Road Apples, #169

Eye Freckle...In the "news of the weird" department, my annual trip to the eye doctor's office yielded the fact that I apparently have what is commonly (well for something relatively uncommon) known as an "eye freckle".  The technical name is a "choroidal nevus".  I knew something was up when, during the "shine a bright light into your eye" phase of the exam I kept seeing this purple pill-ish looking thing floating in front of my left eye.  Apparently it's nothing to worry about, provided that it doesn't turn into eyeball cancer on me.  My wife warned me that, if horribly this does turn into eyeball cancer, I eventually have to get a glass replacement eye.  I would have gone strictly for the patch.  Kicking it Moshe Dayan style.

On a related note, I really dislike wearing sunglasses.  I find them to be annoying and uncomfortable.  Yet, given the eye freckle, I really do need to engage in some better eye care, especially from the sun.  To that end, I actually broke down and bought a good pair of sunglasses.  Now to see if I actually wear them.

Speaking of the Eye Doctor...I am supposed to go every year, which I do mind you, but the timing is somewhat variable.  This year the impetus was the fact that I stopped wearing my glasses, left them in my truck for a week or so when it was 90+ degrees outside (and hotter inside the truck) and effectively baked the lenses.  The odd thing is that I can go without wearing them as much as I like; I do see better with glasses, especially at night, but I can muddle by without  them.  Anyway, new glasses have been ordered, and this time I have to remember not to bake them in the truck.

Donald Trump...by some accounts, is polling at 1% in the African American community.  That may sound bad, but I can make it worse:  Mitt Romney, quite possibly the whitest American alive, got something like 5% of the African American vote in 2012 (source HERE).  Let that sink in for a moment.

Hillary Clinton...I was talking to a colleague about Hillary Clinton's speaking style the other day.  Now I think I am a fairly good public speaker.  Certainly not up to Presidential standards, but pretty good.  By virtue of that, I feel like I can offer constructive feedback when I hear others speaking.  All of that is window dressing for the following:  Why in the Heck does Hillary Clinton basically engage in monotone yelling when she speaks at rallies, etc?  It's like fingernails across a chalk board.  I know that Ms Clinton can speak well; if you doubt me, just what her hours long performance in front of Congress a few months ago.  Simply brilliant.  On the stump?  Not so much.

A-Fib and Energy Drinks...I came across this a week or so ago:  Energy Drinks & Heart Problems.  The more I read about this stuff, the more convinced I am that my sudden heart issues earlier this year were mostly the result of poor sleep and the consumption of energy drinks (you know, because I didn't sleep so well).  Needless to say, I don't touch the stuff now, although I do worry about generations of younger folks who are growing up drinking Red Bull and Monster drinks.

Kathleen Kane...is now a convicted felon and former Pennsylvania Attorney General.  I'm not the most connected person in the world, especially when it comes to politics, but I did get the impression very early on in Ms Kane's initial campaign for AG that she's difficult to work with; to that you can also add "vindictive" as well.  This is the part where I'm supposed to say "...she came so far, how could she have fallen so fast?" or something like that, but I won't.  Instead I'll simply note that former AG Kane is a great example of just how toxic of a force ego can be in our lives.  Maybe she'll have some time to check out Eckhart Tolle while she's in prison.

Religion and Class...I found this on the intra-webs the other week.  Seems to at least partially make sense to me.

Maybe it's not the intention of religion, and I am not anti-religion by the way, but I think religion has been used as a kind of governing agent for centuries.



 

My lessons in humility

I think about humility, probably more than most.  I'm not always sure that's healthy, by the way, in that it would be one thing if I were this raging ego monster that always needed to keep my head from blowing up into extra large proportions, but I don't think that's me.  At least I hope it's not me.  More on ego in a moment.

When I was a kid, I was in a perpetual state of humility.  Growing up in a fairly staunch Catholic family, I was raised to believe that I was in this constate state of sin, some of which (the "original" variety) wasn't even technically related to anything I've actually done myself.  No bother, as I was probably guilty of so many sins via thought that one more for the perpetual road wasn't going to make much difference.  This made, by the way, the confession of sins all the dicier;  I knew I was swimming in sin, so much so that I couldn't remember them all, let alone be able to actually act in accordance with a reasonable accounting of misdeeds (real or otherwise).

The above, by the way, contributed to my last formal religious confession of sins being in 1986.

It's not that I don't believe in the idea of confession; heck, it seems to be a good idea if you ponder it for a bit.  Who wouldn't want to express that which is gnawing at your conscience like a New York City pizza rat?  It seems both reasonable and logical.  So why did I stop and what does this have to do with humility anyway?

To answer that I think it's important to take a side trip down the road called "ego".  The president of my company has talked about his desire for an organization that is exemplified by "...no drama, low ego...", which I completely understand.  In fact, I remember the first time I heard that quote.  Quite frankly, I was thrilled.  I've always believed that I had a "low ego".  In fact, I can think of many times when my ego has been practically roto-stripped out of existence.  To be fair, I can also think of times, 98% of them being in my professional life when I wasn't acting in the best interests of "low ego".  I try in my life to not dwell on the past, but when I do and these thoughts come up, I am regretful.

Fast forward to now, and I've spent some time studying the works of Eckart Tolle, specifically his thoughts on the nature of ego.  Now I wouldn't consider myself to be a devotee of Herr Tolle, and I wouldn't recommend any of his videos right before bedtime (because you'll fall asleep well before any of them end), but I agree with his basic concept, namely that ego is a corrosive force in our lives and it really does lead to suffering. Mostly our own, but in some very grand ways the lives of others as well.  For me, this becomes a practical matter in that I've learned to detach the concepts of "ego" and "humility".  Humility isn't the absence of ego.  In fact, I can think of many people who are humble but yet likely have enormous egos.  It's not quite the contradiction that it would seem to be when you ponder it (and someone like, for example, U2's Bono) for a moment.

As a matter of personal practice, I don't try to remove ego from my life, mainly because that's almost an egotistical thing to think and do.  I simply recognize it for what it is and try to live accordingly.  This hasn't made me more humble; my humbleness quotient (if there was such a thing) is at about the same level it has always been.  The key difference, at least for me, is that it's become okay to aspire to humility, not because I'm down-trodden and unworthy of doing anything of importance, but because it's simply good for the soul.  The narrative for me now is one of conscience acceptance of who and what I am.  Note the word "conscious", mainly because I do have to work at it.

Another thing I have to work on?  Awareness and management of my feelings when I am around those who may prize their ego and for whom humility is something that is maybe equivalent to a personal weakness or even a show piece that is displayed mostly for effect.  I am admittedly unnerved by such folks.  However, I've learned that my reaction says more about me and my ego than it ever could about anyone else.  Ego isn't just a looking down kind of thing, as it works in the other direction equally well.  That's an easy lesson to understand for me, but far more difficult to apply.

So why haven't I been "back to confession" in 30 odd years?  I respect and admire the tradition of a religious confession of sins, but I've realized that I don't need to feel sorry for my misdeeds in retrospect, as I can (and should) fully do that in almost real time.  An act of religious confession for me only served to distort the real meaning and value of humility.  Being humble isn't something that I need to drag out for an event; rather, it's a conscious decision I need to make about how I live and view the world around me.  I'm not "so good" as to be above the act of confession, but nor am I "so bad" as to be beyond its hope.  Mostly I try to be a good human being; humility simply helps me approach that goal in an intellectually honest manner.        


* * * * * *

What I was listening to on the way back from the gym:

"By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls
There's a hidden door she leads you to
These days, she says, "I feel my life
Just like a river running through"
(Al Stewart, "Year of the Cat")


Unrelated to humility or ego, mainly just a great song.  And that's good enough.