With my birthday looming on the horizon, I’ve lately been looking back at my time here on my home planet, right in time with the stages of life the sociologists and psychologists say I’m supposed to go through at this age.
I’m “taking inventory of my experiences and trying to figure out if I’ve learned anything.”
One would think the correct sentence would be “taking inventory of what I’ve learned” from them, but sadly I’m rather hard-headed, so that’s not always the case.
Once, when I was young, I had a vision. I was twelve, and I was asleep in bed. I woke to see a tall, dark woman with long, dark hair standing at the foot of my bed. She didn’t say anything, and I didn’t say anything, and she started to fade out of sight. It wasn’t scary, but for some reason, the words the “red way,” stayed with me. I easily fell back asleep, but in a conversation with my mother the next morning, she informed me, nonchalantly, it was probably my great-great grandmother, who was Metis.
The “red way,” she said, meant the way an Indian lived. She was totally unconcerned I should have such a “dream” at such a young age, or that my great-grandmother might have tried to communicate with me long after her death. Mom always had illuminating dreams and thought everybody else did.
It wasn’t until many years later in college, when I was pursuing Native American Journalism for a Copy Reading and Editing project, one of the things to come out of my readings was this concept of “the lesson.”
Basically it referred to the practice of considering what you learned from the people you met, the situations you encountered, the experiences you had, and to be thankful for them (good or bad), because they taught you how to live a better life. The older I got, the more references I found to the concept.
I discovered basically, (and very simply put because Native American theology runs across over 500 conquered tribes and it’s hard to boil that down to a simple “religion”), “the red way” referred to a way of living one’s life, and to be thankful for the lessons (no matter how uncomfortable or embarrassing sometimes).
Figuring out my ‘red way’
I spent many years trying to figure out what my “red way” was, in deference to my great-grandmother. I thought if life is for learning lessons, what have I learned? I mean, really, besides how to do emergency repairs on my vehicles, “break” horses, handle ventilators and balance my checkbook, what have I learned about living?
Probably the most paramount with me was to look at my interaction with other living beings on this planet and make that better. It was an easy concept for me to understand, that “we are all related,” and I’ve tried to live that way. I have to say, though, one real important lesson I’ve always remembered came from my Copy Reading and Editing teacher, a decidedly non-Metis man and the one who approved the aforementioned Native American newspaper project. He was Mr. McCauley.
The lesson was “consider the source.”
I cannot begin to tell you how many times that simple directive, once considered, has made a major impact on my life. That small phrase has transformed a whole host of incidentals too tiny to even remember. At the time, muttered by an elderly man with gray and white, fly away hair, it seemed an innocuous statement, almost a no-brainer, but one of those things you just don’t think of yourself, and comes as a surprise when you first hear it. I wrote it down dutifully in my CR and E notes. I had never considered it before, and thankfully, I’ve never forgotten it.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Mr. McCauley might have gone a long way to give me a really good weapon with some serious ammunition with which to deal with life. Always prone to have a bit of trouble with self-esteem, that phrase became a lifesaver thrown to a drowning woman. No more was I prey to those who hunt out and stalk chubby women with poor self-esteem. I was making some mistakes, but my eyes were opening. Wait a minute! Consider the source!
I started applying it to daily issues.
Applying my best lesson
As Americans, we are supposed to consume. Everything depends on it. We go to work, get money, spend it and consume (or use) it. Whether we actually need it, and whether it is actually good for us, or our environment, is a totally moot point. To this end, we are bombarded by TV and radio ads urging us to buy this vitamin, or that beauty product. All women, in case you men don’t know, are deficient, lacking in one way or another, (companies would have us believe), and if we will just buy this or that product advertised on TV, we will be “better, prettier, skinnier and sexier.” Being sexy is the most important thing a woman can hope to accomplish, and something we should waste great amounts of time and money trying to achieve. We should also always seek to be competitive with other women based on looks and sex appeal.
Advertising worms its way into our most private moments. If it doesn’t get us, it gets our children. Keeping up with the status quo becomes the paramount goal of parent and child alike, and we take jobs that take us away from our families at night, for long hours at a time, subjecting us to unrelenting stress that sneaks into our marriages, relationships, and health with all of our family members. I felt fine before I turned the TV on, but now I realize I’m getting a double chin, I’ve got gray hair, and oh that belly. Wait a minute!
Consider the source!
Drugs! For Pete’s sake, we all need drugs! Turn the TV on to find out which ones you need and can suggest to your doctor – they like that. You’re bombarded by the amazing quantities of drugs that have been developed to handle every possible bodily function. Starting from the head with headaches, acne, sagging skin, sinus problems and crow’s feet, we follow the body on down with fibromyalgia, neural malfunctions, varying states of psychosis, multiple muscular disorders, breathing medications, stomach and gut medicines, renal, liver, diabetes, and joint ache concoctions, and end it up with diabetic foot pain and the different kinds of athlete’s foot and toe fungus. I’m not saying these conditions are not genuine. I’m saying they are celebrated on TV. The drugs are followed by several seconds of not-to-be-missed warnings concerning their use, (which often, to me, sound worse than the actual condition).
I guess they think we’re listening but no, we must not be, because then they are followed by a plethora of lawyers’ offices offering to sue, on your behalf, various companies, some of which are still offering the said drugs.
Consider the source.
What a great concept
What is the source, when it comes to phones and media devices? I said to the cashier at WalMart’s, “I want the simplest plan with the dumbest phone.” You’d have to have at least a two year community college certificate of something, to figure out any more than that. Single plans, couples plans, family plans, unlimited this, that and the other, and various speeds from several providers. It’s mind-bending. That doesn’t even consider the phones themselves. Couple all of that with the new sources for television – everything from DISH, cable, and TV “sticks” that plug into our newly “smart” TVs. Music is the same way. No more supporting your local artist at your local pub or coffee houses. Download this, download that, and to me, it seems like it’s mostly music that is a beat squashed into a series of vaguely pornographic suggestions, just right for our teenagers, the new crop of consumers.
Consider the source.
I do again and again. It’s just one of many lessons along my “red way” that has never lost its keen edge, never been eroded with time. Just about when I am about to be overcome again, it pokes its little head out of my pocket and says, ah Lyn, consider the source! Once considered, it is so much easier to make a decision I can be happy with. What a great slide rule. What a great concept. What’s the purpose, what’s the agenda, who gains and who loses? Follow the money, Deep Throat. What’s the real motivation? It’s not a guarantee against bad decisions, but it can shed a little light on the situation.
You rock, Mr. McCauley!
After all this time, my hat’s still off to you. I do appreciate the little news writing tip you gave me. It’s some of the best advice I ever got, and some of the best I can give to anybody else.
And with that in mind, consider the source.
Lyn Hacker is a Lexington native raised by Appalachian parents to be not only educated but proficient in the living arts – working very hard, playing music, growing gardens, orchard management and beekeeping. The UK graduate has been a newspaper staff writer and production manager, a photography lab manager, a Thoroughbred statistics manager, a Bluegrass singer and songwriter, a registered respiratory therapist, a farmer, a Standardbred horsewoman, and a beekeeper. She lives on a farm in Sadieville.