trust your friends

A brilliant friend of mine, Judy Clemet Wall, posted a beautiful blog earlier today chronicling the Ten Things She’d Do if she could. She’s a wonderful writer and just reading her list was (and is) inspiring. When you’re done here and have left a comment, I’d highly recommend popping over to Zebra Sounds ,checking it out and giving her a follow.

One of her ten things, a truly remarkable and beautiful thing, was this:

“I’d loan my eyes to some people I love so they could see how beautiful they are.”

I know. Fucking awesome, isn’t it?

That item informed a brief online conversation about wishing that we could actually do that; share in some fundamental, elemental way how much we appreciated certain people so that they could, in essence, see themselves as we see them, as we love them, as we appreciate them. It would be an inestimable gift to be able to express our respect and love that clearly, on demand, and shoot it out when it was most needed like a love missile.

No… dirty, dirty… not that kind of love missile. A deeply honest, positive regard smartbomb kind of missile.

And then I had this thought:

What if we tried seeing ourselves as others saw us once and a while, not assuming the worst (as is usually my inclination), but instead seeing the best? You know, actually believing the things that people say to encourage us instead of just brushing them off in some sort of ode to humility.

How many people do you know that have heard and ignored the same, consistent advice and encouragement from their friends and then, like a bolt out of a clear blue sky, finally get it when they hear the same advice from a therapist, or a counselor, or a book, or even on Oprah, ferchrissakes.

Yeah, you’re nodding your head now. I know. Me too. We’re way to willing to accept negative opinions from anywhere, and way to slow to accept positive ones from the people we trust most. Tell me how that makes sense.

This isn’t a self-affirmation thing. I’m not suggesting that you are a precious and unique snowflake. I’m not talking about flowery expressions of positive self-regard here. I’m not telling you to say nice things to yourself or apply the law of attraction. This isn’t about giving your self a hug or creating a self-realization mantra and saying it three times before your next job interview.

I just wonder what it would look like if we stopped once and a while, really stopped dead still, and then saw ourselves through the eyes of the people that care most for us. There’d be some honest, realistic critical observation in that view, sure, but I think we’d also be struck dumb. I think we’d have to just sit down and weep for the overwhelming joy of the love we’d feel. I think it would break us in the most complete and wonderful ways.

So here’s a thought exercise: Try to remember the last few compliments you’ve received from people you respect, admire, love and/or trust. Make them into a sentence about yourself. Like this:

“I am pretty, sensitive and I write like a motherfucker.” *

Or:

“I am strong, punctual and I work harder than anyone my friends know.” *

Or:

“I am creative, have great hands and am profoundly empathic.” *

Whatever…Do it. I dare ya.

And when you have your sentence of compliments, think about it. You don’t have to repeat it to yourself. Just think about it. Just stop… and think about it. Let it settle on you. Accept that your friends or family or boss actually think that about you, think you're pretty fucking wonderful in your own inimitable way. They sit alone sometimes and think, like Judy does, like you do about those you love, “I wish I could give them my eyes so they could see how beautiful they are.”

Thanks Judy. You’re amazing.

* These are not necessarily autobiographical in any way.

...one of those days...

Do you ever have one of those days? You know the kind....

One of those days when the overwhelming weight of the world just seems to be bearing all of its deep gravity well down on you? When all of the culpability of the species just seems to be unfucking avoidable and you have to own it, hold it to you at the same time that you're trying to tear it out of you?

One of those days when you can't resist to the urge to take on the sins of your race, your country, your gender, your species? When every story, every song, every image reminds you of the incredible fuck up this all is, all of it, in spite of the good things, because of the unmitigated horror of the bad?

When the black hole is so dense that it's hard out get out of bed, off of the floor, out the door? When the sunlight hurts and smiles feel like razorblades? When the thought of peace, the ephemeral unlikelihood of it, the whisper of its possibility and the truth of its goddamn improbability, reduces you to tears?

When you want to slap every child you see push another down, ram your car into every self-involved driver that didn't see the person they almost ran over, strangle every self-serving politician you watch lie, again and again and again, destroy every person that ever hit their spouse in anger, knowing the whole time that it's the wrong answer to every one of those situations and not caring?

Knowing that even if you could, the shame would just be worse afterward?

One of those days when you can't see the hope through the fear, or the love through the hate, or the intelligence through the ignorance? When bigotry seems to be the rule and tolerance – not even real acceptance, just tolerance – looks like it's about a million fucking light years away from being possible?

When laughter makes you want to cry, crying makes you want to scream, and honesty makes you want to smash every mirror in the world?

One of those days? Do you know the kind I'm talking about?

I'm having one.

Sometimes it's good to just sit in awe and fucking own it for a day.

S'okay though. It's just a day. Tomorrow's a new one, and things'll be better. It's just one day.

“Think not forever of yourselves, O Chiefs, nor of your own generation. Think of continuing generations of our families, think of our grandchildren and of those yet unborn, whose faces are coming from beneath the ground.” Peacemaker, founder of the Iroquois Confederacy, (ca. 1000 AD)

(Like the For Gaza post on July 9, this post is in support of Bloggers Unite, a blogger cooperative in support of several blog-worthy subjects throughout the year. Today’s post is specifically in support of International Youth Day, August 12, 2010.)

I’m a 43-year old guy with no kids of my own. Raised as an adopted child in what ended up being a broken home, and with a somewhat less-than-mainstream perspective, I grew up a little sour on the idea of having kids. I saw an exploding global population that didn’t need any extra human units, was afraid of doing to children some of what I’d experienced, and just never felt that overwhelming urge to pass on my genes.

I have, however, tried to find my own ways to influence generations subsequent to my own over the years. I’ve coached hockey, worked with ‘at-risk’ children in foster care and their own broken homes, volunteered with youth and even now, while I’m admittedly self-focused on completing the novel that is at the foundation of my life-inversion, I volunteer at a local climbing gym working with birthday and school groups. I’m also fortunate to be friends with the son of a close friend, a 15-year old young man I met 4 years ago with whom I share a love of goaltending.

My close friend was courageous enough to send that young friend out for a few days visit last week. I was honored enough back in the day when she picked me to be a ‘positive influence’, more honored when he decided to gift me his friendship, and floored that the friendship is still of any interest to him. I consider it a responsibility, this opportunity to have even a small say into the life of an intelligent, caring, funny and talented 15-year old. That close friend has done a great job of parenting herself (leaving me wondering what there is for me to contribute), but I’ve appreciated the chance to be a friend, to help him with his goaltending (in whatever small way I can do that), to talk about his education and hopes and dreams, and even discuss something else we both seem to appreciate – writing fiction. We hung out, talked about all of the above and I spent an afternoon introducing him to another love of mine – climbing. There was no pressure, just being friends. I hope that he enjoyed it as much as I did.

Because my head works in a certain way, I was and am reminded in such moments that we live in a world that needs help and that he and his peers will the ones to whom falls most of the responsibility to try to fix things. There are things we can, should and must do now, today, but most of the real solutions are over my temporal horizon, somewhere wonderful beyond my allotted 80 to 100 or so years. Seeing a real solution to problems like inequality, racism, carbon emissions, ecological degradation, political corruption, corporate and social greed, war, etcetera, etcetera, won’t come in my lifetime.

Don’t get me wrong - we need to start actually taking the steps to start the change that needs to take place now, but it’s going to take our generation and the next, and probably the next after that for any fundamental change to truly happen.

So yeah, obviously, I think our youth are pretty important.

They are smarter than we are, more open to change, less aware of cultural and racial differences and more aware of the things that we have in common. They think our greed and bigotry are stupid and foolish. They have a healthy skepticism that will serve them well if they can also remain hopeful. They have a hatred of lies and love of truth that is inspiring.

The truth that they embrace imperils our generation’s commitment to greed and avarice. Their truth scares the shit out of us, and we’re far better at denial than change. They’re uneasy with the complacency and self-centeredness that typifies our generation. They’re interested in solutions and critical thought. For as long as our species has been passing wisdom from one generation to another, we’ve been encouraging the next generation to not make the same mistakes as we did, and to consider the generations that will come after them as they make choices. It’s a concept that, frankly, our species gives a lot of lip service to, but generally fails to honor. But I remain hopeful.

The other day a friend asked her Facebook universe how it is we might imagine raising our children so that they will think self-critically and be more empathic than our generation is proving to be and more than the one before us was. The conversation ended up in a place where the concept of generational solutions seemed more viable and rational than any unrealistic hope that we might affect profound change within our own generation. Not that anyone felt that abdicating responsibility to the next generation was appropriate, but that the job was too big for the few that see it, and that the change would have to be manifested in a new generation of empowered and educated humans. Our realization was that we have to do all that we can now, but that too many people are too invested in denial, in simply not seeing the truth, to ‘get there’ in one generation. So while we have to ‘do’ now, we need to pragmatically focus on the next generation and actually encourage a profound generation gap that creates a better species.

They have some advantages, the ‘next generation’: Our technological age of global connectedness has taught them, far better than we seem to have learned, that it’s a small planet. They know that the other side of the world is part of their world. Our social myopathy and ecological hubris seems ignorant and illogical to them. They have grown up with friends from around the world, from different religions and cultures and socio-economic circumstances, and they don’t recognize our small-mindedness as viable anymore.

My young friend is certainly this way. He’s still young, but his heart and mind are already miles ahead of where I was at his age. He understands the importance of an absence of borders; of equal opportunities for all; of the possibilities inherent in inclusion.

Honestly, I have a fear that we will fail them completely and leave them no further ahead in terms of vision than we are, and with a deeper hole to dig the species out of. I fight it, but it’s there. I have no fear of what they can do though. They’re the hope that keeps me young.

International Youth Day is August 12. Pass something positive forward.

(UPDATE: While writing this, I listened to an interview with economist and author Jeremy Rifkin on CBC 1. His latest book, The Empathic Civilization – the Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, recognizes the requirement for a generational shift. He suggests that the fundamental shift that has to occur will require a recognition that the age of enlightenment concepts of extreme individualism, competition and social Darwinism are leading us to economic and social bankruptcy; that only a society that embraces the need to cooperate and recognize our inter-connectedness – that embraces empathy – will be able to survive the challenges that currently face the global society. Just for reference…)

‘The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools.’ Doug Larson

Today is my birthday, my 43^rd to be specific about it, and I want to talk about that a bit, but I also made promises last night on Facebook while watching the SOTU regarding today’s topic. This will be a two-themed blog entry then, so I picked a quote that can do double duty.

I’ve gone on record as saying that birthdays are one of the annual celebrations, along with New Years, that I still respect. That’s because it has changed so little over the years. While the last century has seen many of our national holidays turned into consumption orgies, birthdays and New Years always were ones, so I respect them for being unchanged by our worship of materialism, even if the compliment is backhanded.

Birthdays are, I think, kinda cool. Especially the milestones. I’m personally excited about 45, far more so than about 43, because the five-year markers are somehow more significant. I don’t have a really good reason for that other than that they are moments to be proud of in an “I survived 43 years and all I have to show for it is this crumby birthday” kind of way. It’s a “look at what I can do!” kind of pride, like walking on hot coals or eating a 40-ounce steak.

It’s more than that though, obviously. Time allows us the opportunity to either learn and move forward, proving that we are cerebral and intuitive beings capable of transcending the simple material and animalistic urges that drive our bodies, or contrarily prove that we are incapable of that little trick, and thereby dispel any doubt that were are little better than monkeys with refined tool-making skills. The population of the earth provides ample anecdotal evidence that both dynamics are at work, and if you look closely, even that both dynamics can be at work in a single human organism.

Take me for example. I am 43 today, and it is really only in the last year that I have foresworn the distractions offered to us by modern existence in order to finally pursue what it is I think I was made to do (or at least the part of it that I know about). And this in spite of at least three other pivotal points in my life that I can see, from the perspective of 20/20 hindsight, when the opportunity to embrace the real me was presented in full glory, yet was successfully ignored or lost. I’d allow myself to be distracted, get caught up in the hoopla and hubbub of all the baubles and shiny lights thrown at us to keep us entertained and mesmerized, and subsequently lose the mission. I have, at times, even been confounded by the shame I felt for not fulfilling my potential and reaching for my dreams. How’s that for counter-intuitive.

And yet, in spite of missing the opportunity in the past on several occasions, I think I’ve managed to get a good grip on it this time. I’ve never been poorer or, paradoxically, richer than I am today.

So time is a good thing. It provides a frame of reference that allows us to suggest and hope that it is never too late or too early to reach for something better, to become the ‘us’ that we have it in us to become, and to know that this ‘us’ is a destination we will never truly reach in the time that we have. It is always the process that is important, always the journey that makes the journey worthwhile. The only final place we will ever reach in this lifetime is death, so why are we rushing to get to the end? I hold with Peter Pan that death will truly be a great adventure, but I’m in no rush to start it.

I like my process, like it more every day I walk it and talk it. I like knowing that the more I know, the more I know how little I truly know. I like that I am finally to a place where I recognize that I know just enough to be a danger to myself, but that I have time to continue to learn, and enough experience to appreciate the opportunity.

So birthdays are good. I look back and see that I have been a fool, and now I’m looking forward to the process of becoming an old one.

Oh yeah, the other topic, the one I promised to write about last night: Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada. I considered doing a full blog on him, but a) couldn’t find the motivation to waste too much time on him, b) have deep-seated shame issues in regards to his position as Prime Minister of the country I live in, and c) feel I can say everything that needs to be said about him in a relatively small space. Here it goes.

He is an embarrassment; a democratic leader that has gone on record saying that he only needs 40% of the vote, which translates to approximately 25% of the eligible voting population, to retain power for his party, and that, subsequently, he doesn’t care about the rest of the people in this country. His only goal is maintaining his minority government and the privilege it provides to him, his party, and the corporate handlers that own his soul. He has driven Canada to the point where our fellow commonwealth nations have started a movement to expel us from said Commonwealth because of the draconian position that Canada has now taken in regards to industrial and petro-chemical development, green issues like sustainable infrastructure development, and international carbon controls. He cares for the Canadian public, for the nation he is sworn to protect and lead, not one bit.

He is an old fool, so I am assuming that he was a young one. Shame he doesn’t see it.

I may be looking forward to becoming an old fool, but at least I recognize what and who I am. I’d hate to be a fool and not know; to think that people respected me when they only hated and vilified me. Better to be a fool and know it, I think, than to be one and not know it. 

That would just be deeply, deeply  embarrassing…

"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions." Augusten Burroughs

I have not read any of Augusten Burroughs' books, but from what I have gleaned regarding his past, he survived a particularly horrific childhood and converted his experience into several successful memoires. I love this one line all on its own. It is simply one of the most humble and pathos-filled sentiments I have ever encountered, and it makes me both want to smile and cry.

 

I can only guess at Mr. Burroughs’ state of mind when he wrote this about himself, but I find it poetic as an expression of the human condition. And I enjoy the concept of intent as a redeeming quality. I like good intentions. They lead to good things...

 

And that’s all I have to say about that.

“Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.” Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902)

I learned a couple things about blogging yesterday, not to mention about myself. Both of them have directly to do with asking questions.

The first thing I learned was that it’s a great idea to end a post with a question if your goal is to start a dialog. It’s just a great way to start a discussion.

The second is that, if I’m not asking a question at the end of a post, then I have somehow come to the erroneous conclusion that my particular little perspective is the only truth I want to know. That scares me. I realized after responding to Matt’s response yesterday that, regardless of whatever conclusions I’d come to on the subject of honesty, the idea of this blog is to encourage discussion. And my response didn’t do that.

When I’d recognized that simple truth, I was able to honestly look back at other responses I’ve made, whether to comments regarding my quote fetish or as responses to other blogs. I wasn’t entirely pleased with my observations. Fortunately I have the rest of my life to apply the lesson I’ve learned.

So I’m resolved to doing two things more often: First, start the discussion with a question, and; second, once I’ve said my piece, ask more questions than try to provide additional opinion.

I appreciate those of you who have indulged me by subscribing to this little exercise and I promise to get out of the way more in the future.

One of my favorite things about learning new things is that it is a continually humbling process.  I kinda think that’s what Mr. Butler was getting at.

So here's the question to end the blog: Where do you think the line is between standing firm on a value you believe and remaining open to learning new things? If we're doing all this thinking in order to define our moral home ground better, when is it appropriate to start defending that home ground instead of trying to define it? Or is it maybe a perpetual balancing act...?