The Eyes Have It.

While I was at training this week the inevitable discussion of what part of the body (generally female) first gets your attention was brought up. Mine may be boring, but it is without a doubt the eyes. This goes for both men and women (not physical attraction, just first impressions!).

They say the eyes are the windows of the soul. I am not sure what that is fully supposed to mean, but I do know that when I see a person's eyes I can generally draw some conclusions about them. As for the color? I prefer brown. That may sound silly, and I know you will say "That's the most common color!" but it is true for me. I am not sure why, but I was telling a friend the other day that I never had a girlfriend that didn't have brown eyes, and come to think of it, I never even dated a blonde. What does that say about me?

So what do I like to see in eyes? I really like to see a mix of confidence and vulnerability. Maybe I am crazy and you can't see that in eyes. Maybe I am reading into it what I want to see, but I don't think so. I think you really can see these things in someone's eyes.

I don't like cocky people. Mainly because they can never be real. I like real people. I want to surround myself with real people. Life is too short and time is too precious to waste it on people who will never be real with you. That's where vulnerability comes into play. I don't think you can be real if you aren't willing to be  vulnerable enough to reveal yourself.

I think this is a part of me that sometimes people don't get. I will stay friends with some people who may rub others the wrong way and seem to be the cocky type I don't want to be around. Why do I stay with them? Generally because they have been vulnerable and real with me. When you get a glimpse into the (this may sound cheesy) soul of someone and see a good person, it makes me often ignore the outer persona that person projects. For sure there are limits to this, but it is a general truth for me.

I also like people who tell you what they think. This is where the confidence comes into play. I hate guessing what someone is thinking. I want them to tell me. I don't get my feelings hurt very easily if someone who is real tells me how they feel about something.

What else do I like to see in eyes? I guess a sense of wonder. I am constantly amazed by the world around us. You can find something beautiful and awe inspiring around every corner. You just have to be looking. Some people have the look in their eyes that they are just trying to get to the next objective in life. I want to be surrounded by people who take the time to notice things. To laugh about things. To feel things about life. To even cry about life at times. Regardless of your religious views, the fact is that all of us have a finite amount of time here...I want to be constantly reminded of what a privilege it is.

Is it a mission or a quest?

I was playing Borderlands 2 with a couple of friends last night who are probably the two most fun people with whom I game. Anyways, once I got past the deep hurt of them having leveled up greatly without me while I was at training, had matching uniforms (Wonder twin powers activate!), and pretty much didn't need me at all this week, we started talking about the levels in BL2. Are they quests, or are they missions?

Melissa and I have both played RPGs. She has a preference for emo games like Final Fantasy and Kung Fu Panda games like World of Warcraft. I, on the other hands, prefer awesome games like Guild Wars (best MMO ever!) and the Elder Scrolls games (best RPGs ever!). As a side note, it is pretty obvious who has the best taste in games, right? Well, since we have both played RPGs we have a tendency to call them quests.

Michael, who is not a big RPG guy, corrected us and told us they are missions. I'm not really sure what the difference is, but he was opposed to the term quests. I can sort of see his point. I guess Borderlands 2 does not have elves, swords and sorcery, however it would be totally badass if it did. We ended up making a compromise and decided to call them either quissions or muests. I have a fondness for quissions because it sounds soft and squishy.

Why do I share this with you today? I share it because this is what I love about online gaming. For me it is less about the game and more about spending time and having fun with good people. Its the reason I keep turning on the Xbox when I should probably be sleeping or doing something more productive. Then again, in my book spending time laughing and having fun with friends is a productive thing to do. Now if we can just do something about that timezone difference...

The Last Day

Today is my last day away from home for this training. I am looking forward to getting home, but have really enjoyed my time up here. The camaraderie with the other guys has been great. Tuesday was a pretty emotional day for me, but it was good to get those feelings out. I realized that I hadn't really grieved those losses because of shock and being busy helping. Yesterday we had a social (got to love the use of old words) at the lake. It was a great time full of a lot of laughing and joking around. It was a good time to depressurize from the heavy things we had been discussing for two days.

"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow."

I saw this quote today and really liked it. It fits with a phrase I have been hearing someone use a lot lately..."Just do it." Sometimes we over think things and that leads to procrastination. If we wait for the perfect plan, or the perfect opportunity we will probably only accomplish one thing...waiting.

The Morning After

I guess that last post qualifies as the obligatory emo post for this blog. It was a situation where I needed to say what I said to someone at a moment when I couldn't contact anyone....so, you were it. I told a friend the night before that crying is healthy when you need to release that emotion. I took that advice after the post and it didn't fail me.

I woke up early this morning to go for a run. There is a really nice track right behind the barracks that runs through the woods. To set the scene you need to understand that where I am is in a very rural part of the state. There isn't much around the camp and the camp is very large, with lots of woods and empty space. That makes it very dark at night. 

When I walked out to the track it was still night and the coolness in the air felt great. The leg of the track that is closest to the barracks is somewhat lit by the buildings, but you can't see any of the rest of the track because of the woods. I stretched and started my run. As I headed into the woods it got very dark....dark enough to where I was wondering if I was going to be able to see where I was going.

As I rounded a corner, the track took me into an opening in the trees and the track was illuminated by the star light. I looked up and it was amazingly beautiful! There were so many stars and they were so bright and clear. I could clearly see the little dipper constellation among all the stars. It was just one of those moments of awe when you look at the world around you and are just amazed. I felt so thankful for being right there at that moment of time. That set the tone for a great run.  

I still have twinges of sadness this morning, but I am okay with that. I hope I never get to the point where love, loss...life...doesn't affect me. I want to feel, its just not as much fun on days like yesterday. I still miss my friends. I still wish I could have been there in a more meaningful way, to perhaps change the outcome, but all I can do is move forward and try to do the best that I can with each day that I am given...to enjoy the friends and family that I have and the blessings that often come unexpectedly.

Overwhelming Sadness

Have you ever had emotions that were buried deep down, and that you thought were behind you, explode from deep within you like a volcano? Today is that day for me. I am here taking a training on suicide intervention. The training is phenomenal and is the best thing I have ever seen for intervening in someone's life. That's the good part.

The bad part is that seeing the videos of people who have tried to commit suicide and just talking about it has dredged up sadness I thought had long passed me. I am having a hard time putting into words my feelings. All I can come up with is that every fiber of my being feels like curling up into a ball and crying. It hurts down into my soul. 

Why? I have been reminded of two friends who committed suicide. I have been reminded of the good and the bad. I have been reminded of the loss and the pain. Most of all I have been reminded that two friends felt so alone that they saw no other alternative than to take their lives. They felt that alone and yet I was supposedly their friend. I can't even imagine how despondent, desperate and alone they felt...right up to the moment they died. When I imagine how they felt, I am overwhelmed with sadness and I just can't shake it.

Wow!

I am way too tired to write another lengthy post, but I had to share something. Today I had the hardest time trying to write a paper. It is one of the final papers I will write as a part of this doctoral program, and it ended up being one that impacted me the most.

I have always prided myself on not being biased in regard to sex or race, but today I discovered that I have been biased in ways that I never knew. I will share more later, but there is a concept called categorization theory. In short, categorization theory is a way that helps us to organize and process things. In essence, our brain throws similar things into categories and then processes them. Its like carrying a bunch of separate papers in a folder. It makes things easier.

Anyways, categorization theory can also apply to things like evaluating people. You tend to build these categories based on experience. When dealing with people we tend to build prototypes by which we evaluate others to sort them into categories. An example would be that if you had a sweet little grandma, you might tend to assume that all little old ladies are just as sweet. We all know that isn't necessarily true, but our brains do it anyways.

I share all of this to say that when it comes to leaders we all build prototypes as well, and we use that prototype to evaluate leaders and potential leaders. The catch in all of this is that for many of us when we think of leaders we tend to think of current leaders who happen to be predominantly white males, or historical leaders who also happen to be predominantly white males (I see you Abraham Lincoln and George Washington). So our brains build this prototype of a good leader based on characteristics of these white males.

What happens then? We evaluate everyone against that prototype and when it comes to women and minorities, well... they often get the short end of the stick. Its an unconscious bias, but a bias nonetheless. Very eye opening and convicting.

For some, that might be the most boring post yet. Don't say I didn't warn you! I also started my post saying I wasn't able to write long. I guess I lied.

Listening

If there is one universal desire outside of the obvious physical needs and desires, I think it would be to truly be heard. I am not just talking about being heard audibly. I am talking about being understood. Have you ever wished that someone just understood you? Understood what you were trying to say? Understood where you were coming from? Understood your motivations, your fears, your hopes, your dreams?

Its such a dichotomy to me. We are individual beings. We breathe our own air, we eat our own food, we live within a body that is separate from everyone else. Even when we experience things together, our perceptions are often very different. Yet, we want to be together. We want to know and be known. We want someone else to break through into our world and truly get us.

Researchers tell us that in normal conversations we spend the majority of the time between us talking thinking about what we are going to say next. This doesn't leave much time for us to hear what the other person is saying. Add to that the fact that a large percentage of communication is non-verbal and it is even more likely that we aren't going to pick up on cue that might lead us to a better understanding of what the other person is saying.

The lack of being able to listen well can impact getting directions, making plans with friends or resolution of a conflict. It can also keep us from truly listening to the really important things people are saying. Let's face it...it is really hard to open up and be vulnerable (see last post) in the first place. Not many of us are going to bare our souls easily in the first place. Couple that with a lack of the other person really being able to listen and it is highly likely that even when we try we will walk away thinking that the person doesn't know us any better than they did before.

So how can we make a difference? How can we know other better? How can we listen? Its simple really, almost ridiculously so. All it takes is a desire to listen and a little bit of practice. If you don't care, then you won't ever listen. But assume you do want to know, you do want to hear, you do want to get it...what can you do?

You can listen. I am not trying to be cute. I am sure you (if there are any of "you" out there) are saying "Stupid. I read all of this to get to this stupid end? What an idiot" or something like that. However, I am telling you that the secret it to listen. To really listen. In order to do that you are going to have to change the way you have been going about it most of your life. Remember when I said that we spend the majority of our time when we are not talking thinking about what we are going to say next? We have to break that habit.

Experts in communication call this active listening. It involves training yourself to not think about what you are going to say next and instead focus on what the other person is saying. The words they use, their body language, the inflection of their voice all tell a story. So how do you train yourself to use active listening? Listen as though you have to give a report, and you will..sort of.

When you are having a conversation with someone listen to them and then briefly paraphrase what they said back to them. This will seem awkward at first, but it works. It makes us focus on what is being said, and it allows the other person to: a) know we are listening, and b) correct us if we are getting things wrong. I am not saying that you do this in every conversation after everything someone says...but if you are ready to do it all the time, then you will be engaging in active listening. The more serious the conversation, the more you should use it. Give it a try. I bet you will catch people off guard and you will find that they are excited that you are actually hearing them.

Vulnerability

"What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful." - Brene' Brown

I just came across this quote tonight and I love it. I think a lot of us confuse vulnerability with weakness, so we spend a lot of time putting on a front of strength, or hiding and hoping no one sees us. However, real strength is found in being vulnerable and real.

Background

I mentioned in my first post that my desire to write a book has more to do with sorting and putting my thoughts onto paper, and that the reason for that might be more clear as I keep posting. I grew up in a great home, with great parents who had us in church every week. As a result, the church had a huge impact on my life. However, over the last several years I have been rethinking everything I thought I knew.

 I promise this isn't going to become a blog about religion. I am just sharing my background so that maybe some of the other stuff I write will make sense. My religious upbringing is only one of the things I will share that has led me to where I am now. I would not call myself a religious person, but I would call myself a spiritual person...even though I don't always act in a way consistent with how I would like.

My father was in the military while I grew up, so we spent a lot of time moving. From my birth to middle school we lived in six different places. Every couple of years I was the new kid in school. I think that has been a benefit for me as an adult, since I can adapt to new situations pretty well. However, as a kid it was not fun at all. It was hard always being the new kid, and then just when it felt like home, it time to start over again. I remember being very jealous of my friends who graduated from high school with people with whom they had gone to kindergarten.

The result of all of this was a kid who was very self conscious, very shy and ready to fight with anyone who I thought was a threat. I was fortunate to make some good friends, but I was certainly not comfortable in my own skin. I remember in college meeting girl who had been a cheerleader and part of the "popular" crowd in high school. She told that they thought I was stuck up and that I thought I was too good for them. Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

It wasn't until I was in college that I truly began to be comfortable with myself...began. It was a process that is probably still happening. 

Wow. I am not sure why I have written all of that while watching this football game, but like I said...some of this may be random.

The starting point...

This week I was inspired by a friend. I won't get into the details because it is not my story to tell. I can't tell you how significant the decision was, because I am not her. What I can tell you is that she made a courageous decision. It made me think that courageous decisions, be they small or large, are the foundation of lives that are worth living. Every time we decide to make a change in our lives, or the lives of those around us, we are making a courageous decision. We are stepping out of a place of comfort, a place in which we naturally want to stay.

So what does this have to do with this blog? For a number of years I have wanted to write a book. It wouldn't be a work of fiction, or necessarily anything that many people would want to read. It would be more of an opportunity for me to think some things through and put them down on paper (the need for this will probably become more clear in coming posts). It would be more of a growth experience for me than anything else. Sort of Ken's thoughts about what really matters in life.

That's where this blog comes into play. I am going to start writing thoughts down here. They may seem random, they may be humorous, they may be serious and sometimes they may seem ridiculous. I don't expect to gather a following. The goal is to have a place to put my thoughts down as they come so that when I am ready to put some things together, they will be here. So thanks to my friend for inspiring me to finally do something I haven't had the courage to do in the past.