The Long Road is Shorter Than We Think

Somewhere along the line, you lost sight of why you were running.

When you began, it was a pleasant morning, walking with friends over hilltops and in the shadows of trees that filled the valleys. There was enough - berries on the bushes, water in the streams, sunshine on your skin (no burning, just vitamin D), shade when it got too hot, warmth at night around the fire as you went to sleep with close friends. The world was an adventure with no goal other than to explore. There were mysteries, beautiful things to admire, some scary moments when you heard unidentified rustling in the bushes during the darkness of a new moon. You were following the river, perhaps finding your way to the sea but feeling alright if you didn't make it. The reason you were walking was to walk, to enjoy the journey and have a good time with the others along the way.

It's difficult to remember when things changed. They happen so incrementally, and our brains aren't wired to remember all the details of the past. Somewhere along the line, we started to walk a little further each day, even though we were sufficiently tired already. We felt that if we went that extra mile, we'd have a little extra space from the increasing number of our fellow pilgrims. Where all these other travelers came from is not clear, but with each passing season we saw our numbers grow. The grass was a little more trampled each day from those who had walked before. The streams seemed to hold less water, like someone was drawing more of it off up in the hills. There were fewer trees to give us shade or with which to build shelter. Much of the low-hanging fruit was gone already, and some of the less ripe ones were missing as well. The feeling of scarcity began to creep into our minds and edge out the feelings of sufficiency and abundance that had marked the beginning of our journey.

Nowadays, we often run flat out for fear of being left behind. Our story is that we'll catch only the scraps or sometimes nothing at all if we don't stay ahead of the pack. All the good things - well, we've got to be faster, smarter, and sometimes a little more ruthless to earn access to them. We'd love to slow down again and take time to talk with the others on the path, but now it seems that there isn't enough time in the day to stay ahead and still connect with others. We've got to cover a lot of ground, gather the resources necessary to take care of ourselves and our family, and when we're done with that well, frankly, we're plumb tuckered out. We know that tomorrow will bring more and we've got to be thinking about how to cover more ground and outpace the rest.

So many days, we wish we didn't have to run this hard. The sun is pretty hot now that there are fewer trees. The streams with enough water are sparse in this landscape. The days when we can sit and listen to the cool, nourishing rain seem fewer and further between. When we look at those who can't keep up, we're afraid that we'll end up like them - disenfranchised, lacking access to the basic means of sustenance, not having a voice in the group. The promise of abundance seems a little further from our grasp each day, but if we run faster and faster, and learn to endure the discomfort and strain, we hope to close that gap, for ourselves at least. Each day we run more, and eventually we lose sight of the walk completely and can't remember anything other than the running.

And then, every once in a while, we wake up. We lay in bed and hear the breeze in the leaves or the soft silence of snow. Our muscles are weary from being clenched. We flex our toes and rub our hamstrings. We massage our palms and fingers that ache from grasping. For a precious while, we see the race for what it is. We see it as just one story - so real, so scary with the overarching feeling of competition and scarcity, but just a story nonetheless. How did we get lost so deeply in that story? How did the race become an all-encompassing reality? How did we lose sight of different ways of being?

There are so many ways of being in the world, but all too often we get wrapped up in the feeling of crisis and scarcity that seem to permeate our existence as humans in the modern world. This is not an unreasonable response. We're in the deepest ecological crisis that the world has have ever seen, with the possible exception of a catastrophic meteor impact millenia ago. There are increasing numbers of humans while at the same time we continue to strip our resources and lose them forever.


I often think that the greatest challenge of our generation is how to live in a time of deep man-made crisis. How do we deal with the catastrophe? Do we ram whaling ships? Do we engage in political debate at international meetings? Do we just run the race a little harder than everyone else so as to get ahead, and hope that everything will somehow miraculously turn out OK?

All I can offer is my own imperfect, personal strategy. I'm trying to stay calm but aware. I want to be able to embrace facts, as best we can discern them, and avoid generating a false sense of security by burying my head in the (tar) sand. I want to act with efficacy and also keep in mind a sense of scale about what I can undertake while maintaining a sense of balance. I want to remember that we're all doing the best we can, and accept that this may not be sufficient to steer ourselves out of this crisis that we're in. I want to have good times with friends, and help us all relax while we navigate life in the modern world. I want to keep myself honest about what messages I'm sending out to those around me through my words and actions.

I know that the only way to avert more oil catastrophes like the one in the Gulf right now is to stop demanding, with my consumer dollars, that we keep drilling for oil. I know that the only way to end the endless war is to speak and live for peace and tolerance. I know that the only way to decrease the amount of plastic trash floating around our oceans is to stop using them. I know that the only way to promote a slower, more reflective society is to continue making space in my life for reflection and calm. I know that turning to dogma of any kind (political, religious, etc) is just placing myself in a box, and I think we want to avoid that. I want to be thoughtful and question everything, while still waking up in the morning and going forward in my life.

All this is difficult, but not impossible. I know that you are with me, and I am with you. I take heart in your courage, and you can do so in mine. I'm glad to help carry your burden when you are feeling weak, and I'll be glad for a hand up from you when I stumble. I like the different flavors of life that we offer each other, and I delight in the new synergies that we create. Let's conspire to live well...

A bid for your attention

This morning I'm sitting in the slanting sunlight, thinking of English scientists and living inside the box. Why is that, you ask? Doesn't Chris usually write this blog in an attempt to get "outside the box"? And why English scientists? Is Chris somehow connected to Climategate?

The English scientist I'm speaking of is Michael Faraday, who lived from 1791 to 1867. He was a geek par excellence for his time, doing work in electromagnetism and electrochemistry. He was apparently one of those Really Bright People who made huge strides in the physical sciences due to the combination of his experimental curiosity and the low hanging fruit that was waiting to be discovered in his day.

I don't usually sit around reflecting on deceased scientists, though, let alone English ones. I'm merely writing about him here as a segue into my own experiments in life, and more specifically meditation. Yesterday evening, I was sitting on my cushion, surrounded by a lovely group of friends who were also meditating with our regular Tuesday evening sitting group. About halfway through our sit, when I was "supposed" to be thinking of nothing, I suddenly started thinking of the room we were in as a Faraday cage.

A Faraday cage is a pretty awesome thing that Michael Faraday discovered. You can think of it (as I do in my not-as-brilliant-as-Faraday-way) as lining the walls of a room with chicken wire (or some type of conductive material). What this does is prevent electric fields from entering the room or space. You can protect things from lightning strikes this way, as well as block out any electromagnetic radiation that is outside the cage. You are creating a box that is relatively safe from outside interference, which is useful for conducting experiments or protecting sensitive equipment. The finer the mesh of the protective wrap, the more types of electromagnetic radiation you can block out (basically any radiation whose wavelength is bigger than the holes in your surrounding mesh).

Why was I thinking of Faraday cages while I was supposed to be working towards nirvana? Sadly, I cannot answer that. However, after the meditation, I started thinking of our lives as being full of signals that are coming at us, much like all these forms of electromagnetic radiation that are present in our modern world. We've got cell phones frequently going off, we've got incoming texts, we've got computer screens with visual and audio alerts for new emails, we've got alarms, we've got Twitter. We've got all the distractions you could possibly hope for in this modern age of leisure and well-being. Reflecting on all these incoming bits and bytes, I suddenly felt a huge amount of gratitude for my friends who come together each week to help me create a safe space of quiet meditation - a Faraday cage for our spirits, a sacred slice of life devoted solely to sitting with our breath.

I've been thinking recently that it's really important to pull the plug on our lives as often as we can, and find a little bit of uninterrupted time with ourselves. I have this suspicion that we are failing to serve ourselves as we live at the beck and call of our technology. As we fill our lives with more little noises and flashes that signal an incoming message, we actually erode our ability to be aware of the present moment. Yes, there are useful bits of info that come through the internet to our eyes and ears. Yes, we can stay connected with friends and family more easily than ever before. By inundating ourselves in communication technology, though, we steep ourselves in a new ethos that it's okay to be interrupted by anything that comes along. Few things rub me like petting a cat's fur backwards as much as being in the middle of a deep conversation with someone when suddenly their phone gives them an email alert. They say sorry, pause to check it, and then say "oh, it's only a fill-in-the-blank" from some organization they get mass emails from and don't care much about anyway. I hold that the very act of checking interrupts our train of thought and takes us out of the present moment, into which we then need to focus to re-enter. Something is lost in those situations, and I (obviously) feel some apprehension about giving our lives over to them.

Beyond our ability to be present, more and more people are writing about how gathering data via instant-access web technology is actually changing the way we think. Reading bits and pieces while bouncing around the web (the irony is not lost on my as I write this blog post) seems to leave us remembering less while we actually read more than we have in the past. Our attention spans are shortening, and our ability to take in and process data is changing as the technology changes. It's pretty wild, and we're not sure where we're headed with it.

Why am I being so dramatic? I don't know. All my explanations may just lean dangerously close to rationalizing my semi-Luddite lifestyle. Perhaps I'm just an old soul who is persnickety about new-fangled things. Perhaps I'm just a late adapter. I do know that I love the wave of peace when I unplug, tune out, and turn off. I like practicing being present with those around me in an uninterrupted way. I like when people offer me the same attention and consideration. I like reading longer pieces of writing without giving consideration to surrounding ads or novel formatting and presentation.

I don't want to blame anyone for being plugged in in this way. I think it is a common way of life in modern affluent American society. I think I can tell a story of the benefits of receiving a more constant stream of signals. We can stay more frequently connected with family and friends. We can follow news stories closely. We can keep our hands in more work projects. We can gather bits of data and triangulate from various media. We can avail ourselves of benefits unimaginable even 20 years ago.

Rather than blame us for being enticed by the signal stream, I want to encourage you to take a step back when you can. Create a little space that is sacred and keep it clear of tweets, pings, rings, pop-ups, and alerts. Turn off the phone and computer and be with the space around you. Reconnect with the freedom from technological distractions. Maybe Tuesday evening can be your very own Faraday cage, with a book, a loved one, a good dinner, a picnic in the park, or whatever you want. If you feel inspired, leave a comment on my blog and let me know how it goes. I'll love to hear from you, even in cyberspace.

water and mountains

Has it been two months since I've written? My blogger account tells me that, so it must be true. Wow. I have so many thoughts these days that I'm not sure where to begin. So I'll start at the beginning of recent memory, which is my wonderful trip through the northwest of the U.S. and into British Columbia.

In the two weeks before starting the current quarter at Stanford, I took a trip from the Bay Area up to Portland, a community called Windward in Klickitat in Washington, Bend (in Oregon), and then on to Victoria, Vancouver, and town called Nelson in the middle of British Columbia. It was an amazing trip.

This is my lovely traveling companion Jess, who inspired the trip in the first place, and I on the train to Portland. I love the train! Smooth, pretty on-time, way less stressful than dealing with the random attempts at security/harassment in the airports, and scenic.













This is driving along the Columbia River gorge, east from Portland headed towards Klickitat and the Windward community.











It's impossible to capture the feeling of Windward. This is due to the fact that it is situated in a forest so you can't step back and see the whole thing, as well as it being a community of people doing great work taking care of themselves and the land. I've included this picture because the sheep were really cute, and very friendly every time we walked past their pen. The Windward folks are doing so much more than sheep-raising. They are gardening, doing aquaculture, managing their forest as best they can, and perhaps most importantly asking deep questions about how they and all the other people on the planet are living in terms of resource use and cooperation. They are seeking to model a different way of life focused on love, caring for each other in a close-knit community, working smart with appropriate technology when they can, and living in the peace and quiet of a rural setting. They were wonderful hosts, and I look forward to visiting them. If you have more questions, just email me. It's too much goodness to put into words here.


Then we drove a few hours south to Bend to visit my friend Matt, who turned out to know all sorts of people that Jess knows as well from Stanford. Small world! Bend looks like this...










this...



and this. Yes that's snow. Both the rock tower and the snow are a few miles outside of Bend, in opposite directions. Skiing one day, hiking in 65 degree sunny canyons one day, and lots of chilling out in downtown Bend. Local microbrews are great, people are friendly, and our hosts were great.




We got back on the train in Portland, and took it to Vancouver. Vancouver is a lovely city, with lots of views like this one. In the total metropolitan area it has around 2 million people, and it is snug in between mountains with snow on them and the ocean. We only stayed for a day, but had a great time walking around and eating Japanese noodles.








Victoria is a smaller city, located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, about a 90 minute ferry ride from the southern outskirts of Vancouver. I loved Victoria. Nice beaches, beautiful downtown right by the harbor, and the restaurant that is the source of my favorite cookbook, The Rebar. We stayed for four days here, split between wandering the beaches, downtown, and idling in Jess' grandparents' house nearby.







At this point you may notice that the rainbow sweater makes frequent appearances in the trip album. I packed with the intention of camping, and therefore had few clothes so as to save space and weight. I ended up not camping, but rocked the rainbow (wool!) sweater all over town.




Check out this sunrise over Mt. Olympus that we saw on the ferry ride back to the mainland from Victoria. Amazing!














The last stop was Nelson, a 7 hour drive inland from Vancouver. Jess' dad Bill lives in this town of about 20,000. It's a nice place. Good people, good nature nearby, quiet vibes. This picture is from a provincial park nearby where we went on a long hike one day. Once again, amazing!


These are just a few photos from the trip. I have a few hundred, and wanted to share at least some of them with you to let you know what it was like. My main feeling the whole time was being overwhelmed with gratitude for access to such natural beauty and wonderful people. I had a fantastic time with Jess, and it was great to see old friends. It took me a while to mentally check back in after this epic 16 day trip, which is fine with me.

These days I'm helping lead a class at Stanford on values, science, and the current deep ecology of being human. I'm also leading a regular meditation group, doing yoga regularly(including bikram - John Nishan, who could have guessed I'd get there?), and thinking about what I'm looking for in community. It's a great place to be. I look forward to writing some more reflective pieces for this blog in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

So much love and peace to you, from the western edge of the continent.

ps - Forgive the chunky format of this posting. I can't get blogger to do what I want with the photos and spacing.

The Refined Art of Calling Things as They Are

"Why don't we fight harder?" The question burns in me, sometimes gently and other times like a southern California fire in July pushed by the Santa Ana winds. I think of it as I sit here and watch the cars roll by, as I glide past the smokestack at the Stanford co-gen plant in the evening, and as I picture an iceberg the size of Luxembourg breaking off an Antarctic glacier. I think of it as we plan weddings and funerals, make deposits into our 401K plans, or talk of property values and long-term investments. I think of it as we pursue our individual passions, advance our entertainment technology, and struggle through this Great Recession without an end in sight.

The question came to me from a Derrick Jensen article that I can't even find right now. But that particular article is not terribly important. He, and some courageous others, have been writing for years about our losing struggle as humans to save ourselves and the biosphere from our heavy hand of destruction. He is of the opinion, which I share, that we're not doing nearly enough to stop the catastrophic changes we're wreaking on the planet. In one of his articles in Orion Magazine about getting beyond hope (http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/170/), he says:

PEOPLE SOMETIMES ASK ME, “If things are so bad, why don’t you just kill yourself?” The answer is that life is really, really good. I am a complex enough being that I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good. I am full of rage, sorrow, joy, love, hate, despair, happiness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and a thousand other feelings. We are really fucked. Life is still really good.

I'm glad he wrote that. I share his sentiment. When I look around, I see little evidence in our culture at large that we are going to stop being destructive to ourselves and the world around us. Yet I delight in good times, love the people close to me, and am trying to enjoy each day as much as I can. In fact, this is my purpose in life - to walk my journey as best I can and work for common good, while keeping in my heart the knowledge that we are not doing enough.

I can't prove it to someone who wants to argue about whether or not we're deep into an ongoing catastrophe that we can't seem to slow down. I think of resource wars, overpopulation, extinction, climate change, alienation from each other, and other big picture trends as evidence that our impact is too big and too complex for us to remedy in any significant way. I see no real, logical reason for optimism in any other trends, either - 'green' technology, buying things with a slightly smaller ecological footprint, conferences on the idea of sustainability, healthcare reform legislation, carbon offsets, etc. However, I don't want to live in despair because the tide of destruction is overwhelming. I believe that the reason we are unable to really change course as a culture/species is the same reason that I am able to live with something other than perpetual despair.

There is an analogy circulating widely, mainly amongst liberal folks who read science news I think, that we are in a condition similar to a frog in a pot. As you turn up the heat on the frog, in small increments, it does not notice that its habitat is quickly becoming hazardous to its health. Apparently, you can come close to boiling the frog without it freaking out. Our situation as humans is postulated to be analogous - we are poor at perceiving threats due to slowly changing circumstances. As the air gets more toxic in big cities over decades, we fail to notice the changes because we continue to acclimate ourselves in mind and body to the conditions as they evolve. We fail to look at a planet with 7 billion people on it and freak out about overpopulation and crowding because it has been (relatively) slowly growing over many decades. If the population doubled or the air became cloudy with soot within the course of one year, we might notice with alarm that our environment suddenly became less hospitable. Such a drastic change might overwhelm our senses and thinking enough to capture a large part of our attention, and perhaps subsequently our action.

Instead, we focus on the bits of our daily life in front of us. We pay bills, go to work, adapt as best we can to new technologies, medicate ourselves with entertainment and drugs, spend a lot of energy finding and thinking about a life partner, gather or grow our food, and on and on. These activities take up our attention and energy, and we only have so much life left to devote to pondering our place in the big picture, what the big picture even is, and how we may contribute to the future of this big picture. I believe that we can only focus on the big picture, which for me at this point in time is on a scale smaller than astronomy and bigger than your local town, for a certain amount of time each day, week, month, and year. To sit with the idea of global ecological collapse, day in and day out, is overwhelming. Such a practice might lead me, or anyone else, to kill myself. I believe we are simply not organized in our heads to be able to give constant attention to such a broad, sometimes subtle, multi-faceted, ever-evolving threat to the basis of our lives.

We give so much thought and action to the little things that make up our daily lives, that to me it seems that we are fundamentally unable to take the individual and collective action required to steer our planet on a drastically different course. It will take going beyond politics, economics, religion, habit, and all the other impediments to a thoughtful and scientific look at ourselves and the world around us. We will need to immediately cease so much of what we have built our modern standard of living around - massive throughputs of energy and materials, neither of which we are allowing to regenerate at anything close to the rate that we are extracting them. We will need to voluntarily reduce our population by some amount in the billions, at the very least. We will need to leave the trees in and oceans in peace, to let them recover as best they can. We need to stop putting plastics and other novel chemicals out in the world to wreak havoc on us and the biosphere. We need wholesale change on every level.

What does all this have to do with me not wanting to live in despair? Everything! I want to admit all these terrifying things about the trends I see in the world around me, and continue to feel like I'm doing a bit to live lightly on the earth. I want to write and talk about futures that I feel good about. I want to have love, intimacy, fun, exercise, sleep, meaningful work, and good food. I feel that by disclosing my fear and resignation that we are destined for some kind of collapse, we can still feel good each day by taking care of ourselves and aiming to have a milder outcome as we emerge from this crisis. I want to protect wildlife - not because I think humans are really going to voluntarily give back habitat and resources to them and they'll return to a "natural" state, but rather to keep diversity alive beyond this period of destruction if possible. I want to free the political prisoners in Burma - not necessarily because it is the most important thing in the world, but because I carry a little pain in my gut thinking of them spending their lives in prison. I like public transit, but it's not going to make New York/Tokyo/Bangkok/Cairo/Paris/Portland an ecologically sound place. I want to tackle these problems, while admitting that I don't think we will be able to "save ourselves" (i.e. preserve something resembling our way of life and level of affluence) through any action we can muster at any level.

I'm writing all this to get back on track with my purpose. I want to come clean like I'm at an AA meeting. I want to share that I think we're completely screwed, but we can delight in the joy that life brings and in doing things that we feel good about. My purpose is still, as always, to sink my teeth into good things and put one foot in front of the other. I want to write useful essays. I want to help carry my friends through their hard times. I want us to disabuse ourselves of illusions. I want to dig in the dirt a bit and build with my hands. I want to try my best to live and die with integrity. I want to go beyond rhetoric of self-congratulation and self-flagellation. I want to cut out the frivolous (not the same as fun). I want to be more radical all the time.

I'm looking for partners. Leave a comment, help me out, send me a vibe. I'm doing my best.

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.