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As we head into the summer season of weddings, I have four wishes for all ye who enter there.  No, it’s not to abandon hope, the subject of my blog last week, but to have hope tempered by reality.  Place on her finger a diamond with the proper Cut, Color, Clarity, and Carat weight, and then bestow upon each other, and receive from each other, the singular wedding gifts of Clarity, Consideration, Consistency, and Completeness.

First, I wish you Clarity.  I know you are planning to marry a perfect person who will eagerly satisfy your every whim, even before you know you have it.  He will bring you flowers every morning of your life.  She will center her life around every one of your needs for comfort and support.  You both will feel the same overflowing generosity of spirit that has seized your heart and stalked your mind for so many months or years now.  The best is yet come, nurtured this wedding day out of your mutual pledge, your kiss, and your mingled tears.  Yet after the pledge, the kiss, the tears, the free flowing champagne, I wish you the clarity of eye, ear, and heart to know your beloved’s pain as well as his pleasure, her hard edges as well as her soft curves, to embrace your own fears and hesitations which are always present but often hidden.

Second, I wish you Consideration.  I have lived enough days to know that each is fresh, holding infinite promise, and unlimited possibilities. Yet each day is different from any other.  What can be, and I hope for you is unchanging, is the consideration you have for each other. I wish for you a certainty that, whatever comes, whether hurt or happiness, help or hunger, you will retain a deep understanding and appreciation for the gift you have been given; the opportunity to share life’s most intimate journey.

Several days ago I enjoyed dinner with a couple who had been married for many years.

“Every day of our marriage,” she said, “the moment he wakes up, he whispers into my ear, ‘I love you.’”  She smiled at him.

“Every day of our marriage,” he said, “from the moment I wake up to the moment we cuddle to sleep at night she has gentled me with her smile.”  They smiled at one another, and I felt almost embarrassed to be in the presence of such profound kindness.

Next I wish you consistency, the safety of knowing you can count on someone being there for you day in and day out.

Finally, I wish you completeness.  Not the completeness of the other filling in your holes, but the completeness of sharing all of who you are and accepting all of who she is, whether her vanity or valor, your fulfillment or your fear, his weakness or his strength.  It makes no difference what is shared, only that it is. This is the gift, the diamond, I wish for you.

Alan

This is the inscription over the gate to Hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy.  Until recently, I’ve found these words chilling.  After all, it’s a greeting at the entrance to Hell, which is supposed to be a pretty nasty place, and who would want to live, or die, with no hope?

I do.

Hope is described on Wikipedia as “an optimistic attitude of mind based on an expectation of positive outcomes.” As a verb it describes a desire for certain things to happen.  “I hope I get a better job.”  “I hope that in our marriage we both will be happy every day.”  “I hope you recover soon.”

In our dark moments, we might feel that hope is all we have.  Yet I propose that hope, especially when it is unrealistic, prevents us from accepting and enjoying to the fullest the present moment in which we live. It might be pleasant to focus on some desired goal but that emphasis can prevent us from being fully engaged with the reality of our lives right now.

Several days ago I met with Frank, a mediator in a serious dispute.  During a break he told me about a former client of his, I’ll call him John, who was worth five hundred million dollars.

“John wanted to be a billionaire,” Frank said.  “I asked him what he could buy with a billion dollars that he couldn’t buy with five hundred million.”

“Good question,” I said.

“But he just repeated to me, over and over, that he wanted to be a billionaire.  That was his hope.  Two months later John died of a drug overdose.  He was under a lot of stress.”

I guess that John, like most of us, hoped for more in his life than he had and his addiction to hope kept him from feeling fulfilled by the five hundred million dollar moment he’d already achieved.

Years ago, at my thirty-fifth high school reunion, I spent time talking to David.  I remembered him from when we were twelve. We used to eat lunch together every school day in a secret place so the bullies wouldn’t find us.

“What have you done with yourself for the past thirty-five years?” I said.

“I’ve been an engineer for the City of Los Angeles.”

My immediate thought was that David must have lacked the imagination to get promoted and had no hope of becoming a supervisor or earning more money.  I felt disappointed for him.

“And I’ve enjoyed every minute of my career,” he said.

My disappointment turned to jealousy. His answer caused me to question my own career. Though I’d been extremely successful in terms of money and social standing, I was far from feeling that that I had enjoyed every minute. Not even close.  My hope had prevented me from focusing on each moment and savoring it.  While I was gazing at the far horizon my ship had crashed into many log jams and had been, at times, a rough journey.

Each of us enters into a marriage filled with expectation and desire. We think back on our wedding day as one of the happiest of our lives.  Yet, how easy it is to let our hopes prevent today, this moment, from being our happiest.

Call me wise, call me a fool, or call me just plain tired, but more and more I’ve abandoned hope. I’ve stopped expecting something to be better than the way it is today.  When my mother died, I was in the room, holding her hand.  She had been in a coma for five months, with no possibility to recover.  I did not feel a loss.  I felt at peace.

Now I attempt to embrace the moment rather than looking ahead to some rosy future, and I find that living with appreciation for the present, rather than hope for the future, brings me much closer to Heaven than to Dante’s Hell.

Alan

I have learned a great deal in my life by listening to the suggestions and wisdom of others.

About thirty-five years ago I had the opportunity to study with Dr. Paul Ware, a psychiatrist in Shreveport, Louisiana.  For an entire week, together with four or five other students, I followed Paul around to his lectures, his meetings, and his visits to a psychiatric hospital.  At the end of our five days of training he allocated to each of us one hour of his time to discuss privately anything we had on our minds.

I had a lot on my mind. After talking to Paul about my marriage, my work, and everything else I could think of, I had used all but four minutes of my time with him.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“There is one thing, but it would take more than four minutes to cover, so I guess we’d better stop now.”

“Alan, you can accomplish a lot in four minutes.  What is that one thing?”

I was embarrassed, and didn’t want to open something up that we didn’t have time to finish.  But I trusted Paul, and he was an expert on adolescent behavior.

“It’s about my son.  He’s fifteen.  About six months ago he got mad at me for something.  He left my house and went back to live with his mother.  He hasn’t seen me or spoken to me since.”

“Do you want to have a relationship with him?”

“Yes.  Of course.  Absolutely.”  I was near tears.

“Go home and apologize,” Paul said.

“But I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Do you want to have a relationship with your son or not?”

“Yes.  I do.”

“Then go home and apologize.”

I sighed.  I felt certain that I was in the right and that my son was unreasonable and wrong.  I often feel this way when I am in a dispute with someone.  But in those four minutes I took my first giant step toward becoming a better, more forgiving person.

When I returned home I arranged a meeting with my son.  We spoke, he aired his grievances, and I apologized.

Not long after that he returned to live with me at my home, and we have gotten along well ever since.  That experience was the inspiration for the Apology tool in my original People Tools book. It is also the reason I am willing to apologize, even when I don’t believe I’m wrong.  Of course, I will allow that every once in a while my belief that I am right is, regrettably, wrong.

Those four minutes have made a huge difference in the past thirty-five years of my life.

What else can you do in four minutes?

You can take a shower, fall in love, or listen to a song.

You can ask someone to marry you, or say “yes.”  Or say “no.”

You can be born, get married, or die.

You can make a good first impression, get a job offer, or decide to quit something which makes you unhappy or at which you are failing.

You can read this short blog, and decide to change your life.

Alan