The TrueTalk Blog

Pennies/Heaven - Interlude

See, authenticity and reverence are two sides of the same coin.

Pennies/Heaven 4

A couple of days ago, I blogged about a way to think about happiness as distinct from money.

2. Authenticity

There is no real food to buy in the local village shop anymore, and all that’s left has been pushed to the back corner. No meat, no vegetables. Nothing real.

The same has happened to Main Street, there’s nothing real left to buy on Main Street anymore. You have to go to the mall, where the same 20 chains – Gap, WalMart, Williams Sonoma, Calvin Klein – sell the same things that they sell at every mall. Nothing local’s left. Nothing real.

That's a snip from a blog about the "7-11ification" of politics.

Essentially, it's about inauthenticity.

The relationship between authenticity and happiness is deep. We all recognize our happiest moments as those in which we are most fully "being ourselves." What does being ourselves mean. It means living in a situation spontaneously, without prior concerns about needing to present a particular persona to the others in that situation. It means speaking from the center of our own experience, following the thread of the experience without concern for the consequences of others' judgments. It means engaging in conversations focused on the matter at hand rather than becoming preoccupied with the scorecards of winners and losers being kept by other participants. It means allowing the passion, disappointment and curiosity show through; revealing ourselves to others.

If courage is persistence in the face of fear, then authenticity continually requires courage. Why? Because being yourself flies in the face of the pressures to conform to prescribed ways to be. Because those in authority always exert subtle, or not so subtle, pressure on us to affirm their worldview. Because it's so much easier to just sit there, shut up and blend in.

So, what's that got to do with happiness?

Experiencing something authentic invariably stands out as a vivid moment. Here's a test: walk into your local supermarket. Most likely, it's been engineered to general revenue in scores of ways: product placement, traffic management, signage. Now, if you're lucky enough to still be able to find one, walk into a neighborhood market and feel the difference. In one, you are a consumer, in the other, you are a person; in one, you hurry, eager to get out, in the other, you linger, savoring what you see, hear, smell; in one, you are task focused and solitary, in the other, you are exploratory and sociable. One experience is manufactured, the other is organic. One experience is bland and generic, the other is vivid and distinctive. One experience: ennui; the other: happiness.

Now, apply that same thinking to conversations. Think about conversations in most business settings. Then think about conversations with good friends. For me, the parallels with the supermarket and the local market are striking.

And while striving for "perpetual authenticity" might resemble seeking the holy grail, using authenticity as a guidepost, a checkpoint provides another way of living happiness on a moment-to-moment basis.

These moments have no pricetag; just embedding myself in as much authenticity as I can. Whether it's a real conversation, a real shopping trip or a real moment of silence, these "moments of truth" are not about "finding happiness," they are happiness.

Pennies/Heaven - Interlude

Here's a preview of tomorrow's post on Authenticity.

Pennies/Heaven 3

A couple of days ago, I blogged about a way to think about happiness as distinct from money. I included a list of factors that could serve as guideposts in living a happy life. I'll take them up one at a time.

1. Simplicity
2. Authenticity
3. Community
4. Legacy

1. Simplicity

Here's a term that's landed on hard times! Calling someone, "simple" today is a stinging insult. It's cousin, "naive" is even worse. Hip, savvy, complicated and in the know are keys to success in our hyper-networked world. After all, we live in extraordinarily complex times ("interesting," in the apocryphal Chinese curse), in which simplicity can hardly be a virtue.

And yet, we still recognize the importance of simple values as a rudder in even the most roiling seas. In our daily dealings, we most respect those whom we experience as honest, focused, committed to something beyond themselves (family, business, country). It even seems that these simple values have become even more appealing in the post-9/11 world. How else can we explain the enormous outpouring of emotion for stories like Lord of the Rings, in which these simple virtues are so compellingly celebrated as the path to society's salvation? Or Rudy Giuliani, who went from Darth Vader to Obi-Wan Kenobi in one day?

So, seeking happiness in simplicity might not be so peculiar after all. American Demographics magazine, in an article entitled, "Soccer Mom is Dead," (sorry, item only included in subscriber "Demographics Alert" newsletter) says that Gen-X parents (both moms and dads) are focusing more on family than career, and worrying less about making Junior a genius than letting her enjoy her childhood: "just let kids be kids." Getting simpler.

This looks like a reaction to the overwhelming pressures that arose in the 80s and 90s as a result of trying to "have it all." Supermom, Driven Dad and Mozart-in-utero-hyped Kids made up the ideal family unit in those days, clearly an unsustainably complex ideal.

So, simplicity looks like a good place to start building a foundation for happiness that extends beyond economics.

Tomorrow: Authenticity

Pennies/Heaven 2

More lively talk about money and happiness over at Plastic. Our fascination with this subject belies something we all recognize deeply: money and happiness exist in entirely different domains of reality.

While money can provide all manner of pleasurable accoutrements, happiness is a both a momentary and cumulative condition of the spirit.

Happiness is lived, an experience; things are possessed. Things may create an occasion for experiences, but experiences can occur independent of any particular things. Most importantly, things can never guarantee experiences. We know this because we all know the disappointment of thinking that this next thing, this next house, next car, next computer, next dress, would be a thing that would "make us happy." And, for a while, it may. But then...

How we long to make that moment last.

But, the buoyancy we experience in moments of happiness is independent of the domain of things. We know this because of the diversity and serendipity of happy moments; the smallest, stupidest, most unexpected situation inexplicably becomes joyful. And we see others experiencing the same thing. And smile. At these moments we recognize the spontaneous, unpredictable, irrational nature of happiness.

Things can never make us happy. Nor are things necessary for us to be happy. It could be argued that a subsistence level of things is necessary for happiness, but that's not an argument I'm interested in having here. Most of us reading blogs are well beyond subsistence.

We live in the domain of desire, not survival.

The challenge we face in the domain of desire is to recognize the distinctness of the world of things from the world of the spirit. I, for one, am not advocating turning away from the world of things as the path to happiness. I love beautiful, interesting things. I believe it is possible to live in both.

But to do so means recognizing the independence of the world of things from the world of the spirit. And to tend to our ability to live in both.

To do so demands living in the world of things with mindfulness of its limitations for enhancing the life of the spirit, and of the ease with which we can deceive ourselves into substituting the one for the other. To be mindful means to pay attention to our ability to live in the world of the spirit, to practice and nurture living there.

Paying attention to our skillfulness at living in the world of things is easy; we're experts at this. Paying attention to our skillfulness at being happy is a different matter entirely.

I believe this is what is required to move from moving from momentary happy experiences (regardless of the conditions in which they occur) to a cumulative condition in which happiness can be sustained beyond the domain of things.

But this is very hard to do.

If only it were so easy; if only money truly could buy happiness.

Pennies/Heaven

It's not much of a surprise to learn that money doesn't buy happiness. We've seen tons of research that confirms this finding.

Yet, we don't seem to believe it.

We seem convinced that more = better, convinced that the rich live on "easy street," free of concerns, or at least, free of the kinds of concerns that we have. That they are happy.

Why?

What makes it so difficult to understand that connection, meaning, love, productive work, aren't just "signs" of happiness, but are happiness?

I think it's because most of us don't know what "happy" feels like. We have created a culture in which the desire to acquire more and more (a treadmill it is impossible to step off) has turned happiness into a scorecard. It's gotten so that it's impossible for most of us to imagine a person of modest means as happy.

But when we think of our own lives and think of moments/periods/conditions of happiness, we find that they are our experiences of being connected with people/work/places that challenge us to fulfill ourselves, use our gifts, fill us with awe and admiration.

Check this out, a nice piece about things that make work/life meaningful and happy. It contains this list:

1. Simplicity
2. Authenticity
3. Community
4. Legacy

For my money, that's a kind of heaven whose entry doesn't require pennies.

Holy synchronicity, Sethman!

So, after writing the Galaxies of the Blogosphere post, I start catching up on my RSS reader subscriptions and came across this post from Seth Godin.

I'll tell ya, when an idea is in the air, it's really in the air!

The Galaxies of the Blogosphere

As bloggers become stars (registration required) the diversity of the blogosphere becomes more evident. With Wonkette,Daily Kos, Escaton, Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan attaining celebrity, it’s clear that the political galaxy of this universe is developing into something (nobody knows exactly what) to be reckoned with.

But what’s going on in this little corner? The corner that’s exploring ideas that might be relevant to new ways of working together.

A lot. The luminaries might night shine as brightly, but they’re getting a fair share of attention: Seth, Gapingvoid, Doc Searls, Scobleizer, even the fairly recent arrival of Tom Peters. Over here, the heat is slightly lower than over there, but there's plenty of stimulation. And the ideas matter.

Take design, creativity or innovation, for example. The amount of attention being paid to these idea is amazing…you can’t travel anywhere in this part of the blogosphere without finding some discussion of one or more of these ideas. And the thinking keeps us all on our toes, exploring corners we haven’t explored before, defining our own thinking in agreement or contrast with that of others, working out some little nuance that is slightly different from anyone else’s.

This space may not be getting the media buzz of the politicos, but it is equally exciting for those of us who spend part of our lives here. It also holds out great promise for the development, refinement and dissemination of ideas that will improve the way all of us will think about doing business from now on.

Dwelling On The Threshold

Van Morrison is easily my favorite musical artist. He's a mystic poet of great depth and soul, and can sing like a motherfucker.

Poets are often esoteric and remote; their ideas, language, concerns, far removed from the practical realities of modern life. Modern life is fast-paced, technologically-mediated, materially-focused. It's easy to believe that the poet is fundamentally removed from those practical realities, "above the fray."

But this isn't so. Modern poetic artists live in this world as well. They experience the frenetic, wired, acquisitiveness, too. And they speak to that experience in a different voice, a voice that can yield important insights for us in our own lives.

Van Morrison is one of those rare, wonderful voices for me. Here's an example of the kind of thing he writes that can give me great pause:

I'm a dweller on the threshold
And I'm waiting at the door
And I'm standing in the darkness
I don't want to wait no more

I have seen without perceiving
I have been another man
Let me pierce the realm of glamour
So I know just what I am

So many of us dwell on that threshold, fearfully standing in the darkness.

I know I, for one, "don't want to wait no more." Today, I only want to be in situations in which I "pierce the realm of glamour" and can be, "just what I am."

That call, the call back to who we are, is the challenge of our time, (maybe the challenge of all times) made extraordinarily difficult by the great speed, remoteness, and lust we've created.

Van Morrison points to a path through those obstacles when he says he's, "seen without perceiving" and, "has been another man." Dwelling in the fundamental truths (the ones that do not come to us through magazines), the quiet recognition of our embeddedness in our lives together, helps us find our way across the threshold to our common reality...to the greater meaning we create together.

Short-lived creatures like ourselves haven't the time to waste in fearful avoidance of the truths that exist between us. We are called daily to speak those truths together so that we can accomplish the things that nourish and enrich us, rather than deplete and impoverish us.

Doing so, as is so often the case, is simple, but not easy. It requires courage and resolve. Great poetic artists remind me of these things and help me to muster the courage and maintain the resolve I need to be sure I continue to work at being "just what I am."

Are You in A or B?

This guy's not just funny, but right on the nose with his contention: you're either in A, the creative part of the business (and that means being creative in whatever function you're working in...pay attention HR professionals!) or you're in B, the outsourced "part" of the business.

It's that simple.