Counseling Kevin

Giving Up My Awesomeness For Lent

This year for Lent I've decided on a different tack. Instead of giving up indulging in some pleasurable food or activity, I've decided to give up the following cardinal sins:

• Sloth. Physically, emotionally, intellectually, and, most important, spiritually, I've simply gotten out of shape. I'm a lazy, pear-shaped, embarrassment. For at least forty days, I'm getting out of bed every day but Sunday at 5:30 am and working out, praying, attending mass as often as I'm able, and then getting to work at my professional endeavors with a passion I had until the period of mid-to-late 2003, when, for reasons that remain between me and God, I turtled up and switched off the afterburners. Half-assed is not how I lived my life up until that point, and whether it's a day or a decade (or three) left to me, I'm going to worship, work, play, and love like there's a thief in the night right outside my door getting ready to break in.
• Gluttony. See the immediately preceding bullet point and add the fact that in 2002, I hired the most bizarre nutritionist on the planet, who, while she might have been an odd duck from a personality standpoint, was one heck of a menu-creator. I lost 30 pounds of flab and put back 20 pounds of muscle before, again, falling off the wagon in late 2003 and spending too many days since then as a pie-hole-stuffing slug. It isn't rocket science, but it does require some self-discipline.
• Greed. Although this one isn't high on my list of personal faults, I've noticed that, since I joined a new law firm a year and one-half ago, I've become increasingly engaged in the kind of dust-ups where it's actually bothered me that fellow solicitors look for opportunities to line their pockets at my expense. As Christ warns, you can't serve two masters and make it to Heaven. So, "loot away," partners. From now on, it simply has to mean more to you than it does to me. Much more. Otherwise, I'm just another humpbacked camel trying to thread the eye of a needle.
• Pride. This is going to be a tough one. For example, last week, a professional writer, hired by one of the nation's largest financial service providers, spent an hour on the phone with me, interviewing me for a series of articles the client had hired the writer to do based on "Kevin's Super Seven Basic Lessons For Bank Directors," a list I put together as a joke for a speech I gave last fall to a nationwide group of bank lawyers. The writer finished with the line, "Mitch [senior officer of the client] said you were 'awesome' and he was right. You're a rock star." Although I hoped she hadn't had Steven Tyler in mind, the first thought that came to mind was not, "Thank you, Lord, for the gifts with which you have graced me; how do I use this opportunity to serve your purpose?" No, it was the more pedestrian: "That was kinda cool." Pathetic. Humility: it's not what's been for breakfast in my household, but it better start being.
• Wrath. The most self-indulgent, and, unfortunately, reflexive, of all my many failings, I simply have to give this one up or kill someone die trying. Despite a desperate search for loopholes (an occupational hazard), I could not find "kicking ass and taking names later" among the beatitudes. The morons fellow motorists who nearly kill me every time I drive: I must pray for them rather than flip them off. Memo to self: stock up on valium.

That's five of the seven deadly sins. I'm not conscious of Envy in my heart, but that may very well be the by-product of an unnatural amount of pride. After all, how can you be envious of another when your world circles around your own super-cool awesomeness and rock-stariness. If I can get a handle on the Pride thing, I may have to see if this one surfaces.

As to Lust, you have to give me a pass. I may be "awesome," but I seriously doubt that, when it comes to refraining from thinking about women and sex, I'm likely to be anyone's "rock star." I've got enough on my plate, so maybe next year. Or the year after that. I mean, if even St. Augustine can ask God, "Lord, make me chaste, but not yet," who am I to try to expunge a cardinal sin too far.

One giant leap at a time.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

I recently finished Julian Barnes' award-winning novel "The Sense of an Ending," and, as I read the final pages of this short (163 pages), marvelous book, I felt an emotional tug, not of sympathy with the protagonist, but of recognition of how many of us, me included, spend lifetimes trapped inside the four corners of the stories we've created to explain our lives and our experiences. The creation of such narratives is universal, and a necessary process by which we try to give our lives meaning. Just as universal, however, is our capacity for self-deception, and many of our stories' plots are riddled with it.

Barnes' beautifully crafted narrative (reviewed by The New York Times here) is a first-person reminiscence by a man of a certain age, an age close to my own, that focuses on his close friends and former lover from their teenage years on. Without giving any plot spoilers, it becomes clear in a rapid fashion at the end of the book that the judgments that the protagonist has made about the characters and motivations of his friends and his lover, and, most critically, himself, have been dreadfully wrong. The stories that he's been spinning for decades to justify and explain to himself his life and the lives of others are shown to be false.

I put the book down with a mixture of melancholy and satisfaction. "Melancholy" not in the sense of gloom, but of sober thoughtfulness, recognizing that I, too, am a flawed human being who has lived for decades as an adult who has spun his own personal stories to explain (and justify) myself and others, and that those stories are just as likely filled with erroneous judgments about my own acts and omissions, my motivations for those acts and omissions, and their effect on others (and on me), as was true for Barnes' character Tony.  "Satisfaction" in the sense that Barnes' story, as often is the case when a novel works as "art," communicated truths to me about myself and the larger human condition on levels more profound and emotionally resonant than a work of nonfiction could achieve.

It's easier to observe the traps of self-deception in others than in yourself, of course. I thought, especially, of one person I know who had concocted a story about this person's relationship with me a number of years ago that was a mixture of fact and plain fiction. This person had ascribed to both of us false statements and actions, and omitted critical true statements and actions, but mixed in a healthy enough dose of truth to give the created story a patina of plausibility. After awhile, perhaps a short while, this person began to believe their own fiction was the truth. Once emotionally committed to that "truth," and after a number of years of holding out to others close to you that version of the "truth," it must now be difficult to cut through the hard shell of self-deception without an emotional acetylene torch.

In fairness, I wonder how many of my own stories are hide-bound with the same self-deception. I'll bet more than one, perhaps a lot more than one.

To be fascinated with words for words' sake is a child's game. To employ words to spin a story that breaks apart other stories and sifts through the shattered pieces to reveal hidden, powerful truths about what it means to be human: that's a high calling.

I Am Not Ready For The Storm

The Storm by Theodore Roethke

1

Against the stone breakwater,
Only an ominous lapping,
While the wind whines overhead,
Coming down from the mountain,
Whistling between the arbors, the winding terraces;
A thin whine of wires, a rattling and flapping of leaves,
And the small street-lamp swinging and slamming against
the lamp pole.

Where have the people gone?
There is one light on the mountain.

2

Along the sea-wall, a steady sloshing of the swell,
The waves not yet high, but even,
Coming closer and closer upon each other;
A fine fume of rain driving in from the sea,
Riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot,
The wind from the sea and the wind from the mountain contending,
Flicking the foam from the whitecaps straight upward into the darkness.

A time to go home!--
And a child's dirty shift billows upward out of an alley,
A cat runs from the wind as we do,
Between the whitening trees, up Santa Lucia,
Where the heavy door unlocks,
And our breath comes more easy--
Then a crack of thunder, and the black rain runs over us, over
The flat-roofed houses, coming down in gusts, beating
The walls, the slatted windows, driving
The last watcher indoors, moving the cardplayers closer
To their cards, their anisette.

3

We creep to our bed, and its straw mattress.
We wait; we listen.
The storm lulls off, then redoubles,
Bending the trees half-way down to the ground,
Shaking loose the last wizened oranges in the orchard,
Flattening the limber carnations.

A spider eases himself down from a swaying light-bulb,
Running over the coverlet, down under the iron bedstead.
Water roars into the cistern.

We lie closer on the gritty pillow,
Breathing heavily, hoping--
For the great last leap of the wave over the breakwater,
The flat boom on the beach of the towering sea-swell,
The sudden shudder as the jutting sea-cliff collapses,
And the hurricane drives the dead straw into the living pine-tree.

Breaking The Circle

Discussing the work of Viktor Frankl, author Robert C. Leslie, in Jesus and Logotherapy, skewers the excuse that people are "victims" of their "conditioning":

The decisive factor does not lie in the conditions: the determining element is found in personal responses to the conditions. "Freedom," as Frankl puts it, "is freedom to take a stand toward conditions, but it is not freedom from conditions." Man is responsible for how he handles the conditions which life presents to him. Great as the condition of depth psychology has been to our deeper understanding of forces at work beneath the surface in man, we are in danger of overlooking the most human aspect of life, if we fail to hold man as accountable and responsible for his action in the present and in the future. Conscious decision with a definite goal in mind can break the circle of behavior dictated by past conditioning.

I realize that many people have grown up more wounded than I, more scarred by the pain inflicted by dysfunctional parents, traumatic childhood events, psychic trauma. Most of the pain inflicted upon me has been delivered while I was an adult and, presumably, better able to bear its burden. I get it: some people are emotionally crippled from the get-go through no fault of their own.

And now what? At some point, you have to accept the fact that you're given a choice: suck the lemons and wither, or make lemonade. Hard cheese, no?

I had lunch today with one of my favorite clients, a woman who was dealt a hand in life that might have bankrupted many, but that she turned around into a winner. She's a senior executive of a wild-and-woolly bank filled with good old boys nurtured in the fertile soil of the Lone Star State. It's not an environment for the timid or the psychologically fragile. She's neither, but unlike some of her male counterparts, she's not an over-the-top hard-ass. Instead, she is just one cool kitten.

For every woman who falls prey to the male cowards who try to make them dependent by ripping apart their self-esteem, assuring them that without their male protector, they'll be nothing, here's some free advice: dump the loser and sign off with the only decent song Madonna ever wrote: "You'll See."

You Come In Waves

I'm not a huge fan of Jennifer Nettles, as I find her voice often cloying, and Matt Nathanson's stage manner often borders on spastic. And yet, together, I think they nail this one.

Have you ever felt this "slow fire burn"? If not, I pity you.

Twisting Our Vision

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
---Thomas Merton

I was "reflecting" upon this quote this morning and it called to mind one of my favorite observations about love, an observation I've discussed previously on this blog.

"Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of the what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true."

The "love" that Frankl and Merton understand, and that I did not for many years, requires, initially, a certain passivity, and objectivity. By "passivity," I mean that you must not actively project what you desire another person to be upon that person. Instead, you must try, as best you can (realizing that perfection is impossible), to step back from your own needs and wants, and objectively observe the strengths and weakness of the other, contemplate those strengths and weaknesses, and, with humility and a selfless wish to help the other, offer whatever words and actions you genuinely believe might assist the other to "actualize her potentialities."

This is a very difficult task. At least, it has been a difficult task for me for most of my life. Even now, I recognize two recent instances in my personal and professional life where what I thought I was doing out of love for another (not in the the emotional or romantic sense of that word, but in the sense, in one case, of "philia," and in the other of "agape," as those terms are discussed by Pope Benedict XVI in his first encyclical, "God Is Love," a condensed version of which can be found here), I think I was doing out of baser desires.

In one case, I offered a business opportunity to a colleague, an opportunity that was presented to me and that I could have taken advantage of myself without involving him. I thought that I was doing this because it was, selflessly, "the right thing to do." Upon further reflection and discussion of the pros and cons of having involved the other person, I realized that I might have also had a less selfless motive, one that involved "paying back" another colleague by not involving him in the opportunity. That motive would have been based on a past transgression by the second colleague for which I'd consciously forgiven him, but which, on an emotional level, I've apparently buried in a shallow grave. I'm fairly certain that "pay back" played a role in my decision and it doesn't make me proud of myself.

In the instance involving my personal life, I urged someone who I thought had talent to stop holding back in her fiction writing and tell us the truths only an artist can communicate. This person had once meant something more to me than merely a "friend" and she had once called me her "muse." We had a falling out a number of years ago, and when I saw that she was pursuing fiction writing seriously at this time, I thought I would attempt to make a small gesture of atonement by sending her encouragement without any expectation of reciprocation. She thanked me for it; however, after reading more of her most recent work, I've decided that I'm not doing her any favors by continuing that line of conversation.

I think that what I thought I saw long ago was my own reflection in her eyes, and that I was blinded by the glow given off by my ego being stroked, by having someone of her beauty and intelligence state that she admired me and that my opinion mattered to her. Instead of exercising critical, honest discernment, I was projecting upon her what I wanted to see, and giving her "feedback" that was not designed to honestly evaluate and nurture her talent, but, rather, to elicit from her continued warm feelings toward me. I wasn't feeding her, then, or perhaps now. I was feeding myself. I wasn't doing any of that consciously, but it's suddenly become as clear as crystal to me.

That being the case, whether or not "there is any there, there," is a question I'll need to leave to more objective, dispassionate critics to answer. You don't accurately see the "potentialities" that need to be "actualized" in another person when you're looking in a mirror. In other words, I'm simply not fit to make the judgment.

Whoever said that you can't teach an old dog new tricks was only half right. Even slow learners have a 50/50 chance of eventually getting it right.

The Passage We Did Not Take

Footfalls echo in the memory down the passage which we did not take towards the door we never opened into the rose-garden.
--T.S. Eliot

I loved you
--Alexander Pushkin

I loved you, and I probably still do,
And for a while the feeling may remain...
But let my love no longer trouble you,
I do not wish to cause you any pain.
I loved you; and the hopelessness I knew,
The jealousy, the shyness - though in vain -
Made up a love so tender and so true
As may God grant you to be loved again

****************************************************************

And as the lights go dim
I lie down with him
And as I'm lying there
I can only smell your hair

The Night Before Christmas

Father Larry Rice, in a Christmas homily: "Jesus is there to acknowledge and heal whatever is within us that's broken..."

It's essential to remember that along with joy and hope, Christmas is a time for forgiveness and reconciliation. Start the forgiving with yourself.

"We cannot avoid missing the point of almost everything we do. But what of it? Life is not a matter of getting something out of everything. Life itself is imperfect. All created beings begin to die as soon as they begin to live, and no one expects any one of them to become absolutely perfect, still less to stay that way. Each individual thing is only a sketch of the specific perfection planned for its kind. Why should we ask it to be anything more?"

[...]

“What we are asked to do is to love; and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbor worthy if anything can.

Indeed, that is one of the most significant things about the power of love. There is no way under the sun to make a man worthy of love except by loving him. As soon as he realizes himself loved – if he is not so weak that he can no longer bear to be loved – he will feel himself instantly becoming worthy of love. He will respond by drawing a mysterious spiritual value out of his own depths, a new identity called into being by the love that is addressed to him.”
---Thomas Merton

Have a joyful, loving Christmas.

I Cast For Comfort

I hate it when the past won't stay buried.

My Own Heart Let Me More Have Pity On

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather - as skies
Betweenpie mountains - lights a lovely mile.
--Gerard Manley Hopkins

That Warm and Fuzzy Feeling

Houston-based novelist Chris Cander advises readers who "fall in love" with a book they read to send the author "a love note." She says that the author will appreciate it.

It sure makes me feel good to be on the receiving end of warm and fuzzy feedback.

Ms. Cander relates that reaching out and touching other authors has led her to some "gentle acquaintances," and a few "genuine friendships." Such relationships are to be treasured, no matter how they arise.

I've only written one author of a novel a "mash note" about their book. That was Alice Sebold, and the love note was for her book The Lovely Bones. The book follows a young teenage girl, who is raped and murdered by a neighbor, and her family, both before and after her murder. The book explores many themes, but the one that especially spoke to me was the possibility of a husband and wife, unhinged by grief, each venturing off on destructive paths that should have shattered their marriage, finding the grace of redemption and not only the salvation of their marriage, but the resurrection of it on a level much deeper than would have been possible without their experience of suffering.

The possibility of finding life's meaning through suffering the loss of a loved one has been explored by authors and thinkers much deeper than me, or Ms. Sebold, for that matter. Yet, she tells her story powerfully, and through the magic of her talent, communicates to the reader meaning in a way impossible by any other means. While I may have amplified her novel's power through my projection into it of meaning Sebold did not intend, that is the natural consequence of a story told by a gifted storyteller. When artists speak truth, readers speak back to the artist with their own truth, and thereby imbue the artist's truth with an even deeper meaning. It moved me profoundly, and I wrote to Ms. Sebold and told her that.

I never heard back from Ms. Sebold, but at the time she was riding high, had sold the movie rights to the book, and was writing a second novel. Moreover, it wasn't important to me that she respond, only that I had communicated to her how much her work had meant to me. I think that is what Ms. Cander is also saying when she tells us how "warm and fuzzy" she feels when she receives our praise, that it is the communication from reader to author that is most important. As icing on the cake, in Ms. Cander's case, her reaching out to authors has led to some genuine human connection with her correspondents. Since life is so short and human connection one of the critical ways in which life is infused with meaning, I think that she's a lucky woman to have had that result.

So, reach out and touch someone today, especially if that someone writes novels.