The Liebling Center Continues

I stopped in to look at the construction of the new Liebling Center addition to the film & photo building last week. As always the rooms keep changing. First I think they're too small, then they seem to feel larger, then a few days later they shrink again. It's amazing how your perceptions can change with the additions of sheetrock, paint, ceiling tiles, and lights. Think what it's going to be with stuff and people in it. Well, that's the problem – I can't.

Over the weekend my daughter received an invitation to this years alumni reunion/commencement/building opening (that's the new austerity – bundling events together, good thing there isn't a funeral happening too). She lives in San Francisco now, so I opened the invitation and discovered that Ken Burns is on a panel of distinguished alumnus and is doing the ribbon cutting of the new building on Saturday the 16th. That's just six weeks from now. Glad I know what's going on now. Wow, there's a little pressure to get stuff set up and at least look like it works. My daughter's not going to be there, but I'm an alumn too and I'll go.

My daughter and I talk about two times a week, three if I'm lucky, well two if I'm lucky. She's really calling to talk with her mother not me, but we have a good time. I'm really her step-father, but I like to claim her as my daughter since she's turned out so well. She told me once that she and I had the most in common of all of us in the family. I took that as an extreme compliment and a deep insight. We do. She studied photography and writing and is now in grad school for psychology. Psychology was one of my majors in college, along with photography, but my writing has come late and it's tardiness is noticeable. My daughter, on the other hand, is the best writer I've ever read and it's my only disappointment that she doesn't pursue it, but it's not my choice, it's hers.

So, just as it's often hard to see what rooms will turn into from discussions and drawings, it's hard to know how people will develop and what pathways are the ones to follow and the ones to avoid. You just have to let things unfold and make suggestions and hope all the changes are for the best. Cheap psychology tells us it's not the destination that's the goal, it's the journey and having fun along the way. I wonder what expensive psychology would tell us.

gunther