the conundrum of moral orienteering

On Saturday, when I heard about the Arizona shooting, I was writing this:

Who are you? I mean, if someone walked up to you at a party and asked, “Who are you, really?”, after you raised an eyebrow and maybe looked at your shoes for a second, what would you say?

The always sparkly Judy Clement Wall said this on her always delightful Friday List post:

I was wondering what would happen if we sought only meaningful connections. What if we tried, always, to see the person and not the title – neighbor, parent, cashier, waitress, mail carrier, homeless guy, child. Would it be exhausting to live like that? Would we long for the freedom of not really caring? Would we crave superficial conversation, goodbyes that don’t hurt? Or would we feel alive, surrounded by love, connected to each other in a big, beautiful, messy human tapestry, each of us a piece of the breathtaking whole?

I responded with this:

I hate how, so often, we ask what people do instead of asking who they are. I hate that, just as often, when someone inquires about who we are, we answer by saying what we do. I am not what I do. I am me, more than the sum of my actions.

And then I heard about a supermarket parking lot in a warm place and thought about little else all week.. There were long stretches of soul searching, periods of despondency, frustration, anger, a couple arguments with people I generally respect, and a relapse of the cold brought on by too many sleepless nights. Yesterday I crashed and slept for thirty out of thirty-four hours, so I guess I needed it.

The arguments centered on whether this was a time for recriminations or reparations, division or peace. I find the blame game incredibly frustrating right now, and appreciated that Mr. Obama worked hard to avoid it yesterday. The only blame I think we should be laying is on ourselves; all of us, regardless of political, social, religious, or sports affiliation.

I said Saturday that I thought – think – empathy is the key to getting out of this place of polarization. If we could spend a bit more time wearing the shoes of other people, even if just in our head and just for moments, then we’d be less inclined to despise them unreasonably.

We’d still disagree; at least I hope we would. Growth, progress, enlightenment - these depend on the grain of sand stuck in the shell, causing friction and forming those pearls we need to pull out of the mud and make our own. But we wouldn’t hate as much. We’d see people across the aisle, street, border, and ocean instead of enemies. We’d see faces instead of silhouettes; individuals instead of mobs.

It was tempting to get lost in the spiral of confusion about what we’re doing these days, to think about how little empathy there is instead focus on the evidence of it that fills my life. I think yesterday’s physical collapse was as much about rebooting emotionally and mentally as it was about being physically sick. I just shut down, had to, needed it like I needed the soup and liters of water and the absolute quiet. It was a migraine of the soul that I was getting over.

I also think that the identity issue is a key. People who know who they are tend to be empathic. They’ve done or are doing the work, or have simply been blessed with a better internal compass, and there is no question about what it is that defines them. They give strange answers when people ask them what they do instead of who they are, intentionally trying to confuse the interviewer. If we don’t speak the language of self-awareness, we don’t understand.

I read an article last week about how new studies are redefining how language affects the way we interpret the world around us. One example they gave involved Aboriginal peoples of Australia, how they don’t have words for ‘behind’ or ‘front’ or ‘beside’. Their language evolved in a world that was wide and expansive and centered on the sky and the stars and the sun, so all of their directions are based on cardinal points. They don’t say, “I was standing beside him when the kangaroo jumped out”. They say, “I was standing to his east when the kangaroo jumped out of a bush to the north”.

When they tell a story, their hand gestures are always cardinally accurate to the event. If they describe the arc of a person falling out of a boat they were in, they don’t gesture relative to themselves, but relative to the compass position, so that if they tell a story facing north one time, and south the next, the gestures will adapt to show the exact direction of the fall in cardinal space.

And, for these people, it’s not just language. Put them in a dark room, blindfold them and spin them around, and they’ll still, infallibly, point to north without hesitation. Perfect sense of direction is built into them so deeply that they can’t help but know where north is.

I wonder if it’s even possible to have a moral compass so right and so sure that everything we say would be true to it, infallibly, unassailably, perpetually.

I don’t know, but if it is, I want that super-power. I call dibs. 

wikileaks and the emperor's new clothes

“Which country is suffering from too much freedom of speech? Name it, is there one?” Julian Assange

I didn't want to write this post. I just wanted to watch and post links. I wanted to be a spectator and hope for a good outcome. But here I am. Not writing about it was becoming a distraction that I don't need and so, in spite of the fact that it's a ridiculously complex issue, and that coverage of it in the main stream and alternate media is ubiquitous (if selective), here I am. I hope it's readable, and maybe offers a synthesis of ideas already circulating, but this is my disclaimer: I'm writing this for me. I need to process it here and go on the record. For me.

At best, I'll understand better how I really feel, the whole mess will make a bit more sense, and you'll have found something redeeming in the next many paragraphs to justify the battery power you use and the time I've stolen from you. At worst, I'll be as frustrated as I am right now, and you'll be asleep. Either way, for your entertainment, here's my brain, or maybe my brain on Wikileaks. For the record, the following is based on my understanding of the facts. I'm no journalist (nor do I want to be), or a lawyer, and I'm not doing any vast amount of fact checking beyond reading pretty much everything I can find on the subject. I'll try to avoid making gross errors of the facts, but if I do miss something, or get something wrong, it's an honest mistake. If you find such an error, please post the correction in comments and I'll update the main post.

To summarize then, Wikileaks is a journalistic enterprise dedicated to the ideals of transparency and open government. It supports these ideals by acting as a clearing house for whistle blowers, with systems from simple to sophisticated, designed to allow whistle blowers to provide Wikileaks with secret documents. Wikileaks vets the documents and then, after varying degrees of editorial perusal, they release them. They've been doing it now since 2006. Julian Assange was the original mastermind behind the idea and implementation, and he has remained the 'face' of Wikileaks throughout its existence.

While they've been operating for over three years, Wikileaks hit the big time this year with the release last spring of the Collateral Murder videos, versions both edited for length and completely unedited, of a US helicopter gunship attack on civilians that resulted in multiple deaths, including the deaths of two Reuters journalists. The video, if you haven't seen it, is graphic and disturbing. The audio of the pilots, gunners and their CO's is chilling and suggests a level of inhuman disconnect that shocked the world. Wikileaks was accused of editorializing the video, especially the length-edited version, to make the participant soldiers, and thus the US military, look as bad as possible.

They followed that up with the Afghanistan Logs, and then the Iraq Logs, two caches of military documents that provided unparalleled insight into both wars, the mentality behind the occupations, and revealed dramatically different stories and statistics than the US State Department and Pentagon had previously suggested were accurate. Finally, since the end of November, Wikileaks has been releasing in increments a cache of US diplomatic cables in what is now being called “cablegate”. In all three of the document release cases, Wikileaks has worked with major mainstream media sources, allowing seasoned journalists to scour the caches for weeks prior to public release, assist with redactions, and to help facilitate coverage and add legitimacy to their efforts, perhaps in response to the accusations of editorialization in the Collateral Murder video release. They also, in the cases of the Afghan and Iraq documents any way, invited the US government to participate in helping scour the caches and assist in redacting sensitive information that might put lives at risk, offers that were rejected.

In the summer, US Pfc Bradley Manning was arrested under suspicion of being the source of all of these leaks.

Also this summer, Assange was in Stockholm, Sweden to speak at a conference. He was later accused by two Swedish women of sex crimes under Swedish law. The allegations include sexual coercion and rape. Assange has completely denied any wrongdoing and accused the women and Swedish authorities of participating in a smear campaign against him on behalf of the US government. The lawyer for the two women says that they have no political motives. The allegations revolve around consensual sex that the women say became non-consensual, but the timeline and facts are convoluted, and the stories, so far, are just that.

Assange has now voluntarily surrendered himself to the UK police authorities in response to an international INTERPOL red notice requesting his detainment on a Swedish warrant. That warrant is not in relation to actual charges – no charges have been laid – but rather the desire of the Swedish police to speak to him IN PERSON. Suddenly that's a really big deal, even though Assange offered to make himself available in August and September, and was given permission to leave Sweden, and has offered to speak to investigators by Skype or other means since then.

The timing and circumstances are, needless to say, suspicious, and it's not hard to start drifting into conspiracy theory territory, but essentially, those are the facts and the end of the boring part. I say boring because, well, if you've been reading the news, and if you are Google-capable, then you can find it all out yourself. Go to it.

There is also a cult of personality issue here, and I despise the cult of personality. I despise unjustified fame being heaped on people of questionable character, whether it's heaped in response to talent or ability or luck or success. In a perfect world, fame would be reserved for those who were of the highest character only. But character isn't sexy. Character doesn't sell. And we do love the fall of our icons as much as the meteoric rise, don't we?

More important by far than Assange is or will ever be, is the underlying reasons and actions behind Wikileaks, and one of my frustrations is that Assange's soap opera is detracting from the message. It's the same problem I have with Black Bloc protesters that feel direct actions against postal boxes and corporate store fronts are an effective way to get an activist message of dissent across: It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of public perception, and a basically selfish and childish motivation to serve self ahead of the cause.

All of that said, the response to Wikileaks and cablegate has been electric and fierce. For the first time in such a public way, the governments of the West have embarked on an unprecedented extra-judicial attack against a non-American site, with massive Denial of Service hacker-style attacks being mounted against Wikileaks servers around the world, and pressure being applied to the “American” companies that have been hosting or allowing Wikileaks to work through them for parts of their operation. That response is a de facto admission that, as much as the US government protests that Wikileaks is only a minor inconvenience, they've really touched a nerve.

But why? What nerve have they touched? The US Government says that any disruption to diplomacy is only a minor inconvenience. If so, then why have they mobilized what amounts to an illegal attack on all things Wikileaks? An attack that, if perpetuated against the US government, would result in federal charges and aggressive prosecution. They are obviously afraid of Wikileaks far more than they are wiling to admit if they're willing to adopt the tactics of those they call cyber-terrorists to try to combat them.

I believe that the answer is obvious: Wikileaks is showing the world just how corrupt and morally vacuous our leaders actually are. As one writer put it, the emperors' clothes have just been shredded by the web, and the naked truth is that our political and plutocratic leadership is utterly devoid of anything remotely redeeming. In war, our “leaders” act like sociopaths, and incite and train soldiers to do the same, and in politics and diplomacy they act with all the aplomb and sophistication of three-year-olds fighting over the sandbox. Our leaders, in short, are not leaders at all. At least not ones worth following.

Several other pundits have also pointed out that, in the wake of the reaction to Wikileaks and Assange (especially if it is ever proven that the Swedish allegations are politically motivated), we will never be able to take self-righteous allegations against totalitarian regimes made by the West seriously again. The West has shown in the most public way that they are just as willing to suppress freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and dissent, as any of the regimes that they point at derisively to make themselves look better by comparison.

The illusion that we live in a free society has been completely stripped away. Our society may not be as oppressive as those totalitarian regimes, at least not on the surface of things, but the people in power are just as desperate to hold onto their power as any other dictator. When someone manages to pull the curtain aside, and we see not only the weak false-wizard back there, but see that the wizard is utterly naked and pathetic, those supposed leaders of the free world react with the same kind of violence and disregard for the law as any dictator does.

That we, as voters, are complicit in their tyranny just makes it a little more sad. 

Again and again, writers who see the value of what Wikileaks is doing, even if they question the details, have reiterated the concept that the best defense against Wikileaks and those who will inevitably follow it is a more open, less deceitful form of government, one that actually does work on behalf of people, and does so with transparency. If you are blameless, the logic goes, the reason for whistle blowers disappears. Even if accusations are leveled, it is easier to defend and prove innocence. 

That's a lesson that most of us are supposed to learn by grade one. I hope that Wikileaks and those who are like-minded manage to break the dysfunctional system we currently languish under so completely that re-making it becomes impossible. I hope that enough people open their eyes to the truth that we can reach a tipping point, and that this time, when the shit truly hits the fan, we can learn lessons from our history that actually stick.

I hope that Wikileaks makes it impossible for us to ignore the truth, and impossible to forget. This is, perhaps, an unrealistic hope. We've been here before under different circumstances, and supposedly we learned unforgettable lessons from those horrific times. Obviously, our ability to forget is directly proportional to our greed and selfishness and laziness. Maybe this time we can get it right. 

I know- doubtful. But then, I've been accused of being an incurable optimist before...

...one of those days...

Do you ever have one of those days? You know the kind....

One of those days when the overwhelming weight of the world just seems to be bearing all of its deep gravity well down on you? When all of the culpability of the species just seems to be unfucking avoidable and you have to own it, hold it to you at the same time that you're trying to tear it out of you?

One of those days when you can't resist to the urge to take on the sins of your race, your country, your gender, your species? When every story, every song, every image reminds you of the incredible fuck up this all is, all of it, in spite of the good things, because of the unmitigated horror of the bad?

When the black hole is so dense that it's hard out get out of bed, off of the floor, out the door? When the sunlight hurts and smiles feel like razorblades? When the thought of peace, the ephemeral unlikelihood of it, the whisper of its possibility and the truth of its goddamn improbability, reduces you to tears?

When you want to slap every child you see push another down, ram your car into every self-involved driver that didn't see the person they almost ran over, strangle every self-serving politician you watch lie, again and again and again, destroy every person that ever hit their spouse in anger, knowing the whole time that it's the wrong answer to every one of those situations and not caring?

Knowing that even if you could, the shame would just be worse afterward?

One of those days when you can't see the hope through the fear, or the love through the hate, or the intelligence through the ignorance? When bigotry seems to be the rule and tolerance – not even real acceptance, just tolerance – looks like it's about a million fucking light years away from being possible?

When laughter makes you want to cry, crying makes you want to scream, and honesty makes you want to smash every mirror in the world?

One of those days? Do you know the kind I'm talking about?

I'm having one.

Sometimes it's good to just sit in awe and fucking own it for a day.

S'okay though. It's just a day. Tomorrow's a new one, and things'll be better. It's just one day.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle

I was talking with a friend today about how we ingest media these days, and specifically, how critically we take in the feeds that we receive from fourth and fifth estates. We both agreed that our suspicion of the 'party line' had increased exponentially over the last while with the effect for both of us that we ask very specific questions whenever we hear 'news', and pretty much regardless of the source. We now wonder what it is we're not supposed to be looking at when we see the disingenuous stories that seem to dominate the headlines, or at least the biases that dominate the way those headlines are reported.

We grow up (or perhaps grew up – my smart, young friends seem to be suspicious far more naturally these days) thinking that the news we receive through the mainstream sources are credible and unbiased by default. These are, after all, the professionals – the epitome of journalism and, ostensibly journalistic integrity. I grew up in the then-present mythos of Woodward and Bernstein, the Pentagon-Papers, war-journalists embedded in Viet-Nam, before the movies but just after the breaking news, when journalism was held up as the last great defense against corruption.

I don't feel that way now. Maybe (probably) I just grew up a bit. I've grown to believe that cynicism is a natural response to seeing the world the way it is. Psychologists routinely report that depression is statistically linked to a more accurate perception of the world around us, the world as it truly is. Being hopeful, resisting an unadulterated strain of that disillusioned perspective, requires either denial of the truth or a stubborn choice; a refusal to give up on what could be. Denial shouldn't be a viable option anymore, so that leaves making daily choices. Hard ones.

This isn't even about which side we take. I'm a firm believer in passionate disagreement and debate. I entertain dreams of that kind of respectful yet strong discussion occurring here one day, comments from honest and open people on both sides of an argument. I wouldn't for a second suggest that I'm detached or completely objective in the perspectives that I hold, but I hope that my opinions (because that's all they are) at least show that I've taken the time to investigate and think through both sides of an argument. My conclusions usually end up in relatively the same place: perhaps an inevitable destination because of my biases, or perhaps because of the logical result of the investigation – most likely (hopefully) at least a bit of both.

But we shouldn't be afraid to ask the questions. I've used the Descartes quote before: 'If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt all things.' This should be - has to be - the attitude that we take when looking at the world around us. So much of the world that we are presented with through the media, by our politicians and social leaders, is presented through a biased and manipulative lens, that we have to doubt what we see. Have to.

To not do so is to deny the simple truth that we all create our perceptions of the world through our own, auto-biographical narratives – that we are constantly being tempted to see the world only through the lens that we find most comfortable; the one that feels safest. We seek others that think like us, talk like us, are passionate about topics like us. It's so comforting to surround ourselves in group-think cocoons so that we never have to face the possibility that our perspective is wrong. Being committed (and continually renewing that commitment) to questioning what we see and how we choose to see it is part of our responsibility as citizens.

It's not easy, especially when we find ourselves in a comfortable place, that place where we feel at home and accepted and amongst friends. Ironically, that's when a questioning, self-cynical perspective is the most important. It's at the exact moment when we feel safe and included that we need to ask ourselves the hardest questions: What are my prejudices here and now? What is this place of apparent comfort encouraging me to not see? What biases are my deeply held beliefs fostering in me? How is my perspective encouraging me to dehumanize people who don't agree with me? Am I in danger of becoming that which I hate?

That kind of soul-searching and the constant state of imbalance it can create can be very disorienting, but it's honest. When we think that we're standing on concrete is when we should be most concerned. The world is made of sand, constantly shifting and never stable. Simply recognizing our inclination to try to delude ourselves into thinking it's solid when it isn't is an enormous challenge.

Our responsibility as citizens, if we care about ever evolving past war and greed and the creation of arbitrary differentiations between 'us' and 'the other', is to get comfortable with being off balance; with choosing to stay off balance in so much as we are constantly re-evaluating our beliefs and assumptions, constantly trying to see past ourselves.

It's a hard place to live, but nobody ever said that anything worth while was easy.

‘Free advice is worth the price.’ Robert Half

Dear Barack Obama,

On this, the day of your 2010 State of the Union address, I would like to offer you some free advice regarding your speech.

First and foremost, shoot from the hip. We all know you could talk the garter off of a nun, but speak plainly this time. By all means, exercise your rhetorical skills and impress us, but do so as if you were speaking over coffee or a couple beers. Don’t spin anything or try to dazzle. Frankly, as inspiring as you can be, the shtick is getting a bit old. You need to be heard being sincere, not presidential; plain, not fancy. The people that elected you are pretty plain, you see. They are the moderate, independent middle of everything. They are the disenfranchised that saw in you and your beautiful speeches the possibility of a politician that was not one. Someone who saw what they saw.

So be that guy again. Talk plainly, even coarsely. I myself think that you should swear a few times. You should say ‘bullshit’ at least three times, and one of those should be in a sentence in which you are describing the disingenuous and partisan practices of the Republican Party. You could also call your own party to task while you’re on that topic, maybe throw in an F-bomb when describing how frustrating it was to watch your own party’s congressmen tear apart your health care bill like hyena’s squabbling over a kill, each one taking a nibble to appease one of their big money/no conscience, financial backers, leaving a proposal that is ultimately neutered.

And ‘balls’… use the word ‘balls’. As in: ‘I promise to grow a pair of balls in my second year as your president’. I mean, I truly admire the commitment you have made to non-partisanship, but come on; the GOP will be pouting over their loss for at least another six years, even if things continue as they have been and they reclaim the Whitehouse in three, so offer the olive branch every time and, when they blubber and cry about how unfair it all is, take it back and hit them over the head with it. Perhaps repeated concussions will improve their IQ.

I mean, I know that there isn’t really any difference between the Dems and the Reps, the blue and the red. Pretty much all of the elected officials (oh, please not you too – say it ain’t so) have corporate and special interest hands so far up their asses that they are practically muppets (to muppets everywhere – I apologize for the insult), but we, even those of us who just watch and have no say in US politics, all hoped so hard that you’d be different, that you’d do what you said, walk what you talked. I read your book, read and listened to your speeches and, dammit, I still want to believe that one person can beat the odds, make it all the way up there without completely selling out, and when they have the chance, will actually use it to make a real difference. I want to still believe that.

I want to believe what you said in your book about rising above it all, about throwing the old school out and ushering in a new era in the way politicians can work in service to their country instead of using their country and position in their own service. I thought you might be that guy. Lord knows, plenty of your fellow Americans thought you were that guy too; someone that actually cared more about getting shit done than what the polls said; someone who would sacrifice a second term if that’s what it would take to get the job done. You made them think you really care. Don’t let them down, okay?

So this is your chance to turn it around. Don’t wear a tie (I distrust people that wear ties), and go for that town hall look, only grubbier. Be earnest and sincere and that adorable bit of a geek that you are. Most of all, tell it like it is – no varnish, no illusion, no misdirection – just that facts. And then, after you say it, actually do it this time and damn the torpedoes. Do it not because it’s politically efficacious, but because it’s the right thing to do, because it’s honest and real. Be that guy and they’ll follow you. Right now they can sense the fear and smell the ubiquitous stench of the bullshit. You can’t keep doing that and think there will be a legacy worth leaving behind. Do something that’ll make the bad guys mad, mad enough to take a shot at you, and then you’ll know that at least you’re doing it with gusto.

The fact is, everyone that was so enamored of you back in November of 2008 is still waiting to see the guy in office that they saw in the campaign, and they are eager to follow that guy! So be him again. Start tonight. Take off the gloves and fancy ties and the smart suit jacket and put on a baseball cap and talk to them. They’ll follow if you can be strong enough to lead them. I promise.

And we, the rest of the world, will be hopeful too, if you do and they do, because if someone can actually redeem the US, then there’s definitely hope for everyone else.

Yours sincerely (mostly),

Michael

‘I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.’ Henry David Thoreau

I read a blog by a far more experienced and successful blogger today praising the virtue of being busy. He made a good argument and, for some, it might even be a right argument, but it’s not the whole story. I remembered and used this quote by Thoreau in my response, and remembering set of a cascade of thoughts about what I’m doing this year and why I’m doing it.

My recent biography in a nutshell: After nine years in the casino and gaming industry, seven of those in middle and upper management, I quit last February, sold almost everything, and took a job caretaking a remote ski lodge for the summer so I could write a novel. The novel is going well, I didn’t write “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” once while secluded, and I haven’t regretted the dramatic change in my revenue stream once (well, maybe once, but I can wait for new tires). I opted to chuck all that stuff, all that busyness, in the trash can in favor of a simpler, less rushed and far more satisfying life. I’ve written here before that one of the things I know about myself is that, while I can multi-task effectively, I don’t enjoy it. Nor do I think that I do my best work while engaged in it. I am a good, three-ball juggler at the best of times, and while I might not drop them if I juggle more, it certainly isn’t as graceful to watch.

So, ‘simple’ works better for me, even if I have to make some sacrifices in terms of social conventions, fiscal security and conformity. I want to live a creative life that leaves lots of time to do nothing more complicated than walking in the woods, reading a book, or doing yoga with friends. I think that, while the ‘busy’ and ‘successful’ mentality permeates and suffuses our culture, it is neither particularly efficient nor lucrative in terms of our meta-lives. I’m not one to pin high hopes on the bible, but I do agree with the statement, “What profit is there for a man to gain the whole world at the expense of his soul” (not the King James Version). We trade an awful lot these days to be ‘successful’ and secure, and how much is too much to pay for a nice car, house, bank account or sense of accomplishment if we have nobody to share them with, no love to experience, and no sense of our own character and dignity?

So, yeah, I’m all for being busy if the cause is right. I like hard work. I just question the causes that are popular in our culture. I’d gladly give up security, wealth and the high estimation of my banker for a profound sense of intellectual strength and freedom; happily drive a beater and pound out a novel on a six-year old laptop than punch a clock, own a new car and have a company Blackberry; joyously sacrifice a long list of accomplishments for just one that really, really made a difference; blissfully abandon days full of meetings and power lunches for those spent being with, helping and being helped by friends.

Perhaps I’m arguing semantics with my fellow blogger. Perhaps he means ‘busy’ in a healthy way too. I just worry that the healthy definition is out of common usage, replaced by one that is an illusory lie, a hologram that looks like abundance and efficacy but is actually just a matador’s cloak, sucking us into a chase for financial or commercial success that is designed to not have a finish line, that is really designed to suck us into getting a sword in the heart. Like the proverbial carrot on a stick that we are told we might reach one day but never do and never will, once we start down that road, enough is never enough.

I wish to refute that lie with every breath I take for all the remaining days of my life. I know in my heart that, if I do this, though no other person would ever hear or take note, I will have spent my life successfully by the only definition I care to use – my own. Maybe not very busily, but it’ll do for me…

“When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.” Japanese Proverb

I have some truly remarkable friends, and when I say that I’m also pleased to count my family among them. I’m not sure this is an accurate reflection of my character, but if it were the best measure, I’d be full to the brim.

I’m not talking about the kind of friends that are just kinda fun to hang out with, although they are. Or the kind of friends that are fun to get my drink on with, although they are (on the rare occasion that we are moved to do so). Or even the kind of friends that are there to let you vent and bitch and moan occasionally, although they are.

I’m talking about the kind of friends that will extend themselves and make sacrifices to support me and help me achieve things that would, simply put, be impossible without that help. And the kind that will let me do the same in return.

Our society, by and large, measures wealth the old fashioned way – by what we earn, what we own, what we wear and what we accumulate. We are reminded from time to time, through the odd emotional commercial from the Mormons or a nice card that someone gives us or a motivational poster, or maybe even some twit that likes to post quotes, that there are other things in this world that make us wealthy, but it’s the monetary message that takes up most of the social bandwidth. But I like to remember that it’s my family and friends that are my real wealth.

Friends are a currency that never devalues based on market conditions. In fact, they appreciate when things are at there worst, providing a reserve of security that cannot be measured. And in times of plenty or poverty they are the ultimate entertainment and resource. They help us laugh and cry, they keep things in perspective and keep us grounded, or they inspire us to dream and reach for lofty goals. They help us measure the passage of time and the ways in which we grow and change, and chuckle with us when we realize that we’re moving backwards in stead of forwards, then support us when we make the changes that we need to turn things back around.

I’ve never kept many friends, preferring a few that I could trust and love for a lifetime to a plethora that drifted in and out of my life like leaves with the changing of seasons. If the Japanese proverb is correct then I have to assume that I’ve made some progress on pursuing a solid foundation to my character…

…because the friends I have are phenomenal.

Go me.

Do you have friends that will go to the wall for you? You don’t need to (shouldn’t) mention names, but if you do have them, how have they made an impact on your life? And are you thankful for them? J