Tag Archives: philosophy

No Country for Young Women Either

Posted on March 15, 2008 | Leave a comment

I’ve been a bit behind in my blogging for three weeks now. A big trip to Mexico followed by an illness that felt like the flu have really set me back. But I’m starting to catch up.

Over the past few weeks a few things have happened in succession which I couldn’t help but juxtapose. First, the film No Country for Old Men took four Oscars. Then two young women at universities in the south were killed more or less at random, petty robberies a motive in both cases. Take a look at Eve Carson and Lauren Burk. Try to imagine what it might be like to be the parents, grandparents, friends, classmates or neighbors of either of these two women.

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Eve Carson, 1985-2008. Murdered for an ATM withdrawal.

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Lauren Burk – 1990-2008. Murdered for her ATM card.

As it turns out, I don’t have to imagine in my case. Lauren’s family attended Temple Kol Emeth, a synagogue about a mile from my home in Atlanta. As I was driving to the airport last Sunday to return to Dallas I passed by the Temple as her funeral service was being held. I’m pretty sure that I met Lauren’s parents once a few years ago when I was doing some personal study on comparative religion. I can’t imagine their grief.

What do these tragic deaths have to do with No Country for Old Men? Nothing. At least not directly.

I have traveled quite a lot in recent years and I’ve noticed a few things big and small about us Americans that separates us from most of the world’s popular culture. Some of these things have less serious consequence than others. Take for example our relative obesity. Spend a week or two in most European or Asian countries and then come back. You won’t be 100 yards off of the airplane before it hits you like a bag of bricks just how damned fat we have become. Land of the free and home of the brave? Somehow waddling out of Wendy’s with a Baconator in one hand and a bucket of Coke in the other doesn’t fit that ideal. It’s not pretty, but it’s not the most serious thing in the world either.

Our uniquely casual attitude toward violence in entertainment, on the other hand, has terribly tragic consequences in my opinion.

Here in the US we are arguably very prudish and hypocritical in our concerns about sex in entertainment. In mainstream TV and film we effectively censor sexual content to a large degree while privately I would bet that we are the biggest per capita porn spenders in the world. Meanwhile, the blood flows in rivers out of our movie screens, television sets and game consoles – to a far, far greater degree than anywhere else. For the most part it’s just not like this in other parts of the world. Take Javier Bardem’s comments on the matter. Keep in mind that Bardem is the 2007 Oscar winner for best supporting actor owing for his portrayal of the psychopathic Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men:

“I had a problem with the violence. In Europe we don’t have a problem about sex. We show our ass; we make love—that’s fine. People on the set are relaxed. But when you’re doing a movie and they give you a gun, people in Europe still say, ‘Is this really necessary? Is it going to help to tell the story for us to kill somebody or to take out a gun?’ In America it is the opposite.”

Indeed. The Coen brothers apparently got Bardem to believe that the movie is meant to deplore this sort of violence, but who really believes that? If you want to make a statement about the tragedy of violence you don’t do it with this kind of film. You do it with a film that focuses on the depth of the tragedy, not the graphic extremes of the violence.

Of course it’s not just film and television, music and games too.

Rewind to around the time when these two murdered young women were born and a lot of the “lyrics” you hear in popular music today would have been socially unacceptable in just about any circle. Today however, we broadly and passively accept the discussion of casual yet brutal violence – particularly against women – as just part of the norm in music. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the hip hop genre, where beating, raping, maiming and killing “bitches and hos” is now standard fare. The simple fact is that kids today – and in particular young black men – grow up steeped in a popular culture that celebrates and glorifies monstrous acts – behavior that fully disregards the humanity of other people. We are somehow supposed to accept this as being “authentic” (how insulting this would be to me if I were a black man) and would also be led to believe by the purveyors of this cultural garbage that it is somehow harmless, that it has no effect on actual behavior.

Really? Does anyone out there really believe that? What do you want to bet that the thugs who murdered Eve and Lauren have grown up on music from the likes of 50 Cent and Ludacris as opposed to artists who don’t glorify rape and murder?

If depictions of behavior have no impact on real behavior, please explain to me how advertising revenues run into the hundreds of billions of dollars each year. A lot of pretty smart people prove day in and day out that words, images and video can and do affect how we think, buy and otherwise behave. The idea that popular entertainment is somehow separated from the behavior of the people that soak it up is self indulgent stupidity.

Of course it’s not just hip hop. Gratuitous violence oozes from American entertainment in every direction. Ever heard anyone describe the Hostel movies? Try this. Read the movie review posted here on Hostel: Part II. Pay particular attention to how director Eli Roth describes his mood when he’s filming horrific acts of torture and murder. Then try the interview with Roth and Quentin Tarantino here. Scroll back up and look Eve and Lauren in the eyes. Now what do you think of Roth’s glee? How do you like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction now?

Today people routinely accept the idea that second hand smoke makes people sick, that pollution in general can degrade health, and that “hate speech” is bad. Everybody knows that having good role models is good for kids. How can we possibly believe that the cultural poison of casual violence in entertainment can do anything other than make our lives cheaper and more dangerous?

Everybody ought to know that a society which freely supports the objectification and murder of young women as a form of entertainment is going to wind up with more of them killed in the real world. And yes, if you buy this sort of entertainment you’ve got a hand in the violence – however far removed it may be from the actual perpetration. I love the United States of America and would live nowhere else in the world, but we are more than what we have become. At all times every human being sets an example for all others and in some ways, our country’s example has become pretty pathetic in recent years.

I look forward to the day when we remember ourselves.

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Wrath

Posted on March 6, 2008 | Leave a comment

Wow am I behind on my Deadly Sins. For those of you that have been tuning in for a while you will recall that I’ve been attending a Sunday school class on the seven deadly sins since the beginning of the year. I’ve missed three of them owing to the fact that I’m in Dallas only every other weekend. As a result I’ve fallen far behind in my write ups on them. On February the 17th our class was on Wrath. If you’ve been following this series on the deadly sins you’ll recall that they get increasingly deadly as they progress toward Pride. Wrath holds 3rd position.

Early in the class series when the deadly sins were discussed broadly people fessed up to which one was their worst – the one they were most likely to succumb to on any given day. Mary said hers was Wrath, which would not be apparent when you meet her. It’s mine also. I was well into adulthood until I finally realized that my easily provoked temper was not in any way valuable, useful or virtuous. Part of that came with age and maturity, part as a result of the patience that comes only with parenthood, part from the general trial-and-error experience of life. I have slowly succeeded in my struggle to contain and dissipate my anger, and I’m a much happier person as a result. So my interest in Wrath is a little more personal that that of the other deadly sins.

Aquinas thought that anger – if very carefully controlled – could be put to positive use. Augustine would have none of that, insisting that it was always dangerous. Although theologians may remain split on this one as they are on many things, Mary was quick to point out that most agree that there is no such thing as “righteous anger.” As a recovering Angry Man, I have to agree with Augustine and the majority opinion. Though I see where Aquinas was coming from – anger perhaps bringing to bear action where it is appropriate – I think that anger is so destructive and risky that even accommodating it for this reason is fraught with peril. Action may indeed result where anger lurks, but it’s very likely that the action itself will be an ill-considered response, and that a cooler head would work with more wisdom. I think of it in the same way that George Washington compared government to fire when he said:

“Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like fire: a dangerous servant and a terrible master.”

Substitute “anger” for “government” in the statement above and you understand why I disagree with Aquinas. While he believed that reason could divert anger to useful purpose, I would argue that reason and anger are essentially opposites. I don’t believe that the mind can entertain both equally at once, and that anger is far better at killing reason than reason is at taming anger. Aquinas’ accommodation of anger must be very appealing however. The idea of righteous anger is a popular one. One of Mary’s questions from class was why we thought that anger is a sin which we tend to defend more than others. I’m not sure that we adequately addressed the question, but I feel certain that we humans too often walk around believing that anger is justified.

Interestingly enough, another of our founding fathers said something about anger which is noteworthy. Contained in Benjamin Franklin’s endless storehouse of aphorisms is this gem:

“What’s begun in anger ends in shame.”

I couldn’t agree more. Note the particulars of this very concise statement. What is begun in anger ends in shame. Not what passes through anger, but what starts there. Throughout all of my experience in life this has ever been the case. Acts carried out with a premeditated anger as their genesis have always ended badly and reflected poorly on me or whoever else I observed making this mistake. Never once did something admirable result in my experience. My guess is that this has something to do with Pride, the deadliest sin and the subject of another Sunday.

The subject was a rich one. Mary asked more than one question which was tough to provide a satisfactory answer for. My favorite of these was wondering why we tend to provide more excuses or accommodation to the sin of Wrath than we do to other sins. I suspect that this also has something to do with Pride, but we did not develop the discussion that day. Other questions regarded God and anger, particularly the God of the Old Testament, and most poignantly the scene of Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers in the Temple at Jerusalem. These are subjects worthy of extended discussion I think. One thing is for sure – I doubt that Jesus woke up one morning hell bent on showing those money changers a thing or two. I suspect his anger caught Him by surprise that day, much as it does many of us on many days. Fully human and fully divine indeed.

I don’t know about you guys, but most of my anger is generally direct at one or more individuals when it gets the best of me. For that reason yet another quote that I first wrote about on New Year’s Day sprung to mind when we talked in class about how to best manage our anger. It is from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

I won’t recall all of my thoughts on that again in this post, but I continue to hold that quote as being pretty special. I could go on and on writing about Wrath, it’s pitfalls, and my happiness at being delivered from it as a constant condition. Maybe I’ll continue with that another time.

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Sloth

Posted on February 17, 2008 | Leave a comment

Continuing with my Sunday School class on the Seven Deadly Sins I went today to participate in our class on Wrath, but I still haven’t posted on Sloth until now. How fitting!

Actually I didn’t get to participate in Sloth last week. I was in Atlanta with my daughter. Still, Mary provided me the notes with which she led the class, and today I heard a recap of what sounded like an excellent discussion last week. Mary wanted to stress the work of Reinhold Niebuhr in the discussion. Most people probably automatically think of physical laziness when they think of Sloth, but it’s actually not viewed that way by many theologians. Sloth is really more of a failure to live up to our potential. Niebuhr was one of these, and I’ll paraphrase from Mary’s notes here.

Niebuhr wrote that we humans are both creature, totally separate from and subject to God, and made in God’s image, “little lower than the angels.” Therefore, we are unique among creation in that we are both creature and vessel of the divine. We walk the tightrope of life balancing these two weights on either side of us, and we sin when we lose our balance and fall in either direction. When we deny our creatureliness and aim to be our own gods we fall into Pride (more on that in another post). But when we deny our divine nature and wallow around in our creatureliness we fall into Sloth. In Sloth we ignore or reject the call not only to live up to our potential, but also deny our role in God’s greater plan. Living in Sloth is actually therefore an escape from the freedom of the Spirit that refuses to let us limit our lives. We are overwhelmed with the possibilities for our lives when we understand our divine empowerment, and in our fear we retreat into Sloth. Instead of devoting ourselves to the divine, we devote ourselves to trivial things instead.

Simply put, recall the many things you’ve heard in your life about the greatest courage being the courage to live your dreams – to strive to the best you can be. The failure to do so is Sloth. To me this is a very profound insight. I really like how in Niebuhr’s way of thinking that the opposite failure is Pride. This makes an awful lot of sense to me.

In the recap of last week’s session, Mary brought up how those who are chronic substance abusers are often retreating into the drug as a form of Sloth. The tragedy of the loneliness that often goes along with this form of addiction was a topic of discussion. That combined with the tension between Pride and Sloth immediately made me recall the lyrics to a great song by the Bodeans (I’m dating myself here but hey – it’s gotta be obvious by now that I’m not a college student anymore). The song is “Far Far Away from My Heart”. It goes like this:

Well the feeling’s coming on again
Like a whisper that’s knocking down a doorway
And everything it says I just believe
And I fear that I’m nothing and alone
So I pour another drink and take a hit
And I wonder where the smoke goes
And I’m feeling more and more like less and less
And it comes from so far down deep inside
But you can’t get to it no matter what you try

And I’m far, far away from my heart
Far, far away from my heart

It’s just a voice thats bent on telling me I’m too good
And there really is a shortcut
And I’ve been through this so many nights before
That you’d think it would be easier by now
So I let the chemical reaction cloud over
The pain that keeps on hurting
As I slowly, but too slowly drift away
To a place where I know I don’t have to think
God I hate myself all over so more I drink

And I’m far, far away from my heart
Far, far away from my heart

And now I’m staring blankly at the TV
Holding this guitar for some comfort
But it’s so hard to write a simple song
And try to turn this feeling into melody
So I put it down get on my knees
Close my eyes real tight now I’m praying
To anyone that maybe can hear me
Tell me everything will be OK
And I don’t think I can make another day

And I’m far, far away from my heart
Far, far away from my heart

If you’ve never heard it before, it’s worth the 99 cents to download it from iTunes here.

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Heaven and Hell in Uptown

Posted on February 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

When I attended the Uptown service this past Sunday I was on the tail end of a series of sermons on Heaven and Hell. This fourth and final installment on afterlife addresses was focused on who gets to live where upon their eternal relocation. I figured that this presented an excellent opportunity to learn about the attitudes of the church I’ve been attending. I believe that it was, and to my surprise I think that I learned a little something about myself as well.

I won’t recount the entire sermon, and if you want to hear it all for yourself you can download the podcast here. The short version is this – in my view the pastor giving the sermon gave no hard and fast answer as to who goes where, but rather presented one of three philosophies taken by Christians and some thoughts on each. In very simple terms, they go as follows:

1) Exclusivists hold that belief in Christ as savior is unconditionally required for salvation and passage to heaven, and that Christian beliefs are inherently superior to all other faiths without qualification. Those not accepting Christ are Hell bound, generally without any exceptions.

2) Inclusivists believe that Christian beliefs hold inherent advantages and truths as compared to other faiths and that salvation is achieved through Christ, but also think it is possible that salvation may be achievable through other means. How this may be is not dictated and is often presumed to be unknowable – perhaps through other faiths or virtues, perhaps simply by the generosity of the Creator.

3) Pluralists take the view that Christian beliefs – while suited to themselves personally – are not special when compared to other faiths. Virtue is virtue regardless of the particulars of any faith, and those that deserve Heaven or Hell are sure to get theirs in the end no matter the path.

The pastor offered pros and cons of Exclusivism and Inclusivism, but his description of what commended Inclusivism was what rang so true to me – that it implied humility. He had little to offer in the way of praise for pluralism, but did not condemn it. If I could call myself closest to any of these three it would clearly be Inclusivism, and this is what I learned about myself last Sunday. Throughout my life I have had nothing but the most unpleasant experiences with Exclusivism and have never been able to accept it. What I most appreciated in the sermon was that the pastor felt comfortable laying out these schools of thought in all their contradictions without dictating the conclusion to the congregation. You might say that he had faith that we could sort it out for ourselves.

I was surprised to learn that Billy Graham is often described as an Inclusivist, though he is reluctant to accept that description. This has apparently drawn more than a little brimstone in his direction, which you can view here:

If my beliefs draw the disapproval of people that think like this, I must surely be on to something. I think I’ll continue to muddle my way forward as I always have in the manner that Sir Francis Bacon described a very long time ago when he said:

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.”

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Greed

Posted on February 3, 2008 | 1 Comment

Today I got to attend the third installment of the “Seven Deadly Sins” Sunday school class at the Church of the Incarnation. We are taking them in order of increasing deadliness as detailed by Pope Gregory the Great, the original author on the topic. Lust and Gluttony were our first two, today was Greed. It was a much tougher and deeper topic I think.

To help begin the discussion on Greed, Mary (our class leader) brought in a column from Steve Blow at the Dallas Morning News. It was regarding a relatively new columnist at D magazine going by the pen name of Marty Cortland. In “Ramblings of a Rich Man” Blow investigates whether Cortland is actually a hoax satirizing wealthy snobbery among locals, or someone who actually makes complaints about the degree of opulence in his lifestyle and it’s attendant “complications.” The editor of D dispelled the mystery. The man behind Marty is real. As I read the column describing him, his wife and their attitudes I was reminded of one of my favorite Winston Churchill quotes. When meeting Lord and Lady Astor at a state function, Churchill is reported to have said: “Sir, if you were my husband I would poison your tea. Madam, if you were my wife I’d drink it!” Give it a read and, more importantly, follow the links to Marty’s actual works. I wouldn’t be surprised if you think similar thoughts to Churchill. But all joking aside, I truly do not envy Marty or his wife. I wouldn’t trade places with them.

After reading about Marty there followed some discussion about what constituted greed. We touched on related topics such as first world wealth versus third world destitution, the waste and worry of too many possessions, charity and taxes. The same gentleman who drew distinction between sexual desire and lust in an earlier class wondered about the difference between being providing for your needs and those of your loved ones versus being greedy. I think this goes to the point of needs versus wants – or you might say perceived versus actual needs. We didn’t pose this question, but who is to say which is which? What really caught my attention on this point was a definition of greed from Islam that Mary provided based on her research: “Greed is having or desiring more than what is required of a man to keep his back straight.” I must say that I really like that definition.

Think about it. If you don’t believe that you’re genuine needs are being met you are going to feel pensive or weighed down. It is unlikely in these circumstances that you will “keep your back straight.” Having been there myself in the past, I can identify with this. The things that you pursue in this frame of mind might very well be things that you don’t actually need, or things that won’t cause you to feel any better once in your possession. But arguably even such errors aren’t greed if you really believe that needs underly your pursuit. Complicating matters further is the operative question: Need for what? Survival? Health? Happiness? What do you need to “keep your back straight?”

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs provides an interesting backdrop to this question. Remember his pyramid? From the base up it lists needs as follows: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, self-actualization. From a physical point of view you could argue that you don’t really need anything once your physiological and safety needs are met. I don’t think we run into people that are greedy at those levels very often – at least not in the modern United States. But what kind of life is it that stops at primitive needs? What kind of existence has no love or belonging, no esteem, no self actualization? I don’t think anyone would hold the pursuit of those things against another human being. It’s how we do the pursuing that can yield trouble.

People often want material things because they believe that having them will help them to “fit in” with others, in other words, having them will help them belong. Love is necessarily behind belonging, and the desire for love is almost impossible to overstate. Anything that a person perceives will help to fill a void of belonging or love will be desired intensely. I don’t think that any human being could “keep his back straight” for long without love. The fear of exclusion is therefore very strong, and I think it drives a lot of our materialism. It is at this point I make an intellectual leap about belonging and greed that I can’t quite explain at the moment.

I believe that there is good belonging and bad. Good belonging is fellowship among people that respect one another, that treat each other as equals in the eyes of God, that include each other as best they can. Bad fellowship results when people find community through a process of exclusion, by convincing themselves that they are more worthy than others through their works, their achievements or their possessions. Bad fellowship draws together on this basis. It is hard for me to feel sure about what is properly defined as Greed in the case of every kind of need, but in my mind desiring material things to achieve fellowship by exclusion is clearly Greed.

I think that this is what we find so repugnant in Marty’s narratives.

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Gluttony

Posted on January 20, 2008 | 1 Comment

Last week I posted on starting a Sunday School class on the Seven Deadly Sins. Our topic then was Lust, this week it was Gluttony. There was much discussion of how only 9% of Americans would describe themselves as gluttons though fully a third of us are deemed overweight. With the sedentary lives we lead in today’s age of knowledge work I suspect that it’s quite a bit easier to be overweight without being a glutton than it once was. But that wouldn’t explain the 35,000 calorie per day eating habits in TLC’s show on the Brookhaven Obesity Clinic would it?

Gluttony has many angles of course. Food is one, drink is another, and excesses of other things by quantity, delicacy or expense were also discussed. Reflecting on last week’s topic one of our class members asked the excellent question of whether hunger was to gluttony as sexual desire is to lust. I think that’s probably right. Eating and sex are both good and good for you in the right contexts and quantities. Outside of those, no.

Our class instructor asked at the outset what we thought of when we thought of gluttony. For me the thing that came to mind immediately was “Rome”. What better portrait of consumption to excess was there than the Roman norm of eating and drinking to the point of vomiting and then starting all over again? Also, since one of the ideas behind the Seven Deadly Sins is that they lead to other sins, the Roman orgy seems to me that it defines gluttony. I suspect that it did so for the Jews and early Christians also, considering their less-than-friendly relationship with the culture and power of Rome.

Since lust, gluttony and greed are not so much acts themselves as they are descriptive of the degree or manner of other behaviors, there followed some discourse on what constituted pleasurable and healthy consumption versus sinful and self destructive behavior. For me the answer is most easily given in hindsight. With an honest heart assess yourself the following day and ask if you are better off now or worse. Do you have a hangover? Is your digestion wrecked? Do you have to consult other people to know what your actions were? Did you damage any relationships last night or treat anybody badly after you started drinking? If so, I’d say that there was some gluttony in there somewhere. Do that enough and you will surely diminish your life – eventually you’ll run out of people that think you are any fun!

For me, one thing is certain. Merely eating, drinking and being merry is not sinful or gluttonous in any way. In fact, the very phrase comes from a positive statement in Ecclesiastes 8:15, and it just might be my favorite verse in the whole bible:

“So I commended mirth, that a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry, and that this should accompany him in his labor all the days of his life which God hath given him under the sun.”

To me that is pretty clear – the joy of food, drink and merriment is hard to beat, but if you are indulging so much that you can’t labor you’ve obviously got a problem. I think the same thing is clearly true if you’re merriment comes at the cost of hurt to yourself or to someone else.

But when it doesn’t? When a genuine good time is had by all, what happens then? Well that’s some of the best stuff life has to offer, and I think that it can do much to not only make life pleasurable, but to even make a better person. I know it’s made a difference for me. For the past two years when we’ve had our holiday parties at work, I’ve had my fill of wine and laughs with co-workers, some of whom I’d had my doubts about or conflicts with. In those moments I’ve quite literally felt the wall in my heart come down toward them, to my certain benefit and betterment.

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Seven Deadly Sins

Posted on January 14, 2008 | Leave a comment

It was back to the Church of the Incarnation this morning, and this time I went to Sunday School. I decided I’d join a newly started class on the Seven Deadly Sins. It seemed that discussions of topics like lust, gluttony, greed, etc. should be loaded with opportunities for lively discussion and humor. If not, I probably needed to go find another church. Aside from that, the other classes just didn’t sound interesting to me. I wasn’t disappointed. As I entered the room I asked “Is this where all the deadly sins are?” to which I got a good laugh.

Having deadly sinned a fair measure myself, I was interested to learn a few things today. One was that in order of increasing deadliness, at least one prominent theologian lists them as lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. I happen to agree with that order. Everybody lusts to some degree for example, but I think that’s far from the worst problem we’ve got. Excessive pride, on the other hand, is one of the things I find hardest to bear in another person and most likely to lead to really bad behavior.

We were all about lust today. We’ll get on with the other sins on successive Sundays apparently. I was glad to see a healthy distrust in the room for various priggish ideas related to lust. Among them was the idea that all sexual desires are sinful. My take on it is that which consumes the mind with desire while objectifying another person is lust. Regardless of what your sexual morals are or how you might joke about them, you’d have to admit that’s probably a bad thing. Especially as a habit.

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On Resolutions (with a Word from Longfellow)

Posted on January 1, 2008 | Leave a comment

Since it’s common to discuss New Year’s resolutions around this time, I’ll offer my general thoughts on them, what passes for my 2008 resolution and how it came to be.

Some of the cynicism toward resolutions that you hear these days is understandable. I clearly remember my impression of the custom two years ago. Starting in the first days of January my gym was so packed with people I’d never seen before that there was a long wait for equipment. Most irritating, but no matter – within a month they were all gone. Dramatic? Yes. Surprising? No. Getting in shape wouldn’t be the most frequently made resolution year after year if people were more successful at it. I’d been among the ghosts of February myself at least twice in previous years.

Maybe we sometimes behave like this because resolutions can be a way of voicing out loud to others something we want to do in the hopes that saying so to friends and family will somehow make it so for us. It is too easy substitute a wish for a commitment without realizing it and in the process make an empty resolution – one that doesn’t actually contain any resolve. That mistake isn’t always the end of the story. The resolve might come later. But if not…? Then the resolution soon becomes a person’s broken promise to self, and that can do pretty damaging things. Breaking a promise to someone else damages their trust in you. Breaking a promise to yourself damages your belief in your own will. In this way the failure of a single casual resolution can actually serve to undermine your determination in general – not good! I suppose real commitments are always internal first. True resolutions are great things, but wishes out loud are probably best left to that which we truly can’t control.

For many years this presented me with a problem every bit as big as my mouth. I find it hard to keep much of anything inside, and thus it has always been easy for my aspirations to become expressed wishes before they can mature into real commitments. Realizing that fact and then surpassing the problem is something that I take as one of my better marks of maturity. So to anyone that might ask my advice – still worth only what’s paid for it – it would be this: Be honest about the difference between what you’d like to do and what you are committed to doing. And if you fall into the wishing trap don’t beat yourself up. Remember that you had the best intentions, keep confident and move forward.

I avoid the wishing trap at the New Year by using the opportunity to build on something. Something that I’ve already shown myself that I’m committed to. In that way I hopefully reinforce a good thing and proceed to make it better. That brings me to my resolution for 2008, which this year was an easy choice.

Whenever I feel any animosity brewing toward another person, I plan to adjust my attitude by remembering these words from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

Isn’t that excellent? If it doesn’t strike a chord I suggest reading it again. Really. Consider some of your own enemies – or even just people you’ve been irritated with – and what their hidden sorrows might be. Reflect on some of your own and how they might have affected your behavior for the worse. Doesn’t it adjust your feelings, if only a little? Although I really am a bit of a quote hound, I stumbled on this one by complete chance. I think. The way it happened is a good story.

I travel quite a lot for business. To put it in perspective, I made platinum on two airlines in 2007. There are a lot of unavoidable frustrations and stresses that come along with that much time on the road, and during one particularly draining marathon last summer bad weather found me in Denver and left me without a flight home and with no available hotel rooms. I’d have to drive at least an hour to sleep and the next day would now be lost traveling – again. I was exhausted and very irritable. Storming away from the gate my thoughts wandered toward a lingering conflict at work and before you know it I was thinking pretty bad things toward a couple of colleagues. My frustrations with travel transfered to my frustrations with them and the result was nasty. As I disgustedly dropped into my seat on the train I tilted my head up in that way you sometimes see people do when they’ve had enough. It was only then that I saw Longfellow’s quote in a little space on the wall of the train car, almost at the ceiling. It was in one of those small spots reserved for non-commercial messages. My mood immediately shifted toward reflection. Of course my hidden malice would do nothing to improve their behavior and everything to make mine worse. That clarifying moment stuck with me and was a big help later in the year. Before jumping off the train I hastily typed the quote into my Blackberry and verified it later.

Of course I haven’t done a perfect job of keeping Longfellow’s observation at heart, but I know that the effort has made a difference. My New Year’s resolution is to ensure that it continues to do so.

Thanks, Henry.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882)

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