The easy way?

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Often when something is difficult or time consuming I find myself trying to devise an easier or quicker way to do it. When I buy beets for juicing - stems and leaves still on, I have a tendency to throw them in the refrigerator, until I need them only to find them in a disgusting state of decay from the humidity in the area of the frig where I laid them. I justify this because it would take time to get out the cutting board, separate them, cut them into juicable sized stems and leaves, put them in ziplock bags and then, in the refrigerator.

Even as I type these sentences I am thinking, how can I get this piece on doing things the easy way done a little easier, without poring over every word and without editing it after I am finished.

I have known people who dropped out of college because of a math class, an English class or in one case, “because I could tell I had nothing in common with the professor”, only to find life without college quite tough - with jobs harder to come by and the ones available not what they would prefer. I wonder if they ever think that the easier way, not finishing college, actually turned out to be the hard way; the way I think when I see my beet stems and leaves rotting in the refrigerator and I have to throw them away. Maybe I should start processing my veggies as soon as I get them home, the way I did this afternoon, because I knew I was going to be writing this piece on not always taking the easy way out.

This past spring I tried to run a marathon without putting in enough training miles per week and I wound up walking much of the second half and finishing thirty minutes slower than my previous marathon time. But I start thinking of easy alternatives even when the thing I am doing is not nearly as hard as training for a marathon. I do it if I am replacing a ceiling fan or a light switch, writing an essay or an email, making a speech or just chit-chatting with someone. I am always looking to cut corners on big things or on small ones.

I suspect a psychologist would tell me this tendency is a sign I am ADHD, which I bet I was when I was little, although they did not have the diagnosis back then; and which I bet I still am. But it would not surprise me if a lot of people would not say they did the same thing. In fact, finding easy ways of doing things is sort of like what engineers do for a living, so it cannot be all bad, right?

It is probably not that big of a problem if I cut corners to save time, money or energy; when the matter is not life or death for me or a loved one, or when it does not mean I compromise my performance on an important project or shortchange the quality of my future life, in some way. The only problem is, I not only do it on unimportant things; I do it on big ones too.

I did it as a high school student, where I did not work my hardest. I did it my first year of college and I am not sure I did not do it on my Ph.D. dissertation, which honestly, I was never all that proud of as an accomplishment. It got me my degree, but I do not believe I came close to giving it everything I had. By that time, I just wanted to be done with the degree and move on with the rest of my life, instead of taking pride in the process and product.

I have known people who have given up on relationships, on members of their family, even on their state of residence – moving to another state in hopes that the new state would fix their problems. I knew one couple that gave up on keeping their money in banks because the bank was always hassling them about writing bad checks. When they told anyone they kept their money at home instead of a bank, they made it sound like the bank had done them wrong – actually that several banks in succession had done them wrong and so they finally gave up on banks.

It is easier to take supplements than to eat the proper foods, easier to sit sweating twenty minutes in a sauna than to spend that time on an elliptical, and in general it appears to be easier to take a hand full of pills than to either eat right or exercise. It gets worse, when it comes to health. Apparently, a lot of people think it is easier to have multiple by-pass surgeries than it is to take care of their health by not eating cholesterol-filled animal products and dairy.

Clearly lying in bed an extra hour is easier than getting out of bed and running three miles, or getting on an exercise bike, right? I mean, you have to put on your clothes, stretch, run-which is no fun - and then come back home and shower, then put on other clothes, whereas if you stayed in bed, all you had to do was find one outfit after you showered and just slip on your clothes.

But lying in bed day after day and year after year without doing work on your body only seems easier. At some point, the “difficulties” of living that way start to become obvious. You wind up in poor health, in the hospital, taking all kinds of pills, hurting all over, having headaches, stomach problems, thinking problems, problems getting around, not being able to go on a hike, not being able ultimately, to easily get out of the bed you so easily chose to lie in all those mornings, instead of getting up and doing the more difficult thing, taking care of the only body you will ever have.

I know, I am a big one to talk, but the next time you succumb to the temptation to take the easy way out, ask yourself, where is the hidden difficulty in that “so-called” easier way? I am going to try myself, although it sure is a lot easier to just write an essay on the subject.

Do we really have a choice?

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Should I stay home or go out, talk to a friend or read a good book, walk in nature or write down my thoughts? None of these are mutually exclusive, of course, I could do them all in the same day or I could do none. The one that gives me the least choice is staying home, since if I find myself at home, there are two options: stay or leave. But the way I posed the question is intended to suggest that I have these two ways of spending time, luxuriating around the house or luxuriating around in my car or something like that. Since I set the options up in the series that I did, it sounds like I am one lucky cuss and that any way I turn, I have time on my hands and I am in harmony with life, always faced with choices far less than life or death ones - nice choices to have. But, I could have said it another way.

I could have said: should I hunker down in my house or flee, phone a friend or see if my lawyer can find a loophole in the warrant they have for my arrest, run through the back alleys or pen a suicide note? Those choices do not sound as good, do they? I have spent most of my life much closer to the first set of choices than the second, in fact, I don’t think I have ever been too close to the latter, not to say I will never be. Those who are on the lam or being literally or figuratively hunted down are in what might be the least enviable position of all human beings. I would not want to be Edward Snowden, right now, hanging out in Russian airports – although I do think he is more hero than villain – these days, he is someone without good options.

We like to set up our time away from work as a series of choices, and some of us are even fortunate enough to do it at work; at least to some extent. If I get up on Saturday during the warm months, I have a choice of meditating for 45 minutes when I get out of bed or not, going for a run or not, at some point writing 1000 words or not, going with my wife to the farmer’s market or not, going to the gym for my 26-station workout or not, eating three meals or not, juicing beets, carrots and other veggies at some point during the day or not, going to bed between 10 and 11 or not, getting the car oil changed or not, eating one of those meals out or not, going to Memphis or not, listening to music while I write or not, and maybe a few other possibilities. But really, if my oil needs changing and it is not coming some sort of fierce storm, I will do all of the things on the left side of those sentences, the things before the not, except for going to Memphis, which only happens occasionally and every now and then not listening to music while I write because I am too lazy to think of putting my earbuds in my phone before I sit down. In other words, it is not as if I really have much choice of how I spend my “day off”.

Most of my days are the same, but you won’t hear me complaining. I don’t feel like screaming or they don’t need to come and get me in a van with padded walls. I am content with my life of non-choice choices. The truth is, if my back is hurting or I have pulled a hamstring recently, or if it is stupid hot, I may not run on a given Saturday. Instead, I might do an hour on the elliptical, but most likely I will exercise, not because I feel compelled, well maybe a little bit because of that; but mainly because I like the way it feels to get the usual stuff done. I do those things because those are the things I do.

Earlier in my life, say when I was in graduate school, my days were terribly different. I might choose between heading to the library first thing on Saturday morning or studying in our apartment. We might choose to drive to the mall and walk around or not, walk the bike path for a few minutes or not, watch a little TV before we went to bed or not. As you can see, at any given time in my life, my discretionary time has really been a matter of a handful of choices and not real choices at that, just doing or not doing the same things from a short list; when I am not being told what to do by a work schedule or some other type of schedule - like the you have when a loved one is in the hospital and you visit that person three times a day for three straight days, in a town far from your house.

I wonder if there are people who live differently from that? Are there people for whom every Saturday is unique from all the others, with the possible exception of getting up, eating three meals, and going to bed? If so, I wonder if they are happy? On Saturday number one she might do yoga with friend one, have lunch with friend two, go to a movie with friend two, have dinner with friend three, take a bike ride with friends four, five and six. Then on Saturday number two she might lie in bed until noon, skipping breakfast, drinking a juice instead of having lunch, reading a book during the afternoon and going to bed early. On Saturday three she might fly to the coast and spend the entire weekend there – I don’t know, let’s say- all alone. On Saturday four she might get up early and cut down a few trees before eating lunch at the soup kitchen where she is volunteering, after which she tries to immolate herself on her patio before someone puts her out, so she lives to see another Saturday and so on like that.

I know there must be people with more predictability in their life than I have, trappist monks come to mind, but I wonder how those with little predictability like it. I am guessing those with the least predictability are the ones whose jobs are quite varied and who work all the time. Within the confines of their job, they do lots of different things, but it’s all work. I suppose there are also socialites and party animals who are flitting and flying hither and yon and never seem to have any pattern to their days, but can that be sustainable? Would your body and mind not eventually just fall apart? Are lots of true and actual choices really all that common and really even, desirable?