Just Getting through LIfe

 

I’ve spent much of my life just getting through life. But once in a while I’ve actually accomplished something. And whenever I’ve done that I found most of my accomplishments all had something in common. First, they were, as I said, difficult. Not one of them was easy. Secondly, they usually took time, sometimes months or years. Thirdly, there were always, always, always obstacles. Fourth, I would usually have at least one major setback that made me want to quit or made me feel the goal was no longer possible. Finally, when I did reach my goal, I always felt better about myself and I could always look back on that accomplishment and know that no one could take it away from me.

            Interestingly, however, I found there were different circumstances or origins of those goals. One was simply that it came up, usually unexpectedly, but it looked like something that was fun. For example, when I was 13, I learned that there were events called “Comic Conventions” or “Comic Cons” in which hundreds of comic collectors and professionals would meet in a common place to buy, sell, and discuss comic books. Being the comic book enthusiast I was, this seemed like my idea of Heaven on Earth. Then about a year later events conspired to allow me to go to my first Comic Con in San Diego. My dad would be living in San Diego and so my parents arranged it so I could stay with him and go the 1975 San Diego Comic Con. Once this was settled, I did everything I could to earn money including babysitting and delivering newspapers. It was a magical time full of optimism and excitement and it was when I first understood the power of goals. (Also, was my father moving to San Diego, of all places in the world, serendipitous or did I somehow manifest it? If I did create that, what does that say about our potential power?

            Another reason I reached a goal was more negative than positive, but no less effective. When I was 18, I joined the California Conservation Corps because I desperately wanted to travel. I was so excited when I was called and asked if I was still interested in a job I had forgotten I had applied for months previously. But my excitement turned to fear when I realized what a rough group of kids I worked with and, more significantly, how easy it was to be fired or “terminated” as the CCC called it. As I saw people being terminated right and left, I made a decision: I would survive the training month and go on to my first assignment. I did not want the humiliation of being fired. I did not want to return home a failure. That would have been too horrible an embarrassment. The day I graduated was one of the happiest of my life.

            The third reason I set a goal was because a gauntlet was hurled. I had recently finished writing my fiftieth blog and someone challenged me to reach one hundred blogs before my next birthday (which was about two weeks later). The goal seemed fun and do-able. It was also hard. There were setbacks, like the time I realized I had miscounted and had to write one more blog. I found myself being irritable if I were in social situations instead of at home and writing. Very little else mattered except reaching 100. I reached it on my birthday. A teacher in the 9^th grade telling me I wasn’t mature enough to understand Kurt Vonnegut was another gauntlet hurled that caused me to read most of his works within the next six months.

            The fourth reason I accomplished something was almost unknowingly. I did not set a goal or have a vision. Instead I simply found myself in circumstances, not completely of my own choosing, in which I had to change. The circumstances were difficult and unwanted, but they were thrust upon me. I was like Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski in the film The Big Lebowski. Through no fault of my own circumstances intruded upon my life and peed on my rug. (See the movie if you don’t understand the reference.)  If there was a goal, it was this: get through this thing and be successful with it. Interestingly, these have been the events that changed me the most.

            I’ve learned something else about myself. I have not usually planned or set goals. As I said, I’ve just gotten through life. But sometimes something would come up – an opportunity, a challenge, or a difficulty and I rose to meet it. I would persevere and win. And I was in the moment and in the future simultaneously. That had advantages, but I’ve since realized that unless I have a goal, I’m only in the moment – not present, as Eckhart Tolle says in The Power of Now, but just in the moment with no eye to the future for myself, my kids, or my career. This is why it is important to think about the future: so we can begin to create it. Life will still happen to us, but maybe not as hard if we Get Started and Keep Going and not just get through life.

Our Country

The United States seems to be creeping towards becoming a totalitarian country. This movement is being (and has always been) fueled by an ideology that favors whites over people of color, guns over lives, fundamentalism over grace, fear over love, and the maintaining and increase of profit over everything else.

Because our country has lived in (relative) peace since 1945 many of us have grown inured to the lessons of history. Totalitarianism and mob rule happened in 18^th century France, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, China, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The turning in and turning on of friends, family members, and neighbors happened in those times and places, not in America (forgetting the less-violent, but no less real Red Scare of the 1950s). Most of the world’s collapse of governments and the ensuing insanity happened “there and then” and it could not possibly happen here and now.

Because our country has lived in (relative) prosperity we are certain the conditions of Ethiopia, Central and South, America, southern Asia, or Haiti could never happen here, not realizing that those conditions are created not just by politics, but also by exploitation of the weak, the poor, the racially marginalized, and by environmental changes that could alter life as we know it in a heartbeat.

We decry abortion but not the economic and social conditions that make abortion a viable option. We want the baby to be born but we defend its death as an adult in routine traffic stops, while sleeping, jogging, or even a trip to the grocery store. My faith teaches me to oppose the ending of life before it begins, but ignores the means and conditions in how it lives or how it ends. We say “Blue Lives Matter” but apparently not when a Blue Life is ended by a white life with a semi-automatic weapon. But we do send “thoughts and prayers.” Equally frightening, a trend is occurring (actually re-occurring) to suppress voter rights and to make it illegal to even give water for those waiting in line, thus ignoring and contradicting Jesus’s own words, “When I was thirsty you gave me something to drink.”[1]

The faith I embraced for so many years, Evangelical Christianity, a faith I thought to be based on love, grace, inclusivity, has a dark counterpart. Historian Will Durant said of it, “It’s done devilish things, but it’s been basically beautiful.”[2]

Jimmy Carter wrote, “(T)he greatest challenge we face is the growing chasm between the rich and poor people on earth. There is not only  a great disparity between the two, but the gap is steadily widening.”[3]

 Totalitarianism has only increased the conditions of injustice, racism, and wealth disparity. Ultimately it has also damaged and destroyed its most fervent supporters. It is based on, above all else, fear, fear there will not be enough money, land or resources for all of us. The answers are complex and not easily reached, but perhaps we can start with the admonition of the ancient Hebrew prophet Micah:

He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?

 

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Nixon and Trump

 

There have been comparisons to Richard Nixon, the 37^th President and Donald Trump, the 45^th.  At first glance, it’s not a far stretch. Both were considered extremely corrupt. Both made use of the existing divisions in the country. Both made populist appeals, Nixon to the “Silent Majority,” and Trump to angry (mostly) white voters who felt disaffected by Democratic politics, the Affordable Health Care Act, and changing demographics. Both men had highly questionable pasts, Nixon politically as a Red-baiter (someone unjustly accusing people of being Communists) and being fast and loose with finances. Trump had multiple accusations against him for questionable business dealings, such as Trump University and Trump Tower. And there are other similarities between the two men.

            The first similarity is the word “impeachment,” a word that will be written in the histories of both men. But for Nixon it was only a threat, a highly likely one given his admitted obstruction of justice in the Watergate affair. The threat, however, was enough to cause Nixon to be the only US President to resign. If he had been impeached would he have been removed from office? That is only for lovers of counterfactual (What-if?) history to debate, but it should be noted that three presidents, one before him and two after him (Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump) all survived the impeachment process, if only barely. Trump survived his impeachment, but, as of this writing, is undergoing an unprecedented second impeachment for his incitement of riot in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. However, by the time that process is through, Trump’s term in office may already be over.  For both men, the end of their terms were and are highly controversial, leaving many Americans cynical about the government while others breathed a sigh of relief that it was over.

            But here the similarities end.

            Nixon, for all his faults, was a brilliant man, at least in some areas. His knowledge of foreign affairs is legendary. Had it not been for Watergate, Nixon would have been most likely remembered for the president who ended the Viet Nam War, sent a man to the moon (though that process started under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations), and, most of all, “opened” or re-established a diplomatic relationship with China. Unfortunately, he was also a Shakespearean man, like Hamlet or Romeo, sowing the seeds of his own demise. Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s Secretary of State, said, “Can you imagine what this man would have been like if somebody had loved him?”

            Trump is not brilliant. He seems not Shakespearean, but Faustian, like a man who had sold his soul to the devil, gained the world, lost his soul, and then lost the world he craved. His story is not over and is too current to be history, and maybe that’s why it’s easier to feel some sympathy for Nixon because time can soften anger and create perspective.

            Both men seem narcissistic, craving constant attention and approval, but Nixon was far more introverted. He was also sneakier. He secretly taped all his conversations from 1971 to 1973 and that was what undid his presidency. Trump, far more extroverted, constantly “tweeted” his thoughts without hesitation or filter. Unlike Nixon who kept his thoughts secret though ultimately they became public, Trump wanted everyone to know what he was thinking at any moment. Finally, Twitter, the app he used as his public platform, closed his account, but only at the end of his presidency during which time he incited the first American insurrection.

            History allows us the privilege and the burden of never ending our stories or our interpretation of events. But for the sake of this country, I hope our stories get better than Nixon and Trump.