Resignation

Steve Jobs announced on Wednesday that he was stepping down as CEO of Apple and Seth Godin wrote a 'blog about it.  Being neither a tech-guy nor a sports guy, the Joe DiMaggio analogy was somewhat lost on me from both ends.

But then I did some reading about it.
And then I did some thinking about it.
And then I went to a going-away party for my friend Johnny Shortstuff and his goodwife Sara.
And I have all new thoughts and questions now.

What does it mean for someone to have profoundly impacted your life and then "move on?" 

Are there words strong enough to capture the magnitude of that person's significance to you? 

What should your response to their decision be? 

How do you let them know that the simple matter of their existence in your world has top-to-bottom-revolutionized the way you do business? 

Is it possible to over-state the difference that they've made?

How do you resign yourself to accept that this is necessary and good for them and a natural step in the right direction for their life?

To tell the truth, I don't have a clue.

But I think that, whatever you do, it should be honest and meaningful and overflowing with gratitude.

And I hope I did that tonight.

I love you guys.

Lead Courageously

I've been tossing around some ideas for this week's 'blog and I have absolutely no desire to write any of them down.

It's not so much that I don't want to write at all, it's that I'd rather write about a million other things besides this because, frankly, I don't feel qualified to speak on the subject.

I am, as of this writing, a broke art major behind on his bills with a dead-end job and $30,000 in student loan debt.

What the heck do I know about leadership?

If we define leadership as running a successful company or commanding an army or guiding people to the top of Mount Everest, then I guess I don't know the first thing about it.

But I don't think that's what leadership really boils down to.

Leadership is not about telling people what to do or wearing a special uniform or being "the top guy."


Leading is about doing what you are uniquely positioned to do.

And more than starting companies or winning battles or telling other people what to do and how to do it, there is one thing that I am infinitely qualified above and beyond any other person on the planet to do: 

Make decisions about how my life will operate.

Whether I keep my apartment within a reasonable margin of cleanliness and organization or let it smell like farts and dirty laundry doesn't depend on my girlfriend's actions or what decisions she makes today.

Whether I stay up playing League of Legends or go to bed at a reasonable hour so that I can wake up in the morning with time enough to eat breakfast and take a shower can't be blamed on League of Legends.

Whether I budget my money so that I can get what I want at the grocery store and fix meals at home or spend money I don't have on fast food that isn't nearly as good as it is convenient is totally my call to make.

Why?  Because it's my apartment, and my time, and my money.

There's a temptation to believe that if my decisions don't impact millions of people across the globe, then I'm not really a leader or my decisions don't really matter.

But that's a lie.

John Maxwell says leadership is a spectrum.  On the one side, it's your title that makes you a leader.  On the other, it's your reputation.

If you're using a title to validate your authority ("...because I'm the boss and I said so!"), the only reputation you'll ever have is for being a jerk and a bully.

On the other end, if you build a reputation for being responsible and doing the right thing, what label you operate under doesn't really matter.

So the question isn't "Am I a leader or not?"

It's "Which type of leader am I?"

Accept Responsibility

As I mentioned last week, there's a study at my church beginning in September called "Biblical Manhood" and I'm picking apart the four major points of it between now and the time it starts.

This week's principle is that a real man accepts responsibility.  I thought of some examples for what this might mean.

If I were to get a dog, you might say that he would be my responsibility (also, that he is adorable).  We could also, then, say that it would then be my responsibility to tell my apartment complex that I got a dog and to pay the appropriate pet deposits and fees.   It would also be my responsibility to feed him and to take him to the vet and pick up his messes whenever I took him for walks outside.  All three are different kinds of responsibility: object, obligation, action.

But I don't think that these are the kind of responsibility that Biblical Manhood is referring to.

I think that being "responsible" is a lot like being sober.  For one thing, there's no gray-area for sobriety.  It's pretty much a switch with two positions, and you're either on or you're off.  You don't just kinda use and you're never almost sober.  You either are or you are not.

But I've also come to realize that no matter how long you stay sober, there's never really any point where you stop being an addict.  You may stop acting out of your addictive patterns, but there's always a propensity for you to go back to using and even the most devoted 12-steppers will tell you that you're never really "cured" of it.  You may be sober now, you may be sober 25 years from now, but can't ever take for granted that you'll always be sober.  Sobriety is a choice that you have to make, every single day, for the rest of your life.

In a very similar way, responsibility is not an over-arching condition of your whole person, it's a present state of being.  I can't tally up the total days I've been productive and done the right thing and deem myself "responsible" if the good outweighs the bad.  I'm "responsible" in this moment to do the best I can at whatever's in front of me with whatever resources I have at my disposal.

To put it in practical terms, I first have to accept that I can never get back all the days I've lost to drinking, drugs and pornography and then be willing to do whatever I'm able to move ahead from wherever I happen to be as a result of it all.  

Shame and self-loathing tell me I'm a worthless waste of space and I can never rise above my circumstances.  

The gospel grace of Jesus Christ says that I don't have to live there and I can do different with my life.

Responsibility is learning how to ignore my feelings, accept the truth and leverage that freedom to take action in another direction.

So I guess I should stop asking myself whether or not I am a responsible person and start asking myself whether or not I'm ready to be responsible, where I'm at, right now.

Reject Passivity

I signed up last week for a class at my church called "Biblical Manhood."  It's a study that the senior pastor adapted from a book called Raising a Modern Day Knight, a book I have mostly avoided in the past due to its cheesy-looking cover. 

(Of everything cheesy about it, I think it's George Costanza's shirt sleeve that bothers me most.  Why is George Costanza on a Christian book cover?  What does he have to do with raising a modern day knight?  Is he giving that sword to a child or taking it from a child?  Why would George Costanza have/need a sword?)

The basic premise of the book and/or study is that many of both our societal and personal ills are rooted in faulty definitions of what it means to be a man.  The study defines a man as someone who:

1. Rejects Passivity

2. Accepts Responsibility

3. Leads Courageously

4. Expects God's Greater Reward

Since there are four major points to the study (and I have four posts to fill between now and the time it starts) I wanted to look at each one individually and come to a clearer understanding of where I'm at in each of them before the study gets going, beginning with the first.

First, I looked up some synonyms for "passivity," a few of which are as follows:

Acquiescent, Apathetic, Asleep, Compliant, Docile, Idle, Indifferent, Inert, Latent, Motionless, Nonresistant, Phlegmatic, Quiet, Resigned, Sleepy, Static, Stolid, Submissive, Tractable, Unassertive, Uninvolved, Unresisting, Yielding.

Second, I looked up definitions for "passivity."

1. Not reacting visibly to something that might be expected to produce manifestations of an emotion or feeling.
2. Not participating readily or actively; inactive.
3. Not involving visible reaction or active participation.
4. Inert or quiescent.
5. Influenced, acted upon, or affected by some external force, cause, or agency; being the object of action rather than causing action.

I particularly like that last one.  "Being the object of action rather than causing action."

I struggle a lot with this, as evidenced by even a casual glimpse at some of my old 'blog posts.  They seem to emphasize what Newton's First Law clearly states, namely, that objects in motion tend to stay in motion while objects at rest tend to stay at rest.

As a recovering addict and someone with a tendency toward depression and despair, it's easy to get caught up in that idea and resign myself to hopelessness, feeling (and, thus, believing) that I'll always be a worthless lump and I'm never going to change.

But that ignores the second part of the Newton's Law, which is that objects tend to stay in motion or at rest unless acted upon by an opposite outside force. 

To be perfectly honest, I'd rather not go through with this study.  It's at 6 o'clock on Wednesday mornings (which, I mean, that right there...) and registration is $25 that, frankly, I'd rather spend selfishly.

To do so, however, would be to cut myself off from a significant "outside force."

Rejecting passivity means deciding to do something, even if it's wrong or there's a possibility (or certainty) of failure.  It doesn't necessarily mean recklessly over-committing oneself, but I have the $25 and I can make it to the church at 6 AM on Wednesdays.  I may not want to, but sometimes being a man (and an adult in general) means doing things I don't particularly want to do.

How about you?  What are your outside forces?  Where do you find them?

On Art

I've been trying to broaden my horizons lately by following 'blogs like Seth Godin's and Michael Hyatt's, that take an instructional-yet-encouraging approach toward working, writing, 'blogging and social media.

It helps, too, that they're successful people I've heard of before and admire a great deal.

Thus far, they've helped me gain a better understanding of what a 'blog is and challenged me to shorten my posts, and keep them centered around fewer, stronger, more concrete ideas.  Even in a small amount of time, I feel like it's starting to make a difference.

But those are mechanical things, and mechanics are easy to fix.

The struggle for me is in the soul: 

Why do I have a 'blog?  What is my 'blog about?

Looking over the ground it's already covered and thinking about where I want it to go, I'd say my 'blog is about the relationships between addiction, art, and spiritual growth.  Of the three, I think the middle one is probably the most absent from what's already been done.

It's ironic, really, given the piece of paper I've strategically hung so that it's the first thing one sees when one walks through my front door.  Apparently the University of Texas deems me to be competent in the study of Art.  Why doesn't my 'blog reflect that?  Better yet, why doesn't my life?

Telling people "I'm an artist" invites certain, inevitable questions.  What do I do?  Where have I shown?  What's my main focus?  Who have I worked with?

I studied Art.  I can talk about Art.  I even know how to make some of it.  Whether any of that is actually worth something or not, I have the information.  Isn't that all it takes?

C.S. Lewis wrote, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

And I guess that's what art is for me: it's not just a thing that exists in the universe, it's a way of looking at the world and understanding it better.  It make the intangible a thing to be seen and explored.  It enables the frog to be dissected without having to kill it.

I am a Christian and an American and an artist and a man.  I don't have to be a pastor or the president or show you a painting of my penis for any of those things to be true.  It's hardwired into the fabric of who I am and it's okay for me to say it out-loud.

So then, why is it so difficult to convince myself of something that's already the truth?