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My kids were on their Spring Break last week. I took one day off to go to the Museum of Science and Industry with the family: Lynn, the boys, and me. We had a good time. It wasn’t really that long a day, to be honest, but it made us all tired. We had a lunch at the Chicago Diner. It’s the tastiest vegetarian and vegan food in the whole city. I mean, you can get good food in all kinds of places, but the Chicago Diner has been featured on The Learning Channel for a reason. I had their award-winning “Reuben” sandwich before. The corned beef isn’t “real” in that not beef had to die and be corned in order to make it. Right up my alley. My oldest ordered spaghetti with “meatballs” in a restaurant, and I ordered a barbecue “ribs” sandwich for the first time since in almost two years. Mac-n-Cheeze for the little guy and a Philly Cheeze Steak sandwich for Lynn. We all smiled. It’s nice to walk into a restaurant and know that you can order ANYTHING on the menu. The only thing to consider is what tastes good. It’s a small pleasure but still a pleasure.

So, lazy days last week kept me from the keyboard. To be honest, I’m trying to figure out what to focus on in my writing. What matters? What’s relevant? Why bother? I’ve been doing this for over a year now, and my writing is all over the place. I am not sure if that makes a difference or not, but I feel like I should focus my energy differently. I don’t know…maybe it’s nothing. Maybe I’m just letting uncertainty elsewhere insinuate itself into other aspects of my personality. We’ll see…I’m not in a rush to figure this out. I just need to get back into the discipline of writing on a regular basis and reaffirm my commitment to myself. That commitment is to practice the art of writing.

Write is what I intend to continue doing.

That’s me: an artist in search of art.

I like Seth Godin’s definition of art: something created to have an impact, freely given from one human being to another as a gift.  He says it is what we are doing when we do our best work.  It’s not just about paints and chisels and wood-carving tools.  It is not about canvas and marble and a block of mahogany.  

Art is about action.

Art is about painting.  Art is about sculpting.  Art is about carving.  Art is about performing.  Art is about dancing.  Art is about strumming a guitar.  Art is about singing a song.  Art is about writing a novel.  Art is about coaching a client.  Art is about customer service.  Art is about every action taken by every person who chooses to infuse their essence into the activity in service of someone…or everyone…else.

Art is about giving.  

Art is about giving of yourself.  Freely.  Without expectation of anything in return.  

Art is love.  And love…love is art.

Let’s practice our art.  Let’s fill the world with art.

I am an artist in search of art.

I’ve been reading a lot lately.  I’ve been listening to a few books on tape, too.  I think my brain is full right now and that I need to go and digest the words for a while.  I have just started “Committed” by Elizabeth Gilbert and “Quantum Touch” by Richard Gordon, so I think the break will begin after I finish those.

While I digest, I would like to explore any and all of these books with any and all who are willing to engage in some thoughtful discussion.  Or I can sit here by myself and ponder.

Books I have finished reading since the beginning of the year:

“Wading the Stream of Awareness” by Jeff Brunson (I read an advance copy; it hasn’t been published yet).
“Linchpin” by Seth Godin
“Drive” by Daniel Pink
“The Back of the Napkin” by Daniel Roam
“Unfolding the Napkin” by Daniel Roam
“Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell
“The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle
“The Leader’s Way” by HH Dalai Lama and Laurens van den Muyzenberg
“Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert
“The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” by William Kamkwamba

I have nothing deep to say right now.  So, I am going to go to bed.  Maybe this list will generate a little conversation for a later day and time.

 I used to think that the Universe was vast and that I was an infinitesimal speck in relation to it.

There are times when our skin fits us so tightly that we begin to believe that we are our skin and our muscles and all the squishy parts underneath.  I think this becomes our modus, almost our default, for most of our adult lives.  But it is wrong.  At least I think it is.  I know because I have glimpsed the space inside.

When you find the quiet stillness within, that place where we are untouched but touch everything, something happens.  There is a lifting up, a feeling of being raised just a bit higher…a nudge at first…then, there is a twinkling, vaguely electric feeling that pulls you upward.  With eyes closed, you can see the tight space inside suddenly gain dimension.  The ceiling vaults.  It unfolds.  It twists, then collapses up, up…every up.  Then it stops.

This is as far as I have seen.  I guess I am not ready yet to see, truly see, what more there is.  

But I know it.  This is the space inside.  It is vast.  It is limitless.  It is greater than anything and everything that I can find outside of me.  My thinking parts cannot fully comprehend the infinite nature of this Universe, but my feeling parts can fully comprehend that there is something unending inside of me.  I am quite sure of this.

I think.

And if I am wrong, then simply think of me as another crackpot who is full of shit.  

Either way, there is peace in that quiet stillness.  There is joy in the calm space inside.  I think I should like to go back there again.  Yes, I think I would like to very much.

There are several hurdles to overcome.  They are small now, yes, but they are relevant yesterday.  And it is yesterday that must be put to rest.  Or, rather, the effect of yesterday on tomorrow.  Yesterday…tomorrow…all in preparation of fully embracing today.

I see freedom in the corner of my vision, just escaping my sight.

I feel calm just below the surface.

I hear quiet under the layers of noise.

I think who I was is just as irrelevant as who I imagined I would become.  Who I am…this is the person that I must be.  

Free, calm, quiet.  This is the person that I must be.

Last night, I was goofing off with such laser-focused attention to the goofing off that I forgot to write.  I also went to bed earlier than usual, if that matters.  I suppose it does.  I can be pretty easily thrown for a loop if I screw with my routine.  It’s not that I’m that automaton, this mindless drone (which I suspect I pretty much am).  It’s more like…I cram so much into the few hours that I have at home that I can’t skip a beat.  If I do, I pretty much skip a beat and trip over my own feet.  If I were a dancer, that would be the way my life would work.

But I’m not a dancer.  I may sometimes fantasize about entering the TV-based competition “So You Think You Can Dance?” as the only 40-year-old that ever made it into the top 20, but I get dizzy when I spin around too fast.  I don’t know if you’ve ever watched that show, but those people freakin’ spin around FAST.  And they do it A LOT.  There’s also dancing and physical stuff involved that I might not exactly be prepared to do.  The 40-Train is coming fast, and I don’t know that I’ve left myself enough time to be in tip-top shape.  And there’s always the spinning problem.

I think it’s OK to sometimes goof off with laser-focused attention that results in your forgetting to do something that is not mission-critical for your life, the life of your significant other, the lives of your children…or the lives of your parents, siblings, their spouses, their children, your friends, their families, HH Dalai Lama, Sigourney Weaver, Mike Tyson, Orson Scott Card, Stephen King, Gerard Butler (because you can’t mess with Jennifer Aniston’s mojo), Bruce Willis, Bono, William Kamkwamba, or just about anyone else on the planet.  The mainly irrelevant stuff is OK to forget.  

Stuff like writing in your blog.  You can forget that, especially if YOU are OK with it.  Goofing off is completely acceptable, healthy behavior.  

Trust me, I know.

There are some moments that you are able to relive instantly, almost as vividly as you did the first time.  I don’t care how old you are or how many wild experiences you’ve had, some moments just stand out.  They normally do because, whether we realize it or not, they change us.  They change us for better or for worse.  One could even argue that there is no “better” or “worse” there is simply change, and it is.  There are moments that change us.

I was at a workshop a few years ago, and we were asked to tell a story about a time in our lives when we first realized that we were different.  My moment sprang to mind without hesitations.  I was 8 or 9, about my oldest son’s age.  I had to walk home from school from the bus stop.  The problem was that I got off at the wrong stop.  Why?  Not relevant.  I just did.  

Boy, was I screwed.

See, I wasn’t exactly fluent in Spanish back then.  This is a problem when you live in a Spanish-speaking country.  I couldn’t ask for directions, so I didn’t.  I just walked.  And walked and walked and walked.  I have no idea how long I walked.  It must have been a long time because when I finally got home, my mother did one of those “I’m going to kick you ass/THANK GOD YOU ARE ALIVE!!!” numbers on me.  My poor mother…  

As I roamed the streets, I became more and more frightened.  I could see a dog wandering here or two wandering there.  I saw brown people, older and very much unlike me.  I was in Mexico, remember?  I may look like I have “olive” skin to the locals here in Illinois, but I was pretty much as pale as they came back then.  I was a kid.  What can I say?  I noticed these things.  I recall being so frightened that I would do everything in my power to walk by any place where there were any living beings regardless of size, shape, color, or species.  Dog barking behind a fence up ahead?  Dart across the street.  Two women walking towards me?  Dart across the street.  The sound of kids playing?  Some men walking home from work?  Zombies?  Dart, dart, and more dart.  I can’t recall how long this went on for.

I don’t know when it started, but I think I cried most of the time.  Heavily.

Then, a man walked up to me.  I was weeping, and he looked at me.  He spoke: “BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH?”  I don’t know what the heck he said.  He was short.  His hair was black.  And his skin was brown.  I recoiled in terror.  It must have shaken the poor guy because he took a step back.  He’d been walking towards me, but my reaction stopped him dead in his tracks…slid him back a few steps.  Then he spoke again.

“Donde vives?”  he asked.  “Where do you live?”  He was stern this time.  There was an edge to his voice that snapped me back to reality.  I still couldn’t speak, but the hysterically crying abated just a tad.  I looked around.  Consciously or subconsciously, I’d been lingering around a street sign that rung a bell.  Then I realized: that’s MY street name.  

“Aqui,” I managed to blurt out.  “Here.”  I pointed to the sign.  The problem was that I could tell which direction the sign was telling me to go.  I was at a “T” intersection, and I felt like I’d already gone in circle in both directions.  In fact, I had.  The streets around my house could be tricky.  

“Bien.  Camina.  ALLI!” he yelled.  “Good.  Walk.  THERE!”  

I looked at him.  I was still crying, but I felt the panic leaving me.  “OK.”  I responded.  He nodded.  That’s when he smiled.  I started walking.  Eventually, I found my way home.  Happy ending.

Yet…20-something years later, that was the story that popped into my head.  So, I talked about it.  I shared my story with about four other people in my small group.  I told my wife about it that night.  I contemplated why that story came to mind when I was asked about a moment when I knew that I was different.  The reason was clear.

As a child, I felt foreign that day.  I felt alien.  I was in a strange land where I barely spoke the language and could not really read the street signs.  I felt completely isolated because every person I met was different from me…or, rather, I was different from every one of them.  THAT is what did it for me.  Before, in the car or on the school bus, I was surrounded by people like me.  I was like a fish in a bowl with other fish just like me.  Then, I was scooped out of the bowl and dropped into the ocean.  You sort of realize that there are a lot of other fish out there that are NOT like you.  More of them, in fact, than there are of you.  That became startlingly clear.

But I never forgot the man who helped me.  He set me back on my way, the right way.  He could have walked right by, ignoring the balling child, but he chose not to.  Instead, despite my hysterical state, he talked to me just long enough to snap me back to reality and guide me home.  He probably never gave it a second thought, but to me that was the other lesson in that moment.  I may have been frightened and lost, but I wasn’t alone.  

Different but not alone.

We are all different, aren’t we?  That’s what makes meeting new people and experiencing life with them so wonderful.  And just the fact that there are so damn many of us on the planet should tell us that we’re not alone.  Too bad we tend to forget that.  It really makes managing the rough spots a little easier.

We’re different, but we’re never alone.

I like randomness.  I like life without constraints.  I like days without structure.  I like open-ended questions.  I like meandering streams and meandering conversations.  I like waking up and not sweating what needs to get done every minute of the coming day.

I like order.  I like life with boundaries.  I like days with purpose.  I like specific inquiries that lend themselves to specific answers.  I like getting to the point and not dawdling.  I like waking up and knowing exactly how the day is supposed to unfold.

This is me.  Plural and singular.

Poetically, the contrast is cool.  Practically, the contrast is more like a conflict.  It can be maddening.  You see, I can live my life both ways and be completely content.  I just need the freedom to be both of me.  For me, freedom means that I get to choose which me I am going to be and I get to choose all the when, where, and how.  When someone infringes upon my right to exercise that freedom…yeah, I don’t like that so much.  When I feel that I don’t have the choice…yeah, I don’t like that so much either.

I bristle at those times when freedom is taken away from me.  I can adjust on the fly when I adjust by choice.  I can be happy following an agenda all day just as much as I can be happy letting the day take me where it will.  I can be unhappy in both situations, too, if I feel I’ve lost control.  My experience has been that most people respond the same way.  Loosing control is a tough thing to swallow.

What I have come to understand is that control is a perception.  It’s a function of what we believe should be happening in the world around us at any given moment in time.  All we really control is our reactions to things.  Once we embrace the circumstances of the moment, we choose how we want to react.  Understanding this is crucial to finding freedom in situations we might have otherwise perceived as lacking freedom.  If we choose the reaction, then the reaction can be anything.  

Like randomness. Like life without constraints. Like days without structure. Like open-ended questions.  Like meandering streams and meandering conversations.  Like waking up and not sweating what needs to get done every minute of the coming day.

Like order. Like life with boundaries. Like days with purpose.  Like specific inquiries that lend themselves to specific answers. Like getting to the point and not dawdling.  Like waking up and knowing exactly how the day is supposed to unfold.

The freedom to be both of me, whenever and however I want, is a choice.  It’s your choice, too.

I had the chance to open a department meeting today, and, while not my finest performance thanks to the cloudiness of a “stuffy head,” I felt a deep connection with the central theme of my talk: choosing where to go from here.

Life is a series of choices, each leading to another choice or two. It’s like the “Choose Your Own Adventure Books” of my youth…only I can’t flip ahead and work my way back from a cool ending.

Or can I?

There was a young man in Malawi, Africa, who survived a terrible drought and subsequent famine that occurred during the early part of this new millennium. His name is William Kamkwamba. Most of the people who live in rural Malawi are subsistence farmers. They grow their own food, being sure to save food for the times when their crops do not grow. In Malawi, most farmers grow tobacco, too, and sell it as a way of making a little money so they can buy other things that they may need. Their lives are intimately intertwined with the seasons and the cycles of rain and drought. This is why any blip in the system can have a devastating, fatal effect.

When the drought hit, William’s family lost not only their source of food but their source of income, as well. His parents were not able to pay for his school fees. At the age of 14, he dropped out of school. There was little work to be done in the fields. So, with nothing to do and, literally, starving to death, William decided to spend his time at the library in his village. It was little more than a small room with several shelfs of books. Among those books, William found a book called, “Using Energy.” Within the pages of the book, William saw a picture of a windmill. The picture captured his imagination, and William learned that windmills could be used to generate energy, electricity.

Electricity.

William built a windmill. If he had failed, it wouldn’t be much of a story. He built a windmill and produced enough electricity to power one bicycle light bulb which he hung from the ceiling of his room. The windmill changed his life forever.

William’s windmill was vision made reality. It was a dream pulled from the ether and given tangible form.

For a long time, windmills have been a symbol of futility. Miguel de Cervantes, Saavedra wrote a book about a character named Don Quixote who lives in such a dream state that, at one point in the story, he attacked a windmill because he thought it was a giant. The term quixotic is used to describe something that is not sensible or practical, something delusional.  And the term “tilting at windmills” represents the ultimate quixotic endeavor: fighting the unwinnable, futile battle.

Or the impossible dream.

We are presented with windmills throughout our lives: challenges, trials, opportunities, changes.  How we view these windmills is truly a matter of choice.  Unwinnable battle or impossible dream?  I know what William would say.

On a farm somewhere in Malawi, the blades of a windmill spin furiously in the hot desert wind.

I posted this elsewhere today and offer it here again with some edits…

I believe that anyone who searches too hard for purpose is struggling with fear…fear that has something to do with recognizing and acknowledging their true purpose. I empathize with the journey. I’ve felt what the seekers are feeling, and I didn’t feel any better until I began to understand the role of fear in keeping me off the path. Too much thinking created noise, and the noise gave my fear a place to hide. When I found it, I grabbed hold and didn’t let it go. I embraced my fear and learned to love myself in spite of that fear. I found my footing and my way back to the path. It wasn’t until someone reminded me that I had to go back to the place of stillness within and stop THINKING SO MUCH that I can say that I recognized that I was once again on the path.

I believe that the harder we churn, the more likely that we are working off nervous energy or fear or abject terror. Doing anything and everything keeps us from doing the one thing we should be doing. And the most important “one thing” we should be doing is attuning ourselves to our life’s purpose. Until we understand that, no matter how much we produce and how great the things we produce might be, they will never fill that gaping hole, fulfill that insatiable void, inside of us.

I believe in shipping; in drawing lines in the sand and challenging ourselves to meet our own deadlines. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the concept of shipping as Seth Godin describes it is essential to not stagnating. I just believe that what I ship should align with my desire and intent for my life. Purpose? Sure, I’m still searching for a connection to a greater purpose, but I recognize that the search is internal. The longest distances, the greatest depths, and the most astonishing heights are all part of the journey, and that journey exists almost entirely within me. I know inside is where I will find purpose.

Wherever your feet are is exactly where they are meant to be. The path follows you wherever you go. It’s a matter of aligning the path to the calling. That is how I would define “purpose.”

Or, perhaps, it isn’t a path as much as it is a stream…