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Go get a library card…

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Having a library card is like having a gym membership. It doesn’t mean anything if you don’t use it.

There are plenty of people who come in every four years to vote in the Presidential election and they feel that they have to get a library card. Our library is an early voting site, and we have people come in that normally never go to a library. They feel that it is part of being an American to have a library card, so they sign up. Four years later, when they come in to vote again, they ask if their card is still valid. It isn’t. If you don’t use it in a couple of years it expires. So then they sign up again. Every now and then I’ll ask them if they want to go and find a book first, to see if they NEED to sign up for a card. Nope. They want to get a card. They just don’t want to use it.

Libraries are the most amazing thing ever about America. They present a free exchange of information. With a library card you can unlock any door. You can learn how to do anything. Going to the library is the best way to improve your mind and your life. It is the way out of a bad situation. It levels the playing field.

There are books at the library for everybody. Every now and then they get challenged but they usually get to stay. A book is “challenged” when someone tries to get it removed from the library. It is very hard to remove a book from the library. People don’t understand that just because they don’t like a book doesn’t mean they have the right to prevent another person from reading it. Thus, libraries have a huge variety of books to accommodate the varying needs of the community.

Yet this means nothing if they don’t use their card. What is the point of getting a library card if you don’t use it? There are plenty of countries around the world that don’t have libraries. Just being able to read is something you shouldn’t take for granted.

Plenty of people take the amazing resource that is the library for granted. If they use it at all, they will fill up on movies and fiction. That is just the icing on the cake. There is so much more to the library than this. The most amazing thing about the library is that if you want to improve your life or your community or the world, you can learn how to do it at the library. It is free to everyone.

I feel that Americans take the library and free public education for granted.

I know a lady from India who was a patron here and then went back home to India. She told me about how there were no free public libraries in India, or at least where she was. There were libraries, but you had to pay to be a member, and there weren’t that many books. Thus, people don’t really read very much.

A community that doesn’t read is a dead community.

Having a card isn’t enough. You have to use it.

If you are poor, education is the way out. Plenty of people will say that the schools are bad in their area, but this means nothing. You can have your education spoon-fed to you, or you can go hunt it down yourself. It also doesn’t matter what your local library is like. No matter what library you use, you have access to the inter-library loan system. Whatever you want, if it isn’t at your library, they can get it for you from another one. So if you don’t get a good education, the only person you have to blame is yourself.

Go get a library card. And use it. The mind you save will be your own.

Bad habit weeds and good habit flowers.

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Weeds are bad habits. Flowers are good habits. If you want more flowers, you have to dig up the weeds, sure. But you then have an empty space where the weed was. To prevent a weed going back in, you have to plant more flowers. You also have to weed regularly to keep them from getting so big that they are hard to remove.

We have to be intentional about our time in order to not lapse into bad habits. The New Year is coming, and plenty of people have resolutions. Sadly, the resolutions last at most a month for many people. Who wants to start going to the gym when it is cold and dark outside?

But that is the very best time to do anything – when it is hard. It is easy to quit smoking when things are going well. It is when things are going poorly that the old habit will come back. You have to have a different thing to do to fill that mental space; otherwise that bad habit “weed” will take up residency again. It might even be worse than before.

I have a morning routine that helps me set my day on the right track. I try to do all of it, but some mornings I have less time before work than others. I do as much as I can and I don’t obsess about it. Obsessing about it is yet another bad habit. It doesn’t change anything.

I’ve talked about some of it before, but not in this context. I have added some things too. I offer this as a suggestion – take of it what you will, or none at all. I find it helpful, and I hope that some of it is helpful to you.

When I wake up I’ll say the Modeh Ani – the Jewish prayer of thanksgiving to God for letting me have another day of life. This is a new practice. If I don’t say the actual prayer, I’ll at least be mindful and conscious of the gift of life and health and another day. I think it is important not to take anything for granted. That keeps me in a state of thankfulness and mindfulness. With that mindset, everything is a blessing.

I’ll have breakfast (either oatmeal or yogurt) with grapes and a banana. During that time I’ll check the computer for my “news”. I don’t read regular news because it is so depressing. One day I’d like to see news that is balanced – good and bad, but until then I’ll find out what is going on in the world in different ways. I discovered that starting off the day with negative news made the day start off very badly. My goal is to have the mindset of new day, new chance.

I’ll read the Daily Office – a daily set of readings from the Bible. If left to my own devices I’ll read whatever I want, which will end up being nothing at all sometimes. Having a set structure helps me a lot.

I’ll finish up a blog post I’ve pre-written the day before. I’ll write during the day on my phone or Kindle and email it to myself. When I’m at my home computer I’ll pick one of the posts I’ve started and I’ll finish it up. Sometimes it is something I’ve started the day before, sometimes it is something from months ago that I just didn’t have the desire to work on then. Rarely do posts come fully formed from my head in one sitting. They never come in easy-to-manage chunks of time. I’ve learned I don’t have the time or focus to start and finish a post from scratch every morning. It is jarring to me to switch gears from being creative to having to get ready to go to work, so I create at other times. Waiting in doctor’s offices is ideal.

I pray while I’m in the shower. Every day during my shower I make an intention that that day will be dedicated to God. I try to treat every day as if it is like a retreat. I expect to see and hear from God every day. I know that God is in everything and every time, but this way I’m reminding myself of that. It isn’t that I’m calling God into the day – God is already there. I’m calling myself to be awake and alert and mindful to the presence of God.

After that I go do some yoga. I have a mat out in my craft room and I will practice yoga for about 10 to 15 minutes. During this I will focus more on being mindful and present.

Then I’ll read that day’s page from “Affirmations for the Inner Child” by Rokelle Lerner. These are simple one-page affirmations that are very healing and help me slowly heal myself. I’ve found it is easier to face the fact of my abusive upbringing in little chunks. In my head I want to not deal with it at all, but in my heart I know I need to face it to heal it.

Then, if I have yet more time, I’ll do a “Praying in Color” sketch/meditation. This is yet a further way to clear out my head and connect with God.

Jesus tells us about how dangerous it is to not have good practices in place, in Matthew 12:43-45

43 “When an unclean spirit comes out of a man, it roams through waterless places looking for rest but doesn’t find any. 44 Then it says, ‘I’ll go back to my house that I came from.’ And returning, it finds the house vacant, swept, and put in order. 45 Then off it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and settle down there. As a result, that man’s last condition is worse than the first. That’s how it will also be with this evil generation.”

The bad habit, whatever it is, is like an unclean spirit. When you get rid of it, if you don’t have a good habit in the place, it will sneak back in and bring reinforcements.

Occupy your health

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Perhaps the Occupy movement needs to teach us something else – don’t wait on the government to take care of us. We need to do it ourselves. While we are all holding our breath about the Affordable Care Act and whether Congress will get over its collective snit fit and start working again, we can do something ourselves.

Let’s not wait for tragedy to strike before we take care of ourselves. We’ve already seen that the government doesn’t really care about taking care of us. Instead of getting upset about it, use it as an impetus to not need to be taken care of. Remember, prevention is cheaper than cure.

The insurance companies, sadly, don’t think like this. Yet.

I remember one time when I lived in Chattanooga. There was a tree that was leaning too close to my house. I could see that any time now the thing would topple over and destroy my roof and everything under it. I called the insurance company and asked if they would pay to have the tree cut down. Nope. They would pay to repair the house and for a hotel room for me to stay in while the repairs were going on. But prevention? No. Prevention was a lot cheaper and faster. They would rather wait for the inevitable to happen and clean up the mess.

Insurance companies are doing the same with our health. Let’s spend a lot of money on a cure for cancer. Let’s spend a lot of money on diabetes supplies. They don’t think to encourage exercise and eating well.

If the government really wants to regulate health, it needs to ban cigarettes and vending machines. Ideally, we’d have enough self-control to know that we need to not smoke and not eat processed “food.” Obviously we don’t. So we have way too many people dying of entirely preventable diseases.

Sometimes the government does us a favor. Remember when you would go into a restaurant and they would say “smoking or non-smoking”? It really didn’t matter what section you went to – if there was smoking in that place, it travelled all over the whole restaurant. You were in the not-as-much-smoke section, but not the smoke-free section.

Sure, people have the right to smoke. They have the right to kill themselves that way. But they don’t have the right to take other people out with them when they do it. That is where the government stepped in and made it illegal to smoke in public buildings, and for that I’m very grateful.

I remember a lady who got really upset when she heard that she was no longer going to be able to smoke in restaurants. She got mad at the government telling her what to do. I was glad that finally they did something to protect me. But we can’t expect the government to take care of us all the time. We have to step up.

This should be an idea that will appeal to all the people who think government needs to get out of our lives and let us live the way we want to. This should be an idea that will appeal to all the do-it-yourselfers.

Let’s not sit around and wait for the government to do anything for us in regards to our health. We see what they have done with education. Why let them dumb down something else? We don’t need our health reduced to the lowest common denominator.

If health insurance is going to live up to its name, it needs to insure health. Paying money to restore what has been lost is backwards. Health insurance should pay us to go to the gym and eat well. We should go to nutritionists and personal trainers more than we go to doctors. We should all get stress-reduction training before we even are stressed.

We go to the dentist every six months to get our teeth checked. This prevents bigger problems. We brush our teeth three times a day to prevent problems too. Why are we so reluctant to take care of our bones, our muscles, and our hearts? We can get replacement teeth. Replacement bones, muscles, and hearts are another matter entirely.

People say they don’t have the time to exercise. That is all in your head. You have the time. You don’t want to do it – just be honest. You’d rather spend the time playing videogames or drinking beer or watching “reality TV”. I do all of these things to – well, except for the TV part, but I do them in moderation. And I exercise. I realized that my health was more important than my leisure time. If I didn’t take care of my health, I wouldn’t have any leisure time in a few years.

We have to change the way we think.

People say they don’t need health insurance and they shouldn’t be forced to buy it. OK, so do they have a card on them so that when they are in a car crash that they don’t get rescued? They don’t get their bones set? They don’t get a blood transfusion? If we all don’t pay into it, then we all don’t get to benefit from it. That only seems fair. But it isn’t the way we do things.

We have a way of thinking in America that if someone is hurt, they will be taken care of and that we’ll just sort it out later. So do you need health insurance? Yes, but not the kind that we currently have. Take matters into your own hands. We need insurance for accidents, but not for the things we can do for ourselves.

We are looking at the problem backwards.

Yoga is…

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Yoga is –

A caterpillar/butterfly
It is seeing the butterfly in the caterpillar, and the caterpillar in the butterfly. It is also seeing the beauty of the caterpillar as it is.
It is stopping to see these tiny little creatures and appreciating them and their very short lives. It is contemplating how amazing they are – perfect and complete and yet so small.

Water.
Yoga is water. It is water in all its forms. It is ice, mist, hurricane, the ocean. It is a glass of water at the restaurant, served with a slice of lemon. It is the rain that waters your flowers and it is also the deluge that washes away your home.

Work.
Yoga is at work. It is paying attention to each customer and each part of your job to your fullest attention. It is also forgiving yourself for when you are too tired to pay attention.

Food.
Yoga is about what you eat. It is about eating less and eating better. It is about being aware of the consequences of what you eat – for yourself and for the planet.

Tattoo.
Yoga is about getting a tattoo. Not some flash off the wall to show you are a rebel. It is getting a tattoo to mark a milestone or to set an intention. It is about being a witness to pain and transformation.

Yoga is mindfulness and being in the moment. Yoga is acceptance of things as they are, yet also not settling. Yoga is, was,and shall be. Yoga is you, on the mat and off the mat, doing the best that you can exactly as you are right now. It is about not comparing yourself to others or even yourself.

Yoga is about showing up and being present, to the best of your ability and not judging yourself. Just showing up is a big accomplishment.

Yoga is about taking the time to work on yourself and knowing it isn’t a quick fix. It is about knowing you are in it for the long haul. Self-improvement is a lifetime process.

Yoga is about finding your limits and gently pushing them. It is also about being OK with the times that you can’t push because you are sore or tired or angry.

Yoga isn’t about the postures at all. The postures are the doorway. Yoga is the room. There are many ways into that room. Yoga is just one of them.

And here’s a final one to chew on. Yoga isn’t about being a winner. It is about being a good loser.

Kindergarten 8-28-13

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Kindergarten is hard work. There are so many expectations, so fast. I heard today that every child is going to be tested on the alphabet by the end of the week. There are a few who just won’t get it. School has only been in for three weeks. They are five. They can’t get it this fast. Sometimes things take a while.

So many kids don’t have help at home. This is regardless of whether their parents speak English or not. For some, school is all the time. Some parents know that just like with plants in the garden, children need a lot of nurturing. You can’t just plop little Susie down in front of an “educational” video and think that you’ve done your part.

There was a little girl last year who was from the Congo. She was here with just her Dad. At the beginning of the school year she could speak only French and didn’t know the alphabet. At the end of the year she was reading “Go Dog Go” to me.

The difference? Her Dad made regular trips to the library and got books for her. He read to her. He encouraged her. He worked hard to teach her outside of school, and it showed.

There was a boy last year who was from Ethiopia. Have you ever seen the Ethiopian alphabet? It looks nothing like the English alphabet. It is all squiggles and dots. I think it is beautiful, but confusing. I think that if I was raised with it I’d have a hard time helping my child with schoolwork. His parents learned fast, and taught him. He flew through class. I rarely had to tutor him, which is a shame because he was a delight.

The most interesting thing is that I ended up tutoring the English-speaking children as much as the non-English speaking ones.

I have a theory that native English speakers take school for granted. I think that they don’t get how hard it is to learn the alphabet, to read, to count. These are essential skills and they are the building blocks for everything else. If you can read and count, you can do anything. If you can’t, you are in big trouble.

If you were raised in America, you might not appreciate what a blessing it is to have free, mandatory public education. Plenty of people knock our educational system, but it is a far sight better than in many countries. Sure, our system could use improvement, but the biggest thing we can do for the future is to work on education at home.

Don’t wait for the school to teach your child something, do it yourself. School doesn’t stop at 3 p.m. Take all the energy and focus of homeschooling and add it to public school. Don’t wait for legislation to improve the schools. Go to the library and get books. Make sure your child is filled up with facts and information.

Every foreign parent I see at the library gets non-fiction books for their children. Almost every American parent lets their kids get picture books and comic books. The difference is dramatic. You get out what you put in. The foreign kids are shaped and molded. The American kids are allowed to grow up like weeds.

If we really want to “be number one,” we need to start acting like it.

Comfort food and Western medicine are killing us.

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I know a lady whose adult daughter has Crohn’s disease. She has done well with it for several years, but it has flared up again. She is recently divorced and has moved back in with her parents.

Her mom wondered if she should buy her a Blizzard from Dairy Queen after she found out the test results weren’t good. Uh. No. As another person said – what health condition would that be good for?

But it isn’t physical health she is trying to treat. She is hoping to soothe with food. We do this a lot. We soften the blows of life with ice cream and cake and brownies.

These are celebration foods. Perhaps what we are trying to do is “turn that frown upside down”. Perhaps by eating the same foods we eat at parties we are trying to trick our brains into thinking that everything is fine. We aren’t in the middle of a bad situation. We are at a party!

But junk food never fixes anything. Good food will fix quite a bit. Exercise will always help.

I’m not sure how we got to the point that we treat the symptom rather than addressing the cause. I’m not sure how we have become reactive rather than proactive. I’m not sure how we have become so passive about our health and our lives.

I know that I’m not playing that game anymore. Sometimes I think I want to go back to school to learn how to be a nutritionist, or a life coach, or anything that helps people prevent their own suffering. But then I think I can’t save the world. It seems like such a logical thing – eat well and exercise and you’ll do fine (barring accidents). Eat terribly and be a couch potato, and you’ll suffer. But that is the way of things. I don’t think we’ve always been this way, but we sure are now. Our medical institutions don’t help either. Coughing? Take a pill. Diabetes? Take a pill. There is no education on how to get well.

Doctors who made a pledge to “do no harm” aren’t doing any good either.

Where does the change start? I think it has to start with us. We have to take control of our own health and lives. We have to essentially homeschool ourselves on our health and wellbeing. The more we expect others to do for us, the more passive we are. And the more passive we are, the more we will fall behind.

Yoga lesson (surprise)

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On Friday I performed a headstand and a handstand in yoga class. I surprised myself. But that is part of yoga. You push yourself and stretch yourself. You find your edge. It isn’t about hurting yourself or falling over that edge. It is about stretching, both physically and mentally. It is about unkinking yourself too – getting rid of rigidity in thought and body.

I’m in a process of self improvement. I’m in a process of body modification, but piercings and surgery aren’t involved. I’m transforming myself from the inside out. I’m not interested in the quick fix or the short term. I plan on walking on this path for the rest of my life.

American society doesn’t teach this. It teaches mindless living. It teaches eat whatever you want and take a pill to fix the resulting health problems. It teaches live for the moment and don’t plan ahead. It teaches that somebody else will save you, fix the problem, make it better.

Eating well and exercising and being creative are some of the most counter-cultural things you can do.

It has taken me a year of yoga and three years of water aerobics to be able to perform those moves. Either I needed all that work to be physically strong enough to do them, or I needed all that time to feel confident enough to try. Or I needed a teacher to suggest them to me and show me how. Or all three.

I’ve made a habit of writing every day, and now I’ve added in drawing every day. Everything worth having starts in such simple ways. Who knows where this is leading to? What will I surprise myself with a year from now, three years from now?