Four people I tend to think about and why when it’s time to dig deep or regroup with sadness or overwhelm before moving forward again:
1. Mum – “you always have three choices you can make, even to the moment before death.”
And her refugee immigration story for getting to the U.S. reminds me that we made it this far, she went through a lot to get here, most of the nonsense we face isn’t quite like witnessing tanks roll into your city and having to escape with part of your family from political persecution by boat.
2. Jake Turbett – when I was in middle school and sometimes even high school I knew he’d be willing to make space at a lunch table for me to sit down even though I didn’t know much about him otherwise. We’d probably have very different views, and straight out of high school he joined the U.S. Marine Corps genuinely believing in defense of the country before getting killed in action a few years later while in Kandahar.
3. Marie Colvin – war correspondent focused on telling the story of everyday people impacted by war and was credited with preventing the massacre of 1000 Indonesians during a civil war by refusing to leave when all media agencies departed in anticipation of a military operation; she was later killed while reporting on the Assad regime’s decimation of Homs in Syria. She exemplified the fact that some people are willing to risk death for the sake of simply telling the truth about people’s suffering.
4. Charity Hicks – Detroit advocate whose memory is often expressed with the phrase to “wage love.”
While I might have crossed paths with her, I certainly didn’t share a conversation in depth but that expression tells me that it’s equally important and always possible to show up with a tender heart while doing the work that's needed.
Create, stand up, speak out, live with the courage to care even when it's hard to find and feel. All of it matters even if it's to one person.
An Origami frog folded for a friend in Washington D.C.-- Omakaki, Ojibwemowen for frog with roots that can also mean "growth in the dark"; Kaeru in Japanese which can also, if my shallow gleaning from a beer company has any bearing, mean a return to prosperity.
They don't teach first aid for alcohol poisoning in the Boy Scouts. Nor did I learn it in lifeguard training. Last night I encountered an unconscious young man with all the signs of alcohol poisoning.
However, I didn't know what alcohol poisoning looked like.
A group of young Chinese National or Chinese American students struggled to hold up a ragdoll-limp body by the street outside a night club as I passed by.
I came up asking if he was okay and met with hurried tones of assurance: "he's fine... everything's okay!" I gave a questioning second look and walked on.
It wasn't until a few people in my group mentioned it wasn't right for someone to be unconscious, that it was symptomatic of alcohol poisoning and needed medical attention that I turned around to re-engage the Chinese/Chinese American students and prompt them to seek professional medical attention.
Strangely enough, the person in my group who recognized alcohol poisoning actually knew how to check on an unconscious person, down to recognizing how much alcohol dissolved in the blood it takes before one can smell it as a sign of serious dehydration.
In retrospect, it's a form of first aid, and certainly not a form I had ever thoroughly prepared for before.
I motioned for us to carry him into the night club where it was warmer so they could wait for an ambulance there.
Knowing what you know in a situation, what's your responsibility?
For anyone who wants to know, here's what to do if you come across someone too intoxicated for their own good:
Top left: "When at cusp of ambiguous commitment to action, meaning and zeal will be found by leaning into the ambiguity and ensuring that you choose to commit to those actions in alignment with your greater sense of purpose/intention." e.g. not sure how you feel about something you claimed you'd do/losing sense of purpose about doing it. Assumes clarity one's own intention/purpose already established/underway or at least nascent outside of the particular situation.
Midsection: distinguishing kinds of discomfort in ambiguous situations. Side note lower left corner on ambiguity/uncertain risk references this guide to embracing complex systems with risk governance.
For examples with context, note post on desperation. Summing them here: Intrinsic discomfort: am I willing to forsake something good enough most people try to rely on--though evidence and experience points to it not working--and believe that a better way for living exists?
Circumstantial discomfort: if desperation constitutes the core subject for laughter and ridicule in the film among viewers, and an individual actually lives under the same stresses created by those circumstances--is it better to stay in hopes of learning something new or leave to preserve peace of mind? For both the guiding question might be "what is the courageous choice?"
Upper right: A=Anxiety D=Depression S=Shame All three link into a negative self-sustaining loop. All three have near-term potential tactics for intervention.The note on "Healthy forgiveness" references this particular interpretation of forgiveness.
I saw American Beauty for the first time this weekend at a house screening as a friend's guest. The person who chose the film explained it was "a classic", and another mentioned it was a "dramedy"--humor to be found in the absurdity of emotional extremes.
Desperation was a key theme to a lot of the behaviors that drew most of the snickers and laughter. If willing, conscientious choice is fundamental to dignity desperation then serves as its converse.
Example: an insecure suburban WASP mom archetype forces a smile and recites capitalistic mantras for success as her work in real estate continues to fail.
For those who rely on one belief or another as a way for finding self-worth and meaning in life, ridiculing desperation quickly skirts the line toward becoming a demeaning and disempowering act. It's mean-spirited if not cynical humor shrouded in the laurels of being an iconic film for mainstream U.S. Cinema.
It's also a negative feedback loop [here's a place better suited for diagrams than text]:
A desperate individual's chosen actions for self-preservation are demeaned when subject to ridicule (bullying). If it's vicious enough, giving up on the practice out of fear becomes a probable outcome, further reducing their choices for a willing existence.
Also, what happens when the topics and subjects of laughter are current and real for members of the audience?
For the sake of self-preservation, the characters are constructed to have little to no choice--they operate from a default stance of desperation--and as a result, little room for realizing dignity. The few who embody a glimpse of dignity are killed or kicked out from families unable to cope with the way their perception of the world unfolds around them.
It's not far from me either: what difference does it make if someone like me ascribes to outdated religious and moral codes like Bushido, or draw from Buddhism's principles, or Christianity's in the hopes that ancestors and family knew what how to cope with their reality in resilient grace?
The answer comes from asking another question I've overheard Cesar Gonzalez emphatically ask: What is the courageous choice?
The courageous choice doesn't involve choosing a particular religion for the sake of having to believe in--unless you have to. If one recognizes holes in any of the religious and spiritual frameworks above, it is courageous to forgo holding onto an ineffective and rigid belief for the sake of faith in oneself and one's capacity to engage the future by embracing the present.
As easy it is to write, that's a tall task for one, myself included, to instantaneously take to heart and keep.
Similarly, is it better to leave a familiar source of suffering for peace of mind or choose to endure it for the sake of seeking meaningful actions out of repetitious exposure?
Side note:
Circa 2011/2012 I adapted Hamilton's Rule from evolutionary biology:
(Relatedness * Benefits)-Costs >1 for altruistic behavior to be likely
as a way to roughly rank experiences with a film:
(Relevance x Benefits) - Costs > or = to 1 for a good film
If it's really relevant, and it benefits you in some way which outweighs the costs of cognitive/emotional/time/physical load, it's a good film.
Definition: good? I'll reference Aldo Leopold's characterization of good:
A thing tends to be good when it preserves the integrity and beauty of the human and biotic community.
American Beauty, at least on first impression, does almost the exact opposite. We find glimmers of hope in one or two individuals, not the community.
Originally I adopted the rule out of anger at Pan's Labyrinth--which takes viewers through a fantastical and terribly oppressive world, and the end reward for the audience is a glimpse of the protaganist entering eternal life as she leaves the rest of the real world behind to carry on in dystopic chaos. It was a disproportionate benefit and the movie left a bad taste...
Just as Pan's Labyrinth, American Beauty was a relatively disempowering film. Yes, grace in American Beauty could be found in the protagonist's moment of transcendent acceptance (to paraphrase: "there's so much beauty in the world, you just have to let it flow through you"), and two teenagers deciding to leave abusive households. However, the overwhelming chain of events in the film lead to negative and destructive fragmentation of many relationships and some resulting in killing. The reality depicted in the film echoes much of what we already see in the world or grow up with. The emotional impact calculus burdens the viewer with more vivid problems than they can engage or resolve, and the "one to many" nature of communicating content in film and television to large audiences more often than not makes it an isolating endeavor.
Honesty without humanity is brutality, to paraphrase...
"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality" -John F. Kennedy [*possibly attributed to Dante Alighieri]
Considering the above quote, moments of great moral crises are opportunities for us to live. Choose to maintain neutrality--in other words, choose indifference--and we forfeit an opportunity to live and exist to our fullest within the moment.
So in the spirit of keepin' it real: It is often in retrospect that we burn by flames of our own anger, shame, and unrest over those pivotal moments of crisis in life. It's a waking and living afterlife in itself.
For a few tangents, I'll pose a pseudo-scholar's conjecture: Perhaps Dante's inferno was also an early attempt at psychology--using heaven and hell as allegory to how we live our lives immediately as well as in his broader interpretation of religious afterlife. [disclaimer, last time I read Dante's Inferno was in high school, early 2000s]
I'm tempted to loosely ponder how other dimensions of reality and alternative universes can exist via physics too, but that's probably too much pseudo anything for today...
New life-challenge: turn curiosity into courageous questions quickly.
Not so new but still challenging for me to do: elicit passion and wisdom from other people as soon as appropriate.
“Art ain’t about paint. It ain’t about canvas. It’s about ideas. Too many people died without ever getting their mind out to the world.” — Thornton Dial, SR.
Art, as I’ve come to understand, exists as a special form of communication. It’s communication that inspires a sense of wonder—a deep curiosity that has us ponder the encounter and ideas behind what we engage. It compels us to activate our curiosity as we wonder about the possible implications an encounter can have on our lives or the that of others.
I saw Thornton Dial SR.’s quote in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s folk artist exhibit. It was liberating as much as it was validating: To make art, one requires no rigorous history of training, art degree, special materials or extraordinary circumstances to start. To me, Thornton Dial’s quote was an invitation to make whatever was on my mind if I so wished to do so. Better yet, it comforted me to know there’s boundless opportunity to share any idea, including those that can’t be experienced in writing. Perhaps what we have to share comes forth as good and beautiful. Whatever we choose to do, the act of honestly communicating our ideas certainly brings us closer to truth for our minds and hearts. Whenever that happens, it’s an invitation to live life artfully.
Looking at Mr. Dial’s quote again, it also applies to how I look at living life when speaking with and listening to people. There’s an art to good conversation and dialogue. If we consider Seth Godin’s distinction between the characteristics of work and art, artful conversation becomes a palpable ideal. Godin believes that work can be recognized as something people want to do less of, while art is something people want to make more. In that sense, we can all strive to make artful conversations. Both are important, good work can be necessary for creating better art.
. . .
I believe everyone benefits being in and moving from a place of passionate curiosity. Being as Rachel Carson describes, in a “sense of wonder”. When activated, it entices profound intrigue straight from the spirit. Whether mentally or physically, that place could be our own, among others, or perhaps better yet: shared. What matters most is that we speak with the flames of inspiration, those burning deeply from within our being to create that place.
If there’s dead space or if confusion nags at your attention in a way that prevents peace for everyone in the conversation, call it out and help shake things up. Time and life in the presence of another person are too precious an opportunity to squander. For anyone who grants me the privilege of sharing a conversation, this applies to us too. Call me out if I don’t do so first. Just because I’m familiar with the recesses of awkward pause doesn't mean I necessarily need or want us to stay there.
Perhaps the cost of very good conversation comes from committing yourself wholly to the people you speak with by thoroughly listening and keeping the courage to share what really matters to you. But do so in the greater interest of co-creating an enriching dialogue for everyone involved. Live boldly. Don’t be cautious, but be considerate with presence, intelligence, and equal heart. With this in mind, we can strive to create heartful conversations.
I’m still learning how to do so with excellence. But I like the idea that it’s an endeavor to live and share.
If it quavers and shakes in fear:
let it be for the reasons we share with you.
Speak your truth with courage, and all your heart.
Inspire, then move us--with each word you expel, and each breath you spend. We'll catch our breaths, and then we'll respire.
We'll breathe as we move closer toward something worth every spirited breath of speech, story, and song before our lives expire.
But it ends not at your life, nor ours. Greatness flows over and through endeavors of legacy everlasting.
Free it with your voice and contribution to the world.
Let it ebb and flow from heart to heart: yours to mine, theirs to yours.
Call again!
Through sacred passage of wisdom in your call and listening--let your curiosity open the greatness of others, share your reliable truths, and always ask for the greatest of truth even when the only answer may be silence from your fellows.
The echoes of utterance will be great, and the world may quaver and shake in new movement as it awakens with the warmth of your voice for the reasons we share with you.
Perhaps today's dragons come not in the form of multi-headed monolithic institutions that exceed our ability to grapple with. Rather, they're a challenge for us to advance and embrace unencumbered honesty.
I recently gave feedback on the draft speech of a fellow social entrepreneur who was invited as a keynote speaker for the Jane Goodall Vision 2020 symposium.
While I won't be there for the symposium (it's in Australia), I can imagine the following for events of this caliber and magnitude: people are privileged to attend, and the event organizers bring in some of the best speakers they can find to leave all their attendees charged with the finest of rekindled hearts and solid wisdom.
While I was more or less familiar with various strategies she explores in her speech, I'm starting to realize how tremendous an opportunity it's been to have access to her speech and organization: due to the nature of the organization's programs, I've been privileged to learn about some of her organization's deepest challenges in ways that most people would never imagine possible for someone working with it in such a short amount of time. I know that in some way, the things they might have struggled with are the very same things I struggle with too. They probably boil down to very simple (but tremendous!) things that were affirmed at the end of her speech: perseverance, commitment, and belief in your own success before you begin.
If you're left with the same things you had questioned before, it's time to get moving--sometimes you must live to understand them, rather than know them to live. Some ideas retain resilience even when we don't feel we have a complete grasp of reality or the concepts in our minds. Those come from learning by undergoing the most trying challenges of fully living our lives.
Heed your vision to find your bearings before committing, keep your eyes open, and dive in
Perseverance is a powerful thread of sustainability. Yet in the opposite direction, perseverance in purview of foolhardy and narrow commitment can become the undoing of an individual, community, or organization.
We require vision to ensure the viability of our perseverance and ultimately, our sustainability.
#added 20 III 2013 11:22
"In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught." -Baba Dioum
“What we need to match the science of human health is what the ancient Israelites called ‘hocma’—the science of the heart. . . the capacity to see. . . to feel. . . and then to act. . . as if the future depended on you. Believe me, it does.”-Bill Moyers
Alright, in heed of Valentine's Day, I've realized love is necessary for sustainability.
Again, there are some who’d argue that love goes well beyond romance, it's really about finding ways to embrace life to its fullest with other people whom you can trust, even in trying circumstances [1]. Perhaps in essence, much of the world is enamored with romance because it exists as the opportunity and hope for lightening discovery. But overall, love's about fostering relationships and circumstances that celebrate others as much as it invites and encourages them to become the best they can be at all times. Perhaps that's a key element for distinguishing love from compassion.
Love then becomes a requisite ideal for sustainability because people must move beyond a sense of duty in compassion. Compassion wholeheartedly considers a humane cause or misfortune, and like love, it may operate on a notion or ethos of improvement and hope. However, without commemoration or celebration-- outcomes from possible merits also fosters awareness about the products of something deeply appreciated. On some level, this can imply a deep understanding as well. The more you know, you're more capable of appreciating, and thereby loving. Which brings us back to Baba Dioum's statement:
"In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."
Those who find pain in loneliness or comfort in solitude have learned something profound as well, and in many cases, have an opportunity to articulate the experience in profound ways, often in the arts or through their commitment to substantive endeavors [2]. That's what makes the arts so elusive: they can commemorate an experience and guide us toward our shared humanity in tremendous ways. They can also inspire deeper appreciation and learning about the world we live with, and why the things we live with matter. That's necessary for sound conservation--the practice of ensuring near-term and long-term well-being.
... there's more to this notion of love for sustainability (I feel like the ideas are 3/4 baked at this point). In particular, the role of concepts like compassion, love, hocma, and their relation to appropriately bringing one's courage, wisdom, and capacity for expressing it in life that signify the significance of an individual in the world. I can see it, but it'll take me a while to put it down into writing...
What's the difference between compassion and love? When does compassion become mandatory for good character? I started exploring those questions through this tune and the stories behind it. [Edited: 19 IX 2013]
Willie (in reply to a complement about him as a tremendously compassionate person): "Ian, I appreciate that. I'll humbly accept that, but in some ways I didn't have a choice--you know how my life's been..."
Some people become notably extraordinary in response to or as a product of extraordinary circumstance and exposure. He had gone to prison three times, and started turning his life around through his determination to be who he knew he was capable of becoming--a better person and an artist.
If you get a chance to hear to his story there several key moments during his final time in prison:
1) choosing not to eat meat (at a time when vegetarian options were almost non-existent) while in prison as a way to prove he had control over something in his life
2) one night, a neighboring cell mate who had a reputation for drawing passed one of his pieces over to one of Willie's cellmates, and from then forward he knew he could draw and started sketching
3) seeing the sense of peace that painting brought to one of the inmates
4) a moment where another inmate noticed he was drawing and sat down to show him how to draw with three dimensions for about 5 minutes
He ended his addiction to drugs and later earned his GED, then a college degree, ran 3 Detroit Free Press marathons, and worked at the University of Michigan-Dearborn Wellness Center for a little over 20 years before retiring early to live the wisdom he preaches and pursue his art with greater focus.
It's important to acknowledge that his addiction had negative impacts for other people beyond himself--and that's at the core of his statement "but in some ways, I didn't have a choice--you know how my life's been..." He'll be one of the first to acknowledge and warn people about addiction and the realities of prison and its role in criminal justice. At the same time, he also understands that many of the events which led up to addiction could have been circumvented in many ways--whether it was through the attitudes instilled in him by others as a child to having an earlier exposure to healthier and creative means for expression.
Willie has been a mentor and a champion for my own efforts. I learned so much about compassion and artistry from sporadic visits with him in the past year as he Worked at the Wellness Center--sometimes just from watching him sketch as he told some of the stories I shared above. Or by the way he remained relentless about encouraging me and finding opportunities that could advance my musicianship even as I focused on other kinds of work.
Willie attributes the magnitude of his compassion in large part to his experiences, though I could say there's a fair amount of credit due to his character and commitment too. His life story's tremendous, and I wish more people have met him or can spend time with him to learn about it firsthand.
However, through his reply to my appreciation for what he does and how he lives, I realized he noted a distinction in gauging one's character: there's more to being and becoming a great person than just meeting circumstance with magnanimous compassion. Perhaps actively seeking opportunity to help others becomes the next distinguishing gradation in our humanity. While it's something both Willie and I do, the extent of which that it happens as a regular basis is something new for me to focus on. Not necessarily because I didn't care about or didn't do it before, but because I hadn't seen life with this degree of clarity until I meditated over Willie's reply.
Another question arises about actively helping others: at what point do we let another person be as they are?
Perhaps it behooves us to examine a maxim of life: be as you are unless you yourself find compelling reason to change. I suspect many try to live by it, yet what does this maxim say about our relationship with other people? A distinction and balance exists between seeking--active, and intentional form of aid--to help and helping as an outcome of a reactive/passive or perhaps something simply receptive to opportunity.
I'm still exploring this concept, and I've also titled a new piece "Mandatory Compassion" based on this conversation.
Start 9 I 2013, # 12:24 pm 18 I 2013
. . .
I've since realized the difference between love and compassion. Love is a proactive endeavor which exists in the interest of helping others be at their best. Compassion tends to be reactive and circumstantial. We may help others upon recognizing some need that can be met, but if not, we might empathize for a moment and move on. I also attribute some of this to sharing lunch with a homeless man, Mr. Westberry, at a time when I just happened to have enough extra food to share a hot meal during a very cold December day in Ann Arbor. That event ran through my head as I started playing the opening notes of the piece, and Willie's conversation versus my encounter with Mr. Westberry galvanized concept behind this title. [#edited 19 IX 2013]
I'm starting to suspect iterations of good personal questions also make good interview questions: they challenge your character and if you're unprepared, you're challenged to truly face yourself.
"What's your day like?"- Anna
"What do you think you want to develop about yourself?" - Chelsea
In some cases, people probably have a ready answer. I've asked myself an iteration of both of these questions before, but hearing it articulated or simply being asked by another person who does not know your answers sheds light on how another person can hold you accountable for your own life.
The funny thing is that I might have asked other people similar questions not long ago. I may have recently examined these facets of who we are and am ready to answer them--the stars align and I feel pretty good about it. Sometimes, it's been a bit too long and the salience of the question becomes especially incisive. You start to squirm, sometimes not even because of the person asking it--you might trust them a lot--but rather it's because you realize you never knew, or no longer know who you are at this time.
Self-help guru Stephen Covey, probably best known for his Franklin-Covey planners and his book(s) _# Habits of Highly Successful People (the number changes, last I checked I think it was at 7), talks about "Sharpening the Saw" as one of the habits and principles of self-improvement. In essence: make your own self-restoration a regular priority.
From contemplating these two questions from friends, I realize my biggest challenge comes from finding an appropriate time frame.
I'm not sure why I regularly worry about issues far beyond my regional geography and connection, but knowing that some people die because they have a burning desire to tell the truth about other peoples' suffering is thoroughly sobering.
To my knowledge, I've not examined any of Marie Colvin's work, but Colvin was awarded the Martha Gellhorn prize for journalism. The Gellhorn prize "challenges secrecy and mendacity [lies] in public affairs" and "raises 'forgotten' issues of public importance, without fear or favour." (Aside: Gellhorn had a really interesting life too, I live similarly to how she did)
I noticed Colven on the Gellhorn website Saturday (when I started writing this post), and that she had an eyepatch--the result of a rocket propelled grenade intentionally fired at her in Sri Lanka--and that she was killed in Syria this March according to the Guardian UK.
There's a conflicting account about how she died on wikipedia, but in the spirit of her interests, that shouldn't matter--Marie's a strong woman worth knowing about in any case and a killing of this kind is still an injustice. What strikes me about her is that she's way under the radar, but I think her efforts are as heroic as many noted civil rights activists like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
