Any Questions?

I hope it’s not yet time for me to take on the role of senex—the sage, the archetypical wise old man.

A while back, I went through this assessment called the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator®. After the process you get a report that shows your scores for twelve archetypes, highlighting the three for which you score the highest. Mine are Creator, Jester, Sage.

Each archetype in the report has a summary statement which hints at what it is all about. For example:
CREATOR: “If the Creator is active in your life, you assume what can be imagined can be created.”
JESTER: “If the Jester is active in your life, you assume that life is meant to be enjoyed.”
SAGE: “If the Sage is active in your life, you assume that ‘the truth will set you free.’”

By the way, if this sounds intriguing and you would like to know your archetypes to learn more about the story you’re living, you can do an online version of the assessment for $19.

If you do it, I would love to hear from you to see how it turned out, and how you feel about it.

For each archetype in your report you’ll get the good news and the not-so-good news; areas where you can improve. That’s where this Sage thing worries me. I’m good with the Creator and Jester types, although I do see some of the evil tendencies of those types in myself. For example, in the Creator there is an inner critic that can get out of control, and for me it does. For the Jester there is “a tendency to be irresponsible, to give into debauchery, to play tricks and make cracks that hurt people—or at least their feelings.” To all those who have been in the fallout of my jesterly ways: I’m sorry.

It seems to me that since I’m old now I should be less jesterly and more sage-like. To be honest, I can’t picture myself as the wise old man on the top of the mountain where people can come in search of answers to life’s big questions. Maybe I could get a job writing those “fortunes” that get stuck in little oragami cookies at Panda Express®.

The scary part of the Sage archetype for me is seeing how the dark side of it shows up more and more these days. From the report: “Guard against the Sage’s tendency to be dogmatic and opinionated, with an ivory tower disdain for ordinary life and affairs. Their keen ability to see the flaws in opinions and practices can take a negative or cynical turn, as they sit on the outside criticizing the efforts of others. They also can retreat to their heads, as they fail to act on what they know. Their emotions may take them over so that they act in petty ways, masked by high-sounding principles and rhetoric.”

Ouch!

Fortunately, if I could figure out how to do this Sage thing well, there is a capacity to “be not only knowledgeable but wise, to be wonderfully curious with a love for thinking things through.” According to the report, I have the potential to “excel at evaluating the merits of relative truths and to commit to people and ideas even in the face of the realization that it is impossible to know anything for sure.”

I’m still probably not your guy for solid wisdom though. When it comes to the big ones, most times I still have more questions than answers. I do have opinions though. So if you need one of those delivered with biting wit and sarcasm, I’m your Jester/Sage.

There is a song that fascinated me from the first time I heard it. It was written by a guy that goes by M. Ward. It’s called “Chinese Translation”. It’s a song about sage-seeking and the quest for answers to great questions. The song set me to thinking: if I could go to a mountain top and speak to a real sage, what question(s) would I ask? In this song the young man gets to ask three questions. The three he asks are not ones I would have ever thought of asking, but I love them.

CHINESE TRANSLATION By M. Ward

I sailed a wild, wild sea
Climbed up a tall, tall mountain
I met a old, old man
Beneath a weeping willow tree
He said now if you got some questions
Go and lay them at my feet
But my time here is brief
So you'll have to pick just three

And I said
What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart
And how can a man like me remain in the light
And if life is really as short as they say
Then why is the night so long
And then the sun went down
And he sang for me this song

See I once was a young fool like you
Afraid to do the things
That I knew I had to do
So I played an escapade just like you
I played an escapade just like you
I sailed a wild, wild sea
Climbed up a tall, tall mountain
I met an old, old man
He sat beneath a sapling tree
He said now if you got some questions
Go and lay them at my feet
But my time here is brief
So you'll have to pick just three

And I said
What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart
And how can a man like me remain in the light
And if life is really as short as they say
Then why is the night so long
And then the sun went down
And he sang for me this song

Any Questions?

Shared Name

THANKFULLY I HAVE A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW. Initially the first sentence of this post was going to be, “Thankfully I have a daughter-in-law who reads this blog,” but when I typed those first seven words I had to put a period, or as the Brits call it, “A full stop.” First and foremost I am so thankful for our beautiful daughter-in-law; period. I am also thankful (in a less profound way) that she reads this blog because she read my recent post on ideas for Father’s Day gifts and bought me something leather—this wonderful leather journal cover. Perfect.

Her husband, our son, then screenprinted the cover of a few Moleskin journals for me to use in my new leather cover. Perfect.

He chose to put on the cover a quote, a line from a song by the Avett Brothers called “Murder In The City”. It is a haunting song both in melody and lyric. I had not heard the Avett Brothers play the song before but it sounded vaguely familiar. Then I realized one of my all-time favortie artists, Brandi Carlile, recorded the song on her album, The Firewatcher’s Daughter.

Always remember there was nothing worth sharing
Like the love that let us share our name.

In a few days now, vows will be exchanged, born out of shared love. Names will be shared, and I will be humbly thankful to have a second, beautiful daughter-in-law.

Thank you Kara & Corey, Brooke & Kyle.

Love Stories

WARNING: This is going to get pretty sappy. But, Love Stories can be like that. I’m not really an expert on love or stories, but I thoroughly enjoy both. Speaking as a layperson, so to speak, I’m guessing that the Love Story is the oldest and most enduring of any storyline. Let’s hope it stays that way, or as The Beatles sang: sometimes, “All you need is love.”

LOVE STORY No. 1.

Ours began in June 1972. Well that’s not really true. It started before that. That’s just when we formalized it all with public vows, rings, flowers, cake, punch, etc.

Back in the day when our romance was emerging, there was a little slice of pop culture that in some ways became a part of the 70s courting lifestyle. It was a cartoon series called “Love Is…”. Here’s an example:

Love Is… is the name of a comic strip created by New Zealand cartoonist Kim Casali in the 1960s. The cartoons were published in booklets in the late 1960s before appearing in strip form in a newspaper in 1970, under the pen name “Kim”. They were syndicated soon after and the strip is syndicated worldwide today by Tribune Media Services. One of her most famous drawings, “Love Is…being able to say you are sorry”, published on February 9, 1972, was marketed internationally for many years in print, on cards and on souvenirs. The beginning of the strip coincided closely with the 1970 film Love Story. The film’s signature line is “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” --Wikipedia

By the way, as it turns out, the movie was wrong; the cartoon was right. Love does from time to time include being sorry. (I’ve learned something in 44 years.)

Even though we will be celebrating 44 years of the marriage part of our Love Story in a few weeks, we’re really just getting started, relatively speaking.

LOVE STORY No. 2.

Tomorrow we will celebrate Anniversary Number 70 with my Mom and Dad. That’s a lot of togetherness. Not only can they finish one another’s sentences, they can actually start one another’s sentences. I am grateful for the wonderful way they prove the beauty of marriage, still.

Their story began in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Mom grew up there. Dad was in town as a part of an assignment as a young soldier during WW II. They both happened to be at the local skating rink one night. He asked her to skate, and as my Dad likes to quip, “We’ve been going around together ever since.”

What do you buy the happy couple for their 70th according to those anniversary charts? Google, google, google. The lists seem to skip from 65 to 75, like 70’s not significant. As I was searching the lists though, I peeked at the anniversary category for #44, hoping it isn’t “Hearing Aids”. 

“Groceries”. “Groceries”??? What the what? So, I guess on June 16, you’ll find us at Whole Foods. We’ll splurge; it’s our anniversary.

Even though we’ve been married almost 44 years, we’re partying like it’s #10. The 10th year is the “Aluminum” anniversary. And since we now adventure in our tiny, aluminum love shack on wheels, it’s like we’re young and broke again.

LOVE STORY No. 3.
Our oldest son and his beautiful wife Kara, just celebrated anniversary #11. Corey posted this on the Facebook:

He must have thought this was the “Groceries” anniversary. How do I know that 11 years later their story is a Love Story? You can see it in the kids.

They have three happy, confident, tender-hearted, wonder-full little girls. That kind of stuff sprouts and grows in the fertile soil of loving relationships.

LOVE STORY No. 4.

In a few weeks, we’ll celebrate the formal start of another amazing Love Story. This is one that I never would have seen coming. It’s one of those that if you had any doubt about Providence, you wouldn’t now. Our youngest son, Kyle is engaged to Brooke. If you know these two, you have a glimpse of how special this is. If I lived in one of those country’s where the male of the family still got to pretend like he’s the All-Knowing Patriarch, in a country where the marriages are all arranged, this is the way I would have arranged it.

Turns out they didn’t need my arranging anything. It’s like they have discovered something that was there all along. Maybe that’s what Love Stories are really all about.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Beyond Age

WHEN IT COMES TO DOWNTON ABBEY, people either WATCH Downton Abbey or they don’t. For those of who WATCH it, we know that every episode will leave us wanting more, tempting us to wish away a week of our life waiting for the next Sunday night, and the next episode of some of the best screenwriting ever.

In a post last Thursday, I wrapped up with this:

“Tomorrow at Noon, I will be having lunch with some of my favorite people. One is 20-something, one is 30-something, one is 60-something and the other is 80-something. I plan to ask them how they feel about being a part of a multi-generational collaboration. I’ll let you know how it turns out.”

So maybe it wasn’t the kind of cliffhanger that had people talking around the coffee pot Monday morning, but who knows, maybe someone wants to know how it turned out.

We gathered a few minutes after noon at this amazing little Guatamalan cafe in Oklahoma City called Cafe Antigua. Two of the group couldn’t make it—the 60-something and the 80-something.

So it was me, representing the Baby-Boomers, a 20-something athletic/outdoorsy/artist named Molly, and a 30-something bold/brash/creative-entrepreneur named Kathleen.

L to R: Molly, Pops, Kathleen. Now I know what to do when they say, "duck lips"!

I tried to explain to them my intrigue and interest in multi-generational friendships. I gave a few great examples of the power of multi-generational collaborations.

We talked about blessings and curses of cross-generational stuff. You know: “Generation Gaps”, differences in style and values, communication issues and the like.

Kathleen mentioned that while she did enjoy some conversation with older people (like me), she didn’t want them for clients. (FYI: Kathleen is one of the best, most creative and intuitive branding persons I’ve ever encountered.) Her reason: “Older people just don’t get it.” She’s right you know. On the flip side, I’ve often been tempted to jerk the smartphone out of the hands of millennial or two and throw it in the nearest toilet, because sometimes; they just don’t get it.

Without a doubt, there is a time and a season for multi-generational conversation and a time for segregation too. When it’s right though, it can be a wonderful thing.

Molly said, “Sometimes the common thread is the interest, not the age.” Then she gave an example. Molly is an avid climber. By that I mean she practices in a climbing gym several days a week, and then travels somewhere most every weekend to climb with friends. She told us that on these climbing trips you will find everyone from young teens to older adults from all walks of life, gathered around the common interest of climbing, hiking and being outdoors.

Kathleen who now has a young son talked of the value of having a multi-generational tribe to help connect the dots in our human story. “I want to know if people think about dying. Are they afraid of dying?” I told her that I agree with Woody Allen who said, “I’m not afraid of dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” I don’t know if Kathleen is afraid of dying or not, but I do know this: she is NOT afraid of living! She has made be braver too.

For me that’s one of the coolest things about having a multi-generational tribe—the story. If you have people younger than you and people older than you, it’s like having more chapters in the book of your life story. It’s essential to have those who have gone before to help you make sense of it. And each of us who have been further down the path, if we do it with humility, can serve those who are younger by showing the way.

What if we were to step outside the normal and made something happen? What if we joined with some younger and some older and saw a movie together, or read a book together, or had coffee together, or told our stories together; or just listened to each other?

I hope that Molly and Kathleen know that I respect them and value their friendship, that I love hearing what they are up to whether it’s a climbing adventure or organizing a conference for creatives entrepreneurs in New Orleans. The old adage that if you want to stay young, hang out with young people is true. I hope the inverse is not true. I hope that by hanging out with older persons, these two and others will feel wiser and inspired and more courageous.

Oh, and if you aren’t one of those who WATCH Downton Abbey, you’re missing a great story about the power and beauty of multi-generations.

Stay tuned to About POPS. In a future post we’ll explore this issue: What’s Family Got To Do With It?!