Transcription of John C. McCain for the show Intentions #16
Genevieve: Very exciting today. We have on the ‘Maine Magazine Minutes’ John C. McCain. He’s a musician, a visual artist and a teacher. He is a shining example of the kind of innovators and entrepreneurs that we have here in our state. He’s one of the great entrepreneurs and creative minds like the people we always feature on the ‘Maine Magazine Minutes’.
John, you have a very special treat coming up for us. Can you tell us what you’ve done?
John: Thanks, Gen. It’s a collection of audio clips that I’ve collected over the entire reign of our show. As people have come in and talked, we’ve often ask a separate question with them at the end which is basically, “What’s your intention in your work or in your life?”, “How do you set it for yourself?”, we’ve also phrase it for people as “What gets you out of bed in the morning?”
Genevieve: What gets you out of bed in the morning?
John: Certainly the sense that life is brief and that the chance for the day is ours to take, that things are precious, inflating, each day is a gift truly, and that we have a chance to support our values in the world and to foster the kind of world that we’d like to live in.
Genevieve: That’s a beautiful sentiment. Thank you. Now, we’re going to hear what you’ve done.
John: Thank you. I hope you enjoy this kaleidoscope collection of voices all discussing the same thing, which is various ideas on intention.
Female: There’s something that wants to be heard. There’s something that wants to be expressed in life. What that is for each of us is very personal and it is generated in a sense out of the fabric of our being.
Dr. Lisa: It is always the intention to marry the head and the heart, because I think when you’re a physician and as I am trained in western medicine, it’s all about the intellect and the data and the systems and the theories. Then, when you are trained in Chinese medicine, you know that it’s about those things, but also about a deeper understanding and really connecting into who you are and what the underlying issues are.
For me, it’s always about connecting those pieces and connecting people back with themselves and with their families and with their communities and with the world as a whole, because we are not solo in this life, not any of us. We’re always connecting to something bigger than ourselves. That’s always the intention is for me to start with my head and my heart, and then connect to something bigger.
Then, part two is when you’re not connecting the way that you want to and things aren’t ending up the way that you thought, having the strength to make changes and be flexible and move on and connect in different ways, so being able to break patterns that don’t work for you. That’s what I have in my mind when I think about intentions.
Genevieve: A very wise man said to me once that it’s really hard to know what you want, because intention for me has some relationship to deciding what you want in life or out of a situation, and that can be very hard for me. He said, “Why don’t you start with what you don’t want?” When we’re talking about what to let go of, what to edit out, what to leave behind, that begins to narrow my intentions.
I would say that that’s where I start is thinking about what I don’t want, and then I can go to what I want, and then I can set my intention.
Female: Yes, it’s beautiful setting intention. When a client comes to see me, see us … see me, the first thing we do is open sacred space, so automatically, our intention is different. We’re creating an environment where it’s not the day-to-day environment. I don’t want to say it’s more elevated, but it gives us access to different information, so we’ve already set an intention not only for the physical body, but for the spiritual body, for the mental body and for the emotional body, to feel comfortable, to come and bring what is coming to that space to clear.
As we come together through talking, we understand together what the intention of the clearing is for the day, and then we actually do work around the clearing toward that intention.
Female: The way I feel about intention for myself is that what’s really important for me is if I talk about things that I actually practice in myself. It’s really a pet peeve for me in medicine is that I don’t look healthy, then I don’t really have any right to talk about health, and if I’m not exercising, I really can’t talk about it. If I’m not eating well, then I shouldn’t be talking about that either, so I’m really careful that I practice what I talk about.
I think that in my own life, I also have taught my kids that there’s no such thing as no, which means that if you want something enough, you can get it. You might have to change things, you might have to work a little harder not to your expense, but you can always accomplish what you want, and it’s been certainly true in my life.
Female: Every day, I take the opportunity to listen to the will of my heart and allow that to come forth. It’s really a bubbling up, a rising up from that heart space that connects me to what I think of as the greater consciousness that is always longing to unfold. If I can tap into that, then I know that I’m expressing the highest.
Chris: Intention to me is just living more authentically and comfortably in my own skin. That sometimes is harder than it sounds, but it’s something that I wake up with every day as an intent. That means in genuine relationships that I have with family and friends and partners and children versus genuine relationships I have in my business world. That’s the intent. Some days, I win and other days I lose, but every day, I leap out of bed with that same intention.
Male: My intention in my life has drastically changed since the birth of my daughter, Evelyn, 21 months ago. What having a child has brought out in me is not simply how I want her to be in the world, but I want to show her what a model person could possibly live like. My teaching to my daughter is as much about paying attention to my own hang-ups and my own aspects of myself that are beautiful and then I can honor and how can I relate to people in an honest way. I try to model that so that she has someone growing up that she can look at who’s trying to live with as much integrity as possible. I primarily see that as my intention in the world is to model my behavior for her.
Female: I think setting an intention or whatever you want to call it is incredibly powerful. I’m amazed when one sets something out there consciously and speaks it aloud, how much more likely it is to come true, and it sounds a little bit like magical thinking from kids, but it’s not. I think especially in public health, we can be so reactive and look at the problems and react to them, but because that’s not our training or our values or our natural inclination, and certainly wasn’t what I was taught in graduate school, our discipline is to set that intention I think to look proactively at what’s going on in our communities, and set an intention and say, “We want a community where children grow up, children of any income level, of any color, any spot, any whatever can grow up and actualize their own potential, whatever that is, whatever they want to be that they have what they need to grow up and be healthy.” That is certainly the goal and intention of our work, is that no matter who you are in our community that you can live to your fullest potential.
Male: When I think of intention, why I do what I do, why I am so motivated to continue in the direction I’m traveling with my career, with my family, with my personal life, I’m reminded of a story which was … Maybe it’s a parable. When I was a child, a tree was a tree. As I became a student and a young man, a tree became the photosynthetic properties, xylem and phloem carrying those compounds from roots to leaves, and suns affect and the weather and the soil and the microorganisms. Ultimately, when I was a wise old man, a tree is a tree. I’m hoping that the study of medicine and the practice I pursue on a daily basis, a human becomes a human.
Female: There’s something that wants to be heard. There’s something that wants to be expressed in life. What that is for each of us is very personal, and it is generated in a sense out of the fabric of our being. For me, what gets me up in life is trying, is knowing that I have a piece of something to offer that no one else can offer in quite that unique and special way. I think that each of us has this inside of us.
I know people whose thing in life is to cook the most beautiful meal and to share it with others, and to feel that warmth of a community and thing that happens in breaking bread together. For me, I’m most alive when I am in the midst of a story that is engaging others, and when I can see there is a spark that gets brought alive through the story sometimes. I live for those moments. I mean, one of the reasons I do mysteries with kids is that I feel that the very small and the very secret, and even the dark and earthy and mysterious have something to say to us.
The body, earth, nature, animals .. They have something deep that they need to say to us, and our culture has a tendency to ride rough shot out over those things. My stories are about those things. It’s about the piece of soul that is dancing inside of matter itself. The message for me is that matter matters.
Female: The first word that comes to mind is service, and I don’t mean necessarily service to others, but hopefully what I do is, but mostly, I put myself in service to something bigger. I find that something bigger either comes through my dreams or in meditation, or it’s something sometimes not even like my ego wants to do necessarily, but it’s in service of something bigger, and so I offer myself to that.
At sometimes, it’s writing. The writing is something bigger. It’s a story that needs to be told, so I put myself in service to it and it makes me work very hard sometimes.
Female: I will tell you the moment I was having a drink with my friend, Monica Wood, the writer, Monica Wood, and we were talking about writing, and she’s so supportive and so generous and was talking, “Oh, I love your writing. I love your writing.” I said, “Yes, Monica, but I don’t have an Ernie’s Ark. I don’t have an Any Bitter Thing …” these beautiful books that she wrote.
I said, “I have not done my best. I have not done my best. If I got hit by a truck tomorrow, the thing that I would be thinking about staring up at the sky is I have not done my best yet.” No one was going to do my best for me. I mean, I’ve had a wonderful writing career, but I have not done something that I can hold and say, “This is my best effort. This represents my best work.”
Pretty much at that moment, that’s when all of this show and book started happening, because when I did the show, it was the best I could. I mean, it might not have been perfect, but it was the best I could do. To be able to say that is a creation of an intention and a fulfillment of an intention, whether it’s exactly how you think it’s going to happen or not, but to set a goal and to work as hard as I’ve ever worked in my entire life for anything is in itself its own reward.
Male: I’d say I think more than anything, I try and bring good humor and joy to the people around me and try and approach each day with a fresh perspective. Sometimes, you have things not go your way. If you let those things carry day to day and week to week, I think it can take hold, and I think it’s important in our relationships and in our personal lives that we try and take a deep breath every once in a while and give ourselves the opportunity to have new and fresh perspective and bring lightness to our world and to those around us.
Male: That’s a great question. Yes. I think I’m all about giving back. I was going to put a quote on Facebook today that said, “If you’re not a giver, you’re a taker,” but I’ll wait. I guess that I derive most of my energy from others like yourself who are positive and add something to the day.
My motivation I guess selfishly is my daughter. My motivation is doing the right thing, leaving something of value in the day, try to add to people’s worlds. If they ask me for something, I want to give them something. A lot of adults are programmed never to ask for help. I’m trying to change that. I think more of us should. I got a big mouth. I’ll start asking one.
Female: I guess I have to say the thing that gets me up every morning and keeps me motivated and looking forward to the next day are just all the great, small conversations I have with people that I see are making a difference, not only in their lives and how they’re thinking and where they’ll end up going with their day, but the impact it has for me knowing that I’m connecting with someone in our community, and that we are making a plan to do something bigger than ourselves and that conversation. I try and look for the small things that I know are going to lead something a lot bigger.
Female: When I think about what motivates me, I think back to a very pivotal moment in my life, and that was in 1992. I spent several months after I moved from Los Angeles and moved back to Maine, I spent several months in India and Nepal. I had a wonderful time hiking and doing some volunteer work. I ended up the last month volunteering in Calcutta with the Missionaries of Charity.
Lots of people were just so moved to work for the Missionaries of Charity there, and they were giving up their lives at home and moving to Calcutta was quite moving. By the end of the month, I have learned a lot, but I was really excited to move back to Maine, my hometown, my home state as well. At the end, the tradition is that you’d go up to Mother Teresa and we saw her every day, she was there and for the morning prayers and I went up to her. It was the tradition when you’re leaving to let her know how your time volunteering was.
I asked her, I said, “I have to tell you, I had a wonderful month, I learned a lot from the sisters, but my dilemma is that I actually am not that moved to stay here. I’m just really excited to go home to my home state of Maine and start a new job practicing in my hometown at Farmington and practice in medicine.” I feel a little guilty about that.
She took my hands with her rough, elderly hands and held them. She looked at me and she said, “If where you are going, you will work with love and you will love your work, that’s where you are called to be.” I thought, “You know, I had to go halfway around the world to figure out that it’s just finding your passion and finding what helps you to help others who are in need.” If you can get up every day and be able to realize that you’re going to be able to help others and help others in need, and that you love your work, and that’s where you’re supposed to be.
I feel extremely fortunate because everything has come to fruition. That was almost 20 years ago. I’ve been able to find what makes me passionate about things.
Male: Actually, I’m motivated by others. I mean, I get up in the morning and drive the 12 miles from Sydney to Camp Keyes in Augusta, Maine, and I walk into my headquarters, and I’m surrounded by a great generation of young men and women. My dad was a World War two veteran. They were the greatest generation. They were my call to service, but we’re being served by other great generation of young guys and gals today.
My motivation comes from seeing and being with them on a daily basis. These are young men and women who have left their families and their employers, and deployed some of them three or four times to serve this nation. If you can’t be motivated, being surrounded by people like that, probably isn’t worth getting up in the morning.
Male: Wearing the uniform, I think that some folks would look at me with a certain lens and would be surprised to find out that I am in awe of the other people who serve in uniform. The folks that are willing to actually take a bullet for another American, the people who are actually willing to give up time, years from their family so that they could be … make sure that their families were safe back here at home, and the idea, the very idea that I’ve been blessed with the ability to go into work every single day and try to do everything I can to help those people have a better life is motivation enough for me.
Male: Yes. I love that question because one of the things I do in my work is to ask… we set intentions to our work. I’d say that for now, the main intention and I don’t mean to be vague, but the main intention that I have, constantly I have to come back to is opening my heart. It’s really hard to … and that takes different forms, but it’s really hard to open my heart not just to other people, but to myself, so there are times that I’ll make a mistake or I’ll think of something I could have done better or something like that.
To stay open to that and say, “You know what? I’m okay and everything is okay and things will continue to move forward,” and that intention, boy that’s just a lifelong practice.
Female: Generally, I start my day, I really ask for peace of mind and the openness and the willingness to accept what I encounter and to try to approach it with some kind of humility and some kind of compassion for myself as well, because I think sometimes, it’s really easy to be reactive and there’s a lot that gets thrown at us. At the same time, if we miss something because we’re too busy focusing on business, then we might miss something really special, so I try to slow down and I try to reach out to others and I try to be grateful.
Female: At night, all of this sense of who we are and what we are in the world disappears and breaks apart and splinters off, and we experience the dream world, and it’s messages. When we wake up into the morning, we crawl out into the day and make ourselves all over and new again. In a sense at that moment, we are trying to craft together a piece of the earth. We’re diving deep into that unconscious and bringing up a piece of the earth, a place for people to stand. That’s what my work is about.