The Values Sort

Freedom looms large in my life. Let’s get into it.

When I was a child, we sang songs about freedom. I grew up in the land of the free and the home of the brave! Let freedom ring, baby! When I was growing up in church, we sang songs about the things we were free from, and freed into. We talked about ourselves in terms like “freedom from bondage.” We looked to Jesus to “Set the captives free.”

When I was a child, the 4th of July was a major holiday in our house. We hosted a party each year, and for a while, it was a pretty happening joint. We made literal red, white, and blue foods. We ate barbecue. We had various lemonades and beverages. We invited everyone, and a lot of them came. In the evening, we’d pile into cars and head for the local fireworks display. We’d “ooh and aah” with a thousand other people on the banks of the mighty Willamette and listen to the Knox Brothers sing old gospel tunes.

That evening was always magical because, from a pretty young age, we experienced a sort of freedom we weren’t really used to. Harrisburg, Oregon is a small town with a bank and a Dari Mart. We were allowed to basically walk up and down the streets and get into various mischief that generally consisted of nothing more than choosing our own candy purchases. We decided to walk over two streets and look at the tee-shirt stall or the wind-chime guy. We decided to go check in with our folks when we needed money or a can of soda. We decided to walk around in circles until we found someone we knew. And we always found someone we knew. Freedom was quiet and gentle. I was young and it was for the enjoying.

Later, our freedom rang closer to home. My brother and I discovered that with some slight—umm—modifications, simple, legal, safe fireworks (purchasable at any marginally reputable church with a plywood stand out front) could be crafted into a much more powerful expression of patriotism and American ingenuity. And that’s when the explosions began.

We blew everything up. We blew up a dead chicken. We blew up countless bean cans, shredding their ends open. We made cannons and we blew garbage cans 40 feet off the ground.

Once, I even blew my thumb into my hand. I’ll spare you most of the details, but we essentially, (accidentally), built a pipe bomb and I essentially decided to hold onto it, and it essentially turned my thumb and hand into meat putty. I am lucky to have kept them at all.

Was that freedom? Am I free yet?

Today I think of freedom in very different terms. Today I think of freedom in terms of all that I have. All that I enjoy. All that I contain and express. I think of freedom in terms of the places I can go and the things I can think.

And I think of my freedom contrasted with others’ lack. I think of freedom in terms of all we have and how we got it. Freedom is under attack in ways that are clear and obvious for anyone looking. Who’s allowed where and who’s allowed to do what, and who’s allowed to be.

And while some of those threats seem fresh and new, we could, (we should), ask marginalized communities about this. They have a voice and a perspective worth noting. Worth considering. Worth remembering. Worth hearing over and over, and as loudly as necessary. We would be wise to listen to voices who know our collective future based on their collective past.

Today I think of the types of freedom I enjoy and I wonder, genuinely, if my children and grandchildren will know freedom of thought, freedom of action. Freedom of opinion and freedom of idea.

I think of my religious upbringing, and I reflect on a song from my childhood that still means a great deal to me. I promise not to get too preachy, but stay with me here.

I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me, it makes the lame to walk and the blind to see, it opens prison doors, it sets the captives free, I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me.

Spring up, o well! Within my soul! Spring up o well! And make me whole! Spring up o well! And give to me, that life, abundantly.

I love every line. I believe every line. I believe we have a river of life that can flow, uniquely, out of each of us. I believe that we can have real impacts—real, tangible, positive effects on the people around us. Positive effects that can only come fro the river of life flowing from each of us, uniquely.

The lame walking and the blind seeing are references to specific miracles Jesus is believed to have performed. But we can do great things with our actions and our words, our money, our votes, our ideas, our labor. Moreover, I don’t know that we can even be whole without that well springing up within us.

What does it mean to advocate for the freedom of others? I suppose I’m not arguing for the broad opening of prison doors and the freeing of all captives. But what if we looked for ways to set people free from the bondages and captivities in which they find themselves ensnared? How can we be a part of freeing people from addictions? Or from debilitating beliefs that hold them still and stationary? That rob them of pleasure or creativity or curiosity?

A favored tune that comes to mind is Bob Marley’s Redemption song. Marley paraphrased Marcus Garvey;

emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.

And so I say, here, now, in this essay: Spring up, o well, within my soul. Make me whole. Give to me the fullness of life that comes from fighting for the freedom of others.

A few thoughts I’ll pepper in here at the end. Freedom is not, can not be a personal possession, held Gollum-like in secret, underground perpetuity. For our very own.

Instead, it’s important to remember that most of what we enjoy as freedoms—safety, mobility, speech, work, dignity, et cetera—these are all things that depend on shared systems and mutual restraint.

“My freedoms don’t end where your feelings begin,” the somewhat aggressive and unkind bumper sticker slogan goes. But I suppose it is so.

However, this is important, if others are silenced, if others are marginalized or excluded, the very systems that supply your freedoms become brittle and unreliable. If freedom is robbed from them today, it will be robbed from you tomorrow.

Freedom is not the same as power over others. Freedom is freedom only if all are free.

Freedom don’t come free. What is the cost? The cost can be death, it’s true. Many men and women have fought and lost their lives on the altar of freedom. Their sacrifices should be honored. They should be remembered. Some have died for freedom.

Can we also live for freedom? Can we work toward systems of justice and kindness that protect the freedoms we enjoy for all to experience?

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” —Nelson Mandela

Curiosity is easier the older I get. I think that’s because when we are young, we are terrified of looking stupid. I was. I still am, sometimes. But less so with every passing day.

We pretend to know things when we’re kids. When we get older, we realize nobody knows anything, and it becomes a lot more fun to just ask, “How does that work?”

I shot this photo on a moving blanket. It’s symbolic to me of movement and change and adjustment. And so much of that starts with a sense of Curiosity. Walking through life with a sense of “What is it?”. “How’s that work?”.

We ask how high something goes. How deep it could be. We find all of science nestled neatly under the Curiosity card.

When I was young, (and sometimes still) I wanted to be the guy who knew everything. I wanted to find all of my value in Capability, in the value I add to a community. Now I am more easily able to rest a bit easier, to ask questions, to not know the answers. To cultivate an okay-ness with being uncertain. But still curious.

As I watch my country and planet undergo some of the most formative and pivotal societal adjustments of any of our lifetimes, (I see you there, grandma), I am struck with the great lack of curiosity exhibited by many people. Many people around me. Many people in leadership, making decisions that will affect my grandchildren.

I have enjoyed the work of an author, Pete Enns. Our trajectories are not identical—I ain’t no clone—but I’ve drawn solace in these last years listening to his words on podcasts and reading them in some of his books, including one called “The Sin of Certainty”. I will not give a full book report here. Suffice it to say the “sin” in question is, in my words, a gross lack of curiosity. Often brought on by a fear of the unknown and unknowable, the sin of certainty seems to have infected even the most secular of us in this age.

I have been so very guilty of being certain of my ideas, my ideals, my beliefs. So certain of certain things. And I guess here, as I embark on the second half of my life, I want to do things that encourage curiosity in myself and in others. What are you curious about?

This card covers a lot for me.

When you do the exercise, you have to sort concepts down from 57, all the way down to five. And as I’ve alluded here before, it’s not about finding THE FIVE, the ones that define you and box you in. It’s about identifying some of the things that have affected, are affecting your choices in your recent life, in order to better understand your position. It’s about allowing the thought processes surrounding your values to affect your vision and mission. Eventually to affect your choices and the work of your hands and your mind.

So, one of the ways you do this is by “nesting” concepts. People often end up looking at some binaries. Some either/or’s. For instance, people will sit and hold “True Friendship” and “Mature Love”. Which is it? They look at the little descriptions on the bottom of the cards, and I encourage them to ignore the little descriptions, preferring their own conceptions of what the words on the cards mean. Is it more this or is it more that?

And then they’ll “nest” one concept under the other. For me, personally, I ended up “nesting” Mature Love under True Friendship. Because True Friendship is obviously the best card in the deck. Everything wonderful can fit neatly under its banner. I digress.

Creativity is important because there’s no Painting card. No Sculpture card. No Poetry card. No Essay Writing card. Not even a Musicality card. And for each of us, I think there is a creativity available for us to pluck out of the darkness of our guts and present to the world.

Some people don’t feel creative. But I say to them, I think they probably are.

I have always felt creative. And I’ve always expressed that creativity somehow. I am good at building coffee shops. I’ve done two, and the second one was better than the first. I’d really like to do another one. In this economy!?I like to draw plans. I find a space we might move or expand into and I draw it over, and over, and over. Graph paper everywhere.

I have developed a comprehensive plan for a home I’d like to build for my wife and me to live in one day. It’s called “The Aggregate House” and it’s about gathering and warmth and solidarity into the future. I’ve thought out many details and I really think it would be a special place.

I am converting horse stalls into chicken pens. I am a very poor watercolor painter. And I love to write. I think this project—these essays you’re reading are some of the most creative, generative things I’ve done in years and years. I have, as of this post landing in your inbox, completed 57 essays—one for each of the cards in the deck. They’re releasing slowly over time, but they are complete now. I am proud of this accomplishment and frankly, a little shocked.

I have been moved by the experience of doing this card sorting exercise with so many people over the last couple of years, and I have wondered how it might morph. How it might change. And one day I just sat down and began. I wrote one essay, and then another and another and now I’m making lists of other things to write about. I feel like I’m cracking into a little treat that I’ve held onto for a long time. I don’t even know what it will bring about. But I hope this creative venture never ends—it’s been so beautiful. I want to refine. I want to hone. I want my hundredth essay to make my first look positively amateur, because that’s how these things go. We start, we botch, we reframe, we start over. Eventually we share.

That’s how baking goes for me. Woodworking. Anything creative I’ve ever done, or certainly that I’ve ever succeeded in has begun. Somewhere, sometime. It has a beginning. Why not now? Why not today?

In my youth creativity was ancillary. It happened or it didn’t; I had no intentions. In my younger adulthood I attempted to tie creativity to vocation or obligation. “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with”.

These essays are expressions of my creative energy blasting out through the cracks formed in the mundane. Roasting 20 batches of coffee in a row. Making payroll. Changing oil and household chores. It takes me a minute to get rolling, creatively speaking. I have to break free from something external that limits and hinders creativity. It’s all the pressure to do and produce, you know? It’s finances and the speed of life. Creativity feels like such a waste when productivity is on the table. We must be mindful. We must decide. We must break free.

This world can be bitter. It’s cold and it’s inhospitable, a lot of the time for a lot of the people. And creativity, generating something lovely—whatever it is—from nothing is one of the kindest, freest things we can do for and alongside our fellow humans. I have a profound sense of value for creativity in its various forms. It’s my joy to sit down with people and be present when something creative unlocks within them.

We are moving from a Varied Life to an Exciting Life. They sound similar, but I think there is a crucial difference.

If a Varied Life is external (the things that happen to us, often without our consent), an Exciting Life happens within.

For me, excitement is fuel. It’s a rocket booster. I crave it. I can’t always control the variability of my life. As I wrote in the last post, lived experiences often just collide with us. But I can plan for stimulating experiences. And more importantly, I can cultivate excitement within myself to change the way I approach that variability.

When I look at this card, I think of the things I’ve chosen to do. I’ve traveled to Europe. I’ve traveled to Asia and Africa. I’ve never been to Antarctica, or south of Mexico. One day. One day.

But the real excitement isn’t on a map.

I chose my partner. And she chose me. And that has been overarchingly exciting. We have lived a life of constant change and adjustment, and through it all, we have not left one another behind. We have not grown tired of one another. We have kept up.

I am (cheese-alert) more in love with her today than I was last year. Or the day we got married.

We have done everything by one another’s side. For years we’ve worked together on our business. We’ve discovered new layers of each other. We’ve witnessed success and failure in one another. We have lived out our vows—the “better” and the “worse”—and I find that really exciting. I daydream about what the future might look like with her, and I get a spark.

And I think about the children we’re raising. We chose to have kids; it was all in the master plan. Certainly, we didn’t plan for every twist and turn. But we knew from the jump that we wanted to be parents.

I think about how wonderful and whole they each are. So different from one another, so different from us, and yet distinctly US.

I find them exceptionally exciting. We hear the reports. First it was, “Your kids are my favorite to babysit.” Then it was, “Your kids are my favorite in class.” People long for the affection of my children, and it’s not just because they’re special (though they are). It’s because they are whole creatures unto themselves, and adventure seems to follow them. They are attractive in a world of media consumption and intrinsic self-service because they are present.

I suppose my wife and I have something to do with that. We’ve been responsible for setting the tone and culture of our family. But increasingly, that tone is being shared around our common table. We’re all setting the tone now. And that is very exciting.

I will be a dad to them for many years as adults. But precious are these days of mundane excitement.

I’ve already talked about Daring, which feels connected to this card. I have done daring things. I have learned new definitions of daring. But “Excitement” is the internal result of that daring.

It has been exciting to live a life open-handed and open-hearted. I value an exciting life. And looking at my family, I feel so grateful to have one.

I have lived what I consider to be an extraordinarily varied life. I think we all probably have. Which I suppose would make it an ordinarily varied life. Who among us knew the trajectory of their lives at five years old? At ten? At twenty? Heck, even at thirty?

I am now in my “sporty-forties.” And I am still (newly?) uncertain of what I want to do with my life. Where it will lead. Where I will end up. How far will I go? I know now not to expect an answer. I am learning not to need one.

A few years ago, I thought I knew where I was going. Just ahead of COVID, things seemed pretty settled. Our kids were in school and doing well. Our business had lost that “new business” terror. We moved to a house that actually fit our family. I had a view. There were migratory birds. Salamanders abounded. We could canoe off the back of our property. I purchased woodworking tools. We were settling into a rhythm.

I remember feeling like a tree—firmly planted in a windy environment, but grown strong and healthy. Able to withstand the rain and the wind and all manner of environmental abuse.

I was, of course, wrong. Within the span of a year, our lives were utterly changed.

On February 28, 2020, my family traveled to Africa. It’s a whole story. The plan was to visit coffee farmers we’d done business with. I was going to visit the film locations of the Howard Hawks classic Hatari!—a slow-moving film that was nonetheless a huge part of my childhood. It was the world’s introduction to Henry Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk”. I was going to stay at the ranch! Or I wanted to, anyway.

Instead, COVID became a household word nearly overnight. Our flights were canceled. My family went on a day trip to an island inhabited by tortoises, and I spent the day waiting on hold, being disconnected, and calling back. Sweating bullets in the Hotel Tembo. What a profoundly stressful time that was for us.

I lost a particular bit of my mind in that space. We eventually found flights home that didn’t go through fully-locked-down-Europe. The airport in Dubai waited for us not with luxury, but with weird full-body scanners and teams of people holding thermal guns. All the perfume shops were closed. Nobody was selling Haribo candies or Toblerone bars. There was nowhere to pay too much for a phone charger. We sat stock still with a million other people trying to get wherever home was. Surely everything would feel alright if we all got home.

We did make it back to Oregon, but you may recall what we made it back to. I closed my coffee shop for a day, then reopened with a walk-up window, serving customers through a little porthole. We learned the difference between surgical masks and N95s. We purchased a big sheet of plexiglass to protect everyone. I consoled baristas enduring people’s stress and fear and rage.

Then the social fabric started to tear. I grew up in the church. I was part of a consistent thread of relationships for more than thirty years. But when church got deeply complex and weird in 2020, we felt a need to create distance. This was a deeply destabilizing experience. I am not over it.

I watched helplessly as kindness and empathy were politicized. Everything became us-vs-them. Everything required a taking of sides and a drawing of swords. My neighbor, who had always been indifferent, became threatening and ugly. I had moved onto that property devoted to neighborliness, and eventually life “handed me my ass” in that area. Not everyone wants to be friends. I didn’t know that before. I arrogantly thought I could make friends with anyone. I was wrong.

George Floyd was murdered and that was a horror. Parts of my community responded with an ugliness that’s become uncomfortably common today, but I was not prepared for it at the time.

Business got hard; customers dwindled. Retail was mostly dead. Regulars did their best, they paid in advance, they came as often as they could. But there were no tourists, no walk-by business, no new customers.

Other people’s businesses suffered. Wholesale dropped off, my income was threatened significantly. I was frightened.

Then came the smoke. I hid inside my house in September 2020 as my beloved Willamette Valley was entirely smoked in. I witnessed the aftermath of vast swaths of my sweet Cascades being burned. Big trees. Trees that had survived fires before, but didn’t survive them now. I contended with having grown up in a culture that mocked global climate change as a hoax, if you can imagine that. It had been years since I’d questioned the validity of broad scientific consensus. But for whatever reason it was then, those September days locked in with smoke, newly knowledgeable about the local Air Quality Index that drew my fearsome rage.

And through it all, my children grew. Sunrise, sunset. I remember looking at photos from that airport trip in 2020, and my eldest child looked “little.” She was interested in little kid things. She was engaged in a little kid’s world. Just a year later my children seemed to have swung pendulum-like to being “big”. My youngest decided to like Taylor Swift. Sunrise, sunset.

My partner and I got our yearly physicals in 2021, which led to a biopsy, which led to a cancer diagnosis. She is thankfully in remission now, having completed a rigorous course of treatment.

My business continued not to work the way it used to. My marriage didn’t look like it used to. My thought processes weren’t recognizable to me.

The point, I suppose, is this: A Varied Life isn’t something that we seek—it is something that happens to us. We can choose some of our circumstances. But we can’t choose not to be confronted by a deadly disease. A layoff. An abusive situation. Or a global pandemic.

Even this project—these essays—is a result of that variety.

One day in 2024, a friend told me about a therapist who had been a pastor for 25 years and was now helping people through “deconstruction”—a hot-button term that for me anyway, describes a process whereby applied beliefs are reevaluated. It has been deep, aching work for me.

My relationship with the church had been complex for years. I was reducing my faith journey to its constituent parts, checking them for potency and future-proofing. I decided I needed to talk to him.

He didn’t take my insurance, so we agreed on a short engagement: a beginning, a middle, and an end.

At one point, he identified that I’d missed a season of “values setting” in my youth. He handed me this Values Deck.

I sorted the cards myself. I identified five values that were affecting my choices in that time of my life. I snapped a picture and made it the background image of my phone.

When I returned for the next session, I relayed my excitement, and he gave me the deck for my very own. I took it home. I did it with my family. Then my closest friends. Then others. Then others. Then others.

Now I’ve done it many times with many people. Some I’ve known since birth, like my little old grandmother. Some are so young they don’t even know what the exercise is about, but they trust me, and they want to be involved. And that’s deeply meaningful for me. I love guiding a ten year old through this process. Reading the cards aloud and creatively explaining an idea like “Reciprocation of Favors” to a child.

It is the most important thing I do with my hands. Not more important than family, you understand. Or world peace.

But in terms of the sticks & bricks of my life, the day-to-day working it out—this is the thing I love to do with people.

I couldn’t have planned this when I was sitting on hold in Zanzibar, or hiding from the smoke in Oregon. We don’t know. Our lives are varied. We can’t count on them to be static or ordinary.

We can try to buy or plan our way into a life of knowing what’s next. But that will produce a life of mediocrity—and anyway, it won’t work.

Life will be variable. The only question is what tools and beautiful new plant life we find in the rubble.

I am a middle-aged dad. That is how I imagine I’ll always think of myself. “Father” has become my calling card. It’s the lens through which I see myself primarily. Husband to my wife, father to my kids. One day, God willing and the creek don’t rise, I will add “Grandfather” to that esteemed list of identities.

I am no stranger to the phrase, “Get down from there, you’ll hurt yourself.”

Each night I tell my kids to go to bed because it’s “damn near midnight.” It is usually about 9:00 PM. Sometimes even 8:30. I do not, on the first pass, resonate with the idea of “Daring” at this time in my life.

When I think of daring, I think of my youth.

I have done some things that seem quite stupid to me now. I had a lot less to lose back then, or I thought I did.

When I was about seventeen, my friend Dan had a little red pickup truck with a pipe rack on the back. I would routinely climb out the passenger window at highway speeds and jungle-gym around like an idiot. I’d hang off the front of the rack and put my ass right down on the hood. I’d flip my head backwards so I was facing the wind as it rushed through my hair. I clearly did not die. But it was foolhardy, and maybe even daring.

Outside Silverton, Oregon, there are numerous lesser-known waterfalls. Some of them fall into deep pools that I’ve never seen the bottom of. Some of them require strategy to jump off in order to avoid breaking all of your bones at once. Opal Pool is not for the faint of heart. I have leapt them all. Is that daring? Or just young?

And then there was the Cemetery Incident. Well into my twenties, on a drive with friends, I noticed how fresh and crispy the driveway of a certain cemetery looked. Newly paved and glassy smooth, with grassy edges at least ten feet wide before any headstones appeared. I went home, fetched my longboard, and determined to “bomb that hill” without bothering to change out of my sandals and light linen pants. I didn’t even own a helmet.

The hill hid a precipitous decline I was not prepared for. I carved the first two corners and felt like Tony Hawk.

I fell around the third bend, mangling my arm and legs. My friends got to see my bloody bottom cheeks because my linen pants failed me so.

That is the “Daring” of youth. It is physical. It is adrenaline. It is often regretful.

But in more recent years, I’ve discovered a new layer of Daring.

In 2008, when the market collapsed, I started a coffee shop. I didn’t even have the cash, I needed a money-person. I had no nickels. I paid myself $800/month and I had a wife and a child. It was certainly not the wisest choice of vocation. But it was, I suppose, a daring choice.

And sometimes, daring is thrust upon us. When my wife received a cancer diagnosis, we embarked on a very arduous journey. And we chose the path of doing it together. That required daring from us both in order to stay in tight with one another. We faced uncertain circumstances, as a couple and alone as a result of this uninvited new aspect of our lives. I do think it takes a certain daring to believe in life after proof-of-mortality. It takes a certain daring to remain intimately entwined with one another when it would be easier to shut down and close out.

I realized then that Daring doesn’t have to mean climbing around the outside of a moving vehicle. It doesn’t have to mean narrowly avoiding death in a cemetery just because you want to feel alive.

Real daring is making choices that express your value for life, even when it’s scary. I have three kids. That’s daring in itself. They outnumber us.

Sometimes it’s not a choice to be daring for the sake of the thrill. It is a choice to be daring in the face of uncertainty. To stay. To build. To love people who might leave. To start a business when you’re broke.

I may tell my kids to get down from the ledge, but I’m still taking the leap. Just a different kind.

Okay, this is the third and final card in the “Yellow” category. The Hedonism Trilogy.

We had Pleasure (The sensation). We had Enjoyment of Life (The attitude). And now, the big one: Self-Indulgence.

If the other two made me uncomfortable, this one makes me want to run for the hills.

“Self-Indulgent” is almost always used as an insult. It implies weakness. It implies a lack of discipline. It implies eating the whole cake while everyone else watches. For a guy who works hard to cultivate Capability and Service, “Self-Indulgent” sounds like “Useless.”

But I am holding this card, and I am looking at the definition in my head: yielding to one’s own desires.

And I am thinking about my customers.

I sell lattes. I sell giant, buttery pastries. I sell cookies with hazelnuts and praline. Nobody needs a hazelnut praline cookie to survive. Buying one is, by definition, an act of self-indulgence.

When a customer walks in at 1:13 on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, looking tired, looking beaten down by their boss or their kids or the news, and they order that cookie... are they being “weak”?

I don’t think so. I think they are being kind to themselves. I think they are buying a ten-minute vacation. I think they are using a small indulgence to patch a hole in their hull so they can keep sailing.

So why is it so hard for me to buy that cookie for myself?

Maybe it’s because I confuse Indulgence with Greed.

* Greed is taking more than your share.

* Indulgence is simply allowing yourself to have a share.

I am hard on myself. I hold myself to high standards. I value “Capability” and “Ambition.” And often, I treat myself like a machine that just needs fuel, rather than a human who needs a treat.

But machines break. Humans burn out.

Maybe Self-Indulgence isn’t about being spoiled. Maybe it’s about Mercy. It’s the act of saying: “Nicholas, you are working hard. You are allowed to sit down. You are allowed to eat the cookie. You are allowed to watch the movie. You are allowed to turn your brain off.”

If I can offer that mercy to a stranger across the counter for $4.50, surely I can offer it to myself for free.

So, here ends the Hedonism Trilogy. Pleasure. Enjoyment. Indulgence.

I don’t think I’ll ever be a “Hedonist.” My heart is still with the Blue cards—the values of Service and Benevolence that we are going to look at later.

But I am realizing that I cannot be a servant if I am running on fumes. So I’m going to indulge. I’m going to savor. And then, once I’m full, I’m going to get back to work.

Okay, I’ll be honest. I looked at this card and thought, “Didn’t we just do this?”

Card #12 was Pleasure. Card #13 is Enjoyment of Life. They sit right next to each other under the banner of Hedonism. Full disclosure, the next card in the deck is “Self Indulgence”

And frankly, I want to skip them. I want to fast-forward to the Blue cards, (just you wait). The “Benevolence” cards. The “Universalism” cards. Give me True Friendship or Helpfulness. That’s my speed. That’s where I feel at home.

I don’t personally see “Enjoyment of Life” as a core value of mine, certainly not in comparison with love, kindness, generosity, or forgiveness. To me, “Enjoyment” feels optional. Service feels essential.

But the deck doesn’t let you skip. So I have to ask: Why is this card here?

Maybe it’s because Service without Enjoyment is just Martyrdom.

And nobody likes a self-martyring servant.

Think about it. If I bake you a biscuit, but I am miserable, sighing, and resentful while I do it, that biscuit is going to taste like guilt. You won’t enjoy eating it because you’ll feel the weight of my unhappiness. It becomes a transaction, not a gift. I’ve seen this a hundred times, in person, in my pwn business. The coffee just tastes better when it’s produced with a happy heart. I cannot account for it.

If I bake you a biscuit and I am genuinely enjoying the process—the flour, the heat, the smell, the act of giving—that biscuit tastes like love.

If Pleasure is the act of eating the cookie, Enjoyment of Life is the attitude that lets you bake it.

I still struggle to prioritize it. I still feel guilty sitting on the porch when there are chores to do. I still feel like “Enjoyment” is something I should save for retirement.

But I’m starting to see that if I want to be a “Safe Place” for others (which is my real goal), I have to be a relatively happy place for myself first.

A miserable host makes for anxious guests.

So, perhaps Enjoyment of Life isn’t a selfish detour from my values of Kindness and Generosity. Maybe it is the essential ingredient that makes those values edible to others.

I’m ready for the Blue cards now. But I think I’ll take a minute to enjoy this coffee first. Just for me.

Let’s talk about pleasure. And let’s talk about the Values Categories listed on the top of each card. This is the first one that is listed under “Hedonism”, a word which many might be unfamiliar with. You may have noticed that each of the cards we’re talking about have a value “category” on top of the card. There are ten total categories we’ll work our way through, with a varying number of concepts under each.

The Hedonism category contains just three cards and I’ll drop all three explorations today. They’re linked, as all of the Values are. But these in particular seem complex and difficult for me to even hold in my hands, so we’re going to rip this bandaid off together.

Hedonism is defined as “a philosophy holding that pleasure is the highest good and proper aim of human life”. How do we all feel about that?

Personally, I do not hold to this philosophy, as may be evident in some of my previous posts. I certainly don’t feel like the gratification of my own hedonistic desires is the chief aim of humankind. I hope not. But the question is about pleasure. Do I value it? Do you value it?

I’ve already established that I believe that a life in service of others is a life worth living. I ascribe very deeply to that idea. So is this in contradiction to a value for pleasure?

I am a professional pleasure dealer. I roast and sell coffee for a living. A substance with no redeeming qualities beyond pleasure. People like to think of themselves as addicts but in truth, if it all disappeared tomorrow we’d be okay—we really would. We’d rediscover chicory root or black tea, we’d grow our own mint leaves. Here’s my industry secret: Nobody needs this crap. Nobody needs what I sell. Pastries. Lattes. Sugar and spice.

I do it anyway, because it brings small joy to people’s lives.

I’ve written about this before in other forums, so my apologies if this is re-heated information for you. I call it my “kitchen floor moment”. Pithy phrasing, maybe. But it’s a moment I’ve talked about a lot over the years.

In 2013 we opened Chrysalis Coffeehouse, which we later rebranded Flag & Wire Coffee. We were living two counties away from the shop when we opened it. We had what we thought were good reasons for being so far away, but that was my situation. Every morning I’d wake up and silently say goodbye to my sleeping wife, and my three baby children. My eldest would have been about four when we opened our doors.

My wife stayed home with them, changing diapers and wiping up messes and I drove the long road to open the shop at 7am each morning. We had a pathetic revenue picture.

One day in January, (traditionally a pretty slow time of year), I returned home from a day in which we’d done a total of $82 in revenue in the coffee shop. This is not a living.

I entered the house and found my wife crying on the kitchen floor because we were so very poor and so very locked into our situation. I sat down with her and cried myself. We used a point of sale system with an online portal, so my life and business partner could watch intently throughout the day as our numbers didn’t climb.

We sat together on the kitchen floor, certain that we’d made many wrong choices in our lives that brought us to the position we were in. And she asked me this question:

Are you even passionate about coffee anymore?

I was not. But I knew I should be.

The problem I didn’t understand yet is that I’d never been passionate about coffee. Ever. It’s a story for another time, but I didn’t even enter the coffee industry on purpose. It was very much something we backed our way into.

See, there’s not a lot of cash involved in this business, even now many years later. I am a profoundly blessed man, but not exceptionally flush with cash money, honey.

The people who choose this industry generally choose it because of passion for the product and process. And I didn’t, (don’t) care particularly about either. And that seemed at the time like a problem. I did my best for a lot of years to convince myself and others that I had what it took to be passionate about coffee. But I do not.

I confessed, there, on the kitchen floor to my wife, (but mostly to myself), that I wasn’t passionate enough about coffee. But we didn’t have any other options. So it took me a while to realize that it was really the people that I could get on board with. That I could be passionate about.

And people, it turns out, love coffee. It gives them pleasure. And that gives me pleasure. Hedonism at work in my life.

To eat a meal quickly is efficient. To savor the same meal is pleasurable. And we have but one life for sure! It’s impossible to know what comes next and don’t listen too closely to anyone who says otherwise.

I am trained to avoid pleasure for my own self and guard it for others. What’s that about, I wonder?

What if we reframed the word pleasure to “Savoring”. Enjoying. Maintaining. And what if we swapped the word “Hedonism” for “Delight”. Delight yourselves in your one wild and precious life that was made for living.

Service is a part of living. It’s a big part that I have a high value for.

But reflecting on my recent post on Self Respect and Self Doubt, I see that personal maintenance is also key to a life of service. And part of that is pleasure in the end.

The goal I suppose is to live a life and find pleasure where we may, without stepping on others in the process. Can we do it? Can we observe and enjoy pleasurable experiences in our lives without them coming at the expense of the poor or the broken or the marginalized? God, I hope so. If I’m honest I’m still deeply suspicious about pleasure.

Pleasure seems carnal and base. But I think, probably, that’s a piece of my upbringing speaking. I would actually like to explore a value for pleasure and explore the things that delight me. I’m not good at that. Let me think. What do I enjoy? I’ll make a list. Sometimes that’s helpful.

* I enjoy time with my wife. In this season “dates” are few and far between. Time together is something that doesn’t feel productive on some level, but I think it actually is.

* I enjoy spending time with my kids. I can do that often if I’m intentional about it. It gives me great pleasure to watch them grow, to watch them change and grow and develop as genuine humans. When they were young I took great delight in them asking silly questions, in taking them for haircuts, in their little buttcracks hanging out the top of a diaper. Now everything’s so different, and I know I need to continue finding pleasure in who they have become.

* I do enjoy hard work on sunny days. My laziness gets the better of me though, and I spend time indoors instead. Even on a cloudy overcast day, even when it’s chilly and wet outside in my beloved Willamette Valley, if I can break the gravitational pull of my warm chair and go outside I am generally rewarded with rosy cheeks and a reminder that I’m alive.

* I enjoy this values exercise very much. I’m writing these essays and learning so much more about myself with each one. I’m getting a better sense of how I might keep exploring. It gives me great pleasure when I am able to sit with someone while they discover something new about themselves.

* You know what else I love—this one’s kind of a bonus. I love marrying people. Several years ago I got ordained to marry people on the internet. Twice. First I was ordained by the Universal Life Church. After I received my credentials I learned about The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and got ordained there, too. You’re reading the words of an ordained Spaghetti Minister. Not to brag. I married some good friends of mine who have remained close friends. I spoke from my heart about things that I’d gathered up that mattered to them, and it was, (for me) a deeply meaningful experience with thier friends and family in the hills. I love them. I love their parents, and now I love their children. They’re a source of pleasure for me.

A couple of years later an employee, nay, a friend of mine asked me to marry he & his fiance. We went quietly, just about ten of us to a meadow in the Ash Trees and I said the kindest things I could come up with and at the end they were married. I love marriage. I love commitment between two people. It’s a beautiful choice and it’s a deep honor to be a witness to it.

Tell me what you value about pleasure. The next few cards all have “Hedonism” printed atop them. This should be an interesting experience.

Yeesh. This one is a hot topic.

I just watched a video recently and this person was basically saying that we don’t know what anyone’s thinking at any time. What they’re thinking about us. So when we think we know what someone’s thinking about us, we’re really ideating what WE might be thinking about ourselves. And it can be doubly shitty because we’re not only seeing the worst in ourselves, we’re assuming the very worst in the other person.

Self respect is, it seems, inextricably linked to self doubt. For me, for certain, anyway.

You ever watch “The Odd Couple”? It was a movie with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. And then later on a television show with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. Edgy for it’s time, both the film and TV show, (and the Broadway play preceding both) centered on Felix and Oscar, a news writer and sports writer respectively, who lived together for reasons. Hilarity ensued as fastidious Felix ran up time and again against obnoxious Oscar’s hijinx.

So, I think, it goes with self doubt and self respect. I’ll leave you to decide which character most embodies which attribute.

Self doubt is like smoke in the kitchen. Self respect is like warm bread smelling up the house.

Do you ever imagine what you’d do if someone spoke to your kid, to your friend, to your loved one they way we speak to ourselves sometimes? I know I’d come unglued.

If I ever heard some of the things I said about me…

Do I have a value for self respect? I do. I do. Self respect is about stepping into the middle of that fracas that goes on in our own minds sometimes and separating fact from fiction. Self doubt would like to decide the entire vacation plan. We cannot let it drive the station wagon! Our own mental health is riding backwards in the way back seat. Safety first. We cannot let self doubt pick our direction.

I know this to be true because of evidence in my own life. How many times have I just woken up in the backseat of a car with self doubt at the wheel? Many. The answer is many.

And self respect is a discipline. Something to plan ahead for. Something to practice in the mirror in the morning. And the afternoon. And before bed.

You guys remember Stuart Smalley? It’s a media-heavy post today. He was a character on SNL in the 1990s played by Al Franken. His tagline was “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggon it, people like me”.

I think we have to be that guy. We have to recognize that, in fact, we are good, enough. Smart enough. And people do like us. Not everyone, not all the time. But we’re capable of being loved and cared for by the people around us just as we are. And when we realize that, when we really lock horns with it, self-respect opens up to us.

But it has to be more than that, right? It has to be I’m good enough for me. I’m smart enough to face my own life. People like me not because they’re magnanimous, but because I’m worthy of being liked from the jump.

Ultimately I’m thinking of others though. I see us as interconnected with one another. We are not islands. We do not live alone—not well, anyway. Not in a way that honors the fullest expression of our singular humanity. A life lived in service to others is a life well lived indeed. But if we’re not able to respect ourselves, our very real contribution(s) to the world around us, it will be difficult or impossible to see others as worth serving.

If we’re not able to respect ourselves, our boundaries, our needs, our wants, our whole selves, where does that leave the people who would eat the fruit from our trees?