Goodbye!

When I was in grade school, we used literature books published by Prentice Hall. They were full of short stories and essays. We typically had to read at most about 1/5 of them, but I normally read all of them anyway. One of the extra readings that I particularly remember is from ninth grade: "Sayonara" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (an excerpt from her book "North to the Orient"). It is an essay about saying goodbye that looks at what we are really saying when we say goodbye in different ways. Goodbye (short for God be with you) and Adios are blessings and wishes for the protection of those who are leaving (Farewell and Slan are non-religious wishes for things to go well). Auf Wiedersehen, Au Revoir, and such sayings are a statement of hope that the time of separation will be short. But Sayonara means "since it must be so." It isn't a statement of hopes or expectations, it is a simple acceptance of what is happening. It is, according to Mrs. Lindbergh, the most beautiful of all goodbyes. I don't entirely agree with this, as I think it depends on the situation.

As a student for the past 12 years, I have watched many people graduate and leave. Sometimes the blessings seem appropriate (people going off to grad school or a job). Sometimes I really do expect the goodbye to be temporary and using one of those forms is best (summer jobs and short breaks). I can only think of a few examples where I really felt that Sayonara would have been most appropriate (mostly people leaving for medical reasons).

I first recalled this essay when breaking up for the first time. Sayonara had never seemed as appropriate as it did then. After a lengthy period of trouble in our relationship, it was clear that things were over. "Since it must be so" is a good description of how I felt about it. Two and a half months of happiness followed by six weeks of uncertain misery led to me understanding that we wanted different things. Sayonara, an acceptance of reality as it is rather than as we want it to be. And as we broke up, we agreed that we would remain friends, which is the part that mattered most to me.

This summer I again thought of this essay. My time at MIT is drawing to an end, and it is time to move on to the next part of my life. But how can you say goodbye to an institution? I have been at MIT for about two fifths of my life, nearly twice as long as I have been anywhere else. For so many years, MIT has been my home. I have learned all the twists and turns of the hallways, where the bathrooms and water fountains are, and how to quickly get between points even when classes are switching. I have explored the innermost parts of the buildings and found the places of true beauty on campus. MIT has taught me my limits. I have watched the campus grow and change as new buildings were added and old ones were renovated. I have watched the world be completely transformed while I hid in the safety of MIT's academic halls. There are many stories I have made about the things I did and failed to do at MIT.

But now it comes to an end. I don't expect to be back, so some variant of "until later" wouldn't be right. And I don't think that blessing MIT makes any sense. But sayonara isn't right either. There is an edge of sadness in that expression. It suggests a premature parting. I want something more like 2 Timothy 4:7 - "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." I have done what I came to do, and MIT has little more to offer me. I also have little more to offer to MIT. It is time to go, because I am done. This is not a time for saying "since it must be so." There is no significant difference between reality as it is and reality as I wish it could be. I have been at MIT for long enough; I have done what I came to do. I suppose the appropriate thing to say is "Thank you."

There is another parting in my life right now. Someone I have been friends with for a long time is leaving. We were for a while very close and for a while very distant, but in the past few months our friendship has been pretty much right where I wanted it. And now, almost exactly 6 Martian years from when we first met, she is moving halfway across the country with her family. They have an opportunity which is too good to pass up. And as much as I would like to continue seeing them regularly, I want even more to see them continuing to succeed in life. This is a situation where the proper goodbye really is Farewell, Slan, Good Luck. And so to Erin, Ben, and Blaise, I have this to say:

Slan go foill. Go raibh mile maith agaibh. We will miss you, but we wish you well. Good luck in North Dakota.

How a Thesis is like a Newborn

In the following, I use the term thesis to refer to all the work involved in completing a PhD.

Ways in which a thesis and a newborn are similar:

• both consume all of your time, significantly cutting into your social life and making you lose contact with some friends
• both seriously interfere with getting enough sleep
• both are something you put a lot of effort into in the hope that someday they will produce a meaningful benefit to the world, but you have to accept that most likely they will both go unnoticed by the world at large
• both are capable of making you feel completely incompetent and unable to do anything right for what feels like forever
• both are a good way to meet other people doing the same thing
• friends and family give you advice on both, which is only sometimes useful
• both have a very frustrating way of telling you that something is wrong, but not indicating in any way whatsoever what is wrong
• both are expected to triple in size over the course of a year (different years of course)
• both produce lots of meaningless gibberish

Ways in which a thesis and a newborn are different:

• your thesis is never going to smile at you
• your thesis never seems to be satisfied with what you have done
• your thesis's problems can't be solved in a few minutes
• nobody has claimed that putting your uncovered thesis on your naked chest is good for anything
• your thesis didn't come into the world looking like it came from an alien race, you had to spend years working on it to provide that appearance
• your thesis doesn't smell good
• your thesis doesn't look like you, your partner, or any of your relatives
• your thesis does not become more independent over time
• your thesis will not be damaged by unexpectedly rolling off a table while your back is turned
• you don't have to thesis-proof your house
• you are not genetically programmed to fall in love with your thesis
• people offer to make food for you when you have a newborn
• people do not come over and ask to hold your thesis
• people are actually interested in your newborn (some people, not everybody)
• your thesis isn't your responsibility for 18 years (I sure hope not anyway)
• you can drop out of a PhD program
• neglecting your thesis is not illegal
• you don't have to pay people to watch your thesis when you are unable to
• you get to choose a partner for raising a newborn (most of the time)
• you can't accidentally apply to, be accepted by, and enroll in a PhD program
• there isn't a committee that decides when your newborn is good enough for you to move on with your life
• removing a useless appendix from your thesis does not require major surgery
• random strangers on the subway don't comment on or try to touch your thesis
• when you first bring your thesis home, your pets don't react to it at all
• nobody asks you to track how much waste your thesis produces
• the soft spots in your thesis won't go away on their own
• if you fall asleep with your thesis on your chest, you won't wake up to the feeling of something sucking on your neck
• you don't have to buy any furniture for your thesis
• most people know what a newborn is, but have not heard of sub-Riemannian geometry or astrodynamics
• people never mistakenly think you study stars when you say you have a newborn
• you are allowed to physically damage your thesis when you are mad at it
• your thesis is not at risk of suddenly dieing because you put it down the wrong way
• nobody thinks your thesis is "the cutest thing ever"
• people don't post pictures of their thesis on facebook (or at least not large numbers of pictures)
• you don't normally put your newborn on your resume or expect him/her to be useful for getting a job later
• your thesis never learns to sleep through the night
• when your thesis does something strange and unexpected, you can't call somebody and ask if it is actually normal
• all your ancestors successfully raised at least one child, but most of them did not do academic research
• when you talk about your child, people understand the words you are using
• you can backup your thesis in case you make a mistake later or a hardware problem causes you to lose it
• most parents don't pressure their children to get a PhD
• you can pretend to not have a thesis for a few weeks before it causes a problem

Significant dates in my life

This is a list of some important days in my life. Some of them have an explanation of what was important, some of them I don't want to explain.

Jan 16, 2000
Feb 19 - Michael's birthday
Feb 19, 2000
Feb 25, 1994
Feb 25, 2000
Mar 1, 1994
April 10, 2000
May 7, 2005 - Mira and I got engaged
June 17, 2007 - Mira and I got married
July 3, 1999 - Rebecca's wedding
July 17 - my mother's birthday
July 23 - Daniel's birthday
Aug 2 - Darlene's birthday
Aug 22, 1998 - the day I arrived at MIT
Aug 24, 1992 - Hurricane Andrew
Aug 24, 2002 - Darlene's wedding
Sep 4, 1990 - we met Kim
Sep 24, 2010 - I passed my PhD defense
Sep 28, 2002 - Michael's wedding
Oct 4, 1999 - I first tried change ringing
Oct 7, 1999 - I first tried change ringing on tower bells
Oct 5 - my parent's anniversary
Oct 11 - my birthday
Oct 24, 1999
Nov 9, 2003 - Mira and I started dating
Nov 17 - Mira's birthday
Nov 17, 2000
Nov 22 - Rebecca's birthday
Nov 24, 1992
Nov 30 - my father's birthday
Dec 19, 1995 - my Eagle Scout board of review

By my count, 5 of those days were the happiest day of my life (up to that point). 2 of them were the worst day of my life (up to that point).

Joining Together

Earlier this week was Simchat Torah, the day when Jews all over the world press the rewind button on their Torah scrolls (this results in lots of dancing and jumping, probably because nobody wants to be the person with enough energy to actually rewind the scroll - and because dancing is fun). Which means today we started at the beginning again. I was amused that there is a page of commentary on the first half verse in the Torah, which consists of about 6 words. Most of that commentary was basically saying that the Biblical story of creation should not be taken literally and explaining how someone can deny that the story is literally true without claiming that it is false. It's nice to know that some people really don't have anything important to do with their time (an interesting thing to write in a blog).

Moving on, we had the first story of creation. The commentary pointed out that after the second day of creation, God did not end the day by observing that things were good. So according to God, Mondays are not good, but all other days are. Tuesday is the day of earth and fertile lands, which I find interesting for personal linguistic reasons.

Then we get to the second creation story. This is the one with few details about the world being made and lots of details about people being made. I've always liked the bit about how man and woman were separated and are supposed to rejoin in marriage. I've had four girlfriends for a total of just over 9.5 years of romantic relationships, and somehow that just seems like the right way to put things. The brother of one of my girlfriends asked why she would date someone when she had no intention of getting married ever and how it was different from being friends. But it really is different from just being friends, because there is some amount of joining together. Everyone I have dated has left an impression on me - some part of themselves that will always be with me. The closer we got, the stronger the impression is. My friends have changed me too, but in much weaker ways.

This summer I spent a lot of time thinking about my time at MIT, which inevitably included a lot of thinking about my past relationships. One thing that I realized is that while I had a good time with my previous girlfriends (and have many good memories involving them), Mira is the one who properly completes me. She both makes me a better person and has strengths where I have weaknesses. The two of us together are far more capable than either of us would be alone. There are many examples of how we work well together as partners. At this point I really do feel like I was an incomplete person waiting for Mira to fill in the areas that I was missing.

But this joining together goes beyond just helping each other out. When I asked Mira to marry me, I wrote an essay describing why I loved her and wanted to marry her and what that means to me. Part of that was based on this section of the bible, with two people joining together to become one. People can be joined physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I think that's the right order. Physical is definitely first, because it is the easiest and also the only one that can't be maintained indefinitely. Being emotionally joined is a wonderful experience, although you have to be careful about emotions traveling between people. Mental and spiritual joining are more subtle and I don't think we've really gotten there yet. Mira and I have spent very little time apart from each other in the past 5 years, but we have felt the separation each time. I really can't imagine my life without her.

Going back to the Torah reading of the day, I also like the Jewish concept that God started creation and left it to us to complete it. More on that later.

(By the way, I don't think the male/female thing is particularly important to this concept, and I recognize that other people have different concepts of dating, love, and marriage which I respect as equally valid)

What is a blue fluffy cotton ball?

I have told many people that I am a blue fluffy cotton ball, but I haven't explained how that came to be many times. The story involves three people, but I am only certain about the identities of two of them. The third one was a resident of Loop Floor, who I will identify as E for the purposes of this story, although that may indicate the wrong person. The other characters are me (J) and someone I won't name (R). The setting is Loop Kitchen, early September 1999, sometime in the early evening. E and I were sitting at the tables in the middle of the room facing the wall with the mirror, and under the mirror there was a table on which somebody had left some junk they were throwing out with a note saying that anybody could take whatever they wanted.

R: (walks in and looks at the table)

R: What's that?

E: It's just some useless junk that somebody is getting rid of. I don't know why they didn't just throw it out.

R: (walks over to table, looks through the things, and picks up a bag of cotton balls and a cardboard rectangle with the center removed)

R: This isn't just junk. I can make abstract art out of it.

E: And what's that supposed to be?

R: It represents how we are all trapped by the rules of society, like how these cotton balls are trapped in this bag. And I have a frame for it.

J: Oh yeah, that makes sense. I'm the little blue cotton ball right there.

R: (looks at the bag of cotton balls. Looks confused and looks more closely)

R: There are no blue cotton balls in there.

J: I know, I escaped.

So that's how I became a little blue cotton ball. But that quickly morphed into a blue fluffy cotton ball, because it sounds better.


Also, when I say cotton ball here, I mean little pompoms, which are fluffy balls made out of cotton. I don't mean the things that are generally called cotton balls, which are almost always white and used by small children to make clouds. Sorry, I'm a rocket scientist, not an artist. How am I supposed to know the proper names for these things?

What? You are/aren't Jewish?

Every now and then, somebody will ask me about my religion. Normally this happens when someone finds out that I'm not Jewish, or when they find out I go to synagogue fairly regularly instead of church. I normally say it's complicated, because it actually is.

First, a bit of background. I come from a very religious Christian family. How religious? Here is my mom's website. Notice how she writes bible study books. We went to mass basically every week when I was growing up and had bible study most nights. I've read the bible all the way through multiple times. When I went off to college, I continued going to mass every week even though almost nobody at MIT was religious in any way. When I started dating my first girlfriend at MIT, we spent the day talking until I ended what was up to that time the happiest day of my life so that I would not miss the last mass of the day (at 5pm). This background is the reason that people are surprised that I now go to synagogue instead of church and celebrate almost all of the Jewish holidays.

In the more recent past, I went to Friday night services at MIT Hillel basically every week for about 5 years. I went regularly enough that most new people didn't realize I wasn't Jewish for at least a few months. I've been almost counted for minyan many times. People would talk about how Jews shouldn't even date non-Jews right in front of Mira and I and then get embarrassed when someone reminded them that I am not Jewish. I've been complimented on how well I can read Hebrew and I once organized Reform services over the summer. More recently we started going to an actual synagogue. After a little while, they started asking us if we wanted to have any of the various parts in the service, and it took a few more months before the people in charge of that managed to remember that I am not Jewish before offering me a part (which only Jews can actually do). This is the source of people that are surprised when they find out I'm not Jewish.

The story of how I changed my religious practices is not actually very interesting and I don't remember it well enough to tell it properly anyway. The end result though is that I am a Celtic Christian that goes to synagogue.

There are only two large groups of people that I am aware of that converted to Christianity without having their lives threatened: the first Christians and the Irish (many individuals converted freely, but I mean processes of entire cultures converting). One result of this is that Christianity in Ireland was separate from Christianity in mainland Europe for several centuries. It also peacefully coexisted with Celtic paganism for several hundred years. It also means that Celtic Christianity was established and outside the Catholic church when the Catholic church was first corrupted (the early corruption of the Catholic church has mostly been corrected, and I do not consider the modern Catholic church to be particularly bad - but the Church does not have a history that it can be proud of).

Some people think that the separation of church and state is important for political reasons. Many of my atheist friends seem to be concerned about what religious leaders will do to a government. It is a valid concern, but it is nothing compared to what giving religious leaders political power does to the religion. Once the bishop of Rome became one of the most powerful politicians in Europe, while simultaneously being one of the few positions that was theoretically open to anybody, power hungry idiots started trying to get as high up in the church as possible. These are not the people that I want leading my religion. People whose primary motivation is acquiring power over others don't tend to have morals that I agree with.

One particular argument between the Celtic church and the Catholic church was the split between Pelagian Christianity and Augustinian Christianity. Pelagius argued that people are not inherently good or evil, and that their actions determine whether they are good or bad. He argued that people learn to sin because they are raised in a society full of sin, and that ultimately people are responsible for their own actions. Augustine argued that people are inherently evil and that we can only avoid sinning because every now and then the grace of God will shine upon us and allow us to do the right thing. A consequence of this is that people can't prevent themselves from sinning and are sort of not responsible for their own actions - bad things happen to people because God is punishing them, and good things happen to other people because God has decided to reward them. This was a popular idea in Rome, where the rich bishops were surrounded by people suffering from poverty. The Irish mostly did not have people living in poverty (except for some of the crazy monks that wanted to) because they had support structures in place to provide for those who needed support.

Pelagius's teachings were declared heretical by the Catholic church (thouch interestingly, Pelagius himself was never officially declared a heretic), with the stated reason being that in Pelagian Christianity, God is, strictly speaking, not necessary. In Augustinian Christianity, God is necessary to provide some support to people so that they can occasionally be good and Jesus is necessary to provide a mechanism for people to be forgiven for the sins that they will commit. Pelagian Christianity teaches that people are responsible for their own actions, and while God may provide assistance and guidance that encourages people to be good, it is ultimately their choice and even people who are unaware of God can be good. In theory, someone could even manage to live their entire life without sinning, which would make the sacrifice of Jesus unnecessary. I find that argument to be pretty weak and mostly irrelevant anyway. I'm not picking my theology based on what might hurt God's feelings.

The important distinction is that in Pelagian Christianity, God is viewed as a teacher who provides guidance that people can follow to be better people, while in Augustinian Christianity, God is viewed as an all powerful miracle worker who decides who will be good and who won't be. So in Pelagian Christianity, it is all about trying to be a good person. Not because of some promised reward (like getting into heaven), but just simply because it is the right thing to do. I have been asked if I think that people can earn their way into heaven by being good enough, and that is most certainly not what I mean; I consider the question of how people get into heaven to be basically irrelevant and unimportant.

When Mira took a class about religious thought in America, she stated very clearly a major difference between Judaism and most forms of Christianity: Christianity is about orthodoxy, while Judaism is about orthopraxy. In other words, most forms of Christianity are distinguished by beliefs, and a good Christian is someone who believes the right things, while a good Jew is someone who does the right things. Pelagian Chrsitianity is also more about orthopraxy than orthodoxy. Ultimately, in Pelagian Christianity, the best thing that a person can do is try to sin as little as possible and to raise their children to do even better.

So now I have gotten to the point where it begins to make sense that I could suddenly switch from actively going to church all the time to actively going to synagogue all the time. The moral teachings are essentially identical, and that is the part that matters most to me. Combine that with substantially more freedom to argue ideas (Jews are actually encouraged to debate theology, rather than just accepting what they are told), and it is only natural that I would prefer Jewish practices. Mira did not drag me to synagogue, she brought me once and then I dragged her to synagogue until she liked it enough to go on her own. Our religious compromise was that we would practice her religion, but we would do so to the degree that I had been raised with. At the time, this was probably more of a compromise for Mira than it was for me.

My favorite religious holiday is Holy Thursday (which is the only day that I insist on going to church still). To me, the essence of Christianity is displayed more clearly on that day than any other. Holy Thursday is the celebration of the last supper. It is the day on which the reading focuses on Jesus getting together with his disciples and washing their feet. So you have the leader of this new religion, who is in some sense God or a high-ranking servant of God, doing the lowest task any servant would be asked to do. I don't think you can have a much clearer statement of the idea that people are supposed to be kind to each other and help each other. No matter what the task is, you are not too good for it and it is not beneath you. Service to God and other people is the point.

And today is what is possibly my second favorite religious holiday: Yom Kippur. It is a kind of odd holiday to like, since it is kind of unpleasant with the fasting and everything. But it emphasizes the idea that we have sinned, the world is a worse place because of that, and we have a responsibility to try to fix the problems we have caused. We can't always fix what we have broken, but we should at least try. And we should be aware of what we have done and what we have failed to do, so that we can try to do better in the future.