Overachieving

   An interesting thing happened to me on my way to work this past summer. I was driving on a back road and I could see a couple of people and a dog walking down the road in my direction. The dog wasn't on a leash and it broke away from its people and started jogging toward me. It seemed that the people tried to call the dog back, but it was more interested in my car than whatever they were saying.
   As the dog came closer, I slowed down so as not to run into it if it made an unexpected movement. It stopped right in the middle of the dirt road, so I also stopped, rolled down my window and told it that my car was much bigger than it and it could get hurt if it stayed there. At this point, the people accompanying the dog were probably no more than 30 yards away so I just sat and waited for them to come retrieve it. I wasn't having the greatest morning, was already late to work, and really didn't want to hit a dog, even at a very slow speed, to make my day even more stressful. I was feeling pretty good about how responsible and patient I was being despite their obvious delinquency as dog owners in not keeping their animal out of my path as I waited for the woman to reach her dog.
    Imagine, then, my surprise when the woman (who looked a lot like a shorter version of Katherine Hepburn) approached my rolled down window and kindly but firmly said to me, "You need to learn something." She went on to tell me that when this dog, or any dog, was in the road, I needed to keep on driving. According to her, the dog had been encouraged in this bad habit by people like me who stopped to talk to him or even feed him treats when he was in the way of their cars and that's why he kept getting in the way. I was just reinforcing bad behavior by stopping my car. She seemed set to lecture all day (I found out later she was probably a retired teacher) so I did my best to draw the one-sided conversation to a quick conclusion by acting interested in what she had to say and then taking the first opportunity I got to thank her for the information and wish her a good day.
    As I got to work and set up for the day, my mind kept returning to this incident. I could see the point in what the woman was saying but couldn't help but feel rather annoyed at the way she let her dog do whatever it wanted, then chastised me, a person who didn't know this particular dog and had been inconvenienced on my way to work by its actions, for my 'enabling' behavior! I couldn't quite decide whether to laugh it off or give her a piece of my mind if I ever ran into them again.
    And then I realized what about the experience kept me mulling it over and what my attitude about it would gel into. I thought to myself: is it harder to train unwanted behavior out of one animal that you have contact with every day, feed, groom, take care of it it gets hurt or sick, and, presumably, inspire affection and a desire to please you in, or to undertake to train a wanted behavior into hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of previously unknown drivers you will encounter when you are walking said animal on the back roads of a small community over its lifetime? It absolutely boggled my mind to imagine the amount of determination and confidence that could cause a person to prefer to undertake the latter task! And I decided that that woman is the best definition of an overachiever I've run into in a long time.

Make War, Not Love

     I've always thought of myself as a pacifist and been unsure I could kill someone, even to save my life, though I am pretty sure I could do it to save one of my children. I've always played a good defensive game of chess, but been unable to figure out how to win the game, except by accident! And I've been sure for years those two facts are related in some way, but until recently didn't think it was worth bothering to figure out how.
     But "the times, they are a-changin'." (Never thought I'd be quoting Dylan on this blog! Now I need The Mike to do his impression for me.)
     Years ago, I went to a cooperative games night at the kids' elementary school. One of the games we played  involved breaking the players up into two equal groups, putting one group on either side of a line down the middle of the room, and giving each group an equal number of small, soft balls. The object of the game was to become the group with no balls on your side of the line.
     Of course, as soon as the game started people on both sides started throwing balls like crazy, trying to get them all onto the other side of the line, and it immediately became apparent that wasn't the way to win anything. As I watched, I couldn't see any way all the balls could end up on one side of the line, because they were continually being thrown and returned, and if one side hung on to all of them, thinking they would then throw them all over to the other side at once, they would lose the game while they were stockpiling for that final throw. But I did think of a way both sides could win at the same time.
     So I consulted with a few people on my team. They agreed it was worth a try, and we told our plan to our other teammates. Then we called a couple of our opponents to the center to see if they wanted to put the plan into action. They did, so they spread the word to their teammates. Then players on both sides grabbed the nearest ball and hung onto it. Everyone who had a ball came to the center line and, on the count of three, placed their ball on the line, meaning neither side had any balls on it and so both teams won at the same time. Or at least, that was the way the plan was supposed to work. What actually happened was that one of the mothers on my team had a ball in her pocket and once all the other balls were on the line she threw it onto the other side, thinking we won the game without even considering we actually lost it while the ball was in her pocket! By which action she showed herself to be stupid as well as an uncooperative cheater and bad example for all the children present. But that has nothing to do with my point. My point is: I thought of a way for both sides to win the game. Yay!
     But I've always wondered if there was a way for only one side to win the game that I just couldn't see. So recently I asked my facebook contacts if anyone could come up with an answer to that problem. Almost immediately, one of my friends responded with this solution: have one team member unobtrusively hold a ball over the line while the rest of your team holds onto the balls that are being frantically thrown at you. Then at the count of three everyone, including the sneaky over-the-line ball holder, can throw or drop the ball they're holding on the other side of the line and your team will win the game outright. Simple, right? But I never thought of it whenever I remembered that game over the years.
     Which brings me back to the facts that I don't think I could ever kill someone, even to save my own life, and I can't seem to play a winning game of chess. And I figured out these facts are related by the sad truth that I have no offense. My life plan has always been to seek cooperation from others and try to find ways everybody can be happy.
     Now this is fine for many, maybe even most, situations in life. But it occurred to me as I was pondering these things that there will be times when you just can't get cooperation from the people around you, and the stakes will be important enough that you have to try to win - like if someone really is trying to kill you, or if there's only one chocolate left in the box. So you have to develop some offensive strategy to the best of your ability. And maybe it's okay if everybody doesn't end up happy when one of the everybodies involved just wants to kill another of the everybodies, or neither body is willing to split the last coconut cream chocolate. So I'm thinking of changing my philosophy to generally pacifistic but ready to fight when I believe the situation justifies it. And I hope this will make everybody happy ;)

You Never Really Know

     It's been such a crazy week I haven't really had much time to think about things (weird, for me!) but I sat down at the keyboard this morning to try to write something for this blog because I believe it's important for me right now to do this regularly and it's been a couple days since I posted anything. As I sit here, I'm distracting myself with the Book of Faces and a spider solitaire game instead of trying to meditate on what I might like to write about, but somewhere under the surface of my thoughts things must be brewing anyway because it just came to me that I've relearned a couple of huge life lessons this week.
     The one that strikes me most strongly is how important it is not to judge others, even when you really want to because categorizing makes you feel safer in an uncertain world and, especially, categorizing others in an "inferior" category and yourself in a "superior" one makes you feel both safer and better about yourself! But the truth is, if one stays open to possibility, it is possible to learn so much from the "inferior" others.
     Observing, trying to be helpful to others in a caring, mindful way, and then sitting back to meditate occasionally on what has been happening in our lives can all be difficult to do, given the frenetic pace the society we live in seems to move at. But so much can be gained from not giving in the to siren song of "I want more and I want it now!" that plays in various keys all around us, not least of which is greater understanding - and thus peace with and control over - our own motivations.
     So there I was earlier this week, thinking I was helping a young friend through a personal crisis and hoping I could impart some wisdom that would help her to have a smoother ride on the road ahead of her. I was feeling all wise and secure in my aged wisdom. Sure, I felt bad for her pain, but at least I was much too old and sagacious to fall into the same sort of situation myself!
     Smugness never becomes me for very long. As I sit here this morning, I realize I am still motivated by the same feelings she has been suffering through and, what's more, had nowhere near the same insight and ability to deal with them at her age that she has displayed to me! I was blown away by the level of understanding of herself and her situation she showed to me in our talk last night and how quickly she seems to be bouncing back from some very devastating emotional turmoil.
     So now I'm thinking perhaps I should call her this evening to talk about something in my life that's been bothering me a lot lately. After all, does it really matter if we get to be the teacher or the student as long as we're all trying to learn together?

Don't Be Scurred

     "Fear causes most - if not all - of the problems in human relationships." I coined this little phrase years ago and over time it's held true for me. When I look at a problem I'm having with someone in my life, I can always find fear of some sort at the bottom of it.
     The other day I was talking with an interesting woman I've recently met about the reasons for war and political unrest around the world. I pulled out the aforementioned saying as a reason why people can't seem to cooperate to make sure everyone has their basic needs for sustaining life met. She opined that greed causes a lot of these sorts of problems. So I got to thinking, what are the connections between fear and greed? Does greed stem from a fear that, if you don't have more than enough, you will someday not even have enough?
     What do you think? Is there fear at the bottom of greed? Do humans just want more and more stuff because we're greedy or do we want it because we fear running out unless we stockpile? Are we afraid if we don't grab things from others they'll grab from us or that someday that resource will be gone and we'll be without unless we take some now?
     I know we humans are very complex creatures, so perhaps I'm oversimplifying this. But I read years ago in some self-help book (the bane of modern civilization!) that even anger is a secondary emotion we feel because, underneath somewhere, we're feeling the primary emotion of pain or fear - emotions we label as "negative" and that leave us feeling uncomfortably powerless. We prefer to feel the anger because it makes us feel more powerful, less helpless. And when I thought about that one I could see truth in it, at least in my own emotional world. And I began looking for and trying to root out the fears that cause me to feel unjustified anger with others. After all, "perfect love casts out fear", and I want to be a loving person.
     So now I'm thinking, if greed is rooted in fear, doesn't that make it unloving toward ourselves and others? If we act and react based on underlying emotions we don't understand or even know are there, aren't we at the mercy of, or enslaved to, those emotions? Shouldn't we try to be guided by well-thought-out principles rather than continually changing feelings? I'm thinking here. What do you think? Let's keep thinking...