DIFFERENCE MAKER, THE RECIPE

A difference maker is often the last to know what’s up.

Who has ever been to a funeral or memorial and heard strangers talk about the deceased in terms so glowing it sounds like nobody you know.

And you’ve known them most of your life.

How does that happen?

My Uncle John was a difference maker in the mid-60s when he graduated from high school and told his parents he was gay.

Grandma and Grandpa were small town movers and shakers in city hall and their church.

Back then, so many years ago, the normal response, at least their response, was telling their boy he needed to leave town.

Which he was happy to do.

“If you ever want to see me again I’ll be in San Francisco.”

It turned out they did want to see him again.

He was their difference maker.

They brought PLAG to their town and opened their home to the new community and then some.

From telling their son he has no place in their busy public lives, to opening their hearts to him by their actions, he discovered more about his parents then he’d ever hoped to know.

We can agree that that’s how it ought to work out?

 

When It Goes Wrong

A difference maker goes wrong when they take a wrong turn for the wrong reasons.

I’m trying to imagine how my adult kids woulds view their old man if I took a sharp right turn to maga-land.

Based on what I’ve seen over the past years a political belief trumps personal feelings.

Such feelings, the maga ones, are the opening and closing thoughts on every interaction.

I’d need to blame everything on something, and since I’m not the best blamer, I know I’d get it wrong.

I’d screw up when it comes to climate change and forget to give industrial pollution and auto emissions two thumbs up for not playing their role.

 

Vehicle emissions, fuel oils and natural gas to heat homes, by-products of manufacturing and power generation, particularly coal-fueled power plants, and fumes from chemical production are the primary sources of human-made air pollution.

 

What about opening lands near national park for oil exploration? I’d need to promote that to fit in with my new group.

“This administration (Trump) has been consistent about two things: Number one, they don’t like public lands. And number two, they love oil and gas and coal,” says Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club’s lands protection program.

“And when those things meet, they will do whatever they can to increase drilling, even in places that are adjacent to national parks. No one goes to a national park to see an oil rig.

These guys have a totally bizarro view of public lands.” 

 

Let the dream roll on.

 

The Boss Knows Whose Land This Is

Sing along with Bruuuuuuce:

 

As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway;
I saw below me that golden valley;
This land was made for you and me.

I’ve roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding;
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.

 

The Difference Maker Recipe

Words and actions need to match.

Save the shit-talk because everyone with a camera in their phone practices their craft more often than you.

Stick to the basics, unless you feel you are gifted with the spirit of pitch perfect shit-talk.

Which, by the way, you’re not. Shit talking for good is still too stinky.

So what are the right words?

Oddly enough the right words get drowned out by the huge wave of attention seeking amateurs breaking into new media.

It’s easier being a difference maker, an influencer, a game changer, when you point to everything and say it’s all circling the toilet and a hoard of strangers and bots agree with you.

But your family hates you, so you need to ignore them and embrace your tribe.

That it’s a tribe made up of ass-hats, dipsticks, and methy-looking mofos should be no worry.

You’ll look just like them eventually.

 

Why not stay your course instead.

Keep recycling your plastic trash into the bins at New Seasons; pick up after your dog; be kind to your wife.

You’ll know you made the right choice in husband or wife when they say, “I’m glad we found each other.”

What I say?

I’m glad we found each other and stuck around, stuck it out.

When I say, “Honey, you saved my life,” I mean she saved my life.

I faced cancer a few years back and got all hyped up to make a new break through.

David Gillaspie, the difference maker who defeated cancer without chemo or radiation.

I mentioned my idea to her and she said, “I know two people who tried that.”

Me: Let’s call them up.

Wife: We can’t. They died trying everything but chemo and radiation, but not before seeking chemo and radiation when nothing else worked. By that time they were too far along to survive chemo and radiation and were denied treatment.

I listened in stunned silence. If I was heading into the cooker phase of cancer treatment, I wanted to get there sooner than later.

The first cancer doc I interviewed prescribed three separate chemos and a chemo pump.

Before we left I was ready to spike a needle into my neck and start right there.

Wife: We’ll get a second opinion.

Again I listened in stunned silence while the second cancer doc prescribed one chemo and no pump.

Different treatment modalities for different cancer? Not all cancer is the same? My stunned silence echoed with ‘What the fuck is this?’

It all turned out the way it was supposed to turn out, which means I felt like death warmed over without the dying part.

My wife saved me from a much worse outcome when she could have let me go.

I nominate her for difference maker of a lifetime.

Find one of those and see how things turn out.

The only problem is they’ll want you to be the best person you can be, and that’s not always easy.

But isn’t that a worthy goal, one worthy of your effort?

Have you started yet?