I’d Pick Sunday

Sunday mornings are relaxed, sleeping until I awake, coffee in bed watching CBS Sunday Morning and then writing.  On the other hand, Friday mornings are up early, hurry around and get to work.

Most of the day Sunday is spent doing whatever my heart desires while most of the Friday is spent at work doing what someone else demands.

Sunday evenings are similar to Friday evenings, sometimes there’s something to do, sometimes there’s not.

Sunday wins easily 2-0 with evenings a tie…but Friday’s still favored.

When I think forward to Friday, it’s a happy anticipation. Friday is the eve of the best day of the week, Saturday, and like roadies for a rock star, catches the overflow of love.

Truth be known, Friday is just evil Monday’s good twin brother.  Not much happens on either day that doesn’t happen on the other; up early, work all day, go home, do whatever needs doing at home.  Poor Monday gets all the flack but if you had amnesia and no calendar you couldn’t tell the two apart.

Garfield’s syndicate has made a fortune pasting the disgruntled orange cat on posters, tee shirts and mugs grumbling, “I hate Mondays.” Yet Friday gets its own acronym, TGIF, “Thank God It’s Friday”.  It’s a wonder Monday hasn’t completely quit and gone into another line of work.

Sunday isn’t quite as similar to Saturday as Monday is to Friday, only because both weekend days offer so much freedom…far more freedom than any weekday. And I wake up both weekend days feeling great, like the day is my oyster. The feeling lasts until bedtime on Saturday but just past 3 PM on Sunday, a full seven hours before my waking hours are over.

Around 3 the oppressive weight of the workweek starts to burden my heart. Even though I’ve got the equivalent of almost two weekday evenings of free-time left before bedtime I feel the burden of responsibility descending like a dementor on Harry Potter.

The kicker is, I love my job. Except for having to get up to an alarm clock, I don’t mind getting around and going in. The downside to working isn’t the work, it’s the inability to do whatever else crosses my mind…compared to most, that’s really not that bad a deal. Yet it’s the impending workweek that makes Sunday evenings such a downer.

I know full well Sundays are better, far better, than Fridays, it’s not even close, but my heart doesn’t seem to agree. Still, if you give me the choice between Friday and Sunday, like a teen girl choosing the Captain of the Debate Team over a biker-dropout, I’d pick Sunday.

I Don’t Believe Exclusively In Coincidence

And that’s why I just got irritated. On CBS Sunday Morning, the only ‘never-miss’ on my DVR…besides Doc Martin…was a story about coincidence. (Coincidentally, I was looking for a topic to write about.) It wasn’t the story that irritated me; it was Professor Jay Koehler, at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago.

Professor Koehler stated a coincidence is, “a striking co-occurrence of events that appear to be meaningfully related but, in fact, are related only by chance.”

Technically (according to Merriam-Webster Online), a coincidence is a situation in which events happen at the same time in a way that is not planned or expected. Similar definitions but with the Prof’s being, to my ear, a bit judgy.

I believe coincidences happen, and often, but I also think fate plays a part in our lives. There are too many stories of the stars lining up, so to speak, for random events to be a proper explanation. But that’s not what this story is about.  It’s about my reaction to Professor Koehler.

A guy whom I’ve never met, who I’ll likely never meet, who has no impact on my life outside what I grant him, disagrees with my opinion and it irritates me (which is me allowing him to have an influence on me). I was offended he had a different opinion on something neither of us could ever prove right or wrong. Why!?!

Because I felt threatened. If there is only coincidence it affects my belief that life has a plan for me, that my lack of success in pursuits is personal failure instead of a series of events preparing me for a specific future success. It means my wife’s hand wasn’t guided to pick my name out of the hat (literally) and we weren’t meant to be.  It means Mr. Scott’s example of acceptance and encouragement was randomly a part of my schooling instead of a seed for my success working with the irrationally opinionated, unjustly self-confident Millennials. It means the ‘grand scheme’ isn’t awaiting my contribution and I’m not important, that life goes on with or without me. 

And it doesn’t matter…not whether coincidence does or doesn’t rule the day. What doesn’t matter is anyone else’s opinion…unless I let it matter. If someone doesn’t like my bald head and beard it doesn’t mean I need to be offended, I need to shift my shaving 180 degrees or that I’m less of a person for my grooming habits.  It doesn’t even mean they have poor taste. It means they have different experiences, observations and preferences…leading them to have poor taste.

I’ve heard it said, you can’t be offended without your own permission.  I believed that before this morning, and I still do.  Apparently, my emotions forgot to check with my belief system before reacting to Professor Koehler’s statements.  So, regardless of his or anyone else’s statements, based on my lifetime of experiences, observations and preferences, I don’t believe exclusively in coincidence.

You Won’t Miss Me When I’m Gone

Death sucks for the living.   

Depending on your personal beliefs the dead themselves are either in a better place, no place or getting their just deserts, leaving those who loved them behind to face the day alone…but maybe not in a few more years.

According the founder of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, John Smart, digital twins are in our future…our near future. Drawing off our computer interactions, phone communications and whatever else can be harvested about us, a computer program could be our understudy. Capable of making decisions, it might take care of paperwork and have conversations as though it were us. And, assuming the hard-drive doesn’t crash, outlive us, giving our family and friends an ongoing fix of our charm and personality once we’ve gotten busy pushing up daisies.

According to Smart, “Where we’re headed is creating this world in which you feel you have this thing out there looking after your values.”

Nope!  We’re creating this world in which you feel like you better not turn your back on a computer.  If we’ve learned anything from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and ‘War Games’ it’s that computers are just waiting in the wings to take things over.  (On a side note, does anyone else think Mathew Broderick changed his name and got a job on ‘Two and a Half Men’?).

As I write this article, I wonder what’ll actually get emailed to the editors.  Maybe what I write…maybe what I would write if I wasn’t relying on the computer to do my job…or maybe propaganda from the Cyberluminati trying to convince you everything is just fine and I’m not tied to a kitchen chair with printer cables and a mouse-pad taped over my mouth.

It’s bad enough that we pickle deceased bodies, nail them in a crate, seal the crate in a giant concrete humidor and bury them with a large “here’s the dead guy” marker.  Now we’re going to be capable of pretending nothing is wrong, their spirit has simply moved from a fleshly vessel to a Mac Book.

If it keeps a person from being lonely, I suppose it’s not a bad thing.  The pain of loss associated with the death of a loved one is devastating.  My grandfather died in his early sixties and it would have been a tremendous comfort to my grandmother to speak with him, even via a computer screen (which was dark gray and capable of only green letters back then).

But it reeks of those ‘My Buddy’ dolls they used to market before we invented computer games and the internet to socially isolate children.  The idea of computer ghosts piques the same apprehension in me as a table full of teens busily ignoring one another to text.

Living vicariously through anything, a sports hero, a television, a cable news station that tells you half of society is pure-evil, is human nature.  But, as with coffee, Twinkies and Disco music, moderation is key.  

I’m pretty sure, once I’m gone, everyone who happened across my path during my living years will have had enough of me.  So after my funeral leave the computer off and go visit some breathing friends, that way you won’t miss me when I’m gone.