What serial daters have got to to with globetrotters

I had been wondering why I remembered short, distinct periods of time much better than the longer ones.

You mean the intensity of your memory is negatively related to the length of time spent for a specific activity?

Yes, if the activity in question is quite different from what happened before or after.

Jumping rope every morning for a quarter of an hour does not qualify as something of short duration and special, I presume.

If we live in the Land of Marbles, and someone from the Land of Jumping Ropes comes over to perform for the first time in history, yes.

Come to think of it, we seem to remember short flings better than the long ones.

We tend to equate the density of our memory to the intensity of the affair, but that is not quite true. Simply owing to the fact that it did not last long, we tend to remember the smallest details, not necessarily because we were so much in love with the person.

That explains the claims of people who have had a succession of lovers.

They say that they were very much in love with every one of them, and I have come to understand that they are not exaggerating. The same applies to more generic interactions.

A talk about life with a person who happens to sit next to you at a bar, for example.

I am certain that what s/he said would have a bigger impact than the same said by some other person you have known for a long time and meet regularly. 

Suppose you are told that you are a coward. Wouldn't that have a bigger effect if it is from someone who knows you quite well? 

That's true... But only the first time around. 

Well, here is another piece of evidence against durability of long-term relationships.

I'm afraid you are right. Your spouse may say exactly what your short-fling lover says, but their potency to you is far from being the same.

So, you are now convinced that the reason why you remember two years here and three years there better than other longer periods is not because they were inherently special?

I have discovered that it is because they were quite different from the periods that sandwiched them. I still go back to my childhood years that I spent in the Land of Giants and Witches.

It must have been a scary place.

After we left that Land, my parents started telling me that I shouldn't laugh like a witch or a sorcerer. They never said anything to that effect when we lived in the Land of Giants and Witches.

Why do you think they changed their attitude?

I had picked up the way of laughing while in the Land of Giants and Witches, and I guess it appeared inevitable to my parents. Now that we were in the Land of Headless Phantoms, they realized that my laughs do not conform to the local culture which happened to be my parents'. Anyway, it had always puzzled me why I could recall so much about my stay in the Land of Giants and Witches as well as about the assimilation period in the Land of Headless Phantoms that followed.

That's because they were of short duration?

Not only that, but also because both were so different from the times that proceeded and followed each of them.

It looks like you now know how to answer when someone says, 'You're attributing that to your having lived in the Land of Giants and Witches? But that was only for two years.'

I always forget to tell them that my siblings and I lived without my parents and with a family of Giants and Witches for a while. It seemed like a year at that time, but it must have been 3 months or so... In any case, I should point out that it is because of the brevity that it has had lasting effects on me.

You were also at a tender age.

Right, neither twisted nor hardened yet. But I can say the same with other short segments, later in my life. I remember the 2-year periods better than the over-5-year ones, and I know that the shorter ones were no more eventful than the longer. Only in my memory, they turn out to be so.

Your 6-year stint in the Land of Mean Bean-Counters, for example, was riddled with hardships.

And yet, everything from that period has become so blurry in my mind.

What about the slightly longer sojourn in the Land of Evil Priests and Ethicists?

As much as I had been appalled by their double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, sextuple... 

Comrade, you have sufficiently demonstrated your vocabulary.

Although their multiple standards repelled me, I am certain that as time passes, I would not remember every instance of their flagrant breach of own ethics. Or how they imposed authority by intimidation, how they divided in order to conquer, how they forgot and recalled as they saw fit, how they lost and regained hearing faculty at the strangest moments, etc.

Perhaps you should take notes before it is too late.

Doing so would reinforce my anger.

All right, it's better not to waste any emotion because of them...

Besides the increased capability in storing information, going to a different Land turns mundane chores---such as doing laundry and taking public transportation---into something special, because we are not used to the local ways. Ordinary days become full of discoveries.

Of difficulties, too.

True, but we do get exposed to what we did not know before. That in itself is life enriching, unless it is something so traumatic that it could destroy you.

Can you say that traveling is one way of living more intensely?
 

I certainly think so, and that is one of the biggest reasons why it is so addictive. Some time ago, I asserted that travel enables us to forget reality for the time being. As far as I can tell, that poses no contradiction to the view that we live more intensely through traveling.
 

What about relocating?

Ditto. The two---travel and relocation---have different advantages, though. On one hand, lack of modern trappings may appear romantic to a short-term traveler and plain annoyance to long-term residents. On the other hand, if we want to get to know the local culture better, we have to stay longer.
 

Some extract the maximum from their lives, not by traveling or relocating, but by pursuing one short-term affair after another... 

Who can blame them if every relationship opens up a new world, as any good relationship would?

... Comrade, something tells me that you do not fully endorse your own assessment. You agree, though, that serial daters and globetrotters have something in common.

Sure, both try their best to stretch their life-time, or more precisely, their preception of time.

There is nothing wrong with it, right?

You must also know that people tend to be nicer at the beginning and at the end.

So, more beginnings and ends there are, the better?

Just don't believe what they say at welcoming and good-bye parties, or during the first few dates...

Know your reality, and forget it

You will be greatly distressed upon hearing this, I know, but as a friend of yours and a project partner to boot, I feel very much obliged to tell you... I was approached by the café owner the other day who commented that we had been occupying a table for an increasingly long time with only a couple of glasses of wine.

Is that a complaint that we are undesirable customers?

Well, the suggestion was that we make each talk short and come more frequently.

So that we would be ordering more per hour?

It's a natural desire for a owner, isn't it?

But we are here to save the world and that single-handedly. It's a motivation much more sublime and worthy than profit making!

I am fully aware that you don't like talking about money, but even you can't deny that it is what allows us to live.

I thought it was food.

Unless you are a versatile farmer, you need money to purchase foodstuff.

To tell you the truth, I have been getting rather scared by the mightiness of it.

Shall we call money 'It,' if you feel more comfortable that way?

Recently, I have come to the conclusion that to live a full life is to seek maximum sensuous stimulus.

How could I have guessed that you would turn into a hedonist?

In what I call sensuous stimulus, I am including acquisition of intellectual insights and knowledge. You must know those 'Aha!' moments that give us great pleasure.

It could be instances of 'What the hell is this?'

Or, 'There is a unifying force behind all these seemingly unrelated phenomena...'

That must be why so many people love mystery/detective novels and conspiracy theories.

I agree. It's a pity, because the folks who restrict their reading to such material are diverting their energy that could be used to learn and understand mysteries in real life as well as true conspiracies.

Come on, we all need diversions!

Think about it. Isn't it rather irresponsible to be intensely interested in Miss Marple's adventures, but not at all in the mysteries of hedge funds, hoping your money will forever enjoy an above-the-average return, and complain about the financial regulators when it doesn't?

We neither have the time or the capacity to understand everything that goes on in this world.

True, but that is not a license for staying ignorant. As I claimed last time, in order to manage a complex world in the way we see fit, we need to be sophisticated enough to face the complexity. To me, the mechanism is the same as with the politicians. If the voters are sophisticated enough, so would be the politicians. If the private investors are vigilant enough, so would be the brokers.

On average and in the long run, you mean...

How else could you change their behavior?

Strikes and protests are certainly attention grabbing, but most likely for a short time and for the addressed issues only.

Getting back to the issue of sensuous stimuli, they do not need to be pleasure deriving.

So you are a masochist?

Not exactly. What we truly value about sensuous stimuli is that they make us forget everything else.

We are constantly in search of an escape from reality, then?

I would say that the feeling of being mesmerized and captivated is the best experience that life has to offer. We all seek it, although many are unconscious about their search. We would be mistaken to think that there is more to life.

I thought it was all about status, fame and money!

It would be awfully nice to have those, but only if they are associated with stimuli of the senses. Besides, we can acquire them even after we are dead, but not sensuous experiences.

Shall I ring up Hugh and ask him to organize a party in your honor?

Remember the stories of kings and queens, emperors and empresses, sultans and their wives, who were always on the look for something that would get them out of their boredom? The most famous example may be the preamble to 'One Thousand and One Nights.'

Their wealth and power would make life enjoyable only if they lead to interest-piquing ideas, objects and physical activities...

Wealth and power are useful in the sense that they enable you to meet celebrity people, see celebrity objects, and engage in very expensive activities, like going to the moon for fun. Such opportunities by themselves are excellent gossip fodder, but there is no guarantee that they would be anything meaningful. By the way, I was at the Palace of Versailles a while ago.

Cursing about all the bloody tourists who marred your view, right?

At first, I thought how nice it would be to turn into Louis XIV and have the entire place to myself. Then, I realized that I would quickly get used to it---having at my disposal the huge palace, gardens and hunting grounds. Looking outside the window from that vast residence, I would be clicking my tongue for want of something that I did not know before and turns out to be amusing.

I'm glad that you are of a budget-type. You could experience being a Louis XIV without building another palace for yourself.

I also realized that I need what we decided to call 'It' in order to obtain stimuli on a regular basis.

Getting to and entering natural parks, attending concerts, exhibitions, film shows and lectures, purchasing books, supplies, equipment, gear and instruments, taking lessons and courses, having a drink at a café, dining at a restaurant---all these activities require money.

My argument further implies that the poor people should not be deprived of such opportunities just because they happen not to have enough funds. They, too, should be allowed to indulge in what life can offer, through subsidies.

I can already hear objections to that. Some will say that the poor do not deserve it, because it is their laziness and/or lack of planning that led them to poverty.

I would like to emphasize here once again that it is human nature to downplay the roles of chance and luck in our lives and worldly events. Some are simply unlucky to be poor, and their children even more so. A humane society is to shoulder the burden of misfortune that is beyond anybody's control.

The poor may have bigger reasons to momentarily put the reality aside...

The trick is not to forget the reality altogether.

You said that life's joy is in moments that make us oblivious of everything but what is in front of us!

Yes, but we will be unhappy if we have a poor grasp of the reality.

You mean a misconception, such as your money manager cannot make mistakes.

Or, justice prevails.

Or, good work will be recognized as such against any odds.

It is tragicomic to go from one society to another and see what is common wisdom in one is not so in the other, and due to lack of such wisdom people suffer throughout their lives. It depends on the culture how much people attribute certain outcomes to chance and luck. So are the expectations that men and women have about each other. Even how much people take advertisements as impartial facts is culture dependent.

In sum, it is best to look at the reality straight in its face...

And seek as many opportunities as possible to turn your eyes away from it.

Isn't that the reason why some of us are addicted to traveling? We manage to forget about big issues in our lives by swapping them with the problem of how to get from Point Here to Point There when we have little idea about the local transportation system.


I wouldn't say 'the reason,' but one of the reasons for sure. But what's wrong with that? It poses an intellectual challenge in an unfamiliar milieu, and yet, we usually manage to accomplish our tasks.

It gives us a great sense of achievement, plus some funny stories to share later.

The best part is that we can laugh about ourselves in the end, which may not be true with respect to life.

... Comrade, the next round is on me... What would you like?