When the unexpected occurs, things you’d prefer to avoid; self-, other-, or life-inflicted, take a minute or an hour or a month if necessary to:

• Remind yourself that life itself has spent a lifetime preparing you for this. You’ve run versions of this track before. You have what it takes. You are probably stronger, more resilient than you may feel most of the time. No one is strong all the time. It’s rare to be weak all the time. Courage ebbs and flows.
• You’ve had a lot of practice facing adversity and all of the opportunities were rehearsals for the next one. You’re more skilled, self-aware, experienced than you’ve ever been. A little distance, a lot of patience, a load of listening, a truckload of grace for yourself and others will get you through this. Take time to replenish supplies of goodness and grace.
• You’re not who you were, you’re not who you will be, you will emerge with new learnings, renewed, replenished grace. Give yourself room to receive divine grace and you’ll be unrecognizable to others and yourself. Everything can be faced without returning evil for evil, wishing ill on another, and without carrying a sense of entitlement or a desire for revenge. Peace is possible, no matter what or who you face.

I know it’s hard to believe but in March 2022 I will have been published each weekday in your newspaper for 21 years. To date I have written 7500 columns for The Mercury. There have been a handful of times when I have been traveling or out of WiFi range that very kind editors have re-published a column but, in the main, you have become part of my daily routine and I have loved it.

I especially appreciate readers who have followed my work from the beginning. Some readers have created scrapbooks of my columns and, while I am flattered, you indeed have more of my work collected than I do. The absolute truth is that this daily exercise in writing about relationships, mental health, emotional wellness has kept me growing (hopefully) and relatively sane (hopefully).

I know I am repeating an old theme but this column may indeed have helped you or inspired you but I am my first reader. The issues I write about are the ones I am seeing face-to-face in clients and meeting face-to-face within my own journey. Thank you for your faithfulness.

I am planning (tentatively, cautiously) a trip to KZN in March, 2022. Let’s get to scheduling.

An invitation to a deeper life

Let’s throw off our deliberate self-assuredness, our certainty and pride and embrace a little ambiguity. Let’s cast aside pride, the apparent lack of need to question our own fallibility, striding through life as if we alone are infallible. Our brazenness, hardness of heart, determination to pursue wealth, are getting in our way and we appear to be none the wiser about what it is doing to the core of who and what we are. 

Do you, do I, not know there are no self-made men and women? We are a product of magnificent grace no matter who you are, no matter who I am, no matter what our roots. Yet, there are days we live as if we could not possibly be wrong, or need to learn anything, or could benefit from evaluating something from a new or different angle. 

Let’s not fail to honor others and therefore live as if it ourselves alone who deserve all honor. Let’s not fail to listen to others and therefore live as if we ourselves are the only ones with something to say. Let’s not fail to observe and therefore live as if we have seen it all and stride as if the world and others have little or nothing to teach or to show us. 

You will hear “there are two sides to every story” when people face interpersonal conflicts. I would like to suggest that there are usually about 7 sides – maybe more – and at least three or four layers to every story. People and relationships and people in relationships are simply not that simple. We are not jigsaw pieces in search of our perfect fit place in a puzzle.

Human entanglements are complex. Each of us brings to every relationship a complex history, a network of failures and successes, a compendium of both declared and undeclared, known and unknown dreams and expectations. We have needs and drives and hopes of which we ourselves may be unaware.

“I have found my soul-mate,” or “finally I have what I want in a relationship” are wonderful declarations. We celebrate when they occur. When such meetings occur and flourish there’s a lot more at play than pretty eyes or instant compatibility or his or her stability. How we get entangled, become involved, respond to our attractions, commit to friendships, give our word, enter into levels of deeper and deeper intimacy is as complex as it is exciting and invigorating. How we try to get untangled or unattached when relationships derail is just as complex and extraordinarily painful and much more a two-sided story.

It’s taking me a little time to get used to the idea that both my sons are now fully employed and earning their own money. 

I love it. 

For years I have told them they can live with me but I will not allow them to live off me and it seems, thus far at least, that trying to live off me will not be a problem.

I’m just not used to this new arrangement. 

This is the first time in about 20 years I have not had to rush out and get school supplies for a project or go to the school to sign some form one of them forgot in his locker. It’s the first time in years I am not trying to sell team T-shirts to raise funds for soccer or basketball travel costs. 

I could go on and on. 

The real transition is deeper. It’s deeper than escaping the repetitive tasks of running my own life and the lives of two growing boys. It is the mutual realization that we are now fellow adults sharing life and I just happen to also be their dad. I intentionally hold back on offering guidance, I encourage them to save as much money as possible, and there are whole volumes of their lives I steer clear of. 

It works.

Mostly.     

When it comes to mental health and emotional wellness I like combinations, especially if they are paradoxes. I can work with them. They challenge me, offer me goals toward which I can work.

For instance, an emotionally healthy person is both intimate and autonomous. He or she has to have both and, at its best, in equal share. These two states, at first glance seem mutually exclusive, but they are essential wheels on the same bicycle. Unless I can be me without you (autonomy) I will not be too good at being us (intimacy) or me with you.

The less healthy person usually becomes so invested in the “us” that the “me” gets abandoned in the name of love. This is when one person in the twosome – the higher-functioning one – will whisper to close friends, “I just need a little space; a little room to move.”

Naturally, it is as unhelpful when it goes the other way too, meaning the “me” is so strong and independent that there is hardly a semblance of “us.” Careers can so fully consume a couple that the “us” of the couple is left in the dust until there is no semblance of togetherness at all.

Another combination I love is that of Ambition and Humility – and within this combination is the essence of true leadership – and the essence of Jesus’ Leadership style.

Keep in mind the loose criteria for an addiction. 

It may help you to avoid some considerable pain and expense.

If it, whatever it is, alcohol, gambling, drugs, sexual activity, has caused you to lose your job, it is an addiction. If it has caused you to lose status in a community, lose face among people whom you value, it is an addiction. Seek help. 

If it, whatever it is, has caused you to lose an important relationship, it is an addiction. Even if it threatens your most important relationships and none has been lost, it’s an addiction. Get the help you may not think you need. 

If abstaining from it, whatever it is, causes you physical symptoms like cravings, headaches, bad moods, irrational behaviors, it is an addiction. This activity or substance is driving you and you are no longer in control of your own life. Get the help you need. 

If any of the above is true and present in your life, it’s likely that your life is slowly (or rapidly) spinning out of control. This it, whatever it is, is bigger than you, it’s in the driver seat of your life, no matter how much you think differently.

Humble yourself before life does it for you and get the help you probably don’t think you need. 

I loved it when I heard a British Naval cruiser or aircraft carrier had docked in Durban Harbour. 

I’d hear that The HMS Eagle – that’s one I remember – was at T-Jetty and I knew my dad would take me down to “the docks.” 

We’d be waved through the security booms, park the car, walk along the side of the ship until dad caught the attention of sailors peering down at us.

“Can take four,” dad would yell, “make it five.” 

Within a short while 6 or 7 sailors would come off the ship and make their way over to us and we’d all squeeze into the car and the sailors would stay at our home until they had to report back and head for England.

As a young child it felt like dad and I were doing the Queen of England a favor. 

We were giving her dedicated sailors a break while they visited Durban. 

While the visits were brief, just a few days at a time, they were many. British war ships docked often.  

I knew dad was offering radical hospitality to men he considered brothers having himself served on the HMS Dorsetshire and having survived her sinking.

Yesterday I wrote about being “crystal clear and forthright about expectations in all areas of your life” to limit the amount of “having to clear things up later.” 

Most of us have been in situations where we find ourselves saying, “I should have spoken up.”

I have tended to avoid certain areas of conversation in the belief that I won’t get what I want if I’m seen as overly demanding. What I see in retrospect is that people value “upfrontness.”

I have recently had to interview a list of potential employees for a particular role and had several highly qualified candidates.

One person stood out.

She had done an amazing amount of research and could show me how much the job was worth and why she was probably ahead of all the candidates who applied.

Not only that, when I made her an offer she came back to me to talk about the culture of our organization and how I perceived she may or may not fit in.

The interview process revealed what it would be like to work closely with her.

Three years later I confess she was an excellent hire.

Her forthrightness has paid off for her and for our organization.

Hard earned lessons I’m trying to learn and teach:

When push comes to shove all you have is your word and your integrity. Treasure both. Sadly you will discover that some people are not as committed to honesty and integrity as they may declare and you may think. Everything has a price and for some even their honesty and integrity has a price tag.

Try to be crystal clear and forthright about expectations in all areas of your life. The more you leave to trust and to chance the more potential you will face in having to clear things up later. Remember, we all teach others how to treat us.

Don’t begin or dabble or test out behaviors and potential habits others are trying to stop. Surely this is one way we can learn from others. If seeing the pain an addict experiences trying to get his or her life back together after years of addiction doesn’t teach you, what will teach or show you? Learn from others, even their pain, actually, especially their pain.

Acknowledge that you are as prone to error and to lapses and to your own weaknesses as any person. You will never meet the day when you yourself are not vulnerable to common human failings and frailties. Embrace necessary, appropriate humility.