The ideal body type today for men has become more muscular and bulked up.  The perfect man is seen with narrow waist, six-pack or washboard abs, muscular shoulders and bulging biceps.  This attention has been good for gym memberships and manufacturers of bodybuilding machines.  It has also been good for those of us who endure a generous waistline.

It has not been good for those who have dedicated themselves not only to develop muscles, but also obsess to obtain a perfect body, perhaps going on to unhealthy and dangerous behaviors including steroid and substance abuse. 

Low self-esteem has been found to be a more likely cause of bulk building than the pursuit of health.  The perceived reaction to the future perfect body drives that person to continuously work out, and the social isolation that results is a situation they are used to. 

The problem starts with being dissatisfied with their body image, and they see bulking up as a means of social acceptance.

What they do not see is that people relate to them through their confidence and personality.  What they do not see is there is no one ideal shape or size for all.

Getting in shape is a great goal.  Exercise and diet are still the only healthy way to fitness.

The world is filled with people of all shapes and sizes.  Relationships are built on compatibility between people.  How much time would we spend with a person who had a perfect body and no personality?

While confidence is a major aspect of personality, and toning our body through normal exercise and diet may increase our self-confidence, getting to the point of a healthy body should be the goal. 

Moderation is key.  We should learn when to stop as well as when to start. 

Live a vital life. 

“Happy anniversary,” she said with a chuckle. 

Oops.  I had completely forgotten our anniversary.  The thing that saved me was so did she. 

We made our wedding date the day after Income tax many years ago when I had a business printing out tax returns for accounting and tax services at a computer center.  With last-minute tax preparations, the day after income tax was the first day I could schedule for anything.

Luckily, April 16 was a Saturday and my bride-to-be made all the preparations.  She ordered the cake, invited relatives and friends and even picked out my suit.  When I got up Saturday morning all I had to do was to get dressed. 

That was a small bump in the road we have traveled together for 32 years. 

But life happens and occasionally, normally important things get temporarily lost behind the smoke screen of the immediate problems that we must deal with. 

In the previous weeks, our life has been bumpy.  My middle-thirties daughter suffers from an insidious, incurable disease that has been acting up pretty severely recently.  She has a normal job, but has been sick so often recently, she went on Family Medical Leave (FMLA), a great federal program that allows her time off to go to the doctor and to the hospital to have her disease treated without getting her fired. 

On top of all the visits to local doctors, the Emergency Room and going through an endless array of drugs to try to make her disease manageable she has finally been referred to a surgical facility.  There is no other choice. 

The best hospital for the job is 90 miles away and there are more than several visits before the surgery. 

While my wife drives her down and back, I take care of our ‘almost’ seven-year-old grandson and relieve her of that stress.  We generally wind up together for dinner, and at least we can spend some pleasant time together. 

On another note, as the IRS deadline approached, our son, who made more than a fair amount selling items on Amazon last year, was a nearly nightly visitor to ask for the help of my accountant wife.  He also stayed many times for dinner as well. 

We love having our kids visit, although under these circumstances, it made for a rather hectic lifestyle.  So, April 15 came and went, and it didn’t even occur to me that the following day was our wedding anniversary day. 

I am grateful that my wife has a sense of humor and I rewarded her with an anniversary card and flowers, and we rewarded ourselves by going out to dinner (alone) at a nice restaurant. 

These are some examples of riding the bumps in the road.  We have no say in how life goes.  We can only try to react to circumstances thrust upon us.  And we have lived and been married long enough to ride the little bumps without breaking pace.  We have learned that life has enough of the big bumps. 

All in all, life happens and includes lots of bumps.

Live a vital life.

The glum faces of Team USA impressed me as they were receiving their silver medals.  Each of them looked like they would never play hockey again.  Later, during the closing ceremonies, they seemed in better mood, but the initial letdown of losing after trying so hard showed on their faces. 

Looking on without the emotional involvement of the practices and playing six intense games in 13 days, I could idealistically ask why they were so glum when they had proven they were the second best hockey team in the world. 

And I get stuck on the words, “second best.”

Team USA did not want second best, they wanted “best.”  In preliminary play, they actually beat Team Canada, and so they thought they could actually do it.  And they did come within an inch of achieving that goal. 

Team Canada had them down by two goals, when Team USA scored their first goal twelve minutes into the second period, and the tying goal with 25 seconds left in regulation play. 

Needless to say, that’s when emotions peaked. 

Going into overtime with four skaters and a goaltender playing “sudden death” their nerves must have been like violin strings – can’t make a mistake …

But fortune went to Team Canada, when their player found the puck almost unexpectedly near his stick, and in his own words, I just hit it in the direction of the net.  And it went in. 

Make no mistake; the win could have gone either way.  

Neither team was second best.  They were each at their personal best.  Team USA played as well as Team Canada, but opportunity came first to the Canadian team. 

And therein lies the lesson for us.  Life is like that.

We prepare to the best of our ability for an event, a job or career.  We perform our personal best, but someone else is a razor-thin line better or seizes an opportunity and they win the job, the place first in line, and we are “second best.”  We feel the disappointment intensely. 

But winners pick themselves up, improve their skills and move on to the next opportunity. 

Winners are never “second best” except in a particular circumstance or event.  They will never be “second best” in their own minds.

They are “best” somewhere, and often in many places, and they continue to practice and play the game until the world sees that they are the “best” as well. 

Let’s make it personal for ourselves.  Let’s never settle for “second best. 

Live a vital life.

It is easy to get our schedules bunched up as well as our blood pressure; and very easy to be late.  Habitually late

If we were meeting a potential romantic partner or employer, I would bet we would move everything out of our way to arrive on time, especially if it is the first time. 

Whether it is a date or meeting, over time we get comfortable and it becomes part of our routine.  We push the schedule and insert small tasks before we have to leave and they take longer than we thought.  We get more done, but are habitually late. 

Our blood pressure rises and we feel the stress squeezing us. 

So, how can we defend ourselves?  Don’t be late.  How can we do that? 

Make each time like the first time. 

This presupposes our schedule is not like an emergency room disaster.  If it is, we can do two things; try to lighten our schedule or become experts at time management or a combination of both. 

We can try to say no to some meetings and events if they make our lives too stressful.  We can try to limit activities with our young ones or involve other family members to help out. 

But at work, we might have a boss who doesn’t understand anything except his own needs, and drives us relentlessly.  We can probably discuss it with him, but he wouldn’t understand our hectic schedule.  We can ask him to prioritize the meetings he wants us to attend on time and without stress.  And he may be deaf to our suggestions. 

In that case, a decision should be made.  Do we want to die of stress on our present job, or live with another, better job? 

And if we manage to lower our activity, appointment and meeting schedule, we can then work to lower our stress by allowing ourselves a pace to get there on time or, even a little early.  How?  Apply a little project schedule planning.

Planning

Everything we do that involves interdependent activities is a project.  There are things we can control and things we cannot.  The secret is to recognize the difference, and plan each leg.  

First we need to do some calculations to know our personal numbers—adjust them for each particular case:

• Know how much sleep we need if we have a super-important appointment like a job interview the next day.  Let’s enter 8 hours.
• We are not robots, so it takes some time to fall asleep – more if we are apprehensive or nervous about the next day’s events.  Let’s enter 30 minutes. 
• We are not firemen, so leaping out of bed fully dressed and ready for action will not happen.  Most people need about 90 minutes to rise, shower, clear our morning fog, and dress.  It wouldn’t hurt to add 30 minutes for miscellaneous items like de-icing the car in winter, walking the family pet, herding our young ones and making breakfast.  Let’s enter 120 minutes to get out the door from the sound of the alarm. 
• How long will it take to get to our destination?  If we are driving, is there gas in the car?  If we take public transportation, do we know the bus or train schedule?  Would it hurt us to take an earlier bus or train in case there were delays?  Do we drop our young ones off on our way? 

This is a personal estimate of travel time, and keeping abreast of weather conditions and construction sites will help make the number more accurate.  We all like to estimate our travel time as if it was Sunday midnight, but most commuters commute at about the same time.  Vary the time with experience.  Pad on some extra minutes, just in case. 

Preparation

Next, prepare the night before.  Put gas in the car.  Organize what we will need and place it by the front door to avoid forgetting it.  Lay out clothes for our young ones and ourselves.  Prepare lunches and store them in the refrigerator. 

Check directions to our destination if it is unfamiliar.  If we are driving, it wouldn’t hurt to plan an alternate route in case of jammed traffic. 

I used to take a route to work through a large metropolitan center.  It was the most direct route, but every day, there were accidents and construction and my stress levels soared.  Then I planned an alternate route around the metropolis.  It was slightly longer, but less traveled, and the time was constant every day.  I actually enjoyed the drive. 

Distractions

The last thing I like to do before retiring is to check my e-mail for any change in plans.  I can do it in the morning, but 5 minutes usually turns into 25 and I fall behind schedule. 

This falls into the category of distractions that can put us behind schedule.  Other distractions may be an unexpected phone call.  Some of us cannot resist the sound of a ringing phone.  This is a discipline issue.  Let it go to voice mail unless it is someone with critical news.  We can call them back while enroute or when we arrive early at our meeting. 

Other distractions may include young ones out of sorts; they don’t like what they have to wear; they don’t like breakfast; they didn’t do their homework and a big report is due today.  Sorry, I can’t help you there.

If this is a regular occurrence perhaps we need to build it into the schedule.

Scheduling

Finally, we should time ourselves to be at the right point at the right time in the schedule, so we’re ready to leave on time. 

If getting up is our problem, we can set the bedside alarm ahead to compensate for hitting the snooze button too often, or we can set the alarm out of reach or out of the room to force us up to shut off the annoyance.  Most cell phones have a multiple alarm capability that can be set a few minutes later than the bedside alarm with a second alarm going off when we should be leaving the house. 

Practice

In truth, this approach requires discipline to keep to the schedule, but with practice it gets easier. 

In a recent CareerBuilder survey, 20 percent of workers admitted to getting to work late at least once per week.  12 percent confessed to at least twice per week.  Constantly arriving 15 minutes late cost our employers a week’s pay in lost productivity over the course of a year. 

And this is no economy to make our employer feel we are cheating them. 

Payoff

Arriving early gives us time; time to de-stress, to read an article, write a letter, make a phone call or work on something personal while waiting for the meeting or our work shift to start.

Arriving early gets noticed.  Over the years of my business career, the promotions and raises always went to those who arrived early, even if they did not stay one minute past quitting time.  Executives are in their jobs partially because of their timeliness, and they notice those who are like them. 

And finally, routinely arriving late for our date or meetings shows everyone we have little respect for them or ourselves. 

Live a vital life.

We are not robots, although sometimes the dullness of life can make us feel that way.  At various stages of our lives, we are overwhelmed by the boredom of daily living.  I guess that is what winter vacations are for. 

There are many diversions built into our lives to relieve boredom.  There is the latest movie or album to entertain us for a brief period, there are events and activities of all kinds to break up our days, too many to mention.  Each one offers an invitation to participate. 

Back to the scribbled note, it names a major reason for living is to have a little joy.  What dismal persons are those who have no joy. 

Joy might be discussed as internal happiness.  We all know people who run the range from being nonstop happy (sometimes very annoying) to nonstop unhappy.  We should focus on the middle ground. 

Let’s look at it from the backside. We know a lot of things that will make us unhappy (supply your own list here) and by eliminating them from our lives (where possible) our happiness index will naturally rise. 

If our lives are weighed down by responsibilities, see them through and don’t renew. 

Once we have a written list of what makes us unhappy, we can also make a list of what would make us happy, and try them out, one at a time.  Then we know if it stays or goes from the list.  We should be creative and not hold back.  We may not ever have the opportunity to “run away with the circus,” but on that list will be a lot of dreams that could become reality if we follow that path.  

Now that’s a reason for living.

We should be careful what we wish for.  Winning the lottery, as an example, should make us happy, but many people who have won wind up unhappy, plagued by relentless appeals for money. 

A major item that makes people unhappy is lack of control over their life activities.  The punishment of imprisonment is more than the lack of freedom; it is the lack of control over the person’s life.  They can make almost no choices of their own. 

Many of us are caught in a web of our own making.  As we mature, obligations seem magically to accumulate and we are driven by them.  We feel we are losing control over large portions of our lives.  We are not happy, and can’t pin the reason why. 

Feeling helpless and loss of control makes us unhappy. 

We must be careful to combat those feelings early.  Left to themselves they will get worse and may cause depression.  People give up living when they lose all control. 

We should go back to that list or make a new list of things that obligate us and things that draw us to them.  Rate them on some scale, positive for the things we want to do and would make us happy, negative for the things that make us unhappy. 

Keep in mind that an obligation like college tuition for a child will result in the happiness of seeing that person graduate with a career.   

If there are relationship issues, there are thousands of articles and mentors that can help us deal with and improve them.

Make it a hobby to work on the list, taking steps forward to raise the negative ratings and gain free time to pursue the positive items that will bring us joy. 

Now that’s another reason for living. 

Finally, feeling useless makes us unhappy. 

We are social animals, and it is built into our genes to help others.  We can volunteer for something that helps another person.  It is one thing to send money, but physically working to help others face to face makes us feel useful and gives us deeper satisfaction. 

Can we make someone’s life better by helping them in some way that would only get done with our efforts?  Try it.  You’ll feel great.  

And that’s another reason for living. 

Don’t give up living and don’t “run away with the circus.” 

Be useful; be happy. 

Live a vital life.

People make appointments and are late all the time – look at the cable guy.  Society today has a problem with promptness.  Trains and airline schedules are delayed all the time.  My coworkers are late all the time.  Why should I be on time?  If I am an hour or two late for dinner at Mom’s she won’t mind. 

Why bother getting to work on time?  I can get there any time and stay late, as long as I accomplish what I need to do.

Who cares if we are on time? 

A lot of people care.  15 minutes late is not late, is it?  The answer may surprise you. 

Think of a bus, train or plane leaving at a scheduled time.  We get there 15 minutes late.  They are gone.  Why didn’t they wait?  It was only a few minutes.  Now I have a great inconvenience. 

Our employer cares

Two-thirds of the expenses companies spend are on the workforce.  That cost is reflected in the products the company sells.  Putting in less than the time we are paid for lowers our productivity and is basically shoplifting from the company, ultimately raising the cost of the product.   

Arrival lateness cheats coworkers of their time, especially if they depend on our presence or have to spend time filling us in on what we missed.  Organizations lose millions in lost productivity due to lateness.  A 15-minute daily lateness costs the company more than our weekly salary over the course of a year. 

Our family and friends care

Perhaps Mom doesn’t say anything about our lateness, but she worked hard to prepare that dinner on time, and keeping it warm because of our lateness will dry it out.  It minimizes her gift prepared with her labor and shows her our lack of respect. 

When we promise to meet our friends at a certain time and we are late, we are showing them they are not important to us.

We should care

When we are consistently late, we project an image of self-indulgence, disrespect, and lack of time organization, telling everyone that we are more important than their insignificant event.  Like Mom, they may never say it, but they are thinking it. 

We should imagine ourselves on the other side at work, watching us consistently come in late.  Would we give that person a responsible project with a deadline?   

We should visualize each workday or meeting like a job interview appointment.  Would we be late then? 

Arriving early with small tasks we can work on will show off our characteristics of time management and respect. 

Punctuality is the most obvious form of loyalty we can display.  Time is never refunded once spent.

“I could never think well of a man’s … character, if he was habitually unfaithful to his appointments.”  Nathaniel Emmons

Bingham interweaves challenges to his audience with advice to the people he fires.  In his motivational talks, he sets up an empty backpack as a focus point.

He associates the backpack with the burdens we carry through our lives and challenges his listeners to consider what is in their backpacks, and how as we travel through life we become bogged down by our ‘stuff’ and by our commitments to people. 

Bingham preaches to his audience, How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life… you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks; then you start adding larger stuff; clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV… the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home… I want you to stuff it all into that backpack.

Now I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office… and then you move into the people you trust with your most intimate secrets; your brothers, your sisters, your children, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack. Feel the weight of that bag.

Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life; all those negotiations and arguments and secrets; the compromises.

As we watch this scene, we start to think about what we are carrying around, our burdens and our connections to different parts of our life.  A friend of mine described each burden as a golden thread, securing us more firmly in the cage of our life. 

Bingham points out that it is with our backpacks that we journey through life.  For most of us, our backpacks are pretty heavy.  Can we enjoy our journey with all that weight on our backs?

What’s in your backpack? 

The weight 

Can you feel how heavy the backpack is?  We weigh ourselves down to the point where we can’t move.  Bingham says, “Your relationships are the heaviest components of your life.” 

Bingham preaches we can choose not to be weighed down with objects.  In truth, we all accumulate lots of currently useless items over time.  They are the items that once had value to us but no longer.  

He also advocates the letting go of pesky personal relationships, praising the avoidance of commitments and connections. 

We must remember that this advice comes from a man whose entire wardrobe is contained in his airline carry-on bag, has no friends or intimate relationships, and whose lifestyle has made him a stranger to his family. 

His backpack is as empty as his life. 

The Moving Journey: 

Bingham also advocates continuous moving through life.  He considers he is at home in airports and on flights.  Experiences are more important than objects. Moving is living.   

The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake; moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks. 

He thinks of himself as a shark, but not in the competitive sense.  Sharks never stop or sleep.  Sharks have no relationships; they die if they stop swimming. 

In Bingham’s mind, relationships slow you down or hold you back.  He has none in his backpack.  He has even become a stranger to his family, being always on the move, no longer a part of his family.  As his older sister suggests when she asks him for a favor, I know you have a problem with doing things for people. 

His journey involves a quest to achieve ten million frequent flyer miles on the airline he uses exclusively for his travel.  He will be only the seventh passenger to achieve this, and the youngest.  For flying coast to coast more than 3,000 times, he will have his name written on the side of an airplane.  [This guy has issues]

Connections

Bingham is a man who spends his life making connections – between planes.  He also spends his work time severing connections – for others.  He fires people in corporate downsizing.  In his words, we set them adrift when they are most vulnerable. 

His cost is to avoid making any people connections for himself.  He doesn’t know how to connect with people or even if he wants to.

His older sister observes, You’re awfully isolated, the way you live.  Walking through a crowd, Bingham returns with, Isolated?  I’m surrounded.  She further points out that he lives in a cocoon of self-banishment with no human connection. 

But connections find him.  At his younger sister’s wedding, her groom, Jim gets cold feet and Bingham is pushed forward to handle it. 

Jim tells Bingham that the night before, he couldn’t sleep.  He started to think about his future – wedding, buying a house, mortgage, having kids, paying college tuition, having grandkids, and eventually, death.  Jim is mentally packing his backpack and reeling from the perceived weight of the staggering baggage. 

“What’s the point?” he asks. 

Bingham is caught in a connection where he must preach the exact opposite of what his base philosophy is. 

He admits that what Jim say is all true.  There is no point.  But if you think about your favorite moments, your most important moments in life, you were never alone.  Life’s better with company.  Everybody needs a co-pilot. 

Wakeup call

The wedding and his intervention wake up feelings in Bingham that perhaps he would enjoy his moving journey more with his own co-pilot.  After years of carrying his own empty backpack, he thinks maybe he wants to put something back in.  He seeks out his casual intimate fellow traveler and finds she has a family of her own. 

Where he considered her only a distraction, she considered him the same.  He finds it’s tough looking in a mirror, having yourself look back, and disliking what you see. 

After years of telling the people he terminates that the firing is a wakeup call for them, Bingham receives his own wakeup call.  

Do we need a wakeup call?

Repack

From his book, What’s In Your Backpack? John Bytheway recalls the pack one of his fellow Scouts that he lugged up a steep trail. “He had things in his pack that were too heavy, that he didn’t need, that weighed him down, and that made the hike a lot harder than it needed to be.”

What does this all teach us? 

We don’t have to be like Bingham, with only three shirts and no connections in his backpack.  However, periodic examination of our backpacks and our lives will certainly reveal unnecessary former treasures we can put aside and relationships that are holding us back from what will make us truly happy. 

Perhaps we are carrying bad habits, procrastination, a poor self-image, guilt, unresolved feelings and hindering relationships.  We could replace them with a capacity to love, energy, courage to follow our own path and supporting relationships that inspire us to move ahead with purpose.  Perhaps it is as simple as emptying a garage stuffed with former treasures.

After we purge those heavy burdens and change some of those relationships, we can pick up our backpack and it will feel just right.

What’s in your backpack?
 

All of the 193 countries were out for themselves.

They won’t admit to the big picture.

Now that’s a pretty big statement, but here’s a bigger one.  The generation of greenhouse gasses spells probable doom for the future inhabitants of this planet, which are your and my grandchildren and their grandchildren.

Yet the attending individuals focused on their immediate needs rather than look ahead. 

Many delegates refused to sign the Copenhagen Accord because it didn’t do enough as far as they were concerned.  Everyone wanted a perfect agreement for themselves, even if it means others will suffer.

I didn’t get everything I wanted.  The future will take care of itself.  I need to take care of me now.  There is always next year.

Other examples are the shoppers of Black Friday last year, who crushed an employee, a young father, as they jammed into the store looking for bargains, and Republicans doing anything they can to destroy the Democrats, regardless of the people they hurt.

These are examples of our survival instinct.  Survival now is all that matters.  It has been like this since creatures of any kind inhabited our earth.  It is called competition.

At the lowest level, trees grow higher or angle upwards to get the most sunlight.  Bugs and vermin will kill anything in the way of food.  Predators eat the weaker and slower. 

At a higher level, animals defend their territory from other animals, even of their own kind. 

At the human level, competition has been refined with ego and greed.  Having some is good, having more is better, having it all is just right. 

Greed is what drives us into competition, and winning feeds our ego. 

Before we look down on competition and greed, be aware that competition and greed are the reason you are alive today.  If your ancestors had not carved out their ‘piece of the pie’ for themselves and their families, they would have been eliminated by the competition.

We all share the greed for the better things of life for our families and ourselves.  That greed drives us into competition for a better paying job to gain the better things.  Winning the competition for a better paying job feeds our egos and increases our greed for tougher competition and higher pay. 

When rewards for competition are removed, so is the incentive to compete.  Would we be so interested in sports if there was no competition and no prize?  Would we work harder than others if every job paid the same regardless of effort?  The Soviet Union tried ‘collective’ farming where there were no rewards for extra effort, and their people nearly starved.  

How does that relate to the delegates at COP 15, Black Friday shoppers and Republicans? 

Delegates at COP 15 are in competition with each other, putting the good of our earth aside.  They are more of poor nation against rich nation, and their agreement is all they have to sell here.  If they don’t get paid off, they will not cooperate.  They hold the earth for ransom. 

Black Friday shoppers were in frantic competition with each other.  Greed for the bargain shut out all other reality, including the fallen body of that young father whose children will grow up without him. 

Republicans are denying their votes because the agenda of their party is to defeat the Democrats at any cost, holding the welfare of the people of this country for ransom, while they attempt to make voters believe it is for their own good. 

Survival is a good instinct, but it needs temperance.  Sometimes it is the survival of our neighbors, our group, our people and our world that is more important. 

We are not yet at a stage where we can put the greater good before our egos.

It is a sorry state.
Change starts with just one person that says “I won’t join that sorry state.”
Maybe it’s you. 

The critics are voicing their petty jealousy.  People like that can generally be heard issuing negative comments any time someone else gets rewarded.  They deserve our pity. 

Perhaps it is really not jealousy.  There is a fine line between jealousy and envy.  Jealousy and envy both are emotions that refer to negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity.  Jealousy involves fear of loss to another of something valuable.  Envy involves resentment of something valuable given to another, especially if they feel the receiving person did not deserve it.   

Whether jealousy or envy, it is a negative emotion that paints the critic an ugly shade of green. 
 

The Critics

Google “Obama Nobel peace prize” and read the nearly 20 million articles pro and con as to whether our president should have received the award. 

The best thing about this country is everyone’s Constitutional right to offer an opinion, no matter the viewpoint.  It is one of our national entertainments. 

Culling out the harshly negative comments from the Arab world like the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other Obama-haters like Republican party leader Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives (big surprise), reactions are mixed between “too early” and congratulations.  

As a side note, it is encouraging that American conservatives and the Taliban have finally found something to agree on. 

Breaking with his conservative colleagues, Arizona Senator John McCain congratulated the president and said Americans should be pleased with the award. 

The Nobel Committee

Thorbjorn Jagland, chair of the committee and a former Norwegian prime minister, rejected critics underestimating the definite changes Obama has already made in U.S. policy.

During the announcement press conference in Oslo, Jagland declared that the Committee wanted to demonstrate support for the approaches Obama is taking toward global problems.  ”We are not awarding the prize for what may happen in the future but for what [Obama] has done in the previous year.”  

Jagland ”stressed that it [the Committee] made its decision based on Mr. Obama’s actual efforts toward nuclear disarmament as well as American engagement with the world relying more on diplomacy and dialogue.”

Norwegians have been entrusted with choosing the Nobel Peace prizewinner because of their track record as objective arbitrators.   Obama was selected from a record 205 nominations. 

Many critics offer their opinions due to political party affiliation or to get attention through negative reviews.  The critics may think they are doing a service by pointing out a truth, but the ugliness of envy they hold inside always shows through. 

There is many times a tinge of envy when some else wins a prize that we fantasize should go to someone else (perhaps even us).  In the case of the Peace prize, we should avoid speaking out critically and showing our green envy because, after all, it is the Nobel committee’s prize to give.

The Peace prize is an award to our entire nation, given to our president as the leader.  According to the Nation Brand Index, the USA jumped from 7th to 1st of the most admired countries list (never before achieved) because all Americans elected Obama.  The list shows that the world sees the USA with a new respect.  

Obama in his 9 months in office, has completely changed America’s foreign policy, is making us reengage and lead on major global challenges and has done more to promote peace and stability than anyone else in recent times.  The prize rewards our nation where something profound is happening. 

This is a time to be proud of this country and of America’s renewed status as leader of the free world.

We all know the President has a lot more work to do. Let us all congratulate him as well as ourselves for the award and leave the jealousy and negative rhetoric to those petty others who look to tear down anything good that happens to anyone else.  

 
The Nobel Prize

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been honoring men and women without regard to nationality for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for effective work in furthering peace.

The foundation for the award was when Alfred Nobel (scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, author and pacifist) wrote his last will in 1895, leaving roughly the equivalent of 250 million dollars U.S. for the establishment of the Nobel Prize from the interest gathered.  

Nobel owned a major armaments factory and was the inventor of dynamite.  He found a safe method to manufacture and use nitroglycerin by blending it with absorbent diatomaceous earth (cat litter). 

He was condemned by many as the “merchant of death” who “became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before” and this opinion is said to have influenced his decision to leave himself a better legacy after his death.  

To achieve that legacy, he provided in his will that the Peace prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”

The Nobel Committee’s interpretation of his guidelines has broadened over the years. The prize is now awarded not only for concentrated efforts to bring peace between nations, but also to combat poverty, disease and recently, climate change. 

The Peace prize is not a lifetime achievement award.  It doesn’t require recipients to completely succeed in their efforts.  Many have received the prize without solving the problem they had worked toward ending.  There were also years the Nobel Peace prize was not awarded. 

 
Recipients

There are many Nobel Peace Prize Recipients who have been received the award for their work in improving our world, including using nuclear energy for peaceful instead of military purposes, and awareness of man-made climate change.  Those issues as well as others are still incomplete, yet the prize was awarded. 

President Theodore Roosevelt won it in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson was given the prize in 1919.   Obama is the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace prize.

Jimmy Carter won it 2002, but was not in office at the time. Former Vice-President Al Gore was awarded the prize in 2007 for his efforts to raise awareness about global warming.

That bus pass was great; just get on and flash it to the driver.  Sometimes I was even able to use it after school hours if the bus driver didn’t look too closely, or a lot of people were getting on the bus at one time.

But still I walked a lot.  My school was some two miles away, but the terrain was flat, and the forty-five minutes or so it took me to walk that distance gave me a chance to think about things.

What did I think about?  Stuff.  I can’t exactly remember my thoughts, but I remember the experience.  I remember I used to invent stories from the tiniest piece of information, like seeing two people  talking or an odd-shaped object on the ground.

And so I walked.  In Brooklyn and perhaps other cities and towns,the blocks were laid out in a grid, twenty blocks to the mile. I could always look at the street signs and tell where I was on my journey, and how far I had left. 

Now I live in Myrtle Beach.  I still like to walk, but the streets are not laid out in the uniform, grid-like pattern of my youth.  In the city of Myrtle Beach,  developers have altered land lots to configurations that suit them, not to a uniform plan.  It is more comforting to walk the regularity of the numbered blocks in the old town near the beach. 

In the mid and far west of our country, the farm and ranch areas, there are only mostly straight roads outside of the towns; roads that stretch for miles with only an occasional break for a house or crossing road.

I still walk and think today.  What do I think about?  Stuff.  Random thoughts that entertain me for the moment.  And that is where I came to this revelation.

We are all on individual journeys.  Some of us are able to see our journey as walking a grid, always knowing our position and able to estimate where we will be at a certain time. 

Some of us are not quite sure where we are, because our landmarks are not laid out quite so neatly.  Events in our lives have altered the expected path, and we may not be quite sure when we will  arrive.  We deal daily with the twists and turns life sends us, and hope we are at least going in the right direction. 

We could (and sometimes do) give up our lives of uncertainty and continue our journey on the familiar numbered streets.  That travel is predictable; not always dull, but safe.   We give up the path where we take pride in our ingenuity, enjoying the challenges of finding our way. 

Some of us travel the long road.  We move ahead, striding purposely toward the distant horizon, keeping our goals before us.  We make choices at roads that cross our path, whether to follow new directions, and at passing houses, where we might stop and rest, for a while or for good. 

Moving forward is the key to enjoying the journey.  Whether we predict, plan or guess our goals or next move, the hope that things will be better for us when we get there keeps us going. 

We never get “there.”  Each time we reach a milestone, we look forward; either seeing our goal closer or choosing a new ‘there.”  And somewhere along the road we come to the end of our journey, and cannot travel further. 

Prisoners are punished not only by taking away their freedom to travel, but by limiting their lives to routine sameness.  They are prevented from moving forward in their journey. 

Look back now and then at the road traveled.  Ask yourself these questions.  Are you moving forward?  Are you enjoying your journey?  And is it your own?   

Enjoy your experience.