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On X

4/20/2014

X is deceptively simple. Two lines strategically placed in symmetrical bisection and rotated such to look both perfectly askew and perfectly stable. The 24th letter of the alphabet might have more uses outside of English than any other letter, except maybe its hugs-and-kisses counterpart, O (and as far as symbols go, the circle is difficult to compete with). But in the realm of things that stand for other things, X’s versatility is remarkable.

X-marks-the-spot on a map, making it a designator of precise location. Right. There. It is also the most often used algebraic variable, where it signifies the unknown (until you solve for it) which is, oddly enough, the opposite of designating precision. Consequently, it gets a whole axis named after it on the Cartesian plane, a further testament to the infinite realm of numbers X can be. It’s a mathematical chameleon. Unless we’re talking the Roman system instead of the Arabic. Then it’s just 10.

But it is also a sign of danger, especially when formed from a pair of bones, placed under a smiling skull, and flown atop a canon-armed ship or stickered to a bottle in a laboratory. Other common uses are in the phrase “the X-Factor,” an uncategorizeable exception or unpredictable agent. This is connected to one of X’s shining moments in popular culture, the X-Men, the thrilling superhero team allegorizing the battle between tolerance and intolerance. Which side of this debate does X belong? Well, when we cross our two forefingers in front of us we are warding something away, and if you’re reading this on the computer, then there’s an X in the upper right of whatever program you have open waiting for your command to exit. Want to excise text? CTRL + X. The X-Men may be named for Professor Xavier, but they are branded as the unknowable, unpredictable, unwanted others of society. Every society has its X-Men.

X is mysterious, darkly mystical, unknown, a symbol for symbols. The letter that nets you 8 points in Scrabble means so many things that it almost doesn’t want you to know what it means. It revels in its subversiveness, a smile beneath a shadowy cloak, ready to brandish coin or blade.

This power, I believe (or, as an analyzer of symbols, choose to believe) is derived from X’s shape. Two perfectly diagonal lines bisecting each other in the center has a specific effect on our culture’s visual conventions. First, it is the inverse of a square. While a square is simple and shapely and draws a boundary between what it includes and excludes, X is merely exclusionary. You can’t get inside X; you can’t know X. There’s no space in there, just four disorienting corners.

That awkwardness puts us off. In many Xs, there aren’t right angles but two acute and two obtuse, and even when the angles are right they are positioned awkwardly. In a society of right-angle buildings and intersections, X is defiantly different. It seems to pull from the furthest reaches of its stretch—that corner, and that one, and over there and there—stretching as wide and far as it can, stretching to grab everything if it had the choice, and bringing it all in to a single point. The intersection. Where all the separate entities of everything migrate to commune.

This shape does not just give X practical application at railroad crossings, in bowling alleys, and on game shows, there is a grander architecture to it. It symbolizes one of the great binaries of our reality: the individuals, all out there where those four arms are stretching to grasp, and the collective, where they all meet in the middle. And we don’t every really know what is going to happen when individuals collect in the middle. It’s unknown, unpredictable. Each connection between individuals is as unique as the two people in that connection. We may commune or exclude, meet ally or danger. We may judge each other solely on quantifiables. We may click together with a good handshake or be awkward or misunderstood. Or, not knowing what to do, we may wander in the mystery that is our unsolipsistic sharing of this space. Whatever that mystery is, where the known and unknown forever intersect, that’s the spot that X marks.

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On Comparing Oneself with Others

4/20/2014

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The social phenomenon of one human being comparing himself or herself to others has more ins and outs than an ant farm, but I wanted to address the general topic because the mechanism of comparing ourselves to others is both really important and potentially quite damaging, along with unavoidably ubiquitous.

We compare our bodies to models and make ourselves feel terrible instead of accepting the beauty of nature (flabby or unsixpackly as it may be). We compare our grades to other students, wanting to be as good as her in, like, every subject. We compare careers, wishing we made the money he or she makes or that we climbed as fast. We compare stages of life and want to know why we didn’t get married/buy the house/have the kids at the same ages as our parents or grandparents or friends or enemies or delusionally idolized celebrity.

Before addressing the perils, we should acknowledge that comparing ourselves to other individuals does have valuable function. First, it lets us know where we are. If all of our other high school friends are bagging groceries and selling movie tickets, maybe it’s time for us to pull ourselves off of the couch after school. The same could be said for hitting the gym, learning fiscal responsibility, and taking up extracurriculars. Paying attention to what others are doing gives us suggestions and hints for how to improve our own lives. There are some people who, admittedly, have a chronic habit of this, worrying about their neighbors at the expense of doing something with their own damn lives, and there’s always keeping up with whatever major electronic purchases the Joneses just made. But done healthily, comparing our lives to other’s lives is a key mechanism in the evolution of personal and cultural identity. To varying degrees, we each influence and are influenced by each other. We see this most specifically in professional sports and the capitalist sector, where concrete metrics are used to judge performance. Competition creates greater ingenuity and talent, or so states the main maxim of the market.

But it can turn problematic on both psychological and sociological levels when we take this idea of comparison (and its selfish stepbrother, competition) to aspects of our personal lives that require more active consciousness on our part. Comparisons set unrealistic expectations, whether its wanting a body you’ll never have (no matter how many crunches you do) or hoping for a job outside your talents or ability levels. If you aren’t good with words you shouldn’t go into law; if you don’t have people skills maybe dealing with customers isn’t for you. Some people don’t have the dedication, energy, money, circumstances, or coordination to go to medical school (I have none of those five). Other expectations, like body type or marital status or religious conviction, can be even more tyrannical and lead to eating disorders, early divorce, and moral inferiority.

Interpersonal comparisons don’t account for our individual uniqueness, down to all the dimensions of intricacy for each person. Even if two people have similar skill as a parent, the wealth of other differences between them are going to affect what kinds of parents they actually are, not to mention the uniqueness of the children. The human being is so complex that, very often, we wind up comparing ourselves to others instead of learning how to reach the potential of our own unique selves. These comparisons can damage our self-esteem and lead to further comparisons in a brutal downward spiral like a house of mirrors where you never see your own reflection. Maybe the worst effect is that comparing ourselves to others promotes conformity and suppresses our individuality, which not only weakens the spirit of the individual but also deprives the community of that person’s true gifts.

It’s so easy to slap a categorical label on ourselves or to measure this thing with this metric and use it to define ourselves as this or that (or not this or that). And how often are we bombarded with the trite sales pitch of “Best Service,” “Best Product,” “World’s Best Grandpa.” A few weeks ago I was at a school that claimed that they had the best teachers and services, as if this word “best” means anything. What it really means is that the advertiser isn’t confident enough or clever enough to sell the product on its own merits. It’s the same mentality of the schoolyard bully: pump yourself up by putting someone down. Outside of any quantitative measurements, best is always subjective, and even then sports and stocks aren’t without their arguments and controversies.

In writing this, I saw a father in his mid-40’s with two young children. Not being that age yet, I thought, “That could be me someday.” Bam. Just read an inane article online showing what body parts of what celebrities men and women chose to represent the “perfect” male and female body (as if the idea of such an objectivity weren’t something to politely smile at). Comparison mode engaged. (Who gave that order?)

It’s natural, it’s unavoidable, it’s sometimes quite helpful. It all matters how we do it. When we use other people as a mirror and analyze our reflections, we should do it consciously, with self-awareness and self-love, and—perhaps the greatest challenge here—with a mature intuition for when to tell that comparing inner critic, “Thanks for the comment. You’re good at what you do. In the meantime, I’m gonna go lay on the beach of my life for a while. Check in with you later. Peace!”

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On Resistance

4/3/2014

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There are two types of resistance. That of the romantic revolutionary or the monolithic system of oppression (Viva la resistance! vs. the futility of that resistance), and that of something preventing you from a goal. Like a 4,000-pound boulder in the middle of the road or two young children clinging to your legs. People even give themselves resistance on purpose when they're working out. Even the stretchy home exercise things are called resistance bands. And why do they do people work out? Because resistance makes you grow.

Breaking muscle builds muscle. Hard work is the thunderstorm you must suffer to grow a capability: at the piano, writing, pinball, whatever. Artists go through years of shame at their work not meeting their expectations because they're unrealistic about how much resistance you need to push through to be that good. I know that each broken heart I've had has taught me a new way to love. Resistance is inescapable. In fact, each resistance is an opportunity, despite how tall the hill looks when we first encounter it.

Thank goodness resistance isn't something you can escape. Viva la resistance! is now a phrase that can multitask. Boy do we try though, to escape it I mean, through sleep and booze and yelling at people and opiates of all kinds, not to mention emotional defense mechanisms like denial and projection and rationalizing (which cause more or lessresistance? hmm...). Yep, resistance takes all shapes and sizes, but it's always there. The roots of a tree must grow through the soil, a baker throws away ruined batches, every marriage encounters instability. Even the slickest substance has the slightest friction against ice. Resistance is a byproduct of having more than one object in a single reality: some of them are going to bump into each other. This fact makes it an inherent aspect of being alive. Your life is a story, and every story needs conflict or else it isn't a story. It's stasis. But we can judo-flip resistance by flipping our mind: resistance should not be avoided, but embraced. Our inward resistances are signs pointing to challenges we can accept or decline. The path of least resistance may get you somewhere, but it isn't going to bring you there with many tools to work with.

In the same way an athlete puts on muscle and strengthens their speed and endurance (or maybe the way you are I are happy after ten morning push-ups), we can use non-physical resistance to grow. By that I mean our dislikes, our aversions, our biases. "I haven't tried that, but I don't like it" becomes "I'm going to put myself through it and see who I am on the other side."

Maybe you hate jazz, avoid your mailbox, think Indian food stinks, or can't stand Aunt Mertle. Great. The first step is acknowledging that resistance. The second step is assessing whether or not this is a resistance you could lean in to. The third is deciding whether you actually should lean into it (you know, making a grown-up decision), even if it's only a slight lean, like a drunk guy using tall bushes for balance. Maybe that thing you were resisting wasn't as bad as you thought. You might even like it. On the other hand, some resistances might be too difficult or painful; you lift whatever weight you can. The fourth step is doing the leaning. Work with the resistance when possible and take breaks. Maybe a half hour of listening to Aunt Mertle talk about Joan Rivers and Barbara Streisand is good for you once in a while, but you don't need to stay in her guest bedroom with those six cats all weekend.

Some people practice confronting resistance by doing charitable work, following a routine or code, pushing themselves into unique experiences, or just accepting the commonplace frustrations of life. That stuff's like hitting the gym hard. I'm not always consistent with my physical exercise, though I'm getting better at it. What I will say is that I find it useful to look for similarities between the physical and metaphysical aspects of the human being. At least it makes it easier to talk about this stuff. And maybe I can't do a pull-up (even though I really want to do a pull up), but not many people meet their end because they are unable to pull themselves up off the edge of a cliff. Life doesn't always test those muscles in that way, but there are a different set of muscles that it can work like a masseuse with the hands of a farmer. And it probably will.

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words by Derek Salinas Lazarski

On X

On Comparing Oneself with Others

On Resistance

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