Listening to Obama’s acceptance speech last night, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between Lincoln (which he talked about), FDR, and him. I suppose to leave out Washington is historically inaccurate, but I don’t know enough to draw those conclusions. This is not to say that I have decided that Obama is a great president and that history is already decided - there are many issues that he must confront and his challenge is much more in the leadership and organization vein than any other. Will he be able to break the US reputation for only being capable of handling one major issue at a time? We shall see, but I digress…

The point I was headed for is based on the generational political cycles discussed in the book Millennial Makeover. In brief, there are four main types of generations in Anglo-Saxon culture (including the US), and these cycle through in order. The current generation - the Millennials, or Gen Y - are an example of a civic generation. Civic generations also fought the revolution, the civil war, and world war II. Thus, when Obama referenced Lincoln in his speech last night, and the commentators referenced FDR in 1932, the association rang particularly true through that perspective.

Yes we can

“Yes we can,” he said. This is the first presidential campaign slogan that I have heard in my life that seems to reach out and inspire people on a massive scale, a scale on par with the stories that we read about in history books growing up. I guess so much of this will be written by history, but Obama’s climb to power is an impressive feat in a short period of time, and one that does ride on hope for change.

So DC erupted last night. As I lay in bed at 2 or 3 in the morning, I was awakened repeatedly by honking, yelling, and probably gun fire (although I wouldn’t swear to it) above the dull, continuous roar of a crowd all along U street. I have seen so many quotes from black Americans that for the first time, they feel like real Americans - that they are no longer second class citizens. Jesse Jackson crying in the crowd in Chicago. I will not even pretend to understand the relief that seems to have come from Obama’s election in this regard, but it certainly seems to be cathartic on a cultural level for race relations in our country. That is not to say that we are all done with that part of our history, but as Obama said in his speech, this is the beginning of a change that will be significant for our country.

No fear

If you’re like me, you’re wondering how all of this babbling relates to the title of the post. I guess I would have to say that Obama’s hope for change has successfully moved the US in many ways from a culture of fear. So much of the racial difficulties derive from fear - historic fear and guilt bred from centuries of abuse and mistrust and violence. 9/11 and the politics of fear that ensued from that. Fear is crippling. It promotes decisions based not on reason, but rather on emotion. It creates a world run by reactive response, instead of proactive leadership. It is my belief that it is fear that has led the US to fall from our leadership position in the world. To be pursuing the elimination of danger instead of the creation of safety. To be so busy protecting our interests that there is no room to promote our ideals. If you’re going to lead you have to be in front. No one likes a backseat driver, but that is where we’ve been - all the while sitting in the driver’s seat!

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” said Roosevelt in his first inaugural address in 1933. He wasn’t talking about confronting enemies in a war. He was talking about the Great Depression. He was talking about confronting ourselves. Now, as then, there are enemies out in the world, but the way to defeating them is not through protectionism, it’s through engagement with the rest of the world and confronting our own issues.

Life is for the Living.

As I lay awake last night listening to the crowds celebrate and thinking about fear, I realized something: I have been operating my personal life out of fear. My work life is great, but I continue to struggle in the arenas of play and love. What do I want? What do I enjoy? Am I happy? What do I need in order to be happy? I couldn’t answer these questions. Why? Fear. Fear of losing a friendship. Fear of ending a relationship. Fear of insulting or hurting people around me - the people I love (family and friends), the people I know (acquaintances), the people I meet on the street, the people I just pass and never even speak with. This was not a debilitating fear, it was a very functional fear. Most people would not even recognize it as fear, but rather as a sort of niceness. And in fact, this fear has given me wonderful diplomatic skills. I can’t complain about that, given my current location and goals in life.

The difficulty is that I have been so concerned with avoiding danger (instead of creating safety), that all I have seen is danger. I have known that in fact I am surrounded by love and support (and yes - safety), but unable to really enjoy it, to take advantage of it, to relax, to revel in life and all that it has to offer.

I can’t say that the curse is fully broken, time will tell if that is true. But I’ve made a big step in this regard. And I’m really excited about it.

Several years ago, I was doing some therapy and my final realization was “Life is for the living.” I continue to understand that more and more as I grow up (I know I’m 37), but I think the important part for me today is to take advantage of every opportunity presented to you and don’t spend time worrying about the ones you miss. There are so many opportunities every day, it’s not possible to explore all of them.

And if you think this isn’t true, then your eyes are also shut like mine sometimes are.

Life IS for the living. So get out there! If you’re reading this, tell me what new thing you’re going to take up that you’ve always wanted to do in the comments below.

Wayne

If you have arrived here, you probably already know about the Open Forum Foundation. You can visit that there.

On the off chance that you aren’t familiar with it — check it out! I could gush about it, but I’ll let it speak for itself. Me? That has primariliy become my life and that’s why I’m sending you there before I even say anything about me, but if you’re interested you can poke around here and learn a great deal about who I am, where I came from, and how I think.

I also use this for blogging personal thoughts and ideas - when I do that (the best laid plans…).

Anyway, hope you’re well. And let me know if I can do anything for you.

He puts forth several examples of this throughout history, including Christopher Columbus, who managed to discover America due to a miscalculation on the circumference of the planet. Our friend Chris apparently died believing that he had found a quicker trade route to India.

He goes on to make the point that in situations with “substantial degrees of uncertainty or social unpredictability,” this ignorance remains an attribute - it is, however “little help in routine day-to-day problem solving where efficiency and expertise are wanted.”

I find this reassuring and exciting on two fronts. First, because this is exactly how I feel as I stumble into my work in trying to change the way that decision-makers and their constituents communicate with one another. I know just enough about a fair diversity of industries that the inevitable obstacles don’t bother me at all - on the contrary, I’m kind of looking forward to them!

Second of all, Gigerenzer references how this ‘ignorance’ can be used to positive benefit when stepping into a new situation, in his case - management. By refusing to be briefed on the ‘flaws’ of his new staff, he gave them the opportunity to rise to his expectations with no preconceptions - which they did! I am doing the same thing as I meet people and discuss my work - there are people out there who are negative, and there are people who are supportive. I know that the right people exist that will make this all come together easily — and while having fun doing it.

In these ways, my ignorance IS blessed! What do YOU think?

In his prelude to the discussion on how transparency creates trust, he quotes Alan Greenspan (p 215). These are fabulous! What do ya’ think?

“If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.” - to a Congressman.

“I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

The Open Forum Foundation

What do you think? Is it too similar to some other organization that I’m not thinking of or unfamiliar with?

Here’s the whole vision statement so you can see how it ties together:

The Open Forum Foundation believes that all human beings should be able to freely and easily:

• communicate their views, opinions, and beliefs to pertinent decision-makers and leaders without fear of reprisal, as well as to each other.
• gain an understanding of the views, opinions, and beliefs of others, including people in their community, pertinent decision-makers and leaders, people on all sides of an issue, and people all around the world.
• participate in an open, vigorous, and all-inclusive debate that develops realistic and holistic solutions to the issues that concern them.

As I told you before, I think I over did it on my first day. The second day I wore my new glasses for an hour and even that was pushing it, so I back off for awhile - I think my eyes were strained by the first day and really need to recover, so I gave them time until they felt okay again.

Then I started back on the following schedule:

And with the exception of yesterday, where I fell off the train (I think I was just tired). They have felt fine. No serious headaches like before. It takes some concentration to see, but it improves with time.

I even have moments where I can suddenly see REALLY WELL. It’s a little eery, frankly.

So I’m going to keep building slowly and see how it goes. I think there are really two things I’m getting used to here. One is the fact that the world is shaped differently, ie no astigmatism correction. I think this is where the headaches came from. The other is strengthening my eyes so that I can see well with the glasses on.

Since I’m extremely sensitive to not being able to see, I am constantly trying to see better whenever I’m wearing the new glasses, and as they become my regular glasses, I think it will just become easier and easier to see like I’m used to seeing.

Thanks for listening!

“We need to stop trying to be, and just spend our time being.”

I think that I changed my prescription too much, frankly. This is what I did and what it means:

My current prescription:

Pupillary Distance = 65mm

Isn’t it cool that the left eye is the sinister one - it’s so true, isn’t it????

Anyway, the Spherical measurement is how far you have to be corrected all around to bring your eyes back to 20/20. Reading glasses are +1, +2 or whatever, and those of us that are near-sighted get negative numbers (to go with our sinister eye).

Cylindrical and Axis work together to correct astigmatism. Astigmatism means that you need a different prescription in different directions within your eye - it’s also called wonky eye (I made that up). It’s easiest to think of in terms of you things can be blurry up/down or left/right, and so it needs different corrections for each. So, the Cylindrical number represents the amount of additional correction needed along a different axis, and the axis tells what degree angle that other axis runs along. The axis is measured from the 0 degree line in a polar graph - that is, from the right side horizontal line going anti-clockwise. The Cylindrical number actually gets added to the Spherical number to get the full adjustment.

Pupillary Distance (PD) is the distance between your pupils in mm. I guess 63 is normal - I’m close.

Wikipedia has all the ugly details.

So, that’s where I started. I then thought to myself, “Self,” I thought… I don’t seem to have any problems when I don’t wear my glasses (headaches and the like), why don’t I immediately drop the astigmatism component. “That sounds like a fine place to start,” I agreed.

And then I made it worse. I was thinking about how the larger the jumps that I take, the fewer pairs of glasses I’ll have to buy before I can do away with them completely and thought I’d just drop a .25 off the prescription. I mean, it’s a quarter! What’s that doin’? Nothing! Or close to it. You can’t even buy gum for a quarter anymore…

So that’s how I ended up here:

The prescription of my new glasses:

Pupillary Distance = 65mm

Looks bad, right? Well, I guess we’ll find out.

Like I said, yesterday was a little rough. But I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve realized that when I used to get new contacts, they would make the world funny shaped and me a little dizzy for a couple of days. In addition, I’d have to work up to wearing them full time. So that’s what I’m doing now.

An hour a day until it feels good, then we’ll go from there.

On the bright side, I do have to say that as I wear them, it gets easier to see. Also, when I go back to my old glasses, I can see incredibly clearly. I don’t think this is just in comparison to having been blind for 2 1/2 hours, but legitimately better eyesight. Of course, it’s all subjective, right? Well, for now. If I can wear these new glasses full time, I’ll know that I’ve accomplished something.

In the meantime, the world is a little blurry around the edges.

I just ordered new glasses from an online seller. Infathomably, they were $19 (plus shipping). To keep it interesting, I ordered them with a weaker prescription than I probably should have to work on improving my sight and hopefully do away with my glasses altogether over time. Is this a good idea? Tell me what you think.The reason I’m doing this however is that I’ve had success with improving my vision in the past. I first noticed that things got better in college while I was delivering Chinese food for Ho Lee Chow (do you believe it? Anyway…). Within a month of squinting at house numbers in the dark, I found that I became better able to read them. My contacts at the time didn’t quite match my prescription (early contact technology, I guess) and at night, all lights would blur into a long thin streak - it was a pain. However, after a little delivery-driving-sight-therapy, I discovered that I could make the streak go away and vastly improve my night vision.

So, a couple of years later I’d switched to glasses and was driving home on the backroads of Michigan a little bored. (I don’t recommend anyone do this, of course…) I got to thinking about my vision, and decided to try a little experiment. I took off my glasses (keeping them in my right hand and ready to put back on immediately) and tried to focus on the passing road signs. Within ten minutes, I noticed a significant difference in my vision and was excited about it. However, ten minutes also seemed to wear out my eyes, so I put my glasses back on and headed for home (keep in mind, there was noone else on the road, the road was perfectly straight, and I knew it really well - I was being a little incautious, but not much in terms of becoming some form of automotive statistic).

This was fabulous, so I would take my glasses off at different points during the day for short periods of time to ‘exercise’ my eyes. What did I learn? My vision continued to improve. So much so that a couple days into this (literally), I was driving home from work at night and in the seven minutes that it took (glasses on), I had acquired a splitting headache - to the extent that I literally crawled up the stairs to my apartment and went straight to bed without dinner.

The next day, I decided that this was due to the improvement in my vision and began focusing on making my eyesight perfect for the glasses that I was wearing. From that day forward, my prescription has not changed and my eyesight has been perfect. Every once in a while, it will start to blur a little, and I’ll have to focus to bring it back to perfection, but that’s worked great for eight or ten years (I know it was the 90s, but I don’t remember when).

So, when I was practicing hypnotherapy, I did some personal work around my lack of vision and the emotional causes that created it and maintain it that way today. This was very effective and interesting, but didn’t really change how well I can see (incidentally, if it seems a little presumptuous or just downright silly that vision can be improved by resolving some sort of underlying emotional causes for it, I’m with you in spirit. How about we view it from the perspective that whether or not those emotional issues created the visual inacuity that I experience, the therapy still results in the resolution of issues that were affecting my life an a number of ways).

It seemed to me however, that a direct leap from impaired vision to perfect vision was just too much for my brain and/or eyes to handle. That is, I couldn’t function without my glasses even though I fully believed that I could improve my vision over time sufficiently to stop wearing them.

… time passed …

And now I’ve finally done something about it. I ordered these glasses with a weaker prescription. For $19, how can you beat it! I stand to lose very little - I can always just go back to my old glasses and move on with my life, knowing that I’ve failed. But if I succeed, I’m well on the road to no glasses whatsoever, and how exciting would that be?

Anyway, thanks for reading - let me know if you’ve done anything similar or if you just think I’m completely nutso!