Written Along the Way

This idea about what soul fitness means makes perfect and total sense to me.

Christmas is complicated. It’s fun but it comes with expectations. We look forward to it and build it up but then it’s over quickly. We get to see family but we have to see family. Sometimes that’s a drag or at least a lot of driving. And what the capitalist consumer driven society we inhabit has turned Christmas into is sad and ugly.

Speaking of the sad, ugly consumer driven society we exist in, if you work retail you see the level of waste. For every holiday, tons of crap is delivered to every store. But more and more I see a lot left on the shelves after the holiday. At first I wondered if people had finally gotten sick of this constant cycle of consuming but then it occurred to me that there’s just so many stores and other outlets to get this crap now and that’s why there’s so much left over everywhere. A lot of that leftover crap just gets thrown out. Yes, the crap that doesn’t sell gets thrown away. What an abominable waste of our resources. We live in a country where many people don’t have enough to eat and don’t have affordable healthcare but we are allocating our resources to produce a bunch of crap that no one wants and then it gets thrown out when it sits on the store shelves too long.

I’m sure I sound like a grumpy old man but shit’s just not the same as it was. Certainly, some things change for the better over time but you know that’s not what I was talking about. The general vibe now is resignation. It didn’t used to be like that. Yes, our country and culture has always been fucked up. But, in my experience, when dealing with a business, there used to be more accountability. People used to actually try to solve a customer’s problem but now the customer is really at the mercy of a company that’s so big that there’s rarely anyone to deal with who has any power to provide real help. Even if they know the policies of the company are stupid, they can’t do anything. We opened a box on Christmas that had been purchased about a month before. It was an electronic item and the box did not have the power cord in it. The representative for the company stated that they could do nothing because of the age of the product. It is common to buy a Christmas present ahead of time. This is not a surprising situation. I know that this is where we are now but I was still surprised that this company wouldn’t do anything at all. What’s the big deal? Do they really think that we’d call them just to get an extra power cord for free? They cost $6. The guy on the phone said he understood how we were feeling and he sounded like he meant it but that’s it. That’s all that was going to happen. He couldn’t do shit and his supervisor couldn’t do shit and the people who could do anything don’t fucking care about you, me, or their employees. They care about buying another yacht. Resignation. The employees know that the company they work for sucks and doesn’t care about them or their customers. We, as customers, know that the company we are purchasing from sucks and doesn’t care about us or their employees. The company was Dell, by the way. The vendor, Best Buy, was equally awful. 

We live in a modern day feudal system. See above.

December/January is a great time of year for sunrises. The Sun is rising so late that it’s easy to catch a sunrise. Watching a sunrise is an awe-inspiring experience. It is a direct line to Reality. Not the make believe nonsense we are surrounded with and our mind is cluttered with regularly, but the real Reality.

Gratitude. It does a body good.

Resistance is futile. It just causes us pain. I’m going into 2024 focusing on accepting what’s in front of me.

We all have to deal with people that we don’t particularly enjoy, right? The other side of the coin is that they might not enjoy dealing with us either. I know that there are people out there who don’t like dealing with me and they think I’m a jerk. Please, my three loyal readers, stay calm. It’s true. There are people in the world who dislike me. It’s ok. Just like it’s ok that there are people that I don’t really enjoy dealing with. Why do we get so hung up on stuff like that? It really doesn’t matter at all. We’re all just doing our own thing. We gotta deal with each other when we gotta and then we just go back to our lives. It’s ok that we aren’t all in love with each other.

I am feeling the nostalgia of youth and of my children’s younger days. I am nostalgic for them sitting on my lap when we watch a movie. That will never happen again. I am keenly aware that the window of time is closing with my kids. I have always been aware of these types of windows in time. Being raised by my grandparents, instead of my parents, did it. They were a generation older. Kids can see their parents as immortal but when your grandparents are raising you, even when they’re healthy and strong, there is no illusion about their age and where they are in their journey. We can complain about time passing and these windows closing but that isn’t helpful. It’s better to just keep an awareness of these passing stages and live each one fully.

All of a sudden there’s just less time with your kids. It is the flip of a switch not a slow transition. They are in school and you work. If they do any other activities, those activities take place in the afternoons and evenings after school (and weekends). That’s time when you could be hanging out with them. By the time the activities are over, it’s time to wrap up the day and get ready for the next day. We go from hanging out and playing with our kids to mostly just seeing them as we drive them to their own activities.

We move on from Christmas so quickly. For some people it’s back to work and the regularness of our routines the very next day. There’s room for so much emotion around Christmas and the end of one year and the beginning of another. Where we live, the darkness and the weather play a role in it too. Lots of darkness and downtime. Christmas is a different kind of holiday. It comes at us with more depth. We have feelings about it that stick with us from our childhoods but there’s the reality of how it’s not the same as an adult. There’s nostalgia. And even if you aren’t a New Year’s Resolution person, the end of one year and beginning of another is a normal time to reassess, reevaluate, and regroup. There’s a lot going on this time of year and it feels like when we return to the normal routine too quickly we miss the opportunity for reflection.

Staring at phones is just a different version of an old thing. Being able to take our phones with us all the time is what compounds it but we’ve been staring at screens for decades. How many times did you come home from school as a kid and just sit your ass in front of the TV and watch cartoons? How about Saturday mornings? We were being lazy and isolated and antisocial back then. It’s just worse and weirder with phones. Not just because of their portability but because it’s not just a TV show. It’s movies, music, games, internet. We all do it. I don’t watch a lot of TV but I do love sports. But how many games do we need to watch? How humans spend their downtime is weird. What were people doing before TV? Did we play more games together? Did we hang out with each other more? I don’t think staring at a screen counts as living. It’s sitting on the sideline.

No one can grieve for you. I know a few people dealing with loss right now. They’re on different timelines and probably in different stages of the process. I’ve expressed my condolences. I still think about them and what they’re going through. But I don’t reach out to them every time that I think of them. You need room to grieve. You need time to deal with the business of someone dying. If we reached out every time we think of someone, in that situation, it would be too much. I know it feels good to be supported but you don’t always want to be thinking about it. If we’re constantly reaching out then we become a distraction and maybe even an annoyance. There’s gotta be some sweet spot where we check in from time to time to make sure everything is ok while still giving enough space for them to be able to move through the process. Often, I handle my own emotions and losses better than other people’s losses. When I’m the one dealing with it, I have to be able to still function and take care of my business. But when it’s someone else, I can feel pretty bad for them. We know what it feels like to experience a loss and it sucks for someone we care about to suffer. Then I end up feeling stupid for being so upset about something that doesn’t even really affect me. Whatever we do or don’t do, no one can grieve for you. That’s your journey to take.

My god is the Sun. It feels a little cheesy to write that because it’s the name of a song but it’s true so I’m sticking with it. I totally understand why people have worshipped the Sun as a god. The Sun provides us with light and warmth making life possible. Even on cloudy days, the Sun is there behind the clouds still brightening the darkness. And if that isn’t enough, the Sun is the most reliable thing in our lives. It is always there, returning to us every morning to start a brand new day.

That’s the part that gets me. The never ending series of new beginnings. People say that America is the land of second chances, whatever that means, but every day is a new chance. I’ve already had thousands of them. Whether you are there to bear witness or not, the Sun will rise.

The constant repetition of new days has two sides. The repetition can feel monotonous. Whatever problems, anxieties, and miseries we ended the previous day with will still be there to be endured in the morning. Each sunrise brings a new day but not necessarily a clean slate. But another chance isn’t the same thing as a clean slate. A clean slate is boring and too easy. Another chance gives us something to sink our teeth into and the opportunity to grow.

Each new day also brings more beauty, more joy, laughs, and smiles. This life is magical. The fact that we exist at all is difficult to fathom. No amount of science can explain away the magic of our existence. Knowing that the Earth is rotating while revolving around the Sun doesn’t make the sunrise less magical. It’s still powerful to experience. 

Even when the sunrise brings a new day that still contains the anxiety, grief, or problems of the day before I still find myself in awe. Our existence is awe-inspiring. Our minds’ constant onslaught of thoughts and worries distracts us and aims our attention at the noise. Beyond and underneath the noise, the unbelievableness and awesomeness of our existence is always there. Witnessing the sunrise is tuning into the awe and the magic. It can not be denied in that moment. Pause to be alive. Pause to notice your aliveness and recognize the magic of it. 

We are in a tough spot. We are inundated with news of despair, violence and hate. We are intentionally mislead and divided by the greedy. It’s easy to feel lost, to wonder what we can do. But most of what we read about or hear about is out of our control. 

That realization could make us feel more lost or even helpless. But the truth is that we do have control over our choices, our actions, and how we live our lives. Despite all the miserableness currently in our world, we still get to choose how we live our lives.

We often think that what we do is so small that it won’t make a difference. That is false. This morning I was in my front yard, with my dog, when a neighbor drove by. She is more than a neighbor. She’s a friend. She stopped, rolled down her window, and said that she was sorry to hear that my Great Aunt had died. 

That was completely unexpected. And it was such a small, simple thing. But its impact wasn’t small. It was quite meaningful to me. 

Too many times I’ve wondered how to help someone. How to make them feel better or how to do something meaningful for them in a difficult time. It usually feels like there’s nothing I could do to make a difference. How can I say or do something that will make a difference in the midst of their grief or hardship?

When my mother died, a few of my friends came to the funeral. They didn’t know my mother. I understood that they were coming for me but it wasn’t until we were all there that I understood how impactful it was for them to be there. Before that moment, I thought it was nice of them but I was consumed with my grief and with details. I didn’t think it would really matter to me that they were there. I was so wrong (that list keeps getting longer). I will never forget that they were there and I will never stop being grateful for it. 

They did not change my grief. But I felt supported. It sounds so silly but I don’t know how else to say it. What a powerful thing our presence can be. Just carving out the time in their schedules to show up. I’m still thinking about it. It’s not an exaggeration to say that it changed my life. 

We can do great things with our little lives. We can’t take away grief or undo what is troubling someone but we can let them know that we understand. We can acknowledge their pain and acknowledge that what they’re going through is real. We can say that we care. We can be present. 

It doesn’t matter that we can’t take away someone’s pain. What we do have to offer is so plain and simple that it matters.   

Don’t give in to despair. Don’t be immobilized by the headlines. Don’t believe that what you have to offer isn’t enough. It’s so easy to positively impact someone’s life.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing. It can be even harder to say nothing.

Perspective is hard to gain but easy to lose.

Nothing makes you feel worse than parenting. It’s the best ego destroyer available, even better than marriage. To all the Zen monks in their monasteries: You want to destroy your ego? Try parenting.

The shit that makes us miserable is what keeps us alive. Do you ever think about that when you hear about a celebrity suicide? If that person’s kids weren’t already financially set for life do you think they would have killed themselves? As selfish as we can be as humans, it’s our responsibility to our loved ones that keeps us going in our darkest, most desperate moments. If I didn’t have to have a full time job I’d probably be a drunk. If I had plenty of money and no job to go to…yeah, I’d be drinking. It’s the ongoing “musts” that we complain about that keep us alive.

At some point in our lives will we get to a place where the details of whatever it is that we’re dealing with or feeling miserable about don’t even matter anymore? There’s always going to be something to deal with. Shouldn’t we be able to stop complaining, or at least minimize the complaining, and stop having so many feelings about every little thing and just handle what’s in front of us with some grace?

I was texting with a friend about a difficult week. Difficulties at home and at work. Parenting stuff and just being completely overwhelmed at work and knowing that the company is greedy and soulless. My friend replied that it sounded like a perfect storm. Then he said enjoy it. But the enjoyment part was referring to a beer he was going to drop off. He texted back to clarify that. “Enjoy the beer not the storm.” But being able to enjoy the storm is the secret to life. It’s not a natural way to look at it for most of us. And it takes a lot of effort and practice to be able to do it. Maybe most of us will never get all the way there but we can move the needle and change the way that we perceive the storms in our lives. Even being able to realize, while we are in a storm, that we’re going to get through it and that we can learn and grow and change from what happens in the storm is a big shift. Acknowledging to ourselves, while we’re struggling in a storm, that these are the moments that we learn from is not the same thing as enjoying the storm but it’s a turn away from just suffering. It’s all the cliche stuff about enjoying the journey and the obstacle is the path. Easier said than done, but our lives will be filled with storms. When it rains we get wet. Better to accept that than to be miserable about it.

It’s surprising how many adults don’t know the different between a tablet and a capsule.

Something I think to myself a lot when I’m talking to other humans: “I’m confused that you’re confused.”

A little something that’s occurred to me recently is that it might be more difficult to handle several small stressors than it is to handle one big stressor. And maybe that’s not exactly right. Maybe it’s not more difficult. Maybe it’s equally difficult in a different way and it feels more difficult because we perceive that smaller stressors should be easier. But when there’s several small ones, it’s not easier. With one large stressor our attention can be focused. We can even get pumped up for it. And if we can get a moment to put that stressor aside then we might get a brief reprieve and be able to let go. But with several small stressors, there is no break. If you stop thinking about one thing, you don’t get a break, you just move on to another stressor and you just keep cycling from one stressor to another. It’s exhausting.

When someone asks how you’re doing and you say “ok” it doesn’t mean that things are easy. “Ok” doesn’t mean easy. Being able to carry the load doesn’t mean that the load is light.

“I like how monarch butterflies look like leaves falling in autumn”, said my daughter.

If you’re fully open to the moment, how can you not be overwhelmed by emotion?

People don’t want to be corrected. People would rather just go along continuing to be wrong than to have someone correct them. (Yes it’s a big generalization but I still think it’s mostly true)

The difference between a reason and an excuse is whether or not it’s under your control.

This is not mine. I can’t remember where I read it but I really like it. “I always thought it would make a sound when you hit rock bottom, apparently not.”

Are we not doing things for fear of messing up? What if we did mess up? Would it even really matter?

It’s more important to know what day of the week it is than to know the date.

Who holds the CEO and executive board of a big company accountable? And don’t tell me it’s the shareholders because their interests are selfish. As an employee, I get held accountable for my performance. I even get held accountable for nonsense. I get emails asking why my team hasn’t completed a training yet, but the training’s due date will still be four weeks away. So let’s sort this out. The CEO and executive board give themselves millions of dollars in bonuses annually while the equipment the company uses keeps breaking, the software is outdated, there’s not enough staffing in many locations and they “can’t afford” to give employees pensions. This only makes sense if you’re the one getting the millions of dollars in bonuses.

Fuck you leukemia. No one likes you.

This life is horrible and makes no sense. I know that life and death are two sides of the same coin but why do some people have to suffer so much? This life is like the blooms on the lilies all around my yard. They are beautiful bursts of color perfectly shaped, but they are short lived. The petals whither, die, and fall off. This life’s cruelty makes me so angry but the anger quickly gives way to a deep sadness. No god that I can worship would participate in or allow this kind of blind cruelty. The only lesson I can take from it is to grab joy at any and every opportunity. Even in the midst of our darkest misery try to see the wondrous beauty that is existing simultaneously with the horror.

I am a patriot. I love this country. It’s a disappointing mess ruled by greed and discrimination but built into its foundation is room for hope and change. Living in the town that hosts the oldest 4th of July parade in the country is great. The 4th of July celebration reminds me of senior week in college. Those few days between the end of classes and graduation were filled with parties and friends every night. The 4th of July celebration has concerts every night, the orange crate derby, fireworks, a parade, a tennis tournament, and so many other events. All those events include spending time with friends. It’s a time outside of our normal reality. We don’t usually get to spend day after day with our friends. We’re too busy with work and other obligations.

It’s hard not to eat ice cream in the summer and it’s easy to drink too many beers on a hot summer afternoon after mowing the lawn. 

I am highly entertained by musicians who make funny faces while they play their instruments. And while we’re talking about it, music is art in action. If you read a book or a poem or look at a painting, the work has already been done. The music was written without an audience but the performance of the music is a living thing existing for that moment in front of the audience. 

I still love that summertime is baseball season.

There is no good and bad. There are only ups, downs, twists and turns that require a mindful navigator.

We don’t often see things this way but we can frame our interactions with the world and other people differently. I play tennis with a guy who can be a jerk. He likes to compliment his shots and laugh at or point out other’s misses. A few weeks ago he continued to hit high looping balls over the net to me and I continued to try to smash an overhead shot back. I kept missing. After a few of these exchanges, he laughed and said something about how he was luring me into those errors with his high shots. I didn’t respond. I wasn’t surprised by his point of view. But I saw it differently. We weren’t playing in a tournament or in a league match. There was nothing at stake. It was just practice. I am capable of hitting those overhead shots well. I’m capable of hitting a lot of shots on the court well, but the percentage of time that I actually do it is low. To me, he wasn’t luring me in, he was giving me chances to practice that overhead shot. Why I am telling you this? As parents we deal with repetitive behavior from our kids. And sometimes we adjust and handle it better as we repeat the cycle but sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we get frustrated that we’re in the same situation over and over again and it makes it even more difficult to keep our emotions in check and to handle it well. But what if we saw these behaviors from our kids like high lobs coming over the net in tennis? It’s just a chance for us to practice that shot. Damn, that changes things. To take this tennis analogy one step further…a big thing in tennis is to be able to leave the previous point in the past and move on to the next point. If you’re still feeling frustrated from the last point or down on yourself for making a mistake then you aren’t fully focused on the point that is about to be played. Any interaction with other people throughout our day that is annoying, frustrating or negative in any way can be like this. We wonder why someone said what they said or thought what they thought. We tell the story to the friend we see next or we go back to our coworker and complain about how the person acted. But what if we treated all these interactions like a point in a tennis match? What if we just immediately dropped it and created a blank slate to start the next interaction? We would feel better. The residual negative emotions from all these interactions would no longer be piling up on us. We’d be starting fresh every time instead and at the end of the day we’d probably feel lighter and less tired because we wouldn’t be carrying around that pile of negativity and frustration all day long.

“We’re living and working thru the collapse of an empire.” -AB That feels like an accurate statement to me. Anyone who works for a big company knows what a shit show these companies are. They don’t care about their customers or their employees. The CEO and executive board care about maximizing their bonuses and keeping the shareholders happy. Fun fact: Shareholders don’t give a shit about the company in any real way. They just want the stock price to go up or the dividend yield to go up. Letting their opinion determine how a company is run is a recipe for disaster. And how about the country in general? Have you looked at any headlines lately? It feels like the Earth is fighting back against us dumb humans trying to eliminate us. The news and media outlets haven’t been interested in serving the public by providing facts and information for a long time. They are interested in clicks and ratings. They show us the extremes of human behavior and the extremes of social/political ideologies. Those extremes, on both sides, are scary. It appears that no one with any power, whether it’s political power, monetary power or media power, cares about anything but their own selfish agendas. We’re in a predicament. We have access to so much information and we can see the facts laid before us. It doesn’t seem like a big exaggeration to conclude that we are speeding toward Armageddon. But we are mostly powerless. It’s like being a citizen of the Roman Empire. Who cares about the drama among leadership in Rome when it’s so removed from what matters in our daily lives? Their bullshit seems so meaningless and unimportant. And most of our “leaders” aren’t likable, believable, or trustworthy. So, we are simultaneously spectators and participants in the collapse of the American Empire but we have no real power to prevent the collapse.

but our show began with karma as well. I got a random email months ago telling me that I had access to a presale for Taylor Swift. One of our credit cards was a sponsor of the tour. I didn’t think too hard about how many other people must have also received that email. I just shot out a text to a bunch of guys I’m friends with asking if they had a kid who’d be interested. Surprisingly, only one said yes and he had access to a presale too. 

He’d seen T. Swift with his daughter on the last tour. As a previous attendee he got invited to an earlier presale than mine. By now, even if you don’t care for T. Swift, you are likely aware of the difficulties that arose with the ticket purchasing experience. As it turned out, we would not have been able to purchase any tickets with my presale. But my friend got tickets. Two for us and three for them. He was planning to bring his eighth grade daughter and one of her friends. I would tag along with my fifth grade daughter. I was scheduled to work that day but that was just a detail to be sorted out. 

Getting the tickets should have been the hard part but there were two big twists still to come. The twists are a story of their own so for now we’ll just stick to the impact of those twists. My daughter had to be sixty miles away in a different direction at 7:45am on the morning of the concert. My friend’s daughter would not be able to attend at all. 

New plan: my daughter and I would be up at 5am, on the road at 6am and then have to get it together later to get to the concert. The other three tickets would still include the friend who was in on the original plan plus two other eighth graders (without another adult). Of these three young women, I only knew one and not well. In fact, it had been years since I’d seen her although I still considered her parents as friends.

As the concert date approached the other parents began to have thoughts about their daughters making their way through the crowd of 65,000 people into and out of the concert. (You see where this is going?) I was asked to step up. But we already had a long day and we weren’t sure when we’d be able to get to the stadium even though we hoped to get there early. Not everyone shows up to a concert at the same time but everyone leaves at the same time. The bigger crowd and bigger chaos would be after the show. I’d be able to help with that. 

Fast forward. We got to the show later than we would have liked but still well before Taylor Swift took the stage. Our three young lady neighbors were in their seats when we arrived. It was raining. And it kept raining. There were lulls and even when it was raining hard it wasn’t a true downpour. Until the last couple of songs. It really started to come down near the end of the show. By the end, no one was dry. 

I hadn’t talked to our three companions much. I wasn’t sure if they were even told that I’d be walking them to their pickup car. I didn’t know two of them at all and the third I barely knew. I thought I’d introduce myself to them when we got there but they were their own group of three and didn’t seem interested in us. My daughter and I were tired, arriving later than we’d hoped and it was already raining. I didn’t want to intrude on the independent adventure of the other girls either. Looking back on it, they are eighth graders and I am an adult man that they didn’t know. It was really on me to break the ice and I probably should have just introduced myself. But it was ok. They had their night out on their own without me bothering them. 

When the concert ended, I just said to the girl I knew that I told her mom that I’d make sure they got to the car. No big deal. We walked down the stairs together then down the ramps with the mass of other people. A few times it took a little effort to stay together but it was pretty easy. When we were out of the stadium but close enough to it that we were still in the midst of a big crowd, one of the girls I didn’t know stopped, looked around, and said “Where’s Shawn?”. I was right behind her where I was supposed to be. 

That was the moment. They did know that the plan was for me to walk with them and as much as they may have enjoyed going to the concert on their own, when they were tired, at the end of the night, walking in the rain, through that crowd, not really knowing where they were going, they wanted to have an adult with them. I was glad I was there. 

After we found their ride, my daughter and I still had to get back to our vehicle. As we got closer to where we had parked, we were rewarded with the sound of frogs. There were little ponds from the collected run off of the parking lots. We had parked on the end of the last row in the lot. I thought it would be easy to get out but they had wood barriers blocking the way to the road I came in on so I would have to go all the way through the parking lot. We were not first. We were last. 

The road that was blocked to me went through the middle of what was two lots and kept going beyond our last row of cars. When we parked, there were two police vehicles stopping cars from going any farther down the road beyond the parking lots. I asked one of the officers if that road would be opened and we’d be able to sneak out after the concert. He said it was a new road and he didn’t know but he thought they’d make us go back out the way we came in. And that’s what we found as we walked back up that road at the end of the night. The two police vehicles were still blocking the road and the barriers were blocking me from accessing that road anyway.

Cars were already lined up just sitting amidst the parked cars not going anywhere. We had to deal with ourselves being soaked and trying to get more comfortable. My daughter fell asleep quickly in the back seat and I was prepared to just sit for an hour or two. But after a few minutes the police vehicles left. And a few minutes later a little cart with parking employees moved those wooden barriers that were right next to me blocking my way out and they exited down the road that the police had been blocking. That was it. I started the engine and took off. Our windows were all fogged up but I wanted to escape before everyone else noticed that this back exit had opened up.

My excitement ended quickly as I didn’t get very far before stopping and turning off the engine behind a line of other cars. But from the time I sat behind the wheel of my truck expecting to wait forever to the time I pulled out on the main road was only 50 to 60 minutes. 

So, we had a little karma of our own. By trying to share my presale with others I ended up in an even better presale and that’s how we got tickets. Then at the end of the night, if we had gone straight back to our vehicle maybe I would have been tempted to pull out of our parking spot and get into what would have appeared to be a shorter line to leave. I would have been stuck in that line and missed the escape out of the back of the parking lot that opened up later.

I got to bed at 3am but still had to work that morning. No surprise that I left for work later than I should have. Pulling out of the driveway I noticed a white iris blooming. This iris comes up every year but rarely blooms. It wasn’t blooming when we left at 6am the day before. All that rain woke it up. Then on the main road to the bridge out of town I would have been speeding to get to work but the driver of the white SUV in front of me kept us at the speed limit. The police were waiting in one of their usual spots. I would’ve been pulled over if that SUV wasn’t in front of me. 

One more thing. Since we didn’t get to the concert early, we missed out on people exchanging the friendship bracelets they’d made. My daughter didn’t know about that tradition early enough to make any bracelets but I’d hoped she’d receive a bracelet at the show. We got to our seats and had totally forgotten about that and realized later that we missed our chance. But at some point in the show, the person behind my daughter in section 315 row 15 tapped her on the shoulder and gave her a bracelet. Thank you to that Swiftie for your generosity. I expect that karma will come back around for you too.

There is a fundamental flaw in a society that loves an imaginary right more than the lives of its citizens. 

This is the Second Amendment: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. The first thing it states is “a well regulated Militia”. “Well regulated”, not a free for all.

There is also a longer history of gun control in our country than anyone now seems to remember. The propaganda about gun rights ignores the truth of the past.

Many of the same people who are banning abortion in their quest to protect life are also opposing gun control. How do they decide which lives to protect? Only the ones that are convenient for them perhaps.

My inability to find time and headspace to further develop any of the thoughts and ideas I have continues. I have recently diagnosed the cause of this but it is not within my power to change it. In the meantime, here are some quick hits.

There are some problems and situations that we can’t really help other people with. They have to help themselves.

Some things we encounter in life are hard to handle. They are even harder to accept, but when we do accept them they become less hard to handle. 

Accepting something does not mean that we suddenly like it. It does not mean that this thing doesn’t still suck or that it won’t still be hard. Maybe incredibly hard. Accepting means that we see things for what they are. We are no longer surprised by it, we are no longer asking “why?” or telling ourselves that things shouldn’t be this way. Accepting means we see what’s in front of us and deal with it without all that extra emotion and baggage. We may still suffer but we will suffer less than we would if we continued to resist it.

I just saw a little video clip where this guy is explaining that our brain doesn’t understand negatives. His example: “Don’t think of an elephant.” You just thought of an elephant, right? His second example was telling someone skiing through the trees not to hit a tree. All the skier will see is the trees. But if you say to look for the path & follow the snow, then instead of looking for trees the skier is looking for the path through the trees. He took this further by saying that if we are focused on obstacles in our lives we will only see obstacles. But if we are focused on the path then we will see the way around those obstacles.

I have discovered that the special gift of middle age is that even when there is no major stressor in our life we can still feel an underlying stress. Middle age has it all: job, kids, spouse/significant other, maybe health problems or money issues, maybe aging parents. So even when there’s not one big thing to be stressed about, there’s still an undercurrent of stress. 

It seems like people gravitate to one extreme or the other but there’s always so much room in the middle. If we tried I bet we could find a place somewhere in the middle where we’d both be comfortable enough.

Time does not operate the way we’ve been told. I wonder if there is any past or future at all or if it’s all just happening at once.

If we stay comfortable and never bump up against our limits or push past our limits, then we aren’t going to learn or grow too much. It might even be boring. The hardest moments, when we feel like we have nothing left and we may not even know what to do, are the moments where the treasure is buried. But you’ve gotta dig to find that treasure.

In our lives, if we wait for a moment of calmness, if we wait to have everything crossed off our to do list, if we wait until everything is in its place, we will always be waiting. We have to create the eye of the storm. 

I am not a collector. I don’t like “stuff”. But it’s good to be a people collector. Instead of leaving people behind as we move from one place to another, one job to another, one phase of our life to another, we should instead add people to our collection. Keep that collection growing. It takes a little effort to add someone to your collection. It doesn’t just happen. It’s worth the effort. 

Postcards are an easy, fun way to stay in touch with the people you’ve collected.

Is there any relationship more complicated, complex, heavy, twisted up on itself and potent than the parent-child relationship?

Feeling good for a moment can happen on its own. We may receive a gift, get good news or be at a fun event with friends. But to feel good for longer, to have a sustained feeling of good through our lives requires cultivation. It is created by the way we live from day to day and all the little choices we make. We all know what we need to do. Get enough sleep, eat well, be physically active, spend time with friends, and have a way to calm our minds and deal with stress like meditation or prayer. 

If you treat someone decently they are likely to treat you decently in return. If you are adversarial…

🤙🏼

It’s so easy to be swept away and carried along through life. We are distracted and over-scheduled. We are detached from real life by screens and notifications. We are separated from the real world by where we spend our time: climate controlled building to climate controlled vehicle into another climate controlled building.

It takes an effort to pause and notice where we are, what we’re doing or even who we are. Is who we are something that we are actively aware of and steering or is who we are just another thing that’s happening to us? Another product of being swept away and carried along?

That’s fucked up. But if we just let life happen to us then who we are is more about these external forces and distractions than it is about what we really want and how we really want to live. If we aren’t noticing where we are and how we are acting and what we are doing then every moment just becomes a white noise filled blur. We look back and wonder how we got here.

That protective plastic film that comes on our new watch or new screen is supposed to be peeled off. If we don’t consciously engage in the moment in which we are living our autopilot will take over for us. But our autopilot is like that plastic film. We are supposed to turn off autopilot and engage with our life. 

At any moment during the day we can come back to our breath to reset, to become aware and in touch with the present moment.  We can pause. When we pause we can remind ourselves that we are choosing the life we are living. We choose every moment over and over again. By not consciously choosing we are giving up our chance to direct our lives. When we come back to our breath we can ask ourselves what life do I want to live? Do I want to be positive and happy? In that second, we can regroup and change course. It doesn’t matter what happened in the second before.

That’s something we get hung up on. We think that it does matter what happened in the second before. If we do try to tune in and take back the controls from our autopilot, we become stuck or hindered by what has already happened or what we’ve already done. But that’s over now. You can change course at any moment.

Every moment, all day long, everyday, day after day, we can choose our life and who we are. If we do not, life will still go on and we will fumble along on autopilot. But if we want to be who we want to be and be engaged in our life then we have to wake up and pay attention. All the noise and details we are often paying attention to are actually distractions from what we should be paying attention to.