Written Along the Way

There’s no new ground being covered here. It’s really just an admission of guilt. As we get older and have more experience, we’re supposed to be learning, but we also forget things that we’ve already learned.

How do you feel about driving around running errands dealing with people? Do you think it’s a pain in the ass or is it fun for you? I think it’s a pain in the ass. I usually feel like I’m in a rush even if I’m not. I guess I’m just trying to get through the errands as quickly as possible so that I can be done with them. It’s a pretend rush that I’ve created.

Way back, in some other lifetime, I used to think of these sorts of things as adventures. Every time I left the house, I’d tell myself I was going on an adventure. That was more fun. And I don’t remember always feeling rushed either. Just that sense of being in a rush creates an unpleasant edge. 

A few weeks ago, on a day off, the kids were at school and my wife had her own things to do so I ran a few errands. The way it all played out got me thinking about all of this. After breakfast that day, I went out to run my errands. As I’ve said, I usually don’t love that sort of thing but I don’t usually dread it either. It’s just something that’s got to be done. But this time, I found the whole experience to be pretty chill. Since no one was home and I didn’t have any particular time that I needed to be anywhere, I just enjoyed the pace that was given to me.

First, I went to my eye doctor’s office to get my PD measurement done. That’s a whole other story…but the experience at the office was pleasant and I got the information I needed.

When I left there, I went to the Post Office to mail a package. I also had to pay taxes at the Town Hall, so I parked between them. I had to wait in line at the Post Office. I saw someone I knew already being helped, at the counter, when I got in line. I got to observe several other interactions with people who knew each other while I was waiting in line. I enjoyed it. I noticed that I enjoyed it and I found it amusing that my wife feels the opposite about the small towness of the place we live.

After that I walked to the Town Hall. When I walked inside there was another line. I’d never waited in line before to pay taxes, but this time there was already several people waiting. Our neighbor works at the front desk so I got to talk to her. It turned out to be the last day to pay the quarter’s taxes. Earlier in the day, when I remembered that I hadn’t paid our taxes yet, I thought I was late, but I was just in time. I usually pay earlier in the month so I hadn’t experienced the line before. 

But the line didn’t matter. I was just relaxing. 

Next stop was the grocery store for just a few things. Last stop was getting gas. 

The whole thing about knowing people everywhere and seeing people who knew each other was fun. It’s more fun than just being in proximity to so many other humans and not having any real interaction with them. It’s pretty easy for me to ignore people and just do my thing, but I realized that if I’m going to be out and about with people anyway, I might as well have some fun with them.

And the errand running was more enjoyable because of the way I perceived it as well. Not having any reason to be back home and not having any time constraints just put me totally at ease with whatever came up, whatever delay or just whatever. My attitude about always having to be someplace and not having enough time pushes me into grumpiness. By just rolling with what came up and treating it as an adventure the whole experience was so much more enjoyable. 

It seems like I should have already known this stuff, right? No Earth shattering revelations here. Here’s my admission of guilt. I did know this stuff but I forgot it and just happened to refigure it out by accident during these experiences I’ve just written about. So now what? How about we treat each day as a new adventure? How about we realize that our sense of always being in a rush is a self-imposed torture? How about we try to keep it light and have some fun with the other humans that we have to interact with anyway? 

Part of treating each new day as an adventure is being open to the unknown. It’s realizing that each new day is unknown; that’s what makes it an adventure! We create routines and schedules and familiarities to make us feel more secure. It helps us to believe that we have some control over our lives when really most of our lives is out of our control. We are living in chaos! It’s a fucked up world out there, people!

And this is how I tie my little story into what we are all experiencing right now: Coronamageddon. We are dealing with some extreme events right now. Because these events are extreme, they are thoroughly shaking up the routines and structures that we have created to feel in control of the chaos. Now we are faced with the reality that life is chaotic. We can’t hide from the chaos when it’s coming at us in the form of a contagious virus.

There are real reasons to be concerned right now. Concerns about our health, the health of our loved ones, our ability to pay our bills and so much more. I’m not going to downplay any of that and I’m not trying to say that those things are not real. But we still have to deal with it and we can still choose how we deal with it. Everything we are faced with in life is an opportunity. 

Right now the veil has been pulled back and we can see the confusion and lack of control that is really always present in our lives. We can freak out because we’d convinced ourselves that we have control or we can recognize that we never really had control and figure out how we’re going to get comfortable with that fact. 

Everyday is an adventure. Some parts are dull and boring. Some parts are exciting and thrilling. Some parts hurt and some parts feel good. Some parts are dangerous and some parts are comforting. We don’t get to pick which parts we want to experience. It’s all coming at us anyway. We can decide to accept and roll with it or we can freak out and get crazy. 

Coronamageddon is just our latest opportunity to admit to ourselves that we are not in control. I hope we embrace this opportunity to become adventurers and to become more comfortable with uncertainty.

Tonight (3/9/2020) is a full moon, I knew that but had forgotten or didn’t care. I was sitting in our kitchen with my daughter. We were working on her homework when she noticed it. She saw it through our kitchen window rising. I don’t remember what she said. Something about how big the moon looked. It was impressive. It wasn’t just how big it looked while low on the horizon. It was orange. I was struck by it and excited. We went out our back door to look. it wasn’t enough. We live four streets up the hill from a boat ramp. We go down there to see sunrises and to look at the moon every so often. This was going to be one of those times. I was wanting to get there so quickly that I didn’t even put sneakers on. I left in my slippers. When you see people out in stores with slippers and pajamas on…that is not me. I am the person who mocks the people who go out in public with slippers on. Tonight I drove down to the boat ramp with slippers on and got out to look at the orange full moon rising and to take pictures of it. The moon wasn’t orange in my pictures. I am not well enough equipped or skilled enough to get a picture that comes close to capturing how fabulous it was.

We didn’t drive straight home. We drove along the water and stopped again at another good spot. The moon was clearly orange and there were dark areas on the left side of it easily visible. I was going to take another picture but it seemed futile. I turned to the back seat and talked to my daughter about how moments like that were why we can’t live looking at our phones all the time. It’s fun to try to capture a picture when the moon looks so spectacular, but we were seeing it right there in that moment and that is living. 

A few hours later, I went again to the back door to check on the moon and its progress. It was higher in the sky. Maybe 20 or 25 degrees up from the ground. It was bright and round and there were clouds everywhere in the sky. It was still. The clouds weren’t moving. They were just hanging there and the bare tree branches stood out black in front of the clouds and the brightness of the moon. 

I was in awe of the moon and in awe of all of it and how it all works. We are on a planet that rotates and moves. The moon is moving with us and rotates and spins around us. It’s all so ridiculous. It’s also so much more real than most of what we deal with daily in our silly, little human lives. 

I am not in awe of our politics and politicians, of our petty bigotries or our greedy consumerism. We are little specks on the earth’s surface running back and forth, moving our little piles of things from one place to another place. 

The earth will spin without us. The moon rose tonight despite our viral worries. There will be no cancellations of celestial events. 

Some of us don’t agree with the President’s policies, but some of us do. For those of you that do agree with the policies, I’m not trying to tell you that your political beliefs or policy ideas are wrong. I’m not going to try to change your mind about any of that. But if you laugh when the President says something crass or attacks someone who disagrees with him, then I have a question. Do you want a leader or an entertainer? This is not a rhetorical question. Our media preys on our desire to be entertained so it’s important for us to realize that it’s happening. A comedian saying something extreme to get a response is doing his/her job, but the President’s job is much different. We should not be seeking entertainment from our President.

There are so many of us living in this country. We will never all agree. But here we are together. Is it better to create further division, mistrust, fear and even hatred between us or is it better to understand that while we can’t agree on everything, we are stuck here together and to try to get along peacefully?

Do you want to live in fear of your fellow citizens?

A President who treats his foes with contempt, who demeans and openly disrespects others, who sows the seeds of fear and fans the flames of anxiety is not a leader of all our citizens trying to help us live together. He is only a leader of the few whose own personal agendas are helped by the chaos and distraction that he creates.

Most of you laughing at the President’s jokes are not driving Lamborghinis. Take a moment to look up the net worth of your leaders and heroes. The President is laughing with you on camera, but he is laughing at you off camera, as he and his crew profit from these tactics of division and consolidate their power.

There’s a lot of noise out there. Most of us are living in a whirlwind. We have so many commitments for our time and for our attention. We are constantly being given new information. We have bills to pay, people to take care of, even fun to be had. We are bound by our schedule. Do we even have free time? I’ve written before about asking ourselves who we want to be, but how can we even remember who we are when we are bombarded by so much noise?

I picture us in the middle of a storm with the winds swirling all around us. The wind is loud and objects are being blown by us. It’s hard to keep our footing in this strong wind. It’s really all we can do to get one foot in front of the other, push forward and not get smashed by one of the objects getting blown around in the wind.

We’re even overwhelmed with good advice. Everywhere we look there’s an article or an app trying to help us get better. Pick any topic: nutrition, exercise, finances. Think about all the nutritional advice out there. We should drink enough water, drink tea and/or coffee for the antioxidants, eat fresh fruits and vegetables, eat enough whole grains and fiber, incorporate “super foods” into our diet and on and on. I can’t eat enough in a day to include all these recommendations. There’s even advice about how much and how often to eat. Is breakfast important or should we skip it? And what about exercise? How many different workouts can we fit into a week? I’ve got a job too, I’m not just killing time in between workouts. Instead of being helpful, all this advice can become more noise and add to the stress that we already feel. 

All the daily routine noise is enough to overload us, but there’s often more than just that going on. What if your child is sick? A fever of 104 is a big wind gust in your already stormy life. Or your car breaks down or you need a new furnace? These extras aren’t uncommon. We all have things like this pop up in our lives.

I can’t make the noise and the winds go away. I accept that I am surrounded by this whirlwind, but I want to become the calm in the storm like the face of Shiva Nataraja as he dances in the midst of fire. We’re all in the storm or dancing in a fire everyday but we’re probably not feeling that calm. 

When we are living in this wind storm, the noise of the wind diminishes our focus, blocking out our priorities. We see the storm instead of seeing our life. We can be swept away by the winds. What does it mean to “lose yourself”? It can mean that you are so into what you’re doing, in the moment, that it’s like you aren’t thinking at all. Athletes call it being in the zone. It can be the goal of meditation. To shrink or even destroy the ego because that is what separates us from the universal oneness. But it can also be used to describe something that probably none of us want. It can mean to lose our sense of self. To lose our idea of who we are or what we want out of live or where we’re headed. When we’re focused on the noise, we aren’t focused on who we are or who we want to be. We’re not really living our lives, we just moving from one obligation to the next.

Constantly stimulated, distracted, interrupted. It puts a ringing in our ears. It puts us in a constant state of excitement. It’s a surprise that we can even accomplish our daily tasks but to be able to take it to the next level and remember who we are and who we want to be and actively work toward being that person seems impossible. How do we block out the noise? How do we not lose ourselves? How many of us are just living our “to do” lists? I’m always thinking about what I need to do next. What I want to get done in the day. I’m not really awake in the moment if I’m focused on my mental list of things to accomplish in the day.

There has to be some regularly practiced way to ground ourselves in our own reality. A regularly practiced way to step away from that noise or hold it at bay long enough to find ourselves, to regroup, to look at our life without the filter of the noise. To see our life instead of just seeing all the distractions and obligations swirling around us.

I have known about meditation for years and it’s always seemed like a good idea to me but it’s only been recently that I’ve been able to make myself sit still to do it. Maybe it’s the insanity of being a middle aged parent that has caused the benefits of meditation to be able to lure me in. When I am just sitting with my breath, I am not stopping the winds that are swirling around me. I have not erased my time commitments or paid off all my bills or removed any of the other distractions and interruptions. All those things are still swirling around me, but in meditation, we can find the eye of the storm. It’s all still flying by us but we can find a place to sit with our breath and not feel the noise that’s still swirling around us. 

Instead of being picked up and thrown around by the wind, I’m sitting still watching the winds spin by. That shift of perspective is a tool to use when I step back into the storm. A tool that makes it possible to be a part of the spinning but still see past the spinning. Then, instead of being directed by the wind, I am choosing my path through the wind. 

A few evenings ago, I discovered that driving when I am following the directions of an app on a phone makes me anxious. I don’t think it started that evening. That’s just when I understood that it was happening. Driving along a route that I am unfamiliar with doesn’t necessarily make me anxious. It’s being at the mercy of an app, being at the mercy of that lady computer voice that makes me anxious.

I have driven many places without an app to guide me. I have driven long trips across several states and short trips through a town or to a spot in the woods without an app to guide me. I was less anxious about that. I remember a trip, in the spring of 1995, from Pennsylvania to Cape Fear, North Carolina. At one point, we realized that we were in West Virginia. We weren’t supposed to be in West Virginia. It wasn’t a big deal. We didn’t panic. We sorted it out and got back onto the correct route. 

There were a lot of things about this drive a few nights ago that were out of my normal. It started out with me driving through a city I’d never driven through while looking for a place I’d never been to. I was driving my wife’s vehicle, not mine. Once I ran this errand, at this place, I’d never been to, we were headed home but that would start out on a route I’d never taken.

I’ve driven her vehicle before. It’s called an SUV but it’s a car. It’s a unibody. It’s just a big car with all wheel drive. But it doesn’t drive big on the highway. It’s easy to maneuver and quick. It’s got one of those information touchscreens on the center console. I’m not sure that we’re better off with these screens. It’s fancy and it’s sci-fi, but it takes the driver’s eyes off the road longer than the old knobs and levers did. I needed the assistance of a co-pilot to help with defogging the windshield, etc. She was an excellent co-pilot. She even peeled back the aluminum foil from the wrap I ate for dinner so I could keep my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel. 

The vehicle didn’t make me anxious. The place I’d never been didn’t make me anxious. I went in alone and spoke to three different people who were all pleasant and polite. I got what I came for and more. It was a successful errand and I only have good things to say about it.

Seeing the map on the phone screen, having the touch screen center console, having the app ask me if I wanted to save eight minutes by changing the route mid-stream (Yes, I wanted to save eight minutes. We were already going to be arriving home past the kids’ bedtimes. I wanted those eight minutes.) are all very sci-fi, future is here now things. I always think of that stuff as being from Buck Rogers. It’s not Star Trek or Star Wars for me, it’s Buck Rogers (I wonder if I’d still like that show if I watched it now). We are living with the crazy gadgets of science fiction. 

The map app is not from the future. It’s not even a new thing anymore. But it still makes me anxious. 

Once we got to a road we knew, we turned the app off. We knew the way home, I had eaten my wrap, I was used to driving this vehicle again, and the kids might or might not have been asleep. Kid 1 was alseep. Kid 2 might have been in and out of sleep. Anxiety over. We were cruising. We had been listening to the Dead but I changed it up. I tried to listen to a couple of songs that were new by a couple of artists that I didn’t know. I was disappointed, but then we got a few good songs in a row: “Everybody Wants Some” by Van Halen, a demo version of “Young Lust” by Pink Floyd and a few songs later some live Led Zeppelin. Early Van Halen before 1984 is good. That started a good run of songs for us. 

But the anxiousness is what got me writing about this. Why the anxiousness? I used to have an idea of how I was going to get to where I was going before I left. Before I started the trip, I’d look at a map and check out the route. Maybe there’d be construction or a detour but I would still already have an idea in my head of which way to go. Now I’m lazy because of these apps so I have no idea where I’m headed or what to expect. And sometimes the apps are just wrong. They get confused and send me in the wrong direction. And it’s easy to miss a turn. The app calls a 90 degree turn a “slight right”. I think it was more enjoyable when I knew where I was going and I was just looking for road signs or the next marker or turn. Listening for the app voice to tell me what to do is more stressful.

Anyway, it was a good drive home. The anxiety only lasted as long as I was dependent upon the app and this time it didn’t steer me wrong.

Repetition. So much of life is repetition. Breathe in. Breathe out. All the daily routines from brushing our teeth and getting dressed to brushing our teeth again and going to bed at night. Over and over again. But when the repetition involves encounters with other people it wears me out. Having the same interaction with someone else over and over again is rough. I don’t have enough patience and perseverance to do it and feel good about it. 

This is especially true when dealing with my kids. Every single day, day after day, the same show of disrespect. The same show of not being able to think of anyone else’s feelings. That kind of repetition is grinding me. Each time my frustration mounts higher. Each time I have a little less patience for repeating the interaction. 

The mythology of Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down again is so perfect. He puts in the work to get the boulder up the hill only to feel the same frustration again as it rolls back down. No matter how I handle these bouts of disrespect from my children the result is the same. 

But there’s a more modern story about the repetitive nature of our lives that gives us more hope: the movie Groundhog Day. When I first saw the movie, I didn’t really like it. I was too young to appreciate what was really going on. The movie’s message isn’t about frustration and hopelessness like the story of Sisyphus. The movie’s message is that once we accept the repetitive nature of our existence, then we can free ourselves from the frustration and apply ourselves to being the best person we can be and apply ourselves to helping other people, who are still stuck and frustrated. That’s some powerful shit.

Today I had another version of the same conversation I’ve had with my daughter so many times before. She has long hair. She likes having long hair. However, she doesn’t like having it brushed. Snarls and tangles don’t feel good when they’re brushed out. I get it, but no one is making her have long hair. During today’s conversation, I told her that if she didn’t like having her hair brushed, she didn’t have to have long hair. She immediately started to escalate, thinking that I was threatening to cut her hair. Pause. No, I wasn’t threatening her, I was just trying to explain the reality of the situation to her. If every time her hair is brushed it hurts and she doesn’t like it, then what can she do to change this? Cut her hair. If having long hair is that important to her then she needs to accept that brushing it will hurt and handle it better. 

I was proud of my Dad skills there. I thought I had really explained something to her about facing a reality, accepting it and coming to terms with it. But, after a while, what I said started sinking into my brain too. Turns out, I am doing an equally horrible job, as my kids are doing, at accepting how things are. My son and I are stuck in a repetitive rut of his disrespect and my frustration, and I just explained the conversation with my daughter. So I am getting frustrated over and over again every time my son is disrespectful or my daughter is yelling about getting her hair brushed, even though I should expect these things. I have no reason to believe that these things will be any different yet I continue to get frustrated, upset, angry, worn out and every other negative emotion. Why? 

As a parent, this is a little murky. We should strive for our kids to learn how to handle things better and we should be trying to teach that. But for me to get frustrated every time, like I’ve described, is me not accepting things as they are. I can continue to try to teach them and guide them but why can’t I do that while accepting that their current behavior is going to continue? I’m not suggesting that I accept their behavior as ok. I’m saying that I could accept that their behavior is what it is and instead of thinking it’s going to be different next time, I could be prepared for it to be the same. 

If we’re expecting the punch to the face, does it hurt less? I don’t know but I’ve got nothing to lose. Will I have more patience and be less affected by their behavior if I expect it? Can I stay calmer and feel better and maybe even be a more effective teacher if I expect their behavior to be the same way it’s been?

While some of my frustration is about not accepting things as they are, some of it is also ego. My frustration is also about my belief that they should respect me because I am an adult and I am their parent. Some of my frustration is my dislike for having to deal with this behavior at all. Instead of it being about my need to be respected and my frustration about how the kids are acting, it could be about teaching them to be respectful and to handle themselves better. Ego is not helping here. Imagine if I didn’t react personally to these interactions. I wouldn’t be frustrated at all, I would just be doing my parenting job and moving on.

Accept things for what they are and destroy the ego. No problem.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

How much do you care how your lawn looks? How much time, effort, and money do you put into getting your lawn to look a certain way? Do you compare your lawn to your neighbors’ lawns? Are you annoyed if you have neighbors who don’t take care of their lawns? If you live in an apartment or condo, is not having to deal with a lawn, one of the reasons that you don’t live in a house?

The lawn is a big deal in America. People really care how their lawn looks and other people really care how your lawn looks. There are lots of people who don’t even use their lawn but still really care how it looks. The only time they’re on their lawn is when they’re taking care of it. 

We have a dog and kids so there are practical reasons for us to have a decent lawn. I don’t want to be wiping mud off the dog’s paws every time it’s wet outside. The kids play in the yard so it’s better to have grass to run on than just dirt or weeds. But my goal is for our lawn to be good enough. It’s a practical goal more than an aesthetic goal. 

We have tons of trees and some of them are oak trees. It’s takes a lot of time and energy to clean up all the leaves and acorns that fall off the trees. The acorns are a pain. If I didn’t clean them up they’d overtake the lawn making it hard for the grass to survive. They’re uncomfortable to walk on and the squirrels would be burying them all over the lawn making holes everywhere and digging up the grass. 

I don’t put that effort into our lawn so that it looks nice for other people. I don’t even put the effort in so that it looks nice for us. I put that effort in because we use the lawn. I would often rather be doing something else. I like being outside and I don’t mind the physicality of it but lawn care is usually not a lot of fun or my first choice of how to spend my free time. I try to do just enough work on the lawn to keep it good enough, but I’ll bet there are people who think I spend tons of time on the lawn or too much time on the lawn. Neighbors have mentioned our lawn to me. I assure them that it’s not perfect. It looks good from their side of the street but if they were really checking it out they’d see the bare spots and the weeds. They seem unconvinced. They think I’m being lawn modest. They think I am really into this American lawn thing and trying really hard to make it look like a golf course, but really I just want to have a useable lawn. 

 

What’s with all this lawn talk, you wonder? Our lawns are such a good analogy for anything and everything else in our lives. Every decision we make about how to spend our time or how to spend our money is a decision of one thing over another. We do not have unlimited time or money, so we always have to pick one thing at the expense of another. I have a certain amount of free time after work. How much time do I spend working on the lawn? How much time do I want to spend with the kids or doing some other thing? Can I do both? How much money is too much money to spend on fertilizer and weed killer for my lawn? Do I want to use all organic products or do I want to spread poison all over this lawn that surrounds the home I live in? 

Always choices. Always trade offs. Where do we put our priorities? Do we make something a priority because it really matters or do we just care what other people are going to think? Is this choice about appearance or is there a practical value to our choices? When we choose one thing, what other thing are we passing up?

I don’t care if you want your lawn to look good so that you’re the envy of your neighbors and I don’t care if you don’t take care of your lawn at all. I don’t care if you bought the expensive, uncomfortable pair of pants because they are stylish or if you bought the less expensive, comfy pants. We all have to sort out these choices, priorities, and trade offs, on our own, all day long, everyday.

I just think it’s super interesting. Last week, when I was out in my yard picking up acorns again (I’ve filled a 5 gallon bucket with acorns about a dozen times already this season), this whole idea just occurred to me. The trade offs. The idea of what our lawns represent to people and how people think about us and judge us based on our lawns. And then how all these lawn choices are just a microcosmic example of the prioritizing that we do all the time. I’m trying to get my kids to understand that every choice is choosing one thing over another. There isn’t enough time in the day to do everything. Every moment on lawn care is a moment away from something else. 

Even thinking about the motivation for our choices is interesting and our lawns are an especially good example of this because people do seem to care how lawns look even if they don’t use their lawn much or it’s not their own lawn. The part of this that’s about appearance and how other people see us, make how we feel about our lawns a great analogy. Why do we make the choices we make? Why are our priorities what they are? I’m curious about that and no matter what the whys are, it’s a lifelong project to balance all the trade offs. 

Ok, I know I’ve been slacking and haven’t been keeping up with my goal of one post per month. I’ll try to get another one up here this month to even it out.

I’ve written about not judging things that happen before. Maybe it’s good. Maybe it’s bad. How do we know how things are all going to flow together? And how is assigning a value to every little thing helping us on our journey anyway? Not judging each moment is really taking things as they come. These small shifts in perspective can have big results down the line. Is it an obstacle or is it a challenge? What’s the difference? Well, an obstacle just sounds like a pain in the ass, doesn’t it? But a challenge, while it is hard and requires effort to overcome, could still be fun.

I recently did one of those mud race obstacle course things with my daughter. We crawled through mud, carried rocks and climbed over a 6 foot wall. But we did it for fun. We really can have fun working our way through challenges.

After one of these posts, a friend of mine wrote to me about not seeing things as obstacles. I don’t remember exactly how I answered but it was something about how everything might not be good or bad but we can definitely tell if something is an obstacle or going to be hard to deal with. I was so stuck in seeing things as obstacles that I couldn’t see what he was trying to tell me. Getting away from judging everything as good or bad is a start, but I was still making a different kind of value judgement. 

I’ve been dealing with a moral challenge. I was given a piece of information that made me feel a lot of things. But, initially, I mostly felt confused. For the first time, in my adult life, I needed to reach out to another friend for help in how to handle a situation. The process has been ongoing. Speaking about it with this friend, again, on a second occasion, I was thinking how tired I was of talking and thinking about the whole thing. But, at the same time, I realized that part of me was enjoying the challenge of handling this moral dilemma. 

That  sounds a little weird, but what I’m trying to get at is the idea of just trying to enjoy what we’re being dealt. The past few weeks of my life would have been easier if I didn’t have this extra thing to think about and carry around with me. But I do. And the reason that it’s bothering me is because I care about the people involved. Realizing that is important too.

Maybe this whole obstacle/challenge thing is why I’ve always loved street skateboarding. I’m no good at it but I love watching people who are. They’re just skating along using the obstacles in their path as opportunities to do tricks and have fun. They are turning the obstacles into the fun part of the ride. That’s what made that run I did with my daughter fun too. If it wasn’t for the obstacles, it would have just been a boring run. 

If none of this made any sense, just go listen to “Take it as it Comes” by the Doors.

 A friend of mine died today or maybe last night. I’m so tired of people dying. I’m not tired of it. I guess I’m angry about it. And worn out by it. And definitely saddened by it. I am trying so hard to learn and grow and to keep getting better. Any of you reading this stuff know that. I’m pouring my guts out in these words so you know what I’m talking about. But I’m not getting any better at dealing with death. I can actually see the sadness that I feel from all these deaths. I picture it as a big pile and every time someone else I know dies another heap of sadness gets thrown onto the pile and the pile just keeps getting bigger. It’s just sitting there casting its shadow on me. 

It’s making me fucking sick.

I just don’t know what to do with myself. Crying doesn’t make my pile any smaller. Remembering all the good about these people, seeing their smiles, appreciating each fleeting moment even more every time someone dies doesn’t make getting the news that someone else has died any easier or any better. 

I’m sick of it. 

Some of you have read or heard before a story about a farmer and the events that happen to him that can be seen as good fortune or bad fortune. You can read a version of it here. 

The point of the story is that we can not know if something is good or bad when it happens. We do not know how events will continue to unfold.

I was recently reminded of this story and I made a smart ass reply that things may not be good or bad but I know when things are hard or easy. My smart assness stuck with me and as I continued to think about my reply over the next day or two, it struck me that assigning any type of value to events gets in our way of experiencing what is happening and what may happen. By placing a value on an event, even just thinking that something is going to be difficult or easy, we are creating a filter through which we will see that event. These filters, that we create, put space between us and each moment. Instead of being fully present with what is happening in our lives, we are separate from these moments because of these filters. What we are experiencing and seeing is changed because of these filters.

Here’s my own little version of the good/bad valuation game that we play with ourselves everyday.

Recently, at my work, our hours of operation have been cut……………bad?

As the manager, I did not lose any hours so I keep the same pay……good?

But I will have to work twice as many 12 hour shifts…………….…………bad?

But, my other shifts will be shorter. Only 5 or 6 hours………….……..…good?

It’s turning out to be difficult to get my work done on the short shift…bad?

I don’t often open after I closed now (so I don’t know how I’m starting the day)….…..bad?

But I have the nights off before I open so it’s easier to get enough sleep…….…………..good?

I had to go to a meeting on my day off……………………………………………bad?

Since I had the meeting, I left early another day to see my son’s baseball game.……..good?

At first when I found out that I had to go to that meeting on my day off I was unhappy about it. I definitely thought that was a bad thing. I had to work a twelve hour day, I had one day off, and then I worked another twelve hour day. The meeting was on that one day off. Between the meeting and the drive, it would take up my whole afternoon. But as events continued to unfold, I was able to leave early on a day later in the week. Because of that meeting I was able to see another one of my son’s baseball games. So was it bad that I had that meeting on my day off or was it good? Or maybe it wasn’t good or bad. It was just a meeting.

We put a value on the events in our lives but we also put a value on the emotions that we feel throughout the day. I feel bad that the hours at work changed. I have decided that it’s bad that the hours changed and I feel bad. Then I decide that it’s bad to feel bad because I want to feel happy. There’s another layer of filters that I have to see through. 

If we are able to experience emotion without attaching a value to that emotion, the emotion becomes just another event in the day. If we can roll along with the events and the emotions of the day, we can experience life as it’s happening without seeing through filters.

The other day I was driving somewhere while I was eating a pear. It was a really good pear. I realized how good I felt at that moment because I was enjoying eating this good pear. Then I thought about all the different moods and emotions I’d already experienced in that day. That made me think that I was a bit of a basket case, but it also occurred to me that I hadn’t been getting stuck in any of these emotions and feelings and I hadn’t been putting a value on any of these different moods. I had just been rolling along with them so even if I hadn’t been feeling really good all day, it had still been a good day. Just experiencing what had been happening without the filters changed how I perceived the day. Even if every little moment wasn’t exactly what I would have wanted it to be or what I thought it should be, when I looked back on the day, I still felt like it was a good day.

All the thinking and value assigning gets in the way of just being.