I’ve been
getting similar sunrise happiness feelings watching this years’ version of the
Golden State Warriors play basketball.
They play stellar defense. They
move the ball with purpose and quickness. All the players – even the stars -- are
unselfish, they share the basketball, they work hard, they work together, and
they believe in each other. They are
good. They have a lot of fun. And they are winning. It doesn’t always work,
but when it does all come together it’s fun and uplifting to watch. Warriors
Coach, Steve Kerr, has been promoting this style of basketball ever since he
became the head coach of the Warriors back in 2014. The mindset of the team flows from Kerr’s
four core values: Joy, Mindfuless,
Compassion, and Competition.
I
usually start my day with coffee and end it with red wine. I have a wine barrel stave that is painted with this saying: "life is what happens between coffee and wine." These delightful beverages book-end my day
with joy and comfort. Pick me up in the
morning, settle me down in the evening. Sunrise,
sunset. Sunrise, sunset. I probably overdo the coffee. I have two or three cups of black coffee,
then take a hot shower and walk down to our local coffee spot, Tahoe House, and
get a double shot medium latte and a fresh pastry. Now that double shot latte is a pure cup of
joy.
Last
Thursday, exactly a week before Thanksgiving, I drove down to Madera, in the
central San Joaquin Valley of California, for a business meeting. I left before sunrise, stopped at Tahoe House
for my usual cup of joy, and headed down the mountain. From Tahoe City, before you head down the
mountain you meander 13 scenic miles along the Truckee River to pick up the
I-80 in Truckee. Heading west on
Interstate 80 from Truckee, before you can head down the mountain, you have to
climb up to Donner Summit. Heading west
up the mountains between Donner Lake and Donner Summit I watched the sun rise
over the mountains behind me, lighting up the valley cradling Donner Lake. A few miles later I crested over Donner
Summit, and lost the sun as I started downhill toward Sacramento. Twenty minutes later, as I was coming up on
Big Bend, I saw a second sunrise cresting over Donner Summit and lighting up
the western slope of the Sierra Nevada.
But after I passed Big Bend I got down in a trough heading Southwest
toward Colfax and lost the sun again.
Just before I got to Colfax, I saw the sun rise for a third time over my
left shoulder out my driver's side window.
Not all sunrises are created equal, but every sunrise is a thrill of
light and hope and possibilities. This
day I got three sunrises with my cup of joy.
Wow. That’s a good day.
But
the joyful, happy feelings, powerful as they were, didn’t last too long. Just before Auburn the road descended into
heavy fog that persisted all the way down to Sacramento. Around Roseville I started seeing homeless
camps all along the freeway, along fences, fields and underpasses. Almost all of the homeless encampments were
ramshackle and full of trash. I’m not
talking about the people, which at sunrise I didn’t see too many of, but about
the proliferation of garbage. Paper
bags, plastic bags, bottles, cans, containers, fast food wrappers, shopping
carts, abandoned clothes and shoes. Just
a lot of garbage. So depressing to see
so many homeless encampments – representing so many people unable to afford to
live in a real house or apartment. So
depressing to see such awful conditions and so much garbage. I thanked God for the blessings of my life
and the plenty in my life. I can’t
imagine being homeless, but if I was, I believe I would at least want to have a
neat and clean and tidy homeless camp.
When
you come to the Watt Avenue exit off the westbound I-80 you see the Haggin Oaks
Golf Course on your right out on the north side of the freeway. I looked over and saw a flock of wild turkeys
out on one of the fairways, and a couple of Toms in the flock had their tail
feathers fully arrayed. We can assume
this flock was all Toms, since I am informed that, in the fall, male turkeys
flock together and female turkeys flock together, but usually they don’t mix. https://blog.nature.org/science/2017/11/21/the-fascinating-fall-behavior-of-wild-turkeys/ Also, generally only the males will fan
their tail feathers. https://askinglot.com/do-female-turkeys-fan-their-tail-feathers So this was probably just a normal gathering
of male turkeys strutting their stuff on the golf course.
It struck me as
ironic, though, that a week before Thanksgiving, with homeless people all around,
and almost certainly, a number of them not having enough to eat, that here on
the golf course near them, a rafter of wild turkeys was cavorting unmolested.
Before
we moved to Lake Tahoe I bought a hybrid Honda Accord. The car is rated to get up to 48 miles per
gallon. My plan was to have a car that
we could take on road trips and to have a car that was more ecologically
responsible than my gas-guzzling Ford F-150 4x4
pickup. I still need the truck, but I drive the hybrid Honda when I’m
not needing a truck or a 4x4. I am
concerned and anxious about climate change and global warming. The effects and evidence of climate change
are undeniable and, frankly, frightening. I thought of the terrible wildfires and wildfire smoke that have been getting worse each year, plaguing us every summer from July to September. So when traffic slowed to a crawl through Sacramento, and I was
surrounded by thousands of carbon coughing cars and trucks on the morning commute, I was thinking: Shit! This environmental suicide is taking place all around the world every
single day. Morning and evening. We are doomed!
We are killing the planet that sustains us. We are like a cancer slowly killing our host. I feel sorry for
my kids and the next generations following us, and I am a little ashamed that I
have been an unwitting, and also a knowing, contributor to this f-ing disaster
and planet-wide ecological suicide.
Every week now I read articles about where you can move to if you want
to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. Of course, options like this will only be available
to the rich. So in the future, we will
have even more homeless and miserable people -- some economically displaced,
and some ecologically displaced.
I
continued to see many homeless encampments all the way down through Sacramento
and the San Joaquin Valley. All dismal
and disorganized and depressing and ramshackle with tents and tarps and
garbage. Then, around Lodi, I passed one
encampment that was organized and neat and free of garbage. Seeing it was like a breath of fresh air in a
Covid world; like a hopeful sunrise after a dark night. I thought, if I am ever homeless, these are
the kind of homeless people I want to associate with. I mean, how hard is it to pick up the garbage
surrounding you so you don’t have to live in the middle of it? I used to preach this to my employees; you
don’t have to, and in fact you can’t, solve all the problems of the world; but
every day you should do at least one thing to make your life and your environment
better. It doesn’t take much time or
effort, and doesn’t have to cost anything.
I
resolved to stop at a Starbucks in Lodi for another cup of joy – the good ol’
double tall latte. The Starbucks parking
lot I stopped at was packed with uniformed police officers. I overheard that they were gathering for the
funeral of a fallen co-worker. I thought
of my favorite scene from the Harry Potter movies. It’s near the end of the Deathly Hallows:
Part 2, where Voldemort and the death eaters are presenting a dead Harry Potter
to the remnants of the resistance group outside of Hogwarts school, and
Voldemort invites them to “join us or die.”
Unlikely hero Neville Longbottom limps forward and says: “It doesn’t matter. People die every day. Friends, family. Yeah, we lost Harry
tonight. But he’s still with us-in
here.” (motioning to his heart) It’s true; People do die every day.
The
Harry Potter books (movies) are a classic kind of tale about the struggle
between good and evil. In this context, good wants what is best for all and
evil only wants what is best for the evil ones. It seems to me that, in my
lifetime, and particularly over the past 20 years or so, the people of the
United States have become more divided, more polarized, and more uncivil. Despite a lot of flag-waving and talk about
“this great country,” it sometimes seems like this great country is falling apart.
People seem to
be redefining good and evil as, if you believe like me, you are good; if you
don’t, you are evil. We have flipped the
definitions of good and evil around to define good as wanting what is best for me.
If we see you as evil, we don’t feel any compulsion to act civilly
toward you, or to actually be good in regard to our own actions
in dealing with you. Driven, in part, by
the algorithms of social media, we have fallen into the trap of group think,
and we have become inwardly focused, selfish and self-centered. We no longer have empathy or compassion for
others who are not like us. It seems to
me that what we need to bring the U.S. back together is a good war. I always like to say, if you want people to
get along and work together, you have to give them a common enemy. I used this psychology on my own daughters
with a high degree of success (I was the common enemy).
Maybe
we could turn things around and still avoid the ugliness of war if we could
just get a good, national leader like Steve Kerr who will coach us all to work
hard, work together, believe in each other, compete hard but also be unselfish,
and to have fun. Maybe we can all be
coached to care about each other and the planet, and through an all-for-one-and-one-for-all approach, and hard work, we can solve seemingly
unsolvable problems like global warming, trash in our environments, poverty and
homelessness.
It’s
Thanksgiving, dammit!! Damn meanness and incivility. Damn laziness and selfishness. Damn trash and global warming. Damn homelessness and hunger. Damn wildfires and wildfire smoke, and damn
the fog. I want clean air and a clean
planet. I want goodness and
niceness. I want everyone to work hard,
work together, and have enough and a good place to live. I want to live a life full of the thrill of
light overcoming darkness; a life of hope and possibilities. I want to live a life of fun and joy. I want to be happy and thankful. Give me three sunrises and a cup of joy, please and thank you.
