Remembering "Four-Letter Words"...

ANOTHER TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE
More than a dozen years ago I wrote the following epistle as a commentary which the editors of the Daily Pilot very kindly published on their pages.  I thought it might be time to reprise this.  A couple of the references show their - and my - age, but the core message remains.  Enjoy...

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

And now, a few words ...

By Geoff West

August 24, 2004

I've been thinking about four-letter words lately. Now, don't get all excited, I'm not talking about those four-letter words, the ones that seem to have saturated casual public discourse more and more in the last decade or so. I'm talking about some others.

Four years ago, as we ramped up for the last presidential election, there was a little joke going around: "No matter who wins the 2000 election, we're going to end up with a four-letter word for a president." I smiled then, and I'm smiling now. Among the four-letter words I've been contemplating lately is "work." It's one of the few four-letter words many of our kids don't seem to use these days, especially when combined with another four-letter word, "hard."

Seems to me that too many of our young folks just kind of skate by, willing to drift with the tide rather than work hard to accomplish their goals — academic and otherwise. Of course, not all of them are set on cruise control. There are many outstanding overachievers in this neck of the woods. There seem to be many on the other side of the equation, though, and it's a problem.

I don't know why. Maybe it's because the levels of academic achievement have been so ratcheted out of reason to avoid damaging self-esteem that even accomplishing a straight-A average seems not to be enough. How can we expect our kids to keep their eye on the ball, when we keep changing the target?

A couple other four-letter words I've thought about recently are "love" and "hate." Both of these seem to have gotten diluted. Hate is a word that has gotten watered down by overuse. People will say they hate someone when what they actually mean is, "I don't like your opinion," or "You're different, and I don't understand you." They hate the dress, when they actually mean, "I don't like that color much." Heck, I use the word — among others — when I'm tied up in traffic. It's an easy word to use, although not always accurately. I do know what real hate is, though. Hate is what I felt as I watched the airplanes hit the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001 and viewed the aftermath later. I hated the cowards who conceived the plan and those who fulfilled it. Almost three years later, that feeling has not subsided, and I still find myself contemplating appropriate punishment for those responsible.

Drawing and quartering is one of the more mild solutions I've considered. That is hate.

"Love," on the other hand, seems to have gotten confused with another four-letter word: "lust." Believe it or not, I was actually a teenager once — a long time ago — so I still remember lust. It was easy to confuse the words back then. Today, the difference is quite clear to me. Lust is seeing Halle Berry in a black cat suit and Sharon Stone in a white pants suit, frolicking together on the silver screen. Love is what I feel for my sweet wife of 37 years every hour of every day; it brings a smile to my face and makes my heart skip a beat when she walks into the room. Love makes me ache when we are apart.

"Fear" is another four-letter word I've thought about, usually in close proximity to "hate" in my thought process. Fear is what the Sept. 11 terrorists have given to this country. I guess I do hate them for that. Fear exists in our community for other reasons, too — fear of the new, the different, the unknown. There are those who use that fear to fan the flames of hate and try to convince us that their way is better. Sadly, sometimes that plan seems to have worked. I think we all need to do a better job of overcoming that fear and douse those flames.

Another four-letter word rattling around in my skull lately is "best." You know, as in "be the best." Lance Armstrong's recent win at the Tour de France has made me think about this word. Can there be any doubt that he is the very best at what he does? Even if you ignore his successful battle with cancer, his accomplishment is without equal in sport.

In this Olympic year, we are seeing young people from around the world become the very best and marvel at their accomplishments. We sometimes let "be the best" overshadow "do your best." In the Olympics, for every winner there will be others who will not stand on the top step of the podium and hear their national anthem played. Many of those individuals will have done their very best and still not win the gold.

Being the best is an admirable goal, achieved by very few. Doing your best can be attained every time you compete and in everything you do. In my mind, it's OK if you are not "the best" as long as you do your best.

The last four-letter word on my mind a lot in recent months is "life." There are many aphorisms that describe views of life, but I've discovered one thing at my rapidly advancing age: Life is usually not what you anticipated. This message was driven home to me, loud and clear, last winter when I spent 45 days at the bedside of a man who had been my best friend since we were 5 years old. He didn't expect that he would crash his motorcycle, but he did. I certainly didn't expect to be the one to tell the doctors to stop trying to bring him back at the end of his life, but I was.

So, I leave you with these thoughts: It is hard work to lead a good, happy, productive life, but it's worth the effort. A little lust is OK, but not at the expense of deeper feelings. Don't let fear of the unknown overcome you. Don't let others turn it into hate. If you do your very best, that's good enough.

Finally, learn what true love is — and share it.

•  GEOFF WEST is a resident of Costa Mesa.

Oh, yes... In case you're wondering, we'll get to the loaded City Council meeting in our next post... I have to pound myself on my shoulder pads and get pumped up for that one...

A Trip Down Memory Lane - The Beginning

WHERE THE HECK DID HE COME FROM?

Did you ever find yourself muttering to yourself, "Where the heck did this guy, West, come from?"  Well, here's your answer...

THE ANSWER

Fifteen years ago Byron de Arakal - then a columnist for the Daily Pilot - wrote a provocative column about the Costa Mesa City Council, HERE.  I usually didn't pay much attention to that stuff, but that particular day I did and decided to write a letter to the editor to the Daily Pilot in response.  And.... they printed it!  A month later he wrote another one that provoked me, so I wrote another letter... And they printed it!  That was the beginning of this whole thing.  Blame Byron... it's all his fault!

LOTS OF WORDS AND NUMBERS  

One thing led to another - lots of letters and commentaries published by the Daily Pilot and elsewhere, lots of offers to write a column (12 from the Daily Pilot alone), a few awards and - after two different blog hosts, more than 3,400 entries and more than 3 million page views - what you see published here nearly every day is the result of this very first Letter To The Editor and the encouragement from my sweet wife and readers like you.   Thanks...

ENJOY

So, for your reading pleasure, here's that first letter as dredged up from the Daily Pilot archives.  A lot has changed... and some has not.  It sure has been fun...

 

April 11, 2002
As a longtime Costa Mesa resident -- 28 years and counting -- I have
been concerned about our present City Council and its apparent inability
to work together to get things done in our city. For months I have
struggled with feelings of extreme frustration as, month after month, the
council seemed to blow in the wind on almost any issue you care to
discuss. They, as a group, seem to lack the ability to focus, analyze,
prioritize and act on the many serious issues that face this city.

Byron de Arakal's column ("Merrily on our way to nowhere at all,"
April 3) was a masterful piece of work. He managed, in his own special
way, to hit the nail right on the head. As he stated in his column, "It's
as if the mother ship has a guitar pick for a rudder and dysfunction for
a captain." That's a perfect description of how the leadership of this
city is operating these days.

On Monday, April 1, I sat at home and watched as much of the council
proceedings as I could stomach. I stayed up until the bitter end, which
turned out to be just after 1:30 Tuesday morning, hoping for signs of
accomplishment. I went to bed disappointed.

I know that the members of the City Council have chosen to make
sacrifices in their lives for the overall well-being of the city. I'm
sure that each of the current council members try to do a good job.
Unfortunately, as a group, they are just plain ineffective. There is no
leadership evident, as witnessed by the frequent breakdown of decorum
during the council meetings.

Over the past months I have watched council meetings, looking for
signs that would help me decide who, if any, of the current crop deserves
my vote next time around. Painfully, the answer is none of them do.
Mayor Linda Dixon, who is probably a very nice person, is in over her
head. It's absolutely no surprise to me that the Downtown and Eastside
Transportation Ad Hoc Committee has accomplished so little since it was
formed way back last summer. Clearly, she provides no more leadership for
that committee than she does at council meetings. She seems much more
concerned with "fluff" than the nuts and bolts of keeping a city running.
Gary Monahan has chosen to take himself out of the running next time
around but is clearly frustrated by the way things are going on the
council. He makes no effort to hide that fact.

Karen Robinson seems to be uninformed on issues facing the council.
She appears to have way too much on her plate these days, and her
performance on the council suffers because of it.


Libby Cowan is clearly the strongest personality on the council. As
she sits beside Linda Dixon on the dais, you can almost see her pulling
the strings. She has clearly displayed her own agenda, which has more to
do with empire building than consensus building, over the past months.
Her unwillingness to take a firm stand on issues that affect her employer
-- and our neighboring city -- should disqualify her from further
consideration.

Chris Steel is, well, Chris Steel. Not only does he attempt to appeal
to the basest parts of human nature, he lacks the ability to articulate
whatever is going on in his head. He is a perfect example of what happens
when the electorate doesn't take an interest in the process. There were
good reasons he ran unsuccessfully so many times in the past. Perhaps
nothing else more accurately defines Steel than the entry on the official
city of Costa Mesa Web site. At the link that introduces the City
Council, with photos and summaries of professional accomplishments,
beside his photo is a blank page.

The leadership vacuum in this city is so great that you can almost
feel the life being sucked out. Without clear, strong leadership, this
city is in big trouble. Without clear direction from the council, the
city staff will continue to run around in circles, trying to guess what
kind of a curveball the council will throw next. Do you suppose
exceptional public servants like City Manager Allan Roeder would even
consider another job if he was satisfied with the leadership in this
city? Neither do I.

It's getting to the point where it might be better to just recall them
all and start over.

Do you suppose it would be possible to Shanghai Peter Buffa and Joe
Erickson for another tour on the good ship Costa Mesa (by-the-sea)?
Again, my thanks to Byron de Arakal for stating the problem so
clearly.

GEOFF WEST
Costa Mesa