Prayer Without Ceasing

     I used to talk to God all the time. When I woke up, when I went to bed, and throughout my day I would tell Him what was going on, what I was thinking, and what I was thankful for. This was in middle school and early high school. I didn't know it at the time, but I had a really healthy, ideal prayer life. I think this was due to the fact that, at that time in my life, I had few friends and was a weird mix of shy and socially awkward. When I had no one else to talk to throughout my day, and really a lack of confidence in the idea of finding actual people to talk to, prayer was a natural resort for me.
     I can safely say I started high school with three friends, Mac, Josh and Jered. They were great friends and I had a lot of fun with them, but they also had their own things (swimming and football) and I spent most of my non-school time alone. Then things started to change. My funny, confident side grew tired of being stifled by my shy side. My older sister's friends seemed to enjoy me and like me as a peer instead of as a friend's little sibling. I remember the first time I cracked a joke to the class and everyone laughed and I thought "okay, I can be funny out loud."
     Suddenly I was making friends. I would see people and say hi to them, even talk to them, when walking through the halls. This was new to me. I had to work at it and get better at it. I started running conversations and interactions through my mind, analyzing them.
     I think this was when it changed. I started to think about myself and my strengths/weaknesses instead of talking with God throughout my day. I was growing selfish, honestly. With this selfishness I think the main thing I lost was my communication with God. I noticed the change. One time I walked out of a grocery store and had a thought like "I sure am funny," probably after a particularly sarcastic day of mine, and then almost immediately thought "huh, I haven't really talked to God today. In fact, I haven't talked to Him in a while." I missed the conversation and was aware that I missed it.

     Sometimes I will try to trace a line of thought I've had. It's a fun, challenging exercise. You know when you are thinking about something, say, work, and next thing you know you are thinking about ligers (not to be confused with tigons. How did you get from work to ligers? I try and remember what my connections were. Something like "I need to get to work early tomorrow to finish grading. Should I bike or should I drive? I'll drive. Which route is fastest at 7:00 am? Depends on the lights. I wish the city would release an app telling me the timing of the lights, so I could plan a route just as I start driving. Or better yet, let google maps do that. We could have a whole society of efficient, linked transportation. A bunch of batmobiles. Wow, Batman is so cool. Catwoman's in the next Batman movie. I wonder if she'll have a pet tiger or something. Tigers are also pretty cool. Did I bring my Detroit Tigers hat with me? Ligers are real. They seem like they would be fake but they are totally real." All I can remember is I was thinking about getting to work and now I am thinking about an absurd animal. I trace the conversation as best I can (and usually find all the links, you should try this sometime).
     This happens to me when I am praying all the time. I start praying with the intention of thanking God for lots of things, and all of a sudden I am drawing up The Annexation of Puerto Rico in my mind. These tangents weren't a problem when I was "praying without ceasing" because God was right there with me, agreeing every step of the way. "Yes, Grant my son," He'd say in His deep, all-knowing voice, "Boardwalk and Park Place are overrated when compared to the Greens." Now when I pray, I am starting and ending a conversation, and it seems rude or inadequate to get on so many tangents.

Wyatt often puts his arms up, straight in the air,
while sleeping or while awake. We like to say he
is always ready to worship. He's not doing it here.

     I've realized that I replaced my thinking from the one thing that is truly worthy of my praise to a bunch of things I think are cool (myself, friends and batman). In the process of me doing that, I lost my prayer-without-ceasing mindset, and it won't come back easily. Like trying to improve your posture, or trying to brush your teeth every day, it's a hard habit to get back into once it's gone. I've had days where I've told myself "let's try this again" and usually don't do too well. In fact, I feel like I can't do it anymore, as if it was a gift that I threw away.

     Now it's starting to really bother me. I was with my son Wyatt one morning - and I mean one disgustingly early morning - and prayed for him a little bit. Mid-prayer, I realized I hadn't prayed for him, or at all, in a couple of days. This really disturbed me. If there is anything I should be praying for it's the little ball of helplessness in my life. Why hadn't I prayed for him in a while? I think that the fact that I used to pray effortlessly, I didn't need a routine or system. Now that the effortlessness of it is gone, I need to either get it back or buckle down and commit.

     So, I guess there was something gained and something lost when I started to gain self confidence in high school. I wish I could have the best of both worlds, and if I could do it all over again I probably would, but here I am. I guess I just have another things to work towards.

Inheriting Appreciation

    I had a teacher in college named Shlomo. He's a fantastic teacher; his lectures are rife with information, you learn a ton, and he imparts a lot of passion and excitement into the material. Shlomo told a story one time about going to an art museum, just for kicks. He wasn't an art fan, but wanted to see what the fuss was about. He remembers seeing a painting and not being very impressed with it. He went back to the same museum later, and there was a tour taking place, so he tagged along. The tour guide stopped at this same painting and espoused all of the things he loved and respected about this painting. Shlomo left with the same love of the painting as his tour guide, and he learned something too: Sometimes people don't appreciate something until they learn why it should be appreciated.
     A little later (this might have happened in the same lecture, in fact) Shlomo is working through a proof of something. I don't know what the proof was on, but it was in a geometry class. He looks at an equation and says "Maybe you don't like this equation. You don't like it? You change it. Where else can this happen in life but in mathematics? You want something, you get it. Only in mathematics."
     I'd never thought of this. Truly I didn't really stop to think about it until much, much later. His lectures were dense, and I usually left feeling a bit punch-drunk as my brain tried to wrap itself around the new keys to the universe it had discovered. One day later I was solving an equation with a bunch of fractions, and instinctively I got rid of the fractions. No one likes working with fractions.

     It hit me at that moment. I didn't want the fractions, so I got rid of the fractions. I was able to get what I wanted immediately. This doesn't happen in life! Only in mathematics!!

     Let me explain a bit more, but it involves actual math so feel free to skip down to more good stuff. 

The above equation has 4 different fractions with no common denominators. I have to teach my students how to solve these types of equations, and when I show the first one their faces go white. I say "What, you don't like fractions? Fine. I don't either. Let's get rid of them." If we multiply everything by 30 (the lowest common denominator of all 4 fractions), we get the equation 20x + 24 = 15x - 25.  No fractions. Hallelujah.

     I pause here and yell at my class. We didn't like the fractions so we got rid of them. You have that kind of power! You have that freedom! If you don't like something in math, you can change it! You're given rules to follow and you follow the rules, but do whatever you want. Where else in life does this happen? Where else can you want something and get it right away? If you want to get stronger, you have to work hard. If you want to get richer or prettier, you have to be extremely lucky or you have to work hard. If you want to get taller, well you can't. But in math, when you want to get rid of the fractions, you get rid of the fractions. I love that about mathematics. I love many things about mathematics, but that's a big one.


     My hope is this is a turning point for my students, where they go from what is their worst-nightmare-of-a-problem, to a realization that math is potentially wonderful. I try to keep sharing this point, and don't mind it when they laugh at my nerdiness. Just like how Shlomo inherited the love of a painting from someone else, Shlomo had to show me this appreciation for math, and then I inherited it. I hope if I can show this appreciation to my students, they can inherit it as well.



     Well, I've thought more about this, of course - this relationship of rules and freedom in mathematics. As long as you follow the rules you can do what you want. My parents have often said that kids want boundaries. They want to have clear rules of what they can and cannot do. They want to have these rules enforced consistently and fairly. If they have freedom within those rules they will be more or less happy and content. This is just like mathematics. There are extremely clear rules that are very, very consistently enforced, but if you follow those rules you can do as you please.
     So then I think about society. Ideally, society would be full of easy-to-understand, all-encompassing, non-loop-holey rules that are enforced but are fair. This doesn't happen, and that leads to all kinds of problems, but wouldn't it be great of society was more like mathematics in this sense?
     (Heck, isn't this kind of like how God gives us rules to follow, but freedoms within those rules?)
     You are thinking "But Grant, what about art? What about freedom of expression? What about diversity? What if some rules work for some people and not for others?" My reply? Shut up hippie. Seriously, though, that's all true. We won't ever have that idyllic society where a fair and just government makes and enforces laws that are for the equal protection and benefit of all. It won't happen. That sucks.
     But I can have that idyllic world in my small, misunderstood world of mathematics. There's freedom in all of those restrictions and rules that students don't understand. I just need to get them to appreciate it.

Take My Advice: Skip the Previews

     I'd like to take a moment to bring to the public's attention a growing problem that no one seems to care about: spoilers in movie previews. Really, it's not even spoilers that I am referring to, but the fact that trailers seem to contain all the best parts of movies these days. It's as if a movie is filler for a trailer, and the trailer's goal was to make everyone see the movie on opening weekend - before people can tell each other "wow, Paul Blart was awful" (that move made $146 million off of a few good gags in a trailer). Seeing lots of scenes in a trailer about an action movie or a thriller can give away a big part of the whole movie experience. So take my advice: if there is a movie you know you are going to see, skip the previews.
     I first did this with The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers. I was in high school and extremely excited about the movie (and also extremely cool). I decided I wasn't going to watch any previews, read any reports or reviews, and let my anticipation grow. I called it watching the movie "with virgin eyes," (seriously, all the girls liked me back then). I probably did this for attention more than anything, but I found out that I liked it. I enjoyed not knowing anything about the movie (you know, besides reading the books).
     One of my favorite movie experiences ever happened the same way, as I've discussed before. I hadn't seen any previews for The Bourne Identity and new nothing about it, which is part of why I loved it so much. These two experiences convinced me to start trying to skip more trailers.
     Let's discuss the alternatives. There's a theatrical trailer for The Bourne Ultimatum that essentially covers the last 20 minutes of the film. I went and saw this movie with my brother, who had seen all the trailers while I had not. At this point in the trailer, a really fun, though fairly inconsequential, twist is revealed. When I was watching the same part of the movie, I was super excited. I turned to Garrett and said "ohmygoshhesintheoffice" and he was annoyed and said "I know." I looked around the theater and no one else was shocked or stunned. They all knew it was coming. What a waste. Same thing happened here. I had no idea that semi was going to flip over in The Dark Knight, and went a little nuts when I saw it.

     It's not easy avoiding trailers of films you plan to see. I am already avoiding a few websites I used to check because they've made it their goal to ruin every plot of the newest Batman film. When I go into theaters I will plug my ears, close my eyes and say "lalalalalalalalala" to myself like my mom used to make me do when people were kissing on TV a couple years ago. I have the remote handy in case a movie I am excited for could be on TV. I've found it to be worth it.
     So, I am working hard to avoid any information about the new Sherlock Holmes, the new Batman and the possibly potentially new Bourne that may or may not have Matt Damon in it. I am also learning to avoid preview for anything Christopher Nolan is involved in, because everything he makes is awesome. Take my advice and avoid movie trailers.

I Got Married Young

     It wasn't super young. I was 21, but that's pretty young by today's standards. It's not like I was 17, or it was a shotgun wedding or anything. And the timing was right. I graduated from college and got married, nothing shocking about that.
     But still, it's young, right? And I don't think there were a lot of people that pegged me for the "marrying" type, by which I mean they thought I was immature. I would like to challenge their ideas of maturity, but that's for another time.
     Some people thought I was rushing in to it. Cara and I dated for 17 days before I told her we were going to get married. We set a date right after I informed her of our impending marriage, and we were married six months later. It was definitely adjustment for the people that knew me.

     For me it comes down to selfishness. From both a personal and religious standpoint, I think all decisions are ultimately judged by how selfish they are.

     I didn't give myself a chance to weigh my options with marriage. I was excited and ready and it was all so fun and so fast, that I never stopped to think "don't I have at least a couple more years of living with my roommates, playing video games, and not having responsibilities in me?" I didn't think about what I was giving up until I had already given it up.
     Well, when the fall and school rolled around again, I started thinking about it. My roommates were still living together, playing video games whenever they wanted to. My friends were all still on the same ultimate team, going to tournaments and having a great time. Was I missing out? I was in Corvallis with no friends, one wife, a student teaching position that wasn't a good fit and nothing to do. I had to analyze my position.
     I knew before I got married that the most important thing in my life was going to be my wife and my family. It would be more important than jobs, money, living location and fun. I don't think this is a culturally common mindset for a young man in college. If I had decided to postpone getting married to keep my independence train rolling, I would have been choosing my own well-being over my wife's, and that's not a healthy thing to do for a future marriage. That plants the seed in her mind that those other things are more important than her (which, had I made those decisions, they would have been), and no good can come of that.

     I am of the opinion, and have been for a long time, that the next stage of life is better than the previous one if you choose to make it that way. There tends to be an idea in society that the college years are as good as it gets. Sex is easy and fun, responsibilities are low, you are mostly free and encouraged to do all kinds of dumb things to get them out of your system and to have good stories to tell. Sure, that's all fine, but I would rather choose not to peak at any point in life, if I can help it.
     What I see happening is guys my age buy into the notion of the college glory days, to some degree. They think about the freedoms and fun they have when they are 21, and they want to be 21 forever. Or at least for as long as they can. America is a great place to have a bill-paying job, a few bars nearby an internet connection and an xbox with four controllers. The temptation to hold on to the golden years of college is so strong, and the ability to do it is so easy, why would someone give that up if they didn't have to? And since all these guys are making these decisions independently together, it's not like the women out there are getting snatched up. Date your girlfriend for a few years and see what happens. This is a selfish line of thought.

     But I don't think people are actually thinking along these lines. Guys aren't saying "there will always be women to marry so I am going to bide my time." I don't think a lot of people think like this at all -- long term, with someone else's interests and well-being at heart, even if they don't know this future someone.
     Either of those two options are selfish, however. Thinking "I can prolong my glory days" and not thinking about one's future, in terms of marriage, are both selfish approaches. You might be thinking "what if someone doesn't want to get married." If someone doesn't want to get married they should think about why.
My guess is, it is for selfish reasons. I guess I haven't taken the time to explain why I think generally selfish decisions are wrong (from a moral standpoint) but I'll deal with that another time. But I can share a common outcome of this train of thought.
     Guy doesn't want to get married, he's having too much fun. Guy keeps having fun for years and years. Soon this fun is less fun than it used to be. Guy tries harder to make it more fun again. Guy starts going bigger. Guy goes to Vegas, guy has reunion parties with college buds, guy keeps seeking fun. Guy is in his 30's wishing he was still 21. Guy might start to have a change of heart. Maybe he meets someone great, maybe he starts thinking about having kids, maybe he "thinks it's time," he and his girlfriend get married (or "take the next step," whatever it may look like), or maybe he thinks its time he start progressing in life. Guy gets married. Guy still wants that fun and freedom he had been clinging to for so long, so guy watches a lot of sports, hangs out with the guys, etc. Guy has kids. Guy is in his high 30's/40's with a wife and kids and a job and feels trapped. Where was the fun? Why did it have to stop? Wife isn't happy, guy isn't happy, divorce happens for any one of a billion reasons.

     Okay, that's painting in extremely broad strokes. It is also me putting my values and interpretations onto other people. I can do that because it is my blog. I don't expect everyone to have my values, and I am not saying that everyone should get married, and should get married today. I am saying that selfish approaches to life and decisions have long term consequences, and I am saying that you have to give up the desires of ultimate freedom, independence and fun to have a healthy marriage.

Versailles, outside Paris

     Again, I didn't have to deal with this when I got married, this desire to hang on to my fun. If I did, I would have made the same choices I did anyways. However, I did have to confront these ideas when Cara started talking seriously about having kids. Like, when she started putting dates on a calendar. I wanted to have kids, I just didn't want to have them right now. Why? Because I was having fun. Cara and I were having fun. We took a lot of vacations, would take random trips to the beach or Portland, we'd go see movies and play games with friends. We were saving money. None of these are bad things. I wanted to hold onto them. Still, I was being selfish.

I figure if I keep posting Wyatt pictures, ladies will keep reading

     Cara wanted children. She wanted to get pregnant before a certain time, for her health, the baby's health and she wanted a baby. I started thinking about my children, and how I wanted to be young and energetic when they were young and energetic, for their sake and mind. Waiting wasn't going to make any of those things better. I had to believe the next stage of life is better than the one I am currently in.
     It took me about two days to realize that the timing was right to have children, and that if I pushed it out I would be being selfish. I don't think two days is very long. I was able to do this quickly because I had already analyzed me thoughts and opinions about selfishness, and the systems of life stages, to know that this was the right choice. Yay for me.

     I got married before all of my friends. I had kids before almost all of them too. These are statements of fact, not boasts or suggestions. I don't think my life is how every life should look, mostly because they can't all be as lucky as I am. That would no longer be called luck but called normal. Don't go and get married because it is the thing to do at this stage in your life, or whatever stage you are in, but start thinking about the choices you are making. If they are selfish, recognize that and change them. It's worth it.

Explaining Inequalities

     I find that most of my students aren't terribly concerned with why things are the way they are in mathematics. I am of the opinion that this is because when students ask why questions when they are young, they don't get answers. If they ask "why is a negative times a negative a positive" they get an answer like "just because," or, if they are home-schooled, "because I said so." I'd like to discuss some of those why topics in math, most of which I don't think are asked that often.

"Why do you switch the inequality when you multiply or divide both sides by a negative number?"

I'm glad you asked. (You're still reading this, right?)

Suppose we have the inequality -2x + 3 < 11. It is solved as follows:

-2x + 3 < 11
        -3   -3                         Subtract 3 from both sides
-2x < 8
-2x  >  8                              Divide both sides by -2 and switch the sign

 -2      -2
x > -4

The solution x > -4 works if you check numbers larger than -4 (like 0).

The inequality, much like the equals sign, is a statement of fact. The inequality 2 > 5 is stating the fact that two is greater than five, and the inequality -2x + 3 < 11 is stating that the left side is less than the right half.

The reason that inequalities switch when you divide by negative is, honestly, because that's just the way it is. Here's what I do with my students:

I put up two numbers and ask which sign goes in-between them.

4          8

and they tell me that a "less than" squeezes in there.

4    <    8

I start doing things to both sides, and check to see if the inequality is still true

4    <    8
+12      +12

16   <   20                   still true, 16 is less than 20, so we subtract 30
-30       -30

-14   <   -10                still true, so we multiply by 5
x5            x5


-70   <   -50                still true, so we divide by 10
/10          /10


-7     <     -5                still true, so we multiply by -1
x(-1)          x(-1)

7       <     5                 this is no longer true. Seven is, in fact, not less than 5. The sign needs to switch.
                                   
The sign didn't need switching with multipling or dividing positive numbers, and it didn't matter if we added or subtracted when positive or negative. It only mattered when we multiplied by a negative number. The same would be true if we divided by a negative number (like negative one).

Another way to describe this is with a number line. I have tried like a trillion ways to create a number line in this space that I can work with, but I am having almost no luck. Here's the best I can do:

-5  <  -3                      but                      5   >  3   

     Imagine having two points on that number line, a point at -3 and a point at -5.

     If we multiply both of those points by -1, we get the new points 3 and 5.

     Well, for -3 to travel to three, it has to travel a total of 6 spaces, but for -5 to get to 5, it has to travel 10 spaces. In that farther distance to travel, the -5 "passes" the -3 and goes from less than to greater than.

That is why the sign switches. Most people don't care. I never had it explained to me, and when I was teaching it one day I thought to myself "why does that happen?" So I went home, figured it out, and started teaching it. I know there are a few students in every class that appreciate seeing that. Hopefully it helps.

I know that no one is still reading this, so I would like to take this opportunity to let the world know that today I wiped my face with a towel that was on the carpet, and my wife told me we had placed that towel under the baby when changing him. Thanks, wife, for waiting until I had finished.

Stuff That Happened To Me Today.

10/24/2011
     I thought the most interesting thing about my day would be that I was forced to use a chalkboard. Usually I have either whiteboards or a document camera and a projector, but today that doc cam wasn't in my room. I had two clean, green chalkboards (not blackboards) in the front and a few sticks of chalk.
     I was stressed out. I had never taught with chalk. I'd used it, but teaching forces me to concentrate on my handwriting, legible-ness and keeping my work level (as in flat). When I first started teaching I'd spend time practicing with whiteboards. I haven't logged those hours with a chalkboard yet, so I wasn't confident I could make my work look nice.
     The chalk was extremely screechy at first. I had to adjust the angle I held it at and... who'm I kidding, you don't care.
     Turns out, it was great! I like the "click click click" sound it makes when I write. I enjoy the fact that I don't get minor highs by standing to close to the board. I think my writing actually looked a lot better. I don't like having chalk on my fingers, but I felt like an old-timey professor. Now I want to get a tweed jacket and a library to put in my house, and debate enthymemes and policies.

     No, the most interesting thing was when a student of mine, at Lane Community College, told me he wrote some jokes about me. I knew before this conversation that he was a professional comedian, so I wasn't too offended. I choose to take this as flattery, and he said he'd record them and send them to me. What!? I can't wait, I am so excited. He asked if he could use my name and I told him if he didn't I'd fail him. I'm funny too!!
     Having a student in your class who is a comedian is interesting. He doesn't crack jokes at all and is really attentive, but I want him to be funny. I also want to try and be a little funnier myself, to just show how similar I am to this big black guy from North Carolina. Today someone said to him "that sounds pretty intense," and from across the room I was this close to shouting "like the circus fire?"

You know, because circus fires are intense.

I'm glad I restrained.


Other stuff: A student got back a test and on the test she had said 11 - 3 = 7. This isn't a big deal to me, it's a minor brain fart that happens all the time (kind of like real farts), and at least two other students had done the exact same thing (I'm a good teacher!!). What was interesting was how she had been looking at the problem for a few minutes and then said out loud, to me, while going over other test problems: "explain to me how eleven minus three isn't seven." I thought she was kidding and chuckled (she has a good sense of humor, meaning she laughs at all my jokes). Then I looked at her and saw she was serious, and said as kindly as I could "eleven minus three is eight. I'm sorry, I honestly thought you were kidding." She blushed, and we agreed from then on to pretend like she had been kidding all along.

I put off grading till the last minute and got it done like 12 seconds before class started. Procrastination at its finest.

I told a woman that, when teaching high school, I always assume that a student's parents are divorced unless I know otherwise. There have been a couple of times I have said "mom and dad," only to learn that it's just mom or just dad. I never liked putting my foot in my mouth like this. Of course, the woman I told this to was a divorced mom. Is that irony?

It's okay though, because a few minutes later she said "The one advice I would give to people is to not get married at 21," and then promptly said, "you weren't married at 21, were you?" Of course, I was. Is that irony? Does anyone know what irony is?

A guy passed me while biking to work. Then I passed him, then he passed me, then I passed him again, and then he passed me again. We weren't racing (at least I wasn't). It was just how we timed the lights and the traffic, and we were going in the same direction for a long time. I wish I knew Yellow Helmet McWhiteBeard a little better after spending so much time in his vicinity.

The Case of the Unyielding Detective

     I read an article a couple of years ago in an airport. I don't remember who wrote it, or who published it. I will not investigate these details. The author of the article (I'm pretty sure she was a woman) claims that Sherlock Holmes is the most enduring character in literary history. What she means is that even to this day, people are still writing stories about him, debating gaps in his known timelines, and retro-fitting him for new generations.
    She's right -- assuming she was a girl -- as far as I can tell. People can't get enough of this guy, or the world he inhabited. Characters that only appear once or twice, or who are referenced a few times, have entire collections of work based on them (like Irene Adler, the closest thing to a "crush" we see Sherlock have, or his nemesis Professor Moriarty who, to my knowledge, only makes a physical appearance once but is discussed in maybe four or five stories). Why is that? I want to explore what makes him so dang appealing, popular, and enduring.

    Let's start with the facts. After all, Sherlock never formed theories without first gathering all of the facts, as it leads to bias. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the first story involving the detective Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet in 1887. It is a simply fantastic read. If you've never read it, or any Sherlock, read A Study in Scarlet. Doyle would write short stories that would appear in a magazine of the time, and publish short novels every couple of years as well.
     The character of Sherlock Holmes is based on a doctor that Doyle (himself a physician) knew. This doctor was known for looking a patient up and down, inspecting some various, innocuous aspects of physical appearance or personal belongings, and then being able to recount where this patient had been and what he or she had been doing with astonishing accuracy. In fact, this doctor was the Queen's favorite doctor solely for this ability. Doyle took this idea and wanted to apply it to detective work, and thus Sherlock was born.

     I think this is part of the key to Holmes's endurance. He's almost possible. He's based on a real doctor, and takes this real doctor's abilities to the extreme through essentially memorizing every possible detail he can about London, and solving all sorts of cases throughout London. These things are within one's grasp, if one wants to pursue them. Sherlock could exist. Superman will never exist. Spider-Man can't exist. Batman and James Bond simply tempt fate and beat the odds too often to be real. The heroes of fiction are grand, but not practically possible. But the heroes of the real world -- which I guess are policemen, firefighters, soldiers and math teachers -- are too real. They're plain and boring and don't swing through cities or save the world daily. They die. Sherlock is right in that sweet spot of making you think, for chapters at a time, that this person could be real.
     But he just couldn't possibly be a real person. Sherlock is simply too smart, too correct and too resourceful to exist. Yet, even as I write those words, I know that nothing that he accomplishes is so extraordinary as to be unbelievable. Even now, I can't decide if he could be a real person or not. He's almost possible. This is a quality that is rare for heroes. We like to identify with our heroes, see ourselves in them in as many ways as we can delude ourselves into believing that, with a little work and luck, I could be just like them. With Sherlock, it's simultaneously possible to identify with him AND to dismiss him that it's easy to obsess over him.
     This is either the genius or the dumb luck of Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes is a fairly inconsistent character. He claims to know nothing of the world outside of his trade (once stating that a) he didn't know that the Earth revolved around the sun, and b) once Watson informs him of this, he will do everything in his power to forget it, as it has no bearing on detective work), yet he will solve cases with observations of the nuances of political processes or familial relations. In one paragraph, Doyle can shock you with how absolutely calloused and self-absorbed Sherlock can be, but two chapters later you forget this when Sherlock analyzes a lover's quarrel for motive or telling bits of evidence. He walks the line of being possible or not possible in almost everything he does.

     I also attribute Holmes's endurance to how hard it is to write a good mystery story. A couple weeks ago I was pondering how hard certain types of characters can be to sell to audiences. Indulge me: If I wanted to make a movie about the richest man in the world, I'd show him with stuff and houses and at parties, and say "this is the richest man in the world." If I wanted to make a movie about the prettiest girl in the world, I'd find a pretty girl and -- in my movie -- make every guy fall for her and want her, put her on covers and in the news, and state over and over "this is the prettiest girl in the world." These two characters wouldn't be hard to sell to an audience.
     If I wanted to make a movie about the funniest guy in the world, I myself would have to be VERY funny. I couldn't have my character crack bad jokes and make the other actors laugh hysterically. The audience would see through it. I couldn't have all the other characters in my movie say "that guy is the funniest guy in the world," because if he was, the audience would already know it by how hard they were laughing. I'd have to be the funniest guy in the world to make that character believable, and if I were that funny I wouldn't make up some character, I'd get my own sitcom. That's a tough character to sell to an audience.
     Well, making Sherlock the smartest man in the world is very hard for the same reasons it'd be hard to make the funniest guy in the world. Additionally, he has to be smart in a way the audience can appreciate, which means he can't be too smart (which is why Doyle had the character Watson record and publish the stories). So Doyle has to make up a mystery, and give this mystery clues that Sherlock will notice but we won't, and then present these clues and evidence in such a convincing manner that we simultaneously think three things: a) that's so brilliant, b) that's so simple, and c) that's the only possible explanation. In reality, when I re-read a Sherlock story, option (c) doesn't hold up. Sherlock will give an explanation of the facts in a way that makes it sound like only his version is possible, but of course that's not the case, how could it be? He's not possible, but he's so damn good.
     Sherlock is extremely smart in a few areas: detective work, chemistry, encylcopedic knowledge of crime and some trivia. He has no bearings of anything else and claims that he's that way intentionally. This is downright fascinating, that a guy as smart as Sherlock is actually so smart that he can only be entertained through puzzles and mysteries of rare and magnificent complexity or simplicity (and he uses heroin and opiates to pass the time inbetween these mysteries. Who is this guy?) He's brilliant enough to make the decision to limit his brilliance to a few areas. What? He's not possible.

     Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn't know what to do with Holmes. The character grew so big so fast that all people wanted out of him was more mysteries. Those things can't be easy to write. The detail, backstory, evidence to give and to withhold, it had to be stressful. So Doyle killed Sherlock. He killed him in the most unsatsifying, non-committal way possible just to give himself a break (basically said "maybe he fell off this cliff and over a waterfall"). And Doyle took a break from Sherlock for several years, before writing some more stories that took place years after his non-committal, maybe-he's-dead-but-he's-probably-not death. Want to know what this did? This opened the doors (unintentionally, I am sure) for people to write more stories about Sherlock. What did he do in those inbetween years? He claims he was in Africa, but what does that mean? And the whole time? Why stop there? Watson didn't publish EVERY case that Sherlock was involved in. Oftentimes he only alluded to some. Let's publish some more of those stories also.
     Suddenly, its as if Sherlock lives like some comic book character, always getting more stories and plots, sometimes aging and changing and sometimes not, and he's going to live forever. Someone is always going to have one more story to write about this guy. He's the most enduring character in literary history.

     Want proof that Sherlock is an enduring character? House. Doctor Gregory House, his pal Dr Wilson, his superior Dr Cuddy, and his three fellowship lackeys at any given time are all taken straight from Sherlock Holmes. The creator of House even said so, from the beginning. Remember how Sherlock was based on a doctor? Well House is a doctor based on a detective based on a doctor. Wilson is obviously Watson, his only friend and humanizing aspect; Cuddy represents the London police: holding the authority but recognizing their inferiority and need for him. The other three fellowship lackeys exist just so we can experience and understand House's brilliance, arrogance and lack of knowledge in any other settings outside of medicine (and he's addicted to drugs to escape the pain of his existence). Any wonder that show was (is) so incredibly popular and successful for so long? Because House is Sherlock, and people love Sherlock.
     Another example is the TV show Monk. Like House, it is an extremely successful show that won a ton of awards. It was simply Sherlock taken to its logical conclusion: Sherlock was messed up, and needed an outlet. Again, the creators of this show stated from day one that it was essentially Sherlock for San Francisco. (If you haven't watched Monk, it is truly a wonderful show in every sense. Check it out, it's on Netflix Instant).
    I could go all day, but I'll give one more: Batman. Batman is Sherlock Holmes in spandex and with money. Batman actually started in Detective Comics and was supposed to be a crime serial. You probably didn't know that Sherlock was a master fencer, boxer, and knew some martial arts as well. Kind of like Batman. You better believe I have spent a lot of time comparing these two characters and analyzing their similarities. You also better not ask me why, because that would be embarrassing.

   Are Batman, Monk or House possible characters? Could they exist in real life? I seriously don't know. It's brilliant.

    I'll leave with this. There was a BBC series in 2010 called Sherlock that put Sherlock and Watson in modern-day London. It was perfect. Go watch it. It's on Netflix Instant, and can probably be found elsewhere. Three episodes, about 90 minutes each, were made in 2010 and three more are set to come out soon in 2011. Watch them. Additionally, there is another Sherlock movie coming out soon, the sequel to the last one with Robert Downey Junior. I appreciated the first film because it didn't seek to make Holmes old and stuffy. In "real life," Sherlock was athletic, excitable, engrossing and physically imposing. Most importantly he was an absolute master of disguise, employing them in nearly every adventure (just like Batman).
     There is so much great Sherlock Holmes out there for you to consume. Check it out. He makes you smarter. He makes you want to be a better person at whatever it is you do. He is dangerous in the way he thinks and approaches life. I just don't know if he's possible.