Irritated by the noise, as I walked in front of the truck, I looked up at the guy, rough shaven, dirty ball cap, ripped T-Shirt, smoking what looked like a “funny” cigarette clenched conveniently between his gums in one of the several gaps provided by the few teeth that he had left in his head. He didn’t seem to notice me as I walked by, and appeared “Zombied” as if he was in some kind of trance, head nodding up and down and moving back and forth, foot long scraggly pony tail bobbing in rhythm to the head nods. With his hands he appeared to be playing an imaginary miniature drum set. All of the above was happening, I concluded, as a result of the leaves he was smoking combined with the music he was listening to.

In my mind, I began constructing an unauthorized brief biography as to what kind of person he was, what his value system was (poor), this level of consciousness (low), what kind of father he was (I assumed he was an absentee one), what kind of partner he would be (bad), his level of trustworthiness (low), his violence potential (high), all in the length of time it takes a web page to load.

Do I need to say that the above conclusions were not what could be characterized as gracious? Need I say that the judgments of him were less than complimentary? Need I say that I didn’t cut him much slack? Need I say that having run that mental rap sheet on him in about 6 seconds that I was even more irritated by his mere presence?

As I got in my car, having allowed him to have pretty much hi-jack the peaceful feelings I had going into the store, I firmly slid into my smug, holier-than-thou, self-righteous, judgmental pew (car seat). Suddenly everything went quiet. As I glanced at the hole in the noise, I saw the man get out of his truck. (He was probably going for his shotgun, because he was going to rob the store? Or decided that he wanted to shoot someone? Me? Had he somehow read my mind?)

With the biggest toothless friendliest smile that think I have ever seen on a human being he turned and began moving towards the back of his truck, obviously talking to someone. His buddy? His friend? His wife or child? A police officer coming to check him out?

No, none of those. As I watched in my rear view mirror, I saw him approach an elderly lady. As the scene unfolded it became apparent by the gesturing and talking that she had “lost” her car. (By this time I had rolled my window down to make sure that he wasn’t going to mug her). It seemed from what I could make out that she had been walking back and forth in the parking lot for several minutes. He had noticed her, (I hadn’t, because I was busy writing an opinion paper in my head, remember?) and asked her if she needed help. I saw him reach for her grocery sacks, while together they began walking, chatting, laughing, and apparently having a good time as they looked for her car. They eventually found it and actually finished off the adventure with a hug.

Thinking that the woman must have been someone he knew, I waited a minute or so until he got back to his truck and yelled out my window, “That was nice of y–did you know her?” He simply said, “Nope.” He then got in his truck and cranked the tunes.

I was embarrassed and chastened. See, while I was taking this guy’s inventory, he was noticing people around him who could use his help.

I wish I was evolved enough to have said, “Hey you know what I just caught myself doing?”

“You know what lesson I was reminded of?”

“You know what you just taught me, again?” I didn’t say anything. Out loud.

I did symbolically sit myself down and give myself a good talking to. It is hard to be reminded that part of me can still seize a moment. I guess I needed to be reminded that I am still capable of hurting others (and myself) with my judgments. Apparently, I needed to be reminded that while I am doing stuff like that in my mind I miss a lot of what is REALLY going on. Another AFGO. (Another Freakin Growth Opportunity).

Margie I were in Las Vegas helping celebrate a very special friend’s 80th birthday when we first began seeing and hearing snippets of what was happening back home. Reports of 8 inches of rain in one 8-hour period. Then 13. Now 18 inches in 36 hours! There wasn’t much national news coverage because of a bombing attempt in New York City, and a disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The hotel we were staying in didn’t have the weather channel, so we couldn’t find out much of what was happening.

Slowly news began filtering in. Nashville International Airport was closed. Scenes of a church building floating down one of our local expressways destroying itself as it rammed into cars flooded to roof level and semi trailer trucks. Images of streets we travel on every day that were now raging torrents of water. Pictures of basement floors ruptured by the hydrostatic pressure of ground water in the Vanderbilt Medical Center, where we have been patients, water spewing as if it was coming from an artesian well, just a few blocks from where we live.

We called a friend to ask him if he could go take a look to see what might have happened to our house. He tried the first day, but all the streets that would take him to our house were closed. The second day he was able to reach the house and found the crawl space of the house flooded. When he went to Home Depot to see if he could get a sump pump to use to remove the water, the clerk smiled, reached down under the desk and came up with a drinking straw. There’s always room for a comedian. We got up early the next day and purchased a pump while in Las Vegas and brought it home with us on the plane.

Those scenes did nothing to prepare us for what we were to experience as we flew over Nashville on our descent into the recently reopened airport. The massive Opryland hotel complex looked like an island in the middle of a lake. (They hope to have it re-opened by Christmas). Expressways covered with water (some remaining that way 6 days later). The Cumberland River that runs through the heart of Nashville, normally 300 yards wide, was miles wide. It was difficult to figure out where the actual river channel was.

Once we reached our home it was clear that we had not totally escaped. Our heating and cooling system was flooded out. Our roof had leaked. Not a big deal. Compared to what many, many others had experienced, we were lucky and knew it.

Then we turned on our TV. The coverage we hadn’t been able to get in Las Vegas was suddenly right in our face, continual coverage, hour after hour. The death count clicked upward by the hour. There was not a section of town, East, West, South, or North that wasn’t impacted. It was eerie as places we knew well, had frequented often, were all part of the tragic unfolding story. One of the two water treatment plants was flooded. Electricity to downtown buildings was lost and would remain so for days. Bodies were found behind the Kroger store we have shopped. Cars having been caught in the flash flooding were piled on top of each other like a stack of wooden building blocks. Then it got personal. One friend’s house totally destroyed. Another’s first floor totally destroyed. Another lost his cars. Yet more lost their businesses. Some their studios. We know of many musicians who lost all of their instruments. Some people lost both their home and their business. People in cars who thought they were just driving through an intense rain storm were suddenly swept away when a wall of water slammed into them. There was not just one wall of water. In every low place, on every expressway, in every part of town, at one time or another a wall of water swept people and cars away in a an instant. They were not out joyriding.

Few of them had flood insurance. Most did not live in a flood plain. Flooding like this had never occurred. It has been named the “1,000-year flood”. Stories of miracle rescues, close calls, and people pitching in to help were also a part of the story. Prayers and good wishes from all over the world poured in. But as the realization of what had happened, as vignette built upon vignette, I felt heaviness and a depression begin to settle on my shoulders.

There was absolutely no way of rationalizing or setting straight the wave upon wave of loss. Did you hear about Kathy? Did you hear about Lee? Did you hear about Julie? How about Jerry? Keisha? How about the elderly couple trying to reach high ground whose car was washed off the highway and overturned, drowning them before they could get out. Of all the uprooted lives. Of all the lost lives. Of all the tragedy. I couldn’t find any logical place to put all that.

We had visited, just a few weeks earlier, some friends of ours who live in New Orleans. They told us and showed us what I call an “insiders” view of what hurricane Katrina meant to their city. One of the things I have realized after my own experience with the Great Flood of 2010, was that whatever empathy I felt (and I felt a lot) as they were showing us their beloved city, struggling to get back on its feet after being knocked flat, was nothing compared what they actually experienced. I know better now what they must have felt.

I will, from now on, be more careful in saying, “I know how you must feel,” unless I have had the exact same experience. One of the things the Great Flood has taught me was that unless it has happened to me, I don’t really understand. I can’t. I don’t know what losing a child is like, thankfully. Or what it’s like losing my home to a fire. Or losing everything. (As a friend of mine, a victim of this flood said, “I have heard of people losing everything, but until the moment I realized that I had indeed lost everything, I never truly knew what that meant). I do know what it is like to lose a best friend. And now I do know what it is like to live through a flood. This experience has deepened my sense of empathy. That can be nothing but a gift. A gift of empathy from the Great Flood of 2010.

• About life:  “Found great happiness in insignificant details”
• On the human condition: “My reach always exceeds my grasp”
• Why I am the way I am: “I watched a lot of television”
• Purpose in life: “Seeking route, not sure of destination”

They have one on love too, more about that later.

Love, what a concept.  I have been accused of not “believing” in love.  Though not quite true, I can understand how someone might walk away from a conversation about the topic and believe that.  You see, I think that using the word “love” is a cop-out sometimes; well maybe more than sometimes, maybe most of the time.

I think that the phrase has become a short cut for us “lovers”.  Instead of understanding and saying:

• “I really enjoy the part of me that comes alive when I am with you”
• “I really enjoy having fun with you like this”
• “I really like how the poet in me comes out when I am around you”
• “I feel lucky that someone like you would want to be with someone like me”
• “I feel really safe with you”
• “I sometimes think about how empty my life would be without you in it”

Or countless other thoughts and feelings, though I may FEEL and THINK these kinds of things, often all you get is the “I love you” shorthand message.  You really have no idea what I am experiencing (it is a way of keeping those awareness’s from myself too).

Don’t get me wrong, hearing “I love you” is better than hearing nothing at all, but I like receiving (and delivering) the more accurate, richer, deeper, intimate message of that moment.

So, if you dare, the next time you are moved to say to someone “I love you”, dig a little deeper and see if you can grab hold of what you are really experiencing.  Find words to describe what you discover.  See if it doesn’t feel closer to what you were trying to share.  And if you really dare, the next time someone says, “I love you”, ask them if they would be willing to share what they mean by that.  See if the result is worth the effort.  It is for me.

So, back to the Six-Word Memoirs.  Margie challenged me to compress how I would describe our relationship in six words.  Ever the one to buy time, I said “You first”.

She said “With you, I am, most myself”.

My turn, but try as I might, I couldn’t think of six.  Always one to ask if I can change the rules, I asked if I could do it in just three.  She let me get by with that.

And, speaking of how I felt in and about our relationship I said, “My safest place”.

Another (better?) way to say “I love you”.

What would your words be?

I was shocked. Not because he was indicating that he didn’t want to play baseball. I was very ok with that, but shocked because he felt like it might not be OK with me and he felt like he should ask for my permission.

“Of course it’s ok”, I said, “What makes you think you would even have to ask?”

“Well, name another Klontz who hasn’t played baseball”. He had me there. There weren’t any Klontz’s I could think of that weren’t passionate about baseball. My brother. His cousins. His Dad. All of these Klontz’s played organized baseball, many collegiately. Not only that but both his Uncle and I were part of very successful High School baseball programs as head coaches.

I had always been proud of myself for not having my kid’s future all planned out. I prided myself in believing the message that I was giving them was that they could do whatever they wanted to do and I would be there to support them. I imagined, and would have told you until this day, that they would feel free to follow their own desires and interests. I prided myself in not being one of those parents who would try to use my kids to attempt to play out some unfinished business from my childhood, as I had seen so many other parents do.

Then, I started taking a look at what I might have done to feed him the belief that he was expected to continue the family legacy of every Klontz male, that of becoming a baseball player.

Could it have started when as a newborn, I put a baseball and glove in his crib? Nah, that was just for fun. Could it have been that as a young child there were baseballs, bats, plastic and rubber balls resembling baseballs that dominated his toy box? Nah. Could it have been that I watched every baseball game on TV that I could often with him sitting on my lap? Nah. Could it have been that when he was four or five I had a miniature baseball uniform designed for him, an exact replica of the varsity baseball team’s uniforms? Nah. Could it had been that every chance I had, I used him as our bat boy? Nah. Could it have been that when we did spend time together he and I (and his sister) would often go to the baseball field and water the grass, pull weeds, rake the dirt, pick up papers, clean the dugouts, paint the fence, hang signs, ride the tractor as we groomed the baseball diamond? Nah. Could it be that every chance I could I would take him and his sister to Tiger Stadium to watch the Tiger’s play, managing to bribe the ushers so we always sat right next to the field? Nah. Could it be that they could sense that if they wanted to be with their dad, baseball was part of the trappings? Nah.

Actually, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had, unknowingly and unintentionally groomed him (and his sister). The effect was as if I had said to my son “You will be a baseball player, you will like it, you will be good at it, whether you want to or not will not matter”.

I must have done a little bit right though, because he did ask, eventually. I have no idea how long he had been wanting to ask, or how many years he played baseball without really wanting to.

He said, “I think I would rather play tennis”. Tennis!!!! It was a game that he had been exposed to by his step-mom. She was very good at it. She was the varsity tennis coach. I was terrible at it. It was a game that I literally didn’t know anything about. Tennis indeed.

Tennis it was. He became a good enough High School tennis player to get a college scholarship. He later became a national amateur champion. It was actually quite fun to watch him play a game I knew nothing about other than I wasn’t allowed to or supposed to talk. I was to just sit there and keep my mouth shut. It was a sport that he has been able to carry with him for more than a couple of decades. When I see that, I am grateful that he asked and that I said “Of course it’s OK”.

One of my best baseball players said to me, the day after he graduated from medical school, “It was clear to me that my parents wanted me to be a Dr. They began saving money for my medical school education the day I was born. They let me know that. They also told me I didn’t have to go to medical school, but, deep down, I knew better. So here I am a doctor, and I will always be a doctor, but I am realizing it was something I never really chose for myself.” “You know what else?” “I would have preferred to play tennis instead of baseball, but I knew it would break my dad’s heart”.

I have never forgotten about the law of unintended effects. I have tried to remain conscious of and sensitive to the effect of what I say, what I like, what I don’t like, my opinions, and how I live my life. I never know what someone might walk away believing about myself, themselves, or their world. I am still surprised when I am told about something I have said and done that has had a powerful impact on others’ lives. I have to keep in mind that whether I say it or just live it, I am giving them a message. Is it the one I intend, or is it something different?

After that first varsity game where I felt so badly out-coached, I became obsessed with learning everything I could about how to coach baseball. I read everything I could find on the great coaches and leaders of all sports and all times. I studied the newly emerging field of the psychology of sports performance. I attended endless clinics. I listened to the “great ones” talk about their philosophies and experiences. I asked great athletes what made a good coach. I analyzed my own performance, especially focusing on those times when I thought I could have done better. I watched professional games looking for the small things they did that made a difference. I didn’t watch games for fun, I watched them to analyze and extract every bit of data that I could about how to play the game.

Slowly, I developed the awareness that our team was not being out-coached. We won some games we shouldn’t have because of our coaching edge.

My efforts seemed to pay off. Gradually, our teams became more and more successful in terms of wins and losses and became one of the dominant baseball programs in our region. I felt a great pride in knowing that many of our players went on to play college baseball. I got feedback from college coaches, and felt great pride about hearing that our athletes “really knew how to play the game.” These accolades served to feed my obsession with everything baseball.

Secretly, one of my goals was to be a baseball coach at a major college level. One week I found myself spending the better part of an entire week with a hero of mine, the incredibly successful head coach of a Big-Ten University, as we attended a national coaching conference together.

As was typical, I was like a sponge. I soaked up everything that came my way. We talked about the most technical aspects of the game for hours. He was one of the smartest people I knew.

One evening near the end of the week, my wife and I had dinner with him and his wife.

Gradually, I noticed, quite unexpectedly, that as long as the topic was baseball, he was engaged. When it went to any other area of life, he was strangely quiet and seemly distracted. His wife carried all of those discussions. We talked of politics. He was silent. We talked of hobbies. More silence. We talked of his kids, and ours. More awkward painful silence and distraction. At one point it became clear that he didn’t know even basic information about his children, such as when his their birthdays were, or even their ages.

I was stunned. In that moment it became crystal clear to me just what it was going to take to become successful if I were to ever hope to become a college baseball coach. It was clear to me I would have to continue in the direction I was going which was becoming more and more obsessed with learning about baseball, all the while shutting down the other aspects and other people in my life.

Remarkably, a sense of peace came over me. I said to myself, “I know now what it takes to get and keep a job like that. I am just not willing to pay that price.” I realized that my relationship with my wife and kids (which to be honest, had already suffered because of my compulsiveness around baseball) was more valuable than what college baseball coaching could ever give me.

I walked away from that meeting feeling grateful that I had been able to learn that lesson without having to lose the most important relationships in my life.

I continued to coach, for a few more years, but never again at the same level.

He asked if I would be interested in taking a look at his latest project. One of the things he cared a lot about was those whom fate had not treated very well. He had taken a series of photographs of special needs children with their mothers. As he went through the slide show that represented the edited versions of the photos he had taken, I was moved to tears, actually finding myself stifling a sob or two, (which I quite unsuccessfully, I imagine, tried to cover up with pretending to clear my throat). As one picture would slowly dissolve to be replaced by the next, not a word was spoken. He didn’t say a word about them. He didn’t need to. The pictures told the story in a way that words could never have done, and if there had been a narrative, I had the sense it would have actually detracted from the experience. After the last picture, we just sat there together for a long time in silence.

I fancied myself, at that time, as a pretty good hobby photographer myself. I blurted out, “Jim, I want to learn how to do that…to learn to tell a story so profoundly without words. Will you teach me?”

He said, “Sure, I can, and would be willing to teach you. All it would take is for you to give me just two years of your life.”

Something important shifted in my life at that moment. I realized that I was being offered the opportunity to do something, to learn something that I sincerely wanted. It was within my reach. Then, I realized that I wasn’t willing to pay that price. I realized that there was a real difference between something I would LIKE to do and something I was WILLING to do. I recognized that a lot of my wishing and wanting for things in my life (and not having them, feeling vaguely dissatisfied and victim-like) had more to do with what I was willing to do to make it happen than whether “fate” would provide the opportunity for me to do it.

What I walked away with that day, and still carry some 30 years later was a very different perspective of life. Actually, it was a sense of confidence I had never had before…confidence that I could have a lot of what I found myself wishing and wanting if I was willing to pay the price by being willing to do whatever it took to make my wishes and wants come true.

I had been raised in an environment that had this unwritten rule that said, “People like us could never…,” so it was best not to wish for, best not to want, and best not to dream too big. My friend Jim’s comments changed all that in seven words “Give me two years of your life.”

Now, when I wish, or want, or dream of something, I ask myself, “Are you willing to do what it takes to make that happen?” 99% of the time I say, “No, not really,” and walk away smiling, feeling empowered, feeling good about my choice.

The other 1% of the time, I say, “Yes, absolutely, let me find out what I need to know to make it happen.” I walk into the decision smiling, feeling empowered, and good about my choice.

The message is, am I willing to do whatever it takes to make the things happen in my life that I want come to pass? If so, let’s get going, and if not, let me realize and accept that I don’t really want to, that’s ok, and it is my choice, not something that someone, something, or some circumstance prevents me from being able to do.

It’s the difference between my experiencing life as a victim or a choice maker.

I thought about my answer. Looking it up in the dictionary seemed like cheating, and I figured he could have done that for himself. I understood that he was asking for my opinion. So, following the old adage, “Seldom right, but never in doubt”, I plunged in to the process.

My thoughts? A good reputable agent is:

• Someone who knows you and who chooses to represent you (albeit for a fee).
• Someone who has access to resources, people and places you don’t.
• Someone who tries to make you look good to anyone to whom it is important that you look good.
• Someone who carries messages back from those same people, telling you what they want and need from you.
• Someone who has your back.
• Someone who ‘sells’ you, because they believe in you.
• Someone who inspires you, picking you up when you want to give up.
• Someone who can take the jumbled up parts of your life experiences and make sense of it to other people.

So, feeling quite good about how I just rattled those things off the top of my head, I left a message listing the above. I got a call back from him a bit later. He sounded a bit perplexed. My answers, he said, didn’t make a lot of sense. He wondered if I had misheard the question. He said “I asked you for your definition of an “ANGEL”. Whoops. Not the first time I have spent a lot of time answering a question that wasn’t asked.

I am not sure if it was my defensiveness or insight or a bit of both, but I thought to myself “You know, I am not sure that there is much difference”. Wouldn’t an Angel be an entity who knows and represents me, who has access to resources, people and places I don’t, tries to make me look good, carrying messages from a power greater than myself telling me what I need to know, who has my back, who believes in me, who is protective of me, inspires me, gives me courage to go on, and can take the ‘stuff‘ of my life and make sense of it…… Sounds like the same thing to me.

I was once told that Angels are those people, those moments, those places, those situations that at strategic times, when we most need it, come in to our lives and deliver a message, a gift, a teaching, or a lesson. Some stay a long time, perhaps forever, until we get it. Others, stay just for a far too brief moment in time (too brief, we think at the time). Some of the most profound “Angelic” moments I have experienced have not involved words. They have involved someone reaching out and taking hold of my hand when there were no words that could ease the pain of the moment, or a kiss on my forehead as they were leaving me in a place of great anguish and unremitting pain. Then, there are what I call dark angels. Those people who have been a part of my life, whose method of delivering the ‘lesson’ were through incredibly painful lesions. They were Angels, too, if I look back and see how they helped me grow.

I was reflecting the other day on the number of friends I have ‘lost’ over my life time. About the same time I found an article on some research that had been done that suggested that the average length of a friendship, from beginning to end, is about 7 years. It helped me put in to perspective that perhaps these ‘losses’ were merely the coming and going of ‘Angels”. I also wondered if the pain that I have felt in losing these friends was the cost of trying to hold on to that “Angel”, (taking hostages?) rather than accepting with grace and appreciation the gift of their presence for that finite period of time and then letting them go. They have others to teach. I have to make room for new teachers.

Angels and Agents. Not that much of a difference to me, Dave.

A long time ago, seems like a lifetime ago really, I spent part of a summer on the Navajo (that’s our name for them, they call themselves the “Dine’ ”) reservation in the middle of the Northern Arizona desert. I went there, I thought, to help.   As those things often do, it ended up helping change my life in ways I could never imagine.

I had been teaching a series of high school classes about the Native American people. Teaching about their philosophy, culture and history before the Europeans came; their subsequent American experience, as well as what life was like for them in the modern world. One day, as I was talking about the abysmal conditions they live with, Jill, one of my students, said “You seem to care so much about all of this, why don’t you actually do something about it, rather than just talking about it?”

Kids do that, you know. They tend to call it as they see it. My first thought was “What a creep, who does she think she is challenging me”? “I am doing something about it, I am teaching you about it”. Then I realized she was right. Talking about it wasn’t really doing anything about it. So I began looking in to how I might take some of my time, talent, and energy and use it to directly help.

I discovered that the church I had been attending was part of a denomination that had, as a part of their outreach strategy, established “Missions” on some of the reservations. I talked my young wife into going with me, and bringing along our toddler son. The concept and project grew. Some of my students (Including Jill) volunteered to go. A church youth group in Colorado agreed to join us. Since my wife and I were both teachers, the idea was to do sort of a “Head Start” type program for a couple of weeks for the children of the village. In those days, many of the Native student’s first exposure to English was at age 5 or 6, on their first day of school. We were told that the people in the little village of Chilchinbeto would be very welcoming and appreciative of our efforts. So we set up a “summer School” staffed by all of us.

My wife, son and I arrived before any of the other “helpers”. As we drove in pulling our recently purchased camper into the little village, there was not a person in sight. As we began to set up camp a gentle rain that lasted several hours began to fall. Although it seemed like people were around, and I had the feeling that we were being observed, there was not a soul to be seen, not a sound to be heard. It seemed as if even the dogs wanted to pretend that we were not there.

The next morning Charlie Billy, a native man who was the head of the local mission came to greet us and show us where we could set up our ‘school’. People of the village were moving around, going from place to place doing their business as if we weren’t around. The Colorado youth group showed up by bus later than morning having met up with the students from our home town. We began making plans to start doing our thing the next morning.

The experience was a fantastic one for the children of the village and those of us who were there to provide the experience. We learned much more than we were able to teach. Though, materialistically, these people had very little, there was a spirit and a joy of life they possessed that was beyond anything I had ever experienced. It was simply contagious. Their sense of humor, their appreciation for the most simple of gifts, (our time and attention), their curiosity, their willingness to share and their unconditional acceptance of us made the experience beyond anything I could have imagined.

There are many precious scenes of the “classes” we taught, a couple of which I will mention. I’ll always remember Terri, one of my favorite students from back home, teaching a group of kids French (not English) as they were teaching her their language, and the laughter as they played with the languages.

Another was looking for our son one day and finding him standing in a circle behind a shed with half a dozen other kids his age (3) “sharing” their lollipops with each other, far away from the prying eyes of the moms who might have been appalled at the lack of sanitation in the sharing (there were dogs and desert sand involved in the ‘sharing’ too).

While we were there to give, we all talked each night about how much we were being given by the experience. We loved them and they loved us. I had never experienced such unconditional love. One night as I was walking alone in the desert, I heard myself say “I didn’t know it until now, but this is what I have been looking for, I want to stay and live here”. Then a voice, as clear and loud as if there was someone standing right beside me said “You don’t belong here”. “You now know what it is you are looking for, go find it in your own culture, with your own people”. Sufficiently chastened (and challenged) I realized that quest was to be my spiritual journey (that’s another story) for the rest of my life.

When it came time for us to leave, no one wanted us to go. Some of the village children hid our shoes so we couldn’t leave. The village put on a celebration/thanksgiving feast for us. There was much joy shared and many tears in our parting.

I remarked to one of the elders that I had become close to, how amazed I was that, given their experience of what had historically happened when the dominate culture (people like us) interacted with their people in our ill-advised attempts to “help”, they had been so open and welcoming. He simply said, “Oh, we knew the first day you were coming to bless us and it would be good”. I asked him how he knew that. He said,

“Remember the afternoon you arrived? We were watching you. That’s just what we do. We didn’t know what kind of experience this would be, until it started raining shortly after you arrived You see, rain, for us, is always a blessing. You brought it with you. We knew by its presence, that your coming was a gift from our creator.”

I always remember that on these rainy days.

“That’s a pretty big statement,” I thought. My resistance and defensiveness were called up to the front lines instantaneously. How about where I was born? Who my parents were? What I experienced as a child and as an adult? My schooling? Who I hang out with? Aren’t those REALLY the factors that determine my destiny?

Occasionally when my thinking is challenged like this I allow myself to do a little more looking before I totally slam the door on an idea that is different. What on earth would lead someone to make such a bold statement, inferring that it is the words we use that have the power to determine our destiny? As I thought more about it, some of my own experiences began to percolate up into my consciousness.

I remembered that one of the tools I teach couples I work with is that I ask them to incorporate the phrase “What I make up is…..” For example, “The story that I am making up is that you’d rather watch football with your friends than spend a Sunday afternoon with me.” Saying “The story I make up is…” is different than the more typical judgmental, blaming exchange that begins, “You’d obviously rather be with your friends watching football than with me.” If you were on the receiving end of those statements, guess which one will make a difference that day in how you feel about your relationship? What cumulative effect would one or the other have on the destiny of a relationship?

How about the global words we use? (Well, maybe not you, but I would have to plead guilty of playing the King and Queen of Global Words; “ALWAYS” and “NEVER”). Add to that the magic ace of global words, “You”, and I have a full (dysfunctional) house.

“You never help around the house”, “I am always picking up after you”, “You are never satisfied”, “I can never do anything to please you” “No matter what I do it is never good enough”, “I never get credit from you for anything”. “You are always complaining about something”.

I can see how using words like this will determine my destiny if I use them with my wife this evening or any evening. Long term, I see how they have the capability to destroy my relationship. Determining my destiny indeed. And my family’s. That’s why my wife and I have agreed that we can call “foul” if either of us plays any of those global word cards in our conversations.

I was working with a young engaged couple recently. Being discussed was what is known as a prenuptial agreement. It is a legal document that they were being asked to sign, by their advisors, that would formalize the concept that what each of them had, in terms of worldly goods going into the marriage, would be theirs to hold independently throughout the marriage, rather than using what they each had and creating one marital “pool” of money and resources. What they create together would be theirs to hold jointly. They were struggling. Actually, they were at an impasse. After listening to them talk about it all, it seemed to me the actual word “Prenuptial” and the negative connotations (of undetermined origin) that term had for them was the problem. They were, it seemed, actually on the same page in terms of what they thought they wanted to do financially, what they thought was fair, etc. I suggested that they might be better off to get rid of the word, “prenuptial” and use instead the concept that what they were doing was consciously deciding (unlike most new couples) how they as a married couple, were going to manage their financial resources. They liked that re-frame and were able to quickly come to an agreement that felt right for both of them. Another example of how the words we use can change things.

Using the term “spending plan” instead of the word “budget” has helped some of the people we’ve worked with.

Finally, I remembered my 3rd grade teacher writing the word “Can’t” on a piece of paper and talking to us about the crippling effect of a little four letter word. I don’t remember what she said but I do know that she went to the window, threw it out onto the street and said “We will not use that word anymore in this classroom.”

Destiny followed.

“Capitalism”, the movie. What did I think? Not much. Perhaps I just didn’t get it, but it left me flat. There were some entertaining moments, very funny ones, but those were the best parts of the movie. Not exactly what one hope for when one is trying to make a point. If, in my talks, I would get feedback that suggested the very best parts of it were the jokes I told, I wouldn’t take that as much of a compliment, if, in fact, I was trying to leave the audience with a clear call to action as Michael does in this movie (though I am not sure what he was suggesting that ‘we’ do about it all).

The implication I was left with was “we can’t do anything until capitalism goes away. We are left to be victims of a system that will consume us all. We are powerless (unless we want to start or be part of a revolution that overthrows “Capitalism”), and I would be hard pressed to know where to tell someone they can go to sign up.

What about our own individual choices around all of this? Which of those contribute to the problem? Perhaps that will be the next movie.

If I were to take this movie to heart, I would believe that the source of all our woes is Capitalism and Capitalists. If we got rid of it (and them) everything would be ok.

I once heard of something called “Grossman’s Law”. It goes something like this “For every complex problem, there is a simple, easy to understand, wrong answer”.

I try to remember that.