Living for success

A dam in the middle of the desert, a dam to manage the water, dictating where it should go, and to whom, and when, and also using that water for energy, the ultimate in control, accomplished. Yet it seems success is a slippery slope when it comes by way of control. The difference between a demand and a choice.

When the demand for the dam occured, there were many reasons, such as ending the flooding in the Imperial Valley so that this land could be used more effectively for growing crops, as well as to use the hydroelectric energy, powering nearby Las Vegas and outgrowing areas. There was also money to be made by the 5 companies that won the bid to build it, and Southern California could continue growing at its own fast pace. Yet also, the men who were paid the slim wages were now off the streets. It made the country appear as though an economic recovery was taking place.

Yet at the expense of men working a job that went against nature and not necessarily for it? Nevertheless, it was a job that developed character and culture, proving just how mighty men working together really can be, capable of building a monolith.

Presently there's a suggestion to put the unemployed to work on the oil disaster in the gulf. Pay them so much and get as many of them working, and this time, to solve a problem that's gone against nature.

Thus heroes continue to be created, as men continue to work on demand and on behalf of something much bigger than themselves. The rise of success in our post-everything existence, we do what can be done, every one of us, rich or poor, jobless or well etched in a career and we rarely for a moment look beyond the work at hand.

Living for success accomplished with control.

Seeing beyond privacy

Privacy is a thing of the past, so says many. We need strategies to understand and philosophize this phenomenon that has begun with or without us.
While the dam was getting built, men worked side by side every day in elements that were harsh and "unreal." They endured with a kind of camaraderie the way soldiers depend on one another. This is common in many jobs, the "looking after" of other employees, the celebrating small victories on the job together. Privacy then is not an issue but rather privacy is shared.
Can we share with others what we feel might help ourselves/help others? Absolutely.
As the dam got built...so did the workers. As technology increases the capacity for "sharing"...so too our capacity for seeing beyond "privacy".

Bees Do

Bees live an average of three weeks. During this time they are busy making honey. Their workload is heavy and they go nonstop. How much honey do they produce in this time? It takes 12 bees to make 1/4 teaspoon of honey. Yep, only a small sip drip of honey in all three weeks of work. Is it enough? The question is, do we appreciate the hard work it takes to produce what they do?

Sure the queen bee may live for three years outside the three weeks. She may get to know many bees in her time. She is destined to be singled out, revered. Yet it's the worker bees that create her world.

The workers on the dam weren't ashamed of their hard work, day after day, drilling into that solid rock of Black Canyon. They inched their way into the rock, setting dynamite to blast through for the diversion tunnel. It was hotter than 125 degrees sometimes and work did not stop.

There's something amazing about a man setting his mind to accomplish a job when the odds are against him. To go an inch? A mile? Do we stop measuring when the work becomes something that is needed? Or more specifically, when we feel needed?

Tents of life

Living in a tent...it's something not everyone does. Yet those who do or have in the past understand the reality of simple pleasures. Water, food, being clean...and yes, the thought is again of people "down on their luck" or experiencing "hard luck". Not "campers" who have someplace else they can go.

When times are tough there has always been alternatives. It's just that we make living so hard that if we must endure greater hardships than we "expect" we feel sorry for ourselves instead of seeing the moment for what it is. We call "unfair" only because we compare our lives we've made so hard with other lives. Sure some people want to give up living for whatever reason, but those who can embrace the alternatives seem to have a resilience at their core.

On the other end of this spectrum, consider the workers on the Hoover Dam who went to work for $4 bucks a day (even in 1931 this was not a lot.) They got used to the wage, they pushed themselves harder at their jobs for small raises and to prove their worth. Getting themselves and their families out of the Hoovervilles or tent cities seem to mean the work provided a better life. As if there was shame in living in tents.

The tragedy then is not that a man dies but that he fought so hard to stay alive.
We fight today to stay alive when perhaps we should instead just fight to live.

Live as in being so present in the moment we don't see work as work. We see our needs, we live our needs so our wants become these needs. And we thus circle back to the simple pleasures of food, water, being clean...