Category: dignity

Too often, we say and do the opposite of what we actually think and want. Insecurity drives us to push away someone we want as a friend, perhaps with an insult just to start small talk. We may respond negatively with, “I hope not too often,” when invited to visit regularly.

More so when younger, we all misbehave, break things, run away and ask not to be followed, be unbecomingly rude, or even get violent—and it’s all as a cry for help. Attempted suicide can be a call for help, particularly in public or if the attempted method didn’t have much of a chance of succeeding. If this is you, understand that sending any of these “reversed messages” are not likely to be interpreted correctly except by a very few. Even people worthy of your respect might not understand.

Get comfortable with yourself, accept yourself, learn to invite and speak constructively; teach others the same. It takes time for everyone to learn; especially the most “positive” people became that way by intent and practice.

It goes without saying that suicide is no good answer; “crossing over” is one appointment you don’t want to be early for. There is much written by countless counselors with differing opinions, but don’t presume any instinctive response to be correct when you learn about a suicide. Everyone needs good, professional counsel with this matter, including friends and family, perhaps therapy or just someone to be authentic with.

But, if you’re not the person sending “reversed messages”, learn to identify it quickly. Don’t try to interpret others by their words, rather by what they imply: a call for friendship. Others may need some space, meaning “friendship at a distance”. Sometimes love means making it clear that people standing by themselves across the room are accepted right there at the same time as they are welcome with the group.

You might grab an article on this subject, ponder what you’ve seen, or discuss with friends from younger to older. Learn to identify insecurity quickly and train yourself to give a smile without feeling insulted. Those are moments when your own confident kindness can lift the spirits of those who need it.

Operations refer to the normal flow of work, whether in family or administration. “Operations” work is “secular”, being neither religious or non-religious. Anyone can become good at operations or never learn and do a bad job with operations—regardless of religions. The skill of “operating” a boat or bicycle is part of operations. You can learn good operations from anyone.

Operations are neither more nor less important to God than loving God and people. Just how the Second Great Command flow in a sequence, not a hierarchy or priority, operations second in sequence to living God first. Operations actually are part of the Second Great Command.

To make friends, be a friend. To be a friend, do a good job.

Love includes making sure that people don’t get wet from a leaky roof, regardless of whether residents of a house feel affection for the roofer who did a good job. Keep the car working, pay the bills, keep food on the table—these things are part of love. Love also includes tenderness, giving others personal space, and smiling or frowning as needed to get through each unique moment.

Martin Luther taught that the street sweeper and cobbler should find just as much glory in their work as a bishop or priest, not because they are equally glamorous, but because God likes good shoes and clean streets. Jesus himself learned the secular skill of carpentry. But, Jesus’s lifestyle of teaching was also a matter of operations. When his disciples would quarrel mildly or the religious teachers challenged him, Jesus always knew what to say. Jesus’s ultimate work of operations was to die so that anyone who simply welcome’s Jesus in their minds and hearts would be able to continue a positive existence in the next life. Dying at the cross was Jesus’s main operation in his first Earthly ministry.

Since operations are part of the Second Great Command, flowing from the First Great Command to love God, loving God and loving others will make operations flow more smoothly. If you do your work because you love others, knowing that your boss is a Jewish carpenter, you will gain more insight and everything will work out best.

Less organized cultures tend to think of getting things done as “hard, passionate work”. This idea may be common in a poorer part of town or in developing nations. It generally goes hand-in-hand with the idea that “being angry” as a parent means the parent is “serious” and therefore “responsible”. None of this is true. Being “angry” does not make one more in-charge; having all rules memorized while acting calm does.

The way to get things done well is to have a complete list, both on paper and in mind. Do everything according to the list—both to-do items and procedural rules—and the job will be done perfectly. This doesn’t require any passion or desperation or “hard-working” attitude.

A good work ethic works hard and with a purpose, but that isn’t what makes the work quality. Hard work simply makes the work happen. Whether the work is accomplished with quality depends on whether it was done to specification.

This is a problem in the manufacturing third-world where high-maintenance Western consumers look for features and factors that developing nations don’t even know exist, let alone matter.

Consider Vietnam. When a grandfather was young and went farming to feed his family, but blew his leg off on a land mine because an American president died and a vice president took over, presuming the right to start a war neither nation wanted. He grew up not being able to walk, so things around the house never got done. The concept of “finished” had been literally blasted to bits for his family. They raised kids with dangers and hazards in the house, but the house was considered safe because it didn’t have any land mines. When the eight year old grandson goes to school, he doesn’t have time to think about whether he has folding or patch pockets on his shorts. So, as an adult working in a clothing factory, he might overlook that detail on the product specification—10,000 times. It is the responsibility of the West to help him learn.

Envisioning the resulting product and managing its list of specs are the keys to good operations. Learn these yourself and help everyone else understand them better.

Meetings are one of the greatest wastes of any organization. The Sunday morning monologue worked well in a world without phone lines, but today a weekly monologue at an indoor amphitheater is a waste since a podcast will do much better. The same is true of companies. “Conference” is different, but shouldn’t be more than once a month. The purpose there is to cultivate widespread excitement over common interests. But, “conferences” are different from “meetings”.

The purpose of having a meeting is to host discussion.

Healthy operations require lists, but humans are born to not understand lists. Learning to understand, create, follow, keep, update, and recognize items on a list is part of growing up in a civilized society—and the learning never stops nor is it ever easy. Good parents teach their children the art of “listing” at an early age just as a good supervisor and mentor helps employees, volunteers, and students see how lists work in the real world.

Even God gave Moses a list, the Ten Commandments. It’s hard to obey all ten as with any moral code. Sometimes remembering is the hard part, sometimes it’s applying, sometimes it’s understanding, but, with morals, most of the time the hardest thing is the willingness to obey. But, remembering that even morals are simply a list of things to do that, if done, will result in a perfect product, the obedience part becomes a little less difficult.

Listing is a lifelong study. That’s why managing lists are best done at group meetings.

Every member of an administration—every employee and volunteer—along with every member of a family—everyone already has two “lists”, sometimes we even write them down. The first list is the “de facto” list, the list of things we actually do. The second list is the “prescribed” list, the list of things we should do. The list to write down first is not the prescribed, but the de facto.

Know what you are doing day to day. Write it down as if you needed to guide yourself over the phone. Talk with others about how to “list” better. Then, you’ll have a better idea of what you should be doing.

Questions about God, heartbreak in romance and family, disappointment in a new school or job—many of our problems go back to our dissatisfaction because of things we assumed.

Humans are assumption machines. We even assume about assumption—that we don’t assume as much as we do. Communication breakdown, verbal abuse, Satir’s “blamer mode”—these also begin with assumptions made about what another person assumes. When we stop assuming, even for a micromoment, it is as if we enter a light-filled zen void of “nothingness”. We assume because we are uncomfortable with the silence associated with “not having an opinion”. Calming your nerves, being less reactive, shutting your motormouth at “quiet time”, being that oasis of calm in other people’s storms—that all stems from comfort with silence—and silence is devoid of assumption.

If you want to calm your insides, learn to not assume. Assumption is, itself, a way to distract from the silence.

If you aren’t always ready with your sword, what will happen? Will you survive? Dropping your guard feels dangerous. “Not knowing” the answer to every question feels like you’re not prepared when, actually, it prepares you to receive, learn, understand, and perhaps even contribute. It’s hard to do surgery with shaking hands.

So, drop the busyness and the caffeinated distractions; begin with your assuming. God is much easier to not be angry with when we drop all of our made-up assumptions about Him. Relationships go much more smoothly when we begin with the assumption that other people are not so stupid that we don’t need to take the time to understand them.

One of the biggest problems in tech support—operator error—is clinically proven to occur less frequently among people who don’t throw away the instructions before reading them. (Not actually clinically proven, but let’s just ‘assume’ that it doesn’t need to be.)

Good theology leaves assumption at the door. The ultimate theological question is not what we assume about God, but what God sees in us. Pain will advise us when we make assumptions of our own. One of the best commands God ever gave Israel was to be still and know, not to be noisy and assume.

When life gives you a hard time, appeal higher. On the school playground, kindly obey. Make the rude teacher’s day better by making the principal proud.

By preparing your appeal to higher authorities, you free your mental energies to act with charity toward those closer to you. Live to serve the king and forget the offenses of your immediate supervisors. Even an ill mannered cop is easier to deal with if you imagine yourself on TV “out-kinding” him. You might already be on camera anyway and if you either act super-kindly or super-unruly, you might end up on TV anyway. So, smile for the crowd and forget the foe in front of you. Besides, with a wider lens and sugar with a cherry on top, your foe could become your friend anyway.

The higher appeal will serve you well in the long run. A landlord, employer, magistrate, sheriff, trade partner, and anyone with powers to dangle over your head may try twisting your arm and lord their strength over you. It’s sad, but normal. Don’t get bent out of shape about it. And, if you play the long game—the end game—you may court friends and authorities much more powerful than they could contend with. But, you only find those higher appeals through wider and longer lenses.

One of the highest appeals is to public opinion. No organization’s or nation’s president is ever bigger than the organization or nation. The people at large are always the highest appeal to make.

Then, there is the supreme appeal to God. But, in a sense, God Himself appeals to the people. He does not impose His good rules on us. It’s up to each of us to welcome Him. Even God appeals to the public, on some level. But, His appeal to the public is so strong and convincing, whenever we find a good idea, we celebrate it. Sometimes we even give God credit for good ideas, even though they all belong to Him.

So, make the higher appeal to God by appealing to the public how He does. Don’t ask the public to teach you right from wrong; appeal to the public. There is a difference.

Men need women’s help, but only with half of the things anyone is capable of recognizing, and only one quarter of things we are all capable of recognizing. Respectable men will not, under any circumstances, continue being around a woman who does not give them respect, even when they don’t deserve it. That is male DNA, how God made men: Those who want respect give respect first. We have to learn it because life doesn’t work for us until we do because we can’t function without respect. A woman who understands men half as much as she thinks does understand and agrees with this 100%.

Paul commanded men to love their women, but for women to respect their men, all because that was how God designed men. So, helping a man means respecting him until he’s respectable. Everyone, man or woman, who presumes to know “all” the needs a person has does not respect that person.

Respect begins with the heart-level belief that no one can fully understand another person. Anyone so capable of being fully understood by another human, even after a thousand years, is not worthy of respect, and certainly not worthy of relationship. Whether you are a man or woman, if you want a relationship without strife, stay away from any relationship until you understand this deeply and the person in the relationship does also.

Too many women live in misery because they thought they could change their husband or that there were things she could accept if he didn’t change himself. Thirty minutes at a bookstore could have taught her otherwise. Thirty minutes at a bookstore could have taught her husband that they weren’t ready yet for a relationship. Strife develops among people who believe that they don’t need to learn from others first, who do not seek to begin by learning the easy, obvious advice already widely available.

Respectable people, however, are teachable and expect their friends to be the same. Men need to be ready to work, to take out the garbage every day and buy flowers and diamonds on holidays, not the other way around. Women need to look for men who don’t need to be told that.