Forwarding the Conversation

Over the coming months I will begin to feature people and organizations that are forwarding the conversation. A friend of mine, Zach Kolodin, has recently started an organization called Young People First. The organization seeks to create a Young People’s Agenda designed to organize young people around America’s chronic problems. Organizations like this are precisely what is needed to connect conversations and create joint-action. I believe that this organization is truly sourced in the idea that “we did not put our ideas together. We put our purposes together and we agreed. Then we decided.”

In order to truly create change we cannot continue to talk at each other offering outworn ideas and opinions. We must get to a deeper level and join our commitments and use them as the basis from which we move forward. This idea is reflected in the writings of Scottish Mountaineer William Hutchinson Murray:

But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money— booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:

    Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
    Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

Please watch the video below, provided to me by Zach, then visit IdeaBlob where you can find more information about the organization. If you like what you see vote for it. Each vote is important and if the organization gets enough votes they will be awarded a $10,000 grant. You can also check out the organization’s website at Young People First.

This week as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made their way to Capitol Hill to argue for the passage of their estimated 700 billion dollar package designed to stablize the financial markets what did we hear from our presidential candidates?

Who cares how many cars John McCain owns and what the hell does mum mean? We are in the midst of a financial crisis and all the campaigns can do is air negative ad after negative ad. Last week the Washington Post published a story titled “Recent Obama Ads More Negative Than Rival’s, Study Says.” The article goes on to explain that 77% of Obama’s ads were negative the week after the Republican National Convention while 56% of John McCain’s ads were negative. So, Obama airred more negative ads than John McCain. In total, 30 million dollars was spent between the two campaigns on ads with and it’s possible that almost 20 million of those dollars went to negative campaign advertisements. For me, it doesn’t matter who is airring more negative ads because a few weeks before the Democratic Convention it was the John McCain campaign who was tossing the bigger mud pies.

What matters right now is that in the midst of a financial crisis both campaigns have decided to pummel each other into the ground. At a time when America’s President is publicly taking a back-seat role to a member of his cabinet the only thing that the two men running for the highest office in the land can do is resort to petty attacks. America needs leadership and neither candidate is showing that they are capable of leading. This morning Obama made the statement that he may not even go to Washington to vote on the 700 billion dollar financial package if it looks like it’s a sure thing to pass. Senator Obama might not go to Washington to vote on what could be one of the most significant bills in United States history? What does that say about the way he will lead as President? John McCain has not yet committed to being in DC for the vote? What would it say to the country if neither Presidential candidate went to DC to vote on this bill?

At the same time that these ads are running Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, went on Meet the Press to talk about the crisis. As I watched I found myself saying to myself “man, he sounds presidential.” After I finished watching I went online to watch the latest statements from both candidates and was dissapointed. Neither sounded like a President attempting to address a crisis, they sounded like fools trying to figure out how to fill a sound-bite without saying anything at all. Bloomberg projected an heir of calm detachment. He seemed confident and at ease with the questions and he didn’t sugarcoat the problem. 

As I watched Mayor Bloomberg I couldn’t help but wonder why can’t our Presidential candidates talk to us this way? Maybe that’s not what we, the public, is demanding or maybe it’s something else. All I know is that at the end of the day one candidate will win and be faced with cleaning up this mess. My sincere hope is that the performance goes better than the auditons.

Bobby Kennedy on the quality of youth:

“Our answer is the world’s hope; it is to rely on youth. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress.

This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. It is a revolutionary world we live in, and thus, as I have said in Latin America and Asia, in Europe and in the United States, it is young people who must take the lead. Thus you, and your young compatriots everywhere, have had thrust upon you a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived.”

Youth is a quality and a state of mind that gives us the ability to continually see the world through new eyes and different lenses. Bobby Kennedy spoke of the outworn dogmas and slogans of the previous generation and cited that what we need is the quality of youth. If we are to tackle the growing problems of tomorrow we need to go back to the visions of yesterday. We need to go back to a time when we saw the world differently: before we decided things are just the way they are. 

When a newborn baby opens its eyes for the first time it sees a world without labels and identities. It sees a world through the eyes of infinite possibility. That is the quality that we need now, not just in our leaders but among the general populace. Kennedy said that in order to create the world that we all want to pass down to our children that we require the “qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.”

It’s time that we demand this quality of our leaders and of ourselves. I will now leave you with some questions to spur some creative thinking…

When you were a child how did you see the world?

How does the way that you saw the world as a child differ from the way you perceive the world now?

What is not possible now that you thought was possible when you were a child?

Who do you know that as an adult displays the ‘qualities of youth’ that Kennedy describes?

If you know a person like that, how do they personify these qualities?

Bobby Kennedy is an example of someone who displayed the qualities of youth. The video below is another speech that he gave called the Mindless Menace of Violence which highlights his thinking.

I just finished reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo. It is a fantastic read that packs so many truths into such a short space. So, in addition to having a string going on Rethinking Poverty I will begin recording some thoughts on The Language of the World.

The Language of the World is a phrase used by Coehlo throughout The Alchemist as a way to describe the way in which we communicate with our world and each other and how the world conversely communicates with us. This idea gets at the essence of Forwarding the Conversation because it is only through purposeful listening that can we find an understanding of The Language of the World, and it is only through the Language of the World that we are able to see our deeper purpose. We must always be willing to attentively listen to our hearts and we must always be willing to follow the path that our heart lays before us.

It is in this spirit that I will include some of my favorite quotes from The Alchemist and feature a short HP commercial with Paulo Coelho

….”whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth.” ….”And when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to acheive it.”

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When you know that language, it’s easy to believe that someone in the world awaits you, whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city… without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning.

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There was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.

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Don’t forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else.

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When we love, we always strive to become better than we are.
When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.

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Wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.

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The world’s greatest lie: At a certain point in our lives we lose control of what’s happening to us and our lives become controlled by fate.

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“Continue in the direction of the Pyramids”, said the alchemist. “And continue to pay heed to the omens. Your heart is still capable of showing you where the treasure is.”

“Is that the one thing I still need to know?”

“No”, the alchemist answered. “What you still need to know is this: before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.’

“Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.”

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No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.

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People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want. We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it’s our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same Hand.

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