Society's Squeeze

So how did the hearing assignment go?

          Emphasis on how.

                    Why such emphasis?

Well, in a world full of valuations, assessments, and judgments, in a world where businesses entice us with impressive sweepstakes to survey their customer service, where many jobs are not confirmed until a 90-day assessment period has ended, where marketers pay millions to improve their Google or Yelp public reviews, in such a world of incessant judgments...

          ...we could use a little more emphasis on how we are doing, don't you think?

So again, how are you doing, in retrospect, of that listening exercise?

If you'd like to share, I'd like to hear.  Just post a comment below...

          I promise to read each with openness.

Hmmm...openness...now there's a beautiful word for the world we face everyday, a world of judgements and, thus, a world of so much closemindedness.  You see, to expand on this theme of incessant judgments, I'd like to make an evaluation of our society itself, the one so keen to evaluate everything from the food we eat to the toothpaste we remove that stuck food with to the toilet bowl where the remnants of that food drop to the pipes that send it to sea.  Yes, why not evaluate such a society obsessed with evaluating:

          A judgment on some product or an assignment on someone's performance presumes a preset standard from which the evaluator uses to evaluate a particular object...or person, though don't you feel like an object in such situations?  And such an evaluation against a standard is a closed process, for a standard of measurement already has an established—a closed—set of rules, boxes, formulas, and examples by which to measure the object.

An "open interview," for instance, is a public relations ploy.  Such an "open" exercise in the job market doesn't exist.  An "open interview" is impossible by the very nature and definition of the activity itself.  To interview someone implies the use of a preset box of standards and expectations for a position already formed and prepared for filling.

If you were being interviewed to join a company rather than fill a position, then maybe, you could truly have an "open interview."

          But what company wants to hire you for you?

No!  Companies have workforce needs that are first determined.  Only after these needs are identified and prioritized do the "positions" and "job posts" appear.  For it to be profitable, the need of the company must precede the need of the employee.  In other words, a predetermined set of of job functions—and thus closed ones by nature—are established long before you even start filling out that tailored resume.

                    So again, how are you after the hearing exercise?

Remember, I asked you to listen to the water drops but "do nothing more."  That latter part about "doing nothing more" was just as intentional as the "hearing" part.  For the purposes of this exercise, I'm actually not seeking what thoughts occurred to you during or after this exercise.  Nor do I have some standard in mind of what an "A student" in water-drop-hearing would be.

                    I simply wanted you to hear nature.

I simply wanted you to have a moment encountering the only raw form of nature inside your shower besides your naked self.

That water cleansing your body, where did it come from?  Likely from some river, sourced by some mountain lake, sourced by some glacier, sourced by some snow from a cloud, sourced by some sea, to where your water is flowing right now.

In the shower you recently took, everything those water drops hit are manufactured, except you.  You were listening to the sounds of the un-manufactured.  You were listening to the sounds of raw nature within a cubicle full of unnatural chemicals—the tiles, the shampoo (Can you understand half the ingredients listed on that bottle?), the spout, the plastic bottles, the grout, the drain, the "mold-free" curtain (yeah right! Where's the survey on how effective those "mold-free curtains" end up being?).

Everything in your shower, but the water drops and you, are the product of human manufacturing and evaluation.

This whole Shower Time exercise of encountering the natural—within the confines of the unnatural—coincides well with a new movie trailer, Dr. Suess's The Lorax.  Check it out:

And back to the original question we go: How might taking a shower improve the world?

How about the simple act of hearing those water drops might spark a softness and openness within you for nature itself?  Maybe that softness and openness inspires you to hear more nature throughout the rest of your day.  Maybe those encounters with nature inspire a growing love for the natural in the midst of your world so crammed with the unnatural, the closed, and its boxes of judgments.

          What grade or evaluation exists in simply listening to water fall?

          Openness happens within me when I simply listen to nature, in moments free of judgment.

                    Not surprisingly,
                    my love for the natural in this world grows,
                    as does my desire to do something about preserving it...