Recalibration

...recalibration.

Just finishing my sentence from the previous post, sorry.

Recalibration is the better way of which I spoke. Better, I propose, than binge drinking at getting a pessimist like me off the steeply downgrading road to deep depression. Impressive, right? I thought so, at least. Allow me to explain.

I first learned about the concept of recalibration in, of all places, a college classroom. Astonishing, isn't it, that I actually learned something in college! (Besides the fine art of binge drinking, I mean.) But I did periodically learn things there. Some were even worth remembering past finals week. I often found, after fifteen weeks of grueling coursework, that an entire college class actually boiled down to about a one-sentence takeaway. In my macro economy course, that sentence was: The fundamental problem of economics is scarcity. That's all I remember from this class, but it's enough. Now at least I know that we won't have to bother with economics anymore after God's kingdom comes, since in God's kingdom there will always more than enough of everything. No scarcity; therefore, no economics - or, anyway, economics won't have a fundamental problem anymore. Religious mathematicians, though, promise me passionately that there will be maths in heaven. I just smile at them. They don't know that my one-sentence takeaway from (mercifully) the only maths course I was required to take as an undergrad was only two words long: Never again.

I took interpersonal communication in the first semester of my sophomore year, and although I did enjoy the course about twice as much as anything maths-related (not hard to double that quantity of enthusiasm), my takeaway was twice as short as the maths takeaway. One word: Recalibrate.

That would be an imperative sentence. A command - to myself. I often heard myself whispering the word in everyday, non-academic scenarios, and that's how I knew that this would be my one-sentence takeaway from interpersonal communication. I must say, it's also proving to be one of the more relevant concepts I've ever toted with me past any finals week. But what is it, you may ask? How exactly does one recalibrate? Why would anyone need to do such a thing so often? I think I'm finally going to tell you... in my very next post. Why wait, you ask? To keep you interested, I answer. And to keep my posts from getting desperately long-winded. I know from experience that no one ever reads long-winded blog posts. Stay tuned.