FRAZZLED.

May 3, 2024

 

 

As my very short visit with paralyzed, nerve-damaged son Colin ended this morning, I told him:

“Today I feel like I’m identifying with each one of the millions of details I have to attend to every day. Usually I feel like the space that holds them all.”

His response: “You shouldn’t have come, Mom.”

And he meant it. Totally empathic.

But I did. And I’m glad I did.

 

The details involve many different levels and projects.

So today, finding myself identified with each detail as it pops up, then the next, and the next . . . I’m totally frazzled.

Unless I can feel like “the space that holds them all,” I need to scale back, way back.

Or: it may be that I just need a break.

 

I wasn’t going to go out there (20 minutes away in busy traffic on IU graduation weekend), even though I had planned to. I could feel my usually spacious attention fragmenting, microscoping, getting lost . . . I sensed that to go out there in this mental state was to invite a car accident.

I had made the decision not to go on my early morning walk with puppy Shadow. And it felt right. A way to downsize my responsibilities today, given my frazzled state.

 

But then, when I got home, I saw that Josh, who visits him on Friday morning and brings his Starbucks coffee, and with whom we had scheduled a three-way business conversation with me present, had texted me: “Get coffee on your way here. Starbucks is closed today.”

Colin’s morning coffee (stronger than what’s offered at Majestic Care) is a ritual he thoroughly enjoys. And of course, we familiars who tend to his emotional and mental health, while getting inspired by his mostly upbeat attitude, know that when we come, we bring coffee!

So of course I went, despite my frazzled state, asking my higher self — itself open to divine energy of universe — to steady and balance me, while creating a protective shield around the car.

It worked. No accient. Thank you, higher self attuned to universe!

 

I didn’t stay long.

Came back and sat down to write this, not knowing what I was going to say. But here I am, calling for a short break in routine!

 

Each of my days is patterned to get the maximum done of many projects and responsibilities that cover an enormously wide range, some of them of great depth as well. At 81 years old, most people would not be engaged so fully. And frankly, nor do I want to be. But what to let go of? What to scale back? That is not clear to me. What is clear to me is that I must take a break from at least this blog, until Monday.

Just saying that, helps my frazzled state!

Victor Davis Hanson: “Can the Current Universities Be Saved?”

May 2, 2024

 

I have long admired military historian Victor Davis Hanson, and consider him a human treasure, one of the world’s foremost “public intellectuals,” his wisdom, gleaned from full and detailed consideration of subjects in the public eye unparalleled. Thus so here, his assessment of the current state of “higher education,” which I post on the day before graduation ceremonies in the college town in which I live, Bloomington, IN.

At the supermarket this afternoon, seeing all the students, many with parents, likely about to head off to parties, or dinner out, or backyard grilling, in the back of my mind, the usual little worm digs its way in. Is college worth it? Maybe it used to be worth it? But now? Victor Davis Hanson spells it all out.

(One caveat, however: Soon after the October 7 false flag, I was shocked to realize that Hanson had actually — reflexively? — taken sides in the Israel/Palestine imbroglio! Of all people, how could Hanson not see the current, intensely complex situation in deeply historical terms? How could he just instantly side with one of the players, Israel, in this latest iteration of humanity’s deadliest zero sum game? I haven’t kept up with his thinking on that drama since then, however.)

 

Can the Current Universities Be Saved?

More, much more . . .