"Road to Hell Paved with Unbought Stuffed Dogs"

My college friend Peter recently unearthed this long-buried memory for me. Fans of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises will recognize the title of this post, but just in case you need the backdrop, here's the set up (www.perpenduum.com/2008/07/happy-birthday-yesterday-hemingway/) :

Jake is being encouraged by Bill to buy "just one stuffed dog" to "brighten up his flat" but Jake declines. Bill tells him "it will mean everything in the world to you after you've bought it" but Jake says he'll "get one on the way back." Few things are more clear than that he has no intention of getting one at all, and Bill drops the famous line, "All right. Have it your way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault."

It's been a long time since I did any meaningful literary analysis, and I'm not going to pretend to try now, but I am so grateful to Peter for bringing this strange and haunting passage back into my consciousness.

There are a lot of strange, small things that claw at my mind every day. Things that I can't really explain why I think it would be important, or of value long-term. Things that in fact in the moment are utterly bizarre and meaningless, and that run the risk of making me seem nearly unstable. (I mean really, who just buys a taxidermied DOG for crying out loud?)

But Hemingway is on it....and yes, he was seen as a tad unstable, but maybe that is the consequence of living in the Real. He is known to have said something to the effect of I don't know why everyone says writing is so hard, all you have to do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed...........and that he did.

He bled out this idea that we don't know what is valuable all the time, but that it's the weird little chances we take that lead to our closest touch in this world with what is authentic and expressive and inexplicably imporant. Hell is when we realize we didn't exert ourselves or take chances on something being relevant or meaningful, even if at the time we can't explain it at all.

So here goes. Peter, I can't explain why you linger as an important personality in my life. We weren't particularly close friends, we didn't take a lot of classes together, we didn't have a shared social scene. But one thing I do know, my personal road to hell has been missing opportunities to tell people they mattered, they were unique, they stood out and they still enhance my life in ways large and small. That you would pop up with this quote seems about right.

Thanks for doing it, and thanks for reminding me we don't always get to know why something is important, but we do get a chance to follow through.

In the Strangest Places

In my underwear drawer today I found a flyer I apparently picked up on business travel when staying at a Marriott hotel.

It was time management tips, and the Number One tip was "The Compass Over the Clock."

The tip goes on to talk about the madness we all perpetrate on ourselves by prioritizing speed over direction.

I haven't been writing much lately, and I miss it. Taking a deep breath and allowing my personal time and my core values to reconnect is always valuable, and has never not paid dividends in all areas of my life.

Compass over the clock. Try it with me? I could use the support!

The Skinny Branch

So this is, as they say, me "going out on the skinny branch."

I want to write just a little bit about the whole social response to Tiger Woods and his admission of infidelity to his wife, Elin. And since he and Elin are the parents of two very young children, I think it may not be over the line to say that he has strayed from something much bigger and more significant than just his relationship with one woman.

It's always a shock to realize how imperfect you are, and I mean that sincerely.

Item One that Troubles Me: I know. We all know. Any grown-up aware of your situation knows. You are the last to know.

I don't believe that I am any better than this man, or better than any other person. I was raised in a faith tradition that says all are flawed, and to tell yourself otherwise is to head down a dangerous and arrogant path. So please, stop educating me, and stop acting like admitting you are human is some Big Revelation to anyone but you. It's insulting. I encourage this conversation with yourself, but truly you are the last to know. We know.

Item Two that Troubles Me: As a society, we are more and more likely to say that this failure is not relevant.

I believe that the only the two people in a marriage who know what it is and what is going on (and sometimes not even then) is, well, those two people. I myself have been divorced. I am not interested in encouraging judgement on the highs and lows of other people's relationships. But I'm also a little freaked-out that we seem to have swung from making adulterly an offense punishable by death, to shrugging it off and saying it doesn't have anything to do with "us."

When we say as a society that it is irrelevant, and everyone votes in their online polls about how they don't care about his personal life, it feels to me like we are turning our backs on a very sad and vulnerable situation. We are saying, look, just play golf, and you -- the Mrs. -- quit complaining, there is plenty of money in this for you, the kids will eat, and it will all be fine.

I'm pretty sure no on in the Woods' house is fine. And it's painful to me that the public choice seems to be to say it's none of our business and who cares, or to make jokes or attack the participants in some way.

On Father's Day, the NY Times ran a beautiful feature on this family: how they loved each other, how it was a dream come true, how they inspired other people in so many ways. That was about 6 months ago. I don't think I'll ever forget that picture.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/sports/golf/14woods.html?_r=1

Please don't think I'm saying I have the answers. I'm not saying that.

But I am saying that if we can't stand up for the fact that it is a big deal when a family is permanently scarred by these kinds of choices and events, we are in worse trouble than I already thought.

Photo credit OSU: http://www.flickr.com/photos/osucommons/3528718369/

Everything and Nothing

I once heard organizational guru Peter Walsh http://www.peterwalshdesign.com/ say, “When everything is important, nothing is important.”

He was counseling a woman who had lost control of her possessions. All of her things were out on her front yard, and she somehow laid hands on her deceased father’s wallet which had been crammed in the back of a drawer. It was full of pictures of her and her siblings, as well as handwritten notes and other mementos. Bursting into tears, she begged to be allowed to keep it, even though she was in a boot camp of sorts to save her home from clutter.

Walsh reminded her that she had not even known the wallet was there for over 20 years. It made no sense to hold onto it. “But,” she cried, “this is so important! Please!” Gently he pointed out to her that she had not treated this item any differently than she had treated anything else in her house, from random domino pieces chewed up by dogs to moth-worn scarves from her kids’ childhoods 40 years ago. That’s when he laid it on the line. “When everything is important, nothing is important.”

Unlike any other related advice, this stuck with me from the beginning. We so rationalize our attachments that often we lose our ideals to the idea that everything is important. I’ve had multiple experiences over the years where I felt pressure to push someone else’s goals, priorities, or even values up the totem pole in the interest of my own pereceived success.

There is no end to the parade of people who need you to believe that what THEY want from you is important. The question becomes, what is important to YOU? Which of the things you have filed away and stuffed into drawers – literal or metaphorical – are truly important to YOU?

This post first appeared on http://www.corporateidealist.com/ on August 5, 2009. Photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/sylvar/2764272024/.