I like to be barefoot as often as is socially appropriate and good for my health. Those constraints are pretty subjective, but luckily I’ve got some trusted informants who help me toe the line. Side note: being barefoot is supposed to be good for kid’s development, good for improving memory, and it’s requested by God on occasion in the Bible. Generally if it’s good with experts in physical, mental, and spiritual communities it’s good with me. But some people find feet offensive, which is understandable. I intended to post a review of Emerson’s essay “self-reliance” with questions about the relevance of dogmatism and institutionalism in modern life. My examination of the waves of thought his work initiated culminated in a single phrase. “Rightly believing in the importance of self cannot come at the expense of devaluing the other.” Put colloquially, “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” In a tame critique of my review I would say, it lacked mass appeal and continuity. It wasn’t scholarly enough to strike a chord in the intellectual mind and it was too theoretical to resonate with the regular, every day reader. So, I am opting for a story loosely connected to the overall barefoot theme. “Liberty” closed with a promise to write about the negative implications of societal expectation in my life. Not a hard one to spot. My life’s riddled with mistakes from accepting pressure to behave in a way incongruent with my beliefs. Let’s start with an easy one. I value (or profess to value) honest prayer. God’s supposed to already know, right? Why be anything but authentic? I grew up at church. I’m not a PK but we lived in the parsonage. I learned at a very early age all the good words to say for an awesome prayer. And public prayer became food for my pride. I can make this prayer so good and people will think, wow this dude really knows how to talk to God. Then I heard myself talking and wondered what I was saying. It didn’t make much sense. The first Bible words flashing in my mind were whipped out there with some “Jesus’s” and “Lords” where my “um’s” should be. Expectation and praise funneled me into a heady worthless prayer. I was wasting a prime chance to address God by addressing everyone else instead. When I realized I was doing it wrong I switched to praying public prayers like it was just me and God and no one else was there. Which was a little awkward. Like when everyone is talking at a restaurant and I’m having a sidebar and then they go silent right when I say something about the time I missed the bathroom train at the apple orchard. So, I am still sorting out these prayer situations. Old habits die hard, and I’m not a public speaker. I think the best way to go is to be on the same side as the rest of the group talking to God with/for my squad. Have you heard someone deliver a prayer that swallows up all the energy in the room and brings it to God? It gives me chills. Social pressure can be not so good when it ramps up “people will see how good I am” feelings. Especially in a religious environment. And it’s still maybe not very good when it’s hyper-individualism. It’s really, really good when it inspires an “us” and we all step up to the plate with a spokesperson helping us be awesome together. Businesses are keyed in to this idea of social pressure. There are people they call “thought leaders” or “brand ambassadors” and there are “innovators” and “early adopters”. People with influence, people willing to try new things and tell all the regular people about their benefits. Then it makes all us regular people think “I need it now.” Some businesses use advertising and just wear us down. Some businesses try to be chameleons and say the right things and do the right things without really believing what they say or do. Good businesses recognize us as people and really want to make our lives better. There are lots of ways to persuade people things are good. But the best way is to be good. And to be good there needs to be core value and lots of compassion and lots of action. This is why minimalism is important. It helps us say no to lots of things we may do or buy or say just because we want to please other people. For me that looks like a public prayer being an honest delivery about what's really happening. Not a string of words other people will like or a string of words I want to say to God when no one is around. It’s like a pitch for my team not a pitch for myself. I’m praying for us to God. I can do that. This doesn’t mean other people’s opinions don’t influence me. I love affirmation. I crave it like I crave the smell of coffee and those little puffs of steam coming off the cup in the morning. Affirmation isn’t bad. Neither is bringing other people joy, making people feel comfortable, or trying to be socially appropriate. But, forgetting my core values and the principles I stand on, or the people I love, that’s a good sign I’m living outside in not inside out. Being excited about and open to new ideas, that’s great. Letting every little thing pull at my attention, not so great. Recognizing the difference between “fitting in” and being minimal, honest and vulnerable, that’s sort of the target I am aiming for. It’s a big reason why I write. So, dear reader, my encouragement to you is to write down a couple of values and measure them against your actions. What’s driving you to do the things you do? Start there. And pray lots for your intentions to be pure and full of humility and compassion. And, if you get a chance, pray for mine to be that way too. Next week will be all about positive social pressure. If you want stuff like this delivered to your inbox each week click here. And if you think other people would benefit from reading feel free to share.
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There arrives a time in all lives when the chosen path looks bleak. Societal expectation seems to require sacrifice of liberties for "adulthood." Time is no longer our own, money is not our own and we are obliged to do an infinite number of things for other people: required activities like—payments, mortgages, civic duties, and expectations to uphold to spouses, children, and employers. If day-to-day duty is not enough, we are tasked with predicting the future, making investments, reconciling mistakes, and living out consequences. These past-present-future requirements amass a spinning reel of life. Walls go up in the mind as the movie plays with minimal creative opportunity for altering its plot. Changing direction feels enormously challenging and pumping frantically at the brakes and pounding furiously on the walls is the common course of action. What once was a house grows dark like a tomb. Vehicles initially started to transport to a destination have turned out to be a hearse. And it feels lonely and chaotic and dark. Some will sit passively in their tomb and wait. Others will take drastic measures to regain liberty. And in the name of freedom there is murder, suicide, unemployment, drug abuse, avoidance, oppression, violence, lying, cheating, torn families, anxiety, and jealousy. And in all this bondage and chaos blamed on perceptions of duty, is this idea of freedom. "If I could just get here or there, then I would be free and happy.” So, how do we get it? Without all the destructive actions mentioned up there ^. To obtain it, we need to know what it is. Because it’s more than just an “anywhere but here” or it will always be anywhere but here. It has to be somewhere. And what I believe (this is opinion inferred by statistics and colored by experience) people are looking for when they seek personal, mental, liberty, is that space where the walls come down. And those walls come down in the numbing sensation of euphoria. And so it's there we seek freedom. Euphoria: a feeling or state of intense excitement and happiness. This is what freedom tastes like to me. It tastes like an open country road with the windows down and the song “Ain’t No Grave” on full blast—wind in my face singing as loud as I can with a few Breakfast Club fist pumps at elevated moments. It feels like the turn of a wake board on a glassy lake at 7:30 am with a delicious spray turning golden in the sunrise. It tastes like a slider to induce a swinging strikeout for the last out of a game. It tastes like perfectly spoken words, followed by a perfectly landed kiss. It tastes like the first step out the door after the last exam . If none of these examples landed, think Titanic “I’m the king of the world”. When do you feel free? Remember it now. Do you feel it? The exhilaration growing in your chest. The unstoppable smile spreading across your face. The lightness in your brain. Do you feel the sensations in your fingertips and toes flooding you with heart-pounding desire to sprint a marathon, sing as loud as you can in joyful noise, and pump your fist in the air with wild excitement? Here is the question I want answered more than any other as I set down roots for the rest of my life. How do we make liberty last when we’ve traded in all our youthful pursuits for adult responsibilities and these euphoric moments start spreading themselves thin? And so far the best I can come up with is this answer: Don’t pursue euphoria. I've not found any mental freedom in pursuing whims of pleasure. Freedom may be felt in euphoria, but that is not a sustainable freedom. You can’t be high all the time. That high all the time feeling is my destination. One I arrive at by pilgrimage. It's not found by getting sidetracked, or by obsessing over something good like a lab rat and pushing the lever over and over hoping to stay high. Sustainable liberty in adulthood is a byproduct of staying course for a destination and recognizing my personal choice to live from the inside out until I get to my destination. And the destination is the most euphoric thing of all. That existential drive for intense and lasting pleasure, for sweet and eternal freedom, for the endless road and the endless song and the endless blast of never-ending joy—that is irrevocably linked to a source. And there is no separating it from Him. The only liberty I've found is surrender. Letting go of all my heaviness for a lighter yoke. If he walked out of the grave I’m walking too. So, dear reader, my encouragement for you today is to let the walls in your mind fall. Open to the revelation that your life is not a tomb, the door is always open. Choose today who you will serve. And as you journey towards an eternal destination be encouraged by the strength and lightness given to you. Uphold your daily responsibilities in noble pursuit of something greater. Find the freedom in difficult work. Embrace the positive feelings of euphoria, without demanding them or obsessing over them. Let them breathe. From strength to strength, in all desert, in all weakness, in all joy and sadness, pursue Him. It is your only true chance for sustainable Freedom. Your train is bound for glory. Next week I am going to look at some ways societal expectations negatively influence me, and how minimalism can help me regain the liberty I’ve lost to people-pleasing. The week after that I am going to look at the positive results of peer pressure. If you want stuff like this delivered to your inbox click here.
The idea for this post has been ruminating for months now. It’s time to let these thoughts fly. This post is about mental minimalism. It is about letting go. In all choices there are closed doors. Roles require sacrifice. Love requires action. These unopened doors, sacrificed items, and untraveled paths form an entire world of the “unlived.” It’s tempting to stare at the unlived world with curiosity. Then curiosity starts morphing into bitterness or regret. My research on the “unlived” brought me into topics about identity, the shadow self and the false self. Topics well beyond my realm of knowledge and experience. Topics I should not dive into without proper certification. But when acknowledging things given up, it seems it is necessary to have a positive perspective of sacrifice for a quality adult human life. So, this is not advice as much as it is observation of the experience of other humans, quotation from actual qualified humans, and reflection on my own challenges. I read a tweet today from a local sports personality that is a perfect anecdote for this post. Stories like this one embody the humble, diligent love we idolize. But, as I venture into adulthood I find it easy to slip into “sacrificial love” as a duty or an obligation rather than a true desire. It feels forced; and the weight of responsibility steadily grows like a heavy burden and not the lighter yoke I'm promised. When I bear up my yoke and don’t receive adequate praise or immediate reward for my sacrifice I begin to stare longingly at the unlived and complain loudly that my martyrdom should be receiving more recognition. This pulls my intentions into question. Is my sacrifice sustainable? Is my sacrifice loving if it is for personal glory? Am I using my sacrifice to make people feel guilty or indebted? In Derek’s story I doubt his father talked about getting rid of his Corvettes and driving a minivan. If he did, Derek would not be sharing the story he would be feeling guilty that he ruined his father’s dreams. In the case of my own parents, I know they gave up a great many things to support nine children. But, they will tell you the strength they received to perform this came from their core belief they were fulfilling the purpose they were given. A purpose causing all the things flying by the window to be a little easier to wave at as the train heads for its destination. This is not easy to do. But ultimately, subjecting desires to the will is essential for pursuit of any goal because, as Stephen Covey says, “If you are an effective manager of yourself, your discipline comes from within. . . You are a disciple, a follower, of your own deep values and their source. And you have the will, the integrity, to subordinate your feelings, your impulses, your moods to those values.” That is a tall order. And I wouldn’t say I am an effective manager of myself. But in writing down my deeper values I can filter out when something is important and fits within an overarching purpose, and when it is fleeting. It makes it easier to know when the things I am letting go of are truly important, and when they are just a momentary pleasure. These deeper values play a key role in decision making, and in living contentedly with our choices. When I can assign my choice to a value I have, or a value I know is important, it makes the unlived a lighter yoke. It makes sacrificial love sweet and wholesome and genuine, rather than bitter and demanding. It makes goodness attractive. I can look fondly at what I gave up and smile knowing what I have is truly what I need. Dear reader, if you have arrived down here I want to encourage you to wave with a smile at the countryside and passing cities as you roll toward your destination. Your train is bound for glory. Now this idea of contentedness and moral duty get all sorts of complicated. Things can quickly turn into boundaries, walls, and limiting beliefs. I am going to finish out "Bound for Glory" next week with a post about independence. Click here if you’d like an email alert when it’s up. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us ~ Paul the Apostle Time for painstaking reflection, space for exposing revelation, and a necessity for better consumption are keys to feeling like I've made this blog a success. The reception has been better than I anticipated, and the effort has been more refreshing than exhausting. You know the episode where writers put a lot of clips together of actors "reminiscing" and call it an episode? That is this week. A quick review of the major topics from the first part of the year. A much needed refresher on the principles I've been talking about, and a small break from generating something from scratch. Some high level review. After my mission statement for writing I went into a four part essay on what I called Foundations. Post one "Vapor" tugged at some philosophical threads about the meaning of life and the way my understanding of the void shapes my perspective. From this bleak topic I sallied forth into "Hope!", discussing the reality of suffering and the path from suffering to hope. Then came "Quiet", where I stated silence is the space hope needs to grow. My foundations closed with "Focus"; the gear setting hope to action and growing motive into energy. With the foundation poured, I moved on to Frameworks. Frameworks took an iceberg look at the following creed. I believe in black coffee Rainy days Traditionalism Transcendental words and the bottom line My love for black coffee is a metaphor for simplicity and authenticity, and also a literal fact. The rainy days post, a personal favorite, gave me an opportunity to contemplate other emotions in which humans feel joy. It helped me understand why, to me, melancholy doesn't mean sad and happy doesn't mean joyful. There is a richness in the rain. Traditionalism is a post about family and the way mine shaped the person I am. I cried the most writing it. Completing the transcendental words post filled me with dread. It forced me to delve into challenging concepts of faith and philosophy I knew I needed to unpack. I'm still unpacking, but I learned much from writing down my thoughts and researching. The bottom line, like black coffee and rainy days, is a metaphor. Data is important. I believe it. The bottom line is sustainability. It is consistency and persistence. Like daily love in marriage and not a quick passion. The bottom line is the reason I write and keep writing. It supports everything above it. Once the foundation was poured and walls were raised I started Working on a Building. This is the title of a cover song most popularly done by Bill Monroe, and most well-done by Brother Joe May. The song is about some consistent efforts required for improvement in the soul and the character of the individual. So, I keyed in on some topics where I am consistently working. Areas like "Humility"-- a key to quality business leadership. "Change"-- one of my biggest struggles and an important one lately. And "Perseverance"--the key to the ever elusive consistency I am seeking. I closed talking about building materials and personal affirmation of worth in my post "Reclaimed". This brought me to the current topic. Bound for Glory. A metaphorical examination of the journey to living with joyful purpose. I've enjoyed writing, as I hope you've enjoyed reading. But, primarily I have enjoyed the growth it has forced. Not in an ever present sense, but in a foundational way. A way I know I will appreciate when the harvest comes. So, dear reader, as promised I am closing with an encouragement for the week. Remember to pray. Honestly, reverently, fervently, and frequently. Pray out loud. Pray on your knees. Pray in the quiet of your room with the door closed. Pray with the people close to you. Pray with the people at the table with you. Pray. A few favorite songs and quotes below. I pledge to uphold the standards of fresh content next week.
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I'm a Hoosier. I like the outdoors. Taxes are my job. I write for a living. This Blog
Writing my way to an adult life of minimalism, sustainability, and joy rooted in Truth. I'm learning, unlearning, and relearning.
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