Be Kind. We’re All Idiots!
Spotted on a bumper sticker. Musings on humility ... & on my own considerable fallibility. Tunnel vision. Blind spots. Echo chambers. Etc.
Be Kind. We’re all idiots!
An amusing phrase my daughter spotted on a bumper sticker a while back.
It gave her a good chuckle. Me too!
I think it’s true!
We all have our own special ways of being idiotic.
As James M. Barrie (I have no idea who he was; it’s just a quotation I picked up somewhere along the way) said
“Life is a long lesson in humility.”
This also seems very true!
A little humility is probably a good thing, no?
Better than having an inflated ego, I think.
Or hubris. “Exaggerated pride or self-confidence.”
The crazy people who run things on Planet Earth have more than enough of that for three planets!
But I’m not here to convince you of anything! I’m out of the convincing business. (Well, mostly out of it… :) )
Pretty much surrendered to people’s tenacity in holding onto cherished myths & beliefs. Illusions (of which I’ve harboured my own fair share in this life!).
I’m pretty certain we humans all practice tunnel vision to some degree. Have blind spots we’ve no desire to shine a light on.
“For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forbears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” – John F. Kennedy (JFK)
But as Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh said
“Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with the truth.”
And I rather like that. It makes sense to me.
I Know I’m an Idiot. I Made a List!
Oh, let me count the ways...
Things I’ve done (& do) that prove I do dumb (even downright stupid) things routinely. Very humbling indeed.
Sigh.
But then, in the Wavy Gravy phrase, I’m just another “bozo on the bus!”
Which I picked up from Elizabeth Lesser’s truly wonderful Broken Open – How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, a book I can’t recommend highly enough. A major, major treasure! We’re all just bozos on the bus. A thought that can help us keep our egos in check.
“Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.”
And that also rings true for me.
So I’m going to be truthful here about a few of my own many ways of being idiotic.
Here goes!
Putting people on pedestals (even whole classes of people! Doctors. Scientists. Possessors of PhDs. People who are “more spiritual” than I am – whatever that means). Then feeling profoundly disappointed (betrayed, even) when they later fall noisily off them – as they inevitably will! Since hey, as previously stated, we’re all just “bozos on the bus.” With our own cherished illusions, tunnel vision & blind spots. My bad for putting people on pedestals in the first place!
Jumping to conclusions. Judging people/situations/issues without careful consideration.
Sooo many things are like the iceberg, no?? Much complexity beneath the surface.
Naively trusting in “experts” & “authorities.” Believing our government(s) have our best interests at heart. OMG. As if! ‘though I’ve pretty much rassled this one in recent years.
Swallowing mainstream media (MSM) “sound bites” and carefully-crafted PR slogans such as the oft-repeated “Vaccines are safe and effective.” (My trust in MSM – & the pharmaceutical industry! – died a long-overdue death in recent years.)
Not recognizing the constant “divide and conquer” tactics used on us by governments (& their minions). Which are at an all-time high these daze!? This lovely short video is very helpful on that score.
Failing to connect the dots!!! I’ve done this all my life! Dots I needed to connect about sooo many things. People. Relationships. Situations. Issues. My own health/energy issues. Politics!! Etc. Etc. Etc. It’s very galling to me now to realize how many times I’ve failed to connect the dots in my life. OMG. WTF!
But you know? I think we ALL fail to connect the dots about many things in life. The world. And we don’t finally connect them until we’re darn good & ready. We may even have to be dragged into it! In the Covid era, as many of us have learned, facts almost don’t seem to matter anymore ... to a great many people. Wilful blindness is at epidemic levels!
But...
“Facts don’t cease to exist just because they are ignored.” – Aldous Huxley
To continue:
Failing to recognize my own failings & missteps as a mother. Which, sadly, have been all too numerous. Sigh. Is there any role in life more humility-inducing than motherhood??? Geez. I ask you... (I wrote about this ages ago. Back in 2010. Here.)
Ignoring (loud) wake-up calls. These too have been entirely too numerous. (My hearing for these seems to be growing more acute with age.)
Saying things I wish I’d never said. Not saying things I wish I had said!
Not following my own intuition/inner wisdom. Not listening to my body. Not listening to my own good advice!
Worrying/caring too much what other people think of me. These 2 quotes help!
“What other people think about me is none of my business.”
“Don’t worry about what others think, they don’t do it very often.” – Source unknown
Doing the same thing over & over – & expecting different results. I reckon we all do this, eh?
And hey. Old habits die hard. As Mark Twain said,
“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs, one step at a time.”
I’m pretty sure we humans are mostly pretty reluctant to admit we’ve been wrong about things. Or have been fooled. It’s just the way we are!
“We would rather be defeated than persuaded.” (W.H. Auden)
Humility, eh?? We’re maybe mostly not so good at that.
“He smiled tolerantly. To survive, everyone needs a viewpoint from which they can look down on everyone else, thought Hadda. With some it’s intellect, with some it’s beauty, with some it’s religion.” – from the novel The Woodcutter, by Reginald Hill
Practice, practice. Keeping those egos in check, eh??
As it happens, I’ve done a couple of pretty stupid things in recent weeks/months. Geez.
But you know what?
I don’t have the energy to beat myself up about this stuff.
I’m being kind ... to myself!
For the record, I can think of plenty of other dumb stuff I do. And if you ask my kids (or anyone who knows me really well), I’m sure they’d happily add to the list ... as well as point out that I can be a right pain in the ass at times! But after all, we all have our fair share of faults. Neuroses. Bad habits. Blind spots. & the thing about blind spots? We can spot other people’s readily enough. But not our own. That’s why they’re called blind spots ... right?
The Covid Days/Daze
The past few years (ever since March 2020?) have been ... whoa. Challenging, challenging times.
Bamboozling in the extreme!
Enlightening.
Mind-blowing
Truthfully? Shocking – horrifying, even ... in a whole variety of ways.
It’s been a daily tsunami of information ... insights ... learning.
Enlightening. Exhausting.
Not for all of us, of course. Those who rely on mainstream or “legacy” news sources live in another universe entirely from those of us who’ve abandoned that old (blind) trust.
But it’s doubtful anyone in that category would be reading my Substack – & as already stated, I’m no longer in the convincing business. So I won’t go down that rabbit hole here. (I did write about it early on in the Covid era, here ... if any faithful follower of mainstream media wants to check it out. Or watch this very revealing 9-minute video about government subsidies to mainstream media outlets.)
So. Short form.
It’s a dizzying, dizzying, dizzying, confounding time.
A bit of a nightmare...
Many of us (even the non-religious among us) have come to believe evil is not just afoot in the world, it’s on a rampage. Marching fast & furiously!
Even that we’re in a “spiritual war.”
Good against evil.
It seems that way to a lot of us now.
And oh my. There’s such a lot for us all to disagree about! Even among those of us who can be described as “freedom fighters.” We don’t necessarily share religious views. Views on feminism. Politics. Or on the gravity of the environmental crisis. Climate change in particular. Not gonna go down that rabbit hole, either!
So ... the Covid daze, eh?
A daily roller coaster.
A daily tsunami of revelations. Some of them surprising. Shocking. Heart-breaking. Many even outright gut-wrenching.
My own outrage/heartbreak meter got busted quite a while back now.
Outrage overload!?
I ran across this card several months ago now. Sure gave me a good laugh!
But.
These Things Still Matter ... I think
In my admittedly not-always-humble opinion, however bad things are – however bad they become – these things still matter:
Honesty
Truth-telling (lots of great quotations about truth!)
Integrity
Curiosity
Kindness / Compassion / Generosity/ Forgiveness
Simple friendliness & helpfulness
Non-compliance with evil
Raising a little hell once in a while :)
Staying human!
George Orwell put it rather well ... way back when.
My Current Coping Strategies
I’ve come to believe that retaining our humanity – our sanity! – is Job 1.
Sounds simple enough, but frankly, it seems to become more challenging by the day.
The world has gone/is going utterly mad all around us. More so by the day, I’d swear. (I guess I already said that?)
I want to do my best to not add to it!
Here are some things helping me keep my feet on the ground, as it were:
A daily walk ... if possible, & it isn’t always possible. But a good thing to aim for!
Love for / appreciation of the natural world
Conversation!!!! It’s the Whole Darn Karmic Enchilada!
Loving & being good to my peeps. Family. Friends. Colleagues. Neighbours.
Reading good books (heck; even junky ones on occasion!). Books are hugely important in my life. Always have been!
Buddhist thought is (has long been) a big help to me. Recognition of the inevitability of suffering. Human desire, & our endless wants for more. More things. More money. Especially? More control. Compassion. Non-judgment. Living in the present moment.
Listening to old Alan Watts lectures (for a man who died back in 1973, he sure understood a lot about our world. Even the world of today! Decades after his death. There are tons of Alan Watts lectures you can listen to. Some short. Some very long! For me? All of them insightful.) Eckhart Tolle sometimes. Ram Dass (one very short. One long
– & very worth listening to!) Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön’s words of wisdom.
An active practice of gratitude. I love how Kurt Vonnegut used to say we need to look for opportunities to say, as often as possible, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is!” Good advice! There are lots of great quotations about gratitude here.
Getting inspired by the heroic actions of the many-many people speaking up/acting courageously in these so-difficult times. Lots & lots of people/groups are doing this! Far too many to name here (though I did do a posting about Covid heroes a while back). For example, I find many of the interviews shown on ‘Cafe Locked Out’ inspiring. (Cafe Locked Out is from Australia. It’s hosted by Michael Gray Griffith. Find CLO on Facebook – Cafe Locked Out Back Up Page, or at this site.)
Taking maximum pleasure from “small” things. e.g. getting a good night’s sleep after several nights of really crappy ones. A morning cup of coffee. Ahhhh.
Celebrating small achievements. Keeping my goals for each day modest.
Giving myself permission to feel my feelings. Even the so-called “negative” ones. Sadness. Grief. Occasional despair – though I do my best to keep that one at bay. The thing is, feelings pass! They actually linger longer if we insist on pushing them down and pretending we’re not feeling them.
Recognition of what is under my control .. & what isn’t!
I like to say we’re in charge of our lives. Though not in control. There’s a difference!
“You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. That's a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
Breaks from the daily tsunami of awful news & revelations. I don’t do this enough! Note to self, note to self...
Raising a little hell now & again :)
Looking for (& sharing) occasional bits of humour. Since, as Milton Berle said,
“Laughter is an instant vacation.”
This item always gives me a good chuckle!
This one too:
& this:
Silly humans...
Listening to podcasts that are not about all this wretched Covid madness (by which I mean Covid-19 / masks / vaccines & vaccine passports & vaccine deaths / increasing digital surveillance / the coming CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) / the WEF (World Economic Forum) / the WHO (which cares nothing whatsoever for human health) / the relentless march of tyranny/totalitarianism / the bottomless swamp of media lies/manipulation/fear-mongering). Breaks from “the news” (& my devices) are essential!!
Celebrating what remains!
Conscious efforts to slooooowwww down. (What the heck is the bloody rush about??) Sometimes I tell myself “Just stand still.”
Doing my best to live one day at a time. To really be in the present moment. Harder to do than it sounds, of course. It takes constant effort. Discipline. I have to remind myself often: Be. Here. Now. This moment. This moment. This moment.
“It seems we all have the tendency to move away from the present moment. It’s as if this habit is built into our DNA.” – Pema Chödrön (more Pema)
And finally?
SEIZING JOY. Yes. Seizing it. The dumpster fire the world has become can make us nuts if we’re not really careful!! I make conscious efforts to find joy wherever & whenever possible.
These things all help!
Like everyone, I’m sure, I have my good days ... and my bad ones. There have been some very low ones of late.
And ... they do pass!
To circle back to my own considerable fallibility?
In recent times I’ve done a couple really dumb things. Details not important. (I’m too embarrassed to talk about them.)
Silly woman.
But hey! I’m just another bozo on the bus! Like all of us... hmmm?
Forgiveness!
Forgiveness & compassion – for both myself, & for others. These are very strange, difficult, challenging, challenging times...
Day at a time.
Day at a time.
Day at a time....
p.s. for those who don’t know me, & for the record, I spent 30+ years as an environmental activist. My interest in the environmental crisis was first piqued in the early 1970s, during my university years, but remained mostly dormant while I was busily occupied with career & family stuff. Until the mid-1980s, when it really grabbed me; then, in the early 90s, when it swooped right in & pretty much took over my life. Over the years/decades, I dove into a whole laundry list of different issues. Learned a lot about climate change, energy issues. Waste/waste reduction. Plastics. Dioxin. Cancer prevention. Water issues & deforestation. The ozone layer. Pesticides. Lead. Toxics of all kinds in our air, water, food, personal care & cleaning products – even in our bodies! Nukes. Geeoengineering/weather modificiation. Etc. Did gobs of neat projects, met tons of great people. Really loved being an activist! We leftie activists learned some important lessons about how capitalism & corporatism really work. Regulatory agencies that don’t really regulate, but in fact act to promote the industries they supposedly regulate. All this while, sadly, failing to connect some dots, e.g. about how utterly corrupted science had become – how taken over by corporate forces. (some great insights about that here). While many of us learned how corrupted the regulatory agencies were with respect to pesticides & nukes & Big Oil, it seems many of us remained oblivious to how beyond corrupted & controlled our governments were/are by the pharmaceutical industry. The military-industrial complex. How bankrupt the WHO was, & is. Utterly naive about the real UN agenda, & how the growing globalist (& “woke”) agendas were seeping/had seeped into all of our institutions. No clue about the sick WEF (World Economic Forum). Working away in our “silos.” Unwittingly caught up in “identity politics.” (Of course this habit is not the exclusive domain of those on the Left!) Not really seeing the forest for the trees, you might say! All of us, seemingly … on both sides of the political divide … subject to the “divide and conquer” tactics of Left vs. Right. Let’s face it – most of us live & work in echo chambers! Social media algorithms feed us what they figure we want to hear. We are all guilty of groupthink. So now it’s become fashionable to dump on lefties ... & with so many these days, I’ve abandoned many of my old leftie illusions. Have become “politically marooned,” along with so many others. This graphic speaks to this.
But those who these days spend a lot of energy dumping on “the Left” fail to recognize that “leftie” activists like me were really passionate about making the world a better, cleaner & safer place for all. If anything, our crime may have been one of excessive naivete! A reluctance or inability, perhaps, to really recognize evil when it was staring us right in the face. (We humans are often far too trusting.) I can see now that not only was the Left not always right (i.e. correct, which I’m sure most believed, & still believe, they always are/were), the “Right” is not always wrong! Nobody gets it all wrong, all the time! Now? Among “freedom fighters,” the very real environmental crisis our planet faces (has been facing for a very long time!) is apparently invisible. Climate change considered laughable. Ai-yi-yi! Seems we all have issues we are reluctant to connect the dots about! (For those who deny climate change & its human involvement, the 2014 documentary Merchants of Doubt
is worth watching to learn about how Big Oil has been manipulating public discourse on this issue ... for decades & decades.)
These days? It seems many truths are “inconvenient.” For all of us ... whether “right,” “left” ... or the growing number of us who now consider ourselves politically homeless. So damn many elephants in the room!
Sigh. Oh well. T’is what it is ... isn’t it??
p.p.s. speaking of elephants in the room!! A concept I’ve long found amusing & helpful. There are so many of them now, one can scarcely keep track of them all! Sheesh. Their numbers just keep growing!! I ran across this posting
only recently (though it’s from December 2021). Its sub-title really gave me a chuckle.
There are so many elephants in the room . . . it feels like we're on safari
Now ain’t that the truth???
p.p.p.s. Here’s an “elephant in the room” that Facebook doesn’t like! (If you’re not a F-book user, you may be unaware of its Big Brother aspect in recent years. Posts get flagged - or disappeared - for supposed misinformation, people get thrown off for saying things FB doesn’t like - even if they’re 100% backed up by authoritative sources!) Censorship in all its aspects has been rampant since the Covid era landed in. Anyway, here’s an item FB rapped me on the knuckles for posting:
If you’re not aware of the surge in vaccine injuries & deaths since the Covid injection rollout, DO check out this site! Be sure to take note of the information showing how VAERS (the official U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) has had a decades’ long habit of VASTLY under-reporting vaccine injuries & deaths.
A Few Relevant Quotations
I usually throw a few in ... because they can be so inspiring! & yes, I do tend to get a bit carried away…
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Plato, Greek author & philosopher in Athens (427 B.C. – 347 B.C.)
“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” – Mother Teresa
“Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.” – Ingrid Bengis
“Apology is a lovely perfume; it can transform the clumsiest moment into a gracious gift.” – Margaret Lee Runbeck
“Never, never, never give up!” – Winston Churchill
“Sin is that which separates.” – Nietzsche
“Some people think it’s holding on that makes one strong. Sometimes it’s letting go.” – Sylvia Robinson
“Facts don’t cease to exist just because they are ignored.” – Aldous Huxley
“It’s one of the secrets of the world. We all have the key to one another’s locks. But until we start to talk, we don’t know it.” – Michael Silverblatt
“Only connect. This is how we make meaning. This is how we learn to think as Nature thinks.” – Gregory Bateson, anthropologist
“The miracle is this – the more we share, the more we have.” – Leonard Nimoy
“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.” – Daniel Boorstin
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” – T. S. Eliot
“The one truth that would help us begin to solve our ethical and political problems [is] that we are all more or less wrong, that we are all at fault, all limited and obstructed by our mixed motives, our self-deception, our greed, our self-righteousness and our tendency to aggression and hypocrisy.” – Thomas Merton, quoted in Anne Lamott’s wonderful book Stitches – A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair
“I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us.” – Dorothy Dix
“Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.” – Sarah Bernhardt, actress (1844-1923)
“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.” – Karen Kaiser Clark
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the one most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin
“Madness in individuals is something rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (quoted in Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine – Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner)
“There is not much truth being told in the world. There never was. This has proven to be a major disappointment to some of us.” – Anne Lamott in the prelude to Grace (Eventually) – Thoughts on Faith
“Telling the truth is like making oxygen.” – Joanna Macy (in Toronto, June 19, 2009)
“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” – Albert Einstein
(lots more great quotations about truth!)
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” – Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon, 1973
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” – Carl Sagan from The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.” – Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan – political or religious – who comes ambling along. It wasn’t enough, Jefferson said, to enshrine some rights in a constitution or a bill of rights. The people had to be educated, and they had to practice their skepticism... otherwise we don’t run the government, the government runs us.” – Carl Sagan (quoted in “Cause Unknown” The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022, by Edward Dowd)
“He smiled tolerantly. To survive, everyone needs a viewpoint from which they can look down on everyone else, thought Hadda. With some it’s intellect, with some it’s beauty, with some it’s religion.” – from the novel The Woodcutter, by Reginald Hill
“For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forbears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” – John F. Kennedy (JFK)
“Laughter is an instant vacation.” – Milton Berle
“You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. That's a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” ~ Douglas Adams
“I want to tear this damned place [the Warsaw Ghetto] apart. But we are powerless, and it is pointless.”
“Maybe playing a part in the Resistance isn’t even about winning a battle,” Elzbieta said, after a pause. “Maybe it’s just about being true to your values. About standing up for the things you believe and those you love, even if you know you can’t win.” & then, a bit later: “She had drawn the shape of a fist, painfully clenched, and underneath she had written There are many ways to fight, but striving for justice is always worth the battle.” – from The Warsaw Orphan, by Kelly Rimmer (2021)
“All’s you can do is your best,” he says. “Sometimes it doesn’t work out the way you intend it to. You just gotta keep doing it anyway.” – main character in the Tana French novel The Searcher
“4 Rules for Life: Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth. Don’t be attached to the results.” – Angeles Arrien, U.S. teacher, author (1940 – )
“Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it’s the only thing.” – Albert Schweitzer
“A clear conscience is more valuable than wealth.” – Filipino proverb
“The great end of life is not knowledge but action.” – Thomas Henry Huxley
** If you’re not already on overload with quotations (!?), find oodles more great ones – in a ton of different categories from A - Z – here, in Quotation Central