My Oldest Son

Today is the 39^th birthday of my oldest son who is also the father of Chloe and my namesake.  Although he has my name, the truth is that he’s more like his mother.  That’s a whole different daily thought.  When I began working at Humana he was only seven years old and in the first grade.  Now he is knocking on the door of middle age and has a few gray hairs to prove it.  He is a single Dad and although Chloe may disagree some days, he’s a very good Dad who works hard.  I found it touching that this past weekend Chloe told my wife and me that she wanted to get her Dad a Mother’s Day card.  We stopped at Walgreen’s where she picked out a card and a few of his favorite snacks.  When my son was born in 1978 I was only 27 years old and married only four years.  This was pre-Humana so at the time I was working for a Heating and Air Conditioning Wholesale company where I waited on customers and unloaded semi-trucks full of air conditioners and furnaces.  Becoming a parent changed my life as it does for most people.  Once you become a parent it never really ends.  The midnight feedings and diaper changes turn into sleepless nights wondering where your teen-ager is and what they doing.  Before you realize it they grow up and leave home for their own life.  Eventually they have a crisis or two and realize they are lucky their parents are still around to help.  It is also a good thing if their parents have a bigger bank account.  Once my son called me in the middle of my evening nap and asked if I could watch Chloe for a few hours.  I responded that I could and asked him where he was.  He replied, “I’m in your driveway”.  Four years after my oldest son was born, his brother came along.  I think both of them would agree they had a pretty good life growing up.  There were lots of Saturday afternoon movies, attending professional wrestling matches, going to the circus, and being on vacations.  Santa Claus never missed a Christmas either.  I never had a daughter but now I have a very special granddaughter.  Sons and daughters and grandchildren grow up quickly so use some of that Zen I am always talking about and enjoy every moment while you can.

 

The Sound Of Our Own Wheels

“Try dying every day to your old self so that you emerge renewed and young again as the tired mind sheds its load”.

-Kristen Zambucka

 

Let’s be honest.  Aren’t we all just a little tired in ways that have nothing to do with a lack of sleep?  I call it being psychically tired.  It’s part being physically tired.  It’s part being emotionally tired. It’s part being spiritually tired.  Life is hard for all of us even if we have lives that many would consider very nice.  Life is sometimes harder for us as individuals because of our own dysfunctional behavior patterns.  The rock band “The Eagles” have a song lyric that goes “Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy”.  This is what many of us do.  If life isn’t challenging enough we drive ourselves crazy with the sound of our own wheels.  In my mind the “sound of our own wheels” is our dysfunctional behavior.  After many years I have realized that people don’t really change much and they are who they are.  This is certainly true with people within my own family, people in the workplace, and with myself.  I can help guide behavior but I can rarely change it in others.  It is the same with me as a person and a leader.  My strengths are my strengths and my weaknesses are my weaknesses.  My weaknesses will never be my strengths.  Our personalities never really change.  We just become older and hopefully better versions of ourselves.  When I had only been married a short period of time, my wife complained to my mother that I was obsessed with music.  My mother told her to relax because I would get over it when I grew up.  42 years later at age 66 I have a music collection that probably contains 3,000 CD’s.  They take up an entire wall of my room at home.  In the next month I will be attending two major rock concerts.  I am still a hippie and still a little rebellious.  We are what we are.  Having said all of this, sometimes I wear myself out with my dysfunctions, my obsessions, and the sound of my own wheels.  Know what I mean?  I would like to sometimes wake up to a new and renewed version of myself.  By the way, my mother is now 87 years old and probably still waiting for me to grow up.        

Can You Be Present Every Moment?

“The solution to our mood problems may not require heroic attempts to change our inner feeling world or the outer world of people, places, and jobs.  Rather, it may simply involve a shift in the way we pay attention to all of them”.

-Mark Williams

 

“The little things we do in life may not seem to have a direct bearing on spirituality; maybe they seem quite unspiritual.  Nevertheless, it is your world you are dealing with; it is your environment.  So the things you are doing should be felt fully rather than rushed through”.

-Chogyam Trunga Rinpoche

 

“As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are.  Otherwise you will miss most of your life.”

-Buddha.

 

As simple as all of this sounds I find it very challenging to do on a day to day basis.  When I think of presence, I think of being totally focused on the moment and the event.  I then ponder, “When has 100% of me ever been anywhere and doing one thing at the same time”?  I often feel like I am going in ten directions and parts of me are trying to catch up with other parts of me.  Most days I have less sleep than I need, so I am often tired, and there seems to be places I need to go and things I need to accomplish.  By the time I get home at the end of the day I feel exhausted from trying to be present all day at work.  My evenings are generally free and unencumbered but I know many of you have child care responsibilities, part time jobs, or school obligations.  I don’t know that I can be conscious or truly present every minute of the day.  Consciousness or presence is a lot like meditation.  When one sits in meditation you strive to be present to the moment and most meditators focus on their breath or a mantra to stay focused.  When you realize that you are drifting you come back to your breath or your mantra in order to return to your center.  You really have to do the same thing when living a busy life.  When you realize that you are chasing your tail or meeting yourself coming and going, pause for a few moments and just breathe.  If you can, stop what you are doing  and use a mantra or a prayer word to refocus and re-enter your own center.  In other words, get your bearings and let your inner GPS re-direct itself.  Ironically, consciousness can be the awareness that you aren’t conscious!  When you are truly in the moment you probably aren’t aware of it.  Some psychologists refer to unconscious consciousness as “flow”.  Flow is when you are no longer aware of time or space.         

 

All Of Life Is A Teacher

“The entire world is an open book, a scripture.  Read it.  Learn while digging a pit or chopping some wood or cooking some food.  If you can’t learn from your daily activities, how are you going to understand the scriptures”?

-Swami Satchidananda

 

“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.  After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water”.

-Zen saying

 

“You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.”

-St. Bernard of Clairvaux

 

Most of you reading this have probably never dug a pit, chopped wood, or carried water.  I assume everyone has prepared a meal if only for themselves.  Any of you who are old hippies like me probably know that Swami Satchidananda appeared at the original Woodstock Music Festival in 1969 and was also featured in the Woodstock documentary film.  He was a Hindu guru and died just a few years ago.  Today’s Zen quote is a famous one.  It is basically telling us that before or after we may attain some level of enlightenment we will still have the chores of everyday life.  What will change is our attitude and view of these chores.  Most of us in America live like Kings and Queens compared to most of the world.  The reality is that many people chop wood and carry water everyday just to survive.  I believe this quote is also telling us that if we aren’t finding what we are looking for in the tasks of everyday life we aren’t likely to find them in a church or temple or mosque.  St. Bernard is a Christian monk who lived near the end of the 10^th century in France.  Clairvaux is a small town in France where he founded a monastery and lived much of his life.  I have been to Clairvaux, France and while there I visited a spring in a forest where St. Bernard is believed to have meditated and inspired to write the words quoted above.  St. Bernard was one of the early teachers and monks in the order of monks that came to be known as Cistercians.  The monastery where I lived as a young man was a Cistercian monastery.  I am reminded of a time I was in the monastery and feeling ill.  I was in the infirmary and reading “The Complete Works of St. John of the Cross”.  John of the Cross was a 16^th century Spanish mystic.  His books would be considered “heavy”.  An older monk came to see how I was feeling.  When he saw the book I was reading he said, “Brother Dominic, you would learn more about God working in the cow barn than reading that book”.  The works of John of the Cross are spiritual classics but the older monk was right.  I learned more about God working at the cow barn and taking walks in the woods where the trees and the stones were my teachers than I ever learned in church.  There is nothing wrong with going to church but all of life can and should be your teacher.   

You Are Responsible For Your Own Decisions

“Distracting yourself away from your problems doesn’t help you.  Your problems will always return.  Acknowledging your problems is the first step to dealing with them”.

 

We live in a society where many people feel they are victims.  Some people truly are victims of circumstances that are beyond their control.  Many other people are just looking for an excuse or someone to blame for their problems.  Whenever I talk to my granddaughter about her school work, a bad grade is always her teachers fault.  Occasionally I speak with an adult who is still blaming their parents for their life.  Sooner or later we all have to own our problems and our lives.  You can play the blame game or you can just deal with your situation which may or may not be your own fault.  Most of our lives are the results of our own good and bad decisions.  I think we all have the power to make our lives what we want them to be.  This doesn’t mean that our lives always turn out the way we want them to do.  I truly think most people’s lives are accidental in the sense that they turn out the way they do without much actual planning.  How many of you who are reading these thoughts have the life you wanted?  How many of you think the circumstances of your life are exactly what you thought they should be?  Even if a life is accidental, that doesn’t mean it turned out badly.  Are you happy with the life you have?  If so, you may be proof that an accidental life can be a happy life.  On the other hand, some people achieve a life they think they wanted only to find out it makes them miserable.  Many of us try to make the best of our situation regardless of how we got there.  Look at the life you have.  How did you get there?  What decisions good or bad have you made?  If you are happy, be grateful.  If you are not, what are your options?  Sometimes we get so far down a road it is difficult or impossible to turn back and start over.  For others it is never too late to start over.  We are always at a crossroads.         

Finding Balance

“It’s not so much that we are afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear.  It’s like being between trapezes”.

-Marilyn Ferguson

 

“There is no such thing as work-life balance.  Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life”.

Alain de Botton

 

“To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life, and then to come out empty is a tragic error”.

-Tibetan Book of the Dead

 

Whenever I know or think my life is on the verge of change, I like to think “maybe this will be a good thing”.  This is the optimist in me.  I tend to believe that even when bad things happen some good will come from it.  It is only human, however, to have moments of doubt or fear while you are swinging through the air hoping your timing and your grasp are perfect when the next trapeze appears.  Much of my life has been a quest for balance.  I always wanted a little of this and a little that while not having too much of either.  The one job I had that created an unbalance in my life was also my favorite job and one of the few from which I was fired.  It’s been a while since my life felt unbalanced.  The last time was probably during my child rearing years.  I had two children and was working a lot of overtime at a new job while also going to night classes at a local college.  I was also experiencing the early stages of what became a health crisis.  I got through it all but in retrospect I prefer a balanced life over a crazy life.  These days I mostly have balance but sometimes it feels unbalanced because some things feel out of proportion to other things.  For example, at this stage of my life I don’t mind working but I would prefer working less.  I don’t have the energy I used to have so three days of work per week would be preferable to my current five days a week.  I need more sleep and I want more leisure.  Sooner or later this will work itself out.  I guess the bottom line is that our lives will feel differently at different stages.  When I was younger and more energetic I could handle a lot more.  Now that I am older and less energetic, I prefer more rest and down time.  With most of the labors of life I have done my time and paid my dues.  Now it is time for more books, more music, more daydreaming, more staring out the window, and less slaving away on the sometimes pointless and mundane business of life.  Been there, done that.        

Life In The Slow Lane

“Patience may seem like a superficial virtue, but actually it embodies a deep insight into the nature of things.  They’re intertwining, messy, and usually not about you”.

-Rick Hanson

 

“Patience has all the time it needs”.

-Allan Lokos

 

I am always amazed at the impatience of people.  People like the guy who honks at you the split second after the light turns green or the guy that tailgates you when you are already 15 miles an hour over the speed limit.  Everyone seems to always be in a hurry.  For what, I have no idea.  My children laugh at me when I say, “The journey is the destination”.  This summer I have a trip planned to the ocean.  I have decided to drive because I hate flying.  I have no fear of flying but I find the whole experience stressful.  A lot of that is dealing with impatient people.  I am going to a part of the country I have never been to and I want to see the land and scenery along the way.  As Gandhi once said, “there is more to life than increasing it’s speed”.  Over the weekend I saw a segment on CBS Sunday Morning about a television show in Norway called “Slow TV”.  One of the shows was nothing but watching logs burning in a fireplace.  Another show was a train ride through the Norwegian countryside.  They put a camera on the front of the train and the show lasted for eight hours.  It was like you were the engineer of the train. Imagine C-Span in nature.  I am all about slowing life down.  This past weekend was a very rare weekend without my granddaughter staying at my home.  Admittedly I missed her.  I didn’t leave the house the entire weekend.  I slept late, drank a pot of coffee, listened to a lot of music, read from a new book, took a few naps, and walked in my back yard.  Many people would consider this a very boring weekend.  I was in hog heaven.  It was an introverts dream.  I had nothing to do, nowhere to go, and all day to get there.  I definitely wasn’t in a hurry.  It was my own channel on “Slow TV”.