Conference quark::human_relations-v1

1099.0. "The Solutions to all OUR Problems" by BIGRED::GALE (Okay, I'll settle for 12/11/90) Tue Nov 06 1990 19:56

                        THE SOLUTIONS TO ALL OUR PROBLEMS
                              (GUARANTEED!)
    
    It's happened once too often.  Somebody says or writes to me, "You talk
    about what's wrong but you don't offer solutions."  And maybe they're
    right.  Maybe to merely detail one's vision and let readers take it
    from there isn't enough.  Maybe there *are* solutions, and maybe I
    *should* know them.  So I sat down and thought about things real hard,
    and here, numbered for your convenience are my solutions to everything.
    
    00.  Indulge in secrets.  Without one or two major secrets, your life
    will surely fade.  (If you're over 40 and don't understand
    this...you're in big trouble.)  A conundrum:  secrets aren't lies -
    they're mysteries, havens, passageways.  Lies wreck your life; secrets
    can save your life.  But sometimes you have to lie to keep the secret. 
    Uh-oh.
    
    1.  Make mistakes.  As jazz saxophonist Coleman Hawkins said, "If you
    don't make mistakes, you aren't really trying."
    
    2.  Stop lying about yourself.  To yourself.  To your friends.  To your
    family.  To your business associates.  Maybe even to your enemies. 
    (Your enemies can oppress you just as much by forcing you to maintain
    fidelity to your own lies as by any other means.)
    
    3.  Stop tolerating in your leaders what you wouldn't tolerate in your
    friends.
    
    4.  Tolerate impurity.  Trying to be pure about *anything* is a way of
    setting yourself up to fail.  Asking other people to be pure is a way
    of setting them up.
    
    5.  Read one book a month - a book that you didn't find out about in a
    magazine or newspaper.  Browse an independent bookstore and wait til
    some book says, "Read me," and then read it.
    
    6.	Listen to the voices.  The wee inner voices.  (The voices make
    mistakes sometimes, but they don't make *boring* mistakes.)
    
    7.	Leave people alone when they tell you to leave them alone.  (Note: 
    This rule applies to grownups only.)
    
    8.	Don't make the "sophisticated" error of thinking that a negative
    voice is automatically smarter than a positive voice.
    
    9.	Eat healthy food but don't be a fanatic about it.
    
    10.	Don't be a fanatic about *anything*.
    
    11.	Do only exercises that take you somewhere.  Walk, ride a bike,
    roller-skate, swim.  All other exercise is ego- and/or fear-driven, and
    if you listen to ego and fear you will drown out the voices you most
    need.




    12. Don't run.  Really, *don't*.  America likes to run because running
    from (fill in the blank) is what we do best.  Everybody who runs is
    running away from something terrible.  Stop running and find out what's
    behind you.
    
    13.	Eat Italian food.  Italians went from being oppressive Roman
    conquerors to being the inefficient, wonderful Italians they are today. 
    It's probably the food.
    
    14.	Order the novel _Night Time Losing Time_ (Simon & Schuster, 1989) at
    your local independent bookstore.  (This won't solve the world's
    problems or yours, but it'll do wonders for some of mine.)
    
    15.	If you're living in a place (like Los Angeles) where driving is
    necessary, learn to drive.  You may think you know how, but my
    experience of the way you drive is that you probably don't.  So here's
    how:
    	Drive for space, not for speed.  Space in front of you is the safest
    thing you can have with a car.  Darting in and out of traffic doesn't
    change anything, it just makes you older.  You can't beat the average
    traffic flow on any given street or freeway by more than five minutes,
    which only makes a difference if you're having a baby.  And don't you
    feel like an idiot when you've passed six cars and they pull up beside
    you at the next light?
    
    16.	Dance.  Jesus said, in one of the Gnostic gospels, "He who does not
    dance does not know what happens."
    
    17.	Don't worry so much about being fat.  Fat feels great in bed.
    
    18.	Look into people's eyes when you talk to them.
    
    19.	Have candlelight in your life.
    
    20.	No matter how rushed your schedule is, spend at least five minutes
    in the morning quietly in bed with your loved one just being gentle
    together.  Perhaps drinking tea.
    
    21.	Tell your mother and father, individually - and your children, if
    you have children - what you *really* think.  Once a year, minimum. 
    If more people did this, it would save more lives than arresting drunk
    drivers.
    
    22.	Do not avoid the eyes of the homeless.
    
    23.	If you think something's wrong - at work, in your family, in your
    self, in your country - agitate for change.  If you won't do that, it
    doesn't matter how tan you are.
    
    24.	Tape this quote to your bathroom mirror:
    
    	"One can only accept in others what one can accept 
    	 in oneself."  - James Baldwin

    25.	Don't talk down to kids.
    
    26.	Don't chicken out about sex.  Given that you're with a consenting
    adult, do whatever you fantasize.  This is much more important than
    quitting smoking.
    
    27.	Watch at least one black-and-white film per month.
    
    28.	Regarding number 6:  Entertain the notion that there are...voices. 
    Some come from within, some from the plants and objects and such around
    you, and some come from what I call, for shorthand purposes, the
    Infinite.  If you don't listen for them, your life will be more
    difficult than it has to be.
    
    29.	Pay more taxes - and insist that those taxes, and the taxes you
    already pay, go for education.  Giving the young a lively, thorough,
    truthful education is the most important *environmental* issue today,
    even more important than acid rain, tropical rain forests, and ozone
    holes.
    
    30.	Let me make that a lot clearer.  Recycling and shopping
    ecologically are almost pointless when one-third of California's
    high-school students drop out, and most who graduate can't read much. 
    How can these people inherit a world?  Even if we give them a greener
    world, are they equipped to keep it that way?  You want a solution, so
    here's a solution:  Take to the Streets for the Education of the
    Children.
    
    31.	Pray
    
    32.	Stop looking for other people to supply the solution.  *You're* the
    solution.  If you're not, there is no solution.
    
    33.	Be aware of the Network.  We live by a network of connections and
    links.  Your connection to yourself, to your intimates, to your place,
    to the collective, to the planet, to the Infinite. (Each is a distinct
    connection.)  Equally powerful are the collective's connections to you
    (not at all the same as yours to it), to groups of intimates, to
    itself, to the planet, to the Infinite.
    	All the links or connective points of this network (call them the
    acupuncture points of our universe) both take and generate energy.  Any
    link out of sync weakens the others.  (The West, for instance, has
    concentrated too much on the individual, the East, too much on the
    collective; both approaches have been catastrophic on every level of
    the network.)  This network, from you all the way to the Infinite, is a
    living whole, ceaselessly changing.  Some of these changes take
    millions of years.  Some happen instantaneously.
     	May the links of the network shine.

>    14. Order the novel _Night Time Losing Time_ (Simon & Schuster, 1989) at
>    your local independent bookstore.  (This won't solve the world's
>    problems or yours, but it'll do wonders for some of mine.)

    How come you never told us 'til now that you'd written a book?

    RE: .2
    
    Ah, it doesn't say order *my* novel, it says order "the" novel...
    
    wish I HAD written it though...

	Eveything is fine excpet paying moe taxes.

	I already pay more taxes.\

    re: -.1
    
    "...paying moe taxes."
    
    Well, skip "Curly" and go directly to me!  I can use the money...
    
       - Larry  ;-)
                

    Did I miss something?   Who wrote this?   What's it from?
    
    Thanks.

	Good question.  I recognized it when I first read it.  This article
	was originally published in the LA Weekly and reprinted in the 
	Utne Reader.  The Author is Michael...  Michael...

	Ah, hec, I can't remember his last name.  But I do have it taped
	to my refrigerator at home.  I'll check it out tonight unless someone
	else remembers his name?

	"Michael Ventura" is the author's name.  (I knew there was some 
	reason that I taped this to my refrigerator)

    Gosh, all this time I thought Gale wrote this....and I thought she
    was so clever.  ;-)

    RE: .9
    
    No, Joyce, .3 says I didn't....  I sure wish I had....
    I thought that was clear from .0, and when it wasn't, I MADE sure it
    was clear :-)...
    
    G
    

    Thank you for the answer. Now for one more question:
    
    Is it from a book or collection or something that I could reference by
    name and find in a book or library?
    
    Thanks again,
    
    Tom

    Re: .11
    
    That should be "...bookSTORE or library."