Category: Dream

Back from the abyss

The day I was first diagnosed with hypertension, I thought I might be having a heart attack. When the ER nurse took my blood pressure and it was 224/124, they said, “Yeah, you’d better come on in here and stay awhile.”

They were pretty sure it was NOT a heart attack, but just in case they gave me a nitroglycerin tablet. At some point they gave me a second pill, and I was making small talk with the nurse when I started feeling nauseous and everything went white. (That was the most interesting part, you always hear about “blacking” out but this was definitely white.)

An undetermined amount of time later, I woke to a bunch of concerned medical faces, who told me my heart had stopped for a few seconds more than anyone felt comfortable about. They called the heart-restarting team to the room and had the paddles out and everything. It was a little scary in hindsight, and I had trouble sleeping that night — largely because I was in a hospital bed and they hooked me up to a monitor that beeped every time my heart dipped below 50 beats a minute.

But I went home the next day, spent about a week away from work, and have been on blood pressure medication for a little more than 21 years without another episode like that. 

Damar Hamlin went home this week. His cardiac arrest was measured in minutes, not seconds, so I can’t pretend to know what his experience was like except maybe that first moment of losing consciousness. I am relieved and happy that he is recovering from his nightmare.

Moments like this are reminders of what’s really important. I can’t add to what has already been said and written since Hamlin collapsed on the football field and brought everyone together for a time. 

You always wonder if this will be the time we all stay on track, when we gather together once and for all and hang onto the understanding that life is precious and how silly and petty all of our disagreements tend to be. Then someone changes the subject and we’re bickering again, or remembering old grudges, or shooting at people we’ve never met in the name of some greater purpose.

I don’t know why it’s so easy to forget that the person you hate, the political party or race or foreigners you can’t stand — they’re all living human beings and each of them precious. Damar Hamlin’s crisis brought us to sanity for a few hours, and that was a good thing. We need to hang on longer to that understanding next time.

The words must be there, somewhere

Peace © Khwanchai Phanthong | Dreamstime.com

I am a bit of an introvert, and the blog is my way of reaching out to communicate with the outside world. “This is what I’m thinking; how about you?” 

Words are marvelous inventions that allow us to share our minds one with another. Where are the words, though, that will lead us at last to understanding?

We can speak to each other face to face across thousands of miles and see the creases around each other’s eyes. Words give us access to the minds of people who died centuries ago. Our technology of communication is unfathomable compared with 100, 200, and 300 years ago.

And we don’t communicate well why?

The words are there. The intentions, I think, are there. Who wants to live in war and fear of violence? Who would want to impose war and violence on others?

“Ah,” one might reply, “but it is a violent world. Just look at nature.” No, I don’t believe that violent men are mimicking nature. If the universe tends to entropy and inertia, after all — Damn, this thought is not forming properly, perhaps because I just can’t understand why, if people want peace, peace proves elusive.

Maybe if you place seven — eight now? — billion souls, each with a unique outlook and needs and desires, on one large orb, then clashes are inevitable.

And yet, we just need to agree to live and let live … and maybe that’s the problem. Maybe the “and let live” part gets in the way. 

People don’t want to let people live in certain ways or with certain beliefs, and so there is no peace. Other people want to force everyone to live the way they do, and so there is no peace.

But a guy can dream.

The one thing you need to know

[Back to the archive today, one of my most oft-read pieces, from May 26, 2015. A year later it became one of the “bonus tracks” as I expanded Refuse to be Afraid.]

All you need to know is it’s up to you. Whatever “it” is, you can and must take care of it.

That realization can and will fill you with fear. That realization can and will — if you let it — fill you with the greatest sense of power and peace.

No longer is it out of your control. No longer is it dependent on someone “out there” who may or may not ever notice or care.

No — that is to say, yes — you have the reins of your life. You decide what happens next.

“If it’s going to be, it’s up to me.” It really is that simple.

It’s not easy. If anyone tells you “easy,” they’re lying to you or perhaps even to themselves.

But simple? Yes, it’s really simple: You can be the change you want in the world.

In simple fact, if you are not that change, it won’t happen. Not, at least, in your world.

That boss? That spouse? That senator? That president? They can’t affect your world. They don’t have the power. They can’t get inside you and tinker with you — your soul, your attitude, your thoughts, your feelings. Only you can get that close. Only you can tinker with what’s in there.

Yes, you can let them in. But the change — if you care to change — is up to you.

And if you’re right — if they want you to change in a way you know isn’t right — well, then, hold on. Don’t let someone else take the power from you.

Oh, no doubt, someone with “power” can affect the external trappings of your life. They can confine you, adjust your wages, withdraw your job, beat you, steal from you, and cause you discomfort and pain — physical, mental or spiritual. Yes, they can even kill you.

But they can’t touch you unless and until you let them.

By “you” I mean that special sentience — that unique essence of who you are — what makes you you.

It belongs to you. You were born with it, and it will stay with you until the mortal vessel you occupy and operate runs out of power.

You can never again control what happened before. That happened. It’s over. But you can always control how you react to it, now, this moment.

Your reactions — your proactions — are in your hands. Your hands — those powerful tools that can pick up a tool and do your bidding. Those mighty tools that can reach out and build or close in a fist — that can nourish or strangle — that can grow a garden or drive a car or tear down a wall or take a life.

Your hands — your mind — your soul can be instruments of life or death. Choose wisely. Find wisdom. Seek truth. Ignore lies — no, wait: Correct lies.

You are not the only one who wants to know the truth. You are not the only one who wants to be the change. Help others understand.

But know this: Each of us has the power to change only one life — the one under the control of the person you call I. me. myself. You do not have the power to change or control your neighbor, your mate, your parent, your child, or that stranger.

You do have the power to persuade — or to force your will on others. In the first instance you can gain a soulmate, an ally, a companion, a fellow. In the second you gain nothing but solitude and hatred and bitterness and resentment.

You cannot take their freedom, no matter how high and thick you build the walls of their cage. Neither can others take your freedom, no matter how high and thick they build the walls of your cage. It’s all up to you.

You have the power, you have the controls, you have the reins of your life — but only your life.

The extent to which you lead others is completely dependent on those others. The extent to which others lead you is completely dependent on you.

Decide this moment to take the reins of your life. They’ve been in your hands all along anyway. They’ve taken you to this place, good or bad or indifferent, where you are at this moment.

Where do you want to go next?

It’s entirely — entirely — up to you.

The year the world became better

New Year’s Eve is when the optimists come out to play, with our resolutions and fresh goals and hopes and prayers.

Maybe 1941 will be the year when nations stop rattling swords at each other and sue for peace.

Maybe 1968 will be the year when people stop thinking skin color determines superiority or inferiority.

Maybe 1990 will be the year when we are finally free to beat our swords into plowshares.

Maybe 2020 will be the year when authoritarians grow tired of their games and trust in freedom.

Maybe 2023 will be the year when … humanity changes its very nature?

The pessimists who call themselves realists are not surprised when humans’ basest nature rears its head again and the resolutions and fresh goals and hopes and prayers clatter to the dirt.

As I wrote the other day, we hang our heads and realize there is no peace on Earth, despite what the bells on Christmas Day say — but there is more peace than there once was. Americans and Japanese and British and Germans work and play together. People with different skin colors marry, and their families are welcomed with love and acceptance. Around the world, every day, day by day, billions upon trillions of human interactions are performed peacefully, and we are always appalled when violence intervenes. Even the authoritarians are constantly frustrated by the independent thinkers who refuse to kowtow and do things their way.

Maybe 2022 was not the year when everything changed — but some things changed.

Inch by inch, bird by bird, soul by soul, not all at once but slowly, the world has become a better place than it was one, 10, 50, and 100 years ago.

Maybe 2023 will be the year we finally accept that and are grateful.

Or maybe the calendar doesn’t matter, and you and I should simply do what we can to make this day better than yesterday was, day by day.

Happy New Year, friends.

100/26,031

Whatever happened to ‘no more war’

Where are the folk singers singing, “How many deaths will it take?”?

Who will say, “enough”?

Who will sing, “Smile on your brother, everybody get together”?

When will we ever learn?

Does anyone actually want peace on Earth anymore?

Is love the greatest power, after all?

Reach a hand, someone, please.

It’s a magical world

We live in a world filled with contraptions that would seem like magic to the folks of not long ago — but also magical devices FROM long ago that, preserved, continue to do magic. I’m looking at my 1941 Philco radio and my century-old records when I refer to the latter. 

Here is a recording from some afternoon in 1915 when a band sat in a studio and played into a megaphone — three minutes captured in amber to be heard in 2022. Magic?

Here are books from 50 – 75 – 100 years ago that still mean something now.

But imagine the band members getting a peek at 2022, where their three minute performance can be stored on a computer chip along with hundred of other performances. Imagine the author of a book from 1910 taking a tour of a modern library.

Magic!

This

We are always seeking the next moment, when the present moment is all we have. We spend a lot of time on “what happened?” And “what next?” But no so much on “what is happening?” 

Of course we need to assess what happened and where it might be going, but all we can actually affect is this moment, moment to moment. In that context “It is what it is” becomes an important recognition, not a resignation — Not “it is what it is and we can’t do anything about it,” but “it is what it is and we we must work with what it is, not what it used to be or what we wish it would be.”

We always want to be doing something else, somewhere else. We worship at the altar of “anything but this.” But this is what we have, this is all there is. It is what it is, but look at all that it is!

In this context, “It is what it is” becomes more than an annoying shrug.