When the first monkey touched the ladder, the researchers hosed all the monkeys with cold water. Soaked and confused, the monkeys tried to reach the bananas again, but whenever any one of them touched the ladder, all were punished. Soon enough, the monkeys learned the lesson: the ladder is taboo. The researchers then exchanged one of the experienced monkeys for a new one. As soon as he entered the room, the new monkey started toward the ladder. Before he could touch it, the other monkeys pulled him away. After enough thwarted attempts, the monkey abandoned his efforts.

The researchers then exchanged another monkey. After time, not one of the original monkeys remained. Yet the lesson endured: No monkey ever climbed the ladder.

(Incidentally, if any of monkeys had tried the ladder, they would have succeeded. Researchers did away with the water hose early on in the experiment.)

There are many things we don't try.  

There are many ladders we don't climb. For any number of reasons.  

Or we try for a while; and then we quit.  

Or, we have been told, "Don't try. You don't have what it takes."

That may put the kibosh on any enthusiasm in a world of never enough--be it beauty or faith or courage or success or passion.

It is as if something insidious crept into our spirit, partly fatigue, or partly something else we cannot name. Regardless, in the end, we believe the messages to be the truth about our life or ourselves. They become our narrative, our script.

"I can't," I will say. Who told you that? Does it matter? In the end I pull my punches... and I stay off the ladder.

Some of these messages have more stick-um than others. Some we lug around for decades--from our family of origin. (I have a suspicion that there are designated family message luggers.) Some messages are internal (we just make them up). Some are odd reinforced prejudices. (Even Jesus had to listen to this stuff, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?")

But this is not just about building our self-esteem. It is about the reservoir we draw upon, in order to live with our whole heart.

So. How do we re-calibrate? (I think of Lucy yelling at Charlie Brown, "Just quit doing that!" Easier said than done.)

During a rock-climbing lesson, Dan Clark stops on the vertical incline, as if paralyzed.

He writes, "I could see an outcrop for my right foot, but no place where I could place my hands or left foot."

Yes, he felt stuck. Hopeless perhaps.

The instructor, not far from Dan on the face of the incline, tells him, "Take the step."

"Are you crazy?"

"Once you lift yourself up you may find something you can't see from where you stand."

"Well what happens if I don't find anything?" Dan is incredulous.

"If you don't find anything," the instructor says calmly, "fall back on the harness and try it again."

Fall back.

As in... let go.

Perhaps of our expectations? Or perhaps our notion of what we think we see?

Is it possible that these notions (or assumptions) are the baggage concealing an incredible gift? That at any given moment, we have the power to say: This is not how the story is going to end.

Maybe, just maybe, we need to embrace that gift that voice today.

In the Power of Pause I talk about slowing down in order to pay attention. But more than that; pausing is about sanctuary. That place where we fall back, in order to try again. A sanctuary is that place where we are revived and where we receive. The Celtic church called them thin places. "A thin place is anywhere our hearts are opened," writes Marcus Borg. "They are places where the boundary between the two levels becomes very soft, porous, permeable. Thin places are places where the veil momentarily lifts and we behold (the "ahaah of The Divine")... all around us and in us."

Sanctuaries are about remembering who we already are. About the abundance inside. And to whom we belong.

A five-year-old girl who, upon the arrival of her baby brother, insisted that she spend some time alone with him. Her parents agreed, but listened in on the baby monitor as the sister closed the door and walked over to her brother's bed. After a minute of silence, she told her baby brother, quite firmly: "Please tell me about God and Heaven. I have almost forgotten."

We do forget.

And we do internalize the sway of the "water hose."

Here's the deal: When we internalize (and live out) any message that we are not enough, we are not our best selves. And because of that, we misunderstand, we belittle, we dismiss and we judge. We live deflated and sad. And we forget or overlook the fact that in the sentence is the word best--meaning a self capable to rise above.

'Take the step."

Which means that we may not see what is already there. Or, what is already inside of us.  

Here's what I know: When life's choices are viewed in terms of "systems thinking" rather than "straight-line linear thinking," then outcomes other than giving up or escape become possible.  One outcome is the mobilization of what is inside--such as resiliency, courage, determination, self-regulation, stamina, audacity and faith.   

Remember this: Many battles can be won simply by not given up; one does not have to conquer the other.  

Just like Dan Clark on the mountain, when you don't give up, when you know you have a future (even if that future is only the next step), you become less reactive, less anxious, less blaming, more imaginative and more responsible.

In September 1942, Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, was arrested and transported to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents. Three years later, when his camp was liberated, most had perished--but he, prisoner number 119104, lived. In his bestselling 1946 book, Man's Search for Meaning, about his experiences in the camps, Frankl concludes that the difference between those who had lived and those who had died came down to one thing: Meaning. As he saw in the camps, those who found meaning even in the most horrendous circumstances were far more resilient to suffering than those who did not. "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing," Frankl wrote, "the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."  

"Take the step." 

The peonies are in full bloom here. I boarded a plane very early this morning for Texas. I will miss a week of peonies and roses and iris. But I carry them with me. Spring is extraordinary to me because of the profligate nature of the garden. There is no hesitation. There is only generosity and bounty. There is life, in abundance.