The Attic

 

First, an apology to my dedicated readers for a two-month abandonment. Between MBA term finals at Columbia and two weeks of vacation, I have been off the radar. But school is now back in swing and I am back at the keyboard!

Our vacation included a week in Alaska, which was refreshing on so many levels. Partly, a respite from balancing the responsibilities of a full-time job and part-time school. But also on a deeper level, a refreshing of the spirit in being among grand natural monuments, largely untouched by human development. The picture at top is one of many I took trying to capture moments of sweeping mountains, blankets of fog, immense glaciers, and myriad wildlife. Alaska calls itself “the Last Frontier,” and in many ways this is true; there is simply so much untouched space that you feel you could truly come and live an adventure. (That said, the winters would be an ‘adventure’ in and of themselves). I kept thinking of Psalm 8:3-4:

 

“When I consider your heavens,
   the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
   which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
   human beings that you care for them?” 

The other aspect I enjoyed in Alaska was a re-focusing of priorities. One of our excursions took us kayaking in Ketchikan with a great company, Southseas Kayak. Our guide grew up in Australia, visited Alaska a couple years ago, fell in love, and decided to stay with $10 in his pocket. He now owns a small boat that he lives in, and guides kayak tourists like us around for fun and to pay the bills. Worried about what you’re having for dinner tonight? This guy keeps a small trap outside his boat and eats whatever he catches for dinner. In the inland states, a complex and myriad-choice land of supermarkets and strip malls, we have so many things to pick from. But what should we really focus on in our lives? How can we be choosy about choosing?

Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Study in Scarlet” contains one of the more famous Sherlock Holmes quotations, showing Holmes to be quite conscientious in what he chooses to learn:

"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."

I don’t recommend following this so whole-heartedly that, as Sherlock admitted, you don’t know that the planets revolve around the sun rather than the other way around. But it is about priorities, and one of my goals this term is to be more consciensious about choosing and focusing on my priorities. There are certainly lots of things I could do – but the real question is what should I do? The answer to this will change with changes in circumstances, but I want to keep Alaska's reminder that life is only as complicated as we choose to make it.