Mom

This week we learned about the self-sufficiency of God in Sunday school, among other things, and I couldn't help but shout, "Eureka!"

In some small way, I think I know exactly how God feels.

As I rapidly approach my thirties and my anniversary celebrating six wonderful years of wedded bliss (no sarcasm, really), my mind drifts to the B-question more and more.

When should I have a baby?

Many of my peers already have kids or are actively trying but I'm still floating in a pool of indifference. I just don't feel it--the drive, the maternal instinct, the biological alarm clock, the whatever it is that is supposed to make you get out there and procreate!

I feel very 'meh'. I could take it, leave it, either way. It's not a big deal for me to have kids, now, next year, or ever. Why? I'm not sure, but when I heard of this interesting attribute of God, I thought, maybe that has something to do with it...

In a nutshell, God's self-sufficiency is such that he doesn't need anything. He didn't create man because he was lonely, or needed praise, or love or adoration. He was perfectly happy living in the blessed community of his triune persons. He was complete already.

That's how I feel--complete. I don't need a child to love, care for, give to, get from, teach, learn, grow, etc. I mean, objectively, I probably do need a child to shake me out of my consummate self-absorption. But subjectively, I really feel no need.

I'm so happy with the way things are, just the two of us. I love my life, my extended family, my friends--my days are filled with meaningful and joyous hopes and plans. Who needs a kid?

But don't get me wrong. I love kids. I think kids are great! But I just don't need one.

It's like a Lexus, a Louis V purse, a trip to Prague or, perhaps more appropriately, a puppy...all nice and wonderful things that I just don't feel the urge to have.

But maybe I should feel the urge...is something wrong with me?

Who Wants to Date a Millionaire?

Patti Stanger from Bravo's Millionaire Matchmaker is part Yenta, part Heidi Fleiss. And you definitely have to pay to play.


Watching her show is like getting a crash course on evoluationary biology at its finest. The men must be millionaires and the women must be hot, perfect 10's--beauty, brains, and sweet as a midwesterner fresh off the bus.

But apparently, money isn't enough. The guys ALSO have to be good-looking and young enough to get the women at the top of their wishlist. It's fascinating to see the trade-offs that inevitably play out match after match.

If he's older than 46, he can't get a girl younger than 32. If he's only average looking, he can't get the 9 and 10 girls. If he likes to party (and owns an adult online store), he's not going to get the nice girl that wants to settle down.

It's hilarious watching Patti mercilessly cut a guy down to size and give him the "tough love" straight-up truth to deflate his outsize expectations and make a realistic match. She doesn't mince words and gets right down to business, using the p-word so much that most guys start to blush.

But she's dead on. She knows how the social darwinian game is played and she knows exactly what you can and can't get with the limited resources you have.

But what about beauty and the beast? Where's the love that doesn't care about outward trappings and just looks at person's "heart"? It's a fairytale people.

The reality is the law of the jungle--survival of the hottest and richest, with a dash of decency.

Caging the Beast

Everywhere you turn there's news on the economy.

Unemployment rising, markets crashing, credit shrinking, banks failing, stimuli pumping, fears growing...

And always an undercurrent of wanting to blame someone. Who is responsible for this mess? Whose degenerate greed and ambition destroyed a nation's wealth? Bring his head out on a platter!

But as far as I can tell, the problem is not with individuals, but with that elusive entity made up of many individuals and yet another thing entirely--the mob.

The mob is a dangerous beast, and no man can stop it once it has become unleashed. The might of collective action is like a great breaking wave, sweeping any mere individual that dares to stand up against it under its overpowering tow.

It was a mob on Main Streets everywhere that decided to mortgage their houses to the hilt and refinance like there would always be rising housing prices. It was a mob on Wall Street that decided to sell mortgage backed securities like there was no tomorrow. It was a mob of credit-rating agencies that decided CDOs should be rated AAA despite the dubious assumptions used in their formulae. And it was a mob of politicians that pressured agencies to make mortgages more available to low-income people.

Any one homeowner, one trader, one rating agent, one politician was utterly powerless against these mobs. If you didn't follow the tide, you would be swept under. If you don't make the trades, you would post below-market returns. If you didn't rate the CDOs AAA you wouldn't get the repeat business from sellers of the securities. If you didn't back the policy of making mortgages to low-income people who couldn't afford it, you were political chaff at best and a racist at worst.

The whole economic debacle then is not the result of any one person or group's moral failing. It is, instead the result of failing to account for human nature. The nature of man is to act in his best interest (right on, Adam Smith). When you have hordes of people acting in their natural interest, you have the mob at it's finest.

Each person does what only comes natural and before you know it, it becomes impossible to do otherwise. The disincentives are too great to buck the trend.

This economic meltdown, then, was caused by the perfect storm of bad collective incentives. And then it took on a life of its own.

The blame then falls on the systemic failure to cage the beast.

The incentives of our politicians, businessmen, agencies, and consumers were aligned in dastardly precision, each one abetting and supporting the other, until the bubble burst and the party finally ended--and the bill had to be paid.

In any social system, there must be proper checks and balances to make sure the beast of human self-interest does not run amuck, all off the cliff together.

Mauritania!

Mauritania is the answer to all our problems!


Mauritania is a land where up is down! Black is white! And big is beautiful! (Ok, only the last statement is true.)

Yes, that small country in the northwestern region of Africa has the opposite cultural ideal of beauty than that which is held by pretty much the rest of the world. Plump women are considered gorgeous, and skinny (or "scrawny" as they call it) women are disgusting.

Young girls are force-fed cous-cous and fatty milk until they vomit and then force-fed some more! This ritual causes all kinds of unhealthful side-effects in older women, as one can well imagine--high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, etc.

But Oprah couldn't get enough of it. I saw her show on "beauty around the world," which had a segment on Mauritania and she could not hide her fascination with this place in which her long-battled gut would actually be a boon and not a curse.

She was so overjoyed she burst out into song, "There's a place for us...Somewhere a place for us..."

Sure Oprah would fit right in to Mauritania, but what about naturally scrawny girls? Isn't that the problem with cultural ideals of beauty (no matter how much they may vary from culture to culture)?

Someone, somewhere is always ugly.