Tag: Tony Campolo

Who Switched The Price Tags?

Published on by Scott Williams5 Comments

Tony Campolo tells the story of a group of criminals who break into a department store but don’t steal anything. Instead they went around and switched all the price tags. Just imagine the frustration and confusion! He goes on to talk about the propensity within ourselves to switch the price tags – things that are valuable become not valuable. Once worthless things become important. We start putting stock in things that are not important, or healthy, or helpful.

Couples often do that with each other. Hot button issues like sex and communication become bones of contention, or simply too explosive to see in perspective. We begin to notice the flaws in that other’s character and become unsettled. We fixate on what is lacking and feel unappreciated or unfulfilled.

Expectations have forced us to switch the price tags.

There was a time when you couldn’t wait to connect emotionally with that person, but somehow that doesn’t happen much anymore. We started by putting that girlfriend or boyfriend’s needs before our own. It was all about them. You appreciated that they loved you. But things have changed.

In counseling I am fond of telling people that if they want to be happy in their relationship they need to lower their expectations. I have recently taken a second look at that idea and realize that it is more about changing your expectations than lowering them. Happy spouses remind themselves constantly how fortunate they are that someone else would love them enough to dedicate the rest of their life to that person. When I start telling myself that I am lucky to have a wife like Annette it actually transforms how I treat her, and how often I am offended by her. This crazy chick went way beyond the requirements of friendship. Not only does she love me but she is willing to align her future with mine – a truly stupid thing to do.

The more I cultivate gratitude in my feelings towards my wife the better things seem to go in my relationship. As I change my expectations I change my attitude. It is my choice to take what she says wrong. It is my choice to be offended, or angered, or frustrated. Sure she can piss me off – she can be so female, sometimes. She is like a different, albeit extremely attractive, species. Annette is very, very different than I am and it is tempting to become frustrated or negative towards her when she says or thinks things that a man cannot understand or appreciate.  But here’s the clincher, as they say: the more I celebrate her uniqueness the happier I find myself. The more I try to change her, the more I flail misery around me.

The older I get the more I realize that happiness and contentment are things that I choose, they don’t come naturally.

Loyalty Is Hard

Published on by Scott Williams14 Comments

Most of us can count on one hand the number of authentic, lifelong friendships we have. We would like to believe our friends at work and play are deep and meaningful but we know, because it has happened before, that after we leave we will gradually lose contact with people we have cared about. This is a natural, even healthy part of life. Friends come and go, the circle of life.

We have all been hurt by someone who said they would always be there for us. Perhaps we were more invested than they were, we made assumptions and believed that the other person cared as much as we did, but we were wrong. I too have been blindsided, more than once, by someone I loved with abandon only to find out that they had completely different feelings and assumptions.

Every day I counsel people who have been damaged by someone they loved. It helps, perhaps, that I have experienced a little bit of that pain and know at least something of what it is to ‘endure’. People disappoint and rare is the friend who you cannot shake, cannot offend enough to leave. I aspire to be someone like that, as many of us do.

In his book, You Can Make A Difference, Tony Campolo tells the true story of two men who were traveling together on a train out of Victoria Station in London. Twenty minutes into their journey, one of the men had an epileptic seizure and if you’ve ever seen this happen they you know how frightening such an attack can be. The man stiffened and fell heavily out of his seat onto the floor of the train. When this happened his friend immediately took off his own jacket, rolled it up, and put it behind the stricken man’s head. Then he blotted the beads of perspiration from his brow with his handkerchief and talked to him in a quiet manner to calm him down. A few minutes later when the seizure was over, he helped lift his friend gently back into his seat. Then he turned to the man sitting across from them and said, “Mister, please forgive us. Sometimes this happens two or three times a day”. And then, in the conversation that ensued, the friend of the epileptic explained. “My buddy and I here were in Vietnam together, and we were both wounded in the same battle. I had bullets in both my legs and he caught one in his shoulder. For some reason the helicopter that was supposed to come for us never came to pick us up. My friend here picked me up and he carried me for three and a half days out of that jungle. The Viet Cong were sniping at us the whole way.

Understand, he was in more agony than I was. Repeatedly I begged him to drop me and save himself, but he wouldn’t let me go. He got me out of that jungle, mister. He saved my life. I don’t know HOW he did it and I don’t know WHY he did it…but he did. Well, four years ago, I found out that he had this epileptic condition, so I sold my house in New York, took what money I had, and came over here to take care of him”.
Then he looked at his friend and said,
“You see, mister, after what he did for me, there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him.”

Loyalty

Real love is like that. When you truly love someone, not just think you do, but love them with every part of yourself there is nothing they can do to drive you away. I love my family like that. There is nothing my children could do, no crime or indignity they would commit, that would make me love them less. I’m reasonably sure you can understand what I am saying. Friendship, however, is not held together with blood. There is no legal contract, no external pressure forcing you to care. Friendship is about loyalty.

Loyalty.

I do not hear much about loyalty, outside of movies and documentaries about the mafia.

Trust, faithfulness, sacrificial love, unselfishness, commitment –  character traits that are not automatic or easy to assimilate. Loyalty is inconvenient, it is costly. It walks in, as they say, when everyone else is walking out. It’s easy to talk the talk, make promises, spew platitudes; but it is another thing altogether to walk the walk. Loyalty shows up at three in the morning and holds your head when you throw up. Loyalty doesn’t keep track of slights or demand tit-for-tat.

Loyalty is hard.

What Are You Chasing?

Published on by Scott Williams4 Comments

Dog sunny Day AfternoonFred Craddock tells the story…

A man walks into the living room of a friend’s house and sees a large greyhound dog wrestling on the floor with his friend’s children. His friend had a habit of rescuing the greyhounds from the race tracks because they make great pets.

The dog and children were having a great time rolling around and playing on the floor with each other. The man looked down at that greyhound dog and said, “Dog, how come you’re not racing anymore?” And the dog said, “I’m certainly young enough to race.” The man responded, “So you’re young enough to race. Is it because you weren’t winning anymore?” The dog said, “Oh no. I was winning every race. I won every race up until the day I stopped racing.”

“Well then why aren’t you racing anymore dog?”

The dog replied, “Because one day I realized, that rabbit I was chasing wasn’t real.”

I’m sitting in my front room, taking some personal time, checking out the recommendation of a friend – watching “The Big C“. I try to find shows I can share with my wife, our tastes are very different. It’s the story of a woman who finds out she has cancer, terminal cancer, but can’t seem to tell anyone except her crotchety old neighbour. She realizes that she has spent her life playing it safe, chasing after middle-class furniture and watered-down dreams. It is a reminder of how easy it is to forget what is important, to settle for what is predictable.

Tony Campolo likes to talk a about a study in which fifty people who were in their late nineties were asked the question: “If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?” Looking back on their life they concluded that, if they had a chance to live their lives over again, they would have spent more time reflecting, taken more risks, and done more things that would live on after they died.

No one mentioned they would have attended more meetings, spent more time doing taxes or had more arguments about paint samples. Few of us, if pressed, would admit that we grew up hoping that some day we could waste our lives on things that didn’t matter.

Conformity

Published on by Scott Williams5 Comments

I am amazed by the similarity of people in various professions. Is it that each job brings with it changes to the people so eventually they look alike? Or rather, are we drawn to certain occupations because of who we are? And how often do we ‘change’ or try to at least, to fit in with the group that we want to belong to? This starts young and we can see it all through grade school into college. And for what outcome do we do this? Acceptance? Personally, I’m done chasing acceptance.

Here’s an example. Have you ever noticed how many ministers/pastors seem so similar? There has definitely been some temperament profiling going on. I have known hundreds of ministers and after a while it began to dawn on me how much alike they are – outgoing but not aggressive, confident but not opinionated, absolutely dead center on the extrovert/introvert scale. It’s true, look around you. I have been at conferences with literally hundreds of pastors. You can count the number of controversial personalities on one hand. If you are looking for marginal personalities, check the kid’s table. Most of them make a brief appearance as youth pastors.

A little known fact is that most youth pastors have a shelf life of only a few years before leaving for good. Why is this? I counsel several ex-youth pastors and they have admitted to me that they never ‘fit in’, that the pressure to conform was overwhelming; and that most of their creativity was shot down by established mores and hierarchical power brokers within the church culture. They expressed an increasing frustration and heightening awareness of their own worthlessness, brought on by repeated rejection and character assassination.

Unfortunately these are not isolated cases. The pressure to conform in society is overwhelming.

I love the Tony Campolo story about conformity. He starts by pointing out how important we like our children to feel. Imagine them at their first day of kindergarten. The school principal comes to the microphone and reassures the parents, “Here at hippity hop elementary school we take seriously the trust of your children. We like to think of each child like a little flower that needs to be watered and nurtured until it can blossom.” So the kid grows up thinking he’s a little flower. And everyone treats her special.

But the day comes when she has to get her first job. I’m pretty sure the foreman doesn’t get up and say, “Here at Landmark Lumber Mill we like to think of each employee as a little flower…” No way! The name of the game is conformity. About fitting in. About not making waves.

Institutions, by their very nature, stringently require conformity. It can be argued that effective organizations must not be constantly threatened by opposition or change to operate efficiently. Marginal employees and leaders are guilty of polarizing issues and straining relationships. They are difficult to bear with, without a modicum of understanding and equanimity. Many people simply do not put up with the extremes of opinion and action, viewing it as self-indulgent and evidence of a lack of restraint. Ultimately they come to be judged as immature or in need of Ritalin. One has but to witness the horrendous rise in childhood medication within the school system to see the practical application of current cultural philosophy. In a recent issue of Reader’s Digest they cited studies that concluded that while only a few percent of the general population of Canada suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder, over twenty percent of school students have been recommended for mind-altering drugs. It is far easier to dismiss and medicate than it is to recognize the inherent lack of appreciation for differing personalities. I have little doubt that I would have been recommended for such medication as a child had I been born ten years later. There is less and less room for ‘busy’ children in established organizations.

Considering the psychological ramifications, the societal pressure, and the subsequent lingering feelings of inadequacy, it is no wonder that marginalized personalities have a higher rate of chemical and emotional abuse. A vast majority of society’s disposable people exhibit anti-social behaviour and lack a general sense of propriety and culturally acceptable behaviour. An investigation into their pasts often reveals that they experienced catastrophic rejection as a child and continued to struggle with conformity well into adulthood. The example of Columbine High School put a magnifying glass on the potential dangers that we as a society face when we refuse to assign value to those who are unable to easily move within accepted norms.

I know a little bit about what it feels like to not fit in. My grade three report card actually said, and I quote, “Although Scott does well academically he thinks he can run the class and frankly I am getting sick of it!” Grade three, already a leader. Sweet.
One time, a very long time ago, my father asked his pastor at the time what to do with me. Apparently I was a handful. The old guy gently reminded my father that the story was not over yet, that often the most high-strung and oppositional kids grow up to be great leaders. This was sage advice.
I am keenly aware that I write for many people who have been beaten down by the system, by the expectations of others, by the death of dreams. It is tempting to feel marginalized when people are actually marginalizing you. As they say, it’s not paranoia if they are out to get you.

You’re ok just the way you are. I have spent much of my life chasing acceptance and it is vastly over-rated. I am tired of trying to “fit in” and chances are you are as well.

The story isn’t over yet.
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Casual Friday – Do We Matter?

Published on by Scott Williams5 Comments
110411_75159_0In 2002 I was a single parent, hurting, lonely, visiting Winnipeg, the city of my childhood. Alone.
I was at a conference downtown but felt a nostalgic need to drive for an hour in traffic to go back and remember. So there I was, driving down a road I had walked hundreds of times, decades ago. I had never been back. It was the time, elementary school, when everything was possible and I knew I was going to be significant.
Now years later, looking back on a shattered life and broken dreams, I drove back in time to my old elementary school. It was much as I had remembered it, only a great deal smaller. I remembered it as a happy place, a loud adventure full of girls and bullies and games and sports. But now, so many years later, I was back walking down empty hallways and bad preteen crayon art. I wasn’t sure why I was there but for some reason was drawn down those hallways, looking like a middle-aged creeper with too much time on his hands.
As I passed the trophy case I was struck by it’s emptiness. Someone had obviously been cleaning out the old pictures, painting and rearranging. Even today I still wonder if it really happened and still do not completely understand it’s meaning, if there even is one.
You might be able to guess what was in that window, it unfolded like a movie – There was only one photo in that display case that day – yellowed by age, bad haircuts and knobby knees. There I was, grade six volleyball team. Only one picture in that case, twenty or more years later. Why? It was a one in a million, a ridiculous proposition, a hollywood story.
I still don’t know why, or even if there is a why. I only know I was feeling alone one day, insignificant and small. And in the midst of that insecurity there was a gift, a single moment out of time and a reminder that I mattered. hundreds of teams, dozens of years, an old picture that could not fit in a small display case needed by this years teams. A ten foot picture frame with only one picture…
It is easy to believe we don’t matter in a world of superstars and the super rich. When we die will anyone remember us, mourn us? Many of us, as we grow older, ponder what legacy we will leave, if any. Many become discouraged by the brevity and seeming meaningless of life.
Do we matter?
I am inspired by the story of Rosa Parks, an average nobody who changed her world because she “was tired of giving in to white people.” Like many of us I get tired of hearing of yet another person born in privilege being noticed just because their family or circumstance gave them a platform. Rosa showed us that even a regular person can leave a powerful legacy if they live their life with integrity and purpose.
This spring I am spending a few weeks with my father editing his memoirs while basking in the sunshine. He too has left a powerful legacy of perseverance and integrity for the following generations though being an orphan who was not given many breaks in life. He may not ever be world famous but he is living proof that you don’t have to have a Harvard degree or reality television series to impact the lives of people in your world.
Do we matter?
Yes you do. Don’t settle for a mediocre life.
As Tony Campolo is fond of saying, “Most of us are tiptoeing through life so we can reach death safely. We grew up praying, “If I should die before I wake. Maybe we should be praying, “If I should wake before I die. . . .” Life can get away from you.
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Casual Friday – How Long Have You Been Alive?

Published on by Scott Williams5 Comments

Empire State BuildingTony Campolo tells a story about how he challenged his students at Eastern College by asking them, “how long have you been alive”? They responded by reciting their birthdays, almost without thinking. Then he turned to them and asked again, “how long have you really been alive”? He went on to tell of a time that as a child, he stood on the Empire State Building and for a few brief moments, as the wind whipped his hair and the panorama overwhelmed him, felt fully alive. Then he turned to his students again and said, “now, how long have you been alive?”

Some years ago I went skydiving with my friends Fergus and Wendy in Fort McMurray, Canada during an impending rain storm. It was one of those days when you could see the vistas of the horizon and watch the heavy grey clouds roll in like a blanket. It was undoubtedly not a pristine skydiving opportunity but we were anxious to get in a jump, despite our best interests. As we rose to meet the sky the clouds extended over us like a cotton canopy. We leveled out at approximately 6500 feet and flew just under the clouds. I climbed out of the door and held on to the top rim. The wind in my hair I watched the plane skim just under the unbroken cloud. On a whim I reached up and wiped my hand through the fluffy billows, splaying them behind me. For that moment, I was truly alive.

So much of life I have not lived really alive. Days meld into days without end, seasons come and go. It is easy to just exist but not really live. The older I get the more I understand that my life is so short. It’s very easy to live day after day like time doesn’t matter, wasting hours, even months doing nothing notable, nothing meaningful, taking people and situations for granted.

I had a pretty brutal car accident last year. I was in Saskatchewan, visiting friends and attending a wedding. I broke a few ribs and totalled one of best friend’s cars. Everything initially seemed to work out fine. It was a little later that I realized I was quite shaken by the experience and afraid to drive. I had to use some of the cheesy stuff I teach patients to work through it. Things are fine now but I was left with a pervading sense that I am mortal. Last month when I had a grand mal seizure I was again reminded that we are finite beings and need our lives count. Like you, I still have some things to do and want to make my life count for something.

I want to be awake and alive. I want to fan my had through a few more clouds.

If I close my eyes I can see myself clearly from a distance, standing in the doorway, the solid bank of clouds, looking up – then pushing my hand into the solid mass. There is joy on my face. Truly alive.

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Casual Friday: Does Anybody Out There Know Who I Am?

Published on by Scott Williams9 Comments

English: Cover of Undead Fishtank album, for u...

Tony Campolo tells a story in one of his books about something that happened after World War II. There were more than 200 Frenchmen who returned to Paris suffering from amnesia. They had been in prison camps and were so psychologically devastated by their ordeal that they had lost the conscious awareness of who they were.

In most cases, their identities were quickly established, but after all that was done, there were still 32 men whose identities couldn’t be verified. The doctors who were treating them were convinced that their chances for recovery were slim unless they were connected with former friends and relatives and restored to their once-familiar settings.

Someone had an idea to help. They published photographs of the men on the front page of newspapers throughout the country, and gave a date and time when anyone having information about any of these amnesia victims could come to the Paris Opera House. Well, on the appointed day, a crowd gathered to view these war veterans who didn’t know who they were. In a dramatic moment, the first of the amnesia victims walked onto the stage of the darkened opera house, stood alone in the spotlight, and slowly turned completely around. Before the hushed audience, in a halting voice, he said to the crowd, “Does anybody out there know who I am?”

It is a profound question.

I mentioned on this blog that recently I had a Grand Mal seizure at work. Fortunately I work at a doctor’s office and two of the best doctors I have ever met were on the scene within seconds. At least that is what I was told. I don’t remember any of it. Apparently I also became physically violent at one point as well, although I wasn’t there to see it.

It is a scary thing to wake up on a gurney and not know what is happening. It is very similar to waking up from an operation with that foggy pseudo-understanding that something has happened and you should know what that is. You understand, on some level, that you shouldn’t be in an ambulance – it’s a work day. It gradually dawns on you that you don’t know where you are or for that matter, who you are.

I could not remember where I lived.

It is a bizarre thing to realize you do not know who you are.

Many of us spend our entire lives trying to find out who we are. We jump through hoops and do things hoping to be loved, only to find out that we have lost a sense of ourselves. We grew up believing we were going to be rock stars and multi-millionaires, at the very least healthy, wealthy and wise, but we aren’t, and we may not get there anytime soon. It is easy to build your identity on the wrong things, trying to impress the wrong people for the wrong reasons. It is no wonder than that so many of us have come to the conclusion that the real world is boring and life has little meaning unless we find it from within.

The older I get the more I realize that life does not hand you meaning, you have to grab it for yourself. The paltry drive to acquire more money and status is so entirely meaningless yet enticing. How many rock stars and celebrities have to kill themselves or end up in rehab before we as a people stop spending our lives wishing for something that does not heal our souls?

So who are you? As Billy Crystal says in the immortal Princess Bride, “Hey! Hello in there! Hey! What’s so important? Whatcha got here, that’s worth living for?”

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Beating Anxiety And Depression Is Possible, But It May Be More Work Than You Are Prepared To Do

Published on by Scott Williams18 Comments

Anxiety and depression are plaguing 21st Century culture. It’s an epidemic.

We have never had better medications to provide relief, never had better therapies available. Health care, thorough physicians, EAP programs for free counseling, nurses, and other professionals has never been as accessible.There is no world war, most of us do not have a terminal illness. Employment is at an all time low. So what is the problem? Is there any hope?

Day after day people tell me in counseling that they have been dealing with anxiety and depression for years, even decades. They have been on antidepressants literally for generations. They believe that they have a biological issue, some sort of genetic flaw, though no one can identify when or how they were tested to confirm the neurochemical prognosis. Many people, at least in my part of the world have seen a psychiatrist who, after ten or twenty minutes, has diagnosed them (without any evidence-based analysis) as having a depressive or anxiety disorder. I have asked these individual what tests were run, what scale was used; did you even fill out a Burns Depression Questionnaire, or a PHQ-9, or a HAM-A/D, a GAD-7? Anything? Did you share the story of your past few years, describe the emotional and psychological stressors?

Twenty minutes every month and a prescription for an antidepressant, a benzodiazepine, and a sleeping medication. Many, many of my patients have been taking these same medications for a decade or more and have no idea if they do anything substantive.

The hard truth is that taking medication for a generalized anxiety or depressive disorder is only a small part of the solution (though perhaps necessary); and by themselves do little to address the important questions. Dealing with anxiety and depression requires actually dealing with the key causes, issues and effects, and takes a tremendous amount of learning, transition, and vigilance.

I tell patients that the tools they need to address these issues are incredibly simple to learn and very very difficult to master. This requires a level of humility and dedication most people are not willing to give. If you have a major issue with anxiety or depression it is going to take major work. But with the right tools, a counselor that doesn’t suck, and a dedication to do ‘whatever it takes’, you can experience significant change in just a few months.

But you need the right tools. If you go to a counselor and they tell you that you need to begin by changing your lifestyle (like the doctor who tells you to fight depression by going for a long walk every morning) then fire that therapist. Real change begins with changing your mind, not your activities or emotions. A counselor who knows what they are doing will challenge you to deal with your thoughts, show you how to practice taking back control of your impulses, and help you learn to address your dysfunctional coping skills and cognitive distortions.

With depression, for example, if you could go for a long walk every morning you probably wouldn’t be talking to your doctor. A person who is seriously depressed is usually unable to find the energy or motivation to open the curtains, let alone go for long hikes. So once again you are a failure, only further entrenching your despondency. A good counselor will help you find hope, not set you up for more failure.

Depressed people can get better. Every day I teach people the tools they need to find hope. The problem is that not everyone is prepared for the relentless battle that is necessary to drag your emotions and garbage, kicking and screaming, back into your control. You will have to fight your own dysfunctional thinking and learn to get control of your mind, battle your obsessions, say no to your desires, and question your own beliefs. This is a great deal of work and pain but the reward is sanity, hope, and a shot at a happy life.

I love what Tony Campolo once said, “As children we were taught to pray the prayer, ‘If I should die before I wake’. Most of us should be praying, ‘If I should wake before I die’.” Many of us have been walking around most of our lives half asleep, half alive. Isn’t it time we woke up? Anxiety is not a terminal illness. Panic attacks can be beaten. Depressed people find hope.

Don’t give up, you’re worth it.

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