Finding Our Center While Bailing Water –
Yes – I know I’m digging up the past a lot …
… but I have been playing catch up.
You see – we have been very busy for at least six months now. Because if not, we would have to either return to punching someone’s clock or slipping into oblivious hardship.
The inevitable business cycles are good for making us sharpen our pencils!
The good news is – our infrastructure is really shaping up and it is very satisfying. But the bad news is that spending most of my time on the creative side is not a luxury I could afford over the last several months. Even the holidays had to take a back seat. But aren’t we all in the same boat right now bailing water?
Now we can step back at look at the glory of all that sweat and coding has gotten us. And it is magnificent! I am pleased – and it is also a pleasure to have such a smart team on my side who also happens to be immediate family members.
Ah – the joys of a computer scientist wife cannot be put into words. But without a wing-nut, the bean counters would most certainly starve! I relish those confused looks only to be praised later for brilliant insight :-)
I have been receiving a lot of calls lately inviting me to travel and speak to groups. There may be something in that. Stay tuned.
But for now – another revisited essay from some of my spilled ink in the wee hours of 2008:
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“Finding Our Center As A Nation”
An essay on Liberty by Tony Rollo
We live in a great nation. Not only great in strength and ability from most American Citizens, but also great in territory. Our nation is great in not only physical space but also in mind and spirit.
For the most part our people are down the center. In the middle of the road. True peace lay in the center. The easiest path to the Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness is in the center of the road. A well traveled path. Our Founders understood this when they formed Our Constitution. Our Nation’s Founders bore the difficulties to blaze this trail so the future generations would not have to.
At the same time we can appreciate those who seek to extend this road. Our trailblazers, innovators and those pioneers who got scalped in the wild. This is the Spirit of America. We can appreciate those who question, reason, experiment and innovate because it is the true freedom through Liberty which allows and accommodates honest inquiry.
Most Americans may not be eloquent enough to express their Liberty in their own words, but they can feel and exercise the freedom of the American Way that Liberty provides. Our Freedom Of Speech is but one example. People are free to speak their minds and hearts. How else can we balance the center without knowing the weight at the opposite ends?
There are opposing views to how our government should govern. Debate is good. It is the basis for our two party system. We can watch as the political professionals duke it out in the public arena. After the public balances that debate, they can vote their own conscious with confidence.
However, there are those who seek to pull us from the center. Even those who seek to use skewed ideas, rhetoric, and even force to divide us. They take a theory and put “ISM” behind it. They seek to steal our freedom by chipping or even blasting away at the very foundations of Liberty. If they can’t simply force control, then they infiltrate, deceive, amend, abridge, diminish, coerce and divide.
Our ingenious system of two parties with the checks and balances built upon a solid constitution affords Liberty to the public who merely desire to live in peace and seek prosperity in their own way. We have a duty to recognize those who wish to create a stormy existence and pull us off the center into the rough of one extreme or the other.
The concept of Liberty, our American Constitution and our very homes are sanctuaries to these storms and the rhetoric of those who seek to control and abolish our hard earned Liberty. This is the same Liberty that was won by the sacrifices of our Founding Fathers and continue to be won by brave American citizens even today. The ones who seek to control a free people not only despise the opposing and competing ISMs, they especially despise those Americans who choose to choose. Choice is part of the very foundation of our America.
Where does true peace live? Where does Liberty shield those who thirst for freedom or wish to maintain freedom? The destructive storms from those who oppose Liberty are not unlike one of the most powerful storms found in nature.
It is sometimes best to illustrate higher concepts into every day examples or natural occurrences. What better way to understand the political and social storms imposed on people who love and understand Liberty than to look to the storms in the natural world?
A hurricane is one, big circle of storms. We can see this in our modern times because we can see from far above. Our “eyes” can be positioned from high above the earth to see the big picture of our planet’s weather and its movements. We can see the storm coming and prepare.
Imagine experiencing a hurricane at ground level in a time before we had eyes in the skies. You never saw it coming until it was upon you. Hurricanes were only known by name after the fact. They are a fierce and destructive monster pulling everything in one direction.
My grandmother lived through the great hurricane that ravaged Miami, Florida in 1935. People sought shelter in the Miami train station which was a long, block building with open ends where the railroad tracks ran through. The great wind and rains raced through the building as people clung to the walls as the storm carried debris through the open ended building like bullets from an machine gun. Many were injured and some killed as my grandmother witnessed in horror.
But then as sudden as an unexpected sneeze, the storm subsided. Not only subsided, it was suddenly a perfect day other than the tremendous destruction left in the storm’s wake. People began to emerge from hiding. Some began picking up the debris or looking for missing people and pets. An elderly lady in a corner house was still inside rocking in her rocking chair although her house had been pushed halfway off its foundation.
Then, just as sudden as this peace had began, the monster reached out once again. Just as fierce as before, but now in a completely opposite direction. Now many more people were killed as they were caught in the open. An utter surprise because in their perception, they could never imagine two storms such as these appearing in the same day.
As my grandmother was too frightened to emerge with the others and begged people to be careful, the winds, water and debris came racing through the train station from the opposite direction. Across the way was a young mother with a newborn baby. The mother desperately clung to her baby and the walls of the station. My grandmother witnessed the storm tear the infant from the mother’s loving arms and toss the child into the distance to never be seen again.
These people thought they had experienced two storms. But the eye of the storm had passed through. Because they had no experience or high view of the storm, they had no realization of this eye as a place of peace until the peace was gone and the ravages of the storm ensued.
Imagine how someone living one hundred years ago would scoff at our concept of predicting coming storms. Another mere few generations back and you could find our modern meteorologists burned at the stake for witchcraft and sorcery.
Is it then such a surprise that even today we find those who wish to control or destroy the concept of Liberty? Is it so difficult to imagine people who seek to destroy our Liberty from within our own borders? And to what end? How selfish and dangerous are people who desire to oppose our very freedoms!
The shadow of human regimentation is once again being cast across our lands just as dark clouds cast long shadows from a raging storm on the horizon. As these forces attempt to pull us away from peace we can find shelter by staying in the center. We can stay in the eye of the storm. The “ISMs” seek to control and force us all away from Liberty and the peace Americans seek to maintain.
It is in the center where Liberty dwells. Liberty accommodates. Liberty shelters those who seek to maintain the true peace. Balance comes from the center.
– Tony Rollo / July 2008
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NOTE TO SELF: do not fear the spell checker in the future or get a good editor for a change!
Category: Tony Rollo Blog
