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From the Archives: Something Different Today – Perspective

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Originally published in May 2011

My profile picture could be the stereotypical headshot with a devil whispering in one ear and an angel in the other. No I don’t hear voices in my head… I create them. I can understand anger, desperation and depression from the perspective of someone who has had to endure both personal tragedies as well as those which I have shared with friends and loved ones. I also have so many memories of unsurpassed joy and goodness proving that life offers not only balance but rewards.  Logic forces my thinking to deal with the fact that the lowest valleys of life are never really as bad as they seem and the highest peaks do not always represent a sustainable or constant reality. Most of the time, we are walking on a plateau somewhere between extremes where we are constantly scripting our own internal voices that keep us on the level path.

Yesterday, the morning was crisp and beautiful and I remember thinking that the weather forecasters were probably checking to see if their prediction dice were rigged. But late in the afternoon, their roll for the day proved to be correct and the rain came down in buckets. I stepped outside to watch. The safety of the overhang above the front steps kept me dry so that I could observe my own private world. First I noticed how clean and fresh the washed air seemed to be, begging for a deep breath to check for reality and quality. Then it was as if a spotlight fell on the leaves of the red maple tree in the corner of the yard, glistening in the rain as I had never seen it before. That picture and the sound of the rainfall was so very calming and peaceful. Across the street I saw a mother cradling her baby in her arms as she lovingly protected him from the downpour and got herself totally drenched while putting the infant into a car seat. I smiled as I could feel the warmth radiating from this caring image. As the rain began to subside I saw two robins, first setting up an observation post on a fence, and then swooping down to feast on the food that the rain had offered up.

Almost as if a curtain closed on act one, the spotlight of my focus switched to the opening of the second act of Today’s Front Yard Rain Storm. Lighthearted comedy gave way to tragedy. There is rain pouring over the edge of one of my gutters! In one spot there was rain running BEHIND the gutter indicating that there is a high likelihood that some immediate attention to preventive maintenance is needed to keep this from getting worse. Toward stage left, I noticed that the water running down the driveway into the river of a street in front of the house was tinged with mud. That driveway repair that I have been putting off is laughing at me with its brownish stain shouting up to me, “Bwuhaha! I’m going to cost you an arm and a leg!”

Calmness somehow managed to return as I continued creating my current plateau script and I realized that with all the things that could draw my focus, my attention was first captured by the beautiful things around me before I noticed the badness. I didn’t know that about me. I’ve carefully protected my reputation as an angry man, a cynical guy and outspoken critic of just about everything, but it seems now that my knee-jerk reaction isn’t quite as negative as I had thought. Have I somehow conditioned myself to think positive first? That can’t be a natural tendency so maybe it has to be learned.

Sometimes I have occasion to speak to disgruntled employees and sometimes I am privileged to work with those seeking employment who would actually be happy with any occasion to become disgruntled. Maybe it was the rain stimulating an image I haven’t thought about in years, but I offer this perspective of life to anyone who cares to listen: Picture if you will a bird’s nest perched precariously at the end of a tree branch where eggs are laid, nurtured, hatched and new life begins. Now picture a roaring waterfall just inches away from that nest. Throughout the daily comings and goings of the birds they are always only a fraction of an inch from disaster and never seem to notice. Call it instinct, but their ingrained life script automatically protects them from despair and keeps them from noticing the terror all around them. Somehow they know how to build their lives safely in a hostile environment. In fact, that environment also serves to protect them from foes that are not as well acclimated to the danger. Do human beings sacrifice that instinct by being too intelligent or do we simply lack the faith that we can survive and defeat ourselves in the process?

One of the books on the shelf over my desk, just to the left of The Art of War by Sun Tzu and Hire with Your Head by Lou Adler, is When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner. It is a tattered first edition paperback from 1983 so I must have picked through it several times over the past few years. The treasure next to that is a signed copy of Rabbi Kushner’s Overcoming Life’s Disappointments with “Best wishes to Tom” and a scrawled signature that I treat as a sacred relic.  Somehow I think that I have subconsciously answered my own questions by glancing up from the desk and seeing this unplanned layout of a few books. Perhaps my reality is the intellectual sum of the professional and the spiritual. I’m not sure if that ultimately gives me comfort or conflict. The results of that vote are not yet tallied.

 

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