Grown-ups, Have Your Dreams Come True?

Guest blog post by John Prin

“The greatest despair is to not become the person you were meant to be.”

--Soren Kierkegaard

Ramona had a dream. A big dream. During one of my seminars, she declared, “My dream is to prevent any animal on the planet from ever being harmed.” Her certainty and clarity got everybody’s attention, as it did mine. But she was too busy with life, taking care of three growing children, running a busy household, and working part time at a supermarket as well as volunteering on weekends. How could she possibly realize such a huge dream?

We all dream about the best life we want to live. Many of us imagine great deeds and larger-than-life goals. Almost any functioning adult, it turns out, faces a primal, deep-rooted quandary that will define their identity:

“Why am I alive?”

“What is my purpose in life?”

“What am I going to do about it?”

In our minds, we may aspire to lofty achievements and significant acts of service that will inspire our fellow human beings. We may envision striving for a grand purpose, a destiny we are meant to fulfill. Yet . . .

A vast number of us learn that life gets in the way. Quite simply, we confront obstacles and life’s demands, so we eventually settle for less and move on. Where do those dreams of making a difference go? When we postpone our destiny, is a happy ending impossible?

Some people avoid the responsibility of answering these three questions by working hard at unsatisfying jobs to provide a living for their family, while others escape into the abuse of drugs and alcohol or depression and apathy, to cite a few responses. My seminar titled My Life Dream and Destiny occurred during a national conference for health care professionals. 1 I asked the thirty-five audience members: “Have any of you defined your dream in life and are you working to make it come true? Or, is your destiny on hold waiting for you to act?”

That’s when Ramona, a woman in her 40s, raised her hand and declared her big dream. Fellow participants affirmed its idealism, its simplicity and universal scope, but wondered how a goal so lofty could ever be achieved. We discussed how significant progress toward a goal that huge for one person would itself be a worthy lifetime project. One participant suggested narrowing “animals” to more manageable limits: from dogs, to cats and other pets, to horses, and so on.

“So, Ramona,” I asked, “what steps are you taking to make your dream come true?”

“None right now,” she responded. “But that’s why I’m here: to come up with a plan and do something about it.”

Ramona reminisced about being raised on a farm and her childhood love of animals. The passion in her voice aroused us. I asked, “In what ways could you rekindle that same passion as a mature adult?” She drew a blank. 

One group member suggested, “Sounds like you know why you are alive and what your purpose is.” Another proposed that she could volunteer at a local humane society where injured or abused animals need care. Ramona liked that idea, however, “My goal is to prevent animals from being abused and mistreated in the first place.” Still another member offered to help create a website to promote her cause. She scribbled notes.

Group members raised the issue of priorities: What activities would Ramona have to put aside to make available more time in her schedule to invest the energy her big dream required. People suggested new choices of activities such as encouraging neighbors and friends to join her, using social media to spread the word, different ways to raise money, etc. Ramona acknowledged that her husband and kids no longer needed the level of attention she’d once devoted to them years earlier. “A lot of years have piled up behind me, and the ones ahead are getting fewer and fewer. I’m going crazy every day thinking about it.”

“The purpose of life is to live a life of purpose.”

--Poet Robert Byrne

Whenever people focus on positive and authentic goals that matter deeply to them their energy elevates and new priorities become clearer. I offered a three-phase model intended to help a person “unleash the most complete version of their authentic self—to embrace “the True You self” that strives to make one’s dream come true for the benefit of others.” 2

Dream: An ideal that nourishes and challenges me.

Purpose: My motivation to do, and be, my best for others.

Meaning: Why my dream, and my life, matter.

The distinctions between “dream,” “purpose,” and “meaning” set off some animated comments. As individuals, we can choose and develop our dream based on our strongest interests and highest values. Purpose stimulates us to arrange the roles and responsibilities of our job/finances, family/spouse/children, and citizenship functions in society that will facilitate our dream.

Meaning is the set of emotions that result; it’s what happens when the benefits and rewards for others and ourselves accrue from acting freely and authentically.

For Ramona, that meant a solid answer to the question, “Does my life matter?” She replied with a resounding, “Yes.” A happier family life could also follow because she would be acting consistently with her authentic dream and celebrating when each of her objectives and goals made headway.

Meaning is the elixir of life that human beings seek and desire, the fulfillment of one’s life lived with passion and purpose. Meaning can be experienced as inner joy even in the midst of outer trials and severe circumstances. Meaning results from accomplishing tasks and goals which achieve a broader purpose; it follows from expressing one’s gifts to the world, and from serving something larger than oneself (a cause, a population, a life mission). 3

“The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance, and then even small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.” 

--Oprah Winfrey

John Prin leading a seminar.

When aligned, a person’s dream, purpose, and meaning generate the reality of knowing who we are and why we are alive. We live out the reason for getting up in the morning and moving through the day. When legitimate daily demands of competing priorities arise, like careers or parenting, we find fresh energy to keep going.

Ask yourself: “Is my destiny calling me? Is it time to go deep within myself—beyond being a mom/dad and wife/husband and employee/boss—and nurture the “me” who is an artist, inventor, explorer, entrepreneur, leader, or pioneer?” Expressing that identity will make possible the finest moments of being alive—as one who knows who you are and why you are alive.

“With optimism and a firm belief in a positive future, you can throw yourself into the service of that which is larger than you are.”

--Martin Seligman, Founder of Positive Psychology

1. Florida Inner Circle Networking Conference, Fort Lauderdale February 2008

2. Roadmap to Lifelong Recovery Guidebook, © John Prin, 2008 PESI 2008

3. Authentic Happiness, © Martin E. P. Seligman, Jan 5, 2004 Atria Books

Thinking About The Future

You can tell a lot about a topic by Googling the words >>quotes about topic<< and seeing how much people have said about it. "The Future" is one of those subjects people think about quite a bit, and about which much has been said. Even though we're urged to live in the present, it's a pretty big challenge. It's not entirely healthy to neglect the future altogether.

While going through some notes I came across these two quotes about the future which connected with me. The Lapham quote jumped out at me because I'm currently reading Mark Twain's autobiography. Twain gave instructions that it not be published till one hundred years in the future after his death. He wanted to be blunt and totally frank in the recording of his life observations, and did not want his words to be injurious to anyone still living, or their children. He figured one hundred years was a fairly safe distance.

“Twain said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” ~ Lewis Lapham

"Nothing ages so quickly as yesterday's vision of the future" ~ Richard Corliss

These quotes set me thinking there may be other thoughts about the future that would make good food for thought today. So I decided to see what I could mine from the 1607 quotations about the future gathered at Goodreads. Here's a smattering.

“Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.” ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“The future depends on what you do today.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” ~ Malcolm X

“The future is uncertain but the end is always near.” ~ Jim Morrison

"Drink like there's no tomorrow and pretty soon there's no tomorrow." ~ Author Unknown

“The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.” ~ Nikola Tesla

“It's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems.” ~ Nicholas Sparks, Dear John

“The past is made out of facts... I guess the future is just hope.” ~ Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies

“The past was gone and the future had yet to unfold, and he knew he should focus his life on the present…yet his day-to-day existence suddenly struck him as endless and unbearable.” ~ Nicholas Sparks, The Choice

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ~ Søren Kierkegaard


Speaking of the future, as I write this there's an opening reception at the Duluth Art Institute this evening that you won't want to miss if you're here in the Twin Ports. Starts at 5:00 p.m., about ten hours from now.

Meantime, life goes on .... all around you. Embrace it.

The Existential Hero/Anti-Hero Cool Hand Luke

“You made me like I am…. When does it end? What do you got in mind for me? What do I do now?” ~Luke Jackson

For a variety of reasons, existentialism became one of the prevailing philosophies of mid-Twentieth century. It is a philosophical view with fuzzy edges, as writers as varied as Kierkegaard, Sartre and Camus bring differing perspectives to the equation. Nevertheless, at its core there are several common defining features: a sense of personal alienation, that our life situation is absurd, and the sense of calling to live authentically.

One definition refers to modern man's situation as "a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world."

Merriam-Webster offers this definition: "A chiefly 20th century philosophical movement embracing diverse doctrines but centering on analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad."

When Cool Hand Luke was released in 1967, Existentialism was a prevailing wind on college campuses and in popular culture. Hence, the film demonstrates, without preaching, the fundamental essence of this worldview.

SPOILER ALERT

Luke Jackson (Paul Newman) is a combination existential hero/anti-hero and Christ-figure in this film. As the opening credits roll we see a drunken Luke cutting the tops off of parking meters in the middle of the night, not to rob them but simply out of his sense of boredom, or for whatever meaningless reason. The rest of the film is about his time in prison. Luke has one quest here, to escape this meaningless existence. I see the overall film as a metaphor for Sartre's No Exit or Camus's The Stranger.

Like all good stories the film is a sequence of scenes which serve to define Luke's character for the viewer. His "never give up" attitude is demonstrated early in his fight with Dragline (George Kennedy). And though his "achievements" win the admiration of his bunkmates or "co-workers" in this hard labor camp, he is non-plussed about all of it, as A. Hardt points out in this 2011 forum discussion:

Through my multiple viewings of Cool Hand Luke, my analysis of the message of the film has switched back and forth between an existentialist one, and one of determinism. The existentialist references are the most common within the film; Luke is constantly discrediting the meaning in his actions. After Captain lists Luke’s significant war achievements, Luke responds by saying, “I was just passing time.” Also, when Dragline consults Luke about the 50 eggs in an hour bet, Luke says about the extremely difficult task, “Yeah well, it would be something to do.” From these and other examples, it seems that Luke has come to believe that his life is inherently meaningless, and in order to create meaning, he must give himself seemingly impossible tasks to complete to the amazement of those watching. When the chain gang is ordered to pave an entire road in one day, Luke recognizes the meaninglessness of this menial task, and by doing so he is able to accept it and even make the task into a game for the other workers, thereby achieving a sort of satisfaction.

Final showdown at the film's end.

In my recent watching of Cool Hand Luke I noted once more that in addition to being something of an existential hero/anti-hero, it's very clear that Luke is also something of a Christ-figure. In one of the reviews at imdb.com the writer points out that director Stuart Rosenberg consciously viewed the character of Luke in this manner, hence the deliberate use of Christian imagery in the film, most strikingly after the egg-eating scene where Luke is lying on the table, hands outstretched. The other prisoners have left his side, amplifying with a slightly long lingering shot the sense of Christ's abandonment at the Cross.

Though at first he was just another prisoner, his escapades serve to help give meaning and hope to his fellow prisoners, even if they seemingly mean nothing to him. In the end, like Jesus, he is abandoned by God (Matthew 27:46) and betrayed by a friend.

Peering through the existential lens we note that Luke is a non-conformist who is authentically himself. He is not like the others who, though discontent, accept their boundaries, their circumstances. Luke is a man of action, not resignation. Tragically his aspiration is impossible to achieve yet he pursues it till the end, hence his final despair.

There are plenty of great moments in this film. If you haven't seen it in a while, it may be time to re-visit this memorable classic.

Internal Time Consciuosness

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
~ T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

This morning, as with so many others, I woke a few minutes before my alarm. Yesterday, when I woke there were eight seconds left on my alarm and I marvelled at this strange and fascinating phenomenon of time consciousness and our internal clocks.

Today it brought to mind one of my philosophy professors at Ohio University, Dr. Mikunis. The first essay we studied was Kierkegaard and the Leap of Faith. I remember sitting at a table dissecting the concept with Dr. M and other students.

My second year at O.U., this being 1971, I lived in the co-ed Experimental Dorm on the South Green. I believe it was an attempt by the school to pander to the laxity of the times while simultaneously devising a way to keep students in school in order to collect tuition. (Speculation.) One feature of the Experimental Dorm was this: students could develop their own class curricula if they could get a professor to sign on as sponsor.

There was a certain seriousness among some student/professor relationships in this regard, though I remember some professors would nod an O.K. to anything proposed. The class I developed, with eight or ten peers, was a class on dreams. Each week one of us was to present a paper on dreams and dreaming from a different point of view. One student presented Freud, another presented Edgar Cayce, etc. We even brought a guest presenter from Washington, D.C. one week. The last class Dr. Mikunis presented his views.

Dreams had always been a fascination for me from my earliest years. In seventh grade I decided to start a "dream diary." It seemed that my dream life was more interesting than my day-to-day existence, and less predictable. I remember my first recorded dream had Tim Conway in it, from a TV show that was popular at the time.

All the way through high school I kept up with this diary, extensively developing the ability to recall up to four or five complete dream sequences.... not at first, but over time.

Dr. M changed all that. He presented to us the ideas of Husserl and phenomenology in such a manner that it seemed my dream life was no longer relevant. What is relevant, he said, is the "now" experience. My dreams last night were part of the past by the next morning, hence they had no importance.

Truth is, Husserl's concepts about phenomenology and the consciousness of time are difficult to grasp and might have been misunderstood. As I review some of Husserl's ideas today, I note the concept of retention, that things may be past but are retained in the present by our memory and consciousness, and may thus have present relevance after all. If this were not so, nothing we experience, including the understanding of a basic sentence, would make any sense. This sentence that I am writing making sense only in the context of the fuller blog entry here, which if you lived totally in the now, the only thing you would know is the very last word word word word what whoa where go uhmmm now

None of this explains what time is or what dreams are, or why when I go to Las Vegas my internal clock is still on Central Standard Time so that I wake at 4:00 a.m. no matter what time I crashed the night before.

Husserl's writing is a bit dense, so for more on Edmund Husserl's musings on The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness this is a good starting point. I'd share more on this, but I've run out of time!

Remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life. Make the most of your present as you prepare for the future.

Sherwood Wirt, R.I.P.

“If you have been ordained to write, woe to you if you put everything else first.” ~ Sherwood Wirt

I was reading the Passages section of Christianity Today last night and came across the following notation:

Died >> Sherwood Eliot Wirt, Christian journalist and author, on November 8 in Seattle. ‘Woody Wirt’ was a longtime associate of Billy Graham and founding editor of Decision magazine.

He was also an author of 28 books, including one that in 1983 pretty much changed my life. That book was You Can Tell the World, subtitled New Directions for Christian Writers.

Wirt had been, among other things, a journalist. One great feature of being a journalist is getting the opportunity to throw a lot of questions at some fairly significant people. Wirt, for example, had encounters with heavies such as H. G. Wells and Albert Einstein. He also did C. S. Lewis’ last interview.

In the interview with Lewis he asked, "Will you tell young writers something about style?" Lewis said, "Style? Say exactly what you mean, and when you have said it, be sure you have said exactly that. That is style."

Wirt’s style was direct. His hefty serving of advice for young writers, with no mincing, had me hooked from the first punch. My frame of mind was such that Wirt's advice had the authority of the word of God. This was not just another book for me. At that time I truly felt writing to be a calling. I had "failed" as a missionary and my interpersonal skills and circumstances did not suit me for pastoral work. During a weeklong vacation at a private cabin in Portage, Wisconsin, I had an epiphanal moment in which, for me, writing became a calling.

My first published article six years earlier resulted in letters from three continents thanking me for what I had written. Only five hundred words, but these letters claimed their lives were changed. I experienced first hand the power of the written word.

I was only too aware of my limitations and lack of experience. Thus, when I picked up Wirt's book, I knew he was dead on. His message resonated because he passionately believed that what he was saying needed to be said. If we're to produce great work, we must know what great work looks like. The only way is to be a reader of great works.

“Darwin’s Origin of Species, Marx’ and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, Kierkegaard’s attacks on Hegel, Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Kafka’s The Trial, Camus’ The Plague and others.

“These books, the most influential of our time, deal primarily with the scientific challenge and loss of meaning in a mechanistic society. There has been no Christian work written since the novels of Dostoevsky that can honestly be said to match them in boldness, in documentation, in breadth and scope, in vision, in appeal to the human spirit, or in grasp of truth. C.S. Lewis is the only Christian entry in the field. The opportunities are wide open, and there is plenty of room at the top.”

A little further along, Wirt again urged serious young writers to read the classics. “The author of the 70’s who will really influence his day will be a person who knows the English language and the writers who have mastered it. Journalism courses are no substitute for a grasp of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Bunyan, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Robert Browning, or even Ernest Hemingway. To live in the twentieth century and to understand it, one must also know Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. There is no easy way to master such men; if we haven’t read them, sooner or later our bluff will be called. And may I add that there is very little God can do with a lazy Christian writer.”

I'd been given my marching orders. With this admonition I was pushed into the literature, listening to classics while painting apartments, while commuting, whenever I was not able to sit at a typewriter and pour myself out. I considered myself a serious young writer, and took these admonitions to heart. For better or for worse, though I may not have significantly changed the world, the skills I developed help me provide for my family. And the rest of my story is as yet unwritten...

One takeaway from Wirt's book bears repeating: If you want to change the world, and I earnestly desired it, you begin by changing yourself.

As for Mr. Wirt, thank you for helping light my torch that I might in some small way give light to another generation of young writers seeking to hold back tomorrow's darkness with courage and truth.

Of Conflict and Poverty

Could we still fight for peace if our army did not exist?

I woke with that thought today. It was from the dream I was having, which evaporated without a trace while the thought lingered.

Will we ever have peace in this lifetime? Like poverty, the underlying forces (or is it over girding structures?) creating conflict are neglected.

The irony is that instead of working for peace, many just accept conflict as a given so why fight it? This is essentially a fatalistic acceptance of Necessity as a final value. That is, what is is, and we must resign ourselves to it.

But when we turn to hunger and poverty, do we just accept it as a given? Is Necessity right? Jesus said "the poor you will always have with you" so do we just let it be?

According to Simon Scharma, that is exactly what the British did on two significant occasions. During the Irish potato famine, there were some in the government who argued that the government should not intervene, that when God had accomplished His will He would bring an end to the famine. A few decaders later the identical argument was used to remain at arm's length during mass starvation in colonial India.

What madness.

One of the influential writers in my personal life from the century now past was Jacques Ellul, a French lawyer, pastor and author of more than forty books. Ellul had studied Marx before his conversion to Christianity. He had seen his father imprisoned and die at the hands of the Nazis. He experienced first hand injustice and saw much that we in America only read about in World War II France. His own strongest personal influences were Luther, Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, whose dialectical approach led him to abandon Calvinism.

Here are a two passages from an essay called A Synopsis and Analysis of the Thought and Writing of Jacques Ellul by James Fowler. The first paragraph is a direct quote from Ellul regarding being in the world but not of it. Ellul's influence in my personal views has been immeasurable.

"The Bible tells us that the Christian is in the world, and that there he must remain. The Christian has not been created in order to separate himself from, or live aloof from the world. ...if the Christian is necessarily in the world, he is not of it. This means that his thought, his life, and his heart are not controlled by the world, and do not depend upon the world, for they belong to another Master. Thus, since he belongs to another Master, the Christian has been sent into this world by this Master, and his communion with his Master remains unbroken, in spite of the 'world' in which he has to live."...the Christian finds that he is not confronted by the material forces of the world but by its spiritual reality. Because he is in communion with Jesus Christ he has to fight not against flesh and blood but against 'the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness.' At the same time this communion assures him that he does not belong to the world, that he is free from the fatality of the world which is moving towards death, and, as a result of this liberation by grace, he can fight against the spiritual realities of the world."

A little further along Fowler writes:

Ellul's thesis is that the natural man is incapable of seeing the spiritual reality in which he is struggling (cf. I Cor. 2;14). He only sees the surface issues of social, political and economic problems, and he attempts to work and find solutions with the methods of technique, and in accord with moral standards. The world of modern society is not capable of preserving itself or of finding remedies for its spiritual situation. The more so-called "progress" man makes, the more he is aware of the inadequacy of human solutions, which all fail, one after another, and only increase the difficulties in which he lives.

For the complete essay, a great introduction to this perceptive man, check it out here. Today, what are you doing to make a difference?

Lenny Bruce: Challenging the Status Quo

The term status quo is a Latin term meaning "the present state of affairs." To maintain the status quo is to keep things as they are.

Many of history’s most significant names were at odds with the status quo. Martin Luther was one of a long string of those who challenged Roman authority, resulting in the Reformation, which altered the balance of power in Europe. Kierkegaard passionately challenged people to awaken from their status quo stupor and choose “life.” Nietzsche raised his voice against the decadence that in his day was status quo as well as the church that in its acquiescence to things as they were had become an irrelevant voice for these present times. In point of fact, the Christian faith was founded by an anarchist who stood against the powers of his own era, both political and ecclesiastical.

I recently stumbled across a copy of Frank Kofsky’s bio of Lenny Bruce called Lenny Bruce: The Comedian as Social Critic. Comic Lenny Bruce could easily be characterized as an entertainer who was persecuted simply for pushing the boundaries and being ahead of his time. According to Kofsky, he was much more than that. His troubles came from upsetting the status quo.

Though often in line with the liberal causes of the day, his fight was not against conservatives. In point of fact he frequently pulled up liberals’ skirts to show their dirty undergarments as well. Liberal Dems might wish to claim him, but his real stance was against all of them. “I don’t get involved with politics… because I know that to be a [successful] politician you must be what all politicians have always been: chameleonlike.”
For Lenny, who was repeatedly prosecuted on obscenity charges, “Better Dead Than Red” and similar ultra-patriotic slogans were the real obscenities. He was appalled when ultra-Right ideologues condemned U-2 pilot Gary Powers for not taking his own life when his plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. Talk is cheap when it’s someone else’s life on the line.

Lenny’s life, Kofsky asserts, was “a wholesale assault, as opposed to a piecemeal reformist modification, on the status quo.” But this posture carried a heavy price. Harassed and prosecuted till he could no longer find work, punched down to the gutter, victimized by trumped up charges, perpetually in court, anathema to the establishment… because he dared to speak, to challenge the status quo. In the end, bankrupt. In the end, Lenny Bruce was dead.

What’s status quo that Lenny might attack were he alive today? I think the continued machinations of our political parties would remain under his microscope. Political Correctness would give him offense. The Religious Right, though it has in recent years taken a hit as witnessed by the nomination of McCain in the GOP, would be in the crosshairs. Then there’s that weirdness in the religious TV evangelist wilderness that would certainly take a hit. Check out the digs on some of our mega-famous Christian leaders and it’s hard to imagine them giving it all up for a camel’s hair garment or locust treats.

Here’s another Lenny bit.

First convict: I’m a strung out junkie. I started smoking pot, that’s the way I started. By the way, cellmate, how did you get to be a murderer of eighteen people and the horrible gambler that you are?
Second convict: I started gambling with bingo in the Catholic church.
First convict: I see.

And how about this political jab? Change the name and the same story could be on last night's news.

“I grew up in New York, and I was hip as a kid that I was corrupt and that the mayor was corrupt. I have no illusions. You believe politicians, what they say? It’s a device to get elected. If you were to follow Stevenson from New York to Alabama you would s*&% from the changes. It’s like two syndicates, man… but morals don’t enter into it.”
Oh well. Another election coming. There’s still no third party candidate with a ghost of a chance. The power brokers have seen to that.

Dylan wrote a tribute to Lenny that begins, “Lenny Bruce is dead" noting that "he fought a war on a battlefield where every victory hurt."

I can’t say I agree with everything Lenny said or stood for, but I do agree with his stance. He challenged peoples’ thinking and made them uncomfortable, not for the cheap laugh or to score points, but to help them see their own inconsistencies and their failure to get serious about this serious business called life.

Thought for the Day

Both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard most forcefully rejected the herd mentality. That is, being in agreement with others because it is convenient instead of thinking for yourself and using your own observations is a character flaw and ultimately tragic.