Nothing to hear here.

I got there early so I could have some time by myself, some time to think and “meditate,” as they say.

I have always been leery of that word; meditate, but as time goes on, I’ve become more comfortable with it. I’ve let go of the mystical stereotype that I once connected with it, mostly influenced by movies and TV shows that epitomized “hippie types” listening to new-age music, perched on floor mats while humming chants. While that works for some, it’s not me.

I envision meditation as quiet contemplation or purposeful thinking; evaluating or uncovering the truth about something I’m dealing with, or something about my own self. Don’t get me wrong, I struggle with it. I become distracted and my mind wanders toward things that I’ve no intention of thinking about. I hear the slightest noise; a footstep, the sound of a car passing by outside, the clock ticking on the wall, and I lose my focus. Each noise is a push or a pull of my mind onto another topic, each of these topics spawning its own sub-plots, directions and deviations. Some of the thoughts are nuisances related to the nitty-gritty details of life: I need to return that shirt to the store; I should call my brother; the car needs an inspection; but then before I know it, I’m processing the passing of a loved one, or my own mortality, an interaction with a friend that went badly, and a dozen other things. It seems my mind strays more to the future than to the past. More to what could be, than what was or even what is.

Wait. Stop. Now I’m distracted about being distracted.

I try again, sustaining my focus for a short time but soon I’m off on a familiar track. Too tired or too lazy I let it go, and then almost suddenly I can hear it. It was there all at once: The silence, the being still.

It lasted for just a few moments, probably suspended by my own realization that it happened. Perhaps that is what truly being still is; somehow being “there” so completely that you are not able to process that you are “there.” The processing takes you out of the moment. Perhaps too, the spawning of thoughts, one leading to the next, is needed. Maybe we need to give each of those detours their due as they pass by our mind’s eye so they can be dismissed and all the other items buried underneath can move themselves up and be given their own moments in our heads and hearts. Leaving just us and our maker.

Maybe being truly still is not about pushing thoughts out of our minds but instead releasing our thoughts. Maybe it’s not about willpower, but instead about being willing to let go of the power.

To be sure, I don’t know; but I’m learning about myself, I think. Listening to the silence today, if just for a moment, was a wonderful blessing. I’m definitely coming early tomorrow.

Light Bulbs and other Gifts.

It’s absolutely amazing. The world we live in is being transformed at an astonishing rate. Like many of you, I am spending a good number of hours looking for gifts for family and friends, and as a result, I’m becoming keenly aware of the accelerated evolution of our day-to-day world.

“Smart phones” can seemingly do anything, and then tablet computers can somehow do even more. The coat I considered giving someone was developed using new technologies that will keep a person warm in temperatures that I would never want to be exposed to! I considered purchasing a frying pan that used some “space age” materials, and had a guarantee that nothing would ever stick to it (maybe it was made by a politician). I also thought about purchasing some movies, but I couldn’t decide if I wanted them made available via DVD, Blue-ray, media-streaming, on a tablet, on a phone, in a tree or on a train, with a fox or with a goat!

Our society’s ability to create advances for ourselves is really amazing. Heck, even my coffee is crafted from the best beans from all over the world.

Even if we expand our lens beyond that of gift buying, our world and our ability to change it is amazing.

In the realm of health care, our lives are constantly being improved and lengthened. While some dreadful diseases still evade our attempts to cure them, many have been successfully conquered. In a broader look at the sciences, we’ve traveled to outer space so many times that we hardly notice when we go anymore. We can fly across the country or around the globe in no-time; our capacity to know what’s going on in the world is instantaneous and unlimited, and our vehicles are safer and “smarter” than ever. Even light bulbs now provide better light using less electricity, and it’s this last one that got me thinking.

I’m sure at one time or another, we’ve all walked into a darkened room, and flipped on a light switch while saying “Let there be light,” pulling (perhaps unknowingly) from The Bible’s “Book of Genesis”, in which the central theme is God’s creation of the world.

I’ve always thought it an interesting paradox that we as human beings have the capability to create light, and so much more. As we look out over the bright landscape before us, with all of our inventions and advances, it’s easy to become full of ourselves and conclude that there is nothing we cannot create for ourselves.

Is there anything out of our reach?

I would suggest that there is at least one thing, regardless of how far our advancements grow, that we will never be able to create on our own. It’s also the one thing we really need. It’s that “light” inside of each of us that we refer to as love. Love for our family, our friends, our fellow inhabitants of this ever-evolving world.

Even more good news; it can be delivered today, with no shipping charges, and returns are guaranteed!

Hands

I didn’t know it until I looked it up but the human hand, in all its intricate design, has an interesting uniqueness. Did you know that within our fingers, there are no muscles, just tendons? The muscles in our palm and forearm basically play puppeteer to our fingers; pulling the strings that make our fingers move.

I thought about our hands and what they can do after noticing a couple holding hands. I thought it was sweet that this elderly couple still held hands after all their years together. Their hands were marked with age, and all the bumps and marks that come with time. They had long since lost the newness of the skin of a newborn baby, but as they gently held each other’s hands, their connection seemed no less pure than that of an infant grasping its mother’s fingers.

It seemed to me, as I considered these weathered hands, fingers interlocked, wedding rings worn down by time but still shining bright, that this couple had likely employed their commitment to one another to forge a life that we could all learn from.

I expect they handed down rich family traditions to their children and modeled what it meant to lend a helping hand to a neighbor in need. They likely spent more time pointing to rainbows in the sky than they did pointing out other people’s flaws. They probably spent little time using their hands to spank their children and instead used them to guide and soothe them.

I imagine their hands were balled up in fists of rage far less than the number of times they were clenched in fits of passionate celebration of family milestones, successes and accomplishments.

Based on what I see, I know they used those puppeteer muscles to make their fingers point to themselves more than others, always thinking first if there was something they could do differently before pointing blame at someone else. I am sure they held their hands out in friendship a countless number of times. Using all those muscles and tendons to grip someone else’s hand, holding on for just a few more seconds than usual, to let the other person know they cared.

They must have had some challenges through the years though; I bet they held onto each other for strength throughout hardships, and folded their hands in prayer instead of throwing their hands up in defeat. Regardless, there were times that those hands were needed to wipe away tears of sadness, and I hope their hands were stained with tears of joy as well.

Yes, our hands are truly amazing gifts, and like all our gifts, we get to choose how we use them. That’s right, we are our own puppeteers. We have both the privilege and responsibility to make our own choices. Sometimes that can be a bit daunting, but it’s important for us to know that we hold all the power we need, right in our own two hands.

Your Serve

I don’t play very often anymore, but I used to enjoy Ping-Pong a lot and I had quite a good serve. This thought came to the forefront of my mind when my brother-in-law mentioned that he had played the game recently with some friends. That simple statement made me think back to when I once played, and all my competitive juices started to flow again. I bet if I started playing I could get really good again. It would also be a great family activity and something I could do with friends. Maybe we could start a tournament, track wins and losses and use it as bragging rights against each other. That’s what we used to do, compete against each other constantly, trying to out-do one another and prove we were the best.

Since my serve was one of my best weapons, I mulled over in my mind the specifics of how I used to serve. I’m not a young child anymore, so I can’t rely on the skill I had then. I had to ask myself, “How can I improve my serve?”

Obviously, I’ll need to practice. We all know that the best way to hone our skills is through repetition and hard work. I’ll need to understand what type of serve my own talent is best suited for and then, through continuous use, I’ll get better and better. I’m sure I can find opportunities to serve.

Of course I’ll need a place to practice my service game. If I’m really going to take advantage of the talents I have been given, I’ll need to not only find the right place for me to serve them up, but I’ll also need to determine to whom I’m going to serve. Maybe if I find someone who is less fluent in serving than myself, I can teach them, if only by example, how to improve their own serve. I imagine that if I look around, I’ll find plenty of places that would be more than happy to let me exercise my service.

It would be great too, if I had role models to look up to. If I could reach out and surround myself with other people who have given much of their lives to perfecting their own service, I could learn from their example and be inspired by their actions. As I contemplate who some of these people might be, I realize I already know many. Interestingly, none of them exude the competitive juices that I flaunted as a young man. Quite the opposite in fact; they are more focused on the success of the person they are serving, than themselves.

Finally, I think I’ll need a coach. Someone with knowledge and tremendous insight that can help me to grow my talents, someone I can ask advice of and confide in when I think I’m not serving at my best.

I may not win all my matches, but I don’t think I care now, as long as I get to serve.

Shrinkage

“What a compassionate solution,” I thought to myself while conversing with my friend. I had no idea how we might solve the problem in front of us, but this man, quite my senior, not only solved the problem, but did so in a way that showed compassion and caring for everyone affected by it.

I have the fortunate opportunity to be involved with a number of people who are considerably older than I, and am consistently astonished by their capacity to pull from their unique experiences and knowledge, in order to offer solutions to any number of problems that I’m personally stymied to resolve. Ironically, I have that same experience when I’m involved with the youngest part of our society. Although children can’t pull from years of experience like our seniors, they replace that with an uncluttered view of life that lends itself to solving what seem like complex problems, with simple solutions.

Although these two segments of our community come at things with wildly different mindsets it seems to me that they share a very common thread. They each inherently speak from their mind and their heart at the same time, as if there is no separation between the two. There is no need to reconcile between a thought and a feeling; they are intertwined to the point that there is no distinction.

With children we usually explain this away as immaturity, but if the most experienced people gravitate back to this oneness of heart and mind, this kind of response can’t be appropriate.

We have all heard young children make suggestions that in their purity will indeed solve a particular problem, if it were not for our grown-up view on the implications of the solution. “It will be too hard,” “Some people may not like it,” or “It’s more complicated than that,” are all things I’ve heard myself think or say. I wonder what my friend would say. I bet he would be much more in their camp than in mine.

So, maybe it is me, or our period in life. The innocence and purity of childhood too often gets buried as the commerce of our lives becomes a focus. We have responsibilities, jobs, homework, and chores to fill up our days. We exercise our mind constantly to the point where it starts to believe that it’s an independent organ strong enough to survive on its own. If we forget to exercise our heart, it becomes overshadowed by the strength of our mind, distant and eventually cold.

As an infant we are just tiny little creatures, and as a result our heart and mind are physically close to each other. As we grow from infant, to child, and then on to adulthood, our mind and heart become physically separated by a greater and greater distance. Maybe that’s why as we move into our senior years we start to shrink, so that like a child, our mind and heart are nearer each other, intertwined as it was intended.

On Purpose

I can hear their words as clear as a bell -- My sister or brother telling on me. “He did it on purpose!” they would rant. There were many times I accused them in the same way, “She did it on purpose, Mom!” I would scream.

It’s a common phrase when we’re young. Likely someone got hit while roughhousing and thought the perpetrator did it intentionally. Or maybe the accuser was trying to get the other person in trouble in retaliation for some prior run-in.

Regardless, my parents, like all other parents, were now presented with a challenging predicament. Two (or more) of their children were presenting differing stories and they needed to judge as to which story was “the truth.” Back in my youth, I could not understand this challenge. Obviously my sister had indeed done “it” on purpose, and I was obviously telling the truth (ok, so maybe not ALL of the time).

When I became a parent, my turn came to be the judge; a situation I detested. How could these two people be forcing me to pick one of them over the other? Thank goodness my children are older now, and the situation no longer presents itself with any frequency.

Yes, we seem to grow out of using this accusation as we mature. Even if we say the phrase aloud now, we tend to use a childlike voice, harkening back to the immature and taunting ways of our youth. As adults we only use this phrase as a joke or sarcastic reference to a family member, friend, or peer’s behavior. That’s too bad, living a life “on purpose” is the greatest thing we can do with our short time here on earth.

Merriam-Webster’s defines purpose (in part) as “something set up as an end to be attained; a fine definition, but probably not the optimal way to describe a life. A life of purpose has many interwoven meanings. A singular larger purpose is almost certainly something we all struggle towards and strive to understand for our unique lives. It is the topic of countless books and a core focus of our faith.

As those young people that accused one another of little things that happened in our backyards and play rooms, we were just beginning to understand that each individual moment, and our actions and reactions to them, have impacts on the world we live in and the people in it. As we never stop growing and understanding, we continue our realization, that living each of life’s moments on purpose and in alignment with our current and evolving understanding of our life’s greater purpose, is what it’s all about. In short, our purposeful response to every moment of our lives, results in a life of purpose.

What a life you would have led if at a young age a loved one accused you by saying “he did it on purpose,” and then again at the time of your golden years, after a life well-lived, those same words were spoken once again.

Laundry

In our house we share all the work and that means that we all tend to gravitate to the chores that, if left undone, tend to bug us the most. For me, that’s the laundry. I by no means do all the laundry myself, but left to my own devices, I will keep loading the washer until there are no clothes left to clean.

I’m not sure what drives me toward this particular chore; maybe it’s the clarity I get from having everything clean at one time, maybe it’s the sense of organization I get from having things all in their rightful place, maybe it’s the simple pleasure of having something uncomplicated that I can do, and see it through to completion without any vagaries.

I do know one thing. It’s not because I’m the best at it. In my hurry to complete ALL the laundry, I’ve definitely taken some short-cuts and made some irreversible mistakes. It’s not uncommon for me to fly through a couple of loads of laundry and never look at the labels to see what special accommodations I should make. I’m not completely without guidance. I know the brights go with the brights and the whites go with the whites, but beyond that, I tend to take shortcuts assuming that if they look the same, that they are close enough and can be dealt with in the same way.

I guess if I were to be honest with myself, I’m sometimes too much in a hurry to look for special care labels. In the rush of each day passing by us with seemingly more and more dirty laundry to deal with, we’ve probably all ruined both an everyday article as well as a precious one that we’ll never forgive ourselves for sullying.

Now, looking back, it seems so simple. The tag was right there, all I had to do was look for it and then take the appropriate action. It couldn’t be simpler, but we sometimes, with good intent, make these mistakes. I guess that’s why we need to slow down and look for the tags.

The tag that will tell us that our friend, although on the surface seems durable and resilient, may need a spin in the gentle cycle. The tag that tells us our loved one can’t take the heat right now, and we should, instead of pushing them, take a walk and let them air out their issues to us as we listen; just listen. Or perhaps we hold back and don’t agitate our co-worker, but instead lend them a hand as they face a challenging task.

Maybe it would be easier if we all wore our clothes inside out, so everyone could see our tags, but I think if we slow down our own cycle a bit, we’ll see people’s tags just fine, and we’ll know when to use special care. After all, once a stain is set in, it’s much harder to get out.