Crunch Time

Become who you really are

There was an unemployed man looking for work. He found an opening at a zoo that was looking for someone to dress in a gorilla costume and sit in a cage. The real gorilla, the star attraction, had passed away and they didn't want to let the visitors know.

He figured he could that. He applied, got the job, and began to sit in the cage in the gorilla costume. He got bored so he began to jump around and act "gorilla like". He found out that the more animated he became with the gorilla moves, the more elated the audience became. He was intoxicated with the accolades, so he thought he would really work the crowd.

He began swinging on a vine, and on his third pass he slipped and flew right into the lion's cage. He realized he was in grave danger so he began to tell the audience that he really wasn't a gorilla, he was only dressing up in a costume and they needed to get help.

Before he could get the message completely out, the lion pounced on the man, pinned him to the ground and said, "Would you shut up! Do you want to get us both found out?!"

Most people spend the first half of their lives being what others expect them to be. They then spend the second half of their lives being what they were made for in the first place. But why wait til then to to become an authentic person? Becoming who you really are requires some bold moves.

First you must get out of your costume. Undress yourself from market definitions of who you are supposed to be. Become unbranded from product lines and become your own brand. Do the hard work of discerning what expectations from others are accurate and which are unreasonable. I think your gut knows the difference. This will make you a new person.

Then become free from your cage. If ignorance is bliss, then we have alot of contented people in the world. Don't believe everything you read or hear. Take the time to think and determine where you are being locked in by biases (yours and others), past disappointments and other restrictive components of life. Change and healing begins with you. Often our cages are locked from the inside.

Finally, venture out into the wild. The philosopher David Henry Thoreau said that the "mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Often what is called resignation is in reality desperation. Out into the wild is really a part of the life you live now. To be out of your costumes and free from your cages opens a whole new adventure for the life you are already living. Doing this will give you a whole new purpose.

Realities of the moment

Life is made up of moments - the elemental makeup of our time on this planet. Moments are infused with meaning and potentiality. Choose one course of action in a moment of time and it could have lasting impact  on every moment there after. I am fully convinced that our current historical moment is intense in its challenges and must be understood in order to make the most of it. I call it crunch time.

The following are the realities of our moment as I see them:

Relentless: The changes that come at us during crunch time are insidious in their attacks. There is hardly room to breath. Take the current technological advances as an example. The computer in your car is exponentially more powerful than the computer that got the man to the moon. The cell phone in your hand connects to a worldwide library of information - unheard of two years ago. And on it goes.

Disconnected: There really is no continuity from yesterday to today. The changes are just too prolific and earth shaking. Though we might learn lessons from the past, the changes bearing down upon us require different ways of thinking and doing than the past can provide the resources for. Take warfare as an example. Previous wars were conventional with massive movements of troops and equipment spearheading into a particular geographic location. Today's armies are starting over in their strategic thinking.  Combat today requires smaller troops supported by robotics to fight intense squirmishes that aren't isolated to one location.

Accelerated: Change is not only relentless but accelerated. That is, the changes we experience do not slowly unfold over a few generations but often happen in days and hours if not minutes. The current economic condition, while brewing for a while (10 years they say; which is a blip on the screen of human existence) came upon us so suddenly that we weren't sure how to react. Who would have thought that stately Lehman Brothers would no longer be in existence today, collapsing virtually overnight.

Advantageous: I am a huge proponent of hope. In fact in my keynotes I always refer to hope as the only operative dynamic that is going to get us anywhere. Without hope the future looks bleak and our days are laborious. So, our current historical moment is full of opportunities to change the world for the better. The anemic economy is creating new patterns of existence. We are being more community minded and altruistic as we share in the deprivation together. Our lives are being marked with restraint and frugality, both important virtues toward a sustainable future and away from rampant and erosive consumerism.

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 Joy-Driven Life

In the midst of all the upheavals in the world today, it is easy to ponder the sobering reality of life and fall into a major funk. But there is a greater truth and a richer response to life and what it means to be human: Joy. G.K. Chesterton, an English Journalist, Novelist, and Essayist who died in 1936 knew well the undercurrent of joy in life. A person is fully human, he says,

"when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind;...Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live."

May all you labors this day be uproarious with joy

The persistence of joy

My lived experience has been an attempt to effectively migrate the quandaries of change by tapping into the persistence of joy. In a previous post, I defined joy as that smoldering internal ember that refuses to be extinguished despite repeated external attempts to douse it.  Happiness is embedded in our constitution and is a protected right.  Yet happiness is fleeting in our attempts to capture it.  Joy, on the other hand, captures us.

Joy is the deep undercurrent of life. Independent from any temporal realities, joy compels us to tap into the transcedent dimensions of our lives.  The two eternal dimensions that buoy joy are humor and hope. Both are in desperately needed today.

Humor: This is the closest we can come to facing our failures and moving on with renewed vigor.  When we can laugh at ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in, we are engaging in a very courageous act; for both our egos and our culture don't like to be laughed at.  Yet it is the discovery of humor and the act of laughter that disarms them both. As the great American philosopher Jimmy Buffett once said, "if we all couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."

Here are some suggestions for finding humor and engaging in laughter:

• Listen to comedians.  Most comedians will tell you that their humor is inevitably birthed from pain and insecurity.  Some of my favorites are Jim Gaffigan and Demitry Martin, and Ken Davis

• Share a bottle of wine (or two) with great, close friends and loosen up the nerves enough to laugh with one another. A nice affordable merlot that does the trick for me is Red Diamond

• Read and watch satirical content such as the Colbert Report or "The Onion".

Hope: I define hope as an act of the will that stubbornly leans into and moves forward against the headwinds of life. It is a refusal to be knocked down completely. Hope exists at the interface between the temporal and eternal. All that separates this world from the next is a sigh. That deep, audible exhalation of sadness or duress is the signal to begin leaning forward. 

Here are some suggestions for accessing the will and leaning forward in hope:

• Nurture the soul. This is best done in contemplation and silence. It is very hard in our noisy world, but try sitting silently for 20 minutes. Let any thought that comes your way to flow along out of your consciousness so that can be fully presence with the eternal.

• Don't go it alone. Share your worries and fears with those who can be trusted. The act of verbalizing them with others can normalize your situation and provide much needed camaraderie and support.

• Absorb stories of lives lived hopefully in the midst of extraordinary bleak circumstances. You will learn how powerfully resilient the human spirit is when enriched with hope.  Two wonderful ones are: The book "A Paradise Built in Hell" and the movie, "Life is Beautiful"

I wish you all joy as you move forward into the new year!

Nouns and verbs for a New Year

The New York Times ran an op-ed piece visualizing the significant cultural dynamics of the last decade (00's):

 

Notice the bottom two categories: nouns and verbs.  Words matter and can succinctly sum up cultural moments and collective consciousness.  Looking ahead to the next decade, here are some of my own nouns and verbs (along with definitions) that I believe will be key signifiers in the years to come:

NOUNS:

Joy: The smoldering internal ember that refuses to be extinguished despite repeated external attempts to douse it.  Happiness is embedded in our constitution and is a protected right.  Yet happiness is fleeting in our attempts to capture it.  Joy, on the other hand, captures us.

Scola: This is the Latin word for "leisure" and the root of our English words for "school" and "scholarship". It is not used in the sense of nursing an umbrella drink while lounging in a hammock.  It means to have unencumbered time to explore a topic or idea deeply and thoroughly.  Ask any teacher today and they will tell you their classroom is the farthest thing from leisure you can possibly find.

Frugal: To enjoy the fruits of one's labor in such a way that their value is intensified and their good effects multiplied to everyone. It has little to do with consumption and everything to do with contentment. It is a nasty and debilitating word to our consumer culture.  You watch - it will be attacked and squelched at every turn.

Bipolar: I am hearing this description used more and more in reference to our cultural situation. Listen for it as we attempt to describe the extreme oscillation of change we will continue to experience in the next ten years.

Hypers: This is the moniker I have bestowed on the youngest generation alive today (born after 2000). Though not everyone will agree, I think it aptly describes the metabolism of our contemporary culture and the subsequent challenges that commitment and contemplation will pose for them.

VERBS

Contract: In my training on generations, I use a "c" word to describe the formative themes of each age group. I am using this verb to describe the formative theme for the Hypers (see noun above). The last ten years has seen a steady contraction of perceived freedoms and assumptions that we in the West once enjoyed.  The youngest generation is going to be defined by the restrictions placed upon them by emerging global realities.

Beautify: This is the process whereby aesthetic improvements are undertaken to refurbish decaying infrastructures.  Not only is the infrastructure of many of our urban centers in need of beautification, but the infrastructure of our souls as well.  I predict that artisans will become more relevant and sought after as producers of meaning and beauty.

Pornify: This is the saturation of our culture with the graphic images and demeaning values of an oversexed population. It might even be the reality of an undersexed populace devoid of the intimacy that gives sex its depth and worth.  You watch how this dynamic increases the personal loneliness as we relate more and more on a digital level. This might inspire an earnest search for beauty.

Obviously these nouns and verbs are by no means exhaustive or definitive, but they are on my mind as I look ahead at the changes that await us.

Deeper perspectives

When the US Airways plane with 155 people on board ditched into a chilly Hudson River, we knew who to thank for saving all on board.  It was captain Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger, whose masterful skills navigated the plane to safety. 

But, imagine you are on a plane flying over two hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet, when suddenly without explanation, the engines stop working.  The captain has tried everything to get them to reignite, but to no avail. You are in crash position and agonizing your demise.  Then, suddenly, without explanation, the engines burst back to life one by one, delivering you safely home.  Who do you thank then? read more>

Feminine napkins and me

My wife and I have three children.  My son is fourteen and my two daughters are twelve and ten.  Though change is constant and swift for them (and us) in the fertile ground of adolescence, there is one change that is hitting me hard in the stomach - and it involves the feminine napkin.

I know what they are and what they're used for.  Heck, I sometimes find them in my gym bag enmeshed with my workout clothes from the wash.  Generally, I don't give them much thought.  Until now. 

When my wife sprung the box of feminine napkins on me one evening, she was preparing me for the inevitable and imminent use of those "things" by my little girl.  My little girl having a period! It was more like an exclamation point. I somehow never imagined her ever needing and using them.  What was I thinking?

I'll tell you. She's my little girl; my snuggler at night, and reading companion by day.  She's the little girl that sits on my lap and kisses me on the cheek.  She's the little girl whose little bottom I wiped clean and dressed with a diaper.  She's the little girl that scibbled love notes with crayons to me on a regular basis. She's the little girl that stole my heart.

Those feminine napkins seemed like thieves.  I saw them as conniving to steal my little girl from me. They were repulsive to my sensibilities.

I was in avoidance mood.  But as is the case, I had to be a big boy and embrace those napkins for what they symbolize - vibrant life and progression into a future that cannot be halted. Her life is vibrant. Always has been, always will be.  Our life together is vibrant. Always has been, always will be.  Feminine napkins will be around.  Always have been, always will be.

Peepholes

It's snowing and cold today where I live.  These conditions create a stubborn glaze of ice on the cars parked outside. The sounds of frantic scrapping on the windshields ricochet through the neighborhood.

In our haste to get on our way, we tend to clear a peephole through the ice just large enough to see ahead.  Yet, such a strategy is dangerous.  It limits our field of vision and diminishes our capacity for strategic response. It's a quick fix with potentially devastating results.

Today's hyper accelerated, disconnected world can quickly ice our souls.  Yet we tend to navigate through it with only a peephole of vision.  As a result, we steer our way through contemporary life with a limited perspective, a diminished response, and a deflated spirit.  A more expansive sight line is needed to keep our souls thawed and our lives expansive.

Have you ever had a conversation that went far deeper than the words spoken or an experience where you felt you had participated in something sacred–that you had been part of the unbidden activity of a reality much more expansive than yourself?  If so, you are experiencing life beyond the peephole.

One of the more significant resources I found to scrape ice from my soul and broaden my vision is the book "God hides in plain sight: How to see the sacred in a chaotic world" by Dean Nelson.  In this colorful, story-driven introduction to sacramental living, Nelson offers human beings a way to see the presence of God amid the chaos and acceleration of every day life.

An expansive life beyond the peephole.  That's the way to go!

Friends and Aquaintances

It's fascinating to me that in this day and age of Myspace and Facebook there is no longer a relational category of "aquaintance".  Everyone is a "friend". 

The problem is, we aren't quite sure what a friend is.  Modern American friendships have lost the force and importance they once had. C. S. Lewis for example, in his The Four Loves, writes:

"To the Ancients, friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it".

According to a 2006 study documented in the journal the American Sociological Review, since 1985 Americans are thought to be suffering a loss in the quality and quantity of close friendships. The study states 25% of Americans have no close confidants, and the average total number of confidants per citizen has dropped from four to two.

In the age of social networking, we are all alone.

But in the avalanche of ceaseless change, we need good friends to migrate with us through its intensity. In your social network who are your friends and who are your aquaintances.  The distinction is important. How do you know? 

To me, an aquaintence is more like a CEO. You know, the boss that keeps you on task, highlights the bottom line, and has the power to promote or demote depending on your performance.  They put conditions on your future behavior and leverage your vulnerabilities as a show of their managerial finesse in helping you.  

We all need people to play that role in our lives, but as aquaintances, not friends. A friend is uniquely suited to nurture your soul and invigorate your thinking.  It is a relationship of mutual caring and intimacy among one another. A friend is one who knows you as a person and regards you for who you are and not what he or she is looking for in a good friend. 

A friend suffers fools because we all are fools from time to time. Aquaintances don't put up with our crap for long. Friends do, thank God.  Savor the following quote from Frederick Buechner as you reflect on friends in your life.

“Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.”