Happy New Year, 2017

act before anything exists govern before anyone rebels a giant tree grows from the tiniest shoot a great tower rises from a basket of dirt a thousand-mile journey begins at your feet 

Verse 64 Tao Te Ching, translated by Red Pine; Copper Canyon Press

New Year's Resolutions. New jobs. New loves. Everyone loves a fresh start.

We humans are narrative-driven. We love and demand good stories. Americans are particularly fond of fairy tale endings. Whether the underdog in sports who beats the odds to win the championship - or the poor kid from the projects who becomes a tech billionaire - we take note of and celebrate such stories.

And why not? Truly there are those stories and they should be celebrated. But, are those stories the norm or the exception? Are happy endings really something we should always strive for?

Certainly, there are not definitive answers here - only opinions. My own opinion has been formed after years of searching always for the fairy-tale ending. As you can imagine, such a journey has been full of ups and downs. It has rarely been a smooth road - nor a lonely one. It would seem many of us are looking for the 4-leaf clover or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

All of this leads me to this year's "resolution light". I've chosen, instead, three words for meditation to begin my year. Drum roll, please…

My three words are these - Awareness, Acceptance, and Contentment.

Please do not laugh out loud! I do not expect to perfectly focus on these three words any more than I expect to always meditate or never lose my temper. Whether yoga or meditation, any spiritual pursuit is more of a practice than an accomplishment. An aspiration instead of fully-formed character trait.

Based on recent world events, one could easily choose despair over hope. Many of my friends are quite upset about the current state of the world, our country, our community.

Chicago has seen record levels of violence and murder. The Tennessee legislature has outlawed local ordinances intended to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians. Texas has completely removed funding for healthcare for poor women. Kentucky provided state funds for a bible-based theme park where dinosaurs roamed the earth with Adam and Eve.

There's a lot to be upset about if you are an open-minded liberal who believes in equal rights and science.

However, I would suggest that this has always been true - and always WILL be true. There has never been a "golden age" for mankind. There have only been good times and bad times - where the definition of "good" and "bad" differs depending upon your personal beliefs.

During the 1960's in the USA, there was much good and bad. There was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - and this was good. But, lest we forget, the law was passed only in the days after the tragic assassination of President Kennedy. And lest we feel too joyful, the passage resulted in 50+ years of racist backlash in the Southern US. A backlash that transformed the "Solid South" from reliably Democrat to Predictably Republican.

The 1960's and early 70's was some of the most turbulence times in American History. The Vietnam War. The SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). Terrible assassinations (JFK, MLK, RFK, Malcolm X) and destructive urban riots.

As Dickens famously wrote "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times."
Recent events have lead me to suspect that history is on some sort of cycle - not unlike our new washing machine. There must be something like a perpetual "Wash, Rinse, Spin" routine that we humans demand.

It seems like we wash away some social stain - and immediately rinse away our memory of history and our past. Many today demand a complete denial of America's past racial sins - while others similarly deny any progress that has been made. All of this results in the inevitable spin-cycle of social unrest, partisan entrenchment, and political gridlock. Any informed reading of our history will provide many examples of previous, similar cycles.

So, what are we to do? How should we respond? Should we retreat to ESPN and abandon CNN, FOX and MSNBC? Should we conclude voting and civic activity is useless and become passive?

I believe this dilemma is not new to us. I imagine Dr. King asked himself similar questions long before the days of fake news and partisan cable-news channels.

In my childhood Nashville, there were two newspapers - The Nashville Banner (afternoon) and The Tennessean (morning). According to the Banner, the Civil Rights Era did not exist.  
It refused to report either the student sit-ins at the Woolworth's lunch counter, the resulting violent response to the peaceful protest, or the march by black students from their campuses to face the then mayor of Nashville - Ben West. The peaceful compromise by Mayor West was a turning point for Nashville as a city. As a result, Nashville never saw the racial violence other cities experienced during the 60's and 70's.

My point? It has always been a mixed-bag of good and bad, light and dark, hope and despair. Given our human nature and polar tendencies, how could it be anything but that?
So, back to my three words - awareness, acceptance, contentment.

More from Tao 64:

but to act is to fail to control is to lose

Chinese scholar Wang P'ang writes about this verse saying:

Everything has its course. When the time is right, it arrives. But people are blind to this truth and work to speed things up. They try to help Heaven and end up ruining things just as they near completion.
Tao Te Ching by Red Pine, p.129.

It has been said of me - and possibly of you - that at times I have been "my own worst enemy." In my impatience and misplaced self-confidence, I have at times taken charge like the oft-referenced fool. As in "fools charge in where angels fear to tread" fool…

Now, many of those charging times, I had good - or partially good - intentions. I meant well. But so many times, I made things worse or simply muddied the waters so that nothing was clear. Usually, it was my care for someone or something that spurred me to act. And, certainly, that care and concern is a good thing.

But, let's dig a bit deeper into my - and maybe your - motivations.
Sometimes, we act out of fear. Sometimes we act out of a need for security or predictability. Both common to humans, right?

But if we are honest with ourselves, I suspect we only realized those motivations AFTER the fact - not in the moment or just before. We likely were convinced in the rightness of our motives and our actions - just before everything went awry.

At least for me, I know I must ever guard against self-trickery. What's that? Oh, it's that thing I do when I convince myself of one thing that I like about myself - to cover up another thing is strongly dislike. My own version of "bait and switch". I imagine we all do this to one degree or another - with varying degrees of frequency.

In my urgency to act, in my own self-deluded state, I many times obtained an outcome I desired to avoid or - at the least - did not achieve the desired outcome.

So, what then, is the solution. Well, for me, I need to relax a bit and SLOW DOWN. Avoid false urgencies. Resist my own worst impulses to act prematurely or rashly. But how, you ask?

Well, that loops back to my three words for this year: Awareness, Acceptance, Contentment.

Awareness according to Thich Naht Hanh is simply taking care in the moment. Whether we are washing dishes or attending to a child's skinned knee, a calm focus on the moment - with all our attention focused on NOW, now LATER - is the beginning of awareness.

Have you ever found yourself so worried about what comes next, that you completely missed what's happening now? Well, that's what a lack of awareness looks like. When we are more aware, I find that time slows down. Time becomes richer and fuller. Why is this?  
Did time actually change? No, not really. But our EXPERIENCE of each moment certainly did change. Being aware provides a richer context to time. Awareness - for the nerd - provides a much richer data stream for each and every moment.

And, more information (if heeded), usually means better decision making.
If you thought awareness is a hard mount to climb, then think about acceptance. 
Acceptance means acknowledging things as they are - as they really are - not as I want or wish them to be.

So, ever try to fix another person? Ever leap into a relationship with the dream of "changing them" or "helping them to be their best self"? How did that work out? Many times, those doomed relationships only ended when we "came to our senses" or "got real honest" with ourselves about the other person, ourself, and the nature of our relationship.

I think we sometimes do this same wishful thinking over and over in our lives. We tend to avoid unpleasant truths simply because they are unpleasant. We like to think we are being hopeful and optimistic, when in truth we are sometimes being selfish. We keep someone around because we don't want to be lonely. We stay in a job that is slowly killing us because we like having extra money at the end of the month.

So what is the cure - or at least the precursor to a cure? Honest - and possibly painful - acceptance of the truth of our situation. This is rarely easy. But, I believe it is essential to a more fulfilling and joyful life. And, when I say joyful, I mean a plurality of joy - not necessarily an ever-present joy. Because early acceptance can many times avoid a painful acceptance later on - AFTER the situation has exploded in our face…

A willful acceptance of truth and consequences now is almost always less painful that a forced acceptance of the truth much later.

So, if per chance we become more aware - if we learn to more often accept things as they are without sugar coating or rose-colored glasses, what reward can we expect? What possibly could be worth all of that effort and potential pain? Ah, the best reward I can imagine. Contentment.

Whereas we all say we'd like to live "happily ever after", I think we know such things only happen in movies or fairy tales. In this present world, constant, continuous happiness is simply not possible.

Happiness is fleeting. And life is full of many happy moments, no doubt.

But, life is also full of sadness. Tragedy. Injustice. Death. If we are aware of what is occurring in our world, if we accept the truth that all living things must die eventually, how can we be perpetually happy?

I would suggest perpetual happiness is unattainable. But, to aspire to contentment is at least within the realm of possibility.

If happiness is 4th of July fireworks - bright and boisterous, then contentment is a beautiful sunset or the discovery of a lovely wildflower in the crack of the asphalt.

Contentment is calmer. Contentment is more subtle. But, to my way of thinking, contentment is the foundation of a life that can support so many other good things.

One can be aware of the suffering of a dying parent or friend. We will not ever like such a thing, but we can accept the course of things when our beloved Aunt dies at the end of a full and joyful life.

And, painful as it may be, we can be content in knowing that her life was well-lived. It brought joy to others. It had purpose and meaning.

And, at such moments - painful as they may be - we can be content.

dg 

1/3/2017

Sent from my iPad