Blogging101

Be Whose Change, Now?

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Blame former Vice President Al Gore. In his bestselling book, “Earth in the Balance” (1992), Gore recounts the story of watching his six-year-old son be hit by a car, and the months he and his wife spent bringing the boy back to health.

He writes that “something changed in a fundamental way” for him that year, 1989: he turned 40, watched his son almost die, and lost the 1988 Presidential election. (He came in a distant “don’t remember him running that year” in the primaries to Michael Dukakis.)

On the same page as that list, page 14 in the revised edition, he writes that,

This life change has caused me to become increasingly impatient with the status quo, with conventional wisdom, with the lazy assumption that we can always muddle through. Such complacency has allowed many kinds of difficult problems to breed and grow, but now, facing a rapid deteriorating global environment, it threatens absolute disaster. No one can now afford to assume that the world will somehow solve its problems. We must all become partners in a bold effort to change the very foundation of our civilization.

(Gore does a far better job connecting the personal with the political than I did for him just now, above; reading the long quote on its own, as I shared it, reminds me of a tire-screeching/pulling-the-stereo-needle-across-the-record sound effect. “One minute, he was talking about turning 40, and then? This is connected to climate change how?” Okay. He spends the first dozen pages laying out his political credentials as a leader trying to avert the environmental catastrophe that we are now 20-plus years closer to than when he was writing. Then he reveals something that few politicians like to admit: vulnerability and teachability.) (My own Al Gore cred: the first vote I ever cast for president was for him, in 1988, in the New York State Democratic primary, which Dukakis won. I voted for Clinton/Gore twice and Gore in 2000. Nine years after its release, I have yet to view “An Inconvenient Truth,” however.)

In the next paragraph, he brings in Mahatma Gandhi, and bumper stickers have not been the same since.

I believe deeply that true change is possible only when it begins inside the person who is advocating it. Mahatma Gandhi said it well: ‘We must be the change we wish to see in the world.’ And a story about Gandhi—recounted by Craig Schindler and Gary Lapid—provides a good illustration of how hard it is to ‘be the change.’ Gandhi, we are told, was approached one day by a woman who was deeply concerned that her son was eating too much sugar. ‘I am worried about his health,’ she said. ‘He respects you very much. Would you be willing to tell him about its harmful effects and suggest he stop eating it?’ After reflecting on the request, Gandhi told the woman that he would do as she requested, but asked that she bring her son back in two weeks, no sooner.

As Gore tells it, or Schindler-Lapid tell it, the mother and son visit Gandhi two weeks later and he delivers his health message to the boy. The mother thanks him but asks why he had requested a two-week wait. “Because I needed the two weeks to stop eating sugar myself,” he is said to have replied.

And we all, without prompting, cast Sir Ben Kingsley as “cuddly Gandhi” in our movie version of this anecdote in our minds. In 12-step fellowship meetings, I promise you will hear someone re-tell this anecdote as if it appeared in the great movie biography, or in any biography of the great man.

No version of the story appears in any biography of Mahatma Gandhi. Nor does the “be the change” quote. According to a spiritual writer named Keith Akers, the bumper-sticker-perfect expression, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world,” can not be traced anywhere in the world until the 1970s at the earliest. He spent a couple of years trying to find the statement in Gandhi’s published and recorded works. His article, “Did Gandhi Really Say ‘Be the Change,’” concludes that it is a legend. Not that there is anything wrong with the notion—it is certainly a viable suggestion to make in any debate—but someone wanted to add some historical-philosophical oomph to the thought and attributed it to Mahatma Gandhi.

Akers also shares the amazingly ironic fact that several years ago, the National Cattleman’s Beef Association used the phrase in a pamphlet it released aimed at educating school boards about making sure beef was a part of their school districts’ nutrition and wellness plans for the coming school year. It is not attributed to Gandhi, but there it is, uncited and without quotes, in a document dated September 2005. About beef and its positive role in a youngster’s school nutrition.

In 2011, a writer named Brian Morton published in the New York Times an essay titled “Falser Words Were Never Spoken.” Akers also cites it. Morton expounds on several bogus quotations, including the “be the change” thought, and authoritatively quotes this from Gandhi: “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.”

He calls it the “closest verifiable remark” from Gandhi on the idea, but he does not offer a source so that anyone else can verify its closeness or its anything-ness. A Google search yields articles on spiritual websites that recount the mother and son and sugar story (some quite vividly, making it sound like an adventure tale), and the trek to the spiritual leader, and his request that they check back with him some time later (in some versions it is two weeks, in others, three days). And then the long version of the quote, the Morton quote, is offered in these stories, which were found today in a simple Google search, as Gandhi’s wise words to the mother.

There is no documented evidence he ever even said the Morton quote. Gandhi was an activist, so yes, putting his money where his mouth was would have counted for something. But he was not merely a spokesman for his ideals, telling people how to live. He knew that personal discipline in one person can not change anything, certainly not a government, but that a lot of people of discipline, working together and pushing each other, can. Those who like to vocalize the “be the change” quote are rarely heard speaking about changing unjust political systems or sparking revolutions; usually they use the quote to remind each other to smile more and be more sunny and thus make the world a smilier, sunnier place. And anyone who doesn’t smile back? It’s their fault.

If you want to write a best-selling bumper sticker, water a big thought down to a weak and insipid one, make it sound altruistic but really be about self-congratulation, and attribute it to someone long dead who really was a deep thinker but who would not have thought or even uttered what you are crediting them with saying.

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The WordPress Daily Prompt for January 2 asks, “What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?”

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Pathies: Sym- vs. Em-

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A friend used to say, “If everyone could throw their problems onto a table in the middle of the room and then listen to each other’s stories, everyone would go crazy trying to make sure they got their own problem back.”

Until this past year, I was unfamiliar with the term “spoonie” or the “spoon theory.” For those with chronic, painful and pain-filled conditions and illness, the term has become incredibly popular in the last half-decade, because it depicts better than most analogies what it is like to live with a chronic illness or disability.

A writer named Christine Miserandino is credited with inventing the analogy on her terrifically-named website, But You Don’t Look Sick. She has lupus and tells a story about how she explained to her best friend what her world is like. She handed the friend a dozen spoons and explained that it is now the start of a new day and that different tasks would cost a spoon each. When she reveals that “getting up and showering” would cost a couple spoons, the point started to become clear.

From “The Spoon Theory” :

I asked her to count her spoons. She asked why, and I explained that when you are healthy you expect to have a never-ending supply of “spoons.” But when you have to now plan your day, you need to know exactly how many “spoons” you are starting with. It doesn’t guarantee that you might not lose some along the way, but at least it helps to know where you are starting. She counted out 12 spoons. She laughed and said she wanted more. I said no, and I knew right away that this little game would work, when she looked disappointed, and we hadn’t even started yet. I’ve wanted more “spoons” for years and haven’t found a way yet to get more, why should she? I also told her to always be conscious of how many she had, and not to drop them because she can never forget she has Lupus.

People with chronic pain have a talent for analogy that perhaps they did not know they had until they learned that they needed to find a way to communicate what life feels like for them. They become good explainers, because the quality of their life depends on it.

Because pain is one of the most personal of sensations, or appears to be—a burn might feel the same for you as it feels or me, but we only have our anecdotes to compare and weigh against one another; meanwhile, I’m on fire!—because perception is personal and pain is utterly a perception and not a measurable reality, those who suffer chronic pain are left with their own talent for creating analogies to make others understand their day, their night, their world. Anyone who has visited a pain specialist (I have not) is familiar with the range of sketched faces that they must circle to communicate how much pain they are in. I have a friend with fibromyalgia, and I remember her saying things like, “My back is at a 7, but my legs are a 5.”

Good sensations seem to be almost universal; our senses of humor may differ, but a laugh is a laugh. Your feet might be ticklish while my arms might be, but a tickle is the same for us both. (Unless it causes pain, which it might for someone with fibromyalgia.) As much as I love comedy and enjoy making people laugh, I have not yet found myself explaining why I found that one punch-line made me laugh with a barely audible “Heh” (call it a 4 on the laugh scale that does not exist) and another one got a laugh from the back of my throat.

Until July 15, 2010, I did not have much skill with empathy. Sympathy, sure. Sympathy is an “attaboy” given to someone bearing up under a weight without offering to assist in lifting it at all. Sympathy was something I gave to someone with the expectation that I would be thanked by the injured party. “Wow, that sucks,” is sympathy, and before the other person can continue talking and telling the sympathetic person any details, the sympathetic person has moved on, having rescued them with an “attaboy” of sympathy.

Empathy is love. It is saying to someone, “I do not know what this is like. Tell me,” and then listening. Of the two “‘pathies,” it is the one that requires more effort but can bring greater rewards.

If my problems were in the center of the room—my diminished mobility and two hands that are becoming clubs (I can tie shoelaces, but only if I want to eat up a day)—I would take them back. And maybe they have given me a modicum of empathy.

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In answer to no one’s question: Yes. I chose a new layout. I was using “The Columnist” all 2014, was happy with it, but thought I would change things for the new year. I am using the free layouts still, but might invest in this website. Any suggestions? Sympathy? Empathy? Does this layout make my ideas look good?

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The WordPress Daily Prompt for January 1 asks, “If you could spend the next year as someone radically different from the current ‘you’—a member of a different species, someone from a different gender or generation, etc.—who would you choose to be?”

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Edison’s Happy New Year

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Sixteen months of embarrassingly public false starts and failed attempts led to the rarest of things from Thomas Edison: silence. He was going to allow his results to speak for themselves for once. When he and his invention were ready, one hundred thirty-five years ago tonight, on December 31, 1879, Thomas Edison invited the public to his lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, to witness electric lights being turned on and off for the first time.

In September 1878, Edison had convinced himself that he was so close to an electric light that he announced it to the press. “I have it now! When the brilliancy and cheapness of the lights are made known to the public, illumination by carburated hydrogen gas will be discarded,” he told the New York Sun. Gas lamps inside and outside the house, with their many inherent dangers, were about to be a thing of the past.

Like many great inventors before and after him, Edison was almost as a good a salesman as inventor. He certainly was an inventor, one of the most accomplished in American history, but he was also a self-inventor. To this day, the image we associate with Edison and the image we associate with the word “inventor” are very close: that of an obsessed tinkerer in his garage, testing and refining different materials and different systems until success reveals itself. Think of the quotes from Edison one still encounters when looking for sayings about success: “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Or, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Or, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Or, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

When he spoke to the Sun, he was already famous and becoming wealthy for inventing the phonograph and powerfully refining the telegraph, so dozens of investors in his electric light project came forward with enough capital to create the new Edison Electric Light Company, which is now General Electric. They knew what it would mean to be on board financially with the man who would bring electric light to every street and each house on those streets. A new world was about to be created. But not in 1878.

The investments helped. Edison was able to hire technicians and expand his lab at Menlo Park. It might have taken longer than four months for him to realize that a light bulb, a vacuum-sealed glass enclosure, was key. In March 1879, Edison once again announced that he was even closer to success. The historian Mark Essig quotes a skeptical newspaper article, from an impatient New York Daily Graphic writer:

Day after day, week after week, and month after month passes and Mr. Edison does not illumine Menlo Park with his electric light. The belief has become rather general in this country and in England that for once the great inventor has miscalculated his inventive resources and utterly failed.

(And we think the 24/7 news media we live in now is impatient. It always has been.)

When all the experiments and tinkering resulted in a successful product, Edison and his assistants knew it. They had a light bulb that was emitting more energy than was being put into it. For once he remained quiet. He wrote one friend, “It is an immense success. Say nothing.”

He put out the word that he was ready by inviting the public to his famous lab in northern New Jersey. The demand for rail tickets became so great that the rail companies added cars to the routes west. The crowd was estimated to be over three thousand, and no one in attendance was disappointed. Not even the newspaper reporters. Edison did not provide entertainment or work the crowd up with delays and announcements or speeches about the grand era to come; instead, he turned the light on and off, again and again, and allowed the public to do the same. The grand new era was here, and by September 1882, Edison’s company was providing electricity and light to customers in lower Manhattan.

(Mark Essig’s 2003 book, “Edison and the Electric Chair,” does a great job explaining the science behind the false starts; it is also a great work of history about the legal battle between Edison and Westinghouse and AC versus DC power distribution. It and some online articles helped when I noticed that today is the 135th anniversary of the debut of something I will be turning off about two minutes after midnight tonight. Happy New Year, everyone, and may the only tears any of us shed in 2015 be tears of joy.)

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The WordPress Daily Prompt for December 31 asks, “We cry for lots of reasons: sadness, pain, fear … and happiness. When was the last time you shed tears of joy?”

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