A TV report about a tragic accident at a local high school got me to thinking.
A student crossing the street in front of the school was hit and killed by a car driven by another student. In an attempt to boost ratings by appealing to the morbid curiosity of the general public, the reporter stuck a microphone in the shocked faces of the grieving student witnesses and asked them to describe their friend who had just been killed. The curious answers were, "He was very respectful. He wasn't the kind who'd try to start fights. He would just try to get along and be nice." And, "He was your basic, all-around student. He wasn't into drugs or anything".
Do those on-the-spot eulogies sound strange?
"He was a great kid. He wasn't a mass murder or anything."
Maybe it's just me, but I don't expect a kid to start fights or to do drugs. Are antisocial behaviors so much a part of our young people's world that people are defined by their absence? Is our society at a point when someone abstains from deviant behavior, we find that newsworthy?
The words used to describe people may say as much about the times we live in as the people we're describing. What will they say about you when you're moving on to life--phase 2?
"He was a good guy, never cheated on his income taxes and almost never cheated on his wife."
"She was a loyal employee, didn't lie or steal hardly anything."
"What a great cousin, never knocked my teeth down my throat with a baseball bat."
Lesson: Be so much there is little room for what you're not.
The all-leather, NFL-regulation football, inscribed -- 1963 Chicago Bears
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
A MURPHY METAPHOR MOMENT
Murphy, the dog, liked to hike with us in the mountains. Murphy also liked to jump in mud up to his neck and accompanied by the inevitable sucking sound, Murphy would leap out and rapidly roll in the nearest pile of fresh animal droppings. In that "earthy" condition, Murphy would come up to us, eyes caked and twinkling, begging to be petted. Murphy was a dog oblivious to the theory of cause and effect, among many other things.
Unfortunately Murphy is not the only animal struggling with cause and effect. This is a concept seeming very difficult to grasp for the human animal also. Examples from my sparsely populated home state of New Mexico:
o A lady in Albuquerque spilled hot coffee in her lap, sued McDonalds and was awarded $2 million plus which was eventually reduced to approximately $600,000. (What would you spill in your lap for $600,000? Battery acid comes to my mind.)
o A former medical student sued University of New Mexico contending the school, under the Americans With Disabilities Act, didn't make reasonable accommodations for his disability. His disability -- test anxiety! His suit stated he suffers from an anxiety disorder. (A doctor with an anxiety disorder?)
o A gambler (apparently not a very good one) sued the Indian gaming casinos for loss of his money and his marriage. Said he couldn't resist gambling so the casinos shouldn't have been there to tempt him.
o A high school football player was arrested for running 35 yards across the field and blindsiding a referee who had tossed him out for unsportsmanlike conduct only minutes before. The boy's mother explained to the press her son was not at fault; it was the fault of the authorities who let him play when he was tired.
For all too many people, they do everything to create the cause and fight with every ounce of their strength against accepting the inevitable effect their cause created. You spill coffee, you get burned, You flunk enough tests, you fail. You gamble long enough, you lose. You cold cock a referee in front of a hundred people, you get punished. Why should someone else pay for the effect of your cause?
If you, like Murphy the dog, insist on rolling in it, others shouldn't have to suffer because you're not getting petted.
Lesson: You reap what you sow, but don't expect somebody else to eat it.
Unfortunately Murphy is not the only animal struggling with cause and effect. This is a concept seeming very difficult to grasp for the human animal also. Examples from my sparsely populated home state of New Mexico:
o A lady in Albuquerque spilled hot coffee in her lap, sued McDonalds and was awarded $2 million plus which was eventually reduced to approximately $600,000. (What would you spill in your lap for $600,000? Battery acid comes to my mind.)
o A former medical student sued University of New Mexico contending the school, under the Americans With Disabilities Act, didn't make reasonable accommodations for his disability. His disability -- test anxiety! His suit stated he suffers from an anxiety disorder. (A doctor with an anxiety disorder?)
o A gambler (apparently not a very good one) sued the Indian gaming casinos for loss of his money and his marriage. Said he couldn't resist gambling so the casinos shouldn't have been there to tempt him.
o A high school football player was arrested for running 35 yards across the field and blindsiding a referee who had tossed him out for unsportsmanlike conduct only minutes before. The boy's mother explained to the press her son was not at fault; it was the fault of the authorities who let him play when he was tired.
For all too many people, they do everything to create the cause and fight with every ounce of their strength against accepting the inevitable effect their cause created. You spill coffee, you get burned, You flunk enough tests, you fail. You gamble long enough, you lose. You cold cock a referee in front of a hundred people, you get punished. Why should someone else pay for the effect of your cause?
If you, like Murphy the dog, insist on rolling in it, others shouldn't have to suffer because you're not getting petted.
Lesson: You reap what you sow, but don't expect somebody else to eat it.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
SECOND HAND SMOKE
Two days before Christmas the stockings were hung by the chimney with care, chestnuts were roasting on an open fire, sugarplums were head-dancing, and our dogs were tearing apart a little, gray kitten.
'Tis the season.
Living in a more rural area sometimes we unintentionally play host to families of feral cats, this was one of those times--we were not very good hosts.
My son Dave was home for Christmas, and he and his mother were playing in the snow. The tranquility of the moment was disturbed when they saw (and heard) the kitten being worked over pretty well by two of our otherwise friendly dogs, who must have thought they had received an early Christmas present.
Extricating the dog-spit-covered feline was a trick in itself, but the dogs didn't stand a chance against Jean's maternal instincts. The dogs lost their present, and we gained a second cat.
Smokey the cat is now twelve years old, an indoor cat, well-fed, warm and loved. For Smokey to go from very perilous existence in the wild to a protected life in our home he had to go through being used as a pull toy by creatures fifteen times his weight.
To go from what you are now to what you can become, do you also have to be metaphorically pulled apart by the big dogs of life?
Sadly for many of us, that's the case. Smokey would never have experienced the solace in Jean's arms if being held by a human hadn't been infinitely better than the pain of being chomped on by large, canine incisors.
To leave what you currently have, staying must be too painful. That is the root reason anyone would choose to change. As long as you perceive what you have now to be less painful than facing the "dogs" guarding your brighter future, you ain't goin' nowhere.
If Smokey could only have reasoned that once he got through this dog thing, the rest of his life would be better, he might have gone looking for the dogs.
How are you different from Smokey the cat?
To change your job requires facing the dogs of interviews, working with strangers, new policies and procedures and a chance of failure.
To change your house requires facing the dogs of paperwork, meeting new neighbors, leaving old neighbors, arranging for furniture moving, new grocery stores, additional financial obligations.
To change a relationship requires facing the dogs of tears, meeting new people, self-doubt, additional financial obligations and a chance of failure.
Look at all the good things you have in your life and think about the dogs you had to face to get them. Don't leave an even greater future unexplored. Grab a box of treats, a can of citronella spray and wade through the pack.
Lesson: Sometimes to get what's best, we have to experience what's worse.
'Tis the season.
Living in a more rural area sometimes we unintentionally play host to families of feral cats, this was one of those times--we were not very good hosts.
My son Dave was home for Christmas, and he and his mother were playing in the snow. The tranquility of the moment was disturbed when they saw (and heard) the kitten being worked over pretty well by two of our otherwise friendly dogs, who must have thought they had received an early Christmas present.
Extricating the dog-spit-covered feline was a trick in itself, but the dogs didn't stand a chance against Jean's maternal instincts. The dogs lost their present, and we gained a second cat.
Smokey the cat is now twelve years old, an indoor cat, well-fed, warm and loved. For Smokey to go from very perilous existence in the wild to a protected life in our home he had to go through being used as a pull toy by creatures fifteen times his weight.
To go from what you are now to what you can become, do you also have to be metaphorically pulled apart by the big dogs of life?
Sadly for many of us, that's the case. Smokey would never have experienced the solace in Jean's arms if being held by a human hadn't been infinitely better than the pain of being chomped on by large, canine incisors.
To leave what you currently have, staying must be too painful. That is the root reason anyone would choose to change. As long as you perceive what you have now to be less painful than facing the "dogs" guarding your brighter future, you ain't goin' nowhere.
If Smokey could only have reasoned that once he got through this dog thing, the rest of his life would be better, he might have gone looking for the dogs.
How are you different from Smokey the cat?
To change your job requires facing the dogs of interviews, working with strangers, new policies and procedures and a chance of failure.
To change your house requires facing the dogs of paperwork, meeting new neighbors, leaving old neighbors, arranging for furniture moving, new grocery stores, additional financial obligations.
To change a relationship requires facing the dogs of tears, meeting new people, self-doubt, additional financial obligations and a chance of failure.
Look at all the good things you have in your life and think about the dogs you had to face to get them. Don't leave an even greater future unexplored. Grab a box of treats, a can of citronella spray and wade through the pack.
Lesson: Sometimes to get what's best, we have to experience what's worse.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
TICK TOCK
On the TV show ER, a couple in their 80s are stage center. The man is dying, the wife asks concerned Doctor Carter, "How much longer?" Doctor C says, "A few more minutes." Woman sobs in stunned and saddened disbelief, stares at Carter with a look in her eyes that rips your heart out and mumbles numbly, "Only a few more minutes?"
Sixty years of loving togetherness for that man and his wife came down to only a "few more minutes."
There comes a time for all of us when our relationship with those we love will be over in just "a few more minutes." The difference between most of us and the TV characters is they knew which minutes would be their "few more."
Given this finality fact of earthly relationships, should you then be kind, tender, warm, devoted and giving to your loved ones every single minute of every single day? Commendable, yes, but just as certainly unattainable, and in many ways, undesirable. (How would you like to spend a serious amount of time with someone who treated you as if you were going to croak any minute?)
Here rests our earthly dilemma. You shouldn't treat others as if they are going to die before lunch because 99.99 percent of the time you will be wrong. But if you're not treating them the best you know how when their few minutes are indeed up, you beat yourself upside the head with the guilt stick. "I was going to call Aunt Lenore last night but I watched ER instead. Now she's dead, I'm a terrible person."
It would seem to be a part of our human makeup when someone close to us dies to feel we didn't "do enough," "weren't there for them," "didn't say what we wanted to say," yada yada. Get over it. The odds are against us always doing the right thing at the right time.
A loving relationship is a balancing act of living daily with the humanness brought to that relationship. A loving relationship is the times you called Aunt Lenore twice in a day blended with the times you didn't call at all. Death as well as life is a game without rules. You can't judge the quality of a relationship on the last "few minutes." But you definitely could hold yourself accountable for all the years, months, weeks, hours and minutes before the last few.
When you have treated your loved ones the best you know how for 99.99 percent of the time, the last few minutes are just the last few minutes.
Lesson: Enjoy others as if they will live forever, and love them as if they only have a few more minutes.
Sixty years of loving togetherness for that man and his wife came down to only a "few more minutes."
There comes a time for all of us when our relationship with those we love will be over in just "a few more minutes." The difference between most of us and the TV characters is they knew which minutes would be their "few more."
Given this finality fact of earthly relationships, should you then be kind, tender, warm, devoted and giving to your loved ones every single minute of every single day? Commendable, yes, but just as certainly unattainable, and in many ways, undesirable. (How would you like to spend a serious amount of time with someone who treated you as if you were going to croak any minute?)
Here rests our earthly dilemma. You shouldn't treat others as if they are going to die before lunch because 99.99 percent of the time you will be wrong. But if you're not treating them the best you know how when their few minutes are indeed up, you beat yourself upside the head with the guilt stick. "I was going to call Aunt Lenore last night but I watched ER instead. Now she's dead, I'm a terrible person."
It would seem to be a part of our human makeup when someone close to us dies to feel we didn't "do enough," "weren't there for them," "didn't say what we wanted to say," yada yada. Get over it. The odds are against us always doing the right thing at the right time.
A loving relationship is a balancing act of living daily with the humanness brought to that relationship. A loving relationship is the times you called Aunt Lenore twice in a day blended with the times you didn't call at all. Death as well as life is a game without rules. You can't judge the quality of a relationship on the last "few minutes." But you definitely could hold yourself accountable for all the years, months, weeks, hours and minutes before the last few.
When you have treated your loved ones the best you know how for 99.99 percent of the time, the last few minutes are just the last few minutes.
Lesson: Enjoy others as if they will live forever, and love them as if they only have a few more minutes.
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