Month: May 2019

“What does your generation think about the state of things?”

The teenager is the understated type. She’s not one to speak much in public but her eyes reveal an active, internal intelligence.

“We don’t expect to live past fifty.”

The comment quiets the room. Heads turn. Eyes flash.

“Really?” I respond. “Why is that?”

The young woman shrugs. “Just look around. The climate is changing. Everyone is arguing. There isn’t much positive news in the world. Something bad like a global epidemic or war or some other social meltdown is bound to happen.”

The teen’s nonchalant acceptance of a bleak future is disarming. “Everyone my age understands it,” she sighs. She clearly believes what she is saying. She clearly isn’t happy that she believes it.

Listen up, everyone! This isn’t acceptable. This cannot be let be. Our young people deserve better from us. At a time when our country’s economy is reasonably strong, when we are not rationing goods and services because of war, we cannot stand idly by while our Centennials experience some of the highest rates of anxiety, depression, and generational negativity in recorded history.

The burden we are placing on our youth is unprecedented. It is unfair. It is unnecessary.

I’m not just another voice of concern regarding the calamity of our contemporary discourse. Quite the contrary. I aim to be a voice of hope. We must be better, yes. But, importantly, we can be better. A more resounding yes. We truly can be better.

We just need to “Stop, Slow, and Go”.

First, let’s stop the blaming. The weight bearing down on our youth is not just a consequence of social media or smart phones. This is not about Republicans, or Democrats, or Independents. The more we blame technology or each other the less we engage individually, as human beings. The less we engage as people the more we acquiesce, to cliched expectation. The more we acquiesce to that expectation the less we are open and able to help, to make a difference. So let’s please stop.

Second, let’s slow things down. We need to slow the pace – of images, of pressure, of the general speed of our time. There is breath within the spaces that open up when we slow down. There is recognition of purpose with that breath. Everyone needs purpose, especially those maturing in our midst. Let’s slow so they can know how important that search is.

Then finally, let’s go forward, together, gradually, with our Centennials, and with our Gen X and Y’ers too. Going together is our best chance of getting somewhere. Looking forward is our best way to see where it is we all feel it is important to go. Without a common sense of where it is we are going, we don’t stand much chance of knowing when it is we’ve arrived. Let’s learn then, with our youth, where it is we should go. Then let’s go.

If you check the statistics, young people have a right to be worried; the average lifespan of Americans has peaked and, in fact, has recently decreased. We would do well, therefore, to listen to their concerns. The young have a right to feel entitled to a more than fifty years of life! We have a duty to help them live as long as we ourselves plan to.

So the next time you might be tempted to join the chorus of critics about the young, or to feel frightened by the trends regarding their health and welfare, try to listen a bit more gently to what it is they are saying. There is amazing wisdom from our teens. If we allow ourselves to hear some of that insight, maybe we can better help them – and ourselves – become more optimistic about our collective future. And then we can translate that optimism into meaningful action.

The woman in front of us didn’t know what she wanted. A colleague and I were talking, not paying much attention. There was no rush. The cafe had plenty of caffeine and sugar.

“You guys go ahead,” the woman said, stepping aside. “I need some more time.”

We told her we could wait but she insisted. So we thanked her and ordered. When I gave the barista my credit card, I leaned forward and quietly asked him to hold onto my card and charge the woman’s order on it.

There was no reason for me to pay; I didn’t know the woman and she didn’t appear to be in any distress. I just decided spontaneously to cover the cost of her coffee. Maybe she was a tourist. Maybe she lived locally. I had no idea, didn’t much care, and moved off to a table with my scone. My colleague and I fell into a work-related conversation. I lost track of time and the cafe goings-on.

You might think I was practicing randomly. Not at all. I look for opportunities to do something nice for someone, something unexpected. The unexpected part is the key. I don’t try to predict what I will do and when. But I do try to keep aware of chances to be kind. A smile. A gentle word. A good tip. A little bit of patience. There is nothing random about offering unexpected kindness when the decisions to do so are intentional.

Let’s be clear: I’m no saint. Most of the time I’m in my own little world. I am often impatient. I sometimes ignore what’s happening around me. Hence I miss all sorts of opportunities to recognize others – family, friend, or stranger – and help them feel better.

Which is all I am aiming to do: help someone feel better. In the process, I know that doing so will help me feel better as well. Because there is no doubt that my intentional acts of kindness, however small, have that result.

They also bring unexpected reciprocation. People return smiles. Their eyes light up. They nod and wave. They extend a hand to another person. They surprise me with their own intentionality.

Back in the cafe, the barista quietly returned my credit card to our table, my colleague and I finished our meeting, and we left. The woman wasn’t there. The cafe was now otherwise empty.

Later, it occurred to me that I hadn’t received a receipt with my credit card. Could I have been charged a lot more than I planned? Feeling slightly concerned, I decided to log-in online to my credit card account and see what the charge was. There was none, not even for the coffee and scone that my colleague and I had ordered. No problem; the cafe was probably delayed in submitting the charges. But the next day, there was no charge. And ten days later – still no charge.

The only explanation? The woman paid for our coffee and scone, not the other way around. Now that was unexpected! What’s a guy to do when his attempt to extend kindness rebounds with the exact same kindness?

Smile, I suppose. And look for even more chances to be non-random.

Today my oldest daughter graduates from college. Tomorrow my youngest daughter begins high school advance placement tests and finals. Today is celebratory in our family; tomorrow is challenging. Regardless of each young woman’s perspective, both daughters are passing a milestone in their lives. For each I share some insights based on my own moments in time.

1. Be proud of what you have accomplished. Recognize what may not have worked out so well. Learn from both. Then move on. Our society has taken to measuring life’s early developmental progress with academic markers. Education is important – let there be no doubt about that. But not all forms and types of education are as meaningful to some people as to others. Find the types that mean something to you. Don’t perseverate about the ones that do not.

2. Notice the way a towering evergreen tree dips its tip into a deep blue sky. Imagine the feeling that all life experiences in reaching beyond itself. Reach.

3. Listen to your pulse. It beats in a rhythm uniquely yours. Pay attention to what you hear in that pulse. Sometimes it will tell you that you can press on, try harder, stretch further. Sometimes it will counsel you to take things slower, to pace yourself better. Trust what you hear. Act on that trust.

4. Walk. Don’t scoff at age-old learning related to exercise, nutrition, hydration, sleep, and healthy habits. Your wellbeing is under your control. Simple lessons from those who have lived before you should not be summarily dismissed or ignored. Walk, as much as you can.

5. Hug people. Modern science has shown that daily hugging is biologically good for you. Centuries of social living have shown that touching others with care and respect is one of the joys associated with being.

6. Forgive yourself when you disappoint yourself. Because you will. Forgive others when they disappoint you. Because they will.

7. Laugh. Smile. Enjoy being kind. Appreciate kindness shown to you.

8. Keep going. The sun sets on today so that it can rise on tomorrow. Rise with it, if not at the same time then with the same steadfastness. Don’t be fooled by overcast or rainy days. The cycle of life is still spinning. Spin too.

9. Show up. You won’t find fortune in this world if you aren’t engaged in it. You may miss part of life’s wonder if you aren’t present. So be present. Be present when you don’t feel like it. Be present when it’s not convenient. Be present when it’s not trendy. Just – be – present.

10. Nurture humility. We all want to make a difference. And we all do. Some of us get more public recognition than others; that is the way it is. Be happy for those who are acknowledged. Be happy that you are able to acknowledge others.

11. Love. A lot. Even when it hurts. Even when it feels one-sided. Don’t confuse love with other forms of affection. Do find comfort in the realization that real love takes a lifetime to understand.

12. Touch the majestic. It is there, around you, each and every day. No can experience it for you. No one can take it away from you. The miracle of life manifests itself in a multitude of ways. Experience the wonder of being inside moments of subtle and supreme connectedness.

Above all else, breathe. And always remember that you matter.

“Hey! Who are you?”

I had just left kung fu class and was rounding the sidewalk corner of an intersection. The guy asking the question was bearded, middle-aged, and sitting cross-legged on a short concrete wall in front of a homeless shelter on the opposite street corner. I turned. He wasn’t yelling at me but instead was looking towards one of my classmates, a woman who was moving down a third connector of the intersection.

“Who, me?” she asked.

The guy nodded dramatically. “What’s your name?”

Without hesitation, the woman responded. Because a car passed on the road between us, I couldn’t quite hear what name she had shared. But I did hear what she said next. “What’s yours?”

The guy seemed pleased to be asked. “Larry,” he shouted. “Hey, come talk to me!”

To my surprise, the woman stopped and crossed the street to talk with him.

Impressed, I continued on towards my car, questioning my own potential response. Would I have given a guy sitting on a wall outside a homeless shelter my name? Would I recommend that my wife or daughters, or any woman for that matter, respond truthfully to such a request?

We live in interesting times. For all the media and electronic communication methods available to us, we are not necessarily able to connect any better than we used to. In some ways, the increased variety of capability has hampered our trust in trying to do so.

Consider this: these days I know who is calling before I answer a phone. More accurately, I expect to know who is calling. Consequently, if I don’t recognize a number, I usually don’t answer as it is often someone trying to run a scam or sell me something. The same is true of emails. Even if I do recognize the name on an email, it can still be a phish or some other trap. So I often don’t respond. Or I quickly hit delete.

And I wonder how, in little more than a decade, the world has gone from a place in which phone calls were answered from a phone hanging on a wall – when we didn’t know who was calling but understood that it was almost always someone we knew – to a world in which calls are often made by computers, from numbers spoofing other numbers or from people with deliberate malintent rather than general good will in mind.

Despite this change, has social communication become so potentially treacherous that a person shouldn’t give his real first name to a man sitting on a wall outside a homeless shelter? Does it even matter what name I might give a guy like Larry or rather is it ok that I simply respond to him, as a fellow human being, even if in a guardedly compassionate way?

Who have we become? Who am I in the midst of that becoming?

“I didn’t give him my real name,” my classmate explained the next day, when I had a chance to ask her about the encounter. “People can’t pronounce it very well so I gave him the name that people sometimes hear.”

I nodded my understanding. “That was still pretty nice of you to go over and speak with him.”

The woman shrugged. “Yeah, well, I just said hi and recognized him, you know? He wasn’t sober so they wouldn’t let him into the shelter. I just wanted him to know he wasn’t invisible.”

All of our so-called social media does not necessarily make any of us more visible. Personally, I often feel more exposed, more unshielded, instead of more seen. That vulnerability can make me more likely to close in, to withdraw, and hence be less likely to acknowledge someone like a guy named Larry, a guy sitting on a wall outside a homeless shelter. A guy who might only want to know my name.

Who am I? I am someone who, despite my fears, needs to try better to make others feel visible.

Who are you?