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I take my commitment to awakening my writing spirit very seriously. This is why I write each night. If I miss a night, I feel it. Some days, it’s a chore to write. Others, it’s not. Either way, I take my commitment to myself very seriously.

I am dead tired. It is late. I have an early morning tomorrow. I have a long day ahead. I have a date with my wife to look forward to, but that seems like it’s an awfully LONG time from now. Many days or months. Or maybe just hours. Regardless, I am dead tired.

So, that’s all I got.

Although…I did have a great conversation with someone today during which I was given the opportunity to help them see that someone else’s seemingly under-handed tactics had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the other person’s deep, personal pain. It helped my friend instantly; a cloud instantly passed from his face, a weight instantly left his shoulders. “Don’t take it personally,” I told him. “It’s more about the fear and loss of control that he feels than it is about something you’ve done.” That gave him just enough pause so that truth could reveal itself to him. It gave him a measure of peace.

It was an honor to facilitate that for him. It made my day. Those moments when I can connect with someone else, and they come out of it for the better…I live for those days. They are precisely why I continue to do what I do in the way that I do it.

Now, that’s all I got.

I believe it is a mistake to think that “someday” we will all have the chance to dedicate our time to the things we REALLY want to do. It’s as if there is a guarantee that, at 65 years of age, we will all be able to retire. We assume we will have the money we need to set off on these grand adventures. We assume that we will have the physical health and mental capacity to fulfill our life-long ambitions, like climb Mount Kilimanjaro to touch its ancient glaciers. We assume Mount Kilimanjaro will still be covered in those same glaciers. This attitude assumes all kinds of things.

Of course, we all realize these are just assumptions. We all understand that there are no guarantees. We all get that not even tomorrow is guaranteed to us. If you dedicate your life to something that sucks the life from the very cells in your body, you can’t assume that vitality will magically be renewed at retirement. Chances are, every single aspect of your dream will be compromised. Vitality is mainly nurtured throughout a lifetime, not acquired magically at a later date.

I know this sounds harsh and overly pessimistic on my part, but I assure you that I am neither harsh nor pessimistic. Some would argue that position. Some would argue my other opinions. Some would argue that a long-term outlook is important, that looking forward is prudent. Some would argue that patience is part of the equation or that positive thinking can get anyone through anything. I don’t doubt any of these or other arguments. However, I also believe that the future that is taught to us in our modern culture does not exist. As I am prone to saying, it is an artificial construct of the human mind to help register and categorize how we, as humans, perceive the passage of each moment. It helps us string together our memories.

Memories, though, are just mental images. They do not exist outside of our brains. Instead, what exists outside of brains is…everything else. Everything that is REAL is what exists outside of our bodies. As for our consciousness, there is only NOW as we experience it. Not a new idea, I know, but maybe this is a slightly different angle. If NOW is all that there is, then waiting in anticipation of some perfect future that may never come is not the way I want to live. At minimum, I don’t want to idealize my future, expecting that every detail will be a precise manifestation of my vision. That is a future that is guaranteed to disappoint. And wouldn’t it be sad if I waited my whole life for the future, and the future just didn’t meet my expectations? I don’t think it ever can.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe in the power of visualization. I believe in our ability to envision what we want, then make it happen. I believe we co-create our existence. What I don’t believe in is the perfect future that is on the horizon. The horizon is always moving. It has no end. You can never arrive at its location. You can’t touch it. If that is the view of the future that most people take, then I believe most people will fail to fully manifest their dreams.

Instead, I believe the future is always within reach. It exists only as the next moment, the next NOW. The moment you can conceive of it, then it is NOW. I am sure someone far more clever than me can debate me into a pulp. I am sure that someone far more clever than me can craft and articulate logical counterpoints to prove that I am not a semantic maestro. That’s OK. I’m not arguing or defending. I am simply stating, stating my belief about embracing today and not allowing the prospect of tomorrow to shift our focus.

Tomorrow is a distraction. I seek to find contentment today. Improve the next moment. And then the next. And then the next. I can only hope that you and I don’t dedicate our lives to something anticipating that years down the road everything will be better.

Write down the following questions and answer them for yourself:

What do I do?

Why do I do it?

Would I still do what you do if I were given $1,000,000 tomorrow?

The answers should tell you volumes about how you spend your days. The answers should tell you volumes about yourself.

Read this first, then join me afterward for a few of my thoughts:

—

At a metro station in Washington DC Joshua Bell played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. Since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station.

Three minutes went by. A middle aged man noticed the musician. He stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip from a woman who threw the money in and continued to walk.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

Joshua Bell, one of the top musicians in the world, played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a Stradivarius violin handcrafted in 1713 reportedly worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before, he sold out at a theater in Boston with seats averaging $100.

This was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people: In a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written with the best violin, how many other things are we missing?

—

OK. I’ve read about this before. It’s hard to believe…or is it? I did think of an alternate way of looking at this. I think that maybe a more interesting way to look at this is to consider the fact that perhaps not everyone who passed by was even capable of appreciating the quality of the music. How many people know their classical composers? How many people know what a “good” violinist sounds like vs. a “world-class” violinist? Of those who can appreciate these things, how many people actually have the ear to tell the difference in the quality of the instruments? My son is a pretty good pianist, but he has this amazing ear for the quality of the pianos he plays. I believe he is gifted in this regard. I’ve seen his face when he has had the opportunity to tickle the keys of an expensive, high-quality piano. It truly is priceless.

200 years ago, the only way to hear music was live. Period. No other way existed. If someone wanted to see a play, they had to go to a theater. If they wanted to read poetry, they had to buy a book or find someone from whom they could borrow a book. To appreciate art, you had to be in the physical presence of the original work. These are all things that we have “lost” in this electronic age. That said, we have access to more music, more art, more writing, and more information about other cultures than anyone living 200 years ago could imagine. We have replaced quality with quantity, and I do not necessarily think that is a good or bad thing. In the end, like my son, we all have unique gifts that, hopefully, have the opportunity to manifest themselves.

I’ve thought about this story often. Even if I were on vacation and happened across his playing, I do not know if I would have given him much thought. I would like to think that the beauty of his art would have moved me, but, in a crowded train station in Washington, D.C., I don’t know if I would have. I shared this with a friend of mine, and she offered up this last point: “I do believe most people are not fully present in each moment. They pass by the violinist, and many may not even notice the music.” That, unfortunately, is still very, very true.

When is a $3.5 million violin not a $3.5 million violin? When you don’t hear it.

There is a voice in my head.

It is my own voice. It guides me throughout my day. It tells me where I need to go, who I should visit, when I should keep my mouth shut. I often listen to this voice. Sometimes I don’t. When I don’t, I usually regret it. When I do, things usually work out well.

The voice tells me to tell the truth the first time, even when it may be hard. Truth today avoids the inevitable harder truth tomorrow after the repercussions of the lie are known. The voice also tells me to be gentle and compassionate with the truth. It can hurt sometimes, so it is not to be used unconsciously. When I listen to this advice, I usually come away better for the experience.

The voice in my head is primarily intuition.

When I don’t listen to intuition, I normally wind up regretting it. Well, I don’t truly regret anything. That would imply that the decision I made was not the decision I was supposed to make at that given moment in time. Every consequence, good or bad, is simply a lesson for me to learn and apply to all tomorrows thereafter.

Regardless, when I choose to avoid or delay truth, I usually pay for it. I am paying for it now. I’ve avoided a conversation I don’t want to have, and, in the process, created an even stickier situation for myself. I should have heeded my own advice. I should have gone where intuition was pointing me. I didn’t, so now I have a much harder task ahead of me.

You can apply this rule, the rule about intuition and truth, to just about anything in life. When your intuition speaks, listen to it. It won’t do you wrong. Of course, you might mistake your ego wanting you to do something that your intuition would prefer you didn’t, but you’ll have to learn to tell the difference. I can’t help you with everything, you know? =)

OK, I can point you in the right direction. Try this: be still, be silent, and listen. What you hear in the silence is intuition.

When I read fiction, I usually devour the story in as few sittings as possible. It’s like being timed at an all-you-can-eat buffet of literature for me. I keep going back until there’s no more food left in the bin. When I read non-fiction I usually read self-development material, like self-help, spirituality, or leadership development. These I usually read at a much more subdued pace. I take things in little morsels, chewing slowly and savoring each bite. I ruminate, to be honest. Yes, I know that’s gross, but that’s what it’s like. I chew, swallow, regurgitate, chew, swallow, regurgitate, chew, swallow…you get the picture.

It feels like it has taken me six months to read “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink. I’m not actually DONE yet, but I’m getting there. Anyway, today’s morsel ended at the section about mazes and labyrinths. Daniel starts his train of thought with the book “Who Moved My Cheese?” a NY Times Bestseller for a REALLY long time. The gist of the story is this: two rodent-like creatures live in a maze. They wake up one day, and their cheese is not in it’s normal place. Gone. One of them freaks out and decides the best course of action is to wait for someone to take care of their problem. The other freaks out, too, but later decides the best course of action is to go off into the maze in search of food. They hem and haw, but they finally decide to take off in search of food. Then, Pinhead shows up and eviscerates them slowly. Not really. They take off, find new cheese, and live happily ever after. The moral of the story is subtle (he says sarcastically): when change happens, get over it, and move on.

So, the story and the gentleness of the message leave a little to be desired, but the purpose of the story is to demonstrate how action, not denial, create new opportunities when changes strikes. Change strikes a lot these days. Ironically, when Daniel Pink published the first edition of the book in 2005, he could foresee a world where there was so much abundance that people would increase leave the emptiness of material pursuits behind and focus on the search for meaning. I guess he thought we’d all have so much stuff that we’d learn the error of our ways and turn to matters of the spirit. That didn’t happen so much. Maybe a little, but not so much. Enter recession.

Recession has forced quite a few people to recognize that the house of cards, the pursuit of stuff, and the accumulation of meaningless “wealth” are empty pursuits. They are external to us, and as such, they can never truly satisfy what is inside of us, what is internal. I explained to my son recently that we are just tubes with legs and arms. If we swallow a coin, it goes into our mouths, moves through our digestive systems, and is expelled out the other end…of the tube. “The coin is never truly INSIDE of us,” I explained. “At best, we are all around it, but we never, ever, become one. This is why looking for things outside of us doesn’t make us happy.” He absorbed. He contemplated. He shrugged. “I kind of get it,” he replied.

That’s more than I could have asked of his little brain. He’s a smart kid, and I dig his sensitivity and desire to find truth.

And that is the point I am trying to make. Cheese will move. Real estate markets will crash. Economies will go down in flames. Such is the nature of human, material pursuits. Pursuits of the spirit, those that come from within…those are the ones that will really get us through life. I think my son is really beginning to understand that.

Continue searching for meaning, grasshopper.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” –Aristotle

Again with this quote. The issue is that I like it. I repeat it often. I say it often. I write it often. Sometimes I write it just to see it because the words inspire me so much. They inspire me to want to continue to grow and learn and seek and inquire.

Sometimes, though, all that examining is such an ass-whipping.

Now I have to formulate an opinion on the use of chemicals in personal hygiene products and stuff like hairspray. I mean, I sort of had an opinion, but now…now I’m getting sucked in and am REALLY starting to form opinions.

When I was talking to a friend a few months ago about the carcinogenic nature of animal proteins (such as meat), he said, “Yeah, just like everything else that causes cancer.” I hear that a lot, so I just moved on in the conversation. The problem is that his comment has been bouncing around in my head. Why does it seem like everything causes cancer? Can it be that cancer is simply a reality of the natural world? That’s where my mind always goes.

But…how freakin’ stupid is that? Cancer as a part of the fabric of the Universe? I don’t think so. How about cancer as a part of the fabric of modern human life? That sounds more like it. Of course there’s a carcinogen every time you turn around because we live in an artificial world where CARCINOGENS ARE PUT INTO JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING AROUND US! How about THAT?!?!

As far as I can tell, that’s the truth. And I can’t just deny the truth; I can’t just ignore facts. So, I have to formulate opinions on stuff, constantly, like all these chemicals in my deodorant, toothpaste, and hairspray. There is ALWAYS something about which to be concerned.

Like I said, thinking about all this stuff can be a whipping.

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychologist. He had completed a manuscript for a book when he and his wife were rounded up by the Nazi’s. His manuscript was lost during his first days in a concentration camp. Viktor’s wife, brother, mother, and father all died in the gas chambers over the course of the next 3 years in Auschwitz and later Dachau. Vitktor set about the task of recreating his manuscript by finding scraps of paper and writing on them using whatever means he could. In 1936, Viktor Frankl was liberated from Nazi imprisonment. The book he wrote is one of the great works of the last century, “Man’s Search for Meaning.”

See? None of us are alone. We all seek meaning for our lives. What is our purpose? Why are we here? Why do we awaken each day in a world that spins on an axis around a star set like a tiny piece of glitter in a vast, expansive universe? Viktor argued that “man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.” He also observed over 60 years ago that “people have enough to live, but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.”

At what possible point in any of our lives could this be more true? It’s really not a matter of “more” or “less” true today versus any other day. The words resonate with us now because of the fear and the pain that the current economic situation brings. The truth, though, is that everything Viktor Frankl wrote in the 1940’s was true then, and those thoughts stemmed from his observations of the world around him. So, they were true long before his manuscript was sent to print in 1946.

Every human being searches for the meaning of their loves. It is an inescapable part of the human experience. Each of us has a heart, mind, and soul that, together, attune us to a compassionate and generous Universe that is constantly sending us messages about the meaning behind our lives. We fail to get that message because we become bound to the world of form, of material things. Is there any doubt that we, as a human species, has the means to feed every hungry mouth’ to clothe every body; to restore dignity and hope to those who have none? I believe we do. We just get distracted.

Without meaning, the material means nothing.

Fear actually works against motivation. It’s the most powerful antidote to the courage required to change.

Fear of death is nothing. Fear of Skittles is actually not that big a deal either. It’s fear of SELF and all the uncomfortable things that slither below the surface that have the greatest impact.

Motivation won’t grow in soil poisoned with fear.

As an example, there was a woman on Oprah the other day. It was one of those shows about people who accumulate stuff in order to compensate for something missing in their lives. It’s not like the subject matter itself was anything new, but this one woman in particular really touched me. Her husband died in 1997 while on a fishing outing with their kids. He drown saving one of their children. This woman spent the next 12 years covering herself up, fearing what she might see in the mirror: a woman in pain, alone with five children, and a widow. That’s an awful lot to have to look at each day. She might as well have covered every mirror in her home with a sheet. Living that life…there was no room for motivation.

But everything changes in some way. She has begun to pull those sheets off of her mirrors. She is taking back her life, reconnecting with her two sons who still live at home, and coming to the realization that all the stuff has buried her just as surely as she buried her husband 12 years ago. Fear may still be there, but it’s not all there is any more. That’s where motivation gains a foothold. How? It’s called “hope.”

Where there is hope, motivation will follow. Fear will subside.

Fear Skittles? Fear NOTHING. There is always hope.

Fear of death is simply not a good motivator. I ate a bag of Skittles today. Skittles are pure sugar. I should say, they are made mainly from sugar. Refined, white sugar. Did you know that animal bone char is used in the processing of whitening sugar? That’s gross and another reason for me to avoid sugar. On top of that, sugar shocks caused the insulin levels in your body to spike. Spikes in insulin are bad. Over the long haul, problems creating insulin and sugar resistance within our bodies leads to things like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain types of cancers. So, sugar shocks…they are bad. Bad. They can quicken you down that path to death.

And I still ate a bag of Skittles. So, my hypothesis stands: fear of death is not a good motivator. The only time it’s a good motivator is when the threat of death is immediate and overt. Like when there’s a person holding a gun to your head. That’s immediate and overt, and it would probably motivate 99% of us to action. Once you remove the threat a little…motivation goes down. I’d love to know if there have been any studies measuring the critical distance between threat and action. I suspect that it’s not as great a distance as we would think.

Worse than death, I think, is the idea of living as a bed-ridden, diabetic amputee. Still, that’s a far-away prospect from where I am sitting. So, fear of a severe compromise of quality of life doesn’t really appear to be that effective a motivator, either. As a matter of fact, people I know often cite fear of compromise of quality of life as the actual REASON they don’t do what they know is good for them. “Who wants to live to be 100?” I hear them ask. Well…heck, I do! Why not?

Binge on sugar today, live in pain tomorrow. That just doesn’t make sense to me. If you think “binge” is too harsh a word, read some food labels! Despite what those irresponsible, outrageous, inexcusable commercials say, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP IS NOT NUTRITIOUS OR HEALTHY. It certainly isn’t any of those things given the how prevalent it is in processed foods today.

Adjust your palate today, live a longer, healthier life with many tomorrows. That makes all the sense in the world to me. The only problem is that death is such an abstract concept. I need to latch onto something much more tangible and visible in my life today…

Fear of death? How about fear of Skittles?

I find myself defending my position an awful lot. It’s like I have to argue, debate, and justify my every move. That’s what it feels like. Whether or not that is a bad thing is a wholly subjective assessment, and I wholly assess it to be a royal pain in my ass. It’s ridiculous, and I am tired of it. At work, an honest-to-God grown-ass woman actually walked over to one of my technical superior’s office and asked him for exactly what she had just asked me for 15 minutes prior. She didn’t like my answer, so she went to him. When I say “grown-ass woman,” I mean that she’s an adult. An adult that’s older than me. I’m not exactly from the “straight out of college” set, either. More like “straight out of college 14 years ago.” So, she’s definitely closer to retirement than I am. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. Un-freaking-believable. She really pissed me off.

Then the steam vented. And I pondered: why was I so angry at being challenged? Is it that I think myself so clever as to confound my intellectual inferiors with my verbose and articulate electronic repartee? Or is it because I am a manager…I manage people…I am very important…RESPECT ME!?!? Or, perhaps, it is quite simply that I am a human being, prone to the same moments of weakness and self-doubt as everyone else? Yes, I quite think that is, indeed, the answer. I am human, and as such, I find myself falling victim to my ego. My ego is nourished and fed by all my clever, clever thoughts. And in all my cleverness, I sometimes lose my connection to my conscious self and fixate instead on my little, insecure ego.

This is the predicament in which I find myself this week: struggling to rise above my ego and act from a place of consciousness. The woman in today’s rant is the same woman from yesterday’s rant. There’s just another lesson to be learned from that one interaction, and it’s the lesson of the challenged ego. When I allow myself to become disconnected, I find myself threatened by many trivial things, least of which is the opinion of another person. When I am connected and conscious, I can watch others act out their frustrations for what they are: external manifestations of an internal struggle of that individual. This woman, you see, obviously had a reason for her reaction. Whether I deem that reaction to be “legitimate” or not is irrelevant, of course! She will do what she wants, and the consequences of all her doing will be hers for resolving. I can’t share those consequences with her! Now, I can choose to allow her actions to influence mine, which I did, and the consequences of MY actions then become my issue. The subsequent poisoning of my aura had to do with me, not her, just as the initial poisoning of her aura had everything to do with her, not me. It’s really quite clear to me now. I wish I would have seen it sooner!

Conscious action and conscious living…Aristotle offered that “the unconscious life is not worth living.” He so “got it.” That dude was ON. Like Donkey Kong, as they say. Like Donkey Kong, indeed.

I wish to be “on like the Kong” myself. There is so much more wisdom and peace in conscious action and conscious living. I find I can have the greatest influence on others when I come from that compassionate, loving place. That will be my focus for the remainder of this week. There are three days left at work for me to redeem myself and correct my behavior. There is plenty of opportunity for me to do the same at home. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out.

Lucky for me, I’m so damn clever.