Dwelling in Connection

Our generation, the young people and the old people not yet settled in their ways, are in a beautiful and interesting position.  We are seeking answers about how to thrive in a society that is crumbling and a world that we're destroying...

Immediately, you may respond with a strong feeling welling up inside.  "Society isn't crumbling!  The world isn't being destroyed!  What do those even mean?"  I'm unsure how to measure them in a good way.  When I read about the ecosystem(s) of the planet, I see that we are directly and indirectly making big changes and disruptions.  The trends seem to be destroying the diversity of life, converting natural resources into hazardous wastes (carbon dioxide, trash, nuclear waste, soot, etc), and rendering the whole system less stable all the time.  These all run counter to the trends of life sustenance in which we evolved.  These broad conceptualizations are how I approach thinking about the modern world.

We seem to be engaged in a similar unpleasant degradation in our society (societies) as well.  There are more of us working more hours to earn relatively less money that we did a generation ago.  We are dismantling the social structures through which we are supposed to care for each other.  Everything from public libraries to public healthcare are under the knife.  We continue to add more people to the planet all the time, with big organizations like the UN and the CIA trying to estimate how many people there will be at some point in the near future.  8 billion, 9 billion?  Whew - I think it feels crowded already at just over 7 billion.  Our money game, which entails placing arbitrary monetary value on essential aspects of life like food, water, shelter, clean air, and (I will contend) access to the wilds, is wearing terribly thin both in the U.S. and abroad.  With the situation of the haves and have-nots growing dimmer all the time, can we say that this system is inherently functional and just needs tweaking?  That does not resonate with me, but feel free to email and we can chat more if you want.

How do we proceed in life when the systems in which we operate are so broken and poisonous?  I think it takes a lot of energy to work against these complex systems full of inertia that weave through most of the world.  How do we admit what is happening, as best we can understand it, and keep going on?

I think our current predicament has something in common with first generation Americans, born of parents who immigrated here from their home countries.  Their children, the first generation born in America, grow up in a world that is very different from their parents' homes.  Their parents may have brought certain values, ethics, and attachments with them that are rooted in the country from which they came - Vietnam, Poland, Guatemala, China, wherever.  Growing up in America, especially in the second half of the 20th century, their children experienced choices, options, and promises that their parents never had.  They can marry someone not from their ethnic group.  They can live alone, or even with other people of the opposite sex to whom they are not married.  They can choose from a huge number of professions and career options.  They are navigating their lives as they live out these and many other choices that their parents perhaps never had.

This freedom can be tough.  What if your choices run counter to the REALLY strong ethnic/religious upbringing of your matriarchal grandmother, who weeps and prays at the dinner table every day that you haven't met a nice boy of the same ethnicity as your family?  Don't laugh (or laugh if you want) - this stuff happens.  You can choose any career you want, as long as it's being an engineer, preferably mechanical, and going to school for it in the same city where you grew up.  You can be as independent as you want as long as you live in the same house with your parents after college and devote much of your non-work hours attending to their needs.  So many choices!  What do we do if we love our parents and grandparents and yet want different things for ourselves?

Our generation now faces similar clashes with the culture at large, and with our older relatives too, regardless of ethnic traditions.  What do you do when you are ensconced in a capitalist culture, yet see that this system is our vehicle of choice for continuing the exploitation of each other and nature?  You can write a book critiquing it, and make some money for yourself as well as the publishing company - one of the top five who control more than half the market.  You can get a sandwich board sign and stand on the corner of 42nd St in Manhattan, telling people about the intricacies of the broken system.  That might get you actually kidnapped and institutionalized at your parents' request.  You can attempt the Warren Buffett - make boatloads of money in the system and then reach out to some of the cultural critics with indictments of how the rich get away with murder.  Not that his criticisms are invalid, but think first about how many millionaires and billionaires get that money and continue to engage in a deep and radical critique of the system.  How will you fare? 

The only way I know to live in opposition to the system we are engulfed in is to find others who resonate with your mind and spirit.  It is critically important to prevent your own slide into excuses and hypocrisy, or to prevent insanity as you engage in cultural critique alone.  You do not have to go find a commune, ashram, or monastery (though if that's your thing, call me up and we'll talk 'cause I love them).  A yoga class is good.  Join a writer's group.  Knit with other knitters.  Volunteer at a bike repair workshop.  I promise you, deeply and truly from my own experience, that when we connect with other kindred spirits in any way, we garner energy to live our lives with more awareness and courage.  Both of these are key to being heartfelt and authentic in seeking to change the world. 

It takes a lot of energy to make it through our modern lives.  We are overwhelmed by choice in every product we buy at nearly every store.  If we drive, we're overwhelmed by more traffic and higher costs of gas, tolls, car payments, insurance, etc.  If we watch TV, we're overwhelmed by the frequent and fast cutaways in the programs as well as the advertisements.  If we read the Times, we're overwhelmed by the volume of inanity and hate in the world news and the U.S. elections.  If we acquire gadgets and knick-knacks like most Americans, our home is overwhelming with clutter and chaos.  If - and by if I mean "when" - we use facebook, we're overwhelmed by bits of content clamoring for our attention regardless of its utility value.  I know you've got to watch the video of a kitten tumbling out of a cardboard box, but it's just a distraction.  Don't do it - I promise you'll feel better.

We've created these systems and we perpetuate them.  It takes so much energy that it's no wonder we have difficulty getting out to do the things we love and letting our minds fully engage the world around us. 

When you do the things you love, the things that help you to awaken, you get more energy.  I promise.  100% of the time.  It never fails.  There is something about authentic encounters between your soul and what you love, what speaks the truth for you, that calls up energy from inside.  If you make it to the 7 a.m. yoga class, you will feel better when you come out, even if you had to wake up an extra hour early to get there.  When you knit with nice folks at the yarn shop, you will come out feeling more energized (as long as you like knitting), even if you just sit there with them clicking away on your 16" circular #8.  When you sit in meditation at the zen center, if that's your thing, you come out feeling energized by the 40 minutes spent in a dim room saying nothing to the person next to you in a black robe with a shaved head. 

Human connection is the key to revolution.  It begins with the courage to go out and meet other people who like or love the things that you love.  The path will become clear from there, I promise.  You do not need to know what comes next.  In fact, you cannot know what comes next.  If your spirit calls out for it, perhaps you will be the person to help resurrect the Black Panther party.  Perhaps you'll find a way to wrestle tax money from the hands of rich so that we stand a chance of being able to take care of each other.  Truth be told, I suspect that heartfelt, relentless contact with the world will inevitably lead you to do more to take care of your fellow humans and the ecosystem.  I can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something hollow behind the devil's advocate saying, "What if my heartfelt truth is to steal lollipops from kids and cut down old-growth redwood trees?"  I don't lose sleep over it when I continue to encounter joy from so many people seeking real human connection. 

Your energy will come from this contact - the Gestalt word for authentic encounter with the world around you, including other people.  Contact is inevitable when we are heartfelt and awake in the present moment, and this comes from being with people doing what you also love to do.  As you continue to cultivate contact, you will have authentic encounters with everything in the world, because there are no real boundaries or divides in the world.  When you talk about injustices that speak to your heart, you will find the people who want to talk with you.  When you knit scarves for charity, you will inevitably have the chance to consider why some people are poor and some people are old rich white men.  As long as you come to these encounters with an open heart, you will keep reaching and growing as a human being.

This is the formula for success.  I do not know what success looks like - be very wary of anyone who tells you that he or she knows.  Through contact, we are simply able to explore the crisis in which we find ourselves in 2012.  (Hint: it is not the end of some misunderstood ancient calendar, but the real prospect of a degrading world.)  We will find love, sorrow, joy, tribulations, and peace as stepping stones along the way.  It will be a journey as fresh, authentic, and full of possibility as each and every moment to which we awaken. 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Me, or You)

Walt Whitman came back into my life two weeks ago, just before coming to the Zen Mountain Monastery, near Woodstock, NY, where I am currently residing for the month of January.  He came to me in a hardbound green book, containing all his writings.  This came to me from a gentle and loving hand, attached to a heart and mind that are profoundly human.  Who knew that through a man who died long ago, whose writings I thought I knew, I would discover the song of myself again for the first time?  

from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

"I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful curious breathing laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them... to touch any one... to rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a    moment... what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight... I swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them and in the contact and odor of them that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well."

This is our work here at the monastery.  We seek not to retreat into ourselves, but to be with ourselves just as we are in the world.  We seek to lean into the experience of being alive.  Not to cultivate an absence of thoughts, but to be at peace with the thoughts as they come and go.

We generate a story about what it means to be ourselves.  Are we good or bad?  Does a certain thought make me evil or kind?  What does it mean if I don't know what I want right now?  How shall I be in the world to make my life worthwhile?  If I don't perpetuate the story of what it means to be me, what will be left and who will I be?

In zazen, which is the formal sitting meditation, and in all other life here at the monastery, we are seeking to find the still point where we don't buy into the story of meaning.  What happens when I am cleaning a toilet and am just present with my breath?  What happens when I chop wood and shovel snow, and let the thoughts flow through without latching on to them or struggling against them?  Do I die?  Worse yet, do I become nihilistic and shallow once I get "free from attachment"?  How can I live a good life if I'm not beating myself with the whip of my conditioned mind, shaped by all the elements of my society that have told me what is Right and Wrong and whom I now carry in my mental machinery?

My experience is that in the moments of life where I can dissolve the story, where I can consider all the facts and feel joy in my existence, where I can feel the fullness and emptiness of the universe at once, where I can be loving though I don't know how, where I can accept my accidental cruelties due to my ignorance... these moments are full of compassion.  I can feel that all of us are the same.

You and I are the same, though completely different.  We are made of the same elements in identical arrangements (it's amazing what carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen can do when they spring to life).  We operate with nearly identical biological processes.  We, for the most part, share faculties that give us rough approximations of what is happening around us.

But, we also keep ourselves wrapped in the illusion of separateness, from each other and from the universe, by our stories.  I like rum raisin and she likes coconut.  I am a Buddhist and he is a Presbyterian.  He is the Secretary of War and I talk about peace.  He leaves dirty dishes on the counter after cooking and I am a conscientious person.  He is the thoughtless 1%, and I am the awake and aware 99%.  These are endless, if we choose for them to be so.

A different path that we can take is to realize our unity.  Freed from the clinging or aversion to our stories, the unity of experience overtakes us.  We're all eating, drinking, breathing, and seeking warmth in the winter.  We all feel better living from a place of love in our hearts instead of fear in our minds.  We feel joy in our bodies sharing a sense of connection with each other.  We wish to break through our limitations, and we wish the same for others.  We are the same and different at the same time, existing simultaneously and seamlessly together.   

Perhaps a question is begged here: if we accept ourselves just as we are, how we will we engage with and, in this the darkest of all hours, save the world?  How will we turn the Red States back to Blue?  How will we keep fundamentalist Christianity out of our government?  How will we convince the North Koreans, Iranians, Southern Baptists, Republicans, our mothers who don't listen enough, couples with more than one child, the neighbors with the noisy dog, Israelis, people who leave the lights on, people who don't check with us before making plans, people who don't love us exactly as we need to be loved every moment of every single day (which incidentally would be so much better if you just saw that you need to change and repent of your old ways)... how will we convince all these people that they need to see the world from our enlightened viewpoint?  How will we do it?  How????

The zendo is still and quiet.  The late morning light comes through the south windows, slanting across the black cushions and the square mats under them.   Outside the field is crusted with hard and bright snow.  The creek coming down the mountain gurgles under the small ice waterfalls that are frozen on the rock ledges.  The trees are bare, leaning into the wind and calling out for nothing against a bright empty sky.

I bow as I step across the threshold, and walk quietly to a mat halfway down the empty row.  I bow to my seat, and then turn to bow to the middle of the room.  I pick up the cushion, set it aside, and kneel down.  I tuck my homemade wooden seiza bench under me, and sit down on it.  I rock gently side to side to find a balance point.  I smooth out the fabric of my gray robe where it flows down to the mat all around me.  I place my hands in my lap in the cosmic mudra that is standard practice here.  I look at my watch one last time, and then gaze toward a spot on the floor a few feet in front of me.  The baseboard heaters tick wildly for a few seconds, and then settle into silence.

I am here, as best I can be.  Sometimes I count my breath and am in the river of my body that flows through my life.  Sometimes I sit and worry about the future, and why I am how I am.  Why do I struggle in marriage?  What kind of work do I really want to do?  Will I cut it as a therapist?  I wonder how long it would take to build a 10x10 hut all by myself.  It would be nice to have a good portable table saw for that kind of project.  How deep will a spiritual practice take me?  I wonder if that's a... and back to the breath.  Just like that.  Just like that.  The still point is always there.  It is not the end, nor is it the beginning.  It is not an anchor, but I can anchor to it.  I am not empty when I have no clinging in my mind, and I am not full.  I am uniquely and completely myself when I realize my connection to all things.  Though it may feel that way sometimes, there are no gaps in reality.  The puzzle is rich and infinite, and my heart burns to explore it.

The shimmer of a steel spoon in the mug,
still hands hold the gentle book -
the cat adjusts its paw.

Harvesting What the Earth Brings Forth

We need 25 bunches of green kale.   You got it?


I've got it.


I drag my knife across the gritty sharpener six times, and tuck it in my small harvest apron next to the bunch of rubber bands.  I haul the big plastic barrel called a tomba off the truck, and carry it on my back towards the long beds of bushy, green, nutrient-packed goodness.  The sky is probably as big and beautiful as always, but the morning mist obscures it for now.  I can just see the autumn colors where the vegetables end and the forest begins.  

The quiet of 7 a.m. is still upon the fields.  I don't mind if the others want to talk, but I'm happy these days to walk a little further down the row to harvest in silence, especially in the morning.  The kale is cold and wet in my hands as I roughly bunch up the leaves, and a quick slice of my stainless knife separates them from the stalk instantly.  It's nice to handle sharp tools with confidence - no distractions, no blood, minimal effort, clean cuts, an attractive bunch of leafy greens.  My now-practiced fingers twist the rubber band around the base of the leaves, triple up the loop, and toss it into the harvest pile.  If my father the surgeon were still alive, he might smile to watch me using my hands and a knife to help take care of people.  


230 bunches of salad turnips.  They come out of the ground with a faint satisfying pop as the tap root comes free.  What beautiful white shoulders and smooth bodies.  170 heads of cabbage.  Walk quickly down the line, cutting and leaving them lay.  We'll double back to toss them to the receiver, who puts them in the big crate being carried by the tractor.  5 tombas of spinach.  Sigh.  Spinach is tedious for me, but our shareholders love it.  I bend over to slice it at ground level into handfuls, then toss it in the tub.  Seems like forever just to fill one, especially if it's a weedy row.  Next, an entire bed of acorn squash, four rows at 800 feet long...??!!  All 8 of us are out there.  I'm taking 5-gallon buckets as fast as I can and dumping them into crates on the trailer as the tractor idles along.  6 people are on the ground carrying me more full buckets and taking away the empties to fill.  We find flow for a while, brown skin and white and the comaraderie of a system that has harmony like a fine-tuned John Deere.  


The farm keeps moving.  Harvest, plow it under, seed the next crop, weed the beds, hope for the best.  Lay down plastic, take it back up.  Watch the satellite imagery as the weathermen tell you that a hurricane is coming up the coast.  The rain comes and you watch it fall, taking in the butternut squash anyway and hoping for the best.   We lose some lettuce to bottom rot, but the broccoli looks beautiful.  The first round of zucchini is delicious, and the second is wiped out by disease that decimates the whole planting.  Those radishes are going to save us this year, she says.  I smile.  How did the share boxes look this week?  They were beautiful, I say.  Others nod. 

The work doesn't have to break your back, but you need to keep moving to stay on pace with the flow of nature.  Your hands get dirty.  It's hard to drag a tomba full of celery 100 feet to the truck, let alone lift it up.  (A tomba, pictured here, is probably about 20 gallons in volume.)

 

You start at 6 a.m. in the summer, 7 a.m. in the fall.  If you're the owner and things need to get done, you get up earlier.  The cucurbits (zucchini, patty pan, summer squash, cucumbers, watermelons, and the like) scratch your arms as you reach into the plant for harvest.  A bee stings you.  You smell like onions all day after harvesting them.  Why worry?  You're working on a farm. 

There is tremendous beauty on the farm.  The aforementioned quiet mornings are rich in tiny nuances.  In late August, a red pepper right off the plant is a taste explosion.  The smooth, deep purple skin of the eggplant is so satisfying to hold, putting them in crates by the dozen.  The cold morning air is bracing as you head out at first light on the bed of the truck.  The sweet aroma of basil fills the wash barn while we pack the leafy bunches into brimming boxes.  The warm feeling of cooperation with the crew to quietly get the job done day after day feels incredibly human.

Working on the farm this year, I've learned the lesson yet again that it is important to have as much of your life as possible be connected to physical reality.   Our lives are fundamentally somatic experiences, regardless of how alluring it may seem to live in virtual worlds of our own design.  Working with our hands, through easy times and hard, is of the utmost importance.  As we put our shoulders to the wheel of a task that needs to get done, we can learn to ride out our inner dialogue that longs to contextualize our experiences with mental contortions. 

When we lose touch with our bodies, when we give the captain's wheel to our fearful, ego-centered selves, we rob ourselves of authentic experiences in life.  If we're bored, we seek distractions from the computers in our pockets or recorded music that we know inspires a certain mood.  If we face a task we dislike or disdain, we try to speed through it if we think we can get away with a shoddy job.  If we're afraid of not getting rewarded for being bright and cutting-edge, we learn to posture ourselves as clever by playing with language and sticking to areas where we think we already know the answers.  If we think we're being treated unfairly, we create a story that we repeat in our heads about how we have the moral high-ground and how to seek justice and/or retribution.  We behave much like children when they spend more energy resisting reality than it will take to accept and complete the task at hand. 

In the face of our mind's best efforts to sabotage our own growth, it is empowering to remember that comfort is the enemy of joy.  When we ride out our reactions of discomfort, we can get to the other side of our petty stories and discover the joy of simply being with what is all around us and within us.  It is a spiritual leap to learn to be with discomfort and not ascribe meaning to it.  Not having the right answers, methodology, approach, insight means nothing about me as a person.  Rather, it is a chance to open up and have an authentic learning experience. 

My own work with meditation is a reflection of this.  When I sit in meditation, and my mind keeps racing along thinking about things, that is what is.  I accept it, sit the 30 minutes, and get up at the end.  Tomorrow I will do it again.  I've noticed that my ego goes wild like a chihuahua on bad acid when I simply accept what I'm thinking and feeling, yet refrain from jumping to act on the impulse. 

What do you mean you're going to keep writing?  You've never published anything.  Why keep going? 

You're really going to keep working on the farm?  What about the doubts you have that you should be doing something to make a bigger splash instead? 

You're going to take a pottery class?  You know you'll just go for a while and then drop it.  Why bother? 

All these things and many more have flowed through my neurons while I'm sitting on the cushion.  I'm still on the farm, still writing, still throwing pottery, and still trying to not take my ego's stories as the Truth.  And miraculously, I'm still alive.  You might even say I'm thriving. 

If this were an after-school special, I suppose the take-home message is that so much good stuff happens in life when we follow our discomfort, heading towards the things that our egos just KNOW we can't do.  A great way to do that is to find a task for your hands and body to do, and get down to it.  Bake a sweet potato casserole.  Clean the bathroom.  True your bike wheels.  Take a carpentry class.  Go to a silent retreat.  Turn off your computer for 72 hours.  Breathe into the discomfort.  Remember, the chatter in your head isn't your friend, and it will fade away.  It may reappear.  Keep going.  You are practicing being alive and in touch with the wonderful self that is your body, in this amazing world. 

Not-so-Strange Love or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Farm

 

Where have I been in the past seven months?  Has it really been since early December that I've sat down to drain the reservoir of brain synapses that have been bouncing and building in my head?  This surprises even me, though as you likely know if you're reading this, I've been keeping a full life.

Jess and I went to British Columbia and Alberta for nearly a month over the winter holidays.  We came back and helped Magic move towards the inevitable shuffle and purge that is coming with the new house next year.  In early April we decided to get married.  I don't remember April, really, because we planned our wedding from scratch in only three weeks.  In early May we got married (you can find a link to photos on my Facebook account).  In mid-May we flew out to the east coast, had a few parties to celebrate, and took the train from New York up to our current home, Picadilly Farm.  We're living in the southwest corner of New Hampshire for the bulk this growing season (May through November), staying in the farmhouse with Bruce and Jenny while working on the farm.  

At this moment, I am at my own little axis mundi of the here and now - a coffeeshop in Keene, NH called Brewbakers.  Jess and I usually come here when we make a trip to the big town of Keene (population 24,000), about 25 minutes by car or 150 minutes by bike, as we discovered today.  The good decaf, friendly and attractive servers, wireless service, and creaky wood floorboards help me tap the spring inside that I draw upon for thoughts worth sharing.  

So what is on my mind these days that brings me back to the keyboard?  Resisting the global race to the bottom, starting on my hands and knees at 6:05 a.m. under a gray New England sky.  

We were talking in the kitchen a few weeks ago about selling eggs at the farm each week for $5 a dozen.  Many people who come to pick up their vegetables each week also purchase other products from local producers who sell through us.  We have maple syrup, milk, yogurt, cheese, bread, meat, and our own Picadilly eggs.  We do it to help support regional farms, offering them leverage by being a point of sale where more than 200 people pass through each week (already committed to buying local produce by virtue of their being there).  It adds a nice feeling of community to the farm, and lots of shareholders enjoy getting easy access to locally produced foods.

In the kitchen, though, we were talking about the incredulity that some shareholders express at buying our eggs for $5 a dozen.  This price represents the focal point of a pickle in which we find ourselves at the farm.  With the cost of feed, the labor it takes to care for the chickens (daily food and water, as well as maintenance of their hen houses and fencing), and the time we invest in gathering, cleaning, and packaging the eggs, Bruce estimates that we're only just about breaking even at $4 a dozen.  Even if we sell 30 dozen eggs a week (about our average) for the whole shareholder season, at $5/dozen we're taking home only $780 for profit.  If there any mishaps along the way, or the price of chicken feed goes up, that only reduces the profit further.  And this is for a farm where most employees work 50 hours a week for more than half the year, and the owners are willing to pay reasonable wages, which come out of their bottom line. Lots of work, and no one takes home big profits. 

What this whole equation basically amounts to is that selling eggs at $5 per dozen is just the busy farmers doing a favor for the shareholders.  We try not to be soured by complaints.  The area of New Hampshire we're in is not full of money tree plantations.  It is as depressed as any other rural area in this modern American permanent recession. 

The pickle is this.  You can go down towards Brattleboro, NH, and probably buy a dozen eggs from Walmart for about two dollars.  When you do that, you're supporting industrial scale food flows.  Why do I say flows?  Think about the quantities involved.  According to the American Egg Board, 77 billion eggs were distributed in the US in 2009. That's a huge number of chickens, cropland to grow their feed, energy to process them, energy to transport them and keep them cool, material to package them, antibiotics to feed them, etc. That is a flow, to keep all that process of supply and distribution going every day of every year.  It's a tsunami of calories on an epic scale, like most food production in America and throughout the world these days. 

At scales of this magnitude, Picadilly farms can't compete.  We could try to cut corners.  We could give them antibiotics to reduce the risk of infection and disease.  We could box them up for their entire lives so that it was easier to just go and grab the eggs.  We could feed them only really cheap chicken feed rather than let them scavenge in pastures for food which requires more of the farmer's time to maintain.  We could pack twice as many in half the space.  We could do these things and probably more, but we like giving the chickens a little decency and ability to realize their full avian potential.  We like having a farm with more integrated cycles of animal life.  We like selling eggs that are probably more nutritious than conventional ones. (I can attest that the yolks are a deeper color yellow than I've seen before.)

When people come and buy eggs (or bread, or vegetables, or anything else) from Picadilly rather than their supermarket, they are making a choice with their dollars to support local producers.  This choice means stepping away from our usual m.o. of giving as little as we can and taking as much as we can get away with.  The idea that we will feel good maximizing our own advantage while externalizing disadvantages (like cheap eggs, the production of which trashes the chickens and the ecosystem) is an insidious myth well worth examining and possibly rejecting. 

When we buy cheap, mass-produced things, we are commanding an exploitative way of life with our consumer dollars.  We may not enjoy sitting around contemplating the effects of our purchases (human and ecological exploitation and degradation), but they are the end result nonetheless.  This is the race to the bottom.  If we offer our money to someone who can do it "cheaper," they will find a way.  Scale up production, dump your waste, enslave your workforce, medicate your chickens, spray your vegetables.  When we smell the chance to save a buck, and the producer smells a way to make an extra buck, we often chuck our moral compass out the window.  We think we're all winning, when in fact all we did was abuse some animals or people, and make the world a little less liveable for future everyone.  

The background to all this is the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  We want others to support us when we're struggling to do the right thing.  If we perpetuate the race to the bottom, what reason do we have to expect others to help us when we wake up to all the destruction we've caused?  How can we support others right now so as to keep the circle unbroken when it's our time to receive help? 

How can we be different?  How can we take a stand for the things we want in this world - happy chickens, healthy and content friends, a stable ecosystem that will support farming into the future?  I think the key to our work is changing our mental organization.  It may seem difficult at first to think that spending more on our food than is necessary (local happy eggs vs. Walmart agribusiness eggs) is the path to more of what we want.  But what if we took the least satisfying dollars we spent in the past week or month (the third beer, the second scoop of ice cream, the cheap shirt at Forever 21) and convert them to purchasing food that does less harm to the earth?  What if we explore the feeling of voluntary buying fewer things and instead making higher-quality, local purchases?  What does a life like that look and feel like?  Where will it take us?  What does it feel like to want to pay $5 for eggs to support local farmers? 

In these times, this kind of exploration is not a destination, but rather a journey that is not always clear.  We live so interdependently.  We use resources from all over the world, and are heavily addicted to our exploitative, corporate systems.  Connecting to local resources is a great way to begin untangling our own place in this web of modern life.  Finding other people who are on similar journeys is a good way to boost our own enthusiasm.  Asking heartfelt questions is great, too.  Why are the eggs $5 when the Big Box store sells them for $2?  I want to support local folks, but I'm not sure how best to do it.  Where can I begin?  

Five days a week, I and about 10 others are working at Picadilly Farm, living out the answers and the questions together.  We're on our hands and knees weeding and harvesting.  We're smiling or frowning at how the crops are doing.  We're mending irrigation lines.  We're washing thousands of vegetables each day and boxing them up.  We're helping to run the farm because we believe it's a good place to begin.  

Start Where You Are, or Life After the Decline of the American Empire

 I went to Arizona this past week for a nice vacation with Jess.  We enjoyed a few days with family and friends in Phoenix (she and they hit it off well, no surprise), and then headed to Sedona.   We popped in to the Grand Canyon briefly as well, to take in all its wintery goodness.  

The sights were breathtaking.  We got to shiver and watch the canyon get snowed upon at sunrise.  We walked the beautiful red rock formations around the town of Sedona.  We hiked from sandy desert up into snow and ice covered trees in just a few miles.  And we saw the sun rise and set over all types of desert landscape.

In tandem with this beauty, though, came the persistent feeling that we (not just Jess and I, but everyone) are witnessing the increasingly rapid decline of the American empire.  We built the domestic empire by wiping out the native populations, and have since gone on to colonize the world with supposedly soft ideas about capitalism and democracy, backed by men with guns.  We've paved roads, built dams and canals, and put up high-tension power lines to bring our necessities and drugs (electricity, water, and dense sugary calories) to most corners of America and the world.  We did all this with cheap, accessible energy that was seemed limitless when we began but is now quickly running out.  We've exported our goods and lifestyle choices, to the point where the world is now swimming in plastic, chemicals, inequality, and debt. 

Rolling through Phoenix and the surrounding highways, the main features seem to be cracked but endless pavement, slow suicide through sedentary and corpulent lifestyles, and divisive politics based on shallow and fearful opinions about how to grab as much as we can of the vanishing pie.  Wide people are driving wide cars on wide roads to wide shopping centers with wide selections of cheap crap.

How do we live in the face of such decay?  In some ways, it seems daunting.  We can be our own worst enemies in the challenge to live lightly in a meaningful way.  We choose distractions - television, drugs, iPhones, Youtube, farmville, Harry Potter films, and more - rather than engagement with the world immediately around us.  It's tough to look at the decay and destruction around us that we ourselves are facilitating, and not want to shut it out through distraction.

It's not a great mystery as to why we seek this distraction.  Behind the destruction, we (accurately) perceive a high level of fear in our society.  We are afraid that we won't get a piece of the good stuff (big house, exotic vacations, power over other people, social status) if we don't work hard to climb the ladder at work.  It is ironic, perhaps, that we can see that climbing the ladder is how we degrade the world, yet we are afraid that if we choose lifestyles other than scrambling to the top of the heap, we will be left behind (homeless? friendless? penniless?).  I don't really want to drive to work, but I "have to" to keep this job.  I don't want to end up in a pile of debt, but I need to get a graduate degree to have a secure future.  I dislike the stock market as much as the next person, but I don't know what to do with my money to get as good a return.  I must toe the line in order to make real changes in society.

When we feel this fear in ourselves and others, we often think that there is no alternative besides joining in the race and hoping we come out closer to the top than the bottom.  Crabs in a bucket?   Mob of children fighting over a toy until they break it?  Third world countries vying to have the lowest wages in order to attract business to become "prosperous"?  Philanthropy from wealthy corporations that have already trashed the planet?  None of them paint a pretty picture.  Seems like a tough game to win.   Hmmm...

So, if our ecosystem and society are breaking under the strain, what do we do?  To paraphrase someone more famous than I, "I'm not here to tell you how it ends.  I don't know that.  I'm only here to tell you how it begins."  Worrying at this point about what the future will look like is another way to get wrapped up in a fear-based story.  The future is unknown.  Starting right where we are is the only way to begin. 

When I look at where we are at, I feel quite sad.  The sadness that comes with being present, however, is a powerful motivation to engage in making the world a more pleasant, diverse, and habitable place. When I perceive alienation and fear amongst myself and my fellow humans, I want to just be with that feeling instead of launching into some story in my head about what that means or what I can and can't do about it.  It is tempting to give into the fear voice in my head, where I think that my actions don't matter all that much anyway, or I'll be ridiculed/ostracized for being different, or that I'm a naive fool for thinking that we can be different.  OR... I can smile a little more and enjoy being right where I'm at.

When we are present and awake, we feel wonder, gratitude, and love.  When we live an authentic life rooted in these feelings, we are less inclined to engage in the race to the bottom and write it off with a fear-based story.  We spread our consciousness like a light simply by being present.  Others around us can take courage and sustenance from our presence, and in turn spread the aware, mindful life.  Sitting and being with your breath at Starbucks one morning may not incite an immediate global revolution of consciousness, but it will feel good inside and create some ripples of a different way of being.

By practicing being more alert, awake, present, and therefor loving, can we turn the tide?  Can we be the change we want to see in the world?  Can we weave together a new tapestry of life based on love rather than fear?  

I'm not sure.  I'm skeptical myself that being lovingly mindful from moment to moment, all the while burning fossil fuels and working Wall St. hedge funds, is even close to enough to save our society.  I don't even know what "enough" means anymore with respect to changing our culture, or even if I want to put energy into "saving our society" in its present form.  But I do know that it feels good to practice and join with others in living differently.  I literally get misty-eyed when I read about groups of people in history banding together to create change by being different, and there are large-scale examples that I love to invoke.  Ghandi leading the salt marches?  I get all choked up.  A hundred thousand people in the Philippines marching to the airport to oust the American-backed dictator Marcos?  I literally started to cry in my political science class reading about it (embarrassing, let me tell you).  Coal miners going on strike because things were so bad they couldn't imagine living another day like that?  I'm so faklempt I need to take a moment to gather myself. 

Did I just suggest that you can be like Ghandi?  Yes I did.  History is full of stories of people who chose solidarity and love to overcome fear and create a revolution.  Even better than their stories, though, is Our Story, because it is the only story we have, and begins the only place we can begin - right where we are.  The stories of others are inspiring, but our lives moment to moment are where we make a stand.  It is our own satyagraha.  How can I love myself and take care of myself better?  If I feel that I'm going too fast, how can I slow down?  If I'm chasing money and it's never enough, how can I see a broader, deeper picture?  How can I communicate a more loving outlook in life to others?  What do I stand for in my actions?  How do I translate my personal values into outward action in a loving way?  All these questions are relevant and urgent as we seek to make the world a better place.  In asking, answering, and asking again, we create a present reality that challenges wider societal trends of narrow fear. 

It's the holiday season, and I know you're busy, so I'll wrap up here.  What is the take home message I wish to convey?  I support anything you want to do in life to slow down and be present with yourself and your surroundings.  I predict that you'll feel more love and delightful wonder for the world.  And that is where I always want to begin - right where I am. 

Give It All to Get It All

Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest piece in the New Yorker entitled Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.  I loved it so much that I feared I would lay awake restless and twitching, unable to fall asleep due to the adrenaline I get when reading something on which I've reflected for some time.  Before too long, though, I fell into a nice slumber with the warm anticipation of coming here this morning and writing a little bit about the article and my thoughts.

In the article, Gladwell draws a broad comparison between high risk, strong-tie activism and low investment, weak-tie activism.  High risk may be characterized as the act of risking something in your own life for the cause - often your own safety and well-being, as in Gladwell's example of white activists who came down for the Freedom Summer in 1964 and risked injury and death to help move forward the Civil Rights movement.  The strong-tie aspect refers to connections with other people whom you know and share some background with - friends, family, members of the same church group, etc.  It is a sliding scale for sure.  I think of it perhaps as having two brothers with a whole life background together on one end, and the other end as being myself and a person in Lithuania who have nothing in common but membership with million others in an online group called I Love Jelly Donuts.  One of these pairs is likely to feel closer to each other, and to be willing to risk and endure some degree of hardship to help each other out.  The other pair is less likely to know anything about each other or to feel any investment in the life of the other.

Gladwell posits the idea that online social networks are mainly weak-tie networks, and that strong-tie networks are what create social revolutions, in the past and today as well.  He is challenging the idea that Facebook and twitter are tools for meaningful social revolutions.  I say, Right On Mr. Gladwell.  The key to this argument is that we (the generation that is logged on to facebook and twitter much of the time) will join nearly any and all movements that come our way and look even the tiniest bit like something we may sympathize with.  We'll sign up to save cities we can't even locate on a map (where is Darfur?  somewhere in Africa?), we'll oppose dictatorships for crimes we can't recall, and we'll put our name on a list to support a charity without giving any time, money, or attention to the cause.

The problem with this type of "activism" (I put it in quotes to show my skepticism at our efficacy in such endeavors) is that we end up subscribing to a large number of causes that each take very little investment.  It's easy to work for peace and freedom in Rwanda, Sudan, Tibet, Burma, Cambodia, America, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Sri Lanka all at the same time if all I have to do is click a button between browsing You Tube and browsing J. Crew, while I wait for 5 o'clock to roll around.  Do I give substantial donations to each of these causes?  Heck no - I belong to so many I'd break my bank account.  Do I go to weekly meetings for their organizations?  Not nearly enough waking hours in my week for that.

The kicker for me is that I think we are still sensitive and sympathetic people.  I think this type of activism does not necessarily reflect some sort of growing callousness or apathy on the part of the younger, completely plugged-in generation (kids these days! :-).  Instead, I think it is another manifestation of an idea that we are hoodwinking ourselves with - that we can have it all and give up nearly nothing in exchange.

Gladwell talks of the early protesters in the Civil Rights movement as putting something at risk in their activism, and being highly invested in the cause.  I can't even imagine, due to my comfy suburban upbringing, what it was like to have your life and liberty threatened by other people in your very own town who were angry and terrified by your challenge of being black and sitting at the white folks' counter.  Or seeing other volunteers with your organization get beaten and shot at for registering people entitled to vote, who had been denied suffrage only through persistent, deep-rooted discrimination.  Or, in other cases, taking to the streets to oppose the corrupt dictatorship of your country (Philippines, Iran, Chile, everywhere).  These people were invested in their cause, and faced much higher risks, including their lives.  Would you go toe-to-toe with the National Guard to support a facebook group with a million members you've never met?  I pause and wonder.

What is the upshot of me writing all this?  I, like Malcolm Gladwell (I enjoy comparisons between he and I), feel that there are so many aspects of our culture that deserve a good, hearty revolution, that it's difficult to fathom them all.  At the same time, our lives are precious and finite.  We only have so much energy in the day - call it X amount.  I believe that we can only do so much with that life every day, week, and year, and still give our high-quality attention to the task we are engaged in.  The promise that we can do 1.1X things, or even 2X things or more, and still make a high quality effort, is an illusion.  I hold that we can't belong to 15 social justice groups on any social networking site, be a full-time student, get enough sleep, eat mindfully, get in some movement and exercise, and do all the other things in our daily routine in a high quality way.  Something has to give.  I think we can do many of those things in a low-quality, half-assed way if we choose that route.  Or, I think we we can do fewer things and really learn to feel a sense of investment in the activities we undertake - work, study, exercise, loving, etc.

I feel that we are doing the world and ourselves a disservice by continuing to perpetuate the myth that we can do it all and give up nothing.  At Stanford University, where I help teach a class, I see this in students all the time.  I have literally talked with students who are basically nodding off while trying to explain to me how they are just fine cutting out sleep as part of an overstuffed life.  I've met students who are really excited about committing to a club fully, only to end up attending two or three meetings over the whole quarter.

It isn't fair to pick on Stanford students, though.  From my interaction with other students around the country, and my peers who are now young professionals, I get the impression that we all want to feel like we're having and doing it all while giving up nothing.  Beyond social media, we've turned this trend into other troubling aspects of our culture: bumper stickers on cars about not supporting a war for oil; conferences where we fly in people from all the over the world to talk about local-focused living; green building assessment standards that purposefully omit the energy footprint of the building materials that went into it.  We're like three-year-olds sometimes - we really really want to fly all over the world while saying that we're sensitive to climate change.  We really really want to consider ourselves in touch with various global causes.  We really want a cheap, steady supply of all our consumer goods in a green, sustainable way.

Perhaps we can have these things.  Perhaps I'm a curmudgeonly pessimist at the age of 32 - wouldn't that be a hoot?  I have yet to see evidence for it though.  I think we're wrapped up in the illusion that we can have it all.  Wouldn't it have been great if the black guys at the white folks' counter could have started their revolution without being threatened with violence and imprisonment?  Sure.  It would have been nice if they could have kicked off big changes without having to invest and risk a lot, and have their girlfriends, sisters, friends, and mothers worrying that they were going to be the ones to "take one for the team" and lose their lives.  Wouldn't it be great if I could click my mouse and stop deforestation, violence, ocean acidification, and more?  Sure.  Sign me up.

I think it takes more, though.  I think we need to slow down, accept the limitations on how much high-quality life we have to give, and then use that life to get invested deeply in the work around us.  I think this is the way to foment the revolutions we need.  I think we need widespread actions where we feel solidarity with others by actually giving something up and taking a risk.  I am skeptical that the revolution will have a corporate sponsor, souvenir t-shirts, and prize giveaways.  I doubt it will happen while we click away during a bored moment at work.  It might happen if we question the suit and tie, and walk out of the office.  It may happen if we actually pledge to not use fossil fuels for transportation - not sometimes, or just this one wedding, or for this one special event, or because we haven't seen so-and-so in a long time.  If we give up some things, and feel like we're doing it with others with whom we have strong-ties, I think we'll get amazing results. 

The other incentive (who likes sticks with no carrots?) is that when we slow down, and shed the illusion that more and faster is fine and even desirable, we really begin to notice the world and people around us in a deeper way.  We hear more of what others say.  We notice the place we live (I'm telling you that you can't take real stock of your home if you're flying 50,000 miles a year for work).  We enjoy the food and the water.  We learn more about the plight of others, and feel moral outrage at a deeper level.  We're less quick to proclaim that we already know and understand everything, and more likely to open our senses and learn.  We give and get more out of this one precious life.

What I Want To Say When I Write About Life

The title of my blog is the World Belongs to You, and the web address is Nothing Is Lacking. These lines were shamelessly stolen from the Tao Te Ching, an ancient Chinese text by the apocryphal author Lao Tzu. The slightly larger context of the chapter from which I took it is this:

Be content with what you have,
Rejoice in how things are.
When you realize nothing is lacking,
The world belongs to you.

Last week, after posting my most recent blog entry, I felt compelled to reflect on what I'm trying to communicate with my blog. I thought a lot about the title, and how it relates to my reasons for writing and sharing thoughts with you.

When I'm operating from my higher sense of self, as far beyond ego and pride as I can get, I want to communicate ideas that are helpful to others in reflecting on their lives. I really do believe that the world belongs to us. For me, this means seeing the world as accurately as we can and taking responsibility as best we can for how we are in the world, both being and doing. I think when we do the best we can by acting with as much courage and love as we can possibly generate, then we have done all that we need to as human beings. I really do love when I live on that edge - trying to be as aware, compassionate, and intentional as I can be. That is the place from which I generate a deep feeling of ownership in the world.

I see the 'nothing is lacking' part of it as a call to remember that we can be fully aware only when we see that the world is what it is. There is nothing lacking - when we feel that something is, it is merely us resisting reality. We can surely work to create a future that is different from the present (more love, more peace, more harmony, fewer potato chips consumed [my own personal journey]), yet we must begin with who we are and what the world is.

For me, this means talking about the shadows and the light that I see around me all the time. In my writing, sometimes I feel an urgency to communicate more of one than the other. In my last post about my perception of our biophysical and cultural homogenization tendencies, I felt compelled by the wilderness to write, so I sat down and banged it out on the keyboard in a few hours one morning. My intention is not to present any one piece of writing as a Complete Version of Reality, but rather to share one interpretation that I have found useful and relevant in learning to accept how I perceive things to be. Someone once told me that it is important to be able to make a case for all viewpoints when considering a contentious course of action, so as to be able to fully understand and empathize with the parties involved. I like the spirit of that approach, and it is what I aim for in my writing.

In looking back over my past few years of blogging, I see many different flavors of writing: poetry and essays, optimism and pessimism, admonishment and uplift. Some people have reacted with strong support to my writing, others with occasional but sharp criticism. Some readers enjoy the variety of styles, while others strongly encourage me to forgo the variety and stick to just one straightforward format. My only defense is to invoke Walt Whitman: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." I do not aim to confuse or confound, but rather to shoot from the hip and accept that some pieces will resonate with a reader while others may not.

As I look at where I'm at in life and think about my future writings, I want to continue to cultivate awareness of myself and offer a useful viewpoint on the world to share with you. I aim to keep writing from a place of love, even if it means working through some despair. When I criticize our modern culture, I want to do it from the spirit of Edward Abbey, Derick Jensen, or other naturalists who love the world so much that they weep for the steady loss of natural beauty and diversity. I want to write from a place beyond hope and despair, and instead embrace what is and talk of what we may do differently from now on. How can we accept the crisis around us, and sometimes in us, yet still sing, dance, and enjoy life? It can be done, and we sometimes do it well. I personally need courage to do it, so I write to unburden myself of weighty perceptions, and relish the replies I get from all of you.

I make no claim to Truth. I am for sure only one small voice, trying to be one of many lighthouses and offer what I can to those sailing the seas. I have my own prejudices, predilections, and foibles - forgive me if they rub you the wrong way sometimes. The greatest compliment is simply for you to say, "Hmmm, I like that you're sharing a different perspective. I'll ponder it."

This piece itself is a step in my growth and journey as an amateur writer. I love to write, and have so far to go that I can see my journey stretching beyond the horizon. I do not write from a place of defensiveness, but rather a reflection for myself. Thanks for reading it, and I look forward to writing more.