#11: Clobberin' Time

The last two Fridays we talked about time, prioritizing, and aligning the lists of the things we spend the most time on and the things we say are most important to us. The truth is that we live in a society that is just busy. We often become so busy with things that, while not inherently negative, force us to take time away from the things we say we value most. To borrow a phrase from The Thing (of the comic book quartet The Fantastic 4), these unnecessary activities are all too often "clobberin' time" in our daily lives—they are destroying our time and our supposed priorities using the mechanism of what I call "activity gluttony." To help illustrate this point, here are some interesting quotes and statistics on the topics of time and priorities.

First of all, think about the amount of time you spend each day in real, positive interaction with your children (particularly teenagers). Now consider this quote from adolescent development expert Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University and former President of the Society for Research on Adolescence:

"The average adolescent spends more than seven hours each day using one or more media, and this includes time spent using different media simultaneously ([i.e.,] one hour watching TV while surfing the Internet would be recorded as only one hour of media use) ... Half of all adolescents live in what might be called a 'constant television environment,' in which the television remains on throughout the day, regardless of whether anyone is watching it" (Steinberg, Adolescence, p. 253).

If, for example, you are allowing your kids to spend 7 hours a day with the media and X amount of time interacting with you (probably much less than 7 hours), what are you teaching them about your priorities when it comes to them?

Now consider the following case example given by Laura Berk, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Illinois State University:

"THE 'TIME BIND.' Like many parents, Angela ... complains of being 'torn in too many directions.' Often she leaves work in a hurry in the late afternoon to pick up [her children] Victor and Janine from child care, dashes to Victor's tumbling class and Janine's piano lesson, then stops at the grocery store to pick up something for dinner. When Angela and her husband, Tom, walk through their front door, they typically head to the phone or fax machine to take care of some unfinished work while trying to quell Victor and Janine's hunger and irritability with a frozen dinner popped into the microwave and unlimited access to the TV set. Caught in a ceaseless sprint to reconcile job, marriage, and parenting, Angela and Tom feel drained at the end of the day—too tired to grant their children more than 10 to 15 minutes of focused time" (Berk, Awakening Children's Minds, p. 6).

Does this sound something like your life, or can you at least see some similarities between this family and your own? Linda and Richard Eyre, New York Times bestselling authors of numerous books on parenting, have written the following:

"Most of us think we have our priorities straight and that our hearts are in the right place ... [N]early 90 percent of us say that commitments to family are 'very important,' and 82 percent say they admire someone who puts family ahead of work (while only 16 percent admire someone who will do whatever it takes to get a promotion at work). On the open-ended question 'What matters most?,' 63 percent of Americans say family--far ahead of health or finances, which come in second and third with 19 percent and 18 percent, respectively. And by a 63 percent to 29 percent margin, Americans believe that life with children is richer than life without them.

But compare the claims we make with how we actually live. Parents spend less time with children and more time with work than ever before ... Why is this? Could one credible explanation be as simple as the principle of dilution? When we try to do too much—to spread ourselves over so many activities, ambitions, interests, and demands—we dilute and divide ourselves, leaving lower concentrations of ourselves for each thing, including the most important thing, our families ... [T]he twenty-four hours in a day have not increased, while the number of things we try to stuff into them has—dramatically" (Eyre & Eyre, The Happy Family, p. 37).

In light of these statements, let us all do a better job of putting first things first. My hope is that we will not allow ourselves to get so caught up in activity gluttony (even if the activities we are involved in may not be evil in and of themselves) that we have no time left for the activities we really need to do. May we all spend more time not just on good things, but on the things we know in our hearts are the most important.

#10: Speaking Others' Language

Tonight in class we discussed the idea of learning to speak others' language in order to become more effective listeners. In order to illustrate the principle, I read a quote to you in Spanish that none of you understood. The only problem was that I forgot to read it to you in English. While this was not vital to making my point, I did want you to actually understand what I had said. As such, here is the quote from F. Burton Howard:

"If you want something to last forever, you treat it differently. You shield it and protect it. You never abuse it. You don't expose it to the elements. You don't make it common or ordinary. If it ever becomes tarnished, you lovingly polish it until it gleams like new. It has become special because you have made it so, and it grows more beautiful and precious as time goes by. It should be that way... [with] our marriages" (as cited by Katharine Jenkins in Meridian Magazine, 2006).

Anyway, I hope you benefit from the quote itself, but also from the lesson that it was used to teach. If you really want to communicate effectively with others, you have to learn to speak their language—not in the traditionally broad way we think about language (English, Spanish, Russian, etc.), but in a very personal way. You need to learn how that individual communicates. We talked about some ways to do this, including creating common ground for communication through shared experiences, asking questions, or doing a little research on your own into some of that person's interests. As an example of this, I noted how I had to learn to "speak Nerd" to effectively communicate with my wife and had become a converted nerd in the process.

There is one other point regarding speaking others' language that I would like to expound upon. Speaking someone else's personal language goes far beyond knowing about that person and his/her interests, thoughts, etc. This is good, but it only scratches the surface. To truly speak another's language you must care enough to really want to know that person. Let me reiterate: To truly speak another's language you must care enough to really want to know that person. If this is the case, I promise that your communication will be productive and you will indeed come to know the one with whom you share this experience. Over time, you may come to know one another so well that in some cases words will not even be necessary. You will be able to speak each other's language with nothing more than a simple glance, a smile, or a gesture performed in just the right way. You will have arrived at the place where you can say everything beautiful without saying anything—and that, my friends, is luxurious place indeed. The cost of getting there is extremely high, but I assure you that the value of living there more than compensates for travel expenses.

#9: The Truth about Truth

We ended our class on Friday with a discussion of what truth is, what it is not, and how we can find it. We defined truth as "a knowledge of things as they really are." We concurred that it is constant, not variable. Truth is not a product of individual or societal subjectivity; rather, it transcends time and circumstance. We also agreed that truth can be found in a wide array of disciplines and places and that it is never out of harmony with itself—various elements of truth that we may encounter will always fit together. If this seems in any particular instance to be untrue (that is, if two ideas seem to be both true and in competition with one another), it is for one of two reasons: either one of the ideas is not really true, or our understanding of one or both of these ideas is incomplete.

We also discussed that an individual cannot possess both the spirit of fear and the spirit of truth at the same time; that is, we cannot find the truth if we are afraid of it. Author Jack Christianson has written:

"The truth about any subject ... is not an easy taskmaster. It requires us to look at the issues as they 'really are and as they really will be,' not just as they may appear on the surface. Truth, if we do not fear it, may cause us to change our opinions, admit that we may have been wrong in the past, or accept something that previously rubbed us the wrong way .... Truth about [anything] in life is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It can be found. It is available to all who do not fear it" (The Power of Music, pp. 14-15, 32).

One early 20th-century writer has offered this timeless insight about the search for truth and the aforementioned fallacy of the subjectivity of truth:

"The search for truth means that the individual must not merely follow truth as he sees it, but he must ... search to see that he is right" (William George Jordan, The Power of Truth, p. 17).

Thus, it is not enough to be true to what we believe. We must seek to learn the actual truth, and then to harmonize our lives—our thoughts, words, and actions—with that which we know to be true. This is the key to finding real LIFE in the middle of a world of confusion and competition. We must be true to the truth. William Jordan has suggested a motto for life, which I submit to you as my personal goal: "Truth above all things" (The Power of Truth, p. 13). I challenge you to make this your goal as well, and I promise you that your happiness will increase in proportion with your efforts to learn and live the truth.