What do I Write when I don’t want to Write?

There are times when writing is cathartic for me. (dictionary.com: the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art as tragedy or music.)

There are times when writing is fun for me. (dictionary.com: something that provides mirth or amusement; enjoyment or playfulness)

There are times when writing is a pain for me. (dictionary.com: a distressing sensation in a particular part of the body; mental or emotional suffering or torment; laborious or careful effort; assiduous care)

There are times when words just gush out of me. (dictionary.com: to flow or issue suddenly, copiously, or forcibly, as a fluid from confinement; to have a sudden, copious flow of blood or tears; to emit suddenly, forcibly, or copiously)

There are times when words just trickle out of me. (dictionary.com: to flow or fall by drops, or in a small amount; to come and go or pass bit by bit, slowly, irregularly)

I read a lot and listen to a lot of college level classes on CD while driving around. It is rare that you will find me without my Kindle and my note cards or sticky notes. I am probably the only person you know who keeps sticky notes and highlighter pens within easy reach in the bathroom. I have plenty of books on philosophy marked up, 4x6 cards with ideas from classes I’ve taken or things I’ve heard and want to remember. Usually when I sit down to write a column I go through these cards or marked up books and find something that hits me; something that compels me to write (dictionary.com: to force or drive, especially to a course of action; to overpower; to have a powerful and irresistible effect, influence.)

But what do I do when I don’t want to write? What do I do when I just don’t feel like it? What do I do when none of my notes, highlights or printouts inspires me. (dictionary.com: to produce or arouse a feeling or thought; to fill or affect with a specified feeling; to influence or impel; to guide or control by divine influence; to give rise to, bring about, or cause.)

I have read books on writing and how professional writers treat writing as a profession. You set a time, you sit down, you put your fingers on the keyboard, and you WRITE. It has nothing to do with feeling like it or wanting to. It is your job, you don’t work at a factory only when you FEEL like it, so don’t treat your writing like a pastime, treat it like a job. BE a professional. (dictionary.com: following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain; following as a business an occupation ordinarily engaged in as a pastime; expert.)

So, I guess I just don’t know what to do when I don’t want to write and I sure don’t feel like writing today. Any suggestions?

The Facts

“Just the facts, ma’am” said Jack Friday in Dragnet. We are obsessed with the facts. The facts will tell us the truth right? Maybe not so much.

We have all seen the experiment or heard of the accident with 4 witnesses and all of them told what happened. They told the facts and all the facts were in conflict with each other. The more witnesses you had, the more problems you had identifying the facts and consequently, the truth.

Maya Angelou is fond of saying that “sometimes the facts obscure the truth.” And the truth is that sometimes truth is what we WANT to remember and not what actually happened. I want to remember a GREAT childhood but my brother or my sister might remember it differently. I want to remember how this guy really ripped me off when in fact I was just stupid at the time. We taint facts for political reasons. We taint facts for personal reasons. We taint facts to avoid responsibility. We taint facts to bend the truth to our advantage. And we simply don’t remember what we should remember to get all the facts straight. I have a son with a near photographic memory for facts and figures but he forgets to come to a family dinner. We remember what we want to remember and it only marginally has anything to do with the facts.

But that is okay. As long as we understand that our facts are messed up and prejudiced by our view of them we can get along. This is the truth AS I SEE IT and not this is the truth NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY! As Maya said, sometimes the facts get in the way of the truth. I can find out a lot about a person if I get them talking about politics. Before too long I can tell you if they are Republican or Democrat, both sides seeing the same “facts” but coming to totally different conclusions. I can tell a lot about your job by asking simple work questions. I don’t want to know the “facts” of your job. I want to know if you are happy there, if you are doing what you want to do, or if you have big or small dreams. The facts often get in the way of the truth.

I am okay with that ambiguity. But I am okay with it because I understand that we all tell the “facts” according to our own worldview, our own particular bent of looking at the world. Your filter can then go through my filter and we can have a GREAT discussion on issues that are important. But if one of the parties doesn’t believe they have a bent of the facts but has a corner on the facts; there is a problem.

What about you? How do you “see” the facts?

I NEVER tell the Truth

Another paradox or isn't it?

The ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea spent most of his time on the paradoxes of time and motion. For example it can be logically argued that Achilles (the fastest man EVER) could never catch up to a tortoise if he gave the tortoise a head start. This is because in order for Achilles to overtake the tortoise he MUST reach where the tortoise is/was, but by that time the tortoise has moved on. So then he must reach where the tortoise has moved on to but by then, of course, the tortoise has moved on again, and so on and so on, as infinitum.

Also Zeno logically proved that any arrow shot from a bow cannot possibly move. Since at any moment of time, the arrow had to completely occupy a certain space. Like a photograph, at any given moment, the arrow is where it is and not somewhere else. Hence, it is stationary. If time is nothing more than a series of moments, and if the arrow is stationary at every particular moment, then it NEVER MOVES!
Yet we know that arrows do move and the fastest man can overtake a tortoise, so what is flawed? Our view of reality or the logic of the paradox?

Zeno's paradoxes had the ancient world running hard just to stay still. But what these questions/paradoxes do is allow us to get to the right questions. Knowledge is NOT having the answers as much as it is having the right questions. What is time? Is time made up of a series of ever smaller chunks called moments or is it something else? Einstein called time the fourth dimension in his theories. The universe was NOT just made up of length, width, and height; it was also made up of time. With Uncle Albert time was NOT an infinite series of moments, time was fluid and could be flexed, shortened and lengthened.

This introduced a whole NEW batch of paradoxes: can I arrive BEFORE I leave? Can I go back in time and kill one of my ancestors? What would happen if I meet myself?
Just when we think we got this world figured out; God throws us another curve. The world is flat; nope it round. The planets revolve around the earth; nope we revolve around the sun. Things fall faster if they are heavier; nope gravity works the same on heavy and light. Newtonian physics explains the universe; nope not quite, what about relativity and the speed of light. Newton and Einstein figured it out; nope quantum physics is needed to explain certain phenomena. Quantum physics is than answer; nope ... whatever is next is just around the corner with its own paradoxes to explain.

God is not a cruel pet owner teasing his cat with a string that he will never catch. God is enjoying the sense of discovery in his world like a home designer hearing you go "oooohhh, ahhhhh" at every corner that has something new and neat.

"When I look at your heavens, the works of your hands; what is man that you are mindful of him?"

I LOVE IT!

How often have you heard the word "love" today? On the one had we NEVER hear it enough from those WE love. But on the other hand we hear it too much and that, I believe, is the problem.

I followed behind a couple, in their thirties and a little overweight, at a salad bar restaurant. Here is a summary of their conversation: "Ooooh. I love this kind of salad don't you? Don't you just love it. Here look! I love these, these are great, I love them on a salad. Didn't you just love that meal we had last night. Well, they have those corn and peas here that you can put on your salad because I KNOW you LOVE them. Ahhh, cucumbers, I love cucumbers AND I love these small tomatoes. Don't you just love them?" To each love comment the guy nodded his head and just said, "Love it!" every now and again.

Words are important and we denigrate words when we used them for other than their intended and MEANINGFUL purpose. Now we all know our idioms and we know the evolution of words like: "cool, far out, NICE, bad, etc." When I say I love my grandson it means something more than if I say I love sweet peas doesn't it? Shouldn't it? No wait, I REALLY love my grandson but I only love my vegetables.

The way to the heart is through the words of the mind and when we disengage our mind from our heart language we've lost something. We have lost to ability to express how we really feel. We end up having to define our words in order to get the emotion accross. "So when I say I love you I am saying that it is more than I love vegetables and more than my car but less than the Indianapolis Colts when they win the Superbowl."

Mindless love leads only to error and miscommunication. A mindless fervor in love leads to abuse and burnout. A mindless spiritual love leads to cultic error and emptiness. The way to engage the heart is through the mind. Words are the language of the mind, if you don't believe me trying silent reading without repeating the words on the page in your mind, you can't. Even though you are reading silently your mind HEARS the words you are reading. But if the words you hear have a diluted or lost meaning it will never "sink in" and you won't really hear it.
My father never told his kids he loved them when we were growing up. Only recently have I been able to say "I love you dad" on the phone to him as I get ready to hang up. At 50 years old I heard my say I love you for the first time. It went through my ear, through my mind and straight to my heart.

Say it, say it often and MEAN IT!

Hear, Hear, Hear, and Hear

"I hear you!" I say to my wife. "But you don't hear me!" is the reply.

"Did you hear me?" I ask my son as he continues to play and doesn't make a move towards going to bed.

I believe there are four definitions for hearing and it is the play between them that causes a lot of the communication errors in our lives. We hear but we don't hear. So here's my hear definitions and levels of hearing:

To hear at the surface level is to simple have someone's auditory waves go through our ears and into our brain. Often we don't even pay attention to what we hear at this level. We hear but it doesn't "sink in" or it "goes in one ear and out the other" or we simply tune it out as background noise. This is what husbands do during game time when their response is an unintelligible "un-huh."

At the next level of hearing we have what is called "listening." Now this is deeper than the first level of hearing because this involves the engagement of your mind. To get to this level of hearing you want to make eye contact. Husbands and wives, parents and kids need to get the attention of the other person, make eye contact and THEN say what they need to say. The mind is engaged and "thinking about" what it just heard.

The next level of hearing is the level of "understanding." At this level what the other person is saying is not only heard, not only thought about, but now it is understood. "Ah NOW I hear/understand you" we would say. There are many times where I will look into my wife's eyes and hear what she is saying but simply don't understand it. "I don't get it?" or "What does that mean?" is the response or we ask to repeat it again in different words.

The deepest level of hearing is the "heeding" level. Now this is a tricky one because when someone heeds you there is a sense of obedience attached. When I tell my son to go to bed I EXPECT that he heeds me. That not only does he hear my words, not only do the words sink in, and not only does he understand it, but I expect that he heeds me and DOES IT. This is the biblical "HEAR or israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE!" or "I tell you the truth" says Jesus, "whoever HEARS my word and believes in him who sent me has eternal life." (John 5:24)
You can see where the communication problems occur. A son hears but doesn't heed. A spouse understands but doesn't agree so does that mean they REALLY don't understand or they just won't heed? Anybody can talk but many simply don't understand.

That is why OVER communication is asked in most situations. I can say something 5 times as an announcement, it is in the Weekly Newsletter, in the weekly email and still there are those who will say, "I never heard about it? Why didn't you tell me?"

Communication is, yes, speaking clearly but that is only 10%. SAYING SOMETHING that sinks in, is understood and heeded is the rest. Communication is, yes, hearing someone but that is only 10%. Focused attention so that you can understand and heed, if necessary, is the rest.

Do you hear what I am saying?

Dohicky, Thingamabob, and Whatchamacallit

These are three of the greatest words in the English language in that they say something without saying a thing. Therefore they are universal: "Hand me the dohicky, you know, the thingamabob next to the whatchamacallit." Words have meanings but these stand out in the fact that their meanings are lost in the nebulous.

Hand me the dohicky, however, doesn't get you the thingamabob very fast unless the other is a mind reader. Which could happen. When my wife wants me to give her the thingamabob I generally know what object she doesn't know the name of and can hand it to her based on our 30 years together. But that doesn't get you as far as saying "Hand me the 1/4 inch ratchet with the 9/16th socket."

Naming something USED TO require assessing the character and nature of the things named. In the biblical story Adam named the animals and I don't believe he just called them dohicky, thingamabob and watchamacallit. Genesis 2: 19 says "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to Adam to SEE what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name." (Caps mine) God wanted to SEE what Adam would name them based on the character and nature of each animal.

Many cultures don't name their kids until they are 2 years old. They earn their name once the parents assess the character and nature of that child. To call your child Bob when he is born is the equivalent of calling him dohicky unless you have found the etymology which says: it is short for Robert and came from Germanic tribes to England and means "bright fame". Is that who your Robert, Rob, Bob, Bert is? We don't spend enough time on names and I find to many people naming their kids Thingamabob and Whatchamacallit. In Ancient Egyptian Culture the NAME was a part of the "essence" of an individual. We might have mind, soul, and body as the essence but Ancient Egyptians had five: Body, Shadow, Ka, Ba, and NAME. To abuse the NAME was to abuse the individual. When people were REALLY bad in Ancient Egypt they would scratch their NAME off any carving or hieroglyph and so erase the person.

Naming requires knowing the character and nature of the person. Using family names is significant and good. Naming based on what you HOPE that person will become is also good. Naming a name the just sounds cool is your right and privilege but is the equivalent of calling your child Dohicky.

My parents named me Steven, a form of Stephen and the Greek Stephanos which means: crown. Did my parents name me that so I would become royalty some day? Did they name me that because I was the 6th boy in the family and they were running out of names? OR maybe they named me that because I am going bald and everyone can now see my crown. Yea, that's it.

I'm Mad at Everybody!

Jay (Will Smith) to Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) in Men in Black, "Why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it." Kay answers, "A PERSON is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody KNEW the earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago everybody KNEW the earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you KNEW that humans were alone on this planet!"

I am mad at EVERYBODY and his sister EVERYONE! No, I'm not mad at you or anyone in particular I am just made at EVERYBODY and EVERYONE. I am mad at the concept of EVERYBODY and EVERYONE. I am mad at the idea of a nebulous group of smart people who make the rules, who say whatever they want and want whatever they say.

But I guess that is okay because I have had EVERYONE mad at me before.

I have also had EVERYBODY disagree with me.

It seemed like EVERYONE was against me at times and EVERYBODY was trying to hurt me.

I am sure that you have had EVERYONE upset over something you did too.

EVERYBODY knows everything so if you are wrong EVERYONE knows it.

EVERYBODY knows you are not good enough.

EVERYONE is out to get you.

EVERYBODY says you should do it THIS way and not THAT way.

EVERYONE is an expert at whatever.

You get the idea. I am mad at THAT everybody and everyone. Using those words is usually a copout trying to justify a weak defense. "Well, I'm right and everybody knows it!" "You ALWAYS to that, everyone tells me you do it to them too!" I hate everybody and everyone because they really don't exist. They are just a label we use for "masses" of people who SEEM to move as one unit and the way they move is usually WRONG.

So don't tell me that EVERYONE or EVERYBODY are your reasons for disagreeing with me. First, since I am part of that group it is false and, second, it's a weak defense for your opinion.

Don't use EVERYONE and EVERYBODY because they don't exist. Besides, I am mad at them.

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Say what you want about Edgar but he could put words together. His favorite topic was the death of a beautiful woman which was his topic in at least 4 other of his poems. Read this out loud and hear the words. When you read it FEEL how easily and unforced he uses rhyme and repetition. The "emotion" of the poem is dark but love comes through in unusual places; the first four lines of the last stanza particularly stand out. The moon and the stars will keep his love forever in his mind.

In this ever increasingly electronic age we need to stop and smell the proverbial roses but we also need to stop and savor words and phrases constructed NOT for the speed of tweets but for the evoking of emotion.

Last Column of the Year

This is my last column of the year. I write a column every week. I have been doing this now for 20 years. That is over 1000 columns. If you count the column I had as a Senior in High School you could probably add another dozen or so to that total. A couple hundred of them have been put into books, a couple dozen have been published in other people's books, a few newspapers get them and publish one or two of them a month depending on if they have room. My column has not "taken off" into national syndication, the blog form hasn't gone viral, and my website has trickled down to only a few hundred visitors a month. So why do I keep doing it?

There are times when I think of running for political office and then I remember that I have 20 years of thoughts and columns for my opponent to pick through and find glaring politically incorrect statements I've made. I force deadlines on myself and sometimes just don't want to write and sometimes I just don't have any ideas that seem worth sharing. So why do I keep doing it?

I write for the same reason some of your go to the gym. I write for the same reason some of you jog or walk every day. Writing is my exercise. It stretches my mind. It forces me to do things that I normally don't do in any given day. As I sit here the beagle in my brain is running to corners and dark places, sniffing out words and phrases, thoughts and stories, and bringing them back to the place where he can deposit them through my fingers to you. So many things have been seared into my memory over the 50 years of my life but so many things have been lost on the receding train track of time. Writing gives me a chance to run to the caboose and look behind, memorizing as much as I can before it is captured within that distant line on the horizon. I write as exercise but also there is something more, I think.

A seventh grade teacher slapped a wooden yard-stick on the desk of a sleeping 12-yearold so hard that it broke into pieces. He woke with shock and embarrassment to not being able to close his eyes again for days. Later that same teacher took the writings of that student and read them in front of class. It was a "Hitchcockian story" he said and it was about an eye transplant going wrong and driving the owner of the new eyes crazy because colors weren't the same, shapes were different, and the world was wrong. After he read some of the words out loud to the class he said, "This is some of the best writing I have ever read from a seventh grader!" The teachers words were more shocking than the shattered yard-stick to the kid.

My beagle just found that story in an avenue of my mind that hasn't been explored in decades. That may have begun my fascination with the written word but I think it really just legitimizes my penchant for day-dreaming. Writers are just daydreaming kids who invite you into their world imagined.

Offensive Words

The most famous nemesis of all time was Professor Moriarty. Star Trek had a Nemesis and so does over 62,000 books at Amazon.com. But do we really know what a nemesis is? I like words. More accurately is like to find the etymology of words: where did they come from? We most commonly use nemesis to mean “archenemy” or something like that but is that what it really means?

Nemesis is a Greek god. The god of divine retribution for the hubris of humanity, she is the implacable executrix of justice. In other words she will whoop on you if you think of yourself more highly than you aught. She is justice without mercy.

So, literally, when you claim to have a nemesis you are saying that you are being justly punished by someone. Not quite what you intended, I’m sure. Unfortunately we don’t think we EVER need divine retribution because we are just not bad enough to deserve it so whenever we feel the sword of Nemesis we consider that person our enemy, even ARCHenemy. I felt the sword of Nemesis in the form of my father’s belt growing up when I was unruly and disobedient. I also felt the sword of Nemesis in my mother’s tears over other childhood wrongs. They were not my enemies; they were loving parents who understood the sword of Nemesis was necessary to raise well-adjusted kids.

Another word that we continue to misuse or adapt to our meaning is the word “holocaust”. I have been studying Jewish Theology and have found that holocaust is an offensive word to most Jews. First, because it is a Greek word, not Hebrew, which means “whole” (holos) “burnt” (kaustos) or completely burnt. It was a Greek word used for sacrificing to pagan gods. It was first used in reference to Jews in 1190 when the fervor of the Crusades caused the mobs to turn against the Jews and massacre tens of thousands of them. Second, because it insinuates a “divine retribution” or a NEEDED sacrifice because of the sins of the people involved. You can see why an informed Jew would rather you call it the Shoah (Hebrew for calamity) rather than the Holocaust. Yet we believe it just means terrible tragedy.

I continue to learn how offensive I am by the words I choose to use. I appreciate more and more the patience and goodwill of those I offend. If we would all just keep learning, keep forgiving, and keep up the patience then we would have no Nemesis and prevent any Holocaust.

Hocus Pocus

I looked at the blank stare from the elderly ladies in the nursing home and knew I just gave them more information than they wanted. The question was: “Where did that Bible come from?” And I went into a 15 minute historical recitative of the Bible and its origins. After the blank stares I asked “what?” She smiled and said, “I just wanted to know if you got that Bible from the desk over there.” I got it, but I didn’t get it.

I took my three kids and sat them down in the chaos that used to be our living room. I said that we have had lots of fun and I loved playing with them but now was the time for cleaning up, mom was coming home in about an hour and NONE OF US wanted the repercussions of mom coming home with the house looking like a tornado just went through. “So our Lego armies and airplanes had to have a final battle and put away, the toys needed ...” and I went on to explain what had to be done. We put our hands in the center of the circle and cheered: “Go TEAM!” I went to the kitchen to tackle the mess there while the three of them were to restore the living room. A half hour later they were still playing. So much for calm conversational compliance now came stark, strict instructions. They got it but didn’t get it.

“Daddy, why are they washing that baby? Didn’t they give her a bath at home?” said one of my kids trying to understand the latest baptism in our church. After explaining the spiritual significance of it all, he said, “They still could have done it at home.” He got it but didn’t get it.

Sometime in the 1500’s kids came to Catholic Mass to witness the priest in Latin saying “Hoc est enim corpus meum” which means “This is my body...” and it seemed magical to them how the bread turned into the “body” of Christ. As kids do: they played, practiced and perverted the Latin into (you guessed it) “hocus pocus.” The phrase turned into anything that will magically change from one thing to another, and eventually into something that “falsely” turned from one thing to another; a magician’s sleight of hand. They got it but didn’t get it.

They got but didn’t get it. It sunk in but not quite far enough for complete understanding. Sometimes we nod our head too soon. We tell others we understand when all we have is an unsteady grasp with mentally oiled hands. Many of the problems in our life are caused by us saying we understand – too soon.

STOP! Ask one more question to make sure. Repeat what YOU think they said to make sure that is what they REALLY said and not just mental hocus pocus. It would be better to understand now than to get into trouble when mom gets home.

Cloud Cover

The old wood smell overtook me as I slid between the pews. My feet still couldn’t touch the ground as I climbed up next to my father in the uncomfortable silence. As I yanked on the tight collar of my brothers out-grown shirt my clip-on tie was exposed for the fake it was. Fifteen minutes before the organ music signaled the start of the service we were sitting in our mentally assigned pews along with most of the members who had theirs staked out as well. Ten minutes early was late and got you the front rows or maybe even the Fellowship Hall where the folding chairs signified a lower status of worshipper. The lights seemed to work but as the organ began playing I looked up at the expensive chandelier-like fixtures and it was as if the dark wood of the room sucked the light out of them. It was a cloudy Sunday morning.

There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

(Emily Dickinson: There’s a Certain Slant of Light)

I sit in my office unable to get any work done. It feels like a blanket has been laid over the world as the clouds came. The world isn’t dark it’s just – wrong. I don’t mean the light, white, airy clouds of summer days where you fashion them into animals and funny faces; I mean the dark, purplish clouds that lay low like fog with substance. They don’t bring a good cleansing rain but they tease you with a little spit and dust circles on your car: winter clouds bringing a chill and with a depression chaser.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where all the meanings are.

We’ve all felt the clouds laying on our life like heavenly hurt and too often the place where light should shine is the place that absorbs and takes more light from us. All we want to do is find a comforter and huddle in a corner chair and wait for it to pass but that is the exact opposite of a health.

After the first song where I stood trying to hold an amazingly heavy hymnal when all the professionals sang in four part harmonies a child, not much younger than me at the time, rang out with a “LA LA LA LA LA LA” after all other music had stopped. It was as if a ray of sun burst through the clouds and the stained glass windows to blind me with joy. Even my father smiled; pass the pink peppermints, I can make it through this!

With deference to Emily let me add a verse:

There’s a sky full of light,
That’s always, always here,
So push cloud cover away
And see the Light that’s near.

Despair.com

Achievement: We acquire strength in what we overcome.

Challenge: The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it.

One of the things that drove me crazy at work was those corny motivational statements plastered all over the break room walls at the factory or office. You know the ones with the great pictures and the inspirational statements below them, meant to get you into a positive attitude about your work. If I was still in the corporate world I would go to this website I’ve found and substitute a few of the corny ones for these from Despair.com.

Cluelessness: There are no stupid questions, but there are a LOT of inquisitive idiots.

Consulting: If you’re not part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.

Effort: Hard work never killed anybody, but it is illegal in some places.

Laziness: Success is a journey not a destinations, so stop running.

Tradition: Just because you’ve always done it that way doesn’t mean that it’s not incredibly stupid.

Sanity: Minds are like parachutes. Just because you’ve lost yours doesn’t mean you can borrow mine.

The TV show Office and the cartoon Dilbert are full of Despair.com quotes and that is what makes them so appealing. It is the anti-motivational message that resonates with people, not the motivational ones. The majority of people relate to failure, while only a few relate to success and a manager standing in front of a cadre of employees spouting clichés becomes the opposite of motivation. At best they become the butt of jokes and youtube videos.

Motivation doesn’t come from outside sources. At best they are reminders of what we have inside but the switch is not going to come from a frequency of posters and clichés. Motivation, the opposite of despair, comes from considering yourself in a constant state of indebtedness. Most people don’t do that. Most people believe the world OWES THEM and doesn’t believe they OWE anything to the world or their God. Second, motivation comes from family. A supportive nurturing family breeds motivated people. And finally, motivation is a decision, not a feeling. Just because you don’t FEEL motivated doesn’t mean you can’t be. DECIDE to be motivated for whatever task you have and you will be motivated.

Motivation: Giving thanks for all, feeling family vibes, and choosing it.

Why I Write

When I was in High School as a freshman I would look at our school paper and the first thing I would read was the column by this ultra-wise senior who was also a basketball player. Talk about a trifecta: wise, senior, basketball. When I became a sophomore I began to think that I could do the same thing, they had no columnist for the Echo (name of our school paper) but I didn’t believe I was quite ready yet. By my Junior year I was on the Echo staff and learn to develop photographs (yes, this was still when we used dark rooms and had to actually “lay out” a newspaper since computers were not yet involved.) Then I submitted my first column. I don’t remember what I wrote about, but it was good enough for the Teacher/Sponsor of the Echo to give me a regular column. So when my first two knee surgeries took me out of any basketball playing I had to rely on my writing to attract the opposite sex. By the end of my senior year I felt I was a seasoned columnist. I wrote because I thought it was cool.

In my college years and in my years in business my writing languished. I had things to say but no format in which to say them. Then came computers: God’s gift to budding writers. I started writing my first book of fiction in the late 1980s and it took about 5 years to complete. It was on 5 1/2 inch floppy drives and was about 220 pages. Only a few have ever read it, it was never published, not even attempted to be published, and I don’t quite know where my copy is right now. I wrote it mainly to see if I could, kind of like climbing Mt. Everest.

Then I became pastor of a church and out of the business world. I was asked to write a Bible Study for Teens and when it was published I had the bug again. (It’s called Workout! And you can pick it up at discount tables or Amazon’s used books for less than a buck). I also started writing a column again in our church’s bulletin/newsletter. Because I was the pastor they let me. Being forced to write a column every week created a hunger in me. First: a hunger for something to write about since you run out of ideas pretty quick, seriously, try it sometime. Second: a hunger for reading things, anything and everything. Third: a hunger for memory helps, since I had the greatest idea for a column that would have changed the world but I forgot what it was – I didn’t write it down fast enough.

Today I write for two reasons. I write because I believe I have a gift of taking something complicated and through stories and weird connections I can make it simple and easy to understand. And I write because it helps me to focus my thoughts clearly and precisely. So here is my advice to you:
- READ, anything and everything. Listen to Books, Lectures, Classes on CD. Magazines, Blogs, and Websites. This will make you a broad, well-rounded, and interesting individual, the life of parties.
- WRITE, anything and everything. Your own column, blog, a journal, or even start your own book. This will force you to focus that broad knowledge you picked up from your reading and give you a conviction in what you believe.
Read to build knowledge and it will make you interesting. Write to build focus and it will make you firm in your convictions and beliefs.

Words can be worth a Thousand Pictures

I read some amazing words today in Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s final address to the cadets ad West Point in 1962. The words themselves actually took my mind into battle with the sounds, smells and feelings of wars long past. The passage is too lengthy to put here but a simple internet search will bring you to those same words.

Pictures and graphics can do much to move you to action, explain situations, and even build memories. But there is something special about words put together in such a way that they take you, in your mind, to places never been. I have never been moved to tears by a picture or a good graphic but I have repeatedly been moved by a letter from a loved one, a song with words that make my heart sing, or a book that tugs on your emotions like a child wanting to play. I enjoy writing and I enjoy going places in my words, they work for me and I hope they resonate with you.

I could say that when I was young I used to play in our back yard. Or I could say:

My childhood on the farm is now filled with memories of the earth. The earth made up of the smell of fresh-cut grass as I rolled and rolled down a small hill in our backyard. I would get up dizzy and ready to do it again with our collie Princess running after me trying to figure out if I was hurt or playing. The earth made up of mudpies my sisters and I would construct in an old chicken-house turned bakery. Earth and water were the only ingredients but taste was only limited by our imaginations as we explained to the gas man who came on the yard that it was a chocolate chip cookie not a simple chocolate cookie as he thought. The earth made up the smell of freshly plow-turned furrows which would exactly fit my (full sized) GI Joe Army Jeep as it raced down the road until ambushed by the waiting enemy. Clods of dirt made realistic, exploding bombs as my hero fought unbelievable odds to eventual victory every hour of play. The earth made up of trees where I dared the impossible climb. Sometimes egged on by my brothers but mostly just to see what was up there. My first remembrance of fear was falling to the earth from a precarious limb and having the breath knocked out of me. The fear didn’t come from the fall as much as it came from the frantic gasps to get air into my lungs. Seconds felt like hours as I lay on my back in the grass wondering if I was going to die. Finally my body found the switch to activate the inhale almost like turning on a bank of breaker switches until you finally found the right one. The earth holds these memories for me and when I look at climbing trees, smell freshly turned dirt, get my hands muddy, or sit on a hillside the earth releases them back into my heart like hugging an old friend.

Words can be worth a thousand pictures.

85% Chance of Fogginess

We had a primary election last week and it seems that only 15% of our local population showed up to the poles to vote. That means 85% of the people who are eligible to vote decided to stay home, or to ignore the advertisements, or to simply thumb their nose at the process in protest. 85% chose to withdraw.

If that percentage held true throughout all of the US that means of the 300 million people we have only 45 million voted last week. For the season finale of American Idol there were over 65 million votes. Even America’s Got Talent and So you think you can Dance got more votes than did those in our primary. Now before you think this column is about complacency let me change tack here.

Alexis de Tocqueville told us in “Democracy in America” way back in the 1800’s that one of the dangers of democracy is “the tendency, when there is equality in conditions, is to withdraw.” In the Philosophical world when two philosophies to battle with each other and neither is a clear winner the tendency of the populace is to enter into a “so what?” kind of malaise. In the religious world Christianity thrives under persecution but when there is total freedom of religion the tendency is to become complacent and non-committal.

With five older brothers I learned to play baseball and basketball with kids who were years older than me. When it came to going to school and playing with kids my age it was a piece of cake, yet when I did my game suffered. I wasn’t challenged, I wasn’t growing, I was simply getting complacent and lazy.

As a compliment I think Americans are predominantly over-achievers. But we are over-achievers who have gotten everything too easily so we have become withdrawn, complacent, lazy and in some kind of foggy malaise. 9/11 shocked us out of this for about a year and then was gone. Katrina shocked us again for about 6 months and then was gone. Our politicians can’t win right now because they are simply trying to appeal to these over-achievers who are stuck in this fog.
It is time for a politician to take a stand, to have a backbone that is not bent by the latest wind but by some kind of conviction that is radical and earthshaking enough for us to push through the fog and vote. EVEN IF IT IS THE WRONG STAND TO TAKE! Did you hear me on that last one? Let me say it again: EVEN IF IT IS THE WRONG STAND TO TAKE! Because if you stand on something with backbone and strength it will cause me to take a stand against it with backbone enough to match yours; which would cause you to stand up again to defend and promote it; which would cause me to make my point clearer and more appealing, and so on, and so on. Cut the clichés, dump the doubletalk and speak clearly and concisely and STRONGLY for or against something. You will turn some people off, turn some people on but most of all you will help ALL out of our 85% chance of fogginess.

Innocents Abroad Part 6: Trains and low flying Birds

In a journey filled with great and even jaw-dropping experiences there was one experience that had to be the fly in the ointment. There was one experience that gave all of us in our party a measurement for rating all the other experiences. We could always say, “At least that wasn’t as bad as the slow train to Luxor!” or “Compared to the slow train to Luxor this is luxury!”

We began our journey from Cairo to Luxor excited about riding what was billed as the Agatha Christie train ride. I have not read the books but apparently there are mystery novels set on a train from Cairo to Luxor. We fought the hazy Cairo traffic to get to the train station with ALL our luggage. And there we sat. The train was a bit delayed. We found out later that there was a crash delaying OUR train so they hastily put together another train to take its place. That should have been clue #1 but we didn’t know any better. The train finally arrived and we were looking forward to our luxury compartments for the eight hour, over night ride. We knew something was wrong when we walked down the narrow aisle, struggling with our luggage, while looking out of windows that looked like they were coated in a thin film of frost. It turned out not to be frost in the Egyptian desert but skuz. Our luxury compartment was a dingy grey with brownish accents and no room for luggage much less a 6’1” 250 lb. passenger and his wife. I sat in the seat with my knees grazing the sink in front of me looking at myself in disbelief in the mirror. Don’t even get me started on the bathroom down the hall because this is a family program!

The food was delivered by our steward and we picked at it for a while before he came and made it disappear. It was some kind of meat with some kind of vegetable with some kind of hard, crusty bread. I got some tea to wash the few mouthfuls down and was happy that I had the sink in front of me. Then our steward came in and pulled down the bunk beds for us and I found my grey sheets and ratty wool blankets were, just like the bunk, made for someone closer to 5’6”. The boards that supported the bunk were easy to find and hard to sleep on with the one inch mattress rising and falling around each one of them.

After a sleepless night we found out in the morning that the train was not going to move for a while. That same accident that stopped our original train was now gumming up the whole train system and we sat for an extra six hours staring out skuzzy windows and trying to find our steward who was fast asleep in one of the compartments. At least he got a good night sleep.
As I look back it reminded me of spending a Sunday in Jerusalem the week following this train ride. I was dressed in my Sunday best and we went to a Lutheran church in the Old City. We had a great time and a spiritual high for me but as we were walking back I got “bombed” by a low flying bird. It hit me on my ever-growing forehead with unexplained, wet warmth. I asked my wife what it was and all she could do was laugh. As I look back on the train ride I can complain to you as much as I want, and my co-travelers would complain with me but, after all, we were in Egypt. We had just seen the great pyramids of Giza and were now in the Valley of the Kings, I’m sorry but on a trip like that I can handle a nasty train ride OR being dive bombed by Jerusalem birds.

By and Large

By and large I am a pretty simple guy.

By and large I don’t get riled up about much.

By and large my peccadilloes are relatively miniscule.

Whoa. Let’s stop a minute before I get too carried away with my excessive verbiage. I like words. I like to look up the meanings of words, this is called the etiology or more precisely the etymology of words. By and large it is kind of a geek pastime.

By and large. That is an interesting phrase isn’t it? A friend of mine gave me a desk calendar that has etymologies on it and “by and large” showed up. This is a nautical phrase. A phrase used by sailors. When you have a LOT OF wind or a “favorable” wind, one in your direction, you say you have a “large” wind. You then use you large square sails to catch the most out of this large wind. “By” is a little more difficult, because it means the opposite: sailing against a large wind or you sail “by the wind.” So when you have a ship that can sail in a large wind, in a favorable direction and by the wind in the opposite direction you have a ship that can handle anything: by and large. It was used first that we know of in 1669 in the Mariners Magazine “this ship handled in fair weather and foul, by and large.” Since then it has come to mean “generally” or “for the most part.”

We use those phrases all the time in English and it is confusing to those who are learning the language. I have a Korean friend that I golf with and I will say things like, “You are ahead of me by one stroke” or “I can’t get down on the ball in my swing because my back is killing me” or “I have a serious case of aquaphobia.” Think about these phrases as a person learning English would. Ahead by a stroke even those you have LESS strokes to lead in golf? Get down on your ball? Back killing you? Aquaphobia?

Words can be very powerful and very confusing. Words can sting and can calm. Words fascinate me by and large.

As to peccadilloes and miniscule? Well, I’ll let you look them up.