John Gunter

Thoughts on Life and Living

“no one understands me”– one of the biggest lies we tell ourselves

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Thank you for all of your feedback on my last post, The inevitable pain of loneliness . . . I am going to write a follow-up to it in a few days.  However, here I wanted to get some of my thoughts down on a different subject that is important to me.LIES_edited

A little while back, I was trying to help a friend in a very difficult situation with his wife.  They are back in America and not even from Atlanta, so I don’t have the advantage of seeing them on a regular basis.   However, it was clear to me, as is the case pretty much with all such instances, that there was blame to be laid on both parties.  The husband was in a rough situation, no doubt.  However, he was also part of the problem.

I tried to help out as best I could.  I tried to sympathize with him on where he had been wronged by his wife, and she clearly had wronged him.  He appreciated this.  However, when I also tried to get him to own some of his fault in the situation, he immediately rebuffed and became angry with me.

“You don’t understand me. . . you don’t understand my situation!” he literally yelled at me.  When I asked him who does understand his situation and even tried to point him to others whom I thought could help them out, he then let me know that NO ONE understood his situation.

I am not married.  I did not completely understand his situation.  However, my friend had fallen into what is clearly one of the biggest and most detrimental lies you [Read more…]

Glory in the Grind – contentment in the midst of “one of those days”

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John Gunter on his primary form of transportation
Left: me in happier times. . . Right: today at the shop

Today has been one of THOSE days.  You know the kind.  We all have them.  Nothing cataclysmically bad happened, but everything was just kind of off.

I woke up sick.  Nothing like a tumor or anything, just your garden variety flu like symptoms.  Not bad enough for me to find a doctor, but bad enough to make life really uncomfortable.  This seems to happen a lot to us foreigners living over here in Asia.  We will get a cough and it just won’t go away.  Months on end, we cough.  One day we notice it is gone, but we don’t really know why.  It seems like that is what is happening to my body right now.

I woke up to a broken clothes dryer.  It’s been broken for over a week, but today was the day the repairman was to come.  At least they said he would either be here yesterday or today, so I was hoping today would be the day he would actually show up (tomorrow begins a holiday and then all bets are off).

Thankfully he did get here today.  He arrived at noon, after telling me he would be here in the morning.  He fixed it and left, but there went a large chunk of this day, including a canceled lunch appointment.

I went out and got on my motorbike only [Read more…]

An embarrassing blunder and a vital life lesson

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John Gunter, Patrick Ku, and others in Asia
Patrick Ku and I in the midst of one of my many awkward cultural blunders (details below)!

I cannot begin to count how many times I have made cultural and life mistakes while living in Asia.  Pat Ku, upon moving to Asia gave me this advice regarding Chinese culture and the language. . . “however you do things/say things in America, do the opposite in Asia and the Chinese language”.  Though a little overly simplistic, it was solid advice just the same.

As a result of this, I have come to embrace one of the most helpful life lesson I have learned by living and working cross-culturally.  Whenever you enter a new environment, whether it be a new job, school, family, or in my case, country, FIRST notice what the local customs and norms are, THEN respond in all situations essentially in the same manner. This is THE fundamental skill in cultural and life adaptation.

This might sound as if I am endorsing conformity.  Nothing could be further from the truth.   At least not at a core values level.  Your values will stand firm and keep you grounded where ever you go in life.  However, styles, culture, and general ways people carry themselves around others will be different everywhere you go.  In order to be heard [Read more…]

Cherishing life through three realities from this summer

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John Gunter and family on the Alaskan cruise
Here is the entire Gunter clan on our Alaskan cruise.

This summer was a massive time of travel for me. 4 different countries, 13 different cities, and 15 different beds within a 5 week window.  It was a good and profitable time, but physically demanding. Throw in the fact that my time in the States (outside of our Alaskan cruise as a family) was FILLED with work meetings and the result is me still stuck in recovery mode here in Asia.

The time, though, was a blessing on many fronts. The work went very well, but more so, it was a wonderful time of being with my family and a few close friends. In addition to the Alaskan cruise that all 15 of us undertook (click here for the post I wrote during the cruise), we had other times of fellowship and celebration as a family of Mom and Dad’s 50th wedding anniversary.

As I sit here in this steamy coffeehouse in Asia reflecting over this time, though, three realities come to mind most about the summer that draws me to want to live a life of greater purpose, joy, and intentionality.

  1. Whales are awesome and Alaska is beautiful – I won’t go off on this much here since I have already written a post about it, but I did want to say this. . . whales are awesome.  On multiple occasions we had whales swim past our ship.  One day, we took a smaller boat on a whale watching excursion in Juneau.  Seeing mammals the size of school buses swimming in a pack of 9 within 20 yards of our boat was incredible.  I messed up in trying to take a picture and instead got 2 seconds of video footage (see the “video” below).  Probably won’t get me a Pulitzer Prize or anything, but I hope you enjoy this video captured on my iPad.  Not much here in the way of purpose and intentionality, but [Read more…]

The opposite of love (and purpose) is. . . indifference.

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The-Lumineers
Album cover for “The Lumineers”

As is the case with most new music I get, the first thing I did upon downloading the Lumineers album was put on my headphones and listened to the lyrics.  One of the lines of the song “Stubborn Love” stood out to me.  It is a phrase I have heard much over the past few years.  Great line.  Packed with truth.  The line. . . 

“It’s better to feel pain, than nothing at all; the opposite of love is indifference.”

Intuition would normally points you to the opposite of the word “love” to be that of “hate”.  I assume school children the world over would get counted off if they claimed the antonym of “love” is “indifference”.  However, I do believe there is great truth in this.  The opposite of love is indifference, not hate.

This rings true in marriage.  I don’t have to be married to know that a great way to screw up your marriage is to grow indifferent towards your spouse.  If they get affectionate, you brush them aside.  If they get angry, [Read more…]

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