Last week, I shared an interview I did with my friend and colleague Marrin Scalone. In that interview, Marrin, who survived a suicide attempt when she was a teen, said, "That teenage girl worked really hard for me to be able to tell her story"
I could relate to that. I've never actually attempted to take my life, but I have my stuff. I have my stuff I've overcome. I have my stuff I'm overcoming. I think we all do. Marrin said something that struck me in our conversation. She said as a woman now, she has to make sure she looks back with kindness on that young Marrin who struggled so mightily. She has to offer grace to the young girl who tried to take her life. I could relate to that, too. Sometimes we look at our struggles as reasons to beat ourselves up, not treat ourselves with kindness. Maybe it is easier to be kind to ourselves when we realize what Marrin realizes. The stories we live out become the stories we tell. And the stories we tell become the stories others cling to for hope. Life is not a 'happily ever after' story. Life is actually a 'fight to be happy after' story. A fight to be happy after we've faced a mental health challenge. A fight to be happy after we've faced a broken marriage challenge. A fight to be happy after we've lost a job or faced a pandemic or lost a loved one challenge. Life is a fight to imagine happiness in moments and experiences when happiness seems completely out of reach. And often - our lifeline in those fights is each other. It's each other showing up for one another with a story. It's showing up in each other's storms and weathering them together. Imagine it - throwing lifelines to one another. Lifelines that start with the words, "let me tell you a story..." It's Monday. Maybe you're going through something hard today. Be kind to yourself. I know it doesn't make it any easier, but you are living out a story you will one day tell to bring hope to someone else. Maybe what you are going through doesn't feel beautiful. But your story will be. It's Monday. Maybe you're beating yourself up for something in your past. Be kind to yourself. You are alive and you've overcome it. STOP beating yourself up and START telling your story. Someone needs to hear it. You are someone's lifeline. It's Monday. Chances are it won't be a happily ever after week. But we can absolutely find 'happiness after' this week. We can find it in one another. We are each other's happiness after.
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It was 7:30 AM Friday morning. Only - it did not FEEL like Fridaaaay!!
I walked into my local tire store for my appointment. I was about to spend time and money - both I was short on - getting new tires put on my car. Let the weekend begin. 🙄 The young lady behind the counter was kind - and efficient - and clearly interested in making my day feel as fridayish as possible. My mood started trending toward the good. One of the young lady's co-workers came in. He disappeared into a small office nearby. I heard him shout out, "hey, do you want me to fix you a drink?" I paused a moment, then yelled, sure - it's 5 o'clock somewhere....😊 He poked his head out of the office. The young lady was grinning. Her co-worker quickly explained, oh - we have different kinds of coffee back here - expressos and lattes and just coffee. So I never ask her if she want's coffee; I just let her tell me what kind of drink she wants. I told him, hey - you do you buddy. I just want whoever is changing my tires to go easy on the drinks. He assured me those folks were doing NO drinking. Yet, he added... A man walks hurriedly through the door. He looks like Friday ain't going so Fridaaaay! for him either. He asks the young lady behind the counter, can you put a new tire on my car this morning? I just had a flat on the interstate. She explained to him that they don't keep tires in stock, they order them by appointment. But - she said - I could have one here this afternoon. He told her he was in a bit of a bind, and needed it sooner than that. The young lady moved to her computer and told him she'd find him someplace. In a matter of moments she had a list of competitors, their phone numbers, and told the man which ones would likely take care of him first. I just stared at her. Who does that - with all that smile. And then him. He thanked her. Told her it had been quite the morning. He said his flat happened in the busy morning traffic on the interstate. There was a pile of debris in his lane. He said he had to pull over in a tight spot and it made him nervous. Really nervous. But, he said, soon after he got out of his car a big truck pulled up behind him. The truck put its hazard lights on. This truck was ten times bigger than his car and made quite the shield. You could feel his relief as he told the story. Then, he said, a veteran got out of the truck. Only, it was apparent he wasn't a veteran because he had his uniform on. "The guy approaches me and tells me he's got it. Then he just goes about changing my tire for me." The guy parks his truck behind me and changes my tire, he repeats, sort of in his own 'who does that' voice. "You won't hear about that on the evening news tonight," he said. Then added, "but we should." I was sitting last night watching the evening news. The first stories were about a war, a pandemic, a protest and a kidnapping. And I thought, you're right, we're not going to here about that on the news tonight. But we should. Some of the best news happens on a Friday morning in the local tire store. You don't always here about it. But it's there. And it's the perfect way to start a weekend. I think I've gained more smarts the last ten years than I did the entirety of my life before then. I know that's because for the first time in my life - I'm a curious person.
SMART: having or showing a quick-witted intelligence. CURIOUS: eager to know or learn something. You know, when I read those two definitions, it occurred to me there is a necessary order of the two. I think it's much easier to make a curious person smart than it is to make a smart person curious. Trust me - I know - it took me better than four decades to become someone who is 'eager to know or learn something.' I think about our public school system - generally speaking. How so much of our testing is built on preparing kids to provide quick-witted intelligence to the questions on a test. I say all the time these days, I gauge how 'smart' someone is by the kind of questions they ask, not by the answers they have. Which has me thinking. What if our kids' testing on a particular subject prompted them to ask 10 questions they have about what they've studied instead of 10 memorized answers to questions we think they should have. Trust me, I could measure how much a kid knows about a subject based on their questions. And more importantly - MUCH more importantly - I'd know what they still WANTED to know. I've heard it said that curious people aren't afraid of questions. Well, Hal Gregersen says, “The average 6-18 year old asks only 1 question per one-hour class per month.” What does that say. We don't have curious kids? We aren't making time in their studies for questions? I was one of those kids in school. I didn't ask many questions. In fact, I made it through my entire college experience without ever asking a question in a college classroom. Which makes sense. I was never eager to learn. What changed it for me? People did, I think. One day I realized the person I am today is a product of what I've experienced along the way. And it clicked in me - that's true of you as well. So now I'm intensely curious about what you've experienced on your journey. It's why I love doing podcasts. For an hour or so I get to sit and ask people questions - often seemingly ordinary people - who I discover are far from ordinary. Because I guess at the heart of my curiosity these days is the belief that none of us are remotely ordinary. Not one single one of us. We ALL have a noteworthy story worth asking about. My curiosity about people has made me more curious about my faith. You can't hear the stories from the people God created without having some questions for that creator. How did that happen? WHY did that happen.....? I am wondering this morning. Yes, I'm asking the question. Have we designed a world that is structured to make people smart at the expense of stealing their sense of curiosity? And is that indirectly - or even directly - responsible for us believing we have all the answers we need when it comes to how we think and feel about one another? Have we been built to make quick-witted decisions about who each other are at the expense of becoming eager to know and learn about one another? Have we been built to become more judgmental than empathetic? I don't know. I suppose that's just something I'm curious about..... When I was a young kid, my great-grandpa ate a lot of burnt toast. It was like his toaster was a slot machine or something. Sometimes the toast popped up golden brown. Many times pure black.
He used to say, that's OK. There's penicilin in that black. It's good for you. There was a lesson happening in those moments. I'm pretty sure it's one he really wasn't intentionally trying to teach me. And if it was, I'm pretty sure he was hoping it wouldn't take me 50 years to get it. But today I DO get it. The lesson is, we can spend our time hovering over the toaster making sure that bread turns out just right. Or we can spend our time figuring out how to make the best out of that bread no matter how it turns out. I actually DID burn a piece of toast last week. My first thought, I wonder if this will help me fight off COVID...🤷♂️ I've heard it said that fear is a liar. I agree with that. I think fear's partner in crime might be control. In fact, the more I think about it, control might be the gang leader; most fear comes when we begin to sense we're no longer in control of a situation. If that's the case, many of us are being programmed by others and by ourselves - to live in fear. We live our lives making plans for the best education and job and all the american family and the all american neighborhood. We point our lives with laser focus toward having the best of everything. Sure, for some people, I suppose that toast pops up golden. But for many of us - life doesn't go as planned. And if you're only prepared to live out the best made plan - and not the plan that showed up uninvited and screaming that your best made plan ain't happening - you suddenly start spending a lot of life walking around saying, 'this ain't how it was supposed to go.' I think about my great grandpa - coming up in hard times - world wars and the great depression. I think about how that likely shaped his understanding about life and how it doesn't always go the way it is supposed to go in our minds. And how maybe that made him a little better at making the best out of life no matter how it went. I think about us. COVID. Maybe this is our great depression moment. I wouldn't dare make a comparison of the two other than to say it would seem to be a moment when many of us are feeling and saying, 'this ain't how it was supposed to go.' COVID seems to have disrupted a lot of best made plans. It's made a lot of burnt toast. COVID seems to be teaching us a lesson. I don't know if it's intentional or not. If it is, I hope it doesn't take us 50 years to understand it. It's nice to have great plans. It's even better to be great at making the best out of our lives when plans don't go our way. I'm figuring that out more and more every day. And hey, one of the benefits of that, I truly do enjoy a piece of solid black burnt toast.... Many years ago, when I was just dipping my toes into my running journey, I had several friends in an online running group who were registering for a local race. I'd go online and read their posts about their preparations; I could feel their energy as they looked ahead to the event.
Meanwhile, I just kept THINKING ABOUT registering. Every day I'd go for my run. Every day I'd come home from that run and go to the Richmond Marathon website. I'd scroll to the half marathon registration button. And every day I'd leave that website continuing to think about it.... Then one day I decided that surely there'd be less anxiety just going ahead and registering for the event than spending the next several months thinking about it. I was right. Once I registered for the race - once I committed my energies to running and not to wrestling with the idea of running - life no longer felt like it was sitting in neutral. Running as much as anything else has taught me about the perils of fence-sitting. Running as much as anything else has taught me the energy and power that can be found in just making the choice: No or Go. Sometimes decisions are hard. While we're sitting on the fence thinking about them, we can start convincing ourselves wrestling with a decision is better than making one. No and Go both sound bad, so we choose neutral; committing to either one sounds terrifying, so we commit to nothing at all. Fence-sitting can become habit forming. We can find ourselves perpetually wrestling with No or Go in our relationships, in our jobs, our vacation plans, our dreams and visions - we can make a lifetime out of 'all in' or 'all out'. Then one day we wake up to the truth that while we've decided nothing, we've gone nowhere. Sometimes that's what making the decision is all about - moving. Fence sitting is neutral and directionless. But by choosing No or Go - either one gets you moving again. We can spend our whole lives wrestling with which one is the best choice when at some point simply making a choice became the best one. Because while you're on the fence, that's where your energies are. That's where life is. On the fence. When you choose No or Go, either way life starts moving again. And more and more, I'm discovering a moving life is underappreciated. It's often sacrificed to have more time to come up with the right choice. A choice some folks never make while they sit motionless on a fence. It's Monday. Is there a No or Go choice you can make this week? Maybe it's not about which one is the right one. Maybe it's simply about getting your life moving again. I don't spend a lot of time trying to raise good kids. I spend a lot more time trying to help my kids see the good that is already in them.
I believe we are all born with goodness in us; life can cause us to lose sight of that. In ourselves and in each other. Gregory Boyle says, "You teach children that they are valuable by valuing them. Not by insisting that they prove their value to you. There are lot of things and toxins and blindness that keep us from acknowledging this and seeing it AS true, but nonetheless, it is immutably certain. More and more these days when I see someone behaving in an 'evil' way, I find myself wondering what goodness that evil is hiding. What goodness it's hiding from them and from me. For a large part of my life I think I lived expecting goodness. Now I know goodness often involves more of a search. I supposed I learned that first by realizing I was spending a lot of time beating myself up because I couldn't be as good as I expected myself to be. You do that enough and you start seeing yourself as a bad person. You abandon the search to find the goodness within yourself. Which makes it a lot easier to start abandoning the search to find goodness in others... Unlovable people. Are they unlovable because they aren't good people? Or are they unlovable because they've lost sight of their goodness - and we've lost interest in helping them find it? There are two pathways to love, I suppose. One is to love all who are obviously good. The other is to be so committed to love that we are on a constant search for the good that isn't always so obvious. You know, when I was a kid they used to put little prizes in the bottom of the cereal box. I don't think they do that anymore 🤷♂️. Those prizes weren't always in cereal I liked eating, but I ate it anyways. Because I just KNEW there was something good waiting for me at the bottom of that box. You'll go through a lot of stuff you don't like going through when you're certain there's something good at the bottom of it. If you don't believe that, you won't go through it. In fact, you might even just throw it away. The journey to getting better at loving everyone isn't about getting better at loving, it's about getting better at finding goodness. And before we can ever get good at that, we have to believe in it. "There are lot of things and toxins and blindness that keep us from acknowledging this and seeing it AS true, but nonetheless, it is immutably certain....." 2/4/2022 0 Comments God is never embarassed by usGod is never broken. But our notion of God sometimes is.
Gregory Boyle says, "Nothing is more consequential in our lives than the notion of God we hold. Not God. The notion of God." There's a lot of truth there, I think. It starts with the reality that when I say to you - "I love God" - and you in turn by chance say to me - "I love him too" - it's likely the notions we have of this God are different. Some differences might be small. Some might be quite big. It's not like we both say of our best friend Joe that I love Joe and you say I love Joe too and we both know we're talking about the exact same person. Joe isn't a notion. Joe is a dude we both hang out with all the time. God is different. God doesn't say "this round is on me." God doesn't show up to make a 4th in a foursome for a Saturday round of golf. God doesn't lend us his car or pick us up when ours breaks down. Joe does that. But the reality is, a lot of us start forming our notions of God based on Joe - who he is and what he does. When Joe picks me up when my car breaks down, I guess that works in God's favor. It's when Joe ignores me at the party - when who I am no longer fits the picture of who Joe thinks I should be - when for some reason Joe doesn't accept me - that's when notions of God don't work in God's favor. Because there's never a party where we aren't the first person God wants to talk to. There's never a party where God isn't excitedly introducing us to everyone as his best friend. At least that's my notion of God. My notion comes from an awful lot of people who aren't embarassed by me when others find me embarassing. Who don't reject me when others find me rejectable. Who don't wrestle with differences like Samaritan and Jew when it comes to love and acceptance. Maybe that's because they know so much of my notion of God comes from the way we love and accept one another. Maybe because they know how difficult it is for me to believe God loves me when it doesn't feel like you love me. God is indeed largely a notion. That is a lot of responsibility when you know so much of that notion is built on me and you and the way we love one another. Or looking at it another way - what a glorious and beautiful opportunity. A beautiful opportunity to come alongside someone at the party that no one else will come alongside. Come alongside them and maybe leave them with the notion they just partied with God. Maybe that is when when our notions of God will become as similar as our notions of Joe.... I watched the movie Groundhog Day for the umpteenth time last night. And maybe for the first time, I understood exactly what the movie was saying. Or at the very least, the movie said something to me it had never said before.
In the movie, Bill Murray's character - (Phil Connors) - gets stuck living the same day over and over. That day just happens to be Groundhog Day. And as the Groundhog Days begin to add up - as he lives the same day over and over - Connors becomes more depressed. I always thought the depression came from the torture of being stuck in time. Being stuck in time in a cold and dreary Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Last night it hit me - that wasn't the cause of Connors' torture at all. Connors' real torture was being stuck living life as a cold and dreary Connors. He was arrogant. He saw himself as God - “I make the weather,” he said in the middle of a crippling snowstorm. This made it easy for him to treat everyone around him like they were less than him. Then, driven mainly by the desire to win the heart of a girl (Rita) who was as humble and kind as he was arrogant, he discovered this re-living the same day thing was an opportunity to change the way he lived his days. He started treating people the way he saw Rita treat people. Earlier this week, I wrote about the difference between kindness and being nice. I said nice is something we do, kindness is someone we are. Well, little did I know, I'd actually be watching that play out a few days later in the movie Groundhog Day. Because for the man to win the girl, the man had to start acting nice to win the girl who'd always been kind. But an unexpected thing happened. The man started liking who he was when he was acting nice. And his motives became more about becoming a kind person than winning the heart of one. Thankfully, as movies go, in the end - he did get the girl. Not because he won, but because of who he'd become. There was something far more important than winning the girl, though. Connors got to resume life - no longer stuck in Groundhog Day. He got to resume it as a new man - one he liked being far more than the one who came to Groundhog Day. The pastor I heard preach on kindness last week said, "kindness changes the trajectory of life." I think we can all get to feeling stuck sometimes. Like maybe we are living the same day over and over. The movie last night helped me wonder if maybe it's not us who get stuck in time, but our hearts. Maybe the way to stop feeling like we are living the same day over and over is to change the way our hearts see those days - and maybe, just maybe - influence the way others see theirs. Andie MacDowell (Rita) said, for a movie about kindness, it was writer Harold Ramis’ spirit that influenced “Groundhog Day’s” charm. She described him as “the nicest man” she’s ever worked with, always in a good mood and never grumpy. And she hopes that kindness rubs off on anyone who watches “Groundhog Day,” even decades later. What she was saying was she hopes kindness will change the trajectory of someone's life. It sure worked in the movie. Maybe we can all come together and make it work in real life. Unless you've been in a cave this week - and hey, it's a pandemic, so no judgment here if you have been - but otherwise, it's likely you know by now that Tom Brady retired.
Brady is arguably the greatest NFL quarterback of all time. Depending on who you are arguing with - some would say he's the greatest athlete of all time. Either way, the guy knew how to win. For me, the most inspirational part of the Tom Brady story is he won when most people thought winning was something he'd never do. I was watching an old 60 minutes interview the other day. It took place shortly after Brady had won his third Super Bowl. The interviewer asked Brady what the scouts missed. Brady wasn't drafted until the 6th round - a round where guys don't often even make the final roster of the team that drafts them. The interviewer reminded Brady that he didn't come out of college built like the typical NFL quarterback. He didn't throw like one or run like one or in many ways remotely look like one. What did they miss Tom? Brady looked at the guy with that sheepish grin of his and simply said, "I think they underestimated my competitiveness." I played the board game Clue with my boys last weekend. When we were done with the game and moved on to our own things, I picked up Ian's "Detective Notes" that he left behind. He had little question marks and my and Elliott's initials and little markings that clearly had some specific meaning only to him. His notes definitely looked way different than mine! I asked Ian - dude, what are all these different markings you have on your notes. He said, I can't tell you. It's my secret. It's how I'm going to win. Unless you've been in a cave this past week, you know there is a crazy game going on out there called Wordle. (You all made it so crazy that the New York Times bought it yesterday for many millions of dollars 😮). I see people playing this game daily and posting their results on Facebook. I now have Facebook friends I didn't know I had until Wordle drew them out of their Facebook cave. And I love it. I still have no idea what those yellow and green and black squares mean. I scroll by them. But I know what the game itself means to many of the people playing it - and that is very cool. Because what it means is: "it's how I'm going to win." When I saw Ian's notes - and I see your Wordle posts - that's exciting. Because I know what Tom Brady knows - being competitive is an asset in life. Waking up and starting the day with a desire to win - that is a blessing. Competitive is fight and drive and heck yes I'm alive. Competitive is bring it on life. I'm not Tom Brady - for SO SO many reasons...🤦♂️ But one day I'll quote Brady. One day someone will ask me - what did they miss? And I will tell them, "I think they underestimated my competitiveness." Good luck on all your Wordles today. And believe me, I'm not underestimating ANY of you!!! 😮 2/1/2022 0 Comments Kindness is an overflowI heard someone say yesterday, "I value kindness over niceness." On the heels of listening to a sermon on kindness Sunday, that value made perfect sense to me.
To me, it boils down to this. Niceness is something we do. Kindness is someone we are. In his message, the pastor described kindness as an overflow. What a beautiful image, really. Overflow is preceded by fullness. Can't you just picture the people around you so full of kindness that it can't be contained. It's like a flood; a kindness flood. I'm not opposed to someone treating me nice. It beats mean every time. But I think nice can be preceded by 'what should I do here.' It can be preceded by thinking. And I've discovered that situations that require me to think about 'play nice or not?' - well, in those situations I'm not always doing my best thinking. In those situations, I think it's nice to have the right thing just pour out of you before you hastily decide it's not the right thing. Because to be clear - kindness IS always the right thing. It's impossible for kindness to go wrong. I'm not sure it's possible for mean to ever go right. Of course, to get kindness boiling inside you enough for it to overflow - there has to be fuel for the boil. You have to hang close to something that lights that fire. The pastor said "kindness is evidence you've been around Jesus." That's been true in my life. The closer I hang with Jesus, the less I have to think about being nice. The closer I hang with Jesus, the more kindness just overflows from me in spite of the way I can get to thinking. The closer I hang with Jesus, the more I start looking like Jesus without having to tell people I look like Jesus. I know Jesus isn't everyone's thing. But the truth is, if we want to overflow something we have to hang close to something that overflows that something. Jesus has just been the greatest source of that something in my life. Maybe you're not up for hanging close to Jesus. If not, I would encourage you to hang close to people who overflow kindness. It makes it more likely that will become your overflow as well. And, it makes it more likely you'll never have to think about 'play nice or not?' Because that's a choice that doesn't always result in kindness. |
Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
May 2024
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