Seaman Family Values

I must have been five or six years old, playing in the front yard of our home in what would best be described as a working class neighborhood. It had been a two bedroom home until my parents added a living room on the front and converted the old living room into a third bedroom. A man approached me and asked if my mother was home. When I said she was, he knocked on the door. He explained to her that he was out of work and was going through the neighborhood hoping to earn some money doing odd jobs. She paused. "Well, we don't pay people to do our work," she said. "We can do our own work. But if you're hungry I'll get you something to eat." He said he was hungry and would really appreciate that. I sat with him under the big old elm tree that dominated our front yard and chatted. Soon my mother returned with BLTs (toasted), potato chips and lemonade for both of us. I don't remember anything we talked about. But I've (obviously) never forgotten what my mother said and did that day. I learned about respect for work, respecting the unemployed and helping those who need it.
I remember being on the roof of that house carrying shingles to my dad while he nailed row after row into place. I don't know how old I was, but we moved from that house when I was eight. I remember my dad putting in a driveway at that house as well as a patio and walkway in the new house we moved to, building shelves for food storage and a small office in the utility room next to the carport and chopping wood in the backyard to burn in our fireplace. I remember his building a "shell" for his 1948 Ford pickup. (It was the first year of the F-Series.) And painting that pickup ... with a brush! "We can do our own work."
I grew up in a labor family. Dad worked for thirty years for Union Pacific Railroad and was an officer in the local B of  RT (Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen). These were proud, hard working people who improved the lives of the union membership in many ways. Valuing work, all kinds of work, became fundamental to my life view.
In Sting's autobiography, Broken Music, he recounts visiting with his dying father:

"I have no idea what to say, so I take his hand in mine and gently massage the soft triangle of flesh between his thumb and his first finger. I haven't held his hand since I was small. They are big square hands, massively knuckled with strong muscular fingers, deeply lined and grooved. My father's hands are not the delicate, expressive hands of an artist, but they have a kind of elegance and so close to death they possess an honest and translucent beauty. They are the hands of a working man."

Give me a job, give me security
Give me a chance to survive

I'm just a poor soul in the unemployment line ...

But I've got the power, and I've got the will
I'm not a charity case …

Make me an offer that I can't refuse
Make me respectable, man …

So like it or not I'll take those
Long nights, impossible odds
Keeping my back to the wall
If it takes all that to be just what I am
Well, I'm gonna be a blue collar man

“Blue Collar Man”

 by STYX

That time when I REALLY didn't know which way was up ...

When we were teenagers, a group of us spent a week at Lake Powell.  Water skiing wasn’t that big a deal. We did that frequently at Lake Mead.  The best part of Lake Powell was the cliffs.  We camped at a different site each night on a constant quest for higher cliffs and new challenges.  As the cliffs got higher, we learned to point our toes so it didn’t hurt our feet (eventually, we just wore our tennis shoes ... it also made the climb back up the cliff easier).  Then, not to let our arms spread out because the water really slapped your arms if you did.  We learned to go in as straight as we could.  It also hurt if you got off sideways.  We learned to spread our arms and legs out after we got into the water so we didn’t go down too deep.  By the end of the week we’d decided to forget that, stay straight as long as we could, and see how deep we could go!  The goal became to go deep enough that you couldn’t see the surface ... absolute darkness.  It’s amazing to put your hand right in front of your nose and not be able to see it.  No hint of light anywhere!  Of course, at that point you don’t know which way’s up ...

Life took care of me.  I sat at the top of the cliff with my buddy, Mike, watching stupid teenage boys jumping into the darkness.  I asked him (because he was the only one there), “If you can’t see the surface, how do you know which way to swim?”  Mike was an accomplished trampoline gymnast.  Looking straight ahead and with absolute calm, he said “You curl up in a little ball and wait.  You’ll start to float toward the surface and you swim in that direction.”  I was shortly really grateful that Mike had been there that day and that I had thought to ask the question.

When I realized I’d accomplished my goal ... no visible surface ... no light ... I panicked a little.  I remembered what Mike had said, but wasn’t serene enough to really “curl up ... and wait”.  I just kind of hesitated until I thought I could feel myself floating and then started to swim.  I expected to start seeing light sooner than I did and questioned the direction I was swimming.  I didn’t have a lot of faith in my ability to hold my breath for long, so when I hesitated again to try to “feel” up, I didn’t really “curl up ... and wait” the second time either.  And naturally, the panic increased.  When I thought I could feel myself floating, I committed to that direction, closed my eyes and swam as hard as I possibly could.  When I broke the surface of the water (at about a 45 degree angle, flailing, gasping, panicked) I was greeted by a dozen teenage boys laughing so hard they could hardly breath.  I must have been a sight.  When I settled down enough to think about it, I realized that I had worked a lot harder and swum a lot farther than I’d needed to because I hadn’t been relaxed enough to really “curl up and wait” to be sure I knew which way to go.

Years later I learned about the Tao and realized that life had provided me with an incredible lesson about being  that day.  “You curl up in a little ball and wait.  You’ll start to float toward the surface and you swim in that direction.”  Life knows what we need and will take us there if we allow it.  We only complicate things by imposing our will.  Like the symbolic fish that are the Yin/Yang, things work best for us if we are at peace enough to feel the current and swim in that direction.  Be still.  Be aware.

Phil Jackson: “The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and an open heart.  When we do that, ... life takes care of itself.”