Wisdom from little yappy dogs

Let me start by saying how much I hate little dogs. Why do I hate them? I could go on and on about how they look like rats, how they're disgustingly pampered, how their owners treat them like accessories, how they bark endlessly etc, etc. But just today I realized the real reason I hate little dogs. All the other reasons are just excuses, whereas this is the heart of the matter: little dogs are afraid of everything!

Where I live there are two little dogs that live upstairs. Each and every time I go upstairs they bark their heads off at me. At first I thought they were just mean, but then I realized that they were simply terrified of me. If I called out to them as I walked up the stairs, they wouldn't bark as often because they recognized my voice and knew I wasn't a threat. They were afraid of everything and everyone they didn't know.

That explains the incessant barking. It also explains the lack of open, authentic, and shameless love that bigger dogs give to humans, even perfect strangers. Think of a golden retriever – even if he doesn't know you from Adam (or Eve), he loves you from the minute you meet with an open heart that doesn't hold anything back. Not so a chihuahua. A chihuahua will bark at you from the moment you meet...until three months later when he finally decides to put aside his fear and classify you as “not a threat.” But even then you're not a friend, you're merely “not an enemy”. How terribly sad!

This lead me to discover (or rather, be able to properly name and verbalize) an important truth: fear prevents connection.

Once you state it like that (and give it a second of honest consideration) you realize this isn't rocket science. Fear is an emotion that consumes. It smothers and overpowers practically all other emotions. It encourages you to keep your distance from the world, and leads you to believe the worst in every situation.

For connection to occur, you have to be open and authentic. You have to trust the goodness and intentions of the other person, and believe in them. You have to hope for the best. And above all, you have to give love first, and receive it second. The terrified chihuahua waits to receive unconditional love first, then slowly opens up and eventually returns it.

The discouraging part is that fear comes to all of us so naturally. Which means we have to develop a way of life that actively and continuously suppresses fear and the connection destroying reactions (as opposed to actions) that accompany it. The encouraging part is that fear is part of the self – so if you get outside of your self and concentrate your time and energies on other people instead, the fear naturally disappears. Turn your thoughts back inward toward yourself and the fear will return.

An interesting observation is that we are simultaneously scary and scared. We are at once the tiny dog and the threatening human. It's easy to feel intimidated or unworthy. But other people probably feel the same way; so we are at once large and threatening, and tiny and scared.

We can draw two conclusions from this. One, be nice – other people are scared of you, whether you feel scary or not. And two, don't be frightened of what others can do to you. I say this not because they can't hurt you – because we all know they can. I say it because you can never connect with anyone if you're always afraid of everyone who comes up the stairs.

Two theories of social interaction

I spent the morning writing down all of the unwritten social rules I could think of. You know, the rules that govern the way everybody behaves in social situations; the rules that determine how (and on whom) they invest their time, attention, and heart. Most people don’t have to try and write these rules down to discover them, but I’m an idiot when it comes to these sorts of things, so I do. Basically, the rules I came up with could be fairly effectively summarized in the following way:

·         You have limited time, attention, and love to spend; so be careful who and on whom you spend it

As soon as I wrote this down I knew I was onto something bigger – a theory of social behavior! The statement I just made sounded like basic principles of economics: in a world of infinite wants and needs but finite resources (in a word: scarcity), how do you invest the resources you have to acquire the most economic goods and services possible? In short, economics is about maximizing welfare in a context of scarcity.

My theory for social situations is analogous. I call it the theory of the social economy, and it revolves around the answer to the following question:

·         In a world of infinite social wants and needs, how do you invest your finite social capital (time, attention, love, etc) so as to achieve the maximal social welfare?

We human beings have a default mode of social interaction: we’re trying to maximize our social wealth – just like in the real economy, where we’re trying to maximize our economic wealth. Some of us are more ruthless about it than others, but we all would like to be wealthier. In other words, in social contexts as in the money economy, people rarely give freely; most of the time interactions are characterized by reciprocity: the exchange of goods and services of roughly equal value.

This realization provided the beginnings of an answer to my continual social bafflement. Isn’t friendship grand? Then why isn’t everyone looking to be friends with everyone? Why do we form a few strategic friendships and then settle down into relative inactivity and ignore the plethora of opportunities to strike epic friendships that wander past us every day?

I realized that we aren’t usually thinking about social interaction that way; we’re too preoccupied with our needs to be much concerned with mere wants. And we are too terrified of scarcity (the fear that there won’t be enough to even meet our needs, let alone our wants) to think of social situations that way.

As human beings, what we are after most of all is a knowledge of our worth; how meaningful, how important are we? And what we need most is to know that we are worth something. In fact, we are desperate to discover that we are worth a lot. But because our worth as intelligences, as individuals,  as human beings, is intangible and resists direct measurement we settle for measuring the next closest thing: what is our worth to others? For instance, we often ask ourselves: does anyone care about me? how much do people want to be with me? How cool/important/beautiful/wonderful are the people who want to be with me? In other words, we use our social wealth – the sum total of all the social goods and services our social capital can buy – as a measure of our worth. Hence the enormous drive within each of us to get wealthier and, therefore, the need to take care how (and on whom) we invest our scarce social capital. There’s only so many hours in a day, and only so many friends you can manage at a time; and at the end of each day, they are the ones you will rely on to provide a strong measure of what you’re worth.

This realization explains a lot. It explains why we are so desperate for friendship. It explains why so often those who are most desperate for friends aren’t offering to be good friends, they just want to have them. (Not that I despise such people – on the contrary, I have often been such a person.) It explains why we are so careful and selective in how we choose to spend our social capital; invest it poorly and your intrinsic worth as an individual declines!

Except that it doesn’t. The only thing declining in such circumstances is your perception of your worth – your measurement of it. But social wealth was never more than a proxy for personal worth. And the truth is, a person’s social wealth is a terrible proxy for her worth as an individual.

If so, then the question (one of the most fundamental questions of human existence) remains: how can you know your own worth? After all, we’re all desperate to know.

The answer this question is the first step in establishing an entirely new theory for human social interaction; God’s way is built on a surprising yet simple truth: we have infinite worth.

Now at this point a lot of you are probably rolling your eyes and thinking, “this is soooo tacky. Why should I believe that all of the people on this planet – many of whom are bona fide assholes – have an enormous (let alone infinite) worth?” I’ll agree with you that it isn’t obvious from daily observations of human behavior. It certainly isn’t obvious from an examination of human history. But let me say this: God loves you. With his whole soul. You are his precious child, and you are worth more than this entire universe to him; and nothing you do – nor anything anyone else does – can ever diminish your worth in his eyes. Not one bit.

How do I know this? Personal experience; revelation; intuition; knowledge from before that burns in me, despite the veil. Yes, at some level it is a matter of faith. Or if you can arrive at the same conclusion via another route, whatever you do believe in this. You are worthy of all the love in the world and more.

If the world’s way of social interaction is the theory of the social economy, God’s way is the theory of the wholehearted life. Here is rule number one:

1.       When it comes to how much you’re worth: don’t doubt it. In fact, don’t even think about it. You are worthy to hang out with anyone; to be anyone’s friend; to be a part of every social circle. If someone excludes you – or no one invites you – this says absolutely nothing about what you’re worth. Don’t doubt it – don’t even think about it! Just assume you have infinite worth and are infinitely loved, and act as if that were the case at all times. Because it is!

Where does rule number one put us? In a whole new place, vis-à-vis the social economy model. Compared to the latter, we are so free! Thanks to the infinite plenty of God’s love and our own infinite worth, we are freed from the constraints of maximizing social welfare through careful, shrewd investment of social capital. In short, we don’t have to worry about ourselves anymore; and as a result are free to base our investment choices on our social wants (not needs!) and the needs and wants of others.

Which brings me to rule number two of the wholehearted theory:

2.       Give generously of your time, attention, and love to everyone who wanders into your life.

It’s as simple as that. When in social situations, don’t be someone you’re not; don’t think about you. Be genuine and full of love. Take every opportunity to share with the people you know how much you love them, how incredibly awesome they are, and how much they mean to you. And take every opportunity to get to know someone new. In so doing, you will also be letting them know how much God loves them, and helping to build their faith in the greatest truth of all.

This paradigm is so massively superior to the social economy theory of social situations, it’s simply stunning. In the wholehearted theory, there are no hidden motives; there are no politics, no maneuvering. People are completely free to be who they really are – free from the fear of rejection and scarcity – and give according to their unique gifts. This is the paradigm on which social interactions (and society writ large) in Zion are based.

I experimented on this one Sunday, and it completely changed everything (for that one day, at least. You’d be surprised how hard it is to maintain action according to this paradigm from day to day). My congregation is comprised entirely of young, talented, single 20-somethings. And the mode of social interaction is the “mingle” – a sort of free-form ‘go up and talk to whoever you want/whoever will talk to you’ situation with dozens to hundreds of people standing around chatting. It’s pretty much a waking nightmare for me.

This past Sunday, though, I began by firmly believing that I was good enough for any of those people; and not in an arrogant sort of way, but in a ‘God thinks I’m epically awesome, so if anyone here doesn’t think so, it’s because they just don’t know me yet’ sort of way. I refused to think further about my worth, to question it, or to try and evaluate it based on how my social interactions were going. In fact, I refused to let myself think about me and how I was doing at all! I just smiled, basked in the happy light of God’s love for me as an individual, and focused on rule number two: go make someone else feel loved too.

It changed everything. I talked to girls who wouldn’t give me the time of day before. I went straight up to them (without having to summon any courage either!) and asked them how they were doing; listened to them; told them how glad I was to hear they were doing well. They seemed pleasantly surprised – shocked, even – at the change they could feel in me. And I met some new people too – several, in fact! I noticed that people responded more warmly, seemed more excited to be talking to me, and more eager to meet me than on usual Sundays at church.

I am struck – as I so often have been of late – by the incredible power of the principles of Zion. By the way they transform life from a self-focused affair to one based on the welfare of others; how they transform community and society into a cause worth living for; and how they change life from a dreary daily search for meaning and fulfilment to a light-infused, collective journey towards God.

Revelation and modern spirituality

There is a very interesting phenomenon underway in the modern world – one very worth studying and understanding. The world of religion is, in much of the world, in an advanced state of decay, with churches reporting ever-declining membership and attendance, and more and more people self-reporting as unaffiliated with any official church or religion. Yet against this backdrop of apparent Godlessness, is a surge of interest in “spirituality” in a wide variety of forms.

I think it is safe to interpret this to mean, broadly speaking, that while the average person’s trust in old religious institutions is fading, the basic human need for spiritual meaning, context, and connection is as strong as it ever was. And it is being met, these days, by what might be termed “modern spirituality.”

Some revel in its freedom and celebrate the end of the religious institution. For the British writer William James, “the spirit of politics and the lust of dogmatic rule are apt to enter and to contaminate the originally innocent thing.” Very true. The great apostasy that drew its dark shades on European Christianity not long after the death of Jesus’ apostles is a case in point. Yet a spirituality that is nothing more than an eclectic selection of “whatever pleases me most at the moment” is hardly a serious attempt to reach, understand, and connect with the divine.

Sadly, modern spirituality fails its followers in precisely the area where it ought to excel: revelation. The religious institution has an unfortunate tendency: it makes its members lazy and spiritually dependent on it. Rather than provoke an intense search for the divine – and provide the adherent guidance and assistance in that endeavor – religious institutions often become crutches for their followers. The latter come to delegate all questions of spiritual relevance to the institution. When an issue arises, followers tend to respond – often subconsciously – with “well, what does the church say?” rather than giving the matter serious thought and reflection, and seeking God for truth on the matter.

This is truly unfortunate. One should never thoughtlessly delegate questions of serious spiritual importance to an institution. Never let the religious institution think or feel for you! The role of the institution ought to be to help you connect to the divine – not to serve the role of an agent who manages your spirituality for you so you don’t have to be bothered.

In theory, you would think that modern spirituality would shine in this department. Without the institution to rely on, individuals engaging in modern spirituality would be forced to seek the divine on their own and tackle difficult questions personally – thus exposing the individual more directly to God.

Alas, this is not the case. Modern spirituality in many cases appears to be little more than a way to replace former institutional religious duties and obligations with something far less onerous. Modern spirituality, it seems, is often little more than a cheap excuse for not getting up for church on Sundays, not an impassioned quest for the divine.

In view of this weakness, let me suggest to everyone – adherents of official religions as well as the free spirits of the spiritual age – that no true religion, religiosity, or spirituality of any kind can exist without revelation. Without direct, personal communication with the divine, an individual’s spirituality is as lifeless as sodden ash. And this applies equally well to members of official religions as to the independently spiritual.

But how does one go about communicating with God? Now that is truly a question of immense importance – yet one that is almost frivolously passed over by the faithless and faithful alike, as if it were obvious. I want to shed some small amount of light on the subject through a simple analogy:

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­If you had a quiet, soft-spoken friend who had something important he wanted to tell you, what would you do? Ask him to text you? Or send you an email? Would he likely want to have a conversation with you at a boisterous party, or while you’re busy with work? If you knew this friend well and valued his advice, you would invite him over on a rainy day for hot chocolate. You would put your favorite quiet music on in the background, and you would happily and gently invite your friend in. You would sit together, just the two of you, at a table, sipping your hot chocolate, reminiscing about past experiences together. You would appreciate each other’s friendship and company, and you would tell your friend how grateful you are for his friendship, for his love; how grateful you are that he cares about you.

And at some point during this conversation – and it might happen suddenly – you will know why he came, and what it was he wanted to tell you. And you will wonder why you don’t do this more often.

It is my experience that God is indeed soft spoken. Unlike parents of rambunctious children, he won’t shout over the noise of your life to get your attention. The Bible and Book of Mormon describe God’s voice as a still, small, and perfectly mild. Definitely soft enough that you aren’t likely to notice it unless you’re listening for it.

So don’t forget to take the time to invite him in. The ancient art of searching, pondering, and praying has been lost on the world, I fear. The beauty of it, though, is it’s not something that you need a PhD in theology to do. All you need is a sincere heart, a quiet place (both literal and figurative), and a desire to uncover the truth. In our modern consumer culture, that may not sound very sexy. But true spirituality never was about consumption; it’s about revelation.

On Vulnerability: Of Fire and Ice

I wonder a lot about relationships. How they work, and when and why they don’t. It’s a topic I don’t think we spend enough time on, because I think we want it to happen naturally, magically, without our having to think about it, understand how it works, or “force” it in any way. We want our relationships to bloom magically, as if they were always meant to be. We sometimes think that analyzing the process takes the magic out of it, and hence the sense of fate and destiny that we – magical, eternal creatures stuck in a hopelessly time-bound and unmagical world – so desperately crave.

But there’s a serious risk to avoiding the analysis and counting too heavily on the magic. It’s an oft-heard adage that friends are rare and true friends rarer. I think there’s a lot of truth to this, and I also think that life has a lot to do with it; mortality makes forming meaningful relationships and maintaining them over time quite difficult. Yet a lot of the truth behind the “rare friends” adage is that we humans are bad at relationships. And the reason we’re bad is partly because we don’t always understand well how human connection works. Oh, we recognize it when we see it; and we are right to crave it. And I’m sure each of us could deduce the essential dynamics from our own personal experience if we gave thought to it. But do we?

Indulge me in a quick mathy exercise real quick. Let’s say each relationship between two people has a significance, or depth, for lack of a better word. Let’s define the total level of connection in the world as the sum total of the depth of all relationships in the world. A measure of how “connected” we are as a race. I firmly believe that if we only more fully understood and embraced the fundamental principles of how relationships form and last we could be living in a world where the total level of human connectivity was much higher than it is.

Now, maybe you think that would be a bad thing. Maybe humans can only handle so much connection at a time; maybe the added depth of connection, mixed with the constraints of mortal life, would only cause more heart break and suffering. Both valid points, and I’m sure there are others as well. But if you believe as I do – and, I think, as just about all of us do, deep down – that human connection is the source of happiness and relationships are what life is really about, then it’s worth at least entertaining what I have to say next.

So what about friendship? What about human relationships? What determines how many (or how few) we have? What nurtures them and makes them grow? How do they germinate? What weakens and kills them?

These are rich questions and I don’t pretend for an instant to have all the answers. If anyone does, please send me your masterpiece when you’ve written it. But I have discovered (and many others have confirmed my hunch) something that I believe fundamental to all of them. Relationships deepen and weaken on vulnerability. As Brene Brown put it, vulnerability is the birthplace of joy, connection, and whole-hearted living.

Why vulnerability? Sounds awful, and scary. I’m not sure exactly why. I think it’s maybe because, when we are vulnerable, we are exposing who we really are – honestly and truly. No obfuscation, no hiding, no holding back. So when we’ve been vulnerable with someone, and that someone accepts us and even loves us afterward, we know for sure they love the real us. The most awful, gnawing fear in the human heart is the fear that if others really knew us – every dark, ugly, weird corner – they wouldn’t love us. We fear above all else that we are not loveable. Oh sure, our surface personality may be pleasant, and our visible exterior may garner praise and affection. But if people really knew all there is to know about us – if they could peer behind the façade – they would recoil in horror and shock. They wouldn’t want to have anything to do with that part of us.

And so we believe we are only partly loveable; only worth of conditional love. We are loved incompletely, and not fully; loved according to how well we conform to what the world wants us to look like, act like, be like. And so we hide ourselves and only dare connect at the surface level.

Yet we crave connection. We yearn for unconditional love. We want our dark corners to see the light of day – and we want to be loved despite them. We want to know that, as a whole, with all our good and bad lumped together in the awkward mess that is a human being, that we are still worth loving, and connecting with; that as we are now, we are worthy of love and connection, fellowship and friendship. A true friendship is one where each can relax in the utmost confidence that the other knows him and accepts him as he is, all the same.

So true friendship, then, is only possible when you have made yourself known to another; and that is a very vulnerable experience. The more meaningful and deep a relationship goes, the less of yourself you can afford to hold back. Until, in the ultimate relationship, each partner knows everything there is to know about the other. And that is why vulnerability is absolutely essential to meaningful human connection.

Now, I know full well that’s an ideal. It’s a theoretical statement about relationships while we live in the real world, where the rubber hits the road. But it can still teach us a great deal because it reveals what needs to happen if we are to experience more and deeper connection in our lives – while leaving the how to make it happen up to each of us individually.

Basically, the prescription can be summed up in a single sentence: we need to embrace vulnerability as a natural part of life. Like public speaking, most of us (including yours truly) avoid vulnerability like the plague. We put up with it when we absolutely have to, but steer clear otherwise. While not advocating aggressively seeking it out (in potentially inappropriate ways), I am asserting that we must not avoid vulnerability. We need to stop running from it, stop stigmatizing it, and stop fearing it. How often are those who are readily willing to share honestly about themselves ridiculed? It’s gotten to the point where we assume any man willing to be vulnerable must be gay – no offense meant to gays, who are in fact often more willing to be open and honest about things other than their income level or how much they can bench press.

Now, I know that a lot of people aren’t going to like this. And it could well be argued that a world where everyone was willing to wade through the vulnerability to form deeper and more meaningful connections with a broader swath of humanity would perish, as Robert Frost said, in fire – consumed by the depth of hurt that is the risk all take who let themselves be truly seen, and learn to truly and deeply love as a result. But I fear our world is heading towards the opposite extinction: dying in the cold, icy loneliness of empty space – all because we aren’t willing to share the intimate flame that burns within us.