Musings

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.

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.