I'm Getting Static

I’ve been wearing the same buzzed haircut now for about eight years, largely for the same reason that Jim Harbaugh wears the exact same pair of khakis every day. Harbaugh explains “It’s gotten to the point where I have so much time in the day knowing that I don’t have to stand in front of the closet, trying to decide what outfit to pick out.” (http://blogs.mercurynews.com/49ers/2015/01/06/jim-harbaugh-weighs-in-on-his-49ers-exit-kaepernick-khakis-twitter-and-michigan/) Exactly. I never, ever have to think about my hair. Or at least I don’t have to think about my hair anymore than I do my toenails.

Like Harbaugh, I would happily wear the same clothes each day, at least to work, like my seventh grade Industrial Arts teacher Mr. Wilken, who had a grand total of three outfits that he rotated on a weekly basis, e.g. week 1- navy slacks, light blue short-sleeve button down, navy necktie; week 2- dark green pants, light green short-sleeve button down, dark green necktie; etc., and who was so humorless that he demanded absolute silence from us, his pupils, as we used t-squares to fill our papers with the desired combination of geometrical shapes. Humorless, that is, but for his one joke: “Why do they call it a Sears & Rowback motorboat engine? Because it always breaks down and you have to row back.” If anyone ever made a sound in Mr. Wilken’s classroom he would promptly exclaim “I’m getting static!” Nothing further was ever required.

I was well prepared for the rigors of Mr. Wilken’s shop class by Ms. Travers, a 4th grade teacher at my elementary school to whose classroom I was not assigned, but who did take her regular turn monitoring the cafeteria for all of 4th grade. Ms. Travers had but one rule for the lunchroom: no talking. On days when absolute silence was kept, she was sure to pop onto the loud speaker during the end-of -day announcements, genuinely thanking us for our beautiful behavior. Not once, ever, did one of us give Ms. Travers any static.

The great thing about silence is that, like buzz cuts and uniforms, you never have to think about it. It’s always the same, always beautiful. Many Buddhists love the movie Groundhog Day, finding in it the paradox that it is only in the repetition of the very same day over and over again that we find the opportunity for change by way of slowly, haltingly, but assuredly increasing our compassion. But I am left with the distinct impression that Ms. Travers’ and Mr. Wilken’s insistence on the repetition of silence had nothing to do with a paradoxical opportunity for growth and change. And I am only left wondering which is the more emphatic “yes!” to life: the Buddhists’ “Once more, from the top,” or Travers’ and Wilken’s “Let’s check the instant replay.”

Even more to the point, do I always wear the same haircut in order to free up time to improve on the past or in order to assure more of the same? Jim Harbaugh is lucky in that he can definitively answer that question based on the outcome of his last football game. Without wins and losses balancing the ledger, the question basically boils down to whether you would prefer to live forever or never die. Strangely, you can’t have both. I owe my own recognition of this distinction to the author of the Gospel according to Matthew and David Shields.

Perhaps wanting to live forever is the surest sign that you are making a mess of the effort to never die, a twist hinted at in Matthew 16:25’s “For those who want to save their life will lose it.” For a more contemporary take, Shields, in How Literature Saved my Life, writes the following about Raymond Kurzweil, the futurist who expects that nanobots will, in the next twenty years or so, cure all disease and reverse aging, an eventuality the 62 year-old is preparing for with a regimen that involves, per Shields, 150 daily supplements, weekend intravenous transfusions, and, for a worst case scenario, plans to cryogenically freeze his body:

“He wants not so much to live as never to die. He seems to me the saddest person on the planet. I empathize with him completely.”

Kurzweil and, it seems, Shields both take their Woody Allen much more literally than their Matthew 16:25. I am, of course, referencing Allen’s famous “I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”

Things will get very interesting if Kurzweil is right about the nanobots. I have a feeling I’ll be sitting in my apartment, with the exact same haircut, wondering if I am still alive.