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So, the little guy was up at 4:00 AM, yelling my name. I heard him through the monitor. It’s a two-way deal, so I can talk to him through it. I asked what he wanted. Very matter-of-factly, he let me know he had to pee. That’s a positive when you’re at the tail-end of potty training, so I mustered up some gratitude for his progress and went to help him to the bathroom. He’s so chipper at 4:00 AM; it chaps my ass. His irresistible cuteness kicks in, though, and I just wind up smiling stupidly at him as he stands there trying to take care of business. He smiles back, every time.

Last night was no different. He did his thing, I took him back to bed, and his eyes were rolling back in his head before I left his room. Out. Me, on the other hand…well, I went back to bed and couldn’t find sleep. It eluded me, so my mind started processing. Saturday evening, I watched a recent episode of Oprah’s show on our TiVo. Suze Orman was the guest, and she was laying it out: what you need to do in 2009 to survive the economic downturn. If you thought last year was nutty, wait until people start DEALING with what went nutty last year. That’s what’s in store for 2009. So, Suze Orman wrote a book, an action plan for 2009. Seriously, it’s a book specifically written to help people get their financial houses in order in the year 2009. You can get it for free until January 15th. Check it out at Oprah.com/download. The whole point of the book and the show was to help give anyone willing to listen a plan for reducing debt and increasing their long-term financial security. The show left an impression on me and got some wheels turning.

Listening to Suze, contemplating the US economy, seriously considering consumerism, and stuff like that lead me to the conclusion that this whole system is screwed up. The U.S. Government actually encourages people to go out and spend money…that they don’t have. Huh? You want people to work their butts off making minimum wage, barely make enough to stay above the Poverty Level, and then run out with their “discretionary” cash and buy crap they really don’t need to survive. I am sure that the $200 XBox will definitely have a HUGE positive impact on the quality of life of that household making the $40K a year. Forget that their health care costs are through the roof and that they have no savings in the event of an unforeseen personal crisis. I know, I know: self-accountability. I get that. It’s all about choices, that is true. Still, the pressure to consume is incredible, the onslaught relentless. We should live in a world where you have to fight against pressure to buy, buy, buy. But that’s the engine that turns the world.

I think about it this way: imagine two companies, Company A and Company B. People work for Company A. They make Doodads. They churn them out and earn their wages. People work for Company B. They make Doomahakies. They churn them out and earn their wages. Marketing people at both companies convince everyone their lives are incomplete without Doodads and Doomahakies, neither of which are essential for life. So, people from Company A spend their left over pennies on Doomahakies, and people from Company B spend their left over pennies on Doodads. Both companies are profitable, people get paid, and life goes on. And on and on and on. As the machine chugs along, what progress is made? People are running to stand still, sweating to make money that we are encouraged over and over again to spend.

Spending is the measure of a healthy economy, so that means things are at their best when people are in a never-ending cycle of acquisition. That means we should be working our wholes lives to we can constantly buy stuff, and we should plan on having hordes of cash for retirement so that we can continue to spend money until we die. That’s how we keep the World Economy strong. How utterly depressing. Ba-a-ah! I feel like a sheep.

I fell asleep before I could conjure up a brilliant solution. I woke up not wanting to contribute to the World Economy. I am a bad Global Citizen! Bad Global Citizen!

Some days are just tougher than others. They aren’t all fun and games all of the time. That’s OK. They can’t all be good.

Or can they?

Even bad days are good days. After all, if you make it to 11:40 at night and have time to write down a few thoughts, then things can’t be all that bad, can they? Besides, the rough spots turn into smooth spots. The rough spots enhance appreciation of the smooth spots. So, nothing is wholly bad.

Like today. There are no horror stories for the day, just some rough spots. That said, we managed to get a few things done that might not otherwise have been completed. That’s good; it’s always nice to cross something off of the “to do list.” More importantly, being able to sit here and write makes me appreciate the life I have. I am grateful.

I have learned that gratitude today turns into abundance tomorrow. You can’t have one without the other. Just being alive to experience all of the pleasure and all of the pain is reason enough to wake up the next morning. It’s worth it just to see what will happen next.

There is always something good around the corner.

Woo (wU): Matters of a spiritual nature, often inexplicable.
Woo-woo (wU-wU: Of or pertaining to woo.

“Woo” begins in the home. It is learned at an early age. I hold my mother responsible for teaching me woo. She is a very spiritual person. My father calls her a saint. My mom doesn’t like that characterization, understandably. She may not be a saint, but she is definitely a woman who does her best to live by her spiritual principles. In that regard, she is really quite special. The thing that impresses me the most about her, though, is her humility towards her spirituality. For her, it simply is the way to be.

These are things that you pick up as a child. As you age…notice I don’t say “mature;” that comes later…the lesson sticks with you. Why? Simple: leading by example is the single-most powerful learning mechanism for children. What children see at home, they model outside the home. Keep that in mind the next time you cuss somebody out on the road and hear your expletives repeated back at you, contextually appropriate, a few hours later. Try explaining THAT to your wife. Hypothetically speaking.

So, by simply and genuinely being a spiritual person, my mother showed me the beginning of a path towards spiritual enlightenment. It’s a long path; I have traveled far and will travel farther still. As I look towards the horizon, I see a startling light ahead. As I look back to the beginning of my path, I see another radiance: my mother, the Font of Woo.

I posted this in a private Ning group back in August 2008, but I stumbled across it today. It makes me chuckle every time. I have to shake my head at how insistent some people are on painting others into corners by attaching labels and assigning categories to them. Interestingly, this post indirectly has to do with many of you who might read this, the friends and family I had around me when I lived in Mexico City. Some of the language is tongue-in-cheek, so I hope nobody gets pissed at me. Just know that my memories of you are as individuals who contributed to the beautiful, full experience of my life, not nationalities, ethnicities, or other such corner-painting language…like Mexican. 😉

—-Originally posted on August 18, 2008—-

At the risk of offending someone, I have a few thoughts to share.

The hardest part about being Mexican is that I am not Mexican. I mean, I like Mexicans. I love Mexico. I lived there for 11 years, between the ages of 7 and 18. Mexico holds a spot in my heart that few other places do. I don’t have a problem with Mexico. The issue lies in the fact that the people I meet and the people who see my name on a piece of paper don’t know that I’m not Mexican. All they know is that my last name is Gonzalez, therefore, I must be Mexican.

But I’m not Mexican. I’m Puerto Rican. More accurately, I am an American citizen whose mother was born in Puerto Rico. My dad was born in New York City. His parents came from Puerto Rico. So, if I have to label myself, I call myself a Puerto Rican. There, I have a label. Now everyone can go about the business of reshuffling their expectations of me. Because, after all, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans are very different.

The problem, though, is that I kinda am Mexican. I lived in Mexico for a long time, when I was really young, during those formative years. I learned to speak Spanish like a Mexican. Any Puerto Rican I talk to will tell you that I’m Mexican because of the way I speak, the words I choose. But any Mexican I talk to will tell you that I have a funny accent, like I’m Italian or something. People I met when I moved to Illinois to go to college used to assume I was Italian. A guy on my floor my freshman year at the UIUC said, upon learning that I was Puerto Rican, “Dude, I thought you were Italian! I didn’t know you spoke Mexican.” Mexican isn’t a language. Maybe he thought that I spoke ancient Aztec or Mexica (pronounced me-SHEE-ka) as the language is called. I don’t. I do speak Italian, but that’s just because I thought it was easier than French. I speak a little French, too, but don’t let me fool you into thinking that I’m poly-lingual. I’m not. I just look and sound like I should be. Ricardo Antonio Gonzalez: Puerto Rican, lived in Mexico, speaks Spanish and Italian, can fake French, and looks like he’s Italian or something. Do you see how confusing this gets?

My point? Well, this is the rant I promised in my last posting: anointing people with titles. Titles are just labels. We place a lot of emphasis and importance on titles. Sometimes it’s warranted: the guy that I go to who has the title “Doctor” pretty much has earned his title. So, I assume he knows what he’s doing. Assumptions about title hold true in business just as much as they do in any other aspect of life. As a Manager, I am one thing. As a Leader, I am another. Either way, the Corporation has given me “the juice” by way of my title. So, people are forced to listen. That doesn’t mean that I’ll change hearts or minds by title alone, but it does mean I get the floor…unless there’s someone in the room with more juice. Then I’m forced to prostrate before them. But what about the brilliant guy in the corner who doesn’t have the juice, therefore doesn’t have the opportunity to truly be heard, because he lacks the title? We miss out on brilliance all the time, simply because there’s a title missing. No title, no juice, so they must not have worthwhile ideas. Unless they are Mexican.

Those guys are really smart.

I’m one of those people who hasn’t always felt that they live up to their full potential. At minimum, I’m one of those people who really, really just wants to be a better me. Sometimes, stuff gets in the way. Most of it is self-sabotage. Other times, I find myself buying into something someone else may have said about me or done to me. Worse yet, there are times when I talk myself into believing that something is going on when nothing at all IS going on. That’s more self-delusion, I think.

Regardless, the most important remedy to such situations is to allow my true self to enter into and be fully present in the moment. If I can reconnect with the realization that I am consciousness observing the moment, then the emotion passes, and I can see the moment with more clarity. Emotion is useful; there is a great deal of wisdom and intelligence inherent in our emotions. The idea is not to suppress them. Instead, the idea is to objectively observe the emotion, feel the emotion, then utilize the emotion. The most important thing is to never let the emotion rule the moment. Things can get messy at that point.

I can be a better me. Even if I miss the mark this time, there is always hope…hope that I will hit it next time. Can’t beat the hope out of me.

It’s funny how life provides you with lessons. Lessons and opportunities to practice what you preach.

Yesterday, I pondered attribution and anger and the choice of how to react to something. Today, I have the opportunity to choose my reaction. How should I react to someone violating my home and taking for themselves what does not belong to them? Well, I guess it belongs to them now, doesn’t it? Yes. It does. So, that in and of itself is a lesson on possession. I am humbled at the reminder.

Then there is the matter of what one human being must be going through in order to take from another without asking. What stories does one tell oneself in order to justify such behavior? I feel sadness contemplating such a thing. And I feel a swelling in my heart that is nothing but compassion for that person. Now, at least. Earlier…not so much.

And that brings me to choice again. I choose how to react to this situation. I can choose to allow this to poison my heart against a fellow human being who experiences the same range of emotions I do, who feels hunger and cold and fatigue like I do, who mostly likely simply wants live their life…like I do. Or, I can take it all into account and choose to let my attribution of her action go. I can choose to accept this as not one but many lessons that the Universe has provided to me and allow myself to learn from it, to hear the message that is being broadcast to me.

What was taken never belonged to you. Possession and ownership are just illusions. Compassion for those who suffer is paramount.

I am grateful for the reminders and for the opportunity to choose how to react to the moments in my life that may not always be precisely as I would like them to be.

Sometimes up, sometimes down. It’s funny how things can change at the drop of the proverbial hat. Not sure where that saying comes from, but it sounds goofy that anything could change at the literal drop of a hat. Hats not withstanding, things can change quickly. It never ceases to astonish me how one moment can be the polar opposite of the next. One moment up, the next moment down.

Of course, it works the other way, too: one moment down, the next moment up. It’s equally as fascinating and seems equally arbitrary. But it’s not really arbitrary at all. In fact, every moment is deliberate. Or, better said, our reaction to every moment is deliberate. Think about that for a moment.

I remember reading about an experiment when I was pursuing my undergraduate degree. This particular experiment had to do with attribution theory, specifically, misattribution of arousal. Sounds dirty, I know. The experiment went like this: a group of people assess the attractiveness of individuals in a set of photos. They then go on a long, seemingly dangerous hike. At the end, they assess the attractiveness of the photos again. Guess what happened? They assessed the attractiveness of the people in the photos more highly after the trek. Why? Because the adrenaline rush from the hike caused them to misattribute the source of their arousal. It wasn’t that the people were any better looking. It was simply that their excited state caused them to experience their surroundings differently.

Anger works the same way. Anger causes misattribution issues, too. Unfortunately, it’s normally not arousal. The key is that a decisions is made, conscious or otherwise, to feel a certain way as a result of a moment of anger. Keep it going or be the “hero” and find a way to behave your way into another state of mind? That’s a great question. It’s just hard maintaining that level of lucidity in the moments that usually require it the most.

Sometimes up, sometimes down, always a choice.

The best thing about cliches is that they immediately evoke a response. They have a history that is, for the most part, instantly recognizable by most people, so cliches are useful. For example, “what makes you tick?” That’s a good one. It has literal connotations…like the ticking of a clock, a sure sign that the timepiece is functioning. Figuratively, it means the same thing, except that timepiece is you. What makes you function? What makes you tick?

There’s value in understanding the answer to that question. If you understand what truly gives you energy, what truly makes you feel alive, then you have something upon which to focus. It gives you a plan for how to fill your days. Why not fill you days with activities that give you life? At some point in our lives, we were lead to believe that life isn’t filled with such activities. Life-giving, energy-producing activities are the exception, not the norm. They are the things that happen to us on vacation or on the weekends. They are the things that we have to look forward to “tomorrow.” If we’re lucky, we get a taste, just enough energy to keep up moving along in what would otherwise be one big energy-suck-fest of a life.

OK, so maybe it’s not that bad, but the truth is that there are forces at work all around us that could otherwise lead us to believe that an unconscious life is what is in store for all of us. That seems a terrible message to teach my children. I would much rather they say me as a person who had life-giving, energy-filled days. To model that behavior, though, I have to actually live that way. Kinda hard if I don’t know what makes me tick.

So, that’s the quest: to understand what makes me tick and do my damnedest to fill my days with whatever that is. I’m not just talking about the smiles of my children or the companionship of my wife. I am talking about the things that come from deep within me that sing to my soul and make me, the individual, feel alive. They are activities and behaviors that are uniquely mine. If I can identify them, then I can take steps to make them a bigger part of my days.

Figure out what makes me tick, then tick away all day long. That sounds like a good idea to me.

I wouldn’t exactly recommend “7 Pounds,” Will Smith’s current feature film. I wouldn’t exactly recommend “The Bucket List” with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, either. For different reasons, they aren’t films that I would list among my favorites. That said, I watched both within the past few days, and each offered something that made me think.

The whole premise of “The Bucket List” is this: two terminally ill strangers decide to embark on a journey to cross off as many items as possible from a “bucket list,” a list of things each would like to accomplish before they die. The concept got me thinking, as was obviously the intent of the film: why wait until death approaches before creating your own bucket list? My oldest son has such a list in his head. It’s the list of things he wants to do and places he’d like to go. I think we all create those lists as kids. We just tuck them away in a corner of our spiritual attics as we get older. Time to dust mine off.

In “7 Pounds,” Will Smith plays a character who is obviously haunted by something that happened in his past, and, as the film unfolds, he plays “guardian angel” to complete strangers. One of those is a character played by Rosario Dawson. During a conversation, she asks him to play a game with her. She calls it “What if…?” The intent was for the two characters to share wild, far-fetched dreams with one another. This scene, too, got me thinking” why not play that game with myself, with my wife, with my children? Why not find out their dreams and share mine? When we share our innermost thoughts and feelings with others, there is a certain accountability that comes from that reveal. When we speak the dream, we own it. It immediately shifts from fantasy to possibility…even though it was a possibility all along. Time to own some of my dreams.

So, I offer up a game for consideration: The What-If Bucket List Game. The purpose of this game is to create a list of dreams that you want to see come true. Share the list. Reveal those dreams. Own them. Be outrageous. Be creative. Dare yourself to be precisely the person you dream that you can be. Along the way, someone might take notice and have the courage to play the game themselves. What if…?