Birds

What Matters Most…… Commentary by Jim High

I was only about ten years old, but I remember killing Lewis like it was yesterday.  Lewis was our family’s Parakeet, and like any pet, we all considered him a member of the family.  After playing most of the morning with my BB gun, shooting at almost everything until it ran out of BBs, I was called in for lunch.  Lunch at our house in 1950’s was a sit down affair with the whole family present.  It was a time before television, pre-packaged food, fast food or take out, and drive through windows had yet to be invented.  I don’t think I actually went out to a restaurant to eat a meal until I went away to college.

But this is about the death of Lewis, not how old I am.  After I finished lunch, I jumped up and got my BB gun and stood in the front hall announcing to my entire family still sitting at the table in the dining room that I was going to shoot Lewis.   They could all see me clearly through the double doors between the front hall and the dining room.  It was summertime and with no air conditioning the front door was open with just the screen door between me and Lewis’ cage hanging on one of the columns on our big front porch.  Now, of course, I didn’t intend to kill our family’s Parakeet because the gun had no BBs left in it.  But I did intend to antagonize my Grandmother, who I knew would think that I had lost my mind.  And right on cue she began to holler, “Jimmy don’t.”

I raised the gun and took careful aim before slowly pulling the trigger.  Everyone could tell the gun had fired, but only I could see that poor Lewis had been hit and fell instantly to the bottom of his cage.  I was stunned and then devastated.  I fell to the floor and began to cry uncontrollably.  The whole family got up and rushed to see what had happened, to me and to Lewis.  The bird was dead with a perfect BB shot right through its little head.  Only my uncontrollable sorrow and my brother’s confirmation that I thought the gun was not loaded saved me from punishment, or worse, some institution for the criminally insane.

That afternoon when we were all calmed down, and had corrected the rumors in the neighborhood about me killing Lewis, the boy who was my friend and lived up the street, we buried Lewis, the Parakeet, in a matchbox in the back yard.  Lewis wasn’t our family’s first Parakeet, but he was our last.  We just couldn’t have enjoyed another bird in a cage after that horrible day.

Now that I’m all grown up, I have come to understand that birds probably don’t like living their lives in little cages.  Scientist now think birds probably evolved from the dinosaurs.  Isn’t that strange, stranger even that me announcing to my family that I was going to kill Lewis and then actually doing it. 

Have you ever really thought about all the many birds you see every day?  They live among us, build their nest, raise and feed their young, and find food and water every day.  The migration of birds with the seasons is a miracle in itself.  How do the birds stay warm when it is bitter cold outside?  Birds always seem to know where to go and how to live their lives.  Maybe we should pay more attend to the birds; they could teach us lots of things.

What matters most...... is the direction, purpose and meaning for our lives that we can learn from observing, not just the birds, but the whole natural world that is all around us.  I believe that Nature has put the same instincts into our lives that exist in the birds, and all the other animals on the earth.  What we need to do is become more aware of the world in which we live and of our own internal instincts, and then use those instincts to give our lives direction, meaning and purpose.

                                                                © 2008 #20   Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Oneness

What Matters Most……… Commentary by Jim High

Sometime during the 1990’s I attended an Economic Conference in Memphis, TN, to hear Jim Barksdale talk about this new company called Netscape, and something called the Internet.  During that speech he made a most remarkable statement that I have never forgotten.  He said, “The Internet will change the world more than the invention of the printing press.”  Most of us in the room that day didn’t even know what the Internet was and, of course, were not using it.  I didn’t even own a computer at that time.

Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1439, and began work on that now famous Gutenberg Bible in 1450.  By 1455 he had completed an estimated 200 copies of the Bible.  Before that time, books had to be hand copied by scribes, and no two turned out exactly alike.  Books were only for the wealthy and the church, because only a few people could read and even less could afford to own a hand copied book.

But here’s the real explosion of knowledge caused by the invention of the printing press.  In only a little over 50 years, printing presses were established in 2,500 cities throughout Europe and 15,000,000 books representing 30,000 titles had been printed.  Of course, today we have Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble Bookstores, and billions of books.  How could something I knew nothing about and didn’t understand change the world more than this?

The Internet has a long history, probably going all the way back to a science-fiction comic book from 1946 that laid out how it might work along with its strengths and weaknesses.  And we all now know that Vice President Al Gore really didn’t invent the Internet, even though he is supposed to have said once that he did.  But during the 1990’s a lot of things came together and the Internet was created.  The Internet is just what its name implies.  It is a network of lots of computer networks and systems all talking to each other with a shared understandable language.

During the early part of 2008 Oprah Winfrey teamed up with Eckhart Tolle to host a worldwide live Internet seminar about his book, A New Earth.  A friend and I met every Monday night for ten weeks to read, to listen, to watch and to participate in the discussion of the chapters of this book.  The worldwide audience grew to over one million people, and we could watch as people from all over the world asked questions and got answers.  That was surely the largest classroom event ever.  And it gave both of us a special feeling to know that people just like us were gathered in front of their computers, and like us were learning and hearing the discussion all at the same time. 

As of June 30, 2008, an estimated 1.463 billion people use the Internet.  Yes, the Internet is truly changing the world more than the invention of the printing press.  And right before our eyes.  Jim Barksdale was correct.

What matters most is that through this radical change now taking place in our world, we have the opportunity to bring about the oneness and connection between all the people of the world that has always been present, but not recognized until now.   And the realization of our oneness with each other will ultimately create a positive change in our personal lives, our communities, and our nation. And this change is happening in all nations for all of the world’s population.

                                                            © 2008 #14  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Connections

What Matters Most…     Commentary by Jim High

You can never look at the Grand Canyon long enough.  Have you ever been there?  I have on several occasions.   One time when I was there it was filled from rim to rim with clouds.  They were not above it, the day was actually clear with not a cloud in the sky, the clouds had all settled into the canyon as if someone had filled it up with whipped cream.  It was really strange to look at something so huge and not be able to see it.

But every time I have actually seen the Grand Canyon and been able to look down into it, I get a real sense of connection to time – to the Universe itself.  And when I think I have seen it all and turn away, I immediately realize that I have not looked at it nearly long enough.  Besides the feelings of grandeur and the immense beauty that go with me when I finally do have to leave, I take with me this real feeling deep down inside that I have not looked at it nearly long enough.

There is a huge meteor crater in northern Arizona, created some 50,000 years ago when something large from outer space crashed into the earth.  Have you been there?  On my one trip to this site, I stood on the rim and looked across this miles wide hole in the ground.  I gazed up at the sky and thought about that day long ago and what it must have been like.  The connection I felt to the Universe standing there on the edge was as strong a connection to space and time as I have ever experienced in my life.

Have you ever been to Australia?  I went in 1975 for a month to visit an exchange student who had spent the previous year in Tupelo.  She invited me, so I went.  I flew 18 hours with only a brief stop in Hawaii.  I didn’t even get off the plane until it landed in Sidney, which is on the bottom on the world, compared to the top half where Tupelo is located.  I took a tour of the city and a wonderful harbor cruise before flying out that night to Dubbo, New South Wales, where my friend and her family lived about 200 miles northwest of Sidney.  That whole first day in Australia I felt upside down, like I was standing on my head or pointing in the wrong direction, which actually I was considering where I had started.  It was a physical feeling of being out of sorts.  Everything looked the same, no different than if had I flown to New York City or over the Atlantic to London, but it sure felt different and upside down to me.

Now I know that most everyone has stood on the shore of an ocean at least once in their lives.  And I know that you felt that same tug or pull of something that is hard to put into words, a connection of some kind, a sense of belonging, of being home.  Did you know that your blood plasma, minus its cells, is chemically indistinguishable from sea water?  No wonder we always have these feelings as we stand in awe and look at the enormous expanse of ocean before us.  The feeling is the same no matter on which ocean beach you stand, and I’ve stood and looked at almost all of them.

What matters most about all of this is that we, the human animal, need to become aware of our connections to Creation, to the Universe itself, because we are a part of it and these connections are all around us all the time.  When you understand these connections, you better understand life.

© 2008 #2 Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Friends

What Matters Most……Commentary by Jim High

Last weekend one of my special friends arrived back in Tupelo for his 30^th High School Reunion all the way from Sweden.  Jonas was a Rotary Club Exchange Student from Helsingborg, Sweden, during the 1980-81 Tupelo High School year, and was a guest in my home for two months of the year he lived in Tupelo with various Rotary Club members and other families.  That began a friendship that continues to this day. 

Jonas has returned to Tupelo several times over these thirty years, and I have been to Sweden to visit him and met his brother and sister, as well as his Mother and Father, who have also visited Tupelo more than once during these thirty years.  When Jonas married, I and two others from Tupelo attended his wedding in Sweden.  I’ve also visited with Jonas and Cecilia while then lived in Paris and in London.  Once I flew over to spend just a weekend with Jonas and Cecilia who were living in Brussels, Belgium, at the time.  All that’s left will be to visit Stockholm again to see Jonas and Cecilia’s three children.

However, Jonas is not my only international friend, not even my only Swedish friend.  Lars, who now lives in Luxembourg and works for the World Bank, was also a Swedish exchange student who spent a year in Tupelo.  Back in the late 1980’s I visited Lars in Stockholm, and then we traveled through Europe together by train.

Rotary’s first two exchange students were from Australia, and in 1975 I went to Australia to visit them.  In 1979 I visited a girl from France who had come to Tupelo as part of the advance team with the “Up With People” singing group that preformed in Tupelo.  My traveling companion and I stayed with her and her family for several days. 

In the late 1960’s I met a young Filipino girl while taking a Gray Line bus tour of Chicago.  She was traveling alone all over the United States.  We sat together on the all day tour of Chicago.  She had not planned to go to New Orleans, but I convinced her that seeing the Big Easy was a must.  We later stayed in touch by mail.  And I found out that she had indeed changed her itinerary and loved New Orleans.  When my family attended the World’s Fair in Japan in 1970, I arranged the trip so we could go to Manila to see her and her family.

On a trip in 1986 to Nairobi, Kenya, I took a three day safari to see the big game animals with a private driver in a small white van.  We got to know our guide very well, as we were totally dependent on him as we toured the African savannah on dirt tracks to see the animals, as there are no official roads in the huge game parks.  All of my travels have been on independent trips and not on prearranged tours.  And I’ve stayed in many very small hotels and B&B’s where you get to know the people who run them.   

Meeting and getting to know people from all around the world gives you a very different perspective and outlook about the connections that actually bind the whole world and its people together.  You have heard it said that people are alike all over the world, and it’s true.  It’s a valuable lesson and one that you can only learn by experiencing it.

It means you don’t make judgments about people as quickly, because when you get to know them and see how they live, you come to understand them.  And understanding another person and another culture makes you realize that maybe we Americans are not the world’s greatest people.  You find out that the world’s people are much more alike than they are different.

What Matters Most…….Anybody can be your friend when you realize that everyone everywhere actually wants and desires your friendship.  If you accept people for who they are, where they are, they will also accept you in return.  Friends make life wonderful and meaningful.  I have a new friend on Facebook who lives in Izhevsk, Udmurt, Russia.  I’d like to meet him in person.  Someday I’ll find a way to make that happen.

“To know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and, though distant, is close in spirit..…this makes earth for us an inhabited garden.”  ---Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

© 2011 #12  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Worldview

What Matters Most……Commentary by Jim High

What is your current worldview?  Do you even realize that you have a worldview, and that it affects the way you see the world, what you think and how you act?  Does your worldview change with new information and new knowledge?  Should it?

These are all valid questions for discussion.  Let’s start with Nicholas Copernicus, who was a German astronomer, and the first person to formulate a comprehensive view of cosmology, which displaced the Earth from the center of the Universe.  This occurred a little less than 500 years ago, Copernicus died in 1543, and the worldview of the human race changed, maybe for the first time.  And it has been rapidly changing ever since.

By worldview I mean the way you see your world.  Not just the Earth or the Universe, but the way you see you neighborhood, city, state, nation and all the people of the world.  From the problems we experience in relations between people, governments, corporations and the world community of nations, it is obvious that all of us are not on the same page when it comes to how we view the world.

You develop your worldview through study, knowledge of history, and your own personal observations.  In 1975 I had a chance to confirm with my own eyes that the Earth is not flat as everyone thought before Copernicus’ monumental discovery.  I was on a trip organized by our state insurance association to visit Lloyd’s of London, and on the way home our group of about 40 people on the 747 airplane were all getting VIP treatment from the flight attendants. 

In twos and threes we were allowed to go up to the cockpit of the 747 for a visit.  This meant climbing the stairs to the upper level of the plane that contained the First Class lounge and the cockpit with the pilot, the co-pilot and the navigator.  They showed us the various instruments and let us ask all the questions we wanted.  This was, of course, way before the events of 9/11 that have made this kind of thing impossible.  But what interested me most was the view out the front window of the cockpit.  We were flying at about 38,000 feet, over seven miles high, and you could actually see the curvature of the earth out in front of you.  I didn’t have to see this with my own eyes to believe the truth of what Copernicus had revealed to mankind, but it was beautiful to see.  I can close my eyes and see it still.

Another worldview changing even occurred on July 20, 1969, when Neal Armstrong first set foot on the moon.  I watched this event on TV, as anyone alive at the time did.  We don’t have video of Christopher Columbus setting foot on what was for him a new world, but we all know about it never the less.  And now anyone who goes out most any night can track the progress of satellites across the night sky. 

Your worldview must keep changing in light of all the progress and the discoveries we are making about our world.  And yes, your worldview does affect the way you think and the actions you take.  Consider this, every word written in the Bible was written by people who had the worldview that the Earth was the center of the Universe, and that it was flat.  Would you consider using a medical doctor who only had the training and education of a physician from ancient times?  Yet we have let our religions, developed in ancient times, influence our worldview for today’s times.  To say nothing of Charles Darwin’s discovery of evolution that he presented to the world in 1859.  Another worldview changing event, I might add.

What Matters Most…….If you really want to expand your worldview, consider this fact.  In only a little more than a 100 years every person alive today on the face of the Earth will be dead and gone.  Oh, there will still be people, billions and billions of them, but it won’t be any of us that are here now.  That one thought should change your worldview.  It has changed mine.

© 2010 #13  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467 / highjim@gmail.com / (662) 401-1932

What's Going On?

What Matters Most…….….Commentary by Jim High

Sunday is my favorite TV day of the week.  It starts at 8 AM with Sunday Morning on CBS.  For over 25 years it has provided TV’s best and most interesting coverage of events, the arts, entertainment, fashion and personalities.  It’s like a wonderful magazine come to life.  Then Global Public Square at noon on CNN with its lineup of informative guests that you don’t see on the other talk and opinion shows, and I finish up with 60 Minutes on CBS at 6 PM with their stories that get to the truth behind the news.

Recently on the Global Public Square, Fareed Zakaria’s Sunday program on CNN, one of his guests said that he couldn’t understand why the people are not marching in the streets upset with the Wall Street financial institutions that are stronger, more powerful, and richer than before the economic meltdown caused by the recent recession that these very banks and financial institutions caused by manipulating home mortgages.  

I don't know what will be the spark that will shift the coming change in the consciousness of the American middle class, but it is bound to come.  When the top 5 to 10% of the people in this country control 80% of the wealth, when a few people on one side of town earn tens of millions of dollars and many thousands on the other side of town live from minimum wage or slightly higher paycheck to paycheck, something has to give.  It always does, history proves it over and over.

But, I think, there are two powerful things going on not just one, and neither of them is good.  One is of course money, the battle between the very rich and the vast majority of American who are the working middle class.  The rich are winning right now.  For almost 40 years the laws have been changing in their favor.  We were sold a bill of goods that if the rich did well and were given favors, the money they made would trickle down to the rest of society lifting everyone up.  But it has not happened.  They got richer and richer, while the rest of us got poorer and poorer.

When people want food and can't afford it, when gasoline goes above $5 a gallon people can’t afford to drive to work, and when many have lost their jobs entirely as corporations moved those jobs to cheap labor elsewhere, they will begin to march in the streets and in other more unpleasant ways begin to fight the rich, the powerful and the huge corporations who have unjustly gained way more than their share of the American dream.  We see it happening in the streets of the Middle East right now.

But the other force that is out there is the "take our country back" group.  These white Americans think this is their country and they don’t like seeing Blacks, Mexicans, Asians and other foreigners in growing numbers here in what was “White America.”  This war has already started in the State Legislatures as they pass new and much more restrictive immigration laws designed to favor white Americans over everyone else. 

Religion is also certainly a factor in both of these problem areas and in the end may be the only real solution.  It is a fact of history that empires, corporations, businesses, families, and all kinds of entities have to crash and burn before they start to get better.

What Matters Most………It is the getting better that we need to think about.  And that is where religion comes in.  We can no longer afford for all Christian religions to claim to be in the same boat.  We must call out the wrong thinking, the ancient thinking, for what it is.  WRONG AND ANCIENT.  We need new language about our beliefs that recognizes a 21st Century world.  We need to accept that we live in a different world connected at every level, and that all the people of the world are in the same boat.  A boat named Earth.  We need to acknowledge that all religions have value if they encourage love, care, compassion and justice.  And the enlightened among us and among the many religions need to speak up and speak out about right living, about justice, about balance and about love, care, and concern for all people everywhere.  Only this will save us from new wars in the streets, not just in the Middle East, but right here in America.  The clock is ticking.  

© 2011 #4  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Change

What Matters Most………….                  Commentary by Jim High

My two Grandmothers taught me a lot about change.  Oh, they didn’t say “Now pay attention, this will be a change.”  In fact, while they were alive I didn’t realize the changes that they had experienced.  Grandmother High was born in 1874 before the invention of the automobile.  As I think back now, I never heard her talk about those days.  But I do clearly remember sitting with her in front of the TV in 1968 as our astronauts circled the moon on Christmas Eve night.  In one life time she experienced going from no automobiles to space travel.  She died at 94 before Neal Armstrong stepped out on to the surface of the moon becoming the first person to leave earth and walk on another object in the Universe.

Grandmother High never flew in an airplane.  But, my Grandmother Boggan did once in her life.  She was born in 1890 before the Wright Brothers took the first flight at Kitty Hawk, NC.   In 1974 our state insurance association organized a trip to visit Lloyd’s of London.  I decided to take my Mother and Grandmother, since like me neither of them had been to London.  I don’t think Grandmother Boggan had ever been outside of the State of Tennessee, except to Tupelo to visit us.

I will never forget the experience of standing with her in front of Buckingham Palace on a bright sunny day to watch the changing of the guard.  She was like a little girl at Christmas time.  She said that she never in her wildest dreams would have expected to be standing on that spot.  I imagine she never expected to live until she was 12 days from being 100 either. 

Two very full lifetimes full of constant change.  Without meaning to they taught me to always accept change, to not be afraid of it, and to always take advantage of it.  Now that I am getting old enough to look back on my own life, I can easily see the advantage of this lesson, so perfectly exemplified in the lives of my two Grandmothers.

When I started my insurance career we had no fax machine, no cell phones, and no computers.  We did have a copying machine of a sort.  You put a piece of pink tissue like paper over your document and ran both through the machine.  Then you put the pink tissue on another kind of special paper and ran it back through the machine and the image was transferred.  We didn’t make many copies; it was just too much trouble.  Our calculator was a manual contraption where you put in one number, and then pressed a lever the number of times that equaled the other number.  It’s too complicated to explain further, you had to see it in operation to really understand how it worked.

So I bought two electric calculators the first month they were available.  Each one cost over $500 and my competitors in the insurance business around the state thought I had lost my mind.  We got a fax machine and a Xerox copier, and I was the second agent in the state to convert my bookkeeping to computers.  We had to send everything off to be processed, in Texas I think, but we got back meaningful computer generated reports and monthly statement.  Immediate acceptance of these changes and modernizations helped my business to grow and made life easier for my employees.

What matters most is to understand that change is you friend, not your enemy.  Change is going to happen whether you accept and embrace it or not.  You are so much better off if you find a way to incorporate change into all areas of your life.  This is the most valuable lesson I learned from my Grandmothers, and they didn’t even know they were teaching me.  And there is a lesson in that also. Someone is always watching and learning from what you are doing right now.