In honor of my hero - Boots Hodge

ON FREEMAN “BOOTS” HODGE

Boots was born either June 1^st or June 2^nd.  The man with two birthdays.  His mother Alice said it was the first.  The state said otherwise.  His mother wasn’t the kind of woman one wanted to argue with.   Neither was his father.  Flavius Hodge carried a gun on his hip and rode a horse for transportation.  His grandmother was supposedly a Choctaw princess, his grandfather, according to legend, was an outlaw on the run in the Oklahoma territory.  These are only pieces of the early legend of Freeman “Boots” Hodge.  In truth, very little was known about his grandparents on his father’s side.  His father, Flavius was a half-breed who didn’t own a car until the 1950s.  Evidently he wasn’t the kind of man you messed with.

Boots came from a big family.  There were seven kids.  They, like many families in those days, called each other nicknames that stuck through the rest of their lives.  His older sister’s name was Gal.  Boots had a brother named Buster, who looked almost identical to him after they’d both lost their hair and wore horn-rimmed glasses.  We thought we had two Grandpa Boots the first time we saw him.  “Two Grandpa’s was like having two Santa Clauses!”  He had another brother named Pee-Wee and one named Buddy.  Tobe and Pete didn’t get as colorful nicknames but they were spoken about fondly by the rest of the family.   They lived in New Mexico and western Texas during the 1920s.  This was the dustbowl.   The hard times that followed him around for his entire childhood began in those wild, untamed, arid climes.  He grew up tough and quickly.  He grew to have grit.  He was put to work by the time he could mount a horse, which was about around the time he could walk.   They scraped and busted their tails from sun up to sun down and still barely had a pot to piss in.  He’d work all day only to find out the fella he’d labored for didn’t have a dollar to give him.  He’d sometimes have to settle for food or practical items as forms of trade.  Boots learned early on how to be resourceful.    He also learned that family, a strong one, could survive anything.

The event that would end the challenging chapter of his childhood would be World War Two.   He enlisted and was sent to the South Pacific, the Solomon Islands, Guadalcanal to be more specific.  Four of his brothers fought overseas during the war.  His family had no idea where those boys were for three to four years.  Boots snuck a reference to the Bible and Solomon into one of his letters and it made it past the censors.   Alice Hodge had dark hair when Boots left in 1942 and white when he got back in 1945.  Boots never once talked about the war.  He never watched a single war movie.  He had nightmares so violent and horrific that he rarely slept through the night without a violent episode.    He remarked later that he was surprised and grateful his wife Madie put up with him.   Madie was equally special in her temperament as he was and they made the perfect couple.  She was patient and kind hearted to the ninth degree.  Snippets gathered from visiting war buddies over the years began to imply that Boots saw and experienced the worst of the seven hells.   All he’d say about it was, “You can have a unit of men march and fight through the jungle and when they come out the other side you’ll have as many different versions of what happened as there are men left to tell about it.”  He lost a lot of buddies in those jungles.   It is unclear but he once insinuated that he’d been a sniper of sorts perched atop a jungle tree and taken out many a “Jap”.  It was made to me in reference of his plan to shoot a dog that was harassing his cattle.  He could put an eye out from some extraordinary distance was the initial hint, and something along the lines of that’s what he did over there from a treetop.   One story he did relay openly to me on one of my magical Sunday visits after his wife passed and I was in college, goes thusly:  He was unloading a ship and was bringing a load to shore when the ship was struck by a torpedo and blown to pieces right before his eyes.  He’d missed it by minutes.  Another time he ducked to tie a bootstrap and a shell flew right over his back.  His unit was lost and he wondered around the theater for a while, joining with different units along the way.  He drove a bulldozer for one unit and may or may not have had a pet monkey. 

The years that followed the war were difficult ones for him and his otherwise stoic resolve.  He did what he always did and sucked it up and moved through it.  The first great step forward was meeting the true love of his life, Madie Hudson in Whitharral Texas.   After their first encounter she went home and told her sister she’d met the man she was going to marry.  He’d found his salvation.

He worked for a pipeline in east Texas when his first son Tom was born.  Sue followed a couple of years later.   Opportunity came for him to start over in Missouri and so he moved his young family north and built from scratch a new life.  They lived in tiny shacks or at one point a barn.   He worked all the time and saved his money.   When Madie’s family came to visit they asked her what she was doing living in a barn?  But Boots promised her that if she’d stick it out he’d build her a house on some nice land.  It is unclear if he had his entire vision for his future then or if it came to him over time, but he eked out a living and finally was able to purchase a large plot of land that butted up to the Oklahoma boarder.  During the war the government had mined the larger older trees and what was left was underbrush and saplings.   There was a tiny two-room shack with an outhouse surrounded by budding forest upon rocky ground.  Again his family and hers wondered if he’d lost his mind.  What could he do with that forsaken place?  He worked construction by day and built Madie her house by night.   It took him awhile but he built that house practically by himself.  Tom, who was at the time ten years old and ready for serious labor, helped him.  Madie also worked her fingers to the bone to make that vision come true.  Sometimes a curious neighbor (by neighbor I mean a person who lived two miles away) would stop by and help out.  People were like that then.  Plus Boots, an imposing cowboy right out of the movies with his homespun philosophy and strong commonsense approach, made a good first impression that lasted a lifetime.   People automatically respected Boots.  While he was working construction all those years he’d stick around when the plumber would show up and he’d watch him work and ask him questions.  He did this with all the contractors until finally by the time he built his own house he knew how to do it all himself.   For a man with an eighth grade education he was a brilliant engineer.  He could envision something in his mind and make it into reality.  He never understood why no one in his family inherited that ability.   If he set his mind to something consider it done, no matter how ambitious.

When the house was completed Boots built a chicken coup and a milk barn.  He bought some chickens and a milk cow and set about making his property self-sufficient.   He plowed a garden and Madie worked it during the summers.  He called it his garden of life.  He explained how the garden of life sustains us.  Perhaps it was his Choctaw blood but he was a spiritual fellow even when thinking about something as mundane as a garden.  He’d tell Tom how the garden of life needed to have vegetables and things to sustain us but it also needed a watermelon.   And it was also very important to keep the weeds out of your garden.  He meant figuratively and literally.  He also planted roses.   The garden of life needed roses, too.   Tom spent more time with him than almost anybody and was the recipient of much of Boot’s profound wisdom.   They’d be working beside one another, usually for long distances of silence, when all of sudden Boots would straighten up and look off into the distant trees.  He’d sigh and say, “Son…”  And Tom would stop and look up at him.   “Don’t pick other people’s scabs.”  Tom would nod and they’d both go back to work.  Tom would work out what he meant by that and come away with the truth beneath the odd comment.   Everyone has scabs in their life, leave them alone and let them heal.  One of Tom’s many jobs was to herd the cattle up to the barn.  Boots would warn him not to stand behind those cows.  “They’ll kick the devil out of you.”  But sure enough, one day Tom was in a hurry and one kicked him square in the gut.  It knocked him to the ground where he writhed in pain, unable to catch his breath.  Boots walked past him and with his southern drawl said, “Well, I told ya not to get behind ‘em cows.”  Life was a lesson.   Tom didn’t have a curfew in high school.  If he came home late Boots would find something important for them to do at four in the morning.  Do what you want, but be ready to live with the consequences, was his philosophy.   He’d later turn those lessons into personal cards that he would send his children and grandchildren in the mail.   He sent this to his daughter Patty, my mother, when she was an adult with four kids.

“Good Judgment comes from experience, a lot of that comes from bad judgments.  Whenever you see darkness there is an extraordinary opportunity for the light to burn brighter. -Good luck with your back – Dad.”

Boots worked construction and his business partner was an old cowboy from Texas who’d made a lot of money in oil.  His name was Mr. Smith.  One of Boot’s favorite stories to tell was about this colorful man.  Mr. Smith drove an old beat-up pickup truck and wore overalls, looking like a dusty old farmer. The guy from the bank was there and Mr. Smith pulled up in his old truck and looking like he just milked a cow and the banker tried to warn Boots about going into business with that guy.  Boots didn’t say anything but, “Oh-kay,” and the banker told him he’d look into Mr. Smith for him to make sure he wasn’t making a mistake. Boots smiled and let him do the research needed to explain Mr. Smith’s economic status.   The banker came driving up, he jumped out and said, “You definitely should go into business with this guy.  You have any idea how much he’s worth?” Boots just smiled.  He did not believe in putting on heirs.  It was the sign of a weak man to try to impress others with his wealth or style.  “You can send a fool to college but all you’ll get is an educated fool.”

He wore the same denim shirt for as long as I could recall.  I later found out he had several denim shirts that all looked alike.  Cowboys boots, faded blue jeans, denim shirt with snap buttons because he’d cut his thumb off when he was an apprentice in Texas, large white, or slightly yellowed cowboy hat, this was his uniform.

The thumb story is a famous one in the legend of Boots Hodge.  He sliced it off when he was an apprentice in Texas.   The story goes that he sliced it off, picked up the severed piece, drove himself to the hospital but they couldn’t sow it back on and so he stood there calmly, holding the flap of skin against his hand while they stitched him up.   His pain tolerance is a large part of his legend.  He never took pain pills no matter how severe the injury.  It wasn’t that he had dulled nerve endings.  His tolerance came from a stubbornness of the mind, a mental toughness that refused to let pain interfere with his day.  He was so disciplined in everything he did.   He believed in putting off or foregoing gratification for what needed to be done.  He was up at four o’clock every morning and went about working his property all day long with a skip in his step, because he was doing what he loved. 

Eventually Boots grew weary of putting up with the fickle mind of housewives changing their minds with the wind and so he brought home four piglets and from there went into the hog business.  It was here his brilliance and ingenuity would shine.  Tom recalls the first time one of the pigs was giving birth, how it couldn’t handle the pain and chased its rear end around in circles until finally giving birth and killing the baby.   Boots fattened that pig up and sold her for her meat and then favored the pigs who gave birth easily and from there he went from four pigs to four thousand.  He revolutionized the pig farming industry.   He designed his operation in such a clever way so that it would only take Tom and Boots to work the entire thing.   Tom shoveled a lot of hog manure and feed in his young life.  Boots worked out a system for everything; from how the barns where constructed to the alleyways and shoots.  He realized that one of the biggest problems facing pig mortality was newborns being rolled onto by the mothers.  So he designed a trap door in the birthing cages that opened for the baby to fall through into some straw under a heating lamp.   So in the spring when most farmers were bringing three to four new pigs to the market, Boots brought a dozen or more.   He built a cage with two decks for his truck to drive them all to market.   He caught the notice of many people and a few college professors of agriculture came to see the operation and to study it.  He made them change clothes before they could go out there.  He didn’t want them getting his pigs sick.

While they worked extremely hard, Boots took his family on at least one vacation every year.   They’d go to Colorado and Wyoming.   He’d have his nephews, who lived up the road, look after the farm.     All the while his hog business continued to expand.  He built what would later feel like an entire town on his property with various sized barns and outbuildings.  He had it all organized with different sections for pigs recovering from giving birth, to areas for fattening them up, to weaning them.  After he retired from the business, his abandoned pig town turned into a fantasyland for his grandchildren.  It fueled my early imagination and we loved to have all sorts of fantastical adventures out there.  It was a magical place to grow up. For his children they had hundred of acres to ride their horses.  They explored the vast forest.  Boots would say, if you get lost try to find a fence and follow it home.  There was a spring fed pond with an enormous weeping willow tree that they’d swim in on hot summer days. 

When Tom was in high school he came to his dad, seated in his favorite recliner, in the place it would remain for sixty years.  Boots was reading the evening paper and Tom told him he’d like to try football.  Boots didn’t say much, maybe grumbled from behind the paper, peaked over the top and then went back to it.   Tom, feeling a bit rejected, shrugged and left the room.   The next day, when Tom returned from school, Boots handed him a pair of cleats.   He didn’t say anything else.   So Tom went on to try out for the team and he had his butt handed to him by an older boy.  He got pounded all week and began to hate the idea of playing football.   He was later embarrassed to admit that he seriously thought about quitting.  But there were those damned cleats.   Those cleats weren’t in the budget.  Boots had stretched to get them.  He was just starting out in his new pig farming business and things were tight.  Tom stuck it out and eventually, after college, became the football coach in Seneca.  He was by far the most successful coach in the history of that school and in fact one of the top in the entire state of Missouri.  He’s in the Missouri sports hall of fame for coaching.   The stadium in Seneca is named, Tom Hodge Stadium.  In a small southern town, high school football is the NFL.  Boots and his wife Madie collected all the articles written about their son.   They were both extremely proud of him. 

Boots would send Tom, then in high school or when he’d come back for summer break in college, to markets to buy up the runts and they’d bring them back and Boots would shoot them with boosters and fatten them up.  He was always thinking of new ways to improve his operation.    He was at a trade show many years later and saw his invention being demonstrated.  He recognized the guy who claimed the patent as one of the professors who’d visited.  The guy shrugged apologetically, and most likely frightened for his life, but Boots shrugged it off.  The guy said, “I looked and you didn’t have a patent on it, so…”  Boots had made plenty of money off of his invention, he didn’t need the glory for it.  He wasn’t one to hold a grudge.  He’d say, “Don’t waste your time or your money feeding your ego.”

He’d say, “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”  Or “The true measure of a man is how he handles a crisis.”

He was in the hog business for twenty years before debilitating headaches bothered him so much he decided to look into it.  He’d had skin cancer and probably wondered if the constant headaches weren’t something serious.  He never told Madie or his kids when he went to see his doctor but whenever he came back he explained that he was allergic to the pigs’ dander and would be selling them off.   He was going out of the hog business.  It must have been a difficult decision to make.  But Boots sucked it up and made it.  The headaches must have been horrendous for his pain tolerance.   Perhaps they were making him cranky?   He had grandkids by this point.   He doted on them.   He stopped cursing after I began to repeat everything he’d say.  He also stopped drinking.  He was never a hard drinker but he’d have a beer each night; sometimes Jack Daniels.  He gave it up to set an example to his grandchildren.

He often remarked how the ghosts of his war buddies would dance around his bed at night asking what went wrong with the country they died for.  In his mind his generation spoiled their children, because they didn’t want them to have the hard life they’d had, but it made them soft and weak and in turn they produced children even more spoiled and soft.   He foresaw America’s decline from the world’s greatest country to the limp bureaucratic nightmare it is today.  He didn’t think highly of politicians and the government.  He worried about one world government.  He said someday that’ll happen and we’ll all be in trouble.

His retirement plan was based on an idea he’d had perhaps all along; to section off his land into plots and to lease it to people with bad credit or who weren’t able to get loans.   When they would default he’d take the land back, but if they could pay it off then it was theirs.  Few of them did.   His plan is now helping his children in their retirements.  One of his big philosophies was about need versus want.  We only need a few things to sustain us.   The rest is what we want.  He’d say, “No luxury should be purchased with debt. When people tell you they need something, usually they’re confused about what that means.” 

To say a few words for a man who put little stock in words seems ironic.  He said, “No one can talk for more than five minutes without exposing the extent of his ignorance.”  He was a man of action.  He didn’t say I love you.  He showed it.  He wore the toughest exterior of any man I’ve ever known, but beneath that cowboy hat there beat a warm and kind heart.  That man loved his family.   “Kodak would go out of business if it weren’t for our family,” he’d say pointing with his half thumb at all the pictures on his walls.   As he got on in years, he’d say it every time you saw him.  

When his wife got sick he’d carry her up the stairs each night for bed and carry her down again in the morning.  When she was out of it towards the end, he picked her up one afternoon and she looked up at him with love drunk, teenager-eyes, all doughy and she said, “Wanna dance, cowboy?”  And he let her stand on his feet and they swayed back and forth for a moment and then he scooped her up and carried her up those stairs and sat with her until she fell asleep.   A large piece of him died when she did.  But he was too sturdy to show it and he bit his lip and his enormous adam’s apple would quiver and he mustered on.  That was a special time for him and me.  I was living in Joplin, going to school, and every Friday Aunt Sue would take my laundry back to their house, she lived with him, and I’d swing by every Sunday and pick it up and we’d have lunch and talk for an hour or more and then I’d head on down to Neosho to see my parents.  We did this every weekend for a year.  We grew very close.  He’d tell the stories he loved the most.   They usually had multiple meanings and were full of life lessons. 

Boots truly was a living legend, by definition.  He earned the respect of every man he’d encountered.  Boots Hodge.  He was an inspiration, a guide, a cowboy guru.  He was the cowboy John Wayne was pretending to be.   But at the end of the day John Wayne was just Marion Morrison and Grandpa was still Boots Hodge.

“In the battle between the stone and the stream the stream always wins because it’s persistent.” He’d write these nuggets of wisdom in his famous cards.  I don’t know that he came up with all of those himself, if he’d picked them up along the way or what, but he knew the importance of seeing the world in those types of terms.

Here’s a poem they found in this personal things. 

My Self

By Freeman “Boots” Hodge

I have to live with my self, and so

I want to be fit for myself to know,

I want to be able as days go by

Always to look myself straight in the eye,

I don’t want to stand with the setting sun

And hate myself for the things I’ve done

I don’t want to keep on a closet shelf

A lot of secrets about myself,

And Fool myself as I come and go

Into thinking that nobody else will know

The kind of man I really am

I don’t want to dress myself up in Sham

I want to go out with my head erect

I want to deserve all men’s respect

But here in this struggle for fame and pelf

I want to be able to like myself.

I don’t want to think as I come and go

That I’m bluster and bluff and empty show

I never can hide myself from me

I see what others may never see

I know what others may never know

I never can fool myself-and so

Whatever Happens I want to be

Self Respecting and conscience free

Boots

He was a man of extreme reason and intuition.  He lived in a world of logic.  If it didn’t make sense to him, then by God he wouldn’t do it.   And if it was broken, then by God he could fix it.    He did things HIS way.  He said to be happy; you need to be your own boss.  He said, don’t follow the crowd, go your own way.  Find your own path.  He taught us to think for ourselves.   Institutions were generally bad ideas.   The government had no right to tell us what to do.   He wouldn’t wear his seatbelt in the hopes of being pulled over just so he could explain to the cop what he thought about that particular communist law.   He’d say, “I think the seatbelt is the best invention since birth control, but the government has no right to tell a man, who fought for his country, that he HAS to wear it.” 

 He taught us the difference between religion and spirituality.  He didn’t need to go to church every Sunday.  In fact he refused.  He hated preachers.  All but one, a man named Griff, who wasn’t anything like any other preacher we’d ever known.  He was a special case and he earned the respect of Boots as he sat with Madie as she died. 

He was at Boot’s funeral and someone asked Griff if Boots had asked him a lot of tough questions during those times.  “No,” said Griff, “He pretty much just told me stuff.”  

Boots found God sitting on a stump at sunrise on his back forty watching a deer graze in the distance.  The irony to me was that people were always trying to “save” him.   If you were at his funeral and saw the amount of love and adoration being given to that great man, then maybe those folks would have all done better to follow his example.  Who needed to save who?  Was he perfect?  Of course not.  No one is.  Like everyone he was flawed, but that’s what made him who he was.  But damn if he wasn’t a very good human to live up to.  

He was an idol, a legend, a hero to his family and that extended beyond blood.  Boots was very active in the Warrens Branch Community, serving many years on the school board.  He was one of the original founders and leaders of ‘Busy Beavers’ 4-H Club.  He’d host mini rodeos on his land called shodoes. He’d plow the ground to make it softer and the kids would ride calves and horses.  He coached Tom’s baseball team and when they won first place he made it clear he didn’t want his name on that trophy.  It wasn’t about him.  He was a selfless man to the core.

We found the drafts for a few of the cards he’d sent to everyone and I’d like to include this here for posterity.  The following are the words of Boots Hodge to his family.

“Boots-isms”

Tom & Sue

“A hundred years from now, it won’t matter what my bank account was.  The sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove.  But the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.”

Tom & Merlene

“The most certain sign of wisdom is to make your home a refuge from the rest of the world.”

Sue

“It is loving and giving that make life worth living.

And giving that love to children can make a difference in their life forever.  You can do a great job at that.”

- Have a good day  -Dad

Patty

“Good Judgment comes from experience, a lot of that comes from bad judgments.  Whenever you see darkness there is an extraordinary opportunity for the light to burn brighter. “

-Good luck with your back – Dad

“When you come to the end of your rope tie a knot and hang on.  Everyone gets the same 24 hours in a day, the difference is how you use it.”

Bobbie, Patty & Tera

“Just be yourself and never look back and don’t take life or death too seriously.  Making it in life is kinda like busting bronc’s.  Your going to get thrown a lot, the secret is getting back on.”

-Just an old Cowboys way of looking at it. Grandpa Boots

Pam

“By changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.  Never take the advice of someone who has not had that kind of trouble.”

-I think you have proven that, just be your own person you can’t please everyone. 

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”

Merlene

“Anyone who says raising kids is not the most difficult job in the world is not doing it right.  Memories are your most valuable possessions.”

Travis

“There is not half the pleasure in processing an object as in the effort to attain it.

Let go of the what-If, don’t put your life on hold. 

Trust your hopes not your fears.

Optimism is a gift

The most certain sign of wisdom is a positive outlook.”

Marcy

“Grab happiness in the passing moments of life and never look back.”

“Never feel lonely in the kitchen, food is very friendly.”

“Treat your kids like you wanted your parents to treat you”

Mark

“Happiness is a byproduct of an effort to make someone else happy.  The most wasted days are the days when we have not laughed.  A happy marriage puts the marriage before the children. Two people loving equally is a rare occurrence.”

Tera

“You’ve got to be original, because if you are like someone else what do they need you for?”

Scott W.

“No matter what kind of backgrounds two men are from, if you go ‘Hey man, women are crazy’ you got a friend”

Josh and Amy

“Love begins in the eyes and quickly goes to the heart, and only sometimes ends up in the brain.” – Boots

Eric

“The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself.”

Ryan

“Not everything can be made sense of

Your Eyes are the windows of your soul.

We are sometimes taken into troubled waters not to drown, but to be cleansed. 

Use your memory to make your life more enjoyable. 

Look back at your ancestors for strength; carry a can-do attitude with you. 

Banish the word ‘cannot’ from your vocabulary; every person is born with a talent. 

A good idea is usually risky,

The door to success is always marked ‘Push’

Contentment is worth more than Riches.”

Lacy

“Be afraid only of standing still.  Grab happiness in the passing moments of life.  We are sometimes taken into troubled waters, but not to drown but to learn how to swim.  Sometimes things that hurt-teach skill and confidence are an unconquerable force.  Every person is born with a talent, use it.”

“Don’t be discouraged by your mistakes.  Accept the good and run with it.  Opportunity sometimes knocks very softly.  Surround yourself with things that make you smile.”

Ross

“We are all treasure chests of talents.  In Sights and remarkable gifts we are judged by what we finish, not on what we start.  The secret of success is doing something you love.”

Tayler

“Never grumble, it makes you as welcome as a snake at a picnic.  Its best to keep your troubles pretty much to yourself cause half the people you tell them to won’t give a damn, and the other half will be glad to hear you have them.”

“Follow your hearts’ desire and it will lead you to great adventures.  For when you follow your heart life becomes joyful.”

Britnie

“You must do crazy things once in awhile to keep from going nuts.  Just don’t do anything that conflicts with common sense.  The best advice is don’t give it.”

Hudson

“Hey a true friend will tell you when your hats on backwards, just how did you get so stupid, well maybe it’s the company I keep.”

Hayden

“Its better to have one good friend than many acquaintances.  The most certain sign of wisdom is a positive outlook of a person is defined by what he makes of himself during his lifetime.”

Charlie

“Most folks are like a bob-wire fence.  They have their good points.  Nobody ever drowns himself in his own sweat.  Never joke with mules or cooks as they have no sense of humor.”

More….

“Today you don’t have to lift a finger, you are royalty, the hero of the day.  You don’t know about war, poverty or disease, you only know love, enjoy the moment.”

-Grandpa Boots

“If you have a loving family its amazing what you can do without.”

“Don’t pet a porcupine unless you are looking for trouble.  Life is an emotional journey.”

“No luxury should be purchased with debt”

“Never sacrifice your principles to please anyone”

“Aim at fulfilling whatever talents you have inherited.”

“Having an education is different than having plain ol’ horse sense.”

“You can ruin the present by worrying about the future”

“A stumble may prevent a fall.  Don’t put your life on hold”

“Trust your hopes not your fears”

“Just be yourself and never look back, and don’t take life or death too seriously.  Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none, your eyes are the windows to your soul.”

“Knowledge is a precious treasure that cannot be given away nor stolen.”

“After you climb to the top of the wall don’t kick over the ladder”

“Good fortune is usually the result of wisdom and hard work, not luck.”

“Optimism is a gift”

“There is no security on this earth only opportunity”

“Its no disgrace to fall down, the disgrace is not getting up and going ahead.”

“The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up”

“An imagination can make reality more joy able”

“Its easier to accept love than to give it”

“Wisdom is sometimes disguised as foolishness”

“Don’t waste your time or your money feeding your ego”

“Just remember don’t pursue happiness, create it.”

“Kids need more hugs than they need things.”

“The greater the obstacles the more glory in over coming it.”

“You can never go wrong when you follow your dreams.”

“Never play leap frog with the unicorn”

“Never pet a porcupine.

If you carry yourself like a beauty people will think of you as one.”

“You can never step in the same river twice you can just about always stand more than you think you can.”

“No one can talk for more than five minutes without exposing the extent of his ignorance.”

“Watch what happens to a wagon when one wheel comes off”

“A good reputation cannot be bought for any amount of money”

“Intelligence is not enough, using intelligence wisely is the key”

“Respect yourself and others will respect you.”

“Happiness comes from a persons character”

“The squeaky wheel will be the first to get the grease, but if it keeps on squeakin’, it’ll be the first one to be replaced.”

Mythology

ON MYTHOLOGY

A study conducted on Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks, revealed that when individuals are in a state of concentrated meditation and prayer the neurons stop firing in the parietal lobe of the brain; the area responsible for spatial orientation and physical awareness.  Another study showed that when individuals suffer from temporal lobe seizures and also others who have had that region of the brain stimulated using electrodes produce sensations that are considered intense religious euphoria or experience.  Atheists look at that and interpret it as proof that there is nothing spiritual going on at all.  “There you go.”   But I’m not devout to anything yet and so I say simply, “I don’t know…”   But for me some interesting questions arise for the thought experiment; do we remove a portion of our ego when we turn off the region that is aware of our physical body?  Isn’t it our egos that have fooled us into thinking we’re individuals separate from the universe in the first place?  Does that portion of the physical brain naturally block or impede our true connection with the universal consciousness?  Is the parietal lobe our anchor to the physical realm?  Or is it all electricity and energy distribution?  Is it all in our heads?  I struggle with this debate all the time. 

There have been other studies that suppose our brains naturally need to impose order to everything; that we need to understand everything as having a cause-effect relationship.  We simply can’t accept chaos.  Things cannot happen randomly. 

I’m currently enrolled in a mythology class.  The semester just began and the second chapter in the book looks at the origins of myth.  Where do they come from?  The book breaks down several competing theories.  There’s the Archaic view that basically says that, to the ancient Greeks, myths were substitutions for history and theology, but also offered examples of heroic actions that promoted certain courageous standards for not only their citizens but their leaders as well.  There were “externalist” theories that state that myths were a prescientific attempt to explain natural phenomena.   Some believe that myths derived from explanations for certain ancient rituals and customs; as justifications.

The “internalists” view myth like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung did, as stemming from our subconscious; that they are expressions of the human mind.   Jung had his mythological archetypes. 

My friend Matt Savage wonders if myths were actually viewed as fiction but accepted and celebrated as holding universal truths worthy of veneration.  He likened it to Harry Potter or Star Wars.  We know these stories are fiction but we celebrate them as our modern mythology.

There was the Hellenistic theory that supposed that the ancient gods were based on leaders from the distant past whose exploits had been so exaggerated over time that they took on divine qualities.    I like this theory for reasons I’m unaware of other than it supports my theory on the Biblical stories and oral tradition.  I compare it to the game of telephone.  Each time the story is told to the next person it takes on a subtle but important variation.  But over thousands of years those variations have grown to the point that what’s left is nearly a completely different tale.   But boiled down and below them there was once some truth to them. 

That leads into a section I found to be missing from the text book; the Ancient Alien Theory.  A kid seated behind me brought it up in class.  As much as I don’t trust the Ancient Alien theory its hard to watch the so-called History Channel and not come away with at least a few more questions than you have answers on that subject.  The idea is that mythology comes from the ancients’ misunderstanding of technology well beyond their wildest imaginations and so the aliens became gods.

A competing theory to the aliens is the ancient demonic theory.  This one I’ve employed in a series of books that have yet to be completed, but that I started over ten years ago.  The idea is that the ancient gods were actually powerful demons that corrupted and subverted the truth and tricked ancient man into worshipping them.  The idea that the act of being worshipped made them extremely powerful makes more sense to me as far as their motives are concerned, than the ancient aliens needing to create a race of workers to build the pyramids.  What also makes the ancient demon theory such an intriguing one to me is how these pagan gods influenced history all the way into our modern world.   Think about Christianity’s relationship with the pagans.  Constantine wasn’t the Christian saint they’ve made him out to be.  He was still a pagan worshipper long after he legitimized Christianity.  But what people don’t realize is that he corrupted the faith and from that moment forward the pagan’s controlled it.  When Rome took over Christianity it no longer belonged to the pure of heart.   They stepped into the shadows, these demon gods, but they never left.  And plenty of evil was done in the name of the church.   According to the theory, that evil was orchestrated by these demonic forces, to be carried out under the false name of God.  Why does the Vatican have an ancient Egyptian monolith in its courtyard? 

The idea that for thousands of years mankind made blood sacrifices to these demons, which we know from the stories weren’t shining examples of morality.  Zeus raped a lot of virgins.   The conspiracy folks will say these pagan demons are still at work in our world today, whispering into ears if not making straightforward deals with extremely powerful people.   If you want to lose your mind look into pop music and hidden symbolism throughout it.  It will make your hair curl.   

But I have to leave it with the understanding that I don’t claim to have any answers only questions.  I see patterns in things, but then again that’s what all of our brains do automatically.   We look for and some times fill-in patterns everywhere we look.  But sometimes the patterns fit and tell us things.

Is the Universe a Super-Organism?

On Super-Organisms

 I keep coming across people who say things that suggest they are open to a new interpretation of spirituality.  I’m watching my generation stepping into the seats of power and influence, slowly but surely, and the world changing to reflect our more open minded take on reality.

I keep coming across the elusive theory I often refer to in the voices of my fellows.  It has yet to have a name.  It questions more than it answers.  But, a lot of us are no longer willing to accept the old models of religion, but are not yet willing to give in to the dogmatic conviction that there is nothing beyond the human experience.   We can see the convergence of science and spirituality.  I think a staunch atheist is just as closed minded as a far-right-winged, bible-thumping literalist.  To assume you understand all the mysteries of the cosmos is a bit narrow in scope, no?  Some of my best friends are atheist and to them I mean no disrespect.  I think if it comforts them not to believe in anything beyond the chemical reactions of the brain, then so be it. 

I prefer to muse on the idea that the cosmos has the possibility of being an enormous super-organism, just as the human body is a complex system of smaller components.

We start with the question: What does it mean to be alive? It’s all about the flow of energy.  Energy resources drive complex systems.  Well the universe has energy flowing throughout it.   It’s hard to think in terms that grand, but take comfort in knowing that there are patterns in everything.   They repeat on all levels, from quantum to multiversal.

According to Wikipedia:  Any contiguous living system is called an organism.  Organisms undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, can grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce and, through natural selection, adapt to their environment in successive generations.

So you might say, well, the universe doesn’t do all those things.  How do you know?  You have to look in terms of the concept of there being multiple universes to begin to see how this may be happening.  The idea is that this universe is the clone or spawn of an older universe, which was the spawn of an even older universe.  According to many leading scientists today there are countless universes in the sea that is called the multiverse.  And we used to worry about feeling insignificant when we imagined that the sun didn’t revolve around the earth.  But realize that we are not removed from this system but are very much a part of it.  Why would the patterns cease to exist the larger you get in scale?   Could each universe be like a cell inside of a larger super-organism?  The cells divide just like they do in living organisms on earth.  The universes could be evolving and natural selection could be rewarding those that are more hospitable to create life and new universes.  Blackholes could be the spawning grounds of new universes.

Someone might say, what does that do to the concept of God?  It makes God infinitely greater and many times more vast and complex.  What does that do the idea of you as an individual?  It suggests that it doesn’t stop with you.  You can believe that you are made up of tiny particles that have come together as a complex system to make you.  But then we think that’s the end of the line for complex systems?  But what if you’re not the highest beings in the universe?  What if we are all tiny components in a larger complex system?  We think we’re individuals but really we’re not.   We’re all connected in this way, coming together to make something greater and more complex than ourselves, just as the cells in our bodies do, or the atoms of the cells and so forth.

There has been a lot of research done lately on the idea of there being a “collective consciousness” or a “unified field of consciousness” surrounding this planet.  In 1980 Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab began to study how focused group intention and attention brought order to random computer output. Random-number-generating (RNG) computers have suggested strongly the existence of a collective consciousness.  In 1995, for example, Roger Nelson and Dean Radin began researching similar effects that occurred when mass attention was captured by events like the O.J. Simpson trial.  The research shows that romantic couples working together can affect the RGNs six times as much as individuals.  Suggesting love binds us together and makes us even stronger as something else beyond our individualities.  Global events that capture our attention collectively have powerful sway on the RGNs that are in place in various locations on the planet.  9/11 had a tremendous effect on the random-numbers-generating computers.  There has been much more independent research done on the subject.  Feel free to research it for yourselves.  The idea is that collective consciousness is a mode of awareness that emerges at the first transpersonal stage of consciousness, when our identities expand beyond our egos.  We intuitively can sense and work with the interactions between our and other’s energy fields, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.  This projection of emotions and thoughts is a real phenomenon, just ask anyone who is afraid of horses or dogs.  These animals are well aware of our emotions, because we project them. The theory suggests that consciousness has the ability to exist beyond the constraints of space and time.  And it suggests that our individual consciousness has a part to play in the larger more complex system as one collective hive mind that surrounds the earth.  The idea is then carried on to the galaxy and the clusters of galaxies all the way to the universe and the multiverse.  The basic patterns don’t break down the larger you get.  They too expand and form an even larger complex system called the super-organism.

Could that be what the Bible was talking about when it said God created man in “their” own image?   God is not a Him but an Us.  In that we are all particles of God.  Our egos have convinced us that we are individuals, separate from the divine.  Could it be we are part of a chain, connected somewhere along the way, in an infinitely immense system?

I sure don’t know.  Do you?

 

 

Dogs

On Dogs

I grew up with dogs.  I loved my childhood dogs; especially Splicer, the little black mutt who despite his strange name was very smart.  He was special.  But I grew up in the country.  You didn’t have to walk your dog, you just opened the door and it went outside.  It came back when it was ready to come inside.  I first lost my affinity for dogs when I moved to the city and my roommates had a little devil of a dog, who nipped at people’s ankles.  He loved to stalk you under the table and latch on to your ankle with a quick snip.  He got me a few times before one weekend when my roommates had to go out of town.  I stayed behind.  It was Thanksgiving and the weather had turned bitter and cold.  I had to walk the dog and pick up its poop with a plastic bag.  I thought, I would never like to have a dog in the city.   I decided that since I was stuck with the dog, I’d win it over by showing my dominance.  So I took an oven mitt and played a game with the dog by grabbing his mouth.  He tried to bite me but couldn’t break through the mitt.  I simply held on until he relented and stopped fighting me.  It became a thing we did the entire weekend.  When he’d growl at me, I’d get the mitt out and grab his snout and hold on until he stopped fighting.  By the end of the weekend he was seated by my side on the couch, panting and obedient.  He never tried to snip my ankles again after that.  I grew fond of the little critter but I never grew fond of walking him outside in the freezing cold.

So it can be said that I never wanted a dog of my own, since becoming an adult.  I married someone who felt the same way.

But when you have kids they reach a certain age and they start begging to get a dog.  One of my daughters in particular is an avid animal lover.  She cries about not having a dog.

Recently my father came to visit.  He started in on how good it is for kids to have a dog. He worked my three children into a dog frenzy by taking them to a local pet store to look at puppies.  I was like, “Dad, we’re not getting a dog.  You’re only going to upset them.”  They have a picture of a sweet little puppy from the pet store as a screen saver.  At about this time a guy who works with my wife was planning to go out of town.  He has a puppy.  She’s about a year old.   She’s on a special diet and has all this medicine.  She chews up everything she can get a hold of.  So my wife, with a stroke of genius, tells me about how they are going to have to put the dog in a place while they go out of town.  She asked me if we should agree to watch the dog for the weekend and make our kids do all the work.  I knew it would be a challenge but I agreed it was a good idea.

We got the dog on a Thursday night.  It came with a long list of instructions.  The owners were very apologetic and kept asking if we were sure about this.   We had committed.  We could survive one weekend.  The kids went around the house picking everything up that could fit into the dog’s mouth, or so they said they did.  Stuffed animals were bagged and put away.  Small toys were put into bins.   The dog jumped up on me, trying to lick my face.  I pet her behind the ears and kept her from licking me on the lips. At first the dog was a nervous wreck, running all around, checking everything out.  The kids were all excited.  The time came for them kids to walk the dog.   “Keep him in the backyard,” said my wife.   Five minutes later, she looked out the back door and didn’t see them.

“Trav, where are they?  You’d better go out and look for them.”  So I threw on a coat and shoes and headed out.  I found them in the front.  We live in a cul-de-sac and the neighbor kids were playing on the huge snow mountain the plowers had pushed together in the center.  The dog was pulling my daughter around from kid to kid.  Everyone was worked into a whirl of new doggy excitement.  “What happened to staying in the backyard?” I asked.

“I tried,” said my daughter, looking near tears.

“If you can’t walk the dog without it pulling you all around the place, then we need to call (the owners) and have them come and get her.  Because that’s part of it,” I said.

“I know,” she said in her whiney voice.  My other daughter helped her and they brought the dog into the garage.  But it was soaked and muddy from the filthy snow pile.  I found some old towels and made them dry her off. 

My wife had tickets to a concert and I stayed with the kids and the dog.  I had the kids take the dog out one more time before starting our bedtime rituals.  They managed to keep her in the backyard this time.  But the bedtime rituals, which are already a pain in the ass, were wildly interrupted by the dog.  The kids fought over which room she would sleep in.  They kept calling her into their rooms. 

“Go to bed!  No one’s getting the dog tonight, if you all keep calling her.  Trust me, she’ll go where she wants to go.  Get in bed.  I will close your doors.  Now get to sleep!”  I tried to keep cool but I find bedtime makes me very cranky even without a new dog in the house.  With the added stress of the dog distraction, bedtime had become infuriating.  But I imagined that once the house settled down the dog would too and I could have some peace and quiet to maybe get some writing done.  But that was not to happen.  The dog whined at my door.  I finally opened the door and let her in and she kept jumping up on me while I was trying to write and licking my ear and head.  It barked at me. Then it left the room.  Five minutes later I heard my daughters calling me.

“Dad! Dad!” I came out of my room to hear.  “She peed all over the floor, Dad. I told you we should have taken her out one more time.”

I had them throw on some boots and coats and take her out again, while I cleaned up the pee.  At this point I had a clear thought. While this sucked, it was going according to plan. A devious smile crept over me, while I was on my knees soaking dog piss out of my carpet.  I went downstairs to watch TV after the kids settled back into bed.  The dog followed me.  She jumped on me and started to lick me.  I pushed her off and dried my head with my sleeve.  Finally the dog settled on the couch beside me. But when my wife got home and we went to bed, the dog jumped into our bed with us.  We got horrible sleep.  The dog moaned and whined all night long.  The next day it was just me and the dog.  I tried to write in the morning, but she came and jumped on me.  She then brought her toy ball and dropped it by me.  She barked, meaning she wanted to play.  I went downstairs and found wads of paper everywhere.  She found my son’s art supplies and ripped up some of his drawings.  The owners said to crate her if she didn’t let me write, so I put her in her cage downstairs.  She barked the entire time.  I let her out and she followed me everywhere I went.  Always under foot.  I decided to take her for a walk.  My dad happened to call when I was out with her.  He found it hysterical.  I was not laughing.  I kept thinking this was all his fault. That night, I settled down to watch TV after the kids went to bed and the dog was with me.  After a while I heard her climbing the stairs.  I hoped maybe she’d go and sleep with the kids.  But a few minutes later I heard the sound of plastic being chewed on.  I ran up the stairs.

“What have you got?  Spit it out!”  I grabbed her by the mouth and struggled until finally a small Lego piece fell out.  I put it on a ledge she couldn’t reach and returned to my stories.  A minute later there came the same sound of dog teeth working plastic.  I thought we’d done a thorough sweep of the house.   I stormed into the girls’ room and flipped on the lights.   They were both asleep. I shook my daughter on the bottom bunk.

“Get up.  Get up.  We need to get everything up.” I was purposefully being loud and abrupt.  They got drowsily out of their beds and half-assed an attempt to dig under their bed for any loose items.  After a moment of watching this, I got on my knees and dug under their dresser, pulling out item after item of loose plastic toys.  I piled them on the bed. “Find spots for all of this stuff.”

“I’m tired, Dad,” said my daughter.

“Yep. Having a dog sure is tiring, huh, kids?” I said, basking in victory. 

By the third night, my son was the first to admit he no longer wanted a dog.  “When’s this thing going home?” he asked.  By the last day even my animal loving, motherly little daughter admitted it was too much work to have a dog.  They stopped asking for one.  For now, anyway. 

Indigo a'go go

On Indigo Children

As mentioned before, I met a very interesting woman who claimed to have one foot in the fifth dimension.  She was very fascinating.  I refer to her as the “highly spiritual” lady.   She could see through her “third eye.”  She holds seminars on the subject.  We had a very interesting conversation as you can imagine. 

This “highly spiritual” lady I spoke to mentioned Indigo Children.  I’d perhaps heard of it, but hadn’t given it much credence before.  But I decided to look it up.  It’s the idea that a large number of unique children are being born into the world with much more frequency.  They are said to be vibrating at a higher level.   These children are said to have indigo auras and to be much more in touch with the universe and to possess special, unusual and sometimes almost supernatural qualities; such as psychic abilities. Many of them are misdiagnosed with autism, ADD and ADHD.  The fact is children are different these days.  Yes, I know it has a lot to do with the parents.  But even then there’s something going on that isn’t quite right; mass autism, and wide spread gluten and peanut allergies?  The wheat hasn’t changed nor has the peanut.  It’s us.  It is believed by some people that our DNA is changing.  There is no proof of this and the evidence is sketchy at best, but I always like to play the “what if” game.  So, according to some New Age parents, it is said these children are coming to earth to help us and to teach us things; to help guide humanity into the next age.  Coming to earth?  From where?  I don’t know.  The lady alluded to another planet, as if they were older souls from another part of the universe, from a society more advanced spiritually than ours, incarnating into human bodies, but that’s getting into another bag all together.  For me though, it’s a wonderful concept if anything.  As a storyteller, I love this kind of thing.

The qualities listed for these children are interesting.  Some are born with what the old folks call a sense of entitlement, because they feel they are special.  They almost expect you to realize how important they are.  They have more confidence than most children today but way more than all children from the past.  They despise authority for the sake of authority, for they believe we are all equal.  Rules almost seem silly to them.  They don’t like school because they know that school is going about teaching them in the wrong ways, not giving them real-life experiences, but instead instilling a worker slave mentality upon them.  They feel removed from the rigidity of the structured world, for they see past structure.  They are spontaneous.  One huge problem with their feelings of alienation is they often turn to drugs in their teens and early adolescence.  They first seek them for mind expansion but easily become ensnared in the void of addiction.   It’s a snare put in place by the forces working against the better good.  The Indigos are considered systems busters.  And they believe the systems were put in place to hold us back and to control us.  That’s especially true of economic systems.  Most of them despise money but some have figured out how to use the system to acquire wealth in order to remove themselves from its burden.  They do things completely different than how it’s been done for years and years.  They break traditions, for they see them as trivial and superstitious.  They don’t read books from cover to cover anymore, but they are usually smarter than most people for they seek out their knowledge through a more precise method.   They have the internet at their finger tips and they know how to use it.  They prefer to guide their own education and while they don’t do well in school, later in life, if they can stay focused and not distracted by their own self-destructive pursuits, they will be the wisest among us.  They can be seen as anti-social unless they are with other Indigos.   They refuse to be ruled by fear.  They act out because of this.  They are rebelling against a system that doesn’t make sense to them.  They are usually highly creative and headstrong. And they are inheriting the earth soon. So say the New Age parents of Indigo Children.   Okay.  That’s interesting.  A bit much to digest but I thought it was worth a look.

Skeptics of the Indigo Child Theory, and that includes most people, claim parents who believe their children are Indigo are doing so as a way to avoid considering psychiatric or pediatric diagnosis.  “There’s nothing wrong with my child!  She’s special!”  It could be argued that it is wrong and dangerous to justify disruptive and rebellious behavior from a child as being symptoms of a higher consciousness.  Sure and that’s living in reality.  But I’m a fiction writer at heart, remember. I get to live outside of the system of reality.  Maybe I’m an Indigo Child?  I can definitely identify with some of the supposed qualities of the Indigos.  That’s why I found it most interesting, I suppose.  I don’t know…

The “highly spiritual” lady told me that when the age of ego dies and the age of Christ-like consciousness emerges, that is when we are ready to move forward and to seek a more harmonious existence.  And that age has begun, she told me.  Perhaps our brains will start producing more oxytocin, the chemical responsible for our feelings of love, trust and compassion.  Oxytocin is exclusive to humans alone.

But there are those who seek to divide us.  They benefit from us warring with each other.  They created dogmas and politics.  They are the ones who are purely ego driven.  They have to be in control and they will do anything it takes to keep it.  We should realize we’re all truly equal.  No human should have dominion over another human.  The only real tool they have is money, influence and fear.  But as I’ve said before, we are born knowing right from wrong.  That’s been proven by years of study at Yale and other institutions.  We all intuitively know it, despite what the world has thrown down on us to alter our realities. We began to “think” instead of “feel” and confused ourselves.  Our egos have gotten in the way of our instinctual understanding of morality.   If a newborn baby is a clean slate, how could it understand morality? Where does that knowledge come from if not from the universe itself? 

 

 

Human Development

On Human Development

What if the Mayans were right?  What if in 2013 we entered into a new phase of human development?  A New Age.  It takes millions and millions of years for selective breeding and mutations to create subtle changes in a creature.   Homo sapiens went from walking upright to making tools to speaking logically and thinking abstractly in a relative blink of an eye in terms of evolutionary time scales.  Why don’t other animals speak logically to each other?  No other animal does it.  Whales and dolphins are close, and we don’t really know how smart they are, but they aren’t building cities and they have no real technology.  They’re not exploring space.  But why would they?  They don’t need to.  They get along just fine.  It’s the need to survive or be wiped out of existence that drives a species forward in evolutionary terms.

Early humans were screwed if not for their advanced brains.  They had few if any defenses out there in Africa against saber tooth cats and enormous lions.   Selective breeding took such a gamble on humanity.  It doesn’t make sense how it even worked out for us.  What sort of random, chaotic, accidental process leads to the channeling of energy away from the physical body in favor of a more complex brain, in an ecosystem that relied on speed and brawn to survive?  There is a real disconnect in logic when imagining the millions of years it took while the early human brain was first developing and the body was losing physical strength.  It seems like we shouldn’t have been able to make it out of that epoch alive as a species. We shouldn’t be here.   We were too easy to catch and eat.

Imagine that energy is currency.  So in order to pay for more complex brains we needed to divert payment away from the physical strength first before it could be paid to the brain, leaving weak animals that are just starting to develop a smart brain out in the middle of Africa to fend for themselves.  Not yet smart enough to make a fire to ward off predators and not fast enough to run away from them, and definitely not strong enough to stand and fight.  The only thing I can imagine is that there was a time when the tribe of early humans found refuge near the coastline.  We lived off of fish primarily and avoided the savannahs and its predators.  This could also be where we lost our body hair.  It’s called the Aquatic Ape Theory.  The humans who could swim the fastest caught the most fish and therefore had the most children.  The ones with the least amount of body hair could swim the fastest.  Okay. And all that fish protein helped improve our brains.  That works. But that had to have happened at a crucial point in our development.  The timing had to be perfect.  Is that the answer?  Or was something else influencing our development.  Protecting and guiding us?  Angels?  Aliens? Who really knows?  That’s up to faith for some people and future scientific discoveries for others.

The fact that the result of the evolutionary gamble created beings who could look up into the sky and speculate, seek to unlock the mysteries of the universe and to explore it, makes me wonder about the question of why evolution would favor brain for brawn.  We are manifestations of the universe, products of it, having been made aware of the universe.  The universe became conscious through us; at least in this tiny spec of someone else’s sky.

We made a huge leap forward in a way that’s never been done before.  So, are huge mental leaps aspects of being human?

Are we undergoing one of these major leaps in human understanding and progress?  Most people would probably say no.  We are probably going in the other direction.  Media is definitely dumbing us down.   But let’s hear from the ones who say yes.  Just for the fun of it.

In the last hundred and fifty years we’ve gone from the horse and buggy to the space age, the internet, the smart phone and Google Glass.  What happened?  And now here we are, sharing ideas like never before.  I had a very interesting conversation with a lady last week about what she called the “awakening” taking place in our world right now.  The lady was very interesting.  I’ll refer to her as the “highly spiritual” lady.  She holds seminars on spirituality.  She said things that I too have contemplated.  And the more people I talk to, the more I come across people who surprise me and say things that you never heard before about religion and the universe, things I thought only I thought about.  The old literal interpretation of the Bible and history are changing.  The fastest growing religious affiliation is “Non-affiliated.”  By current projections, by 2050 Non-Affiliated will be the box checked off the most of all other religions upon survey.  Many fundamentalist would say that’s what’s wrong with our world.  But I don’t know.  The fact is, more and more people I talk to seem to see the world in a complete new and different way.  They don’t accept the old models of what their grandparents believed in.  Are we ready for more information?  Are we ready to wake up to a new reality? 

It could be argued that thanks to modern media we have all been indoctrinated by the same sources.  We all watch the same shows and therefore ask the same questions.  Maybe so.  But isn’t that a form of global collective consciousness then? 

The earth is developing a nervous system through our smart phones and devices. We’re creating, with technology, a digital collective consciousness surrounding the planet that is connecting us all in a global web.   If done right, the internet could lead to real, honest, global democracy.  “Yeah, right,” says the CEO, coughing on his cigar smoke.  “There’s no money in it.”  “There will never be harmony among humankind due to human ego and greed,” says a friend of mine. I agree with him, most of the time, but sometimes I like to think otherwise.  Sure, it appears that way now, based on the old models of society.   But there have been enormous shifts in the way humans think, recently and in the past.

It’s like the first time a cave dwelling ancestor of ours decided to paint a picture on a cave wall.  We suddenly began to think abstractly.  No other creature had ever done that on this planet before.  And it wasn’t exclusive to one human being in one cave.  There are hundreds of caves that they’ve discovered throughout the world that have abstract paintings in them that go back as far as forty thousand years.  I wonder who was the first human to do that?  Did cave art develop slowly over a long period of time?  They don’t really know.  There’s evidence that one of the oldest cave paintings discovered is just as sophisticated as art that was discovered from periods twenty thousand years later.  Did it start by accident?  An early human blew red ochre onto the wall and thought it looked cool.   It seems that eventually it became part of their religion.  At some point we developed art and the creation of that art became a spiritual experience.  Something happened, rather suddenly by evolutionary standards, that can’t be easily explained.  I’m certainly not going to try to explain it.  But the fact is, we suddenly began to think abstractly and to represent that abstract thinking in art.  By evolutionary terms that happened VERY recently; a major shift in the human brain, almost like an upgrade took place.  Is it happening again?  Are we on the cusp of another leap?  I’m on the look out for it.  But then again, who knows?  Amen.  Or better yet, I don’t know. 

 

 

What ever happend to being Humble?

On Humility

What ever happened to being humble?  Don’t people realize that you earn more respect when you are good at something and also humble about it?  I’m not talking about false humility.  “Oh, now, you’re just saying that.”  Is it better to be good at something, like a sport, and instead of dancing around after you score, you simply nod your head and jog back to your side of the field to start again?  Wouldn’t you rather see that?  In the olden days people were humble when they did something amazing.  Einstein didn’t go around saying, “In your face, Newtonian science!”  What happened to our world where that’s acceptable behavior?  Don’t you realize how foolish a cocky person looks when they fail?  It’s the basis for good physical comedy.  The high brow person who falls down is much funnier than the good hearted, humble guy falling down.  But why do people feel the need to celebrate and parade their accomplishments to everyone else?  It’s like we’re all clamoring for attention.  Much like writing a blog about yourself.  Yes.

I think part of it stems from the inability to see how we look from other people’s perspective.  It must be harder than I think, to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.  People say they do, but they usually don’t.  Really think through the scenario, and imagine you’re them.  How would you really feel about it?  Some people, it seems to me, live in the moment, on the edge of being offended, unable to take the split second required to imagine another more rational explanation for a comment or an action.

When I was starting out as a young writer, I had some extraordinary luck.  I mistook this luck for my own immense talent.  I was part of a group of comedians that put on a sketch comedy television show for the college station.  We had a blast doing it.  The director of the station submitted two of our sketches to a short film festival in Kansas City.  We won first and third place in the contest for sketches that turned out to be short films.  One of the judges was a Hollywood producer who we spoke to after the ceremony.  He really enjoyed our work.  I had written my first screenplay and he said he’d read it.  A few weeks later, I finished another screenplay. Around that time, I received a letter from the producer that turned out to be a very positive rejection, stating that he saw something special in me.  He said I had a unique voice and he’d love to read more of my work.  So I sent him the next screenplay.  He really liked it, but...  We worked on draft after draft of the screenplay until eventually he took it to Fox Search Light to see if they’d be interested in making the film.  I was twenty-one years old. It was my second attempt at writing a screenplay.  During this period, I was hanging out with my new artist friends and I had become quite full of myself and enamored with my abilities.  Fox Search Light rejected the screenplay, or I should say they “passed” on it.  But by that time I’d moved to Chicago and was wrapped up in the Second City world.  I was arrogant in those days and I fumbled several opportunities by my own hubris.  Over the next several years I was slowly but surely humbled.  Though, painful, it was the best thing for me as far as my personality goes. It’s important to mention that I say I was cocky, I don’t mean outwardly cocky.  Mine was a more internal arrogance that affected many bad decisions I made over the years.  Had I been more humble and willing to put in the extra work and diligence needed, who knows, my life could be very different than it is today.  But that’s not the point I’m trying to make.  It’s about humility. I think this happens to everyone in some capacity.  People who are good at things when they are too young and cocky to realize it often find painful humility in later life.  It’s those guys who weren’t arrogant to begin with are the ones that people are drawn to.  Those are the people, other people want to see succeed.    

So I look at Jimmy Fallon and think, what a good person he must be because he’s a humble guy.  He seems that way anyway.  People seem to generally like him.  I look at Leo Messi, the soccer star, arguably and potentially the greatest of all time, and add even more respect for him by the way he carries himself.  He doesn’t slide across the ground when he scores.  He’s low key.  He’s good and he knows it and doesn’t need to hype himself even more.  Being arrogant is a huge indicator of insecurity. 

My uncle Tom is a living legend in his corner of the state.   He was the football coach for a small town called Seneca.  His record for State Championships is staggering.  Year after year he took a new group of kids far into the state tournament.   He inspired kids to play at the top of their game and to reach inside themselves, to push themselves, to give their complete best.  The football stadium is named after him now.  But also what’s made him such a revered legend in the town is the way in which he carries himself.  He’s quiet.  He’s an extremely deep thinker.  That’s the first thing most people would say about him.  He listens and watches instead of idly making small talk.  And when he does speak there’s usually a kernel of wisdom in his words.  He has a unique way of speaking which my brother Josh can impersonate perfectly, but that only adds to his legend.  He’s funny and extremely dry as well.  You’d never hear him brag about any of his accomplishments, he usually down plays them.  But what makes him an even greater legend is how he and my aunt Merlene adopted three kids with high needs and rescued them from horrible situations.   They did it once their children were grown, when most people were settling down to start the next phase of their lives and retire.  They are selfless people and it amazes me.   Its people like this we should have our children immolate, not some arrogant, over paid professional athlete who dances around the end-zone. 

Children are growing up today to think its okay to be cocky and to celebrate themselves.  I fear it’s the wrong message.   But then again, life has a funny way of humbling us.  And maybe that’s the point of living.  Eventually someday, in some remote future, we’ll all be humbled.  Could it be said that in order for there to be harmony on earth, we’d all need to be humble? That’s going to take some time, though, I’d imagine.  But we have time according to the theory I keep alluding to.    Be patient with those who struggle with their egos, they’ve taken the wrong path and will need more time to find their way back to the right one.  But when they get there, it is believed it will be firmly taught and for them the humbling process will be a powerful one.

“Humble thy self in the sight of the Lord.”  Remember?

In order for complex systems to work, each part must be in harmony with the rest.  Could humanity eventually come together to form a truly complex system, in say a thousand years?  Most people would say no.  That’s ridiculous.  Maybe it is.  But you know me, I like to imagine.

What is a complex system?  Anything with smaller parts that come together to make something greater.  Atoms make cells which make up our entire bodies.  How is it that each atom knows it’s a part of the complex system and what its job in said system is?  That’s a good question, but they do at some level because without this knowledge we’d fall apart.  Imagination alert: Could each human be like an atom inside of a more complex system that has yet to come on-line at its fullest capacity?  What could we do once we came on-line?  We know that by a few people coming together working in harmony for the same end goal, forming a small version of a complex system, that we can go to the moon and fathom quantum mechanics.  In nature complex systems are every where.  What if that’s what we were meant to do?  Could the concept of a global consciousness be such a complex system?  If we got rid of all the things keeping us apart and at odds with each other, then what?  But that’ll never happen!  I know, but it’s okay to Imagine, Mr. John Lennon.  Imagine indeed.