Life as an Extreme Sport

Category: Bioethics

It’s about time I added a category for my field of study, eh?

sometimes the hardest thing to do is practice on yourself

Academics, Bioethics, blog as therapy, Buddhism

I wrote this a few weeks ago, and in a tricksy move to make sure no one could know what I was referring to without talking to me, I held on to it to post at a later time. Ooo, tricksy.

More seriously, the number of people who read this, at least occasionally, has lead me to conclude that while I can still talk about whatever I want, with common discretion, it might not be a bad idea to blur the lines on continuity just a bit – at least in some circumstances.

Today has been a serious day for practicing loving kindness and compassion.

It’s either that, or burn bridges in a spectacular flame out that I would regret almost instantly.

The problem is, it’s easy to get stuck in circles of irritation, when I’m essentially by myself all day, and the contact I do have with other people is short/perfunctionary. A conversation I had with Stax earlier is a good example of this; by myself, I was just getting more and more irritated (and thank god I didn’t receive certain email at that time, because I swear I would have done/said something I would have regretted, rather than the more patient filing of the mail and not responding). But having to explain a more detailed and balanced picture to her returned me to a better center, where I could see the picture larger than myself and relax again.

Unfortunately, I’ve been alone with myself since then, and had plenty of time to narrow my gaze once more. I know that I’m doing this, and I am attempting to breathe and retain focus and perspective, but it can be hard. It becomes so easy to just think about our self as individual, and elevate our own issues and priorities above the rest. To always think of how you are engaged with others in the world is not an easy task – it requires a sort of self-sacrifice that opens up a vulnerability. Because to do this, you have to trust that those you are opening up to have also opted to open up, that it is not a single sided exchange, but mutual and respectful.

Which is not, of course, to say that the practice of loving kindness and compassion should only be generated to those who will give it to you in return. But there is a hardening that I haven’t yet gotten over, to practice loving kindness without self-sacrificing vulnerability. What I generate and give differs, and it is much better, more intimate and true, if I allow the vulnerability to be there. If I assume that it is returned.

But that vulnerability, tied to imperfection, can lead to taking offense when there is none, to expectations, to a host of problems where the kneejerk reaction is to lash out, push away, protect, destroy.

What does it say, I wonder, that it is such a human impulse to push and destroy rather than be intimate?

ASBH, wrapped

Academics, AMBI, ASBH 2007, Bioethics, life and living

I’m still in DC, sitting in the hotel lobby, wishing it was at all possible to simply snap my fingers, find a transporter, and end up at home, in bed, with the cats. I’d settle for a second best of in my hotel room bed, but they wanted the room so I had to check out. Bother.

I’m beyond tired, of course, although I didn’t have the as many days “on” as I was expecting. The hotel nicely arranged for me to have a good chunk – about seven hours – of Saturday off, courtesy food poisoning that afflicted everyone who drank from the creamer provided on our end of the table. Since I tend to take my coffee half cream, half milk, it was… unpleasant, to say the least. And of course, I did come back out as soon as I could, and went back to working. Because I am either ambitious or dumb like that – most likely some from column A, some from column B.

But it was a good conference, my glow cubes were an unmitigated success, and it was gratifying to hear, over and over, “oh hey, you’re Kelly….”

started up again almost 12 hours later, at home, as I am lectured by two upset cats
As I was writing, I got a variation of the “hey, you’re Kelly” and was joined in the lobby by an undergraduate student who “belongs” to a friend of mine. I ended up spending the next five-ish hours talking to her; we were joined, at one point, by a doctoral student up in Montreal I had met earlier in the day. The two have similar interests, so I played the networking game.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading and thinking since I started the above, and I’m not really sure what I think at the moment. I mean, I am – the conference was a success, I don’t think I screwed up badly in any political sense, and so forth. It’s just, as I was telling Michael when we spoke briefly earlier, that post-conference is a lot like post-teaching, in that the adrenaline drops out of your body and you realize how much of yourself you spent. It’s post-teaching blues magnified beyond belief. Only it’s also got an element of post-acting in it, too. When you’re in a production, you’re thrilled and delighted, and spend every second of the day with a small group of people – and the minute you close curtain and strike the set that final night, and walk out of the after party, how much you loathe every single person you just spent the last 6 weeks of your life with. Every quirk is an annoyance, every personality quirk a flaw. You hate them all, all the people you see and spend hours with daily, and never want to see them again – for about a week.

😉

The rest is still a jumble, I think, of things I need to process. It has been hard to not reflect on the last year of life, and the differences – it’s such a clear way to mark both time and change.

posting bender

Academics, AMBI, ASBH 2007, Bioethics

As I’ve mentioned in one of these blogs, ASBH has my mind going a mile a minute, and I’ve literally been unable to sleep. My 7:30am meeting ought to be charming. For that matter, so should the 8:30pm one… but, as wiser people than me have said, that is what this conference is all about.

So, I went on a bit of a posting bender – posted here, obviously, but also posted the following, which may be of interest to some of you:

At the Women’s Bioethics Blog, I posted about misogyny in the movies, and furthered the question of women as scapegoats.

Over at the AJOBlog, I posted about an an aspirin a day possibly not being beneficial to women, as well as potentially harmful (due to its tendency to irritate the stomach, etc), as well as a rather startling story abouta health clinic inside a Portland, Maine middle school offering prescription contraceptives to the students without parental consent or notification.

And of course, my own blog was, thanks to a certain UK academic, updated about Deborah Kerr’s death.

It’s now 5:20am, and I’m going to place myself back in bed (curse this hotel for not having wifi in room – I have to sit at a desk and be wired to be online! What’s the point of having a laptop if you have to have wires, I ask you!) and attempt to grab another hour’s worth of sleep before stumbling my way downstairs to meet Franciscan Friar Daniel Sulmasy and fellow students for an academic breakfast.

west coast culture

ASBH 2007, Bioethics

In DC and having a fabulous time so far. Have done none of the tourist things I had wanted to, but instead was responsible and did homework and laundry, and then napped in the afternoon. A fabulous dinner with S~, A~ and H~, and then we stumbled across just the right people with wine in the hotel bar – almost five hours later, I’m tumbling in to bed and remembering everything I love about what I do. I am very blessed to be where I am at this stage in life, and it would do me well to remember this when I think or feel otherwise.

Conventions

Bioethics

I’m off to DC in less than 36 hours, and of course have at least 72 hours of things to do in the intervening time. I almost feel like holding a contest to see what I’ll actually get done,…

I’m still feeling weirdly ambivalent about going. It’s a different role for me this year, and at a time when I’m just not feeling as on my game as I should be. I’m afraid I’m going to be a horrible disappointment for my boss, and let him down. Given all the faith and trust he’s placed in me, that would be rather devastating at this point. (Well, really at any point, but especially this point.)

I have plans one evening – four of us are going out to dinner, and then at least two of us dancing. I’m looking forward to that. I haven’t been out to eat at a nice restaurant in quite a while, so it should just be fun. That’s pre-conference, though. In the last week I’ve found out that two of the people I was most looking forward to seeing won’t be there, both for entirely valid reasons I support. But it’s still disappointing that neither will be there, and the UW contingent is going with a pallor over their heads.

I’m still finding my place, and it will be a few years before I have established rituals and people, and I’m okay with that. But I’m not okay with it at the same time; I know schedules and events (and from many people – I think no one realizes just how many people talk to me) and I’m just not the sort of person to insert myself into things. It took a law professor forcing me down an escalator to have one of the best night’s of last years convention, and I suspect it’s going to go about the same this time around.

I also realize I’m being mildly pessimistic, because life sort of is right now, and because I get nervous when I feel a lot of responsibility and room for major failure. I know I’ll calm down and center and be okay once everything gets rolling – it’s just the til then that I have to deal with being a slightly neurotic and sad basketcase.