136-07-15-2009

 So.  I recommend that we all stop watching reality television … that we pry ourselves away from this form or programming.  What it’s doing to us is nasty to the point of being dangerous.  Besides taking time watching others live their mean-spirited lives, means we have less time to lead our own lives.  We’d be better off doing something positive to help us strive towards our own goals than learning from others how to lie, steal and cheat our way to the top.

FROM ESSAY 134-06-29-2009 by W. Owen Thornton

Why We Don’t Do The Positive Thing

By W. Owen Thornton

I realized that as I read this near-to-closing paragraph on my essay “A Call for the End of Reality Television Programs” where I talked about the fact that people make unconscious decisions based on the last material most recently taken up inside of us, that I specifically and that many people in general have a problem. 

Many of us don’t know what is next for our own lives or if they do know they don’t know how to get there or lastly, they have tried what they know, have gotten stuck and are now lost souls.  So they turn to reality television to live their lost lives vicariously … because their own lives are going nowhere.  When we don’t know what we don’t know or when we are stuck along the way we’ll do anything rather than admit we’re lost.  

And when we’re lost, I find that we lack the patience for human kindness … human kindness towards ourselves and if we cannot be kind to ourselves, then we certainly have too little energy to be kind towards others.  When we are lost … when our goals are hanging out there … our lives in limbo … we drift with any wind that catches us … reality programming included.  Mel Gibson, in “What Women Want” is trying to figure out what he should do about his love for Darcy.  He’s blown it.  He started out attempting to sabotage her and fell in love in the process.  He is walking through his apartment, wondering what to do.  Then, he looks in the fridge.  “What am I doing?  She’s not in there.”  I thought the scene was clever.  To me it is suggesting that we turn to eating something when we don’t know what to do, stuffing down our raw emotions rather than feeling them and doing something about them.

Man’s Search For Meaning

Before I launch into things that can be done in regards to our three potential problems: that we don’t know what to do for ourselves: that we do know what we want but we lack the knowledge about how to get there; or three we do know where we want to go, we’ve tried, failed a few times and are now unsure if they goal is real or whether life is telling you to give up: I want to talk about the importance of meaning for our lives.

Meaning in our lives is critical.  Being somewhat of a lost soul in regards to career (I fit into category three) I have made a study of ‘life.’  One cannot do so effectively without stumbling across Victor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search For Meaning”.  Frankl lived through the Nazi concentration camp experience and his key question was, why do some good people give up and die and why do others who seem less likely to, live … why did they survive the experience?  It turns out that people who had something to go to, people who had a reason to live, something to do after the experience was going to be over: those are the folk who lived.  It didn’t matter what kind of career was enjoyed by the individual.  A doctor with what we might think had everything to live for might give up and die while a construction worker might still have to say good bye to his wife or attempt to create that dream experimental whatsis that he’d always wanted to build.  It was those who had a meaning for their lives who lived and those who had no meaning for their lives who died.

Problems with Finding Meaning

There are many problems with finding meaning for our lives:  Simply stumbling on our giftedness is difficult;  Knowing that we deserve the rewards should the goal succeed is another; being too humble such that we cannot do the things required of us to achieve our goals and failing to acknowledge our giftedness are but four of them.  I’d like to tackle these four scenarios before moving on because they act as barriers to our success … to our ability to be able to share human kindness.

Some fall into their giftedness and have the inner workings to run with it.  I think these are the folk whom we admire … the folk who make headlines … the people who run mega-million dollar companies or after three weeks of being a waitress in Hollywood become a big star.  We envy these folk and we may be jealous of them.  But for the rest of us we’re gonna have to do some work in finding out what suits us and how to overcome the parts of us that we don’t have that allow us to fully access our goal or dream.  Now there’s a cautionery note here.  Those who succeed do pay their dues.  Paying dues to the point of mega-success suggests that we require to work at our goals doing the things we want to do for 10,000 hours.  This amount of time in a goal helps breed success.  With this much practice, one it seems, cannot fail.  So while we might envy and be jealous of the folk who fall into their goals easily, they must work at it in order to succeed.  But lest we think paying our dues is a bad thing consider this:  when successful people pay their dues they are doing something they love so much that it isn’t like work to them to place time and effort to the tune of 10,000 hours into their goals.  The time just flies by!

So one key thing to note is this: your goal should be a natural part of you … if you’re doing it for free or for minimal results and the 10,000 hours fly by so fast it doesn’t even feel like work … then you know you’re on to something.  Two good books to help you discover what you need to be doing for yourself are Wishcraft by Barbara Sher and The Artists’s Way by Julia Cameron.

What would hinder us from completing these 10,000 hours?

·         A sense of entitlement: that we should be able to have the dream while short-circuiting the 10,000 hour model.

·         Impatience.  Disliking the 10,000 hours worth of work to the point that we bail somewhere before we finish.  (Suggesting that you’re in the wrong place.)

·         Lack of persistence.  Thinking we ‘should’ have by now put in the time.  I’ll call this the, “Are We There Yet” syndrome where we believe we should arrive on a cross country trip 10 minutes after starting out.

·         Lack of vision.  Where we get lost in the midst of the 10,000 hours and lose what our initial purpose was supposed to be.

Two Things to Know That Can Help Us Survive the 10,000 Hours

I’ve read some of the story about Bill Gates and his 10,000 hours.  Some of the experience suggested that he fell into a position where he could work with computers at a time in the cycle of the computers where they might or could become big.  He just worked at them so long, that things began happening while he was working on them.  He started to write little programs that would help systems.  I’ve never read that when he started that he wanted to become what he is today.  He just invested himself in his goal, to perhaps obsessive levels – IE working on computers throughout the night because there were so few university computers that the only time a student could get on them was to work all night – with punch cards by the way!  Bill just did what he loved and things grew out of that.

Secondly, the folk I’ve read about who were doing this kind of thing were often in a think-tank of sorts: they were working through their 10,000 hours with someone else they knew and liked.  The Fab Four, the Beatles racked up their 10,000 hours at a German strip club/bar.  But they had each other.  The men who set the world on fire with the computer industry, such as Gates … well they didn’t work in isolation.  Bill worked with a few others who were doing the same thing.  So … it seems important to have someone doing something similar with you at the same time: a support group if you will.  As I’ve always speculated at www.thehumankindnessproject.com life is better when we hold hands and walk together.  But more importantly when the days are long and perhaps dark, it is good to have someone with you doing something very similar who you can talk to in order to pull you through the long stretch that makes up your 10,000 hours.

But there are bigger things that can hijack a dream or our Meaning!

When working through a skills list people are often asked for a list of their skills and weaknesses.  Most people come up with a list of weaknesses as long as their arm while often leaving the skills list blank.  There are a few easy things to say about this (though changing our attitudes around in regards to them will still be difficult).  First an example of what I mean.  A friend of mine attempted to gather together a list of skills of people so that they could learn what kinds of gifts they could offer the church.  They wanted to get all 2,000 parishioners to fill out the skills form within two months: a lofty goal.  Of the people who where hard to get to fill in the chart of their skills were those who didn’t think they had any skills to offer.

Some people genuinely feel this way.  They are wrong, of course because everyone has gifts to give the world: for various reasons they just can’t see them.  But whether people suffer from humbility – that they shouldn’t brag about their gifts; they genuinely suffer from such low self esteem to the extent that they do not feel they have any gifts or lastly that they downplay their gifts – that these gifts come so naturally that they assume everyone else has them too and they don’t feel that their own gifts are unique and special, doesn’t matter.  Our perception is our reality.  If you’re one of those who cannot fill out a skills section, start talking to people about this … and even that may be a tall order.  Ask others what your skills are.  They always know.  They are the people jealous of your gifts.  Keep talking this up to the point if you must, find a good counselor.  What you need to know here is: you have gifts.  Acknowledging them must come before you can use them!

Once you find the skills that lie within, the secondary problem: that of not being worthy of the rewards should you succeed, may well be taken care of as well.  Our sense of self worth will limit our level of success.  Somehow we must feel worthy of success.  I believe that the reason why people who win lotteries and who spend themselves back down to the same financial level as they started within a year – a common trend – are limited by what they think their own worth might be.  Having too much money in the bank is as stressful to us, when we don’t think we’re worthy of that money, as having too little money in the bank.

A bigger, vaster problem here is statistics which are difficult to overcome and which have enormous complications in regards to attempting to solve them.  It is estimated that fully 25 percent of children grow up with someone in their family being addicted to either a substance (alcohol) or a process (work).  In addition another 25 per cent grow up in homes where they are abused.  Often these two groups overlap.  Sadly we turn a blind eye to these statistics and we do nothing to change this.  Anyone growing up in these homes will struggle with attaining a level of self esteem that enables them to even believe there may be a meaning for their lives.  If you belong to either of these two groups or both, then success because you have the skills and you are worthy of the rewards will be far more difficult to achieve than had you grown up in a home without these two ‘conditions’.  These victims struggle just to be okay each day.  Too many people fight this fight.  But, sadly as I do not have a solution here … other than great therapy for free by seeking out Emmaus International Support Services immediately.

Finding Meaning and Moving the Dream!

Finding meaning begins with being okay with yourself, acknowledging your gifts/skills and being worthy of future rewards.  Once you have achieved this position (sometimes this is no easy task) you need to discover your own inner knowing about why you are here.  Meditation may help.  Get a book on this or find a guru.  Reading Wishcraft can be freeing and liberating.  Once you identify something where you might like to spend 10,000 hours doing something (and this will NOT be a daunting task, but will look like fun!) dive into the deep end of the pool (first ensuring that there’s water in the pool!). 

But if you don’t know what you need to know … don’t know how to begin your dream … then you begin by being open to it.  Advertisements for courses that could help you along the way will suddenly appear to you … people who know someone who know someone where you can glean advice and useful tips suddenly appear.  Sometimes you do need to work this list.  What is the rule?  Five questions … five people will lead you to the answer you seek.  “Do you know anyone with who has …”  and sooner or later you will find the right person to talk to. 

Never stop.  Keep trying.  If the person who is your keystone doesn’t answer right away, don’t give up.  This is where reading Keith Ferrazzi’s book, Never Eat Alone comes in.  He’ll tell you not to take unanswered calls and emails personally.  If you are taking it personally you may desire to revisit those self esteem lessons you learned.  Because unanswered calls and emails from people who don’t know you but … they know a friend of a friend of yours … well they go unanswered because people are busy, because emails go into junk folders, because they are on holidays because they are stretched for time, because they are bad administrators of their own time, because they don’t see the relevance of needing to talk to you ya-da, ya-da.  Keep calling.  Keep emailing.  You will succeed.  Not hearing back from someone is NOT about you.  It is about them! 

Don’t take no for an answer at this stage.  You take no for an answer only when you’ve done everything you can with all of the knowledge you require and you discover, as Stephen Covey would say, that you’ve leaned your ladder against the wrong wall.  This is the wrong dream for you.  Start over.  Things will go faster this time because you’ve done a lot of the steps required.  Never give up.  You will succeed.  But at this stage, when you’re still investigating the process, well … you don’t know whether or not you are on the wrong wall.  People owe it to themselves to do everything in their power to succeed at their goals and stopping before you have the information required to enable you to succeed, isn’t the way!

So far, what I’ve written helps someone who A: doesn’t know their dream, or B: knows what they want to try, but doesn’t know where to begin.  But what about my position?  Position C:  knowing what you want, trying to get results and failing.  What happens then?  It may mean that you need to ‘try another way.’  Let’s say you do the right things but still fail.  Well, here I’m talking about my novel writing and why my works aren’t published.  I’m running up against a wall where my lack of skill hinders my ability to give me a fair chance.  What I’ve done is tried a few times and gotten crushed and I don’t want to be crushed anymore.  I’m learning … now … to have a tougher skin.  That’s one thing!  (And that comes from some great Emmaus therapy, I’ll tell you that!)  Second I know that I didn’t try hard enough because the pain of rejection was too great. So I’m going to try some more.  I can do that because I feel better about myself.  I’ve learned that rejection of my work is not a rejection of me as a person!  But third, I tried one way and it didn’t work.  So I got better at that way and it still didn’t work.  Then I tried the same way some more.

Insanity, they say, is doing things the same way and expecting different results.  Recently I learned that someone I taught creative writing to has since published nearly a dozen books.  So I’ve contacted her.  I don’t know if she’ll contact me back.  I’m not sure my method of contact will reach her.  There are other ways to get to her though: IE sending a letter to one of her publishers!

But doing this does two things for me.  It may well give me someone to talk to as I work along my 10,000 hours.  That’s a good thing!  Someone who’s been there can encourage and guide.  I won’t be alone in doing this.  If you’ll recall from above this was a key to success.  Second, she may be someone who knows someone who knows someone who can help me get past my “try only one way” method.  She might simply be able to hook me up to an agent or … a good editor or some solution like that!  So that’s an additional possibility.

So Why Have I been Watching Summer Reruns?

I’ve been watching summer reruns and some reality programming (never a full episode of any one show – I just can’t do that because it’s not entertaining enough).  I’m watching other people live their lives rather than living my own.  Why?  Partly because I didn’t know how to live my life after nine months of school.  I was sort of shell-shocked from going from 70 hours a week to working on projects around the house.  Don’t get me wrong, some form of a break was required, but after a while, I just found my brain turning to mush … then I found myself letting that happen.

But I believe that we all have the capacity to do something great … something wondrous … that we can all do something with our lives that will make an impact on this earth and even if I don’t find out what that gift is, I’m not going to go down without trying to do it because that’s living out human kindness for myself … and if I can be kind towards myself, then I can be kinder towards others.

And so I’m writing again … getting new ideas again … finishing old projects that had been lingering on and wondering about what I’m going to do with them once they’re edited. 

School is part of my plan now too.  Should I be able to go on to Graduate work, I would love to teach philosophy … help to shape young minds … help to divulge knowledge … to teach people to think for themselves and to lead by example by sharing the things that I believe in … the things that I believe make up a wonderful life.

In Conclusion

So why do people watch reality television?  There may be little harm in taking a break from our own lives.  But the problem comes when that break becomes watching it all the time!  Suddenly people are not living their own lives: they’re watching others live theirs.  How sad!  Maybe watching others live their lives gives folk a normalization check.  People see that others live as I live … so I’m not odd or weird like I might have thought I was.  But when I continue to watch, well … I’m just wasting my time: stealing time away from myself and my own dreams.  Maybe people watch reality television for the entertainment value: but I question that.  I recently heard a celebrity say they are saddened by what passes for ‘entertainment’ lately.  S/he was referring to reality television.  In truth, I feel, according to my own sense of aesthetics at least, that there is no redeeming value in reality television.

Watching reality television is not a problem but a symptom of a lost people bent on finding a way to continue to stay lost.  Watching reality television is an excuse for not succeeding.  If we’re busy here, we don’t have to be busy working in our own lives (and confronting our demons that we may not be worthy of success or that we don’t know what the next step towards our goal might be.)  Watching reality television programs is the same as going to the refrigerator door and looking for something to eat when we know we should be going to the home of the person we love and telling them that we love them (Gibson: What Women Want!).  It’s a sidetrack and it’s an unhealthy one at that!  Especially when we consider that we make decisions unconsciously based on the information recently taken up inside of us.  Do you want to live your life making decisions based on the fact that you’ve watched so much negativity on a reality television program?

Real life is scary and frightening.  It can get you hurt.  But real life is about getting hurt and getting back up again.  Sometimes getting hurt like that is a way of knowing that you’re still alive.  In fact, if you want to go numb, watch some reality programming.

Professional speaker Jack Canfield says that the average millionaire of today went broke three times trying to become a millionaire!  Success cannot be made without making a few mistakes along the way … without breaking a few eggs.  Human Kindness towards ourselves means taking risks … getting out there and being alive.  There are risks out there … risks for greatness … risks required for us to succeed.  You’ve heard me talk about healthy risks before and maybe I’ll do that again soon.  But I don’t think the risks I’m talking about are as scary as you and I think they really are.  I’m betting that if you and I launch ourselves into the 10,000 hour program that you and I will take many risks during that time and you and I won’t even “see” some actions as being risky: they will just be part of the things you and I had to do to go to the next step.

Think of the riskiest thing you can.  Now … go back 2,000 some-odd years.  Become an itinerant preacher.  Find 12 dudes to give up their work and families to follow you and now, for the next three years go preach a new way of being in relationship with God … ways that will get you into trouble.  No one is saying that you need to end up like Jesus: that was his special gift to humankind: his blood so that people could find God through grace.  Now I mention this, not because you need to be Christian.  But it seems to me that Jesus lived out a life of high risk.  His reward?  His legacy has lived on for a full 2,000 years creating challenges and controversy for humankind ever since.  Debate whether he was the Son of God all you will.  Read his message and you will find incredible wisdom for leading a successful life including loving yourself.  His messages and the lessons he taught: they are difficult to refute.  And he did all that by one day deciding that he’d earn no money, but would go from town to town preaching The Way.  How scary would that task be for one of us today?  None could do it, I dare say.  Not that way.  Not to THAT degree.  Yet he lived and was fed and had places to stay … most nights.  But he wasn’t afraid of a cold night out on the desert floor every once in a while either.  The greater the risk, the greater the rewards.  Christ’s reward was a 2,000 year living history: and, of course, the saving of millions of souls who believed in his Way.  Have many others so impacted the world for so long in such a positive way?

Maybe I should also talk about rewards, because I now don’t think they will all manifest themselves in a monetary way.  Maybe too, we have to rewrite that script before we comprehend what it means to lead a rich and full life.  Maybe there are many ways to win … but we have lost track of those too.

Blessings

Owen

Dear Fans: I do sincerely apologize for the prolonged absence.  I do have more articles forthcoming and still more in my mind that haven't hit the page yet.  School has become a very high priority as I consider applying for grad school in philosophy.  So while I'm trying to get great grades, I'm also doing the research required for attending school next year.  This entry is quite long.  It has the good thing about it that it unifies many different thoughts, helping me, and hopefully you to comprehend the much bigger picture of why it is so difficult to practice human kindness towards one another.  God Bless, and hopefully over the next few days, I'll make some more posts.

Owen

135-07-13-2009

Diminishing Respect
By W. Owen Thornton

I’ve written before, years ago now, about the lack of respect we show one another in our automobiles.  Human kindness demands that we respect ourselves and others.  While in our cars we turn in front of one another with too little space, accelerate through late yellows – early reds etc.  We make aggressive driving mistakes at the expense of safety in regards to our own and others.  We literally risk life and limb on the roads in an over-inflated sense of our own driving skills.  I use this kind of behaviour now as indicative of our reduced respect for one another in all things.

It is not always clear why we should respect one another just a little bit more on the roads.  One man I know said that doing 110 kilometers per hour he did a shoulder check on a four lane highway in order to begin to change lanes.  The car ahead was going a little slow.  In an instant his wife screamed.  The man ahead stopped in the middle of the road for what appeared to be absolutely no reason (there were no cars ahead for quite some distance as it was early in the morning.)  Our chap jerked the wheel to change lanes faster than he ought to have and over the next few agonizing seconds he overcorrected his steering several times until he did a 180 in the middle of a large major city. 

He lived with only a dent in his rear corner but he came away with two more things than a little car damage.  One, he had a renewed sense of the value of life.  The second was that in a crisis, most normal people cannot handle their car at highway speeds.  Those little aggressive moves we make on the city streets leave people with split-second reactions to avoid a great deal of misery.  At least in the province of Ontario, insurance being what it is, most people will now spend upwards of $5,000 to repair their car on their own, rather than go through the hassles of dealing with insurance hoops and having their insurance rates go up more than the cost of doing the repairs.  Insurance today is seriously unkind to folk who have fender-benders (To be kind to insurance, it still works well when the user needs serious help, however).  And Insurance woes have nothing on the emotional cost of what happens when someone scares themselves silly by having a near fatal crash.  Hence one would think human kindness would be the order of the day because otherwise the cost of lack of human kindness is more than we want to bear.

So, when it comes to respecting one another, human kindness exhibited on our roads is an excellent example.  It shows us why we should practice human kindness because the cost of aggression or rudeness is emotionally visible and financially real.  Likewise we see this to a lesser extent in the contact sport of hockey.  Each time players up the ante for the last check … making the next one a little harder and a little dirtier, this lack of respect means players run the risk of injury and loss of a life-long income.

Oddly, I see lack of respect for others as an internal matter.  Aristotle said that we are meant to live in a political world … that we need one another to live valuable lives.  But today we have the sense that we can and that we should do it all on our own.  And so, because we’re doing it on our own, no longer relying on help from our fellow travelers, we seem to gain permission to ignore them.  We operate in little bubbles of isolation.  Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone tells the story of how the ‘wealthier’ classes get wealthier.  They go to their friends with an idea and ask for help in areas where they cannot readily do something for themselves.  And selflessly, more often than not, these requests are met: Not because the person granting the request expects something in return.  But rather, they know that when you put something good out into the universe, that the universe sees it as a vacuum and … and because nature abhors a vacuum, this means something good, from some other as-of-yet unknown direction will come back to you.  And if it doesn’t happen right away, as Norman Vincent Peale says, the longer it is withheld, the greater the return will be.

Where does doing it on our own come from?  Well, for one thing there are many things we must do on our own.  We must all work in our own jobs.  We must all be diligent and faithful to ourselves and our livelihood because in part we know that we cannot expect others to take care of us.  Doing it on our own, for the most part is a good thing.  These facts are truisms.

But in these pages I’ve also explored how sometimes our greatest traits lead to what I will now call excessivism.  Excessivism is a condition where we enable our best traits, which is normally a good thing, and we take them one step too far.  For example we like to joke to make things light and funny but we do it while teasing people.  Most times this makes someone popular and the atmosphere light and fun … until someone steps one step too far and their teasing results in an unintended but still hurtful insult.  This example demonstrates that we are never truly alone in the world and because of that fact, our actions are monitored and our negative excessivism, whatever trait that might be, can be harmful and demonstrate lack of respect for one another.

Combine our own tendency to excessivism with the false dream of avarice and that money and stuff will make everyone happy when we’re all millionaires and we’re driven to succeed on our own so we can retire at age 40 with our millions in the bank.  I recently read that humanities greatest sin is covetousness.  We all want more.  I remember an episode of West Wing.  One of the president’s men is sitting at a bar in a strange city, socked in by bad weather, unable to return to Washington.  He starts talking with someone who represents Joe or Josephine Q Public.  Without knowing that s/he is talking to a president’s employee s/he says, “It’s hard.  I get that.  Life is supposed to be about the struggle.  It wouldn’t be worth living if life were easy or free.  But it could be a little easier, you know?”

Foolishly we fall for avarice or greed each and every time.  Ponzi Schemes appear to be thriving right now.  Tell people that they can invest money and earn it back faster than it can be believed and … people fall for it.  (Thus the old adage, “If it is too good to be true, it probably is,” comes into vogue!)  But we’re bombarded by images of the ‘rich and famous’ – mostly entertainers and professional athletes – and we believe that we can all have that kind of life: like we can all get people to pay upwards of $1,000 a seat for 70,000 seats in some ‘Dome” somewhere.  But everything has a cost and we continually forget that fact, much to our own detriment. 

The kind of money that the ‘stars’ earn often comes with the sacrifice of privacy and normal lives.  I don’t know much about the story of Michael Jackson when he was alive, but give any fellow with some demons (and we all have a few of those – don’t kid yourself) hundreds of millions of dollars to be able to live out their eccentricities and watch us all go a little weird!  I believe that there are few people in this world who, as Rudyard Kipling once wrote in his poem “If” can approach wealth and fame in this manner: “If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue/ or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch.” 

Sadly most of us get swept up by our own success thinking we’re someone important.  We ‘did it ourselves’ didn’t we?  So we must be someone important!  Success often seems to come at a cost to ourselves … to our humanity.  We need to be wary of that fact and ask ourselves if we are willing to potentially give up the great things we have for fortune and fame.  Few people have the virtue that Aristotle believes we can achieve where we can hold onto both ourselves (our humanity) and fortune/fame at the same time.  It can be done, but it is rare and usually it comes with a cost we cannot imagine.

But all this is vastly complicated.  We should do some things ourselves … but not everything.  And which things should we do ourselves and which should we do by requesting help from others?  Sometimes the way is clear.  Other times it is not.  Sometimes we bang our heads upon a ceiling we cannot penetrate it.  We do this out of pride that we can do it on our own, when we should have just asked a friend and we would have reached our destination by now.

And we all want things to be a little easier.  We all want the ability to be able to pay for that renovated bathroom and the new roof and … student fees … and new clothes and Toronto Maple Leafs season tickets at the same time.  But the reality is most people cannot afford to do all of those things.  But the trick of our society today is that somehow through our own gullibility … our own hopes and desires – also two good things that we should hold onto, but that can trick us if we take them to excessivism – is that we believe we can all have all of these things all of the time.

And some government agencies are not helping us.  The Ontario Lottery Commission has the slogan, “Just Imagine.”  This is a modified version of the previous slogan, “Imagine the Freedom.”  So … “Just Imagine” is telling us that we can “Imagine the Freedom” when we win millions of dollars in lotteries.  This message confronts us despite counter notions that might tell us that having money is like living in a friendless prison.  Look at movie stars or the wealthy people in poverty-stricken nations: both live behind walls and barricades to keep out the ne’er-do-wells (that’s people like you and me, you know!).  If you need to live behind gates and have security … who’s living in a prison, I ask you?

When I wrote earlier about unconscious thoughts helping us decide things, we see the danger in messages like this.  If money means freedom and we don’t have money now, we must not be free.  Not being free means we’re imprisoned.  If we’re imprisoned in our own lives … well who wants to live a life in a prison?  “Just Imagine” cannot be a good message to be sending us: that our normal lives are prisons but ones with untold riches mean freedom.  These thoughts enter our unconscious minds and we begin to see how we can make decisions that show others a lack of respect as we all trundle off down the road of life trying to do it ourselves … often at the expense of our fellow travelers.  And who can blame us for acting this way?  All we’re trying to do is get some freedom for ourselves?  And that freedom has a cost more than just living behind walls and bars and chains and security guards, doesn’t it?  It will also come at the expense of friendships.  People will wonder, with all our millions why we don’t buy every round, or why we won’t loan them money for their house or … and therein lies why these people have to build walls and barricades and pay for security people!

To cite another example, too many images of too many female models who are too skinny, and suddenly we have young women unconsciously emulating these models who starve themselves for fashion and we find new dis-eases of the mind: anemia and bulimia!  Look.  In a psychology experiment when people were asked to work with words and create sentences from them where some of the words they work with remind them of being ‘old’, these people will later walk more slowly than those who work with words that do not remind them of being old.  Let me restate that.  If you work with words that remind you of being old, you will unconsciously walk more slowly.  Mad-eye Mooney of the Harry Potter series has it right.  When it comes to the things that enter inside our minds we must have “CONSTANT VIGILANCE!”  Therefore we should not look at magazines with too-skinny models otherwise we will come to see that as the new way we ‘should’ be … whether we consciously decide to be that way or not!

And here’s a second complication: money in and of itself is not evil.  So it should be okay to accumulate it without becoming corrupted.  So what’s the deal with it?  I recently read a book by a pastor who was driving down the road listening to an evangelical pastor on the radio.  The man on the radio was going on and on about the evilness of money: like everyone who had it was evil.  The author writing the book said that he wanted to drive down to the radio station and correct this terrible mistake: this terrible misread of the Bible.  Money is not evil.  Christ did not say that!  He said the ‘love’ of money is evil: that one cannot serve two masters: God and Money, for if you love the one, you will not have room in your life for the other.

So money is good because we need it to live, but loving it too much is an evil and this corrupts us.  And corruption in regards to money is so destructive because it is so seductive.  A little money makes things easier and we can have some fun, so a LOT of money should make life completely simple and provide an endless future of fun.  Wow!  That seems to make so much common sense.  But when we consider another human foible … that of taking what we have for granted … I’m betting we get used to having a lot of money very quickly.  And then life goes back to normal … with its good days and its bad days … and once you have money and life isn’t ‘perfect’ like you thought it would be … do you give up the quest?  Nope!  Most of us think that we need MORE money … then we’ll find happiness.

Aristotle said that everything we do, we do to bring about our own happiness.  We might decide to do one thing in order to bring about the next in order to bring about the next such that once we’ve done these things we will be happy.  Working to earn money to buy the things we need to live and be comfortable will make us happy.  But fall into the trap of the love of money and suddenly the means to our goal – that of happiness – or should I say the means to the end (the target called happiness) becomes our focal point.  And Aristotle said that a means can NEVER become the end in itself.  It will leave you hollow … always chasing the means and never reaching the end.  The love of money is a deadly, depressing trap, I’m afraid.  Money can only ever be a tool … a step along the way … that can lead us towards happiness.  And in the process, the pursuit of too much money has devastating consequences for human kindness.

Many philosophers believed that the way to happiness would be to have enough money to live and to spend some time with friends where you can talk about the big issues that trouble us … the philosophical issues.  In fact, living a life like this would be a relatively simple one where we didn’t have many excesses.  But, philosophers know too that should people aspire to this kind of happy and joyous life, that they would look very strange to most people: because most people think happiness is about s/he who has the most toys wins!

So that’s a complication too … isn’t it?  If we don’t fall in line with what society thinks is important – the almighty dollar … then we’ll look weird.  And we want to fit in.  We don’t WANT to be weird.  But if we want to fit in, which means being like everyone else, then why would we want to do it all ourselves because ‘fitting in’ doesn’t seem to matter when we’re out there doing everything on our own.  So that’s really strange isn’t it?  We want to do everything on our own so we can fit in with everyone else who is doing it all on our own … but in that world, then it would seem that we don’t need to fit in because fitting in wouldn’t seem to be an important priority.  But it is in the human kindness sense of desiring to ‘fit in’ which seems to be a natural human tendency that we learn to accept that ‘doing it all on our own,’ cannot be the right normal tendency that we first thought it was!  Doing it all on our own to fit in becomes an oxymoron: an impossibility. 

So to conclude this section: take a positive trait like a person’s independence – that of doing it on their own – and drive it to excessiveness.  Then combine it with the falsity that materialism and wealth – and all the tricks that lay in that minefield – are major, prime desires and people fall in love with money as the means to the end: they think money will “buy happiness”.  And they fall for things more easily than they might think because of the emotional and societal atmosphere around them and they make unconscious decisions based on the words and images that repeatedly strike them.  Because of these things they believe the false promises that doing it on their own and that money buys happiness and then because they’re on autopilot they do things for themselves that show a complete lack of respect for one another. 

In our cars we pull out in front of one another where had we waited just a few seconds the road would have been empty.  We pummel one another for slight offenses in hockey rinks.  We take advantage of others to garner gains in our business and financial lives because everyone else is doing it.  And we do all of these things for good theoretical reasons which are all taken to false extremes.  We forget that “holding hands and walking together” makes us feel better than isolated “money” dreams or goals.  And we forget that sometimes we simply cannot do certain things alone.  We are often better off when we work as a team.  All “isolated-greed-goals” lead to a complete lack of respect for others in the process.  But, if our goals were realistic, based on working together and refusing to allow the love of money to overwhelm us then we’d do different and truly meaningful things.  If we REALLY did things to “fit in” we would be practicing human kindness towards one another and the entire world would really be a better place: rather than each one of us “going it alone” and never really arriving at that better place.  We would do things that would be kind to others and towards ourselves.  And then we would all feel better.

Maybe part of the problem is that we don’t have a vision for what that better life means.  Maybe that is why we find it easy to be caught up by the world telling us that we should live our lives alone and for the almighty dollar.  Perhaps the problem is that many of us have never been given the knowledge and the tools that we can really do that for ourselves: figure out the thing that would make us happy and then do the right things to enable us to go for it.  Maybe some of our platitudes, that each person can become Prime Minister or President, fail to come with a list of behaviours and attitudes required to get there.  Maybe that’s the thing we lack.  Maybe we all want too much handed to us rather than desiring to work for it … yes … on our own … or maybe working for it on our own together with others who all want to achieve the same goals. 

The world is a great and tremendous place.  We have so much.  I believe each person lives in a world where we can all achieve our dreams and desires.  And if we don’t know how to get there, we can find those who can help us along the way … while we help others to achieve their goals and desires.  And if we don’t know what our goal or desires need to be for us … we have people who can lead us out of that wilderness too.  We can all have the kind of inner wealth we cherish and desire.  No one ever needs to go hungry.  No one ever needs to worry.  No one ever needs to lose sleep at night.  No child ever needs to go hungry.  No child should ever be abused or neglected or die of diseases that could be cured.  We have had that legacy given to us.  But in our isolated struggles for our own results we fail the world a little bit, every day.  We could all be heroes to the world.  I believe that.  The answers are out there.  We just need to stop doing some of the things we are doing and to start doing something different: rather than continuing to do more of the same kinds of things. 

Human kindness is the way.  It is the focus that can turn our isolated and selfish considerations into a beautiful reality.  It is not easy.  But it is not as hard as we think.  It takes some sacrifice, but had we the vision required the rewards would be greater than we can know.  The sacrifice would not seem like a sacrifice in hindsight.  Human kindness is love and respect for ourselves and for others.  We need to become selfish about doing deliberate acts of kindness for others.  We need to absorb good things so our auto-pilot does good things.  We need to have constant vigilance against words and images that lead us to bad unconscious decisions.  It’s all right to win a lottery as long as you have your eyes wide open and that you realize money is not equivalent to happiness: it only lies on a path towards happiness.

I think I could go on … and if this doesn’t feel like an ending … which it does not … I don’t know what to tell you.  Maybe this essay shouldn’t end.  Maybe it should be the beginning of your own thoughts leading towards kindness.

Cheers

Owen

134-06-29-2009

A Call for the End of Reality Television Programs
By W. Owen Thornton

So because that which we take inside of us registers in our unconscious thought … and because we do seem to decide to do things based not on conscious thought but on unconscious ones, I am calling for an end to reality television programming because I believe it hinders us from practicing human kindness. 

I’m not sure how to begin this essay because much of it stems from article 133: do I repeat myself and make this a long entry, or do I assume you have read 133 and move on? 

Philosophy has much to say about the responsibility of our actions.  If we have Free Will, then we are directly responsible for our actions.  Free Will is clear: I am free to choose that which I do.  However it is odd to consider that for some that even if we are Determined by our actions we may still be held responsible for them.  Being Determined suggests that I do not choose my actions freely but that they are a combination of events and conditions of things that have happened from before I was born that make me act this way.  So if I have no choice in what I do, can I be held responsible?  Some STILL say yes.

In the wake of the thinking in regards to whether or not we have free will or if we are determined to act the way we do research experiments are conducted.  Some results are in.  It has been discovered that many of the decisions we make may depend on unconscious thought … NOT conscious thought.  So our decisions on how we live may be ‘victims’ of what kind of information we have taken up inside ourselves moments before.  A question we need to ask ourselves is: do we want to make decisions after having watched two people yelling and screaming at one another about how incompetent they are when we know that these words and images will help us to unconsciously decide our own actions?

Here are three experiments in a nutshell.

In one experiment people were given a series of mixed up sentences to fix.  What I mean is, they were given a series of words that could form a sentence and from those words the participants were to make sentences from them.  In this test one half of the group was given trigger words that have been known to make people think of senior citizens, such as grey, wrinkled, bingo and Florida.  The other half of the group made up sentences without these trigger words in them.  After completing the test by building dozens of sentences, the real experiment began.  The people were timed on their walk to the elevator as they left the building.  Those who had worked with the key words that trigger thoughts about seniors took longer to walk to the elevator than those who did not work with those words.  When asked if they knew why they took so long to walk to the elevator, they had no clue that they had been working with words that would make them think of senior citizens.  This experiment was informative, but no actual decision had been invoked … so more research was required.

In a similar vein, in another study one half of a group was asked to think about a professor.  Another half of the group was asked to think about a thug.  Then they played trivial pursuit.  Those who had been thinking about a professor did better than those who had been thinking about a thug.  So, a tip: if you want to do well at Trivial Pursuit, think about the characteristics of a University Professor before you play.  Or if you want to do well in life, think about the characteristics of a university professor before going out into the world … because these brainiac thought waves do seem to make a difference in our minds.  Still, no active decisions had been made here.  That is, after being exposed to a series of thoughts or words people’s behaviour was modified, but there was no proof that their actions would be different had they deliberated and decided to do something.  Enter experiment three.

The big pay-off in regards to this kind of testing is still to follow.  This time there were three groups.  One group was given words that could comprise sentences with words around the subject of rudeness.  Another third were given neutral words.  The last third were given words around the subject of politeness.  After working on a host of sentences, the real part of the experiment began.  Once people were done creating their unscrambled sentences they were instructed to ask the experimenter a question.  However, the experimenter was supposed to then be engaged in a conversation for 10 minutes.  Of those who worked with the rude words 63 per cent interrupted the conversation.  Those working with the neutral words? Thirty-four percent interrupted.  And those working with the polite words interrupted only 17 per cent of the time.  This test proved that thoughts on the unconscious mind helped people to make a decision based on those unconscious thoughts.  We actively go out and live our lives reflecting what happened and what kinds of things we were actively engaged in moments earlier.

Conclusion:  It is easier to be rude to one another after having worked with words around rudeness … and the key is … we don’t know nor do we acknowledge that we have been working with rude words previously.  What goes into our minds and lodges into our unconscious minds makes a difference!

When these folk were later asked if they were cognizant of the words they had worked with and whether or not they thought those words influenced their decision to interrupt or wait patiently, not one person identified that they thought the words they worked with influenced their decision.  The point the experimenters are attempting to prove here is that we are not consciously aware of the things that form our decision-making processes.  Have a bad day or a bad series of events and we’re much more likely to make a bad decision.  So knowing this … why would we deliberately want to observe television that would negatively impact our decision-making process.

First, let me say that there was no test considered in regards to how long these effects last.  Nor do we know if repeated tests of this nature make people more susceptible to being rude longer each time they are exposed to a host of rude words or a series of rude events.  However, we do know that when we are attempting to form a positive habit, that we do get better at things the more we do it.  It has been suggested that perfection and promise for people happens with 10,000 hours of practice at a specific task.  Hence, the hours that the Beatles spent performing in a German Night Club gave them a much-polished presentation that helped them to excel to the top of the music charts upon coming to America.  So it would seem to suggest that the more we are exposed to something, the more we will act in that way habitually.

Enter reality television programs.  Here people nightly watch as Simon slags people to the point of making them break down in tears on stage.  On another channel people watch how Survivor players lie, steal, cheat and connive their way towards a million dollars (and fame and notoriety).  On Big Brother we watch two people fight about how incompetent one of them is in the competitions.  Across television people compete for relationships, money, fame all the while they behave despicably towards their fellow contestants, slagging fellow competitors behind their backs: talking directly to the camera about off-scene events that prove how awful Bob or Samantha really are and how they don’t deserve to win … but I deserve to win.  (And I know these things only in the few moments I watch as I flip past.)

So in the moments after we cease watching this kind of programming, who do we think we become?  How do we think we act?  Does our unconscious take over … going on autopilot, making us all a little more nasty, a little more manipulative, a little more willing to stab someone in the back to gain position for ourselves?  Do we think we do that which casts us in a good light while trying to score points with the people around us?  Do we see no harm in doing things to people at work that make them look bad and make us look good?  The evidence of the above tests would indicate to us that even temporarily after watching these shows, that we would be really rather unkind people.  And I don’t think I’m making a stretch by saying that our degree of respect for others is diminishing.  And if that’s happening, our overall human kindness must also be diminishing.

I don’t think we need to know if repeated exposure escalates the problem – which I believe may be the case, but I have seen no evidence for this fact … yet.  But that doesn’t really matter, does it.  There is so much reality television programming on the air that we are constantly being re-indoctrinated to nastiness several times a day.  We will unconsciously be nastier people moments after watching this programming regardless of whether or not repeated exposure to this kind of television makes us worse over all. 

So I would ask all of our networks to save us from ourselves and to cease programming that teaches us all to be nasty … that allows us all to be a little worse today than we were the day before.  This is the moral thing.  This is the right thing.  But media cannot stop.  It cannot stop because at the end of the day benefit to humankind does not matter.  Media exists to sell advertising in order to make money for the owners and shareholders.  And reality programming is one method of turning a profit that the media is hooked on.

As a society we would like to think that the powers that be should control this kind of hidden evil; that politicians should legislate better, kinder programming so that we live in a better, kinder world.  But we live in a world of freedom where we are loath to dictate what should be televised.  And besides, this kind of soft proof can be massaged in any manner of ways to say that reality programming is not harmful to us and our society.  (Though I ask you what would you rather have people experiencing regularly: People working with rude people using rude words or people working with polite people using polite words?)

So the politicians cannot … will not … do not have the will to legislate programming that builds a better society.  This may even smack of paternalism!  That ‘government’ knows best what is good for us.  Or should government move in this direction, we might see terrible, evil powers create programming that control us and direct us in other ways we would not see as beneficial: we could be brainwashed in another direction … instead of the direction we’re being brainwashed today.

So the media has to self police itself.  It must decide to do the right thing.  But it cannot.  Because in the end television networks are businesses created to make money.  And in the recently fractured market-place of thousands of channels, programmers have to compromise between what they can afford to produce in relation to that which people will watch.

And we do watch reality programming don’t we?  We watch it like we drive slowly beside a train wreck, slowing traffic down for miles.  I liken this kind of programming to train wrecks.  A train wreck is startling … surprising … saddening.  It draws out emotion from us.  It conjures up worries about the lives of the people involved and the expense of the loss property.  We know that we sometimes take the train: that one of the people inside could have been me!  And when it comes to reality television well it too plays upon us doesn’t it?  We see train wrecks of relationship and we know we’ve all been in them.  Maybe it’s good to watch someone else go through that rather than ourselves.  Maybe we can feel a little better knowing that it just isn’t us who can’t seem to get along with ‘everyone.’  Combine this factor with the fact that we all want to be wealthier … certainly if someone were dangling a million dollars in front of us we’d be considering which parts of our ethics we can temporarily part with in order to win the money.

And it certainly seems like nice guys and gals finish last in these programs, doesn’t it?  So we have to be a bit corrupt, a bit deceitful in order to win.  (And we must win, regardless of the cost, eh?)  And … I think we all think that that’s how the rich got their wealth: through a little deceit and corruption now and then, so we’d better learn to play the game if we’re going to get our money.  We need to become lean and mean … human kindness plays a very small role in getting the dreams called wealth or fame.

We watch train wrecks because it evokes something in us.  We watch reality television programming because it evokes something in us.  And train wrecks can be healthy … on occasion.  We all take life for granted.  Seeing loss reminds us of how fragile life is.  It refocuses us on our goals … helps us commit to our hopes and desires for tomorrow may never come.  This isn’t negativity, but a healthy dose of reality.  But like anything too much of something is a bad thing.  See too many train wrecks and you become immune to them.  They don’t mean as much to us.  Then we have to see something else much nastier before it registers upon our minds.  We become indoctrinated to these images.  We are lowered by these kinds of things.  We are reduced by reality television.

Liken this to the once terrifying movie, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.  All you saw was the knife blade coming down … a woman screaming … and then, using a Hollywood trick, a photo of her eye with water on it as the camera spiraled out from that shot to reveal the dead Janet Leigh in the bath tub.  Today, in order to invoke a similar response, we require arterial spray with blood spatter on the wall sprayed in the appropriate pattern (or otherwise we will know the scene was a Hollywood fake rather than a reality).  We are a species that needs to escalate images and words and violence to remind us that we’re alive at the same level of intensity.  To give us an elevated heart beat in a dramatic scene, more has to be shown to attain the same rate of the heartbeat.  We eventually become immune to the first levels of violence and we seem to crave more to get back what we once had.

So if the media cannot stop reality programming because it makes too much money from it, and if the government cannot stop it because it will smack of paternalism and this means we are no longer in a free society then it is up to us to stop watching this programming so that the networks will be compelled to give us something else we really want to watch: something that might be good for us to watch.  But we can’t stop watching can we?  We’re enthralled by how someone cheats their way to the top and no one seems to catch on?  We’re amazed by how low people can stoop and by how much hurt they can cause someone else that we cannot stop watching.  At first we’re shocked by it.  Later it makes us laugh at other people’s misery.  And so the cycle continues and our respect for one another diminishes.  Our permission to be mean and nasty towards one another becomes the new norm.  Human kindness seems like an antiquated notion designed for old fogies.

It’s a dog eat dog world out there so we’d better learn, each day to eat a slightly bigger dog.  Toughen up.  Wake up and drink the stoked caffeine beverage.  Be mean.  It’s okay. 

Well … it’s not.  So.  I recommend that we all stop watching reality television … that we pry ourselves away from this form of programming.  What it’s doing to us is nasty to the point of being dangerous.  Besides taking time watching others live their mean-spirited lives, means we have less time to lead our own lives.  We’d be better off doing something positive to helps us strive towards our own goals than learning from others how to lie, steal and cheat our way to the top.

But then … that’s only my opinion.

Please.  Refuse to take in bad information.  Find a way to take in positive information.  Then once you have found a good thing: rinse, lather and repeat … over and over again.  In this way you can cheer for others who succeed instead of being jealous.  You can practice human kindness rather than practicing things that make the world just a little more mean spirited.

Cheers

Owen

133-06-25-2009

The Danger of Unconscious Thoughts:
We need to self censor our intake in
order for human kindness to thrive
By W. Owen Thornton

It is more difficult to practice human kindness towards one another when we receive regular messages that counter kindness.  The proof is in.  Unconscious thoughts do guide us.  Or, expressed in the opposite way: we are not always in perfect control of our actions despite our beliefs and our own moral code.

In one experiment people were given a series of mixed up sentences to fix.  What I mean is, they were given a series of words that could form a sentence and from those words the participants were to make a sentence from them.  In this test one half of the group was given trigger words that have been known to make people think of senior citizens, such as grey, wrinkled, bingo and Florida.  The other half of the group made up sentences without these trigger words in them.  After completing the test by building dozens of sentences, the real experiment began.  The people were timed on their walk to the elevator as they left the building.  Those who had worked with the key words that trigger thoughts about seniors took longer to walk to the elevator than those who did not work with those words.  When asked if they knew why they took so long to walk to the elevator, they had no clue that they had been working with words that would make them think of senior citizens. 

So my theory that if you watch television programming where people slag other people on a regular basis … what do you think you’ll do more of in the moments following that program?  How can you practice human kindness in that sort of environment?  And most people are bombarded by four hours of television viewing per day: much of it of the reality television variety.  So much of this kind of television programming is about rudeness and lack of respect for one another.  I find that most reality television demonstrates that people would sell their mother for a chance to win the grand prize.  These programs are about deceit, cheating, lying, and winning at any cost.  It may make for interesting vicarious viewing (sort of like watching a train wreck) but it may be unwise for us to watch this kind of television.  If we find the world comes with a distinctly lower amount of respect for one another, is there any place where we might point the fickle finger of blame?

In another study one half of a group was asked to think about a professor.  Another half of the group was asked to think about a thug.  Then they played trivial pursuit.  Those who had been thinking about a professor did better than those who had been thinking about a thug.  So, a tip: if you want to do well at Trivial Pursuit, think about the characteristics of a University Professor before you play.

But the big pay-off in regards to this kind of testing is still to follow.  This time there were three groups.  One group was given words that could comprise sentences with words around the subject of rudeness.  Another third were given neutral words.  The last third were given words around the subject of politeness.  After working on a host of sentences, the real part of the experiment began.  Once people were done creating their unscrambled sentences they were to ask the experimenter a question.  However, the experimenter was supposed to then be engaged in a conversation for 10 minutes.  Of those who worked with the rude words 63 per cent interrupted the conversation.  Those working with the neutral words? Thirty-four percent interrupted.  And those working with the polite words interrupted only 17 per cent of the time.  This test proved that thoughts on the unconscious mind helped people to make a decision based on those unconscious thoughts.  We actively go out and live our lives reflecting what happened and what kinds of things we were actively engaged in moments earlier.

When these folk were later asked if they were cognizant of the words they had worked with and whether or not they thought those words influenced their decision to interrupt or wait patiently, not one person identified that they thought the words they worked with influenced their decision.  The point the experimenters are attempting to prove here is that we are not consciously aware of the things that form our decision-making processes.  Have a bad day and we’re much more likely to make a bad decision.

It turns out that the human mind works in the same manner as a computer: garbage in … garbage out.  So we WANT to censor what we view, listen to, or otherwise experience because what we experience is immediately reflected in how we act.  Watch a bunch of people being nasty to one another and … we’ll take that nastiness with us wherever we go.  Watch a bunch of people pull together and help one another … and we’re more likely to go out into the world and do the right thing.

So to practice human kindness go out and find opportunities where people are doing the kind and gracious things … because you’ll more than likely reflect that in your own life … at least for a little while at any rate.  I didn’t learn how long the effect lasts, but it would seem that after a short while our minds would ‘normalize’.  I would think, however, that repeated negative experiences would tend to make our minds gravitate to that kind of behaviour on a regular basis.  So if you want to practice human kindness more regularly, cease experiences that counter human kindness.  Seek out positive human experiences so that you will go out and ‘be’ a positive experience.  Then, after the goodness of the experience wears off, you’ll have to go back and recharge your human kindness battery by observing another sequence of kind acts.

God Bless

Owen

132-06-16-2009

Animals Can Teach
Us About Human Kindness
By W. Owen Thornton

A friend of mine just lost a very old dog.  He was the one who helped her through her divorce.  His continual presence, his on-going acceptance, and his non-judgmental attitude towards her pulled her through.  And so, when it came to the end of his life, as it is for many of us, there was much weeping and sadness for the loss of a dear old friend.  Isn’t it odd how animals can teach humans about ‘human’ kindness?

Where we judge someone for a harsh word, a dog or a cat simply vacates the premises and returns a few minutes later.  There is no residual anger or resentment.  They know that you just needed to blow off some steam.  But it’s more than the ability to ignore our temporarily unkind outbursts.  They return to us.  They know what we need more than we do ourselves sometimes.  They know that we need to pet them and hold them.  And as we do these things whatever it was that caused the harsh word dissipates inside of us.  In addition they don’t judge us or hold residual anger against us the next time we argue.  For an animal the incident is gone … forgotten.

Sure, you might say, it is easy for animals to respond this way towards us because their minds are not as complicated.  So what is it about the complicated human mind that makes it a worse thing, rather than a better one under these conditions?

There were two monks who had taken an oath to never touch anyone.  They came to a stream and there was an old woman there who could not cross without aid.  One of the monks picked her up and helped her across.  They walked on for a time and the one who carried the woman saw that his companion was distressed.  He asked what was bothering him.

“You touched that woman and broke your oath.”

“What is it that you are holding onto my friend,” the monk asked, “I set her down several hours ago?”

Ego.  Hubris.  Rights.  When we are hurt or offended we seem to think that the words spoken against us must have to go into some large scorecard where there will be a reckoning.  ‘We’ have been violated!  So because we are so precious to ourselves we take every harsh word against us and hold it against the person who spoke it: regardless of whether or not those words were really meant for us.  I think, oft as naught that people who deliver harsh words are often directing them at an accumulation of other things and then, suddenly when someone who loves them commits some small act, this act triggers a release of pent up anger – at the wrong source.  (Sometimes simply being nice when the other person doesn’t feel worthy of someone being nice towards them can be a trigger!)  The words and the intent behind harshness is often not meant for us.  But we silly humans take it, keep it, harbor it and hold it against that person … instead of asking them what is going on that makes them so upset.  Lifelong barriers of miscommunication originate here because of our reactions.

If a dog or a cat had a human intellect, they would tell us that they know that there was nothing they could have done to make the person angry.  That they were only there in order to make us feel better … pet me … feed me … love me up … walk me!  That is all they are ever trying to say so they know they cannot be responsible for a, “Go away!” or a, “Not now!” or a, “I don’t have time for a walk!”

A dog knows that contact makes the world a better place; that the act of petting is calming; and that the world is better after a walk.

You can imagine the emotional cost of a divorce.  You wanted the marriage to work.  Somehow despite your best efforts it still failed.  Some of us even attach failure of an activity to ourselves and thus label ourselves a failure.  You were in love and now you’re not.  You’re definitely hurting.  You’re suddenly alone.  Now I don’t know what my friend in particular felt after her divorce (I got to know her after that sad time), but I’m betting I hit a couple of emotions correctly – because some emotions must be common to most divorces where people just drift apart.  And enter into this time of sadness … a dog … a faithful, joy-filled companion.  Someone who gets excited by a car ride … likes to have his ears whipped by the wind … is delighted with a walk in the rain … who loves to be stroked and talked to and enjoys being told he’s a good boy.  Now I ask you how could anyone remain blue with a friend like that around?

We lean on these companions.  We lean on them hard.  Studies indicate that owning a pet extends our lives … but try to prove that at the time of their death!  It seems for every day they extended our life and filled it with joy, that we lose two days in return when we are compelled to deal with their death.  But it is this terrible sorrow at the loss of a pet that demonstrates to us the great deal of positive impact they had in our lives or otherwise we wouldn’t be expressing sorrow at their loss.

And so for all of you who have lost a pet recently, where that pet filled a significant need in your life, I’ll say a little prayer for you.  May your sorrow be brief.  May your memories of them be fine.  And may your search for your new companion restore you to wholeness.  And when you have your new friend, enjoy them and love them and cuddle them and walk them … and appreciate them for each moment they are in your life.

And when you take time to think about it … listen to the rhythm of their lives and learn from them the things you can … so that you can learn the lessons of human kindness that any of us can learn from a good and faithful pet.

Cheers my friend.  My heart is with you.

Owen

131-06-05-2009
Separate and Together
By W. Owen Thornton

Remember that whenever I create a newsletter, that you can receive an email on line directly from me.  All you have to do is send me your email address.  Send it to, owen.thornton@sympatico.ca    Should you ever want to discontinue these emails, send me a note, and I’ll remove you from the list, no hassles.

Today I watched as a troop of little children were guided into the gym area by leaders.  They streamed along in pairs holding hands.  The image touched me and made me think of human kindness.  So often when we do things in our lives, we are alone … separate.  There are specific times in our lives when we need to be separate.  The one time, where I believe being separate is a good thing: where we are both kind to ourselves and to others is when we are taking risks with our careers.  Big ideas, new companies, new products all come about when someone takes a big risk.  And those times we are often frighteningly and appropriately done when we’re alone.  But more often than not we are alone or separate at many times in our lives when others could be invited along.  We are alone and separate far too often.  Most of the time, we need to be like children going to some event where we are holding hands.

Life is better when holding hands.  Even Aristotle said that we are political animals who require the presence of one another.  So, this knowledge has been ‘out there’ for over 3,000 years.  In fact, to achieve his moral code called virtue ethics, there are some character traits like generosity which cannot be lived out without the presence of others.

There is security and love in holding hands.  Holding the hand of someone who cares for you grounds you … makes life more real somehow … and it makes going through life easier when you know there’s someone standing right there beside you.  Human kindness relies on human touch.  It has been reported that human touch is vital for a happy life.

But somewhere along the line we thought we were supposed to grow up … go it alone.  Parents strive to help us become independent.  This is a good thing, but our egos take it too far.  We tend to believe we can do it all on our own, that we don’t need anyone else.  To return to Aristotle for a moment, he said we can be virtuous within a wide range of actions.  There are times to get angry and times to be meek and keep our thoughts to ourselves.  The trick to his virtue ethics is in knowing which times those are.  So, when we begin to believe that we should go life all on our own without anyone else, we have fallen outside a generous range of appropriate actions.  We fall into vice or as Aristotle would call it, we become ‘vicious’.  Or, as you have read here before, any single positive trait taken to an extreme, becomes a liability.  Human kindness requires that we hold hands and stick together for far more than we think.

In Keith Ferrazzi’s book, “Never Eat Alone,” he learned why the rich are rich.  They are rich because they know enough to ask friends for help when they get stuck.  They give away favours because they know if they do so, a favour will be given to them sometime down the road when they need it (but not in a direct ‘causal’ way but from some as yet unknown source).  This is a perfect example of human kindness.  It means casting a wide net of kindness, never knowing how or where a favour will be returned, but remaining secure in the knowledge that it will, one day be returned.

Norman Vincent Peale, in his book called the Power of Positive Thinking used the Biblical passage that should a favour not come in at a time of OUR choosing, that it was being withheld for another time, where interest would be built up and the favour to be returned would be worth even greater value.

Somewhere along the line, our human hubris has stepped in the way.  Becoming a self-made man or woman is the thing to be.  The ability to go it alone gets us street creds or bragging rights.  But few people are self made.  We’re most often, ‘group-made’.  In the church people believe that we corporately raise children in God’s way.  The problem with ‘alone’ is that one person gets the recognition while the cast and crew of that life which helped make that person’s life ‘happen’ … well they all go unknown and unrecognized.  This fools the rest of us into believing that if they can do it on their own, (which they did not) then we can do it on our own.

Human kindness is about helping one another succeed … giving people leads or tips or becoming actively invested in someone’s life or their project enough to introduce them to a friend of a friend of a friend who can really make a positive difference.  As I said in the last newsletter, little kids get purple bear paw mittens.  They also get the concept of leaning on someone when you need to (or even when you don’t but simply because you want to lean on someone) … or holding their hands.

Why we come to believe that holding hands is juvenile, I will never know.  It may be one of the greatest gifts we can give one another.  Certainly holding hands is a living demonstration of human kindness.

God Bless

Hold hands and stick together.

Owen

130-06-02-2009

Be the Change
By W. Owen Thornton

A woman lays in a hospital room her life slowly seeping out her body..  Cancer is a sad and drawn out end for anyone. In this case, it feels completely unjust.  This woman lived by Mahatma Gandhi’s words, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” This woman lives as an example of human kindness.

Carolyn (a name selected to protect our real-life heroine) saw a need in her local church. It needed a church library. The rest of the congregation was a mix of average folk. The church meets its financial obligations.  It is a place where wonderful human relationships can be found. It is not a crystal palace paved with gold, however, as any church with dedicated and joyful givers could create. But it is a nice place to call your Christian home.  

Carolyn knew she had to make a difference … but how to do it? Using gifts given to her by God – she was a home economics teacher her entire life – she and her loving husband cleared out the rooms on the main floor of her home, filled it full of card tables and chairs and she opened a tea room. The food was donated. All revenue generated went to create a library. For several weeks each year, one period during the summer, another near Christmas-time people would flock to her home for top-notch scones, wonderful soups and salads, lovely quiches and sandwiches and scrumptious desserts. 

Her tea room was a place of joy and merriment. It was definitely a place of great hospitality. And it was a place of a true Christian miracle.  People helped willingly and joyfully. There were assistant chefs, servers, dishwashers, even an amiable doorman (her charming husband) to lead people to their reserved tables. Everyone received a visit from the Head Chef, Carolyn over the course of their meal. She spoke with joy in her heart and thanks upon her lips for all those who came and made the vision of her beloved library become a reality.

She bought and catalogued the books … with assistants coordinated by … you guessed it Carolyn. The donations raised from one tea-room event bought wheeled library carts so the library could be brought out into the hall between the sanctuary and the hall where after-worship coffee was served. Then, when the tea room idea waned, a weekly Wednesday morning coffee hour at the church was arranged. Books pour in. People read about God. Her wishes have been fulfilled.

Her project is not quite the success she had hoped. People read more Christian fiction than anything else, and she had hoped that people would read non-fiction books about God so that their relationship with Him would grow and mature. But, still, on the whole, her dream, her work, her vision was fulfilled and the church was much improved by a woman who knew she had to become a changed person in order to change others.

Her kitchen work didn’t stop there, either. Convinced that Jesus the Christ is the Son of God and that life with Them in it is much better than any other, she along with another devoted woman began the Alpha program at her church. The Alpha program is one created for seekers of the Christian faith and it incorporates a meal: something Carolyn knew how to do very, very well. This time, finding the crew to help her work in the church kitchen she created meals to stick to your ribs for guests of the program along with all of the support volunteers required to make an Alpha evening work well.

While that program couldn’t be sustained by the rest of the congregation, Carolyn was undaunted in her efforts to help people build relationships with God. She lived the way she thought God wanted her to, giving of the gifts that she had inside of her (given to her by God) and sacrificing her home, food for hundreds of people … whatever it took to bring people closer to God … sometimes, I think in spite of themselves.

I look at her life and tremble. I tremble because I do not give as sacrificially as she does … or has. I tremble, because even if I did give as sacrificially as she did, I … well … I’m not as certain as she was about what my gifts even are. Even if I knew what they were, I’m not sure that I would know how to give my gifts in such a meaningful and effective way. I do not know how to be the change … though sometimes I think it is clearer and easier than I make it out to be – it’s just too freaking scary to be the change … and so my Christian heart lies buried in a sea of ordinary, when I know that everything God made, including me, is meant to be extraordinary.

But thank God I have her to look up to. Thank God I have seen someone Be The Change! Thank God I have at least a clue what it means to be a human being filled with kindness and love and motivation and drive and giftedness.  I thank God for Carolyn. I thank God for introducing her to me. I thank God that he worked so miraculously in her so that by her example, God could work in me, even if the results in me are a mere echo of what she has done. 

She lived the gift of hospitality. She gave of herself beyond measure. She set an example for everyone. If every single member of every church could Be the Change as Carolyn lived it … even though they were sharing and unveiling their own unique gifts, the Christian church would be alive and vibrant and vital as it truly should be. There’d be no more lights hidden under bushel baskets.  People would point to the church and say, “There!  There the spirit of God is alive and wondrous. Praise be to God.”

The irony of seeing such a woman suffering towards a mysterious ending … a reunion with God … that makes me sad. Sad because I am losing her.  I do not want to lose her. I need her. Her church needs her. Her husband needs her. The world needs her. And in this, she teaches me one last thing: the Lord’s time. Not mine. There are few souls I would wish could be immortal. Were I God, and it is a good thing I am not, Carolyn would be one of my special immortals because she is a conduit of love and Godliness that the entire world needs and which it will soon be without.

Carolyn: I love you as a brother in Christ. Be well. Be at peace.  I will deeply, deeply miss you. But I also know that life here on earth is not so very long.  I will see you soon. And maybe, between now and that time, I too will learn to Be the Change. Thank you for being in my life.

God Bless

Owen

129-03-17-2009

We Need to Think Before We Say Hurtful Things!
By W. Owen Thornton

Recently on the CBC Radio One Program “As it Happens,” there was an segment about a man who had lost several millions of dollars in the recent massive multi-billion dollar Ponzi Scheme.  What was appalling was the reaction of normal, middle-class folk: listeners who felt absolutely no sympathy for the man.

Here is the story.  The man, I’ll call him Harry, had never met the individual who had been recently indicted for stealing billions from people, but I am sure that he had it on good authority that the investor could perform wonders: after all the scheme ran 20 years so someone had to have had high returns.  And so, Harry invested everything he had earned with the swindler.  This was money he had earned from selling properties, which I’m assuming he’d purchased and paid off years ago, and he had therefore sold them to realize the income gains.  We didn’t learn much about Harry, which therein is my point.  Certainly Harry was unrepentant in regards to the penalties that the swindler was facing, over 150 years of prison term was in his future.  Harry hoped that the swindler lived a long, long life, because the man had stolen from him and had left him penniless.  At an age that would be inconvenient to go back to work to “re-earn” his lost fortune, he was going to have to go out and start living his work life all over again.  Certainly Harry had suffered a loss that he will never recover from.

I can forgive Harry his righteous anger.  He has a right to be angry at someone swindling him.  What shocked me were the nasty responses from ordinary people around North America.  The talk show host said the responses were typical and if there were contrary responses, the program usually offers both sides.  Seeing as there were no contrary comments sent in either by phone message or email, there seems to have been only one view.  No one had any sympathy for Harry. 

First some noted that Harry had given his money to someone he had never met, they said.  He was foolish.  He deserved what happened to him.  Really?  Giving money to this smooth-talking swindler was something thousands of people and some very legitimate charities did.  It’s no surprise Harry gave him his money!  He didn’t have to meet him to know the results would be terrific!  The swindler came with a 20 year proven track record.  One wouldn’t necessarily have checked the reputation, nor needed to have met with the person investing your millions with the kind of pedigree the swindler would have had at that time!  Hindsight, as they say, is 20-20.  At the time Harry invested his money he didn’t have the luxury the listeners did.  In addition, meeting the swindler would have probably had little impact on Harry’s decision.  The swindler had obviously conned many other decent folk who did meet hm.

Second others offered crocodile tears.  Poor Harry had lost his millions and now he was going to have to go out and work for a living.  Nowhere in the interview did I hear that he had inherited his money, so we have to assume he worked for his millions … and that he worked hard and invested wisely.  Professional athletes make millions a year playing a game and no one thinks ill of them – and they make their money doing nothing of any real importance!  Harry could have really done something to help people while making his money.  We don’t know that he didn’t.  Yes he made mistakes, but we all do and we all need to be there for each other.  That’s human kindness!

Listeners felt no remorse because Harry had had life easy and now he was going to have to go out and ‘really work for a living’ just like they had to go out and earn a living every day – as they had to overcome their life-long losses in the recent stock market crash.  How sad.  Everyone in this life dreams of making it rich, but when they do, what are we saying?  That they don’t deserve their wealth … they don’t know what it is like to work for a living … they didn’t work hard to get it?  Just because we have lost revenue in our lives doesn’t mean we can put Rhino Armor on and laugh at others because they have lost more than us.  Those who derided Harry should be ashamed of themselves.  Rather people should have cheered on Harry while he was making his fortune and … we should have the human kindness inside of us to feel badly for the money he lost. 

So when it comes to someone losing their fortune due to a swindler, regardless of how large that fortune is, we as agents of human kindness should offer everyone our sympathy.  Now I’m sure we all know some scoundrels out there whom we wouldn’t feel sorry for, but I don’t think that includes someone who is wealthy, who makes an honest mistake and who doesn’t check for references! 

The truth is everyone would like to have more money.  Everyone would like to live as the Rich and Famous do, but the sad part of it is not all of us can.  Some of us work hard all our lives and only eke out a living.  Some others do the same kinds of things and strike it rich.  The world has been full of these stories and it doesn’t appear as though it will change.  I always thought, however, it was the lives of the rich and famous … if we don’t become too jealous of them that we become mean, bitter, and dispirited people … who give the rest of us hope that we too, one day, might become rich and famous ourselves.  They are the ones that inspire us to keep trying to strike it rich: not make us jaded that we’ll never get there (and then we can laugh at them when they lose it all!).

And I’ve also seen just ordinary folk be taken for all they have because they too believed in things that were too good to be true and we see that as tragic.  We are all susceptible to greed and corruption … just a little bit anyways.  So why can’t we have any sympathy for Harry?  I for one, when I was listening thought what had happened to him was very tragic.  I never once thought he “got his just desserts”, nor did I “cry crocodile tears”.  It is tragic whenever anyone is swindled by someone who acts and appears trustworthy.

Look.  I for one have made stupid misjudgments about people where the situation was clear that I was wrong.  Maybe Harry was a jerk.  Maybe he was a spoiled rich guy who deserved what he got.  Maybe he was a fool parted with his money in a get-rich-quick scheme.  I’m just saying in this case that there was no evidence of any of those things and to think them before any real evidence is in runs counter to human kindness.  We have got to start giving people the benefit of the doubt rather than condemning them first.  I don’t want to live in a world where we shoot and ask questions later.  I want to live in one where we can share human kindness with one another.  Where I can find a shoulder to cry on when the chips are down.  I think that’s the kind of world you want to live in too. 

So think about it.  Who should you call and say, “Sorry to hear about your misfortune?”  That just may be a call you might like to hear some day. 

God Bless

Owen

128-03-17-2009

A Song In Your Heart
Can lead to Human Kindness
By W. Owen Thornton

When it comes to the music in my heart, I hear a single pivotal moment in my head.  I hear my father criticizing me for liking the music that I liked.  At 16 or so, criticism like that can be devastating to someone.  I think somewhere along the line, I was supposed to like the music he ‘thought’ I should like.  The sad thing is I never knew what kind of music that was!

But today, as I was walking to school, with a song in my heart and literally on my lips, I thought about how much that song was making me smile.  I think anything that puts a smile on your lips, makes us better carriers for Human Kindness.  Yes, I said a ‘carrier’ for I am beginning to believe that spreading human kindness must be like spreading a healthy, beneficial disease.  Just a little bit of it and we can create a human kindness epidemic.

So I would suggest to you that if you have a song on your mind, that A: you sing it aloud, where you feel safe to do so, or that you B: hum the tune, if you don’t dare sing it.  Sing it as you walk and feel the smile building on your face, and the good feelings racing through your body.  Singing is just one of those things that makes you feel good, even when you don’t want to feel good.

So forget those critical moments where people have offered you negative comments about your singing, or the song you are singing and sing for the sheer joy of it!  (I think dancing to an inner music might even be more profound, but I don’t have a two-step in my little body!)  It doesn’t matter if you’re any good.   Singing is a feel-good thing that most people get!  When you sing and people catch you at it, they always say something like, “My, somebody’s happy today!”  And you know maybe they were right, though sometimes I was just singing because I liked to sing, and I’m not sure that I was happy at that time.  But maybe my body was, even if my mind was not.  Surely it made those people feel happy! 

Happiness places you and those around you in a position that allows everyone to better practice human kindness towards one another.  It’s like one of the ingredients required to create a human kindness epidemic.  It really doesn’t matter if your singing affects anyone other than you, because as I’ve said repeatedly on these pages before, human kindness starts with yourself first.  If you can’t feel it for yourself, you cannot give it to others.  So incubate happiness in your “self” and if that means singing then by all means sing!  A song in your heart is a pathway to happiness should you release it.  It is a signal for happiness within you and brings happiness to those around you.  And who knows what kinds of random acts of human kindness will pop up.

Perhaps with a song on your heart, in these desperate financial times, the entire world can be made better.

Cheers, my friends.

Singer Owen Thornton

127-03-12-2009

Little Kids Get It!
By W. Owen Thornton
Or Purple Bear-Paw Boy!

I wear purple, University of Western Ontario Bear Paw mittens and I think they’re about human kindness.  Little kids get it!  Wherever I go, when they see the mittens, I watch their eyes light up.  They can’t take their eyes off them!  Sometimes it seems like they want to point it out to their parents, but you can see it in their faces: they don’t bother because they don’t think their parents will get it either.

So if little kids know what brings them joy, why is it that adults and teens don’t?  It’s all about the supposed-to’s, and the not-supposed-to’s I guess.  We’re supposed to grow up.  We’re supposed to become sensible!  And because of that we’re supposed to be like everyone else who knows we’re supposed to grow up and become sensible and then if that weren’t enough we suffer from peer pressure!  And we’re not supposed to do embarrassing stuff.  And we’re not supposed to act like little kids anymore.

But the thing is, when my mittens bring so much joy and human kindness towards others, I can’t resist wearing them.  I see the looks on the faces of my fellow (and much younger) university students faces.  Some smile sardonically.  Some roll their eyes, but they secretly wish they could wear them and some give a look of disgust.  I do it for the smiles.  I do it because I love the colour.  I do it because they’re neat looking.  And now, I wear them because they bring smiles to people.  But some people out there are judging me and those who do are being unkind!

And these mittens are more than fun!  They’re also smexy.  I know that because I bought a pair for a 14-year old girl, who upon seeing them on me before Christmas, thought it would be cool to receive a pair for the festive season.  Her problem was that it just wasn’t cool to wear them to school!  Anywho, my 14-year old girl eventually wore her mittens to school on the coldest day of the year because her mom made her and her friends thought they were smexy.  Now that I have it on good authority from a selective group of 14-year-old girls that these purple mittens are smexy, I have even more reasons to wear them!  By the way smexy means they are smoking hot!

I don’t know where adulthood went so far off the rails with its shoulds and should nots.  It has been made clear to me by some that purple bear paw mittens are not cool or adult (enough), but that they are in fact stupid.  Really?  I can also tell you how little I care about this attitude towards my mittens.  I live for the smiles they bring people (children), and because of that, I can overcome the few folk who’ll offer negative comments.  If becoming an adult means I can no longer wear them and if that means I have to sacrifice some human kindness along the way, I will not submit to this pressure.

Little kids know about joy and neat stuff!  They know bear paw mitts are fun and cool and that purple isn’t a colour you see on outerwear all that often and that this also makes them cool.  They know what makes them happy.  They are instinctive about it.  And as we’ve said before human kindness starts with the self and works outwards.  So if you want to be kind to others, kindness starts at home and that means wearing … on some occasions, bear paw mittens!
I’d like to know where we got the attitude that we should behave in certain ways and that if we do that makes us an adult.  Should I list all the ways that adults behave badly in order to balance the scales here?  Don’t make me.  It would be unkind!

Cheers

Purple Bear-Paw Boy