Shoelaces.

I want to talk to you about my shoelaces. Specifically about the shoelaces on my running shoes. The direction of my entire day seems to be tied up in my laces ( the only pun I promise! )

It determines my emotions, my creativity, productivity, and energy for relationships that day. It all starts with my shoelaces.

I can feel my shoelaces calling to me about 10:30 pm. That's the time when I'm debating watching another show after a long day or laying in bed to read two pages of a book before falling asleep. The laces say, "take me out of the cabinet under the sink, untie me, put socks in the top of my shoe and place me next to the toilet on the ground." It's an oddly specific sentence, I know, but when you are a tool like my shoes are, your speech is minimal. Whether or not I listen to my laces at 10:30 pm is a major factor in whether I will get out of bed before 6 am, walk down the stairs to my bathroom, put on my workout/running attire, and actually run or workout. I have been known to run on occasion without following this ritual choreography; however, the likelihood of me following through to the actual run without it is low. 

The ritual is extremely basic. It builds on simple steps that take slightly more energy at each decision but built on each other; they stack up to a run. When the simple process is repeated, it stacks to days, weeks, and months of incremental but permanent strength, stamina, focus, and growth. 

Often, in the excitement of seeing the results of this process, I've been distracted from its simplicity and started looking for ways to accelerate the change or improve my comfort with the act of running. I research the endless virtual aisles of gear online and in stores. Watches, earbuds, jackets, tapes, socks, shoes, shoes, shoes!! All of this feels like engaging in the pursuit of running itself, but it's not. It's a trap, and the trap is called "complexity." Complexity is the built-in resistance to human decision-making. Complexity is what makes every decision hard and, therefore, meaningful. We love to hide in complexity. Complexity offers an infinity of reasons, concerns, and circumstances. Without proper attention to complexity, humans suffer or cause the suffering of others, but too much of it and we could cause equal or more suffering.

Maybe you've picked up on this by now, but my brain tends to make connections between everything. I often tell my friends, "when I talk about one thing, I'm talking about everything." 

I have a hutch that you can relate to the feelings connected to my experience with shoelaces. We've made it to December, and I think it's safe to say we are exhausted. Parents unprepared to handle the ordinary demands of work in a significant recession have been forced to adapt to homeschooling their kids in a ramshackle virtual system. We've all been subjected to a brutal and divisive election that continues to sew chaos, fear, scarcity, and suspicion in the tilled up soil of a volatile year of violence. We've been impacted by the death of 288,762 people in America (according to the CDC 12/10/2020) of a preventable pandemic. Let's be honest, if you've made it this far, congratulations! I'm raising my glass to you! 

I don't want to minimize your achievement this year, and I don't want to dampen your mood too much during this season (if that's possible). Yes, there is much to be grateful for, but I have to add one word of encouragement. It's 10:30 pm in 2020, and I want 2021 to be a move in the direction of joy, health, and beauty for you. I'm reminding you to heed the call of your shoelaces. Tomorrow will come. The challenging and straightforward work that is known as "faith" will be waiting for you. 

If you are an artist, musician, or performer. I know that this pandemic has been especially brutal on you. The same goes for all my friends in the event world. I see you audio engineers, lighting designers, stage-hands, production managers! My heart and my mind is with you! 

It's hard right now, I know, but we need to trust the goodness in our neighbors. Listening will need to be one of the first hard things we could do. We need to ask for help when we need it and give it to anyone who asks for it regardless of their merits, ideology, or status. We won't be able to trust unless we know them first. Do the hard work of listening. Ask your neighbors where they came from, how they got here, what they care about, what they love, and what scares them.

Not only is listening a step in the stack of actions that will make 2021 better. We must decide. This one is especially challenging for me, in particular. I love the plurality of voices, and I'm very empathetic and often have a hard time with universal truths. The hard work for me, I know, will be making it clear to those around me the decisions I make on hierarchy. 

There is a paradox that exists as you take steps into more complex self-leadership. For example, you might have two competing values of comfort vs. safety. I do want my family to be comfortable, but not for the sake of being safe. I don't want to hurt feelings or cause conflict, but at times I know it will be inevitable if I choose to live by my values. Therefore, I believe we must all decide on the hierarchy of values in our country. Clarity is kindness, and it requires us to risk being shunned from our various tribes to live according to those values. There are somethings that we may need to cancel forever in 2021. We must decide and accept the cost.

The last thing we should do is make a plan. Accept that is work is hard, and we are often tired and tempted by shortcuts. If we know that exercise is challenging, we cannot hope to find the will-power somehow tomorrow. We need to make the plan today! We don't need to make the whole plan; that would get us too much into the weeds of complexity. We need to make a plan for one thing that can be repeated easily. 

Shoelaces. 

Can you think of one thing? 1% of your money? 1% of your time, 1% of your energy you can start to give to your future self? Or to your neighbor? Or to the well-being of your "enemy?" If that still sounds like too much, can you begin to imagine what that plan would look like and think about it for a while? 

Franciscan Friar Richard Rohr writes, "We don't think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking." This is the power of a ritual habit to move us toward transformation. It starts with judging the current reality and making an extremely basic plan that can be repeated. It will not yield results right away, it will take a lot of faith to last through the ups and downs of energy and uncertainty, but with the help of a few friends, we can start to see the emergence of a new reality and a new self. 

My heart is with you, my friends. Stay safe and keep the faith.

Merry Christmas! May the road rise up to meet your shoes in 2021!