"I like jazz"
"No, you don't."
I respond with something like,
you can't say that.
And she replies,
in the last five years, I haven't heard you listening to any jazz, or going to any jazz concerts. Therefore, you don't like jazz.
I don't normally mention this conversation to give her credit, but this morning I will: in that moment I thought, yeah, I do like jazz but I haven't listened to anything in a long time. My stated preferences didn't match my what I was actually doing.
In high school I really enjoyed our jazz band - many of my friends were members, so I heard many of their rehearsals and performances. One of my favorite tapes in college was the soundtrack to the movie
'Round Midnight, and perhaps the highlight of my freshman year was seeing
Branford Marsalis in concert. My junior year, one of my favorite tapes was John Scofield's
Still Warm. Michelle and I listened to that one a lot, and if I didn't have the tape anymore it was because I gave it to her after we broke up (and if I did have the tape, I probably didn't listen to it because it reminded me so much of Michelle). Which is to say, there was a point in my life when jazz was important. But it was pointed out to me that
my actions hadn't matched my self-understanding. That, I think, was really important, and it made me change my actions (in this case, I started reading about jazz and slowly accumulating a fairly
large collections of CDs). Perhaps a trivial example, but I hope illustrative of something more significant.
What's the flip side of that - what do I actually do? Well, every day I read a variety of news sources - national politics from the Washington Post, global news from Foreign Policy, headlines from
Slate, analysis and culture from
The New Yorker, and of course
Paul Krugman's blog and editorials. I care about being informed, and my actions reflect that. (I also like discussing news and politics, but that takes someone who is also relatively well-informed.)
What else do my actions reflect? I care about what I eat, both in terms of health and impact on the environment. I don't always articulate it like that - I'm not proselytizing for vegetarianism all the time - but I try to make sure my choices are consistent with that (also remembering the virtue of being a gracious guest - I like to phrase it in terms of
Luke 10:7 - emphasis on "whatever they provide"). Oh yeah, I read the Bible, as well as
other spiritual literature - and the poetry of
Mary Oliver,
Rainer Maria Rilke, and
various Chinese poets - not every day, but more than once a week. I think that accurately reflects my need for a spiritual connection, even as I'd like to make it more central to my life.
I buy organic and/or fair trade foods when I can; that's been difficult economically recently, and I worry that's it's gotten too easy for me to just go cheap. I understand that my
commitment to organic and fair trade foods isn't enough. I try to shop at local stores, probably not as much as I should, but I never shop at Wal*Mart if there's any other option (and I can say a lot more about that, but not today).
And I wonder, what else do my actions reflect - what do people see when they see me? Not just looking at a picture, or even across the table, but acting the in world? My values may or may not be revealed in the stories I tells about myself - because stories can be a good way of
concealing, as well as revealing - but my actions reflect my true values, whether or not they match what I say.
I'm talking about
integrity here, and I want to be clear that it's something I'm working on; I think that's a work-in-progress for everyone, all the time (except maybe for people who've reached
Kohlberg's Stage 6 of moral development). But not just integrity: it's also about identity, who I am. I can tell you I like Indian food and jazz, I can tell you stories (eating a tablespoon full of wasabi in Boston!) but that doesn't necessarily tell you who I
really am.
All of which is a lengthy preamble to the question,
who are you?
...the hearing of the so-called joke, not the subject of said joke.
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