The Retraction

Well, I have some good news and bad news.

The good news is that I found my walkman. We are in the middle of a move to new office space and I placed it in one of the bags I had. I was very happy when I found it but then I realized that I cast apersions on the characters of my coworkers. Granted, some of it is earned but I went ahead and determined that one of them was the thief and this attitude effectively coloured my whole day, making me less than productive.

That was the bad news-the fact that I jumped to a conclusion and did not consider all options.

There is a Chinese parable that one of the Taoist masters told and it went something like this.

A man who was a woodcutter came back from lunch and found his ax missing. He looked for it in the area where he was working. He remembered that there was a boy who was hanging around. At first, he though him lazy, because he did not seem him working. When he saw the boy again, he thought that the boy took the ax. He thought that the boy walked like a theif and acted like a theif. The woodcutter then found his ax lying right where he had left it-inside of a stump. He had done this to keep it from being stolen while he had gone to lunch. He felt badly about accusing the boy, even though he had not confronted him, he had jumped to a conclusion.
Now when he saw the boy, he saw a boy who walked upright and honorably.

Maturity

Michael Jackson has been accused of having "Peter Pan Syndrome." For those who aren't familiar with it, it means that this is a person who does not wish to take on adult responsibilities.
I don't know that I suffer from that, it does occur to me that I should be having more fun than I am currently having and I feel that being an adult should not suck so much.

Don't get me wrong, I am happy to:

A) Still be alive
B) Still be alive and healthy
C) Recognize that my life could be truly miserable

I guess that I want to experience what some people experience, which is that unbearable lightness of being that motivates you to live your life to the full. That feeling that children usually have that makes them want to get up in the morning.

I get the feeling that adults lose this and fast and we spend the declining years trying to get it back. That's why we buy the gadgets and get the face-lifts and crowd the studio audiences of Tony Robbins, Dr. Phil, Oprah, Suze Orman and whoever else seems to tell us that there is a way to find it.

I am not in the age group of that demographic. I am in the demographic that makes up the eldest of their children, who were told to do certain things and to take on certain values even if we saw how flawed they were.

I did not expect every day to be great but life is a bowl of cherries. True, some of it is the pits but a lot of it is sweet. I think I want a little more sweet.

I guess the fact that I lost a second walkman in a year has got me down. I am down because I obviously did not learn my lesson from last time about coworkers and thievery. Well, I learned it now. I think I just hate the fact that people steal and will steal junk. The walkman had more sentimental value that dollar value. It was a walkman, not an ipod.

Well, maturity is knowing that into everyone's day a little rain must fall.

So why get wet? Where is my umbrella?

I suppose that's what maturity is also, knowing that mummies and/or daddies can't kiss it and make it all better. I will need to find my own umbrella.

Hotel Rwanda

Well, last night I saw 'Hotel Rwanda.'

I have a confession to make. There are times when I feel so very low and hopeless that I need to see something or be exposed to something that reminds me that I am still in control of my own destiny. I decided yesterday that 'Hotel Rwanda' was to be that something.

I appreciated that the movie had no easy answers about anything. The war in Rwanda was easy but complex. It was definitely a morality tale about who your real friends are. Or is it? The hero of the story, Paul, got them through because he paid off a lot of people and curried favour. Pretty much as he told his wife, he stored some "Don Corleones" which totally saved their lives at times.

It's nice to know that everyone has a price, which seems to be an underlying theme to this film also. Paul was told by Nick Nolte's character that basically Blacks were not worth the trouble to save. White skin had a currency that Black skin could not match. The next level down, it was clear that Hutus has a currency that the Tutsis did not. Rather, they redefined it because in Rwanda's history, the Belgians made it good to be Tutsi, not unlike whites in America who made it good to be multiracial so long as you looked more European than Black, Latino, Indian or Asian.

There were other prices to be had. Paul probably would have risked more had his wife and children been safe and had they not been Tutsi. I know that Gregoire totally would have been gone.

I also appreciated the quiet moments in the film. The loving moments between Paul and his wife Tatiana, Paul and his family and the children dancing while chaos erupts around them outside the hotel.

In terms of acting and production, I think that Don Cheadle edges out Jamie Foxx. In my opinion he always has dramatically due to his awesome body of work. Definitely one of the most underrated actors of our time. I think that both are must see and both, while based on the real events were able to create a level of believability that made you forget that everyone is acting and that these are sets.

I wonder about Rwanda now. It has been 11 years. I wonder if they hear about Darfur and remember. I am almost tempted to find a penpal that could tell me.

I am reminded that I am lucky and that I have responsibility to pay forward.