Musings

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.

The world is filled with people who measure life against a ruler defined be everything their life is NOT rather than everything it is. The thing about taking the “negative definition” approach is that the list of what is not can and will grow into infinity. There is always something new against which to compare. So, in essence, with every new idea, with every act of creation, with every spontaneous evolution of our Universe, there is a new opportunity for negative definition.

The world is filled with people who look at other people this way, too. Today, I fell victim to frustration and allowed myself to judge another, to complain about what they were NOT according to my narrow, self-centered, self-serving definition of what they should be. I am ashamed of my pettiness. I am humbled by the lesson. I am grateful for the opportunity to grow.

This negative approach to living in this Universe is mot fulfilling in the least. It drained me of energy. It did not give life to others. I stained the energy of others today because they listened to my complaints. Some commiserated, and that is even more unfortunate. I don’t assume responsibility for their actions, but I do acknowledge my part in perpetuating, not seeking to lessen, the darkness in their hearts.

Today is Dr. Seuss’ birthday. He wrote a few stories about an elephant named Horton. In one of those stories, Horton proudly declared that “an elephant’s faithful, 100%.” Where I failed, Horton succeeded. True, he’s a character in a children’s book, but…man, I could have paid a little better attention to that lesson. Which reminds me of another Dr. Seuss quote that I read today:

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You. “

Today, I should have been a little more like Horton, a whole lot more like me.

As my boys slept in our room, my wife and I remodeled their rooms. It wasn’t like an HGTV show or anything, but we did pretty well. My big guy sacrificed his lower bunk so his little brother could finally get a “big boy” bed. Even though we didn’t exactly present it as an option, I still found it heartwarming and sweet that he didn’t protest one bit at the idea of losing a bed. We spruced his room up a bit, too, so he has a “new room” just like little brother. As a matter of fact, he expressed gratitude for it at the dinner table this evening. That moved me.

My little guy took his first nap in his new bed this afternoon, and everything went well. I anticipate a few midnight visits now that he has the freedom to leave his bed and his room. That’s how it went for us with his brother, so I assume it will be the same for him. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter, really. It’s all just part of the deal when you decide to raise little people into big people. Tonight, my little guy reminded me of just how little he still is. In the dark, his cool “big boy” bed isn’t so cool. In fact, apparently, it’s a little frightening. He started crying when I closed the door to his room, so I went back in to talk to him. Turns out, monsters are more of a concern when you’re closer to the ground and not protected by bars all around you. We talked about his nap, the overall lack of monsters in our house, and how his new room isn’t really any different than his old room. I turned a light on in his closet, snuggled with him a bit, kissed hit forehead many times, and scratched the top of his head. I did something right because he let me leave. We’ll see how his first night goes…

It’s funny how much children flourish when given respect, the opportunity to participate in the course of their own lives, and the freedom to experience the good, the bad, and the scary. I used to think that my job as a daddy is to shelter and protect my children. I have come to realize that I can protect them, but sheltering does them harm in the end. My boys were watching “Finding Nemo” this evening. There’s a great scene where Nemo’s dad, Marlin, and his traveling companion, Dory, are arguing about something, and Marlin tells Dory that he doesn’t want anything to happen to his son. Dory responds, a bit perplexed, that a life with nothing happening doesn’t sound like much of a life. As much as I selfishly dread my little guy taping me on the forehead at 3 AM because he’s cold or tired or lonely, I think I might really be struggling with the fact that my littlest isn’t quite as little as he was two nights ago when I put him down to sleep in his crib. Time marches on, and, some day soon, my little boy really won’t be so little at all.

Big Boy Beds can be scary for little boys…and their daddies.

My wife fell asleep on the couch tonight while I played on the Wii with my boys. She slept through the whole thing. She slept through the laughing, the yells of disbelief, the whoops of victory. The boys went upstairs, got ready for bed, came down, kissed their mother on the cheek, and trotted off to bed. She still slept.

I put them to bed. I cleaned up some of the mess I made in our bedroom when we returned from our trip. There are some suitcases left on the floor, but my clothes and shoes have been put away. I started to tidy up a bit because the house needs to be cleaned tomorrow. I have more to do in the kitchen, and I could get ahead in the bathrooms. It will make tomorrow a little easier if something gets done tonight.

She is still asleep.

My wife spends most of her day running around, ferrying our boys here and there, running errands, shopping for our food, and working, when she has the time. Our lives are good, particularly in light of some of the suffering going on in the world today. She’s worn out, though, so she sleeps.

I want her to sleep. She deserves some sleep.

I, for my part, want to sleep, too. Nothing is stopping me, of course, but I find myself at this moment very much awake and…thinking. Today, Eckhart’s card reminded me that being too enamored of my thoughts is a sign that the ego has seized control. I am resisting the temptation to let my cleverness mesmerize me. It would be a vain and shallow shame if I succumbed to such egoic treachery. Instead, I am letting my mind wander, taking me (and you) where it will.

It occurs to me at this moment that I feel much more comfortable sometimes just allowing the stream of consciousness to come. Good stuff.

Everyone around me is asleep. It gives me great satisfaction to know that my family can just drift off to sleep without too much concern. There is time tomorrow to worry for others in the world. Tonight, there is just my family, and that is good.

I can hear my wife breathing downstairs on the couch. Somewhere in the darkness, outside the walls of my home, thunder rolls and rain falls quietly on the ground.

I don’t like this time of year. Temperature has nothing to do with it. Finalizing taxes with my wife has nothing to do with it. It all has to do with annual merits at work.

I can handle doing annual reviews. I can handle doing regular checkpoints throughout the “year.” I can even handle having some of those uncomfortable conversations that you have to have when you take on a leadership role. What I struggle with the most is administering salary increases. It’s about having those money conversations. It’s a mixed bag; some people are happy, others aren’t, while the rest are usually OK with it.

There are those who excel, get a decent raise, and are grateful. There are those who excel, get a decent raise, and feel they should have gotten more. There are those who are mediocre, don’t get such a decent raise, and are grateful. There are those who perform well, don’t excel, get an average raise, and really let you have it. You aren’t guaranteed each of these every time, but it’s usually a safe bet that there are one or two in the mix. That is enough to make me dread this time of year.

This year, I am trying to take a long, hard look at myself to figure out why this aspect of leading others bothers me so much. I could talk about how empathetic I am, how sensitive I am, and chalk it up to something positive having to do with my character. That’s always a safe bet. After all, isn’t such human sensitivity really something to brag about as I lament my lot in life? But my lot isn’t so bad at all. Not by a long shot. There is much more for which to be grateful, so not “liking” this time of year is really just a big ol’ “pity party” on my part. Boo-hoo: Ric doesn’t like uncomfortable situations. Who does?

I think the issue might go back to that whole issue I have with not feeling worthy. Who am I to judge others? Am I really someone capable of making such assessments? Am I qualified to mess with their livelihoods? If I doubt that I deserve to hold the position that I do, then it would stand to reason that I’d have a hard time executing the responsibilities associated with this role. That resonates with me.

So, I feel different this year, realizing that my hang up has nothing to do with empathy and everything to do with insecurity. It’s not about the people I am talking to; it’s all about me. And THAT revelation hurts the most. I claim empathy, but in reality I am being selfish. Selfish is like the antithesis to empathy. I felt a measure of shame as I thought about that point. That didn’t last long. The light of the revelation brought everything into focus.

It shouldn’t be about me at all. It really, truly is all about them. I have to bring my heart back into the situation and focus on the people to whom I am talking. It’s their livelihoods I am impacting.

So, I was in Texas for a few days. A dear friend turned 40. I got to see another friend for the first time in about 4 years. I got to see some more friends who I just saw this past November, but it’s always such a comfort to be in their presence. I also got to see my family. Big brother and his family…I actually got to see my brother and my niece on their birthdays! That hasn’t happened in years. Got to see Mom and Dad. I got to watch my boys playing with their cousins…yelling and laughing and stomping about. Good, good energy. I love all of my friends; I love my family. My time with them was good.

When I was in Texas, I saw the Alamo Drafthouse. That was cool. When I see it mentioned at aintitcool.com, I’ll be able to picture it, in the heart of Austin, right there on Sixth Street.

Random thought, of no consequence.

I also thought a bit about my diet. When you are a vegetarian sitting in Lambert’s, a joint famous for old-fashioned Texas barbecue, you think about things like diet. Earlier that same day, I sat in on a class about medicinal foods at Whole Foods on Lambert, the company’s flagship store. A few days prior, Dr. Mehmet Oz interviewed the author of a book called “The Origin of Diet” about…you guessed it…the evolution of the human diet. A few days before THAT, the world celebrated the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin (February 12, 1809 for both).

I found myself at that odd crossroads of spirit and science. I find myself there often. His Holiness the Dalai Lama maintains that when science teaches us something that conflicts with our beliefs…well, we might want to reexamine our beliefs in the context of scientific discovery. He makes a subtle point here, not about throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water but about reexamining. That’s it; just reexamining. If science can add to the spiritual, then embrace that. If the spiritual can add something to science…well, isn’t that what the Christian Conservative Right in America is fighting for? The soul as the conscience of science?

So, in Lambert’s, Texas BBQ, I thought about my soul, the sanctity of all life, and my conviction that another animal should not have to die for me to live. It is a hard choice, a complicated path, this life of vegetarianism. My belief is rooted partially in science: vegetarians, as a whole, live healthier lives. It’s a tangible, quantifiable assertion backed by good science. My belief, though, is rooted more in my spiritual belief regarding animal life. Perhaps if humans showed more humanity in their treatment of animals, my opinion might be different. I don’t think so, but it is possible. Regardless, my mind wandered back to science. There are those who maintain that the human organism benefits from certain animal…byproducts, flesh included. Can I get everything I need from things that grow from the Earth? I believe I can; others do not.

As I sat there, I listened to someone talking to my wife about some of her medical issues, and diet inevitably came into the conversation. They talked about how modifying diet has helped alleviate her medical concerns. It was interesting given that the person who conducted the class earlier in the day had also told a story of how she suffered with psoriasis for over a decade before modifying her diet. When she did, her debilitating psoriasis all but disappeared. And for those keeping score, she still eats meat.

If you are going to eat meat, the best thing you could probably eat is grass-fed organic beef. Grain-fed animals are…well…pretty much not as healthy or nourishing. We’ll leave it at that. Now, I hesitate discussing diet with people because, I have found, it is as personal and as volatile a subject as religion, politics, and parenting. As a matter of fact, I’d rather discuss any of those over diet. People seem more interested in finding inconsistencies in my vegetarianism than in my child-rearing, spiritual, or evolutionary beliefs. The thing that matters the most, I realized, is that I continue to live in a way that resonates with me. I seek to gain consistent alignment between what I believe in my soul and what I do with and to my body. It is about me, not about anyone else. I smiled while sitting in Lambert’s because everything felt…right.

That said, given a choice of topics between God, Darwin, and grass-fed organic beef, I’ll stick with God and Darwin.

Sustaining activities over the long haul is not my strong suit. My mind wanders, my attention shifts. I float from stream of consciousness to stream of consciousness. I often find myself jolted awake by this crisis or that crisis, whatever requires my attention at the moment. I tend to be forced into focusing on something rather than choose my area of focus.

Focus. That would be another one of those key characteristics of “successful” people. Focus. It helps to know what you want because that gives you a “guiding principle” for everything that you do. Success can only be measured against a goal or objective. Without either…well, how do you know where you are?

Right now, I am going to take some time to figure out where I am, where I want to go.

Pause…