Category: Experience

Nothing is as simple as it seems, and yet the most profound truths are as simple as pie. This is my umbrella observation for the paradox that is life. I can’t say it enough. Life is both/and. To be sure that it is either this or that is a sure sign that we have used our life reducing powers to cut out most of the rest of the truth. We all do it. We have to. The full complexity of it all is too overwhelming to handle.

This leads to the great paradox in my quest for a state of interbeing. To rephrase what this is about, it is my earnest attempt to find a mode of being that will support our evolution as a species (as opposed to the path that we are currently on, which is leading us to extinction). My own life is the site of my experiment. I’m taking you along for the ride via this blog. I’ll observe here that I wish my site were a whole lot less complicated!!! Yet, this is the material that I have to work with, so let’s get real.

It can all be distilled down to a simple umbrella. To the casual observer it was just an umbrella. To my wife, it was just an umbrella. And what is an umbrella anyway? It’s just this tool that we have created with a structure that pops up and collapses down to support a membrane that keeps us from getting wet in the one position and is easy to take along in the other. The umbrella is ubiquitous, which is to say that it is everywhere and probably most everyone has (at least) one (or has had one as the case may be). They come and go from our lives like pens or hair bands or cash. It’s nothing special. Unless it is.

I’m historically not very good at nurturing my physical being. This in part comes with the territory of having grown up as a competitive gymnast and in part from having a mother whose motto is “suck it up.” I learned at a very young age to suck it up. If you are not sore as a gymnast, you are not a gymnast. Sore is a constant state of being for that endeavor. Oh you have a “rip” on your hand that is bleeding profusely and hurts like hell? That’s nice. You must be a gymnast. It’s your turn at the bars. You are pushing through a sprained ankle, a strained knee, an overuse injury that has pushed your tendons to the brink. That’s just what you do. Don’t be mad at my coaches, my mom or anybody else in my story. All they wanted was for me to succeed in life. And for our society in general that requires pushing through obstacles, learning to be “gritty.”

Well I am most certainly gritty. I learned to disconnect from pain to the degree that nothing can stop me. But I’m not talking about the extreme stuff of Herculean athletic feats right now. What I am talking about is how that training seeps into everyday life. I need to pull an endless string of all-nighters to meet a deadline even though it is going to rack me physically? No problem. I’m getting sick but have classes to teach? No problem, I’ll be there. It’s pouring rain and I’m going to get soaking wet? No problem. Let’s face it, I’m not going to melt.

Shannon and age have brought me down to earth a bit on this front. I have been working to change these patterns over the last few years in an effort to learn how to nurture myself. For example, about four years ago my umbrella went missing. I had therefore experienced repeated incidents of getting soaking wet between my car and the architecture building. That wasn’t such an unusual experience for me. There was a time when I didn’t really even believe in umbrellas. Carrying one was a pain in the ass. Getting wet was much less inconvenient than having to carry that umbrella. But somewhere in my wise old age I decided that I was being ridiculous and bought into this whole umbrella thing. And then it went missing, as umbrellas do.

So one day I decided enough was enough. I went out of my way to carve time and space out of my extremely hectic schedule to go purchase a new umbrella. As you might surmise, I wasn’t overly experienced in this department, so I wasn’t really even sure what to buy. I knew that I had found it extremely helpful if it was compact so that I could store it easily in my backpack and not think about it. That answered nicely to my persistent feeling that carrying around an umbrella is a pain in the ass. I knew from experience that not all umbrellas were created equal in their ability to pop up and contract back down, and that can be particularly annoying when you are trying to transition from outside into a building or your even worse into your car. I also knew they have a tendency to break. So I went out in search of an umbrella that would keep me dry without annoying the hell out of me.

I just happened to luck upon it- the perfect umbrella. It was the right size of compact and had a wide closure band to compact it down even further. It was sleek and black with a single flashy red button on the handle, appealing to the architect in me. That magic button popped it up into place instantaneously. Seriously… pure magic. And it contracted back down with equal grace. It was a match made in heaven. For the past four years that umbrella has been my constant companion, albeit tucked away into the bottom of my backpack so that I only ever think about it when I need it. But when I need it, there it is.

This past Monday night I needed it. An unexpected downpour rolled in. We had worked late that night, so it was dark and we were tired. Shannon, who does an amazing job at self-nurturing, has ironically never quite turned the corner on umbrellas. She still doesn’t really believe in them, so she never has one. There is only ever one over her head when I happen to have mine and it is pouring. As we walked out to the car she gets the idea- because as I highlighted in “Sophie” this is how she is in the world- that after we get to the car she wants to drive back to the building to give our umbrella to another stranded professor who is also umbrellaless.

I immediately tightened up. You want to what? You want to give away my precious umbrella??? Are you crazy?! Well that last thought might not have literally seeped up into consciousness, but it was in there nonetheless. Of course I didn’t say any of that. I just tightened up. It would be one thing to give the umbrella to somebody who we see every day, but this professor only works late on Monday nights when we typically are not there. Once in the car, I pushed back a little on this idea to see how serious she was. “If we give away our only umbrella, then we won’t have one the next time we need one.” She responded that we have many more hanging in the entry at home. I had to think about that one. Was it true? It might be true. After the purchase of my precious umbrella, my old one had decided to stop hiding plus my mother had given us two more. It was true. But I didn’t use any of those umbrellas. They weren’t special to me. This one was. In the Kondonian sense, it brings me joy. It is my constant companion. The others, they can go. “Thank you for your service.”

So now I had a serious dilemma on my hands. To give or not to give, that is the question. I didn’t have much time or space to work it out in either. On the one hand, this umbrella represented self-nurture in a very concrete sense. That, as explained, is a critical evolution for me- to care for my self. On the other hand, the very concept of interbeing is to recognize that all definitions of self are by definition arbitrary. That is to say there is nowhere we can actually draw a concrete boundary that says where “I” begins and where it ends. And what that means is that the world that we experience is nothing more than our extended selves. There is no separation. In that light, to take care of this stranded professor is also to take care of my self, in the extended sense. Which self to choose?

I know full well that to give is to place myself in an ever increasing cycle of the gift network. This is to say that when we give, the gift comes back to us threefold, usually from some other direction. For example, if I give up my umbrella, I am setting myself up to receive an umbrella (or some other equivalent item) from somebody else should I ever find myself stranded. I know this. And yet still, we are talking about my precious umbrella here! I don’t want to part ways with it, not at all. So much so, that anger rose up in me. I was angry to have been put in a position to have to make this choice. If I held on to my umbrella, I honored my self while dishonoring my extended self. If I let go of my umbrella, I honored my extended self in trust that my self would be taken care of in the future- that I would be taken care of in the more general sense by the Beloved.

I would love to report to you that I came to a place that I was able to give my umbrella with an open heart and a sense of nurture toward my self, both extended and not. But that’s not what happened. Instead, I angrily relinquished my umbrella. I did so, because I did not want to be judged. I did so, because I felt I had to in order to be in “the right.” I most certainly did not do so out of love. As far as I was concerned, that professor could deal with her own damned inconvenience. She wasn’t going to melt, after all. I was so upset in the moment that I didn’t even get to say goodbye (to my umbrella). No “thank you for your service” was said. I couldn’t even look as Shannon delivered my precious umbrella. And I remained angry for a long time. Days.

I share all of this with you to be real in a concrete way about what the challenges are for us as we attempt to shift our mode of being out of a worldview that has us convinced that separation is real. Even after you see through that myth, the patterns that have been formed by it remain. And it’s tricky. It’s especially so in the heat of the moment. Patterns are hard to disrupt. To do so requires that we catch our snap directly in the heat of the moment. It requires recognizing the pattern as it is happening, then stopping to breathe and give space for some other possibility. And we have to do this over and over and over again until a new pattern has been established.

It would have been helpful if in that moment I had stopped to feel what I was feeling and to give space to understand why I was feeling it. Then I could have communicated that to Shannon and we could have worked through it together in a way that honored all selves involved. There was no right or wrong in giving the umbrella or not. It was really a question of which choice might best support each self involved. Let’s reverse the roles. If I were the stranded professor, I actually would not want somebody to give me something that is precious to them if I wasn’t sure I would be able to return it. I’d choose the inconvenience of my self so that my extended self could continue to experience joy. If, on the other hand, I saw that giving me the item brought the other joy, then I would accept that gift and seek to pass it on. Either of those options is a win-win. Begrudgingly giving is a win for nobody. So my observation for the week is that when in a situation that doesn’t feel nurturing, just stop. Meet yourself where you are at and nurture what is showing up. Do that first. Do that first because if you don’t feel nurtured, you can’t truly pass it on. You can’t extend your umbrella to cover others until you are situated in your own profound safety. Let’s just say… I’m not there yet.

In a previous version of myself, this week would have tanked me. Actually, to be more specific, a single announcement would have tanked me within the space of the five seconds that it took me to read the headline. In that instant what was crushed was our (as in belonging to both Shannon and I) vision of our perfect future. We have been cultivating this vision and working toward it for years now. What’s more, the Universe has been seemingly supporting us in both big and small ways all along the way. A little less than six months ago the big break that would move us into our next phase of being in the world was presented to us. At least that’s how it seemed. Other possibilities have also been presented, but well… this was the one.

Everything was falling into alignment. Everything. Every aspect of our being would be placed into perfect play, perfectly balancing work and life while enabling us to fully live into each of our own unique gifts to the world. As you all know by now, this involves charting a viable path forward for humanity in the face of our social-ecological challenges. Then, suddenly… whoosh! The Universe yanked the magic carpet out from under us and sent us tumbling to the ground. We each went to our separate corners to process. My first thought raged forward. It went something like this:

“What in the f*ing hell, Universe?! Are you serious?? You want us to all f*ing die, don’t you??? There are amazing people all over the planet trying to turn this thing around, and you are choosing to not support us???? For real?!!! Really? This is what you are doing? F* you.”

Just to be clear, it wasn’t just us who were effected by this announcement. In fact, this turn of events is devastating to the thousands of people who study, work, support and are part of the local economy of our country’s best college with a mission and curriculum focused on sustainability. Green Mountain College is closing after 185 years. At a time when our country in particular needs to get its act together, we are instead letting what I view as one of our greatest treasures die. We are saying no to the leading edge in sustainability education. We should all be crying right about now.

As you also may have discerned by now, my emotional reaction on the surface was not nearly as intense as the way I just portrayed it. In fact, if you had been watching me in that particular moment, you would not have even know that anything had just happened. This process of writing about it helps me to allow the real emotion of it rise to the surface after the fact. Better late than never! Although hidden, the emotional intensity of it was all of that, at least for a few minutes. Then the next thought came:

“When I look back at my life, I can see without a doubt that the Universe has perfectly supported my every move. How could I conclude that it is not supporting me now?”

Truly I have had the most amazing life thus far. Just in the past twelve years, Shannon and I have been on a mind-blowing adventure in which we have done crazy things that I might never have thought possible. We designed-built the first project in Texas designed to meet the Living Building Challenge. I can’t even begin to describe how far beyond the reach of ordinary reality that was. We built Tiny Drop according to Passive House principles, showcased it to thousands of people, and hauled it to Vermont to its forever home- our 40 acres of paradise in the Green Mountains, which in and of itself came to us via a head scratching turn of events. We have through our teaching efforts at PVAMU won the Grand Award in the DOE Race to Zero Competition not just once, but twice, and now our latest design for net-zero, affordable infill housing is racing toward manifestation. None of this would have happened without the alignment of immeasurable factors, in other words without considerable assistance from forces greater than ourselves. Then came my next thought:

“If the Universe has withdrawn support for my perfect version of the future, maybe it wasn’t the perfect future after all.”

“If that wasn’t the perfect future, then I surely cannot even begin to imagine what will be!”

Now for the unpacking (not literally, of course). The first thing that I have to say is I am hereby banning a phrase from the English language. I know, I know… this is extreme, but really it must be done. Let us never again utter the words “too good to be true.” Henceforth, every time these words might occur to us, let us instead say “not good enough to be true.” Your dream job didn’t come to fruition… it wasn’t a good enough job for you. Your dream relationship didn’t come to fruition… it wasn’t a good enough match for you. Your dream house didn’t pan out… it wasn’t a good enough home for you. You get the picture. This takes a ton of trust. Believe me, I get it.

Yet by moving into a place of trust that the Universe is conspiring to support us, we open up the door to wonder. Have I mentioned that it’s funny how life works? On this particular day, my lesson from A Course in Miracles was to in essence not rely on my own limited perception of what is what, and to instead invite the unlimited vision of the Universe (God for the religious, Christ for the Christian, Consciousness for the spiritual, the absolute for the agnostic, the field for the scientific, etc.) to show me what is what. We most commonly hear this expressed this way: all is not what it seems. That was a powerful juxtaposition, a perfectly designed lesson.

Then there was the text that came in minutes later from one of my former students, who I affectionately call “Mini Me.” She is not about to let us off of the hook. She insists that this is the green light for us to create that something that will be even better. She says, “That program is one that I feel is desperately needed in this country. I was excited for what it was but there’s so much more that it could have been… It could be that this is happening so that the right people now have the opening to bring it. I think you are part of that group.” No pressure or anything. But that’s o.k., because I am hereby including her in this group too, so there! (I know you are reading this, Mini Me 😉 )

Another tool that I am experimenting with right now is called The Wonder Method, by Alain and Jody Herriott. I’m just getting started with it, so I can’t really comment on it yet. That said, I love the way that they succinctly describe the state of wonder:

“Wonder is like a ‘?.’ Interestingly, the Japanese symbol for wonder is a question mark. The act of using wonder is like pushing a reset switch: it gives us access to a state of potential where anything is possible.“

Perhaps you have heard this expressed in this way: live the question. Wonder describes a state of being in which we remove our constrictions on reality. We stop being so dang certain. We normally equate certainty as being aware of the truth. Yet this is a slippery slope, because by its very nature to be certain is to have eliminated the majority of reality and of what is possible and to have replaced it with only one version of reality and of what is possible. On the other hand, to be deeply certain- of your next move for example- is to tap into the full extent of possibility through your intuition. To know the difference is more art than science. Our culture tends to dismiss intuition or knowingness with rational decision making. I’ll leave this for you to contemplate.

All I can tell you is that wonder feels a whole lot better than having it all figured out. Wonder leaves the door open for a new reality that is beyond our wildest imaginations. We are going to need a reality such as that. So bring on the wonder.

This word has been the center of my gravity for well over a year now. It is the state of being that I most respect. It is the state of being that I most desire. And it keeps calling to me. Sometimes I answer, “I am coming.” Other times, it just feels like a million miles away. You see I came out swinging, due to my bumpy entry into the world as I talked about in my post “The Gift.” Not that I think most people would describe me as a particularly belligerent type- I am more of the quiet, even-keeled type. My mother, furthermore, trained me well to be deeply understanding of others. Nevertheless, I do think that it generally comes across that I’m not somebody that you want to cross. This is to say that you can feel my edges if you just pay the slightest bit of attention. Anyone who has actually dared to cross said edges would testify that, no, no in fact you really don’t want to go there.

The people who I admire most in the world are the gentle ones. Our culture, by contrast, tends to favor the strong, the bold, the unyielding, the uncompromising, the headstrong. “Well there’s lambs and there’s lions,” to quote a song by Chase Rice for all of you country music fans out there. When the title of this album (Lambs & Lions) and the aforementioned lyrics to the song “Lions” came across my radar this week, my immediate reaction was… lambs. I’ll go with the lambs. The song, of course, celebrates the lions. But don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to dis on the lions. As mentioned, I am such a beast and I am not about hating on myself. That would be very unlamblike of me, which wouldn’t help my cause.

Of course the metaphor way oversimplifies the situation. In biblical terms, the lamb is that which is sacrificed and the lion is that which rises above, but the reality is… no lamb, no lion. You see if the story were that Jesus had fought back and prevailed against his persecutors to escape crucifixion in typical lion-like fashion then that would have been just, well, more of the same in a long line of despots. But as the story goes, the strength of the lion actually emerges from the gentleness of the lamb. They are two sides of the same coin, which is to say that this is one of those paradoxical both/and situations. And this is why the meek shall inherit the earth. You can, incidentally, find the essence of this story in every religion and wisdom tradition. What it boils down to is, love wins. Love wins because true power can only ever come from love and never from fear.

But that sure doesn’t seem to be the way the world works, does it? Yesterday the great Dr. Cornel West spoke at Prairie View A&M University, where Shannon and I work. Due to some physical challenges we both had this week, we made the call to be gentle with ourselves and not go in spite of the huge disappointment of that. I bring this up just to take a moment to say that step one in becoming gentle is to first be gentle with yourself… which is not something that I am traditionally well-versed in. Fortunately, it was live-streamed so we got to watch from the comfort of our couch. Although it would have been something to be there in person to feel the energy of full-on Brother West addressing his people, we were grateful for the opportunity to watch from the couch.

If you ever get the opportunity to see Dr. West speak, do it. I am so incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to take his class at Princeton. Hearing him speak reminds me that he has played a role in shaping me. So much of what he had to say to our students is reflected in what I teach now too. In fact one of my students texted me afterward to say that she thought of me when he said “you’re an extension of me and I’m an extension of you.” Yes, he spoke of interbeing, not that he used the word. If you are not at all familiar with Dr. West, what you will quickly find out is that he is a lion. He too came out swinging. He knows this about himself. But he is that particular type of lion that is driven by lambhood. He is what he calls on all of us to be- a love warrior. In other words… a lamb-lion.

If you asked me to choose one living person who is most exemplary of the Christian faith, Dr. West would be my hands down choice. As I was saying, it sure doesn’t seem like love wins in our world. It sure as heck doesn’t seem that way in the face of oppression, be it overt or covert. So we learn to fight for our survival. Those of us who are successful in our culture have become what Dr. West correctly labels “well adjusted to an unethical mode of being.” Cuts like a knife, doesn’t it?

Yet he isn’t telling us this because he hates us, he is telling us this because he loves us deeply. He tells us to remind us that we are more than we have accepted ourselves to be. And in the same vein as the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he would remind us that we can’t fight fire with fire. Well, we can, but so long as we do so we will end up with nothing more than despots. We have tried to overcome unchecked lionhood with more unchecked lionhood for the entirety of human history now. If we want to inherit the earth, by which in practical terms I mean simply survive ourselves for starters, we must invoke the lamb to realize true lionhood. We must evolve to lamb-lionhood.

So bring on the gentle. As I delve deeper and deeper into my inner layers, the inner child that I am meeting is oh-so-gentle. She is tender. She is vulnerable. She is sweet. She cares immensely. She is full of grace and understanding. She doesn’t come out swinging. She instead stands quietly in stillness. She gives space for a world that at once she doesn’t understand, and yet she feels for. She yearns for its freedom. She loves it immensely, even as it cuts her deeply. She is standing there waiting with open arms and an open heart. This child is in you too. She is our common heritage. She is our humanity. Long live the lambs. 

I say this only because we are so out of balance. I am so out of balance. I’ve got the lion gig down. So many of us do, and we trample our own and other’s inner lambs in the process. This gives rise to and reinforces all that is unethical in our world. To correct this, I/we must take the time and effort to recalibrate to our inner lamb. This is the inner work that I described in my post “Whatever.” As I stated in the beginning of this post, gentleness is the center of gravity of this work. What helps me to stay on the path is the strong pull toward a gentle state of being.

It helps to have role models. For my fellow Houstonians in sustainability world, I will give you my example- Pat Greer. Pat is the epitome of gentle, a true lamb whose being exudes love. No one will disagree. And true to course, perhaps by now you will not be surprised when I tell you that she is fierce. She is a lion beyond measure who has paved the way for our evolution in more ways than we can count. I bring Pat to mind fairly often these days as a way to resonate with her being. Having a Pat helps. These are the elders of our world. Such elders demonstrate our profound safety. They demonstrate that it is o.k. to lower your dukes. Look for these people in your life and abide there. Be gentle.

I once wrote a three page guide on the secret of mastering goaltending. I have coached a lot of goalies in my life, having given out bits and pieces of insights along the way, but the guide in its totality was written for one goalie in particular who I felt was ready to absorb it. She treasures it to this day. In fact she just texted me as she was cleaning out her file cabinet to tell me that her copy, which looks pristine, would always remain with her. It’s funny how life works, as I’ve mentioned. Before she sent this text, I was planning to reread this little guide myself in prep for this week’s post.

My reason for revisiting it is because said goalie, who is now a dear friend if not part of the family, asked (or should I say challenged) me weeks ago to write a similar guide on the art of making friends. First off, let me just say that if this isn’t a case of the blind leading the blind, I don’t know what is! Understand that this is one pure introvert asking another pure introvert how to connect with other people. As if! So this request has been swirling around in the back of my head and I decided it was time to start moving it forward. Having reread my secret guide on goaltending (it is indeed secret because she and I are the only two who have a copy), what I am realizing is that writing such a guide would in fact be the guide for this thing that I am calling interbeing. Here’s the bad news… I am not ready to write that yet.

But here’s the good news! I am ready to start thinking through that out loud and I am thinking that this might be quite comical. This is definitely going to be from an introverted perspective, however I do think it might also prove useful to you non-introverted types. Let’s face it, making friends in our adult lives is not the easiest thing to do in our hustle, bustle culture. So without further ado, here are the observations I can offer on friendship based on whatever experience I may have:

1. When that person who grew up around the corner from you when you were little, you know the one you were pretty much inseparable from in the summer in your early years; who also happened to be one of your early gymnastics teammates; the one who you went to school with from elementary through high school; the one who became popular early on while you became, well, sort of geeky; the one who nevertheless you were still involved in a lot of activities at school with even though, let’s face it, you had no social life outside of school because you were, um, geeky; the one who not surprisingly headed to the west coast when you headed to the east coast for college and you were like, well, I hope she has a great life because no doubt we will never cross paths again; yeah, that one. When sometime in your mid to late 40’s she should send you a FB friend request and you are like, oh hell no, I have a policy of no high school friends other than my best friend because, let’s be real, what would my grown-up, gay, liberal self have in common with my white, upper middle class high school friends from Texas? When that request comes in… say yes. Much to your surprise, you have a worldview in common. And even more than that, you’re pretty sure she has grown up to become one of the most insightful, wise, and loving people on the planet. And what’s really cool is that you’ve known each other since the beginning of time. There is something super special about that.
2. When your best friend from middle school through high school, you know the one who you created your own little bubble with from whence you made snarky observations about the trials and tribulations of teenage drama, only to then lose that connection when you went your separate ways for college. When she sends you a FB request in your late 30’s ish, and you are like, hmmm… this is a tough one because when I begrudgingly joined FB it was with a hard and fast rule that I would not friend anyone prior to college. When that request comes in… say, yes. Say yes even though saying yes will lead to the scenario mentioned above, and then everybody else ultimately finding you too. Of course proceed to give her hell that it is all her fault for opening a can of worms that has exposed you to everybody, even though you are secretly grateful for it. She’ll understand because she always understood that it was kind of her role to draw you out. So when said friend texts you two hours before your 30th high school reunion and spontaneously wants to go even though neither of you has been to any high school reunion, and you are like, oh hell no…. say yes. And then proceed to make your wife go with you, because what could be more fun than showing up with your wife? (She was a good sport.) And while you are there, give people a chance. Some of it will seem as you expected, but there will be moments that surprise you. Notice those. And then at least consider following up with those people.
3. Let people grow up. While this obviously applies to people who are of your own age as highlighted above, what I want to talk about specifically here is allowing people who you once had some form of authoritative relationship with (parent/child, teacher/student, coach/player, etc.) grow up. They do. My M.O. has been to give it some time- a few years maybe- for them to establish their own footing without me. Then I will, ultimately, re-establish the relationship on equal footing. Adulthood is long. Many of my closest friends are not of my generation, both up and down. Said goalie who has brought you this post is just such a case.
4. When you sign up for a conference with the specific goal of making new connections with people who share your interests, notice the woman who turns around to talk to you about your presentation later in the day. When this woman just happens to be making her way to the hotel lobby to go to the conference dinner and asks you if you want to share a cab with her and another woman you met earlier in the day…. say yes. Say yes even though you were planning to brave the Barcelona metro by yourself for the first time, because we both know that you procrastinated in your room a little too long dreading having to go to this thing and be social even though that was your whole reason for being there! Say yes because even though you now have to talk to two people you barely know all the way across town, you now don’t have to show up to the dinner by yourself and face that awkward moment of figuring out what table to sit at. While you are in the taxi, be sincerely open and engaged in the conversation. Show up openly and authentically. Be curious about who these two women are. They just happen to be really, really cool people. You just won the lottery. This doesn’t happen often in life (although maybe it could…), but you may well have just picked up not only steadfast companions for the rest of the conference, but also potentially for the rest of your life. Establish communication when you get home and make a concerted effort to stay in touch.
5. Don’t believe the hype about not making friends with your coworkers. Go ahead… befriend them. That person that you walked with to Starbucks every day (o.k., twice a day) will remain your friend even after you both move on. That gay boy who was out with you will remain your friend even after you both move on. Heck, even your old boss may become and remain one of your close friends. True stories.
6. When your best friend, or teammate, or any friend from college calls and asks for your help in a crisis moment (or maybe doesn’t call but you know he/she is in a crisis moment), even though you may not have a ton of money or time or wherewithal or whatever…. say yes. Drop whatever you are doing and then take planes, trains, and automobiles to get to them. These special people came of age with you and therefore know you in a way that people from other times of your life do not. They are irreplaceable. Even if you don’t talk all the time or see each other every year, make sure you have a finger on the pulse. Go to your major reunions. Hell, if they weren’t in your class, go to their major reunions. Keep them close.
7. When a seemingly bat-shit crazy extrovert from hell woman busts into your house, traipses through your bedroom to your private study where you are minding your own beeswax just trying to get some work done (well let’s be honest- basically hiding from the parent of one of your kid’s friends because it wasn’t so safe being out at that time), and then sticks her hand out and asks if you are the partner, even though this is one of those complete deer in headlight moments… say yes. This crazy extrovert from hell is going to be your best friend for the next twenty years and beyond. You are going to see each other through it all. You are going to hold each other accountable. You are going to help each other to be more of who you are in the world. As scary as it may be, let her in.
8. Last, and most importantly, know that however somebody came to be your friend, he/she is precious beyond words. Take care of these relationships like they are the most valuable thing in your life. They are. As you can see from the above, making friends is only half of the trick. Keeping them is the harder part. We are all challenged on this front for innumerous reasons. The easy part is to simply make it a priority. Did I say this was easy??? It’s not so easy given the pressures of our everyday lives. Do it anyway. The hard part is to hold on when the going gets tough, as it will for anybody who makes it into your inner circle where our shadows hide. When this happens, care enough to examine your own shadows and do the work to bring it to the light. This is the most sacred work of friendship. Without the reflection that our closest relationships offer us, our shadows easily remain in hiding and run the show from behind the scenes. So next time you find yourself triggered, take some space to be grateful for the person who helped bring your shadow to the surface. With any sort of hope, he/she will be doing the same.

I am fortunate that I have many more stories than the ones I have shared here. To all of my friends out there, maybe I haven’t told you or told you lately, but I am forever grateful for your presence in my life. To all of my future friends, I am looking forward to meeting you. Even though I’ll likely have some harebrained, reflexive reason for saying no… I’ll do my best to remember to say yes!

This is going to be a round about story about the newest addition to our extended family, Sophie. She was our Christmas present to our nephew. But before I get to all of that, because of course I am sharing it because it speaks something about my own journey, first a little about my journey. That’s right, you have to read to the end to get the cute puppy story!

But before I get to to my journey even, I have a little gift for you all. This is a link to a free screening of a documentary on the Gaia channel called E-Motion. The link will be good for only 24 hours. If you have some downtime today it is worth your time. If you miss this window, then you can watch it with a trial membership of the channel for only 99 cents.

https://give.gaia.com/cjql358lt00gi01o9auct8x4z

The documentary is about how negative emotions get trapped in our physical beings and is then manifest in other ways including physical illness. A handful of practitioners working through different modalities give tips on how to release negative emotions from the subconscious and physical body. The end game is to manifest from love rather than fear, which opens us up into an expansive state of being. If you are already working toward this end, this may be a good reminder with some new tools which you may find helpful. If this is new to you, I encourage you to just make some space for considering it. Maybe try out some of the tools and see for yourself. Always come to your own conclusion.

Personally, several of the tools resonated with me (as they also did with my wife Shannon and my sister-in-law Amy). I’m going to talk about just one simple tool today, which has to do with bringing fear to consciousness. The tool is a simple statement:

“If I were not afraid, I would ________________________________.”

Fill in the blank. You might recognize this as an alternative form of the question “What would I do if I knew I could not fail?” I like this statement form better for one main reason. It puts the main issue front and center- fear. Whatever it is that we would do if we knew we could not fail, we are not doing precisely because we are afraid. Let’s name the culprit. Failure isn’t the problem. Fear is. Failure is a perfectly o.k. and positive role player in the pursuit of our expansiveness. How about we stop dodging it? How about we just confront our fears head on? That is what this open ended statement is asking us to do.

So when I contemplated filling in the blank this week, I at first found myself, well… blank. Now I have a lot of explaining to do! I was seriously blank for a few minutes. When I searched my surface life for how fear is holding me back, I didn’t find much. But I need to tell you that I by no means came to this seemingly fearless moment easily. This moment has been a good fifteen years in the making. During that time, I have pushed through fears that no longer dominate me.

It started fifteen years ago with the realization that my relationship with my first partner was not serving either one of us. This was a stark realization in the midst of a worldview that told me that this was my one partner, for life. If suddenly my worldview was incorrect, then what would stop the entire world from turning upside down? If I left, what would happen to my kids? What would happen to my partner? What would happen to me? That’s the order of importance that I processed that decision with. Incidentally, that is probably why it took me three years to ultimately face my fear. The only thing that saved me from my fear was the realization that if I truly cared about what would happen to my kids, then I needed to model for them what I would want them to do if they ever found themselves in a similar situation. I left.

That made it all sound a little too easy. It wasn’t. It was excruciating. But we all got through it. Not without scars, mind you, but at least it opened up the opportunity for each one of us to face our fears and better live into our true Selves. I could be wrong, but I think that facing that fear will remain the hardest one I will ever face in this lifetime. This is in part because the first time tends to be the hardest. It gets easier.

Flash forward five years and I found myself at the same job that I had been at since grad school. Fifteen years into the same job I was comfortable, secure. I had long since stopped having to prove myself. I had autonomy. I had respect. I got to pursue my own interests. I was well paid. I was on the verge of being made a partner for crying out loud! And yet… it was too easy. That’s just a nice way of saying that my job was smaller than what I was vocationally being called to. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It wasn’t the fault of the firm. It wasn’t my fault. It was just the reality seeping up from the murmurings of my soul. What was more was that my soul was implying that working for any firm was going to be too small for me. Nothing less than starting my own would do.

As hard as leaving my first partner was, I would be lying to you if I told you that facing my fear of leaving a secure job was suddenly a piece of cake. It wasn’t. This fear tapped deeply into my survival instincts. How would I support myself? How would I support my new partner (now my wife)? We could lose the house, the car, the shirts off of our backs! We might starve!! But what I will tell you is that if I hadn’t already faced the fear of leaving my first partner, then I would likely not have had enough gumption to face leaving my job. I now saw the fear clearly for what it was, and that enabled me to dialogue with it. I got myself through it by journaling on a daily basis. The journaling revealed a fierce internal battle that ultimately kept my ego in check. It didn’t make the fear go away, but it did keep me moving forward. I left.

And you know what? The Universe has supported my every step since. Not only have we not lost the house, but we have gained two more beautiful, soul-healing homes in Vermont! That’s a story in itself which I’ll leave for another time. For now, suffice it to say that not only in starting my own firm, but also in just being open to any opportunity that might prove a vehicle for my soul’s purpose, I can unequivocally say that for the past seven years I have been doing exactly what I am meant to be doing in the world. I do not want to understate the openness part of this equation. That is what ultimately led me back into academia, such that I now have not only one, but two vocational vehicles to offer my unique gifts to the world. And I in no way feel stuck. New opportunities are right around the corner and I have no problem, no fear, in making space for them.

So that was my knee jerk reaction as I attempted to fill in the blank. Fear? What fear?! Yet I know better than that too. I just need to look deeper now. It’s there. And it has been nagging at me just the same. I am standing at the walls of my fortress with that old familiar feeling… this place is too small for me. That’s what this whole blog is about, right? In many ways it is akin to the intense journaling that helped me leave my job. Now I just have to do that journaling publicly. Yikes. But again, having faced those more outward manifestations of my fear has prepared me well for this moment. That is how the world serves as our friend. It gives us a way in by first making it apparent on the apparent outside. Start with whatever it reflects back to you, whatever fear it invokes in you. Face it.

This is how I ended up filling in the blank: “If I were not afraid, I would give love freely.” Or alternatively, “If I were not afraid, I would take down my walls.” Outwardly it might look like this, “If I were not afraid, I would cry unabashedly and uncontrollably out loud to another human being.” Or to the point, “If I were not afraid, I would not perceive myself as a separate being that needs to be defended in the first place.” So this is the fear that I now face.

I didn’t even see what Shannon was yelling at me to stop for. Of course I knew it was an animal of some sort. I dutifully pulled over. Shannon hopped out not knowing if she would be able to get the dog to trust her. No sooner had she stepped out of the car and Sophie, a Boxer puppy, was jumping on her. But only momentarily. She saw the open car door behind Shannon and immediately jumped in to the front passenger seat. Well that was that. Sophie, with zero hesitation whatsoever, had decided she was at home with us (no owner was to be found). Actually, I think it is more accurate to say that she never even considered that we were in any way separate beings in the first place. No separation, no fear. Also… zero sense of personal space! Sophie has no qualms with just plopping herself down on you regardless of where you are or what you are doing. Sitting, sleeping, standing, walking- doesn’t matter. Sophie wants to be physically connected. Get annoyed and admonish her- doesn’t matter. She keeps right on as if you are being silly in your desire for separation. That’s just the way she sees it. Be like Sophie. Metaphorically speaking anyway. A healthy dash of respect for personal space is in order!

Last thought for the day. If you need a dose of courage or just a big, huge smile on your face, go see Mary Poppins Returns. I’ll leave you with this:

“After all, you can’t lose what you never lost.” – Mary Poppins

That was my 90’s-ish disenchanted response to my daily A Course in Miracles lesson yesterday. I’m just being honest here. So, yes, I am on day 249 of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) in what is a year long process. I do, incidentally, recommend it thus far. That said, I do a fair amount of translating the language from its Christian-based perspective to my own personal form of spirituality, which doesn’t follow any particular religion (never has). The old patriarchal Father-Son language just doesn’t work for me. In particular, please stop referring to humanity as “the Sonship.” Just stop, please. I’ve read the justifications for this that suggest that Jesus, who is being channeled, utilizes the masculine in an attempt to heal all of our negative connotations of masculinity and to heal separation by including all genders in his definition of the Sonship. It just doesn’t work for me as a woman, which is to say that I still don’t feel included. I can see how it might work to guide a man into a mindset of inclusion. And, yes, you can argue that this is my own perceptual problem, but I would counter-argue that the problem is that our language isn’t capable of correctly portraying the way it really is. I endorse telling it like it is- God is not gendered and neither are our souls. If our language can’t convey this, then let’s invent words that can. You can see that when ACIM triggers me, I easily move into a full on rant.

This bothered me so much when I first attempted ACIM many years ago, that I stopped very early on because I couldn’t get past it. But I am determined this time to not let the language get in my way, so I just translate as necessary the essence of the lesson into my own terms. That has worked for me. Overall, I agree with the gist and intent of ACIM and have found it a helpful daily reminder, or mental operation as the case may be, in the midst of an intense part of my journey. There are those days, though, that it pushes my buttons. Yesterday was such a day. The lesson that I reacted to was this:

“Whatever suffers is not part of me.”

Is it pushing your buttons too? Just curious. If your reaction is anything like mine, the pushback is something like this: “Wait the hell a minute… my suffering is my G-damn suffering!” Again, just being honest, if not slightly dramatic. My reaction wasn’t all that, but I did feel my chest tighten as I read it. What that told me is that this is a sticking point for me. It also means that it is something that I am ready to look at and in fact have been working on very intensely this year.

To say a little more about the pushback, there is a flip side to all of this and really that was what instantly came up for me. And to be fair, this particular lesson can’t be taken out of the context of the 247 days that proceeded it. But I think the wisdom that it is attempting to convey is a sticking point for most of us. Other wisdom traditions say something similar. In Buddhism it is stated like this: attachment is the root of suffering. Hinduism aligns with Buddhism in this regard and both include desire and wrong-thinking as primary causes of suffering. What each of these traditions is trying to say is that it is our belief that we are our relative, embodied selves- our ego- that is the cause of suffering. In short, to be alive is to be subject to suffering for the simple reason that in order to be alive in the first place we kind of have to believe that we are separate beings. That is the function of our ego, to maintain this illusion of separation. But this separation from our divine nature is painful, and frankly, unreal.

So here is the rub for me. I like being alive. I think it is pretty dang cool and miraculous. I also think that life is divine in nature. In fact, I believe that there is nothing but God. That is my spirituality in a nutshell. ACIM, incidentally, agrees with this view. So something in me has an adverse reaction every time something or someone suggests to me that I should somehow want to overcome this condition of being alive. I’ll take it, suffering and all, thank you very much. Not that I am adverse to the alternative, it’s just that I don’t think that one state is inherently better than the other. Both states- relative (embodied, manifest) and absolute (unembodied, unmanifest)- are equally divine to me. That means that the suffering part is, in its own way, a gift.

Stated slightly differently, I react to the suggestion that my ego is not divine in nature. Really? If there is nothing but God (again, my view, which I am not asking you to adopt), then my ego has to also be God. This is where I may ultimately remain at odds with ACIM even though our view and end game is essentially the same, which is to say that this difference is more about semantics. Now mind you, I fully recognize that the function of my ego is to keep me convinced that I am not God. I get that. It’s just that at this point in my life I recognize that even this weird, backward-ass function plays a divine role in my process of becoming.

Now I am certainly not saying that I think that these wisdom traditions have it wrong. I don’t. In fact, I think they are right to point out that our suffering is of our own doing, generated in our own minds, projected out into the world, and then reinforced as our limited perception of what is what. If that was a mouthful, it simply means that we are making it all up. Again, I acknowledge that this is a trigger for many people. I can only hold space for myself and for you to consider it. ACIM is a good way to make space for this sort of considering. Come to your own conclusions. For me, suffering is based in the ego via attachment and the underlying misunderstanding of who we really are. Where I might differ from these traditions is that I don’t necessarily deem this choice to be a mistake. To the contrary, I view it as a necessary part of our process of becoming, of living into our divine nature. To know and experience who we are, we have to first forget who we are and then play out who we are not. I have found in life that I have to exhaust my ideas about myself and about the world before I can overcome my small-mindedness.

To bring this down to earth a bit, I would say that it is by moving through our suffering that we arrive at joy. And joy is our true nature. Again, this is in alignment with these wisdom traditions. There is a meme going around that suggests that maturity comes with damage, not with age. If that were accurate, then we would all be as mature as all get out! There is plenty of damage to go around and nobody is immune from it. Although I do think it is generally true that people who have more evident damage are more likely to be in touch with their damage and are therefore more likely to attain maturity. This is to say that for me the sign of maturity is the degree to which we are able to step into and own our damage (aka, suffering). For me I distill this into a four step process:

1. Gain awareness of the root of my suffering.
2. Face the part of me that is suffering.
3. Do the (hard) work of nurturing that part of me that is suffering.
4. Carry my suffering to the surface and expose it to the light.

The process ranges from easy to extraordinarily difficult. Some suffering lingers at the surface, but the deepest suffering in us has been hiding out for a long time- perhaps since birth, or even before. Simply discovering that it is even there can be difficult. Those deepest, most primal wounds tend to be the most allusive and the most subversive in our process of becoming. I liken getting to them as digging a well into the depths of myself. Basically, follow steps 1-4 starting with whatever is showing up at the surface, then repeat, repeatedly. Eventually you’ll get down into the center of the suffering. To me it is the regular and conscientious implementation of some process like this that is the sign of maturity.

I knew that I was earning my wings when I got deep enough into myself to understand that step 3 is about me becoming the parent to my own inner 5 year old child. This parenting is no easier than the real deal. Same difficulties, actually. That kid has a mind (and a heart) of her own! Kids don’t grow up overnight (although it seems that way) and we don’t necessarily gain maturity with age. I might argue that maturity as I am defining it is fairly rare these days.

The point of it all, though, is what comes with step 4. To expose suffering to the light is to release it. To release it is to experience the joy that it was hiding all along. This is what these wisdom traditions would have us know. That we are not our suffering. What we are is joy. Now I suppose it is possible that we could come to this realization without all of the well digging. Just a snap of the fingers and be done with the suffering. Let’s just abide in the joy that we are already! I think- and I could be wrong- that to achieve the level of joy that the wisdom traditions point to (heaven on earth or enlightenment in the highest sense) would be difficult to achieve without doing the hard work of acknowledging, facing, nurturing and exposing our suffering. If it were as easy as a snap of the fingers, then I seriously doubt that Jesus would have whined to God about being forsaken, or that Buddha would have starved himself to near death in search of the truth.

But my point is that the work itself doesn’t have to be a life sentence. Mastery of a process like the one that I outlined is what I would call a state of full maturity, or elderhood. It isn’t that the suffering goes away- that is a condition of life as the wisdom traditions say. We need our pesky egos to maintain the illusion of relativity that is the foundation of life. Mastery of the process, to me, is to fall in love with every second of it. It is to embrace and be grateful for this extraordinary opportunity of Self-discovery. We can find joy in the process itself. We can find joy in our pain. To do that is to transcend it in a way that allows us to remain here, gratefully and gracefully, in this gift that is life. This is different than trying to escape being here in search of some absolute state where suffering does not exist. I have no desire to escape life. This is to say that I do not believe that the state with no such suffering (the absolute, unembodied, unmanifest) is any more divine or any more wonderful than the state with suffering (the relative, embodied, manifest). That’s just me. You can choose whatever you like.

Moving toward a non-conclusion now. Maybe you have noticed, but all of the above contains a paradox. On the one hand, life is suffering. On the other hand, life is joy. On the one hand, we are truly not our suffering. On the other hand, we need our suffering to figure that out. This is the both/and that is life. Life is a beautiful paradox, and to embrace this is perhaps half the battle in healing the attachment that causes our suffering. Don’t try to solve it. On this front, here is one of my favorite lessons from ACIM so far: “I leave creation free to be itself.”

Last but not least, my end game might just be to save life on this planet. Facing where we are on this front has been painful. The level of loss that we are all being confronted with is extraordinary. It is easy to focus my attention outwardly on all of the things that I might help heal through my vocational skills. Believe you me I have been hard at work on that front for years now. Yet what I will leave you with today is that I have come to realize that there is nothing more important than the work that I am doing to heal myself. It is not even the case that I have to heal myself before I can heal what is outside of myself. Healing myself is the actual work. Period. Yes, and hopefully, others will be inspired by my healing and in turn heal themselves. But to keep this beautiful experience called life around, we each will have to ultimately do our own work to heal the illusion of separation that lies within. That is the crux of the issue at the moment. Godspeed.

“Life itself- our human lives- is a gift. Our lives, our talents, our abilities, our privilege to be human are given to us, and like all gifts they are not to be hoarded. They are not to be devoted, like the capital of classical economics, to the endless increase of me and mine, but must be passed on lest they stagnate and decay. The circle- really a gift web- takes care of its own, just as the ecological web of nature sustains every species within it. In other words, each gift eventually finds its way, usually in some altered form, back to the giver.” – Charles Eisenstein

This is your introduction to the book that I am just finishing up and that I would give to every person on the planet if I could. Yet even if I did, I recognize that it’s not easy to get through all 512 of its dense pages. The book is The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein. So instead of imploring you to read it (please do ;-), I’ll just share the gist of it as it comes up in the moment. This is one of those moments.

Earlier this month I celebrated my 49th birthday. While I most often forget, always swimming around in my subconscious such that I do sometimes remember, is the awareness that I am only here by the stroke of a miracle. No, really. Actually, this is true for all of us. Think about the infinite number of contingencies that led to the creation of you. Any ever so slightly different turn of events and no you. My story has just always been a little more direct, if not in my face about it.

I almost died at birth. Long story short, my blood is RH positive and my mom’s is RH negative. I was the second child, with an older brother who is also RH positive. RH negative blood registers the protein in RH positive blood as a pathogen. That means that when an RH negative mother has an RH positive child, her immune system kicks in to create antibodies. The first child escapes unscathed. If another comes along, however, the antibodies get right to work. There is no polite way to say this (sorry, Mom), but quite literally my mother’s blood was trying to kill me the entire time I was in the womb. These days the problem has been eliminated pharmaceutically. But not back then. Back then, nobody even knew that I was in a fight for my life. When I entered the world I was, by all accounts, as orange as an orange. I was lucky to have made it to birth. The survival rate at the time was 50/50, and it was very much looking like I would fall on the losing side of that equation.

To add insult to injury, our doctor was out of town… and the hospital was not equipped to deal with me. My mother, who just happens to be a registered nurse, has always made it her business to know every doctor in town. Without hesitation, she commanded the hospital to load me and my dad into an ambulance and take me across town to a specific doctor. She was not allowed to come with. The chosen doctor received me and immediately got me hooked up to an incubator. Now imagine the incredible liability that doctors face. They have standard procedures to follow such that if they don’t, malpractice can destroy their careers. My blood cell count hit the magic level that dictated that a blood transfusion be performed or death would surely follow. But for God only knows what reason, the anointed doctor said, “Wait. Let’s just wait. Give her a moment.” And so they did, for a long while. Days. My blood count didn’t budge. It stayed right there until I ultimately caught my snap.

So here I am. I didn’t escape entirely unscathed, but I made it into this world. My maternal grandmother was a first had witness to this turn of events. Growing up, there was not a day that I spent with her that she did not tell me this story and remind me at least 10 times a day- much to my annoyance- that I was just a “miracle baby.” That’s the in my face part of the story. While I didn’t appreciate these incessant reminders as a child, I do now. I implore my internal maternal grandmother to remind myself as often as I can. I forget too often.

But when I do remember, what it calls my attention to is that I am here, by God! Every single day of my life has been a gift. What to do with it? Well, the answer to that question is in a constant state of discovery. Each day brings new clues. I heed them to the best of my ability. What I understand for sure is that there is only one me. I have a unique essence. I have my own unique gifts to offer. Nobody but me can give these gifts to the world. The only question then is, “to give or not to give?” The answer is obvious, but the execution takes awareness, courage, and action. Most of all, it takes a heapful of love.

So instead of sending everyone in the world a copy of this visionary book, I’ll instead pass along the gift of just one insight. You are a miracle. You have your own unique essence. You have your own unique gift to offer that nobody else in the world can give but you. For those of you celebrating this season in whatever religious tradition you follow, know that this idea of gift giving is sacred. It isn’t menial. It isn’t about commodification. It is meant to help us to remember that we have a gift to give in the first place. Give it. Give it wholeheartedly with no expectation of return and it will return to you threefold. That is true because we are already, and were never anything other than, one big, divine, beautiful interbeing. Your unique role is essential to the evolution of our interbeing. Give what only you can give.

“To live in the gift means to approach each person and each choice with the attitude, ‘What can I create? What can I give?'” – Charles Eisenstein

As you contemplate this season of giving, I offer you this final question:

“What would I most love to give to the world?” – Charles Eisenstein

Love to you all, and thank you for the gift that you are.

Let’s start with the girl. Listen to Greta… again:

Don’t cry. Remember that has been one of my rules. Most people who know me think that I am fairly even-keeled, which is a nice way of saying that I don’t seem to have strong emotional swings (until they erupt on occasion). People who get to know me better begin to experience my particular brand of stoicism as a sort of impenetrable wall. At first it may be a source of wonderment at what may appear to be a super-human like quality. But those who get even closer still come to the stark realization that, well, I’m not all that. It’s just my very well designed defense mechanisms. Upon that realization, the frustration begins to set in. Sensing that something much deeper is going on, the question begins to revolve around how to get past this fortress I have built (at least for those who are brave enough to go and stay there).

It’s frustrating for me too. Very frustrating. As the people closest to me try to reach me from the outside, I am frantically working from the inside to dismantle this thing I have built. My experience is often- damn, why did I have to build this so well? I haven’t cried uncontrollably to another human being since I was 5. The truth, however, is that I am super-sensitive. I actually cry at the drop of a hat. It’s just that my tears are silent, or if they need to be more than that they are shed in isolation. My very inner circle know this about me. I am bringing this up at the moment because what I want to share with you is that I cried deeply, outwardly, in heaving uncontrolled tears when I watched Greta’s TED Talk. In fact, the tears are still tricking out now as I write. And just to be fully transparent, you will start to notice that I am going to keep connecting these very big picture realities to my very personal experience of them. Notice that. It’s important. 

Before I get to the Three Amigas of Barcelona, I first need to say something more about Greta. Marty Webb, I know you are reading this, so this is for you. Part of the reason that Greta touched me so deeply is because of you, Marty. You know why. Let me explain it to everyone else. Marty is the founder of The Monarch School in Houston, Texas. Monarch is a ground-breaking school for kids with neurological differences such as autism. I had the great honor of being the architect of their campus. In the process, I had the privilege of learning from Marty, the brilliant staff, and their phenomenal students themselves about what it is to be human in this world.

The issue with autism, in a highly over-simplified nutshell, is that people who have it didn’t quite fully complete the individuation process during their early neurological development. That means that they don’t quite know where they end and the rest begins, which makes it very hard to make sense of the world in the neurotypical ways that we do. Stated differently, our social conventions don’t make sense to them because the idea of separation is foreign to them. What they taught me is that it isn’t them that are “off” – it’s us. Autism, as hard as it is on those who have it and those who care for them (Mary and Jim, I am thinking of you), is a gift to the rest of us for one simple reason: it reflects to us at this critical time in our story that we are all living in a state of disconnect. In a very powerful way, the epidemic rise in autism is showing us that our sense of separation is deeply problematic- if we would only pay attention.

People with autism don’t automatically fall in line with our separist worldview the way the rest of us do. At Monarch they have learned to work with each student to build a conscious, healthy connection between self and other, between self and nature. This process involves everything that is required in the regenerative processes that I now teach: self-reflection and self-actualization tied to systems-actualization. In short, it involves understanding that we are each nested into one big interbeing, each with our own unique role to play. I could go on and on about this, but instead I am just going to leave it at this: listen to Greta.

And now for Barcelona. I went to Barcelona to stretch myself. I feel the same sense of urgency as Greta does. So over the past year or so I have been working on entering into new arenas. Bigger arenas. This isn’t to negate the focused work that I am doing on the ground, it is to extend it. On the ground plane I utilize regenerative processes to catalyze Place. Places have their own inherent essence and unique gifts to offer. People as well have their own inherent essence and unique gifts to offer. My job, as I define it, is to unleash those. That is the game, in a nutshell. That is what will save us from ourselves, in a nutshell. 

I went to Barcelona to connect to an international community working on the resilience of humanity. They are primarily researchers who are feverishly trying to figure out what we need to do. There are about a million things that I could share with you about this, but let’s just stick with the nutshell as I see it. My nutshell is always a little off from the crowd. I am used to that, and I value that. In fact, that is probably the only thing that compels me to lend my voice to the equation. I have something to say that only I can say in the way that I say it. That is my unique gift to offer. My gift to the world is my voice. 

I didn’t know exactly what to expect of this particular crowd. It was my first time to be around them, rather than just reading their articles and twitter feeds (they love to twitter!). I don’t abide in the rational processes of research. I abide in vision, zooming in and out of perspective. But we have one thing in common- we all care deeply about the survival of humanity and those species which are threatened by us. If this is a bit too heavy for a Monday, I apologize. Hang in there. The nutshell is worth it.

Not knowing how they might respond, I decided not to hold back. For all I knew this would be the one and only chance that I would get to address them. So I chose to speak in a non-researchy tongue. I began by sharing with them that I replace the words “living system” with the words “living being” in my thinking. The former, although it isn’t meant to, objectifies what we are studying. The latter makes it personal. It instantly compels me to empathize with what I am looking at (a particular community for instance) and more importantly to be relational with it. In other words it isn’t something I am simply studying, it is something that I am in a process of becoming with.

Once we understand all things across all scales (humans, places, organizations, communities, cities, states, countries, the planet, etc.) as beings, we start to get the sense of respect that has been lacking. A being is a mysterious and magical thing in the sense that the whole is always greater than the parts. That is a mystery that we can never fully unlock. We will never be able to explain it away. Thank God, because then life would be boring. 

So anyway, I used my 15 minutes to explain how every being across all scales has a unique role to play in the evolution of the larger being. For you to be fully you, step one is to get in touch with your own essence where you will find your own unique gift(s) to offer. Self-actualization then comes from giving your gifts for the purpose of actualizing the larger being of which you are a part. This leads to co-evolution, which is to say the evolution of both you and of the larger being (family, organization, community, etc.) of which you are a part. Now I got a lot more specific about how to apply this to a community, but I’m giving you the nutshell. 

In the conference’s researchy presentation format, there wasn’t much time for reflection or conversation. My session was particularly time constrained and so it ended rather abruptly and in such a way that I couldn’t get a very good read on how it had gone over. But as the day went on a few people acknowledged hearing me in a way that I could tell they actually heard me. Two of those people became fast friends: Hanna Ruszczyk and Shivali Fifield. Together, over the next few days we became the Three Amigas, doing this whole conference thing, Barcelona, and the quest for resilience together. We had deep conversations and developed much respect for how each of us is working outside of the status quo in important ways. They are each doing amazing work by the way. Hanna works on actualizing the feminine voice to build resilience throughout the world, and in the Global South in particular. Go, Hanna! Shivali works on actualizing the voice of the community – much in the same way I do- in Glasgow. Go, Shivali!

Then the day after my presentation, a graduate student named Luca Arbau (from Brazil) approached me between sessions. He sheepishly began by saying that my session had been so intense that he needed the night to sleep on it. I couldn’t help but laugh, and then assured him that was the nature of the beast. He asked me to explain further the regenerative concept of how beings need to relate to the larger whole for the sake of resilience. I happily and slowly walked him through it again. Then we exchanged contact info so that I may continue to support him in his explorations. Go, Luca!

Not everyone who I wanted to connect to made it to my presentation. I was there in the first place because I respect the work that they are doing in the world and want to help them in whatever way I can. Here’s the thing about giving our gift. Can you remember a moment in time when a certain thing happened- a certain person said or did a certain thing for you- that changed the entire trajectory of your life? Of course you can. That’s how this game of interbeing works. Our human trajectory needs to shift. This seems impossible… until we remember that the slightest of encounters sends us off in entirely new directions. 

So I made sure to lend my voice to each of the people whose work resonated with me. First there was Isabelle Anguelovski who works on social justice issues relative to green gentrification in cities across the globe. I reminded her that nature deficit disorder is part of what is driving what her research bears witness to. It is fundamental to explaining why underprivileged communities resist green infrastructure (it’s half of the picture anyway- with the other half being justified gentrification fear), and therefore what needs to be healed in order to reset the trajectory. She knows this and kicked herself for not yet including it in her presentation. She was thankful for the reminder, in particular because it will help her answer to the kickback that she gets from those who are fighting for the inclusion of nature in such communities. Evolving a social-ecological system is complex, because they are complex beings that respond in radically different ways to slightly different inputs… just like us!

Then there was Timon McPhearson, an ecologist at the New School in New York. He heads up a team that is doing extraordinarily sophisticated resilience modeling for New York and other cities across the globe. The work is impressive and comprehensive… and highly technological. That said, they are running up against limits to what the work can do. The first thing that they are noticing is that it is difficult to get people to expand their vision of what is possible. The second is that they are having trouble figuring out how to include the voice of the community. Lastly, they are noticing that it is hard to get action in response to what they are discovering. From my regenerative perspective, all three limitations are related and there is an answer for how to overcome them. I talked to Timon about this and we will continue that conversation. There is no sense in leaving them out there hanging when the answers exist. He was grateful and very willing. I am looking forward to what may come of this.

Lastly, there is Stephan Barthel, who I am going to call my Swedish nature boy (although he is not a boy, he is very much a man who is adulting in the ways that Greta is asking of us). I have been following his work and communicating with him over the last year. He, like me, fundamentally understands that what we need to heal is our connection to nature. The way I understand this is that we need to overcome our separatist worldview. And to bring this full circle (finally!), it is exactly what Greta is pointing to. A non-separatist worldview is the new world that she is calling forth. So I will continue my conversation with Stephan about this and how we go about doing it. For you, Greta. This is for you. (Tears.)

Have you ever noticed that when you are focused on something, everything that flies across your radar seems to reflect that something? More on that another time. I was just saying something about arbitrary boundaries and then my good friend Amanda shared this post from Green Renaissance (who look to be doing amazing work):

“Life is not in a box. There’s no rules. It’s what you make with life.” – Elrieda Pillmann.

Then there was this gem shared by Jayna Hefford during her recent induction speech into the Hockey Hall of Fame. At one point she directly addressed her kids, who are too young to comprehend the magnitude of the moment, with  “I want you to know that there are no rules for your journey.” She goes on to say that she will support them in whatever their passions are. Can you imagine if we actually said that to all of our kids? And meant it?? What if we said that to ourselves?

The rule when I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s was that girls don’t play ice hockey. In fact, in the South (Houston) I am not sure it was considered polite for girls to be playing team sports of any sort. That was a hard reality for this typical tomboy, the only girl on the block that the boys allowed to play in (dis)organized sports including tackle football. And I held my own.

I come from a skating family (not from the South!)- my dad grew up playing hockey and my mom grew up figure skating. You can guess which one I was supposed to pursue. To this end, I was on the ice before I can even remember being on the ice (age 2ish). Looking back on it now, I think we would have to declare that the rule that girls don’t play hockey was- there is no polite way to put this- a dumb rule. Girls actually excel at the sport, as Hefford’s induction into the Hall of Fame lends testament to. 

So the question is, why do we follow dumb rules? I think my parents instinctively knew that it was a dumb rule for me… that maybe they should let me play hockey. They would never have put equipment on me and a stick in my hands if that had not been the case. But they did just that when I was little. It was only when I got old enough for organized play that the answer came back as a hard no. Don’t blame them. We all do it. We all give into dumb rules even when our best instincts are telling us otherwise. It’s just easier to not fight the world. At least seemingly… 

But fortunately our passions have a mind of their own. We can only hold them back for so long. You may be able to make it through an entire lifetime holding them back, but they’ll break through in the next one, or the next one after that, or eventually anyway. I was lucky. I didn’t have to wait that long. My little hockey passion had no patience. By age 18 it kicked that “no” to the curb as I walked onto the women’s varsity team at Princeton. Not only did I end up getting to play, but I excelled. It was a minor miracle. But then again, that’s just Passion’s M.O. 

But back to my question. Why do we follow dumb rules? Why do we bury our own inner voices and instincts and buy into the status quo? In the end I suppose it doesn’t really matter… our passions will ultimately get the best of us anyway. But the inevitability of that just makes following dumb rules all the more… dumb. So why wait? It’s pointless. Just let your passions have their way with you. You’ll be happy you did. 

Now for one more question. I am curious to know. What dumb rules are you noticing in your life right now? Please respond in the comments below. Let’s get them all out on the table!