Mike Befeler's Blog, page 54

Acceptance and Tolerance

Pay close attention to the difference between tolerance and acceptance.  Be tolerant of different viewpoints, races, religions, cultures and styles.  Revel in the uniqueness of yourself and of others, but also recognize the common humanity of all people.  Do not accept the violence that drugs wreck upon the body and mind.  Do not accept the violence that guns cause.  Do not accept the violence of hate.  Resist not evil.  Be a judo expert with hate: let the force of hate neutralize itself rather than you trying to fight back with hate.

Both/and, not Either/or

Life is full of dichotomies.  We face many decisions: chocolate or vanilla, to spend time at work or with our family, to take the turn to the right or left.  In Western tradition we become used to these binary choices whereas Eastern tradition embraces polar opposites: each positive has a negative and vice versa, the yin and the yang, you are and you are not.
The overarching duality calls for us to be both individuals and members of humanity.  Both aspects define our humanness.  We all share a commonality, but each individual is unique.
Science in the last century has also embraced both/and.  It used to be thought that matter or energy existed in one state.  Then along came the discovery that light acts like both a particle and a wave.
The same dichotomy exists within our lives.  We can embrace the opposites and not be restricted by an either/or viewpoint.
We can learn to balance both work and family so we’re not sacrificing one for the other.  Parents may bring children to work, take work home, set priorities and be successful in both roles.
In business people get labeled as visionary or action-oriented.  How about being both?  How about having a clear vision about where a company is going while taking the steps to make it a reality?
Rather than having to be either focused or aware of things around you, how about being both?  Like a good firefighter who is concentrating on the fire but also aware of threats around him that may prevent him from quenching the fire.
Do you need either to have an imagination or be pragmatic?  How about both?  How about dreaming up wild ideas and then implementing one with down-to-earth pragmatic steps to make it a reality?
What about being either intuitive or logical?  How about being both?  Make the intuitive leap and then build the bridge, plank by plank that gets from here to there.
Do you have to either accept your situation or improve it?  No.  You can both accept your current situation with a realistic assessment of all its warts, problems and challenges and then take the necessary steps to improve it.
Embrace dichotomy.
And by the way it doesn’t have to be chocolate or vanilla.  You can order a swirl.

Faith: Positive or Negative?

“Have faith,” someone says.  It’s another way of indicating, “have hope, don’t give up, hang in there.”  That’s a good trait.  Stick-to-itness.  The Stockdale Paradox is to have faith in a positive outcome and do everything possible for that positive outcome, but be grounded in the reality of your current situation.  That’s faith based upon reality.
But there is another type of faith.  Blind faith.  This is the faith that runs counter to logic, rationality and what is happening in the real world.  This is the faith of fundamentalism.  If it is written in the old testament, new testament or Koran, then it’s to be believed literally.  If a priest, minister, mullah tells you to murder in the name of God, do you do it?
This becomes the danger of our time.  The misdirection of faith, faith run amok, that takes life rather than preserves and enhances life.
We see all around us the two types of faith.  On one hand appears the faith of joy, giving, following the true teachings of Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, Confucius.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Resist not evil.  Love your enemies.  The Eight-fold Path.
On the other hand we see the misdirection of faith.  I’m saved, and you’re going to hell.  I’m right, and you’re wrong.  My family, tribe, nation or religion is justified in killing members of your family, tribe, nation or religion.  My book has the literal truth of God, and yours is the misguided ramblings of lunatics.
How can so many people believe that they have the literal word of God and all the others don’t?
What we need today entails seeing the truth in many different religious traditions and to focus on the common truth rather than the exclusivity of one prophet versus another.
Each religion starts with insights into the human predicament.  Unfortunately, a structure is wrapped around the core teachings to become institutionalized.  Then the message is lost in the trappings of the formal faith.
So keep the faith.  Just don’t kill others with it. 

World War II Speaking Events

Taking a detour from my mystery writing, my first non-fiction book For Liberty: A World War II Soldier’s Inspiring Life Story of Courage, Sacrifice, Survival and Resilience has been published by Green Leaf Publishers.
On D-Day, June 6, the subject of the book, 96-year-old Ed Gitlin, and I will be speaking at two venues in Colorado. At 9 AM they will be at the Broomfield Veterans Memorial Museum, 12 Garden Center, Broomfield, CO, and at 12:30 PM they will be at the Spirit of Flight Center, 2650 S. Main St. Erie, CO.
What will be fun is the format of these two programs. Ed is very articulate and has a great sense of humor. I always kid him that he has a better memory than I do. We’re going to use an interview format for the presentations. I’ll tee up an event in his past, and then he’ll tell the story of his experience.
To give you an example of his impish sense of humor, Ed once attended a party with his wife, a climate scientist. A pompous academician looked down his nose at Ed and said, “What do you do?”  Ed the owner of a machine shop business said, “Oh, I sweep the floors and clean machines in a machine shop.” The man was taken aback. Ed then put his arm around his wife and said, “And this wonderful woman taught me how to read and write.” As Ed recounted, “Boy did I hear about that from my wife afterwards.”  

Enlightenment

In the movie City Slickers,Curly holds up a finger and says there is one thing.  Each of us has to find that one thing.
As I get older, I look back over my life and realize that certain buttons constantly push me.  This has led me to consider that if I am ever to become an enlightened human being, I have not one, but three goals to achieve.  These are mine.  Yours will be completely different.  We all have our own personal demons and challenges.  They may be big things or little things.  So here are my three.
One: competitiveness.  I played competitive tennis as a kid and in college.  Even though my joints protest, I continue to play racquet sports, but in a social setting.  I still have that competitive drive to win.  One aspect of this is positive because it pushes me to do my best.  But one aspect continues to get me.  I hate to lose.  So after a hard fought battle on a Saturday morning, if I lose I will stay pissed off for hours afterwards.  It’s just a game I tell myself.  Why can’t I just enjoy the game and be a gracious winner or loser?  I can be a gracious winner because I won.  But when I lose, that’s another story.  So my first step toward becoming an enlightened human being is to be able to engage in a racquet game, enjoy it, be alive and present and feel positive whether I win or lose. Right.
Two: pride.  Having been married forty-six years, my wife and I rarely fight about big issues, but we still argue about some of the same things over and over, such as, you’re not listening to me.  There are times when she is speaking about something that is important to her and I’m not paying attention.  Then she accuses me of not listening.  Rather than admitting it, I try to prove her wrong and me right.  My pride can’t take being criticized.  So instead of taking in what she’s saying, I respond with, “I was listening.  And by the way you’re the one who doesn’t listen.  Remember that time. . .”
Three: fear.  This is the biggy.  I have experienced those rare moments when I have been a good loser and there have even been times when I haven’t gotten defensive when criticized.  But the fear factor is the toughest one for me.  When I get stressed over writing issues, I’m pretty good at handling them during the day.  But at four in the morning, I pop awake worrying about some small item.  Did I set up that meeting?  Will I have time to get edits completed tomorrow? How will I solve that writing problem?  My mind is churning, my stomach’s tight, my right ear is ringing, I’m sweating, my heart’s going lickety split.  And I should be sound asleep.
This is the curse of the active mind.  What serves me well during the day: analytical skills, problem solving, planning, looking at contingencies, unfortunately, keeps going during the night, and I find myself wide awake and mulling things over in my mind.  Sometimes I get up and write myself notes.  Sometimes I get up and read.  Sometimes I try to get back to sleep.  But usually I end up tossing and turning.
My logical mind says to turn it off for the night, relax, get a good night’s sleep.  My subconscious mind says, wake up, take care of this, worry about it, look at it sixteen different ways, fix it.So my final step to enlightenment will be the ability to park the problems of the day, get a good nights rest and then tackle the issues fresh the next day.
I’m sure you have your own list that would symbolize your own journey to enlightenment.  For me these are my three.  They represent where my mind and emotions are disconnected.  I can look at them logically, but emotionally I react to losing a game, a comment from my wife or by waking up in the middle of the night.
So proceed on your journey and when you achieve enlightenment, let me know how you did it.

Growing Your Soul

Since life is a mystery and we may never know how we came about and what happens after we die, we can all speculate about this brief period of living.
My own interpretation: we are entrusted with a soul.  Our mission becomes growing this soul during our custodianship.  We have choices we can make.  We can let our soul stagnate or we can improve it.
The concept of reincarnation intrigues me.  This would say that after we die our soul continues but in a different body.  Does this really happen?  We don’t know and probably never can know.  Some people seem to be in possession of immature souls and others exhibit the wisdom of a mature and experienced soul.
It’s said that there are more people alive today than have ever lived before though the history of mankind.  Thus if souls get passed on, then a whole lot of new souls keep getting added to the mix.  Unless souls are being supplied from some other location in the universe.  That presents another interesting possibility.  Outsourced souls.
Regarding the reality of this, I don’t know.  But I like the concept of soul custodianship--that we take responsible for a soul during our lifetime.
This provides a good model for ethical living.  It implies we should do everything possible to grow our soul during our lifetime.  We should contribute to life and not death, nurture our soul with positive experiences and the beauty of nature, learning from life’s experiences and doing what we can in our sphere of influence to make the world a better place.
Since we can each have an impact either positive or negative, why not contribute to the positive?
Water your soul, give it light and, sure, a little fertilizer is always getting thrown on it, but just realize that this also helps your soul grow.

Life Is a Mystery

On one hand appears the Literalist tradition within the major religions--the folks who have all the answers and often kill those who disagree with them.  On the other hand emerges the Gnostic path of seeking to know, but not getting lost in the literal acceptance of written words that came from people and not God.  The Gnostics follow the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad.  Love your enemy.  It doesn’t mean you have to like your enemy.  But it means that we are all one, and we are torn apart if we hate part of ourselves.  The Literalists remain exclusive, the Gnostics inclusive.  One separates.  The other brings together.  The mystery of life becomes the mystery of the individual within the collective.
When you look at one individual life, it is amazing that any one specific person is here.  Consider all the right decisions, luck, successful reproduction that has been required for that one person to be alive.  One ancestor eaten by a saber tooth tiger and the chain would have been broken.  One ancestor who decided not to enter into a relationship with a member of the opposite sex.  One decision that would have led to premature death in a car accident.  It’s incredible that all these links happened for one specific individual to exist.  Yet, we see all these people around us.  The individual can be buried in the morass of humanity or be overlooked in the teaching that the individual doesn’t matter and that you can achieve paradise by giving up your life to reach an afterlife of supposed rewards.  The danger becomes turning one’s back on the mystery of life and abdicating the moment for a promise of paradise that has been invented by human imagination.
So at the micro-level of one individual, life is a mystery of how any one person got here.  What were the odds over ten thousand years ago that the circumstances would lead to me being here today?
At the macro-level an easy answer to the mystery exists.  Someone had to survive.  Look at all the ants, cockroaches, rabbits.  It’s just a matter of numbers.  Some get stepped on and eaten, and others survived to reproduce.  No big deal.  Just the law of averages that some get killed and some make it.  But what a mystery that we are here to begin with.  The grass, the flowers, the trees, the animals, the variety of people.
When I was twenty I wrote a brief philosophy.  After another fifty years, I can’t come up with a better summation.
Each moment is unique as is each individual.
Yet moments unite through time and individuals through love.
What more is happiness than living and loving each moment.

What a mystery!

Writers Conferences

I attended the Pikes Peak Writers Conference in Colorado Springs last weekend. It was well-run with a wide variety of workshops to help writers improve their craft, learn how to query agents and editors and improve their promotional skills.
I taught three workshops: Mixing Humor, Mystery and Older Characters; Balancing Writing and a Full Time Job; and Rejection Is Not a Four Letter Word. In addition I was on an amateur sleuth panel with Robert Spiller and J. A. Kazimer.
The keynote speakers included Mary Kay Andrews, Andrew Gross, R. L. Stine and Seanan McGuire.
All-in-all a valuable weekend.

Editing with Word and Audio

Yesterday, I completed editing for my upcoming biography, For Liberty: A World War II Soldier’s Inspiring Life Story of Courage, Sacrifice, Survival and Resilience. I had an opportunity to do it a new way. The publisher sent me the final Word document and an audio file. The audio was not human recorded but automated. This led to a number of strange words such as when it recorded World War I instead of saying World War “one,” it said World War “eye”.
I played the audio and read the Word document as the recording flowed. This was very helpful in that sometimes I would catch an error from audio and sometimes from visual. This took about seven hours, the recorded time of the audio.

Audio Books

I love audio books. Whenever I’m driving by myself, I listen to books on CD. Currently I’m listening to Suspect by Robert Crais. This is a for a book club I’m in, and I enjoy reading with my ears as much as with my eyes.
I recently received the Books in Motion audio book edition of the fourth book in my Paul Jacobson Geezer-lit Mystery Series, Cruising in Your Eighties Is Murder. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, but actor,  Jerry Sciarrio, did an excellent job of recording the first three books in the series.
The next two books in the series are under contract with Books in Motion, so I’ll have a chance to continue to listen to Paul Jacobson and all his antics in the future as well.