Some Fundamental Truths
Before we go further, I wanted to share some of my bedrock beliefs.
I call them truths. You may not agree. That’s okay. I lay no claim to the ultimate truth.
But they’re important enough in my world that I call them truths, and I want to share them here.
We’re All Innocent
One of my core beliefs is that we’re all fundamentally innocent.
Whether it’s the racist uncle or the lying politician or the lying government official or the corrupt regulator or the assassin, we’re all innocent.
I’m not talking about the law. There are certainly people who are guilty of crimes, and we have laws to punish them.
I’m talking about moral innocence.
Pick the most evil person you can think of, and I promise you, if you set out to genuinely understand their belief system and why they believe what they believe, you’d understand why they did the exact thing they did.
We want to stop the behavior. We want to follow due process and exert whatever punishment the law prescribes.
But on a moral level, on a human level, we want to see the innocence in the person. We want to have compassion for them.
Why?
Because anything you cannot be with in others is something you cannot be with in you. It’s an area you’re not free.
You may say “but Calvin, I’m not a murderer.”
To which I ask, have you ever killed a fly or a mosquito or an ant? If so, you’re a murderer.
“But I’m not a liar!”
Have you ever fibbed? Told a white lie? Ever withheld a truth?
Then you’re a liar.
And it’s okay. We all are everything. We all have every quality within us. That’s part of the beauty of life.
Any aspect you cannot be with is an aspect of yourself that you’re disowning. This becomes your shadow, as Carl Jung called it, and it will find outward expression, usually when least convenient.
It’s like trying to keep one of those big inflatable beach balls under water in the pool. Eventually you’ll run out of energy, and it’ll shoot up, water splashing everywhere.
This is the exact mechanism that would make a staunch anti-gay politician get caught trying to have gay sex with a stranger at an airport bathroom stall.
It’s called projection.
The things we rail against out there, because we’re in denial about it being in here too.
Own all of you. You have flaws. We all do. We’re human.
Celebrate your humanity. We think if we’re perfect, we’ll be loved when the truth is it’s your imperfections that make us love you.
But not if you repress them.
Forgiveness
I harp on this, because it’s so important that there’s a path to forgiveness for all of us.
The alternative is that those among us who have committed sins will have to continue to dig their heels in ever deeper. We have to give them an off ramp if we want to move forward as a society.
In 2015, a BBC documentary came out titled 1945: The Savage Peace that made a horrifying allegation: After the 2nd world war, 12 million Germans and German speaking individuals across Europe were ethnically cleansed, and between 500,000 and 2,000,000 died.
Mobs can do atrocious things when they get riled up. We have to be careful with this.
I know it is angering when you realize the darkness and depravity that’s been used to keep the current power structure going. Forcible drugging, assassinations, rape, and underage sex. It’s horrifying.
But we must resist the temptation to overreact. It’s no good if we become like them.
Nelson Mandela is my hero when it comes to this. We need healing, not angry revenge mobs.
Stop the behavior, 1000%.
Pursue justice using the legal system.
Not with sham trials, like was done in the Soviet Union and often happens here today. Not with lenient judges and juries either where criminals get a slap on the wrist and are allowed to go free, like it happened with the doctor that murdered Michael Jackson.
With honest trials, where the accused is assumed innocent until proven guilty, and where all relevant evidence is presented honestly.
And we need to offer a path of forgiveness.
I believe humans are naturally wired to want to live with love and integrity.
Only hurt people hurt people.
There’s a reason they became the kind of person who could do such a thing. There’s a reason why their heart closed, and they adopted a belief system saying they have a right to do what they did, or that it’s the only way for them to survive, or to meet their critical needs.
I know there are lots of people who believe evil is inherent, and we’re in a fight between good and evil.
I believe every human is an innocent child at heart. I’m open to being proven wrong, but this is my current belief.
And even if I’m wrong, it doesn’t change much. Some people obviously won’t heal in this lifetime. I’m not naïve here.
The point is we need a way to constrain the behavior and stop their impact without vilifying the human. Offer a path of healing, repentance, and redemption, without getting caught in the drama of vilification, moral superiority, and projection.
We’re all human. We’re all fucked up. We have all done fucked up shit. We’re all flawed and broken, no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves and everyone else otherwise.
While we want to stop and hold the person to account for their behavior, we still want to see the pain, the suffering, and the humanity of the person behind the behavior. We can still offer compassion, understanding, and forgiveness.
Stop the behavior. Never close your heart.
Everything Happens for You
The pain and trauma that shapes you doesn’t just shape you in bad ways.
I believe that everything that happens in life happens for us.
Or, as one of my mentors, Peter Crone, says: “Life will present you with people and circumstances to reveal where you’re not free.”
We subconsciously attract the exact experiences we need to develop the character, skills, emotional depth, compassion, and love we need in order to discover inner freedom and joy, and to be a light for others in this world.
My childhood was beautiful in many ways and deeply challenging in many ways. I don’t blame my parents. I used to, for sure. But I see now that it all helped me become the man that I am today.
I believe I have something very important and very special to contribute (hence this book), and looking back, the way I was born, the place and the way in which I grew up, all the pain and hurt, the joy and passion, my failures, mistakes, wins, and insights. All of it made me the man who is perfectly qualified to take this on.
This, I think, is one of the big misunderstandings behind how we talk about policy.
We’re Not the Same
It’s like we have this idea that a good life, a meaningful life, can be measured by how much money you have or the college degrees you have, and that everyone should have more or less the same.
That’s not how life works. It never was. It never will be.
We’re all different.
More importantly, we’re all here to fulfill a different and unique purpose.
We all have different wants and skills and characters, different experiences, different strengths and weaknesses.
And thank God for that! That’s what makes life fun and exciting. That’s what makes the world work!
If it was all the same, what would be the point?
Elon Musk is an incredible entrepreneur who has contributed so much innovation. He’s the CEO of six billion-dollar companies. Has anyone done anything remotely like that ever before? I can’t think of any.
But most people don’t want his life. He’s intense, driven, addicted to chaos and pain, overweight and in poor health. You may think you want his billions, but I bet most people wouldn’t want his life. It’s like a sign I saw on a car some years ago: “You can have my handicap parking spot if you take my MS too!”
It’s so easy to project onto other people how wonderful their life must be. But we don’t know what their lives are really like. And it doesn’t matter. You’re here to live your life, not mine. I’m here to live mine, not yours. Who cares if someone has more than someone else. Life is not a race to see who dies with the most stuff. The funeral car doesn’t have a luggage rack.
My beloved friend Kasim is a 2nd generation immigrant from the Middle East. His dad sells Persian rugs in Scottsdale, AZ. During his younger years, Kasim would help his dad deliver these beautiful, expensive rugs to some incredibly large and beautiful houses. And inside each and every house sat a man in a big room watching TV all by himself.
Just because you have a lot of money doesn’t mean you’re happy.
In fact, even the focus on happiness is misguided.
Happiness
You can achieve that by lowering your expectations or improving your results.
You can achieve that by lowering your expectations or improving your results.
Denmark is widely known for being among the happiest countries in the world, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from the faces of people on the street.
Some years ago, I looked at the data, and what I found was that Danes were considered the happiest people because their expectations are low, and they’re generally met. That’s awesome. Nothing wrong with that.
Happiness is also about feeling pleasure and avoiding pain. We’re wired to do this.
All of this is surface level, though.
The deeper level is about fulfillment. Purpose. Meaning.
I believe we’re all here to pursue a mission.
What your mission is, no one can tell you. You must discover that on your own.
But the mission will always have two parts. One is about the change you’re making. The other is about the person you become in the process of pursuing it. Achievement and transformation. They go hand in hand.
Who must you become in order to share your unique gift with the world. That’s what matters. Who you become. That’s the only thing you can take with you, in my mind.
Life is not about being comfortable. Or happy.
It’s about purpose.
Everything Is Exactly as it Should Be
Any belief you have that something or someone (including yourself) should be any different than it is, is a lie, and will cause suffering.
But only every time.
This is probably one of the greatest energy wasters in the political discourse.
Politicians shouldn’t be lying or corrupt or mean.
Criminals shouldn’t commit crime.
Racists shouldn’t be racist.
Lefties shouldn’t be leftist, and far-righters shouldn’t be far-right.
I shouldn’t be judgmental
I shouldn’t be scared.
I shouldn’t be prejudiced.
I shouldn’t be racist.
All shoulds are lies.
As they say, “stop shoulding all over yourself!”
You are exactly the way you are. People are exactly the way they are. Reality is exactly the way it is. Period full stop.
Any “should” is you arguing against reality. And as Byron Katie says, when you argue against reality, you lose. But only every time.
So what can we do instead?
Accept everything as it is.
That doesn't mean you can’t commit to taking action intended to change reality in the future. That’s what we do as humans. We’re creative. We get to create our own futures.
But stop believing anything should be different in this moment. Which is the only moment that is real.
Recognize that everything is perfect just as it is. Even if you’re not able to comprehend the perfection with your limited human mind.
I mean, just think about how preposterous the idea that the world should be different is.
There’s 8 billion people in the world.
Each person is made up of an ecology of almost 90 trillion cells, bacteria, and other microorganisms. You’re not even in charge of your own digestion, elimination, breathing, or blood circulation.
And yet, here you are, morally superior to your perception of reality?
You, in all your infinite wisdom, are trying to tell the reality how it should be?
Good luck with that!
Can you see how crazy that is?
Yet we all do it.
Let go of the idea that you’re in charge of the universe. That your opinion is the correct one. That you have a monopoly on truth.
You don’t.
This is way bigger than any of us.
When you can allow yourself to rest in the knowing that everything is exactly as it should be right now, you free up all the energy you’ve spent on opposing reality.
You have more freedom. More power. More energy.
What is the Story?
TODO: COMPLEX WORLD!!
The only way we can make sense of such a complex world is through
narrative.
“Trump is literally Hitler.”
“Kamala is dumb.”
“The deep state is in charge.”
The narrative, aka the story we tell ourselves or are being told by others, is the way we try and make sense of things. And by definition it’s a gross oversimplification of reality.
But it’s the best we can do, because there’s no way we can take in the trillions of data points and make sense of it without a story. We’d be paralyzed.
And that’s okay.
Just remember that any narrative that you tell yourself is ultimately a lie in the sense that it takes something extremely complex and makes it appear simple.
It can be a useful lie.
But it’s always a lie.
