Intelligence

 

I adore Nick Rhodes. He’s not my favourite member of Duran Duran—that honour belongs to the father of my unborn children—but in truth I would adore Nick even if he wasn’t in the band. I find him alternately insightful and hilarious. It’s been clear from the beginning that he’s highly intelligent ... but on finding this quote, I was initially compelled to disagree with him.

At first glance, I’d have said that intelligence is often too easily insulted. Intelligence is the scorekeeper, the entity who judges status and determines the hierarchy. Intelligence, if given any authority, can become, depending on one’s nature, nurturing, condescending, patronizing, oppressive, suppressive or, at worst, despotic.

Unless he’s referring to emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is less about being right or being in control than it is about being open-minded and accepting of other opinions. Emotional intelligence allows for debate between opposing views, and for proponents of either side to remain friends in the event of a draw. Emotional intelligence ensures that criticism, whether given or received, is less crushing than constructive.

I know intelligent people who wield their smarts like a weapon designed to show their superiority. I know people whose intelligence is applied to fostering their own poor self-esteem. I also know intelligent people who think of themselves less (rather than less of themselves) than they think of others. In any of those categories, only one seems to fit the notion of intelligence being insulted.

So now I think Nick might be right. Intelligence itself is actually a neutral force. Neither proud nor humble, intelligence does not tell us how or where to use it. I’ve been confusing intelligence with ego!

D-oh!

The Sum of Our Parts

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one).

All for one and one for all.

It’s not the name on the back of the jersey that matters, it’s the crest on the front.

Call me a socialist and you likely won’t be wrong. I am all for sharing the wealth in support of the whole. Everyone has resources. Everyone has a talent. Everyone can—and should—contribute. I’d not presume to dictate comfort zones, but the best thing about humanity is the way we rally to support a person, a family, a community, or a country in need.

There is something to the attitude of putting the good of the group ahead of stardom for one. Take the International Ice Hockey Federation’s 2019 World Cup Junior Champion Team Finland, for instance. Consistently outmanned, outgunned and short-handed in the final against team USA, they stuck together and ground it out to win the gold medal. There were no superstars and no obvious egos in their game. They were just a bunch of young guys doing their best to help each other.

And win a trophy, of course.

Hm. Competitive sports might not be the best example—though sport is supposed to teach kids the value of teamwork. Too often I see pro players either trying to draw a penalty or whining when they get caught themselves. Participant ribbons for all was maybe not a good idea.

I laughed out loud at a commentator remarking on Canuck wonder-rookie Elias Petterson’s understated celebration when he scores a goal. The kid is Swedish. Modesty becomes them. In fact, it’s taught to children in many cultures around the globe. The “modesty lie” is encouraged in some countries—commit a random act of kindness, but don’t take credit for it. I agree with that in part; when asked point blank if I put cookies on the office snack station, I confess because I’m busted. There’s no point in lying when I’ve been naughty, either. (And some would suggest that’s the case when I put cookies on the office snack station.)

But in this magical world of contrast and the human experience, superstars are inevitable. Everyone wants to be special, even in societies where they’re taught to be ordinary—or at least not to be extraordinary. That’s hard for an ego to endure. I get that. I also know that everyone is born special. The best thing anyone can do is be themselves. That’s why we’re all here. Be yourself and be the best at it. As Martin Luther King once said, even if you’re a shrub, be the best darned shrub you can be.

The whole garden will look better.

With love,

Behaving Badly

I’m breaking in a new boss. Six weeks in, she’s awesome and she thinks I’m awesome, but the honeymoon hit a bump this week when she called to chide me for failing to review the standards of employee conduct (I didn’t make the deadline and the system ratted me out to her). “So,” she says, “what’s that all about?”

Tongue stuck firmly in cheek, I replied, “I don’t believe in standards of conduct. People should be free to behave like screaming orange toddlers.”

Of course I was kidding. She got the joke, we had a laugh, I clicked “OK” on the standards webpage, and that was that.

Only it wasn’t. Not really. What happened to “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all”? That’s what I was taught, and though I have occasionally strayed from the principle, for the most part, I try to practice kindness, tolerance, and socially acceptable behaviour. This last quality seems to have dropped significantly in standard, but I insist on maintaining the level of manners my parents still expect of me. I also happen to know a good many kind, generous, cooperative, polite and responsible people. The world is full of like folks, in every culture, religion, and race.

I wish they got the same level of attention afforded the ranters and ravers. I support freedom of speech and the right of people to have their own opinions, but we have become so ill as a society that the sickest of us are now media heroes and world leaders. We’re a step away from televising public executions, yet we are conversely outraged at the merest whiff of a perceived insult to a stranger. I’ll leave the examining of that contradiction to Bill Maher, who is better equipped to articulate my dismay ... but I have noticed this:

Paying attention to unacceptable behaviour only encourages it. Ego loves a reaction, so aim a camera or facilitate a panel discussion on its antics, and it will ramp up the output. When I hear my voice getting louder, it’s accompanied by the anxiety of my point being negated. If that happens, egad, I might have to accept another’s view and maybe change my mind. My comfortable reality may be proven false! Worse, my value as an intelligent being may be compromised, so even if I’m wrong (especially if I’m wrong), I’d better outshout my opposition. Volume equals conviction, right? And conviction means I’m right, right?

Riiiiiight.

Let’s make good behaviour fashionable again. Do something kind for someone today. Say something nice, or say nothing at all. Take the sting out of ego’s plot to ruin the world—or at least your little corner of it.

With love,

Buzzkill

Well, thank you, Debbie Downer, for yesterday’s post. Sheesh. The last thing one needs on the threshold of her fifty-fifth birthday is a reminder, even a semi-positive one, of tragedy and mourning. While the subject is true enough, and the post was, I guess, as uplifting as one can make it, it was also evidence of the panic my mind went into on discovering that a) I am on vacation and b) all is well.

Honestly, I was amazed at the abnormally dark and dangerous thoughts that taunted me throughout much of Tuesday. At first, I was actually immobilized by them. Everything from locking the basement door between laundry loads, which I never do, to picturing Ter being T-boned at a left turn, which I never do, came to mind in such a short space of time that it was soon obvious something was afoot.

Someone was trying too hard to scare me out of my happy.

Turned out to be myself.

Not myself in the divine sense, of course. Myself in the intellectual/egotistic sense. Yup, my compostable white knight, the disk operating system assigned to keep my physical self safe and alive, didn’t have a lot to do on Tuesday, and facing a fortnight of days off with not a darned thing to worry about, she freaked out in a big way.

Once I figured out what was happening, I was able to stop it. I just said, “Stop!” And it worked. I could almost hear the whimpering as my mind shrank into a corner to suck her thumb. She poked her head out a few times during the day, but now that I was on to her, she didn’t get very far before I sent her scooting back to her corner.

As for why, all I can conjure is the suspicion that I usually run on so much adrenaline, always thinking ahead because Ru time is defined by my work schedule, that when I take my foot off the gas, my mind views it as a threat and sets out to convince me that the world is scarier on vacation than it is in everyday life!

Nice try, girlfriend.

The conscious mind is uncomfortable with silence. It’s awkward with contentment, and if the present moment is tranquil, it won’t last “so you’d better buckle up for what’s coming because if you’re not braced and breathing fast, you’ll be horribly maimed for not having listened to me!”

Relax, Compostable Ru. You’re fine. All is well; you’re safe, Ter is safe, and no one is imperilled just because I’m taking a few days off. This moment is most precious for being one of a kind, so I intend on enjoying it—and if you calm down and breathe, you’re welcome to enjoy it with me.

There. Doesn’t that feel better?

You bet it does.

With love,

Against Our Nature

When did Man decide that he is separate from Nature? Was it when he ceased to exist as a hunter/gatherer and began to farm the land rather than accept what was offered? At some point, it obviously occurred to his burgeoning ego that if he could choose what to grow, then he must be in control of and thus separate from—perhaps even superior to—Nature.

He mistook the earth’s willingness to work with him as something less than cooperation and more like mindless servitude. He lost his respect for the natural world and began to exert his formidable will over it, flooding arable valleys and redirecting rivers, overplanting the soil, overfishing the oceans, and sucking out the oil buried beneath the planet’s skin. He perceived flaws in the fields and orchards and began to tinker in the name of perfection, and now we have genetically modified Frankenveggies designed to… what? Last longer on the supermarket shelves? It can’t be for our nutritional benefit, else fish genes would have been evident in prehistoric tomatoes.

And don’t get me started on the biological misconceptions; that because we can think analytically we must be smarter, thus better, than the other animals. Have you ever watched a crow crack into a discarded Starbucks cup? That takes some ingenuity.

You know what makes us different? Our ego. Our arrogance. Our intellect. In fact, the most unpleasant facets of humanity are pretty well responsible for the present discord between Man and Nature. Of course the planet exists to serve, but so do we, and in believing ourselves separate from it, we have failed to nurture the resources meant to nurture us.

Abuse can only be endured for so long before the tables turn on the abuser. A planet once eager to embrace us is now fighting to save itself, and if we’re caught in the upheaval … oh, well.

We are not separate from Nature. We never have been. We are born of the same stuff as the rocks and trees and birds and rain and stars. We are a vital part of a greater whole comprised of other vital parts, each subject to the same law as the others. We are all alive. Living, breathing, adapting, we are all beings responding to the energy of intention. To cut ourselves off from this wondrous collaboration of particles is truly the means to our end.

The tide is turning, slowly. More and more people—the unlucky inheritors of a world we’ll leave to them—are reawakening to the relationship we have with the rest of creation. Many of us are trying to mend the broken ties and reconnect to the wonders of the world around us. Nature may lack the intellect, but forgiveness and compassion are universal traits. It might be too late … but it’s never too late.

With love,

Playing for Pride

So said number 93 after the Flyers were mathematically eliminated from the post season while the regular season was still underway. At that point, even if they'd won every remaining game, there was absolutely no way in which they could claw themselves into a playoff appearance this year. So, for the last eight or nine games, they were “playing for pride.”

At first I growled at them for being lame. “ ‘Playing for pride’, grrr.” Come on, guys, where was pride when the games counted? Sure, we were injured. Our blue line was more of a blue thread because of those injuries. Our starter goalie was out with various and sundry issues over the winter. We also have two of the best players and a host of snipers on the top two lines, yet a good chunk of our scoring came from the grinders. They were the guys playing for pride. Playing for ice time. Playing to get noticed, sure, for bigger contracts, but really, boys, play for the love of the game and you’ll win even when you lose.

Then I caught three of their final five games. Home and home against Pittsburgh (they won both penalty-ridden games), and one hosting the dreaded devil spawn Islanders. They won that one, too, with two seconds to spare after the Isles tied the score at 19:30 of the third period. I was getting ready to bawl when Schenn the Younger took a random shot and, miraculously, the puck trickled past Jaro Halak and into the net. I admit, I expected little to no effort; after all, the team was done, out, their season kaput. I also admit that they surprised me. Surprised and delighted, in fact. They played like their lives depended on it, taking their rivalries and their roles as spoilers seriously. They made me proud, so I guess they really did play for pride.

Thus endeth the Flyers’ season. All told, it was a good year for them, better than the numbers tell. By the end of the year, they played as a team, trusting each other, fighting for each other, and having a pretty good time doing it. I’m so glad I saw those last few games. They gave me hope for 2015/16.

In the meantime, the Canucks have made it to the playoffs, so guess who is cheering for pride?

“The Day of Undying Loyalty”

My father could have been Jon Bon Jovi.

Well, not really.

For one thing, JBJ is a year younger than I am, and no matter how quirky are quantum physics, even a Master of the Universe would have trouble engineering that one.

I mean that Dad and JBJ were born on the same day—albeit thirty-one years apart. According to Gary Goldschneider and Joost Elffers in The Secret Language of Birthdays, anyone born on March 2 will share a bunch of specific traits with millions of others, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Dr. Seuss, Desi Arnaz, John Irving, and the latter half of Simon & Schuster.

So how is it that not everyone born on this date is a rock star, politician, artist, journalist, or business magnate? Personality plays such a strong part in who we are, and an equally strong part in what we become, but every soul is a snowflake. Give each child in a kindergarten class a box of Crayolas and watch how their drawings differ.

It’s half what you get and half what you do with it. What you get is, I believe, predetermined. What you do with it is up to you. We are as much a product of our environment in this life as we are ourselves, and our personalities dictate how we develop, how we adapt, how we endure, and, perhaps, whether or not we survive. I am unsure how much of what we are is influenced by planetary alignment at the time of birth, but I do wonder if the range of available traits depends on the astronomical tableau. I’ve heard that personality is connected to the ego/intellect, and that tells me it’s disposable, as in, we neither bring those traits with us when we come nor take them with us when we go. We might take the knowledge of how to use them, maybe to wield them more confidently in the next go-round, or to leave them in the box and try something else instead … and start by choosing another birthdate.

For the record, my father may not be a rock star, politician, artist, journalist or business magnate to the rest of the world, but in a very real way, he is each of these things to me.

Happy birthday, Dad.

With love,

Leggo My Ego

Last week I drafted a post about my ongoing battle with ego.

What began as a dissertation ended up as a diatribe. Surprising? At first, yes. On reflection, I should have seen it coming. Any time my ego is involved, it gets messy. It gets loud. It gets argumentative and angry and defiantly positional. By the end of the piece, ego was firmly at the wheel, driving at breakneck speed for the cliff’s edge and utterly heedless of the damage awaiting it once it hurtled into open space.

Ego works like that. It believes in hurting itself first to save it from being hurt anon. Conversely, it believes in hurting others before they can hurt it. What kind of nonsensical beast is this thing? And why do we give it so much power?

I wish I had the answer. All I have is a theory and a lab experiment with myself as the white rat.

The general consensus among philosophers is that the human condition can be divided into three separate components: body, mind, and spirit. “Body” is fairly obvious, being subject to hard-copy things like biology, environment, pathology, chemicals, and the physical manifestations of mental and emotional stress. “Mind” is the disk operating system which houses both the instinct for survival and the intellect. From what I understand, ego resides in “mind”. “Spirit” is the infinite essence that cannot be seen, but is probably the most important part of our makeup because it’s the one thing we take with us when the compostable container reaches its expiry date. “Spirit” is the life force, the truly eternal part of us that has been and remains the mystery of ages. Many people have devoted lifetimes to its study, trying to pin it down and give it substance and better yet, to figure out where it goes when we die.

Where it goes is less important to me than what it learns while it’s here.

 

One of the bookcases in our house is loaded with the works of Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle and Bruce Weiss (among others), but I let Ter do the heavy lifting. She reads the books, then gives me the highlights. We discuss, and if what I hear makes sense to me, I apply the principle du jour and see what happens. One of the goodies of late has been the subject of ego.

 

I’ve always known that ego is ridiculously fragile. What I never understood was why. How can something so brash and confident and smartypants witty be shattered or enraged by an offhand comment?

I think now that it’s fear.

Ego is always afraid – of loss, of disdain, of criticism, of failure, of disappointment, of poverty, of conflict, of death. Ego is road rage and cyber-bullying. Ego is impatience and intolerance. Ego is excess and extreme, and the misguided notion that the more you have, the more important (therefore the more viable) you are. Ego looks back in anger and forward with anxiety; ego is addiction and frustration, feelings of inadequacy and of superiority. Ego is absolutely the most paradoxical, self-destructive element in the mortal makeup. At its best, it monitors and mobilizes to keep us safe and society running smoothly. At its worst, it will literally kill itself and others merely to make a point.

How do I know all this? I’ve lately been observing my own behaviour. Fortunately, my ego restricts itself pretty much to internal putdowns and shots aimed at my self-esteem. These are designed to keep me static and thus spare my ego the risk of ridicule or a face plant – or success, for that matter. Better to be safe than sorry, right? At least it has never committed wilful acts of violence just to prove a point. I have been known, however, to raise my voice when my point (therefore my ego) is being challenged. I do, occasionally, lash out in reflexive anger at someone who does something I judge to be stupid, dangerous, or just plain inconsiderate. I also, on occasion, take it out on friends and family members, but I usually realize the error of my ways and apologize … though that may have more to do with being Canadian than being enlightened. Oh, and about being enlightened? Ego will proudly announce to the world that “I Am Enlightened” and expect some sort of awestruck adulation from those it deems to be less so. I don’t consider myself to be more enlightened than anyone else. I’m still learning. We are all still learning. I reckon when we’ve learned it all, we’ll be done with this gig and I’m not there yet.

Nowhere near, in fact.

My intention is for Comfortable Rebellion to be a welcoming place of creativity, positive energy, and Ru-mination. It may be argued that ego prompted me to start the blog and that’s fine. It’s not the truth, but I won’t belabour it. We are each free to think and believe as we will, with no undue pressure to accept the opposing view of another. I am more aware of this now than ever – so much so that when considering which photo to match with this post, I remembered the chalked message I had seen and snapped on a morning flânerie some weeks ago:

“FIND FREEDOM”

Freedom from ego, and from the fear that drives it, is a darned good place to start.

With love,

2 out of 5

Volume 1 of Fixed Fire

My poet buddy, Nicole, has been dabbling in prose these past few months. She’s a poet first, but one day a voice came to her and from then on she’s been besieged by characters clamouring to tell her their stories. It’s been great fun to watch and share her experience. We’ve both learned a lot from it.

On completing her most recent piece, she emailed me with an interesting observation. Everyone, she said, hated it. She’s been writing for long enough to have exchanged ego for “educational opportunity”, so she welcomes negative feedback as graciously as the positive – and that’s imperative if an artist wants to develop and improve. You have to lose your ego.

Sure, Ru. Remember “Treason”?

Oh. That.

A few years ago, I proudly entered my first self-published novel in a contest sponsored by a literary magazine that shall go nameless. At the very least, each entry was guaranteed to be read, and the author would be awarded a review of their work. After an interminable length of time, I got the very least – a 5-point rating of the story, the characters, the layout, the writing proper, and the artwork. In each category, my baby garnered 2 out of 5.

You bet I was insulted. Outraged, even. Some faceless drone had just called my child lame and stupid. Inaccurately interpreted by ego, I was lame and I was stupid. No, I did not take it graciously. I let it depress me for a while, though I did not cry and, more importantly, I did not quit writing. I can’t quit writing, simply because it’s what I do, what I am. It’s not up to others to decide if I can write. It’s up to me, and because of that, I should welcome the negative feedback with the positive.

Once I realized this, the below-average grade lost it is edge. It even became an in-house joke between Ter and me. “What do you think of this, bud?” I would ask, to which she would cheerily reply, “2 out of 5!”

These days, I share my work with a trusted few whose opinions I respect. Good, bad, or indifferent, theirs is the feedback I appreciate most. Anyone else is free to like or dislike it without risk of being cursed or, worse, hunted down and maimed. Just don’t be bitchy about it.

There is always something positive to be said about someone’s art, even if it’s only finding a gentle way to say, “Don’t give up your day job.” The same rule applies to everything else life – not because I have the power to destroy someone’s universe (I wish), but because something good can always be found if you take the time to look for it.

Hey, I’m not above spouting a knee-jerk, “Idiot!” when my feelings are hurt, and I’ve held grudges from kindergarten ... but I hope that my ego is softening, that one day I’ll be as brave as Nicole about feedback of any ilk. Until then, 2 out of 5?

I re-read “Treason” last week. Yes, I see where it could be tightened up and improved, but compared to books I’ve recently read that were published through a big fat company, I’m adamant that it deserves nothing less than 3 out of 5.

Methinks the ego may still need work.