Small Things

by Neal Lemery

published in the Tillamook County Pioneer, 1/19/2022

We live in a complicated and interconnected world, a world where a volcanic eruption in the South Pacific creates sound we can hear, alters our air pressure, and sends tsunami waves up our beaches and rivers. Natural and political forces from other places affect our lives, requiring us to respond and alter our lives. We can search data bases and communicate effortlessly with people all over the world. The enormity of all of that is often overwhelming. It is easy to feel insignificant, ineffective, the problems of our lives too big to handle.

Yet, it is the small things in our lives that are often the most important and the most transformative.

I’m joining others this week in donating blood. Being part of the Red Cross blood drive in my town has been something new for me, part of my efforts during the pandemic to do something meaningful for others in need. I’ve learned it is good for me, too, helping me to feel part of something bigger, making a difference, even saving lives. I feel involved and I feel I’m acting for the common good.

Recently, I couldn’t help but overhear part of a conversation between good friends who were digging deep into sobriety and personal accountability. There was a sharing of experiences and the giving of heartfelt advice and encouragement. I tried to give them their privacy, yet I felt the energy of their friendship, their mutual respect for each other and their friendship, and their passion for improving lives and building a community based on knowledge and mutual positive regard. Those golden conversations occur a lot, I think, the sharing of experience and wisdom, the love for a friend, building up rather than condemnation and rejoicing in the misfortunes of others.

That experience reminded me of the deep conversations on addiction I had with a son, one on one, digging in deep to the heart of the dilemmas and questions we both had. We loved each other, we trusted each other, and we both wanted to move on with our lives and deal with the elephant in the living room: addiction. We were both tired of feeling angry and not finding resolution, both wanting to be loved and to give love. I cherished those hard conversations with him.

When he invited me to his AA meeting, proudly introducing me to the group, I experienced the trust everyone there had with each other, and their passion for changing their lives. I felt my relationship with my son change then, and I grew. Part of that growth was painful, and included recognizing some uncomfortable, hard truths about me. That recognition, I have come to realize, is part of my own growing and changing.

Such work may seem like small talk, small work that doesn’t make much of a difference in the world. Yet it does. Such conversations, such truth telling and empowering changes lives. A changed life changes other lives and changes our communities. Hope and faith find their voices and people find the strength to change.

The storms in our lives often give us renewed faith and strength to endure and to change. Dolly Parton reminds us “storms make trees take deeper roots.” By believing in ourselves and our own and collective goodness, we gain strength, we become the healthier giant trees in the forest that is our community.

We live now in the midst of many storms, the pandemic, drug addictions, violence and thievery, houselessness, depression, and other situations that often seem to defy solutions and relief. Yet, we endure, we cope, and we often move into solutions and remedies that we may not have previously imagined. The pandemic is teaching us that there is much work to be done to realize our dreams and to heal the wounds that now need our attention.

The work that needs to be done is often silent. Confucius reminds us, “a seed grows with no sound, but a tree falls with huge noise. Destruction has noise but creation is quiet. This is the power of silence … grow silently.”

We are a resourceful community, and our successes in coping and managing often go uncelebrated. Yet, like the quiet conversations one has chanced to overhear, that work goes on and changes lives.

1/19/2022

Getting Distracted

Some of the best conversations I’ve had occur in the aisles of the local grocery store. There, in those spontaneous and seemingly random encounters, I find the greatest wisdom, coming from longtime friends who speak profound wisdom and solid Truth.

We nearly ran into each other, grocery lists in hand, and quickly caught up on the successes of a mutual friend. Our similar political views led us to some hand wringing about one of the current scandals on what I’ve been calling our collective national news feed.

“But, it’s really all a distraction,” my friend says. “Keeping us from talking about and taking action on the really important stuff.”

My friend is right. I am distracted, feeling like I’m jumping from one outrageous story to another, never having the time to be fully morally outraged about an event or a trend, when another absurd or unsettling story blips on my radar screen, stirring up my indignation, and leading me down another rabbit hole in the political and cultural scene.

Some of my angst comes from not feeling I’m taking action myself, righting some injustice through my own actions, or simply not speaking out at all, because I’m distracted.

I’ve been finding some direction and camaraderie with a wise person from the nineteenth century, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Politics and culture in his time weren’t tranquil and serene, and, in his writing, he spoke out against injustice, hypocrisy, and what one of my social worker friends calls “stinking thinking”.

“At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—’Come out unto us.’ But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I’ve been distracted from being purposeful, intentional, and acting against the intolerance and injustice of our times.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived, and lived well.”

_Ralph Waldo Emerson

Am I living well, am I living to be useful and compassionate, and making a difference? Like all of us, I suspect, I want to be living in the here and now, to be productive.

My grocery store conversation stirred me up, and I’m motivated to keep at it, keep doing my life work, and making a difference.

I’ve long believed that social ills and “stinking thinking” are best addressed by a good public airing, so people can truly see a thought or an attitude for what it really is. One of my missions in life has been to seek the truth, and bring it to light.

My friends in the medical community often talk about the curative properties of sunlight and fresh air, and how infections often respond to a change in the environment, and the need for a thorough examination under a bright light, bringing in fresh air, and creating a place where healing can begin.

I’ve long enjoyed the idea of clearly identifying the elephant in the living room, so people can begin to talk about the real problem, take ownership and responsibility, and move towards finding solutions. Such clarity and directness gets us “down to brass tacks”, as my grandmother used to say.

Then, another news story, and a flurry of unreasoned opinions, rants, and personal attacks. Distractions, again.

Uncivil discourse, a sign of the times.

Blindsiding and personal attacks; not having meaningful, purposeful conversation about the issue at hand — it all reminded me of what our national political conversations have turned into, a lot of noise taking away our need to focus on productive discussions and the elephant in the living room. We are being distracted from expressing and sharing, not having well thought out and articulated debates on issues vital to our national health and direction, and respecting people’s views, even if we might disagree with them.

My grocery store encounter with my good friend reminded me that distractions are simply that. They get in the way, and keep me from my purpose in life and in my community. I need to keep focused on the task at hand, the issues we are facing, and carry on, “to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived, and lived well.”

–Neal Lemery, 6/1/2018

Seeking An Intelligent Inquiry and Conversation

How does one navigate community political discourse in this age of apparent propaganda, half truths, and dogmatic black and white thinking?

A government clerk engaged me this week on my thoughts about Michael Wolff’s runaway best seller on Washington dystopia. When I opined that the book presented a significant amount of information that was critical, that there appeared to be substantial dysfunction and lack of moral compasses in the current administration, centered at the top, he seemed to agree, then caught himself.

He then abruptly sidestepped the conversation, to praise the recent federal tax code changes, expressing delight that Apple would now bring back billions of dollars into the American economy.

While that statement would warrant some serious fact checking and deep analysis of public tax policy, international macroeconomics and trade policies, my conversational partner quickly nodded off my obvious skepticism of his statement, and turned to his next customer.

I was left hanging, with an unresolved conversation, and yet another encounter of bold statements unsupported by intelligent discourse and informed debate. Such is our current level of community conversation and social dialogue. Conversation by ambush, and don’t go too deep.

Such encounters run counter to our duty as citizen to be of a curious mind and to demand that a point of view stand on its own, based upon truth and reason, and at least a mostly well informed factual foundation.

We need to be on guard against false logic, propaganda, deceptive thinking and hidden agendas.

Instead, I am a seeker of Truth and leading a purpose-driven, meaningful life aimed at bettering humankind, and being congruent with thoughtful, goal-oriented moral values. That conversational topic can actually challenge all of us to assess our own views, and perhaps grow our minds, even alter our opinions.

In my questions and along the path of my search for truth and moral focus, I aim to strive to focus on thoughtful logic, challenging questions and science-based methodology.

In applying these principles and processes to current events and publicly expressed and popular viewpoints, I notice a general lack of the application of researched facts, moral principles and thoughtful, persuasive reasoning.

Instead, the rhetoric is dogmatic, emotional (primarily fear-based), and beset with half-truths, falsehoods, and unsupported conclusions.

It often appears that the goal of the one who makes the declaration of a certain political view is often not seeking a lively debate, truth or intellectual development. Instead, there is an attempt to persuade by false logic, even outright lies, and changing the argument in mid-course, a mixing of two distinct trains of thought and reasoning, hoping, apparently, that the listener would simply agree with both conclusions and points of view. And, all the while ignoring the concept that perhaps many issues and social questions are inherently complex, and that reasonable people may reach different conclusions and viewpoints.

Life, however, and its complexities, rarely allow that luxury of simultaneously accepting two viewpoints on two vaguely related topics. It is an unsatisfying mix of apples and oranges.

I simply want to engage in informed and interactive conversation. Perhaps in that, we will each grow in our thoughts, and be better informed citizens in our community.