Parallel Parable Parallaxisms

I promised myself not to open the Book of the Future this week.  I wanted surprises to greet me should I hear or read about what's going on in the world.

Surprises ... if I want surprises, I should open a dictionary in a language I don't know.  Is that a surprise, though?

The past few days I have let my thoughts drift more than usual.  I have pondered world news and wondered why I see the same accusations / responses / behaviours all over again.

I have put myself in the place of some of the countries as if a nation has a personality.

I have asked myself in what way is an accused or insulted nation like myself.

Then, a personal issue that has crept along the periphery of my thoughts came forward.

Many weeks ago, I felt happy to say I was down to 222 pounds in body weight (you can estimate the stones or kilograms on that one for yourself).

An event - a personal issue - occurred afterward that has pushed my weight back up to 238 pounds.

My wife and I ran into a colleague of mine, Dr. N, a department chair at a local for-profit career college.  Dr. N asked me if I was interested in teaching a class for her on Saturday.  I said yes and agreed to stop by her office to meet the new academic dean.

During my meeting with the dean, I discovered she is originally from Connecticut but her husband is from the South - she ended up getting her academic degree down here.

Further into our conversation, I found out that the dean considered me a "bench player" because, although I had excellent feedback from the students in the classes I had taught there, I was up against newer instructors with more advanced degrees and longer time in the postsecondary education business.  Plus, the dean said, I should consider getting a more advanced postsecondary degree (presumably in education) in order to "broaden my horizon."

Thus, although the department chair had wanted me to teach a Saturday class for her, I was being put into a substitute instructor position while they brought in someone from a local university to teach the class because the class had been moved to Thursday and the new instructor could teach that day (Saturday is a holy day for the new instructor, I was told).

So, here I found myself in an odd position.  I had decided to stop teaching at ITT Tech several months back,  came back to the local campus at the invitation of my former department chair and then was told, in a sense, that they didn't really need me after all.

I felt like I had been invited to my own birthday party just to be insulted by my friend.

It's an emotion, in retirement at middle age, not to be wished for, I can tell you.

With the memories of that emotion strong right now, with my weight pushing my belly up and over my belt, I step into the shoes of a nation.

Pick a nation that has publicly proclaimed it has been insulted lately - Iran, Israel, China, United States, Cypriot (Turkish or Greek), Korea (North or South) - and I am there.  Pick a nation's leader, a religion, a religious leader, a corporation or corporate leader who has been picked on and I am there.

I do not know what the Book of the Future says about what will happen next in the international business of nuclear weapon proliferation.  I do not know who will be the next Supreme Court Justice of the United States, Prime Minister of the UK or leader of Iraq.  I do not know how we will convert people who don't give a rat's ass about the environment to care about recycling or the "green" movement in general.

I sit here in complete ignorance, my emotional state a mixture of depression, boredom and happiness.

Not a cloud in the sky, the light streaming into the room casting bright green shadows.  And yet, Mr. Positive, Enthusiastic Optimism feels a dark weight pressing down on his shoulder blades.

I am a person.  I feel aches and pains in my body and emotions in my brain and glands like everybody else.

Most days, I ignore my bodily self as a byproduct of the thought process I was born into.

This week, I am paying more attention to myself as a body to see what being a real, complete person is all about, putting aside thoughts of the impermanence of the self or other ideas that a thoughtless body is [probably] barely aware of.

Have you been told you're a "bench player," a second-teamer, a substitute when or if the rest of the team thinks you're needed?

The [non]proliferation of nuclear weaponry.  The sovereign right to decide how the people will be ruled.  The product mix you know the customer will buy versus what the marketing department says the customer wants, the board of directors be damned.  Keeping the faith for billions while delicately handling how thousands have lost their faith through the misbehaviour of a few.  The international cooperation of space exploration, taking turns such that some will sense they are being left behind.

Changes.

Being honest with ourselves.

I'm one person.  I don't own much but I own a lot.  By world standards, I am a rich person, not wealthy or filthy rich, free to live a healthy life and spend money in most any way I please.  I am a product of two people and the result of billions more.

Because my name is common, having been used by a member of the U.S. Congress, an actor, an automobile dealership owner and many writers, to name but a very few, I am relatively anonymous.  I exist but I don't exist.

Half the week is gone.  Half a week of watching the world at work.  Half a week of watching life on this planet grow and consume itself over and over.  Half a week of knowing that the other half will pass by just as quickly.

In the world of for-profit postsecondary education, I am a bench player.  Although that world is part of my past, what does it say about my future?  How, in the world of highly effective people, should I sharpen my saw?  Have I slipped into the world of the chattering class?

You're only as relevant as you believe yourself to be and act on that belief in the moment.

I have control of the food I consume and the exercise I put into my daily habits to burn off the excess calories I consumed knowingly/unknowingly.  I decide how I'm going to react to others no matter in what temporary emotional states I may find myself.

I am also every one of you, you being a person, a people, and/or a group.  We have control of our lives.  We consume more than we need but we have the ability to control both our consumption (including our reactions to others that cause emotion-based changes to our consumption) and how we exercise to burn off excess consumption and increase our strength/health.

I can guess what the Book of the Future says we're going to do next if we keep drawing lines in the sand and insulting each other like children in a playground.  Instead, are we not adults?  Do we not have wisdom upon which to draw mutually-agreeable conclusions?

Don't wait until next week to see what the Book of the Future says you're going to do next.  Be the first on your block to take the initiative to step over the line and see life from another perspective.  Perhaps you'll find that both sides are insulting each other for no reason.  Then, you can put aside the old ways of insulting and kicking sand and sit down to talk like reasonable adults.

A few more days of peaceful ignorance and then I'll look at what my colleagues, associates, insect farms, computer programmers and stack of pencils have to say about the future.  Until then, I'm going to enjoy being me, with all my wonderful imperfections, insect bites and personal issues I couldn't see because I blinded myself emotionally from living freely in the moment.