This thing called peace.

This thing called peace.

I learned something about Peace recently.

I think there are two sides to the coin. On one side, there are things that steal our peace away from us. They can be times and events when other people have hurt us, damaged us, stolen from us something that was sacred. Wounds, sometimes deep ones. Sometimes so deep we can’t even put a finger on who exactly it was that hurt us, but we know it happened. Maybe it wasn’t even some deep mistreatment, maybe it was a lack of teaching or care. Maybe someone just didn’t look out for you when you needed them, maybe you were forced to learn a hard lesson, that someone could have taught ahead of time.

Often times I find, on this same side of the coin where peace is stolen, the way we have been hurt and neglected leads to our own failure and mistakes. Heaping our own mistakes onto the mistakes of others in our past is a deep chasm in lacking peace. We want, and we yearn for a release from this soul ripping pain, we don’t even know what it is. Often we can find ourselves at this place I call ‘Again.’

Again, someplace where we don’t want to be, again. At the bottom of another bottle, again. On a web site, again. Having that same conversation, again. Angry, again again. Wishing, again, that we could get out, man up, stop, control ourselves, but again, failing.

Again, and again, and again.

This is a very uncomfortable side to this coin of peace, and yet it is VERY important that we look at it. It is very important that you ask questions about it. It is EXCEEDINGLY important that you bring some other people, to look at this side of the coin with you.

Why?

Because you more than likely won’t get anywhere on it by yourself.

How do I know that?

Well. Think about it. How is what you are currently doing working out for you?

If you currently feel like you are spinning your wheels, and this place of “Again” is kinda bugging you, then doing what you are currently doing now but harder isn’t really going to fix things for you, is it,? It is like loosing traction on a slippery road and stepping on the gas.

You need a tribe, a group of people that care about you that will look at this side of the coin, the side that speaks about the Peace that escapes us, and work on it with you. I plan on writing more on how to Gather Your Tribe in the future, so stay tune.

Now this other side to the  coin of peace.

I call this side – the more positive side, the side of Insatiable Peace.

It is like a bucket that gets filled up, and feels GOOD when it is full. Artists are perhaps the easiest people to look at in this regard. They take pictures, edit them, and present them to a client, and that client posts them to facebook, shares them with their friends on twitter, and prints them, hangs them on their wall, and come back to your website and makes positive comments on them…

All of that feels GREAT. It feels like, when you named this as a dream these VERY moments were that dream coming to true. And it feels awesome!

And then you wake up the next day, and the feeling is gone.

Why?

As much as I believe that the creator planted something inside each one of us, a dream, a gift, a passion, a desire. I don’t care if it is the good feeling you get when your house is clean, or when a baby gets delivered, or when you complete a perfect weld, or have a happy customer,  or a job well done, or a perfectly nailed training week, there is another thing the creator planted deep inside of us.

There is a hole in our bucket.

There is a hole in our bucket and that is a gift?

Yes. This is why I call it Insatiable Peace. Something magical happens when we lay our heads on our pillows at night. A new day dawns, and we get to wake up, and while we have the memory of our bucket being full, the bucket is empty again, and the memory really doesn’t do it for us!

If this didn’t happen, if the peace that comes at living out our dream didn’t leave during the night, then, we would all be satisfied with yesterday’s efforts, and have no need to do anything ever again.

See I think we are closer to living out our dreams them we realize – it’s just that it isn’t something out there, that we are looking for. It is something here, something now. I believe that we see it better when our tribe helps us past our hurts and our hang-ups, when we can forgive ourselves. And when we can see this bucket that we have each been given, when we can discover it with each other, and when we fill it with each other in community, we have a better shot at being at peace.

Although, we will be in peace, in a different way, expectantly waiting for the peace that will always evade us.

slv2all

You don’t know what you’ve got until its gone.

You don’t know what you’ve got until its gone.

This blog post is about relationships.

And guys I want you to read it.

I came so close to botching this up completely, sometimes, when it’s quiet, and its just me, it really freaks me out how close I got to giving up.

Don’t throw in the towel.

Ok, here it goes. (that was the guy pep talk)

I watched a video recently (apparently a viral one) in which a dad “responds” to his daughters “inappropriate” rant on Facebook by posting a video (to her wall) . In the video, he “lays down the law” and then gets up from his chair and literally puts 6 bullets into her laptop.

What do you think? Appropriate? Funny? Entertaining?

Or how about my favorite (ya, the response I hate)

Whatever…

(ooooh nothing gets me like apathy)

Its 2012, and in this day and age relationships are different, WAY different than they ever have been. We have instant communication, Facebook, twitter, text messaging. Dad’s used to say good bye in the morning, and that was it until supper. If Dad worked away, that was it, for weeks at a time. Now it is different, and part of that is good, and part of it, well, not so good.

So, you have relationships.

Friends, Spouse, Kids, Siblings, etc.

Life used to demand that we keep relationships in check. Because without them you starved to death, or died alone in the cold.

We used to need relationships to survive.

Now you need them to thrive.

More than likely, you can think of one relationship that pisses you off, gets you angry, and well just isn’t working – it doesn’t bring you joy, or fulfillment, or peace or happiness. And, you can also think of times when the relationships you consider good, they make you feel that way too.

Let me try and put this in perspective.

There are moments – pure ones that are full of everything you want in life! Fun moments, when you are out with your friends, and its just good solid times, things are clicking, and you are happy. I’ve had moments like that with my little kids like 3-year-olds, good times giggling away at nothing. Or even just good times, like having a camp fire and couple of beers. Or Heck, what about sex with my wife, when we both want to be with each other?

Good times.

We have all had them. How come we can’t make them last?

Not so long ago, I spent the majority of my life in agony over my relationships. Mad. Angry. As a matter of fact, I was so angry and frustrated that a cop (after asking me three times if I was ok) pulled his badge on me, and asked me one more time. “Sir, are you ok?” I can’t tell you how close I was to doing something really stupid.

What changed?

What makes the good times last? What makes anger short? Forgiveness quick? What makes Relationships that continually bring you Joy?

Simple. Understanding them, and working on them.

And this is what the dad in the viral video gets so wrong, his stupid senseless reaction isn’t building his relationship with his daughter. It’s killing it.

Killing it.

Don’t you think that dad wants to walk his little girl down the aisle some day? I bet he does, and I bet he is frustrated with his relationship with her. And here is the tricky part, that relationship is HIS responsibility. Kids have been whining about their parents since they walked in the desert with Moses – come on people! Provide a safe kids for your kids to belong. For them to mature. Be more important to them than their friends. Attach to them.

I’m not taking all the time to answer everything here tonight. But let me just say this, if your relationships are frustrating you, it is because you don’t understand them. We have lost our intuition about relationships. Especially with our kids. And I can prove it to you.

2 situations:

A 12 month old crying in her high chair because she didn’t get what she wants – what does the mother do? Takes the child out, and brings her close. Does it help to yell? No. Does it help to hit? No. It helps to draw close and soothe.

2^nd situation Your best friend looses their 14 year old daughter to a car accident. What do you do? You go over, and you may not know what to say, but you stay in their presence. Does it matter if they are swearing and yelling? Or throwing things? No.

So, why is it ok to be different with a 14 year old? Why do we speak harshly? Why do we shame? Why do we tell them to grow up? Why do we tell them we don’t care? Why do we tell them to shut up? Why do we send them away from us, instead of allowing them, in their frustration to share it with us, to be with us?

And then, after pushing our kids away from us for 10 years, why do we wonder that they won’t listen to us, that they would rather listen and impress friends? Why do we then wonder, why they never call, and why they look coldly at us. Why do we wonder when they then turn and push away from us? Why do we wonder why our relationships are shallow?

You just pushed them away during the most important developmental time of their lives, when they needed your influence to help them mature. And now they practically hate you. But the things you said and did, if you did them to any of your friends, how long would they want to be with you?

We have lost our intuition.

Lets get it back.

Deep abiding joy in relationship is possible.

slv2all