M The online social nexus for the active idealist.
“What do you do when there’s a part of you that you hate?”
“Accept it. We all have a dark side. We wish we could deny it, but we can’t. It’s there.”
– the Bourne Supremacy, Robert Ludlum, 1987
I heard a story of a guy who took his motorcycle and created a burnout smiley face on the floor of his garage. That sounds like mess of melted tire rubber, a lot of smoke, and a less-than-inviting smell. I also have visions of cleaning all that melted rubber off the underside of a bike and having to replace a $250 rear tire. While all that might be a downer, having one would be fun.
The bike.
Not the burnout smiley face on my garage floor.
Come on, surely you knew which I was talking about.
Right?
I just got back from hanging out in Orlando with these guys for the 2007 IMN Orlando cohort. It was an experience filled with good conversations about the future of leadership, tools for helping people become more human, and really good food (Thanks, Alex!). It culminated in a two-day conference known as Humana 2.0. My friends Sam and Rachel from Sheffield, England, have lots of good pictures on their sites and Leslie is posting some good notes of some of the sessions.
Tyler Durden had it wrong. We do have a great war.
“Great warrior? Wars not make one great.�
– Yoda
So what does? Some, like Alexander, are indeed remembered because of war. But other than bringing the entire known world under one very short lived empire, what was the point? Ok, so we also remember Hitler, but we vilify such as he. And so Alexander and Hitler both make Yoda’s point.
Self serving greatness can be long remembered, but is honored only by those who seek the same ends. There are some, however, whose greatness is difficult to dispute. These are the ones who were not wrapped up in themselves, but in the greatness of others. They focused their attention and energies on the welfare and care of people in need. Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Theresa. These are the people we remember. Great actors from just 30 years ago are already mostly forgotten by this generation. These people have their day in the sun and if they use their influence rightly, like Bono, they can have lasting effects on the rest of humanity.
We all have a choice
How the present plays out
Like a staged masterpiece
Or a corner-bound beggar
Most of us fall
Somewhere in between
The extremes of the actor
And the loss of the quitter
On this middle ground
We walk and we fall
And again as we rise
We learn how to move
Through trial and hardship
Through love and great joy
We find all along
One distinct constant thread
That moving and standing
Are two different things
That standing like sitting
Goes nowhere at all
So to find greatest pleasures
And to love in the end
Begs movement of lovers
And riches found there
This place where the worlds meet
This convergence of shores
Gives all the great option
Of heaven or hell
To choose one or the other
Is a matter of course
To set sights on others
Or stand by yourself
A quest of years finally came to the end of the beginning in a twilight conversation on the steps of a long, squat, dilapidated building. Lives that had but brushed against each other finally took converging paths on the tail of the setting sun: the young man finally met the sage. Having no personal experience of this sage, only loose and scattered tales of him, he knew little of what to expect. But he told this man the tale of his dream and his dad.
The sage smiled and posed a question.
“If tomorrow you decided you wanted to change how your house looked, how would you go about this?�
“I would have to decide what I wanted it to look like and then figure out how to get it there.�
“Right. What else?�
“You actually have to do it?�
“Good.�
“So what�
“Do you want to change the world?�
“Yeah, I do.�
“What do you want it to look like?�
A young child once heard that his father had wanted to study psychology and then spend his life trying to change how people think. But when he asked his father, he was told not only that it wasn’t true, but that it wasn’t even possible.
“One man cannot do that,� his father declared.
“Must’ve been a dream,� he mused.
Years later, I am told, this same boy wonders at the truth here. He also wonders about the dream. Was this a foretelling of the future or at least some mystical directional signpost? If it was not something told him of his father, then from where did the memory come?
