Archives For Purpose & Meaning

Why Broken Lampshades Are the Best Gift This Holiday Season

December 14, 2012 — 10 Comments

Lampshades can emit tremendous beauty. Even broken ones. Maybe we’re all like broken lampshades, and maybe we don’t need to wait to be fixed in order to be beautiful…

Domestic Object 005

Photo Credit: swirlingthoughts (Creative Commons)

THE WAITING GAME

Every therapy office has a waiting room. Waiting rooms are an important part of the therapeutic experience—they contain those rare moments of peace and quiet before entering the psychotherapy room. Moments of decision, when we decide what parts of our story we will share with the person we have chosen to trust.

But I wonder if sometimes the waiting doesn’t end in the waiting room.

We enter into the therapy room and immediately begin a waiting of a different kind. Waiting to be fixed. Waiting to be cured. Waiting to be repaired. Waiting as passive recipients of a remedy—a word or an experience that will leave us finally feeling whole. We have put our lives on hold until we feel, finally, perfectly put together. We wait to truly begin our lives. We are waiting until we feel properly fit for purpose and meaning.

I think this happens in psychotherapy offices all the time.

But I wonder if we also wait like this in our hearts and homes and neighborhoods and nations and in our world.

Advent—the liturgical season leading up to Christmas—is meant to be a season of waiting, but I wonder if we’re all waiting for the wrong thing. I wonder if we are all waiting until we feel like we have it all together—afraid to really put ourselves out into the world while we still feel so cracked and broken.

MY BROKEN LAMPS

I have three lamps in my office. Each of them has a lampshade the color and texture of old parchment paper. They emit a warm, even glow and people who peak into my office on a dark winter afternoon will often remark on the sense of peacefulness evoked by the lamplight.

My lamps create beauty.

And they appear to be pristine themselves—perfect, whole, untarnished, classy. But I’m going to let you in on a little secret: they’re all broken. The lampshade on my desk is marred by water stains, which are rendered invisible when the light is turned on. The lampshade on my side table has a gash across the back of it. And the shade on my newest lamp—the floor lamp—was torn in assembly before I even had a chance to turn it on.

My lampshades are stained and ripped and torn. My lamps are a mess.

And they are beautiful.

BROKEN AND BEAUTIFUL

We’re all ripped lampshades.

We’re all stained by life, ripped by experience, and torn by pain. But there is good news: we don’t need to wait to be beautiful. We don’t need to wait to be fixed or cured or somehow redeemed in order to be an inviting light in this world.

On U2’s most recent album, Bono sings: “You don’t know how beautiful you are. You don’t know, and you don’t get it, do ya? You don’t know how beautiful you are.”

Perhaps the best gift we can give ourselves this holiday season is to know that we are all broken lampshades. Broken people. Stained, ripped, torn and beautiful people. If we could cling to the grace of this, perhaps we would step out of the waiting rooms of our lives and step courageously into this world—into marriage and parenting and friendship and into quiet moments in which we keep only our own company.

Maybe we would discover that our rips and tears are like a prism, reflecting the light within us in unique and beautiful ways. Maybe in this discovery we would become a gift given to others, as well. Broken and beautiful givers of light, inviting others into the peaceful glow of the light we cast.

Let’s be ripped and torn together this season. And let’s know precisely how beautiful we are.

QUESTIONS: Is there something you’ve been waiting to begin. How could you step into that new part of your life now, before you are completely whole? Share your thoughts in the comments section.          

DEAR READER, As many of you already know, my new eBook, The Marriage Manifesto: Turning Your World Upside Down, is now available free in PDF format. (It will soon be available in Kindle, Nook, and iBook formats but I wanted to honor the Season by delivering this gift to you now.) If you are not yet a subscriber, you can simply click here to subscribe. Your subscription confirmation e-mail will include a link to download the eBook for free. If you are an existing e-mail subscriber, your e-mail of December 11 contains a link to download a free copy of The Marriage Manifesto! I have so much appreciated your outpouring of praise and support for the book in the last few days. You have given me the gift of your readership, and I’m glad to be able to give this gift back to you. Warmly, Kelly

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How to Find the Promised Land (In Less Than 40 Years)

October 12, 2012 — 11 Comments
Popped red balloon

Photo Credit: Kat…B (Creative Commons)

Few of us consider ourselves to be leaders. But I think each of us is called to lead someone. That can be an intimidating notion. But it doesn’t have to be. You have all the tools you need for leadership. In your heart…

Summer is dwindling in Chicago, and the shadows are long in the early-gathering dusk. My five-year-old son is in the back yard, bouncing a large balloon above his head. I look on as the red orb drifts toward a rosebush and I can see it coming—the loud pop of balloon on thorns and the even louder little boy, mourning his shredded prize.

As the tears flow I walk casually to his side. I pat him on the back. I reassure him there are other balloons—it’s not the end of the world, and we should be grateful for what we do have. But all my soothing only enrages him and now I’m angry he won’t accept my wisdom and guidance.

But why should he?

Why should he listen to this calloused adult? This big-indifferent creature who is apparently clueless about the grief in this moment? Why should he listen to anyone who can’t relate to the pain he is in?

And he’s right. Because if Daddy cannot touch this place of grief in his own heart, how can Daddy know the means of deliverance?

Leadership is Always Deliverance

People don’t follow leaders because they are hip or fun or friendly. People follow leaders because they want to be delivered out of bondage into the freedom of the Promised Land. From loneliness into companionship, from poverty into affluence, from sorrow into joy, from obscurity into influence, from dependency and submission into empowerment.

Henri Nouwen wrote, “The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.” As leaders, our only real authority is our intimate knowledge of the bondage itself and the ways we were delivered into freedom. When we lead, our authority is our experience of the freedom-journey.

Maybe this is why the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years? Perhaps it wasn’t all about their opposition and rebellion. Maybe it was a failure of leadership. Maybe Moses couldn’t lead because he had experienced a life of privilege and then of exile but never of slavery. How could a man who has never experienced the slavery of his own heart efficiently lead a bunch of slaves to the Promised Land?

A Daddy Leads His Little Boy

As my son weeps anguished tears, mourning over the sudden loss of his prized possession, I try to find his place of bondage in my own heart. I try to find the place of loss. I know this beautiful boy is my prized possession and an image flashes through my mind—a sudden darting of boy into street, cars racing past, and my prized possession broken and shredded. Lost.

His grief wells up in me, and suddenly my eyes are wet like his. And I know that leadership in this moment is not a lesson in letting go or gratitude. Leadership is an embrace—a steadfast reassurance of I-am-with-you.

Deliverance Always Begins in the Leader’s Heart

As a leader, you must first walk the lonely journey into the substance of your own soul. You must find the place of bondage in your own heart—the loneliness, restlessness, frustration, emptiness, loss, helpless dependency, or whatever.

And you must trust that your most personal experience is also most universal.

Because the people you love and lead do have the same conflict in their hearts, and they are starving for a leader who knows the experience and is prepared to lead them out of it.

The preparation is simple, but it may be painful:

You must feel the place of bondage in your own heart, rather than running away from it. This is your preparation for leadership: you must become intimately familiar with the place you want to leave. It is the only way to truly understand those you are called to lead. And they won’t respect your authority if you don’t understand them.

Having experienced the slavery, you will then learn how to walk out of it and into the freedom of the Promised Land. Having walked the walk, those who look to you for leadership will trust the authenticity of your calling. And they will feel real hope.

Finally, your calling as a leader is to clearly communicate the nature of the freedom-journey. You are called to spread the message of hope and point the way toward the Promised Land. In vulnerability with your spouse, a late-night cuddle-talk with your child, a cup of coffee with a friend, as referee in the neighborhood soccer game, or in an encounter with the aching eyes of a stranger.

It’s that simple. And it’s that hard. But I think if you’re willing, you and the people you love and lead won’t have to wait 40 years to glimpse the Promised Land.

Questions: What do you think about this view of leadership? What do you think are the keys to leadership? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

DEAR READER, Thanks for your patience as UnTangled has transitioned to a self-hosted blog. So far, the biggest problem has been the commenting system. But based upon the comment response to the last post, it seems that issue has been solved. Please let me know via Facebook or Twitter if you are still having trouble commenting on the blog. And feel free to give me feedback about other elements of the blog. I’m excited to use the versatility of the self-hosted blog to bring you my new e-book and to find ways to get it to you for free!

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How to Find Passion, Peace, and Purpose (Without Looking for Them): An UnTangled Mission Statement

August 24, 2012 — 42 Comments

The Good LifeDear Reader,

Today I want to speak directly to you. Some of you have been here from the very beginning, with the first posts about therapy and redemption. Many of you arrived here in the spring and early summer after “Marriage is for Losers” took a trot around the globe. And others of you have joined us in recent weeks, with posts about pain and overcoming.

With content from marriage to parenting to pain and therapy and purpose, you might be asking yourselves, what is going on here at UnTangled?

I know I would be…

“IT WAS JUST A MISSION STATEMENT.”

The film Jerry Maguire infused pop culture with a number of phrases that have stood the test of time, like “Show me the money!” and “You complete me.” But beneath the football story and the love story, another story was playing out.

The film opens with an early-middle-aged sports agent in the midst of an identity crisis. In a moment of inspiration, he pens a manifesto—a mission statement—for the future of sports agency. He calls for fewer clients, less money, a life of sincerity and passion. He titles it, “The Things We Think and Do Not Say.”

And it’s a total disaster. By the end of the week he has no job, one client, an alienated fiancée, and only his loneliness to keep him company. As he walks through the devastation of his life, several scenes find him muttering, “It was just a mission statement.”

I loved that movie. Saw it five times in the theater.

Because I think I’ve always wanted to be the kind of person who will risk everything to follow the cry of his heart, even if it leaves him broken and alone.

THE THINGS WE THINK AND DO NOT SAY

There are at least two reasons I should think-and-not-say what I’m about to say.

First, I’m going to speak to you directly from my heart. And therapists aren’t supposed to do that publicly. Therapists are supposed to pick and choose rare moments of self-disclosure. I recognize the wisdom in this. But I also think we need to know our helpers and healers are human—they think and feel and cheer and tremble like the rest of us.

Second, I’m going to tell you the life you want—a life filled with passion, peace, and purpose—cannot be obtained by seeking passion, peace, and purpose. I’m going to break the golden rule of blogging. I’m going to complicate things.

I want to share with you my hope for redemptive living.

I hope you’ll stick around for the journey! But if nothing else, I hope you’ll remember, “It was just a mission statement.”

THE GOOD AND EMPTY LIFE

In these days, the hearts of people are filled with a deep, yet vague, sense of longing. In an age of instant recognition, overwhelming connectivity, and startling wealth, we find ourselves with an aching hollow inside of us. Whether secular or religious, conservative or liberal, native or immigrant, we seem helpless to escape the gnawing.

And everyone has an idea about how to fix it. But the solutions are like bailing water on the Titanic. The ship is sinking and the band plays on. And we all know it, and we’re all frustrated and scared, and so many of us are wondering, “What’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t the advice work for me?”

I think it’s because the solutions are always focused on finding the good life.

And the good life is a hollow promise. It’s empty of passion, peace, and purpose. If we watched a movie about a person who lived the good life—raised in wealth, protected from hardship, inheriting the family business, retiring early and becoming a great shuffleboard champion—we would not come alive inside. We would be bored. Restless. We would want more.

We would be craving a story about redemption.

THE REDEMPTIVE LIFE

The redemptive life has three movements, and each movement ambushes us with the desire of our hearts.

First, the redemptive life always begins with brokenness and pain. In our favorite stories, the character we love begins broken and haunted and full of demons. We ache for the character, and the aching is the seed of passion—a word literally meaning “to suffer.” To feel alive with passion, we must first feel our pain.

Second, the redemptive life always contains a moment of confrontation. A moment in which the character we love stops running from the slobbering beast-of-pain at his heals, turns around, stares deep into its eyes, and sometimes even growls back. This is the moment when a redemptive life really begins. And this is also the birthplace of peace. Because peace is not the absence of pain. Peace is the deeply held confidence that all of our pain can be faced.

And finally, the redemptive life transforms the pain into something beautiful. And the moment of transformation is also the conception of purpose: a sense of purpose throbs within us when we face the pain and realize the transformation of it will be the direction of our lives.

But here’s the catch: our hearts cannot yearn for both the redemptive life and the good life. The desires for both cannot coexist in our souls. I know. I tried.

I remember the day when I turned to my wife and, voice cracking, stepped into all the pain I thought would annihilate me and said, “My whole life has been one long lonely scramble for perfection.”

One continuous hunt for the good life.

I remember the months that followed, facing the isolation of my shame—my deep-in-the-bones sense of not being good enough. And I remember how my heart began to rupture, as a desire for comfort and ease gave way to another desire—a yearning to walk through the world with open arms, leaving cashiers and waitresses and customer service representatives and friends and a wife and children feeling overwhelmed by grace and marked by a sense of belovedness.

REDEMPTION BEGINS WITH YOUR STORY

We sabotage the redemptive life by starting too big. We try to fix the world before we have learned to redeem our own stories. We must find the quiet space inside of us, where we can finally touch our own pain. And we can’t go there alone. We need someone or Someone to be there with us—a loving witness in the painful silence and a source of strength when our knees get weak.

Only when our compassion has been refined in the fire of our own souls will we be prepared for authentic togetherness in our relationships.  Having first learned to face and transform the conflict within our own hearts, we will be prepared to redeem the broken relationships in our lives with love and patience and hope.

And when redemption has ruptured our hearts and healed our relationships, only then will we be prepared to step out into the pain of a world waiting to be transformed into something beautiful. In fact, then, we will want nothing else.

A PLACE (AND A POST) FOR YOU

If you are ready to forsake the good life in favor of the redemptive life—if you are craving a story with passion and peace and purpose—there is a place (and a post) for you here at UnTangled.

If your story is riddled with brokenness and shame and fear and anger, and you are seeking a quiet place in which to turn around and face it, there is a place for you here.

If your life is filled with relationships crying out for healing, there is a place for you here.

If you look around at a world mired in pain and suffering, and your heart ruptures and you feel compelled to enter into all that darkness with a redemptive love, there is a place for you here.

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

You may find yourself today at a fork in the road. Down one path lies the good life. And down the other lies the redemptive life.

I know which path I want to walk.

Want to go for a stroll with me?

 

Comments: Does this excite you? Confuse you? Make you scared? Angry? All responses are welcome. Please feel free to share in the comments below.

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Why the U.S. is Losing the Olympics by Winning Them

August 10, 2012 — 11 Comments

Oscar PistoriusI love my country. I cheered for every American athlete and followed the medal count. But last Saturday I got choked up by a South African man running 400 meters on carbon-fiber legs and it made me wonder…

Why do we watch the Olympics?

Why do people who only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials suddenly sit entranced by synchronized diving and floor routines? Why do we suddenly care about Missy Franklin and Michael Phelps and Ryan Who? How can a major network get away with programming three consecutive hours of marathon running? Seriously, marathon running?

An old friend recently remarked that men tune in for the “geographic tribalism.” For two weeks, we are given something bigger to belong to—a country, a cause, an event that we all have in common. And we watch the medal count because we all want our tribe to be victorious, especially when the triumph is over the entire world.

But I think, deep down, we all sense tribal clashes and epic victories aren’t enough.

We may live our lives like getting on top is the most important thing—like winning will give us a sense of purpose—but in our heart of hearts, we know it isn’t true. Because once you climb to the mountaintop, you still have to climb down. And there’s always another summit.

But if the medal count isn’t enough to keep us focused on the Games, what is?

The NBC producers know the answer.

They know we are all captivated by a good story, and they know a good story is not defined by a character’s outcome, but by what that character has overcome. If an athlete hasn’t overcome a major obstacle, if they haven’t sacrificed and endured to get where they are, they know the athlete will not capture our attention.

So, the producers of the Olympics go out of their way to uncover hardship, to illustrate conflicted characters and their resilience in overcoming.

During the first week of the Games, I saw a commercial in which American athletes talked about the sacrifices of training—not watching television for a year, or not reading the popular book that everyone else is reading (thank God—the image of Michael Phelps reading 50 Shades of Grey might be enough to end my Olympics-watching career).

I’ll be honest, though: the discipline described was impressive, but it didn’t move me.

Because it doesn’t make for a good story.

If I went to a movie, and the protagonist was seeking an Olympic gold medal, and the entire movie was scene after scene of him looking longingly at the blank television screen, or standing outside the window of a bookstore (if one still exists) with tears in his eyes, I’m not sure I would love that character.

But last Saturday, I was reminded of the power of a redemptive story.

When I watched a South African man run on carbon-fiber legs.

Oscar Pistorius was born without fibulas—the bone running from knee to foot—and his parents made the painful decision at the age of one to have both legs amputated below the knees. And then his family spent a lifetime living the redemption of it. He was encouraged to join his brother in every activity. If his brother climbed a tree, so did he. And if you can climb a tree with no legs, why not become an Olympic runner, right?

As my eight-year-old son and I watched Oscar prepare for his first Olympic heat, and as the announcers narrated his story, my son turned to me and exclaimed, “I’m rooting for him!”

I’m rooting for him.

Oscar had almost no chance of winning. Yet, it was the first non-American my son had cheered for. Suddenly, tribalism and triumph had been thrown out the window, and both of us were captured by the power of a story that is not about outcome, but about overcoming.

As Oscar came in second place in the heat, achieving his goal of reaching the semifinal, something was caught in my throat. Something that wasn’t there when I watched a commercial about sacrificing television for a year.

You see, in a good story, we pull for a character because we are drawn to a soul bent on overcoming. If they persist and endure and move through the conflict and pain and struggle, we love them. The outcome itself no longer matters. Rocky’s victory was to stay on his feet for fifteen rounds. Aron Ralston’s victory was to simply remain alive with one less arm than before. And a thousand beloved romance films end simply with the character finding love. These are not extraordinarily triumphant outcomes. They are actually quite mundane. But we love the characters all the more, for what they overcame in the story.

And I think the same may be true for the stories you and I are living:

If we focus on triumphant, glorious outcomes in our lives, we will be impressed with ourselves, but we won’t love the character we are becoming.

If we spend our lives seeking safety and minimizing conflict and hardship, we will leave ourselves with little to overcome, and the love we feel for the characters we are living will be just as little.

If we want to love ourselves—if we want to carry within us a deeply-seated, unshakeable sense of value and worth and belovedness—we will need, finally, to make our lives about overcoming.

If we became people surrendered to the task of overcoming, I think we would look in the mirror and see a character we can root for. I think we would write the final scenes of our lives with a sense of peace and freedom. And I think our final scenes might be characterized by an entirely different kind of glory.

Perhaps, we would even write a scene like this:

When Oscar Pistorius’s semifinal heat was over, he had finished dead last. Eighth out of eight. But in the midst of runners celebrating the joy of victory, and other runners hunched over in the agony of loss, the man who had won the race—Kerani James of Grenada—searched out a last-place amputee on manufactured feet. Kerani James found Oscar, and he traded racing bibs with him. He gave Oscar the identity of the winner.

Not because he won, but because he overcame.

Your thoughts? What Olympic stories of overcoming have moved you? What characters did you root for? Remind us what a good story is, and give us hope for living one in our own lives.

About the Blog: My very first post, back in January, focused on story and redemption. Then, I credited Don Miller with impressing upon me the value of using story as an organizing principle in our lives. Once again, with this post, I am grateful for his writing. You can read that first post of mine by clicking here.

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In Purpose & Meaning, Story & Narrative , , , , ,
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(What Your Dentist Knows) About the Secret to Life

August 3, 2012 — 24 Comments

walking through pain into a big worldWe think the secret to life is achievement and status and comfort and painlessness. But we’re wrong. The secret to life lies elsewhere. I know, because my dentist told me…

“Until you can completely feel pain again, don’t eat anything.”

I was sitting in the dental chair last week—the right side of my face numb and drooping—when he said it, when my dentist told me the secret to life.

Our pain is the secret to life.

We can’t even eat unless we’re capable of feeling it.

Yet, we are a people obsessed with avoiding our pain. The DEA reports sales of prescription painkillers increased sixteen-fold in the last ten years. Oxycodone and hydrocodone are the two most popular painkillers—in 2010, pharmacies distributed 111 tons of those pills.

In the U.S. alone.

We build our lives around comfort and safety and ease. We feel entitled to painless living. Both physically and emotionally. We will go to great lengths to avoid our interior pain—our sadness, grief, powerlessness, fear, despair, shame, and anger. As Carl Jung said, “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.”

But what is the psychological equivalent of a painkilling pill?

I think we numb our psychological pain with myth.

By myth, I mean the ever-so-slightly deceptive stories we tell ourselves. About ourselves. About other people. About the world we live in. Our personal myths are the beliefs that protect us from the pain of life.*

Young men will tell themselves they love the bachelor lifestyle, so they don’t have to enter into the sweaty-browed risk of real intimacy and their own sense of inadequacy.

Young women will tell themselves they are in charge—and every weekend it’s the same bed but a different man—so they never have to acknowledge how empty it feels when they are finally alone.

We put doctors on pedestals, so we don’t have to fully feel the terror of the disease.

People who have given up on this life will survive it by adopting a set of rules that will guarantee there place in another life.

Perhaps (and this one haunts me), some of us may even write blog posts about redemption and compassion, so we can feel satisfied with our effort and avoid some of the painful work of love in our own lives.

And our myths protect us against the details of our story that feel too painful to acknowledge: the haunting vacancy in the eyes of our parents, the desperate race for worth in a family who dressed up competition as nurturance, the bitter loneliness of the schoolyard taunts, the aching regret about sleeping with that guy freshman year, the nagging emptiness of a paycheck with no meaning, or the walking-on-eggshells way of life in a household dominated by one person’s anger.

Our myths keep the pain of reality at bay, and so they sustain us with a false sense of freedom.

But what if we’re like puppies, chasing our tails inside the comfort of a grassy yard, thinking we’re free, when we’re actually imprisoned? What if our pain is like an invisible electrical fence, keeping us penned in and depriving us of a vast world and the freedom to fully live in it? What if our personal myths are just Kibbles ‘n Bits—pacifying morsels that keep us from deciding to walk through our pain into the freedom of fully living?

What would it look like to freely enter into our pain and walk through it? What might a life of freedom look like on the other side of our pain?

Earlier this summer, Chicagoland was in the throes of another heat wave. Through thick evening air, cicadas protested the end of day and crickets welcomed the night. I was with family, celebrating a birthday, and I was embroiled in an intense battle. I had the upper hand. My boys had water guns.

But I had the hose.

I smugly enjoyed the power as they approached me with their feeble weapons, and I drenched them in a cold-stinging flood from the hose. I had no intention of getting wet and spending the evening in the discomfort of wet-clinging attire. And the kids were powerless against me.

But then something happened.

My oldest son started to walk toward me with a different kind of look on his face. It was peaceful and determined and somehow knowing. I warned him to step back. But he kept walking.

So, I sprayed him.

But Aidan just kept walking forward into the jet of water, throwing his head back and letting loose a maniacal scream. And when he was within range, he raised his water gun and opened fire on me.

He was William Wallace with a super soaker.

And, this may sound a little strange, but I suddenly felt powerless. Aidan was attached to nothing. He had no interest in staying comfortable or painless. He didn’t care about the wet, the cold, or the sting. He had welcomed the discomfort and the pain—it no longer controlled him, and consequently he had become incredibly powerful.

I think the willingness to walk into our pain sets us free, and I think that kind of freedom makes us a powerful people.

In a culture that says we should be working at all costs to numb our pain, the therapeutic experience is a place of rebellion. In the paraphrased words of Peter Rollins, it is “nothing less than the taking place of the Real. It is the incoming of that which cannot be contained in our various mythologies, that which ruptures them and calls them into question.” I am always in awe of my clients, who for one hour a week choose to question their myths and walk through the pain of it.

In the therapeutic space, people are deciding the tiny-comfortable yard-of-life, in which they have been wearing a path, is no longer big enough for them. They are insisting there is more to life. They have decided there is a vast, beautiful world waiting for them—a world they are missing and that is missing them. They have decided to forsake their myths in favor of the real, and they are stepping directly into the pain of their invisible fences.

And they are learning the pain is intense. But it doesn’t last. If you keep moving into it, keep moving forward, the pain is temporary. And they are stepping onward into the vast freedom of a world completely open to them—a world in which pain is an acceptable consequence of fully living.

They are learning that people are waiting on the other side of the fence, to embrace them, and to walk hand-in-hand with them into the open expanse filled with possibility and wonder.

They are discovering the power of a people who are not absolved of pain, but who are set free from the fear of feeling it.

In the end, the secret to life is this:

The whole wide world is a banquet table, and there is a feast waiting for you. But you don’t get a seat at the table—you can’t eat—until you can feel your pain completely.

That’s what my dentist told me.

Your thoughts? Have you embraced pain in a way that you were able to let it go and move on into fuller living? Please feel free to share your story with us in the comments below.

About the Blog: The next Tuesday Tip will focus on a method for staying present with our pain, rather than running from it. Subscribe in the sidebar and receive the tip, as well as future posts, in your email inbox!

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And always, thank you for reading. It’s a gift.

*For the term “myth,” I owe a debt of gratitude to the recent writing of Peter Rollins.

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Licking Happiness and Forsaking Joy

July 13, 2012 — 15 Comments

Happiness and JoyWe’re drawn to simple pleasures. They go down easy. They make us happy. But sometimes, I wonder if we’re settling.

Settling for something less than joy…

On the first of July, as the minutes ticked toward midnight, I stood at the edge of the country. I faced east, gazing out over a dark and undulating Atlantic.

And I held my breath.

Because hundreds of miles northward a vast thundercloud throbbed with orange pulses of energy, and jagged bolts of lightning showered the horizon. From a distance, it was quiet, but violent and powerful and breath-taking.

And at the same time, the sky above me was star-scattered and, from the south, a full moon bathed the beach in a gentle glow.

In one direction—violence and destruction. In the other direction—tranquility and beauty. And me. Standing in the middle of it.

Alone.

The beach was empty. On the fluorescently-lit boardwalk several hundred yards away, throngs of tourists licked ice cream and ate funnel cake and pushed quarters into arcade games.

Distracted.

They were enjoying the classic American holiday weekend. Last week, Americans spent three billion dollars celebrating the holiday. Three billion dollars on gas, and burgers, and soda-pop, and sparklers. I contributed more than my fair share.

But I wonder if all of us were settling?

I wonder if we settle for happy things on the boardwalk of life.

You see, happiness is all about circumstance and situation. It’s all about orchestrating events so life is comfortable and pleasurable and fun. Happiness is what happens when all the tumblers fall into place and life just clicks.

It’s sitting on the front porch on a perfect June evening with plenty of money in the bank account. It’s the right job coming along at the right time. It’s your kid walking down the aisle in a cap and gown with a full-ride scholarship, or your daughter walking down the aisle in a completely different kind of gown to take the hand of a guy you actually like.

Happiness is winning lottery tickets, and good luck, and serendipity, and pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming.

Happiness is the perfect ice cream cone on the boardwalk, with fireworks on the way and a long beach week with cloudless skies ahead of you.

Happiness is sweet.

And we’re drawn to it like moths.

And why wouldn’t we be? Happiness goes down easy.

But happiness is always fleeting. Because circumstances change.

The furnace goes out and the roof springs a leak, and suddenly the financial margin evaporates. Or the new boss is a disaster. Or the kid comes home after a semester at college because the pressure got to him first and the amphetamines got to him next.

Happiness is an ice cream cone that melts, leaving you with sticky fingers and a constant hunger for more.

But Joy.

Joy is a place inside every circumstance. It’s a constant place, and it feels like peace, and it gives hope, and it looks like love, but it is more than all of these things, and words will always fail it.

And the place of joy is waiting for us.

But there’s a catch:

It only exists smack in the middle of the lightning and the moonlight. In fact, the place of joy in us cannot exist independent of the storms in life, because joy is the peace that comes from looking right into the storm and feeling freedom from it.

Joy is the place we stumble upon when we look our deepest pain and greatest fear directly in the eyes, and we refuse to flinch. It’s the place we stumble upon when we decide pain and fear aren’t going to be the final word. It’s the place where we anchor ourselves in something more than the vicissitudes of our material existence. It’s the place of freedom inside every situation, where we realize the things that are happening to us are losing their power to control us and define us.

Joy is not the answer to hardship. Rather, it is the birth of an entirely new way to experience the pain and the fear and the sorrow itself. Joy is watching the lightning-violence and trusting there is moonlight-peace just over our shoulder.

Joy is lightning and moonlight, all at once.

Joy is not knowing where the next meal will come from, yet hearing the laughter of your children and allowing yourself to be fed by it. Joy is the chaos of a toddler and newborn twins and a husband who just left you, and a knock on the door from a friend. Joy is sitting in the doctor’s office while the cancer grows, and deciding to love the stranger next to you anyway, with a comforting word and a smile. Joy is walking alone and lonely down a crowded city street and suddenly feeling yourself surrounded and joined by the millions of stories being lived every day. Joy is standing in the middle of the street during a historic blizzard, and shouting at it in defiance.

The night after I stood between the lightning and the moonlight, I boarded the Paratrooper ride at the boardwalk carnival with my oldest son. The Paratrooper is a kind of Ferris Wheel on steroids, whipping you up and down with legs dangling and feet flying out into the open air.

As the ride commenced with a lurch and a growling-hum, Aidan gripped the sticky handlebar with desperate tenacity. Looking straight ahead, he confessed, “Daddy, I’m terrified.” As we crested the top of the orbit, I shouted to him, “Put your hands in the air, Aidan; if you can do this, you can do anything!”

I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but I knew it would feel true to him.

And with joyful defiance, my gutsy, lovely son raised his arms above his head and let loose a wild scream, all terror and glory at the same time. Violence and beauty, all at once. My son stepped into the lightning and the moonlight. He chose his terror and found a joyful freedom there.

I think he’s glad he didn’t sit on the sidelines licking an ice cream cone.

If we’re going to live, really live, we have to choose to stand in the middle of the lightning and the moonlight, because that’s where joy is found. That’s where we find peace and freedom from the pain and fear, in the midst of the pain and fear.

And that kind of joy gives birth to meaning and beauty. It will be more terrifying than ice cream. But it will be vastly more joyful than funnel cake.

What ice-cream-cones-of-life are you licking?

Where is the dark beach of your life? Are you ready to step off the boardwalk and go there?

Because there will be lightning waiting, but there will also be moonlight.

And in the middle of it all?

Joy.

 

*About the Blog: For this post, I owe a debt of gratitude to all of you who contributed your ideas on the Facebook page.  And for those of you coming out of traditions and cultures that transpose the words joy and happiness, please forgive my ethno-centricity, and I hope it resonates anyway!

Share Your Comment! Have you ever found moonlight in the midst of the lightning? We’d love to hear about your experience of joy!

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In Psychology, Purpose & Meaning, Therapy & Personal Growth , , , , ,
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