What Does It Mean to Be “Awake” in Life?

What does it mean to be awake in life?

In large part it means being able to ask, “Is this really true?” when speaking to oneself, when speaking to others, or when others are speaking to you (or when reading what another has written).

Being asleep in part means not being able or willing to evaluate the truthfulness of statements and one’s own or others’ thoughts.

Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, the blogosphere — all of these are exploding with person after person sharing their “wisdom” and posting their pithy bon mots and platitudes. And many of these platitudes are simply not true, or only partially true or occasionally true, yet many appear as categoricals/universals, not situationals.

To me, being “awake in life” is synonymous with leading an examined life–a life of ever-increasing awareness, noticing, observing, attention, paying attention, commingled with reflection, pausing, contemplating, pondering.

And such a life is, when it comes to listening to others (or even ourselves and our own stories–narrations of reality and statement of the (facts”), in large part based upon being courageous and inquisitive and aware enough to ask the question: Is this really true?

Is this really true?

If we can’t/won’t ask this question, much less try to answer honestly, then we are subject to whatever lies, bias, propaganda, slant, deception, is being sold or marketed to us.

We live in a world that is becoming more and more fake and fraudulent, more and more driven by deception, sleight-of-hand, unauthentic-ness / inauthenticity, bullshit.  Deep down I suspect that many of us want real connection, real trust, real intimacy, for someone to have our back and for us to have someone else’s back just as much.  But we are living amidst a culture of false advertising, a culture of trickery and deception.  What we see on TV isn’t real.  We don’t see real life, but heavily edited and directed reality shows.  We see products being sold that over-promise on what they claim to be able to deliver.  We see people gussy themselves up behind make up, toupees, et cetera.  On-line dating sites are full of people not being real but claiming to be real and claiming not to be into games.  Without being able / willing to pause and ask “Is this really true?” we’re an easy mark–we’re highly gullible and suggestible and manipulable.

Is this really true?

This is such a large (and ignored) part of what being truly vulnerable *really* means: Being vulnerable actually means openly stating what we believe, putting out there (for all to see and to debate and even criticize) our deepest convictions and opinions and principles, and then having the courage and the respect to allow others to ask of us (in their own way): Is this really true?  If we don’t allow others to question us, if we hide behind platitudes such as “it doesn’t matter what others’ think” or “forget the haters and the naysayers, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter won’t mind,” then we’re not really “daring greatly” and we’re deceiving ourselves about living out loud, or living vulnerably.

The proof of truly living openly and vulnerably is in whether the person is open to receiving criticism.  And being open to criticism means being able to deal with it by pausing and asking “Is this really true (what the other person is saying)?”–this is the only way of legitimately dealing with criticism / a different point of view.

Is this true?

The Waiting

My mom died from metastatic melanoma a little over 3 years ago.  She found her first lump in mid-Feb of 2009 and she died about 10.5 months later.  She lived here in town near me, we had a good relationship, so I accompanied her through the entire process-through all of the consultations, appointments, treatments, et cetera.  I was there at her bedside much of the time during her last weeks, including when she died.

I learned a lot about waiting during that time.  Most obviously, there were the many waiting rooms where I would wait with my mom before her various appointments.  Then there was the waiting for test results—PET scans, MRIs, CAT scans, blood counts, et cetera.

And then there was the waiting that took place during the last couple of weeks of her life when it was clear that all of her treatment options had been exhausted, that the cancer was incurable, and the end was nearing quickly.  During that time, when I was at my mom’s bedside and she was sleeping, I would try to wrap my head around the concept that there would soon come a time when my mom would no longer be here.  There was going to be a clear and absolute division, a time in my life before my mom’s death and then the time after that.  And that time was coming soon.  It was a lot to try to wrap my head around, not just emotionally, but even intellectually.

And then one day it did indeed happen.  My mom did indeed die.  And then life with my mom ended, and life after my mom started.

I don’t have a grand philosophic point in mind as I am writing this.  Just a sense of similarity, but in a different direction.  I am waiting again, in a very turning-point sense again.  This time for the birth of my first child.  At 45-years old, my suspicion is that one appreciates this much more and much differently than when one is 25 or 30—or had this happened for me when I was 25 or 30.  45-year old me has lived more and seen more and read more and thought (and written) more—thought (and written) a lot more—than the 30- or even 35-year old me.  30 or 35-year old me hadn’t yet lost his mom, hadn’t yet had Rilke’s writings open up to him like a 3-D picture because of the ending of a particular relationship.  35-year old me wasn’t yet into photography, had only begun exploring Bowen and Schnarch’s writings on “differentiation of self,” was just starting to get a sense of what the world (and many of its inhabitants—human inhabitants) were really like beyond the façade and the veneer.

At 45-years old, becoming a first-time father means something more to me because there’s more of me for it to mean something to.

As Rilke put it, “The richer/deeper we are inwardly, the richer/deeper too is all that we experience.”  Something like that.

As I said, I have no grand philosophic insight in mind in writing and sharing this, no pie-in-the-sky Eckhart Tolle-like living in the now while still waiting take on this.  Just the simple observation that waiting for a new life has something in common with waiting for a death.  Just the simple observation that while my daily life is going on and while I am making preparations for this new member of the family, I am also temporarily in a bit of a holding pattern, waiting for this latest crescendo-like turning point in my life to actually occur—this next *life-will-never-be-the-same-again-afterwards-as-it-was-before* type event, but in an opposite and much more joyous direction.  Hopefully.  Hopefully, meaning my child is not yet born, my wife has not yet gone through this labor and emerged healthy and having given birth to our son yet.  But so far, everything looks good, very good.  Any day now.  Any day now and my life will change in ways that I cannot fathom.  Any day now, and that line will be crossed—the line separating the time when I was not yet a biological father and was still waiting to become one and the time when this new chapter of my life will start.

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The only tidbit I have approaching a bit of advice is this:  Wise people think about death.  Their own and others’.  They have a realistic relationship with their own mortality and thus with others’ mortality as well.  It’s not a depressing relationship or a morbid one, but a very life-enhancing and perspective-giving one.  As in the real meaning of carpe diem—being very grateful for and appreciative of what one has, not sweating the small stuff, not going through life childishly and angrily with a hole in one’s soul that nothing can fill.

We live in a society where the concept of growth has been usurped and externalized to mean improvement and is measured in material ways—home improvements, lifestyle status improvements, social improvements (“How to Win Friends and Influence People”).  Advertising has us convinced that if we improve the externals of our situation—take a vacation, redecorate the kitchen, put on a new coat of paint, get a fancier car, travel here or there, somehow gain more attention adulation and fame—then we’ll be happier, or then we’ll finally make it—or at least get closer to this.  And for some this does seem to work to some extent and perhaps for a while.  But it’s my experience that for this strategy of roundabout self-pseudo-improvement to work, there has to be a fair amount of self-delusion and self-deception in play, as well as some sort of psychic numbing and placating in addition to the shopping and consumerism—alcohol, antidepressants, et cetera (arguably even with some people religion).

Our own mortality and fragility and brevity is a lot to wrangle with.  And at first, this wrangling can be very very unsettling—very anxiety-provoking and or very depressing and nihilisitic (life has no meaning, paint it all black)—anything but life-enhancing and perspective-giving and empowering at first.

And clearly this is where many people get caught.  We get our first brush with death—someone close to us dies, or we start being haunted by thoughts and intimations of our impermanence and cosmic brevity—and we spin out, dive headlong into a superficial life of appearances, of psychic numbing, of distractions and dissipation, of the pursuit of status and advancement and travel, of checking things of our bucket list—self-indulgent things that we think are ultimately important but that in actuality likely really won’t be.

Or maybe our dive isn’t headlong; instead we just go along even more fervently with the crowd: no else seems to be integrating their own mortality into the fabric of their everyday decision-making, everyone else seems to be chasing after the wind in one form or the other, so why not join the crowd and chase after it too?—after all, what else is there to do in life with one’s life?

But there also seem to be those who have endured the first line and very powerful dissuaders of depression and anxiety and who instead of turning aside from a more realistic relationship with life and with their own and others’ mortality and fragility and brevity, have stuck with it, wrestled with and through the depression or fear and panic, and who have come to some deeper and more abiding sense of perspective and wisdom.

And it’s this realistic relationship with death has much to do with their wisdom, with having made them wise.  Arguably, a realistic relationship with our own impermanence, with our own brevity and fragility, is the only source of real compassion—compassion that doesn’t merely involve the limbic system, but that also includes the higher brain—the neo-cortex, the frontal lobes, our conscience and our consciousness.

When we are living in denial, when we live and love and fight and argue as if life goes on forever, we live and love without perspective, and arguably, without much depth or appreciation.  Real compassion, real wisdom, stem from developing a realistic relationship—instead of a denial-based relationship—with our own mortality and with our place is the universe.  Mortality is a lot to haul; it’s a lot to wrestle with; it can be unfathomably frightening and unsettling and disorienting, but it might just be what ultimately saves you, or lets you avoid living a life of quiet or unquiet desperation and un-appreciation.

Related articles:

• The Waiting Place (http://thewaitingplace-lifesjourney.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-waiting-place.html)
• The Fight (http://dcurt.is/the-fight)

For the Class of 2013 (& People Everywhere) — Four Brief Pieces of Advice

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1.

If I had one piece of advice for people everywhere, it would be this: think critically more often.  Try to spend some time every day thinking critically, examining yourself, your life, your relationships, your own deeds and words, your basic assumptions, your conscience and your principles.  Be a more reflective person.

2.

My second piece of advice would be to try to spend some time every day reading something of substance.  Not just something that affects you emotionally, but something that makes you think, that makes you go wow! or a-ha! or I hadn’t thought of it that way before.  Books and reading are too often abused; intellectually we Americans consume far too many books that only entertain us or that only speak to our biases.

3.

My third piece of advice would for people everywhere would be to learn to deal better with criticism.

I don’t mind criticism.  I really don’t.  The rejection part of it still stings, but nowhere near as much as it did at one time.  I learned these things about criticism (and dealing with it) long ago —

“Don’t mind criticism; if it’s untrue, disregard it; if it’s unfair, keep from irritation; if it’s ignorant, smile; if it’s justified, learn from it.” — unknown

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” — Winston Churchill

I’ve found that the best way to deal with criticism is to make the decision to detach emotionally from it and instead think critically about it.

Criticism rarely is the enemy; our reactions to it more often are an issue; once we learn better how to deal with ourselves and our emotions and calm and soothe and talk to ourselves (talk ourselves down), then we become much more inwardly peaceful and much better able to deal with criticism.

If you’re not being criticized, you’re not really living.  A person can easily avoid criticism by saying nothing, doing nothing, standing for nothing, being nothing. (I think a quote similar to this has been attributed to Aristotle).

Or as Winston Churchill said, “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”  The same goes for criticism:  You’re being criticized?  Good  It means maybe you’re standing up for something.

Or it means that maybe you’re in the wrong and you have something to learn.  Either way, it’s a win for you if you can reign your ego in and not let it get in the way of things.

(And here’s a link to a blog post that might be helpful. — http://tinybuddha.com/blog/how-to-deal-with-criticism-well-25-reasons-to-embrace-it/)

4.

My last piece of advice to people everywhere (including myself) is this: whether you are young or old or somewhere in between, get your house in order.

Living constantly under perpetual threat of dying or of losing those around you, or of losing your health, can be exhausting, not to mention highly unnerving, anxiety-producing, and panic-inducing.

But what other option is there really?  Ignoring all of this?  Living in denial?  Only thinking every once and while about our own mortality?

If we don’t reflect at least occasionally on our own and others’ mortality, we tend to live badly, without much appreciation.  We tend to take other people and life and our own health and the good things we have in our life for granted.  Reflecting on death is one of the surest ways to cut through the morass and muddle and get to what matters most.

Of course thinking too much about death can completely unnerve us, cause us to take too many chances, live desperately, do rash things.

So what’s the solution?

Find an optimal balance.  Think about / acknowledge death just enough so that you don’t go off the deep end (or too far off the deep end) and live foolishly and recklessly, but think enough about death so that you don’t take life and those around you for granted, so that you live in a more deliberate but not desperate way.  Live in a way so that you focus on the things that will matter the most to you in the end.  Death is inevitable for each of us and for all of those whom we love and rely on.  This is not negotiable.  It’s a hard fact of life—the hardest, if we’re honest.  But how much time we and those around us each have is a bit more of a mystery, and it’s this leeway that tends to get us each in trouble.  We tend to play games with ourselves and others because of this leeway—taking them and ourselves and our health for granted, or we numb ourselves, we don’t live from our highest and best self, we don’t live a very examined life, we go through life on autopilot, we don’t live deeply and passionately and intensely enough, and we don’t live in such a way that we put our house in order.

Thoreau’s oft-quoted words about life and death still make for some very sound and good advice—

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. . . .”

Bonus point to ponder:

“The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.”

How awake are you?

How awake do you want to be?

How much discomfort and unsettledness are you willing to endure to become more awake?

And is it possible to live a very meaningful life if one is not very awake?

Camus wrote, “everything begins with consciousness and nothing is worth anything except through it.”  Great spiritual masters and leaders have spoken throughout the ages of human beings tending to go through life asleep, blind, deaf, and needing to “wake up.”  What if awareness is where it’s at?  And what if the more aware we are—the more we see and feel and think about—the less settled and less comfortable we are?  How aware are you willing to be?

The Pursuit of Happiness Doesn’t Always Make You Feel Happy—and, in Fact, it Shouldn’t; and Here’s Why

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Becoming a “better” person—becoming more centered, emotionally mature and stable, principled, conscientious, (yes, all of these nice adjectives and virtues I like to list), pensive, reflective, composed, affable, joyful, (you’re almost at the end of the list o’ adjectives), good-natured, kind-hearted, generous, patient, courageous, humorous, happy—isn’t always an easy or a happy and joyful process.  At times it can be quite difficult, quite a struggle—and even make us feel bad.

Gretchen Rubin, in her book “The Happiness Project,” sums up this seeming paradox up quite nicely—

“Six months into my happiness project, although each day I felt more joy and less guilt, had more fun and less anxiety, the areas that had been toughest for me when I started were still the toughest.  I was continuing to struggle to keep my temper and to be generous.  In some ways, in fact, I had made myself less happy; I’d made myself far more aware of my faults, and I felt more disappointed with myself when I slipped.  My shortcomings stared up at me reproachfully, in the form of X marks instead of checkmarks, from the page of my Resolutions Chart.

“One of my secrets to adulthood is ‘Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy,’ and  a heightened awareness of my failings , though salutary, wasn’t bringing me happiness in the short term—but in the long term, I was sure, I’d be happier as a consequence of behaving better.  I was comforted by the words of my model Benjamin Franklin, who reflected on his own chart: ‘On the whole, though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet as I was, by the endeavor, a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been had I not attempted it.’ ” (pp. 163-4)

Sincerely trying to become a better person will indeed help you become a better person—likely a *much* better person— than had you not tried focusing on becoming a better you.

It’s like taking up golf or tennis.   You become a better golfer or tennis player by actually playing the sports—picking up a racquet or set of clubs and hitting some balls.  You won’t become a better golfer or tennis player—you won’t even become one, period—unless you first pick up a racquet or set of clubs and start hitting some balls.  If you want to be become a better person—more mature and stable emotionally, more brave and courageous and persevering, more composed and reflective, more kind and affable—then you have to make the decision to start, to take up the challenge, to make the attempt—to try and start behaving in those ways (the ways of a better person) more and more often.  You have to practice those behaviors and patterns and attitudes that lead to betterment, clarity, wisdom, happiness, perspective, moral goodness.

It’s really that simple.

And that difficult.

The theory is simple—and really inviolable.

But the practice and application are more difficult—perhaps even much more difficult, depending on where we’re starting out from—i.e. our current level of psychological fitness, our upbringing, our emotional state.

Practicing behaviorally the behaviors of a better version of ourselves will require mindfulness, focus, resolve, initiative, proactivity, a good memory, will-power, some modicum of discipline, et cetera.  Just a thimbleful at first is all that is needed.  Just 20 seconds of raw courage.  Just some shred of self-discipline—because that’s the irony about developing self-discipline: it requires some iota of self-discipline, or some external discipline and outside motivation, to develop it.

And some of us, by virtue of good genes and or good upbringing, may have a head start over others, who because of not as good genes and or a tougher and less favorable upbringing, may have the deck stacked more against them.

But regardless of how favorably or unfavorably our deck is stacked, action—doing—getting off our butts and our buts (excuses, rationalizations, justifications)—is essential.—

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.  This is the case with the virtues: by doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly.  The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become temperate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate circumstances. Thus states of character arise out of like activities. This is why the activities we exhibit must be of a certain kind; it is because the states of character correspond to the differences between these. It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; rather it makes a very great difference: it makes *all* the difference.” – Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, Chapter 1 (http://nothingistic.org/library/aristotle/nicomachean/nicomachean08.html)

You—me, any of us—becomes a better person simply by *trying* to become a better person—by making the sincere effort and decision to become a better person, and by starting now to do the things that a “better person” or a better version of you would do.

And one of the first things to do is to admit or acknowledge or realize that a better version of yourself does indeed exist and is possible.

Which means paradoxically some form of self-rejection.—

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” – Lao Tzu

“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This goes for ourselves as well.  Too much self-acceptance—I am this way or I am that way and I can’t change it, it’s just the way I am—can be a bad (or stultifying) thing.  Life is change.  Change is certain; but growth and deepening in response to all / some of that change is *optional.*

Granted, self-acceptance and self-rejection tend to be touchy subjects.  Self-acceptance—especially “radical self-acceptance” tends to be en vogue in certain new age and self-improvement circles.  But the concept of “self-acceptance” tends to be a muddy and ill-defined one—even one that is inherently and internally contradictory.  The truth (ok, my opinion; —but it may also be the truth too) is that we can’t—or won’t—grow without the right mix or *balance* of self-acceptance and self-rejection.  Too much self-rejection and we go off the deep-end and plummet into a dismal spinout cycle of violence and or substance abuse or depression, et cetera.  But if we over-correct or if we go for too much self-acceptance, then we will never really change or grow much, and we may well find ourselves surrounded / insulated with people who are as neurotic as we are—people who are blind and or hurting in a way similar or compatible with how we are hurting and or blind, and also opting for more self-acceptance and comfort and healing—and possibly stagnation—than growth and change and depth.  (Maslow divided people into two types: deficit and repair oriented, or growth-oriented.  He posited that most people—the vast majority of people—were deficit and repair oriented; and that perhaps only 2% of people were truly growth-oriented.)

If we can ease up a bit on the throttle of our inner-critic and inner-fault-finder, become a bit more gentle and kind with ourselves as we (hopefully) would if we were mentoring a child, if we can learn, paradoxically, to think more clearly, and improve our own critical thinking skills (perhaps what is often most needed in terms of dealing with one’s inner critic and to silence him or her is to start thinking critically about that voice!), and we can find a healthy and wholesome balance between self-acceptance and self-non-acceptance, then we will have done much to set the stage for some genuine growth and self-betterment.

In fact, just getting this balance right or more in balance is itself a major feat of personal growth.

And success—perfection—becoming a perfect is never the goal—even though the Bible does make mention of this (I tend to suspect that in this day and age, were Jesus to see the poop-storm that the term “perfection” typically unleashes, he might have qualified his words.  Maybe he wouldn’t have, but I tend to suspect he would have).  Instead of perfection—which is something that is outside of our control—i.e. scoring 100% on a test can be done, but likely requires some luck, a couple of good / educated guesses, et cetera; but getting an A on a test should be more doable—so instead of perfect, aim for excellence or improvement.  And maybe something modest, maybe 10% improvement.

In other words, get acclimated to the idea up front that becoming a better person may mean failing, it may mean faltering and stumbling, it may mean some missteps and wrong paths; it may mean feeling bad or guilty or regretful about things you have done or not done.

—And all of this is par for the course.

All of this is to be expected.

None of it is unusual.

You’re going to see a lot of things about yourself that you may not like—that you never did like, but that you were anesthetized to (perhaps in part because of who you had surrounded yourself with—people who didn’t expect much out of you, or people who expected *much* out of you but didn’t have much to offer you in terms of direction and support).

Part of becoming a better person almost always means *losing the blinders,* having the scales removed from our eyes, becoming less desensitized to what we perhaps ought to have been very sensitive to in the first place.

And this is the sort of thing that doesn’t make us feel good or happy when it happens—but that can and likely will lead greater—far greater??—happiness in the future.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

(Which means that a lack of excellence is likely also a habit.)

“The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what he gets by it, but what he becomes by it.” – John Ruskin

“Ideals (and principles) are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny.” – Carl Schurz

What Vulnerability *Really* Means

“The real gift and the crux of our difficulty is our constant and entirely natural experience of vulnerability. Trying to live without feeling vulnerable means we do not understand the fierce nature of the reality we inhabit. In closing off our vulnerability, we close off the authentic exchanges that tell us we are actually having a real conversation. Vulnerability is the door through which we walk into self-understanding and compassion for others. Being enlightened does not mean we assume supernatural powers or find a perfection that exalts us above the daily losses other human being are subject to; enlightenment means we have accepted thoroughly our transience, our vulnerability and our imperfections and live just as robustly with them as without them.”

David Whyte, in “The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self, and Relationship.”

Cultivating the Mind: Resolve to Master Something Truly Difficult (& Worthwhile!)

(Much*—much*—of the following essay has been borrowed, adapted, rearranged, added to, edited, excerpted, taken word for word, from a post Greg Swann wrote on a blog titled “freetheanimal”—http://freetheanimal.com/2011/12/guest-post-greg-swann-and-resolving-to-master-something-difficult-in-2012.html. I want to make this perfectly clear at the outset: MUCH of this post is not my own.  The arrangement of it is; the additions to it are, but much of this post has been excerpted and adapted from a post that Greg Swann authored. And so what I am doing here is displaying the way my mind works—how I process something I read.  First, I read it, and then if it has some wisdom or insight to it and piques my interest, I will sometimes rewrite and edit what I have read so that it squares more with my own experiences and temperament, and so that it says even more what I think is true.  To me, this is an inescapable part of what it means to read actively and critically.)

 

“What Teachers Make” by Taylor Mali

He says the problem with teachers is
What’s a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life
was to become a teacher?
He reminds the other dinner guests that it’s true
what they say about teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.
I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the dinner guests
that it’s also true what they say about lawyers.
Because we’re eating, after all, and this is polite conversation.

I mean, you’re a teacher, Taylor.
Be honest. What do you make?

And I wish he hadn’t done that— asked me to be honest—
because, you see, I have this policy about honesty and ass-­kicking:
if you ask for it, then I have to let you have it.
You want to know what I make?
I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time
with anything less than your very best.
I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won’t I let you go to the bathroom?
Because you’re bored.
And you don’t really have to go to the bathroom, do you?
I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
Hi. This is Mr. Mali. I hope I haven’t called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something your son said today.
To the biggest bully in the grade, he said,
“Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don’t you?
It’s no big deal.”
And that was noblest act of courage I have ever seen.
I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.

You want to know what I make? I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write.
I make them read, read, read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math
and hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you’ve got this,
then you follow this,
and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this.

Here, let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
Teachers make a goddamn difference! Now what about you?

(http://taylormali.com/poems-online/what-teachers-make/)

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Is there anything you can think of that you did in school or college that you’re truly proud of now? —Away from athletics or the school play, was there anything in your academic life where you gave everything you had? Was there anyone else who did that?  Was there any class that you took—ever—where you had to bust ass every day or risk getting hopelessly lost?

And moreover, the reality is that virtually all of us were denied the kind of education that was a matter of expected routine for our grandparents.  To have graduated from high school in the United States in 1880 or 1910 was to have acquired an education far beyond that attained by all but the smallest few college graduates today.

And irrespective of why this may be and how times have changed, we are still largely responsible for the education we received.  Too often we were grade-greedy glib-and-lazy eff-ups who were just phoning it in, doing the minimum necessary to get the grade we desired or that was expected of us from our parents, and not looking to be challenged in school—not looking to take AP or Honors Level courses.  So I absolve myself of nothing in this.  I know how much of the time that I could have spent acquiring an education was wasted on trivia instead, or on tendentious cant, or on outright lies, or on plotting my social life.

And yet the fault is not entirely our own.  So many (some? at least a few?) teachers are of the cash-greedy glib-and-lazy eff-up type—those who by default and not as a vocation or a calling decided that teaching was their best option—an option that gave them the summer off, and a few more vacation weeks throughout the year.   Certainly there are teachers—a lot? some? a few?—who do little to nothing more than the minimum necessary to get the money from and meet the standards of the glib-and-lazy politicians who employ them.

Put another way, how many teachers did you have or even know who pushed you like the teacher in the poem at the head of this post or who inspired you like Mr. Keating did many of his students in “Dead Poets Society”?  How many teachers demand nothing less than your best from you?  How many pushed you beyond what you thought you could?  How many consistently expected and demanded exceptional work from you?

And you weren’t just cheated of an education when you were young, you were cheated out of the full awareness of your own humanity.

Bottom line: You were cheated of an education. And, yes, you were complicit in cheating yourself—with every daydream in class, with every gossipy note you passed, with every sneer, every snicker, every spitball you shot at a clueless teacher or fellow student. With every half-assed, half-stepping, half-hearted effort you turned in, hoping it was just enough to get by—you were cheating yourself of an education that likely was already cheating you.

But that’s over. The past can’t be undone.  So what to do about it? The future is yours to make of it what you will.  You can start changing things with just one resolution:

Resolve to master something difficult.

Tell the truth:  Every time you see a musician performing—popular music or classical—don’t you wish you could do that, too?

The good news is, you can. All it takes is commitment and effort—and time—maybe 10,000 hours.  Maybe more, maybe less.

Mastering a demanding new skill will take a while.

How much progress can you make on any resolution in a single day?  Almost none.

How much progress can you make in a year’s worth of serious, daily effort?  You’d be amazed.  The desire for instant results is how all resolutions, including New Year’s resolutions, get abandoned.  But to learn a serious discipline will require your time every day—an hour or more a day of serious, dedicated effort.  I like the idea of working every day, since, if you take no breaks from the work, you won’t have to resist the temptation to extend a break by one day and then another and another.

The benefits to be realized by putting the time in mastering something difficult are huge—far beyond anything you might be expecting.  First off, you’ll be better for having improved your mind.  You’ll be a better person, too—more independent, more competent, more whole, better able to focus and persevere, less of a whiner and a complainer.  You’ll be better for the effort.  Not to mention wiser, and more confident.  You’ll be more independent, too, more indomitable.  And you’ll be more admirable—to your spouse, to your children, to your family and friends—and to yourself.

Plus, you’ll learn firsthand how to learn something.  You’ll learn about your own resistances, your own blocks, your own laziness.  You’ll also see for yourself just how important resolve, grit, determination, self-discipline, showing up every day, putting the time in, doing your best, pushing yourself, practicing, studying, really is.  After all, mastery of a truly difficult discipline can ultimately *only* be done alone.  Your teacher can help, and, as always, we stand on the shoulders of giants.  But it’s only your brain, working all alone, that can distinguish educere from educare in Latin.  Because in Latin, we can say, “Educere est educare“—to bring up is to bring out.  To cultivate the mind is to liberate it, to lead it forevermore away from the slavery of ignorance.

So no matter what your pedigree, unless you were very lucky, you were cheated of an education when you were young.  And right now you can begin to amend that deficit.

 

Responsibility & Character Development — A checklist for the kids (as well as for myself!)

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I can’t control “the world” (no one can), but I can control (or at least really really really try to control and influence) how I show up to it; and I can certainly strongly influence how the three little ones living here with me show up to it as well.

So much of parenting (and even teaching) is focusing on the character-development of the children you are entrusted with. And when you begin finally parenting yourself, a large part of that means focusing on your own character development—the type of person you are, your sense of right and wrong, your capacity to give and honor / keep your word, your moral courage, your level of integrity, how responsible you are.

Character development does not happen on its own, unless a person is born with an innate strong sense of right and wrong.

Most of us aren’t; so our moral development—as well as our character development and integrity—are all up for grabs. If we are graced / gifted with a good strong caring (and moral) influence (or a few of these), then our character and our conscience can be influenced in a certain (positive) direction. (So much of what Jesus said and spoke about in the Gospels is designed to influence the conscience and character of the person reading / hearing his words.)

On the other hand, if while growing up we do not have the good fortune of having any positive role models around us—any teachers, coaches, parents, mentors, aunts or uncles who are wise and caring and responsible—then we are apt to be swayed in a more apathetic or even negative direction by the influence of all of the forces around us—TV, radio, Internet, video games, pop culture, socialization and contact with other children whose character-development and conscience are being neglected or left to the haphazard influence of happenstance.

The reality is we live in a world of more and more sham relationships—relationships of convenience, of only superficial loyalty and fleeting committedness. Promises and commitments are easily broken and revised. People break their word with greater and greater appalling ease—and with either little to no thought of how it affects others, or with utterly no concern—with callous indifference—as to how it affects others.

And much of this is because we live in a world where moral education and character development are sorely lacking. People want to have fun. They want to be comfortable, to enjoy life, consume, be happy, “have it all,” live the dream, gain attention, fall in love, have sex, eat cheeseburgers, read gossip magazines, go on adventures, take lavish vacations. But pay attention to the nuts and bolts stuff? No. It’s not fun—character development, informing our conscience, isn’t fun. It’s work. It takes effort, attention, focus; it requires critical thinking; it requires looking honestly at oneself and at life and willingly and continuously examining both; and above all, it takes real goodness; it takes giving a damn. And all of these things cost. It’s easier to go through life with a glib and unfocused and often closed-mind, in self-chosen ignorance, and pay the price for this (—because it’s basically the same price that everyone else is paying, because almost everyone else is going through life in this same way—on auto-pilot, half-heartedly, with minds riddled with unawareness, prejudice, bias, half-truths, propaganda, nonsense, illusions, self-deception), than it is to live with heart and mind wide open, to think critically, to care deeply, to try to be of some genuine benefit to self and others.

But that’s what character development is all about—trying to combat this tendency toward decline and laziness and self-indulgence and apathy and not thinking (thoughtlessness) in each of us.

Character is who you are when you think no one is watching.

Our character shows in how we treat those who can do little or nothing for us.

Our character shows in how we treat the “little people.”

When we have good character, there are no little or unimportant people.

Character is doing what’s right when no one’s looking.

Character and conscience are closely related. Our conscience is comprised of our higher values—the better angels of our nature; our character shows in how we actualize these values and principles.

“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” – James D. Miles

“Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops – no, but the kind of man the country turns out.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. . . Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back.” – Abigail van Buren (Pauline Esther Friedman)

“Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses and avoids.” – Aristotle

“Every man has three characters: that which he shows, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.” – Alphonse Karr

“If we want our children to possess the traits of character we most admire, we need to teach them what those traits are and why they deserve both admiration and allegiance. Children must learn to identify the forms and content of those traits.” – William J. Bennett

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Abraham Lincoln

“Happiness is not the end of life: character is.” – Henry Ward Beecher

“The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he’s born.” – William R. Inge

So much of what constitutes developing character revolves around (and hinges on) the concept of *responsibility*.

(*Much of what follows has been adapted and elaborated on from http://www.k12.hi.us/~mkunimit/responsibility.htm*)

*CHARACTER VALUES*

Respect
RESPONSIBILITY
Compassion
Sharing
Perseverance
Friendship
Cooperation
Fairness
Caring
Citizenship
Self-discipline
Honesty/Trustworthiness

Responsibility – In short, being RESPONSIBLE means others can trust you to do things with care and excellence. You accept accountability for your actions. When you give your word, you follow through. When you make a mistake, you offer amends instead of excuses. Responsibility is the ability to respond appropriately, ably, and justly; to make smart choices; to honor your commitments, your word, your obligations. Responsibility means that you take good and proper care of yourself, and your relationships, personal property, and anything that has been entrusted to you; that tidy up after yourself; that you leave things as good as if not better than how you found them; and that is you make a mess or if you mess up, you own the mistake, clean it up, make up for it, and take steps with yourself to ensure that it does not happen again.

THE MEANING OF RESPONSIBILITY

Responsibility is taking care of your duties.
Responsibility is honoring your word.
Responsibility is answering for your actions.
Responsibility is accountability.
Responsibility is treating others as you would want to be treated
Responsibility means understanding the impact of your actions (or inaction) on others
Responsibility leads to trustworthiness.

WHY BEING RESPONSIBLE IS IMPORTANT

Responsibility is a core value for living honorably.
Responsibility is essential to good character development.
Responsibility is being accountable for your behavior.
Responsibility is being dependable when you have things to do.
Responsibility is keeping your commitments

EXAMPLES OF RESPONSIBILITY

You complete your chores at home without being constantly reminded.
You take good care of your personal possessions.
You come home on time.
You call your parents if you are late.
You eat healthy food, get plenty of exercise, and take good care of yourself.
You take care of your lunch money and don’t lose it on the playground.
You keep a promise.
You put part of your allowance into a savings account instead of spending it all.
You complete your school assignments on time and to the best of your ability.
You take care of your pet and spend time with your pets.
You return library books on time.

RESPONSIBLE CHILDREN

Understand and accept consequences for their actions and try to correct their mistake
Complete assignments and tasks
Clean up after themselves
Do the “right thing” and apologize sincerely if wrong
Help others in need
Follow through without giving up
Understand the effect they have on others

STEPS TO MAKING RESPONSIBLE DECISIONS

Define your goal. What do you want?
Explore all the choices and options.
Gather information and facts.
Write down arguments for and against each choice.
Take time to think through the consequences of each choice.
Make the decision.
Honor your word and keep your commitment

PUT RESPONSIBILITY INTO ACTION

Clean your room without being asked.
Throw away your trash and pick up some litter.
Practice self-control when you feel angry.
Clean up your area after lunch and encourage your friends to do the same.
Follow through on all assignments at school and chores at home.
Do your chores at home without being asked.
Look for something extra to do at home or in your community that is helpful.
Organize a park cleanup.
Keep a promise (or your word) even if it is hard.
Express your anger with appropriate words and actions.

HOW TO CARRY OUT OBLIGATIONS TO PLAN

Write a list of all the things you need to do.
Write down when each task or jobs needs to be done.
Write down what you’ll need to accomplish each task or job.
Always have a backup plan—a “plan B.”

MORE ACTIVITIES

Tell about an experience where you exhibited or did not show responsibility.
Think of a new skill or talent you’d like to develop. Practice and share.
Write a poem, jingle, paragraph, or saying about responsibility.
Research discoveries and inventions that have had both positive and negative consequences.
Consider whether math makes you more responsible. Cite examples.
Research responsibility in advertising.
Research responsibility toward indigenous people. Choose a country that was taken from natives by invaders, setters, or foreign governments.
Survey your neighborhood to see who needs help.
Write a skit that demonstrates your school’s rules.
Find a job or start your own business such as a yard service or babysitting.
Make a family jobs chart.
Create a responsibility tree to show what you are responsible for doing.
Make your own daily planner.
Find examples of popular music that promote responsibility, dependability, and perseverance.
Examine the role of responsibility in sports.
Play a “What’s Their Responsibility?” game for various careers.
Read stories about responsibility.

MANY TYPES OF RESPONSIBILITY

Moral Responsibility—to other people, animals, and the earth. This means caring, defending, helping, building, protecting, preserving, and sustaining. You’re accountable for treating other people justly and fairly, for honoring other living things, and for being environmentally aware.

Legal Responsibility—to the laws and ordinances of your community, state, and country. If there’s a law you believe is outdated, discriminatory, or unfair, you can work to change, improve, or eliminate it. You can’t simply decide to disobey it.

Family Responsibility. —Means treating your parents, siblings, and other relatives with love and respect, following your parents’ rules, and doing chores and duties at home.

Community Responsibility. —As a part of the community, you’re responsible for treating others as you want to be treated, for participating in community activities and decisions, and for being an active, contributing citizen. Pick up trash to keep the community clean. Read local and community newspapers to stay informed. Vote in elections when you’re old enough.

Responsibility to Customs, Traditions, Beliefs, and Rules. —These might come from your family, your community, your heritage, or your faith. Learn what they are, and why they are, and do your best to respect / honor and follow them.

Personal Responsibility. — It’s up to you to become a person of good character. Your parents, teachers, religious leaders, scout leaders, and other caring adults will guide you, but only you can determine the kind of person you are and ultimately become. So get organized, be punctual, and honor your commitments.

. . . .

To me, what all of this talk about responsibility comes down to is playing chess and not checkers in life. Responsibility requires that we learn how to think well, that we learn to think ahead, think widely, put ourselves in another’s shoes, and think such that we understand and appreciate the effects of our actions on others.

And it’s clear to me that to the extent that we practice this and role model this—Responsibility—we actually help create a kinder and more thoughtful and harmonious and civil society. And to the extent that we fail to practice this (intentionally or unintentionally), we contribute unnecessary chaos, disorder, even suffering to the world.

Perhaps a bit over the top, but it makes the point. There are times when as a parent we need to actually step up and give a little tough love. And of course, it depends on the kiddo as well–some children do better with tough love and need that as part of their upbringing; others do fine with lots of tender love and rarely ever do anything that requires tough love.

WEBSITES OF INTEREST—

http://www.52virtues.com/virtues/the-52-virtues.php
http://www.virtuesforchildren.com/the_virtues.html

BOOKLIST for RESPONSIBILITY

*For grades K-4*

Value of Responsibility: Ralph Bunche – Johnson
Brother Eagle, Sister Sky – Jeffers
Horton Hatches the Egg – Dr. Seuss
Arthur Babysits – Brown
Berenstain Bears: Messy Room – Berenstain
Annie and the Skateboard Gang – Carlson
Bear and Bunny Grow Tomatoes – Koscielniak
Stop, Look and Listen, Mr. Toad – Petty
Katy and the Big Snow – Burton
Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie – Roop
A Light in the Attic – Silverstein
Where the Sidewalk Ends – Silverstein
Salt Boy – Perrine
Shoe Shine Girl – Bulla
Two Bad Ants – Van Allsburg
School’s Out – Hurwitz
It Takes a Village – Cowen-Fletcher
Red Light, Green Light, Mamma & Me – Best
Franklin Plays the Game – Bourgeois
D.W. the Picky Eater – Brown
Valentine – Carrick
Solo – Geraghty
A Very Important Day – Herold
Little Brown Bear Dresses Himself – Lebrun
Nine for California – Levitin
Badger’s Bring Something Party – Oram
The Paperboy – Pilkey
Shaker Lane – Provensen
One Up, One Down – Snyder
Another Mouse to Feed – Kraus
Herbie’s Troubles – Chapman
Pigsty – Teague
Sachiko Means Happiness – Sakai
Strega Nona – De Paola
Swimmy – Lionni
Tell Me a Mitzi – Segal
Amos and Boris – Steig
Five Minutes Peace – Murphy
Luke’s Bully – Winthrop
Horton Hears a Who – Seuss
Little Red Hen
Mother’s Day Mice – Bunting
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge – Fox
Arthur’s Pet Business – Brown
Arthur’s Computer Disaster – Brown
Star Wars: a New Hope
Making the World – Wood
Whem Mom Turned into a Monster – Harrison
I Did It, I’m Sorry – Buehner

*For grades 3-6*

Across Five Aprils – Hunt
The Book of Virtues – Bennett
A Christmas Carol – Dickens
Hatchet – Paulsen
In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson – Lord
The Indian in the Cupboard – Reid Banks
Island of the Blue Dolphins – O’Dell
Profiles in Courage – Kennedy
Stone Fox – Gardiner
Tuck Everlasting – Babbit
The Yearling – Rawlings
The River – Paulsen
Buffalo Bill & the Pony Express – Dadey
In Trouble with Teacher – Demuth
Julie – George
Nothing But Trouble, Trouble Trouble – Hermes
Marvin Redpost: Alone in His Teacher’s House – Sachar
Learning About Responsibility from the Life of Colin Powell – Strazzabosco
Fudge – Graeber
Dicey’s Song – Voigt
Little House in the Big Woods – Wilder
Malu’s Wolf – Craig
Summer of the Swans – Byars
When the Road Ends – Thesman
The Giver – Lowry

Teddy Roosevelt on “Character”

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“There is need of a sound body, and even more of a sound mind. But above mind and above body stands character—the sum of those qualities which we mean when we speak of a man’s force and courage, of his good faith and sense of honor. I believe in exercise for the body—always provided that we keep in mind that physical development is a means and not an end. I believe, of course, in giving to all the people a good education. But the education must contain much besides book-learning in order to be really good. We must ever remember that no keenness and subtleness of intellect, no polish, no cleverness, in any way make up for the lack of the great solid qualities. Self-restraint, self-mastery, common sense, the power of accepting individual responsibility and yet of acting in conjunction with others, courage and resolution—these are the qualities which mark a masterful people. Without them no people can control itself, or save itself from being controlled from the outside.”

This is from the same speech—“Citizenship in a Republic”—that Theodore Roosevelt gave at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910, and that contains the oft-quoted “Man in the Arena” passage (a quote that is perhaps even more oft-quoted now because of Brene Brown’s recent book “Daring Greatly”)—

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

The World Needs *More* Warriors

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The World Needs More Warriors

.     (This is my abridgment and adaptation of Sakyong Mipham’s article “We Need to . .
      Be Warriors,” on pages 15 – 19 of the January 2013 issue of “Shambhala Sun”)

As the speed of life continues accelerating, more and more people—which is to suggest that more and more of us—are doing more and more things in perfunctorily—in half-steps, in a routine, rote, mechanical, cursory, even superficial way, with little interest, attention, enthusiasm, or engagement. Parenting, work, driving, shopping, eating, conversations, relationships, sex, all done in a path of least resistance / only partially engaged way; not in a wholehearted deeply present and attentive way.

Because of all of the distractions and horror in the world these days, it is getting harder and harder to show up deeply for the present moment and truly engage our lives. And as a result, our kindness and care are on the wane. In part because our advertising culture keeps lulling us into thinking that somehow someday life is going to get easier, better, et cetera.

As the speed of life continues increasing, what the world actually needs is more engagement, not less. We need more people who are willing to care more; not less, be more attentive, not more distracted; be more thorough, not less; be steadier, not more up and down.

In short, the world needs more warriors—more people who are willing to show up and engage the moments of their lives—the everyday, seemingly ordinary and even mundane moments of their lives—with greater attentiveness, clarity, wisdom, and bravery. The world needs more people who are dedicated and determined to engage life wholeheartedly and with an inquisitive, focused, steady mind.

Steadiness—resolve, not having a lot of ups and downs—along with bravery, is one of the basic qualities of warriorship. In this culture, most of us are constantly flip-flopping—mentally, emotionally, physically, and in every other way possible. So many obstacles and distractions are unknowingly empowered by us to sway us and drag us away from what we’re doing. And this is just an inescapable byproduct or consequence of engaging life in a half-hearted, half-focused, cursory way—the more indifferent and shallow our attention, the more easily distracted we are and become. One feeds and increases the other, and vice versa.

The process of being truly present—and remaining so—takes energy. But it also creates it. But first we have to surrender our patterned ingrained ways of escaping. When we surrender to reality, we have to keep showing up in order to make progress. And that takes effort, discipline, dedication.

Fifty percent of engaging life is just showing up, being there physically—be it showing up on the meditation cushion, classroom, work environment, home, family life, et cetera. Just showing up is fifty percent of the battle.

But it’s only fifty percent.

The other fifty percent is in how we show up. And the most important element in this is care—having a sense of respect and real interest in what we’re doing. Without care and respect, we become disengaged, and even something as potentially profound and centering as meditation becomes hollow. So how we show up is crucially important. When we pay attention to what we do, we naturally care. They feed each other.

These days, when people pursue a spiritual path and a more spiritual approach to life, they can be very enthusiastic at first, but then at a certain point some people will tend to just want to shelve it; they think they’ve practiced enough, seen enough, gained enough, and they just want to hold and stay where they are now, or even cash out and revert back to their comfort zone.

Many people seem to want a spiritual path on their own terms. And this is not possible. When we are truly engaged, we are actually giving our body, our speech, and our mind to the world.

Personally, the more my path unfolds, the more I see the need for the kind of steadiness, discipline, structure, resolve, and paying attention that keeps us on the spot, that allows us to be more deeply aware of how we show up, how we speak, what we do, how we engage with others. Because even with practice—even with a spiritual practice—and even as we are trying to practice something as noble and as profound as the dharma, it’s still easy to develop little places to which we escape, little cocoons of comfort where we withdraw when life gets uncomfortable or stale. But the training of warriorship is there to help us with those neutral and uncomfortable moments, to help push us through to an even deeper and a more profound form of practice—a deeper and more profound engagement with our practice. Without that sense of steadiness—devotion, determination, fixedness—we are always in the back of our minds looking for our retirement—a place where after we have worked hard and invested ourselves for a while, we can flop ourselves and relax and just let everything hang.

But the path of engagement does not get easier. There is no retirement on it. There is however a profound sense of delight to be developed from it. But no retirement. Engagement is the path. And this is the way of a warrior—engagement without the aim of retiring.

“Communion”

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This is my response (slightly edited here; this is my site, so I’m a bit more blunt and direct here 🙂 ) to a comment that I received on another site in reference to a comment I left there (and that I posted here as my previous blog post “Connection”)

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“why oh why does this existentialist view point make me (and all disciples of it) feel so much like jumping off a bridge, or just sitting and contemplating the knotted roots of a tree?”

I think that’s how it feels in the beginning—and for a while (a year? 10 yrs? who knows; it varies from person to person) after that. I know it felt like that for me in my teens and even into my twenties. Of course, I didn’t dive headlong into it. I sort of fell into it bit by bit, as it were. Everyone else around me was doing their thing, living life in a very non-existential (blind) way. So I was on my own. I stepped—fell—into existentialism and despair little by little—and I never did it full-time. It was more seasonal and part-time. As a teen, I would have these intense excruciating experiences of my smallness—my cosmic insignificance, how infinitesimal I was, how little my life was in the scheme of things, how vast the eternity before me was and after me will be. And I would be left wondering: What’s the effin’ point? How did I get put into this predicament?

And then I would run—dive headlong into school, friendships, play, whatever would distract me and keep me from thinking these terrifying horrible thoughts. I was living in denial.

And the process would repeat. A moment—or several moments, repeated over the course of days or weeks—of excruciating intense existential clarity—and then my attempt to escape from it, to unseen what I had seen, to unthink what I had thought, to numb and distract myself from what I had realized, to get myself to forget what I had glimpsed and to go back to “normal” life.

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I would try to play games with my fears—peak at them, try to master them, try to trigger them and then calm and soothe myself, rescue myself from the terror suddenly unleashed and raging within me, the sudden turbulent whirligig of giant white-hot thrashing waves that had capsized me and was pulling me under.

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I would read or think something frightening, unleash the terror, and then throw myself into the water after myself and try to rescue myself life a Coast Guard diver. I would try to soothe myself and restore my equilibrium, get my heart-rate down.

 

And I was just a kid—just a frightened 13 or 14 year old kid at first, and then a 20-year old, then a 23-year old.

But at some point in my very early twenties, I made the choice to stop running (or at least to stop running using the ways that I had been using). No more bar-hopping, no more anesthetizing myself with sex or by trying to pick up women.

I was no longer going to live the way those were around me were living. I didn’t want any more of the insubstantial bar banter and chitchat. I wanted to have friends who didn’t look at me as if I was bat-shit crazy or as if I had “finger-banged their cat” when I wanted to talk about some existential thought I had had.

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No, John, you’re not supposed to do that; you’re not supposed to talk about morose depressing things. You’re not following the rules and playing nice; everyone else here wants to talk about the Cleveland Browns or how hot that girl over there is and how best to approach her; no one wants to talk about how life is fleeting, empty, and fragile. You’re such a buzz-kill, dude.

Needless to say, my “friends” and I soon parted way—their choice more than mine. And I was left to look for new friends. Oddly enough, I didn’t really find any live ones. But I did find some dead one, some antecedents—Peck, Nietzsche, Buddha. Apparently I wasn’t the only one. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who had opted out of the conventional approach to life. Apparently I wasn’t so strange after all. There were others; at least, there had been a few others here and there sprinkled through history.

But were there others who were alive now?

That would seem to be a needle in a haystack type proposition.

At the very least though I had found some decent books to read; I had found at least a few minds whose thoughts resonated with me and actually seemed firmly connected to the way life actually is.

And so I read and read and read—and I wrote and wrote and wrote, as well. And eventually I started writing more than I read. And then some time soon after that my thinking took on a life of its own, or rather, my thinking came to life—it brought me to life. I had found my own voice. It was there all along, but it had been stuffed down most of the time under a lot of denial and fear and avoidance.

No more.

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“why oh why does this existentialist view point make me (and all disciples of it) feel so much like jumping off a bridge, or just sitting and contemplating the knotted roots of a tree?”

I think that’s just (just?—when you’re feeling it, it feels far far from “just” anything!) how it feels in the beginning—and for a while (a year? 10 yrs? Who knows; varies from person to person) after that. The first noble truth of Buddhism is “Life is suffering” (or “life is unsatisfactory”). Peck and Rilke both wrote about how life is difficult. Sartre wrote: “‘Life begins on the other side of despair.” Most people are afraid to face this—or at least to consider/ponder this. Most people are afraid to face the facts, they’d rather believe what they want to believe, what makes them feel good, what helps get them through the day; most people live behind a curtain of fantasy; and so (arguably) they never really live. Because as long as a person lives on the near-side of despair, without having faced or considered/pondered what scares them the most, they will be living a hemmed-in anxious life of avoidance, denial, and very limited awareness; they will always be preemptively excluding things from their consciousness that might frighten or trigger them, and they will turn to relationships, shopping, reading, writing, bars, football, dancing, et cetera, all as means of trying to anesthetize themselves and keep their mind occupied and from straying onto what scares the shit out of them.

And they will do all of this in a Sisyphussian attempt to make themselves feel better about their life, that it’s not as scary and frightening (that life isn’t as fleeting, that we’re not as fragile, et cetera) as they fear. Every morning they will get up and roll the rock of their particular neurosis / amalgamation of avoidance and denial and distraction up the hill. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Repeat. Always the same underlying fear driving them on. Until one day, they get brave, they get tired of rolling the rock up the hill; the weariness of their neurosis becomes greater than the threat of their fear, and so instead they start to actually face their fears. And really it’s not so much out of bravery as it is out of weariness, out of the desire to experience something different than the rock they’ve chained themselves to. The comfort zone of their rolling their rock up continually back up the hill life has become a dead zone.

But how much better would it have been to have begun from the realization that we are alone, that we are lost, that we are forlorn? How much life could have been not wasted? It was just a matter of the weariness getting big enough. It was just a matter of the weariness becoming big enough that it was more cumbersome than what it was originally intended to save and insulate the person from.

So that’s the position we’re all in. Continually rolling our particular neurotic tangled rock up the hill again, and again. And again. And our culture offers us an abundance of potential distractions and anesthetics—means of distracting and anesthetizing/numbing ourselves—Internet, 4G cell phones, books, movies, television, shopping malls and centers, pornography, drugs, alcohol, bars, restaurants, even religion. All of these can be used as means of occupying our thoughts and taking our mind off of what we most fear and what seems to hold no solution.

So how much better is it or would it be to cut to the chase and begin from the realization that life is suffering, that we are alone, to begin with despair, and to really face that, instead of always running from it and trying to avoid it? Why not try to get the pain out of the way first? Yes, of course, facing life honestly and directly may be like taking a “headlong dive into a bottomless bucket of shit.” It may indeed be like going down a rabbit hole of despair that has no end. It may be the equivalent of getting sucked into a psychological black hole. But apparently some people *have* taken the journey, some people have gone before us. And what they have to tell us is that there is a bottom to the bucket, the rabbit hole doesn’t go on forever, there is something worthwhile and even better and more beautiful and joyous on the other side of our fears and despair.

So that’s the choice we’re all faced with: red pill or blue pill. Deny reality and live in our own little fantasy worlds, believing whatever it is we want to believe—and then searching for others who share our particular peculiar version of neuroticness and have a penchant for the same anesthetants and distractions that make up our neurosis. Or start facing reality—whether out of boldness or out of weariness from the alternatives—and see who else, if anyone, we meet along the way . . . .

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“You can choose to connect to people…despite the aching, droning truth that in the end, you are alone. It just feels better to share a laugh, doesn’t it? Laughing alone is the stuff of lunatics (more often than not). . . . So…we all have these new toys to communicate with. Nothing has changed, really. We are still alone AND we still have the choice not to be.”

That’s the question—do we really have a choice in not being solitary? Can we ever escape the prison of ourselves and find some real deep and lasting connection or communion with another human being? Certainly we can meet up with others who are opting to distract and anesthetize themselves in a way similar to the way we are numbing and distracting ourselves—and we can doll this up and call it “connecting.” But I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t call it that: I would call that level of relationship or connection an “acquaintanceship,” because two such people haven’t met and connected with each other from their core: they’ve met and connected with each other from their periphery, from their particular neurosis.

And I suppose we always have a choice in that—in connecting with people from that place—from the place or level of our neurosis, because the stuff of most people’s neurosis—the stuff that most people use in their distraction and avoidance and denial—is fairly common stuff—bars, TV, dancing, sports, fitness, yoga, meditation (most people use meditation as a way of avoiding /escaping from life and themselves, not as a means of really facing themselves and their demons and their fears/terrors), shopping, book clubs, surfing the web, hiking, “nature loving,” et cetera, et cetera—the vast majority of people seem to participate in these things from the near-side of despair, not the far- or other-side of it. And so at the very least, most people will at least have that in common—that they’re both living in denial; it’s just that the particular mechanisms or means that they’re each employing in their war against reality and suffering may differ.

So can we really choose not to be alone? Can we really choose to connect with people?

I don’t think so. I think we *can* choose to relate to people, to try and understand them and what they are going through. But our success in that will be limited by how well (i.e. honestly, truthfully) we understand ourselves and our own motivations and struggles and underlying fears, and how widely we have lived and thought (and read—what we have read—how many wise and deeply truthful minds we have rubbed up against and wrestled with). These factors will definitely influence how well we can sympathize with others, understand what they’re (likely) going through. So the more we read and think and reflect, and the wider and more broadly we live and the deeper we become, the better able we will be to interact with understanding and compassion with others.

But as far as finding a real live soul mate or someone with whom we can connect and converse deeply and experience a deep and profound meeting of the minds, that seems to require quite a stroke of luck, because it requires that two do deep and well-self-developed souls / persons actually happen upon each other.

But the first step is developing oneself, and that ultimately means ceasing to deny reality and instead learning how to face it and ourselves directly and heroically.

“Our relationship with our deeper selves is the foundation upon which we achieve any notable communion with others.” – Bill Plotkin

The extent that we get real with ourselves and with life in general, to that extent will we be able to connection deeply and genuinely with others—but we will also find ourselves that much more alone / isolated / unrelate-able—strangers in a strange land—a very strange land, what T. S. Eliot refers to as a wasteland, wandering and wading through all of the varieties of ways that we humans have created in order to distract ourselves and buffer ourselves from raw existence.

“When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.”

– Martin Buber