On Connectedness

I was thinking today about John Cage’s 4’33” and the access every person has to insight, intelligence, and inward beauty, but about the role of relatedness, as well.

There has been so much talk over the past several years about individuals’ need to feel heard; but I’ve wondered whether this is a misnomer.

If it is true that each of us recognizes on a certain level that it is our eternal qualities and identities that constitute all that really matters about us, why would there be value to listening to one another at all? While many people believe that, in fact, there is no value in it, I still wonder whether there is ground to be gained for us all in more consciously including one another in recognition of each person’s unique and irreplaceable identity.

I do believe media organizations can play a very important part in making such collaboration possible; and while I by no means feel like I am alone in having ideas about ways to make these better, after my experience feeling so trapped (after loving my early years) at CNN, I sometimes feel like I am practically the only one who knows important information (specifically regarding CNN’s handling of women’s rights in at least some cases), and, given how significant media corporations’ influence on the world has continued to become, this can feel like a heavy weight. While I could very certainly be wrong, it appears, to my view at least, that in the last year alone thousands of people, for example, have been killed owing largely to a senseless delay in any meaningful, solution-oriented dialogue about stock market-augmented journalism corporations’ seemingly increasing hegemony over the country and its foreign policy decisions.

On the Climb

I looked today through several family photo albums and came across a Separation Qualification Record detailing a number of positions my maternal grandfather held for the U.S. Army during World War II; and I was reminded of the story (one of very few I have heard) of his experience in France.

On D-Day, as he and his comrades arrived on the beach at Normandy, my grandfather’s boat would not open to release the soldiers inside. It is hard for me to imagine how they all – heroes – must have felt in that moment and what must have been going through my Pop’s mind, especially given his, I imagine, terrifying assignment as a heavy machine gunner.

Especially after looking through lifetimes of photographs of love, of joy, of life, and family, not to mention the factor of millions by which this can be multiplied given the magnitude of the populations – present and future – his unit so selflessly protected – the weight that lay on him at that moment was stunning; and I believe he felt it.

But he had an important role and, is always the case for every one of us, he was the only one who could fulfill his individual responsibility. What could he do?

I realize there is very little relationship between the battle facing those attempting to raise the question of corporate media business models – a battle of ideas and words, against other concepts and words (not ever people) – and the monumental physical fight the protectors of 1944 faced. Still, I thank God today my grandfather climbed out.