It occurs to me…

“Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves.”  Cheryl Strayed

Based on my internet research, this sentiment has many sources.  I heard it recently, in the format above, from Cheryl Strayed.  That said, it seems to me that this sentiment is found all over the place, and going way back in time.  On hearing this from Strayed I immediately thought of three other variations among some of my favorite writings:

From Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata – “do not distress yourself with imaginings.”

From Baz Luhrmann’s Sunscreen recording written by Mary Schmich – “Don’t worry about the future, but know that worrying is about as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.”

From Matthew 6:34 – “Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Whatever the source, there is great truth in this concept.  This is not to say that some things worried about never occur.  As a kid I worried that if I skipped a class in Catholic grade school I’d get caught and end up getting some “nun-ishment” in the principal’s office – I was right, once.  But my odds for one of the things I worry about actually happening are, on reflection, lottery-like.  My path in life is, thankfully, I guess, littered with worries of possibilities that never occurred. All of which points to the realization that I am good at worrying, but not particularly good at deciding what to worry about.  Yet it occurs to me that there are no bragging rights associated with being good at worrying, and perhaps not even knowing what to worry about, because often, things just happen.  (Don’t believe me?  Read the bumper stickers.)  This is a sentiment I think is best addressed in Luhrmann/Schmich’s work:

“The real troubles in life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, that kind that blindside you at 4:00 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Great!  What the hell is going to happen this Tuesday at 4:00?

 

“And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.”  Like 15:13

Reading the parable of the prodigal son again today, this passage jumped out at me, particularly the “wasted his substance on riotous living” portion.  My on-line dictionary defines “riotous living” as “given to or marked by unrestrained revelry; loose; wanton.”  Jesus could have, instead, said that the younger son “made some bad decisions” or “ran into a streak of bad luck” or “was taken advantage of by some unscrupulous conduct.”  With the use of those words it would have been much more difficult to be judgmental as to the younger son.  As it is, we can all roundly condemn the younger son for his “riotous living” and, as the older son puts it later, devouring his father’s money with harlots.  We can feel righteous and smug in thinking that the younger son “got what he deserved.”

But then it occurs to me that this all misses the point.  I am reminded of something C. S. Lewis wrote to the effect that before we toss out the life preserver, we shouldn’t ask the drowning man how it is he came to be in the water.  The manner in which the younger son “wasted his substance” is merely a footnote, an ancillary fact in this parable.  The point to the story is that ultimately, he came to his senses, recognized his errors, swallowed his pride, and headed back home, where his father joyously greeted him.  But of course, the father would have taken him back had he only made some bad decisions or run into a streak of bad luck or been taken advantage of by some unscrupulous conduct.  No riotous living required.  The father was and is there waiting on the return, no matter how or why the younger son screwed up.

These quotes from a Brene Brown On Being interview:

“We are all taught to be brave, but warned not to be vulnerable.”

“The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.”

Brown repeatedly comes back to the thought that nothing of value is accomplished without risk, without vulnerability.   We often know, or at least feel we know the right thing to do, but have uncertainties about it.  As she puts it, when I decide “I am not going to do it because I cannot guarantee an ending that deserves a bow,” what I am really saying is that the risk of failure, the uncertainty of success, creates more vulnerability than I am willing to accept.

Well, when she puts it that way, and one considers the complexities and surprises in life, the concept does sound a bit silly – that I can accomplish things without risk, without vulnerability.  That implies I can know the result, know the outcome, before I start. As much as I would like to believe that, I know it not to be true in most instances.  And even when the outcome (the spot I get to) is as expected, the path to get there is often full of detours, rife with unexpected lessons learned along the way.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  Romans 12:2

My friend, the late Jim Mulford, must have thrown this passage my way hundreds, perhaps thousands of times in the years that I knew him.  These are such masterful lines by Paul, Romans 12:1-2, as much for what they do not say as what they say.  Three things always jump out at me here.  Note Paul says nothing about removing myself from the world, nothing about holing up in a cave, a monastery, or some remote deserted island.  No, Paul, at least indirectly, is telling me that my transformation is to occur where I am.  Second, the insertion of “any longer” is such a nice, non-guilt inducing way for Paul to get across that I have already allowed myself to “conform…to the pattern of this world….”  And last, the key, is that the transformation Paul writes of does not come so much from doing as it does from thinking.  I am not being asked to write “renew my mind” 100 times on the blackboard.  I am not being tasked with some physical effort halfway across the world.  I am only (?only?) being asked to think and see things differently (which may, of course, lead to doing, but let’s not go there now).

Boy, that’s a lot packed into one sentence.

From Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo:

“To Rub’s mind, Sully’s one human flaw was that he didn’t seem to want much more than he had, which seemed unaccountable.  If you were standing outside in the cold and wet, it was only natural to wish you were inside where it was warm and dry, so Rub wished it, and not just selfishly for himself, but for Sully, too.  That was friendship….  And as Rub slid onto the stool, as close as he could get to Sully on the other side of the counter, he’d have liked to explain this whole friendship deal to him, so he’d know.  Instead, he said “Could I borrow a dollar?”

I like that simple concept of friendship – to wish more than they have for someone else.  Not more so they have more, but more in the sense of wishing well being to come upon them, like getting out of the cold and wet, into the warm and dry.  It occurs to me that such is a find definition of friendship.  I also occurs to me that Rub and Sully have a typical male friendship — one left to action, rarely words.

Spending a good deal of time on planes, I followed with particular interest the recent Southwest Airlines incident that resulted in the death of a passenger.  Reading accounts from the passengers and crew feels sort of like gawking at an automobile crash on the opposite lanes of traffic as I pass by, uninjured, car intact.  Having been on a few Southwest planes over thirty plus years of travel, it is sobering.  But the one word that keep bubbling to the top is “fragility,’ as in “the fragility of life.”  Life has its bumps and bruises, its breakups, crashes, and tearing aparts.  As such, it is easy to start to think of life as something other than fragile.  It becomes easy to think of it as a rock, not an egg, a sheet of steel, not a pane of glass.  It becomes easy to start seeing life as an entitlement, not a gift – but a gift it is.  It occurs to me that perhaps the best way to honor those who pass before me is to treat life as the gift that it is.

 

“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way

When sorrows like sea billows roll

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know

It is well, it is well, with my soul”

Horatio Stafford penned that in the 1880s.  It popped into my mind today, as it does with some regularity.  Today, I am struck by the duality of the lyrics.  In two lines, we have “peace like a river” and “sorrows like sea billows” rolling.  Perhaps that is why this song has hung on for so many years – because that is the roller coaster we call life. That sentiment was expressed nearly a hundred years later by John Prine:

“That’s the way that the world goes round

You’re up one day, the next you’re down

It’s a half an inch of water, and you think you’re gonna drown

That’s the way that the world goes round.”

The hard part, of course, it to remember, to see (or see to it) in the midst of those days of ups and downs, while standing in that “half an inch of water,” that “it is well with my soul.”  Today, it seems so.  I’ll take that.

From Making All Things New by Henri Nouwen:

“One of the most notable characteristics of worrying is that it fragments our lives.  The many things to do, to think about, to plan for, the many people to remember, to visit, or to talk with, the many causes to attack or defend, all these pull us apart and make us lose our center.  Worrying causes us to be “all over the place,’ but seldom at home.”

Let that settle in a bit – “all over the place, but seldom at home.”  I can’t help but think of the analogy of a merry-go-round.  So long as I am settled into or near the center, the core, the ride is fairly smooth as the rotation (while still 360 degrees) seems much less unsettling than if hang around the periphery.

“The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”  That passage from Galatians 5:14 is familiar, and the same things is said throughout the Bible.  While difficult to do, it is easy to let that settle in, at least as a good idea, something to aspire to.  The next verse, however, came across as I read it today as a pretty stern warning, and certainly more unsettling: “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.”  Galatians 5:14-15

There it is – and who can argue with that?  All of the animosity, the bad blood, the “us and them” mentality that is so prevalent today makes me think of the line from one of Merle Haggard’s songs – “Are we rollin’ downhill like a snowball headed for hell?”

So what do we do?  Well, as crazy as it sounds, that answer is in the preceding verse: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”