Dan Pallotta

5.13.2005

SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2005

The Value of Silence

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FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2005, SECOND POST

Neil Armstrong

So this is Neil Armstrong at the USC commencement this morning, zoomed in as far as I can go with my little Canon Powershot.

Other men and women will walk on the moon. But for all eternity, and all the eternities in eternity, this is the one and only person who will ever be the first person who walked on the moon. There will never be another. It is something to be alive to see and hear that person - his own flesh seen, not on a digital file five hundred years from now, but with my own eyes, today, and his own voice, not on a tape recording, but reverberating through the same air we are both breathing, and heard with my own ears. The most privileged of our progeny, perhaps able to transmit themselves through the air like they do on Star Trek, able to feast on technologies I cannot even now imagine, will never be able to say they saw and heard Neil Armstrong, the first man ever to walk on the moon, in the flesh, with their own eyes and their own ears, under the same sun that lit his remarks, and on the same day they did so.

Are you getting that it was special for me? Thanks Chris!

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5.12.2005

FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2005

Drums and the Moon and Little Acts of Kindness

Today's post is dedicated to Chris Markl, a teacher at Olympia High School in Orlando who had me go down there to speak to several hundred students. He asked me what was on my list of the ten things I still want to do in life and I said, not knowing what he was up to, that one of them was to learn to play the drums, so he got me a drum lesson right there in Orlando before my flight and it was a blast. Really, we must remember to spend time doing the things we dream of doing. The he asked me who were the five people I'd most like to meet and I said one of them was Neil Armstrong, so he sends me an e-mail telling me that Neil Armstrong is speaking at the USC graduation today - so, I am probably at the USC graduation as you read this sitting in the boiling sun waiting to hear the first man who ever walked on the moon speak.

Yesterday he wrote to tell me that he challenged his seniors to do something to change the world by engaging in activities they enjoy - not just random community service to get a good grade. His words were, "Because we all know forcing people to help isn't going to work, but only by people doing what they love, will people give 120%, and through this we can create a new world filled with possibilities."

Here's what he said his kids chose to do:

"Chris and Jonathon went to the YMCA and taught about 15 children how to juggle, these students are amazing jugglers and have a juggling club here at Olympia

Tim, Adam, and Richard went to an inner city park and organized a pick up game of kickball with a bunch of little kids! ( I gave them the ball and the bases) Kickball, I don't know if these inner city kids had ever played kick ball before, but in the pictures they looked like they had a lot of fun!

T.P. always plays basketball in his neighborhood on Thursdays, noticed there were no younger kids ever playing, so he went through the neighborhood and has now organized weekly basketball 2 on 2 tournaments where a young kid is paired up with a high school student.

Tom who wants to be a chef went to the Ronald McDonald home here in Orlando and cooked everyone who was staying there a huge breakfast.

Daniel who spoke with you about his passion of playing drums went to an after school program and taught a bunch of kids the basics of percussion.

Maria who is obsessed with origami (and is actually the vice president of the origami club) organized an origami club event where every one made huge bouquets of origami to be displayed at a local assisted living facility.

Sapphire knows a single mother with 2 kids who works all the time. Sapphire works at Disney and has free tickets. So she and a friend took the kids to Disney for a day, to give the kids an exciting day and to give the mother a day off."

Truly, this is how we will change the world. Chris, you're a real inspiration - I salute you and thank you for being who you are in this world. One day, when we've ended war and hunger and people are kind to one another the world over, I hope to play drums on the moon....with Bruce Springsteen.

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THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2005

New Growth

I had this bright idea of putting a pine tree inside the house a while back. It looked beautiful inside the house. It brought the outside in. For a while. The it began dying and no amount of water seemed to make it happy. So we planted it outside and now all the old dying leaves and branches are falling off and all this pretty, soft, vibrant new growth is replacing it. A pine tree is better off in its own element. It can't be itself in an artificial environment. And when it can't be itself and can't connect with the rest of the earth, it dies. But in the ground it flourishes. This little pine tree will become a mighty monument to nature before too long.

On that note, I get e-mails from many of you expressing desire to be involved in something great that will make a great difference. I observe that there is no entity out there that seems to be connecting people who really want to change the world - that is, not just address one problem or issue - but transform the whole system in which the problems of our world manifest and persist. So perhaps we will have to begin such an enterprise with such an objective. Who knows what great things could grow from many acts, large and small, all connected, and rooted in the same desire to create a transformation of the scale that Jefferson and Madison and the founders sought? Or on any even larger scale.

To do this, I think we have to get out of the artificial environment of wanting to do something less than change the world, and into our natural habitat, where we can see the infinity of the sky, and dream of precisely that.

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5.11.2005

WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 2005

Werner Erhard and Changing the World

Thanks to Chris Chantland for today's wildflower shot.

I did the est training when I was 19 years old. Est ("It is," in Latin) was a four-day seminar over two weekends that hundreds of thousands of people did in the 1970s and 1980s - it's now called the Landmark Forum. It was enlightenment packed into 75 hours. Legend had it that zen monks were somewhat depressed that one could have the experience of enlightenment in such a short period. For me, it created my consciousness of cosnciousness itself - that is, that I am not my chattering mind, I am not my fears, and I am not my feelings, but rather, I am the consciousness that experiences my feelings, hears the chatter in my mind, and feels my fears. In a nutshell, est taught me that I am OK, just the way I am and just the way I am not, and it taught me that I have a choice in all things - that I don't have to be run, robotically, by the chatter in my head.

Est was founded by a man named Werner Erhard, who also later founded the Hunger Project - a daring dream to end hunger in the world by the year 2000. The breadth of his imagination was awe-inspiring to me, and influenced me tremendously.

Werner Erhard was, as so many bright lights in our world, attacked ad nauseum and accused of creating a cult, (as if we aren't collectively living in a cult already) and all manner of other things.

A lot of times reporters used to ask me if I had done est or was a fan of Werner Erhard. I was cautious in my answers - defensive even - and sometimes embarrassed. I regret that now. More and more I see how this culture of ours wants, demands, expects conformity, conformity, conformity, and it tries to shame anyone or question anyone or create suspicion around anyone who does anything that is in the least way different, or a threat to the growing normalcy. I have noticed that even Landmark - the successor to est, shies away from any association with Werner Erhard. I imagine there weren't alot of people who wanted to have anything to do with Galileo either when he was walking around telling everyone the earth revolves around the sun.

Werner Erhard taught me that we can change the world. Yes, I did est, and yes, I learned a tremendous amount - a tremendous amount - from Werner Erhard. And you know what? I want to see the world change in our lifetime, and I want to work with others who want no less, and I will not be shy or embarrassed or apologetic about it. In a world where 8,300 people died every day of AIDS, where 20 million people die every year of hunger and hunger-related disease, where there are 20 active armed conflicts, where we have the nuclear capability to annihilate the planet many times over, where the ozone layer is falling apart, and in a country where 6,000 people murder one another every year, who in their right mind wouldn't want to change the world? Who in their right mind would want to see it stay this way?

It is the people who have deluded themsleves into thinking that everything is basically OK, or who profit by everything being exactly the way it is, and who want the rest of us to follow along, that are the real cult leaders. And make no mistake about it, that is exactly what they are. Cynicism is the biggest cult in the world.

We can change that.

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5.10.2005

TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2005

Thank You

The Santa Anna winds are blowing this morning - they are these beautiful strong and steady warm winds that come in from the north and clear the entire sky throughout the San Fernando Valley so you can see for miles and miles. Despite all of the difficulties of this life on earth, it is worth it to be here just to experience a Santa Anna wind.

I want to say thank you this morning for all of you who check in to read the site every day. It is a great source of inspiration to me to know that there are many other people out there who believe in the beauty of their dreams, and who can see beyond practicality and the obvious realities to a world of unimaginable possibility. If you watch enough of CNN and Fox and MSNBC you can come to believe, very quickly, that the whole world has gone mad, that it has given up all desire to dream an impossible dream once again to live instead in fear, with the apparatus of the media and the government doing all of their thinking for them and setting all the boundaries for their imaginations. But I have been to the well of what lurks in the hearts of the silent soldiers of imagination out there - people like you. I have seen that there is a force out there willing to journey thousands of miles and raise hundreds of millions of dollars to make this world a better place - indeed to transform it. And I know that what I have seen is just the tip of the iceberg. That beneath that surface lies the most beautiful and powerful force in all the world and that it is more powerful than all of the entrenched cyncicism in this world.

The cynics of the world don't even know it exists. They think they have taken all into account. But one day its time will come, and it will clear all of the hopelessness and despair out of the valley, and the world will be able to see for miles and miles a new future for itself, independent of all the mistakes and errors of the past. And it is worth being alive too to be able to be here when that day comes.

Thank you for not surrendering your dream to all the petty minds that seek it from you.

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5.09.2005

MONDAY, MAY 9, 2005

The Destruction of Our Dreams

Virtually every system in our society kills peoples' dreams. People go into the world of charity because they believe in building a better world and the system kills their dreams and discourages all of their great ideas, encouraging them instead to think cautiously and to think small. People want to go into politics because they have great dreams for the nation and for the world, only to find that they have to remain silent about the full measure of those dreams in order to get elected - or so they believe. People go to religion seeking a higher manifestation of themselves only to be brought down to a lower level by fear and dogma and intimidation. School teachers become school teachers because they hope to change the world, only to find that the system sucks the life out of them and gives them no resources with which to work.

We don't need more people going into the same demoralizing systems. We need new systems. We can create them in a great adventure to change the world. This will require tremendous courage and unstoppable commitment to principle. It would be the most difficult endeavor humanity has ever undertaken, but it will also be the most exhillarating. Though it is unspoken, it is what most people in the world reallly and truly, in their heart of hearts, want more than anything else. No system is powerful enough to hold back the tide of that desire.

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5.08.2005

SUNDAY, MAY 8, 2005

Principle

Happy Mother's Day to all you Mom's out there who do the toughest job and perform the greatest service of all.

I saw the new Ridley Scott movie, "The Kingdom of Heaven," last night. I highly recommend it. It addresses the question of principle in a powerful way by contrasting those who have it and will never sacrifice it to those who don't, or will sacrifice it at the slightest sign of a convenience. We live in a world that is all too ready to sacrifice principle for advantage. A world where most people take the extreme short-term view, without the wisdom to see that the sacrifice of principle now for a short-term gain is a debt that will always have to be paid later, and at much higher price.

We must learn never to sacrifice principle. Most of us were not born with the courage to do this. This is of no moment, and we ought not chastise ourselves for it. We are not asked to be born with more than what we were born with. We are asked to be more than what we were born with.

People who sacrifice principle focus only on what they will gain by it, and what they will lose if they don't. They never consider what inconceivable things might occur if they refuse to sacrifice principle. Every act of courage is rewarded with a return no person could have foreseen. But this is not why we should refuse to sacrifice principle. We should refuse because to do so maintains our integrity - our wholeness - the cohesion and consistency of our souls.

There is a scene in the movie where the Muslim army has breached the walls of Jerusalem and is ready to take the city over. The hero wants to defend the city's people from certain death. A Catholic bishop in the film says, "We should convert to Islam and repent later. As for the people, it is the will of God that they die - there's nothing we can do about it." The hero refuses, and because of his refusal, and the respect it engenders from the opposing commander, without even a battle, the people are saved.

The sacrifice of principle never comes free, no matter how appealing it may look in the moment. It will always, as a friend of mine says, come back to bite you in the ass later. If we lack courage, then perhaps common sense can drive us to the side of principle in all our affairs.

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