A step into authenticity

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Transition may not be simply a step toward an outlook that is more appropriate to the life-phase that we are actually in. It can also be a step toward our own more authentic presence in the world. That would mean that we come out of a transition knowing ourselves better and being more willing to express who we really are, whenever we choose to do so. It would also mean that we are more often willing to trust that who-we-really-are is all right—is valid and a person capable of dealing with the world.

William Bridges, The Way of Transition

These people are your real friends

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As we grow up, we realize it becomes less important to have more friends and more important to have real ones. Remember, life is kind of like a party. You invite a lot of people, some leave early, some stay all night, some laugh with you, some laugh at you, and some show up really late. But in the end, after the fun, there are a few who stay to help you clean up the mess. And most of the time, they aren’t even the ones who made the mess. These people are your real friends in life. They are the ones who matter most.

Marc & Angel Chernoff, 20 Things to start doing in your relationships

Self-renewal and Failure

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The self-renewing man is versatile and adaptive. He is not trapped in techniques, procedures, or routines of the moment. He is not the victim of fixed habits and attitudes. He is not imprisoned by extreme specialization.  

For the self-renewing man, the development of his own potentialities and the process of self-discovery never end. It is a sad but unarguable fact that most human beings go through life only partially aware of the full range of their abilities. By middle-age, most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves. How long is it since you have failed at anything? If it is long, you are in poor shape. If you are sufficiently adventurous, sufficiently willing to try new things, you will stumble fairly often.  

John Gardner,  published in the Saturday Review XLVI, Jan. 5, 1963

Why are conspiracy theories popular?

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People who feel powerless or vulnerable are more likely to endorse and spread conspiracy theories. This is seen in online forums where people’s perceived level of threat is strongly linked to proposing conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories allow people to cope with threatening events by focusing blame on a set of conspirators. People find it difficult to accept that “big” events (e.g., the death of Princess Diana) can have an ordinary cause (driving while intoxicated). A conspiracy theory satisfies the need for a “big” event to have a big cause, such as a conspiracy involving MI5 to assassinate Princess Diana. For the same reason, people tend to propose conspiratorial explanations for events that are highly unlikely. Conspiracy theories act as a coping mechanism to help people handle uncertainty.

Stephan Lewandowsky & John Cook, The Conspiracy Theory Handbook

The magic formula for flourishing

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In 1938, a group of researchers began an intensive study of 268 students at Harvard University. The plan was to track them through their entire lives, measuring, testing and interviewing them every few years to see how lives develop. 

As this study — the Grant Study — progressed, the power of relationships became clear. Body type was useless as a predictor of how the men would fare in life. So was birth order or political affiliation. Even social class had a limited effect. But having a warm childhood was powerful. As George Vaillant, the study director, sums it up in “Triumphs of Experience,” his most recent summary of the research, “It was the capacity for intimate relationships that predicted flourishing in all aspects of these men’s lives.”  

It’s not that the men who flourished had perfect childhoods. Rather, as Vaillant puts it, “What goes right is more important than what goes wrong.” The positive effect of one loving relative, mentor or friend can overwhelm the negative effects of the bad things that happen. 

In case after case, the magic formula is capacity for intimacy combined with persistence, discipline, order and dependability.   

But a childhood does not totally determine a life. The big finding is that you can teach an old dog new tricks. The men kept changing all the way through, even in their 80s and 90s. 

The men of the Grant Study frequently became more emotionally attuned as they aged, more adept at recognizing and expressing emotion. 

David Brooks writing in the New York Times

 

How to shape the future

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The future is shaped by men and women with a steady, even zestful, confidence that on balance their efforts will not have been in vain. They take failure and defeat not as reason to doubt themselves but as reason to strengthen resolve. Some combination of hope, vitality and indomitability makes them willing to bet their lives on ventures of unknown outcomes.

John Gardner, Self-Renewal

Drinking bacon grease for breakfast

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If you seek advice from a very old person about how to become very old, the only person who can provide you an answer is a person who is not dead. The people who made the poor health choices you should avoid are now resting in the earth and can’t tell you about those bad choices anymore. That’s why it’s difficult not to furrow your brow and wonder why you keep paying for a gym membership when Willard Scott showcases the birthday of a 110-year-old woman who claims the source of her longevity is a daily regimen of cigarillos, cheese sticks, and Wild Turkey cut with maple syrup and Robitussin. You miss that people like her represent a very small number of the living. They are on the thin end of a bell curve. There is a much larger pool of people who basically drank bacon grease for breakfast and didn’t live long enough to appear on television. Most people can’t chug bourbon and gravy for a lifetime and expect to become an octogenarian, but the unusually lucky handful who can tend to stand out precisely because they are alive and talking.

David McRaney, You are not so Smart

 

God had come near

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He came, not as a flash of light or as an unapproachable conqueror, but as one whose first cries were heard by a peasant girl and a sleepy carpenter. The hands that first held him were unmanicured, calloused, and dirty. No silk. No ivory, No hype. No party. No hoopla. Were it not for the shepherds, there would have been no reception. And were it not for a group of star-gazers, there would have no gifts.

For thirty-three years he would feel everything you and I have ever felt. He felt weak. He grew weary. He was afraid of failure. He was susceptible to wooing women. He got colds, burped, and had body odor. His feeling got hurt. His feet got tired. And his head ached.

To think of Jesus in such a light is - well, it seems almost irreverent, doesn't it? It's not something we like to do; it's uncomfortable. It is much easier to keep the humanity out of the incarnation. Clean the manure from around the manger. Wipe the sweat out of his eyes. Pretend he never snored or blew his nose or hit his thumb with a hammer.

He's easier to stomach that way. There is something about keeping him divine that keeps him distant, packaged, predictable. But don't do it. Let him be as human as he intended to be. Let him into the mire and muck of our world.

Max Lucado, God Came Near