Down Time

I have had no agenda for the past week.  What a relief!  Life is so complicated these days that when you finally get a short spell where you don’t have any responsibility other than to exist and observe the world around you, it presents you with an opportunity to be open and observant.

We drove to Savannah last Sunday, with a stop overnight in Gainesville to see my youngest daughter for dinner.  Just the act of driving away from life’s circumstances releases the heaviness of the present.  I felt unencumbered and light.  All we had to do was talk and plan our week with no real schedule facing us.  We visited Caitlin and I marveled at how she has suddenly grown up!  She is enjoying her independence and is fully engaged in her life at school.  I think I saw her through unencumbered eyes for the first time because all I needed to do was to be with her without an agenda.

We were on our way the next morning to visit my wife’s cousin and watch him do some business in Savannah.  He created and manages a business that shows tour videos in hotels in major vacation cities.  He invited us to tag along with him for a few days while he shot some video, and since we have never explored Savannah, we combined that with a visit to some friends on Hilton Head Island, just a short drive further up the coast.

During our time in Savannah, my wife and I decided to take a city tour on one of the many open-air trolleys in Savannah.  In thirty years of marriage we had never done that.  Having been in the television production business for all those years, we had been to thousands of places working, but never as tourists.  What a new experience!  So for an hour and a half I was just a human blob absorbing everything without having to really concentrate.  As I listened to the tour guide droning on in the background, I dozed on and off and really didn’t care about what I was seeing or hearing.  It was divine!

Having no agenda frees your mind to dream and create possibilities.  That happens too rarely for most of us.  For the idle rich and comfortably retired, I imagine that being in the flow of no real pressure constantly might be boring after a while, but for me, it was a balm for my soul.  I have found myself actually dreaming up solutions to problems I face without concentrating on solving them!  How novel!

Our friends on Hilton Head took us to a Jazz Club last night for dinner and a show and I had the best time I have had in years just because I was unburdened by worries.  My spirit was able to soar with the music and I found myself getting lost in the pure joy of the moment.  I need more of this!  During the day, I had tagged along with my friend as he handled some responsibilities and errands, but I had no obligation to do anything but observe and comment while I closed my eyes and let the sun warm my face as we drove around.  He was dealing with real estate problems and other responsibilities and I knew that none of it concerned me.  How liberating!

Now I sit here on Saturday morning, a week later, wondering how the time evaporated so quickly!  When you have no agenda, everything just flows so easily that you lose track of time completely.  Tomorrow we start the long drive home, and while I long for the comfort of my own bed and the balmy breezes of Naples evenings, I also know that I have a long ‘list’ waiting for me when I get there.

So what do I learn from this, and what message of value can I pass along to you?   Take more vacations!!  It is easy to underestimate their value. 

And if you can’t take more vacations, live your life a little easier. Don’t take it all too seriously.   Remember that we are only here for a short while, and if you don’t find the opportunity to observe the beauty of the world and the loving people around you, none of the rest of your life is worth it!  Even short spells of 'no agenda' re-charge you with new energy, and make facing life's daily challenges somehow less daunting.

Can We Find More Cheese?

I read a wonderful book about 8 years ago called “Who Moved My Cheese?” by Dr. Spencer Johnson.  It is a short book that is a parable, and an amazing way to look at change in your work and in your life.  It is the story of two mice who find their cheese at the same place every day until one day they don’t!  It just stops appearing outside the mousehole door.

One mouse eventually decides that the cheese has left for good and successfully goes out to discover another source of cheese.  The other mouse insists that if he waits long enough, the cheese will reappear.  Well, guess what?  He patiently waits for the cheese to reappear (which it never does) and he ultimately dies because he cannot bring himself to believe that his cheese is really gone for good.

In life, when your cheese is moved, you have to accept that someone has moved it, and you must search for new cheese.  That is what is happening in our American society today.  Our cheese, (the way we derive our economic sustenance has moved).  Yet many of us believe that if we just wait long enough it will come back.  Sorry folks, not gonna happen!

If we continue to wait for the economic climate to change back to what we had for the last 25 years we are going to ultimately 'starve'.   Change is needed.  Our leaders must look for cheese in another place since it is they who have the power to regulate and change conditions.  And herein lies the biggest problem we face.

The opposition party in today’s political universe is a party that really has no interest in change (looking for more cheese) or actually governing.  The Republican party has been co-opted by extremist voices like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Glen Beck.  They feed the party base’s frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it.  They turn obstructionist rather than bi-partisan, so they prevent the administration from actually dealing with the crises that face us.  They oppose regulation of Wall Street; they want to preserve the culture of lobbyist privilege and influence; they preach fear and the paranoia of Socialism, Naziism, and Communism hiding behind the curtains of the Oval Office. 

Elections, as agents of change,  tend to be determined by events and economic conditions rather than rationality. So the possibility of Tea Bagger Republicans winning big in the elections next fall because of the slow pace of change, the rising level of unemployment and the administration’s difficulty dealing with problems that require creative bi-partisan solutions is real.  What will that mean?

"The result would be that the United States would essentially become ungovernable in the middle of an ongoing economic disaster.  The point of all this is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter" says Paul Krugman of the New York Times.  When Rush Limbaugh and his ilk made their appearance on the front lines of ‘talk radio’ back in the early 90’s I instinctively knew that they would be bad news for America.  I could never have imagined their present prominence, however, or their twisted arguments trying to stop positive change in its tracks.

The mice who believe the cheese will reappear if they just wait long enough may succeed in shackling the mice who are trying to find the new cheese to the front door of the mousehole!

What's So Bad About Universal Health Care?

Last night I happened to be channel cruising on my cable system and dropped into Michael Moore’s documentary “SICKO”, examining America's health care crisis.  I had heard a lot about it over the past year or two but never had the opportunity to view it.

RENT IT OR SEE IT SOMEHOW!!

It is classic Michael Moore in terms of his hyperbolic yet understated reaction to what he finds when he explores the health care systems of Canada, the UK, and France, and then compares those systems to what we have here in the US, but the people he meets and the stories they tell will give you a sense of shame and anger that will remain with you for a long time.

God Bless him, he goes to all these countries and walks the halls of the hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices, and actually talks (in more than 30 second sound bites) to real people who participate in these systems—both health care workers and patients.  He holds round-table discussions with expatriated Americans who live in these countries and who have experienced both systems as well as native born citizens in each country.

The picture that emerges is shocking, really.  All the myths that health industry lobbyists would have you believe regarding long waits and citizen dissatisfaction are just that – myths.  I am sure that some people are unhappy with some things, no system is perfect.  That is endemic to any bureaucracy.  But the picture that emerges of the lives of people who are not always thinking about being bankrupted by medical costs will give you pause……they seem so…..relaxed!   They all seem content with the health care systems in their own countries, and are amused and sympathetic with our preoccupation with cost; and horrified with the lack of readily available care, both critical and preventative, that  we experience here in America.  I guess you would expect as much from a Michael Moore documentary.

But, if you listen closely and really ponder the difference between what you see on the screen and how we all feel about the care we get here in the US, you will be so disgusted and shamed by what you see and hear that you will want to call your representatives in Congress and tell them to get off their fat asses and just change the system!  The tales of despair and downright neglect for our people are ….overwhelming!

I am left with the images of desperate economically underprivileged people  remaining sick and  no one caring about them.  I see case after case of middle class and working class citizens bankrupt or unable to get needed treatment because insurance companies deny them coverage or benefits.

And by the way, how come anyone over 65 in our country is not desperate when it comes to things medical?  Could it be that Medicare takes the worry out of getting care?  Omigod, does that mean we are socialists at heart??  A universal health care system for old people?  What about the rest of us???

I am not preaching socialism here, I am preaching humanism and morality for God’s sake!  Look at the statistics!  Our rankings in the international community for life expectancy, mortality, infant mortality and illness among the population fall lower than 30th place in all cases!

These are facts!  We don’t care about our population!  Money is the driving force behind health care in this country.  Private hospitals deny care to people who can’t pay, and are content to see people die in their emergency rooms waiting for transport to public hospitals!  Insurance companies are only concerned with how much money they can squeeze out of their enrollees and not what care they actually need.  There is no focus on preventative care here in America, while in other societies there is a constant preoccupation with preventative measures.

Wake up everyone!  We don’t have it so good here!  Our priorities are not right!  Watch this documentary and you decide, but watch it you must!  And then, for all our sakes, take some kind of action!  Before it is too late......

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