Frost's Freedom

Today's inspiration:

Freedom lies in being bold. ~ Robert Frost

from: Senia.com Positive Psychology Coaching

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I Like Ike's Kind of Freedom

Monday night I encountered a surprising bit of wisdom from a fellow I hadn't thought about in a while: Dwight D. Eisenhower.

I was a kid when Ike was president. He's the first prez I remember, and I was not of an age to be very politically minded. Curiously, I had fantasies about him calling me up and asking me to play golf with him. (Deluded child!!)

Second surprise, I was watching Jon Stewart's must-see distinctly-lefty satire-on-the-news Daily Show when I ran into word from this '50s Republican military man.

The guest author Eugene Jarecki was talking about his new book, The American Way of War. He said that Eisenhower, five star general and supreme commaner of the Allied Forces in World War II, warned us in his farewell address of excessive defense. Extreme efforts to ward off intrusion from the outside result in destruction from the inside.

As Jarecki elaborated: the cost of excessive vigilance is enormous and damaging financially--and it erodes civil liberties, the very thing we fight to protect. A pretty good description of the mess we're in now.

We need to take reasonable national precautions and otherwise exercise the same boldness we do by getting up in the morning. It isn't risk-free. We know that. And it's better to accept the risk of getting hit by a car on the way to school than staying home hiding under the bed and not getting an education.

Trying to completely guard ourselves is like trying really hard to broad-jump the Atlantic. No matter how hard we train, we'll wind up in the drink. Better to spend the energy some other way.

I like that philosophy. I think it's the only one that can work. Because total security simply cannot be achieved. No matter how much we spend.

I'm with Ike: let's take the reasonable and necessary risks that freedom requires. And no more.








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James Taylor Making Music in Carolina

James Taylor -- the real one, not a recording -- is singing outside my office window as I write this.

Taylor is a local boy--we claim him--who is giving concerts to celebrate Obama. I don't need to tell you who Taylor is. Everybody knows. Years ago in India, I stopped at a one-table restaurant next to the Ganges. Three rangy twenty-something guys were sitting in three of the four chairs at that table. I sat down at the fourth.

Turned out that they were from Argentina and were working in Italy and had come to India on vacation. I said I was from the U.S.

"Where?" one asked

"Outside Chapel Hill."

One of them responded by singing a line of "Going to Carolina in my Mind." I smile now to think of it, how that pulled home and India, and Italy and Argentina together for me in an instant.

This morning, when I first heard Taylor's silky voice through the window glass, it was well before the concert hour. My office partner Carrie Knowles and I walked the two-and-a-fraction blocks down to the square. Taylor and his crew were doing their soundcheck an hour or so before the performance.

It turned into an intimate performance, with him singing "Suzanne," etc. and occasionally stopping to get an adjustment in "tracking." People had gathered, but it was still possible to get close, for him to chat with audience members only yards away.

I remember hearing him live back when he was a young long-hair, as was I at the time. That has been more than thirty-five years. His voice, singing the same songs, brings then and now together.

(Oh, he just started into "You've Got a Friend," a great campaign song)

Just now in the park, watching his hands close-up riffing on that old-style guitar-- It was like watching a Zen master performing a ritual done countless times. The automatic straight-from-nature half-aware look of his performance made me think of the truism: that it takes 10,000 hours of practice before we become good at our art.

He's good. And I'm now back at my desk typing; couldn't spare time to go to the whole concert, but it's floating through my window, inspiring both perseverance and ease.

That ease with the music that's grooved into his brain: that can free an artist to be bold.

Carrie went back for the formal concert, took this picture; she could no longer get close enough to see who was singing. But there was no question whose inimitably distinct voice it was.








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