the Doing Cure

The Talking Cure is a term coined, according to Wikipedia, in the 1800s by a lady who was cured of her 'hysteria' by talking with a therapist.  For all the merits of talking, a meaningful life must also have some Doing in it.  A lot of times we don't 'DO' because we've told ourselves we must do something Big and Important.  Maybe we got that message from our parents. Maybe we got it from TV.  Maybe we made it up ourselves because we have a wish to be Big and Important.

Here are two people, with outward similarities, who have Done or Are Doing, 'small' things that, I believe, are meaningful in Big and Surprising ways because they connect people with one another and with a sense of joy and love.  The first is Larry Selman, who's obituary appeared in yesterday's New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/nyregion/larry-selman-a-shepherd-of-greenwich-village-dies-at-70.html?ref=obituaries&_r=0  He was a someone well known in his neighborhood of Greenwich Village because of his "prodigious work as a neighborhood fund-raiser. From 1970 until his death he collected more than $300,000 by some estimates — from people he approached in the Village, one at a time, requesting donations of $1 and $2 each. He collected money for St. Vincent’s Hospital, the families of Sept. 11 victims, Muscular Dystrophy research, AIDS research, Kiwanis International projects and animal rescue groups, among others."  Mr. Selman also happened to have an IQ of 62 and after losing both his parent in the 1960s worked very hard with the help of his uncle to live independently throughout his life.  If you have the chance to read his obituary, something I admired about him is the way he brought his neighborhood together and helped people feel connected with one another and with him.

My second 'Do-er' is Grace, who, with her family have adopted a bus stop in Glendale, Missouri.  That's right.  A bus stop.  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Graces-Glendale-Bus-Stop/116072348526169  If you haven't seen it or live outside of St. Louis, you should check out her facebook page.  It is such a treat to drive by and wonder what she is going to do next, how she is going to celebrate a holiday, or honor an occasion.  Driving by and seeing her latest 'I Too Have a Dream' in honor of MLK Day was a moment of joy and inspiration for me.  Grace also connects people with one another, gives them a sense of community, joy, and play.

Here is something I believe:  You can DO something loving, joyful and inspired even in the midst of the rest of your life, which might feel at times sad, hard or stuck.  Just choose a little thing and do it.  It takes courage, but if you look around, you will find so many inspiring people who have had courage before you.  It will be the cure for what ails you and maybe help somebody else along the way.

Beyond 'Girls' and Boys

With the return of HBO’s hit series, Girls, I’ve recently read an onslaught of  newspaper and magazine pieces speculating about dating, sex, and gender issues in the lives of 20-somethings.  I guess we’re supposed to find them endlessly fascinating.  It’s especially curious, because I’m reading these articles in the New York Times and the New Yorker, places that I am sure have a median age readership far older than 24 years.  So, I find myself more concerned with older people and our obsession with youth than I am about ‘hook up culture’ and what it means for dating.

I am a middle aged person, more or less, and this is what I’d like to say to us:   we would do better not to think about the Girls and Boys so much.  If you want to get older and enjoy yourself, start thinking about and spending time with older people.  Instead of looking at where you’ve already been, start thinking about where you’re going and who you might want to be when you get there. 

This can work in two helpful ways.  It can help show you what you don’t want to be and it can help point you in the direction of what and who you DO want to be. 

The first time I became fully aware of the “Don’t Want To Be” category of  older people was when I lived and worked in Washington, D.C. I was in my early 20s.  It was a high pressure/low pay job, though my superiors were very well paid, and growing more well-paid every year (the dot com years!).  People who were ‘old’ to me then, ranged in the ages from 35 to 50.  Not all, but more than several really struggled mentally and emotionally with the stress of their lives and balancing work   and family.  I remember working on a particular Saturday at my ‘cube’, when a project manager, who was probably 35 to 40 came to me crying.  “Will you talk to my husband on the phone?” she asked.  “He doesn’t believe me about how stressful this is.  He doesn’t understand how mean our boss can be.  Will you tell him?”  I did NOT want to be this person in ten years!  I began to examine the contributing factors to the panic and neuroses  around me.  I began to envision my life going in a different direction than the direction I seemed headed.

Conversely, I have had the opportunity in the past ten years to be around some vibrant, curious, wise older people, who have ranged in age from 50 to 95 years old.  Not only have I had friendships and mentoring relationships with some, some I have had the privilege to be with as a hospice worker or therapist.  When I am with an older person, I listen carefully.  Here are some characteristics I notice in people who age with grace and complexity: 

1)      They take risks – they take classes or travel or try new hobbies

2)      They find the humor in life and in themselves

3)      They are flexible with their time and flexible with their minds.  They don’t get stuck in one way of thinking, but continue to learn

4)      They stay curious about the world and show an interest in things that are ageless – music, art, reading, politics

5)      They have friendships with people of different ages

6)      They accept their age and don’t try to be younger (is it self-serving to say that I think dying the grey out of your hair is okay?!)

7)      They balance quiet time with activity.

I’ve heard, that when you’re mountain biking, you need to look at where you want to go, not where you don’t want to go.  Don’t look at the big boulder that you're trying to avoid, look at the smooth path you want your bike to follow. 

Our individual and collective mental health would benefit from valuing and thinking about age at least as much as youth.  I'd like to see some more articles in the New Yorker about that.  

Spirituality & Practice: Book Excerpt: The Road of the Heart's Desire, by John S. Dunne

I don't usually post without a pretty lengthy narrative, but I don't think I have one today, other than this:

A dear lady I know shared a resource with me,  a website called "Spirituality and Practice."  It's kind of a great stew of information, inspiration, and education.  I don't check daily, though I check once or twice a week - this is today's daily inspirational reading - I just loved it and wanted to post it.  Maybe I'll write a bit more on it when I have time, but for now I hope you get a little something from it too.  If you tend to think of life as a story, and find that you maybe live at least a quarter way in your imagination, you might particularly enjoy it. 

Spirituality & Practice: Book Excerpt: The Road of the Heart's Desire, by John S. Dunne

In 2013: listen to your Deep Knowing

If you are someone who knows me well, you probably have heard me say for a number of years - 'This is the year I am going to do less.'  'This is the year of saying NO.'  By now, you probably laugh at me and roll your eyes (I hope you roll them in an affectionate way).  

One of my character flaws is to over-commit to various activities and then run around like a maniac and complain that I don't have enough time to enjoy my very full life.  If you haven't read a children's book call Owl At Homeby Arnold Lobel - you should.  It's so funny - it's a series of vignettes about a neurotic owl.  Perhaps my favorite is the one where Owl runs upstairs and downstairs.  'Owl, are you Downstairs? '  he calls to himself?  'No,' he replies to himself, 'I am Upstairs'.  Then he runs Upstairs trying to catch himself.  This happens again and again.  Finally he says, 'I can't be both upstairs and downstairs at the same time.  All I am is exhausted.' 

Maybe you are not an upstairs, downstairs person.  One of my dearest friends says she is a one thing a day person.  Amazing!  But maybe you are a person who would like to make a particular change, but this change seems to not fully happen.  Maybe you make a little progress and  then fall back into 'old ways.'  

Another friend, Laurie, has often been my 'upaguru' (I just learned what this means - it means 'the guru next to you.')  Her life has been full of experiences and relationships and she's been a student of both life and death, having worked in home hospice and bereavement for many years.  She is one of those friends that after every time we have lunch or meet for coffee, I find myself mulling over something she said or some unique perspective she shared and it's as if I'm a better person for having spent time with her.

This Fall she visited me at home and we sat in the kitchen drinking tea - the afternoon sunlight warming us through the windows.  My family and I had recently moved and as I may have mentioned here, this stirred up many things, including the painful aspects of the Upstairs, Downstairs part of me.

As I was talking with Laurie about this, she asked me, "what does your Deep Knowing want you to know?"  Wow.  What a question.  Laurie is so awesome because she asks questions like this and really wants to know the answer.

I pondered her question many times this Fall and early Winter.   The word that kept coming to me was 'Quiet.'  What did it mean?  I kept listening to this place in myself that we'll call Deep Knowing, and what I believe is this - for these several years, I've been saying, 'I'm going to say NO, I'm going to cut back on activities' and what I really needed to do was whittle down to the essence what I need.  When I ask my Deep Knowing what it wants me to know, its this: my Self, my inner core, needs more Quiet time.

That's just my answer.  You have a Deep Knowing too, that may be trying to tell you something.  Does a particular theme keep coming up in your life?  A problem relationship?  Is there a certain change you keep trying to make, but find it so hard and exhausting to make that change?

Maybe it's been difficult because  you have been keeping yourself at the surface of the problem.  Maybe it is time to listen to your own Deep Knowing.  To give yourself the time and space, not just one day, but maybe over several days or weeks.  Or months.  Ask yourself, 'what does my Deep Knowing want me to know?"   Write about it.  Talk with a trusted someone else about it.  I believe you have the wisdom and courage you need inside you.

Dream Bigger

 I have been with many, many people in the last days of their life on earth.  I try to be a comfort to others in their grief.  I believe we honor those who have gone before us by the way we live our lives.  In our love, their legacy is love; in our compassion, they live on in compassion; in the joy and beauty we find in life, we honor their memory and this is one way their spirits continue.  I believe we can do this for people in our family, I also believe we can do this for those we don't know personally, like the children and adults who lost their lives last Friday in Newtown, CT.

I am reading Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  In the introduction, by his daughter, Rev. Bernice  King, she says that her father did what was necessary to eliminate the "Triple Evils of Poverty, Racism, and War."  At the end of his letter, Dr. King concludes, "Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all of their scintillating beauty."   Dr. King's words and visions inspire me just as much as his awesome actions in life.

So, this is what I want you to do to transform your sorrow.  I want you to dream bigger.   Dream bigger for yourself, but also dream bigger for this world and all its people.  Don't be embarrassed or sheepish. 

When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be the first woman President of the United States.  My fifth grade teacher told me that women couldn't be President.  This didn't dash my dream, but it shows how life can start muddying up our dreams so we can't see them anymore. 

My dreams have changed since 5th grade.  It feels vulnerable to write my dream, but it is a true one: When I give someone my full attention, I see what is loveable in them.  Sometimes I see what is loveable in them before they see it in themselves.  I dream to shine a light on that loveable thing, so that the person can feel it and see it for themselves.  I dream of a world where each person can feel that loveable part of themselves and interact with the world from a place of love and confidence and not from a place of fear or insecurity.  That is my dream.  It's a big dream. 

You probably have a dream too.  Take some time to think about it today, about how your life honors those who have come before you, about how you may have forgotten that you can clean off  those muddied up dreams or create new ones.  Think about that dream and then dream a little bigger. 

A quote attributed to the Buddha is this:  "In this world, hate never yet dispelled hate.  Only love dispels hate.  This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible."  After grieving, may your dreams be created in love.

anger is a tooth

When I was still in social work school back in 1999, I was tasked by my practicum at Kids In The Middle with teaching a court mandated class on co-parenting for divorcing parents in the city of St. Louis.  My supervisor and friend, Jen taught it with me.  We were about 27 years old and neither of us were married.  Nor had children.  We were not stupid enough to think we knew exactly what we were talking about, but we did think we were kind of awesome considering the circumstances.  I remember walking away from the class thinking,  "I actually think that went pretty well.'  We must have had some really nice, kind people we were speaking too, because I can only imagine what we looked like to our 'students' -  there is no other way to say it - we were young, inexperienced white girls with a good deal of guts, but no street cred at all.

And just like with so much of life, we don't always know where our lessons will come from and which ones will stick with us.  Here's one that continues with me today, 13 years later - it was part of the curriculum - something I was supposed to be teaching on those Tuesday nights so many years ago.  It's so simple, it's almost childlike:

Anger is a tooth with two roots:  sadness and fear. 

If you think about it, almost every time you're angry you can examine the roots of that anger in sadness and fear.  When my kids are bugging the hell out of each other and I finally lose my temper with them, I am sad, wondering if they will ever get along or I am fearful that I will not have a moments peace or I am fearful one of them will get hurt by the other.  When I am mad at the guy who cut me off driving, at root, I am scared I will get hurt or scared that I will be late.  When I have a client who is angry with her father, it may be because she is afraid she will never have the relationship with her father that she longs for.  When I talk with a client who is angry with his wife, it may be because he is really sad that he doesn't know how to ask for his needs to be met. 

I believe it is Thich Nhat Hanh who says that living with anger is like living in Hell.  I don't think all anger is bad - in fact I've written about it before. I've read that anger is like a warning sign, a flashing light that tells us, "Pay attention.  There has been a violation of some kind."  Once we pay attention, I don't think we need to just throw out the anger and tell ourselves that if we're emotionally healthy we just 'get over it.' 

But, I do recommend sitting with the anger for a few minutes before you respond.  Try imagining that tooth.  What are the roots.  Are you sad?  Are you fearful?  If you have time, write down all the parts of that situation that might make you sad or fearful.  I guarantee that when you respond, when you address the violation, you will be addressing it in a more honest way and you will feel better about how you handled that situation.

U.S. drones in Pakistan and other wake up calls

I dreamed about war last night and weapons.  I think this may be rooted in information shared this past week in the Spirituality class I assist at Wash U.  After a student presentation about spirituality in the military, another student, who is from Pakistan said, 'I'd like to share something about the U.S. use of drones in Pakistan.'  She went on to explain that most Americans don't know about drone use there, but drones are unmanned aircraft that are controlled remotely.  They are used to bomb sites where suspected Muslim extremists may be gathering.  Unfortunately, there are many inaccuracies with such a remote system and many, many civilians - including women and children have been killed.

The woman who shared this anecdote is a lovely, intelligent, and thoughtful young woman.  I had a deeper sense of both connection to her and also a sense of guilt and culpability after she talked.   I have heard her describe her city, her mother, and now how her fellow citizens are hurt by the actions of my government.  I just read a statistic online that nearly 75% if Pakistanis consider the U.S. an enemy.  For a pretty balanced report, I've attached a Wikipedia entry on 'u.s. drones in Pakistan.'  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan

 I can't tell you how many times before this I'd heard about drones on the news or read about them.  At least the word 'drone'.  Why did I not pay more attention?  Why have I not used my curiosity to find out more about what my government is doing and where, as a representative of me?  What does this have to do with emotional health?

Two things:  1)  how many of us go through life, or at least parts of our life, rather drone-like ourselves.  As if we are unmanned vehicles just operating by some remote pilot.  We don't pay real attention to our environment, the people around us, the colors of the trees, the road we are driving on, the expression on a friend's face.  We zone out and don't  listen and aren't fully alive.  What are we missing out on?  2)  We are individuals and we have an individual emotional/mental health - but we are also a society and we have an emotional character as such.  What do we want  that emotional character to be?  Can we help shape that?  If so, how?  Paying attention is one way to start.

It reminds me of a quote that I've heard attributed to Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys.  When asked about the way the band's image changed from frat party boys, to politically conscious activists, he said, "I'd rather be a hypocrite to you, than a zombie forever." 

So whether zombie, drone, the matrix or whatever you want to call it - I don't want to contribute to a world in which we say, 'that's just the way it is and I can't make a difference.'  That's not good for MY mental health.  In a time of year where we are getting ready to pay special attention to giving thanks, I'd like to give thanks for moments that make me uncomfortable.  The moments that wake me up.