fine

The job is great.
My family is good.
Life is wonderful.

I was parked behind this bumper sticker for several minutes yesterday, so I had time to reflect just a bit. It was affixed to a rusted-looking Honda Civic, and so -- cynic that I am -- I initially presumed it to be tongue-in-cheek. After all, our daily exchanges have become so automatic that they hardly even register:

“How are you?”
“Fine. Job’s fine. Family’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

But it was that last line that convinced me otherwise. Life is wonderful. How often do we ever think to say that?
For that matter, how often does it even cross our minds?

And then I thought, What if everybody, everywhere, all over the planet, made the decision to speak in positives for one entire day? What if, when you turned on the news or listened to the radio or walked down the street, you heard nothing but contented affirmations? No fearful pronouncements on the economy. No collective hand-wringing over the latest barnyard-bred global pandemic. No worrisome reports on orange highlighter pens and their possible link to cancer. No arguments over global warming. No “formal investigations” to identify the latest guy who Screwed Up Royally.

The job is great.
My family is good.
Life. Is. Wonderful.

What would happen? Because when you really think about it, for most of us, there’s lots more going right at the moment than there is going wrong. (You’re reading this right now because your eyes work. You’re deciphering the words because your brain is functioning. You’re sitting up because you’re breathing and fully alive.) In fact, when you really think about it, most of those “public service announcements” are not-so-cleverly-disguised messages of communal fear. Played without ceasing into our ever-sentient minds.

So what kind of world would it be if we all just resolved to ignore them … and then stuck by our agreement? What if we just decided, as a group all at once, to look on the bright side? It wouldn’t change the fact that things still need fixing. It wouldn’t change the fact that life is imperfect. But it might give us a new vantage point from which to regard the problem. A “collective perspective,” if you will. What do you think would happen?

John Wooden once had an interesting thought: “Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.”

signs of intelligent life

I was randomly flipping channels during a late-night bout of insomnia earlier this week, and I came across the ending credits of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Funny how less than a half-century ago, we humans presumed that we'd use our burgeoning technical prowess for outbound exploration. '60s and '70s favorites like Space Odyssey, Star Trek, and Star Wars -- backed by a virtual catalog of Isaac Asimov science fiction stories and an entire litany of Charlton Heston cult classics -- simply took it for granted that the dawn of the 21st Century would see humankind hyperdriven into the outermost reaches of distant galaxies with geeky, unpronounceable names.

Fast-forward to 2009, and Mr. Heston's alter-egos might be stunned by the state of affairs: A series of oft-disgraced shuttle launches and grounded attempts at lift-off; peppered with the occasional unmanned space probe sending filmy, nondescript images back from Jupiter (could be a man, could be a funky-looking boulder).

This is the final frontier we'd fearlessly hoped to conquer? Well, it's not a total wash. We simply took humankind's astounding technical aptitude and turned it inward ... so that now when we sit down on a couch, with a console, or at a keyboard, we're controlling things like Tivo or the Wii. We're posting our up-to-the-second state of being on Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn. We're tweeting on Twitter or texting nonstop (OMG, RU there?) while uploading live video feed onto YouTube.

Now certainly, we've also made huge leaps in medicine and research. But pardon me for pointing this out: Does it strike you that we're using a disproportionate percentage of these amazing technical advances to turn the spotlight on ... well, ourselves? Because it seems like a lot of these transmissions (including, some might argue, this one) imply a near-frightening fascination with making ourselves feel known, recognized, important, even celebrated.

Is that really so wrong? Well, it's not the question of right or wrong I'm debating. What I'm simply doing is observing what we all look like. Collectively, as a society. You give intrepid young minds a mirror, they'll often figure out how to create fire. You give babies a mirror, they can spend an amazingly long time just gazing into it.

When God regards his children -- collectively, mind you -- I wonder which age group we fall into. But mostly, I wonder what He thinks about how we're using the tools we've been given.

"I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do."
H-A-L 9000, in 2001: A Space Odyssey

for richer, for poorer ...

I believe the unrivaled Eric Hoffer once remarked (and I’m paraphrasing here) that a sense of inadequacy – however indistinct – sharpens our eyes to the imperfections of others. Hoffer went on to observe that we often strive to highlight in others the frailties we hide from ourselves.

How often I’ve seen this dynamic played out in even the closest, most caring relationships. We carry with us a menagerie of unresolved childhood conflicts. Then, inevitably, the world wallops us with its measure of hardship and unpredictability.
The resulting fear and frustration can cause us to snipe at even those whom we love most deeply. But as the accusations escalate, we are plagued by a deeper distress:
that it is we ourselves who have failed to fulfill an ideal.

There’s a reason the early stages of a romantic relationship are so addictive. For a short time, we become someone’s idea of the perfect person. Slowly, secretly, we dare to persuade ourselves that this might actually be the case -- that we might truly be someone’s soul mate, conceived to fit perfectly with our pre-ordained match! Our wedding day is often the culmination and celebration of this joyous illusion. And over the course of time -- the gradual and not-so-gradual process of breaking through to reality – we are forced to confront two disturbing facts. First, this person cannot possibly live up to our expectations. Secondly -- and infinitely worse -- we are doomed to fail them miserably. Most likely on multiple levels.

I call this very difficult process “expectation erosion.” And true to Hoffer’s observation, it often serves to echo and uncover deep feelings of inadequacy within ourselves. Sure, we feel some sense of loss that our “perfect person” is only human like the rest of us. But how badly we wanted to believe that we could actually be everything they ever needed.

I often wonder if it’s possible to love another person fully and completely until we’ve forgiven ourselves for this inevitable transgression. Until we (and our loved one) can recognize that we are uniquely lovable, just the way we are. Perhaps, in the end, that is what the journey of marriage is all about.

floodlight or footlight?

Society can do weird things to your aspirations. Our list of popular platitudes pretty much says it all. Look Out for Number One. Go Big or Go Home. Climb the Ladder. Winning is Everything. It's enough to make you believe that you're lost in the shadows if you're not in the spotlight. And nothing could be further from the truth.

You want to serve as a guidepost? There are two ways to do it. One is to become the floodlight. Big, dazzling, flashy, and visible for miles. People look up to you. You use your brightness to illuminate darkness and lead the way. And everyone knows exactly where you are, precisely what you're doing at any given time.

Lots of us want to be floodlights. All that attention can make you feel pretty important. Trouble is, if everybody were a floodlight the world would be -- ironically -- a pretty blinding place.

But think of the last time you were in a movie theater. Ever try to find your seat without footlights? You probably had to ponder that for a second. After all, when footlights are doing their job we hardly even notice them. But they weren't designed to be flashy or ostentatious. They're meant to illuminate quietly. They point to a safe and certain path. And gently, very subtly, they guide us in the proper direction -- even when we didn't realize we were headed off course.

Turn off a floodlight, the path becomes unclear. Turn off the footlights, the very same thing happens. It's hard to say whether one is more important than the other. They were simply created to shine in different ways.

so the story goes

The power of any story depends on the point at which its telling begins. And of course there's the challenge of timing. Some people like to plunge in and uncover all the details, maybe even wanting to know the ending up front. Others prefer to savor each new surprise and element as it emerges. So there is, perhaps, greater truth in the corollary: The power of any story depends upon the pace at which we choose to discover it.

Years back, I was hiking in the hills when I came across an arresting scene: a quiet, breathtaking pond, the surface as perfect as unblemished glass. It waters reflected back everything beautiful about my surroundings. They even captured a tiny image of me, silhouetted as I was against picturesque trees and clear August sky. Stepping closer revealed even more detail: crystal glint of sunlight on the surface, lazy drone of dragonflies, hushed movement of minnows somewhere far beneath. The image was so idyllic that I'll admit it took me some time to venture further. Barefoot, pants rolled to the knee, I finally waded in -- and of course, no matter how carefully I tried to step, it destroyed the mood completely. Bracing cold, clammy rocks, slippery shapes that nipped and nibbled disturbingly. Ew.

Needless to say, I didn't stay in for long. In the end, what had I expected? Like a Seurat painting, everything breaks down up close. But we humans wrestle with the stasis of superficial beauty. It never sustains us for long. We want to plumb the depths, learn the secrets, make our mark, discover more. Perhaps it has to do with that unbroken image of ourselves, that Narcissus-like picture we see reflected back. We gravitate toward things that suggest we are worthy, noble, lovable. Yet we also distrust them, because we know ourselves far too well. So we strive to break the illusion and wade on in -- but at a controlled and predictable pace. And life, that crafty old cannonballer, usually lumbers in to force our hand and reveal the unflattering ending. This hastened knowledge can often catch us, to put it mildly, unprepared.

In the end, I realized that my mountain pool was indeed an oasis of beauty -- both more and less mysterious than I'd given it credit for. The closer I looked, the less it could maintain that unspoiled illusion. And, unconcerned with my opinion, it went on being exactly what it was, eons before I'd stumbled into that clearing. Which, if we're honest, is more than we can usually say for ourselves.

The power of any story depends not on the ending, but on the telling. And even more depends upon our courage to accept the revelations on every page -- each unexpected detail beneath the surface.