Little Fish, Big River, Bigger City

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special bulletin on the state of the human race....

Those words always send a shock through me. Sometimes I think I should just skip listening to the newsbreaks as I'm always floored by humans and the insanity that we're capable of. Amidst the devastating nightclub fire from pyrotechnics at a Great White concert in Rhode Island and the news of an 80 year old Newspaper endor who was mugged of $400 and killed on his way to work is today's "snowball" story.

I'm sure I don't have all the facts right, but the gist of it is this: some girls were in a snowball fight and one of the father's came back to the scene and began arguing with other parents. He then left the scene and returned hours later and fired a gun into a group of young girls, five shots...one girl, a ten year old was struck in the head and is now in critical condition.

It makes me think the human race is in critical condition when something so traditional and fun, like simply playing in the snow and tossing it at each other can turn into a gun-firing nightmare. What is with people? What are we doing to ourselves? The girl who was hit by the bullet was not even involved in the original snowball fight and regardless, why would any argument over tossing snow necessitate gunshots??? I'm just at a loss over things like this. It's constant and it's beyond belief. Yesterday police were looking for witnesses to a road rage incident which resulted in the death of one man. We're talking about just driving here, people. Driving...moving from one place to another. The story goes that a man got out of a car, jumped into the back of a pickup, grabbed a shovel then started smashing the rear window of the pickup. The driver sped off with the man still in the bed of his truck, still swinging the shovel. The driver then struck another car which resulted in his death and the serious injury of a woman and her daughter innocently driving along in the other vehicle.

I recall the incident where I was doing nothing but riding my bike along a lonely road in New Mexico on my cross-country cycling trip. It was a couple of days after New Year's, early, on a perfectly clear winter morning. I heard a car behind me and I hugged the white paint of the shoulderless highway as best I could. I was way out in farm country, the kind of place where houses and ranches were miles and miles apart. I felt something strike my leg fairly hard as I looked up to see the open window of an old white pickup driving by. The truck was loaded down with hay and bits of it flew off as the pickup sped up and drove away. I was in such disbelief that I turned around and went back to see what hit me. I was filled with the hope that it was simply a rock kicked up by the tires. Nope, it was a roll of black electrical tape.

What on God's Green Earth possesses us as a race to be violent to each other? Why do we have this stupid ability and worse, why do so many of us act out in violence at all levels against innocent people just minding their own business. We may never know and as I look for comfort in this day and age where one would hope for peace but war looms on the horizon, I realize that our penchant toward hurting one another most likely stems all the way back to the beginning of time. I don't know if it's bad chemicals in our brains, the way we were brought up, the environment we live in or whatever. I do know that it's unnecessary yet it remains a fact of life. Humans can simply be good and evil all at once. Whenever I see a movie about the battle between good and evil, the good guys and the bad guys, I'm reminded that the struggle between good and evil is pervasive.

I sometimes dream of a world where we could separate everyone into two places. If you physically hurt someone else, you go to Evilville and if you're good, you remain free to do as you please, live and let live. I wonder if eventually, over time, Evilville would die out and leave us with just the good in humanity.

Another thing I noted during my ride was how a small town could somehow have its own personality. It seemed that if one person in the town was a grumpy smart ass with an attitude that an entire town could be the same way because they got it in their head to follow suit. I also found towns where there was nothing but kind, generous, caring people. They followed a different drum beat. It makes me think that if you're a good soul, you should do everything you can to just keep spreading good things because what you do, good or bad can be infectious to those around you.

I used to buy a rose or two every Sunday during the months following 9-11. I would walk through a neighborhood, sometimes for over an hour until I found a little old lady. I would hand her the rose and tell her to have a nice day. Sometimes they stood there for a minute in disbelief, sometimes they hugged me while crying. All I know is that that simple act probably brightened my day more than theirs because I felt the power behind a simple act of kindness.

I always sort of hoped that somehow my little routine would catch on, that others would give it a try until someday, all across the world, people everywhere were buying flowers and giving them to lonely little old ladies or men until peace prevailed and crime and viloence vanished. As far as I know, not even one of my friends ever followed suit despite my urgings. Eventually, I myself even gave up as I felt hopeless against so much history of man's inhumanity to man. I never knew if I made any difference. I never knew if a single rose rippled outward in an avalanche of other good deeds like the movie "Pay It Forward."

I guess I got the idea from my Grandmother Dorothy who used to keep an entire large dresser drawer full of cards and small meaningless trinkets on hand. I used to criticize her for it, but after she passed away I had to clean out the drawer. Sitting alone in her dark bedroom and going threw that drawer, I woke up to how selfish I can be and how pitifully shallow I can act. It was at that moment that I realized that all she was doing was keeping an arsenal of kindness for whenever a birthday needed celebrating or a day needed brightening up. She was a master at giving kind cards and gifts to others to spread cheer and love even though each day she was painfully battling cancer and losing. I woke up to how selfish I can be and how pitifully shallow I can act. I realized that it wasn't about me, me, me. No, life is about somehow living in a way that the good you do is remembered and then passed on. So, I'm no hero or angel as I could do so much more than I do to spread good each day instead of being my selfish little self 99% of the time. But I still try hard at times to be a link in the chain of kindness that was passed on to me by my Grandma's selflessness.

No, I'm not perfect. I've done my share of stupid things and I've hurt people who don't deserve it by being a self-centered jerk. I'm sorry for that and that's my one regret in life. That I ever did anything to cause someone else pain in any manner, emotional or otherwise. The best I can do is go forward from here and keep trying to fight the "evil tide" of snowball shooting sprees and road rage shovel attacks by continuing to be kind and giving. I'll never be perfect, not even close... but I can strive for excellence. And I can hope that somehow, someway it will ripple out and gently touch the hearts of people who shoot 10 year old girls, of people who kill 80 year old men over a handful of dollars.

But i can't do it alone. I need help out here, people. I doubt that any of us will ever be Mother Theresa but I do believe that if we all do enough little things, each day, whenever we see the chance that it will add up. Sure, there will always be painful disasters like earthquakes and forest fires. That's life and the nature of our planet which is nothing more than a frail rock hurtling through the endless void of space for the time being. I don't believe that humans need to add to our natural disasters by being violent to one another, though. Perhaps the reason I've decided to eventually become a writer is so that I can pass on how much I learned from my Grandma about transcending the evils of man with small senseless acts of kindness.

It's not necessary to spend all day every day just making the world better each minute that we're alive. All we need to do is just act where we can, here and there, now and then no matter how small it seems. Like small raindrops that eventually erode the highest jagged mountains into gently rolling hills, perhaps, maybe, just maybe, good can win out over evil. Think about it. Better yet, act on it. Why? Because I'm really tired of listening to the news as it is now, aren't you? We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

Today I realized what a large role our attitude plays in our lives. I have been trying to work out as hard as I could the past four weeks to get back into shape again after neglecting my body by not lifting weights the last several months. I spent the weekend being sore and limping about from overworked hamstrings, lower back and just about everything else. I went to bed around midnight and woke up at 5:30 wanting nothing more than to roll over inside my warm covers to go back into slumberland. Instead, I decided that I felt great, that I was ready to attack, that sleep is for the lazy.

I arrived around 6 and started going through my upper body routine. It wasn't so bad afterall, in fact, I felt pretty darn good. I used my small notebook to refer to last week's upper body workout and the weights I used for each muscle group. As I neared the end of my workout, I started on the biceps...60 pound cable curls working up to 90 pounds. After that was over, I flipped back to see what weight I started at on triceps.

"WHOOPS!!!" I had accidentally reversed the tricep and bicep portions of my routine. Not only that, but I had gone through all of my biceps exercises at a full 20 pounds heavier than I'd normally been working out at. "C'mon...no way!" But there it was, a full 20 to 30 pounds less weight was used on every set last week. I had been reading the tricep levels instead, sure enough. I finished up the workout amazed that my body had been holding out on me to such a large degree. Or was it my mind? While driving home, I pondered. I wondered. Just how many other areas of my life am I lifting 20 pounds less than I can? And how much more can I be doing based on my attitude and what I believe in. How many times do I just float through something thinking I'm giving it my all when I could actually do 50% to a 100% more. I shudder to think of it.

I have a small paperweight sitting on my desk. It reads,

"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"

Hhhm, now I wonder, "what would I attempt do if I knew how much I actually COULD do instead of what I think I can do?" So this kind of circles around to knowing your limits and then ignoring them somehow. I wish I could trick my bank account into being 50% larger. I wish I could trick my brain into thinking it's 50% smarter. But how? How do you trick the very brain that is doing the actual thinking about tricking itself? I'm not really sure but maybe I can figure it out. Maybe I can read faster, learn faster, be smarter and be more financially successful by simply thinking I am. I just tried writing an extra couple of zeroes on the end of my bank account balance. Aah...that looks better already. Now to just photoshop my picture onto the cover of Forbes.

Considering that this post is 50% more boring than anything else I've written, I'll change the subject in an attempt to save it. On Friday, I met my friend Antonella for lunch. We caught up while chatting about a number of things. One of the subjects was "fulfillment" and how to find it. There's such a fine balance between keeping a roof over your head with a paycheck and having a job that you love. Often, we end up in jobs that simply bore us to death but we're afraid to let go of comfort in a daring leap of faith to chase a dream. So what do you do? Even more complicated is the whole issue of finding your passion in life. Yea, what does one do with their life to feel happy? Antonella explained how she loved just traveling and hanging out and while she's not lazy by any means, she'd much rather be in Europe touring around than at a boring job. I couldn't agree more. But that's not real life, at least it's not for most of us.

So how do you go about finding your passion? Your calling? Well, I can speak to that a tad as I recently found mine after a long, winding life that bounced from one thing to another like a pinball flying off of bumpers as bells clanged and lights flashed all around me. I've been a bit of a scatterbrain so far, always chasing one thing or another but never really settling on anything in particular for very long. I happened to pick up a book by Martha Beck titled "Finding Your Own North Star." I loved this book. It takes you through exercises by asking you questions about your worst situations and your ideal situations. Bit by bit as you do the exercises, you come to realize what you really enjoy in life. You get tuned into that inner voice that has nudged you your whole life toward something even though you never took notice or worse, you chose to flat out ignore it.

You see, it turns out that we often live for "others" or our "everyone" which, in reality is NOT "everyone" but rather it's a small group of people we assign as our "everyone." We sign up for something or skip doing something because "everyone will say this, or everyone will think THAT." Um, okay...but WHO, exactly is "EVERYONE?" It turns out that our everyone is usually just one or two people who we CHOOSE to be our EVERYONE. We then end up trying to live our lives according to what WE think THEY think. Yea, there's another flaw...we don't always get it right in terms of what they are thinking so there we are, living so that we can "please everyone" and get their approval. Meanwhile, we're probably just dreaming it all up. It might be that "everyone" doesn't even care what we do.

I have often done things, said things, acted in certain ways just to try and please certain people in life. I've knocked myself out looking for approval from certain people all for naught. You see, in the end, life is really about finding the YOU that you want to be, doing the things YOU enjoy doing. For me, I discovered that I love little adventures and I love writing so now I'm working on making a living at that. Sure, I might end up getting a pile of jobs between here and success, but I've finally discovered what I love so from here on out, "side jobs" as I call them are just that...a way to keep a roof over my head while I pursue my dreams. Eventually, my dreams will grow and build and pay for themselves if I stick with it.

How do I know this? Well, it's just a fact of life. Anything that you consistently apply yourself to, you get better at it. The body and brain just take over and tasks or activities that are hard at first eventually become easier. Over time, many things we once thought impossible become child's play for us.

I think about my first time behind the wheel of a car. I bounced off of the curb, I could barely stay in a lane on corners, my mind was filled with stoplights, turn signals, speedometer, steering, speed limits, other cars...AAAHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Well, that was a long time ago. Now I end up driving somewhere and arrive only to say "huh, I actually don't remember one detail of driving here but here I am...I must have been thinking of something else the whole way."

The same goes for reading. I still recall how I used to open books about 32 years ago and the words were just black ink on the page. Only the pictures made sense. I recall when others would read to me and it was like magic that they could look at this thing and somehow make sense of it all. I used to marvel at people typing without looking at the keyboard. Now I can type and read and I don't even give it a second thought. See how this all works? The impossible eventually becomes second nature if you stick with something long enough.

In any event, your attitude and the words that you say to yourself play the biggest part in taking something on. At each moment, you can choose to look at something you and you can say "oh man, this is impossible." Likewise, you can look at the same thing and think, "oh, this is CAKE!" It just all depends on how you want to approach it.

Last summer, I drove down the Pacific Coast on a camping trip. I remember seeing a couple who was biking from Seattle to San Francisco and I thought to myself how utterly impossible it would be to spend four weeks touring on a bike. It simply can't be done by me. Little did I know that just a few months later I would spend twice that long on my own bike and I would travel almost five times the distance.

How did my attitude change from thinking bike touring would be impossible to something I could actually do? Well, I simply looked at it differently. When I was in my car driving down the coast it made biking seem impossible in comparison. It's hard enough to drive, let alone bike! But then, when I looked into things like sailing around the world solo, climbing Mt. Everest and kayaking from Seattle to Alaska. Okay, well when you compare all that, a cross-country bike ride seems like walk in the park next to those things. Yea, suddenly it looked VERY easy...relatively speaking. It's all a matter of how you approach something and the place you're standing when you look at it.

Well, I've probably bored you all enough but perhaps there is something in here that will flip a little light switch for you in your thinking. Perhaps you've wanted to go after something but felt it was impossible. Perhaps you have no idea what on earth you want to do in life. I'm here to tell you that you've got everything you need to do whatever you wish, right between your ears. Your brain has the power to dream a dream and it has the power to see that dream as impossible or easy. The cool thing is, you're the one who gets to decide. Every moment of every day you get to choose how you see things. Like hitting the gym even when you're dog tired, if you just make the step out the door to show up, that's 90% of the battle. The other 10% is just thinking it's all easy while you go through the motions.

One last thought for this Mundane Monday posting: no matter what you decide to take on... if you think it's impossible, just remember that there is probably someone, somewhere who can look at the same thing and tell you it's easy because they did it. The journey of a thousand miles begins with that first small step and no path is a perfectly straight line. Just dare to dream, dare to take the leap of faith and then stick with it until you're eating cake. There's a reason dessert comes at the end: the sweet stuff is always sweeter after you've plowed through the main course, one small bite at a time.