Kind Words

I had a few kind words and kind gestures given to me today, and it really lifted me up. Speaking of this topic, I want to share my philosophy:

Okay, every day you wake up, and you're consuming a lot of resources. As an American, you are using 200 times more resources than the average Ethiopian. I feel that every day we all need to justify our existence.

One thing you can do is make it a point to make life a little less miserable for someone every day. This can be done with a kind deed or some nice words.

We all come across service people every day — in restaurants, stores, and other businesses. Always give them a smile. Try to say something positive and kind. Always try to lift others up. If there is a problem with your service, freak people out by not being a jerk. Rather, be patient and tolerant. Service people are usually low paid and they typically don't want to be behind that counter. Many of them lead hard lives and they are just trying to survive. If you have a sense of humor, make them laugh.

Over the course of a day, it just take a few positive people like yourself to put someone in a better mood. When that person goes home from their crappy job, that positive mood may transfer to others in their household. Holy crap, you just made the world a slightly better place.

Don't whine, demand, and scream because there is a pea in your mashed potatoes. Life is short, and in the grand scheme of things it's not important.

EXPECT the world to be an imperfect place, and you'll be a lot less stressed and feel better. Technology will fail, just as it has since the beginning of technology. People will make mistakes. Things will go wrong, and then snowball. Learn to accept that. If you have a service problem, explain your problem, and ALWAYS be polite and respectful. Trust me, assholes are a penny a dozen. Be the exception.

Just for fun, I always like to have a behavior that's totally unexpected. One time I was at an event and I learned that even though I had a room reservation, no rooms were available. The hotel had rebooked me at another hotel, far away by the airport. I simply said, "That will work out perfectly - I have a colleague who's staying in that area." The hotel clerk was surprised. He said, "Wow, you're the only person who didn't yell at me about this today." That made me feel really good.

In conclusion, I want to give a shout out to the positive, happy people in my life who continually lift me up and make me feel good. I am blessed to have each of you in my life, and I love you all. See, I said something nice.

Behavior, Excuses, and Hope

Photo by Miriam Espacio on Unsplash

I'm an alien space probe thrown into a human body. I'm going on the ride just looking around, observing, and learning all I can. I'm not sure what I'll do with all this acquired knowledge because I'm now in my "twilight years," as they say. In 20-30 years tops, the oxygen will get cut from my brain and all this "stuff" swirling in my head will simply cease to exist. It will be like pulling the plug on a computer. But, what the heck, for right now I'm a curious little beaver, walking around, and soaking up every morsel of knowledge that I can get.

Behavior
As I sail on the ship of life, one thing that continually trips me out is how people find a way to justify ANY behavior. People mainly do this to make themselves look good, feel good, or protect someone they like. Sometimes their rationalizations border on the absurd, but the story sounds good to them, so they stick with it. Some of my favorites: "I smoke to keep my weight down." Or, "We want to settle the New World to save the Indians." Or, "The Bible says slavery is okay." The list of absurdities goes on and on. I'm not sure how to solve this problem of self-deception, but I believe it plays a key part in our dysfunctional society.

Excuses
It amazes me how people use excuses to justify DOING NOTHING to help our deteriorating planet and society. When I did my first Sierra Club tabling event in 1998, I remember a guy saying to me, "There's nothing that can be done about it." Then, there is a large group of people who say, "We're going to be whisked up to Heaven anyway, so why me worry?"

As for me, I occasionally fall into the pits of the cynics and jaded people. These are the folks who say, "HELL, I tried to do something and they fought me every inch of the way. I'll just do NOTHING and let them learn for themselves." Well, I TRY not to feel this way, but this feeling tries to creep into my soul every day. I think about all the times I went to Washington, DC to lobby. I think about all my phone calls to legislators. I think about all the tabling events I worked at, all the PowerPoint presentations I made, all the traveling I did. And what did I accomplish? I feel that NOTHING has been accomplished. Except, maybe I've kept things from getting worse. There is a mild environmental movement that has reemerged in this country. Gay rights has made major progress, so at least we are advancing socially. But in the environmental arena, things are going slowly.

Hardly anything has been done to slow carbon emissions and to wean the nation off oil. Oh, maybe some baby steps, but it's a drop in the bucket. It's hard to stay focused. I often think that market forces and social evolution will simply determine our future. Changing public policy is nearly impossible. Our Congress members simply respond to the squeakiest wheels, and the environmentalists have neither the dollars nor numbers to compete with the passionate Christian fundamentalists and their corporate allies. Or Big Oil, Big Coal, and so on. I can't afford to buy a Congressperson, and I can't make enough noise to scare one, so I'm screwed.

Hope
But, regardless of all the above, I know I can't just have the "we're screwed anyway" mentality. I have put children in the world and have an obligation to them. I love nature, and have an obligation to the natural world. I love my planet, and want to protect it. But the short-term market forces are so massively powerful that I'm not sure we can protect the long-term. I feel overwhelmed, and I stay in a constant state of melancholy over it. Part of me just wants to get the hell out of here because I can't stand looking at the daily destruction. It hurts. And then I live with the constant guilt of being a part of the industrialized system. Even with the many green things I do in my personal life, I am still a locust, doing my share of devouring our resources. I still have to fly in gas-guzzling airplanes and drive global-warmer vehicles. I stand before Mother Earth and cry that I am GUILTY.

Okay, I will try to get back up and bury my cynicism and jadedness for another day, but I feel strapped down. Just trying to survive, trying to hold a job, trying to be a support for my children, and then finding time to save the world? Yeah, I know, I just have to be more disciplined.

Ultimately, I do have hope. People who talk of doomsday scenarios are just shirking their responsibilities. After all, it's easier to do nothing than something. It's easier to justify a bad behavior rather than change it. Humans take the path of least resistance — we evolved with the concept of conserving energy. And now we have gotten lazy. And, heck, God's going to burn the whole place up anyway, so, let's just watch reality TV and have a brewskie. Let's just party like rock stars, and maybe we can get Nero to play the fiddle.

Devil Music

During my teens and 20s I attended several fundamentalist and independent Baptist churches. I was always intrigued by the term "Devil Music." After all, who really knows what kind of music Satan enjoys. I would guess a little Frank Sinatra.

I never got a clear grip on why Devil Music was bad. I was once told that the beat of the music brought out "primordial urges." Okay, I was only 15, but I knew what that meant — rock music supposedly turned you into an animalistic, horny person. Then there was the claim of the "hypnotic effect" of the beat.

I did not buy into this, nor did any of my friends. My favorite artist at the time was Elton John, followed by Queen. Then there were the Eagles and The Who. Everyone I knew listened to rock or country music. It was a mild form of rebellion.

The Dictator Visit
The brief time my parents had me in a Baptist fundamentalist church was a total joke, with rampant hypocrisy everywhere. But I'll get to that another time. A most memorable moment was when the pastor, who ruled his church as a dictator, came for a visit. First off, he opened our refrigerator, which really annoyed me. Yes, indeed, he was searching for the Devil's Nectar (also known as BEER). I was in my bedroom playing games with some siblings and friends. I put an album from the rock opera Tommy on my record player. I cranked up the song, "Tommy Can You Hear Me" and soon I heard the pastor coming down the hall. He said he was just coming in the bedroom to say "hi." I smiled and said "hi" back. We made small talk, and then he left. All the while, my album was playing on.

The Anti-Rock Seminar
Fast forward a decade and I'm attending another fundamentalist church with my new wife. One week there was a two-night program to expose the evils of rock music. The evangelist spent much time explaining the Satanic connections to song lyrics and talking about quotations and lifestyles of various rock artists. The speaker seemed to have a particular dislike for Ozzy. After spending a couple of nights listening to all this stuff it was time to "get saved" at the end. I was surprised when the associate pastor and some other church leaders came forward, and they said before they thought they were saved but they had not been "really saved." So, I'm not sure how to know when you're "saved" or "really saved" but it probably doesn't hurt to renew your membership, so to speak, every few years. This is known as "rededicating your life."

The Pastor at the Pulpit
At this same church, the pastor was firmly against any music that wasn't gospel. In addition to rock, he was against country, which was "worldy." And he said that easy listening was simply slower versions of rock songs, so that had to go too. He also spoke against homosexuals, pornography, and all the other evils in the world. I realized that there was a lot of bad stuff in the world — it was hard to keep up with it all.

Conclusion
At the last two churches I attended, the once-evil rock songs and rhythms are actually played during the service. They call this "contemporary style" and it's a marketing tool to attract the 30-somethings and younger crowds. The older folks still like "traditional style" where they sing out of the old, ripped hymn book and there's always someone in the choir singing several octaves off key.

The point being is that what is considered "evil" by one generation suddenly becomes acceptable a decade or two later. This same trend can now be seen with the increased acceptance of gay rights. In the past year there's been a steady stream of state bills supporting gay marriage. In fact, more and more churches are now performing gay weddings. I think this is all wonderful.

But as for the Devil Music, I still laugh every time I hear the song "Hotel California" because that was supposed to be a satanic song, and it really freaked out the fundamentalists.