Paul Mitchell

Slack in the System

It can be tempting to maximize every system to its limit.

To squeeze as much productivity out of our minds and bodies selves as possible…

To be satisfied only with the best (whatever it might be)…

To overanalyze every moment to make sure it is producing maximum pleasure…

To take from the earth without regard for ecological limits…

At some point, this is going to break down and we will bear the cost.

And this maximization mindset actually makes us unhappy, pounding our interior lives dangerously thin.

Keeping the slack in life’s systems is a worthy and indispensable discipline.

Yesterday, for an hour or so, I tossed a plastic stingray, lobster, and octopus onto the floor of the community pool for our 6 year old to swim down and return triumphantly. He loves this game, and so does his younger brother who also took turns throwing the “sinkies” while splashing around in his floaties. Continue reading “The Infinite Game”

Religion DTR

In college, we used to jokingly talk about “the DTR”… where two people, with unspoken interest in a romantic relationship need to take time to “define the relationship.”

It’s a great turn of phrase and a useful tool.

It is worth it, too, to periodically have a DTR with one’s practice of religion.

That is, does my practice of religion:

Pad my ego and sense of superiority?

Narrow what I am willing to see?

Or does it represent a humbling preparation to enter a mystery of love, to engage a life more abundant than we could have imagined or engineered?

1984 or Brave New World

In school, we were introduced to two classic dystopian visions of the future: 1984 and Brave New World.

In 1984, the tyranny of a fearsome dictator reduces humans to submissive beings.

In Brave New World, humans are so preoccupied with pleasure and trivialities, they subdue themselves into submissive beings.

In your world, which one is coming true?

You Don’t Need Permission

To contribute generously in a challenging situation.

To show up a daily habit of meditation or prayer.

To gather a small group for a purpose close to your heart.

To open that conversation.

You don’t need permission to begin doing any of these things.

Or, put another way, the only person you need permission from is you.

A New Decision

When someone says “no” to something we offer them, we can beg them to change their mind, but it probably won’t work.

What we can do, though, is offer a subsequent opportunity to make a new decision based on new information.

That is, we can offer a little more insight, and invite them to take another step forward.

Talking About the Problem

Talking about fixing problems… is not the same as actually addressing them.

Yes, talking about strategy is important. It should also not be confused with the action, the actual fixing.

Here may be the hard part: Talking about a problem, finally getting it out in the open can feel good. A sense of relief follows. But if we let the tension of the moment drain all the way out, we will never do the thing we said we would do.

Lurk or Lead

At work, at church, in your family, or online… Do we typically lurk (that is, sit in the back without interacting, watching what other people do) or lead (by connecting with one or more people, by starting a conversation about what is important)?

Lurking is easy to fall into. It can be scary to speak up, especially in the presence of a difficult problem.

But difficult problems are the only ones that are left. All of the easy ones are taken.

And so, leadership, not lurking, is really what we need from each other.

What does leadership look like? To risk having the generous conversation, to offer the next best idea to move the issue forward. To see someone as they are (and not as we want them to be), and then inviting them to be generous as well.

Leadership does not have to be loud or in front of everyone. We can lead from any chair in the “orchestra” of a community… as a conductor, an oboist, or the person who stacks the chairs at the end of the day. We each see something important and can make things better.

We need to lead, not lurk.

Mistakes Were Made but Not by Me

Mistakes were made (but not by me) is a delightfully devastating book chronicling the human tendency to avoid responsibility, to self-justify, to make ourselves look good.

Seen in one way, it lays bare our compulsion to try to control our own sense of goodness.

Holiness, by contrast, consists in coming to realize that:

(1) we are, truly, not any better than anyone else and are quite capable of petty and destructive behavior.

(2) we are, in fact, very, very good… much more so than we could ever manufacture by ourselves, and that unique goodness is a wildly extravagant gift.

Seeing this frees us to avoid the exhausting dead end of a life lived out of the “mistakes were made but not by me” mantra.

So freed, we are able to see that (and talk about how) we participate in a system that is not functioning as well as it could. And then we can ask: “How can I help?” “How can I show up in generosity, bravery, and love to participate (better) in this system?”

The answer to these questions may likely consist in doing less things, but seeing more deeply.

The Blitz

From September 1940 until the following May, in a period called “the Blitz,” German bombers dropped thousands of tons of explosives on the city of London.

Eight million Londoners moved in shelters and subway stations to avoid the destruction of these raids.

And from that time, there is data to suggests that mental health in London improved.

“Not only did these experiences fail to produce mass hysteria, they didn’t even trigger much individual psychosis. Before the war, projections for psychiatric breakdown in England ran as high as four million people, but as the Blitz progressed, psychiatric hospitals around the country saw admissions go down. Emergency services in London reported an average of only two cases of “bomb neuroses” a week. Psychiatrists watched in puzzlement as long-standing patients saw their symptoms subside during the period of intense air raids. Voluntary admissions to psychiatric wards noticeably declined, and even epileptics reported having fewer seizures. “Chronic neurotics of peacetime now drive ambulances,” one doctor remarked. Another ventured to suggest that some people actually did better during wartime.”

Tribe by Sebastian Junger (pages 47 and 48)

Wild, right?

So, certainly, the paragraph above does not describe everyone’s experience of violence. War is not a good time.

It does make me think, though, that meaningful, communal struggle actually does make us happier, in the long run, than lives oriented around individual comfort.

Instead of constantly rearranging our lives to make them more pleasant, let’s seek lives of responsibility and active love.