Crunch Time

Welcome to the in-between world

It’s important to recognize where we are.  This is brand new stretch of water.  It’s Crunch Time, a disorienting moment of change rife with such extraordinary potentiality that people are faced with the transformative decision on how to get through it. Professor Walter Brueggemann writes that there are three major stages of orientation that reflect even the seasons of our own lives.

The first stage is being “securely oriented”. It is here that we feel settled and secure. Our lives make sense and the decisions we make are anchored in good judgement. This could be a time when your job seems secure and your family life is well ordered. Financially we are doing okay. Yet we know that this security never hangs around for long. Which leads us to the second stage.

The second stage is being “painfully disoriented”. These are times when we feel blind sided, hurt, and reeling from stress and the perceived enormity of change. Here you may have lost a job, a child, a divorce or some other chaotic and unexpected event. Yet if we persist in this movement, hang on with resilience, the third stage inevitable reveals itself.

This third stage is “surprising reorientated”. This stage is marked by surprise, the way things all seemed to work out for good and gives us something new out of something old. When we are in this stage, life seems renewed and our circumstances are compellingly welcomed. Over time this new place becomes settled and secure and we begin the process of moving through the stages all over again.

Right now we are in a stage of painful disorientation. We suddenly find ourselves in a tough new work and life environment.  We have drifted out of the current of a known world and into the vortex of a completely strange, new world. It's in-between what was and what will be. It will be surprising to see where this all leads us.

Welcome to the outer limits

The old, funky television show “The Outer Limits” had one of the most creative openings I can remember. The screen you were watching would begin as a test pattern. Then suddenly it would begin to morph and act erratically as an ominous voice would begin to narrate,

“There is nothing wrong with your television set” it would intone, “Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. For the next hour we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the outer limits.”

It seems today that we have entered a place in the outer limits. The speed of change is mind boggling. We are held captive to a test pattern and we feel as if we have no control over our situation and its extraordinary changes.

The subsequent anxiety often expresses itself as a vice-like compression deep in the gut. Our thoughts race around in our skulls first thing in the morning toward what seems an insurmountable finish line. Days become reflective, many times obsessive, about the state of our lives and the condition of our world.

It’s no wonder. I believe we are in an unprecedented time of change, the likes of which have been experienced only a few times before. It’s an evolutionary exclamation point in human history.

Alvin Toffler’s "Social Wave-Front Analysis" looks at history as a succession of rolling waves of change and asks where the leading edge of each wave is carrying us. It focuses our attention not so much on the continuities of history as on the discontinuities--the innovations and breakpoints.
The First Wave in human history was the agricultural revolution.  It was during this time we learned to cultivate the land and grow fruits and vegetables from seeds.  It lasted for thousands of years.

The Second Wave was the industrial revolution. During this time we learned to harness the energy of steam, coal, and oil to advance the ability of machines to make work more efficient and our lives more convenient.  This lasted for hundreds of years.

The Third Wave of human development is what Toffler calls the information age.  This movement is only decades in the making and we are still trying to catch up with the speed of its change and its far-reaching impact on what it means to be human.

This is our time…this is when we discover what we are really made of...

That's the irony. Our true character doesn't reveal itself when times are sedate or situations are easy. It emerges when we are brought to the brink of intense challenges.  What a great opportunity to strengthen our resolve and build the mental and emotional moxie such times require.

 

They mostly come out at night, mostly

In the movie "Aliens", a little girl named Newt, found by a visiting crew, gives insight into the cruel, fear-inducing aliens that have decimated her community and home. "They mostly come out at night" she says, "mostly".  The aliens that haunt me during this recession mostly come out at night too. They wake me up from an uneasy sleep and make it hard for me to go to bed at night. They mostly come out at night, mostly.

When you bed down for the evening there is a vulnerability that sweeps over you. Your physical body is going to shut down for a time and your brain is going to dissipate into dreams. You are at the whims of the night. It is then that I begin to feel the full weight of the situation and the reality of very tough times - the aliens of angst in our midst.

What are the aliens of angst that come out at us at night, mostly?

The alien of uncertainty: We are conditioned by our Western scientific mindset to value certainty over all else. When it gets threatened, we begin to run scared in the face of its unpredictability. It is the loss of control that we fear. Yet even in the best of times, the loss of control is a certainty. It is the illusion of control that we cling to and that gives this alien its fearful presence. To look uncertainty in the eye and accept it for the fact that it is, diminishes its negating, illusory partner; control.

The alien of failure: I have lived most of my life living under the description of bipolar II disorder. It has stalled my life. The main reason is that every opportunity became an invitation to despair. A friend asked me yesterday if I ever had a dream job. I answered I might have, but I wouldn't have known it. So here I am with very few prospects, no momentum, and not much to show vocationally for all my work.

To define failure, one must define success. You can't understand one without the other. Yet our definitions vary across the spectrum. For some success is defined by material possessions. For others it is the amount of time available to pursue what's important. This alien comes at me most profoundly because I allow the materialistic, consumeristic definition of success to rule the night. I am not a failure.  I am a good father to my children and a loving husband to my wife (thought not very capable at the moment of providing for them). So, in the words of the great American philosophy Kenny Loggins, "even though we ain't got money, I'm so in love with you hunny, that everything will bring a change of love."

The alien of despair: Despair is like a compression wave that radiates through everything. It is mostly a mindset that we allow ourselves to engage in and allow to have its way with us. I've mentioned in previous posts that depression has a tight logic. It's easy to stay there. What's harder is to break out of its grip. To do so requires joy. Joy is not happiness. Happiness is fleeting, like trying to chase a butterfly. Joy is enduring and finds us. It can seep into our lives in the most unlikely of situations - situations for which joy should be in short supply. It comes from something outside the realm of our reality. Joy, as C.S. Lewis says is "the serious business of heaven"

The once and future stooge

There was a recent article in Sports Illustrated exploring what makes Peyton Manning so doggone funny.  What struck me was a quip by David Letterman hailing Peyton’s remarkable ability to to transform himself into a “likeable, condescending TV stooge.”

Before we grimace with preconceived notions of what a stooge is, the head writer for Letterman stated that to call someone a “TV stooge” is the ultimate accolade from Dave.  To be a stooge is to willingly participate with no ego, no concern for how it all looks.  Ah to be so liberated!

As a public speaker and performer who attempts to let it all hang out on the platform, I’ve decided the best career move for me right now would be to become a stooge. Not ‘stooge like’, but a full on, no holds barred, throw caution into the wind, like-able and condescending stooge like Peyton.  I knew the first step toward that goal was to do business with my ego.

Believe me, I don’t lack for opportunities to decimate my ego.  It’s not just something I’m prone to do.  I would rather stab my eyes with knives then kill my precious, beloved ego.  Like the fallen hobbit Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings”, clinging to one’s precious most often leads to a diminished downfall.

But life has an uncanny knack for dealing the ego some vicious blows.  Often they strike without even looking, blind siding you into stoogeness.  I enjoy riding my road bike.  I quickly realized I am just one of thousands of aging wannabes vying for space on the road.  It still doesn’t stop me from fooling my ego into believing that I’m a pretty good rider and can handle most of the excruciating challenges thrust in my path - very similar to what Tour de France riders face.  That is until a manhole cover got my comeuppance.

Half way through a very enjoyable ride I slightly swerved to avoid a manhole that sprang up suddenly in my path. Physics attest that the faster you go the more accelerated your reactions become.  I was cruising along around twenty miles an hour when my slight avoidance maneuver caused my bike to undulate suddenly underneath me with accelerated response.

In the slow motioned perspective of hindsight, I clipped out of my peddles from the inertia of momentum, my body flipping over and over, head over heels then hip over hip and visa versa like some great lumbering beast trying to right itself after a surprise encounter with a trap.

It was over as soon as it started.  I was flayed upon the asphalt like fresh road kill, my legs twitching now and again as proof that I hadn’t completely expired.  The stench of gaping wounds was wafting into the air. They were steaming in the cold air. Grasping for some semblance of comfort I slowly opened my eyes and adjusted to the sight of two people looking over me as if peering down the abyss of a dark chasm.  They had witnessed a near brush with death and they wanted to make sure they could recount all the vivid details that night over dinner.  When my slowly rising body and expelled moans of painful released gave them further evidence of dodging a dicey situation, they helped me to me feet.

It struck me that my ego and its bodily housing just took a licking. My left arm was unable to rotate at the elbow without a searing jab of heat like intensity.  My left upper buttock was so tender that the slightest touch was enough to induce nausea.  My right knee and lower calf was ripped of its epidural casing and replaced with shimmering plasma and flecks of industrial tar.

One witness looked into my eyes to see if there was any dilation of the pupils.  An indication, at least to my young son, that the end is near.  He stated that I would be okay and that I rode well as a “clydesdale”. 

“Arrgghmmm?”, I inquired, fluids dripping from my nose.

In biking vernacular a clydesdale is a rider passing the 200 pound threshold. 

“I have to admit, for a big guy you fell pretty gracefully”.

I had to wonder if he saw the explosive residue of dust and tar embedded in my elbow and shins, but I acknowledged his kindness anyway, eaking a faint, unappreciative smile from my chapped, dehydrated lips.

It wasn’t until I got home that I realized the extent of my injuries.  I had a crimson colored oblong bruise slightly to the right of my high upper groin area.  Much too close to the bone if you know what I mean.  I also had more extensive scrapes around my butt cheeks and left hip, shrapnel of asphalt gleaming in the light.  There was a small bruise on my left hip.

My guess is that the impact of asphalt with my middle age spread around the torso caused that bruise to become much more apparent 24 hours later.  The injury was sustained deep within the adipose tissue and allowed to express itself fully after seeping upward to the skin like injected dye from the slow wringing of a sponge.

It is impressive - large and colorful.  I’m half tempted to snap a digital photo and post it online for the sheer novelty of it all.  The bruise is in the exact shape of Australia.  I kid you not.  There’s even some discoloration off its eastern coast that looks like the Great Barrier Reef.  It is physically situated a few short nautical miles north of the scab on my knee that is, I kid you not, in the shape of Jerry Seinfeld. 

As it continues to heal, the bruise is shrinking in size and becoming the team colors of the University of Notre Dame: black with gold highlights.  If only I was a fan of the fighting Irish I could provide a unique souvenir to some rabid alumnus.

The whole experience, though by no means an isolated one, helped jar me into the reality of my fragile existence, strengthening my foothold on the beauty of life and keeping it all in proper perspective, while at the same time crushing my ego and putting me well on my way to becoming a stooge...are you on your way to stoogehood?

The leader's mystique

Our time of extraordinary change involves extremely diminished morale and anger among citizens (with or without jobs); a grim budget year for states; an economic scare in European financial markets; an ecological disaster in the gulf coast of Louisiana; and the prospect of a lesser standard of living than in the past.  The list no doubt can go on and on.

What is needed for this time, this moment, is a unique kind of leader, a leader tasked with taking advantage of the crisis to cross over to a new model and way of doing and being. The following four deeply engrained abilities (inspired from one of my mentors, Jim Miller, whose "HopeLens" blog can be linked to on the side bar) embody a leader's mystique, an allure to spark the impulse to migrate together through our moment of extraordinary change.

Mud on our hands 

The participation of hard work alongside those we lead not only commands great respect, but seeds an inspiration for others to see their work as making a difference.  Leaders in crisis and change aren't afraid to dive in and dig in at every level of their organization, to do well what others deem not worthy of doing.

Love in our hearts

A leader understands the power of love as a critical undercurrent in the hearts of people. Love embodies itself in patience and kindness, humility and forgiveness, hope and a dogged pursuit of the truth. Nurturing these qualities daily soon leads to them being second nature in our relationships.

Stars in our eyes

Imagine what it would mean to your people if you inspired a vision that transcends the temporal difficulties they may face. This involves putting the gleam back in the eyes of people whose luster in life has slowly been extinguished. Be relentless in putting hope and enthusiasm before everyone you meet.

Curiosity in our minds

The ability to re-imagine and the permission to explore completely new ways of doing things (involving the encouragement of failure) is critical to contributing to a leader's mystique. Seek out wilder ideas from everyone at every level. You'll be honored as a leader that realizes life is not settled, but is in perpetual motion. Ideas are the catalyst moving forward.