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We are moving from our house to a 2 bedroom apartment and for me it’s a bit of a deep dive about what I want out of life and why I’m here on the planet. A lot of people I know are wondering why — insanity, mid life crisis? Perhaps, but I believe it is a continuing invention of self, a new vision, an update. Lewis 2.0.
Lewis 2.0 is step one in a probable series of downgrades. Sage and I are of the age where we are supposed to increase our footprint on the earth. We’re supposed to make more money, have more kids, move into a bigger house, remodel it, buy a dog and sit still for 20 years.
Well, we’ve talked about it and it’s just not our thing. Nothing wrong with it, mind you, it’s just going to slowly suffocate us. We’ve isolated what brings us joy and it is the idea of personal freedom – freedom to be spontaneous, free time to think, free time to experience new places and ideas. Even if freedom is an illusion, we are most content when our lives are flexible.
We cannot experience this freedom if we’re tied to our stuff. We are on a mission to unload. This means saying goodbye to lots of things that have emotional attachment. That, for me, has been spiritual work, but it is dealing with Indy that has brought out the real tough stuff.
Most notably: How dare I? How dare I impose my bizarre material downsizing agenda on a kid? We all do it, this agenda on kid thing, but when the agenda goes against the grain instead of with it, it can seem unfair. Making a child’s life too different, on purpose, is viewed as irresponsible.
So what do you think? As Sage and I pursue our dreams to live free from material things and stay flexible to travel, etc., are we denying Indy essential normalcy of childhood? Is normalcy a gift? A right? A curse? When is a human allowed to choose their own agenda? Am I denying Indy his freedom to obtain my own? And on what grounds do I impose this change, this minimization, in Indy’s life? Religious zealots can say it’s God’s will, but this is my will, plain and simple.
See you in my new location.
 Today my son had Monday malaise and channeled it into a powerful life question.
He asked, “Why do we have to work?”
Me (not getting it yet): “Money for food and whatnot.”
Indy: “No, like why do we have to go to school, and go to work, and stay at work all day and then go to school again. Why can’t we just be home?”
Ah hah! Now that’s a question.
As I proceeded to ramble an answer, I tried to express these opinionated values:
- Society is useful.
- School is worthwhile because community is worthwhile.
- Materialism traps us.
The cool thing was that I could imagine him internalizing these values and then moving in many different directions – like maybe Ted Kaczynski (disagree on 1 and 2 / agree on 3) or stock broker with a Manhattan townhouse (agree on 1 and 2 / disagree on 3), etc.
I want to know, what values did you inherit from family and then embrace or reject?
Here was my answer to Indy:
Me: “There was a time people didn’t go to work or school. Their only job was to eat and stay warm and sheltered. They grew their own food, built their own houses and that was their job.”
Indy: “That sounds good.”
Me: “It was to a point, but if the rain didn’t come, you starved to death. And if you got sick, you died because there was no medicine.”
Indy: “Oh.”
Me: “So we built all this (we were on the highway at the time, so I could just sweep my arm around). And now we all do very specific things like work on the internet or make medicine or drive food from farms to city people.”
Indy: “I wish we didn’t have to work all the time.”
Me: “We don’t! And you don’t have to go to school. When you grow up, you can work part time your whole life and still eat and stay warm. And I can teach you at home.”
Indy: “Sweet.”
Me: “But not working much means you wouldn’t be able to buy many video games or ugly dolls or go to Burger King. And if I teach you at home, you won’t see your friends all that often.
Indy: “Oh.”
Me: “People work because they like to buy things, and they like to be with other people, and they like to be like other people. But you don’t have too.”
Indy: “Okay. Turn up the music.”
He’ll probably bring this up again after he really processes it. He’s super cool like that. I can’t wait. I’ll let you know what he thinks.
I have wronged a lot of people in my life. Many of those people I wronged were young, vulnerable, different and particularly kind hearted. I should reach out to them personally, but I am still a coward, just as I was then when I did cruel things. If you are one of the people I was cruel towards, I am truly sorry. I am “think about you and feel ashamed” sorry. I am “my son is being socially excluded due to my bad karma” sorry.
Please know that I wish I knew you now because I have heard you’re interesting and the kind of person I’d now want to befriend. But it’s too late for that and good for you. I want you to know, I grew up and made friends with people who were bullied and they are my favorite people – interesting, kind, unique, bold and talented.
When I look back, I cringe, but also hope.
- I hope that you were not forever scarred or injured by something I said.
- I hope you were able to turn your rotten interaction with me into something worthwhile. Not positive. I’m not daring to say or believe that nonsense. Just worth something more than plain rotten.
- I hope you never think I was right. Whatever I said or implied. I was, and mostly still am, an idiot. I don’t know you and I never did.
Why? I had moved from a school where I had found my place and confidence. In my new school, your school, I was bullied after we moved to town. In my mind, not a sensitive or sharp one, I simply figured I could be a victimizer or a victim. I was not a creative, forward-thinking kid. I was a social climber and reactionary. I rarely thought for myself.
Why you? Because you were better than me and I was filled with self loathing. You were a leader or you had a strong sense of self. I hated that. How dare you not be popular, be different, and still have a sense of self? I did everything I could to be like everyone else and still hated myself. I wanted to bring you down a peg. I wanted to lead you, somewhere, anywhere, because then that would mean I was better than you. I desperately wanted validation that I was equal to or better than you. Clearly I was not.
If you thought of killing yourself because of me, didn’t want to come to school because of me, cried yourself to sleep because of me. I am sorry. SO, SO sorry. If you ever see me, please make me squirm as you tell me how I wronged you. Please raise your voice.
Know that I’m truly sorry. Know that I realize that’s not enough. Know that I’m trying to be a better person now; trying to not be a drain to the world.
Sincerely,
Melissa Hickey (now Melissa “Rocky” Lewis)
 When did you start this great hair-style-tips blog?! I knew a guy that could turn the conversation back to the topic of himself in under one sentence. Wherever he is now, I know he adores social media.
I have often believed the act of truly listening – where you immerse yourself in another person’s life, opinions, values, concerns and then engage them with follow up questions and thoughts — is an act of spirituality and love.
Like meditation, it takes practice and study and one must let things go, like their own mind chatter and general distraction, in order to focus on the person in the moment.
I always figured that when I met people who could not do this, they were simply untrained or perhaps not empathetic. Now there appears to be another reason. Perhaps they are addicted to the high of discussing themselves.
In this Harvard University study, researchers found “… evidence that revealing even relatively mundane facts about oneself … seems to trigger the brain circuits that respond to rewards such as food and money.”
As a side note: I have an opposing addiction of sorts. Well, not an addiction, a fear, of discussing myself with others in conversation (no problem online…obviously). A psychologist memoir told me it was low self esteem. If you judge yourself harshly, you probably believe sharing opens you up to judgment from whomever you are speaking with at the time. Bingo.
In a way, this relates to my love of writing. All the sharing with none of the judgement. YET. Once published, I will have to heed Anne Lamott’s warning: “Publication makes us more mental than we were. Your own private Idaho. I Am Exhibit A. Cuckoo. So today will write, breathe, pray, play, rest.”
When people discuss church-sponsored violence, inevitably, The Crusades come up as an example of violence done only for the sake of, and in the name of, Christianity. I usually counter that it is politics and human nature that are violent; religion gets hijacked to garner supporters for violent campaigns.
Got all that confirmed this week when I watched this cool History Channel special about The Dark Ages and learned an interesting tidbit about The Crusades that I didn’t know. According to The History channel, one of the reasons the church endorsed The Crusades was to defer and deter violence against “their own” — Western European peasants. Supposedly, soldiers who had been employed to stave off Viking and Barbarian attacks were now aimless and employed instead by feudal lords who used their new employees to plunder peasants.
The church leaders recognized this as a human rights issue and had regular meetings with these lords and their minions to tell them how much God and the Saints disapproved. They even became desperate enough to try to set all kinds of rules on raids (aka: how about not Christmas week, Lent or Sundays? Can you leave the widows and children alone?)
So, when the Byzantine Empire asked for a church blessing on rampart expansion into Muslim territory, it seemed like a win-win solution to also get the warriors off the locals’ backs and take a futile stab at reclaiming Jerusalem. Isn’t it interesting that the plight of the common man and human rights had a hand in The Crusades? Ain’t life complicated?
 Have you heard the top religious news of the week? Two new studies have the Internet spewing headlines just like mine. It’s an exercise in distortion. Here are summaries of the two actual two stories.
This study published in Science magazine found a causation between analytical processing and disbelief. The abstract explains:
“Scientific interest in the cognitive underpinnings of religious belief has grown in recent years. However, to date, little experimental research has focused on the cognitive processes that may promote religious disbelief. The present studies. . . provided evidence of causation, as subtle manipulations known to trigger analytic processing also encouraged religious disbelief.”
Now consider how it’s being “reported” by some like in this Oped piece titled Does Religion Make us Dumber? This writer is summarizing the study above and the Pew Research finding that non-believers test higher on their religion quiz.
Sigh. Seriously? The headline not only reversed the causation of the first study, but also generalized intelligence as “analytical thinking” which both Howard Gardner and I would argue is not the only intelligence in the world.
So, yeah the study doesn’t imply that the the Dali Lama, Bishop Tutu, Nelson Mandala and Martin Luther King Jr. are/were stupid. Sure, you ask, but do they engage in thinking analytically? I don’t know, but these philosophers who adhered to a religion certainly dabbled in analytical thought. I’m not debating the study results or even the causal relationship, I’m just saying it’s never a simple correlation as headlines like to imply.
Now let’s take a look at the another religious headline this week: Highly religious people are less motivated by compassion than are non-believers.
It’s accurate, but leaves a key point out (motivated to give money) that makes it seem loaded. Want to take bets on how long before the headlines read: Religious People Found Less Compassionate or Religious People Less Charitable? Neither is proven true in the study. It simply reports that non-religious people are moved to give via compassion more so than the religious.
Here’s the study takeaway:
“Overall, we find that for less religious people, the strength of their emotional connection to another person is critical to whether they will help that person or not,” said UC Berkeley social psychologist Robb Willer, a co-author of the study. “The more religious, on the other hand, may ground their generosity less in emotion, and more in other factors such as doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational concerns.”
I write this to point out how the media wants science and religion divided, just as it wants to divide the religious and secular. Everyone loves to fuel an adversarial relationship, but in this case, it simply does not need to exist. So stop it.
Seriously, Tennessee? First the second crack at the monkey trial nonsense and now this.
“Plaintiffs in a civil trial trying to block a proposed mosque in Tennessee on procedural grounds were largely blocked Wednesday in trying to raise claims that Islam is not a real religion and that its followers are violent.”
Sigh.
Personally, I can never understand how one denomination or religion in power in the moment can strip rights from someone of a different religion and not recognize how that’s going to bite them in the ass later.
As college professor of engineering and pro-Mosque spokesman, Saleh Sbenaty, said so well, “I left my country [Syria] over 30 years ago to get my freedom over here, and now that’s being threatened,” he said. “My First Amendment rights are under fire.”
I have faith in humanity to rise above crazy like this though. I’m not as sure about this other religious news that dabbles in the issue of church/state loop holes.
BusinessWeek reports that Government abiding business owners of Montana claim religion is oppressing their rights to make a buck. Order of Amish-esk folks are stealing construction business by not having to pay workers or taxes or the BWC. Turns out that hard to compete against.
Emily Herx of Indiana can’t have IVF and keep her language arts teaching job at Catholic school.
Do these people need protection from religion or do their counterparts need that “of” religion protection?
I think people have a particular vision of what faith looks like.
Times are tough and she’s on her knees full of hope. She’s given her burdens over to an unseen authority because things happen for a reason. At very least, there’s a flow, and she knows this and will “go with it.” Faith. Relief. Contentment.
Bullshit.
I’ve had a lot of faith lately and it looks nothing like that. I’m certainly not on my knees (although that might help); I’m not grateful; and nothing is flowing. I have my butt glued to my chair, and I am promising myself a dark chocolate Easter egg from my son’s basket if I just write that next dreadful paragraph.
Most days, I hate my writing. I often doubt it’s worth my time. Life is happening, real life and not fiction, all around me and I’m off forcing prose into my inadequate fake world.
My faith is dark and ugly and expressed only in the action of doing the writing — day after day with no real indication I am cut out for this, meant for this, or that this brings value to me or the planet.
Occasionally, I dare to hope just a little and then make efforts to squash it out. Faith means not requiring validation, feedback, or pay. It means being okay with no voice of God in my head or Holy Spirit in my heart. It means being okay with my motivation — a near-evil gnawing notion that NOT doing this would be worse. And, of course, that promise of chocolate.
All this said to announce I made the semi-finals in ACFW’s Genesis contest. I’m entering year 3 with my butt on this chair, plugging through my 1K a day, and that phone call came as a huge relief yesterday after a near spirit-breaking week. There was no squealing or jumping after I hung up. Just a potent exhale and a decision to keep the faith a bit longer.
So, no matter where you are in your artist’s journey (and we are all artists), I say keep your butt in the chair. And tell me, what does your faith look like?
 My son had trouble coming back to school after vacation. He was excited to share things he’d done, but came home that first and second day with the same lament.
Mom: How was it being back with your friends?
Indy: Okay, I guess.
Mom: Why just okay?
Indy: They don’t get me.
Mom: (hair up, teeth barred) Were they mean to you?
Indy: No. They’re nice. They just aren’t interested in me.
Other details came later, but, in short, he feels isolated and misunderstood. Or misunderstood and isolated. Hard to know which comes first, yes?
Incidentally, the boy is fine. Group dynamics are tough for him. He tends to do the one-friend thing and he has that friend and she’s a doll. So, I’m not worried, but what mother’s heart doesn’t break a little hearing their son echo feelings of isolation?
I had practical advice. Stephen Covey crap without the “how to make friends” punch line. I told him to ask people questions. In other words, be interested in them. But, that advice is not really a message of hope is it? It’s more so a statement about coming to terms with the existential crap sandwich that is humanity. Yeah buddy, unfortunate news flash. You can count on one hand, for the rest of your life, the people who are genuinely interested in you.
Faith is soooo handy for coming to terms with this reality. Especially if that number of raised fingers on your hand gets low. It’s not that God can be your friend, although some people might think that I guess. It’s that it doesn’t start and end with you and therefore the isolation dissipates a bit. As a person generalizes the horror of their solitary fate, the idea of a source, a constant, a connector of all things alive (and a reason to connect), gets one out of that hole.
Do you agree? To simple? How else can we find hope in isolation? Also any tips on helping my boy, simply, with a message of hope that contains no dogma?
I honestly did better than I thought I would. I scored 14 out of 15. Go on now. You know you want too.
CLICK HERE To take the quiz.
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