Life Becomes a Daring Adventure

Part 5 of 6 because as we all know Helen Keller was blind, and deaf, and mute. Helen said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. And unfortunately for most of us it's nothing. And in a context of a world that works for everyone, and living life out of a principle that each of us makes a difference. Life becomes a daring adventure. It's now the way you vote is now important. The choices you make when you wake up in the morning is now important. What you do with each moment of your life counts. And to live successfully in such a context. You need to find the rules for living successfully in a you and me world. Like I said, it's changed. It used to be that there wasn't enough to go around. In order to live successfully, you needed to know how, you needed to know what the rules were in a you or me world. And part of the rules in a you or me world was if I got enough, I gave some to you. But I never gave to you, the power that I had to get it. You or me world is also I get mine first. Oh, absolutely. Then you have yours. Yes. And and there's of course a justification. And the justification is if I don't get mine first, I can't give it to you. And if I do get mine first, I can give it to you. Maybe that worked at some time. I guess maybe it did. It got us to here. But the rules for living successfully have really changed. We cannot, You as an individual, me as an individual, us as a city, this country, etc. We can't make it, if we continue to try to make it, on rules in a world that's changed on us. I'm talking with Warner Airheart and we're talking about well I don't know what we're talking about but it sounds interesting to me and one of the things that occurs to me as as I'm listening to you Warner is that uh and I think I mentioned this before that there aren't any answers, there aren't any solutions and throughout our life we're trained that there is an answer, there is a solution, there is something to do from when we start in school to when we finish and when we go out in the world, this is the way you do it. And part of realizing, I think, what you're talking about is realizing that there are lots of ways to look at the same thing. There are lots of ways to experience it. And in our society especially, one of the things we one of I think one of the mis-assumptions, one of the assumptions we operate under is that everybody thinks alike that that somehow if the same stimulus is presented, everybody will act in a certain way. So things like Nielsen ratings and Gallup polls and all of that tend to cement that, tend to support that idea, when in fact there are lots of ways of looking at things, and it's opening ourselves up to that possibility that you're talking about. Yes, that's really very beautiful. I think about programs of education, and I'm thinking, programs in the media some of which are even very, very, very well done which leave people with the sense, ahhh I see that's the way it is when in fact what would empower them is to be left with the sense ahhh I can see various ways of looking at how it is. In other words, to empower the person to create a vision for themselves, rather than leaving them with a picture. There's a really great thought in the book the Medusa and the snail written by Dr. Lewis Thomas. he also wrote Lives of a Cell. Exactly. Which is of course another great book. But he says for in real life this is the way we've always arrived at decisions, even though it's always been done in a disorganized way. We pass the word around. We ponder how the case is put by different people. We read the poetry. We meditate over the literature. We play the music. We change our minds. We reach an understanding. Society evolves this way. Not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique individual human beings to comprehend each other. I think he was talking about the same thing. And he wasn't talking about the oil companies. I'm afraid not. What we were talking about, Michael, and I wanted to stick with it for just a second, was a context in which people's lives could matter, in which people could make a difference. And if one looks for oneself, one can see, that in any other context, in a you or me context, nothing works. I mean, it's just a fact. It's like trying to play basketball when you think you're playing football. In other words, you're the only guy on the court playing football rules. Everybody else is playing basketball. you're probably not going to be very effective. As a matter of fact, the game would probably, at least, in your part of the court look the description of the game in your part of the court would look like our daily newspaper looks. And I think our daily newspaper looks like that, because we're really playing by the wrong rules. Like I said, all of us have become very capable and able at playing. We know the rules