Defining Life By Your Causes

You can gain a great degree of insight into how a person approaches life and defines what constitutes “living,” by the predominate metaphors he uses regarding life.

From my book, Legendary Leadership:

Complete this sentence stem: “Life is like …”

For Forrest Gump, “Life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re gonna get.”  Life is a series of surprises.

Albert Einstein said, “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”  Life is service.

Helen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”  Life is an adventure.

[….] Each belief creates a particular kind and quality of life. 

Which brings me to this question: What happens to people whose predominate metaphor is, “Life is a War”? Well, to begin with all of life is framed, thusly: Us v Them, Good Guys v Bad guys, Winning v Losing. Individuals whose overarching metaphor for life is War for a Cause approaches relationships, church, business, society, the political arena, and everything else, as a warrior. Consequently …

Homes become boot camps

Churches are gatherings of Navy Seals for Jesus

Education is where I am provided weapons and ammo with which to destroy the enemy

Art is propaganda

The Political Arena is where we “take no prisoners”

In Business, we destroy competitors

Recreation is “resting up so I can get back out there and crush the enemy.”

And all the people in my world are sized up, measured, evaluated, and judged, by the standard of my (present) Cause, be it religious, political, or societal.

“Come on, Wilson, join us and make your life count for something.”  

If you aren’t joining their Cause, if you aren’t with “us” fighting against “them,” then your life counts for nothing … and you’re probably one of “them.” Such people are often clueless as to how in the world St Paul could write, “Mind your own business, lead a quiet life, and work with your hands, so as to not stand in need of charity.”

“Man. I guess even Paul could be a slacker.”

Ah, there’s nothing like a Great Cause to make us feel that we are doing Something Important, as it defines and imbues us with feelings of significance and meaningfulness. Now, think about that for a moment. Does this mean that people whom choose to not join our cause are insignificant and meaningless? Is my sense of self and even my worth as a human being derived from my fighting for a Cause? And tell me, if my Cause goes down in smoke, who am I now? What do I do now, so as to regain my sense of worth?

Is it any wonder that so many of these people run around picking fights, creating enemies where there are none? They are worthless, or at least lack meaningfulness and a sense of significance, unless they’re bludgeoning an enemy.

When your dominant metaphor for life is War, tell me this:

Do you ever enjoy a night out with friends, where you simply enjoy the presence of others, or do conversations invariably turn to the battles, the Cause, the burning issues of the day (to you)?

Do you have any friends who aren’t fellow combatants, or potential converts to the Cause?

Can you sit and watch a sunset, being overwhelmed by the beauty and grandeur of creation, with a still mind and soul, or does your brain start tracking the progress of the Cause, the players and combatants, and the next move against The Enemy?

Do you only read books that are directly related to your Cause? How long has it been since you dove into a book solely to lose yourself and be inspired by a great story?

Newsflash Battles for Causes are events that we may engage in, while we are living life: they are not Life, not “what life is all about.” If we choose to define our selves in terms of our battles, then the potential for living and experiencing life as God intended actually diminishes to the point where the human inside the armor disintegrates and disappears. If this is you, I’m thinking you may want to take off the armor and tend to your self. It’s okay. Really. It’s not like God is helpless without your being on the battlefield.

Copyright, Monte Wilson, 2105

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Our Need For Friendship

It is not good for man to be alone.  -God

Some years back, a man whom I had known for a long time was describing me to some new acquaintances of ours. It was all very positive and complimentary, but with one small problem: he wasn’t describing me. In fact, the more he waxed eloquent about the attributes, gifting, and talents, of Monte Wilson, the more invisible I felt. All I could do was sit there thinking, “You really don’t know me.”

A friend responds to me the same way I would if I were seeing and sensing myself through the mind of my friend. In other words, he acts as a mirror that reflects the image of how I see and experience myself. He sees what I know to be true of myself, both good and not so good, senses how I experience life.  In other words, true friends are psychologically visible to each other.

Of course, friends also help us discover the, heretofore, unseen aspects of our self. You’ve had this happen before, when a friend complimented or criticized you about something and you instantly intuited that, yes, “That’s me!”

Certainly, the mere fact that we are (relatively) visible to someone doesn’t mean that we are going to be good friends. However, there can be no true emotional connection and companionship where there is little or no visibility. How can you say," I love you," if you are blind to my “you”? Am I really going to believe someone loves me who doesn’t Get Me, get who I am (“warts and all”)?

In our quest for realizing our true self and what we were placed here on earth to do, we know by intuition and experience that such cannot be accomplished alone, that autonomy and isolation is the path to disintegration, not wholeness. It’s not just visibility that we desire. We also have an innate need to love and to be loved. While there are many reason why this is so, two jump out at me:

External validation and affirmation “You really are you!” However self-aware I am, however brutally honest with myself that I seek to be about the nature of my true self, I need feedback as to the veracity of my self-evaluation. Caveat: I am not referring to a craving for the approval of others, as if I were asking permission to be myself. I am referring to the acknowledgment that my evaluation of my self is, indeed, accurate.

Mutual support I know that I need the love, gifts, and wisdom, of others to make my journey in this life, just as others need mine. I instinctually know that it is neither healthy nor wise to be “alone.”  Think back to the stories many of us grew up reading: Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable, Frodo and Samwise, The Three Musketeers, Harry with Ron and Hermione, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, King David and his Mighty Men, and Jesus and the Twelve. One of the things that draw us to such stories is that we too long for a Band of Brothers.

Being alone is not good for us. We know this. So, what are we actively doing to seek out or maintain the health of our present relationships? What are we doing about discovering who our Band of Brothers is: those men and women with whom we make ourselves visible and available, and to whom we offer our love and support, in their quests? What steps are we taking to develop meaningful relationships?

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2015

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The Isolation of Invisibility and Inauthenticity

“It is not good for man to be alone “… but my o my does he go out of his way to be alone.

In the case of our God-created need for visibility, understanding, and companionship, many choose to remain invisible. The thinking here is that loneliness is far better than revealing a self that we believe will probably be rejected. One of the ways we do this is by pretending to not be ourselves. Rather than increasingly becoming the person we were created to be, like actors on a stage, we take on roles and pseudo – personalities.

We are like Kirk Lazurus (played by Robert Downy, Jr), in Tropic Thunder:  I know who I am! I'm the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude!

My parents insisted I become this person and, so as to garner their approval, I became that person.

My mother or father are like this-and-that and, in reaction to their shortcomings, I build a persona around the intent to Not Be Him or Her. What role is being taken on here? “Not-him!” (Bad news: when I do this, I cannot help but become whom it is I am focusing on.)

No one will love me as I am, so I have to pretend to be the kind of person others will love. Or, if I believe no one will love me, period, I go out of my way to reject them before they reject me. In this case, I take on the persona of the lone-wolf, or the perpetually misunderstood victim who must connive and manipulate others to love me.

And the award for Best Actor goes to … the Lonely Guy!

We are the dudes playing the dudes disguised as other dudes. So, which dude are people relating to? And are any of these dudes actually the real “me”? No. Therefore, as I know people are relating to a role I am playing, I know without a doubt the relationship is not real. However many people may appear to be in my world, because I am not being real, my world is not real, therefore these friends are not real.

I say we know, but, with some, they have forgotten what they knew: that the self they are projecting, what people are seeing, is not real. They have been playing a role for so long that they are invisible to themselves!

Interestingly, one of the ways we can discover that we, in fact, are pretending to not be our true self, is feedback from the individuals in our lives whom we know are authentic. Real people spot role players fairly easily.

Role players are seldom comfortable in their own skin

Dudes playing dudes are constantly calibrating for approval where, if they sense they aren’t performing as expected, they morph into another role or character, not understanding that what an authentic person is looking for is … authenticity!

Actors are all buttoned up, perfectly put together, with just the right lines. Even the disheveled look that The Victim takes on is perrrrfectly cast: tears flow just so, and guilt-manipulating phrases are spoken with Academy award winning timing and pathos.

So. When you are ready for some reality, ask the authentic people in your life about how they experience you, as well as the “you” they see behind your mask. And, Yes: you DO know who these people are, for as soon as you read that sentence, he came to mind; she popped up on your radar. 

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2015

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