About Michael

Some people are born with it, some casually stumble into it, and some spend years trying to earn it even without understanding what it really is. Me? Well, I’m from this third, mostly confused category of people; yet not without hope. After nearly 42 years feverishly searching for it, including 20 years of marriage and spiritual pursuits, 19 years of fatherhood, 5 years spent earning a degree in psychology, and another 2 years spent earning a degree in Marriage Family and Child Therapy, I may just now be getting it myself. Yet my recent gains are not due to intellectual insights; but because, after years of having the recipe for it, I’ve only just now acquired it’s last missing ingredient: courage.

So what is this mysterious and elusive it? For many years in my life, it has been like a variable in a mathematical formula:

it = happiness

Sometimes it seemed to represent loving attention from my mother, at other times it seemed to represent acceptance from my peers, and still other times it seemed to represent freedom, power, financial success, physical intimacy, etc. Even though the value of it in this equation has changed for me over the years, I’ve always equated it with my happiness.

What I now understand is that it is not a variable at all. In fact, it is a constant. It is not a narrow, transitory flavor of the day. It is love - extraordinary love. Not the common, inexpensive brand of love that’s watered down with self interests and served only to “loved ones”. No, I’m talking about the strong, 100 proof stuff. Love given freely to whomever is in need of it. Love not for withholding, but love to spare.

Of course, in a world where we heavily promote self gain and consumerism, it’s hard to imagine that anyone has love to spare - least of all ourselves. Forgive my bluntness, but we tend to feel justified in our selfishness. Indeed, my own justification went something like this:

I have unmet needs and desires (I am lacking it). In order to achieve happiness, I must allocate my time, effort and resources towards attaining it; and until I do attain it, I have no real time, resources or worth available to freely give others (especially those outside my circle).

At first glance, this may seem like a reasonable argument. We can’t give what we don’t have, right? But I found two major problems:

  1. This type of thinking made me feel inadequate. It shifted my attention towards lamenting what I didn’t have, instead of taking stock and appreciating what I did have, and sharing it with others. This was bad because gratitude and sharing are the main ingredients in happiness. Without gratitude and sharing it is impossible to be happy.
  2. This type of thinking made me less available, less connected, and less useful to others. This was bad because feelings of disconnectedness, isolation, unimportance and uselessness are the key contributors to unhappiness.

So the moral of this story is that self importance and “me-ism” lead to unhappiness, while gratitude and sharing lead to love. This is an easy enough concept to understand. I grasped it (at least intellectually) many years ago. But putting this concept to good practice in the real world requires courage. In that respect, I’m only just beginning. This blog represents an important part of what I want to share with you. It is offered to help draw attention to, celebrate and hopefully even inspire acts of extraordinary love.

- Michael Scott