songs of experience

My brother phoned yesterday to ask me the definition of “existentialism.” I wasn’t home, but his message said, “I need to know tonight, so if you call back and I’m not there, leave it on the machine.” Now, what kind of person finds needing to know the definition of existntialism an emergency?! My kind of person, that’s who.

He - and all of us Nesbits - are about one degree shy of certifiable (whose dictionary definition, I am tickled to discover, reads “fit to be declared insane”). I prefer the word “passionate” over crazy. We are not manic; we’re high energy. Not obsessive or complusive, but thorough. Yes, thorough, paying great attention to detail. Ha.

I once participated in an “elite distance runners” study down at Georgia Tech - along with a dozen other top female runners in the US. We were put through a barrage of tests like VO2 max. and body fat percentage and treadmill running to measure our foot plant (I mentioned this in my about me section of SoE). They also had us fill out an extensive psychological questionairre where the graph had me measuring “off the charts” (another delightful euphemism!) for VIM … as in vim and vigor. My red vim line had this huge spike that literally went off the chart.

So, of course, I left the definition on my brother’s machine. It beeeeeeeeped right before I got to the difference between existentialisman and essentialism. 30 seconds just isn’t enough time no matter how much VIM you have!

p.s. after searching for a link to the results of the study, I could only find the one they did with the elite distance men in the ’70’s - called Once Upon a Time.