Charles Gupton

Attitude

Honoring the Process of Process

Have you ever been severely constipated, your bowels aching to relieve themselves of the blockage? All you want to do is move along with your day but your intestines won’t cooperate.

Writing is often like that for me.

I’ve just spent the last two hours straining to push words out of my brain into a book project that I’m working on.  And much of what has come out appears to my eye to be crap. But I continue to strain. Why?

I am excruciatingly, slowly teaching myself to honor the process of the process.

Calling myself a writer doesn’t make me a writer. I’m only a writer when I’m writing, not talking about writing. Doing the writing makes me a writer.

I have been a professional photographer for 35 years. But several years ago, in one of the deepest dips of the recession, I realized that I’d not shot one picture in a nearly six-month period. What I had done during that time period was go to networking events, business classes, sales presentation appointments, and anywhere else I could to shake up an opportunity for paid work. But I had not, during that time, picked up a camera.

My attitude sucked and my energy was flagging.

If we are what we do, then I was an unpaid networker. But I was NOT a photographer. I had not honored the process of feeding my heart or keeping my skills sharpened.

I took a week off from all appointments and shot photos. I can’t say they were great images. My vision was rusty and shallow. But the process fed my heart and energized my life.

I realized that I am not an artist and communicator because it’s a glamorous or lucrative way to make a living. I am passionate about telling stories. It is the core of who I am. But to truly be something, I have to do it. It is action that creates results, not talk.

It is the same with writing. It is a process. What I’ve discovered is that the most critical part of developing a process is to honor the process.

What I want, when I sit down to write, is for the words to flow out of me like a tap. If you’ve ever written, you know that’s not how it goes. But I’ve also learned that honoring the process of writing does cause the words to flow. A lot of the process of writing is fighting back the ‘voice’ of doubt and recrimination that whispers ‘Who would ever want to read anything you have to write?’

My job at that moment isn’t to find an answer to justify my time in front of the keyboard. My job at that moment is to write. By trusting the process itself, I eventually fight back the ‘voice’ and get the words out.

I’ve talked with a lot of people who want to write/paint/photograph, etc., but stall when the process becomes painful. Although there are times when creativity does abound, I don’t think it ever becomes entirely pain free.

That’s when the discipline of honoring the process becomes critical to becoming what your heart screams out to be.

How do you respond to the resistance that inevitably inhibits your personal vision from seeing the light?

 

Charles

 

Suffering a Loss in Your Narrative

We left home last Wednesday with great anticipation for the week ahead. We had two profiles to film as part of an ongoing project and a conference to attend. Both had our creative juices flowing. We were giddy with expectation.

Because we have six cows on pasture and a small flock of chickens – in addition to our dog and two cats – we have to make extra provisions for animal care compared to our urban counterparts. For instance, we know if the cows run low on grass in a pasture, at least one of the steers has an inclination to jump the fence looking for greener opportunities. And a cow getting in the road is a car wreck and a multi-million dollar lawsuit just waiting to happen.

As we rolled down the drive, I glanced over at the layer flock with a passing thought: “I hope today’s rain doesn’t cause the chickens’ electric fence net to sag over.” We were running about 30 minutes past our planned departure with a set time to meet one of our interviewees in Knoxville. I reassured my internal alarm with the knowledge that our neighbors were watching over our animals. And anyway, we can’t stay home and be on the road doing our work, so we had to get going.

Feathers remain caught in the electric net for days after the attack of wandering dogs.

There are times you don’t want your caller ID to show a friendly face. Friday morning at 6:11 was one of them.

Our flock of 23 layers had been decimated by a pack of dogs overnight.

When a pack of domestic dogs attacks, it’s for “fun” and it’s a bloody mess. Although several were dead, many had to be put down because they were still living but too torn up to survive. Four birds survived and we hope they’ll heal and be capable of laying eggs again.

While we grieve for the chickens – and the great eggs! – we’ve lost, the fear that so quickly escalates is the vulnerability we feel to spiritual and emotional attack when we are most open to pursuing our hearts’ desires for adventure and doing the work that, we believe, has the greatest impact.

The irony is that, at our core, we understand that our lives need to be vulnerable if we’re going to do anything that has meaning or makes a difference in the world. The higher the stakes, the more exciting the game becomes.

Most people say they want an interesting life. But most people don’t want any of their own skin in the game. It’s great to be a raving, lunatic fan of your favorite sports team, but that’s a far cry from putting yourself on the field of play.

As we got the heart-kicking news of the dog attack, we were getting ready to head to the Storyline conference we were in Nashville to attend. My first reaction was that of the angry victim – “Why did this have to happen while we’re so far from home and so out of control?”  But when are we ever really in control?

In the moment, I had to stop the questions of doubt and accusation in my mind and replace them with statements of fact about what I could and could not do. There is action I can take that will minimize our loss but I can never eliminate the possibility of disaster.

The most important decision we each made in the moment was to not allow a fog of anger and fear to settle in our hearts. We decided to accept the pain and move into the day with excitement and the anticipation that learning and being challenged held for us. I didn’t try to ignore my grief. But I didn’t allow it to frame my days either.

There are going to be attacks and losses in our lives regardless of what we do. But if we don’t embrace them as part of a greater narrative and push through them to a redeeming conclusion – if we allow the attacks to define us rather than us define them – then of what real value is the struggle?

Charles

 

The Power of Stuff

Over the last few years, Linda and I have been spending way more time than I could’ve imagined going through the remaining possessions of relatives who have downsized their living space or have died (the ultimate downsizing…). What I’ve seen time and again is that accumulated belongings possess an inordinate power over their owners to the point where it’s more important to them to sit amidst their stuff than be with the people they say they value more.

My Aunt Frances’ possessions stored in a unit to be sorted in eight months.

So much time and energy was spent boxing, storing, and otherwise keeping things which would eventually be sorted and trashed by us or others instead of doing something more meaningful that would leave themselves or others better off.

My Aunt Frances slipped into my grandparents’ house after my Papoo died and took a bunch of furniture and other things before her sisters arrived. She locked the stuff she’d taken into a storage building behind her house which eventually leaked and ruined almost everything she had poached. What she left behind has either been thrown away or is now being held in a storage facility at an expense of several hundred dollars to her estate to wait for her remaining relatives to sort through.

To what end?

One effect it’s had on us is to examine the accumulation of our own stuff. We’re in the process of cleaning out our own storage spaces. We’re donating or discarding stuff we don’t use. We’re examining the way we spend our time more closely.

I have been greatly moved by a quote from Annie Dillard, “The way we spend our days is the way we spend our lives.” I’ve been reading and meditating on that thought for several weeks.

Our days seem to pass in a flash with little to show for many of them. But added together they become the legacy we leave. I don’t want the sum of my life to be closets and storage units full of meaningless stuff somebody has to sort through. What’s the point?

I want my legacy to be something I wrote or said that made someone else’s load a little lighter or at least more bearable to bear. I want you and others to know that you’re valued. What we all need are more experiences that shape us into our better selves. Not to become vessels of stuff that other people waste time discarding.

How about you? What are your thoughts?

Charles

From Fear to Anger to Awareness

I have three angry, negative relationships that are impacting my life, but I don’t know how to extricate myself from any of them. Maybe you have some of those as well.

I find my irritation rises not only when I have to use valuable creative energy to deal with the mess these soul-sucking crazy-makers create, but also when I read or hear trite advice to simply cut the negative people out of one’s life. It’s as simple as deciding to wish away the cancer that has consumed a victim’s body.

What I’m trying to do instead is learn and grow from the experience of dealing with these difficult individuals. By sharing my observations, I hope to more deeply understand what I perceive.

What I consistently notice about anger is that it stems from deep, unresolved fear. What each of these people has is a fear that is so deeply entrenched that there is almost no way to get to the cause and expose it for scrutiny and resolution. The emotion of anger has become so raw and close to the surface that there is no regard for who gets damaged by it.

What scares me most is how easily I can be infected by their hatred. I’d like to believe I’m so strong that I can’t be touched by their negative energy. But that’s like pretending I’m invincible to radiation while standing in the core of a nuclear reactor. The first contact with any of them produces a reactionary, lizard-brain flash of anger in return.

It scares me because my reaction means I must also be holding on to a fear so deep that I can’t name it or detect it. At least not quickly enough to stop my own negative flush of adrenaline. It would be so easy to point the finger at others in regards to their evil without recognizing how close to them I really am in my emotional response.

I don’t now how much I would pay to disentangle myself from these sorts of people. But even if they were gone, without dealing with my own deep fears, I’m still going to be stuck with myself.

How about you? Do you have any angry people or negative situations where an aphorism or positive mantra won’t turn your mind around? How do you respond? How is it transforming you?

Let me know. I still have a lot to learn.

Charles

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is Anger the Best Road to Understanding?

As I’ve watched the fevered debate over extending marriage benefits to gay couples, gun control, as well as a number of other issues, I can’t help but wonder what many people hope to accomplish by their fervor.

I’ve often found that when people are quick to stake a claim on a particular cause or position, they are equally slow in their willingness to shift or change their position.

The nature of humans is such that once we publicly commit to an ideology, we are very unlikely to shift our positions or views to consider new evidence or opinions. And once entrenched in a point of view, most folks get angry towards everyone who does not share their position on the matter.

The challenge is that there is seldom one absolute, perfect solution. There are nuances to all controversial matters, whether they are subjects as diverse as gay rights, fracking, gun control, universal health care, organic vs. conventional food systems, etc.

By keeping an open mind for discussion and debate, we have a better chance of understanding the nuances that lead to better possibilities rather than limiting the options to a “victory” for one side and a desire for vindication from the other.

Have you ever been persuaded by someone who was angry and dogmatic? By friends attempting to stuff their points of view down your throat? Did it change your mind or your emotions?

If you, a reasonable person, were not moved to greater understanding of an opposing view by an angry outside argument, what makes you think anyone else would be either?

When I see people changing their profile pictures on social media to represent their side of an issue or otherwise taking a stand for a particular cause, it prompts me to question their motive. Are they really trying to affect a change they believe in — or are they simply trying to say to the people in their peer group that “I’m one of you, too!”

Since most people connect on social media with people who share their homogeneous beliefs, it really doesn’t impact change. It simply shouts “Me too!”

Courage is displayed and change achieved less by shouting one’s dogma (It’s usually ‘their’ dogma and ‘our’ truth…) and more by gently asking questions which lead to our own growth and understanding.

What we need are leaders who have the ability and courage to take a stand based on core values — but a willingness to modify those beliefs as new understanding emerges. I realize that it’s human nature to demonize “them” as a means of solidifying “us.” But we don’t show boldness when we run from the things we fear. Courage comes from questioning why we’re angry and facing the fear that caused the rage to surface.

Charles