WHY I AM PRO-CHOICE (Yes, that way too)

So the other day I was having a typical conversation with #myfavoritepersonalive, my 10 year old son.  Same old, same old—telling him how smart, funny and handsome he is, and how honored I am to be his mom.  The kind of scintillating discourse only other parents truly understand.  Then I told him that in addition to these things he is also kind, and that is what makes me most proud.  Because smart, funny and handsome are gifts; kind is a choice.  I explained to him that while it is good to enjoy our gifts, it is only by our choices that we can make ourselves known to others.  Other people may appreciate smart, funny and handsome; but kind is what they will love.  Because kind is his unique expression of personal preference:  what sort of guy do I want to be?  We don’t choose our gifts; this is what makes them gifts, they were bestowed upon us without our earning or selecting them.  What we do with our gifts is our choice, and our choice is all we can truly hang our hats on.  And, perhaps a bit ironically, choice is the greatest gift any of us will ever have.

We have all had the experience of listening to someone complain about the restrictions they have in life—bad marriage, bad boss, bad luck, bad hair—and what is remarkable about these “conversations” (do you ever get a word in edgewise that isn’t slapped down?) is that when it is not ourselves, we can usually see a way out.  Of whatever “prison” this person imagines themselves to be in.  We are all the MacGyver of other people’s traps; meanwhile we remain hopelessly ensnared in our own.  Why is this?  Why is choice so easy to make for someone else and not ourselves (more on that in a minute)?  Partly it is simply perspective…it’s hard to tell what you’re looking at when your face is all mashed up against the glass…and partly it’s because our traps feel safe to us.  There are stories of literal imprisonment in which a captive, when given the opportunity to escape or even be rescued, does not want to take the chance.  We are all like that to some degree or another.  We all have relationships and situations in our lives that we dream of escaping without seeing it is our choice not to, usually because losing that “trap” also means losing a whole bunch of excuses we are making for ourselves.  We love our excuses more than our freedom. 

You always have a choice.  Some people accept this as fact without actually acting on it; others rail against it, maybe YOU have a choice, but not me, NOT ME!  Because the choice isn’t necessarily a “good” one.  Because the choice may look a little like “out of the frying pan and into the fire”.  Because the choice feels like a one-way street, a dead end.  And maybe it is.  But frying pan or fire, your situation sucks, so why not change the scenery?  And I don’t know about you, but not only have I driven the wrong way down a one way street (thanks to the cop who let me off with a warning), I’ve also backed my way out of a dead end.  Because you always have a choice.  There is always one more move to make.  And chances are your next move won’t be your final one because that is not how life works.  But just like when you are sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, ANY movement can feel like relief.  Any movement will feel like positive change.  Because when you move away from something undesired, it stands to reason you have already stepped into something more desirable.  You have stepped on the gas, so to speak.

It is easy to think you know what is best for somebody else because you have not walked a mile in their shoes; or a hundred, or a thousand, like they have.  There is something tragicomic about the fact that we often feel like we don’t have enough information to make an appropriate choice for ourselves, but are frequently convinced we have enough input to be making good, sound life decisions for other people, EVEN PERFECT STRANGERS #roev.wadeforever!  We all make hundreds of choices a day; some work out great, others not so well but that shouldn’t stop us from getting up and starting all over again.  Our choice is our freedom.  We always have a choice.  And, in the wise words of the Canadian rockers from Rush, “If you choose not to decide, you have still made a choice”.  So practice exercising your freedom of choice, and please, allow others to do the same.  Even if you have to drive down a few dead end streets, you are on the road again.  And change is not only good, it is essential.

WHY BE AFRAID (Of Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!)

Raise your hand if you like to be scared!  You can’t see me, but not only have I raised my hand, I am waving it back and forth, wiggling in my seat and yelling “Oooh, ooh, ooh, Mr. Kott-ah!”  POW!  Just hit you with my first “Welcome Back Kotter” reference ever!  It will not be my last, I promise you that.  Those who know me (or even just read this blog) understand that the Master of Horror himself Stephen King is my #onetruelove and that scary movies and shows like The Walking Dead are second only to my kid when it comes to consistently bringing me joy. 

However, I like being scared only when I am in an entirely safe environment.  Like my bed reading a book, or my couch watching a movie.  So count me out if you are going on one of those crazy ass roller-coasters that flip upside down because I know my karma and my karma says: "Risk it and become a cautionary tale, babe".  The lady-decapitated-on-a-roller-coaster-who-now-tortures-teens-on-lover’s-lane-with-her-hook-for-a-hand, or something like that.  My BFF has a theory that you are either a horror film buff or a roller coaster buff and rarely the twain shall meet.  But I know plenty of people who hate both, and the reason is plain:  they don’t like to be afraid.

The truth is, in small doses, fear is good.  Fear is a useful tool that promotes our survival.  Fear makes us appropriately cautious when faced with a questionable situation. Even sometimes in a situation that isn’t obviously suspect, you get that feeling—your Spidey-senses tingle--and you know to proceed with care because something is not-quite-right.  I remember the days of driving my husband to the train station at 5 o’clock in the morning and the blind left hand turn on the way.  There was a light, but one day the light turned green and I didn’t go.  Just sat there staring stupidly, like I didn’t understand what that meant.  Then, as I slowly came out of my daze and pressed on the gas pedal, a car blew through the red light coming from my blind side.  If I had gone when I was “supposed” to go, he would have smashed right into my side of the car.  How many times have you been saved because you hesitated instead of jumping?  Fear can be our friend.

On the other hand…we are all aware, to some degree or another, of the so-called “culture of fear” perpetuated by the media and people in a position to manipulate the media.  Be terrified by terrorists, ticks and Tim Tebow (haha, sorry Tim for singling you out as a religious zealot!)…be suspicious of strangers, sun-exposure and silly string (shout-out to Darlie Routier, google her name and silly string if you are curious).  You have to wonder how many tragedies could have been pre-empted if Americans didn’t feel the “need” to arm themselves to the teeth, how many roads have been left untraveled for fear of an accident (or lawsuit or just the unknown)?  When I was growing up, we had all this wonderful, dangerous equipment on our playgrounds, we didn’t wear helmets or seatbelts and we drank a lot of punch with red dye #2.  I survived just fine, as did every single kid I knew.  As a matter of fact, the worst injury I sustained as a child, the only scar I bear, was gained from tripping as I walked home from a neighbors…well, I might have been skipping, if I am totally honest about it.  So skipping is very dangerous!  GET THE WORD OUT, it should be BANNED!!!

Our fear reflexes are hard-wired into our systems, much in the same way a dog will turn in a circle before lying to mat down tall grass it no longer sleeps in.  Fear was keyed into our ancestors for far more practical reasons than recognizing potentially harmful spam…there was actually a high probability they could be eaten alive.  Now THAT is something to fear!  And why I never swim in the ocean #thanksalotStevenSpielberg.  But in spite of the great Louis C.K.’s brilliant idea that lions should be released into the streets to cull the herd, as it were, the fact of the matter is the chances of any of us being eaten alive is now statistically insignificant.  Keep those words in your head, “statistically insignificant chance” as you scroll through your list of worries and fears.  “Why worry, it will probably never happen” is not stitch sampler wisdom for nothing, my friends!  When we live our lives in fear of the now totally metaphorical “lions and tigers and bears (oh my!)”, we are missing out on a lot of the best stuff life has to offer.

Freedom from fear is the only kind of freedom that matters, when you get down to it.  You can have all the money in the world, but if you are spending it on guns and security systems, you are not free.  Fear is a jailer that keeps us from our best selves, our best relationships, our best experiences.  Fear causes us to hold our tongues when something important needs to be said.  The oft quoted line, “The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral” reminds us that the definitive Hell is a world where we do not speak our truth.  Fear keeps us from reaching out, fear keeps us from taking a shot, it keeps us locked up and tied down and heavily medicated (by self or doctor).  There are no lions in the streets.  There is very little left to be truly afraid of, in a statistically significant way.  Robert H. Schuller famously said (a lot of amazing things and), “What great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?”  Without fear, anything is possible.  Trust your instincts, but roam freely.  You are safe here.

WHY THE GOOD NEWS IS, THE BAD NEWS IS WRONG

Man, I had another one of those weeks.  They seem to be coming fast and furious recently, so I am doing my best to keep the hatches battened down.  This was a week of disappointed expectations, unclear redirection and general confusion.  Mostly, it was a week of “bad news”.  Nothing catastrophic mind you, but bad enough to throw a monkey wrench into pretty much every plan I thought I had going. 

I’m a planner, you see.  Growing up, my Dad was really into these Myers-Briggs personality tests that break down our operational motivations into 4 categories:  introvert or extrovert, thinker or feeler, intuitive or sensor and judger or perceiver.  It’s this last category that has caused no small amount of strife for me, because I am a judger who grew up in a houseful of perceivers. 

Judgers prefer life to be more structured and decided; perceivers are more flexible and adaptable.  I know this makes me sound like a stick-in-the-mud but believe me, you WANT a judger on your team when it comes to things like hotel reservations, financial planning and basically all things that require organization.  However, the down side is, when all of my careful planning goes down the tubes, I may start drooling and banging my head against a wall.

I would describe this week as having reached a crossroads where all directions look suspect.  Clowns to the left of me; jokers to the right, as it were.  Naturally this makes the little Filofax (HA! Remember those?) in my brain go absolutely bonkers; or as the more modern day GPS would put it, “recalculating” on an endless loop.  And believe me, the voice in my head saying “recalculating” over and over again sounds just as pissy as that British broad on the GPS. 

So I was driving by a church that had one of those signs out front—I am a big fan of the church sign as a rule—and this one said, “The good news is the bad news is wrong”. That is the Lord working in a NOT so mysterious way; the sign was in front of a church after all and I am sure I am not the only person driving by who needed to hear that. 

But it made me think of our obsession with labeling things as “good” or “bad”.  From behaviors to foods to movies to appearance, we have made some universal decisions as a species about what is “good” and “bad”, but then as individuals we have our whole world broken down this way as well.  Which leads me to the “good” part of my “bad” week.

In the midst of my bad-news-bears-blues, my son, who is currently obsessed with looking at maps, asked me what Vatican City is.  This began a discussion of Christianity and how the beliefs of some churches don’t necessarily mesh with our own.  I explained to him that some branches of the Christian church are more committed to the idea that there are rules we all have to follow to in order to please God; for example, how some churches teach that if you are homosexual, you get on God’s bad side. 

My kid’s response to this was, “That’s impossible.  God doesn’t have a bad side.” 

Whew.  Out-of-the-mouths-of-babes, and he is absolutely correct.  It is impossible to get on God’s bad side because God doesn’t have one. 

So why do we?  I’m not saying there is no use in discernment; on the contrary, discernment is not only helpful, it’s fun!  There is hilarity to be had in agreeing that some things are “bad” (like the way bowling alleys and roller skating rinks smell) and some things are “good” (like pizza and sunsets) and the wonderful truth that my #onetruelove Stephen King expressed in his masterwork CUJO:  “There is no bad time for good news.”

But why do we feel the need to decide whether our news (or luck) is good or bad so quickly?  There is a fable about a farmer whose horse runs away, but when the neighbors sympathize about his bad luck he says, “Who knows if it is good luck or bad luck?”  The horse comes back with several wild horses and the neighbors marvel at his good luck, but he has the same response.  Then his son breaks a leg taming the wild horses and again he replies “Bad luck?  Or good luck?” Finally the army shows up to take his son to war, but he is spared because he is temporarily lame. 

I have no idea what is going to happen in the big picture as a result of my “bad” news, but I do know that we don’t have the expression “It’s a blessing in disguise” for no reason.  Some of my biggest disappointments have turned out to be some of my most fortunate redirections, and some of my most exciting triumphs have turned out to be not much more than smoke and mirrors.  Good news, bad news, I don’t know. 

But often enough we discover, when we are able to let go of our plan and see what develops, that the good news is the bad news was wrong after all.

WHY YOU ARE HAPPY WHEN YOU'RE HAPPY

Yes, I actually said that.  On the phone the other day, I dispensed this priceless wisdom: “Well, when you are happy, you’re happy.”  Ladies and Gentlemen, this is why I get THE BIG BUCKS. An endless font of insight, I am.  But truthfully, I think this is the crux of the expression “You can’t see the forest for the trees.”  When we are unhappy, we tend to micro focus on the people and situations in our life that we believe are contributing to our unhappiness.  But when we are happy, we are more likely to “go general”…that is, appreciate the beauty of the forest and not worry so much about the ticks, mosquitos and wood rot. 

Happiness is expansive and broad; unhappiness is constricting and specific.  There is a great scene in the movie “Groundhog Day” (Holla, Bill Murray!) when Phil has relived the same day so many times that all of its nuances are fully realized by him, and he sort of breezes through the hours literally catching people mid-fall with a smile on his face…no longer worried about the details, he is able to fully enjoy the experience of living.  There are no fears because he is assured that generally things are going to be okay.

There is another wonderful movie about the ability to relive key moments in life called “About Time”, which I highly recommend.  In it, the protagonist discovers that he has the ability to go back in time and correct missteps and regrets…which naturally leads to the sort of confusion and hijinks one would imagine.  But at one point he simply has a rotten day and instead of going back in time to change it, he goes back in time to APPRECIATE IT.  Knowing that at the end of the day things were really fine, he was able to withstand the annoyances, petty and otherwise, with humor and grace. 

I had a conversation with a friend this week in which she described a confrontation she had as “yoga off the mat”.  That is, breathing through the accusations, the vitriol…staying grounded and present in spite of the roaring hurricane.    Understanding that no matter what, you are okay.  I’ve never been a fan of the saying “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” because seriously?  Is that the standard we are going for, really?  But there can be the positive takeaway that every day is a new chance, and every day we are better prepared and equipped to make the most of our opportunities than we ever have before.

Progress, not perfection, is our goal.  And the good news is, with this as an objective, you literally cannot fail!  It is impossible not to progress, even if you feel like you are making the same mistake, or allowing that same button to get pushed by that same person, the truth is that every time your awareness grows, and every time your behavior evolves.  I think a lot of people make the mistake of believing anger is negative…it certainly can be, but more often it is empowering.  More often, it is an IMPROVEMENT over how you were feeling before you got angry! 

If you are depressed about something, most likely you will become inert and feel powerless to change your situation; but if you become angry, you will start to get your juices flowing, start thinking of solutions, start making some moves.  Any emotion can be a useful tool of progress, so long as it represents relief from what you were feeling before.  Anxiety is a habit as much as smoking and it can be pretty tough to quit that endless loop of worry.  But you are worried when you worry, and that gets you nowhere.  Stop obsessing about the specifics and reflect generally on your life.  In most cases, thankfully, you will realize that as my Dad used to say, “You are fine.”

I have a lot of things I do when I am feeling unhappy to turn the tide around, so to speak.  Listening to songs that make me feel good, hanging out with my kid, going for a walk.  Because when I do things that make me happy, I am happy.  Ha, that priceless wisdom for you again.  A few years ago for lent, I decided to give up criticizing myself for 40 days.  Holy cow, was THAT a Herculean challenge!  I had no real cognizance of how frequently I said unkind or unflattering things to myself inside my head.  It took real diligence to kick the habit, basically by simply being aware of the thoughts and course correcting whenever I had one. 

Progress, not perfection but I will say it made an enormous difference in my outlook on life.  Now, whenever I think something that doesn’t feel good I notice it, and think again.  Or listen to a song that makes me smile, or read a quote that inspires me.  Because I am happy when I am happy.  So I do everything in my power to be happy whenever I can manage it.  And when I can’t, that’s okay too.  Feeling unhappy is a useful guidepost to help us figure out the changes we need to make in our lives and the direction we need to go in to get back to happy. 

Because what is more important than being happy, when you really think about it?  When we are happy, all is well; we see the beauty of the forest.  When we are happy, we realize we don’t need to change a thing.

  

WHY IT'S FINE

I love words.  Funny thing for a writer not so much, I realize.  I was practically born with a book in my hand, torturing my parents for “one more story” from the day I could talk, and I consider reading a good book as much of an experience as virtually any “real” experience I have ever had.  Some people think and imagine in pictures; I think and imagine in words.  Nothing suits me more than a clever turn-of-phrase, and the artistry of a well written sentence is as beautiful as any picture in the Louvre, by my reckoning.  All of this to impress upon you—language is my thing.  So you know when I now concede that words are often inadequate, I am not coming from a place of defensiveness about my inability to use them.   Words are so malleable; one man’s trash is another’s man’s treasure as the saying goes, and using the “wrong” word at the “wrong” time can set off a minefield.  And last but not least in the lexicon of the insufficiency of words—it’s just words.  Sticks and stones being more efficacious according to childhood legend, right?

My parents believed actions speak louder than words and frequently used the expression “vote with your feet” to impress upon us the importance of acting in accordance with our beliefs.  It is all well and good to speak your mind, but as it says in the bible “Faith without works is dead”.  Your “works” need not be flashy; sometimes a well-timed hug can be game-changer.   I believe as a modern society we have been trained into a sort of backwards equation… "Works without faith”, which are also dead, IMHO.  Do you ever find yourself conducting your day to day business with the same sort of pulse-pounding, adrenaline racing intensity of a contestant in “The Hunger Games”?  Like the action itself is our value, like the fate of the free world rests on our shoulders, like there’s plenty of time for sleeping when we’re dead, to paraphrase Ben Franklin?  What do we accomplish in this state, besides exhaustion?  I don’t know about you, but my most impactful work is done when I am present, calm and rested.  When I am most able to be myself, and not a wind-up toy that is teetering along the edge of a precipice.

After my Dad had a stroke, many words were lost to him.  He was always the family peacemaker and counselor, so this was a blow to all of us.  His pithy wisdom, the infrequency with which he got worked up over ANYTHING, his ability to use humor to diffuse tension…I don’t know if any of these things would come in handy with your family, but with mine they sure do.  So as we were adjusting to “the new normal”, there was a lot of anxiety, I think, about having to cooperate as caregivers to the man who had always taken care of all of us.  Needless anxiety, it turned out, as my Dad was able to use his very limited vocabulary to develop his new catch phrase:  “It’s fine”.  Or its companion, “You’re fine.”  Okay, so I’ll admit, there was a time when I didn’t quite understand the wisdom of these twin expressions, which became Dad’s go-to for nearly every situation laid at his feet.  Mainly because I think most of us have co-opted “fine” as a pejorative term, equal to acceptable-but-mediocre.  But that is not what Dad was telling us, not in the least.

The inadequacy of words again.  If I describe something as “fine art”, you will know this is the real deal, very high end and impeccable.  If I tell you that your outfit looks fine, however, you will want to instantly go and change it.  We don’t consider things being “fine” a very good state of affairs, generally speaking.  But consider the alternative…if someone asks you how you are and you can easily say “fine”?  I’d say life is going your way, frankly.  To be “fine” most of the time is a lucky, happy life.  Most especially on those days when things don’t appear too lucky or happy if you can still say “I am fine”?  You have discovered the secret to life.  That is what Dad was telling us.  You are fine, you’re going to be fine, things are going to be fine.  A mantra for tough days if ever there was one.  Another expression my Dad cobbled together after he lost agility with language was “Every day is a good day”.  This he could not say as clearly, and perhaps that is what made it so impactful.  He lost so much to the stroke, but he could still tell us, able-bodied whiners that we were, that every day is a good one.  And it was fine that we were able-bodied whiners at that. 

I have often detailed my love of the film “Meatballs”, but anything worth saying is worth repeating.  Another great quote from this summertime classic is Morty (“Hi, Mickey!”) trying to calm a belligerent child about taking a ride on a dilapidated bus by describing it as “A fine, old bus”.  To which the child replies, “It is NOT a fine, old bus.  It is a PIECE of JUNK!”  Hahaha, my sister and I love that one.  And it is a perfect illustration of a head game we play with ourselves every day.  We shout down the reassurances that we are fine, that it is going to be fine with vitriol equal to that child’s.  We don’t want to hear that we are good enough, that our effort is good enough, we want to impress upon anyone who will listen that we are “a PIECE of JUNK!”  Do you want to know another definition of fine?  Free from impurity.  “You are fine”, my Dad would tell us, over and over again.   You are fine.  You don’t need to hurry, you don’t need to be fixed, you don’t need to prove anything.  You are free from impurity in the most meaningful way.  You are fine; you are yourself, and you are fine just the way you are.  I am grateful to my Dad for telling me this.   I wish I had understood sooner, but I’m glad I figured it out.  Hope you have figured it out about yourself, too.

WHY I DON'T FEEL BAD

I’ve decided I don’t want to feel bad anymore.  If you are curious about why I was feeling bad to begin with, I thank you for your interest but I’ve also decided not to share that.  Because I just spent a whole week feeling bad and it sucked, and every time I thought about the “bad thing” that made me feel bad, my stomach tied up in knots and I had the urge to cry or puke or maybe both.  Feeling bad about the thing I was feeling bad about was also a slippery slope, as it made me anxious and my mind naturally went to other places of anxiety for me and before long I felt like I was having a full blown “nervous breakdown”, like people used to have in the old days before we invented medications to prevent such a thing.  But I knew I wasn’t actually having a nervous breakdown because I was still able to function in a way that appeared normal from the outside and also I knew intellectually that most of the stuff I was feeling so bad about was complete and utter bullshit.

Our attention is a powerful thing.  Whenever we focus on a situation or emotion or person, we are literally becoming one with whatever our attention is on, at least for a little while.  Quantum physics explains to us that we are all pure energy fields, vibrating at such a high rate of speed that we appear to be solid beings when in fact we are not.  We are fluid, transformative and capable of changing our world just by putting a little attention on it. We have all encountered people who can bring the energy of a room full of others either up or down, depending on their attention.  Every time you walk into a room, the option is open to you to be that person.  Are you the life of the party or Debbie Downer?  It is up to you and the magical powers of your attention.  What we focus on we see more of, good and bad.  This is why feeling bad is a really bad idea.

This is also why the expression “the rich get richer” and others like it are so steadfastly true.  Whatever we have our attention on we get more of, and the rich have their attention on…well, their riches.  Whereas most of us have our attention on our bills, our escalating health care costs, our wobbly job security…that is what we are looking at and that is what we are seeing.  Unfortunately, (also:  fortunately) that is how it works for all of us.  Ever notice you have the same fight with your spouse over and over?  Or you keep running into that same vexing person at the grocery store?  Or you keep recreating the same dynamics in new jobs, new relationships, and new neighborhoods?  It has to do with your attention and your expectations.  My father was EXTREMELY fond of saying, “The good news is life is a do-it-to-yourself project.  The bad news is there may be an idiot in charge.”  Thanks for that, Dad.  But he was so very right.  About a lot of other things, too.

 It is easy to get overwhelmed by input, both desirable and undesirable, and just throw your hands up in surrender to the inevitability of it all.  But you do actually have control and you do have choices.  For example, have you ever met someone and had the (unkind?  uncharitable?) thought, “This person is homely (ugly)?”  Then you get to know them and suddenly they are not so homely anymore?  Suddenly, they are quirkily attractive?  That is because your attention on them has shifted.  When you didn’t know anything about them, all the information you had was physical appearance.  But when you learned more, you realized they were intelligent, or funny, or charming, or kind or all or some of the above and magically, how they look shifted.  When you start focusing on what is desirable about the person, you see more of what is desirable about the person.  And the rich get richer.

This works for other things as well.  If you focus on what you hate about your job, you get a lot more of what you hate about your job.  But if you focus on what you like about your job, you get more of that and ***BONUS*** the stuff you hate get less “ugly”.  Here’s an experiment:  if there is someone peripheral to you that drives you nuts…a neighbor, the mailperson, that lady from the PTO…next time you see them, pay them a compliment.  It can be anything, nice sweater, whatever.  Then start doing it every time you see them.  See how they shift, both in your perception and in their behavior.  Seriously, I have worked miracles with this and I dare you to try it.  Focus on something positive, no matter how insignificant, and see if it doesn’t become significant over time.  And hey, try that one on yourself as well.  I don’t care how bad your hair looks or how big that zit is, you can find something kind to say to yourself every day.  Several times a day would be even better.

I want you to be rich.  In life, in love and yes, in money.  So look at what you have and bless it.  Notice it.  When your attention gets drawn away to the bad stuff, what is going wrong, who is letting you down, drown out those thoughts, shout them down.  Clap your cymbals like Jehoshaphat and insist on noticing what is good.  The more and more you do this, the more and more your attention will be drawn to the good.  My grandmother used to say, “Don’t go borrowing trouble” and I have shared this wisdom many times with people as they invented catastrophic scenarios that had not yet occurred and were really unlikely to occur in their lifetime.   I would like to amend this to, “Don’t go looking at trouble.”  Because the more you look for it, the more you will find it.  So seek the treasure you actually want.  Put your attention there and see if it doesn’t find you.

WHY IT'S LIKE RIDING A BICYCLE

Over the holidays I had a nice phone chat with my elderly neighbor.  That is to say, the neighbor I lived next door to when I was 4-11 years old.  36 years ago.  I have seen her perhaps 6 times in those 36 years but I will tell you—no time has passed when we talk.  It is yesterday that she was making me cookies and complaining about our dog pooping in her yard.  We have kept in touch mainly through the lost art of “letter writing”…does that ring a bell?  No?  Anyhoo, it got me thinking about the nature of true connection, what makes some people “stick” while others fade away. 

We all have those people in our lives…it doesn’t matter if you have been apart for 100 years; you can always pick right up where you left off.   The expression “If you don’t use it, you lose it” is in this case far less accurate than the idiom “It’s like riding a bicycle”.  True connection is like riding a bicycle.  Once you have it, you can never lose it

Moving around quite a bit in my life, I have discovered this as the ultimate truth:  what is real is forever.  It is just waiting for you to put your attention on it again.  We have all heard the silly Sting song “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free”.  We have, right?  Sting may be silly (oh, come on, he IS!!!!) but this is actually profound common sense…chase it, and it flees.  Accept it without attachment and it is yours, almost definitely. 

As a Cancer (crab) and a clinger, it goes against my inborn nature not to be grasping after all that I love.  But I have learned the hard way that without a doubt “letting go” is the quickest path to stability, as counterintuitive as that may seem.  I have experienced the joy of many relationships spanning multiple decades and I am always astounded and relieved to realize that no real “work” is necessary.  Just being present for whatever occurs when it does is the “trick”.  But it is a trick fewer people can accomplish in this day and age.

I hate to beat a dead horse here…oh, let’s be honest, I am a dead-horse-beater from way-back-when and I always will be.  HA.  Today’s dead horse is technology.  There is truly no sight that I regularly encounter that I despise more than the vision of an adult human walking along hunched up over his or her phone or other portable electronic device.  Stupid thumbs stupidly texting away; it is like going to visit “The Zoo of Idiots” for a laugh, only to discover the idiots have all escaped their cages. 

Life is short.  Look around, smell the coffee, meet the eyes of the person you are talking to and try not to salivate when your phone BINGS!  Slave to it, you know you are, while actual experiences fade from relevance.  And stop defending yourself in your head, you know I am right.  I’m not even going to mention the “while driving” thing.

Alright, now that I have gotten that out of my system…well, no, actually, I have more to say.  Did you know that there is technology available to let you know when someone has read your text (or e-mail)?  Meaning you are essentially STALKING the people you communicate with electronically and are not allowing them the privacy to respond in their own time.  Did you know there is technology that allows you to see what the other person is typing to you BEFORE they hit send?  That gives me chills, seriously. 

This strikes me as the pinnacle of desperation and fear based logic.  Clinging, grasping, looking for reasons to be upset, searching for reasons to be offended.  I am also not a big fan of Facebook as a tool in personal relationships; the sheer number of stories I have had to endure about a party that so-and-so wasn’t invited to or a snotty comment that was “liked” by a supposed ally are legion.  So I remain blissfully, ignorantly Facebook-free; I won’t even know you had a party if you don’t invite me to it, so there.

I am not going to convince anybody to give up Facebook--believe me, I have tried!!!--but I am going to issue a challenge—in this electronic age, it is so easy to find virtually anyone.  So why don't you call (don't text!) an old friend you haven’t seen in person for ages and plan a meeting.  You can talk and eat and gossip and laugh, just like old times, wouldn’t that be great and fun?  Just do me one favor, will you please?   Leave your phone in the car; unplug for a second and enjoy being human again. Let’s stop dogging each other electronically, what do you say? 

What is real is forever.  You don’t have to hover over it, breath down its neck or micromanage it.  What is, IS.  The magic of technology has allowed me to be in more constant contact with beloveds who are scattered across the land, but it hasn’t changed the nature of the connection.  When you are face-to-face with the truth, it is undeniable, palpable and unchanging.  Put down your phone and look into another person’s eyes.  If you see something there, it will always be there, waiting for you to put your attention on it again.