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.