Understanding “importance” is the key to intimacy

             Let’s begin with a few statistics.  In 2010 the Nielsen Company conducted a study that examined dependence on texting among 60,000 mobile phone users.  As would be expected, teenagers scored the highest, averaging 3,339 text messages a month.  The average texting among female teens topped out at 4,050 messages a month.  That’s one text message every seven minutes of a sixteen-hour day.  Tellingly, the researchers also noted that voice communication among teenagers dropped by fourteen percent in just one year.

            What is the impact of this trend?

            We are losing sight of what is important and what is urgent.  Let me define my terms.  Importance is our highest calling—our personal mission—founded on such principles as love, integrity, understanding, forgiveness, and transcendence.  In contrast, urgency is the interruptions—the loud, demanding voice that shouts, “You need to pay attention to me right now!”  Text messages—and other faceless communication—that do not advance a personal mission are examples of urgency.  To be clear, a text message that says “I love you” is mission-based (although such intimate messages are better suited for face-to-face encounters).  Text messages that are glib, trivial, pompous, or sardonic are seldom principle-centered.  It’s not that living a life of urgency is wrong; in the long run, it is just not very emotionally or spiritually fulfilling.

            Yes, there are times when urgency is in alignment with one’s mission.  For example, if your son were in a serious accident, you would drop everything to get him to emergency.  That’s an example of something that is both urgent and important.  But that’s the exception.  We spend the lion’s share of our lives responding to interruptions that are urgent but unimportant.

            Consider texting and driving.  A 2011 report by The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that roughly half of eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old Americans send and receive text messages while driving.  Personally, I think the number is higher.  When I was teaching at Washington State University, all my students admitted they routinely texted while driving.

            Texting behind the wheel is the perfect example of tending to what is urgent but unimportant.  It’s like saying, “I ran out of gas because I was too busy driving.”

            But is it possible that texting (along with our love affair with selfies, iPads, Twitter, and Facebook) is eating away at our very character?

            A 2013 University of Winnipeg study reported that low-texting college students identified with life goals that were moral, aesthetic, and spiritual.  In contrast, high-texting students (punching out over four thousand messages a month) reported an affinity for life goals that centered on wealth and image.

            I’m not suggesting that the Winnipeg study is evidence of a cause-and-effect correlation.  But I do think it is representative of a cultural trend—a move from community to individual desires, from empathy to narcissism.

            Technology has another downside.  Our youth have come to equate the number of cyber connections with intimacy.  At the end of a course on interpersonal communications at WSU, I asked my students what they could do to make their relationships more meaningful.

            “I’m going to build greater intimacy with my friends,” one student said.

            “That sounds noble,” I offered.  “How do you plan to do that?”

            “I will text them more often.”

            Ouff, that hurt.  If he had been even marginally attentive during the term, he would have known that texting and intimacy are not synonyms.  Texting may be efficient, but it is not intimacy, for intimacy is qualitative, not quantitative.  It evolves through face-to-face transparency, non-judgment, and empathy—all of which takes time.

            In today’s society, when a young, sensitive person seeks more from a relationship than a ream of cryptic messages, the other will often become impatient.  The French author and journalist, Jean-Louis Servan, said it succinctly:  “With the slightest disruption or inconvenience, we have the sensation of being wrong about the other, and we determine that it is easier to simply drop the person.”

            There is a physiological reason for Servan’s observation.  Antonio Damasio, director of USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute, explained that deeper emotions—such as empathy—“are inherently slow.”  Although the brain reacts instantaneously to threat, it takes much longer to respond to the psychological suffering of another person (a phenomenon of the brain that can actually be observed on a magnetic resonance imaging machine).

            Nicholas Carr, author of the Pulitzer finalist, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, explained that the synapses in the brain become permanently shaped by repetitive functions.  In a phrase, we become what we practice.  On the average, Americans spend eight hours a day on their screens—computers, iPads, televisions, and cell phones. Their eyes are constantly flitting from one point of interest to the next, not spending more than two minutes on any internet page, and no more than ten seconds on any image or text within that page.  Eventually, their brain synapses become “hardwired” to respond quickly and superficially.  As Carr put it, “… as the Net reroutes our vital paths and diminishes our capacity for contemplation, it is altering the depth of our emotions as well as our thoughts.”  In other words, as avid consumers of technology, we are training our brains to be built for speed—and not for empathy or intimacy.

            I know that I cannot turn back the clock of technology.  There is probably not a teenager on earth who would set aside a smart phone for, say, an evening of singing around the piano.  But that knowledge does not ease the pain of rejection when I reach out for a moment of compassion—from anyone, young or old—when I say to a pair of darting eyes, spellbound by flashing thumbs over a flickering screen, “Hello.  Do you see me?”

True community is the secret to marital longevity

            My wife Nita is a salamander, which may be the most reckless metaphor of my lifetime.   Please don’t misunderstand me.   The figure of speech is not meant to be disparaging to Nita or the salamander.  In fact, it’s a compliment.  To begin with, salamanders are amphibians, which is pretty cool—right?  But even more astonishing, they are capable of regenerating lost limbs.  That’s my wife!  No, she can’t pop out a new appendage at will (although she does have the baffling knack of extending her leg six feet under the dining table when I say something rude to our dinner guests).   However, like a salamander, she has the uncanny ability to adapt and evolve.  And that powerful facility is why we have been married for nearly half a century.

            The American psychologist, Scott Peck, said it best when he spoke about the “stages of community” in his book A Different Drum.  Peck explained that a couple (or any close-knit group for that matter) goes through stages of development in their quest for community.  They evolve—or not—depending on their level of maturity.  There are four stages.  Many stagnate or give up at stage one or two.  Only the most psychologically and spiritually evolved get to stage four.

            Stage One:  Pseudo-community.  The first stage of any relationship is the honeymoon.  It’s called pseudo-community because from the outside it may look like true community, but it is all built on pretense.  The couple wants the relationship to work so badly that they present an idealize avatar of their true selves.  Imagine the first date.  They scrub their faces, put on their best duds, and maybe even speak with an English accent—anything to be appealing to the other.  Meanwhile, they ignore their differences.  “It makes me cringe when he talks with a mouthful of pizza, but, hey, no one’s perfect.”

            My wife was a trooper during this first stage of our marriage.  When I was in my early twenties, water skiing was one of my passions.  I was sure my petite and graceful wife would share my enthusiasm—not an easy assignment for a woman who never really learned how to swim.  In fact, her definition of swimming was “staying alive in the water.”  Still, she wrapped herself in the over-sized orange life vest and slipped her feet into the long planks, looking like a terrorized jack-o’-lantern on a stick.  For Nita, slip-sliding on water was as natural as a Parisian fashion show with sumo wrestlers.  But she loved me, really loved me—and for that I am both eternally grateful and woefully embarrassed that I put her through so much needless misery.

            Stage Two:  Chaos.  Stage two is not a happy time.  It’s as though a marriage certificate suddenly mutates into a license to criticize.  What we are willing to ignore in pseudo-community becomes intolerable within the chaos of stage two.  We want our partner to abide by our standards, our world view.  It is tantamount to saying, “Let me take a moment out of my day to make you a better person.”  It’s crazy, I know—why would we want to replicate ourselves?—but somehow we harbor the kooky impulse to take dominion over our spouses.

            When this happens, no one is happy.  Those who stay in chaos often resort to defense mechanisms to survive.  For example, some will emotionally check out and live in their own world of fantasy.  I once counseled a woman who relied solely on romance novels to get through the day.  “How many do you read?” I asked. 

            “Just one a day,” she said meekly. 

            Uhhh, okay.

            Others choose more toxic get-my-way tactics, including such favorites as depression, anger, addiction, and adultery.

            Stage Three: Emptying the self.  We always have a choice.  We can choose to be right, or we can choose to be kind.  Being “right” is about ego; being “kind” is about spirit.  Recently, I had a respectful but spirited conversation with a Christian friend on a controversial church doctrine.  At one point I said, “But that’s crazy.  You can’t believe that . . .”  Then I caught myself.  “No, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to say that; that was a cheap shot.” 

            “You see, Allen,” my friend said, “that’s an example of the Holy Spirit talking to you, counseling you to be less harsh and more kind.”

            Although I am more likely to label my regret as a twinge of “social conscience,” I do agree with my friend.  In that moment I emptied myself of my ego and determined to be kind.

            Replacing ego with spirit in a marriage requires an Olympian leap of maturity.  We have to truly believe it when we say, “I love you just the way you are.”

            That has not been difficult for my wife.  I think that being loving is in her DNA.  I’m not so virtuous; my genetic code seems to be laced with rungs of “bossy” and “crabby.”  But with time—and a wife imbued with indefatigable patience—I have learned that Nita cannot be all things to me (just as I cannot be all things to her).  So we both have turned to other friends to satisfy many of our unique passions.  Nita has her birding and ecology friends; I have my music and theatre friends.  At stage three we no longer need to be constantly together—as we did in the early days when poor Nita rode shotgun on my umpteenth trip to the hardware store.

            Not everyone understands this kind of freedom.  Nita once received a phone call from a friend who reported that I had been seen playing tennis with a mysterious woman.  The meddler was convinced that I was having an affair.  Nita and I laughed about the phone call.  What the officious friend did not know was that our love has always been deep enough to be faithful and liberated enough to be expansive.  Some might argue, “But what about appearances?”  Frankly, we don’t care about appearances; we care about love.

            Stage Four:  True community.  It will sound a bit like the Age of Aquarius, but true community is characterized by understanding, forgiveness, respect, and love.  It is a wonderful sanctuary, a place where problem solving is civil, even effortless, because you know that you can be completely transparent—or silly or fumbling—and rest assured that your partner will never be derisive.  You are at peace.

            In the end you know you are at true community when your wife remains unruffled, despite an unbecoming comparison to a salamander.  And why shouldn’t she?  She knows it is said with humor and affection and that I love her exactly as she is—a woman who is amazingly adaptable, loving, trusting, and positively unsalamandrine in her beauty.

Dr. Allen Johnson is a columnist for the Tri-City Herald and the author of the novel, The Awakening.  His column, “Mindfulness,” appears on the first Sunday of every month.

Cheating is the product of an abandoned mission

            On January 18, the New England Patriots routed the Indianapolis Colts in the 2015 AFC Championship Game.  Then the news broke that eleven of the twelve Patriots’ footballs were underinflated to ensure a better grip—a clear violation of NFL rules.  We still don’t know what exactly happened—and perhaps never will.  But whether cheating was in play in this case is incidental when measured against the magnitude of deceit in our country. 

            It doesn’t take long to generate a long list of dishonest athletes.  You know the names:  Lance Armstrong (cycling), Alex Rodriguez (baseball), Ben Johnson (track), Nancy Kerrigan (skating), to name a few.

            And we certainly know that cheating has no class boundaries.  There are the womanizers:  John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Martin Luther King.  There are the giant corporation tax cheaters:  News Corp, Boeing, Pfizer.  And, of course, there are high school and university student cheaters.  (In a November 1999 cover story, U.S. News and World Report noted that “Eighty percent of ‘high-achieving’ high school students admit to cheating, seventy-five percent of college students admitted cheating, and almost eighty-five percent of college students said cheating was necessary to get ahead.”)

            Whether the offense is deflating a football, stepping out on a wife, or pilfering the answer to a tough exam question from an erudite neighbor, cheating is nearly a national pastime. 

            Why? 

            Cheating is what happens when human needs—for survival, love, freedom, power, and fun—usurp one’s mission.  We all have needs, and most of our time is spent in figuring out ways to satisfy them.  We simply want to get enough food, love, freedom, power, and fun to enjoy life.  Sometimes we obsess about one need over all the others:  teenagers may obsess about freedom, despots certainly obsess about power, and thrill seekers obsess about fun.  Frequently a cocktail of needs are simultaneously activated.  For example, we may find that the deflated footballs had to do with the freedom to break the rules, the fun of winning, but mostly the power of money, influence, and recognition.

            Satisfying our human needs is natural and right, but not when it violates our mission.  Try this.  Sit quietly in a darkened room for ten minutes (it doesn’t take long) and ask yourself, “What is my personal mission?”  Then write like crazy for five minutes.  I predict you will compose something like this:

            “My personal mission is to be loving, honest, and transparent.  I live a life of absolute integrity.  I care deeply about others.  People can count on me to do the right thing.”

            Beautiful, isn’t it?  We can’t argue with it.  Indeed, that is the kind of person we would all like to be.  But is it possible to live such a virtuous life?

            It is for some.  When India was seeking its independence from the United Kingdom, Mahatma Gandhi made a two-hour presentation to England’s parliament—all without a single note.  At the end of his impassioned speech, all members of the chamber gave the Indian leader an effusive standing ovation and quickly encircled him to shake his hand.  Seeing that Gandhi was unreachable, one of the journalists approached the leader’s secretary.

            “Tell me, Sir,” the journalist asked, “how is it possible that Gandhi can speak for so long and with so much passion without the benefit of a single note?”

            “It is simple,” the secretary said.  “What Gandhi thinks is what he says, and what he says is what he does.  He is all one.  Gandhi tells us, ‘Man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department.  Life is one indivisible whole.’  And that is why he does not need notes—all is congruent.”

            What a beautiful definition of integrity—one that could also stand as a personal mission.

            But consistently living a life of integrity is no easy task.  No one is perfect.  In fact, we are often slightly adrift, if only for a moment.  Imagine a cross-country pilot.  The aviator constantly checks the compass, sees that the plane is a few degrees off course, and makes an adjustment.  Those with character are continuously checking their compasses.  They ask the most important questions:  “Am I on course?  Am I headed toward my true north?  Am I in alignment with my mission?”  If they are a little off, they true up their line—and with any luck (and a good deal of integrity) they arrive safe and sound at their destination.

            I believe that the men and women that I mentioned at the opening of this column arrived—through some convoluted mental and spiritual gymnastics—to separate their human needs from their missions.  They allowed their eyes to wander from their compasses for too long.  Marriage vows were broken.  Contracts were severed.  And, as we may discover, eleven footballs were deflated because someone’s personal mission—if one was ever internalized—was shutdown and shutout.

            Now, before anyone accuses me of sanctimonious piety, let me quickly say that I am no Gandhi—I am too often seduced by my own needs—but I am capable of self-examination.  I can sit alone in a darkened room and ask myself, “What is my mission?  And given my mission, what is the right thing to do in this situation?”  When I abide by the voice of wisdom that resonates in my head, I discover that I am invariably a better man—at least for that brief moment in time when my hands are steady on the yoke of my life’s journey.

            Do I live a life of integrity?  Let’s just say that I make a lot of scrambling trips to that darkened room and leave it at that.

Allen Johnson is a doctor of psychology, community advocate, keynote speaker, and jazz musician. He is the author of a new novel, The Awakening, and will be a featured speaker at the Mid-Columbia LitFest on March 10.

Believing You’re “Special” Is Not a Predictor of Success

WARNING:  This essay is not about your children or grandchildren.  (I’m sure they are all adorable with their rosy cheeks and perfect manners.)  This is about someone else’s children—youngsters who belong to your neighbor or your congressional representative or the toothless bag lady on First Street.  So should you read this through and find yourself ready to reshuffle my teeth, take a deep breath and say to yourself, “This is not about my children.”

            Our children reside in a hallowed domain that is protected from scrutiny by outsiders, regardless of how judiciously our concerns are framed, so to quote Betty Davis, “Fasten your seatbelts.  It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

            Several years ago I taught a full load of communication courses at Washington State University, Tri-Cities.  At Christmas my wife and I decided to invite fifty of my students to our home for a holiday celebration.  We decorated the house, baked the cookies, made the punch, and carefully tailored the entertainment for the evening. 

            When the big day arrived, I was giddy with excitement.  “This is going to be fun,” I chirped. 

            We pressed our pants, donned our Christmas sweaters, and waited with childlike anticipation.  And waited…and waited.  WE GAVE A PARTY AND NOBODY CAME.  Not a soul.  Nor was there a single regret spoken, telephoned, or emailed.  We turned off the lights, sat in the dark, and breathed a long, sorrowful sigh.   How much did it hurt?  You remember the pain of being turned down for a date in high school?  Multiply that by fifty.

            After the forsaken Christmas party, I started to notice evidence of a curious cultural change.  There was the teenage girl whose telephone answering machine bleated, “Leave your message.  Maybe I’ll call you back, but only if it’s important to me.”  Then there was the youngster who posted on Facebook, “Not everyone can be a princess; someone has to applaud when I walk by,” a sentiment that received two hundred “likes” in the first day.  Then I noticed the young professional athletes—heroes to our kids—who strutted like spring chickens and pounded their chests with every slam dunk or crushing tackle.

            What was going on?  I seemed to be witnessing a national epidemic of self-absorption.  Was it true?  Or was I just being hypersensitive? 

            To test my theory, I began examining all corners of our culture.  I saw how businesses and even governmental agencies were responding to this new ethic.  In 1995 Prudential changed their venerated slogan, “Get a Piece of the Rock,” to “Be Your Own Rock.”  Burger King followed one ego-centric slogan, “Have It Your Way,” with another:  “Be Your Way.”  Then in 2001 the United States Army adopted the bewildering motto “An Army of One.”  Huh?

            Now, with more votes being cast for contestants of American Idol than for the President of the United States, it is not surprising to see more businesses catering to young egos.  For example, take a look at a booming enterprise called “Celeb-4-a-Day.”  For only $3,000 you can experience a celebrity’s life for two action-packed, heart-pounding hours.  The package includes six personal paparazzi, one bodyguard, one publicist, one limousine, and your own magazine cover.

            Then I examined the research.  In 2008 the Journal of Personality published a twenty-seven-year study that reviewed the rise in narcissism for over 16,000 college students.  Their findings were dramatic:  Within two decades, self-reported scores on narcissism rose by 30 percent. To give you some perspective, narcissism in our country is rising at the same alarming rate as obesity.

            In 2003 the Journal of Personality Assessment looked at over 1,200 responses on a respected personality inventory (MMPI) over a four-decade period.  In 1950 only 12 percent of the teenage respondents agreed with the statement “I am an important person.”  By 1989 an astounding 80 percent agreed with the assertion.

            Some might argue, “Come on, Allen, what’s wrong with that?  Our young people should think they are important.” 

            The problem is that the pendulum has swung so far that “feeling important” has evolved into self-absorption, narcissism, entitlement, and, particularly troubling, low empathy.  For example, in a longitudinal study with nearly 14,000 college students, scores on empathy spiraled downward by 48 percent from 1980 to 2010.

            As a darker example, consider the words of Eric Harris, one of the eighteen-year-old shooters in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre:  “Isn’t it fun to get the respect we’re going to deserve?”  Empathy:  Zero.  Narcissism:  Off the chart.

            What is the source of this spike in narcissism and free fall in empathy?  In the 1960’s and 70’s educators and pop psychologists preached that a child’s fragile self-esteem needed to be continually exalted.  Parents were counseled to teach their children that they were “special” and that they could do “whatever they wanted.”  Because children were then (as they are now), our most treasured resources, we embraced that doctrine like the frenetic fans of reality TV.  Meanwhile, our children took the message to heart—one four-year-old girl in a frilly blue-satin dress telling me, “I can do whatever I want, because I’m a princess.”        

            Self-esteem—liking oneself—is healthy.  Narcissism—feeling that one is better and more deserving than others—is not.  For example, out of the fear of bruising a child’s ego, we have redefined the meaning of excellence.  According to the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, only 18 percent of American high school students earned an “A” average in 1968; by 2004 that percentage had skyrocketed to 48 percent.  Meanwhile, SAT scores steadily decreased—creating an academic environment where even the undisciplined are above average.

            Finally, cross-cultural studies offer a good deal of insight into the downside of overvaluing the specialness of children.  For example, Asians score significantly lower than Americans on self-report instruments measuring narcissism.  But how do Asians and Americans respond to academic challenges?  Interestingly, Asians buckle down until they get it right, while Americans tend to give up and select a task that is not so demanding.  Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University and the author of Generation Me, put it this way:  “True self-confidence comes from honing your talents, not from being told you’re great just because you exist.”

            So here is my point (fawning mothers and fathers may want to look away at this point).  Telling your children you love them is healthy; it encourages a natural sense of self-esteem.  Telling your children they are better than others is unhealthy; it imbues your youngsters with narcissism.  Try saying this:  “Little darling, you are indeed special, but no more or no less special than any other person on earth.  If you are going to make a difference in the world—or just a difference among the people you love—there is only one thing that will make that happen:  Self-discipline.  Now get on with it.”

Dr. Allen Johnson is a columnist for the Tri-City Herald and the author of the novel, The Awakening.  His column, “Mindfulness,” appears on the first Sunday of every month.