TURN IT OFF, THEN RE-START IT – Part 1 of 2
Thursday, June 11, 2020
Getting from start to finish, in anything, often requires a re-start. Re-boot.
Turn it off.
Turn it on again.
We learn this, from nearly every device we own – and even with a dead battery in our car, we get a boost. Getting charged, re-charged, and re-booted.
We all understand this, but I believe we all forget this every time we feel down, let down, or when we fall down – because we expect that we, like everything else in our orbit, will keep on working. Like an old Timex watch commercial: we take a licking and keep on ticking.
We don’t.
I’m not a student of biofeedback science, but I know it has value.
Recently, like most earthlings, plenty of self-pity-party time, and plenty of time to brood on how sad, sidelined, maligned, and off-track we are. Having any kind of face-to-face activity, meeting someone for breakfast, having lunch, returning to normal – all done. Gone for now. Maybe forever. Once the next wave/phase and stage of COVID-19 wafts over, as corporations and governments test the limits of how much they can borrow or print to stay afloat …
Then something happened. A customer paid a bill. A friend made a joke. A computer re-boot went off without a hitch. A friend sent a kind note.
All of this happened between late afternoon and the following morning. Work isn’t the same, but this is work. Ideas aren’t the same – they have new filters now, and just as one old tried/true thing won’t work now, something else does. It will. Who knew?
I have been so fortunate to go through a life of pursuing money and things – and when I had them in abundance, I under-appreciated their value and power.
Today, for most of us, things and money and power don’t matter so much. Yes, of course, we need things, but the things we need most aren’t things. We need to know and feel we are alive, that we matter – that all lives matter – and that we can make life better. Not better for the whole world; that takes time.
But what doesn’t take time is a call to a friend, or a minute to call a stranger. What doesn’t take time is counting our blessings.
What doesn’t take time is realizing everyone matters.
And bad people. They matter too. Even people who’ve made horrible mistakes in their life. We don’t need to forgive or forget – but we do need to acknowledge their right to live and breathe, to work and play, or to avoid responsibility, it’s their right.
The society we live in has more to say, more to do, and more to be valued for than how much money anyone has in the bank, how many friends they have, or how many people will march in the streets when they are gone.
There is a lot to be torn up about, a lot to be stirred up about, right now. There always is, and likely will always be. A new generation is pushing for change beyond what a previous generation called progress. That’s a good thing in so many ways. A new generation is saying no to those whose behavior, attitudes, and words reveal what they think, how they need to change. Some people change, but mostly it’s the community that changes, the society that changes. What we need to be wise about – and this requires selective use of history’s magnifying glass. Was it Dr. King, or the movement? Was it the war, or the protest? Was it one Cosby or Weinstein, or was it societal change? There are victims in every war, in every revolution. Some are people, some are ideas, and the truth is usually stretched so far out of shape we don’t recognize fact from lies anymore.
A celebrity was called out for his comments – some current, some past, and his apologies have been widely spread. His PR folks will sanitize his image. And then there are people who really know who he is, how he thinks, and what he’s done. Some will scoff and say, “When money and power are involved very little changes.” They are right.
Whether we discuss bad behavior, gender inequities, sexual misdeeds, crime, government, racial tensions, and power struggles – things can always be boiled down to a peaceful, non-violent protest, and a reason to march. But, these things alone do not make change happen. They contribute, but they don’t make the world change. They are, sometimes, powerful catalysts for change.
Changing the world in a hurry, about anything, is a slow progressive process that wears away at old themes the way water wears its way through rock, a little more each year.
Call someone.
Talk differently, talk about different things – agree, or argue, but talk.
Push and shove verbally and in writing with ideas.
Debate things.
Stand up for things.
Or, you could yell from where you are seated.
Reader feedback:
Great Words today. Finding a New You in a New Way is a great take away. Thanks Mark, MJ, Calgary, AB
You are guilty of one of the most insidious of grammatical abuses: Misuse of the semicolon: “ It seems to me; that what sets us apart...” . You set apart a sentence that required no such parting and suffered for it. Shame, shame and more shame to the writer. Still, (presuming to be) speaking for all your faithful readers, we forgive you, because we are a generous and forgiving lot, RH, Calgary, AB
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