The Motivation
It is day 200, twenty percent of the Trust Tour is complete and that means I have been at this for over six months. During this time people have asked me what motivated me to do the tour. Some thought of this as a spiritual journey, others suggested it was a business, last week someone wondered aloud if I had something to hide. The truth is that the tour brings out the best in me. It gives me a chance to meet amazing people and keeps me learning and growing. Most of all I am hopeful that in some small way I can have an impact on you and ultimately our world. I believe passionately that the most important issue of our time is trust.
The tour also has helped me heal. Integrity is about trusting yourself and I have a good amount of experience struggling with this issue. It’s very nature makes it difficult to share but I believe much good could come from doing so. As I type these words, I am reminded of the risk that comes with honesty. I also know that trust can only be created when someone is willing to be vulnerable, so I will take that risk. This is a sensitive subject so if you are not an adult or if you really don’t want to know more about me here is a place to “bail out” … otherwise I will trust that I have your permission to share my story openly.
Chief Joseph once said, “It does not take many words to tell the truth.” I can tell you in just a few words.
The Revelation
I am a crooked man.
There are two definitions of crooked, one is “dishonest” the other is “not straight”. I am not dishonest, so that leaves not straight – meaning that I am not a heterosexual man. It might sound puzzling to you as I have been married for nearly 25 years and have grown children. To say this has been puzzling for me would be an understatement of epic proportions. This definition might help you understand what I mean when I say crooked man, “Sexual attraction may be incongruent and fall along a continuum, someone does not have to be exclusively homosexual or heterosexual, but can feel varying degrees of both as sexual orientation develops across a person’s lifetime.
By the time I read this definition, I had spent years fighting an exhausting battle with myself over my orientation. Integrity starts with knowing who you are and I was having a heck of a time figuring out who I was. I was like a crab in a cooking pot, I did not fit in anywhere and it was getting pretty uncomfortable, I needed to get out. The more I tried not to feel crooked, the more it felt shameful. Shame is a cancer to integrity. I tried to fix it by dismissing the feelings as passing, I wrestled with it, denied it, delayed it, tried to change it, cried about it, got sick over it and even had thoughts of ending my life over it.
I have a deep love for my family. I married my high school sweetheart and we raised two great sons. I’ve enjoyed a successful career and teaching young people what I learned. I am blessed with a large extended family and have been honored to have a great group of friends and co-workers. How could a guy that has it all this think about ending his life. Well… there was this ongoing battle inside my head. One side saying, if I made public my feelings I would sacrifice my honor and lose the people I love. The other side demanding to live an authentic life no matter what the consequences. Each side was prepared to annihilate the other for self preservation. The pressure was building inside of me.
The Breakdown
Then…one day, 30,000 feet above the ground in a 757, it all came to a head. I experienced a full out personal melt down. It started with a lump in my throat followed by difficulty breathing and a cold sweat. My heart rate went through the roof, my chest started to feel like someone was standing on it. This was matched equally with wide-eyed anxiety. This fear was disorienting, I felt dizzy and not in control of my thoughts. As I looked around for help, the flight attendants were nowhere in sight and the people next to me were fast asleep. I was trapped in this metal tube traveling 500 miles an hour. The pain of this experience hit levels previously unknown to me. All I could do was to endure it until we landed. When we did, I crawled out of the plane and into the terminal building. I immediately heard my name being paged. It was a late arrival so they were waiting for me to board my connecting flight. No way was I was in any condition to fly — I was rattled to the bone. My goal at that moment was to put what energy I had left into making it to the safety of a hotel room.
A part of me died on that flight, that night. It was the start of a life transition. Later, I learned what I experienced was an intense panic attack. It was the first of several panic attacks that would come in the years ahead. I did not want to live this way, never knowing when the next attack would come. How could I trust myself ever again?
The Recovery
If I was going to get better I would have to expose the truth to the light of day. My wife and I have no secrets so she knew of my struggle as it was unfolding. There where others that I needed to tell, starting with my kids and then family and friends. This all happened several years ago and it went much better than I thought. The disasters I imagined did not materialize, rather there were a few tears and a lot of hugs. That support has enabled me to write about it publicly.
I have come to look at the meltdown as a gift, I decided to accept the whole weird, interesting, ambiguous me. I kinda like me, part of me is entrepreneurial, I like turning problems into opportunity. I began to see that my experience had made me more sensitive to differences in people. I started to think about what I could do with this ability… why not help people trust themselves and each other – wow what a great mission that would be for my life. I could get very passionate about that kind of work. This became a life mission for me and the start of the Trust Tour.
The Lesson
I was internally divided and in the middle of a extended war with myself, one side wanting to destroy the other. Worse I did not understand how much trouble I was actually in. You can’t disrespect part of yourself and still be healthy. The very definition of integrity is whole. When I started to respect that part of me which I was previously ashamed, I became a new more whole person. To get healthy, I had to learn to trust myself and others with the truth.
I see parallels between what has happened to me and what is currently happening in our society. For example, the Republicans and the Democrats are a house divided, a house at war. It is clear that destruction of the other party is considered success. They do not realize how much trouble we are all in. The country is suffering as the congress focuses on their enemy and loses sight of us (the whole). We are the United Stated of America. We are one people. We live in this house together and trust starts with respecting the other parties opinion. Many of our other organizations are intended to bring us together suffer the same fate. How many businesses, churches, unions, families and marriages are embattled in conflict? The lesson is we have to be whole individually and collectively if we want to live healthy lives. There is much work to be done.
The Irony
You probably remember the old nursery rhyme about the crooked man:
There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house
I always thought this poem was a bit odd until I found out it originated from the English Stuart history of King Charles. The crooked man is reputed to be the Scottish General Sir Alexander Leslie. The General signed a covenant securing religious and political freedom for Scotland. The ‘crooked stile’ refers to the border between England and Scotland. ‘They all lived together in a little crooked house’ refers to the fact that the English and Scots had at last come to an agreement after many years of fighting. It seems ironic that the poem is essentially about a society being whole, living together as one. This is the same lesson that I learned about the coming together of me.
The Conclusion
In some way we all are crooked men, we all have walked crooked miles and we all are living in this little crooked house. Today our house consists of 6,697,254,041 people. We are one human race but the main thing that binds us together is trust. Without it none of us would want to be here. So my message is simple, know who you are and live that truth, our success on the planet depends on IT.
