those who lift and those who lean

a poem by ella wheeler wilcox-


“Lifting and Leaning
There are two kinds of people on earth today,
Just two kinds of people, no more, I say.

Not the good and the bad, for 'tis well understood
The good are half bad and the bad are half good.

Not the happy and sad, for the swift-flying years
Brings each man his laughter and each man his tears.

Not the rich and the poor, for to count a man's wealth
You must first know the state of his conscience and health.

Not the humble and proud, for in life's busy span
He who puts on vain airs is not counted a man.

No! The two kinds of people on earth I mean
Are the people who lift and the people who lean.

Wherever you go you will find the world's masses
Are ever divided in just two classes.

And, strangely enough, you will find, too, I ween,
There is only one lifter to twenty who lean.

In which class are you? Are you easing the load
Of overtaxed lifters who toil down the road?

Or are you a leaner who lets others bear
Your portion of worry and labor and care?”

so, i'm back in my hometown this weekend. for a number of reasons- my grandson's basketball finale, an education meeting, and a hometown theater production that my mother was in. and since i was in "rome," i did as "the romans" there, and i went to church this morning.

and yes, i know what you are thinking. that i'm quite the hypocrite, given how you know i feel about church these days. but. before you judge, hear me out on this, because hypocrite or not, i did find some rearrangement of thought there this morning.....

so, you also know how i used to be quite fervent in my beliefs. and i'm not sure i ever told you why- but basically it was because when my children were infants, church was the one place i could take them, stick them in the nursery where i didn't have to worry about them for a whole hour, and i could sit and listen to adults talk about ideas bigger than themselves. (remember, i lived in the small town.) and so at the time, we had an extremely intelligent and intellectual and well-read minister (how misplaced was he?) and well, whether or not i could believe in spiritual hocus pocus or such, i could believe in all these grand ideas and social/political philosophies. and then one day, suddenly, i just started feeling it. feeling that "THIS is what God is, God is the GOOD, the INTELLIGENT, the TRIUMPH over what all is base and rude, and meaningless in your life and in life, in general." and as i started to believe in that, i started to be grateful for it all. grateful to the God, who inspired this triumph in people.

fastforward to later. when i felt like all of the sudden that this god could not even exist. because surely a god like i had believed in would recognize the goodness that was in me, and well reward me for it. this god, surely if he knew how deep and pure my love for someone was, would certainly intervene for me in circumstances that were ripping this relationship asunder.

well imagine, how very pissed off i was, when he didn't. so pissed off, that the FEELING, the KNOWLEDGE, the spirit of that God failed me, that i couldn't deal with him, except by realizing that he never really existed. that i had been fooled into believery. and i had been quite the fool.

now let me tell you something- i'm not still yet again a believer. in this god. or that God. i'm still right there firmly in the atheist category. not that i don't recognize that even if there was such a God as i once believed in, that it was selfish, and childish, and ridiculous of me to expect him to give me good things or tit for tat. seriously, i recognize that i was quite as bad as all those "pray for" people in the world, that i hate. expecting anything at all that way. it was vain, even arrogant of me, to expect that. i do get that.

and some would think now that, given my realization of my own failings, that they were MY failings and not God's, that i could now instantly believe again. but i can't. and i don't. and at times, i really still think and wonder "was i hypnotized back then? when my kids were all safe in the nursery and i was all safe in the pew and i had my "revelation of belief" - was i simply just unbelievably naively hypnotized or something? because seriously, if you look at science and math and all that is truly evidentially proofable and true, you really can't intellectually believe in a God. even if you really want to. you just can't. it makes no more logical sense than believing in Santa Claus or the easter bunny or aunt jemima.

but fast-forward with me again now. back to today, where i went to church, because it's a familial and social convention. and we had a sub minister. who i knew. know. and who i know to be mensa smart. literally. and i'mthinking to myself, how can this genius smart guy still believe in this God? but i don't let it trouble me too much, because i'm thinking "oh well, he does. just listen to him and see what he has to say today."

and he interwove some really great stories with this poem. that i'd heard before. when the same guy had spoken at a funeral of someone i'd known. his story was different and actually his points were different when he recited the poem this time, but when he started reciting, i remembered it instantly for the effect that it had had on me the first time i'd heard it.

and i got to thinking that perhaps it doesn't matter to me so much whether or not i believe in a god. or anyone else does for that matter, or why they do, but what does matter to me is whether or not they believe in this lift/lean philosophy in life. that it's preferable to be a lifter, rather than a leaner.

and i don't mean that in the more selfish sense as in being such with your own family, or even you're own job or business if you happen to own or run one, but in the whole societal sense. because of course you care about the members of your family or what profits you and yours. duh. but. is what you are doing or about to do good for people as a whole? or isn't it? does it involve you leaning on people? or does it involve you lifting people? and not just some people who are special to you, or just the people you judge worthy of being lifted. but all people.

i have to tell you. the less inclined i am to believe in a god, the less inclined i am to believe in capitalism. or the idea that lifting some people will raise to the lifting of all people. and i think in the end, that this might have been the one thing that i fundementally didn't like about the whole God thing in the first place, even when i believed in God. i didn't like that whole "God helps those who help themselves" idea.

because quite honestly, that does sort of lead you to the hopeful belief that if you have good and pure intentions, that God will protect you somehow or at the very least he will open a window for you when another one shuts. plus it also gives you another false hope that what is good for you, will be good for other people.

if god makes you rich, well then you will be generous and give back and help other boats rise too. well, that's all good and fine, if you're an andrew carnegie in the end. doing "real and permanent good." but geez, look at the depravity of the bill gates foundation and the sam walton bunch. they aren't lifting any boats. they seem downright set on sinking boats so that only their "special boats" can rise. seriously, i'd rather they fund the PUBLIC post office (since libraries are taken) than what they are doing to all the little boats of education and scientific discovery in the name of "philanthropy." they are leaning on people. not in the sense of depending on them, but in the sense of leaning on them to do things their way. leaning on them to believe and act in certain ways with the promise of a carrot, but also with the threat of taking away your carrot, if you aren't a good donkey or something.

really. it would be like andrew caregie saying "you can enter my libraries and check out some books, but ONLY if you write a better grant than that guy, or are clean and tidy and wear the right clothes, or "walk this way" or show me in some way that you are worthy of coming in the door and that you'll be accountable for all those books." so to bill gates, i say- "that's just bullshit. you're not a lifter, you're a leaner."

so my belief in god and free trade capitalism have gone right out the window together, it seems. and what remains is that idea of who i want to be. not someone who leans on people. or someone who believes someone else, be it a god or a significant other, or a philanthropist should be there to help prop me up. but i want to be someone who helps lift others up.

that's my religion, right there. so see, i did get something out of church today. even if it wasn't god. it was good.

and that brings me around to thinking about a conversation i'd had with my sister in law last week. and i was kind of reflecting that for the most part, i'd been sort of a failure in life thus far. and i thought outloud that perhaps that was because i just never had anything like ambition in me. i never aspired to be anyone or do anything remarkable or achieve anything. i'd not built a bridge, or cured cancer, or become the top of some organization. i'd not written a song that made the whole world sing. anything like that. i'd somehow just been content to just do or try to deal with whatever ever it was in front of me at the time. i said "perhaps i'm just lazy." to which she responded that i certainly wasn't lazy. and that while maybe, i was right, that i was not at all ambitious personally, the one thing i was- was purposeful. she told me, that she'd never seen me in all the years she'd known me that i didn't have a sense of purpose.

and i'm thinking now, that this perhaps is what i'd really lost for awhile. this sense of purpose. and maybe now, i've found it again. or remembered it again.