Checking out a camp for sale near our place. Want to be neighbors?
This week I learned that twenty seven degrees is my cut-off for showering outdoors. I guess I could do it, and probably even would do it, but the wanting-to has definitely waned. Sleeping is still fine and toasty though, so we’re doing alright.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the importance of a steady mind, not for the sake of claiming existence on some quasi-enlightened plane, but as a matter of self preservation. Of communal preservation. Everywhere I turn right now, people are running around losing their ever-loving cool, and it’s fair to say about half of these people are going to be real disappointed come Wednesday morning. And then what? Because according to each side, the country is going to implode if the other candidate is elected. So yes, people are losing their cool, and maybe it’s justified, but it won’t change the outcome or the so-called implosion. But here’s what I keep telling myself: If we lose our minds now, what are we going to do if everything actually implodes? And I'm not of the ilk that is sitting around waiting for that to happen, or heck, even believing it will happen, but what if it does hit the fan? If we can't manage the idea of a less than desirable outcome, how will we manage the reality? Kinda seems vital to remain calm and steady. Measured. At least that’s the plan around here. (Which is not to be confused with complacency.)
One voice over the last several months has consistently served as a reminder to keep perspective. It was a pleasant discovery, allowing me to forgive Mr. Rather for assigning my former town with an unflattering and not-entirely-true moniker. I’ve come to appreciate his writing as a sort of zen-intellectualism that is mostly absent in journalism today; delivering the heavy stuff in a way that is informative, yet still leaves the reader with an ounce of hope. Sometimes more than an ounce. I love this quality to his writing because living inside the absence of hope is one of the most difficult places for a human to reside.
Someone recently said, “I don't know if there's a Pulitzer Prize for something like Journalistic Sanity within the context of Social Media, but if there were, Dan Rather, it belongs to you.”
Yeah, I'd have to agree.
I've been having some conversations with Emily recently about cynicism versus skepticism, recognizing the difference between the two, and exercising one over the other. Then I came across the following piece from Dan Rather, and although our conversations have not been entirely within the context of writing or politics, they have not been unrelated, either. Maybe there is something here for you, as there is for me:
Woe to the nation that succumbs to cynicism. It is a poison that suffocates hope, extinguishes the light of intelligence, and severs the common bonds of humanity. I fear we are facing an epidemic of cynicism in the United States and it is an infection that could send our democracy onto life support.
When I came to Washington as a young reporter to cover the Johnson Administration, I entered a small White House press corps that was almost exclusively made up of men. The most influential, the leaders, were old men. Some of them often reeked of whisky, cigarettes… and cynicism.
I respected the fact that they were survivors of long wars in the journalistic trenches, and they were–in the main–good reporters who could write well, quickly, and under deadline pressure. But I was a bit aghast at their deep, abiding cynicism and I remember going home to my greatest font of wisdom, my beloved wife, Jean, and in the earnestness of a young couple eager to sow the seeds of long-term success, I told her I don't every want to become like that.
Webster's defines "cynical" as: "believing that people are generally selfish and dishonest." All the fiber of my being, all my life experience up to point, led me to the opposite conclusion. Sure some people were bad, but not most, and certainly not categorically all – even in Washington, let alone the many millions spread across the vast continental expanse of our great nation.
I remember desperately thumbing through a thesaurus searching over a list of synonyms for "cynical" to come up with something more akin to what I felt my profession as a journalist should demand. After a while, I came to the word "skeptical" and it struck me. Webster's defines "skeptical" as "having or expressing doubt about something (such as a claim or statement)." That seemed to be the job of a reporter, saying "I hear what you have to say but I am going to check it out." I was happy to march under the banner of skepticism, and I have ever since.
Many young colleagues of mine have heard – more than they can probably count – some version of my professional credo: "A reporter's job is to be skeptical but not cynical." And it turns out this approach to life doesn't just benefit journalists. I have heard some version of it from scientists, police detectives, military generals, judges, and so many others. Cynicism is a downward spiral. Skepticism is a healthy way to find truth in a complex world.
And yet today, we, as a nation, are in danger of losing the battle to cynicism. We have a broken government because some have decided to play to cynicism for their own political gain. We have a press corps that has too often confused cynical slogans with prescient analysis. We have had the motives of experts from science and industry challenged with cynicism by those who do not like the conclusions based on fact.
The great wit Oscar Wilde once said: "“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
Stephen Colbert addressed the notion with a fuller definition in a commencement address at Knox College: " Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying "yes" begins things. Saying "yes" is how things grow. Saying "yes" leads to knowledge."
I know which world I would rather live in and I hope a less cynical world can await us after November 8.
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Take care of yourselves, friends. Let's all do our best to remain skeptical, hopeful, and steady.