I have been spending a lot of time trying to figure out what I want to do next with my life and career.
In that constant question I keep coming back to the same answer. It does not matter what I do. The real question/quest/battle/struggle is about how I do it.
I have always been a results oriented guy. Willing to do what it takes to get the job done. Believing in the result, I have always done what it takes.
I have always thought of my self as a pretty good strategist. I am good at evaluating the people and the conditions that surround a matter. Structuring the process so that we get the result we want. Using the circumstances and the needs of people to attain the goal. I have been good with power. I am usually successful. I am aware of the process of power and have shown some ability to use it.
I haven’t always found that to lead to happiness. Often getting what you want makes you unhappy. Desires are smoky things. They are never satisfied. They just shift and change.
Maybe it’s all this grey hair. I think, maybe, it is the scars on my heart.
My hair and my scars tell me today that the ends never justify the means. There are no situations that justify hurting people. There are no reasons to say it is ok to do the wrong thing.
If you can't accomplish something without hurting people then you have not spent enough time strategizing nor have you understood the role of patience.
And so it is much more important to act well each day than to accomplish something at all costs.
And that - as we all know - is one tough assignment.
When I think about all the things I could accomplish I keep coming back to the same goal. I just want to be a better person. I want to live the right life. I want to mediate EVERY day. I want to offer my knowledge to those who ask for it. I want to eat right and sleep well. I want to love tenderly and act justly.
And I believe that that is toughest struggle of all. The world's great and most important battles take place inside us. The ones with great impact are the ones going on inside of people who are living public lives. We don't see the important parts.
I was thinking about means and ends and process and results and was surfing the web looking for others’ thoughts. Each day, I like to post a “thought for the day” for my students on our program website at the college. We all struggle with motivation and direction. We struggle with what life brings us each day. We are all here walking the path. And that is what life is about. When I have things I am struggling with, I like to use the TFTD as a place to suggest to all of us different approaches and ways of thinking.
Looking for ideas on means and ends, I kept coming to were quotes and stories about war and peace.
Interesting.
It is probably the most enormous example of the conflict between means and ends.
I believe that every day George W. Bush asks himself if he was wrong - if he didn't just make a mess of things. However, as a leader, he is not allowed to ask those questions in public.
The real battle and struggle for truth and right is going on inside him every day.
So today, rather than use my power to bash him. Rather than use my ability to have you read my thoughts, against your need for information as you evaluate your world, to have that influence the way you may chose not to support him, I will use my ability for compassion.
Pray for the poor old bugger. Let’s pray that ideas and opportunities come forward that he and his people might find a way to turn this big mess into peace and prosperity. Let’s wish for peace for all those sad people in the world’s most ancient of societies.
That is peace and prosperity as they see it. Not as we see. In the way they want it. Not as we want it.
The end does not justify the means.
Remember that when you continue to ask yourself , “Is power a good thing or a bad thing?”
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi
"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind...War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."
-- John F. Kennedy
"War is as outmoded as cannibalism, chattel slavery, blood-feuds, and dueling, an insult to God and humanity...a daily crucifixion of Christ."
Muriel Lester
"Our chiefs are killed...The little children are freezing to death. My people... have no blankets, no food...My heart is sick and sad...I will fight no more forever."
Chief Joseph
"There was never a good war or a bad peace."
Benjamin Franklin
"War would end if the dead could return."
Stanley Baldwin
"If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another."
-- Winston Churchill
"I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war."
-- Cicero.
"War is cruelty and you cannot refine it."
Gen. William T. Sherman 1820-1891
"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime"
Ernest Hemingway
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it"
George Orwell
"Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won."
Duke Of Wellington 1759-1852
"More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars -- yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments."
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous"
-- George Bernard Shaw
"We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that is a patriotism above the narrow sentiment which usually stops at one's country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in dealing with others... Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognises justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with...the other nations of the world. The first step to this end is to develop peace and goodwill within our borders, by training our youth of both sexes to its practice as their habit of life, so that the jealousies of town against town, class against class and sect against sect no longer exist; and then to extend this good feeling beyond our frontiers towards our neighbours."
Lord Baden-Powell
"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"There is no way to peace. Peace is the way."
-- A.J. Muste.
"I would say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you...because no one has the right to take the life of another human being."
Joan Baez
"How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy."
Nietzsche
"At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other even more reasonable says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man's power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events'; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second."
Leo Tolstoy War & Peace
"This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love."
-- Peace Pilgrim.
"The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites - acquiescence and violence - while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both. The nonviolent resister agrees with the person who acquiesces that one should not be physically aggressive toward his opponent; but he balances the equation by agreeing with the person of violence that evil must be resisted. He avoids the nonresistance of the former and the violent resistance of the latter. With nonviolent resistance, no individual or group need to submit to any wrong, nor need anyone resort to violence in order to right a wrong."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally it reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"One of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern that while everybody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobody’s' business among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Can one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, a substance that one can have, own, possess. The truth is, there is no such thing as "love." "Love" is an abstraction, perhaps a goddess or an alien being, although nobody has ever seen this goddess. In reality, there exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing tolife, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self increasing. from To Have or to Be?
Erich Fromm
Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty.
Mahatma Gandhi
In the secret of my heart I am in perpetual quarrel with God that He should allow such things [as the war] to go on. My non-violence seems almost impotent. But the answer comes at the end of the daily quarrel that neither God nor non-violence is impotent. Impotence is in men. I must try on without losing faith even though I may break in the attempt.
Mahatma Gandhi
"The Holy Prophet Mohammed came into this world and taught us: 'That man is a Muslim who never hurts anyone by word or deed, but who works for the benefit and happiness of God's creatures. Belief in God is to love one's fellow men.'"
Abdul Ghaffar Khan
"We frail humans are at one time capable of the greatest good and, at the same time, capable of the greatest evil. Change will only come about when each of us takes up the daily struggle ourselves to be more forgiving, compassionate, loving, and above all joyful in the knowledge that, by some miracle of grace, we can change as those around us can change too.
Maíread Maguire
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