Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our challenge today is that we expect too much of others while expecting too little of ourselves
It is still dark as I’m writing this, but already hundreds of reporters and photographers are gathered in Pennsylvania for the weather prognostications of Punxsutawney Phil. The 130-year-old tradition, much like last night’s Iowa caucuses, has little to do with the actual outcome, but the tradition is one we can’t seem to break and, for a day, we are distracted by a myth that something might actually change. In our minds, we know both events are heavy on hype and short on substance. There’s a blizzard moving into the Northern sections of the Midwest, and powerful thunderstorms, some possibly with tornadic activity, will hit the opposite side of that system and move Eastward. Being in Pennsylvania, Phil could actually see his shadow, supposedly indicating six more weeks of winter but that won’t stop the storms from coming. We expect too much from a groundhog.
We are the same way with our politicians. None of last night’s results produced a clear winner. On the very crowded Republican side, no one achieved even a third of the overall vote. As I’m writing, most news outlets are saying the Democrat side is still too close to call, so again, no clear winner, no one standing above all the others. We know the system is broken. We know little, if anything, said on the campaign trail will ever evolve into reality. Yet, we buy into the rhetoric and hyperbole of a presidential campaign just as surely as we do the shadow of a chubby little groundhog.
I firmly believe that the measure of a person is not in the size of their stature nor the poetry of their speech but in the length of the shadow they cast. There is an overabundance of people who stand tall and talk big but whose actions fall quite short at their feet. Interestingly enough, a great number of those people are politicians. Talk is cheap on the campaign trail and it is easy to be boisterous and make promises that are popular with the electorate. What one discovers after being elected, however, is that moving a nation is as complex and slow and difficult as trying to move the Rocky Mountains from Colorado to Florida. To pin all our hopes and dreams on one personality is about as foolish as making picnic plans based on the predictions of a Pennsylvania rodent.
Change comes from those who cast a long shadow. To know who casts the longer shadow, pay attention to where they stand in relation to the light. Have you ever noticed what happens to a shadow at high noon? It’s almost non-existent. Those standing directly under the spotlight, those who seem to glow with the radiance of illumination, cast very little shadow and affect very little change. They are too concerned with keeping the light on themselves and do so by saying what pleases the ears of those listening. Those who stand at an angle from the light, those who buck the system, those who claw their way through red tape, those who spend more time doing rather than talking, those are the people who cast the long shadows, those are the people who get results.
To that end, who best to rely upon to create change, to get work done, to clean up the mess and change the system than ourselves. We are not powerless, and we certainly are not brainless (with a few questionable exceptions). There is much one can do through invention, creativity, and more often than not, good ol’ hard work. If the banking system is no longer meeting the needs of the people, let’s create a new system of money management that better addresses contemporary realities. If global corporations truly cannot be trusted to act in the best interest of their customers (and they can’t) then you have the ability to work around them, create a local cooperative if necessary to achieve the same service in a more responsible manner. If you don’t like how a coffee shop brews their coffee, do as I do: buy a french press, buy and grind your own beans, heat your own water to 150°, and make your own coffee (it really is much better this way). Dance with your own shadow.
You are the one who has the power. You have two incredibly strong weapons: your wallet and your vote. Don’t let anyone tell you that your voice doesn’t matter; people who say that are cowards who would rather complain about the system than contribute to its overhaul. You can do great things. So can the person next to you. Working together, we are invincible.
Yes, we need a strong, central government and we need strong people who can cast a long shadow running that government. Make no mistake, though, when it comes to real progress and creating genuine change, the shadow that makes the most difference is your own.
Sleeping Through Sunday
I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any.—Mark Twain
None of us are sleeping as much as we should. Going back to bed may be the healthiest thing you do
I would dearly love to be sleeping right now, truly I would. Unfortunately, my body has conditioned itself to wake up at this ungodly hour, while everyone else is still sleeping, so that I can actually get some work done before the world starts getting noisy. As a result, to sleep even past 6:00 AM is a luxury rarely afforded these days. I’m not the only one, though. For the past four years, doctors have been warning that we’re not sleeping enough. Cases of insomnia are on the rise. Sure, there are sleeping pills that help some, but those also bring the chance of abuse and, in some cases, addiction. The problem isn’t just limited to the US, either. The whole world is having trouble sleeping.
What causes us to have so much trouble falling asleep and staying that way? There are a number of issues, of course, but the three most common to our contemporary first-world lifestyles are:
That third one, of course, is new, and largely limited to people in industrialized nations. In places where 24-hour wifi isn’t quite so prevalent, concerns over personal/family safety take the third spot, which is certainly understandable. In the US, especially, we have a problem putting down our phones even to sleep. Whether it’s playing some silly game, browsing the latest cat memes, or actually reading something worthwhile, we rarely turn off our phones. Making matters worse, recent studies indicate that the light emitted by our phones is bright enough that our brains mistake it for daylight so that the little trigger telling us to go to sleep gets turned off.
Such insomnia is not totally new. Throughout the twentieth century, there were plenty of things keeping our parents and grandparents awake at night. In the early part of that century, we feared becoming involved in a European war, so much so that we were almost too late to help, Then came the Great Depression and I’m not sure anyone slept much. Homelessness, poverty, unemployment, and hunger all have a way of keeping a person up at night. Then, from 1936 on, the threat of a second European war became a worry and those who remembered the first one were especially sleepless. The 1940s were a decade of war and no one sleeps well through that. Troops were back home for most of the 1950s, but the Cold War set in hard and the Red Scare had Americans wondering whether their neighbors and co-workers might be communists. Air raid drills were common in schools, making sure children didn’t sleep well, either.
By the 1960s, parents worried about war in Southeast Asia, violence around the growing Civil Rights movement, and an exploding drug problem. 1972 crushed our faith in government. 1974 introduced us to the worries of inflation. By 1979, we looked at the Middle East as our newest enemy and worried how to keep them in check. Fear of nuclear annihilation reached its peak in the 80s and we responded to any and every threat by attempting to outlaw it, sending more people to jail than the prison system could handle, most for non-violent offenses. By the 90s economics were again a major fear and this thing called the Internet threatened to change the very fabric of our society.
Society is too complex for us to not find things to worry about. My current personal list of immediate concerns is about 20 items deep, and that’s with me trying to be positive. I refuse to be pollyannish and say everything’s going to be alright. The fact that we’re not sleeping like we should is itself a warning that no, everything may yet go to hell in a handbasket.
So, why are we not sleeping through Sundays, every Sunday? I challenged my father on the topic more than once. If one is going to actually believe Old Testament mythology regarding creation, then one has to deal with the notion that, after six days of work, God rested. Throughout the Old Testament, he seemed rather adamant about that whole resting thing and to this day devout Jews struggle with the juxtaposition of secular demands to do things and their religious commandment to not do things on the Sabbath. Spending all day at church seems to me, still, as just as much a violation of that command as if one were working. One does not rest at church, at least, you’re not supposed to actually sleep through the whole thing. My father was never amused, nor moved, by that argument, though.
To me, it just makes good sense. Our bodies, and our minds, need a break. We fill our lives with so very much the other six days, we need a respite to allow our bodies to catch up, re-energize, and recuperate. We need scheduled time to laugh, to read fiction, to have pleasant conversations, to enjoy non-stressed company of friends who don’t care if the house is clean, to ponder, to appreciate. More than anything, we need to be sleeping.
Go back to bed. Chores can wait. Ducktape kids to the wall if necessary. You should be sleeping. Get to it.
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