Walking With My Grandson

Having walked to the edge
of the street he pauses
as I sternly call his name.
‘Isaiah! No!’
He looks back and I
hold his gaze from a few
feet away with my best
‘I really mean this.’ face.

There is no immediate danger,
the street is empty
but there are so many
future streets to be
crossed and I must keep
my little friend alive
long enough to absorb
the calculus of urban life.

He will surely and gradually
internalize the invisible
boundaries of protection
I now cast around our
rambles around the neighborhood.

But at not yet two, his
full comprehension is still
in the future, so I quickly
walk over to grasp
his hand mittened hand
and direct his attention
elsewhere—no show-down
of authority necessary.

I explain again the dangers
of the rushing cars and trucks
he adores and offer the ancient
truism of not playing
in the street but there’s
no traffic now and I know
he’s still too young to fully believe.

So for now, I stay
close and keep careful
watch for both of us.

Year-end Completion Exercise

One useful human skill that we rarely think about is the skill of completion—that is to consciously bring some event or time in our lives to a close. We turn our attention backward over what has happened to honor, learn and grow as we move forward. It’s kind of like a memorial service for what is now over. But not one of those services where the deceased is spoken of in exaggerated and unlikely praise. To really complete something we need to honor and include the fullness of all that happened. The process of completion praises all that has happened, allowing us to begin to come to terms with both the good and the bad, both our successes and our failures. Not only can this lighten the load of unprocessed feelings we carry forward, it can also help us gather hard-earned learnings to bring with us as resources for our next adventures.

The first life-coach I ever worked with in the early 2000’s suggested I do a very simple year-end completion exercise like this that I found surprisingly useful. It takes anywhere from ten minutes to several hours to complete. I offer it here in case you are in a reflective mood during these last three days of the year. There are four parts: Joys and Accomplishments, Disappointments and Failures, Learnings to Take Forward, and Vision from One Year From Now.

If you’re interested, get a piece of paper and your favorite writing implement, or just sit down at your word-processor.

At the top of the page write 2020 Year-End Reflections. Then the heading Joys and Accomplishtments. Now make a list of all of the things you are proud of over this past year—all the things you accomplished or brought you joy. These can range from ‘I survived.’ to specific things that come to you as you scan back over the year. ‘The annual black-eye Susan vine (thunbergia) I grew from seed looked spectacular on the back railing.’ It could be about relationships that have deepened, challenges met, risks taken, adventures begun.

The point here is to remember the good stuff. Many of us have minds that so readily focus on past disappointments and future problems that we rarely find time to acknowledge the many things that go well, the many times we have successfully met the challenges of our lives. Looking back and appreciating your own resilience, ingenuity and courage is a way of claiming the skills you already have as your own.

These accomplishments and joys can be a quick list with just a few words, or it can be a long and detailed list. Follow whatever feels right. I often find when I do this that as I write, other things occur to me that I had almost forgotten. If your list begins to get embarrassingly long, take a deep breath and enjoy it.

Next is the heading Disappointments and Failures. This is the list of all the things that didn’t work out the way you wanted. They may be due to things you did or didn’t do, or they may be events far out of your control. But everything on this list is, in some way, something you didn’t want (or something you did want that didn’t happen.) Some positive-minded people might ask what the point is to going back over painful things. Why not just move on and focus on the good stuff? Much of the difficulty in our lives stays with us far beyond the time when it is ‘over’. Consciously turning to examine the things that have been disappointing or even heart-breaking gives us the opportunity to feel whatever we feel about them as well as to begin to learn what there is to learn from them.

We human beings are learning machines. If you are living a creative life (and we all are) you will sometimes, even often, fail. This is not a sign you are doing things wrong, but rather a sign you are willing to take chances, to go beyond the safety of what you know how to do. Picasso once said ‘I am always doing that which I do not know how to do in order to learn how to do it.’ This is each one of us, every day. Reflecting on our successes and failures is a way to support our natural and incessant learning.

The third heading is Learnings to Take Forward. This is where you list what you have learned over the year. These learnings may be quite specific ‘Rabbits in the Temple garden love to eat cosmos seedlings.’ to much more general ‘I am more and more drawn to wandering without purpose in order to find my way.’ Again, trust whatever comes to you, but consider what you have learned from both successes and failures.

Finally, imagine it is one year from now (12/29/21) and you are looking back on the coming year that has passed. You are amazed at how well it went—surprised by the wonderful thing you accomplished and that came to pass. You can label this section Vision from One Year From Now. Use the past tense as you write this, as if what you are imagining has already happened. Again, it can be as specific ‘Created a new terraced flower bed by the garage.’ or as general ‘I met the pressures of the continuing pandemic with equanimity and ease as the vaccine became widely available.’

That’s the exercise. You can put these lists in a safe place to take out again at some future date, or you can tear it up and burn it as an offering to the gods or even just put it on top of the pile of papers on your desk and let it fend for itself.

(If you’re really in the mood for an adventure, you could ask someone to be your ‘life-coach for an hour’ and read your reflections to them. If you do this, please instruct your temporary life-coach to just listen and appreciate. No advice is necessary or helpful. They don’t have to analyze or figure you out, they are just the witness and cheerleader as you notice what you notice.)

Appreciations

When I was 16 years old, I spent a year in Nagasaki, Japan as a Rotary Club exchange student. Four different families opened their homes to me and took care of me as if I was their own son. Looking back, I can’t believe my American parents let me go half-way around the world and stay with total strangers—strangers who had been mortal enemies of this country just 25 years previously. (Thank you Mom and Dad for letting me go. I had no idea what a big deal it is for a parent to let their children go off into the world until many years later when I myself was a parent watching my daughter go off—and she was only going to college a few hundred miles away.)

Looking back, I remember so many moments of kindness—from my host families, teachers, friends and also from complete strangers. Everyone helping me find my way in a culture that was so different from anything I had ever encountered. I had never been out of the United States, and at first I couldn’t even really believe that people didn’t understand English. I mean, of course I knew they spoke Japanese, but to my naïve American ears, English was not one language among many, but was language itself. The year in another culture opened me to the possibility and the wonder of difference. Many of my assumptions about the way life is are just one choice among many alternatives.

In 1969, when I went, westerners were still a rarity away from the city center of Nagasaki, a prosperous and hilly city of 400,000 residents. In the outskirts of the city, away from the Western-style affluence of the downtown, little children would startle at my blond hair and strange appearance and would run fearfully to their mothers calling ‘Henna gaijin! Henna gaijin!’ (weird foreigner). Their mothers would shush them and look embarrassed. I would smile and do my best to look non-threatening. (OK, this didn’t happen all the time, but even having a few young children run screaming to their mothers at the sight of you is an impressive and memorable memory.)

But what caught my mind this morning about Japan is the New Year’s Day celebration I remember from my time there. New Year’s Eve was not a big deal, it was New Year’s Day that was the real event. We dressed in our fancy kimonos and went together to the main Shinto Shrine of the city where thousands were gathered to celebrate the coming of the New Year. We ate delicious food, wished for good fortune in the coming years and remembered our ancestors—those who had come before us and made our lives possible. And then, every time for the next few days and weeks when you saw someone for the first time, you made a big deal out of your first meeting of the New Year. A new beginning.

So as the New Year bears down on us to end this weird and dangerous year, I’m thinking with gratitude of those many people who sheltered and protected me, a vulnerable and competent man-child far from home. And all of us who are here at this unsettled time have made it this far because of the kindness of so many people—most of whom we will never know.

Perhaps these next few days are a good time to remember all the acts of kindness and support that have helped us get to this point—especially the ones who have been there for us over these past twelve unprecedented months. The old friends and acquaintances we have taken socially distanced walks with, the family we have zoomed with or met with as safely as we could, and the new people who have virtually and otherwise come into our lives. And also the myriad people who have grown our food and driven it to the supermarket and worked in the supermarket on eight-hour shifts while we have run in and run out to lower our chances of infection. And the nurses and doctors and attendants. The fire fighters, the essential workers who have shouldered the risk for us all.

We are supported by a web of life that covers the whole earth. As we consider this reality of interdependence it feels appropriate to send our thanks out to everyone we know and everyone we don’t know, in appreciation of their role in our ongoing life of wonder, weirdness and difficulty.

Dream, Movie, Memory

A Dream: I was applying for the job of leading a private school. I had been the Head of the school previously but was not currently. I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to do it, but applied because I thought it made sense to offer my skills once more to guide the school. There were a number of other candidates. The trustees called a meeting in a large auditorium with hundreds of people. Three men in suits spoke at some length and then announced they had chosen someone else to be the Head of the school. I was sitting in the back with a friend, she looked over at me to see if I was OK. I was shocked and unsure what to do.

I decided to quit my job then and there—to empty my desk and leave the school by the end of the week. I was angry and disappointed. While I was gathering my things, the new Head came by before a meeting to ask me some obvious questions about the budget. I was amazed he didn’t know what was plainly evident and was sure he was incompetent to run the school.

I was also relieved to be leaving. I spent the rest of the dream coming to terms with both the loss and the freedom that would now be possible once I left. There was one scene where Wonder Woman (in her street clothes) and two other women were comforting me and gently expressing their confidence in my abilities to find my own path and flourish on my own.

A Movie: We watched Wonder Woman 1984 last night. I wouldn’t call it a great movie, but it was good fun and (spoiler alert) ultimately sweet and positive though not everyone gets everything they want at the end. That, in fact, is the subject of the movie—our wants and desires and what happens when we get what we think we want. Turns out (surprise) that it’s not purely good for us to get what we want.

A Memory: When I was in high school, my father, who was the minister of the local Presbyterian church, was also the assistant coach of my wrestling team. I had been wrestling since 7^th grade and had gotten quite good by a combination of determination, innate capacity and hating to lose. Before each wrestling meet, my Dad would gather us together in the locker room to pray before we went out to wrestle. He always prayed that we might stay safe and that we would do our best.

Secretly, I always prayed to win. At that age, staying safe and doing my best seemed like getting sox for Christmas—nothing worth wishing for. Looking back, I see it differently. I think of the sweet gaggle of tough and vulnerable high school boys trying to prove themselves—and, in retrospect, I see that my father’s prayer was sincere and true. But at the moment, winning seemed like the only thing worth wanting.

One day (and here’s the point of the story that ties it in to the movie and maybe even the dream) I confessed to my father that my prayer was to win. I pressed my theological point by saying ‘You say that God always answers our prayers. How come I don’t always win?’ Without missing a beat, as I recall, he responded ‘Sometimes the answer is no.’ His response was surprisingly satisfying to me. I didn’t really like it, but it made sense.

So What?: We don’t always get what we want. And when we get what we want—the victory, the job, the relationship—it turns out to be different that we had imagined—more complicated, fluid and short-lived. This is one of the teachings of life-coaching I most appreciate—that fulfillment is not a destination but a process. Fulfillment is what happens when we act in alignment with what we love.

Success and failure, gain and loss, praise and blame are pairs of human experience that are neither good nor bad. In not being chosen to lead the school in my dreams, I was disappointed. But who were the three beautiful women offering me comfort and encouragement? The three Muses? Three parts of me with hidden powers, one of whom can fly through the air with her ‘lasso of truth’ tangling up bad guys and making sure children are saved from harm (even in the middle of a chase scene when she is fighting for her life).

Personal Practice: What if what you have is what you need? Can we choose this life—even with it’s impossible difficulties and disappointments? What if what you have is what you really want? I pose these questions not as theological positions, but rather as lines of inquiry and investigation.

Take a moment as you read this and look around. Take a breath. Listen to the sounds. See what is around you. It could be otherwise. It will be otherwise.

Getting Over It

The day after Christmas is always an anti-climax. In fact, Christmas itself is usually an anti-climax—even before this weird year of social and familial distancing. What can live up to all the hype—the gloss and glitter that comes before this magical day? If your spouse doesn’t pull back the curtains to reveal the black muscular jeep you’ve been longing for or doesn’t produce the diamond necklace of your dreams—whatever else comes is a letdown that one tries to bravely meet with a smile and positive attitude. I suppose that even the Jeeps and Jaguars, diamond necklaces and tiaras that are given are not enough either. Or they are enough for a brief moment, then the brief flood of serotonin recedes and we’re left once again on the arid beaches of everyday life.

For a wonderful illustration of this, I’ve especially enjoyed watching ‘The Crown’, a ‘based-on-real-life’ Netflix drama about England’s royal family through the long reign of the current Queen. Beautifully filmed in sumptuous interiors and casually fantastic cars and castles the series gives a palpable sense of the fantastic pressures of public scrutiny and the hollowness of the consequent human relationships. (Spoiler alert) The Royal family is not a happy family. Apparently even being married to a beautiful princess and having scores of gardeners at your beck and call is not enough to satisfy.

I turns out that all the things we think will make us happy, don’t really work. The possessions, the positions, even the relationships don’t save us from the ten thousand joys and sorrows of everyday life. This is ultimately good news. Because it means we can give up our grand dreams of how it, or we, or someone else should be and begin to work with and appreciate what is already here.

The ancient Greek Stoic philosophers clearly understood these issues and preached a brand of practical acceptance and enjoyment of life. One modern day adherent recently summarized this philosophy as ‘Do what you can, where you are, with what you’ve got.’ Sound advice for us all as it is pretty much our only option. Our sense of ease and freedom doesn’t come from having superpowers to control the kingdom (which even the Queen doesn’t have), but the gradual acceptance of how little is actually within our control.

One Stoic story that got passed down is about the philosopher who got in political trouble and was banished to a small barren island off the coast of Greece. The weather was good, but apparently the Internet was terrible and the local cuisine even worse. His devoted disciples would occasionally visit him to comfort him in his lonely exile. But he, in fact practices what he had taught and did what he could, with what he had, were he was and was quite content. He, the one who had lost everything, ended up being the one that comforted the students who had come to comfort him.

So here we are, back to sea level once again after the Christmas boondoggle or the Christmas non-event or whatever it was or wasn’t for you—back to everyday life. I find myself kind of relieved and curious about what comes next. I’m looking forward to this one weird week between Christmas and New Years. My goal for these days ahead is to be reasonably non-productive, to do some reflecting and writing. To do what I can, when I can, with what I’ve got.