Our Life Is a Story

Our life is a story we tell ourselves in our heads. I say then if we have had a hard time of it, than tell ourselves a story of recovery. If we have regrets for actions past, tell ourselves a story of redemption. If we have been befallen by obstacles, tell ourselves a story of victory. If we feel we have not known love, than by all means tell ourselves that story of transcendent love. Why not, life is short? There is one story and one story only:
yours!

The What-If excercise

So at first I stopped and sat down quietly and asked myself to consider WHAT IF everything were alright. Not to believe that everything were alright or even that it was possible for everything to be alright but simply What If  everything were alright? A thought experiment like Einstein said he liked to do - a much simpler one than he would do, mind you, no higher math involved. Very simple thing to do. Very easy.

Whew okay now then everything is alright so there is nothing to "fix" nothing to "fight" nothing to "regret" nothing to "fear" - wow uncharted territory here? I saw immediately.

Suddenly new questions arise as I see like sunlight breaking through dark clouds that clearly the only thing I "must do" is breathe.

What do I want?
What will I do?
Where will I go?
What do I love?
Who do I love?

Suddenly I understood something "told to me" by a mushroom voice in my own mind years earlier that I had remembered but not really understood: "Everything that ever was, ever will be or is right now, is perfect". I could make no mistakes. There was no such thing as a mistake. There are no wrong turns in life only right turns taken wrongly. All I truly have to do is breathe. What to do and where to go and who to love that is all a choice. Opportunities. Options. Simply really taking a moment to ask myself  "what if" was like grasping a doorknob, turning it and pushing open a door into life.

July 1st 2012 in a forest near the shores of lake Superior alone in a quiet glade,  I found the what if exercise to be a powerful, transformative tool. It broke something open inside of me. The truth of things is always so darn simple it seems?

How David Halberstam Relates to War Journalism Today

An Essay by David Sky

David Halberstam now deceased maybe was best known for his book on the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest. Perhaps I shouldn't say best known since he wrote also sport books and a book about the firefighters in 9-11 called, Firehouse, later in his life. In The Best and the Brightest, he explores in characteristic depth just how such a collection of the best and the brightest minds America had at the time lead by defense secretary Robert McNamara so spectacularly failed in Vietnam. He won a Pulitzer prize for his war coverage while reporting for The New York Times and I think I like best his character as described by other war correspondents who wrote memoirs of their time in Vietnam especially in Neil Sheehan's, A Bright and Shining Lie which is I'm not alone in thinking the best non fiction book on the Vietnam War definitely what I would recommend to anyone wanting to read just one book on this subject instead of a hundred although insofar as reading can convey such a thing the many memoirs written by the soldiers themselves are profoundly insightful on the Vietnam War if not as comprehensive individually in scoop as Sheehan's epic masterpiece. As books on the Vietnam war go, the very best book to me and one of the best books I've read in my life really which seems more a book length prose poem than a work of non fiction is Michael Herr's, Dispatches, in which Halberstam makes an appearance as well. My favorite book by Halberstam is not about Vietnam at all but a highly readable history called, The Fifties, that I feel anyone would enjoy as history especially if old enough to have lived in that period or even the sixties - as he points out, a lot happened in the fifties in America that set the groundwork for the last half of the century. Halberstam I think is particularly notable in that in comparison to his colleagues he was relatively square with his nose to the grindstone and highly professional and I would say a real team player and in a way not a radical or subversive in any sense at all unlike some of his colleagues so I wouldn't think that he could be seen as controversial in this day and age by even conservatives?

To the point of comparing that time in journalism with today, I thought still laying in bed this morning about news coverage recently of America's newest disaster in the making in yet another country thousands of miles away with so far no journalist involved at all rather information coming in being entirely just taken from the military and read to the public so not journalism in any sense of the word hitting a new low I feel and being in fact I would say by definition public relations at best and actually propaganda. So much for the fourth estate. If God died in the sixties, then Journalism died in the nineties. Earlier surely there was censorship at every level and journalism was hardly pure but there was some actual journalism also very credible investigative journalism. Now literally a handful of corporations control all media and most newspapers are dead and journalists are scattered in disarray like some utterly defeated army. The corporate news at best is public relations and at worst propaganda startlingly similar to “The Party” who controlled all information in “Oceania”. Orwell's 1984 now seems to me less of a work of fiction than a How-To book for governance.

What really comes most strongly to mind from the Vietnam era was what most all journalist called, “The Five O'clock Follies”. In Saigon which was headquarters for our forces at five O'clock the military conducted evening briefings on war events that day which were known to be hopelessly biased and of little journalistic value. Most reporters hung around Saigon attending these briefings then sending in “reports” to their respective agency then went out for a night of drinking and often whoring with the legions of young Vietnamese woman available. By and large these reporters held the Five O'Clock Follies in nearly as much disdain as did Halberstam himself only they didn't care and if they were to make any argument in their defense, the best one would be that it was only their job to report what they were told and that going out and covering the war in depth was somehow unprofessional in the way of editorializing upon the war. Some strongly disagreed with that sentiment and for those relative few like Halberstam who risked life in limb typically travelling by helicopter far into the jungles where the kinds of potential deaths awaiting were nearly endless with a few of our soldiers actually eaten by tigers, the real information gained was often heavily edited back home by often well meaning professionals who were obliged to couch the truth in a pretty uniform manner according to the dictates of the status quo. This was an endless source of resentment for them to me recalling how many of the army's Long Range Reconnaissance teams felt after going out into the jungle in lightly armed five or six man teams often among regiments of hard core North Vietnamese regular infantrymen who would then find their hard won Intel dismissed by commanders as unbelievable with the real theme being that their information garnered by boots on the ground did not fit the screen play war being written by the top level brass.

Only in their books as some mentioned above do we get the real dirt, as it were. To be clear, if the America public had been given the dirt on the war by their journalists in the field risking life and limb just as did the brave soldiers of that war, perhaps the American people would have brought it to a swift end ergo the reason why such a thing did not occur. For the many Americans who give mouth service to our forefathers, it should be noted that this so called Fourth Estate was considered essential to maintaining a democracy and preventing our government from becoming tyrannical a fate our forefathers always had close in mind and a fate to which American has absolutely succumbed so it seems. Today many conscientious journalists have rallied from their defeat and are reporting via various let's say “asymmetrical” means – to invoke that term “asymmetrical warfare” to make a point here. For many that means blogs some of which demand a small monthly fee since no matter how much esteem the writers may have for journalistic integrity, they still have to eat. Books also still provide a view unbiased by corporate media control unfortunately very few Americans read these books and no mention of their contents will ever be seen on network television. For those journalists like David Halberstam who eschewed the Five O'clock Follies, those who only attended these propaganda briefings and parroted that information back to their bureaus as if it were journalism were held in the lowest esteem by the real journalists who in many cases like the over 50,000 United States Soldiers gave everything in their commitment their calling.

Today I seriously wonder if by some magic our vaunted evening news anchors and those personalities on the cable news networks actually reported the truth to us would it make any difference at all – we having grown that apathetic, maybe? To be fair and balanced and convey a bit of positivity, I have to admit that particularly these cable news networks which run literally 24 hours a day, seven days a week do a consistently flawless job at saying nothing of any real substance at all – I mean that in itself takes real hard work, organization and a high level of professionalism so let me give praise exactly where it is due. I can't help but think of what was said about the Mafia - how much success they would have and how much good they might accomplish if they but choose to use all the hard work, organization and talent they possess for some legal enterprise!