Monthly Archive: December, 2007

I was touched by Nora Ephron’s “First Annual HuffPost Charity Chain.” Her charity of choice for this year is the Innocence Project. It supports the collection of DNA and other evidence to get innocent people out of jail.

Readers sent in their wonderful projects. I wanted to give to each one. The problem is always who to give to. Over the years I have developed a way to narrow it down. For me the best giving involves not just writing the check, but giving my self and my time.

Here my favorite ways to give time:

Rotary International:  When I was International Chair, my club funded a washing machine for a Russian orphanage (Can you imagine handwashing for 50 children in Siberia?), desks for a Mexican elementary school, and a water project that supplied 1700 families of the poorest of the poor in the Philippines. Maybe even more important, we were in partnership with the Rotarian business people in those local communities. They did all the work and I did my share with a few emails. And now I have friends for life in all three places.

One-on-one for free:  I recently spent a couple of hours tutoring a young friend of a friend. I didn’t teach him algebra as much as I showed him how to learn algebra. Bright, creative, sensitive, he caught on quickly. That little bit of time will effect his life.

I ran into Borders last week to sign some books and met a 50-something woman who has been struggling with what to do next with school and work. In a few minutes of chatting about what we both really want out of life, she shook down a whole new career direction that will help hundreds, maybe thousands, of others. I did nothing but give her the space and a few minutes and she reminded me how much taking a bit of time with a stranger can mean.

I’m “on call” for advice for the Paia Youth and Cultural Center. I cofounded it and I have been around the longest. Now and then I help sort out complicated messes on the phone or over coffee with the staff or board members. They go off and do the real (and wonderful) work.

Systems science:   For almost ten years, I’ve been researching and writing about this emerging worldview. It is the grounding for Men Are Easy. It has the power to shift the world.

So, yes, I’ll write a few checks, but this year I want every bit of my work and my life to be about giving and I’m going to be continually on the lookout for the very best ways to do it.

I keep hearing about the second Oprah show with Elizabeth Gilbert. Women are finding their places of peace in their homes. Women are making pilgrimages to Italy, India, and Indonesia. My friend Nancy wants her hair to be like Elizabeth’s. But Eat Pray Love is not the first about a woman finding her way.

Years ago a friend gave me Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s book, Gift from the Sea. First published in 1955, it is about the importance of taking time for contemplation and creativity within and in spite of marriage and family.

When our children were small, I left them with my over-working husband and moved into our newly-remodeled rental. I had one futon, my grandmother’s quilt, a bed lamp, and one chair that I moved out to the porch. Done with my construction projects by noon, I sat in that chair for hours. I stared at clouds. I slept. I ate cottage cheese, fresh tomatoes, and cucumbers. My only book was Gift from the Sea.

A month later I moved back home, much healthier, rested, clear, ready to take on the new phase of our life.

My actions could be interpreted as selfish. That’s the comment about Eat Pray Love that one mommy blogger had. But for me that month was a survival move. My husband connected more deeply to our children and home. That time healed us both.

I recently read that depression and anxiety are found in higher rates among disadvantaged people. Anne Lindbergh was an aviator, an author, and mother of five, but she had people to clean, cook, and take care of the children. She and I had spare houses and accommodating husbands.

I flash back to my mother, who had five children and no extra house. When I was a teenager, I once noticed that she was washing dishes alone in the dark kitchen.  In a fit of guilt, I asked if she wanted help. She carefully folded the dish towel, placed it on the counter, turned to me, and said, “Lynn, this is the only time that I have time to myself. Leave me alone.”

These days I find asylum in writing, in walking with girlfriends, in just cleaning out a closet. Selfish? Never. It’s all about taking the time in order to give.

I was looking through blogs, thinking about what to write about this week and I saw Liz Rizzo’s post headlined on blogher.com:  Separation Anxiety–What Am I, 5? Interesting that Blogher, with all its issues and topics, chooses this post as a headliner.

Liz writes that she is irrationally anxious not being with her boyfriend. He calls every day when he says that he will. But she misses him. They don’t get together for a week at a stretch.

I wondered, is this a classic case of “he’s just not into her”?  Because when a man really cares for a woman, he doesn’t let a week go by.  He just doesn’t.

Needing a male perspective on this, I read the post to my husband. I asked, “If a guy cares for a woman, does he let a week go by without seeing her?”

My husband answered, “Nah. Dump him. He’s a loser.”

I said, “But he calls her every day.”

My husband looked at me like I was an idiot.

Maybe it’s not you, Liz. If it doesn’t feel right, maybe it isn’t.

I keep thinking about writing a change manifesto for changethis.com.

Something about marriage. About committing to the design of a great life rather than to an institution. About how marriage is something that you do, that you are creating in the moment, not a thing that is good or bad and that needs to be fixed.

Something about how  it’s not how much you know when you go into it, but how open you are to learning. How it takes fearlessness. How it’s not about compromise as much as it is about taking on different realities. How it grows you and you grow it. How marriage is a complex system formed from two complex systems and exhibits the processes, all of the beauty and messes, of every complex evolving system in nature. How, when it all goes wrong, often it isn’t a problem of distance–It’s a problem of being too close, too bonded to see and to grow. How stepping back from it can feel like breaking the bonds but it’s what you have to do to get it right.  About how one little shift from one of you can change everything and big emotionall-charged attempts will change nothing. About how real growth can involve breakdown and chaos before the emergence to the next level. How it can involve risking everything–all that you’ve built together.

Marriage is a learning space and a design space for life. It’s a space to come in to, lick one’s wounds, and go out from again. But also a place where you can practice all of the skills you’re going to need on the outside with someone who is on your side–or not. It’s a space to learn what love and family and life really is and can be.

Why is this important?  The processes of the complex system of marriage are the same processes in family, community, nations, the world.

This kind of marriage is complex but it’s exciting. With a few basic ideas in place, marriage becomes the very best game going.

I think that I will write this proposal for a manifesto. Any thoughts?