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.

Am I Part of the Cure?

In Coldplay's song "Clocks," the singer asks a very simple question:  "Am I part of the cure, or am I part of the disease?"  It's a question that has been asked in many different ways by many different people, and one that really is worth the time to consider as far as it concerns our own personal lives.  There are many things that are "wrong" in the world, and we'd all like to think that we're not part of the problems that face us all,  The truth is, though, that the vast majority of us are unaware of many of the effects of our words and actions (or lack of action) on others, so there's a good chance that we're actually contributing to some of the problems of our world, and we're unaware of our contribution.

What kinds of things contribute to the "disease" of the world?  There are many obvious things that we can avoid contributing ourselves if we try:  dishonesty, anger, meanness, spite, arrogance, unnecessary criticism, physical violence, emotional manipulation--it really is a very long list.  I suppose we could call it a list of "Don'ts," but for the most part if we focus on what we're not supposed to do, life is just a bit less wonderful and fulfilling than it is if we focus on what we can and should do.  All of these behaviors or traits do focus to what we could call the diseases of life--those things that hurt others, that bring them down, that keep them from becoming the best versions of themselves that they can be.

But how can we be part of a cure for loneliness?  For depression?  For despair?  For low self-esteem and a lack of confidence?  For feelings of ineptitude, of isolation, of not belonging, of not living up to standards that other people push upon us?  If we want to cure a disease, of course, we may be able to cut it off the body, as with some forms of cancer.  But usually it takes more than that--more time and more effort.  We have to follow a program of treatments at regular intervals, such as taking antibiotics twice a day for ten days, or putting other medicines into our bodies to fight whatever disease happens to be there, or immobilizing a limb in order to "cure" a break.

In terms of being with other people, it seems that our "cures" must come in the form of making someone not just feel better for the moment, but actually feel better for good.  I think one of the most important parts of the line of the song are the words "part of"--it's not my job alone to make other people feel better, but I am a part of the whole that can do so.  I can give encouragement today that will be part of the process of helping someone develop self-esteem, but that encouragement must be part of a larger situation.  I can refuse to buy a certain product because a manufacturer is exploiting human beings, but there must be others working to solve that problem, too.  None of us can solve complicated issues on the personal level or the social level by ourselves--we can be part of a cure, but we don't have the responsibility of being the whole cure.  And if we try to take on the job of actually being the whole cure, we're setting ourselves up for tons of stress and busyness, as well as most likely failure.

Part of the cure?  Here are some contributions we might make to be so:

Giving sincere compliments.
Not spending money for products made by irresponsible companies.
Listening closely when other share.
Driving our cars as little as is necessary.
Not wasting food.
Not supporting companies that contribute to deforestation.
Not demanding more than our share.
Sharing even tiny bits of "extra" money that someone else (individual or organization) can put to better use than I can.
Not insulting others, but treating them kindly with love and compassion.
Not adding to conflict when it arises, but either staying out of it or calming things down.
Being honest.
Looking for the silver linings in the clouds we see.
Teaching young people valuable life lessons that will help them, without trying to get them to see the world as we see it.
Respecting every other human being, whether we agree with them or not.
Picking up litter when we see it.

If we think about it, it's not that hard to be a part of the cure.  The hardest part, I think, especially for those of us in the so-called "Western" world, is doing good and positive things without ever seeing any tangible results.  We want to see the results of our efforts, but life isn't always prepared to show us the results of good things that we've done.  Sometimes, the results won't be obvious for months or years later.

But we still need to be a part of the cure.  And we need to let life take our contributions and do with them as it will, because we should give out of a desire to make the world a better place for everyone, not a desire to make things better for ourselves.

What about you?  What do you think are the most important things you can do to be a "part of the cure"?

And the question I always ask myself is simple:  Why am I not doing more of those things?

   

We're in This Together

You and I, for some reason, have ended up spending much of our time together on this planet.  Perhaps we've never met in a physical way, but we do share a connection, if in no other way than through the words on this site or on Living Life Fully.  It boggles the mind to think that of all the people who have ever lived on this planet, we've ended up being right here, right now, and having some sort of connection to each other.  And there are some seven billion other people sharing this planet with us right now, also.  And I think we'd be amazed to find out how much we have in common with so many of those people.

Just looking at the computer that I'm using right now, I see that it's made in China.  Of course that means that a couple of years ago, someone went to work in China and worked on putting together this exact computer that I have now--and it's surely the result of the work of several people in the same factory, each putting in their own pieces on an assembly line.  And not only that, but the different pieces that make up the computer--the screen, the processor, the battery, the hard drive, etc.--came from a completely different place and were put together by completely different people.  And all of those things were made from different raw materials that were mined or produced in different places.  I could probably trace the elements of this computer to hundreds, if not thousands of people who worked on it or who provided materials used in it, all over the world.

And we all breathe the same oxygen, and drink the same water--without either one of them, we would die very quickly.  We eat foods prepared in different ways, but that originate in similar ways.  When I go to a restaurant, I'm connected to my server and the cook and the host or hostess for a short while, but also to the farms that provided the chicken, the potatoes, the vegetables.  Someone made the bread or rolls that I eat, and the wine had to come from somewhere, and is the result of the work of many different people at many different stages.  We are simply part of a greater whole, and so is everyone else.

And so is everyone else!  All these people around us every day are here on this planet with us, at the same time as us.  What does this mean?  For one thing, if we can keep in mind that we're all sharing this planet for a very short period of time, it may be easier for us to see everyone else as "fellow passengers to the grave," as Dickens referred to us all, rather than strangers who may or may not be nice to us.  We're all experiencing what it means to be human beings at the same time, often in the same places.  If we can truly understand this connection, it may make it easier for us to treat those other people kindly, with decency and respect, and not let them hurt our feelings with their mistakes or their indifference.  We're all learning lessons about life as we go, and not everyone learns as quickly as everyone else.  Perhaps that person who just was rude to you is acting out insecurities in the only ways they've been taught to do so, no matter how inappropriate or harmful those ways are.

Life is a challenge.  It offers many difficult moments along with the moments of joy and even ecstasy.  How we meet those challenges is up to us, and how we treat other people as they deal with their own challenges is also up to us.  If we can remember, though, that we're all learning and growing and that almost no one has reached any sort of peak or pinnacle of growth, we can be more kind and compassionate as we witness others make mistakes that often affect us.  We're all here doing the best we can, and those other people in your life may really need a smile and a greeting this morning, even if they regularly ignore us when we walk by.  How we act and how we treat others is up to us, after all, and shouldn't be a result of how others treat us.  Just because others treat us rudely doesn't give us the right to pass that rudeness on to someone else who hasn't treated us rudely at all.

We're in this together.  Do we want to be that small portion of glue that holds things together, or do we want to contribute to the separation of the world?  Everyone can use a kind word or two each day, and who's to give those words to them, if not us?

Nothing's Perfect

I've just finished putting in windows on our porch.  It was a rather pricey thing to do, but we faced a pretty interesting decision:  put in new windows and be able to actually use the porch, or leave in the (very) old windows and have a porch that was very uninviting and that heated up far too much in the summer for us even to consider spending time out there.  We decided to spend the money, and we now have a three-season porch that we actually like to spend time on.

But the decision to spend the money is only a small part of the process of putting in new windows.  Because we're not wealthy, a job like this falls to me to do, so I end up pulling out the old windows, frames, sills, and all, and putting in the new windows and then framing them.  That's where the time-consuming part comes in, and that's where I have to make decisions as to just how perfect things need to be, as people will be looking at this part of the work more than anything else.

And there's a part of me that wants everything to be perfect, that wants every cut to be precise, every fitting almost unnoticeable.  Part of that, I'm sure, is the fear of being judged by others when they see something I've done that isn't perfect, and that's not a motivating factor that I want to be dominant in my life.  If I want to do something perfectly, then I want to do so simply for the satisfaction of having done so, not to please others.  Besides, if I want perfect, then I need to buy many more expensive tools than those I have, things like a table saw with which I can make precise cuts and fit every board absolutely perfectly.  I really don't want to spend that much money, though.

So I'm pretty satisfied with a very good job rather than a perfect job.  The windows look nice, and so does the framing.  If a professional were to come in and look for so-called flaws, they probably would find quite a few.  But the fact is that the windows are in securely, the framing around them looks very nice, and their installation has improved the porch immensely, turning it into a place where we can spend a lot of time this summer, whereas before, with the old windows, it wasn't a very pleasant place at all.  We now have an attractive three-season porch where we're going to pass many pleasant hours, reading and listening to the many birds in our neighborhood as they sing each morning.

I do know people, though, who would look only at the flaws, who would look only at what they think should have been done better, places where boards should have matched up better or where there shouldn't be quite so much of a gap.  To me, those things are completely unimportant, and I'm happy to have a useful porch now.  I think it would be difficult to go through life always focusing on flaws, always trying to find things wrong with other people's work.  I grew up always looking for flaws in my own work, so now that I'm able to relax and enjoy a nice porch even with its imperfections, life is quite a bit more pleasant.

I hope that I'm always able to be satisfied with a very good job.  Nothing needs to be absolutely perfect.  I don't use this attitude to justify shoddy work that results in inferior results, but I do want to be happy with very good work that makes the most of limited resources and produces a very good job.  The best that we can do is just that--the best that we can do, and we should be happy with that, and not have unrealistic expectations of perfection that are almost always unjustified.

Everything from Seeds

It really is interesting to consider just how much of who we are depends upon seeds.  On the purely physical level, almost everything that we eat to gain energy and grow can be traced back on the food chain to seeds that grow the grass eaten by cows and other animals, or that are actually eaten by birds and rodents and even humans.  We put seeds in our bread and in our cereal and in many other things that we eat, but the true beauty of seeds is the way that they can become something completely different when they're planted and they sprout and grow.

As a teacher, I see myself as a seed planter, not a knowledge imparter.  I don't consider my job to be to transfer knowledge from my brain to the brains of my students--rather, I consider my main task to be to provide the conditions in which learning is possible, in which students can find the desire and ability to learn new things, but--more importantly--also find the desire to learn.  After all, we can't grow and develop into the people that we're meant to be if we don't want to learn and grow.  By the end of a semester or a school year, it's much less important that a student has memorized certain facts or processes or information than it is that a student has reflected upon their own lives and the ways that they fit into the world.

So I try to plant seeds.  I try to instill a love for learning by teaching students how to learn, rather than simply focusing on the information they're supposed to "know" by the end of a term.  I make it possible even for someone who struggles with learning to do well in my classes by making an effort, whether they're able to do everything or know everything that the state says they should know by a certain age or not.  I want these seeds that I plant to give them a sense of hope and a feeling that they're able to do anything that faces them, even if it's something very difficult, by approaching it in the right way.

With these seeds, they hopefully are gaining something that will help them later in life--next week or ten years from now.  I've given up needing to see immediate results in the classroom, and I'm much more interested in how they'll be able to do next year, or five years from now when they're in college.  Once I plant the seeds, of course, it's up to the students themselves to nurturer them and help them to grow into something healthy and beautiful, and I have to trust in the process, knowing that I more than likely will never see the actual results of the seeds that I've planted.

On a more basic level, if a tree seed is planted in the wrong kind of soil, then it simply won't grow, or any growth will be stunted.  The tree will not be able to reach its potential.  Unfortunately, we try to treat each young person as if they were all the same--but every young person isn't a maple tree, that can thrive in New England, but that wouldn't even survive on a mountainside in Colorado.  Are these seeds wasted?  Unfortunately, many people aren't able to overcome the treatment they received as young people when they become adults, and they live their lives never really becoming anything near what they had the potential to become.  It's truly a shame, but it happens all the time, unfortunately.

I think about seeds a lot when I'm teaching, and I think of myself not just as a sower of seeds, but as someone who's helping other people to learn how to nurture those seeds and to help them grow to maturity.  You have had many seeds planted in you over the years, from great ideas to strategies for success to possible career tracks to the fulfillment of your own potential.  Do you help those seeds to grow?  If not, how could you do so?  How could you make the seeds of your life grow into beautiful plants, whether they be large and beautiful or small and delicate and beautiful?  And how can you plant seeds in the minds and hearts of others, seeds that can help them to make the most of their own lives?  One of our greatest goals in life should be to help others to navigate life in ways that are healthy and that make them happy, and we can certainly help others to do so by planting healthy seeds in healthy soil.



(By the way, one of the ways that I love to plant seeds is to share books that can help people to see life in wonderful ways.  Some of the books I like to give as gifts are Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Little Prince, Kitchen Table Wisdom, Prescriptions for Living, or books of poems by people like Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, or many others.  I'm planting seeds by giving the books as a gift, and the authors are planting their own seeds in their own ways.)

I Who Know Nothing

I would really like to think that I have some wisdom built up, that I have some knowledge that I've been able to gather and store in my mind over the course of my life.  I would love to believe it, but I can't be sure that it's true.  After all, most of what I've learned here on this planet has been what other people have taught me, either directly by telling me or indirectly when I've read their books or watched their films.  And it really is impossible to know for sure whether or not what I've learned from them is accurate or not, whether or not it's relevant to me and my life.

I say this not to be self-deprecating nor to question the intelligence or integrity of other people, but because I have a feeling inside that there's more to life than just the stuff that other people tell me.  There's more to learn on this planet than simply information, for which our brains are well suited.  There are other things that are much more important than knowing dates and facts and figures and amounts, such as understanding our intuition, feeling compassion when others are hurting, understanding how to live in harmony with the planet we inhabit.  It's important to know how to rest so that we're at our full strength as much as possible, and how to deal with things that stress us out so that we don't allow that stress to affect us too strongly.

I don't think that the answers to these questions are to be found in any particular religion, though that seems to be where most people look for them.  But look at what's happened to our major religious figures over the years--they began as teachers, as people who were willing to pass on important lessons and messages, and then other people deified them and started to worship them.  Most of the Christianity of today, for example, doesn't resemble very closely the things that Jesus taught.  The Buddhism that most people practice today is fairly far removed from the lessons of the Buddha because other people learned those lessons and then modified them to fit their own beliefs, ideas, and ideals.  There are three main divisions of Buddhism now, just as there are several divisions of Christianity, and then there are literally hundreds of divisions within those divisions.

So whose teaching is accurate?  And if the version of a religion that we choose isn't accurate, how are we supposed to know that?

If I was a Methodist my whole life long, for example, I would have been taught over and over again that homosexuality is wrong, and that LGBTQ persons weren't allowed to serve as pastors in the church.  That teaching was just reversed, though, which I see as a positive step ("Love everyone" is an important command), but what about the teachings of the last couple of centuries that are now viewed as archaic and out-of-date?

And more importantly, which other teachings of the church will also be found to be "wrong" in the future?  What are we being taught as right, now, that will one day be considered wrong?

This is why I really like the idea of emptying my mind and allowing things simply to be, without imposing my will on it.  My will tends to be a result of my learning and my beliefs.  If I believe that having green hair is wrong, I tend to judge others harshly when I see their green hair.  But my belief is generally an idea that I've adopted as a truth because someone else taught it to me.  The truth of the matter is that green hair is neither right nor wrong--it simply is.  I'd prefer to simply see it and recognize it and let it be, without judging the person who decided to dye their hair.  And then I can move forward with my learning, and the lesson would simply be that "some people dye their hair green."

If I'm not able to accept this fact, then my "learning" that green hair is wrong will affect me in negative ways.  Judging other people because of what I "know" to be true causes stress, and it keeps me from feeling positive about life and living.  I want this person to change the color of their hair, whether I put it into words or not.  And that's just me trying to control a situation that's completely out of my control because I've "learned" that when something is "wrong," it should be fixed.

But it's not my job to fix the world.  Or maybe it is.  But I don't know enough about anything to tell other people how things should be in the world and in their lives.  I don't know enough to impose my will on others because of what I think I know.

There is much to know here on this planet and here in our lives.  But we have to take that "knowledge" with a grain of salt and realize that what we know is simply a result of the efforts of a unique group of teachers, a collection of people that is completely different for me--nobody else has had exactly the same teachers that I've had.  And there's no reason at all for me to think that all of my teachers were completely right about everything that they taught me, so the best thing that I can do, I think, is to understand that everything that I think I "know" just may be wrong, and I need to recognize that fact and not try to impose my knowledge on others.

It's a difficult task to accomplish--especially for someone who has been a teacher for as long as I have--but if I want to be content and happy in life, it seems to be one of the most important tasks that I can undertake.

What was lost

My father recently passed on, and I've been left with a lot of memories that I would rather not have.  To be very honest, his passing wasn't that difficult for me to deal with--we had never had a strong relationship, and he was suffering a great deal, so dying was actually more of a release for him than anything else.  In fact, he was refusing any treatment at the end, so everyone knew he wanted to die.  The sad part is that he died alone in hospice, because there really was no one who felt called to be there with him at the end, not even his wife.  My mother, for her part, is more relieved that he's gone than anything else, as he tended to bully her quite relentlessly during the 60+ years that they were married.

When something like this happens to us, of course, one of the most important things that we can do for ourselves is process what has happened.  We like to know how we feel, and we like to understand just how we're affected by such a loss.  In my case, the last two months have been spent processing the fact that I really didn't feel anything when he died--he simply moved on, and there was no real sense of loss on my part.

Instead, what I've been learning as I've reflected on our relationship and the ways that he acted as a father is that I'm grieving more for the relationship that I never had with him than I am for the loss of the relationship that I did have, or the loss of the person he was.  I'm grieving more for the loss of a childhood that he caused than I am for the loss of someone I loved dearly and will miss dearly.  For the truth of the matter was that he was a mean person who drank an awful lot and who did awful things when he was drunk, and who didn't do very many kind things at all when he wasn't drinking.  He was a person who liked to put other people down, to call his kids offensive names as a "joke," and who spent virtually no time at all trying to help us kids to grow and to learn when we were young and impressionable.  In fact, he seemed to spend as little time as he possibly could with us, passing on the entire burden of raising us to our mother, who really wasn't up to the task of raising three kids on her own.

But there are those people who will say, "Yes, but he was your father, so you have to mourn his loss."  And the simple truth is really no, I don't.  Because in all honesty, it isn't a loss at all.  "Father" is a claim that he could make only biologically, but he really did nothing to earn or to reinforce that title while we were children in his care.  Like my mother, I feel more of a sense of relief than anything else.

What this experience teaches me is something that I've known before, but that I often have difficulties putting into practice.  I've learned very clearly over the last few weeks that it's not up to me to tell someone else how they "should" feel in certain situations.  It's not my place to analyze their situation and figure out what's right and what's wrong for them.  Rather, the best thing that I can do is simply be there for them when and if they need me, without judging their reactions or their actions.  Their lives are theirs to live, not mine, and their feelings are bound to be different than mine because they're more intimately involved with what's going on in their lives.

It would have been nice to have had a father who was loving and caring and supportive, but that's not what I had.  Unfortunately, neither my brother nor my sister were able to rise above their upbringing--both of them dropped out of high school and ended up being severely addicted to drugs and alcohol and dying rather early deaths--but that's another story, I think.  I was for some reason lucky that for some reason I was able to make my own way through life and succeed at accomplishing a few things that I wanted to accomplish.  But the death of my father isn't something that triggers mourning in me, and I honestly can't think of any interactions with him that I'm going to miss.  And that's okay.  Life is what it is, and my life has been what it's been, and my duty is to move on and make the best of what I have in the here and now, and try my best to live fully and do all that I can for others while I'm here.  These are lessons that I've learned in spite of, rather than because of or from, my father.

I still will say, though, in all sincerity, may he rest in peace.  Life had to be very difficult for him, for him to have turned out the way he did.