Zac Parsons

Two weeks ago, I showed many of my students a PSA (public service announcement) at the beginning of class.  It is surprisingly powerful and emotional.  In fact, since it’s less than two minutes long, I will just let the video make it’s own point without me spoiling anything.

March 3, 2010 marked the official day to “Spread the Word to End the Word”.  The word that we are looking to end is the r-word, which can stand for both “retard” and “retarded”.  Really, we just want it’s derogatory use to stop.  When someone uses that word to describe or color something as “stupid” or “less than” in some way, it’s more than just being insensitive; it’s bullying.

Even though I do not have any close family members who deal with a cognitive disability or who are differently abled in some way, I knew that many of my students do.  Inspired by r-word.org, We got together this past week to shoot a quick video and make our own PSA.

It’s been a fantastic experience.  I’ve already had a high school student approach me to say that she has been convinced to forever change her language because of this.

I’d say that is a pretty good start.

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One of the paradoxes of the curriculum at The Pacific Institute (and I mean that in a very complementary way) is the mandate to set a firm goal, and to be flexible with the process that gets you there.  Maybe its more of a misnomer than a paradox, because it’s often difficult to identify what is a process or step towards the goal, and what is a goal in and of itself.

I have a lot of goals.  One of them involves becoming a better facilitator.  Another involves becoming a better communicator.  Still another is about being a wise man.  A few months back, a local college preparatory school asked if I would be interested in substitute teaching.  I identified this opportunity as a process that would help me towards those first two goals, and even provide a little income on the side.  After meeting with the administration and learning a little about the school and its values, I agreed and began to substitute a few days per month, for various courses.

While I was there, a funny thing happened.  I LOVED it.  Now, I don’t mean that it was a pleasant surprise and a welcome change to my schedule.  I mean that I could feel something inside of me and around me as I walked through the doors into the hallway.  Now, it may be that they pump laughing gas through the air vents, but I think it is more likely that some vivid picture of life that I had in my own mind was being matched by something outside of me.  It was the realization of a goal that my subconscious mind had been teleologically fixed to, and I thoroughly enjoyed becoming aware of it.

Still, my goal remained to be a full-time Project Director and Facilitator with The Pacific Institute.  I was meeting new people, developing new projects, and collaborating with others for some exciting work in the coming months and years.  The goal was fixed, my affirmations were clear, and the plan was moving forward.

Then a door opened.

The head of the upper school called me to inquire if I would be available to fill in for a teacher for the rest of the school year.  Without even thinking, I politely declined, citing the amount of time I needed for my projects with The Pacific Institute.  Because my goal was clear, and I perceived this new information to be a threat to that goal, I shut the door.

But, as it sometimes does, opportunity knocked again.  This time, our conversation touched on the courses that would be on my docket.  Subjects like psychology, religion, history, and social studies.  She wasn’t asking for me to fill a hole as a warm body.  She was telling me that she had interviewed several interested applicants, and still believed that I was the best candidate for the position.  She was confident in the positive impact the position would have on me, and the students of the school.

So I did something that I should have done the first time around: I evaluated.

As I looked closely at the opportunity, I became acutely aware that I was not operating within a vacuum.  Taking responsibility for my choices and their consequences has been my modus operandi for the past seven months, but I often forget that almost every choice has consequences outside of me as well.  It’s another paradox, it seems.  I can’t focus just on my own choices and their consequences, and I can’t just be passive and let my life happen to me.  It’s a delicate balance, and I was leaning too much on the goal of being a successful Project Director.

But why did I want to become a successful Project Director?  Was it so that I could share my own experiences with others in a way that would help them to avoid the pain that I had experienced?  Was it to impact people in a meaningful way so that they would find something great within themselves because of something I did or said?  Was it to do my part as a citizen of the world to make it a better place?  When I took all of those things into consideration, the teaching position was offering me a process towards an even greater goal: not just to be a wise man, but to be a wise man with a legacy for my children.

In the end (or beginning, as it were), I gladly accepted the position and will begin on January 4, 2010.  Since I was a teenager, I have had the idea in my mind that I will have my act together (in some way) by the time that I reach 30.  If Jesus didn’t really get his game going until then, and Siddhārtha didn’t reach enlightenment before 30, why would I?  In February, I’ll reach that magical age, and while I’m not sure that I’m going to have my act together, this new chapter has me very excited about what life (and my students) will teach me as a teacher.

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Yesterday was a eventful day in the world of the television shows that are important to me.  First, it was announced that the final season of LOST will begin on February 2, 2010.  As you know, this is Groundhog’s Day.  The creator’s of this show are keenly aware of nearly detail of this show’s production.  They have developed and broadcast commercials for fictional companies (that are a part of the show’s canon) that actually air during the broadcast on ABC.  I imagine that the 2-2 date has more to do with the Bill Murray movie from 1993 than whether or not we will be having more or less winter weather.  Nonetheless, I am manically excited for this date to come.

On a much more somber note, Jon and Kate plus 8 aired it’s final episode.  Part of me is relieved that some sort of conclusion has been reached in this saga.  There will always be some sort of celebrity status attached to this family, but unless they begin a new show or other endeavor into the entertainment world, the “new” normal that is coming may look more like the “old” normal that the Gosselins enjoyed before the show.

The biggest difference that I noticed in this episode was the behavior and attitudes of the older twin girls, Maddie and Kara.  The show starts with a daddy day.  The kids are all together with Jon, at the house, and they decide to put together a lemonade stand to raise money for the local fire department.  Tensions between the girls are high, which happens with siblings a lot in normal situations where tools (markers in this case) need to be shared.

In a moment of frustration, Maddie says “I like stuff we do with Mommy.”  Of course this doesn’t sit well with Jon, and he immediately banishes her from the project, with a pledge to throw her poster in the trash after she asks him not to finish it for her.  Just for good measure, Jon halts Kara’s progress on her poster and sends her inside as well.  The girls are left in tears, while Jon is able to bask in the glory of not being the easy-going, push-over dad of the past umpteen similar incidents with his children.  It seems that he is trying to “be” Kate in the increasingly frequent situations where she is not present.  Sadly, the girls are at school for the mommy day outing in the second half of the episode and are not seen or heard from again.

Its the moment that every divorced parent fears and tries to be prepared for: when the kids start playing the parents against each other, realizing that they are no longer on the same team.  Kate later laments her situation as a single parent by stating that Jon is no longer her teammate.  Its was a tough scene to watch, and even tougher to have as the last taste in my mouth of Maddie and Kara.  I’m hopeful that things have progressed with their relationships together, but there is no longer the promise of a future episode to experience this progression as a viewer.

Unlike with LOST (I hope), the ending of Jon and Kate Plus 8 does not tie up all of the loose ends.  Most likely, this is still very much the beginning of their journey as a family, albeit a fractured one.  Jon’s admission of fault for most of the downfall of his marriage is refreshing, but probably stings of “too little, too late”.  Kate seemed disappointingly focused on how depressing losing the show was for the kids, and much less on how their relationship with their father has changed.  Maybe this is too negative of a way to look at it all.  With plenty of knots to untie, there will be plenty of growth to be had for both of these parents.  I’m probably just jealous that I can no longer experience some of this growth vicariously.

I can’t say I know what it is like to be the parent of multiples.  I met with a new friend this week who has four 2-year-old children.  He shared with me the negative looks and disparaging remarks that his family has received since the Jon and Kate backlash began earlier this past summer.  I had a separate conversation today with a different friend about a view his counselor shared with him about the “selfishness” of having children.  The counselor is not a parent himself.  Both of these friends shared the same sentiment:

“You just don’t know until you’ve walked in my shoes.”

It’s probably the drum that I will bang over and over again as I hear criticism and judgement with little compassion or understanding offered.  Discipline, punishment, castigation, judgement, and the like are only useful as tools on a path of change, growth, and redemption.  Jon and Kate have received a lot of it over the past year.  Will it help to propel them to such change, growth, and redemption?  Listening to Jon’s final session on the couch…. maybe so.

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I do not own a John Mayer album.  I can’t say that I was tapping my toes when my brother introduced his music to me during a car ride through the New Mexico desert a few years back.  I do remember his Volkswagen commercial where he just shreds his guitar while using the car’s audio system as an amplifier.  Really, my only exposure to the more human side of John was a fairly popular Youtube clip of him on a VH1 show doing an off the cuff parody of Chocolate Rain.

The day of Michael Jackson’s death, Mayer’s words were the celebrity quote that most accurately conveyed my own feelings at the time:

“Dazes in the studio.  A major strand of our cultural DNA has left us.  RIP MJ.  I think we’ll mourn his loss as well as the loss of ourselves as children listening to Thriller on the record player.”

Then, I saw his musical tribute at Michael Jackson’s funeral.  It was a type of synthesis of his unbelievable guitar talent, and the very human connection that John felt with Michael’s music and life.  It had such an impact on me, that I made it the theme song to this web site, as odd and as self-aggrandizing as that is.  Strangely enough, I’m not sure if I have thought about John Mayer or heard any of his music since then.

It is somewhat poetic and appropriate then, that a recent video interview of John with CNN would catch my attention and paint a nice picture of what it means to be human.

The full transcript of the interview is even better and I gleefully recommend reading it.

Many of the articles on this site deal with the human side of two groups of people who often times aren’t considered as such: criminals and celebrities.  I am convinced that both groups of people are judged far too harshly by many, due to the blindingly bright nature of one side of his/her personhood.

If you view John Mayer as a skirt chasing, limelight loving, lucky SOB;  you’re only half right, if that.  The theme of the interview (and apparently, this new album) is that John is taking ownership of who he actually is, and not who he is trying to be or pretending to be.  This is tremendously important for anybody who is looking to know oneself, even if for the sake of trying to change.

Although John’s comments on age are intentionally hilarious and exaggerated, they ring true to me now as I am on the cusp of my thirties.  I’m taking inventory of where I have been, and I’m trying to examine the events that most helped to contribute to my current state.  I now believe that just a few core beliefs help to guide nearly everything that I do, and in a way, life isn’t as complicated as I sometimes make it.

As Polonius said to Laertes in Hamlet: “This above all: to thine own self, be true.”  Before John Mayer was a celebrity, he was… John Mayer.  Writing songs about love and heartbreak were natural, well received, and most of all… real.  It sounds as if he is trying to keep a hold of that which made his music magical, namely his unapologetic honesty.  He may not be politically correct, but he doesn’t seem to be bitter or resentful of much outside of himself either.

I’m a fan of honest conversations and blunt confrontations, in a spirit of love.  I want my life to be characterized by more of this.  I want it to be one of those core values that everything else flows out of.  Thanks for reminding me of that today, John.

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I felt a number of different emotions when I first saw the video of Elizabeth Lambert from the University of New Mexico soccer match vs. BYU on November 5, 2009.  If you have not seen it yet and you want to dial up your own emotional response to it, here you go:

I had a few people tease me in high school for playing “girls” sports like soccer and volleyball.  While I haven’t seen a volleyball video quite like this before, perhaps the idea of soccer being a “soft” game, even for girls, may be closer to being exposed as quite false.  While mostly tongue in cheek, it is a startlingly violent video.

Like many people, I was shocked and disgusted by how intentional Lambert’s actions were.  Even though the video just shows highlights (lowlights?) from the match, and the tension of the game cannot be discerned from snippets of film out of context, it’s impossible to justify what she did as an acceptable part of the game.  She has been suspended indefinitely, and many believe that she will not be considered for reinstatement to the team until she undergoes serious psychiatric analysis and treatment.  In addition to her reputation as a soccer player, he may also lose her scholarship, and any hopes she had of playing professionally at another level.

Many people can relate to losing their cool and doing something regrettable in the heat of the moment.  Unfortunately, many of us forget what we ourselves are capable of when we see such egregious acts of violence while personally being in a calm state of mind.  Some people have called for Lambert to be expelled from school.  Even others have wanted the police to investigate the hair pulling incident as an assault.  She has even received an alarming number of date proposals from men who would like her to treat them as rough as she does her opponents on the pitch.

After two weeks of dealing with a cacophony of media pundits and Youtube commenters, Elizabeth finally granted an interview to the New York times today.  Her tone varies from one of genuine remorse to explanatory pleading. The accompanying picture doesn’t exactly fit the thuggish girl from the video above.  Although her video seems to show a pattern of dirty play, she has only received 2 yellow cards in her career at New Mexico, which has spanned over 2,500 minutes on the field.  Maybe she did just have a bit of temporary insanity.  Perhaps she should be given more benefit of the doubt.

In fact, the two weeks of time that have passed since this episode and today’s interview have given me a lot of time to think about my own screw ups and shortcomings.  If I were defined by my weakest moments or known around the world by my greatest failures, I’m not sure if I would still be allowed my own web domain www.zacparsons.com.  As it is, people know me by some mix of what I have shared with them, or what they have heard or seen themselves or second hand from others.  Although I make sincere attempts to be transparent, I’m sure that many of my behavioral warts would lose me some friends and comrades if every detail of my life was known.

If what we know about someone is bad, is it fair to label him/her as a bad person?  Do stories of shocking behavior expose someone’s true nature, or is it just a moment of weakness that happened to catch our attention?  Do we poo-poo away our own moral failures as circumstantial, heat of the moment, “you would understand if you were in my shoes” types of events?  Or even if we take responsibility for our actions, do we feel that we need to saddle ourselves with that burden on a daily or hourly basis to remind ourselves of how evil we really are?

Maybe the question I’m asking is: are we all really bad people who happen to do good things from time to time?  Or are we all good people, who happen to do bad things from time to time?  Or are some of us more inclined to be good and others of us to be bad?  I believe that your answer to those questions has a lot do to with how you deal with others on a daily basis.

If you know that you need slack cut to you in order to enjoy life and the relationships around you, take a good look at how much slack you are cutting for others.  Since our country doesn’t even trust Elizabeth Lambert to make the decision to imbibe alcohol (she’s only 20), maybe we should all help her to learn from this and work towards changing her nickname to something more fitting of a human being.

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The dust has settled from the tragedy at Ft. Hood.  With it, little else is known about why Major Nidal Malik Hasan felt compelled to take so many innocent lives in a storm of bullets at the deployment center.  As I wrote last week, it is possible that Hasan was attempting to go down in a blaze of glory for the sake of God, or perhaps by what he perceived as God’s command.  In an unusual ending to this type of attack, the shooter remains alive.  Although, reports of permanent paralysis may explain why he was unable to turn the gun on himself during the chaos.

A fact that did not get as much attention as his religious affiliation, but may be equally connected to his behavior, is Hasan’s role as a psychiatrist for soldiers returning from tours in the Middle East.  If you believe that we move toward, and become like, that which we think about, then his violent behavior may be slightly more understandable.  Hour after hour, day after day, of hearing and processing accounts of death and carnage in a messy war would take a toll on even the healthiest of doctors.  But the attack earlier this month may have been the price for this exposure to vicarious violence for this psychiatrist.

Most psychiatrists will help patients to filter through their thoughts and behaviors, classifying some as normal and healthy, and other as disruptive or negative.  For soldiers preparing to return to civilian life, the rules of war that have become second nature to many of them, are not the same rules of life in America, and the psychiatrist helps the soldier to come to terms with that.  The psychiatrist helps the patient to build new thoughts and plans for action in a future of non-violence and a stable civil and judicial structure.  For Hasan, this breakdown of normal thoughts and actions for the future of a civilian must have been truly dissonant in his mind, knowing that his future was likely to include the violence of these soldiers’ pasts.

Even though he was born in Virginia, there have been reports that Hasan felt more of a connection to his Middle Eastern heritage than the Red, White, and Blue of his true homeland.  Perhaps in his personal thoughts of the war battles, he put himself in the shoes of the local Iraqi or Afghan fighters.  The best memory training techniques and methods for developing your subconscious hard drive include visualizing yourself doing something in first person perspective.  If Hasan’s thoughts drifted from: “How terrible it must be to kill someone!” to “How terrible it must be to be attacked on your own soil?” perhaps he did imagine himself as a local fighter of the Americans from the homeland.

Of course, the connection to his religion is still key, as many people see themselves as a Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc. first, and an American, Iraqi, Afghan, etc. second.  With the declaration of jihad from many terrorist groups, a holy war would trump any connection to his profession, his country of birth, and even his connection with mankind, as God’s will is supreme.  Devotion to Islam coupled with regular exposure to the love and charity of fellow Muslims and those outside of the faith should not result in violence.  But any religious beliefs that are combined with images of repression, invasion, or a divine mandate for murder often times will.

Perhaps the saying “Violence begets more violence.” is proven true once again.  Even if the original violence is just in one’s mind.

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90 minutes was not enough time to decide the semifinal match between the L.A. Galaxy and the Houston Dynamo last night.  My childhood friend Alan Gordon came on as a substitute late in the game.  During the overtime period, Alan drew a penalty kick that would ultimately be taken by team captain Landon Donovan.

Here is a video of Landon Donovan’s goal from across the stadium with the shooter’s point of view in frame:

Here is another angle on that same goal, with the goalkeeper’ point of view:

From a physical perspective, it’s not really an impressive goal at all.  Most 12 year old soccer players could put the ball where he put it.  If the goalkeeper were to dive to his right, he surely would have blocked the shot with some part of his body.  But he didn’t dive to his right.  He was fooled.  Donovan has become one of the best penalty kick takers in the country.  What’s more impressive is that he has done this with one of the least powerful shots in professional soccer.  A little glance of the eye, twist of the hip, and a fountain of confidence gives Donovan the mental edge in nearly every duel from the penalty kick marker.

Speaking of mental edges, David Beckham is now one win away from making good on his promise to lead the Galaxy to an MLS cup championship.  As you may remember, Beckham was banged up when he first signed his MLS contract in 2007.  Most of his appearances that season were with him battling some sort of injury or another.  Now, he’s 100% and his fingerprints are all over the team.  Even if the Galaxy do not win, it makes you wonder if Grant Wahl want’s to add an addendum to his June 2009 book “The Beckham Experiment”.  With this excerpt entitled “How Beckham blew it“, it’s obvious that he considered the experiment to be a failure.

But Beckham paid no attention to charges level at him in the book.  At least, he did not allow them to disrupt his objectives this season.  His focus was consistent even in the face of loud fan objections, as I wrote about earlier this year.  The guy is nothing if he is not resilient.  Maybe more people will start believing that Beckham’s success has come more from his mental discipline than from his pretty face.  We’ll find out after the final on November 22, 2009.

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Easy tiger...

How you feel about Jon Gosselin is probably going to depend a lot on what you have personally experienced in your own life, or how you value stories of failure and redemption.  If you’ve led a morally upright life, and you tend to only value failure if it is soon followed by redemption, you may have little to no sympathy for Jon Gosselin and his bachelor-esque behaviors (while married) over the past several months.

This is especially difficult to swallow for those who revered him as a type of “super-dad” and loving husband who would sacrifice anything for his family.  Even if a divorce is a dance for two, he seems to have loaded up the jukebox with many more songs than Kate.  Their legal proceeding are becoming increasingly volatile and their relationship is strained to a microscopic level.  I’m sure that many may have the desire to remind Jon that he made this bed, and now it is time to sleep in it.

From doting father and submissive husband to jet-setting playboy with a cell phone filled with booty calls, Jon has shown clearly that he has a wild side.  But is that all that it is?  Is it just one side of his personality?  With his behavior over the last year seeming so different than what was known about him up until that time, the question on many people’s minds is:  ”Will the real Jon Gosselin please stand up?”

Lisa Respers France from CNN wrote a fantastic piece about Jon’s recent conversations and counseling with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who apparently is something of a celebrity spiritual advisor.  In the article, besides dispelling rumors that he was to be starting a new reality series with “Octomom” Nadya Suleman, Jon had some frank comments about his behavoir:

I am well aware that my behavior over the past few months has not always reflected my personal and religious values. I further accept that I have allowed myself to become somewhat severed from my own moral anchor and be carried away by the challenges of fame.

and:

It is my sincere desire to use the fame I have so unexpectedly acquired to highlight mature, responsible behavior as well as the joys of fatherhood and family.

and probably the most honest of them all:

I ask the public to please understand the challenges I face in living under constant public scrutiny, even as I am aware that I have at times courted that scrutiny.

Ok, so a level-headed Jon is issuing a mea culpa, with a promise to change the future in a positive way.  But does anyone care?  Over 60% of that CNN article’s readers polled believe that Kate should NOT forgive Jon.  There is a real belief in the minds of many people that some sort of penance must be undertaken before forgiveness should be entertained.  Perhaps those people are right.

But there are many that believe that blanket forgiveness is often undeserved, and punishment (or justice) is the best way to return to a balanced way of life.  In my own story, many people advised Kim to “make him (me) pay” and “make him (me) work for your (her) love” during the beginning of our time of healing.  Our healing blossomed into a reconciliation, but that is not and should not be the only expected result of healing.  Peace is paramount.

Jon at a more innocent time

Past behaviors, both negative and positive, must be synthesized to arrive a current state of someone’s character appraisal.  Jon is neither a knight in shining armor nor a wild, partying, lust-monster.  At least, not fully.  They are two sides of his personality, and it’s likely not a 50/split.  We all act differently in different stages of our lives, and sometimes the pendulum swings wildly.

Human nature is not just about who we wish to be, it’s about who we are, which is evidenced by what we do.

The biblical story of the prodigal son has be retold in many different forms over the centuries.  I even participated in a reimagining of the story with cues taken from The Princess Bride while I was in college.  In my opinion, it’s a story that highlights three parts of human nature:

1. Personally testing the rules put in place by others for one’s own good, only to find out through much pain that they are true.  (The prodigal son)
2. Having love override all negative behaviors to bring about a restoration of peace, despite a lack of justice.  (The father)
3. Being frustrated and angry over a lack of justice and wanting a situation of “fairness” to exist.  (The brother)

I’ve felt all of these feelings at different times in my life.  Is the Gosselin saga an appropriate narrative to apply the principles of this parable?

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Malcolm Gladwell is my favorite writer and one of the brightest thinkers I have come across.  He was invited to give a talk at TED.com, which is a website sprung from an organization dedicated to discussing “ideas worth spreading” in the fields of Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED).  The video below is from his talk in February 2004 and is about 17 minutes long.

Gladwell illustrates the lessons from his story about Howard Moskowitz pretty darn well, so I won’t add much.

I too often find myself obsessed with universals and trying to discover the rules that govern the way that all of us behave.  The idea of variability and diversity is very intriguing.  In truth, there may only be a handful of universals amidst a sea of beautiful diversity and variables.  It seems to me that a large proportion of our conflicts and wars are due to leaders mistaking a variable truth for one that is universal, and then attempting to impose it on the masses.

Even attempting to give something as universal as “freedom” to another culture can fail based on the variable understandings and perspectives on freedom.

The older I get, the less “black and white” the world gets.  While I always knew that “There’s no wrong way to eat a Reese’s”, I didn’t extrapolate that principle to many other areas of my life.  There always seemed to be a right way to do this, and a wrong way to do that.  The more I understand about my own perception, the less faith I have in my ability to discern things that are ALWAYS right or ALWAYS wrong.

Since taste seems to be obviously chock full of variability, where does that principle end?  What is universal?

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If you have never checked out the website www.mentalfloss.com, you are denying yourself the greatest internet experience of man’s recorded history.  Ok, that might be overselling it a little, but it’s at least worth giving a good look-see.  Check out some of the shirts they sell (Disclaimer:  I have no connection or relationship with the developers of this site.  If they make money from my links here… good for them!):

It’s a shame that the T-Shirt in general doesn’t make it into my wardrobe as much anymore, because I would love to stock it with these babies for sure.

The reason I wanted to bring the website to your attention today is because of an article that was featured on Yahoo News on Monday.  The title of the article is “Four People with Super Memory”.  It won’t take you more than 6 minutes to read the entire thing.  All four of these “Super Brains” have been involved at studies at Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine.  I’ve constantly wondered what would happen if I could remember everything that I had ever perceived and experienced…. instantly.  With some of the information from this article, I’m still not sure whether the ability would ultimately be a blessing or a curse.

Baron uses his super memory to win stuff. Although unemployed, he’s extremely resourceful and is constantly entering, and winning trivia contests.

Who's the big winner?

I’m pretty sure that Rick Baron would chalk up his memory skills as a gift.  I mean, if you asked this guy what he does for a living, he could honestly answer:  ”I’m the big winner!”  Its kind of interesting.  For whatever reason, businesses are willing to part with money or prizes in order to let people display their memory skills.  Admit it, if you don’t play those cheesy trivia games in sports bars, its probably because you aren’t interested in losing, right?  Because of the social and/or economic gain involved, we tend to enjoy sharing our memory with others.  Heck, others will even take time to watch us if we are especially adept at it, as evidenced by Brad Williams’s appearance on Jeopardy.  Which, by the way, doesn’t look to be his only brush with fame due to his memory:

“Growing up, I never really had reason to think I wasn’t like everyone else,” he has said. A feature-length doc on his life, titled “Unforgettable“, is presently in production.

Fame, by it’s definition, involves a perception of superiority or uniqueness in some regard from the rest of the community or the population.  It sounds sort of nice, but there are countless stories of the loss of privacy that occurs with fame (see exhibit A:  Jon and Kate Gosselin).  Williams may enjoy his status as a walking date encyclopedia, but if the majority of the people he meets greet him with a date in history and then wait for him to perform, I can imagine that becoming tiresome quickly.  He may loathe the idea of meeting new people who know him for his memory skills.

I can sympathize with Jill Price, who:

in her memoir, she describes super memory as a nuisance, partly because she can’t seem to forget painful events, like when someone she was crushing on rejected her.

Now, almost everyone over the age of 17 has experienced pain deeper than having a crush reject you.  Imagine if a single stimulus such as a date would bring you right back into the toughest pain of your life thus far.  In truth, our thoughts and feelings are just chemical reactions based on the perception of our senses.  Our sight is just our brains translating light reflecting off of objects.  Our memories can be jogged back to an experience in our past and it can vividly feel like living it anew.

The idea that “time heals all wounds” is true because of our lack of memory recall.

As we continue with life after a traumatic experience, new stimuli are perceived and our minds bring them to the forefront of our thoughts.  We usually give people a certain amount of time to grieve a loss, but eventually encourage them to “get over it” and “move on with life”.  We would never say something like that to someone immediately following a tragedy.  We know that perspective is often gained after contemplation.  This is an organizing of our memories and placing the new experience in it’s appropriate place in the story of our life.

As Sean O’Neil would tell you, everything that we have ever experienced is located somewhere in our minds.  It’s just a matter of finding the right stimulus to recall the details.  For many of us, it takes a number of different stimuli.  For Bob Petrella, it doesn’t take much:

when it comes to the Pittsburgh Steelers, his favorite team, you can show him a single freeze frame from most any game that he’s seen, and he can tell you not only the date of the game, but the final score.

It’s probably fortunate that this guy is not an Arizona Cardinals fan.  Honestly, you have to have a selective memory or rose-colored hind-sight glasses to be one of those.  ;)

Ultimately, I believe that the blessing or curse of  Super-Memory is determined by your overriding emotional view of life and the experiences of it.  While the kid in the room full of toys may complain, the kid in the room full of horse crap may keep digging through it looking for the pony.  In order for us to be responsible, we must still be able to choose what we think about or how we think about it.

I’d like to leave you with a picture of my favorite t-shirt from Mental Floss and ask you: how is your memory?

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