I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves. Zarathustra in “Thus Spake Zarathustra” by F.W. Nietzsche

I had a beloved professor as an undergraduate at Colgate named Barry Alan Shain who loved the writings of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. I took as many classes with Professor Shain as I could which wasn’t so difficult as he was a kindred spirit when it came to not scheduling any classes before noon on a school day.

Most of these classes involved some degree of political philosophy, communitarianism and whatever philosophical itch he was scratching that day. He was a very itchy man and I learned a great deal about not opening my mouth unless I was ready and able to make clear statements about my ideas, beliefs and determinations about the world.

There was something simultaneously disturbing and seductive about Nietzsche’s ideas that fit rather nicely with the state of my being as a twenty year old man living in a cold, sleepy college town in upstate New York. Professor Shain was seductive in his own ability to illuminate the elements of this profound nineteenth century German’s thoughts that seemingly mirrored my own at the time.

The fact that Nietzsche’s work arguably laid the intellectual foundation for both Richard Wagner and Adolph Hitler’s work made this particular academic experience feel a bit like waking up on a Sunday morning with a terrible hangover and some embarrassing flashbacks trailing across my dorm room.

And life itself told me this secret: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘I am that which must overcome itself again and again.” Nietzsche, “Ecce Homo”

You’ve probably seen a bumper sticker or two reflecting Nietzsche’s most famous quote, “God is Dead.” Of course, to truly comprehend the depth and magnitude of Nietzsche’s work requires a great deal more space, time and effort than a bumper sticker. Yet, boiling down a lifetime of intellectual exploration into a pithy sound bite seems to be the way of the modern world.

Ours is a world of dense volumes of congressional laws offered as a headline or a dramatic cgi graphic. Incredible, monumental events occur in the world and are typically presented with a particular (invisible and unknown) person’s interpretation amidst the sights and sounds akin to a summer blockbuster action movie.

Nietzsche once remarked that

the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.

There is an uncomfortable feeling I get when I consider a growing phenomenon of the masses on our planet accepting truth as carefully constructed, bite size morsels rather than a complex meal to be ingested and digested followed by a healthy bit of deconstruction and analysis.

Last week-end I sat and watched my wife eat her favorite dessert of late, an éclair. To be honest, I savored the experience of simply appreciating her relish the pastry, bite after bite, with both precision and passion. I learned far more about her by silently watching her love what she loves than I possibly could have by asking her why she loves the éclair so much. Perhaps we all need a bit more éclair gazing in our lives.

Well, spring has sprung here in Chicago. Barely. It isn’t snowing or blowing as much and the temperature is creeping (slowly) upward. It’s funny how we have come to call this season “spring.”

I suppose it would be awkward to refer to it as the Days of the Vernal Equinox, although Vernox would be fun and sort of appropriate in a Dr. Seuss sort of way. The Lorax is definitely a springtime fable in my book, all about the environment and how we relate to the world around us. We even have a tendency to refer to the beginning of better things to come as “springs,” like the Prague or Egyptian Spring, although Libya might have to wait until Summer.

So, as the perky little shoots of this and that (micro flora to be exact) spring forth into existence through the muddy clumps of mushy leaves I am confronted with matters of life and death, or more intellectually speaking: deterioration, disintegration and resurrection. In fact, I need only look to my hallway closet for evidence of this cycle of life. Last week I discovered a Tupperware container full of red worms, newspaper and old banana peels tucked between a stack of clean towels and some rolls of paper towels. My wife’s new composting project would have won me a science fair “honorable mention.”

And yet, it’s all really about composting, isn’t it? As a relationship focused fella, I don’t need to travel far to make the connection between past relationships and the composting required to sprout new strengths, abilities and insights for emerging relationships. Indeed, without allowing old incarnations of relationship to decompose we run the risk of spreading hopeful new seed onto the same old, tired, stuck soil.

I have dabbled in more than a little gardening through the years and I know that I can get the best darned seeds in the world but if I plant them into old, tired, mineral hungry soil I am going to have problems. Likewise, if we don’t learn from the past and put certain old patterns to rest, we run the risk of regenerating the same genetically modified experience and then what…?

We run the risk that our cucumbers will be as small as pickles and our melons will taste like tomatoes. Your past is the black gold needed to nourish your future. Compost away!

When I was a boy, there were few things I enjoyed more on a hot summer day than a good game of war. The sun shining, neighbor kids out en masse, ice cream man due in a few hours…and water guns. I loved squirt gun fights. With enough kids involved, these fights could become battles and we would re-enact our own distorted versions of the Raid on Pearl Harbor (wasn’t their any hand to hand combat at Pearl Harbor) or one of the numerous battles against the Nazis. We could all agree that Nazis were bad.

At my ecumenical summer camp, these games of war were nuanced to the “Raid on Entebbe” where Israeli commandos swept into the heart of Uganda to save 248 Jewish Air France hostages from sure death at the hand of terrorists. We all fought over who got to be the unit commander, Jonathan Netanyahu, who was the only commando who didn’t make it out alive.

What was it that drew me to the hot molded plastic with cool water in its chamber? What was it about the passion and the fury as we swept down at each other furiously squeezing our weapons and simulating machine gun noises? Well, for one thing, we were almost always all boys. Sure, there was the obvious need to release pent up aggression at parents, teachers and bullies. Sure, more than a few of us had begun the Change…strange squirts of adolescent testosterone pulsing through our wiry little bodies, hardly equipped it seemed, to handle these new levels of manhood.

There was something magical about these squirt guns, these tools of young masculinity. Just gripping a plastic Uzi in my hand gave me a certain power, a sense of strength and ability, a certain reach, so to speak. In fact, holding a water gun was like holding an extension of myself. I was able to imagine my manhood reaching out into the world and effecting change.

That might make you giggle. It might make you wince at a culture that equates violence and masculinity. You might run out to the store and buy dolphin squirters for your children. Yet, there is a truth here that transcends projections about violence and aggression that we often associate with little boys playing with guns.

There is a process by which little boys realize that there is something powerful about their penises and while it may not be the ideal manifestation of that process, playing with guns is an attempt by little boys to understand themselves. And, yes, violence is a component of transporting testosterone. It is one of the challenges; a test of strength to use testosterone wisely and for good…

Abercrombie and Fitch this week released a new line of push up bikinis for little girls who aren’t biologically supposed to have a woman’s breasts at nine years old. While I’m as outraged as the next person, I also understand the challenge for young girls to understand what it means to be a female in this world. Somehow, playing with dolls and baking cakes in the Holly Hobby oven doesn’t cut it any longer. Kids know there is something just outside the door, waiting.

Like their male counterparts at nine years old, there is a desperate need to feel safe and in control of oneself as we negotiate a society that is rapidly maturing, encroaching on childhood with a frustratingly insistent intensity. Technology, change, and information is squeezing childhood back toward the crib without concern for the impact it might have on our basic human development.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things…
Henry David Thoreau, 1854

Two weeks ago I stood in line for 3.5 hours at a huge shopping mall to be one of the first to have the option to purchase the IPad 2. My wife and I arrived to the mall one hour before the unit went on sale and found we were already placed behind almost five hundred other “second edition early adopters.”

“Let’s just give it a little while and see what happens,” I suggested to my wife who had already started to slow her pace to a resistant crawl.

“Really? You can’t wait a few days and get it later?”

I smiled sheepishly and grinned.

Within minutes, we had struck up several conversations with our “line mates” who all had interesting stories to share about their first this or that’s. We found an instant kinship with those who also wanted their IPad’s today, not tomorrow.

Ironically, the IPad 2 was released on the same day as the worst disaster in Japan since WW2. In the midst of the excitement and privilege surrounding the purchase of a generally extraneous piece of technology, I periodically checked my smart phone for updates on quake victims, tsunami damage and the threat of leaking radiation.

Perhaps it was my way of staying in touch with reality; perhaps it was a way to assuage inklings of guilt that crept up knowing that I was buying a fancy, expensive toy on a day when people across the planet were in absolute terror and chaos. Perhaps, it had nothing to do with anything.

Two weeks later, I love my IPad. I use it to read the news about the disaster in Japan and then I play Angry Birds. I use it as an aid to facilitate change and transformation in sessions with clients and then I read a comic book.

Sometimes I think about the people of Japan and the fear they must feel regarding radioactive leaks from nuclear power plants and then I don’t think about them. I don’t want to think about their pain sometimes. It’s terrible. I think about Libyans who are afraid to speak out against their crazy leader and then I stop thinking about them because it can become overwhelming to think about them for too long.

I think about the ways I compartmentalize my life and there is a tidal wave of consideration that sweeps through me, recalling moments of trauma and grief in my past when I opted to go sit in a movie as a way to “detach.” I consider moments when I was stressed out about something and I ate three donuts instead of finding a healthy way to confront my anxiety.

What is the appropriate or healthy amount of thought, consideration, commiseration one must offer to another in their grief? Is there such a thing as the right amount?

I feel good about showing up for my IPad on game day because it brought me joy and continues to do so even though people are suffering on the planet.

It is a fascinating process being alive at this juncture of time and space. It is fascinating to even have the opportunity to consider such things.

Forgive me if this seems a bit personal, but what is the POINT of your relationship?

I agree with you… because you love them, because they deal with your crap, because you want to have a family or they look like they’d make a nice baby or two…

I personally believe that the primary reason we enter committed partnership with another person is to grow as an individual! Now that may be hidden beneath the obvious reasons, unconscious to many of us, but have you noticed that the person you love is also the person who seems to get under your skin sometimes?

There’s no coincidence there, and no, this does not mean you are with the wrong person! We choose the person to commit to who pushes our buttons so we have an opportunity to grow and learn about ourselves. Otherwise, when everything is just smooth sailing for the rest of your life together, never a wave or a sudden storm, then you might have a very NICE life, but I have to say, it might not just be boring, it might even be disappointing because you really don’t find yourself challenged to assess yourself and possibly shift some of your behaviors.

Now, many couples don’t like to hear this, but I am very clear that while it is a huge part of relationship to do nice things for your partner, you can not expect your partner to do anything for you. I had a couple on my couch recently and the woman said, “well what’s the point of being married if he’s not going to take out the garbage when I tell him to?” If you fall into this camp, I hate to tell you that you are sailing into a tsunami, not a few little waves.

When my partner does something sweet for me or vice versa, it is a gift, not an obligation. As soon as we feel we have to, we resent it. We all have needs, and we have every right to express those needs to our partners. We just can’t expect them to do anything about them.

Every couple has issues. We all have a problem or two in our relationships however this does not mean we are with the wrong person! However, without a solid, healthy process, i.e. a healthy way of communicating with one another, we find ourselves in trouble. Without a healthy way of speaking and hearing what the other is really saying our problems become the heart of our relationship rather than our process, and that can lead to extraordinary challenges!

So remember, it is the process, not the problems that matter!