Posted on

Broken Promises

The industrial age materialized a great promise. It promised domination over nature, material abundance, unlimited happiness and unimpeded freedom. New forms of energy — steam, electric, nuclear — were substituted for human, manual energy. As the computer pushes aside the need for the human mind, we could see our way to unlimited production and unlimited consumption. (Fromm)

Sipping Youth berry/ Orange Blossom tea, I wonder…is that reality? Expecting infinite resources from a finite planet seems a little obtuse.

The industrial age has indeed failed to fulfill its Great Promise, and ever growing numbers of people are becoming aware that:

*unrestricted satisfaction of all desires is not conducive to well-being, nor is it the way to happiness or even maximum pleasure.

*the dream of being independent masters of our lives ended when we began awakening to the fact that we have all become cogs in the bureaucratic machine, with our thoughts, feelings and tastes manipulated by government and industry and mass communications that they control.

*economic progress has remained restricted to the rich nations and the gap between rich and poor nations has ever widened

*technical progress itself has created ecological dangers…which may put an end to all civilization and possibly to all life. (Fromm)

These sentiments are echoed in many tomes. Michael Beckwith, in Spiritual Liberation, calls it the “tyranny of trends” that hijack our standard of success and “convince individuals what their life’s purpose should be.” Michael Ray from The Highest Goal believes “the most powerful obstacles to living in resonance with the highest goal come from the media, our schools, our parents and friends — our society. All of them tell us to chase a successful life that will be admired by others.”

Although many “enlightened” tell us to follow our bliss, or march to our own beat, the “tyranny of trends” is very compelling. We want to find our own path but the siren’s call is too strong. We need a better way to change our route.

For me, and maybe for you too,, that way was to adopt a new language for goal setting and dream building. The popular practice of setting S.M.A.R.T. goals keeps us focused on attainment. We express our desire in terms of getting some timely measurable objective. We set income goals. We set weight loss goals. We set a deadline. We measure our progress. We attain our goal. We pump our fist in the air and experience the moment of elation before we realize that we have to do it all over again.

Or we don’t reach that brass ring and we sit down. What is all that striving for? Science has told us that the happiness we feel when we achieve some goal is a short-lived peak experience. We quickly revert to our happiness set point.

What if the goal was not a set point, but a destination. Like arriving somewhere, like Disneyland, and we have the opportunity to explore and enjoy who we have become because you made it. We can measure success because we now have choice. For example, instead of having a goal to be debt-free consider embodying the life of someone for whom money doesn’t dictate their choices. For me, someone who doesn’t have to think about money when making choices is someone who makes smart money decisions, pays their bill on time and has money to exchange for great experiences. When I stand in that place, I am likely debt-free and I am enjoying what I am doing and who I am being, the destination.

What is your destination? Instead of labelling our goals as reaching a peak, label it as a place to go where we can now enjoy the view rather than always looking to the next mountain.

Posted on

The Colour of Compassion

Sipping blueberry lemonade tea on a sunny afternoon has me reflecting on the colour of compassion. The tea is not the purple hue of blueberries, nor is it the bright sunshine of lemons. It is somewhere in between. That in between is where compassion might lie.

Timber Hawkeye in Buddhist Boot Camp likes gray. We don’t live in a black and white world:

“When you’re not standing at either end, but hanging out in the middle instead, nothing can offend you.

Compassion and deep understanding towards others are significantly easier to access when nobody is far away from where you are.” (pg. 81)

Timber stands firmly in the middle ground. That does not mean that we need to be accepting of what is harmful. Having a moral code can help us define what is harmful and…

“you don’t have to agree with, only learn to live peacefully with, other people’s freedom of choice…No matter how certain we are of our version of the truth, we must humbly accept the possibility that someone who believes the exact opposite could also be right (according to their time, place and circumstance). This is the key to forgiveness, patience, and understanding.

That said, tolerance does NOT mean accepting what is harmful. Often times the lesson we are to learn is when to say “no,” the right time to walk away, and when to remove ourselves from the very cause of anguish. After all, we are the ones who create the environment we live in. (pg 65)”

Imagine if we create an environment of patience, compassion and understanding in our little corner of the world. And your neighbour creates their little plot of altruism. Our community would become little plots of peace that would leak on to one another. Is that too much to ask? Just fix up your little plot of peace and I will worry about mine.

Then we would…

“Never judge anyone for the choices that they make, and always remember that the opposite of what you know is also true. Every other person’s perspective on reality is as valid as your own, no matter how certain you are that what you are doing is the “right thing,” you must humbly accept the possibility that even someone doing the exact opposite might be doing the “right thing” as well.

Everything is subject to time, place, and circumstance. There are not “shoulds” in compassionate thinking.” (pg 136)

What is the colour of your compassion?

Posted on

Dodging Procrastination

I am putting off again. I opened my window to let the sweet summer air in and I hear someone cutting the grass. I think, my grass needs cutting. I should cut my grass. Cutting my grass is not on my list today. Tomorrow, it can be cut. I can put it on my list tomorrow and do it without the guilt of not doing the things on my list today. I did put the things on my list for today because it was important that I do them today.
Photo by noor Younis on Unsplash

And they are still on my list at 5 o’clock in the afternoon.

I have read much about procrastination, eating the frog, having courage to take action. Still I sit here. Tea today is Grapefruit Squeeze.

I am not a bad person. Although the little voice in my head tells me that when I see others move passed my on the way to their goals and mine are still out of arm’s reach. I am not a lazy person. I have accomplished many worthwhile things.

I am distractible, like many. And, like many, I am afraid.

For me, procrastination only equals fear.

In his blog, Zen Habits, Leo Babauta agrees with me:

At its root, procrastination is almost always based on some kind of fear. And figuring out how to beat that fear is the key to un-procrastination, in the long run.

Quick fixes are fine, but if the fears remain unabated, they will continue to act on you, causing you to want to procrastinate despite your best intentions.

So how do you beat fear? One of the reasons fear can be so powerful is because it lurks in the dark — unnoticed, in the recesses of our minds, it acts without us knowing it. So the first step is to shine some light on it — fear hates light. The light is our attention, our examining of the fears, our taking a close look at them to see if they’re rational or baseless.

Once we’ve shined a light on the fears, we can beat them with information. For example, if you’re afraid you’re going to fail, well, do a small test and see. If you don’t fail, that’s information — you now know that, at least with a small test, you won’t necessarily fail. Keep repeating the tests and you’ll gather a lot of information that is contrary to the fear, beating the fear because you now know with good certainty that it’s baseless.

Shine a light on the fear, run small tests, and beat it with information….

…Some Procrastination Fears

A number of fears contribute to procrastination, including but not limited to:

Fear that you’ll fail or do badly. Probably the most common one.

Fear of the unknown — the task is not familiar to you, so you don’t know what to do or where to start.

Fear of the uncomfortable. It’s easy to do things we’re comfortable with, but doing new things is uncomfortable so we put them off.

Fear of starting in the wrong place. You don’t start because what if you’re not starting the right way?

These are all obviously related, and they can be summed up as “fear of failure or not being good enough”. (Zen Habits)

I am aware of the problem. I acknowledge it. I know that I am the only solution. And still here I sit with my list not finished.

So I move. Although not perfectly, I am internalizing this belief to push me through:

No one is watching.

“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.” — David Foster Wallace

And…

“Nobody cares what you are doing.”
Obscurity is not a problem. It’s an opportunity. It allows you to lay the first brick in your idea without a judging panel. Then, you might find the confidence to lay another. And then another. Safe in your shroud of being a nobody, you have full reign to take whatever type of material you like and build whatever type of legacy you want. (Todd Brison)

And I am done.

Posted on

The Break

“The most common way for people to give up their power is by thinking that they don’t have any” – Alice Walker (epigraph, The Break)

Photo by Brendon Thompson on Unsplash

Katherena Vermette’s book, The Break, is real. Curled in my reading chair with one of my mother’s scrap quilts wrapped around my legs drinking Darjeeling Green Tea (so smooth), I am struck by how real the characters are. It is woven with the perspectives of many people. Although the book feels like it is about the strength of women and community and love, I found it interesting that the only two male characters that are developed reflect Canada now. The relations between colonials and First Nations are taking the headlines from speech by Justin Trudeau in front of the UN General Assembly to committees for residential schools and missing and murdered indigenous women. The two police officers, Officers Scott and Christie, are the two sides of that story.

Officer Christie is a personification of beliefs that seem to pull at current affairs. When he first shows up in the story, he is bored, curt and uninterested. To him, it is just another “nates” fighting “nates” story. Through Christie, I can hear conversations in coffee shops and around lunch tables as Canadians in cities and towns speak about the First Nation headlines: higher than average suicide rates; higher than average drug and alcohol addictions; run down housing communities; social assistance-ne’er-do-well. Christie is mild prejudice shows in his lack of effort to investigate the events. He refers to his partner, Tommy Scott, as May-tee. I can hear him saying something like, “I am the least racist person in the world. Look, I like the guy.”

And Tommy Scott, is First Nations. He is trying to fit in to the colonial world. His wife wants to embrace the Pomp and Circumstance of Indigenous pageantry, without seeing the underbelly. Tommy is learning to speak up. He shyly indicates his heritage on his employment forms. He is conscious of how he presents himself to his superiors and his colleagues. It is through Tommy’s perseverance that Christie begins to listen. He begins to hear the story that is playing out through the crime. He steps in and helps.

Is this the story of Canada?

The Break’s storyline is a fictional depiction of Trudeau’s speech:

“Our efforts to build a better relationship with Indigenous Peoples in Canada are not only about righting historical wrongs. They are about listening, and learning, and working together. They are also about concrete action for the future. The reconciliation we seek has lessons for us all. We can’t build strong relationships if we refuse to have conversations. We can’t chart a more peaceful path if the starting point is suspicion and mistrust. And we can’t build a better world unless we work together, respect our differences, protect the vulnerable, and stand up for the things that matter most…” (http://bit.ly/2EhJFUj)

Officers Christie and Scott are Canada.