I Coulda Been An Intender

September 11, 2009 by  

The prevailing sentiment in response to massive change shifts we’re experiencing reminds me of the great scene from On The Waterfront.

The main character, Terry Mallow, played by Marlon Brando, is a dockworker mixed up in waterfront crime. He’s also a washed up fighter who, on his brother Charley’s instructions, threw a fight he could’ve won, to rig the odds for the mob/union boss. Later, Terry considers risking his life to testify against the mob, and his brother Charley tries to bribe and then threaten him about that choice. The famous scene plays out when Terry reminds his brother, that if he’d looked out for him and not pushed him to fix the fight “I coulda been a contender” and not just a bum with a one-way ticket to Palookaville.

What we get now, in similarly challenging times, is pressure to contend, that is, to struggle, strive and compete for and against people, things and situations. For the contender, perceived failure or loss leads to regret, guilt, despair and rage. The media and those who give advice for a living, love it. We’re bombarded with information that suggest that to survive we must contend.

But its a failure response to change.

Giving oneself over to contending is a form of hubris that leads to more suffering when we delude ourselves that we can change things through our force of will or stop change through the force of our resistance. Change is life. When we refuse to contend we align with life, with the infinite outcome probabilities available in every moment and with a guiding force that Einstein described as a friendly universe that’s on our side.

We’re witnessing the pressure to contend in the public and political battle over health care reform. The issues got obfuscated by the judgments about President Obama’s bi-partisan response to the opposition. He was increasingly called weak and ineffective, by even his most ardent supporters. Yet he refused to contend and instead consistently intended unity. Wherever you stand on the issues, there’s no mistaking the power of a leader who speaks from his or her personal truth and integrity. That power came through in the president’s recent health care reform address.

Contend implies against; intend implies toward. Its not to say that to contend is a bad thing, but from a Buddhist perspective to not contend means less suffering.

Yet we can learn through suffering as the Marlon Brando character learned in the story. We always have access to our voice of truth, exemplified in the movie by Father Barry, played by Karl Malden. Despite Terry’s furious screaming “its none of your business”, the priest convinces Terry that he can avenge his brother’s murder through the truth in a courthouse, not by “firing lead into another man’s flesh”. In other words, don’t give them what they want. Don’t contend.

For too long now, we’ve been telling our true self and inner voice: its none of your business. But we had it backwards and we’re now beginning to see more clearly that its never been our business. I think Emerson was speaking of our hubris, and that we think we know more than Nature and she says to us, “So hot? my little Sir.”

More than ever, it takes vigilance, diligence and courage to refuse the temptation to contend. Going against the status quo can mean rejection and even retribution. But when they called Terry a rat, he responded that he’d been ratting on himself for years. When we stop doing that, we may find that Palookaville is not as bad as anticipated and a gateway to what we want, the equivalent, or something even better.

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Filed under: alignment, change leadership, intention, intuition, Metaphysics, self-awareness
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