Just the other morning as I was driving my daughter to school, I went into overwhelm. I had a roof leak in my home. It was raining and the visibility was poor. The puppy was chewing on something in the back seat he shouldn’t be. There was some awful news on the radio and my daughter was chanting at the top of her lungs.
“Quiet,” I screamed. I took a deep breath, turned off the radio; hollered at the puppy and put my attention back on driving. When I looked back at my daughter in the mirror, she was now upset and sulking. “I’m sorry I screamed, Honey. There was just too much going on. It’s not about you. It’s not personal.”
It’s not personal. I thought about that phrase for a while. In a younger and much more dramatic time of my life, I used to take everything personally. If I felt a woman had scorned me, I would go sulk, much like my daughter was doing now. If someone had scratched my car opening their car door in a parking lot, I would go ballistic. “How could you do that to me?”
I was once a bank teller. One day a customer came in angry about something that the bank had done, and I got upset. I was sure that they were angry at me and not simply at the error the bank had made. This was the way I lived my life. Everything was very personal.
Somewhere in my thirties, I discovered life wasn’t as personal as I thought it was. For example, I started to realize that if someone had almost caused an accident and crashed into my car, they weren’t out to get me. They just did something thoughtless or stupid and I happened to be there. I took a job as a customer service representative and did pretty well at calming people down. After all if they were screaming in the phone, it wasn’t just at me. If I handed the phone to another rep the customer would still be screaming.
I even noticed that my wife would do things that I didn’t like, but she wasn’t doing them just to annoy me. There was no malicious aforethought. She wasn’t out to get me. She was just doing whatever she was doing and I didn’t agree.
Life is a personal experience, just don’t take it personally. I don’t mean to be flippant, but that seemingly paradoxical statement can be very important in how you live your life. There is a distinction between the events in your life and how you let them affect you. If you can become skilled at recognizing the difference between these two concepts it can be very liberating and powerful.
This seems so simple, but many of us still take things too personally. If you a super-sensitive person you are probably taking this article far too seriously. Lighten up! It’s not all about you.
It is very useful to be able to be a little bit detached. Here are some things that you can do.
Realize that the vast majority of the time the other person is not out to get you.
Remember that the other person sees the situation from their own perspective.
Understand that the other person would probably be acting the same way even if you weren’t there.
This is true of politics too. However you disagree with people, don’t take it personally.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
How we view each other
There are times in life when something happens and all of a sudden there is a huge difference in how you see the world. The addition of that one thing shifts us from one point of view to another. Some of these things are big and some seemingly inconsequential at the time, but still our view of the world changes.
Adopting a child was one of those major events that created a difference in my view of the world. Going from being childless to having a child in an instant, changed how I acted, how I viewed the future, and so much more that I couldn’t give real merit to it in a short entry.
But one of the seemingly inconsequential moments occurred some years later that shifted my thoughts about my daughter. Up to a time after my wife and I first adopted our daughter, she was ‘our adopted Chinese daughter.’ This was just the way I introduced her. For some of my life long friends who knew me, this seemed appropriate.
But one day I was talking to a stranger and he asked me about my ‘adopted Chinese daughter.’ I don’t know - there was some – not distain – but some perhaps distance in his inquiry – like ‘why would I do that?’ I’m really not sure what colored the interaction, but the way he asked his question was distasteful to me.
At that moment she became simply ‘my daughter.’ No longer did I feel like I have to explain her heritage or how she came to be in our family. I no longer cared to be specific in my introduction. She was at that moment and forever more simply ‘my daughter.’
The distinction may not seem significant to you. It doesn’t really matter, but it was quite significant to me. To this day my relationship with her is different, stronger, more loving and complete. Additionally it was a breakthrough for me as to how I saw race, skin color, cultural background and genetics. She is mine and all that entails.
Saying that, I want to take the essence of that experience and apply it to our President Elect, Barack Obama.
At first I saw the significance of Obama as being our first black president. That truly was momentous and marked a turning point in our history. But there is more to it than that.
Instead of Obama being our first black president I invite you consider that he is simply our President, who happens to be black. At a higher level of thinking, this means the color of your skin doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, Asian or Latino. What does matter is that the merit of a man or woman is measured by what he or she does and not by their ethnic background.
This becomes immensely important to me, because in some circles my daughter is still considered a ‘person of color.’ But perhaps the racial prejudices that we have held in this country have been eroded just a little more. This election may be one more thing that will shift our view of each other. It may mean that there is one less barrier blocking my daughter’s potential success in life. It may mean that it won’t matter what color she is, but that her success is based on what she is capable of accomplishing and no parent could ask for more than that.
Adopting a child was one of those major events that created a difference in my view of the world. Going from being childless to having a child in an instant, changed how I acted, how I viewed the future, and so much more that I couldn’t give real merit to it in a short entry.
But one of the seemingly inconsequential moments occurred some years later that shifted my thoughts about my daughter. Up to a time after my wife and I first adopted our daughter, she was ‘our adopted Chinese daughter.’ This was just the way I introduced her. For some of my life long friends who knew me, this seemed appropriate.
But one day I was talking to a stranger and he asked me about my ‘adopted Chinese daughter.’ I don’t know - there was some – not distain – but some perhaps distance in his inquiry – like ‘why would I do that?’ I’m really not sure what colored the interaction, but the way he asked his question was distasteful to me.
At that moment she became simply ‘my daughter.’ No longer did I feel like I have to explain her heritage or how she came to be in our family. I no longer cared to be specific in my introduction. She was at that moment and forever more simply ‘my daughter.’
The distinction may not seem significant to you. It doesn’t really matter, but it was quite significant to me. To this day my relationship with her is different, stronger, more loving and complete. Additionally it was a breakthrough for me as to how I saw race, skin color, cultural background and genetics. She is mine and all that entails.
Saying that, I want to take the essence of that experience and apply it to our President Elect, Barack Obama.
At first I saw the significance of Obama as being our first black president. That truly was momentous and marked a turning point in our history. But there is more to it than that.
Instead of Obama being our first black president I invite you consider that he is simply our President, who happens to be black. At a higher level of thinking, this means the color of your skin doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, Asian or Latino. What does matter is that the merit of a man or woman is measured by what he or she does and not by their ethnic background.
This becomes immensely important to me, because in some circles my daughter is still considered a ‘person of color.’ But perhaps the racial prejudices that we have held in this country have been eroded just a little more. This election may be one more thing that will shift our view of each other. It may mean that there is one less barrier blocking my daughter’s potential success in life. It may mean that it won’t matter what color she is, but that her success is based on what she is capable of accomplishing and no parent could ask for more than that.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Why I'm voting for Obama
I am a person who researches things thoroughly before I make up my mind. If you followed my column in the Pensacola News Journal you will know that I follow leads, research extensively and make sure there is documentation for everything that I write about and pass along. So it is with the Presidential Election of 2008.
There are people on the political right who want you to think that Obama is unqualified, or worse that he is lying to us, and has connections with all sort of nefarious people. This group relies on half truths and innuendo. They rely on slurs and character assassination.
In one of John McCain’s rallies he was confronted by a woman who called Obama an Arab implying that he was connected to terrorists. McCain retorted, in disgust for the women’s disinformation, and replied that Obama was an honorable man. McCain thinks Obama is an honorable man but his campaign doesn’t represent this. How come?
Perhaps it is because his campaign is being run by the same neo-conservatives that lied to us about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Perhaps it is because his campaign is being run by the same people who wanted Clinton to attack Iraq during his administration and finally found a way to do it, after 911. This is the same group of people who consistently try to connect Iraq to 911 which has been refuted even by Al-Qaeda.
McCain is not Bush; that is true. McCain is a dignified, honorable man and is not being allowed to run the campaign that he wants to run. Instead his campaign is being run by the same people that run Bush’s Whitehouse. This is why this is a continuation of the Bush administration and its policies; no matter how much of a maverick McCain has been in the past. If McCain can’t even run his own campaign what hope is there that he will run his own administration.
On the other side, when I look at Barack Obama, I don’t see a black man, I see a Harvard graduate who was editor of the Harvard Law Review. I see a man who has been called by his peers, both Republican and Democratic alike – an expert in Constitutional Law. I see someone who speaks of bringing this country together instead of relying on divisiveness and conflict.
Obama is a literate, educated, intelligent man who can be a force in bringing this country together again to the glory that we once were. The United States once held the moral high ground and was supported by the other countries of the world. There is clear reason why we have lost the support of our allies and now remain “the biggest bully on the block.” Through Obama, I look to an America that can regain the respect of the rest of the world, and not its distain.
Go to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice2008/view/ and view the documentary on Obama and McCain. They are both honorable men – forget the slurs and misinformation. Forget the sound-bites and divisiveness. Then vote for the person whom you choose based on facts, not innuendo, because you believe in their policies and not because you have been swayed by lies and half-truths.
There are people on the political right who want you to think that Obama is unqualified, or worse that he is lying to us, and has connections with all sort of nefarious people. This group relies on half truths and innuendo. They rely on slurs and character assassination.
In one of John McCain’s rallies he was confronted by a woman who called Obama an Arab implying that he was connected to terrorists. McCain retorted, in disgust for the women’s disinformation, and replied that Obama was an honorable man. McCain thinks Obama is an honorable man but his campaign doesn’t represent this. How come?
Perhaps it is because his campaign is being run by the same neo-conservatives that lied to us about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Perhaps it is because his campaign is being run by the same people who wanted Clinton to attack Iraq during his administration and finally found a way to do it, after 911. This is the same group of people who consistently try to connect Iraq to 911 which has been refuted even by Al-Qaeda.
McCain is not Bush; that is true. McCain is a dignified, honorable man and is not being allowed to run the campaign that he wants to run. Instead his campaign is being run by the same people that run Bush’s Whitehouse. This is why this is a continuation of the Bush administration and its policies; no matter how much of a maverick McCain has been in the past. If McCain can’t even run his own campaign what hope is there that he will run his own administration.
On the other side, when I look at Barack Obama, I don’t see a black man, I see a Harvard graduate who was editor of the Harvard Law Review. I see a man who has been called by his peers, both Republican and Democratic alike – an expert in Constitutional Law. I see someone who speaks of bringing this country together instead of relying on divisiveness and conflict.
Obama is a literate, educated, intelligent man who can be a force in bringing this country together again to the glory that we once were. The United States once held the moral high ground and was supported by the other countries of the world. There is clear reason why we have lost the support of our allies and now remain “the biggest bully on the block.” Through Obama, I look to an America that can regain the respect of the rest of the world, and not its distain.
Go to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice2008/view/ and view the documentary on Obama and McCain. They are both honorable men – forget the slurs and misinformation. Forget the sound-bites and divisiveness. Then vote for the person whom you choose based on facts, not innuendo, because you believe in their policies and not because you have been swayed by lies and half-truths.
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