The Values Sort

#49 Self-discpline

In some ways this entire project has been about my own self discipline. It has come up time and time again–it’s at least a central focus of the project.I have had to exercise tremendous self discipline in my life. Ever since I was young. Don’t get me wrong–I often fail in my disciplines! Emphasis on the word exercise.I have regularly been called upon, in many forums, to be less. “Half as hard, half as fast” my mother would repeat to me in my youth. And who could blame her? I consistently did things twice as hard and twice as fast as the people around me, and not always with favorable results either for me or for my loved ones.“Your greatest asset is your greatest assache” is something that’s been a constant refrain in my life. Two sides to the coin. It’s a never ending battle to stem the tide of internal negative self-communication. The things I say to myself sometimes.. You’d be shocked. You might even feel defensive of me. How dare myself?Feeling twice as hard, twice as rough, twice as much of a liability to myself and others is a great weight to bear, though, and it can be difficult to flip that script; I have great capacities for kindness and love and care. And I don’t give myself credit for them because… I must restrain myself!I’ve already alluded to the idea that I’m sometimes too much, even in a positive way, in my relationships with people. Too much text! Too many cookies! Too much praise offered without enough perceived merit.I again reflect on what this card means to and for me versus another person. Surely there are as many interpretations of this card as there are respondents sorting through the deck. I cannot be the only one to struggle in life with self restraint. With self discipline.The card also says resistance to temptation.I will eat the whole box of shortbreads. I will stay up past my bedtime and write essays knowing I’ll be tired and grumpy in the morning. I will let the thing that need not be said escape my lips.Words are something I’m tempted by always. It comes from a desire, I think, to be heard and seen. And it comes across, (often) as a desire to dominate or relegate another person into wordlessness. I call names. I level judgments. I put my mouth out for the world to hear and not everyone likes it. I don’t always like it.And vices! I’ve known a few and we’ve discussed some of them here in this series. But it’s been far from an exhaustive list! There is barely a vice on this good Earth that I would not, have not dipped a toe into. And the remedy is very nearly always some practice or method of other-centric thinking. Observing how my behaviors, thoughts and actions affect the people around me. Thinking beyond myself. Maybe that’s my motivation for self-discipline.Is that okay? Is it okay for my motivations to come from a place of community rather than from a pure, deep well of personal integrity; an integrity that cannot be bought or sold? God, I hope so.I would like my motivations to be pure. I would like them to be from me and for me, and benefiting others only inasmuch as they’ve already benefited me. But I confess, I am sometimes motivated to self-discipline by a quiet observance of my behavior’s effect on the ones closest to me.Sometimes I struggle with knowing the right thing to do. Life is not always black and white! Life does not always present its challenges with clarity of reason and cause and effect and consequence. Sometimes we must suss these things out for ourselves and that can be a challenge.And how do I discipline myself toward greater love and communal affection when I don’t know what’s right and good? And what about the times when a lesser of two evils presents itself as the only option? When there is no good outcome for everyone? When someone, by my hand, by my words or decisions, by my vote, will be harmed? How then do we discipline ourselves?It can only be our best. The core discipline must be our intentions I guess. But that leaves room for play in the steering. “I was doing the right thing for my family”. “I was just following orders”. It’s a paradox to wrestle with.I would like to make this concept land with a big story about self discipline in my life. I think we want a movie montage here. We both want to see me getting up early and running hard up a flight of stairs with a rucksack on. We want to see me drinking raw eggs and pumping iron and getting into fighting shape and waking up tomorrow and doing it again. Right? We both want that?I have accomplished things! I did quit smoking. Twice, actually. I have cut back on and even eliminated bad habits that don’t bring life. But those are largely events, and self-discipline is about smaller choices that take place over a longer time.I am here to tell you, as a man who has roasted coffee for a living since 2009: The soundtrack never plays.There is no soundtrack for 4:30 AM on a Tuesday in November. The bed is warm. The floor is cold. The business I run is a giant beast filled with moving pieces that do not care if I am tired. It does not care if I am inspired. It only cares about heat and airflow and time. It cares about espresso and customer service and repetitive motions. If I don’t get up, the coffee doesn’t get roasted. If the coffee doesn’t get roasted, the customers don’t get their drinks. If the customers don’t get their drinks, my family doesn’t eat.So I get up. I put my feet on the cold floor. That is the entire story.And I think that’s all of our stories regarding self discipline. There are moments in our lives, probably, where we are either literally or figuratively getting up at 4:30 and body-slamming life’s challenges to the ground. But more often, more consistently, it’s about consistency, and it’s about recognizing our place in the great web of life. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

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#48 Respect for parents & elders

1w ago00:06:28Tap to summarize

Another tricky one for me. Let me say at the outset that I love my parents and elders. I crave their approval. Less so now, in my forties, but the craving is still fresh in my memory.Let’s start with another heavily paraphrased bible story!Near the beginning of time there came a great flood that killed every man, woman and child, every beast of the land and every bird of the sky and presumably every saltwater creature of the seas, all except a man and his family and two of every animal in creation residing on a dubiously sized boat. After weeks afloat, landfall was made and the hard work of being fruitful and multiplying began.Noah apparently had brought vines aboard the craft, for after a while he became a farmer and planted a vineyard and promptly became a drunk. Classic.His son, Ham, in all probability pissed off at being named Ham, found his father passed out drunk and naked lying in his tent. He ran to his brothers, Shem and Japheth, and made light of his father’s circumstances. Shem and Japheth did the honorable thing, going into the tent backwards so as not to even SEE their father’s nakedness and covered him with a blankie to sleep it off.I have a friend who is younger than me by about fifteen years or so. I think he respects me, I was kind to him as a little guy and now he’s kind to me today. We were sitting around another fire, (I love a good fire), some years ago. And I made the analogy of walking around a big stadium outer-ring. You know, where the bathrooms and concessions are? You can walk and walk and finally you’re back where you started.I said it was as though I was walking just barely ahead of him around the ring-road. I could see the future—it’s true. I could see further ahead than he could and I had a little more time under my belt. But really, just barely. In the scheme of our lives the differences in my wisdom in comparison with his were really pretty incomprehensible and even then should only be brought to bear for our edification. And besides, he can see further back than I can! I know a little better about what lies ahead. And he knows a little better what is happening now, today.I have examples of this going every which direction in my own life. I certainly have examples of elders demanding their due respect. I also have my friend. My mentor. My coffee guy. Yes, it’s the guy I took $250 off of. He appears again.He is really the first one I can recall showing me the respect of an equal. The theft incident was a great example of this. I had to make it right. I had to make amends. And in truth, he’s had a bit of fun at my expense on the issue over the years. But I can never remember him lording it over me. I never remember him typecasting me. The opposite, actually.I was naked like Noah, black-out drunk on dumb choices. And instead of grinding me into a powdered form, he honored me, he chose to cover my nakedness and filled in my weak spots. He treated me with respect and dignity and very soon we were back on that ring road, he was just ahead of me. Still looking out for me.Respect for parents and elders cannot, in my understanding, come at the expense of respect for the young. And sometimes, oftentimes, it does just that.It didn’t feel great when I was young, and now that I’m aging up a little bit it’s my honor to love and respect those coming up on my heels the best way I know how.When people respect and honor one another intergenerationally it is almost cosmically lovely. It is a kind of beauty to behold. And I have beheld it.When respect is demanded from one direction, any direction, it is ugly and unproductive to say the least.What profit is there in demanding a high place of esteem? What good is the respect of the youth if it is coerced on traditional or religious grounds?By contrast, what good does it do to discount the lives, the work, the sacrifices of those who are a little stretch ahead of us in this great ring-road of life?Now is the time of my life to put my money where my mouth is. Now is the time for these concepts to be made real in my life and in my experience. I am the elder. I have elders. I am an elder. I am middle-aged. I have an eighteen year old child. They are–you will be shocked to hear it–not making all of the same choices I might make for their lives. I will turn out, in the sweet by & by, to have been correct about a great number of my ideas and thoughts. They will come around to some of them and we will look back together and sigh. And I will always have been pure in my intentions toward them. That’s my way as a dad. I will cover their nakedness and fill in their weak spots wherever I can. And I will not demand a power differential that does not need to exist. That’s my promise. Because at the same time, the rubber meeting the road as it is, I must acknowledge that father does not always know best, and there will be a second great many things that we look back on and see that they were right in their assumptions, correct in their thinking. That they were the master of their own fate, captain of their own vessel and they were simply sailing a different direction. Much to my immediate chagrin.I want to harness this. I want to foster this belief in my life. I want to remind myself that the youth are alright. That they’re worthy of honor and respect and that respect is, now perhaps more than ever, a two way street This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

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#47 Politeness

2w ago00:04:09Tap to summarize

The next four cards all fall under the heading of “Conformity”. Here we go. Let’s get this deed done.You will not be shocked to learn that I can be quite an impolite person. I have that capacity. But in truth, as I sit and reflect on what on Earth to write about this idea, I do think I am quite as polite as I can be. It’s a learned behavior, maybe for all of us, but certainly for me. My mother taught me the value of politeness.When I was young we were but simple country folk. Still, my mother taught us which fork to use in the correct order. She taught us to use our napkins efficiently and sparingly, to keep our elbows off the table.I was apparently the last human being to address my elders by Mr. & Mrs. and I did so until I was a teenager. Sometimes I still do, and it really seems to weird some people now. Not a very polite practice at my age I suppose, actually.When we answered the rotary phone on the wall we’d say “Hello, Walton residence, this is Nick speaking”. What a nerd.I did grow up with a value for politeness, but I think it’s one I easily trump with other values. It didn’t make it very far in my sort because, much like the last card, it can feel, (in today’s society), cloying and inefficient. And that bothers people. It bothers me.It feels like politeness can also be weaponized and used as a blunt object with which to subjugate others. To put oneself on a morally superior footing. “At least I wasn’t rude about it”.If we’re not vigilant and watchful, politeness can cover all manner of sin. Politeness can even cover abuse or in the worst cases crimes. I am thinking of a crime now in my head, covered up for years and hidden under the guise of politeness. I am gratified that this seems less common now than it was when I was younger. Politeness often demands silence. “Don’t make a scene”. Many people today are more willing to make a scene. Perhaps not enough people. I think the complex part of politeness to me is that it seems to often fly in the face of kindness, a value that does not have its own card but is nevertheless among my own personal central values. Politeness uses the correct fork and then quietly slips its sharpened handle between your ribs. Kindness shoves over and scrapes half its food onto your plate–there’s enough to go around. Polite is nice. Kind is kind. In the end I find politeness suspicious at best. It does feel too-often antithetical to kindness and in a binary choice I know where I land. I know I land with kindness and it alarms me to feel like I’m in a world where not everyone shares this hierarchy of values. I will be polite until it is untrue. Until it is unkind or harmful. And then I will let the chips fall. I will try to be polite. But I will not be silent. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

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#46 Respect for Tradition

3w ago00:05:06Tap to summarize

I placed the photo upside-down on purpose. Just to be difficult. I thought it would be funny to start by disrespecting the 45-essay-long tradition of putting a normal photo atop each post by making you crane your neck around.I really ain’t got much. I do not actively respect very many traditions. As I’ve aged, I’ve become less conservative—in that there are fewer and fewer things from the past that I see a substantial value in conserving. It always feels like we end up conserving the wrong bits, anyway. We can’t be trusted to be conservative. (This is not necessarily a political statement. Don’t get weird).When I think of tradition, I think of people trying to shoehorn their loved ones into doing something “the way it’s always been done,” despite the world changing, the sands shifting ‘neath our collective feet. I find the traditionalist’s perspective to be primarily one of a head buried in that sand.What customs are important to me? I’m really wracking my brains. I like that we gather, but I never really care about doing it on Christmas. I’d much rather have sporadic, randomized gatherings. I love receiving gifts! But I don’t need them concentrated together. I’d prefer to be thought of when I’m thought of, and never for you to feel a sense of urgency or obligation. (Seriously though, about those Island Punch Spindrifts... that’s a tradition I can get behind).As I sit and reflect on Respect for Tradition, I see that I’m actually somewhat antagonistic toward the concept. I get barby and short-tempered when I’m forced to participate. To me, traditions often feel like Peer Pressure from the Dead. Or from those who refuse to live into the future. At best, they can be stifling and boring. At worst, they feel toxically rote and obligatory. And as we discussed in the Responsibility essay, obligation is the enemy of care.But then. Then I look at the 5-year-old child in my house.We have a little child living with us now. They came from a place where things were not predictable. For me, a man who has had safety and stability for 40 years, “Tradition” feels like a cage. But for them? Tradition feels like a floor.“We always wash our hands before we eat.” “We always watch a movie on Friday.” “We always say goodnight.” “Bath, Books, Bed.”I am realizing that while I hate the obligations of tradition, I deeply value the rhythms of tradition. Because Rhythm can create Safety.When my friend and I shared a Schnecken (that espresso split for two), we were building a micro-tradition. It wasn’t a law handed down by an elder; it was a recurring kindness we built for ourselves. When I take a photo of every single person who does the Values Sort with me, that is a tradition. It is a ritual of honoring the moment. And I do love that tradition.Perhaps I have been looking at this card wrong. I thought “Respect for Tradition” meant worshiping the past. But maybe it just means respecting the infrastructure that holds us together.If a tradition is a wall that keeps people out, I hate it. I will kick it down. But if a tradition is a trellis that allows a new vine to climb up out of the dirt and find the sun... then I can respect it. I can get behind it. .I am building new trellises now. I am building a trellis for my family. I am building some trellises for my friends. I am respecting the necessity of doing the same good thing, over and over again, until it becomes a part of who we are.So, I will leave the photo upside down. Because that is my tradition now: To question the way things are done, and to only turn them right-side up if they actually serve the people I love. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

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#45 Moderation

3w ago00:07:30Tap to summarize

We’ve left my five chosen values behind and these are getting trickier to write. I feel like we’re back at the beginning again writing about “Wealth” or “Social Recognition”. I feel awkward and ham-fisted. Because indeed I am, and anyway, we are very near the beginning again because as I’ve said before these values are arranged in a great wheel; spoiler alert, the last card in the series is #57, A sense of belonging, (feeling that others care about me), which is, if you think about it, strikingly connected to card #1, Social Power, (control over others, dominance). Let the circle be unbroken.Let’s DO THIS.This card is moderation, the photo for which I took on the backdrop of a box of my favorite commercially produced shortbreads, Walkers. I will, left to my own devices, eat this entire box in one sitting. Cup of coffee, nervously read the news, I’ll blow right through them. Some of these cards feel made just for me because I guess I was really made for them. Some of these cards are so difficult for me to get my head around as to be laughable. I laugh at this card. I snort, snicker. I LOL.I am not naturally moderate. I am naturally obsessive. I am positively addictive in ways. I must be mindful of the vices I allow a foothold in my life lest they take me over completely. And sometimes they do. Sometimes they do.I have discussed some of these things here in these essays; To my great disgust I smoked cigarettes. I will drink Spindrift, (Island Punch if you’re feeling gifty), until my blood is carbonated. I am currently obsessed with these essays and I am more than a little nervous about what might come next, once I do reach card #57. Where is #58? What will I do? It’s actually not a small anxiety in my life. I feel them coming to an end and I’m already sad.I am also full throated in my love and my care for people. I am not moderate in my fondnesses. I have, on more than one occasion, utterly overwhelmed someone with the depth of my affections for them. It’s too much! They haven’t felt they’ve earned it! But it’s honest and it’s true. If I decide I like you there’s little you can do to keep me from liking you.On my road to 200+ values exercises I have written, let’s say, 175 absurdly long text messages. I overwhelm people with my words, I overwhelm them with intended-kindnesses that can even, I imagine, seem disingenuous. I love people as I’d like to be loved. Immoderately.Is there time in this life for moderation? I guess I don’t really know if I believe there is; not in relationship to people, to loving them and liking them and vying for them. There’s not enough time to love people as much as I’d like to. Why measure out my love as if there is some hard limit on the amount I have? I have not reached it yet, and I don’t imagine I will. I am also sometimes immoderate in my rage. This, we’ve discussed as well. Try calling my children names! Disrespect my wife, be needlessly unkind to my friends. I’ll have a difficult time moderating my response to you, and it will not be laden with kindness. Is there time in this life for moderation? I guess I still don’t really know, not when it comes to the defense of the weak or the loved or the defenseless. I defend people as I wish I’d been defended at various times in my past; viciously and thoroughly. Immoderately. So. Moderation. Is it worth even pursuing?Well, yes, probably so. Because in my immoderate justice-rage there is very often collateral damage, and anyway, it’s not always righteous in its origins.Sometimes I am caught in a shameful situation and I react badly. I react in a way that feels taken over and I’ll fight with someone for no reason, over nothing, for too long. There is value in the pursuit of moderation. I have admitted to the capacity for dishonesty. It is a terrible feeling to be caught in a lie–a feeling I know. It’s a kind of a self-wounding to wound someone else that way. A double edged sword by which we’re all sliced way open, our insides showing. And to respond immoderately in that place of pain is damaging for those around me. I smoked cigarettes. At one point I drank too much beer. I eat shortbreads like pacman. Nom nom nom.Forget about keeping a bag of gummy worms in the middle console of the car. Those things are gone. Yesterday.These displays of my great lack of moderation catch up with me. Sometimes quickly like the distance and sadness I feel between me and a friend when I’ve been unreasonable. And sometimes they’re longer term. Will I pay the big price for my smoking? Will I develop diabetes as is a hereditary potential for me?Will my relationships with those I’ve perceived as wrong doers ever recover? Can they really be that bad? And what of my family? If I’m not careful I make unilateral decisions about who we do and do not relate to based on my immoderate judgments.How then shall we live? Moderation in all things, friends! Even in moderation. The answer I think, for me, is discipline in my proclivities. Mindfulness of my tendencies. I can grow! I can change! I can become a better version of myself by observing my values and rejecting the things I find to be harmful.I can be justifiably angry and not wound others unnecessarily in my anger. I can be mindful of the collateral damage I cause. I can choose peace instead of violence. I can decide not to always choose the path of extremes. I can choose a moderate, measured response and I can enjoy the benefits and rewards.Like the last essay on humility, perhaps, for me, it’s not really about moderating myself in relation to anyone else, but simply about moderating myself. Full stop. Being willing to hold things in my hand and prioritize my responses to them.I can rage for injustice! I can make room on the bench even if it means using my weight to shove some boorish inconsiderate oaf off the other end. But I must always be aware. Mindful of the boor as well as the weaker one. I can be aware of how my actions and words and responses will affect the whole group in a situation. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

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#44 Humility

4w ago00:06:45Tap to summarize

I needed to look up the word effacing. I could use context clues—I got what it meant the first thousand times I thumbed through the deck. It means what I imagined it would: To erase. To make oneself smaller or less conspicuous.I am not humble. I am loud and somewhat boorish, and I can be rude and perfectly monstrous the better you get to know me. I can be outlandish. Just far, far too much sometimes.I would like to be more humble. I would like to be more modest. But I think “self-effacing” gets into complex territory. I am willing to shine less so that others may shine more. It’s part of the job of humanity to lift one another, to float all boats. But if I’m taking up all the space in the harbor... well.I reflect on this very thing we’re doing together—here, now, as you read this. I have told more than one person something to the effect of: “This is for me. I do not need anyone to read my content or validate me in this.”But. I mean. I want people to, right? The truth is—I’ll share it now, 44 essays in—I hope there are people reading these. I do hope people are gathering value from my words. I hope people “like, share, and subscribe.”I’ll go further, friends. I am hoping this turns into something. Which precipitates something else. Which generates interest and energy for something more. I hope I look back at the second half of my life, when I am very old, and see that the day I discovered the Values Deck was the day my life changed. The day something new began. I want to build a website. I want to write a book. I want to use this big mouth and my propensity for communication to benefit the people around me.That’s what I want. Is that humble? Am I humble?There’s the rub. In truth, I don’t just want to help you. I don’t only operate from a place of purity and altruism. I am beset by the needs of the one. And for me, for now, that means validation and comfort. It is to be known and beloved and appreciated.What does this say about me? It is a flowing gradient. There are moments when I can honestly say it is all about the other. When I’m sitting with someone doing their values sort for instance, it’s very nearly always this way. I do feel my best when I’m looking out for others.But there are other days when the gradient shifts, and I am lowly and in need of validation—more than validation sometimes, praise. I lost a good friend once because of this.He had been, for a time, my very closest pal. We worked together and we played together. We invented the Schnecken together. It’s a German word meaning “snails,” but commonly refers to cute little sticky buns. I’ve used the word as a stand-in for any kind of tasty treat since I saw the incomparable Nathan Lane use it in The Birdcage. “When the schnecken beckons,” Lane says, sampling a second treat at the corner bodega.In our context, a Schnecken was a double shot of espresso, split into two 5-ounce rocks glasses and topped with a little water. (And a little cream if ya nasty). The point was a single pull of espresso shared between two people. It was our way of encouraging people to come and spend time together, and my friend and I did just that.But at a certain low point in my life, I cried out to him. I was flailing and thrashing about in need of validation, love, and preferential affection. It was too much for my friend to bear. It was too much for him to shoulder, holding me up in this time of great sorrow. And we drifted. Just like that.I was not modest. I was not self-effacing. I sucked all the air out of the room. My lack of humility—my inability to see things from another person’s point of view—was the death knell for our friendship. The Schnecken is meant to be shared. I drank it all.I reflect on my marriage. It requires near-constant re-calibration to humility for both of us. We would call it “preferring one another in love,” which comes from the Bible (Romans 12, if you’re taking notes).I think the thing I dislike about “self-effacing” is the implication of disappearing. The goal, from my standpoint, is not ultimately to become less, but to make space for others to become more.I reflect on my place of privilege in this current society. I’m large. I’m white. I’m ruddy-cheeked and ruggedly built. I generally get along in this life just fine wherever I go. Nobody hassles me. Nobody stops me and asks for my papers. People usually trust my words. I do not walk around under the weight of strangers’ suspicions. I have so far enjoyed the privileged position of not having to care.And I reflect on my wife the woman. My friend the Black man. My friend the trans man. What of them? Do they also enjoy my place of position? Or are they standing lower on the ground they were given?How can my modesty—perhaps even my self-effacement—make more room for them at the table? I am physically incapable of becoming small. But I am capable of moving over. And I am capable of blocking the door open.I have chosen to care. To try, anyway. It takes a choice—an endless series of choices—to give a s**t about others. To root out any stem or seed of tokenism. To stop trying to earn my high place, and start using it to pull others up.Maybe that is humility for a loud man. Not silence. But amplification of someone else. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

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#43 Acceptance of my portion in life

Apr 3000:08:36Tap to summarize

I visited with a college professor yesterday. He taught that biology class series that changed my life. Yesterday I had the opportunity to tell him so.The class was environmental science, and it was a required class for my course of study, (forestry). I have already told you that I did not finish this course of study–I am not a silvaculturalist today.This biology class was part of the reason I quit. The comparison between the things I was learning in the class with the things I was learning in and about the forestry classes and industry were so stark. And I found myself drawn into a fuller and more beautiful observation of the natural world and away from the extractive practices of my youth and of my course of study.Of the classes I took that year I do not retain very much mensuration, (the branch of mathematics focused on calculating lengths, areas, and volumes of geometric shapes, like tree shapes), I could not easily, if called upon, estimate the board feet in a stand of timber today.But I still happily keep and occasionally refer to my copy of Pojar and Mackinnon’s Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast as well as my Oregon State dichotomous key. I’ve added to the list the Sibley guide to Trees and more recently, (and perhaps more delightfully), Pete Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees. I entered the program thinking of logging. I left the program thinking of the preservation of our natural world. Not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive! This is not a political statement. Don’t get weird. My house is made of wood. I went into that class very dubious about its value in my life. I spent a year measuring logs both standing and lying, and counting insects, and learning about the impacts we have on our natural world and learning lessons about hairbrushes broken too easily.I could not have articulated the change it made in me at the time. But in hindsight I see that it was a point of inflection and it changed my perspective. Which did in turn affect my values, which catalyzed beliefs in my life, which had forever impacted my vision and mission.Many of my actual behaviors and thoughts and actions in life have ultimately been affected by this class and I’m grateful.When I visited my professor, (the first time we’d seen one another in more than 20 years), it was as though no time had passed and I remembered why I liked him and his class so.One thing he showed me as we sat and ate gingerbread in his living room near his warm fire, was thirty years of data he’d collected on bird species present on his 28 acre property. It was delightfully nerdy and reminded me of a dataset I’m collecting.I have done this values exercise with over 200 people. And at the end of each one, (with permission), I take a photo. A beautiful photo of the respondent and their choices. I do not publish these photos or share them with the world, but I do look at them myself. I will flick through the album on my phone, land on a person, observe their values, check the date and think about their lives in the days or weeks or months since we sat together. It’s really been a fascinating experience in addition to being a beautiful one.Interestingly, in the times that I’ve done this, only two people have had a matching set of five values. This says nothing, really, as they are unrelated in any meaningful way and both people will have landed on those choices for different reasons. In fact, out of 57 cards, it’s remarkable that I would even have had a full match at all in only 200 samples–a big number for me, but not a particularly huge dataset.It’s also notable that there are several cards that are chosen only very seldomly. Preservation of my public Image. Social recognition.One of my favorite tasty little mysteries, one card has been selected exactly one time.Acceptance of my portion in life. Submitting to life’s circumstances.One time. One person. Sitting crosslegged on her living room floor with me. One time. Now what do you make of that?What does that say about my friend who made this selection, I asked her after the exercise? And what does it say about over 200 other people?I reflect again on my professor. He does not try to count all the birds in Oregon. He accepts his portion. He accepts his 28 acres and has a beautiful, ring-bound volume of collected data as his reward.Do you not yield? Do you not submit? Do you not accept the circumstances of your life?Obviously I’m making a mountain out of a molehill here, because as I have noted these are five cards, five choices in comparison with the compendium of human experience. There are fifty seven cards. There must be 57 million things that we could value as humans. Things with words like Kindness or Generosity, or things that are beyond words like a baby’s warmth or a long love in the same direction.Still, it’s a value that, far from discarding flippantly, I wrestle with. Submission to life’s circumstances.I have bent my knee to life’s circumstances. Is that always the right choice? Can we value it and still fight, still rage against it? The submission? Or is the fight itself a lack of submitting to the slings and arrows of this life? And is approaching submission as a defeat a sort of defeat in itself?For what of positive circumstances? Do we submit to those as well, or do we expect them and take them for granted? Do we deserve all that we have? All that we get? All that happens, how it happens and when?I often think of my college professor and the things I learned in that year. Not just mensuration and dendrology and planned obsolescence. But the things I learned about my own self. It was, as college often is, one of my first experiences outside of my parents’ sphere. I had lived on my own for some years by then. I was accustomed to that Lucky-Charms-and-cheap-beer lifestyle.But everything I was and wasn’t in those fresh, crispy years of early adulthood was still measured against who I was within the context of my home and family.And environmental science was a breath of something new. I often wonder–what if I’d stayed in? I make the comment, I’ve made it here, that there’s probably a place where a guy with a big mouth and a big love for people could have made a home with a forestry degree. I could be something really neat, like a park ranger. And instead I am not. I am a coffee roaster, an occupation I have already admitted I do not have a particular passion for. I must accept this. I must let go.And besides, if I had not followed the life path I did, I may never have developed my dataset, my 200 people, (and counting), I may never have married my partner, I may never have done and seen a million wonderful things.Not everything is perfect in my life. Not everything is always peachy-keen for an entrepreneur. My business struggles in this post COVID era where people make buying decisions very differently on some levels. Not everything is perfect in my family; my own children are growing up and pushing against boundaries I don’t even know that I should have set in the first place.In my recent essays I have discussed my faith. Out of something and into something new. Metamorphosis. But what does it mean for the caterpillar? Is there any sense of loss? Probably not for the caterpillar. But for us? As I continue a life-long transformation it is necessary to accept the circumstances of that transformation.My portion is my portion. My portion is indeterminately good and indefinably difficult. This is true for us all I think. For every choice we make there are a million more we do not. And we can spend our lives, if we’re not careful, regretting those paths.What does it mean to submit now, today to the circumstances of my life? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

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#42 Devoutness

Apr 2500:11:01Tap to summarize

You may recall that I grew up in church. Perhaps you did, too.This card is funny because people have one of three responses, and maybe it’s actually this way for all fifty-seven cards. But I’m reflecting on the triad of choices now. It’s either a shoe-in, no contest, a definite value, OR it’s an easy card to toss in the “no” pile on the first round, OR, it is deeply wrestled with; compared and analyzed alongside other cards like a spiritual life or meaning in life. It all sort of depends on where you came from and where you’re going. I am, you may have guessed, moving away from organized religion in my life. Except…I’ve started going to church. About six weeks ago as of this writing I was sitting with my friend around a nice backyard fire. We were sharing a whiskey and a moment together and I was becoming animatedly enraged, (as I do), with various church leaders from our shared past, their abuses and untended wounds. He listened quietly, gave me space to feel and be myself as friends do, and then suggested I try a church he’s been attending with his wife for a while.It’s a very different kind of church than I’ve ever attended before, and I’m not going to make this essay a comparative side-by-side, nor am I going to give you a list of reasons why I’m still in church at all. We are all on our own paths.In this series I’ve admitted to being disillusioned with the church of my youth. I’ve tried to be fairly diplomatic about it, but if you’re paying attention it’s there. In this series I’ve admitted to stealing in my youth, I’ve admitted to my own capacity for violence and malice and dishonesty. Now here’s another admission. I am still on what I weirdly call a “Jesus flavored path”. No matter how much I grow weary of the church, all her rules, all her dominions, all her hate-dressed-as-love, I do not seem to grow weary of the words of Jesus. And I do not tire of wanting to be more like him. I think. I grew up learning a certain set of facts regarding Jesus, regarding his place in the larger story of the Bible, regarding our appropriate responses to those facts.Do you remember POGs? It was a fad in the 1990s. A game played by stacking cardboard disks, (the name was taken from the name of a Hawaiian beverage, Passionfruit-Orange-Guava, and the acronym POG printed on the cardboard bottle lids). You’d stack up your POGs face down and then use a heavier disk, a Slammer to, (as the name would suggest), slam the pile. The player would “win” any POGs that flipped face up. In my personal experience, I rarely ever played the game, instead I collected POGs. I had a binder with special plastic pages in it that was made specifically for displaying and protecting the little disks. I did have a SLAMMER though; a huge, heavy piece of acrylic plastic affixed to a metal disk that said the following, (this is why I’m telling the POG story):The Bible says it—I believe it—That settles it. I grew up believing in the Bible as a set of literal facts collected for my benefit. I grew up telling myself, (and almost believing it), that the very word Bible, stood for Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. In reality the word “Bible” obviously comes from the Greek biblia (βιβλία), meaning “The Books”, itself stemming from biblos (βύβλος) which means papyrus and refers also to the Phoenician port city of Byblos where it was commonly traded. But you already knew that. But in my little-guy brain, that’s exactly what the Bible was—specific instructions for living. If it wasn’t in there, it didn’t exist; it spoke, if you read hard enough, to every potential eventuality this life could throw our way.This is how I grew up. This is what I believed. I memorized various passages of scripture and performatively recited them to Mrs. Kennedy in order to win the 10¢ goldfish she’d bring in as prizes once each year for the good little boys and girls who’d done their memorization. I won my fish. I named him Clyde. He lived for many years and only died in the house fire I mentioned in the Privacy essay. He was six inches long living in a 20 gallon aquarium at the time. It was too small a habitat. I believe he’d still be alive today if not for that ill fated end, teaching us lessons about growth. And over time my beliefs have changed; I have already admitted that I no longer believe in a place of ECT, a real acronym used to shorten Eternal Conscious Torment, the specific kind of hell we believed in. The cracks began to form in that doctrine many years ago and they continued until one day I just… didn’t believe that way. I couldn’t. I couldn’t make myself see what some people see in the texts and I couldn’t unsee or unlearn some of the things I’d seen and learned that countered that narrative.And as I mentioned in the Spiritual Life essay, without hell, without consciousness in torment, evermore, evermore, what were we even left with? For me, I’m left with invitation. One of Jesus’ most often used words was come. He was invitational in nature, that guy. He was always speaking with authority the religious leaders didn’t feel like he did, (or should) have to forgive, to invite to repair. And those are things we can do, too! I cannot, (as I have already stated many times), speak to the afterlife. I do not know.But I can invite you into love, into kindness. I can look for the fruits of the spirit of God in my life, the Love, Joy, Peace in my life and I can foster and foment those things in my life. I can share good news with you—the good news is that we have this life. We have now, today, together. We can be heaven or hell for one another—indeed we will be heaven or hell for one another. We may have no other way. A few years ago I started tuning my ear to Rainn Wilson. Hopefully you at least know of Wilson and his character from The Office, Dwight Schrute. He’s hilarious and a treasure. He was born and raised into the Baha’i faith. I am compelled by his messaging and his stories, and I’ve thought, privately to myself and apparently publicly on the internet, that if I had it to do again I might dig a little deeper into the Baha’i.A few years ago I received my introduction to Buddhism. It was simple and a little silly, but it was mine. I was wandering Powell’s Books and picked up, almost at random, James Norbury’s The Journey: Big Panda and Tiny Dragon. In it two friends embark on a beautiful journey out of and into. They leave a comfortable home they’d made together taking only Tiny Dragon’s teapot as luggage. They face various beautifully illustrated trials and finally lose even the teapot before finding a new place, a new life, a new home, and yes, a new teapot. In the end all is different but all is well. So, I feel it going for me. Perhaps in another life I’d have pursued Buddhism. Perhaps I’ve had made a terrible monk somewhere. Am I devout? The question here is am I devout? Do I hold to a religious faith? And the answer, which still, after all this time, after all these words, is hard for me to write, is no. Not to the faith I know—not to the faith I knew. I have left the way I knew. I can no longer hold to a religious tradition. That word ‘hold’—as in grasp tightly, clutch, refuse to let go—that’s carrying a lot of weight here. Because I’ve let go. Not of Jesus, not of love, not of invitation. But of the structure that said there was only one way to understand any of it. But am I devoted? Yes, I think so. Devoted to continuing to sojourn on, continuing to identify those fruits in my life, continuing to discipline myself in the way(s) of love. A word used to describe people in my situation has been Deconstruction. As in, we’re de-constructing our faith. But I don’t like that term very much and I don’t actually feel like it applies to me or maybe to very many people at all.I do know folks who want to just tear it all down and walk out of the rubble—I’ve met them, I’ve known them, and I’ve even felt like one of them. But I see now that, (as I mentioned in a previous essay) that I am simply evolving and growing. I am going from one thing into another, quite naturally, quite natively. Like a caterpillar I am entering my pupae state; closing into myself for a quiet liquid metamorphosis into something different. If I had to guess I’d guess I’ll never become a Buddhist or a practitioner of the Baha’i faith. If I had to guess I’ll keep walking this Jes...

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#41 Meaning in life

Apr 2000:07:51Tap to summarize

I am in a time of flux. I am in a time of transition. I am in a time of metamorphosis. When we were all younger my wife and I started a coffee shop called Chrysalis Coffeehouse. Do you know what a chrysalis is? Maybe you do, but if not you should because it’s beautiful. Before about 2012, if you would have asked me how a caterpillar became a butterfly I’d have said something about going into a cocoon and maybe one leg grows up into a longer bone, (insects have bones, right?), and then maybe the wing sort of webs down from that, and presto-chango, it’s a butterfly or something!That is not how it works, friends. Moths form cocoons, silk structures into which they envelop themselves and out from which they emerge. A chrysalis by contrast is fully the insect itself. The hard outer shell is a part of the critter, and on the inside, far from growing into something it actually changes into something new. Metamorphosis. The whole of the animal liquefies into something magical, reforms, reconstitutes and regrows into a different animal altogether. It’s a beautiful, and I’ll say it again, magical exercise in nature’s way. So it goes, we decided, with coffee. We were a metamorphosis point in the life cycle of a coffee bean, taking a hard, barely edible, waxy green coffee bean and, through the application of heat and pressure, transforming it into something palatable and even more than that, pleasurable.At that time we also saw ourselves in that imagery. I can look back now and see that we’ve pretty much always been at the beginning of some new change, some new way. It is the blessing and the curse of being us. I look around and see that not everyone is so lucky to live this way. As we did business it became increasingly clear that not everyone knew what a chrysalis was, and certainly not everyone knew the beauty of how they worked, and the name presented more challenges than we’d intended. Eventually we changed again, rebranding and becoming something different. So, I feel, it is going in our lives today. I can feel the winds of change. They have ebbed and flowed in our lives often enough that I’m no longer particularly afraid of them, though I know they almost always bring pain along with new life. I am turning to liquid. Again. I will not discuss all of these things now; I have revealed some of them already. My children are growing. My business is changing. Things never stay the same for long, and they will continue on that trajectory I think. The most important thing I do now, the most important thing to me, is this values exercise. It never gets old and I could do it every day. In the beginning I did the exercise with everyone—I was ravenous. You could not be on my doorstep for long before I’d ask you to “do a fun values sort with me.” I have my electrician’s values. I have my old babysitter’s values. I have my friend’s son’s girlfriend’s values and I have my former life coach’s values. It is what I would like to be doing with the rest of my life. It’s not the cards, though, you know that by now. It’s my love for people and my belief that we do have this life! We are more than we know, more than we think we are. It’s about coming up under the people around me and giving them something, anything that gives them hope or a little more of a vision for their own futures. For their children’s futures. As I write this it feels self aggrandizing. Oh, that I could be a benefit to others! Who am I that I think I could? But I’m here, I have these cards, I have these ideas, and I’m not losing heart or interest. I’m continually discovering meaning in life. As part of this pursuit, I have begun developing my Values Tree which I will describe again here, briefly for your reference. Our Lived Experiences happen to us. Around us. Without our command or request. They’re the sun rays and raindrops falling on our faces and we cannot control them. We cannot even predict them much of the time. Our responses to those experiences inform our Values which in turn inform our Beliefs, which I believe are really just crystalized, (or calcified) values. Our beliefs and values inform our Vision, the “what success looks like”, and Mission, the “how we’re going to do it” of our lives. For me, these things are fluid. More fluid than I’m altogether comfortable with. But here we are. Our mission informs our Goals, the things we’re trying to see made real, our goals inform our Tasks, and our tasks inform our Time Management. So you see, there’s a line of continuity between our lived experiences and our time management, (the things we do with our hands and think with our minds and say with our mouths. For me, for the purpose of these essays, I see meaning in life in relation to our Vision and Mission. What are we going to do. I grew up with a vision for the next life. Everything was viewed and filtered by the coming age. And now I don’t know! I literally, honestly, just don’t know what to think about the future. I don’t know what to think about next week, let alone the split second after my final breath. And as I’ve said numerous times in the course of this project, we know only this life for sure. We know we have our next breath, our next minute, our next day. What will we do with them? What does success look like for us?For me, it looks like continuing to dig deeper here. Continuing to try to identify what’s making this work in my head. It’s something about people. It’s something about you. It’s something about us, and about making tomorrow brighter. We’re the only ones who can. It’s something about helping people know themselves better. This writing project is specifically to help me get to know myself better. I hope people read these, I’m gratified that some people seem to be. I’ve gotten some positive feedback which feels nice. I want people’s kindnesses. I love them. But ultimately this is an exploration of my own thoughts surrounding these cards and the ideas they stir up. And ultimately success looks like you being more mindful of your own values in life. Which is nearly impossible to measure. Classic Nicholas. Setting unattainable goals informed by an immeasurable mission in life. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

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#40 Mature Love

Apr 1500:06:08Tap to summarize

In my last essay, A spiritual life, I identified that many times people struggle with a binary choice. Is it this one or is it more that one? Is it capability that’s driving my choices, driving my thoughts and behaviors, or is it ambition?So this one goes for me. I sat and looked at mature love and true friendship together for a long while. Which one is it? If I’m not able to walk in mature love, how can I be a deep, true friend? But.. Isn’t true friendship the highest form of love? Ultimately, as I revealed, True Friendship won the day in my sort.But I often tell people, you know, this thing we’re doing, (the values card sort), isn’t a game. It’s not a game because you can neither win it nor lose it. I suppose you could lose the exercise sort of if you failed to take it even a little bit seriously. If you were only sorting the cards for my sake or to get me off your case. But assuming you think a little and choose five cards honestly, then it’s been a success and you’re a winner. So forget what I said before… You can both win or lose this thing. But it’s not really a game. I have also established that the big secret, as I’ve found anyway, to this sorting exercise is that they’re all important! They’re all valuable. I say to people, “as a marginally well adjusted human adult, you probably have a value for all 57 of these concepts, there are no negative values listed; there’s no punching babies card.”I tell people that if, in two weeks time, you’re driving down the road or sitting in your chair and a value card you didn’t end up choosing pops into your mind, and if you let it linger there, if you let a concept like social recognition or wealth or preservation of my public image pops into your mind, why, then it’s been a double success because it means you’re beginning the process of thinking of your values more holistically! Everyone’s a winner here.I have spent a lot of time driving down the road thinking about mature love. When I think of deep, emotional, spiritual intimacy I do think of my wife. There is simply nobody else whose relationship I can compare ours to. I revealed in True Friendship that I am utterly surrounded by friends and more than that, surrounded by friendship. I cannot escape it, I could not if I wanted to. If I ran away they would follow me. If I hid around corners or under beds they would find me. Friendship follows me.But there is no friend I have like her. We have been married for twenty years! Which is not forty! But it’s not five! We have weathered many storms. Big ones like her cancer and my somewhat rocky mental health over the years. We have been there for one another, and when we’ve found ourselves not there for one another, we have mindfully redirected our attention back toward our chosen togetherness.This is not the right choice for every couple, not the right choice for every situation. But it’s been the right thing for us and while we have many years and many trials and many successes waiting for us up around the bend, I am more committed than ever, I am more resolute and more in love.I am resolute in my steadfast love for her, yes. But in that love I have discovered a resolution to a kind of steadfast love for myself that wasn’t familiar to me at the beginning. I am realizing and learning that almost always, the thing I can do for her is to mind myself. To care for the life I have to live and to be the best version of myself.You know, at the beginning I was sold a belief system that was self-sacrificial. Which sounds excellent! It sounds loving on some levels. And certainly, in this life, there are times when we’re able to be self sacrificial and “take one for the team”. But very often, much more often, that resulted in a patriarchal sort of martyrdom that was at least intellectually dishonest. If I am always the one sacrificing for you, then I am the hero and you are the burden.By not caring for my own self, by not putting on my own oxygen mask, by not observing and spending adequate energy addressing the log in my own eye, I was free to condescendingly and paternalistically “make room” for the speck in hers, in a show of false magnanimity.And it all came so naturally to us, you know? Until it just didn’t.I still want to be self sacrificial. I would still spend mine to conserve hers. But now it comes with a realization that she feels the same. Would do the same. Has done the same. Is still doing the same.Today we’re both looking out for each other in this life. We’re both minding ourselves, walking into growth opportunities and developing postures of learning, awareness, curiosity. For ourselves, for each other.The love we shared in our youth said “I am here for you”. The more matured love, (though not as mature is it shall be!), that we share today says “We are here together”. It is a subtle difference, perhaps. But one I wouldn’t trade for anything. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com

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All episodes

#49 Self-discpline

#48 Respect for parents & elders

#47 Politeness

#46 Respect for Tradition

#45 Moderation

#44 Humility

#43 Acceptance of my portion in life

#42 Devoutness

#41 Meaning in life

#40 Mature Love