I'd like to share what my daughter, Cristin, wrote on her Father's Day card to me:
Dear Dad,
Wishing you a wonderful day, and a happy relaxing summer ahead. Enjoy each bike ride, walk, garden guru moment, and great book you embark upon, in the coming hazy, lazy days.
Thank you for a great year, and more great times ahead.
Love,
Cristin
(can you hear the deep and appreciative breaths I am taking?)
There's that old bumper sticker which says: "He who dies with the most toys wins."
It used to be good for a quick chuckle and a sardonic smile. Now it's not worth spit.
I was building two 4-foot square wooden frames for my square foot gardening project several weeks ago. I'm not much of a handyman, but I know how to screw pieces of wood together. I had a drill and drilled 48 holes. That was the "easy" part - "easy" in the sense that little "labor" was involved and it "didn't take much time."
Then came the actual screwing of the screws. (I don't know how else to word that so it will have to just stay in the post.) The screws were about 2" long and 48 were involved. I knew I had a screw driver (powered by me) and I thought that it would be efficient if I had an electric screwdriver. A debate followed in my mind as to whether this was a good time to buy one - after all I would be able to use it to assemble the frame "in no time at all" not to mention how I could use it for all those other projects which are always around the corner. Or was this another invitation, an opportunity to do it simply and to not buy yet again another some-thing which will eventually be sold at a yard sale, but not until it has collected dust for several years.
It turned out, I am pleased to say, to be an easy choice. My pockets remained heavy, no gas used to go to the mall to buy the gizmo, no time "spent" traveling (traversing would be a better word) to and from, no throwing away of more plastic and cardboard and paper, no warranty form to fill out - oh, did it feel liberating.
I got down to the business of using the screwdriver. I knelt and stretched. I used my fingers, my wrist, my forearm, my elbow, my upper arm, and then switched arms. When I got uncomfortable I stopped for a few minutes.
My son Andrew stopped by and I said: "hey, you wanna give me a hand?"
He said: "Sure."
Actually he gave me two hands and we threw in some conversation to hold the whole thing together even better. He even lent me some back muscles to help carry the frames from the garage to the upper level of my back yard. (It's even sweeter when he stops by and looks at the tomato plants growing in the frames - more history-making than I had anticipated - try and buy that at the mall!)
We grow when we put mind and effort and concentration and ingenuity into figuring something out; when we put our own chosen effort into our actions. Ran was talking about that a while back in his entry of May 21-23. Eleutheros was also referencing it on his blog when he talked about the tyranny of the mind set of: "Git 'er done (quickly)."
I've known for decades that consumerism is destructive. It's a parasitic meme which repeats and replicates itself over and again. And like any good parasite it feeds on it's host without outright killing it. If it kills the host slowly all the better since it can itself survive longer. And what parasite would give a second thought as to how the host continues to pay and pay and pay. But as I was saying in my last post on "It's more than just putting on the brakes" the "not buying" is incomplete - it has to be coupled with the life and living that has a way of taking root in those other spaces
Yes, I'll just say "no thanks, but could you pass me a little more time and a lot more of no-things." It's really just fine with me, when it's time for me to pass on, if I don't have all those toys.
I guess I'm shifting towards a "keep it simpler" kind of guy.
*****
From Wikipedia: "Cultural change necessarily involves resistance to change. The term Luddite has been resurrected from a previous era to describe one who distrusts or fears the inevitable changes brought about by new technology. The original Luddite revolt occurred in 1811, an action against the English Textile factories that displaced craftsmen in favor of machines. Today's Luddites continue to raise moral and ethical arguments against the excesses of modern technology to the extent that our inventions and our technical systems have evolved to control us rather than to serve us and to the extent that such leviathans can threaten our essential humanity."
And from http://www.primitivism.com/index.html : "Primitivism is the pursuit of ways of life running counter to the development of technology, its alienating antecedents, and the ensemble of changes wrought by both. This site is an exploration into primitivist theory, as well as various works that contribute to an understanding of the tendency."
I've been thinking a lot about this whole process of taking time, not rushing, and my mantra: "I will rush no more!"
It occurs to me that imbedded in the statement is an invitation to slip into an alternate way of being. I am coming to the conclusion that it (my mantra) is like a skeleton key for a portal to a different way of being and experiencing. If you go too fast or if you are preoccupied and harried in your "going" then you will miss the portal and the opportunity. But if you go at the right pace and with a state of mindfulness, i.e., being in the moment without the flood of judgements and preferences and qualifications, then the passage presents itself and you can slip into it.
However, if the "not rushing" is coming from a place of just putting on the brakes, a having to slow down, in the sense that it's a rule or a mandate, rather than a preference and an active choice, then it loses all of its magical potential. A rough approximation would be having to slow down in traffic but being frustrated the whole time because the impulse is to continue speeding, for whatever reason. Perhaps the classic situation would be with a person who has what is called Type A behavior. A person with that is suffering from an ongoing sense of time urgency, and anything or anyone who impedes that urgency is seen as a source of frustration. In those situations the best outcome (and it's not good at all) is to just endure the impedence; no growth there.
Most of the time simply not rushing will have a positive effect in my experience (provided it's not simply applying brakes). But the further gain will come when there is a softening into the moment and opening of the gates of awareness without preference. Nice things happen then, or more properly, new things have a greater chance of happening under those conditions.
There is one further piece in all this and that is that if you bring all of the "old" into the place of freshness, then it will just contaminate that place.
But all is not lost if you mess it up because the potential of using the skeleton key for the portal is always there. It's always there for the taking or experiencing. Sometimes I think it's like there is a revolving door which is ever present. If you enter, you leave one place, you move around, and then you can get out and be in the different place. And of course, the revolving door goes in the other direction also.
I'm talking about a skill. A skill for living well. A skill for improving the sense of appreciation and wonder and curiosity.
In my last post I talked about procrastination.
During the week or two before writing that I became aware of several dreams in which I was rushing. There was no particular place that I was rushing to. No particular task to accomplish. Not running from anything. Just rushing. Just the feeling of pressure that comes from rushing.
It may have been related to the fact that I was procrastinating with those reports and that led to a feeling of "having to get something done." Maybe that's it; in my daytime consciousness I was doing a fairly good job of pushing the task out of my mind - and then in my sleep / dream time world, it shows up as the concrete abstraction (how's that for juxtaposing two words) of just plain rushing - without any specific content.
But another thought also occurred to me. That was that with any change there is an inevitable backlash which tries to re-establish the original state of affairs.
In my situation, I started this process when the words "I will rush no more" became my mantra by applying them in an ongoing, daily, and gradually expanding manner. The "ongoing" was important because to not do that it would just become another incomplete experiment in living and I've had enough of them already. The "daily" was important because that has a more cumulative power and helps to maintain momentum. An analogy would be with exercise. It's better to do some exercise every day than to save it up for extended periods of exercise every few weeks or so. As we all know that is the surest way to increase injuries and then that will set the person back even further.
And the "gradually expanding" was important because that both makes it real and that also makes it much more interesting and "alive."
I also wanted it to be gradual to forestall the inevitable backlash. The bigger the initial change, the more abrupt it is, and the more radical it is the bigger will be the pushback. It is as if the force of habit of the original lifestyle suffused with rushing and mindlessness and consumerism has a life of its own, and if you push hard, it will push back hard. Isn't that one of the basic laws of physics - every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It's not just physics. That's also life.
Another way of looking at this is that a person or a system tends to keep doing what it's doing unless it is acted on by an unbalanced force. (If all the forces are balanced, i.e., equally counteract each other, than the object / system will either remain stationary or will continue at it's same rate of speed and in the same direction it's headed.)
The strategy I adopted was to apply an unbalanced force combined with the principle that "the slow way is the fast way." You could call it a stealth approach the goal of which was to allow for change of very well ingrained habit clusters (lifestyle, society-style) by keeping the change beneath the radar so the pushback would be (almost) avoided.
To go back to the dreams now, I wondered if the mindless rushing in my dreams was a signal that "the old way" was "creeping" back in?
And then an interesting thing developed. When I made this connection, the dream sequence ceased ( - at least so far.) My further thought was that now the new system (I will rush no more) is well established and the pushback from the dreams (unfocused rushing) is a "threat" to the new and more prized system and therefore I / it wants to neutralize the potential resurgence of the old system.
Neat.
I'm baaaack! Ahhhh....
Here's the simple fact: I had some paperwork to fill out and I didn't want to do it. No way around it - I just didn't want to do it. I dug my heals in, and, in essence, threw a good old fashioned temper tantrum. The tantrum was quiet and essentially passive. The wish was played out with the internal words, "not doing it!" playing over and over in the background.
Guess what? It was effective in the sense that it reinforced the fact that I didn't want to do it. It kept that wish alive and kicking. But, it was also effective in keeping the pressure on me to finish it, and I knew from past experience that the pressure wouldn't subside until I got around to doing it. It was like procrastination on steroids.
Thankfully I was efficient in dealing with other day to day things. They got done and that part of my desk didn't start accumulating more "stuff." But that first report that I didn't want to do remained there. Then another report had to be filled out. That didn't get filled out either and then they were both laughing their heads off at me. And just to keep this real, a third form (a dreaded reaccreditation form - dreaded because they truly are a useless pain) came in and, you got it, went into the same pile and joined in the discordant chorus.
There was a part of me which knew that if I started new posts here that I wouldn't get back to the "work-pile" till even later.
All kinds of bargains or strategies with myself took place and all were equally ineffective.
I even tried to invoke my mantra: "I will rush no more!" but I quickly short-circuited that because I knew it was just a cheap marketing trick to get me to buy something that was not in my best interest.
I knew I had to do the work..."just gotta."
But I didn't "wanna." No, no, no, no! But you gotta!
Waaah, waaah, waaaaaaaah!
Oh!
Then I had a lucky break. I knew that I wouldn't feel good again until I started writing on my blog again. That became a....I gotta and I wanna. Yes! That motivation got me going and was enough to break the log jam. First the homework and then the play.
The next day I started the reaccreditation form and kept at it in a piecemeal fashion till it was finished. Then I got to the last report and I sailed through that easily. None of this work was heavy lifting for me, you understand...but I just didn't wanna because I had a spasm of my "dig in my heals" reflex to a "you gotta" command.
That evening I sat with my wife telling her about this, and I play acted a grade school temper tantrum complete with whining and fake pounding on the table. It felt great and we both had a great laugh.
The next morning I tackled the first report, the one that was on the bottom of the original work-pile. On a lark I called the person to whom it would be sent and asked if they still needed it. Guess what. They didn't. Long story but practical fact was the report was no longer needed. That turned out to be only a minor relief since I had organized the whole report in my mind and had all the pertinent information assembled and it would have been finished in a short amount of time. I guess you could say the work pile had the last laugh.
Yes, it's good to be back.
The man is Liviu Librescu. He was an Israeli engineering professor who taught at Virginia Tech. He was a survivor of the Holocaust. He knew how important life is. He knew the worst.
And he used his body and his life and his energy to thwart the expression of evil so others could escape and live. He blocked the door to buy time for others.
I salute you, Sir. May your spirit live on.
I walked into a coffee shop this morning and was assaulted again by the face on that terrorist posing as a Rambo Wannabe. Two different posturings in two different newspapers, both first page and above the fold.
I turned away, not wanting to feed energy into the icon of rage and hatred. But I came back because there was something else there. In the upper left corner was a small rectangular box with "NBC News" printed within.
Well, I suppose NBC would say that it was their picture and therefore they are protecting their property and in essence putting their mark on the photos. (I don't know the legal niceties about all this and frankly I don't care at this point.) Where my mind goes, however, is to the brazen marketing of NBC. They have become willing victims of Marketing 101 which says: "Put your brand wherever you can so you get more visibility and better market positioning." In that way it makes no difference if they are branding beautiful or grotesque.
Come to think of it, maybe shame isn't what NBC should experience. Maybe NBC should be tatooed with those photos. Let everyone associate that logo with that face of violence.
When videotapes of the horror are mailed to Al Jezeera, do they put an Al Jezeera logo on "their" photos? If so, a pox on them also.
This is just a short rant, because any more would put energy into memorializing the unknown posing as a wannabe and I don't want to do that.
As I walked out I turned the newspaper over.
To my way of thinking, rushing around is antithetical to living the good life. But what would it look like if the rushing wasn't there? Would it be like a perpetual vacation to a plush resort in the Carribean or on a Greek Island? Would money be a concern? Would it be easier or harder than you have now?
So one question comes up as to what that rushing is all about and is there anyone "out there" who has really come to terms with the pursuit of money and who has also found a way to live "the good life?"
A few months ago I was introduced to the writings of one such couple, Helen and Scott Nearing and one of their books is appropriately named: The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living. The edition I have also contains another of their books, equally appropriately named: Continuing The Good Life. I'm still reading the book in a leisurely manner and am in no rush to finish it since it keeps feeding me wonderful thoughts and images and possibilities.
The book was originally published in 1954, the year I entered high school. Their formal journey began at the height of the Great Depression. They left their professional life in the New York Area at a time when "society was gripped by depression and unemployment, falling a prey to fascism, and on the verge of another world-wide military free-for-all; and entered a preindustrial, rural community" by buying a run-down farm in the Green Mountains of southern Vermont.
By way of their intent, they "thought of the venture as a personal search for a simple, satisfying life on the land, to be devoted to mutual aid and harmlessness, with an ample margin of leisure in which to do personally constructive and creative work.
They started with a set of goals (they were very focused), a timetable, a willingness to get their hands dirty, and the wish to not be consumed by "things." But what really caught my attention was their attitude towards money and food and time and not going into debt.
They had a series of rules or guidelines. One was that they grew as much of their own food as possible. They were vegetarians so that made that task somewhat easier. When they had enough food for themselves and for the non-growing season (remember it's Vermont where they start their adventure) they would give away the food. They take delight in talking about how they had bountiful crops from their pole bean plants and they would fill baskets full of fresh beans and go into town and offer them to people for free. People tended to be hesitant to accept them, but when they found out that there were no strings attached they did, and were appreciative.
They were entrepreneurs in the sense that when they ran into a problem, they would look for a way to solve it and would, in a sense, start a business. For example, when they were building one of their stone homes they had difficulty negotiating a steep and oftentimes muddy road. So they bought a piece of property which a neighbor had no use for (and thought was useless) and started pulling out gravel from the property, sold some of it to the town for road repairs, bought a truck to move the gravel to pave their own road and then when that was finished, sold the property to another resident in the area at essentially the same price they bought it for. There's a lot more to that story which gives glimpses into their character and how they were clear that they were not trying to make any money at anyone else's expense. I would say they were living the principle of: "win-win or no deal."
Their work schedule was equally interesting. They worked 3 hours a day. I'm not sure about Saturday but I do know that they took Sunday "off." You read it right! Three hours a day. Period. It was their choice if they worked the 3 hours in the morning or the afternoon, and it could vary according to weather, or whim. They took three hours each day to read or write or walk or talk, or whatever, but no work during that time.
In their book they talk about how they had frequent visitors. The rule was the same for their guests. Everyone worked for 3 hours. One of the problems they ran into was the "city folk" wanted to continue working once they got into it. But the Nearings would insist on the house rules - 3 hours per day, and that's it.
Their built their sheds and houses, gardened, gathered wood, had a sauna, collected maple syrup, etc.
There was one other particularly important and fascinating practise they followed. They kept close financial records (they actually kept careful records of all their endeavors) and they estimated how much actual money they would need to live their lives for that year, and when they had enough food, and enough money for expenses for the year, they stopped working for the rest of the year.
I'm sure it helped that they didn't have any children. I have my doubts that they carried any insurance. They were clearly healthy - he died at 100. That's a story in itself. And they travelled when they wanted and they had earned their yearly quotas of food and money. To my knowledge, and this is equally significant, they carried no debt.
I have always found it helpful and valuable to meet someone or read about someone who is actually doing something that others talk about but never seem to actually get around to doing. Thoreau talked about it and lived it for a year or so and thankfully wrote about it for all of us to enjoy and dream and wonder about, but the Nearings actually did it and showed how they did it and left their footprints in words so others, if they chose, could also set out on a similar path.
Do you think it could be done in this age? Would you welcome the opportunity? Would you be able to handle the hard work and the slower pace? Would you feel good about yourself if you didn't buy as much as you buy? Or travel on a whim? Could you tolerate the apprehension of not having money set aside for "retirement?" Would you need to have more put away for a rainy day? And perhaps most importantly do you think that you would have to move away from where you are now and move "out there" somewhere? So many questions.
For some further thoughts on Homesteading you can find a brief thread on the Forum at Pathtofreedom.com.
I would love to hear anyone else's thoughts or experiences around this topic.
(Prewords: Over the past 3 weeks I have written several drafts (variously titled: Gradual Change; Reversing Reversals; Depression as Ground Fog; Some Thoughts on Peace of Mind and Restlessness) for blog entries but have held back on posting them. The topics are in themselves worthy and may eventually be published. But it's like something was holding me back. I was waiting for something that was more spontaneous, something with a bit more "oomph" feeling to it. I think it was also related to not wanting to "have to" get another entry up.)
I've been very active in the nightime dream department in the past several weeks. It may be related to coming out of that stormy place I was in a few posts back and, in my mind now, it may be connected to a series of posts by Proxima (entries dated 3/23, 3/24, and 3/27/07) about dreams. I also had a person ask me about what I thought about dreams a few weeks back and that may have stirred the pot somewhat.
Bird Dream #1: (Three weeks ago) I'm driving along minding my own business and a big black bird flies into my car and perches directly on top of my head. I'm aware that there is not much room up there for the bird so I scrunch my head down into my shoulders to create more space for it. Initially there was some fear but then it was mostly just trying to create space for "the addition." It could have been a crow or a raven.
Bird Dream #2: (Last night) I'm walking up into a mountain range. I am then aware of a very large flock of birds swirling above me. They do their aerial dance gracefully. I am then in a more forested area and there, on a low lying branch, is a great snowy white owl. No movement; just perched there.
The dreams had things happening before and after the appearance of the birds, but those two birds is what stands out in my mind. Each one on its own would have pulled my attention, but the two of them, even though separated by approximately 3 weeks of external time, really caught my attention.
Hmmm...why birds? One while driving, and one while walking - an issue of movement? One jet black and the other pure white. One moved and the other is stationary. As they say, it just gets "curiouser and curiouser."
--
Some further context of what's going on in my life recently:
1. I've been thinking again about psychotherapy and healing. We tend to organize our lives around extensive habit-clusters. If those habit-clusters are working well for us then it is often best to leave well-enough alone. If, however, they are persistent and seem to work against our best interests, then it may be a good idea to find a strategy to shift away from them and towards a better and more wholesome habit-cluster "seed." The task then would be to put energy into that new "seed" and let that expand and develop through latency towards its own potentials.
That process has much to recommend it and it goes towards the idea of healing - the process of making whole again by dealing with the original imbalances either directly or through changing the down-the-road-consequences by offering workable alternatives. But there is a further sense of healing which in a sense takes us out of the drivers seat and opens us to input from outside. In that sense, there is an opening, a cultivation of the sense of receptivity coupled with a seeing what is as clearly as possible - without the filters. In that way, we are still in the drivers seat but there is a another source of input from "on top."
2. I have been reminded in the past several weeks of something I have been aware of previously, namely, that information is being "presented" to me often. By this, I mean that I'll be just doing my thing, whatever that is that day, and something will catch my awareness: I'll hear a quote, hear a story, see a picture, have a flash of partial insight, etc. Then later in the day I will be working with someone, or talking with someone, and they will say something which gives me an opportunity to relate the earlier experience.
It's like I'm presented with a key (the information) and it takes a while for the lock (the situation in the conversation which is a puzzler) which responds to the key to make its appearance. It's very curious, but sometimes it's as if it's an only-to-be-used-one-time key. When I see these connections, then it gives me more motivation to stay aware to what is being presented and to not press for any interpretation. At those times my only effort is to set the intent to be receptive and to see / hear clearly. This process feels "non-linear" and is just available "for the picking." It appears to me as a larger process and contains a certain wonder. It invites a "deepening" rather than a "doing" but they are both there.
3. After I was up this morning I scribbled the following 2 comments based on the dreams:
A. Accept that it's all inside - the positive and the negative - and then choose your directions and intents and expressions.
B. The way we organize our history is in the service of "the winner" ... (it's not just with world history) ... the ego - it's mostly fiction - one way (of many possibilities) - just what is happening - period.
My wife and I are visiting our daughter and her boyfriend in Michigan.
In no particular order:
** Me: (To the front desk clerk) "Why is it called Ann Arbor?"
Other: "The first name of one of the founders of the city was Ann. The middle name of the wife of the other founder was also Ann. And because of all the trees."
I wasn't particularly interested in the names of the founders so it didn't go any further. Mission accomplished. But shouldn't it have been called: Anns' Arbor?
I'll have to find out more about "all the trees" because it doesn't seem that there are all that many trees here. Maybe if you were coming from Oklahoma it would seem that way. Maybe I should find out where the founders came from originally.
** Passing an older gentleman at the Briarwood Mall; he's in the slow lane and me in the passing lane, during my morning walk. On the back of his gray t-shirt there is an orange triangle, like one used on road construction sites, with the words "Caution, slow moving vehicle" under the triangle.
Me: "(laughing)...slow moving vehicle."
Guy: "Hey, I'm still moving."
Me: "Chew got dat right, mon"
** Passing two women in comfortable chairs in the mall. I didn't look closely but one was the designated listener and the other was speaking with ... something...I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but I thought that she may have been post-stroke from years ago.
Speaker: "If you were the normalist person in the whole world, would you..."
She stopped there and waited for me to pass. It was like she was saying this is a private conversation. I wonder if she knew I was "listening in" even though I was eyes forward and moving fast? What was the vibe she picked up on or was it just coming from a sense of "hey, even though I'm talking loudly, this is private."
** The busses here (the system is collectively referred to as 'The Ride') have a gizmo on the frontend of each bus where people can place their bicycles. Great idea!
** On line at Starbucks at the mall. I pick up a New York Times. Waiting in line. I hold the paper up in front of the man along side me.
Man: "Did you want me to see something in particular?"
Me: "No, (playfully) there's nothing really of much value there anyway."
Man: "It's a bit much to the Left for me. But it balances out the cricks."
Me: "Yes. We need that balancing. This past election was an important one in doing that."
Man: "In what way do you mean that?"
Me: "The overwhelming majority of the American public spoke with their votes to balance away from the consolidation of brute force power practised by the Bush administration. The country, in my opinion, was headed towards 1984 in our world of comfort trappings. I don't hold out any positive expectations for the Democrats to do any better...but the trend was stopped dead in its tracks."
Man: "Yes, gridlock is the best outcome."
Me: "I don't know if that's the best outcome but it's better than where it was headed."
** The main reading room - I will call it 'the Great Reading Room' in the Horace Racham building at the University of Michigan is nothing short of spectacular. Walls were, I roughly estimate, about 60 feet high, 80 or 90 feet wide and about 150 feet long. Wood paneling. Windows along one wall were 35 feet high and about 13 feet wide, long deep red drapes with tie ropes pulling them to the side half way down. Heavy wooden chairs and long wooden tables aligned down the center line of the room, and they were punctuated by easy chairs up against the walls. You could hear a pin drop; maybe you couldn't since it was almost so cavernous that the slight sound would be lost in the size of it all. Many other pleasing rooms in the building. By the way, Racham was the attorney who wrote the articles of incorporation for a guy with a hair-brained idea to replace horses with something called a horseless carriage. But Mr. Racham saw something in the idea and went to a bank and borrowed (?) $5,000 to put into the business as a shareholder. Oh, the guy was Henry Ford. The rest is history.
At the other end of the campus is a somewhat similar building, housing the Law Library. The reading room there is similar but nowhere as elegant. The exterior is, however, a spectacular example of Gothic architecture and the only thing missing was chairs outside the library so you could sit and slowly inhale the beauty of it.
** At some point you have to visit Zingermann's Jewish Deli and Bakery. Maybe twice. It would be worth more visits but you'd go broke.
** Best meal so far was Rush Street restaurant. Go there Monday through Friday between 4 and 6 and all the meals and drinks are 1/2 price. Excellent food. I had plain old spaghetti and tomato sauce with lots of herbs and shrimp. It just got better and better.
** If you're into movies, check out the Michigan theater. It is an old movie theater which has had a ton of restoration work done. On the outside you would walk by it without giving it a second thought. Inside is a totally different story.
We saw a German movie: "The Lives of Others." It was a riveting political thriller about life in East Germany in 1984 under the Stasi (State Secret Police) and tight / taught human drama of how the spirit can survive even under those conditions and how risky it was for anyone who wanted to keep their spirit alive under terribly oppressive conditions. Not a pleasant movie but you know afterwards that you were outside the bubble of "isn't everything just so wonderful."
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