Tolerance

This past week I’ve ridden my bike to work everyday. Well actually, I ride my bike a little to the bus stop and then I take the bus the rest of the way. But I’m not using my car! And eventually I think I will be riding more bike and less bus.

On my way home Monday night I eagerly got off the bus, took my bike out of the carrier and started down the bike trail. I felt so relaxed and the lilac fragrance was a beautiful reminder of spring. Aaaahhh! What a great alternative to driving. No traffic backups, no angry drivers. This is the way to go!

As I went down the trail, I shifted a little because the strap on my backpack was cutting into my shoulder causing my arm to go numb. As I did this my bike wobbled a little and I veered slightly toward the middle of the path. Then a guy going pretty fast yelled: “Stay to the right!” I was startled by his voice and as he sped by me I called back to him: “Passing on the left.” Because that line is more near what I am used to bikers saying when they pass you on the trail. I felt he was rude and anger began to well up within me.

In addition to the anger I immediately went into this routine of self-assessment (defense) that flows over me anytime someone judges me like that. I thought about how I always tried to keep right. And why just when he was silently speeding up on me did my bike swerve just a little – enough to freak him out. But if I were to defend myself in that way, no one would really believe me. I wondered if I was now branded as a “bad bike path rider”. I felt that title would be unreasonable and unjust. Besides, he should have slowed as he approached another rider on the path, because you never know what might happen as you pass, it’s best to err on the side of caution.

So I felt unfairly judged and his intolerance infuriated me. I launched into a mental diatribe about how, ever since Money Magazine voted Madison a top ten city in which to live, all these high profile “A-type” personalities have been moving in and taking over, making it not so "top ten" anymore. I cursed about that a bit, I cursed at him, and generally felt crummy. My relaxing bike path ride at the end of a stressful workday was now angry, vexed, and exhausting. I couldn’t smell the lilacs anymore, all I could smell was the rancid odor of the lagoon. My knees started aching. I was so mad about how intolerant he was.

Why couldn’t he just have been nicer to me? Did he think he owned the world? Just because he wanted to use the bike path as his personal racetrack didn’t mean everyone else needed to get out of his way! Why was he in such a hurry anyway? The whole idea of the bike path was a relaxing way to get from here to there, not to make it another expressway, where you have road rage on a bike instead of a car. Boy was that guy ever missing the point! What a jerk!

Then there was a flash of light off the lagoon as I rounded the corner by the bridge. All I could see was a washed out view of the scene around me. It was very hard to navigate the tediously narrow sidewalk area of the bridge. All my attention went into trying to keep myself balanced so I wouldn't fall into the road.

As I passed the spot in the road where the blinding reflection was shining and came into regular vision again, I realized I had also been blinded by intolerance. I was being just as intolerant of the guy on the bike, as he had been of me. I needed to forgive him, not judge him. In addition, I needed to accept that I wasn’t perfect, and even though I try very hard to be cautious on the bike path and follow all the rules, there are some coincidences that will occur that will make me look like less than a perfect bike path rider. I've come to the conclusion that the worst thing I could do was to internalize that man’s behavior and behave just like him.

Happy Birthday!

I used to get a real kick out of my birthday. It was such a fun day, I got presents and my mom baked me a really nice cakes with candles and stuff. Even now that I'm older I always manage to have some fun on my birthday. Although I have to buy my own presents and make my own cake, it makes me feel special for just the day — plus — an added bonus of doing it all yourself is that you can decide how many candles to display on the top of the cake! My birthday is always extra fun because it comes right next to the 4th of July so I get a paid holiday from work and there’s always a fireworks display!

But recently there has been a pall cast over my once happy birth date. I found out that I not only share my birthday with Ringo Starr and Burt Ward (Robin on the Batman TV series) I also share it with a most loathsome public figure. So now, when I think of my birthday, I think of him. I try not to, but it is there, throbbing under the surface like puss in an infected cut. I tell myself; “At least it’s not the same year.” But that is of little consolation. I fear that somehow we are linked, that we are the same because we share the same birth date. I fear I am more like him than I want to be. I fear that the only thing people will ever remember about me is that I had the same birthday as him.

I am a social justice person. I’m not a perfect social justice person, I do stupid things that don’t help the problems we have all the time. But I try to vote with people who claim to want to use our tax dollars for the common good. One of my least favorite public policies is the waging of war. The only people who would wage war are those who would profit from it. The profit could be monetary, or political, but they reap the spoils. This person wages war. This person stands to profit from oil revenues as soon as he manages to strong-arm the Iraqis into signing over most of the rights to their sovereign reserves.

The whole thing is sick. Americans like myself have to sit by and pay for him to profit using our hard earned money through income taxes we pay. He mortgages our future and the futures of our children to pay for a war that looks as though in the end will profit only him and the 1% of Americans like him! Each day more and more men and women, someone’s son, daughter, sister, brother, mother, father, uncle, or aunt dies for his policies of greed and aggression. Each day he gets away with more graft and thievery. I wonder what the world will be like when he's through with it. It physically disturbs me.

So now when I think of my birthday, I grimace and get a terribly fowl taste in my mouth. Not because I am steadily getting older and older, but because of having to share it with such a Golum-esque character such as him. I feel I have no choice but to try to forgive him because this anger I feel for him is so toxic it is eating me alive — but isn’t that what true evil will do? For instance: as I drove in to work today I was thinking; "I wish he would eat this war and choke on his so-called power". — See what I mean? —

This is one of my birthday buds! I can't dis him like that! Does this mean I have the potential to be evil like him? Well if I look at it honestly, I guess the answer is yes. I assume we all have the potential to be really evil. Given the right circumstances, the right bunch of sycophants around us, and the right amount of money, we all have that potential. So after all, I guess we really aren't that much different.

Adagio Sostenuto

When I was about 16 I theorized that the reason old people drove so slowly was that as you get older life speeds up. So these old drivers perceived the world speeding by them, when really they were not going very fast at all — relative to conventional perception or “the standard of youth”.

Now that I am 48 I see I wasn’t so far off. I’m pretty sure in 30 years I’ll be hanging on for dear life as I drive 25 mph in a 45 mph zone.

What I didn’t realize as a budding philosopher of 16, was that the increase in speed wasn’t just going to apply to driving. Each day life in general speeds by faster and faster. There is less and less time to savor the beauty of life. A year melts away like butter in a hot frying pan. Seasons flip by as if on fast forward!

After a day of desperately trying to muster the strength to catch up — keeping up is an ambition which has long since been cast aside— I find myself stumbling. By 9 pm I’m plodding into the bedroom and aching as I put on my jammies. I feel like the Tin Woodsman in the Wizard of Oz, I want to squeak; “Oil can, oil can!” (Oil can what?)

I want to slow everything down! Adagio Sostenuto! My son is 18 for god’s sake! Where did all that time go? I just saw him wobbling around the church parking lot on his bike the first time he rode it without training wheels. My dad’s gone, my mom’s rotting away in a nursing home. I think about the Peggy Lee song, Is that all there is?; But the refrain in that song mentions; …“If that’s all there is, then let’s keep dancing, let’s break out the booze, and have a ball…”

Well I don’t drink, but I do dance. And I think of life as The Big Dance. Maybe not all of us are so beautiful when we dance, but there is a tune of some sort we hear that moves us. So maybe I’d write; …then let’s keep dancing, don’t drift off and snooze, but have a ball… Because from what I’ve experienced, life just flows like a raging river. It kind of fools you when you're young and looks like a trickling stream, but as time goes by it builds and builds until it is torrential. You start out dangling your bare feet in a sweet little brook in the shade of a beautiful oak tree, watching the tadpoles wiggle around against the brown mud below and you end up hanging on for dear life with the whitewater spinning and plunging you violently through each day. It’s hard to keep dancing that fast. You want it to slow down, but there are no brakes on a boat.

Spooky Stories

When you’re young, it’s fun to hear stories about ghosts and goblins. It’s fun to watch spooky movies, even dress up like monsters on Halloween. It's exciting to be scared! As time goes by, maturity sets in and those horror movie things don’t scare you like they used to when you were little. Now other things scare you, and it's no longer so exciting to be scared.

Now that I'm older the thing that scares me most in the world is… change.

Spooky isn’t it? Creepy, crawly, change! The scariest thing about change is that it hits you when you least expect it. There you are getting ready for bed, you lift up the cover and yikes! Out jumps change. Same thing happens at work. You happily go off to work each day, helping your nice boss get things done, and then one day your boss gets a new job. Poof! He's gone! AAAAAAAAAAaaaaayeeeeEEEE! (that's a scream) Where did they go? It's just plain weird.

No doubt about it, change is very scary.

What’s even scarier is when change comes to more than one major thing in you life at the same time. It’s like the rug is pulled out from under your whole routine. Dust is flying and your once comfortable stocking feet become ice skates on the slippery wooden floor. Yikes! Looking at all of this scary change optimistically can be really challenging when you are air born and facing an unpleasant impact with a hardwood floor. All you can really contemplate about the immediate future is just how much it’s really gonna hurt.

And does it ever!

There you are, a tangled lump of humanity, heaped up in the middle of a bare hardwood floor, a pile of dust on your head and up your nose. Your head throbs, your knees ache, and you think your arm is broken — not to mention your heart. At first you lie there in agony wondering when the paramedics will come. But after a while you realize you have no choice but to get up, dust yourself off, and head toward the nearest first aide station for a little TLC.

It's nice when the person leaving your life helps administer that TLC. They can help you ease up off the cold, hard floor and turn your mind's eye to a less bitter, loathsome perspective. Rather than Nightmare on Elm Street, maybe it’s just a Rear Window. It’s tough to see it that way at first, but eventually it gets a bit easier. You just hope that you have enough time to find your center before the next scary surprise comes and knocks you off balance and sends you back to that hardwood floor.

Eventually you're able to shine a light into all the spooky corners of those sinister changes that so afflicted your reality. You rip the mask off of those monstrously menacing changes that seemed so threatening and expose them as shadowy exaggerations of a much meeker reality. Then you look down and find that you are standing on a new rug — a little different than the one you stood upon before, but just as good — and even though your knees still ache, your arm's in a sling — we won't even talk about your heart — you find yourself getting curious about the future and all its possibilities.

So now that the scary part is over, you can peel your hands away from your face, raise your head and bid your dear friends adieu, with love, fondness, and well wishes. Then you can start picking out curtains to match that new rug.


(Goodbye Bruce you will be missed. Oh, and congratulations.)

Fatality

There was an accident on the beltline this morning. A car crossed the medium and slammed head on into two cars coming from the other direction. A semi parked across the lanes to prevent further chaos. One person died at the scene, two others were badly hurt.

They were just going about their day, expecting to arrive as usual. They woke up, took a shower, got dressed, packed their lunch, and went out the door. Expecting to arrive safely. Expecting to do what they normally do every day. Just driving along on a brilliant sunny spring morning — maybe they were listening to the radio and singing along as they drove — expecting everything to go smoothly.

If they’d known what was going to happen to them, would they have done anything differently? Would they have savored the moments a little more closely? Would they have hugged their kids a little longer and a little more tightly? Would they have taken the time to smell the fresh spring air?

We expect to get up each day and have a normal day. Why shouldn’t we expect so much? We live in America after all. We don’t have to worry about air strikes or suicide bombers or sniper attacks or shoulder fired rockets. We don’t have to worry about how we are going to fill our guts, our gas tanks, or get clean water to drink or wash ourselves with, or have a car to drive, or passable roads to drive them on.

A few people in this country do still struggle to find decent living conditions. They are the less “productive” members of society, the elderly, the mentally ill, people who are physically handicapped. Because they are perceived to be unable to contribute to our GNP, they are marginalized and left to fend for their selves or the mercy of charity. They struggle on the fringes of our society and live as if they were in a third world country.

The people caught in this fringe society cannot expect to ride on the roads, get good health care, have a living wage job, or even a warm place to sleep at night. Do we realize how lucky we are? What are we chasing when we speed down the beltline at 80 mph plus? Is it the promise of more? The promise of better?

Last night after I was done swimming laps, I walked out of the building and the beautiful warm spring breeze surrounded me. The smell of honeysuckle accompanied that air and as I looked out at the sky I saw the most beautiful remnant of a sunset, just barely visible in the western sky. I took a deep steady breath through my nose and shut my eyes. I tried to be totally in the moment. And I thought how lucky I was to have lived the life I have had. And I thought about my car (that runs) and my house and my family. I thought of all the interesting people I have known throughout my years here on earth. I thought that if I died tomorrow I’d be so lucky to have led this crazy life.

[It's not like this is a new thought or anything, it's just that it's good to remember this as we spend each precious breath. Each breath is golden. Each breath is a gift. How often do we act like the swine that this gorgeous world's pearls are cast before? How often do we grunt and snort at the idea of getting up, getting out, and enjoying this world? We who ignore the splendor of a sunset but pay attention to the garish and vituperative television set? (Matthew 7:6: Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.)]

The next moment I opened my eyes. A fiery spark appeared toward the southern part of my vision. It arched across the sky toward that dissolving sunset. It left a trail of embers as it shot across the heavens and I thought I could actually hear it sizzle as it became first brighter as it arced downward, and then ashen as it burned out. It was so thrillingly beautiful. It wasn’t so fleeting an apparition such as a typical shooting start might be. It lasted long enough, that if someone had been with me, I could have said; “Look! A falling star!” and they would’ve been able to catch sight of it.

That shooting star was like a signal flare. Not to warn me off, but to acknowledge my acceptance of the true brevity of our time here, and my thankfulness for the fortune that I am afforded. I saw that beautiful sign because I took the time to stop, look up, and look beyond the rattling cage we sometimes let our culture lock us inside.

I wonder who else was given the gift of that heavenly sight last night? Who else looked up at just that very second and saw that lovely ephemeral arc of light splash across the ocean blue sky. I wonder if by chance one of the victims involved in that horrible crash on the beltline this morning saw it. I wonder if at that very instant, they thought about how lucky they were.