Where My Book Will Be

I like to go to book stores, and find the exact spot my book will be when it's published.

 I believe that imagining it in store after store will help.


It seems to. I have an agent interested!

"Tired of Having the Same Old Argument" is one step closer to taking its rightful place on those shelves...

The Hippocratic Oath of Love

 

You know the deal, doctors are supposed to live by this oath: “Do no harm.” 

The rest of us have a similar agreement, we call it the Golden Rule:  “Do not do unto others what you would not want done to you.” 

Here’s my new oath for Love: “I never want my love to make anyone’s life smaller.”

Like the other oaths, it sounds simple, but is stunningly challenging to put into practice.

When the Police Roll In

First, the sadness. It is as if the rubber bullets buffeted my heart. The LA police’s tank rolled over my happiness.

Okay, what part of me is like the greed that ordered that holocaust; is like the glee that ripped flimsy tents and spewed free food in the mud? When has destruction seemed the only and right course inside of me? When have I seen Truth and vulnerability and compassion, and responded with hatred and anger and violence?

When I am in the throes of terror (wrongly) that the only way I can get the thing I really need is by fighting for it. When my thoughts fall down a bottomless well of despair into my own childhood night terrors. When it seems I’m living a life-and-death primal jungle struggle that can only end with one winner standing.

No matter how much stuff I have piled up in my life, it seems there is a part of myself that is still in that jungle, fighting for his life against some unknown enemy.

It is the “unknown” quality of that enemy which is so insidious.

It allows us to project it on anyone or anything. It strips away the thin veneer of society and tears the fabric of our civilized life, and pulls us all the way back to the primal ooze.

How do we speak our desire for fairness, without scaring the warriors back into fight or flight?

Finding the YES in their NO

Inside every “No” is a “Yes” waiting to come out.

Here’s how to find it.

Since all communication is an attempt to get needs met, and since all needs are life-affirming and always come from positive intention, when someone says “No” they are communicating something positive and life-affirming: a need of theirs.

Clearly, the thing you asked them to do (your strategy) doesn’t meet their need.

So here’s a multiple choice question about what you can do, given this new understanding:

1. Judge them for being uncooperative
2. Repeat your request louder
3. Explain in greater detail why your strategy is so good at meeting your needs
4. Get curious about what need of theirs is up


If you picked 1, 2 or 3, you’re in the majority. And what you probably will get most of the time is an argument with both people feeling hurt or dissatisfied.

If you picked option 4, you’re likely to hear the “Yes” inside their “No.”

The Peace Patrol at Occupy Wall Street

Fittingly, the address was right on Wall Street. An “atrium” of marble, ceilings too high to measure. Palm trees in winter. All the signs of wealth.

And fittingly, there were scruffy gatherings of “protesters” earnestly working the real democracy on plastic chairs or sitting on the cold marble floor.

Three generations of Americans: the 20-something “Millennials”, the X-Gens, and my compatriots, the Boomers. Mostly millennials. And aren’t they something: so NEW, so clear, so pure in their intent.

In ‘69, when we marched on Washington, we were idealistic, but back then cops were pigs and we were “experimenting” in a paisley psychedelic confusion of sex and drugs and, oh yeah, politics.

These young radicals got right to work. “I’m X, my preferred pronouns are ‘she’ and ‘hers’ and I’m from the Safer Spaces committee.” “I’m Y, and my preferred pronouns are ‘he’ and ‘his’ and I’m from De-escalation.” Each person introduced themselves and their assignment: “PR,” “Mediation and Non-Violent Communication”, “Medical”.

They have a silent language for meetings. When someone is talking, if you like what is being said, you hold your hands up and shake them back and forth like the a Queen’s waving. If you disagree, your fingers point down when you shake them.

This silent real-time feedback is such an efficient way of getting a sense of the group’s direction. It overlaps the speaking without disruption so takes no time, but directs the topics like wind carrying a kite this way and that. Who made up this language? How have I never seen it before? I learned it in a few minutes without anyone explaining it. It thrills me to witness progress, to learn and grow so effortlessly.

The topic is scary, drug addicts and street people are invading the occupation, and the media is dying to pounce, to use the confusion to misrepresent the whole movement. And the government is one reason away from bringing in its troops, and reasons abound (not that the media or the government actually need the reasons to be real for them to act).

Then, a couple of thrilling hours in, a bunch of cops amass near the doors. One pulls out a bull-horn. I feel the fear, the old fear, the primal fear as the bully saunters onto the playground.

“Now hear this,” he bellows through his electronic amplifier, “It is now 9pm. The Atrium closes at 9:45. Please have all your meetings concluded by then, and finish using the bathrooms as well. Thank you.”

Each of the caucuses stop and a spontaneous applause erupts. He is not the voice of hatred: there was respect and understanding here, and the applause is polite and touching.

The cop does an exaggerated stage bow, and turns to leave, then stops and through the bullhorn asks, “Does anyone have a copy of the ‘Occupy Wall Street Journal’ in English?” Laughter from all corners and several people run over to him with copies.

He takes one and looks up at us looking at him. We all stand suspended in silence, a precious and surprising moment of solidarity. It could have gone so wrong, and with this simple gesture of good will, it is so right.

He starts to leave, then pauses again, puts the bullhorn to his lips again and bellows: “Fuck Goldman Sacks!”

The room erupts in cheers.

(see www.OccupyPolice.org for more stories and video about the cops who acknowledge that they are part of the 99%)

Strong Feelings

While it is true, according to NVC, that our feelings are created by our needs (not by other people); the sensations that needs create are pretty subtle: warmth, heaviness, weakness, burning; nothing which even rises anywhere near the neighborhood of a toe-jam.

In the ideal case, you'd follow these sensations down to the need, and either experience the satisfaction, or experience the need directly (which inevitably resources you to get it met).

Step 2: Naming the feeling: Instead, we use our brain to come up with a name for that feeling: anger, or hurt or happiness. These names are not created by needs, and they take us one level away from the need itself.

Step 3: Beliefs about the Feeling Name: Many of us have beliefs about these feeling words: "It's dangerous to be angry" or "It's forbidden to be sad" or "I can't control my anger."

Step 4: Feelings as a result of the beliefs: These belief/thoughts often come with very strong feelings: "He had no right to make me angry" or "It's his fault I'm feeling hurt." These feelings about the thoughts about the Names about the sensations caused by our needs are so far away from our needs, they make it nearly impossible to know what we are needing!

And that's why it's so hard to know what you need!

Eat Your Marriage

Let your love flourish, this week. Okay, how about this weekend?  One day?

Take a day off and have the marriage you wanted.

It’s there like a ripe peach. You say you can’t taste it anymore? Of course not. You can’t taste the peach until you bite into it.

Bite your juicy partner in the peach, and let the juices run down your life.

I promise I won’t tell.