Sometimes, one of the best ways to cheer yourself up is to make someone else happy. When another human being thrives, it becomes contagious. Even watching my garden grow or my pets flourish puts me at ease.
For all our flaws and moral shortcomings, our species is still an inherently nurturing and social one. It’s very difficult to prosper in a negative social or physical environment. It’s been universally observed for centuries that happiness is strongest when it is shared.
Russian composer Igor Stravinsky was born on this day in 1882, and lived until April 6, 1971. Also a talented conductor and noteworthy pianist, he was one of the 20th century’s most influential and innovative contributors to music. Stravinsky was known for his stylistic diversity and innovation, and his impact remains noticeable to this day.
His most famous work, The Rite of Spring (1913), changed the way composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky’s enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary. I’ve shared it below, along with his other two famous ballet pieces The Firebird (1910), a personal favorite and his first major piece, and Petrushka (1911), which revealed Stravinsky’s growing independence as a composer and defined his style.
Fifty years ago today, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman into space, having been selected from more than 400 applicants and 5 finalists to pilot the Vostok 6, the last mission of the Vostok program. Although Tereshkova experienced nausea and physical discomfort for much of the flight, she orbited the earth 48 times and spent almost 3 days in space. With a single flight, she logged more flight time than the combined times of all American astronauts who had flown before that date.
She was also the first civilian into space; whereas most astronauts and cosmonauts had military backgrounds, Tereshkova, who had humble origins, was employed as a textile worker. She chosen only for her skill and enthusiasm for skydiving, which she pursued as a hobby (she was made an honorary member of the Soviet Air Force after her mission). Talk about a career seque.
Even though there were plans for further flights by women, it took 19 years until the second woman on Earth, Svetlana Savitskaya, flew into space. Tereshkova now lives a quiet and low-key life in Russia, although she is a staple in many science conferences and political functions.
Learn more about her and the history of women in space here.
She was only one of ten million victims of the Holocaust, but somehow her story, as recorded in her diary, can move us more than pondering the huge number of victims who left no testimony. Let her story, then, be multiplied by ten million, for though not every victim was young, all were loved.
This is the only existing video of Anne Frank, she appears for only a few seconds, and it's been on YouTube for several years.
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, often called the the “Muslim Gandhi,” was an Afghan political and spiritual leader known for his nonviolent opposition to British Rule in India. A devout Muslim and dedicated pacifist, he worked with Gandhi to put an end to the British Raj and bring unity among the divided people of South Asia. He once said it is “better [to] be poisoned in one’s own blood then to be poisoned in one’s principle.”
Khan was also a reformer and social activist who sought to alleviate the poverty, violence, and hatred of his society. To that end, he formed the Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God) movement, in which members would take an oath of honesty, integrity, self-sacrifice, and the serving of others without regard to faith or ethnicity. The success of this group led to a harsh crackdown by the British, though Khan remained committed to nonviolence.
He opposed the partition of India, and because of this – as well as his lifelong opposition to authoritarian rule – he was frequently arrested, exiled, and harassed by the Pakistani authorities. Despite this, he never wavered in his values and remained a pacifist for the rest of his life.
Interestingly, one of these stories takes place in India, and the other in Pakistan, each being reported on within months of each other. Regardless of their location, selfless and innovative ideas like these help give me hope in humanity. I’m short on time, so I’ll let the pictures and their captions speak for themselves. Click the images to link to their original sources (Washington Post and NPR, respectively).
A makeshift school set up under a bridge in New Delhi, India. Run by shop owner Rajesh Kumar, the over 50 students, ages 4 to 14, study everything from basic reading and writing to mathematical concepts like the Pythagorean Theorem. The students sit on foam mats just yards away from an excrement pit, and are taught for over 2 hours.
After decades abroad Saeed Malik (left) returned to his native Pakistan to rectify the poor education system. He remembered talking to a group of boys, 9 to 16 years old, and finding that the majority wanted to be freedom fighters and die as martyrs, because they had nothing else to live for. “And I felt, in what way can we bring these kids back to the beauty of life, to the beauty of future, to be of value to fellow mankind and to themselves and to the country,” he says. “And I started thinking in what way can we help the children.” Malik felt books were the way to broaden children’s minds, to introduce them to a whole world of subjects, and to help build tolerance for others. But he discovered that virtually none of the public schools in and around Islamabad had libraries. Through donations from the UN and private individuals, he founded the Bright Star Mobile Library, which now serves about 2,500 children, providing a range of books in Urdu and English.
We need more stories like this to be known, especially to balance out all the cynicism and negativity that typically captures our attention (and subsequently make up the bulk of our news). Even a flicker of light in the darkness is something to be cherished.
1. Mamihlapinatapei (Yagan, an indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego): The wordless yet meaningful look shared by two people who desire to initiate something, but are both reluctant to start.
2. Yuanfen (Chinese): A relationship by fate or destiny. This is a complex concept. It draws on principles of predetermination in Chinese culture, which dictate relationships, encounters and affinities, mostly among lovers and friends.
While procrastination, like most human behaviors, is certainly nothing new, there is something seemingly “modern” about it. In a fast-paced and complex society in which people are doing far more than the bare minimum to get by, holding off on our various responsibilities definitely stands out: there are tests to study for, jobs to work, errands to run, things to pay, and so on.
People have always been busy of course, as day-to-day survival obviously takes work. But nowadays we’re bombarded with a lot more than gathering food or firewood. Modern civilization is complex, and even recreational and leisurely activities are daunting in their variety and sense of necessity.
To be sure, I’m not lamenting the fact that we have more opportunities than ever for entertainment, comfort, and the like — for the most part, that’s a good thing. Nor am I suggesting that we go back to the seemingly simpler times of tribal, hunter-gatherer existence. It’s just that every era brings with it new challenges and concerns, and every progressive development, no matter how positive in many respects, has certain caveats.
For example, there’s been much discussion about the so-called “tyranny of choice,” in which our minds our overwhelmed by the sheer amount of options and stimuli available, and subsequently we become more tired, indecisive, stressed out, and even depressed.
But to go back to the original point, what does this have to do with procrastination? Well, all these demands have raised the bar of what society expects from us, such that (in America at least) a strong work ethic is seen as a paramount quality. One’s social and personal worth is dependent on one’s socioeconomic status, and that in turn is still widely seen as deriving from hard work and personal responsibility. Those who are regarded as lazy procrastinators are anticipated to be failures in life; conversely, “failures” — e.g. those who are poor or fail to conform to the standards of our materialistic consumer society — have their shortcomings attributed to laziness.
Now, setting aside the complex and systemic reasons why hard work no longer seems to promote upward mobility like it once did, something needs to be set straight: procrastination is not laziness, and the strong desire to put a pause on life and relax is not evidence of self-entitlement, poor work ethic, or some sort of moral decay. There are good reasons to be “lazy” and deep psychological and social motivations that need to be considered…starting with understanding the distinction between procrastination and laziness.
David Cain of Thought Catalog wrote an excellent piece that explains this phenomenon perfectly. While I encourage you to read the article in its entirety, the following excerpt is what stood out most for me:
It turns out procrastination is not typically a function of laziness, apathy or work ethic as it is often regarded to be. It’s a neurotic self-defense behavior that develops to protect a person’s sense of self-worth.
You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything.
But in real life, you can’t avoid doing things. We have to earn a living, do our taxes, have difficult conversations sometimes. Human life requires confronting uncertainty and risk, so pressure mounts. Procrastination gives a person a temporary hit of relief from this pressure of “having to do” things, which is a self-rewarding behavior. So it continues and becomes the normal way to respond to these pressures.
Certainly, the above reasons don’t apply to every case, nor should we excuse genuine laziness. There are many other theories and explanations regarding the psychology origins of procrastination But this is something to consider, and it definitely applies to a large number of people (if not everyone at some point).
Ultimately, the difference between laziness and procrastination seems to come down to the motivations and thought processes that guide the former: procrastinators tend to be artists, writers, or others who feel they have better things to do with their time — things that, unfortunately, don’t provide an income and/or may not be respectable. The same reasoning may apply to, say, athletes or the vocationally-inclined, who have no interest in academic pursuits — in grades, tests, and industrial-style education — but who excel at doing what they love, even if it’s central to their overall curriculum (if measured at all).
For those who fear the next step — particularly those with anxiety — procrastination can be their only respite. In this fast-paced world, I can see the temptation for people to, in essence, put a pause on life. Society has changed so much and so quickly, even within the short lifetimes of the young. It can be overwhelming to conform to these social norms that nobody individually seems to like or choose, yet everyone feels pressured to follow (this in turn leads to a whole other sociological tangent about the nature of society and such).
I’m anticipating that people will react to skepticism at this argument, namely that it gives an excuse to laziness. But I think it’s important to see the distinction as far as the reasons, and to consider what the implications are.
There is a lot of evidence that sleeplessness, stress, and depression are growing problems in our society; that young people, especially, are in for a raw deal as far as longer work hours, lower pay, and higher costs of living; and that people with relatively more idle times on their hands are starting to reach existential crises much earlier in life (anecdotally-speaking, I’ve seen a number of teenagers already begin questioning the purpose of their lives, acknowledge the primacy of death, and muse about other hard “adult” concerns — although I’m told this may not be anything new, just more noticeable).
With these trends, one has to wonder whether procrastination will become some sort of widespread characteristic of modern society. Will the stresses and pressures of civilization lead more and of us to shut down, pursue escapism, and otherwise come into conflict with the wider world around us? What do you think?
I’d weigh in further but, ironically, I’m procrastinating at work as we speak by writing this post…
We all have beliefs and opinions that will likely remain unchanged no matter what counter-evidence is brought to our attention. This is actually typical of all humans, since our politics, faith, values, and views are shaped by psychological and social conditions that are largely outside of our control (and usually unnoticed in their influence).
Yet every one of us will claim that our beliefs are based on sound reasoning and facts — in contrast to our opponents, of course. In that case, we should ask ourselves the following: what would it take for me to accept my opponent’s beliefs? What sort of proof would I need to discard my deeply held views?
If you can’t find any reason why you should think differently, then in essence you’re admitting that your views are purely visceral rather than evidence-based. Either change the basis of what you believe — i.e. try to find evidence for it, and discard it in the absence of said evidence — or admit that your beliefs have nothing to do with reality or rationality, but are instead the result of unthinking emotional or psychological attachment.
If we’re going to take up a belief or opinion based on “gut instinct,” faith, or whatever else you want to call it, then we might as well be honest, recognize it, and not hold it against others if they don’t see eye to eye with our views (after all, if said belief is based on personal feelings, rather than something objectively measurable, then you can’t expect everyone else to agree).
Also, there’s no harm in saying “I don’t know” or “I believe this based only on what I know.” It’s honest and it represents a fact of life: not everything is knowable to everyone.
To the best of my ability I try to hold myself to these standards. Otherwise, I leave it to others to call me out.
