The choice

“Deep down, he’s really superficial.”

-- Dorothy Parker about
Ernest Hemingway

I don't follow leaders, and I watch the parking meters, as advised over 40 years ago by Bob Dylan himself, so you can be sure that I'll be the last cat to steer you in the direction of some television preacher, guru du jour, or a motivational speaker. I thought I saw the essence of motivational speaking a couple of decades ago on public television, in the person of a motivator whose selling spiel was a story of how for a long time he had been a lost man barely subsisting in some American city, before he saw the proverbial light and got motivated to become... guess what, a physicist, computer programmer, teacher, journalist, doctor, lawyer? No, folks, motivated to become a motivational speaker! That was the bloke's entire resume, presented to motivate ourselves to do something with our lives! I remember flipping the channels.

That said, there is one fellow I've come to admire, having at first dismissed him as another one of those. He's been around for 30 or so years, has written numerous books, conducts seminars all over the country, produces occasional programs for public television, that are shown usually during membership pledge times, like the concerts of the forgotten 1960s teenage heartthrobs, now aching and balding, when the local stations beg the viewers for money and more money every month from then on. (I flip the channels at those times, too!)

The reason I like this man is that, as I've seen over the years, he has gone deeper than the usual motivational speaker banalities and cliches, has reached to the ancient texts and to religious and literary sources of wisdom, and has become, for lack of a better term, a sort of popular philosopher. He's no Mortimer Adler, that's for sure (another author to look up), but he comes close enough.

His name is Dr. Wayne Dyer. Check him out. I don't buy everything he says, and I'm not qualified to write a summary of his teachings, as there is plenty information (as well as some controversy) about him on the Internet.

All of the above as an introduction to a thought I have been meditating over recently, that, I am told, originated from Dr. Dyer:

"When given the choice between being right or being kind, always choose kind."

Wow! It may not be deep, but it sure is provocative, and, I'd say, a bit discomforting (Feel free to disagree.)

Is this a white flag of surrender? Is this a real or artificial choice? A manifesto of a feminized American male? All these questions came up as I chewed on the sentence over the past month. A short time before hearing it, I did in a manner of speaking choose kindness over rightness to deal with a tough professional problem with personal ramifications, emerging from the experience not exactly unscathed, or much wiser, but alive and kicking, which was better than I or anyone had expected.