What Is It That You Really Want?

Nothing except possibly love and death are of importance, and even the importance of death is somewhat ephemeral, as no one has yet faxed back a reliable report.
-Naturalist /Writer Gerald Durrell

I recently received an email from a friend telling me about a Zen retreat he had made. When he arrived at the retreat the Zen Master asked the participants what they wanted. He did not ask what they expected. He asked what they wanted. He asked a second time, “What is it you really want”? He wasn’t referring just to the retreat. He was also asking it in the context of their total lives. Looking at your own life and dreams, what is it that you really want? What is really important to you? I think all of us want love in our life. We want someone to love and we also want someone to love us. If you don’t have love in your life everything else loses much of its meaning. The common understanding of success is not a universal desire. Most of us cannot even agree on what success is. Is success based on the size of your paycheck or the happiness and contentment of your life? If the answer is the latter, there are many very successful people with simple lives, minimal possessions, and average paychecks. As most of us live our lives we get hung up on incidentals that aren’t really important in the great scheme of life. I’ve spent much of my work life dealing with people who are upset about something. I’ve talked a lot of people off the ledge. What are really grains of sand and bumps in the road are often seen as boulders and craters. Sometimes we need to stop, breathe, and put things in perspective. There’s not a hidden agenda behind every circumstance in life. More often than not, life is just life. Things happen. A lot of the time they are good things even if we don’t recognize them as such. Occasionally bad things happen. They are not always fair or deserved and usually they are not part of a conspiracy that life is perpetrating against us. Take some time to reflect on what has real value and importance in your life and focus on that. Everyone has problems and heartache. We all have disappointments and things that annoy us. Most of it we need to let go. Our energy needs to be spent on what we value and consider truly important.

Perception Versus Reality

Sometimes I complain because my life seems too busy. I know many people, especially younger people who are still raising their children or trying to go to school, or both, would probably laugh at me for feeling this way. Is my life really too busy? I doubt it. What might seem like a busy life is probably just a full life. My wife and I work full time, we are involved in the lives of our children even though they are adults, and weekends with my granddaughter seem to roll around quickly. Admittedly, my wife is frantic at the moment trying to prepare for my youngest son’s ordination. It’s a little bit like having a daughter and putting on a wedding. Although we’re both excited, we will also be breathing a sigh of relief when it is over. The point I want to make, however, is that the way our life feels is not always the way it is. Most people’s reality is based on perception and perception is not always reality. My personal perception is that my life is too busy. The reality is that my life is actually very simple. I wake up and come to work five days a week. Most work nights I go home, have a simple dinner, change into my evening attire, and I sit in my chair undisturbed. I read the daily newspaper, check my personal emails or maybe Facebook, listen to my favorite music, and often take a nap. At some point I watch a little television or maybe a movie, and then I go to bed. If this is “busy” many people would love to be so busy. Weekends with my granddaughter can seem full but weekends without her are usually wide open with nothing that demands my attention. Mindfulness helps me see reality. When I take the time and make the effort to really be present to the moment I can see life as it really is and not as I perceive it.

Life's Little Annoyances

Today I will live in the moment unless the moment is unpleasant. In that case I will eat a cookie.
-Zen saying

Life is full of little challenges and annoyances. Here are a few of mine. Last week my wife prepared what would have been a tasty dinner cooked in a crock pot. Unfortunately she forgot to turn it on so we came home to a cold crock pot full of raw chicken. My alarm clock makes random decisions about whether or not it will wake my wife and I up on workdays. Fortunately I automatically wake up every two hours with or without a clock. My automatic coffee pot begins brewing my morning coffee at 6:10 AM every workday so it’s ready when I come downstairs. Sometimes, with no warning, it turns itself off and I don’t always realize it till the creamer I am stirring into my coffee does nothing but turn into lumps. My wife’s personal body temperature has nothing in common with the real temperature. She lives in an endless summer. No adjustment of the thermostat in the house or the car is to her satisfaction. Sometimes on the drive to work she will roll down her window to “get some air”. Keep in mind that it is still winter. Going to bed at my house is like camping out. The bedroom window is open, the ceiling fan is on high, and my wife also has a small personal fan on her nightstand that is on all night. At the same time I have my electric blanket on because I’m freezing. If anyone is looking for gift ideas for me, a hat and gloves that I can sleep in would be good. After 38 years of marriage my wife and I still disagree on the proper way to load a dishwasher. Yesterday I forgot to check the settings on my toaster so I ended up with a slice of warm bread. The butter barely melted. It took me three attempts to listen to the Who’s “Quadrophenia” CD because the first two times I fell asleep after just a couple of songs. More often than not it rains when I go to the grocery store and I have to load up the car in the pouring rain. None of these things could be considered a crisis. I categorize them as inconveniences but let’s be honest. These are the kinds of things that occasionally make you want to scream. Usually I don’t scream because screaming hurts my throat. I’m sure each of you could come up with your own little list of things that make you crazy or that annoy you. Maybe I am on your list.

You Can't Please Everyone

I cannot give you the formula for success but I can give you the formula for failure which is try to please everyone.
-Editor Herbert Bayard Swope

Everywhere you turn there is someone who has expectations of you. Even a robust attempt to please everyone will end up mostly in failure. I am not sure I have ever totally pleased anyone. I’ve tried to be a good son, good brother, good husband, good father, good employee, and good leader. The only thing I am confident I have done really well is being a grandfather. I also try to be a good writer since writing is the closest I have ever come to having a gift. At this point in my life I have an attitude that many may find difficult or unacceptable. My current attitude is that I am doing the best I can and if it’s not good enough for you, you can yada, yada, yada. I’m sure most of you can fill in the blanks. I believe most people, including myself, are generally doing the best they can to be all they should be. I don’t expect perfection in myself or others. The older I get, the more tolerant I am of human weakness. Life is difficult, those around us often expect a lot, and our ability to deliver can vary wildly on any given day. Abraham Lincoln once said, “You can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time”. These are wise words from a wise man. I try to put my best self out there as much as I can with the hope I will make a positive difference in the world. Sometimes my less than best self makes an appearance and I hope that he does no harm. My advice is to not worry about pleasing people. I encourage you to focus on doing good. If you do good things you will please more people than you annoy. Actually I think annoying some people is a good thing and I occasionally I take pleasure in doing that.

Spoiler Alert!

I was amazed to recently read that some people who went to see the movie “Lincoln” didn’t know he dies at the end of the movie.

Do No Harm

I am on the verge of finally finishing a book that I feel I began years ago. It is called Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It is a book about mindfulness. This morning I read about the idea of doing no harm. If you don’t know what to do, at least do no harm. This is a good mantra for those who find it difficult to actually practice love, kindness, and compassion. It is similar to the Dalai Lama’s teaching that if you can’t love everyone, at least don’t hurt them. This particular Dalai Lama teaching is something I practice a lot in the work environment. However, I think the idea of doing no harm is a great default mantra when love, kindness, and compassion seem beyond our ability. I like to believe that myself and most other people are driven by idealistic motives. However, my experience is that being optimistic, positive, and caring takes a lot of energy. It is energy well spent but it does take a lot of effort to be a good person. Doing no harm may seem like a negative way to live but I think it can only have positive results. By doing no harm we keep ourselves from unleashing negative energy into the world. The laws of karma would say that by doing no harm, no harm will be done to us. In a perfect world we would all be driven and motivated by care for others and doing good things. In the real world it is challenging to always do these things. I still hope to practice love, kindness, and compassion as much as possible and whenever possible. However, I also know that some days it seems beyond my ability. When I am feeling less than charitable, I hope my backup plan of doing no harm kicks in and keeps me from saying or doing things I will regret later.

My Granddaughter

Earlier this week one of the people who is helping me with my book said, “I want to meet the famous Chloe”. I assume she has found many references to my granddaughter while reading through all the things I have written. It is not unusual for me to encounter people in my office and be asked about Chloe and how she is doing. I have been writing about her since she was only a few weeks old. Chloe is now eight years old and quite the little lady. She is a wonderful blend of childlike wonder and innocence with a Zen like presence to the moment that only a child can have. Her birth and entry into my life was just what I needed. I have never really been what you might consider great with children. I found parenthood very difficult. Chloe and I, however, seemed to bond almost immediately. Maybe it’s because she is a girl and I never had a daughter. From the day she was born, and to this day, I still get excited every time I get to see her. Whatever age she is, I want her to stay that age forever. Compared to her early years she now seems so grown up. We have wonderful conversations whenever she comes to my house for a weekend. Her favorite thing to do with me is what she calls “playing the game”. I am a big fan of the rock band called the Grateful Dead. I have a doll of Jerry Garcia, their lead guitar player. When Chloe comes over she will bring me the doll and say, “You be Jerry, Paw Paw”. We then get on the floor directly in front of my fake wood burning stove. That’s her favorite place to sit because of the warmth it provides. In the same corner are all of the stuffed animals that she leaves at my house. We then “play the game” with Jerry and his animal friends. Chloe is like the director of a movie and I am an actor. It is very important that I stay in character. If I stop being Jerry and start being Paw Paw, she calls me out. My Jerry Garcia doll usually survives all of this but Paw Paw sometimes struggles to get up off the floor.  I'll be "playing the game" this weekend.  Pictured above is one of my favorite photos of Chloe and me.  Jerry is sitting in my lap.

Stop Worrying So Much

Worry is the most natural and spontaneous of all human functions. It is time to acknowledge this, perhaps even learn to do it better.
-Pathologist Lewis Thomas

I know people…one of them is my wife…who worry about everything. Such people are almost incapable of not worrying. It is in their nature to worry about everything, no matter how irrational it may be. I worry about nothing. I sometimes have concerns and on a rare occasion I do get stressed. My wife would say that I don’t worry because I am clueless about reality. She would probably say this about all men. Admittedly, there are probably times I should worry. I do sometimes make molehills out of mountains but I am an eternal optimist who always believes things will get better even when they don’t. What does worry accomplish? It seems like a terrible waste of energy to me and I don’t have any that I can spare. Such energy could be spent seeking a solution to whatever it is that you are worrying about. I think many people worry because they cannot differentiate between an inconvenience and a real crisis. I don’t know exactly why I do not worry. I believe it is because of my belief and experience that God and life has always taken care of me. One way or another I have almost always gotten what I need to live. When I haven’t gotten what I thought I needed, I probably didn’t really need it. As we all know, there are needs and there are wants. Sometimes what I need is not what I want and it might take me a little while to accept that. I wish people, especially chronic worriers, would take all the time and energy they waste on worrying and use it to just think deeply about their life. They might want to reflect on the question, “Why do I worry so much and how many, if any, of my fears have actually come true”? We all need to deal with the challenges that life gives each of us but we would also be doing ourselves a big favor if we could simply relax and live.