Gene's Blog

All about choices

This comes from Steve Goodier’s Life Support newsletter and it has a telling point. If you don’t make your choices sometimes they get made for you and you may not always be happy with the outcome. Life’s like that, isn’t it? I’ll be back after with a couple thoughts. :^)

MAKING CHOICES

Joseph Henry was an American scientist who served as the first
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He used to tell a rather
strange story about his childhood. His grandmother, who raised him,
once paid a cobbler to make him a pair of shoes.

The man measured his feet and told Joseph that he could choose between
two styles: a rounded toe or a square toe. Little Joseph couldn’t
decide. It seemed to be such a huge decision; after all, they would
become his only pair of shoes for a long time.

The cobbler allowed him to take a couple of days to make up his mind.
Day after day, Joseph went into the shop, sometimes three or four
times a day! Each time he looked over the cobbler’s shoes and tried to
decide. The round-toed shoes were more practical, but the square toes
looked more fashionable. He continued to procrastinate. He wanted to
make up his mind, but he just couldn’t decide!

Finally, one day he went into the shop and the cobbler handed him a
parcel wrapped in brown paper. His new shoes! He raced home. He tore
off the wrapping and found a beautiful pair of leather shoes – one
with a rounded toe and the other with a square toe.

I can learn a lesson here…a lesson about decisions: if I don’t make
decisions myself, others will probably make them for me. Better that
I make them myself.

And if I choose poorly from time to time, that’s okay, too. At least
I won’t have to wear shoes that don’t match. Besides, I’ll probably
do better the next time.

— Steve Goodier

Last week I watched the Idol Gives Back show, yes, still hopelessly addicted to American Idol or at least I have it on, I’m not much affected by anyone on the current season but last year, and I want to be sure to give Fox Broadcasting (not an outfit I am particularly enamored of as you might surmise) props for this idea. All television shows make money. Or they wouldn’t be on television, or aren’t long. I didn’t begin watching Idol until its fourth season – I have in internal bias against reality shows, I think they emphasize the worst in humanity rather than bring out the best, which I would like to see something as powerful, that reaches as many people as television does, do MORE of. Television, and the other branches of media, seem to believe that, for the most part, the only news that is fit to be seen, heard or printed is bad news. The question is what can they scare us with today? It often isn’t anything tangible so it is coached in “could” terms, such and such a thing COULD happen to YOU. Thank God, most of the time, those things never do, but when something dread does happen, there are they are like happy little vultures, the crows of the human world, only they don’t clean up messes like our little black-feather friends, this bunch just wants to stir the pot.

Now, I’ve mentioned this before so won’t go over all that again, at least not tonight, if you have interest you can find a post in which I wrote about one of my favorite movies, The American President, starring Michael Douglas and Annette Benning – he made one of the most stirring speeches I have ever heard in that movie. The part I’m talking about specifically tonight is when he said that the fear-mongers, and I include all forms of media in that phrase, aren’t the least bit interested in fixing problems, they only want to point them out, point out who is to blame for them and to keep you afraid, because your fear is their power.

Now, he didn’t say it quite that way, giggle, but he did say it, and God says it too in Book 1 when Neale asks him why the world is the way it is. We’ll come back to that, perhaps tomorrow night. I’ve other things on my mind tonight and to do yet. But I did want to do this first – so my fingers are flying and I am sure you, most of you, will forgive the typos and tense issues, giggle. We can all learn to relax a little bit, can’t we?

Anyway, I wanted to congratulate Fox Broadcasting, and specifically American Idol for something they started doing last year. The season I began watch, four, was the year Carrie Underwood one, and I had her picked as my favorite from her first audition. It was a compelling year, great competition, Bo Bice was the other finalist and I actually think if he had done his acapella song during the finale, he might have won the title. But he didn’t, Carrie was wonderful and has gone on to enormous success while retaining the humbleness of her roots and NEVER forgetting where she came from. She is still the same sweet girl now she was then, oh wiser in the ways of the world, no doubt, but she gives credit where it is due and shows up ON the show at least twice every year as payback. Given her schedule that is a hard thing to do, but she does it and she never stops thanking AI for giving her the break she needed. I admire that.

Now, as I said earlier, television shows are about making money. Lots of money in the entertainment industry, obscene amounts of money, and, well, we won’t go there at the moment, :^), but Fox and AI are the only ones who have chosen to give something back. Last year’s Idol Gives Back show had great music, compelling videos and raised more than $77 million dollars for charities here in America and in Africa. This year they are spotlighting 6 specific charities, all most deserving. And they donated two and a half hours of their air time to doing so again this year. The stories they showed were as compelling as last years, as sad, and the children and people every bit as much in need. I am proud to support that effort and would urge everyone to do so, it isn’t too late, Idol Gives Back has a place where you can still make a donation, if you are so inclined. What I like SO much about this, is that people really are giving of themselves, their time and talent, as well as their money. We are so blessed to have been born in this country. It is wonderful to see an industry that is about making money, lots and lots of it, give some back in such pleasant and compelling ways.

The first thing I think should be supported is any organization that says “first, war no more.” Since there aren’t many of those on the agenda, the six charities Idol chose are indeed worthy. And the statistics just as horrifying. Every 30 seconds a child in Africa dies of malaria (while I was in Viet Nam, I took a little white pill daily to avoid that disease, and used mosquito netting – which did not prevent friends from contracting it, but most of us managed to avoid it) the cost of one mosquito net is $10. And what DO we spend our money on? Bombs, weapons of mass destruction, guns, and ammunition, mines and machinery with which to deliver these tools of horror. Last week I talked about what our world might look like if every church in America was armed, with basements full of weapons, as seems to be the case in the Middle East, well, this week I ask a different question. What would our world look like if we pledged War No More, and turned our attention and defense budgets to bettering the human condition regardless the particular faith or lack thereof of any particular people? New Orleans could be rebuilt in nothing flat, safely, most dread diseases, including AIDS which kills thousands of African children daily, could be wiped out virtually over night.

Idol Gives Back is a beginning, not an end. I want to see that spirit carried forward until all that would harm these “least of His children” are no more. There are good people the world over, who care about each other, but our media feed us a never-ending stream of bad news. Let’s change that. Let’s make a new choice. Please. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene