Meaning Owning Relationships Emotions

Blog Post: Remember When

Do you remember your first best friend? The one you played with for hours on end, the one you told secrets to and trusted with your fears, the one who was your partner in all your childhood explorations?

My best friend was Karen. Her family moved in down the street when we were both four years old. We were inseparable through most of our school years. Growing up before the need for playdates and physical boundaries, Karen and I explored the reaches of our neighborhood and the country roads that began at the end of our block. The older we got, the braver we became and the further we explored. We were Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer; we were runaways and adventurers. We packed lunches, hopped on our little coaster bikes, and explored for hours. Our backyards became tented escapes, penny carnivals, and a wide array of locations for escapades and characters. We rode the city buses to swimming lessons, art classes, and Saturday afternoon matinees. Our sleepovers involved little sleep and a lot of talking. We laughed, we learned, and we cried together. We believed anything was possible. The Disney movie Peter Pan inspired us to become scientists as we endeavored to create pixie dust. Perhaps we just didn't get the right combination of the white, sprinkly substances — flour, sugar, and salt? Undaunted, we continued to believe that, just like our Barbies, we could do anything.

Our lives have taken us in very different directions and led us down very different paths, but always, we will be part of each other — the part that believes we can be MORE.

From Passive to Active MORE

As a child, I had no idea how hard my parents worked to make ends meet and give my two sisters and me all that we had. We never seemed to lack anything. I had friends who had more things and friends who had less, but we all appeared to have enough. We lived the epitome of 1950s and '60s middle-class Canada. The economy grew, wages rose, and everyone began to need, buy, and collect more of everything.

I grew up a shopper. In Edmonton, Alberta, everyone knew the location of every high school by its adjacent mall. As a young adult, I purchased as I wished, never stopping to pay attention to the motivation behind my purchases. Buying made me feel good; it was such a rewarding experience that I ignored my ever-increasing credit card debt. Consumerism fed my ego and gave me an artificial, passive, outside-in sense of worth.

It was not until I chose to move to the British Virgin Islands (BVI) that I forced myself to deal with my debt. I arrived in the Caribbean debt free. I soon learned that my meager savings in Canadian dollars turned into next to nothing in the US-dollar-based currency used in the BVI. That, combined with the minimum salary I received teaching at a small private school, threw me into a new understanding and appreciation of what I needed. I began to examine how I could essentially have MORE by living with less. It forced — or should I say allowed? — me to actively explore my worth from the inside out, not the outside in.

Meaning belonging passion purpose loss

Blog Post: The Jump Rope Syndrome

"Not last night, but the night before ..." we seven-year-olds sing as I jump in rhythm to the skipping rope. "Twenty-four robbers came knocking at my door." I mime knocking as I continue to jump. "I went out ... " Breathless, I jump away from the rope, race around my best friend's back, and prepare to jump back into the skipping rope's rhythm as we continue, "While they went ... in!" I jump back into the rhythm just as the recess bell pierces the din of our childhood freedom.

There was always a tension between the anticipation of the jump into the swinging rope and actually jumping. When it came to double Dutch (jumping into two alternating skipping ropes) the tension could easily be paralyzing. Once you successfully jumped in, the longer you were able to navigate the rhythm of the rope, the more excited you felt and the more satisfying the experience. But what if you had to jump the rope, had to stay in, and had to keep singing the same song over and over?

Many of us live our lives in the rhythm of our own jump-rope games. We know the song, the players, the actions — going to work, taking care of family, controlling finances, and managing home, health, and day-to-day necessities. Initially, each of those jump-rope games excited us, inspired us, and challenged us to explore and expand who we were and who we could become. So at what point did we transition from excited into complacent? When did we become numb to the endless repetition of our lives, paralyzed in our repetition? How did we decide that this is all that there is and good enough? Why do we allow ourselves to live without passion or purpose and settle for less than our dreams?

It doesn't have to be this way. We can move beyond complacency and repetition. We can reconnect with and actualize passion and purpose in our lives. We can create meaning in our lives.

Meaning

MORE's core element of meaning acknowledges our need to belong, contribute, and play a part in creating a greater purpose. Meaning and purpose are not given to us but are what we create from all that is given. They are found in living our lives passionately, accepting the wisdom that comes from our challenges, and spreading kindness in the darkest of corners.

Many of us live overwhelmed in today's always-on culture. The yin and yang of technology allow us the freedom to work from anywhere and yet restrict our ability to let go, reflect, process, and revive. Taxed to the maximum, we have lost our sense of human beings, exceeded our lives as human doings, and now multitask like human viruses, causing much of the imbalance, dis-ease, and disease in our lives. In our viral state of multitasking and simultaneously attempting to control all the multiple aspects of our lives, we lose sight of our bigger pictures, our purposes, and what truly gives meaning and value to our lives.

We live in numbness; a state of being overwhelmed clouds our ability to seek and create meaning. Asking for help may feel pointless — just a continuation of the same cycle. Always tethered to technology, we can feel isolated and disconnected from others and ourselves. We stay in relationships and jobs that do not serve us, creating toxic environments that breed the dis-ease to disease cycle in our lives, the cycle that feeds a nagging cough, another cold, an unexplained rash, stiff joints, the sleepless nights — you know your list. Many of us carry on blindly or blatantly ignoring the dysfunction in which we exist. Prolonged high stress keeps our brains functioning in a threat state, which limits our abilities to problem-solve our way through daily dilemmas, blocks our creativity and insight, and starves our ability to communicate clearly. We live in sleep deprivation, manage our lives with medications (prescription and...