the n-word.

Watch this video. It's beautiful not just in the way it explains why white people can't use the n-word but diving into words and context along with the way whites often see the world. 

Which explains much more than just a word. 

You won't be sorry. 

believe beliefs.

Most of us believe beliefs. We mentally acknowledge something that is supposed to be mentally acknowledged. We keep something in our brain that can't really leave our brain.

That's fine. For many things. 

But that's not God.

Ever. 

If your God is centered around the proper belief of a proper belief... well... I'm not interested. 

Well I guess that is a belief, so maybe I am. Or am I? 

Are you? 

the 50%

Here's how I see it.

For any given stance or view or opinion there are generally 25% who are always going to take one side and another 25% who are always going to take the opposite side. 

Every leader will generally have 25% who love him/her and 25% who hate him/her. 

Those people don't matter much. Of course, they matter as humans but they don't matter as to what you or I are trying to do. 

There is another 50%, though, that read, that learn, that listen, and that change their mind and try to make (as best they can) unbiased decisions based on reasonable, generous, helpful opinions, including yours.  

Those are the 50% that matter to what you are trying to do. 

Ignore the extremes - they will always be there and they always have been. They do not change your world and you do not change theirs. It's that other 50% that have punch though. 

This has some practical applications. 

1. You are the ignored 25% for some. They aren't going to listen to you and you are not going to change their mind. The sooner you stop trying, the better. 

2. Don't give up hope on them. There is a 50% for them. It's just not you. 

3. Don't get suckered into arrogance by focusing on the 25% that loves you. 

4. Don't get suckered into hopelessness by focusing on the 25% that doesn't. 

5. Don't think a nation is run by either 25%. Or a world. Often, it's the 25% in the extremes who get all the attention. Don't fall into the trap of believing they are the majority. Even combined with their fellow extremists (of completely opposite belief), they aren't the majority. 

6. Correct, you won't convince them. 

7. Correct, you can have important conversations with them though. 

8. Of course, people love him or her or that or this. They always do. That's not an argument for anything. 

9. Of course, people hate him or her or that or this. They always do. That's not an argument for anything. 

10. Find your 50%. Listen to them. Be persuaded by them. Be a 50% to as many people as possible. Let them listen to you. Persuade them. 

11. Yes, you and I are extreme somewhere with something. We refuse to listen to the other side on that issue or we will never listen to that person. We will try to see it as best we can but it'll always be there in some way or another. Have empathy for other 25 percenters - we share something in common with them. 

12. This is all very fluid and intertwined. Just because they won't listen to you about gun control, they might about recycling. You might want to hear them out on a trip to Thailand even if you do despise their views on the anthem. 

13. Right. Search out 50 percenters. Stuff happens there. Everything happens there. 

14. If you disagree with this entire post, it's fine. I know about 25% of you will. : ) (Just kidding. Or am I?" 

15. When someone says "you made me think" that's a sure sign they are part of the 50%. When someone makes you think, it's a sure sign you are part of their 50%. 

mental health and good samaritans...

Another shooting. But, we all knew another senseless, horrific, devastating tragedy was coming, right? 

Three key things I recently read that give insight into our current culture. 

1. "Officials did not say whether Kelley was killed by a self-inflicted gunshot or by one received from a good Samaritan who pursued him from the church." 

Just real quick: the point of the Good Samaritan story was a man who took care of his enemy at the risk of his own life, not a man who shot someone to protect others. 

I'm not saying that this man didn't do a good thing. But he didn't do a "good Samaritan" thing. It's important to not confuse those. 

2. Trump, referring to the shooting at a Texas church, said that mental health is the issue and that the shooting was not a guns situation.

Just real quick: a mental health issue with guns is generally much worse than a mental health issue without guns.  

Just real quick. If we're going to play that one, let's be consistent. 

Mental health is the issue, not terrorism, or Islam, or ISIS, or jihad, or the caliphate, or radicalized Muslims.

Just real quick. Trump signed a bill that revoked Obama era restrictions for people with mental illness and access to guns. 

3. The Attorney General of Texas said "It's going to happen again..." 

That one, I agree with. In part, because of the first two statements. 

a deadly selfie.

There are a few stories like this every year. But when we were in Hawaii this past summer we went to a waterfall where a girl had died a few months earlier taking a selfie. Since then, the paths leading up had been closed and no one was allowed to the top anymore. 

Of course, you can't help but hear the story and ache. She died for a selfie? 

I was recently with a friend (in a leadership position) who was telling me about an issue in his company that had taken over everything for a while because of a picture on social media. I said "No one in your position would have ever had to waste time on this 10 years ago." He nodded. The time and energy that was spent and is being spent to clean it up...

There are so many posts and articles and books and speeches about social media that we all think we know the deal. But we don't. 

How has social media benefited your life? How has it not? 

The first step in any addiction is admitting a problem. Do we have one? Some of us do and maybe some others don't. But we better be willing to seriously ask and analyze the question every day. 

it's already happening.

You are failing.
People don't like what you are doing. 
Other people are critical of you.
It's not safe. 
You're risking a lot. 
You're missing out. 
You're making wrong decisions. 
You're missing opportunities. 
It's going wrong. 
You're losing money you could have had. 
You're letting someone down. 

Now, since those are all already happening, what are you afraid of again?  

You don't need to fear. You just need to make sure the who and what and why above are what you want them to be. 

bottom of the 9th.

I'm not a huge baseball fan but there were some great baseball games in the World Series (congrats Astros). There's not much that can compare to that bottom-of-the-9th feeling that good baseball can produce. 

Where things, with one pitch, can go this way or that way and both ways are drastically different. Someone will be ecstatic and someone else will be devastated with one pitch. 

And, honestly, it feels a lot like life. Those moments where this decision, this call, this reaction, this interaction, this next moment, feels like it has the potential to go either way and those ways are drastically different. 

And fear can seize the day.

But, you still have to pitch the ball. You still have to try to hit it. And you have to remember that there is often another game. Or another season. So, you might as well try to enjoy the edge. 

random. terror.

A day after a man rented a truck from Home Depot and purposely ran over as many people as he could, killing 8, in New York City, a man walked into a Walmart in suburban Denver and shot 3 people. 

The words used in news descriptions of the two tragedies are interesting. There are some similarities and many differences...

for no apparent reason...
deranged...
pandemonium...
immigration...
terror...
national security...
planned...
death penalty...
random...
politicize...
laws...
solution...

But, at the end of the day, one is labeled a terrorist attack and the other a random attack. One causes all of our government to call for change and the other doesn't. One sends us all into our tribal roots and the other, somehow, doesn't. One gets all the coverage, one you can barely find.

One is very rare. One is extremely common. 

And, it's that last one, that might be the most terrifying thing of all to me. We still react to "terrorist attacks" because they are so rare. We barely mention "random shootings" because they are so common. 

They are both random. They are both terror. They are both deranged. They are both politicized. They both require new laws and more creative and deeper solutions than reactionary defenses. They are both planned. They are both for reasons that are beyond rational thought. They are both national security issues. They both induce pandemonium. 

I don't know the solutions but I do know there is no difference between a Walmart shooting and a man driving a truck yelling Allah Akbar. 

The sooner we recognize those facts, the sooner we might actually come up with some solutions. 

In the meantime, we grieve. Again. 

religion as a drug.

Drugs are never the problem. No addiction is. They are the solution to a bad reality. They numb, they alter, they fake, they hide... something that we don't want there. 

Which got me thinking... we usually take religion for the same reason. And we find ourselves addicted to it. And we wonder why we can't let it go. And we wonder why we feel so bad when we do. 

Not all religion is a drug. But it sure can be. And there are all kinds of addicts out there. 

another update.

It's November 1, which means I'm half-way through my experiment. 

One thing I've learned in life, in the last few years, is to be very okay with changing something if I don't feel like it's working.

If the counselor isn't doing it, find a new one.
If the book isn't keeping me going, put it down.
If the project loses the fire, cut ties and move along. 

So, with that said, I'm changing up my routine half-way in. 

1. I'm reading again. I already started Russel Brand's latest book. I found that not having a book made me go to other things that I didn't want to go to. Twitter. A game. Reading more news stories. I went through quite a bit of old notes and that worked for a while but I found not having a book, wasn't working like I thought, eventually. 

But, and this is a big but. It was a very important time. My wife and I were talking later about how amazing it was that after I stopped reading, we actually started implementing some of the things I had read a million times. We made some pretty big decisions. (More on that eventually.) 

Reading can be procrastination of sorts and it was for me. Once it wasn't, it was just a rule not to read, which wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. 

2. I got rid of the ban on email before 11. But I didn't get rid of the ban on email to create a creative space. Again the rule revealed something better and then the rule wasn't needed. 

3. Meditation. I'm still meditating. I'll be honest, it's hard to do every day and there are some days I've missed. I don't have a huge story with my meditation but I do think it's affected some small things in good ways, including the realization that I have a lot of meditation time built into my life that is not sitting on the floor with my eyes closed but might be just as productive. I've also realized that if meditation isn't working, like a counselor, it might be worth trying a different form. 

So, there's the update. It feels like 1/2 way through this is less about doing something for a certain amount of time and more about changing some things in the way I live, which is always better anyway. It's less about rules, even though it started with rules, and more about learning what the rules were supposed to teach. 

Cheers to that. 

on fire...

Have you ever experienced that feeling where it just feels like it's working? Like you have ideas that are good and that are clear and that you're going to do whether people think you're insane or whether they think you're a genius? Have you ever felt so sure? Have you ever felt unsure and yet that it was time for a change? Have you ever felt like the future is clear somehow? Have you ever felt passionate about something and excited to get out of bed? 

Have you ever had these kinds of emotions and, because of them, said something along the lines of... "Wow, I'm on fire! This project is on fire! This idea is fire! We're on fire! This company is on fire! This group is on fire!"

Ever?  

If so, I recommend you act like Moses. Just sit there for a moment and take it in and realize that it's holy ground you're standing on when those bushes are burning like that. 

you see what you want to see...

Not sure if you have read or listened to anything at all in the news recently from Russian collusion with the Democrats and/or Republicans or how well/crappy Michael Moore's play did. But you don't have to read any of it. 

Just watch any athletic activity from an NFL game to a 4th grader's soccer game and you'll see the same thing. A penalty will occur and 1/2 the fans will cheer and 1/2 will insist that there was not a penalty. 

Because, we see what we want to see.

So, instead of just reading the news, learn whose side the person reporting the news is on. It'll help you try and figure out what actually happened. And try to find a news source that is as close to a referee as you can get - who, hopefully, has the most accurate view of what took place and who, hopefully, reports that with the least bias. 

Of course, good luck finding an unbiased news source because you've probably already been told the one you're watching and/or reading is unbiased and... you see what you want to see. 

bus stops

There is a spot in town that has a bus stop and a crosswalk at the same spot. So, if someone is waiting for the bus, it appears as though they want to cross the street. So cars stop and inevitably the people urge the cars to go ahead because they are just waiting for the bus. Of course, if you assume they are waiting for the bus, they yell at you for not stopping. 

Don't have a crosswalk and a bus stop at the same location in your life. Be clear. Be obvious. It's much less dangerous in the long run. 

it's a different race.

I've been talking to my son in Sweden a lot about the differences of culture here and there. 

And while it sounds great to implement some of the things that seem to work well for them, here, it just doesn't work that way. 

In short, the more we look at the different cultures we realize that we're both running toward a completely different finish line. It's an entirely different race. 

Thus, when you ask someone running the capitalism race about universal healthcare, it doesn't compute. They don't understand much of welfare states either. But, it makes perfect sense in the socialism race. 

I suppose both races are about finding happiness, although based on most every amount of research out there regarding materialism, money, social equality, and collecting stuff, there isn't much debate about which finish line actually finds it. 

Of course, none of this is about countries, at the end of the day. It's about you. And me. 

What's your finish line? What are you racing toward? Don't be surprised if it's hard to have a conversation with someone with a completely different understanding of the goal. When was the last time you stepped back and analyzed the competition and end goal? And if it works?  

roughly...

The Universe is around 13.8 billion years old.

Humans have been around for roughly 200,000 of those 13.8 billion. 

Roughly 5,000 of those 200,000 years make up all of recorded human history. 

Roughly 240 of those 5,000 make up the history of the United States. 

Roughly 4 (at best 8) of those 240 years make up the term of any single president. 

Things generally move real slow... one direction or the other. 

You're going to be okay. 

Keep plugging away. 

stop. start.

Stop walking on the wide road. 
Stop waiting for the perfect time. 
Stop wondering if it will work out. 
Stop worrying about the ones who say it won't. 
Stop wanting it all. 

Walk outside. 
Wait for that sunset.
Wonder at it all. 
Worry about missing right now.
Want more of that. 

If it's not now, not here.
What is it? 

100%

It was 100% my fault and I’m sorry. 

If we mean them, there are not any words that are as powerful at deescalating the affects of a mistake. If we deny them their power, that's usually on us. 

a windy one

Why windy and one
don't start with the same letter  
I don't know. 
No, I don't know
why those two don't too. 
Unless
the windy won
the day.
Then it makes cents
but still not much sense
why Y is a word and
a letter
like because and be
a cause
and be.
Just b. 
Do you see
a
c?
Do you feel me? 
No. Know. No. 
We can't feel letters
we can only use them to write
letters
that we deliver with a stamp
hoping our feelings
arrive intact. 
Right? 
Letters
can mean to be mean
or maybe
the mean is the average
depending on how we see them
and feel them
and what is inside our mind. 
If you don't mind
I'll say this: 
and you think god
fits into all of this? 

-rsjm


 

great people...

Great people will always be mocked by those who feel smaller than them. Yet a lion does not flinch at laughter coming from a hyena. A gorilla does not budge from a banana thrown at it by a monkey. A nightingale does not stop singing its beautiful song at the intrusion of an annoying woodpecker. 

 - Suzy Kassem 

trimming palms.

The story that he told me was that a mom had put her baby under a palm tree and a coconut had fallen and killed the baby. Since then, the entire state, and much of the world, started trimming palm trees to prevent that from happening. 

He told me that trimming palms is the second most dangerous job in the world, right behind convenience store clerks, and the guy I talked to, on the beach after his descent, told me that he thinks he is going to die every time he gets up there. 

I haven't been able to confirm the stats or stories. But, I can tell you this: it looks real scary climbing up a palm tree with a machete and hacking away at all the dead branches. I've seen too many palm trees to count and I've never thought about someone trimming them, let alone it being a dangerous job that, potentially, saves lives. 

Once again, it's a big world out there, with lots of people doing good things that affect us in good ways, and we don't even know. Or care. Look around a little more. Thank someone.