Because It Matters

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Every professional writer has an editor because no writer is perfect. And because the writing matters.

Every aspiring athlete has a trainer because she can’t pay attention to the mechanics of her backhand while she’s returning the volley. And because the game matters.

Every serious student has a teacher because a teacher integrates fragmented information and knowledge in a transformative, human way. And because the learning matters.

Why doesn’t every person have a coach when it matters? 

Perhaps the value proposition doesn’t appeal to some people. Perhaps some people don’t value greater self-knowledge or awareness or perspective or integrative clarity or constructive challenge from someone who genuinely cares about their success.

Obviously, it can’t be about the money since coaching is not that expensive, and since we always have money for the things that matter most to us.

Or is perhaps the reason a terribly sad one, that some people just don’t think they or their contribution matter very much at all, that their lives or work just aren’t that important? 

These are not rhetorical questions. Your thoughts in response are welcome.

Lessons from the Incarcerated

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So much can be learned from extreme experiences. Although the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 is incomparably less terrible than the Holocaust of World War II, reflecting on the lessons learned from survivors of that savage chapter of human history can help us now. There are few more life-giving and inspiring reflections on that dark period than Dr. Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

The Inner Life, Art, and Nature

Following the coronavirus outbreak, the need for physical distancing—even to the extent of isolation or quarantine—has meant a loss of freedom for large numbers of people throughout the world. But a restriction of outward activity, as Dr. Frankl learned, does not mean a restriction of inner activity: “this intensification of inner life helped the prisoner find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation, and spiritual poverty of his existence…” and experience the beauty of art and nature as never before. We have seen this in our time, from the communal singing from Italian balconies to the resurgence of that simplest of outdoor pleasures, taking a walk around one’s neighborhood. A loss of freedom makes possible the sharpening of our senses and sensibilities and perhaps a sharpening of our abilities in creative expression. There has never been a better time to dust off that old musical instrument or take up a new art.

Curiosity and Humor

A restriction of external activity takes a toll on us. Frankl found two other weapons to combat this experience: curiosity and humor. The first was a psychological means of self-protection in the context of a concentration camp, but it can be repurposed in the time of this coronavirus. We can use the detachment and objectivity that curiosity brings to examine and understand both ourselves and others better, especially with the reduction of the non-essential activity that often distracts us from that understanding. As for humor, Frankl wrote that it “more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.” So keep those funny memes coming!

Future Goals

During the pandemic of early 2020, boredom set in quickly, followed by depression. Frankl reported that the most depressing part of being in a concentration camp was that a prisoner could not know how long his term of imprisonment would be. He discovered that “any attempt at fighting the camp’s influence on the prisoner had to aim at giving him an inner strength by pointing out to him a future goal to which he could look forward. It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.” Even if we cannot act on those goals now, Frankl asserts that it is critical to our mental health to keep them in mind, engaging our mental powers to imagine and plan for our eventual action toward those goals.

Thankfulness for the Past

But inner life can develop not just into the future but also into the past. For the prisoner in the concentration camp, this was a means to hold on to his identity and the meaning of his life. In a less dire situation, it can take on a different purpose: when done with gratitude or thankfulness, reflection on the past can be a powerful defense against the depression by which we may feel threatened. Better yet if this reflection gets expressed in written form, in a journal perhaps or in a handwritten letter or note to someone.

Whenever one is confronted with an inescapable, unavoidable situation, whenever one has to face a fate that cannot be changed, just then is one given a last chance to actualize the highest value, to fulfill the deepest meaning, the meaning of suffering. For what matters above all is the attitude we take toward suffering, the attitude in which we take our suffering upon ourselves.

Dr. Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning

A Pause of Grace

In the Psalms, the word selah is understood to mean a pause, even a pause of grace. The current public health crisis allows us just such an opportunity for a pause from our usual activities of the day and week, from the noise and distraction they often create. Difficult as it is, the pandemic is also an opportunity for experiencing more deeply the beauty of art and nature, for curiosity and humor, for refocusing on our goals for the future, and for grateful reflection on the past. All of this will only help us become more present in the present when the pause is over, and our daily and weekly activities even more meaningful.

Two Life-giving Practices

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This is new year’s resolution season, and among the most popular from year to year are those focused on bodily health. On that subject, here’s a morsel of ancient wisdom with perhaps an unexpected twist:

A monk should always act as if he were going to die tomorrow; yet he should treat his body as if it were going to live for many years. The first cuts off the inclination to listlessness, and makes the monk more diligent; the second keeps his body sound and his self-control well balanced. —Evagrius

Evagrius highlights self-control as the key virtue for physical health. This is particularly relevant to those of us who live in affluent societies, where so many of our illnesses are related to abundance. Excess sugar leads to diabetes. Cancer is the unregulated proliferation of cells. While we have developed amazing medicines to treat these illnesses of abundance, we also know that self-control and moderation are among the best treatments and preventative measures. But we struggle to practice these virtues. 

It’s possible that the other half of Evagrius’ advice can help us in this struggle. He asserts that acting as if we were going to die tomorrow cuts off the inclination to listlessness, that depressed condition in which a person lacks energy or enthusiasm. This may not make any sense to many modern people, who might understandably ask how a daily remembrance of death, a practice some might call “morbid”, could cut off an inclination to depression instead of fueling it. 

It works because most people have something worth living for—a person we care about, for example, or a cause for which we’re fighting, or a responsibility we take seriously. When that’s the case, the intentional, momentary remembrance of death can paradoxically be one of the most life-giving practices we can observe. It can intensify our focus on what matters most, motivate us like nothing else could, and as a result free us from a listlessness or depression that we’re tempted to numb with materials and practices that are bad for our bodies, certain types and amounts of foods and drugs being the most obvious. 

If the forgetfulness of what matters most creates the steady drip of a low-grade depression that renders us more susceptible to the self-indulgences that sap our bodily health, the intentional remembrance of death creates a quick splash of high-grade pain—sort of like a cold shower in the morning—that can produce clarity, thankfulness, and urgency for meaningful action.

In this season of resolutions, how could your life change if you pursued your longer-term goals in the light of a daily remembrance of death? Especially if resolutions haven’t worked well for you, perhaps it’s worth an experiment.

Anger, Self-Will, and Leadership

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A neighbor across the street has a customized license plate that reads: BN2SELF. Perhaps it’s a bit uncharitable of me, but I don’t find myself particularly interested in getting to know this person, let alone follow her. 

In one of his texts on guarding the intellect, Saint Isaiah the Solitary writes, “Without anger a man cannot attain purity: he has to feel angry with all that is sown in him by the enemy…He who wishes to acquire [this] anger must uproot all self-will…”

One doesn’t need to believe in God, sin, or the devil to profit from this text.

Isaiah’s statement may come as a surprise to those who expect a monk to be all about peace and serenity. He recognizes our need for anger, with the important caveat that it is directed toward the right target: anything that enters our minds or hearts that undermines our alignment with the greater good. The purity of which Isaiah writes is purity of the mind, the state of being untroubled and undistracted by negative thoughts and desires. All of us have surely experienced the opposite and how that state of mind negatively affects our work and relationships.

But what about uprooting self-will? Some may dismiss this activity as specifically monastic or Christian and irrelevant to others. I’d argue that it’s not. We’ve all seen coaches yelling at their players for doing their own thing instead of following the plan. Self-will undermines both teamwork and community.

This topic also calls to mind Jim Collins’ famous description of a “level five” leader as one with a combination of personal humility and professional will. A great leader subordinates self-will to professional will in service of the company’s mission and vision.

Cutting our self-will paves the way both to the external, public victory of a team in the marketplace and to internal, personal victory on the battlefield of the mind because it helps us subordinate what we want to what we need, and our own good to the greater good. 

Fueling our self-will, on the contrary, turns the crosshairs of anger’s targeting scope toward other people who would thwart us, like the person who cuts us off in traffic, and makes them the enemy instead of the thoughts and desires that undermine our alignment with the greater good. 

To start shifting the crosshairs of anger’s targeting scope to a worthier target, answer this question: To what are you committed that is greater than yourself?

A Path toward Purpose

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In a memorable scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Black Knight, who has just lost both of his arms, replies quite matter-of-factly to King Arthur that his traumatic injuries are “just a flesh wound.” It’s the knight’s absurd denial of reality that makes the scene so funny. In real life, it’s not funny at all.

Sadly, many people go through life unaware that they have suffered some form of trauma. Physical or sexual abuse of children, for example, can be buried in their consciousness as part of a natural human defense mechanism. And there are countless more who experience emotional trauma both as children and later in life.

One of the lessons from Bessel van der Kolk’s excellent book The Body Keeps the Score is that trauma can rob us of a sense of purpose. If purpose is a connection to something beyond and greater than ourselves, it makes sense that a self wounded and compromised by trauma would have difficulty experiencing purpose, along with the energy and meaning it gives us. If you feel you are lacking a sense of purpose, trauma is one of the possible reasons. 

To connect with a purpose that takes us beyond ourselves, we require some minimal threshold of wholeness and integration. Most people have not suffered extreme trauma and may already be across that threshold. But it is probably safe to say that all of us have been wounded to some degree or another, so for all of us, the path to purpose may very well begin with healing.

If you want to discover or clarify your purpose, a good way to start is with a conversation. I welcome the opportunity to speak with you about purpose, and if I can’t help you, I’ll help you find someone who can.

Listen from Below

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Purpose can supercharge an individual or an organization. This has been well documented. Unfortunately, “purpose” can seem like a vague thing, something abstract and philosophical that we’re supposed to grasp through some sort of contemplative process. But it’s really much simpler than that:

Purpose is first and foremost something greater than any one person, something above me or you. And to understand it, we first need to adjust the way we seek it, the way we listen for it. We need to listen from below. Not from above, which is the place of authority, power, judgment, and criticism. And not even at the same level, as we do with friends with whom we’re on equal footing. 

So what does it look like to listen from below? Here are three practices that clarify this idea:

  1. Associate with the humble—These are not necessarily the poor but anyone who exhibits the groundedness and other traits of humility. But this requires a real connection or conversation with humble people. Listening to their perspective can often help us listen from below.
  2. Be curious—respectfully and appropriately, of course. One can begin with Stephen Covey’s classic direction: seek first to understand, and only then to be understood. The great virtue of humble curiosity is that it helps us be less self-centered and more focused on the other. Another way to be curious is to look for the greater story in every conversation and experience we have. Purpose always lives in a greater story, and we have a much better chance of seeing purpose if we’re looking for that greater story. This naturally leads to…
  3. Invite others into a story of greater purpose—This puts some positive pressure on us to live into that greater purpose. After all, we can’t invite someone to a place to which we’re not willing to go. It also creates a community of purpose, which reinforces listening from below.

A story from a commencement address given by Fred Rogers, highlighted in the recent documentary Won’t You be my Neighbor?, brings many of these thoughts together:

I wonder if you’ve heard what happened at the Seattle Special Olympics a few years ago? For the 100 yard dash, there were nine contestants, all of them so-called physically or mentally disabled. All nine of them assembled at the starting line; and, at the sound of the gun they took off—but one little boy stumbled and fell and hurt his knee and began to cry. The other eight children heard the boy crying. They slowed down, turned around, saw the boy and ran back to him—every one of them ran back to him. One little girl with Down’s Syndrome bent down and kissed the boy and said, “This will make it better.” The little boy got up, and he and the rest of the runners linked their arms together and joyfully walked to the finish line. They all finished the race at the same time. And when they did, everyone in the stadium stood up and clapped and whistled and cheered for a long, long time. People who were there are still telling the story with obvious delight. And you know why, because deep down we know that what matters in this life is much more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win, too, even if it means slowing down and changing our course now and then.

—Fred Rogers, 2001 Middlebury College commencement address

These humble children with special needs had, perhaps because of their so-called disabilities, special vision and special hearing, the kind that doesn’t only see the finish line or hear the gun that starts the race, but which also hears the cries of a boy who fell and sees him on the ground. Because they were so unselfish and aware of the other, they saw more clearly than most that there was a greater purpose and a greater story than winning the race. They followed each other into that story, crossed the finish line together, and inspired by their human greatness an entire stadium of people.

If purpose is about something greater than me or you, then in order to see it, we must place ourselves below—in how we hear and how we act. Listening from below is how humility listens. And it is this humble mindset that gives us the perspective to see, work, and live with purpose.