Wonder And Awe

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.
-Comedian Lucille Ball

Lots of words have been written about staying young. Some people say age is all about attitude. This idea has been humorously captured by the famous baseball player, Satchel Paige, in his quote “Age is mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter”. Some people also talk about being “young at heart”. I don’t think we should obsess about being young. As Bob Dylan once sang, “Those not busy being born are busy dying”. Sometimes our attempts to be young are little more than immature behavior. There’s nothing more pathetic than a man or woman my age trying to act like they are twenty. As we grow older we should trade our immaturity for wisdom. If there is a quality we should strive for, it is not youthfulness, it is being childlike by living our life with a sense of wonder. One of the pitfalls of aging is that we often become cynical and we can no longer be awed by anything. If I end up physically old, wise, and with a childlike sense of wonder and awe, I will be happy with myself. Never lose your openness to awe and wonder. Fight your cynicism. When nothing impresses you or causes you to be lost in the moment, you are already dead. Life is tough and it can sometimes feel boring. Every day there are the chores of life and the demands of making a living. Don’t let making a living, however, replace living your life with childlike wonder and awe. Be open to the extraordinary within the ordinary. Pay attention and be present when moments of wonder and awe reveal themselves to you.

Zen And Balance

Zen is doing what you are doing and being where you are. It sounds simple but in reality is quite challenging. Zen is also about balance. This is also very challenging. Keeping the different parts of our lives in balance is like spinning five or six plates on the end of long sticks all at the same time. Getting enough rest, doing enough but not too much work, being with others and being with self, being active and being still, enjoying life and being present to the sacred, knowing when to go and when to stop, when to speak and when to be silent, is a daily challenge. If your life feels out of balance, it probably is. Life moves fast. Sometimes you must slow down to keep it all from spinning out of control. You can't be present to the moment if you meeting yourself coming and going. Stop now, close your eyes and simply breathe for a moment. Refresh yourself. Do this throughout your day. Go home at the end of this work day (if you are not already there) and practice slowing down. Pay attention to your own breath and remember it is the source of your life. Be where you are....

Remembering My Dad

On this day four years ago my father died. He took his last breath just as I was walking into his hospital room for what turned out to be my last visit. I still think of him frequently and I see him every morning when I look in the mirror. I am my father’s son. I look just like him, although he did not have a beard, and I have inherited much of his solitary nature and personality. Like many fathers and sons we did not always get along. Over the years, however, we both mellowed and looking back I think we were closest during the last year or two of his life when he suffered from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases while residing in a nursing home. Even in those last days he had a wry smile and quiet sense of humor that some people think I also have. It is difficult to think of my father without also thinking of my sons. As they grow older and approach their middle age, how do they see me? Do they have a negative attitude towards me as I often did towards my father when I thought he had no clue and I knew everything? Although my father was an uneducated man, in the end he had a quiet dignity and he died a good death. I delivered the eulogy at his funeral and spoke words I never could have imagined in my rebellious youth. Most of us do not appreciate our parents. It is usually in their old age and our increased wisdom that we see them in a positive light. I look favorably on both my parents now even though I still don’t understand everything about them. In my own struggles as a human being I sometimes reflect on their struggles as they lived their lives and it gives me a more compassionate view of them.

Get On With It

“I take a simple view of living. It is to keep your eyes open and get on with it”.
-Actor Laurence Olivier

Life is complicated enough without us making it more so. However, if you live one day at a time and live in the moment of each day as fully as you can, life is greatly simplified and it is much easier to “get on with it”. Living in the moment is only possible when our eyes are open and we are awake. Too many of us walk through our lives asleep. When our eyes are open and we are awake, we can be more mindful of the moments of our lives. If you pay attention to life in general, and your own life in particular, much will be revealed that you might otherwise miss. Pay attention to what goes on around you. Notice things. Take nothing for granted. See everything as a gift. Simple things are important. I came into work today all happy because it’s Friday and tomorrow I will be spending the day with my granddaughter. I hung up my coat and attempted to boot up my computer. Nothing happened. Since I am not exactly what you would call a technical guy, I had a co-worker look at it to see if the problem was simply user error on my part. For once in my life it wasn’t. The power source was out and I had to call a real computer guy to fix it. One little power source brought my morning to a complete halt. When the problem was fixed and the electricity flowed through my computer, I had a new appreciation for Thomas Edison and computer gifts. It was a simple problem with a simple solution but when it was fixed I felt a simple joy and much gratitude. Now I can get on with my life.

Our True Selves

We must try to discover the real person we are. From time to time something authentic shows through in moments when we are carried away by such joy that we forget who might be looking at us, when we are unself-conscious in moments of extreme pain, or when we have a deep sense of sadness of wonder. At these moments we see something of the true person that we are. But often after we have seen ourselves we turn away because we do not want to confront this person face to face. Nevertheless this is the only real person there is in us.
-Orthodox Bishop Anthony Bloom

Who are all of us…really? We show up in different parts of our lives in a variety of costumes acting out the role we play for that scene. All of us go through life wearing a variety of masks usually because we fear rejection from our fellow actors. I shared once that every time two people meet there are six people in the room. For each person there is the person they think they are, the person they really are, and the person the other person thinks they are. When the masks and the costumes are stripped away, who is the real person? We can spend much of our lives in the company of the same people and the mystery of who we are is never truly revealed. I have long believed that the person we are when we are alone is a good indicator of who we really are. When there are no roles to play, no games to play, and no expectations on how we should act, we are usually most comfortable being our true selves. The whole goal of life and our individual spiritual journeys is to find our true selves. Our true self is who we are in God. The Buddhists call this “finding the face you had before your parents were born”. The true self is the real self, the unmasked self, the pure essence of who we truly are. It is our original nature and the part of us that many believe is eternal.

Take A Leap Of Faith

When you get to the end of all the light you know and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen. Either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.
-Physicist Edward Teller

When was the last time you took a risk? When was the last time you took a leap of faith and jumped into the darkness? I must admit that I am not generally a risk taker. Temperamentally I am way too cautious. I don’t usually go where angels fear to tread and I tend to think before I do anything. This might be a safe way to live but it can also slow one’s progress and limit one’s opportunities. Sometimes it is fear that holds us back and other times it is a lack of confidence. Occasionally we all suffer from a fear of success. Yesterday I met with two people who are currently reading and selecting what they think are the best writing I’ve done. The three of us are working together to publish my first book. It has taken me years to get to this point despite much encouragement. I took a small risk asking my friends to help me. They are busy people with their own lives. What if they said no? Fortunately for me they both said yes. While we were talking yesterday one of them said, “You never know. This could be huge”. That almost scared me a little. What if I am actually a success? How will I handle that? Being successful has never been a problem for me because I have never really felt successful in my life. In some ways this effort to actually publish a book is a step into the darkness for me if for no other reason than I have never done it before and I don’t really know what I am doing. My fear is lessoned by the support and encouragement of people who believe in me. I am a little afraid that I might not be ordinary. I lived most of my life in the comfort zone of just being an ordinary person. What about you? Do you fear your own potential and greatness? Are you hiding behind a false humility that masks a potential gift? If so, step out of the darkness and take a leap of faith.

Stages Of Life

At eighty I believe I am a far more cheerful person than I was at twenty or thirty. I most definitely would not want to be a teenager again. Youth may be glorious but it is also painful to endure. Moreover, what is called youth is not youth; it is rather something like premature old age.
-Writer Henry Miller

I am not yet eighty but I am a long way from twenty or thirty. I don’t know if I am happier in my sixties than I was in my twenties or thirties. I have always found happiness elusive. Usually the best I can do is to feel reasonably content. I can say one thing with a fair amount of certainty. I would rather be sixty than twenty. Looking back there were too many parts of my life I found very difficult and I would not like to relive them. In my current age I feel a sense of relief that many of life’s challenges are behind me. Daily life is still challenging and I don’t know what lies ahead but in general I am more relaxed and more comfortable in my own skin. When one gets older you think more and more about less and less. You have a greater appreciation for life’s simple joys and it doesn’t take much to make you happy. You are past the stage where you want to build an empire and most would rather have less. A simple life has great appeal. Perhaps it is in this simplicity, when you spend more time letting go than gathering, that people find the greatest happiness. Occasionally I do wish I had my sixty year old life experience and wisdom in a twenty year old body. However, that might be a dangerous combination. You cannot experience old age without doing time as a young person. In all fairness, every stage of life has it’s joys and sorrows, it’s challenges and rewards, and it’s pros and cons. If you are lucky you will experience it all. Some of us have old souls when we are young while others are young at heart in bodies that are falling apart. Happiness and age are in the mind and in our attitudes. As I once said in a previous daily thought, “When we are young our bodies drag our minds around, when we are old our minds drag our bodies around”. Think about it. If you are young I advise you to live well now while you still have the energy.