February 21, 2011 · 11:09 am

The Butterfly Effect

Life is filled with thousands of little Butterfly Effects. We’ve heard the parable. Most times it is reflected in science and the science fiction of time travel. In science it is depicted with the cliché of a butterfly flapping its wings could cause a change in atmosphere that might cause, prevent or change the path of a tornado or tropical storm in a specific location. In science fiction it is usually used when the character travels to a different point in time, she must be careful not to do anything that will change history. Heaven forbid that she is plopped down at a point in her own pre-history and do something to change the particulars of her conception. Maybe she would cease to ever be. I can see you smiling at that one. But if you give it some thought you would see the logic.

Life is cause and effect. Think about this very moment in time. What would you be doing if you weren’t reading this? Maybe you might be drinking coffee, eating some grapefruit, or typing on your computer? Or maybe doing all three like I am doing just now. And then you might throw in a television in the background, playing the Today show and a story about a paralyzed former pro basketball player who is trying to learn to walk again. Not to mention the clothing that I have in the laundry. That is my kind of multi-tasking. But sometimes it digresses into a big batch of white noise and I can’t think of anything at all. It only makes sense if you are aware of what you’re doing in this moment.

How did you wake up this morning? Was it a kiss from your loved one? Was it because you had to go to the bathroom? Did you wake to an alarm clock? Was it a bell, buzzer, song or talk radio? Did you lie in bed until the very last minute or did you leap out of bed to face the new day? I like to split the difference. I wake before the alarm, sometimes hit the On button, lay in bed listening to NPR for a half-hour or so, then leap up to face the day. I like to get a snap shot of news, traffic and whether to start the day.

What did you eat this morning? Did you skip breakfast to get a little ahead on that diet that you’ve been trying out? Are you going to eat a bigger meal later to make up for it? Maybe you had some grapefruit and coffee like me, or a bowl of cereal or oatmeal, or toast or a bagel. Did you use butter or margarine? Jelly or jam? Mustard or mayonnaise? Did you drive through your favorite fast food joint for an Eggiemuffin? Or maybe you stopped off at the sit-down for a grand slam barnyard bustin’ steak and eggs waffle cake. And that’s just your breakfast choices.

Let’s take a look at these options. If you skipped breakfast how does this affect your meal choices the rest of the day? If you went to the drive-thru did you dribble anything on your shirt or scald your tongue on the new premium coffee? If you ate in the car, did it give you indigestion? How did this effect your day? Let’s say you went to your favorite sit-down restaurant. How much coffee did you drink? Was the plate clean and the mug unstained? How was the service? Did you server smile at you? Did you smile back? Was he having a good day? Did you make it a little better or a little worse? How much did you tip? Was the amount you tipped related to the service, or is that just who you are? Did you help him make his rent, or will he have to try a little harder for the rest of his shift. You are the butterfly that flitted through his day.

Regardless of where you ate, what did you put in your body? How much thought did you give to your order? Did you research the nutritional value? Bacon or sausage, whole grain or bleached, cheese or no cheese, plain or lettuce, tomato, and assorted condiments? Each one of these choices has affects the nutrition of the food that you eat and the effect that it has on your body. Does it matter what you eat? Do you have what we used to call a cast-iron stomach? Is your metabolism such that you can eat whatever and not gain a pound? Most of us are not like that. I have been battling a bulge since I was a kid. I will always have love handles. But does that mean that I shouldn’t be cognizant of what I eat?

Absolutely not. Every move we make and every choice we take has consequences. There is contingency in every single thing that we do. If we choose to eat that Baconator, somewhere down the food chain a pig paid the price. If we choose to go with the three-egg omelet instead of the two-egg, that extra bit of cholesterol could lead to a heart attack five years from now. If we get the milkshake instead of the glass of iced tea, there will be a subtle change in your body chemistry that could have long-lasting effects. I’m not saying that you need to become a tree-hugging, animal-loving vegetarian. Just be mindful of your choices and how they affect the world around you. It’s a ripple effect.

Even if we are not the variable in our action, there is still contingency. If your alarm doesn’t go off, you can over-sleep and feel like you’re behind all day. If you’re behind, you feel as if you have to make compromises in your routine to get to work on time. If you go through the drive-thru, you might order the food that catches your eye through the pretty picture. If you take the first bite and it doesn’t meet your expectations, you’ll still eat it because you don’t have the time to take it back and complain.

If you do make it to the sit-down, there is still contingency in every move. If you get there twenty seconds earlier, you might get to sit in Megan’s section instead of Daniel’s. If Daniel is having a bad day, he can affect the quality of your food or the temperature of your coffee. If you complain or send it back, his day gets even worse. And then you decide not to tip. His day, maybe even his month goes into the crapper. Maybe he goes home and beats his girlfriend. Maybe she slips and hits her head on the corner of the coffee table. Maybe she dies. Maybe he gets charged, goes to jail, gets twenty-five to life. All of this happened because you got to the restaurant twenty seconds too late. This is an extreme example, but it accurately depicts the contingency that is interwoven into our life.

Life is contingency. All around us little unseen butterflies are flitting around, waiting to start or prevent the next tornado in our lives. By being mindful and cognizant of the choices that we make in life can open a window into the wonders of life. The past will never to be repeated. The future is contingent, completely beyond your control. Those butterflies are there to make it so. Be here now. Now is all you’ve got.

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February 16, 2011 · 9:34 am

Evolution Instead Of Revolution

I have been contemplating the deep rift that divides our country. It seems as if the United States of America is ideologically divided down the middle. But is it really? Just because we have a conservative base on the right that shouts really loud and a liberal base on the left that shouts really loud. The problem that we have is that the shouters on both sides drown out the majority in the middle. Does that mean that the majority in the middle doesn’t really matter?

I was a Marine. I may have been one of the worst Marines that ever served, but I did my four-year tour in the Marine Corps. I learned about the history of the Marine Corps and my country. I learned how to kill people. Rightly, they determined that I probably shouldn’t have a weapon in my hand. In fact, the only thing that I was ever armed with was a hand-held anemometer, a wind gauge. I was a weatherman. But my brush with the military made me think about peace.

“Cultivate peace first in the garden of your heart by removing the weeds of selfishness and jealousy, greed and anger, pride and ego. Then all will benefit from your peace and harmony.” Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

That Buddha guy went through some pretty tough transformations on his way to becoming heroic. He started out as a hedonist who was coddled by his parents, protected from the outside world. He was in his twenties before he ever knew sickness, suffering and death. It so affected him that he left his beautiful wife and newborn child in order to get to the bottom of the human condition. He went from having all of his desires sated to living on one grain of rice per day. He was starving to death in search of enlightenment. A young girl with bowl of rice came by and saved his life. The funny part was that his fellow monks shunned him for being so weak. They would rather he died than caved into his human frailty. He took repaired his body and his mind came along for the ride. The rest is 2500 years of history. Which brings us to today.

The enlightenment that the Buddha found was that everything comes from within. We have a well inside of us that runs as deep as an ocean. Magic happens when you tap into that spring. To know yourself, to love yourself, is the key to happiness. It is also the key to peace. Before we can have a societal change away from the wars and the imperial hubris that guides our ideology, we must first know ourselves, love ourselves, and foster peace in our hearts.

You hear it a lot. America is a melting pot. It’s a cliché, but in this one instance it is true. We are Christians and atheists, Catholics and Muslims, Mormons and Wiccans, Jewish and Buddhist, agnostics and Taoists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientologists. If I left anyone out, I’m sorry, but you get the point. Just because we all bow to a different God, or no god at all, just because we read from a different holy scripture, or no scripture at all, that doesn’t mean we don’t all have things in common. We are the stewards of this planet. We are all a part of the same family tree. Whether you believe it goes back to Adam and Eve or Australopithecus afarensis, we can agree on that. So, if we are all a part of the same family, what makes it okay to kill each other?

Nothing. Not land or diamonds or color of skin, not religion or politics or oil or resources. Nothing makes it okay to kill your cousins.

“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this.

“The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.” Black Elk of the Ogala Sioux (1863-1950)

So it starts with one person. You have the opportunity to grow peace in your heart. And the hearts of your children. You can choose to sharpen your spear with love or with hate. I choose to sharpen mine with love. One person nurtures peace in her heart and shares it with another. And then there are four peaceful hearts and then eight and so on. If everyone evolves the peace in his or her heart there would be no need for war. But it has to start somewhere. Why not here?

I can hear the naysayers shouting already. There are bad people in the world. We need to protect ourselves from them. We need our guns and our planes and our bombs to protect ourselves and our country. But have we really examined what makes the terrorist strap a bomb to himself and kill a bunch of people? What causes a Hitler or a Stalin or a Genghis Khan? I don’t have the answer. But I don’t think it really matters.

The only one you can control is yourself. And this very moment. You can try to push someone in the right direction, order them into whatever form you want them to be. But in the end they will have to buy in to your ideology. And they won’t. That kind of discontent is what starts wars. It is what causes people to shoot up the McDonald’s or their work or their Congresswoman. Better to leave them to their problems and spend your energy worrying about your own.

“Anger is the real destroyer of our good human qualities; an enemy with a weapon cannot destroy these qualities, but anger can. Anger is our real enemy.” The Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama was forced from his homeland in Tibet by a Chinese invasion in 1959. Despite fifty years in exile, he still supports non-violent protest. The images of bald monks and nuns in robes facing the Chinese war machine are burned indelibly in my mind. Yet the Dalai Lama refuses to say he hates the Chinese and says that they could even be friends someday. He keeps peace in his heart 24/7/365. This is a lesson for us all.

There are going to be crappy people in the world. You don’t have to be one of them. You can choose to be peaceful. You can choose to vote for candidates and issues that value peace above all else. You can choose to support companies who believe in peace. Or boycott companies who don’t. You can choose the way your food is grown. You can choose to educate those who will listen. You can choose to protest. But keep peace close to your heart.

So greet each day and each person that you meet with a smile. Start your own personal peace movement. Foster the evolution in your heart. If we all agree to do this, if we refuse to sponsor the war machine, if we reject the empire, it will begin to falter. It may not happen today, or tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean that we should waiver. We should emulate the Dalai Lama, keep peace in our hearts 24/7/365. Start a peace evolution instead of another war. Only then can we make the planet a more peaceful place.

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February 13, 2011 · 9:07 am

Pecha Kucha Columbus

Have you heard about Pecha Kucha Night? If you haven’t then you’ve been missing a lot. Pecha Kucha is a night like no other. Taking place in 230 cities across the world, Pecha Kucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat,” it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

Twenty seconds? Are you kidding me. How can you get a message across in twenty seconds?

Think speed dating . Or better yet, an elevator pitch. You catch the CEO of your dream job in an elevator and you have twenty seconds to make an impression. That is the spirit of Pecha Kucha Night. Except at Pecha Kucha you get twenty chances to get your pitch across.

Last night was the 16th Pecha Kucha Night in my fair city of Columbus, Ohio. A crowd of about 500 was on hand to see eleven of these little “chit chats.” It was awesome. The first presenter was Jeff Sims, the videographer from the host site, Columbus Museum of Art. He specializes in documenting the various installations and guest artists who exhibit at the museum.

Next up were two “friends of friends” Rachel and Heidi from OpenheartArt. They could best be described as creative educators and performers who use music, theatre, and body puppets to teach and inspire kids to live the artful life.

Julia Applegate and Liv Gjestvang gave a funny talk about their two-year quest to get pregnant.

School planner Christian Long gave an inspired presentation about new ideas in school design. The crux is that there is no one cookie-cutter way to teach and learn, classrooms and curriculum should be designed to adapt on the fly to get the most of every minute of face time.

Amy Turn Sharp’s presentation was about keeping the creative flame burning through life’s twists and turns.

Tim Lai talked about the new wave of green architecture. His firm designs one-of-a-kind living and working spaces that balance concept, function and beauty. His work is quite a contrast to the one-size-fits-all standard that has been the trend in building for the last thirty years.

The Columbus Idea Foundry was presented by Alex Bandar. The Foundry offers classes and resources to help everyman conceive and execute a creative project from design to fabrication. They have offered classes in blade-smithing, building a contact microphone, making a mechanical iris, and an upcoming one on sand-casting aluminum. They also put on the Ohio Tool Racing Championships. Wow!

Next up was Marianna Kerppola from the International Design Collaborative and Nationwide. She talked about using social and local networking to foster sustainable micro-enterprises.

The Ely Brothers Photography (Caleb and Levi) gave an inspired talk about starting a business on the cheap. They touched on building websites, business cards, proper cell phone usage, social networking, and bartering on a budget. “I’ll trade some photographs for a new office chair, hint, hint…” was one of the best lines of the night.

Tristan Seufert of the local music dynamo Shin Tower Music talked about the Columbus Music Scene and the possibilities for the future. Tristan spoke to the fact that we all love our city and it is our responsibility to get the word out to the world about our local bands. He suggested that our current brand of collaborating and genre-bending is cutting edge in a world where new music is just a click away. He also pointed to the VIA festival in Pittsburgh as a blueprint for our coming out party.

Last up was the developer of CORNIFY.COM, Christoph Ono. If you don’t know about CORNIFY, you probably will in the near future. It is an innovative website that puts fun on any page you happen to visit. People like unicorns and rainbows. Who knew?

Musical groups WAY YES and the OSU NEW MUSIC COLLECTIVE provided the preshow and intermission entertainment.

Pecha Kucha Nights happen daily all around the world. If you see a PKN pop up on your radar screen stop by and take it in. I guarantee you’ll be amazed and inspired. I know I was.

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February 10, 2011 · 12:43 pm

More Alchemy

b’AWARE ~ Consciousness is a magical elixer of realization and enlightenment. Catch a snowflake on your tongue. Make someone smile. Be aLIVE today. ~ Brother T

I’m not a philosopher. I have never been successful at any one thing in life. Mediocre at much. Excellent at nothing. It is only after I learned that life is not about indulging oneself in any whim or want, that I learned that the world does not revolve around the man known as Brother T.

A decade ago I was a hot mess. Stress had me stacked up like a Jenga game with too many pieces missing. I was business first and everything else second. I never smiled. I never greeted anyone who crossed my path. I wanted what I needed and I wanted it now.

One day I walked into the office of the company that I was working for, went straight to the woman who was in charge of that department and demanded some stupid insignificant thing. It never occurred to me that anything could be more important than the thing that I wanted. Of course I got it. I’m sure that I heard an “asshole” whispered under her breath. I didn’t care. I got what I needed.

Upon exiting the room, I was immediately accosted by my girlfriend. She dressed me down for not being civil, asking how my co-worker was doing, not enquiring as to how her ailing father was holding up. In other words, being a rude asshole. Now the girlfriend, who I’m happy to report found herself a non-asshole for a husband, was from a foreign land. She was an alien not only to the USA, but also to the rat race that was ruling my life. The lesson that I learned from her was that there is nothing more important than being civil and friendly. The funny afterwards of the story is that I greeted the co-worker the next day, asked after the ailing father. She complained to our collective boss that I was “nice to her but faking it.”

“Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though t’were his own.” ~
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I’ve become a firm believer in the ability of the individual to bring a sense of joy and happiness to virtually everyone that they come into contact with on a daily basis. I knock on doors and talk to people for a living. Twenty to thirty people per day open their door for me. Most of them do not want to see me. They do not think that they need home improvements. They resist my intrusion into their free time. That’s okay. My main mission is to make them smile and laugh. Once I make that happen, we are on the same team. It is US against THEM. So I say and do whatever I can, no matter how outrageous (but always legal and in good taste) to make that happen. I can honestly say that I get as much if not more joy from the smiles and laughs than these strangers do.

“There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.” ~
Kahlil Gibran

Saturday I woke up feeling less than human. I decided to take a long walk up High Street to my current library of choice. Even though the temperature was hovering at fifteen degrees, there was a steady stream of pedestrians, joggers and bicyclists out on the main drag. I made it a point to address every one of them. The beauty of our neighborhood is the diversity. There are probably one hundred different nationalities living within two miles of my home. It helps that I live on the fringe of the largest and most diverse university in the United States, The Ohio State University. I pimped for smiles and by golly I got em. It was a spectacular two hour tour. I felt like the King of High Street by the time I was done.

“You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both” ~
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The Sage of Concord” got this one only half right. If you have joy and you share it, you will have power. The world is a rat race. It keeps spinning faster and faster. People have to hold on for dear life in order to survive. It is stressful and numbing. Yet few walk among us through life like a fish swims through water. Effortlessly. Joyfully. Happily. As I journey into the second half of my life, I find that if I hold on too tight then life gets hard. But if I can walk at just the right pace, give smiles to all who cross my path, and take time to smell the… pick your euphemism, and life becomes ever so much easier. If that’s not power, I don’t know what is.

Joy to Power,
Brother T

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February 9, 2011 · 8:28 am

flamenco sketches

my fingers play over
scarred bartop
like miles
pressing down on the keys
his horn
moaning and throbbing
painfully
stabbing phrases
through the air
like so many voices
in a gospel choir

bill evans
tinkles the ivory
restrained
and masterful
filling the space
like raindrops
on a warm spring night
while the great man
takes a blow

miles starts in again
sweet sweet horn
taking my breath away
i play with the sweat
on the rocks glass
take a sip
of smoky scotch
inhale a lungful
of kingstown’s finest

i run my fingers
across your bare shoulder
its texture as smooth
as the bartop is rough
hoping i can play you
like miles played that horn
cool and effortless
relentless
through the night

It’s 1959
we aren’t born yet
but miles knew
we’d be listening
played this song for us

best we make the most of it
he’d like that
sketch the dance flamenco
all through the night

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February 8, 2011 · 8:27 am

World's Smallest Footprints

World’s smallest footprints
in a patch of snow
cause me to pause
and ponder

Looking closer
I see ten perfect toes
and wonder what a baby
is doing unshod in the snow

Alarmed, I follow their progress

The footprints
grow smaller
closer together
almost as if

They never were

I turn around to a field
of unblemished snow
footprints are gone
baby’s and mine

Almost as if
We never were

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February 7, 2011 · 9:23 pm

Two People, One Job, One Moment

“Wow, I really want this job.” You fill out the online application and send it off through cyberspace. Thinking that a phone call might be better, you make the call and leave a voicemail. You open another tab on your browser and pull up the company website. It seems perfect. You finally make the connection and set up the interview. You make getting this job your number one goal in life.

“Each minute in life should be a divine quest.” Paramansa Yogananda (1893-1952)

You wake early on the morning of the interview. You meticulously prepare, your hair and clothes are perfect. Your resume is updated. You leave early and arrive twenty minutes before you’re supposed to be there. Your stomach is tied in knots.

“Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.” – Jim Rohn (1930-2009)

You walk into the office and meet the Manager for the first time. She stands and walks around the desk and meets you half way. You are both smiling. You share a warm handshake. You talk about the job, its qualifications, responsibilities and compensation. You both agree that you are the perfect person for the job. It seems like all of your life experience has been leading you to this point. But has it? Let’s stop and examine this moment for a second.

“Time is not a line but a series of Now points.” Taisen Deshimaru (1914-1982)

Let’s imagine a few variables in this perfect occasion. Maybe the Manager spills her coffee right before you walk into her office, making her irritable. Maybe a car on the sidewalk splashes you out front, shattering your confidence. Maybe you cut yourself shaving, making you look less professional. Maybe the Manager used to work at one of your old jobs, or knows one of your references. Any little thing can spoil this perfect, magical moment. But is it a really magical?

“The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.” Abraham Lincoln – American President

In truth, the future never comes. Just as we have no control over the past, we cannot control the future. We spin the past in ever-increasing fantasies, interpretations that fit our self- and world-views. At some point the past becomes some mixture of fact and fiction. If you don’t believe me, just pick up any history book and ask the winners and losers for their interpretations of it.

We try to guide our future. We plan meticulously. We prepare for that special day. Then we spill the coffee, cut ourselves shaving, get splashed on the street or say the wrong thing. Our plans go awry. All we can truly do is the best that we can and hope for the best. But there is one thing that we can control.

Let’s rewind to that moment when you stride confidently into that office and shake your future Manager’s hand. Even if any one of those variables has thrown up a roadblock, you can still salvage one good moment. And the one after that. You can only control the physical moment that you are in. If you walk into this same office one hundred days in a row, prepare just as meticulously, say all of the same things in the same order. You can never, ever, have a Groundhog Day moment. Something will always be different, even if it’s just that you wore the shamrock boxer shorts instead of the ones with the Tasmanian Devil. You and the Manager can never share this same moment again. As soon it is gone, that is when the legends begin to be written. So why not make that moment the best it can be?

“Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks to another day of loving.” Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)

You have the power to make this moment the best that it can be. You can choose to be happy and share that happiness with everyone who crosses your path. The past is gone and the future is nothing but a dream. All you have is now. So seize this moment and really live it. I know that I am.

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February 6, 2011 · 11:33 am

A Step

Breathe

Place the heal
with purpose
on the ground
transfer the weight
to the ball of the foot
stride

And repeat

“The journey of one thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.” Lao Tzu

Any journey, whether it involves running a marathon or walking to the refrigerator, requires the taking of that first step. As you place your foot on the ground and begin the transfer of weight to the ball of the foot, do you notice the texture of the walking surface? Do you feel the blades of grass, the grains of sand, the ridges of ice, the faux smoothness of the blacktop? Do you note how the temperature contrasts with that of your skin? Is your stocking dry or slightly moist? Is the soul of your shoe free of debris? Is the elevation on an incline or decline? Does your heel drag behind you or lift and drop? Do you notice the subtle difference as your other heel strikes to complete the step?

The right heel to the ball of the foot to the left heel to the ball of the foot. One step. One second that lasts a lifetime. No other step will ever be exactly the same. The next step will encompass another lifetime and the step you just took will be lost to you. You will never capture it again.

Maybe if you slow down, enjoy the tactile sensation of placing one foot in front of the other, you will realize what you are missing in the ten thousand lost lifetimes that you throw away every day.

“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on green earth, dwelling deeply in the moment and feeling truly alive.” – Thich Nhat Hahn

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January 31, 2011 · 8:34 am

Thank You

“There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn as in doing it.” Seneca (1 BC – 65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher

A lot is made of all of the hustle and bustle, the rat race of our world. We are on the go all of the time. We eat drive thru food in our cars as we race down the freeway. We have an internal clock that tells us when to be pissed off if that food takes more than thirty seconds. We are jacked into the matrix with our smart phones, email, text messages and Internet 24/7/365. In defiance of modern laws and conventions, we talk on those phones and send text messages while we are driving. Multi-tasking is viewed as strength instead of a distraction.

We need to slow down.

“Wake with a winged heart and give thanks to another day of loving.” Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) Lebanese Artist and Poet

I have been That Guy. That Guy that you love to hate when you see him on the road. That Guy who gets pissed off when his food takes to long. That Guy who talks on his phone or sends texts instead of paying attention to the road. That Guy who was constantly distracted by thoughts of past and future while missing the moment, missing the Now. I hated being That Guy.

I needed to slow down.

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.” Cicero (106-43 BCE) Roman Statesman and Philosopher.

Eighteen months ago I found a website that has helped me slow down and get in the moment. It is called Philosophers Notes. It is a collection of notes and podcasts on 100 (a second 100 are in the works) of the greatest self-help, philosophy and spirituality books of all time. It is where I get my inspiration from authors as varied as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Pema Chödrön, Joseph Campbell, Tony Robbins, Marcus Aurelius and Lao Tzu. Each book has numerous big ideas that are juxtaposed with the big ideas of the rest to reveal universal truths and life lessons.

A sister site of Philosopher’s Notes is Gratitude Log. It is called the happiest place on the planet. It is all about giving thanks and recognizing those things in life that make it wonderful. I am trying to make it a daily ritual.

I dislike that word: try. I believe that you DO something. TRYing to do something means that you acknowledge possible failure before you start, giving you and excuse when you do fail. So just do it (too bad that phrase was coined by Nike). Even if you fail, there are lessons to be learned from it. But at least you started from a positive outlook.

We need our daily rituals to be all that we can be.

So this is my evolving daily ritual:

Rise with the sun
Meditate for twenty minutes to empty my mind and focus
Give thanks to all the wonders of my life
Write for approximately two hours
Take care of my hygiene 🙂
Catch the bus at 9:30
Make it to work fifteen minutes early
Greet everyone and thank everyone, along the way

“The deepest craving of human nature is to be appreciated.” William James (1842-1910) American Psychologist and Philosopher

Greet everyone and thank everyone along the way. That has become an important part of my life. I believe that we can become a more civil society. I believe that we can slow down and smell the coffee. There is more to us than accomplishments and a paycheck, a house in the burbs and two point five kids. When we share a moment, I will strive to make it a good one.

“Namaste. I honour the place in you where the entire universe resides, a place of light, of love, of truth, of peace, of wisdom. I honour the place in you where when you are in that place and I am in that place there is only one of us.” Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian pioneer of civil disobedience.

Namaste Friend. Thank you for being you and thanks for reading.

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January 26, 2011 · 8:38 am

Going To War

Going To War

Two armies face off
across a dusty plain
armored for a long siege
swords sharpened
quivers filled
arrows dipped in poison.

Death is imminent.

Warriors pound chests
chant slogans
build to a cacophony
of spirit
pride
and rage

A perfect killing storm.

The battle is joined
and no one
not General
cavalry
infantry
or Head of State

Can remember what the war is about.

We all live in a perpetual state of war. Or at least on the cusp of war. It might be war with your wife, kids, boss or friends. It might be political, religious, or ideological. A person is mean to you or to someone within you hearing. Someone cuts in front of you in the supermarket line, drives erratically while messing with their cell phone, gets your order wrong at the drive through, puts you on hold before you get to talk. It might even be that mosquito that keeps buzzing you when you are trying to concentrate. These little battles are a part of life. There are as many different reasons for war as there are people on this planet. They are inevitable. Unavoidable.

Or are they?

Life’s little battles happen all the time. We can ignore them or let them ruin our day. I am notorious for allowing my train to be thrown off the tracks by little things that I won’t even remember a week from now. It was especially bad when I was in the restaurant business. Heaven forbid that a pizza got made wrong, a server gave poor service, or a guest had to wait too long to get a table. If dishwasher or oven went down or the toilets backed up, I was a borderline basket case. If I am out of balance, I am not a nice person. You don’t want to be around me. I will make you cry.

There is a crucial moment that occurs right before we start to go off the deep end. You can see it in others. The eyes start to glaze over. The corners of her mouth start to tighten up. Her shoulders hunch. Her heart starts to harden and you can almost see the walls going up between her and the rest of the world. The stress is palpable. It is painful to watch it happen to a loved one.

Now imagine how they feel when they see it happen to you.

But does it have to happen? Perhaps. In the beginning. This “hardening of the heart” has been recognized and expounded upon over the course of history.

When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it. ~ Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius – MEDITATIONS (121 – 180 CE)

Equanimity is defined as “evenness of mind especially under stress” (Merriam Webster). I’ll call it balance. I think we can all agree that life is great when we feel like we are in balance, in the flow. We are like a finely tuned (or poorly tuned, in my case) automobile. When all the cylinders are firing in order we feel like we can conquer the world. But add a little water into the gasoline, throw in a bad sparkplug or a pinhole in the radiator and suddenly we are laboring to get through the day. The key is not eliminating all of the little distractions in our lives, but recognizing them and not allowing them to get in the way and slow us down.

Buddhist Pema Chödrön of Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia does extensive teaching on this subject. There is a Tibetan word, shenpa, which translates to “attachment.” Pema Chödrön prefers to call it “the hook.” Shenpa refers to all of these little speed-bumps that I’m talking about. It is that instant when we feel ourselves going off kilter. The moment when we get caught by that traffic light. The moment when our loved one is not as attentive as we wish. The moment when the cable goes out. The moment when the person hangs up on us or slams the door in our face.

Practicing Peace In A Time Of War

Pema Chödrön teaches that shenpa can be a powerful and instructive tool to not only help us keep our balance but improve it. Rather than viewing our little irritations as a weakness, we can learn to recognize their onset and power through them. She calls the irritation a “hardening of the heart” and advises us to “hold on to the soft spot behind it. Every time that we can conquer irritation in this way, we condition ourselves to be better and faster the next time.

Marcus Aurelius used to play a game with himself. Whenever he felt an irritation coming on, a flux in his equanimity, he would race to see how fast he could conquer it. He called it his “Equanimity Game.” Since I discovered this game a couple of years ago, I have learned to calm down, attack things rationally instead of emotionally. I make less people cry now.

MEDITATIONS ~ Marcus Aurelius

Life is like a fisherman who casts his line in a barrel. Millions of little hooks are dangling in the water, waiting for one of us to swim along and take the bait. If I get lucky and make that traffic light, the hook is still waiting there for the next driver, the unlucky one. If I say the right thing and make you smile instead of cry, the hook is waiting at the next table for the couple that is not on the same page. The hooks will always be there, dangling, waiting to catch you unaware.

The trick is knowing that they are there, dealing with them unemotionally, and getting on with your life. Pema Chödrön calls it her Four R’s.

RECOGNIZING (that the hook is there)
REFRAINING (from being knocked off-kilter)
RELAXING (into the feeling)
RESOLVING (to deal with irritation the same way over and over again)

The more you practice, the better, and more in balance, you will be. Not only will you be one step ahead of the game, but you can avoid some of the wars that seem inevitable in your life.

Namaste,
Brother T

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