Dover and the Art of Reinvention

One of my favorite rock bands of all time is Dover, a Spanish band relatively unknown in the U.S., even though they play a very American style of rock and sing in English. I was first introduced to them by a Spanish friend of mine while studying abroad in Spain. The lead singer, Christina Llanos, has to me such an evocative voice; strong yet vulnerable, emotional, honest. And the rest of the band always seems to create just the right stirring, minor key rhythm for her to work through her latest pain. Interestingly enough, the band took a major change in direction circa 2006. And while I will always be partial to their former sound, I really appreciate the new sound for what it is, exactly what the band is feeling and wanting to do at this point in their lives. Oh, and the new music is also really good too. So, for anyone interested in hearing more, here's a brief videography of this ever-developing band whose music is very much a part of who I am. 

An early video for the song "Serenade" 

 Dover performing the song "The Devil Came to Me" live

The big change in sound. Dover's video for their 2006 pop song "Let Me Out"

In light of their change in sound, Dover also remixed some of their old songs. Here is one of the many fan-created videos available online for Dover's 'Serenade Remix'  

Dungeons & Dragons (or In Praise of Guilty Pleasures)

The year was 1985. And an event was about to occur that would forever change my shy, awkward prepubescent years. No, it wasn't my first kiss, or my first soccer goal, or anything else that might have helped me join the ranks of the cool 4th graders. In fact, it was something that was going to ensure my place in the halls of Geekdom for many years to come. It was the day I bought my first Dungeons and Dragons books (sound angelic choir here). I had been captivated by the game for some time, with its lushly illustrated rulebooks and dice of varying colors and shapes. And somehow, despite warnings from the media that the game caused kids to murder their friends and commit suicide, I convinced my parents to take me to Child's World and let me buy the Basic Rules set. Once home, I carefully unpacked the various items from the bright red box; the Player Manual, the Dungeon Master's Rulebook, the six polyhedral dice, and I followed the directions to create my very first character, Theiton, the fighter. In the years that followed, I purchased more of the seemingly endless books on the market. And I spent many a night combing through my beloved D&D books, surveying the evocative pictures of warriors, wizards, and mythical creatures, and studying the detailed graphs of weapon damage and spell effects. The funny thing was that I never actually played the game. It was a bit too complex for my ten-year-old mind. And, let's be real, I didn't really know anyone else who played. (note to self: If I ever write a memoir of my childhood be sure to call it "I was such a dork, I couldn't even find anyone to play Dungeons and Dragons with). So as the years went by, I moved on with life. I tried new and exciting things like...talking to girls, playing sports, and combing my hair. And eventually the tragic day came when I decided to sell my D&D books. Little did I know at the time that my failure to have actually played the game with which I was so fascinated would haunt me for years to come. And haunt me it did, like a dream deferred. Years later, I found myself walking into hobby stores just to brush my fingers along the latest D&D books. I even tried out some role playing games on the computer to no avail. Nothing, it seemed could fill that void.

So fast forward about 20 years. I'm married and a father. I've done all the school I ever want to do. I'm enjoying my work. And I'm looking for a hobby...something with a manageable time commitment, that has a social aspect, and is just plain fun. Could it be? That, as an adult, I might still satisfy my unfulfilled childhood longing to play Dungeons and Dragons with actual living, breathing people? Well, about six months ago I did some research and discovered that there is an entire community of people my age still playing D&D. And with a little effort, I managed to gather a group of five other thirty-something D&D enthusiasts. Here's the group as it stands today... 

Matt: playing Kefis, the Minotaur Ranger
Early: playing Sixty, the Halfling Rogue
Julie: playing Hardin, the Human Fighter
Justin: playing Dilip, the Human Cleric
Cory: playing Gutter, the Shapeshifting Druid
And yours truly: serving as Dungeon Master.

Once the group was established, it was just a matter of buying some books and getting the hang of the rules. And now that we've been playing for about 6 months, I have to say, Dungeons and Dragons is way more awesome as an adult than it ever was as a kid. It's amazing how much it helps when you actually understand the rules, and have the capacity to create a compelling and mature story for your characters. So this post is my tribute to my new D&D group, a bunch of adults who are finding the time once a month to be kids again. It's also my tribute to guilty pleasures in general. As adults, I think we all need to find the time to do the things we love to do, without having to worry about productivity or maturity or societal expectations. Whether that means knitting, or doing crosswords, or getting together with a bunch of friends and pretending that you're a band of heroic adventurers out to save the world from evil.

A picture of the classic D&D set from my youth

An evocative illustration from an early D&D book

Another classic image. This one is called "A Paladin in Hell"

Some of my cool new D&D books

Some of my "minis," representing characters and monsters and, of course, the iconic D20 (twenty-sided die)

Modern Problems

In a recent conversation with my father, I mentioned how I thought that the modern world required a different parenting approach. My father, responding in the endearingly succinct method of communication that has been handed down through the generations in my family, simply replied…”people are people.” It was one of those fake disagreements where both of us were right - that whole “the more things change, the more they stay the same” phenomenon. In any case, our brief interaction got me thinking about my assertion a bit more. After all, I’ve built this blog partly on the assumption that there are all these new challenges in the modern world that are requiring us to rethink the notion of what a healthy, functioning adult should look like. But what exactly are these new challenges we face? And what consequences arise if we fail to meet them?

The Zany Modern Family: This is a big one. Our notion of the “normal family” has been changing pretty consistently ever since the 60s; Single moms. Stay at home dads. Gay parents. Unmarried parents. Inter-racial couples, inter-faith couples. And, as exciting as it is to see people making commitment, love, and family work in all sorts of new ways that better accommodate our modern diversity, there are definitely challenges to living in this increasingly heterogeneous society. I don’t think we’re really that good, as a species, at dealing with complexity. We want our simple categories and boxes. And when the world won’t reduce, we become overwhelmed. Our impulse becomes to turn off that part of the brain that tries to understand, and rely on anger and hostility. But as much as we may want to close our minds to more complicated and inclusive thinking, doing so in today's world severely limits our ability to be effective and supportive family members. So the challenge for modern adults, amidst our ever-growing family diversity, is to discover and enjoy our common ground, while also accepting and appreciating our differences. For a hilarious take on this idea, I highly recommend the television comedy Modern Family.

The Information Highway: We are in exciting times. Thanks to the internet, information is being shared quicker and more democratically than ever before. Old barriers have been removed and traditional notions of authority and expertise have been eroded. Much of this change is having a positive impact on individuals. Patients, consumers, students: all are enjoying greater power through increased access to information. So much of my own recovery from health problems, for example, has been the result of internet research, which connected me to guidance from others experiencing pain and specialists knowledgeable about my specific symptoms. And yet, the information age is also presenting the modern adult with a new and significant developmental challenge. Information can now be presented to us by anyone who happens to have an internet connection. And it has become increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the real deal and the charlatan. This means that critical thinking skills have become crucial to adult development in a way they never have been before. Being able to tell the nuance from the hackery, and the fact from the fiction, is a lifelong developmental skill that requires consistent attention. And yet, the pressure as we age is, once again, to reject complexity. To cling to narrow ideas and black and white thinkers. And, once we begin down that road, we become increasingly disfunctional in this big, diverse world. So increasing one's capacity for complex, critical thought, even into adulthood, has become essential.

Money and the Machine: The gears of the societal machine are getting larger and more menacing. Advertising, the Media, big corporations: they're all threatening to crush the individual's motivation to think and to act. We're finding ourselves increasingly dependent on our unfulfilling jobs (and their sad excuses for health insurance plans). And, as we work ourselves to exhaustion week after week, naturally we would rather spend our days off shopping than thinking and learning and developing. And that is exactly what so many of the upper, upper, upper class (you have to add an extra upper every so many years) hope will happen, because it will make them richer, while we become more apathetic, more materialist, and more inclined to purchase the latest anti-depressant. (Sigh). So the challenge for the modern adult is to somehow escape this system that sees us only as consumers of varying purchasing power, and to find the space to become more fully human. Because, there are actually these other human values that don't turn a profit. Things like compassion, justice, imagination, equality, gentleness, connection, nurturance. The modern adult must make the effort to ensure that these things continue to be part of our society and add depth to our lives.  

College, Travel, and the Multicultural World: There was a time when a college education was reserved for the privileged, and travel to another country was unique and special. And yet, to most young adults who grew up in the 80s, 90s, and beyond, these things have become commonplace. And interactions with people outside of one's hometown, city, state, and country are becoming commonplace as well. More than ever modern adults are being required to negotiate complicated interactions with people who have remarkably different experiences and perspectives. It's a difficult process that, without fail, leads to social miscues and mistakes, and misunderstandings. In response to these difficulties, we may often feel the urge to succumb to offense and fear and anger, and to close ourselves off to those who are different. And yet, if the modern adult hopes to be an effective, functioning person outside of his or her in-group, he or she must push through the difficulty and discomfort and develop the skills of cross-cultural communication.

And yet, when all is said and done, my pops had a really good point when he said that “people are people.” Amidst this ever-changing landscape, human beings still have the same basic hard wiring that we've had for at least the past 400,000 years. We're still these beautiful and confused amalgams of the best and the worst in this world. And we're still trying to figure out how we can bring out more of the good stuff and less of the bad. And families, despite their changing appearances, are still built upon the same old principles. They still exist to provide us with safety, love, and support; not to mention the occasional dose of eternal wisdom. So thanks Dad.

The Pain of Living

“Pain and death are part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself.”

                                                                           -Havelock Ellis

A major challenge of adulthood comes with learning to accept pain, death, and loss as realities in life. Historically, developmental psychologists have suggested that this is something we accomplish later in life...like clockwork, just after the career has been established, the kids have grown up, the mortgage has been paid, and the mobile home has been purchased. Our modern culture seems only to reinforce this delayed engagement by convincing us that there are pills to cure all manner of pain, surgeries to counter aging, and shiny new gadgets to distract one's mind from any thoughts of death that might creep in.

In my own life, I have experienced the opposite extreme. For better or worse, life forced me to accept pain and death at a very early age. And no amount of pharmaceuticals or shopping sprees was going to change that. When I was 24 years old, my lung collapsed spontaneously in the night as I slept (it's called a spontaneous pneumothorax and for anyone interested in seeing the anxiety it causes, check out the facebook group for those who have been through it). After waking up early in the morning unable to breathe, I was rushed to the emergency room, stuck with needles and tubes, cut open and operated on, and then spit back out into the world after 14 days in a hospital bed. Throughout this ordeal, I allowed myself to cry on one occasion. The day after I had undergone the surgery that permanently fused my lung with my chest cavity, I let out about 60 seconds of tears, full of suffering and frustration. That is, until my surgeon entered the room with a look that seemed to say ‘Please stop that. I really can't deal with your emotions right now.’ And so I gathered myself, and returned all of that pain and fear and weakness to a place where others could not see it. And as I returned to my life outside of the hospital, I continued to learn that it was best not to burden others with my pain. I did my best to keep on acting like a “normal” twenty something, one who was healthy and strong and confident. And I suppose that my strategy worked on a certain level. I managed to accomplish some things in a timely progression...receive an education, become what I hope is a competent social worker, develop meaningful relationships, become a father. And yet, throughout those years, I was living with severe, chronic pain.

In the years since my surgery, I’ve felt it all. Sharp pains that originate at my sternum and slice all the way through my body to my back. Dull aches in my shoulders, neck and back that won’t go away. Migraines in every part of my head. Intense pain in my left eye that makes me have to turn out the lights and lie down. Metallic tastes in my mouth. A ringing in my ears. Pains in my jaw and my cheeks. Odd internal sensations that wake me in the middle of the night afraid that I'm going to die. Inconsistent eating and sleeping. Hot flashes. Fatigue. Anxiety. Depression. Irritability. Terror. And when a person experiences this sort of pain, it is the only thing there is. All of those other things going on in one's life - the work days, the classes, the social gatherings - are like the scenes in a movie. You watch them and try your best to be a part of them so that people don’t think you’re a total loser or an asshole. And then you wait for the time when things will be quiet and uneventful again so that you can relax your body and not have to think or interact.

Luckily for me, there has been a path to recovery. It took some good practitioners - a doctor, a physical therapist, a massage therapist, and a chiropractor - to help me understand the specific problem (the twisted mess that my spine had become after years of improper breathing and posture since my surgery) and the solution (painful massage of the neck, arm and chest muscles and gentle strengthening of the back and shoulder blade muscles). I am now on the way to physical recovery. With each passing day, my body is getting stronger and the pain is decreasing. I am beginning to remember how I felt before this all started.

So, as a sort of twist on the traditional notion of development, at 35 years old, I find myself already acquainted with much of life's darkness. I’ve been living in pain and staring at death for the past 10 years. And now, as I’m slowly awakening from the suffering, my developmental step has actually become to get back some of what the pain has stolen from me, which is to say the ‘enjoyment’ and the ‘living’ parts of life. And, it seems to me that Havelock Ellis' words do hold true. That, in having gained an acceptance of death, and an experience of pain, that I will find living to be better than it ever was before.

And, in keeping with the academic bend of this blog, I'd like to propose a new component for my model of adult development. Because, it seems to me that my experiences with pain - past, present, and future - will continue to present me with significant emotional challenges, which I can respond to in both healthy and destructive ways. And in this I'm not alone. As we enter adulthood, we all become increasingly aware of that dark cloud hanging over our lives. But we're sort of left up to our own devices regarding how much we allow our "death awareness" to surface, and how, when it does surface, we make sense of it. Finding the right balance, then, is the challenge of adulthood. If one avoids the issue, one fails to develop the sort of emotional depth that comes with embracing the "darker" parts of life; heartache, grief, sadness, weakness, struggle. And in neglecting to devote attention to the subject, one also fails to develop an acceptable explanation for the existence of death and suffering. Furthermore, when a society teaches its people that, with careful planning, pain and death can be avoided, you get modern-day America, where we struggle to feel empathy and compassion for others in pain. Too much pain and death, on the other hand, and a person becomes incapacitated by darkness, not to mention irritable, pessimistic, and depressed. So where does the correct balance lie? While I would never propose to have an answer for that question, I do think that Erikson was onto something when he proposed his own developmental steps as conflicts (x vs. y). So I'm going to propose this one in much the same terms....

Death Preoccupation vs. Death Denial

As adults we must resolve ourselves to understanding that pain and death are essential parts of life. When we fail to accept the existence of death and pain in a way that is satisfactory to our own thinking, we are unable to process tragedy and loss. We get stuck with questions like 'why do bad things happen to good people?' and 'why me?' We also fail to develop the emotional depth needed to connect with others who are experiencing difficulties in life. Too much of a focus on death, on the other hand, leads one to develop a dismal outlook and to "miss out" on the lighter side of life. The goal of the modern adult must be to integrate an awareness of death into one's thoughts, emotions, and actions in a way that supports healthy development and affirms life.

That's all for now. In the future, I plan to write about other conflicts we face in adulthood, and eventually integrate these conflicts into a cohesive model of adult development.