C.A.R., the Vehicle to Your Dream - Part One: Connection

All Terrain Vehicle

            If The 3D’s of a Dream (see Hobbits of the Heart: Desire, the First D of a Dream, Your Dream is One Decision Away: Determination, and Apollo 11 and Lessons in Firing Squad Etiquette:  Give Discipline a SHOT! blog posts) are the internal combustion engine for your life, then Connection, Association, and Reflection are the external vehicle to get you down the road to your Vocation, Calling, or Dream.  While desire, discipline, and determination foster proper and healthy internal conditions, Connection, Association, and Reflection foster proper and healthy external conditions, creating a vehicle that can handle any terrain you’ll have to cross to intentionally live the transformed life of your Dream.  So let’s take a look at C.A.R., the vehicle to your Calling.

C. Is for Connection

understanding the relationships between moments

that bring enlightenment,

or insights that inform us (form us within)

about our choices and our activity.

Wisdom is vision, and without vision people perish.[i]  In Spencer Johnson’s wonderful parable, The Precious Present[ii], a man realizes this truth:

It is good to learn from the past, but it is not good to be in the past.

And it is good to plan for my future, but it is not good to be in the future.  Because that is how I lose myself.  I must live in the present.

Poor Vision Brings Headaches

I called him to the front of the room and handed the student a rubber ball.  I was trying to give the class a demonstration of cause and effect.  I didn’t realize just how effective this lesson would be.  The student was a really nice young man.  I liked him.  However, he was a little high-strung and really enjoyed being the center of attention.  In other words, your typical fourteen-year-old.  I knew he would enjoy being the demonstrator, but on this day, I think he got a little more than he, or I for that matter, bargained for.

“I want you to throw this ball as hard as you can at the wall,” I said.

He broke into a devilish grin, turned to the wall, and threw the ball as hard as he could.  Immediately the ball bounced back off the wall, hitting the young man in the forehead right between his eyes.  Smack!

There was a silence of disbelief in the classroom, and then the class burst out in laughter.  “This poor kiddo,” I thought.  Rubbing the red welt developing in the middle of his forehead, glaring at me, he whimpered, “Why did you make me do that?”

“I didn't make you do that,” I said as compassionately as I could.  “You chose to do that.  I said, ‘I want you to throw the ball.’ What did you think was going to happen?  Didn't experience tell you if you threw the ball straight at the wall it might bounce back and hit you?” (This just goes to show that experience is not the best teacher.  Experience with reflection is the best teacher.)

            He had no vision, I imagine literally for a few minutes after this incident.  He failed to see.  He didn't learn from his past, plan for his future, and live now.  He didn't have to throw the ball as hard as he could.  He didn't even have to throw the ball.  He chose, and he chose poorly.

            By the way, he was fine, and, I’d like to think, wiser for the wear.

Frames

If wisdom is vision, then vision is making connections.  Ironically, in a period where technology is supposedly connecting us more and more, we live in a world that teaches us disconnection from an early age.  School systems break learning down into subjects such as Math, History, Science, and Literature. We create frames around each subject. There’s nothing wrong with this per se.  We need frames to focus on the picture before us and to pay attention to the details of the picture of Math, Science, History, or Literature.

In one of my favorite series of paintings, Monet’s Haystacks[iii], we see the hay, the shadows cast by the sun, but interestingly enough in the paintings, guess what’s missing?  The sun!  It’s outside the frame.  Hopefully, we recognize frames help us focus on specific contexts, but we recognize there’s more to the contexts than what’s in the frame, and what’s beyond the frame matters to the moment in the frame.  What’s outside the frame and inside the frame are connected.

            In school, the very best students recognize Math, Science, History, Literature, Art, Music, Physical Fitness, and Language are all connected to one another.  In business the very best entrepreneurs recognize price, product, demand, culture, inspiration, marketing, human resources, team building, communication, timing and trends, and presentation are all connected to one another.  In life the person of integrity recognizes who he is at home, at church, in the community, and in his business are all connected, all one.

The frames, the courses in school or the areas in business or the circles of people in life, are all illusions, mere shadows on the cave wall.  The frame helps one focus on specific contexts, and when context is understood, the frame no longer serves.  A different frame is needed.

Frames don’t really exist.  They are simply tools to help us focus, grow, and understand various parts of the whole.  The real learning occurs when the observer connects what’s inside the frame to what’s outside the frame.  For example, in the novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, the symbol p (pi), a transcendent, irrational, infinite equation is an expression of a human being who is transcendent, irrational, and infinite.

We often hear people talk about “thinking outside of the box.”  The box doesn’t exist, we just keep trying to make it real, like shadows on a cave wall. We don’t need to think outside the box, we need to think inside and outside of the box because everything is connected. People who “think outside the box” simply make the connections most don’t.  A frame is like the box.  We must see the little picture (what’s in the frame) and the big picture (how what’s in the little picture relates to what’s beyond the frame).

The Six F’s of a Great Life

When we connect our past moments to our present and let them help us plan our future, we have vision.  We have wisdom.  The same is true for the six areas of our lives, what I call the Six F’s of a Great Life:

·      Faith – living what we believe in our lives.

·      Foundation – our core; what we believe; the stories we write and live by.

·      Family – the way we conduct our relationships with those in our family.

·      Friends – the way we conduct our relationships with others like friends, co-workers, and acquaintances in our lives.

·      Fitness – how we care for and treat our bodies through nutrition and exercise which ultimately determines how we think and live.

·      Finance – how we view and handle money and what kind of meaning we attach to it in our lives.

Realizing these six areas are frames to help us focus on living a healthy, whole life, we actually experience freedom.  Frames don’t restrict us.  They serve us, just as rules or plans bring freedom as long as we remember the bigger picture.  When we practice focused activity in the Six F’s of a Great Life, we don’t just survive.  We thrive!

Wisdom comes when we remove the frames around the Six F’s, seeing the interconnection of all life. Our practices in Fitness impact our practices in Finance.  Our Foundation determines our Family and Friends relationships.  They are all one.  Those who see the connections between seemingly disparate experiences have vision and thrive, walking in Greatness.

Oftentimes, we forget connection and focus on the frame.  Students do this in school when they focus more on a grade for a course and less on learning and growing.  In business, people do this when they fill their calendar with ineffective activity. Parents do this when they fill their kids’ time with activities but lose sight of the family relationships in the process.  In community or church organizations people do this when they focus on accomplishing a service project and less on the people they serve.  The what (the grade, schedule, activities, or project) displaces the why at the center of Greatness.

Soren Kierkegaard writes, “If a person does not become what he understands, then he does not understand it either.”[iv]  Knowing is not the same as being.  And being is not the same as doing.  We’re not human knowings or human doings.  We’re human beings!  When what you know, do, and feel are one, you are connecting why you do what you do with who you truly are, and though challenges arise as you do this, mentally, emotionally, and physically the will to live that way is effortless.  Connection keeps us from throwing a ball as hard as we can at a wall, ending up with a terrible headache.

Connection helps us define our desire, discipline, and determination:

·      Desire – Does my desire (what’s written within my heart) line up with what I’m doing?  Am I being who I am in what I am currently doing?  Do I possess integrity?

·       Discipline - Are my daily actions (my protocols and process) based on the lessons learned from my past, and are they propelling me toward my calling?

·      Determination – Am I persisting on my unique path, or am I on an ineffective path, a path that is not me?

             Connecting moments, events, and experiences in your faith, foundation, family, friends, finances, and fitness, connecting the lessons learned and the connection between those lessons are the first component to constructing the vehicle that's going to take you in the direction of your calling, purpose, or dream.

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[i] Proverbs 29:18

[ii] Johnson, Spencer.  The Precious Present.  New York: Doubleday, 1992. Print.

[iii] For a brief explanation of Haystacks by Monet visit http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/437122.

[iv] Kierkegaard, Soren.  Journals and Papers. Ed. and Trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, 4 vols.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967-75. Print.