There are times in our society when things happen that make you want to close your doors, pull down the shades, and make sure the ones that you love are close by and safe.
The shootings and resultant deaths in Arizona on January 8, 2011 is one of those times. The debate which will inevitably take place must be a serious one.
While Tuscon, Arizona is about 2,200 miles from us, the feeling of sadness hit me almost as hard as it did the day when President Kennedy was killed. That day I was taking exams at McCallie, the Presbyterian Military School, where I attended high school in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Being someone who took history in college, I have to hope that we can take a moment, look back, and realize that there are some things which need changing in this country. While I am all for a more civil political discourse at all levels, I think the nasty political discourse is more a symptom of the problem than a root cause. Blaming speeches and pundits is not going to fix the real problem.
I don't claim to have turned out to be a micraculously nice person. I have plenty of faults, but I have learned a few things over my life.
One of those life lessons that has managed to sink into my consciousness is the necessity of training yourself and your children to do the right and honorable thing by default. Personal or political gain should not be part of the thought process.
While you might never be perfect at this, making a sincere effort will let you sleep well at night.
At the heart of treating people right is taking responsibility for your own actions, and understanding that your actions might have unintended consequences which are nevertheless the result of your actions. No one should take the blame for everything, but we all should carefully consider how far the ripples we create travel. We should especially think about our actions in terms of how they might impact others.
Being interconnected with the lives of others is both a burden and a joy that comes from living in a very complex society. Society has changed so much that it is far to easy for us to have forgotten many of the lessons than we learned the hard way growing up in the fifties and sixties.
Six things that I have never lost sight of can help us through this challenging time.
- Winning is not everything.
- Everyone has something to contribute, you just have to find them the right spot.
- We can disagree about things and still be friends.
- Treating someone like you would like to be treated is a recipe for success.
- Burning bridges makes a return visit very difficult.
- Being a positive influence in any situation is the only way to live.
I have tried to live by these rules and several others with the hope that any place or situation where I have been involved is better for my having been there.
One of the biggest problems in our society is that people let themselves be part of the cult where the world is all about "me." Focusing your life on yourself is a recipe for disaster. The truth is that a rewarding life has to focus on others.
I have been in companies where managers focused only on their own success and ignored the employees working hard to make the company a success. While it lets some people get rich, it sucks the soul out of people.
It is hard to ignore the mega stars in our sport and fame orientied culture, but we need to learn that the most important people are not the ones on television.
The reality is that the wonderful life we enjoy in this country has more to do with the sometimes nameless people who labor at making the miracle of the modern world function and often dedicate their lives to taking care of others.
Often these people make minimum wage or not much more than that. Some even do it with no monetary pay. Yet these people may well be the ones who do your laundry, serve your meals, care for your aging parents, make your plumbing work, keep the heat working, the lights turned on, your precious state of the art entertainment system functioning, and sometimes even save your life.
As long as we live in a society where we do homage to the famous and often treat others poorly, we should expect people to seek fame and ignore the consequences of their actions. We need to understand that the value of a person is not measured by how much money they make, but by how they live their life.
I hope this event in Arizona ends up being a turning point for the better. I never want to be as disillusioned as I was in the early seventies.
I came back from that dark time only by surrounding myself with people who cared more about their neighbor than themselves. I had to take up farming to do that. I cannot afford to be a farmer again.
