When you complain about a situation, you ensure your victim position with each utterance. The instinctual goal--which I've engaged in many many times--is to take a vote; to surround yourself with so many people who agree that you have been wronged that, just maybe, you might start to believe it yourself.
My new approach is more proactive, and it applies both to situations that are working and those that are not. For every relationship I'm involved in, every project I'm working on, I ask myself two questions:
- What do I want?
- How am I going to get it?
The second question is where the reality of the situation comes in. The world doesn't just hand you every thing you want on a silver platter (and I wanted a platinum platter anyway). So: I know where I am. I know where I want to be. What steps do I take to get me one step closer to the goal?
Abraham Lincoln was a master of this. You may think that, as President of the United States, that he would finally be in a position where everybody would just go ahead and do what he said. But of course that is not the reality of it. He had to work even harder to maintain the trust and loyalty of those working for him. He had to continually find new ways to motivate and align his staff and his generals.
He could have continually maligned a lot of these people, and be justified in doing so. Instead he encourages those who failed to carry out his orders, and even those who worked against him.
I'm listening to his letters and speeches through books on tape as I commute. As I listen to each track, I ask myself: what did he want? How was he going about getting it?
I find that he wants more than just having people do the jobs he needed completed. He wanted to build working relationships with people, and to maximize the productivity that comes from walking together down that portion of the two life paths that overlap.
Actions of questionable nature undertaken by this nation are often defended--by the common man, if not officially--by the declamation "but we're the good guys." I hear often of the goodness that America adds to the world, and that if our enemies dislike anything about us, it is that they hate goodness itself--they possess a bitter hatred of liberty, honesty, and happiness.
Taken in a global context, it is immediately obvious the failings of using "we're the good guys" as a justification for any action. If we agree on this maxim as an international law, that any action undertaken is approved only if you believe you are right when you undertake it, or that it is wrong for others and right only if you have the moral authority...well, then, that would indicate that it is a correct action for the whole world, because even the worst liberty-hater must consider himself right when he uses whatever means possible to further his agenda.
Furthermore, it would seem that the right to punish an offender of this law would belong solely to the side in power, and that they would then be punishing the perpetrator for following--rather than breaking--the law of doing what you believe is right with no other considerations.
For this reason it becomes quickly apparent that for a law to make sense, it should have some element of universality--that it would be wrong for any to violate it.
A nation that says "all are innocent until proven guilty" and follows that with "except..." would be reverting to a law of personal judgment rather than a law that spans humanity. To say all have a right to a fair trial, unless we've captured you at wartime, is to make nonsense of the very principle that inspired the law.
This country started with a similar contradiction, noted in the written words "liberty and justice for all," and "all men are created equal" and yet containing an unwritten "except for slaves" clause. The impact of that "except" still resonates today, more than two hundred years later.
My concern today is the recent shift in this country, from being opposed to torture--at least in words--to being opposed to torture "except...."
Now, let's be clear about something. Waterboarding is torture. It is the intentional infliction of great pain and discomfort upon somebody who cannot defend himself. The popular description of it in the press is "simulated drowning." This makes it sound like a display at a science fair.
Waterboarding is not simulated drowning. It is killing somebody by drowning him, but stopping just before death actually takes place...only to resume the painful process. It is no more "simulated drowning" than a back alley stabbing is "simulated surgery."
The leap from saying the we stand for human rights and therefore allow no torture under any circumstances, to saying we allow torture under particular circumstances defies what this nation stands for.
Is the stance now that we believe that all nations have the right to torture captives as they see fit? I certainly hope not. Is the stance that we alone can do it because we are the good guys? Besides the argument I've already made for the impractical--if not nonsensical--nature of such an argument, I wonder how the "good guy" status is expected to remain in light of the fact that we--like so many of our enemies--apply human rights only to those humans we choose.
I recently bought the "Ultimate" collection, which gathers all five books in the trilogy plus a short story. I read it a couple months ago and I still love it. And now I'm reading it once again.
I do like the humor. But there's another feature of these books that I love: I just want to hang out with these people. So I keep reading it. Being around interesting people makes me feel good.
A few years ago at work a friend of mine was trying to tell me about something big happening in the corporate structure. He was using names and I had to keep stopping him and asking "Who is that?" The answer would always be that this was a director or vice president or whatever.
He finally got frustrated and said "You know the name of every store clerk and waitress within four blocks of here and you don't know the names of the people running the company you work for!"
My goal is to be around--as much as possible--whoever's got "the spark," as much as possible. They could be VPs or directors or janitors or waiters or waitresses or people asking for money on the street. I could agree with their viewpoints or disagree. If you are on fire about something, I want to be around you.
They say one has to "warm the pen"
But that's not really true
The ink will flow with passionate flame
If only I listen to you
How can I, with impoverished words
Capture the beauty which lies within?
With what aching stride, what longing ears
Can I sing the song my inner self hears?
The clouds, like ice floes, drift apart
Letting the sunshine warm my heart
The trees like dancing children sway
Inviting me to dance today
Along the Big Two Hearted River
Through the burnt-out fields I roam
Ahead of me lies hope and danger
Yet nothing behind can I call home
Step by step I cover the miles
The sun lays to rest in a reddened sky
I have no map for the treasure I seek
Beauty herself is my only guide
Trembling with a forest breeze
Upon a moth's white powdered wings
I look upon a misty lake
While stars, aloof, their anthems sing
Padding through the blanket of green
Duckweed's soft enveloping caress
The moon's bright children dance and run
Laughing with brilliant tenderness
My eyes are drawn to the distant shore
Beyond the craggy, whispering bend
Along the path that rises there
My evening's journey will find its end
Bob Dylan hadn't set out to write songs. He played folk songs written by others until new songs just came out of him.
Tolkein absorbed epic poems and tales and wrote his own version of them.
Soak up the real, pure water--movies and stories themselves. Never mind "the rules"--theories applied to existing art but not used to create that art.
Soak it up until your own story bursts out.
