Write Something, Already...

Taking advice from other people is an acquired skill.

It's not something that comes naturally. Otherwise, pretty much everyone would be doing it at the same level, without any real qualms. So it's obviously a learned trait of most, or maybe just some, of the people in the world. I am fully convinced of that thought, and I use people from all walks of life as evidence. When we're younger, we not only have to learn to listen and communicate with others, but we also have to learn the simple lesson that listening to others is even useful. I want you to think of any toddler, baby, or probably even adolescent you know. How many of them can you recall several times that they heard something that you said, something that you told them to do or something you strongly advised them against, and they did exactly what you warned them against?

Pretty much everyone one of them, right? Every young person has to learn the concept that other's opinions and ideas and thoughts actually matter. It isn't some supernatural occurrence that we all think we know more than we do at some point, and have to be educated to the contrary by our elders, our peers, or just whoever is nearby and is willing to lend their two cents in. And that's fine, that young people think they don't need other people's input into their lives, because they grow up and learn many important lessons throughout their lives. Sadly, not all of them actually do that, which is why there end up being more than a few adults that have never fully evolved out of the mental state of "I must be right and you must be wrong because I'm just smarter than you. No one else could possibly know the things that I think I know right now in my life." There shouldn't be as many people running around out there that are incapable of taking someone else's perspective, and yet many of us deal with them daily. They have small roles in our lives, like when they work near us at the office or they write us tickets and don't care that it sucks. Some of them have bigger roles. We may be electing one of these people president this year.

I'm not going into a serious political rant here, because I kind of did that last entry and would really like to avoid making a habit of that. The point I want to make here is that there is so much that we can learn from other people, just random little tidbits of information that can make a profound impact on us. We likely will even take it for granted when it happens right then and there, but down the road, there are so many little moments that play through us, over and over again. And this can be people's wisdom, their actions, their ideas, he'll even their mistakes. Try to learn from all of it. Eleanor Roosevelt said it best:

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

But I was talking more about advice...

The best advice I ever got came from a good friend of mine, who we'll call Charlie for this post, and it was a very simple conversation, but it stuck with me from that moment on, and I think about it over and over. And it's a perfect metaphor for the friendship that he and I have had, because he's always been wiser than I am and he's always been able to pinpoint the right thought, the right needle to pick out of a stack of needles that makes sense and is concise and profoundly deep at the same time. This is how the conversation went:

Me: You know what? I think I want to be a writer.
Charlie: Yeah?
Me: Yeah, I think so.
Charlie: So write something, already.
Me: Huh?
Charlie: Yeah, get going. Go write something.
Me: Uh, ok. What should I write about?
Charlie: What the hell are you asking me for? You're the writer.

To be fair, I think he actually wanted me to leave him alone so he could finish studying, but the fact remains, it was pretty direct advice. Or him being an asshole, but again, I'm choosing to take it as advice. And it always stuck with me. I still picture that exact moment, which seemed to barely even register in his mind, as one of the little moments that make me how I am today.

You want to get started doing something? Get moving, get up and start right now. Go read a book about that thing. Go YouTube other people doing that thing that you want to do. Go buy the stuff you need to do it, or try to make your own thing. Go meet other people that do that thing and see how they do it, and learn from them, or join them as their doing that thing. The operate word here is 'go'. I mean, what are you waiting for? Are you waiting for something, like having enough time or money, or waiting until your skill in that thing is good enough that you won't feel embarrassed? Who gives a shit, go do the thing anyway, whatever it is. I mean, anyone can do something that they're already great at. How about you go and start doing something that you are willing to suck at, at least until you really figure out what the hell you're doing?

You want to be a basketball player? Then you should join a league and learn the game, and watch some other games from people who play at a high level. But you know what else? Go out and play games with some guys that will absolutely destroy you, and learn from it. Get faster, stronger, tougher, get a better jump shot, learn the game. Get going. Start playing and start developing yourself as this thing that you want to be.

You want to be a computer programmer? Take some classes and all, but also get the software you need and start making programs. Do it right now. I know they're going to suck at first. They're going to suck for a while. But you'll keep learning from classes and apps on your iPad and from other programmers making fun of your shitty apps when you try to show them off, and all of that will push you to building something better and better.

You want to be a surgeon? Study and get into med school and all that jazz, but also get out there and start performing surgery in your spare time. Get out there and cut some people open. A lot of people need surgery and can't afford it, why do you go out and do some pro bono work like law students do? And sure, the first few people may die horrible deaths by your hands and ignorance, but you gotta learn the human body somehow and this is the most direct way to get acquainted with the type of work you'll be doing.

...I'm not as sure about that last one.

Knowing Better vs. Doing Better

I spoke a while ago about weird things becoming a norm in our lives. I mentioned subtle things like traffic, weird sounds that you hear in your house, or how often your boss talks to you at work. I had absolutely no intention of this taking a darker meaning in my own mind (or anyone else's) and yet here I am, admitting that there is yet another type of regular occurrence that is awful and yet seems to be customary to our daily lives now.

Horrific acts of violence are something that we live with and deal with in our society. I write this now, in the wake of the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, which both included black men being gunned down by white police officers under circumstances that could arguably have been de-escalated. This preceded a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida perpetrated by an individual who had ties to Islamic terrorism. Before that, though, an incidence of violence still never seemed to have been too far from the present. Other names like Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Walter Scott all come to mind, all of whom had different circumstances with their deaths but all of which sparked moderate to heavy protests. Dylan Roof, a white young adult, shot several church goers in South Carolina (in an event that could also be considered terrorism, but that's not really my point here). The city of Chicago has adopted the nickname 'Chiraq' because it's level of violence has been said to compare to that of an actual war zone, which is a stretch compared to which war zone you want to bring up.

For example, a flurry of violent attacks have occurred this week at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, in Istanbul (Turkey), Baghdad (Iraq), Medina (Saudi Arabia), and Dhaka (Bangladesh). Hundreds of people died at Baghdad alone. Or another example could be the ongoing drug wars that have taken place in Mexico. Or the several wars that are going on in Africa constantly. I'll just name a few: The civil war in Somalia, The Boko Haram insurgency that affects 4 different countries (Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad), the Libyan civil war and the civil war in the Sudan and South Sudan. And I consider these events, going on outside of our country, and one theme seemed to remain constant: These events have been largely ignored here in the U.S.

Is it that we don't care? Is it that it doesn't matter to us? Do we really find it that easy to shrug off death and violence in other countries? Maybe it was that several of these conflicts have been ongoing for several years, and they aren't considered newsworthy to our culture. I don't know, I'm throwing out ideas. Or maybe it was that these conflicts get overshadowed by conflicts going on in our own country. Maybe there is so much violence going on in the world as a whole, that caring about all of it is too exhausting and everyone has to ration their empathy for those who live close to them and are most similar to them. Again, I'm not posing an answer here. But it makes sense to me that a lot of it boils down to one particular point: we tend to pay attention the most when the victims remind us of us or the people we love.

So then last night, in Dallas, a city that had nothing to do with the recent situations, another shooting took place, this time at a protest for the two killings by cops, and this time targeting cops as the shooting victims. The protest itself was peaceful, and was apparently ending when the gunfire began. At last count, 5 officers were killed and several more were struck and are now recovering. I watched footage of this event spiral into chaos the morning after, and for the third day in a row, I hardly knew which emotion within me was the strongest. It was like the feelings all overlapped and jumped back and forth over one another. As soon as I started to let myself feel one way towards what has been going on, another side was right there to argue right back against it.

I felt significant anger watching the footage of Alton Sterling getting shot. I mean, it's surreal enough just to say that I watched this in the first place. Do you ever catch yourself feeling how awful it is, that we now can log on to Facebook or twitter or whatever else, and watch human beings die there? That footage was readily available. I was more than just angry at the two officers involved in the video. I was furious, and dismayed, and hurt that they felt they could make the decision to devalue the life of another man on the spot, and try to justify it later. But it felt like it was more than just those two that led to it, the more I tried to shake off that feeling. And then the second shooting happened and again, the same impulse came into my head, that I should not just be mad at the individuals, but the others that are similar to them in the decisions they make and justify, and then their entire profession, the entire system that lets events like this happen without enough consequence, the culture that feeds into that system and doesn't... see, there it goes again, I can feel myself getting worked up about it, no matter how many times it happens.

And then the police officers get shot last night, and obviously that's a terrible tragedy too. And I'm mad for the police and I'm upset at the shooters, and anyone who thinks that killing cops can be justified, and anyone who thinks that responding to violence with more violence is the way to handle a situation like this, in our country that is supposed to be better, is supposed to be stronger.

Look, I KNOW that there are millions of cops that go out there every day and do the right thing. I have friends who are cops, or have cops in their family, or have cops as their close friends. I won't for a moment badmouth what police do for our society. I have encountered many police officers in my life, in several different scenarios, and I can say with confidence that I have never had a negative experience from how I was treated by law enforcement of any kind. I'm not saying I never have received a ticket, because I have. But my treatment, my interactions, my memories of dealing with cops have been overwhelmingly positive. I have been let off with warnings more than once that I could have been given citations, which I would not have been happy about but that I could have been given and it would be justifiable. I know that this is not everyone else's experience with police, but that is my personal set of experiences, so that's what I have to draw from.

But my regard for the majority of police does not erase the fact that there are individuals out there that still betray my trust and expectations that so many others have set. Cops that I have met and that I know and my family knows, these cops do it the right way. And they've set the bar high for cops everywhere, some of whom may not be up to that level. And I have to weigh that balance, that they are not all great people that want to protect everyone and do their jobs right, but that they are also not all monsters that want to shed professionalism and shoot first rather than use proper training and procedure.

That's where I stand here. Right in the middle of all of this, not trying to oppose all police but angry at the individual policemen involved in the shootings. Not trying to call out all protesters, but furious with those that would shoot police in retaliation. And it shouldn't be a hard stance to clarify, to not want anyone to be killed anywhere. And not want people killed out of fear, out of confusion, out of justifying killings elsewhere. That shouldn't be a unique stance to have to take. I wish it didn't have to be "Black Lives Matter" vs "Blue Lives Matter" in times like this, but I have already seen the two hashtags pop up. Honestly, I wish that 'All Lives Matter" was an actual movement, that was actually going out and doing shit rather than just serving as a rebuttal to shout down other movements. But we don't seem to be able to handle that right now as a society.

Come on, America. We're better than all of this. We know better than to keep dividing ourselves and letting others push buttons so that we can be so easily divided. The protests are not just black people, but people of all races that care about fighting injustice against everyone. The police that protect us, the people in the armed forces, the emergency services that fight to save lives EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. These are not people of one race or another. We're all working towards the same thing, right? Or we should be, right? We know that we can do better. How many cycles of violence and retaliation do we have to go through before we can do better?

The shitty thing here is that I don't have a solution that I can offer here. I don't know what steps have to take to de-escalate the current situation or to try to prevent the next one. I don't know if this has always been a problem of this level and we're just now paying more attention to it, I don't know if I should be individually worried the next time I have an encounter with someone in law enforcement. I didn't write all of this to try to solve our country's problem. I just needed to breathe all of this out, any way that I can. And hopefully, I'm not alone. Hopefully I'm not the only one that hates what they see going on, but appreciates that this is not a one-sided problem or that a heavy-handed response isn't necessarily the best cause of action.

I could go on, but I'll stop here. We know better. Let's do better.