Power...who wants it?

The sun was setting.

His body was aching, his soul groaning, and his mind racing.

The burden of knowing that on his shoulders he was carrying the weight of a decision so immense, so important, that it was possible that the future of the whole planet rested upon it made his stomach churn and made him feel queasy. He stood up and walked to the window.

The oval office was warm and comfortable, yet he felt the chill of the autumn winds searing through his bones.

Would Khrushchev accept his proposal?

Would reason prevail, an agreement had, or was this the end?

A soft tap on the door brought him back from his mellow thoughts.

-Bobby, come in, come in.

-You look just as bad as I feel, how are you doing, Bobby?

Bobby entered the oval office, walked up to his brother, gave him a quick tap on his shoulder then sat down on one of the couches.

John walked up to one of the easy chairs and dragged it close to Bobby.

Like so many times before, John sought the counsel of his brother to help him navigate through the tough decisions that had to be made.

Reason did prevail, an agreement agreed upon, and a nuclear war was averted.

A few years later however, both of them were dead, both murdered, both in the prime of their lives.

Now, not so many years later, once again the threat of a possible nuclear war looms large across our planet.

I don't know about you, but I can't help but wonder what goes on inside of people in power that makes them even entertain the thought that creating weapons that can exterminate all life on our blue planet is a good idea. 

What is it about power that can so corrupt a mind that it "blinds" it to compassion, empathy, and the sanctity of life? Paraphrasing Lincoln: "If you wanna test a man's character, give him power."

Some suggest that for someone with high ethical standards, gaining power does not necessarily have to corrupt, power only corrupts someone who before gaining power already had dubious ethical standards.

People with a high moral identity tend to show a greater understanding of how their actions affect others. This is often accompanied with a broader and more communally orientated perspective than those who register a low moral identity. (According to some research)

I take this to mean: Power does not necessarily corrupt, but it does heighten preexisting ethical and moral standards.

(For some of us, "power can go to our heads" they say, especially if that power gives us advantages over others in different social or personal settings.)

"The measure of a person is what he(she) does with power", according to Plato.

So, who had the power to order the assassination of: Abe Lincoln, J. F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi, Julius Caesar, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, etc.etc. ?

(The thing with being a person of power is that such a person does not have to do the actual "deed" themselves, that will be allocated to someone else. The CEO orders someone else to fire the 1.200 employees, close the factory, put the business into liquidation, shut down the school, etc.etc.)

  Some people seek power in order to be able to exert control over /in their own lives, some seek it to exert control over their own and others lives, some seek it in order to contribute to affecting change for the betterment of mankind, and some seek it for personal political, financial, material, etc.etc.  gain.

"Power", said Chairman Mao, "comes from the barrel of a gun", "Power that comes from the barrel of a gun is only effective for a short time, in the end, peoples love for truth, justice, freedom and democracy will triumph. No matter what governments do, the human spirit will prevail", says the Dalai Lama.

Right on, Dalai Lama, I am with you.

(ps: the black and white image is a graphite drawing)

Wherever you are, be there.........easier said than done...

(This is an edited version of a large painting of two boys watching TV for the first time in their lives.)

"Wherever you are, be there." (Steve Goodier)

This quote, or versions thereof, is probably one of those quotes most of us have come across at sometime or another.

At first glance one may perhaps feel inclined to go: Duh! Obviously!  But, here's the thing, us human beings are able to be physically present while our minds and thoughts are somewhere else.

(Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk reminds us of the importance of being present when we eat and drink: allowing our minds to be focused on what we are tasting and so really tasting(experiencing) everything that we put in to our mouths.

Although perhaps a simple exercise to do when or if we are working on being present in the moment, easy however, it is not, which very quickly became clear to me when I decided to try it.)

Physically we are limited to being in one place at the time, but with our minds we are able to "time-travel". While driving for instance, our minds can be running a list of what we have to buy for dinner, while at work, our minds can be fantasizing about where we will go on our holidays, while running  on a treadmill, our minds can be reminiscing about past events, conversations, experiences, etc.

The mind, may I suggest, is not bound by time, we can all be time-travelers. In the flash of a moment we can weave our way through memories(past), hopes and dreams(future), or focus our mind on for instance, the apple we are eating right now (present). 

This fluidity, being able to flit between the tenses, wondrous as it is, at times can make it difficult for us to "wherever we are, to be there."

When go to bed, often we are thinking about what we have to do tomorrow. While on the way to work, we are thinking about what we will have to do when we get there, when we are at work, we are thinking about what we have to do when we get home.........repeat.....

(For years, while driving to a gig(music job), all I could think about was when I would be driving home again.)

For many of us, once we have decided that we are no longer able to classify ourselves a "young" our minds may be full of thoughts such as: when I was younger I used to be able to walk faster, run faster, stay up all night, drink more, eat more, party more, learn new things quicker, etc.etc.

Remembering, brings us to the past while in the present, thinking about what we will do next brings us into the future while in the present, to be in the present, well, we have to be there, ....body and mind.

And this can be rather difficult.

According to some, we have thousands of thoughts every day, some even suggest 75.000 or so,  which leads me to ponder how in the midst of this onslaught of thoughts we are supposed to be able harness those that belong only to the now?

Since we seem to either to be rehashing the past or planning for the future, how can we become more present in the present, aka "just be there"?

For me, it is a matter of focus and attention.

I ask myself to make a note of where I am, what I can smell, what I can see, what I can hear, (what I can taste) and then I focus all my attention, hone in on, one of those things,,,commonly what I can hear and then filter out everything else.

(According to those in the know, our minds can only focus on one thing at the time, and what we may consider as multitasking is really a matter of doing a number of different things in rapid succession.)

Wherever you are, be there: when you are drinking or eating something, focus all your attention on the taste, when you are listening to something, focus all your attention on what you are hearing(not your thoughts), aka paying an active, open, intentional attention to what is happening right now.

When, or if, thoughts of the past or the future pops up, in my opinion it is often helpful to bring back your attention to something that anchors you to the present moment. 

"Life is available only in the present moment. If you abandon the present moment you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

"Yes, I remember it well"......really? Memories, can they be trusted?

Looking back, walking down memory lane, ..we are rarely aware of doing any editing and or revising of our memories, but according to those in the know,...we do.

As life experiences teach us, mold us, and change us, we change the way we remember things.

As a kid, I remember our ice-skating rink as huge! but...when I saw it many years later as an adult, it seemed to have shrunk somehow.  Actually, wherever I went when I visited my home town, everything I saw seemed to have shrunk. 

I remembered the forest we used to play in as massive and mysterious, the lake next to the school as enormous and never-ending, the school house as big as a cathedral, and the house I grew up in, well, that had somehow become quite small and sad looking.

Memories...can be deceptive, elusive, incorrect, enhanced, magnified, basically, to put it simply: go through a whole lot of "spin cycles". Our memories, whether they may be good or bad (as deemed by us), very seldom in my view stay static, most of them take a turn or five through the spin cycle.

(Spin, as in what media for instance does with information.)

We may, if we are old enough, wax lyrical about the "good ol days" , times when everything seemed much simpler and much easier to understand.

But, here's the perplexing thing, was it though?

Are what we call the good ol days just our edited versions of what we remember?

I recently listened to a talk-back show on the radio in which a "futurist" (his name escapes me) was asked how he views the future. "-Optimistically" he answered.

"-Really?" asked the interviewer, "with the threat of a nuclear war at our doorstep, China expanding its territory, North Korea sending one missile after the other into the skies, Russia interfering with political elections in various countries, global warming and ice-caps melting etc.etc., how can you possibly be optimistic?"

The futurist retorted by going through a long list of mankind's fears and concerns, wars and struggles etc.etc. from the 1950's through to today. (Listening to the futurist I concluded that the good ol days probably never existed, life has, and always will be, a struggle. )

"Every decade comes with new challenges and difficulties, but it also comes with new discoveries, new inventions, new ways of dealing with mankind's challenges and difficulties, new ways of expanding our understanding of our planet, our Universe, ourselves, our fellow human beings, 

and other life forms" he continued.

Looking back, more often than not, the way we remember something changes every time we recall the memories of days gone by, and according to the futurist, we tend to "forget" some things. aka "edit" away some memories and keep others that are more congruent with our current mindset.

Nader, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, together with other colleagues at the University have done some experiments that suggests that a memory is re-formed in the process of calling it up, which would seem to support the futurist's  assertions.

There are a bunch of different definitions for the word memory: recollection, or a process of retaining information over time, or something remembered from the past, or patterns inscribed in the connections of millions of neurons in our brains, etc., but my favorite by far is this: "an echo of something in the past".

Memories, according to those in the know, are not stored in our brains like on a computer, as in, once stored, they are kept intact. For us humans its more like an echo that fades and sounds less and less like the original sound that we first heard.  Further more, according to some, once a memory starts to fade, the brain starts to fill in the gaps by borrowing data from other memories in order to make a complete "picture".
If, the first experience a person had of eating a banana for instance happened to coincide with having caught a stomach bug, chances are that the two somehow will go together in that person's memory even if they had nothing to do with each other. Memories are influenced not only by the experience itself but also by other elements such as our mental state at the time of the experience, sounds, smells, weather, and so on. (I have read that smell is a very powerful trigger for bringing forth memories and it certainly seem to be the case for me. The smell of freshly baked buns, or an open fire, or freshly brewed coffee instantly takes me back to my childhood.)
Some memories, whether mere echoes or still very vivid, may be treasures that help us to stay strong, hopeful and motivated, but others may be painful reminders, like thorns in our subconscious that keep on hurting us.
Memories, like with most things human can be complex, confusing and unreliable, and sometimes it may be helpful to question their accuracy. (Did the banana make me sick or was it just a coincidence?)
Extensive research/studies have shown that our memories of events are active interpretations of the past rather than picture-perfect records of them and since memories belong to the past and what happened can't be changed, what we can change is whether we allow our memories to dictate how we will experience and perceive the present.

"Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers." (Kazuo Ishiguro)

About the image: A graphite on paper put through a filter in Photoshop to retain the feel of an old Newspaper photo.

On the importance of eye contact.............

Some say that the eyes are the window to your soul.

After I watched a movie titled "A Dog's Purpose", I started to ponder if such is also the case with all creatures that have eyes. (Excluding insects and creepy crawlers.)

Soul, is a much debated topic since proving that it exists, or not, is problematic indeed.

So, for the sake of clarity, or at least a point of view, here are some definitions:

A soul is the incorporeal essence of a being, ....or something invisible and spiritual in nature that exists inside of a human being even after death, .....a name for that which which may be called the Self.

The urban Dictionary: "The energy of life existing in all beings. Exists both inside and outside of the beings physical shell as both a fuel for the physical realm and a connection to the universal life-force."

There are suggestions that the concept of a soul may have come about around the same time as humans came up with the concept of consciousness, so it has been around for quite some time.

Regardless of when the term was first coined however, most of us probably use the word in many different situations, and with our own personal interpretations of the word.

"I like the music, but it lacks soul, yeah, it a good painting but it lacks soul, he/she is a good speaker but he/she lacks soul, it's a good policy, but it lacks soul, etc.etc."

"For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?" so says a wise man according to sacred texts.

Some suggest that human beings came up with the concept of a soul to minimize the anxiousness connected to death, as in, there's a part of us that keeps on "living"after we die.

As with many problematic terms, at some point we just have to decide for ourselves, make a choice, how to interpret those problematic terms, because there are a great many terms that we use in common parlance that there is no specific or undisputed scientific data to support the existence of.  For example:

Emotions, we all experience emotions of varying kinds although exactly what they are can be difficult to explain, we have value systems we adhere to that can't really be measured, we experience a sense of "Me, I, the Self" but can't really pinpoint exactly how we know what "I am" is or means, we write volumes about Love, we experience love, but when it comes to defining where it comes from or what it is exactly, we may find ourselves scrambling for terms that accurately defines it other than that it is something one "feels".

Regardless of whether there is a "soul" on display in our eyes or not, if we take out the word soul in the saying, what do we discern when we look another living being into their eyes?

"The eyes is a window to your emotional state?" (Actually, the eyebrows play a big role as well when it comes to "reading" someones face.)

Here is a collection of eyes that belongs to some of my paintings.

What do you reckon? Can you guess at what emotional states the eyes represent? 

How often do we really have eye contact these days? Do we prefer to send emoji's rather than potentially allowing our souls to become "visible" through our eyes?

In my experience, there are times when a multitude of non verbally-expressed words of compassion and understanding can be given and or received through a mere few seconds of eye contact.

And sometimes, it can make a world of difference for a mother with a screaming child, or for someone waiting to see the doctor while a loved one is being diagnosed, or for someone waiting to find out if they got the job, or for someone being spoken to too harshly, or for someone looking sad or lonely, etc.etc.

Eye contact, in my view, says: "I see you" and sometimes, we may all need a little bit of assurance that we are "seen".

(And this goes for other creatures too methinks, whether they be dogs, cats, or other living beings.

Although, I am sure that in my cat's case it's more like: "Yeah, I am looking at you, you have seen me, ....now, where's my food?!!)

"Eye contact is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to make a person feel recognized, understood, and validated."  (A. J. Harbinger)

What??? I'm being mugged?........

Suddenly, someone grabbed my right arm and swung me around.

Facing me was a man wearing a balaclava and holding a very large knife in his hand.

He lifted the knife and then pressed the blade against my throat.

I'm being mugged? Really? Right in front of the Hotel and barely 50 meters away from the Police HQ? What do I do? Resist? No, my sensei told me that if someone with a weapon threatened me, don't engage, just give them what they want. Very inappropriately, I suddenly felt the urge to laugh, but instead I asked him what he wanted.

The mugger motioned me to hand over my bag in which I had my wallet, mobile phone, and sheet 

music.
Damn, why tonight of all nights! For once, my band has been paid before the gig so now I won't be able to pay the guys. ''Hang on, if you move your knife then I will be able to get my wallet" I said to the mugger and wondered if those words were going to be the last words I would ever utter.

Still silent, the mugger proceeded to move the knife from my throat to instead pushing the tip of his knife into my shoulder. He slowly pressed the tip through my jacket until I could feel it piercing my skin. He is serious, this is a serious situation, potentially life threatening. I slowly put the bag on the ground and pulled out my wallet. Still wordless, just two eyes staring at me through the holes of the balaclava, I could sense the mugger becoming impatient. Where the hell are all the people? 7:30 pm in a big city, on a Saturday night, 50 meters from the Police HQ, in front of a major Hotel, and nobody can see this going down?

I found the wallet and demonstratively pulled out all the bills and handed them to the mugger. Thank God I kept the guys money still in the envelope! The mugger wont see it and if I survive this, at least I will be able to pay them.

As soon as the mugger had the money in his hand, he took off and seemingly just vanished. Just as he had appeared out of nowhere, he disappeared the same way. The whole thing probably only lasted a few minutes, but in my experience, some minutes can seem much longer than others.   

Man, the gig, I'm on stage in 15 minutes!!!

Though my legs felt a little rubbery, I managed to run across the road and in to the Hotel. A few of the guys were sitting in the lobby chatting but as soon as they saw my face they knew something had happened. 

To cut a long story short: the gig was a very important gig because the band consisted of the very best jazz musicians in the country, we were playing my compositions, the place was jam packed, not to mention that dispersed through the audience were some very famous and respected jazz musicians, and the gig was only one hour long. I had to get it together. So I did something I have never done before and have not done since, I went up to the bar and said: "A whiskey, and make it a double."

Out of all the gigs I have performed through my time as a jazz musician, this one stands out.

For once, I played with absolutely no fear, no nerves, just reckless abandon and with a total focus on the music. After we finished, the trumpet player came up to me and said with a twinkle in his eye: "You should be mugged before all your gigs, I have never heard you play better."

Only in my car on the way home did it hit me just how close I had been to potentially have been killed, a victim of murder. But, there was an upside, and the upside was that the experience cured me of stage fright.

Thinking we know how we would deal with life threatening situations and how we actually deal with them, are often very different things. It can be easy to become judgmental and view other's reactions to difficult situations as foolhardy and "weak", but until we are actually in those difficult situations ourselves, I believe we can't really know how we would respond. 

"If I would have been in that situation I would have......" works in theory, but in actuality,... often not so much.

"If I was homeless, I would.... if I was a refugee I would.....if I was being held up I would......if I was bullied I would.....etc.etc."

I can't help but wonder if in today's society we do not often tend to engage in victim-blaming.

Do we sometimes focus more on victims' behaviours rather than on asking questions of perpetrators why they continue to commit acts of violence?

Do we subconsciously believe that some people "deserve" their suffering? 

I think we do, not because we are heartless and un-caring but because the alternative is harder to get one's head around: we do not live in a fair world. Bad things sometimes happens to good people.

Occasionally we may need to let go of the "why" and instead focus on the "how" when it comes to people in pain as in: How can I help you?

"Laws of nature do not make exceptions for nice people. A bullet has no conscience; neither does a malignant tumor or an automobile gone out of control. That is why good people get sick and get hurt just as much as anyone." (Harold S. Kushner)