Who’s Driving Your Car

Are you just along for the ride, or are YOU driving your car – your Life?

When I was young, naïve, foolhardy, and hitchhiking in Yugoslavia, my travel partner and I had had seemingly interminable waits between rides. We were also in a hurry to get to Greece, so we accepted and stayed with a ride that we shouldn’t have.

Our driver, who was clearly unfit to be on the road after an all-nighter party, intermittently dozed and sped, and ultimately crashed us into an olive tree, leaving me to have my face stitched. Then, I blamed the driver.

Now, I have accepted responsibility for that outcome because I had relinquished control of my life and safety into the hands of a random individual who happened to be on the road I was traveling on.

When you hitchhike you have little control over your direction, speed, safety, comfort, or stopping points, and no right or reason to complain about them. The same could be said of choosing to be merely, or predominantly, a passenger in Your Life, allowing someone else or some perceived power beyond your control to drive it.

It’s common and “easy” to live our lives almost by default, telling ourselves that “They” or The powers that be, or society, or the economy, or our perceived enemies, are waging assaults on us, causing us difficulties, and that it’s just not fair. Well, I have it on good authority: There is indisputable evidence that Life is Not Fair – to anyone.

So it is for each of us to discover and pursue our own destinations, even daily, and drive the vehicle we’ve been given. The only person you can really change is YOU. Destinations may change, you will have flat tires, engine trouble, even crashes along the way, but YOU will be the driver. Life will have more meaning – the meaning you give to it.

As one year closes and another one opens, isn’t it time to look under the hood and see what’s there? A good time to see what needs tweaking or fixing? Check the oil, fill your tank with gas, get behind the wheel and go for the road less traveled. Take a risk that is Your conscious risk. It will bring a wonderful new sense of freedom.

Searching for a Fit

In the 1996 film Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise (as Jerry), has a revelation about his feelings for Dorothy (Renee Zellweger). In a bumbling way, he blurts out his love for her in one of the most memorably romantic lines of all time.

“I love you. You complete me,” he says.

Of course, long before that, Dorothy had realized they were a match, and her response was equally memorable: “You had me from hello,” she says.

What more could we ask for or expect from love, or even from friendship, but this – that one person “completes” the other?

We are all like segments of a puzzle, each one looking for various pieces that fit at all of our sides, at one angle or another. So we aren’t seeking someone who’s just like us, our clone, or even one who agrees with us on everything. The pieces wouldn’t fit, and besides, as someone observed, “If two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary.”

And another thing: Although some try, no one individual can meet all of our needs in every area, even a loving spouse. It would be akin to searching for one puzzle piece that completely surrounds and fits into all of the nooks and curves of the other.

We need family, friends, acquaintances, co-workers, and even momentary strangers, of a variety of backgrounds, cultures, belief systems, experience, lifestyles, and personalities in our lives to both broaden and enrich us, to make us the best puzzle segment we can be, and to complement us. We can learn something from everyone we meet, and that in itself is a “fit,” if only small or temporary.

It’s to our detriment when we reject the friendship of someone because he or she doesn’t fit all or most of our angles. We might then never experience a “match” that could complete some part of us.

VISION

If you don’t stand for something, they say, you’ll fall for anything.

But how do you stand when you’re pushed around by crowds and blown about by prevailing, or errant winds?

It’s so much easier to choose a labeled box and live in it or pick a rut, stay in it and travel wherever it takes you, unconsciously. This may include everything from the kind of food in your daily diet, whether healthy or not, and the addictions that blind you, to your occupation and your voting choices—your brands. I am a (fill in the blank) and therefore I believe and do (fill in the blank).

Unfortunately, so much of today’s society runs on the unconscious choices of masses managed by people lacking vision. This creates problems. Every day we hear about more insanity and things that make no sense. What’s the solution?

Your world and the world at large, your health and the world’s health, are much improved when you make conscious choices that are the result of the guidance of your inner vision. Developing vision comes from quiet time, alone.

Among Native Americans there is a tradition of the Vision Quest—typically a four-day period of fasting and prayer, in isolation. It’s a time of purposeful pursuit of vision, an experience of being actively welcoming to wisdom, to seeing or knowing, beyond the individual self.

We may not have a four-day period available for such a quest, but we can surely find moments.

Which Brand Are You?

Labels simplify our lives. We don’t have to open every package, box or can to know exactly what’s inside. Cheerios. WD40. Liquid detergent. Organic beet seeds. Labels are handy because they give us information necessary to determine whether the item will satisfy a need, a hunger, or a desire, or not. This saves untold time and effort.

Unfortunately, for convenience sake, simply out of bad habit, or even for lack of judgment or compassion, we put labels on people as well.

Politicians and marketers certainly take every opportunity to lump-label large groups of individuals and appeal to them based on even a single characteristic taken to define who they are.

Honestly, we are in the stranglehold of so much information bombardment from all media sources and from our electronic devices, screaming so much we should be concerned about, that it’s no wonder we often consciously or subconsciously take the de-humanizing labeling short-cut.

We don’t have to spend our valuable, scarce time being concerned with individuals tagged with labels of groups we don’t want to be associated with. We don’t have to trouble ourselves to know anything of them beyond the label. We don’t have to consider their history, individual opinions, belief systems, struggles, abilities, or that they have hearts, souls, and needs as we all do. We don’t have to consider how they may be contributing to the world or how they might help us to learn lessons we need to learn. We don’t have to be touched by them. We don’t have to see them, but only dismiss them. In the process though, we deprive those people of their humanity and ourselves of compassion, wisdom, and grace.

Is there a single political party, religion, age group, socio-economic class, education level, occupation, family status, gender, race, culture, lifestyle or interest group that defines exactly all of who you are? I think not. Old man, Old woman, Middle-ager, Hipster, African American, White, Native American, Jew, Mexican, Social elite, Upper class, lower class, Middle class, Redneck, Freak, Immigrant, Professional, Retiree, Divorcee, Widow, Widower, Christian, Muslim, Gay, Lesbian, rich Capitalist, White Male, Blue-collar worker, Right-winger, Boomer, Millennial, Dropout, Uneducated, Unemployed, Welfare recipient, Punk kid, Aging Hippie, Liberal, Conservative, Jock, Geek, Soccer mom, Suburbanite.

Labels divide. We need to DO better. We ARE better.

The Music Calls

 I can’t imagine a world without music. Luckily, I don’t have to, especially in southern Louisiana. Music season is all year round of course, but certain times of the year there’s an explosion of events and gatherings built around live music. Music melts boundaries, builds friendships, grows romance, and is generally what is right about the world.

Music is being in harmony, being in sync. Music releases tensions, brings smiles, gives hope, and builds bridges of unspoken communication. The ultimate Cahoots train. All aboard!

If I sound over the top in praise of music’s ability to bring us together, it’s because I find myself repeatedly in the position of being consumed in its magic.

Last week, The Dew Drop Jazz and Social Hall in Old Mandeville, Louisiana opened its doors once more for the fall season of concerts. Concerts can be held only in the fall and spring because the 1895 wooden structure has no heating or air conditioning. Personally, I hope it never has. A couple of times a month, the old cypress hall with eight-foot tall window openings but no windows, and multi-colored lights strung from the ceiling, its only lighting, hosts some of the absolute best musicians around. They play to a crowd who are there because they love the music. Some dance on the wooden floor, and all are rapt. The atmosphere is indescribably delicious in its communal absorption in the moment, in the beauty, in the beat, and in the universal language. The audience and the musicians are in intimate exchange, almost inseparable from one another.

It was obvious last Friday that when Don Vappie, his banjo, and the rest of the Creole Jazz Serenaders played, they weren’t simply doing a job, they were making love—to their instruments, to the music, and to the audience who loved them back. Who can deny that this, and not the hokey pokey, is what it’s all about?

Even if we can’t ourselves make music or can’t dance, we can still open ourselves to the harmony and magic.

Unto Others

A recent trip to a department store to return a skirt brought an unexpected gift.

I had left the store in a hurry to finish my errands in another one when my cell phone rang. Not recognizing the caller’s number, I hesitated to answer it because I’ve gotten too many robotic sales or phishing calls of late, but something prompted me to answer anyway.

“My name is Susan,” she said. “Is this Carroll?”

“Yes.” I waited for the pitch, but none came.

She told me she had found my wallet, which I wasn’t even aware I had lost, in the ladies department in the store I had just left. “The manager put it in the safe,” she said, “but when you go back, you can ask any cashier to page her, and she’ll get it for you.”

After thanking Susan, I rushed back to the store. Within minutes the manager smilingly handed me my wallet, which of course contained what could be a tidy bundle of information for an identity thief.

They were able to contact me because I had my business card in the wallet, the manager said. I remarked that I appreciated the honesty of the store’s employees, but when she told me that it hadn’t been an employee but a customer, I was even more impressed.

At home later, after finishing a phone call with a friend, I must have pocket-dialed a number. “Hello, hello,” the voice on the other end said. “Hello, hello,” I said, thinking someone had called me. Then it registered.

It was Susan, of the last number in my recent calls list, which I had believed to be a store number. “Your wallet was sitting on the check-out counter, so I gave it to the cashier, but she just slipped it into a drawer and said she’d have the manager put it into the store safe. She said it was store policy.”

But Susan strongly objected, found the manager, and urged her to open the wallet to determine the owner before putting it in the safe, then called me.

If my business card hadn’t been in the wallet, Susan said, she would have taken a photo of my license, then come to my home to let me know where my wallet was. When I thanked her profusely and said how grateful I was, she said simply, “Well, I would just hope someone would do the same for me.”

That a woman who didn’t even know me but who was honest and would have the concern and take the trouble to see that my wallet was returned to me raised my spirits and boosted my faith in the good in people.

You couldn’t find a more succinct moral directive than the time tested Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

From Chaos to Common Ground

For more than twelve years of being an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher, I have been privileged to teach, and learn from adult students from forty-seven different countries. Recently having left that role to attend to another life calling, I find myself contemplating the wealth those years have brought me – wealth of both mind and heart – in cultural, social, intellectual, and emotional gifts.

From those years as well as years spent living abroad in various countries, I understand that despite the surface differences among us, and wide differences among our cultures, we all share at our core at least two commonalities. We are all born with the instinct for survival and the need to love and be loved.

These are driving forces, despite the odd forms that the instinct and the need sometimes take, and how they may be submerged or perverted. We can mine for the good and beautiful in people and their cultures. In learning to love, and loving to learn, we are better equipped to have meaningful and joy-full lives, no matter our circumstances, and to help others to do the same. So, I see the twin pursuits as our charge – the price of life.

Fortunately, if we are open, we can learn from everyone who crosses our path and every culture we encounter. It doesn’t matter if we speak different languages from those we meet.

On a recent trip to Montana, we visited a few of the places where Lewis and Clark overcame immense challenges, drank in the stunning ‘cowboy’ art of Charles Russell, and learned a new appreciation for the culture of some Native Americans through their perspective. The unifying “visions” of so many bled through these experiences, and I felt connected to all.

Perhaps this world could use more “vision” – described as “a mystical experience of seeing or knowing” by Kenneth Cohen. In his book “Honoring the Medicine – The Essential Guide to Native American Healing,” he wrote that in all Native American cultures, the most powerful visions come during the Vision Quest, typically a one-to-four day period of isolation, fasting, and prayer, in pursuit of guidance from the Great Creator.

In this world of chaos, we can find or make islands of sanity and restore our balance. Short of this type of Vision Quest search for vision, I wonder: How can we all do better at finding answers to the great questions and successfully meet on common ground?
Your comments?

Katrina Dancin’ in the Streets

Like flotsam and jetsam we landed in shelters and on doorsteps in places that other people called home – flopping on couches or floors and gratefully accepting the kindness of both strangers and distant friends.

Many of us who were St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans area Katrina refugees, had evacuated from homes which were turned into mucky rubble. When we could return home after more than a month, we found that swampy waters had marinated the contents of our homes, wood floors had buckled, and moldy sheetrock had fallen down to piles of slimy debris covering all of our ruined possessions.

Outside, an eerie gray pallor lay heavy like a filthy blanket over everything, and a deep, dark, colorless stillness pervaded. Streetlights were out; stoplights didn’t work, and a mournful silence ruled. No dogs barking, no birdsong, not even the hum of electricity. Barely any sounds of life in St. Bernard. Worse, No Music – an essential ingredient of our diet in this part of the world. Sadness on top of devastation.

I couldn’t believe the music had really died. I liked to believe that as someone said, “Down deep in the mud and slime of things, something always, always sings.” I kept listening for it.

Eventually, soon after we found a tiny apartment in Uptown New Orleans, I heard on the grapevine rumors of music. The Voodoo Music Experience festival would be happening at the River. It was designed especially to thank all the volunteers who had come to help make some sense out of the devastation we all faced, but for me and many displaced locals who joined in that night, this was in itself what gave us most hope of climbing out of the chaos.

Music filled the night. We bumped into friends and other locals, recognizing them most by their inability to stand still while the city’s music played. We danced and broke out into a truly heartfelt second line. Instant celebration! From one stage came the hot, vibrant, rallying horns of Bonerama. Those horns reached into the deepest part of my soul and pulled out a rebirth of joy and a confirmation that when all else fails, if you have music in New Orleans you can survive.

Coming Home to Cultures in Cahoots

After a long hiatus, due to Life, I begin Cultures in Cahoots again with renewed spirit. The intervening time was not lost. Trials overcome, projects completed, trips taken, nature studied, inspiration drawn, history learned, garden grown, new relationships formed and old ones renewed. With it all comes a new appreciation of the natural world and especially of its people.

It occurs to me that I – and each one of us – can through understanding, contribute to the Truth and Beauty we all want. “Be the change you seek in the world,” Gandhi said.

As the world becomes an increasingly smaller place, we are confronted daily by countless souls – on the world’s stage or in our own neighborhoods – many of whom don’t look or sound like us, who may hold beliefs and values that are disparate and possibly confounding or even repugnant to us, but who struggle along their human paths as we do. How should we respond that we might sleep well at night, learn the life lessons we need, and enjoy the journey?

It is the renewed aim of Culture Cahoots to be a platform for understanding, for conscious consumption – of time, space, experience, resources, ideas, and beliefs, for a search engine for Truth and Beauty, and for enjoying life’s journey. Your positive contributions are welcome.

Connected

We can’t help it; it’s in our nature. We all need to be “connected”.

Whether we realize it or not, we’re always looking for ways to be a part of, and important to, someone else, some group, some venture, some cause, some future. And so we make connections, either constructive or destructive, for better or worse.

But every connection is a potential re-birth opportunity – both for us and for whom or what we connect with. No matter what form it comes in, every re-birth is an opportunity for learning about ourselves and the world, for understanding, and for growth.

Every person who crosses our path is then, a potential “teacher” for us, and we for them – most especially those who are most unlike us. Every ailment or other trying situation that comes our way offers the potential for us to connect with and grow from the experience. Being “in cahoots” isn’t for sissies.