From the Museum to the Playground

Warning: This entry is about getting down and dirty.

The commitment I’ve made this year is to move from the museum to the playground. For a long time, I have been the faithful custodian of a special exhibit seldom visited by others–the Monument to Unfulfilled Potential. I have polished it with painstaking care for most of my life. It is pristine in its beauty and is stored under very controlled conditions. The general dust and hubbub and impurities of every day life are held at bay and not allowed to disturb it.

For a long time, I’ve felt that this work, beliefwork, is my special calling, my gift.  Whether it comes from a Higher Power, or is merely me calling to myself (which aren’t mutually exclusive and a topic I might explore in a future post) isn’t that important to me.  What is important to me is that the times I spend working with folks on their beliefs, helping them to move from doubt, fear, anger, bewilderment, and discomfort to a sense of peace, ease, love, purpose, and empowerment are the times I value the most. And, paradoxically, it is this work that I am most likely to push to the side to deal with other “urgent” matters.

So, the work stays in the museum, beautiful in its undisturbed potential (which includes the potential that just maybe I really can’t make a successful go at it). In other words, the prioritization of the other “urgencies” in my life might really just be a mask for fear. So, I’m committing to leaving the rarified air of the exhibit hall and kicking up some dirt in the sandbox.

What about you?  Do you have any areas in your life–or one in particular–that you feel drawn to and yet assiduously avoid? What would happen if you made that a priority and committed to taking perfectly imperfect action to bring it into reality?

C’mon. Let’s play together.

Little League Ball, Major League Judgments

Today, as I walked Scooter on a cloudy Sunday, I came across a couple of Little League teams playing at the neighborhood school around the corner. They must have been 1st or 2nd graders—little be-gloved and be-capped Munchkins in small red and blue jerseys running around the field, with fathers scattered among them serving as various linemen and coaches.

Crack. Wood and leather connect and the ball flies over mid-left field. One outfielder was a little late in getting there and the ball sailed away him.  The outfield coach immediately chided him: “Don’t wait for it to bounce before you start moving—get going as soon as it heads in your direction!”

It was good advice, though I was a little concerned about the tone of his voice—a slight hint of exasperation.  Not just, “Hey, do this next time,” but “What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you do this?”

And he said it again. And then again. I could hear it, along with everyone on the field. Even after Scooter had finished her business and we were moving away, I could still hear him repeating the same words, with the same tone, the same wagging head.

I wonder what Major League self-judgments might have started on that field? And I wonder what the coach was reacting to? The boy in front of him, or the modeling he received from his own father? So often—maybe always—the judgments we place on others are reflections of our own judgments (whether inherited or arrived at independently) of ourselves.

I was thinking, “Wow. This is how it starts.”  But maybe it didn’t start on that field. Maybe it started on a field generations before. And who knows how far into the future that ball is going to sail?

Ready for Your Close-up?

Yesterday afternoon, I read a particularly moving article about returning home, by a national columnist describing his contentment at moving back to his childhood hometown in Louisiana. Afterwards, I lay on my bed reflecting about how lucky I am to live in such a marvelous place—a surreal “dream state,” if ever there was one.  Then, I got up and hitched my aggressively amiable pit bull, Scooter—She of the Wagging Tail of Destruction—to her leash and left for a walk around the neighborhood.

I also hitched up my iPod and set it to play some particularly melodic, evocative music—the kind you might hear in the background of a heartwarming montage in a movie.  And as I looked at everything and everyone, it was as if I was watching a movie, as if they were all worthy of being commemorated in film.

There was the young family—my neighbors from across the street—walking with their three little children, each moving in a different rhythm and on separate urgent missions as their parents tried with mixed success to keep them herded in the same general direction. The middle-aged hipster couple from around the corner—the woman dressed in a full-length fur coat on a mild 70s day, with a bemused grin on her face (I believe they started their New Year’s Eve celebration a little early).  The father and son piling and bagging the last autumn leaves in their yard.   My other neighbor from across the street with the two incessantly yappy, scruffy-faced little dogs.

My heart warmed and I smiled as I looked at each one. What winding paths had brought each of them to this particular point, and what roads lay before them?  Just one example: it was easy to chuckle at the eccentric neighbor in the fur coat, but I also knew that she had lost her husband quite suddenly a couple of decades ago when she had a houseful of growing children.

We are each of us stars of a movie, by turns comic, tragic, magical, romantic, thrilling. Some of us are even on an epic hero’s journey.  We each have a story worth telling, worth remembering, worth celebrating.

Someday soon, plug in your headset and go see the movie down your street, or at the park, or even in the grocery store checkout.  I hear it’s a great one. You won’t want to miss it.

Happy New Year.

All About Whom?

Just in case anyone out there is under the impression that it’s “all about you,” well, I’ve got news for you.

You’re right. Except, of course, for the part that is all about ME–which, come to think of it, is all of it.

For each of us, our self is the axis and reference point of our turning world.  Every stimulus that winds it way through our awareness presents us with a question: “What does this mean for or about me?”  And the answer to that question is often reflexive, to the point of being automatic. It springs from our beliefs, and perhaps the most powerful of those beliefs—the ones that have the most impact on our moment-by-moment experience—are our judgments about ourselves.  If those are optimistic, hopeful, and comfortable, our experience will be, too.  On the other hand, if our self-judgments are harsh, accusing, or negative, that will be the lens through which we’ll  see and experience our world.

Which one is the “correct” viewpoint?  I would emphatically answer Neither.  And Both. You get to decide.  Because, in the end, it’s all about you.