happy

Writing Interrupted

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

It was a good morning, fresh coffee at the left, as I tapped out what I had been thinking about for a week regarding code, law and artificial intelligence. There are important things, I think, that people don’t understand and maybe through exploring the right example they might understand the importance enough to give it a moment in their lives to consider. To discuss. To maybe affect.

We’re too busy, usually, to think about these things. Too busy chasing the red dots of life to consider implications that we think don’t impact us directly. My block of time set, I was engaged, finding things I wanted to reference, connecting the pieces, building a relatively short post…

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

RING! RING! RING!

The phone, sitting on the charger, glowed and made noises, demanding attention.

Who would be calling me at this hour? They are not in my contacts. They are alien to me. Should I answer it? Should I not? With a sigh, I answered.

A deeply happy and glowing young female voice, too enthusiastic for my mind in the moment, was reminding me of the appointment I had made yesterday that I had today about getting my eyes tested. I knew it yesterday that it would happen but had forgotten that this call was coming. This young woman, who I have met in person, is always way too happy when she interrupts my world. She glows through the phone, and while iridescent in person, over the phone she comes through like a bright neon pink supernova.

It’s not her fault. She’s doing her job. I know that. I can’t exactly tell her that she should be less cheerful, I knew that she would have to call because it’s what the store does – it’s not even a medical practice related to eyeballs anymore, it’s commerce. She just goes right into her lines, well rehearsed over the years I have been having my eyeballs stared at by well intentioned people. She’s a nice person. Bubbly.

But on the phone, interrupting the quiet entanglement of my writing solitude, the ring of the phone, the sheer joy of interrupting me… oh, the poor young woman just doing her job well.

I do not betray these thoughts as I respond to her interruption, getting it over as quickly as possible.

I hang up, staring at the phone a moment as I consider all of this, why I would be upset about her being so happy. Yet maybe she isn’t. Maybe she’s really good at hiding the misery of life, resiliently doing her job in the face of adversity. Maybe she’s secretly angry at the world, shaking her fist through a glowingly happy voice. Maybe this was just her doing her job.

This, I found, made me feel better. There’s just no way people can be so happy in this world I know, it would take a level of consciously strategic ignorance to really make that work and that, I think, is part of our problem as a society.

That, and the fact that people would need to be reminded of an appointment that they made yesterday for today. That speaks volumes to me.

Happy, Strong, Tough.

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 1 Comment

Sipping my coffee this morning I began thinking about how we start happy and we become strong and tough because the world demands it of us.

It happens faster for some of us than others. Some it seems don’t manage to become strong or tough. During all of this, we aspire for various reasons to be happy, some sort of Holy Grail that everyone seeks, charlatans claim to find, and maybe some of us enjoy for periods.

We have tools now that generate images, even videos, and I wondered what the difference would be between a happy boy, a strong boy, and a tough boy. I used DeepAI to generate the images, since I use DeepAI to generate most images these days.

The idea is that given all the images that are used for training these ‘artificial intelligences’ uses our own biases to show us what whatever we wish would look like – implicitly trying to create something we would like based on what that training data.

The first image is the happy boy. DeepAI conjured up a boy with a mild smile, not terminally ecstatic, with a dirty t-shirt and messed up hair. I think that’s relatable.

The strong boy, the next image, seems less happy. Determined, maybe, with musculature that some body builders are training for right now. The brow is slightly furrowed, it seems, and the eyes seem determined.

I remember in my youth always wanting to be stronger. Being stronger meant being more helpful with carrying things, moving things around, and the competition between boys as to who was stronger was a part of my own youth.

Society values the load we can carry, I suppose. I’m certain that there are happy and strong boys out there. I think I was. There is a certain accomplishment to being increasingly strong. Being smart wasn’t something I did here, but it was much the same thing.

Yet the images that DeepAI generated about strong boys did not seem to be happy. I could have cheated and asked for both, but I wanted to see what the large language model and image training would come up with.

This was one of the better images.

Being tough, though, comes from adversity. To an extent, so does strength, but being tough requires more. Grit, as it is, is being able to push past obstacles physically, emotionally and mentally.

This last image in the post is of a tough boy.

Being tough means going through periods where there is no happiness. Being tough requires strength, be it of body, mind and emotion.

‘Tough’ means pushing forward, maybe because of hope, or maybe because there is no other way. When things seem to be without hope, one has to be the toughest, pushing forward in the hope that one day it won’t be so tough.

Some people become tougher than others. Adversity creates ‘tough’, and maybe because of that we don’t see ‘tough’ as frequently in children in the developed world as we do the developing.

Yet when we think of a child – any child – we adults like to think of them as happy. Not strong. Not tough. We are stronger, we are tougher, and I think while it’s necessary for children to become these things we also miss our own childhood happiness and do not wish to see it leave the faces of children.

And what do adults want? “To be happy”, we hear all too often.

It might be interesting to see what these might look like with girls. Since I’m not a girl I chose not to do those because I wouldn’t relate. It might be interesting to see those results in a post by a woman.

The Key

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

KeyA morning of cutting brush out on the land, and a voice from a pickup on the road nearby shouts my name. I invite them up the hill; they had planted cassava when I had and had just gone to try to dig some up. They told me it was no good.

“It’s all in bush”, I said, looking over my cassava proud and tall in the beds, having just gone through by hand – pulling vines, hacking or pulling weeds. They admit to not keeping it clear… and yet, they thought by simply sticking it in the ground they would be able to reap something.

It doesn’t work that way. It never works that way. The expectation that it would work another way boggles me, a reality as clear as a sunrise, a truth as hot or cold as one makes it.  And of course, once there is bush, people start doing things – like letting their cows graze.

Crazy.

———————————————————————–

The young man upstairs – about 6 – is doing handstands in front of my apartment. He’s getting better at them; I say so – it may be that he has the girl as an audience that inspires extra effort, but he has gotten better and I say so. I ask them if they’re ready for Christmas – people celebrate this thing, slaving for money to slave to purchase to give to other people – fellow slaves, typically – but it’s a popular thing, probably the most popular thing on the planet, and who am I to rob children of the dreams of their parents?

I expected a few remarks about Santa Claus, what they had asked for, etc. Instead, I was told that Santa Claus didn’t exist, that it was their parents. So I told them the truth.

“I am not a Santa Claus expert. I don’t know whether he exists or not.”

“But, T?”, they call me that, “But haven’t you gotten gifts for Christmas?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“No”

“Not even as a child?”

“No”

Now, I may have at some point gotten things for Christmas, but I wasn’t about to get into detail with inquisitive minds. I’ve never been much for all of that; when I wanted things I tend to get them – and as the years have come and gone, I have wanted less and less.

—————————————————————————–

I work for what I need, and what I want has become much more inline with what I need. I only bought a gift for one nephew that I have yet to drop off; I rarely buy things for people on agreed upon shopping periods… I do it randomly.

The point, I suppose, is that we have these myths that have become mandatory for society that make no sense to me. OK, let’s say that Jesus was born on this day – the reality being largely disproven – and even for an atheist, he was a nice guy who, after being born, disappeared until he was much older and was doing nice things (I’m waiting for someone to write “Jesus: The Missing Years”). But what are people actually buying each other other than shiny trinkets, metaphorical and otherwise? It keeps them happy, and that’s good.

We are all keys in our own ways, only – at least some of us – are sentient and can decide what locks we unlock. We choose our paths, we decide our futures with simple acts and simple habits. This, I suppose, was my gift from my abruptly ended childhood.

That key. That we can choose for temporary happiness or seek out contentedness, a nuance demonstrably lost in shopping sprees. Marketing constantly sells temporary happiness.

Contentedness is free.