bonsai minimalism

Not For All My Little Words, Not If I Could Write For You

By in bonsai minimalism, books, foolosophy, writing

When I consider all the people I know or have heard of who write prolifically or who at least produce lengthy and finished works, I feel an ambivalent envy, a disdainful admiration, an incoherent mixture of mixed feelings. The creation of something complete or whole, be it good or bad — and if it’s never entirely good, it’s very often not all bad — yes, the creation of something complete seems to stir in me above all a feeling of envy. A completed thing is like a child; although imperfect like everything human, it belongs to us like our own children.

And I, whose self-critical spirit allows me to only see my lapses and defects, I, who dare write only passages, fragments, excerpts of the non-existent, I myself — in the little that I write — am also imperfect.

—Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

An aristocratic patron recently gifted me a copy of Leopardi’s Zibaldone, a book I’d admired from afar for many years. It’s a mammoth of a book, over 2500 pages of notebook-style reflections on everything from literature to philology to history and sundry other topics. He compiled this between 1817-1832, and he only lived to be 38 years old. Pace Senhor Pessoa, I wouldn’t say I feel “envy” when confronted with such a vast laboratory of thought. It’s more like dull incomprehension. How can anyone think, let alone write, that much? I’ve already outlived Leopardi by nearly fifteen years, and had I written down every coherent thought I’ve ever had, it probably still wouldn’t match his word count. I can only think or write in short bursts, with a lot of silent observation and subconscious reflection in between. I simply can’t comprehend what it would feel like to be “on” all the time. I’m a bonsai essayist, that’s what I am.

Obiter Scripta, no. 78

By in bonsai minimalism, calvin and hobbes, nietzsche, obiter scripta, santutthi, socmed

Learning solitude. O you poor devils in the great cities of world politics, you gifted young men tormented by ambition who consider it your duty to pass some comment on everything that happens — and there is always something happening! Who when they raise the dust in this way think they are the chariot of history! Who, because they are always on the alert, always on the lookout for the moment when they can put their word in, lose all genuine productivity! However much they may desire to do great work, the profound speechlessness of pregnancy never comes to them! The event of the day drives them before it like chaff, while they think they are driving the event, poor devils! If one wants to represent a hero on the stage one must not think of making one of the chorus, indeed one must not even know how to make one of the chorus.

— Nietzsche, Daybreak

I think the high priests of commerce, culture, media and athletics have converged for their annual extravaganza as I write this, but I couldn’t tell you anything about it. Likewise, I think there’s some drama happening up in our nation’s capital which I haven’t paid any attention to. Also, I hear the new bubonic plague is coming to kill us all soon? Oh, and are we still fighting World War Three? Or was that finished last month? Well, anyway, in important news, I spent my day organizing my work space and enjoying this brief burst of springlike weather while looking forward to reading before bed. As Calvin said, the days are just packed.

Obiter Scripta, no. 67

By in bonsai minimalism, obiter scripta, santutthi

What he needed was to work in the shadows while another wielded power, he himself holding aloof from responsibility, reading noteworthy books within the four walls of a quiet room, writing works of his own invention, to no man subservient, beholden to none—and such was Erasmus’s notion of an ideal existence.

— Stefan Zweig, Erasmus of Rotterdam

There should be a particular word for that unexpected and poignant sense of kinship across centuries, where despite all the temporal, linguistic, and cultural differences, you feel like you’ve shared a knowing glance and a smile.

Obiter Scripta, no. 50

By in bonsai minimalism, books, obiter scripta, santutthi

The dreadful fact is that there is no God. But what if there is a multitude of gods, small gods of small things, all the small things of the world?

What Horace is telling Leuconoe is this: everything that is needed lies at hand, if only we know how to taste and appreciate it. Spiritual sustenance comes from a winter view, the snow-whitened peak of a familiar mountain; from a beloved waterfall, with ilex growing from the rocks; from the apparent monotony of the sea’s waves; from wine, the great heartener and restorer of spirits; from friendship and conversation; and from love, so long as we do not expect too much from it or grab hold of it with too much vehemence. Horace’s way is the way of worshipping small things and small gods.

— Harry Eyres, Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet

In our current populist-nationalist moment, there are a number of prominent voices announcing and praising the return of the strong gods. They would no doubt prefer the term “idols” for those Horatian miniatures, which they see as shallow pleasures appealing to hollow men. Others, like Peter Watson and Anthony Kronman, have each in their own way called for renewed attention to the transient things of this world in place of grand hopes of otherworldly salvation; Kronman even names his ideal “born-again paganism.” Who will turn out to be more prescient? Who knows? Let the ambitious ghost-hunters attempt to capture the zeitgeist in a narrative; I prefer the poetry of everyday visible life, expressed with haiku-like brevity. Quod satis est, said Horace. Santutthi paramam dhanam, said Buddha. Bonsai minimalism, said some insignificant blogger. Let it be enough.

Oddball Draws His Water From Another Well

By in bonsai minimalism, santutthi, socmed, the statusphere

Self-loathing Twitter is a consistently popular genre. But this candid admission is why, despite all the perfunctory flagellation, I don’t really think the sporadic “back to the blog” mutterings we’ve heard in recent months will ultimately amount to more than another type of status-signaling, sort of like the Day of Unplugging. People who want to be in the conversation but not of it will continue to use Twitter self-deprecatingly, allowing them to have it both ways, pretending to be above the attention and adulation they wallow in.

Dan Cohen says “ambient humanity” is what keeps people yoked to the giant platforms; I prefer to reiterate that people are always eager to avoid effort and agency, happy to drift down to the lowest common denominator while ironically lamenting their weakness. Quality, not quantity, right? I’m far more flattered by the fact that a few people silently show up here every day to see what I’ve written than I would be by thousands of likes, retweets and attaboys from people who just see me as one more ephemeral content provider to help them kill time at work. The satisfaction of a post well-written is its own reward, regardless of how much attention it gets. I always thought this was self-evident, but it turns out I’m just odd. Thank God for that.

Unfinished

By in bonsai minimalism, books, eric hoffer, santutthi

Have I missed much by spending my life with barely literate people? I need intellectual isolation to work out my ideas. I get my stimulation from both the world of books and the book of the world. I cannot see how living with educated, articulate people, skilled in argument, would have helped me develop my ideas.

— Eric Hoffer, Working and Thinking on the Waterfront

A friend of my stepson’s once came by the house to visit him while I was out. He knew me from a job where we briefly worked together, but only as an acquaintance. I laughed to hear that he was gobsmacked upon seeing all my books, especially as he’s a fairly serious reader himself. He told my stepson that I was an enigma. “What’s he doing here?” he asked, meaning, here in a small town, living a nondescript life. Apparently I should be someone important in a big city if I read this much. I recently heard that he’d taken to calling me the “Wizard” and the “Pagemaster,” in reference to some ’90s movie starring Macaulay Culkin, and telling people that I live in a library (I haven’t seen the film, but still, I think that might just be my favorite compliment of all time).

That’s the benefit of low expectations, of course. If people don’t see you as much more than a truck driver or a janitor, they’re overly impressed by any ways in which you defy the stereotype. The flipside to that, though, is wondering why you should be content to exist below your potential. It’s a reflexive assumption that any talents or interests one might have should be maximized and monetized. I, in turn, have said repeatedly, ever since I started writing, that this is just another one of the many ways in which we surrender our agency and let the conventional wisdom do our thinking for us. Had I taken the path of least resistance and “risen” to my potential as defined by parents, teachers, and aptitude tests, I would have probably been just another unhappy face in the crowd of failed writers, like a couple academic friends of mine. By remaining undeveloped, unpolished and unfinished, I’ve preserved the freedom and space to grow at my own pace for my own reasons, and that has been far more satisfying than reaching for the stars would have been.

No man is an intellectual island, obviously. I’ve benefitted greatly from having a few highly-educated friends and pen pals, and the Internet provides constant exposure to smarter thinkers and better writers. Still, there is something about living an ordinary life among regular folks that serves as the necessary ballast to keep from floating off into the cerebral clouds where so many ambitious, educated people get lost.

I’ve Had Enough With Rolling Boulders, I Want More Moss On Me

By in bonsai minimalism, books, santutthi

A bad cold kept me from doing anything yesterday, so I sat and read a couple collections of Orwell’s essays. Superb stuff all around, but I had to admit that I resembled some of his remarks on Charles Dickens:

I could do without the horde of children, and I prefer to do my own chores rather than rely on servants, but quibbling details aside, yes, this sounds like an acceptable deal to me. Home life is always enough, indeed. Forever in a kind of love and forever in a kind of selfishness and self-enjoyment, you might say. Pace Orwell, I don’t see anything contradictory about combining purposelessness and vitality. “Purposelessness” doesn’t mean that you sit around in a vegetative state; it simply means that you’re capable of generating depth and meaning from within an outwardly simple, ordinary life. I’m never bored, and I’ve always got things to do (with not enough time to do them in). It’s just that none of those things would be impressive to anyone else. My life is like a bonsai tree — insignificant by your standards, a wealth of meaningful details by mine.

The Things You Think Are Precious I Can’t Understand

By in bonsai minimalism, books, foolosophy, the statusphere

John Armstrong:

The ancient Greek moralist Theophrastus coined a useful term, microphilotimos, which means ‘attaching importance to unimportant things’.

This begins a brief section of the book in which Armstrong looks at ways we can find meaning and satisfaction in the ordinary details of everyday life. It’s misleading here, though, because the image Theophrastus actually intended to convey with that term is not serenity, self-containment, or imperturbable philosophical depth, but vainglorious posturing, the strutting of a cockalorum concerned with status and validation from others. He used the example of a cavalryman wearing his spurs in the Agora; if you prefer a modern version, picture George W. Bush in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier. Anyway, it doesn’t have exotic flavor, and it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, but I use the term “bonsai minimalism” to symbolize a life concerned with simple pleasures, indifferent to status, wealth and power.

The Minimum Blues

By in bonsai minimalism, foolosophy, santutthi

Small stakes ensure you the minimum blues
But you don’t feel taken and you don’t feel abused
Small stakes tell you that there’s nothing can do
Can’t think big, can’t think past one or two

— Spoon

Gracy Olmstead:

Brooks’s piece reminded me of my grandmother. She did not live a grandiose life. She rarely traveled outside her home state. She lived in a simple, yet elegant way: using every opportunity to beautify the world around her, to bless the people she loved. Work was important to her, and she worked hard. But she also was very involved in her church, a devoted mother and grandmother, a faithful friend. Her way of living was, as Brooks put it, that of a “small, happy life”—one filled with things like strawberry shortcake and Easter baskets in the spring, family grilling parties and homemade pickles in the summer, giant Christmas trees and hearty stews in the winter.

It’s worth reemphasizing the role that humility plays in giving us purpose: Brooks points out that it is those who live small, unrecognized lives with contentment who are often the most happy—while those who seek a grandiose and perfect sense of “purpose” end up unhappy and discontent. They may feel that all their efforts only amount to “not enough.”

Those who live a simple life, grateful for its blessings and significances, are liberated from that discontent. They don’t need great successes or accolades in order to feel accomplished: rather, the beliefs and relationships they hold dear bring them purpose.

The small life is often seen as unfulfilling. We worry we’ll get to the end of our lives and think, “All that ambition and dreaming wasted. All those opportunities not taken.” But really, what Brooks seems to indicate, is that there are few people who achieve positions of extreme passionate purpose and acclaim in the world. Rather, it’s those who find purpose in the sweet, small things that will be happiest in the end.

Seeking Out the Cracks

By in bonsai minimalism, books, foolosophy, santutthi

Matthew Crawford:

But it seems best to conclude by registering a note of sobriety, as against hopes for transformation. If cultural despair rests on a view of history as being more powerful than individuals, the revolutionary for his part entertains an exaggerated fantasy of world changing. A heady vision of the progressive hereafter in which economic antagonism has been overcome may come to stand in for, and distract him from, the smaller but harder work of living well in this life. The alternative to revolution, which I want to call Stoic, is resolutely this-worldly. It insists on the permanent, local viability of what is best in human beings. In practice, this means seeking out the cracks where individual agency and the love of knowledge can be realized today, in one’s own life.

You’re In the Grip of the Controller

By in art, bonsai minimalism, calvin and hobbes, foolosophy, santutthi, work, writing, Ω

I watched the documentary Dear Mr. Watterson the other day, in which Stephan Pastis said something interesting:

This leads to my theory of what it is that Watterson might be doing, and I suspect that some of it is about control. Comic strips are all about control. It’s the one art form where you have full control. It’s not collaborative like a film. It’s not collaborative even like a book, where your editor changes things. I really don’t even have an editor. It’s just me. It’s not collaborative like a tv show. It’s not collaborative like a record album. It’s you — it’s just you.

When you wander into licensing, it becomes a collaboration. Somebody at your syndicate has to approve it. Somebody at your syndicate gives suggestions. Somebody at your syndicate says,”You know, that’s nice, but it’d be better if he smiled on the package, right? Smiling sells more.” Then it gets in the hand of the designer. The designer has their own ideas how the character should look. The designer knows what material sells. The designer knows what materials are safe. Then there’s the designer’s boss, who may have different ideas, ’cause they gave it to the salesman, and it didn’t sell well.

So I’ve just introduced seven people into my life that weren’t in my life before. I don’t particularly like any of them. They’re not my kind of people. They’re commercial people, and they make your stomach hurt when you’re with them. So I’ve introduced an element into my life of a whole bunch of people I don’t like. I’ve got to overcome them all, even if it’s so much as just saying, “I don’t think we should do this,” and they say yes, I still have to do that to seven people. And that’s all a loss of control, a loss of control that I never had before, right?

And imagine if he started licensing. The first lunchbox would have sold nine billion, right? The minute that happens, everybody is gonna be on him for all the more, like this, that, and the other — all represents a loss of control. Then they all sit in your head. Rather than go, as he probably did, and walk through the forest that day, he took six phone calls that he didn’t want to take. They interrupted his day. They’re floating around in his head. That’s all bad. You know what I’m saying?

And that’s control. That’s not about artistic purity. No, no. That’s about control.

This is my attitude toward blogging, toward ambition. I don’t pretend to be doing anything artistically, let alone culturally, significant here, but this is still an important space for me, where I can write for the pure enjoyment it gives me. A few people have suggested that I could or should make a living by doing some sort of writing, but my response is always the same — making this into a paying job would destroy everything that makes it enjoyable. It would be death by a thousand cuts. Keeping it “pure” isn’t about snobbery and status, it’s about having something in your life that isn’t subject to mercenary considerations.

Fortunately, I’ll never be offered a spot writing at Buzzfeed or the like, where I would have to make those sorts of compromises, so I have to admit it’s easy for me to say that. I am truly in awe of the fact that Watterson was looking at potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in merchandising and still held to his principles. Would I absolutely refuse to write clickbaity headlines about trivia and gossip if doing so meant I never had to work a real job again? I’d like to think so, but…

Grabbed a Book and Read the Cover

By in bonsai minimalism, books, santutthi, socmed

Karl Greenfield:

What we all feel now is the constant pressure to know enough, at all times, lest we be revealed as culturally illiterate. So that we can survive an elevator pitch, a business meeting, a visit to the office kitchenette, a cocktail party, so that we can post, tweet, chat, comment, text as if we have seen, read, watched, listened. What matters to us, awash in petabytes of data, is not necessarily having actually consumed this content firsthand but simply knowing that it exists — and having a position on it, being able to engage in the chatter about it. We come perilously close to performing a pastiche of knowledgeability that is really a new model of know-nothingness.

NPR’s April Fools’ Day web story “Why Doesn’t America Read Anymore?” went viral on Facebook, where pranksters in on the joke linked to the piece and others then argued that they do too read and indignantly shared the link with exhortations to “read the story!” without actually clicking on it themselves to see that the only content was the revelation that the whole thing was a prank: “We sometimes get the sense that some people are commenting on NPR stories that they haven’t actually read. If you are reading this, please like this post and do not comment on it. Then let’s see what people have to say about this ‘story.’ ”

I finished reading The Vertigo Years over the weekend. It was a look at the major cultural, political and technological trends in the first couple decades of the twentieth century, leading up to the Great War. After reading one particularly poetic passage near the end, I stopped for a minute and just marveled at the exquisite style of it. I thought about how much time, research and vision would have to go into writing such a book. I tried to imagine, from my layman’s perspective, how one would even go about analyzing the ocean of information pertaining to such a culturally fecund period, how one would even begin to sort though the chaotic jumble of threads in order to weave the relevant ones into a coherent narrative. I remembered things that Mark Forsyth had said about the art of rhetoric and things Jonathan Gottschall had said about the deep structural patterns of storytelling and felt grateful for having the opportunity to read a book by someone who had done a masterful job with both elements.

What I appreciated most of all was the sense of context and perspective that comes from reading a good book. It’s the sort of thing that makes you realize how much of what you read on the web is merely stimulating, or perhaps I should say agitating, without being informative. There are a lot of interesting-but-fragmentary perspectives, but very few people with the ability to put them into meaningful context. Too often, information appears as if in a funhouse mirror, distorted and distended. Of course, if you think of social media as being a boisterous party environment, where everybody is trying to entertain and be entertained, it makes sense. Conversations tend to be fast, hyperbolic and superficial. Spend too much time talking in-depth to one person, and you might miss out on something exciting happening across the room. But again we find that limits and boundaries on the horizontal plane are essential if there is to be any depth to explore. Some perspectives require your undivided attention to reveal themselves. You have to excuse yourself from the party, block out the overstimulation and narrow your focus to get there.

Yinshih

By in bonsai minimalism, books, santutthi, solitude, work, Ω

While reading this book, I came across an anonymously sourced description of a “yinshih”, which greatly appealed to me. A quick search of the term made it clear that Alphonse Vinh must have been that very source, because his response to Andrew Rogers is nearly a word-for-word version of what I read with a few extra details, even:

You asked me what a yinshih was. Well, a yinshih means in Classical Chinese, a scholar-recluse, which is my vocation in life. Yinshihs have existed in every place and time (Walker Percy was a Southern yinshih and Joseph Joubert was a French one); but in East Asian culture, they had an honoured place at one time. Many were poets and writers. Some were mystics. Others were retired scholars who sought a quiet life of spirituality and solitude. But what they all had in common was that they had renounced the ‘red dust of the world’ and were dead to worldly ambition and desire for career success. Yinshihs renounce all this. The fortunate ones lived in the days of the Empire like many of my ancestors who could write their farewell poems to the world at age 40, “hang up their scholar’s cap”, and leave the Imperial Civil Service to take refuge on their estates or their little cottages or huts to devote themselves to contemplation, prayer, study, solitude, literature, and friendship. Very few yinshihs rejected the pleasures of poetry and wine. They did not hate the world—only its unworthy and spiritually uninteresting temptations.

In times of great societal corruption, yinshihs withdrew from society and public service in order to preserve their integrity, no matter the cost to them. Yinshihs have always been gentlemen and lovers of the life of the mind. But they care not for conventions nor do they care much for being in the right society or climbing up the slimy pole of success. They don’t care about such things because they think it’s more beautiful to sip wine whilst sitting in their hermitage as the sun sets in the fields before them. They cherish not the group so much as the individual. They are not meant for the big stage but prefer the quiet life in the shadows where it is possible to observe the stream flowing quietly beneath the waves.

Yinshihs suffer all the afflictions of humanity and sin greatly too. But it is their way to strive not to contribute to the general suffering of humanity by their own failings. Their ministry through writing and personal friendship is with the individual person whom God may send their way.

Yinshihs are happy about things that may not occur to more society-oriented people and there’s a chasm of understanding or appreciation between both sides. They do not see their way as better but simply as a reasonable, individual alternative to a group-oriented, power-driven, society-focused way of existence. Yinshihs are the first to admire that famous phrase, “A Southern Gentleman’s vocation is being and thinking.” If yinshihs have to scratch a living in the world, they will strive to do so with integrity and good will, but they will always see their livelihood as a means to live fully a yinshih life—away from the world. Yinshihs don’t know the meaning of careers. It’s meaningless to them. They care about their place within this beautiful and mysterious universe that God created, they care about worthwhile friendships and good poetry, and if they have to earn their living in the world, they feel they will have gained their right to dream in their real life after the working day is over. Yinshihs value, above all, the inner universe of the individual and the private life which they regard as most holy.

And Many Fantasies Were Learned on That Day

By in bonsai minimalism, foolosophy, santutthi, work, Ω

Cass Sunstein:

Research suggests that in the Olympics, those who finish third are likely to be a lot happier than those who finish second. The reason is that much of our thinking is based on counterfactuals. We like to ask: What else could have happened?

If you finish second, you tend to think that with a little good luck, or maybe a bit of extra effort or skill, you might have gotten the prize of a lifetime: Olympic gold. But if you finish third, you tend to think that with a little bad luck, or without that extra effort or skill, you wouldn’t have gotten the prize of a lifetime: an Olympic medal.

My boss and I were on a road trip yesterday, getting some new equipment activated. He was interested to hear all about the world of bookselling, and the conversation naturally turned toward reading for personal enjoyment. “You know, Damian, I used to love reading, but…” He shook his head. “Y’know, you get married, then the kids come along… most days, I get home in the evenings, eat dinner, play with the kids. I try to grab at least 15-20 minutes of actual conversation with my wife, and then, if I open a book before bed, it’s like five minutes, and BOOM.” He closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest.

He told me about his former job, working for a global shipping company in New York, how cool it was to have to look up all these faraway cities he’d never heard of and see them on a map. “One day, Damian, one day…!” he said, pointing upward with a determined look, “I’m actually going to travel to these places. And I’m going to have time to read when I get back!” He said his wife fantasizes about being able to read a trashy magazine all the way through. “Just to be able to read a copy of US Weekly, uninterrupted; she wants that so bad. I say to her, don’t worry, in several years, they won’t want to have anything to do with us, and we’ll have time for that!”

We didn’t actually talk a whole lot, because he spent most of his time making and receiving calls, getting ready for this massive snowstorm that’s got me chillin’ at home in the middle of the day today. As we were getting off the exit to head back to base, he ended his last call and sighed. “ARRGH, these are the days I hate the most, Damian. Trying to keep tabs on 80 employees, trying to make contingency plans with dozens of clients for tomorrow, looking forward to getting my ass chewed in the next conference call…”

“That’s why I like having simple jobs,” I said.

“Yeah, not aging prematurely due to stress,” he said with a slightly forced laugh.

Anyway, yes, to return to the original point: my own experience confirms that setting your sights lower seems to lead to more genuine contentment. I’m fine with my metaphorical bronze medals.

A Small World After All

By in bonsai minimalism, foolosophy, nietzsche

And while I shall keep silent about some points, I do not want to remain silent about my morality which says to me: Live in seclusion so that you can live for yourself. Live in ignorance about what seems most important to your age. Between yourself and today lay the skin of at least three centuries. And the clamor of today, the noise of wars and revolutions should be a mere murmur for you.

– Nietzsche

Adam Gurri:

In making our morality telescopic we trivialize the choices that do matter; the ones close to us, involving the people in our lives. Obsession over a world you cannot hope to meaningfully influence is the road to either madness or self-delusion, and it is hubris from the outset. Cast off the chains of telescopic morality and move forward with the morality of human flourishing, of eudaimonia.

TPM:

We should go a little easier on ourselves when it comes to indifference to the news – and recognise that we’re one of the first generations to have to deal with the torrent of information about things very far removed from our own lives. For most of history, it was extremely difficult to come by information about what was happening anywhere else. And you probably didn’t mind. What difference would it make, if you were a crofter in the Hebrides, to learn that a power struggle was brewing in the Ottoman Empire?

Much of what we now take for granted as news has its origins in the information needed by people taking major decisions or at the centre of national affairs. We still hear the echoes in the way news is reported; timing is assumed to be critical, as it really would be if we were active agents. If you don’t have the latest update you might make a terrible blunder or miss a wonderful opportunity.

Ease of communication and a generous democratic impulse mean that information originally designed for decision makers, now gets routinely sent via the media to very large numbers of people. It is as if a dossier, with the latest news from Kiev, which might properly arrive on the desk of a minister has accidentally been delivered to the wrong address and ends up on the breakfast table of a librarian in Colchester or an electrician in Pitlochry. But the librarian or electrician might quite reasonably turn round and politely point out that they can’t do anything with this knowledge and that, surely, the files have come to them by mistake. They don’t, but only because habit has closed our eyes to the underlying strangeness of the phenomenon.

Hapathy

By in bonsai minimalism, getting and spending, santutthi, work, Ω

Whitney Collins:

But this job was different from any I’d seen before. We wore jeans. We piped in Hall & Oates. We told a lot of jokes while cranking out a lot of assignments. The designers weren’t aggrieved by the concept of labor. Rather, they wore sneakers and Walkmans, they drove crappy little Hondas that rattled with old cans of Tab, and they all talked of things—were defined by things—other than the work before them. Music and friends, hiking and television, babies and dogs and tacos. I remember thinking: now this is what work should be like: something you don’t loathe or love, but like well enough.

Gen X had witnessed what its parents had done in the name of Mercedes or making ends meet (depending on economic class), and we pledged to set our sights on careers that we weren’t beholden to. We wanted jobs that helped us to live but weren’t life itself.

…So now, here we Gen Xers are, more or less in our 40s, with neither fame nor fortune, just the freedom that comes with what we do being quite different from who we are.

“Hey, Joe. How’s work?”

“Doesn’t suck.”

“That’s great.”

…Is “hapathy” a word? I don’t know. I just think the overarching theme for Gen Xers is one of happy apathy. The whole Buddhist approach to living teaches non-attachment, in that “attachment is the origin, the root of suffering; hence it is the cause of suffering.”

Well, Generation X sure got its Zen on by watching marriages dissolve, the Berlin Wall fall, the stock market crash, a president get shot, the Space Shuttle explode, and Fonzie jump the shark. We grew up accepting that nothing was permanent—not the economy, not the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, not even the lead singer for Van Halen. To top it all off, all of our music has been ripped apart and remixed. All of our movies remade. Even Twinkies had to be resuscitated and I hear they taste different now. Because of this, we’ve learned not to get too attached. And because of this, we’re content.

Finally, some generational analysis I actually have use for.

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