Lessons from The Great Gatsby

I love movies! In fact I write movie reviews on one of my other blogs. Over the weekend, I saw The Great Gatsby. I was really looking forward to it as this is one of my favorite books of all time. Leonardo DiCaprio does a fantastic job as Gatsby a man smitten with the notion of winning the heart of Daisy Buchanan. In fact, he wants to erase the five years of war and marriage and bootlegging that has come between him However, his new friend and neighbor warns him that “You can’t recreate the past.” To which Gatsby responds, “Can’t recreate the past? … Why of course you can!”

Unfortunately Gatsby finds out that you really can’t recreate the past. You can’t recreate it. You cannot return to it. You cannot relive it. No amount of money or time or force of will will bring it back. So what can we learn from Jay Gatsby.

You cannot spend the present trying to recreate the past. How many of us live a life of regret, trying to make up for past mistakes and missteps? We think, “If only” or “I should’ve” Everyone thinks those thoughts once in a while but when they begin to consume the better part of your days, you are getting into trouble. The scary part is that one day you’ll wake up and see all the time you lost and will never be able to get back.

Was the past even the past? Some people say hindsight is 20/20 and I guess it does have that sort of clarity when you can look back and see your mistakes and review your decisions and actions with maturity and an emotional distance that only time can bring. However, when you look at the past through distorted rose-colored glasses, it is anything but 20/20. The past is made up of memories and thoughts. Memories and thoughts are never objective; they are always seen through our own very specific filters. 

Just like you can’t see through another person’s prescription glasses, none of us look at the same events the same way. We all have fond memories and things we’d rather forget. Yet with time, those fond memories can become idyllic illusions and the dark memories can become darker and denser. Were the good old days really that good? Were there a few bright moments during those dark times?

Learn to Let It Go. However, good or bad, the past is the past. There are no time machines or do overs. Some wounds leave scars but a scar is never as bad as the actual injury was. As adults, we have a responsibility to ourselves and those in our lives, to heal those wounds as best we can. However, we need to keep our good memories in perspective as well. In some cases, we make monuments of people and events from our past and nothing can ever compete with those images. You compare your great past love to every other man (or woman) you meet conveniently forgetting his faults and idiosyncrasies in the process. The time that separates us from our past lives is usually a good thing.

The past is history … our personal histories. We can learn from it and take those lessons into our present but that is all we can really do with it.

Want to know what I thought about the movie? Read my review at www.divasoulsista.blogspot.com. 

Closer Together and Further Apart

It’s the 21st century. I use a Blackberry. I have an MP3 player and a gajillion cable channels, so I’d say I’m pretty current with the times. Lately, I’ve even started getting all my news through Google reader. Who needs a paper paper, when I can get my favorite sections of the paper delivered to my PC?

I get the top stories, local news and political sections. It’s really helped me keep abreast of current events. However, I have become practically addicted to reading the comments people leave regarding a story.

It’s fascinating to see how people’s minds work when they are posting anonymously, hidden behind a computer screen and a protective ‘screen name.’ No matter what they topic … crime, the school board, unemployment, even weather, it devolves quickly into political name calling and race-baiting.

A commentator at the paper recently posted a challenge to the usual posters. He asked them to say something nice about the opposition. In other words, he wanted pro-life people to say something nice about the pro-choice side and vice versa. Those on the left could have come up with a comment for the people on the right side of the aisle.

Do you know most couldn’t do it? And some just outright said they wouldn’t do it. I tend to be in the middle of most issues and even when I skew one way or the other, I can’t imagine going so far to one side that I couldn’t see anything at all good on the other side.

I think its easy for people to vilify ‘the other side.’ It’s easy to call them crazy or stupid or misguided if you stop seeing them as people. If you can say something nice about them it humanizes them and makes it harder to spew unadulterated mean-spiritedness and condescension.

I would have hoped a decade ago that the Internet would have helped us connect. Sites like Facebook that reunites friends and family help show us how small the world really is. Yet, the commenters on my local newspaper show us how wide the divide between us truly is and how much further we have to go.

Life Coaching in the News: The Curious Case of Alvin Greene

A South Carolina Democratic Primary has turned into national news. Why? Alvin Greene, a previously unknown unemployed military veteran is now the Democratic nominee for the US Senate. He faced off against a more well-known competitor and won. Greene won without a website, phone campaign, rallies, fundraisers or even signs. How he came up with the $10,000 filing fee is a bit of a mystery, but the bigger mystery is how this guy that no one knew managed to get over 100,000 primary voters to choose him.

Some contribute it to race. Others contribute it to name recognition (Alvin Greene sounds a lot like iconic soul singer Al Green). Others still claim it’s because his name came first on the ballot over that of his opponent Vic Rawl.

So, you ask, what the heck does this have to do with life coaching? Good question, here’s my answer. Regardless of what prompted over 100,000 people to vote for Greene – be it race, recognition or order on the ballot – they voted for Greene and they voted without a clue of who they were voting for or what he stood for. South Carolinians woke up Wednesday morning having chosen a candidate who can barely manage a basic interview.

The lesson here is simple, do your homework. Homework doesn’t end when school does. Whether it’s buying a home or a car, choosing a school for your children, filing your taxes or casting a vote, the onus of responsibility falls squarely on your shoulders. You are responsible for doing the research and the due diligence before you take action.

Predatory lenders took advantage of a lot of people’s naiveté when it came to home buying. They lead people into mortgages with ridiculous adjustable rates. Every year, some poor celebrity loses everything to the I.R.S. because they didn’t pay close enough attention to who handled the finances. There is a saying, “The devil is in the details.” He hides there because he knows no one will look for him there.

Tragically, we can’t just blame predatory lenders, the IRS, shifty politicians or the Bernie Madoff’s of the world for manipulating us. We play a role in that manipulation when we don’t do our homework. The bigger the decision, the more costly the consequences, the more due diligence you should undertake. Find the devil in the details.

And,when it comes to voting there is always another choice. If you aren’t familiar with the candidates or the causes, you can always choose not to choose – just leave it blank.

Life Coaching in the News: Look Before You Leap

Some of the biggest scandals of 2009 involved several very public transgressions, in particular, the scandals of now beleaguered golfer Tiger Woods and the gallivanting governor of South Carolina, Mark Sandford. I do believe that a certain amount of celebrity and or power creates an aura of invincibility. Surrounded by people who hang on your every word, encourage your every deed (good and bad) and agree with every idea or opinion can create a skewed world view. I just wonder what would have happened, if these men had taken a moment to look before they leaped.

It’s not a four-letter word, but it is a four-syllable word that many people don’t like to hear: consequences. And all of us, regardless of stature and notoriety have to face them. Thinking before you act helps to protect you from the negative consequences of our potential actions.

In both cases, both men should have considered the effects that their actions would have had on their families and their wives. In Sanford’s case, he didn’t just lie to his wife but he lied to an entire state about his whereabouts while he went to visit his Argentinean mistress – leaving the state without a governor for days.

These are major transgressions played out of the national and international media stage, under the hottest of spotlights that 99.9% of us will never have to face. Yet, we still have to face consequences for our own actions.

There are consequences for big things like:

• embezzling money, even if you need it and have a good reason for taking it.
• cheating, even if your spouse doesn’t understand you or seek to meet your needs.
• getting behind the wheel after having a few drinks.

There are consequences for the smaller things like:

• underperforming at work or school, whether you like the assignment or not.
• not controlling your anger and lashing out (verbally or physically), even when you feel justified or that the other person was wrong.
• procrasinating around important tasks and decisions, even if they are difficult or boring.

There is always a reason, even a good reason for ignoring the obvious consequences but that reason (feeling justified, being wronged, being bored) does not shield you from consequence.

Hindsight is 20/20. It’s easy to think about what we could have, should have or would have done differently. Foresight is a lot harder. It’s not as easy to see where we could go, what we should do or what would be best. Yet, it helps if we just take a moment before we leap to take a good look at where that leap will lead.