Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Sunday musings…

1) Bufflehead. The official duck of Clan bingo.

2) Tortiere. Official cuisine of the occupied according to the NYT.

I dunno. Does occupation taste better if it has a fancy name?

3) Friendship. “Friendship without loyalty is like a lake without water.”

That’s pretty deep.

4) Reality. There are a number of movies that have just come out that deal, either directly or incidentally, with poverty. Characters are either in the act of overcoming their poverty, or are inextricably affected by poverty as they attend to whatever theme the movie other wise addresses. I am struck by a certain detail that I simply cannot ignore in each and every example: the actors all have perfect teeth.

Not only is there not a single tooth askew in the entire cast, but there is nary a blemish to be found on an incisor. Heck, I’ll bet that even the lowliest Grip or Best Boy has a perfect smile.

Don’t know about you, but I just think the mountain men of “Deliverance” or “Winter’s Bones” would have seemed a whole lot less dangerous if they had all of their teeth.

5) Certainty. There are some really big decisions in a life. I mean huge, consequential decisions that simply must be made. To do so is very, very hard. There is simply no escaping that fact. You reach a point where you have to make a call on something that matters. Really matters. Like, rest of your life hinges on your decision matters. As part of this monumental process you must make peace with the concept of “certainty”.

You can–you really must, actually– be certain that this is a really big decision, but you must at the same time be cognizant that you cannot be certain that you are making the best decision possible.

I am forever in search of a better vocabulary to describe things I know or things I feel very deeply. In that never-ending search I came across an article about the former GM of the Philadelphia 76’ers, Sam Hinkie. Mr. Hinkie is a polymath who is at any particular time either wildly sentimental or icily objective. Fascinating guy, actually (you can read the article in SI 12/5/16). Throughout the article it was somewhat difficult for me to establish common ground with him (except for our shared devotion to precise language) until I came upon a brief discussion of “certainty” in decision making. Both Hinkie and I had the same decision to make–to prioritize our courtship and subsequent marriage over other pursuits like education and vocation–and we both not only made the same call but continue to describe it as the best call we ever made.

We were certain of its importance, and in response at some point we went “all in” on the decision. Here is Hinkie on the process:

“You have to be careful that you are thinking reasonably. People are too willing to scratch the itch of the near thing. Discipline is the difference between what you want and what you really, really want…I think people often don’t bring that kind of rigor to whatever it is, if it’s important. Because they’d rather make lots of little tiny decisions that a few big ones.”

Certainty is a sword that cuts both ways. The only cut you control is the one of knowing that something is really big. Something you really, really want. Something that matters. You cannot be certain that you will make the right decision, but the only way forward once you are certain about something is to pour everything you have into whatever that thing is.

Hinkie: “What wouldn’t you pay to make it so, if it’s right?”

I’ll see you next week…

–bingo