"I have six locks on my door, all in a row," George Carlin said. "When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three of them."
Carlin was a brilliant man and a flaming pessimist. I loved his wit but I cringed at his outlook on life. He's the only person I know who could make you laugh for a solid hour and leave you feeling depressed.
A couple of weeks ago someone posted an excerpt from his "Last Words" concert on Facebook. Of course, I had to look (and then afterwards I had to read the financial section of The New York Times just to elevate my mood to depressed.)
"Forget the politicians," he said; "they're irrelevant. Politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners."
It's easy to buy into the negativity, especially when it's espoused by the man in black stalking the stage, the same guy we all knew and loved as the "Hippie-Dippie Weatherman." But despite what Carlin told us, we do have freedom of choice. One of the most important choices we can make is how we look at life, as another man who stalks the stage like a madman reminds us. If you've ever been to a Tom Peters seminar, you know exactly what I mean. He's the author of In Search of Excellence, in his new book, The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence, Peters says, "Powerlessness is (mostly) a state of mind."
That's not to say that we can stick our heads in the proverbial sand and ignore the rest of the world as it crumbles around us. It does mean that we have the power to focus on those things that are in our direct control. Despite the economy, despite the politicians, despite our "owners," there are many people who are doing well, right now, under the same circumstances as the rest of us, under the same oppressors Carlin would have us believe in.
A few weeks ago at PLASA, I spoke to several people who said business is up. The folks at Chamsys even confided that they had managed to grow sales at an 80 percent clip for the past two years. How do they do it? Not by obsessing over the bad, but by refusing to participate in the recession. It's simply mind over matter. As Steve Biko said, "The most important weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."
Another choice I love to exercise is to watch clips from the early Carlin years when he wore flowery shirts and used his sharp wit to make you laugh and forget your problems. I also choose to avoid clips from his later years when he wore black and focused on everything that's wrong with the world and why it will never be right.
Here's another choice I like to make. I choose to believe that in the afterlife, Carlin found himself in heaven. Saint Peter greets him and, after checking his roll, allows him to pass. Gabriel is nearby and he scratches his head.
"Why did you let him pass?" Gabriel says. "He's the last guy I would have thought would make it into heaven."
"When George gets to the next gate, he'll find it has a row of six locks on it, all in a row," Saint Peter answers.
"But he knows that trick," Gabriel says. "That won't stop him!"
"True," Saint Peter replies. "But what he doesn't know is that the locks on the gates of heaven were open to him all along."
"Oh," says Gabriel. "I get it. You're trying to get him to realize that his troubles are all in his mind."
"I'm trying to get everyone to realize that."
