"Don’t Wait to Say What Needs Saying"

I've been away from this blog for several months and, after reading a column by Bob Welch in our local newspaper last week, I decided it was time to share his words that reminded me of a key part of an ethical will.

I was especially moved by these words from Bob's column on "Passing over life's rumble strips:"

"Time passes. The world changes. The unexpected happens.

And for me, the lesson seems to be: Don’t let things go unsaid.

But too often, I do. I get so wrapped up about getting where I need to be that I overlook where I am and where I’ve been.

I too often miss the observation that my mother — at 85, still traipsing off to the coast for contemplative stays — makes about appreciating what we have.

“We can enjoy an event in three ways,” she said. “While looking forward to it, while we’re in it and while we look back on it.”

I too often miss the wisdom from author Ann Voskamp, in her book “One Thousand Gifts,” about living each day with thankfulness.

Thankfulness, she says, leaves no room for bitterness.

Ah, but you can’t wait for the muse, she warns. You have to be proactive. Have to think it, say it, claim it — before it’s too late."

Wisdom worth taking to heart every day whether or not we ever write and share an ethical will with our family and friends.

I've been reading Bob Welch's articles and columns since moving to Eugene in the late 80's.  His humanity and humor make him one of the best columnists I've read as a lifelong newspaper reader.

Thank you, Bob, for all stories you've written over the years about people in our community, your experiences as a father and grandfather, and the many places you've been in Oregon and the Northwest.  I'm grateful for all of the laughter, tears, and joy you've brought to my life.  Best wishes for many more years of writing columns and books that make a difference in the world!

Some Wisdom from Steve Jobs

While I've certainly enjoyed using the products that Steve Jobs and Apple have created over the years, I've never been a fan of the man's management style (which has been described by others as "psychological manipulation" at best and "brutal -- this is shit -- putdowns" at worst).

Reading an article in Newsweek on "How Apple Revolutionized Our World" by Paul Theroux,
I was please to learn what the author called "the essential things to know about Jobs life (that) emerged in a speech he gave in spring 2005 at Stanford University."  In his commencement address, Jobs noted:

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."


For the full text of Jobs commencement address, here's a link.


NOTE:  Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011 at the age of 56.

Life Lessons: Joan Halifax on Compassion

When working as a hospice volunteer, I did lots of reading about death and dying.  One of the writers I admired for her work is Joan Halifax, a Buddhist priest.  Her latest book is "Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death."

Today I came across this TED video of Ms. Halifax that I wanted to share (and keep for myself so I can return to it for viewing in moments when I feel I've lost touch with compassion!).

Life's Decisions: Dorcas Smucker

One of my favorite local writers is a "nearing age 50" woman named Dorcas Smucker.  Her "Letters from Harrisburg" have been published in the Sunday edition of The Register-Guard for many years (and have been turned into books by the author).  I highly recommend them all.

Today, Dorcas wrote about "life decisions," asking herself about her life choices (which she notes that she has seldom done).  Among the gems of wisdom in her story I think is worth remembering every day of our lives is:

"What I realize now is that maybe what we see as the big life decisions of career and education and location are actually the small ones. The big decisions are the ones that transcend every place and relationship and job — integrity and kindness, mercy and generosity, love and joy and justice."

You can read the full story on the newspaper site or on Dorcas Smucker's blog, "Life in the Shoe."

Enjoy!

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The Things You Would Have Said

Reading a story on the front page of today's Oregonian newspaper brought to mind why I think it is so important to consider your life legacy "before it's too late." Titled "A home for letters from the heart," the article featured a Portland woman's website that collects letters from people who have words they've wanted to share with someone but didn't or couldn't. You can check out the letters on her website at www.wouldhavesaid.com.

If you have words you want to say to people in your life but haven't done it yet, I encourage you to do it today in person or by letter. And, if the person has died, write a letter to them anyway and read it aloud to a friend or send it to Jackie Hooper's website.

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Best Advice You Actually Followed

I read an interview with author Chang-rae Lee last month in which the interviewer asked him a great question:

The best piece of advice you actually followed?

His answer:

"Honor what you love, whether it's a person or vocation or idea."

Lee's mentor and good friend, poet Garrett Hongo, gave him that advice.

Knowing and doing "what I love" is the best guide I've found for living a contented life. Seems like it took me way too many years to realize that truth. But I'm grateful that I learned that life lesson before I'm on my deathbed ... and that I've had more years to "practice" than I ever expected.

What's the best advice you received that you actually followed?

Photo Credit: Denise Applewhite

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Life Lessons: Solitude and Silence

This week I read Anne LeClaire's new book, Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence. The book describes her experience of practicing total silence on two Mondays each month for over seventeen years.

In LeClaire's chapter on "Nourishing the Creative Self," I appreciated what she says about the power of imagination:

"Today our imaginations are under siege by a constant barrage of noise and busyness. Our culture regards solitude and silence as something to be avoided. We would rather scrub grout than spend expended time alone.

A high cost comes from this. We have lost the path by which we journey to the place deep within where dreams and stories and visions appear. As Picasso noted, solitude is necessary for this work. In silence's calm surrounds, we discover the power of imagination and throw open the gates to creativity. In the opulent luxury of solitude, time becomes elastic and creative impulses surface and are allowed room to breathe. Sitting quietly, we gently enter our own inner worlds. Daydreaming, Woolgathering. Lost in space. These are rich and fertile activities. The playgrounds of imagination."

Thankfully, at this stage of my life I have many hours of solitude each week -- some of the time in silence (but never full days like the Ms. LeClaire). Knowing how important solitude is for nourishing my creativity and inner life, I may well give the author's practice of silence a try. I definitely want to reduce the noise and distractions in my life and would welcome an upsurge in creativity. Her experience transformed her life, igniting her creativity and fostering new connections with others, with herself, and with nature.

I enjoyed reading about Anne LeClaire's discoveries from answering an unexpected call to "Sit in silence." Now the question for me is "When will you start?"

If you decide to read the book, please send along your comments. Or share your experiences of silence and solitude.

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Life Lessons: A Quote to Remember

I've been away from the blog for quite awhile devoting much of my time over the past 10 months to outreach work for an alternative high school (where I've been blogging!). When I came across this quote from Eckhart Tolle in the "Sunbeams" section of The Sun (Aug. 2009), I decided to add it to my postings on life lessons:

"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment."

I've recognized the wisdom in this quote much later in my life than I would have liked to have "gotten it." At least now I'm getting closer to "at this moment" in knowing why I'm having an experience in my life ... whether I like or not!

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The Gates Legacy: Interview with William & Bill

I just watched a father-son interview with William and Bill Gates. On a wide-range of topics (with a focus around William's new book "Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime"), both men shared insights on their life and work together.

As someone who had a troubled relationship with his father, I was touched by what the Gates' men had to say about one another and the way in which they said it. And I'm pleased that this 83 year old and 59 year old "duo" have taken on such huge projects with the Gates Foundation -- ending malaria and AIDS -- and the U.S. education system. While I'll be long gone from this life before their goals are achieved, I'm more hopeful than ever knowing that these guys are focusing their lives (and billions) on the problems.

I'm going to order the new book and expect I'll enjoy reading the life lessons of Bill gates, Sr.

The "Zen Commandments": Wisdom for Living

I just finished reading a new book by one of my favorite Buddhist writers, Lama Surya Das. Titled, The Big Questions, the author writes on the "sacred art of questioning" and offers his views on 14 questions that address life's essential mysteries.

I especially enjoyed what Surya Das says he jokingly calls his "Zen Commandments":

~ Take care, stay aware. Watch your step. Pay attention---it pays off.

~ Awaken your mind, open your heart and energize yourself. Learn to see clearly and love generously.

~ Find a way to live your own spiritual practice. Develop an ongoing spiritual life, not just a few spiritual experiences.

~ Don't see others' light. Exploit your own innate natural resources for a change. Mine the mind.

~ Freedom is a process, not just an idea or ideal outcome. Progress is more important than perfection.

~ Learn to accept, to let go, and let be. Allow.

~ Lighten up while enlightening up. Cultivate joy. Don't take yourself too seriously, or it won't be much fun.

~ Don't cling to anything. Recognize everything is impermanent and like a dream, a movie, a sitcom. Remember the daily mantra: This Too Shall Pass.

~ Not too tight, and not too loose. Stay attuned to the big picture.

~ Be mindful. Pay attention. Keep your eyes peeled. Be vigilant and intelligent about your experiments with reality.

~ Be here while getting there, every single step of the way.

~ Don't rely on mere words and concepts. Just say maybe.

~ Don't be deceived by ideas and opinions, either others' or your own. You just can't believe whatever you think.

Life is precious; handle with prayer.
Be good and do good.
It's now or never, as always.
Meditate as fast as you can.

Amazing life lessons! The guy packs a lot of wisdom for living in just a few words.

What "zen" (or "non-zen") commandments" would you write for your ethical-spiritual will? That's a question I need to answer for myself ... and I encourage you to give it a whirl. Write them down as fast as you can!

Living in the Light of Death

I was reading one of my old journals a few days ago and came across some writing I did at the Oregon Coast in October 2003 about Larry Rosenberg's book, Living in the Light of Death. Most of what I wrote were quotes that offered wisdom for living life to the fullest:

"Death is not waiting for us at the end of the road. It is walking with us the whole time."

"No one is guaranteed even one more breath."

"Life just keeps being how it is, no matter what we hope or expect. There is a gap between the way things are and the way we want them to be, and that gap is filled with suffering."

"Communing with fear stimulates an understanding that has liberating power." "And, when you learn to practice with ordinary events, you are capable of staying with the extraordinary ones. Like the moment of death."

"We know in our head that we will die. But we have to know it in our hearts. We have to let this fact penetrate our bones. Then we will know how to live."

While I rarely read my old journals, I'm glad I came across these quotes and others that reminded me of the importance of contemplating death as I live in the light of my life.

Do you avoid the subject of death or have you embraced the wisdom of knowing that "it is walking with us the whole time"?

Life Lessons: Pathways to Contentment

The older I get, the less concerned I am about "being happy." Now in my mid-60's, being content with my daily life is more important.

What does contentment feel like? What produces contentment in one's life?

Certainly being satisfied with the life I have is a place to start. To just be. To honor "what is" in my life. Not to be thinking I will be content "just as soon as" something (anything?) I desire is achieved, earned, or received.

In their book, "Contentment: A Way to True Happiness", Robert A. Johnson and Jerry M. Ruhl write:

"As modern people, we like to believe that contentment comes from getting what we want. It does not. Contentment grows out of our capacity to mediate our desires with "what is". A basic spiritual principle is learning to accept "what is" instead of insisting that life be a certain way. Life is rarely the way we want it to be, it's just the way it is. This doesn't mean that you should give up or become passive. The art of realizing contentment is an active and dynamic process. You might imagine it as a dance between your wishes and reality, what you want and what you get."

In my experience, contentment never results from my doing or having. Simplifying my life has helped. But there's more to contentment than just simplicity.

Johnson, a world-renowned Jungian analyst, and Ruhl, a psychotherapist, say that "contentment grows out of the circumstances of life as you find it, in the very place where you currently exist." Furthermore, "the more present and aware you are to what is, the greater the possibilities for contentment."

When I feel content, I have a sense of deep satisfaction, an inner calm, a timelessness. My mind is at peace. My ego is silenced. I feel an inner integrity with my life.

Johnson and Ruhl contend that we must first learn to differentiate between our inner and outer lives to realize contentment. That requires us to understand projection.

The co-author's define projection as "the error of attaching an aspect of your inner life onto someone or something on the outside. This way, you do not have to take responsibility for it. In projecting a disowned part of yourself, you endow other people and things with the power to make you blissful or miserable. Then you turn around and praise or blame the person or situation, while all the while you are reacting to an unconscious, inner part of yourself."

I know I'm projecting when my response to a person or situation is out of proportion to reality, highly energized with emotion (my voice changes), or compulsive in nature. People who know me best usually sense my projections of my inner world before I do (because I'm busy projecting my blame or praise onto them!).

But I've gotten better "with age" at recognizing my projections since Gay Hendricks, co-author of "Conscious Loving" and other books, suggested to me in a training to just "assume your life is all projections!" A radical approach? Maybe. I know it has helped me "reel in" my projections sooner and take responsibility for my actions as well as to notice more quickly when others are projecting their life "stuff" onto me.

So it takes a shift in one's level of consciousness to experience contentment at its fullest. Can I say "yes" to all of the content of my life -- the painful, the ordinary, the joyous? What about when discontent arrives (unannounced!) on the doorstep of my day or my bedstead at night? Yes, I need to honor discontent as well. Attempts to control "what is" in my life simply don't work. In Johnson and Ruhl's words: "When you start trying to repair or manipulate 'what is', then you only upset the natural order of the universe."

The co-authors of "Contentment" go on to say that "you cannot acquire contentment like some consumer item but you can awaken to its gifts. It is closer to the truth to say that contentment comes to us by divine grace."

Most often, that's how it feels as contentment comes to me in the form of divinely inspired gifts. All I have to do is be present and aware -- to notice, to accept, and honor the gifts that "what is" brings me each day of my life.

One Simple Question Can Change Your Life

When my partner and I were doing counseling together with couples, Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks were our mentors. Their book, Conscious Loving, and a workshop we did with them made a lasting difference in our relationship and guided our work with couples.

Recently, Gay wrote a new book he calls Five Wishes. An article based on the book was published in New Connexion (Nov/Dec 2007). Gay tells a story about a life-changing conversation he had in his 30s that centered on one simple question. Here's a link to the article:

Five Wishes: A Gift That Changed My Life

I encourage you to read it. It may just be the gift that will change your life!