Speaking of Kindness

In my last post, I mentioned my weakness of character when it comes to kindness to others in day to day interactions. I consider myself fairly loving, and go-the-extra-mile when it comes to BIG stuff (ie. crisis, need a friend to talk, need help moving, etc.), but I tend to be blunt and borderline rude in normal conversations... even with my friends (I'm probably being too generous to myself here by including the word borderline). This shortcoming is made painfully clear at many funerals that I attend when people share their thoughts of the person who has passed away: "He was always so nice to everybody." or "He never let anything bother him." or "He always greeted me with a big hug and smile."

Yeah. Well. I'm pretty much the exact opposite of those.

Today, I read in the Reader's Digest this quote:

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." ~ Maya Angelou

The winds of change are a blowin'. Just you wait and see.

TrueLife

"I wish I could be as honest as you; but my family might not like it."
~ Anonymous, 2006

My first response, "What does your family liking it have to do with the matter? Do you want them to like YOU, or false projection that you give them of who you think you should be? How sad if you content yourself with the latter. And let us suppose that an honest self assessment is given. Suppose you don't like what you see. Then you must lie to yourself too. Is honesty to be sacrificed so easily? To what end?"

Set aside thirty minutes to read the rest, then click here!I am reminded of a great term I read about in "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by David Burns (an AWESOME book by the way). In his book, Burns talks about a trap that is easy to fall in to: living the Should-y Life. (Say it out loud. The Should-y Life. Enjoy how similar the word 'Should-y' sounds to something else.)

So what is the Should-y Life?

"I should provide for my household financially." Seems like an innocent statement, doesn't it? But let me tell you how much I loathe the word 'should'. How it can so easily and invisibly become a torturous burden, too heavy for a person to bare! A man is working 50 or 60hrs per week. He handles the bills at home 'to keep his wife's mind at ease'. In reality, he masks and distorts all things related to finances to try to keep his wife in the dark about the fact that they are not making ends meet each month. He lies to himself, assuring himself that its only for a season... he will make it up with overtime next month or next year. He lies to his wife with gifts and nights on the town they can't afford. He lies to his friends when he gambles money that is needed to make payments on his credit cards. He is living the Should-y Life.

Take another example. "I should share all of my sexual energy with my spouse alone." Like the first example, a noble and honorable thing to shoot for. But how quickly the word 'should' serves as both ball and chain to a person who does not meet that reality. A man finds himself habitually masturbating, feeling horrible about it afterwards, and telling nobody ... particularly not his wife. He is wrecked with guilt and shame about it. Before two hours goes by, he forgives himself, reminding himself that he serves a graceful God. He can't tell his wife. It would crush her. And his friends? No. They'd pressure him to confess and step out of ministry or something, right? And probably .. they'd tell him to 'fess up to the wife too. So instead, he moves on, lying to himself. He minimizes the issue. Tells himself that all guys do it and he is actually doing his wife a favor by looking out for her. He knows what she can and can't handle. All the while, his guilt continues, his sex life with his wife is not quite right, and this wife ... this supposed companion and life partner ... is left out of the loop, cutoff from a core, defining portion of her man's soul. Thats the Should-y Life. And I avoid it like the plague.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking doom and gloom here. I'm not saying the first guy is going to go bankrupt and lose the house. And I don't at all mean to suggest that the second guy is going to become a deviant, a sex addict, or a child predator. I'm not saying that AT ALL. I don't buy in to that sort of fear based logic.

I'm saying, come on... what type of life is that to live? Who are we kidding with these type of antics? Me personally? I'd rather be honest and bankrupt or honest and hurting my wife with a masturbation problem than living a lie. A man can survive financial ruin, and marital wounds can heal. But time lost to lies is forever waisted. Maybe that guy's wife is a financial genious waiting for an opportunity. Perhaps the man finds his wife too feels a lack in their sex life and the honesty, though painful, gives them opportunity to discuss together what is and isn't working in their sex life together.

And maybe these two examples don't apply to Anonymous at all. I have no clue. Maybe you are a closet cross dresser. Or a pathological liar. Or maybe its something entirely less 'vile' than these examples. Maybe you are a Doubting Thomas. Maybe you dislike your pastor. Maybe you are sick of how your spouse talks to you. Maybe you hate your job. Maybe you wish you could just speak your mind openly to your friends who have entirely different views on social issues than you do. I have no clue. But ... life is too short. I say let it all hang out.

Its better to have love and lost than to never have loved at all.

Its better to have run the race, fallen flat on your chest, broke a bone, skinned a knee ... even have gone to the Emergency Room ... hell, even to have DIED RUNNING ... than to never have run at all. And I mean that. I really do.

How much better would it be for our pretend friend in financial crisis here to say to himself first, and then to others, "I want to financially provide for my family. I am working as hard as I know how to. We are not making ends meet. We haven't for a long time. I want something to change." Not exactly date night conversation. But God, how liberating it is to talk that way! Maybe he still ends in financial ruin. Maybe his wife leaves him (if that were the cause, maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing!). Maybe he recovers. Who knows? Either way, thats the way I want to roll. Good or bad. Straight up. Honest. Let the chips fall where they may.

For our second friend who struggles with his sex life ... what if he said to himself and then to others, "I want to share my sexually exclusively with my wife. Despite all my efforts to do so, thusfar all I've done is lie to her and myself by doing things behind her back that I don't feel comfortable with. I know what I'm doing is hurting myself and my wife, is not fulfilling to either of us. I want more than this and I believe that sharing in life's struggles is really, at the core, what my wife and I agreed to do together when we became married." Oh yeah baby. Now we are talking. That, my Anonymous friend, is LIVING. No promises of good times in the sack when you bust out with that sort of conversation. But how in the world will you expect progress when the problem is hidden?!

Let me speak to you now from personal experience as a long time porn addict. When I look back to my 10yr+ hidden stint with porn, it makes me sick. It really does. And, suprisingly to some, its not because I shouldn't have been looking at porn. Nope. Instead, when I look back at the heights and depths that I went to to keep my true self from being known to all the dynamic, loving, wonderful people in my life, I am sick to my stomach thinking of all the TrueLife moments that I robbed from them. I am sick to my stomach thinking of the TrueLife moments I myself missed. And let me be clear. I don't want you to think I'm talking about 'all the good times I would have had if only I would have been honest' sort of thing. No. I would still have had a tough go of things. Perhaps I would have continued looking at porn and struggled alongside some other people to rid myself of the habit. Maybe it would have caused a rift in my marriage for a time. Maybe I wouldn't have had the positions in ministry that I did if I was more honest. Heck, for all I know, maybe it would have gotten WORSE before it got better. All of these things would have been difficult. But none of that is the point at all! ... grrr... I almost feel at a loss for words here.

Ah... here it is:

First of all, you can't hope for any sort of solution or progress if the problem itself is hidden.

Secondly, take progress entirely out of the picture for a moment. For if that is your only goal, it will eventually become too easy to sacrifice truth at the altar of efficiency, ie. "I won't tell my wife about my problem because it will hurt my marriage.' (I say, what sort of marraige is that anyway?) ... I've found that pain that is true and honest actually feels good compared to safety and comfort gained by fraud. I bet any recovering addict or liar can tell you that. There is something that is just so stinking RIGHT about feeling the pain that is real and true after you've been running and hiding from it for so long.


What else should I say here? Two last items: 1) Why explore truth so completely? and 2) What advice would I give to one that might want to embark towards TrueLife having been holed up in the Should-y Life for so long?

1) Why 'go there'?

I mentioned before that I wonder if the events of September 11th where not a large contributing force in my hidden porn confession. So many people's lives cut short so quickly and randomly. A janitor, a contractor, an executive. I remember picturing a head honcho for some investment firm up in the towers trapped in the building with the receptionist he had an affair with. His wife and kids at home ... He thought of his family and how their relationship was based almost entirely on lies. And this woman, the receptionist ... all they did was medicate themselves, he sexually, her romantically, in a relationsihp that both knew was doomed from the start. And so they jumped together. In tears. And that was that. That day was the end date on their tombstone. No retakes. No "I'll do better next time"'s. No mas. ... I thought of myself, found in a car wreck. Dead. Skelatons in my closet. My wife finding porn on the computer and coming to the knowledge that I had lied to her our entire relationship. Ugh. Still makes me sick to my stomach to this day.

The whole church experience I went through also pushed me towards complete honesty ... particulary in the arena of friendships. Deceit, gossip, and slander made a killing at my old church. Sad and sickening. Such rupture between what where once strong friendships, ... and most of it caused by smiles and hugs on the front end, malicious backbiting behind closed doors. Hidden things don't tend to get cleaner and tidier. They stale, mold, and stink. I have yet to be convinced that there is much (if anything) to be gained by cordialities with those you intend to relate to on any important level.

More recently, I went to a funeral and, as I always am at funerals, I was struck with the finality of the dates shown on the program. 19xx - 2006 ... and that was it folks. Can't make up those soccer practices, or missed bedtime readings. Game over. Love them kids now. You, or they, may go at any time.

What do I want to do with my time on Earth? Do I want to relate to people as I should be, or as I am. Do I want my wife to be married to an false image of who I should be, or who I am? Do I want my friends to hang out with me and enjoy the company of who I should be, or who I am? Shall my children know some sort of projection of who I think I should be, or will they know ME?

It became a simple decision once it finally dawned on me. I don't believe that any of us actually wants to relate to a person who is only portraying what they think they ought to be. Not me anyways. I want REAL. Even when it ain't pretty. I want the real you. The whole bit. Give me the complete freakin' enchilada.

I want a hug if you want to give me one. I want you to tell me you think I'm an arrogant jerk with a loud mouth if thats how I'm rubbin' ya that day. Give me a gift if you'd like even if its not my birthday. Call me Judas. Flip me the bird. Blow me a kiss. Thats actual RELATING to one another, ya' know?!

Lets run in to each other a bit, see what comes of it. See where we bloody each other. Come back, apologize for things. Love on each other some. Grow. Learn. Think. Explore.

Enough pretending.


2) Advice for the new TrueLife traveler?

Do not expect an immediately pleasant response from many. There are those that are scared to death by truth at this level. Give them a wide, graceful berth and move on. You will find others who seem to respond to your honesty like a moth to a flame. They will want to explore, and discuss, and question, and probe ... and you can see in their eyes that they long to be free as well ... cherish these conversations.

Prepare yourself for isolation for a time.

Prepare yourself to second guess ever changing course to begin with.

Make no mistake about it. The level of honesty that I strive towards is not really an enjoyable thing for anybody involved. From my experience, I have found fear and defensiveness to be a common immediate reaction to complete honesty. No, pleasure is not guaranteed. I would even go so far as say it is only seldom found when compared to the fraudulent life where you exchange truth for comfort. But when you have paid the price of admission for TrueLife and have found it's pleasure ... let me tell you it is good and true and deep, like nothing found in the Should-y Life. And it is totally worth it.

T W O

1) Great idea over at Thinking Out Loud, a friend's blog. Go check out his recent post and chime in if you are an old (or current) NH'er!

2) I'm playin' Mr. Mom again from 9/22 - 9/26. Just me and the kids. If you want to play, call me. We will be bored. I may be losing my mind. I might desperately need your help. Any time. Day or night. Please.

Another movie night...

I'm gonna' do another movie at my house. All are welcome to come watch a movie called "The Secret". I'm thinking Friday, October 13th around 7:00pmish. I had a great email conversation with somebody recently and he holds to a belief that the power of our imagination is a vastly untapped resource. I was curious enough to buy the DVD. Anybody interested?

A week.

I wonder what a week without analyzing everything would be like. I'm gonna try it. From today on, no more in depth conversations with my wife trying to psychoanalyze each other, ... no more trying to figure out the meaning of life, ... and no more scrutinizing every action I take in life. I'm just gonna' take a big deep breath and live.

Feeling better already.

100 Things About Me

I have finally gotten around to the obligatory '100 Things About Me' post... it was actually kind of fun putting it together.

If you have some time to kill ... Click here to read the list!
Family History:
1) I am the only child conceived by my mother and father.
2) I have an older brother, born of my mother ... adopted by my father.
3) My parents, who had married as newly born again ex-hippies, divorced when I was 4.
4) Both of my parents are passionate, devout Christians.
5) Both of my parents have remarried.
6) I have a younger brother and sister by way of my dad and step-mom.
7) When my mom married my step-dad, I also gained three sisters ... all near my age.
8) My mother is a recovering alcoholic. Sober for 12yrs+. She is a creative, soulful, deeply spiritual, and loving woman. Anybody who knows my mother, knows her to be a cheerfully magnetic, down to earth, genuine person with a survivor's heart. I am proud to be my mother's son.
9) My father is a full time pastor. He is the most truly selfless person I've ever met, a lover of his neighbors, and an unabashed warrior for what he believes to be Right, Good, and True. Anybody who knows my father knows him as a determined optimist, an encourager to the downtrodden, and a man who shoots for the moon. I am proud to be my father's son.

Religious History:
10) I would have never used the label back then, but I now realize that I was a Fundamentalist Christian up until 2005.
11) Nowadays I'm so spiritually confused that I refer to myself as agnostic.
12) The transition was the most difficult time in my life, hands down.
13) My blog was birthed in the process and the theraputic nature of it helped me keep my sanity.


Other stuff you may or may not already know:
14) I was a virgin when I married at the age of 19.
15) I had only two girlfriends before my wife. One of which I never even kissed.
16) Aside from a 8-month stint with my mom in the Pacific Palisades when I was in Junior High, I've never lived outside of my hometown.
17) Sometimes that really bothers me.
18) I sometimes regret not naming my son after myself. At the time, I thought that other people would see it as an arrogant thing to do.
19) My travels outside of the United States include Mexico, The Bahams, and Israel. Exculsively.
20) My wife lets me put everything on my blog with one exception: details of our sex life. So, I started another blog.
21) You will never find that blog. EDIT 9/16/2006: Somebody acted like they found my other blog. For my wife's sake, I took it down.
22) EDIT 9/19/2006: I am really pissed about losing my anonymous sex blog, it was a good outlet for me. I am over it now. Live and learn ...
23) I am calm in the midst of crisis and trouble.
24) I often feel very burdoned when others find no reason to be.
25) I had never been so much as buzzed until my mid-20's when a friend of mine and his wife invited us to stay the night while they housesitted their parents' home. Before then, I had only drank one time in Mexico in attempt to get drunk but for some reason it had no noticable effect. Anyhow, at my friend's parent's house we raided the liquor cabinet and I got wasted. We had a really great time. Like all people should the first time they get drunk, I puked the next morning in the kitchen sink. I'm glad they had a garbage disposal.
26) My true calling in life is to be a counselor and encourager to others.
27) It is difficult to find opportunities to fulfill that calling when most of your days are spent operating a small business in the insurance industry.
28) I played football and volleyball in highschool and enjoyed both tremendously.
29) ... until I started having Grand Mal Seizures for no apparent reason.
30) Those dang seizures really messed up my already hodge podge highschool experience: Took me out of sports. Screwed up my social life (had to be in bed by 10pm while they ran me through various tests and drugs trying to find out what was going on). Made me stop playing guitar. And ended up being one of the main reasons I graduated a full year earlier than scheduled.
31) I've never taken any illegal drugs.
32) If they ever legalize pot (or if I found somebody's stash that they left behind or something), I'd try it.
33) I've always teased my older brother for his hair thinning. Now I don't think its a funny subject at all.
34) Whenever my crazy eyebrow grows back, I look in the mirror and see my grandpa and my dad looking at me in the mirror ... and I smile.
35) I believe life is too short not to laugh, dance, love, and risk.
36) I believe safety can be a sort of death.
37) I didn't come up with that last one myself. I read it somewhere, ... but can't remember where at the moment.
38) I hit my personal income goal nearly four years ago. It was the same financial goal my dad once told me that he had always aimed for.
39) I don't feel as rich as I imagined I making that kind of money but I don't really have a need or desire to work longer or harder for more.
40) Between work and leisure, I spend more time with electronics than I do with my children.
41) I'm not proud about it, but its true.
42) Aside from what the Bible says about the subject, I've never been all that bothered by homosexuality.
43) I have more than one relative who has come out of the closet.
44) The older I get, the less convinced I am that any of us act as freely as we think we do.
45) I cannot stand subversiveness.
46) Thats probably part of the reason I feel so guilty that I laugh so hard when I see this.
47) I have a compulsive need to respond to all emails that I receive immediately. It is very very rare that a new email, even about a trivial subject, goes unreplied to for more than twelve hours.
48) If it wasn't for Addictive, I wouldn't have no Personality at all.
49) All of my blog entries are written and posted with not more than one or two quick read throughs to make sure they easy to read and understand (except the expansive Chapter 7).
50) I hope in the depths of my soul that a merciful, all powerful, good God is in control of all of this mess.
51) I love to eat mashed potatoes, asian food of all types (except Korean), and popcorn with way too much butter and salt on it. But not in one sitting.
52) Sometimes I wish I didn't take life so seriously.
53) Other times I'm enraged that others don't take things as seriously as I do.
54) I guess that makes me human.
55) At least, a tormented quasi-schizophrenic human.
56) Now... what was I talking about? Oh yes. I remember...
57) Admittedly stolen from Buckhorn Road's 100 Things About Me: My wife is one of those women who doesn’t need makeup to look beautiful.
58) Despite my efforts to control the habit, all of my writing is littered with '...'s.
59) The part of my business that I take the most pride in is keeping my paycheck out of the equation when giving advice.
60) My absolute favorite movie EVER is The Naked Gun.
61) I love it so much I can ALMOST forget that one of its stars, OJ Simpson, murdered two people, everybody knows it, he walks free, and many African Americans celebrate that fact.
62) I love it so much I can ALMOST keep my currently broken relationship with a life long friend from popping in my memory despite the fact that we were The Naked Gun junkies together as little kids. We memorize nearly every line in that damned movie.
63) Who brought all that crap up anyway? ... Damn that schizophrenia. ... and those '...'s!
64) The number one reason I am a sober minded, dour, sometimes depressed person is that I can't keep weighty and difficult questions and issues from popping in to my head.
65) I've recently discovered that alcohol can help with that.
66) I don't really know why, but I've always wanted to visit the motherland of my grandparents on my father's side: Praque, Czech Republic. I don't speak the language, know little to none of the history or culture, and know nobody there. And yet, I want to go.
67) My problem with seizures made some parts of my life grow that I frequently criticize myself for: I sleep ten hours a day, don't play sports as much as I'd like to, and instead find competitive release through cards, video games, and intellectual musing.
68) When I am in a Miroslav-bashing depressive mood, I think the seizures are just an excuse for all those things ...
69) ... but deep inside I know they aren't.
70) I've never been very happy with my wardrobe. Thanks to my wife, it has definately gotten better over the years, but there are times I look with envy at all the metrosexuals walking around town looking so dang good. Its like they just stepped out of a magazine or something.
71) I know I'm way too comfortable with my physical appearance to ever be a metrosexual (... not that there is anything wrong with that).
72) Many times when I meet new people, they assume I'm The Man. And I don't mean that in a good way. I mean it in the keep-the-black-man-down sort of way.
73) Every person I've ever asked to share with me their first impression they had of me said the same thing: ARROGANT.
74) Ouch.
75) Every one of those same people also immediately said that now that they know me, they realize its not at all true.
76) Or perhaps they were just stroking my ego.
77) Those same people also informed me that many who don't know me well are put off by my sense of humor because it is so dry.
78) But now that they know me, they get it. And like it.
79) I'm having a hard time coming up with this list, ... particularly because of #49.
80) People who feel entiteled to everything really make me disgusted and angry.
81) Sometimes I don't know how to just BE.
82) The first girl I kissed would have slept with me the same night. We had opportunity, she offered, I declined.
83) You don't know her.
84) I don't even remember her name to be honest.
85) No, I didn't make her up.
86) I was great with math until my seizures. Now, I can hardly draw a triangle without my brain tweaking out. Stuff like that really frustrates me.
87) I am right handed.
88) I cannot ride a skateboard AT ALL. If I had to use one to travel a mile, I'd end up in a hospital. No joke.
89) One likely contributing factor to my inability to ride a skateboard is that I have a massive cranium. "Head! Down!"
90) I inherited that trait from my dad, and he from his.
91) My poor son ... he didn't escape the curse.
92) I'm sick of "I don't know" being the answer to serious questions about the world, humanity, and God.
93) I spent far too much time as a young kid pouring through The Joy of Sex.
94) I do this odd habitual thing when I'm reading stuff on the internet. I click and drag repeatedly, highlighting and de-highlighting random paragraphs and text. If you ever sit down with me while I'm in front of a computer, you will see it. There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to it. I didn't even know that I was doing it until somebody pointed it out to me recently.
95) For ten years, I was a closet porn addict. Looking back, I realize that the vast majority of the damage done in my life wasn't actually done by the porn. It was from the lies I told to myself and others to try to keep my secret.
96) Because of that, I now find myself preferring the pain of complete truth to the false comfort of secret thoughts and desires.
97) When I'm in a social situation, my blunt speech makes people very cautious and uncomfortable at first.
98) Eventually, they either are drawn to the transparency and vulnerability and join in like manner leading to a refreshingly frank conversation ... or they can't stand it and distance themselves.
99) Either way is totally cool with me.
100) I am really tired and need to go get my ten hours of sleep. Goodnight.

Ricknauth Jaggernauth

I never met Ricknauth Jaggernauth. Had our paths in life crossed, we may have shared no more than a casual hello. He was a working man. A man's man. Worked with his hands. Enjoyed cold beers. Ricknauth was a Hindu. He was from a far off land. A country I couldn't point out on a map. Not even if you narrowed it down to the continent.

From Legacy.com:

"Every day when he came home to Brooklyn from his construction job, he would grab a beer and sit in his front yard, and play with his grandchildren and other neighborhood children until it was time for dinner. "My father was a happy, loving, giving man," said his daughter Anita, 31. "He loved to talk to young people about their lives and about how important it was to get a good education."

He would have only one or two beers, but his wife, Joyce, teased him and called him "drunkie grandpa," a nickname the children used for him. He came here from Guyana 19 years ago, and worked for a company that was renovating offices in the World Trade Center.

The day it was attacked, they were working on the 104th floor of the first tower.

Mr. Jaggernauth, 58, planned to retire in two years and wanted to visit his homeland. He had five children and three grandchildren, and all lived together in the family's two-story house on Pennsylvania Avenue. His daughter said that if his body is recovered, the family will have a traditional Hindu funeral for him. "It's what he did for his own mother," she said. "

Ricknauth died tragically on September 11th, 2001. Today, I commemorate this man's life and death. Hats off to Ricknauth and his loved ones.

A prayer of mercy and grace for us all.

Feel free to leave a kind remark for Ricknauth's family
at his Legacy.com guestbook.

Lessons from the checkout line

The magazines all lined up so pretty like ... what do they tell me?

Skin Deep Pockets
1) We like beautiful people.
2) We like rich and successful people.
3) It is in that order...
4) Nice, kind, generous, and spiritual people don't get much props. They are more like a novelty item to keep it fresh.
5) We are fascinated with beautiful and rich people's lives, even though their life experience mirrors our own in most ways. They have babies, get married, get divorced, get fat, get thin, and die ... just like us.

Fat Momma'
1) We are convinvced that somewhere out there, waiting to be discovered, is some secret method (besides diet and excercise)to lose weight and bolster our health.
2) Ok. We aren't convinved of it. But we sure are gullible hoping there is an easier way.

A little to the left?
1) Our sex life leaves us wanting, and we think we are alone. "Honey, ... that missing piece to sexual fulfillment has been discovered! Look! ... The Top 10 Sex Tips to Drive Your Man Crazy! Maybe the last eighy articles they wrote on sex left something out!"


And strangely, while we pay money to see their films, buy magazines telling their stories, and buy products to make us look like them... we hate ourselves for doing so. And deeper still, inside our hearts we resent those skinny, skulpted, tanned, suposedly sexually-adept, beautiful people.

Why?

Immigration Solution

While at the park today with some family, we saw a pro-illegal immigration rally. Apparently, we are not going to stop them from coming and we aren't going to send them back. And really, when you stop and think about the circumstances, how could we (both morally and practically)? This is the best opportunity for freedom, health, and escape from poverty that many of these people have. So how about we start thinking a little out of the box. My solution?

Indentured Servant Citizenship

Why not?