In The Box, a personal parable

Nine months ago I found myself in the hospital with a liter of fluid in my right chest blocking that lung from filling properly and making it difficult to breathe. While I was there they discovered that I had a completely blocked artery that had caused some heart damage. This required a stent (tiny wire coil inserted to hold the artery open). Two days later they sent me home to recover.

As you can imagine, this set me back quite a bit. Now walking for pleasure and exercise was nearly impossible. Even short distances or the slightest rise in the path would leave me huffing and puffing. I would stop every few moments to catch my breath, then stagger on. After three or four weeks I became discouraged and felt really old!

Normally I love to walk at a good vigorous pace, especially along the beach or on our local woods trails. (See my next "principle" on the value of walking). But now, suddenly, nearly all that had been taken away. It felt as though I had been put in a tiny box with fixed, rigid walls (my new physical limitations), walls that severely restricted me. I was frustrated, angry, and really feeling my age, a royal bummer!

Then one day I had a beautiful ah-ha, one of those amazing gifts from the universe (or from God if you use that language). I thought, "I may be in a box, but inside this box are lots and lots of wonderful gifts and toys." These gifts and toys had always been there - my friends and family, Delia's garden, the birds at our feeder, the mystery novels I love to read, etc. - it was just that my fear and frustration had blocked them out so I couldn't see them. All I'd been able to see was the damn box! Now I realized that I only had to wake up and enjoy these gifts. How wonderful!

But then a second realization: this restricting box might be bounded by four walls, a floor and a ceiling, but if I worked slowly and steadily, I might be able to expand the box, make it bigger, provide room for more toys. I didn't know if I could do it, but it was worth a try. So each day I walked a little farther, lifted just a little more weight at the gym, or walked for 20 minutes instead of 15, 30 minutes instead of 25. Slowly my box got bigger; my body stronger, my lungs and heart more powerful. Today, after some luck and much patience and persistence, it's as though the box no longer exists. I'm back to walking my beloved hills for as long as two or three hours, with a goal of a three day backpack trip sometime in the next few months.

So my experience has been that no matter how much our lives become restricted by circumstance, there are always things we can enjoy, always toys to play with. We only have to wake up, notice, and decide to put our attention on the miracles around us instead of the difficulties. Sometimes this is easy, sometimes it takes effort, but in my experience it can change everything.

The 20 Minute Brain Dump

I love to do what I call a regular brain dump. It helps me think clearly and is very simple. I just take out my Journal, or perhaps a separate "brain dump" pad of paper, and start to write. I don't write for quality or to make any sense. I just let thoughts, ideas, and garbage come spilling out. Some can be angry, some sad, lots is frustrated, much is just "stuff". I don't worry about spelling or grammar. I don't worry about what's being said. It can even go into the trash afterward. The key is to let whatever comes flow out onto the page.

Because I'm easily distracted these days, I sometimes set a timer for 20 minutes. Taking the full 20 minutes is useful because some of the best junk may spill out in the last five minutes. And I try to do it at least once or twice a week - occasionally every day.

Because I consider myself a sometimes writer, there are occasional snatches of poetry or a story idea that pop up that I save for possible future use. Or I get some good thoughts about the days or weeks ahead, or some new insight about some issue I'm wrestling with. Some of it might be the day's To Do or shopping lists. These might be worth keeping. But mostly it's just junk. And that's the idea. Get the junk out of you head by throwing it out on paper. Then there may be room for some of the good stuff to help you through the rest of the day.

So try it out. Let me know what your experience is.

It's Time to Wake Up

Most of us go through life without being fully aware. (There are whole books written on this topic.) We get up in the morning, throw on our clothes, grab a cup of coffee and a muffin, and face day the same way we've been doing it for years. 

But what if we slowed down just long enough to notice, to wake up, to look at our world with new eyes. What if we paid attention to how the space narrows as we step through the bedroom door and then opens again as we move into the kitchen? What if we woke up enough to notice in slow motion detail the miracle of our hand grasping the warm coffee mug and lifting it to our lips? What if we allow ourselves to become aware of the three dimensional nature of our living space, how one space flows into another. What if we take time to notice, in slow detail, all the different shades of red in the painting on our living room wall?

I don't do this very often - I manage to keep my self and my mind much too busy. But when I do take time to awaken, the world around me blossoms like a fresh spring flower. Sometimes it happens if I have my camera with me. I remember early one morning noticing a blob of bird shit on a railing, normally a yucky thing I would have walked right past or taken a sponge to. But when I took the time to frame it in my viewfinder, it became a lovely shape against the grain of the dark rail, something to photograph and mount on my wall instead of treating it like a blob of disgusting offal.

But there is another step to this waking up process, the step I like the best. It's when I become aware of being aware. It’s the self who says "This is cool! Look how I'm paying attention to my hand grasping the mug!  Look how I'm aware of paying attention to the birds at the feeder." I call this guy the observer, not the observer who stands apart and isn't involved, but rather the one who is truly awake to himself and to the world around him. This "observer" feels like the real me, my core self, the best part of me. It's a shame he's awake so little, but when my busy self remembers to pause, to step back and let him come forward, it feels wonderful. And in some mysterious way, he's the one who's aware enough to make the best decisions, to guide me wisely through life.

I don't find this easy, not because I can't wake him up, but because my life gets so full I forget to do it. (Now that I write this, I'm determined (again!) to keep him awake as much as possible!)

So play around with this, have fun, and let me know what happens.

Wait in Anger - a story

Here's a little story that perfectly expresses this bit of "Tom's Hard Won Wisdom". I heard it some years ago and have tried to follow its example ever since. Each time I have succeeded, it has consistently made things go better. So here's the story as I remember it.

The Shopkeeper

There once was a village shopkeeper who had a lovely wife and three small children. Early one morning, before the rest of the village was awake, the shopkeeper went to open the store and discovered a man's body draped over the steps into the shop. Terrified, he ran out of the village and wandered the surrounding countryside in a daze. Finally on the third day he came across a group of strangers around an evening campfire. He learned that they were pilgrims on their way to gain spiritual strength and wisdom from a hermit who lived on top of one of the nearby mountains. He decided to join them. For ten years he stayed on the mountain top, assisting the hermit with his many visitors.

Then one day the hermit said: "You have been a faithful servant, but it is time for you to return home."

The shopkeeper replied, "If I must. But please sir,  I have worked hard for you all these years. What can you give me to take home?"

The hermit replied, "Very well. My gift is this: If you are ever moved to anger, don't act on that anger for at least 24 hours. Now go."

The shopkeeper didn't say anything, but thought, "After 10 years of loyal service, this is all I get?" Fuming, he packed his few belongings and set off.

He arrived at his village well after dark. Nervous about his reception after ten years away, he tiptoed onto his lawn and looked in the window. There he saw his wife dancing cheek to cheek with a very handsome young man, obviously a new lover. Overcome with jealousy, he grabbed his knife to storm the house and do something, anything to get them to stop!

Then he remembered what the hermit had said: "Don't act on your anger for at least 24 hours." Frustrated, and with great difficulty, he re-sheathed his knife and want off to camp for the night at the edge of the village.

On the way into town the next morning he ran into a neighbor from years before. "John, how wonderful to see you," the neighbor said. "You've returned just in time. Your son has grown into a wonderful young man and is about to be married to the prettiest girl in town. The whole village will be celebrating with a ball after the wedding. You may not know, but your son never learned to dance, so he and your wife have been practicing at every opportunity and all over town. It's been a delight to watch."

The shopkeeper nearly fainted. How wrong I was last night. To think that my anger might have killed them instead of joining them in this wonderful celebration.

As you can see dear readers, this is also a story about being careful of the assumptions we make about other people, and about what's going on in the world around us. But "assumptions" will be another wisdom piece that will be coming soon.

Wisdom Rant 1

Dear Stephen Hall,

Your book on wisdom has stimulated some interesting thinking on my part which I would like to share. Many of the sentences or phrases below should have whole essays to back them up, but this will have to do for now. Here's what I wrote a few days after starting the book, largely based on my experiences as a 73 year old.

For me, wisdom requires experience, thoughtfulness, an ability to self-examine with some depth, resources to process feelings and move through and beyond them, the ability to see something from multiple points of view, to understand that almost every problem has at least 4-5 possible solutions, that brainstorming with self & others can be useful, that ambiguity is a part of life, that it's possible to have multiple feelings about a given situation simultaneously. It also helps to have the desire to find a good working solution that is moral and ethical, to care about others, to be flexible, to have good self-control, and so forth.

Here are more factors that contribute to wisdom: A strong sense of personal ethics, but without rigidity; that is, being able to recognize that there are rare circumstances where the usual "rules" don't apply and that the "rules" may need to change over time (e.g., 100 years ago vs. the present day concerning the issues of population and Climate Change). Trust, gratitude, honesty, patience. The ability to love, to cuddle, to care. Being able to see things in historical context. To find the "truth" in any situation, even when (especially when) that truth challenges your personal world view (Have to define truth). Look for what's real rather than make assumptions or leap to conclusions, especially in relationship to other people. To be able to step outside your personal cultural milieu and view things from a broader perspective. To realize that cultural context can be everything. (We need to be careful about judging some aspect of another culture that we don't like, especially when we make the judgment from solely within the context of our culture.) To not be locked in by rigid religious dogma. To understanding that most mistakes are not something to be ashamed of, but something to learn and grow from. (Years ago a friend told me that if I couldn't report at least one mistake a week, I wasn't sufficiently on the leading edge of my life and wasn't opening myself up to the possibility of new learning.)

Mistakes and 20/20 hindsight: It's so easy to see so many actions as mistakes AFTER they have happened, while at the time of taking the action, one couldn't tell, and then we get locked up in self-blame rather than see it as a learning experience. (Sometimes, however, we make mistakes knowing full well it is an unwise choice and that's a different issue).

One of the key things that helps is the strong desire to act wisely while realizing that you will make mistakes at every step.

Things that get in the way include greed, selfishness, self-centeredness, lust for power, overpowering emotions, lack of self-control, racism and related isms, inability or unwillingness to see the larger picture, etc.

The importance for me of Re-evaluation Counseling for getting free of childhood and other hurts that otherwise make us more rigid. Un-cleared, these old hurts can greatly narrow our range of choices and the actions we take. (A huge topic that would take a book to explain.)

Understanding that the world is full of contradictions.

The ability to play chess with a given problem by projecting various solutions out a few steps to see where they might lead, then choosing what seems the wisest choice.

Related to this is the understanding that what appears to be a "solution", especially one we're strongly drawn to, may end up being a bad choice by create far more problems down the road. Example: The wonderful altruistic trait of humans to care for each other, including saving whole populations from starvation by shipping in tons of food. Meanwhile, the real problem is that there are far too many people for the local land to sustain so that without adding birth control, a well fed population will tend to grow, creating even more starvation.

Working through one's prejudices also leads to at least a little more wisdom.

Sense of humor - getting others to laugh or chuckle at life's foibles, heartaches, etc. The healing power of humor. There is something about the fact that I can now get others to laugh with almost every sentence I say. Odd, quirky twists of language or of ways to view the world or impossible exaggerations, or forms of self-deprecation, etc. that make people chuckle, and how laughter can relax people or defuse a tense situation.

Being able to change the world a grain of sand at a time by finding ways to appreciate others with just the right words that get through to them in a way that they can hear.

The healing quality of good listening.

Journal writing and the Shamanic Journey as tools to understanding the unconscious and the inner self. What are my fears, hopes, grief's? What drives me? Why do I want or do what I do? Just who am I? Also tools to help guide me in a conscious rather than unconscious way.

Being aware of the observer self while being present to the world around us - that extra level of awareness, aware of being aware, that is so rare and that opens the true self to the world.

Gratitude and understanding that so much of who I am comes from those before me. Being able to see and be grateful for the amazing advancements we humans have made while also recognizing the huge problems that come with those advancements.

The ability to trust in others, even at some risk. Actively trusting someone has the potential to make them more trustworthy, but also enhances relationship and community. It also strengthens the character of the other person by increasing their self-esteem.

A corollary of trust: When a group or community is struggling to resolve some issue, to be willing to let go of what I want in order to help find a common solution that works for the community as a whole. Ideally, since I am part of the group, a solution that works for all also works for me, and in fact, in the long run, might be a better solution for me than the one I was holding onto at the start. NOTE: We so often think, in our culture, that such a process must involve compromise - that each side must give up something. But this is not necessarily the case. Many times a search for a 3rd or 4th or 5th alternative can solve the problem without the need for compromise. We just have to be open to that possibility, have faith that it might be possible, and work toward it. Quaker faith and Quaker silence.

That's as far as I've gotten for now. Thanks for listening and I would love any comments you might wish to make.

Some of my poetry

I thought I would share a few of my poems. See below.

Every Day

Every day,

when I am reminded of your gentle eyes

and warm hands,

I make a small paradise for you

here in my heart.

Walk through my open door dearly beloved;

step into my arms and join me in the Holy Dance.

Every day

that we fly our carpet over the heartbeat of the Earth,

searching for answers to old pain,

healing each other's wounds,

I am drawn to you like

the humming bird to the first flower of spring,

sipping the sweet nectar

that is our friendship.

There are not enough

words,

music,

nor holy places

to tell you the full Joy I feel in your presence.

Yet, the mystery of our friendship

must not be constrained

by the content of some exalted verse,

 bottled as a rare perfume,

nor knotted into some colorful ancient Tapestry

just because my poem might want it so.

No, we are blessed, you and I,

that God

has put limits on my speech

so I cannot bind up

that which should be boundless.

by Tom Snell