Mood:
rushedNow Playing: N'dambi - Tunin up and Co Signin'
Topic: Inspiration
Sunday 3:27pm 30apr06
I watched Wayne Dyer's latest PBS special recently. It was part of his new book Inspiration - Your Ultimate Calling. I got into him two years ago when he did the Power of Intention. I ultimately bought the book and all the Cd packages that went with it.
The viewing of his chat on inspiration reminded me about how I used to look for and find inspiration everywhere. Back in the days when I liked myself more and was more emotionally heallthy. ha ha. But seriously I used to have a more upbeat look on life and then it plummeted for a very long time. Part of the subsequent plummeting was that I started focusing on the wrong things, for my sanity anyway.
Since watching his program, I've been doing a few little things for inspirations sake. One of the things is getting up when I wake up way too early and writing down random thoughts in my journal. Enjoying the silent peace of 4am in my apartment building when my downstairs neighbours aren't banging their renovation and my upstairs neighbour Mr Heavyfoot AKA Fe Fi Fo Fum isn't stomping around like he weighs two tons when he is actually quite small. Why is it that some people walk so damn hard when they live in apartments? Do you really think you are the only one in the world? Do I really have to go up and knock on your apartment and show you how to walk lightly? The thing is I've already spoken to him about it and he apologized all shamefaced and has since continued to walk like he's the Giant after Jack in the beanstalk. But I digress...
Inspiration? What has inspired me lately? There was an article in the Toronto Star recently about a man that rented out Roy Thomson Hall after re-mortgaging his house. He rented it because he's always wanted to get on stage and sing in front of an audience. The guy did it and sold it out too. It was his lifelong dream. He put his money where his mouth was and did it.
My second piece of inspiration came from the documentary that was on A&E last night called The man who predicted 9/11. Rick was the head of security for Morgan Stanley and got out all of the Morgan Stanley employees safely except for 6 people. He also died in the tragedy. Now dying in a tragedy isn't necessarily inspiring but this guy was the type of person whose calling was to save people. In the documentary his biographer said that when Rick was in the vietnam war he was the head of his platoon ( I don't really know what it's called but you get the message.) In the majority of the other platoons the survival rate was approximately 50%. 50% of the people died. In Rick's, 6-8 people died only. And the thing about this guy was that it tormented him his whole life that he lost those 6-8 men. Come on buddy you did a hell of a job. But each person was important to him.
As an aside, he met and married the woman of his dreams 3 years before he died in the World Trade Centre attacks.
From the get go, he was looking for ways that the centres could be attacked. he brought in his army buddies and asked for their advice. One friend said that the best way to attack was with a bomb in a van. Rick tried to forewarn the Port Authority, the people that owned/ran the buildings and they nodded their heads, smiled and waved him away. They believed in him more after the 1993 bombing attack that went exactly as his friend predicted.
After that, he brought the same friend back and the friend said that the next time could only be from the air. Rick, believing that there would be another attack first tried to convince the Morgan Stanley people to move to another building. When that didn't work, he started regular evacuation alerts. Every three months whether you were in a meeting, in the bathroom, on a long distance phone call, you had to drop what you were doing and leave the building on Rick's say so. The employees now say that that vigilance was what ultimately got them out alive. Of 2700 employees, 6 people didn't make it out alive.
One of the big executives saw Rick before he left the building and told him, "You need to get out too Rick."
But Rick stayed in to help the EMS workers rescue the other people in the building. An impossible feat as we all know. As a character that would be what would drive the story that this man cannot bear to lose people in his care.
Every one who spoke about him said, "He would have been a hero if he'd left the building after he got the Morgan Stanley employees out."
He would have been a hero but he still would have been tormented by the lives lost. He died doing what he believed in. An inspiring man...
