Posted on

Wag More, Bark Less

I’ve never really been a Woody Allen fan. But I saw the first Woody Allen movie that I liked the other evening. Midnight in Paris was a splendid movie. Entertaining, creative, fresh. Overall, very well done. The main character Gil (played by Owen Wilson), travels through time and meets various famous artists and writers. So what does that have to do with wagging more and barking less?

Gil is dissatisfied with his life. He feels if he could just live in another time, the past, his life would be better. Nostalgia trumps the reality of the here and now. Gil learns that what we do with our present is what matters. And here’s where wagging and barking come into play. Culturally, it seems like we are longing for “the good old days” (whatever and whenever THOSE were) and that today is tragic. The economy is in shambles, unemployment is high, Congress is inept, gas prices are high, etc.

What we fail to see is what’s good in our culture and our lives. As Americans, we are pretty close to being “the 1%” if we look at our lives in a global context. Most of us have a roof over our heads, food on our tables and usually a car in the garage (sometimes two or three). I know some who don’t, but by and large, we as Americans are pretty darned blessed. Even the poorer members of our society are not too bad off compared to many people in the world today.

Yet we focus on what isn’t going right. Or at least what we think isn’t going right. But guess what? The economy really isn’t in shambles, unemployment is improving, Congress will probably always be inept in one form or another and gas prices have been going up and up since I got my first car in 1973 and regular was 29¢ a gallon. When gas hit a staggering 50¢ a gallon (gasp), I bought a more fuel-efficient car. And life goes on. I still have a car. Which puts me in the top 10% of people in the world, since over 90% of the people in the world don’t own a car.

So instead of focusing solely on what’s wrong with our world, maybe we should focus on what’s right with our world and our culture. Because there really is a lot to be grateful for and appreciate. Stop barking and start wagging. It’s good for our health, it’s even suggested in scripture and it makes all of us much more pleasant people.

Posted on

Just Take a Deep Breath – Part 2

So now you may be wondering about how I went from an LTD bus to a coffee cup? Well, aside from wanting to put in a shameless plug for my favorite coffee shop (Full City, thanks Michael for a great cup of coffee), there are two things I wanted to build on from my last post. Those are Margins and Perspective.

MARGINS
We don’t tend to build margins into our lives. We leave ourselves no margin for getting stuck behind that slow driver, no margin for a task taking a little longer than we had planned. And in doing so, we pressurize our lives.

thesimpleHOUSE is about “living a simple, sustainable lifestyle.” Pressurizing our lives makes things more complex. We rush here and there, often running late, blood pressure rising. The American Heart Association estimates about one third of the US adult population has high blood pressure. They say the cause in 90-95% of the cases isn’t known. I would submit it might be the lack of margins in our lives.

Slow down. Give yourself a little more time. Walk, ride the bus or a bike. I’m amazed at how much calmer I am when I bike or bus to my destination. And there are fringe benefits to all this.

When I walk or bike, I get exercise, which in turn, increases my healthiness. The Mayo Clinic has tips on walking for exercise. (I’m actually a little disturbed that we need instruction in walking…). When I ride the bus, I make new friends, have the opportunity to read a book (remember books?) and save $$ on gas and maintenance on my car. ALL reduce my carbon footprint.

PERSPECTIVE
The coffee cup actually is an example a friend of mine, Van Clements, uses. And I have reused this example many times.

We are seeing one side of the cup in this picture. Someone on the other side of that cup will see something else. There is no logo on the other side of the cup. How do I know? They shared that observation with me; and I listened. You see, that’s where perspective comes in. We have to be willing to listen to another’s perspective and realize they’re still looking at the same cup. We’re just getting a different perspective of that cup. It’s still the same cup for both of us and neither one of our perspectives is right or wrong; just different.

Right now, in our country, we are tearing ourselves apart because we are’t willing to listen to one another’s perspective. And I mean listen. We ultimately don’t have to agree (although I believe if we listened more, we’d find out we agree on more than we disagree on), but we absolutely need to listen. For our society and our culture to survive, this is critical.

If we truly listen to each other, find our common goals and start there, we can repair our society and our culture. I would submit most all of us want clean air, clean water, good health care, and the like. And there may be very different perspectives of getting there. And you know, either or both paths might actually work.

But until we are willing to see the “other side of the cup”, we won’t get anywhere except into a life without margins, with high blood pressure, disintegrating as a culture. I don’t want that, and I don’t think any of you do, either. For a truly simple, sustainable lifestyle, lets step back, take a deep breath, commit to giving ourselves some margin and be willing to hear one another’s view of that coffee cup.

For only then will we see the entire cup.