Before you check out the article (a short chapter for my future book about control) here’s a quick invitation to participate in what I’m doing:
Register for a Book Salon: When We Walk By. Soon, the dumb evil we are dealing with will be brought down, and we will dance on the streets. Let’s give substance to our joy by learning how to better care for each other. Order a printed, audio, or e-book copy and dive in right away!
Join me for Renaissancing hour. I know you wonder what this might be.
Download 5 Principles of Telling Your (or Your Loved One’s) Life Story. We tested these with hundreds of people who found the nerve to say their lives out loud. It can change the way you think about the most important story you’ll ever tell.
And now, to the article “A Nifty Lil’ Drawing You Got There: Which life do you want to live?”:
Five years ago, my older daughter Ena walked into my office asking, “Dad, what do you actually do?”
She was applying to a graduate school in social work. My wife has been a social worker her whole career. Me? With years as an engineer, a pastor, a management consultant, and a life and leadership coach, I was operating in a blurrier area. Transformation? That sounded really blurry.
I felt caught by her question, with no direct answer or explanation about the many ways I have been helping people over the past thirty years.
No, really, what was I doing and who was I? The word “impostor” came to mind.
For decades, I had a question growing at the center of my life for which I couldn’t articulate an answer. It has been following me like a stray kitten, as a fire in my brain, and as a dream waking me up at night, sometimes with dread, sometimes with laughter.
Years passed like this. Decades. I couldn’t name the riddle that has organized my heart. All the while, the experience hadn’t been frustrating. Instead, it has been magnetic, pulling me forward and connecting me with people I needed to meet and experiences I needed to have. Tortured and happy, I was in love, obsessed with something I couldn’t name.
To name it at any point earlier in my life would have been too early. But now, when Ena stood before me with her gorgeous, young curiosity and power, I sensed the moment had come to face what I couldn’t face for so long and name it right there and then.
As I have done a thousand times before, I picked up a pen and one of the 3 x 5 cards I always carry in my pocket and said, “This is what’s going on.” Holding the pen in my right hand and pressing down the card with my left, I still did not know what I was going to draw or say.
This conversation was an improvisation, a loving play between a father and a daughter, so I drew and said what I had never drawn or said before.
I said, “There’s life you can control, and then there’s life you can live. I help people live a life greater than what they can control.”
Years of personal struggle and professional experimentation came to this moment of release, an answer birthing itself within the safe space held by the pure, loving presence of my daughter.
“The way I see it, crossing this line and learning to live this greater life is the most important journey a human being can take. I help people do that.”
I sensed an archangel in the room with wings spread over us, as a surge of new clarity and fresh energy for the years to come rushed in.
She said, “Oh, okay.”
She walked from the doorway to where I was sitting, put her elbows on my shoulders, pointed her index finger toward the table, said, “That’s a nifty ‘lil drawing you got there,” and left.
I looked at the stick figures. One person, a hero of their domain, in a power position with their arms on their hips, declaring, “I can do this!”
Across the line, the other stick figure, a person with arms extended up in wonder and faith, saying, “How exciting!”
Which life do you want?
Whom do you want to become?
I looked at the card the next morning and many mornings after that, beginning to realize how different, difficult, and utterly delightful this larger territory is. It is, veritably, the greater life.
I first began using it to help others. Then, in assisting myself in my times of despair, and when I needed to let myself experience joy. When isolated and when connected. In my prayers and in my writing. Turning my attention from my maps to the landscape of life.
As I went, the territory changed, like those restored ecosystems that wide-eyed entrepreneurs adopt and nourish, where flora and fauna return to health and entirely new forms of life appear.
Again, an invitation to participate in what I’m doing:
Register for a Book Salon: When We Walk By. Soon, the dumb evil we are dealing with will be brought down, and we will dance on the streets. Let’s give substance to our joy by learning how to better care for each other. Order a printed, audio, or e-book copy and dive in right away!
caption... Join me for Renaissancing hour. I know you wonder what this might be.
Download 5 Principles of Telling Your (or Your Loved One’s) Life Story. We tested these with hundreds of people who found the nerve to say their lives out loud. It can change the way you think about the most important story you’ll ever tell.
