Vain Vein

I held a branch in my hand this morning. On the branch were green, drying leaves and seed pods of the sweetgum tree. Also lichen, mold and bacteria. In other words, common life on this planet. I can find no happier quiet moment so I threw the branch into the woods to enjoy more life with the rest of us - I picked up a broom and swept dead leaves off the driveway.

I had wanted to fly my RC plane today but the wind is too strong for my toy-flying ability (perfect for my toy-crashing enjoyment, however). Instead, I'll spend a moment here and then go back outside, take a walk in the area around my house and then read a book or two.

While reading the background story for an Aristophanes comedy, I juxtaposed my life on both today and the days of Athenian rule. The Athenians had defeated Persian rule and were in the middle of a relatively peaceful period before eventually seeing the defeat of their navy and subsequent decline. Fast forward 2500 years and we now have a planet completed divided into local kingdoms we call countries, some of them based on the Athenian concept of democracy and some based on the religious concept of theocracy. Monarchy or hereditary rule still exists.

I see my species in all its wonder, now or 5000 years ago, 5000 years from now or 10000 years ago. We desire variety. We desire conquest of one skill. We live because someone beside us discovered a creative way to advance our habits of living.

I am not fully conscious or conscientious. I am only aware of myself in the local environment and extend my thinking to include myself in the cosmos. I know my capacity to love is limited. In all the above cases, I learn every moment how to expand my understanding and practice of living with others.

I belong to this planet. I breath the planet's air which is full of pollen, seeds, bacteria, fungi, viruses, insects, gases, molecules, atoms, smells, wind, rain, smoke, sunshine, radio signals, and dust. I am completely a part of my environment, in the food I eat, the water I drink, the skin cells that fall off of me.

So, no matter how I see myself in the mirror, no matter what societal clues I decide to label myself with, I am an Earth-bound being with an average 80-year lifespan to use as a member of my species.

My species is composed of billions of beings with many archetypes dominating our lifestyles. I see every archetype as essential to our species' survival. I also see that all of us can find ways to laugh at our lifestyles. We succeed when we seek a balance between archetypal lifestyles, knowing that archetypes rise and fall in popularity with respect to time and boredom at seeing the same archetype over and over. We want to see ourselves reflected back to us at some point ("I was born; therefore, I am important as myself and an example of others like me to the rest of my species.").

As we grow older and discover the power to motivate and control the behaviours of others, we have a natural tendency to associate with others like us and convince/coerce others to be like us. In a balanced world, we would completely accept the behaviours of others who have chosen not to be like us, knowing that once we discover our archetype tendencies, we tend not to change ourselves. At the same time, we would continue to be and act like ourselves, knowing that some behaviours are free of archetyping and that we're members of a malleable species so we will benefit from the new discoveries within the common behaviours we share (e.g., eating, breathing, muscle movement, thinking, family-rearing).

We don't live in a balanced world. Some archetypes clash. Most of us display characteristics of more than one archetype. Some of us fear the influence of other archetypes on us, our colleagues and our children. We don't want to have to think all the time about how a particular archetypal behaviour is beneficial or detrimental to our set of behaviours so we find ways, using a predetermined set of thoughts, to avoid or exclude that particular archetype. Perfectly natural behaviour - nothing the matter with feeling comfortable with who you are. As long as...

[Sometimes I wish my brain synapses were stronger so that I could better hold all seven billion of us and our myriad behaviours in my brain and not in an external computer program that requires extra maintenance to get the data I need to write these thoughts down. If I only had the money to run my own species study and promotion institute. Imagine the possibilities of having the means to study every human behaviour and build them up so that we all find ways to live with each other positively, instead of using "us vs. them" deterrent behaviour modification methods to manipulate crowd behaviour. But I digress.]

Do you know the phrase "pick on somebody your own size"? It's supposed to mean that a person who wants to fight will find a smaller opponent or victim in order to guarantee victory for the initiator of the fight. Some people also call it the "kick the dog" syndrome (the boss yells at the father, the father argues with the mother, the mother lashes out at the son and the son has no one to pass the violent behaviour to but the dog).

Life is not fair. I find my happiness in knowing that statement is true. Children get brain cancer in the womb. Good citizens die in automobile smashups for no good reason. Therefore, I seek solutions that benefit us as a species knowing that as individuals we may never have want we want or need.

I do not expect our species to unite on any one issue with the same set of beliefs. We want diversity of behaviours just like we want ecological diversity to ensure the air we breathe contains a mixtures of substances to support our biological systems. We live in a complicated ecosystem and should learn to live with complicated answers to the questions we ask about the solutions we seek.

What I cannot see today is how to keep channeling our violent behaviours into positive output. Of course, sports is a ready example. I enjoyed pummeling kids when I was a 10-year old football tackle just as much as the next kid, even though I didn't have the burning desire to go on to the next level of weight training. These days, I enjoy watching players on the field try to win the game for my side.

In business, I've always sought winning solutions and tried to make sure I won or was on the winning team, using all the legal means at my disposal to keep other companies from winning. I don't enter contests to lose (maybe there are those who do?). Of course, the desire to win is not necessarily a violent behaviour but the two are not mutually exclusive, either. We talk about a win-win situation but often when we win a contract or successfully conclude a business transaction, we celebrate victory while somebody else feels the loss, violence at a lesser degree (more mental than physical, in other words).

Grit. Determination. These are positive means to express our "fight" (from fight-or-flight) and violent behaviour.

Love. Understanding. These are other positive ways to think and act.

How do we put the two previous paragraphs together for positive everyday living, knowing that no two of us act exactly alike and life is not fair? It's a question we can't answer in a single sentence. It takes individualized approaches to the problem. One person and one day at a time. In fact, we will never answer the question because remember that we crave newness. Peace and quiet and disruption and violence all find ways to exhibit themselves in our interaction with one another - every behaviour will negatively rule the day for someone in an unfair manner, despite our best efforts to turn everything positive for everyone.

That's why I look at the bigger picture. I accept life as it is and let others describe life the way they want it for themselves. For me, the bigger picture is getting us to see each other as members of the same species and go from there, while hoping that we'll continue our species' push to explore the universe. Local issues still have to be resolved locally (although we as a species can see local issues all over the globe and reach out to help, including natural disasters and sets of local issues that a global application or approach can solve).

I picked up a tree branch today and it caused these words to pour out. I didn't hear the tree fall in the forest but it sure is hearing me type!