Purposeful Growth

A judge sues his cleaners over a lost pair of suit pants–for $67 million dollars! The cleaners found and returned the pants a week later, but the judge claims they weren’t his.

Subsequently, the cleaners offered a $3,000 settlement, three times the cost of the judge’s entire suit. The judge refuses. The cleaners offer another settlement offer of $12,000; the judge rejects it and now the matter of a $67 million dollar pair of trousers will go to trial. (NBC5.com article of May 2, 2007)

This has to be, among other things, a classic demonstration of cognitive dissonance. The judge refuses to budge from his self-righteous, victim position despite evidence that the situation is resolvable: a) his pants were returned, and b) the cleaners offered a settlement of twelve times the cost of his suit.

The judge steadfastly (stubbornly?) maintains he was wronged, to the tune of millions of dollars. Oh, and included in the judges calculation of damages is a leased car to enable him to drive to a different cleaners.

As if the story itself isn’t humorous enough, author Brenda Layman (Song of Joy, http://www.healmyspirit.com/) penned these hilarious lyrics. Sing along to the tune of Darlin’ Clementine.

Oh, My Trousers

In a country, in a city,
Cleaning spots and pressing suits,
Was a cleaner, from Korea,
Just a guy with Asian roots.

Came a judge with fancy jackets,
Costly suits he wanted clean,
But the cleaner, from Korea
Didn’t know what this would mean.

Oh, my trousers!
Oh, my trousers!
You have ruined my favorite suit!
They are lost and gone forever,
What a chance to grab some loot!

We are sorry, said the cleaner,
We have lost your pair of pants,
But, we will try hard to find them,
If you’ll just give us the chance.

But the judge just couldn’t stand it.
How he’d loved that pair of pants!
Now, his spirit was downtrodden,
And his soul no longer danced.

Oh, my trousers!
Oh, my trousers!
You have ruined my favorite suit!
They are lost and gone forever,
What a chance to grab some loot!

Said the cleaner, to the client,
We have found the pants for you!
Said the client, to the cleaner,
I will still be suing you!

For I loved those special trousers,
They were near and dear to me.
So you owe me several million,
Here in the Land of the Free.

Oh, my trousers!
Oh, my trousers!
You have ruined my favorite suit!
They are lost and gone forever,
What a chance to grab some loot!

Copyright Brenda Layman, 2007

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I’m fed up with violence. A young man goes berserk and rains murder and mayhem on other young people and faculty going about their business of education at Virginia Tech. He probably felt that was the one best way to solve whatever the problem was that overwhelmed him.

Why do people keep choosing this approach to problem solving? Is it human nature? Is it our environment? Our culture?

I’ve resurrected something I wrote a couple of years ago and re-printed it below. I still believe in it.

PEACE

Peace is a state of mind.
Peace is not the absence of war; war cannot exist in a state of peace.
War is not an option for peaceful beings.
Peace is a state of mind, an intention to live peacefully with all beings.

Waging war will never bring peace, just a temporary cessation of war.
The last war fuels and justifies the next war.
The last war teaches hatred, domination, and power.
The last war trains leaders for the next war.

Peace is not without conflict.
Conflict is an unavoidable result of the diversity of human desires.
In a state of peace, conflict is resolved without harm to anyone.
Violence does not resolve conflict—it nourishes it.

Peace is possible when each person, community, state, and country has access to life’s necessities, along with a reasonable opportunity to achieve life’s dream.

You and I can bring peace to the world.
How many hundreds or thousands of beings do I encounter in my lifetime?
How many do I influence with a peaceful state of mind?
How many in turn, does each of them influence?

A culture forms person by person over time.
We built this culture of belief that war is acceptable, justifiable, and appropriate.
You and I built this culture step by step, day by day.
We idolize and glamorize violent behavior, praising and teaching violence through entertainment.
We declare wars on poverty, AIDS, and terrorism.
Poverty, AIDS, and terrorism still exist, proof that war energizes its targets.
War is good for the economy, though we would never harbor war for that reason.
Or would we?

We believe war is natural because we’ve been warring for centuries.
People have always killed other people: that’s just the way it is, we say.
We confuse natural with normal.
Normal means a behavior is prevalent and accepted.
Natural means a behavior is inherent.
It is normal to kill others because we created a violent culture.
It is not natural to kill others, contrary to claims that survival behaviors in nature support this thesis.
Humans do not naturally and inherently need to kill to survive.
We’ve decided to kill to resolve our conflicts.
This is the culture we built.

Tomorrow’s culture begins today.
You and I, acting with love, acceptance, and respect, begin to form tomorrow’s culture.
You and I, acting with vengeance, hatred, bigotry, or greed begin to form tomorrow’s culture.

Which culture shall we shape today?

Another relevant article here.

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