I left my job in Colorado because of irreconcilable differences with my boss at the time.  I headed to Florida because my best friend needed help with her daughter and I had some consulting opportunities there.  It provided a good home base for me as I lived at night at another friend’s house for most of the time and during the day took care of this little girl in her home.  I got up every morning and took her to school, most of the time riding bikes together.  Then I would ride my bike and pick her up.  We’d do her homework and then play or just hang out.  Sometimes I made her dinner and packed her lunch for the next day.

And we talked.  A lot.  About soccer, school, her cross country team, her friends, her teachers.  She sang me songs, danced when she felt like dancing.  She made me laugh.  We played with Clyde, her hilarious dog.  And sometimes we cried.

In her book, Love, Toni Morrison, writes about infatuation and love, the difference between the two.  She hints at the dangers of infatuation and the intelligence real love requires.  But one phrase captures it all.  “Softly, without props.”  She, of course, is talking about the love shared between lovers, between two people committed to each other.  But this year I came to understand that “softly, without props” is how I want to love everyone and everything.  And I learned that from this little girl.  So what does love mean?

Love means being there for no other reason than being there, being available and accessible.  Love does not mean someone I can count on, someone I only go to my problems with.  Love means no schedules or plans.  It means time.  It means being a natural part of someone’s life, of it’s rhythm and its breath.

Love means listening, not only when they talk, but when they sing and dance and play.  When they cry and hurt and hide in the next room.  It means tracking the tides of their lives as they ebb and flow, knowing when a storm is on the horizon and living together in its wake.

Love means touch, a touch that not only feels, but touches back to heal and guide and remind then you are there.  Touch that avoids emotional buttons, but finds that space where irresistible laughter instantaneously replaces irrepressible tears.  It means hugs.  It means playing Wii and letting her win.

Love means the understanding that loving is often expressed in like, that if we don’t like someone, it is hard for them to feel loved at all.  Love without like is a love too often interpreted as duty, love that feels more like obligation, tough love, rarely given softly without props and seems more like a test, rather than safety.

Love means intimacy, the sharing of what matters most to us, an open book written and illustrated in a common language, pages turned if not written together.  It means the vulnerability of self discovery in front of each other, with each other.

Love means trust, the faith that we will be okay, that we can survive anything as we create lives we like, as we fail, and learn and grow.  Morrison’s distinction between infatuation and love is much like the difference between confidence and trust.  Infatuation is confidence, a false bravado that withers when baggage inside us opens wounds and emotional bloodletting, seeking outcomes and goals, exposing wants and holes.  Love is trust, trust of our past, of dreams realized and promises broken, buttons and baggage turned into the imperfections that allow someone to see us whole.

Love means doing good and being well, instead of  doing well and being good, for yourself and whomever and whatever you love.  Love is building the life we like in a healthy way, that allows us to be there, to trust and be trusted, to touch and be touched and to feel and be felt.

Love means not being distracted or seduced by the world created around us, a world selling us love and approval and judgment, of ownership, social status, and being “in touch” mistaken for the real thing.

This ten year old girl taught me, reminded me of a time when I had no past, no baggage, and in doing so reminded me of the gifts I so often talk and write about.  Touch, Feel, Play, Like, Trust, Know, Create….and it is through those skills we do so many other things, things we might have surrendered to the judgment of others and the fear of not being good enough…things like dancing and singing and sharing and wondering aloud…. dreaming of who we can be, not worrying about who we should be.

She reminded me of that space between a smile and a kiss, of softly without props, the power of a hug, and best of all the permission Nature gave us that man too often takes away.  That there is room for like….and she did all that when one day in the grade school words we all understand, she explained that between like and love is “like like,” that special place, most often used when we want to make clear to someone we only “like” them, not “like-like” them.  “Like-like,” that place on life’s map where we feel something we don’t quite understand, when we were too young for it to be infatuation or get too hijacked by hormones, but where we enjoyed being…that may or may not blossom into love in someone older.

Here’s hoping my life at 50 is full of “like-like,” with the patience to not rush it into love or make promises born out of want.  “Like-like” where knowledge is slowly gained to transform any uncomfortable energy into the power of love for the people around me, the things I spend life doing, and for myself.

I will start a new blog soon to replace this one where I will put into action the lessons I learned and what happens as I do that.

In the meantime, I went back to an earlier blog I did called The Journal of Nothing.  It is mostly words that inspire me from people who inspire me and I thought I would share that with you  The link is http://journalofnothing.wordpress.com/.  I encourage you to go read it.  There are not many posts and they are not very long, but rereading it reminded me of the things I knew before this year that carried me through the tough times in this, my fiftieth year.

Here are some samples:

Happy New Year

The last few years, I have been fortunate to rediscover that spot, to grow it and “unspoil” the rest of me.  Most of it happened by accident.  It has cost me everything I “owned.”  In a word, I have Nothing and that is the greatest gift I have ever received.  I have come to believe that Nothing is also the greatest gift I have been able to give to people around me.  This is what I will give for Xmas.  Nothing.  That clean unspoiled spot inside of me in the hope that others find the same inside of themselves.  This is what I do for my clients.  It is what I wish I could do better for the people who matter to me.  I would like to offer Nothing to you so you might take the time and make the space in your life to give Nothing to others.

Recently I sat down and thought about the process I use with my clients or friends who ask me for help.  I want to share that with you.  Maybe you don’t know what to get someone else for Xmas.  Maybe you worry about the holidays and the parties, about family gatherings that too often touched the “spoiled” parts of us filled with judgment and seeking approval.  Each year returning home in the hope that somehow these holidays will feel better than the last.  Like second marriages, sometimes holidays are simply the triumph of hope over experience.  Yet we travel great distances too often to simply find the same old feelings, bring with us our worn out “buttons” that when pushed, cause us to emotionally bleed out.  We discover nothing has changed, including ourselves.

When I work with people, they often come to me for advice, for a “how-to” checklist to creating the life they like.  At best I will facilitate a process that helps them rediscover that clean unspoiled spot inside them, the spot from which they build a world in which they like to live.  Here is that process, my gift to you.  I’ve come to a place in my life where I truly believe that everyone should know or learn or God forbid be taught about this unspoiled spot free of charge.  It should be the central focus of education.  I will leave it to you to judge whether or not it is even worth your time to consider or try.

I do not actually use these words when I work with people because I listen to them before I say anything.  But in going over it, trying to figure how to give it to someone from a distance, these are the words and this is the process that unfolds.  It is a process I learned from people who live lives they like.

Touch, Feel, Play, Like, Know, Trust, Create.

1.  Touch.  How do we feel what we never touch?  If you want life to feel better and be better, then it means touching the world around us.  But in order for us to touch the world, to be touched by it, we must do so from that clean, unspoiled spot inside us.  Think back in your life to the things you touched for the first time, those things that no one told you about, that you discovered on your own that made your hand reach out and touch.  Like a little kid in a store for the first time with no intention and no pressure to buy something, a hand driven by wonder.  The first song you heard that touched you simply because the words and music rang true to what you felt about yourself free from the judgment of critics and billboard’s top 100.  When your mom or dad let go of the bike and you rode free and when the training wheels came off and where you rode on your own exploring.  When you made the ball or piano or pen do what you wanted for the first time.  As Bruce Hornsby once told “Put your hands on the keys.”

2.  Feel.  I think what Walt Disney was really saying in describing that clean unspoiled spot was that we feel in and from that place.  Free of feelings hardwired into us from past experiences.  No noise, no voice in our head, Nothing.  You feel the truth about things, about people.  What’s real.  As Lance Armstrong wrote in his book “”As I continued to climb, I felt the pain, but I also felt exultation too at what I could do with my body.”  When we allow ourselves to touch and to feel, we discover and begin to claim what WE can do with our bodies, our minds, and our spirits.

3.  Play.  Play is how we learn, how we grow.  Accountable to the process, but free of the judgment of others.  We try things with no fear of failure.  We test ourselves and  those things and activities and even the people around us.  When it stops being play, we look for other things to touch and feel.  Play done well is never trivial or silly.  It is instructional, informational, energy transformed by knowledge of ourselves and our connection to those around us.  Play is never manipulative, never deceitful.  As the philosopher Gademer wrote, “Play fulfills its purpose only if the player loses himself in the play: seriousness is not merely something that calls us away from play; rather seriousness in playing is necessary to make play wholly play.  Someone who doesn’t take the play seriously is a spoilsport.”  Play is expressing ourselves until we are spent, as Calvin said in Calvin and Hobbes, we can’t wait to do it again tomorrow in spite of the cuts and scratches and hurts.

4.  Like.  When we’ve played with something long enough, we will either come to like it or not.  If we like it we will continue to play, if not we will seek something else to touch, to begin again.  As Malcolm Gladwell said in his article The Physical Genius, we find something that “on some profound, aesthetic level, makes us happy.”  Then we’ll protect it, keep it unspoiled.  Maybe it turns into love, maybe not.  But the power of liking something, even liking ourselves, has been diminished over the years, turned into the pressure to do what you love or to find the love of your life.  In my interviews, I heard it over and over again– the world class performers said they “liked how it felt” to do something the first time they did it.  They made the connection between liking and doing and that made all the difference.  Toni Morrison once described real love as loving “softly without props.”  My experience tells me that liking something or someone is done softly without props, without the need to turn it into something different or something we want it to be or are told it should be.  We learn the difference between wanting and liking, no longer wanting the things we have no experience with or something someone wants to sell us.  We invest in what we like instead of spending on what we want.

5.  Know.  Plays opens the world up to us at the same time it opens ourselves up to the world.  Like allows us to see what’s real because we do it long enough to come to know it.  The lack of props helps us see what is real and meaningful.  It helps us know who we are and what we like about ourselves, what’s right about us.  What we can count on and what needs to be done better.  We know things because we’ve touched it and played with it long enough to feel what it really is.  If we’re lucky, we can touch and feel something so well, we can touch it back in a way that it responds to us– a surgeon with a scalpel, a pilot and her plane, a writer and his words, a player and the ball.  We are bombarded by energy in our world and that energy too often speeds us up, makes us rush, instead of taking the time, living in the stillness to touch and feel and know.  We confuse “knowing about” things with the knowledge that transforms our energy into our own work to move us forward.  As one surgeon I interviewed told me “You cannot learn surgery from home.”

6.  Trust.  Knowing leads to trust, rising above the notion of confidence.  Confidence is the fragile belief that we can somehow shape an outcome or win the game or make the sale.  Trust lets us know that we will be okay even if we fail, that we’ll come back to learn and grow.  Trust from the knowledge of the training we’ve done and of the people in our lives.  We might not win, we might hate to lose, but we know we will survive and in the moments that matter most, we can do what matters most.

7.  Create.  Having touched and felt, played and liked, known and trusted, we can put the pieces together to create the lives we like.  We create rather than consume.  We grow and behold who we are, who we have become, and wonder who we are yet to be.  That clean, unspoiled spot grows inside us, the noise and clutter wiped clean.  And we touch again and the process renews itself.

I think Pable Picasso said it best:  “Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

Merry Xmas

When I was on the faculty at the University of Virginia, several students from the business school asked me to participate in a project they were doing.  It was an assignment they’d been given by one of the leading consulting firms from the Northeast.  Big name.  Big opportunity for these students.  The consulting company was interested in what they could learn and use from the world of sports.  I sat in on some meetings and attended the final presentation and was allowed to ask and answer questions of the client.  Big mistake.

I sat quiet as the students presented and as the client asked questions.  But I noticed something missing in these discussions.  They never used the word “Play.”  It bothered me enough to finally say something, to point out the omission.  I was ignored, even derided by the client.  The students started squirming in their seats.  So I asked the obvious question.

“Why are you interested in how sports could be used in business?”

I was unprepared for the answer, for the naked honesty (or was it ambition) the client showed.

“We just want to know if we can make more money,” he said.

I was stunned, which just showed my naivete.  I was partly blindsided by this because nothing the students were presenting showed any data about how they could make money.  They were simply ideas in a vacuum.

What was also clear to me was that no one in the room had ever played a game where something was on the line.  I had.  I had also worked with people whose livelihoods counted on play, demanded play everyday.

“There is a difference between work and play in the minds of a lot of a people.  Play is voluntary.  People get to choose what and how they play.  And when they can’t, they quit the game.  The power of play and therefore the power of sport comes from the inherent freedom,” I argued.  That is what makes something a game.  You can choose not to play.  You play because you like the game.

We went on to have a discussion about this and I shared with them what I’d learned in my interviews and in my work.  Almost every world class performer I interviewed used the words play and freedom, interchangeably at times.  I tried explaining that play is not only the how, but often the why of the success of these people I interviewed.

I also explained that one of the greatest demotivators is when someone promises play and freedom to someone to get them to participate and then breaks that promise.  How many kids each year walk away from organized sport because of this broken promise, when the play and freedom and choice is stifled or taken away?  How many people do you know who had that coach or P. E. teacher whose authoritative voice still scares them as adults?  How many kids don’t have fond memories of the old playground because the kids made fun of them, because they weren’t yet good enough to play?  How scared are you of being chosen last?

I speak with some authority here because I’ve been on both sides of that fence.  I’ve never played on a losing team.  I was a good athlete as a kid, good enough in high school to win Player of the Year awards.  I was also well known nationwide as my college coach’s Human Victory Cigar, the guy at the end of the bench that the home crowd cheered for in blowouts while one of my teammates was three-time National Player of the Year.  It is this juxtaposition that drives my work.  What happens when the play not only disappears from the game, but even worse, you begin to believe you don’t matter anymore.

This country is in a fragile place right now.  Too many people feel like they don’t matter, not only to their government, but also to their fellow countrymen.  They are scared not only of being chosen last, but also of not being chosen at all.  Life feels like a game of musical chairs they cannot win and, even worse, is somehow rigged.  Like the Little League kid who sees no chance of getting better, many will simply quit trying.

What’s this got to do with play?  It’s pretty simple really.  Without play, there are no games. The effectiveness of games comes from the power of play, of people playing.  One of  Nature’s gift to us– our need and ability to play.  Some of the best games teach us to compete, to play to win, and when played well, to recover from failure and defeat by learning about ourselves, our gifts, and our shortcomings.  When games lead only to differentiating between winners and losers, when they reward some and not others, they are not games because there is no play.  When the lessons learned are that most of the players are not good enough to win or to contribute to the team’s success, people stop playing.  Not only is it not whether you win or lose nor how you play the game, it is about whether or not the game itself is worth playing.

The reward found in any real game is play itself.  Play allows us to be held accountable for our performance, but it also demands games that provide ways for us to improve, to learn, and to get better.  Most important, when we play, we do not hand judgment of ourselves to other people.  When we play, we want to know how we did, but then we want to know and learn how to be better.  And while it helps to have coaches, it is even better to have good teammates.

If business is trying to capitalize on the gaming generation coming of age, it must also realize and acknowledge why so many kids disappeared from playgrounds and retreated to their couches in front of their flat screens.  They wanted to play and feel free.  Free to fail, to make mistakes, and to put in the hours required to get better.  They wanted to play with their friends who had the same love of the game they had.  And in these environments, trash talk is often part of the game as I learned playing on some of the best playgrounds in D. C.

If, however, we force people to play games they don’t want to play, that have no play in them, the trash talk becomes dangerous and destructive.  I work with people who are world class at their chosen game and most of my work revolves around keeping play in their process.  They don’t play to make money, but because as Malcolm Gladwell wrote in The Physical Genius they have found something that when they do it, it “on some profound, aesthetic level makes them happy.”  It is how they feel when they play that is the most important reward.  It is the motivation that leads to the long hours of practice.

In The Black Swan, Naseem Nicolas Taleeb writes that it is “unfortunate that the right strategy for  our current environment may not offer internal rewards and positive feedback (meaning how to get better).”  I suspect that games seem to be a desirable solution to this because people like playing games in environments in which they feel they can get better and grow.

He also writes about the “hedonic deficit,” which I have heard from thousands of people in more simple words.  “I have done everything I was supposed to do, but my life doesn’t feel like I thought it would.”  The promise of play undelivered leaving  playgrounds abandoned.

A good friend who is a Grammy Award winning drummer probably said it best to me.  When asked how he kept from burning out, he said it clearly.

“I don’t confuse what I do for money with what I would for free.  I get paid to be away from my family and the bus trips and the dehydration and all the problems, but I play the drums for free.”

People will play for free if the game fits them.  They will endure long hours.  They will learn, and grow and get better.  They will deal effectively with failure.  They will hold themselves accountable.  These are the compelling characteristics of play.

What they won’t do is play a game they are forced to play, no matter how much money you pay them.  Tell them it is a job and that their reward is their compensation and they do it.  Tell them what work they must do and how much you’ll pay them and they will show up.  But promise someone that they will feel a certain way by playing a game and don’t deliver and they will walk away.

It is my belief that some businesses are trying to capitalize on the “gaming generation,” trying to profit from the assumption that gamers who grew up playing games will work best that way to the benefit of all.  But the distinguishing characteristic about the kids of the gaming generations, of the snowboarders, is that they will walk away from “playing the game” so many previous generations played– the one built on politics and too often deceit and telling people in power what they want to hear.  The gaming industry has it right.  Listen to the gamers.  Feel what they feel when they play and play well and you’ll understand how to make the game better, to make it more real to the players.  Game developers get this and address their markets.

Employers need to understand that building business around games means more than listening to their customers.  It means feeling what they feel and translating that into making the game better for as many players as possible.

It means creating games that people would play for free.

“To feel and be felt. It is the most fundamental force we’re all after. We can build all kinds of environments that make it easier, but ultimately what we’re trying to do is really connect with one other person.”

Enjoy

Can you feel me?

Can you feel my pain, my fear, my doubt?

Can you feel my dreams, my wonder, my hope?

Can you feel what I feel when I smile, when I cry, when I dance, when I hide?

Can you feel what I like, what I hate, what scares me, what inspires me?

Can you feel what I feel when I work, when I play, when I move, when I’m still?

Can you feel what I need, what I want, when I’m right, when I’m wrong?

Can you feel what moves me, what makes me sing, what makes me silent?

Can you feel what I wear, what I write, what I make?

Can you feel where I’ve been, where I go, who I’ve known, what’s yet to be known?

Can you feel what I’ve said, what’s yet to be spoken?

Can you feel me?

How can you feel what you never touch?

Will you take the risk?

To touch me?

To feel what you touch?

To know me, instead of know about me?

To like me, to love me, instead of want me?

To see me, instead of watch me?

To hear me, instead of listen to me?

To be with me, instead of next to me?

To hold me instead of hold onto me?

To free me?

Will you take the risk that I will touch you and feel you?

That I will see you and hear you and hold you?

That I will know you?

That I will love you?

In learning how to use Social Media to expand myself and my work into the world,  the whole thing has begun to feel too familiar.  Einstein’s words run through my head:

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

Don’t despair though.  I don’t mean it the way it sounds.  Closing the gap between our humanity and our technology is the true opportunity hidden in Social Media.  We will, or at least should, close that gap by elevating our humanity, not by bringing the technology down with how we use it.

This has always been the challenge.  In every institution, every new idea, the possibility to raise the water exists.  But as T. E. Lawrence wrote in Seven Pillars of Wisdom:

We were fond together because of the sweep of open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked.  The morning freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us.  We were wrought up with ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for.  We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to remake in the likeness of the former world they knew.  Youth could win, but had not learned to keep, and was pitiably weak against age.  We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.

We have a window, a window that might not be open for very long.  If we miss it, if it closes, Social Media will simply become what TV has become– a wasteland of entertainment that has seen its creative possibilities overcome by its ability to influence impulses and increase consumption.  The studies that tell us that more people watch television than before suggests that television is alive, but let’s not interpret that to mean it is well.  Social Media has no reason to believe it cannot suffer the same fate.

I’ve studied world class performers in a variety of fields from medicine, sports, music, business, the military, education, etc.  This research revealed some fascinating distinctions between the people who lived lives they wanted to live and those who were stuck or unfulfilled.  For the purpose of this post, what it revealed most was that they were “successful” precisely because they understood that their success counted on their own humanity.  Only then did they look to the technology.  As one world record holder I interviewed said, “Find the passion and put it to work.”  And when they did this, when they felt this, their humanity grew and the technology kept improving.

The Social Media Superstars might be people you never know about, might never hear about, unless you look.  And, well, that’s the real challenge isn’t it?  They won’t be loud.  They won’t seek attention.  They might go broke in the pursuit of their own passion, ideas created and then expressed in public.  Their “success” will depend on the rest of us.  They are counting on that, counting on us.

As we push ever forward into this new universe, the gap between our technology and our humanity might be phrased a different way– that the opportunity for the promise of democracy (humanity) also meets the tools for the widespread of democracy (technology).  It is up to us to decide if like in our Republic, we will allow its future to be determined by a few well funded representatives, in power not because the best has risen to the top, but driven by our choice to be consumers instead of creators… active, world class even, performers.  The Superstars of Social Media will be those who elevate their humanity  to the promise of the technology.  Based on my research, here is what these Social Media Superstars might look like:

1.  They will redefine work.  Work is simply the march towards a fulfillment of the human promise, the gifts inside us that we develop into skills for quality living.  Social media offers one of the most exciting tools ever for us to overcome the gap that exists between our life’s work and our jobs, between our standards of living and our quality of life.  These people will effectively demonstrate that what makes us happy and therefore makes us healthy must be part of any successful process.  They will prove that how we feel matters and that it is  THE competitive advantage in everything we do, for every company seeking to grow.

2.  They will create and develop tools that tap our inner reserves of energy, our curiosity, our passion, our love for what we do.  They will create places and open up spaces where this inner energy is no longer the mysterious “touchie-feelies” fraught with peril and unpredictability, but energy reserves that drive the purest forms of work for individuals and teams and organizations. They will create labs for understanding the secrets of  “team chemistry” and how to use them in our own lives. These spaces will serve as canvasses for us to create, to connect, and share.  Maybe best of all, the space in each of us to listen and to be heard, spaces to rise above the scars of our pasts, instead of places merely to vent or pretend that life is good in times we don’t really mean it.

3.  They will help us turn information into knowledge, knowledge that refines random energy into the fuel to do work, and allows passion to replace caffeine and drama.  They will create places and spaces that elevate entertainment into engagement, engagement  that results in progress that drills as deep inside ourselves as it moves us forward.  We must know ourselves to know what matters before we know how to do what matters well.

4.  They will expose “the Trick” for what it is, that youth can win, but  is not skilled enough “to keep” as Lawrence wrote.  The Social Media Superstars will never purposefully sell you something you “want,” but that you won’t like once you have it.  They do not subscribe to planned obsolescence, but strategic growth into something better.  The promise of Social Media is not found in the unleashing of the impulses of the people, but in the decreased time needed to find and connect with other people.  Instead of the old way of Being Good and Doing Well,  these superstars will provide a place for our better angels to Do Good and Be Well.  They will also demonstrate and prove that this is not merely good business, but the best way to do business.

5.  They will provide the tools and the spaces to fail and prosper.  Every failure is a chance to learn the lessons and then forgive yourself for failing.  You will remember what the Trick wants you to forget– that you sought something, not through knowledge, but out of “want,” out of impulse, that cost you far more than you received. You will discover that “knowing about” something is not enough, that “knowing” something is the only way.  The Social Media Superstar will create places and experiences that let you know enough to try something, to put your hands on the keys and play, and fail, free of judgment, but accountable to the results.  They will not just tell you what book to read that makes something difficult sound easy– until you actually do it yourself.  You will learn from experience.  You will connect with others who share the experience, the failures, and the desire to get better.

The Social Media Superstar will help you understand and feel the difference between passion and impulse.   They will help you find your passion, what’s right about you, AND put it work.  No impulse buys at the virtual checkout line.

In doing so, they might show us what so many of us wish for in our lives– work that fulfills us and the skills to do it well.  A meaningful economy that builds tools and standards of living defined by the quality of life we seek, not the other way around or a game we play.  What we like and love and create instead of  what we think we want and consume.  Businesses that profit from the creation and sales of the tools for living and people who know how to use them well.  And for our children, the knowledge not only how to win, but to keep and sustain, and with that the trust that what matters is worth working for.

When I was teaching a class once at a well known university, my students were asked to stand in front of the class and tell us their story.  Why were they here?  How was it going?  That kind of thing.  The students always had amazing stories.  Near the end of the class one of the students raised his hand and volunteered.

He was an African-American and I only say that because he wanted to talk about his experience being African-American in a mostly white school.  He wanted to vent.

He proceeded to tell us how mistreated he was, how his classmates were lousy classmates, how none of them had taken the time to get to know him.  The class ended, but he kept going and no one moved.  Needless to say the other students were uncomfortable, looking at their feet, trying not to take it in.  But they heard him.  They felt him, probably for the first time.

Now I have no idea what the students were feeling.  Shame?  Guilt?  Compassion?

I found it inspiring what he did.  He obviously had been carrying it around for a while.  But no one ever asked him to tell his story before or he simply never did.

He finished and simply stood there.  He took a deep breath and looked down.  Some of the students turned to me looking for permission to leave.  I let the discomfort hang in there.  Finally, he looked at me.  Right in the eye.  Then all the students turned and looked at me.

“So what would you like us to know?  How would you like us to react to what you said?  What do we do now?”

I don’t think it occurred to him I would ask him that.  I think he thought I’d be mad.  So he stood there for moment and said “I’m not sure.”

I grew up playing basketball at a mostly white suburban high school where we had a couple of major racial incidents that turned very ugly.  I played on basketball teams in Alexandria and on playgrounds in D.C. where I was often the only white guy.  I got beat up, picked on, even had my life threatened with guns and knives.  In high school I tutored a first grader in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in D. C. at a school with few white students or teachers.

But here’s the thing.  For every guy who wanted to make things racial, there were ten guys who stood up for me, who cheered me on.  In a summer league game once in Alexandria I got a standing ovation after a dunk.  I was the only white guy in the gym.

So I told my students that I was adopted.  I told them I could not begin to imagine what he was going through.  But I did believe we had one thing in common.  An experience we all have in common I suspect.

I asked him if he felt like he didn’t count, like he didn’t matter.  He nodded.  We understood each other at least in that sense.  That is what my adoption made me feel.

“How many of you have felt like you didn’t count, like you didn’t matter?  How many of you felt like no one cared enough to listen?  How many of you wish one person truly cared how you feel?”

They all nodded while still looking at the floor.  The discomfort lifted.

“I don’t know what we can do about the racial issue.  What I know is we can make people count.  We can listen.  We can care how they feel.  And in doing that you will realize how much you matter.”

This was 20 years ago.  I think things have gotten worse.  I think fewer people listen and without that we cannot claim to care how other people feel.

I don’t know about the race thing.  What I have observed though is that when things get tough, people look for bad ways to feel like they count.  They put other people down.  They undermine others in some misguided attempt to count more than someone else as if that makes us count for something.  You either count or you don’t.  There are no degrees of counting.

I’ve lost pretty much everything I own and barely get by these days.  I’ve had people tell me I don’t count if I can’t pay my bills.  I’ve had people imply I don’t count if I don’t have a job.  But everyday I listen to someone about them, about their lives, about how they feel.  I ask people to tell me their stories.  It seems to me these days that doesn’t count for much if you measure yourself by money or social status or if you even have a job.

I am here to tell you none of those things money can buy matter in a world that seems so lost.  What I can tell you is I know when I listen to people, when I ask them to tell me their story, then for two hours or so, they know they count.  Then I know I count.

Not many people have gotten to do the things in their life that I’ve been blessed with the chance to do.  In medicine, business, sports, music, etc., I’ve asked people at the top of those fields to tell me their stories.  I’ve been invited onto the stages, into the corner offices, onto the playing fields, and into the minds of some of the best in the world.  I just haven’t found a way to make money at it.

What I learned, what was shared with me, was the story of the people who do great things or things at a very high level. I got to know the people.  One best selling author even said to me “You’re better than my therapist.”

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve made people feel small, like they don’t count.  That happens when I am at my worst, when I’m tired or worn out or upset, when I feel like I don’t count.

But what I know is that what makes me my best is when I listen to someone, when they tell me their story.  When they walk away knowing I cared how they felt.

I was once asked to give a talk at a camp for kids with diabetes.  These were teenagers and as I walked up to the hut where I’d be speaking, the oldest boy stopped me and asked me if I was the speaker.  I said I was.

“Do you have diabetes?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Do you know anything about diabetes?”  I shook my head no.

“Then why should we listen to you?” he asked.

“I don’t know actually.  But I’ll make a deal with you.  Give me five minutes and if you don’t like what I’m saying, we’ll go play on the zip line.”

“Deal,” he replied.

They let me talk to them for two hours.  At the end of the session, I asked him why he let me go on.  What did they get from the talk?

“You gave us permission to be like everyone else.  You gave us permission to dream the way everyone else does.”  I didn’t understand.

He told me that their dream had too often been defined by their disease, by over protective parents, by labels of diabetics.  Their dream as given to them by others was simply to successfully manage their diabetes.  He told me that I showed them that everyone had obstacles on the path to living their dreams and that was all the diabetes was– an obstacle.

“Now I understand that if I take care of myself, if I do what I need to do to take care of my diabetes, then I can dream a real dream, do the things I want to do.”

He pulled out a piece of paper and he had written out the process I use with people.  He’d filled it out correctly showing me the preparation he had to do like checking his blood sugar, exercising, and eating well.  Under obstacle he simply wrote “my disease.”  What he understood was he could make the obstacle smaller through his preparation.  He could dream.

Under Dream he’d written–”To find and live my dream.”  He told me word for word that I made him feel like he “counted.”  He carried that piece of paper in his wallet for years.

I have no idea how to solve the race issue or even how to have a conversation about it.  What I know is where to start.  You start by helping people feel like they count.  It’s in all of us to do that.  It is what’s best about all of us– not what we know, but listening to what we don’t know, what we cannot possibly know about another person.  We can never know exactly what someone else feels.  It is the most personal sense we have.  But we can listen.

I don’t care how much money you have, what title you have, what awards you’ve won.  I guarantee you I personally know someone who has more money, has more important titles and won more championships and awards.  If you make people feel like they don’t count none of that matters.  If you don’t care how people feel, then you don’t matter.

We are at our best when we care how other people feel.  We need a lot more of that right now.  We need it now more than ever in my lifetime.

Do you feel like you count, like you matter?  If you doubt that you matter, then ask someone else to tell you their story, to tell you how they feel…and then just listen.

You will discover how much you matter…and how little the other stuff counts.

So I woke up this morning needing something.  It seemed everything had welled up to the surface, both good and bad.  It needed expression it seemed.

No, there was something very specific I needed, something I knew, but had lost or forgotten.

As I sat at my computer ignoring the email from the Biggest Loser Club, I turned to itunes as I often do and there it was.  Bruce Springsteen’s Unplugged version of Thunder Road.  So I hit play.  Here is how he explained the album Born to Run.

“What’s it about? It’s an invitation…we invite you to something. Something is opening up to you, what I was hoping it would be is what I got out of rock and roll music which was a sense of a larger life, greater experience, hopefully more and better sex, a sense of fun, personal exploration and the possibilities in us, the idea that it was all aligned inside of you just there on the edge of town.”

An invitation.  Exactly.

I often feel like I am simply an interruption into people’s lives.  In fact one writer, Joe Kita, recently explained my approach to fitness in his blog.  He said that what feels at first like an interruption to life will transform into life itself.  I remember reading that and thinking how right he’d gotten it.

But here’s the thing.  It sucks being an interruption.  It sucks being perceived sometimes as SPAM.  Maybe it’s my style.  But maybe it is life has gotten so busy for people, that they are all doing what they’re supposed to do but feeling like it’s not leading where it’s supposed to go.  Maybe people think so little of themselves that because what we’re doing isn’t working, that somehow we’re simply not good enough.  We must try harder.  And I interrupt the “working harder.”

I won’t get into an argument about whether things are working or not.  I don’t think much of what we’re doing collectively is doing the work we all want done, leading us where we want to be.  What I know is a significant number of people are not becoming the person they thought they would be.  I know that because I talk to a lot of people.  I listen.  How have we evolved to the point that someone wanting to listen is perceived as an interruption?

But Springsteen reminded me that life itself is an invitation, an invitation ALWAYS to be something better, to the possibilities inside ourselves.  How many of us go through life doing the things we think we’re supposed to so we can become what we want to be and yet lose ourselves in our own wake?  How many of us are consumed in our own consumption of things?  And we simply don’t know anything else to do or try.  So we tell ourselves to be positive.

Springsteen reminded me this morning that life is an invitation, reminded me that I am life, my life, that I am my own invitation.  He reminded me that wonder is an invitation and that worry is an interruption.

We need a more inviting world, a world built on the life inside each of us, not marketing disguised as invitation, crafted to attract us to things we don’t need or want.

There is one thing I know for sure.  The things we buy, the things we consume, are not life.  They are the tools for us to live life.  But when the tools define the work we do instead of life creating the tools we need to live what’s inside of us, our economy becomes about jobs, not the doing of work.  And when jobs drive how we live, something is wrong.  When the powers that be, whether political or financial, become the gatekeepers, when they define the tools, it doesn’t work.  We become their tools.

In Thunder Road, Springsteen sings “I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk.”  One of life’s tools expressing what’s inside of him.

What I realized this morning  is if I am not, if my life is not, the invitation to life itself, then I am simply what I like being least– an interruption.

Be the invitation.  Discover what’s inside you and use that to define your life’s work and create the tools to fulfill it.  Allow other people who seem like an interruption in.  Ask yourself exactly what they are interrupting.  Are they interrupting your work or just your job?  Are they interrupting the checklist of the things you need to get done or are they an invitation to the life that is inside you?  Are they interrupting your Standard of Living or are they an invitation to a higher Quality of Life?

Be the invitation.  And if you need someone to listen so you can hear yourself, if you feel like you are an interruption and you are tired of that, give me a shout.  YOU are invited.

“What else can we do now? Roll down the window and let it blow back your hair.”

And here is how Springsteen closed the performance:

“So this was my big invitation, to my audience, to myself, to anybody that was interested.  My invitation to a long and earthly journey.  Hopefully in the company of someone you love, people you love, and in search of a home you can feel a part of.”

I started writing this blog as a reminder of my own promise as I ventured into my fiftieth year.  I have found that promise and it is alive and well.  What I have not yet found is the outlet for that promise.  What I mean by that is a way to use it to make a difference in the world.  Maybe I am not meant to.  I am not giving up, but what I know is I really don’t know what else to say.

What I learned a long time ago was the best way to learn, the best way to make a difference, was to listen.  Listen to people, listen to current affairs, listen mostly to Nature.

Since I left my job in February, I have listened and worked at the same time.  I have spent 18 hours a day learning and listening.  I’ve tried to offer my “take” on what I am hearing.  I have not found my medium yet.  Words, at least the words I know, fail me.

I’ve always been very good at seeing “the field,” seeing the big picture.  I predicted all of the calamities in a general fashion that we face now almost a decade ago.  I’ve tried telling people what I was seeing and people did not want to listen because I am not good enough with words to make my case.

Each week I have 5-10 conversations that last over 2 hours with people who ask me what I think, who ask me for “advice.”  All I can offer is how I see their situation after listening to them.  I ask hard questions and make them think and I make them feel.  Robert McKee defines aesthetics as the ability to think and feel at the same time.  I like to think I bring aesthetics into people’s lives in these conversations and that engages them.

I entitled this post a failure of imagination for a reason.  My imagination has failed in communicating “the field” as I see it.  Maybe I am just wrong about things, but I don’t think so based on the evidence over the last twenty years.  But I am simply not good enough with words yet.

But here’s the thing.  In the last month I have seen several posts by people who study and preach innovation and creativity and everything they say indicates to me that we have a worldwide failure of imagination going on.  Why?  Because of fear.  Too many of our politicians, too many of the people we look to for leadership, are scared.

In many of my interviews, I heard a simple line– you must keep the desire greater than the fear in the moments that matter most.  Thomas Paine wrote that the purpose for society is to create what we want.  I would add that in a free society, in a democracy, society must also create what we need.  He added that government’s role is to protect us from our impulses.

I think too many of us are scared.  Too many of us have lost our desire or at least decreased it to the point that it now gives into our fears and consequently into our worst impulses.

The stalemate in our politics, the malaise in our society, I believe is the result of confusing our impulses with our wants.  And once we have something we want, then somehow we justify them into needs…and we become unwilling to consider that there is a difference between our standard of living (the things we have) and the quality of our lives (how life feels, how healthy our lives are).

I can tell you from my work with people I have heard horrific stories of abuse, of neglect, of evil, and of complacency.  Secrets.  Things people don’t tell, in their own words, even the people closest to them.  I have seen people do dishonest things and rationalize them as business.  I have heard well meaning people say they need all the luxury items they have in their lives because of their kids.  I have people tell me they can’t listen to people or focus on a problem because of their ADD nature (few of them having been officially diagnosed).

But here’s what I know.  When I sit and listen to someone for hours, when I hear them recount the promise inside of them, they tell me that a 3 hour conversation felt like 20 minutes.  They thank me for listening.  And as I said I do this several times a week.

I also know the studies that show we are distracted by our technology and that leads to a shortened, even challenged, attention span.

I also know that when I have a meaningful conversation with someone, when I listen to them, there is no deficit of attention, rather full engagement.

I know that people want and need meaning.  If they are distracted it is by the fear we all live with.  If they are not innovative or creative, it is because it is seen as not productive and therefore, they will not risk it.

We have a failure of imagination from the people we need it from the most– all of us.  That includes me.  I simply do not know what to say.  So I listen.

My promise in my fiftieth year, one of the hardest financially of my life, is completely intact.  I know it not by what I say, but by what I hear.  When I talk too much, I know it is because I, too, am afraid.  When I talk too much it is because I don’t agree with or like what I hear.  When I talk too much, it simply means I have no idea what to say.  According to Harry Frankfurt, who wrote On Bullshit, that is the definition of bullshit, when people feel compelled to talk about things they know little about.  I do not know enough about how to move forward or I don’t know how to articulate it in any other way–the intersection of my failure of imagination and my bullshit.

I was prompted to write this because I listened to Andrew Ross Sorkin on Morning Joe say something I hear people say over and over.  We have to deep well drill because we need the oil.  In other words, we cannot give up something until we have a replacement for it.  I hear this from people all the time.  I can’t leave my job I hate until I find a new job.  I can’t leave my relationship until I find someone else…and they never leave and nothing changes… and we will keep finding new places to drill.  Let’s just hope we demand cleanup strategies that work before permitting the drilling.  As The Daily Show graphically illustrated, every President since Carter has said that what we’re doing isn’t working when it comes to energy.

But this makes my case.  It’s bullshit.  Bullshit from people who are admitting they don’t know what they’re talking about.  They are admitting their own failure of imagination, imagining a life without the things we know aren’t working.  So if you can’t imagine that, then stay out of the conversation.  If you are admitting life isn’t working well enough, then get to work on the life we  want and need…then make the case that it will take time, but that we can change direction, and offer a solution.  Otherwise you are simply feeding fear.  And I know I am guilty of this as well so I am not simply pointing fingers.  I am looking in the mirror.

Thank God our founders didn’t this think way.  I don’t believe it is an accident we wrote the Declaration of Independence before we wrote our Constitution.  We had to be free to think freely.

So I will leave you with this.  Everything you do, every dollar you spend, every unit of personal energy, every ounce of love or fear you put into the world is an investment in something.  What are you investing in?  Why?

We have to imagine our economy moving forward not as consumers, but as investors.  In other words, to get something we need, something we want, it is not good enough to “spend” our energy or money or love.  We must invest.  And investment means risk.

I watched the National Governor’s Association Annual Meeting on C-Span the other day (I have watched every minute of all the hearings since February on BP, Energy, Financial Reform, Climate Policy, etc.) and Erskin Bowles said it very plainly.

“We face the most predictable financial crisis in our history.”  The question remains whether it is preventable.

He also added:

“We cannot grow our way out it and we cannot tax our way out of it.”

In other words, we cannot spend our way out of it.  We cannot “keep doing what we’re doing” our way out of it.  We can’t just go shopping.

So what does that leave?  Investing in our imagination.  We can invest in our freedom.

Maybe I am wrong.  Maybe our imaginations are alive and well creating and feeding the fear.  Let’s invest in it more wisely.

What we need is to write our own Declaration of Independence, not from the State, but from the society we have created, built too much on consumption and spending.  Then and only then can we write our own Constitution, that of which we “constitute” the society we need and want.

Your doubt can become a deep attribute if you discipline it.  It must become a knowing; it must become the critic.  Ask it, as it always wishes to spoil something, why something is ugly.  Demand proof of it, test it, and you will find it perhaps perplexed and confused, perhaps also in protest.  But don’t give in; demand arguments.  Act with alertness and responsibility, each and every time, and the day will come when doubt will change from a destroyer to become one of your best fellow-workers, perhaps the wisest of  that have a part in building your life.