Things I Say to Myself

By Dale Andrews

As a local TV talk show host and occasional standup comedian, author Dale Andrews has moved audiences to laughter and tears. Today, through his new book, he encourages anyone in the throes of contemporary life to make just one more day with dignity and purpose.

Each morning, Andrews starts his day off with a simple written onepage statement of encouragement and insight into himself and others. Things I Say To Myself is a collection of some of those writings, and is written with respect to the many that serve in solo capacities in the fields of ministry, counseling, missions, social work, or just as a human being facing another day. Each page is a glimpse of the ongoing inner conversations that he uses to get through some of his most difficult and complex situations.

With articles written in no particular order, Things I Say To Myself reflects lifes randomness, and the humor is that of positive resolve. Join him as he reflects on own spiritual journey with insights into the complexities of simply being human in this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 11, 2010
• ISBN: 9781456802219

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by Dale Andrews.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010916747

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4568-0220-2

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4568-0219-6

ISBN: Ebook 978-1-4568-0221-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval

system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

87008

Contents

Obsess or Produce

A Thousand Miles Away

Smile and Nod

Seasons of Life and Death

The Art of Daydreaming

Get Angry—Get Better

Imagination As Your Best Friend

Soul or Circumstance

Accused

The Jesus Mirror

Security in Adventure

The Finish Line

Religiosity or Spirituality

The Formula for Evil

The Measure

Your Life As a Play

For the Sake of the Good

What Year Is It to You?

Noble Living

Benefits

Simplicity

Illusion Resolution

Bug Illusions

Dude

Wants and Needs

Clueless

The Nose Knows

What If . . . ?

Worst Case Scenario

CQ

Finding Your Life

Endurance

Imperfections of God?

Lighten Up

Want What You Want

Your Situation

Blessed Are the Poor

Life’s Tour Guides

Go Find Some Stress

The Fun in Faith

Crisis

Why Jesus Did Not Have a Car

Best Comedy Around

Mental Musical Chairs

Status Symbols

Perfect Moments

Contagious

Why and How I Gamble

Education in Sympathy

Thirty-four Thousand Feet

Better Motives

Radically Basic

Today’s Celebration

Principles or Institutions

While

Tricky Question

Soul on Canvas

Magic Marker

Barn Revolution

Inspired by Loss

Perfect

Admitting Our Greatest Fear

The Kingdom Within

Another Definition of Immortality

Your Experience of God

Words of the Heart

The Two Most Unanswered Questions

Detaching to Retain Your Power

A Passion For . . .

From the Inside Out

Narrating Your Own Life

Time to Slow Down

Only You Are You

Creative or Conforming

The Future

The Ability to Ignore

The Failed Experiment

I Wonder

Burdens and Projects

Problems or Mission

The Crisis of the Moment

Critique

Something Left out of the Formula

Imagined Emergencies

The Blessings of Solitude

Explaining Your Life Away

Slowing Down to Speed Up

Thought Addiction

Sophisticated Non-belief

Using Your Spiritual Tool Chest

Inspiration for the Impossible Moment

Shadow Bag

A Moment for Beauty

Speechless

Three Steps Back

Incremental Growth

Crazy for a While

Silence

Faith in a Better Mankind

Eccentrics

Reflections on Grief

Reminders of Being Alive

Manipulation or Integrity

Distant Shores

Realizing Home

Nothing to Lose

Your Place in History

Enchantment

Heart Growth

Comedy Over Tragedy

And Today’s Miracle Is . . .

The Good Life

Suspicion

Creative Characters

Mind Buckets

Positive Procrastination

The Choice

Reality Surfing

For Its Own Sake

Peace of Mind

Style

Obsessing on the Obsessive

Should or Is

The Thrill

Stage Fright

Leave a Little Room

Smiling Through It All

Dog Explanations

Silly Putty

Open the Door

Mental Transformation

Laugh Day

Ultimate Need

Good Question

Get Out of Town

Life Is Like . . .

What’s the Idea?

Weather Freak

Expectations

Another Page

Two Voices

Meaning in Tragedy

No Choice

My Favorite Lines

Control by Crisis

Enjoy the Story

Our Illusive Dreams

Control Trap

Glitch Season

Survival or Sainthood

Going Deaf

Reality-Lite

Motives, Truth, Results

Your Own Day

Better Verbs

Perfect Moments

Frustration

Better Questions

The Joys of Imperfection

Imagine That!

Life Cues

Ugly Little Secret

Solo Chess

Blessings or Luck

Robotic Calls

Little Things

Going Sane

The Quest

Enough to Love Others

Time for Time

Remembering Nothing

Priorities

Looking through the Fence

Turning the Corner

Falling in Love

Hint from Above

First Response

Between the Lines

When People Pop

Getting It Done

Your Emotions Map

Life As Adventure

The Voice Within

The Question

Preventing Burnout

Ideas and Attitudes

Reassembling Your Soul

Meaning, Pleasure, Power

Could Be Worse

Some Strange Paradoxes

When Life Goes Gray

Walk on Water Day

Mind Gifts

Advice from a Tree

Mind-blowing

Blessed Annoyance

Turn Loose

Dog Talk

Leader of the Ultimate Revolution

Twist of Plot

Worth It

Two Views, Two Outcomes

Be the Torch

Your Life Account

Right—Wrong—Same

The Fine Line

Gifts to Myself

The Head and the Heart

Something’s Going On

Vision Power

Logical Self-Deception

The Original You

Fame and Fortune

Doing Nothing

Can’t Believe That

Your Own Coach

The Success of Failure

Leave Some Room

Wear and Tear

The Risk

Thorn in the Flesh

Integrity, Sanity, and Circumstances

Attention

The Parable of the Plane Crash

Halt

The Greater Fear

When Celebrities Die

The Last Straw

Divine Reality Check

Adjusted Expectations

The Nature of Pain

Crazy in a Better Direction

When You Face the Impossible

Idea Hunt

The Glory of Imperfection

Get It Off the Line

Take a Break from Reality

Overwhelmed

Spiritual Elegance

Sooner or Later

Obligation or Celebration?

What’s the Hurry?

Engineering Life

T-shirt Wisdom

Spare Time

Freedom from Misery

Pet Contentment

Motions or Meaning

For Truth-seekers Only

Too Late

Comfort Zone

The Lottery Test

The Veiled God

Questions That Work

No Complaint

Life Quality

So God Probably Does Not Exist

The More Things Change . . .

Tossing Stuff

Deadline

Looking High and Low

The Little Big Stories

Get Off Stage

All at Once

Seductively Familiar

Inside/Outside

Reality and the Real

Gently

Small Amounts of Something

Change Everything without Changing Anything

Tossing Worry

Prophets of Doom

On Picking Mentors

The Same Room, the Same Moment

Secretly Wealthy

A Time to Laugh

Actions over Language

My Enough List

Resistance

Disillusioned?

The Fun of Life

Pondering Life’s Reversals

Changing the Way You Feel

Forever Patient

The Real Deal

The Power of Selectivity

Never What You Think It Is

Little Adventures

Fairies on Strike

The Only Sane Person

I Wonder What . . .

Enjoying the Kaleidoscope of Life

Courses That Need to Be Taught

Avoiding or Facing Life

What Am I Doing Here?

Not Sure but Certain

While Everyone Else Is . . .

Energy As Spirit

Or

Myth Busters

Obsess or Produce

Anything can become an obsession. Take any subject and let it run in circles in your mind. Whether you do this for minutes or many hours, the end results are the same—exactly zero. Obsessing is a little like sitting in your car with one foot on the brake and the other slowly pushing the accelerator toward the floor. Heat builds up in the engine, transmission, and brakes without the vehicle going so much as an inch forward. This damages a very expensive machine and burns fuel without any productive outcome. In short, doing that to an automobile is simply crazy. The fact that we do that sort of thing to our own precious nervous systems (worth much more than any car) is even more insane.

Producing a Mona Lisa or an epic novel is quite beyond wishing that you had or obsessing about why you cannot seem to get started. Obsession is avoidance. Sometimes, it is not wanting to confront a person that should have been confronted years ago. Thinking about it gives us the illusion that something is being done about the problem. It isn’t. Obsession is not even prayer or meditation. It is just another round on the merry-go-round of unfinished business. Need and will have become separated. Desire has been stifled by perfectionism. The mental magic carpet is becoming worn by all of the pacing. You are not flying anywhere on it.

Getting started is the key to any productive day. There is an art to it. For me, it is going to the weight room or writing a brief article. Just loading up the computer with the day’s tasks will suffice. I get distracted into one of the projects on the screen. The next thing I know, it is noon. The mind likes to do real things. It wants to run the court and shoot the ball, not just stand there dribbling. Look at the goal more than the ball. So what if you miss! Shoot again! Whether the crowd boos or cheers is irrelevant. You are playing the game of life, while they are only obsessing about it.

Evaluation is the least of my concerns when I teach. What matters most is whether the experience I present to others is something that can change them for the better and one that they will never forget. It is not hard to stay busy, but it is a gift to be truly productive. It is no accident that there is a direct correlation between forms of poverty and habits of avoidance. Life rewards doers. A cup of water in his name may be all it takes to tip the spiritual scales of spiritual revolution in the direction of worldwide repentance.

A Thousand Miles Away

Every so often, it pays to get a thousand miles away. There you will find the familiar and the unfamiliar. The familiar will keep you feeling secure, while the unfamiliar will give you the opportunity to see life from a new perspective. You cannot stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon and come away the same person. Humanity has always loved its mountain peaks, shorelines, cliffs, great trees, and starry nights. Some of those things are nearby, but there is something about the thousand miles between where you are and what you call home that does wonders for your perspective.

I like sleeping in my car in the middle of nowhere. Waking up and wondering where you are is a real trip. It makes you appreciate your inner orientation abilities, but before they kick in, there is a sense of wonder that makes such a strange trip worthwhile. We are over-convinced of who we think we are. Each day in the familiar is the reinforcement of self-delusion. Our emotional wooden props become granite. We are so sure we know ourselves, yet all the while we may be drifting away from our real selves. No wonder the keynote of Christianity is to be called away. Finding your ultimate purpose is seldom discovered in the predictable world created by your ego.

Spend some time away from your mate and all of your friends and see if you enjoy your own company. The person you are avoiding may be yourself. Others will see that about you before you do. There are plenty of electronics around to keep you preoccupied. A book can be just as effective for distracting you from yourself. Do you enjoy your own company? Would you like to have a friend just like you? Do you know yourself well enough to be your own best friend?

Being alone between the desert floor and the night sky is a spiritual experience. No wonder Jesus went to solitary places in the dark; no wonder the Desert Fathers (and Mothers) could write such magnificent things. There is an art to being un-alone while being all alone. I highly recommend travel a thousand miles away, a solitary place, and a 3:00 a.m. sky. What you find there may be your better self.

Smile and Nod

Listening is an art. Pretending to listen is an even higher art. Please do not get me wrong. I take people seriously—seriously enough to ignore much of what they have to say. After all, it is not what they say that I hear, it is what their hearts reveal between the lines. God has blessed me with the most wonderful gift of being able to look at people while they say the most asinine things and let them know they have been heard. I often find myself giggling in my office after some conversations (The same happens in my car, on the street, and at other events). I am sure you have had the same experience. People usually mean well, but they often do not weigh their words or the context in which they are said.

People are communicating animals. Of all our capacities, the one we seem to use most is our auditory skills (though I prefer the visual arts). Selective hearing is the key. Doctors do this all of the time. They listen for valid symptoms. They really do not care who your uncle is. The same goes for other professionals. Intelligence is a matter of sorting through the noises to get to the heart of the matter. Hearing has to do with tuning out the noises. You do this with your eyes too. When you drive, you will tend to notice stoplights more than whether someone has trimmed their hedges.

Selective attention will keep you from feeling drained and worn out. Listen with your heart as well as your head. Keep your mental filters operating. The people talking to you really do not know how to run your life or make your major life decisions. Smile and nod. That makes them go away more quickly. Better yet, smile and nod, and then go find something worth your time. This is not being cynical; it is being a good steward of your life energies.

You do not have to work everything through your soul. I have a list of issues the broader culture debates that I address with a smile and a nod. It is not that what is being debated is unimportant; it is simply that in the bigger scheme of things, those items simply do not have any ultimate bearing. Take yourself out of the middle. You do not have to take to heart the trivia that others deem important. Keep your healthy detachment healthy. The air is filled with words. Listen closest to the ones you say to yourself.

Seasons of Life and Death

There are dead ants on my kitchen counter. They were scouts for the den. They did their job looking for food until they died. You would think by now the word would have gotten back to the queen that I do not cook. Since ants hate diet drinks, you would think they would have given up by now. They live; they do their tasks; they die. The same principle is all around us. Physical aging can be slowed a little through diet, exercise, and good mental/spiritual health, but it cannot be stopped. The grave beckons us from the day of our birth. The seasons remind us of this inevitable fact of life in constant, slow patterns. Each day is a miniature life of birth (waking up), our baptism (the morning bath), our productive years (midday), then the sunset years (when we dread birthdays and mirrors) . . . and finally falling asleep (the universal symbol for death).

Enjoy the seasons of life and death. Each has its beauty as well as its challenges. The shadows exist for a reason too. Some go through life with almost constant illnesses. Many are poor. Some die suddenly. A few lose their minds. Needless wars abound. Inequities in all things are continual. Try as you may, you will make but little difference in the big picture. You help others as you can, but you turn to yourself to ask for the meaning of it all. That is when your life really begins. Once you understand the ground rules of this world, you are free to pursue all that transcends it.

Love is a favorite. Music is second, I suppose. The visual world can be breathtaking at times. Nothing beats your favorite meal when you are really hungry. No two sunsets are the same. Humor can pull you above the struggle pretty quickly (I recommend it at every turn). Great stories can give you hope in the midst of hopelessness. The essence of stories from centuries past still speaks to our hearts. Classics are somehow eternal. There are many reasons to live and a few good reasons to die. I have chosen as my primary focal point the second of those two because they are paradoxical.

When you are ready to die, then you are ready to fully live. There is no one as miserable as one using this life to fight the inevitable. It is a battle always lost. Accept the end so you can enjoy the middle. Read the last page first if you have to. I can tell you how it ends for everyone, so relax into this one day. Experience it to the fullest. In Jesus’ words, Take no thought for tomorrow . . .

The Art of Daydreaming

For the first several years after graduate school, I worshipped the left side of my brain (the more verbal/analytical side). I read nearly one thousand books in the first three to three and a half years. The books were mostly of theology and philosophy. It was a book per day. I got to where I could see the pages and think the thoughts of the author ahead of him. It was a rush that ended in anxiety attacks and the complete inability to function. During that same time, I held down the equivalent of two jobs, studied German, and worked on a doctoral program in ministry. Consequently, I learned that if you live like a rocket, you can crash like a rocket.

The solution to the horrible anxiety attacks came one night in a hospital (they were looking for an endocrine tumor). I had lost the art of not thinking; I had lost the art of daydreaming. The left side of my mind was crushing the right side—bombarding it with ideas that had no pictures. I had been force-feeding my mind without the time to ponder, walk, live, breathe, relax, and visualize. The mind is a wonderful thing in balance. When it is out of balance, it is a runaway roller coaster. God made us for dreams as much as for thoughts and actions. I checked myself out of the hospital before the tests were completed. It was not about my body.

It took a long time to establish my full daydream life again. In the end, I found that looking into the sky for ten minutes was more effective than an hour of therapy. One of the saving ideas I stumbled onto along the way was that analysis is the disease and not the cure. You will not be able to think your way out of your emotions or even most of your situations, but you can daydream your way into the images and stories that will take care of you, no matter what you are facing.

The space between your analytical thoughts can be a healing respite—an inner garden of peace. Being distracted may be the best thing that happens to you all day long. Daydreaming is not thinking. Never confuse the two. It is something you did best as a child. From it come the greatest inventions and insights. It is the part of the mind we are not controlling. It has its own life. Respect it. Enjoy it. Pick any cloud and stare at it awhile. Flowers, ponds, rivers, empty sky, stars . . .

Get Angry—Get Better

Pure anger is a God-given emotion. It does a whole lot of good things for you: It clarifies the situation; it brings you to your full senses; it gives you the energy to make decisions long overdue; and it is the emotion of dignity. Anger is not rage. Rage is a shaming and destructive shadow of real anger. Rage aims to hurt others and inflict toxic shame on them. Anger awakens the soul to what needs to be done.

Most people are uncomfortable with anger. I am sure the same people just do not understand how Jesus could take a whip of cords and drive opportunistic parasites out of the temple. What Jesus did in that repeated event (at the beginning and end of his ministry) is what we need to do but have ignored. We should get angry enough to change our self-talk or angry enough to begin choosing more positive associates and friends. Anger is the red flag of self-respect. It sets boundaries and cleanses situations from the inferior, the negative, and the unholy.

Free-floating internal anger can create all sorts of inner monsters; repressed anger is the classic emotion implicated in many forms of depression. In its lesser forms it can come out sideways, as in passive-aggressiveness; it is also a major component in many, if not most, psychosomatic issues. Woody Allen once jokingly said, I don’t get mad, I get a tumor. For as macabre and dark as that statement may sound, he hit it right on the head. What does not go outward emotionally goes inward . . . and often does more damage than the expressed outward anger ever could have done.

We all have our anger styles. It takes me a long time to find my anger, but when I do, it comes with a flash of insight—an admission of something I always knew but would not admit. Once I get the point of the anger-driven insight, the needed changes come. Justified anger can be one of your best teachers—and certainly one not to be ignored.

Imagination

As Your Best Friend

For a lot of years, I was a tortured soul. I had allowed my imagination to isolate itself and believe all the negatives about me that had come my way. Mentally beating up on myself became a habit and then a normative inner state of misery. I tried to compensate for that inner negativity by achieving. At the end of the day, I still did not measure up to my own inner criticisms. My spiritual journey has been one of the spirit within making peace within my psyche. I am about thirty-five years into that reunion, and each day is better than the day before.

We get split away from ourselves early in life (the fall in the Garden of Eden revisited). Most of our life is spent in an attempt to heal. All addictions are ways people act something out about their inner losses and estrangement from themselves. The world is a stage upon which we act out, inflict, and sometimes even come to grips with the angst within.

Worry is a sign that you have not fully made friends with the most powerful gift you have—your imagination. Get to know it. Learn to respect it. Let it heal. Stop feeding it toxic ideas and images. Theology is another way of depicting the coming home within but it is cast as the grand cosmic struggle between humanity and deity. The great redemptive stories are mostly projections of our deepest longings, struggles, and attempts to heal.

There is no way to stay ahead of an estranged imagination. It cannot be bribed or bought. It must be embraced and loved—flaws and all. Healing is a trial-and-error journey that lasts a lifetime. Learning to love God, neighbor, and self is grounded in the self. Start there and see if you don’t start treating your neighbors a little better, and see that you are less critical of and less frightened by the greater creation and the Creator.

Soul or Circumstance

Some live out of soul; some live from circumstances. Those living from soul are not bothered much by what happens. They are on an eternal journey; they live for the moments of the good, the beautiful, and the true; they live for spiritual insights and a relationship with the Divine. These people are mystics with an infinite center. Deep down inside they know that there is more going on than molecules, motion, and momentum. Something beyond magic is happening, and it is personal.

Circumstance people live in a sense of almost constant panic. They cannot be content unless they have all of their ducks in a row. For them, life is an ever-receding security hunt; they manipulate others for their own good; they are easily threatened if things do not go their way; they are almost always frantic in their search for happiness. Since they are circumstantial beings, they are most conscious of their self-defining affiliations—their political preferences, their race, their gender issues, their financial condition, and their social rank. They whine and bully much of the time; they are forever threatened by what they cannot directly control.

Soul people know that circumstance people look down at them. They know that they are ridiculed as less objective, when, in fact, they have a higher ability to be truly objective (they see life from the stars rather than the sidewalk). You will see a gentle smile on the lips of the soul people during various debates over science, religion, or politics. They are not smug, but they know that all arguments are limited and ultimately petty. It really does not matter to them. They are looking at life from the vantage point of the big show.

My soul is on some sort of cosmic journey. It has been attending earth school for the better part of a century. I care what happens here but not ultimately. I know things will change continually. If I died today, life would continue on this little planet. Though things do not always go as I think they should down here, my soul’s destiny is not determined by what happens on this giant ball of mud floating through the galaxy. No, there is something greater happening. I cannot fully explain it; others have alluded to it, pointed to it, and labeled it Kingdom of God and other similar things. It is deep and transcendent at the same time, and it has nothing to do with whether I am liked or if things go like I think they should.

Accused

You do not have to be guilty; you only have to be accused. Careers of innocent people are destroyed every day by false accusations. Hollywood has made some blockbuster movies using this theme (Harrison Ford was marvelous in one of them). People are quick to jump to conclusions, because we use accusations to distract ourselves from our own guilt and shame. There is nothing new here. The original example began in the Garden of Eden. In short, Satan accused God of holding back information concerning the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and The Tree of Life. It was implied that God was somehow stingy about what the trees could do for humankind and wanted to keep these things for himself alone. After much coaxing, Eve caved in to the lie and Adam quickly followed. (God as stingy judge is the distortion that continues to echo to this day.)

It is no accident that the Ten Commandments include not bearing false witness. People live and die by information that is accurate or inaccurate. Words really are life and death. Jesus was crucified over a twisted implication concerning a piece of real estate (destroy this temple and I will raise it in three days). Truth has no room for compromise without devastating consequences—even eternal ones.

A few years ago, a young man on the Internet entertained an accusatory idea against a government official. At first it was a joke. Eventually he was taken by his own fantasy. A few years later, his accusation is considered hard fact by nearly 40 percent of Americans. Despite the hard reality that a trustable independent research team proved the fantasy false, the accusation still holds as absolute truth to those unwilling to look at the valid evidence. (God be merciful to this young man’s soul . . . or what little of it might be left.)

Truth is the obvious fact that has to be sought afresh constantly. It is a way of being. As a living principle, it serves the spiritually courageous that are willing to do the hard research to get to the bottom of any worthy issue in question. There is nothing convenient about truth. It is for the brave and intellectually hardworking people unwilling to settle for innuendo and accusation. The truth will set you free, but you are going to have to work toward it (Truth as Absolute Being) with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength . . . so help you God.

The Jesus Mirror

He had a wonderful way of reflecting back to people who they were and what they were really doing. To the meek, he was an attractive person of great humility. He was a sinner to the sin-obsessed Pharisees. He told the woman at the well all about her life—as if she had forgotten. Sometimes he mirrored in contrast. He was the positive to the negative—like when he forgave those that executed him.

People that hated despised him. Those open to love loved him. He was the walking inkblot of the first century. People projected their sins onto him. In him they saw their best and their worst, and then they had to either accept or reject what they saw. Their judgments were self-judgments. When you look in God’s face and hate what you see, you really hate yourself, for you are made in the image of God.

On any given day, I can take a look at my life—how I might be like or unlike Jesus. Each time I do, I have to smile. Jesus was the universal character. He was simple yet complex. He was humble but able to be the absolute center of any situation. His friends and enemies often reversed their views of him—depending on what they saw of themselves in him (Judas comes to mind). Jesus was anything but neutral, but he came across as the mirror of souls. What people saw in him was who they were. For some, he was a reason to hate. For others, he was God’s love incarnate.

In the end, no one is fooled—especially God. We broadcast who we are to the whole planet in everything we do. If it is negative, we leave a spiritual vacuum behind. If we are positive, we leave footsteps filled with sprouting flowers of life and hope.

No matter what you find in him, just own it. Be real. Accept what is like him. Reject what is not. Your life’s project is you.

Security in Adventure

We all have our security needs. Security, like control, is a bit of a paradox. The more you seek it, the more you lose it. The most insecure people you will ever know are security driven. After all, security is a bit of a myth. At best, it is relative to whatever the current conditions might be. For security to work, it must be balanced by adventure. It is strengthened only by putting it to the test. You get more of it by giving it up once in a while.

There are several ways to do this. I like travel. It is amazing what having to learn new territory will do for building a sense of personal competence-which underscores your sense of well-being. Security is not the result of having money in the bank or your home debt-free. It is the result of taking on new emotional challenges. Settling for the same predictable routine makes novelty very threatening, and thus security is lost.

I once read that, There is no security except that of making one’s way toward a goal. The more risky the goal, the greater the security, for security is what we believe about ourselves and not how much we have collected materially. It does not have to be found in a distant journey; it can be found in taking social risks right where you are. Get to know someone you have ignored. Change the way you relate to your family or community. Get out of the secure rut that makes you so insecure.

Routine can work like a drug. At first it feels good, and then it creates more insecurity and the need for more pseudo-supports. In the end, we are creatures with no bargaining power with reality. Whatever security crutch we use we can lose. The leap of faith in which security is tossed to the wind grants an existential security. We come to trust that which we cannot see and understand what we do not fully comprehend. It is the adventure of faith. The most secure people I know sit on the edge of the cliff and dangle their legs over the edge.

Any time I am afraid of losing what I have, I put it up for grabs. I will not be intimidated by anything that promises security at the cost of adventure. The trade-off is just not worth it. There is no security on this side of the grave anyway, but there are endless adventures. Take one and see if you do not feel more secure. You will find your life by losing it.

The Finish Line

Life’s finish line is always in sight—even from the very day of your birth. It is a receding line that moves ahead of you on a daily basis. Sometimes it seems to stop. Over the years, you know you are seeing it a little more clearly and that you really have moved toward it. Due to some genetic issues, my finish line has always been close, and I like it that way. A sense of the temporary will do amazing things to keep you focused on what is important.

I would rather be sixty than thirty. The dark social and religious clouds on the horizon seem a bit more ominous than they did three decades