Why do dreams turn into nightmares, and even your ‘dreams come true’ have morphed into situations that you wish you could escape from, if only you knew how? How did Cinderella suddenly change into the wicked stepmother, and the handsome prince one day show up as the troll under the bridge? The answer to that question lies in the nature of dreams, in human nature, and in the difficulty we all have in changing our minds. Midlife is simply that moment on our journey when the rose-colored glasses are ripped off our faces and we’re forced to look reality in the face without the gauze and soft-focus we’ve become accustomed to seeing it all through. How you navigate the midlife transition is all about how well you’re able to sustain yourself through a big dose of harsh reality. Today, I’d lke to offer a spoonful of sugar to help that medicine go down (thank you, Mary Poppins).

First, the nature of dreams. Your dreams are simultaneously the product of your imagination and a creative stimulus. “I see things that have never been,” says your imagination, “and ask, ‘Why not?’” Life would be incredibly boring and stale if you had no dreams of something different and better. The greatest tragedy that could befall a human would be to live a life of such despair that s/he lost the ability to dream. Dreams are truly God’s gift to you, allowing you to see fresh, creative possibilities where you had never seen them before. Rich dreams bring with them an adrenaline rush that surges within you when you suddenly realize an exciting possibility you may never have seen before. Adrenaline rushes are amazing, but they lead us head-first into a collision with our human nature.

To a certain extent, our human existence is infused with the ‘disease of more.’ Without adequate self-knowledge and self-control, your first impulse after having a delightful experience is to ask yourself, “How can I do more of this? When can I do this again?” Without proper training, we humans tend never to be able to enjoy fully a pleasurable experience and to experience satisfaction. “I can’t get no satisfaction” isn’t about a lack of anything outside of yourself; it’s all about your capacity to live in — and to enjoy — the moment without being concern with what came before or what’s coming afterward. Satisfaction, contentment, and serenity are gifts that only you are able to give yourself by learning to accept that the trials and joys of the moment are enough in and by themselves.

Human nature — our old nemesis the ‘ego’ — wants to spoil the experience by getting you to focus on making the experience last, or recreating it, or even surpassing it as quickly as possible. People tell us that, if you’ve got one foot in the past, and one foot in the future, you’re pooping on the present. If your experience of the present is poop, it’s no wonder you want out of this dream!

As time passes, I come to appreciate more and more the incredible truth that Buddhist monks teach through the practice of the mandala. Creating a mandala takes incredible planning, design, cooperative teamwork, and an attention to detail beyond what most of us can achieve. The incredible colors and patterns, laid out almost one brilliantly-colored grain of sand at a time, take your breath away. Untold hours are spent in creating detailed imaginings, which are then brought to life in a vision-blurring, muscle-cramping execution. And, when it is completed, and every grain of sand is in perfect alignment, one monk sweeps his arm across the whole and, together, they carry the remains down to a stream and pour the formless streaks of colored sand into a flowing stream. Why? What’s the lession?

These monks are teaching us about our dreams. They are beautiful. They are exciting. The stimulate and motivate, and then they are gone! The lesson that you and I must learn on a daily basis consists in this: dreams and their execution are ephemeral. When you’re in the throes of a dream, it can seem to be the most wonderful and most exciting experience imaginable. You get into trouble only when you confuse the dream (the invitation) with the reality. So long as you remain locked in the dream, you deprive yourself of the capacity to see the reality in its fullness: an experience that always surpasses expectations. In terms of the mandala, the gift is discovered in the experience of creation, destruction, and recreation, not in the product.

What, then: should you give up living your dream? Not at all! Your dreams bring you the opportunities that provide life with its motivation, richness, and direction. Your job, however, like the Buddhist monks’, is to learn to let go of the dream and embrace the reality. Sure, you will experience pain as your experiences grow, arise, and depart again. There’s a sadness as what once was a brilliant pattern floats away in the stream. But the pain that you experience as you embrace the ebb and flow of life will be far less than that you will bring upon yourself by clinging stubbornly to a worn-out dream. You don’t need heaven’s help to “Get me out of this dream!” . . . you need only change your mind and accept that the dreams that you’re so tempted to cling to are holding you back from the dreams that are yet to come.

The only skill you need to bring you contentment is to look at whatever is before you — be it a dream or a reality — and to be able to say to yourself with full appreciation: “This, too, shall pass.” Of all the lessons that midlife has to teach you, that one, perhaps, hold the key to your unimaginable future. Embrace it, if you are wise!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

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4 monkeys in a room. In the center of the room is a tall pole with a bunch of bananas suspended from the top. One of the four monkeys scampers up the pole and grabs the bananas. Just as he does, he is hit with a torrent of cold water from an overhead shower. He runs like hell back down the pole without the bananas. Eventually, the other three try it with the same outcome. Finally, they just sit and don’t even try again. To hell with the damn bananas. But then, they remove one of the four monkeys and replace him with a new one. The new monkey enters the room, spots the bananas and decides to go for it. Just as he is about to scamper up the pole, the other three reach out and drag him back down. After a while, he gets the message. There is something wrong, bad or evil that happens if you go after those bananas. So, they kept replacing an existing monkey with a new one and each time, none of the new monkeys ever made it to the top. They each got the same message. Don’t climb that pole. None of them knew exactly why they shouldn’t climb the pole, they just knew not to. They all respected the well established precedent. EVEN AFTER THE SHOWER WAS REMOVED!

Was this a scientifically-controlled research project, or a fabricated urban myth-in-the-making? Who knows? That’s as far back as I could trace the story. Even if it’s a fable or parable, I think that we can all relate to the underlying experience: many animals are prone to give up hope in the face of social opposition. That’s the message that researchers wanted to convey when they coined the term ‘learned despair‘: when attitudes around us turn negative, we tend to give up trying to reach our goal without even trying!

The word ‘despair‘ itself tells the story. It comes from the Latin de-sperare, meaning to turn away from, or to give up (de-) hoping (sperare). It’s a cognate of ‘desperation‘. When I’m working with people who might be emotionally allergic to hearing about the so-called theological virtues of ‘faith’, ‘hope’, and ‘love’, I replace those terms with synonyms: ‘acceptance’, ‘trust’, and ‘engagement’. Despair — turning away from or lacking hope — derives from a lack of (or, rather, from a misplaced) trust. We tend to trust what we learn from others’ beliefs (whether or not they’re grounded in facts) rather than trusting in our own experience. We turn our methodical doubt inward on ourselves at least as often we apply it to what we learn from others.

Our lack of trust in ourselves, in our own capabilities, and even in our own experience can prove to be a very serious flaw, particularly at midlife. I can relate it to another theological construct: what is known as the ‘unforgivable sin,’ or the ‘sin against the Holy Spirit.’ What kind of sin could possibly be ‘unforgivable’ in the light of an all-loving God? It’s not so much an action, as it is a belief or a mentality: one that says, “I don’t believe that God would forgive me for ______.” The ‘unforgivable’ sin is such because someone lacks the trust in a loving God that would make forgiveness possible.

Like the ‘unforgivable’ sin, ‘learned despair’ derives its power from a refusal to trust in ourselves and in a Power greater than ourselves Who loves us unconditionally and who enlightens and empowers us. In learned despair, we yield to the temptation to surrender our self-esteem to those who don’t believe in us, rather than to accept (have faith in) a God who does.

How often do those around you influence you not to try do accomplish something that would (or could) move you forward? In what ways are you allowing others’ beliefs about you to erode your trust in yourself (as well as your trust in a Higher Power who cares about you)? In what ways are you permitting others’ opinions of you to keep you stuck in a midlife rut? What do you need to do to recapture your enthusiasm for who you are and where you’re going? What do you need to stop listening to? What old, negative beliefs about yourself do you need to get rid of? What can you do today to overcome just one fear that you have about yourself?

To move forward, all you need is to recapture some of your primal hope. To recapture hope, you need re-learn to trust yourself (and your Higher Power). To learn to trust yourself, first, you need to unlearn despair. You can begin unlearning as soon as you tune out the discouraging voices around you, and start, once again, listening to (and believing in) the wisdom of your own heart.

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

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Must couples in trouble necessarily fail? No, not necessarily: no healthy couple is doomed to failure. In fact, the only ‘doomed’ relationships are those where one or both partners are unapologetically physically or emotionally abusive . Without a doubt, the only realistic option for someone who finds her- or himself in a fundamentally abusive or exploitative relationship is to exit immediately. Apart from that, I believe that many (if not all) relationships “on the rocks” could be healed under the right circumstances. From my perspective, the fact that this healing so often fails to take place could be an indication that one or both of the partners have stopped listening. Additionally, ceasing to listen indicates a spiritual problem. Let me explain.

It would seem that the  person who hears another’s voice, but is no longer committed to listening to what the other has to say has given up on her or his partner, as well as their relationship together. If you look more closely, however, it soon becomes clear that the person has actually given up on him- or herself. Empathetic listening and appreciative inquiry represent a three-fold choice: 1) to accept the other, 2) to trust the other, and 3) to engage with the other. Closing off the lines of communication also represents a choice: to cease accepting, trusting and engaging with one’s partner. Before I relate this to fundamental spiritual principles, let’s look briefly at each choice.

The choice to accept another human being is foundational. True acceptance represents a fundamental option to see in the other person another self, with exactly the same sorts of strengths and weaknesses that we ourselves possess. This choice to acknowledge the other person as another self  has two destructive opposites. The first perversion of acceptance we call ‘exploitation‘. Philosopher Martin Buber contrasts these approaches with the terms I-Thou (for true acceptance of the other), and I-It (for exploitation). To see your partner merely in terms of his or her usefulness (like a tool or a piece of furniture) or her or his capacity to satisfy you represents a fundamental denial of humanity on your part. The second perversion of the choice to accept your partner shows itself as conditional acceptance. In brief, “I’ll accept you if you do such-and-such or so-and-so.” Conditional acceptance of another puts you in the position of being their judge, jury and executioner. In fact, it represents nothing less than your attempt to usurp the position in your partner’s life properly held by God alone.

Next, let’s look at the choice not to trust your partner. Why don’t you trust her or him? Because you’ve been hurt before? The refusal to trust your partner goes way beyond self-preservation. Once again, it is passing a judgment of condemnation on another person — another self — who exhibits the same sorts of faults and failings that you yourself exhibit. In fact, if the truth were known, the faults and failings that you find most easy to condemn and most difficult to forgive in others are the very ones that you exhibit most strongly yourself. In fact, the two keys that are absolutely essential to unlocking both acceptance and trust are these: first, to acknowledge an identical humanity in both yourself and the other, and, second, to commit yourself to the path of unconditional forgiveness. Who cannot look at the plight of even the most desperate of people around us and not be able truthfully to say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I?” The greatest message of Christianity — and also, I’m afraid,  its most forgotten and neglected — is simply this: unconditional, unlimited forgiveness. If you cannot forgive unconditionally, you cannot trust for very long.

The final choice is the choice to engage with your partner. If you refuse to engage with her or him, you thereby give credence to the (Jungian) ego’s false belief that you are vulnerable and need protection. It’s the same force that drives people’s frantic searching for that illusive (and illusory) ‘security’ that they believe will fix everything and protect them from danger. Once again, it would be foolish to put ourselves in harm’s way by engaging with an abusive partner. We owe it to ourselves and to them to take the necessary precautions so as not to allow ourselves to become victims of deliberate abuse. However, if you imagine that refusing to engage with your well-intentioned partner will grant you some sort of immunity from harm and from hurt, you are mistaken. Do you believe that spiritually you are invulnerable and that nothing outside of yourself — not even death — can destroy the essence of you? “Greater love has no one,” we have heard, “than to lay down his life for another.” Oddly, dieing for someone can actually be a whole lot easier than living for them.

Finally, what does the choice not to listen say about that person’s spiritual condition? The testimony it gives is nothing short of damning. Personally, I would liken it to what Christians refer to as the ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’ or the ‘unforgivable sin.’ Here’s what I mean. Whenever I write, I use the terms ‘acceptance,’  ‘trust’ and ‘engagement’ as  synonyms for what are called the ‘theological virtues’, namely: faith, hope , and love. The ‘sin’ against faith is the decision not to accept the will of God exactly as we encounter it in our world. The ‘sin’ against hope is the choice not to trust that our only Source of genuine security is divine providence. The ‘sin’ against love is the refusal to become meaningfully engaged with those we were sent to serve: our fellow creatures who, along with us, share the “image and likeness of God.” If the ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’ is a refusal to believe that the love of God is powerful enough to forgive us (and so we refuse to ask for forgiveness, and therefore refuse to accept it), then turning a deaf ear to someone we once claimed to love is a ‘sin against love’, for, as we know, the opposite of love is not hate, but deliberate indifference.

What can you do if you find yourself failing to listen? Remember the futility of protecting yourself. What can you protect yourself from? Even more importantly, what are you protecting yourself for? After all, your mission here in this world is not to try (futilely) to keep yourself safe. It’s to share with your fellows (and especially those in relationship with you) the same kind of acceptance, trust, and engagement that your God has shown to you. God hears his people’s cry . . . can you do any less?

And what about you who find yourself ‘learning to love one another’ and your words keep falling on deaf ears? You, too, have the opportunity to pass on the love of God. Your acceptance of the other can be renewed continually. Your trust of the other need never fail or fade. You may stand ever at the ready to engage. However, engagement (love) requires reciprocity. God does not condemn, so how could you? God does not constrain, either (because love can never be forced), but rather waits for all eternity for the other to emerge from his or her isolation and re-engage. You can have the willingness to re-engage, whether or not the other ever seeks it. You may never re-engage as you once did: time and the world goes on while the other chooses to isolate, stagnate, or (what’s worse) repeat the same self-defeating choices and behaviors with other partners. You, on the other hand, have the opportunity to accept and trust and engage with people at every stage and every condition of your life: people who, like you, have chosen to listen not only with their ears, but with their hearts.

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

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Just before Christmas, I had stumbled upon the archives from Craig’s friend and performance poet, Chasen Gaver, who had died of AIDS in 1989. In those archives were listed audio tapes of conversations that the two of them had recorded many years ago. Seeing the list of familiar tapes and documents now part of a university library collection really affected Craig. He mused, as we walked along the water’s edge, about how strange it was to be confronted by the person he had been back then, when life was new and full of possibilities and ideas were exciting and heavy with promise. Now, he said, he felt as though his life was in ‘maintenance mode.’ It made me think: this is the shift of perspective that sets maturity apart from mere adulthood. It’s a tough change of perspective to navigate successfully.

Can you remember the thoughts and feelings . . . the dreams . . . that you held so dear when you first emerged into adulthood? So much was new! There was the first time you decided that you had found your partner in life. There was your first foray into politics. Your first career. Your first trip abroad. I’m certain that you can think of many, many more ‘firsts,’ each one seeming to open up new vistas, new possibilities, new promises. Life, for adults, appears like an endless series of adventures. Remember “Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it”? All the while that your storehouse of experiences grew more complete, your ideals were tested by time and adversity, your tastes became solidified, your hopes and desires tempered by disappointments.

The final transition between adulthood and maturity happens when reality forces you to acknowledge that your own hard-won experience has let you down. You look around at all that you’ve accomplished and built for yourself and suddenly you see it for the first time as emotionally and spiritually unsatisfying. You hunger for more, but everything that you’ve experienced and everything that you’ve learned tells you that ‘more’ promises only more of the same. The midlife awakening can be summed up in one sad phrase: “Is that all there is?”

Beneath the surface of your conscious thought, you’re experiencing a transformation. ‘Hope’ is robbed of the meaning that it once had for you. What’s there to hope for when you’re left trying simply to maintain yourself in a reasonable semblance of well-being until you die? What’s the point? Believe it or not, this is the turning-point of the midlife transformation. This is where you’re given the opportunity to create a solid foundation of maturity that goes beyond anything that you could have experienced in your adult life thus far. Leaving behind the ‘hope’ of the child waiting breathlessly for Christmas morning (mere anticipation) actually represents a major step forward toward living a fulfilling life. For the mature person, ‘hope’ comes to mean the kind of trust that sinks down into your very bones that, in the words of the Desiderata, “No doubt, the universe is unfolding as it should.” And that universe encompasses you.

The meaning that you find in your life no longer needs to be dependent on your accomplishments from yesterday. They helped to make you the person who you are, but now they are faded and stale. Regardless of how exalted your position, by now someone somewhere has bested you. Few accomplishments remain notable for very long. Nor can you expect to discover the meaning of your life in those things that you are yet to accomplish. By now, you’re way too cognizant of your limitations to imagine that you’ll be changing the world any time soon. What’s left? Ah! There’s the gift that you’re being given to ease you into maturity! What you discover that you have left is all you really ever had: today.

We’re looking at the immanent close of this year and our entry into the teens of this new century. Of course, we do well to look at where we’ve been this past year and where we hope to go in the one that begins anew in a couple of days. This could be a time for a radically new approach to living, if you want it to be. You have the choice of turning away from the regrets and recriminations that kept you stuck in the past and letting go of the fruitless habit of making ‘resolutions’ for the new year, as though you could by sheer act of will change what’s coming tomorrow.

There are but three decisions (call them ‘resolutions’ if you wish) that are worth making for this New Year (and every one thereafter): 1) to lay aside and detach yourself from every expectation that you may entertain about yourself or others for the coming year, 2) to deepen your personal contact with your Higher Power (however you may define that Power) Who supports and sustains you through every moment of your life, and 3) to live fully just for today in conscious awareness that you are an integral part of the divine plan and to do what you can to bring that sense of purpose to those around you who languish without it.

Every year at this time, I am reminded that my first coach, Lyn Christian, discouraged me from making New Year’s resolutions, and, instead, encouraged me to adopt a theme for the new year.  Here is my theme for 2010: “Be the hope you wish to experience.” What will your theme be? E-mail your theme for 2010 to me at lbrown@proactivation.com, and I will share it with my readers. A happy and blessed New Year to you all!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2009 H. Les Brown

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As you progress more and more deeply into your midlife transition, if you haven't prepared yourself physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually for what's coming, you may find yourself plunging almost imperceptibly deeper into a sort of life-draining depression. You can almost feel your joy ebbing away, as those experiences that used to thrill and delight you now feel boring and silly. You may feel like some of your favorite pastimes are no longer worth the effort. For many men, even their sex lives become — dare I say it? — boring. How does it feel to be sinking ever deeper into a dull, gray sameness with no clear indication of a direction you could take that would improve your sorry state? It's a feeling not unfamiliar to many in the midlife transition: hopelessness. Is it any wonder that so many people try to break out?

I don't want to indulge in petty partisan politics here: but the contrast been last week and this feels extreme. If you've never had the feeling of being ashamed of your homeland, it's a 'must miss,' let me tell you! For many reasons that were brought out over the course of the US election campaign (and for many personal reasons), my sense of patriotic outrage after the attacks of September 11, 2001 faded into a sense of embarrassment — and even shame — over the face that this country presented to the rest of the world. I'm not speaking 'right' or 'wrong' here, only how I felt as a guilty bystander. I lived through the Viet Nam era (although I was a seminary student and exempt from the draft, many of my friends weren't). In fact, I watched most of the 1970's from my school abroad, which gave me an incredible 'world's eye view' of the whole complex of events. I saw what the world saw, and it taught me how (and why) to assume a global perspective. I saw and I felt what's been going on here for the last number of years, and it disturbed me badly enough to encourage me to make plans to expatriate. 'My country: love it or leave it?' "OK," said I, "just point the way."

I tell this personal tale only because so many others walk that same walk, only instead of a country or a society, it's a career, a position, a marriage, a family . . . something that weighs heavily on their shoulders and makes them want out. How bad does it have to get for a man to turn vicious toward the woman he loved (or a woman toward the man she loved)? How bitter do you have to feel to make you walk out on your career in the middle of the worst economic situation since the great depression? What kind of desperation do you have to reach to let yourself go into any of the -isms that afflict the middle aged? Yet, if walking (or running) away doesn't help the situation, what does? Take a look around you right now, and you'll see the answer perhaps more clearly than at any other time, at least in my lifetime. The answer to our midlife dilemma is simply this: hope.

I know that I've written about this before, but folks generally get the ideas of 'faith' and 'hope' all confused. When they say, 'I believe that God will get me out of this,' what they really mean is that they have hope that they'll escape the current predicament. So, when people talk about faith but really mean hope, what are they talking about when they talk about hope? Many times, I'm afraid, it's just wishful thinking: 'I hope I'll win the lottery this week.' 'I hope it won't rain on our picnic this afternoon.'

In that case, what is 'faith'? What is 'hope'? Faith implies the acceptance of things as they are ("the serenity to accept the things I cannot change"). Faith means having the conviction that, regardless of how things may appear, there really is a greater purpose behind it all, even if I can't see it. Life, with all deference to Samuel Beckett, is not a theater of the absurd. If 'faith' can be defined as 'acceptance', what, then, is 'hope'? My synonym for hope is trust. If you can accept that there is a higher or deeper purpose behind all the insanity that surrounds us, you should as easily (or with as much difficulty) conclude that whatever purpose brought you here to this moment has the power to sustain you. Where can you find the wellspring of hope in the world that can keep you from caving in to any avalanche of despair? More importantly, where can you discover the wellspring of hope that will keep you from giving up on your dreams, your career, your relationship, your family, or yourself?

The wellspring of your hope arises from your awareness of your own destiny and purpose. Think for a moment about the universe. There are only two possibilities: the universe is eternal (always was and always will be), or it had a beginning and will have an end. Everything that our studies of the universe have shown us tells us that the universe is finite, not infinite: that it had a beginning, and that it will have an end. What many people who acknowledge that much don't fully appreciate is that therefore the universe is vector: it must be expressed as a line with direction. It's going from somewhere (the Big Bang?) and it's going toward somewhere (the Big Crunch?). It therefore has a destiny. Once it set out on its course, it's destiny was established — not as a foregone conclusion, but as a distinct set of possibilities. If that's true with the universe, it's equally true for you.

Before you've gained an understanding of your personal destiny and purpose, or when circumstances have disrupted your equilibrium and left you questioning your own identity, no flight, no hiding, no covering up the issues will ever restore your hope to you. That can only happen by going within . . . deep within. The midlife transition, because it brings you face to face with both your hopelessness and your hope, is no place for sissies or cowards. It's essentially a spiritual transition that challenges your own self-awareness. 'Alright, you!' it seems to shout, 'Who are you really and what are you doing here?' If you're man enough (or woman enough) to stammer out an honest answer, if you have the strength to grapple with your life's purpose without flinching or pretense, you will — I promise you — uncover and unseal the wellspring of your hope. Once you've drunk deeply of hope, you'll never more have need either of cowardice or of despair. Hope, after all, springs eternal.

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC

Copyright © 2009 H. Les Brown

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