Starting Here and Starting Now

Old habits die hard. I keep a wallet crammed with foolscap. It works out well unless you were to rob me, as there's rarely any money in it, though not necessarily because of the foolscap.

Many years ago, in a galaxy far away I couldn't let go of my anger and lived mostly in a state of rage. I was lucky to find someone who could help me, but he insisted I had to help myself. He came up with the foolscap.

Every time something angered me, I had to write it down on a piece of paper and put that paper in my wallet. But it had to be on its own, separate, piece of paper. No doubling up. By the end of the day, I could have hundreds of slips of paper in my wallet. 

I then had to review ALL these slips each night and on a different sheet of paper, write down all the items I was still ANGRY about. Then, every week before I saw him, I had to review seven pieces of paper, and transfer anything I was still angry about to a separate, clean sheet and bring that to our weekly conversation.

Within a month, I had no lists. I'd review the slips of paper of all the things every day that made me angry and realized I had no idea what was written on most of them or what the words I could read meant or concluded whatever had spun me up wasn't that important after all. Practical magic. 

How about this week especially as we approach the anniversary of 9/11, we try that? Live your life and allow others to live theirs and try to be more mindful. There was a time in this country when we disagreed with each other without being disagreeable. But not anymore.  

Some people tune to certain TV shows just to yell at the talking head who’s making a fortune yelling back at them. Others of us read a newspaper aloud and follow every line of the article with a scowl, a gesture, or a deprecation. And we keep getting louder and angrier about more things, and more people, every day. We don't know how to get off the escalator-and most of us don't even know we're on one.

Passion is fine and necessary. If our primordial ancestors didn't care if they evolved and developed legs to carry them from the pond and then grew lungs, every day would be Friday, if you follow my drift. It's the grinding though, that is wearing us out; the pitched battles we are waging to benefit who knows who or for what purpose.

Do you want to start to fix how we now get along with one another, but you don't want to use the foolscap? Tell me five things this country was angry about before the airplanes on September 11th, 2001. Go ahead, I'll wait. Too hard? Then give me three things, Still too hard?

Did you say you want to take a break from all this head noise and hate to concentrate on the real and critical issues we face as a nation? Then let’s start to do that, starting today. I'll make a note of where we were and when we started to heal. 
-bill kenny