Bank Robbers Illustrate the Danger of Too Much Focus

Don't miss the lilies, the Open to Possibilities Meditation, and The Force Awakens quotes... mild spoilers.

It was April of 2010 when every police officer in Philadelphia was out on Broad Street.

1550 nurses and healthcare professionals (radiology techs, respiratory therapists, social workers, and many, many more) were out on Broad Street in front of Temple University Hospital, engaged in a 28 day landmark strike that would determine the course of healthcare labor relations in Philadelphia for the foreseeable future.

I had forgotten what the main issues were, but when I looked back at this article in Labor Notes, I remembered. Central to the fight was Temple’s attempt to impose a non-disparagement clause, or gag rule, on healthcare professionals for whom this rule would conflict with their professional ethics and obligations under the law.

Temple failed to impose its non-disparagement or “gag” clause, an idea incompatible with the legal obligation of health care workers to serve as advocates for their patients. The clause would have prevented union members and leaders from speaking publicly about patient safety issues rising from short-staffing. — Labor Notes, May 21, 2010

The strike was inspiring, monumental, and for those of us responsible for running it, exhausting. You really haven’t lived until you’ve had people coming to you telling you that they will lose their house within days if we don’t get a contract. I played less of a role in this one than I had in some previous ones - I was running a new organizing campaign at the time - but I was there, ordering pizzas and walking the picket line.

The weather was kind, and nurses etc. walked the street in front of the hospital in the warm spring sun. Dunkin Donuts had set up a free kiosk and gave out coffee to our members and to all of the police who had been stationed to watch over the strike. We trained our members very carefully to not be provoked to any sort of violence or confrontation. We knew that management would try to provoke us, as that’s how they could get an injunction to prevent us from picketing at all. Fortunately, we were dealing with some of the most self-disciplined people on earth: urban nurses who have to provide life saving care under the most difficult of conditions. These people know how to focus.

So, it seems, did the police. Civil Affairs was there - it’s their job to monitor protests of any kind. They were such nice men, always in suits, very professional. I loved coordinating with them. Then there were dozens of regular police officers, some of whom I noticed seemed to pick up a nurse girlfriend over the course of the strike. It’s a classic combination: nurses and cops. Two people who regularly put their lives on the line for people they don’t know.

Apparently, we were not the only ones to notice the police department’s single-minded focus on the strike. At some point mid-strike, on the day of a giant noon rally outside the hospital, some low tech robbers in masks robbed the PNC Bank branch just a half a block down the street from the hospital. And got away!

Why? Because no one was paying attention.

Eventually the thieves were apprehended, but it took quite a while. I’m sure PNC Bank was annoyed that there were no cops available in all of Philadelphia because they were all stationed at the hospital up the block, hitting on nurses and eating pizza that we happily shared with them. (I have a freaky gift for figuring out the exact number of pizzas and kinds of pizza that a large gathering needs to eat. Exactly so many veggie, barbeque chicken, pepperoni, cheese, buffalo chicken, etc. I nailed it every time. No one else can do this as well as I can. I should put it on my resume.)

The moral of the story is: do you job, and do it well. Focus intently when you need to. But never neglect the possibility that someone may be about to rob the bank up the street.

One of the true marvels of Western Civilization is the ability of men to focus. I say men because men have an entirely different kind of focused attention than women do. Our brains are different, and to argue otherwise is to end up with a lot of unhappiness. Men at the top of Western Civilization developed the ability to focus intensely on something, be it building a bomb or negotiating a peace or any number of other important things, to the exclusion of all else. The thing that makes this a uniquely western achievement is that men can do it without compulsion, either from a king or an army or a god. Of their own free will, some of them can apply this level of concentration to a problem that will simply not be solved any other way.

Women focus too, but in a different way. Women are always scanning the horizon, and pick up on, estimating conservatively, 100 times more emotions than men do in any given ten second interval. By the time the gentlemen read that sentence, the ladies had had at least fifty complex thoughts and feelings about it. This is how we keep the tribe together, how we raise families, and how we keep our men from going batshit crazy. Women focus on the single most important thing any human being can ever do: giving birth to a child. But most of the time we have a million things in the background of our minds, from paying the bills to winning a strike to reminding our former partner (of twelve years ago) that it’s his sister’s birthday.

I could say more about that because it’s a topic I’ve thought about in depth, but I’ll save that for another day.

The habit of focus is good. I fear that phones and growing rates of ADHD are intertwined and destroying this thing that is essential to saving our civilization. While men in the US, Europe and Canada are messing with their phones, men who would kill or enslave and at very least convert us are paying quite a bit of attention. There will not come a point when we will all peaceably play video games together and join a group chat on whatever app the kids are using these days. We need people to focus on the essential task of discerning threats to our security and fighting them, un-distracted by virtue signaling, fear of cancellation, or concern about the proper oven temperature for roasting fish.

That salmon is probably raw and should probably be grilled, but see, you’ve already wasted a thought!

In the process of achieving and maintaining focus on a larger goal, it’s important not to miss either the obvious or the unexpected.

The obvious: it’s lily season and they will be in bloom for only a short time before the heat dries them out and they’re gone until next year. Take a moment to look for the flowers if you live in a place where you have them.

This is a picture of real lilies, just a few houses down from me. I’m enjoying having a little free time to walk and take pictures at peak season for my favorite flower.

Then there’s the unexpected: someone may rob a bank down the street from your strike. Any number of things may happen that if you’re not paying attention, you could miss.

A few years ago, I started doing an Open to Possibilities meditation. I had always been a person with a plan, but as time went on, things got so far away from my original plan that I decided to just be open to what might happen. Save for retirement, have health insurance, but be open to possibilities.

In the morning when I meditate for the first time, and then again in the evening in times of high stress or volatility, I open my mind up to possibilities. Every time a narrative about what might happen starts, as it inevitably does, I recognize it, then let it go, with the mantra, “I am open to possibilities.”

I start to think about a potential job… and let it go before the idea gets too clear. I imagine a place to live… and let it go, before I get to attached.

It’s not indifference to the outcome. I’ve never managed that cold feat of bloodless calculation. I have a friend who can do it and I envy her, but true indifference to the outcome I have never achieved.

What I have achieved is a conscious recognition that I never know what will happen, even when I think I do, and a determination to trust in God, even when I am tempted to trust only in myself.

That way, when I say to myself like Han Solo did in The Force Awakens, “This not how I thought this day was going to go,” I’m always right. Nothing ever goes the way we think it’s going to go, even if we are having a “normal” day. Even less so when there is no normal day.

Once accomplished in the Open to Possibilities meditation, it is amazing what possibilities can open. Even that which appears impossible.

Which brings me to one of my favorite exchanges in the new three Star Wars. As they are getting out of the ship that Han and Chewie were on when they recaptured the Falcon, Han informs Rey that they’re leaving the hangar at light speed.

Rey: Is that even possible?

Han: I never ask that question until I’ve done it.

How is the beauty of real lilies even possible? These are one block from my apartment.