Gary Mintchell

Author Archive

Lonely People

September 8, 2022

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Elenor Rigby, Lennon/McCartney

Not being lonely constitutes one path to longevity.

Have you friends? A friend? Someone?

I think of Jesus and how he was at times alone among friends. Have you ever been in a room full of people and still feel alone? Have you called that room a church sometimes?

Maybe a family? I have memories of being a child at home and being alone even with three brothers. My mom probably wished for alone time.

Being alone does not equal being lonely. I like times to be alone. I like times to be with others. I am both extrovert and introvert—like most of us.

But lonely? When that visits, we hope it intends a short stay hotel not an extended stay residence.

I wish I could advise you on being unlonely. If I knew, I’d practice it. Go to a coffee house, see someone and ask a question, I guess. Questions are your friend.

Posted in Attitude, Disciplines, emotions, Friends | Leave a Comment »

Doing More Than The Minimum

September 7, 2022

A department of the US government establishes something called Minimum Daily Requirement for a number of nutrients.

(Poor) Students ask the teacher, what’s the minimum amount of work I need to do to pass this course.

Laws establish the minimum requirements for staying out of trouble.

Religious laws also establish the minimum requirements, as well as, offering means of comparison with others.

Some people in the workplace get by with the minimum amount of work to avoid being fired.

The Pharisees (rule-followers) asked Jesus what the minimum effort was to get them right with God.

Jesus continually told them that it would take their whole heart. Similar to Yoda’s words to Luke Skywalker, “Do or do not, there is no try.” Jesus said, don’t look back. Do–with all your heart (and soul, and mind, and strength).

Jesus does not want followers looking for the minimum daily dose of goodness. He wants people whose whole life is immersed in that goodness.

Posted in Doing, Living | Leave a Comment »

You Don’t Own Me

September 6, 2022

Looking back on the 60s, I thought this was radical for the time–and for many even today in the 20s it is radical.

You don’t own me

I’m not just one of your many toys

You don’t own me

Don’t try to change me in any way

And don’t tell me what to do

And don’t tell me what to say

And please when I go out with you,

Don’t put me on display.
Written by John Medora, David White; Sung by Leslie Gore, 1963

Even in my nerdy teenage years, those words resonated.

And today even more so.

The non-technology part of my Twitter stream concerns women hurt by evangelical pastors and evangelical husbands. I’m sitting here not 15 miles from a guy who famously injured emotionally if not physically many women.

I know of many who hold to a theology ripped from part of the Apostle Paul’s writings to justify that behavior. They may make fun of how that disciple of the Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson, famously cut phrases from the Bible that he couldn’t agree with (understand?), but this is the same in reverse. Let us just cut a few phrases out of Paul, paste them on our walls, and follow them.

Count the number of times Paul instructed mutual submission. Observe the way Jesus treated women. Follow Jesus’ command to love our neighbor (and no, not that way…).

The radio in my wife’s car is set to Sirius XM’s 60s Gold (for contrast, mine is on Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville). This Leslie Gore song pops up occasionally as a reminder of how to treat other people.

Try it.

Posted in Compassion, Freedom, Justice, Love, Relationship | Leave a Comment »

Labor Day

September 5, 2022

Today is a national holiday in the US originally designed to honor working people in the newly developed factories. Working conditions were dirty and dangerous. Pay was low. Hours long.

There were two transitions happening. Increasing mechanization in agriculture reduced job opportunities on farms. Factories designed to produce more products were rapidly displacing craftsmen. Men took their families to cities where they could find factory work.

I went to graduate school intending to study political philosophy. I was intrigued by an early essay of Karl Marx where he discussed this transition from craftsman to factory worker. The craftsman put a little bit of soul into the things he (sometimes she back in the 1800s) made. A factory worker just performed one little task not being responsible for building the entire product. Marx called this alienation. Humans were alienated from the fruits of their labor.

They closed the department during my first semester at grad school. They let us stay out the year, but my incentive for degrees was shot. I got one of those factory jobs.

We’ve broadened the definition of labor for these labor day celebrations. But much like almost all of our national holidays, the original meaning is almost lost while we just celebrate a day off.

But this alienation from work idea lingers in different guises. Surveys today reveal that people want to work where the output is meaningful, that their contribution is important, that they benefit society in some way. Put a little bit of soul into your work. Or, go out to work on your own.

Posted in Work | Leave a Comment »

Personality

September 2, 2022

It’s 3 in the afternoon (15:00). I finished my workout and breakfast and sat down to write at 9. But since it is soccer season and I never know what emergency I may face, I scanned email. Oh, joy! There was a long email sent to the state sports administration. That created all manner of interpersonal conflicts that required a quick response. Then a second one. This soccer season (in its second week) is shaping up as one of conflicts.

The problem? It really boils down to a simple initial personality conflict that expanded to a full-page memo to the state. It needn’t have gotten that far.

How often we offer a quip in a moment that we think is cute or funny. And, how often that quip is received in a manner different from what was intended. And feelings are hurt. And things grow. And now people are not speaking to each other. And now they talk about the other person to third parties. And it grows and grows like mold on your onions in the pantry.

It could have been stopped. I can still see Don Knotts as Deputy Barney Fife in the old Andy Griffith show on one episode where he said, “Nip it in the bud, Andy. That’s it. You gotta nip it in the bud. Nip it in the bud.”

Yes. A lesson for us all. Nip it in the bud. Don’t let it sit and mold and spread disease everywhere. Fix it now.

Posted in Attitude, forgiveness, pride, Relationship | Leave a Comment »

Opportunity for Self-Discipline

September 1, 2022

I listened to a podcast interview on dialectical behavior therapy. The psychologist stated that people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder do not have an overwhelmingly strong ego. They have a great fear of being ordinary. I can think of several examples without straining my memory.

These are people who crave power and status. Many of us have a little of that. As Ryan Holliday wrote in The Daily Stoic, “You’d think that the more powerful you are, the more freedom you’d have. The more money and success you have, the more you can do. You’d think that being a millionaire or being a celebrity or being the CEO would finally unshackle you from all the obnoxious and annoying constraints of being a ‘regular’ person…”

Maybe you have had those thoughts at times. Holliday continues, “How wrong this is. How wrong this has always been.”

Freedom longings populate the world in this era. In America a weird sense of what constitutes freedom has recently evolved. No one can tell me what to do, when to do it, or how to do it, any time or any where.

Paul tried valiantly to describe freedom in the spirit in his writing to the Galatians and Romans and other places. He fell a little short of clarity. Or maybe it’s difficult to understand.

I picked up this thought from Holliday in The Daily Stoic, “It was Eisenhower who said that freedom is really better described as the, ‘opportunity for self-discipline.’ ”

We must learn to tell ourselves that what we want to do is neither moral or ethical or just or beneficial. We must aim again.

Posted in Freedom | Leave a Comment »

Enough

August 31, 2022

Enough is a feast–ancient proverb.

We go to a buffet dinner. We could take a smaller plate and add just enough tasty food to satisfy. Or we could take a large plate, pack it full of food piled high, eat most of it, and with stomachs distended and bloated feel lethargic and ill.

In America, we have so much stuff that we have no place in the house for the new stuff we just had delivered from Amazon. A thriving business of storage garages serves the need to keep stuff that we may never see again.

We can’t get enough. We must have a larger house. Another car. More money.

Yet, we are unfulfilled.

Posted in Attitude, simplicity | Leave a Comment »

Work Success

August 30, 2022

What does it take to be better at work? Even for someone like me who works alone?

One of my few go-to news sources is called Axios. They use a technique called smart brevity. What I like. Short and to the point. I wrote to them about too many adjectives, but in reality they minimize those extraneous and emotion-laden words. (Did you notice what I just wrote?) I’ve always tried that here.

They have a daily newsletter called Finish Line that ponders personal issues. They ran a series where they asked readers from different generations to send their thoughts on work. I appreciated how similar the thoughts were. Founder Jim VandeHei summarized all the comments in a column called the 10 Commandments of Work Success.

Click the link to read them all. My picks from the litter include:

Serve others: If it’s only about you, you will do the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Life is empty alone.
Work morally: Honesty, grace, humility, hard work and honor are the core values of a work-life well-lived.
Work smart: Working hard on the wrong or nonessential things is time wasted.
Study deeply: Master the tiny details and panoramic context of your profession.
Study thyself: Be clear-eyed about your gifts and flaws. It’s the only path to betterment.
Fortify thyself: Optimal work performance is impossible without healthy relationships, diet and exercise, and spirituality and mindfulness outside of it.

The bottom line: When the clock stops, smile confidently — knowing you did it right and well.

Posted in Disciplines, Work | Leave a Comment »

Charitable Attitude

August 29, 2022

I told my wife this morning, “I’m going to the grocery to pick up a prescription this morning. Do you need anything?”

She replied, “You could pick up some of that wine I like–but only if it’s on sale.”

This is a cheap Riesling. It costs around $9 a bottle, $8 something with my discount card. If it’s on sale, it might save another $0.50. This from a woman who just spent $300 for a framed picture for our living room. (We moved during the pandemic, so she’s still in decorating mode.)

While I’m thinking about this typing on my $1,500 Apple laptop at a park, my thoughts coalesced around an incident during a trip we took with a church group that wound up in Egypt.

It seems that there is no toilet paper in the latrines at one of our stops. Women from the area sell toilet paper in order to make a little money to feed their children. The women in our group were aghast! What?? We get toilet paper for free back in America. Why should we pay? And they rapidly organized themselves into who had tissues in their handbags that could share around.

I thought at the time (and still remember with regret that I kept my mouth shut), what a poor example of Christian charity. These women were not “ripping us off.” It was partly custom and partly a way they’d worked out that could provide an income for poor people. It is similar to dropping a coin into the saucer in a German restroom as a tip for the cleaning lady.

It’s like a minimal charity. Although middle class people in America seldom feel rich, we are. There’s a frugal mindset and a cheap mindset (borders on greed?)–and there is also a charitable mindset. Charitable with money and with time and with encouragement.

What mindset do you (and I) cultivate? Does it need continual tuning?

Posted in Attitude | Leave a Comment »

That Complex Relationship With Emotions

August 26, 2022

Once when somewhat stressed and flooded with email requests of my time and energy, I responded to one with some extra comments. I don’t remember the exact topic or words or the exact response from the woman who sent the original–someone I’d known for several years–but her response pricked at a sore point. She said something like, “I know how you are…”

That stung. And 15 years later, I still feel it.

And, god bless electronic media. It’s so easy to delete 2/3rds of your response to an email or entire Twitter or Facebook posts!

I am emotional. I try to keep the emotions in check. I hate emotional movies–I tear up.

This thought from Pema Chodron came my way:

“If you open to all your emotions,

to all the people, to all situations,

staying present and trusting,

that trust will take you as far as you can go,

and you will understand all the teachings

anyone has ever taught.”

– Pema Chodron

If you pause to consider this little poem, you’ll find complexity and compassion.

Try “open to” as a key word. And then “trust”.

So much of Jesus’s “blessed’s” that I’ve been pondering lately contain these. Open to God, open to yourself, open to others. Trust God.

I need this. How about you?

Posted in Attitude, emotions, Trust | Leave a Comment »

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