Musings

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.

My favorite synonym for “mediocre” is “ordinary”.

So, if you’re goal is to achieve the state of being mediocre, also known as mediocrity, you don’t have to do much other than…well…not much.  Or you can fall these rules (don’t worry…you don’t have to follow ALL of them):

1. Convince yourself that the rut is the safest part of the road, even though it’s really not because all you need is one wagon to remind you why hanging out in ruts isn’t the brightest idea.

2. Hang out in the shadow of much cooler, more interesting, more generous, and infinitely happier go-getters.  These people can cast long shadows, so find a dark spot shouldn’t be too hard.  Just don’t get too comfy in the dark.  Why?  Also not a safe place to be.  See the following movies as evidence: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Pitch Black, The Descent, or 30 Days of Night.

3. Find reasons to do tomorrow that which you could clearly do today.  Like take a leap of faith or make lemonade.

4. Try fitting a square peg in a round hole.  Talk to the peg.  Tell it why fitting into the round hole is a great opportunity for growth.  When it resists, talk to it some more.  When it refuses to fit, find a sharp knife and whittle it down to a roundish shape.  Then, stick it in the hole.  Ask it how it feels now.

5. Be the square beg.

6. Let yourself be more afraid of looking stupid or not succeeding or showing the world that you are imperfect than you are of never doing the things you really want to do.

There you have it: 6 steps to achieving mediocrity.  The best part is that you don’t have to aspire to achieving all 6!  You only need to do 1 or 2 really well.  Heck, you don’t even need to do them really well.  Shooting for a half-assed implementation should do the trick.

 

 

Here’s something disturbing that happens to me on a regular basis: I pay attention to my posture when I’m sitting at my desk.  Have you ever done that?  Scary, isn’t it?  When you become conscious of your posture, you notice all kinds of things.  For example, you notice that you have lousy posture.  You notice that your feet are falling asleep, and you didn’t even realize it.  You notice that your neck is aching.  You notice that your hands are all gnarled and incorrectly positioned.  You notice that your shoulders are tensed up and slightly raised.  Your back isn’t straight.  In short, your body is a mangled mass of stressed-out, unnaturally configured human being.  

 

Catch that last part?  Human being. 

 

Like I tell my boys, our bodies are soft, fragile things.  Our physical self is nothing more than some bones and the squishy parts that surround them!  So, I just went through the exercise of bringing consciousness to my present moment.  My shoulders are relaxed now.  My back is straight.  My head is held up (but my screen is too low, so I’ve got some work to do for this one).  My arms and hands are more properly positioned.  My feet are planted flat on the ground.  I just nibbled on a Larabar.  In short, I am conscious of my human beingness.  Consciousness leads to presence, and presence leads to happiness.  It really does. 

 

There are all kinds of reasons why we might become so distracted and so stressed that our physical beings become outward manifestations of our emotional and spiritual state.  Take a moment, from time to time, to allow your humanity to flow through and overpower whatever negative energy might be permeating your body.  Your squishy parts will be happier and will thank you.  You might just feel a little better in the process, too!

Positive matters for the simple reason that being and staying positive makes everything better. It makes the world a nicer place. It makes it easier to enjoy your family. Not unlike garlic, it makes food taste better. It makes vision clearer. It makes hugs warmer. It makes working with other people so much simpler.

Positive matters because, without it, good isn’t quite as great as it could be.

You cannot choose for yourself.  You are too dumb to choose for yourself.  You are not worthy to choose for yourself.  Sit down.  Be quiet.  Wait to be chosen.

Wait to be called upon.

Wait for the selection.

Wait to be tapped on the shoulder.

Wait to be annointed.

Wait to be given the opportunity.

Wait to prove yourself more worthy than your peers.

Wait for the succession plan to slide you in the slot they’ve chosen for you.

Wait, wait, wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait to be told you can retire.

Wait to be told you can begin to live your “real life” now that your time has come.

Wait until you have arranged everything just so.

Wait until you’ve planned out the realization of your dreams.

Wait.

At some point, the waiting has to end.  You choose when to make your dreams reality.  Or you an wait so long that you slip out of this life with so many unfulfilled dreams left behind to evaporate into nothing.

Did you know that you can choose now as opposed to then?  Did you know that you can choose so many whens and hows throughout your lifetime?  Did you know that you have the right to choose?  You have the right to choose.

You have the right to choose.  You are worthy.  You deserve more.  You deserve peace.  You deserve fulfillment.  You deserve happiness.

You can choose for yourself.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.