This quote was passed on to me the other day:
Chinese Proverb: “The
person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt
the person doing it.”
~Copyright:
Magnetic Graffiti Co.
You remember the old adage: “You won’t like seeing how
sausage or laws are made.” Well this Chinese Proverb is in the same league. If
you want to solve a problem or get something done that no one else wants to do,
don’t let those others get in your way of doing the work. Just do it!
Related to this, I think is this same bit of arcane facts:
“Wages:
Salary of
retired US
Salary of
House/Senate members: $174,000 for life
Salary of
Speaker of the House: $223,500 for life
Salary of
Majority/Minority Leaders: $193,400 for life
Average
salary of a solider serving in Afghanistan
Average
income for seniors on Social Security: $12,000
I think we found where
the cuts should be made!”
~Anonymous
on Internet
It amazes me at times how we miss the basics. The facts of
life are staring us in the face. If you want something done, do it yourself.
What I think is not always commonsense to someone else. The problems we endure
are often made by us and can only be solved by us.
Watching TV you’d think the world has gone to hell in a hand
basket. You’d think all problems are imponderable and unsolvable. There is such
a din of noise made over the news we tend to forget that it matters to the news
provider that they say and do what they do. It builds audience. It attracts
viewers. They get to air ads to that audience and make money doing it. If the
world were calm, peaceful and logically put to bed each evening, there would be
little purpose for the TV news. It is in their interest to keep news flowing,
or what passes these days as news.
I remember a simpler time when news was slow getting
distributed. Newspapers were written on a daily basis. What was happening in
the world was sorted out and shared around the globe. News gathering teams assembled
the words about those happenings, wrote stories and printed them in the
newspapers. Eventually these news bits made it on the radio and then TV news
programs. The speed of spreading the news accelerated quite a bit.
Today, news channels on TV and cable networks compete with
each other to have the most news, the latest news, the most interesting news
broadcast around the clock. To compete they sometimes make the news seem more
urgent, or ominous. Getting someone to pay attention becomes a full time job of
marketers and broadcast management. The job of writing the news or making sense
of it gets lost.
Along with that we get lost in meaningless details
disconnected to what matters. After awhile we begin to make up news – at least
the why and what it means content!
Whatever happened to the concept of news: the who what when
and where? Today it is all about the why accompanied by a leer, sneer and
meaningful glare! Think Nancy Grace and you’ll have my point down perfectly!
News indeed. Of
course I want to know why something has meaning. I need analysis done for me so
I can get up to date quickly. But that analysis needs to be open and
transparent. The questions being answered or posed need to be clear and open.
Over time we come to agreement on what something means and understand why
something happened. It becomes a public accounting of news items; not a
proscription of meaning.
Meanwhile, leave me room to do my own thinking. It takes
time. Like the old time news delivery system. Time to think and process. Time
to understand. Not time to be told.
That’s up to me.
February 27, 2013
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