I am sometimes asked why I write about 200 words a day for a growing audience both in hard-copy newspapers and on the web.I will tell you 5 reasons:

Reason # 1. I get a high, a thrill, call it what you will, when I know someone has read my column and made the decision to live more meaningfully, more determinedly, more powerfully. I know things often work in tandem, and sometimes the column is a necessary catalyst to get someone out of a pointless orbit and into something more rewarding and purposeful. The fact that I hardly ever know the person (sometimes I do) or even what country he or she is in makes it even more rewarding for me.

Reason # 2. It’s a little tiresome for me to hear strong talk about sin as smoking or drinking or sex before marriage (I’ve worked in church circles a lot) – when the real sin, in my mind (without appearing to endorse any “traditional” sin) is the failure to fully live, to fully use ones skills and talents, to live at half or even quarter potential. If a handful of readers move towards greater effectiveness as a direct or indirect result of anything I have written I will count the daily joy worth every minute. (Reason 2 sounds a lot like Reason 1 — aah, a theme!)

Reason # 3. I grew up reading The Mercury – a South African morning newspaper – and my favorite section was The Idler. It captured my boyhood imagination that one person could “talk” to so many people every day for years and I wanted to do the same. After a brief visit in 2000 with the then editor, Dennis Pather, I was in. “You and Me” has been published every weekday since, usually in the top right-hand corner of the op-ed page and on opposite ends of spread where The Idler still appears.

Reason # 4. I LOVE Family Systems Theory and know that its application to any issue, in any culture, will bring desired reasonable change directly proportional to the willingness of the person or family to “stay” with the change they wish to see occur.

Reason # 5. I have and have always had an almost insatiable desire to communicate. Even if I am in an airport terminal (or on a bus or in a waiting room) I want to call a meeting. I want to challenge people to get to know each other, I want to get people motivated to “do” something. The web, a column, and an audience is perfect for me to express my inner desire to reach out and communicate. It’s not about money or reward – it’s about the desire to influence and to be connected.

The Mercury / Monday (getting it in early….!)

Buck-stop analysis – note to self and any who are willing to grow (up)…..

• I am the one common factor in all of my relationships be they personal, intimate, professional, or casual. If things are not proceeding as planned or desired I will take a good hard look at my role in whatever is happening.

• I cannot afford to be a by-stander when it comes to my own life. If I am passive and adopt a whatever-will-be-will-be attitude to others and to circumstances I cannot legitimately complain if I feel like a victim and others treat me as one.

• How I respond to what happens to me is often vastly more important than what happens to me. While I will count my losses and grieve when necessary, I will re-assess, learn from my errors and from others, and move on as efficiently as possible. Scar-counting and bruise-nursing and poor-me droning has a limited shelf-life and is exhausting to endure and for others to witness.

• Reinvention is possible. Many have achieved it in the past and many will do it in the future. If I am so-called “stuck” a little courage, sufficient desire, and enough clean pain, will probably be enough to launch a few healthy and new beginnings.

• If my gains (financial, status, or whatever) diminish or demean others I must desist and repent. 

[On a personal note: I will be in Lausanne this week….if you’re around, drop in.]

Things new and authentic leaders are really good at: 

• Joining a community. Taking time to listen to what the community is and is not saying before acting. This can take weeks or months or even years – especially in churches or schools.

• Holding onto his self or her self (I have used two separate words intentionally) when there exists the potential or the presence for unexpected challenge or conflict. Every community will test a new leader in a manner similar to how children will test a new teacher.

• Apologizing when it is necessary and doing so as close to the event as possible and in the presence of the group or the team the precipitating event or problem occurred.

• Refusing to be delayed, derailed, or debilitated by innocent errors.

• Visiting the research or looking for the principles or outlining the standards or the expectations as a base for taking action or determining policy or making or acting on decisions. The authentic leader finds what’s already written rather than acts on a whim or gut response.

• Collaboration with a variety of necessary key players in order to have the organization be community-driven or led rather than driven by select personalities.

• Separating anxious personalities or issues from the humans who are playing temporary hosts.

The Mercury / Thursday 

I was once in London in my very late teens and was taken to a fine restaurant. When the food was served and I unwrapped the baked potato from the foil and the rottenness and blackness of the potato became obvious to me. I covered it with other foods so no one else could see the rotten baked potato and then bit-by-bit and bite-by-bite I ate the entire thing to avoid drawing attention to the food or to myself. 

I was violently ill the next day.

Shame consumed me in that restaurant. 

Shame hid the rotten potato. 

Self-blame silenced me.

I could no more draw attention to the potato than I could have walked on water. I embodied shame for something that happened to me and something I had nothing to do with producing.

The baked rotten potato was not, in my mind, an oversight from a busy kitchen or the result of a lack of attention from a distracted chef. I was getting what I deserved. In polite but pained silence and with the subtlety of a teenage boy hiding an immoral act I hid it all.

Thank God things have changed….

The Mercury / Wednesday 

Why is breaking up so hard to do?

It’s not difficult for people who take relationships lightly, who hop and skip from one relationship to another, who regard others as dispensable, and who use others for their own purposes. Their connections are easily formed and breaking up appears to be, at least on the surface, to involve little more than a trifle inconvenience. 

Breaking up is exceedingly difficult when there’s been a head and heart physical commitment and connection, when there has been trust and shared space both physical and emotionally, and when resources have been pooled in trust and in good faith. It’s difficult when families have met and formed a profound connection. It’s difficult when there are children involved, when children’s lives are disrupted because the adults whom they love and trust are no longer able to love and trust each other.

Breaking up is hard to do when there is denial, deceit, and cheating and when one of the parties is played along and continues to trust while the other is living or developing a duplicitous life.

Breaking up is hard to do when questions are unanswered and  anger becomes the glue that keeps people together while they are trying so desperately to find the resolve to establish life apart.    

Tuesday / The Mercury 

By the power of undeserved grace – given that we each live in a different country – every few years my sister and my brother and I meet.

Sometimes it is for a few days or a few weeks. It’s happened in my brother’s home in Melbourne Australia and it occurred once for a week in Switzerland.

Now we are together again in my home in Indianapolis. My brother came in for two weeks and my Durbanite sister is here for three months.

The occasion?

On Friday my youngest son graduated from primary school or grade 8 as it is here in the USA!

Yes. The boy walked down the church aisle to get his diploma when his name was called and his uncle and aunt were there, with his brother and me, to witness this pivotal event.

I could barely contain my emotions.

No one watching could have known that fifteen years ago, to the very day, I had gone to the large public hospital, legal papers in hand, and met the baby who’d by legal decree had already become my son and eased his tiny frame from the pediatric intensive care crib into the car seat I had purchased on my way to the hospital and brought him home.

Once again, the power of undeserved grace.    

Bullying wears primary and subtle colors.

The overt bully is easy to spot. He uses physical intimidation, strikes out at younger or smaller children, and has been around for generations. 

We all know him. 

It’s the more devious forms that often escape the attention. 

It’s the child who bullies with her eyes. It’s she who can bully with a smile or by withholding one. She can inflict intimidation, floor her target, in the presence of other children and adults AND not be detected – except by her victim. 

She’s a skilled communicator. She sends words like missiles, usually at one who aches for her acceptance.

Adult platitudes like “keep away” or “tell an adult” or “she’s just jealous, honey” fall on deaf ears while the victim herself cannot separate the tactic, source, and target.

Helping all children find backbone and a voice is where the real cure begins.  

Before I am deluged with boys-do-it-too emails let me say that the subtle forms of bullying are far more prevalent with girls among the girls and the boys I have known for the past 14 years.

I ache to facilitate helpful conversations about bullying with faculty and students all over KwaZulu-Natal during July and August, 2018. Drop me an email if interested. 

PLEASE SHARE – especially if you are in South Africa

Things I remind myself about my children – please join me in my journey:

• Their lives are larger at their ages than mine was at their ages. Of course, they’re starting later and the world is a very different place. Their platforms are more complex, and more dynamic than mine was and, I admit, I am somewhat limited in my ability to identify with it. This means I should not be taken aback when I am blinded to possibilities and experiences they see and want to embrace. Rejecting an idea or a possibility simply because I couldn’t envision it is a good way to widen a gap that is mine, and not theirs, to bridge.

• While the world is a very different place than it was in my formative years, some things remain unchanged. Good manners, using please and thank you, looking people in the eyes, standing up for adults, dealing honestly with money and time, working hard, and displaying empathy in the face of those who are suffering – are values that cannot be discarded just because the world is faster paced than it once was. One of my jobs as a parent is to encourage, even enforce, some of these things if necessary.

• I am enough for my sons and the only dad they will ever need. 

Choose the person who has a track record of adventure. 

Look for a “yes” mindset. 

Avoid attitudes of excessive caution. 

Look for a person who does not seem invested in who gets the credit when work is well done. 

Find the natural connector, the networker, the one who sees possibilities when others see problems. He or she will have a natural propensity to “see beyond” to find resources, to discover solutions in places no one else thought of looking. 

Find the listener, who, after listening, still makes up his or her own mind.  

Look for the person who collaborates with others, who is able to collaborate even with those who have little or no authority, and yet, is not stumped when collaboration becomes impossible. 

Find a person with natural empathy and yet one who at the same time understands how the overly empathic can be crippled by it. 

Avoid the controller, the nitpicker, the one who wants to peer over everyone’s shoulder, the one who carries the weight as if it cannot be shared.

Find the one who has demonstrated the ability to delegate, to follow, to inspire, and to step out ahead, all at the same time.