Unusual Behavior at Christmas

Instead of being a time of unusual behavior, Christmas is perhaps the only time in the  year when people can obey their natural impulses and express their true sentiments without feeling self-conscious and, perhaps, foolish.  Christmas, in short, is about the only chance a person has to be him- or herself.   -Francis C. Farley


Christmas is nigh, and we all have the chances once again to do something special for someone else this Christmas season.  Personally, I love the Christmas season because it's a time when people let down their guard a bit and treat each other just a bit more kindly, with a bit more respect and caring and love.  And to be honest, that's that way I want to be all the time, and this time of year allows me to share that feeling with others.  The rest of the year, it often seems like I'm the only one who wants to do special things for other people, and at times that can get very frustrating and even discouraging, because most people aren't ready to accept that kind of behavior if there's no special occasion for it.

Think about it:  If you were to give some of the gifts that you give for Christmas on just some random Tuesday in June, how would people respond?  In my experience, their first response would be to be baffled.  Why is this person giving me a gift?  That's often (usually?) followed by suspicion:  What does s/he want from me?  Is this a come-on?  It's a shame, but in our societies we're often taught to be suspicious of anyone doing anything out of the norm, and it's also a shame that doing kind things for people for no particular reason is quite out of the norm.

Of course, I'm not talking about buying a car for a co-worker that I hardly know.  Rather, I'm thinking about the little acts of kindness that we can show to others that can help them to have a better and brighter day.  During Christmas season, we see tons of those--candy and cookies in the mailbox or on the desk, kind words in the hallway, asking about our holiday plans or what we want for Christmas.  What most people don't seem to realize is that these things are natural for us--it's natural for us to be kind to others, to share gifts with them just because, to actually speak to them as if we're interested in what they say.

But as Francis says, we see this as "unusual" behavior.  We see this type of treatment of others as an aberration.  But what if we were to take back our right to act in ways that come naturally to us, no matter the outcome?  What if I were always to be kind to others even when I get rudeness or indifference in return?  What if I want to be giving even when others aren't ready or willing to be getting?  What if I want to share even when others don't seem to be interested in sharing?

It isn't always easy.  I work at a school at which fully half of the faculty doesn't even look at other teachers when they pass them in the hallway--honestly!  That makes it hard to continue to say good morning to people who simply ignore the greeting.  After a while, my tendency is to say to myself, "Okay, they're not interested in hearing a greeting from me, so I'll stop."  When I do that, though, I'm very clearly allowing their actions to affect my decisions about how I'll treat other people.  And I don't want that to happen, so, I have to keep on saying good morning even when someone doesn't respond--if I want to be true to myself and the person I want to be.

At Christmas time, I think it's easier because so many other people are also receptive to what we have to give.  They not only accept it, but they express their appreciation for it, too, and that makes us feel better about having offered our gifts in the first place.  So we have a chance to be ourselves because we're not afraid that being ourselves will cause us negative results or feedback.

So let's take advantage of this Christmas season and give all that we can in all the ways that we can (in a realistic way!).  And let's use this season as training, getting experience in giving and in getting, so that we can continue to be ourselves every day of the year.  It really is up to us if we want to show our true selves to the world.

Taking Action in Small Ways

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade wind in your sails.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover.   -unattributed


Twenty years from now?  How about three days from now?  How often do we regret not doing things that might have helped us out in life, that might have taught us important lessons, that might have just been really, really fun?  And when we think of reasons for which we haven't taken action--expediency, fear, apathy, being busy, not being able to afford something--our lack of action can prove to be even more frustrating, more regrettable.  We all have many chances for action every day that we're alive, but my guess is that we take advantage of few of them.

In my life, I've learned that if I want anything to change for the better at all, it really is up to me to take some sort of action to make it do so.  There's a whole lot to be said for allowing life to flow as it will and for allowing oneself to flow with it, but that perspective doesn't absolve us from responsibility for shaping certain aspects of our lives.  If we move to a new town, we're the ones who actually have to look for a new job, who have to make contact with others to find things to do and interesting activities to be involved with.  If we want to meet new people, we may sit around and wait for others to take an interest in us and come to introduce themselves to us, but the chances are that that's not going to happen much.  We need to take the initiative and actually introduce ourselves to people.

It's easy not to take action.  As a runner, I try to go out and run at least four times a week in the winter, and trust me--it's not always easy.  When the temperature is 20 degrees and there's a breeze and it looks like it could snow any minute, I often have no desire at all to go outside and get cold.  But there is one truth about such a situation that I know from experience--I have never had an awful time when I've gone out to run in "bad" weather.  On the contrary, some of the times when I've bitten the bullet and put on my cold-weather running clothes and gone out for a 40-minute runs have become some of my best runs ever, ones that I remember more than the vast majority of the runs that I've done in fine weather.

I'm not a very good people person--I try, but there are a lot of things about the ways I grew up that caused me to be intimidated by almost everyone I meet.  I've accepted this fact and I've learned to deal with it and to live with it, but that doesn't mean that my fears of people and contact with people have simply gone away.  I think they'll be with me my whole life, to be honest.  What this means is that, for example, if I want to meet people I have to take an action that can be very difficult for me to take--actually introduce myself to someone, or start a conversation with someone.  I know plenty of people who have no problem at all doing so, but I also know plenty of people like me who have a hard time with such a thing.  Though my mind comes up with many reasons for not taking action, it's important that I'm sure not to take my mind too seriously all the time, and to disregard its fears and suspicions.  When I do that, I can take an action that may be beneficial to me.

I've written five novels and several non-fiction books in my life.  None of them have sold many copies or made me any income, but I do have a feeling of satisfaction for having done something that I wanted to do.  And of course, the most important part of any of those books was the sitting down to start working, the taking action to begin a book, not having any idea when or how I would finish it.

When I graduated college with a degree in Spanish and no real prospects, I bought a one-way ticket to London and ended up pretty much penniless in Spain, but I was able to teach English classes and make a very sparse living.  I wasn't wealthy and I struggled quite a bit, but the three years that I ended up living in Europe were easily the most important three years of my life.

Sometimes we have to take a risk and take action.  We need to follow our hearts and do something, though I would strongly suggest making plans that will help you avoid disaster before stepping out into unknown territory.  The plans don't need to be extremely detailed, but we should have some idea of what steps we're going to take when things don't turn out as we hoped or thought they would.

Is there something in your life that you wish were different?  Think about it--what action(s) would you need to take to make that something a reality?  What kinds of contingency plans would you need to have in place in order to make those actions doable for you?  A life without action becomes stagnant, of course, just as water that doesn't flow does.  If we want to add in positive ways to our own lives, we do need to take some actions, whether they have to do with jobs, relationships, hobbies, or even recreation or vacations.  Knowing this can help us to make ourselves ready to take actions that will matter in our lives.

Work or Play?

The masters in the art of living make little distinction between their work and their play, their labor and their leisure, their minds and their bodies, their education and their recreation, their love and their religion.  They hardly know which is which.  They simply pursue their vision of excellence in whatever they do, leaving others to decide whether they are working or playing.  To them they are always doing both.    -Zen Buddhist text


We like to classify things, don't we?  We like to give things names, put them into categories, group them, and define them.  We've been taught since we were very young that this is necessary for us somehow, that this is an effective way of approaching life.  I believe that we see this tendency of ours as an effective way of controlling things, and of controlling our minds.  After all, if I have something that I don't know what to do with, that can be frustrating and stressful.  Is this an A or a B?  Does it belong in this group or in that group?  Is it for Tuesdays or Wednesdays?  It gives us a sense of comfort to be in control, to know how something is defined, exactly what it's used for, and exactly how to explain it to others.

But what does that do to potential?  Once I define something as "play" or "recreation," then it doesn't belong in the workplace, does it?  Once I define something as "work," then I'm going to avoid doing it at home, even if I enjoy it.  We're taught not just to categorize, but to build walls between categories so that the things that we consider to be of one category won't interfere with what we consider to be of another category.

Of course, this is often a useful tendency.  I'm often somewhat shocked to see some of the things that some teachers do in classrooms that are very clearly simply entertainment, and that have practically no pedagogical value at all.  I've taught students in language classes, for example, who spent tons of time in previous classes watching movies and playing video games--and who haven't learned what they need to know for this new language class.  And they're often in classes with students who had teachers who taught an awful lot, and who have a very strong base in the language.  Guess who does well in the class?  I find myself feeling awful for the students who watched a lot of films, and wishing that their teachers understood better the need to use the class time actually teaching and modeling and answering questions rather than simply pressing "play."

Looking at that example of an extreme, we can see one reason for which we do separate things.  Do I really want to take my car to a mechanic who spends all their time watching videos on social media, even while working?  Obviously not--there needs to be separation.  But that's not what this passage is talking about.  Would I prefer to take my car to a mechanic who sees his job as a necessary drudgery that he performs so that he can pay bills, or to someone who loves his job so much that he can't wait to come into work so that he can problem-solve, fix things, and improve things?  If his job is intellectually stimulating to him, and if he enjoys it, then he's found a great gift--work that he enjoys doing.

But what if all of us can find such a way of looking at the work that we're already doing?  What if there's a lot of enjoyment to be found in the jobs we have, but we just haven't looked for it yet because we've categorized it as "work," and we just know that there isn't anything enjoyable to be found there?

This does actually happen to me sometimes, depending on the school I'm teaching at.  Sometimes the stress just builds and builds until I even dread going to work each day.  I do my best to work my way out of such feelings, but they do arise at times, and they're difficult to deal with.  I have to remind myself that I have the privilege of working with young people who are in the process of learning what they can about life, living, and education.  And in my own very small way, I have an opportunity to contribute to their education, to help them to learn how to learn, to help them to understand some of the choices and dilemmas that they're going to be facing as they move into adulthood.

But the most important thing I can do is keep in mind that working with these young people can actually be fun--and that my journey to school each morning isn't a trip that ends in misery for eight hours or so, but a way to get to a place where I enjoy myself while helping young people to learn things that may help them later in life.  And it's up to me if I see it as fun or if I see it as a tedious and annoying chore--and I much prefer to see it as fun.

So my goal is to pursue excellence with the kids I work with, and to try to help them to learn, and to enjoy their company.  And when I think about it in the right way, I understand that my ability to go work with these young people every day is a privilege that I'm very fortunate to have, and that whether I enjoy the experience or not is completely up to me.  Is my job a joyful part of my life, or a dreary and drab and tedious annoyance?  It's so very true that the answer to that question is completely up to me, and the way that I answer it can strongly affect my happiness and my fulfillment in life.

Defining "Achievement"

I hope that my achievements in life shall be these--that I will have fought for what was right and fair, that I will have risked for that which mattered, and that I will have given help to those who were in need; that I will have left the earth a better place for what I've done and who I've been.    -Carl Thomas Hoppe


It's an interesting word, isn't it?  If I achieve something, I should be proud of my achievement, right?  After all, I now have something to share with others, even to brag about, depending upon how proud I am of my achievement.  I think problems come into play, though, when two different things come into play.  First, if I'm achieving things solely to please or impress others, have I really achieved anything at all, other than gaining positive judgment from other people?  And second, what if my motivation for achievement is purely selfish, if I want to accomplish something strictly for my own benefit?  I would say then that the achievement is tainted somehow, and could possibly even be classified as something other than an actual achievement, and more as just something that I've done, like washing my bowl and spoon after having cereal in the morning.

When we decide for ourselves what we consider to be true achievements--and Carl's list gives us an excellent place to start--and then pursue those goals, then I think that we're on the right track.  Carl was a salesman, of course, so his list is going to be a bit different from mine, but our lists can overlap in some very basic ways, such as treating others with dignity and respect, and helping others as much as we can.  As a teacher, I'm going to have a list that concerns how I treat my students, whether or not I actually teach them something (many "teachers" don't teach anything at all, believe it or not), and how I prepare them for later in their lives, among other things.  These are the things that are important to me as a teacher, and if I can truly say that my students have learned something important, then I can also say that I've achieved something positive.

Parents have the opportunity to contribute caring, kind, and compassionate people to the world, depending on how they raise their children.  Sending a kind and compassionate human being into the world is a wonderful achievement.  A salesperson can help people to get the best possible product, or vehicle, or home for the best possible price.  A chef or a cook can provide people with food that will keep them alive and that will also be enjoyable, giving people a chance to connect around a dinner table or lunch table--one of the best places of all for connecting with others.  A young person who gets C's and D's on school assignments can get a B and consider that a fine achievement--not everyone is going to get A's in every subject, after all.

I love the first line of Hoppe's quotation--it's nice to think of our achievements as hopes before we achieve them.  If I re-word the line to read,

"I hope that my achievements in the future shall be these," we can provide ourselves with a working plan for both our short- and long-term futures.  And what if we limit ourselves to three things that are definitely things that we can accomplish?  Can we set ourselves up for success?  So here goes--I'll get us started:

I hope that my achievements in the future shall be these:
a.  to encourage young people to make the most of their lives,
b.  to be kind to as many of the people I meet as I possibly can, and 
c.  to let love be the guiding force in my life.

So what about you?  How will you fill in the blanks?

I hope that my achievements in the future shall be these:
a.
b.
c.

No More "Should Be's"

If you can accept the flow of life and give in to it, you will be accepting what is real.  Only when you accept what is real can you live with it in peace and happiness.  The alternative is a struggle that will never end because it is a struggle with the unreal, with a mirage of life instead of life itself.    -Deepak Chopra

Where do we get the idea that life "should" unfold in certain ways?  How do we come to think that our actions should have certain results, and that other results are somehow "unacceptable"?  It seems pretty clear that as we grow up, we're taught some things that simply aren't true, and we're left to make our own conclusions as to how life works.  We're also taught that control is very important, and that we should have control over our lives if we're to be successful.  Unfortunately, though, we seem to have been taught incorrectly and inaccurately, and many of us have reached a point at which we're unable to accept things that affect us strongly, and we cause our own misery--and can make other people miserable--by refusing to accept certain things.

I just read a very long article on a couple whose son is gay.  They spent years trying to "deal with" this "problem," rather than accepting him as he was.  During those years, they isolated and alienated their son, and they were constantly stressed out and unhappy because of this glitch in their lives.  After all, their son was supposed to grow up, get married to a nice woman and provide some nice grandchildren, wasn't he?  And since their expectations weren't being met, they refused to accept the truth that was there right in front of them.  And because they were unwilling to accept that truth, they spent years being very unhappy people.

I admire this couple, though, because they did eventually accept their son.  And not just that, but they started support groups for people in similar situations, helping them to accept something in their lives that they hadn't expected or foreseen.  And their acceptance, unfortunately, was a mixed blessing--they were able to re-establish a strong relationship with their son, but many of the people that they knew--and especially people from their religion--started to reject them because they were no longer rejecting their son and his supposed "deviant" sexuality.

And we don't even need to get into the discussion of what's right and what's wrong as far as sexuality is concerned.  The simple fact of the matter is that people are as they are, and we can either accept them and be a friend to them, or keep them out of our lives.  It's complicated, though--my brother was a very violent alcoholic while he was still alive, and the question I had to ask myself was whether or not I wanted him to be a part of my life.  Should I accept him as he was, or accept the fact that his violence made him a danger to both my wife and me?  I went with the latter because I had spent my whole younger life growing up with a violent alcoholic as a father, and I didn't want to continue dealing with an alcoholic in my life.  And I certainly didn't want my wife to have to deal with that sort of thing, either.

So I accepted his alcoholism, and I accepted the fact that his lifestyle made him completely incompatible with our lifestyle.  As painful as it was, I accepted the fact that I basically had to keep my brother at a distance if I was to have peace in my life (my mother wasn't able to accept that fact, and she went through a lot of hell over many years because of it, unfortunately).  And because of my acceptance of a situation--instead of trying to change it, or change his behavior--I was able to find some peace and also keep my wife and me safe when he happened to be drinking heavily when we lived near him.

Deepak calls it a "mirage of life," meaning that we see what we think life should be or could be, and we want to make that a reality rather than accepting the reality as it is.  The mirage for me would have been to think "I can have a great relationship with my brother even though he gets drunk often and threatens people."  It couldn't have happened, though--he kept on drinking heavily until he died, and he didn't let anyone get close to him.

I had a friend once who got laid off from a job of thirty years.  He didn't whine or mope, though, and he never said "That's not fair."  Rather, he accepted his new situation fully, and he and his wife sold their home and moved to a place they had always wanted to live, and they ended up quite happy, enjoying their new lives in their new home.

It's easy to start thinking, "This is how life should be."  It's easy to start trying to make things different than they are because after all, if we can change this person or change this situation, then everything will be just fine."  Right?  Personally, I really love the perspective that Lao Tzu offers us when he tells us that accepting life as it is, is one of the most important steps that we can take to put ourselves in tune with life (or the Tao).

What is real is simply what is.  Much of what is bothers us, concerns us, frustrates us, annoys us, frightens us.  But we'll never be able to deal with what is until we accept what is, and until we allow it to be what it is without condition.  We may want to change what is, but even then, we can change nothing until we accept completely what it is.  And that is a challenge that's well worth the effort, for as Deepak says, our peace and happiness are at stake.

Are We Mistaken?

We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.    ~Tom Waits


Our addiction to information is starting to frighten me, not in the least because so many people don't understand the difference between knowing information and having wisdom, between knowing a fact (or even a supposed fact) and understanding life and living and other human beings with whom they share the planet.  There's a huge difference between knowing that 2 + 4 = 6 and knowing how to talk to other humans, but many people these days feel that the fact that they can access information online makes them capable and competent people. The truth of the matter is, though, that many people these days don't have the slightest idea of how to comfort someone who's sad; don't understand that they have the potential to affect other people in negative ways; aren't able to pass on knowledge to others because they actually have little to no knowledge of their own.

How many people can tell you their favorite player's batting average or quarterback rating, but have no idea what kinds of things their own kids are afraid of, or what they aspire to be one day?

What does this mean to us as people?  It means that we're stuck in societies that are growing progressively less human and humane.  It means that when we need help from others, we're going to have a very hard time finding someone who actually has the knowledge necessary to deal with any problems we may have.  It means that children these days are going to have a harder time finding mentors and teachers who can pass on knowledge and wisdom, so they're going to grow up much less prepared to face life than they would be if they were mentored by people who have knowledge to pass on.

Waits' other points are just as important for us to consider:  do we truly believe that having more of something gives us abundance?  We might have five cars, but is that abundance or excess?  When we consider the fact that each of us can use only one car at a time, it seems pretty obvious that having more than one is simply excess (except for those few people who legitimately need something like a heavy-duty truck for work that they do, and another car that gets better mileage when they're not working).  And does having tons of money mean that someone is automatically happy?  Research and experience tell us no--many people who have a lot of money are inordinately worried about losing that money, or have developed such high expectations because of their ability to pay for things that literally no one is able to meet their expectations, which leads to a great deal of disappointment, anger, and frustration.  Among other things.

Personally, I hope that I can find knowledge, abundance, and happiness in my life.  I'm not concerned about information, possessions, or wealth.  I hope that I can accept the things I have and not waste time wishing and hoping for "more" of something that isn't liable to affect my happiness at all.  I can be happy with what I have, and that is true abundance.  I can try to attain more possessions and wealth within reason, of course, but whether I attain them or not shouldn't change my present happiness.  My present happiness is a cherished possession, and it's very important that I make myself aware of how to maintain it authentically, without getting caught up in what society tells me is important.

Things Get Muddled

Here's another set of thoughts triggered by a song!  One of my favorite Christmas songs is sung by Kevin Bacon, and he sings, "When we are young we are swaddled and snuggled / Whispered to, fussed over, tickled and cuddled / When we grow up, things get muddled."

These lines are wonderful to me, especially the last one.  Things do get muddled, for a variety of reasons.  We lose clarity, and we lose perspective as we grow older and buy into more and more of the things that the society around us is selling us.  Because as we get older, we forget more and more some of the beautiful things of our childhoods, as we "grow up," which we've been convinced by others involves a whole lot of things that aren't necessarily a part of growing older unless we allow them to be.

When we grow older, we're encouraged by so many people to put aside the things of youth.  But why, for goodness' sake?  When we're kids, we can wander around our towns for hours with no destination at all and truly enjoy ourselves the whole time.  When we're older, though, we feel that we always have to have an answer to the question "Where are you going?" even though such a thing isn't at all necessary.  Things get muddled--we no longer do things just for enjoyment or out of curiosity; rather, we think we need to be able to explain everything we do or say to others.

And indeed, those others can definitely be problematic.  They can give you a hard time for "wasting your time," for "not being focused," for "not doing things the way we're supposed to do them."  They can make us feel like we're doing something wrong if we don't have a clear purpose in mind.  They can make us feel like we're wasting our time if we aren't accomplishing some sort of thing that has quantifiable results.  And we can get caught up in the idea of doing what we should be doing, of keeping up appearances, of meeting other people's expectations.

Things get muddled.  We start to think that it's important to make other people happy with us.  We start worrying about appearances, about what other people see, and how other people judge us.  We put aside things that we truly love, like walks along the river or watching our favorite cartoons or painting really mediocre paintings.  We can even stop living from an authentic place, choosing instead to put on a show so that other people will see that show and judge us favorably--based strictly on their criteria for what we should be, not our own.

So how do we unmuddle the world?  How do we see clearly what we need to do to make ourselves happy, to enjoy the experiences that we have on this planet while we're here?  I think that one of the keys to doing so lies in questioning our decisions and our actions--we need to ask ourselves, "Am I doing this just to please someone else, with no real benefits other than having that person be pleased with me for having done what they want me to do?"  The wording of the question should be a warning to us that we may be doing things for completely the wrong reasons--we might have lost our ability to do things because they're the best for us or for the people we love.

After all, how many people agree to work many extra hours even though they have young kids at home who need their presence?  How many people commit themselves all weekend, not allowing themselves the rest and relaxation that they really need?  Things get muddled, and we make decisions that don't make us better versions of ourselves, that don't help us to grow and improve.  Things get muddled and we stop taking care of ourselves and nurturing ourselves.

The whole idea of something being muddled implies that we aren't seeing things with clarity.  We aren't seeing things as they are because other things and thoughts are getting in the way and blocking our ability to see clearly, so we become confused and bewildered.  And when we're in this state, we don't make decisions as effectively as we do when we do see clearly.

I don't want my life to be muddled, but it often is.  My brain sometimes seems to take over and think too much, focusing on too many possible outcomes for me to see a clear path of action--or inaction.  Perhaps it would be better if I were to simply accept the main thought behind Occam's Razor, that the simplest answer to a question is usually the best or the most effective.  Perhaps I need to imagine myself as a kid again, when I was able to make decisions very quickly based on simple criteria like "that would be cool!"  (Although I have to say, I did make some pretty stupid decisions when I was a kid, like jumping off the roof of our house because I thought it would be cool, never thinking that I might get hurt doing so.)

Perhaps our main challenge in life should be just to unmuddle the things that have gotten muddled.  If that's the case, then, we need to recognize the areas in which things are muddled.  If I'm miserable every time I visit this person, but I visit them out of a sense of obligation, then perhaps I need to see the damage that the sense of obligation is causing, and stop visiting this person who makes me miserable.  It would be nice if I can see and accept things as they are, and make decisions based on what is truly best, rather than what I think things should be.