ten years ago...

Ten years ago today was my first day in my MBA program.  I'm at the age where I look back ten, fifteen, or twenty years a lot, and I'm struck by how those events feel both like yesterday and forever ago at the same time.  There were many times during my four-and-a-half years in the program that I questioned the wisdom of pursuing the degree, and ten years ago all of that work and all of those questions lay ahead of me.  It's just odd.

Another milestone I passed in the last year is the twenty-year anniversary of getting my first job in high school.  In fact, a couple of months ago I passed a the twenty-year milestone of my second job in high school, which I held concurrently with the first one until I went to college.

It used to be that any milestone I had like this only reached a few years back to when I was in high school and living with my parents, but those days are long past (about ten years past, to be precise).

I can't be the only person who does this.  Who else notes anniversaries of what was happening in your life one or two decades ago and asks where the time went?  Where did the time go?!

powerball

Recently, the Powerball lottery got up to some ridiculous level that causes a lot of people to want to gamble.  Usually when that happens someone in my office decides to buy a pool of tickets, and whoever contributes gets a share of any winnings.  I always go in for the price of one ticket for one reason and one reason only: insurance.

Like most things, my view on gambling is that it is not sin, but the attitudes a person brings into it are frequently sin.  So, for a lot of people gambling is sin because of why they gamble, or what gambling brings out in them.  In fact, I do believe it's difficult to gamble without a sinful attitude.  If I were to find myself daydreaming about never working again, or longing for whatever luxury items something like that would afford, or risking my family's stability, those would likely indicate underlying problems.  I hope in that instance I would avoid participating, because that would be a sign of something wrong with my motives.

What I don't want to happen, and what I am genuinely concerned about, is for everyone else in my office to win then quit on the same day.  Being the last guy left in the department would be an absolute nightmare.  So, I throw in the minimum so that if that sort of thing happens I have a little more freedom to decide what to do.

Truth be told, I don't really want to win the lottery.  Sure, I would love the money, but the problems that would come from getting the money in this way would probably outweigh that.  There are a number of people in my life who have moral issues with this, so it would open multiple uncomfortable conversations.  Then, there would be pressure to contribute to specific causes, and while it would be great to have that opportunity, it would open up a lot of saying no to disappointed people as well.

Another concern I have has its basis in pride.  The odds of winning the lottery are outlandish, and I don't want people to think I that I bought tickets with a serious hope of winning.  The joke goes that the lottery is a tax on those who are bad at math, and a prideful part of me doesn't want others to associate me with that.  How could I not if I were known to have won the lottery?

So, while I try to make sure I'm technically covered from the bad results of everyone winning the lottery at a cost I'll gladly pay, I'm not actually hoping for us to win.  The good news is that, unlike most people playing the lottery, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of what I am hoping for.

tabula rasa

Several years ago I learned about the concept of tabula rasa, which asserts that a baby is born with a mind that is largely a blank slate.  Personality, behavioral tendencies, intellectual capacity, etc are all things that spring out of the environment a child is raised in rather than from genetics.

I have heard from various sources that research done in the last two or three decades has largely discredited the idea of tabula rasa to the point where it is not a seriously held position in academic circles now, though not long ago this was not the case.  Having had two kids I have to strongly question how anyone who raised more than one child ever believed in tabula rasa.

While our kids are still young--just seven and nine--it is striking and unavoidable to see where specific aspects of our kids' drives and personalities are not only unique, but have been that way from birth.  In fact, I have a very difficult time believing that someone could have kids and not notice this, as I see this uniqueness in a lot of the other kids I am occasionally around as well.  Kids with strong personalities always had strong personalities, and they often have siblings with completely different personalities, though they grew up in the same household.  Things like birth order play a part, but only as an outgrowth of what they were from the start.

If it is obvious to a parent that the foundations of our kids' personality is due to nature rather than nurture--and I have definitely heard other parents observe this as well--why was this not obvious to the academic world for a large percentage of the twentieth century?  Do (or did, since this idea is no longer widely held) academics in psychology/psychiatry simply not spend time with and observe their own families?  It's baffling!