Ich bin ein Jude

In the spring of 1980 as a first-year college student, I was offered an opportunity that was also a dilemma. My friend Steve and many of our mutual friends had signed up for a semester aboard program for the following Fall in Munich. There was still room in the program. Did I want to go?

On the one hand it made perfect sense. What an incredible opportunity to spend a semester in Europe for the same cost as a semester in Greensboro, N.C. I could room with Steve and the trip would be led by a physics professor I didn’t know well but generally liked. I had even studied German in High School though my grasp of the language was pretty flimsy. But as a Jew born just 16 years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust and whose own grandparents and great grandparents had left Germany, my feelings about Germany and Germans were, well, complicated. I decided to go but not without some trepidation.

At the time, I played the Scottish Highland Bagpipes, which I had taken up in High School. I brought my pipes with me to Germany and out of consideration for the neighbors, I only practiced outdoors in public parks. One day toward evening, I was practicing near our apartment and a man (assuming I was British) began cursing at me. A number of other people leapt to my defense and a lovely older Frau, learning I was an American college student, invited me to her home for a meal. I ended up going back for dinner every week thereafter and got to know her family including her grown children and 4-year-old granddaughter, Sabina, very well. But one night, Frau asked me a question that was so unexpected and threw me for such a loop that for a moment I didn’t know how I wanted to answer it.

I had reason to recall that question this week when I learned that a 2019 change in German law allows me, as a descendent of German Jews, to apply for German citizenship. There are many good reasons to do this (reclaiming something that was wrongfully taken from my grandparents, EU citizenship, easier travel to and throughout Europe). But changing or even just amending ones Nationality (even if you believe as I do that Nationality is a particularly bankrupt human construct) is still a decision that probes one’s sense of identity surprisingly deeply.

I haven’t yet decided about applying for German citizenship but contemplating it brings back the question that the Frau, whose last name I have now forgotten, asked me more than 40 years ago.

I wrote a poem about that question. By omitting punctuation and running together all the thoughts and sentences, I tried to create a kind of stream of consciousness, breathless quality and capture that sense of having just a moment to respond to an extremely fraught and complicated question asked of a 19-year-old by seemingly kind people who were old enough to have participated in the Holocaust.

My answer to her question was a defining moment for my identity and is the title of the poem.

Ich bin ein Jude

Thirty-five years ago the Führer blew out his brains in a bunker under the capital of the Reich and I’m 18 studying in Bavaria land of my grandfather’s birth and this family has been hosting me for supper every week since they found me playing Highland Bagpipes in the park hospitality redemption Marshall Plan gratitude for America and we are watching the news after dinner most of it going over my head because in spite of years of high school and college German and three months here the language still sounds to me like a hammer on plumbing Hitler’s machine gun sputter from Triumph of the Will and there is a man being interviewed on television and Frau says a Jew outlining a semicircle over her nose with her index finger and what religion are you and I pretend not to understand with my lousy German You know Catholic Lutheran exhausting 90 percent of the possibilities with those two options but I don’t have a religion atheist born raised devout and I look at their generations Frau and Herr adult children and their 4-year-old granddaughter and it takes a moment the words to find

Why They Keep Changing Things

“The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.”

--Charles Darwin

“He’s playing old tapes.”

--Scott Brown

“I preferred being a caterpillar...”

Without a doubt hardware is very important. Big brains, opposable thumbs, and an innate insatiable curiosity are three reasons Sapiens have been such a resounding success. But this machinery would be nothing without the software that runs on it. The software is the extraordinary ability of the human being to adapt to change. It’s allowed us to inhabit nearly every environment planet Earth has to offer. 

For several decades, I’ve enjoyed offering my friends and family free technology support (as long as it is for an Apple device). During the pandemic, I moved largely to providing guidance by phone or FaceTime. I helped several friends and even my mom’s friends to back up their phones, buy a new one online, and restore their data, all over the telephone. It’s what I used to do at the Apple store but without being able to see the customer’s screen or touch the device. 

Rarely does a week pass that I am not called upon by a friend or a family member who is frustrated by something on their phone or computer that not working as it should or at least as they THINK it should. To be honest, my motives are not completely altruistic. I am an Apple shareholder (albeit a very minor one) and so I have an interest in making sure the customer is satisfied. Perhaps more important, providing tech support helps me keep my skills up-to-date and helps me feel useful. 

But when a major update to MacOS or iOS comes out all hell breaks loose. Inevitably, features change, buttons move or disappear, or something that worked before stops working. That is when I start getting messages. “What happened to…” and “that… thing stopped working.” I help as best I can. I explain the new feature and why it is an improvement over the old way it used to work and try to help the person see that Apple is just trying to make their life better. That’s when I usually hear it: “Why can’t they just leave things alone. I liked it the way it was.” 

Here’s an example. In the most recent major iOS update, Apple moved the address bar in the web browser Safari from the top of the screen to the bottom. The reason made sense. The screens have gotten larger and the fingers now need to travel farther to get to the top of screen. Moving the bar to the bottom gets it back into easy reach. Many people hated this change. Even the technology editor of the Wall Street Journal decried it and told readers they should change it back, which you can do in the settings. I have not seen such outrage since Apple removed the headphone jack on the iPhone 7. Remember the headphone jack? 

Apple understands this resistance to change and usually provides a path back to the old way with a settings switch or a hardware solution that gives us the time we need to get used to it. But sooner or later we usually succumb because, well, resistance is futile. When Apple dropped the headphone jack in 2016, it provided a dongle in the box with each phone for a few years allowing traditional headphones to be plugged into the phone’s lightening port. The adapter quietly disappeared from the box a few years later with no fanfare and little notice. 

My approach to these changes is this: I give it a week. If after a week, I still hate it or find it irritating, I change it back. Usually, I find after a week I usually no longer even notice the change and if I do, I see the value. After a month, I don’t remember that it was ever different. 

Isn’t this so often the way change works in our lives? Something alters and our first reaction is to hate it, to wish that it would go back to the way it was before. Not because it was actually better but because we were used to it. Soon we get used to the new way and can’t remember that it was ever otherwise. 

We like things static because that allows us to live mostly on auto-pilot. This is not a completely bad thing. Putting our routines on auto-pilot may allow us to use the power of those large brains for things that require creativity or innovation or to experience the things that are extraordinary. 

However, there is a deep downside to auto-pilot. When we are on auto-pilot we are not really paying attention. We are missing the extra of the everyday ordinary. Change is life’s way of reminding us to see what is going on. Do we truly prefer things as they were, or is this new way just fine, maybe better in some way? And if it is not better, we are challenged to find a path forward. Because, unlike changes to your phone software, life rarely has a setting or a dongle that can set things back to the way they were. We must adapt.  

Sometimes we adapt by accepting a different kind of life than we had before. Sometimes we problem solve. Sometimes we even figure out a way to get it mostly back to the way it was before because we just can’t accept the change. 

I can attest that the older you get, the harder it is to adapt. That is why when I am presented with change, whether in my phones operating system or plans run aground on the shifting sands of Covid, I try to ask myself if I can see this as an opportunity to learn, to change, to keep my mind flexible.

Most change is neutral. It is neither good nor bad; it just is. Every change embodies both loss and opportunity. Which you see depends on your personal settings. But resistance to change is largely futile. The change doesn’t care whether you want it or not. What we can control is our response to the change. We can try to demand that ‘they’ put it back to the way it was before or we can look to see how the new reality can make our lives more fulfilling or at least more interesting. It’s all about your software, how it allows you adapt, and how long it takes. Check periodically to make sure you’re not running an out-of-date version of you. 

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Cosmic Insignificance

Last year at this time I was bemused and irritated at all the folks who claimed to not be able to wait for 2020 to come to an end. I found this silly for several reasons.

First, because the whole idea of a year is a human construct. Though roughly tied to real thing (the amount of time it takes the earth to go around the sun once), it is only an approximation of that cycle, as those who followed the Julian calendar found out to their chagrin. In any case, the new year falling on January one doesn’t even make sense from an astronomical perspective. Shouldn’t the first day of the year be one of the equinoxes or solstices? Personally, I vote for the autumnal equinox since that is close to the new year of me (my birthday) and the birthday of the world (Rosh Hashanah), but the first day of spring probably makes more sense.

Next, the idea of something “bad” like corona virus being contained to a single calendar year is, of course, absurd, as the view from the vantage point a full year later clearly demonstrates. No organisms except humans think that anything ends on December 31 or even know what December is for that matter.

But last and most importantly, the idea that anyone would wish away a moment of the precious little time that we have seems almost sinful.

Last week, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, The Tim Ferriss Show. Ferriss is the author of The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, and a number of other books, none of which I’ve read. His podcasts are long-form conversation (each is an hour or more) with what he calls “high performers” but are really just super interesting people. Ferriss is a great interviewer and pretty interesting himself. (He is using some of his fortune to fund research into medical uses of psychedelics. But last week he posted something unusual. It was not an interview. Rather, it was someone reading a chapter of his book. Here is what Tim writes about the episode in the show notes:

“This special and very short episode requires some back story. Cal Newport, bestselling author of Deep Work, was the first of several people to recommend a book to me called Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (@oliverburkeman). I recently read the book, devoured it over several days, and captured hundreds of Kindle highlights in the process. It’s quite unlike anything I’ve ever read, and one of my favorite chapters was “Cosmic Insignificance Therapy.” Even by itself, this chapter left me with a profound sense of calm that lasted several days.”

I highly recommend this episode, which you can read or listen to here. It is just 20 minutes long.

I was intrigued by a number of things in this short piece but most of all by the idea that someone who achieves the biblical “Four score if granted the vigor” years of life, that is to say lives to age 80, will live just around 4,000 weeks. However, rather than be intimidated by this thought and feeling that we must achieve something of lasting significance during this short time, Burkeman suggests that in context of the lifetime of the universe or even in the course of human history, little or nothing that any human being accomplishes will be of any significance whatsoever or even remembered 50 years hence. In human history there are few Aristotles, Elizabeths, or Einsteins, and I (and likely you) won’t be one of them. Even Einstein himself will be irrelevant (irrelative?) long before the last bit of light leaves our sun for its journey toward infinity.

This, to me, is an incredibly liberating idea. It means that I need not worry about whether I am creating a legacy (I’m not), whether any part of my life’s work or words will last longer than an eyeblink (they won’t). And though this realization could give one a sense of futility, it just might help one focus on the true task at hand: to live each day in a way that is meaningful to you and those around you. Rather than feel one needs to write the great American novel, one might just pen a few thoughts and send it out to a few friends. Just taking care of the ones you love or calling a friend might be enough contribution for today.

It also means that we don’t need to “return to normal,” to a world the way it was before Covid 19 in order to have a meaningful life. Although it is natural and understandable to feel frustrated about the things we imagine we can’t do, there is still a lot we can do in the days we are given. If we are able to focus our attention on those things, our four thousand weeks will fly by fast enough. No need to wish them away. For those who have lost loved ones or had their own health impacted by Covid, there is no compensation. But then, what compensation has there ever been to hardship except the lessons it offers and perhaps another day to live? If you are lucky enough to have one, you have all there is.