Last year I attended a gathering where a gentleman, let’s call him Chuck, delivered a speech to us about an accomplishment he had made.
In 1988 Canada hosted the Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta. As part of the celebration Canada’s state owned oil company Petro-Canada decided to sponsor the Olympic Torch Relay across the country. How would the relay team be assembled? By lottery. All you had to do to participate in the Olympic Torch Relay was go to your nearest Petro-Canada Gas Station and fill out an entry form. Relay participants would be drawn from among the entrants. You could enter as many times as you wished.
Chuck lived in a small rural community, but it turns out our he was ambitious. He was determined as a grade school student that he would participate in the Olympic Torch Relay. He went down to the Petro-Canada Gas Station and picked up as many entry forms as the gas station attendant would allow, went home and began filling out entry forms by hand, one at a time. Then he would go back to the Petro-Canada Gas Station and stuff all his completed entry forms into the entry box.
Chuck was determined. Every day he would go to the Petro-Canada Gas Station and collect a ream of entry forms. Everyday he would spend all his spare time filling out the entry forms one at a time by hand. When other kids his age were spending their time with their families and friends, enjoying leisure time or participating in extra-curricular activities or sports, our speaker was filling out forms.
The entry form completion and submission routine went on for months. Chuck’s family thought he was crazy, his friends thought he was crazy, his teachers thought he was crazy, the attendants at the Petro-Canada Gas Station thought he was crazy. Then the day of the draw for the Petro-Canada Olympic Torch Relay participants finally arrived. The draw was made and about a week later a letter arrived at Chuck’s home. He had been drawn to carry the Olympic Torch as a relay participant. Everyone was overjoyed.
The Olympic Torch Relay began during a Canadian Winter and it finally arrived at the point where Chuck would take the Olympic Torch from the previous Torch Relay participant, bear the Olympic Torch for a kilometer or two and pass it to the next Torch Relay member. Chuck was dressed in the red and white Olympic Torch Relay uniform with the Calgary 1988 Winter Olympics logo, the Canadian Flag logo, the Olympic Torch Relay logo and the Olympic Torch Relay logo emblazoned on it. However, it was bitterly cold, the relay schedule was very tight and physically Chuck was not only unfit, but considerably overweight. However, no matter, Chuck received the Olympic Torch and jumped on the back of a snowmobile driven by a Torch Relay volunteer. They crossed the snowy Canadian winter wilderness with God speed with Chuck holding the Olympic Torch high. Finally, they arrived at the next relay point and Chuck jumped off the back of the snowmobile and passed the Olympic Torch to the next Torch Relay participant, who in turn jumped on the back of the snowmobile and continued onward. Victory had indeed been sweet.
Now, let’s return to 2007 on the day this speech was being delivered. Chuck completed his story and proudly displayed the Olympic Torch Relay uniform he had worn during his leg of the relay. We all looked admiringly at it and thought about our own desire to carry the Olympic Torch that we had not attempted to realize. And looked at a man who had had the courage to realize a dream.
Chuck stood before us proud, reserved and two hundred pounds overweight. He now worked for one of Canada’s provincial governments as a senior bureaucrat. He was a senior elected member of the organization of which his audience belonged. He was also a member of the subdivision of the organization to which the audience belonged. He does not believe in new members or in fact any members of the organization receiving a copy of the organization’s constitution, but knows it intimately. He studies Robert’s Rules of Order intensely during organization meetings, but does not share this knowledge with the members, instead waiting to be called upon in an advisory role as Parliamentarian deciding for everyone what due process is. Instead of rationally debating motions, he bellows out bombast like profanity. When asked about ethics, he says his is winning.
So, what did Chuck learn from the example of Olympic Torch Relay? First, he learned that sport and sportsmanship had nothing to do with the Olympic Torch Relay. Second, he learned that the Olympic Torch Relay was a lottery, not based on merit. Third, he learned that he could manipulate the outcome of the Olympic Torch Relay selection process by stuffing the ballot box. Fourth, he learned to be a good bureaucrat legalistically filling out the same Olympic Torch Rleay entry forms day in and day out, neglecting family, friends, liesure, extra-curricular activities, sport and physical health. Fifth, he learned that the Olympic Torch Relay had no physical fitness requirements at all. He simply sat on the back of a gas poewered, internal combustion engine, polluting snowmobile so the organizers of the event could meet their schedule. It’s a wonder that Chuck had the strength to hold the torch up for the length of his leg of the relay.
Chuck had learned a lot of lessons from the Olympic Torch Relay. I believe that the Olympic Committee, Canada, the Petro-Canada Corporation and the Canadian Olympians should all be proud of what they accomplished. They have produced an immoral, misleading, scheming, complex, inefficient, ineffective, inadequate, over-indulgent, imprecise and inaccurate bureaucrat who could die of any number of self-inflicted chronic health problems the next moment. Although I’m sure he has a redeeming trait or two. They all deserve a medal.
Live the Dream.
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Zen: Don’t Think Good or Evil
2009/02/27 — grant czerepakIf you think good and evil,
You become a person of good and evil.
I recently chanced upon a book sale and was able to purchase a book of Zen koans and a book of Haiku poetry for a fair price. I had read about Zen in the past, but I had not read actual works by Zen masters.
I have completed reading Zen Inspirations: Essential Meditations and Text, by Dr. Miram Levering for the first time. It includes the complete text of The Gateless Gate a thirteenth century collection of koans, commentary and poetry by Ekai, known as Mumon. The book also includes The Ten Ox-herding Pictures accompanied by ten poems by the twelfth century Chinese monk K’uo-an Shih-yuan It is definitely not something you read only once. I enjoyed the Zen masters’ admonitions to read the koan and permit yourself to solve it quickly and without hesitation to discover the enlightenment that comes from honesty. As I read the koans, I let myself be honest about my inner response and the wisdom of the Zen masters became increasingly amusing. I think I came to be enlightened many times by their frank honesty about the human condition, the Buddha and the Tao. I think one admonition by Zen master Mumon, that if you encounter someone filled with the Tao, strike him in the face with all the strength you have, sums up what I have learned.
The Zen koans and Taoism I find agree with the philosophy of science, the philosophy of Karl Popper, skepticism, the evolutionary biology of Charles Darwin, the physics of Werner Heisenberg and the mathematics of Kurt Goedel seamlessly. Uncertainty remains the only certainty.
There is origin without origin, direction without direction, destination without destination. Any sense of order is localized and transient. That is the Tao Te and not the Tao Te, and that is what the adherents to Zen struggle with daily.
I don’t claim understanding or overstanding of this paradox.