“I will take the ring, though I do not know the way.” Frodo
Wisdom from Frodo, Michael Jackson and George Vaillant
In No Ordinary Time, What is Our Job?
We citizens of The Excited States of America have to keep up our pace, do we not? So even our holidays are busyness plus, and yet they provide rest and regeneration, for many of us. In spite of holiday reminders that many beautiful things happen all the time in our social order, in families, work, education, community and more, we also see human dysfunction at all levels. Political stagnation, culture wars, international rivalries, violence and environmental dilemmas all favor downside stories of decay, not the generative ones we need in the holidays.
Something old has to move aside (die, even, at least in part) before something new can be born and take its place: accordingly, we live in a tumultuous time of cultural decay-rebirth. In our clearer moments, when we accept our responsibility for future generations, we know that this something waiting to be born needs all our involvement to help it come about. This scale of thinking gives depth to our holiday cheer.
Question: so what are we to do?
Answer: lock arms with our loved ones, close colleagues, and buddies and transform the world.
Like in all the great stories of heroes and sheroes, Frodo foremost among them, we have been preparing for this charged-with-possibility era without knowing it. Even those of us on small stages, which is the great majority of us, have a new expanded job, the role of adding our specific positives to the generative stories. This job is always there and it is especially important now as we strive to bring something fundamentally new into the world. We each have to take the ring a few steps ahead. We can fulfill this duty in the day-to-day acts of care, support and learning that present themselves regularly.
We can go out of our way to do a little more, to inject some benevolence and love in the things we have to do, to erase the ugly and the cynical. The teacher can take his skills up a notch for his students, the corporate leader can get even better at growing more skilled leaders, the coffee shop owner can create even healthier amounts of social capital-building opportunities at the little corner place customers love. Things like that—extraordinary high intentionin ordinary settings.
Be a Step-Down Transformer on the Power Grid of Life
There is some useful neuroscience, a metaphor from the energy and power grid world, and some memorable Michael Jackson in all this. First, Michael. He sang a famous line for how to go about the job of adding to the positive story of life:
“If you want to make the world a better place, Start with yourself and make that change.”
Thank you for the principle here, Michael.
One neuro-science contribution, and there could be many, is the reminder that changing ourselves is no small task. The old brain is change resistant. Unlike the neocortex that can change and add so much so quickly, the structures like the limbic system change only with ample persistent effort. As those working on anger management can tell you, the proverbial amygdala hijack, now a widespread term, takes time to learn to manage. As do all the negative habits we fall into. And the positive traits take time to foster and grow as well. Taken together this act of starting with ourselves and self-management builds what we sometimes still refer to as character.
Our collective job, something we each have to do in our unique settings, is to bring our best wisdom, and positive energy, our angles on the true, the good, the and beautiful, to those around us in our work, families and communities. If you know electricity at all (and I barely do) an image from the power world can help us. The image is that of a step-down transformer that takes high voltage/low current power and converts or transforms it into low voltage/high current electricity. Then it can be used in all the ways we need—lights, power, devices and so on.
We each have to take in the maximum insight and good will we can. We work on ourselves, using our highest and best will to take in the high voltage power from the more powerful transformers further up on the grid. These transformers are the folk who have developed wide-ranging benevolence, inclination for growth, and courage—from the movies think Ob-Wan Kenobi, Galadriel or the Black Panther. From your life, think of those you know who regularly help others with their care, know-how, wisdom and positivity.
After our intake it is our turn to act like transformers in the grid. We alter and pass on the power-juice we receive, into the most usable forms possible, currents for those we impact with the best that is human and true. This current transfer from one form of power to a more usable form is the source of holistic will and useful thinking that helps and heals our troubled culture with its many problems. It is the scaffold that holds us together and builds enough social capital so we don’t self-destruct. It is our hope, the little generative acts we can all do, that gets us through the deep social change and decay-rebirth struggle we are in.
We Are It
Accepting the role of a step-down transformer carries us forward. George Vaillant, the renowned developmental psychologist, after decades of research, concluded that the bad things that happen to us are less predictive of our happiness and contribution to society than the good people that come into our lives at the right time. This is our job—be those helpful people. Be at our best to receive the best and pass on the best. Our solutions are not under a dome, or residing in business leaders or technology leaders. They all have their place in bringing in the new. But we are all it. We are all the solution. This is our current extracurricular job, the one we didn’t bargain for but the one that builds a better future. Let us start with the person in the mirror. Become the step-down transformers we are for these holidays and beyond.