For a variety of reasons, the opportunity turned out to be less lucrative than anyone had anticipated. Eventually the company’s entree into the mid-market was abandoned and the company was shut down.

The thing I remember most about this wasn’t the company itself. It was how he responded to its collapse. He didn’t get upset. He didn’t beat himself up about it. The day after he shut the doors he picked up the phone and started getting his old consulting clients back.

His response was to move forward.

The rule of economic well-being

When I asked him about it a few years later, he told me about a rule of thumb that he’s operated by for most of his professional career that helped him recognize the situation for what it was, and helped him move forward with relative ease.

He told me that no one is responsible for his economic well being except for him. And that the key to maintaining your economic well being is to constantly provide immense value.

It might sound simple, and the connection might not be obvious. But understanding this idea can have profound implications in how you view the world.

Understanding this rule is why he didn’t get upset when the company folded – there wasn’t enough value to potential customers, or the value wasn’t communicated effectively. It was a learning opportunity.

It’s why he didn’t lash out at the larger organization they were partnering with. They didn’t “owe” him anything – it wasn’t their job to take care of him.

It’s why he was able to jump right back into consulting so easily. He recognized that his value isn’t a function of a particular company or opportunity – it’s something he has available to him at all times. He can bring people immense value regardless of the situation.

Putting the lesson into practice

Three months ago, the startup I was working for took a dramatic step in a different direction. Matt, my business partner for many years, and I were both let go. It was a sudden change of events, one that coincided with my wife deciding to work part-time, us starting to put our son in daycare, and the decision to buy our condo. When it rains…

When it happened, the temptation was to throw a pity party. A part of me wanted to get the emotional high that can come from feeling you were wronged, the sick pleasure one can get from worrying about something even though there’s nothing you can do about it.

But then I remembered what my step-dad taught me.

Rather than hold a grudge or feel sorry for myself, I decided that what we had worked on, however clever or promising it might have been, simply didn’t create enough value in the minds of the people who mattered. If it had, we’d still be there and the product would be taking off.

Sure, having more time might have helped the situation, but we didn’t have more time. That’s not wrong, that was just the reality of the situation.

So Matt and I decided to put our energies into finding consulting work, while we figured out what to do next. We turned our outsourcing company into a product development shop and started doing what we did at Brill Street for others. Rather than stay indoors with the lights off staring at our computers while eating Cheetos and feeling sorry for ourselves, we hit the streets and started selling.

A couple of opportunities fell into our laps right away thanks to the help of our friends (and I’d like to think a little bit of providence.) We gathered some momentum, picked up some additional business, brought on some new guys. In the last three months, we’ve picked up more business than we were projecting for the year.

It’s been a crazy 90 days. Who knows if we’ll do the consulting thing in the long term – it certainly brings with it its fair share of stress. But for now we’re working hard, having fun, learning a ton and meeting a bunch of great people.

And none of it would have happened if I didn’t remind myself about my step-dad’s rule of economic well being.

Rejecting Entitlement

It’s a lesson that I think we should all keep in mind.

There is a large portion of the population that operates as though they are owed something. Because they got a degree, they deserve a job. Because they logged the hours, they deserve a raise. Because they didn’t screw up, they deserve a promotion.

Your company isn’t obligated to take care of you. They have an obligation to their shareholders and to maximize value. If you provide immense value, they’ll bend over backwards to keep you.

You don’t have to sit and hold a grudge because you got passed over for a raise. You don’t have to do less than your best work because you and your boss don’t get along.

You don’t have to blame the company if they let you go. Instead, you can step back and use it as an opportunity to learn. In what ways were you not providing immense value? What could you have done differently to make yourself indispensable? What lessons can you take with you to your next opportunity?

Most importantly, you can keep moving forward. The world is so full of opportunities if you’re willing to look for them. All you have to do is remind yourself that at the end of the day, no one owes you anything. And then go create value.

Every year in December I take an inventory of the past year, and develop goals for the year ahead. Historically those goals have been relatively large, primarily focused on business or personal finances. And for the most part I’ve managed to hit them. I would argue that people who desire to do great things should simply set bigger goals for themselves. They’ll likely be surprised at how much they’re able to do.

But this year, three things have conspired to make the goal setting process unusually troublesome for me.

1. The birth of Miles is of course the biggest factor – the last six weeks have been the best (and more tiring) of my life, and I fully anticipate that continuing into the next year. But infants can definitely put a cramp in your style, and when all that free time you used to be able to leverage completely evaporates, it makes it tough to think really big.
2. Focusing on others has been an increasingly strong desire in the last few months. I don’t want to do things simply for myself like I usually do. I’d like to develop more of a heart for others.
3. I’m learning that I desire the spotlight way too much. So much of my motivation is based on the desire for recognition – to do good work and (more importantly?) for people to know about it. Which, like many other things, might not be considered a bad thing to some people, but is something that I think needs remedying.

So perhaps for the first time, I’m actually finding myself writing goals that are smaller than the year previous. It might sound funny, but for years I’ve gravitated towards visible goals and shied away from things that are good and character building but ultimately small and hidden. And while there’s a place for the big and visible, maybe the small and hidden is where the really amazing stuff happens.

Small is the new big

Mother Theresa’s name gets thrown around so often (often with sarcasm or in jest) that it’s easy to overlook how unique her ideas were. Everyone knows she was a saint, but what most don’t realize is the manner in which she went about her ministry.

While most people are grasping for more power and visibility, she genuinely believed that the world is changed through the small and hidden. She regularly and consistently argued that the small things are where the action is.

There are no great things, only small things with great love.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.

It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

Jesus said love one another. He didn’t say love the whole world.

If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

Just 70 cents a day

When I was growing up, my parents adopted one of those foster kids you see on television – you know, the whole “70 cents a day can save a life” kind of thing. His name is Oscar, and he lives in La Paz, Bolivia. Other than sending them a check every month, your responsibility consists of optionally writing your foster child a letter once a year. The child does the same.

I never gave much thought to it – I don’t think I ever read one of the letters growing up. I did, however, make many jokes about how Sally Struthers was hoarding all this cash and eating caviar on her yacht off the Bolivian coast. I wasn’t even thoughtful enough to see whether or not Bolivia even had a coast.

Last year when I was home for the holidays, they received a letter from him with a photo, and I read it. It literally made me cry. Now a teenager, this boy’s entire life was changed because of my parents. He was able to go to school. He was able to afford clothing. He was able to eat healthy food. He was hoping to become a doctor. He was happy, healthy and excited about the future. And he loved my parents. He couldn’t stop talking about what a gift it was that these random people in America decided to sponsor him.

It was a small thing, writing a check for 20 bucks a month. But it transformed a life.

Small can change the world

If I’m honest, I think the reason I haven’t pursued doing “small things with great love” is that I’ve thought it was beneath me somehow. I’ve waited for years for some big, magnanimous, and public idea that I could do to “give back.” And while there’s nothing wrong with big things, my motivations have been much more about myself than about the cause.

Doing small things is hard, maybe even harder than big things. You don’t get the high of having a bunch of people congratulate you. In some cases, not a single person even knows what you’ve done. It requires humility, selflessness, patience and self-discipline. And there’s no big reward at the end of it. At least not an obvious one.

The Bible talks a lot about a concept of “The Kingdom of God”, and a common misconception is that it’s some vague thing that happens when you die. But in reality, the “Kingdom of God” is here, now. It’s about bringing God’s love here to earth, and that’s done primarily through small acts done with great love. Caring for the people who are ignored. Helping a neighbor who’s lost their job. Giving your extra coat to someone who needs it, a hot meal to someone who’s hungry. Loving everyone – even the people who others would consider “unlovable”. And doing so not because of what you get out of it, but because you want to create the kind of world that God wants, where people with the freedom to choose willingly decide to love each other more than themselves.

I’ve desired the big and showy for years, but this year I’m hoping I can think smaller.

But actually the devil is immensely beautiful. Like Brad Pitt times a billion. Or me, times ten.

He was one of God’s greatest accomplishments. He was smarter, more creative, more charming than we can imagine. And even after the fall, his outward beauty never diminished. Nor did his creativity, intellect or charm.

It’s a difficult thing to wrap our minds around, that the personification of evil would be contained in a thing of beauty and brilliance. And yet when you think about the concept of temptation, it makes sense. If you really did live in a world where you were being silently opposed, prodded, tempted to do things that weren’t in your best interest… you’d probably trip up a lot less if your tempter was an ugly dude with a snarl, wearing tights with mustard stains going down the front.

I think one of the points of that story is that a lot of the things we think are good can be very bad for us. Hard work can be good. Hard work that leaves your family lonely and your life out of balance is not. Money can be good. Money as an end to itself, or used to buy another BMW when there are families living in tents outside the city, less so. Beauty can be good. Beauty that is used as a tool to manipulate, or as a basis for exclusion, not good.

C.S. Lewis talks about how one of the best ways to tell people a lie is with the truth. And while we live in a world of broken economies, broken families and broken lives, it’s hard to find the culprits, the ones who cause all the pain. That’s because the culprits aren’t wearing red tights and holding pitchforks. It’s actually pretty hard to find people who are overtly evil and ugly and mean. Most of the bad stuff that happens in the world is the result of lies masked with the truth.

Our markets lie in ruin and global commerce is threatened because while hard work and innovation are good… unmitigated, perpetual growth and expansion are ultimately destructive and unsustainable.

Because we think beauty and nice things are good, we create and consume as much as we can, willfully ignoring the consequences on our planet’s resources and on the gross inequity between us and our brothers and sisters on the other side of the world.

Because we believe in the importance of the self, we ruin countless relationships and marriages because we refuse to compromise or truly put the other person’s needs before our own.

Because we want families to be safe, we train our children to avoid people that don’t look like them, perpetuating cycles of racism, sexism and classism (which is particularly egregious because, according to spell check, “classism” isn’t even a word.)

When we look into our own lives, it might make sense for us to examine how things that we might have once thought of as good (or that others might still consider good) could be harming us or those we love.

It might make sense to consider whether our workaholic tendencies are a good thing if our relationships are suffering.

It might makes sense to examine whether our desire for more requires that other have less.

It might make sense to think about whether hard work drive are always good, considering they might be driving us in a direction that is ultimately destructive.

It might make sense to think about whether our love for country masks us to the injustice and pain others feel at the hands of our military or economic systems.

But to do so will take work, because it’s very likely the worst part of ourselves isn’t wearing red tights. It’s probably hidden in plain view, inside something beautiful but ultimately deadly.

We have a tendency to gravitate towards material like this. It gives us a simple roadmap to follow. Instead of living a life of prudence and responsibility, we can get rich in 90 days with no effort. Instead of dilligently exercising and eating like we should, we can lose 30 pounds in two weeks. Instead of working harder than everyone else and creating amazing products and services, we can load our resumes with action words and memorize answers to interview questions. Instead of
becoming an interesting, genuinely good guy, we can con women into thinking we’re smart, successful and interested in them as people just long enough to take them home.

In a society based almost entirely on instant gratification, we no longer care about the journey – just the destination. We’re not interested in the acquisition of virtue and character nearly as much as the keys to health, wealth and perceived happiness.

Perhaps the foolishness of us all lies on thinking that another time management system or novel web app or stock picking strategy or “prosperity gospel” religion or pick-up line is going to give us anything really valuable. Maybe we bought a lie that says that we can mimic the results of hard work without the hard work.Maybe we’ve convinced ourselves that the end is what matters, when what matters is all the stuff in between.

Looking at my bookshelf, I’m just as guilty as anyone else – maybe more so. Which is why there’s a certain irony when I find myself wondering why my spiritual life can be so lacking at times. Perhaps its because I forget that the whole “Christian thing” is about a relationship, and that there aren’t shortcuts in relationships – at least not in ones that matter. Perhaps the problem is that I’m often uninterested in a God that is wild and unpredictable and, well, very much a person. Perhaps I sometimes would rather have a formula or a set of instructions to follow to get a happy fulfilled life. A genie in a bottle instead of a god, the outcome instead of the relationship. The end without the means.

I wonder where we got the idea that life, in all its fullness, can be had by following 3 easy steps.

The businessman approached him and asked him why he was already leaving when he was having such a great day. The fisherman replied that he had caught all he needed.

“So what do you do the rest of the day?”

The fisherman replied, “I go home, spend time with my kids, take a siesta with my wife, and head into town to grab dinner and wine with my friends.”

The businessman knew that many cultures outside his own approached work a differently, but he couldn’t understand why this fisherman was giving up so much opportunity to grow his business. He proceeded to spend the next 20 minutes talking to him about how he could increase his revenue to a staggering degree. He talked about how he could hire other locals and teach them what he knew, and that by doing so he could triple his revenue. He talked about how he could eventually purchase a boat and some nets and increase his daily catch by a factor of at least one hundred.

He talked about how the money from the first boat could be used to purchase additional boats, and how after a period of time he could have a whole fleet out in the ocean bringing in thousands of fish (and hundreds of thousands in revenue.) He said that within 10-15 years he could see him easily becoming a millionaire or multimillionaire, and how he could retire and never have to worry about money again.

The fisherman paused for a moment and asked him, “What would I do then?”

This caught the businessman off guard. After thinking about it for a few seconds he replied, “I guess you would spend time with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and have dinner in the town with your friends.”

How many of your long-term goals could be had right now? Are you working 80 hour weeks to achieve a lifestyle that’s easily attainable today?

I tried URGE this week, the music service offered through Windows Media Player. It’s a subscription service like Rhapsody and others, which had always turned me off before. But I’ve finally overcome the urge (bad pun) to have to own my music, and I’ve been happily listening to whatever I want ever since.

It got me thinking about our need to own things. For two years I was gladly paying Apple a buck a pop to “own” the rights to my music files. I could say that I was doing this because I wanted to “support the artists,” but I think we both know that would be a lie. I did it because I wanted to own the music – it was important enough to me that I dismissed the subscription services out of hand.

Why is that? I don’t have a car, and I don’t have to deal with a long commute. I listen to my music primarily when I’m working in front of my computer, which all but makes my iPod superfluous. I’m getting to enjoy any music I want for a fraction of the price, with the understanding that it’s not mine – I’m borrowing it.

Does that make it any less enjoyable?

Why do I insist on buying books versus going to the library? Why does it give me so much satisfaction to look at a bookshelf bursting at the seams? Why, when I moved from New York to Chicago, were a few dozen books I was never going to read again so difficult to part with?

Why do I get so frustrated that I don’t own property yet? There is of course the argument for building equity (although most people never do anything with their equity but trade it in for ever-larger loans), but there’s also that desire to be a “landowner.”

As our means increase, why do we so often acquire a bunch of fancy cars that sit in a garage somewhere covered in a tarp? Isn’t it just as easy to rent a fancy car for the day when you want to drive it?

Why do we buy ridiculously priced paintings that we keep in a steralized vault in our basements instead of going to the gallery downtown?

Why do we get the summer home that is a ridiculous investment and sits empty 11 months out of the year?

Would my life be worse off if I didn’t buy a bunch of music, if I didn’t have every Tom Peters book 12 feet away from me “just in case”, if I continued to pay rent or, when the time came, lived in a much smaller house than my peers?

What would happen if I adopted a spirit of sharing and borrowing versus owning? What would happen to my temperament if I used my money to get things I needed when I needed them but happily parted with said things as soon as they were (truly) no longer useful to me?

What if I had a habit of buying a book, reading it, and promptly sending it to someone else who I thought would enjoy it?
What if I bought a suit for a conference and gave it to my neighbor of similar dimension when I was done? What if I went to a nice dinner, asked the server to split my meal and wrap half of it in advance, and gave it to someone who needed it more than I did?

What would happen to my heart, my relationships? What would I discover about my needs vs. my wants? How quickly would I move from a spirit of simply borrowing to a more proactive spirit of giving?

After a few drinks I got into a fairly involved conversation with a female friend of a colleague. She worked in hedge funds, and spent the first half of the evening telling us about the type of guys one typically finds in the industry. She told us all about her views on the antiquity of marriage, about the merits of pursuing a life based primarily measured by one’s bank account, about the impossibility of finding one person to complete your life, about the virtues of embracing the world in its carnal fullness.

It was a frustrating experience, because I’ve gone through it dozens of times before, in various bars in various cities. The professions change, the experiences change, but it’s like there’s a manual that people were mailed that never made it to my door. There are phrases and beliefs that these people share. And the problem is, they don’t actually believe it.

She listened to me talk about what a gift it was to meet my wife. I talked about how a man should treat a woman, about how she doesn’t believe in marriage because she’s never met a man (has never put herself in a position to discover a man) who showed her what is possible in a relationship. I talked about the things that should compel us to get up in the morning, about why I believed in a life of meaning and purpose.

As we talked, her Sex In The City / Boiler Room mentality receded into the distance. She talked about how difficult it is to meet a genuinely nice guy. She talked about how her career gives her a tremendous feeling of power, but that it’s not the same thing as fulfillment.

She agreed with me – but didn’t take the next step.

Couldn’t grasp that you’re not going to find the man of your dreams when you’re looking for the man of the next six hours. That you’re not going to find fulfillment and purpose if you’re focused on money for 80 hours a week.

It’s become a pattern for me when we hit the town – I inevitably get into what makes people (and myself) tick. We discuss the most important things in life…and then we stop. We realize that keeping that curtain perpetually open is extremely difficult, and that resolving to do so at 1:30 in the morning in a bar on Ludlow and Rivington is a proposition destined to fail.

It makes me sad. It’s not that I think I have some sort of answer to all the world’s ills (maybe just a couple.) But I feel as though I do know what it’s like to live without purpose. I feel as though I do know what it’s like to have a life driven by accomplishment, by the pursuit of the opposite gender. Pride, lust, fear, insecurity, envy…these have been the characteristics that have defined the majority of decisions I’ve made in my life. I’d go so far as to say that grace has given me the gifts of my life in spite of my character, not because of it.

Knowing what I know about myself, seeing what I’ve seen in the lives of my friends and family, knowing that there is a world out there that is absent so much of the pain and loneliness and hurt feelings and despair….it makes my heart ache when I meet someone who doesn’t believe in any of it. It hurts even worse is someone who does believe it, but bottles it up thinking that they can’t possibly live that life. That there are gifts and blessings that are beyond our wildest imaginations, but they’re excluded.

With all my talk, I know that I remain miles from that place. But I know it’s there, and I know we’re all included. And if my conversations at 1:30 in the morning resonate in any way with people like that girl I met last week, I wouldn’t be surprised to stand in front of the pearly gates and discover that my best work was done in those moments.

If only I had the courage to tell people they’re loved, they’re beautiful, they are not their actions, they are not the terrible things that have happened to them, they are not the decisions they’ve made in the past or will make in the future. If only I could tell people this when I wasn’t either inebriated or hiding behind a computer screen.

The wife of a friend of mine was hosting one of those parties where the salesperson comes and shows the myriad of uses for candles in your home. My buddy was going to be the only male in attendance, so I volunteered to come up and represent the gender.

During the party I met about a dozen women in their late 20s and early 30s. Most of them were married, most either had kids or were getting ready to. And most were shockingly negative.

They went around the table for hours discussing how one’s love life comes to an end once you marry or have kids or buy the house or whatever. They talked about how you should enjoy life while you can, because once the young ones come around you’ll be poor, tired, bored, busy, out of shape, stupid and lonely.

It was a sad prognosis, but one that appears to be extremely common among women in our country. They were talking about the staggering number of housewives who have become meth addicts, about the number of housewives who cheat on their husbands, about the number of wives who are diagnosed with depression.

What in the world is going on here? Why is marriage the cause of such destruction?

Before I got married, I spent a long time thinking about what it meant, what my vows that day were truly about. It didn’t really occur to me until a few weeks before the wedding how big a commitment it is – I mean, I knew it was important, but I don’t think it penetrated the core of my being.

When most of us talk about marriage and what it means, it tends to be pretty surface level. We talk about someone who we enjoy hanging out with. We talk about someone who is beautiful and intelligent. We talk about someone who has similar interests or ideas about the world. We talk about how “in love” we are.

I’ve written about this before, but the Greek language has four different words for love. The most common is the word eros, or erotic love. It’s that euphoric feeling we get when we most often talk of love. I’d be willing to bet it’s the only kind of love that most of us have ever felt. And sadly, it’s probably the only kind of love that exists between a great many couples who decide to take the plunge.

There’s another kind of love called agape – and it’s love from the soul. It’s the kind of love that characterizes Christ’s love for the church, and it’s the kind of love that he calls husbands and wives to share for each other.

It’s a love that is about much more than ‘good feelings.’ It isn’t about being ‘in love,’ about the things that so many of our movies and songs and poetry are preoccupied with. It is a lifelong devotion that surpasses all other things in this world. It is very literally considering the life of the other person as being more valuable than your own, and doing whatever it takes to ensure that their life is cherished and cared for and treated the way God would want it to be treated.

I honestly believe that there are many marriages out there that lack this love. They lack the fundamental foundation that defines a solid marriage – indeed, they lack the purpose for which marriage was created in the first place.

It’s the only explanation I have for why “life” is allowed to get in the way. I know all about the demands of work, and I do feel as though I can understand in some way the demands that having children and mortgages and the like can have on a couple.

But for a marriage that is based on agape, none of those things could ever upset that balance. They could certainly cause stress or concern and would likely involve discussions that are sometimes heated when trying to come up with solutions. But as powerful as a house payment or a child crying in the next room or a three week sales trip is, it is not strong enough to overthrow the power of agape.

Agape means that regardless of the situation, no matter how stressed out I am at work, I will still make it a priority to let my wife know that she is loved. I will go out of my way to make sure her needs are cared for – not just financially, but physically, mentally, emotionally, interpersonally, vocationally, spiritually.

Agape means that when there is a conflict, I will do whatever I can to make sure it gets resolved constructively and mutually. It means that I will not get bitter or angry or say something that I don’t mean. It means that I will happily compromise instead of digging in and holding my ground for the sake of holding my ground. And it means that if an impasse is reached, I will consider her needs above my own, make her needs my needs.

Agape is completely and utterly selfless. It is perpetually tuned into the needs of the other person. It is the surest way I know of to keep a relationship happy and healthy.

Some would say that they’ve never seen agape, and certainly have never experienced it. Some would even argue that it goes against our basest human desires and needs.

I agree – while in one sense it is something that requires a lot of work to acheive and maintain, in another sense it is something that we can never possess or feel by working at it. I believe it is a grace that is given to us, something given out of love from the One who understands agape in all its fullness. It’s not human, never was. It’s a gift.

Marriage isn’t about fuzzy feelings or being in love or about forming a family unit or about tax breaks. It’s about being given the immense privledge of trying to practice agape in our little ways. It’s about being able to see a small echo of what it’s like to love someone the way God loves us.

It’s about having agape, that fire of divine love, and doing everything in your power to keep that flame alive. Like a candle.

Or like a cheesy, contrived metaphor.

I’m tired of living in a culture that tells me it’s okay, I can do what I want. I’m tired of being told that everything is subjective, tired of being told that I can rationalize away my worst thoughts and deeds. I’m tired of being able to chalk my lowest moments up as ‘learning experiences.’

I’m tired of seeing people make commitments to each other with no intention of honoring them. I’m tired of hearing about couples getting married only to divorce within a few months. I’m tired of flippant, off-hand comments about someone cheating on someone else, as if such behavior is natural, expected, normal.

I’m tired of being let off the hook.

I want to meet people who don’t insist I put on a mask to hide my faults. I want to meet people who are willing to call me on my bullshit.

I write one day about the perils of greed, and the very next I pass right next to a guy asking me for help. Call me on it.

I say something in jest that makes someone feel a little less respected, a little less honorable, a little less beautiful, a little less amazing than they are. Call me on it.

I cut corners on a project because, hey, it’s not like anyone else is giving 150% anyway. Call me on it.

I write something clever. People tell me it’s clever. I puff myself up like I was the source of my ideas, my intellect. Call me on it.

Don’t tell me that I’m being too hard on myself when I point out my faults. Help me work on them, help me become a better person, help me keep the curtain pulled back. Don’t make it easy for me to slip back into normal habits. Expect better from me.

And then take the next step. Expect better from yourself as well. Don’t put on the mask. Someone asks you how you’re doing – tell them. Show your warts. Talk about your demons. Ask to be held accountable.

It’s so much easier for us to slip into a mode that says everything is okay, as long as we’re happy. It’s easy because no one expects anything more from us. Because if they expect more from us, they have to take the next step and expect more from themselves. And that’s a difficult thing to do.

I don’t know how to change the world for the better. I don’t know how to convince our leaders to make intelligent, moral decisions.

But I do know that if I want to hold them accountable, I have to start with myself first. I can’t rail againt my leaders or my friends or my family for lying or cheating or stealing or boasting or hurting others unless I’m willing to first confront myself.

And when I do confront myself, openly, honestly….I find a lot of dirt.

There are so many things I do – daily – that I’m not proud of. Things I’d like to do differently. I screw up all the time. I’m not strong enough to live the way I know I should. Not on my own.

I need someone to hold me accountable. But the person holding me accountable can’t do so unless they first examine themselves. And once they do so, they find a lot of dirt. They discover that they too need someone to hold them accountable.

Our lives, the organism of humanity, appears to me to be more and more related to accountability. We are not islands. The decisions we make impact us, often in the long term, almost certainly in the short term. Our decisions impact those around us, those we love, those we don’t even know exist.

Unfortunately, our nature seems to lend itself to screwing up. Nobody’s perfect, and that’s probably on purpose. But the answer to screwing up is not to be let off the hook. The answer isn’t to rationalize it away. The answer isn’t to call it life and forget about it. The answer is to strive to be better – to resolve to lie to each other less, steal from each other less, hurt each other less.

And the best way I’ve found to support our push to be better is to have someone to hold us accountable. Someone who loves us enough to not let us off the hook, to cheer us on when we succeed, to rebuke us and build us up when we fail.

Are you willing to be held accountable? Are you willing to examine yourself? Are you willing to hold someone you love accountable n similar fashion?

If we did so, I bet the world would very quickly become a much different place.

We learn when we’re extremely little that there are people who are ‘in’ and people who are not. We learn that if you’re not in my group you’re probably stupid. In high school we get in fights at the mall or at a party with a group of kids because they go to a different high school than we do – because they committed the travesty of living in different neighborhood we learn to hate them for no apparent reason.

We grow older and hate people because they root for a different basketball team, or because they vote differently than we do, or because their God is different than our God or because their skin tone is lighter or darker or because they speak a different language.

We do it because it feels good to turn people into cartoons. It feels good to feel like you’re better or smarter or prettier or faster than others, and the easiest way to do so is to take these complicated, emotional, talented, fragile people and package them up into a singular idea. Once we turn them into cartoons it’s easy to hate them.

It’s easy to call George Bush an idiot or Bill Clinton evil. It’s easy to call the kid downstairs a punk. It’s easy to call the guy sitting across from us on the subway a drunk. It’s easy to call the beautiful girl on the other side of the bar stupid and easy. It’s easy to wave an American flag and dismiss people’s complaints as ignorant or unpatriotic. It’s easy to shout from a pulpit that the gay guy in the car next to at a traffic light is demon possessed. It’s easy to call your Christian coworker an intolerant sheep with no understanding of the real world.

They’re not part of our club, so there’s something wrong with them.

What’s hard is to rip up the membership card.

What’s hard is to not get into a stupid argument about whether the Raiders or the Broncos are the better team.

What’s hard is to realize that the girl who walked by you on the street with the ‘go to hell’ stare is probably immensely self-conscious because of magazines telling her how she’s supposed to look and talk and interact, that she may have been hurt emotionally or otherwise by a slew of guys who didn’t value her as a person.

What’s hard is to contemplate the unthinkable tragedies that might have happened in the life of a guy that’s reduced him to sitting on a corner without having showered in a week, humiliating himself by having to hold out a three day old paper coffee cup begging you to drop in your spare change.

What’s hard is to have a conversation or read an article about protests in France or wherever and ask yourself whether their protests have some serious merit.

What’s hard is to acknowledge that every serious political candidate you’re seeing on television has lived a pretty extraordinary life, has done a great deal to impact the lives of those around them and holds the ideas they hold (is willing to put themselves on television at our mercy to spread those ideas) because they truly believe that they will help the country in the long run. What’s hard is to be willing to admit that the idea that one party is right about every idea while the other party is hopelessly insipid…is pretty insipid.

What’s hard is to be aware that there are indeed villians in the world, but they are in much shorter supply than we think. The majority of people we treat as villians are fragile, broken, self-conscious people just like us. And the hard thing is to respond to people, with their scars and blemishes and dissenting ideas and misguided actions….and love them.

We should all consider letting more people into our club.

Forget that – we should all consider getting rid of the club.