All we have to go by
The meaning of every word is its own universe to explore. And so is the meaning of every situation. Storytelling! Exactly. Fun because situations and the words we use to describe them are alive with ideas. Working and playing with ideas to figure stuff out, to be useful, creative, and silly, livens up every day. Writing! Thinking with feeling that wants to be shared in writing. Because Mind’s ideas are a precious gift, and gifts want to be given. Shared.
Thinking ideas and sharing them describes the role of Mind in Creation. The “Creator.” Following its example can put meaning and purpose, fun and satisfaction, into our lives if we choose it. What if we don’t? Thinkers, writers, and artists would stop thinking, writing, and creating because they would have no new ideas to share.
Being smart and talented isn’t enough? Two exceptionally smart and talented people I knew aced every test of academic and professional aptitude, yet it wasn’t enough. Something essential was missing in their approach to life’s work. From their perspectives, because all we have to go by is our point of view. What it tells us about ourselves and our situations. We can’t possibly grasp it all.
Learning that no force can stop
What was missing? Wanting to follow Mind’s example and make that their first priority. No matter what their task. A passion, or at least a commitment, to learning. Because that’s where meaning and purpose come from: “getting it right.” Questioning from a curiosity, a need, to understand.
What if our perspective already has the answers? Isn’t that enough? Sure, if all we need to know is what’s before our eyes. The way things are. That works so long as the way things are isn’t constantly changing and evolving. Our health, relationships, work lives, and our physical and emotional environment.
“The way things are” describes the ideas that define Creation. They can’t change. But it also refers to Creation itself. Forward movement driven by the expansion and sharing of Knowledge and Love. By evolution, because that’s the nature of learning that no force can stop. Minds can’t stop learning by questioning and reflecting if they want to keep meaning and purpose relevant. To fit the particulars of their situations to the moment.
The part missing at the core of motivation
Sticking to one perspective is navigating Los Angeles freeways with GPS programmed by trolley routes. Sailing from New York to Buenos Aires with a map drawn by Amerigo Vespucci. If we keep our one perspective current will that be enough? Trying to learn and be creative without being open to other perspectives, without using them to think, feel, imagine, and judge what our situations tell us, would be turning a project over to one skill that requires more than one skill. Asking a plumber to build a house without any help.
It may only take the talents of one artist to produce art, but the artist can’t write one line, paint one stroke, or play one note without a mind alive with the spontaneity of free association among different sources of ideas and storylines. From a variety of perspectives alive with movement instead of one perspective stuck in the mud.
The two people I knew couldn’t be creative with their talents because their definition of the way things are – their perspectives – stayed put. They never left the starting gate. Their lives didn’t end with the exuberance of creativity. With satisfaction, but with deadening disappointment, frustration. They had put the power of Mind learning, growing, and creating through different perspectives not close enough to the core of their motivation. Maybe not anywhere near their motivation.
Purposeful striving
How could that be? Humans, like theories, works of art and engineering, are compositions. We differ because our parts are composed differently. And because none of us is complete. Some parts are there and active, others missing or inactive. When we learn, grow, and create through different perspectives, we may be going about the task that put us here: filling in the missing parts. Completing ourselves.
An ideal always beyond reach so long as circumstances keep evolving. But also beyond reach if parts essential to movement forward – motivation – are missing or inactive. In one of the two examples it was the part that attracts us to work: purposeful striving. An aversion to working for a living, to putting talents to use in a career, defined this person’s perspective, life, and relationships. Earning the nickname in adolescence “Stick in the Mud.” That doesn’t sound like motivation. Just the opposite. Striving to make things different or better instead of the way things are wasn’t in this person’s genes.
The pleasure and satisfaction of relating
The other example displayed a remarkable talent for self-enablement with a variety of skills. Self-taught self-sufficiency. A self-disciplined striver who yearned for the satisfaction of accomplishment and relationships along the way. But it couldn’t happen without feeling, the part that was missing. The part that connects. Feeling connected to the objects of our passions is the payoff. The ability to feel the pleasure and satisfaction of relating. To others but also to anything we happen to love. I find satisfaction now in relating to a flow of ideas and their source.
What happened to the other person? Striving finally had to be put out of its misery. The ability to relate requires feeling and it’s central to every cause, every effort. Being Love as we all are in Reality but unable to feel and connect with it here took away the meaning and satisfaction of relationships. And with it the will, the motivation, to live. Both persons left virtually together, one missing love of work, the other missing the work of Love – connecting with feeling. Two precious lives that ended in tragedy.
Hierarchy and the allure of wildness
Definitely not how I want mine to end. What can I do? Personal relationships are perceived as either equal or unequal, level or vertical. Equal-level enables friends to share lives without either assuming superiority. Unequal-vertical is hierarchy, where one or the other does assume it. By pretending that only one perspective is possible and it's theirs. Then using it to dominate relationships with their “unshakable will.” As though “resistance is pointless” because their one unquestioned perspective makes them invincible. Indomitable.
This sounds familiar. The allure of “wildness” seduces many into choosing hierarchical. It implies being in an ideal state of no limits. A privileged state reserved for divinity. The “power of the dark side” is wildness “playing god.” If nothing can tame it then its power must be absolute. A common misconception of God as ruler for its own benefit rather than service and support for all of Creation’s benefit. Absolute. Inaccessible. Unrelatable.
Lives end in tragedy when they disconnect with unrelatability. That can be made less likely by being careful with power or authority. By understanding that hierarchy in personal relationships isn’t connection. It’s separation. It’s the arrogance and isolation of one-sidedness posing as “oneness.” In the likeness of “god.” Two-sided empowerment, like affirmation, is a necessity. For self-worth and for healthy personal relationships. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with it. Only when one-sided hierarchical relationships turn it into empowerment for one and disempowerment for the other is it wrong.
Dad’s take on his indiscretion
Give me an example. I was at a children’s park where a parent I knew had taken his son. My age? Your age, and his name was Liam. Liam was having a good time with one of his playmates. Anyone I know? She was visiting from abroad and spoke with a thick accent. Chinese or Italian, I couldn’t tell. OK. Go on. Liam’s dad was lovable and harmless, always making people laugh. So he brought up a time when he and Liam were together and something funny happened. What?
They were surrounded by parents watching their kids play soccer when his dad cut a silent stinky one and Liam said, “Dad, did you just fart?” Now everyone was not only let in on the smell, they were let in on who did it. His dad! How embarrassing! Only for a moment, because his dad lived to make people laugh and this was funny. Now he was using it to add laughter to the fun.
Liam’s take
But immediately Liam protested that he didn’t do anything wrong. He dropped to the ground crying. His dad realized he had stepped in a cow pie and tried to recover with an explanation. But Liam was inconsolable. He had his perspective on what had happened at the soccer game and nothing could correct it. His dad would have had better luck with his playmate. The one from Mongolia? I think she was from Tuscany. Or maybe Boston’s North End. They have thick Italian accents.
There’s more? I was with Liam and his dad a few days later when his dad tried again to make amends for his mistake. By letting his son know how bad he felt and assuring him that he’d done nothing wrong. And by asking if next time Liam would say “I feel embarrassed” so his dad would stop.
Did that settle it? It settled his dad deeper into the same cow pie. Liam again protested that he’d done nothing wrong. He was still aggrieved. His response when his dad proposed a solution was “whatever.” He reacted to being given another perspective as though the whole idea was unthinkable. Irrelevant, as though his dad was changing the subject.
When friendship is irrelevant
Does this example help? Definitely! Don’t fart when you’re in a crowd. It could be making us aware that seeing things from other perspectives requires motivation before it can deliver motivation. Personality types attracted to competition, winning, and dominance assume that presenting one perspective to others, never showing interest or any desire to learn from theirs, projects strength. Makes it clear that their will can’t be shaken. That relationship with them must be hierarchical; they alone can occupy the top; and it must be on their terms.
So one sided! Absolutely. Any situation that depends on forced conformance, like a dictatorship, will have someone ruling from the top with only one perspective. “My way or the highway.” Ruling not for creativity and spontaneity but for conformance and regimentation.
Meaning? That we wouldn’t be motivated to see things differently if it matters more that relationships be hierarchical, with us on top monopolizing authority, than having loving, intimate friends. Friends with different perspectives that we can put to use when they’re shared instead of pitted against one another in competition.
More misunderstandings, fewer friendships
We need to think about this. Yes. Even if our relationships and work are alive with striving, feeling, ideas, and creativity. Even if we’re comfortable learning from other perspectives. With letting them stimulate thinking and feeling with new ideas, new approaches. Instead of choosing to be right and in control because we’re sure that ours is the only perspective possible. The only one that gets the situation right, and so it must be the only one that deserves respect.
Liam’s experience with his dad at the park was certainty from his perspective that his dad was authority handing down judgment. Being insensitive and hurtful. His dad’s experience was being unable to relate to someone because he was captive to one rigid perspective. The wrong perspective because it mischaracterized his intent. Making his son inaccessible, and so the misunderstanding was never corrected. A warning that there could be more misunderstandings and fewer friendships.
Where the story begins
I want friends. And with your talents you must also want to be creative. A writer who helps others see things differently because that’s what sharing ideas and insights is all about. Being part of a cause: advancing toward understanding that removes obstacles to striving, feeling, and satisfaction. By seeking and learning from other perspectives. By treating our own perspectives as starting rather than ending points. Where the story begins. Where creativity takes off.
By being friends sharing and cooperating rather than competitors for dominance who can never be friends. This is why you’re writing? Because you have the potential to lead a creative, satisfying life. In friendship with me and others if that’s your choice rather than wildness without limits. The sublime ideal of an impossibility. And your perspective is open to other perspectives instead of closed. Helping with the work of Jesus: sharing another perspective.
Happy Easter!