2014

One Man

4 Comments / Book Review, Freedom, Respect, Stories / By

Stephen Talty’s book, Agent Garbo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2012), tells a spectacular story of one man’s enormous contribution to the Allied victory in World War 2. Viewed through the lens of today, this story is unbelievable.

Here’s the short version.

In 1941 Juan Pujol Garcia was a 28-year-old chicken farmer in Barcelona. Unalterably opposed to Hitler and the Nazis, he walked into the British embassy in Madrid and asked for a job as a spy. Of course they rejected him. So he went to the Americans. They were not impressed with him either.

Then Pujol asked the enemy for a spy job!

After hearing his emotional and bombastic profession of love for Hitler, the Germans accepted him…if he would relocate to England. Instead, he moved to Portugal and convinced the Germans that he was writing reports from England. When they told him to hire some agents, he created a fictitious network of 27 spies.

At that time, British Intelligence was an oxymoron (they were seriously considering staging the Second Coming of Christ as a means of defeating the Germans). But they soon had enough intelligence to realize that a very proficient Nazi spy was undermining the Allies. Finally, Pujol had gained the respect of British Intelligence!

When he went back to them, they accepted him as a double agent and code-named him “Garbo,” for he was surely the best actor in the world. He was theatrical, emotional, daring, and brilliant. And maybe nuts.

Agent Garbo’s greatest role was his support of D-Day. To create the illusion of an Allied strike 200 miles from the real one, he contrived a completely fabricated million-man army, led by General Patton. Under Pujol’s direction, the British built thousands of wood or inflatable decoys of tanks, boats, airplanes, hospitals, and other wartime necessities. Patton, like an actor, even made a speech in his fictional role.

The Germans bought it. Furthermore, Pujol had the audacity to convince the Germans that the real D-Day invasion was a scam. Even after D-Day! Although they assigned an army to Normandy, they kept a far larger force at the fake site. Clearly, without Pujol’s masterful deceit, D-Day would have cost thousands more lives than it did.

It is one of the most astonishing stories I’ve ever read.

How was it even possible that a man who had no training as a spy and failed at everything else in life became an essential voice to, both, Hitler and Churchill? He, a double agent, is the only spy to be honored by both Germany and England.

So many contributed to the success of D-Day. But Juan Pujol Garcia probably achieved more than any other individual.

Beyond my high recommendation of the book, Agent Garbo really challenged me. Could one person achieve such bold and sweeping things today? I don’t know. But it’s an important question.

It seems that today we live inside a screaming wind tunnel that blows everything into conformity with acceptable patterns. As a result, the distinctives of individuals are contoured into the most “aerodynamic” uniformity possible.

Progress seems to take as much as it gives. I love living in this age; I would not want to live in any other time or place. But it does seem that we’ve lost our view, and our honor of, grand individuals. We all seem to identify with our group.

That is why Agent Garbo is such a mesmerizing artifact. It gives the reader a clear view of a time when individuals sure seemed to matter more than they do today.

Perhaps the leveling of structures in our time will release individuals to achieve great things again.

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Sailors

32 Comments / Appreciation, death, Friendship, God, Respect, Stories / By

In the summer of 1992, while driving a dirt road in Pratt County, Kansas, my 70-year-old dad saw his own tractor, driverless, rolling across a field pulling a land leveler. He felt a chill; he knew his brother Harold had been driving the tractor and leveler rig up to his place near Pratt.

Dad soon saw Harold lying on the ground beside the road. Frantic, he stopped his pickup and ran to his brother. Harold was fully conscious, but Dad could clearly see that was going to be a real bad day.

Harold’s death was an earthquake in the Chinn family. Youngest son, playful and funny, and the spark of life in every family gathering, his death left a wide wound across our landscape. But it blew a deep and ragged hole right through Dad’s heart. He never recovered.

From that day it seemed that Dad’s strong mind began to melt. The distinct shapes of his personality began to droop and dissolve. His confidence tottered. He still went to his beloved shop, but he stopped repairing and making things. He just stood amidst his tools and cried; he didn’t know why.

Dad served on the aircraft carrier, USS Princeton, in World War 2. He was on board for every day of her 19-month existence. Her sinking on October 24, 1944, in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, was the central moment of his life. From that day Dad seemed to live in the shadow of the Princeton.

Dad and Mom made their last visit to our home in Northern Virginia in the spring of 1995. In preparing for their visit I wanted to find something that would engage Dad again, some spark that would animate his wonderful and vivid personality.

In 1995 the very colorful Admiral Arleigh Burke was one of the last living commanding officers from the Pacific theater of the war. And he had participated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Two weeks before my parents’ visit, I learned that the 93-year-old Admiral lived in nearby Fairfax, Virginia. So I found a phone number for his home.

When Roberta “Bobbie” Burke answered the phone, I introduced myself and told her about Dad. I told her that Dad would be there in a couple weeks and asked if “the Admiral would be open to a visit from another sailor.” Bobbie immediately exclaimed, “Oh, yes, he would so love that! Please come.” She gave me their address and we agreed on a date and time.

When my parents arrived, I handed a new biography of Admiral Burke to Dad. He thanked me, scanned through it and told stories he recalled of “31-knot” Burke. Then I told him that we had an appointment with Admiral Burke the next day. Dad’s smile revealed his anxiety; he had never met an Admiral. Even after 50 years of civilian life he still thought like an enlisted man.

Dad asked too many questions about protocol and social courtesies as we drove from our house in Reston over to The Virginian apartments in Fairfax. He grew silent as we entered the building. Finally we stood at the door. I knocked. Very quickly, an elderly man, standing with a walker, opened the door and smiled. “Jack,” he barked and grabbed Dad’s hand. Dad relaxed; he heard an invitation to a safe place.

We spent two hours in the Burke living room. Bobbie gracefully vanished from the distinctly male gathering, as I’m sure she had often done in 72 years of marriage to a Navy man.

I watched in astonishment. A former Chief of Naval Operations, a major player in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, an Admiral who had a class of destroyers named after him sat with an enlisted man, a Kansas railroader, a Sunday School teacher. But their eyes glistened at the same heartsounds of battle, loss, and heritage. And they burst into synchronous laughter at the same details and nuances of Navy culture.

I’ll never forget Dad’s face as Burke told him of watching Dad’s beloved Princeton, through his binoculars, explode and sink.

The 20th century had taken these two men to vastly different places, but as children of God they shared an enormous familial heritage. I saw them touch their shared bond as brothers. Class distinctions blew away like dust; they were sailors.

As we prepared to leave, Bobbie bid us farewell with a deep glowing sadness. Admiral Burke, with his walker, escorted us to the elevator; he clearly wanted to extend the moment as long as possible. He and Dad shook hands, “Come back anytime Jack.” They both knew they would never meet again.

Admiral Burke died 7 months later. Two thousand people attended his funeral; President Clinton delivered the eulogy. Burke’s tombstone at the Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis carries a one-word epitaph, “Sailor.”

Dad lived another 10 years. The slide that began with Harold’s death continued. But that incredible day was a clear announcement that human value has nothing to do with the illusions of rank, class, wealth, or productivity. Our value, our royalty, flows from the Fatherhood of God.

Far more than we realize, we are all His children. We have infinitely more in common than we have in conflict. May we all discover our shared family bond…even with those who may seem so different or so far away. They really aren’t.

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Radical Insignificance

Leave a Comment / Contemplation, Culture, Media, Spiritual life, Technology / By

Did you know that April 11, 1954 was the most boring day in history?

It was according to a Cambridge University project. They fed 300 million historical details about people, places, and events into a computer. And the computer calculated that the only things that happened that day were an election in Belgium, the death of an old football player, and the birth of a future scientist..

So, I wonder if the evening news broadcasts were cancelled or shortened that day? Did John Daly or Douglas Edwards (the only nationally broadcast news anchors at the time) say something like, “Nothing happened anywhere in the world today. So, we’re going to knock off and go home…have a good evening?”

In fact, come to think of it, I wonder why broadcast news programs occupy a specific time window. If the purpose is simply to tell us what happened, wouldn’t it naturally need different lengths of time each day to do that? Could the fact that news programs fill a certain time length each day tell us anything about our subscription to unreality?

And, speaking of unreality, have you ever noticed the oddity of anchor-to-reporter conversations? The anchor will ask the onsite reporter a question. And, the answer always follows the same pattern, “That’s a good question, Dan. My sources tell me…” I’ve never heard a reporter say something like…”What?” “I don’t understand the question.” “Can we talk about that later?” “I don’t know, Dan; never thought about it.”

My point is that we’re gazing into a wax museum. People look real, but aren’t. Yes, I do know this is not a new insight. Many have have written about it in great depth and lucidity. But, I’m just musing on all this as I drink really good coffee so early this morning. I’m in one of my “wish I could sit with you on hay bales in an old barn and talk” moods.

I recently read a Jacques Ellul comment (which he made almost a half century ago!):

Man is living in an illusionary world, illusionary because it is made up of images transmitted by communications media. His world is no longer that of his daily experience, of his lived mediocrity of his personality or of his repeated relationships. It has become an enormous decor, put there by the thousands of news items which are almost completely useless for his life, but which are striking, arousing, threatening, glorifying and edifying in their radical insignificance. They give him the feeling of living an experience, which is worth the trouble, in contrast to the rest of his experience, which is colorless and too plainly unimportant. It is an odd perversion which leads the person of this age to bestow importance and sense on that which does not concern him at all … while rejecting the importance and sense of that which is in fact his own experience 24 hours of every day.

Think about that line: “…thousands of news items which are almost completely useless for his life, but which are striking, arousing, threatening, glorifying and edifying in their radical insignificance.” It seems that we’ve exchanged our real life for the artificial one because we’re jerked (by others) into being aroused, threatened, prodded, glorified, etc.

For example, I have absolutely no opinion about — or interest in — Sarah Palin, the cost or frequency of President Obamas foreign trips, if cell phones explode or cause cancer, or anyone’s sexuality. Zero. I am not going to be “electroded” into “bestowing importance and sense on that which does not concern me at all.” Besides, I have a life: a real experience of interacting with Joanne, friends, family, God, books, music, writing, and cleaning my garage.

It seems that many have decided, as Ellul says, that personal life is just too “colorless and too plainly unimportant.” So, we’re letting (even demanding that) mass culture arouse and threaten us into “radical insignificance.” And, in the process, I think it is extracting our brain and heart and replacing them with a defibrillators. Some seem to sit in a catatonic state until the electrode throws them into animation.

What if we all decided to do something really radical? What if we stepped away from the illusory world and back into the real one? So…this coming weekend, walk in the woods, rake leaves, read a book, make cookies, make love, pray, sing, ride a hot air balloon, build a fire, fire a .45, and encourage someone.

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Shovel Friends

10 Comments / Friendship / By

Most friendships really soar in the big moments. We celebrate, laugh, eat, drink, mourn, and travel through the milestone moments together – we never forget the embraces at the ER, the tinkle of wine glasses in the wedding toast, that message at her funeral, or those transcendent times when Heaven touched earth.

A smaller number of friends come around in life’s agonizing moments, like when we get mugged in a bad neighborhood.

And we turn to a very reduced circle when we do something truly stupid or dangerous. I am grateful for many friends who would pray, counsel, or correct me back to sanity.

But, let’s be honest, we also need the tiny group of those who Brene Brown calls “move a body friends.” Someone else calls them “shovel friends.” They are the ones you call in life’s horrors. Their only response: “I’ll be right over…with my shovel.”

No, I’ve not killed anyone. And my friends (at least, most of them) don’t join criminal behavior. The point here is that we all need a friend (or maybe 2 or 3) whose default position is friendship. In your crisis, they don’t reach for the handrails of reputation, religion, or law; they instinctively and quickly land on the only issue in that moment – a friend in trouble. Those friends will deal with the lesser issues of ethics, morality, a good lawyer, and bail money later.

Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” Sometimes that means to actually die for another. But most often it means to lay down our own self-interests and security. Those are the friends who don’t ask for assurances or collateral; they know you don’t have either. They will take all the risk on themselves. They will show up with what you need, not what they need.

In other words, I think Jesus could have easily said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he show up with a shovel.”

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Confidence

6 Comments / Culture, Freedom, Respect, Sex, Uncategorized / By

We all ride a ball that is 8 thousand miles in diameter and moves 67,000 miles an hour in its perfect orbit around the sun. Our whole solar system is traveling about 45,000 miles per hour through our galaxy, a galaxy that is 100,000 light years wide and contains about 200 billion stars. And all those stars move in their own orbits. And never bump.

How was or is it ever considered wise (or cool) for humans to swagger around our planet, insisting that the vast and synchronous universe, darnedest thing, just came blowing in one day? Just as a great martini doesn’t just happen, most people know they and the universe didn’t either. They are instinctively confident about a creator. Of course, individuals have the right to deny it, but how could belief in creation ever be viewed as stupid or scandalous?

Let’s look at another issue, sex. Consider that people are born male or female. The mosaic of sensuality, desire, love, compatibility, lineage, and the transmission of values and identity through family is obvious and sweeping. That some may dispute sexual design or choose to live in same sex relationships does not invalidate male and female sex as pivotal in civilization.

Come on, folks; it is not ignorant to assume a Creator of the universe or the familial pattern of society. It is fine for individuals to dispute or deconstruct such ideas. But for a whole culture to do so is like losing confidence in gravity or osmosis.

This is not a free expression issue. And I don’t have a problem with the contrarians. My real question is, “how does a society lose confidence in reality?” For example, gender is no longer assumed. People in academia, psychotherapy, sociology, and other professional areas know they can lose everything by writing or speaking in “male” and “female” terms. How does that happen?

To answer that, we have to first look at the basic units of a society – human beings.

Humans have wondrous capacities – moral, ethical, spiritual, physical, intellectual, computational, etc. A mature person is one who keeps them all in some kind of balance and perspective; after all, they are gifts, not sources of identity. They are adjectives, not nouns. We would never call a person “an ethical” or “a spiritual.” Uh-oh. It seems that one of those, intellectual, did somehow become a noun.

And “intellectual” does have a weird effect on those who take it on as an identity, similar to the grotesque human sculptures of extreme bodybuilding. To overemphasize anything creates an aberration.

Now, I know people who handle their intellectual gift with grace and humility. But they are like a stripper at a family reunion; they keep it on a chain. That gathering is just not the appropriate arena for showing their stuff.

Family reunions and other micro-societies should reveal and reflect the Apostle Paul’s words to the Philippians, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3 NIV). Too many intellectuals do not seem to know that. They and other elites (like journalists, politicians, and entertainers) pretend to possess “secret knowledge.” So they grab the microphones and presume to become our guides into their esoteric wisdom.

But, wait a minute. Life’s big question is “Who am I?” It is not “How do I display dazzling logic?”

Stephen Covey wrote, “People cannot live with change if there’s not a changeless core inside them. The key…to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about, and what you value.” Restoring cultural confidence requires that we first know who we are. That solid foundation is essential to navigating change.

Change comes through many voices, even those we call intellectuals. Yes, of course, Rachel Carson changed the way cultures and nations view the environment. We will always need those voices, but those voices also need to think, write, and argue within cultural confidence. That is a “keel.” It keeps our vessel from capsizing in strong winds.

Joanne once had a doctor who assumed that his area of expertise gave him the right to intrude on our territory. When he grew visibly irritated that we didn’t properly react to his dire assessment, we corrected and bounced him back to the small “box” of his value. In complying, he became a valuable voice. He even admitted later that he was wrong; he saw an illusion.

Over the past few years, we have witnessed a parade of illusions (in all disciplines and across a wide spectrum of philosophical and political views). All were championed by elite voices that should have been tested first. Perhaps a renaissance of recalling our foundations would equip us to better manage the voices.

Remember.

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Circles of Life

Leave a Comment / change, Contemplation, Culture, Freedom, Politics / By

I grew up in the middle of Kansas, in the middle of America, in the middle of the 20th century. Naturally the racial attitudes in our home reflected our time and place.

But over time I came into personal friendship with several African-Americans. I didn’t seek them; they didn’t seek me. It just happened. And as the atoms of their life slowly seeped into mine, the molecules of my identity began to mutate.

I changed, not because of anything intellectual or political, but because I grew to love Lee, Bill, Ken and Gail, Don and Hildred, John, Morris, Lorraine, Roland and other African-American friends. And love taught me to look at life through their eyes.

That may be why I’ve never been able to connect with political or cultural approaches to race. The polemics of a movement seemed cold and loveless. The voices always sounded more angry than empathetic, and the action more symbolic than functional.

Twenty-five years ago author Stephen Covey described life’s “Circle of Concern” and “Circle of Influence.”[1] I think that perspective is valuable today.

The circle of concern contains things like aging, weather, alien invasions, and a wide range of national and global issues – things we can do nothing about. That circle is fairly new in human history; it was made possible by mass media and it tends to be where experts hang out.

The other circle, influence, holds our family, friends, property, health, work and other nearby arenas. It is the circle wherein our influence can and does make a difference. For most of history, it was the only circle. Home, school, church, courthouse, barbershop; these marked the borders of life and “concerns.”

In recent decades the electromagnet of our contemporary culture (media, politics, religion, entertainment) has pulled us away from the circle of our real-life influence, the place where we actually do unto others, out into the amorphous arena of “concern.”

I have friends who live and work in that circle; I know they live out of true compassion. I don’t disparage them or their efforts. But I also know that concern can be a bully as it converts normal and noble human concern into funding bases. I know from my own years of working in social arenas that experts tend to design solutions and then parachute them into neighborhoods, without any real engagement with those who actually live with the problems. That’s because the visible objects of the programs are not the real clients; the funders are.

Using the conditions of some to leverage power or funding from others is a cruel hoax. And it happens every day.

A long-time and highly-respected Washington journalist once told me that Washington had become, within his years there, a city obsessed by issues rather than one focused on solving problems. Issues raise money and build careers. That’s why that system can never solve anything.

An “issue” orientation to race only seems to produce voices in a chorus chant, “Treyvon Martin! Paula Deen! Donald Sterling!” It’s an endless loop.

It seems to me that too many of us abandoned our circle of influence; we lost eye contact with those around us, believing that the circle of concern was the proper arena for “progress.” Maybe its now time for us to walk away from “concern” and return to the arena of hard work.

What if, instead of considering racism as an “issue,” and the property of experts, we considered it for what it really is – a problem? Seeing it that way might release us to work on it with practical and relational tactics. Perhaps we could bring it back to our circle of influence where it could be a focus of networking, collaboration, strategic thinking, seeking favor, rewarding goodwill, and, yes, love.

I believe that there, in that circle, away from the experts, the most perfect social law of all time – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – would operate more freely and be infinitely more effective.

What people do to others is what matters.

 

[1] Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Simon and Schuster, 1989) pages 81-86.

 

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The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Uncategorized / By

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Harper-Collins, 2008) is a grand American novel that swept me away to a land I’ve never seen (northern Wisconsin) and dropped me into a story I’ve never read. For days I couldn’t work, think or sleep very well; I could only read this riveting saga. I was completely mesmerized by this tale of fathers, sons, crimes, apparitions, small towns and the mysterious relationship between people and dogs.

Gar and Trudy Sawtelle own a beautiful ninety-acre farm, where they raise dogs, just as Gar’s father did. “Sawtelle dogs” have been systematically bred for decades. They are very smart, loyal, and protective companions. The Sawtelles also want to raise children. After years of heartbreak, Edgar is born. Like the dogs, he is very smart, loyal, protective, and…mute.

When Edgar is barely in his teens, Gar’s brother Claude is released from prison and ends up at the Sawtelle place. Like ink in water, dark poison smokes into the story. Old family secrets and two deaths throw Edgar, and three Sawtelle dogs, into a great escape through the woods. The reader becomes hungry and hunted. We are desperate – stealing, hiding, scheming, inventing and terribly reliant on the kindness of strangers.

Finally, Edgar goes home. The final act of this drama includes a mother and child reunion, a spectacular burning barn, coiled intrigue that strikes like a rattlesnake, and a very moving interaction between this earthly life and the next one.

This was, for me, the most runaway train reading experience since Unbroken. I couldn’t wait to get back to that place and those people. Certain scenes gripped me almost physically – like Edgar, frantic to save a life and knowing he can’t make a sound, dials 911 in wild desperation. When the operator answers, he violently slams his fist into his own chest trying to force some kind of intelligible sound to come out. His dog, Almondine, watching his struggle starts barking to try to help. That scene carries a universal sense of urgency and heartbreak.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a great novel; it gives us a 20th century Shakespearean story, characters who make us care, a full engagement of all our senses, and poetic descriptions of land, machines, rituals, and weather – “By then the yard was in full morning light, the lawn a beaded pelt of water.”

At 562 pages, the book is longer than most modern novels, but not a page too long. You will read the last 100 pages slowly; you don’t want these people to go away.

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Living Life in all the Ways it Might Come to Us

18 Comments / Culture, death, God, Spiritual life, Suffering, Trust / By

Growing up in the farm country of south central Kansas, I quickly learned that agrarian life could be brutal. I saw the long days (and sometimes nights) of very hard labor; watched farmers cope with tornadoes, blizzards, livestock diseases, and volatile market conditions; and we all knew the sickening thud of sudden accidents. By the time many farmers lie down in satin caskets, the passing mourners well understand the scars, missing fingers, and empty sleeves.

The Portal of Suffering

Not coincidentally, I also grew up in a large sense of God.

The prairie Calvinism in farming communities molded people into a vertical posture. All day long their eyes searched that enormous sky; they knew it could bring life or death. And they bowed their knees to whatever it brought. As a result, the “grain” of their lives revealed the deep burnished luster of rich woods, an unfathomable beauty and excellence of spirit.

Suffering had not reduced them; it had enriched them.

A dear friend’s wife has struggled with multiple sclerosis for more than forty years. Recent emergency surgery revealed that she now has extensive cancer, and during that surgery she suffered a heart attack. They both know the end is near.

In a recent email, he gave me an astounding view of their journey. To read his description of what they have both seen through this grueling trial is to stand at the edge of a spiritual Grand Canyon – it is deep, majestic, humbling, and bottomless. And he summed it up with: “Life has to be lived in all the ways it might come to one.”

Those simple and profound words describe how humans have lived for most of history. Only recent decades have brought the possibility of a self-designed life. “I’ll take a little of that…maybe just a pinch more. And no, none of that.” Convenience, comfort, and control are the new values. But what have they stolen?

Designer Gods

The moment of human conception brings life to us in a new way; that baby is a tiny slow-motion hurricane. She or he slowly careens around the womb, evicting any shreds of convenience, comfort, and control. Furthermore, the baby brings nausea, pain, morning sickness, baby furniture and other expenses, and a final and primal explosion of water, blood, muck… and a new human. Sometimes that new person is ill, deformed, or dead.

Historically, even when life brought an unplanned or perhaps mortally ill baby, people lived it as it came. In the depths of the crucible, people begin to see that God, only God, could bring shimmering beauty from the gnarled grain of a wind-warped cypress. After all, He is the One Who “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.” (Ephesians 3:20 NIV)

Self-designed gods tend to select only the babies that we can imagine.

Have you noticed that most people die when they are hit with a terminal disease or terrible injuries? That’s been happening throughout human history (of course, God sometimes heals people. But to live in expectation of that is to entertain distractions from living a purposeful life).

Clearly, the God Who is God often sends diseases and infirmities as His servants, to escort His children to a higher dimension of life. The wise and weathered heart knows that this too is just part of living life in all the ways it might come

But, in recent decades, many have migrated to a self-designed faith, a true American folk religion. Perhaps its primary feature is human control. Therefore, it has gutted the classic faith. Trust is no longer a factor.

This new faith accommodates the illusion that we do not have to pass on from earth life. New designer theologies insist that God has chosen to heal everyone. We all know many well-meaning Christian believers who have marshaled heroic and urgent prayer for the purpose of helping people stay …right here in River City.

Oh, the irony; meeting God must be avoided at all cost!

Trust

What if we all stepped away from our obsessions with ourselves and just embraced all the ways that life might come to us? Do you think we might find ourselves in a larger and more magnificent design? Might we live better if we stopped spending so much time trying to control our health and continuity? Could we rediscover trust?

The farmers of my youth were generally humble folks. From their example, I see that humility is the only way to “live life in all the ways it might come to one.” But it never begins till we give up our design and control.

When we do that, trust is the only road left.

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Remember Who You Are

11 Comments / Adaptation, change, death, destruction, Freedom / By

In “The Lion King,” after Mufasa, the King, died, his son Simba was forced to run away and hide in the jungle. Eventually he totally adapted to a much different place and to a carefree life (“Hakuna Matata”). In reality, he became a different creature. And there, in that alien place, Mufasa returned in spirit in order to call his son to remember his royal roots; “Simba, remember who you are. You are my son…”

When people find themselves in a difficult place, they often think that their condition is very complex, strange, daunting and hopeless. But that is almost never true. More often, they only need to remember who they are. When they do, they can just walk out of the jungle of their false identity.

However, remembering is more than mental assent. Remembering who we are also requires that we fight the inertia that tries to destroy us.

Consider this old story.

A wild duck once flew very high with his flock on the springtime return to northern Europe. But he grew tired and dropped down into a Danish barnyard. He ate corn with the barnyard ducks and enjoyed their company into the night. Although he intended to stay and rest for a short time, the hours turned into days and weeks. After a while he decided to spend the summer in the barnyard.

Then one autumn day he heard the familiar honk of the wild ducks flying south. That sound awakened his true identity. He was not born for the barnyard; he was created for high altitude. His heart reached for the sky. With rapid and loud flapping of his wings he tried to get airborne, but only rose as high as the fence. The barnyard had civilized him; he was fat, soft and weak. Although he knew who he was, he could not return to the sky. For a few years, he held onto the fiction that he would join them “next year.”

Anyone can fall like a rock from his or her true nature. A crisis, a distraction, or a deception can make anyone forget.

Being true to who you are is natural, but never easy. For a duck to fly, it must keep exerting the muscles that allow it to mount the wind. Settling is deadly. In other words, “who you are” is not the same as “what you have become.”

In his book, The War of Art (Grand Central Publishing, 2002), Steven Pressfield examines what he calls “resistance” – that mysterious force that fights our true nature and calling. It is what pulls wild ducks from high flight into the barnyard. According to Pressfield, “Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole…Resistance is always lying…” (Page 9)

“Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill. Its target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on earth to give…Resistance means death. When we fight it, we are in a war to the death.” (Page 15)

Our identity is a high altitude reality. But it is dropped into a realm that resists it. For example, it has been estimated that for every book that gets written, more than 6,000 were started and never finished. Something tenaciously fights to disable or destroy the gift.

Perhaps the best way to fight resistance is to seal off the barnyard’s allure of instant gratification  – the Internet, TV, food, alcohol, etc. They lie. They promise affirmation and joy, but lead only to death.

Remember who you are. You have been designed for a place far above that lower orbit of bare minimums. And now is the historic moment; the barnyard gate is wide open. Even if you cannot yet fly, you can walk. Sometimes, just walking away is the down payment to flight.

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