Real Joe

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. - Anonymous

I tend to operate from a mindset that makes me think people will remember me for what I say or do. I wonder, though, whether it makes for a positive outlook on life to be constantly thinking about how to make people feel good. I probably don’t have to worry, though, since I’ve lived my life more focused on doing and saying things to impress people, not to make them feel good. This quote is a poke to remind me otherwise. Since I read it over the weekend, I’ve been more cognizant in my casual contacts with people, asking myself, “What could I say that’s genuine that would make this person feel good?” Not a usual thing for me.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it. -John Ruskin

Initially, it seems weird or arrogant to think that working on Real Joe makes me a better man. But it could be. Maybe it’s having another voice of conscience in my head, or just the awareness that others are reading what I’m writing — and that that places more responsibility on me to be a better dad, a better husband, a better citizen.

The past couple of days I’ve walked to a spot in the Carleton Upper Arb where there’s a circle of large boulders in a grove of oak trees. Looking at an Arb map, I think it’s the site of the Old Faculty Picnic Grounds but I’m not sure.

The whole scene has the feeling of a church for me. There’s a big slab rock in the middle of the circle, sitting atop a couple of other rocks that make it look like an altar. Eight boulders form a circle surrounding this slab, and as I walk around them, they remind me of the Stations of the Cross in the Catholic churches of my childhood. The trunks of the huge, stately oaks are pillars, the branches form alcoves and canopies and arches. The chirping of the birds and squirrels are the choir.

The May 7 Newsweek cover story on Religion and the Brain and a subsequent article in the Pioneer Press titled The Science of Prayer got me thinking about doing this, putting myself in a mental and physical state where I’d experence the “feeling of God”, a palpable spirituality. Today, I did a version of the Stations of the Cross by pulling out my Palm Pilot and reading an inspirational prayer or a quote out loud as I stopped at each of the boulders. I had a cup of coffee with me, so I placed that chalice-like on the altar, of course.

This sounds pretty new-agey, I suppose, but so be it. All I know is, it “worked.” It’s worked in the past when I’ve visited an empty church too, come to think of it. It’s the same refreshing, inspirational feeling, a souped-up SOS. I’ll keep doing it, now that it’s warm, and see how it affects me.

I am not concerned that I am not known; I seek to be worthy to be known. - Confucius

In the June issue of O magazine, Oprah interviews boxer Muhammad Ali, who’s now 59 and stricken with Parkinson’s disease. It’s pretty much a puff piece, other than when he tells Oprah that he’s planning a comeback in boxing next year. But there is one quote from Ali that caught my attention.

“I’d rather be in my condition than be a man with four children in a four-bedroom house, working hard every day to pay for his house, taking his children to school — but he’s just another person nobody knows.”

What an insult to all us average Joes who are doing exactly that. He’s become a victim of his own celebrity. It’s sad. Oprah weakly challenges him with “Do you still like being known?” but lets him off the hook when he answers with “There’s a reason I’m known – to bring people to Allah, to God.”

He’s got the right religious words, but he doesn’t seem to have gotten the message.