Tonight was my first formal experience with homeless outreach. I've been carrying food for the poor for some time now to cover chance meetings, but apart from pulling quick u-turns to feed a man on the other side of the street, I haven't ever engaged in deliberate service.
Until tonight. Stand Up For Kids is an outreach organization here in the Phoenix area (national organization, actually) whose mission is to provide food, clothing, and other life essentials along with further information and positive relationships. I was introduced to the organization through a student in public speaking.
The organization is in the process of setting up a youth house to increase its ability to serve these kids. Now, law prohibits actually housing homeless under 18 (more on this odd convergence of laws later). But the purpose of this house is to provide the other elements of the home during daylight hours. Its a place to shower, hang out, cook meals, access the food and clothing bank, check the internet... etc.
Outreach for tonight in Phoenix is to meet at the Youth House. I get there about twenty minutes early. I call the outreach lead to make sure I'm in the right place. I am. So I wait, idly picking at white flakes of paint barely hanging onto the building. I hope Stand Up For Kids is renting it for a good price. Should I really be piking at the paint? No. Guess I'll have to paint it. I spend a few minutes wondering how to get paint donated.
The other two people on outreach show. The lead, a woman in her early thirties two months pregnant with her second child, has been doing this for four years. The other woman, in her early sixties with two children a little younger than me, has been at it for a year.
We pack the leads car with supplies (the van we usually use is unregistered) and drive around to the local homeless teenage hang outs. No luck. My companions say its hard to keep up, because as soon as the teens really settle into a place, the cops come and move them on. Don't I know how that works.
So its off to the shelters. Won't find any under 18 year olds, but some 18 to 21, likely. We drive past a pretty rough place my companions call "The Overflow" on our way to CASS (Central Arizona Shelter Service). CASS is a extensive facility that provides lots of different resources and represents the coalition of many different homeless organizations. It's a pretty impressive collaboration.
And so it begins. Some of the youth are pretty ordinary. Maybe their clothes are a bit unwashed, but pretty unnoticable. In a group of teens it would be pretty hard to pick them out. As I said, some of them are normal. Others have either emotional or developmental issues. When I first meet any of them, its all shields. There's this jaded savvy persona that gets performed. A toughness, not unlike the toughness I remember from some of my kids in my youth program. Its the non-verbal "Nobody loves me but I don't give a damn."
Anyway, I remember a particular exchange between two 21 year olds. The one has a job lined up, but doesn't have identification. So he needs his birth certificate. The second guy warns the first that most of those birth certificate websites are trying to steal your identity and set up credit cards in your name. The first says he knows, and that while he thinks this site is legit, he's gonna check his credit in a few days to make sure no body opened up an account. I find it both sad and ironic that a 21 year old homeless youth doesn't have enough of an identity to get a drivers license or a job, but still has to worry about his identity getting stolen.
Some of the youth are inspiring. One young woman we spoke to had just gotten into school after getting her GED and was now working as a telemarketer. At the same time, another is telling about her plans to move to Philly. She's seven months pregnant, and she wants to be homeless in Philadelphia in February. Not what I'd call a solid plan.
Maybe outreach to homeless is less radical than I thought. I guess it depends on the night.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Get beyond yourself
Invest beyond yourself.
Too often we get invested in our identities, building ourselves up into something great.
But we are limited. Trying for greatness within ourselves is a finite endeavor, constrained by the physical and temporal boundaries that constrain us.
If you work in such a way that uncertainty and fear transforms into vision and courage, if you serve other people before yourself, investing in others, the work lives on long after you have gone.
This is the way great work gets done. Forget whose work it is.
Too often we get invested in our identities, building ourselves up into something great.
But we are limited. Trying for greatness within ourselves is a finite endeavor, constrained by the physical and temporal boundaries that constrain us.
If you work in such a way that uncertainty and fear transforms into vision and courage, if you serve other people before yourself, investing in others, the work lives on long after you have gone.
This is the way great work gets done. Forget whose work it is.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Becoming a Hero
Not everyone is a hero. There are people who are great that aren't heroic. There are people who are good that aren't heroic. Heroism requires a certain adminxture of of attributes. They are certainty, moral direction, power, and they occur when the world has a problem.
If you are not decisive, you are not a hero. Plenty of people want good things to happen. That makes you nice. Heroism, on the other hand, requires you to act. Wanting or wishing that everything works out in the end just keeps a person from being a bastard. Heros will things into being, and the critical component is their deeds.
Heroes are more than just determined. They are also morally sensitive. Just being determined makes you more likely to succeed. Being determined without sensitivity makes you likely to be an ass, and an evil and destructive ass at that. Heroism is by its very essence an evocation of moral rightness, and must therefore be as sensitive to its moral orientation as it is determined to seek its ends.
Heroes also have power. Be it traditional influence over events or non-traditional potency in inspiration and emotional leadership, heroes stand apart from others because they effect change. Without power, a good person is a well meaning bystander. This is not to say that moral goodness requires power, but it is to say that if a person is to change the world, they must actually have the means to change it.
And finally, heroes only occur when they are needed. When there is a fracture in the world, an exigence, a calling. Heroes are those people who answer the needs of the time and the place in which they find themselves.
It is the relativly simply aim of this book to convince you that you are on the verge of heroism. If you get your heart in the right place you will have certainty. If you get your head out of your ass you can have moral direction. You already have power, though it is likely you have learned to ignore this fact. And finally, there are certainly things that need to be done here and now, problems that are asking to be solved that have yet to be faced down.
In short, this book will make you a hero.
If you are not decisive, you are not a hero. Plenty of people want good things to happen. That makes you nice. Heroism, on the other hand, requires you to act. Wanting or wishing that everything works out in the end just keeps a person from being a bastard. Heros will things into being, and the critical component is their deeds.
Heroes are more than just determined. They are also morally sensitive. Just being determined makes you more likely to succeed. Being determined without sensitivity makes you likely to be an ass, and an evil and destructive ass at that. Heroism is by its very essence an evocation of moral rightness, and must therefore be as sensitive to its moral orientation as it is determined to seek its ends.
Heroes also have power. Be it traditional influence over events or non-traditional potency in inspiration and emotional leadership, heroes stand apart from others because they effect change. Without power, a good person is a well meaning bystander. This is not to say that moral goodness requires power, but it is to say that if a person is to change the world, they must actually have the means to change it.
And finally, heroes only occur when they are needed. When there is a fracture in the world, an exigence, a calling. Heroes are those people who answer the needs of the time and the place in which they find themselves.
It is the relativly simply aim of this book to convince you that you are on the verge of heroism. If you get your heart in the right place you will have certainty. If you get your head out of your ass you can have moral direction. You already have power, though it is likely you have learned to ignore this fact. And finally, there are certainly things that need to be done here and now, problems that are asking to be solved that have yet to be faced down.
In short, this book will make you a hero.
Potosi, Bolivia
There are no ancient ruins in Potosi, Bolivia. No exotic wildlife. There are no museums worth seeing. No thriving nightlife. Oddly a bit out of the way, stuck in the Bolivian mountains somewhere between La Pax and Uyuni, Kristen and I are there for the same reason the Spaniards were there 500 years ago. There for the same reason its residence have been there since. We are there for the mines.
Hundreds of years ago it made a handful of Spanish miners very rich. Its mining was powered by a workforce created by combining conquered indigenous peoples and imported enslaved ones. Back when the silver veins were rich and the manpower was all but free, the mines turned simple men into sudden kings. For a time, a life of extravagance and purchased political power sprung up around this town. Hundreds of years later, many things have changed... but unfortunately, not enough has changed.
Today the men of Potosi still haul tons of rock out of the side of the mountain. Over 2000 miners work 160 mines that scatter the mountain side. Unlike the oppression of the past, the mines are now a cooperative, a loose collection of mine owners who each hammer away at their own claim, staying out of each others way but collectively paying for the oxygen that gets piped in and likely lobbying together on important issues. Unfortunately, though, this community has no oversight of how the mining progresses, and while our miner guide seemed confident that the experience of the elder miners was better than any engineer or scientist, cave ins still kill more than any other miners a year. Cave ins, I can't help but think, that might be prevented by oversight.
Modern technology has changed the way the rock is processed. Ages ago the silver dried up, and the chaff they haul out is no more than flecked with minerals. Its about 8% tin, 3% silver and 2% lead. 13% valuable to be refined, separated, and exported. 87% to be dumped (after its chemical processing) into the river that no local dare swim in. What was once thrown aside as rubble is now valuable enough to be worth blasting loose and carrying out of the mine, thanks to modern science. And by valuable enough, I mean barely valuable enough.
The value is such that while it will pay a man's wage, it won't buy new tools. So while the technologies of the modern day are used in the refining of the miners labor, it hasn't touched their actual labor. Their method has not changed since the time of Nobel. Take a long piece of steel, and hammer it about three feet into the rock. Stick some dynamite in the hole. Run. After the boom, throw the chunks into a mining cart, and drag it out of the mine. Apart from piped in O2 and battery powered headlamps I can't see a way that this process has changed in 150 years. The fatality rate hasn't changed much either.
About 1% of all miners in Potosi die every year from accidents. Cave ins and and other malfunctions. And if you don't die violently, you die insidiously. No miner lives past 55. None. The respiratory diseases make old age an impossibility. Our guide could think of no expert miner he had ever heard of who reached 60. None. Not only did these men risk very short lives, they accepted mortalities that were shortened as a matter of fact. A life of 6 day a week, 12 hours a day, that was guaranteed to end before 60 from lung problems, if not earlier by some other cause.
At some point, you ask why. Why do they do it? There seem to be two prevailing reasons. One, is its in the culture. Our guide recounts the story of his own youth, he wanted to stay in school, and maybe go to college. But when he was 13, his dad told him he was a sissy if he didn't join his brothers in the mines, took him out of school, and put him to work. Manhood, it seems, is defined by mining. It certainly means muscles, hard work, bravery, and sacrifice for your family. By many standards of manhood, those attributes are mainstays.
The other motivator is the money. In Bolivian terms, miners make a lot of money. A worker in an internet cafe, or another tourist venue, might make 300 Bolivianos a month. A miner, on the other hand, of course, according to the productivity of the mine, might make as much as 1200 a month. This quadrupled salary is enough to keep many in the mines far longer than they had intended.
It should be noted, that 1200 Bolivianos is less than 200 dollars in the US. A job that is far more dangerous than most every job in the States that pays less than the worst job one could get. All and all, their high paying sacrifice pennies out to being just over $0.50 an hour.
One has to admire their determination. Even in the face of certain death, they manage to retain a sense of optimism. They do not live in fear of cave in's or noxious gases, rather they say, "If today is the day I will die, then I will make it a good day." In some ways, the certainty of it makes it all easier to bear. Our guides father was age 53, and still alive. As he talked about it, it was a simple statement of fact for him to say that his dad could die today, or maybe in a year.
But even as I admire their courage, I have to ask if their conviction is misguided. Certainly, they had limited choices. Growing up in a world where this was the norm, they were all but destined to live this life. But I rail at such determinism. Are we, the wealthy beneficiaries of their cheap labor and carelessly discarded lives, so too destined to be blind to their plight? Deined to ignore their suffering? Fated to become what our world told us was normal?
Our normal life is far easier, if no easier to deal with. Normal for most Americans is to work to much, but spend even more, flitting from distraction to distraction, far removed from the lives of who have less and obsessed with the lives who have more. Free in a vast number of ways, but oddly just as paralyzed, our convictions dulled by the inevitable meaninglessness that accompanies a life overly focused on getting what you want.
I say to hell with such destinies. Accepting what cannot be changed is an important part of dealing with reality, but I rail against any who sees respiratory death at age 55 as an unavoidable reality. Neither are we destined to be spoiled overgrown children, blind to our overabundance. These are unfortunate, and very avoidable realities that should be striven against with an immenant tenacity, the same tenacity that drives the miners to feed their families, and the same immenance we expect our desires to be met.
Hundreds of years ago it made a handful of Spanish miners very rich. Its mining was powered by a workforce created by combining conquered indigenous peoples and imported enslaved ones. Back when the silver veins were rich and the manpower was all but free, the mines turned simple men into sudden kings. For a time, a life of extravagance and purchased political power sprung up around this town. Hundreds of years later, many things have changed... but unfortunately, not enough has changed.
Today the men of Potosi still haul tons of rock out of the side of the mountain. Over 2000 miners work 160 mines that scatter the mountain side. Unlike the oppression of the past, the mines are now a cooperative, a loose collection of mine owners who each hammer away at their own claim, staying out of each others way but collectively paying for the oxygen that gets piped in and likely lobbying together on important issues. Unfortunately, though, this community has no oversight of how the mining progresses, and while our miner guide seemed confident that the experience of the elder miners was better than any engineer or scientist, cave ins still kill more than any other miners a year. Cave ins, I can't help but think, that might be prevented by oversight.
Modern technology has changed the way the rock is processed. Ages ago the silver dried up, and the chaff they haul out is no more than flecked with minerals. Its about 8% tin, 3% silver and 2% lead. 13% valuable to be refined, separated, and exported. 87% to be dumped (after its chemical processing) into the river that no local dare swim in. What was once thrown aside as rubble is now valuable enough to be worth blasting loose and carrying out of the mine, thanks to modern science. And by valuable enough, I mean barely valuable enough.
The value is such that while it will pay a man's wage, it won't buy new tools. So while the technologies of the modern day are used in the refining of the miners labor, it hasn't touched their actual labor. Their method has not changed since the time of Nobel. Take a long piece of steel, and hammer it about three feet into the rock. Stick some dynamite in the hole. Run. After the boom, throw the chunks into a mining cart, and drag it out of the mine. Apart from piped in O2 and battery powered headlamps I can't see a way that this process has changed in 150 years. The fatality rate hasn't changed much either.
About 1% of all miners in Potosi die every year from accidents. Cave ins and and other malfunctions. And if you don't die violently, you die insidiously. No miner lives past 55. None. The respiratory diseases make old age an impossibility. Our guide could think of no expert miner he had ever heard of who reached 60. None. Not only did these men risk very short lives, they accepted mortalities that were shortened as a matter of fact. A life of 6 day a week, 12 hours a day, that was guaranteed to end before 60 from lung problems, if not earlier by some other cause.
At some point, you ask why. Why do they do it? There seem to be two prevailing reasons. One, is its in the culture. Our guide recounts the story of his own youth, he wanted to stay in school, and maybe go to college. But when he was 13, his dad told him he was a sissy if he didn't join his brothers in the mines, took him out of school, and put him to work. Manhood, it seems, is defined by mining. It certainly means muscles, hard work, bravery, and sacrifice for your family. By many standards of manhood, those attributes are mainstays.
The other motivator is the money. In Bolivian terms, miners make a lot of money. A worker in an internet cafe, or another tourist venue, might make 300 Bolivianos a month. A miner, on the other hand, of course, according to the productivity of the mine, might make as much as 1200 a month. This quadrupled salary is enough to keep many in the mines far longer than they had intended.
It should be noted, that 1200 Bolivianos is less than 200 dollars in the US. A job that is far more dangerous than most every job in the States that pays less than the worst job one could get. All and all, their high paying sacrifice pennies out to being just over $0.50 an hour.
One has to admire their determination. Even in the face of certain death, they manage to retain a sense of optimism. They do not live in fear of cave in's or noxious gases, rather they say, "If today is the day I will die, then I will make it a good day." In some ways, the certainty of it makes it all easier to bear. Our guides father was age 53, and still alive. As he talked about it, it was a simple statement of fact for him to say that his dad could die today, or maybe in a year.
But even as I admire their courage, I have to ask if their conviction is misguided. Certainly, they had limited choices. Growing up in a world where this was the norm, they were all but destined to live this life. But I rail at such determinism. Are we, the wealthy beneficiaries of their cheap labor and carelessly discarded lives, so too destined to be blind to their plight? Deined to ignore their suffering? Fated to become what our world told us was normal?
Our normal life is far easier, if no easier to deal with. Normal for most Americans is to work to much, but spend even more, flitting from distraction to distraction, far removed from the lives of who have less and obsessed with the lives who have more. Free in a vast number of ways, but oddly just as paralyzed, our convictions dulled by the inevitable meaninglessness that accompanies a life overly focused on getting what you want.
I say to hell with such destinies. Accepting what cannot be changed is an important part of dealing with reality, but I rail against any who sees respiratory death at age 55 as an unavoidable reality. Neither are we destined to be spoiled overgrown children, blind to our overabundance. These are unfortunate, and very avoidable realities that should be striven against with an immenant tenacity, the same tenacity that drives the miners to feed their families, and the same immenance we expect our desires to be met.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Why you build a wall?
"Why you build a wall? It's not functional... Why you build a wall?"
Roland speaks as though he's seen a ghost. Its probably been, what, twenty years since the five year old Roland left eastern Berlin with his ailing father and terrified mother. He claims not to remember much, but goes on to say that he remembers because his parents have always talked about it. So perhaps its the ghosts of his parents past sees as he recounts.
Honestly, I don't even know how this conversation started. Roland and his girlfreind Daniela, who have been traveling South and Central America after getting laid off five months ago, showed up to the hostel to buy some ingredients to "make party." Our sincere but mostly superficial conversation had moved from music to travel to employment. Others had joined and left. But now, after last call for the hostel bar and as the other guests are off brainstorming the next place to party, with little warning our conversation turns to escaping communist regimes.
His dad had worked in the mines, and had "worked so hard his heart broke." His country didn't have th e technology to see his heart, and so they didn't know what was wrong. Apparently there was an appeal
process people with illnesses could make to leave the country, and while some people waited twenty years to be given permission Roland's family was lucky.
"After six months, they tell us, "Just go.""
In western Germany they had the medical technology to diagnose the broken muscle in the back of Roland's dad's heart, and treat him best they could. As history would have it, the wall came down four months after Roland's family left.
Roland is leaned against the bamboo laundry drying rack in the middle of the hostel courtyard. He had been clumsily plucking chords on the guitar, but now the intrament hangs loosely in his hands, as even his gruff German rock fails to express his frustrations. His eyes have a distracted glaze, yet are strangely intense, and he scratches a goatish beard. His timeline puts him at twenty five. The creases that strain at his eyes make you guess thirty.
"Communism promises equality. The same for everyone. But it's not... functional." He finishes the phase in Spanish with an tired and ironic smile. He tilts the guitar at Kristen.
"Some of us have beautiful voices and can play the guitar. Some of us work with wood. We can't be equal. We all need different things. We have to go our own way. Communism... its not functional. Even though we got away, it broke my dad's heart. Now he have to take twenty pills a day. Twenty. And they help, but they make him gain weight. More and more weight. There are lots of ways to say it, but I just ask this: Why you build a wall?"
His voice has lost none of the confusion, but now if full of frustration, too, with tones of bitterness and anger. "Why you build a wall in the middle of the land? To keep people from leaving. To keep them from going there own way. We can't make its so everyone is equal, but we can make no borders, take down the walls, and let people go their own way."
Its late, and while there are plenty of reasons to be tired, but Roland looks particularly exhausted. In a look that I still cannot find adequate words to express, he asks his ringing question thats says more than most answers.
"Why you build a wall?"
Roland speaks as though he's seen a ghost. Its probably been, what, twenty years since the five year old Roland left eastern Berlin with his ailing father and terrified mother. He claims not to remember much, but goes on to say that he remembers because his parents have always talked about it. So perhaps its the ghosts of his parents past sees as he recounts.
Honestly, I don't even know how this conversation started. Roland and his girlfreind Daniela, who have been traveling South and Central America after getting laid off five months ago, showed up to the hostel to buy some ingredients to "make party." Our sincere but mostly superficial conversation had moved from music to travel to employment. Others had joined and left. But now, after last call for the hostel bar and as the other guests are off brainstorming the next place to party, with little warning our conversation turns to escaping communist regimes.
His dad had worked in the mines, and had "worked so hard his heart broke." His country didn't have th e technology to see his heart, and so they didn't know what was wrong. Apparently there was an appeal
process people with illnesses could make to leave the country, and while some people waited twenty years to be given permission Roland's family was lucky.
"After six months, they tell us, "Just go.""
In western Germany they had the medical technology to diagnose the broken muscle in the back of Roland's dad's heart, and treat him best they could. As history would have it, the wall came down four months after Roland's family left.
Roland is leaned against the bamboo laundry drying rack in the middle of the hostel courtyard. He had been clumsily plucking chords on the guitar, but now the intrament hangs loosely in his hands, as even his gruff German rock fails to express his frustrations. His eyes have a distracted glaze, yet are strangely intense, and he scratches a goatish beard. His timeline puts him at twenty five. The creases that strain at his eyes make you guess thirty.
"Communism promises equality. The same for everyone. But it's not... functional." He finishes the phase in Spanish with an tired and ironic smile. He tilts the guitar at Kristen.
"Some of us have beautiful voices and can play the guitar. Some of us work with wood. We can't be equal. We all need different things. We have to go our own way. Communism... its not functional. Even though we got away, it broke my dad's heart. Now he have to take twenty pills a day. Twenty. And they help, but they make him gain weight. More and more weight. There are lots of ways to say it, but I just ask this: Why you build a wall?"
His voice has lost none of the confusion, but now if full of frustration, too, with tones of bitterness and anger. "Why you build a wall in the middle of the land? To keep people from leaving. To keep them from going there own way. We can't make its so everyone is equal, but we can make no borders, take down the walls, and let people go their own way."
Its late, and while there are plenty of reasons to be tired, but Roland looks particularly exhausted. In a look that I still cannot find adequate words to express, he asks his ringing question thats says more than most answers.
"Why you build a wall?"
Friday, May 15, 2009
Not self help
This is not a self help book.
I'll admit there are some similarities. You might find a flow chart here or a seven step process there. You will probably read some poetry too mediocre to get published as poetry, and instead included here because it makes my point.
But this book differs from self help books in very important ways. First, it was not written by an educated man who is telling you that all he had to do to succeed was to have a good attitude. Thanks for that tip. I had no idea that all well off people needed to do to have success was to get their heads out of their asses. Maybe if the book included a copy of their diploma it would actually make me more effective.
There is no attractive picture on the flap of this book. While I suspect my fiancee actually finds me attractive, my looks have not been known to stop traffic or cure cancer patients. I do not have a finely chiseled chin, my smile does not gleam, and my hair does not do that wavy professional thing. Rather my teeth are a bit worse for wear after a childhood of stunts and my hair looks like an electrical burn victim.
Finally, and most importantly, this book is not trying to convince you that while you may have a problem you have the capacity solve your problem if only you listened to me.
It is for this reason that this is not a self help book.
Rather, this is an other help book.
Even as I write, I am trying to convince you that other people have a problem, lots of problems, actually, and that you are the one capable of solving them. This is not an equation for how to make your life better, but the lives of the people around you better.
The pages leading up to this one are stories of my life, an ongoing account of how I got to these ideas and how they changed me. But to be perfectly honest, I am basically done talking about me. From this point on, there will be a new subject.
You.
It is your life, your choices, and your actions that are now the defining drive behind this writing. See, the idea is pretty basic. I can't save the world alone. I could try my ass off, but even with the most brilliant of plans I am doomed to failure. But that is where you come in. Where WE come in. Solving world problems seems a bit out of reach for a single person. Even a few people. But what if the world tried to solve the world's problems? Seems like there would be just enough help to get it done.
My reason for writing this book: to get you to help me save the world. To that end, we need to change up the style of writing. Before, I was telling stories, stories you constructed imaginatively in order to visualize what had happened. But now your imagination needs to serve a different purpose. You need to imaginatively construct visions of what can happen.
This process involves telling you about problems in the world. It goes on to reflect on how to evaluate and solve them. And I'll be perfectly honest, I rely on some of the very same techniques used by the endless wading pool that is self help literature. Flow charts. Step by step processes. Crappy poetry. I'll never suggest that this book is better written.
But I do contend that this book has a better aim. I am not here to increase your satisfaction by making you be a better you. No, my goal, and I can only hope our goal, is to make a better world.
What could be more satisfying than that?
I'll admit there are some similarities. You might find a flow chart here or a seven step process there. You will probably read some poetry too mediocre to get published as poetry, and instead included here because it makes my point.
But this book differs from self help books in very important ways. First, it was not written by an educated man who is telling you that all he had to do to succeed was to have a good attitude. Thanks for that tip. I had no idea that all well off people needed to do to have success was to get their heads out of their asses. Maybe if the book included a copy of their diploma it would actually make me more effective.
There is no attractive picture on the flap of this book. While I suspect my fiancee actually finds me attractive, my looks have not been known to stop traffic or cure cancer patients. I do not have a finely chiseled chin, my smile does not gleam, and my hair does not do that wavy professional thing. Rather my teeth are a bit worse for wear after a childhood of stunts and my hair looks like an electrical burn victim.
Finally, and most importantly, this book is not trying to convince you that while you may have a problem you have the capacity solve your problem if only you listened to me.
It is for this reason that this is not a self help book.
Rather, this is an other help book.
Even as I write, I am trying to convince you that other people have a problem, lots of problems, actually, and that you are the one capable of solving them. This is not an equation for how to make your life better, but the lives of the people around you better.
The pages leading up to this one are stories of my life, an ongoing account of how I got to these ideas and how they changed me. But to be perfectly honest, I am basically done talking about me. From this point on, there will be a new subject.
You.
It is your life, your choices, and your actions that are now the defining drive behind this writing. See, the idea is pretty basic. I can't save the world alone. I could try my ass off, but even with the most brilliant of plans I am doomed to failure. But that is where you come in. Where WE come in. Solving world problems seems a bit out of reach for a single person. Even a few people. But what if the world tried to solve the world's problems? Seems like there would be just enough help to get it done.
My reason for writing this book: to get you to help me save the world. To that end, we need to change up the style of writing. Before, I was telling stories, stories you constructed imaginatively in order to visualize what had happened. But now your imagination needs to serve a different purpose. You need to imaginatively construct visions of what can happen.
This process involves telling you about problems in the world. It goes on to reflect on how to evaluate and solve them. And I'll be perfectly honest, I rely on some of the very same techniques used by the endless wading pool that is self help literature. Flow charts. Step by step processes. Crappy poetry. I'll never suggest that this book is better written.
But I do contend that this book has a better aim. I am not here to increase your satisfaction by making you be a better you. No, my goal, and I can only hope our goal, is to make a better world.
What could be more satisfying than that?
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Darkness and Fear
Last night I learned the power of darkness and fear. My walk out to the canyon had been nothing out of the ordinary, save for the dying batteries in my headlamp. I suppose after months of use, the three triple A's had finally met their end. Time to pay my electric bill. :)
While it had been a bit surreal setting up camp with so little light, I managed, and once in bed I promptly fell asleep.
In the middle of the night I was awoken by a creature walking across my chest. I startle, it scurries off me, and I fumble for my headlamp. Its pale light does little to illuminate the tent, and I am mostly still asleep, with only fear quickening my otherwise groggy awareness. At the very end of the tent I see the shadowy yet familiar silhouette of a field mouse.
For some reason, it's innocuous form fails to calm me. Having been startled out of my sleep has me in a weird mental place, and the poor lighting makes my tiny tent seem even smaller. The game begins, as I try to get the mouse out of the tent, and he runs like hell because he thinks I am trying to kill him. But I am at a disadvantage. I can't see what his happening, and I'm only half awake and slow. The mouse, on the other hand, is all over. He darts under blankets and around pillows. He even climbs the insect netting up the side of the tent, and at one point scampered up my sweatshirted arm and across my back. His frenzied evasion (and crawling on me) does not improved my addled state.
I am now desperate. My light is dimming by the second as the batteries struggle their last moments of light. The mouse has evaded me. I can't see him. I don't think he has gone, so I move the blankest slowly in the ever fading glow of the headlamp. I move cautiously if clumsily around the tent, trying to find the intruder.
After looking everywhere else, I pull back the camping mattress that in effect covers the entire floor of my one person tent. There, beneath my pad, in a curled and shivering fetal position, lies the dying mouse. In the mayhem, he had apparently sought cover under my mattress, only to be crushed by me in my frantic attempt to oust him from my home. One of his front paws is clasped tightly. The other paw shudders outstretched, almost as if to reach for something in his last moments.
I am flooded with despair. Not knowing what else to do, I pick up his broken body and put it outside the tent in the bush. Sleep came quickly, but not before a shadow passed over my spirit.
I awoke in the morning haunted by the nights experience. The death of my little friend had sunken in during my sleep, and as I hiked out of the canyon a sense of futility started to settle. I had moved into the wild to simplify my life. Intending to consume fewer resources, intending to take less for granted, and intending to ease my strain on the environment. But despite my best intentions, last night I had smashed an innocent creature under my weight.
In the darkness of the fading light and the haze of my goggy fear, I had caused a meaningless death. As the day warms I take off my jacket, and I relive in my mind the scramble with the field mouse.
Darkness and fear.
And suddenly, and in shocking completeness, it comes to me. Of course coexistence starts with desire. A desire to do good. An intention. But even my good intentions can fail to do good if I act in darkness and out of fear. If I want to do great good, or even, the greatest good, I must do more than want good things to happen. I must also seek to illuminate the issue. To see what is happening, so that I know what actually is and where the problems really lie. I must create light.
Similarly, when trying to do this greatest good I must act with faith, and not out of fear. While I had not desired to be violent, I harmed another because I was fearful. Because I did not have peace.
Desire, then is the beginning. The want to do good. But I also need knowledge, the ability to see what is so as to do great good. And finally, I need strength of character. I am perhaps unfinished and unready to perform what will be needed from me. For that I must strengthen my resolve. Wanting good, knowing how to do it, and having composure in the face of hardship. With those three things, I could see neigh impossible goods come to pass, solutions to complex problems and bring resolution in frantic times.
With these, I could do the greatest good.
While it had been a bit surreal setting up camp with so little light, I managed, and once in bed I promptly fell asleep.
In the middle of the night I was awoken by a creature walking across my chest. I startle, it scurries off me, and I fumble for my headlamp. Its pale light does little to illuminate the tent, and I am mostly still asleep, with only fear quickening my otherwise groggy awareness. At the very end of the tent I see the shadowy yet familiar silhouette of a field mouse.
For some reason, it's innocuous form fails to calm me. Having been startled out of my sleep has me in a weird mental place, and the poor lighting makes my tiny tent seem even smaller. The game begins, as I try to get the mouse out of the tent, and he runs like hell because he thinks I am trying to kill him. But I am at a disadvantage. I can't see what his happening, and I'm only half awake and slow. The mouse, on the other hand, is all over. He darts under blankets and around pillows. He even climbs the insect netting up the side of the tent, and at one point scampered up my sweatshirted arm and across my back. His frenzied evasion (and crawling on me) does not improved my addled state.
I am now desperate. My light is dimming by the second as the batteries struggle their last moments of light. The mouse has evaded me. I can't see him. I don't think he has gone, so I move the blankest slowly in the ever fading glow of the headlamp. I move cautiously if clumsily around the tent, trying to find the intruder.
After looking everywhere else, I pull back the camping mattress that in effect covers the entire floor of my one person tent. There, beneath my pad, in a curled and shivering fetal position, lies the dying mouse. In the mayhem, he had apparently sought cover under my mattress, only to be crushed by me in my frantic attempt to oust him from my home. One of his front paws is clasped tightly. The other paw shudders outstretched, almost as if to reach for something in his last moments.
I am flooded with despair. Not knowing what else to do, I pick up his broken body and put it outside the tent in the bush. Sleep came quickly, but not before a shadow passed over my spirit.
I awoke in the morning haunted by the nights experience. The death of my little friend had sunken in during my sleep, and as I hiked out of the canyon a sense of futility started to settle. I had moved into the wild to simplify my life. Intending to consume fewer resources, intending to take less for granted, and intending to ease my strain on the environment. But despite my best intentions, last night I had smashed an innocent creature under my weight.
In the darkness of the fading light and the haze of my goggy fear, I had caused a meaningless death. As the day warms I take off my jacket, and I relive in my mind the scramble with the field mouse.
Darkness and fear.
And suddenly, and in shocking completeness, it comes to me. Of course coexistence starts with desire. A desire to do good. An intention. But even my good intentions can fail to do good if I act in darkness and out of fear. If I want to do great good, or even, the greatest good, I must do more than want good things to happen. I must also seek to illuminate the issue. To see what is happening, so that I know what actually is and where the problems really lie. I must create light.
Similarly, when trying to do this greatest good I must act with faith, and not out of fear. While I had not desired to be violent, I harmed another because I was fearful. Because I did not have peace.
Desire, then is the beginning. The want to do good. But I also need knowledge, the ability to see what is so as to do great good. And finally, I need strength of character. I am perhaps unfinished and unready to perform what will be needed from me. For that I must strengthen my resolve. Wanting good, knowing how to do it, and having composure in the face of hardship. With those three things, I could see neigh impossible goods come to pass, solutions to complex problems and bring resolution in frantic times.
With these, I could do the greatest good.
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