TAKING ISSUE
When people talk about issues, "careful" to stick with facts and figures, globalizing and depersonalizing the issue, all I really begin to hear is blah, blah, blah.
As a lover of words I am often fascinated by how we choose to express ourselves. I tell my sons, "say what you mean and mean what you say." In conversations surrounding the issues of the day, most of us fail to convey what is “meant,” not merely from our heads… but in our hearts.
There is a fine line between the words “passion” and "obsession."
The former denotes a function of vitality of spirit and the latter more a deterioration of the soul. And while I read all the discussion surrounding one issue or another, I can't help but observe that, without ever really revealing our “why,” we are eager to spout our opinions as if some badge of honor: Our obsession with being seen or smart is far greater than a heartfelt passion that invests beyond a moment in time.
Our need to be “right” has ordered our lives into plastic baggies of leftovers from a past life of convictions we hold without really knowing why. Like those little plastic baggies, our perspectives are becoming smaller, our hearts are more tightly sealed, and the contents of our minds are drying up. That's what obsession does to you. It keeps you from becoming, from evolving, from understanding.
But let me tell you, and without reservation, you will not draw me into a conversation about any particular thing unless you are willing to bring the whole of you into the mix. What will change my heart, and the heart of others, is the willingness to share, through personal experience and example, how you came to your conclusion and how that conclusion has changed your life.
Hearsay is a dangerous thing. It is the great distractor.
It keeps us from uncovering the truth about ourselves and others. It is the great wall that divides. It is the door we hide behind in the darkness. It is the mask we wear to avoid being seen.
When the conversation begins in our house about one issue or another, I ask my loved ones to tell me what the benefit is TO THEM. "Where's the fruit," I ask. Do you want to live inside a baggie of leftover thinking or do you want to live a life so big that you cannot hold the contents of its blessings? Authenticity does that. Draws blessing, I mean. Not just for us, but for those we encounter. The rewards in life are far greater for a man or woman who puts their whole self in.
Obsession locks us in. “Zip.” The air is slowly sucked out. Gradually belief takes root as truth. Complex ideas fall away and in their place, simple mantras flower. Obsession is covert. It steals the best part of who you are before your consciousness has a moment to protest.
Mine is an obsession of desire to live the bigger life.
An out loud life. The kind that insists on vulnerability and a kind of evolution of the soul.
It begins with admission that I may have been wrong. That I don’t know everything. That I still have something to learn. And that you may have something to teach me.