The Way It Is

May 20, 2014

earth_eyes

I was out driving one day, years ago, with my son Nick. He was young, maybe seven, and he’d been thinking about the state of the world.

“Hey, Dad?” he said. “Seems to me like everything is … getting worse. You know?” He looked over at me from the passenger’s seat, and I nodded. Go on, I’m listening.

He thought hard for a moment, gazing out the windshield at his sifting thoughts, then added, “But … it also seems like everything is getting better.”

I loved it. He was examining his view of the world, articulating it, testing it, sorting it out.

We each have our own worldview, consciously aware of it or not.

Your worldview is not what you think you believe or want to believe. It’s what you do believe. It drives your attitudes, decisions, and actions, moment to moment, day to day, year after year. It is the lens through which you see everything.

When I was a kid, Walter Cronkite ruled the world with an authority greater than that of presidents or kings. Every weeknight, after finishing his report on the CBS Evening News, he would leave us with his famous signoff line, “And that’s the way it is on …” whatever the date was that day.

And for millions and millions of Americans, that’s the way it was.

You have a Walter Cronkite in your head telling you how it is, not just once an evening but constantly, in a 24/7 real-time newsfeed. Your inner Cronkite scans everything happening in your world, searching out those events that confirm your personal view of the way it is, and ignoring or downplaying all other information. It filters your reality and colors every thought and perception you have.

A car cuts you off in traffic. Depending on your worldview, either you say “Oh well” and shrug it off — or your inner Cronkite supplies its confirming punch line: “… and that’s the way it is.”

If I’m going through a tough time, you can tell me “Things will work out” or “Look on the bright side,” and I may try to listen. But if I’ve got a worldview whispering inside me that says, Nothing ever works out in the long run, or Life’s a bitch and then you die — then I might hear your words but I can’t grasp the music. My inner Cronkite is drowning it out with its in my ear: “Nope, that’s not the way it is. Here’s how it is…”

If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.

When God closes a door, He opens a window.

They don’t make ’em like they used to.

Everything will be okay in the end.

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

What goes around comes around.

Money doesn’t grow on trees…

So many different versions of worldview!

For far too many, that inner Cronkite is unconsciously and unquestioningly inherited in childhood, from parents, teachers, church, television. By cultural osmosis. The unexamined lifelens.

That was what I so loved about Nick’s rumination: he was examining it all, carefully and consciously. He was asking, “What do I think?”

When I was a teenager, a friend’s father told us one evening, “Remember these high school days, guys — they’ll be the best days of your lives.” He was jovial and friendly as he said it, but I felt distinctly uncomfortable. It was only later that night, as I was going to sleep, that the penny dropped and I realized what he was really saying:

It’s all downhill from here, boys … And that’s the way it is.

That’s why it made me feel uncomfortable. I just didn’t believe that. I still don’t.

In the four decades since that encounter, despite losses and setbacks and tragedies, my life has overall gone uphill, not down. My friend’s life, alas, has not followed the same course, but has been a drama of drugs, alcohol, and crippling disease. He has an amazingly positive attitude in the face of all his difficulties, but I can’t help wondering if he was not infected terminally with his father’s fatalistic worldview.

Driving to town one day in the fall of 1982—this is three years before Nick was born — I happened to tune the car radio to an interview with the futurist John Naisbitt, who had just published his breakout book, Megatrends. Captivated, I pulled over to listen to him read an excerpt from the last chapter. The book’s closing line hit me like a thunderclap:

What a fantastic time to be alive!

This was not an easy time in my life. I’d lost a child, was struggling financially, and my first marriage was headed for the rocks. Yet the moment I heard Naisbitt declaim those seven words I knew that deep down inside, that was fundamentally what I believed to be true.

It still is.

How do you see it? What, for you, is the way it is?

7 Comments

  1. Laura Atchison

    No matter what is happening in my life that from the outside can be perceived as downright horrible I have always believed and do believe that something amazing is going to come from it if I can just be with the moment of uncomfortable. There are blessings in it all. Yes, sometimes I do wish I could string together a few less “lessons” in my life but then I remember how great it is on the other side. Love the post once again John.

    Reply
  2. jdmann

    Thanks, Laura, always delightful to see you here!

    Reply
  3. Adrian

    In so many ways, 2014 IS a fantastic time to be alive. It is also the ONLY time we have. And as each year passes, with greater perspective, life becomes more precious. The past is history, and let’s try to learn from it. The future is unknown, and let’s try to be prepared. But today is special because it belongs to us. As you so wisely said last week, John, let us be happy in the moment. We can make our own happiness be being who we were created to be.

    Reply
    • jdmann

      “We can make our own happiness be being who we were created to be…” — man, I love it when comments like that come back that are even better than the stuff they’re commenting on! Merci, A.

      Reply
  4. Art Manville

    The world does seem to be getting worse and better all at the same time.

    I sometimes think “the worse” is a catalyst for “the better.”

    Reply
  5. Bob Burg

    Wow – terrific post. Power lessons throughout. Not to mention, I do believe you have just coined a new phrase for our personal belief systems/the way we see the world/paradigm, etc. … our “Inner Cronkite.” (Quotation marks, too) 🙂

    Reply
  6. Richard Bliss Brooke

    Once again John David you nail it. Love the Cronkite icon. And thanks to Bob Burg for leading me to it.

    Reply

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  1. Journal of John David Mann » Blog Archive » Bouncebackability - [...] story you tell yourself about it? While it’s happening, does the little voice in your head (the inner Cronkite)…

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