Preserve the embers; stoke the fire

The beginning of the wage-slave week often brings a fresh fire and a sense of resolve. The past two days have been filled with quiet moments, away-from-the-quotidian moments, active moments, refreshment of personal goals, and thoughts of reinvention and renewal. Then one enters the quotidian pace, and the clock must be tended. ("Or must it?" your soul cries from its rapidly diminishing quiet place.)

The trick, often not accomplished, is to maintain a hold on that fresh resolve. Too often it's abandoned by noon Monday. There are deadlines to make, papers to push, soil to be turned, clock hands to turn. During the course of the day, the resolution becomes a quaint memory; what began as a confident shout of joy becomes a faint, desperate whisper. Morning triumph leads to evening defeat. No wonder so many medicate themselves to sleep.

Essential to success in living, then, must be finding that Monday morning optimism and drive on Tuesday morning. I find mild success by posting little reminders on the face of my computer, brief sayings from two of my favorite outlaws.

One is a resolution I have written about before: "Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day: I shall not fear anyone on Earth. I shall fear only God. I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering."

The other is from an outlaw I haven't quoted often because I don't claim or desire to be an evangelist and don't want to be confused with one; however, it's foolish for me to pretend I am not influenced by these words, so take them simply as an explanation of my motivations: "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."

Renewal is an everyday task. Stoking the fire requires a constant vigil. Life is an endless struggle against forces that will beat you down, but only if you let them. Your greatest power is control over your own personal actions and reactions.

These two writers spent their share of time in prison cells for holding beliefs that transcended the politics of the day, and for putting those beliefs into action. Perhaps the memory of those cells helped them maintain that Monday-morning confidence; no doubt it also left them sometimes in despair. But they maintained long enough to make a difference for the ages.

Preserve the embers of resolutions you made when you had a clear vision of your dreams. Some nights the embers are all that's left, but they contain the seeds of an ongoing fire.

Kumar invades the White House

At first I was completely baffled by Monday's episode of House, where co-workers discover the body of colleague Lawrence Kutner, who completely out of nowhere had committed suicide. On reflection and reading the real story of actor Kal Penn, from an artistic standpoint it makes great theater to have the curmudgeonly Dr. House, who can figure out anything, have a mystery strike close to his life that makes no sense.

The hard thing to wrap my brain around turns out to be Penn's decision to take a job in the White House as "associate director in the White House office of public liaison." Then I realized it was not such a stretch — after all, as Kumar in Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, he had visited the western White House and smoked dope with George W. Bush. That's him on the left, in case you missed that particular cinematic moment.

In the interview I linked, Penn said he was inspired by his grandparents — "They marched with Gandhi in the Indian independence movement, and that was always in the back of my head." In that case I'm further perplexed. First, because he's going to work for an establishment that is devoted to locking up people like Kumar and throwing away the key. Second, because Gandhi is one of history's most revered philosophers of nonviolence, and Penn is going to work for a man who is in the process of ramping up the war in Afghanistan and reneged on his pledge to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months, instead putting a plan in motion that will leave an occupying force of 35,000-50,000 soldiers after 19 months.

I'm guessing Penn's grandparents are spinning in their graves.

A little more Gandhi for ya

A couple of appropriate Gandhi quotes from the Web site "What Would Gandhi Do?"

GOVERNMENT CONTROL gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help...I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the heart of all progress...Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest....We find the general work of mankind is being carried on from day to day be the mass of people acting as if by instinct....If they were instinctively violent the world would end in no time...It is when the mass mind is unnaturally influenced by wicked men that the mass of mankind commit violence. But they forget it as they commit it because they return to their peaceful nature immediately the evil influence of the directing mind has been removed....A government that is evil has no room for good men and women except in its prisons.

SATYAGRAHA (truth-force) is a relentless search for truth and a determination to search truth....Satyagraha is an attribute of the spirit within....Satyagraha has been designed as an effective substitute for violence.... Satyagraha is a process of educating public opinion, such that it covers all the elements of the society and makes itself irresistible....The fight of Satyagraha is for the strong in spirit, not the doubter or the timid. Satyagraha teaches us the art of living as well as dying....Satyagraha, of which civil-resistance is but a part, is to me the universal law of life....Satyagraha can rid society of all evils, political, economic, and moral...A genuine Satyagraha should never excite contempt in the opponent even when it fails to command regard or respect....Satyagraha thrives on repression till at last the repressor is tired and the object of Satyagraha is gained....Satyagraha does not depend on the outside [for] help; it derives all its strength from within....The method of Satyagraha requires that the Satyagrahi should never lose hope, so long as there is the slightest ground left for it....In the dictionary of Satyagraha, there is no enemy. Since Satyagraha is a method of conversion and conviction, it seeks never to use the slightest coercion... For a Satyagraha brigade, only those are eligible who believe in ahimsa--nonviolence and satya--truth... A Satyagrahi has infinite patience, abundant faith in others, and ample hope....A Satyagrahi cannot go to law for a personal wrong....In the code of the Satyagrahi, there is no such thing as surrender to brute force.

Happy Gandhi's Birthday

Tuesday, Oct. 2, is the 138th anniversary of Mohandas Gandhi's birth. For a little more than two years, I've had posted on the wall next to my computer a resolution from Gandhi that seems as fine a way to start the day as I can muster (if only I looked at the wall every day!):

Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:

* I shall not fear anyone on Earth.

* I shall fear only God.

* I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.

* I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.

* I shall conquer untruth by truth.

* And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.

I shall not fear anyone on Earth. So many men and women work hard to make us fear them - or to make us fear something that they want to (forcibly) rescue us from. Begin the day deciding not to be afraid, not to let fear control your behavior, and you are already on your way to a good day.

I shall fear only God. I know this site is visited by agnostics, atheists and believers alike, so let me just suggest that this is a corollary of "I shall not fear anyone on Earth." I also choose to remember (since to me God is a comforting concept, not something to be afraid of) that the words translated in the Bible as "fear of God" can also be translated as "in awe of God." This works for statement #1, too - I shall not be in awe of anyone on Earth; I shall be in awe only of God (or nature or flying spaghetti monsters or anything bigger than this life).

I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. I spent most of eight years hating Bill Clinton for ... oh, why bother explaining? The point is that hate is a force that drains so much life out of you. Many, many folks, especially in Bill's (and his counterpart George's) line of work, should never be trusted - but you will only debilitate yourself if you bear him ill will, and you certainly will never accomplish the miracle of converting him to the cause of liberty if you hate him - because your hate will be obvious and make his ears deaf to your voice.

I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. This is a tough one to follow. Sometimes it's easier to submit than to cause a scene, and I confess sometimes I take the easy course. Or I simply avoid the injustice - as in, I haven't been on an airplane since the spring of 2001, because I prefer freedom to what would happen to me if I object to the unjust and unconstitutional search of my person and property in the airport. Still, if I can point out an injustice and refuse to submit, I will try to muster the courage to do so.

I shall conquer untruth by truth. That's one reason I keep writing this stuff.

And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering. Well ... hey, I'm a big weinie and I hate pain. I keep my wage-slave job, for example, because I'm not ready for all that suffering. And I do have the occasional opportunity to conquer untruth by truth there.

Mahatma Gandhi proved you don't need violence to fight the state successfully. He proved the power of a commitment never to initiate force. We can argue until the sacred cows come home how well he succeeded, or for how long, but he gave us a good example and much to think about regarding how to make this a better world. Happy Gandhi's Birthday!