MY LAST HURRAH WITH EMAIL MISSIVES!

MY LAST HURRAH!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 7, 2008

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.

Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist (1875 – 1961)

______________________

This missive titled “REALITY CHECK” is my “last hurrah!”

One person has responded with his own reality check:


(1) Trillions of tax dollars for truth, justice, oil, and the American Way in Iraq/Mostly talk for hundreds of thousands refugees and victims in Darfur so as not to anger oil rich Sudanese.
(2) Drug resistant TB on march in Africa as a result of HIV/AIDS
(3) New outbreaks of Dengue Fever on the march.
(4) Malaria making comeback in Central America.
(5) Avian Influenza goes global and year around trying to break out.

“And the stock market,” he points out, “is upset over Yahoo and Microsoft not getting together.”

I wrote him back that we saw problems from different perspectives; that he looks at problems in the macro sense while I look at them in the micro sense. All my missives center upon my impression and perspective from an empirical point of view, or from how these issues impact me directly, and by extensions others as I see them.

I am not a macro issue man, not a politician, not a pundit, but a philosopher of ideas, and I have been since I was five-years-old. My greatest gift is curiosity, not profundity. So, at this late stage, it is doubtful that I will change my stripes.

______________________

My son, the tennis professional in Philadelphia, who claims I’ve never gotten the recognition I deserve, and then he explained the reason. “You write in those high minded prose that don’t descend to the level of the average reader.”

We then commenced to discuss the reality of his experience. He has 24 teaching pros working for him in arguably one of the five premier tennis complexes of the United States, and yet he is not happy although wealthy. He started quoting members of the club with whom he has worked with personally. These men and women are international names in cognitive, behavioral and organization psychology. I confessed I did not know them but knew of their work.

“I read your stuff,” he continued, “and these dudes need it more than I do. They may be brilliant but they are some really screwed up dudes, I’ll tell you. All of them are rich but no more happy than I am.”

“Why should that surprise you, Bobby,” I said, “we are a nation suspended in terminal adolescence, self-indulgent and narcissistic to a fault.”

“I hear you,” he replies, “that describes me. I have never left being a 15-year-old, and yet I’ve made a great deal of money.”

“Money isn’t the answer.”

“Then what is?”

“Health, peace and happiness, and living within the perimeters of your own mind, and not being afraid of the darkness there.”

“Write a book about that. Write a book about coping. I’ll get some of these major dudes in your field to write a blur on it.”

“It’s a good idea.”

“That means you’re not going to do it, are you?”

“No, I’m not, I’ve already written books about that stuff.”

“Yes, you have. I’ve tried to read them, but you piss the reader off reminding him of his darkness and that it’s not easy, and that he’s got to change or nothing happens. People don’t want to hear that stuff. They want to be told it’s easy like that lady on PBS that tells viewers how easy it is to create wealth. She doesn’t offend. You do. You make it hard. They all make it easy.”

“But does anyone change?”

“Of course not. That’s not the point. The point is to sell books and get wealthy doing it.”

“Bobby, I’m not interested in that. People have forgotten the importance of struggle; the importance of failure; the importance of taking risks with themselves, risks that they can control. People have forgotten it is painful to follow your own bliss because doors close, and people torpedo you, but in the end you own what you become because you are not afraid to be.”

“That’s what I’m talking about, a book written just like that.”

“It wouldn’t work, Bobby.”

“Why?”

“Because people are so tied up in things and others’ agendas that they don’t have a clue as to what they would prefer doing, or being, or becoming separate from making money. They think once they have a lot of money nobody can hurt them anymore, but that is not true. They are left with themselves, and money fails to bring either peace or happiness.”

“You haven’t changed in all the years I’ve known you, dad.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re afraid of success.”

“For instance?”

“You’d rather be that idea guy on the shoulder of the giant than the giant.”

“So, you have been paying attention.”

“I’ve been very critical of you for years you know, walking away from Nalco and power and wealth, and sitting there in Harbor Bluffs reading God knows how many esoteric books, playing tennis while your wealth dissipated. Then what do you do? You go back to school.”

“True, but you leave one thing out. I’ve paid attention to life and how I’ve seen it unfold. I’ve seen the cruel, the brutal, and the duplicitous up close. I’ve seen power corrupted. I’ve seen maliciousness. I’ve seen life tarnished by betrayal. Yet, I’ve seen no fight in people to redress these wrongs, or even to call attention to them for fear of losing their jobs.

“I live in an age in which violence is equated with courage on the streets or battlefields when there is almost a total absence of moral courage or emotional courage on any front. I’ve seen men and women pay more attention to how they look then how they think, or what they value.

“Power is not going to respond to me. Power resides in the darkest chambers of the human heart, and it will do anything to retain its edge if so threatened.

“People who are hurting are not going to respond to me because they want an easy out and I provide none. Bobby, I am writing in a vacuum for a generation not yet born.”

“There you go again. Off on a tangent.”

“Yes.”

“Well, happy birthday, anyway.”

______________________

Some of the peripatetic articles that came to me while on my walks that will not be transcribed, some thirty or so include the following:

(1) Are Tattoos Cool?
(2) The Advantages To Being Fired
(3) Why We Are Obsessed With Sex & Violence
(4) And on and on.

______________________

My son has a point. I’ve been taken advantage of by publishers because I am not in the mainstream, represent a discomfort to their readers, there is not a safe genre in which to place my work, and am indifferent to money.

______________________

I once did an intervention of a small high tech company of some 250 employees and gross sales of $10 million. The CEO and owner put me on a retainer after the success of initial interventions in which his employees vented their spleens so as to redirect their energies to the work at hand.

Once production goals were achieved, the CEO discontinued to pay my retainer, and so I sued.

Predictably, not a single employee would say in court what he or she had documented with me. It is the way it is. They feared for their jobs, and he knew it, a brutal man who essentially enslaved his workers, which I would never forget.

______________________

I've learned from that, and have since noted less than the people you can count on the fingers of your hand are willing to take a stand when their dignity and self-worth is abused.

There are no more giants anymore so my son's metaphor is irrelevant.

We have had them in the recent past but many were assassinated or made less than they were by pointing out their humanness. I’ve not looked for giants but for people unafraid to effectively use their inherent ability in a positive sense. I can tell you it is not easy.

One of the things I’ve learned is that your most virulent attackers are likely to have a shortage of competence. It is hard to be competent when you are a pleaser. Most pleasers are obsequious to a fault to the powers that be. They prey on what they perceive as weakness, and that is other pleasers.

Since pleasing others is not central to my being, I’ve run into fences when I was a chemist, when I was a chemical sales engineer, and when I was a corporate executive.

The same proved true when I returned to the university and was almost derailed by a professor on my committee for my master’s degree. He was more political than competent.

I am not advocating my approach to life but simply pointing out how free you can feel when you listen to the music of your own soul rather than seek to be entertained by the music from another's.

______________________

Everyone's life reads like a novel.

When you look at all the parts, you realize it is the novel you expected to write. It has a unique plot and consistency, and has unfolded as you meant it to unfold.

For instance, I’ve had an interest in writing since a little boy. When I retired from Nalco after leaving South Africa in 1969, I acquired a literary agent (The Broome Agency), sending him several short pieces of fiction that I had written.

He was excited. “If I can get even one of these sold to a national magazine, you’ll introduce a new style of writing.” He tried valiantly for more than a year, and never succeeded. I quit writing fiction, and returned to school to get my Ph.D., but not before writing and getting published my first book (Confident Selling, Prentice-Hall 1970).

Confident Selling addressed my philosophy of selling, which was that the critical sale the seller has to make in order to be successful is on "the seller," not the buyer. The rest follows naturally. The book was in print for twenty years.

It would be 33-years before I would write my memoirs as a novel (In The Shadow Of The Courthouse AuthorHouse 2003). Now, 38-years after that first book, and nine books later, I’m returning to writing fiction, a book about South Africa (A Green Island In A Black Sea). Stay tuned!