130-06-02-2009

Be the Change
By W. Owen Thornton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Bless

Owen

129-03-17-2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Bless

Owen

128-03-17-2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers, my friends.

Singer Owen Thornton

127-03-12-2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers

Purple Bear-Paw Boy

126-03-03-2009

Time to Ruminate
Afraid of Silence
By W. Owen Thornton

It just so happened that the same text book was required for two different back-to-back philosophy courses … and, it just so happened, that we studied the same specific reading.  You know I thought I had that content down the first time because the prof explained it great, but when I reread the article two months later, I was able to say, … “Wow!  Now I really get it!”  It struck me then that the fast pace of the content in most philosophy courses comes at you without enough time to ruminate on the subject.  And isn’t thinking about “stuff” is what philosophy is all about?  And isn’t time to think about stuff just a little bit about human kindness?

School is no different than the work life … or even the home life of a domestic engineer!  It’s the expected norm that we never have a waking minute with something scheduled and if a mistake happens that we do find ourselves in a moment of quiet … well … a lengthy “to-do” mentally list fills the void.  It’s a wonder we aren’t all going barmy.  (Okay so stress and anxiety is increasing for each successive generation … and do we wonder why?)  Now I’m not criticizing the speed at which course material hits you in a university course.  That’s not really my intent at all (though if it would work, that’d be great!  ).  Really the question that’s been on my mind is what is wrong with us that we don’t make time to ruminate about … well … anything in particular?  In fact, I’ll go a step further and ask, just what the heck we are afraid of should we find time to ruminate?

It feels to me as though we’re afraid of the silence … that if our lives stop long enough for us to even consider what we’re up to, we might find out that we’re on the wrong path … and then all that hustle and bustle really isn’t worth anything.  And then we really can run off the cliff … and with good reason!

Let me tell you a couple of other stories and we’ll see if we can’t get to the heart of things.  A controversial study indicates that if you inject Botox into the vertical crease between the eye-brows that you lessen depression.  It turns out if you can’t make a sad face, you can’t have as many sad thoughts and these collection of sad thoughts won’t add up to depression.  My question here is, why create a manufactured solution where something much bigger is required?  Why don’t we ever look at the causes of depression and attempt to do away with it once and for all?  I’m convinced that most kinds of depression can be cured if we could A: lesson the stigma around it which would give people the space to B: identify it so that we could, C: decide to cure it rather than profit from curing people from it.  I may not be the person to do these things, but I can point it out to someone who just might have the power to bring that about!

Another recent study indicates that those who are abused as children actually have their DNA altered by the abuse such that they cannot cope with stress as well as they could have otherwise, and that they are more susceptible to depression.  Hey, even the Presbyterian Record cites increasing stress rates in Presbyterian Ministers, indeed in people of the clergy across the continuum.  In fact, but 2020, or thereabouts stress and anxiety disorders will be the second leading cause of disease and death in Canada.  So this is not laughing matter.  And what do we do with the news that abused kids grow up with altered DNA?  We consider an appropriate delivery system that would infiltrate the body and change the DNA back to normal.  Now this is good news for those who may already be ‘altered’ but why in the world would we be looking at a pill to correct the problem when we should be looking at the social problems that cause abuse in the first place.

So one answer as to why we never seem to take time to ruminate is that we don’t take time to do things the long way when there’s a short-cut.  We seem to be built for that.  But living in a world of short-cuts hasn’t done us any good deeds lately.  Does a foolish get-rich-quick scheme called asset-backed commercial paper ring any bells?  That was the leading cause of the economic meltdown in the United States.   Does the Madoff scandal ring any bells?  When will we ever learn from the adage that if it’s too good to be true, it usually is? 

Look.  I suffer from this too.  And we’re all so caught up in being caught up none of us think there’s anything wrong with the speed at which we’re living our lives … until a young teen kills him or herself because they cannot find any human connection on the planet.  That shocks us out of our meaningless fast-paced life … for a while … at least.  Do I have to reiterate to you, dear readers that we don’t make for perfect examples of human kindness when we’re going too fast?  Well we don’t.  Trained seminarians will step over the body of a homeless person on their way to doing a talk about the Good Samaritan story … a story inside their heads about a good person helping the needy … a main reason why a soon-to-be minister wants to become a minister.

Here’s a deep philosophical idea that I’m going to plant in your noodles that you do not have to accept.  But I think we’re running so fast because our identity lies in our doings.  If we stopped for five minutes to smell the roses … or to think about that essay … or to think about how much our spouse means to us … we’d lose who we are.  If we’re not doing something we’re not doing something of value.  But the thing is, we’re always creatures of value … just by sitting in a room thinking … how … well, you know, that interesting essay you read, or how pretty the roses smell or how much our spouse means to us. 

Sometimes we can even stop in the middle of a busy school tern and write an essay about slowing down and ruminating … in hopes that others will ruminate and do something for the world that promotes human kindness.  Now, dear reader, I can tell you this.  Do not be afraid of the slow down.  Someone out there loves you.  You’re okay the way you are.  So … slow down.  Ruminate.  Smell.  Write (an article on ruminating for the sake of human kindness).  Think.  Love.  Let’s not be so freaking afraid of ourselves that we can’t take a moment to simply be a human being.  Be kind to yourself.  That’s where human kindness starts.  Then … and only then can you be kind to others.

Love all of you who visit … and even those who don’t … it’s just harder to get the word out to them!

Owen

PS:  Good news.  I just made contact with an old Rotary friend who is … quitting her job and will ruminate over the summer to see where she wants to travel next.  Now you have to have your financial ducks in order to do something like that … but I say, good for her!  She’s doing just the exact right thing for her … ruminating about her life.

125-02-11-2009

You See What You’re Looking For
By. W. Owen Thornton

Lately I’ve experienced more people taking time to hold open doors for me.  I don’t just mean they are coming in or going out at the same time, but that they see me, and wait for a few seconds.  That’s a really nice feeling.  Door-holding is just the beginning step of human kindness, but … it is happening.  And then, on the road, I saw two large traffic cones in the middle of a lane on a busy four-lane street.  They clearly weren’t doing anything useful as there was no reason for them to be there and they were both tipped over.  I thought about going out there, but it looked dangerous in the traffic.  But then a Provincial Glass Truck pulled over to the side, put on his hazards and he retrieved them.  That was a much safer way of doing it!  Nice.

I think seeing these kinds of things and letting them register (rather than taking them for granted) is, at least, a little bit about being on the look-out for them.  So, if all you see is people treating each other badly, (which may be true) it may also be that that’s all you expect to see and therefore, what registers in your mind, is what you expect to discover.  I think we haven’t a clue about the psychological workings of the human mind in regards to these sorts of issues.  There are some things we know, but they aren’t wide spread or rather they aren’t common knowledge.

I refer here to how the brain works when you see another person smile.  When you see them smile, the same part of your brain that would create a smile also reacts in the same way, but to a lesser extent.  So if you see a lot of smiles, then you have smiled a lot in a given day.  And so, I wonder, perhaps not for the first time, here, about whether or not we should censor ourselves with far more care than we do.  I’m still thinking of the latest Batman: the one with Heath Ledger as the Joker.  This was a sick and twisted character if ever there was one.  So, when we witness the kind of violence that he committed, we too committed that kind of violence inside our own minds.

Does viewing/watching this kind of scene, then change us?  Does it make us more likely to do such things?  Because another part of our mind desires to do everything we see … only a secondary part of our mind prevents that (we know this because A: kids do copy because the filter part of the mind is not yet developed, and B: because adults with damage to the filter part of the brain DO copy what they see!) … then have we somehow been mentally harmed by seeing this sort of violence?  For my friend Mike at UWO, I actually did sit down to watch this movie on the cruise ship and I ejected myself early on due to the violence.  I just don’t want to watch that sort of thing.  I don’t want to be corrupted by it.  I don’t want my mind even once, reacting in such a way as to enable me to torture another human being.

We do know that things done repeatedly can become habits.  Viewing evil perpetrated on other human beings repeatedly … does that somehow give us permission to do it?  Perhaps we don’t because we still have law-abiding parts of us that won’t allow us to break the rules, but I will suggest that we become desensitized to violence.  That’s why things have become so much more graphic in our movies and television.  Gone are the days where you can see a big knife, see a woman scream and see slashing action and believe that Janet Leigh was murdered in the shower as it happened to her in Hitchcock’s Psycho.  Now we have to see the direction of the splatter before we’re convinced of the ‘reality’ of the situation.  Ugh!  Who really needs it?

In a university course recently we watched “A Clockwork Orange” by Stanley Kubrick – a movie that’s a cult classic.  In it is a rape scene.  Now I wasn’t there that night (I was cruising with my wife as the cruise was our 25th wedding anniversary present to one another), but I did read about that movie years ago.  So, had I been there, I’m not sure I would have sat through it.  If, as we have proven to be true, everything we witness, we ‘do’ in our minds only to a lesser extent, then I don’t want to witness such an act.  And for all of the young women in that class – 1 out of 7 of whom will be raped simply because they attend a university (this includes ‘date rape’) – I wouldn’t have wished for them to feel or experience what it is like to be raped.  Ugh!  Oh the inhumanity!  I shake my head at the mere thought of it.  There may have been some value in movies like these but I question the value in relation to the damage we do to ourselves.

Somehow, I think these visions we continue to witness over and over again … well it may not turn us into murderers or rapists, but somehow these images diminish us.  I don’t know if there’s a proven link between them and the lack of respect we now show one another, but maybe … maybe there is.  Reality television shows are all about the drama … about how one person hates another, and about how they’re going to stab someone else in the back to win.  We watch these shows and then we wonder why people feel free to say horrible things to us.  I don’t know.  Maybe I live in a bubble.  Or maybe I want to.  But somehow, I just don’t want to repeatedly experience bad things … just in case I start looking for them and for fear that I fail to look for good things.

Lastly, I will say that I have to work on my attitude when it comes to politicians.  I’ve lumped them all into a single group of power-hungry mad men and women.  To me, they only do that which keeps them in power, but they rarely do the right thing.  So when politicians live down to that standard, I discover it quite quickly.  But many good things are done.  We do live in a great country.  So … someone must be doing something well.  Why is it we don’t see those stories.  It cannot be because they never happen.  It may in part be that they go unreported.  It might be because some have proven to be power-hungry mad men and women.  But I’m also thinking they “all” appear that way because I find what I’m looking for.  So, maybe I have to release my sorry cynicism, and I have to start looking for the right kinds of things.

Cheers

Owen

117-2008-07-21

Caution: The following article is about people with a lot of stuff and how that’s bad for you.  This stuff is pretty good, but it ranks nearest to a rant that I have written in some time (which doesn't 'feel' very kind to me).  If you’re attached to your stuff and you really love acquiring stuff, then you should not read this essay.

Too Much Stuff
By W. Owen Thornton

The rise in self-storage lockers is a sign that people have too much stuff in their lives.  Too much stuff hangs like a millstone around your neck.  The sudden rise in self storage lockers offers proof that we’re out of balance.  When we’re out of balance, we need to work longer and harder to spend $110/month to pay for a storage locker.  Perhaps we also need to work longer and harder to fill it … or perhaps to fill it with better quality excess crap!  Working more to have more stuff, which we keep “off-site” from our houses, creates less time for us, family and adds stress and reduces our ability to practice human kindness towards one another. 

It would seem the smarter option would be to give the extra stuff away and work less.  This plan gives you more time, makes you feel more in balance and affords you the ability to think outside of yourself, which makes you a kinder, gentler person.  Now I will qualify the need for self-storage lockers.  If you need a storage locker because you’ve been compelled to downsize due to job loss or a divorce or you’ve lost your home, those are different reasons and you must do what you need to do to make life work.  Self-storage lockers are not a scourge unto themselves, they are only a warning sign when we’re living normal lives and our houses and sheds and garages are already full of too much stuff.

To live a life of human kindness we need to “be real.”  Living outside of your financial means places stress on you and puts you in a dangerous emotional place where your focus is on the wrong kinds of things.  “I have to work more to pay for all this stuff,” becomes a mantra we truly believe but the problem is we don’t stop to consider if we even need this “stuff!”  Working to procure “stuff” is a treadmill to failure.  It seems too that the more we think about work and the “stuff” it buys, the less we think about the people around us.  Putnam’s “Bowling Alone” shows we’re no longer as civically engaged in our society as we used to be, that we don’t have family dinners together, and that we want to go to university to earn a whack of cash so we can be rich … and in the process we don’t really care about making the world a better place … as long as we’re rich.

The west has created a consumer society.  It works because we continue to buy stuff … stuff beyond what we need or require.  Don’t believe me?  In a June 11, 2008 article in Maclean’s Magazine called, “Getting Stuffed: Will the U.S. real estate crisis put an end to the self-storage boom?” by Jason Kirby, the facts are in!

In recent decades U.S. houses have doubled in size to an average 2,500 square feet.  Their homes are fully 500 square feet larger than those in Canada.  In addition in the past decade self storage units in the United States has doubled.  Today it is a US$22 billion annual business representing 2.2 billion square feet of space, 85% of which is occupied.  Fully ten percent of the home owners in the United States, living in homes larger than the typical Canuck are paying $110/month to cram extra stuff into a storage locker.  Stuff, if I’m any judge of human nature we probably never go back to and get or to use.  Once it’s off the property, it’s really as good as gone anyway.  We adapt and learn to live without it … but there’s some kind of hope there that one day … we will use it again.  And to pay for all that stuff?  The average individual debt in the U.S., outside of mortgages is thousands of dollars higher than in Canada.

We need to really think about what it means when we write the size of homes have doubled in the past few decades?  In the 1950s in Canada, with larger family sizes than today, the typical bungalow ranged from 800 to 1,000 square feet.  Today, with fewer kids in the house, our homes are 2,000 square feet.  Self storage units in Canada may not be as popular as in the U.S., but in newer subdivisions with these larger homes, you rarely see a garage with one of the family vehicles parked in it.  Why?  Because it is usually chocked full of stuff that can’t fit inside the house … and that stuff is more than the lawnmower and a few bicycles.  It’s full of beer fridges, old computer monitors, pantry shelves, kid’s toys, skis, and old stereo speakers.

The Maclean’s article introduced, but didn’t talk about an important side effect of all this stuff.  It asked, “What is all this saying about our souls?”  It said it didn’t know … they didn’t want to speculate what it meant for us.  They stuck with the facts and perhaps rightly let us think about that answer for ourselves.  Interestingly enough, here’s something odd.  Noam Chomsky has written about “Manufacturing Consent,” about how media continues to propagate the myth that we need to support the status quo and keep on buying stuff to keep the rich, rich and the rest of us placated … with all that stuff we can buy.  I wouldn’t say Maclean’s ran from that idea.  I’ve seen evidence that it can and will slam aspects of our culture when they think it needs slamming!  It simply may not have wanted to open that kettle of fish.  Most articles today are 800 – 1,000 words long and the notion that we’re all playing a role in a society that demands we buy more even at our own expense is the content of books, not short articles or essays!

There’s little wonder why we’re reluctant to throw stuff out or give it away.  It may be about less than what it cost us at the time, and more about what it represents.  It represents a great deal of overtime and stress incurred while we paid off the debt to cover it.  Throwing it away seems like throwing out the time and effort required to accumulate it.  And some city governments make throwing it out totally inconvenient … an additional waste of time and energy.  What do I mean?  I mean that a computer, its monitor, some old paint from the living room, a couple of batteries, some yard waste (might as well while we’re at it eh?), our son’s old mattress and a couple of expired compact fluorescent bulbs could well mean driving all over the city for hours as each item can only be taken to a specific waste-recovery depot.

But there’s something else being said about us if we’re all becoming pack rats.  We’re afraid things are too good to last … that we won’t be able to manifest all this wealth a second time, so we’d better hold onto the stuff we have for fear it won’t come back to us should we get rid of it?  What’s that sentiment saying about us?  We’re living in fear.  Fear that things are too good to last.  We have to store it away in case of a rainy day that may never happen.  In some ways, it’s a silly thought, really.  If we manifested it the first time, we can do it again.  We have evidence that it happened and that we could do it the first time because we still have all the stuff!  Though, naturally we’re never sure we’ll have the good job to do that again. 

Our companies have definitely proven to us that they can function without us.  Either we’ve been right-sized (fired) or we’ve watched someone be fired after an amalgamation made jobs redundant.  If we’ve survived the purge(s) we still know that the office next door is empty where a friend used to sit.  That could be us at any moment!  Better buy the stuff while the getting’s good.

Or maybe all that stuff says something different about us altogether.  Maybe we’re just a greedy culture.  How did we get there?  Covetousness has a large role in this I think: keeping up with the Jonses.  I sometimes believe people have stuff, expensive stuff, they don’t even really want or need because they think their self worth is somehow attached to that stuff.  AND, if our self worth is attached to our stuff, then we cannot throw it out.  If we buy a new HDTV to replace a perfectly fine working older model, we don’t throw out the older model … because it still works.  We didn’t ‘need’ the HDTV, we simply desired it.  But the older model was given to us by grandparents when we first married, so we don’t want to separate ourselves from it for sentimental reasons.  Really … sentimentality about a television?

But then, the size of our houses too says something about us.  The bigger our homes, the bigger our paychecks must be, the bigger woman or man on campus we must become.  It’s all about status, people!  To hell with the environment!  We’re paying lip service to it if we’re living in homes twice the size they used to be a couple of decades ago with fewer people under their collective roofs! 

And there’s something else about these large homes on post-it sized lots.  We’re all living inside all of the time.  The lots are too small to even play a game of catch on them, so there’s not much point in going outside!  We want our homes at 21 degrees centigrade 24/7 every day of the year.  We don’t want ambient noise from the street to interfere with our screen-time: whether it is on one of the three or four televisions or computers in our houses.  Houses have to be larger to contain all the screens we possess.  And larger houses do not speak of family togetherness, but more about family isolation.  We’re almost afraid to be together anymore.  We may come together in the hallways, but we often retreat to our private demesnes to watch our favorite show or play a game, or surf the internet.  Shoot!  Young teens now sit in rooms together and text one another.  Talking is free, but we get to spend money texting one another … and naturally we need to buy the coolest cells … or other such “stuff”, in order to send and receive the most complex images and videos, so that we can spend more money on the cell phones and on the air time sending all that … stuff!

But maybe there’s a ying-yang to all this stuff which we still haven’t explored.  First, we make stuff to be thrown away in five years.  If I were to use a voice that makes me sound like an old codger, you’d hear inside your minds, “I-I remember when, back in the ooooold days, people used to take stuff to a repair person and get it fixed!”  Now the base charge to fix something costs as much as the item would to simply replace it.  So why bother getting anything fixed?  But things don’t have to break more frequently simply to get us to buy more stuff.  Technology grows by leaps and bounds suggesting we have to continue to upgrade.  Computer games make computers obsolete.  Why own a computer to play games if you can’t play the games, so, you’d better buy a new computer!  Phones are smaller with more features, refrigerators come with ice makers, water dispensers (there is something called a faucet, but the water is not ice cooled … and naturally it’s too much time to waste to walk over to the old fridge to get a cube or two out of the tray of ice!), and refrigerators now have televisions built into them.  We have to have the best of the best and nothing else will do.

The saddening rise of the self storage lockers is proof that we’re out of control with our spending habits.  We’re machines buying stuff for reasons we’ve long forgotten what they are!   We’re making ourselves sick over it!  There may be only correlation and not “causation” to suggest this last point but all this stuff which takes all this time and money to acquire must be placing stress upon us.  Something’s causing our stress levels to rise.  In Putnam’s Bowling Alone, a graph demonstrates that malaise and stress are on the rise for each generation, and as the generations grow younger, the malaise and stress is higher for each younger generation than the last.  So while seniors are finding more stress in their lives, their children find even more and grandchildren have more still.

I have wondered now for some time why countries without all our “western stuff” want to ramp up their economies to parallel ours.  We’re killing our environment with throw-away appliances and other stuff, and we’re killing ourselves in our attempt to house it and acquire it.  Those who hate us for our wealth don’t need to be jealous of it!  They should be running from our greed and spending habits.  They should be looking for another key element to base a society upon other than consumerism.  We’ve made consumerism our God and it’s killing us, but now we don’t know how to stop and we don’t want to look foolish in admitting that we’ve barked up the wrong tree for the last hundred (?) years.  There seems to be a notion that we might even be able to buy our way out of … well … spending!  Throw enough money at something and all problems go away eventually … don’t they? 

Look.  Meditation, quietly focusing on a flame, a flower or even the sound of your regular breathing does more to make us feel better than any toy will.  But we don’t think we have time to stop long enough to meditate for five minutes.  Meditation is stupid!  That’s a waste of time.  But mediation will go further to balancing us than working harder to get the next toy so we can have more stuff ever will. 

Meditation is only one answer that begins to challenge our consumerism.  Meditation restores balance faster than any new purchase ever will.  But we won’t have anything to do with it!  Time with family … really connecting with those we love … that could be a place to start … if we could ever peal each family member away from their large room and their glowing box to make that time.  But ‘family’ is stupid!  Dumb!  A waste of my time.  We’d rather be alone in our rooms … apart from one another.  But it’s proven that a single, gentle, meaningful touch from someone we love will do more to restore our positive brain chemistry (we’ll be happy, warm, nurtured, cherished, loved) than any degree of ‘fun’ we have watching a television alone in a room by ourselves will. 

Playing cards or a board game is less about the game than the social activity around it!  How long has it been since you played cards?  Bowling Alone proves that we do far less of it than we used to … that and a host of other things that all make us more kind to one another … like having friends over for dinner or a visit.  We can’t do that because we’re too busy working too hard and feeling too tired to get together.  But we can work hard and buy stuff to fill storage lockers.  Yeah!  That’s the ticket!  That’s the way we want our society to work!  We want elevated blood pressure, increased stress, and estrangement from our family members.  These are the things we ‘get’ from our stuff.  Storage lockers aren’t evil.  They’re the lynch-pin to the entire scam of buying stuff to feel better … which really means feeling worse!

Here’s something that is proven.  If we suffer from more stress today, than in the past, which is true, and we know that people lived in smaller homes and rented fewer storage lockers, then people lived with less stuff and were happier 20 years ago than we are with more stuff and less happiness today.  (Correlation, not causation, but are we willing to BET on that?)  Consumerism is on a cascade effect that seems unstoppable.  There are a lot of great toys and things to own.  I want some of them.  Really, I do.  But I try to save for those things before buying them and my wife and I often have the conversation of, “It would be nice, but where are we going to put it?”  And if we can’t answer that question, we can’t buy the stuff.  I hope to want less stuff, so I don’t have to save so much, so I can be more available to the people in my life … and to me … so I can meditate … all too infrequently.  I fail at this stuff too.  I’m in this world.  It sucks me in.  I swim with the current.  What’s important at moments like this for both you and I is that I bounce out of that track from time to time to see its real impact on me and you and all of our society so I can write an article about it to make you think a little. So you can go out and spend some quality time with your family without fear of having to work to buy something because you haven’t been spending enough time with them!

And lest you think I’m coming up with anything new … well I’m not.  Aristotle said most of these things (and probably better) than I have here and he did it 3,000 years ago.  Friendship, he said, was the greatest external good.  And he said that those who live a life of contemplative study require the fewest things.  But that most people would look at someone like that and think they were very strange.  People who only measure a person’s value by their stuff, won’t ever get it!

I don’t really know all that much.  But I do know that unless you own a storage locker because you’re forced out of your home, or going through a divorce, or maybe you have a large, once-a-year hobby that takes lot of gear that you can’t really store at home, then a US$22 billion dollar a year business in storage lockers is all about all the wrong kind of stuff.

So, ditch your stuff.  GIVE it away (yes give) and don’t sell it in a yard or a garage sale.  You won’t need the money for more stuff and there are those out there who do need your excess stuff.  So you’ll get a two-fer: you’ll feel good about your stuff having a good home and you may stop worrying about buying more stuff and where you’re going to put it and how you’re going to pay for it.  And all of those things lead to human kindness!

Cheers

Owen

124-2009-01-29

Congratulations to Young Daniel Erlich For a Great Act of Human Kindness
By W. Owen Thornton

The www.humankindnessproject.com weblog celebrates Daniel Erlich of the Ontario Hockey League London Knights for a great act of kindness.  The story starts with another player … a former London Knight.  This player is as well known for his hockey prowess as he is for his ‘attitude’.  He’s been traded three times in an attempt to find him a hockey home where his attitude doesn’t distract his teammates.  As is oft the case with a trade in sport, the traded player’s team comes back to his or her old digs and in this case it was less than a month since his auspicious departure.

With 16 seconds gone in the first period a tussle broke out between, you guessed it, our former Knight and a current player.  Later, the returning player scored a goal against his old club.  As he skated by the London bench he said something so colourful that he earned a two minute minor penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.  For him the game spiraled downhill.  In an uncustomary fashion for fans of ‘Junior A’ hockey, the old home-town fans began to boo the returning player every time he touched the puck.  I say uncharacteristic because fans know these players are boys of 16 years of age ranging to young men of only 20, so rarely do they heckle players … out of respect for their young age.

While it was uncool for the fans to boo him, one could see the other side of things and suggest that he had done many things in this game alone (in addition to his reputation preceding his stay with London), to bring this harassment upon himself.  Now don’t get me wrong about the booing.  I fall to mob mentality at hockey games too, and could have easily been a ‘boo-er’ had I been there.  It is just one of those unkind sorts of things that people find themselves doing in a mob and we are just human after all.  The booing was just one more thing this young man did NOT need.

And so the return home for this player, I would guess was a rather miserable one.  At the end of the game something odd happened, which set up what Daniel Elrich did.  The teams were told by the officials to disembark the ice surface one team at a time to avoid a post-game brawl – things had escalated to that level by the end!  The visitors retreated first after a resounding loss: all but our returning player.  Whether he was too despondent to leave or was told to stay there until everyone had left, I do not know, but there he sat on the bench: dejected … alone … and probably hurting on the inside (if a young male hockey player could ever admit to having such feelings!). 

And then the Knights began to leave the ice.  Our heroes had won the game and the applause was well deserved.  But Daniel – the smallest player on the team but one whom many would call the player with the biggest heart – well he did a round-about and went back to the opposing team’s bench, and he started to talk to his old teammate.  The dejected player left the bench and the two ambled across the ice surface talking like old friends should.  And then, when it came time to depart to opposing dressing rooms, they tapped hockey gloves like two old friends sad at such a difficult parting.  At last … the ice was empty.
Daniel Erlich’s actions had undone everything: the belligerent behavior of the returning player, the negative response by some Knights who tackled him during the game and even the crowd’s improper reaction to him.  Daniel’s single act of kindness saved us all from our improper behaviour.

Now I don’t know Daniel.  I don’t know what compelled him to skate over to that bench.  Maybe he was sent over by the coach and the team as the representative.  Maybe he’d lost the draw to go and do it.  Maybe they’d asked for volunteers and everyone but Daniel stepped backwards, leaving him the “accidental volunteer”!  All of these things could be true, but I doubt that.  I doubt that because if he’d been doing a duty, he probably couldn’t have made the glove tap of friendship happen for love nor money.  The sincerity of the moment suggests another reason why Daniel skated over to his old teammate.

I’m betting that it was something between sympathy and empathy.  He could imagine his old friend’s reaction to what had happened … knew how he’d be feeling about it and … he couldn’t leave things between them like that without doing the right thing.  It may have been hard and awkward for him to do that.  Maybe not.  I’ve heard things about Daniel that suggests he’s just that kind of fellow: Someone you want on the team bus beside you, someone you want in the dressing room before playing a big game and someone you’re praying will be on your old squad who will skate back and get you off the ice with some degree of hope and dignity.

So to you Daniel: www.thehumankindnessproject.com celebrates your great act of kindness.  May you continue to set an example for all of us, and may all of us learn from your example.

The following four newsletter entries have been created in large-sized PDF formats and have not been uploaded into the site, but should you request a high-end printable version, contact me through this website and I'll forward it/them to you.

Merry Christmas, everyone!


122-2008-12-19

Big Bang Theory Has the Spirit of Christmas
(And the Spirit of Human Kindness)
By W. Owen Thornton

Okay … so it was more a Saturnalia Miracle than a Christmas one, but the spirit is the same.  If you don’t know the program “The Big Bang Theory” it’s a situation comedy with four male geeky brainiacs trying to make their way in the world and one normal girl-next-door who has more common sense than the four scientists put together.  Leonard is the love interest for the girl next door but it is Sheldon who is the completely dysfunctional brain who just doesn’t understand or appreciate common conventions such as gift-giving at Christmas.  In this week’s show (December 15, 2008) Penny, the girl next door introduces the notion of a neighborly gift exchange.  She already has her gifts in hand.  Sheldon is mortified because he knows that one of the conventions surrounding gift giving is reciprocation.  “You haven’t given me a gift.  You’ve given me an obligation.”

So, Sheldon goes out with two of his fellow geeks and ends up buying a half-dozen or more bath product gift baskets.  His plan?  Open Penny’s gift, leave the room with fake gastrointestinal difficulties, google the value of her gift, return with the bath basket of equivalent price and return the rest.  But Penny’s gift undoes poor Sheldon.  She gives him a lightly used napkin.  On it?  “To Sheldon: Live long and prosper.  Leonard Nimoy.”  It turns out that Mr. Nimoy had dropped into her restaurant where she is a waitress and she thought enough of Sheldon to procure Mr. Nimoy’s autograph.  Not only has she given Sheldon the signature of his life-long hero, but because Mr. Nimoy wiped his mouth on the napkin.  Sheldon now has Leonard Nimoy’s DNA: He could create his own Leonard Nimoy with a fertile ovum!  As planned upon receiving the gift, Sheldon leaves the room.  But upon his return, instead of just one gift basket, Sheldon returns with them all.  Turns out no gift he could buy would equal that which Penny has just given him.  This geek of a man ends up doing the unthinkable.  He gives Penny an awkward, but heartfelt hug.

Have you guessed then, why I have told you this story here at www.thehumankindnessproject?  Well, it’s because the spirit of Christmas lies not in untold riches, but in a single act of human kindness.  Human kindness lies in investing of yourself in others, such that you know them well enough to give them something simple and basic … and something that is beyond their wildest dreams.  Granted I don’t think Penny knew the extreme reaction she would receive from Sheldon: that is part of the character’s charm to be sure.  But without robbing her of her moment, Penny, the character in the drama performed a great act of kindness to another character, Sheldon, by doing something for him that he could not do for himself.

As I have aged, gifts have become less meaningful.  Oh don’t get me wrong.  I don’t mind a little Western world hedonism especially when it comes my way, but often it is the gifts where there is no price tag wherein the great gift of Christmas lies.  As I slowly thaw out from under my going-back-to-school coma and I’m able to look at the world around me, I’m beginning to believe that I have been the recipient of a great miracle.  That miracle isn’t one that I could have planned for.  It isn’t one that I could have asked for … in part because I never knew it could exist.  My miracle?  It is the love of my wife, Carrie.  Lately, as I have thought of her, I am as bowled over by her loving me for over 25 years, as Sheldon was when he saw Leonard Nimoy’s signature on a lightly used napkin.  Don’t dwell on the comparison too long, as I think it diminishes the true gratefulness and love I feel for my wife when I think of her … as nothing can compare to her … especially NOT a lightly used napkin with Leonard Nimoy’s name on it.  Sorry Leonard, buy my hero was always William Shatner … yikes!  And I wouldn’t trade that napkin for a single moment spent with Carrie!  (Though I wouldn’t sneeze at a napkin signed by Leonard Nimoy either!)

But back to my point.  This Christmas … in the midst of an economic meltdown … maybe we should return to our humanity just a little, and set aside our avarice and greed for just this year, and maybe we can give one another gifts like Penny gave Sheldon … or ones like my wife gives me every moment we are together.
I know … I know.  This note is filled with drippy Pollyanna sentiment.  But I’ve always wondered just how jaded we’ve become when we sneer at Pollyanna!  What, exactly, is wrong with having deep, feelings for one another and expressing it where the world can see them?  I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

God Bless, you … everyone … whether you believe in Christmas … or not.  May you all have your own special miracle this Saturnalia Festive season … er This Christmas Season.

And … so I don’t leave you hanging, Saturnalia was a time of revelry in mid winter during the days of the Roman Empire.  As Sheldon explained, people brought green bows into their homes during this dark time of year.  This tradition was later usurped by the early Christians and the Christmas Tree was born.  Just a little trivia as provided by the writers from The Big Bang Theory … not entirely accurate or retold well here, I’m sure!