old stories and easy habits collide

"you certainly seem like someone with many possible outcomes" 

a quote from the Netflix series version of Anne of Green Gables. Yes, I am unashamed and watching it. I'd forgotten how much I loved the story and how, in it's own interesting way it tells the tale of resilience.

The quote is from an elderly woman spoken to Anne (if you don't know the story do a quick google search) who is roughly 13 and decidedly uncooperative where the social mores are concerned.

The point to the conversation was basically: you go, girl!

Hardships and judgment for this encouragement fully recognized, the stately elder-woman offers the pronouncement anyway. Particularly true for a young Victorian era woman like our protagonist, but also deeply accurate for all of us.

Our lives are moment-by-moment propositions. Each new moment a humanist version of Schrodinger's Cat hanging on a razor's edge of .... will I be this? or will I be that? We take all our little breaths of air as an unconscious promise of another moment, another hour, another day, another month...

Reality is though - we are promised nothing. The universe will do it's "thing" and we get to determine  ...from an array of possible outcomes... how we will influence the subsequent moments.

Not too long ago it struck me that it had become an effort to be deliberately kind. I had to think about it and choose it. When we stop being kind, we walk around life like a house-cat who's claws are never sheathed, always at the ready inadvertently fucking shit up just by moving. I realized this little slip down an unpleasant facet of my personality was a byproduct. The consequence of something I prefer to believe and is categorically untrue: I am bullet proof.

The Kevlar reinforced fantasy allows me to ignore moments in which I feel loss, betrayal, and other subtle woundings. Ignoring them doesn't mean they don't happen (and if you're all like "whoa...therapist heal thyself"...you are not wrong) although it is a stellar defense mechanism.  It's effective in the moments when it is required; however, I'm not proud of how it highlights my natural inclination to be a bit of an asshole. The kevlar defense makes it easy for me to ignore the actions of others altogether only there's an additional heinous downside -

I can't speak to that which I choose to ignore. It is one/another way a potentially necessary statement, question or dialogue silences itself. Speaking up or out or however you want to say it, can come at a cost. A cost that can be consciously chosen or denied if the cost is known to us. If the cost is hidden behind door numbers One and Two - the risk feels exponentially greater.

We are all someones with many possible outcomes. Those possibilities are reduced to contextual social norms when we forget even the outcomes we find heinous are actually still an option should we so choose. Shaking off the weight of the Kevlar Defense requires me to consciously choose what my outcome will be when I choose to keep my mouth shut (sometimes wisdom, without a doubt) and when I choose to open it.

Reinstating a little more kindness started a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully I'm the better for it but more importantly, hopefully my little piece of the universe will be at least less worse - nudging along the outcome to a "the cat is alive" byproduct of intention.

responsibility v. unforgivable asshole

Been thinking about privilege a lot. It's a hot topic in the social warrior world and has become the scarlet letter tattooed to the foreheads of folks who fall into the current accepted class.

On a comparative scale, I've always lived with a degree of privilege:

1. I am caucasian
2. I grew up in a two-parent household
3. My parents were employed
4. I have always had a roof over my head.

That finger-pointing, shun-worthy scarlet P follows me like a junior-high "kick me" sign taped to my back.

Comparatives go both ways. I could write this the other direction. Could write about years of money being tight, of how we lived in a crap neighborhood when I was little, etc. I prefer to talk about how privileged as in grateful I feel that my parents busted their asses. My dad grew up on a working farm. Money was a rare blessing. He was born with a pretty huge birth defect and was Irish-Catholic. Catholic charities hospital did corrective surgery when he was a toddler ... at almost no cost.   That's huge. Without that charity I wouldn't be here. He'd have never made it off the farm.

He was the first/only one from his family who went to college. Same is true for my mom, born to an immigrant dad who literally built the house she grew up in. Himself.

My mom worked - doesn't sound all that earth-shattering. But in the blue-collar neighborhood that was the step up from where we lived before, it wasn't common. She went to work because it was the only way they could maybe send us kids to college.

There are loads of people who had it worse and loads more who had more privilege. I am grateful for how hard my grandparents worked. Literally, physically worked. They survived the Great Depression. Most of their kids survived too. Because two generations busted their asses, I did so less.

Dial forward. In high school, if I wanted what my friends had, I had to work too. Fine. In high school I got a job. I had a history of bone-tired hard working family behind me. I never questioned work was mandatory for survival.

Dial forward several decades. I have a nice roof over my head. My kids are going/have gone to university and we are only student-loaning a portion of it. I have a car I like driving, food isn't a question and there's "extra". Not tons by comparison to my environment given where I live...but extra nonetheless.

And I am unashamed. I know this privilege wasn't a random windfall from the gods. My parents and my grandparents worked their assess off so the subsequent generations would have a leg up. I don't worry about racial profiling and I don't face the scrutiny and judgment that still confronts the LGBQT community.

In the maelstrom and firestorm of "privilege = unforgiven asshole" I'm happy to be who and where I am. Like my parents I worked my ass off, because they required it of me. And now, I get to do something with all that privilege. I could be an asshole. I could lord it over people and tsk-tsk suffering and I could say "well why don't you just get a job".

Here's the thing. There's nothing shameful about being able to pay the bills or going on a vacation. You know the whole power = responsibility? It applies. To any one of us who stand on the shoulders of people who scraped out survival in generations prior. Privilege gets a bad rap when we behave like spoiled little monsters instead of adults with a degree of leverage. There's no shortage of spoiled monsters, but privilege = unforgivable asshole isn't a physical state of being, it's a mental one.

Leverage is power gained from the use of a tool. Privilege is a lever. How I choose to use that lever determines whether or not I function as an unforgivable asshole or I function as productive. I'm sure sometimes I am an asshole because most humans are assholes periodically. Being ashamed is a force amplifier too...but I'm not a fan of the results of that. If you have a roof over your head, food is available and you can pay your bills, you too have a degree of privilege.

Being ashamed of it does no one any good. Your privilege is a lever. Use it well and use it wisely. Make the little world around you a better place. Yeah, it sounds trite but no kidding, you have the power to do so .... pretending you don't makes you the unforgivable asshole, not your privilege.

context-

Context is everything and in a way...it's irrelevant.

Starting with the irrelevant side. Humans are constantly and continuously pulling data points and information from a broader context and applying it to their/our own lives. I suspect we 'have to' do this because there are too many data points - too much information, particularly now, to not extrapolate and apply. The original context often gets lost as we weave the information into the meaning of our own journey and... does it matter?

I don't know - does it add value? Read an article this morning about a new term: textjack, it's what happens when someone uses a biblical quote in a way that isn't actually how it was meant. Happens all the freakin' time and has for centuries.

It matters to theologians. It matters to the woman being beaten under the idea that she should be submissive to her husband and made the grave error of disagreeing with him. It also matters to the emotionally and physically exhausted athlete who leans on her own use of scripture to help her dig deep in a final game, just not in the same way.

Does it add value - maybe that's one of the measures for whether or not the context matters and I have a suspicion that humans pretty much re-contextualize everything, always and that overall, it's such a hard core 'just is' that talking about it may be like pointing out water is wet.

Acknowledging this academically and cognitively opens up a deep opportunity for connection between humans who might otherwise really polarize though, so maybe worth a discussion.

It also helps me wrestle with a glitch.

The event: I say something and humans in proximity do what humans do and hear what I say in a context that adds value to them - and out-of-context to what I am attempting to communicate.

the glitch: I don't enjoy being misrepresented.

On one hand, it serves as a fantastic checks/balances. I learned a looonnnggg time ago that I am responsible for the impact of my communication. If something lands differently than I purposed, it's on me to correct. It was easier when all my communication was contained in a circle of people I interacted with. Whether I was teaching a seminar or in a meeting, I could check and recheck. I could listen and ask questions.  I could self-correct and stay in the conversation with someone until the communication was working. Working doesn't mean agreeing, it means producing valuable outcomes.

I have written a bunch more stuff that's "out there" thanks to the internet, and have taught at more seminars and passed a tipping point at which I can no longer check in with every human who interacts with my communication. Once in a while something cycles back to me - something I said and it's immediately clear that the listener took my communication "out of context".

I don't know how other humans experience this, I don't particularly enjoy being misquoted or misunderstood. It really bugs me when the recontextualization happens around subject matter I carry a lot of passion for. The first time it happened I was 26 or 27 working as a teacher in an adaptive behavior classroom for Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing students. I was in grad school and burning hours I didn't have to burn in a local community theater way out on the outskirts of Baytown, Texas. I'm not a fantastic actress and Broadway would have laughed out loud, but I loved it. The little local newspaper did an interview of the cast because of the nature of the play we were rehearsing.  I was misquoted. I lost my shit. I was all like....what can I do about it? I need to call the reporter...call the paper...blah blah blah.

A dear friend a few decades my senior- smiled and then laughed when he realized I was authentically upset. Really? Like the tiny local newspaper matters and it's one sentence and...basically get over yourself.  Eventually I got over myself but it still bugged me. Personal glitch.

Anyway, recently ran into two examples of how what I was sharing was contextualized by the listener in a completely different context than the conversation I was in/having.  In one example, I don't know if there is any value being gained from the re-contextualization. It's mostly unhappy troll-ing. In the other one, as best I can tell, there is value in the re-contextualization. Like example one, in example two the person didn't like what I said, thinks what I said is wrong and probably also wrong again for sharing it out-loud with other people.

Okay. Got it. Self-correcting next time I give the presentation in question to be more specific in my language because I think the message is important - the message I intended anyway.  Important enough to be damn sure I add in a clarifying distinction the next time around.

And - I get to see again what we do. How humans re-contextualize pretty much everything in life so that it works in our own worldview and at the end of the day, even if I am misquoted and even if the misquote is purposed to disagree with me, or discredit me, if there is value* - then trying to re-communicate may not be all that important.

That's the struggle. I know it's a personal glitch and usually that means I need to just shut-up about it. When the re-contextualization changes the meaning or the purpose of the message and the message a)  is potentially really important and b) not material I came up with (I didn't decide water is wet, but I am responsible for communicating that correctly nonetheless) - then it is on me to retool my communication. My monkey brain wants to whine...that's not what I meant...

The reality is, no one gives a rat's ass what I meant. And this experience is a really good reminder -

Sidenote: Value. I don't mean "value" as in a pedophile misquoting me so that he or she finds justification in having sex with more 5 year olds...as an example...as far as I know THAT has not happened. By value, I mean life gets better for the individual and as it gets better for them, it doesn't get worse for everyone else, as it would with the pedophile...as an example.

sneaky is as sneaky does

Haven't written here in a while. Partly because I've been wicked busy but mostly because my thoughts have been swirly misty things too hard to pin down into a cogent set of words. I'm not sure that's changed but here we go anyway.  I am back from my second teaching gig with the VioDy crew. This time at VioDy Prime. The original location and with mostly retreads (people who've done it before). Significant to me because I was teaching stuff they'd all seen before and seen before by the person who created the stuff. Yeah - no pressure there, nope....none at all.

Like, teaching structure in front of a couple of Judo/Jiu Jitsu instructors who's art forms are anchored in structure. I seriously considered throwing Rory Miller out of the room for that one because my monkey brain was all "oh hey, let me teach that one thing that you taught me...and yeah - the drop step oh yeah, teaching that one too and it took me forever to get THAT one down and now you're going to sit over there and watch me teach it...fuck that".  Didn't kick him out but I thought about it.

One of the get-to's about VioDy is I get to teach Conflict Communication. I think the material is transformational and I really like teaching it - for a lot of reasons - but mostly because each time I teach it the insights that pop up in the room change how I see the material and inform more deeply into how humans work and seeing as how I'm a shrink, that makes my day.

We talk a lot about the monkey brain (your limbic system etc.) and how much it resists change. The resistance goes waaaayyyy up when that change impacts any tribal affiliation or your place in that tribe. The monkey brain is also wicked smart. Not intelligent necessarily, but smart - clever - underhanded and devious even. It's always cool to find the evidence of this, particularly in your own self.

Working with Rory, Kasey, Randy and Terry is a gift all the way around and I am privileged to say Rory is one of my closest friends. My closest friends are the people who are comfortable saying the hard things. Spent several days with this bunch and discovered something. I know that he smart little monkey brain will use our own biases and glitches against us. What didn't occur to me was how this smart little aspect of the socialized self will use our personal ethics in an inverse strategy to undermine change.

If I work to minimize behaviors I identify as personal character flaws - like weakness - my monkey brain can and will use that against me if it means maintaining stasis.

Me: where I find weakness in myself, I will work to change that - do the hard things, etc.
Monkey Me: if you do XXX that will be weakness
Me: Oh! Damn. Okay, got it. Won't do XXX.
Monkey Me: good job! (claps me on the back) atta' girl. (and smiles a little just at the corners to avoid being obvious because not doing XXX does not benefit me or the goal but homeostasis in the tribe).
Me: Wait. What?

Homeostasis of the tribe isn't bad or wrong. Usually. But sometimes it works at cross purposes to strength and growth. Growth and strength - and transformation - they upset the balanced systems of the tribe so the monkey is going to prevent it and if it has to, the monkey brain will use your own personal rules for living to the tribe's advantage perhaps at the cost of your own well-being.

Sneaky little bastard.

transforming fear

"Aren't you worried that training for violence is going to make you fearful?"

"Doesn't this make you paranoid?"

"Isn't this going to make you cynical?"

Real people asked me these questions when it became apparent my training wasn't a casual game I was playing for entertainment purposes. At the time I couldn't answer from a place of personal experience, I hadn't been training long enough to know one way or the other.

I can answer those questions now and the answers are all "no". Training has made my life better.  I do not relish finding myself inside a storm of chaotic human behavior and if avoidance and de-escalation are an option, I would absolutely choose them over anything else. If I am confronted with a situation where violence breaks bad I am under no illusions. I will adrenalize. I will experience fear. And I know I have choices.

This makes daily life more fun. I am comfortable with adrenalization and I understand fear and I know what and how my training may (or may not) be available when shit goes down.

And life feels better, stronger, understanding the what/how/why/who of violence.

Yesterday two active shooters terrorized an upscale neighborhood in Houston, Texas. I lived in that area for about 25 years and have friends and family still anchored in that city. The neighborhood in question is home to a friend. It is home to her, her husband and their three young children. Children they worked hard to have as they faced infertility issues. People died and were injured. Two shooters went through the neighborhood and as of today, details as to why are yet forthcoming. She and her little family "sheltered in place" for three hours. When death unceremoniously crashes through your neighborhood your best option may be to shelter in place holding close beating hearts precious to you. If death crashes through your door...the hard truth of humans hunting humans is now in your house.

I am grateful my friend and her family did not face that hard truth yesterday and this incident is a reminder. You don't have to go looking for violence to encounter it. Sometimes violence knocks on your door, literally.

I have been working with a team of trainers at the Silver Eagle Group for the last six months teaching a day long Active Shooter Response course. The course starts with a 3.5 hour seminar that's a mixture of Conflict Communication, Violence Dynamics & Logic of Violence built with Rory Miller. We have taught the course 3 times so far and we launched it in February. After yesterday's shooting I expect we'll be looking for dates to schedule another one sooner than later because the director of training at SEG is going to get phone calls.....when's the next course?

On one hand, I hate that fear brings people to these courses. But I'm glad there is a program that can make people's lives better. Information to stave off the increasing cynicism.  Dialogue turning paranoia into a plan. Training experiences introducing people to their own adrenaline so they learn they can be afraid and still find ways to access their human brain.

That's why I started training. And now, it's why I teach. It's purely selfish, really. It feels good to spend a day helping other people transform fear into a functioning plan. Training, hopefully, takes that plan and puts it to use building a richer purpose in living.

Train for your life, not for your fear.

redundant musings on change

It's so overdone, talking about change and resistance. Charlie Brown's teacher is probably what we all hear anymore. Yes, it's hard. Yes, we resist it. Of course we don't like it - it threatens consistency and our biology says consistency = predictable = survival.

And for all of how common this knowledge has become, the hardcore resistance is a fascination for me. 

It's common knowledge how and why we fight change. I have been through enough of disruptive and brain-rewiring change to also know the opposite of change is stagnation and stagnation is suffocating. And for all that, it will still create an internal wobble and wobbles make me think.

Woke up wondering today about change and connections. The Buddhists say the source of all dis-ease is our connection; specifically our connection to the past and to hope. The first time I read that, I was offended. Hope? I like hope. We talk about hope being essential, we laud hope, hope against all odds, and we find the hopeless to be lost and destitute souls.

Here though, hope means the future. So our connection to the past and our connection to the future is what screws with us. The way we write the story of the past and how the future pulls us out of being present for today - that screws with us, or it can.

And I find that as much as I will lean into change, and as much as I want to see what lives in the uncharted territories (because I want to find those dragons and figure out how to play with them) - internally, I wobble in the face of deep change.

Today at least, I realize it is because of my connections. Connection to people. I have several adult decades under my belt and with those years I have names who are now a part of my past. Friendships that were situational -work etc. and as the situations changed the friendships drifted. Friends that are no longer friends because the connection was damaging. Friends I miss because the gods deemed it no longer necessary for them to walk among us. Friends I have known for over 30 years and they are still part of my connections.

Every once in a while I am damned lucky with who I get to count as connections and somehow manage to fall in with a group of people with whom I am the shallow swimmer. Over the last 5 years I have been tumbling into deeper and deeper water. Treading to keep my head clear and watching others effortlessly breach the waves. Smart, talented, experienced, insightful people. And when I look at change I realize the upheaval transformation creates also has the energy to reorder the people-connections.

And I have to be okay with that. My connection to my past -or how I write the story, helps. I know loss is survivable and brings depth. I know longevity brings a type of peace in relationship and I know disruption creates possibility.

With that settled - ego volo luder in dracones

The Edge of Truth

Failure.

It doesn't matter how many times we say - our failures are our greatest lessons - or - it's only failing if you don't get back up - or-

There are a ton of those suckers. All those inspirational quotes are true. And they are hollow.

Had a rank testing yesterday for first and second ranks in the MA system we teach through at our training center. I start testings out with a grounding. We talk. Or rather I talk and the students are polite enough to pretend to listen. They would rather get on with it or have me drone on to delay it - either way...it's polite. In the grounding I tell the story about one of my gradings from a few years ago. Two evaluators - one I had just met a few days prior at training camp and the other the head of our system who I have known for several years.

After the grading was over they sat me down and said - we could pass you, you have the scores albeit a bit borderline -but we could pass you. We aren't going to. Then the new guy (who has since become a friend) says this: at this level I want you to have more confidence in what you know. You know the techniques but you followed your training partner over the cliff a couple of times into a mistake. So we are holding your pass for a bit...

I tell this story to students because although I was less than amused, I understood what the new guy with the funny accent from across the pond was trying to do. And I knew he was right. It sucked. It was also a pivotal point in my practitioner career, my personal perspective as an instructor and ultimately as a human being.  All those hollow inspirational quotes are true.

Failure is finding the edges of your truth (and I think that one belongs to Maija). It reveals how we see the world, how we judge our own self and how we measure that self against what we think is reality. That kind of growth is transformational and it's painful.

I think about yesterday's testing and I think about the pass-with-flying-colors people and the people who passed on the bubble and I notice the struggle. I haven't met anyone yet who deliberately walks into an evaluation with the hope of a 'failure'.  The cultural distaste for failure is almost a DNA level problem and I wonder if it is DNA in a way (failing at the hunt or shelter building = dead human). I notice how much I don't like the idea of giving a no-pass result to a student. I have done it. I will do it again if that's the reality of it. I don't like it.

One - it is a reflection of the teaching which is always on me because if I didn't teach that student directly, the instructors I teach did, and that's still on me. I know it is also on the student - s/he is responsible for the level of work, training, etc. brought to the party. Mostly, I don't enjoy the disappointment on his/her face.

I want to magically transport students to the other side of the process where they will experience the deep value of what the experience brings to their lives. I think mostly I want to be on the other side of this mountain because of one of the things I can't control in this process. I can't control whether or not they will take the journey into value. I have some colleagues and friends who will never - ever participate in a grading unless they are 1000% sure they will pass. They have never experienced a failed grading. And they never will because they will never risk it.

They will never find the edges of their truth and the place I get to play in my life right now (which I wouldn't trade for anything) is because the edges of my truth failed. The world got bigger. Richer. Deeper. And for all that? I would still rather not fail - the cultural programming is just too damn deep.

*the picture is by way of Kasey - who wrote an awesome bit on confidence recently