501 by Pat

Simplify.

For the past eighteen months, I’ve been on a mission of sorts. I’ve been trying to understand how I can best simplify my lifestyle.

That’s a difficult change given that I’m a software engineer who commutes 45 minutes to work, a husband and father of two, homeowner in the exurbs, a doctoral student, and one of those people who always has more hobbies than time to pursue them in.

So when I go into a ‘simplify’ phase, I go in with my arms full and my hurdles low.

The idealist in me shakes his head at how stupid that sounds, how inflexible and unwilling to really commit to a radical change. So totally sold out, yuppified and pathetic.

The realist in me asks the idealist on the other shoulder whether he would prefer that I lose my wife, my kids or my job.

And so the battle rages on. As I age, I find myself much more willing to sell the house and downsize, this neighborhood is excellent for my kids, who have friends literally right outside their doors (quite the change from my own childhood in rural Montana, where my best friend lived 8 miles away). And though my job is challenging and relatively lucrative, I can think of many other ways I’d prefer to earn a paycheck given a choice.

Which brings me to the doctoral student hat. As a 20-year software engineering veteran, pursuing a doctorate in ministry probably looks like a downgrade in career options. Yet (despite the whole paycheck thing) I’m invigorated by my study in that area. I would pursue that work, wholeheartedly, in a whole heartbeat, and upon completion, figure out what is next.

Time and financial pressure make that impractical, but it is intriguing.

So, what to simplify? What fat can be cut?

I find that I’m much more focused on using my time wisely these days, simplifying my entertainment options. I don’t watch much TV anymore, only trying to hang with the wife and kids while they are relaxing in the TV room (with a book or an iPad open, usually).

I don’t buy clothes as much these days, though that was never a big challenge for me.

I don’t buy motorcycles nearly as often either, though given a big fat check to spend how I’d like, I know the next ten I’d love to park in my garage.

I don’t buy music as often, instead subscribing to (legal) music streaming sites, including Zune.net which is my current software consulting home.

I don’t buy books as often either, mostly because I have most of the research materials I need for the next year or two’s graduate work, and there’s precious little time for other reading at the moment, sadly.

And now most of what I can simplify really is my attitude, my inner self, my grand desires to Be Somebody. I can’t really say that I’ve reached a point at which I’d be happy just to be a husband and a dad and a worker bee – and I hope I never really am – but I’m more willing to take it all as it comes, without forcing my way into the game the way I used to.

Oh, and I’m driving a 12 year old car with 220,000 miles on the odometer. That must count for something, right? Especially from a gearhead who REALLY loves a loud rumbly pavement ripping vehicle?

I can also simplify my coffee order, now that I think about it.

It has been a while since I’ve written here. Life gets in the way from time to time, I guess.

We’re at a moment in our lives (my wife and I being the we) in which busyness is our constant companion. With children at 7 and 4 and on summer break, and extended family hanging out with us a lot, and a new puppy, and the myriad dreams I have in my mind, we find life sprinting by us, often unannounced and without asking our permission.

I, at 41 now, have found myself in a mode of introspection. More than usual, which for me is a lot. Who am I and what do I want for my life, and why does that feel so far away from the day-to-day?

What do I treasure versus what do I desire? I find that I treasure time and the grandness of possibility more than anything else at the moment. I treasure the little moments of time I get to share with my kids and with my wife, though I am often distracted and un-present. I treasure the thought of my kids becoming individuals who are more like themselves than me or my wife. I treasure the openness of their horizons and am thrilled with what might be.

Somewhere beneath these treasures on the priority curve are the countless projects I have in my mind: mechanical work on a car, a truck and a motorcycles; projects for a bicycle or two; finishing a doctoral dissertation (well, starting and finishing it both); writing and reading; playing music; photographing; hammock time.

And in this region are the duties and obligations of life. The day job, our casual friends and extended family, doing yardwork and dishes and laundry. I am wired such that these obligations are never thrilling to me, but are the things that I think of as keeping me from treasure. If I heard myself say that out loud, I would chastise the speaker – but there it is, and that is my tendency.

Perhaps this barely-controlled frenzy is why I am so drawn to Christian and Buddhist monastics in particular. They strive for intentional focus on the present moment, on simplicity and long-term commitment to deeply important people. They establish patterns and routines of living such that treasure is treasured, and other things are more easily seen for what they are.

I have found in recent years that writing (blogging, journaling, processing in electronic form) both allows and forces me to examine and synthesize my life. Therein lies the treasure that writing has become for me, and therein lies the reason that I am grateful to spend a few minutes here, writing what Anne Lamott would celebrate as a shitty first draft, but a filled page nonetheless, and words transferred from my interior world through my ergonomic keyboard to the electronic world.

External thoughts, treasures.

Step Eight of the Twelve Steps that Bill W of Alcoholics Anonymous created says this:

Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

My grandpa lived by these twelve steps, in a life that was challenged by addiction to alcohol in his early years through his marriage and birth of my uncle and my father, and later in addiction to painkilling narcotics that he took to help him with the physical damage from his work as a building contractor. My grandpa’s knees and back were shot by the time I knew him.

Grandpa “took the treatment” more than once, and told us stories of being in the drunk tank or in the hospital and dealing with the withdrawal effects, really wanting to quit, but being powerless to outthink his addiction. Along the way he found AA and was saved, day by day, minute by minute.

It was years later – a few years ago – that I ran into AA again, myself.

Brogan wants me to type his name here.
Brogan Daniel Dennis Loughery.

Anyway, as I was saying, when my wife and I were leading a church startup, one of our folks was in AA to hlp her with a narcotic addiction. She thought that my approach to the Christian Gospel was a lot like AA’s, so she told me I should read the Big Blue Book. To be honest, I still haven’t, although being a child of the Internet I have searched and found the Twelve Steps, and I’ve been impressed with their depth of transformative power.

I think I should go through them just as a person who’s trying to be more healthy.

I also realize that I have my own addictions as well – though not the same kinds of addictions as my grandpa or my local friend. I just don’t get crushed by them in the same kinds of ways as they did and do, so I’m less aware of them

The Eight Step is about restitution. It’s a fearless step. Make a list of all we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.

Brogan wants me to type my name: Patrick Michael Loughery

This is a deeply spiritual, deeply scary, deeply transformational step. Exegeting it, I find these parts:
Make a list
of all we have harmed
Become willing to
make amends

Our local friend came to us one day, in Step Eight, and spoke to us about things that had happened between us in which she felt she may have hurt us. It was a courageous and a sacred moment. We were on her list.

I also see that it’s not that I have to make amends; sometimes that’s not possible. Sometimes people won’t receive what you’re giving, or they want to rub your nose in it in a way that’s unhealthy for everybody concerned. Be willing to make amends – to restore relationship and to make restitution.

The Christian Scripture says, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”. It’s not always possible, and you/I can only do so much, but live at peace, in that whole-lived shalom, with all.

Peacemaking is restitution in a whole world sense.

I think our world would be a transformed place if the Twelve Steps of AA were practiced by a lot more people than those who knew they were struggling with alcohol addiction.

Including me.