World Trade Center Attacked
As you know, today there was an attack on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, State Dept., Philadelphia and perhaps more locations will be attacked and more people killed by the end of the day. We know there is a United Airlines flight missing, and maybe hijacked, too, carrying a huge amount of fuel to cause possibly more destruction and death by the end of the day.
Having traveled around the world from Latvia, to Turkey, 14 countries in Central and S. America, Asia, Canada, Greece…and listened to people from many different cultural backgrounds and religious backgrounds about their experience of the USA and how we live our life, it is NOT surprising to me that these events have happened.
We only hear certain types of news in the USA. 70% of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution is advertising. We hear the type of news which sells advertising and has Americans look good…but only to ourselves. If the news we read most of the time made us look like warmongering, oppressive, insensitive bullies the TV stations and magazines and other media would not get our attention or sell their papers to us. Basically, they would go out of business. Just like you don’t like it when people see you as a jerk the USA has an image to support around the globe so that our country looks good and smart and strong and capable of great harm and great generosity. This is a much better view to have of our country…it makes us like it and defend it…right or wrong, and that is just ordinary.
But our politicians are very clever about the story they tell, and the media is very careful to publish what they say because they all have so much to lose. The facts of what they say are left for us to try to extract and we are left to gather them from within so much OPINION that it gets confusing as to what is what. When everyone is experiencing fear and disbelief about the events happening today it is easy to simply react and say things we don’t mean.
Bush is saying “it was an attack on our FREEDOM” and that we will “hunt down those coward terrorists”.
Well, it may mean it was an attack on HIS freedom, but NOT MINE. Why would you let him tell you what this attack means to YOU. The facts are the facts…2 buildings were destroyed in an alleged terrorist attack by planes. Does this mean it was an attack on OUR FREEDOM?
Certainly the people who died this morning and continue to lose their life from this attack have lost their freedom. They are now dead and perhaps now more free than ever before.
The attack may also point to our way of life being shaken up, our sense of security and well being shattered and for now we are awake and alert to the lives lost and to our own mortality. We are angry and helpless, concerned confused and frustrated. We are asking “what can we do to help”. But mostly we are asking why did ‘they’ do this to ‘us’?
Imagine and Man and Wife and their children are in a community doing good things. They say he is a pillar of the community, a loyal worker and seems like a great family man. He appears confident and compassionate yet strong and intelligent but
one day, after years of abuse and hitting by him the wife stabs him. In self-denial the man never admitted to ‘doing anything wrong’. He never took the time to examine what he was doing or to correct his actions to make a peaceful household. He went along in his own self-created world thinking everything was ‘fine’ and then WHAM, he is stabbed and looking at her like he can’t believe she did that, saying, “what a !@#$%^&!” she is.
No one outside the family has seen it and no one can believe he would do such a thing. Even more important, in his own mind he was RIGHT! He blames her…she is nuts. He never takes responsibility for his part of the mess! He goes to the hospital where he is pitied and cared for and she is persecuted. Years pass and he has learned nothing and so he does it again to another woman.
But, is she a coward? What courage it must have taken her to finally strike back!
I do NOT condone her violence but certainly they needed to talk it out and she needed to be courageous enough to bring it up, maybe with a therapist, so that a correction to the household problem could occur.
Well perhaps we can take this occasion to look at how the USA is being in the affairs of the world household. Perhaps we can look to see where WE are not taking responsibility in our country and in our lives for the things we believe in on a global scale. Perhaps we will be less afraid to stand up and be counted for what is right FOR THE WORLD and not just for US. Maybe we can learn to not just consider the wants in our own back yard but the needs of all humanity.
Over the next days, months and perhaps years we are going to hear many possible stories, mere speculations made by so called professionals who have experience in the field. Well NONE of them have encountered this before and they are just as lost as you are as to the facts. We are all trying to sort it out. While we are doing that one thing remains clear, and that is that somebody or some group believes we deserved this and so they gave it to us. Whatever their reasoning is we might take the time to listen to what is being said about the USA. Not try to defend it or change it or blame this on somebody else. Let’s look to how we were not being kind to other countries, how we are dumping our trash on foreign soil, provoking war in other countries between other peoples, funding wars in yet others by giving money or weapons or technology, using foreign child and prison labor to bolster our lifestyle and eating and wasting more than half our worlds resources.
Without looking at these things and admitting our part of the problem we do not grow and learn. NOT SEEING our cause in the matter is like lying to ourselves. We have simply developed very clever ways of lying to ourselves…ways to justify our actions.
To bring the idea to us here at Baumgarten’s, more than ever let’s communicate fully, truthfully, and at the same time with the care for each other that we really DO share. This morning as we watch the horrors on TV I looked around the room. On each of your faces and I saw a deep level of humanism that perhaps we are only faced with when fatal disasters like this happen. Shame on us for being so afraid to live daily like each day is the last…for being NICE to each other trying to cover up a problem or try to look good yet lying about what we are really aching to say to each other…that we really DO care about each other, that we want a world that works, an environment that is not only healthy but one where each and everyone of us is FREE TO SAY WHAT WE NEED TO SAY… SECURE enough to hear another persons experiences and frustrations and learn from it and THRIVE and be excited and even grateful for working with each other another day.
I am culprit to sustaining the status quo around here. I sometimes, believe it or not, don’t speak my mind because I want to look good and smart and able…I want to avoid looking bad and incapable. I do it because I don’t want to HURT you but that is not the truth… it is just to protect me. LIVING LIKE THIS IS A LIE and it only serves TO PROTECT ME. NO personal growth or company growth comes out of it. NO greater vision of myself or of each other and no greater vision of the world we can experience comes of this form of lying either.
I, too, get afraid of confronting you when you are making a mess of something. I get almost no feedback from you that could help me grow and learn yet I am able and committed to listening to your advice as a contribution to me and to learning from your experience. FACE IT, WE ALL WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS but we are chickens. I sometimes walk around here like I know what is going on when I don’t. I, too, get frustrated and overwhelmed when things go wrong. Mostly I get upset when we are not telling the truth about the way we see things and PRETEND like it is OKAY. Well, IT IS NOT OKAY!!!
I elected to take on running the family business but I had no idea of what that looked like when I chose to come do it. In fact I still don’t know what it looks like even though I am doing my best to learn as fast as I can what will make this place the best place to work in Atlanta. I can’t force all of you to have wonderful lives and reach your dreams BUT THAT IS WHAT I WANT FOR ALL OF YOU.
I PROPOSE THAT TODAY is the day we drop our fears and create WITH EACH OTHER the environment, closeness and workability needed to fulfill us EVERY DAY WE ARE HERE. Today is the day we SUPPORT EACH OTHER not only in our jobs BUT IN EACH OTHER’S LIVES and towards the other persons DREAMS. There is so LITTLE SHARING of these aspects of our lives around here that we don’t even know where to begin supporting each other. Each one of us can be COURAGEOUS and NOW is the time to let is show. Let today be the day that you MAKE A DIFFERENCE in your life at home, with your families and loved ones, and at work or at church and everywhere you can. Say the things YOU mean to say and cause the world to go towards that of YOUR DREAMS. Cause every environment you step into to be like the world you want to have. You CAN be that powerful. The proof is how we actually ARE creating the world we are living in now, but we feel powerless, small, hopeless, resigned and cynical. Notice those things within yourself, let them go, and then be BIG!
How many people died today with their dreams unfulfilled?
Having traveled around the world from Latvia, to Turkey, 14 countries in Central and S. America, Asia, Canada, Greece…and listened to people from many different cultural backgrounds and religious backgrounds about their experience of the USA and how we live our life, it is NOT surprising to me that these events have happened.
We only hear certain types of news in the USA. 70% of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution is advertising. We hear the type of news which sells advertising and has Americans look good…but only to ourselves. If the news we read most of the time made us look like warmongering, oppressive, insensitive bullies the TV stations and magazines and other media would not get our attention or sell their papers to us. Basically, they would go out of business. Just like you don’t like it when people see you as a jerk the USA has an image to support around the globe so that our country looks good and smart and strong and capable of great harm and great generosity. This is a much better view to have of our country…it makes us like it and defend it…right or wrong, and that is just ordinary.
But our politicians are very clever about the story they tell, and the media is very careful to publish what they say because they all have so much to lose. The facts of what they say are left for us to try to extract and we are left to gather them from within so much OPINION that it gets confusing as to what is what. When everyone is experiencing fear and disbelief about the events happening today it is easy to simply react and say things we don’t mean.
Bush is saying “it was an attack on our FREEDOM” and that we will “hunt down those coward terrorists”.
Well, it may mean it was an attack on HIS freedom, but NOT MINE. Why would you let him tell you what this attack means to YOU. The facts are the facts…2 buildings were destroyed in an alleged terrorist attack by planes. Does this mean it was an attack on OUR FREEDOM?
Certainly the people who died this morning and continue to lose their life from this attack have lost their freedom. They are now dead and perhaps now more free than ever before.
The attack may also point to our way of life being shaken up, our sense of security and well being shattered and for now we are awake and alert to the lives lost and to our own mortality. We are angry and helpless, concerned confused and frustrated. We are asking “what can we do to help”. But mostly we are asking why did ‘they’ do this to ‘us’?
Imagine and Man and Wife and their children are in a community doing good things. They say he is a pillar of the community, a loyal worker and seems like a great family man. He appears confident and compassionate yet strong and intelligent but
one day, after years of abuse and hitting by him the wife stabs him. In self-denial the man never admitted to ‘doing anything wrong’. He never took the time to examine what he was doing or to correct his actions to make a peaceful household. He went along in his own self-created world thinking everything was ‘fine’ and then WHAM, he is stabbed and looking at her like he can’t believe she did that, saying, “what a !@#$%^&!” she is.
No one outside the family has seen it and no one can believe he would do such a thing. Even more important, in his own mind he was RIGHT! He blames her…she is nuts. He never takes responsibility for his part of the mess! He goes to the hospital where he is pitied and cared for and she is persecuted. Years pass and he has learned nothing and so he does it again to another woman.
But, is she a coward? What courage it must have taken her to finally strike back!
I do NOT condone her violence but certainly they needed to talk it out and she needed to be courageous enough to bring it up, maybe with a therapist, so that a correction to the household problem could occur.
Well perhaps we can take this occasion to look at how the USA is being in the affairs of the world household. Perhaps we can look to see where WE are not taking responsibility in our country and in our lives for the things we believe in on a global scale. Perhaps we will be less afraid to stand up and be counted for what is right FOR THE WORLD and not just for US. Maybe we can learn to not just consider the wants in our own back yard but the needs of all humanity.
Over the next days, months and perhaps years we are going to hear many possible stories, mere speculations made by so called professionals who have experience in the field. Well NONE of them have encountered this before and they are just as lost as you are as to the facts. We are all trying to sort it out. While we are doing that one thing remains clear, and that is that somebody or some group believes we deserved this and so they gave it to us. Whatever their reasoning is we might take the time to listen to what is being said about the USA. Not try to defend it or change it or blame this on somebody else. Let’s look to how we were not being kind to other countries, how we are dumping our trash on foreign soil, provoking war in other countries between other peoples, funding wars in yet others by giving money or weapons or technology, using foreign child and prison labor to bolster our lifestyle and eating and wasting more than half our worlds resources.
Without looking at these things and admitting our part of the problem we do not grow and learn. NOT SEEING our cause in the matter is like lying to ourselves. We have simply developed very clever ways of lying to ourselves…ways to justify our actions.
To bring the idea to us here at Baumgarten’s, more than ever let’s communicate fully, truthfully, and at the same time with the care for each other that we really DO share. This morning as we watch the horrors on TV I looked around the room. On each of your faces and I saw a deep level of humanism that perhaps we are only faced with when fatal disasters like this happen. Shame on us for being so afraid to live daily like each day is the last…for being NICE to each other trying to cover up a problem or try to look good yet lying about what we are really aching to say to each other…that we really DO care about each other, that we want a world that works, an environment that is not only healthy but one where each and everyone of us is FREE TO SAY WHAT WE NEED TO SAY… SECURE enough to hear another persons experiences and frustrations and learn from it and THRIVE and be excited and even grateful for working with each other another day.
I am culprit to sustaining the status quo around here. I sometimes, believe it or not, don’t speak my mind because I want to look good and smart and able…I want to avoid looking bad and incapable. I do it because I don’t want to HURT you but that is not the truth… it is just to protect me. LIVING LIKE THIS IS A LIE and it only serves TO PROTECT ME. NO personal growth or company growth comes out of it. NO greater vision of myself or of each other and no greater vision of the world we can experience comes of this form of lying either.
I, too, get afraid of confronting you when you are making a mess of something. I get almost no feedback from you that could help me grow and learn yet I am able and committed to listening to your advice as a contribution to me and to learning from your experience. FACE IT, WE ALL WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS but we are chickens. I sometimes walk around here like I know what is going on when I don’t. I, too, get frustrated and overwhelmed when things go wrong. Mostly I get upset when we are not telling the truth about the way we see things and PRETEND like it is OKAY. Well, IT IS NOT OKAY!!!
I elected to take on running the family business but I had no idea of what that looked like when I chose to come do it. In fact I still don’t know what it looks like even though I am doing my best to learn as fast as I can what will make this place the best place to work in Atlanta. I can’t force all of you to have wonderful lives and reach your dreams BUT THAT IS WHAT I WANT FOR ALL OF YOU.
I PROPOSE THAT TODAY is the day we drop our fears and create WITH EACH OTHER the environment, closeness and workability needed to fulfill us EVERY DAY WE ARE HERE. Today is the day we SUPPORT EACH OTHER not only in our jobs BUT IN EACH OTHER’S LIVES and towards the other persons DREAMS. There is so LITTLE SHARING of these aspects of our lives around here that we don’t even know where to begin supporting each other. Each one of us can be COURAGEOUS and NOW is the time to let is show. Let today be the day that you MAKE A DIFFERENCE in your life at home, with your families and loved ones, and at work or at church and everywhere you can. Say the things YOU mean to say and cause the world to go towards that of YOUR DREAMS. Cause every environment you step into to be like the world you want to have. You CAN be that powerful. The proof is how we actually ARE creating the world we are living in now, but we feel powerless, small, hopeless, resigned and cynical. Notice those things within yourself, let them go, and then be BIG!
How many people died today with their dreams unfulfilled?
posted by D. Baumgarten at 10:08 AM
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