Living the dream?

How do we measure the worth of a person?

I mean is it just in dollars and cents?

It is curious to me that on so many levels we, as a community, society or world judge people purely on how we look. I have heard it said many times that in a job interview the interviewer has decided in the first 1 -2 minutes whether a candidate has the job or not. I have even heard that can be done in seconds.

In a few minutes we make decisions about people who appear on television, are in the media as to whether we like them or not, from a brief appearance. They might look or speak differently to ourselves, have beady or bulging eyes and from a variety of environmental or experiential criteria, we form opinions and sometimes write people off without ever knowing them. They speak too fast, he walks with a limp, he gives me the creeps, she looks guilty and countless other sayings are employed by way of justification for the way we feel. I have been guilty of this on more occasions than I can recall myself.

But it isn't right. I accept that in job interviews criteria for a service organisation require people to be well groomed and speak confidently and represent a company well, but on so many other fronts we cut off people from our experience and cut ourselves off from theirs.

When I catch myself diminishing someones input or expressions I endeavour to look through non biased eyes again and try to give a new paradigm with which to see the person(s) or situations differently. As much to help me understand as to help me better appreciate the difficulties with which we each sometimes travail through.

One such occasion was a former Federal Liberal Party leader the Hon. Dr. Brendan Nelson. He had been receiving so much bad press that it became evident to me that he was a lame duck leader and was overstaying his visit. All these imagined authoritative comments from a person who assumed everything I was hearing in the press must be true, and all it served to show me was that I knew NOTHING. Like the words from the song I've looked at life through both sides now through up and down and still somehow, Life's illusions I recall, I really don't know life at all.

I met this man in a photographic capacity in his office in the federal Parliamentary office in the nations capitol of Canberra ACT. I was humbled and disarmed at his warmth and courtesy, He was not canvassing for votes, it was just him, and I felt it and He, were genuine. His candor both about himself and about his detractors was very generous and warm even for the detractors. There was no bitterness, no malice, just an overwhelming sense of personal and heaven sent direction, (having been raised by jesuit monks) and a desire to do what was right, in his mind for the country, and the betterment of people in Australia generally. It wasn't a speech given with fanfare or verbose oratory, rather a man sitting on a chair away from his big desk in an informal setting with a group of young adults and I was covering the event. I felt after wards and even now, that we need more people like him, who are guided by a moral compass, by an inner desire to lift all boats with the tide.

I walked out of that office slightly under an hour later with such a different view of him as a man. Events occurred and within days he was removed from office in a spill motion and it has happened to his successor as well since.

This experience and many others since this time tells me and continues to reinforce to me that you never really know people until you make time getting to know them. You really can never form flawed opinions about people and can never really judge them until you have walked proverbially in their shoes, as difficult and as impossible as that can be.

I am learning slowly that people whether I like them or not all share common hopes, dreams and ideals. True many may be different, and perhaps many skewed very differently to my own, but on many levels we are the same.

I am 44, the same age as my adopted father died from a heart attack, and as I stood on the precipice of this year, felt it was my year, and hope it still is, but one of the early indicators is that this will be a year where I will be able to choose and do what I most want to be for me. I have noticed significant changes in my outlook, significant changes in my levels of awareness and understanding and changes in the very questions I began with, How do we measure the worth of a person, or said more succinctly, how do I measure my own value or worth, and does it really matter?

A friend commented to me on Friday last as I was driving to the states New England area of Tamworth that I am living the dream. I laughed it off at his insistence and then exchanged pleasantries and hung up from our conversation. Pleasant though our call was, his words have been reverberating in my head all weekend til now. John Lennon once wrote that

Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans

and I look at my life and wonder have I

"squandered my existence on a pocket full of mumbles"

like promises.

I wonder how people see me, and am convinced it is very different from how I see me. That may be true for each of us. I have been on television some 5 times in the last few weeks, and am slated for 5 more in the next few weeks as well. I have often wondered as I look down the barrel of the camera, do people wonder who is that idiot, or do people even care. I think there are people who watch the show and tell me feedback, that they don't realise how nice it is to hear, not for some aggrandisement, but as a guide to know what is working for me and what isn't through the eyes of another.

I don't know what a persons true worth is, but what I can say is this, I know what it is not.

No money, power or influence and no privileges of birth change the fact that we are all on a rendezvous with death at some stage, and though we can accumulate much in a lifetime, with houses, cars and trinkets that may surround us our true worth is not measured in these remnants.

I have been deeply touched when people who had less than me to speak of concerning any possessions or money bought food for me to bless me with, knowing they went without it was hard to accept, but I learned that the giver of the gift was indeed honoured and blessed when I the receiver accepted the hospitality graciously, though that was hard.

I have learned that a monument when we pass, irrespective of how large the individual may have walked on the stage of life, within a short space of time the individual will be only remembered by a few.

I am in awe of buildings in Paris that have survived since the 1200's or in England where castles have survived for hundreds of years or the grand canyon or other wonders of the world that have remained long after generations of us have passed. it adds a perspective to me that whispers the relative impermanence of what I do here and so suggests I should be looking more to do the things that count and matter most for me.

A casual read of this post may lead the reader to believe that it is a melancholy tone or a fatalistic one, but I don't see it that way.

I am trying hard to redefine what I seek out of my life's experience.

I am wanting to understand that I may not yet have the temporal things I aspire to, and does that mean that I have failed?
or
does that mean my life is meaningless?
Or
is the pursuit of a thing or a goal worthy of the price I seem to be paying to get there?

I work very hard at trying to realise my dreams and there are times when it is so clear I can taste it, see it and feel it, and other times when I seem to be further and further away.

There is at those rare moments, the tendency to bemoan my circumstances and complain why has what I most desire, eluded me for so long.

I have concluded that whilst I would much rather have what I wish for than not, there are many, many people who are asking similar questions of themselves and sometimes with little or no possibility of realising those hopes and dreams, that I am so very fortunate to have.

With the devastation in Haiti and 150,000 people dead, my heart goes out to the families, communities and country that has been disenfranchised from the lives they have known. With the context of their loss, I sometimes wonder if my wish to achieve my goals is even important in the circle of life. I wonder if my strivings are almost obscene when viewed within the loss and hurt that so many people feel at present.

I will conclude by making the assessment, that my worth cannot be measured by any remnants I may have or may want.

I am however the benefactor of so much generational talent, hopes and dreams, that it is my responsibility to make the best use of what I have been given and continue onward.

I will close on the last lines in a piece written by Robert Frost:

Two Roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less travelled by and it has made all the difference.

May we all continue to reach upward and onward to find the best within us. My journey continues......