LifeItself

  So I am listening to the Polish internet radio, " New World ." A small group of young people there exudes such gentle happiness and unobtrusive presence that I am instantly transported to a better world of my youth. Today they discussed and read some of the poems of Wisława Szymborska, a great Polish poetess who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in literature. Today we celebrate the centennial anniversary of her birth.  A new complete collection of  Szymborska's poems and letters just came out, all 724 pages of them.    A young woman with an especially pleasant voice reflected calmly: "We must greet strangers and always reply to their greetings. I have noticed that seeing good, happy things brings more of them to my life. It is as if goodness is passing me by very fast and unless I see it instantly it vanishes. Puff!"  Then they played a short recording of another young woman, who sent her early morning greetings accompanied by the quiet cries of young an...

Many people ask me how can I be happy writing and thinking about so many sad and desperate things? Well, let me explain. Happiness is the fleeting rush of dopamine I feel seeing my little grandson, my wife or children.  As good as it might feel, it comes and goes. Think, please, about the happiness you purchase by sharing with your "friends" on Facebook a picture of a new pair of pink sneakers. Or think of the happiness you bring to your partner by giving her/him a bouquet of roses on the Valentine day. You probably never pay attention to over a billion roses  which are imported that day for your bouquet.  They are flown refrigerated on transport flights from Columbia, Ecuador and Mexico.  Once these cold roses land in Miami, they are rushed to other refrigerated planes and trucks, so that you can get them from a store refrigerator anywhere in the US.  The energy cost of your bouquet is absolutely ginormous, but it is worth another minute or two of dopamine r...

Almost every day on the way to campus I watch all kinds of monster trucks overtaking my small diesel engine-powered car.  The drivers look down at me with amusement and proudly roar from all of their 8 monster cylinders, spewing their monster exhaust fumes.  All these dinosaurs on wheels usually carry one person, who is not getting anywhere any faster than I do.  They do burn, however, four times more precious liquid hydrocarbons than I.  And herein lies the quintessential  U.S. infliction: blithe, mindless waste everywhere. Since this blog post will likely be used for all kinds of political spins from the left and right, here is my disclaimer: I am enthusiastic about most renewables (the giant-scale ethanol from any source and biodiesel fuel are excluded), and I would love to see a wiser use of much less energy in the U.S., as well as fewer people. Unfortunately, my fellow Americans - most notably politicians and journalists -  are rather oblivious...