In one of the stores he picks up a mirror and looks in it. Not ever having seen one before, he remarked at the image staring back at him, “How about that! Here’s a picture of my daddy.”

He bought the mirror thinking it was a picture of his daddy, but on the way home he remembered his wife didn’t like his father, so he hung it in the barn, and every morning before leaving for the fields, he would go there and look at it.

His wife began to get suspicious of these many trips to the barn.

One day after her husband left, she searched the barn and found the mirror.

As she looked into the glass, she fumed, “So that’s the ugly bitch he’s runnin’ around with.”

I laughed. So did you I’m sure. But this email from a friend was part of a discussion I’ve been having with people about how our thoughts, how our outer reality is just a reflection of what’s happening inside us. Psychologists call it “projection.” Are you calling someone annoying? What is it that makes it annoying really? Is it something that you do yourself?

Byron Katie speaks to this topic in “The work.”

And while this may all seem like it has nothing to do with triiibes or tribes, it has everything to do with triiibes. Because the stories we tell about others may really be the stories we’re telling about ourselves. I don’t believe in the absolute mirror theory, but I do believe that our THOUGHTS about things rather than the FACTS about them, impact our business, our clients, our communication.

How?

Well, in the past week three new clients have come to me with new business and I’ve turned them down – even though I could really use the work right now. Why did I turn them down? One refused to pay my rate, even though he could afford it – but his last web designer “ripped him off,” and never finished the website and charged him $2,000 and he got screwed. I told him I was sorry that happened, but that I was not that designer. I offered to break down the work in segments and get paid only after he was satisfied at each stage. His solution was to pay me $300 for a $2,000 website. I declined. He was angry at his last designer and I knew I would end up taking the brunt of his anger and that didn’t work for me. He didn’t respect me or even want to give me a chance at proving that not all designers were rip-offs.

Another would-be client wanted a brochure. Simple enough. But his competition made fun of his last design, so he wanted me to figure out a way to create a design THEY would respect. Huh? Think of the Microsoft/Apple pissing contests. Same thing. I don’t want to be designing for a company that would NEVER admit the design was cool even if they thought so. We had “the talk” about being his own man and setting the standard, not following someone else. He wanted to pay for ONE FINAL design, but not all it would take to get there. I turned him down too.

A fairly well-known copy-writer came to me and asked me to write an ebook for them and then “split the profit.” I’d do 80% of the work – they’d handle all the money, create the landing page, and then eventually sell the site and take 2/3’s of the sale. For an “up-and-coming” writer like me – they said, “It’s a great deal.” No it wasn’t. We’re not talking thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars here. He was talking hundreds….as in, less than $1,000. I didn’t laugh in his face, but wish I had. In the past he’s offered me $5 per hour to rewrite his articles. No respect there for me.

My initial thoughts were: What is wrong with ME that I attract these people? Then I wondered if the “mirror” was about me not respecting myself enough and attracting people who didn’t respect me, and on and on and on!! The friend who sent me the hill-billy story said, “You’re not the problem – it’s the STORY you’re telling yourself about what YOU see in the mirror that’s the problem.”

So – the moral of the story – stop trying to figure out what the mirror is “saying” and start looking at the story YOU’RE telling about what you see IN the mirror. It’s the STORY you tell about what you see that matters most….THAT will determine your feelings, and from your feelings will come your actions. Look closely. What do you see?

“I don’t feel good daddy.” He put one hand on her head and looked down in concern before stooping to hug her.

“Okay,” he said, smoothing her hair back with one hand and feeling for a temperature. He kissed her forehead. “We won’t be long. Let me get these stamps and then we’ll go home.” She looked up at him and nodded. The line moved slowly forward. They stood, side-by-side until they reached the window.

She swayed and hung listlessly, reaching for his hand as he let go of her to pull out his wallet and pay for the stamps and hand the clerk his package.

They almost made it out the door before “I don’t feel so good,” became projectile vomiting – all over the tutu, all over daddy, all over the floor.

He stopped. He knelt down. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket as he watched her struggle with the next wave of nausea. As he watched the tiny mouth open he picked her up and held her up so she could vomit into the trash can. Her pink tutu trembled and he whispered in her ear and kissed the top of her head. He knelt again and wiped her mouth carefully with the handkerchief and found a piece of candy in a pocket.

“It’s okay,” he said matter-of-factly. “Sometimes people get sick. It’s okay. It’ll wash out. I’m worried about you. How do you feel?” And he wiped and he reassured and he calmly took a handful of paper towels someone handed him and cleaned up his fairy princess and himself as best he could, smiling kindly the whole time. Slowly, patiently. No rush. We’re okay. It’s all okay. And then he held her hand and they walked out to the car.

It is in the small things our love shines through.

“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”
– Samuel Adams

A little over three years ago I was one of millions of unnamed, unknown homeless people living in a van in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Denver, Colorado. Then I was a little better known, having spoken at TED Global. Now that the video of the talk has been posted my name and my story is known to millions.

The only difference between me and any other homeless, or working homeless person is that “irate, tireless mind willing to set brush fires in people’s minds.” As Margaret Mead said, “”Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

It wasn’t my talk, or the video that made a difference. It was individual people posting, blogging, talking and sharing that made a difference. ONE person can spark the conversation or the idea, but it takes other individuals to continue it. This is the butterfly effect…..

My favorite stories are all about this phenomena called the “Butterfly Effect.”

“The Butterfly Effect” – is a belief that the air stirred by a single butterfly’s wings flapping eventually creates a typhoon that hits land on the other side of the world. It’s a principle that viral marketing – or all successful marketing is built upon – one small thing leading to another, and another.

A snowflake by itself weighs nothing. Put it with a ka-trillion others and it will collapse oak trees, roofs and any structure known to man by its sheer weight.

Our lives are the product of a million influences, nudges, comments and knowledge of whose origins we know nothing about. And while the actions or inaction’s of others are impacting us every day, so our actions and inaction’s are impacting others as well.

Most of us know who Rosa Parks is and how her refusing to move to the back of the bus sparked the Civil Rights movement, but how many of us know that she was not the first African American to refuse to move to the back of the bus? Ten years before Rosa Parks took a stand, baseball legend Jackie Robinson was court-martialed (and acquitted) for not moving to the back of the bus. Robinson, a second lieutenant at the time, was on trial not because he had violated any articles of war, his attorney told the board, but because a few officers “were working vengeance against an uppity black man.”

All charges were dismissed, and several months later, Robinson received an honorable discharge from the Army. But the butterfly’s wings had flapped and ten years later the winds of a typhoon called the Civil Rights movement began to stir. “A life is not important,” Robinson said, “except in the impact it has on other lives.”

How true. Some of us can identify the butterflies who stirred the wind that moves beneath our wings. Others only know they’ve felt the breeze and puzzled over the events in their lives that seemed to be a “stroke of luck or fortune.”

And while we all have been touched by the butterfly effect – sometimes we forget that all we do creates our own breeze, or typhoon. It doesn’t take much. A careless remark, a timely compliment, a smile, a welcome, an insight, an email or an invite for a cup of coffee. There are many ways to stir the winds of change. A person you introduce to someone today may change their life tomorrow.

I read a story recently about a man whose teacher ridiculed him for his lifelong desire to be a firefighter. The teacher thought it was stupid and ridiculous to follow such a dream when there was college and a world of other opportunities to pursue. So the man went to college and hated the life others expected him to live. Eventually he gave it all up and went back to his real love – firefighting. Hr became a firefighter and loved it. Then – amazingly enough – he recently one day to a crash site and extricated his old teacher and his teacher’s wife, and performed CPR on him, saving his life. And now he has the story to tell, and does, and it changes lives. People hear it and follow their heart. All because a teacher ridiculed a job choice so many years ago.

How will you change the world today?

Donna Howell-Sickles is one of my favorite artists. When I get my RV/trailer, I’m having one of her prints, or a mash-up of her work, repainted on it….She’s my favorite because her visuals send an unexpected, but very effective message – like this one – “Keeping Out The Bears.” More than an artist, Donna is a storyteller. I often think about what the story in this painting is. There are so many.

I was looking at it again this morning and thinking how often we all think putting up a picket fence will “keep out the bears.” On the one hand, if those “bears” are thoughts, or “paper tigers,” the right fence may work. After all, it just becomes a construct we use to deal with scary stuff. On the other hand, if those “bears” are real things like the economy, housing, a job, our health, those flimsy picket fences we put up – fences like our belief that “This bear will never come into my yard,” isn’t going to last long.

So I’m torn, do I write about keeping out the mental bears and paper tigers, or the futility or struggle of trying to fence out the “real” bears – poverty, disease, housing?

The fact is, we all experience BOTH kinds of bears and the real question is, “How are we going to deal with the bears once they want in?” I have some experience with both paper tigers and real bears.

30 years ago I was hiking in Canada with two friends. The three of us were living out of a Volkswagen van, camping and traveling around Canada and the west for the summer. We had found a great trail outside Banff, registered with the park service, then hiked 20+ miles into the back country. It was the second or third morning “in country” when we came upon a mother grizzly bear and her two cubs about 500 yards from timberline. When faced with life-threatening danger, I go for practical and proven every time – in this case, climb a tree.

So, JoAnn and I headed straight up the nearest lodge-pole pine tree – about 40 -feet up, well out of the range of a the 15-20 foot reach of a grizzly intent on dragging down prey and protecting her young.

However, Rose Marie, the third woman in our group, stayed on the ground, believing she could “talk” to the bear and become its “friend” should it approach. We resigned ourselves to watching her be torn limb from limb and chewed into small bloody pieces. It took only seconds for us to reassure each other we would not play hero and try to rescue her. She refused to climb up and sat on a stump, waiting for the bear’s approach.

Meanwhile Joann and I discussed how best to spend the night and the next week living in a lodge-pole pine. Then I heard a noise I couldn’t place. Thunder? A tank? Oh – no, it was the grizzly, standing up and roaring – her jaws open wide enough to swallow a live hog whole. The noise…I can’t even describe the sound or the chill that ran through me as she stood, slinging her head from side-to-side as she bellowed her rage and frustration and warning.

Fortunately bears have lousy eyesight. She could smell us, but not place us. Her cubs wandered down the back of the ridge and out of her sight. So eventually, she left, following them, heading away from us. Eventually we climbed down and decided what to do next. I refused to hike on the next 9 miles to our “above timberline” campsite. I insisted on hiking out instead, arguing that I didn’t want to have to burrow under a boulder when the bear returned at night. JoAnn agreed. So we hiked out, much to Rose Marie’s protests. Good thing. Once off the trail a couple of days later, we signed out of the Canadian hiking permit/camping system, only to discover that the other campers at our campsite had been killed and mauled by bears. It could have been us. Had we proceeded, we would have walked into camp only to find pieces of bodies, a fresh bear kill and no trees to climb.

I remember that trip every time I see this poster – the smiling, friendly, “Oh a picket fence!” bears versus the real grizzlies that had torn two campers (both foresters/scientists studying bear behavior by the way) into hamburger so many years ago. And I remember that Rose Marie saw picket fence bears, and JoAnn and I saw grizzlies. Yet, we all walked away alive. Did Rose Marie’s picket fence keep the bears at bay? Did her sing-song assurances to the bear as she sat on her stump keep the bear away? Or was it the prayers, the strength of my Southern Baptist upbringing, force the hand of God? Or was it the cubs, attention diverted by whatever diverts the young, that drew mama bear away from our group? I’ll never know. Maybe it was all, maybe none of those things. I think though, had they all failed, the tree would have saved me.

We move through life and for the most part, we avoid the bears because we don’t venture into their territory. We don’t linger where they live. And when we do, we plan, whether for picket fences, or lodge pole pines. The songs, the prayers, the picket fences, the totems and gods/God we invoke may keep the bears at bay, but I’ll climb a tree every time.

As I get older, the trees (friends, finances, freedom to chose) are more sparsely placed, harder to find, harder to climb. Maybe it’s time to find a tree and build a tree-house in it. And then hang Donna’s print on the wall. It’s a thought.

How about you? How do you keep the bears out?

“When is it supposed to hit?” Todd asks. I shrug.
“Friday? Saturday? I’m not sure. Friends called to warn me it was on the way,” I explain.
“Should we go anyway?” Todd turns to Faith.
They debate the pros and cons. A small trailer in a high wind is not a risk anyone wants to take.

“Maybe it won’t become a hurricane,” I say as I keep snapping pictures.

Faith is a minister, a bearer of the word of God, a Moses with her “rolling tract” – Bible verses emblazoned in careful hand painted lettering on their trailer. There many Christians hesitate to share their faith with a friend or co-worker, Faith is anxious to single-handedly fulfill God’s admonition to share the gospel with the world. Being a “rolling Bible tract,” is how she has chosen to do that. And it works.

“Except for the verse where I misspelled staff and wrote shaft for “Thy rod and thy staff comfort me…” it’s all the word of God,” she laughs.
“We got some comments on that one.” She steps back, waving one hand at the corner of the trailer where the corrected verse is now scrawled. We walk around the trailer. The familiar verses are there….and Rev. 3:20, ‘”Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, (then) I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me,” is, appropriately enough, written on the trailer door. They have a sense of humor and even laugh at the reactions they get.

“People see us coming, they either run away or run towards us,” she explains.
“That’s the spirit of God. It draws those who want to hear His word to us.”

The verse covered trailer draws Christians, but it also draws the curious.

“Lots of people want to take our picture, or a picture of the trailer,” she nods.
“Cell phones, video cameras, still cameras. We get our picture taken a lot. Some people say they don’t have time to read the whole trailer and want a picture so they can read it later. Some people don’t believe we’ve done this and some, I don’t know. They just want a picture.”

They’re used to the attention – mostly positive. No one hassles them, although they’re concerned that they might run into problems in Myrtle Beach. Tourist towns, as a rule, don’t allow overnight parking in store lots. It’s not that the stores mind so much, parkers do tend to spend money – about $150 per person in Wal-Mart for instance. It’s that the hotels, campgrounds and other merchants prefer to see those through campers paying for a stay and paying them.

The couple relies on God to provide. He does, usually through “love offerings, gifts and the kindness of strangers.” They’re not a 5013c non-profit and any money, food or gifts they receive only bless them and the giver, not anyone’s tax return.

I’m struck by their passion for preaching, and of course their lifestyle. Living and traveling with seven dogs in a small trailer – it takes passion. We talk for about an hour, until the Benedryl I’m taking for a bad case of hives kicks in and I can barely stay awake. I wonder at what I’m so passionate about that I’d be moved enough to cover my van with it all. I tape my interview with them and I know I’ll come back to it later. For now – I’m impressed that they have a tribe, a group of followers and like minds. There’s a tribe for everyone – it’s true. And I feel better about my own journey. We heretics, the crazy ones, the ones who will change the world? We’re out there. Faith and Todd are proof of that.

Then I crawl back into my van, they head into the Wal-Mart, and another night passes – hot and muggy with no promise of rain. I drive by their rig on my way out of the parking lot at 7 a.m. There is no movement and the dogs aren’t visible. But the car and trailer are pointed south. They’ve made their decision and it’s not a surprise. They didn’t seem like the threat of a storm was a big deal.

That large white object is not the moon, although it could be. It’s a balloon – symbolizing letting go….it’s a beautiful post that is worth the read! So why this photo? Who is Seth Raphael?

Seth Raphael, “Magic Seth” to his blog readers, is now a married man! Congratulations! I met Seth at TED Global 2009 when we were both interviewed for a short video for the National Library Association. He also heard my talk about homelessness. In his blog post, “Letting Go,” and writes, in part:

“Before our grand event in Massachusetts, we’d been living in Portland Oregon. I had a job, we had an apartment and extended family very nearby. Within twenty four hours of getting back from TED, and eighteen hours before Cullen would fly East to prepare for the wedding, we had a crazy idea. Let’s move out right now, before the wedding. Circumstances had conspired for me to leave my job, and at whatever hour of the evening it was, it seemed like a tremendously good idea to move out of our apartment before August 1st, and therefore avoid paying a month of rent. A whirlwind of packing made the night a daze, and in the morning I drove Cullen to the airport. Opening the door to our apartment after dropping her off revealed the wreckage our whirlwind had laid out. I had another twenty four hours to pack everything into a U-Haul, and put it into storage… in Monterey CA, the place we had decided to call our new home. I found a willing Portlander heading South to split the 12 hour drive in a 10-foot truck, and I waved goodbye to our home, thinking fondly of Becky Blanton’s story of homelessness.”

It touched me to be remembered thus….seriously. Because that first leap, that “letting go,” is really all about potential and not about falling. It’s not until we start to fall that we learn we can fly.

Congratulations to Seth and his new bride. May you both remember your “homelessness” with fondness on your first anniversary!!

Koko and a solenoid

So, I bought the alternator ($36.74) and replaced it myself. It was hot, greasy, nasty, sweaty work, but it felt good to know I could “do it myself.” But as I laid in the grease on the hot asphalt, in the sun, burning myself repeatedly on the hot engine parts that hadn’t cooled completely I thought about Bob’s Wheel Alignment and how unlikely I am to go back to them ever, even though I like Bob.

But I also thought about how I’ve been trusting the universe/God to take care of me on this trip. On Monday for instance, Ken Moss drove out 30+ miles to get my van started when it broke down in a gas station outside Lynchburg. I know Ken from his incredible bio-diesel processing plant in Gretna, VA. He’s not only a brilliant man, but a kind, generous and helpful one.

Once I got to Charlottesville, VA and the van died again on Tuesday (I still hadn’t realized it was the alternator since it died slowly and worked mostly), I had the volunteers at Martha Jefferson Hospital offering to jump the van or help however they could. I ended up calling Suzanna Turner, an old friend, who came to the rescue and helped me get to Bob’s. Bob let me spend the night in the parking lot in the van.

When the van died again at the Food Lion parking lot, Don, a businessman in Fluvanna County, saw me standing with jumper cables in hand and immediately offered to help out. He was the one who noticed that my battery cables had been installed backward – with the red on negative and the black on positive. Had he not spotted that we would have blown the batteries. So much for the mechanics who installed THAT!

All along the way friends, acquaintances and strangers stepped up to help. A career Army guy named James even stopped by while I was under the van at Auto Zone and helped install the last bolt and muscle the alternator back into place – getting the belt tighter than I could have. He refused my offer of pay or even a cold drink and was a gem. So, I got on the road far quicker than I could have otherwise. And now the van is running well.

Trusting God? Or trusting human nature? I think it’s both. It’s amazing to see how the world opens to you when you expect it to. Try it. You’ll be amazed.