A(musing) on Lent

“And what did you give up for Lent?” If I had a nickel for every time I heard this string of words lately. . . I’d be perhaps a candy bar richer.  As is customary this time of year, lots of my friends have chosen to give something up for Lent, whether it be chocolate, drinking, TV etc. And inevitably, I am asked what I ‘gave up’. Having gone to Catholic school for the better part of 10 years, I get the drill and the reasoning behind it – I just don’t think it’s a good way to effect lasting change or long-term altered behavior.

As a child, I would give something up (typically candy/sweets) and then consume in excess the previously forbidden fruit the second Easter arrived. I was even happier when I discovered the alleged ‘loophole’ that you are allowed to violate your resolution on Sundays. Even now, as a mostly adult, I feel like lots of people go through the motions for 40 days, and then totally forget about whatever it was they had given up. Much like a new year’s resolution gone stale by February.

So, I ask you, what lasting changes have been made? Are you a better person for having sacrificed something temporarily? Maybe, maybe not. Who’s to say? This year I’m going to try something different. Instead of giving something up, I’m going to try to proactively alter my fundamental behavior such that it lasts beyond the 40 days of Lent. I’ve tried this before with little success, but for every weekday, I’m going to get up at 6AM and do something productive for 45 minutes before getting ready for work. Whether it’s working out, practicing piano, reading a book, cleaning my room, or writing on here, something will be done.

The idea is that hopefully this will become something I look forward to, and will be able to build into my routine going forward. Now, I tend to wake up at 6, and press the snooze button 3 times. This feels good in the short run, but let's do a little math, shall we?

0.75 hrs/day x 5 days/week = 3.75 hrs/week x 52 weeks/year = 195 hrs/year x 100 years of life remaining  = 19,500 hours

19,500 hours. According to Malcom Gladwell, that’s enough time to become a world-class expert in TWO subjects. Now, this is extraordinarily unlikely to happen, but it just serves to illustrate the point how a small change now can have a massive impact down the road. Like compound interest.

Alternatively, and this may be an idea for next year: have one new experience/go someplace new every week. I'm lucky enough to live in New York City, where potential abounds, but sometimes the impetus is lacking. Now if you'll excuse me, this paragraph was thrown in here because I just though of the idea and don't trust myself to remember it a year from now.

Anyway, now that I’ve wasted several precious minutes of your life with this drivel, I get to ask you: What are YOU giving up for Lent?

Until next time,

Ian

Learning to Read

Do you remember, way back when you were a child, what it was like learning to read? First, you had to learn the building blocks of language, letters, which are really just squiggly lines jotted down on some flat surface. Then, once you thought you were doing well and had a solid grasp on their appearance, somebody (a teacher, I reckon) told you that the shapes were associated with sounds, so you had to go back and learn the sound that was joined at the hip to each squiggly line.

The next layer of complication arose when the individual letters were mashed together to create words. And to make matters worse, there were a bunch of crazy rules you had to learn too! Like people, these letters behaved differently depending who their neighbors were! The Mr. S at the beginning of the word ‘session’ has quite a different attitude and sound from the same sss (esses?) residing in the middle. Once you had those down, you threw the words together to create sentences. Add a touch of grammar and some punctuation for good measure, and voila! So easy a child can learn it! Thus the entire of world of literature was opened before you, and now, as an adult, reading seems like the most natural thing in the world.

So where, exactly, am I going with this? Good question. Tonight, I felt a little bit like the incompetent child sitting in front of his flashcards all over again. I had the first piano lesson of my life.  When I first sat down, I may as well have been a German code breaker listening to the Navajo. The expanse of white keys, interrupted on occasion by black ones, extending as far as the eye could see in either direction was enough to start my head spinning. We started out by reading music, and I was introduced to the bass clef. We sat for 20 minutes as I tried to read aloud the name of each note in several little pieces, and draw the mental line to the key on the instrument. Easier said than done. Next week it will be Chopstix and Chopin.

The goal of all of this is, of course, to be able to read music as fluently and easily as you’re reading this right now. I suppose at some point it will click, become second nature, and I will look back at these struggles with an amused chuckle and slight shake of the head.

Well, that’s it for tonight folks! Until next time, rest easy and illegitimi non carborundum!