Rhetoric without love

Rhetoric is a mouth with no tongue, which is probably why rhetoric is all the French ever need to be motivated. But for those of us who were not born blessed with the art of kissing, we need to add our own love to rhetoric to give its voice any meaning.

I'm rather tired of rhetoric. I find myself less motivated by bold suggestions of where I should be, and I find myself motivating myself instead with small glimmers of where I once was. An example:

The other day I bought He Got Game (Denzel and Ray Allen). As I wathed the dynamic play out between a father who pushed his son to be the best ball player ever, despite ultimately not being there for him, and seeing Ray Allen exude filial hatred and refusal to take his father's advice, it became apparent to me that this is what I do...what we all do.

Why do fat people stay fat? Skinny people always wonder why we don't just stop eating. It's easy, eat less and you'll lose weight. Control yourself! Stop being selfish! You're hurting yourself! I used to think that sometimes people are actually emotionally twisted and will stay fat to spite the people who scold and tease them. I felt something like this myself in never wanting my dad to be 'right' about my own weight problems. But watching He Got Game gave me a new perspective on this apparent insanity. It's not emotionally twisted at all, it's quite natural. The idea is, you never want to continue your abuser's abuse. They already made you cry and told you what they want - for you to lose weight - the last thing yiy want is to give them what they feel they deserve, the right to abuse you. To let them feist on the fruit of their abuse is contrary to human logic.

When a parent's pushing is not coupled with compassion and humility (just as Denzel's was) the abused locks himself in a room full of resentment, and in our case cupcakes. This isn't a pan-excuse, just a description of why it feels impossible sometimes to just pick up and do what needs to be done, to make the sacrifices necessary to better yourself. My point here is this is often what strips away motivation and ambition, the unjustified or even unqualified scorn. And more rhetoric about the way one should eat or the way one should look won't make a fat person change.

But I use fat people as only an example, I came to terms with my dad many years ago, though there seems to be residue of my problem along my waistline even still. But I think this is why rhetoric doesn't move the American people, why rhethoric doesnt cure the fat, the impoverished, sinful, greedy or otherwise. If that rhethoric isn't coupled with compassion and humility, it simply becomes a description of the way things should be, a description that pushes should further away from is. Without love, rhetoric orders all and serves none.

So I'm motivating myself less with rhetoric and more with those tiny moments and words of compassion - that of others and my own. The lessons of Liaofan helped me identify that I have been generally too wrapped up in the 'mathematics of destiny,' which I understand to mean the constant striving to figure out what product of actions will equal a prosperous future. An equation that hopefully balances on both sides with destiny as the equal sign. In many ways rather than putting all of my mindspace on reshaping my destiny, I'm trying to recapure today, the moment. Not to indulge blindly, but rather to appreciate the today in today, as opposed to the lack of tomorrow in today (or worse still the abundance of yesterday in today). Today, I have a host of things I have to do, and a few things I want to do, and enough time to do most of both. For now, that's all that matters.