Engagement is...

Here's where I am right now, more or less.

Engagement is engagement is engagement is engage…. Like the first hour and twenty minutes of Rocky IV. All we really want to see is Ivan Drago bleeding and worn out and humped in his corner saying, “He is like iron. He bends but will not break” or “He is not a man. He is a machine.” But all the other stuff in the movie (like the context that tells us why he is fighting the Russian in the first place (I mean besides the whole cold war bit, which we are left to fill in ourselves, those of us who grew up in it)) they say is necessary and actually makes the fight itself better. For now I remain a skeptic on this point regarding both the movie and the engagement.

Of course, the philosopher and cultural critic, Avery Mixon, likens engagement to another movie, as follows: “Treat engagement like Groundhog day, get really good at communication and learn to play the piano.”