|
|
Dalton
Roberts |
|
|
I love Emily Dickinson’s poem about being a nobody: I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us, don’t tell. They’d banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public like a frog. To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog! I often return to the place where I was born. Someone asked me if I liked the place and I said, ”Not much.” So they said, “Well, why do you go down there so often?” I said, “Partly because I have friends and family there but mainly because I am a nobody there. I have times when I love being a nobody.” My father found a job in Chattanooga when I was being born and we moved here when I was three weeks old. I never had a chance to become “somebody” where I was born. I am not hot stuff now but it’s amazing how many people know me from a quarter century in politics, a half century playing dances and my newspaper column. I once said when I was county executive, “There are 300,000 people in Chattanooga. Ninety percent seem to like me but that means 10 percent, or 30,000 people, can’t stand me.” The problem with being a somebody is that those you cannot please for any reason at all are constantly trying to bring you down. Marilyn Monroe touched on this when she said: It stirs up envy, fame does. People feel fame gives hem some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you and it won’t hurt your feelings—like it’s happening to your clothing. A black friend, Moses Freeman, paid me a compliment I cherish. He said: When Dalton was elected, he remained the same kind of person as before he was elected. When he left office, he remained the same. And he’s one of the few politicians I know who didn’t leave office wealthier. Being a man who likes to tell the truth even about himself, I do not say these things to brag. I appreciate anyone saying good things about me, as we all do, but it doesn’t bother me much for them to say bad things. Once I was trying to close out an old rundown children’s home and make it into an industrial park. One night after a gig I walked in a breakfast place with a Vietnam vet who loved me. A man stranding near the door said, “There’s that rotten crooked !*&# who’s trying to throw them children out in the street!” Quick as a wink, my buddy threw him down across the counter and jerked his arm up behind him.” I said, “Turn him loose, Chuck. I work for him. He’s got a right to tell me what he thinks.” One thing I love about a democracy is that everyone is of equal value. We are losing that in this country and it hurts me as much as the coldness, criminality and power-madness in high places. Jesus did not seek to be known for His works. He most often called Himself “the son of man.” He wanted to be known for the Power that worked within Him. He said, “I do not do these works. It is the Power Within.” He wanted people to see and honor and experience the Presence of the One Power. It’s all right for a nobody to desire to be a somebody as long as the motivation is to do good. It’s OK to be a somebody as long as the thought of being a nobody doesn’t bother you. Jesus knew when we experienced the Presence Within, titles like “somebody” and “nobody” would no longer matter to us. It fulfills us at such a deep level of our soul that neither recognition nor anonymity really matters. To be a somebody to the Presence enables us to actually enjoy being a nobody.
|
