meme is defined as “an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” This could be anything from fauhawks, to LOL Cats to how you practice religion or whether or not you recycle.

We often unconsciously make decisions on how we relate to these memes. We can easily consume and be a conduit for these ideas, behaviors and styles without even realizing it. We can also be disinterested in or disconnected from memes with little thought.

What can truly define us are the memes we chose to create or chase and the ones with which we are determined to disagree. These are decisions we make with greater intention.

The issue with this is when we relate passively (positively or negatively) with memes of significance, while we relate intentionally to the less significant memes. I churn stomach acid over fictional TV characters and college football while real people are illiterate, hungry and/or dying of an easily-treated disease.

What would happen if we worked to relate intentionally with memes of significance?

I rented and watched the movie The Soloist the other day. I want to buy it now. My wife asked me if I really thought we would watch the film enough to justify buying it.

I don’t.

I just want to support a good film and have it as a reminder of its message.

This made me thing about why I buy, or don’t buy, certain things from certain places. I don’t have the same intention to seek out and support something “good.”

If we endorse what we buy, then shouldn’t we buy what we endorse? As Seth Godin said, we get what we pay for.

Some of our most cherished works of art originated from the Renaissance. Without the Medici family, many of these works would not have been created. Lorenzo de Medici supported artists from Leonardo da Vinci to Michelangelo. So, without patrons, The Mona Lisa and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel would not exist for our appreciation.

What we need today are “many micro-Medicis.” We need small armies of patrons who recognize what they appreciate and are willing to support it. Buy from manufacturers with good labor standards. Buy from stores that support the community. Donate to churches involved in good work. Donate to candidates who not only stand on proper (however you define it) values… but prove it with the way they operate their campaign. And yes, purchase movies that communicate rich and powerful messages.

“Patronizing” should cease to connotate negativity. We should all aspire to be more patronizing.

The world continues to move at ever-increasing speed. Twitter is not going to slow down for you to catch your breath.

Not only is work filling your day, but so are non-profits. Even consumer marketing seems to be vying for your time (“Visit our website.” “Fill out this survey.” “Engage in these conversations.”) instead of directly reaching for your billfold.

We’re all busy. It isn’t going to change anytime soon. If I could visualize this phenomenon, it would look like a monstrous fitness center with people on treadmills. So many treadmills you can’t see the end of it.

What can you do? If we’re all stuffing our lives this way, how do you do anything that gets noticed? How do you define success in a line-up of people all running in the same direction, yet going nowhere?

Margin.

On a sheet of standard notebook paper, there are a few inches of space reserved along the edges where the writer doesn’t write. I remember my elementary teacher guiding us, “Write your name in the margin.” If that space were not preserved for our names, it would have been much more difficult to discern which paper belonged to which student.

It is the same in our lives today. Sure there are going to be meetings to attend, traffic jams, paper jams, invoices to create, bills to pay, meetings to attend, paperwork to fill, inboxes to empty, dinner to make, dishes to clean and meetings to attend (let’s not get carried away). But there must be space reserved along the edges of life. This is where we can leave our unique signature.

What are you doing with your margins? Are you filling them up with other’s “stuff?” Are you letting others into your margins and giving them what should be your space? Or are you writing your name? Your way. Your signature.

Create the space to be uniquely you and claim your masterpiece.

Here’s a quick brainstorming tip.

Next time you’re stuck on predictible, unoriginal ideas, try this:
Think 180°.

1. Ask yourself, “What is the LAST thing I would do in this situation?” or “What is an idea opposite of these?”
2. Make a list of the ideas that come to mind.
3. Read over the list and evaluate WHY each idea wouldn’t work.

Now, you may not use any of the ideas you’ve listed, but you’ve stimulated new thoughts. After you explore the opposites, you may go back to one of your original ideas with a twist. “What if we create this product, but market it to women in business instead of men?”  “What if we do the seminar on these topics, but the seminar is free, we charge for lunch and sell snacks during breaks?”

Sometimes thinking outside the box is most helpful when you eventually bring the ideas back inside the box.

Occasionally, she called upon us parents for volunteers to read or give answers.

I was stunned by the silence and awkward glances downward.

The teacher shared her observation that her students were much more eager to participate than their parents.

It gave me pause to wonder – why were we so hesitant to speak up, give answers… hesitant to take even the smallest risk?  Much has been said of our fear of failure, but failure was not the deciding factor here.  It’s not like our success would be dictated by how well we read “See Jane run.”

How come parents paused when our children would have eagerly spoken up?

I think somewhere between 3rd grade and our 3rd year of college, we have been beaten, chiseled, hardened and restrained by perpetual criticism.  We’re a cynical society.  We make snide remarks all the time about someone’s speech impediment, religious affiliation, choice of wardrobe or choice of friends.  The constant wear has made us paranoid… even as adults.

It’s obvious in politics.  Candidates like McCain, Palin, Obama and Biden know the very words they speak will be used in an attempt to hang them later.  But should they let the critics dictate their speeches, let alone their policies?

How about you?  Are you paranoid because of living among critics?  And how much power do you give them over your life?

More on this from Seth.

Financial Independence.

The Declaration of Independence.

An Independent Spirit.

We esteem independence. Our society celebrates freedom. As we should. But, do we miss the point?

We’re not seeking absolute independence. Well, we may be seeking it, but we won’t find it. It cannot be obtained.

We want to free ourselves of dependency on foreign oil. In order to do so, we become dependent on something else (i.e. biofuel, coal for electricity and/or our domestic supply).

It is not independence. It is a transfer of dependency.

Consider the recent demise of Bear Stearns. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said the collapse of Bear Stearns was due to a lack of confidence, not a lack of capital. Even one of the largest brokerages in the world is dependent on something as uncontrollable as our confidence.

This global truth funnels down to you and your business as well.

What is your business dependent upon?

Vendors?
Trends?
Investors?

Is your dependency upon something trustworthy? Is it a healthy dependency?

What about you? What are you dependent upon?

The security or status of your home?
The love of your family?
The convenience of credit cards?
The comfort of food or drinking?
The trust of a friend?
The strength of your faith?

Is the object of your dependency worthy of your faith in it/them?

What is the result of your dependency? Does it help you build on your life, or dig a hole? Does it undergird your hope, or chain down your dreams?

What is worthy of your dependency?

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries…

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

A friend shared the poem above with me recently. I had heard it before. In fact, I had memorized it. Still, I had forgotten the principle within it: Find Beauty!

Sounds too simple and obvious, doesn’t it? But think about this a moment.

We’re Busy

We all admit we live in an accelerating culture.

As society continues to speed up, it becomes increasingly difficult to pause long enough to see the beauty around us. We don’t have time to pluck blackberries, let alone notice a burning bush.

In April of 2007, The Washington Post performed a test. They set out a burning bush to see who would notice it. You may have seen the story or the video of the event. World-renowned violinist Joshua Bell performed some of the greatest music ever composed, playing a $3.5 million violin. 1,100 people passed him. A few dozen noticed him. Beauty was overlooked in favor of rush hour.

Beauty is Hard to See During Ugly Times

Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin was among the first British soldiers to liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. While waiting an excessive number of days for relief supplies to arrive, he witnessed droves of former prisoners continuing to die. They needed food, water and medical supplies. Instead, the first shipment they received was a very large quantity of lipstick. Here is the account from his diary:

I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

History has recorded few things as ugly as the Holocaust. Yet, something as simple as lipstick brought beauty (not just the cosmetic variety) to an ugly tragedy.

Maybe you, or someone you know, are in the midst of some pretty ugly stuff. Beauty is easy to see when life is good. But what about when it is hard or painful? Is there something simple, which can bring an element of beauty into the camp? You may be surprised how little things can make a huge impact.

Find a Guide

I attended an arts conference at Willow Creek last year. Dewitt Jones was one of my favorite speakers. A photographer for National Geographic, he talked about doing what you love… or sometimes loving what you do.

He traveled all over the world for National Geographic. When he arrived someplace foreign to him, he would find a guide. Not a guide to show him around. “Those were easy to find.” He said. He found guides who were in love with the area, because they had something to share: their own unique stories.

Maybe you have a hard time finding beauty. Find a guide. They will help you see the beauty which surrounds you. The bush afire with God.

May you find that earth is indeed crammed with heaven.

Scars

The other day I was shaving and ouch!! I cut my chin. I looked in the mirror and realized that I cut myself because of a scar. The skin was raised a bit by the scar and the blade just nicked it. This scar was the result of an incident when I was two or three years old. While running through my grandma’s kitchen, I tripped and bust my chin open on her linoleum floor. Most people don’t even know I have a scar on my chin. It is on the bottom of the ball of my chin and isn’t noticeable unless I raise my lower lip upward dramatically. I don’t even notice it very often. I hadn’t thought about it in ages, yet it was still there waiting for a hasty blade to bring it to my attention.

We all have scars. Some are from childhood incidents like mine. Others are even harder to see. They’re emotional, psychological, or spiritual. Nevertheless, they are still scars and they wait for some hasty action, ill-spoken word, or reminder of the past to reveal them.

As a volunteer drama director I see this happen occasionally with actors. We will be working on a scene and something triggers an emotion… the actor loses it. We usually take a break and I talk with the actor. Often, something in the scene or about the character revealed something to actor about his/herself. Not surprising since that is what most writers attempt to do. They want people to relate and respond to the story and/or the characters.

My wife Tammy and I were watching Message in a Bottle one evening. Although it is a rather drab movie with suspect acting, there was a moment that shot me to pieces. (Warning: Possible spoiler if you haven’t seen the movie.) One of the characters receives a phone call to find out that a loved one was killed in an accident. On the surface this seems like nothing incredible. This happens in other movies. This time though, I fell apart. The phone call reminded me of one I had received a few months before. A call telling me two friends of ours had died in a plane accident. The scar was reopened without warning and quite abruptly.

What do we do? We can’t walk on eggshells around everyone worrying that we might unwittingly tear open what time has worked so hard to heal. This would paralyze our ability to communicate and ultimately connect with people.

The best answer I have comes from Lethal Weapon 3 (not a typical fount of wisdom, but give me a moment).  There is a scene in this movie where Mel Gibson and Renee Russo’s characters start showing their scars to each other. They take it to extremes by beginning to disrobe, but that’s beside the point. They share their stories through these scars. This is where they fall for each other. Why? Because he relates to her. She understands where he’s been. They connect. What if that’s the point?

What if we have the scars so we can share them with others? So we can relate to one another. Sharing our hurt and hopefully our healing with people who may have similar stories of their own. It’s hard. There’s a fear that people may be disgusted by our scars or maybe they will reopen the wound somehow. That fear however, should not impede us from sharing with the right people at the right moment.

It may be worth a nick on the chin to engage someone’s heart.

I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried
I’ve had my fill, my share of losing
And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing
To think I did all that
And may I say, not in a shy way,
“Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way“

- Frank Sinatra, My Way

As popular as it is, I know there’s a lot of people who don’t like that song. They find it arrogant and self-centered. And, left to itself, I suppose it is.

But, isn’t there something inside you that says, “Yeah, that’s what I want.”?

I think we all have that. I also believe we were each created with a unique purpose in life. And if we truly seek out “our way” we will have to tap into that purpose we were given… not just selfish desires.

Very few of us do, though. Instead, we look for some sort of standardization to make us comfortable. What would a good business leader do in this circumstance? What would a good mom do here? What would a good husband say now?

We look to the generic.

We even ask “What would Jesus do?” or WWJD for short. Maybe asking this is a good step in the right direction toward finding a moral compass, but I don’t know what a first century carpenter would do about managing his email inbox or explaining the birds and the bees to his daughter.

Models, mentors and case studies are great. But it seems like we’re starving for a means of expressing “our way.” We personalize our iPods, coffee, t-shirts, Scions and stuffed animals. I think it’s because we’re living generic lives.

Have you ever asked, “How was I created to deliver this presentation?” Or “What talents and experience can I use to show my husband how much I love him?” Maybe you’ll choose a personal story over a PowerPoint slide. Or you’ll eschew the Hallmark card in favor of writing a song from your heart.

May you say, not in a shy way, you did it Your Way.

Maybe I’m naive, but I had no idea people found the eHarmony ads so offensive/repulsive.

Here’s a comment from a viewer YouTube:

They are annoying beyond belief. The people in them are a bunch of yuppie losers who like to show affection on TV and rub it in everyone’s faces. They all need to die.

Wow! I knew some people didn’t like the Apple vs. PC ads, but this really throws me.

What are your thoughts? Do you like these commercials or hate them? Do you have any idea why someone would hate them enough to make an implied death threat?