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I’m fine.

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Why do people even ask “How are you doing?” They don’t really want to know. They want you to say “I’m fine”. They want to then go on to the rest of the conversation.

They don’t really want you to say “Things are terrible” or “My foot hurts” or “My husband is driving me crazy.” They don’t want the truth.

So why ask?

It is a bit of a transition phrase. It is a demarcation point. It is a way of saying, “Hey, I need to have a conversation with you, and this is how we start.” It is seen as polite.

But is it really polite, when nobody cares what the answer really is? To not really care about someone you are talking with is not polite. Now, sure, you may not have the desire to know what is really going on with your waitress or the guy who changes the oil in your truck. So why ask?

We ask because that is what we do.

And every time we do it and don’t really want the truth, we become more and more un-human, and more and more like zombies. We aren’t being conscious or intentional about our lives or our speech.

The artistic life

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I’m on vacation, and I just haven’t written as much as I normally do. I’ve taken the time to draw, which is nice. It seems to take just as long to draw as to write. I’m not sure how I’d find the time to do both.
What is more important? Isn’t it just important that I’m engaging in art? Art of any sort is healing. The ideal is to have time to write, sketch, paint, drum… But then there is a job I have to go to.
I have a few friends who essentially have said that art is more important than a job. They have made art their job. They say things like “money is evil”. While I agree that loving money isn’t great, I do like the things that money can buy, like food, shelter, and clothing.
While I don’t live large, I do like to live comfortably. I have a small house. Most of my clothes come from thrift stores. I eat well, in part because I’ve learned how to cook. While I admire the gumption of people who have decided to strike out on their own, I feel a little like they are saying that my path isn’t valid, isn’t authentic. I feel a little like a meat eater versus a vegetarian.
Their way is seen as higher evolved or more mindful. My way is seen as hedging my bets and unwilling to cut loose from the shore. My way is seen as being a slave to “the man”, whoever that is.
They wonder why their friends and relatives don’t support their choice to follow their dreams. The only problem is that “support” means “pay for”. They expect their friends and relatives to buy what they’ve made or go to their seminars. Meanwhile they mock them on social media for staying with their secure job. You know, that job where they earn money to buy their art.
If we all quit our jobs and start making art, then how are we going to pay our bills? Because who is going to come to our our seminars and concerts? Who is going to buy our books and artwork? We will all be starving artists because we won’t have an audience to buy our stuff.
I feel it is very dangerous for an artist to mock her audience, or to make them feel like suckers. If everybody could draw or write or bead or dance then why would they need to see you do it? Why would they need to pay you to do it?
We need gas station attendants. We need janitors. We need garbage truck drivers. We need them the same as we need teachers, doctors, lawyers, and diplomats. Saying that someone is less evolved, less mindful, or is just plain less because they have a “real” job and haven’t cut loose and created a non-profit or live in a commune is thoughtless and cruel, and wrong. It is wrong in the sense of “mean”, but it is also wrong in the sense of “incorrect”.
You can be creative while working for “the man”. It just takes a little figuring out. And to knock down someone else’s lifestyle choice as being less enlightened than yours is, in itself, less enlightened.

Poem – the moon does not change

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The moon does not change.
We do.

The moon, with its waxing
and waning
its new and old,
the moon is the same
to the moon.

It is us who change,
us who move.

It is our tilt, our time, that is different.

We forget this.

We mark time by the moon, the months of our lives.
We celebrate, we howl, we dance,
all based on the moon
and how it reflects the light of the sun.

The moon doesn’t change.

It is still the same moon, reflecting the same sun, day by night,
night by day.

All the time, up in the sky, it is reflecting
mirror-like,
the rays of the sun to someone.

Your day is another’s night,
after all.

So when we howl, when we dance, when we celebrate
what are we marking?

Why do we use the moon, the same moon,
to tell us
when it is time
to dance, to howl, to celebrate?

Perhaps because we have no other way
to say
that time
is passing by
quickly.

Pay attention.

The winters only come once a year.
We can mark time by them, but then
it is too late
to change
direction.

The moon reminds us faster, and more kindly.

Yet we need to remember
that the moon doesn’t change.
We do.

Really?

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I know a lady who is constantly saying “Really?” It isn’t used to say that something is truly that way, or to express surprise. It is used in an exasperated way. It is used as a way to express frustration. She does this several times a day, sometimes several times an hour.

The weird thing is that she is a grandmother. She is old enough not to say “Really?” all the time. It sounds so immature. It sounds that way because it is.

It isn’t the word that is the issue – it is the thought behind the word. She says “Really?” because she’s constantly upset that her version of reality doesn’t match up with actual reality. She’s constantly being unpleasantly surprised about how her version of real isn’t really real.

The trick is that she needs to adapt her reality to what reality actually is or she will constantly be upset.

Really.

Fruitatarian

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There is something called being a “fruitatarian”. There are several different levels of it but essentially it is someone who does not eat anything that has been killed. It has been jokingly said that vegetarians just eat things that cannot run away. If you eat broccoli, the plant dies. If you eat a tomato it does not. It is the fruit of a plant. You don’t have to kill the plant to eat it.

If you really care about the well-being of all living things then you have to understand that even plants are alive. Beans, nuts, seeds, grains, fruit and honey are all things that you can eat and nothing has to die for you to eat it. You could also eat eggs and milk. Those are gifts from the animal. The animal does not die.

Do I do this? No. Not yet. I’m working on it. But I think it is good to be mindful of my impact on this planet. How many beings have to die so that I can live? Is it wise to eat scallops instead of fish? One large fish can produce enough food for eight servings. One serving of scallops means that at least ten scallops died. Is that fair? Just because they are smaller doesn’t mean that they aren’t worthy of living. Who am I to say that my life is more valuable than theirs?

I saw a reality show once where the contestants had to hunt and clean their supper. The meat eaters were a bit squeamish. The vegetarian refused to do it. The host explained that if you are going to eat meat, you better understand that if you aren’t the one doing the killing, someone else is. Someone else had to do the dirty work. Someone else had to clean out the animal. Those nice little packets of meat that you buy at Publix? That animal was alive. It had a face. You can’t see it anymore because of how it is processed. This makes it easier to stomach, if you will.

If you can’t handle killing it and processing it, then maybe you should think twice about eating it. Or at least eat less of it.

In the biography of Saint Francis by Nikos Kazantzakis, Saint Francis often refused to eat because he felt that he should not cause the harm of any living being. Sometimes that meant that he got very ill because he was malnourished.

This is a hard choice. Who gets to live? You, or the other beings? With being a fruitatarian, you don’t have to choose. You can eat things that don’t result in a death. It is an interesting idea.

Playing rich

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I talked with my Mom while I was baking today. And of course, I didn’t talk to her in the normal way. She’s been dead for 20 years. But we talked, just the same. You might understand.

I asked her about “real” cooking, instead of basically reheating frozen food. A lot of what we ate came from boxes, and tasted like it. A lot was brown.

I said, if you’d practiced more, then cooking wouldn’t have been such a burden to you. It wouldn’t have been so hard.

She pointed out that they didn’t have much money. My Dad was chronically underpaid as an English teacher. He never got his full professorship. He never got tenure. Every semester it was a challenge to see if he had three classes to teach or none. He had started to teach long-distance. This was in the days before the internet. He couldn’t teach at home with everyone Skyping in. He drove. He drove long distances and late in the day, so that he could teach adult students who were juggling college with a career. They met in high schools after hours. Sometimes he taught in prison. He taught wherever he could – in part because he loved to teach, but also in part because we needed the money.

So we didn’t have much.

But it also wasn’t spent well.

I remember that Mom lived rich. She didn’t get much love from Dad. It was a cold marriage, one of duty. They didn’t have to marry, but they had married fast, without much time to get to know each other. She certainly didn’t know that he was mentally ill and not properly medicated. Not like the medications back then were any good. Mostly they turned you into a zombie, a shell of your former self. No wonder the compliance rate was so low.

My Mom stayed with the marriage out of a sense of obligation, and perhaps out of fear. What was a woman with no training supposed to do on her own? How was she supposed to support herself and two children? So she stayed. It wasn’t bad enough to leave. They didn’t yell at each other. They just didn’t speak either.

So she got what she felt she was owed through material things.

There were expensive perfumes. There were jewels. There were nice clothes. There was even a mink stole.

She didn’t feel loved in a non-tangible way, so she demanded it in a tangible way. This is so sad. It was like she was a prostitute in her own marriage.

So we were shortchanged on actual nutrition because my Mom felt slighted. She didn’t feel nourished, so we didn’t get nourished. I know this wasn’t intentional. I know she didn’t think of it like this. She didn’t see the connection at all.

If she’d worked on the real problem, she wouldn’t have had to supplement with things. If they’d gone to marriage counseling, then there might have been something real there.

And then she reminds me that they did go to marriage counseling. It was through their church. It was with the priest, who had taken a vow of celibacy. This man knew nothing about how to live with another person. He’d never been married. They didn’t get the help they needed. So instead of finding a real counselor, they just left the church.

And just existed, together, in a sad way. For years.

Money doesn’t buy happiness, true. And happiness sometimes is hard work. It is hard to fight for yourself. It is hard to stand up for yourself when you feel beaten down. It is hard, and it is tiring.

The more I dig, the more I uncover. The more I uncover, the more compassion I feel for my parents. The more I understand why they made the choices they did. The more I am determined not to make the same mistakes.

I’m sure I will. Not all, but some. Nobody is perfect. That is impossible. But intentional living and mindfulness are showing me things I never saw before. Perhaps things I never wanted to look at before.

New work practice

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I just realized a fabulous practice. All the whining and complaining my coworkers do used to drive me up the wall. Now I see it as an awesome test.

You can’t grow if you are sheltered. If you spend your whole life insulated and protected, you’ll never mature or get strong. This is true mentally, physically, spiritually.

I was at a retreat recently and was given this meditation. If you are in a rowboat in a lake and a powerboat goes blasting by, you can get upset or you can ride it out. It is what you do with it that matters. If you get upset then you are just making it worse.

I used to think that it would be nice to not have any powerboats on my lake. I’m thinking Rolling Stones here – “Hey, you, get offa my cloud”.

I’m stuck here for 40 hours a week listening to people bitch and whine about everything. Lots of complaining. Lots. From the staff. About the staff. About the patrons. About their husbands. About their children. About everything. All they do is complain, and they don’t do anything to make their lives better.

They are “letting off steam” and I’m the one getting burned.

It gets old. I’ve pointed out that if all we do is talk about negative stuff, then negative stuff is all we will see. We have to look for the positive. This advice works for about ten minutes and then it is forgotten.

If you want to get stronger, you have to test yourself. To strengthen your balance and your ankles, do tree pose. If you do mountain pose you won’t get any benefits. You have to stand on one leg. You have to challenge yourself.

So being around all this complaining is a test. How to listen without engaging. How to be there but not really be there.

I can’t solve their problems. They have to do it themselves. They have to see them as problems first. The longer I try to deflect or dissipate their anger, fear, frustration, the more I’m delaying their realization that they are causing their own problems.

Jesus tells us to love our enemies. He says that if we just love the nice people, what good is that? Anybody can do that.

So the trick is to love the bad situation, the complaining, the whining. Be loving. Don’t fight it, don’t resist it. Don’t join it, either.

This doesn’t mean I don’t want to go rowing on a nice placid lake every now and then either. I don’t enjoy being the calm one amidst the chaos. But I have to do something with this reality.

I’m not the only person to notice this. There are a lot of people who have worked there who feel that there is a bunch of negative energy here. Perhaps the fact that there is a large sinkhole on the property is part of it. One friend says there is paranormal activity. Whatever, the reason, the result is the same. And I’m trying to find something good about this. It is either that, or join it, and I’m not hot on that.

Alone again

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Until very recently I used to make sure that I had plans for a day or a weekend off. I always had to be doing something outside of the house. Errands to run, people to meet – something needed to occupy my time. I just realized yesterday how excited I was to not have any plans to go anywhere for today. I thought this was a good sign.

But then I realized that I still had plans. Make hummus and pesto. Work on the condensed Gospel (still an active project). Make jewelry. Paint my toenails. Write. Cook supper. Organize the fridge.

I realized that I was still packing my day full of stuff. The only difference was that I wasn’t going anywhere.

I know some of my need to stay busy has to do with my awareness of time, and how little of it there is available to us in our lives. I know some of it is my realization that if I don’t keep up some level of activity then depression will sneak in and set up camp. But this need to stay busy busy busy is in itself a symptom of a deeper problem.

Being still is, at the heart of it all, being alone. Deep down, I don’t like to be alone. Thus, deep down, I’m not comfortable with myself.

This is hard to admit, and hard to live with.

It, in itself, isn’t a bad thing. Different ways of living are just as valid as having different hair colors or textures. Different isn’t bad or good. It is just different.

What matters is that I am conscious of it, and aware. Do I let this way of being rule my actions? Do I let it decide for me what I am going to do? Do I live my life by reflex, on autopilot? To unconsciously act, whether directed by a crowd or an unnoticed impulse, is the same. It is, at the heart, to not be fully alive but to have your actions taken out of your control.

My need to stay busy is a need to fill up my time and my head with stuff. It is a need to get away from myself, even if I am the only person in the room.

There is strength in being independent. I’ve gained a real sense of power from preparing food for myself and my husband. I’ve also learned valuable lessons about myself and about life from doing this.

But still, even in this lesson, I’ve not really been awake. It is still a method to stay busy, and thus ultimately stay distracted.

I’ve heard “Hell is other people.” Perhaps for me, right now, hell is myself.

I don’t hate myself, not at all. That isn’t it. I have a good life and I’m grateful for my many blessings. But if I still feel empty in the midst of busyness, then something is wrong. My plan for this past year or so has been to uncover, and recover. It has been to dig up and dig out. Simultaneously I have been reforming and recreating myself by becoming more aware and awake.

Some of this is teaching me to be more conscious, while some of this is teaching me to let go. Some of it is about living in the moment as completely as possible. Some of it is about seeing the path ahead and planning wisely. And some of it is just simply about learning to be me.

You’d think I’d know how to do this by now. I’ve had 45 years to practice. But not really. For many of those years I wasn’t really awake, and that isn’t even including the years I spent in a pot-cloud. Or grieving. Or both. I’ve spent a long time running away from myself. Now that I’m conscious, I feel I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

And that is part of it too. Being patient with myself, in the middle, in the mess. Being patient, and knowing that this is where I need to be, and who I need to be right now.

Learned helplessness – victimhood and the Siren song.

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Learned helplessness is a terrible thing.

Thinking you are a victim makes you so.

Blaming others for your sad state of affairs keeps you trapped there.

Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you are right.

I knew a lady who once complained that there was a roach in her house. She was concerned about how filthy and dirty they are. She said that she was so upset about it that she had to have a smoke. I told her that the cigarette would cause her far more damage to her health than the roach. She got very angry with me and then told me that my saying that made her have to smoke even more.

It has to be terrible to live your life like a puppet.

I did not make her smoke. I did not force her to do anything. That was her choice.

Look at the Nazis. They said they had to commit all those atrocities because otherwise they would be killed. But it is better to die clean than live dirty. They made their choice.

To smoke is to commit an atrocity against yourself.

I knew a guy who weighed over 500 pounds. He said that he couldn’t help it. Everybody in his family was that large. If everybody in his family was as inactive as him, it makes sense. He even had a free membership to the Y and spent his whole time either drinking coffee or floating around in the pool. There were many opportunities for him to get healthy and he chose to not take them. He ate terribly, he refused to exercise. He acted as if he had no choice in the matter. That too was his choice.

It is all about choices. Sometimes people make bad choices. Then there are repercussions. It isn’t fate. It isn’t being unlucky. It is a direct correlation to an action or inaction.

You reap what you sow. If you don’t sow anything, you don’t reap anything. Simple.

I knew a guy who said that he wanted to quit smoking. And then he took another puff of his cigarette. If you want to quit smoking, quit smoking. Really. You are the one buying the cigarettes, lighting them, and bringing them up to your mouth and inhaling. These are all conscious acts. It is all something you are doing. It isn’t something that happens to you. It is your choice.

Whatever you want to be, you have to do. If you want to be healthy, you have to do the things that healthy people do. You have to eat healthy food. You have to eat a reasonable amount of it. You have to exercise daily. You have to get enough sleep.

You can’t wish it into being. You have to do it.

To get jealous of someone who has something you don’t is to paint yourself as a victim. It is in fact why you don’t have what they do – because you have given your power away. You have said that you can’t do it. You have chosen that.

You will either find a way or find an excuse.

Look at what you can do and do it.

I used to be obese. I used to smoke pot daily. I used to smoke clove cigarettes. I wallowed in my helplessness.

I remember one time I decided to at least slow down on my pot smoking. I put the supplies in a plastic bag and sealed it with rubber bands. I put it up in my closet. I had to get a chair to pull it down. It took me quite a bit of time to get to it.

Then I’d climb up there and pull it all apart, and smoke anyway. All along I felt helpless, in the thrall of my desire for that drug. I’d feel guilty and upset and angry at myself. But I’d seal it up again, and it would slow me down a little. That step alone was a step towards getting free.

No change happens immediately. It is all made of little steps.

I even moved two hours away from the person I bought pot from so that it would be harder for me to smoke. I had to drive a long way to get pot. I did that on purpose, to make it harder for myself. That too was a step.

Lao Tzu says that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And then there is another step. And another. You just have to keep walking towards your goal, one step at a time.

I remember one time I was making a rosary. I worked on it a little. Then I put it aside. A lot of time went by and I didn’t work on it. But then when I came back to it I realized that all the work I had done was still there. It hadn’t lost anything. So I added to it.

Positive actions towards a goal are the same.

You don’t abuse drugs, or food, or sex, or whatever. You abuse yourself. You are insulting your soul. You are abusing the gift that God has given you.

Look at Ulysses. He wanted to hear the sound of the Sirens. He knew that hearing it might drive him insane. He told his men to put wax in their ears so they would be safe, and to tie him to the mast so he couldn’t jump into the sea and drown.

Our addictions are like the Siren song. They draw us away from our rational selves. When we are sober, when we are free of the pull, we have the chance to make a decision to make it harder on ourselves to succumb.

My putting the supply of pot further away from myself was my lashing myself to the mast. It slowed me down and made me think. Ideally, yes, I would have thrown it away. At times I did that too, and I just bought more. At that time, I thought I could control it. Just like Ulysses, I wanted to hear that Siren song, just not succumb to it. It is a dangerous game.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:29-30 (ESV)
29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Sometimes we have to make hard choices in order to get healthy.

It is hard to be addicted, but it is still a conscious choice. The addiction is like nothing else. It consumes you. Ideally, it is better to not start. I don’t think anybody will ever tell you that smoking cigarettes, doing drugs, and eating junk food is good for you. We all delude ourselves when we think we can do these things and not get hurt. But if we do succumb, and fall into that pit, there is a way out.

It is step, by step, by step.

But first you have to stop being a victim.

I knew a guy who abused prescription drugs. They weren’t even his drugs. It wasn’t an accident. He didn’t develop an addiction from taking a prescription drug that was for him. He voluntarily and soberly took the first pill or four. He wasn’t an addict when he started.

He knew the risks. He thought it couldn’t happen to him. He thought he was special.

He ended up going to rehab twice. His wife left him. His brother started abusing drugs along with him. His father got sick from all the stress. And then he actually had the nerve to say “Why does all this bad stuff keep happening to us?” and “Why does God hate us so much?”

This passive attitude was the reason he was in that mess. He was the cause of all that mess, not God.

We are the cause of our own problems – not others. We are the solution too, not others.

Paint the background first.

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I’m not very good at painting yet. I’ve just read a tip that sounds really interesting. Paint the background first. Somehow this seems like it is backwards.

In life, you focus on the main part. You’ll see the building, or the dog, or the person first, and then maybe you’ll see the background. Maybe you’ll see the trees, or the clouds. But you never look at those first and happen to look at what is smack dab in the middle of everything, virtually yelling at you to look at it.

Paint the background first. If you don’t paint the background, you don’t have a way to paint the focal point. If you don’t give it a place to be, there is no place for it. If you paint the main thing first and the background last, you may smear the sky or the trees over it. You may end up leaving a weird edge around it.

This sounds a lot like life.

We have to set up for the big things. We have to make space for them. We don’t just graduate from college. We have to go to high school, and before that, middle school, and before that, elementary school. Maybe even there is kindergarten or pre-K in there too.

In order to write a book, you have to know how to write. In order to know how to write, you have to know words. In order to know words, you have to know letters.

Nothing is in a vacuum. Nothing exists on its own. Everything is connected.

Paint the background first.