Love. Life. Practice.

you are strong enough

When Less is Annoying

Recently a dear friend sent me a Lifehack 30-Second Tip image. I’m a big fan of the site, and I’ve enjoyed several of their similar images, but this one…this one I had some problems with. Can you guess why?

The Zen Grammarian

Obviously the first problem is with the grammar: as any reliable source will tell you, when talking about anything you can count the correct word is “fewer”, not “less.” Even more than that, though, something about the ideas in this rubbed me the wrong way.

After some thought, I realized the way I would have rewritten it:

don’t wish it was easier, realize you’re strong enough to handle it
don’t wish for fewer problems, remember that you will outlast them
don’t wish for fewer challenges, relish the lessons they teach you

That’s my version, minus a picture of rocks. What’s yours?

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life isn’t out to get you

Life Doesn’t Care – Why Should You?

I’m kind of concerned that this is going to come across as a nihilistic post, when it’s certainly not intended as such.  It was inspired by a recent article about motivation with the basic idea that “sometimes the best way to get things done is to give up.” The idea is that often too much time is spent trying to get us “motivated” – in other words, trying to feel like doing something. The argument is that no, trying to convince yourself that you do feel like doing something – or worse, that you should feel like doing something – is counter-productive. It’s ok if you don’t want to do something. Accept that. Indulge in it, even.

And then do it anyway. I’ve written about it before, and even decided there should be a whole category called “Didn’t Wanna. Did It Anyway” on my “Have Done” list.

That, by the way, is the list you ought to have at the end of a day of working through To-Do’s. For some reason, we never focus on that…

“God Does Not Play Dice With the Universe”

I don’t know that Einstein ever really said that, but it occurs to me that there are two ways to take it – either with the emphasis on the dice, or with the emphasis on “God.” Many theists use it to back up intelligent design theories, and that’s all well and good – I would never try and argue someone’s faith. But either way you take it – whether as an argument that there is a definite plan to the universe, or that it’s all happenstance and the dice are rolling themselves, it comes down to the same thing: the universe was not created for YOUR convenience.

It’s a convenience that we share. And thank God (sic) for that! Can you imagine the pressure you’d be under if the entire world was centered around you? That would mean that every tragedy that happened was directly traceable to YOUR needs. All of that beauty around you, and you’re spending the afternoon watching re-runs of The Shield? How could you waste such richness? With an entire universe shaped for your benefit, you had better amount to something or else you are wasting the biggest gift anyone could ever give you!

That’s a lot of pressure. No thanks, I say. I am much happier living in a universe that exists for all of us, equally, with laws that have exceptions that we don’t understand and exceptions to laws that we haven’t even imagined yet. I don’t have to worry about the world in Australia right now, no matter what my newsfeed tells me – rather, I get to enjoy the small wonders, like the fact that my grandson Victor, after a rough night of crying, blew me a kiss when I dropped him off at daycare.

It’s Not Personal. It’s Galactic.

Yet even when we accept that we only have a very small part of the larger world to perceive and interact with, we still tend to treat life as though it was a Grand Opponent. “Why is the world out to get me?” “Sorry I’m so mixed up, Mercury is in retrograde” or even the classic “I just can’t win!”

Here’s a secret: much like in yoga, you can’t win because nobody is competing against you. Life is simply happening, just the way it’s supposed to. The measure of your suffering, as the wise Zen masters say, is simply the difference between the way you think life ought to be and the way life is.

The challenges of life get much easier to deal with when you realize that they’re not part of some grand conspiracy or even some trend of the odds. Sure, you certainly contribute to the odds of things happening to you through your own action, whether that’s a tummy-ache after a carton of ice cream or your house being swept away because you chose to live in a certain geographic location.

But you can only predict your failures or your successes to a certain degree, and a large part is the way you choose to define “failure” or “success”.

For starters, if you want to win: stop inventing imaginary invincible opponents

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Control

Control. It comes in many forms, and is a both an impossibly high standard to meet and also a seductive marketing ploy often performing the very act it promises – that is, controlling us through the tantalizing offer of letting us control. We crave control of so many things – data, weight, money, children, lovers, coffee. There is little worse to hear from a friend than that their lives are “spinning out of control.”

The problem is, that implies that there was ever any control to be had over the spinning in the first place.

Freaky Is as Freaky Does

For some, the craving becomes a compulsion – the “control freak”, who tries to micro-manage every aspect of their environment. They are lovingly lampooned in the media, a Sheldon Cooper or Adrian Monk, trying desperately to control everything they can get their hands on whether they want to or not.

I’m very thankful that is not one of my vices; I am more than happy to let some things go, and I feel sorry for those kinds of people. But that’s not to say I’m immune to the seductive fantasy of control.

For me it lies in the organizational porn I consume – the day planners, the new Getting-Things-Done lifehacks, the promise of a fresh moleskine and a shiny pen. “This will stop the chaos” these things whisper to me. “We are the tools with which you can turn the maelstrom into a ballet.” My fantasy of control lies in one of the few personal mottoes I’ve ever come up with and liked: Dance, don’t scramble. It lies in the idea of calm, and grace, and everything sliding into place with a loud and satisfying click.

Dance, Dance, Wherever You May Be

It’s important, though, to recognize that pairing of words: fantasy and control. One of the first mistakes new lead dancers make is the idea that they are supposed to control where their partner moves. That’s silly. There are far too many variables in the human body for someone to be in control of themselves, much less another, and when you add in time, action, and environment the idea of “control” with any measure of precision becomes ludicrous.

Instead, you create a space for your partner to move into and you invite them to partake of it. You suggest, you cajole, you entice. At a certain level of skill, your partner doesn’t feel your hand at all in the dance – they simply move where they ought to go because no other choice seemed available.

“The key to strategy, little Vor,” she explained kindly, “is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory.” – Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game (1990)

That’s the closest you can come to control: the ability to increase the probability of a certain outcome. The advantage of practice and years of performing is the cultivation of resilience in the face of all the things that can go wrong; it’s the ability to stay flexible and graceful and give the appearance that whatever is happening is exactly the way you planned it.

Usually that fools any audience, and occasionally it may also fool your fellow performers.

But god help you if you believe it too.

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The Phantom Rolebooth

The other day I was listening to the excellent podcast “Writers on Writing” (much easier to do than, y’know, actually writing) and George Saunders was talking about the way he would occasionally take inspiration from his dreams. The trick, he related, was to know which dreams were actually worth turning into stories, and which ones should remain just dreams.

I’m not George Saunders, so it’s entirely possible that I’m making a mistake with this entry. But not only was it a dream, it was an idea that stayed with me a few days afterwards…so bear with me, ok?

Available Space

In the dream, I was talking with my ex-wife about one of my daughters (I won’t say which one, since some of them read this blog) and we were talking about her booth.

In that surreal-is-normal way that dreams have, my daughter was standing inside of a kind of phonebooth/tardis-looking box which completely surrounded her without actually impeding her movement. My ex and I were talking about how long it might take for her to grow into that booth, as there was still quite a bit of space around her. The booth had a protective feeling to it, like it would shelter her as needed, and it also kept her from a full range of motion, a necessary sacrifice for that kind of protection.

The conversation wasn’t important, but the feeling was that the booth itself was a key part of her development. That there was some minor worry that she might not actually grow into the available space around her, that the walls might prove too strong, or not give her enough room to move and gain the strength she needed. Somehow I knew that when she grow into it the booth would disappear, no longer necessary.

When I woke – or maybe even before – I realized that the booth might be an apt metaphor for the roles we take on in our lives.

Structural Supports

I’m lucky enough to have friends who see more in me than I see in myself. There have been more than a few times that the way they treat me and the things they expect of me have pulled me beyond my comfort zone and into what I affectionately call “AFGO”‘s: Another Frakkin’ Growth Opportunity. One way of looking at that is to see these as times when my friends have put me into a role, into a box labeled “leader” or “teacher” or “writer” or “father” and simply treated me as if that were the reality.

My reality, on the other hand, is often simply feeling very small and ill-fitted to the walls of whatever particular box I am trying to fill. So I fake it, relying on the walls of the role – the conventions and expectations that go along with the cultural construct – to help me carry on through the process.

My own favorite box. Extra points if you recognize it, and what’s inside.

In the best case scenario, I realize that the walls have disappeared, because now that role is no longer something I’ve put on, it’s something I am. In other situations, I realize that the box is not one that I really want to fit in, and I step out of it.

These boxes and labels can be incredibly useful for your development, regardless of age. There was a pretty and shiny booth of dark blue with red and gold piping labeled “Marine” that I grew into and it gave me the tools and strength I needed for many of the trials to come. Currently I’m trying to fit into the box labeled “writer”, with some success and some setbacks. As the saying goes, sometimes we are born into great boxes, sometimes great boxes are thrust upon us.

The Problem with Boxes

Of course, there’s a darker side of these kinds of booths. The thing about walls of any kind is that they are rarely smart enough to tell the difference between leaning and pushing. The one is for support, the other is expressing a desire to leave, but the walls of the booth don’t care.

They also don’t really know or care what they are keeping out. The constraints of the roles we maintain in our lives can hide things that we might want or need to see. Sometimes it’s because we can’t see over them, and sometimes it’s because the things are right next to us, just on the other side of the wall, but because we’re looking over, our perspective can be warped in a way that keeps things out of our perspective.

I think the worst problem can be when we forget that we are still growing into roles – when we mistake the walls of the booth for our real selves. Others do this too, and their reinforcement of the walls, while well-meaning, can be a real detriment to growth. Luckily there is a very easy way to tell when you or others I believe that when we grow into a role and absorb it into our identity: you or they start using a lot of “shoulds” and “could’ves” in your conversation, as well as creating a mythical Real Archetype. For example “A Real Writer would never sit and watch TV when there’s a book to edit.”

Dorothy: You’re a very bad man!

Wizard: No, my dear. I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad wizard.

When we’ve grown into the roles, they provide us with the ability to stretch, to move, to continue to move. We define the roles, rather than being defined by them, and that provides the next wannabe with their own box to try on. Our examples of living our authentic lives provide the framework for other people to succeed. But never forget that it’s a privilege and a responsibility to yourself, not to them. They will find out the places where your Rolebooth doesn’t fit them, and deal with them.

Your job, whether you know it or not, is to test the boundaries of your own. What are you waiting for? No one’s gonna do it for you.

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The Sword, the Frog, the Diaper, and the Corps

It was a small congregation of Mormons in, I believe, Lake Mills. I was wearing my monkey best suit, white shirt, and tie, looking far more wholesome than perhaps my seventeen years warranted. As I looked out over the shining Sunday faces in the audience, I smiled back at them, because I was about to do the unthinkable: upstage my Dad.

He was the main speaker that day, but I was accompanying him as his “opening act”, so to speak. I knew that people were looking forward to his talk – he’s known for his dry wit, his skill with wordplay, and the amazing skill he has at making his message both accessible and meaningful. He’s also known for carrying his sidearm, on occasion, to Church – as a law enforcement official, at times that was simply required by his work, and it had inspired more than one joke over the years.

Which is why I chuckled inwardly with Jack-Nicholson-Joker-esque “Wait’ll they get a load of me…” as I finished my standard opening “Thank you for inviting me to give a talk today, brothers and sisters. The subject my father asked me to talk about was ‘Building Character thru Adversity’…”

Then I reached under the podium, held the sharkskin sheath over my head and drew the razor-sharp katana, letting it glimmer and sparkle in the bright lights to the accompanying “schninggggg…” as the tip cleared.

I’m proud to say that I was able to successfully resist the urge to shout either “There can be only one!” or “By the power of Grayskull!” Instead I began (with the rapt attention of the audience, may I add) to describe the process by which katanas are forged – strong heat, pouding the metal flat, folding it, heating it, pounding it again, folding it, heating it again and again. It’s kind of an insane process (“fold it over itself 1000 times”) but in the end you have the kind of swords that become legend.

For my talk that day, I was speaking of how we could look at life in that way – God would test us, over and over, and pound us and burn us and fold, spindle, and mutilate us, but in the end it was so that we would emerge as something so superbly capable of fulfilling our function that we were a work of art.

What’s amusing now, twenty seven years later, is that the seventeen-year-old me thought he understood what he was talking about. I was filled with all the typical angst of a high-school junior and then some, with nary an inkling of the interesting journey ahead of me. It was truly a prescient talk, whether I knew it or not.

Plus, it was really cool to hear people gasp when I drew the sword.

Breakfast of Champions

Another allegory often used to explain the same concept is the old gem about eating frogs that came to us from Mark Twain. It is, I would think, a pretty optimistic view of life – I mean, what if eating the frog wasn’t the worst thing that happened that day? Then not only did you have a sucky day, you started out by chewing on a hapless frog for no good reason!

Personally I’ve found that if you have to have herpetological metaphors to get you through the day, it’s better to adopt the one where you see a somewhat startled stork being throttled by the not-quite-swallowed frog in his gullet. Rather than trying to convince yourself that your day isn’t that bad (because hey, it is) or that it will get better (because hey, it might not) perhaps a better attitude would be something along the lines of “You may devour me, Day-From-Hell, but by all that’s holy I’m taking you with me!”

Change is Gonna Come

The thing about the frog (and other adverse situations) is that while they may not work to accurately predict the degree of suckage in your future, they can easily be used to combat the degree of suckage present vs past. I realized this the other morning as I changed my grandson’s diaper before we had our traditional Miller Pancake Breakfast.

It was a truly epic diaper. Easily the worst I’ve ever changed on the young lad. Contrary to dozens of movie portrayals of men changing diapers, however, I did not groan, mutter, plunge my nose into a vial of Vick’s Vapo-Rub or demand my own Repo-Man outfit. No, I just chatted with Victor as I took care of cleaning him, changing his diaper, and disposing of the waste.

No big deal. Why? Well, aside from the fact that diapers aren’t that complicated to begin with, there’s also the fact that I’ve raised four daughters. And not to embarrass them too much, but his twin mother and aunt used to have worse diapers than that and I’d be changing two of them before breakfast. And that was back in the day when there weren’t Koala stands in men’s bathrooms, which means I was trying to keep one wiggly child from falling in the sink while another cried in need of changing and simultaneously trying to convince their slightly-elder-sisters that no, they weren’t white hockey pucks so put them back.

Compared to that? Changing one stinky grandson on a blanket in the livingroom with the promise of coffee and pancakes afterwards is just not that big a deal.

Eat the Apple

Probably the most useful experience along those lines for me was the United States Marine Corps. It is a continual surprise to me how much so little of my life affected everything else about me. Let’s be clear: I was in for just about two years. I never saw combat (just missed Desert Shield by a matter of weeks). I had minimal, if any, leadership responsibility, and I was by no means a shining example of the Few and the Proud.

At the same time I have never met a Marine who has held me as anything less than a brother, whether they were combat veterans or retired officers. There’s something about the three months of boot camp (and, in my case, the additional three months in the School of Infantry) that changes, quite effectively, the entire character of a person. Among other things, there has yet to be a day, in the twenty-five years since I stopped being “boot”, that has been harder than those days.

Not once. No matter how tired, how penniless, how frustrated or angry or lonely I get with life, I can always look back at what I endured in the Corps and say “Well, I made it through that…I’ll make it through this.”

Regardless of what else I may or may not have gotten from my time in the Marines, that has been an invaluable gift.

The Wisdom of Churchill

The moral of this uplifting blog post? Simply this: if your life sucks, if it seems to be sucking worse than anything you ever imagined, then don’t pretend it’s not. Instead, embrace the fact that it is, and pay attention. Because like all things, this too shall pass, one way or another – and it will be your memory of surviving these tough times that can make the tough times to come that much more bearable.

 

If you’re going through Hell, keep going!
But take notes-you might want to blog about it later.

-Winston Churchill

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