The Zombies Are Here, Now!

A few days ago I was sitting in a café having breakfast as I usually do on Wednesday mornings before my classes. The place is pretty large and located in a popular business/shopping center in the center of Kharkiv. And it has free Wi-Fi.

There are few people when I first come in, and it’s usually pretty quiet. Somewhere between 8:30 and 9:00 it starts to fill up with teenagers. Apparently there is a high school nearby. They begin to swarm in groups around tables (we used to call such groups “cliques”). Some mornings, like this one, there are quite a lot of them.

Generally, they don’t buy anything. They just take up space and free Wi-Fi bandwidth. That’s nothing new. But the thing that really gets my attention is what they do in their gaggles around the tables: practically nothing except to stare at the little electronic screens in their hands.

Socializing in Isolation

They gather in groups, which one would think is about socializing in person with friends, creating and cementing bonds, stuff like that. But even as they sit there shoulder-to-shoulder with their friends, they almost completely ignore each other. Their faces are transfixed on their mobile devices. If they say anything at all, it’s about something they see on their devices, probably suggesting that their friends check it out as well.

It strikes me as incredibly odd how these teenagers feel a need on one hand to gather and associate with one another, yet on the other hand are so consumed by their mobile phones that they do so in virtual isolation.

As I was looking at a group closest to me, I saw one guy who was not staring at a phone. He was looking around and trying to talk to others in his group, they occasionally answered him, barely looking up from their tiny screens. He seemed OK with it. Interestingly, he was the only one I saw who actually bought something from the café.

It was sad to look around that place and see so many faces bent downwards into mobile phones: almost all of them. What are these kids going to become when they grow up?

But it’s not limited to teenagers. Look around in almost any public place these days and you see people zombified by smart phones and tablets. And this is Ukraine, which has historically run a little behind the West in these sorts of things. I can only imagine how complete the zombification must be in Denver, Boston, Paris or Tokyo.

Massive Psychological Shift?

Maybe it’s even beyond sad. Sometimes it seems to me like there is some evil force at work here, something that is creating a psychological shift in the masses, systematically changing how our brains work, creating a generation of mindless drones who simply take in the numbing pabulum of the Internet.

These days, a person can’t take a short bus ride, go up briefly in an elevator, or stand in a line for a few minutes without his or her face in a mobile device. And in most cases, they aren’t getting anything new or special from what they see; often they are looking at the same stuff on Facebook or their Instagram feeds for the third or fourth time. It just gives them something to do to avoid being in the real world.

Something is definitely wrong here, something that speaks to a growing psychological problem.

The psychological effect comes to light in the way people treat their devices compared to how they treat other people. More and more, the devices seem to matter more, to be more important. What we would normally consider common courtesy seems to be disappearing.

It's Personally Insulting

A few months back, I had lunch with someone I know. She immediately put her smartphone on the table and was constantly looking down at it as alerts came across the screen. It was like our conversation – any my company – was secondary to whatever popped up on her screen.

I didn’t say anything at the time, but in retrospect it was really disrespectful and offensive. And I know that I won’t tolerate it again in the future. If you want to be in my company, then be in my company; if you want to focus on your phone, then goodbye!

I’ve made it a point recently to “lay down the law” regarding mobile devices in my classroom. At the beginning of each course, I let people know that they’re free to use their devices for translation if necessary, but that I will not tolerate people sitting in class checking out their messages or, even worse, writing messages. The class is only 55 minutes – they can live that long without their devices.

Every day I see people in my office, on the street, and elsewhere who can’t seem to do anything or go anywhere without their faces in their devices. As they walk, they are often hazards to others and themselves, but they are so hypnotized, so dependent on some kind of satisfaction they get from these things, that they can’t stop themselves. It’s scary.

Now, I have an iPhone, and I even have an Apple Watch, so I am pretty connected. But I own the devices – they don’t own me. In class, my phone goes into my bag. If I meet a friend, the phone stays in a pocket or bag, NOT on the table. I refuse to insult someone that way.

Almost exactly four years ago, April 7, 2013, I wrote a post on this subject called Losing Our Humanity. It all seemed pretty sad to me even then. But now, it just seems to be getting exponentially worse. I don’t know what the answer is, but I think this video says it all…

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The Man Who Never Saw Game of Thrones

I have always been slow to get in on the latest trends, especially with regard to television. To be honest, I consider that a good thing.

Almost all majorly hyped television “events” and “experiences” have garnered barely a “meh” from me as millions of people fell all over themselves to hop on the trend-train. Most people seem to want to be part of the TV-dictated in-crowd; for them, the worst fate would be to miss an episode and not be able to talk knowingly about it at work the next morning.

But not me. I’ve never really cared about that, and I don’t think I’ve missed much. After all, who wants to waste life sitting on a sofa watching television? It’s much better to sit at a desk for hours looking at a computer, right?

Actually, watching television is probably better for you than staring at a computer screen. Television allows you to sit further back from the screen and enjoy the comfort of a nice sofa, recliner or easy chair. And on that sofa or in that chair, you can change positions: you can sit up straight, lie on your left side, switch to your right, put a pillow behind your back – the possibilities are endless.

Computers, on the other hand, demand that you sit in a bad chair at a desk with your spine curved forward and your head bent over. Often you rest your upper body on your elbows, and your vertebrae are almost continuously pinched down at the front and lifted apart in the rear. I’m sure any orthopedic specialist would recommend television watching over hours in front of a computer screen.

And as I think about it, I really don’t remember having any back problems in my sofa and TV days. And I was actually more active then, running, softball, evenings at the gym, etc. But watching movies and documentaries on my computer just might be the biggest culprit in my chronic back pain – that and working most of the day at a computer.

I remember my favorite chair-TV combination: it was a wonderfully comfortable reclining easy chair I had when I lived in Japan. During sumo tournaments, I would come home, settle into the chair, and then watch the day’s matches. Sometimes I would fall asleep for a bit, but I would always jerk awake toward the end when the best guys – the yokozuna and ozeki – were fighting.

I had another really comfortable TV chair in my Parker, Colorado, home a long time ago. My cats really liked it too, especially when I was in it. When I moved to the mountains, it became my meditation chair.

But I digress…

Television "Experiences"

There have been several big television “experiences” that I have missed in real time over the years. For example, I was slow to warm up to some of the popular situation comedies of the 1990s. I did become a regular watcher of Seinfeld and Friends in the early days of those shows, but that was mainly because a bunch of us regularly met in the bar at our apartment complex after working out in the gym in the same building. So it was more of a social compact. And exercise was a part of it, so it was a good thing.

Perhaps the biggest TV thing that I totally missed out on was The Sopranos. When I first heard about it – after I realized it was not about opera singers – I dismissed it as some tacky rip-off of The Godfather and countless other Mafia movies. Besides, it was on HBO, which required a subscription to watch. I wasn’t going to pay extra just for that, so I paid it no further mind.

By the time The Sopranos finished its run on HBO and a “cleaned-up” version began airing on A&E (without all the bad language and occasional nudity), I caught some episodes and was hooked. Back here in Ukraine, I found a site where I could watch every episode from each season in the original HBO “adult-content.”

And I could binge-watch, which was great because I didn’t have to wait a week to find out who was going to get whacked. Immediate gratification – it’s a wonderful thing.

But the best thing was that I got into it because I wanted to, not because it was trendy.

A few years after The Sopranos finished its run, HBO began airing another “experience”: Game of Thrones. By this time, I was already more than three years into my exile in Ukraine and barely watching television at all – with the exception of consuming all the old episodes of The Sopranos and finding episodes online (for free) of a new gangster series from HBO called Boardwalk Empire.

So I caught Boardwalk Empire from the beginning – a nicely written and well-acted show, but not an “experience” like The Sopranos or Game of Thrones. That’s just how I seem to do things.

Game of Thrones?

When I first heard of this show called Game of Thrones, I thought it was some kind of stupid reality show. So, just as with The Sopranos years earlier, I paid it no further mind.

Now I’m kind of sorry about that.

As I understand it, Game of Thrones has all kinds of things that I would love in a TV “experience.” The setting is sort of medieval northern European, and I’ve always liked those kinds of movies. I am told that it includes all sorts of intrigue and plot twists, not to mention lots of swordplay, epic battles and similar stuff. So I was thinking Lord of the Rings or Braveheart – more of my favorites.

And from a few trailers and clips I’ve seen on You-Tube, there are a lot of beautiful women, many of whom often dispense with their clothing. Woah! Count me in!

But, alas… six seasons have gone by, and I’ve never seen even one episode. So I have no sense of the story, which makes it too late to start watching now. And finding a way to watch it for free online in the original English – as I did with The Sopranos – seems increasingly difficult these days.

I sort of feel like I’ve really missed something this time. But, then again, can you really say that you’ve “missed something” when that something is just a television program? Probably not.  But still, I’d like to see it someday.

So what’s a boy to do? I can’t just pick up with the current season and start watching it (supposing I could even find it for free online). I would have no context in which to understand what was happening.

I suppose I will just have to wait until some day when I have enough time to find Game of Thrones on DVD and watch it from the beginning. I will binge watch it, just as I did with The Sopranos. What a fine waste of time that would be.

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Knowing When to Quit

Of all strategies, knowing when to quit may be the best – Chinese Proverb

I started this post more than a year ago. It was not too long after I had written a Thanksgiving post in which I discussed the Power of Intention and how having an “attitude of gratitude” is necessary to nudge the universe in the direction of making your desires come true. The whole concept of giving thanks has a real purpose toward achieving success.

But at that time, I was also thinking about another important factor in success: recognizing when to quit, knowing when something simply is not going to work out the way you want, no matter how much effort, focus – or gratitude – you put into it. You have to be able to see when something is not working for you, when continuing along your current path is a waste of time, and when you need to turn around and move in a new direction. And when you realize it, you have to have the courage and will to take action.

I guess I was thinking about it back then because of a “relationship” that was feeling very empty and I knew wasn’t working. I had felt that it wasn’t working for a long time, and it had become especially clear early that summer, long before Thanksgiving. But I kept trying and thinking that a little more time would fix everything. And even though I knew in my gut that it wasn’t working, I kept hanging in there and hoping things would change. They didn’t. I hung on for far too long, allowed myself to be taken for granted and used far too much, and early this past summer I finally walked away – a year later than I should have.

But the point is that I did not quit when I should have, when I knew I was just pursuing the wrong thing. It was my mistake.

Winners Never Quit?

In our popular culture, the notion of never giving up is touted all the time. Social networks are filled with charming little memes telling us all to keep going, no matter what – to never quit. How many times have you seen the saying, “Winners never quit, and quitters never win”?  Enough to make it nauseating, I suppose. It’s a good sentiment, but after so much Internet overexposure, it’s become just another empty platitude.

But there is another saying that “Winners quit all the time; they just quit the right stuff at the right time.” By contrast then, losers stay with the wrong thing for far too long.  And it’s a fact that many people fail to reach their goals or realize success because they stay with the wrong thing for too long.

We see this all the time in work and careers, athletics, music, art, writing, scientific research, academic pursuits and – especially – in relationships. People keep trying for something, even after it’s become clear that it just isn’t going to work out.

I think I’ve been particularly guilty of this in my life, especially in relationships. Even worse than the situation I mentioned at the beginning of this post, earlier in my life I stayed with another “relationship” for a very, very long time. In the long run, all it did was give me false hope and keep me from finding real happiness with someone else.

I don’t blame the person involved; I blame only myself. I got out of it completely at one point, only to jump back in some years later, and I let it keep me hanging on for years. I should have known better and never looked back after I walked away the first time. It was my mistake. But, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

On the other hand, I’ve had no problem quitting and moving on from jobs that I felt were not working out. I invested more than the usual single enlistment in a navy career before realizing that it wasn’t what I really wanted to do, but I did act on my feelings and got out to pursue another career.

Many people thought it was a bad move because if I had stayed for 20 years, I could have retired at 39 with a lifetime pension and then moved on to something else. That was a valid consideration, but my spirit could not wait; I never wanted a “career” in the navy, and I didn’t want to stay simply for the promise of future security.

And I walked away from a few other jobs when the spirit moved me, not capriciously, usually, but at the right times. When I wasn’t feeling fulfilled, when I didn’t feel like I was making progress, I had no problem taking a new path. I did that after eight years in a project management company in a move that brought me to Ukraine. It was a scary decision, and perhaps not the right one, but it was what I felt compelled to do because things were no longer working well at the company.

How Do You Know?

There are two opposite and competing principles at work here. One, as I’ve already described, is staying with something too long, not walking away when you should. The other is quitting something too soon and too easily, not giving it – or yourself – enough time to make it work. Here is where the notion of not giving up does come into play.

There are many inspiring stories of people who “didn’t give up” when their ideas were rejected or when they were told they were not good enough. Henry Ford, Walt Disney and Michael Jordan are just a few of the most famous examples. They kept going and became huge successes.

But one thing most of them have in common, which is rarely mentioned, is that, in fact, they did quit. They quit the paths that were not working and set themselves along new paths that eventually led to success. In some cases, they had to quit over and over again.

Walt Disney, for example, was told early in his life that he didn’t have what it took to be a journalist. He probably knew in his heart that it was true, so he quit that early career path and went in a different direction. If he had kept trying to be a journalist and beating his head against the wall, he might have been a complete failure in his life, and the Disney entertainment empire might never have been.

In fact, Disney tried and failed several times before he finally found success. But he knew when to quit, when to change direction, and he eventually found his right path. You could say that, in the macro sense, Disney never quit, while in the micro sense, he knew when to quit strategically and channel his energy in a new direction. But how did he know when to quit?

I suppose one could perform some kind of logical situation analysis, develop a set of measurable statistical markers, evaluate the numbers, and make a clear, fact-based determination as to what to do. But we are not robots, and we rarely look at life this way.

No matter how logical and programmed we try to be, it always comes down to intuition, that “gut feeling” I mentioned earlier. But having the gut feeling isn’t enough. You also have to have confidence that what your gut is telling you is right, because sometimes what you mistake for genuine intuition is something else entirely, an emotional reaction to some event or offense, and for a time it can block out the deeper understanding in your heart. But if you go deep enough, you know which it really is.

And if you have that gut feeling and have confidence that it is real, you still need to find the courage to act on the feeling, the strength to make a change. Change can offer feelings of hope and the freshness of a new direction, but it usually comes with a certain amount of fear as well. Even when we know in our hearts that we need to change, fear can hold us back. 

Despite that gnawing seed of discontent that tells us we need to make a change, we also enjoy a measure of safety and security in what we’ve grown used to, the way things are. While we recognize that something might not be right, we are afraid to upset the whole apple cart by making a change. So we do nothing.

So the recognition of what your gut is trying to tell you has to be matched by the willingness – the courage in some cases – to make the change that your intuition is calling for.

Alternatively, you can just tell your intuition to shut up and quit complaining.

Time for a Change?

So now here I am (again) wondering if Ukraine is something else that I have stayed with for too long. I seem to do this a lot around New Year.

Often, I think I probably should have quit Ukraine and gone on to something else a long time ago. And I wonder if I’ve just become used to life here, found a certain comfort level (if one can really call it “comfort”), and been too lazy (or afraid) to make the change.

Certainly, I have at least one valid reason to stay: a work niche that would be very hard to find anywhere else. But I often feel now like this is not enough. The last time I felt strongly that I should make the change to leave Ukraine, someone came along who made me feel like I had a reason to stay. But she wound up being the inspiration to start this post a year ago.

Maybe I simply was not supposed to leave yet, and she was just a tool of the universe to keep me here a little longer for whatever reason. As I survey the landscape now, there really is nothing and no one motivating me to stay, although I sure wish there was.

For now, there is just a unique and successful work niche, an inability (at the moment) to visualize what I would do next in another place, and perhaps some fear of taking the leap into a new unknown. But decision time is fast approaching; I'll have to choose my path before my current residency permit expires next summer. If I am going to quit, it’s going to have to be relatively soon.

So it all comes down to listening to your intuition, determining whether it’s really your truth, and then having the courage to make a decision and carry it out.

It’s time for my gut and I to have a serious talk.

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Missing the Good Stuff

It’s interesting how you can often find yourself missing something that you walked away from because you recognized it wasn’t good for you. It might have been a place you lived, a job, or most especially a person.

After some time, you look at this person or thing less critically and are able to remember the good aspects, the things you miss. If it’s a person, you miss the times you enjoyed together, moments that meant something important and left a deep memory. You miss the love that was shared, even if that love dissolved into disappointment and hurt.

Without thinking of the pain, you can still remember the look in her or his eyes when they were locked with your own, and you recall the exhilaration you felt in your heart as you sent messages through those eyes and deep into each other’s hearts. Warm memories surface of walking hand in hand, sharing meals, talking for hours, gently wiping away a tear, or holding each other quietly.

You might find yourself wishing that things could have been different, that you wouldn’t have had to walk away. You wish that the bad parts hadn’t been so bad that they overpowered the good parts. This is especially true if, at the time, you believed it had a promising future, that it was real, that it would last and be good for a long time. This is when it hurts the most. You wonder why it had to be this way. 

But it did, and there it is.

The same can be said of a job that was good for a time and then spiraled off into something that just wasn’t right for you any longer. Maybe you just outgrew it; maybe you felt stagnated. It might have been that conditions changed. Perhaps the specific work you had been doing wasn’t available anymore, and the new project or position you were given was not a good match for you. A new person or new people might have come in and changed the dynamic. Maybe something bad happened, a personal conflict or something similar.

At any rate, what had been working no longer worked, so you had to make the big decision to leave and find something new. But after some time, you can look back and remember the things you enjoyed, or even loved, about that job.

And it’s not just relationships or jobs. Maybe you got tired of living in a particular city, region or country because the weather got you down after some years, or perhaps a lot of new people moved in and changed what you had previously loved about the place. So you pack up and move to someplace new. And after some time, you’re able to look back fondly at the aspects of that earlier place that you miss. It could be the same for a house or apartment.

Whether it’s a relationship, a job, a place or something else, it’s natural to look back sometimes and remember the good stuff. In fact, it’s healthy: it’s better to focus on the positive than to always regard something in a negative light.

But even when you look back and smile, you have to keep it in perspective. You know it’s over, and there’s no going back. And even if there was a way to go back, you shouldn’t want to. You remember that, ultimately, it was bad for you, and that’s why it ended. We all have to move forward and leave the past behind.

But still, sometimes you can’t help missing the good stuff.

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Yeah, But I Am Thankful

The main point of Thanksgiving, of course, is to express gratitude for the good things in our lives. And as I wrote last year, it should also be about showing gratitude for what is yet to come.

Some people genuinely believe that life is great, so they find it very easy to talk about the things they are thankful for. Depending on their religious or spiritual beliefs, they might thank God, the universe, or no one in particular.

Others find it more difficult because of their life situations, but they can still use the holiday as a time to try to look at their lives a little more positively. That’s good, of course, but once the turkey-dinner leftovers are gone, the holiday cheer has passed, and they have to drag themselves back to work on Monday or face the gauntlet of Christmas-shopping crowds in the malls, their grateful feelings fall prey to the “life sucks” virus.

Of course, there are also those who can’t find anything in their lives to be thankful for, not even for one day. It is sad to feel like that, but I suppose at least they are not hypocrites.

Four Perspectives

Most of us sort of go back and forth to one extent or another in how we feel about the “blessings” or “curses” in our lives. But when people look at or talk about their lives, it seems there are basically four options:

1) Everything is great and perfect – the unrealistic “rose-colored glasses” approach.

2) Everything is terrible and my life sucks – the “paint everything black,” gloom and doom approach.

3) There are a lot of good things, sure, but I do have a lot of problems, which I guess we could call the “glass is half empty” approach.

4) Yeah, I have some issues like everyone else, but there are plenty of positives that outweigh the problems, which I guess we’d have to all the “glass is half full” approach.

We can dismiss the first two immediately because life is never so absolute. Nothing is perfect, and nothing is completely terrible. We can try to alter our attitudes to attain those absolutes, but it’s almost impossible to keep the world around us from injecting a bit of the opposite side. We can come close to convincing ourselves that everything is perfect, and that even the bad things that come our way from time to time – the imperfect – are a form of “perfection.”

We can manifest the negative absolute in our lives more easily, it seems, than the positive. But even the dourest and dark-minded person cannot completely shut out those occasional rays of sunshine that try to bring them out of it. Little glints of light can still make their way into the gloom.

More common, and realistic, are those who focus on one side, either the negative or positive, but acknowledge that the other side exists and exerts influence. But which side do we focus on, the upbeat or the downcast? I think for most of us, it tends to fluctuate depending on what’s happening in our lives or how long we’ve been living one way or the other. I know that this is how it is for me.

I like to believe that I live in the upbeat world – focusing on the positive while acknowledging that problems exist – more often than in the other. This blog is testament that I have spent some time in each, but I think that even my darker posts usually end with a positive message. And so it is here.

The fact is that, while I do have some problems, disappointments and even regrets, the things I should be thankful for – the positives – far outweigh the negatives that I sometimes dwell on. In one of my earliest posts, written more than four years ago, I wrote that I was a lucky guy. And I still believe that.

Things are Pretty Darned Good

Last year I wrote about being thankful for what is yet to come. I just reread that post, and it still applies, so I won’t repeat it. I’ll just mention a few things in the “yeah, there are some bad things, but the good is much better” category.

Yeah, I have some aches and pains. My right knee has become a chronic problem, and I frequently get stiffness in my back and hip. 

But, I don’t have any really serious health issues (as far as I know), I can still go out and do 50 km or more on my bike, swim for 30 minutes straight, and do a solid hour or so on the weights. And the, ummm... “essential equipment” still works perfectly. So no real worries about health. That is something to be thankful for!

Sure, I have reasons to complain about work, particularly the mindless corporate bureaucracy that tends to deaden the joy of any creative endeavor. And I’d like to be making more money, of course. 

But money has never been my first priority, and I have definitely had much worse jobs with even worse bureaucracy. I love teaching English, and I know I am very good at it. I enjoy my students every day, and I am blessed to share an office with three fantastic colleagues. That is a lot to be thankful for.

OK, so I live in a small apartment in an old building, and sometimes it is cold in winter, and sometimes there are noisy people around me. 

But it is actually pretty comfortable most of the time, and I have lived in worse places. What’s more, I have it a lot better than many others here in Kharkiv and certainly better than probably the majority of people around the world. And I have had the experience of living in a pretty luxurious home in the Denver suburbs, as well as in a fantastic cabin in a mountain forest. Most people can hardly even dream of that. More good stuff to be thankful for.

It’s true that the city I’ve lived in for most of the past nine years – Kharkiv – is a post-Soviet town that has a lot of dreary looking buildings, poor infrastructure, and a corrupt government. 

But it has its good points too, like a lot of really good restaurants and fun places to go. What’s more, I have been able to travel from here to points in Europe that would have cost me an arm and a leg to visit from Colorado. And I can even think about traveling east to points in Asia or the Indian Ocean. I love travel and adventure, so that’s a lot to be thankful for.

The only true disappointment and regret in my life has been that I’ve had to live so much of it alone and without that one special person, a special love to shower me with light and warmth, and to receive that same light and warmth that I’ve been so ready to give. The person who I thought for decades was “the one” wasn't. And a couple of more recent hopes were just figments of my wishful thinking. 

But, I have some of the most amazing and special friends a man could ask for, both here in Ukraine and back in the States. Every day they add some measure of light and warmth that makes it all worthwhile. And even as the rapidly passing years seem to make finding that special love less and less likely, I still have hope that it’s not impossible. As long as I have such friends as I have, I definitely have a lot to be thankful for.

And to add a cherry to the top of this gratitude cake, I have two absolutely amazing and talented daughters whom I love dearly, and we have relationships that sometimes I feel are stronger than I deserve. They and their families give me a universe to be thankful for.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about coffee. I can drink coffee every day. Sometimes I can have it with Bailey’s. That is a cupful of delicious stuff to be thankful for.

Let’s see if I can remember all of this the next time I get a little down and start to think that things aren’t so great. In fact, things are really pretty darned good.

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