Do we really have a choice?

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Should I stay home or go out, talk to a friend or read a good book, walk in nature or write down my thoughts? None of these are mutually exclusive, of course, I could do them all in the same day or I could do none. The one that gives me the least choice is staying home, since if I find myself at home, there are two options: stay or leave. But the way I posed the question is intended to suggest that I have these two ways of spending time, luxuriating around the house or luxuriating around in my car or something like that. Since I set the options up in the series that I did, it sounds like I am one lucky cuss and that any way I turn, I have time on my hands and I am in harmony with life, always faced with choices far less than life or death ones - nice choices to have. But, I could have said it another way.

I could have said: should I hunker down in my house or flee, phone a friend or see if my lawyer can find a loophole in the warrant they have for my arrest, run through the back alleys or pen a suicide note? Those choices do not sound as good, do they? I have spent most of my life much closer to the first set of choices than the second, in fact, I don’t think I have ever been too close to the latter, not to say I will never be. Those who are on the lam or being literally or figuratively hunted down are in what might be the least enviable position of all human beings. I would not want to be Edward Snowden, right now, hanging out in Russian airports – although I do think he is more hero than villain – these days, he is someone without good options.

We like to set up our time away from work as a series of choices, and some of us are even fortunate enough to do it at work; at least to some extent. If I get up on Saturday during the warm months, I have a choice of meditating for 45 minutes when I get out of bed or not, going for a run or not, at some point writing 1000 words or not, going with my wife to the farmer’s market or not, going to the gym for my 26-station workout or not, eating three meals or not, juicing beets, carrots and other veggies at some point during the day or not, going to bed between 10 and 11 or not, getting the car oil changed or not, eating one of those meals out or not, going to Memphis or not, listening to music while I write or not, and maybe a few other possibilities. But really, if my oil needs changing and it is not coming some sort of fierce storm, I will do all of the things on the left side of those sentences, the things before the not, except for going to Memphis, which only happens occasionally and every now and then not listening to music while I write because I am too lazy to think of putting my earbuds in my phone before I sit down. In other words, it is not as if I really have much choice of how I spend my “day off”.

Most of my days are the same, but you won’t hear me complaining. I don’t feel like screaming or they don’t need to come and get me in a van with padded walls. I am content with my life of non-choice choices. The truth is, if my back is hurting or I have pulled a hamstring recently, or if it is stupid hot, I may not run on a given Saturday. Instead, I might do an hour on the elliptical, but most likely I will exercise, not because I feel compelled, well maybe a little bit because of that; but mainly because I like the way it feels to get the usual stuff done. I do those things because those are the things I do.

Earlier in my life, say when I was in graduate school, my days were terribly different. I might choose between heading to the library first thing on Saturday morning or studying in our apartment. We might choose to drive to the mall and walk around or not, walk the bike path for a few minutes or not, watch a little TV before we went to bed or not. As you can see, at any given time in my life, my discretionary time has really been a matter of a handful of choices and not real choices at that, just doing or not doing the same things from a short list; when I am not being told what to do by a work schedule or some other type of schedule - like the you have when a loved one is in the hospital and you visit that person three times a day for three straight days, in a town far from your house.

I wonder if there are people who live differently from that? Are there people for whom every Saturday is unique from all the others, with the possible exception of getting up, eating three meals, and going to bed? If so, I wonder if they are happy? On Saturday number one she might do yoga with friend one, have lunch with friend two, go to a movie with friend two, have dinner with friend three, take a bike ride with friends four, five and six. Then on Saturday number two she might lie in bed until noon, skipping breakfast, drinking a juice instead of having lunch, reading a book during the afternoon and going to bed early. On Saturday three she might fly to the coast and spend the entire weekend there – I don’t know, let’s say- all alone. On Saturday four she might get up early and cut down a few trees before eating lunch at the soup kitchen where she is volunteering, after which she tries to immolate herself on her patio before someone puts her out, so she lives to see another Saturday and so on like that.

I know there must be people with more predictability in their life than I have, trappist monks come to mind, but I wonder how those with little predictability like it. I am guessing those with the least predictability are the ones whose jobs are quite varied and who work all the time. Within the confines of their job, they do lots of different things, but it’s all work. I suppose there are also socialites and party animals who are flitting and flying hither and yon and never seem to have any pattern to their days, but can that be sustainable? Would your body and mind not eventually just fall apart? Are lots of true and actual choices really all that common and really even, desirable?

A few thoughts on my dad: Paul Asters McCullough ((Dec 9, 1928 - May 14, 2006)

Another father’s day is here, my eighth without a living father, since he died on mother’s day in 2006. It would be cliché to say I love him as much today as I did when he was alive, but it would not be all that inaccurate; only I must admit to having forgotten a lot of the details. How did his voice sound? I can conjure it up, but it is not automatic. How did his face look, that is a little easier and does not take much effort.

What is easiest to remember are the things he would say, such as Yello for hello; or Yaman, for Amen; or I heard you when you drove up, for I know what you are talking about; and so on. He had a million sayings he had either made up or had picked up from others across the years.

He liked to say: it’s better to burn out for the lord than to rust out for the devil; and I feel so good I could climb five trees backwards – I think he made that one up. Get thee behind me Satan. This is a day that the lord has made, I will rejoice and be exceedingly glad. I am going to fight the devil until I die, I’m going to kick him, hit him, scratch him, claw him, bite him and when I lose my teeth, I’m gonna gum him. Or, he would say: as long as Jesus has my hand I would walk on a rotten corn stalk across hell.

Dad did not spend much time thinking on material or earthly things. He thought mostly of the next life, of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. He had read the Bible completely through, over 100 times. For years he prayed at least three hours a day. He had callouses on his knees that made them look more like pine knots. That was another thing he would say: “I’m tougher than a pine knot.”

Many of the things he would say are so deep within me, I find myself saying them at least under my breath at random times. They seem to be in the ancient, early-evolved rear of my brain and require conscious inhibition by the front of my brain. Sometimes, though, there is no stopping them, they just flow out.

Most of the conversations he and I had after I left home and would return for a weekend or a holiday, took place with him holding his index finger on the passage he was currently reading in the scripture. If we arrived with him praying, we may have to wait a while for him to get done or he would leave us on our own and go in the other room and pray for a long time, no doubt praying for us.

He worked for twenty-one and a half years in a cotton mill, until he was around 38 years old, but then he stopped working altogether and became a “home missionary” to eastern Kentucky from South Carolina. His job for the last forty years or so of his life was: soul winner.

His right hand, withered –pieced back together, actually- from where his brother Richard had cut it in two with an axe when he was three years old; was not usually the one he would extend to shake. If a person did offer the right hand though, he would put his withered hand in theirs and I honestly believe that bothered him right into his old age. He never got over being ashamed of his right hand.

We still have a bunch of cassette tapes of him preaching at his church on the Lee/Owsley county line in Kentucky, Pine Grove Baptist – which was actually not in Pine Grove but retained the name after a location switch. I listened to a little of the tapes right after he died, but I no longer have a cassette player and I am not sure I would want to hear them now anyway. Which makes me wonder how long anyone will be interested in the things I leave behind, once I am gone. I think for the first time, I realized, after my father’s death; that when you die, you are genuinely gone. The grip you had over people, the place you held in their thoughts and conversation, it really is gone. The most they will do is conjure memories of you ever so often, maybe on father’s day.

I still love him, it’s just that I also love life and it does not slow down. When people die, others are born to replace them, as much as what happened yesterday is supplanted by what is happening now; and of course, what is going on now will give way to tomorrow.

My father was enormously important in who I became, no doubt more than any other person; but even that influence gets folded into all the other influences and pretty soon it is not simple to figure exactly whom to credit or to blame. At first I think I tried to be like him but at the end of my teens, sort of like Elvis did for a lot of people before he died, dad became uncool for me and stayed that way for many years, during which time I tried to be as little like him as possible, but of course, as many people have pointed out; I wound up being a lot like him, just in my own way. I do not hold many of his religious or political views, but the views I have, I hold with the same level of conviction as he did his views.

In the end, I think what is most clear is that there is a basic part of us on which the less basic parts are built. The most basic part of me, I owe to Paul Asters McCullough, Pastor of Pine Grove Baptist Church, but mostly – father to me and my two wonderful sisters and one brother.

Let Me Tell You About My Mom

Recent days gone by in the hospital

The nurse comes in mom’s room, looks at the chart and asks two questions:

Nurse: What’s your name?

Mom: Joyce McCullough.

Nurse: When were you born?

Mom: January 14, 1934

Nurse: Good, that’s right.

The nurse can then proceed with what she came to do, administer the 20 or so pills mom takes in the morning, put pain medication in the pic line that runs from mom’s right arm to the left side of her chest, give her a breathing treatment that smokes like dry ice, or shift her in bed because mom has complained she is not comfortable.

Mom’s skin looks and feels like the outer layer of an onion. Her hair, always high atop her head in years gone by, now looks like the fur on her toy poodle. Recently, she looked at me with uncomprehending eyes, as if questioning why I was in her room; or maybe worse, that I was someone who had done her wrong.

These hospital scenes were from late last year and early this year when mom had pneumonia, congestive heart failure and a urinary-tract infection, just after having had her second surgery to replace disks in her lower back, since the hope was she would be able to walk without a walker again and continue to live independently, but now the hope is she lives without pain or infection and can enjoy visitors to her room at the nursing home.

Back in the day

When she was manic she would sing of a donkey, "He walled his eyes and switched his tail and went eyonsi-yonsi-yonsi", but as a depressive she would barricade in the bedroom away from dad and us children. Sometimes in church she would cry tears of joy and raise a kleenex-filled hand to the sky, walking and weeping. Among the feelings you get as a boy of 10 watching your mother take to the sawdust trail at a brush arbor camp meeting in Greer, South Carolina, are pride, humiliation and bewilderment.

           

Like her mother before her and like my oldest sister, mom married and began having children too early. Born January 14, 1934, she married February 12, 1949 at 15, had Brenda Joyce on September 15, 1950; Cathy three years later, at 19, me October 1, 1956, at 22 and John Earl on March 10, 1961, at 27.  Her childbearing years ended a year later when she had a complete hysterectomy.

           

Her mothering years ran from 1950 to 1964, years that also covered the Korean Conflict, Mickey Mantle's 1956 Triple Crown –won the day I was born, the ‘55 and '57 Chevy, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But the most significant events for her were when dad was “born again” in 1952 and surrendered to preach in 1957.  These changes ushered in the 24/7 365 world of religion and out - everything else.

           

Her father had been a cotton farmer and a house painter whose own life swung back and forth between preaching and backsliding, the Bible and the bottle.  He died backslidden in 1972, at age 69. Her mother Lula Ivadell, lived with her sister Lula May, in Columbia, South Carolina - dying in early 1998, at age 86. She got height and looks from her daddy and piss and vinegar from her momma.

Mom worked in a factory called Dunean, in Easley, South Carolina when I was a little boy, and during this time, she and dad hired a black woman, Alberta Adeline, from down the road, to stay with us children and keep the house clean. I guess as poor as we were, there were people poorer still – to serve as maid and nanny.

           

Mom has spent most of her life dealing with physical problems. When her tonsils were removed as a newly wed, she nearly bled to death. Her early hysterectomy was followed by a number of other operations, including the removal of her gall bladder and a malignant uterine tumor. But as she grew older, there were positive signs that she might live a long life, since she and dad would walk about every day and her attitude toward life grew more consistently positive.

           

On countless Mother’s Days and other Sundays, during the post-child rearing years, she and dad would get out of bed and she would complain of a headache or some other ailment and decide at the last possible moment whether or not to walk down the hill to church with him. Most of the time she would go to church and for his part, dad would request prayer for her, which would make his life easier that coming week, since he had shown a measure of compassion. There would be 12 to 14 people in the service, including mom and dad. They would sing one of about 30 songs as a congregation and mom and one of the other ladies would sing a duet or two solos.

           

After church she would get some pork chops or hamburger out of the freezer they had in one of the church Sunday School rooms. She would fry this and fix "cream potatoes," macaroni and cheese, and larded-up green beans. Then dad would get his Bible while she laid down for a Sunday afternoon nap. Then early in the evening her internal debate would begin again as to whether she felt well enough to go to church again. It would be a close call, but ultimately she would usually go, although she may or may not stay for the entire service.

After church she would be light-hearted and goofy, singing "On top of Smokey" or "Yankee doodle dandy," making up a song or telling dad a story about her daddy or the time she met the snake in the road and gave it “the right of way.”  Or together they would reflect on the years when we children were home and end the night declaring they would not trade their children for any in the world.

More recent days in the nursing home

I visited her this past week in the nursing-home. She has a view of the courtyard where squirrels, ducks and birds provide her entertainment. She sang a song she made up based on her hours of looking out the window. The tune sounded like a church hymn and although I cannot remember all the words, the story in the song included hawks preying on small birds – the way the devil had been trying to kill her; and ended with her singing: “Now I can see the tops of the trees.”

Happy Mother’s Day Mom

Luxury Concerns

A few minutes ago, my wife texted me that she had tracked our daughter, Stephanie, who is flying on an Alaskan Airlines – Delta operated Flight, as currently flying over Memphis, Tennessee, going from Atlanta to Seattle. Stephanie had texted her that she – Stephanie, had only slept about an hour and a half last night, leaving her hotel for the airport at 4:15 am and flying from Nashville to Atlanta leaving at 5:30 am. My thought after I learned she was over Memphis, was, I hope she is able to sleep.

On Monday of this week, Bill Richard, upon finishing the Boston Marathon, hugged his family briefly and then began to make his way through the other runners to get his medal. If he is like me when I have just finished a marathon, he was thinking of his aching legs and feet, how he wants to lie down, or of the wave of nausea started now he is no longer running. When he hugged his two children and wife, he had no way of knowing they would walk away from him into the blast of a pressure-cooker bomb sending ball bearings and nails into their flesh.

It’s best that we do not always imagine the worst. I send up good vibes for my daughter, that she might be able to sleep over Memphis, but we all know the real concern, the quite normal concern for someone flying at 500 miles per hour seven miles above the earth in a metal tube. But Bill Richard would have had no reason for serious concern over his family in the safety of the crowd at a Marathon finish line. They would have justifiably more reasons to be concerned for him, might he have an injury, or, his wife might have suppressed some thought such as – is he like his cousin with a previously undetected heart issue made deadly by a marathon distance?

I don’t know about you, but I spend most of my time trying to keep nagging doubt and worry from my mind. Yes, there is a bed of deep doubt, that death could strike out of the blue – a car could pull into my lane and send me down an embankment into a fiery crash – and after the footage from Siberia of a few weeks ago, that an asteroid might land on my house – but most of the concerns I am suppressing if you see me with a furrowed brow, will be more on the order of – is my nagging hip pain getting better or worse, am I going to be fresh and lively for my next class or will I be dull and lifeless, will the Cincinnati Reds come to their senses and fire their current manager?

In other words, I seem to live in a world of what might be called, luxury concerns; concerns, to be sure, but only for someone whose life is going well.

My wife’s father died suddenly at his work when she was nine – her aunt picking her up at school and driving her home to her mom. After that, she recalls not being able to join in when other kids were giddy or lighthearted, when they laughed at the slightest thing, acted dumb, goofed off; or otherwise cavorted around in a carefree spirit. She describes a seriousness that sounds like she was thinking of the worst that might happen, while the other kids were oblivious to the worst and perhaps only mildly concerned with something such as whether or not they could get second helpings of ice cream or whether or not a friend liked the new haircut.

Those of us who were not directly affected by the Boston Marathon blasts on Monday, continue to live in a world of luxury concerns, but we have been reminded that there are those jolted into the world of genuine concern.

I spent Monday afternoon fielding questions from friends and family asking if I was in Boston, since they knew I had been aspiring to qualify last year, but had not heard I had been unable to do so - missing by a mere 45 seconds. Two nieces and a nephew called, another niece texted my wife – in case I did happen to be running and had not heard news of the blast yet, how sensitive was that? One of my sisters texted, hoping I had not been there. A coworker emailed to see if I was okay. Several friends on facebook posted on my wall, asking if I was there or not or expressing gratitude, after I had announced I was not there. Another friend said a friend with whom I have lost touch, was wondering if I was running Boston- so she texted on their behalves, to learn my status. They all had temporarily suspended their luxury-concern minds and allowed their genuine-concern minds to take over.

Terrorists understand this notion of luxury concern and how it can be interrupted. Apparently they believe causing people to fear the worst, in crowds, at work, on planes, in high-rise buildings or stadiums; will cause those who live in the realm of luxury concern to feel a little more for those people on the earth who live in fear of their life – or perhaps they simply want us to remember their organization’s name or their cause, and understand the pain they experience that causes them to believe so much in their cause.

What they apparently do not understand, however, is: when our bubble of luxury concern is busted, we may spend more time imagining doomsday scenarios, grieving losses, or simply being depressed – however, most of us, upon learning of a heinous crime, will be reminded of the fleeting pleasure that is our existence and how we need to not only be on the lookout for the worst, but resolve to spend more time appreciating the best.

Tubby Tubby Tubby

Dear Raleigh:

            Who knew Esther Rupp was still alive, or that on the eve of a black coach winning Kentucky's seventh national championship, she might pass on.  Perhaps this is all about myth and legend, and not so much to be taken for real.  Only a Homer or a Virgil would have considered such an element necessary to the story.  Only in a Bible, Koran or Upanishad, might such an event seem plausible.  But while we're making believe, maybe somebody should attach a few blue and white balloons to Esther's tombstone.

            As for me, if I make it into the second-half, I could live forever, but someday a first-half lull will do me in, this I know as surely as I know my name.  And on that fateful occasion, although I prefer cremation (smoking like Jeff Sheppard on a mission from heaven), I request at least the decency of a closed-casket funeral, and if this wish be not granted, I swear by all that is holy, I will raise up in the lap of that downy box and exhale, "Go Big Blue".

            These latest cats marched into the fire and snatched them, one by one, from the burning, with prodigious steps and regal expressions they brought out limp bodies, laid them on the ground and breathed into them the sweetness of life.  Triage was housed on a ninety-five foot long hardwood rectangle.  Tourniquets were fashioned from old denim uniforms, and ceiling banners, decorated with numbers like 48, 49, 51, 78, 96 and 98 and words like NCAA Champions, were laid down as comfortable pallets.  And the patients mended, all were whole and an unbeliever could not be found among those who viewed this glorious sight.

            I myself have been born again.  I vow to eat only that which is good for me, drink that which clears my mind, and exercise with vigor for the rest of my days.  For as surely as I let myself go to pot, soon after Gabriel's lofty horn vibrates the air, and this spirit of mine is wafted on the wings of mercy, the Cats will sweep through the SEC tournament, march all the way to the Alamo and bring home another trophy, and there I will be, stuck inside a lifeless shell.  In the end I know, mortality will prevail.  So my greatest desire is to die on April 14th, and by so doing, not miss March Mayhem and at the same time, confuse the government as they seek to share in my good fortunes from the year just prior.

            When history is writ, the last horn has sounded, and the final offensive voice on sports call-in radio has been given the ole heave ho, somewhere on the horizon I will lift up mine eyes and view four horsemen.  These regal figures will pass by as if through the clouds, and as they draw nigh, the scales will fall from my eyes and their identity will be revealed to me.  On a white stallion will glide the nasal, but impressively Germanic Baron and on his head will rest four crowns.  His time will seem to go on forever, but alas this great figure will drift beyond earth's firmament. 

            Before the brilliant light of the first horseman has faded, I will view with the multitude of singing saints, the second steed and its rider.  This subject will wear dated spectacles and proclaim that the guards of heaven must lay down their arms and yield to the giants from whose hands fiery orbs will be flung through halos of orange.  But this too shall pass. 

            Then behold, Satan shall ride across the sky on the back of an ass, dragging his own posterior behind him, as if for comic relief, except that no one is laughing.  Back into the pit of hell called Oklahoma he shall sink, never to return, save for the occasional first-round contest.

            After this disconcerting interruption, the shrill voice of trumpet will announce the next rider of a brilliant white steed.  Such a fair-haired knight has seldom been seen.  Indeed, he will be the most gallant of them all, proclaiming words of wisdom, making boat loads of commercials, and speaking with a forked tongue these words, "I shall reign forever and ever."  For a time the rejoicing will be great, for despite his busy schedule, he will find time to rescue us from the lip of hell and lay us down at the portals of heaven.  Then lo, even as a vapor vanishes, so too shall he leave us in despair.

            But just as the night seems too dark for day's return, when our eyes sting from so many tears, a man cloaked in black, will quietly arise from the south.  With vision clear, passion deep and syntax African, he will axe us if we can learn to trust him, forsaking all other gods.  Our sadness and fear will not easily be cast aside, but when he gives us a front-row seat for his march to the promised land, our voices will rise in unison to praise him, even as we pass with him to the other side, on the day of our glorious rapture.  Then from Eddyville to LaGrange, Clinch Mountain to Buttermilk Pike, and all across the Commonwealth and far beyond, the cry shall be heard as the clock winds down in San Antone, TUBBY, TUBBY, TUBBY, TUBBY!!!!

           

So the Farmer Made a God

And on one of the first days,

A farmer looked up from where he lay and said, "I need someone who cares what happens to me."

So the farmer made a God.

The farmer said, "I need somebody who loves it that I am willing to get up before dawn, watch the cows, watch over the fields, watch the cows some more, who will watch me eat supper and then give me credit as I go to town for a meeting of the school board that will last past midnight." So the farmer made a God.

"I need somebody who cares enough to watch me rustle a calf and will look down from on high during the delivery of my grandchild. Somebody who loves hogs the way I do, can help me be patient with cantankerous machinery, who will console me when I come home hungry, or when I have to wait lunch until my wife's done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon -- and mean it." So the farmer made a God.

The farmer said, "I need somebody who smiles when I sit up all night with a newborn colt, and watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say along with me, 'Maybe next year.' I need somebody who can help me shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, help me shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, in planting time and harvest season, will help me finish my forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, paining from 'tractor back,' give me a psychological boost as I put in another seventy-two hours." So the farmer made a God.

The farmer had to have somebody to get excited that he was willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place. So the farmer made a God.

The farmer said, "I need somebody who believes I am strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will pay attention when I stop my mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark, somebody who loves when I plow deep and straight and I do not cut corners. Somebody who cheers me on when I seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-mile drive to church." So the farmer made a God.

"Somebody who makes permanent record of when I bale my family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his own son says he enjoyed spending his life doing things similar to what the farmer did.'" So the farmer made a God.

Authentic Communication: Real, Good and Beautiful

Is there anything more satisfying than a long conversation with an intimate friend? Right, I thought you might object, but it ranks right up there anyways. Okay, so why is that? Most likely it is because you and your friend spend some time flattering one another, nudging one another kiddingly out of comfort zones, setting up straw people and knocking them down (e.g. we are like the great friends in history, except they could never have understood one another quite the way we do), and so on like that.

In 1986, my best friend since the sixth grade (best man in one another’s weddings) visited my wife, daughter and me, in our Garfield, New Jersey row-house apartment (I was working an I/O psychology internship for IBM in Franklin Lakes at the time) and the first night he was there, we laid awake talking until the sun was almost ready to rise. Our sentences were similar, the words we knew matched well, our memories were largely shared, both our dreams for the world had been co-produced by the other. And all these years later, when we see one another, our conversations resume right about where they left off, with the same intensity, as if we had not been apart. In fact, just after I married, when I was leaving for graduate school in Indiana, in parting we assured one another that our long conversation would never end; and it pretty much has not. I told him once that what made him so easy for me to talk to, was that I did not have to translate anything I thought, out of my head language into words, unlike the way it is when I talk to most other people.

And I know you have people like that in your life and I have had several others, but we all know, most of the communication we do is much harder than what I just described. We have to talk to strangers, people with power over us or people over whom we have power, people whose status is higher or lower than ours, people whose intelligence is higher or lower than ours, people whose experiences are different from ours, people older or younger, and some who do not even speak our language. The communication snag comes in the way they see the world versus the way we do.

Ken Wilbur, in his book, The Marriage of Sense and Soul (1998), argues persuasively that one of the reasons why communication among people is so difficult in the time of our lives, is the fragmentation of the good, the true and the beautiful. The three are naturally together, but we humans have adopted ways of talking about the world such that they are assumed to be independent one of the other. Scientists (all about the objective truth) have trouble talking to saints (all about the good) who have trouble talking to artists (all about the beautiful).

What are the implications of this fragmentation of the good, the true and the beautiful. Science says believe what you want but what is real is what objective science says is real (William Isaacs, 1999, Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together). Religion and philosophy tell us what is good and the arts, is where the beautiful is arbitrated. But if you pay close attention to pleasing conversations you have had, you will likely notice they invariably take on the rhythm of music, it will feel like you have found or made an honest search for truth and the good life will seem close at hand for the time being.

But nothing may be more of a cornerstone of the best conversations than the number of things you hear come out of your mouth you never have said, or even thought before. In some ways, this quality of conversation defines intimacy.

On the other hand, during the rest of our lives, indeed the majority of the time, when we talk to others, we are not actually looking for the real, the good or the beautiful, because we are not really ourselves. In the vast majority of our interactions with others we are playing a role and they are playing a role, which means despite our best efforts, the words exchanged might as well have been written by a playwright, and not a good playwright either but one prone to the use of stock phrases, hackneyed insights and clichés. Nothing new or surprising hardly ever comes out of our mouth when we are talking to our boss.

Not only are we (both people talking) speaking the lines of the role we are playing, we are representing a constituency. The subordinate plays the subordinate role with subordinates everywhere in mind, both as sympathetic figures and as models of how to do it, and the same goes for the person playing the role of superior.

Consider the table waitress. How authentic are her conversations with the people she serves? With repeat customers, the role playing may break down, but even then, the role may just switch from that of a person delivering food to a stranger, to a friend delivering food to friend. The function itself helps almost guarantee that the communication will not be authentic.

It could be argued that our entire lives are a search, often in vain, for authenticity in relationships. By authentic, I mean, the two (or more) people interacting have dispensed with roles and representation (of others who play that role) and gotten to the point of an integration between what is real, good and true. I say authentic communication brings the real, good and true together, not because you agree with the other person on all three, but because you have found a way to express yourself and they have too, because you have agreed to suspend judgment and replace it with a mutual search for the real, the good and the beautiful.

Imagine if you as a leader were able to figure out how to communicate in this authentic fashion more often than not? Consider how far you would have separated yourself from the majority of other leaders?