Posts Tagged: pursuit

general / life — 1 Comment
12
Oct 10

vulnerable

“I want to expose the wound to as many people as possible because there may be someone who could help the healing” :: Jeremy Current, Watershed Charlotte

There are moments of artistic openness that as a listener you absolutely have to seize, to grab ahold of knowing that you’re likely to learn something incredible. This was made true for me this past Sunday at Watershed when Jeremy Current, a guest vocal artist, began telling some of his story. While exposing some of the wounds that birthed one of his tunes he shared the quote above.

I was absolutely captivated, evidenced by my leaning forward in my chair and widening eyes. What I felt was a combination of a deep connection with this truth and yet an amazement at the succinctness with which he was able to verbalize truths that have taken me 30 years to even acknowledge. There are still chasms to cross before I begin to understand it.

It is not that I was unwilling to be vulnerable for fear of showing weakness. There are not enough über-masculine bones in my body to justify this. Essentially vulnerability required me to be satisfied with being embarrassed about the nature of my wound and required others to be at all interested in my being wounded and needing healing. Neither were realities that I could comprehend.

What I’m learning about vulnerability, though, is that it is provides the fuel for inspiration, transformation, and even revolution. Consider the concept of famous last words. When faced with challenge, defeat, looming destruction it depths of your soul, your heart, your core desires are the things that come out. The most well-known response when staring down the barrel of a gun is: “Please … I have a wife and family.”

These things come from down deep. It’s unfiltered soul-speak without any pretense or filter.

These are the important things.

The “I don’t want to be here anymore” things.

The “I don’t know what to believe” things.

The “I’m sure we can make it if we just have one more chance” things.

And, it is often in the vulnerable moments when we hear ourselves audibly speak the confessions and fears and troubles and questions that have been floating around in our heads that change can take took.  It’s fertile ground.  It’s shaken.  It’s soft and prepared for new things.

Seize those moments when you or someone close to you is being vulnerable.  Drink in the confession.  Let it stimulate your mind and heart. Let it stir your soul.  Let it connect you to another being.

And while you and I may never stare down the barrel of a literal gun, our hearts will break and our souls will be wrenched. We’ll be disappointed in our self.

Our failure.

Failure, though, and disappointment are the critical components for relationship.  Transparency breeds trust.  It is in the togetherness of life that my vulnerabilities and your concerns become our collective strength.

general — Comments Off
7
Feb 10

accomplishment

Most days in most cities in this country, people are driven to accomplish.  For many, a successful person is one who has risen to the top of the proverbial food chain, whose salary now is substantially more than it was “back then”, who has purchased a house, and who has well-adjusted and responsible children.  In this country, this is further heightened by our incredibly toxic tendency towards individualism: “I (an individual) have accomplished (of my own accord) some incredible things.”

What is incredibly telling about the whole thing is that we seem to despise more of the process of achieving this success.  We trudge unwillingly to work most mornings, we fight traffic, we battle deadlines and duke it up for the best positioning on the corporate ladder.

For some reason, at least for part our lives, we’re told to believe that this is the way it is.

I have a friend who often says that he hears that “some people go to work every day and actually enjoy what they do.”

Why are we burdened by these processes? Why do we hate them?

In a cultural coup d’état this same angst, permeates all of the passages of our lives.  Whether we’re fighting traffic on the way to the park, or anxiously awaiting news about a potential raise, or dreading the “travelling” in travelling home during the holidays, or trying to shed a bad habit, our minds are transfixed on outcome, on accomplishment.

When you’re scanning the horizon, you’re bound to miss incredible details right in your path.

I recently watched (for the nth time) a talk on TED.com by Adam Savage, the Mythbuster.  In this video, Savage talks about two of the obsessions of his life as a creative model maker.  First, an obsession with the legendary Dodo bird and acquiring by any means possible a replica of the Dodo skeleton and, secondly (and perhaps even more obsessive), a quest for an as-accurate-as-possible replica of the Maltese Falcon as described in Dashiell Hammett’s book of the same name.

Savage recounts spending countless hours, and resources, and finances, and brain power pursuing these projects – completely obsessed with building the perfect models.

Only, as he wraps up his talk, he comes to the realization that the “accomplishments” never were what these projects were about. Quite the contrary – for Savage it’s the pursuit.

It is the pursuit that teaches lessons about living, that stretches the mind and the soul, and that finally wins the hearts of our desired.  It is the pursuit that we remember, that we value.

Accomplishments, then, are merely milestones in a perpetual pursuit – temporary targets that have our attention only for a short while until the pursuit brings us to a new place.

And this is why there ought to be no end to the pursuit – because there is also something more enriching, more worthy of the chase and the effort.  This is also why when we stop pursuing these milestones begin to crack and disintegrate.

Marriages go unfulfilled when we are not continually pursuing our spouses.  When we feel as though we’ve reached some goal, when we feel vows are simply eternal in and of themselves, what was once love begins to wane.

Self-confidence begins to fail when our career pursuits become stagnant.  When we’re in a place that we don’t want to be, when we see no way out, it’s so easy to sit and wallow in self-deprecating despair.  But it’s the pursuit of something different, something new, something better, that renews our energy.

Crave the pursuit.  Value the pursuit.  Keep an eye for these milestones that we all have and that we all aspire to, but seize the moments of every day to learn from the processes of our lives, the journeys.

Because pursuit is what it is all about.