Solutions Instead of Blame

We all looked on last week in amazement as we began to see the damage caused by the unprecedented winds in Pasadena and the greater San Gabriel Valley. Mother nature showed up in full force and delivered a reminder that life is uncertain and that some things are simply out of our control. Never in recent history had the community faced this type of natural disaster with this magnitude of destruction. City crews and citizens alike worked feverishly to get the debris cleared and return the region to a functional and safe landscape. Southern California Edison faced a gigantic power outage and began round the clock work to get electricity back into the homes of the thousands of people who were left without it. I looked on with admiration for what the citizens had so bravely endured and for the community spirit that was evoked in the mobilization of so many individuals working together to keep things going.

Sadly, not everybody felt this admiration. Instead, some wanted to find blame. It would seem that in an effort to manage the simple truth that we don't like how it feels to be reminded that we are not completely in control, we go a step further and say, well who's to blame. The most disheartening example of this that I heard came from the people that Los Angeles relies on for leadership in times both difficult and prosperous, The County Board of Supervisors. Most specifically, it came from Supervisor Mike Antonovich. I was not present for the hearings between the City Council and Southern California Edison (SCE) so I must acknowledge that the information I have is not all inclusive and could be out of context. However, the few things that I did hear Supervisor Antonivich say at these hearings exemplified the very blame nature that so easily arises in the face of a disaster. Supervisor Antonovich stated an obvious point of the situation but phrased it as an allegation stating to SCE that they did not have a plan. I don't know to what degree SCE did or did not have a plan, but in the face of an unprecedented disaster there can certainly be no exact plan that will precisely address the unique challenges faced in a unique situation. The second indictment made by Supervisor Antonovich was that SCE's efforts to get the word out to citizens regarding safety issues and progress in getting the lights back on, via the media, was "just stupid." Even if in hindsight we decided that this was the least effective of efforts, is there anything supportive or remotely solution oriented in telling people, who were working round the clock to fix something that they had no fault in breaking, that their efforts are stupid?

True leadership is not about finding who is at fault for our problems, especially problems over which we have limited control. True leadership is about contributing to the process of helping people be successful in finding solutions to those problems. Solutions are born from inspiration, creativity and a sense of feeling a part of an effort bigger than yourself. Blame does not inspire. Blame stifles creativity and alienates people and does nothing to move things forward as blame is always about looking back.

I did not like how it felt to witness such divisiveness in the face of disaster and extraordinary human effort. In the face of that feeling, rather than looking to blame, I ask: Supervisor Antonovich, what can we as citizens do to help and support you to find meaningful solutions to real problems?

What of My Time With The Trees?

I do a meditation in which I try to become as much like a rock in the woods as I can. Tonight, when doing this meditation I wondered, what if I was not a rock in the woods but a rock in the desert instead? I lamented the loss of the trees and asked myself, “but what of my time with the trees?” To which I answered “it wasn’t mine, it just was.” My meditation was complete.

Love Takes All Things Into Account

I knew a man once who was a great mentor to me. He taught me everything he knew, he was patient with me, believed in me and never made me suffer my mistakes but simply helped me clean them up. When he died I learned that he had some very serious problems. Things he was involved in had very likely hurt people in a deep and lasting way. I could not reconcile what I knew of him with what I learned about him. I wanted to reject him outright and find fault in all that he had ever said or done. As much as I wanted to I could not. Instead, I had to accept that a person is made up of multiple facets, some that shine with the brightest spark and others that cast doom on all the world. I had to accept that there were parts of him for which I had no respect and parts to which I owed a lifetime debt of gratitude. And even all parts considered, I realized I still loved him and always would.

Learning that I could do that for him brought me closer to believing that, just maybe, I can do it for myself.

Pain's Spark

This is something I wrote after eavesdropping on a coversation about Stacey K. Black's screenblack.

Q-“How do you know that someone is in pain just by looking into their eyes?”

A-“You might think that when you look into the eyes of someone who is in pain you would see nothing, just an empty darkness in a space where all light has been extinguished by this evil life. But that’s not true because where there’s pain there’s actually hope. Without the hope it wouldn’t hurt anymore. Pain is the consequence of hope during times when your dreams won’t come true.

So when you look into the eyes of pain, what you actually see is that spark of hope. A fragile floating ember, blowing on the wind, just waiting to touch down someplace where there is something, anything, that might be ignited if fanned by even the slightest breath of love or goodness.

So that’s how I know…I see that spark.”

The New Me

Many of you know that I just underwent ACL reconstruction surgery. This surgery involves removing the torn ACL from the knee and replacing it with a graft from another ligament or tendon in the body. In my case, the graft for my reconstruction was not taken from my own body but was donated from someone else. My first reaction to this was to be amazed with modern medicine and the ability to accomplish such complex things. I very quickly also began to ponder the notion of having tissue from another body in mine. I flipped through a lot of thoughts ranging from it seeming a little creepy to being excited at the idea of getting to have the opportunity to have such a close connection with another person.

I understood that this tissue (an Achilles tendon in my case) would be harvested from a cadaver, a person who is no longer living. It seems strange now, but it took some time for it to sink in that this would not be a person who's life had run its "natural"course of aging and failing as all bodies eventually will. Such aged tissue would not be a good fix for a knee that will be hoping to dance and jump and run and play for another 30-40 years. I was faced with the truth that the tissue I would receive would come from a person who's life was cut short, someone likely only 20-35 years old.

Whoever this person was, whoever their family was, chose to turn that loss into a gift. In all likelihood, there are a number of people whose lives were saved from this gift, perhaps a heart recipient or kidney or liver. The families who received those gifts surely feel the full gratitude of the generosity involved. Those recipients may want to meet the family at some point to tell them the story of how their loss, became the saving grace for someone else.

Though my life was not saved, it will be significantly improved. It feels very important to honor the gift given me. In comparison to heart and liver transplants, an Achilles graft transplant may seem trivial but in order to have wholeness, it is not. The people who received those larger gifts will forever represent, in fact be connected to, the life giving power of the donor. Those people will represent the life force of the donor and what was notable and evident and special about him or her. I like to think that the gift I received will stand for the the un-notable, everyday aspects of that person. The parts of them that were regular and routine; the parts of them that filled the space between the special and the outstanding moments of their lives; undoubtedly, the parts that their family and loved ones miss the most.

The Truth

Who am I to believe that I know "the truth" over anyone else. Such arrogance would surely impede my ability to see the truth before me. I am as qualified as any and as ignorant as well. For that matter, who am I to believe that there is one single constant truth? With humility, silence, and an open mind and heart I can only hope to attune myself to the truth that exists in each moment; the truth that is specific for that situation, time and place. With trust I can hope to allow others to see the truth before them and to use it as a guide along the path that is theirs. With love I can support them on their path and accept support as well as I take each step with an openess toward each new truth before me.

Bath Tub Adventures:From Insomnia to World Travel

Not being able to sleep tonight, I decided to run myself a bath in hope it might relax me. In general this works for me, yet it took a little while before I could drag myself out of bed to do it. It is a similar experience to being cold when half asleep and the blanket is out of reach. You curl yourself up tighter and tighter and linger between being asleep and awake, sometimes for hours, rather than stirring yourself enough to get the blanket and be done with it. After some bargaining, I was finally able to get myself up and moving.

As hoped, the bath was very relaxing. I was able to manage some success at my own, unskilled form of meditation and soon was at the edge of sleep. As I pulled the stopper, I found myself losing touch with my peaceful state and so turned my attention to the water draining in order to ground myself in the experience of the present. In watching the water swirl at the drain and feeling it slide so gently away from me I began to think of what is was like to be the water. I became aware of the drastic and sudden shifts that this tub full of water had gone through and would undergo in a very short period of time. I started where my awareness of my own journey with this water began, resting so quietly and peacefully, snuggled together in the tub. And now, on such short notice and without consultation, I had pulled the plug and the water had no choice, through the force of gravity, but to leave. Watching the little water funnel that was forming at the drain, I wondered if the water was fighting to stay in the tub. I pictured the next phase of it's journey, which was a free fall down a dark an dirty pipe and into the city sewer. This was all quite horrifying to me and and not very relaxing so I asked myself, "is a different way I can look at this?"

In so asking, I remembered a time when I described to a dear friend the lesson that I had learned while trying to save a bug from getting caught in my shower water and being washed down the drain. As the bug tried to walk up and away from the droplets of water, I attempted to shield him until he could get to a safe place. Repeatedly, he would reach a place that, if it would just be still, would suffice. But, repeatedly, the bug's anxiety got the better of him and he would move his legs around frantically, trying to get to even safer ground. The bug was too frightened, and could not be still. Eventually, he danced and squirmed himself into a flow of water that was just too strong and it swept him down the drain. In telling my friend this lesson about stillness and my sorrow about not being able to save the bug (silly I know, but at times these things trouble me deeply) her eyes watered and she pointed out what a beautiful gift the bug had given me. She expressed her gratitude to the mystical forces in life that are able to give a bugs life meaning and create a value from it's death, by placing a man there as a witness who, simply by witnessing, learns the lesson of stillness.

Recounting the power of this experience, I decided that this is the way I would view the water as it left down the drain. I would see the water with gratitude and and attempt to find a new understanding of the water's purpose and path. This brought my focus to the larger picture. It drew my thinking both backward and forward in time simultaneously. I was now aware of the the water before it came into the bath as it warmed in my hot water heater while at the same time being aware of its path down the drain and it's eventual journey to the ocean. This water, with which I just shared this space had, only hours ago, been who knows where sharing space with who knows who. Over the course of just a few days it will run through pipes, roll down rivers, fall into the ocean, crash in it's waves, be sucked up into the sky, travel in a cloud, rain back down on the earth hundreds maybe thousands of miles away, gather in a reservoir or someones swimming pool or...you can see the endless possibilities.

When told in the form of thoughts, and using only words to tell it, it is complex and would take pages, no volumes to describe. But, as an experience, it was almost instantaneous. It was when I got to what should be the more disturbing thoughts that I had my epiphany. It was when I got to the part where this water gets dirtied and purified over an over again through washing bodies and sliding through sewers and being drank down and peed out, that it struck me, I am made up of 75% water. This is not water that I am born with and stays in my body throughout my life. This is the water that travels the world and makes up 75% of other people and cascades down immense waterfalls and baptizes babies. Seventy-five percent of ME will be somewhere else in only a matter of days. This means that I am, in fact, connected to everything. And, while my conscious mind and non liquid matter stays in one place longer and doesn't experience the drastic changes that the liquid part of me does, the majority of me is actually departing for and returning from amazing, horrifying, exhilarating world wide travels almost constantly. As exciting as this was to discover, I was mostly grateful that my conscious self could go and tuck itself comfortably in bed while parts of my liquid self would be in the not so glamorous portion of its never ceasing adventure.