No. 24 - Friday, July 7, 2023 - 3 Minute Read

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Two New Podcasts: Excellent at Life Podcast | Living Wisely Podcast for Kids

You can listen to an audio version of this newsletter here on the new Excellent at Life podcast.

Your kids can listen to the first story on my new Living Wisely podcast, Stories and Lessons for Kids (and the adults listening in the background).

Yes, I'm a glutton for punishment, but I've also figured out how to create these quickly. Both podcasts are experiments and I reserve the right to end each one with minimal embarrassment and to be as inconsistent and undisciplined as I wish.

One New Law Firm

I've also started my own law firm helping people who are buying or selling small businesses (email for that: Joseph@awiseattorney.com). The previous sentence might constitute attorney advertising in which case I hope it's really effective.

Only one of these, folks, I'm not stupid enough to create two new law firms at once.

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Speak, Friend, and Enter

The Iceberg Rises

It’s taken me quite a while to really understand just how defended I am. As my mind softens, I get little glimpses of how hard I work to hold the world at bay. Detritus surfaces in calmer waters.

My first instinct is to recoil. It scares me to see that all my intellectualization has been a way of hiding from the world, to consider that maybe after all these years I am only now beginning to see.

It’s easy to miss that just allowing more of the iceberg to rise above water, is huge. Just gently touching the fears and fortifications that I threw up between the world and me is a wonderful achievement.

Once you can permit a difficult realization to the surface of the mind, it can begin to resolve. You can slowly see that it is not so scary after all, that nothing will happen to you if you actually touch it. The walls of the heart are often less solid than they appear. Sometimes a gentle caress is all that's needed to melt the mirage. But you can only caress that which you see.

Befriend, Don’t Suppress

When you see how you keep the world out, you now have a choice. Normally, we reflexively push the iceberg back down, we suppress what we see because it conflicts with how we want to see ourselves. We are supposed to have it all together and are afraid of the chaos of underlying feelings.

The trick lies in catching that reflex. You’ll push stuff back down hundreds of times, but if you’re willing to look and willing to befriend, there’s another option: You can see that which has been gracious enough to rise from the depths for the opportunity it is. Difficult as it may be, it is really a gift when challenging feelings make their way into consciousness. Instead of turning away, we can turn to them and cherish the chance to increase our degrees of freedom by just a little bit.

As I see more and more of my own defensiveness, rather than immediately running for my life, I see it as an invitation to look more deeply, to greet the parts of myself that have been hiding away with friendliness. I am more willing to touch the fire, more willing to experience.

Each of us builds a fortress around ourselves as a primal attempt to keep out a painful world. When you are willing to get to know the walls you’ve erected, things that appear so solid begin to waver. The walls begin to quiver in synchrony with the quivering of the heart they protect, the heart that cares so much it believed the only way to stave off inundation was to lock the gates.

Locking the gates only works so much; it comes with a cost. We cannot get to know our family or our friends when we are locked away. Even worse, we cannot get to know ourselves. And the only way to know others is to know ourselves.

Speak, Friend, and Enter

There is a passage in the Lord of the Rings when the Fellowship reaches the Mines of Moria. They stand on a strip of land before the gates, as howling wolves draw near and an ominous lake lies behind them. Moria is dark, delved deep under impenetrable mountains. Gandalf, the wizard, stands at the hidden door and reveals Dwarvish runes which translate to Speak Friend, and Enter. He attempts password after password to wit’s end, until it occurs to Frodo that perhaps the password is Friend. Gandalf chants mellon, the Dwarvish word for friend, and the doors to the impenetrable, open.

You cannot solve away your walls, you cannot medicate away the gates and fortifications that have rendered you impenetrable. No magic word will make them disappear, no trickery will get you through the door. You must greet them in friendship, allow them to melt by seeing they are friends who once served you but are no longer needed. They are what we threw up to protect ourselves when we knew not how to do so more skillfully.

But what a shame it would be if we stay locked behind them forever because we are scared. What a shame if we never learn to trust the soft quivering of our own heart and allow it to fall into natural resonance with the hearts of others, friend or foe, family or neighbor, stranger or acquaintance.

So when the walls permit themselves to be seen, it is a time for compassion, for understanding. It is a time for rejoicing.

Speak friend and enter.

Joseph

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Something I did new in this letter...

I cross-linked to another piece I wrote on the website. I saw another creator do this (Justin Welsh) and realized it's a very effective way to invite people to explore more of your content. Getting good is about tiny improvements.

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