Over the next 36 hours, I’ll confess repeatedly to a crime I didn’t commit. Several, actually, although I’m starting to wonder if I might be an accomplice to at least a few.

The Days of Awe are racing to a close and, as always, I’m unprepared for an appointment that has been on the calendar for almost 3,500 years. It’s not that I’m unaware of the 10-day period of reflection that ends with our sealing in the Book of Life…or not…at the close of Yom Kippur tomorrow night. It’s just that I’m never ready to sit in on the test. Oh? You mean that’s today??

Our dates with destiny arrive without regard for our readiness, though, and I’ll find myself in the synagogue tonight and Monday, along with millions of Jews across the globe, confessing as a group to a gigantic list of sins. One of the confessional prayers is an acrostic, using all the letters of the alphabet to suggest we are guilty of transgressions from A to Z. Ashamnu, the name of the prayer, translates as, “We are guilty.”

We abuse, we betray, we are cruel. Yeah, I guess I’ve done some of that over the past year. Then we get to the part about robbing and killing and, wait a minute, why am I confessing to stuff I’ve absolutely never done? The traditional explanation is that we confess as a community, connected and responsible in some way for each other’s failings. That means somebody in my synagogue is getting away with murder—so I definitely need to be nicer around them—while I have to shoulder some of their guilt. It all seems incredibly unfair, although they’re probably irritated at confessing to sins that I committed and they avoided over the past year. I guess it depends on how we keep score.

On the positive side of the ledger, I frequently suggest that my charitable work has saved lives. I might not know where or how or whose, but I’m 100% certain someone is alive today, or will not be harmed tomorrow, as an indirect but inevitable result of my intervention. I don’t think much about the other side of the scorecard, the one where my action, or inaction, has led to harm. What if, like Peter Parker, my failure to act has made me an inadvertent accessory to murder?

Okay, that’s overly dramatic and Uncle Ben was pretty old already, but there is a point at which the comparison is valid.  It’s our choice to take action, but it’s also our choice when we take a pass. If I’m going to extrapolate from my few acts of charity to claim I am saving the world, it’s only fair that I take some heat for the paths I didn’t take.

None of us can shift the earth’s axis on our own, but tipping the scales is always an option if we choose to act. Maybe I’m doing this right. Maybe I’m choosing life. Or maybe I’ve become complacent, coasting on an inflated sense of worth. Maybe I need to take another look at that list.

Ashamti.

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Question: When is an apology not an apology?

Answer: When it’s on Facebook.

This is the week when many of my Jewish friends post blanket apologies online as we sprint past Rosh Hashanah and race toward Yom Kippur. The Days of Awe are an intense period if you take it seriously, but all the religious rites are reserved for our relationships with God. When it comes to other people, any beefs have to be addressed directly with the individuals involved and there’s no prayer that lets us off the hook.

That’s where all these Facebook apology posts arise, as our modern transgressors adopt a wholesale purge of guilt by saying oopsie online. “If you’re one of the people I’ve hurt in the past year, I’m sorry. If not, feel free to move on. And my work here is done.”

I sympathize; really, I do. With so many aggrieved souls in our circles, the list of required apologies is endless. I have to apologize to Ed for being late and to Andrea for being too early; to Bill for ignoring his birthday and to Gwen for reminding her how old she is; to Stacy for calling too late at night and to Robert for waiting until the next day to give him the news. Maybe I can’t do anything right or, maybe, my contacts are simply looking for a reason to feel slighted.

Either way, the tally of bruised psyches multiplies until it would take more than a decade to deliver all the groveling demanded from me. I understand the temptation to call on Facebook to deliver a simple, high-volume solution for pique response.

Except that’s not how it works, and it’s not just my coreligionists who appear unable to offer a proper mea culpa these days. Nobody seems to know how to make amends, especially those sensitive souls who begin their pseudo-confessions with, “If I hurt you,” or “If I offended you.”

If.

“If you were hurt when I stole your car and ran off with your spouse and emptied your bank account and slandered your name all over the place, I’m sorry. Of course, you’re way too sensitive about the whole thing and it was really not that big a deal. But, if it bothers you so much, then I’ll be the bigger person and apologize.  Are we good now?”

Non-apology apologies seem to be the norm and not the exception, focusing on the fact that someone took offense and not on the offense itself. Does anyone know how to apologize for what they actually did? Apparently not.

Maybe the problem starts with childhood, when parents tell their kids to, “Say you’re sorry,” without insisting that they actually be sorry. Maybe It’s the mantra that, “I’m a good person,” so anyone who is offended is sadly unaware of my kind and giving nature. Or, maybe, we’re just a bunch of selfish and insensitive jerks.

A real apology is the most counter-cultural thing we can do, rejecting all the norms of our current age. There are no apps, no websites, no intermediaries or filters available to do it right. A real apology has to be direct, one to one. We have to speak directly to the person we’ve harmed, specify what we did, and express real remorse for our actions. Hard to believe, but most people actually did that a long, long, long time ago, at least when they weren’t dueling at dawn.

It's much different now. Everyone’s offended about everything and, quite frankly, I’m just a bit offended at their insistence that I somehow owe them an apology for absolutely nothing. I’ll apologize to them after they apologize to me, first, and some anodyne disclaimer on Facebook ain’t gonna cut it.

What else? Oh, yeah. To anyone who posted a generic apology on Facebook in the past year, please know that IF I HURT YOU by sharing my opinions, I am so very, very sorry.

If I actually do owe you an apology, please send me a detailed message, including receipts and warranty cards, and I’ll get back to you right away. If not, just click here to subscribe and I’ll consider us even.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I like big maps. I cannot lie.

There’s something about a 30-by-40 sheet of paper with a million lines and colors that just begs to be savored.

A real map is a lesson in geography, human history, and politics, a tutorial about where we are and how we got here. Here’s the river bend that drew settlers and here’s the forest that still counts humans as an alien life form. These are the spots the politicians thought important enough to connect with roads and here are the blockades demanded by land owners who wanted a barrier around their properties. Governments have always picked winners and losers. Highways, or lack thereof, are Exhibit A.

The difference between a dot on a screen and a real map is the difference between data and knowledge. When you locate yourself on a screen, you can find out where you are. When you look at a real map, you can find yourself. With a real map, you can discover the road less taken and, as we know, that could make all the difference.

Online maps make us dumber, and there’s no better proof of that than a ride-share trip. I take a dozen ride-shares every month and the experience is always the same. The driver has been carting people around for five or six years and they still have no idea how to get around downtown. There’s a screen in front of the dashboard and a street with signs and actual traffic in front of them, but they only know how to read one of the two. Half my trips involve me asking why the driver is going in the wrong direction, although I know the answer before I bother to ask. It’s what the app says and they don’t know how to find anything IRL.

To be fair, I’ve fallen into the same trap, at least partially. I can’t remember the last time I needed to memorize a phone number, and I’m much more likely to check my phone than step outside when I want to know how warm it is. Yes, I’ll use GPS when it’s the only option, but I recognize this poor substitute for the impostor that it is. I’ll also settle for Jack Daniels when there’s no Maker’s Mark available, but I’ll know I could have done better. 

Soon, maybe it has happened already, reading a real map will be a lost art, much like memorizing a phone number and paying with cash. On the upside, I’ll feel like a Jedi, knowing how to redirect the force while those with weak minds must depend on Google Maps, but it’s going to be a loss for the rest of civilization.

Unlike online maps, life doesn’t follow only one path and the closest connection from A to B isn’t always the fastest, or vice versa. Sometimes, the best route is slower and scenic, maximizing enjoyment along the way. Watching yourself as a dot on a screen, tracing a predetermined path like a miniature Pac-Man, is the fate of avatars, not people. Real maps liberate us to see both what is and what could be, to consider all the potential of our physical and allegorical journey.

The smaller your screen, the smaller your world. Full-sized maps can save us, if only we believe.
 
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I came back from Antarctica with 1,200 photographs and maybe a dozen memories, which made my bucket-list trip an allegory of my life…so far.

All the photos remind me of something I saw while tromping around my seventh continent, which makes sense because they literally are the things I saw while tromping on my seventh continent. Or, maybe, they aren’t the things I saw at all, just the photographs I took along the way.

It’s a challenge for every photographer, and I’ve commiserated with dozens of them, but it’s also a challenge for every humanoid. There’s a balance point in the struggle between enjoying the moment and capturing the memory, and it’s damned tough to get the right balance.

I mock people who take pictures of their food instead of just enjoying their dinner, desperate to memorialize a bunch of calories that will be gone before they get their first like. Maybe that’s part of their enjoyment, though, sharing with friends or crowing about snagging the hot reservation.

And I’m as guilty of anyone, texting my wife or kids when I’m dining alone somewhere or posting something goofy to Facebook so I feel more connected to all my “friends.” Back in the old days, we spent vacation evenings writing postcards* to people back home, so none of this is anything new. Still, there’s a time for sharing and a time to simply be, to absorb the wonder, to just sit down and shut up and take it all in.

That’s the part where I really suck the worst. I’m especially bad at nature, since I work on a tight schedule and the animals should be polite enough to show up as soon as I get there. There’s nothing more irritating than waiting a whole ten minutes before the aardvark aarives. 

I went to Antarctica, it turns out, not to see the beauty of nature but to take pictures of the beauty of nature. There’s overlap, sure, but these are not even remotely the same experience. To my credit, I remember seeing everything that’s in the 1,200 images. To my regret, I remember rushing on to the next shot, without soaking it all in before I moved on.

“That must have been incredibly beautiful,” friends will say, and I will reply, “You might be right.” I’ll look at the image and think, “Wow, I wish I had seen that myself,” and then I remember that I did.

All of this makes me human, I suppose. In the race to see and do, to strive and achieve, it’s pretty easy to forget the part where we absorb and reflect. Every day in my world, some sound or scent or scene will evoke a memory from years ago and I’ll smile at the recollection. But I notice I’m not stopping much to capture the new sounds or scents or scenes for my future nostalgia.

The redeeming quality of the photos is that each sparks some memory of the moment I captured the image, the thought that led me to aim and shoot. Memories fade, but photographs revive them, giving them renewed energy to captivate and inspire. Still, there’s wisdom in the advice that we stop and smell the roses, even if the closest “roses” consist of kelp and penguin poop.

Next trip, next year, next part of the journey, maybe I’ll get it right.

* (Postcards were 3D text messages prepared by artisans who employed recyclable tree fibers, organic plant dye and a self-lubricating stylus to communicate with people who could not be accessed online. These masterpieces were so valuable the creators had them delivered personally by federal agents. Unfortunately, the art of postcard workmanship has been lost forever.)

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