Baggage

My roommate for 4 years in college was a trust-fund boi named Colby. His father, also named Colby, had invented the entire Universe … or maybe it was just the solar system. Whatever it was, it was Big, and we had “chairs” and a science building named after him. Like all good preppies, Colby, Jr. parted his hair down the middle and tucked the blonde ends behind his ears. He had a lacrosse stick and a tennis racquet mounted, like trophies, on the wall over his bed, but he never used them. Most of Colby’s college years were spent chain smoking Tareyton cigarettes and drinking amber glasses of single malt scotch. In his spare time, he was a History major. Fueled with two-toke Cambodian weed, Colby argued passionately that if you don’t study history and learn its lessons, you’re doomed (pretend you hear kettledrums) – as an individual and a society – to repeat them.

I’ve always believed just the opposite … which explains (in part) why after graduating I never talked to Colby again (although I have voyeuristically Googled his name and tried – without success - to find his Facebook page). It’s always seemed to me that if you treat any individual, relationship, or historical event as if it’s merely a repeat episode of something or someone else, you’ll never discover the uniqueness of anything! But, what do I know … ?[1]

All of this becomes relevant because I met Tyler a few days ago at a local club where guys-in-suits, flight attendants, and retail “sales associates” drink chardonnay or frozen strawberry margaritas after work. Tyler described his job and his ‘career’ as a former circuit-party-boy, who finally made it into a “program” and no longer spends entire weeks in an ecstasy-and-alcohol induced miasma. Tyler was attractive and sociable, but clearly his tires have lost some of their tread. Suddenly, as if waking up from a nap of self-absorption, Tyler asked about me. ‘So, what do you do, Steve?” He added quickly - as if his question was filled with hidden meaning - “For a living, I mean.”

After reminding him that my name is Scott, I told him the truth. I still get defensive about it. I expect a spate of lawyer-jokes, which for some reason people think are funny. Tyler’s reaction was swift: “Omigod,” he exclaimed. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you; my last boyfriend was a lawyer, and he was a total asshole. Lawyers are real jerks.” Tyler, please don’t punish me for a crime I didn’t commit.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum … That’s Latin for “That’s what I’m talking about.” Of course, we all have baggage … left over feelings that can sabotage relationships. “Assumptions,” my friend Patrick says, “are the termites of relationships.” I like to think that when I meet someone new, I give him a 100% clean scorecard. Eventually, I deduct a few points but only when I discover that he’s basically a sociopath or he doesn’t put the toilet seat down or he inserts a new roll of toilet paper so it unwinds from the bottom. Or maybe he wears a polo shirt with the collar flipped up. These are all crimes against nature.

So, Colby and Tyler, perhaps the only lesson we have to learn from history is that there really are no lessons to learn from history.

Baggage, after all, is “anything of more bulk than value.” I love that definition!

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[1] In his first edition of a dictionary published in 1596, Samuel Johnson defined luggage (baggage’s close cousin) as “lug (v.) … to drag … anything of more bulk than value.”

Crossing the Street

I just came back from a trip to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore. Whenever I leave my Comfort Zone, I always fly economy class so I never expect much. Maybe a thin foil bag of Planter’s peanuts and a plastic cup (half full) of warm diet coke. So I buy a turkey sandwich at Au Bon Pain and a bottle of water. Once TSA gets a whiff of my sneakers, they wave me through immediately. Getting to Asia I flew Cathay Pacific. Coming back I flew American Airlines. Do you know the difference between night and day? Is America a third-world country?

The seats on Cathay Pacific are wide and luxurious with huge armrests. They recline almost into a bed. The meals are served with complimentary wine or cocktails, and even the hoi polloi in steerage get cotton placemats and shiny cutlery. The flight attendants are well lip-glossed, shiny – like newly minted coins - and they never stopped smiling. If a wing fell off at 40,000 feet, I’m sure they’d smile sweetly and offer everyone another cocktail in 4 languages.

American Airlines reminded me of what it must feel like to be cattle going to slaughter. You’re held in a detention center euphemistically called the “gate” boarding area. The seats are plastic with no padding. The public address system sounds like a screechy dial-up Internet connection. It’s worse when you finally get strapped into the equivalent of the Electric Chair. Now I know how Julius and Ethel Rosenberg must have felt. The seats are narrow and uncomfortable, the video presentation before takeoff is garbled and incoherent (is my life vest under my seat? or is it located in the back of the seat in front of me? or is it located in a top-secret pocket in my armrest?). There’s no legroom, the overhead bins are small, and a “meal” consists of a greasy blueberry muffin with tiny containers of something called “jam” and something else labeled “butter.” I don’t believe a word of it.

I don’t want to write a travelogue; I couldn’t possibly compress a 2-week trip to Asia – with all of its exotic temples, pagodas, food smells, incense, gas fumes, knockoff designer jeans and eyeglass frames, spiky hair, motor scooters, missing teeth, shopping malls, unspoiled beaches, communism, and rampant capitalism into a few captivating paragraphs. So, go. See it for yourself. Eat street food (except for fish, it’s perfectly safe). Take a death-defying ride on a tuk-tuk (essentially a motor scooter with make-shift seats). Drink coconut water. Just don’t buy anything; it’s all made in China!

I’d been back for 2 days when my friend Cody called; he wanted to ‘hear all about it.’ So, we met for gin and tonics at a local ‘club’ (which isn’t really a club at all but likes to think it is). I’d been thinking how to answer his question. I didn’t want to give him a colorless litany of events. There had to be some theme or event that I could use to give the trip a meaningful narrative or exemplify the difference between life in the East and the West. I read over my meager notes; then read them again, and again. I scratched my head. Then, bingo, I had it. It’s the experience of crossing the street in Saigon (now officially known as Ho Chi Minh City, but still widely referred to as Saigon).

Crossing a street in Saigon is like entering a twilight zone; there’s an unreal feeling that you’re suddenly stuck at the intersection of walk-and-don’t-walk. There’s everywhere to go, and no way to get there because you can’t cross the street without upping your life insurance. In Saigon, traffic signals and signs are mere suggestions; everyone ignores them. It’s not uncommon for a frustrated cab driver to drive on the sidewalk.

Crossing the street in Saigon is like scampering across the track at a Formula One NASCAR event. It’s almost impossible. There are literally hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of motorcycles, scooters, pedicabs, motorbike cowboys, taxicabs, and cars engaged in their own horn-tooting, non-stop road race. Traffic never stops; drivers never look. Teenage boys and girls are too busy checking each other out over the handlebars.

At home, I wait obediently for the light to turn green and the little pedestrian icon to turn from red to white. Some intersections in Boston even have counters that tweet, like chirping parakeets, every second until the light changes. When the light does change, mirabile dictu, traffic stops.

Not so in Saigon. Here, fasten your seatbelt, so to speak. Past the pagodas and temples, past the teeming markets and ramshackle wooden shops selling silk, spices, baskets, and knock-off Rolex watches, this city is a dizzying, high-octane, chaotic free-for-all of commerce and limitless energy. The onslaught of traffic is so dense there’s actually no let-up, ever. Think of a tsunami of cars and cycles aimed directly at you. Add to that clouds of exhaust smoke, road dust, and the high-pitched whine of kamikaze pilots’ engines revved to the max.

Saigon is Vietnam’s commercial heart, a riverside metropolis of old and new with world-class restaurants and bars and a buzzing, seductive energy. If you want to cross the street in Saigon without ending up like a bug on a windshield, do not … repeat, do not … make the mistake of running quickly across it. Resist that temptation because you’ll die. Instead, cross the street slowly – very slowly – so that the kids on motorbikes can quickly calculate how to narrowly miss you. The traffic doesn’t stop for pedestrians or even slow down. Just don’t panic, don’t for gods sake stop, avoid any sudden moves, maintain eye contact, and - if you’re lucky - you’ll make it across the street.

Pat yourself on the back. You made it. It’s amazing in this motorized hornet’s nest that no one ever seems to get hurt.

A trip to Vietnam teaches an inexorable, albeit predictable lesson: we, who live in the West, enjoy a higher standard of living. Our cars stop at red lights, and pedestrians cross the street safely. But don’t confuse a higher standard of living with a better quality of life. Crossing the street in Saigon may be raw and dangerous, but it’s packed with adventure and challenge.

Who Pays?

The question of who picks up the check after a drinks-and-dinner-date is a complicated inquiry, vastly more nuanced and psychologically muscular than simply slapping down the plastic. The decision to pay for dinner is really a negotiation that starts long before you pick up a fork or order fois gras for a first course. Essentially, of course, it’s about power, which is itself about sex. So, I guess that when you boil-it-down it’s really about sex. But I guess you could say everything is about sex. Suffice it to say, we all anguish (at least a bit) about how to handle this delicate negotiation involving cocktails, crab cakes, flirtation, eye-gazing, insecurity, self-esteem, boundaries … and those often subtle, but intense, signals we give each other about wanting to feel wanted but not for sale.

So, let’s say you’re having dinner with Terry, as I was last week. We’d met at a bar. After locking eyes, I offered to buy him a drink. Then, after the obligatory small talk about gyms, personal training, and total irrelevance of Apple’s new iPad, he offered to buy the next round. So far, so good. Somehow - god only knows how - we managed to avoid any discussion of Avatar (a somewhat gimmicky 3-D movie which doesn’t, in my opinion, merit more than an modest Honorable Mention in any category). After a couple of ‘cosmos,’ we both agreed it would be great to ‘continue things’ over dinner.

After the usual scripted patter (Are you having a first course? Would you prefer a red or a white? Shall we order by the glass or get a bottle?), we trudged through dinner, essentially revising the same conversation we’d had at the bar. We pretended to look at the dessert menu (a motley collection of sorbet, flan, and assorted cookies), then told the waiter we were ‘all set’ and ready for the check. The waiter diplomatically put the leatherette folder with the check on the edge of the table at a point that essentially marked our 50-yard line, our line of scrimmage. We both squirmed slightly and ignored the check, each waiting for the other to make the first move.

I don’t know the etiquette for picking up the check when it’s a boy-girl date. My guess is that the boy picks up the check in order to prove that, if he were a caveman, he could drag home a giant mastodon and carve it up for dinner. It’s a “me-tarzan-you-jane” kind of moment when the boy proves he can ‘provide.’ Alternatively, you can think of it as a kind of foreplay where the boy buys the girl dinner, and the girl gives the boy sex afterwards. Sort of like an economy where two people barter for what they need or want, especially if one of them is short of cash.

With a boy-boy date it’s much more complicated. Money is not just money; it’s a way of establishing certainly dynamics in the relationship, such as who’s going to play the dominant role and who’s going to be submissive and courted. Which one is the hawk and which is the prey. These roles need to exist because you can’t have two hawks and two doves; it just won’t work. Each ‘position’ needs the other, although I don’t think anyone will ever really figure out whether these roles are learned as we grow up or whether we’re ‘hard wired’ for them because it’s in our chromosomes.

Picking up the check can mean you’re desperately alone, and you need someone to think he-owes-you-one. It can also mean you’re too wimpy to deal with the issue head-on by simply dividing it. But this gets gnarly. I mean, Terry had only one glass of wine, while I had two. He, however, had an appetizer … but I ate part of it. His entrée was a cheap chicken breast with a pallid sauce, while I had the 2-inch thick filet mignon (which was, in fairness to me, on special). We’re not old ladies with blue hair at Friendly’s who split their checks and actually calculate each person’s share of the tax! But if I suggest we split the check, I make out big-time; if he offers to split the check, he’s subsidizing my extravagence. Plus, there’s nothing romantic about going ‘Dutch’; that involves too much calculation - too much mathematics - at time when the flirtation should be seamless, unbroken, and rising.

At times like this, I’m reminded of my mother’s wise advice: Never stand when you can sit, never walk when you can ride, and never reach for the check when someone else offers.

If only it were that easy.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

So, maybe I’ve been living in a cave (albeit one that has a microwave oven, washer/dryer, an automatic icemaker, and granite countertops).  Idiot that I am, I’ve been thinking that health care reform, the war in Afghanistan, global warming, cap-and-trade, home foreclosures, the rate of unemployment, and steadying the financial markets are today’s most pressing issues.  Apparently, I’m wrong.

According to my friend Luke, who – like me – gets most of his news from Good Morning America while he’s on a treadmill, the tsarina of the President’s Council on Something Important announced recently that Public Enemy Number One is Spanking.  Yep, spanking.  She actually said – I saw it, too - with a completely straight-face:  “it’s time to enact federal no-spanking legislation.” She stopped just short of suggesting a constitutional amendment to the Bill of Rights.  She was talking about a recent study by University of New Hampshire “Professor” Murray Straus which concluded that children who are spanked have an IQ that is, on average, a whopping 2.8 points lower than kids who aren’t spanked! 

Forget for a minute that the standard error of measurement rules out any statistical significance for this so-called ‘study.’  Forget for a minute that my IQ can vary from day to day, based on how I’m feeling when I take the test.  Forget that IQ isn’t a static ‘thing’ and it’s not clear what kind of intelligence IQ tests measure.  Forget J.P. Guilford’s ground-breaking research that identified up to 180 different intellectual abilities.  2.8 points doesn’t mean squat!

This kind of pseudo-scientific blather is, of course, pure junk, but it highlights the important fallacy of confusing correlation with cause-and-effect.    A good example is heart disease:  there are a lot of factors associated with heart problems (age, diet, exercise, smoking, heredity, cholesterol, blood pressure) … but which ones actually cause the disease and which ones are just the result of the causing factor or the result of the disease itself?  Lots of Ph.D.s do shoddy research because they need to ‘get published,’ and they often jump to the wrong conclusion because they have a pet theory.  Like one of those chia pets from Walmart, put enough confusing statistical elements into it and it grows!  Sometimes, these sloppy statistical studies are referred to as the Rooster Syndrome because it gives credit to the rooster’s crowing for the fact that the sun rises!  I think not.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is Latin for “after this, therefore that” … a logical fallacy which states that “Since this event followed that one, this event must have been caused by that one.”  Expressed another way:  A happened, then B happened.  Therefore, A caused B to happen.  Many superstitious religious beliefs and magical thinking arise from this fallacy … as well as a lot of doctoral dissertations.

Take, for example, the fact that there’s a correlation between high annual income and body weight.  Can we conclude that high incomes make people eat more?  Or that having a high income makes people fat?  Nope, not a chance, even if you have a fancy-dancy degree in Something-or-Other. 

Let’s say that a sampling of Norwegian men eat elderberries every day for two, maybe 3 months, and their blood pressure is compared with guys who didn’t eat elderberries.  (Believe it or not, some numbskull actually did this ‘study’ and someone else published it!).  Can we conclude, as the study did, that eating elderberries lowers blood pressure?  Icks-nay (that’s pig-Latin for ‘no’).  Perhaps the group with the lowered blood pressure found it relaxing to lie back on a chaise lounge and pop one berry after another into their mouths.  Perhaps the time away from their real jobs had something to do with lowered blood pressure.  Perhaps just thinking about their participation in a scientific-sounding study lowered their blood pressure.  Perhaps they washed down their elderberries with Finnish vodka.  Point is:  you can’t know because there’s no cause-and-effect.

So, this is how I view life.  Things happen.  Sometimes I beat myself up and make myself promise I’ll never do that again.  But, upon reflection, I realize that most of the time I contributed to the outcome, but I didn’t make it happen.  There’s a correlation between my behavior and the crappy things that happen to me.  But crappy things happen anyway, whether I eat elderberries or not, and I’m going to give up the illusion that everything happens because of some particular thing I do … or that there’s a reason for everything.  It’s not all about me. A high correlation can occur by chance alone or because both variables are related to some other variable … and sometimes stuff simply happens.

 

Color-Coded Insecurity

Colors are not only pretty; they can be important symbols.  We all know, for example, that in a hospital “Code Blue” means that a patient has gone into cardiac arrest and is about to give up the ghost.  It’s synonymous with URGENT!

Some of us also know that at a stop light red means stop, green means go, and yellow means put the pedal to the metal and gun it!  But did you also know that orange is the color-coded threat level indicating that there’s a “high risk” of a grave, possibly cataclysmic terrorist attack?  I didn’t either … until this past weekend.

I was at the airport in Minneapolis when suddenly the ‘PA’ system woke up – and, in a  voice that sputtered like someone clearing the mucous in his throat – ominously announced that the TSA ‘under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security’ had declared that the security level was ‘orange.’  Omigod, not orange, please god, any color but orange.

I looked around, not knowing if I’d just been warned that bearded men named Abdullah were carrying dirty bombs in their canvas Banana Republic courier bags or if the world was suddenly now safe for democracy.  Was ‘orange’ the hi-tech version of a 1950’s air-raid siren?  I didn’t see signs to a bomb shelter, so I made a mad dash to Arby’s in case ‘orange’ was a signal that I had only a few seconds to grab my last overcooked roast beef sandwich on a sesame-seeded bun.  I wasn’t going down without a fight … or a last meal of all-American junk food (even if it meant 'going down' with a stringy piece of roast beef stuck in a molar).  

The Homeland Security Advisory System, developed by Tom Ridge – who clearly missed his calling as a rocket scientist - is a color-coded terrorism threat advisory scale.  Sometimes it’s called the terror alert level.  I’m sure it was created by the same geniuses who invented the ‘idiot lights’ on my car’s dashboard … you know, those colored icons – like the ‘check engine’ light - that start to glow for no reason at all, except maybe the gas cap is loose.  If we’re going to live in an age of anxiety, we at least need to know how much xanax to take.  Instead, we have a system of color-coded idiot lights that no one knows or understands.  I mean, what are you supposed to do when the TSA – suddenly and without warning - announces that the threat level is ‘yellow!’

I note, by the way, that while Orange means “High” risk of terrorist attack and Yellow means “Elevated” risk, there’s no category or color for “It’s All Good” or “Just Chill.”  Apparently, we’re constantly on the verge of attack.  It’s no wonder my blood pressure is high … or perhaps I should say “elevated” … or perhaps there’s no difference … quien sabe?

I propose a system based on numbers.  It could either be tranquilizer-based, such as warnings ranging from 0.5 milligrams (no real worries) to full-blown 2 milligram risk of attack.  Or, it could a simple numeric system from 1 to 5 – the kind of straight-forward way we rate tropical storms and hurricanes.  This would be an effective warning system because most people can count … even if they have to use their fingers.

Anything would be better than the silly, useless color-coded system conceived in a state of panic.  I’m not suggesting we let down our guard, only that we can’t live in a constant state of orange or false alarms.

 

 

"Have You At Last No Shame, Sir?"

You know you’re “getting on in years” when you start to reminisce about how different, or better, or simpler, or tougher things were when you were growing up than they are today.  I stomped 2 miles in three feet of wet snow to get to school, for example (this is completely false, of course!).  Today, school officials cancel classes when it might snow.  When I was growing up, I had to earn my paltry 50 cents of weekly allowance money (this was, however, at a time when that kind of coinage got me 4 Whitecastle cheeseburgers with grilled onions).  In exchange, I had to wash the family Chevy Bel Air, rake leaves, push the lawnmower, or polish my father’s shoes (which I once did with Colgate toothpaste!).  Some of this is apocryphal, of course.  But the point is that we were active.  We did things.  Some of them badly; some of them illegal; some of them on the golf course late at night.

During the tumultuous Vietnam War years (in between hits of ink-blotter acid and Cambodian weed), we occupied administration buildings, burned flags and social security cards, made fake plans to flee to Canada to avoid the draft, carried placards, tie-dyed our t-shirts, marched on Washington, and, in general, made lots of noisy protest against the war and a seemingly callous, out-of-touch administration.  Kent State - where half a dozen college kids got cut down by a nervous, trigger-happy and under-trained National Guard - wasn’t Tiananmen Square, but it grabbed world attention.  We were cutting-edge!

So, what did I hear on college campuses for 8 years of the Bush Administration?  Yawn.  Silence.  Not a peep.  Everyone was too busy getting an MBA or MP3 player or downloading something-or-other.  Or maybe they all just overslept.  But if you don’t have idealism and the energy to make yourself heard at that age, then hang your soul on a coat hook and kiss it goodbye.

I depend on college students to carry the banner of protest.  They have more time, louder voices, and better organizing skills than I do; they can cut classes.  We should teach every sophomore that Making-the-World-Safe-for-Democracy is, like, wicked more important than chemistry class.  So, please do me a favor – do yourself a favor- do the country a favor - start saving us god-fearing folk from the right-wing, fundamentalist crazies who are trying to save us.  They’re like cockroaches; they keep coming back.   Their character flaws - depression, mental illness, extra-marital affairs, struggles with homosexuality,  drugs and pornography, and domestic abuse - hide in the folds of their flag-waving hypocrisies.

Recently, self-proclaimed ‘family values’ opportunist Sarah Palin made her rabid – and flat-out wrong - remark that Pres. Barack Obama’s proposal for health care reform created ‘death squads.’  Shortly afterwards, Orly Taitz (who organized the movement to prove that Pres. Obama’s Hawaiian birth disqualifies him from being President) went on FOX ‘news’ (so-called) to declare that ‘If Obama isn’t stopped, we will be in Nazi Germany.’  This is obviously someone with way too much time on her hands.  Does she know that Sen. John McCain was born in Panama?  I doubt it because I doubt she knows much about anything, except how to get attention.  I knew how to do that, too, when I was a child. 

It’s obvious that Rep. Joe Wilson (R.-So. Carolina) is a political hack.  His boorish cat-call “You lie” during President Obama’s recent address to the Joint Session of Congress reminded me of the time, on June 9, 1954, when Joseph N. Welch – head counsel for the U.S. Army – responded to Sen. Joseph McCarthy:  “Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness …. Have you no sense of decency, sir?  At long last, have you left no sense of decency”?

In this summer of town hall disruptions and birth certificate controversies, a summer when it seemed as if the Republican Party has been captured by its extremist wing, it’s worth remembering Pres. Dwight Eisenhower’s warning to “beware the danger posed by those seeking freedom from the mental stress and burden of democracy.”

His point is that the rise of extreme movements and authoritarianism can take root anywhere … even in a democracy ... maybe especially in a democracy.

 

Why I Get Up Early

My friend (and erstwhile boyfriend), Connor, thinks that any time before noon-ish is ‘early.’  He also thinks 4 a.m. is a respectful bedtime.  Connor has never seen the sun rise, unless he happens to be taking a ‘walk of shame’ on his way home from an after-hours club or someone’s apartment.  Even then, I’m sure he wears sunglasses.  Maybe Connor is a vampire.

I, on the other hand, prefer to get up early.  My alarm goes off at 5 a.m. every morning, even on weekends.   I have been known to hit the snooze button occasionally because there is, I admit, something delightful and cozy about being awake enough to appreciate the fact you’re still asleep … that la-la land where you pull up the covers and squeeze or scrunch the pillow.   My Mr. Coffee – with its soothing green light-emitting diodes – gets up at the same time.  I love Mr. Coffee.

I like getting up early because it’s the only time left for human beings.  Morning is the ‘poet’s hour’ … an unblemished, quiet time when the day is ready for new and better transcriptions … when you can feel the vast solitude, without all the clatter of traffic and the hurried rush of other people trying to get Somewhere.  

My father taught me this lesson when he took me fishing as a boy.  He’d get me up at an ungodly hour – like 4 a.m. – and drive to a nearby diner.  We ate scrambled eggs, white toast painted with butter, and greasy bacon.  It was still dark when we loaded our small, flat-bottomed boat with fishing gear and cranked up the 3-hp Evinrude outdoor motor.  We rarely caught anything, but that wasn’t the point.  The point was to be together, to feel the waves gently rock the boat, and to marvel at the blackness of it all – the sky, the sea, and even the stillness.

When we headed back to the dock, we passed other boats and people just heading out.  They waved at us, and we waved back.  No one actually spoke; the wave-without-words is like a code of some kind, sort of like a secret handshake.  I felt that we – my father and I –were better than these other people.  There was a feeling of superiority in knowing that our day had started long before theirs.  We’d been bottom-fishing for flounder or trolling for ‘blues’ while the rest of the world was still lazily in bed.

Do things when other people don’t, he taught me.  If you want to enjoy a nice dinner without feeling rushed because the waiter needs to ‘turn over the table,’ don’t go at 7:30 p.m. on a Friday or Saturday night.  Instead, go at 5:30; or go on Monday night.  If you want a tennis court, play early; after 10, the courts are jammed.  Want to see a popular movie?  Don’t go on a rainy Saturday afternoon.  Do things when other people don’t.

I’m not talking about the early-bird special at Denny’s; that’s about reaching-a-certain-age and cheap-eats, and I’ve got no bone to pick with either of those!     But there’s a way in which if you want to avoid the ‘madding crowd’ and live in a way that isn’t constantly clashing with everyone else’s need to do the same thing at the same time at the same place, you’ve got to be out of ‘synch’ with the rest of the world. 

That’s why I get up early.  Try it; it'll help you to see the light of day.