As well-intentioned as we may be in desiring to avoid conflict and “keep the peace,” we create more problems we must face later by running or playing hide and seek. Then, when we do face matters, we’re not the people we once were.
Avoidance is a quick-change artist! It changes us in ways we are likely to regret.
We cannot solve or improve what we will not face. Denial gets us no place worthy of the journey or the unintended, unwanted destination. Until we gather the courage to look difficult situations directly in the eye and expedite what is necessary to face the difficulties, conflicts will stay as they are and they’re likely to deteriorate.
What we avoid shapes us in ways we may never notice. We modify our habits in order to sustain our denial and avoidance. We change our friendships in order to sustain our patterns. We go out of our way to keep the peace but the new path is one to further avoidance. Our defensive habits defend us in unhealthy and unhelpful ways and make us into people we’d rather not be.
Avoidance of necessary battles creates unintended distance from others — even those we truly love.
There is no worthwhile substitute for early honest approaches to family or business conflicts.
Avoidance makes the heart grow harder.
Ours.
I enjoyed this side-walk art…… 49th and Penn in Meridian Kessler, Indianapolis
I shall strive to speak and teach as one who has indeed much to learn.
In every classroom we are all learners.
I shall strive to listen to people in the class (and out of it) as if I were listening to the mountains.
Mountains reveal their real beauty to the dedicated observer, beauty that’s easily missed by those who offer casual hurried glances or who are themselves caught up in how they look or are dressed or what the student may think of them.
Can there be a greater privilege than jetting to Penang to teach Family Systems?
There are no blue-birds of happiness seeking nests.
It will not take us by surprise, arrive unannounced, and it won’t be ours because we read FaceBook memes or read anything inspirational or challenging anywhere, even the Bible.
And, no Podcast will do it – not even that.
Happiness has no victims. Happiness is an inside job, it is an internal state and it requires our willingness, our cooperation, and hard work.
Our happiness will be a direct result of what you and I do with our days.
Do we serve others?
Are we generous?
Do we accept and embrace and enjoy people who are different from us?
Do we look for beauty that is all around us and within everybody?
[If you think there is no beauty around you and there is no beauty in all people, well, you’ve already unearthed a major happiness blockage.]
Answering these questions with our lives will hold a few of many codes to unlock happiness and let it into our lives. And, this is a big one, our levels of happiness are never, not ever, up to others, no matter how much we may love or not love others. Happiness is not something another can provide for you at least for enduring lengths of time. Neither you nor I will be happier, or less happy, based on who or what we love or who or what we reject.
While I concede having money does make life just a little easier, our happiness levels are totally unrelated to money.
Some of the wealthiest people on the planet are clearly some of the most unhappy people.
Jesus of Nazareth said what comes out of people’s mouths reveals the state of people’s hearts or inner-beings.
Is there a millionaire or billionaire you’ve heard on TV with whom you’d want to share your daily life?
Happiness requires action and appears to play hard-to-get with those who persistently whine, “I just want to be happy.” It appears to play hard-to-get with complainers and those who seem entitled. Happiness and Laziness are not buddies. Laziness repels of Happiness. Happiness and Blamingness – I just made a new word – are not friends and, as far as I can tell, cannot co-exist in the same brain.
Finding a useful cause, a cause larger than oneself, and engaging in it with others who have the same or similar causes, and offering it zeal will quite often spark some thrill-for-life aka happiness.
While you and I are influenced even a tidbit by what others think of us (or what we think others think of us) we dead-bolt access to happinesses.
How and what we think and say of others is far more important than concerning ourselves with what “they” think and say of us.
In his country hit “Don’t Let The Old Man In,” Toby Keith croons, “ask yourself how old would you be if you didn’t know the day you were born.”
When I give it serious thought I come up with 42 or 45, somedays 36.
I confess, birthdays (my birthdays) have never been easy for me.
The bulk of them were spent playing music at The Oyster Box Hotel or at T-Jetty or at The Edward or any one of the hotels in Durban and Umhlanga areas. When I was much younger, I spent them on the bandstand at the Parkhill Hall or playing at one of the many MOTH Shellhole functions for war heroes to sing “pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile” and “kiss me goodnight sergeant major” as they danced by.
A birthday is easy to avoid if you’re warming your audience with “Girl From Ipanema” with the finest drummer and bass player in the nation and seated at the the Oyster Box Hotel’s Steinway, or later, banging out “Crocodile Rock” or “Sloop John B.”
Enough about that.
[Please leave a comment if our band played at you wedding(s), 21st, whatever…….]
This year has been quite a year.
I won’t go into the details of the trips I have taken but they did include 5 “new” nations to me. My earliest “speaker mentor” taught me that as an international speaker I would have the best and worst experiences. He said I would sleep in stations and on dirt floors and in 5 star hotels. He told me I’d be delayed, denied, rejected, upgraded, downgraded, embraced and applauded, loved and hated. I loved YWAM’S Rudi Lack from the moment I met him (I was about 20) when I hosted him at Charles Gordon’s request for 10 days in my parent’s home on Blackburn Road.
“God is much more interested in your character than your comforts,” he declared.
Rudi is right.
“Always leave more than your teaching,” he said, “no matter where you go. Give more than you take. Go places that can’t afford your travel expenses.”
This year I have gathered about 25 people to empower through our nonprofit and have been able to leave thousands of dollars in scholarships for young men and women on four continents who aspire to serve and bring healing to our broken world.
Next year, God willing, I am going to do more and more and more until I’ll be at least 55 years old in response to Toby Keith’s beautiful question.
I am not a go-fund-me guy – although I happily give when I can to people and causes I believe in. I know I could post a link right here and ask for your gifts to my nonprofit – but I am not going to do that. Clicking is easy, it’s the human connection I want with you before your giving.
Thank you to readers around the world who read my columns – in 180 Nations – and in KZN’s morning newspaper The Mercury (Monday to Friday for 24 years) and readers of The Courier Times and for those who read my work on FaceBook and all that.
If you want to give me a birthday gift — large or small — make it to my nonprofit and I will pass it on, pay it forward, put it into serving hands and hungry mouths, and towards the education of some of the finest and most beautiful people I have ever met, many of whom most will misguidedly — simply because of where they live and their financial state — consider poor!
Contact me – I’ll send you the link or the address.
So, how old would you be if you didn’t know the day you were born?
I saw Santa at the Children’s Museum with a feather of a child pleading her case. They were locked in discussion, a confessional of sorts, as she entered into detail of her every Christmas wish. Hands, eyes, and all of her face enticed Santa closer lest he miss a detail living so clearly in her head.
“Oh, you want, oh, I see it. Why yes, of course. Perfectly,” Santa said, his voice tapering off into her ear, “I will see what I can do about that.”
Then she nestled into his side, her shoulders comfortably enveloped by his plush red suit as if to declare her mission accomplished. He was a perfect depiction of everything I imagined him to be and the sight easily immersed me in the voices and music of my own Christmases past.
Santa came all year round to our home. I’d look through the window in April or mid-August and Santa would be strolling up the driveway on his return from visits to every home on the street. He’d be wearing dad’s shoes and one of his ties underneath the tatty red coat, but I knew better than to expose his identity. I wanted to believe in Santa and he in turn needed me to believe. Such faith had rewards. I knew better than to dash my own hopes. I wasn’t ready to lose my trust in Santa for anyone and certainly not by my own hand.
He couldn’t resist visits to the whole neighborhood and would drop in from time to time and inspire children toward good behavior, perfect obedience at school, and remind them to count their blessings one by one. At every appearance in our home we’d sing “The Little Boy that Santa Clause Forgot” and we’d all have to cry. He insisted on it.
The lines “he didn’t have a daddy” and “went home to play with last year’s broken toys” really got us going.
It was clear he sang to all the children of the world who’d had to skip childhood and who had known poverty; children who’s fathers had gone to war or whose fathers or mothers had fled their families.
Donning the suit, surprising the children, was our Santa’s way of making the world right.
His visits created intrigue in the neighborhood, and to every child he repeated the promise that this Christmas, no child on this street would be forgotten. As far as I could tell none ever was.
The last Christmas we had together was in August of 1994. We were riding in a car and in the curves of Bluff Road when spontaneously he began to sing, “Christmas comes but once a year.”
The car became a holy place as I heard once more of the boy who “wrote a note to Santa for some soldiers and a drum and it broke his little heart to find Santa hadn’t come.”
The tears we both shed required no encouragement for we both somehow knew this would be the last time he’d sing this nostalgic hymn.
Now this old song is top of my list of Christmas songs.
The melody emerges randomly in my awareness, most particularly when faced with children who are in need. I have had to silence it at all times of the year.
It was the little girl’s confidence, Santa’s grace, and the loving parents looking from the side that caught my attention last week. She touched his flowing beard and told him her every Christmas dream and I found myself listing my own requests with childlike zeal.
It gave me renewed hope that you and I, the real Santas of the world, could deliver a more hopeful tomorrow for “those little girls and boys that Santa Claus forgot.”
(First published, December 9, 2000, Indianapolis Star) ———— Our home this evening….
I have had the privilege of visiting South Africa many times since my January 1990 move to the USA. I have gone most to KwaZulu Natal, where I have family, and, in more recent years, to the Western Cape.
I drive a lot.
It is as if I am looking for something, searching for an item left behind, that I am sure, with enough exploring, I will ultimately find.
Alas, I do know it takes more than renting a car and hours on familiar and unfamiliar roads to journey into the heart of my search.
I have never questioned my move and nor did I ever believe Lady Liberty’s grass was greener.
On rare occasions I listen to South Africans who have made the move and some recurring observations make me smile.
Others, not.
“I miss ‘my’ maid, she was part of the family,” regretting having to pump your own petrol, wash your own clothes, manage your own kitchen are observations that drive me crazy.
Moments of absolute fulfillment, perhaps marking the end of my search, flood me on encountering the sheer goodness, love, acceptance in the nation of my birth, coming from a people who could legitimately regard me with contempt.
Let the people whom you love know it. This means directly telling them in as many creative ways as you are able to devise, but especially, if possible, with words and words that are said out loud and face-to-face. Leave glaring evidence of your love so there is no mistaking it even if it has already been your habit for years.
Cards, letters, cash – let it flow.
Wherever you live, enjoy it, no, more than that, celebrate it. Be aware that wherever you live, there are people – perhaps billions of people – spread across the world who think the grass is greener exactly where you live. They aspire to be where you already are. Make things more beautiful than they already are by adding your joy to the beauty.
Water your proverbial greener grass with joy.
You, yes you, have the power to make someone’s day. I know you do because if it is true for me then it is also true for you. We all possess the power of expressing thanks, of noticing talent and acknowledging it, of recognizing beauty and love and owning up to how it has enriched our lives. The fabulous thing about going out of your way to make someone’s day is that it will inevitably make yours, too.
The kickbacks are terrific.
———— United brought me home — not a single guitar was ruined on the journey……! (Obscure joke indeed…… if you get it let me know). Next stop, Bujumbura…..
Considering others, delivering acts of kindness, will likely be of much benefit to people on the receiving end.
But, as a direct result of acts of consideration and kindness, possibilities for more such acts will kick into gear.
How could I use my power, as limited as it may be, to open opportunities for people?
I’m in no particular hurry and so I can move to the end of the line, or at least suggest those who are rushed for time go ahead of me.
I have more than I ever need or use so I will find creative ways to share and spread the favor that’s been mine.
This kind of thinking is good for our minds, hearts, wills, souls, spirits, as elusive as these “places” are that work together within us and define and shape who we are.
Looking for ways to consider others puts our selfishness and entitlement (at least temporarily) on hold while such thinking engages self awareness and service.
It’s healthy thinking.
It’s win-win thinking that even while we are thinking the thinking it realigns our attitudes and restores hope.
Considering others broadens, sharpens personal vision, does its part in renewing the mind. This can only have positive results, except for committed cynics, of whom, sadly, there are many.
May your heart be jam-packed with great expectations and sufficiently resilient to embrace those unfamiliar with indiscriminate human warmth.
Love is tough for those for whom it is foreign.
May you experience the goodness of which you are capable and possess the courage to allow its full way with you.
Take yourself by surprise.
May you have childlike eyes and be filled with joy and wonder as you see the familiar in new and childlike ways.
May your curiosity be contagious.
May your thoughts dwell on the goodness around you and your focus on designing your fulfilling and adventurous future.
May your enthusiasm impart strength to others.
May your words be soft, sweet, encouraging, while you remain unafraid to speak your mind with conviction.
May your words comfort and provoke all who hear you.
May your hands bring comfort, kindness, relief to those, who, for reasons of historic political atrocities or recent political divides, may least expect it from you.
May your love continually and persistently obliterate stereotypes and prejudices.
May your most treasured friendships deepen, your broken friendships find healing, and all malice, contempt and indifference from you, and for you, cease.
May you embrace and love your friends, former friends, enemies and detractors.
Captured with permission – a t-shirt in Curitiba, Brazil
“Dad, are we normal?” my son asked, bending from his perch on my shoulders, trying to look into my face.
“Why do you ask?” I said, looking up at him while holding his ankles in one hand and feeling his weight swirl to one side.
We did these “walks” around the block almost daily. We’d start out, his five year old body striding out ahead of me, beckoning me to hurry, usually toward the steel climbing equipment on the public school play area. I knew that if the walk was in the evening light was dimming and the alleys between the houses were throwing darker and changing shadows my son would plead tiredness, beg to ride on my shoulders.
I braced for big questions.
Was his question going about the deeper things in life? I wondered in these brief moments if he’d noticed some of the economic disparities that surrounded him. Race? I thought perhaps he’d been exposed to something at school and seen how unusual bi-racial families were in our part of the world. Perhaps he wanted to explore the intricacies of adoption or solo-parenting.
“We have a truck, dad. Everyone has cars. Everyone’s gate works. Ours doesn’t,” he said.
Days of riding on my shoulders are long past…… but the joy has not.
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