LIVING COURAGEOUSLY WITH CONVICTION AT THE HOLIDAYS

Over the past couple of days listening and watching some of the deluge of news stories, I have noticed that 1) many pundits and critics in the media are no longer shocked but now angry over Newtown Connecticut.; and 2) many people are scared and wondering how much more stringent safety measures should be?  It sounds like a form of grief to me of a very strong kind.

Collective Grief and the Energy it gives us

I think that we do experience grief collectively as a society and as individuals.  It seems to me that the media has this ability to connect us emotionally in a very strong way.   Other than the media we seem to experience it collectively as we disclose our feelings in the small talk we make in churches, barbershops, in grocery check-out lines.  We also seem to be grieving collectively in our facebook posts and comments.  We experience it individually as we feel our feelings looking at news aggregating websites.  We feel the energy that emotions stir making us feel like we should just do something.

Anger

Anger is a large energy generator.  At the risk of over-generalizing, it seems that much of the “empathetic” society including the fourth estate of media has moved into the anger stage of grief over Newtown.   They are looking for causes and some are making wide sweeping conclusions that there needs to be more gun control.   Some of the news analysis and opinion is focusing on the mentally ill in his country as the problem.

The energy that anger stirs is also manifested in the extra-large letter to the editor section of my local daily newspaper.  It is stirred in the late night comedy show I usually watch where the comedian came out and made a statement that recognized the tragedy.  It is present in the emotions of people who are critical of gun control laws and how something should be done to keep mentally ill people from having them.  The anger motivates us to stand and protect ourselves.

Fear

However, fear is also an energy that makes us protect ourselves.  Fear tells us

“run stupid there is danger!"

This appears to be showing up also in statements about making schools safer.  As I have heard the fear at my place of work, I have heard people go into laborious detail about what all the possible risks are in a place.

It is hard to say whether the fear we are feeling is tangled with the anger or whether the fear is a logical reaction unto itself, but there is talk about giving teachers guns to protect themselves and the students. There is talk about how things can be made more secure in schools.   This fear still may be part of the societal shock.  

Fear and Anger are Powerful Emotions

It is in times like these where we may realize again that anger and fear are very strong and powerful emotions or energies in motion.  I have to use the word “may realize” because both rage and panic short-circuit common sense.   The energy of the emotions often bypass the rational thinking part of the brain where you and I think through the facts and look at things in a problem-solving fashion and makes us impulsive. 

I am mindful of mob behavior.  Mobs of people can run for their lives together and then they can get angry and become a lynch mob or start a riot.  The one commonality is emotion—they all share it despite what they are actually thinking and act impulsive in unison.

On the flip side, people can be paralyzed by their feelings.  To see someone having a panic attack is like watching someone stuck in their seat on a roller coaster or like a victim in a horror film in terror just before the villain is about to attack.    When someone (whether adult or child) is having an angry tantrum, you cannot get them to do anything else until they have gotten over the emotion.   Emotions can be like G-forces that push someone back against a wall to the point where they cannot move.

One of my favorite shows is Survivorman with Les Stroud.  Again and again throughout his shows, Stroud will talk about staying calm if you are stuck in a survival situation.  Staying calm can mean the difference between life and death.

If you are reading this, you are not likely in the Arboreal Forest of Northern Canada or in the Amazon Jungle or in the swamps of Southern Georgia, but you are probably in an emotional wilderness where the pressures of the holidays are combined with the added emotional stress of the Newtown CT school shooting.   The feelings are powerful and perhaps are making you feel like you are beside yourself and frozen in anger and fear and feel like you are just surviving.  I think when we are stuck in such situations we need courage and calmness because we just cannot stop life as we know it just because of the Connecticut school shooting

Courage

Without looking at a dictionary, courage is essentially going along with the conviction of what the right action is despite the fear and emotion.  It seems to me that courage is romanticized through the movies and TV as big gestures of one hero fighting an army or the hero making a daredevil move for whatever reason.  (My favorites models of courage were John Gage and Roy DeSoto from the TV series Emergency who climbed up in high and dangerous places to rescue people.  John admitted he was scared in a few of the scenes.)  

In our real world, courage is not that exciting or suspenseful.  Courage can be:

• telling someone no. 
• walking away when they want to fight you . . . and maybe you might be called chicken by the bully,
• saying enough is enough to one relative badgering another relative at the family holiday celebration,
• buying yourself a present because you would like it despite having low-self-esteem telling you otherwise,
• doing the right thing at your job when others are not,
• going out to the malls and sending your kids to school despite the fear of what happened in Newtown CT
• going to that holiday family celebration and trying to patch things up with that estranged relative
• finding joy at the holiday season in some fashion or form

Courage is based on your context or situation, and it may be going against some crowd or “grain.”  Typically, you do not have courage without some type of conviction where you believe that some value or principle is worth the cost.   Usually the cost is someone calling you a fool—the vast majority of our risks in the world are not ones of life and death.

 One does not always act tough when showing courage.  When you are showing courage it can feel like the wind is blowing in your face at hurricane-force speeds.  Courage does not feel good until after you look back at it from the future.

I hold that there are people of courage everywhere that go on living and doing what is needed because it is the right thing to be doing.  I'm trying to be one of them.

I hope that if you are feeling paralyzed by your feelings that you can find courage to start moving again.  and do something in the spirit of the holidays.       

Hoping for Inner Peace in a time of discontent

Yesterday was the first day of Advent.  While I was doing the nursery with three, four, and five year-old children there was a sermon going on related to Advent.  Yesterday was supposed to be the Sunday of "Hope."

From time to time I consider the concept of hope.  It is a looking forward to an expectation . . . something that is supposed to be good in your eyes or at least good for you.  We have all kinds of hopes . . . some are little and some are large. 

In the end, something that is hoped for is supposed to bring a sense of fulfillment or pleasure or peace.  Your emotional inside should feel positive and not negative. 

Here at the end of 2012 we have all kinds of worries and discontents.  In many of our countries the economy is doing badly.  War persists in several locations around the world.  The news brings us all of it and Marshall McLuhan's global village brings us a sense of insecurity.

Combine the feelings of insecurity and discomfort with Andy Williams singing, It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, and you are experiencing a contradiction.   The feeling of worry and discontent can increase some to make one question personal sanity: Is something wrong with me?

 Defining and Finding Inner Peace

I think for the purposes of this blog, inner peace simply defined is an absence of anxiety, a sense of fulfillment, a sense of security, and a feeling of confidence that you have a grasp on things.    Inner peace does not make everything better.   Inner peace allows you to see a big picture and tolerate the distress and be able to be still. 

A warning is noted here: I can find my own inner peace.  I cannot find yours for you.  I cannot get you over your hump . . . there are no freebies here. 

First, I think that people as a rule do not pay attention when they have inner peace.  They only know when they feel absence of peace or emptiness.  Some of that emptiness comes when there has been a loss that one had centered his or her life around such as a marriage or career, or significant other.   I have found a useful exercise to include asking:

What do you feel like when you are not feeling empty?

For at least now, some people have to ask the question:

What good is your worry doing you?

I have known, colleagues, patients, acquaintances and family members to stay anxious out of a belief that it is the wise choice.  They are the type of people who say "I hope you're right?"  They will stubbornly hold onto their anxiety and be "basketcases."  They hang onto their worry and anxiety out of some need for control . . . they at least feel they are doing all they can do . . . maybe.

A risky example: Me

For me, I find my sense of inner peace first in my faith.  I note that God offers peace throughout the Bible.  Jesus told his disciples in John 14 that he gives peace--not as the world gives.  I have to surrender from time to time and ask God for peace because I am not always going to find it within me.

I also find peace in my non-religious beliefs.   I found that I had been holding negative assumptions that were actually making me feel wretched. When I stopped trying to mind read the thoughts of others and stopped  dwelling on the past I actually felt more peaceful.  Keeping my mind on the present has a remarkable way of faciliting serenity and a sense of order as I can only do something now--not yesterday nor tomorrow.

I must say that as a human I am not a perfect model of inner peace.  Like all humans I have my worries from time to time. 

As I look at Christmas and seeking the feeling of peace, I do find that I am dependent on something larger than I am.  I sometimes need not to look just at the babe in the manager but also at the courage of a guy named Joseph who learned that the virgin he committed to came up pregnant, and he listened to God in his dreams and acted in faith.  He made the obedient choice to stay in the relationship.  I get the sense of peace that it is okay that I as a human have tough choices to make where there are risks and some emotional suffering because that is life.   Sometimes with the risks come affirmation in strange ways that include

• some strange shepherds barging in on your and your wife in the middle of the night telling you a wild story of seeing angels in the middle of the night sky.  

• eight days later seeing some old guy holding your baby up and saying some prayer to God that he can now be dismissed in peace because he has seen the salvation, and then some old lady making a prophecy about your baby 

• two years later seeing some astrologers coming in with Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh followed by another dream telling you to get out of town because Herod is wanting to kill your son.

The Bible does not give Joseph's emotional state through this story line, so I can only imagine that Joseph saw his big picture that there was something larger working.  It hurt and was humiliating in the beginning, but there were all kinds of acts of God after the fact that affirmed God was present and working, even in possible emotional pain. 

I do not know what the future holds, but the Christmas story does have all kinds of complicated side bars to look at.  I think that it shows that God is not naive of how complicated our lives are and can be.  God is there and he will give people to those who ask for it.