Tag: trump

the do-gooders

The conversation around authenticity and being ‘self-made’ is always an interesting one to me, and the impetus for this thought today is from 2 very important events that I think we’re probably all tuned in to, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Nobody is self-made. Every last one of us has been shaped by experience and mentorship – some of those experiences are wonderful, and some of them are absolute shit.
Those of us who find ourselves in some of the crappiest situations we can imagine are there because of poor decision making, almost exclusively related to advice we’ve received, and trauma.
Similarly, many of the most successful of us have found ourselves there because of advice we’ve received, and trauma.

But whichever the case, we are guided and manipulated; like a shiny silver pinball being batted around a tilted table until we inevitably glide past our own limited control, and the game is over. Nobody wins at pinball… you just take longer to die than someone else, and then a bunch of people gather in a room and – metaphorically speaking – take a look at your scoreboard. Some people hold all-time records…

One of the highest scores of all time is Dolly Parton… despite a tragic upbringing and constant mocking and criticism at every turn in her life, managed to amass wealth to a degree that most of us will never reach, and did so by putting love and understanding ahead of her personal feelings.

Forbes estimates her value around $500,000,000.00 at a point where she’d purchased and donated 3.5 million books for parents to read to their children, countless fortunes given through charities, and created jobs for an innumerable quantity of people who; incidentally, she’d offered to pay for their college tuition and books for anyone who wanted to further their education. She; herself, never went to college.

She quite literally couldn’t give her money away fast enough to truly rid herself of it.

She’s an outlier in times of a Donald Trump presidency, who’s waged a trade war on Canada, which is an ongoing event that you don’t need to learn of from me when you can consult actual, credible news outlet… so all I will say is that he; too, has received trauma and followed bad advice in his life.

She’s an outlier in times of Elon Musk, a man who’s intent on colonizing Mars in an effort to get away from his family trauma and bad advisors.

I’ll end that list there, because I am not interested in discussing the motives of billionaires, other than to say that Dolly Parton would have been a billionaire if she hadn’t spent so much time giving money away, though a decent amount of her time was also spent writing, as she has more than 3000 songs with her name on them currently… which is probably a bit light, since copyright laws around creative works has a long, storied history of being shady.

I’m reminded of Fred Rogers in this moment, when he recounted an experience of about seeing calamity on the news and becoming visibly upset. His mother consoled him and said “Look for the helpers. any time something bad happens, you will always find people helping.“

To say that Dolly was a helper is a massive understatement, and there are obviously many accolades I’ve left out – but you’d be hard pressed to find someone who had something bad to say about her.

It’s easy to say that these are dark times, but I maintain that if you are looking for darkness, you will find it. So be sure to take a minute and “look for the helpers…“

Maybe even be a helper.
Seems we’re short on those.

As an aside, I received an amazing number of text messages and direct messages through social media within the first 10 minutes of the announcement that Dolly Parton had passed.

I didn’t know what to do with that information when I recieved it… and in retrospect, neither did any of the people who reached out to me. We all just needed to make sure that everyone knew that
The Queen is Dead. Long Live The Queen.

For the record, I was never a superfan of her music.
It was great, and authentic, and inspired generations of people to take the world on their own terms.

Personally, I just have a couple of her records, and a lot of respect.

judgement

As I work through a newly subscribed system, attempting to purge myself of ill will, I realize I have a lot of hang-ups for someone who’s ostensibly adapted the catch-phrase “everyone is doing their best.”

Even to take a tired old expression into consideration – There’s a fox in the henhouse – I’m compelled to acknowledge that, although I’m taking a metaphor literally, the fox is doing what he knows to do. My proclivity toward peaceful living and understanding that I am not a carnivore does not stop the fox from being a fox anymore than it stops the hen from being a hen. There are a number of things I can do to protect the hens from the fox, but changing the motivation of the fox isn’t really one of them.

So, too, I must allow cops to be cops, and robbers to be robbers, Donald Trump be Donald Trump, artists to be artists… and so forth. I can never say that “If I were that person, I’d do things differently” because if my life was there’s, and I made all the same decisions up to this point, I can’t rationally say I would do anything differently now. I realize I’m getting into the concept of free will being an illusion and I’ll stop short of that because I’m not really knowledgeable enough to speak on that, other than to say: If I was Jeff Bezos, I’d be Jeff Bezos… and notion of making decisions like Dave Johnston would be out the window.

So when I find myself in a place of judgement, I really have to cool my jets. I can’t rightfully pass judgement on anyone… and yet I do. Whether it’s ‘this band sucks’ or ‘that person is a junkie’ or ‘so & so is a jerk’ I must first acknowledge that I am out of my depth. Not only are these people doing their best – because we all are – but there is redemption for them – redemption being a thing I’ve spoken on before (and will again: spoiler alert) – because if there’s no opportunity for redemption, then there is no point in living.

The one I’m the most critical and harsh with… is me. I can berate myself to the ends of the earth about the 10 lbs I want to lose, or the struggles I have in my life. But if I heard my kid talk like that about herself it would break my heart. A friend showed me that fact recently when I shared my negative self-talk and it’s really stuck with me. If I’d want to intervene in someone else’s negative self talk, then why wouldn’t I want to stop myself from doing the same?

Food for thought… every day.

I’m not big on new years resolutions so much as I try to make changes when hey need to be made rather than waiting for a specific day… but since the new year is upon us, it really would serve us all well to be a bit kinder to ourselves. The kindness to others is sure to follow.

I haven’t been posting much about fitness lately, but I’ve been working my old half-marathon program at the running track at my gym that will carry me through until the thaw, which I hope comes early. Hopefully you’ve found something constructive and sweat-inducing to get you through the shitty months.

Much love.