The Iphone – like a moth to a flame….

Like a moth drawn to the flame, I think it may be time for me to get an Iphone.  But I’m worried – not scared –just worried.  I suffer from AADD – Adult Attention Deficit Disorder – and I can drive people around me crazy with my distractions.   Staying focused on chores and routine tasks, and keeping things in order (to include my life) are not my forte.   My filing system is a stack of papers covering my U-shaped desk and surrounding my computer – I just don’tt seem to get around to sorting them out.  I am drawn to interruptions and distractions:   to answer the phone,  to check my email (again), to  get a cup of coffee, to amble into the offices of my workmates to discuss how we make our world a better place.    In Meyers Briggs terms, I am an ENFP – a dreamer, an idealist, someone who does poorly at the discipline of managing the details necessary to keep things working well, because I am easily distracted by ….whatever.

So then, why get an Iphone and carry this little distraction generating gismo around with me everywhere I go?  Am I the alcoholic who takes his laptop to the bar to do his work, or the overweight, junk-food addict sitting at McDonalds thinking about a healthier lifestyle,  or the sex addict trying to build meaningful relationships in an erotic bar?  Hmmm.. could be….

But I’m going to get an Iphone anyway.  Because I (think I) can handle it!

I believe that these 3 and 4G devices are ushering in a new era in our culture, and I don’t want to be left behind.  I want to play.  I want to stay ‘in the game.’   There are those who have eschewed email, cell phones, and the internet – I respect those who have made that choice out of principle rather than fear, but I am not one of them.  I need people, and want to be part of the give and take of social interaction in my own culture, to fulfill my own need to engage with the world.  Like everyone else (yes, like the alcoholic who thinks s/he can be just a social drinker),   I still think I can handle the distractions of the Iphone.

The simple answer is that I want to be part of our busy culture and society – and I still think I can do it on my own terms.

I believe that the ‘smart phone’ is becoming  such a ubiquitous part of our culture, that it will soon become as essential to playing in the mainstream of American culture as an email account, wide band internet access and a cell phone are today.

There is a debate raging in the blogosphere about the good and the bad of technology.  L. Gordon Crovitz sums up the discussion well in a short column in the Wall Street Journal (23 Aug )  “Is Technology Good or Bad? Yes.”  In her column of 21 Aug, “Information Overload is Nothing New,” Peggy Noonan  pointed out that the debate about the dangers of information overload goes back at least as far as the Roman Empire.  Many of us are thinking about the danters and unintended consequences that may come with these powerful new capabilities.   Perhaps a modern-day Tolkien should write a trilogy, “The Lord of the Smart-phone” in which instant easy access to well organized information, tailored to your own personal education, culture and needs is the ‘ring.’  Is Steve Jobs Gollum? Am I?

I acknowledge that there are wise, well adjusted and spiritual people who have withdrawn to the edges of our culture and live happily at a safe distance from frenetic activity, new opportunities, exciting possibilities and all the resulting stress and craziness.  These ‘outsiders’ watch and shake their heads with little sympathy, and perhaps even less understanding.    I hope to join them someday, out on the edges of our culture, to watch and to smile.

But not yet.  I’m reminded of St Augustine’s prayer, “Lord, make me chaste, just not yet.”

For the time being, continuing to play in the world of frenetic activity will scratch my itch to stay involved in the American ‘game of life,’ to be engaged with a wide array of people in my own culture.  I hope to gain some insights into just what is going on  – and I recognize that I may also be adding un-necessary stress and anxiety to my life – as so often happens.

Like a moth, I am drawn to the flame.  My intent is to fly around it, enjoy its heat and light, without burning my wings….we’ll see.

I will get an Iphone in the next month or so….Stay tuned.  Bob

Mountains of Humility

With our course at 12K ft on the Continental Divide, getting ready to ho down to Mile Long Lake

I just returned last week from my annual sojourn into the Wind River Mountains to spend 23 days with Naval Academy Midshipmen on a National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) backpacking expedition.  NOLS  and the Naval Academy collaborate to make an expedition into the wilderness and mountains a leadership lab for aspiring Naval Officers.  This is the fourth summer I’ve joined them as an instructor, primarily to provide perspectives on how leadership in the outdoors relates to leadership in the military.

People often ask me how ‘backpacking in the mountains’ teaches leadership in the military.  Or leadership in any environment, for that matter. That’s a fair question. 

When I explain that when you have to spend every waking hour, every day, for several weeks with the same people,  working together to confront and deal with new challenges in a new environment, with nowhere to hide from your mistakes, from words spoken in anger or frustration (by others or yourself ), the leadership piece becomes more apparent.  Leadership is very much about people working together to achieve common goals.  The tougher and more unfamiliar the context, the tougher the challenge.   On this expedition, all of us – students and instructors - learned a lot about working together to succeed, thrive, and have fun, in some of the most spectacular and also challenging wilderness and mountains in North America.

While on the course, the midshipmen kept a daily journal.   It is a description of much of what they experienced and is full of witty, borderline, and some probably-over-the-line humor; it is fun to read and is a reflection of their energy, exuberance and even irreverence. 

At the end of the course, I too contributed to the journal.    I put down some thoughts about what I hoped they had gotten out of their expedition.  In retrospect, these thoughts reflected what I had gotten out of being with them on this expedition, away from civilization in the mountains and wilderness for 3 ½ weeks:

                Humility – the mountains and the wilderness are awe inspiring. They were here well before I was born, and will be here long after I’m dead.   My small place in the time/space continuum becomes readily apparent.  Anyone who comes out of that environment and is not humbled by it, was not paying attention.  Also, it is humbling at this point in my life to work with smart, strong, healthy, and exuberant young people.   It is a cure for the smugness that can come with age and experience.

                We need each other – Living well in the back-country, just like living well in the ‘front-country’ requires that we work and get along well with others.  One cannot live well in either environment alone.  We do truly need each other to survive and to thrive….

                We need to protect the Wilderness -  it is fragile.  In our course, we taught and practiced what is called ‘Leave No Trace’ camping, and we were scrupulous about not leaving bits of food or trash, and carrying out everything we brought in;  other campers however aren’t so scrupulous. We regularly came across trash and other debris left by other campers -even in the most remote areas.

                You can live well with very little.   If you have the ability to observe and appreciate the world around you, and you have the love and support of friends and family, everything else you really need fits into a back pack.  A good book and a harmonica help.

                Every one of us is precious.  Two students who started with us did not finish the course with us.  One was evacuated nearly halfway through with painful tendonitis in his ankles; another was seriously injured in a fall and had to be evacuated by helicopter (she will fully recover after a few months of rehabilitation and physical therapy.)   The loss of each of these truly great people from our course hurt them and us.  We were not the same – we were clearly less – without them.

 Our group of 14 included 3 instructors (of whom I was the junior) and 11 midshipmen.  We ‘improvised, adapted, and overcame’ steep, spectacular terrain, gale force winds,  lightening/thunderstorms, mosquitoes, snow covered passes, long hikes with heavy rucksacks.   We bathed in ice-cold lakes, we cooked ‘creative’ meals on our camp stoves, caught and ate fresh trout, slept on the hard ground, three and four in a tent whipped by 40+ knot winds.  We also learned to live well together, which was not always easy.  For all of us, spending 3 ½ weeks away from civilization, was therapy for our ‘nature deficit disorder’ that can come from our sometimes over-civilized life-styles.   We brought many lessons back to our noisy, busy, and very full lives in the front country – what Admiral Stockdale referred to as ‘the big easy world of yakety-yak.’ 

But the mountains are still there for us, in their no-excuses-and-no-apologies Stoic silence.  When things get too crazy, or too busy, or too noisy, or too frustrating, or too whatever – in our minds, we can return to the campsites we left ‘without a trace’ in the Wind River Mountains, places where change is very slow, and the wind in the trees, and the occasional rock breaking loose and falling from the cliffs, are the only sounds we hear….

For another NOLS instructor’s perspective,  I commend to you Morgan Hite’s very short essay, Briefing for entry into a harsher environment    http://www.lesstraveled.com/TripLog/RoadTrip99/NOLS99/briefing.htm