Working Through Discomfort

The story:
My friend was very upset with what I wrote. They let me know in no uncertain terms how hurt they felt and how personally offensive my words were. I felt terrible and foolish. I wrote back acknowledging the truth of some of what they said and apologizing for the hurt my words had caused. They wrote back and said how much my response meant to them. I was surprised and incredibly touched.

My response to the response to the response:
We’re always playing long game in relationships. Relationships unfold over time through multiple actions and reactions. Relationships are an ongoing creation of interweaving responsiveness. And reactivity is just a kind of vivid responsiveness. While many kinds of reactivity feel unpleasant (anger, shame, fear, confusion), reactivity is itself a manifestation of connection. And I’m now wondering if the deep and subtle joy that arose in me in response to my friend’s last communication might also be called a kind of reactivity

Though this interaction over the past couple of days, I’m beginning to see more clearly how my desire not to upset other people is a barrier to my connecting to those same people—especially to the people I perceive as ‘not like me’. This category of ‘not like me’ is utterly elastic and can range from a small subset of ‘those people’ who hold different political beliefs or see the world in a particular way or worship a different God—to everyone who is not me. Some days, even the people who are closest to me feel like strangers and I imagine I live in a world of utter aloneness—trapped in with my own terminal uniqueness.

Though it is may be admirable to care about how other people feel and how our actions impact them, I’m rediscovering that this is not a reliable or effective guide for human interaction. Partly because my intention to not hurt other people is often a cover for my desire not to feel uncomfortable and partly because there is something more important than avoiding conflict. There are things worth feeling uncomfortable for.

A young friend of mine used to play a computer game called Sim-City. The point was to use the resources you had to create thriving interactive cities. The success of your cities could be measured on different scales: population, economic activity, diversity, etc. One measure of success was to have the city with the lowest crime rate. My friend discovered (and this may have been a bug that was repaired in later editions of the game) that you could get your crime rate to zero if you bulldozed the whole city. And effective but self-defeating strategy.

So too, I might imagine that I could realize my dream of not hurting the people around me if I withdraw. There are, of course, many ways to withdraw. We can become hermits and not call or write or see anyone. But we can also withdraw in place by smiling and nodding—pretending that we are agreeable to everything when in fact we are simply refusing to participate fully. We can withdraw into stony silence and respond to inquiries about our internal state by announcing that we are ‘fine.’ We can cultivate an empty neutrality and just not come forward with anything. And these are just a few of my top avoidance strategies. I’m sure we all have our own favorites and infinite variations—all designed to keep us safe—but all having a huge cost.

All of these strategies have been necessary to our survival and are still necessary to some degree. But if we want to live fully and if we want to give our gifts in service of healing the world, we have to be willing to tolerate a lot of discomfort. A friend recently told me they wanted to live a ‘more courageous’ life. I resonate with their words.

For me, tolerating discomfort only makes sense when I remember and clarify what is more important than feeling comfortable. As I think about my friend from the first story and the deep pleasure of feeling even slightly more connected to them, I think that that connection was and will continue be worth feeling uncomfortable for.

And I think of my dream of a more just and free society, where people feel safe and are given the opportunities to cultivate and give their gifts to each other. Maybe this too is worth making mistakes and feeling uncomfortable for.

Working With My Reactivity

I got a very angry email yesterday from a dear friend from the past. I had forwarded one of my blogs to them because of a reference I thought they would appreciate. At the moment I sent it, I wasn’t thinking about our conflicting political views which have led to a decades-long détente of silence. My intention was share a story as a way of building connection. The result was just the opposite.

Their response and their anger was triggered by excitement I expressed in a paragraph at the end of the piece over the then upcoming inauguration of Biden and Harris and the possibilities of working together to heal our divided country. To them, this felt like gloating.  They reprimanded me strongly for my lack of empathy for the pain they and 75 million other Americans are feeling—for being a poor winner. My response to their response was surprise, confusion, fear, and guilt—all arising in a strong swirl that felt like a punch to the gut.

I’m just beginning a thirty-part virtual program designed to build skills for activists who want to have conversations that can lead to a reduction of racism in the U.S. The program seems to have several names: The RACE Boot Camp Method or Equipping Anti-Racism Allies: The Unitarian Universalist Edition or ACT (Ally Conversation Toolkit)   Their stated goal is:

to significantly reduce the percentage of white Americans who think that racism against white people is just as important a social problem as racism against people of color—55% in 2017. The goal of the initiative is to catalyze a cultural shift so that this figure is reduced to 45% by 2025.

They go on to explain:

The RACE Method Boot Camp is based on the finding that conversational approaches using respectful dialogue, empathy, and story telling are more effective in influencing people compared with conversational styles that emphasize factual information, debate, combat, and shaming people.

This all makes sense to me and clearly applies not just to conversations about race, but also about politics, gender issues, religious issues and all other hot button issues that quickly tend toward the polarization that is endemic in our country these days. The program is based on cultivating specific skills to allow the possibility of dialogue where now there is just mutual accusation or the separation of silence, judgment and fear.

Anyway, I’m now on step two which is about learning quick relaxation skills and deep listening. They open with describing the need:

Our hope is that we can do our small part in creating a world where compassion and equity are the hallmarks of daily life. A key requirement is that we find a way to stop the internal chatter and calm our own heightened fear responses so that we can deeply listen to others and understand the deeper human motivations that unite us. We must do this even when others sometimes say things that make them seem very different than ourselves.

So reading this email yesterday, I had the opportunity to practice working with my reactivity. My first observation was how terrible it felt in my body. l felt almost sick. Thoughts came quickly: I had made a terrible mistake that might cost a very important relationship. I was afraid and wished I had not done anything at all. Silence and inaction were clearly better than an unskillful and hurtful action like this.

I focused on my breath and allowed myself to feel the wild amalgam of physiological responses my body was having. I reached out to a friend for support. I sent an email of apology for my unskillfulness. And I have been reflecting on the encounter off and on ever since.

I finally went back this morning to reread their email. I found that most of the anger was directed not at me, but at the many times my friend has felt belittled and called names by voices in the mainstream media. He has felt that he and all the other people who supported Trump have been lumped in Hillary Clinton’s famous and deeply regrettable category of ‘the deplorables.’ He rightly pointed out that we need to stop gloating and calling each other names if we are to enter into any kind of genuine dialogue about our real differences of perspective.

I’m still working through this, but I see that one thing that has kept me from engaging with people with different views (both to the ‘right’ of me and to the ‘left’ of me) is fear of anger. I don’t know many people who like anger, but I grew up in a household where anger and direct confrontation were to be avoided at all costs. I think it was a loving family, but strong emotions and differences of opinion were mostly held in silence to avoid confrontation and the heat of disagreement.

But there is a cost to silence. When my fear holds me back from speaking of my perspective and asking about yours, then difference divides us and possibility is diminished. I’m now rereading the introduction to the boot-camp and I see there is yet another name for the program that involves the phrase compassionate warriors.    

The wise and wild Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa used a similar phrase. He called us all to be tender-hearted warriors. May it be so for all of us and may we find the courage to take the actions and have the conversations that will lead to healing and connection.

New Beginnings of Our Continuing Work

What an astonishing and moving day yesterday was. To see, at a little after eight in the morning, a lone helicopter rising in the clear sky over Washington, D.C. and to know it was bearing away our not-quite-former President—clearing the ground for something new to happen, was an auspicious beginning. Then the rest of the day, as I was able to tune in after the fact and during the fact to the in-person and virtual happenings, unfolded as a vision of America as a nation of proud diversity and hope embodied in the persons of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and in the artists and ‘ordinary people’ of all ages, colors, backgrounds, beliefs and styles who were part of the ceremonies and celebrations. It was an historic and inspiring day.  Our first female and first Black and first Vice-President of Southeast Asian descent! We have indeed come so far.

During these past four years it has been easy to lose hope. We have witnessed some of the darkest strains of the American Dream. Our former President, just like our current one, was a manifestation, a reflection of who we are. His greed, fearfulness, boundless narcissism are woven deeply into our national history and into us all. He made it impossible to look away from the violence and discrimination that is the history and part of the current reality for every woman in our supposedly great land of ‘equality’. We were confronted with the continual demonstration of how immigrants and people of color and people who are ‘different’ are marginalized, stigmatized and objectified. Seeing the ongoing police violence against Black people, we were horrified and then horrified again as we looked closer at the ongoing history of violence that is indeed a part of who we are.

Anger, fear and divisiveness were the currency of our former President from his inaugural address through his final rallying of the crowd to storm the Capital. And these dark forces reside in every human heart.

But yesterday, amid the pomp, circumstance and celebration, not one speaker mentioned his name. Instead, Biden and his team (because the country is never run by one person, but by a far-flung team working in service of and co-creating that one person’s vision) delivered a carefully orchestrated day that demonstrated and laid out another true vision for America. They did not fight their predecessor, they did innumerate his sins or give him any attention. (I’m reminded here of the coaching adage I always share with my clients: If you fight with your gremlins, the gremlins always win.) The day was instead devoted to expressing, evoking, and embodying our better angels as we come together to meet the very real challenges that are before us.

Biden, in his inaugural address, did not shirk from the difficulty of our current situation. His straightforward language was both unflinching and inspiring. Biden invited all of us to join together and renew our resolve to meet the challenges set before us.  He said:

The American story depends not on any one of us, not on some of us, but on all of us.

On “We the People” who seek a more perfect Union. This is a great nation and we are a good people. Over the centuries through storm and strife, in peace and in war, we have come so far. But we still have far to go.

 We will press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and possibility. Much to repair. Much to restore. Much to heal. Much to build. And much to gain. Few periods in our nation’s history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we’re in now.

I was inspired and reassured. To be able to say, after all that we have witnessed in these past four years, that we are a great nation and we are a good people was to call us to a renewed vision. To hear the voice of the heart and possibility coming from the mouth of our President was tonic to my soul. His acknowledgment of pain and struggle were not the cry of one who is defeated or looking for someone to blame, but a clear-eyed look at the work that calls to all of us. Biden reminded us:  

Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear and demonization have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial. Victory is never assured.

But it was the songs and the poems, the myriad colors and backgrounds of the artists and ‘ordinary’ people that were most inspiring. Our young poet laureate who sang and moved her deep words of inspiration. Jennifer Lopez’s soaring voice claiming a land that ‘was made for you and me.’   In the virtual evening celebration, the variety of musical styles and voices were demonstrations of joy and love in the midst of it all. Even my concern that Tom Hanks would turn into a block of ice before my eyes didn’t dampen my feelings the hopefulness, relief and joy that are present in this current moment.

Of course, now the work begins and now the work continues. The tasks ahead of us all are monumental. As Biden said, there is much to heal, much to build and much to gain.

For this brief and nourishing moment, let us once again touch and be touched by the high dream of this great and eternally imperfect country. Let us find new ways to come together. Let us each give our energies and talents wherever we can to join with those who came before us in creating and embodying our highest ideals of justice, liberty and possibility for all.

To Celebrate And To Remember

It is a joyous day for those of us who have suffered through Trump’s self-serving lies, indecencies, and continual attacks on the democratic principles on which this country was founded. This morning in his daily newsletter, Robert Hubbell wrote a chilling and poetic evocation of what we have endured these past four years:

  Vulgarities. Daily assaults on decency and civility. Sordid affairs with porn stars. Islamophobia. Anti-Semitism. Nepotism. Defending white supremacy. Cloying praise for dictators: Putin. Kim. Duterte. Collusion with Russia. Obstruction of justice. Withdrawal from Paris Climate Accords. Pardons for racists. Children in cages. Assault on NATO. Profiteering in the Oval Office. Bribing Ukraine. Impeachment. Firing whistleblowers, Lies. More lies. Conspiracy theories. QAnon in the White House. Blaming Black victims of shootings. Defaming Black Lives Matter. La Fayette Square. Claiming election fraud. Subverting the Constitution. Inciting insurrection. The Capitol Insurrection. Impeachment (again).

It has been a terrible time, but much has been revealed. That Trump could rise to the Presidency and maintain his grip on power in spite of his egregious behavior is a clear sign that our vaunted democracy includes forces and people that have little interest in democracy. The urge to authoritarianism is not something we had taken seriously before Trump’s Presidency. The willingness of politicians to bend reality to their purposes is nothing new, but the new dynamics of the social media information systems have created the possibility for untruths to be cultivated on an unprecedented scale. These are disturbing truths that will not end when Biden is sworn in at noon.

This morning Trump will, however, leave the White House greatly diminished with the Republican party and the people that supported him these four years is in the process of self-destructing. Trump has made it clear there is no party except him and that he will stop at nothing in his desire to maintain complete power. Republicans now must choose their party or their allegiance to Trump. Trump has pardoned many of his accomplices and will take millions of angry and disturbed followers with him. The QAnon lies and anti-immigrant, anti-black, anti-Semetic, anti-other zealots will follow him and will be the cauldron he continues to simmer and stir—hoping for some magic elixer to sooth his wounded ego and make him the Grand Ruler of All.

But there is some wisdom in the hackneyed saying ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ The body’s natural response to a virus is to create antigens that recognize and fight against it. Of course, as in the case of COVID-19, sometimes the virus overwhelms the individual body or the collective body and leads to great loss and even death. But when we face adversity, there is the possibility of learning and growing. We are called to remember what is most important and we are challenged to exit our self-reinforcing bubbles of contentment and engage in the world in new ways.

The flip side of Hubbell’s distressing list are the deep shifts in awareness and action that we have seen over the past four years. Beginning with the Women’s March on Washington right after Trump’s election and continuing to the Me-Too movement, we have seen a renewed recognition of the rights and power of women. Women are running for political office and winning at historic highs, both at the state level and at the national level. Trumps unrepentant misogyny has awakened a necessary and ongoing movement toward gender awareness and equality.

And Trump’s continual race baiting and bigotry is part of what led many into the streets and revivified the Black Lives Matter movement earlier this year in response to our ongoing police violence against black and brown bodies. We are in the midst a national conversation about the impact of racism at every level of our society. There is an emerging national consensus that we must consciously work to guarantee the basic rights for safety and security for all members of our society regardless of the color of their skin or where come from.

Though Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will not be sworn in until noon today, they have already begun their leadership of our country. Yesterday they presided over a brief and moving remembrance for the over 400,000 victims of COVID-19.   Biden spoke simply from the heart as Mourner-in-Chief for our grieving nation. His words and his actions give hope that the coming four years will lead us toward a new healing. This healing must include a reckoning with the pain and violence that implicates us all. The way forward is not a recreation of ‘how it used to be’, but a brighter and more creative possibility in which we learn new ways of being together with freedom and justice for all.

In Biden’s own words: “To heal, we must remember. It’s hard sometimes to remember. But that’s how we heal. It’s important to do that as a nation. That’s why we’re here today.”

Mutual Vulnerability

Many years ago I did a two-day training with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a social action organizing group that works to bring people together across differences to mobilize for positive change. As I think about how we might begin to rebuild connections across the acrimonious divide of red/blue and white/black, several things from the training arise that may be useful tools.

The IAF taught that effective social action and change requires organizing people around their own self-interest. The training I took did not teach us how to convince people to care about a cause, but rather how to have conversations to uncover what people already cared about. At that time, they called these conversations one-on-ones.

The skills involved in these one-on-ones are:

• • clarity of purpose,
  • curiosity and deep listening and
  • mutual vulnerability.

Clarity of purpose means to be intentional about the reason for the conversation. Most of our conversations drift from one place to the next. We talk about the weather, then politics, then our latest Netflix binge. These are fine and even nourishing conversations. But he purpose of a one-on-one is to deepen a relationship through sharing stories of personal events that have shaped our lives.

William James, the founder of modern psychology, wrote that each person has a ‘hot spot,’ where we truly come alive—some thing or cause or activity that lights us up. When he spoke with people, he was always looking for what he called ‘the ground of a person’s joy’. As we meet each other, can we discern this beating heart of interest in the person in front of us or on the screen with us? It’s often easier with children who are less self-conscious about their dreams and fears. But we adults have been carefully trained to cover over what we really care about. We hide it from others for fear of being disappointed or ridiculed. Eventually we hide it from ourselves because we have grown so discouraged or distracted that we simply forget.

The curiosity and deep listening in a one-on-one conversation are listening for this aliveness. These are exactly the skills I was taught in my life-coaching training—listening and following the aliveness. We all care about something, but clarifying that something and then acting on it is the work of a lifetime.

But the part of one-on-ones that was most surprising for me was the mutual revelation and vulnerability. From the time I was a young boy, I observed and absorbed my mother’s endless curiosity about other people. When we went on family vacations to new places we would often lose her. The rest of us would be moving on and notice she was no longer with us. We would then retrace our steps and find her in deep in animated conversation with some random shopkeeper or bus driver or passerby. She was promiscuous in her interest of the world.

My early training in one-on-ones also involved our Saturday morning trips to the local downhill ski area. We would get up in the dark to make sandwiches and take advantage of the ‘early-bird special’. While skiing individually, we played a family game. The object of the game was to see how much you could learn about the person you rode up on the lift with. (These were the days of ‘T-bar’ lifts and allowing ten-year olds to practice independence through wandering up and down snowy mountains.) Exhausted at noon, we would eat our sandwiches on the way home in the station wagon and tell stories of the strangers we had interrogated.

But the idea of sharing parts of yourself in conversation was not something I was accustomed to or comfortable with. While it may surprise the readers of these daily reflections, I tend to be rather introverted. I have this odd enjoyment of being up front and being the center of attention and have taken up this public practice of exploring my inner life through these daily writings, but in individual conversations I’m much more interested in listening to other people than I am in talking about my inner life. (We are all such a wondrous blend of this and that – of open and closed, of private and public.)

But in the one-on-ones, you ask questions about what people care about—about what has led them to where they are—about turning points in their life. Then you respond by sharing the same for yourself. The main focus is on the person you are talking to, but the practice is intentional mutual vulnerability.

I’m incredibly excited about the inauguration tomorrow. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be our new President and Vice-President! This, for me, is incredibly good news. But the work ahead to bring our country together will take years and will require the ongoing engagement of us all. Perhaps these few skills from the IAF may be useful tools for the journey.

MLK Day: Celebrating Truth

Martin Luther King, Jr was not a gradualist. He was not willing to wait patiently for things to change. Many of his colleagues, both black and white, urged him to be more conciliatory, not to do things that would upset the status quo. ‘Don’t poke the bear’ they might have said. ‘Don’t do things that will further antagonize the people in power.’ ‘Don’t cause trouble.’ King heard their voices of moderation, then went ahead organizing and leading courageous non-violent actions which exposed the violence and hatred that were woven into the fabric of our country.

King’s words and actions and the words and actions of those who stood with him, changed our country and changed the world. But the events of January 6 make it obvious that the violence and hatred of people with black and brown skin, of immigrants, of Jews, of intellectuals, of women—of anyone we perceive as different, is still very much present in our country.

Being nice and engaging in polite conversation is fine, but on the most important matters, it is not nearly enough. This applies in our civic life as well as in our daily lives. In a relationship, you might not want to share some important truth for fear of upsetting the other person. ‘They wouldn’t understand.’ ‘They won’t be able to hear this.’ These statements may or may not be true, but they often function as excuses to avoid life-giving conversations. We can feel righteous in our ‘care’ for the other while, at the same time, protecting our fragile self-image against information that might be disturbing. Often, it’s not really that I don’t want you to be upset, it’s that your upset will be upsetting to me, so I hold back to protect myself.

There are a thousand excuses for not telling the truth and for letting things be. But most of them are self-serving and ultimately lead away from the authentic connection and truth that we long for.

What is ‘the truth’? Of course, no one knows. Or there are multiple truths. Perhaps a working definition of truth could be that which leads to reconciliation and authentic connection. This kind of truth requires naming what is going on and what has gone on. When lies are told—lies about things that have happened, things that are happening, things that will happen—they must be confronted or they will fester and lead to more of the same, but bigger and more harmful.

The storming of the Capital on January 6 by people carrying Confederate and Donald Trump flags was a demonstration of the destructive power of lies. Trump’s barrage of patently false statements about November elections were repeated and amplified by Republican Congressional leaders for two months leading up to the events of that day. While the names of all who supported and participated are still emerging, the resulting images are seared in our collective memory.

Now there are calls for unity and harmony from these very people who spread lies in order to retain their grip on power, even if it meant overturning the very system that elected them to power in the first place. ‘Lets not focus on the past.’ ‘Let’s not hold the soon-to-be ex-President accountable because it will further divide the nation.’ These calls from extreme Republicans are the ones that would have us avoid the reckoning and the truth-telling that must be part of any genuine reconciliation.

It’s probably not surprising that these calls to move on and forget mirror the calls by many about race in our country. ‘Let’s not talk about slavery, or lynchings or the raft of legislation passed over the years that has inflicted violence against black and brown people.’ ‘Let’s just move forward.’ But we cannot forget or move beyond what we are unwilling to acknowledge.

Forgetting is a kind of pretending. But the damage of lies is ongoing. The pain and violence of the past can never be undone. Only when we are willing to honestly confront what has happened and what is happening even now, can we find a way forward together.

So, this morning, in honor of one of our great national heroes, Martin Luther King, Jr., let us recommit ourselves to truthful and courageous conversations grounded in love. Let us be willing to disturb ourselves and others on the path to the reconciliation, justice and harmony that we all dream of.

Winter Gardening

The first sign in my household of the coming spring is the arrival of seed catalogues. They come with a reliability and glamour that belies the real nature of gardening which is much more provisional and gritty. I like both. But the catalogues have come this year, as they do every year, to remind me that in eight to ten weeks, I’ll be stumbling upon my first snow drops back by the side door where they seem to spring up overnight next to the snow piles.

Without periscopes or even eyes to look in the periscopes, how do they know the snow is gone? Do they grow in the frozen ground up to near the surface and wait to sense the warmth of the early spring sun before they make the final break into the light? Do they feel the release of pressure as the snow melts? And do I never notice them until I see their tiny nodding white blossoms a few inches above the ground because of the pace of their sprouting and blooming or is it that over each winter I loose the habit of paying attention to the earth at my feet?

So many questions. This lovely wondering is one of the delights of the gardening life. Even as I write this, my heart warms slightly and something, in the middle of winter, begins to grow inside me again.

I had a friend who taught art in high school and she said that her job was to teach her students to pay attention. It wasn’t about aesthetics or creativity or problem solving—all those things are a secondary outcome to the paying attention. I think it’s so with gardening and perhaps with most of life. Master gardeners, carpenters, lawyers and teachers are people who have learned to pay attention in particular ways.

Paying attention and wondering. If you ask me, this is the good life. I’ve never been good at being an expert. Though I have been known to have a strong opinion or two, what I like most is to appreciate the infinite wisdom and variety of the world—both around and within me. I’m enchanted by stories of the Chinese hermit Zen poets who refused positions of prestige and accountability. They lived lives of intentional obscurity and freedom. Of course the ongoing irony is that the ones we know about are the ones who were less successful. The truly successful hermits were never found and left no stories to seduce us. But perhaps the intention of some of these wild seekers of beauty was not to cut off connection, but to be free from the praise and opinion of others.

In Loving What Is, self-realized teacher Byron Katie wrote: “If I had one prayer, it would be this: “God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen.” Many of us contort ourselves into intricate pretzels trying to be good or wise or competent enough to earn the love, approval and appreciation of others. Being free from the desire for these things that come and go is a great blessing.

But you can’t just say: ‘I don’t care.’ I mean you can say that, but it doesn’t change anything except to require more work to pretend that what is true is not true. These desires for approval and appreciation are natural and, despite what Katie preaches, are not a problem. Being human is complex, problematic and painful, but it is also wondrous, fascinating and endlessly emerging.

A better way to work with our human dependence on others is to let it be and learn to pay attention to what really interests us. Each of us are drawn to different parts—different aspects of the world. For me it’s the mud—the wet earth from which we and the tiny snow drops and the mighty oak all spring. The wet earth, that when it’s sticky enough can be shaped into vessels and containers that we can drink and eat from. These basic earth things delight me both in the doing and the considering.

Now, mid-January, is the time of considering and dreaming of the gardens to come. I avidly page through the glossy photos, all perfect exemplars of what might be. I dreamof paths lined with blooming flowers and I look forward to the actuality of the thing itself which is gritty and emergent in ways photos can never be. My disappointments and inevitable failures will be more than balanced by the first green sprout that splits the moist earth and the fully improbable reality of those delicate snow drops that will be coming in the not too distant future.

Blursday

Saturday morning. Blursday morning. These days the days and weeks have a weird sameness. Shorn from their usual geographic reference points they blend together. Many of us no longer traveling to work or to see family around the country or even going out to diner for breakfast and coffee with a friend. My meetings have no specific place, they simply appear, one after another on the computer screen. My days and weeks have no specific place, they mostly happen here. And, now that it’s winter, here is pretty much inside—in these rooms where I live that are now more familiar to me than every before.

The new normal is not moving around too much—not consorting with human beings like we used to. We are told we must carefully keep our distance and stay safely beyond the point of contact. Invisible enemies surround us, now killing nearly 4,000 of us Americans per day. We must be constantly on alert. We have to stay away from each other. Our situation is beyond serious and yet some of us can still not comprehend the danger enough to wear masks, wash our hands and stay safely distanced.

This time is hard for us all.

The vaccine is here, but the coordinated roll-out will not apparently begin to begin until January 20 when a new administration is formally sworn in. The lies and rumors spread by the outgoing administration, including a number of ongoing Congressional Republicans, have created a culture of paranoia and disregard for basic science and the hard-won wisdom of our public health officials.

But I don’t want to go all political again this morning. I’m tired of writing and considering and wondering about the current state of our democracy. I’m tired of being outraged. (At this point, I notice the urge to list all the things I am outraged about. But, alert to my own part in disturbing myself, I choose, this morning to walk down another path. I’m taking an outrage break. Enough for the moment.)

So bleary eyes in the dark this morning. Cold January rain falls outside. The gutter company scaled the Temple building two weeks ago during one of our thaws and cleaned out the gutters, so the water that was spilling noisily over the roof edge above my window now quietly follows the gutter to the silent downspout.

Recently I’ve been singing ‘Itsy-bitsy Spider’ to my grandson on Zoom. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a dramatic song with gestures for little ones. A spider of diminutive proportions bravely ascends the water spout only to encounter a reversal of fortunes when the rain water sends him back to where he was before. But there’s a happy ending as the brave spider is heartened by the reappearance of the sun and sets out once again on their perpetual task.

Itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain,
Then the itsy-bitsy spider went up the spout again.

Though the functioning of zoom and the reality of people on the other side does not appear to fully make sense to my grandson as he approaches his second birthday, he seemed to recognize the song and be curious about the hand gestures his Nana and I were making as we tried to make virtual connection. But the puzzling thing to me, was that when the sun comes up, the gesture he made was covering his eyes (with his cute little hands) rather than spreading his arms to be the reappearing sun.

I’m wondering if he is perhaps being taught an alternative version at nursery school. The correct version of the gestures encourages identification with the sun—manifesting self as the whole world. Apparently there is a heretical version circulating where you are supposed to respond as if you were there and the sun was bright in your eyes. This is clearly an inferior interpretation that not only encourages separation from the world around us but also leads to smaller gestures and diminished engagement.

But, I suppose this rainy morning, it’s all academic. Any spiders that had been safely playing and living in the non-functioning downspouts of the Temple with no need to climb back after every rain, are now fully washed out. It’s still dark, but the rain continues and there will be no visible sun this morning to dry up all the rain. We’ll be wet for the day.

So this wet day is all we have.  Cars pass on Pleasant Street as per usual. The pandemic rages and drags on. Democracy holds for the moment. My pleasantly mild oolong tea is now cold in my cup. Time to cease and desist with the complaints and speculation. Time to make my bed, fold the clean laundry that has been patiently waiting in a pile on the floor and climb up the waterspout of this new day.

Two Questions

1. What do I want?
2. What do I really want?

I spend a lot of time asking questions—not because I know the answers, but because part of my role as teacher and life-coach is to invite people into the possibilities of their own lives. These possibilities dance before us. Sometimes quite clear, sometimes shrouded by fog, and sometimes fully obscured. Yet, we all long for something and this longing is an important resource in creating and sustaining a full and authentic life.

Even in the midst of abundance and seeming ease, there is often a disturbance—sometimes just barely discernable and other times almost overwhelming. We all face the inevitable changes of growing up and growing old. Our friends and partner change. People come and go without warning—and even when we are forewarned, still the parting still surprises and shocks. Amidst these changes, we must ask again: ‘What shall I do?’ ‘Where shall I go?’ ‘Which path shall I choose?’ Sometimes the answers are quite clear but other times it’s hard to know which path to take. Or, if the direction is clear, how to we find the energy and courage needed to follow?

In these cases when things are confusing and we really don’t know, I find these two questions of great use. They are not magic potions to straighten out all the tangles of the moment, but they can allow us to settle into where we are and connect to some deeper intention that can both guide us and provide the courage to take the next step.

First question: What do I want? This is a question that we are often encouraged to ignore. We might feel that everything in our life is set and we have no options. Or we’ve been taught that we must be ‘realistic’ and that ‘dreaming’ is a waste of time. It is true that there are many things in our lives that are unchangeable. We can’t undo anything that has already happened. What we have done, what others have done cannot be undone. We can’t be anyone other than who we are. But ‘what has happened’ and ‘who we are’ is actually much more malleable than it first appears. Past, present and future all arise in this moment and are all shape-shifting constantly. The feeling-tone and the story that feels overwhelming at one moment can change in a heartbeat—can intensify, can vanish, can become something altogether new.

So the first question, What do I want?, is an invitation to stop trying to solve problems or to assign proportionate blame or even tell new stories. What do I want? focuses our attention inward. You may have clear answers for this question or you may have never given yourself permission to ask. Either way, it is a useful question because we all want something.

Now the Buddha taught that wanting is the source of our suffering. But the solution to this is not to pretend that we don’t want anything, but rather to clarify the wanting itself. Because the Buddha also taught that suffering is an unavoidable and essential part of life. Suffering, the discomfort and even the agony of life, are, paradoxically, the entry points into a larger life of freedom and connection.

So ask yourself: What do I want? Allow yourself to be selfish and want what you want. Don’t judge yourself or censor yourself. What do I want?

Then ask the second question: What do I really want? Another way of putting it: If I got what I wanted, what would that give me? If I had a comfortable cottage on the coast of Maine, what would that give me? I might answer ‘I’d be able to sit and look out the window and see the ocean.’ Then ask again, What would that give me? Keep asking this question until you get the same answer over and over. This is what you truly want.

We often imagine what we want is a particular set of circumstances. I want my body to be like this or my finances to be like that or my relationships to appear in this configuration—then I will be happy. But when we look deeper, we can begin to discern that our true longing is for something deeper. The surface configuration of our lives, while important, turns out to have not nearly as much to do with our happiness as we might imagine. Money, fame, even relationships cannot bring us what we truly want.

Next time you come to a decision point or are feeling disconnected or lost, try asking these questions and see where they lead. You may be surprised.

Hatred and Delusive Certainty

I ended my post yesterday with this inspiring quote from Martin Luther King, Jr:

‘Hating someone will destroy you, not the people you are hating. If you‘re in a place of hating someone, you need to let go. Choose love over hate.’

I’ve also heard King quoted as saying to a group about to engage in civil disobedience: ‘If we hate the people who hate us, they have won.’ King’s concern with our hearts, with our inner landscape, was a fully aligned with Gandhi’s understanding of nonviolence as not just a political expediency, but as a way of being. Gandhi was adamant that the path of nonviolence is only effective if the participants have done the necessary inner work.

Gandhi himself continually returned to his own spiritual community for rest and renewal between his many travels and conversations and actions. Daily meditation and regular fasting were part of his everyday life. Gandhi also called off several large scale campaigns of civil disobedience when violent incidents made it clear that the partisans of his cause were not yet able to live up to the demands of nonviolent action, that they had not found yet found a way through the tangle of their own inner hatreds and violence.

That’s a high bar for engagement.

Yesterday, I was caught by King’s words: ‘If you’re in a place of hating someone, you need to let go. Choose love over hate.’ This is inspiring advice and it sounds quite simple, but how do we do it?

I don’t think many people consciously choose hate over love, but we are always beset by the seduction of righteous certainty—the mirror side of hatred. The human mind loves the feeling of certainty. The mind was apparently designed to solve problems and move on. Uncertainty requires the ongoing energy of wondering and not knowing. And while we may generally be in favor of the idea of wondering, in practice, not knowing can be very taxing. Part of the brain simply wants to clear space in our consciousness for the next problem. Being certain, even if we are wrong, is often accompanied with a sense of relief and ease.

The brain cannot distinguish between its view of reality and reality itself. Stephen Covey once said ‘We see the world not as it is, but as we are, or as we were conditioned to see it.’ We live in a world that we unconsciously participate in creating. We live with strong psychic pressure to clarify things into black and white so we can move on to the next problem. Once we know that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys, we settle into certainty.

Consequently, hate and its near relatives of blame, resentment and righteousness often feel quite good. I mean they don’t feel good, but they are solid positions that allow us to create a sense of a stable self. And on some level, the brain only wants to create a stable sense of itself and the world—it often cares more about resolution than whether the resolution is accurate, beneficial or even if it really makes sense.

From the Zen perspective, the self—who we think we are—is the subject of great interest. As we look more closely at our actual experience, it’s quite hard to find the self who is allegedly at the center of it all. I might reasonably say, ‘I am writing these words on my laptop.’ But who is the one who is writing these words? I respond, ‘I am having thoughts that I’m typing onto the keyboard.’ But who is the one having these thoughts? Words and thoughts are certainly arising in my awareness, but where are they coming from? Who is the one who is doing the thinking? Who is doing the typing? To say, ‘I am.’ begs the question. Who is this ‘I’ that ‘I’ talk about so often? If I’m honest, I have to admit that I have no idea who is at the center of it all. There are thoughts. There is typing. There is wondering. That’s all I can really vouch for.

While this may sound interesting, it can be quite unsettling when we begin to realize that we really don’t know who we are on this fundamental level—that this self and personal history that we will go to extreme lengths to defend, is not as solid as we would like to believe. And this is not just academic because this unconscious urge to solidify the self is at the core of the hatred and self-righteousness that tear us apart.

The urgent work of our country and the urgent work of our planet is to find ways to cut through the separation of certainty that leads to hatred, violence and endless suffering. Courage is required to do the necessary work of the moment—courage to face our own internal demons and delusive certainties as well as courage to take action and stand up for justice, accountability and compassion.

These are not easy times, but these are times of great opportunity—to step beyond whatever bubble we have been living in, into the great diversity, confusion and vividness of life itself. We are called to do this for ourselves, for our brothers and sisters, and for this fragile planet that is part of who we are.