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I am trying to figure out if the world was a better place when it was smaller. We say that it’s a small world and that technology has made it smaller, but I don’t think that’s true. I think the planet is small and that technology makes the smallness of Earth within the framework of the expansive universe totally apparent. But I also think that the world of information and possibility and communication is incomprehensibly huge. It is huge and getting huger. And this makes our tiny planet seem absolutely enormous.

There is too much to know and too much knowing at our disposal. It is distracting. It is debilitating. This has gotten me thinking that maybe things were better when world seemed smaller than it does today.

Then I realize that the fundamentals of being human haven’t changed, so the distractions of today were present yesterday, albeit in different form.

Things weren’t better when the world was smaller, they were just a little different

Where does the magic happen?  

 

Where do you perform your magic?  And by that I mean, where do you go, literally and figuratively, to do your best work, your best art?  You’re bound to have a place that gets your creative juices pumping.  You can probably think of the perfect storm of circumstances that result in you being able to quickly and completely reach a state of flow.  Mood music might help.  Or maybe silence is better.  Perhaps there’s a corner of your room you can tuck yourself into to get your mind cleared and ready for inspiration.  Or maybe it’s outside.  Maybe there’s a path or a bench or a rock by a small river to which you retreat to open yourself up to the Universe.

 

Think about what it takes to get you…there, to that place.  Not sure how you get there?  Experiment.  Chances are that you already know, subconsciously, how to do it.  When you find the formula, write it down.  When you’ve done that, you’ve essentially bottled lightning.  That’s real power. 

 

Unleashing it becomes a simple matter of finding the key elements that you can replicate anywhere, at any time.  It sounds impossible, I know, but you hold the keys to unlocking your inner, creative Tasmanian Devil. 

 

It has never really been about the thing or the place or the ritual that makes you feel powerful.  The power isn’t outside of you.  The power is always inside. 

 

It has only ever really been about having the confidence in your own ability to do your magic.  The magic happens wherever and whenever you choose to practice it.

Sounds like a stupid question, doesn’t it?  I sort of feel stupid for asking it.

What is “fun”, anyway?  I suppose there’s an element of subjectivity to however it’s defined, but I think one common characteristic upon which most people would agree is that fun is as much a feeling as it is a cognitive sensation.  When I say “feeling”, I mean like an emotion.  So, fun is a sensation…a tingling of the physical form…and an emotion…a tingling of the spiritual form.  Fun, then, is something you experience with your entire being, with physical and spiritual parts, in unison.

So, do I have the right to have fun?  Sure.  Of course I do.  We all do.  How often?  That’s largely a matter of choice!  

Now, here’s an even better question: do I have the right to have fun at work?  Better still, do I have the right to expect to have fun at work?  Surely, I don’t.  There can be fun moments, but the idea of ALL of work being fun is simply juvenile.  At some point, we have to grow up and recognize that work is about performing for your employer so that you can earn your wage.  Your wage, in turn, fuels the rest of your existence.  On your time, you have fun.  On company time, you produce.

The only problem is that I want to have fun at work.  I don’t want to experience an occasional fun moment.  I want to experience that physical and spiritual tingle every day when I sit down to get crackin’ at the whole work thing.  I want the work itself to be thrilling.  I want my day to whoosh by in a flow-induced blur.  I want there to be so much fun involved that I laugh as I retire for the day, recalling all the damn fun that I had.  

Stupid, I know.  Immature, I know.  Unrealistic, I know.  That’s me: stupid, immature, and unrealistic.  And I aim to stay that way.  I reserve the right to remain idealistic and hopeful.

You bet your ass I have the right to have fun, at work and outside of work.  That’s my plan, and I’m sticking to it.  Do you know what?  You can, too.

 

I felt a lot older than 40 today. I went to a chiropractor. It had been well over a year since my last visit. I let time get away from me.

This doctor is new to me as my previous chiropractor moved farther north. This “new” guy is local, so, naturally, we switched to the new guy. His style is different from the other doctor. He focuses a lot of his attention on soft tissue. The previous guy did, too, but this guy is all about the soft tissue work first, then the adjusting. It’s a different take, and I’m intrigued.

So, cutting to the chase, he worked me over pretty hard. It highlighted to me how far my body has tightened up after just one year. I am not doing nearly as much for my body as I used to, and even then I wasn’t doing nearly as much as I should. Since then, something else important happened: I turned 40. All the parts got older. I’ve got to look for the warranty.

I am reminded of the words of my friend, Conway, on the eve of my 30th birthday: “Just wait until you turn 40.” He warned me about aches and pains and creaking parts. Now I’m 40.

Crap.

Whatever I started doing after my last post on the subject…not enough. And, unfortunately, I am reminded of the words of Sam Roberts: “As you get older, you have to get healthier just to maintain the status quo.”

Crap.

Tonight, I am tight and achy and feeling a lot older than 40.

To be honest, it took me a really long time to “get” Memorial Day.  I don’t know if it had to do with the fact that I grew up as an American in a foreign country or what, but Memorial Day was just a day off of school and nothing else.  I lacked the community that provided the proper context for even beginning to understand why we, as Americans, take this day to pay our respects to the men and women who have died while serving in the US Armed Forces.

I don’t know if that community is any more or less prevalent these days, but what I do know is that there is enough context in my life these days to warrant taking a few moments to feel gratitude and give thanks to those who died in service to the country.  I’ll forgo the debates about what military action is justified or unjustified, which wars are noble and which are for profit, and whether or not the men and women in the Armed Forces have represented their country appropriately.  Heaven knows there is enough of that kind of discussion these days, particularly out here in the Chicago area on the heels of the NATO summit this month.

Instead, I’ll just say that I am reminded that many good men and women choose to serve their country in good faith and with noble hearts.  They believe that what they are doing is in the best interest.  Their experiences while in service may change their minds, but I honestly believe that most go about their business and perform their duty out of a genuine desire to serve a worthwhile cause.  I am surely far from being worthy of judging any of them, so, instead, I dedicate a moment of stillness and silence in my heart for the sacrifices they made and for the price that they paid.

I know that there are many ways in which the value of proper planning might manifest itself, but this most recent example in my life is a pretty good illustration of why you should plan for stuff.

I got sick.  Nothing life-threatening, mind you.  I’m just in the midst of a bout with a virus that has decided to take up residence in the sinus cavities of my skull.  It’s going around.  My wife got it, too.  She’s mostly on the mend.  I’m still peaking, if you will.  I suspect the worst has passed or will pass shortly.

But I failed to plan for this.  It’s not like you should plan, specifically, on getting sick, but you should expect life to be disruptive.  I didn’t.  So, I stumbled.  Yard work suffered.  I got behind on my writing.  I doubled my stress at work because I didn’t give myself enough fluff time to get something ready for tomorrow.  I’m ready now, but the extra effort nearly sent me back to my bed with sneezes, a stuffed-up head, and the beginnings of a mean cough.  All that because I failed to plan.

Thank you, dear Universe, for the reminder on the value of proper planning.

 

Today, my socks and underwear fit really well.  Some days, one or the other doesn’t.  On bad days, neither do.

 

You can get away with socks and underwear that don’t fit well because other people can’t see them.  As for your outerwear, it’s harder to hide something that doesn’t fit the right way.  People notice.  Some might even speak up.  If nothing else, provided you’re not totally oblivious, you’ll probably notice yourself…eventually.  At some point, you retire the item that doesn’t fit.  If you need to do so, you replace it.  You go to a store, try a new one on, and buy it.  Or maybe you go online to Land’s End, like I like to do, and just buy another of the same thing you bought last time.  Maybe you choose a different color.  Maybe you don’t.  Regardless of how you do it, when an article of clothing, from foot to crown and all points in between, doesn’t fit, you get rid of it.  Done.  Gone.  Change.

 

Then why on Earth should you put up with the non-literal things in your life that don’t fit?  If right thinking and right action are important aspects of achieving happiness in life and helping others, surely, so is right fit.

 

I had a conversation with a good friend recently that took me down the rabbit hole of choosing for ourselves again.  Except this time, I focused on one of the more powerful choices we can make in life: choosing ourselves.

So many layers to this, but the train of thought took me somewhere specific.

We spend our whole lives waiting to be chosen, then Death chooses us, and I can only imagine that choice being the one choice we really weren’t really looking forward to.

We wait to be chosen from the time we are but wee humans assembling in our first classrooms.  It start there and pretty much continues on through adulthood.  We wait to be called upon in class.  We wait to be selected for a dodgeball team in gym.  We wait to be asked to Homecoming or Prom or even out on a date.  We wait for acceptance letters from colleges.  We wait for callbacks to auditions.  We wait for job offers.  We wait for promotions.  We wait for new career opportunities.  We wait to be rated by a boss who may or may not have a clue about how good you are or are not at your job.  We wait for the voting results on American Idol.  We wait to see if our constituents will elect us to office.  We wait and wait and wait.  During all that waiting, somebody else is choosing.

Here’s the novel idea: choose yourself.  Don’t wait to be chosen.  Don’t rely on the external validation.  Trust me, I get it: validation from others feels good.  It’s another one of those things built into the Human System.  We can’t help ourselves.  What we can do is choose to override the programming, at least partially.  We can minimize it.  We can take the very difficult but very important step of choosing ourselves.

For fuck’s sake, nobody else is going to choose you.  If they do, it’s because choosing you serves their purpose.  Nothing wrong with that, really, because we all do it to one extent or another.  The crime is when we hang all of our hopes and dreams, the possibilities for our wonderful future, on the choices of other people.  It’s crazy.  Really, really crazy.

Don’t just choose for yourself, my dear, dear fellow human being.  Choose yourself.  Can you try that?

The limitations are inside of your head. For the most part.

I’m not saying that EVERYTHING you want you can have, exactly when you want it and in exactly the way you want it. What I am saying is that once you make the decision, the main thing holding you back is you. The obstacles you perceive are mainly that: perceived. My dad always taught me that perception is reality, and that has been such a valuable lesson to carry through life. So, in a sense, your obstacles are real. They’re just real as long as you perceive them to be real. Perception is the name of the game.

Think of it this way. Let’s say there’s a position you want at work, and you make that decision to do everything in your power to have that position. Let’s say it doesn’t work out. There are people in your way. There are policies you can’t get around. There are obstacles that simply cannot be overcome. Now what?

Simple: envision a new path to the destination. When we get stuck it’s often because of a lack of imagination or a stubbornness to give up what we thought would happen and look for the new path of what could happen. Are you resigned to being bitter about how things didn’t work out the way you planned? Or are you dedicated to finding a new path? You can still get there, to that original destination, but the path might take longer or wander someplace you didn’t want to go or require you to take on other tasks you wanted to avoid in getting there. Or maybe the destination was wrong all along. There’s always that.

We are limited by our child-like need to control the variables. Once we open ourselves up to the possibilities, the possibilities we perceive will increase exponentially. Our lack of creativity becomes irrelevant because what the Universe can present to us is far greater than anything we could imagine anyway.

The limitations are inside of your head.

Mothers perform the proverbial lion’s share of so much of the work that goes into raising little humans into big humans. Period. I know there are exceptions and anomalies, but most people would have to agree that mothers really do the heavy lifting.

I am grateful for my mother and everything she has done to help me get where I am today.

Ditto my wife. She has done for me, but, more importantly, my little boys will grow to be good men because their mother will do the hard work of getting them there.

Ditto so many other mothers…

Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers. On behalf of the sons and daughters who don’t know any better or can’t articulate the sentiment, thank you. Just…thank you.