Practical Wisdom Archive

I have a friend named Mario. We’ve maintained a close friendship for more than twenty years even though we don’t live in the same city or see each other often. I met him when he was still in high school—and for as long as I can remember, Mario has struggled with identity issues and self-esteem.

He tried to make his way in the world like everyone else, but kept failing. He’d get a decent job, but could never keep it. He’d make good money for awhile, but then would find some reason to quit. Mario spent most of the last twenty years wandering from job to job and town to town.

And the older he got, the more successful his friends became, which started to be a real source of frustration for him. He watched them buy real-estate and accrue assets while he was still working as a waiter, living in a rented apartment at forty years old.

And yet all of Mario’s friends knew he wasn’t made for the corporate or business world. His perspective on things was always completely “out of the box!” He excelled in any area that involved creativity. What my friend Mario didn’t know is: God designed him to be an artist, a poet, an esthete; one of those people who lives outside the box of conventional society, whose perspective is priceless to all of us trapped inside of it.

But he kept fighting his own nature; trying to make himself conform to be more like “regular” people. Mario spent most of his life struggling with bouts of depression, questions of value and issues of self-worth. He kept trying to integrate himself into “regular” society.

A few months ago I ran into him in Miami. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time so we were catching up on what had transpired in our lives over the last few years. I was telling him about my own success and how well things were going in my life. I told him about my first book, Your Soul’s Assignment.

As I was talking, I could see the look of frustration building in his eyes. He had no career success story of his own to share that he felt would compare to mine. Sensing his irritation, I said to him:
“When are you going to accept yourself for who you are? Stop looking at other people and feeling inadequate because you’re not like them. You’re not like other people. You’re never going to be ‘normal.’ Start defining your value by what you create, by who you are, not by how much stuff you own, or how much money is in your 401k.”

After our conversation, he emailed me and said: “In that one conversation, you cleared up issues I’ve struggled with my whole life!” And all I really did is give him permission to be what God created him to be.

Every artist I’ve ever known has gone through times when they seriously doubted their worth; times when they felt either completely lost or totally inadequate. Every highly creative person I’ve known has struggled and fought to stay afloat emotionally at some point in their lives. And maybe that’s the other side of creativity, like the other side of a coin. Perhaps you can’t have one without the other. Maybe the passion necessary to create and fill your soul with those ecstatic creative moments is the same passion that can bring you down lower than most people ever go.

We want to separate out the good and take only the characteristics that we’re proud of; the ones we want to show everyone—and then leave the rest behind. But life just doesn’t work that way. We can’t divide ourselves up into little parts. We have to accept the whole package.

We tend to think of ourselves as having good qualities and bad qualities, hoping the good outweighs the bad.  We want to cultivate our good qualities and overcome, or fix what we think is bad or wrong. But we can’t put ourselves through a sifter taking out only what we want to show others, what we like about ourselves and admire.  The soul refuses to be compartmentalized or divided.

It’s best to take a more holistic approach, without passing judgment.  What we call our assets and defects have all been assembled together for a reason.  They make up the full picture of who we are, of who God designed us to be.  Our passion to create may be balanced by a tendency to lose focus or ambition.  Our ability to hyper-focus on a project may be balanced by a complete disinterest in what others say is important.  Our profound thoughts may be balanced with profanity. 

When these “dark sides” of our soul arise from within us, we want to squelch them or pretend they’re not there.  We only want to show people the good side. We don’t want them to see us depressed, angry or ugly.  No one wants to be seen cursing out the neighbor.

But the “dark side” won’t be ignored.  It demands incorporation into our lives so it forces its way in whether we like it or not. We can’t live divided lives for very long.  The soul is designed to be authentic.  And authenticity requires integrating ALL of what we are, both the good and what we call, bad.  The truth is:  Nothing is really “bad.”  That’s just a judgment call.  There are no “bad” feelings, only ones we don’t want to acknowledge or express.   

Once you accept yourself completely and realize you’re not always going to be kind and loving, or spiritual all of the time, it makes it a lot easier to accept others for who they are and to forgive them when they do the same dumb things you’ve done.  It also makes it virtually impossible to judge them harshly for their own struggles to integrate mind, soul and body.

We are a collection of contradictions, a hodge-podge of virtue, innocence, cruelty and vulgarity; a perfect spiritual being in a defective human world.  One part of us is profound and the other profane!  And somewhere in between, perfect balance occurs.

So here’s my advice:  Stop trying to hide the parts you don’t like and feeling ashamed of them.  They make up the full picture of who you are.  And stop pretending to be good and pious all of the time.  Trust me, nobody’s that virtuous—–Even the Pope, pees you know!  And trust that at the very center of your being, it’s all good! And if you can see that good in yourself and come to a place of self-forgiveness and acceptance, it will make it a lot easier to see it in others and to forgive them too.

I saw an old Star Trek episode that teaches a powerful lesson about self-acceptance.  In it, Captain Kirk was beaming up from an obscure planet and something went wrong with the transporter.  It seems like something was always going wrong with that transporter.  In his pretend-Scottish accent, Scotty would say: “The bloody thing is jammed and I can’t control it.”

Somehow when the Captain beamed back to the ship, he was divided into two distinctly different individuals.  Now there were two Captain Kirks dividing his character and personality in half.  One got all of the kind and gentle qualities like compassion and love, the “good” Kirk.  And the other got all of the aggression and passion, the so called, “bad” Kirk. 

Over the course of the episode, it was discovered that the “good” Kirk was filled with so much sympathy for everyone that he was completely inadequate as a leader.  He was incapable of making decisions.  To put it bluntly, he was a wimp!  Without the passion and aggression of the “bad” Kirk he couldn’t function.

So they put them both on the transporter and turned some knobs and through the skills of Mr. Scot and the magic ofHollywood he came back as one person, with the qualities of both the good and bad Kirk fully reintegrated.

And the lesson is:  We need all the parts of who we are to make up what we are.  We can’t just take out the things we like and pretend the rest doesn’t exist.

The truth is:  There’s a part of each of us that’s really good and honorable, pure and loving.  But there’s also a part that’s not kind, a part that’s sometimes impatient or rude.  There’s a part of everyone that wants to don a white robe and walk on the beach barefoot, releasing peace-doves into the air.  And there’s a part that wants to throw on a pair of tight, leather pants and jump on a Harley!

One minute we can be in church saying “Namaste” to everyone, recognizing God in all that we see and the next minute in the car cursing at the person who just cut us off in traffic yelling out the window, “Get out of the way you asshole!”

When it comes to a spiritual being trying to live in a human world, we are a collection of contradictions and that’s a good thing!  That’s exactly the way our creator designed it to be.

Someone said the true test of intelligence is the ability to consider any idea without being offended.  But I say:  The true test of wisdom is to be able to live with paradox, without insisting that it be one way or another.  Sometime it’s not one way or another, sometime it’s one way and another!

We’re not good people or bad people.  Things just aren’t that black and white.  We’re good people who do bad things sometimes.  There aren’t geniuses or idiots.  There are geniuses that act like idiots sometimes and idiots that are capable of great genius.