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Here’s a snippet from an email I just sent a good friend. She had sent me a list of questions and one particularly stood out: Is what your doing really speak to your heart and soul?

Modern society tends to view the word ‘happiness’ as similar to sitting around eating chocolate cake all the time.  When philosophers up until the 19th century talked about ‘happiness’, however, they meant something VERY different.  The Greeks framed the original term ‘happiness’ (eudaimonia) – but their term encompassed the idea of a person’s wellbeing.  Many now posit a better translation using modern terms would be ‘human flourishing’.  In order for a person to ‘flourish’ – they need to live rightly.  And living rightly meant pursuing truth in all things (eating, exercise, government, law, work, etc).

The framers of our constitution (do the words ‘pursuit of happiness’ ring a bell) would have said the word ‘happiness’ with the Greek understanding.  That the ‘pursuit of happiness’ is to seek the highest good of the person/government.  The Greeks, and the framers of our constitution, believe that striving towards the good should be pursued even at the expense of giving up one’s own life for one believes is good, right, and true.  But knowing what is good, right and true isn’t always easy – and the Greeks well knew.

In the same way, I’ve found the search for the true self to be a very difficult process.  My email to her went as follows:

I have been asking that question a lot because I really, really liked software engineering and just didn’t understand a lot of the ministry work I did.  But what I’ve been learning most lately is that knowing what *really* touches your true self/heart takes a lot of work and discovery.  We start with the things we are attracted to; but then have to keep digging into our motivations and attractions to those things.

I found out that one reason that I was so drawn to the order and predictability of software was because I had so little of that in my childhood. It also gave me a sense of control, accomplishment and a way to feel important when I wasn’t very socially adept/popular. It’s interesting; but I liked it not because I was a really free person, or it was really what my heart wanted, but because it was helping me patch over pain, disappointment, feeling unloved, and give me a way to ‘feel fulfilled’ without actually becoming free of those pains or addressing them.

Yes, I genuinely enjoyed it with as much love as I had, and it really was great work. I still enjoy the challenge and creativity of it. But I’m only now realizing how un-free, and little of the true/inner me I was really reaching.  I was acting out of fear of old hurts or expectations of reward, not out of what I *really* thought was the best and most giving thing for me and those around me. I also learned how un-loving and shallow I was because of that. I kept making decisions that helped me stay in that ‘safe’ place. I think that is why relationships have so much power and why I want to explore them so much more right now.

Relationships force us out of our comfort zones and force us to face those places of pain/disappointment/feeling loved or at least they should. We all will have a tendency to pick partners that won’t challenge us or that we know can secretly help us stay in our comfortable brokenness by reading their dysfunctions/lack of maturity as ways they won’t challenge us in those very areas.  Or worse, take advantage of them to enhance our specific coping/patching mechanisms.  Growing beyond this is not always a pretty process – which is why relationships are so hard.  My view of relationships has really changed because of this understanding. Relationships are when people decide to put themselves aside (as best they can) in order to provide a place where both people grow well into the people they should be.

I think these questions are very good ones to ask yourself. They’ll help you pursue the things you are drawn to, and then you can keep digging and discovering things about who you, a unique and gifted person, with all her deep joys and longings are really looking for.

Someone that has a lot to offer the world through her freedom and self-knowledge. I know that it’s a difficult journey at times; and the change it calls us to can feel overwhelming.  But that is where I find that’s where God lives in me. It’s when I start digging into the real joys of my heart (and finding out why they are joys to me) that I start confronting my real self and find lots of brokenness in why I do things I do.

God is there in the joys, and hence I can then feel safe in revealing the why’s and hows of my brokenness to God (and myself) to be given forgiveness, healing, and love.  He won’t abandon me in those most deep and truthful places – the place where I’m finally honest with myself. But honest with myself in front of Him.  So it’s not just me, but both of us, looking, laughing, crying and enjoying what we find there together. That’s what I want to share with others.

I went to a BBQ out on a farm this weekend and had a great time. They had a couple of horses and I took one for a ride. I’m not much of a rider yet, and can count the number of times I’ve ridden on two hands, but I do love it.

Horses are beautiful, beautiful animals. The coolest part is that of all the horses I’ve ridden, each one has a unique personality, style, likes/dislikes, and temperament.

Recently I was talking with a good friend about what has so captured and enamored me about horseback riding since I started about a year or so ago. One of the difficult things for me in CPE and life in general is to just live through and let my emotions really speak to me. To live my emotions and not just ‘work through’ them. There is always a fear that one’s emotions can get the best of you – anger, tears, or attractions might overpower you and make you do things you shouldn’t.

Now there are plenty of people in the world that this is true of – and they need to learn how to use their heads when encountering the power of their emotions. But for others, it’s the other problem – we live shallowly because we do not let our emotions really speak to us. I’ve learned this at CPE as the power of others emotions can wash over and into you – and you share in that place with them. This experience is what I think about each time I ride a horse.  When I saddle up and get on, I marvel at the wonder of it. Here I am on an animal that is a 1000 times stronger than I.  It could throw me, run off with me, or just do whatever it wants in general. Yet, it chooses to follow my lead – within its own temperaments of course.  As you travel through the terrain, horses subtly pick out their own footings and paths. You can direct him, give encouragement and reprimands as needed – yet he is really the power that takes you where you’re going. There is a gentle surrendering of the details to the power of the riding that will get you there. I have begun to see my own emotions that way. If I learn to let them be the power that I ride – to let them just be – I live life so much more fully. It brings so much more richness to my relationships, friendships, and living of each moment.

While there is some fear that my emotions might get the best of me, one of the other supervisors told a couple of us: “Don’t worry. You’re so in control in your head, you’ve got a long way to go before you’d go overboard. So just let it go for a while. You’ll learn the edges in time.”

Time to go riding

The Myers-Briggs personality profile test is probably one of the most widely known and used tests.  One of it’s 4 metrics is I(ntroverted) vs. E(xtroverted).  It may not come as too much of a shock that I come out very I(ntroverted).

I always saw this as meaning that introverted people didn’t enjoy being around other people but preferred to be solitary. I have recently learned that this anti-social trait is not what this metric points to at all. Instead, it simply means that one processes emotionally/mentally/spiritually what is happening to them in an internal way (internal dialog with the self vs working it out with others).  It doesn’t mean that the person is in any way anti-social. In fact, a person could be a very big people-person; yet be extremely introverted. Even more interesting is the realization that the commonly understood anti-social aspect is actually an unhealthy expression of introvertedness if one is too solitary or feels alone in their emotional/mental/spiritual work or lack good social skills.

Being afraid of others, afraid of risk in relationships, desiring to escape into controlled worlds of our own making (addictions to computer games, pornography, alcohol, and many others are good examples), afraid of socializing, or adversity to other people isn’t suppose to be what an introverted person is at all. I realized this because I recently met a very integrated and healthy introverted person in my work here at the hospital.  What surprised me about this person was that he is a very public minister of almost 20 years; yet is extremely introverted – probably more so than me. Yet, he saw that introvertedness as a tool for his work with himself, his family, and the people he met; not a hindrance. For him, understanding his own introvertedness allowed him to help others process how tragedy, joy, hope, or fear felt or worked internally on a person. He could very accurately and amazingly zero right in on what sorts of things were going on inside himself and others when they were going through all kinds of life-changing events (both good and bad) by how it was affecting the internal workings of the person (mind/emotions).

When we go through a difficult time; sometimes emotions can well up and overwhelm us for what seems to be no real reason. Other times, we have an experience that rocks our life – to the point we can’t work or eat or sleep – but we don’t know why we are in that state – or how to process or recognize the emotions that are underneath it. What this guy showed me, what healthy, integrated introverted people can bring, is how one can make sense of life events by being very attuned to the internal state(s) these events bring.  Yet are mature enough not to become slaves to those internal states. It helps them recognize when things are happening to them or others from an internal psychological/emotional/spiritual standpoint and then process through them. This is in contrast to extroverts who might have the same experiences but can only work them out in the interactions and in the context of other people. Both are equally healthy and functional ways of processing what happens in our lives.  Yet, both methods are simply the starting points of our natures.  If one simply stays in those modes (introverted people who pull into self-centeredness/away from necessary and healthy relationships with others or extroverted people who losing their personal responsibility for actions or identity by always referring it to others), it becomes unhealthy and destructive.

Which one are you? How do you processes what happens in your life? Have you really become healthy and integrated in that expression? Can you step beyond your initial tendency to embrace to the larger reality of how that is just the first step in a two-part process