Hello World
If I ever were to write my own biography, an exercise that would be little more than vanity for someone of my own import, I'd open it in the style of Dickens and talk about where I came from.
A Stoic named Epictetus, whose wisdom in his Discourses I have been absorbing as of late, once asked the question of the Greek people of his own day: "Why say 'I am Athenian'? Why not identify yourself with the exact spot your sorry body was dropped at birth?" While he goes on to concede that nationality is important because it is the source of our ancestral and cultural heritage, his point about the silliness of nationalism isn't altogether lost on me. I tend, like most of us, to call myself an American. A better term might be United Statesperson. (I did enjoy referring to myself as a "colonist" while visiting the United Kingdom a few summers ago.)
I was born in Southfield, Michigan, fortituously in a place called Providence hospital, which gives me the dubious honor of being able to refer to myself as a "Providencian". I rather like the ring of this; the ancient Greeks, of whom Epictetus was one, used the term "providence" in a way that was synonymous with "god", "gods", or "Zeus". Essentially, providence was one of the terms they used, along with these others, to refer to the underlying forces governing what they observed happening in nature. I suppose this esoteric trivia is less known to people than the capital of the New England state, so this is apt to cause confusion.
Now that I think about it, the world would be a much more interesting place if we identified ourselves with the place not where we were born, but where we were conceived, if for no other reason than the uncomfortable conversations this would force all of us to have with those who wrought us.
Keeping with the musty old Greeks on this point, Socrates used to say, when asked of his nationality: "I am a citizen of the world." As clever as I like to think I am, I probably cannot top that answer's perfect mix of earnest and disarming.
I have little desire to become my own biographer, but as of late, I have been reflecting on the last 10 years of my life with a much clearer head than I have had in a very long time. I have always written in order to make sense of the chaos reverberating around my head, so I'm resolving to spend at least a few posts sharing some of what's happened and the lessons I've derived from it.
A Stoic named Epictetus, whose wisdom in his Discourses I have been absorbing as of late, once asked the question of the Greek people of his own day: "Why say 'I am Athenian'? Why not identify yourself with the exact spot your sorry body was dropped at birth?" While he goes on to concede that nationality is important because it is the source of our ancestral and cultural heritage, his point about the silliness of nationalism isn't altogether lost on me. I tend, like most of us, to call myself an American. A better term might be United Statesperson. (I did enjoy referring to myself as a "colonist" while visiting the United Kingdom a few summers ago.)
I was born in Southfield, Michigan, fortituously in a place called Providence hospital, which gives me the dubious honor of being able to refer to myself as a "Providencian". I rather like the ring of this; the ancient Greeks, of whom Epictetus was one, used the term "providence" in a way that was synonymous with "god", "gods", or "Zeus". Essentially, providence was one of the terms they used, along with these others, to refer to the underlying forces governing what they observed happening in nature. I suppose this esoteric trivia is less known to people than the capital of the New England state, so this is apt to cause confusion.
Now that I think about it, the world would be a much more interesting place if we identified ourselves with the place not where we were born, but where we were conceived, if for no other reason than the uncomfortable conversations this would force all of us to have with those who wrought us.
Keeping with the musty old Greeks on this point, Socrates used to say, when asked of his nationality: "I am a citizen of the world." As clever as I like to think I am, I probably cannot top that answer's perfect mix of earnest and disarming.
I have little desire to become my own biographer, but as of late, I have been reflecting on the last 10 years of my life with a much clearer head than I have had in a very long time. I have always written in order to make sense of the chaos reverberating around my head, so I'm resolving to spend at least a few posts sharing some of what's happened and the lessons I've derived from it.