vignettes

Split

I once knew a man who claimed he was in love with two different women. Equally. One was his wife, and the other, his soul mate.

Each day that would pass, he held this conflict inside of him. I watched as it ate through him from the inside out. Every morning he would leave his first love at home (his wife) to spend the day at the office with his second love (his colleague). And at the end of each day he would do everything in reverse.

The next day he would start all over again.

He asked me once to tell him what to do. But I wouldn't. Because I couldn't. My heart just doesn't work that way. I have never been so fortunate (or perhaps, cursed) to have two "equal" loves. One always feels a bit closer to the Truth. One always feels a bit closer, a bit more true, to me.

It took me a while to see that his heart didn't actually work the way he thought it did, either. The conflict that tormented him was not the conflict between two "equal" loves. The conflict was between the man he thought he was (a man of duty) and the man he wanted to be (a man of will).

I find that when I am having to make a (seemingly) difficult decision, I am always best served by consulting the feelings in my heart. In the quietest moments, I know they will guide me in the direction that best serves the person I am becoming. The person I want to be.

When deciding how to live, how much of you is shaped by duty and how much by will?

Truly

"Every person is destroyed when we cease to see him."
—Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove

I once knew a woman who lost her sight. I cared for her one or two afternoons each week as I paid my way through college.

I helped her read her mail.

I helped her make tea.

I kept her company.

I watched her, and she "watched" me.

I remember the day she shared with me her story. She woke up, looked out the window, and said to her husband with a sigh, "what a grey day." His silence confirmed what she had long been fearing. The day was bright blue and sunny.

They say that when one sense falters, we rely more on the others to help us perceive our world. So what we may first consider to be a weakness, could actually be the very thing we need to build our strength.

Every so often, I think of Mrs. Zelditch and her journey of learning to "see" again. Her journey of building new strength.

Through her hands as they held your own and as they studied your face, finding the truth in you.

Through her ears as she listened to your words and the spaces between them, looking for hidden messages that you weren't even aware you had.

Through her heart as she felt the weight of your presence, measuring the mood you were in — your level of joy or worry or sorrow.

In other words, Mrs. Zelditch only had room to take in what really mattered: the essence of you.

A little more than two years ago my days went grey, figuratively speaking. I realized that I had forgotten how to see. So I bought a camera and I went on a journey.

And 100,000 shutter clicks later, I have learned (once again) how to see. People, mostly. People I love. People I respect and admire. People I meet in cafes or on the subway or on the street. People pursuing Truth and Beauty. People who inspire me.

And when I am with them, I look for clues. To who they truly are.

I look for their love.

I look for their joy.

I look for their passion.

I look for their purity.

And when I see it, I click.

When you look at your world and the people in it, what do you see?

True nature

"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." —The Hobbit

I live between worlds: the artistic and the analytical, the rich and the poor, the old and the young. I am, and always have been, somewhere in between. Which means I am much more comfortable living on the edges of society, than living in its center. I find comfort and safety in the unknown, rather than the assumed, conventional, or expected.

I am more comfortable here. In this space that relies on self recognition and self worth, rather than the often biased judgment of others. This is how I create safe space. This is how I honor who I am.

When you know your true nature, life gets a lot easier. Everything is a little bit simpler, a little more clear. We are better able to draw boundaries, inviting the right people in, and keeping the not-so-right people out. Because life is just too short to compromise.

What stands between who you are, and who you could be?

What if

What if we took as much time to grow up as we took to grow old? That, as children, we would be encouraged to be children, with clean faces and pony tails and hide-and-seek and keds, instead of being seduced way too soon by the provocative (and often misleading) promises of adulthood.

What if we learned to live our lives whole, leaving no part out? That we valued our setbacks and failures as much as we valued our triumphs, and realized that we hold within us the power to create an even better future by bringing forward everything that we learned and experienced in our past. That it is our whole story that makes us interesting and authentic, not just the carefully edited highlights. That we could just be ourselves, in every moment of every day, and regret nothing.

What if we learned to see in each other art and possibility instead of rank and commerce? That we would separate the substance (who we are) from the window-dressing (what we do and what we have) and stand before each other — equal, naked, vulnerable, exposed — with only the feelings in our hearts and the ideas in our heads to bring us together. That we would make room for each other, creating a world where each individual is visible and valued for who they uniquely are. That we should each feel a deep sense of belonging to this world, and to each other.

What if we learned to stand still? That we valued the journey as much as we valued the prize. That we learned to hold this one moment — step inside of it, even — and honor it above the one that comes before and the one that comes after. That we allowed it to stretch and grow and carry us with it wherever it goes.

What if we all got quiet? That we stopped speaking to be heard, and spoke only when we had something meaningful to say.

What if we valued the possibility as much as we valued knowing?

What (kind of world would it be) if?

The metronome

"Life is long if you know how to use it." —Seneca

I have always held other people's expectations for me a bit suspect.

While I believe that others have the best intentions for me, I think that our hopes and fears for each other are often colored by our hopes and fears for ourselves. This makes the task of finding our own way much more difficult and complex because, in the process of making ourselves happy, we run the risk of making those around us unhappy. Once-beloved relationships become the unintended casualties of our need to find harmony in ourselves.

In writing the soundtrack of our lives, we must decide how fast or how slow we want it to go, when we seek to create harmony, and when we don't, when we borrow influences from others, and when we invent a whole new rhythm or chord. But the one thing we cannot decide is how long it will play.

Time is the only resource in each of our lives that is truly finite, and with each day that passes, we have even less to work with. It quietly slips away, measured by this silent metronome that keeps ticking in the background even while we sleep. And yet we live as though we were unaware.

We spend our time doing things that do not make us happy and we don't make enough time to embrace the things that do. Until something happens that startles us awake—a tragedy of our own, or a tragedy of someone else's—that restores our sense of urgency to do the things that make this life worth living, and make us worth remembering.

Where is the music in your life?

 

The missing peace

"It was missing a piece, and it was not happy. So it set off in search of its missing piece."*

I love the Stoics. Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius. I like to think of them as the "Buddhists of the West."

I stumbled upon them by accident, and found in them something that had been missing for me: a philosophy about personal happiness. It was simple, pure, complete. But most importantly, it was accessible. Because these were real people who lived real lives and toiled with this thing we are all navigating, celebrating, suffering to the best of our individual ability—the Human Journey.

I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if we each became more accountable for our own happiness.

Instead of blaming each other for not being better parents, lovers, siblings, or friends, we would be more accepting of everyone for who they are and what they bring, celebrating what is and letting go of what is not.

Instead of measuring the value of our lives in terms of milestones and material things, comparing our lot to the lots of others, we would be grateful for what we have and stop romanticizing what we don't.

Instead of reliving the past or fixating on the future, we would accept that wherever we are in this moment now, it is the result of choices we made to craft this life and no other. That this one life is the reward. And every opportunity—good or bad—gives us a chance to learn and grow and give back to the world around us.

If we did these three things, it would mean that we would no longer look to the outside world for answers to the question of what makes us happy. Instead, we would turn our attention inward and look no further than ourselves.

Where do you find your peace?

*The Missing Piece, Shel Silverstein

Moving on

"Winners never quit, and quitters never win." —Vince Lombardi

While this mantra may unite and inspire a team to seek SuperBowl legacy and fame, I often wonder how well it works for individuals, especially when the time horizon is sure to outlast a single football season.

As we cultivate the story of our lives, we become entangled with others. We commit to a life of growing old together (in exchange for fidelity). We commit to creating a financial return (in exchange for investment). We commit to our employer (in exchange for remuneration and experience). But even the best intentions are not always enough to sustain a commitment over time. Circumstances change, as do the people involved.

From what I've experienced, there are three tell-tale signs to help us recognize when it's time to stop trying to make things work, and time to start looking for the exit: there is the unfair exchange rate (we are giving more than we are getting), the empty well (we've exhausted our available resources of time, energy, and money), and the philosopher's dilemma (there is nothing new to learn or do).

As someone who has held on too long (to a failed business venture), and let go too soon (of a childhood love), I can't help but wonder:

How do you know when it's time to go?

The genius of George

In December, 2006, Esquire published their Genius issue with a picture of George Clooney on the cover.

Not Albert Einstein.
Not Richard Feynman.
George Clooney.

It was so much more than genius. It was intrigue: Beauty and Intellect had equal parts on the page.

What we know of great art is that it often invites the audience to participate. We are left to wonder about what it was that made Mona Lisa smile, the process by which Michelangelo determined (then discarded) the untrue remains of David, and the variety and provenance of the pigments used to paint the Sistine Chapel.

In that issue of Esquire, men (and women) were invited to unearth the genius of George. On the heels of his debut as a director (Syriana), he shares without subtlety, his underlying motivation: "I am doing all that I can now, so that I can be creative for as long as possible."*

What is your genius, and where is it taking you?

*My imperfect recollection of his statement.

White space

In design, we use white space to create depth, drama, and pause on a page.

In business, white space gives us permission to challenge the status quo and to think and act in ways that are not limited by what we already know, or have the resources (and permission) to pursue.

In either case, white space is the deliberate act of making room to see, or be, or do something else.

In living our lives, it's easy to get caught up in the work we must do, the relationships we must nurture, the to-do list we must attend, that we forget to make room for new people, new experiences, new ideas.

We fill every moment with duty, and miss out on the opportunity to do nothing. Yet it is through doing nothing that we are often led to unexpected somethings: a new friend, a new hobby, a new adventure, a new idea—a whole new way of seeing, being, believing.

How do you create white space in your life?

Eureka!

Marcel Proust searched for lost time (it took him 7 volumes, 4300 pages, 1,250,000 words, and 18 years). Victor Frankl searched for meaning (and found it in a fish head that was floating in a bowl of soup). Erich Fromm searched for the link between freedom and happiness (and discovered the building blocks for a sane society).

But it was Aristotle who explains why they were searching in the first place: "understanding is extremely pleasant, not just for philosophers, but for others, too."* Which is another way of saying that happiness is within reach for each of us, no matter who we are, where we live, or how much money we have. It simply depends on where we choose to look, and how much effort we are willing to expend.

In today's world of immediate gratification and shortcuts, where meals, love, and answers are a mere keyboard click, personality test, or Google search away, we are left with more choices to satisfy our needs, but fewer opportunities to discover our desires. We have to work that much harder to create meaning in our lives.  

If happiness is related to our individual exploration and discovery,
what do you search for?

* p. 7, Poetics, Aristotle, Penguin Classics, Translation by Malcolm Heath