capture the flag

Raise your hand if you played capture the flag as a kid.
Alright, everyone. Good.
In any round of capture the flag worth playing, there's a moment where one entire team is trapped on the other side, save one person. Their fingertips barely maintain contact with the tree deemed "jail" in order to extend their limbs to a maximum point, hoping this gives the only 8 year old left on their home side a better chance of tagging them free. Or they link arms, forming a chain from the tree, which generally causes consternation and philosophical debate on what contact is and if you are really touching the tree by the transitive property that you are touching someone who is touching the tree.
Point being.
You're all trapped at that tree, staring at that the kid on the other side. Now it's usually the smallest one, so he's fast, but he's also that loser who never even gets close to the line and doesn't have the hand/eye coordination to pull the flag of any intruder, even though he can outrun them easily. But he's played a few times now, made a few glory moves, learned from the couple of 10 year olds passing on their wisdom and strategy, and so there's a chance. It's slim, but hey, the kid might just have what it takes to free the other side.
And it feels like you've been standing at the tree FOREVER.
"Just run!"
"Get us out!"
"Just get caught and get it over with!"
But that kid wants to prove himself.
And in most cases, he doesn't. I mean I was usually that kid, so I know the feeling well. You think you're coming to your glory moment as you decide, "This is my time! I will blaze through the army of pre-teens and free all my teammates who will then love me and invite me to all the cool parties and maybe let me sit with them at LUNCH!"

The only difference is, this time it actually worked. He actually made it to the glory moment. Barack Obama got across the line, beat back the defenders, faced the odds, and freed everyone at the tree. That's the only way to describe the feeling I had as people poured out of dorms and bars, windows and doors, to flood the streets of DC screaming, crying, hugging, and chanting: "Yes we did!" That I'd been standing, trapped at this tree for years with everyone I knew. We'd resigned ourselves to losing, to being cornered and powerless forever. And this rookie with unlikely prospects didn't hope he'd free us, he decided to. There was no room for loss. This was going to be the moment. And it was. We ran back to our side of the field completely elated, without regard to who was what status on our team, but overjoyed that we finally had a fighting chance again, that we were reunited, and we had this kid to thank for it.

There's another recognizable moment after this one. It comes just after the pure, unabashed, uncontrollable joy. Real prisoners who have been let out of a jail with real bars have said the same thing: when you get into the real world, you're not sure how to react. When you're back in the game, there's this moment where you're not even sure what to do with the joy, and with the opportunity you've been given. The reason I haven't blogged about this until now is because having all this totally pure joy at something I cannot physically touch or interact with or feel the immediate benefits of, having joy because of an electoral count, because of something I've never really cared about until now, was almost uncomfortable. I didn't know what to do with all this happiness for something that always seemed so distant from my personal life. With this past week, I've settled into a comfortable, confident hope that things will be better in the next four (and hopefully eight) years. Not just for my country, but for me and my family on a personal level. I was able to assign that happiness a physical cause, and now, I can focus on doing my part to help my team get the flag, to not get caught, to put forth the best effort to win.

5th grade politics never fails to comfort me.

serial monogamy

While I have been made fun of as a relationship addict before, I hadn't heard the term "serial monogamist" in any academic setting until last week. I was pretty sure it was just the kind label my friends had come up with for the vastly insecure and ridiculously needy person I can be to try and make me feel like my craziness had some legitimacy.
Turns out it does.
And turns out I'm not crazy.
At least not this time.
According to my biological anthropology professor, the entire human race is genetically built as an army of serial monogamists, jumping from one serious, long-term partner to the next, rarely settling with one person for life. While we psychologically and emotionally embark in the world to find that soulmate, biologically, we want to reproduce. So we're constantly at war with our natural instinct.
No wonder the world can be such a miserable place.

How is it that we continue to love in light of the idea that we are built to move on from it?

Every time we love, we hope it's our last. No one enters into a relationship of any kind thinking, "You know, this will end, and probably not so well." You don't buy a Rolls Royce with the intent, or even the thought, to crash it. In fact, you probably consider yourself such a great driver, or the car itself to be so magnificent, that it is almost impossible for it to be wrecked in any manner. Because you take such good care of it, wax it everyday, keep it locked up in a temperature-controlled garage, somehow that negates anything bad happening to it. We're in denial from the beginning, unreasonably optimistic for our own happiness, or else it'd be impossible to start if we knew the outcome would be terrible. In reality, the best outcome we can hope for in a relationship is that one person in it dies; the car just stops working. Or I guess if you want to cite the incredibly realistic film "The Notebook", then the best outcome we can hope for is to die simultaneously. And frankly, when I'm getting off the phone with someone I love, "Hope you die when I do!" doesn't seem to be the kind of romantic, endearing message I want to send.

By evolving to be unrealistically optimistic, we cope with the fact that all good things come to an end, and badly. By that I mean, we never want good things to end, so when they do, it's bad simply because it's over, and anything on top of this that goes wrong just adds to it. Our unrealistic expectations for our own happiness creates a blind spot. It's not huge, just enough to keep us somewhat ignorant of the tragedies in life. For example, if I tell you right now that in 500 years, everyone and everything you love will be dead and gone, your mind immediately discards that idea. Perhaps you're even angry with me for even mentioning it, for burdening you with the thought. "Why be so pessimistic? Don't focus on the future, live in the present."

Let's be real here: if I told you that you were going to die in 3 hours, and I knew it for sure, you would not be enjoying the moment. You'd run around calling every person you know to tell them whatever you really think of them, you'd be eating an entire box of donuts and having as much sex as physically possible. Think of the lottery, or gambling. Upfront, when we buy the ticket, they tell us that it's nearly impossible to win, that the odds are stacked against you, and yet, against all rationality and logical thought, we play. "Someone has to win, right? Why can't it be me?" As you quickly make up a bunch of reasons why you above anyone else should win this complete crapshoot, you're ignoring the fact that you and Joe the Plumber have exactly the same statistical chance of winning.

Crank up the intelligence, would be the first solution that comes to mind with all of this. Be more aware of the consequences of our actions and our environment. But without the blind spot, you've got a dying breed of humans drunk and stoned out of their minds, lying on the floor watching Dawson's Creek reruns and trying to forget everything awful about their existence, which would be impossible given that they have no filter. It's called depression. You would never start out in a relationship if the depressing end was staring you straight in the face. Thus, we'd never reproduce. Voila. Extinction. It's the process of evolution that's made us slightly stupid with optimism, in order to keep the race alive.

But remove yourself for a moment. A relationship ending cannot be considered bad (remember my earlier definition: anything good that ends ends badly simply because we do not want it to end so we're not getting what we want), it's just there. Everything ends. Everyone dies. And everyone will be alone when that happens. So let's know that somewhere in the back of our minds. Be prepared. Think about loss not just when it's happening, so it doesn't seem like then end of our lives when it strikes. Let's not let ourselves be crushed by the weight of loss. We will get up, and do it again. Not necessarily because we want to, but because we're built to keep looking, keep hoping, keep searching, and to keep going. Simply by being human, we are much stronger than we let ourselves be.

And on that warm and fuzzy feel good note, I bid you all goodnig....good morning.