Molested by Obligations

“If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are.  It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint.  And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: “That’s a good problem to have,” or “Better than the opposite.”

Tim Kreider in The New York Times

Thus begins one of most thought provoking polemics of modern life I’ve read in ages.  And though primarily aimed at Americans, it could just as well be leveled at us here in SA.

At the risk of insulting you:  if you’ve caught yourself so much as murmuring the above in recent weeks you should be ashamed of yourself.  And if you don’t like my tone that’s fine, I invite you to stop reading and go no further.  But before you go, why not hop across to Tim’s column a read that instead?  Click here.

Still with me?  Thanks.  I heard a very sad story this week.

For a few weeks, a friend of mine had been meaning to have drinks with an old business partner.  Their appointment was on then it was off – mostly due, by his admission, to my friend’s suffocating work schedule.  Finally the two agreed to meet each other for drinks a few Mondays back.  The day in question arrived and with it the news that Gary had died the day before in a Cape Town hotel.  Naturally my friend was gutted and is still trying to deal with the guilt of blowing his friend off so repeatedly.

Why are we so busy?  Why, as Tim Kreider puts it, are we so “molested by obligations”?  If we knew just how much of our God-given capacity our busy-ness is withholding from the world and those around us, surely we would think twice before enslaving ourselves to it?

In writing the bestseller “How the mighty Fall”, Jim Collins spent years investigating the causes behind the collapse of some of America’s most successful businesses.  One factor was what he called “the undisciplined pursuit of more” – or a tendency to grasp for profits in a manner that is discontinuous with the founding philosophy of the concern.  Merck Pharmaceuticals was one such company.  An unrelenting obsession with a rheumatism drug called Vioxx became so overpowering that it eventually diluted the real power of Merck’s purpose-driven philosophy and wrought havoc with its share price.  

Which brings me to one of the most challenging blogs I’ve read in ages…Greg McKeown’s “The Disciplined Pursuit of Less”.  In it he asks:

"Why don't successful people and organizations automatically become very successful?  One important explanation is due to what I call "the clarity paradox," which can be summed up in four predictable phases:

Phase 1: When we really have clarity of purpose, it leads to success. 

Phase 2: When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities.

Phase 3: When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts.

Phase 4: Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.

Curiously, and overstating the point in order to make it, success is a catalyst for failure."

McKeown goes on to describe one exception to this rule - world-renowned oceanographer Enric Sala.  Over the period of several decades, Sala strategically resigned from a number of very good jobs until he'd manoeuvered into the one which most aligned with his strengths and desires – his dream job.

“The price of his dream job was saying no to the many good, parallel paths he encountered”

Having digested the writings of the three authors referenced above, two things are clear:  

Firstly, we are seldom content with “enough” – what’s true of big companies is true of individuals too.  When last did you walk away from an income opportunity because there was actually more value in not working?  If you're like me, it's been a while.

Secondly, we are too easily pleased with “good” jobs, possibly because we have never stopped to dream (as Enric Sala did) that the “excellent” is truly within our reach.  Yet “good” is the enemy of “excellent” - as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “while everything might be permissible, not everything is beneficial…while everything is permissible, not everything is constructive”.

Did the writer of Proverbs 13 have any of this in mind when he spoke about our God given desires becoming a “tree of life”?  A tree which, under the right conditions and with the right attention provides emotional strength, financial strength, wisdom and a mind that’s at ease?

If so, what choices do you need to make to get that tree in order?  

Arrogance or something else?

With the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics only hours away, I want to reflect on an aspect of the games that’s been getting a lot of airtime lately – the reactions of the medal winners, Usain Bolt in particular.

In the wake of the Jamaican 4x100m victory, I posted some remarkable statistics attesting to the strength and depth of the island’s pool of sprinters.  I was annoyed, (but not surprised) by the ensuing vitriol for the Jamaican team’s celebrations and those of Usain Bolt in particular.  “He’s an arrogant SOB,” quipped one person while someone else sided with Carl Lewis’ speculations that the Jamaicans had been doping all along.

In the wake of a Jamaican 1 2 3 in the 100m dash, Bolt was heavily criticized for taking a camera off a journalist and recording the moment for posterity.  

Picture courtesy of The Guardian

Why are we so quick to label confidence as arrogance?  Though there is a fine line between the two, I believe there’s a clear demarcation.  So let’s look at two Olympic happenings that, at least for me, helped chalk up the boundary.

The women’s 100m hurdles.  American and former world champion Lolo Jones places fourth behind compatriots Dawn Harper and Kelly Wells who manage a silver and a bronze.  Later in an NBC interview the two medal winners express their disgust at how Jones’s defeat is getting more airtime than their second and third place achievements.

US Athlete Lolo Jones.  

Picture courtesy of nationalconfidential.com

It turns out that Jones – a devout Christian and beautiful to boot – has been on the media “A” list for some time now.  Earlier this year, after tweeting that preparing for the Olympics was nowhere near as hard as preserving her virginity, the media spotlight turned on her with an intensity that few other members of Team USA experienced in the run up to the games.  

In the news industry, it’s the newsmen who decide what’s newsworthy, a fact that seems to have either eluded or been spitefully ignored by Jones’ fellow teammates.  Rivalry between sportsmen and women is to be expected – but jealousy over a fellow team member getting more media attention than you – especially when you won a medal – well that’s arrogance of the highest order.

Then of course there’s Usain Bolt and lesser-known Olympian Robert Harting.  Thanks to a few thoughtful journalists, we have an alternative explanation to the allegations of arrogance we’ve been hearing all along.  Of Bolt et al, Tim Adams of The Guardian says the following:

In among all the choreographed celebrations … there has always been just a trace of an emotion that it is hard to imagine the great sprinter owning up to: relief. Relief that his gift remains intact.  Relief that the gods continued to smile on him on this the biggest stage … Few athletes appear to show as much joy in victory as Bolt, but like all the greatest sportsmen you guess he is fuelled equally by a raging fear of defeat…

Though never televised, the reaction of German discus thrower could attract as much criticism as the Jamaican speedster.  Upon winning the Gold medal, Robert Harting ripped off his shirt, draped himself in his country’s flag and began bounding over hurdles which had been set up for the women’s 100m event.  Instead, Tony Manfred of Business Insider described Harting’s reaction as one of “adrenaline fueled passion and child-like joy”. 

Discus Gold Medal Winner, Germany's Robert Harting

Picture courtesy of Business Insider

So, perhaps what some have labeled “arrogance” is in fact a sublime form of relief alloyed with the unfettered and eruptive joy of vindication.  Which leaves one final question:  why does it make some people uncomfortable? 

Are we really that squeamish about success, particularly that of the inordinately gifted individual, the one with whom we could never hope to compete anyway?  Have we forgotten that the Olympics apart from being the rarefied litmus test of going faster, higher and further are a celebration of the human spirit too?

One Facebook friend wrote that the Brits actually loved the Jamaicans for their exaggerated celebrations and said, “their arrogance was not taken seriously”.  

Interestingly, she also said this:  “We Brits find it easier to fail than to show off”.

It was a courageous admission though probably not limited to the Brits.

Living Expansively

It’s been a week since I heard the news of Lukas’ death in Alaska’s Atigun Gorge.  Since Olaf’s final post on the expedition’s Facebook page, the details surrounding the tragic event are now widely known.

As for me, I’ve been reflecting this week on why this story affected me the way it did.   Let me make a confession:  I barely knew Lukas.  My wife and I probably only met him 2 or 3 times and then only “shared” him in a larger crowd.  Though we were Facebook friends, the only contact I had with him in 3 years was to request his secret Lamb shank recipe a few Christmases back.  So why the preoccupation with his death this past week?

It could be that the story bore strong parallels with the movie “Into the Wild” – and a book of the same name written by John Krakauer.  In that poignant case however, the drama surrounded a young college student’s somewhat reckless sojourn in the wilds of Alaska.  But since Lukas was always meticulously prepared for his adventures and already highly experienced in extreme and hostile environments, this could not explain my sadness fully.

Another reason might be that I actually contacted Lukas via Facebook just three days before his death to wish him well for his birthday and to invite him on a trekking holiday in Nepal this September.  If anyone would accept such an invitation it would be he.  But in spite of the uncanny timing, this explanation falls short too. 

A third explanation seems to resonate more deeply.  Not since opening a Facebook account 6 years ago have I seen the medium serving a community more powerfully than it did last week.  It wasn’t just the innumerable and heartfelt condolences on his Facebook wall.  It was the fact that for a few very moving days, people from all over the world; regardless of race, language, gender or creed came together in a messy yet sincere effort to not only console one another but to genuinely assist each other in celebrating the life of a human being who had touched them in so many ways.  If ever there was a sincere and  spontaneous celebration of shared humanity this was it.

Moreover – and I admit I may be reading too much into things – it was as though each post bore the telltale signs of self-examination.  While none should aspire to become a carbon copy of this unique individual, his death served as a blunt yet timely interrogation:  what is stopping me from living as generously, urgently, courageously and expansively as he lived? 

Mindful of the persisting sense of loss I find myself wrestling with a question: Can a man achieve more through his death than he did through his life?  

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

John 15

Troubled as we remain over the fact that he is gone and haunted by the wasteful and potentially avoidable nature of his demise, this tragedy has produced “many seeds”.  Indeed, is not each Facebook update and tear shed a separate sowing?

Who knows what he would say to this from the vantage point of eternity?  For one thing, it is quite likely that he is laughing over what happened, his fall no more to him than it would be to us had we tripped over the cat.   As the Great World War I poet Wilfred Owen wrote in stirring “Spring Offensive”

Of them who running on that last high place

Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up

On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge,

Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge,

Some say God caught them even before they fell.

For another, he would almost certainly encourage us to reach higher.  As Paul wrote to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 6: 12 - The Message Translation)

I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life.  We didn’t fence you in.  The smallness you feel comes from within you.  Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way.  I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives.  Live openly and expansively!

Or as C.S. Lewis wrote in “The Last Battle” – “Further up and further in!”

Post Script

A lot of the time we tend to define success in terms of how we'd like our epitaph to read.  The Bible is fairly clear that this is like putting the cart before the horse.  Psalm 37 clarifies that we only get the desires of our heart when we "delight in the Lord", when we "seek his face" - when we prioritise the Kingdom ahead of our earthly ambitions.  Viktor Frankl said:

"Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.  For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.  Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success:  you have to let it happen by not caring about it.  I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge.  Then you will live to see that in the long run - in the long run, I say! - success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it"

Into the Wild

Alaska has always been one of the world’s last frontiers for adventurers.  For generations and for different reasons, men have hurled themselves at its wild interior, often paying the ultimate price for doing so.   One such man was a part time doctor and full time adventurer named Lukas Grobler.

I met Lukas in May 2009.  He visited our church on Easter Sunday and immediately turned heads – though mostly those of the women amongst us.  Lukas was a striking man with an imposing build.  To best describe him I steal verbatim from F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby":

“He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.  It faced – or seemed to face – the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour.  It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey”

I’ve met tough and adventurous people in my time though none of them come close to Lukas.  He always went big and moreover, did things in style.  Before a brief spell in general surgery at one of Durban’s hospitals, he had completed an unsupported winter traverse of Southern Greenland with a Norwegian companion.  He was also an aspiring bow hunter and keen horseback rider.  Lukas was fastidious about food and baulked at anything that even remotely resembled a short cut in the kitchen.  I remember him once taking 24 hours to roast a leg of lamb and then forbidding his guests to bring any form of snack to dinner for fear of it spoiling their appetites.  Instead he laid on a perfectly grilled kudu loin which he sliced so thinly you could almost see the sunset through the pieces.  In short, he was a man who knew how to suck the marrow out of life.

But back to Alaska.  As far as I’ve been able to work out, Lukas and his Norwegian companion Olaf Schjoll had their sights set on an un-supported trek across the inhospitable northern part of the country.  The journey would start at the Canadian border and end 1600 kilometers away on the shores of the Bering Sea, a stone’s throw from the eastern tip of Siberia.  Between them lay the formidable Brooks Range, a 1000-mile mountain chain that, according to Wikipedia, has only been traversed by a handful of people.  Intending to live almost entirely off the land, the pair set off on June 21 equipped only with  as much food as they could carry, fishing tackle and Browning hunting rifle.  A photograph taken on June 20th shows Lucas in characteristic pose; standing astride the border separating Alaska and Canada, larger than life and looking like a modern day Grizzly Adams.

With the aid of a satellite device, Schjoll kept a meticulous blog in which he described the hills, rivers flora and fauna as well as the escalating hardships that came with the hostile terrain and inclement sub-Antarctic weather.  

On July 15th, he bemoaned the constant hunger and resulting loss of weight: 

“…we are starting to get terribly thin…we must have more food in one way or another!”

On July 17th, he described the mood between himself and Lukas as “sharp” remarking that they had argued on a number of issues.  

On July 20th, they discovered a ramshackle cabin and a modest stash of expired food.  The owner, it seems, had not been there since 2006.  Thanks to this small mercy they lived the good life for a few days, drawing from the cabin’s stash and augmenting it with trout caught in a nearby lake.  For a brief moment, a certain joy returned to the journey though Schjoll wrote, “I realize that the idea of self-sufficient trip has failed badly”.  

Two days later they celebrated Lukas’ birthday.

Friday July 27:  I stared at Schjoll's blog post in disbelief. 

“There is no easy way to say this: the expedition through the Brooks Range stopped yesterday, when Lukas Grobler died after a fall from a mountain cliff, into a river, Atigun Gorge”

A brief article on the Reuters newswire confirmed that the accident had occurred on Wednesday 25th July about 400 kilometres southeast of the town of Barrow and that Schjoll had used a satellite telephone to call for help.  It went on to say that the US Coast Guard found Lukas' body about a mile downstream from where he had fallen.

I hurried over to Lukas’ Facebook wall – already littered with condolences - more already than I was prepared to count.  The mood was (and still is at the time of this writing) one of complete sorrow and disbelief.  Someone had posted a picture of Rembrandt’s masterpiece “The Return of the Prodigal Son”.  The caption read: 

“As we mourn today, angels rejoice! Lukas Cornel Grobler is home with the Father!”

It was Lukas’ favourite Bible story and he spoke of it often during the brief time we knew him.  “Sometimes I’m the son – sometimes I’m the brother” – he would say.  He was an avid reader of anything written by C.S. Lewis - and perhaps because of this, someone had posted Brooke Fraser’s  hauntingly beautiful “C.S.  Lewis Song”:

If I find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy,

I can only conclude that I was not made for here…

For we, we are not long here

Our time is but a breath, so we better breathe it

Lucas isn't the first to succumb to the perils of the Alaskan Wilderness.  But it's hard to imagine that any of her victims influenced as many as he did in his short life.

Farewell Lukas.  You certainly made the most of the breath you had.  And though we only knew you a short time you left your mark. 

 Onwards!  Upwards!  Higher!

The Atigun Gorge where Lukas died

You are not in control

In 1998 adventurer Bear Grylls became one of the youngest people ever to climb Mt Everest.  When asked how it felt to have conquered the world's highest mountain, he said: 

“I didn’t conquer Everest:  Everest allowed me to crawl up the one side and stay on the peak for a few minutes”

I read these words while taking a six-day break last week in Zimbabwe.  Zim is hardly a paragon of stability – in fact if you were an expatriate you might accurately describe it as a “hardship post”.  No one – rich or poor - banks on having running water and the electricity supply is similarly tenuous. Yet strangely many have adapted to this.  Residential properties in the more affluent suburbs almost always boast a bore-hole (or at very least some form of water storage system) as well as a generator.  Such people show that managing instability and unpredictability, at least to a point, is possible. 

But there is a point beyond which the illusion of control wears thin.  Where the forces that ultimately determine the extent of one’s wellbeing are just too titanic, unrelenting and malignant to counteract  with one’s resources.

From the vantage point of this relatively un-newsworthy third world nation, I reflected on some of the things that were making world headlines.  The Euro Zone Crisis, stubbornly impervious to any form of intervention.  The worsening relations between Turkey and Syria and the new leadership in Egypt - both with the potential to profoundly impact the global power balance.  And what about global warming?  Seriously, much as I try to do my bit, will my meagre contributions matter in the long run?  Not while America and China keep farting stuff into the atmosphere the way they do.

I found myself pondering this amidst the stoical majesty of Domboshawa Hill, an impressive granite monolith forged umpteen years ago by forces either too ancient or complex to describe here.  And with respect to those headlines, I sensed the powerlessness that the poet Wilfred Owen felt in the face of the “monstrous anger” of World War I:

“It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which titanic wars had groined”

Suddenly I felt like an ant tenuously treading the delicate meniscus of a puddle, aware that at any second the surface tension could give way.  Similar to the indebtedness Bear Grylls felt towards Mt Everest, I felt more keenly than ever that my place on this mountain called Life is more an outcome of divine permission and goodness than anything else.

“Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

James 4: 13 to 15

How I lost 10 years of my life

When I was 24 I ended up in a bad relationship.  I say, “ended up” as though it was something that just happened to me.  The reality is I went in with both eyes open.  The girl in question was 2 months pregnant having rebounded from a highly volatile and misguided relationship with another man.  Though two family members questioned whether it would work, I blundered on regardless, imagining I could make more of the faulty building material than others could.   In short, I would be the exception to the rule.

2 weeks after my 25th birthday, the child was born and I became a de facto dad.  We got married 18 months later.   3 years after that; the marriage was on the rocks and in April 2001, it went uncontested to the divorce courts.  It was only in 2003 that I could truly say I’d re-discovered the path I was meant to be on in the first place and with it, the will to really live again.  In all, nearly 10 years of my life had swirled heedlessly down the plughole amidst a fog of aimless conflict and bitterness.

I had some part to play in it all.  I was quick tempered and at times, a certifiable arsehole.  Also, In believing the fraught foundations could sustain the weight of a lifelong partnership, I had reduced the thing to a simplistic, weak-willed cocktail of noble intentions and romantic illusions.

“The prudent see danger and take refuge – but the simple keep going and suffer for it” 

– Proverbs 27: 12

The other night Lisa and I watched a series of challenging talks by Andy Stanley on the topic of life’s destinations.  The central message Stanley calls “The Principle of the Path”: good intentions are always trumped by the path in life you choose – your direction determines your destination not your good intentions.  

“You can have a plan for a beach holiday in Miami, you can pile your car high with swimming gear and surfboards – but if you go north on I 85 instead of south you won’t be having a beach holiday anytime soon”

We were suitably chastened by this.  How much are we basing our direction in life on the theoretical compass bearing of a well-intentioned wish list rather than on concrete actions that actually lead to the desired destination?  How often do we take on the practical, hard-as-nails challenge of marrying action with sentiment?  Are we viewing everyday life critically enough to identify the hidden traps and pitfalls that might take us off the path?

We watched Andy’s DVD with a couple who has recently lost everything in a bad business deal and who are having to make a fresh start.  The wife insisted they’d seen the DVD before.  The husband had no recollection of it and wondered why.  “Because it was 2 years ago and everything was hunky dory back then”.  Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians:  “if you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall”

Mercifully many of the intangibles I lost through the winnowing process of divorce have been restored to me and I am living an abundant life.   This is thanks to my precious wife Lisa and the God of Grace who presides over our marriage.  

But the Principle of the Path remains a chilling warning nonetheless.

Are Winners Overrated?

 “History is written by the Victors,” said Winston Churchill and few of us would disagree. 

Indeed, this would apply not just to history but also to popular culture where a minority of front-runners set the pace and who the rest of us – at least for the most part - look up to and often seek to emulate.  But what gives society’s “winners” (apart from the permission we give them) the special privilege and prerogative to set the bar the way they do?

Yesterday I watched the movie “Moneyball”, a biographical drama about baseball visionary Billy Beane.  As general manager of the Oakland Athletics, Beane is the guy who scouts for and selects the best baseball talent that the club’s money can buy.  In 2002, faced with severe budgetary constraints (relative to teams like the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox), he joined forces with a Yale economics graduate to develop an entirely new way of looking at player selection. 

“The problem with baseball”, asserts his brainy side-kick, “is that clubs buy players when they should be buying wins”.  His hypothesis was that while richer clubs were spending large sums of money on superstars – big hitters, base stealers, the guys who create theatre and build match attendance – a large pool of less explosive but nonetheless competent players  (overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws) were readily available at a lower price.   And so while the club could no longer afford superstars like Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi, it could conceivably “recreate” their influence on the field through a composite of lower profile players.

And so Beane and Brand set about creating a team from, as the latter refers to it, “an island of misfit toys”.  A 37-year-old batting legend past his prime and with less than a year of baseball left in him.  An injured catcher who could no longer excel in his former position but who could bat and keep first base.  A little known pitcher with a highly unorthodox throwing style.  In short, the breakthrough for a cash-strapped club like the Oakland A’s, lay in looking at performance stats from an entirely different angle.  But would it work?

The record reflects that the A’s had the longest winning streak in Baseball history that year – 20 straight wins.  All this at a cost of 250 000 payroll dollars per game while the Yankees were paying over $1.2m apiece for their victories.  It was an extraordinary achievement – one that earned Beane a job offer from the Red Sox worth $12.5m.  Satisfied with being the guy who had turned Baseball selection upside down, he stayed with Oakland.  But In 2004 the Red Sox – who had swiftly embraced Beane’s selection philosophy, broke an 86-year World Series drought.  I was in Boston when it happened – an eye-witness to a euphoria that might have rivaled the end of two World Wars combined.  Two days after the win, 5 million Bostonians lined the city’s streets to welcome their beloved team back from St Louis.

So maybe history isn’t exclusively written by the victors.  Yet such examples are so few and far between that we’re unlikely to see things differently for some time to come.  In the corporate world alone, we’re surrounded by organisations that approach people management the way rich baseball clubs did back in 2001.  To say nothing of flawed education systems and top-heavy, self-interested governmental policy.  The result is almost always the same – the orthodox talent rises to the top while the rarer yet quieter strengths are slowly suffocated before being ejected from the system entirely.

In honour of his achievements and the lesson he has taught me, I dedicate Apple’s legendary advertisement to Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane.