So, Thursday night my son was fiddling around on the wife's laptop at the kitchen table, and opened some conversation with me about a governmental initiative ongoing regarding shareware and piracy and BitTorrent and a bunch of other things that I really don't understand, which quickly devolved into his shouting screed against government, the futility of citizen activism, and "why the hell should I vote when there's nobody to vote for..." Ah, the angst of youth...
I'm jealous, of course, as at his age I'd only voted in one election, and then not intelligently or with any passion or great conviction. I just felt, headed into my first legal opportunity to vote and already part of the green machine, that if my employer was going to stick an M-16 in my hand, a .45 on my hip, and a few grenades hanging off my flak jacket and send me into harm's way, the least I could do before shipping out was to vote. I didn't really understand how government worked, the roles or functions of political parties or lobbyists, or much of anything else. We were only slightly beyond Viet Nam and Watergate, and the standing of government in the eyes of the average teenager or any age voter for that matter was at a record low. Maybe even lower than right now...
My boy, on the other hand, was raised in an intensely political household, grew up the son of a political activist and Congressional candidate, and was responsible for building and maintaining a campaign website that was recognized at the time by a national political magazine as one of the best in Texas. Not bad for a then 12 year old, eh?
And now my youngest offspring, a decade later and after spending his life subjected to voluminous information unimaginable in my youth, constant exposure to the 24 hour news cycle, unlimited access to commentary and dissection on every stripe of matter, and political discourse across the spectrum both electronically and in person, was sitting in my kitchen expressing a somewhat reasoned angst against politics and government and the system and "the man" that hearkened back to those halcyon days of the rock era of my youth. Man, did we have great music in the 70s, or what?
I found myself trying to calmly explain to him the sometimes subtle distinctions between battles and wars, strategy and tactics, progress and perfection, participation and apathy. These aren't easy distinctions to argue with a young man who is measurably brighter than I or his peers ever hoped to be, with a mind like a razor and a passionate indifference to the efficacy of government. Only a couple of years ago, while so many of his age group, with my and others' unsubtle encouragement, were fervently supporting the candidacy of Barack Obama, this one was dripping with cynicism and scorn for "another corporate lackey," based on the seemingly irrefutable argument that a successful participant in the corporate exercise of contemporary American politics can be nothing but. The whole notion of having to vote for "the lesser of two evils" sits and sat poorly with him, and while he did vote for my candidate, it was reluctantly, and might not be repeated any time soon.
I reminded him that, while I'd failed in my 18 month campaign, a battle I'd had with the Federal Election Commission, the immediate outcome of which precipitated the whole disastrous exercise, was ultimately decided in my favor and has significantly improved the ability for an average Joe candidate to wage such a battle going forward against entrenched and monied incumbents - no small feat. I also reminded him that another battle I'd lost on its face has resulted in a significant rewrite of Texas political petition regulations, with the end result being that dozens of local option elections which hitherto would have been defeated have proven successful over intervening years. I even reminded him that, while Barack Obama had been handily defeated in my overly red home state, that we had cut the traditional GOP victory margin in half here, potentially marking a tidal change that might help unseat the incumbent Governor and mark a major shift in the state's political course. Or maybe not...
My rationale for making all these arguments was to try and encourage the lad to retain some focus and to remain involved and to care - something he's never been too big at. Which made me recall that my own apathy at his age and for more than a decade beyond was born of ignorance - a lack of concern coupled with a relative lack of information. And I then realized that his is born of the exact opposite - too much exposure, information, understanding. And yet both sets of contributing factors had brought us to not so different situations - my voting blindly in relative ignorance only because I felt it was my duty, and his refusing to participate in a dirty system over a too fine understanding of its reality. Neither being a healthy approach or winning recipe for the maintenance of a civil society...
And the final thought I had walking away from this exchange was a sense of wondering at exactly what point I had developed the patience and acceptance of nuance and imperfection that is the hallmark of an old man. And pondering whether somehow the distinction between knowledge and wisdom might somehow be contained in the answer to that question. And imagining what sort of man my son would grow up to be, and the nature of the world he would come of age in. And I remembered back to the cynicism of my own youth when I was of the conviction that bringing a child into the shitty world I lived in back then would be tantamount to a mortal sin. And I wondered how different we really are, and how much alike...
Friday, June 25, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
You win some...
So, kind of a frustrating week at work. Yes, I know I don't blog about work, except it was my font of enlightenment this week. Life is like a box of chocolates, you know?
My business, by the way, is human trafficking. Yes, really. In my professional life I'm an executive recruiter - a headhunter in everyday parlance. Its been an interesting and sometimes lucrative gig, but obviously tough in an economy that spent last year shedding jobs at a record pace, with this year seeing an uptick, but only slightly. Now we're eating bugs instead of sawdust, if you catch my drift. Enough to live on but nowhere near enough to thrive on. Our industry has shed roughly half the folks who were in it at the start of 2008, and not a one is eating as well as they were back then. It is a tough job in the best of circumstances, and these aren't those...
Anyway, Thursday morning we were nearing the end of a long week of negotiations on a high-level deal I was brokering. In my business these days, every deal is tedious. Clients are reluctant to spend top dollar in a market that is supposedly awash in qualified desperate talent, and candidates are busting their humps trying to get all they can from the deal, reluctant to cheaply turn loose of their bird in the hand, if you catch my drift. Trying to get all they can from someone who doesn't want to spend a penny more than required. Are you feeling the disconnect yet?
This project was made more tedious by the fact that the hiring company, while strongly financed, is effectively a start-up in a very precarious sector in which the talent pool is quite sparse, and the candidate they'd finally settled on was passive - meaning he is gainfully and securely employed by a sound company and wasn't looking for a new opportunity when I found him, with very strong compensation and benefits, and with no real threat to his position. To use the a sock-hop analogy, he was the handsomest boy in the room by far, albeit one quiet and quite comfortable standing in the corner by himself watching everyone else spinning and gyrating and making fools of themselves on the dance floor...
Without going into details, he knocked the socks off his suitor, to the degree their socks were knockable. They had multiple visits by phone and in person, and a love fest ensued. Earlier in the year they'd settled on two other prospects not from my stable, but had been unsuccessful in their approach to either, which is why I was invited into the game. This go-round they informed me they had settled on my candidate, setting aside other contenders and confident they could get him into bed or up to the altar or both. Neither party would be super specific in how far they were willing to go to get the deal done, as, if you'll recall, the buyer is reluctant to pay and the seller is reluctant to sell. He was open about his top concerns, and these were shared with the client, who crafted a fairly generous offer for the market and their richest to date by far. Unfortunately, it only responded weakly to his three major concerns, while offering a few perks that he liked but hadn't asked for, and which he didn't value overly highly. Uh-oh...
Without boring you to death with detail, suffice to say that the week which could and should have been spent in hearty celebration of a deal well done instead devolved into protracted and intense bargaining, with both parties talking past each other, acting on their own fears and concerns rather than listening closely to the other and seeking to find a workable middle ground. Sort of like Washington, now that I think of it...
On Thursday morning, while conversing with my client, he said, "You must have the worst job in the world. You get the right people together, share information as best you can to help make the deal work, but in the end you have absolutely no control over the outcome. None." Welcome to my world...
In my last conversation with the candidate yesterday, he told me I'd been wonderful to work with, that it had been an interesting experience, and shared his view that nobody had lost anything in the process. In the end the client had just proven unwilling to adequately address his concerns. The client indicated that they remain impressed with my work - said that he was proud of their effort and of the package they'd offered, which was indeed impressive, and that the candidate was unreasonable. And so, after a process which took more than three weeks of intensive closing activity following a months-long search, the candidate was right where he started with little likelihood of advancing his career in the exponential manner this opportunity afforded. The clients, proud of their steadfastness, remain without a Chief Operating Officer. And I am left in the dust with nothing to show for my efforts...
I told a few friends yesterday evening that I really wished I still drank, as this would definitely have been one of those evenings, if ever there was one. Instead, I sat in my Friday night AA meeting and listened more closely than usual to the Serenity Prayer we open with: "God, grant me the serenity to accept those things I cannot change, the strength to change those things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Amen.
My business, by the way, is human trafficking. Yes, really. In my professional life I'm an executive recruiter - a headhunter in everyday parlance. Its been an interesting and sometimes lucrative gig, but obviously tough in an economy that spent last year shedding jobs at a record pace, with this year seeing an uptick, but only slightly. Now we're eating bugs instead of sawdust, if you catch my drift. Enough to live on but nowhere near enough to thrive on. Our industry has shed roughly half the folks who were in it at the start of 2008, and not a one is eating as well as they were back then. It is a tough job in the best of circumstances, and these aren't those...
Anyway, Thursday morning we were nearing the end of a long week of negotiations on a high-level deal I was brokering. In my business these days, every deal is tedious. Clients are reluctant to spend top dollar in a market that is supposedly awash in qualified desperate talent, and candidates are busting their humps trying to get all they can from the deal, reluctant to cheaply turn loose of their bird in the hand, if you catch my drift. Trying to get all they can from someone who doesn't want to spend a penny more than required. Are you feeling the disconnect yet?
This project was made more tedious by the fact that the hiring company, while strongly financed, is effectively a start-up in a very precarious sector in which the talent pool is quite sparse, and the candidate they'd finally settled on was passive - meaning he is gainfully and securely employed by a sound company and wasn't looking for a new opportunity when I found him, with very strong compensation and benefits, and with no real threat to his position. To use the a sock-hop analogy, he was the handsomest boy in the room by far, albeit one quiet and quite comfortable standing in the corner by himself watching everyone else spinning and gyrating and making fools of themselves on the dance floor...
Without going into details, he knocked the socks off his suitor, to the degree their socks were knockable. They had multiple visits by phone and in person, and a love fest ensued. Earlier in the year they'd settled on two other prospects not from my stable, but had been unsuccessful in their approach to either, which is why I was invited into the game. This go-round they informed me they had settled on my candidate, setting aside other contenders and confident they could get him into bed or up to the altar or both. Neither party would be super specific in how far they were willing to go to get the deal done, as, if you'll recall, the buyer is reluctant to pay and the seller is reluctant to sell. He was open about his top concerns, and these were shared with the client, who crafted a fairly generous offer for the market and their richest to date by far. Unfortunately, it only responded weakly to his three major concerns, while offering a few perks that he liked but hadn't asked for, and which he didn't value overly highly. Uh-oh...
Without boring you to death with detail, suffice to say that the week which could and should have been spent in hearty celebration of a deal well done instead devolved into protracted and intense bargaining, with both parties talking past each other, acting on their own fears and concerns rather than listening closely to the other and seeking to find a workable middle ground. Sort of like Washington, now that I think of it...
On Thursday morning, while conversing with my client, he said, "You must have the worst job in the world. You get the right people together, share information as best you can to help make the deal work, but in the end you have absolutely no control over the outcome. None." Welcome to my world...
In my last conversation with the candidate yesterday, he told me I'd been wonderful to work with, that it had been an interesting experience, and shared his view that nobody had lost anything in the process. In the end the client had just proven unwilling to adequately address his concerns. The client indicated that they remain impressed with my work - said that he was proud of their effort and of the package they'd offered, which was indeed impressive, and that the candidate was unreasonable. And so, after a process which took more than three weeks of intensive closing activity following a months-long search, the candidate was right where he started with little likelihood of advancing his career in the exponential manner this opportunity afforded. The clients, proud of their steadfastness, remain without a Chief Operating Officer. And I am left in the dust with nothing to show for my efforts...
I told a few friends yesterday evening that I really wished I still drank, as this would definitely have been one of those evenings, if ever there was one. Instead, I sat in my Friday night AA meeting and listened more closely than usual to the Serenity Prayer we open with: "God, grant me the serenity to accept those things I cannot change, the strength to change those things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Amen.
Friday, June 4, 2010
On God and stuff...
I begin by apologizing for taking last weekend off. I know a few of you really look forward to seeing what sort of drivel I'll spew each weekend - hope you found a satisfactory substitute. It was Memorial Day weekend after all, and we have been having a bit of a rocky time around the old homestead, and the Mineral Wells Trailway did beckon me and my bicycle, and...well, sometimes, we all just need to take a break from whatever habits we form, be they good or bad. Habits, I think, are by definition confining - sometimes comforting and sometimes destructive, but in any case limiting if we allow them to be. But here I am, back for another round...
So, I'm pretty sure that way back toward the beginning of this thing I probably mentioned the corollaries between AA and Buddhism. Yes? Now I always fret a bit about describing myself as a Buddhist, because I have friends who are real Buddhists - sitting zazen and reading sutras and following the Noble Eightfold Path. I'm not one of these, and may never be. And I'm sure I have alcoholic friends who will argue whether I am an alcoholic at all, given that when I finally decided to quit I quit, and that while few who knew me prior to a year ago would recognize me without a drink of some sort in hand or nearby, thankfully far fewer ever saw me totally shit-faced, which didn't happen often but was never a pretty sight. Or experience. For me or anyone near me. My alcoholic doubter friends are, as a general rule, not in the program...
The appeal to me of both AA and Buddhism, and even more so Taoism, which probably more accurately describes my spiritual path, is that they are decidedly non-hierarchical, have suggested readings and texts but nothing accepted rigidly as the infallible scripture, and have rules, if you can call them that, which are so simple and malleable they hardly count as rules as all. Nobody baptizes you into the fold, and nobody can kick you out. The whole load is on me, or you, the individual practitioner, and we own alone whatever successes or failures we achieve in either medium. Pretty empowering, huh? If we do well in these circumstances, its a major ego-boost, right?
Which is interesting, because the most crucial corollaries between recovery from addiction and The Path are a heightened sense of awareness and the absolute elimination of the ego. These are the objectives, anyway. Now some in AA might argue with me on this, and as I don't argue this could prove frustrating. Sorry...
We hear in our meeting rooms with great regularity, "Give it over to God." For those of us successfully recovering in the program but who aren't believers in a conventional God model, though, what many of us hear is, "Get out of yourself already." The God thing can be a real challenge for many, and I think that's too bad, because the point is not so much to have a powerful omnipotent vigilant being to watch over us and take up our individual burdens when the need arises, as it is to recognize and admit our insignificance and inability to, on our own, overcome the vast forces of the universe outside of our selves, or the greater challenge of the ego we confuse as our selves. So, the ego is the enemy, and full awareness is our ability to recognize the enemy when it rears its head, ignore it as the fallacy it is, and accept our connectedness with the universe in all its manifestations. I guess I've often thought of the separate stand-alone God man created in his image to be sort of a manifestation of humanity's ego, but that's probably a philosophical discussion best left for another time.
So, what's my point? Well...
As I am rapidly approaching the one year anniversary of committing to making alcohol powerless over me, and accepting myself to be powerless over alcohol without help, I continue to stumble soberly along the spiritual path, seeking a keener understanding of myself, an awareness of and growing disdain for my ego, a sense of connection with all manifestations of the universe, a desire for a simpler and saner life coupled with a grudging acceptance of the one I have. Daily I come upon answers to questions asked and unasked, but each one spawns another. It is as when we develop more powerful telescopes and microscopes and other investigative tools and techniques, and come to realize that the better we see, the more there is to see. I detect no lessening of this phenomenon in my own physical or spiritual life, nor in the endless quest for understanding that too small a contingent of mankind is engaged in. And so, recognizing the incredibly finite nature of my mortal existence, and hoping to derive as much from it and contribute as much to it as I can, I am settling comfortably onto the path which reveals itself to me each day, a path which is connected to all other paths, which connects me to all other beings, which meanders through and is dependent on the totality of the universe seen and unseen. And I am committing myself to being grateful every day for the gift of my human life, for self-awareness despite the fallacy of the self, and for a mind and spirit that allows me to put it all in a wonderful wondrous harmonious context and to marvel at its fantastic intricacies.
In closing, let me say that in sharing these meager thoughts I do not intend to belittle any reader's belief in some particular manifestation of God. I am comfortable in my own lack of understanding of the unknown and unknowable, and pray the same for all my friends. For some God is Allah, and for others the Judeo-Christian God as portrayed by Charlton Heston or James Caviezel; for some Vishnu or one of his pantheon of lesser Gods. Many consider earth to be God, or Mother Nature. My wife, who was raised Jewish, is certain that God is a Golden Retriever, and who am I to say otherwise? The point is that, for the addict or alcoholic, or really for anyone of curious mind and searching spirit, the image we conjure up to establish a relationship with our higher power is insignificant relative to our having that relationship. I love to paraphrase a quote I once read but can't now lay my hands on, attributed to Buddha, perhaps from his dialogue with Ananthapindika, in which the Buddha is reported to have said, "There is so much in life that we can know, and so much that we can never know - it is best to focus on that which we can know."
Following is a light rewrite of the traditional 12 steps that I generated in my earliest days, to help me get beyond the "God thing" which too many in need find a barrier to joining the program that has helped so many. If it helps you, feel free to adopt it as you own.
12 Steps to Sobriety for Non-Christians, Atheists and Agnostics
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to align our will and our lives with our Higher Power.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to our Higher Power, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Became entirely ready to allow total alignment with our Higher Power to eliminate all our defects of character.
7. Humbly aligned ourselves with our Higher Power to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and, when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through study and meditation to improve our alignment with our Higher Power, seeking only knowledge of our proper role in the Universe and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
So, I'm pretty sure that way back toward the beginning of this thing I probably mentioned the corollaries between AA and Buddhism. Yes? Now I always fret a bit about describing myself as a Buddhist, because I have friends who are real Buddhists - sitting zazen and reading sutras and following the Noble Eightfold Path. I'm not one of these, and may never be. And I'm sure I have alcoholic friends who will argue whether I am an alcoholic at all, given that when I finally decided to quit I quit, and that while few who knew me prior to a year ago would recognize me without a drink of some sort in hand or nearby, thankfully far fewer ever saw me totally shit-faced, which didn't happen often but was never a pretty sight. Or experience. For me or anyone near me. My alcoholic doubter friends are, as a general rule, not in the program...
The appeal to me of both AA and Buddhism, and even more so Taoism, which probably more accurately describes my spiritual path, is that they are decidedly non-hierarchical, have suggested readings and texts but nothing accepted rigidly as the infallible scripture, and have rules, if you can call them that, which are so simple and malleable they hardly count as rules as all. Nobody baptizes you into the fold, and nobody can kick you out. The whole load is on me, or you, the individual practitioner, and we own alone whatever successes or failures we achieve in either medium. Pretty empowering, huh? If we do well in these circumstances, its a major ego-boost, right?
Which is interesting, because the most crucial corollaries between recovery from addiction and The Path are a heightened sense of awareness and the absolute elimination of the ego. These are the objectives, anyway. Now some in AA might argue with me on this, and as I don't argue this could prove frustrating. Sorry...
We hear in our meeting rooms with great regularity, "Give it over to God." For those of us successfully recovering in the program but who aren't believers in a conventional God model, though, what many of us hear is, "Get out of yourself already." The God thing can be a real challenge for many, and I think that's too bad, because the point is not so much to have a powerful omnipotent vigilant being to watch over us and take up our individual burdens when the need arises, as it is to recognize and admit our insignificance and inability to, on our own, overcome the vast forces of the universe outside of our selves, or the greater challenge of the ego we confuse as our selves. So, the ego is the enemy, and full awareness is our ability to recognize the enemy when it rears its head, ignore it as the fallacy it is, and accept our connectedness with the universe in all its manifestations. I guess I've often thought of the separate stand-alone God man created in his image to be sort of a manifestation of humanity's ego, but that's probably a philosophical discussion best left for another time.
So, what's my point? Well...
As I am rapidly approaching the one year anniversary of committing to making alcohol powerless over me, and accepting myself to be powerless over alcohol without help, I continue to stumble soberly along the spiritual path, seeking a keener understanding of myself, an awareness of and growing disdain for my ego, a sense of connection with all manifestations of the universe, a desire for a simpler and saner life coupled with a grudging acceptance of the one I have. Daily I come upon answers to questions asked and unasked, but each one spawns another. It is as when we develop more powerful telescopes and microscopes and other investigative tools and techniques, and come to realize that the better we see, the more there is to see. I detect no lessening of this phenomenon in my own physical or spiritual life, nor in the endless quest for understanding that too small a contingent of mankind is engaged in. And so, recognizing the incredibly finite nature of my mortal existence, and hoping to derive as much from it and contribute as much to it as I can, I am settling comfortably onto the path which reveals itself to me each day, a path which is connected to all other paths, which connects me to all other beings, which meanders through and is dependent on the totality of the universe seen and unseen. And I am committing myself to being grateful every day for the gift of my human life, for self-awareness despite the fallacy of the self, and for a mind and spirit that allows me to put it all in a wonderful wondrous harmonious context and to marvel at its fantastic intricacies.
In closing, let me say that in sharing these meager thoughts I do not intend to belittle any reader's belief in some particular manifestation of God. I am comfortable in my own lack of understanding of the unknown and unknowable, and pray the same for all my friends. For some God is Allah, and for others the Judeo-Christian God as portrayed by Charlton Heston or James Caviezel; for some Vishnu or one of his pantheon of lesser Gods. Many consider earth to be God, or Mother Nature. My wife, who was raised Jewish, is certain that God is a Golden Retriever, and who am I to say otherwise? The point is that, for the addict or alcoholic, or really for anyone of curious mind and searching spirit, the image we conjure up to establish a relationship with our higher power is insignificant relative to our having that relationship. I love to paraphrase a quote I once read but can't now lay my hands on, attributed to Buddha, perhaps from his dialogue with Ananthapindika, in which the Buddha is reported to have said, "There is so much in life that we can know, and so much that we can never know - it is best to focus on that which we can know."
Following is a light rewrite of the traditional 12 steps that I generated in my earliest days, to help me get beyond the "God thing" which too many in need find a barrier to joining the program that has helped so many. If it helps you, feel free to adopt it as you own.
12 Steps to Sobriety for Non-Christians, Atheists and Agnostics
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to align our will and our lives with our Higher Power.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to our Higher Power, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Became entirely ready to allow total alignment with our Higher Power to eliminate all our defects of character.
7. Humbly aligned ourselves with our Higher Power to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and, when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through study and meditation to improve our alignment with our Higher Power, seeking only knowledge of our proper role in the Universe and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
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