There’s a chance I should have titled this fear, but I like courage better. Each weekday morning, I walk up to a six-story building with an all glass exterior reflecting the morning sunlight. I enter the far right set of three double doors into a two-story atrium with simple modern décor and step approximately 15 yards to my first big decision of the day. On the right are three shiny elevator doors prepared to lift me quickly and painlessly to my fifth-floor destination. On the left is a faux wood door, unmarked, with five flights of concrete steps. Days when I’m convicted I’ve started this conversation in the car. Days when I’m late or have recently embarked on a newfangled motivated journey I have an easy decision. Elevator for the first, stairs for the latter. Most days I am convicted and arguing with myself all the way to the point where I press the plastic up arrow and watch it light up. “I worked out this week. My legs are tired. It takes too long. I haven’t eaten yet. I’m still half asleep. I may start sweating. I’ll be out of breath walking in and that’s embarrassing.” This elementary elevator issue is an accurate depiction of my entire day. And life is the sum of our days after all. In this instant I can make a choice to be brave and take the road less comfortable, the road leading to increased blood flow and cognition, and better long-term health. For me, the elevator is the entryway to doing things comfortably rather than intentionally and living without discipline and subsequent meaning. It is a road where I acquiesce to the ebb and flow of luxury and spend and accumulate and take the elevator and forego the run and forget the to-do list and watch one more episode and have one more cookie because I got out of bed after hitting snooze three times and went to work and earned the right to fleeting happiness. For me, the elevator starts a slide into self-pity; it begins an indulgence in short term happiness when long-term happiness is 10-feet to my left. There is nothing wrong with comfort or convenience in my life. The issue is intention. Many times, I find myself folding to any desire because I lack the willpower or the foresight to do something else. Yesterday I read this quote from “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’ Brien (10/10 would recommend reading at least the first chapter). Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comforting theory. It dispensed with all those bothersome little acts of daily courage; it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward; it justified the past while amortizing the future." This made me squirm. “Those bothersome little acts of daily courage.” When I throw things out or give them away I get a gut feeling that asks “what if…someday…remember when?” and I start to argue with myself like I do at the elevator. I believe there are things I need, things I’ve earned. But these things are there to accumulate comfort, to sidestep action, and they stand in the way of making daily change and progress. The wonderful thing about owning books instead of reading books is I get the pleasure of exhibiting my knowledge to people without the daily action of reading them. In this way I become the Christian who is not bothered with the daily acts of forgiving, or smiling, or giving generously, or volunteering time, or going the extra mile. I can take the title without the courage of character.
The more I roll the idea of daily courage around in my mind the more attractive it becomes. Challenging, yes. But what a beautiful thing. Courage that surpasses the fear of death, the fear of pointless existence, the fear of other people, the fear of myself, the fear of failure, and the fear of regret. Courage to take the stairs, courage to pray gratefully, courage to say difficult words, courage to smile genuinely at strangers, courage to perform my job functions diligently, courage to forgive people who wrong me, courage to make a to-do list and tackle it, courage to make goals and pursue them, courage to fall asleep without the television, courage to drink more water and less coffee, courage to speak words so that others may have courage, and courage to believe I am valued and loved. This is courage rooted in a place where courage is not in short supply. These acts of daily courage start by living, by acting, by doing something challenging. Longfellow, in one of the best pieces of poetry ever written“A Psalm of Life”, said, “Life is real, life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal Dust thou art to dust returnest Was not spoken of the soul” (Please read the whole thing. I’ve linked it here). This is my firm belief. This is my great courage. There is life after this, and there is redemption in this life, and they both are in the Spirit. So, dear reader, here is my challenge for you. Take the stairs in your life. Get rid of that comfortable thing preventing you from taking the next step. Find the things you’ve assembled for comfort or pity and be brave. Practice bravery by being intentional every day. One day you may face something huge, an opportunity or a conversation or a heroic act, and the little steps you took this week will give you the ability to stare it right in the face with more courage and nobility than you could have ever imagined. Start today.
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Dear Reader,
Typically, I avoid referencing you until the end to avoid projection and generalization. My posts are designed for reflection. They help me make sense of the world, and if they help others that’s good too. Today I want to project a little bit because my thoughts are about being a human and not only about being me. This is a letter from my heart to yours, dear reader, about letting things go. I know a portion of the challenges associated with release, with change, with moving past. We release because we want to, we need to, and sometimes because we are forced to. We release things as small and insignificant as a pair of socks and as large and weighty as a child to college, to a spouse, or to the world. I can’t speak to you from experience about the latter, but I have felt the sadness and difficulty of giving things up and submitting to change. In my recent life, baseball ended, school ended, life without adulting ended, and I traded numerous small titles and roles for a few large ones. Massive upheaval in my daily schedule and responsibilities ensued and the sheer force of change was more than my emotional intelligence could handle. I’ve come to realize an aversion to change is more natural for me than acceptance. In comparison to things like death of a loved one, loss of a job, war in a country, or economic downturn, my second example still seems small. It is. But human identity is complex. Justifying feelings because our circumstances are not as bad or as good as others won’t lead to a resolution of the void. In my life the absence of baseball left a very real hole. I lost more than a game. I lost social interaction and community, physical exercise, intentional living, mental stimulation, and spiritual reflection. Ignoring the value of the sport in my life only left me more frustrated. The things I lost were evident elsewhere, but baseball carried the brunt of it. Change was imminent, and it found me unprepared. My current efforts in minimalism are designed to help me prepare to accept change. I release things to root out this gnawing human desire to assemble a comfortable and secure hut of junk hoping it will fill me up. Without resisting these desires or creating new ones we end up like a pack rat holing ourselves into a compilation of things that bring supposed comfort. We close ourselves off and live in a secure situation, missing all the beautiful things outside. In addition to things made of matter and atoms we assemble to ourselves feelings of anger, frustration, helplessness, regret, guilt, and bitterness and build a locked house to store them. It is good to feel these things. It is good to be human and know the struggle, the pain, the emptiness, the helplessness. I’m learning to feel the emotion to miss the thing I had or wanted, and then release it. Let it go. Set new intentions and experience the freedom of controlling what is controllable and loosing what is not. There is function, there is beginning, and there is end. Removing things from my life has been complex and emotional. It has induced reflection, recalled pain, and promoted healing. Quite possibly the greatest lesson minimalism has taught me is this: Being human is a sentence. It is finitude. The seasons mark time on our souls as nature submits to the flow and order of birth, death, and regeneration. We will experience sorrow and void and adjustment we will grow and laugh and create and enjoy because it is the sweetness of life to know the beginnings and the ends. “Sorrow may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” The minimalist is prepared to accept change. I inhaled deeply, feeling the seams intentionally with the ends of my index and middle fingers and the sides of my ring and pinky finger. Exhaled fully bringing the shoulders down with the breath and letting the weight fall out of them as the words roll from brain to tongue to heart. “I am a child of God.” Plant the right foot firmly on the right side of the rubber, straighten the hat, and then loosen the body as the right thumb falls over the rest of the baseball and the eyes peer forward for the sign. Week 3 of minimalism has resurfaced questions surrounding value. When I measure the value of items I think about it’s purpose in my life rather than it’s purchase price. If it’s function is not evident, or it’s use is obsolete, it can go. Using this subjective standard of value has proved fruitful. Sifting through the items in my home and pondering macroeconomics and purchasing behavior invoked some vivid memories. Qualitative measurement tools were my primary lens for understanding value until I began my MBA classes. I was introduced to valuation models and informed everything is, or should be, quantifiable. I liked it. There is a standard of measurement and meaning. Quantifying value is one of the difficulties professionals in the field of my undergraduate degree (communication) seek to overcome. For about two years I’ve accepted these ideas of quantifiable value. But going through my things there are numerous items mixed up in my emotions as well as my stuff, and getting rid of them is surgical rather than therapeutic. Factoring sentimental value into minimalism has been as much of a challenge for me as explaining how PR impacts the bottom line. So, by following my train of thought back to the beginning, I’m trying to adjust my mindset instead of forsaking my newfound course of action. My MBA courses started while I was also in my final season of baseball, and it was not going well. Self-imposed pressure to perform and misguided value in my results induced a mental block. Two major issues arose from this mentality. 1. While I was playing I did not handle failure well. 2. When I was finished I was left with an enormous void. Post baseball my marriage and job received the brunt of the pressure I previously placed on the game. But I find when my primary source of value originates from attempts to attain love and happiness from people and things I am prone to despair. For example: if my value comes from being a husband I am limited in the forgiveness I can extend because the foundation of my love is rooted in her opinion of me and my performance. But, I am imperfect and so is my wife. Which leaves me squeezing out the value and stifling the love. Even worse it leads to things like coverup instead of total transparency or surface level devotion in exchange for affirmation. This same mentality plagued my ability as a baseball player. When my sense of value came from my athletic performance, failure equated to feelings of purposelessness, and I let this decimate my courage. Only when I started to take the mound with an attitude of prayer and affirm that my worth was not tied to my performance did I begin to play well. Affirmation came from repeating this statement when I began to be overwhelmed, “I am a child of God.” I firmly believe value is an important element for life as we know it to persist. It tracks utility, quality, scarcity, and other factors to help us understand the world. I’ll continue to work on adopting some sort of system of economic value regarding my active minimalism. For now, I am content to know value without a healing of the soul leaves things valueless. Everything else is soft, everything will fall. My great courage and hope is this; I am loved, and that is enough. As I mold my ideas of material value I must find a way to incorporate my thoughts on personal value into daily living. “Whilst the abstract question occupies your thought; nature brings it in the concrete to be solved by the hands.” Ralph Waldo Emerson. When I am living happily and with open arms of generosity and gratitude, the source is daily practice. Exercise, reading, writing, meditation and affirmation. Affirmation is a key source of value; it’s like stretching for the soul. And, like stretching, it only works when I really feel it. Here is an affirmation I’ve been working on. “I feel, and I am, rich towards God when I let go of my insecurities by daily sitting down to remember forgiveness in my life, compassion towards others, and peace in all things material.” Love the Lord, Love the world, work for nothing. -Wendell Berry So, reader, if you have arrived at this point I hope you can take a shorter route than I did to remembering where true value can be found and where it cannot. When your value is dependent on some external thing you rob that thing of it’s freedom, and subsequently it’s beauty. But when your value is independent of things, they can reveal their authentic loveliness and enrich your life. Write an affirmation, or several, and work them into daily practice in your heart and in your actions. Define value, build value, and remember that you are loved, and that is enough.
Week two of my paradigm shift has been similar to week one. My emotional response to parting with items is lessening. Its been a social week spent primarily out of the house without much excess time to work through my possessions. A list of locations I want to uncover is increasing all the time, and I’m antsy to dive into everything but the books. My first “one for one” trade-out session with clothes occurred, and an upgrade, at no cost, while maintaining the overall size of my wardrobe was a good feeling. I’m excited to continue. A new minimalist revelation came in a brief conversation with my dad on Sunday night as we recapped our weekends. We both went camping in separate locations. I camped with a fan and Dad without. I spent my day relaxing in the water and shade; he spent his hiking and playing outdoor games. I complained about the heat and he remained positive. He didn’t need to say anything reproachful to me, but my reflection on our conversation impacted the way I started Monday—with a heart full of gratitude instead of negativity. I’m grateful to have a father who champions the power of a positive attitude. My father-in-law uttered a similar principle this weekend. “You know what I’ve found? It is true that the key to contentment in life is to pray thankfully”. These are two hard-working and inspirational people—deeply admired in their families and communities for their ability to live with simplicity and kindness. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them. ~JFK Gratitude is a powerful posture—often overlooked. Negative messages cry loud and stay long. Complaining is conversational and vastly easier than examining the quality. But, as I continue my minimalism shift I’m discovering the simplest messages are essential for a thriving life.
As I sort through my life I see how easily I grow accustomed to things and begin to view them as ordinary. Things I once saw as beautiful have become commonplace. The author of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty wrote, “Beautiful things don’t call out for attention.” I’m beginning to agree. Some of the loveliest things in my life take a back seat to the boisterous. Items and tasks bombarding my brain divert my attention from the beauty of a simple, “I love you” from my wife as she climbs into bed and inches close to me to sleep. I forget how grateful I ought to be to have comfortable sheets, how nice it is to feel soft carpet on my bare feet in the morning, how invigorating it is when the refrigerator keeps the clean water cold. I don’t say thank you for the warmth of her cheek when I kiss her goodbye in the morning, and I miss my daily opportunities to be content with the moment. Ralph Waldo Emerson closes his essay Nature with potent rhetoric about detaching from the situation and examining reality with science in one hand and affection in the other. “It will not need, when the mind is prepared for study, to search for objects. The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.” So, reader, here is my encouragement for you and for myself. Examine the everyday good things, the things normalized and overlooked. Take them in as richly as you can with your senses and your emotions and observe them with your knowledge of fact. Absorb the feeling of goodness pulsing through you, and when you have fully experienced the meaning, say thank you. Plant a memory of gratitude in your mind and let it alter your speech and your actions for the day. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” |
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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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