My parents' 50th anniversary is in a few weeks and I am trying to put together a retrospective from old photos to send them as a gift. Now if I thought of this sooner I could have gotten photos from my brother of his family as well and made a big family production out of it but I didn't think of it soon enough to do all that, which is probably just as well. So it will be whatever I have and that will have to be good enough.
Have you ever gone through huge amounts of old photos in only one or two sittings? The past becomes the present in some ways and suddenly time is off kilter. I started with the few pictures of me as a child with my parents and brother. They are long enough ago that I don't remember the situations when they were taken so there is an element of disconnection. Then I moved to the pictures of Tom and I when we were dating and those I remember. I remember who I was then to compare to who I am now. I miss the idealism and the optimistic view but I don't miss the wild swings of emotion that I would experience - the depths of unhappiness and joyful ecstasy. (Ok, I miss the highs being so high, just not the lows:) Then there are the pictures of my children as babies, the Christmases and birthdays, which seem to be the main times we took pictures. It is interesting to see them grow up all over again. And there are the photographs of people that we don't see any more, old friends who for one reason or another are no longer friends. I remember the painful times too.
We've been watching the TV show, "Survivors." It has certainly been interesting as the contestants learned to work together to build shelters, get food, and compete against the other group of contestants. The team that loses the immunity challenges (they get a small idol that confers immunity from the next "tribal council") has to attend "tribal council" where they vote off one of their members. As a psychology student, watching the people interact and who and why they choose to evict has been quite revealing. But now that the two teams have joined together the strategy has changed. One of the teams developed a voting block and is picking off the members of the other team one by one. They pretend to like them and befriend them then vote them off. Suddenly this show isnt much fun for me.
I understand the strategy and that the prize is a million dollars but it seems to me that it basically rewards ugly behavior. It is us against them, and soon it will be us against us, and me against you. I am really not sure what it is that is disturbing me about this now. They have been voting people off from the beginning and everyone knew going in that the game was set up that way. I know part of it is that I don't like rigged games and I believe that how you play the game is more important than winning. (Ok so maybe some of my youthful idealism is still hanging in there.) By forming the voting block those four people made the whole game unfair. It isn't about skill now - it is about teaming up to overpower the others, to gang up on them. And it is in a way pretty cut throat. Once the other team has been knocked out then the voting alliance has to turn on each other in order to attempt to win. It is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Why do these sorts of things always appeal to the worst in us? Why not appeal to the best in us?
So here I am feeling a little out of time and a lot like I don't belong in this world.
Copyright © 2000 Kyril Oakwind