I Love You, Man

These are nice words by Lindsey Graham about John McCain. It's not often you hear a man say "I love him to death" about a friend. I like seeing these men express their emotions to the public.

The Role of Friendship in Marriage

I'm bookmarking this article in The New York Times about the role of friendship in marriage. I'll probably discuss this article with my Research Methods class in the upcoming semester. The article notes: "Those who consider their spouse or partner to be their best friend get about twice as much life satisfaction from marriage as others, the study found." I try to reference a classic rock song whenever an opportunity presents, so here's "You're My Best Friend" by Queen:

Wine Drinking + Card Playing = Fun

Friday nights aren't usually exciting in my family's life. We are all tired after a week of school and work. The hustle of making it through the week leaves us exhausted. Last night we broke format. Instead of pizza night followed by an early bedtime, we went to a friend's house to hang out with a few couples. Our kids ran around in their basement and let the grownups have fun. We drank wine and played cards and had some laughs. It was a nice way to wrap up the week. We didn't bring a fancy bottle of wine. We brought this over-sized bottle of wine. A semi-sweet wine from a nearby winery. I am convinced of wine's restorative properties. Not to mention the importance of laughing. Drink wine. Laugh. Support a New York State winery. All good.

TODD Talk - Being a Good Colleague

This is me talking about being a good colleague...

"Adventures" at Age 41

For the most part, I lead an unexciting life. I don't see that as a bad thing. The waters are mostly calm. My life is a good one. Last week, I participated in a 5k race that turned into a 4+ mile race. Most of us in the race were led in the wrong direction by someone's mistake, and we ran extra. I can't handle much more than 3 miles, so every extra step was a little painful. Thinking about it a week later, I'm glad I was unintentionally pushed to run more than I expected. It turned out to be a good physical challenge. You can't put much stock in the results of the race, because some of us ran a different course than others, but for what it's worth I finished second place in the 40-44 age group. I was even awarded a medal. I'll take it.

A few days after the race, I was walking alongside my 6-year-old as he tried out skateboarding. I never learned to skateboard so I don't have much to offer in the way of instruction. I did my best to show him a few times how it might be done, but I was really just guessing. I don't belong on a skateboard, a fact that became more obvious when the skateboard flew out from under me. I fell hard on my back on a concrete surface. My first thought was "I'm not sure I can get up." I played rugby for seven years during college and grad school and for all the crushing hits I endured in that time I'm not sure the thought ever occurred to me that I couldn't get up from the ground. Well, I got up, and luckily wasn't injured. I then mumbled "Know your limits" which was just a message to myself. So that's the end of my skateboarding career.

Some friends came over last night, guys I've known for around 30 years of my life. We had some beers and tossed around memories, which works for me. I definitely enjoy drinking beers on a beautiful summer day in the comfort of old friends. Some of our stories went way back to high school. Meanwhile, all of our kids were running around my backyard playing together. It was awesome to see our kids having fun together. I threw dogs and burgers on the grill and was happy not to screw anything up. I'm not known for my grill skills.

On an adventure scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the most adventurous, I probably score a 1.7 in this life. Like I've written before, I pretty much live an unfabulous life. All told, I am fortunate to live such a good life.

E-Mail and Conversations

Sherry Turkle's opinion piece, "The Flight From Conversation," was published more than a month ago in The New York Times. Her main point is that nothing substitutes for face-to-face conversation. Alongside Twitter and Facebook, she mentions e-mail as a form of communication that pales in comparison to face-to-face conversation. She says that when we communicate using technology, we do so in a faster, less nuanced manner than when we converse in person. In face-to-face conversations, she says, we are more attentive to other people's viewpoints.

I've thought about her piece a lot since reading it last month. Today, it occurred to me that my best friendship has been sustained by e-mail. My best friend and I graduated from college in 1994. Since then, we have almost always lived 500 miles apart. We get together in person a few times a year. Between visits, we rely on e-mail to stay in touch. Neither of us like to use the phone. Never have. But we both like e-mail and have consistently used it in the course of our friendship. Sometimes the messages consist of frivolous one-liners and not-so-important updates. Other times they have included serious exchanges filled with deep meaning. There are things that are hard for me to say to anyone's face, for fear of being judged for what I have to say or how I say it. E-mail has allowed me to say what I want to say in a careful and measured way. Turkle sees this as a problem. Human relationships are messy and we use technology to clean them up, she says. To that I would say without e-mail, there are things I never would have said to anyone in any way. In college and graduate school I hid a lot of my thoughts in diaries. I've opened up since then, but not totally. There are lots of thoughts I choose not to share. E-mail allows me to carefully share some of those sensitive thoughts. I don't see this as being shortchanged. Nor do I want to pick up the phone every time I want to share a book recommendation with my friend or ask him for a movie recommendation. Occasionally he sends me a hilarious account of something that happened to him. Then I can read it 2-3 times because it's such a great story and I get to enjoy it more than once.

Aside from describing the centrality of e-mail in an important friendship, I want to briefly say something about conversational skills. Being a college professor, most of my daily conversations are with students. Unlike me, they grew up with cell phones. For many of them, Facebook is a vital part of their lives. And yes, they are experts at texting. I also find they possess good conversational skills. I regularly speak with students face-to-face. I am generally impressed by how they carry on conversations. They send me e-mails too, but it's not a flight from conversation. Turkle is right in saying that human relationships are rich. I think that all of the ways we communicate make our relationships rich. We talk, we text. We text while we talk. There are so many ways to enjoy each other. I like a good conversation as much as anyone. But in my life I've found that good conversations are hard to find. So I'm happy to connect with people in any way that I can.

An Honorable Man

I was lucky enough to run into an honorable man. Just when I thought I had life figured out, he shook my view of the world. He did it by appealing to my conscience and pointing me in the right direction. You're fortunate if you meet such a person in your lifetime. In my adult life I have witnessed too many people acting primarily in terms of self-interest and self-preservation. Not to mention self-pity and self-absorption ("What's best for me? How does this help me? I can't catch a break.") We always have room to grow, so we're lucky to occasionally meet people that make us better.

Author's note: this post was inspired by an actual event in my life. I characterize it as creative non-fiction.