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Be The Blessing

This was originally written after the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Many tragic events have happened since then, most notably the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdowns, the resulting economic calamity and now race riots in cities across America after the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after being pinned down by a white officer. Now more than ever, we must put aside hate and be a force for good in the lives of our friends, family and neighbors. In other words, be the blessing.

***

I get frequent messages from readers. One was from someone tormented by current events — be it the government spying on citizens or any number of potential calamities.  She asked how to make it stop.

I didn’t have an answer. I have no psychiatric degree — only my personal experiences.

Mood music:

The reader’s message said, in part:

I deal with scrupulosity, ruminations over heaven and hell, conspiracy theories and intrusive thoughts. It’s gotten to the point where it’s become impossible to function when I read a new headline about what the government is doing to us. I get depressed and I get obsessed. I see my intense fear and read things about the government tracking us, and suddenly I regret all the research I did about conspiracies over many years. I don’t know if I even believe it all, but I somehow feel like the more I know, the more I can somehow save my family.

I don’t know what to do about current events. I don’t know how to save my family from government tracking (even though we’re not doing anything illegal or anything that would be of concern), yet I feel like my OCD is making me out to be this inadvertent target due to the fact that I’m always obsessively searching through conspiracy websites attempting to find “answers.” How did this stop? How do you deal with this?

I can relate to her fear of current events. It’s something that used to paralyze me on a regular basis. I felt the need to give an answer broader than the fear of current events part, because to me that’s merely a symptom of the bigger problem people like us must confront. And so I mentioned how, for me, the biggest helpers have involved:

I noted how, even after adding these tools, I still struggle. Some days I forget to use some or all of those tools for a variety of reasons. Using them actually takes more energy than I have some days. And if something really big dominates the news, it will still have an impact on me. The Boston Marathon bombings come to mind.

After I hit “send,” I remembered something a friend wrote not long before she died of cancer. Renee Pelletier Costa wrote about her despair over leaving all the people in her life and how her pastor replied simply, “Then don’t leave.” That statement made her realize that in a world she couldn’t control, she could still use whatever time was left to be a blessing to others.

That was a huge point for me as an OCD sufferer. I can’t control most of what goes on in the world around me, but I can still carry on each day in ways that make the difference to family, friends and colleagues. It can be as simple as saying good morning to someone and holding a door open for them. You can talk to them about their struggles — or better yet, just listen to them. Bring them a coffee. Make them laugh. Any of these things go a long way when someone’s having a shitty day.

The NSA will keep spying on us. Stocks will rise and fall. But none of that can keep me from being there for my family, from playing guitar and doing other things that make life worth living.

To the best of my ability, I choose to be the blessing. What happens from there isn’t up to me.

Boston Marathon Explosion

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The Jokes About Aaron Hernandez Are Sad

Update April 15, 2015: Hernandez has been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.

A lot of jokes are making the rounds after the arrest of former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez on first-degree murder charges. It’s human nature to do this sort of thing. But it’s also sad.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/1e3m_T-NMOs

One of the more popular jokes had to do with Hernandez switching from tight end to wide receiver, a reference to prison rape.

This is how we can get when the mighty fall. In Hernandez’s case, we have a football star making millions of dollars, living in a mansion and seemingly having life by the balls, only to piss it away by allegedly murdering someone. Hernandez is charged with first-degree murder and faces five firearms charges. According to prosecutors, he drove his friend, 27-year-old Odin Lloyd, to an industrial park in the middle of the night and orchestrated Lloyd’s murder. Hernandez was said to be enraged after a fight at a nightclub three nights earlier.

If he did indeed murder his friend, Hernandez should suffer the consequences, possibly by spending the rest of his life in prison. That’s as it should be. But there’s a lot about this case we don’t have the details on, and we seem to forget that in America, we are innocent until proven guilty.

Life is hard and we all stumble through it, no matter how successful we are. So when someone who has achieved greater success than the rest of us goes down in flames, we tend to find comfort in it.

What we often forget is that we’re all constantly inches away from that one bad decision that can lead us to ruin. I’ve made a lot of bad decisions in life and paid for them all, though it has almost always involved me hurting myself. Some of us abuse and kill ourselves. Others kill someone else.

Of course, it takes a special kind of bad to snuff out someone else’s life, and when that person is atop the world as Hernandez, the shock and disappointment are sharper. No one likes to see their heroes fall. So the harsh judgments come, wrapped in bad jokes.

It’s a shame that we get this way.

I won’t lie: I’ve made the jokes when the mighty have fallen. I’ve laughed at a lot of them when made by others. When Paris Hilton faced jail time a few years ago, a lot of similar prison jokes were made and I chuckled at them.

But more recently, I’ve tried to be better than that. Maybe that makes me a little more self-righteous about the Hernandez jokes than I should be. But there it is.

Ultimately, my hope is simply that those hurt by this case — friends and family of Hernandez and Lloyd — will get the help and support they need in what must be an exceedingly difficult time.

Aaron Hernandez

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Paula Deen and the N-Word

I’m not a fan of cooking celebrity Paula Deen. When I first heard The Food Network fired Deen for using the N-word in the past, I figured she got what she deserved. But part of me feels sorry for her.

Here’s one of three apology videos she made:

http://youtu.be/tDOezlc52z0

According to various news reports, including an item in The Huffington Post, Deen’s troubles stem from her admission that she used the N-word in the past. She said so as an attorney  questioned her under oath last month. “Yes, of course,” Deen said. “[But] it’s been a very long time.” Deen and her brother, Bubba Hiers, are being sued by a former manager of their Savannah, Ga., restaurant — Uncle Bubba’s Seafood and Oyster House — who is accusing them of racism. From the HuffPost article:

The ex-employee, Lisa Jackson, says she was sexually harassed and worked in a hostile environment rife with innuendo and racial slurs. During the deposition, Deen was peppered with questions about her racial attitudes. At one point she’s asked if she thinks jokes using the N-word are “mean.” Deen says jokes often target minority groups and “I can’t, myself, determine what offends another person.” Deen also acknowledged she briefly considered hiring all black waiters for her brother’s 2007 wedding, an idea inspired by the staff at a restaurant she had visited with her husband. She insisted she quickly dismissed the idea.

If the accusations are true, Deen deserves the blow to her reputation, because it suggests she’s not being entirely truthful in that she and her family have no tolerance for racial slurs. But many of us would also be two-faced if we took joy in her predicament.

I’ve never cared about a person’s color, sexual orientation or religious beliefs. All that has ever mattered to me is that people be good to each other and live their lives with generous hearts. But as a young and stupid kid, I’d sometimes use the word for sheer shock value. It was the same attitude that made me think it would be cool to walk around wearing a Charles Manson T-shirt.

I went through a phase where I listened to a lot of angry hip-hop in which the artists used the N-word constantly. One of my favorites was Ice T’s band Body Count. This song gives you a pretty good idea of what unfolds throughout the album:

The songs were a reaction to how they dealt with racism, but my attitude was that if they used the N-word, I could. Racism never had anything to do with it.

Back then, I thought it was a big joke. In my drunken moments, I would play the most violent songs on the album (“Cop Killer” and “There Goes the Neighborhood”) and cackle myself blue. My attraction to that album illustrates what an angry person I was back then. I was spiritually adrift.

As I got older and matured, I got over it. Today, I hear the N-word and it makes me sick. I know the pain that word has caused so many good people, and it shames me that I once used it like it was nothing.

Having learned the lesson long ago, I can’t help but wonder if Paula Deen reached the same conclusion at some point — that racist language is intolerable. I hope so. The reaction against her is a sign that our society has become a lot more intolerant of racial hatred. It shows that society has evolved.

But we’re not done answering for the past.

In any event, I don’t her entire career should be destroyed over something she said decades ago, when a lot of us were using the same language.

Paula Deen

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The Little Boy, the LEGO Gun and a World Gone Mad

I understand the anxiety educators feel over guns, especially after the horrific events in Newtown, Conn. What I don’t get is how absolutely stupid and unreasonable grownups have become over every little thing.

Case in point: a 6-year-old boy getting in trouble for carrying a LEGO gun barely the size of a quarter.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:2bkpCVvOn2XZGhzA4fPyuZ]

I already sensed we had gone off the deep end when a high-school girl got the book thrown at her for a science experiment gone wrong. But this is so much worse. From WCVB Channel 5:

A Massachusetts kindergartener has been given detention and could be suspended from the bus after bringing a Lego-sized gun to school last week.

The incident happened on an Old Mill Pond Elementary School bus in Palmer last week. 

A 6-year-old had the toy gun, which is slightly larger than a quarter, on the bus and it was seen by another student, who alerted the bus driver.

The boy’s mother, Mieke Crane, said her son had to write a letter of apology to the driver, was given detention and could be temporarily suspended from the bus.

One must wonder if the driver had smoked a big fat one with school administrators before that bus ride. A bad reaction to weed is the only reason I can think of for why they’d treat a tiny LEGO gun sighting as if it were Dirty Harry’s .44 Magnum.

My kids are LEGO freaks and there are tons of these tiny guns all over the house. It hurts like hell when you step on one with your bare foot. But that’s about all the damage these things are capable of.

“[The driver] said he caused quite a disturbance on the bus and that the children were traumatized,” Crane told the local news.

Really? Traumatized because they thought the boy would shoot them, or because they all wanted one just like it? Kids can be pretty unreasonable when it comes to toy envy.

Or maybe they were traumatized because all the grownups around them have gone bat-shit crazy, overreacting in the name of school safety and political correctness.

In their overreaction, they are teaching children that violence lurks around every corner and that they should fear everything and everyone, even classmates with toys that are cooler than theirs.

They’re helping to create a paralyzed, paranoid police state.

In this world gone mad, not even the children are safe.

LEGO gun

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‘Dude, You Are Pathetic’

I don’t always respond to readers who call me names in the comments section, but sometimes it’s necessary.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:0xfaolnQFiBRZLff8vvkUK]

When I wrote a post the other day about being released from mental therapy, a guy named Jerry had this to say:

Dude you are pathetic. Be a man, work out your issues outside, or in the gym. Talk to your friends and family. You don’t NEED anything, you just tell yourself you do.

Now, I don’t care that he called me pathetic. After 20 years as a journalist, I have pretty thick skin. I also don’t feel the need to repeatedly justify why I write about these things.

But I see his comment as an insult to anyone who struggles to overcome the demons that hold them back.

So I’ll just say this to you, Jerry:

I agree that people need to talk over their challenges with friends and family. If not for that outlet, I wouldn’t be here. I also agree on the value of the outdoors and the gym as both a physical and mental strengthener.

But mental disorders often require the intervention of a medical professional. In this case, a therapist. If a person’s brain chemistry is off and signals don’t move back and forth properly, venting to a friend or demolishing a punching bag in the gym will help. But it won’t fix the brain chemistry problem, and the person will continue to suffer.

Pathetic? Hardly. It takes courage for someone to admit they need help and then go get it.

If that concept is hard for you to accept, leave this blog behind. I’m sure there are plenty of more manly blogs out there for you to enjoy.

weight-lifting-brain

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When People Don’t Like A Discussion, They Call It Drama

Since I write a lot about how we talk to each other in this blog and my professional one, I hear the word drama a lot. It’s almost always used to describe something people don’t want to discuss. It’s a one-word arsenal meant to shoot down anyone you disagree with. I get shot at a lot. And I’m perfectly fine with it.

Yesterday I publicly took a local newsman to task for relishing his coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings a little too much. He was on Facebook, telling us about how he had the best information and the best inside sources at the hospitals and in law enforcement. He ripped politicians who didn’t come right out and call this a terrorist attack. He kept track of the death count like a scorekeeper at a ballgame, going on about how the media was reporting three deaths but his tally was four.

He boasted that his info was the best, better than Fox, better than the Eagle-Tribune, a local newspaper he competes with fiercely. He carried on exactly as he has in the past, and that’s why I wrote this post a few weeks ago. When all you can do is toot your horn during your reporting, you become part of the problem in media today.

The reaction to my criticism was swift. Some agreed with me, while others defended him. The defenders accused me of creating drama, as if covering a national tragedy like a ballgame wasn’t drama itself. One person said I was engaging in a “form of adult bullying.” Another told me I needed to “get laid.”

As my 9 year old likes to say: “Whatever.”

Facebook is a place where everyone loves to express their outrage and pride with memes and sayings that are not fact-checked. That’s drama, too.

If I smell something that stinks, I’m going to say something about it. As a writer, that’s what I do. If it offends you, unfriend me or unsubscribe from my posts.

Better yet, do something about the drama you create.

kirk yelling at kahn

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People Without Filters

My closest friends know that a true sign of affection from me is when I pick on them. For one friend’s birthday recently, I called him a “broken-down barge” on Facebook. He loved it, because he knows that when I talk that way, I cherish the friendship.

I’m all too aware, though, that this trait is a double-edged sword that can cut deep when turned the wrong way.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:4xTjyX1PVTZJftjY2dUzBi]

I guess you could say I’m one of those people lacking a filter.

I get a lot of this from my father. He’s always been the type to share his observations with you, no matter how insensitive. He’ll look a friend or family member in the eye and tell them they’re getting fat. If someone doesn’t stop for him at a crosswalk, he’ll give them the middle finger and call them an asshole loud enough for people to hear at the other end of the street.

I’ve always worked hard to keep my observations about a person’s weight to myself. Having fought the battle of the bulge my whole life, I know people get zero benefit from being told in public that they’re fat. I would never flip someone off in the street today, though the 20-something version of me would have. Just ask my parents-in-law, who were sitting in the back of my beat-up 1985 Chevy Monte Carlo when I flipped someone off for cutting me off in traffic. Or maybe I was the one doing the cutting.

The present me is a lot more docile in that regard. I might tell someone to go fuck themselves in the heat of heavy traffic, but I do it from the privacy of my car with the windows up and the kids absent, though my boys will probably be able to recall moments when I slipped. They love it when I have to drop change in the curse jar.

I let the sarcasm fly, though. I like to tease — mostly because I like trying to get people to laugh. Yet I know I take it too far sometimes.

I may be too old to change my personality, but you’re never too old to refine your communication skills. So if you run into me on the street or in the grocery store and my words are too cutting, remove your own filter long enough to tell me so.

I’ll keep working to do better.
motormouth

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‘This Post Is Escapism and Blame’

A dear friend hated the post I wrote yesterday on how we’re all lousy parents. He found something in every paragraph to disagree with and found the opening particularly offensive.

He told me: “Not all of us were raised by lousy parents. Not all of us ARE lousy parents. No matter how one was raised at a certain point your life becomes your own responsibility. Not your parents. Not your genes. Not your phobias. This post, to me, is escapism and blame. I choose to fix the problem and not the blame.”

Those sentiments were not what I was going for, so let’s clarify a few things.

Let’s start with the opening:

I’ve had conversations with other parents recently that highlight a fear we all share: Despite our best efforts, we’ll scar our children anyway.

I’m thinking my friend took this as me saying all parents suck, period. Not true. I was saying that among those parents I’ve had the conversation with, all of us share the fear of damaging our kids. That doesn’t mean we will. It’s simply something we worry about. He took the title in the fullest literal sense, which is unfortunate because I was being partly facetious. Since those of us who had the conversation are convinced we are imperfect parents, I was lightheartedly saying, “OK, but let’s try not to suck too much.”

The escapism and blame he frowned upon comes from this passage, I assume:

My father could be a brutal teaser and taskmaster when it came to things like yard work and working in the family warehouse. It always seemed like my best was never good enough. Even as a grownup, I would tell him about promotions and raises at work, and when I told him what I was earning, he’d deliver these stinging words: “That’s it?” Dad also doesn’t have a verbal filter. If you put on weight, he’ll look at you, smile, and tell you you’re getting fat. Yet here I am, teasing my kids all the time.

If I had stopped there, it would have been about blame. But I continued:

Like most moms and dads, I always swore I’d do better than my parents did. But the older I get, the more I realize I haven’t been entirely fair to my mom and dad. They made their share of mistakes, but they did a lot right, too. With the help of excellent doctors, they kept me from dying of childhood illnesses. They got me through school and made my college education possible. My father has helped me out of more than a few financial jams. Yeah, bad things happened when I was a kid, but they were often things beyond my parents’ control. They tried to keep my older brother healthy, but he died anyway. They tried to keep their marriage together, but it wasn’t meant to be.

The point is that I blamed them for a lot of things earlier on, but being an imperfect parent has made me realize they didn’t deserve my scorn. My own challenges have given me a better understanding of what they did right despite all bad cards they were dealt along the way. Bitterness and blame were long ago replaced by forgiveness and gratitude. True, my relationship with Mom and Dad could be better today, but I attribute that more to the differences we struggle with together as adults.

My friend ended his comment with this: “I choose to fix the problem and not the blame.”

So do I.

As imperfect as I am, my boys are growing up with love and encouragement. I’m a constant presence in their lives, and when I see myself screwing up, I work to correct it. I’m also as honest as I can be with my children. If I’m in the wrong, I acknowledge it. And every day I tell them I’m proud of them, no matter how badly they’ve tested my patience. That’s progress.

I point out the lousy parts of my parenting because in acknowledging it, I can improve. And in sharing, my hope is that other parents can do the same.
Bad Parent Alarm

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Hey, Tom Duggan: You’re Doing It Wrong

I like Tom Duggan, editor of one of my local newspapers, The Valley Patriot. Against heavy odds, he started his paper nine years ago to compete with The Eagle-Tribune, the dominant daily of the Merrimack Valley region, and it’s been a big success.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:1qGiiSb3RgkDdkZOmAd8UZ]

As a former Eagle-Tribune editor, I’ve enjoyed Duggan’s effort. I have bad memories from my days there, much of the grief self-inflicted, some of it the byproduct of spending too long in the viper pit that is the typical daily newsroom. I couldn’t help but take joy in the fact that my old bosses had a fight on their hands.

In recent years I’ve mellowed. I wasn’t the most pleasant guy to work with, and I’m grateful for enduring friendships I made despite that. I’ve also enjoyed a fair amount of career success since then, so dwelling on the past lost its luster. Still, I’ve continued to enjoy Duggan’s effort.

But there’s something in his approach that annoys me as well. He’s an over-the-top gloater, and it hurts people who don’t deserve it.

Yesterday, Duggan was on Facebook delighting in a shakeup in the Eagle-Tribune newsroom. Publisher Al Getler was fired, and Salem News Editor Karen Andreas was apparently brought in to replace him. Duggan referred to Getler as “puppetboy” (Getler is a ventriloquist as well as newspaper publisher) and celebrated the man’s downfall with child-like glee.

In the past Duggan has picked on E-T reporters, some by name, and boasted mightily over scoops he has had enjoyed. He’ll usually go on about all the news he broke while E-T reporters and editors were asleep at their desks. He often frames E-T staff as clueless and plays up how great he is by comparison.

The more grownup thing to do would be for Duggan to keep his wins to himself. Die-hard newspaper readers know when one paper beats another, and gloating comes off as childish.

Duggan should also check his facts; the gloating he does isn’t always true. I’ve watched him brag about scoops only to go to the E-T website and find the same story covered, often at more depth.

Boasting about scoops these days is especially childish because it’s become all but impossible to tell who is really first in this age of Facebook and Twitter. A private citizen can hear something on a police scanner and tweet the news, and suddenly they’re the one with the scoop.

I also know as a veteran journalist that it’s not always better to be first. Many stories need to be covered more slowly, more deliberately and with greater sensitivity, especially after a terrible tragedy.

As imperfect as The Eagle-Tribune is, the staff are far from clueless. I’ve seen them in action and have been part of it. Two Pulitzer Prizes testify to the paper’s dedication and endurance.

Congratulations on your success, Tom. But don’t let the need for bluster cheapen your victory.

Tom Duggan

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‘Help’ Might Be the Best Four-Letter Word Out There

A topic I’ve visited often here is the shame people feel in asking for help. When we do so, we think we’re being weak, selfish and all-around pathetic. But, as I’ve said, that’s bullshit. Another blogger made the point so eloquently this week that it must be shared.

Mood music:

Jennifer Pastiloff is a writer, retreat leader and yogi with a popular blog called The Manifest-Station. Monday, at the very end of “Bitch Slap It,” she captured the power of getting help with a simplicity and directness that hit me where I live:

Asking for help is just about the best thing any of us can do. Most people don’t know this secret (so please pass it on if you would). What we think we know is usually miniscule compared to what we really don’t know at all and what we don’t know is how the world will open up and show us that we are held.

So when you say I am on a journey to be a spiritual being and I AM STUCK! I need your help I’d like to point out that the help has been granted. It’s right here. And here. And there.

Also see: “To a Friend: Your Pride Is Killing You” and “The Liar’s Disease”

I recently heard a talk from Cardinal Sean O’Malley in which he called love his favorite four-letter word. It’s a favorite of mine, too. But I hold help in equal esteem.

It’s probably one of the more misunderstood words out there. We’re bombarded almost from the moment we’re born with platitudes about how as American citizens, we can achieve anything we set our minds to. There’s truth in that, but it often gives us the false notion that greatness, even simple happiness, for that matter, is something we can rightfully lay claim to only if we achieve it all on our own. To ask for help along the way is the mark of a sissy, a coward, a lazy soul, a clingy, needy child.

What a crock of shit.

Asking for help is the mark of courage and reason. When you realize you can’t get somewhere on your own and you invite people to join you on your journey, you’re doing something selfless and giving, something generous. Not just because you’re letting people into your life, but because once you reach a certain point in the journey, you inevitably start giving back.

The person who helped you will eventually need help, too. And you will be there for them.

Thanks for the reminder, Jennifer.

helping hand