Greg Proffit Writing

Tag: 99tips

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
Never Ignore Your Conscience—Even If Tempted By Camisoles, Honeysuckle, and Dreams

Photo by Jan Segatto on Unsplash

# 82 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Never ignore your conscience. It is the only internal compass you have to accuse or excuse your behavior. Ignore it at your peril.

Your conscience is to your future moral life as the ability to feel heat from a burner is to your future sense of touch. Ignore it at your peril. You should never ignore your conscience. It’s a pre-loaded tool that either excuses or accuses your thoughts and behaviors. A moral compass if you will.

A clear conscience, free from internal, self-directed accusations and recriminations, is essential to peace of mind. And peace of mind, one of the highest of all ends to be sought for its own sake, is essential to a good life. Therefore, if you hope to have the peace of mind that enables a good life, don’t ignore your conscience.

Alternately, you can lie to yourself, cover up your faults, sins, and poor treatment of others telling yourself you’re not as bad as Osama Bin Laden or Hitler, so you’re probably still not on God’s naughty list, since you aren’t as bad as you could be.

But face it, a good life is really a life in which you’re as good as you can be in every area of which you exercise any degree of agency and control. No one would define the good life as the one in which you fail to be as bad as you could have been.

Fear and Longing in a Camisole

I remember my initial wrestlings with my conscience and the FEAR OF GOD!

Boy, do I! It involved some strange things happening in my dreams because of a raven-haired “sitter” who read me sections of the Hobbit in a too-sheer camisole . (She was my grandfather’s second wife’s 19-year-old daughter.) I remember the feel of her silken smooth arm against my pre-teen shoulder, propped up on pillows, listening to Gollom’s riddles. I remember how she smelled of honeysuckle. And I remember the unbidden and uncontrollable, and horrible longings all that innocent sensuality provoked.

Soon, the honeysuckle-scented camisole’d sitter was in my dreams too! How did she get there? And, well… let’s just say my conscience worked just fine.

It was my first encounter with the lifelong truth so ably depicted in the Grateful Dead’s Dupree’s Diamond Blues:

“That jellyroll will drive you so mad!”

Look, there are things you can control and things you can’t. Don’t fool yourself. And don’t attempt to fool God either, remember:

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”
~ Galatians 6:7, NKJV

The Takeaway

Look, after all that 19-year old in a camisole, and honeysuckle, and dreams, you’re not stupid. You get the takeaway. I’m trying to keep a clear conscience here.

July 12, 2021
LifeSpace Design—3 Books Help You Match Your Space To Your Life

Not my Uncle’s place, but a house with character (Shutterstock Image: Licensed to Author)

# 80 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: When contemplating a home, ask yourself, “What kind of life do I see myself doing here?” Does the space match the anticipated activity?

My introduction to lifespace design

Thefirst trade I learned was carpentry. I had the good fortune to work for an uncle (with whom I also lived for a season when I first left home) who had a brilliant eye and feel for spaces and who shared it with me.

He purchased a small, nondescript house and transformed it into an oasis of livability, aesthetic pleasure, comfort, and utility. The rear of the house included a 20-foot-diameter deck built around the trunk of white oak. A flagstone path led from the deck to an outdoor shower with sides of batten-board red cedar. The open-sided entry afforded privacy by proximity to uninhabited woods.

There’s nothing as pleasing as an outdoor shower. It’s the nearest thing to skinny-dipping you can do standing up.

Heating, chores, and smells like home

Inside the house was unlike any space I’ve experienced since. A squat, black woodstove in the large front room heated the entire home. It sat perched atop a boulder so big the front door had to be removed to bring it in.

We shored up the structure beneath the floor with piers, beefier joists, and concrete. Up top, we set the stone (the size of a king-sized bed) in its own bed of thinset mortar. Then we carefully drilled holes to anchor the feet of the woodstove to the stone’s flat gray surface using bolts epoxied in place. This was not a mere cosmetic stone, nor an homage to cave-dwelling. To my amazement the heat absorbed by the slab of stone during the day would radiate from it at night, warming the house, while the stove went untended.

First thing in the morning, I did my first ever “real man’s” chores. I cut wood from the stack, carefully splitting it with a leather-handled hatchet to lengths I could feed the stove. Then I fed Jack Moon, the blue-eyed half-wolf, half husky wolf-dog that guarded the back of the property from within his 6-foot-high dog run.

Most mornings I returned from chores to the aroma of hickory smoke mingled with bacon— sizzling in the huge cast-iron skillet lit from underneath by blue gas flame. Those smells will always mean home.

In back of the house my uncle built a house-sized barn topped by a gambrel roof that served as workshop, toolshed, and classroom of life.

Barn v. McMansion

Today, if someone offered me a choice between that barn (or a replica, since he is thankfully still using it), or any pretentious McMansion in some gated, cramped neighborhood, I’d gladly take the barn. There was more hominess, (my spell checker auto-corrected to holiness, and you know what, that’s not an accident), more holiness, and therefore more wholeness, than in any of those conspicuous-consumer, soul-less wannabe estates.

My education about spaces and life and activity and how to meld the three was furthered by 3 unique books I’ll share here with you.

3 books about architectural space

The Personal—Can you reach it?

A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams, by Michael Pollan

This deserves its own story, which I will probably supply one day. I’m certain there are many good ones already out there. This book explores the nature of space and place. How different spaces make us feel. How to match a space to its expected usage, and more. I cannot recommend this highly enough. It would easily make my top 10 list of all-time favorite, most important reads.

A House is not a Cathedral

The Not So Big House: A Blueprint For The Way We Really Live, by Sarah Susanka

Susanka wrote this book as a backlash against the encroachment of the mini-Mansions like I decry above. She filled it with beautiful illustrations and photographs. The link above will give you a delightful glimpse.

In a very similar vein as giants of residential architecture like Frank Lloyd Wright, the author shows and tells how impactful beauty and craftsmanship are to one’s experience of life. This is especially true in your home, the space where you spend most of your time.

She makes a powerful argument that these homes are wasteful if not outright harmful. They borrow effects from industrial, financial, and governmental architecture with huge entryways, soaring foyers, sweeping staircases, all of which shrink the person entering the space, elevating the space with its contrived sense of awe (think of a downtown bank lobby or a cathedral after you’ve moved past the entry narthex).

Beautiful for a cathedral (this from inside St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Savannah, GA) not so great for a home. (Photo by Author)

Observing the lives of her architectural clients in the monstrosities, she realized they don’t use the grandiose living rooms, the formal sitting rooms, or the extra den. People still seek alcoves. They will always congregate in a kitchen. So she began designing homes for the way we actually live.

A Town can have soul

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, by Christopher Alexander

This book, one of three in a series that was first published in the mid-70s, describes building elements, “patterns”, that evoke desirable responses to the inhabitant or denizen of the building. Alexander doesn’t limit exposition of these patterns and principles to residences, he talks about public buildings, town design, and construction methods.

The 253 identified patterns are not hierarchical. The author doesn’t impose his own sensibility or value system other than to list some and preclude others.

But if you can find a copy of this work and familiarize yourself with the patterns, you’ll begin to notice them when you find them (as well as their absence) when you are contemplating and considering a place of your own, or a potential remodel.

A couple of quick examples that come to mind

Light from two sides of a room: This pattern not only allows for more natural light, it increases the sense of space and will seem to melt the veil of interior and exterior space in a way light from only one wall will not accomplish.

Transition from public space to private space: Alexander points to examples of Asian, specifically Japanese tendencies to create fencing, screens, archways, or gates between the sidewalk or driveway and the front entry of the home. The transition serves as a visible and physical symbol of moving from public to private activity, from public to private life.

Find this in examples like the photo below, and you’ll sense it physically too. These patterns are real.

The gate, the steps, the beautiful woodwork all transition from public to private (Photo by Author)

Here is a photo from the Savannah, GA riverfront that shows another desirable pattern, especially in towns and cities: outdoor dining with a view of nature.

Alexander wasn’t limited to residential patterns (Photo by Author)

The Takeaway

I hope this very brief treatment of this important topic will spur you to do further research on lifespace design, then put your findings to work. There is probably no greater or easier way to change your daily life and emotional mood than to create appropriate, purposely designed spaces in which to spend it.

July 12, 2021
A Life Worth Living Is The Point Of Making A Living—Even If You Row… Go For It!

Photo by SOULSANA on Unsplash

# 81 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Focus your attention and energy on making a life worth living, more than on making a living and hoping one day to match it to a worthwhile life. That day may never come.

Making a living isn’t that exciting if it just means you’re keeping yourself alive and afloat to—make a living. Instead, focus attention on making a life. One worth living. Making a life worth living is the point of making a living. Right?

How do you know if you have?

Ask

Ask yourself, is this the life I want to be living?

Answer honestly.

Hopefully, there are elements in your life that you enjoy, that you want to be there, and that you would miss if they were gone. Cherish, protect, and be grateful for those.

Other elements need to go. Period. You know it. You’ve known it for a while.

You know them when you lie down at night and scan the inventory of your life and wonder how you got here, what you’re doing in this job, or with that person, or with these persistent, chronic issues arising from so-called friends, or family members that are family in name only.

And these certainly aren’t the only things that may need to go for you to have the life you actually want.

One thing is certain, you’ll never arrive there—if you don’t leave here.

You cannot know for certain that you’ll arrive at your desired, imagined, dream life. You can’t be certain of the destination.

But you can be certain of the launching pad. You can know where you’re leaving from.

Row if you must, but go for it

Lyrics from 2 songs by the only band that matters, the Grateful Dead, apply here.

The first is from Row Jimmy:

“And I say row, Jimmy row
Gonna get there?
I don’t know
Seems a common way to go
Get down, row, row, row
Row, row”

The second, from Saint of Circumstance, is like it:

“Well, I sure don’t know
What I’m goin’ for
But I’m gonna go for it,
That’s for sure. “

You have one shot at this life, folks. One shot. And God, it’s a blink. A vapor that passes.

I especially like pacing suggested by the chorus from Row Jimmy. It’s not Speedboat Jimmy. Nor is it Rocketship Jimmy. It’s Row Jimmy. Sometimes making a change can take time. It takes effort. The pace can feel slow, like a rowboat.

The second song verse from Saint of Circumstance suggests that the decision to commit to a change can be instant and persistent. You may not know where you’re gonna go. You may have to row to get there. So it may take some time, but making a life worth living is what you’re gonna go for.

There and back again

At 19, I traveled all the way across country and back having left home with a $20 bill. I didn’t know how hard it would be to make that trip again, or how long it would take me to do it. I didn’t know the full value of what I was seeing. The places I went were amazing, but I wasn’t as mindful as I’d be now. I was grateful, but not as appreciative as I’ll be the next time. I hope like hell to go across country by car again, but that day may never come.

There will never be a good time to do it. Other considerations, other obligations, other clamoring, clutching things will seem to matter and weave an illusory web of importance to keep me stuck if I let them.

There will never be a good time. If I do it again, there will only be departure time.

Lastly

You will face your own sticky web that is keeping you stuck in a life that is not the one you ever envisioned. Free yourself to live your best life.

I’m not advocating being irresponsible. I’m advocating taking responsibility for your own misery as the only path towards taking responsibility for your own happiness—and go for it. For sure.

July 11, 2021
Sequential Thinking—The Backwarder We Go, The Forwarder We Get

Air-Traffic Controllers are masters of sequential thinking (Shutterstock Image: Licensed to Author)

# 70 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Sequential thinking is a life-skill that must be practiced and mastered over a lifetime.

Sequential thinking is the kind that arranges knowledge and actions into ordered steps.

It can also ease the fear associated with uncertainty. Each step taken towards unknown answers to perplexing questions follows and builds upon answers of which we are certain—having learned them by answering previous questions.

This kind of thinking shows up everywhere, but the construction trades are a good example. Foundations before floor systems. Floors before walls. Walls before ceilings and roofs.

Air-traffic controllers use sequential thinking to do their job. The controller takes lots of data into account to organize and arrange a sequence of one-at-a-time landings onto a single runaway. The perfect picture of linear, sequential order.

Humans usually experience time sequentially—as a linear series of causal events and their effects (one thing causes another which causes another… ad infinitum), connected one to another like the cars of a train.

We experience the slow unfolding of time, living it forward, understanding it backward, as Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, put it.

And while there are a variety of thinking modes, each with its own characteristics—making them suitable to grapple with different kinds of problems; sequential thinking seems to have application to problems of all types.

The Backwarder we go the Forwarder we get

Sequential thinking takes two forms. One works backwards, the other forwards.

The first works backwards from a desired goal, thinking through the correct order of steps needed to reach that goal. Careful thinking of this type will prevent mishaps like installing sheet rock on walls before the electricians have wired them.

The other type moves forward by asking a series of questions. Progress requires answering the first question before moving to the next. In this way, the answers to simple questions link, building upon one another, to solve a more complex problem.

[If I live in an apartment and I want to own a dog, what are the things I will need to know in order to make that desire a reality? The size of the dog, the breed, the pet fee, etc.]

Or if I want to write for a living—I’ll need to determine the things that are necessities for that to happen. There may not be as many variables as landing airplanes, but entertaining abstract thoughts about the beauty of written words and how cool it would be to live in Paris or Spain like Hemingway won’t get the job done.

The Takeaway

Is sequential thinking the best way to think? No, I wouldn’t say that. But it fits the model of time as we experience it. And frankly, we’re all practicing a semblance of it, since we can only think of one thing at a time anyway. So, no matter your habitually preferred thinking style, at some point you’ll need to plan how to deliver to us what you’ve been thinking about. So, it’s a skill worth working on.

Thus endeth the sequence of words. Thanks for playing.

July 10, 2021
The Wise Use The Best Means—Even If It’s A Long, Strange Trip Getting There

Photo by David Iskander on Unsplash

Picking right up where we left off in the preceding companion piece in which you drank coffee and chose the ultimate end for your life, we proceed to the second of wisdom’s applications. Wisdom chooses the best end, then uses the best means to achieve it. So, the wise use the best means.

I didn’t learn about the application of means and ends to my life until after I’d already confused them royally. At 17, I entered college as a freshman. I chose the college I attended because I loved the basketball team. Seriously. What was not to love? Michael Jordan had just helped the team win a national championship. Is there any better criterion for choosing a university?

So, at 17 I arrived on campus with a cooler, a stereo with huge speakers, a bong, and some albums. My pre-med roommate said he’d never seen a freshman so outfitted. I probably took his meaning the wrong way… it made me proud.

I had not just arrived on campus, by God, I had arrived in LIFE! And I was at the summit! King of my Universe! And let me tell you, as king, I had a helluva lot of fun. All my gear was put to incessant use.

2 Years Later

It took two years to realize I had selected the wrong end.

As much as I loved cheering MJ’s exploits as a man among boys at Carmichael Auditorium (this was pre-Dean E. Smith Center, mind you), the lifestyle was unsustainable. The classes were dull. My other roommate spent two hours a night on a single accounting problem. I knew that wasn’t for me. I had no conception of why I was there once basketball season ended. The football team was mediocre even then.

The wise use the best means, and I was as far from wise as I was from equalling Jordan’s skills as a basketball player. I didn’t know what means even were.

A Long, Strange Trip

So I left college with questions about life college couldn’t answer. I went on the road to follow around the Grateful Dead instead. Hey now, don’t laugh! There are worse means to use exploring the meaning of life and consciousness than Dead shows.

Anyway, after a long, strange trip, I now know what ends and means are all about. I know that college is a means to an end, not the end. And I know a job is a means to an end, not the end. Likewise, money, most learning, etc.

Once you’ve chosen wisely and selected your life mission, your ultimate end, you’ll need to determine what it will take to achieve it. What path will bring you there? What metaphorical mode of transportation?

Remember, it is not enough to casually try out the best means. You must use them diligently. Along with diligence is patience, teachability, and flexibility. The best ends take time. It takes a lot of time to figure out what value is. Then more time to know what is valuable enough to make it your life’s pursuit. Still more to adopt the best means and stick with the program.

But if it is truly valuable enough, a wise choice, and therefore worthy of the effort, don’t make the effort by all means—make it by the best means. That’s what the wise do.

July 9, 2021