Middle or Center?

I had a great conversation this week with a colleague about the difference between "the middle" and "the center." He was writing a speech and since we both have a love for the weight of different words it sparked quite the dialogue. 

The funny thing is, when you look up both words you will find the other in the definition. 

Dictionary.com defines Middle as: 

center, ... something from which two or more other things are (approximately or exactly) equally distant. Middle denotes, literally or figuratively, the point or part equidistant from or intermediate between extremes or limits in space or in time: the middle of a road.

And defines Center as:

the middle point, as the point within a circle or sphere equally distant from all points of the circumference or surface, or the point within a regular polygon equally distant from the vertices.

And yet, a sentence can changes its meaning simply by choosing a different word. 

I was in the middle of it all.

I was in the center of it all. (Or, I was at the center of it all.)

Middle or the road or Center of the universe? Do you think of the middle as mediocre or as crucial? How about the middle point that connects it all? 

If Life was a Dream... and it was my dream, choosing to put yourself in the middle of something is very different from putting yourself at the center of something. Make sure you know which you are doing and why. And if you happen to feel stuck in the middle, think instead of the unique vantage point that being equal distance from everything gives you.

The Car Accident: Attitude is the Difference

The difference between a wildly dramatic situation and just a sucky situation is all attitude. 

This morning I was in a car accident on the freeway. Three cars were involved and I was the middle one. Lucky me. Everyone walked away, and at least two of the three cars drove away- not sure about the car in the back of the pile up. 

There we were three shaken people who were just in an accident. That's just what it was, an accident. No one maliciously ran into anyone else. We were from three very different backgrounds all pulled over to the side of the freeway. As calmly as we could, only because we were all literally shaking, we exchanged information and decided to call the CHP to file a report right there. Mostly out of concern that the back car wasn't going to be able to drive away. 

No one raised their voices. The first thing we all did was check in with each other's physical beings. "Is everyone okay?" Which of course actually means "does any one need paramedics?" Then we all went about figuring out what information to exchange. And most of all we were kind to each other. Even the CHP officer that responded was kind. 

We were all different ethnicities, different ages, going to different places but at the core we were all just three humans that were involved in a shocking and "yucky" experience. We chose to be grateful. We focused on the fact that no one was "ambulance hurt," that we were all single riders, and no kids were involved. We didn't focus on the material objects. Yeah, there was plenty of damage between the three cars but fretting, crying, or screaming on the side of the freeway wasn't going to change that fact. We chose our attitude and thus our response. 

As a result the situation remained at a simple "sucky" status instead of escalating into a dramatic situation. 

If Life was a Dream...

In my dream, this is a reminder that we can still connect as human beings. That we are able, even in traumatic situations to choose our attitude. We can still choose to be kind to one another. If I had to guess, I'd surmise that both the strangers I met today practice choosing their attitude about life's situations. It takes practice to choose to be grateful, to choose to focus on the tasks at hand and not to spin out into a rabbit hole of "what if's." 

Be intentional about choosing your attitude toward every situation you face. Keep practicing. 

Iron from the bottom

First can we acknowledge what a weird word IRON is when you're tired. Or maybe it's just when I'm tired. It doesn't even look like a word.  It looks like four randomly chosen letters. Or an autocorrect fail.

Any way...from the depths of my distracted and exhausted mind comes: Iron from the bottom.  

A co-worker was lamenting that he recently destroyed a work shirt because he was ironing a new bow tie, didn't realize the color bled onto the iron and then proceeded to iron his shirt. But he started at the collar. So now there is bow tie smear all over the white shirt collar making it unwearable. Tragic. 

But, and this lesson comes from him, now he knows to always iron from the bottom. If he'd started at the bottom of the shirt it wouldn't be ruin because that's the part he tucks in. 

I suppose some alternate lessons are: don't iron bow ties or clean your iron. Truly it all looks like jibberish right now anyway. 

If Life was a Dream and it was my dream "Iron from the bottom," is a metaphor for experimenting or testing something out. In new work situations (it was a work shirt after all) we need to iron from the bottom. Figure out what setting our iron is at and check for any residue from the last work situation. 

Persistence

Persistence...

On the hottest Saturday in July I drove around Newport Beach, trying to follow my navigation app through the traffic to a parking lot for the beach. It was crowded and I hate driving in places  I don't know, with lots of traffic and lets add to that I had two little girls in the back seat that wanted nothing more than to go to the beach. 

Left on my own I would not venture out to the beach. Probably like, ever. And never to a beach I don't know, but...we had family that was going to be at that beach celebrating a birthday. So... there we were. At a stop light I turned around and prepared my girls for the very real possibility that we weren't going to get to go to the beach that day. 

But...I didn't want to be that mom. There had to be parking. So i went back to the first parking lot my navigation app had recommended and even though it said full I went in and drove around. I let my mom and the girls out so they could join their cousins. And I drove. I figured, even if I spent an hour circling, that's an hour the girls had a the beach. It wasn't about me. It was about the experience for them. Sure I wanted to go watch them enjoy it, but I was happy to make the small sacrifice for them.  

Well that hour came...and went. At an hour and 20 minutes of circling the parking lot I texted my mom and told her to prep the girl to leave in the next 10 minutes. I was going to call it quites. And then a parking spot opened up just a few cars in front of me and i was the only one around to take it. 

We stayed another 4 hours. And my oldest and I had a spirited debate in which I declared that sand is just beach dirt. And I stand by that evaluation. 

If Life was a Dream and it was my dream... my mom did say this would wind up in a blog. And this is a reminder that persistence pays off.

Life happens at it's own speed. Careers happen at their own speed. Sometimes you have to circle the parking lot for what feels like forever. Sometimes you might have to ask your mom to drive the car for a lap so you can use the gross beach bathroom. It's all part of the journey and if you are persistent it will pay off. And if you keep a positive attitude about it, when you finally get to park and get to the beach you will be able to enjoy it. Beach dirt and all. 

A Fictional Account of What Really Happened

We all have a narrative. We use that narrative when retelling ourselves stories of what happened. And we all fictionalize reality. Even when it's harmless exaggeration "the fish was this big!"

My guest writer this week made a conscious effort to craft his fictional account of what really happened and this one is complete with an "If Life was a Dream" twist.

And so here is his work that I have titled: A Fictional Account of What Really Happened. 

By Jeremy Van Cleave

---

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough. without ever having felt sorry for itself.

D.H Lawrence

“The position is at risk - it’s going away. You didn’t get it.”

I pushed back from my desk repulsed by the words on my monitor screen.

“You bastard”. I looked around to see if anybody heard me. It was late afternoon on a Friday and the office was empty. Through the window at the far end of the room I could see the desert sun swimming home. I had been waiting to hear about the thing for 8 weeks persisting through 7 interviews, and They said it  was definitely going to happen. It felt as if a thousand tapeworms woke-up inside me and cycled through their 25 year life-span in a single moment. I tasted blood. From the copper tinge on my lips I knew I bit my tongue.

“I’m so sorry”

We were a small PR firm located east of Victorville on the corner of Palmdale Rd and Borego, next to Raul's Mexican Food #2.  We were handling an ambitious strategy to raise awareness about desert tortoises who habitually cross hwy 395 west of Death Valley. Those damn lizard crabs were getting themselves killed. Some bozo thought "why not just put up a fence" - which they did. Clearly he didn't do his research because desert tortoises are as stubborn as hell, and upon reaching the fence they simply pace back and forth looking for a way through and end up cooking in their shells.

The new gig I was promised was to lead a campaign highlighting the solution: Build culverts in intervals that tunnel below the roads and use the fences to funnel the beasts safely under highway to the other side. Along with man made burrows for temporary relief from the sun, it was a good plan. But nobody cared enough to let us off the leash.

“Are you OK?”

There’s a balance to nature, a structure unseen. Tipped to one side or the other and it throws everything out of whack. In 1995 Wolves were reintroduced to the wild in Yellowstone to curb the effects of overgrazing elk and study what happens when a top predator re-enters an ecosystem. To make a moderately long story short - it worked.

“Don’t get discouraged”

Not only did I not get the job, the job was going away. That was deranged. That means They don’t see. I’m no hippie conservationist necessarily, but I have an inexplicable inclination toward the community of nature and the nature of community, in the same stoic way dolphins have been known to save drowning seals. Lemmings will always want to jump, it’s their nature. I just want to give them parachutes.

“You are still awesome”

Spiraling fast. I had to get out of there and get home. I needed to feel safe. I jumped-up, grabbed my stuff and stalked toward the door. On the way out of the building I ran into a medicine woman that I knew well (they're everywhere here). There was talk that at one time she was a tribal leader for a mad band of performative dreamers who never slept and I believed it.

I told her what happened. After a genuine sanity check, she said it was for the best. She told me nobody should be a part of a tribe that doesn’t collectively understand the symbiotic nature of its own existence. Her advice was solid, but I still needed to be with my people.

“It’ll work out as long as we have each other.”

Home. It was just after dark and I’m a melancholic pile, D.H. Lawrence be damned. Just then, John (6), stumbled out of some jurassic fantasy and into my office with a lilting sidestep. He’s Jim Morrison reincarnated but only the beautiful parts. He looked at me and I broke.

“What’s next?”

I told him everything that happened from the last 6 months to today, stringing together a slippery slope of apocalyptic consequences that will come from not having any awareness about the tortoises, but really just making myself the victim.  After I finished my exaggerated diatribe he looked at me for a beat with those big blue eyes, my eyes, my father’s eyes, and he asked “do you want to color daddy?”

I snapped awake and we colored and we made something beautiful, together.

If life was a dream and it was my dream, any time we faced adversity or felt the sudden urge to engage in a bout of self-pity, rather than sit and cook in our shells, we would first have to create something beautiful, and then see what comes next…

"Do you like my boodfl nachr?" John (6)

"It's not fair"

There is no phrase in the english language that irks me like that phrase, "It's not fair." Actually that isn't true, "That's not fair," is equally irksome. 

Feeling analog- I pulled out my edition of the Webster's Pocket Dictionary (which wouldn't fit in any pocket...except for maybe the jenko's I owned in the 90's...but that's another story). 

And you know what? It only had the noun version of the definition. "An exhibit and sale of things often for charity." 

Well that's not what I was looking for. Guess we'll have to turn to our digital dictionary friends. The first definition that pops up on the Google search defines fair as this:

"In accordance with the rules and standards; legitimate." 

All I hear, when I the words "It's not fair" are uttered is "It's not fair that this situation isn't going according to the rules I have set up in my own personal narrative." 

To be clear. "It's not fair," and "It's not just," are two very different things. Systematic persecution is unjust. Manipulating people and praying on their fears is immoral. You not getting the toy you want is...life. Life is not fair which is why we strive to be just and moral. 

My Dad, a Song, and Rapunzel

I was thinking about my Dad this week, probably because Father's day just past. 

I have this memory from my childhood, I was maybe 9 or 10. My Dad was explaining what the Trail of Tears was. He wrote a song about it and he was sharing the history with me so I could understand the meaning of the song. In a nutshell 100,000 Native Americans from 5 different tribes were forced by the US government to travel 1000 miles to Oklahoma in the 1830's. Thousands upon thousands died. He was deeply moved by the history of the Trail of Tears. The huge loss of life and the trials they endured resonated with him for some reason. Even now I remember that. Maybe writing music was one of the things my Dad did to cope with his time in Vietnam, maybe it pre-existed his time at war. I'm not entirely sure, he died before we got to that part in his story.  

What relationship I was able to have with my Dad, was entirely because of my mom. My mom and dad were divorced when I was very young, but she decided early on that her children were not something to use to manipulate or inflict pain on their dad.  A few months ago I was walking through a parking lot and had to pass a young couple that were fighting in front of their small child. It was clear it was a relationship that hadn't worked out. It was also clear to me in that moment that they were using the child to inflict pain on each other. My mom never did that. I have great respect for her for being able to rise above her own hurt feelings. 

Children are not pawns in a grown-ups game. 

Adults understand that you don't use the love of a child or the withholding of that love to punish the other person. Children need their loving parents. 

I have two children of my own now. They aren't old enough to talk about the Trail of Tears just yet. Right now we watch a lot of kid movies. Do you know, I have a really hard time watching the Disney Movie Tangled because in the opening scenes Mother Gothel takes the baby Princess away from her parents. She rips the tiny child out of her crib just has her parents run into see their child being torn from them. That act horrifies me. I can't imagine how the King and Queen went on having hope while an evil selfish monster raised their daughter in a tower prison. 

Only villains take children from their loving parents. 

I spend at least 20 minutes of the movie trying not to fall down the dark hole of what it would feel like to have one of my babies stolen from me. And then somewhere around the song "I've Got a Dream," I make my way out of the hole to laugh at the silliness again. 

So If Life was a Dream... 

You know, I think this time, I'll let you interpret the symbols for yourself.