in this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead

1. If you had to select the most important human emotion, which would you single out? 

    kindness. For those unclear on it, the dictionary definition is "Having or showing a friendly, generous, sympathetic, or warm-hearted nature. Agreeable or beneficial." It doesn't mean "doormat" or "sucker"—it means, in essence, open and decent human being.

    I'm a cynic as much as the next guy....well, probably far more than the next guy. But the value of kindness is hard to dispute, and benefits both the receiver and the giver. It feels good to be kind. 

2. If you could have more patience in one aspect of your life, what would it be? 

    computer malfunction. It makes me furious far beyond the actual problem. There's nothing—impersonal—that can make me so feel so irrationally angry and unwillingly stupid so quickly. 

3. If you could take one possession with you into the afterlife (assuming there is one), what would you take? 

    in my concept of the afterlife, material possessions would be completely without value.  

    In the spirit of the question, though... if I could be certain to have one thing with me throughout my whole life, I would wish it to be a card from someone I love. 

4. If you were to name one person who interprets dreams particularly well, who would it be? 

    the only person in my life who's really gone into dream interpretation the way that I do is a library colleague. I don't recall how it started, but we somehow got into the habit of talking over our dreams pretty often. He would come to my office (first the nice upstairs spot, and later in the stupidly awful dungeon that our idiot boss created), sit down, and lay out his dreams. After a few moments of absorption and reflection, I would delicately and thoughtfully give my interpretation. We would talk it over, consider other emphases, directions, or analyses, and eventually come to an agreement on what it must have meant. 

    That colleague and I were not always in accord, but those days, discussing dreams, were among the best library days I ever had. I miss him, and our unique friendship, very much.  

5. If you were to name the event that changed your relationship with your family the most, what would you choose? 

    considering my extended family, and my life overall...it's my education. My family is blue collar (or green collar), with one or two exceptions. I never imagined a life where I would not go to college; it seemed completely natural and the only logical destination. It's been a joke here and there, but truly believe that there was no other life for me. I wasn't intended to be an academic (the idea of teaching makes me ill) and lack the independent wealth to be a researcher or writer. Regardless, there is nothing I would prefer to have done with those first four years after college. 

    And the next couple years, in grad school.

    And the next three years, in law school. 

    So I did the only thing that felt right for me, and thus did the only thing that most members of my family could not understand. I don't mean to say that they treat me badly, or call attention to my different-ness. But there are moments, pretty often, where I am the fish out of water. They have similar experience, familiar backgrounds, and speak the same language. I speak a very different language, one that I don't wholly share with anyone.

6. If you were to name a time when your body and mind were at odds with each other, when would it be? 

    high school! Is that the same for everyone? Everything I wanted was exactly what I could not do or have or be, and in the rare instances when it was, my brain said No while my body (er whatever) said Yes Please Now Damn It. 

    I really was a good kid, though, and despite being an easily-distractable hothead, I also had (and have) a surprisingly loud conscience. It squawks at me at the most inconvenient moments.  

7. If you had to name the one thing in life that is generally the cause of unhappiness, what would you say it is? 

    expectations. What you want to happen, or what someone says will happen, or what seems like the logical thing to happen...none of this has anything to do with what really happens. 

 

[from If: Questions for the Soul; the title quotation is by Tony Kushner, from Perestroika]