Greg Proffit Writing

Category: Life

Your Neighbor Is Commanded To Love You—Do You Want Their Love?
Photo by Derick McKinney on Unsplash

# 91 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: You are commanded to love your neighbor, not to trust him.

Do you want your neighbor’s love?

We will look first at love, then at trust, which is only natural since trust is born of love. The commandment to love your neighbor comes from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Jesus called it one of 2 great commandments. The other great commandment is to love God with all one’s heart. The 2nd, Jesus said, is “like it”, that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. If you could have it, do you want your neighbor’s love?

Some questions for you to consider:
- Is it possible to love God and not love your neighbor?
- Does “as” mean “like”? Or does it mean that I am to think of and treat my neighbor “as if” they are myself? (If you thought of your neighbor as a “next door” version of yourself, but in a different body, would that change your treatment of them? Presumably for the better?)
- Do you want your neighbor’s love? (Since they are to see themselves in you, too.)
- Do you expect your neighbor’s love? And do they have the moral right to expect yours?
An radical imaginary world

A further consideration is to think just how radical the results would be if this most radical commandment in human history was universally obeyed.

Imagine a science-fiction world wherein every neighbor loves every other neighbor. Imagine what that would mean for economics, politics, international relations, even the need for nations at all.

It would be like some sort of Kingdom of Heaven. Probably just like the one Christians often pray will manifest on earth in accord with the Divine Will (but with fingers crossed behind our backs).

It’s easier to imagine The Martian Chronicles, Star Wars, Dune, and private spacecraft than a world filled with neighborly love isn’t it? It’s one thing to suspend disbelief to imagine Inter-Galactic Confederations and Spice Guilds. We can imagine a Death Star, but it’s quite a leap of imagination to believe in a world practicing universal neighborly love—too wide a leap for most of us. Superman and Catwoman are more believable than that.

It is nice to play “what if” though, is it not?

Is a belief unpracticed really believed?

I mentioned that this command comes from 2 of the 3 Abrahamic religions. (A similar command may exist in the tenets of Islam, I confess my lack of familiarity with its sacred texts).

And yet, Christianity (with a few notable exceptions for all too rare individual cases) seems to have showed a 2100-year propensity for missing the point.

As a believer myself, I’m dismayed that most of us professing belief in Jesus, act as if His day-to-day purpose in our lives is to help us feel better and prosper financially. We comfort ourselves with the belief He will secure our future admission to heaven. We don’t think about His primary daily purpose as empowering us to love our neighbor… the entire world of them.

I’m guilty here, too. My usual prayers focus much more on my needs than on making me better at loving my neighbor.

Sadly, “believers” will give unequivocal assent to the expression “love your neighbor as yourself”, even calling it the “Word of God”, and yet this mere intellectual assent spurs a vastly disproportionate few to become its “practitioners”. The widespread embrace of the idea without widespread accompanying action is a puzzle. As if it only exists to make a nice wall plaque or refrigerator magnet.

A command radical for its practicality

But this command is imminently practical. And it is imminently radical for its practicality. Because if practiced, you will find yourself in direct conflict with the underlying principles of profit-motive capitalism. And it will radically conflict as well with your cherished political views and reverence for the founders. For instance, how are you to love your neighbor as yourself, yet use your liberty in the pursuit of happiness, unless you also pursue the happiness of your neighbor with equal vigor?

It becomes immediately apparent how incompatible the pursuit of happiness is with the 2nd great commandment. Unless, of course, you find happiness in loving your neighbor.

In that case, Augustine’s directive applies: “Love, and do whatever you please…”

But seriously, if I am to fulfill this command, how can I do so and not have a regard for my neighbor’s well-being as much as I regard my own, for issues like health care, or mask-wearing, or vaccinations, or universal basic income? Or am I to love my neighbor unless it intrudes on my pet political dogma?

And moving to economic considerations, does the law of love allow me to make as much money as I can, selling items for the most the market will bear, enriching myself at my neighbor’s expense? Can profit-motive co-exist with the love-motive? Does neighborly love not command me to sell as cheaply as I can afford to sell, with regard both to my neighbor’s need of my products and services, and their interest in securing fair value as inexpensively as possible, while still loving myself enough to make a living that will provide for my legitimate necessities?

Economic considerations of neighborly love

Last I checked, I don’t require a private spaceship, or even a seat on one for a space tour. I don’t need to pay myself 299 times more because I’m the CEO than I pay my average employee. (An average of $12.7 million in 2020—during a pandemic). According to the law of neighborly love, these men are villains to be castigated, not heroes to be lauded.

These are fundamental, practical questions. Loving your neighbor is the most radical economic and political philosophy ever espoused. It is the most radical action anyone can take. Universal adoption would topple every government, everywhere, other than to provide and administer infrastructure, health care and maintenance services.

There can be no trust where there is no love

Imagine a science-fiction world wherein every neighbor loves every other neighbor.

It’s too preposterous to imagine, isn’t it? And that’s why we need not bother with the second part of my tip. For in a world in which we cannot reliably expect love from our neighbor, and in which the command cannot compel us to offer it ourselves, there can be no command to trust them. And thus arises the need for governments, with all their accompanying evils, to police the selfishness of humankind. Because in whatever form, they are less evil than unloving neighbors would be to each other without them.

But just for a moment, pretend. Go ahead, hypothesize with me. If you could have it, do you want your neighbor’s love? Think maybe they’d want yours? Imagine the ramifications. Imagine if it started with you and me.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Right! That’s just way too radical. Crazy, ain’t it?
July 18, 2021
Gentlemen Hold Doors For Women — And Other Relics of a Bygone Era

Shutterstock photo by Olena Yakobchuck (licensed to Author)

# 7 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: If you’re a guy, hold doors open for women. For that matter, if you arrive at door first, hold doors open for anyone. This way, if you meet the rare woman offended by your offering, you can explain, ”Hey, I hold doors open for anyone when I get to the door first.”

This is, or at least used to be, self-explanatory. I’m not talking about sexist chivalry, here. This is just good manners. This is what gentlemen do. Gentlemen hold doors for women.

I would stop holding a door for a woman who asked me not to, out of respect for her wishes, but it would feel odd to me.

For that matter, hold doors for everyone

In daily practice, I hold doors for anyone and everyone if I get to the door first. Sometimes this turns me into the doorman for a few minutes. Those few seconds lost have never cost me anything of importance. Usually, I get a small sip of feeling good about myself for performing a small act of considerate kindness. I don’t view this as a grand gesture. It is not a statement about the comparative strengths of the sexes. Gimme a break.

Gentlemen hold doors for women and others just to be good people. There are plenty of good people in the world, but not enough of us consistently act like it. This is one hell of an easy way to act like it.

Feels weird to make a blog post about something so self-evident. Almost as strange as writing one about wearing a mask during a pandemic, or getting vaccinated to stop its spread.

But times are different now. Politeness and consideration are at a premium. Human decency is rare as gold bullion. Being nice without a selfie stick or camera crew is apparently passé. Set yourself apart. Go old school. Hold a door.

July 17, 2021
Try Not To Learn Anything New Today — It’s Harder Than It Looks

How I imagine my mind. (How’d that girl with the vinyl backpack get in here?) Photo by Darwin Vegher on Unsplash

# 18 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: ”Try to learn something new every day,” is often included on lists like this. Instead, try not to. By trying not to, you’ll become aware of how much you learn everyday without even trying, you just have to be awake enough to catch it.

I enjoy “life-tips” lists. Invariably, they advise us to try to learn something new each day. I read those words and hear Yoda in my head, “There is no Try! There is only Do or Do Not!”

Still, my tip condenses to this: Try not to learn anything new today. I’m a professional non-conformist. I’m not plagiarizing that usual worn-out tip. Instead, we’ll try the opposite.

I’m sure I must have let some days pass without learning anything new. The likelihood of that seems like a reasonable assumption given a span of some 15K days. But I’d be stunned if I’ve failed to learn something in more than 1% of them. The other 99% of the time, new facts and information falls on me, follows me home, and piles up.

If you’re awake, you learn without trying. If. You’re. Awake.

I’m not going all woo-woo metaphysical here. You don’t have to be the Dalai Lama, or Buddha himself. You’ll learn stuff if you remain just reasonably alert and half sober.

But, I’m contradicting my tip, which is to dis-courage your attempts to learn. Here, I’ll put it in bold letters.

You’re supposed to try NOT to learn

A confession. This is the only rhetorically facetious tip of the entire 99 on my list. How’s that for some purple adjectives? (ProWritingAid and Grammarly are gonna love that). And it is the only one I don’t practice regularly. In fact, I’ve never practiced this one at all. I’ve never made the active effort not to learn something for even one day.

And see, I just proved the point of my tip. You just learned several things in that one paragraph without trying. You learned some things about me. And you gained the bonus knowledge that even pro writing software doesn’t have a sarcasm or satire mode. See?

Comic Relief

I’m curious about all kinds of things. One of my favorite comics of all times is a scene in a doctor’s office. In the office, we see a serious looking doctor wearing a lab coat, stethoscope draped around his neck. He is peering intently at a chart and and standing beside his patient, who is seated on the exam table. The patient is a worried looking cat, brow knit with anxiety. Tension is etched on both faces. The doctor speaks, “I’m afraid it’s curiosity.”

Cute, huh? I’m curious to know. I’ve got a motor to learn. I’ve got more questions than answers and the more answers I get the more questions they breed.

As a writer, I’ve heard of an affliction called writer’s block in which the writer is stuck and has nothing to write about. It’s hard to imagine. That must be the same feeling as having nothing to live about. I have way more ideas than time. Way more time than talent.

Most likely, I’ll just keep on learning and letting ideas and information pile up in my mind where all the rooms look like an episode of Hoarders. See, my advice is not for everybody. It just won’t work for me.

But your mileage may vary. So, you go ahead and try not to learn anything new today. Feel free to return and comment below with all the ways your efforts failed. Other readers may learn something. Oh, shoot!

July 17, 2021
Read for Sheer Joy—The Ultimate Call To Action

Photo by Kate Hliznitsova on Unsplash

# 17 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Read for the sheer joy of it. If you cannot read due to time constraints, look for time leaks to plug so you can make time to read. If you still cannot get the time to sit with a book or good magazine, listen to audiobooks at every available moment: when walking, when commuting, or on a drive of any distance.

I count reading as the cornerstone of all my acquired skills. It is the skill that informs and makes possible all the others I possess other than those that I’ve picked up by observation and practice. (I learned to drive nails with a hammer by hitting my thumb a lot—reading would have been less painful, but not as good a teacher).

Reading Is What Makes Writers Immortal

The whole concept of reading amazes me. Graphical communication supposes the creation of information in the present to be recorded for impartation and consumption in the future without a loss of meaning. Whether a book, an article, an essay, or a note, written words bring the author’s mind to the reader, whether or not the author is still physically alive.

For those who wonder about cryonics to achieve immortality, I say, try writing. Via reading, the author’s mind is as alive and fresh and real as the day he chiseled, or penned, or typed the words.

So much of spoken language is thankfully ephemeral. It passes on the same wind that carries its vibrations to the ear of the hearer. And sometimes it goes in one ear and out the other just as rapidly.

As a test, list how many speeches you know about as compared to how many book titles you’ve read. Any famous speeches that predate radio and television have survived and made it to us because we can read them. How sad if we only had oral history to learn from and to pass on to our progeny.

Written language is an archive of saved thoughts. Expecting the existence of a reader, the writer writes. She supposes that what she records will be relevant and helpful to some reader who comes along in five minutes, or five years, or five millennia.

Reading Is A Kind Of Magic

With these ideas in mind, reading anything is a joy to me. It is a kind of magic. I feel sorry for those who only read of necessity. One of the mind-blowing experiences missed by those who find no pleasure in reading is the opportunity to try on a new life, or a new world in your imagination, to time travel, either by re-living the past or rocketing into the sci-fi future.

If you read the words pink elephant, you cannot help but see it. How did I put it in your mind? I wrote it and you read it. Amazing. If you think that was cool, try to escape the knowledge of that happening with every word you ever read. A writer somewhere cooks up a thought, pecks it out in abstract shapes, squiggles, and lines, posts it somewhere and the reader’s internal interpreter assigns meaning to all the gibberish and makes it real in the reader’s mind.

And while there is something precious and sensual about holding a book in your hands, of feeling the paper as you turn the pages, digital formats and audiobooks are a fantastic way to get many of the same benefits, and they’re convenient in a pinch. Go ahead, read for sheer joy.

July 17, 2021
2 Trees—Knowledge, Life, and A Celebration of Dependency

There were 2 trees in the garden. There still are. (Shuttestock Image licensed to Author)

# 87 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: There is nothing more magnificent in creation than a tree in a forest. I learned this way too late.

Here I simply refer you to Richard Powers’ excellent (Pulitzer Award winning) book, The Overstory. Read it. Digest it. Believe it. Embrace it. Practice it. Live it as if your life, your kid’s lives and the planet’s life depends on it. It most likely does. This story is a celebration of dependency, because life is better than knowledge — life is dependency.

2 Trees

The story of creation begins in a garden. In that garden are two named trees. This story tells how the lie’s promise went unfulfilled and how life is better than knowledge.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and The Tree of Life.

The story juxtaposes these, one to one another, making them antagonists. Black hat and white hat. The distinctions between these 2 trees set the stage for a marvellous story and yet they do no combat against one another. There is no arboreal clash of branches. They do not fight and sway. They simply exist. The two trees are saying something to us through the reach of literature if not from the literal nascent moments of our species and our shared race as humans. The battle is within ourselves.

The one tree has gotten all the ink through the years, but there were 2 trees our first parents could have eaten from, only one of which was forbidden. There was also the tree of Life, about which no prohibition had been made.

The Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil story is fundamentally a story about independence. The tempter offered something he could not give to fill something they could not have and did not need. This is the nature of temptation—to overpromise and underdeliver. Always. The temptation to Adam and Eve was to become “like God—knowing good and evil”.

This is a lie of Trumpian proportions, the first Big Lie and mother of all Big Lies. For God is more than knowledge, and God is more than the arbiter of good and evil. God is that Supreme Creator who determines whether a thing, a thought, an act is good or evil in accord with that wisdom and love only God possesses.

Good? Evil?

What man or woman has ever attained to such heights as to know conclusively what good is, independent of God?

Was crucifixion good? Or was it evil? Was the discovery of North and South America by Europeans good? Good for the natives, the aboriginal peoples on those continents? If good, for whom was it good? For God? For all?

Questions of these kinds are indecipherable entanglements. The best and brightest wear themselves out and drive themselves mad, picking at that backlash of knotted contradictions, hoping in vain to answer the very thing promised to our ancestors in that primordial lie. What is good? What is evil? And in our history, have we arrived at any satisfactory, mutually agreed upon, non-controversial decisions about what is good and what is evil? I trust the reader to recognize a rhetorical question when you read one.

Like Begets Like

As fruit contains its seeds within itself, so it is with lies. Like begets like. Apples produce apple trees, not cherries, or pears, or ferns. A lie’s fruit contains no seeds of truth. Accordingly, we see the fruit from that ill-fated tree was a deadly poison in proportion to the worthlessness and uselessness of the knowledge sought. Because that knowledge could not and cannot produce what the lie purported it could, and neither could that lie or the knowledge it claimed accessible to our ancestors, produce—Life.

We may admit that the eating of the fruit gave them knowledge of good—as memory—the sacrifice of their original manner of life killed on the altar of independence. Likewise, it gave the knowledge of evil—as present and future — the now inability to keep and reestablish that level of Life-receiving dependence so foolishly sacrificed. In that, the tempter lied the truth, but so craftily as to make even this outcome veiled and hidden in that initial lie, “your eyes will be opened…”. And what an opening of the eyes that was. The knowledge wasn’t in the fruit! The knowledge was in themselves!

The history of humankind

The history of what happened at that tree is written in blood and pain, and murder, and war, and black charcoal ash scrawled on cave walls, and choking, teeming clouds of black ash smoke caressing skyscrapers, and in striped, torn skin, and in blood-stained bayonets. It is the sky teeming with rockets unleashed by the “good” to exterminate the “evil”. Oh, God! What a damned misery unleashed on the planet and the race from the belief in that Big Lie that by knowing “good and evil” the created would become as the creator.

And here we are, still in the dark. Still not knowing what good is. Still unable to tell what is evil. Still needing to be led by the hand. Still needing to be told. And still too damned proud and stupid to admit our blindness, our need, our destitution and stretch out our hands to Life, for as it says in another place, “knowledge puffeth up” but “love edifies”.

Those 3 words are the most concise history of humankind ever penned — “knowledge puffeth up”.

There is another tree, also fruit-bearing. That 2nd tree remains, because the idea of it remains. Regardless of whether it is a physical, tangible tree, I believe it is the source of all trees, which may be the residual source and the sustenance of all biological life on this spinning ball we ride through Space. It may be a heavenly tree, possibly metaphorical, or hidden in ineffability. But a more magnificent creation, I cannot conceive. This tree of Life exists in the myths of numerous cultures and peoples. Myths this pervasive exist for a reason. There’s usually something real to back them.

Life is better than knowledge — Life is dependency

The fruit of that tree of Life is of 12 different kinds — its leaves have potency to heal the nations. (Is it any wonder we look to trees and forests for medicines?) Fruit is both food and a seed pod. In combination with medicinal leaves, everything the Tree of Life symbolizes implies dependency. Life is a series of dependencies — truth no created thing can capture so fully as a tree, which creates its entire mass, not from itself, but from the very air, exactly in the pattern we are to “in Him, live and move, and have our being.” And nothing gives of itself more fully than a tree, either.

I can find and infer and reasonably patch together knowledge within myself. But I cannot find life within myself. I cannot grow my food from within myself. I cannot, from within myself, create the air I need for my next breath. I cannot manufacture my own medicine from within. For Life, I am dependent. I am in need. And I’d rather acknowledge, even celebrate my dependency—for I would far rather live without knowing, than know without living.

July 16, 2021
People Fall In Love Everyday—None Fall Into Intimacy

Photo by Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash

# 90 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: A good relationship is a good fit. The broken pieces and whole pieces interlock

You may have heard that good relationships are a good fit.

I remember first hearing the concept from a post-Ph.D psychologist (a former college friend) when I told her about the demise of my 22 year marriage. She wisely told me relationships aren’t like going to the grocery store and picking the perfect item off the shelf, they have to be a good fit, comfortable for each partner.

The mental image was suitable and thankfully soon thereafter, I reconnected with the best fit of my life, and for the past twelve years we’ve been constant companions. We built our relationship on mutual respect, but there’s a lot more to it than that. We take care of each other’s broken pieces, sometimes filling in missing portions, other times strengthening and protecting the ruins.

What makes a good fit?

A good fit is indispensable to a good relationship, but I want to explore what makes a fit good?

A good fit is when the broken pieces of each life fit together, not the whole ones.

That’s something not everyone sees. Think of Tom Cruise and Kelly Preston in Jerry Maguire. Those two were too perfect. Sure, the sex was hot, but there was no room for intimacy in the midst of all that stifling, demanding perfection. Check the linked scene. Who could live up to that?

If you want a good fit, one filled with deep intimacy, you have to embrace brokenness.

And let me add this caveat; everyone’s broken. Even the people who think they’re perfect.

Intimacy in a relationship comes from excavation of the buried, broken pieces, and carefully exploring how they fit together.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

What plays on dating app profiles, won’t create intimacy

When someone starts a relationship telling all about their successes, achievements, and accolades, you may feel happy for the teller, even excited, but not intimate. There’s neither room, nor need for you in those stories other than as their personal admirer, cheerleader or fan.

They may be a wonderful influencer, but those stories don’t admit intimacy.

When you share only your carefully curated best moments, you’re signaling how rich your life already is and how little your listener can do to make it any better except as your captive audience. It is nice to have affirmation, even admiration. But intimacy is better.

Sounds a lot like typical dating profiles, doesn’t it?

But within the broken places… lies a world humility, vulnerability, trust, and protection—intimacy.

There may be such a thing as love at first sight, I don’t know. Sight to me is a very untrustworthy barometer of most anything real.

I know this. There is no such thing as intimacy at first sight.

Intimacy takes time. It takes trust. Being built on shared brokenness, it requires the discovery of where your broken places, ownership of the pieces, acknowledgement that there may be whole chunks missing now, and the willingness and the wisdom to know when to share those details with a new potential partner.

That last piece is key. Not everyone deserves your broken pieces. And no one deserves them too soon. Freely share your whole ones, let everyone see those. Fling those whole bits like you’re riding on a Mardi gras float.

But for your own sake, save the best of you, the broken places, for someone worthy.

When two people build a friendship from mutual initial commonality and attraction, then patiently let each other venture in to the back rooms, the intimate rooms, ones furnished with painful memories and the pictures on the walls are of unforgotten wounds, something magical can happen. The magic of intimacy.

That shared brokenness is the best. Tenderness, lovingkindness, and protective shielding awakens between the partners. Each knows the other’s vulnerabilities and rather than exploiting them for selfish gain, cherishes and caresses them, partners carefully, lovingly tracing each other’s scars, and holding each other in fierce determination not to create new ones.

You cannot fall into intimacy

The Beatles, in With A Little Help From My Friends asked,

“Do you believe in love at first sight?
Yes, I’m certain that it happens all the time
What do you feel when you turn out the light?
I can’t tell you but I know it’s mine.”
Beatles: With A Little Help From My Friends

I prefer the Joe Cocker, Woodstock version as seen here.

Whether or not at first sight, people fall in love every day.

No one falls into intimacy.

That’s reserved for those willing to be vulnerable, patient, and fit each other’s broken pieces together into the puzzle of Intimate Love. That is a good fit.

July 16, 2021
Hate Is Emotional Attachment—How To Be Free From Its Vicious Grasp

Hatred poisons the hater more than the hated. (Shutterstock Image licensed to Author)

# 86 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Hate is way too powerful an emotion to give to the people deserving of it. It attaches you to them the way love does. This is not a good thing.

Hate attaches you to the object of your hatred. Both hatred and love define us in terms of a relationship, whether or not the relationship still exists. Hatred persisted in is not without this expensive surcharge to the hater. And even knowing this—damn if it isn’t nearly impossible to let it go.

Hatred is murder in the heart

As recorded in Matthew 5:28, Jesus said that if a man looks on a woman to lust after her, he has committed adultery in his heart.

By this same reasoning, using the same application of moral principle, in my heart I’m a murderer. You probably are, too.

Hatred is to murder what lust is to adultery. It is the emotional principle behind it. It may be hot, rage-fueled hatred, or vengeance served cold, but hatred is a symptom on the murder spectrum.

That’s too damaging an emotion to keep, and too powerful to give to those most deserving of it.

Your object of hatred is someone who has marred your world, and has marred your enjoyment of it. To where the mere existence of your object taints the world with a putrid stench. And face it, if you’ve known the depths of hate, given the ability, and with no repercussions, you’d blink and have your nemesis vanish or die a thousand deaths.

[Stop grinning in imagined contemplation. Really. This is not a good thing.]

Ain’t no time to hate

Why you ask? You don’t know they did to me. Don’t I? I’ve struggled with my hatred for years. Finally, I’m realizing the truth in one of my favorite songs:

“Ain’t no time to hate, barely time to wait.”
~ Grateful Dead: Uncle John’s Band

Regardless, and I mean, literally, regard it no longer, look no longer at what was done to you. Focus instead at what still lies in front of you to do. Don’t let another day go by being emotionally attached to someone undeserving of a second thought. That’s what hate is, fundamentally—emotional attachment. Do you have time for that? I don’t!

You are still here. Still standing. That person you hate didn’t destroy you, though they tried. They didn’t vanquish your spirit. Your soul remains intact. They just aren’t all that!

The conditions for forgiveness may not be possible

Am I suggesting you kiss and make-up? Oh, hell no!

There are some wounds irrecoverable, irreconcilable, irredeemable by you or me. There are things that require recompense and repentance for forgiveness to even be thought of, much less have any meaning beyond the mouthing of empty words. And ofttimes, there is no way to exact recompense, and the opportunity no longer exists for the change of heart and mind repentance encompasses. If the forgiveness that yields reconciliation and restoration is impossible, we must leave the offender in the hands of God for judgement, or Karma, or whatever you call sowing and reaping in your tradition.

Move forward as a different person

What to do then if hatred is to be laid aside? What to do if forgiveness is an impossibility?

You move ahead as a different person. The version of you the despised object sought to hurt and destroy survives (!) and yet exists no more in that form or that relation. The new you has escaped the orbit; thus free to be defined by what you move toward, not by what you leave behind.

You are as free from being defined by that former relation and the hatred it provoked, keeping the bond in place, as a slave is free upon learning of his emancipation, or an inmate upon learning of his release from prison.

The Takeaway

If you must look back, cast a backward glance in scorn, in pity, in disgust. Better to despise than to hate. Hatred is too powerful. Hate attaches you to the object of your hatred. It gives that object power over you by allowing that object to define the terms of your emotional and psychological health. You drag it behind you everywhere you go. That’s way more power than you should give to any deserving of those feelings we call hate. The burden is on the hater, much more than on the hated.

Better to think of them as insignificant, impotent to do you further harm. While seeing yourself as free. Abandoning the hatred is loosing the last linking shackle. Go!

July 15, 2021
What Do You Like & Why Do You Like It?

Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash

# 85 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Know why you like what you like. Learn to identify the feeling of liking something before you have the words to tell yourself you like it. That resonance, that connection, that is your home.

This one has been staring at me for a couple of days. I know what I mean by the tip I offered months ago when I created my list and posted it, but this one captures so much.

What you like defines you

Why do you like that? Why don’t you like this? Can your likes change—become weaker (?), or stronger? If they can change, did the thing formerly liked change? Or did the former “Like-er” change? Important stuff.

We all start in infancy as blank slates. Yes, I know, the argument of nature vs. nurture. Sure, sure. Still… I have no Grateful Dead genes that make me resonate to that frequency, nor any Russian genes I’m aware of that make the slow, deliberated, painstakingly detailed accounts of Dostoevsky so appealing and full of life and truth to me.

So, as for the accumulation of culture—which is really a fancy word for group or social liking of a thing—I’m on the nurture side of that debate. We like what we like because we get exposed to it by someone who convinces us that people like us like stuff like this. There’s a kind of peer pressure to like most of the things we choose.

[That, and the size of the menu in proportion to the size of our appetites, and whether we find good entrements (palate cleansers) between samplings.]

There are also degrees of liking a thing. You may wear the tee-shirt, but not kill bats on stage and drink their blood. (You can look up the old Ozzy Osbourne legend somewhere… Google it.)

So, Greg, you’re 300 words in and haven’t told me a damn thing about why I like some stuff and not other stuff.

True, dear reader, we are halfway down a proper electronic page and I cannot tell you what to like. I can, however, urge this—Don’t let anyone else tell you either!

We all got our first likes because someone pushed sweet mashed pears into our baby mouths before they spooned in disgusting pureed lima beans. Someone played Mozart, or Miles Davis or Metallica before Beethoven, Benny Goodman, or Bad Company.

We first gain likes and tastes from the people around us who expose us to them and usually because they like them too. (Maybe not with babyhood pears, but you catch my drift).

Here’s the rub

At some point, earlier or later, I don’t know, you will want to pay attention to whether or not you’d like Led Zeppelin at all if that delectable girl in the yellow overalls didn’t look so good wearing that logo emblazoned across her beautiful… t-shirt (what did you think I was going to type?)

My mom was a member of the Columbia Records club. This was back when dinosaurs roamed North America and people still had turntables on which to extract sound from round plastic platters. She got several albums a month, and she used to sit dreamily and play one album called Go To Heaven by a band of long-haired men, standing in a cloud on the cover, wearing cheesy looking, white, polyester-velveteen Lawrence Welk suits.

Alabama Getaway and Don’t Ease Me In off that record sounded like countrified crapola to my 13-year-old ears. Hearing it made me gag and flee the premises, long before I got to hear Lost Sailor and Saint of Circumstance.

I couldn’t stand it! Yuck! 13-year-olds ought not be judged too harshly for underdeveloped anything. Puberty makes for a cloudy filter.

But I did like her Fleetwood Mac, and Rickie Lee Jones, and Little Feat albums. I even liked Jimmy Buffett, and I wanted to like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young because they had the coolest album cover. (You know the antique looking, sepia-toned album where they’re posed with a dog, and Crosby cradles a shotgun, and Neil is draped with bandoleers and a pistol, and a guitar is lying on the ground — Deja Vu—and it looks like Matthew Brady took the photograph right after the battle of Antietam or something).

God, I loved the look of that album cover because I was crazy for all kinds of Civil War stuff. That picture was so cool! Who cared about hippies floating in white John Travolta suits in a cloud!?

But the music, Jeez! My misanthropic mom would get drunk, put on Teach Your Children and slur, “Hunnneee, jusss lishen to theesh wordzz. Thish iss evertheeen I wanna shay to you kidzz.”

OMG!! Please No! — Likes can change

I hated C,S,N,Y then. Association, ya know?

Though, I LOVE their music now. Different association… ya know?

The same reason I now love all things Grateful Dead. I had to grow into it. Then it grew into me.

So, sometimes early exposure doesn’t take root. Germination takes longer. Circumstances change, and then, bam! You hear something, or see something, or taste it, and it’s like tasting and seeing and hearing home. Like gathering up fragments of self that complete you. I know, weird.

But, they say there’s no accounting for taste. And truly there isn’t. If you will put on your Indiana Jones hat and do some personal archeology to dig up the reasons you’ve buried and kept your own personal treasures, you’ll learn a hella lot about yourself.

Fact is, your likes and loves will tell you more about yourself than your dislikes.

Shove over, I’ve invited God in

Probably shouldn’t drag God into a story already crowded with Jimmy Buffett, my drunk mom, Rickie Lee Jones, and bandoleers, but I see [Him] as defined (bad word, I don’t think [He] can be defined adequately, else the whole God idea shrinks, but it’s the best word we’ve got) by what [He] likes, immeasurably more than by what [He] dislikes. Just like you and me are defined more by what we like and allow in than by what we hate and keep out.

It’s the opposite of the way evangelical Christians think of God and themselves. These define themselves by what they oppose, what they’re against, what they resist and are afraid of. They never crack open Song of Songs, the most beautiful ode to physical, sexual love ever written (“kisses sweeter than wine”). It just sits there unread and unappreciated in their bibles. They conveniently forget Noah got drunk (after preserving humanity), David committed adultery—and murder (and was still called a man after God’s own heart), Jesus turned water into about a hundred gallons of wine at a wedding, and Peter denied Jesus (but Jesus restored him again over fish tacos on the beach).

They forget God loved everybody, EVERYBODY so much, [He] paid the ultimate price to win us back. I don’t imagine [He’s] trying to keep anyone out on technicalities like who they love. [He’d] prefer to outfit us all in white suits, invite us to stand in a cloud, and Go To Heaven. Or maybe my God is just bigger and more full of Grace and Mercy than yours. I dunno. Or maybe I’m wrong. But I’d rather be wrong believing in God as revealed Love. Maybe you’re unflawed, and you’re loved for your perfection. That doesn’t apply to me. But because God loves flawed me as much as [He] does, my only response is to trust [Him.] That is what faith is all about, after all. The heart’s response to a God showing and proving [His] Love.

If you’re curious about my brackets around masculine pronouns in reference to God, it’s because of my uncertainty of how to think of God and gender. I think of God as Father, the only real Father I’ve ever known. But God is called El Shaddai in the Hebrew scriptures, too, which means “the Breasted One”, or nurse. I love that image—of God being the source of life and growth and sustenance, of comfort, and warmth, and security, the way a nursing mother is to her infant child. You are welcome to your own images. I am convinced in my heart that my brackets aren’t offensive to [Him], or Him. End of disclaimer.

Back to the topic at hand—Here’s an unlimited credit card

Learn to identify what you like, on your own terms. Evaluate your preferences to see if you picked them up as the price of admission to some tribe or other, or thinking they’d be the key to some girl’s heart.

What do you like, the real you? Imagine you have an unlimited credit card. Your preferences and tastes are the only ones you need consult. You start with an empty iPod, empty media shelves, and an unfurnished home—no pictures on the walls, nothing in the pantry, fridge, wine cellar, or liquor cabinet. What’s parked in the driveway? What do you get? What do you like? Not—what does your wife, husband, lover like? No. What do you like?

Go ahead, you have my full permission to fill your life with as many of those things you can. On the way, you’ll answer the question: Why do you like that? It may be this simple. You just do! It resonates. And it scratches the persistent itch, uncovers the empty spot, and fills up the void. Because it caresses your heart; and sings you, rocks you, swaddles you, envelops you, whispers you—home.

It may as simple as the idea enshrined by Mick Jagger—

“I know it’s only Rock n’ Roll, but I like it… yes I do!”
~ Rolling Stones: It’s Only Rock n’ Roll

Mick likes Rock n’ Roll, and that like defines Mick. What defines you? What do you like?

One day, I’ll invite you over to my own imaginary bare-floored, yoga-pillowed pad where we can have church listening for the whisper of God, blasting my collection of studio and live Dead performances on my megawatt stereo system, while we drink Napa Valley wine and Russel’’s Reserve and Grok out on all my Van Gogh and Monet and Mondrian paintings. Or maybe we’ll “ooh and aahhh” over my library of thousands of volumes of curated literature, housing everything from Brené Brown to Zane Grey.

You’ll like it. Or at least I will.

What did you ask? Oh, yeah, that Aerosmith you hear coming from the other room? Oh, that’s just my girlfriend rocking out on the sounds she likes. She calls mine alternately “Grandpa” or “Sleepy” music. If you prefer the Demon of Screamin’ to my sleepy tunes, you are welcome to plug in your headphones. To each his own. I can’t tell you what to like, I can only ask you to tell me, why do you like it?

July 15, 2021
Don’t Adopt Every Stray—What Things You Adopt Have A Way Of Becoming Your Life

Photo by Alvan Nee on Unsplash

# 84 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: You are not meant to adopt every stray (thought, belief, person, animal, opportunity) that shows up in your life. Choose well.

The wind blows things into and out of our lives. These things take the form of thoughts, beliefs, people, even animals, and sometimes opportunities. Just because something shows up doesn’t mean it should be picked up. Some things are better left alone to blow right on by. Don’t adopt every stray. You aren’t meant to.

The Inbox of Life

I like simple analogies. Viewing the detritus that life blows in is like viewing the daily contents of my email Inbox. Stuff blows in. I scan for relevance, responsibility, or refusal. Some of the items I must have asked to show up there. This is apparently the case. I recognize that the me that asked to receive information about every cheap Caribbean travel opportunity is a different me than the one opening my email this morning.

This revelation creates its own opportunity. I can unsubscribe and save myself the little mental distraction that accompanies every email subject line. (You know that many of these emails have highly trained professional writers whose sole aim is to create irresistible subject lines to trigger you to open the email, don’t you?)

But I’ve digressed. Although this digression was intentional. I digressed about email believing it to be a metaphorical application to which most can relate. The existence of an email address virtually guarantees spam in the same way that staying alive guarantees stray stuff showing up in your Life’s Inbox. Some of that stuff you invited, some you did not. You need not open it all. You need to archive and save even less. Some of it is as dangerous to your life as a virus-laden, malware-infected, trojan horse of embedded code hidden in an email about ED could be to your computer. Best to leave it lie.

Where do thoughts come from?

The element of my advice I find most universally applicable is in the handling of stray thoughts and beliefs. No one being honest can tell you where all your thoughts come from. Are they self-generated? Are they completely random? Did they come from the far side of the Universe? From God? From the devil? No one is sure.

Meditation is a great practice for so many reasons, not the least of which is that is can convince you how involuntary most of your thinking is. Try it for five minutes and see how like a wave machine with no off switch your mind is. Thoughts just show up, because…

But like the neighbor’s cat, or the stray that habitually shows up on your doorstep, you don’t have to buy a little cat bed at the PetSmart and put out a saucer of milk for the stray. Unless you’re my son, then you do. You have to buy one of those. But you can be much less accommodating with 95% of your stray thoughts. Learn to unapologetically shoo them away. Kick if you must.

You may become what you adopt

Don’t adopt every stray. Every thing you invite in to your life has the potential to, like a virus or piece of malware, spread and take over your life. Some things you’ve taken in as a past self have become your present self. Think of that. Choose wisely, friends.

July 14, 2021
Expectations Are Resentments Waiting To Happen—More Like Minefields

Photo by Chris Mai on Unsplash

# 83 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Expectations are resentments waiting to happen. Under promise and over deliver. Rinse and repeat.

I did not coin this phrase. I have, however, borrowed copiously from its minted vaults.

Never was a truer truism uttered. “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.” The oft-used quote is from author, Anne Lamott.

You can create expectations in others, or harbor them yourself

This is a sword that cuts in both directions. You may either harbor or create expectations.

The directive in my advice is to the creator of expectations. If you create expectations that you lack either the willingness or ability to fulfill, you will be resented. End of story.

Expectations are a test drive of hopes you convince yourself are already real

On the other hand, if you harbor expectations that are unrealistic, wishful, or fantastical, not being based in a semblance of reality that can reliably produce them, you are resentment walking. It is important to think of expectations as hopes—only hopes. Unfounded expectations blow up, go up in smoke, cause disappointment, or fail to materialize in all sorts of ways. But they act on our emotions like a trial run at actualization. Because of this, if an expected outcome doesn’t turn out the way you imagine, it will blindside you emotionally. They are imagined entitlements we treat as if already real. So, of course, they make us act entitled, spoiled, and finally angry, as if we’ve had something that was ours stolen out of our very hands, if, in the end, they don’t happen as imagined.

Either way, whether by creating them, or by harboring them expectations in life determine so much of our experience of it. I’ve written before on the little equation, also not mine (forgive me, I’m a borrower as I already confessed above): Happiness=Reality-Expectations.

I try not to own things in my mind not already present in my hand. I usually expect the worst, even plan for it. It is quite a pleasant surprise, whenever the outcome exceeds my expectations. I prefer the delight of surprise to depression. I like to feel shocked by unexpected good fortune.

And if I set correct expectation levels for my kids, friends, girlfriend, customers, readers, and meet them, no one is the worse for wear. If I exceed them, I’m an instant hero. All good.

Whenever you face uncertainty about a person, an event, an outcome, set a very low expectation threshold.

The takeaway

When you face demands upon you; whether of your time, your skills, your expertise, or your level of involvement and engagement in some endeavor or other, be honest with yourself and the ones creating expectations of you in their minds. Don’t promise more than you can deliver. Under promise and over deliver.

If asked to do something and you sincerely doubt your ability to deliver and meet expectations, employ one of the most valuable words in our language, the pound for pound champion in terms of it’s positive impact on your life in proportion to the number of its letters. It is the word—NO.

July 13, 2021