Three More Dances with Death
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There I was a couple weeks ago watching the terrorism trifecta. Dallas, Nice, and the coup d'etat attempt in Turkey rattled me, along with millions throughout the world. In Dallas, white cops were killed by an angry black. 
In Nice, a crazy driver killed at least 84 people as an act of jihad. The driver merely drove his truck through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day. 
At least 84 people were killed in a terrorist attack in Nice, France. Then came the military coup d'etat attempt in a pivotal geographic point in the world's attempt to deal with ISIS. 
Civilians attack a tank of the coup d'etat leader. President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, isn't considered a saint among the world's leaders on human rights issues. Nonetheless, he is making an attempt to help the Western world to face down ISIS's holy war against the West and also against Muslims themselves. There I sat wondering about the world in which we live. We kill innocent blacks and then we kill innocent cops and wonder why. That doesn't seem like a difficult question to resolve. If we treated blacks equally by not merely killing them, there wouldn't be blacks that dislike whites. Hell, if I can figure that out, that would be obvious to greater minds. Cops are not killing Norwegians in record numbers, and Norwegians aren't retaliating against cops. You don't have to be an intellectual genius like Einstein or Hawking to grasp that calculus. ISIS and the other groups of Muslim extremists didn't develop their jihad ex nihilo. It is the same cause and effect issue that we face here in the States regarding race. Address the cause, and we will begin to resolve the problem. However, we need to seize the opportunity that this trifecta presents us. There is an old saying, no pain, no gain. We feel the pain. Now, we need to act. However, in the mean-time, we are dealing with the onslaught of problems, whether from our people or from those overseas. There I sat pondering. Essentially, we are dancing with death...at an emotional level and at potentially a physical one. Then it came to me, Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. One of the things that I realized once I watched his Last Lecture was that dancing with death allows one to live more fully. While that seemingly is an oxymoron, doing the dance does free one to live. In fact, it motivates one to fully live and enjoy the time that the person has. I danced with death twice and then watched that video. It was transformative. Trust me. 
We are not the grand designer of reality. We don't know how long the sands of our hourglass will continue to drop slowly before we actually drop. Therefore, carpe diem. Go out into the world, crazy as it is, and live. Having done the dance, it develops a type of laissez-faire, which is better than emotionally dying out of fear of dying. That is a no brainer. Teddy Roosevelt said in the Man in the Arena, to be like the one "who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." 
Dare greatly or be like "those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." This gets down to the very basics of life. Either love or you will die while waiting for the undertaker to arrive. Enjoy what you have in spite of what the world presents.
Visit the On Seeing the Light page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Connecting the Dots page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Darkest Before Dawn page to read more about this topic.
Visit the The Last Lecture page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Dancing with Death page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Man in the Arena page to read more about this topic.
Visit The Mentors and Me page to read more about this topic.
Forrest Gump, "Stupid is as stupid does." Visit the Stupid is As Stupid Does page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Best and Worst of Times page to read more about this topic. 08/12/16 Follow @mountain_and_me |
