On Monday Joy found out that she had been given her second job offer. I didn't blog this right away, nor did I tell anyone, because I wanted Joy to be able to tell all her people herself. This is the job that Joy really wanted, and she is thrilled that she got the offer. I am too. It came with a few suprises that totally floored me. Had I known that marrying this amazing girl would have been so lucrative... I probably would have messed the whole thing up. :)
I have found that you can learn a lot about people and interpersonal relationships by watching or even participating in the relationships of others. This is one of the great reasons that it is good to have friends that are friends with each other. It brings out more about all the people you know.
One recent turn in all this great learning is learning from the mistakes of others. Sometimes, by being outside of the situation you can know things that the people in the situation won't know. One way this works is that people are often more articulate and willing to articulate when you are outside of the situation, but care about it and know what is going on in the situation too.
All of these things are true for me now in one such situation. I have two pals, A and B, who are very close to each other and have a deep fraternal love of friendship for one another. It is awesome and inspiring to know them and see their love. Lately, though A has made a mistake. Here's the rundown...
A has the following temporary qualities that contributed to A's mistake.
--Attitude. A has downplayed something. This particular something happens to be important to B. Also, A is probably incorrect in A's underestimation of the significance, impact, and difficulty of this something.
--Particular Immaturity. One of A's personality quirks is that A has a hard time taking correction, hearing criticism, etc. (I have this same problem, so I am rather understanding, and furthermore I am tuned into the whole probem, because I don't want my trait to cause this problem for me.) I call this a particular immaturity, because I want to emphasize that it is local to just one part of A, but I also want to emphasize that this is a quirk that can be 'grown out of' or 'matured past' at some point.
B has a few qualities contributing to the situation as well.
--Sensitive. B withdraws pretty quickly when hurt or disappointed. B has that particular something that was mentioned earlier and A downplayed it. Now B's emotions are festering, because B would like to share B's something with A, but doesn't want it to be so insignificant to A.
--Reactionary. B tends to learn 'too quickly.' B quickly noted that A's attitude toward the particular something and reacted accordingly. B also has 'learned' that A doesn't take correction well. So, B reacts by not giving correction, and just to be safe, doesn't even mention or attempt to explain the situation from a B perspective.
For me, the hard part of all of this is watching as these two friends grow apart over a single issue. Harder still is noticing how it tends to spiral out of control. The distance between them will grow almost exponentially, like compound interest or something, because these things continue a centrifugal push until something, some event, (or someone?) comes in to change things up a bit.
I would like to jump in and help, but I have a hard time doing that, because both people are contributing to the centrifugal energy. Sure I could talk to A about the attitude issue, which started the problem and fuels it, but A really doesn't deal with that sort of thing well at all, and my efforts could be all for naught. Also, A will be the first to tell me that I could just as easily have gone to B to fix the problem. This seems true at first blush, but I feel like B is right about the particular something. It is important and shouldn't be downplayed.
Well, I guess now my dilemma is over. I now know that I ultimately feel that A should make the first step, even though I think that they both contribute equally to this issue.
The sad part is that A loves B so much, and is usually so good about playing up things of even minimal importance. This trait of A's is part of what caused me all the grief and reflection about this whole situation! See, I know that A finds many things to be important, and B is high among those many things. I believe that if A knew what was happening behind the scenes and in the undercurrents of this whole issue A would be utterly heartbroken that A had a part in this. A would be even more heart broken to realize what fun, closeness, and mutual joy and happiness A missed out on.
I also know that B really loves A. So much that B's heart is broken, because B wanted to honor and love A concerning/about/with this particular something. B is so disappointed because even though B truly wants to honor A in this way, B can't because A has removed the honor from the particular something with A's attitude toward it. B is also heartbroken because B would settle for the closeness, and the mutual fun, happiness and joy with A, but that too is gone and is now impossible (unless by some twist of chance A changed A's attitude.)
Ending Thoughts
Now that all this is explained I realize that most people will have no idea of what I am talking about, which is intentional, but I also think that some people will have gotten lost even in the abstract. I wish that wasn't the case, because I've learned a lot from seeing all of this. I wish I could share it.
I've learned that my actions have powerful impacts on my relationships -- probably beyond what I see or know.
I've learned that learning some lessons should never happen. Such lessons as "That's impossible" or "He'll never quit" or "I'll always be miserable" aren't really great lessons at all.
Finally, I've chosen to believe that this is another attempt at driving people apart. I believe that ultimately evil drives us all apart, but that good pulls us together in loving, harmonious relationships.
Last night Mike and I went to Blockbuster to find a fun game to play while we hung out for a while. I told Mike that it could be his choice, but if he couldn't make up his mind we should rent NCAA Football 2006 because we were going to watch the Gator game at 8:00, and it might be fun to pregame by playing head to head Tennessee vs Florida.
He chose Lego Star Wars for the XBOX because he wanted to see what it was about and see if it was any good.
The game is pretty good. It's for younger kids, I think, so you could really lose the game. So, we just played through Episode I in the first night -- until the game started. Then this afternoon we finished up Episodes II and III. There are a lot of things that we liked about the game.
One of the handiest features is the drop in / drop out cooperative play mode. This feature makes it so that you can leave to go talk to a wife or girlfriend and the other person can keep playing and advancing through the game. Then when you come back you just pick up the controller and you are right back in the game.
We also both really liked the game because of the Lego take on everything Star Wars. There were lots of cinematic clips from the movie redone Lego style, and the only departures from the film were for great Lego slapstick humor.
Actually, there are lots of little things here and there that make this game a lot of fun. I don't think I can take the game apart like a Lego set and explain why each part of it was so fun. I wasn't expecting to like it nearly as much as I did, which is always huge plus.
I have spent many hours thinking about Hurricane Katrina, Disaster Relief, Aid of all kinds, and emergency management in general. After travelling to different coutnries for month-long missionary trips throughout my childhood I came to the opinion that helping people in great need had much less to do with a lack of resources than with a problem of logistics. Now that it has been two weeks since Katrina made landfall I am beginning to transfer this line of thinking to emergency management as well.
It is often said that America is the wealthiest nation in the world right now. In some ways it is, but in others it is perhaps one of the poorest. However you look at it, this country has plenty of resources and it has the means to get more and more as it needs and/or desires.
So, when we all, as a nation, had a problem of reacting helpfully to this most recent national disaster I saw it as a problem of logistics rather than a problem of resources. (Clearly, there are other issues involved as well such as desire to help, but that is for another discussion.)
In the first week of news there were many themes hitting the media. One of the themes was that rescuers were having problems getting rescuing done due to collapsed bridges, submerged roads, debris covered this and that, and most strange of all -- people shooting at rescuers.
During 'the golden 72 hours' and after they were over (when the rescue effort slowed down) the leaders of the rescue and relief efforts tried to take on other tasks that were important to restoring the area. Engineers worked on repairing the levees, pumping water out of the city, repairing bridges, clearing debris from roads, and making more and more routes into the most damaged areas. They also started to remove bodies from the area, mark where they were found and other mortuary services. The list of these tasks is pretty long so I won't try to list them all here.
Some of these activities happened much slower than people expected. People who are now homeless were without shelter for too long. People who had shelter, but needed to be moved out of the city waited longer than we find acceptable to be transported out of the city. Food, water, clothing, and other supplies came much too slow by many standards, and in many areas these essential things never came at all.
All of these things, in my mind, are logistical issues. It is not like our country does not have enough rescue crews, civil engineers, doctors, nurses, mortuary specialists, water and food delivery companies, or even tow truck drivers (I know that Gainesville's residents wound't mind seeing some of their towing companies short on drivers for a few weeks.)
Our nation doesn't have a shortage of resources problem. Our nation has problems getting resources to where they need to be when they are needed, and making sure that they are distributed appropriately. (However approriate distribution is defined.)
Implications
I have no amazing empirical proof for this claim, but I do have a strong intution that some of this problem is simply a drawback of our society. We are fairly individualistic; we're capatilists; we long for efficiency; we are free to do as we please; and are not forced take orders from anyone. These are some of our ideals. I am not suggesting that we change them here, but I will suggest that we recognize them, see the drawbacks that arise from them, and address those drawbacks so that our ideals can be as positive for us all as possible.
We want to be efficient. So we seek to use the least resources of time, money, and materials to accomplish any task. This is a great ideal, but it often means that we are eliminating surplus, excess, etc. We glean from every part of the plant, leaving none left for times of need. Perhaps as we continue this practice we could also make provisions for times of need, people in need, and short term emergency situations.
We are individualistic. We all operate seperately from one another. Bringing together a unified effort now takes its shape in companies, organizations, government departments, military branches, churches, clubs, families, etc. Without these units of grouped people we essentially operate alone. Knowing this we should make sure that each group exists with more purpose and readiness than what is typically stated in organizational charters or wedding vows. Some examples of what this would look like might include --
--A bottled water delivery company such as DS Waters, Nestlé Waters North America Inc., PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, or even smaller local water delivery outifts contacting customers (or arranging this at the beginning of their contracts since contacting customers uses up personnel that could otherwise be doing other work) and asking them if they can reduce or suspend service so they can use some of their resources to aid natural disaster victims. (I'd start liking Coke (headquarted in Atlana) a lot more if they had sent several trucks full of Dasani water down to the disaster areas and Pepsi hadn't.)
--Large food companies such as Sysco, Performance Food Group (which has helped by lending portions of their MS and LA facilities to FEMA) Nash Finch, supermarkets, and even (though it may sound silly) delivery companies like Domino's Pizza could react quickly and divert some of their supply chains to relief efforts. The whole company could then be involved in relief as they found ways to continue service to existing customers while simultaneously providing relief services to people who are in great need.
We are capatalists. This is somewhat addressed with my ideas for corporations taking the initiative to help with relief. There is a lot more that needs to be done to address this part of our National mentality in a way that allows it to remain, but appropriately handles the drawbacks that stem from being capatalists.
--BREAK--
I am losing steam on writing this, and fun-to-talk-to people are trying to talk to me. Maybe I'll finish this up later.
At church this past Sunday Joy and I signed up to donate time and goods to the Relief effort. So we were happy to receive an e-mail a few days ago telling us about one of the first ways that Joy could help as an organizer/coordinator -- Data Entry!
OK, so it wasn't really coordinating anything just yet, and it didn't require much organization, but doing data entry is the first step to getting things coordinated so we can match up people willing to help with tasks that need to be done and people who need stuff.
So, Joy wrote back and told the church that she would volunteer from noon to 8PM, and that I would be coming along with her for one of those two hour shifts to help out too. So, yesterday at noon we drove over to the church and started inputting all this information into an internet-based database. It was fun, and probably just what Joy had been wanting for a while.
Joy always wants to spend time with me, but I always want to be active and doing something when we hang out. I feel weird or unproductive or something (I don't know) when we just sit around doing nothing. So, we have thought of a lot of things to do since we've gotten married, and doing community service together was one of our favorite ideas.
Even though sitting in front of two computers next to each other wasn't fun for long periods of time, we did get to sit, talk to each other, "hang out," AND get something done. I was happy. Joy was happy. I am thinking that we'll be doing more of this type of thing again in the future.
Oh, and to top it off. At one point we went to take a break. I can't omit this part! Joy has found a puppy store that is a block away from our church. She loves puppies and really loves to visit this store and see all the puppies there. So I just had to go and see all these puppies with her, and I did. Good David.
In the last few weeks Joy has been home a lot, because she doesn't have a job just yet (she's gotten offers, but she is holding out for "the one") and she is new to the area so she doesn't know a lot of people here. Oh, and she was sick.
During all this time she had a few complaints about living with me in Orlando. One of the most frequently occuring complaints was that I don't clean up after myself as much as she would like. The place isn't tidy enough for her liking, and she feels like she is always cleaning up after me.
Well, a night or two ago I had a little fun with her. I had heard her complaints and I have been doing a fairly good job of keeping things clean -- at least the things she asked me to keep clean. So,when I got home from work, I got undressed, put everything of mine away "where it belongs" and then walked in to talk to her. She seemed to be in a decent mood so I told her that I was concerned about some things.
I told then recited almost word for word a speech she had given me roughly a week earlier. I went on and on saying all the things she had told me about staying clean and how important it was to me for us to have a clean apartment. Then I told her about this pile of cottony goodness that she had left in a corner of our hallway. :)
I had a lot of fun with that, and she was kinda unamused and frustrated with me, because she doesn't see irony of the situation as a legitimate form of humor -- especially when she's at the wrong end of it. So, to get her to see what I was doing I ended up tricking her into putting her foot in my hand, and then I started to physically pull her lef. So, we had a big laugh over all of that, and she consoled herself with a happily screamed, "Well, I'm just glad you listen to me, you booger!" as she attempted to wrestle me to a place where she could tickle me better.
In the first hours after Hurricane Katrina I wasn't paying much attention. I knew that the hurricane was big. I heard that it caused great damage, but I thought that it would be a hurricane like the three that came through Florida just last year or any other that I have experienced from living in Florida for the past 23 years. I did think that Katrina would be worse due to unpreparedness. I did presume that the flooding would be worse since New Orleans is mostly below sea level. I didn't think the damage would be this bad. I didn't think that this many people would be unable to evacuate or simply choose not to evacuate.
In the first few days after Hurricane Katrina I was beginning to take notice. I was catching on to what was going on down there. I started to hear things from friends, people at school, and people at work. I started to look into what was going on in Louisianna and Mississippi. The whole situation was better than I had thought and worse than I had thought. I knew that oil refineries, the shipping industry, well basically a chunk of all the big, hazardous, barely regulated industry of the US of A was going to be leaking into the waters. That water would then make its way into the Gulf of Mexico and be carried down the Gulf coast of Florida. That would mess up the beaches for a few months for sure, but probably a few years.
In the first week after Hurricane Katrina I realized that the people of Louisianna and Mississippi are going to need a lot more help than they seem to be getting. I look around. I call around. I want to help. I talk to Joy about taking a trip up to the area since we had a three day weekend. We might as well give our time and energy to help people who can really use it. Then I found out that in many areas there are crazy things happening. Things aren't safe for volunteers yet. Volunteer coordinators are trying to go in and are pulling back in fear of hostilities. Lootings and other madness keeps help away. I can't go and help this weekend, because the situation is so bad that maritial law had been declared in some areas. Police and military police are allowed to shoot looters in certain areas. Areas won't be ready for volunteer groups until Monday or even Tuesday. At that point I'll need to attend to my responsibilities. I guess I need to just send money.
Sunday I find out that I can help through my church. Our church is going to take in a large number of refugees from the area. Some people are going to house them. Others will provide meals, transportation, clothing, school supplies, admistrative/coordinating/organizational time and effort, etc etc. Joy offers to volunteer a few weeks of her time as a coordinator/organizer. I talk to Joy about giving up a computer (probably someone lost theirs and could use a new one) school suppplies, and personal items. I should have thought to donate our air mattress.
After doing all these things, thinking about a lot of what has gone on, and having a full range of mixed emotions I have realized a few things. I had been disappointed that I could help more, do more, participate more in helping people recover. I can help, I am helping, and I will help, but I thought I could do more because there is so much need. I realized though, that I have spent much of my life pretty uninterested in helping other people. In fact, it is only recently that events and people in my life have convinced me that helping others is something that I should actively persue. In so much of life you need to start out small and grow. I should have realized that giving of my time, my money, and my possessions would also start out small. Fortunately, once these small things get started... they have a tendency to grow
I have been having problems with unwanted solicitation in the comment section of my blog. It has really gotten out of hand. I have mt blacklist, but it doesn't seem to block the flood of comments. Too many times this past week I have signed into my blog only to see more and more of these unwanted comments. Then I set to deleting them all, which takes a good deal of time. By the time I am done I don't even feel like blogging. So, today I thought I'd write a little complaint before I started to fight the problem some more.
If anyone has any good suggestions you can e-mail me or even leave a comment. An end to this would be appreciated. Then I can finally get back to writing again.