Monthly Archives: July 2024

The Journeys We Take

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I am just back from a walking pilgrimage I did with a friend in Scotland. As you might imagine, I started out with ideas about what this time away would be like; how things would go and what it was I wanted to happen. Immediately, as in on my first flight out, I was “gifted” with a wrench in the works in the form of a missed connection to Scotland where I was to be meeting my friend in the airport the next day, and then going on to our first leg of the journey.

I put “gifted” in quotes because we typically don’t associate our plans being interrupted as a gift. But that’s exactly what it was for me. Why? Because I got the chance to see what thirty years of practicing mindfulness, of being present to the moment instead of fighting with it, can do for a person. Especially under less than desirable circumstances. Especially when we feel like something hangs in the balance.

We all want things to go the way we want them to go. We all create scenarios in our minds around what will happen if we don’t get what we want. We all do our best to manage the experience of being alive with all of its uncertainties by believing we have far more control than we actually do.

But that’s precisely where the suffering comes from: Our ideas about how things need to go, or else… Or else we won’t be ok. Or else we won’t be happy, safe, loved, you name it. That things will be ruined. That we won’t be able to handle what life throws our way. That we won’t get what we need.

But none of that is true. What is true is that when we can be with things as they are, even when we don’t like them, we give ourselves the gift of peace of mind. Of sanity. Of being aligned with reality in such a way that not only can we be ok, but miracles can actually occur.

This was my experience while being stranded in an airport as I was missing my connection. Missing my meeting time with my friend in Edinburgh. Missing our first night to get acclimated. Missing our first day out on the trail. Just hearing about all of this missing out could leave many of us feeling frustrated, resentful, angry, or despondent.

But in this situation and on this day, I was none of those things. Without even trying. Without putting on a happy face or trying to think positively. I was plainly and simply, ok to be exactly where I was.

It would be easy here to focus on what a bummer it was or how the trip was ruined. But I’m here to say it was none of that. In fact, it was the exact opposite. I got to discover how many wonderful strangers are out there as I spent time talking with anyone who would talk to me. I got the chance to see how at home I am in my own skin. And I got to be the recipient of so many miracles and kindnesses, small and large, that happen in a busy airport when you are not fighting the ten hours you will be spending there.

Because I allowed myself to surrender so peacefully and so fully to what was happening, I spent a wonderful day in the airport eating, reading, meditating, reflecting, doing yoga and walking. Somewhere in the midst of it all, I realized I hadn’t missed a single thing. That I was in fact, already on my pilgrimage. That what I had been intending for my time away was already happening quite beautifully. That nothing was wrong. Nor was I missing anything.

I don’t tell you this to brag about myself. I tell you this to say, life is going to do what life is going to do, so why not surrender up your ideas about how things need to go? Why not admit when you have no control over a situation? Why not let yourself settle into “what is?”

Of course this requires practice. Lots of it because of how conditioned we are to believe that we are the epicenter of how the world should and must operate. This is as simple as getting into the habit of saying “yes.” Yes to the weather that is here. Yes to the politics of the day. Yes to what the people around you are doing. Yes to what your body is feeling.

Not because you like it or want it to stick around, but purely as the sanest gesture to yourself to admit that, yes, in fact, this is here. Whatever it is. Now you are in a position to be with Life on Life’s terms. Meaning that whatever you do or don’t do will be coming from an alignment with the reality of the situation at hand, as opposed to some fantasy or denial about how you need things to be.

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Waiting To Be OK

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“I am done waiting to be okay.” 

I spontaneously write these words down in my journal one morning. The entry follows on the heels of a particularly difficult night of sleep. One of those times when you wonder if you have even slept at all. All of this follows a week of an achy, cranky hip and a lot of anticipation around an upcoming event.

Watching my mind through the hours of no sleep, one theme emerges over and over again: If things were different I would be better. If I was sleeping, if my hip didn’t hurt and if I wasn’t worried about something, then, then, I would be OK. How everything would be right with the world and I could finally be at peace. If only all these things just weren’t happening right now.

How often are we all waiting to be OK? For something outside of us to make everything all better. The test result. The package to arrive. Another person changing. For the weather, the boss, our partner, anything and everything, to be somehow different as the prerequisite for our OK-ness.

The problem with the waiting game being, we wish our lives away. Always waiting for some other time for things to be better. Different. Never realizing that Life does not revolve around our terms and requirements for what we need to be OK. That the weather will do what the weather will do. As will our friends, families, bosses, co-workers, and at times, even our own bodies.

Because the truth is, even if we get what we believe we need to be OK, there will always be something else that will show up and upend our precarious sense of OK-ness that has been built on outside circumstances needing to line up just so.

It literally never ends. Until, of course, our lives do.

Knowing this, what if we just agreed to take Life at face value? Accepted that being here is not about us trying to make everything OK by our own standards, but is instead, about learning to be OK through it all. Through thick or thin. Through both the wanted and the unwanted. The expected and the unexpected.

But of course this takes practice. Lots of it. So best to begin before the really big things arrive. Maybe with the low stakes moments across your day. For instance, being OK if you don’t get the weather you want, the parking space or the yoga spot you covet. Or being alright with someone making a choice you don’t agree with. Or perhaps, the next time you can’t sleep, letting that be okay. Not making it mean anything other than, right now, you’re not asleep, and that even if you don’t get the rest you need, you will most certainly be OK.

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Standing The Test Of Time

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It can be so incredibly difficult these days to know what is good for you when it comes to how to take care of yourself. Should you eat the new line of fake “meats” being touted as helping to save the climate? Should you choose the latest drug promising to cure obesity? Should you consider wearing or having embedded into you the latest technology to monitor your health?

In a world moving at the speed of light when it comes to what we are being sold around health and self-care, how will we keep up? How will we determine what a human body actually, fundamentally and always needs to be healthy in the face of so many choices that may not have anything to do with real biological Truths?

As a matter of fact, to try and run down every new fad, food item or pill that hits the market would be a full time job. Basically, out of reach for most of us who are just trying to live our lives, pay our bills and raise our kids. Meaning, that most of us will never devote the time or the energy to thoroughly vet what is coming our way in this regard. This leaves us at the mercy of the commercials and other agendas trying to get us to buy or do something.

What then? Isn’t there something we can return to? A kind of infallible North Star to help us navigate far too many choices, hidden agendas and scare tactics?

I believe there is, and I think of it as “Those Things That Stand The Test Of Time.” What this means for me is looking back across history and to earlier generations to see what was naturally done in the past. Not as a way to romanticize earlier times, but as a solid foundation for determining fact from fiction when it comes to what our bodies truly need to be well. What it is we did before all the technological inventions and marketing schemes.

An easy example to work with is food. Each year, we are bombarded with tens of thousands of new and “improved” food items in our supermarkets. And while this is a great way for Big Food to claim more market share, along with the stellar profits that goes with that, is it actually good for your health to eat what they churn out? The current chronic rates of lifestyle diseases, obesity in particular, would say no. As would the food research that tells us these so-called “new and improved” food-like substances are merely a new take on highly processed ingredients created to trick your taste buds in order to get you to buy in order to create more profits for them.

Does this sound like a scenario where your health and well-being are central in the equation? If not, you are onto something and it’s called using your common sense; the main ingredient in what it is that stands the test of time.

To get even more specific, if we apply standing the test of time to our food choices, some simple questions to ask would be, “Is this something my grandmother or great grandmother would have made for her family? Would she have recognized this as food?”

In a world that loves to complicate things, one of the best ways to navigate our way through when it comes to health, or really anything for that matter, is to get simple. There is nothing more simple than common sense. Nothing more basic than looking at what has stood the test of time.

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The Trouble With Needing So Much Stimulation

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It’s raspberry season. Today as I’m picking, it occurs to me that many people would find this dull. Boring. Tedious even. It’s particularly slow going on this morning because the porcupine has been getting into the patch; bending branches down and smooshing everything together. This means I have to painstakingly pick up branch by branch to get all the berries hiding underneath without breaking anything.

As I’m doing this, I’m thinking about us as a people and how extremely stimulating things have become in our world over the past decades. How once we would have found pleasure in something like picking berries. But that now, it would feel too slow. Not worth the effort. How an endeavor like this wouldn’t be exciting or engaging enough for many of us now. Where once it would have been the highlight of the season and a deeply coveted activity. Would even have been seen as an important function for helping to bring in the bounty of the summer, while feeding the family something special.

We are way off course when we allow our lives to be gobbled up by the pace of the machines we are so attached to. In jeopardy of forgetting who we are and what is most important when we live so busy and so over-stimulated day after day after day. With all that we believe we have now with our speed and convenience and ease of access, we are disconnected from the preciousness of Life, and oblivious to what is being lost.

That being, a true sense of ourselves, what matters most in Life and perhaps most missing of all these day, how to live in harmony and in accordance with our truest Nature. If we are rarely outside, if we do not pick our heads up out of the screens, if we are never quiet, we will not have access to our deepest selves and to our real place in the scheme of things.

I am content on this morning to be with the raspberries, despite the slowness of the task, because of two things: I have meditated this morning and because I have made moments like this a priority in my life.

And there it is. If you are looking, yearning even, to feel a greater sense of ease and connection, it requires putting your money (or the raspberries in this case) where your mouth is. Meaning, it is up to you to decide what is most important to you and live accordingly. This despite all the distractions and the pull to keep doing more. This means intentionally choosing to slow down regularly. Daily. Maybe it’s meditation. Maybe it’s looking out the window. Maybe it’s saying no. But certainly it is about getting a hold of your own schedule.

Slowing down and getting quiet serving as the non-negotiable prerequisite for figuring out, and then living, what matters most to you.

The world will not do this for you. The world will continue to encourage, demand even, that you keep over-stimulating yourself. But to choose this is to run right past the truest and the most important and most truly sustaining moments of Life.

 

 

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