Sepia-toned Narratives

We are all story tellers, from our earliest days that we can remember (and possibly before) until we return to the earth or lose our capacity to mentally hold together, whichever comes first. Our tendency to tell ourselves stories seems rooted in the situation we find ourselves in - an organism with an agenda (simple or complex) in an environment that we cannot possibly understand in a full or complete way. To sum it up, we tell stories because that's how our minds make sense of the world.

Our stories begin when we are young. They begin with our experiences: love, sadness, joy, pain, separation, physical injury, chocolate bars, flying kites at the beach, riding with no handlebars down a hill, going with our father to see his work, shopping with mom in the perfume-laden department store, seeing other humans do the things they do. We notice that there are patterns to these phenomena. Dinner comes when the clock shows a 6 followed by a : and a 30. Dad comes home later on Wednesdays and we don't usually play with him then. Other kids want to hang out with us when we have a new, shiny bike with shock absorbers. Two brownies are great, and the third sits uneasily in our stomach. When adults drink alcohol, they smell and act differently. People's faces and body language sometimes match the words they are saying, and sometimes they don't. We get some reward for being obedient in school. Soft sheets and blankets feel good when we climb into bed. Our lives begin to take shape around these patterns, as we participate in and create ever more complex and lengthy ones.

As humans we also begin early in life (at birth perhaps, definitely within the first few years) to tell ourselves stories about the reasons why things happen. I get a hug more quickly when I've already cleaned up the legos by bedtime, because mom is happier. Polite people don't burp at the dinner table because it offends others. Our parents drive to work because they need to work to earn money. Fast-food chains use throwaway everything because it's cheaper that way, and cheaper is better. There are as many stories as there are interactions in the world.

The renowned linguist Benjamin Whorf posited the idea that our language is both a platform for and a fence around our worldview. Our stories function in much the same way. With language, we can communicate complex ideas clearly and simply with language. We generate words like praxis, relativity, and entheogenic to expand the world as we conceptualize it in our mind. When we change from passive to active voice, we feel more clarity about who is doing what in the world. On the flip side, people who come from cultures without the language of individual ownership have/had trouble participating in a private property society like ours. When we reify concepts (Government keeps messing with my healthcare rights!), we obscure who is actually doing something (We elected a few people, they hired a lot of other people who go to work and write legislation that is enforced by other people who threaten violence, imprisonment, or other penalties for breaking their laws). These are a few of the things we do.

We do the same things with the stories we tell, sometimes because of the language we use but also by arbitrarily embracing some stories while rejecting others. We tell ourselves that we need to drive because we live far away from work, friends, and the stores we frequent. We see hope for the future in news articles about 'green' buildings built from recycled industrial waste products. We 'know' that our father didn't love us or mom because he didn't tell us the truth about having an affair. We 'know' that, sadly, life just doesn't work that way. We know that grassroots activism is a nice idea but it's not effective in changing the world. You've got to have mass mailing campaigns if you want to save the rainforest.

On the warmer, fuzzier side, we also tell stories about how we function well. We describe ourselves as having overcome traumatic relationships and emerged stronger and wiser. We recognize that we don't want to devote life to playing video games. Yoga and meditation are always good for you. We are a closer family because we came together after grandpa died. We inspired two dozen people to meditate regularly last year. Both of these lists are endless.

What do all these things have in common? They are stories! They are mostly based on little bits of data gathered by us in our tiny slice of experiencing the universe. This is the key to the whole matter. There is so much that we don't know about cause and effect in the world around us. We do have some very gross, rough control over what happens to us. We can choose where to go to work, whom to marry, whether to toss it in the recycling bin, how much caffeine to consume, whether to buy fair trade-labeled products, what we devote life to talking about, and many other choices that shape our days. However, as many psychologists have told us, we as humans seem to have a fundamental need to have a coherent story or narrative about the world around us. To achieve a functional narrative that at least appears durable and stable, we fill in and smooth over blind spots by telling ourselves simple, all-encompassing stories about the World and How It Works. It is a natural process that we all engage in, and seems to be a key to basic mental health and our ability to wake up each day to live our lives. How could we really function at all without a coherent narrative tying together all the sensory inputs we get from the world around us?

When we start to tell ourselves stories as black-and-white, brick-and-mortar reality, however, we run into problems right away. We begin to narrow our sense of what is possible by limiting our ideas about reality to the stories that we tell and to which we eventually cling with an iron grip. When I drive a car as my main means of getting around for a decade, I lose my ability to imagine how I might be bicycle-based instead. When I get much of my information from corporate nightly news broadcasts, I believe that "the environment" is just another issue to be considered alongside politics, religion, economics, etc., rather than the underpinning for all life on the planet and therefore worthy of our immediate, full attention. When I see most others around me working at stressful, disempowered jobs and seeking to release tension through alcohol and Hollywood entertainment, I come to believe that this is how to live a balanced life. When my story is that I need Them tell Us what's healthy/beneficial/useful, I literally lose the ability to remember that I can discover these things myself.

If our stories are limiting, we impoverish ourselves. I have long believed that poverty is as much tied to our stories as it is to how much cash we have stuffed in our mattresses or Manhattan apartments. If you have 10 million dollars in the bank, but can't imagine raising a family on less than 20 (don't laugh, some people believe this) than you are impoverished (i.e. not free) because of your story. If you're a poor farmer in Thailand, but have good food, family, and health to live out the rest of your foreseeable future, then your story of 'enough' makes you wealthy. If your story is that we are all in this global crisis together, then you'll feel more empathy with other human beings throughout the world (and perhaps less inclined to bomb/sanction/enslave them). If your story is that you have the one Right understanding of God, government, or how to be a contributing member of society, I predict you'll be more likely to react with fear and anger when you encounter other people (anyone, really) who deviate from your storyline.

What is your story? Is the world full of possibility? Is your life full of potential? Is life nasty, brutish, and short? Is it Us vs. Them? How much is Enough? Is death something to be afraid of? Do you need to fight aging with botox, make-up, and hair color because old is ugly? Is a conversation full of gossip and complaint a worthwhile use of your life? When you see high school kids getting high, laughing, and playing in a park, is this scary or perhaps beautiful? When someone hits on you in the coffeehouse, is it a threat or a compliment? Is your life sacred, or is it something that you have to trudge through while keeping your chin up?

Here's the magical twist on stories: by changing our stories, we can change our life. When we change the language we use and the thoughts we have about the world and our place in it, we actually feel different. At the recommendation of a skilled therapist, I tried out writing a brief story of my life both as a victim and as a hero. After writing the victim story, I felt deflated and empty. After writing the hero version, I actually went on to do some good creative writing in the weeks that followed because I felt so good about myself. When I tell the story that my struggle with my mom is centered around her fear of growing older and my fear of not being loved and understood, I feel more compassion for both of us, rather than feeling impatient and angry with her for not being how I want her to be. When my story is that I'm learning more about what kind of person I want to partner with, I actually feel excited and optimistic that I've yet to pair up and have kids, rather than feeling despondent that I'm "behind the game." This is the power of stories.

What is the point of all this? I want to encourage you to take a little space from your stories about yourself and your life. I and others have found that when we create a little space, i.e. when we remember that our stories are NOT reality, we infinitely increase our ability to relax, take a breath, and imagine more possibilities in life. What if we can be more scientific about our values? What if we're not as healthy as we thought we were? What if more "green" technology is not enough to "save" our present global society? What if it isn't about Us vs. Them? What if there is more to life than money (come now, let's be honest that when we say that we're rarely giving more than the thinnest lip service to the idea)? What if we're actually addicted to most legal drugs and failing to avail ourselves of the benefits of the other ones? What if getting misty-eyed about democracy and free-markets doesn't really amount to a hill of sustainably-harvested beans? What if we don't need to be afraid of so much because we'll handle whatever happens? What if we really are being selfish defectors from the greater common good by using power that comes from gasoline and coal? What does it mean if all our technological advances have downsides that we can't foresee?

We an also create space to live with more fulfillment than we previously thought possible. What if I am the type of person to do yoga twice a week? What if I can switch from coffee to green tea? What if I sit down at dinner and say to my friends that I'm concerned about the state of the global ecosystem? What if I am the kind of person to say "I love you"? What if my actions do speak louder than my words? What if I go for a walk without my iPhone? What if I am the kind of person to write a blog in the hopes that it can be a light in the world? What if I don't feel good about resignation, and want to be an agent in my own life instead?

The answers to these questions are the beginnings of new stories. What will your story be today, tomorrow, and in the future? I invite you to comment right below this posting. Click the button, change your story and mine for the better. Let's get free.

Sandcastles on Clouds, or That Bad Feeling in Your Gut When You Take Strong Action Based on False Information

Here's a brief list of some of the things I've been wrong about in my life, 1 through n, where n is an unknown integer that grows faster than the total bailout money headed towards the pockets of executives.

1) I thought I would always feel at home in Bethlehem, my home town. As I'm currently discovering, I merely have nostalgia for some aspects of this container which no longer feels comfortable.

2) I thought that I would never need a laptop computer because "I'm not the type of guy who takes it to cafes to write and surf the web." Turns out, I am exactly the type of guy to take my computer to cafes to write and surf the web. Who knew?

3) When I was in college, I thought objectivism (Ayn Rand's... collection of thoughts/inner emotional landscape) was deep and profound. Boy was I wrong about that.

4) I thought it wasn't really important or necessary to love yourself as a first step toward towards loving others with empathy. Wrong-o.

5) I thought for a long time that things will "just" get done in life if I think I value them. Turns out I've got to stay relatively vigilant and on-track with myself, with at least a rough plan, if I want to be effective.

6) I used to think partisan politics was meaningful. Now I really just see talking heads everywhere while we, who observe them and yield decision-making and information-disbursing privilege to them, simply end up feeling more disempowered and prone to alienation.

7) I used to think that working out was self-indulgent and irrelevant to my overall well-being. If you know me now, just smile at that one and tuck it away.

8 through n) So many more things I can't even imagine yet.

Thinking that we know things in any absolute way is really dangerous. We create boxes that we are unable to perceive clearly and then function as if they are some sort of ultimate reality. From these mental constructs we stumble our way through the world wreaking havoc on ourselves and others. We wage "just wars." (Yeah, let that one roll off your tongue while watching Fox news and thinking about two scared guys with dark skin and different flags on their shoulders trying not to get killed in a God-forsaken desert.) We make blanket statements about things being healthy or unhealthy ("almonds are good for you") while deliberately ignoring the questions of quantity, quality, and how we relate to food throughout our life. We keep working to "solve" "environmental problems" while failing to comprehend our predicament in a deeply ecological sense (the total impact of what we're doing on our green and blue sphere of paradise lost). We know that it's not Us but rather Them who need to do something. We know that "you can't just be a writer/actor/teacher." We know that America is blessed by God (whoa! and again... whoa!). We know exactly what we mean when we talk about these things.

It's a funny, beautiful trick to let go of the idea that we Know things. It's scary and fun, like getting strapped into the roller coaster and feeling your stomach sink but your heart soar while you get slowly, inevitably dragged up the first big hill. It's a beautiful thing to learn to see our worldviews as simply that - our view of the world. Can we Know things with only the rods and cones tucked into our two eyes, with their unique set of strengths and limitations? We can see patterns for sure, but what do we Know? One thing I seem to Know is the more I see, the less I feel that I Know.

What do you do when you relax a bit of that iron grip on Right, Wrong, and Other Widely Held Myths? I'm not sure. You probably still wake up, get dressed, have tea, think about your day. What kind of tea? Well I used to drink green because I knew it had the most antioxidants, but now I drink white because I've read in several places that it has the most antioxidants. I thought in the past I'd be going to some kind of academic job because I knew that's what folks with East Asian Studies undergraduate degrees do, but then I learned that I can do other things like build and teach about ecology. You probably still put shoes on your feet and head out the door. What kind of shoes? Well, I used to put really padded, cushy sneakers on because I knew that's what offered the most support to fight pronation. These days I wear open sandals or old sneakers with little padding left because I've read a lot of articles recently about mounting evidence that we do well to run and walk as close to barefoot as we can get, to both strengthen our feet and make them springier and more supple.

What else do you do when you Know fewer things? You probably eat lunch when you get hungry. A few years ago, you probably didn't think much about flax seed or walnuts, because you knew you were eating well. Now we think we see patterns about omega-3 fatty acids being important for the health of our hearts, so perhaps we eat some of those with lunch. Trans-fats? 15 years ago we Knew that they were great because they weren't your run of the mill traditional saturated fat. Now we think we see a pattern of heart attack risk if we eat them, so much so that they are banned in some places.

What's the point of all this banter about changing our behaviors? It's to suggest that we can live well by trying to remember just how little we actually know about the world and ourselves. I think we often pay lip service to this idea, but then act with a huge amount of hubris and attachment to our ideas. We create empires, smoke cigarettes to "open up" our lungs, build with asbestos (oops), trade huge amounts of our waking lives for money, hold climate talks without addressing population, buy clothes made literally by slaves somewhere we've never heard of, and an ongoing list of other acts, large and small. When we forget that we don't really have the Answers, we instantly begin the process to label and divide the world up into Black and White, Wrong and Right, Moral and Immoral, etc. We quickly move to force our ideas on others, or engage in endless inner and outer struggle to subjugate others through our volume, intensity, cleverness, or violence.

Though I'm not certain, I get a strong sense from looking around me and back in history that we naturally become more empathetic when we let go of Knowing. I think this comes about by acknowledging our own flawed process of gathering information about the world, and thereby seeing that other people are just like us. We still go out and act in the world, but we act in more modest, humble ways when we admit our uncertainty. Our humility grows, as does (at least my own) sense of wonder at the beauty and complexity of humans and our ecosystem.

Just some thoughts off the top of my head. Thanks for reading these. May you find a little space to step back this holiday season and say "Maybe things aren't what I think they are." And may you smile in that new found light.

surf mission accomplished

What a beautiful year it has been for me, full of everything under the sun - love, joy, pain, sorrow, reflection, wilderness, pavement, drift, and purpose. In true southern California style, I thank the universe for all it has given me. In a more tangible vein, I also thank everyone who gave me a hand, who pushed me further, who let me off the hook, who never let me off the hook, who loved me, who cried with me, who told me with a quiet voice that all I needed to begin was to love myself. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is my Thanks-giving.

I also want to share my success in achieving the final part of my year's commitments, which I laid out for myself in my June 15th entry. After Gestalt, wilderness, tai chi, meditation, and writing, all that was left was to wax down that board and hit the surf. So last weekend I hopped on a jet plane to San Diego, dropping some CO2 but loving the journey. I arrived in the evening to the lights of downtown San Diego and the big ol' military base there. My friend Sam picked me up, and we flashed away through the night to his secret paradise up in Cardiff, where he lives in a small apartment with his girlfriend, looking out over the Pacific. Next morning we rose at six and checked the surf conditions from his balcony. That's right, from his balcony. We strapped on our neoprene gear, tucked a board under our arms, and walked down to the beach to hit the waves.





It was amazing. I failed to get up on the board in any significant way, but I paddled hard, body surfed through the whitewater, got chewed up and spit out by a few waves, and felt a little bit of the rhythm of the ocean. These simple acts constitute a huge step for me. One of the reasons I put surfing down as a goal for 2009 is that most of my life I've been somewhat scared of the ocean. It's beautiful, sure, but the feeling of being out in the big, cold, salty waves coming over and over used to make me brace up inside. This time, though, I felt the fear and just pushed through, embracing the salt and my own struggle. I even ended up cutting the bottom of my foot on our second surf lesson, but went out later on anyway just to feel the ocean again. It was refreshing and rewarding, and I will go back to it again. My deepest thanks to Sam for taking me out there to the edge of my known comfort zone...

On a related note that I also want to share, my weekend in San Diego was also marked by conversation that was nearly 100% purposeful and directed. Sam and his partner Brooking are pretty self-aware folks who have done a lot of personal work in their lives, and it was wonderful to avail myself of their good natures and broad minds. I noticed somewhere in the middle of the second day that we had established a pretty organic flow of speaking only when we had something relevant and meaningful to share, about ourselves or the world. In the absence of that, we kept our peace and functioned well in silence, even as we were occupying the same small space. I felt my mind clearing of clutter and becoming light. It was amazing. Not that I necessarily spend most of my life engaged in idle gossip or chit-chat, but the experience of hewing away unnecessary chatter is a beautiful experiment that I highly recommend. The more I do it in my life, the better I feel. I help myself stay on track and in touch with my purpose in any given moment. The more I can let go of nervous filler talk about celebrities, abstract political views, hollow pleasantries, and other things that feel vacant, the more I get down to discovering my purpose, being loving with those around me, and feeling good about what I communicate to the world. It's like a cleansing diet for your mind - get on down to the brown rice and vegetables of your soul by cutting out the pork rinds of vapid banter. Thank you Sam and Brooking - you are inspiring!

This is all I want to say for now. As I write about speaking with purpose, I feel like I've put enough words out there in the world. May you be well and thriving, enjoying this weekend to give thanks and praise.

The Revolution Will Be Internalized

What is our brightest, deepest truth?

This question is big for me. It has some heft, like a blender you pick up that you assumed was going to be lightweight plastic made in China and turns out to be metal and glass made somewhere in Scandinavia. It's robust and durable. I can kick it around and it holds up. I can try to rotate it and come at it from another angle, and it still inspires simple yet powerful reflection.

I come at this question after reading an essay by Derrick Jensen last week entitled "To Give Our Brightest Deepest Truth." He writes about the importance of admitting to ourselves how we are free or not free, how we are connected to the systems that support us, how he feels inspired to speak the truth about what we're doing to the world, and how he feels that speaking this truth is of utmost importance right now. I like what he has to say, and his courage inspires me. As I wake these days, or find myself in a few idle moments transitioning between tasks in life, I find myself often feeling this question throughout my body and mind. What is my brightest, deepest truth?

My brightest, deepest truth is unfolding. Part one is to do my best to acknowledge where I am at and where I think the world is at. I'm doing what I do - traveling to San Diego (where I'm currently writing this entry) to see my friend Sam, feeling bad about burning the fuel and feeling bad that my feeling bad doesn't seem to change the physical reality of climate change. I'm biking a lot and trying to have fun as a role model without getting too attached my righteous sense of identity. I'm helping teach Stanford students that they can inquire deeply and broadly in their lives about what they want and how they think they're going to get it, and loving the process of struggle and discovery between us. I look at our society and ecosystems and feel clearly like we are not doing enough, and aren't going to survive in any form that comes close to resembling the resource flows and power dynamics that we currently cling to. I feel some sadness in this, but also lots of desire for movement to come (even if through collapse) as a way of at least taking a shot at ending some of the inequity, violence, and fear that seems to permeate most aspects of our world order. Will we peacefully deconstruct our physical world and our stories about how things need to be, in time to create a future utopia where we get to keep our cars through a magical fuel source while also eliminating racism, disease, and war? I don't see it coming, but I suppose I'm a little open to that. It's a warm target to aim for and a dream worth remembering.

Admitting this somewhat grim ecological pessimism in my blog is an important part of my brightest, deepest truth. I feel sometimes that I hold back from disclosing my pessimism about the state of the world, for fear of turning off some readers who give me feedback about how they like my general trend towards uplift and inspiration. To all of you: please know that my truth encompasses all these things. When I focus too much on the world outside me, beyond the beautiful faces I see each day, I know that I run a high risk of getting lost in arguments about whether our technology will 'save' us, depression over seemingly intractable trends of some people wanting to kill others, or fearful attempts at predicting particular scenarios that may come to pass as a way of somehow buffering myself against that future. All of these are rooted in fear, which is difficult for me to process sometimes because (I think) fear is a natural reaction to have when we read the latest news.

Part two is to find the antidote to this inner struggle by asking what it is I have to offer. What can I give that the world needs? This blog is one thing. I find much joy, peace, some pride, and a small sense of accomplishment in channeling my thoughts into this more useful container.

Another is doing my best to live my life in accord with my ecological understanding of our planet. I get much joy from talking with people and hearing from that I've inspired them. So many people have inspired me, and others have inspired them before that. This chain feels amazing when I think of it stretching across space and time. When I think of myself as part of this infinite group of people, I can draw courage from my roots and feel some peace thinking of where my ripples might go next. This is good - for me, it is a fundamental part of being human.

In the past few months, I've also been discovering that I really love helping people work through the knots in which we tie ourselves, and I feel that this is also an important task to help heal the world around me. I've done two Gestalt workshops this fall, and I've come to see that process as a powerful tool for myself and others to better understand ourselves. I have noted that when we begin to look deeper within ourselves to understand how we operate, we seem to (inevitably?) create at least a tiny space to wiggle and explore different ways of being. We can at least minutely begin to imagine that the story we tell ourselves about any given aspect of our lives is just that - a story. Over time, we selectively latch on to perceptions of the world around us in order to shore up and reinforce our existing stories. If we are attached to our stories as if they were True (and we almost always live like this), we get stuck in a way of operating in the world that is really self-limiting. Gestalt, and other processes like it, resonate with me as good places to begin to view ourselves and the world differently, and in doing so find more feelings of freedom and an ability to lead the lives we imagine.

For now, this feels like my brightest and deepest truth - share this process that speaks to me, develop my skill in facilitating it, keep talking about how I perceive things to be, and draw on the energy I feel when I'm on a good path. What is your brightest, deepest truth? Yoga, medicine, writing? What is the story you want to share with the world? How do you feel when you are on a good path for yourself and the future of the world around you?

Thanks for reading. I feel a sense of community with you, wherever you are and whatever you may be doing. May you get a glimpse of the good stuff around you and run with it.

Reaching Back to Look Forward

I just looked at my photo on this blog, and I saw my dad. He's there in the details for sure - old jeans, cotton shirt that was probably a little beat up, the posture with my arms akimbo, my smile that is faint and unsure of myself while sure of the world, the sunny day surrounded by beautiful people. My father's usual style involved either highly-predictable outfits for the office that involved gray or black slacks and one of a dozen identical pale blue dress shirts, or at home on the weekends it was anyone's guess as to whether it would be a checkered flannel shirt or solid color scratchy wool sweater to go with the old jeans that bordered on embarrassing family members who were with him. The best paternity test you could do for me is look into my closet right now.

My location is also where my father was too. I've listed myself as being from the United States: Minor Outlying Islands because that is often my emotional interface with the world, and my clever monkey brain loves metaphor and being rewarded for cleverness. My father was an outlier. He spent a lot of his life being slightly anomalous to the rest of the medical community in which he practiced surgery. He was often giving his life away, to too many people in too many ways without knowing what he was looking for. It's bold of me to claim this level of insight, but there's my assessment and I stand by it for now. Our house was awash in Christmas cards each year from patients of his from years or decades earlier, who still felt indebted to him for the care he gave them (often at a discount or a long series of affordable installments). Occasionally there were even in-kind payments of fruitcakes, breads, kiffles perhaps, baked goods that hearkened back to the slightly old world roots of Bethlehem, PA where I grew up. These are the odd and touching rewards of being a doctor with a smaller-town approach in an area that was actually growing and booming.

He gave his love away too, and I think his marriages and relationships suffered for it. I think he may have been very insecure his whole life, wanting to be loved but not really feeling able to accept it from others at a deep, meaningful level. It's a tough row to hoe if you can only give it away but not feel that you really deserve it yourself. (I know, cry me a river.) I think this kind of imbalance does lead to infidelity, stretching yourself too thin, thinking that the next person you meet will finally be The One to make you complete, feeling like you're stuck in a pattern that you can't get out of. I know this from my experience, and I'm working on being different and trying to feel more whole in my own right.

Whence this sudden reflection on my father? It just struck me as I opened my computer this morning in the slanting sunlight. I have also been thinking about revolutions, and as I rounded the corner heading over to my favorite local coffee shop, I had been thinking about what revolution meant when my father was a young man and what it means now.

I remember my father talking of things in history with a turn of phrase that seemed funny at the time. He would say things like, "Back at that time, there were many of us who were upset with the dictatorship in Spain," and he would have a slight sadness in his voice, like some grand vision hadn't panned out the way he imagined. He spoke of himself being included in a set of people who were undefined and without number, but I always had the feeling that he was speaking for humanity at large (maybe we all do this with our parents, and hence our worldviews end up the way they do). He was always mum on the U.S. party line about who was Right and Wrong in the world. He didn't go in much for speaking against specific countries, leaders, or the other side of the Cold War. He listened to public radio, and stayed on top of the news as best he could for someone who worked a lot. He had a bit of an academic removal from current events, in that he often spoke of them with regard to their historical contexts and roots.

But I feel that, at the end of the day, he had big hopes for humans at large that he couldn't let go of and he turned these into his motivation to be a healer. He supported the ephemeral dream of a socialized, single-payer healthcare system in the United States. He spoke with a warm wistfulness of some day working for Doctors Without Borders. In the Vietnam War, he spent much of his leave time working at an orphanage for Vietnamese children. I think that throughout his life he grew away from the hope for a top-down revolution to 'fix' our problems, and instead found satisfaction in working with individuals in his circles to be an example for how we might live our lives to create a different world.

I feel that I run the risk of waxing nostalgic here as well as simply mapping my own worldview on top of my memories of him. I know I am afforded this possibility partly because he is dead and is not going to call me up tomorrow to tell me that I've got him all wrong. I know that I'm skewed by attempts to find order and pattern in the bits that make up the past. So be it. If my memories are a bag of wool freshly shorn from the walking lambchop, then my coherent worldview is what I card, dye, spin, and knit to keep the narrative of my life intact.

After all this musing, then, what are my thoughts on revolution and my place in it? I think we need a revolution at the fractal level. What we need to do for ourselves we also need to do for society and the biosphere. We need some serious ownership. We need to cop to the fact that we're tearing through our resources and polluting the planet in myriad ways, all the while arguing what language we can use to describe it, obfuscate it, relieve ourselves of guilt about it, etc. We need to admit that we're making ourselves crazy by working harder and losing ground, even as we're motivated in large part by fear of falling behind. We don't know how to trust each other on a big enough scale to co-operate. We in the States have internalized the Official Party Lines inside our craniums through telling ourselves that we deserve our place in the pecking order, that our capitalist-socialist-fascist hybrid government is the best and we just need to tinker with it, that we can purchase and off-set our way to a brighter future, etc.

We need to revolt by owning the implications of society as it currently is and what we're doing to perpetuate it. Owning it is the first step, and when we do that and band together with others who want to smile and talk lovingly about how to be different, we can muster the courage to take further steps to change the world. We need to spread the revolution by setting our minds on fire, fueling our own personal growth by tossing our illusions in the blast furnace. We need to plant gardens, actual and metaphorical, and tend them as best we can to harvest good things. We need to place ourselves in an intellectually robust, meaningful context at all levels while doing our best to avoid religious dogma, empty rationalizations, struggle for illusions of control, and other fear-based ways of living.

When I think of revolution, I think of always swinging back and forth between our personal growth edge in the nooks and crannies of our soul, and refining our big picture understanding of the world at large. How do I want to be? How can I come from love instead of fear? How can I do better tomorrow than today? How can I find peace with this whole process, in success and failure? Much of my work these days is focused on moving more and more easily between and amongst these types of questions. How can I navigate more smoothly, so as to get stuck less often in a corner feeling like I can't imagine an easy way out?

These are my thoughts, laid bare in the disinfecting yet swaddling sunshine. I wish you much success on your journey today and everyday. While writing, I was reminded of a poem I love and want to share with you. Thanks to those who have kept poetry in my life. In spite of resisting it as best I can, and even identifying as a person who writes it much more than reads it, I find good treasures there.

To Lead or Follow?

The cup of my mind was filled with light,

But the darkness on their faces

Made me put out my light and follow them...

It was only afterward

When we were wandering in the dark together

That they told me

They had come looking for light.

~Harper Brown

the path disappears over the next rise

Turn Over Your Hand

Those lines on your palm, they can be read
for a hidden part of your life that only
those links can say - nobody's voice
can find so tiny a message as comes
across your hand. Forbidden to complain,
you have tried to be like somebody else,
and only this fine record you examine
sometimes like this can remember where
you were going before that long
silent evasion that your life became.

- William Stafford


How's that for an opener?

So where have I been and what have I done? What are the tea leaves holding for my future? What's it all about?

Answers: I've been out to the wilderness and back. After a beautiful week in Yosemite, I did another beautiful week in Desolation Wilderness just southwest of Lake Tahoe. More mountains, more granite, more Jeffrey pines that smell like butterscotch when you get within a few inches of their bark. Some swims in cold lakes above 7,000 feet, some fearless jumping off of rocks into cold water with fish where I couldn't always see the bottom. Go fearless me :-)

A few days after my return to the grid, I departed with some friends for a work week at the Tassajara Zen center in the Ventana Wilderness down by Big Sur. Yet again, so beautiful! We worked with good people, took tea breaks, plunged in their cold creek (more jumping off of big rocks, which has historically been a little challenging for me), sat zazen with the monks and lay practitioners, and sat in the hot baths while looking at the stars. So beautiful... The picture above is from a hike we did one day. Most of it was charred forest (picturesque in its own way) but this meadow of invasive wild oats had sprung back to beauty in the past year since the burn. Thanks David Saxton for urging me to go do that week. So worth it!

The morning after our return, I launched into the fall quarter at Stanford where I and the folks I live with are teaching a course about valuescience - the scientific inquiry into our ideas about value. I helped teach it in the spring, and am really glad for this opportunity to do it again. It is beautiful to help and watch the students wrestle with placing themselves in an honest, rigorous ecological context and then accept the implications for what that means about our lives. What are we up to as individuals? How about as a species? Where are we and where do we think we want to go? Can we get there? Are our ideas about self and world accurate? Big questions, beautiful discussions and activities, lots of growth for myself and others. You can't beat it.

In all this swirling activity, some of you have asked how my Summer of Doing went. I'm flattered that you have been paying attention. If you look a few postings back in this blog ("juicing the long days for every drop of goodness"), you'll find my public testament of the things I intended to do. The amazing news is that I actually did almost everything on the list. I got Rolfed. I did Gestalt work. I spent some time in the wilderness. I have been studying more tai chi with an eye towards teaching. I kept the meditation and pancakes sessions alive each Saturday morning. It's all been wonderful and good. Too much to describe right now, except that sometimes it's okay to kick the doors open in our comfortable lives and let the brisk, clear morning air of challenge come sweeping in.

Some astute friend and readers have asked about one detail I haven't done yet. Seems like folks want to know about surfing. "Have you surfed yet?" they ask. "You said you wanted to do that." Well, thank you for the push. A few days ago I booked my ticket to San Diego for a long weekend in November with my friend Sam. I think that there is no better way for the Old White Guy in the Sky to tell you it's time to surf like having a friend who lives two blocks of the beach in southern California, who is the same size as you and has two surfboards and two wetsuits. There is definitely some divine planning up in there somewhere, and I'm rolling with it. I'll let you know how my capstone experience of getting ground into the sand goes next month. Thank you for keeping me honest and on track.

A few folks have asked what I've learned in all this doing. What's the take home message? What's the take home feeling? I think my main lesson is that I'm learning more and more each day to love myself, as a way to begin to build a life. I think often this concept is somewhat of a dirty idea in our culture. I think many of us (myself included for a long time) feel that loving ourselves is some combination of ridiculously obvious, self-indulgent, narcissistic, New Age, Californian, and a few other things. More and more, I'm instead finding it essential as a way to begin loving others and engaging with the world around me in a deep and meaningful way.

First, I think it's not at all obvious and it is dangerous to take it for granted. Sure, we all take care of ourselves by eating, sleeping, and gathering the resources we need to sustain ourselves from day to day. But so often, we can do these while still not believing in our capacity to have a decent life. Or we can be in a relationship for a long time and still deem ourselves unworthy of love, which in my personal experience almost completely limits my ability to love others fully.

I think sometimes we also worry about being too self-indulgent. I think this is a legitimate worry, but I also feel that we check with our internal touchstones to see how we're doing. Is it indulgent to treat yourself to relaxing weekends of just chilling out? Of course not. Is it indulgent to express our self-love by enjoying activities that come at the expense of others' quality of life, like buying diamonds from an exploitative industry or traveling great distances on carbon-fueled adventures while the climate is continuing to change? Harder question to answer. We all do a broad spectrum of things in our lives, and I think we need to look seriously at how we've defined our ideas of what is good for us, what is necessary for us, what we think we're entitled to, etc.

I think of my friend Sarah (go you!) who is taking the life to do a yoga teacher training course as a way of slowing down and getting back in touch with herself. I think that's wonderful and right on track. I think of friends starting men's groups so that guys can get back in touch with that side of being human. Awesome! These are great things, I think. There are so many ways to love and take care of ourselves that don't involve being indulgent to the point of our own detriment.

One thing I've noticed about this as I practice it (and it takes real practice to love ourselves if we're not used to it) is that the more I'm able to love myself, the more equipped I am to love others. I think it's just a simple extension of the idea that we need to take care of our own basic needs before being able to provide for others. Like on the plane where you do your own oxygen mask first before helping the kids or other people around you.

Does this translate into advice? Well.... sure, okay. I recommend doing something really kind for yourself today. Cup of tea, putting the feet up, reading that book, whatever turns your crank from the infinite number of choices. I also recommend an awareness exercise that I've found to be a great litmus test for things we rarely explore in ourselves. For all my life up until a few months ago, I found it impossible (not that I thought much about trying) to look at myself in the mirror and just tell myself that I'm a decent person and that I love myself. When I say this, I know that some of you, mainly on the east coast perhaps :-), will bristle/scorn/laugh and distance yourself from even thinking about this. I used to do that too. Then I thought about it a bit, and felt sad that I couldn't do this simple activity. I resisted by rationalizing - "Why does it matter whether I can do it and really feel okay with it? I 'know' that I love myself." I resisted by labeling it strange and self-indulgent - "Normal people don't do this." Both of these are perhaps true, but I have also noticed that once I tried it a few times, felt the discomfort, and began to revisit it in light of some personal growth work, I learned a few things.

One - I didn't become some deranged narcissist. Two - I didn't become any softer in the head than I perhaps already am. Three - I learned a lot by asking myself why it seems so hard at first. Four - I gained some more self-esteem. Five - it's not a slippery slope down to a Stuart Smiley level of meaningless drivel. Six - wow, I'm better able to empathize with others and connect in meaningful ways. Seven - life is pretty good.

So this is my story and I'm sticking to it. I'll let you know how it continues to unfold. Know that if you read this, I'm thinking of you and sending you good vibes. (I've started to feel okay with this 'cause it's my own little version of praying for your soul, but feels much better and less invasive.) Be well, my friends, and don't let the cool weather keep your own life from being hot.

my healthcare rant and love

PS - I have this note here next to my computer about things I want to blog about, and one is about owning realities especially in reference to healthcare reform. I know it's non-sequiter from the last entry, but I've got to put this out there. We won't get healthcare reform without PAYING MORE TAXES. We keep building really dumb-ass illusions that we're going to 'fix' things and make everyone happy and healthy without paying more and investing lots of effort to OVERHAUL a BROKEN system. We can't pay fewer taxes and get more out of the system. Not possible. Not even a little bit. Socialism works because people pay MORE and get MORE. We pay LESS and get... well, you know what we get. If you think everything's fine, ask someone who is self-employed about health insurance or ask yourself if you or a loved one loses their job for a few months. I read an interesting article yesterday that claims that all those townhall meetings where people were irate were actually much more civil and engaging, and the few freak Libertarian whackos who want the government out of EVERYTHING were actually the ones making the noise and getting press coverage, even though they represent what amounts to a tiny fraction of the population.

You can tell by the number of words in all capitals that I'm passionate about this. Why? Because it's a chance to move towards a more humane society. We're the laughing stock of the planet in terms of people who claim to be living at the top of the global pyramid (we certainly are in terms of consumption and trash generation) but who actually have no comprehensive way to take care of ourselves. We aren't stemming coming epidemics like obesity and diabetes, we leave tens of millions of people out of the loop for care, and tens or a hundred million more have the terrible experience of having to fight through mountains of paperwork and manage their own cases in order to get the big-business health insurance companies to pay for health care costs. We aren't talking about what the demographics look like for the U.S., with fewer young working people paying into a pot to take care of an increasing number of elderly people, who use up a disproportionately high amount of healthcare funds. We aren't talking about preventive care in any serious way. We aren't talking about taking the profit motive out of healthcare, which seems like a real no-brainer to me. (Yes, in some hypothetical world that doesn't exist, free-market competition could possibly lead to the most efficient delivery of a particular service like healthcare, but so far in human history no one's managed to do big business without screwing lots of people down the line, including the end recipients of the good or service.) So I say, let's get real about the challenges we're facing and talk about ways to do better.

I'm not aiming to be a Euro-trash sentimental socialist who loves all things Scandinavian (though they do make some high-quality stuff, and who doesn't love things made in Norway or Sweden?) and puts on blinders about the problems inherent in all big networks made up of fallible humans. What I'm saying is I feel better at the end of day when I'm living in a world where I at least trust the government a bit more to take care of me and my fellow citizens, even if there is waste and inefficiency along the way. I think (and do this test for yourself inside your own ribcage) that it feels better than the system we have now where private companies are the ones profiting at exorbitant rates from our imperfect system.

A more humane, socialist culture is GOOD. I promise you'll feel GOOD if your tax dollars go to helping other human beings, rather than keeping a few more for yourself while the poor people get f**ked and the rest goes to a war machine. It's not any one of us that's a bad person. We do live in an incredibly complex bureaucracy with vested interests that are slow to change because (in my opinion) we are afraid. We're afraid that others will take advantage of any kind of welfare state while we toil away to contribute to it. We have yet to feel like we're all in it together. We maintain the illusion of competition as a virtue, while altruism of any kind is lauded and held up as a rare example of how we "should" be that is so hard to achieve. It's not actually hard to achieve an altruistic mindset. If we give a little and take that course where it leads us, we'll get to good places of more love and less fear. There are many institutional hurdles to come down, but that didn't stop us from ending the Vietnam War, getting women the right to vote, achieving civil rights for all at least in theory, and other big causes. We can do it, one by one and then two by two, three by three. It's a small planet and getting smaller all the time. We can make it more hospitable and loving if we talk realistically about what we want and how we can get it. We need to start with owning our present reality and blazing a path with heart from there.

Good morning, and good luck.

Living Integration, or Small Axe Break Up Big Pavement

What am I up to these days?




Yeah, that's about it.

I'm living large, swallowing the mountains and sniffing the streams, thinking about places that feel like home and how to get in touch with my primal self. I just got back from a seven day, six night wilderness hiking trip in Yosemite with some friends. It was so beautiful, I can't really describe it.

Some highlights:
- close encounter with a bear, in a friendly way
- watching baby deer nursing and playing
- swimming in glacier-fed pools at 11,000 ft.
- watching the stars
- seeing very few people
- carrying everything I needed on my back
- no cell phone, email, or electricity
- not showering
- watching the sunrise every morning
- basically everything about the experience...

I'm convinced that we would all be foaming-at-the-chakra conservationists if we each spent some time each year in wilderness places. Just being there, in a landscape that is so immense and vast, you feel some humility that I think is lost in our rectilinear, paved world of wireless everything and Twitter De Dee and Twitter De Dum. You feel not so much vulnerable as integrated and enveloped. I feel like my biological roots come alive when I'm able to be away for at least several days in the wilderness. Not that I'm chasing down deer and gnawing on them raw, but I am appreciating the silence, feeling much less need for control, and getting a sense that I'm part of a bigger creation that has evolved for billions of years. We swam in frigid waters and loved it. We played with abandon on the big rocks and boulders. We drank the water right from the streams, no iodine or filters, and it tasted like the Tao. We lived a tiny slice of life without a higher goal or petty fears, and it was spiritual and religious (religion comes from the Latin re-ligare or "to reconnect").


So what? Exactly! I'm back here in Palo Alto, sipping my occasional morning decaf and reading a book while the sun rises over a quiet bar and office building across the street. But I'm different, and it feels so fundamental and great. I think the more time we spend in wilderness the better equipped we are to take ourselves less seriously. Because we need to face the fact that we take ourselves WAY too seriously as a culture, to the detriment of our own well-being and that of the entire planet. We talk of balancing economy and the environment. Bad news for the economists but there is no balance. Economics is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the planet's ecosystem. Nature always bats last, despite any of our species' efforts to retain control. As we destroy biodiversity and throw long-standing cycles and patterns out of whack, we jeopardize our own future, even if we think we're getting what we want by creating thousands of jobs. We're selling out our long-term future for very short term illusions of gain, and questionable ones at that.

Am I now an (even more) wild and wide-eyed 'environmentalist'? I guess so. Perhaps it was always there, waiting just beneath the skin. For years I've considered myself an ecologist, but this trip ratcheted up both my angst and my appreciation for wilderness and preserving it. I think you are too. We all think we love the illusion of control - air-conditioning, cars, moving from polluted areas to "less" polluted areas, living in quiet suburbs but still having easy access to city life, the CDC watching out for swine flu, stores to sell us things and trash companies to take it from our sight, and countless other things. But what is our deep ecology? How much energy and matter goes into our stuff? What are the long-term consequences for OUR CHILDREN of the products we use? What is our footprint and how are the footprints of others tied to us? How much China do we breathe and drink? How much of Ecuador's sweat and humanity went into our smoothie? How much injustice in 24K gold? What do we do when we think about all these things and start to go crazy feeling a mixture of guilt and paralysis?

Here's what I do. First, I try to avoid thinking of everything consciously at once. Recipe for bad times. I work instead to establish patterns that I feel okay with, and then make them habits so I can run on autopilot there while I put my conscious attention to whatever feels like the most low-hanging fruit. Once I've got the fair-trade coffee thing down, I just operate at that level rather than worry about how I can do more. I go on to cutting out an automobile trip or two each month, which takes some brain power and life energy. Once I've nailed that, I go on to low-VOC paints in my house, or perhaps making do with the old color scheme for a while longer. Then perhaps take that personal-growth workshop you've been putting off. Your inner compass is SO good at telling you what is the most important work right now. If you're not sure, just ask around inside your heart (literally, just feel out different veins of your life like work, money, family, health, whatever) and your heart will tell you where to do the work. It's easy, and we need to keep it simple and easy in order to not feel overwhelmed in this world with so many billboards and loud voices telling us what to think about. Shut 'em out, get back to basics.

Also, these days, I'm going primal.

My friend Matt tipped me off to a website about living primal, which I have really enjoyed. It's something I've thought about for a few years now. Here's the gist of it and many other sites like it. Many people think (and I concur) that the best place to find information about how to live well is to look to our biological ancestors. Why? Because we evolved to be certain ways (movement, exercise, diet, perhaps psychology) and those patterns/needs run deep in our structures. We don't get to decide that sitting behind a computer screen for 35 hours a week is fine with us. It may or may not be. Most people find it's not. What the primal folks are up to is trying to discover through various methods (observing our close genetic ancestors like chimps, anecdotal self-experimentation, dietetic studies, etc.) what are the patterns we may want to harmonize with. The blog that Matt pointed me too, as well as a book about ancient running cultures and modern running science, has a few suggestions that I've taken to heart and have been enjoying.

I run barefoot one to two times a week. The gist is that we run differently when we go barefoot. We're more careful with our foot placement. We may pronate a little a bit and that's okay. Our feet get tougher and more flexible too. If you're a runner, you've got to try it. There is an emerging body of evidence that running barefoot is really good for you, and, believe it or not, that our own evolution did a better job building us to run over millions of years than Nike's shoes have done in the past 30. I know - hard to believe. I mean, I really wanted to trust a company, that has a profit motive as its bottom line, to do the right thing. But life goes on. So I run at a moderate pace (9 minute miles?) with occasional sprints. It feels so good. Main point - avoid injury by starting slowly and carefully. Build up gradually, as it is a DIFFERENT experience than running in shoes on pavement. Some people run barefoot on pavement. I haven't gotten there yet, but if it works for you, keep rockin' it. If you take up barefoot running even occasionally, please write to me and let me know what you think. I'm gathering anecdotal evidence myself because it is such a new thing.

More primal: get lots of sleep. If you're depriving yourself, for whatever cultural reason, you've got to get back to biological roots and SLEEP. I promise you'll feel way better, like a different person.

Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. Avoid the processed stuff as much as possible. People looking at longevity and incidence of disease are continuing to tell us that fresh foods is the way to go to prevent inflammation (the basic root of so many ailments, including eventual organ failure). Smoothies, seasonal local foods, organic stuff, stir-fries, things with Omega-3 fatty acids like flax and walnuts, salads, all are sooooooo good. These days, I'm eating mainly fruits, vegetables, some meats, nuts, seeds, and occasional dairy in the form of yogurt or lower-fat cheese. Good stuff...

Move alot. The idea is that our biological ancestors moved at slow speeds most of the time, and occasionally very fast (evading or chasing other animals). Try to walk around the office if you're at work. Definitely walk at lunch. Do small tasks that require coordination. Take up tai chi or yoga if you're inspired. Swimming is great (I'm up to 2 days a week after years at only 1 or less, and loving it!).

These are my main threads and principles right now. I feel pretty good about them and the balance of my life. I just finished my 10 week series of structural integration bodywork (done TO me, not by me) and I feel like my posture and movement are significantly different. He even straightened my nose a little bit in one session.

If you're looking for inspiration this fall, write to me and I'll be glad to talk more about it. I love this stuff. I continue to feel like my work in this life is to help free myself and other from old ways of living that don't serve us and instead re-pattern ourselves to live lives more as we imagine they can be. It feels really great.

Metaphor! or, Busting Old Patterns Like White Collar Criminals

That's what my summer is about, in a nutty shell. Friend and others have been writing, wondering how my big Summer of My Life is coming along, looking for details of the glory or the carwreck. Here it is, straight from the equine mandible.

Rolfing! I'm seven weeks in with my 10-week series of deep tissue massage sessions. Each Wednesday I go to an office decorated with Buddhas and dream catchers to get constructively mauled by a short, stout 75 year old man in a Hawaiian shirt who looks me up and down while I'm standing in my underwear. Have I been taking bad acid in a Guantanamo Bay detention cell? Heck no, I'm paying for this stuff. He's worked my body all over with heavy duty massage, in order to loosen up my myo-facial system (muscles and the collagen that sheathes them). He's basically creating in me the potential for a great freedom of movement and possibility to realign my body in a stack that is harmonious with my anatomical structure and gravity. It's been really amazing to FEEL the difference between my usual somatic habits and what good posture can be. One incredible thing is that after having my feet and legs worked on, he suggested I go barefoot or just in sandals to let my arches stretch out. Historically, I've had really high arches and custom orthodics to support them. In the past I've been unable to go without orthodics for more than a few days before my arches begin to hurt. I'm now gone 6 weeks without them and haven't looked back, all after just my second session. Miracle cure? I don't know, but it feels good and liberating. If you want to know more, drop me a line.

Gestalt! I just did my weekend workshop this past Saturday up in Marin County. It's called the Empty Chair, and it involves getting in the middle of the circle of people and talking to an empty chair (in our case a cushion) where you put something or someone with whom you have unfinished business. I loved it. I talked about fears revolving around money and security, and my dreams of finding/creating a place that feels like a settled home that is safe and secure. Maybe everyone who's done more therapy than I already knew this, but talking about my issues and really OWNING all sides of my human experience is really liberating. That's one of the main thrusts of Gestalt work - acknowledging that we have polarities. We've got hate that goes with the love, greed that goes with the generosity, cruelty with the kindness, etc. They are all there, and that's fine. What a concept! It doesn't mean anything about what I need to go out and act on in my life, but owning all my feelings as opposed to cutting them off and resisting them is pretty freakin' sweet.

Wilderness! I'm headed in a few weeks up to the Sierra Nevada mountains to do some camping with friends, and a few solo nights as well. Yikes! I'm only afraid of the bears, and the deep darkness that feels like Nietzsche's abyss staring back at me. Wish me luck and mental stability.

Meditation! I've been facilitating a gathering of meditators here at my place (still at Magic in Palo Alto) each Saturday morning for a few months now. I say facilitating because I always feel strange when I say that I "lead" a meditation group. It's such a personal thing, I'm not leading squat. Often I'm barely able to hold on to my cushion for dear life and keep it together for that 30 minutes. But it feels so good to do it, and we've developed a small but determined community of sitters, pushing onward and always going Further. Afterwards we eat pancakes and talk about life, which is a great balance for the stillness in our sitting practice. If you're in the area, cornmeal buttermilk is the flapjack du jour these days.

Shifting gears...

I haven't been looking out at the world so much, which probably explains why I haven't blogged so much either. I assume business as usual is still going on. I saw a few days ago that drug companies lobbied heavily to get out their share of healthcare reform, complaining about taking too much of a hit or something like that. We are still a pretty sick culture, spending so much on guns and resisting a national healthcare system. When are we going to admit that private healthcare companies DON'T WORK? They certainly make huge amounts of money for people high up in their ranks. They certainly get good at boxing people out who might actually need healthcare, and therefore they save some money. But these for-profit companies (yes, I know technically they are non-profit, but that's the biggest pile of horse shit I can imagine. That's like Stanford University being a non-profit because it's an educational institution. When you've got $7 billion in your endowment, own thousands of acres, and partner with corporations and governments at the highest levels, you are basically just functioning like any other really large corporation. With that much money and politics involved, you may perhaps still be a non-profit in the letter of the law, but the spirit of it is completely gone.) Whoa, I got lost in my parentheses... Oh yes, medical Big Business. When the insurance companies are under pressure to perform and measure against the bottom line while paying tens or hundreds of millions in salaries, and when new drugs are multi-million dollar enterprises, we've got a system that is fundamentally BROKEN.

OK, so I guess I have been thinking about the outside world a bit. While I'm at it, when are we going to admit that capitalism in general has failed? When can we wake up and smell the viable socialist alternatives? Yes, there is all that reified (reified means ascribing human agency to an abstract idea, like "The company's quarterly report scared investors away.") crap about free markets "driving innovation" and competition "promoting" healthy survival of the fittest. I just don't like the feel of a system where 40 million people are without health insurance and we're barely going beyond twiddling our thumbs about it. How about the working poor and the homeless who have fallen off the bottom of the social ladder? Having been to a few countries with a functional government that actually tries to take care of all the people, it just seems like the more humane way to go.

I think many people in our country are motived by their fear of falling off that ladder. There's no parachute or trampoline there, just a scary future if you don't out-compete someone else. I don't like the idea of needing to compete. Doesn't anyone else feel like they'll sleep better knowing that they will be taken care of by a functioning welfare state (as in "your and my welfare", less about the mythical, lazy exploiters of welfare that we're supposed to fear from the Reagan years) when they get old or sick, or when their kids want to go to college? Does it seem so crazy to just hard cap everyone's personal income at $3,000,000 dollars and everything beyond that goes to taxes? Oh yeah, I'm totally sure that would instantly kill all motivation to work hard or innovate. I'm sure we'd all suddenly be living in a Maoist nightmare where we all have to rotate jobs and live in ugly concrete apartment blocks. I would just be crushed if I could ONLY earn $3,000,000 dollars a year while I had to grind my teeth knowing all my tax money went to take care of my elderly neighbors and folks in the neighborhood who came down with cancer. That would be a tragedy.

Hello sarcasm. Where'd that come from? Must be the Gestalt therapy helping me let it out...

Yes, I'm a dreamer, and possibly one who should go live in a socialist country. But I'm not the only one. Maybe the big theme on my mind these days is: Be Kind, to ourselves and others. We know that what goes around comes around. We know that most of our privilege in life is an accident of our birth (race, gender, how many Benjamins our parents have racked up in the bank). When can we let go of the fear and struggle and learn to share ourselves a little more with those around us? If we all turned the rat race down a notch, what might happen? I don't know, but I love the sound of that experiment. It's the only way I can imagine to move towards more love, peace, and taking care of each other. It's way too big a fish to fry in any quick fix, even for a country with a charismatic young President who has big hopes and a decent portion of the population behind him. It's going to take all of us resisting old fears and dysfunctional patterns. We need to re-invent how we live. We've got to slow down, eat well, listen to each other, get back into our bodies, stop these Wars Without End, own our fears about climate change, and spend time in a park with loved ones on the weekend.

My gray cells are firing and I'm thinking of you all, wishing you peace in your corner of the world. Big love going out to those who have just returned from the canoe trip up north to the Arctic. You are super stars and tough cookies! And a peace sign, thumbs up, California Right On to everyone who has written to tell me of what they've taken on this summer. Philadelphia, San Diego, Bethlehem, Guelph, New York, D.C., and others I don't even know of yet. You are my raison d'ecriver and owners of those beautiful gems known as Your Lives....

whisked away to stillness

Can we find lasting peace in our lives if we don't continually do the inner work of learning to accept and love ourselves right we're at in this moment? I ponder this, as I chew on some tall stalks of grass out at the farm at the edge of Guelph. I'm here for a few days to see friends and pack up some things, and I felt an urgent need to visit the farm, where I have helped my friend harvest grains and also raised two summers' worth of gardens. Today is impeccable - soft blue skies, fluffy clouds sliding across the sky on a steady breeze, trees in full splendor of summer foliage. It's probably 23 degrees and the air is light. I look out over the barn to a hundred acres of soy, gardens, some blooming mustard, and fallow greenery. I can't help but feel some peace and a desire to reflect on where I'm at, where I've been, and where I may go.

Sometimes in my blogs, I feel a bit like Cheri Huber. Cheri is a Zen monk who writes Buddhist-inspired books that you might call self-help. The one I love most is There Is Nothing Wrong with You, where the title tells it all but it is still a worthwhile read. She has many other books, such as Be the Person You Want to Find and How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. Why do I feel like Cheri? Her books touch on many themes in life, but after you read a few it becomes clear that the message is the same throughout. It basically comes down to practicing being calm and centered in the moment, and letting go of the stories we tell ourselves in our own heads about how we're not good enough, how we might fail at our undertakings, how we just need to wait a little longer to begin living, etc. It comes right from Buddhism, though she packages the messages in a broadly approachable way for a modern audience.
Love yourself. It's going to be okay. Everyone has fears and doubts about themselves. Acknowledge the fears, see them for what they are (insubstantial), but pay them no attention. Get back to loving yourself. A good way to do this is to sit and practice calming the mind. Carry this practice into your life. Interact with others, be a light in the world.

These are my own take-home themes from Buddhist writers as well as my own spiritual practice.



So when it comes down to it, my blog is me recycling old themes in new packaging. (Perhaps all writing is this - different people at different times working with variable degrees of success to tap into the themes that speak to their audience.) When I write, I like to focus on specific topics, from global politics to resource scarcity to personal growth. However, I really like to get back to basics as often as I can to convey the message that we are empowered to live beautiful lives. I know from my own experience that lots of information about the world is often not useful if I don't also have a context for seeing how it relates to my life and more importantly what I will do with this information. In the end, this feeling of empowerment is the thing that I want to convey to everyone who reads these posts.

What does all this have to do with me strolling down the tan earth lane in the slanting sunshine? I've been getting a lot of wonderful life this spring from sharing honestly about where I'm at inside. I try to do it more, even when people I don't know make a casual inquiry. While aiming to not overshare, I do try to accurately describe what I'm feeling and what I'm working on. For me this is a big step forward in owning and treasuring my life while learning to love myself. It really seems to begin with accepting that where I'm at is where I'm at. I want to "be here now" as much as possible, instead of thinking about how I might "be there then" and losing sight of my experience right at this moment.

I think I've just figured out why I'm writing this now (which is good, since I'm hundreds of words in and taking up your life :-) I just want to share that it feels like a long road, but that I'm on it in a good way. After my last few posts, and talking with many friends about my inner work, I have been deeply humbled and heartened to hear that lots of folks have taken my work as inspiration to go deeper, further, and in new directions in their own journeys. When I hear these things, I feel a clear sense of camaraderie and companionship with all of you as our paths unfold. And this in turn makes the long journey seem feasible and worthwhile all over again. Because I have to admit that in spite of tackling so much good stuff in my life recently, I do have plenty of moments of darkness and doubt where I get wrapped up in old stories that aren't serving me, and I can flounder there for sure. In spite of working to help others feel empowered and enlightened, I still need some help myself a fair bit of the time, and you my friends are wonderful at helping me out.

So this is a thank you card, an update, and a slice of my life. The feeling I want to convey is walking under the walnut trees with the tall grass brushing under my palms. The sun is perfect, the gardens smell rich and earthy, and it feels like the safest place in the world to walk and ask deep questions of the heart.

Rolling out a New Project

The time is now. Can you feel it?

I can.

So, as promised in my last blog, we (my friend Nick and I) are rolling out the alpha version of our project, Shake Up Your Life, and we're pretty excited. You'll find all the details at

shakeupyourlife.org

When you first arrive, definitely check out the link that tells you about the background of the project.

If you're reading this post, I also ask a favor of you. After you see what we're putting out there in the world, please try one of the experiments, or your own version of one, and put your experiences up there. If you're not familiar with actually adding content to a Wiki format, it's one click away at the little "edit" button on the right side of each entry. Take it from there and run with it :-) I know that as this project grows, it will take on it's own life. This is our dream for it. If you do just one, even with a small entry, this whole thing will take a huge leap forward, all due to you.

We know it's rough and bare bones, but we're excited to simultaneously use it while also evolving and enhancing it with feedback from you. We're already thinking of appearance (color schemes and formatting) as well as content (enhancing the entries with background info). We're thinking about the language of the entries, how to help you feel invited to participate, how to grow it, and more.

If I write more, it will only be clutter. This is all for now. Visit it, use it, let me know how it handles. Thank you!

juicing the long days for every drop of goodness

This is the summer of my life. If you had to choose a word to emphasize in that phrase, "my" might be it. It's less of a statement where you are 18 years old and about to drive across the country with your boyfriend, and you're going to have the summer of your life taking pictures of yourself at Car-henge and The World's Largest Ball of Twine. It's more about me choosing, me doing things that I've been reluctant or afraid to do, me keeping it real and lively and engaged, me coming out of a long winter of struggle, me honoring everything in my life that has led up to this moment by doing my best. It's that kind of summer.

What am I up to? I just had my first Rolfing session an hour ago. Rolfing is a form of deep tissue massage designed to loosen up and realign your body's structure to move more freely, upright, and in harmony with our design that evolved under gravity's constant presence. It's 10 weekly sessions, and it's really intense and painful sometimes. But I feel great already, and I'm psyched for more.

I'm going to travel down to San Diego and learn to surf with my friend Sam. I hope to do this on a roadtrip with another old friend, living the American dream of Californiating myself in the sun and sand. Perhaps we will pop in to Mexico and say hi.

I'm doing a Gestalt therapy intensive weekend session in August. Gestalt therapy is working with a group of other people, facilitated by a few leaders, so as to become mirrors for each other. In doing so, we build trust to allow others to see us more clearly and also share our insights about them. I have read the pioneering book about it that lays it all out (from the 1960s) and spoken with a practictioner in Toronto who's been in a group for a few years. It really speaks to my soul, I think, so I'm eager to check it out.

I'm going to increase my tai chi practice, with the aim of learning to be a full on teacher. Tai chi feels so important and relevant to me that I really want to share it with the world effectively. I have thought about this for a few years, and I'm glad to be moving in that direction.

I'm working on writing an essay that I want to get published in a magazine. I can't say more, for fear of taking the wind out of my own creative sails, but I'll let you know when it happens.

I want to do a wilderness backpack trip, either with a small group or solo, to reconnect with the wilderness. I like the idea of a challenge by heading out on my own, and I also like the idea of doing it with friends. If you're interested, contact me.

I've started a weekly group doing meditation and pancakes. Saturday mornings, if you're in the Bay Area. Check it out in Palo Alto.

These things all spring from my desire to show up for my own life. Someone once told me that is the secret to life. I like the idea of it - showing up for your own life. I've definitely had times when I've shirked being an active agent in my own life, and let the tide carry me where it wanted. I like the feeling of engagement much more, and I'm really getting a lot of mileage from facing my fears and doing these things anyway.

Which brings me to my challenge to you. (This is where you sweat nervously and wish you had never taken that stupid advice to always sit in the front of the classroom so as to learn the most.) Because I'm a co-dependent friend with you if you're reading this, I want to challenge you to do something you're afraid of this summer. I'm thinking less about risky daredevil adventures and more about something you've been putting off doing for yourself for a long time because... of whatever reason you have in your head. Take that class, learn to make pottery, ask that barista for a date, whatever it is, do it. Feel that fear and do it anyway.

In tandem with my own summer work, a friend of mine and I are launching a website in the next week about shaking up your life. (Okay, realistically, I sort of spun out this idea while we were chatting and then he had the ganas to go home and set up the website so that when I looked at my email the next morning, it was fully up and running. He's that kind of guy.) I'll make a product launch here on this blog by July 1st, because that's my commitment to myself. It won't be flashy, but hopefully substantial and usable.

Wishing you all beautiful summer days, wherever you may be...

Sunlight in the Shade

In spite of the claim in my last blog entry that I want to write more, I haven't posted here in nearly two months. What's up with that?

Well, I've been doing some heavy thinking about what I want in life, and unfortunately no easy answers came. I have given up for now my community in Guelph, Ontario and instead embraced the familiar feel of the Magic community in Palo Alto. This process of trying to be kind to myself has been very difficult, and tends to still be a wild ride from time to time. I haven't had many moments of clarity where I can sit down and generate good material to share with the world. I've been down on myself, down on the world, or just feeling down without an object, and that has been hard. So that's part of my excuse. The other part is that I have been doing lots of writing, just not here in the blog. But let's stick to the important stuff.

In this dark night of my soul, I've been often unable to reach out for help. Why is that? Well, I often have this feeling that the rest of the world (i.e. everybody I see in my life on a regular basis) has it all "figured out." To me that means they've got the answers to their questions, if not chiseled in stone then at least adhered to the stone with a durable marine epoxy that's going to last a long time. Do I know that they have it all figured out? Of course not! That would only come from me asking them, "Hey, do you have It all figured out?" and them saying, "Oh yeah, I wrapped up the package of my life a few years ago and now I'm just crossing T's and dotting I's. Why do you ask?" But when I feel stuck and fearful inside, like I'm never going to be able to figure MY life out, find peace, or be able to answer the question How much is enough?, then I project my desire for inner peace on the rest of the world by imagining that everyone else is at peace with all their choices and has a smooth plan for near 100% life satisfaction into the foreseeable future.

Do I know that this is a false projection? Yes. I often get stuck in my fearful little reptilian head, though, and can't easily get out of the illusion that I'm being left behind by my peers as they settle into marriages, houses, parenthood, careers, etc. It's a tough illusion to crack, especially when I'm less interested in telling the story in my head that they are wrong, but rather just want to be okay with a different path for myself. I mainly want to be okay with not quite knowing yet how and to what I want to commit my life. I know that I am doing it by all the choices I make. From the outside, you can truthfully say that I'm committed to a life of:

working part time - 25 to 35 hours per week
not accumulating much money
not spending much money
self and social experimentation
traveling around the U.S. and Canada
staying connected with diverse groups of friends in many different cities
swinging between serial monogamy and non-exclusive dating
constantly diversifying my skill set
being a generalist
reading and writing a lot
social rather than financial capital

These are some of the hallmarks of my life. I want to get to a place of either feeling at peace with my choices or changing my life so that I feel better about them. Right now I often feel stuck in between. I think in many ways my choices are reasonable. I like many aspects of my lifestyle, and I think our culture needs another competitive, narrowly-focused white male like we need a hole in the ozone layer. But I know that I get afraid sometimes because we, in our North American affluent society, value money and the accumulation of wealth more than an experimental life that may not yield the same type of capital security.

Every lifestyle has benefits and costs. I'm working on accepting the benefits of my lifestyle choices so far (more time freedom, more life spent with loved ones, more recreation) and finding peace with my trade-offs (less money, fewer stamps of approval from mainstream folks). This work is where the rubber is meeting the road of my life, where the real action is at.

Beyond all these worries, I've recently been reading and thinking about some ideas that I find compelling and useful. In the past few days I have gotten a lot of mileage from thinking about fear. I like the idea that we all live our lives in the face of fear. Any big or small action we take is scary to some degree. Big fears, like abandonment or failure, can rule our lives if we focus on the fear. What I've found liberating is the idea that fear is never going to go away. We always need to take action in the face of fear. Waiting for our fear to disappear is to wait forever. Instead, we can live much better by recognizing that we will be able to handle it if the thing we're afraid of comes to pass. If we fail in our marriage, can't close the deal, end up working way too many hours each week, or can't afford to own the house in the long run, we will be able to handle those things as they happen. We don't need to focus on them as likely possibilities. We can simply acknowledge the possibility of their occurrence and take action anyway. This may not be rocket science for you, but it feels like a big step forward for me. Perhaps I've known it all along, but now I've found it at the right time and it jives with my needs and hopes.

Some other useful ideas... hmmm... I think we really benefit by being in touch with wilderness. I think that's why most of us feel something intense and at least slightly pleasant when we're at the ocean. It is wilderness for sure. It may not appear as highly differentiated as a mixed deciduous forest, but it is large, powerful, and indifferent to us. In spite of our highly effective impacts on the life in the ocean, the sound and the feel of the waves when you sit on the beach is still amazing. Each one is unique, yet also just like the billions that have come before and will come after. The sound is perfect white noise, varying yet constant. It is a place to be so as to remember our connection with the Earth as part of us and vice versa. We are not in control and nature bats last, for sure, but we are still steeped in this illusion of control in our lives that comes with living in a rectilinear world designed mainly by human minds and hands. Returning to wilderness, whether a the beach, dense forest, or somewhere else, is a return to a feeling of connection with the world larger than us. It is therapeutic. We can heal ourselves with such contact.

Thanks for reading this. Thanks for being out there, doing your own thinking and processing. I take heart in our journey, in loving ourselves and being kind to each other through such dark times as my own recent trouble. Let's push on into the mystery. How can we be there for each other?