Sharings by Daniel

What happens when something goes right in life?  If it’s something big, the custom appears to be to have a celebration, a moment to stop and be happy and thank those who made it possible.  But what about personal victories?  I find I too often write them off and move on to the next challenge, in an endless drive forward towards no particular ultimate goal.  Certainly at work, frustration comes from not being recognized for my contribution while watching my coworkers spend their days trumpeting their efforts rather than get any real work done.

Maybe that’s the oxymoron: personal…victory.  If it’s so personal, then unless it becomes a public victory, who would know?  So I ask myself, when is the last time you stopped to smile on your accomplishments?  And why is it so difficult to share them with my partner, or friends, or coworkers, or the local paper?  The mere thought of being recognized makes me cringe - ahh the truth!  And yet, I expend so much energy to accomplish things for others, hoping for some scrap of “thank-you” which rarely comes.  I guess when you blog-jectify it, I’m your typical low self-esteem case; or some such psychoterm.  But believe it or not, I didn’t fire up the browser for a therapy session.

Perhaps, the key to New Years resolutions is not only setting attainable goals but stopping to celebrate successes.  And maybe my coworkers could join in my victories, if I took time myself to enjoy them and not look at any mention of a person’s accomplishments as arrogant.  The key is me.  Lazy bones that I am, I see stopping and celebrating as just another job to do, and one that can be skipped to move on to the next goal.  But there’s a reason every human culture has holidays and celebrations; its human and healthy to stop and appreciate where we’ve been, even if it requires a little work to prepare the victory “feast.”

So, here’s my New Years resolution addendum:
No more silent victories!  Even if just a word to a friend, I resolve to take the time to share my accomplishments with others; and to keep an open ear when they share their victories with me.

Photo by Daniel Milbo

The following is a transcript of the inaugural poem recited by Elizabeth Alexander on January 20 as provided by CQ transcriptions.

—
Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

This election was no different… standing at the poll with two imperfect (to put it politely) choices.  Sad to say, it was Palin vs. Biden that was more on my mind; but after having weighed the issues, and having read an unprecedented amount of available “facts” and views online, I made my choice and voted.  I was a waverer - there was a night, after hearing Obama speak, when I thought the decision was made; and then as rhetoric faded, I weighed the issues again.  Somehow the three or four issues I recall voting on last election were now a dozen.  How can you drop environment issues from the list just because of the current domestic issues?  No, all these choices pulled my vote back and forth like some 70’s red and blue mood ring.

And then it happened - the election was over - my precinct’s results weren’t even official before CNN’s 3D hallucinations crowned the winner with their calculators on their jumbo-tron as they finger-painted the states blue and red like the country was some crayola plaything.  And the elation began.  A new hope seemed to be born - and people were coming together - at least from the perspective of my small blog-encrusted world.  And then I went to work, and found angry whispers around the coffee pot venting secret bigotry and smallness of mind.  My hope that somehow the country would rally was short lived.

But despite my own personal new-year’s prediction that the initial excitement of a regime change would fade faster than the cynacism left from the political weapons of mass destruction that were eventually found in the White House over the last 8 years and unleashed on the populace, there is no denying the turn-out for the inauguration spells a flare up of that hopeful ember.  And, although more with sighs than hopeful breaths, I too am fanning that flame we will all need to survive the next 4 years.

It is refreshing that Obama is an intelligent and well-spoken man.  It is endearing to hear respect for history and follow his emulation of Lincoln’s best qualities.  And it is amazing to see that he is not afraid to “cross the aisle” and engage viewpoints beyond his own.  And we love him for it.  I know that 53% of us risk making Obama into something he is not, but in our enthusiasm, we need to realize that its our job to empower him to carry us forward.  We have a lot of work ahead of us.  We have to rebuild our sense of community and help each other and make sacrifices to give the President’s policies a chance.  The more we reach out in ways that are unlegislated, the less work he will have to do.  We need to take the initiative; and indulge a little less in griping when his dream is not our own.

In the end, we the people elected him, whether I or you voted for him or not.  He is our President today.  He’s a brave man for stepping up, and I believe, he is sincere in his desire to be a public servant.  Like the new opportunities that open with each New Year, Obama gives us another chance to make more of our time together during our brief lives.  He is our Obama, but let us not mean by “our” that we will, like a million Lilliputians, tie him down with our personal agendas, but rather step up to help our neighbors and take action when there is need, defer the cynical instinct to enjoy his failures, and begin, like him, to consider what work we have ahead of us in the next 4 years.

Well, I’m no cook to be speaking about what it takes to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner; but I do fancy myself (don’t we all) as knowing when a meal has been prepared properly.  If everyone raises a glass to toast…if the flavors are admired and then fade into the backdrop of conversation…and if afterwards, there’s no room for more…well that’s a well-prepared feast!

What then would I lay on my plate so that I may savor a moment to myself?

How much toil and toast-burning must there be, before I feel I deserve to sit back and be?

What must I do to be?  Silly question I suppose, we all know “blogito ergo sum” (I blog therefore I am).  There is nothing that can be done without being.  So I suppose what I meant was…what must I do to be…free? aware? fulfilled?  I must practice it.  I must gain that piano-playing-freedom that comes from habits where the music is created without commanding the fingers to touch the keys.  If I were a monk, perhaps I’d pray the rosary.  But as a writer, what habit shall I form that is customary to my craft?

Need I read the classics or tread the online forums; is it in the writing, editing, or critiquing of others’ works?   Perhaps I should journal daily like exercising the soul.  Or practice the existential art of standing open in moments of lucidity?  I could call beyond myself in contemplation; or find peace in the embrace of the man I love (I confess that I am a bit of the romantic, feeling the best place to write love poetry would be on the rear of his resting nude body).  But in order to be in that amorous mood of teasing out the words onto paper, I must find that state of mind where I lay open as well.

I guess any answers would be unique to the individual…  But I do admire that glint in the eye of the accomplished poet that reveals the joy they found along the way.

What happens when I find what it is I am looking for?  Is it found when I name it?  Or understand it?  Or is it in the touching - holding - grasping of it?  Is it only truly revealed in the grieving of its loss?  And how dare I say ‘it,’ offering no respect for what I am given in the finding.  Am I not found by it?  We find each other.  And in the finding, does the moment tic by from ‘find’ to ‘found’ as if spent without notice?  The verb tarnishes the meaning conveyed.  We are together found.  We are we.   We found we.

Silly abstractions?  No, a test of the boundaries of words.

Finding is both a meeting and a realization of personal fulfillment.  I am free to decide what I want, what I will seek, and I create the moment of awe in encountering what I sought.  There is a kind of love in seeking.  One might call it passion-driven, when the seeking is wholehearted.  But let me sober from feeling myself as master of the world, for I am reminded that whom and what I love most deeply found me when I didn’t know what I was looking for.  I recognized it in that precious moment; I said ‘yes;’ and I have been working ever since to nurture that love and honor its worth.  Moments are not unlike holidays that require preparation and stress and work to build a little window of time in which to smile and sit back sated - they are part of the human ritual, which mimics the seasons and nature’s tectonic events that erupt to transform the earth.  The immovable obligations of the season present an opportunity to acquiescence, to cooperate, to embrace and allow ourselves to be found.

Shall we revive this thread of reflections?  Yes!  It is a new year with endless possibility.

I find myself, at my core, simply thankful for my life and love.  It is my peace to love a wonderful man who is my light.  …to have good friends and a wise mentor whose path I hope will cross again with mine.  …and a home that is secure.  So much can change in a moment…suddenly one can find oneself gifted or find oneself grieving loss, but fear only tarnishes the joy.

I watched The Last Brickmaker last night, a charming movie, and in the midst of family drama, the father asked his wife: we all make sacrifices but what do I get (a seemingly selfish, yet honest question), and the wife responds, You get nothing until you decide what it is you want.  He comes to realize his family is more important than his job, and suddenly he has what he truly wants.  What is it I want?  I didn’t ask for this life, its pains or pleasures, but finding myself somehow alive, let nothing distract from the miracle.

And I owe this spark of wondering to my dear friend Jenny, who put it this way:  “I have seen people running after so many different things they hope would give them some identity they could grasp and keep and name “this is mine” They didn’t know that they have already owned the Universe within.”