Decisions and Priorities

I am finding that one of the greatest - and most difficult - advancements in  maturity is making decisions based on priorities, not on what seems good to you alone.

This is a difficult thing, something I had not anticipated on having to learn.

Decision making is easier when you're younger, of course - it's only you.  The consequences of your decisions - at least the short term consequences - are generally not too damaging.  If you choose to decide something else - the life changing decisions of a major change or job change - it's not too bad; you just do it.

Then you marry and decisions become a little more difficult - there are two to think of rather than one.  Oftentimes longer range decisions - to buy a house and stay somewhere for example - begin to play a part.  Even other changes begin to have impact - if I do this, how does it affect the other person - come into play.  But to a large degree, there is still the flexibility of being able to choose largely based on you and your needs or wants.

And then children arrive.

It's subtle at first - a thought here about if we do this we can't, because something else is going on or if we move, X will not be in our lives - but it gets larger as they get older.  What one comes to discover is that at some point - I wish I understood where that point was - your decisions no longer really become your own.  It's not just you that is impacted - it's all those around you, those who depend on you, those whose lives you are responsible for. They now come to play as big - or even bigger - role in your decisions as your personal desires and wants do.

And then suddenly something becomes apparent, something which maybe you should have grasped years ago:  that all decisions are ultimately based on priorities. 

We confuse this, especially early on, as we think we are making decisions solely on what is most agreeable or best for us.  In point of fact we are exercising our priorities by choosing - it's just that at that time in our lives, our priorities tend to be centered around us.  To the blessed and foresighted, they realize this early on and make very good decisions.  The rest of us  - I count myself in this category - blunder along until we're confronted with it, hopefully not too late.

Because making decisions based on priorities instead of personal pleasure is tough.  It means subverting our own wants and desires to something longer term and usually better, even if that "better" is not for us directly.  It means we accept the fact that all decisions have consequences, consequences that are both sometimes irrevocable and impactful in the lives of others to a degree that may not be seen for years.  It means that what is a priority and important may not be the most desirable thing for me personally - but that does not make the decision any less right.

All choices have consequences, consquences we can never fully control.  We make the best choices we can - we just need to ensure that they are made on the priorities we have established instead of always on personal whims.  Thus, when we face the outcomes of those choices, we can point back to the service of the higher goal - and hopefully the good results - rather than to yet another decision that brings us pleasure but destroys all that matters.

Branching

Branches occur at the strangest places.

I was reminded of this over the course of the weekend, as I was reviewing my job history as part of a "Where have I been and Where am I going?" review.  I'm familiar with it of course as I've rehearsed it enough:  2.5 years in this part of the field, then I switched to another part of the field, following my manager through three jobs until 2004 when I joined The Firm.  After that back into The Industry, where I was three years at one place, 4 months and then laid off, and then where I am today.  Pretty straightforward, actually.

But what I realized as I looked at the history is that something happened in 2004 that I did not see before:  I chose not stay and follow.

Not because of who I was following.  The Great Boss  (TGB) is the one who I constantly look back to, even today, as the example of what a great boss is:  intelligent, honest, supportive, recognizing that the people who work for him are the resources of the company.  It's why I followed him across three companies.

But then, I stopped.

I had never seen this as something different before, a change in the rhythm of my life.  I, who was a follower, chose to strike out on my own (failed miserably of course, but that's a different tale). 

And never looked back.  My switches since then have all been due to my own choosing (or choosing for me in the case of the lay off), never due to the want or desire of following someone else.  I may not have always chosen wisely (another learned skill, apparently), but at least I have chosen.

The surprise I felt at discovering this was tempered with a sense of relief.  For years I have wondered if I will ever get the knack of making decisions for myself, of being able to chose based on something other than a feeling of security.

In this case, it appears that it has been happening longer than I thought.  And that is a good thing.

Headache

Last night I had a headache.

Oh, not a run of the mill headache.  One of those that seems to send a tube of liquid fire through the back of your head, making you think it will explode.  You can feel it pulse and swear your skull has expanded just a fraction to accommodate the pulse.

I'm not one who is given to a great deal of headaches, even more so those that are of an extreme nature.  I hardly know what to do - to take something goes against my general rule of taking anything, but the pain can be so intense.

I run through the list:  Did I not have coffee today (I did, maybe not enough?)?  Have I been feeling poorly?  Has anyone in my house been sick, something that might have passed on to me?  Have I eaten anything that I usually don't?  Did I get enough water today?

So all the questions were "yes", but just because the questions are answered does nothing to relieve the pain.  I try to distract myself in hopes that I can ignore it.  No luck there:  the waves just come and go, causing me to sink further and further into my covers in hopes that relaxing will make it go away.

And it doesn't.  It's become the worst kind of headache of all:  the kind that is still with you even while you sleep. 

It kicks up from time to time:  you suddenly awake and there it is, pulsing.  Mentally you want to cry out loud (although it's night and disturbing to others):  it's simply not fair that when I'm trying to rest to get rid of it that it's still here!

And then, somewhere about 4 AM, it's gone. 

But is it?  Even now, as I go about my morning, I can almost feel it in the back of my head, lurking ready to attempt to break out in a random act of pain and suffering.  Headaches - at least this kind - shouldn't be allowed to remain.  Like the flu, they should come and go.

Yet here it remains, silently torturing me, reminding me of how little, in reality, we control of our physical selves.

Not Able to Post

Blog writing is great,
Except when it fails to work:
Wretched Internet.

Thursday

Thursday are tough.

Thursday are the day of the week when everything seems to be against me.  My energy level has slowly sunk over the week as little by little, the sleep patterns that are disrupted have finally caught up with me.  The schedule and things I started to do on Monday are by Thursday a pile on the floor in front of me, seemingly scarcely able to be lifted.

Whatever is going on at work too often seems to have come to a head by today as well.  More often than not Thursday is the day where everything seems to come together to provoke one long string of meetings and questions that need to be answered, scarcely allowing for any actual work to be done.

And the great thing about Thursday is it simply has nothing about it.  It doesn't have the benefit of middle of the week with half already gone - in fact, it painfully reminds me that there is still one more day until the weekend.  It is not Monday with the weekend just behind nor Tuesday with some leftover weekend joy and energy - and it is certainly not Friday with promise of relief soon to come.

I'd love to say - and I'd even more love to demonstrate - that either these are random occurrences and there is no ultimate plot by Thursdays against my sanity and my body but I struggle to come up with one.   The problem is that I never seem to be able to come up with any evidence that this is not the case.

The better question - the wiser question - is what to do about it.  What can I do to make my energy level last through the week?  What can I do to make Thursday a day more like any other in the week, a day that is simply one more that I work through?

I wish I knew.  My sleep pattern work during the week has been irregular at best, with little or no overall improvement to the process (can we discuss sleep as a process)?  Work remains outside of my control as well - I control what I control, but there is often too little that I do control.

What's the solution?  Maybe nothing at all.  Maybe just a grudging acknowledgement that in the annals of days of the week, Thursday is the day directly or indirectly designed to attempt to break us.

Running with My Mind

Today was my first long run.

My participation in a 5k this weekend, coupled with my desire to get fit (okay, let's be honest:  lose weight), has been pushing me along the course of trying to improve not only my commitment but my time.  In order to do this, one needs to train.  In order to train, one needs to run.

And so, I ran.

What I find is that my intellectual state is 50% or more of the battle.  If I've settled in my head that I am going to run a certain distance before I do it, my body simply acquiesces.  If my mind  is undecided my body seemingly loses all ability to do anything than get down to the end of the block.

So my mind was made up.  Fabulous.  Off we go.

The cooler weather helps a great deal.  It's far more pleasant to run and eventually get sweaty that to start out sweaty after running 5 steps.   It also helps to quiet the mind, which immediately starts complaining about being hot and sweaty and such.

My first serious breakpoint is where I make the turn to start back - the place I would turn back for my heretofore usual runs.  My body seems okay:  no aching bones, no side splitting aches.  My mind starts to wander a bit - Oh boy, here we go back!  No, I have to counsel it, we're going further today.

The second breakpoint is where I turn to do the extra mileage.  My mind is already thinking of the lesser runs I've done up this road, looking for a way to get off early.  Again I have to tell it no, we're going the full distance.

I'm not sure at what point the mind accepts the fact we're going the whole way, but it doesn't stop trying to fight back.  Making the third checkpoint - the turn towards home - I get a little distressed as I don't run this way as often and don't know the turns as well.  The next turn - the one to get me back on my normal route - always seems to be a bit beyond where I am going.  Aha, says the mind, see - told you we shouldn't have gone this far!

We find the turn, of course, and turn back on the final route home.  We make it, winded somewhat, legs aching, but feeling good.

I run the numbers.  Average time per mile is 8:57, not bad at all.

Look at what I had us do, the mind says.

The body just quietly shakes its head and looks for coffee.

Seasons

One of the minorly annoying things about relocating is that it takes you a while to become accustomed to seasonal change.

In Old Home, seasons were, well, like clockwork.  Rains started in November - if your garden wasn't in by 31 October, it probably wasn't going to happen.  Rains peter off in early March, maybe as far as early April.  By the end of May, Summer was well on its way.  And about the middle of September, the cast of the sunlight let all and sundry know that Fall had come.

Here in New Home, it's different.  Not just the types of seasons (we really only have two:  Hot and Humid and Cold) but when they arrive.  Summer starts maybe in May - but sometimes in April too.  Winter comes possibly in November, maybe even as late as December.  And there are a couple of weeks wedged in between the two that seem to quality as Spring and Fall.

But I am still unsure.  We've been in a cooler phase over the last two weeks and the sun has occasionally taken the cast of what I would associate with Fall.  But is it Fall?  Or is it just another cruel joke on me (and indirectly on my garden), condemning me to another two months of watering and indecisiveness about Fall or Winter vegetables?

The leaves don't necessarily turn, but that's not a huge impediment for me:  I come from a place where the evergreen grow right along with the deciduous, and it's a roll of the dice whether your neighborhood will be raking leaves or just watching them stand there, eventually drifting them back to the forest floor.  Other plants seem to come and go, but the grass that is around me on the lawn of my neighbors never truly goes dormant; it just seems to grow less slowly.  And the fact that we have more water here, that everything can be green throughout the whole year with cooperative weather, means that the monsoon cycle I am used to (brown in summer and fall, green in winter and spring) is partially if not wholly of no use to me.

But the weather - that's the one that throws me off.  The seasons are passing, but I don't always realize they've gone before they've moved on. I can sense them - especially those ephemeral ones of spring and fall - out of the corner of my eye, but am always left with the sense of "Did I miss it? Has it already gone?"

I'll survive, of course - the sun still rises, the rain still occasionally arrives, the heat definitely so.  But in the back of my heart I always find myself continuing to look for signs of a season that may have already gone - or is not yet here.

Fight Dissatisfaction!

There's been far too much ink spilt and money spent on getting people to change - to modify their conditions or their lives, to make themselves better than they are.  In reviewing this, I've realized there's a critical market not being served:  The people for who these individuals work, their spouses, their friends - anyone that somehow is a beneficiary of something that these people do.

This whole commitment to change thing is dangerous, you know.  People will start wanting to make their lives better and then start making their lives better.  You're aware of who loses out in that proposition, right?  You do.

That's why, as a public service, I've decided to help all those who want people to remain exactly where they are; those who wish to ensure that people keep their noses to the ground and their eyes on the dirt.  To you Overlords, great or petty, this is what you need to do to keep your people doing what you need them to do.

1)  Don't let them become dissatisfied:  This is one of the first signs that individuals are going to lurch towards the hard road of self transformation:  dissatisfaction.  That vague sense that gnaws at them that even though everything seems okay, something is wrong.  Terribly wrong, and they ought to fix it.

Fight these sensations. Keep them thinking about anything other than satisfaction.  Give them so much to do that they don't have time to think.  Occasionally indulge their little acts, so that the faint gleam of recognition will block out any sense that they are never recognized.  And for goodness sake, don't allow them to question "Is this all there is?"   If there's no question, there's no need to think about it.

2) Be oblivious:  The reality is that you as an Overlord (great or petty) have a great deal of work on your plate.  You're quite busy and important, you know.  Those that are around you, doing things to assist you in what you do, are really there to assist you in your climb to however you've defined success.  The last thing you need is a revolt in the middle of you campaign to greatness.

The easiest thing to do is be oblivious.  If you become too mired in details you're likely to start trying to understand what's going on, which both takes you away from your mission and may give others the idea that what they do is more important than it is.  Vague understanding is your friend here.  Frequently ask for updates.  Offer assistance without ever really giving any.  This has the benefit of keeping you "involved"  (oh, what a delightful word that is!) and gives the appearance that you're taking a more active role.  In the best of circumstances, people will believe you've actually started caring!

3) Occasionally crush them:  To all Overlords (great or petty), there's nothing quite as satisfying as exercising power over someone else.  At some level, it's why we all do what we do, right? 

Crushing people utterly reminds them of the fact that they're not nearly important as the rest of us.  You can't crush others too much, you understand:  that may work for the majority, but it will crystallize the internal workings of a minority, making them hard and focused to succeed.  Just an occasional dressing down ought to handle it.  And don't always insist on the full frontal assault either; sometimes just a lack of support at a critical moment will do more than 100 words spoken in anger.

4)  Insure they occasionally get recognized:  While occasionally crushing them is necessary, occasionally recognizing them is necessary as well.  If they're never recognized, they begin to wonder if this is true everywhere.  And if it's not true everywhere...you can see where this leads.

So occasionally recognize them.  Best if it's only in the confines of your local unit - business, family, chess club - lest they begin to feel too good about themselves and others begin to recognize their achievement (and worse, encourage it). 

Most importantly for this step, immediately go back to the way things were.  Don't dwell on the recognition.  If they begin to see ungrateful about something else, it's always helpful to remind them "Well, we did recognize you for....". 

5)  Don't let them question:  Don't let them question their situation.  Remind them that this is as good as it gets, that they are in fact successful and satisfied with their lives.  If they come to you with questions, play the willing ear.  Remind them that the world is a cold place and that they have it better than most.  Compliment them for their effort (of course), and give indications that with just a bit more effort, they can rise to the next level - maybe your level (they won't, of course, but no need to tell them that).

And never let them read!  Anything.  If they have to, let them keep to socially acceptable things like light fiction or popular literature - the sort of thing that is often discussed but rarely thought about.   Whenever asked, disincline them to read books about success or achievement.  If they must read such books, find ones that deal with them contributing to the whole rather than seeking personal change.  Books are dangerous things - it leads to thinking for themselves, asking questions and seeking change - all things we're trying to discourage, right?

Remember:  The dissatisfied are agents of change.  Agents of change are enemies to the success of those above them, who might be impacted. 

Keep them satisfied.   Keep them under control

The Illusion of Privacy

We as a people are of two minds about privacy.

On the one hand, privacy is something that we desperately hold on to.  We deeply reverence (and rightly so, in my opinion) the concept of individual privacy, that the individual has the right to lead their life untrammeled by the government wherever possible. On the other hand, we enjoy the free flow of telling information about our selves.  We happily discuss the activities of our lives on social forums.  We constantly carry on conversations which we scarcely realize are very easy to hear to those next to us.  We transfer to marketers all the information they want - and more - freely.

But underlying all of this is the concept that we have a right - granted to us by the universe - of a private life.

What if this is not so?

We only deal with the privacy in the context of our fellow humans.  What they do not see or hear is, in our minds, to us alone.  But there is a third party present at each second of our lives, at each moment of our activities:  God.

In reality, we are never truly alone.  We never have a truly private moment.  The walls we erect and the windows we cover do not hide us from the gaze of the Creator of the Universe.

What would our lives be like if we truly understood this concept?  Think of the times you have sinned in the dark or alone or completely isolated from others and have thought "No-one will know or ever find out".  That's simply not true.  Even alone in our mind, we still stand revealed to God.  There are no secret sins.

On the other hand, think of the times you have been steadfast or alone at a task or wounded in the deep parts of your soul.  Neither are these moments private.  The God who sees and comforts records all of these moments as well, ready to repay and reward someday.

If we grasped - truly grasped - that we are always with God and all our actions and thoughts are visible to Him, how would this change our lives?

Servanthood and Unreasonableness

One of the greatest problems I have with learning to serve is learning to put up with the unreasonableness of others.

People are unreasonable.  This should not come as an alert to anyone.  There are merely different  types of unreasonableness.  Some unreasonableness is just merely quirky:  people who like their desks clean or the coffee always fresh or papers aligned a certain way.  Maybe its a bit strange, maybe even a bit crazy, but quirky - and manageable.

But then there is the other kind of unreasonableness.  The kind of unreasonableness that reveals itself in demands or bad treatment, the sort that demands "Thou shalt do it My way" or the passing down of tasks to do without any consideration of how they will be done, the constant coming back to make something done their way without actually wanting to do the work themselves - or worse, the punishment simply because you fail to act precisely as is requested.

At best, these sorts of behaviors can be claimed as unreasonable.

It is somewhat amazing to me how quickly I can move from trying to be helpful and servant minded to a towering sense of rage when this sort of unreasonableness presents itself.  It's not quite that it immediately brings itself up:  it's that it builds, moving from a vague sense of annoyance to an active sense of resentment to - in its worst manifestations - a blinding sense of anger, of being treated as no more than a thing, a sort of human extension of the will of another.  All personality, all uniqueness, all value seems stripped away.  You are merely a pliers with hands, a computer entry device with a voice.

How do I make sense of this in the quest to serve?  Let us not kid ourselves:  be a servant, and human nature will quickly come to treat and view you as nothing more than a stepping stone to their ambitions, their goals, their outward appearances.  Whatever good you may have originally envisioned you were performing, whatever witness you may have been trying to give too often seems to get lost beneath the layers being a smaller cog in another machine.  It seemingly destroys the simple act of serving - after all, what point in being a servant, following Christ, when your service is either invisible or viewed as another tool in the tool box?

Is this not where faith may again play a role?  We are obedient because God calls us to obedience and assures us that all things work to our good and His glory.  All things, not just those of which we have "I am serving as a servant of Christ" blazoned on them like a neon sign.  Just because one person sees us in this light does not mean that all around us do not see us that same way.  Our influence is more often far deeper than what we can imagine:  more is seen out of the corner of the eye than is ever let on by most.

And the anger?  At it's most fundamental level, it's sin.  It's selfishness.  It's pride.  It's me demanding my own rights and my own way rather than submitting to another.  Does that make it easier to deal with?  Hardly.  But just because one can't deal with something doesn't change the facts.

We are called as Christians to be servants.  We are not told - at least in this life -that all acts of servant hood are recognized.  But we are told that, eventually, they will be.

Learning to Serve

Learning to be a servant is one of the most difficult things I have ever undertaken. 

To learn to be a servant is to realize the multiplicity of things that have to go on before and after something occurs - and realize that you are the one to do them.  To be a servant is to accept that even in the context of equals, someone asking for something means that you will do it - even if that results in the realization of others that you are not an equal.  To be a servant is to do without expectation (at least here) of reward or even acknowledgement.   To be a servant is to accept that sometimes, perhaps often, the great tasks of the enterprise or of the age are not yours to do and decide, to be replaced by the humble and unnoticed that may never been seen but are critically necessary.

This can be a very hard thing.

It's hard for me because I guess I have always believed that I was intended for something more:  to be a leader, a decision maker, someone who is out in front blazing a trail.  It's a thought our culture and society tends to enforce; whole books and websites are dedicated to the concept of being in charge.  I tried that once, working for The Firm.  On the one hand it was incredibly hypnotic, this sense of being at the apex of the pyramid, of striding across the landscape of business casting a shadow, of being the one to ask others to do.

Unfortunately, thing didn't work out as I had hoped.  Feelings of power and influence alone do not compensate for the quiet, hard work necessary to make things go.  And having a group of leaders who all believe (perhaps secretly) that the other person is the servant does not make for getting things done.

To be a servant is hard because you realize - in full-force frontal impact - how little control you have over so very many things.  To be a servant is ultimately to put your trust in the person or thing you are serving, that while you are performing your actions they are performing theirs in such a way that it ultimately benefits you as well as them.

Which is probably another reason why being a servant is so hard for so many:  they've been burned by serving those that are not worthy.

Think of world history:  those who gladly served National Socialism or Stalin's communism in hopes of  a better world only to see the long term ruin they caused.  Or more personally in our own lives, those who we have served - business supervisors, friends, even perhaps family - only to discover that they did not have our best interests at heart:  the layoffs that came after we excelled, the sudden cutoff of ties.  To be a servant is - willingly or unwillingly - to put your ultimate success and reward in the hands of someone else.

That's why, perhaps, Christians are uniquely positioned to be servants:  because ultimately we can have faith in the One on whose behalf we serve, that He will ultimately work everything to our good, that by serving Him and in His name He is truly looking out for our best interests, even if we ourselves cannot quite see that here.  Ultimately for the Christian there is ultimate success and reward because it is the hands of Another - One far greater than any of us and far more able to guarantee the results.

Ultimately serving is an act of faith.  Where is your faith placed?

Why Don't I Desire God More?

Why don't I desire God more?

I'm re-reading Safely Home by Randy Alcorn for the second or third time.  For those that haven't read it, it's a novel based on the experience of the persecuted home church movement in China.  While it is a work of fiction, it is based on the experiences of the actual church.

To read it is to read of things that I simply have no point of reference for:  persecution, arrest, physical harm, the Bible being illegal if not registered, of meeting in fear of being caught.  At the same time, it's also to read of things which I wish I had a point of reference to but also seem to have none:  powerful prayer, a real sense of God in one's life, the true commitment and understanding of the cost of being a Christian, a passion for evangelism (here, I fall very short).

Which brings me back to the original question:  why don't I desire God more?

Am I not fully convinced of the reality of sin? Is it that I am not (or never was) completely hopeless about how that sin was to be purged?  Is it that I am to concerned with the things of this life - not just the physical things, but my physical and mental well being?  Is it because my own plans are more dear to me than God?

Is it simple selfishness? 

And all that being true, how do I desire God more?

Can't Control?

What do you do when you face something you simply cannot change?

This is where I have found myself over the last week and into this week:  a situation where, no matter what I do, I simple cannot make everything that is supposed to happen.

I've done what you're supposed to do, of course:  maximized my time, delegated, working harder, made my request up the appropriate chain.  Still, I find myself in the exactly the same position: I cannot change anything.  The part that is bothersome, of course, is the impending sense of doom that is hovering over my head, knowing that there is nothing more I can do even as I fear that something will occur.

So what does one do when this happens?  Do what you can?  See above.  Scream about it?  Not  a terribly useful exercise.  Verbally complain to others?  There is no faster way to be mentally shut out by others.  Wait for something to go wrong?  Maybe viscerally satisfying of course, but hardly a problem solving method and certainly an attention getter in the wrong sense.

So (if one may ask) what's left?

Turn it over to God.

It seems counterintiuitive, and I'm not even really sure I completely understand what it's supposed to do.  But the reality is that this is my remaining option:  to turn this over to God completely.  Do what I can, of course - but then not exercise in any sort of "bad" behavior such that would discredit me or God.

It scares me, this turning over.  It's not something I can really control - in fact, the biggest control I have to exercise is over myself (which is all I ever had control of anyway).  I don't necessarily see how yielding my own rights in this matter (anger, pride, a sense of "told you so") will resolve any of the issues at hand.

But maybe I don't have to.  Maybe this insistence that I have - that I've always had - on completely understanding ever aspect of something before I engage is wrong.  One does not understand love before one is in it, and one does not appreciate what it truly means to be a parent until one does it.

We say "God is in control".  Do we really believe it?

What Matters

I have to keep dragging myself back to what matters time and time again.

It's odd how easily I am able to get myself off what is important and on to what is not.  I think it mostly stems from focusing on me:  my needs, but especially my wants.

Wants are dangerous things.  Unlike needs, which typically there is a justification for (food or sleep or shelter, for example), wants can very easily become a consuming fire, an overriding desire that eats up everything that may be good in our life for that which is either unattainable or at such an extreme outer limit that it will eat up our lives trying to get there.

And for what?  In reality, very little.  One of the benefits (if it can be called such) of growing older is the realization that things don't really have the power to gratify like we believe that they do.  Sure, it feels great for a little while:  the new car zings, the new book we can't wait to read, that thing that we have been unable to envision our life without - even relationships can fall into this category:  the person whose acquaintance propels us up the ladder to the next level, the relationship with the other that will make our lives sun and roses.

But in each case these are temporary things:  the car just takes us places, the book will be read and probably forgotten, the thing will eventually be put aside or scratched or broken, the relationship that moves us ahead discarded when it becomes inconvenient, the idealized romantic reltionship will eventually become just like another.  It's only at that point - if at all - we ask the logical question of "Was it worth it?"

We forget - or consciously block out - that life here is excrutiatingly temporary, that there is a reality that far outweighs this one in time and importance - and that we have the opportunity to do things now that will impact that greater reality.  But in order to do that, we have to learn to focus on the important things, on the things that matter most.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Automatic Transmission

I had an epiphany yesterday walking across the parking lot at work.

Somewhere deep within my soul, I have always believed that what I do was important - and that it would be recognized as such. Somewhere, somehow, there would be a knowledge that what I do mattes, that people would recognize that it matters, and that there would be some kind of sincere interest in what we do, how hard we work, and how we contribute.

I realized yesterday that I was wrong.

To use an analogy, I was under the impression that my career field would be recognized as an engine, an important item necessary to the functioning of car.  In reality, while we are very important to how my company functions, we are really the automatic transmission.

Automatic transmissions are just there.  They work silently in the background of the operation of the car.    People don't talk about their automatic transmissions.  They certainly don't think of the operation of them and they really don't give a second thought as to how they contribute to the operation of the car, other than the underlying sense that they work.    All they know is that when they push the gas and shift, the car moves forward.

That's what people really want from what I do as well:  silent, functional, quietly working away in the background.

In one sense such a realization is releasing.  To quote John MacArthur, disillusionment is the the child of illusion.  The reality is that the assumptions I was making, the things I was dreaming would be self evident others, is simply not the case - because others don't view my job the same way.  There's no point in becoming angry or upset about something that is not interpreted your way and never will be.

On the other hand, there's also a sense of disappointment.  Automatic transmissions never are recognized - except, of course, when they break down.  I guess I secretly have craved - am craving - attention, an acknowledgement of the importance of what I do and the challenges in doing it.  In fact, such attention and recognition will never come as a result of this.

The expectation? To be that automatic transmission silently operating in the background with nary a hint of issues.  To meet the increased demands of operational engine capacity by smoothly and instinctively adjusting.  To accept the fact that in world of engines, exteriors and interiors, I am - and will always be - simply a functional part which solely exists to support the rest of the car.

Bad Assumptions, Necessary Changes

Have you ever been hit over the head with the fact that something you have been doing for many years, a long cherished assumption about human nature, may be wrong?  Or equally as alarming, that how you do a basic activity is incorrect?

Such was my day yesterday, when I was confronted by the fact that how I have managed in the past may be completely and utterly wrong.  The facts themselves are irrelevant - the outcome is that for the second time in less than six months, basic assumptions about people and how I am as a manager are in question.

One incident (in anything) is a fluke, something that may have just happened.  Two incidents are an indication that there may actually be something there - and it starts with me.

Starts with me?  Yes.  As Splinter (that great dispenser of wisdom in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) says, "There are no excuses when you are the leader".  A failure of something which is in my area of purview is ultimately a failure of myself to do something.

What does all of this means?  I fear it means that the belief I have functioned under for years - indeed very style of dealing with people - is wrong.  That style may very well need to change.  And by changing the style, I will have to change myself.

I've had hints of this lately, of course - hints in other areas of my life, hints around how I react and act in the work environment.  Hints that things which I don't necessarily acknowledge as effective but at least as my "style" are not useful.

In a way it saddens me deeply.  What I think it ends up leaving is a me that I'm not going to like very much, a me that is far less personal and far more business-like in my day to day work life - if you will, a person who is very different than the person I feel myself to be.

The odd part is that for once I know what the changes have to be - not just changes in actions and attitudes, but changes in attention.  Changes in knowingly committing my knowledge to a tight circle of things which in a relatively short time will be meaningless.

In a very real way, a large part of me has to change - drastically change - in the next few weeks to become that which it apparently has to become to be in the work world I am in.

The question is, will I recognize the person on the other side?

Perspective

Blame Otis for his turn of mind.

I was driving home last night, using the time (as I sometimes do) to catch up with friends (it's relatively dead time, I'm in the car, the only other thing to do would be to listen to the radio and either sing poorly or get my blood pressure up).  Through a happy chain of circumstance, it was Otis that I got to spend time with last night.

We went through our usual litany of discussion - children, wives, jobs, how things are going - until we arrived - perhaps inevitably - at my most recent postings.

"Job and life couldn't be going better, huh?"  he asked.

Which of course started the flood - which it is always seems to - of this and that, of things I've written about here, my general dissatisfaction with the state of so much of my life and my real sense that I am now essentially trapped in a rut that leads to my grave.

"So you're home life is going well?"

Sure.  Everyone has blended in here so darn well - which is true, no sarcasm added.  Probably the least happy person in the room is me - which is probably true in a whole lot of areas.

"Well, look at the bright side.  At least your home life is good even if your work life is not what you want.  Imagine if the two were reversed."

The car is still driving.  My mind has pulled to the side of the road in a cloud of dust, thinking.

What if the two were reversed?  What if I had the best job ever, but every other part of my life - which for me is almost totally my home life - was terrible, falling apart, in a constant state of war?  What would things be like then?

It's tempting to ask one of the silly questions, like "How much worse could it be?" or "Who would noticed?" After all, work is somewhere which takes up a great deal of many people's lives, myself include.  By the time commuting is done, almost half of my day is spent in, at, or traveling to or from work. 

But the question is not that simple. What if the two were reversed, if my work was a place where I felt that everything was going very well indeed and my home life, my personal life was an area of constant battles and dissatisfaction, of arguments and troubled children and antagonism?

To be honest, it's tough for me to imagine such a thing - simply because I've never had to deal with it.  Ever.

I can theorize, I suppose.  I don't enjoy yelling and arguments as I am now - I can only imagine that such things would be 10 times worse.  And the experience I've had at homes where there is tension - that simmering sort of anger that seems to permeate everything until all within are in sort of a stew of crisis, ready to boil over as soon as the "guest" leaves the premises - would be enough to poison all that one tried to do offline.

And Na Clann?  I can hardly imagine.  They are well adjusted at this point, doing well in school and other activities, loving of God.  To strip that away, to inflict an atmosphere of strife and the uncertainty of not knowing when the next explosion is going to go off or even if a parent will continue to be there....

Does all of this (at which I recoil in horror) somehow make the rest better?  I'd be lying if I said beyond a very real sense of alarm at that sort of scenario, not necessarily.  What ifs don't change the reality of what is.  The rest of my life doesn't magically get better merely by comparison.  There is still work to to be done, maybe still things I can do to choose that course...

But it is good -and I am grateful to Otis - for making me go through the exercise of perspective and realize that the two things are not equally bad. In one case, it is something to be borne.  In the other, it is something that will scar lives forever.

Belief in Self?

What is the role of self belief and success?

Oh, not that usual relationship that is commonly acknowledged: that without self belief there is no success.  This has been demonstrated time and time again, both by the success of those who would otherwise not seem to be inclined to be from their circumstances as well as by those who, given all the hands up they can be given, never really seem to take of.

The thing I am wondering about is something more elusive than that, the role of one's own self belief in succeeding - and how one gets it.

Part of the lose of hope in lives -in mine, anyway - is the sense that I simply cannot succeed at something which I try.  Of course one has to have an accurate measure of success to start with - we are neither master authors nor master cheese makers from the start.  At the same time, I am often dogged by the sense that I am not - and cannot - succeed.

Do I base too much on the reactions of others?  Possibly.  Success - at least in our society - is measured in terms of "simple" things like recognition and money.  They are not truly indicative of success, I guess - but then again, getting paid for something you like and are good at far and away beats getting paid for something you don't really care for and manage to get through.

And too often this is the sticking point for me:  trying to find a sense of self-belief in the midst of a world where I am "supposed" to do something and like it, rather than like it and do something.

To suggest this to others - especially those close to you - is sometimes incredibly difficult.  If you has never had the experience of achieving a long cherished goal only to have it treated as uneventful  - or worse, unnoticeable - you cannot imagine the deflation of the soul.

Which is where self belief is supposed to come in, I guess - that backstop of life, that hedge against the world that when all others strike down our thoughts and goals, it will maintain us from going over the cliff.

But what if it turns out that every time you go to the backstop it is mysteriously not there, that the wave it is supposed to protect against simply washes over you and down the cliff?  Where, you wonder as you go over for the 1000th time, is my self belief? 

In your worst times, you begin to even question if you had it in the first place.

Without self belief, activities lose their luster.  Careers becomes endurance marathons. The thought of doing anything else - anything that requires internal generation of energy and confidence - becomes an exercise in trying to push a boulder up a very steep hill indeed.

If self belief will not come from within, where will it come from?

Trapped

Feeling remarkably trapped in my life this weekend.

It's as if I've suddenly looked up and it feels as if the rest of my life is set for me - and I'm not very excited by future I see.  Yes, I know it's possible to change your choices and thereby change your life, but life seems to be a series of narrowing choices, not expanding ones.

Without very much effort at all, the next 15 years of my life are easily laid out for me:  what I would do, where I will do it, what the expectations are of me. 

So why doesn't this excite me more?

Because in following this course - not precisely chosen for me, but not precisely of my own choosing either - I feel I am simply being reduced to less and less until, at the end, I will simply be nothing more than a compilation of duties and responsibilities.  Me - or any sense of me - will have been long ago washed away, leaving only the persona of duties left in my place.

It's foolish to pretend that at that point something suddenly changes and life reverts back to that which I would like it to be.  15 years from now - or even 5 years from now - I will be that much farther away from that which my heart keenly desires, with that much less time to make it up.

It's wrong to admit, I suppose, that even I am occasionally overcome by the simple desire to just run away - to just shuck everything I have to do and go do what I what to do.  It's foolish, of course, and does not solve anything, but thing that make it attractive - the thing that pushes so many off of that cliff - is the simple fact that one gets to choose something for oneself, that after a long time (years?) of making choices based on responsibilities and duties and things I have to do, one can choose as one wants.

(Again to emphasize it's mostly a pipe dream.  Responsibilities never magically disappear on their own, and the consequences often never really go away.  It's not like we're dealing with at true tabula rosa here.)

But is there a third alternative?  I wish I could see it.  Something between the grinding duty of "I must" and the ephemeral freedom of "I choose" must lie a path where one fulfills responsibilities while have hope and input into the path of one's future. 

Something where "trapped" is not the ultimate definition.

Holding Ourselves to the Standard

Self-vision is a thing which is always difficult to measure and hard to assess.  We are ourselves, of course; the ability to move outside of that basic fact makes it difficult to perform the sort of assessment that we love to perform on virtually everyone around us.  There are even those among us who proclaim themselves to be masters of the self critique, of the (arguably) rare ability to drill down on themselves and know their faults.

My question is this:  in the pursuit of self critique, can these same people hold themselves to the standard that they hold others to?

Standards - goals, expectations, objectives, call them what you will - are dangerous to the individual who is using them.  They are in usually in some way objective, not open to interpretation.  A thing is either done or it is not done, the book written or not written, the conversation had or not had, the gossip made or not made. 

They are outside of the individual, and so the application of self critique does not specifically apply to them.  We may be held to them but they are not fully of ourselves, and so not fully self interpretable.

The difficulty?  Of holding one's self to that standard of performance.

Why is it difficult?  Because too often lack of achievement or even downright failure is the result and too many people are simply unable (or unwilling) to admit this.  It is one thing to say that I have an issue with anger or performance or overeating.  It is another thing to say I have failed to meet a standard on anger management or performance or overeating.  One is, eventually, defined by myself; the other is something which I cannot fully control the definition of success over.

And holding others to a standard which we ourselves cannot (or will not) achieve?  This becomes the height of folly evident to all, the sort of hypocritical  performance that can be the most damaging of all because it is evident to everyone but ourselves that there is a severe disconnect between the two.  Now not only are we not holding to a standard (although by self definition we think we are), we are attempting to hold others to the same standard that we ourselves could not make.

Standards - goals, objectives, achievements - are important things to have.  We just need to accept that it is not our definition alone of what meeting that standard is that defines the reality.

Giving In?

I wonder if at some point, there simply an acceptance of things about one's life, a sort of resignation that this is the way things are going to be for much longer than one had anticipated.

I say I wonder. I think I actually know the answer at this point - and it's not one I'm fully happy with.

I say happy rather than uncomfortable or upset.  Those don't seem to really be options at this point.  One can have emotions about things, of course; it's just that emotions in and of themselves don't really seem to resolve anything.

Action, someone says?  True, actions can solve things - but undertaking actions in the midst trying to live with all the consequences based on choices one has leads to either one of two choices:  a sense of complete exhaustion or a neglect of some important thing for something else.

It comes down to values, I suppose:  what do we value most?

It's odd, in that this sense of being held in place sneaks up on one.  In times past, decisions were not nearly this difficult to implement:  one simply decided and acted.  But with the addition of others in one's life, one's ability to choose becomes curtailed.  It's not just myself I'm deciding for, it's everyone who is influenced by my decision.  Suddenly, decisions which were easy at one time (such as "Yes, I'll take that job" or "Yes, let's move") become far more difficult ("That job would be impossible because of the money" or "Everyone else wants to stay here because we like it").

And then question of values comes up:  what do you value more, yourself and your development and pleasure or the group as a whole?

The thing that is slowly surprising me is how little this seems to be bothering me.  Is it acceptance?  Is it resignation?  Is it maturity (seems unlikely in my case, but a possibility)?  There is just a real sense that some of the things I wanted - or want - may simply never come to pass, because of circumstances. 

Is that a failure of my will?  Is it a failure of my drive?  Or it simply beginning to accept that if one is a mature adult, there are really circumstances which rate higher than ourselves?

Reaction Drills

Last night in class we participated in reaction drills.

The concept is simple enough:  You are in the middle of a circle of your fellow students.  Everyone draws to chudon.  Then, randomly one by one, each student kiais (shouts) and makes an attack.  Attacks can be as simple or as complicated as the sensei calls for; in our case it was a single type of cut.

The great difference - and the great problem - of reaction drills is simply that things becme much less of an exercise in the art of iaido and much more of an exercise in simple survival. A constant series of attacks - even slower ones performed by fellow students - too often seems to drive every technique I've learned out of my mind.  As they say, we study for the dojo, but we practice for life.

But the one thing that was embedded last night in my mind - let us say re-embedded, as the thoughts were already there - was the art of letting the mind go.

When one faces a series of attacks, one's mind will tend to become rushed and confused.  To dwell on the attack that just happened - to try and consider a different way to do things, or reflect on how badly one did - is to invite being struck.  The mind cannot dwell on that which just happened; instead it must move on to the next attack that is coming.

Takuan Soho in The Unfettered Mind  discusses the same idea.  He makes the point that the mind must be free and stop on any one point.  If the mind stops at blocking the attack, it will not continue through to complete the cut and certainly not be ready for the next attack.  The mind instead must simply move through blocking the attack to responding and then moving to the next attack.

As in all things, of course, iaido mirrors life.  Too often we tend to cling to what just happened, the mistakes we just made, rather than simply move through the situation to the next incident.  Is this saying that there is no place for meditation and reflection upon our lives and how we act?  Not at all.  Consideration of and reflection on our actions is an important part of our growth.  It is simply a question of choosing when to consider such things.

Ultimately the point of iaido is to have the mind and body flowing as one, to spontaneously move the mind and body in responding to or executing to an attack.  I sure did not flow last night (though several of my fellow students did), but I saw the first great mental step:  we cannot flow forward in the stream if we cling to the rock that just went under water.

Cabinets Drawers of the Soul

Last week when I was poking around an area of work, I came across something that was almost 12 months out of date.  It was not obvious and had certainly been missed in periodic cleanups, as it was placed in a cabinet out of sight and due to a number of factors (personnel turnover, lack of use of the area) it simply was never discovered.  I pointed it out to someone, where it was promptly removed.

It reminded in general how little a fan I am of such things as drawers, cabinets, and closets.

Why?  They would seem to be terrible useful storage area, right?  We are always in need of additional space to store something or other, especially things that we don't always need right away.  And who is against organization, right?

All true. I am freakish on my own organization, especially at work, to the point of maybe I have a problem.  Clean and organized is the way I like my workspace.  No, my complaint against the innocuous storage device is simply that it enables us to keep that which might better not be stored.

We often seem willing and able to place something to the side which we fully believe we will use one day.  Waste not, want not, as the saying goes.  But things change, people change, priorities change.  Suddenly the thing that was so critical is now consigned to the dustbin of history, and things have moved on.  But having placed things away in cabinets and drawers, they are now out of sight and therefore out of mind.  It becomes a question of having the time to go back and sift through the detritus of time or simply move on with what is important now.

But to be fair, do we not do the same things with our souls?

We all bear pockets within ourselves of items not dealt with, relationships that ended badly or we simply just placed into limbo, of interests that we never really stopped caring about but really stopped doing, of feelings that we simply had no time for (or couldn't deal with).  And so, rather than go through the hard work of either organizing and incorporating them into our lives or simply disposing of them, we temporize:  we put them into the storage areas of our souls.

We never really deal with such things of course.  We find them every now and again as we go through our daily lives:  the anger at something that suddenly rages and we don't really understand why, the recurring interest in something we gave up years ago and was hardly healthy for us then, the thoughts of people that drift into our lives.  It's as if we were going through cabinets again, randomly finding things.

I don't wonder if use this storage device the way a pack rat stores things, that somehow these things are the potential lifeline in case of an event which may never happen.  Or is simply the denial of the life that we actually have, an act of resistance in keeping those things which we once held dear and have no hope of or ability to do?  Or perhaps we're simply lazy:  we've learned to clean our living areas, but not clean up our lives.

That's what it comes to, of course.  Cleaning out our lives.  Like a facility cleaning day, where everyone takes a day to simply clean out the contents of every drawer and cabinet and closet.  Get the garbage bins, get some pizza, start sorting through the detritus of some number of years, keeping that which is important or relevant, disposing of that which is not longer so or simply expired.

Because like most everything else, lots of things in our lives have expiration dates.  Keeping them out of sight prevents us from disposing of them, lightening our load, and moving on.

Pushing

I became extraordinarily frustrated with myself this weekend.

It was around writing.  Specifically, it was around the fact that I simply could not get myself motivated to write. 

The idea is there.  The first few chapters are there.  But I just seem to have hit a wall.  And not just creatively.  Output as well.  Sure, I put together a list of how much I need to write each day, yet most days fly by and there is no output because I can conveniently find something else to work on, and the fact that the text is not flowing is no incentive either.

My frustration hit a peak on Saturday, when I had accomplished all I need to by noon and was feeling as if I had nothing else to do.

So I started writing.

It was not the work I have been toiling on - in fact, it is something completely different, something inspired by this blog.  I had written one chapter and part of another.  I finished the chapter, sat back and looked at it.

And wrote another.

Before long the afternoon had descended into a marathon of writing, of an intent - which became a commitment - to finish this thing I was working on.  To finish something.  To not, as so often had been the case, to have yet another idea hanging in the closet of my life, not quite finished with no real deadline for it to be.

It struck me as odd (the farther that I got into the writing)  how easily a fixation can become a mania.  In one afternoon, I seemed to pass the the line from not being able to write a thing to having to get a completed draft out on paper.  It's almost as if the underlying pent up frustration of not being able to move forward on this - or seemingly any - front of life manifested itself into a driven passion - almost frustrated anger - of filling up the empty page with its blinking cursor.

The remarkable thing:  after 5 hours of relatively focused concentration (and mania-like manifestations)  I had a draft.  A draft, of course, is hardly a working final copy and this one promises to be a bit rougher than most, but a draft all the same.

Looking at the file window with the chapter name neatly arranged, I wondered what had gotten me to to that point in the afternoon.  What had started me from feeling nothing was happening to a complete rough draft in an afternoon?

Pushing.  I pushed myself. 

I am not a man that typically likes to push himself to his limits.  I know this about myself, even as I despise it as a characteristic.  I don't enjoy the pushed, the driven, the times that I have known them.  They are too often socially inept, unpleasant to be around, so focused on their own project that they have no time for anyone else.  In so many ways, they make social interactions harder, not easier.

But they do get things done.  And this is the issue I need to resolve:  is there a method of pushing which does not involve collapsing into relational limbo, into a world so self and project centered that the great task of daily life that one becomes useful for anything else?

I hope there is. Because finishing a draft is the best feeling in the world.

Lazy

Today I have an eye appointment - the what now has become an annual pilgrimage to the doctor to discover when the need will finally arrive for glasses. 

In getting ready for this - and because I don't know what will happen today while there - I did something I haven't done more than twice a year for the last 5 years:  I took a sick day.

I got up this morning knowing that I wasn't going to work at the usual time.  It's amazing how slowly the morning has progressed since then.  I'm not quite sure whether to chalk it up to unmotivation or simply a sense of "I don't really have to be anywhere in particular".

This always makes me question my commitment to anything, of course.  One should always practice something whether or not one is on a schedule.  Anytime I don't, I start to wonder if it is something I really wanted to do in the first place.

But that's as it may be.  Maybe, perhaps maybe, it might worth considering that every once in a while, simply being slow about getting moving and doing is not so much an indicator of any laziness as it is the simple self courtesy of allowing one's self, periodically, to simply wander into life instead of being enmeshed in it.

Making Peace with What Does Not Happen

To what extent is making peace with our lives a sign of giving up and to what extent is it a sign of acceptance?

This has always been a matter of some debate for myself.  If I suddenly stop trying on something, I feel as if I'm not doing everything I can and that I'm settling.  On the other hand, if I keeping chasing after something which at some point becomes self evident that is not going to happen, am I denying myself the pleasure of simply being?

Certainly the general sense of society does not contribute.  There is always seems to be a sense in which we should always be trying harder, trying again, pushing.  Very often we are told that a failure to succeed is a failure to continue trying - which holds in it a seed of truth.

But how do I reconcile this with the reality that always striving after things results in less than a happy existence?

To be always striving is to deny one's self a simple sense of being, of existing in the moment, in many ways participating in the life that one actually has.  To be constantly looking over the horizon means one's eyes are always firmly fixed on the future.  That's useful when driving down the road; it may create a life in which the scenery is always being missed as we focus on the dotted line.

The other danger is that having arrived to where we think we wanted to be, we found out it's not what we wanted at all:  the job we pushed and shoved for is not where we were meant to be, the relationship we positioned ourselves to have occur is less than we thought it to be, the thing we so desperately wanted is only a thing, not a life satisfaction.

Perhaps we need to simply accept that fact that the reason we do not seem to achieve or reach certain goals is not a failure of ourselves or our abilities but rather the gracious favor of a God who truly knows what will and what will not really satisfy us.  We fight against the fishbowl, not willing to recognize that all that lies without it is not at all what we wanted.

6 AM

There is little worse in life than laying in bed awaiting the day you don't want to have.  It's even worse when the thoughts start showing up by themselves.

I laid awake this morning, vestiges of the night's dreams floating through my head - which, apparently, involved various Italian dukes of Ferra and Sforza from the Middle Ages - confusing me to no end.  Why were they there?  What possible reason could they have to show up randomly?  Why would I be thinking about them before I go to bed to invade my dreams?

Ah, Headache.  My old friend.  Apparently you missed the memo last night in which I requested we postpone our meeting until a later date.  No matter, I suppose.  You're here now.  We'll just carry on today, shall we?

Well, at least it's Thursday, the end of the week is near...What?  It's only Wednesday?  No wonder the week is feeling like an eternity - because it apparently is.  Sigh. There really is a whole additional day of work to be completed.

Hmm?  Ah, Work Plans.  I see you've taken the opportunity to visit me even though I have 3 hours or so before I actually have to start thinking about you.  No, I'm not really concerned with what documents I have to get done today.  Or tomorrow. Thanks, no, I'll pass right now on considering what I will say for the meeting I have at 4:00 this afternoon.

Interesting.  Hope?  Excitement?  Fun?  No, they don't really seem to be up along with everyone else this morning.  Maybe they've taken the opportunity to sleep in.

Maybe they're on vacation in Italy, visiting the villas of the Italian Dukes.

Sigh. 

Why yes, I think I'll get out bed, thanks.  Who could resist these charming invitations?

Press

Last night at dinner, Nighean Bhan asks me "Dad, can we make Pepper Jack Cheese?"

Now my cheese making skills are still what I would define as being in a nascent form - the regularity is not quite there.  Sometimes I get great cheese, sometimes I get cheese that I can eat.  Additionally, making cheese seems to be like any other activity:  there's always a little more equipment you can acquire, something else which will enhance the process.

"I don't think so" I replied.  "I need a cheese press".

A cheese press, for the non-cheese educated, is simply a glorified press which, when used with a cheese form, allows a regulated amount of pressure to be applied to curds (here's an example from the good people at New England Cheesemaking Supply Company).  The ultimate purpose is to remove the water and condense the curds into cheese.  They're also a bit pricey - $160 for a simple unit to $279 for the Cadillac of Cheese Presses.

Finally,  I conceded that I would look at my cheese making book to review the recipe.

I pulled The All Powerful Book of Cheese and turned to the jack cheese page.  Sure enough, in the list of ingredients it stated "Cheese Press".  "Well, there you go" I thought to myself as I flipped to the second page to see what the pressure was.

And got a surprise.  It never defined a specific pressure.  It said "medium pressure." 

Medium pressure can come from a lot of things - in my case to date, it's come from a 1 gallon water jug with a plate under it sitting on the lid of the cheese form.  It's not elegant (as if this is suddenly a concern of mine), but it gets the job done.

I went and looked at another recipe.  Sure enough, it said "Medium pressure", not a specific pressure.

Suddenly, my cheese making world opened up.

Am I suddenly going to drop everything and make Pepper Jack all day?  Hardly.  It takes a long time to age and I like my cheese steadily, not making now and waiting for four months without any.  But what it did teach me was an important lesson that I need to apply to every aspect of life:  Just because something is listed doesn't there's not another way to do it, and double check everything before you say you can't.

The important people in your life - including pepper jack loving daughters - will thank you.

Clinging to The Past

Am I clinging to that which is past?

I was struck this weekend as I was contemplating projects that I wanted to work on:  did any of this really make sense?  Are any of the these things actually relevant to my life or what I am doing today, or are they echos of  a past that simply no longer exists except in my mind?

We passed our three year New Home-aversary this Saturday.  On the one hand, it's hard to believe that it has already been three years - which is a blessing, since it means (to my mind) that Na Clann and indeed all of us have blended in so well here that there no sense of time merely passing but of being engaged in the world around us..

But as I thought about this - and the realities of a life with a family - I began to look at what I was doing and wanted to do and asking the question "Why am I doing/holding on to this?"

The question initially started in the context of a random discussion about other potential places we might consider living.  The response was "If it's all the same to you, we like it here a great deal".

This was not the answer I was really expecting.

On the one hand I am exceedingly grateful for the answer, because as mentioned above it means everyone has blended right in.  On the other hand it was the answer I didn't really want, because it implies certain things about where we live and what we do.

Suddenly, I looked at the things I want to do - or dreamed of doing - and cast them in the mold of New Home.  Not surprisingly, many of them don't seem to immediately fit right in.

Which leads me back to the question:  am I clinging to the past?

How I - how all of us - spend the limited time and resources presented is based on a concept of how we believe life is going to be.  Over time, we collect interest, hobbies, things, even acquaintances based on the direction our life seems to be moving in.  Sometimes we take overt steps towards that end, but I suspect for most of us it's a careful balance of living our life and working towards where we believe (or want or hope) to be.

But what happens when that all gets moved aside?

If suddenly I'm thrust into living in a desert situation, my interest in Scuba may be interesting to me, but it will hardly make a difference with the live I am living most of the time.  Likewise an interest in running a cattle ranch  when I'm trapped in the suburbs may give me hours of thought provoking ideas on free range cattle but will not address the actual reality of where I am.

So if this is true - and on some level for all of us our lives are much different than we anticipated - the question remains:  Are we clinging to the past?  Are we clinging to ideas and interests and hobbies that don't reflect the reality of where we are?

Can they be transformed?  Of course.  A career dream of writing only can be transformed into writing meditations and an occasional book (for example).  A free range cattle ranch dream can be transferred to an urban garden with quail and ducks. 

But this change requires one thing:  an honest look at where we are and what we are doing and if what we are doing makes sense.  This willingness to question needs to be met by a second item:  the willingness to let go.

By clinging to that which has always been in our hands, we lose the ability to grasp that which is in front of us.

Shadow and Reality

A branch whipping fast
in the sun's shadow.  A storm?
No.  Just Syrah's tail.

Listing SIns

Have you ever made a list of your most prevalent sins?

This was thought that floated upward in my consciousness last night reviewing the days events, especially a conversation in which things which I had not thought would work their way to the surface appeared.  As I looked into my soul at the end of the day, the thought floated up "What is this indicative of?  And have you really thought about where it's coming from?"

Which lead me to try and list one prevalent sin, which lead to a list of five (well, six really).

The surprising thing to me was that as I made my list, I discovered the rather interesting thing that I seem to have become remarkably comfortable with my sins.  I say comfortable in the sense that as I made my list I went "Well of course that one is on there" and "Oh yes, let's add that one too.  I struggle with it awfully".

What I ended up was an indictment on two levels:  On one level, it pointed to the fact that have way more that six major sins in my life.  On another level, it pointed out how comfortable I have become with my sins, that I recognize and acknowledge them without really being impacted by them or concerned that they are still so prevalent in my life.

Have I become so comfortable with the thought of being a saved sinner that I have simply surrendered any intent of trying to eradicate the sin in my life?  That scares me if it's true, because that means that I have come to accept - nay, embrace - a certain amount of evil and failure in my own life.

Evil and failure.  Those are words that make me shudder as I write them, almost attempt to pull them down off the post.  It's not that I'm evil, I protest, it's merely that I'm a sinner who's saved.  Sinner has come to sound okay.  Evil is still stark.

But comfort is not the Christian's ultimate goal - nor should it be mine.  It's Christlikeness.  Will I sin free - never this side of death.  But can I deal more fully with the prevailing sins and move on to others?  By God's grace, it is possible.

But only if I realize that sin is something to be fought against, not lived with.

Disobedience

In reading this morning, God brought to mind the story of Saul and Samuel.  It's found in 1st Samuel 15 where Saul, then King of Israel, fails to completely execute the word of the Lord as sent by Samuel:  instead of wiping out all the Amalakites, he spares King Agag and the best of the flocks.  When Samuel arrives and asks why Saul didn't obey the voice of the Lord, Saul temporizes:  first he blames the people, then he blames the need for perfect sacrfices.  The Lord's response through Samuel?

"Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrficies,
As in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
And to heed than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,
And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the LORD,
He has also rejected you from being King."
 - 1st Samuel 15: 22-23

This sat on my mind after I read it, having just finished a part of Henry's Blackaby's book Experiencing God where he discusses the same fact: that in order to be on mission with God, we need to be obedient to God.

Which circled me back to my own life:  how well am I being obedient to Christ?

Not very well, I'm afraid.  Simply put, I feel as if I'm nowhere near where I need to be.  And the disappointing thing (if one can use such a mild term for something God feels so strongly about) is that I fear the impact that such disobedience is having on my own life and the lives of those around me.  Yes, I understand that everything going well is no particular sign of God's favor and everything not going well is no particular sign of God's anger, but I am struck by the fact that so often I hit those walls I have so often written about.  Could it be that those walls are really just the limits of my obedience?

Which, I suppose, is good in one sense:  disobedience is something which an be remedied.  Not easily all the time, of course, but remedied.  Certainly one of the great aspects of God is that in returning to Him He does not immediately demand supernatural feats of brilliance.  He just asks us to stop what we're doing, agree it's wrong, and start (in concert with His spirit) doing the right thing.

But this whole discussion leaves me haunted in one aspect:  Saul was rejected as King over Israel because of the incident listed above, even though he went on to reign for many more years.  Has my disobedience already cost me such opportunities as will never come again and can never be redeemed?  And if so, would I know?

Responsibility

Responsibility has been much on my mind of late.

Why?  It weighs heavily on me, in both my personal and professional life.  I am told that I am responsible for a great many things, yet somehow that responsibility neither empowers me to act nor results in the rewards of being being responsible.   It sometimes seems that responsibility is merely a word for shifting the burden of action and decision.

What is responsibility? 

Responsibility:  The quality or state of being responsible, as:  moral, legal or mental accountability; something for which one is responsible:  burden.

Accountability.  That's a word I'm certainly familiar with in my professional life.  It is a word that people love to seemingly hold above one's head.  "You're accountable for this"  they say, often almost seeming to take a perverse amount of joy in making the pronouncement, then leaving without any further assistance or suggestion.

Burden.  I had not anticipated that word being there but that is too often what responsibility feels like: a burden, something which must be borne in the face of daily living.

But is this what responsibility was meant to convey?

Responsibility with only accountability is not, I think, the entire story.  Practiced this way, it truly is a burden, something which must be carried endlessly.  The missing bookends are choice and reward.

Choice:  In being responsible, I am taking accountability for something that is the result of a choice.  Too often it is a choice I have not made and not been involved in.  To be truly accountable, I need to be involved in the initial choice that lead to that accountability.

Reward:  One holds one's responsibilities and is accountable because, in the end, one  has the hope of some reward, be it financial or physical or "Well done, Good and Faithful Servant".  The hope of reward may not even be something as definitive as that; it may only be the hope of victory or a better tomorrow.  In any case, there is the suggestion that there is a end and a treasure for the discharge of the accountability.

But notice that of the three steps - Choice, Responsibility, Reward - too often many people want to be involved in the first and last step but not the middle.

Charting a course?  Deciding on a goal?  That's important stuff. Of course people want to be involved.  It's exciting.  It's fun.  It's future.  And Reward?  Who doesn't want a reward?  Who won't show up for a party?

But that long center climb - accountability - ah, there's the rub.  That's work.  That's unrecognized work, more often than not.  It's thankless.  If you fail, the hyenas of any social group will be there to tear and mock.  If you succeed, well, that's just what you were supposed to do.  Carry on.

I suppose what I'm suggesting is a revolution - at least, a revolution in my own life.  A change - not only in how I perceive and understand responsibility, but how I practice it.and allow it to be practiced on me.  Perhaps by redefining the difference between a responsibility (choice, accountability, reward) and an accountability (something given to me with no choice before and no reward after).   

One, if practiced properly, leads to maturity, success and personal growth.  The other seems to lead only to hopelessness and despair.

Adjustments

"Many of us want God to speak to us and give us an assignment.  However, we are not interested in making any major adjustments in our lives.  Biblically, this is impossible.  Every time God spoke to people in the Scripture about something He wanted them to do through them, major adjustments were necessary.  They had to adjust their lives to God.  Once the adjustments were made, God accomplished His purposes through those He called." - Henry Blackaby, Experiencing God

What is God calling on me to adjust?

I've written off and on about feeling like I'm coming up against walls in my life, of pressing against the edge but not ever really able to break through.  Maybe it's time to ask the question:  can I not break through because I'm not willing to change, to make an adjustment?

That's a dangerous thing, of course.  When God takes change, He seldom discusses minor changes.  It's always for a purpose of course, and always to ultimately help us do His will better and glorify Him more, but they still are generally major sorts of changes.

What kind of change?  This is the part that I always stumble on.  I always tend to think of it in terms of things I have to give up or not do. But that's not the totality of change.  Change can be attitudes and directions as well.  It can be the giving up of things that are not physical:  dreams, goals, passions.

I dread the discussion, of course.  I've managed to create a comfortable sense of myself over the years.  Sure, it's not everything I could want and everything I might desire, but I'm comfortable - or at least, I've come to accept where I am.

But that is precisely where God does not want us.  He doesn't want us comfortable with ourselves, He wants us relying on Him, glorifying Him, doing those things that without His involvement would be impossible (thereby giving Him to glory).  Comfortable with ourselves and our lives tends to breed reliance on ourselves and allowing our world to be bounded by our own goals and dreams.  God calls us to more.

The question is, are we - am I - willing to make the changes?

Purpose, Submission, Self Confidence

One of the things I have always struggled with in my considerations of God's purpose and submission is the relationship of self confidence.

Full disclosure:  I have - for most of  life - struggled with self confidence.  Even when doing things that I am relatively skilled at, I struggle with having any confidence in myself and what I am doing.

Why?  There are probably a host of reasons buried beneath the surface.  The one that is germane to the conversation at hand is that it often impinges on my understanding of what submission to God and His purposes means.

The crux of my problem is this: if I am submissive to God and His purposes, seeking His plans, then I feel as if I have lost the ability to have confidence in my own ability to choose a path and my directions.  This lends itself to constant sense of looking over one's shoulder, of trying to ascertain if what one is doing is really correct or if it is a misdirection of what was intended.

Do this long enough, and what one finds is that one becomes immobilized, never really sure what direction one should be taking or failing to put full effort into what is at hand, fearing that it is the wrong thing to be spending time on but never sure how to figure out what the right thing is.

If you think this isn't crippling, you can't imagine the level of uncertainty - perhaps even fear - that enters one's life when one is never sure of direction or effort or if one is doing the right thing at all.  It makes days a thing of concern and nights a thing of waste (after all, you should be doing something more useful than sleeping, right)?

How does one resolve this?

I'm not sure.  I've just written, deleted, rewritten, and re-deleted a phrase three times in this spot.  I can come with the answer I think I should, but I'm not sure that it's the honest answer.  Matters such as these are too important to leave to trite phrases and passionless mouthings of things I have not really made my own, a form of rote chanting without understanding the words.

How does one bridge the gap between God's will and purpose and the daily self confidence to competently live one's life?

The Act of Lowering

Submission:  The act of being submissive, humble, or compliant; the act of submitting to the authority or control of another.  Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin submissio/submittere, the act of lowering.

One of the ugly little not-so-secret secrets of my life is that I have a terrible time with submission.  I have problems submitting to authority of any kind - especially if I think the idea/thought/request is ridiculous or a waste of time.  But topping the list of my submission issues is my submission to God.

Frankly, I'm terrible at it.

Oh, I'm great at the things I want to be submissive about.  But as soon as we start to meander over into things that I think are foolish or silly - or worst of all, things I really want - the hackles on the back of my neck raise up and suddenly I become...."difficult".

Me, arguing with the God of the Universe.  Silly, isn't it.

The silliest thing about it is that submission to God is freedom, not control.  It's staying with the guardrails of living.  It's transferring the outcome of relationships, events, and even my life over to the authority of God.  "Do it my way"  says God throughout the Scripture, "and I take ultimate responsibility for the outcome - and the ultimate outcome is very, very good.  Do it your way - prepare to be responsible."

Why can't I get that?  Why do I constantly struggle with doing the thing that will bring ultimate joy?

Simple.  Look at the Latin root of submission:  the act of lowering.  When I submit, I make myself lower than something else.  In human terms in can be a government, a pastor, a business, a boss.  Ultimately, I make myself lower than God.

And to lower one's self is to lift something else above it.  Pride - that ever present sin, the one C.S. Lewis considered one of the greatest sins - bursts forth in a paean of self-praise.  You, it says, are equal to or better than all others.  You need to submit to no-one."

How do I learn to submit more? For myself, it's often as simple as looking at the outcome of what I have managed to accomplish on my own when I did it "my way".  Trust me, the track record is not that spectacular.  If we take on the responsibility of doing things our way instead of God's way, we take on the responsibility of the results in our life.

I have to ask myself this question:  "If I did X God's way instead of what I did, what were the possible outcomes?"  Yes, I know we can't fully know what might have happened, but I think we can safely extrapolate other things based on what did happen. 

It comes back to the question of pride:  will we lower ourselves before God? 

Because in the end everyone will lower to God - every knee will bend and every tongue confess that Christ is Lord.  It's when we decide to lower ourselves that has the eternal implications.

Purpose?

How does one find the purpose - or even a purpose - for one's life in the midst of all the other things seeming to offer none?

There seems to be a combination of factors in my life - a renewed realization of the amount of selfishness I possess within myself as well as level of instability - that is causing me to question what my old purpose was - indeed, even if I had a purpose - and what, assuming the old one is defunct, the new one should be.

In my career, I seem to be butting up against the wall of reality; that suddenly the limitless blue sky of possibilities - career advancement, salary - is coming to a halt, that I can perhaps expect the normal advancement of time but the dream of moving to a significantly higher position (with higher pay) has moved on. 

This then combines with factors of self-centeredness within my life - for me, perhaps, the escape valve of my life for doing what I would not really like to be doing - to create a situation where even though I may be at what and where I am for a long time, I cannot just "check out" with my own activities and life.

I'd love to say that I've had some blinding vision from God, some passionate uplifting dream to move me over this hump into the next phase, something so utterly clear that I cannot mistake it for anything else - but alas, I have not. I just have the walls of reality seemingly continue to close in on the circle of my life, leaving me with a smaller radius and and increasingly narrow view of the sky.

How does one find a purpose in the midst of this?  How can one take the ordinary, mundane events of one's life and craft a purpose of it or weave a purpose through it?  How does one find a purpose - not a canned response, but a real motivating one?

I can just make up my own or quote one, but it hardly changes anything - more of a justification of events that are already in place than a guiding statement. And eventually, I will see it as such and it will become irrelevant, one more in a list of things that I thought was real or mattered or I could do.

In the darkness of my soul I ask myself:  What am I doing wrong?

Sin and Selfishness

All sin, ultimately, is selfishness.

That's a hard saying, hard in the face of a world that so often elevates the individual and individual achievement.  It suggests that in fact we should spend less time on ourselves - do we ever really get to spend enough time to suit ourselves? - and more on the things outside of ourselves.

A little enlightened self interest, sure - but sin?  Really?  That's a pretty drastic word for the unkind thought I think or the candy I sneak or the thoughts I have that I shouldn't.   That's more just catering to myself.  I do work hard, you know.  Sacrifice a lot. 

All sin, ultimately, is selfishness.

Sin is simply (if such a word can be used for so devastating a thought)  not doing as God does and not willing as God wills.  It can be anything - an action, a thought, a word.  But when I choose to sin (and as much as I'd like to excuse myself, I do choose it), I choose to do something other than what God would or not will as God wills. 

Why?  Because I have chosen to elevate myself and my desires (or my world, my "deservings") above God and His desires and will.  Whether it is a flagrant sin or simply something secret, the root is the same:  I, O God, am more important and know better than You.

Thus the danger of a culture that worships the individual, that indiscriminately tells us we are the most important thing in the universe and that we are here to self-actualize ourselves:  we believe that our interests, our lives, are the most important things that are going on.  We carefully learn to soothe any sense of "sin" beneath layers of being "God's Creation" and "Unique", forgetting what those words actually mean and imply.

All sin, ultimately, is selfishness.

I write this out of a sense of being first in line.  I have created a plethora of justifications in my life when I sin (and let's not bother with the discussion of if it's sin.  Let's just go with the fact it is).  In my case, I too often hide it beneath a veneer of the "sacrifice" I make by doing what I do (which is not what I love), that I am "owed" whatever pleasures and time I can scratch together, even if such things cause me to ignore the real responsibilities and tasks I am called to. 

I hate writing this, because to shine such a light is to reveal the shriveled thing my inner most self has become - by becoming "rich" in things for myself, I have become poor both in the things of God and the things of responsibility that I am called to do.

All sin, ultimately, is selfishness.

The cure?  Ah, the cure.  Just the most simple and most difficult thing a person ever has to do.  Die to self.

Die to self.  Live to God.  Let go of all that I claim are my rights.  Change my thoughts and my will into God's thoughts and will, my actions into His.  Start by rejecting those ways that I cater to myself, even in the smallest of things.

Repent, of course.  Repent of sin.  Repent of thinking that the clear is not clear, that good and evil are not gray bands moving between each other but clearly defined.  Repent of thinking that my needs outrank anybody else's:  my own, my family, my friends, strangers, God.

All sin, ultimately, is selfishness.

All God glorifying, ultimately, is selflessness.

Back on Schedule?

The problem with exceptions to the program is that at some point, you have to go back to the program.

This is what I'm facing now that the audit has finished.  I have to return to my life - which is fine, I'm ready to be back in it - but in order to get there, I have to get back on schedule. 

This is the difficult part.

I had realized for many years that I am a creature of plans and schedules.  I like to know what is coming up.  One of the most annoying things that can happen in my world - The Ravishing Mrs. TB says I get wild eyed when it comes up - is when someone comes up with a spontaneous plan when I've already got my mind set that we're doing something else.

But we're not at the spontaneous at this moment, we're at the point in which we are trying to reconstruct the morning and evening schedule of my life.  And what I'm finding is that it is drastically more difficult to get back "into the groove" than I had anticipated.  The interesting fact is that it does not take long for me to target - or in my world, lazy.

It suggests two things:  either 1)  I am really unmotivated or 2) I was fooling myself in what I was doing.

So now the re-evaluation process starts:  What am I doing?  Why am I doing it?  Is it the most important thing I could be doing?

Heady questions for a morning routine, I'm sure.  But the underlying theme - what I'm doing with my time - is one I take seriously, as I have come to appreciate more and more that time is in frighteningly short supply compared to all there is to do.

I got at least four things that I usually do done this morning.  Tomorrow I'll try for five, and we'll start rebuilding from there.  But always in the back of my mind I hear the clock ticking and the questions ring:  "Why are you doing this? Is this the best thing you could be doing with your time?"

Audit Last Day

Last day of audit:
I will be very grateful
to get my life back.

Instability or Boredom?

Which do I hate more:  Instability or boredom?

This is brought to forefront ever time I have to manage an audit.

One the one hand, audits do break up the boredom.  8 to 9 hours a day you are in a room, on your toes, constantly waiting for questions like "Can you explain this?" or "You don't seem to have..." or that worst of all possible words, "It looks like this is a non-conformity". 

On the other hand, audits are exhausting.  One exists constantly in  a state of heightened awareness, trying to end run questions before they arise, constantly dreading the words "nonconformity" or "observation".  Yes, you may not be responsible for it, but somehow it always seems to come back to you.

Then there's the going back after they've left to prepare for the next day, perhaps prepare answers in hopes that they will change their mind, and attend to the work that has had to go wanting over the last period of days while you performed the audit.

So the days are instable - but exciting.  On the other hand, most of my days are relatively stable - but boring.

Which one do I really hate more?

Audit

Audited each year
minds me the Great Auditor
is coming someday.