End of Time

I could not cross the imaginary Rubicon without comment. You know; the ending of one year and the beginning of the next. 

Arbitrary as doing so may appear, our arrangement requires change of situation to motivate hope and cultivate trusting. 

If there were no end to misery, by any effort, then all would be an ocean of despair; a proposition that continues to resurface from time to time.  Winter is cold enough without such dark foreboding; we must find reason to mark a change; then imbue it with opportunity. 

I like that about us humans.

What a droll experience passing days without passion would be. I’m told confinement is much like that; it drives some mad; others are just driven away from a society that punishes its victims.  We’re here, on this very day, surveying the coming year with a sense of almost giddy promise; along with a sense of ache in loss as well.  For surely the change takes as well as brings, leaving life’s edges a bit more frayed; suddenly noticing seams no longer fitting as easily as they had in our youth.  I heard a phrase the other day that fed my trolling for irony.  Someone attempting to persuade another replied to the proposition as

  “You’re making empty promises!”

The advocate immediately replied,

   “Aren’t they all?”

There was a moment in time, when the idea of empty promises struck me as dishonest and insulting; revealing them as just manipulation would make me bitter since my conviction was one of promises being ironclad; where breaking a promise was the worst of offenses.   Time has seasoned me, as I know better.  Making promises is, I believe, a policy of wishful prediction.  That can be commendable from a point of view; to possess a vision where the promise is fulfilled to every rich detail of expressed desire in reward.  Yet, too, I am able to accept that none of us are in control of the future, so guaranteeing a concrete end state is an invitation into make believe at the best and dwelling in disappointment at its worse.

That is acceptable as well.  We make believe all the time.  There is a paradox asking which power is supreme?  Inherent power, that which you personally possess; or granted power, that which is bestowed upon you to use as you deem fit?  By and large the popular assumption is that personal power is the greatest for we alone weld its purpose.  But the question reveals the greatest misconception of all;  power has no master.  All our plans and schemes rely on our deluded assumption that we are in control of anything; that anything is inherently ours to claim or keep as ours alone.  It is only through suffering are we awaken to the impermanence of anything we hold safe or secure.  We are, after all, just tourist in this physical plan.  In fact, I might take this moment to add, the more we suffer loss, the closer we get to the actual nature of our being;  temporary.

So then, in that vein of consideration ~ along with a grain of humor for the effort ~ May I wish those who know me, and those with nodding acquaintance, all the suffering the year has to offer….then perhaps we can be sad together…until we find the humor of it all.   

Constant Craving

We lost our parakeet Nemo last night.  It was odd occurrence.  We had just returned from a vacation in Spain; Montse was cleaning and unpacking clothes as I was putting stuff away in my study.  I received a phone call from Rene, the woman who had been watching our cats and the bird.  She was distraught to inform me that our bird was dead.  She went on to tell me that Ramon (her husband) had just checked on the bird earlier that very night and it was fine; they had been telling it that mommy and daddy would be picking it up the next day.  Then, as they were preparing for bed, (it was near midnight) she made a last check and saw Nemo at the bottom of his cage; just hours away from homecoming.

He was nearing 13 years old....pretty good for a breed whose average life span is commonly just five.

  Alas, he was just a bird, but part of the tapestry I've grown fond to wrap up this affection I call my world in.  After conveying the news to my wife and reconciling that death was part of the overarching canopy we live under, I recalled an artist friend once telling me of the loss of her bird, Sophie.  I remember I was touched and wrote a piece on it:  I thought in tribute to all of us who invite pets to be our heart's neighbor, I’d share this much of me today.

Sophie's Gift (to life's circle)

The day is.

As the senses receive

The sun, the breeze, iridescent green leaves on bushes and trees familiar but names escaping retrieval remain unnamed.

Yes, the vestiges of spring, the heart’s delights of life reborn

The circle is visceral.

Yet still, the circumspect side has no season,

One to prepare, to harbor our grief and wait until we are dressed for the occasion.

Likened to a feather on the keyboard, reminder of lost flight

The empty place in our hearts, in our nest.

Ah, be forgetful my misery, of love's visit gone.

Special in a creature I knew not as well as I wished.

The traits, the colors, the very sound...only whispers in my recollection now.

Ah, how cruel this comes, so unexpected.

But is it my awareness that let it come as a surprise?

The circle is, and I knew it from youth.

I know glee of new found love, of joys and happiness in a thousand senses and experiences.

Can I be honest with myself and exclude the contrasting flavors awaiting my taste with nature’s ways?

Am I the master of this creation?

This world I carefully construct.

Adding an illusion here, dabbing one there.

I hold, no ~ I grasp upon such fantasy.

That only sunny days are in my spring.

A life of shimmering summer days riding motorcycles.

Ocean spray of speeding Sea-do's

Bar-B-Ques accented by smiling faces.

I am reminded in departures, of my quest to love more meaningful.

To practice kindness more often.

Be honest

To others

To me

The passing is testament that time is an illusion.

We only have now.

My love is here today.

Tomorrow will be the eulogy to the dedicated heart.

The devotion, the joy rendered in the association.

Alas, in passing we are given the great gift of awareness.

Of the dearness of loving hearts.

For us

Of our precious love in which we invest

To know

To behold

To live

Precious.....Cherished....tourist.

 

 It is a characteristic of condition; this ever-wandering mind.  It thrives on process; it demands fodder.  What we do in place of living, is cultivate drama.  So every second we acquiesce to that unquenchable thirst and ravenous appetite of the mind’s needs to chew on something; to figure out something beyond its control; are precious seconds that not used in savoring the present moment.

The Magical Train of Enthusiasm

  Oh how I use to ride that train of enthusiasm.  I’d pull the window down and lean out as far as I could in order to feel that wind blowing in my face; to the point where my hair would hurt at the roots; and tears from clenched eyes would fill my ears.  I couldn’t get enough of it.  Of course that’s imagery, but as the thrill of life opened its windows of opportunity to me I’d dash to get through it before being slammed shut.  I had my share of shattered dreams and disappointments enough to carpet any banquet hall, so the older I got the more cunning I figured I needed to become to avoid the same results.  I had more than an appetite for good fortune, I was famished for it.  In my youth I had no vision for the circumspect of life events.  I was in the moment; like a favorite pet is for any adventure.  Be it to the beach or the vet, the thrill of being included was adequate enough to wind me up with excitement.  As the years collected I began to connect the chain of disappointments as something beyond personal selection; yet intuitively I felt they also were. That notion demanded I question any flippant dismissal as to negative outcome being nobody’s fault.  I distilled truth enough, I was no victim to a sadistic-cynical universe prowling for innocent hearts to crush. Just as much as I figured out most of my foolishness could be attributed to failed access to reasoning recesses of an undeveloped frontal cortex.  I was, for all intents and purposes, a late bloomer.  I can laugh at that behavior now, because I’ve adequate experience to compare impulsive choices to well thought-out plans.  For instance, just recently, the idea of Humanistic psychology reminded me of some of its features I learned earlier which appealed to my ethos for life in general; unconditional positive regard; empathy in accordance with genuineness, these were attractive to the way I would like to be dealt with; with how I’d like to connect with others.  Yes, that was the path to connection with a purpose; investigation into the topic led me to reconsider.  True as the tenants are to what I consider respectful intercourse with other human beings, too much of a good thing is just…well…goofy.

  I can apply this to past conversations and the example of astrology.  Oh yes, I am familiar enough with it to toy with certain signs possessing like kind dispositions;  as a Capricorn, I’ve discovered most other Capricorns I know of, tend to also not let go of something easily.  Is that unique to the sign? Maybe not, there’s adequate scientific research to suggest we find what we seek, so yeah I can convince myself all Capricorn’s are prone to specific traits just as any other zodiac sign; what of it?  The point of it being, there are some who refuse to enter into contracts when Mars is in retrograde.  And not just garden variety-next-door-hippy-types, but captains of industry forestalling contract negotiations until after that period of passage; call it superstition, it shows up in all quarters of society.  Sure, some people get a kick out of reading their horoscope in the daily paper; most find it amusing and think little of it until the prophetic ‘bad day’ manifest itself; then there is a hind-sightedness in admitting, “gosh, my horoscope said I was going to have a bad day.”  I shrug at the notion, but I use it as a vehicle to bring this up.  It’s fun and all but that doesn’t mean I plan my life around it.  Nor would I wish to be cornered at a party with someone who was a true believer.  Who abandoned all reason to the soothe-saying power of the stars; it just creeps me out.  And my research into the humanistic-existential-transpersonal psychology did the same thing…a feeling as if I would be signing up for a steady diet of overly-sweet-sentiments.  Sure, therapist should be compassionate, genuine, caring and nonjudgmental.  But do we expect them to sob with us? Anguish over our disappointments and hurts? No, that’s what our friends are for, or our bartenders.  Anyway, once it dawned on me that I really didn’t want to be emerged in the ideals from the tip of my head to the ends of my toes I had a very odd subjective flip-flop of feelings.  One was a self congratulations for not running full bore into a notion without further research; the second was a degree of disappointment, kind of like the image didn’t live up to a fairytale assignment I gave it right out of the gate of notion.  It took a couple of days to reconcile those feelings, then admit incorporation was the key to quality I would embrace.  Other scientifically proven methods could serve me just as well.  Yes, I can appreciate both worlds without having to give allegiance to either/or.  I somehow found my way though the brambles of habitual self inflicted wounding…I didn’t expect it…but I’m glad it happened the way it did; I believe that’s called serendipity…how delicious. 

Isaac is Dead

  We were at our gym working out as I noticed the front clerk, Natalie, had come in haste to fetch several of the trainers who were clustered near us talking. I couldn’t hear what she said, but they reacted with a determination that is hard to miss once you’ve been exposed to emergency situations.  At first I thought they were enlisted to help manage a disagreeable customer at the counter.  Another trainer sensed an issue brewing and began walking briskly to intercept the growing group; Natalie waved him off, so he returned to his student in the far back of the facility.  The sudden activity drew our attention.  Montse took up a ruse to go towards the women’s bathroom in order to over head any conversations, but for naught.  There was no impending commotion; no loud voices during struggling for dominance; soon we lost interest and returned to our routine. 

  Sarah, a woman we have a nodding acquaintance with, walked up to us saying, “Isn’t it terrible about Isaac?”

We both looked at her blankly, as if to say, who is Isaac?  She used clues to orient us; older black fellow, short mustache; drove a red Cadillac; it was the Cadillac that captured my recognition; ah, yes we knew who she was talking about.  We noticed he always seemed to be chewing on something, so we somehow dubbed him Donald Duck. We never heard him called by name, nor did we have reason to talk with him, so our nick name suited the two of us.  Sarah went on to mention he had gone into the hospital for a routine follow up from recent heart surgery he had months before; but he didn’t make it.  She also mentioned he was in his seventies, then, abruptly left us ~ most likely to spread the news.

  I didn’t know the man, as I mentioned, I had to translate physical clues into identifying who it was this Isaac was.  As we continued to do our assigned routines, the small voice in my head kept saying,

   “Isaac is dead, Isaac is dead.” I couldn’t tell you why.

  Montse mentioned after a few minutes that she couldn’t get her mind off of Isaac’s death, that she suddenly connected hearing one of the men called to the front desk exclaiming “No.” She added, it must have been Willie because he and Isaac were always seen deep in conversation throughout our visits. We continued our work out, but the topic wouldn’t leave me alone.  I was reminded of the time while in the Army when I was appointed the task of being a Survey Officer.  It was a task of packing up all of the personal belongings of a soldier who had been killed in an auto accident.  My single purpose was to sanitize what was being sent back to his family, purging out anything that would cast a poor light on the victim; things like pornographic magazines or photos that may very well been treasured by the deceased but would invariable tarnish an affectionate memory of their lost intimate; I thought that wise of the military to have such a policy.  What I had not counted on was how, in that process, I would grow to get a glimpse of the person who owned all that stuff; it was inevitable.  Yes, I felt a bit like a voyeur as I skimmed the personal letters and rifled through his junk drawer of little keepsakes.  Tokens from arcades; plastic characters from fairs or amusement parks; spent movie tickets, the like.  I must admit I never actually met the young man who had perished, yet even after more than twenty years I can recall his name; Andrew Jones.  That, and  when I close my eyes I can see the photo of him smiling at the camera with his arm around his girlfriend ~ she in a formal gown, him in his dress Army uniform with the sky blue background accent to his shiny brass branch insignia of crossed rifles.  He looked proud of his accomplishment; she looked even prouder. I was saddened at the loss of potential back then, as I am even now.  But as for Isaac, he had lived seventy odd years; I did the mental math, and that would have meant he was born near the end of World War II.  A lot of history had happened since then; particularly for the black culture.  I remember he had a weathered quality to him; he had lived hard, to project an almost threatening countenance to look at.  I soon learned nothing could be further from the truth. Many at our gym had spoken to him; held him in high regard; even spoke of him affectionately.  I wouldn’t know, I never spoke to him. In the echo of “Isaac is dead.”

  Montse told me she continued to have the odd feeling of a low level sense of loss; she figured it was because she knew of him, and now he was gone.  I agreed.  It was like seeing a familiar sconce in the hallway of your family home.  Feeling with certainty it had been there your entire growing years; even remember special events like hanging silver tinsel on it during the holidays.  Then, one day, it was gone; and so was the anchor to comfort in knowing the surroundings making up the predictable world of the past; projecting a poorly construed assurance to defeat any change that might somehow challenge the ease of predicting the future. It happened suddenly and without warning; like the loss of Isaac.  What else was about to pounce out of the unknown with fangs to rip apart a well constructed delusion prevailing control over ones personal future?  Maybe that’s the collective ill at ease visitation a death commands; a wakeup call to a perchance towards delusional indulgences.  Does anyone honestly think they know what tomorrow will hold?  Heck how arrogant to not even pay attention in the here-and-now.  I coast, and I’d bet with certainty everyone around me does the same.  We’re posed to react to change that is rude enough to startle us into confrontation.  Most times we’re adept at sidestepping upset; sometimes not so much.  Yet the point of the evidence is that we’re more successful at avoidance, so why modify behavior or strategy of surviving moment to moment; until it’s our turn to get off the tour bus, then it’s far too late.  That’s when each of us gets to face an entirely unmapped adventure.  I pondered on all the housekeeping tasks for Isaac’s remaining kin; selling or giving away his stuff. What to do with the Cadillac now that he doesn’t need it?  I wasn’t all that certain I was going to write about this.  Somehow his change and mine are linked.  The story I tell, is consistently from my point of view; this time it includes Isaac, if only as a footnote to a point I wish to make.  I sometimes anguish to consider the notion that my story will go unsung.  Then too, I often anguish deeper to realize the countless millions of stories that have gone mostly ignored.

Run It's Course

  I met up with one of my favorite professors the other day.  I worked for him as a research assistant during my pursuit of a psychology degree.  He introduced me to the topic of Positive Psychology, and with that process, the concept of authenticity and how it was integral to an enduring sense of psychological well-being; this, in contrast to common understanding of happiness being more pleasure, less unpleasantness, or increase of satisfaction.

  A key component to authenticity is unbiased processing.  What that boils down to is not making up stories about personal behavior; to not attempt to rearrange facts in order to protect a projected positive image.  The ideal is to keep your integrity in tact by loving yourself; warts and all.  The end product is laudable, as the process is by nature open ended; kind of like self actualization, you’re never really finished attempting to remove the warping reflex from, well, a habitual practice of self deception.

  We’ve often talked about the point of view where once being aware of the facet, it would become apparent in all of our relationships; then like it or not, we’d see it most as lacking in others. This jibes with observations saying we’ve been given other people to reflect our own strengths and weaknesses.  In the words of Jean-Paul Sarte 

  “Hell is other people.” 

  Sure as any who have studied the notion of self improvement will attest, anything that annoys us about other people is usually the characteristic we deny possessing or attributes we resent not being able to freely display.  So the professor and I were in agreement that organically everything falls into place eventually, and to focus on influencing the one person each can actually change; ourselves.

  I’ve seen the process recently taking more of an effect on me than before.  There was a time I was on fire to play music; at all cost.  Then it was to write; get published.  Then I realized I resented the industry that fed off the insecure and desperate souls who, like me, were aching to be acknowledged.  It was then, like the opening of a blossom, as I was reviewing my past essays, where I noticed with clarity I had nothing more to say.  It was all just an elongated complaint; a bleating of victim seeking a martyr’s dream of importance through suffering; I’m finished for now.  I have nothing worth commenting on any longer; I have made five hundred post and those are mostly noise; there is far too much noise to be tolerated. It morphs people into cynics; I’m glad I wasn’t punished for being stupid.  I am glad I had time to wake up to living.  It will be alright; my mother use to say when as a child I would skin my toes running barefoot.  It will always be all right; just a question of being honest about how I make it personal. That is five hundred words on my 500^th post.

Happy Trails

Keeping Comfort in Place

   At a recent party I was drawn into a discussion on self-help books and the many Guru’s out there who could go on for so long over what they claimed to be a simple solution to encumbering problems. I mentioned in my experience real life couldn’t be distilled into platitudes.  Yet, the consuming public would never tire of seeking a silver bullet to their complaints.

   “They want change to be effortless; the humor of it is that change is totally without effort; the real struggle comes with trying to keep our comfort in place.”

  So really, how many road signs does anyone need to get to their destination?  I’ve traveled enough to know there are plenty of notices on the Freeway announcing which exit ramp to take in order to find the town center.  And they are numerously more frequent the closer you get to the critical departure point; plus, they are unambiguous.  Yet, I see all too often people swerving across congested lanes of traffic to make their exit at the very last minute; as if it were a divine surprise lurking in the shadows suddenly revealing itself.

  We get distracted in our chatter; just as we entertain the doubts we conjure up as being real.  Isn’t that the true hiccup of any effort to be correct? So many words are troublesome while being used interchangeably.  Such is the case with certainty. 

  Certainty is the acceptance of a fact without doubt.  It is a level of confidence attributed to particular knowledge; that’s where we get struck on the tar-baby.  Knowledge always contains a kernel of doubt, because knowledge is an open proposition; it is absent of absolute ~ like perfection.  So the best any can hope to be, from an objective point of view, is within a degree of certainty.  The exception being, the subjective meaning as clearly a personal certainty; then embraced as a fact ruling an individual universe of choice.  In that alone, is where certainty remains unchallenged; by the confines of the one making a choice; for the one who trust, and then believes, their choice is correct for them; and them alone.  The term certainty is often used to describe knowledge without the possibility of doubt.  This is omniscience. It is an improper use of the term.  So we all live within the obscure and inexact symbols of our language and find comfort and confidence in the meaning of certainty as allowing us the possibility of error, but the contextual lack of doubt.  As Bob Dylan alluded to many years ago, “The only thing we have in common is that we will all die.”  Now that, is a shared certainty. 

Point of View

One of the most enduring stories from ancient Greece is that of Troy.

It occupied all of seven acres.

A humble patch of ground may become the scene of a mythical exploit; experience may start small to become a monumental tale.

When I learned of this I was taken aback.  I was tutored in the compulsory public school system; where heroes were grandiose; and everything spectacular came from extraordinary origins. I was particularly fond of Disney fables; I was somber when I learned why children were consistently duped by those they trusted; I was told it was because children couldn’t comprehend the complexity of truth.  Oddly, I’ve been handled in pretty much that same way ever since.  I never got comfortable with the notion that children were unable to identify their natural surroundings.  It wasn’t long until I realized that it was the parents who couldn’t handle the truth. They were the ones grappling with the fact that they were powerless to protect what they cherished.  The stout hearts navigated those shoals without assigning a personal narrative to the practice of deception.  

For the rest of us, we were relegated to either resign or embrace a cynical interpretation of the nature of Santa and the rest of those purveyors of compassion.  Those who resigned did so unemotionally and move on to make pragmatic-logical choices when engineering their lives; the cynical ones got their feelings hurt and committed themselves to convincing any who would listen the stupidity of trusting anyone; they usually ended up becoming journalist or government lobbyist.   

This Sense

  I can never adequately predict what position is most comfortable for me to fall asleep in.  Some people take on the exact same pose every night and slip off into their slumbers; I am not one of those people. I try out different angles and positions so happen to fall asleep while moving from one to another.  I happen to be on my tummy with my arms under my pillow and above my head.  I could smell the faint aroma of my antiperspirant; I know, eww.

  But here’s the thing. The faint aroma reminded me of the night I spent in a hotel decades ago, waiting to report to Army Basic Training.  I clearly remember laying in a similar position in a strange bed feeling anxious with being in an unfamiliar place; facing an uncharted future.  I joined the Army because my wife at the time was pregnant, and we didn’t have health insurance; I joined the Army because my two man band just broke up and I had zero prospects in Eugene, Oregon; I joined the Army because I couldn’t think of any way to rescue my family; more to the point, myself, from the predicament I got us into; I didn’t plan ahead; I was willing to die to everything I thought I was.  My dreams were shattered and my woman looked at me with poorly veiled contempt that only shrivels love to make the stoutest heart run far away for cover; I ran away to the Army for the next three decades. 

  They say that of all our memories, the sense of smell last longest.  Then, just as well, that memory serves as the threshold to other memories that tag along for the recall.  That’s how the aroma of cook outs can invoke pleasant memories from childhood; probably also why Burger King makes it a point to blow its grill smoke into the surrounding area; enticing people to come eat their product.  As my mind wandered on my desperate life; enough to leap into something totally foreign and ill defined I remember something else about dying to what I thought was the order of my universe.  It was written by a new age thinker who, for awhile, captured my attention by speaking on a point of view totally alien to my understanding.  His name is Ekert Tolle, and this passage from his book is Stillness Speaks took me by surprise.

“   ...Most people feel that their identity, their sense of self, is something incredibly precious that they don't want to lose.  That is why they have such fear of death.

   It seems unimaginable and frightening that the "I" could cease to exist.  But you confuse that precious "I" with your name and form and a story associated with it.  That the "I" is no more than a temporary formation in the field of consciousness.

   As long as that form identity is all you know, you are not aware that this preciousness is your own essence, your innermost sense of I Am, which is consciousness itself.  It is the eternal in you - and that's the only thing you cannot lose.

   Whenever any kind of deep loss occurs in your life - such as a loss of possessions, your home, a close relationship; or loss of your reputation, job, or physical abilities - something inside you dies.  You feel diminished in your sense of who you are.  There may also be a certain disorientation.  "Without this…who am I?"

   When a form that you had unconsciously identified with as part of yourself leaves you or dissolves, that can be extremely painful.  It leaves a hole, so to speak, in the fabric of your existence.

   When this happens, don't deny or ignore the pain or the sadness that you feel.  Accept that it is there.  Beware of your mind's tendency to construct a story around that loss in which you are assigned the role of victim.  Fear, anger, resentment, or self-pity are the emotions that go with that role.  Then become aware of what lies behind those emotions as well as behind the mind-made story:  That hole, that empty space.  Can you face and accept that strange sense of emptiness?  If you do, you may find that it is no longer a fearful place.  You may be surprised to find peace emanating from it.

   Whenever death occurs, whenever a life form dissolves, God, the formless and unmanifested, shines through the opening left by the dissolving form.  That is why the most sacred thing in life is death.  That is why the peace of God can come to you through the contemplation and acceptance of death.”

  My intent of including this in my post today was not to address the character of God or how he is conceived by me, or even you for that matter.  The over arching facet for me is my observation into the manner of practice I use for defining my successes or failures.  That, and how common those approaches seem to be shared with my fellow human beings.  From there, each of us can examine what objects our understanding are or are not suited to deal with.  When, of course, we’re willing to explore that part of our life.

Raw Leadership

I was perusing the want ads again and noticed a phrase that continued to echo in many of the seeking announcements.  It was the term; proven leader. 

  Having had my fair share of testing the many philosophies concerning how-to-get ordinary people to do extraordinary things, I reference something I read in Malcolm Gladwells book Blink that captured the how spirit of leadership.

“…On Paul Van Riper’s first tour in Southeast Asia, when he was out in the bush, serving as an advisor to the South Vietnamese, he would often hear gunfire in the distance.  He then a young lieutenant new to combat, and his first thought was always to get on the radio and ask the troops in the field what was happening.  After several weeks of this, however, he realized that the people he was calling on the radio had no more idea than he did about what the gunfire meant.  It was just gunfire.  It was the beginning of something ~ but what that something was wasn’t clear yet.  So Van Riper stopped asking.  On his second tour of Vietnam, whenever he heard gunfire, he would wait. “I would look at my watch,” Van Riper says, “And the reason I looked was that I wasn’t going to do a thing for fire minutes.  IF they needed help, they were going to holler.  And after five minutes, if things had settled down, I still wouldn’t do anything.  You’ve got to let people work out the situation and work out what’s happening.  The danger in calling is that they’ll tell you anything to get you off their backs, and if you act on that and take it at face value, you could make a mistake.  Plus you are diverting them.  Now they are looking upward instead of downward.  You’re preventing them from resolving the situation.”

  Of note, Paul Van Riper recognized the dynamic relationship between the worker’s effect, and what affects the workers effort.  This has been rediscovered time and again by conscious notice in experience.  What makes leadership so rare is its presence.  It’s patience honed by discipline during times of great panic.  Short version:  let things happen and keep your eye on the bull’s-eye of what you personally can influence; everything else is just noise.

The Necessity of a Violet Sky

I took a blue blaze trail that connected to the Appalachian Trail. A posted sign at the juncture announced a blue blaze trail was rare.  I understand why; a marked blue blaze trail is hard to see.  The Appalachian Trail on the other hand is marked with wide strokes of white paint on the trees along the path for easy recognition. This gives confidence to wayfarers as they progress along their course.  Preacher’s Rock was my destination, but I never found the way.  After three hours on a trail that was vague to discern where it led, I concluded  that ANY rock I could see beyond the thick forest would be an answered prayer, so then take on the name preachers.

    Afterwards I stopped at an IHOP near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I was sitting in my booth waiting for my server and noticed across from me a young five year old girl drawing with a focused abandon to their surroundings children muster when they are deep within their world.  I watched, amused with her concentrated obsession in laying down her rainbow of crayons. She suddenly stopped, sensing someone was watching.  She looked up, then raised to kneeling while flashing me her beaming smile; along with holding up her drawing for my inspection saying,

  "It’s necessary to have a violet sky"

  I was taken by the poetry of a young child making such a statement; I had to inquire,

   "Why is that sweetie?"

  At first, I wasn't sure she heard me because she instantly sat back down and appeared to be repossessed by her endeavor.  Yet while placing her drawing back onto the table to continue her masterpiece, she spoke without looking up;  in that child's  matter-of-fact-everyone-knows-this…but if you must ask I guess I am obliged to instruct you, poor dear’ kind of roll play.  Confident in what she was saying as ultimate truth; 

   "so you can see the white unicorns"  

Samantha, my server, overheard our conversation, and we exchanged smiles.

   "What do you think makes us happy?"  I asked her. 

She said, "Well I'm happy."  "I have my step-son, my man, my home" 

I replied, "Ah, but is that purpose fulfillment? Isn't that just the current situation?"  She instantly replied, "From where I've been, that's a real leap"

   It struck me then, how simple our happiness can be. Sometimes we have to endure conditions so far away from our desires, just so we'd know our joy when it came into focus.  It doesn't have to be complex or earth shattering goals of greatness or improving the welfare of mankind before we are fulfilled.  For Samantha, it was the simplicity of those affections that had eluded her during her suffering years; now they were present and in abundance; those were the foundation of her happiness and she had no need to question it; she was there.

   We can appreciate those blue skies, after a spell of cloudy, rainy weather.  Yet I’ve seen in summers past a parade of clear blue days lulling me to neglect; under the guise of a common occurrence; devoid of fanfare.  We can get really involved in our own mental chatter; to the exclusion of even wondering.  I have discovered, perhaps with unfettered enthusiasm of heart's passion, we make it possible to see unicorns. That's how necessary the beauty of a violet sky can be. 

The Same Old Crazy

“And now the old story has begun to write itself over there," said Carl softly. "Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes for thousands of years.”
― Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

  Oddly Willa’s insight reminds me of another saying that is attributed to Albert Einstein. “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity.”  Yes, but who hasn’t embraced that notion as a valid course of navigation? I mean really? Perhaps not distilled as an ethos from a night of reasoning, but I’m rather familiar with many who possess that type of disposition with interacting with fellow human beings.  Sure, we want people to treat us better; but they don’t.  We want good things to come to us without effort; hardly.  We want to avoid all the unpleasantness in life; but that’s not been my experience, nor that of anyone I’ve ever met.  No, we like to fantasize about our lack; and we’ve plenty of childhood stories to encourage our imaginations in that department too.

  Kind of like, did you ever notice how infants are adored by everyone? Pretty much in general anyway; strangers walking down the street pause and make cuties noises to an infant in a stroller.  Oh and that kid just loves it, you can tell by the grins and gurgles.  I wonder when that adoration stopped?  I mean, the exact day the child grows into being just another kid; so then is ignored or subtly insulted by not asked preferences in a host of decisions made for them.  On an episode of West Wing there appeared a group of kids as members of Future Leaders of America.  One bright boy wanted to know why kids couldn’t vote.  Several adults tried to reason with him but the kid brushed aside those excuses pretty well.  He said the arguments over kids not being able to reason well were the same ones invoked a hundred years earlier to keep the vote from slaves and women.  His contention was that since it was going to be his generation paying the bill for decisions made by the current adults, why was it they couldn’t have a voice in deciding what to spend the public dollars on too?  But that’s just an example of how a human being goes from the center of attention to marginalized without so much as a preamble. Imagine the discussion with a child as in conversation; 

   “Well, here we are my friend, eighteen months old already.  It is here our society has earmarked as the beginning of shaping you into a citizen; and the first lesson we’d like for you to master is to stop pooping your pants.”

Wouldn’t it be a hoot if a child had the necessary command of language to defend itself?

  “Well, thank you for your concern, but you know I’m rather happy the way things are.  I’m not real sport at taking on a task that only seems to accommodate your wishes.  Oh sure, I’ll agree that sitting in my poop is not my idea of a good time, but up until now you’ve been really quite adequate at responding to when I void in pretty quick order.  So for me, I think I’d like to keep the present arrangement as it is, if you don’t mind, or at least for a while longer…say, until I’m about fifteen?”

   Is that preference really all that crazy? Oh and let us not confuse crazy with insane.  The terms are used pretty interchangeably in conversation but any doctor of psychiatry or psychology will correctly inform you that insane is a legal term; used as a defense against punishment for misbehaving. Maladaptive behavior on the other hand….is so much more colorful to be sure. 

Certainty

John Locke, (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) widely known as the Father of Classical Liberalism suggests ~

Certainty twofold- of truth and of knowledge.
  But that we may not be misled in this case by that which is the danger everywhere, I mean by the doubtfulness of terms, it is fit to observe that certainty is twofold: certainty of truth and certainty of knowledge.

Certainty of truth is, when words are so put together in propositions as exactly to express the agreement or disagreement of the ideas they stand for, as really it is.

Certainty of knowledge is to perceive the agreement or disagreement of ideas, as expressed in any proposition. This we usually call knowing, or being certain of the truth of any proposition.

~***~

  This spurred me towards personal truths and the nature of us all to cherish our hard fought knowledge; once won, hold it sacred as truth arching over all that is known, or will be known by me. It is a subtle invitation to be ensnared into meaner considerations when bringing my mind into an investigative response over unexpected points of view; points departing from my comfortably ordered universe. I ask myself now;
What can I do differently in order to influence the change I desire in others?
Perhaps getting to the notion that I can only change me is a great start.

“Judge for yourself candidly, and then I shall not be harmed or offended, whatever be thy censure” John Locke

Too Comfortable for Words

  The other day Montse and I were discussing the many delicate maneuvers required to disengage from years of living in our house.  It happened simple enough while looking on line she stumbled upon a charming apartment in New England.  It was big enough for our needs; it was nestled in a homey neighborhood in which there was a Whole Foods market within walking distance; there were many gyms, a doggie park along with bike and walking trail parks nearby.  In addition, there was access to pottery classes and folk music pubs should the notion to play at one struck me.  Not-only-that, as some would say, the place was all of twelve minutes away from my son and his wife’s home. It came very close to the notion of ideal.

  There’s a lot to be accomplished when considering uprooting from the South to the Northeast.  Items to sell; things to give away; along with if the house should be sold or rented out?  Yeah, all that pragmatic stuff calling for discussion on the Pro’s and the Con’s of each course of action.  Oddly, what I had not considered was the reality I could feel sneaking up on me; that reality was the feel of how it would feel to not be in this house.  I’ve lived here for over twenty years.  My son pretty much grew up in this house; as my own growth took place here as well. I felt a pang of reluctance to give up the security of this comfortable known.  Never mind my wife and I aching for a community of like minded citizens; the curious and creative people we knew lived, just not around here.  Never mind also the conversation of moving had been running for pretty much four years with no resolution placed into action; until now. 

  Now, we placed a mark on the calendar; next spring is our target put-the-house-on-the-market time; from there everything else is secondary. It's a little thrilling in the dread over the unknown sort of way.  Having a situation that might be imperfect but with plenty of room for comfortably familiar can dilute the most resolute of any intent.  The trick in worthwhile, is the risk…yes, dare to come out from the dark dungeon of negative possibilities befalling a gallant ideal.  Welcome instead, a new friend potential into the light of the here-and-now; where only the present world exist.  

Classic Blunder

A classic blunder most despots seem to ignore is:

You must always outnumber your foe....evil plays under a handicap, let's face it...evil is straight forward with its objective and puts all its cards on the table.  Not so with goodness; it always has something up its sleeve to spring out at the dire moment when it's on the brink of being vanquished.  Then, presto, a trump that overwhelms evil's well-thought-out, expertly executed plan.  One, I might add, was painstakingly developed, nurtured, and surprisingly launched very effectively. 

   "Well sure if I knew that goodness would resort to using an unknown-as-of-yet bolt of pure energy from the heavens I'd have planned for that....you big cheater!!"

Let's just admit it, and stop all of this prolonged deception.  Evil's goal has always been incredibly and irrefutably simple...

win once....rule forever from then on.

The Really Good Lessons

The really good lessons

you know,

useful in that way you find yourself saying,

"wow I need to remember this"

usually happen when you can't write them down

when you're so busy dealing with the fact

you intuitively realize

 this is an exceptional moment

also

it will never actually return again

in just this way.

When you successfully manage

and you're still here

with all that you value in tact

maybe you'll agree

echoes are neat and all

but you can't get your arms around them.