Somewhere along the line, I lost my joy. I didn’t realize I’d lost it. I’ve always considered myself to be a joyful person. I laugh easily. I make others laugh. I mean, I suspect I’m like most funny people, my wife gets tired of hearing some of my jokes, as I repeat an observation I think is particularly funny a few too many times. My daughter has started giving me a fake laugh at these moments. She refers to them as a “pity” laugh. There’s no joy in that.
Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay
Obviously, joy is beyond funny. It’s the thrill of a beautiful sunny morning. It’s the delight of rain on the leaves of our red bud tree. It’s my granddaughter taking my hand, unbidden. Recognizing a life filled with wonderful people and still meeting new ones. The garden abloom with dahlias. The arrival of the summer anemones. A perfectly harvested strawberry. The Dodgers on a win streak. It’s not that moments of joy don’t appear. They do. What seems to be missing is the feeling of joy when I try to envision the future as bright. I no longer embody joy. I’m not quite sure what I can do to regain that.
The Dalai Lama says the answer is altruism. And I believe him. But being altruistic toward folks who are transactional. Who believe in retribution. Who are afraid of anything other than them is difficult right now. I know better. But. For example, I don’t feel the slightest compassion for the Israeli government’s actions. In Buddhism, there is compassion and there is idiot compassion. Being compassionate for those creating violence toward others, willfully, no matter their reasoning. That is a form of idiot compassion.
The best answer I can come up with to end this joyless future is magic.
Now, before you shut me down, and cancel your subscription, give me a paragraph or two to explain.
Magic, for me, has always been a transformation by the unexpected
Magic, for me, has always been a transformation by the unexpected. I was never adept at performing traditional forms of magic. As a younger man, I knew a few card and coin tricks, but they were just that, tricks, slight of hand meant mainly for kids. In my mind, I longed to produce illusions that masqueraded as something more, something that were truly mind-bending. Transcendent. I thought if perhaps, my fingers were just a bit more nimble, my distractions more cunning.
What was left to me to discover was a different form of magic, that arose not from the sudden appearance of a flower, but the magic that comes from the beating of an unassuming heart, suddenly enthralled, suddenly connected. OK my wife, Laura, picking me up hitchhiking in Santa Barbara was magic. I had daydreams of her appearing, not necessarily out of a cloud of smoke, but nonetheless, at that moment when she did, a real meeting took place. And that’s what’s missing. That moment of meeting the other, where real magic can emerge. Perhaps that’s where I lost my joy when I stopped being willing to meet the other. Or maybe what’s missing is a willingness to meet, really meet. That’s the moment of interaction. It’s not just a handshake. It’s where you and I recognize our common and connected place in this interconnected life. It’s a very intimate place where I can drop the façade of joy and be joyous. Until then, I believe nothing new can take place, nothing unexpected.
Not being one with great patience, what I know and what I do don’t always coincidence in this case, allowing for the unexpected to merge means not forcing the outcome. Sitting with what is and not getting in the way of the natural interaction of life. Isn’t it natural to meet one’s love hitchhiking? Doesn’t everyone. What emerges from such an unfettered meeting is unpredictable. It contains within it the chrysalis of the new and now, the root of innovation, but it is unmanageable. It has to be allowed. And in that regard, I’m a bit like Veruka in Willy Wonka, “I want it, now!”
Trying to change the world I live in doesn’t always permit a natural and magical emergence. The solutions I turn to, the solutions I fall back on and force onto a situation are often and usually nothing more than more of the same. And when faced with a difficult challenge, I make those same choices again and again. This happens even though I know, the same level of thinking that caused a problem can’t be used to solve it. It’s too hard. I want the answer to appear, now! Magic, right? And I’m disappointed, yet again.
In spite of knowing better, my “go to” has traditionally been a temporary fix that doesn’t solve the underlying problem
In spite of knowing better, my “go to” has traditionally been a temporary fix that doesn’t solve the underlying problem, but which I repeat as a stop gap measure to keep the peace. Pick yer poison. It’s all about the distraction. There are all kinds of ways I can find to avoid, what? the intimacy required to face the truth, that it’s not all about me. Perhaps that is why I feel my joy is lost.
So it’s not just that I’ve turned away from the American nightmare. Choosing to no longer read the news, watch MSNBC, or listen to another Podcast from Heather Cox Richardson. I can’t blame that, any more. It’s not them, it’s us. It’s facing the truth means I am a part of it all. Like it or not. There is no separation between me and them, it, him. And to tell the truth, it scares me. This is why a new way of thinking has become so necessary.
I did the logical thing. I convened a conference on Common Ground and the Commonwealth. Of course, it was only those of us who agreed who ended up joining the conversation. Realizing what was missing, I gave a call to the fiercest rightwing person I knew, my cousin, who I loved dearly. He had always been my brother, and yet I had always described him as being just to the right of Atila the Hun. I explained to him what I was doing, with the hopes that he would be willing to gather 6-8 of his friends on the right to join the conversation. “Much to my surprise he told me “No.”
He had passed the point where conversation, for him, was possible. He saw the next step being bloodshed. It was meant to be scary and it was. It was also before January 6th had become a reality. For him, it already was. There was no meeting possible. Which in my mind meant, there was no possibility of anything new emerging that might make it different. No magic.
I loved this man. He was my brother. He is my brother. So, I eventually tried a different tack. I knew he loved my mother as his own. My mother who was venerated for her love, poetry and ability to meet people and dissolve them with her love. She had always seen this cousin as a son, and she never stopped loving him, no matter how far right he traveled. I started there. “We both love her.”
And he agreed. “if nothing else, we hold that in common.”
He agreed. And then I added, “And we love each other.”
He agreed again. “We share that.”
It forced both of us to reframe our relationship. And something shifted between us. We met in that intimate place. For the next few months, whenever we spoke that was where we started. Not from what we hated, but from what we loved together. It’s been slow. It continues to be slow. But the way to meeting was the common ground. This approach, in and of itself, is nothing new. The late, great, Jimmy Carter used a similar process when he would negotiate a hostage release.
I had also introduced a similar methodology in the pages of Open Boundaries, a book I co-wrote with the late and equally great, Howard Sherman. I called it a “Sustainable Model of Inconceivable Development.” (Open Boundaries, By Howard Sherman and Ron Schultz (Re-Emerge Books, 2022).
I should note, I tried this model out in a very real-life situation with a population of folks living “rough” as the English describe it. Not too surprisingly, it resulted in the start-up of multiple new business ventures that actually took people off the streets. And finally, this process was introduced to Senator George Mitchell, after I had shared it with then Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, my former Congressman. At my request, he passed it on to Mitchell while he was in the middle of negotiating a peace agreement in Northern Ireland. By the way, that agreement still stands. Inconceivable, right?
So, if this methodology works so well, how could I use this Sustainable Model for Inconceivable Development to bring about a new way of thinking for me. One that would, magically, transform my loss of joy?
Then it dawned on me. Suddenly and unexpectedly. I don’t want these essays to become an “organ recital,” but I have written about my recent heart “intervention.” I didn’t realize at the time how drastically that intervention had changed the model of my life. Initially, once the entry point on my wrist healed, I couldn’t tell you if anything were really different. But then the behavior changes began to show up.
I’ve made no secret that I don’t like to exercise, and yet I have dutifully shown up every week for my Pilates session.
I would describe to Laura how this woman with whom I worked was really a witch
I would describe to Laura how this woman with whom I worked was really a witch. I’d walk through the door, and instantly she read my body, seeing right through my vain attempts to look like I was properly aligned. She would then apply her magic as I worked out on the Reformer, (of course it’s called “The Reformer) and we chatted about this and that. And slowly, I began to notice the change. But wait. There’s more.
Next a very dear friend with whom I had spent hours over coffee talking about all things relating to story, revealed herself to be a woman of many talents, one of which was that she taught water aerobics. I repeated my refrain of my dislike of exercise, but it was to no avail. The next thing I knew, I was in the pool, being put through my paces at Karen’s expert command. Together with the Pilates, my mind and body began to change in spite of my ardent protestations.
But it turns out that was just part of the remodeling.
Shortly after our move to Oregon, I was diagnosed by pulmonary physician’s assistant, with adult-onset asthma. Six years later, I finally met with a real pulmonologist who ran a battery of tests and told me, I didn’t have asthma, but a bronchial infection due to an old injury. The bad news was it couldn’t be cured. The good news was it could be mitigated with a rescue inhaler.
When I went to the Internet to learn more, I discovered that this infection had been causing many of the health symptoms I’d been dealing for years. OK, along the way, they discovered my heart issues and fixed that. And that was good. But the real culprit didn’t emerge for another few months.
The Sustainable Model for Inconceivable Development says, when the model changes, I have to change my behaviors to support that new model and I have to also change the rules I follow that sustained the old model. When those adjustments are made, something new emerges out of those interactions that changes the model, again. As I repeat the process, and a few levels down, magically, I am transformed by the unexpected, and the inconceivable emerges.
It turned out between the Pilates, pool and rescue inhaler, my constant feeling like crap had a solution. Together these elements precipitated new behaviors to address this new model of me and the requirement of new rules. And slowly, iteratively, magically, I began to rediscover the joy that had left me. According to the pulmonologist, my bronchial infection may never be healed, but it can be mitigated. And as this new model of me emerged, suddenly new possibilities started showing up as well. And what had once felt inconceivable, gone forever, never to be retrieved, was like a lost puppy suddenly come home. The possibility of joy had wondered back in through the front door.
Now, the sustainable part of the model has to be put in place. Every time the model changes, and it does, with each trip on the reformer or plunge into the pool, I need to revisit my behaviors and the rules that guide them, adjusting them here and there, accordingly. And as promised, the magic happens and I am transformed by the unexpected. But even more importantly, joy returns.