Fundamentals if you want change:

Focus on your responses, reactions, attitudes, and thoughts, in all of your many spheres of influence. Do this before you attempt to escape responsibility for your contribution to whatever dilemmas you face by aiming your energies and focussing on what others may or may not be doing or thinking. It all begins with you, for you. It all begins with me, for me. If and when we, you and I, become experts in our own behaviors and attitudes and reactions we will no longer need to worry about what others are doing or not doing. This is an essential shift for all who no longer want to be victims or regard themselves as victims. Victim living multiplies victims. 

Unearth within you your list of unresolved grievances, the things that happened to you that you cannot, or choose not, to forgive. I do not believe that forgiveness is easy or always possible. I do know that it is a remarkably freeing moment – and there can be many continuous moments – when decisions are made to forgive. This does not mean you have to be friends with someone who has hurt you or deceived you but it does mean you have found your peace in spite of what may have happened to you. Forgiving primarily benefits the forgiver, not the forgiven.

Taking charge of your own behavior 

If you know your mother or father of advanced age longs for your calls or your texts or your visits and you are an adult, make a decision to meet your parents’ needs as best as you are able. Define to your parents how often you are likely to call or text or drop in so your parents are not anxiously awaiting contact with you and then keep your word as best as you are able. This is how responsible and loving adults behave.

If you know your drinking and driving increases the anxiety in your family and you are an adult, then it is time to grow up and do the right thing. Why would you knowingly cause the people you love the most and who love you to be anxious? Find ways to enjoy yourself without endangering others and yourself. This is how responsible adults behave.

If you know your foul language and your angry explosive temper and the rage you display in public places or while you are watching your children play sport embarrasses your children then get some help with your anger issues. This is how responsible adults behave. They reduce the negative impact of their own behavior as much as possible because that is the loving thing to do.

On a personal note

I wrote yesterday’s column from the luxury of a friend’s condominium in Somerset West, Western Cape, and headed to the airport. Now, I am soaking in the quietness of Dulles International Airport  – the airport featured in an early Die Hard movie – before it bursts into its normal frenzy of rushing passengers, blaring announcements, and all that comes with one of the busiest airports in the world.

But, all is good.  

It was no cakewalk getting here. The 6 hour haul from Cape Town to Addis Ababa was long but easy. Passengers headed to Washington were whisked off the landed flight and boarded immediately for the sixteen hour flight to Washington DC. I thought it was an error when the in-flight information screen listed Dublin and soon discovered it’s a refuel and crew-switch stop before the 777 heads across the Atlantic. 

But, all is good. 

Here is what really warms me and makes it all good: while I was boarding in Cape Town, my son Thulani, texted that he was about to leave London Heathrow for Chicago after a well-deserved vacation. I heard too that Nate, my younger son, landed and started a fulltime job after his extensive knee surgery following a horrible sports injury.

Odd, I know, even travel challenges feel good when family news is encouraging.

The woman who checked me into South Africa at passport control in Cape Town last week could not have been warmer or more welcoming. Seeing in my US passport that I was born in Durban she added, as she stamped my passport, “Welcome home.” I was really tired and probably somewhat emotional but her welcome touched me very deeply, especially as I juxtaposed it with many harsh, confrontational experiences I’ve endured in several other countries including harsh encounters I have occasionally known on return to the USA.

I have spent a huge percentage of my free time at a bank. This is in an effort to update my checking account opened over 50 years ago. The complexities of living in the USA, generating a limited income in South Africa, and trying to be fully accountable to SARS, can result in mountains of bureaucracy and processes almost impossible to successfully complete from a distant country. I have known nothing but kindness and cooperation from men and women at The Standard in Worcester.

These experiences are isolated and perhaps insignificant. To me, they speak of goodwill and hope. They transform what can be cold and impersonal exchanges into humane memorable events.

Healthy retorts to unhealthy prompts. These are not direct quotations. They encapsulate what I have heard from healthy people:

• No, I do not feel as anxious as you do about this – it’s not helpful if we are both immobilized. (Wife to husband over a business failure.)
• This is a conversation it seems you need to have without me – your adult sons and daughters want time alone with you. I understand completely. (Man to his wife in a second marriage.)
• Your accomplishments at school are yours. When you are doing well I will not take the credit. When you are doing poorly I will not feel as if I am to blame. You already have everything you need (from me) to be a superior student. What do you need to change about your work habits? Start there. No, I will not speak to your teacher. You are perfectly capable of doing that for yourself. Your teacher is not responsible for your performance – you are. (Parent to son of 15.)
• I am very uncomfortable speaking about people who are not present unless you are full of praise for them. Gossip is not at all good for friendships. (Friend to friend.)

Free gifts we can give to everyone we encounter – intimate or casual:

We can give each other room to move, freedom, space, permission to be different, and separate. No permission is required given that all people are already free. It seems some do not know it or believe it.

We can offer each other a positive attitude, a can-do spirit, an approach to problems and requests with a cooperative, and creative drive. We have all had the draining experience of legitimate requests meeting unnecessary resistance.

We can give each other the benefit of the doubt, the stance that assumes no malice when things don’t run according to plan. An air of suspicion can kill any relationship, casual or intimate.

We can offer each other a listening ear before leaping to conclusions. It’s discouraging to talk to someone who is not listening or who has decided he or she already knows what you want to say.

We can offer each other hospitality, a welcome, an attitude that says “you are welcome in my life and I am glad you are here.”

We can offer each other genuine respect, validation, empathy and challenge. Subtle forms of rejection or superiority or condescension are easy to detect and deny any welcome we may try to pretend.

You may have noticed that when you are fearful and anxious – I am not referring to situational fear and anxiety that subsides the minute an immediate threat disappears – but to fearfulness and anxiety as a way of life, you probably don’t make the best decisions.

These emotions run deep. They color our world. They pervert perceptions. 

Fear disturbs sleep. Anxiety distances us from the people we most love. Together they can drive us to erratic behaviors and lead to harmful decisions. 

Fear and anxiety trigger fight or flight responses as a way of life and be so entrenched in our psyches we think it is just the way we are. 

It is not.

It doesn’t have to be.    

Listening, really listening, listening to one’s own life is a necessary skill and an art that can be learned and practiced. It can become one of our greatest gifts we are able to offer others. 

It takes time, discipline, commitment and it possesses the power to reduce anxiety and fearfulness within ourselves and others. 

Sit with your anxiety and fear. 

Using a pencil and paper chart as much as you are able. 

Write the truth about your fears and the origin of your anxieties as you are able and you may achieve some distance, objectivity, even some freedom. 

I know it works. 

I have used the technique for years and seen it set many clients free.

My nephew sent me a whatsapp message in the middle of the night this weekend to tell me Bobby Chalmers died. 

Jenny, my sister and I, here in the USA, knew it was coming.

For the last decade or so Jenny, through mutual friends, has built a deep friendship and so she was getting daily updates on Bobby’s condition.

I “knew” him as a soccer star, from the grandstand of Kingsmead. 

Even now, I could tell you the details of some of the finest goals I have ever seen and most of them involved Bobby. 

Long before I met Bobby through my sister, I knew I’d be in Durban for a week or two and I’d be delivering public lectures and so I published a column challenging two of my soccer heroes to attend.

I asked Bobby Chalmers and Durban City goal keeper George Wooten to extend grace to me and show up for a lunch meeting at The Durban Country Club.

They did.

They arrived together and honored my request.

This was a very powerful moment for me as a man and as a writer. Two of my many heroes were showing up for me because I asked them to.

Thank you, Bobby, you gave hundreds of thousands of soccer fans tremendous joy for many years and may you now know incredible Peace.

My nephew sent me a whatsapp message in the middle of the night this weekend to tell me the South African soccer icon Bobby Chalmers died.

Jenny, my sister and I, here in the USA, knew it was coming.

For the last decade or so, Jenny, has through mutual friends, built a deep friendship and so she was getting daily updates on Bobby’s condition.

I “knew” him as a soccer star, from the grandstand of Kingsmead.

Even now, I could tell you the details of some of the finest goals I have ever seen and most of them involved Bobby.

Long before I met Bobby through my sister, I knew I’d be in Durban for a week or two and I’d be delivering public lectures and so I published a column challenging two of my soccer heroes to attend.

I asked Bobby Chalmers and Durban City goal keeper George Wooten to extend grace to me and show up for a lunch meeting at The Durban Country Club.

They did.

They arrived together and honored my request.

This was a very powerful moment for me as a man and as a writer. Two of my many heroes were showing up for me because I asked them to.

Thank you, Bobby, you gave hundreds of thousands of soccer fans tremendous joy for many years and may you now know incredible Peace.