Platitudes and attitudes

My youngest daughter, while living in Hawaii, used to needle her older sister, who was susceptible to coral fungus, by calling her fragrant foot a “tootsie with an attitude.” While working as a trainer and planner for WorkHawaii, a workforce development agency, our staff was big on “attitude.” A wall poster at the office had the following: “The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, education, money, circumstances, failures, successes, or what other people think, say or do. We have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace. We cannot change our past; we cannot change how people behave. We cannot change the inevitable. But we can play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me, and 90 percent how I respond to it. As it is with everyone else, we are in charge of our attitudes.”

Sounds trite like the rest of the platitudes that are constantly thrown our way by educators, politicians and preachers. But this is more than getting the right frame of mind, adhering to virtues, or thinking positive thoughts. It is being clear that what happens to me, how life happens to me, is in fact infinitely less significant than how “I happen to life.” “It is all a matter of attitude,” became a favored phrase by the time I reached 12th grade. I chanced on this morsel of wisdom from a youth institute. I meant then that my senses may be assaulted by external stimuli, but my feelings, thoughts, and will are totally my own. To be responsible is to be response-able. To be human is to be able to respond to and at life as it comes to us. How we respond is determined by our attitude.

Presidential Adviser Karl Rove has been accused recently as one who understands that facts are irrelevant. Obedience to the story line has more power. Thus, 9/11 became the anchor of the Bush administration’s story line, and it has served to justify chasing mirages in the Iraqi desert and even revealing a C.I.A. agent’s identity! Our collective story line, and revered images, reflects and informs our attitudes.

We’ve all heard someone expound on the virtues of looking at a bottle half-full, rather than delving on it being half-empty. Facts are verifiable so they can be adjudicated as to accuracy by standard measures, but as far as the truth that facts point to, perspectives differ.

In the early 80s, a young man from North Carolina, fresh out of college and shielded from the harsher edges of contemporary urban and secular life by a stable and conservatively pious family, volunteered with the Peace Corps in the Philippines. It was his first trip out of the country. He was cautious by training, venturesome by age and inclination. He was assigned to a rural community in Mindanao. Nine months after his orientation and first semester in the service, he came with the rest of his batch to Manila for his in-service training, a euphemism for all kinds of therapies and interventions on our then young American’s adaptive capacity to a foreign environment. There were also medical check-ups and other paperwork requirements. He came five days ahead of schedule, so he had a full weekend to explore the environs close to the PCV office, which at that time was in a neighborhood famous as an R & R destination of many sailors and visiting business executives. It did not take long for the PCVs to discover that of the hardest jobs “you’ll ever learn to love” that they were recruited for, the PI posting was the Royce Rolls of the lot. T’was the one PCVs did not find hard to love.

After the medical check-up reports came in, the young man came to my training office to seek advice. Awkwardly though not sheepishly, he informed me that he had the “drip” resulting from a weekend of reckless abandon. He dealt with that at the medical office. He wanted to ask if I would recommend a reliable and discreet medical practitioner who would treat his newfound friend so that she too may regain good health. How noble and admirable, I thought.

“I am not being altruistic,” he said, as if reading my mind. “All week, I had been thinking that I had never experienced what I went through over the weekend, and I would like to keep seeing my new girlfriend while I am in country.” He would later give an impromptu speech to the staff just before leaving the city on his way back to his site. He said: “I had a decision on my hands whether I go back to my site thinking that ‘I was screwed,’ or ‘I was loved.’ Nothing can change what happened on the weekend. But it makes a hell of a difference what story I tell myself about it on Monday morning. I decided that I’ve been loved.”

He would later “hire” the girl as his house helper after he enabled her to return to Mindanao where she was originally from. Later, they married and moved to Maryland where they now have two kids, two cats, a two-car garage, a university professorship for him, and a bachelor’s degree for her. (Right! And how many Pretty Woman, or Irma La Doce have you seen lately, I will surely be asked. I could write about the local Paseo de las Putanas, but that will have to wait, that is, if my publisher will still print my column after this one!)

The point of this factual and true story is what I am pointing to with the reality of “attitude.” We live our lives daily and the facts surrounding our existence are irrefutably banal and bare in their neutrality. Some people, however, wake up in the morning deciding that they are cursed for having been screwed, and others, are blessed for being loved.

Recently, Gov. Babauta uttered in his State of the Commonwealth speech a phrase that gave the media a field day. “The economy is still darn good,” he declared with a smile, perhaps, a rhetorical smile. House Speaker Fitial, in a Susupe political rally declared that “the economy is darn bad,” also with a smile. Both gentlemen were probably looking at the same statistics, and similar facts, but one took the wind upstream, while the other blew it down south. What was revealed to this writer, however, was not the objective state of the economy, but the state of their “attitude.”

In seeing a half-full bottle, one tends to figure out what to do with what one has. There is material stuff to focus on so that planning can proceed. A vision can be formulated, and a mission order drawn. Consensus and cooperation is possible. On the other hand, to delve on the reality of the half-empty part only leads one to fuss, and fuss continually over nothing. We’ve had too many much-ado-about-nothings lately. Or, worst, one sees the emptiness and wallows in despair, entertain deep seated fears, and perversely delight in doomsday scenarios. It does make a difference what story line one tells one’s self in the morning. That’s dressing up one’s “attitude,” which finally kicks one into the morning; gives one a lift the rest of the day. As for life and all its drips, believe you me, I’ve been loved!

(Strictly a personal view. Vergara writes a weekly column for the Saipan Tribune.)