Category: meditation

Waiting

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Everything will be alright in the end, and if it is not alright, it is not the end.” – Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Monday is my son’s favorite day because it’s garbage day. In our neighborhood, that means three different trucks: garbage, yard waste and recycling. And even better, they go up the street to service the cans on the north side and then they come back to get the cans on the south side which makes for six possible garbage truck sightings so Monday’s come with a great sense of expectation.  They make me think about waiting.

My paternal grandfather, Doug, died of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 1973 so I didn’t know him. But my grandmother lived for almost 30 years after he died. When she told the story of his passing she said that when he was diagnosed three years before his death the doctor took her aside and told her every milestone of disease progression that would occur. My grandmother was a very positive and loving person so it was always a surprise that she called this doctor the cruelest man ever because she had the knowledge for what would happen next and was always watching and waiting for it.

It reminds me of when I pregnant with my second child and my obstetrician told me, “Your first child will become a nightmare for six weeks. It happens to all kids but they will come out of it.” I really liked my obstetrician and trusted her. But I wished she hadn’t told me that because I couldn’t imagine it happening to my sweet little girl and the anticipation of it possibly happening was a little too suspenseful. But my obstetrician was right – those first weeks were hard and then I was glad to know that it would only last for six weeks and she was right about that too.

But those are two examples of difficulty and sadness to come. But they make me wonder, do we ever want to know the future? Let’s say I knew that in six months that the right man was going to come into my life would it change my behavior? Would I spend more intentional time with my kids and my friends now because I’ll have less time once the mystery man appears? Would I be looking at every guy and wondering if he was going to turn out to be the one?

My thinking often strays into the future. I think that’s probably a necessary part of planning, to imagine what life is going to be like when school is out in two weeks and then arrange for the summer schedule accordingly. But when I spend too much time in the future, I find it impacting my sense of “now” because it overlays a sense of anticipation or dread onto today. I am slowly learning to differentiate between intention and waiting. I can intend to stretch my muscles every day so that I can become a more flexible person and that is quite different than waiting until I’m flexible before I sign up for a class.

When I was going through my divorce, my meditation teacher once quoted the line from the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, “Everything will be alright in the end, and if it is not alright, it is not the end.” It turned out to be the best mantra for getting me through. It had a sense of the future without promising anything specific. And that turned out to be all that I needed to know. Then I could set my intention to do the best and trust that somehow, it’ll be alright.  Anything more than that and I start waiting on pins and needles.

Yesterday, I l happened to look out my office window to see my mom and my son sitting perfectly still and poised waiting for the garbage truck. Watching them, I realized how much faith is involved in waiting patiently. We only sit still when we trust that what we are looking for is going to come our way. For me that is how it should be – let God know the future and all I have to do is simply trust that it’ll be alright in the end.  

The Choice Between Right and Easy

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“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

In the fourth book of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the dark wizard Lord Voldemort has returned and the headmaster of Hogwarts Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Albus Dumbledore says, “Soon we will all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.”

I don’t know much about fighting dark wizards but making the choice between what is right and what is easy seems like something that describes the job of parenting. Maybe I’m predisposed to think that because I’m reading Harry Potter out loud to my child but nonetheless here are some of the many choices I think we as parents face:

We have to decide whether or not to teach our children manners or let them discover them at the hands of their maybe less tactful peers.

We have to decide whether to inculcate a sense of respect for nature and resources of the earth or risk ruining the earth for themselves or our grandchildren.

We have to choose between instilling a deep sense of kindness and compassion for others or suffer knowing that we might have added to the aggression of this world.

We have to choose between raising children that have a healthy sense of boundaries and self-worth that they inherited from watching us or let them figure it out on their own perhaps after doing great damage to themselves.

We have to choose between letting our kids spend their days immersed in screen time or engaging with them to foster real experiences and adventures in this world.

And none of these choices is easy because it means we have to walk that walk when we are distracted, tired and want to live our own lives reasonably well. But I find it interesting that the distinction is not between right and wrong but between right and easy because it’s effort not evil that defines the choice.

Speaking for myself, I don’t do perfectly on any of the parenting choices but more often than not I make the hard choice as I know most parents do and have done throughout all the ages. There is some science to support why as I learned when I listened to an interview Nicholas Christakis, the Yale sociologist who studies how we have evolved as a species. His view as laid out in his book Blueprint is that our evolution has come with some uniquely wonderful social features – to love, to teach others, to cooperate. He holds that humans are wired for good which is so inspiring to hear.

Because we aren’t alone in our choices. We have the magic and faith that comes from our relationship with the Divine and we have our connection to each other. In Harry Potter, Dumbledore’s pronouncement about choosing between what is right and what is easy is part of a moving speech about how unity and friendship carries us through the hard choices and hard times. Our connection to everything that is bigger than us powers us through the moments when we have nothing left in the tank. Over and over again we discover we can do hard things – and we do!

Irrigating the Irritation

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“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Plato

Yesterday my friend John was trying to get a hold of my friend Eric and I was caught in the middle. Eric wasn’t answering so John called me and left a voice mail. Eric’s phone had died and he was temporarily using another number so I texted him on his other phone that John was looking for him. Eric didn’t have John’s number stored in his temporary phone so Eric called me for it. I texted it to Eric and then John called me.

It seemed to go on and on. They called and texted me while I was working, picking up my son from school, out for ice cream, getting the kids ready for the bed. I was irritated. Then I found out John was calling because our friend Joanie was having to put her beloved 15-year-old golden retriever to sleep. My irritation evaporated instantly.

Compassion is such a powerful tool. For years I’ve said that doing meditation in the morning was irrigating my irritations. I hadn’t identified specifically that it was expanding my compassion for my self and others until I was reminded of this “Just Like Me” meditation from by Buddhist monk, Pema Chödrön:

”There’s a practice I like called ‘Just like me.’ You go to a public place and sit there and look around. Traffic jams are very good for this. You zero in on one person and say to yourself things such as Just like me, this person doesn’t want to feel uncomfortable. Just like me, this person loses it sometimes. Just like me, this person doesn’t want to be disliked. Just like me, this person wants to have friends and intimacy.’

“We can’t presume to know exactly what someone else is feeling and thinking, but still we do know a lot about each other. We know that people want to be cared about and don’t want to be hated. We know that most of us are hard on ourselves, that we often get emotionally triggered, but that we want to be of help in some way. We know that, at the most basic level, every living being desires happiness and doesn’t want to suffer.”

Welcoming the Unwelcome by Pema Chödrön

When we do suffer, it is eased by the compassion of others. I remember talking with Joanie after my golden retriever died and because she knew the depth of the heartache, it was of great comfort to me. I am sending that compassion back to her now so the spirit of love, warmth and understanding continues to ripple out. My daughter wants to make a card for Joanie. She suggested a message of “You are the best even though you only have two dogs and one died.” I love the idea but we might fiddle with the wording…

The Power of Curiosity

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“If you see the soul in every living being, you see truly.” – The Bhagavad Gita

My five-year-old daughter kills snails. Let me pause here and say that it’s not a serial-killer-in-training kind of thing where she tortures and then decapitates them or something like that. It’s very well-intentioned interference in their life where she builds these very elaborate snail houses with pools and vegetation and then stocks them with snails. But then she’ll put them directly in the sun or forget to refill the water and oops, another snail is dead. One of my friends gave her a Bug Hotel terrarium and she put so many unfortunate snails in there that I started to call it the Bates Motel.

I have a friend who does a similar thing with humans (the help thing, not the killing thing). She doles out well-intentioned help to people that she believes need an upgrade in their circumstances. Unfortunately it sometimes backfires when people feel like they are projects and don’t absorb the help they are given.

I recently listened to this Dare to Lead podcast with Brene Brown and Michael Bungay Stanier that talked about the pitfalls of giving advice – the person with a problem may not accurately know what the problem is, any solution that you offer might not solve the root issue and even if you have the perfect solution, it can undercut their ownership of solving the problem themselves. Michael Stanier’s advice was to stay curious a little bit longer.

This seems to be a common theme in the content I’m listening to and reading these days – the power of curiosity. Asking open-ended questions like “how can I help?” and “what makes you think that?” and “say more” changes the nature of the conversation. Curiosity brings the power of mindfulness to an interaction and is a gateway for openness, an antidote to judgment. If we believe that we don’t have enough time to have these conversations, think about how much time it takes to solve problems again and again because we didn’t get it right the first time.

I’m finding curiosity a great tool for parenting because kids have so much of it. I could continue to slip out at night and free the snails or I can flat out tell her not to capture them but both of those solutions undermine her ability to see the soul in everything. Because of course this is not just about my daughter and snails, it’s about our agency in this world and learning not to destroy it. I’m hopeful as we research about whether snails grow out of their shells, what leaves they like best and how long they usually live that we can connect more deeply with compassion for others and retire the Bates Motel.

Mistaken identity

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“Before fixing what you’re looking at, check what you’re looking through.” – Mark Nepo

The other day I participated in a conversation with my five-year-old daughter and her seven-year-old best friend and neighbor. She reported that her friend kept interrupting her. Then she asked the friend a question and when the friend started to answer, she said, “See?”

Ah, we see what we expect to see. A chronic condition of being human but I had no idea it started so young! But more than that, I think the two were bickering not because one was interrupting the other but because they were hungry and bored. Another chronic condition of human nature – mistaking one feeling for another. This one is rife with the young!! It seems that they can’t reliably name what being hungry, bored or tired is and everyone around gets an earful until we solve the root problem.

But I’m not sure I do much better. Last year after one of the last times I was able to go to meditation class in person before the pandemic, I went grocery shopping afterwards. I bought so much food without any regard for price or practicality and it wasn’t until I was walking out that I realized that I felt euphoric. A great feeling. Not so great for budgeting!

For me this is the work of mindfulness. Observing the ripples in the water caused by emotions so that I am aware that they are stirring me up and hopefully every so often get a glimpse of my depths when the water is clear. And it is the work of patience and parenting to help others name what is ailing them and hold them until they can become clear. I’m getting a lot of practice these days.

So I asked my daughter what interrupting means. Turns out her definition was something close to feeling irritated whenever you are in conversation. I paused to be sure I didn’t interrupt, offered them a snack and a job to rake up the hedge trimmings and solved both the named and unnamed sources of irritation!

Reconnecting

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“Take everything in the palms of your hands and see what’s worth keeping, then blow the rest away with a breath of kindness.” – Cherokee saying

When we returned from our four nights away this past weekend, I noticed that my toddler went around touching everything. He fingered his toys, he opened the pantry, he got down on the floor and felt under the couch, he lifted the top of the toy cubby, he sidled along the couch while running his hand along, he went outside and ran his hand along each planter. It was fascinating to watch him wander around and reconnect.

It reminds me of the way I’ve felt disconnected upon returning home, especially from longer trips. I’ve felt the huge shift between all the newness of what I’ve just seen and experienced and the ease and familiarity of my home. In those moments, my heart feels full wrapped in the comfort of the space I call home but my head is still gone, sorting what’s important.

And it happens not only when I’ve traveled but also when I’ve gone through life events, big like my dad’s sudden death or small like just when I’ve finished a work project. Moments when I’m at a loss about what comes next, untethered and unsure how to integrate what I’ve learned with who I am. When it happens, I realize how much I often rely on routine to tell me what’s next. Somehow my world has changed and I have to reinsert myself in the flow.

It seems like my son’s method of touching everything contains some basic wisdom. It’s a way of being grounded. Touch everything with your hands until your head and your heart catch up.

This Sacred Journey

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“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I was struck by this line in Listening to Your Life, a meditation book by Frederick Buechner. He was describing his ordination as a minister:


“As I knelt there in the chancel with the hands of the assembled ministers and elders heavy on my skull, I had no doubts, if I ever had before, that it was a risky as well as a holy trade that I had chosen.”

It reminded me of the many things we take on in our lives – being a parent, caring for family as they age, becoming a friend/partner, adopting a pet, planting a garden. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a ceremony to help us be intentional and remind us of the holiness for all the caretaking roles we take on in life?

Airing the Wounds Out

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“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill

My kids and I spent the weekend with my brother and sister-in-law. Sitting around their semi-circular teak dining room table with a padded bench seat, I was reminded about a conversation we had there about a year ago.

“My mom said I should go find another mom,” My daughter said to my brother and sister-in-law. It was all I could do to not explain but because they are wise, they teased out the story from her. She was having a fit that seemed to be part of what came with being four because I wouldn’t let her do something. It had been going on for a while (it seemed like a fifteen minutes although it was probably five) and she said, “I’m going to find a new mommy, a nice one.” and I said, “Go!”

In the months after it happened she kept bringing it up and part of me died in shame whenever she did. She’d mentioned it a few times to just me and I’d apologized profusely. “I said something that I shouldn’t have because I was angry and frustrated, Sweetie” I said over and over again but then it came up again with two of her most trusted other adults. I sat there listening and they talked through it.

Listening quietly to that unfold was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. But love did two things as I watched. It held me silent, knowing that unpacking the hurt for my daughter was far more important than defending myself. And I also felt held by the love of my brother and sister-in-law. I could trust that they know me well enough to know my strengths and weaknesses and all the care I put in between.

In the year since that conversation, my daughter has never brought up that comment again. My silence allowed my daughter to talk about her hurt without it being compounded by feeling ashamed to talk about it. In addition to eating great meals of delicious food, there are so many things we’ve done at that table in my brother’s living room – colored pictures, worked on crosswords, celebrated birthdays, had long conversations about life, reviewed the fun of the day. But now I add to that list – relaxed into our imperfections and healed mistakes.

Walking Boldly into Truth

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“Everything you have ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” – George Adair

Last year a friend of mine realized that she was gay at 50 years of age. In the 6 months that followed her discovery, she came out to everyone significant in her life. She didn’t have a girlfriend or any other forcing function to do it, she just walked boldly into her Truth. I know that some of those conversations, especially with the older generation were hard but when I asked her about how she did it she told me she was ready to find love and hiding who she realized she was would only hinder her path.

As someone who is walking a less traditional path by having kids as a single person at age 46 and 50, I am so inspired and in awe of my friend. I remember being five months pregnant and feeling really glad I wasn’t showing because then I’d have to tell people what I was doing. (Yeah, that wasn’t going to stay hidden forever. 😊) I had told everyone close to me, but for strangers and acquaintances, I was sure they’d think I was some loser that couldn’t find a partner. Over the years it has gotten so much easier but I really had to work hard to be able to say it without fear.

I told a lifelong friend this the other day and she was surprised. “What?” she said “we just always assumed you were some super-empowered woman.” Ha, ha. If it were that easy, there wouldn’t be a whole genre of stories about heroes who spend the entirety of the middle act wandering around trying to do everything they could to pursue their path without being vulnerable. I can say with complete certainty that if the constriction around my heart hadn’t been so tight and getting tighter every time I thought of having a family and time hadn’t been running on out my ability to have or adopt children, I would still be wandering around trying to find the right husband with which to have children. Anything so as not to have to face the vulnerability of saying, “This is what I was certain I had to do even though the circumstances at that time of my life meant doing it alone. I didn’t want to rush finding the right man and in doing so, make a mess of it.”

In Harry Potter, the young witches and wizards learn to run into the brick wall between platforms 9 and 10 to get to the Hogwarts Express train leaving from platform 9 3/4. We reach thresholds in our lives and need to change something — a job, a place we live, a relationship, a way of thinking or being, or something we just have to do — and they feel a lot like that brick wall. It is terrifying to consider running into, always looks easier when someone else does it, and once across, it is the place that transports to the magic life beyond. It’s only a perception that we don’t want to stand out that keeps us from walking into our Truths. When we do, we break that constriction around our hearts and can feel the full power of the vital heartbeat of life.

The postscript here is that with one year of my friend coming out, she has found her person and they’ve bought a house together. She crossed her threshhold and is living in the fullness of her life and it’s a joy and inspiration to watch!

Projections

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“Turn your wounds into wisdom.” -Oprah Winfrey

My five-year-old daughter was sitting at the kitchen table doing her remote Kindergarten class the other day. To do the work, she needed the packet the school had sent home plus scissors and glue. I found the packet for her and then she couldn’t find her scissors and glue because she hadn’t put them back where they belong. She said to me, “You are making me have the worst day.”

Psychology Today defines the term projection as the “process of displacing one’s feeling onto a different person, animal or object.” We project our feelings onto someone or something else as a defense mechanism. Instead of owning our own BS, we can turn the issue into something else in an effort to protect our own egos.

I think of the time I found out about my husband’s infidelities. One of his friends, who was also my business partner, invited me out to lunch which was odd since we had never had a meal without my husband there too. When I arrived the sense of foreboding was amplified enormously because the friend had chosen a table in a closed section and also ordered me a beer. It was almost a relief when he started telling me of the infidelities because the build-up was so intense. But then I had to go home and tell my husband that I knew. He wasn’t home so I called my brother and four of my closest friends and then went out to dinner with my two best girlfriends. I finally saw my husband and asked, “Have you ever been unfaithful to me?” He answered “no” but seeing that I knew something, he then asked, “Who told you?” Then the next question he asked was, “Who else knows?”

The next months were a master class in projection. That is the perfect word for it. There is a source that is running the show but whenever you try to look for it, you are redirected to the pictures showing on the big screen. Any time the infidelities came up, he expressed his rage that his friend betrayed him (and yes, I saw the irony). Any time he got uncomfortable, he blamed me for revealing his secret. It made it so that we never could talk about the real problems. The message communicated was not that he was sorry, but just that he was sorry that I found out. By flipping the conversation to who I told, it made me the person who had been hurtful.

In a truly honest discourse, we would have been able to discuss not only the root issues but also my shortcomings as well. But if he was going to deflect, there was no way I was going to step forward either. I’m so grateful that marriage ended so I never wonder whether it could have been saved – but I do wonder if we could have cleaned and bandaged the wounds a lot faster had we not lingered in the defensive woods for so long. As it was, it took me many more years of my own work, reading, listening to others, and primarily having to sit with myself in meditation for me to finally own my part in the destruction. Projection might work as a defense but it does not work to heal and grow.

So I find it fascinating when I see the little examples of where my daughter projects. She moves past it and back to her happy place so quickly that it’s just a flash but when it’s calm, I try to guide her back to where it’s safe so we can remove our defenses and own our feelings and mistakes. It’s the only way we can take down the screen and really see what kind of day it is.