The Pulse of a Nation.

Photo by Cary Scott Photography

On my way to work this morning during the early hours of the morning when the Sun was not yet to be found, I inadvertently found myself sitting in the midst of a group of people on the 36 Bus who were just as eager to get to work as I was. Each person’s story was so wildly different from mine. I could hear it without asking. Each person’s story was so wildly similar to mine. I sensed it without knowing. The bus ride took us through Pennsylvania Avenue, by the White House, by the Museums and Memorials, up Independence Avenue next to the Native American Museum and the Botanical Gardens. In the twilight arose the Capitol, a product of the great Experiment. I saw a glimpse of America. I saw the pulse of a nation.

In the bus, I saw the homeless, the weary, the restless. I saw the eager, the  proud, and the hungry. I saw poor and the rich. The bus driver while doing his job, taking the first bus from all Friendship Heights to the Naylor Road station, must have at some point realized the importance of his duty. He must have at some point in his career seen how critical it was for him to get up earlier than everyone else to drive these commuters to their livelihood. I took the early bus because I wanted to be early, but didn’t expect the bus to be full.

I used to think that for every industrious person, there were 10 lazy people who didn’t want or need to work hard for others. Today, my mind has changed. Tonight I go to sleep knowing that tomorrow morning, there will be another bus load of people going from Friendship Heights Station to the Naylor Road Station and at 5:15 am  it will pass through the village of Georgetown through Wisconsin Avenue and M. St. I’ll hopefully catch it as it goes by Thomas Jefferson St.

The Apple Seed

As humans we give our hearts and minds over to the stimuli that we observe for better or for worse in terms of results and consequences. I don’t know when I consciously started to “brown bag” my lunch on a daily basis. It didn’t happen over night. Like Rome, my habit wasn’t built in a day. For whatever numerous aspects of my life which contributed to this habit, there is one outcome which I am glad has happened.

The Apple

The apple I happened to be eating for my morning snack was special. It was like no other apple I found until then. The apple I held in my hand had a destiny beyond the normal apple. The normal apple as we all know comes from the supermarket, just like the cheese, and the ingredients for the beautiful hand crafted wrap I happened to have made for myself that day. Honestly, the apple actually comes from a tree. It is picked by an immigrant migrant worker who examines it to put it in a bushel that he or she carries on his or her back. The apple is then sent for inspection where it gets a little sticker of approval. Then, only the masters of the fruit supply chain know how it gets from the orchard through seven states and into my local grocery store. I know why it was in my brown bag. It made it’s way there because I felt like eating an apple.

The apple I was eating was not too ripe, not to raw. Since it was a golden apple, it wasn’t too our and not too sweet. It was good. I ate the apple and and I felt good that I had consumed something relatively healthy to satisfy my craving for some organic sugar in the morning.

The Apple Core

As I took bites, the juices flowed down my chin and on to my hands. This is not entirely new feeling when biting into a juicy apple, but I distinctly remember pausing. As a drop of juice fell down to my desk, I stopped to think. As most things edible in the developed world, especially from nature, the apple’s mass was on it’s way out of it’s life as an apple and on it’s way to being digested through my body and ending up in the plumbing system of the District of Columbia.

As I continued to eat, I bit closer and closer to the core. I tried to stay away from the seeds even while I ate because I know from past experience seeds aren’t too tasty.  I paused again. This time I stopped because the hollow core was relatively expansive compared to other apple’s I had eaten.

The Apple Seed

This apple was special. Inside was a chamber of secrets. The core had an opening through which I sighted my find. Growing in my apple, there was a sprouting seed. This sprouting seed couldn’t wait to planted in the soil. It wanted to grow into a tree. It didn’t want to wait for the natural cycle of things. It wasn’t going to follow the destiny of all other seeds that resided in the apples at the super market. This seed was going to be different.

When I painstakingly extracted this delicate sprouting seed, I couldn’t help but be overcome with an indescribable feeling which gave me goosebumps. I held in my hand something so small that it fit on my finger tip. Something moved me to record the image. I used what I could to capture it’s beauty. Ironically the Apple iPhone couldn’t compare to the optical ability of the scanner in my office.

The Apple Seed

This image has inspired me to create a brand identity for one of my company’s future products and to apply a metaphor of spreading seeds of empowerment. Nothing so simple, yet elegant could have crossed my mind. A handful of us around the globe are working on a project which we hope will empower local, regional, and global markets to be more equitable to people through the democratizing element of the Internet.

Such is the beauty of God. Thanks, God.

The Song of America

During Martin Luther King Jr. Week, every year Georgetown University celebrates the memory of the American hero with a series of events which involve Students, Faculty, and Staff in addition to a concert at the Kennedy Center where the “Legacy of a Dream” award is given to an outstanding person who contributed to the community in the same spirit of justice and quality as Dr. King. I was honored to have been invited to reflect on how Dr. King’s and his legacy have impacted my life during the Spiritual event on Wednesday January 20th, 2010 at Dahlgren Chapel. The spoken words were nearly identical to this draft of the speech. Although I didn’t think to record or transcript what I said, this is more or less what I delivered.

Pens, Friends, and Providence.

There is a well known saying that has been passed from sage to sage, friend to friend, from one society to another. A picture is worth a thousand words. The reason why I believe a picture is worth a thousand words is because it took all of Creation to precede it in order for it to be. That being said, what is to be — whether to have an end or not to have an end or otherwise known as a finite point of existence — is unknown and unknowable to philosophers, and known to believers. That is a subject matter for another day, another season. That is not the reason I write this story. The image which you see in this story has existed in the number of places where this picture has been seen. Namely my phone, my computer, the readers who very few have caused it to come to being on their computer screens by clicking on the article. The picture itself is no longer unique.

Learning the As, Bs, and Cs of Guitar

I’ve always been enamored with music, it’s creation, and it’s existence in the universe. Why is it that certain sounds placed in a particular rhythm and sequence have such a pleasing effect on the human mind? I could say the same about language and poetry. The ability to interpret and create patterns of sounds such as words and music is one set of abilities which differentiates us from other beings. We are intelligent and emotional beings. Music especially invokes emotions and makes us dance, sing, and lose ourselves in the beauty of sound.

I started to play the guitar last week and as of yet have been able to learn only the basics after overcoming the hurdle of painful fingers on steel strings. I’ve learned how to play certain open chords and am limiting myself to the first three frets. After I can play a clean chord, or rather a chord without my fingers interfering with the resonance of a string, I will start to string them along to form sequences equivalent to word such as “cat”, “dog”, and “bat”.

The experience is humbling to the say the least.

Actions instead of words.

Many a wisdom tradition has said that thoughts turn into actions. Thoughts first into words, and words into action. Bad thoughts turn into bad words and subsequently into bad actions. Good thoughts turn into good actions.

The goodness of thoughts enacted are judged and weighed in respect to the benefit gained to the actor, and possibly those who were acted upon. In the event that good thoughts do surface in the mind, where does the hesitation lie in waiting for the thought to turn into words that need approval from others? At which point is the thought considered worthy of action? Is it the inner voice that helps us create the distinction between good or bad?

If God is the inner voice then the thoughts must be for the good of those around as well as the person thinking the thought. If the thoughts mean good for people, then the actions must be taken to bring the good to the people. Sudden prudence in bringing the good to the people is better than indecisive deliberation which results in no action, and hence no action.

Living for others.

Gather and give, so you can give to teach by example. Your time is your life, so what better way to teach than to give your life away.

As we grow into our future self — who we want to be when we grow up — we have a choice to do with our time what we please. That is mostly true in a country like ours. In America, the “blessings of liberty” are such that if we work for others and earn the money for our keep, we can do with our time what we please.

By virtue of working for money, we are working for others. Our toil and trouble — as Adam Smith might say — results in the money which buys our freedom. This trade of our time — or rather a part of our life — results in the freedom we deem so dear to us.

Living is more than just working. True living cannot happen unless it is for others. Though true that one may work for others and live, they are not truly living if their life is always in toil.

In pursuit of a life worth living.

It dawned on me not to long ago that in the not too distant future I will need to make a concerted effort to be a better writer and a better speaker. I can’t get better at speaking unless I get better at writing, so this is why I have chosen to record my thoughts here. The paper journal is going to be the place for my private thoughts and this will be soap box on which I will broadcast my thoughts to the world. I will contribute here the thoughts God gives me as I learn, grow, and experience the new.