March(ing) Madness

Breathing New Life into Our Championship Run

**Breaking: New podcast w/ Dr. Cooper just launched: Not Done Yet! Purpose & Possibilities Through Life’s Second Half. Listen via any podcast app (easy access, including Spotify, Amazon & Apple here) or 60-second trailer avail here!!

In a few hours, the annual March Madness basketball tournament tips off. Buzzer-beaters. Upsets. Brackets blown up by day’s end.

Our family and friends have been doing a tournament pool for more than 20 years - and last year our two-year-old granddaughter won it. Which should tell you everything you need to know about our predictive abilities.

But when it comes to life’s second half, a different kind of madness can have a tendency to take over.

Not March Madness.

Marching Madness. A lockstep approach to “living” that slowly blinds us to what living actually means.

Living - for those - like you - who refuse to settle - isn’t simply biological existence. It’s not the quiet, routine-centric march of days turning into years. Fully living requires engagement. Curiosity. Presence. Not simply being present and accounted for, but actively participating!

Which brings us to a fascinating insight from philosopher Gabriel Marcel...

Actively Maintaining Permeability

Nearly a century ago, Gabriel Marcel wrote that “creative fidelity consists of maintaining ourselves actively in a permeable state” (and in doing so, life expands). In other words: remaining open to the ever-changing world around us.

Actively maintaining permeability. Phew! That gets more difficult with each passing year, doesn’t it? We want dependability - not permeability! With each lap around the sun, our soil slowly hardens.

Certainty replaces curiosity.

Habits replace exploration.

The ground becomes compacted, resisting the very air, water, and nutrients producing growth.

But we’re here (both reading this series and our presence in the world) to grow. We don’t want to simply get older. Anyone can do that. The real invitation is to grow older. And such growth requires permeability.

The challenge is that permeability - with soil or life - doesn’t happen on it’s own. Setting the stage for growth requires something intentional: Aeration. Literally puncturing small holes in the surface so air, water and nutrients can reach the roots.

Aeration Strategies

Let’s (you and me both) try a little aeration. This isn’t dramatic reinvention. It’s just a few small punctures in potentially hardening ground.

• Daily Routines - Automating positive choices (activity, sleep, fueling, etc.) is valuable. Done well, it reduces the need for discipline or motivation. But over time something subtle takes hold. Wise automation can drift into mindless autopilot. Our worlds shrink - not intentionally, but gradually.

  • Aeration Alternative - Pick one and poke a hole. Select something you automated 5+ years ago and mix it up. You’re not suddenly jumping off a cliff. You’re simply taking in some new scenery.

• Entertainment - When it comes to music and entertainment, we’ve spent decades refining our tastes. So why change now? Because artists - throughout history - have been the cultural accelerants of new ideas - a very foundation of growth.

  • Aeration Alternative - Text a friend or family member in their 20’s and ask them if they’d be willing to put together a playlist of some of their favorite music for you. Or - pull up a recent Top 50 Albums or movies list and get started. As a guy raised on 70s and 80s music, leaning into new artists has been a treasure trove. In fact, recent discovery Erykah Badu is playing in the background as I write this - outstanding!

• Tribes - Similar to daily routines, tribes (including everything from political parties to running clubs, churches to sports teams and everything in between) can provide immense value and simultaneously turn off our brains to critical thinking. Doesn’t apply to you? When was the last time you took a left turn when your tribe turned right?

  • Aeration Alternative - Engage in a little exercise called steel-manning (vs. straw-manning). Pick a view your tribe disagrees with and write it out clearly, asking what assumptions, values or evidence would make it convincing. Then reflect, considering which aspects are valid or useful. The typical alternative - straw-manning - oversimplifies and avoids true reasoning. While this may not result in a different decision, it does move us beyond superficial talking points into open-minded thinking.

• Books - What was the last book that genuinely changed the way you see the world? Too often, our reading habits become intellectual comfort food. We tend to “pick & stick.” Our fiction follows a similar script and our non-fiction confirms our pre-conceived ideas, turning both into little more than box-checking rinse & repeat activities.

  • Aeration Alternative - Is there a book or subject that you avoid because it conflicts with your pre-conceived notions? I’d be embarassed to share the list of books I steered clear of for decades - books that now line our home bookshelf with plenty of notes in the margins. Start with one and see where it leads.

• Hobbies - Life’s second half isn’t only about doubling down on existing hobbies. We’re no longer limited to a singular option as we garner additional flex in our schedules. Sometimes the magic happens when we move beyond addition to multiplication! Instead of another hour of the same activity, what happens when we try something new?

  • Aeration Alternative - Beginner status provides a free pass. From painting to pickleball, piano lessons to creative food prep, we enter each of these new arenas with zero pressure and an easy exit. How freeing is that?!? What’s one new possibility coming to mind as you’re reading this?

In the history of the NCAA basketball tournament, not a single team seeded outside the top 11 has ever made the Final Four. Ever! 93% of the national champions have been seeded 1 through 4. Logic would suggest trimming the bracket from 64 to 16 (or maybe 32) teams. But that’s where the fun is! The Cinderellas bring the tournament alive!

Perhaps the same could be said of us. As we move through life’s second half, our (self-imposed) marching orders often feel established.

The routines are set. The tribes are chosen. The habits are hardened.

So why try to teach an old dog new tricks - even if that dog is looking back at us in the mirror?

Because that’s the essence of living.

The courageous leap toward the self we are still becoming.

The upward-aiming pull toward possibility.

The quiet call to adventure waiting just beyond our familiar routines.

For until the day we break through the finish line tape, we are not... done... yet.