Donald Miller's Blog, page 88

I’d Rather be Hated than Loved with Conditions

I’d rather be hated than loved with conditions. I think most people would agree. At least when people hate you, they are being intellectually honest. I mean you know where they stand. But we’ve all shared a political view or a struggle and had people take a half step back, or worse, reveal they no longer want the best for us. When this happens I get a hollow feeling and I associate that hollow feeling with the person and their ideas. So that begs the question, do we actually love our friends without conditions? Are we the kind of friend we hope to have? Ultimately, loving people conditionally is an attempt to control them. We are wrongly thinking that if we can make people “pay” for their faults, or their opinions that don’t match ours, they will have a negative association with their faults or their supposedly wrong opinions. But that’s not the way it works.

When we attach conditions to our love, what we are really doing is attaching a negative association with us! People don’t sit around saying, man, if I just didn’t have this fault or this opinion, that person would love me. What they actually think is this: Wow, that person is a jerk, and all they represent, including their morality and political beliefs must make people jerks. I never want to be like that, so I will seek another community that accepts me as I am.

Photo Credit: ThomasSoerenes, Creative Commons

It’s interesting to me that Jesus never forced anybody to agree with Him. Instead, He has a quiet confidence. He was responsible to say the truth and to be Himself and he let others take responsibility for their lives. He did not use love like money, paying some and withholding from others in an effort to control them. He spoke the truth, He wasn’t offended when people didn’t agree, and He gave them their own will to do as they wish. But what’s more, He loved them regardless. He loved them whether they followed Him or tried to kill them. He even loved them while they were killing Him.

If you have an opinion, and somebody disagrees, let them. Just make it know what you think about the issue, listen to them closely, and then love and care about them regardless. If they keep trying to change your mind, gently explain to them that you simply don’t agree, but you don’t want it to interrupt your friendship. If people can only be friends with others who think the way they think, this is a weakness in character.

The Jesus kind of love, the love that speaks the truth and yet does not try to control, is supernatural. It is a very confident position and it comes from God. Will it always win? No, but the point is not to win, the point is to love, even to our deaths. So make this commitment, I will tell the truth to the best of my ability, I will not try to control, and there is nothing anybody can do to get me to stop loving them.

(this is a repost from the archives)

I’d Rather be Hated than Loved with Conditions is a post from: Storyline Blog

Mike Tyson Talks About Seeking Forgiveness

Tim Schurrer sent me this link today and I was moved by the new, wise, forgiven and forgiving Mike Tyson. “If I can forgive them hopefully people can forgive me” rings Biblical and true and I think in this brief interview we see how this simple teaching of Jesus heals and strengthens us. I hope and pray for the best for Mike Tyson. We could all learn a thing or two from his recent discoveries. (Check out the second video, too, about staying away from old temptations.)

*if you’re on mobile, use this link

Mike Tyson Talks About Seeking Forgiveness is a post from: Storyline Blog

The Best Viral Videos We Found This Week

The winner last week was the Duct Tape Surfing video. So powerful! What about this week? Vote for your favorite below in the comments.

The Best Viral Videos We Found This Week is a post from: Storyline Blog

How I Dealt With Shame From Men

Several weeks ago I read this article Liz Riggs wrote for Relevant about the way it feels for a woman to be called out by a man in public for her looks. Few women can forget the way their stomach turns the first time they experience this.

For me, I was 13 and on a family trip in Rio de Janeiro. I was tall, a size two and had braces. I had packed a tankini swimsuit and flip flops that had plastic flowers glued to the tops of them. They were from the Gap.

Tall, lanky with braces, I did not think of myself as especially attractive. So it took me by surprise when walking the streets that a couple of speedo-sporting strangers passed by us, checked me out and said something to each other in Portuguese, a language I don’t know.

I assumed they were commenting on the fact I was American, people were pretty fascinated by my light hair there. But when I saw my dad’s reaction, who is fluent in Portuguese, I realized my nationality was not the subject of their comments; my body was. My dad confronted the Brazilians using a tone he rarely resorts to, let’s call it protective, and that took care of that.

*Photo Credit: Greg Hayter, Creative Commons

I don’t remember my dad’s words, but I do remember how I felt: hot from head to toe. Hot and squirmy. I had no control over this reaction. The feeling was very foreign to me, a feeling I can now identify as shame, but then it just felt “funny.” The funny feeling lasted through the day if not into the next. My thoughts were clouded by it and my body heavy with it.

Though I couldn’t pinpoint my emotion then, I did register this truth: That as long as I put myself in public, I am offering my body to be commented on aloud, in the way one would comment on a couch at Restoration Hardware.

• • •

When I read Liz’s article and re-felt that shame, I began to wonder why that was my emotion of choice. According to Dr. Brené Brown the “shame expert,” empathy kills shame. When men and women can be vulnerable with each other and work hard to understand one another, empathy happens and shame fades.

So is it the lack of empathy in those embarrassing called-out-in-public moments that is birthing the shame? If men felt enough empathy to not say anything in the first place, would it prevent shame? Or is it more a matter of the woman feeling empathy? There is culture and context to consider, after all. And we had empathy in those moments, would it squash the shame before it set in? I don’t know.

What I do know is this: Women have felt shamed by men and have in turn hated them for a long time. Too long. And as the hate increases, as we become more outspoken about the hate, the shame does not, I repeat, does not decrease.

We are doing something wrong. While the hate feels good and pity is comfy to wallow in; it only leads down the familiar path, a path so worn it is sinking us both into the ground, men and women. I know Dr. Brown is onto something. A different path. One of empathy that is not worn, little used, needs clearing.

Maybe it will be us that choses it. I hope it will be us. Regardless, it will be a long road.

How I Dealt With Shame From Men is a post from: Storyline Blog

Why You Should Write in a Closet

Colum McCann wrote his latest novel in a closet. Literally in a closet. And Annie Dillard, who won the Pulitzer at the young age of 26 for her wonderful book called A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek recommends writing in a dark room walled with cinder block.

This is a far cry from the usual writer’s fantasy of sitting down to a typewriter in a farmhouse sitting before a windowed view of mountains.

The reality about writing is the more romantic you are about the process, the less likely you are to write something great.

Writing is all about emotion, about moods and sentiment and being sensitive to beauty. And yet if you worship those sentiments, you’ll accomplish nothing.

Great writers, the accomplished ones that is, are split personalities. They feel things deeply, they swing with their moods, and yet they whip their moods into shape and, not unlike plumbers or carpenters or brick masons, get to work, smelly and sweaty.

*Photo by Andrew Kuznetsov, Creative Commons

My recommendation for anybody writing a book? Here are 3 tips:

1. Don’t shower until you finish a chapter. Even if it takes days. Smell. Feel dirty. Poetry is heavy lifting. Nobody who reads your book will smell you so don’t worry about it. Lie to your readers. Make them think you were walking through a field smelling roses when you wrote that last chapter. Never let them know you smelled like a dog who came out of a ditch mouthing a tennis ball. Never let them know you beat your head against the desk while you were writing that last paragraph.

2. Choose an uncomfortable chair to write in. Or don’t sit in a chair at all. Can you stand? Can you write on your lap sitting in a parked car? Get over the need to live the writer’s life the way it’s portrayed in movies. Write like somebody trying to raise the money to get their next hit of whatever drug they are addicted to. Don’t wait for a romantic time or place. Write where you are and write well. May the next literary prize go to the hardest worker, not the most sensitive brain. Let’s pray for this kind of justice.

3. Compare yourself to nobody. Your process will not look like anybody else’s. The only thing you will have in common with the greats is a strong work ethic. Imagine yourself in the break room of life, talking to Hemingway, talking to Steinbeck, talking to Dillard, sharing war stories about how hard the devil is attacking your words. Then leave the break room and go back to work, doing it your way, knowing it’s only when you find your true voice the magic will happen. Who cares what the rest of them are finding in the mines? Your only job is to chip the earth and hope you find gold. If they find more gold than you, make sure it’s all about luck, not about work ethic.

Let’s leave the very stupid, romantic idea of writing behind. Let’s just do our work.

Why You Should Write in a Closet is a post from: Storyline Blog

Why You Should Waste Some Time Today

Okay. Today’s Challenge: *WASTE* Five Minutes

One of my new things (of which there are many these days–I feel sort of adolescent, changing & growing & trying new things faster than I can keep up with, in a good way) is wasting time. Wasting it: spending it lavishly, staring into space, wandering around the block, sitting on the kitchen floor eating blueberries with Mac.

My goal upon returning to real life after lake life is to keep my summer heart—my flexible, silly, ready-to-play, ever-so-slightly irresponsible heart. What I’ve been delighted to find is that it’s not that my real life is all wrong, by any means—it’s not that I’m doing work I hate or that I’m ill-fit for the life we’ve made. It’s that for all sorts of reasons, I default to hustle mode all too often. Hustle is the opposite of heart.

And so one of the tiny little things I’m learning to do is waste time. Strategically avoid strategy, for five minutes at a time. Intentionally not be intentional about every second. Have no purpose—on purpose. See what I did there? I could go all day…

In my creative/freelance/work from home/sort of always working–sort of never working world, there are lots of conversations about how to do it better/faster/smarter. How to streamline, multi-task, layer, balance, flow, juggle. How to monetize, strategize, and on and on. Good stuff. Necessary stuff.

But my jam these days is wasting time, playing, becoming aware of that internal engine that always wants to go faster, faster, faster. That engine is not the best part of me. My heart is the best part of me. I’m so committed to keeping this summer heart, this heart I’ve recovered, and I’m finding that one of the keys for me is wasting time.

So that’s my challenge for you: waste five minutes today. And then come back and tell me how it felt. What did you do? How did your heart feel?

What would our lives be like if our days were studded by tiny, completely unproductive, silly, non-strategic, wild and beautiful five minute breaks, reminders that our days are for loving and learning and laughing, not for pushing and planning, reminders that it’s all about the heart, not about the hustle?

Why You Should Waste Some Time Today is a post from: Storyline Blog

“Sometimes We Build What We Didn’t Plan To Build” by Bob Goff

We have a place up in Canada we call the Malibu Lodge. It’s isolated at the end of an inlet and is only accessible by taking a boat or a seaplane fifty miles beyond where all the roads end. Because it’s so remote, we need to make just about everything, including our own electricity.

We generate power for the Lodge from a glacier on the property. It’s not that complicated, really. We use a river that has carved its way down one of the mountains. Two thousand feet up the side of this mountain, we collect water out of the river in a pipe and the force of the gravity pulling the water through the pipe is enough to make a turbine spin in a hydroelectric plant we built near sea level.  I’m still amazed that gravity and a little water we can generate 100 kilowatts of power every minute of every day for free – forever.

The equipment we bought to make the electricity is pretty cheap, actually. It’s building a road up the side of the mountain to the intake that’s expensive. Every foot of the three miles of road we’ve built so far has been blasted out of solid granite and for any dad with young boys, the idea of blasting miles of road together out of granite is irresistible. Nothing says fatherhood more, I guess, than a couple sticks of dynamite.

A few winters ago, I decided that we’d build a bridge over the river at the end of the road. In order to build it, we needed to pour large concrete foundations on each side. These concrete foundations needed to be sturdy to carry the weight of the sixty foot span and the steel I-beams for the bridge. What I didn’t realize though, is how many trips back and forth through the river our big excavator would need to make in order to build the foundation in on the far side.  The way it worked out, with all of those trips, we actually ended up building a road through the river. And, guess what? Now we don’t need a bridge.  I suppose we could still use the bridge because it’s been built and everything, but who would want to go over a river when you could drive right through it?

We all set out to build things in our lives. Things like careers, or relationships, or faith, or confidence or even organizations.  And in the process of setting out to build one thing, sometimes we discover that we’ve built something else too. Something even more useful; more meaningful; more enduring; something that’s a better fit for us.

Some people talk about “building bridges” to people too. Usually, it’s when they’re describing how they’re trying to reach out to a friend who’s in the middle of their pain or where the gravity of life has become just too much for them. People talk about bridges when they talk about how God wants to connect with us too. But I don’t think I’ll use that phrase anymore.  You see, I’ve built a bridge. And while I ended up with what I set out to make – a way to get over a river, I ended up with something even better in the process – a way to get through it. I think that maybe God had in mind the same thing for us when He gave us our friendships. We think at first that we’ve built these friendships to help us get over the difficulties in life when actually, we figure out later that God was building those friendships to help us get through them.

• • •

When have you been surprised by how you started building one thing in your life and ended up with another?

“Sometimes We Build What We Didn’t Plan To Build” by Bob Goff is a post from: Storyline Blog

How I Learned to Work When I Didn’t Feel Like It

I’m a 4 on the Enneagram with a strong 3 wing. Enneageeks know what this means. It means I’m in touch with my moods, my feelings, my thoughts more than the average person (the 4 side) which can sometimes be a pain. Being a 4 means you can only “create” when the weather is good. But I’ve got a 3 wing, which means I need to succeed, I need to get work done and I need for that work to be better than anybody else’s (3 = need to succeed). As you can imagine, these sides war with each other.

*Photo Credit: mabbink, Creative Commons

Here’s a bit of my internal dialogue in a given day:

My 4 personality: My stomach hurts. And I’m feeling like a loser. I’ll write later.

My 3 wing: You’ll write now, you wimp. How else will we win?

My 4 personality: But I don’t want to. I’m torn up inside and I’m pretty sure it’s because of my childhood.

My 3 wing: That’s gold, man. Write about that stuff. Write about the pain. We could win awards for that sentimental crap!

And on and on it goes.

After a while, though, the 4 personality really does become a chore. It’s like having a moody artist living inside you. And the tension with the 3 wing always cracking the whip is enough to drive you crazy.

So here’s what I’ve learned to do about it: I ignore them.

I honestly never knew I could, and maybe it just took getting a little older to develop the ability. But I’ve discovered I don’t have to obey my moods at all. If I suddenly don’t feel like writing, I just let the feeling pass as I sit down to write. If my stomach hurts, I ignore it (I doubt it’s terminal) and if I feel like a loser, I ignore that feeling, too.

I’m learning to do more and think less.

That said, I’m a big fan of thinking, but there really are some of us who do too much of it.

The best medicine for an Enneagram 4 is to ignore their moods and thoughts and sit down to do the work regardless of how they feel.

And I’ve found something to be true in this process: The work is healing.

The thoughts and moods are never healing, but just accomplishing something, just finishing that chapter or researching that data and getting it down on paper is satisfying. It’s as though my rich imagination is the seed and the soil but the only thing my body can use for sustenance is the food that grows in the work.

You ever spent too much time in your mind? Have you tried ignoring your mind?

The best way for me to ignore my mind is to work. Quicker than a pill, the work usually helps me forget anything I was worried about only moments before.

I hope this helps.

• • •

(These are not sponsored links, but in case anybody wants to know more about the Enneagram)

* Don Riso and Russ Hudson have written a great introduction
to the Enneagram here

And in my opinion, once familiar with the Enneagram, this is the best book on personal development as well as understanding others.

Richard Rohr has also written about the Enneagram from a Christian perspective

How I Learned to Work When I Didn’t Feel Like It is a post from: Storyline Blog

Father-Daughter Dance Before Dying

Saw this this week and was captivated. Just try watching this without crying.

Dr. James Wolf is dying of pancreatic cancer but before he passes, his daughter, Rachel wanted to film a father-daughter dance for her wedding. The catch? She’s not getting married any time soon. She’s not even engaged. But she hopes to be one day and she didn’t want to go through her wedding knowing she never danced with her father.

Rachel bought a wedding dress, rented a limo and gathered friends at a park to film a final dance with her father.

So much beauty here. Makes me want to stop and cherish the special moments while I’m alive, and, not unlike Dr. Wolf, leave something remarkable behind. A better story, indeed.

Father-Daughter Dance Before Dying is a post from: Storyline Blog

Saturday Morning Cereal: The Best Viral Videos We Found This Week

The neon sign artist ran away with the vote last week. What a great video!

I usually don’t tell you which one to vote for, but I’m tempted to this week because of how much I love one of these. I’m curious if your vote will be the same as mine. Vote below in the comments.

(If you’re unable to see all 3 videos in your RSS reader, click here)

Saturday Morning Cereal: The Best Viral Videos We Found This Week is a post from: Storyline Blog