One Existential Purpose :

There are myriad differing religious and political beliefs/tenets, but there is one incontrovertible, existential fact that we must all recognize.

The one existential purpose of all adults of any species is survival of the species; not accumulation of wealth; not preservation of possessions. That means making babies and making them successful. Thus, our offspring are our primary resource; not a necessary bother. Their preservation and nurture far outweigh any other suggestible need. Existentially speaking, our adult purpose is to make the next generation successful.

How do we ensure success for future generations? Survival of our species is a societal obligation; not an individual endeavor. All economic progress for anyone starts with five essential, primal needs. Without them nothing else matters.

1.       Environment: needless to say, without it no life exists. Many people, though, follow some misguided mantra touting a need for “economic progress;” loudly denigrating the environment’s importance.

2.       Water: we live hardly a week without it. Go figure; we are some 60% water, depending on gender, age and other factors. Our blood is some 80% water.

3.       Food: without it we might survive three weeks.

Without # 1, #2, and #3 everything else – including gold – is worthless.

4.       Clothing and shelter: elemental protection. When viewing this from a Universal History angle, it would be hard to say which comes first. Even today there are primitives who live without clothing, but they have “houses.”.

5.       Training/Education: Even wired-in, instinctive drives of lower species require additional training. As natural as it is for a cheetah cub to chase moving things, its mother spends more than a year training it to hunt. Humans need more training. Without it we are no more than limited hunters/gatherers.

Success with primal-need building blocks 1 – 4 requires skill advancement. Primal existence provides access only to crude versions of them, and little more. Like lower animals early humans spent virtually all waking hours in that pursuit. Further economic progress is impossible without Primal Need building block #5.

Education contravenes rediscovery and reinvention. It helps us build advancement from old things to new and better things. It makes everything else possible. If we needed to reinvent the wheel to go somewhere else, we would likely have no idea that "somewhere else" exists. First, last, always; education is critical to movement beyond cave dweller needs.

Absurd to the max; political right-wing leadership (if it be leadership at all) tends to claim that a good economy is needed before education can be adequately funded.

While economic progress assists education, education is pre-requisite to that progress. It is the key to personal upward mobility which unlocks the doors of the economy. Without education there are no industry leaders, workers, bankers, attorneys or other professions. All wealth fails if education is not strongly supported. Without it there is no financial base for economic development. We can’t even “stand still” economically without it.

Clearly; economic progress without education is impossible. Without adequately maintained and funded education all else beyond crude versions the first four building blocks fails.

It runs no other way.

Make friends

Make friends with your problems

On Saturday morning, March 1, 2014, I listened to NPR’s “Weekend Edition;” specifically to an interview by  An NPR staff person with actress Elaine Stritch, age 89; still vital and starring in a new production. It was a riveting interview throughout the 10:25 minute piece, but one thing stood out for me. 

Near the end, when asked if she liked the line, "I like the courage of age," from her recent film she responded. 

“Yes, I do. I have to say I like it, because I think you have to make friends with it or leave it, or give up on it. You know what I mean? Because unless you can fight it and unless you can stand up to it, you might as well get it out of your house, because it's too tough to take. But it wasn't too tough to take to look at myself. It was the easiest way I had of dealing with big problems.”

As I listened, I heard her speaking directly to my own experience in dealing with something I will never be free of. Stritch will never be free from her advanced age until she passes on. I will never be free from being an Adult A.D.D. until I am in my grave. 

In the same spirit of that line that Stritch loved, it came as a great blessing one day some 35 years ago when I awoke one morning and could finally look at my face in the mirror, knowing for the first time ever that I was looking a friend in the eye. I loved myself with all my “smooth skin” and warts. I loved myself with all my successes and failures. I loved myself with all my anxiety and with my all my confidence.

Simply, I liked the courage of being ME, and I had found a great friend; my one and only very best friend.

I cannot fight being who I am. I am simply me. Even as an Adult A.D.D., I cannot fight who I am. I have learned that the only way to live successfully is to make friends with myself so that I can focus on managing my ways. To do less is to lock myself into an endless and upward spiraling cycle of frustration, anger and tears. 

In the end, there is only one thing to be accomplished by not loving that courage; by not being friends with myself. That is being locked into what I do not want; complete with all sorts of constant frustration, bitterness and tears. 

To the point, the more I focus hatred on something, the more I will become like what I hate. I will never be able to change or even manage what I do not love. If, then, there is no future in ongoing hate, the only other alternatives are the ultimate self-hatred of terminating my own life or turning to being my own BEST FRIEND. I have never hated myself or my actions enough to want to die; although I have often wished I could crawl into a hole out of sight to weather the “storm” so I wouldn’t have to live my errors down. 

Thus it was that I took the only sensible alternative; liking myself and being brutally honest in facing my problems, admitting my mistakes before someone else clubs me with them.

Then and only then can I move on.

Jack L. Mace

You can listen to the Elaine Stitch interview at http://www.npr.org/2014/03/01/280715944/elaine-stritch-volatile-and-vulnerable-in-shoot-me.

I Heard an Interesting Prayer

I recently heard an “interesting” (to note the least) prayer. The worship leader at church said, “… and Lord, we pray that we might pay attention” to what you have to tell us.

I suspect that the worship leader could have been more effective if he just called our attention back when our minds wander. A hardy “Hey, folks, listen up,” or “Pay attention, please,” would likely have made quite an impression. Any way you look at it, it is our own job to pay attention. I could better understand what is meant if someone asks for grace or strength or … (well, you get my drift) … to follow God’s will, but in the end is God even possibly responsible if we don’t “pay attention?”

I don’t intend to say that we always have to be absolutely perfect when we pay, or that there is no room for the simple, “Lord, have mercy.” God understands the seemingly incoherent prayer as well as the well-composed, well-spoken prayer. Once when I was a kid, I heard an amazing prayer at church camp by our camp doctor. It still speaks to me nearly 60 years later. Dr. Silvey, a physician from back home, was asked to say grace at the noon meal, and he prayed;

“God, we thank you for this good food, and we pray that you will help us to eat it all up. Amen.”

Sometimes when a negative memory comes up, I find myself saying, “God, I hate this,” or, “I want out.” I don’t have to even think a correction. God simply understands that prayer of embarrassment or pain in that memory. I don’t have to even think a prayer for relief. There are times when I simply pray, “God, it hurts.” Regardless of the composition, God gets it.

It still doesn’t hurt to take time to think through a coherent prayer, but that is mostly because I can sort it out better. I can come to a better understanding of why I feel the way I do about the memory, or my pain. I can get much deeper and kind of “answer” my own prayer by changing my thinking. God did give us that ability, you know.

ODE TO A REBEL

          Ode to a Rebel
                 © 1979, Jack L. Mace

Why wend your way alone
    on paths so long and harsh?
You bend as one who's pressed
    to tasks Herculean.
Your countenance is dressed -
    your stoop reveals as well,
Raging emotions known
    but to such as your self.

You could lighten your load,
    but you choose the challenge
of the untrod, unknown.
    best primed to innovate,
You bend your steps alone -
    no entourage, few friends
To cheer, to smooth your road.
    A dream you have - but how:

          To inspire the masses;
          Re-cast dies of aeons.
          A task impossible
          A task you press upon?

Quick you see the conflict
    of love pledged - not given.
Quick you see the hurting.
    Tears you would wipe away.
Yet, how blind to grievous,
    piercing antimony
From those whom you'd select
    as fellow laborers.

"Rabid Idealist!"
    The epithet is hurled.
You wear it as a badge,
    fully cognate within
You travel in cortege
    with those since time began,
Those great "Idealists"
    who would change tides of time:

          To inspire the masses;
          Re-cast dies of aeons.
          A task impossible
          A task they pressed upon?

Flee you t'ward destruction?
    Or comprehend you not,
Comes it all from folly
    that change through you might come?
Love you, oh so dearly,
    the stress and pain within?
Flee you t'ward destruction,
    or comprehend you not?

But why Judge I harshly
    one I know not at all?
Or, do I truly know
    what drives you from within?
Know I the winds that blow
    across your heart and soul?
Why judge I so harshly?
    Your dream is truly mine:

          To inspire the masses;
          Re-cast dies of aeons.
          A task impossible
          A task we press upon?

What if I were ...

If I were temporarily laid up with a broken neck; if I experienced cancer; if you knew about it would you come, willing to help where you can? Of course you would! I’ve seen it happen repeatedly. Having experienced both of those occurrences, I’ve even had a friend I hadn’t seen in ten years bring in a warm dish of food at mid-morning.

Hmm … I wonder. What if I were to suffer a debilitating mental illness like Autism, Bipolar Syndrome or Schizophrenia? If I were an Adult ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), would you still be there for me? I suspect not. “Mental health consumers” would tend to yawn in boredom if you said you would. Yet, people proclaim that caring attitude for the mentally ill.

I am a mental health volunteer, with a consumer friend; now for 17 years. (I'll use the old "John Doe" moniker to protect his identity.) He is disabled by Schizophrenia. At first, our friendship was formal through Compeer at our Mental Health Association (MHA). Compeer pairs volunteers with “consumers” as friends. Our role was to “be there” for them at least one hour weekly.

I emphasize “was” because we no longer have Compeer. Our MHA is closed too, due to various problems that plague volunteer efforts; finances, business, personalities. That doesn’t matter, though. My wife and I continued our friendship with John well beyond MHA. He’s quasi-family; not like he’s our son, although we see him more often than we see our own. He doesn’t sleep over, and he has friends “down the street” whom we would never know. What he says he appreciates most is having a place to go on special days, and we have him with us as we can at family occasions and holidays.

What matters here is that I really doubt that John would believe you are “there for him.” He knows too many societal stigmas. He knows you would likely be afraid? “Is Schizophrenia catching; or dangerous to my safety?” He knows there were far more consumer applicants than willing volunteers; a ratio of five-or-six-to-one at Compeer’s closure.

Oh, wait! I AM Adult ADD – sometimes over-achieving, often overbearing. I am “one of them” and don’t have to tell you about “their” sense of stigma. I cannot relate my syndrome without you doubting me, saying, “Don’t make excuses.” I can’t expect the same caring in ADD as I knew as a “walking-wounded” prostate cancer victim. What I know is that you may listen, but then my “condition” will become a roadblock to close friendship.

There have been few times when I could count on a friend; come-what-may. I’ve become so accustomed to a loner’s life that when someone seems to care I’m afraid of the relationship. I’m afraid that sooner or later even they will walk away.

So, I hold back; a largely-unknown, walking-wounded Adult ADD. I’ve been admonished enough that I need not guess. My consumer-and-family friends would also doubt your sincerity; come-what-may.