Finding Myself through Introspection--A Paragraph a Day

Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself
alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.
-Rollo May

I would really like to think that I might be able to find myself one day, or that perhaps at some level, I already have.  Perhaps I'm on the way there, and soon I'll understand just what I know.  I don't want to reach the end of my days and not know who I've been, and not know who I'm meant to be.  Do they line up?  Is the person I will have become by then be the person I'm supposed to be?  If I'm to become that person, my instinct tells me that I need to go through a consistent process of introspection in order to know where I am compared to where I've been, and which directions I'm going in.  Am I getting kinder?  More generous?  More humble and more helpful?  How do I know the answers to these questions if I don't take the time to look inside for some honest answers?  I don't want to look at introspection as a chore or a task, but rather an enjoyable way of making sure that I continue to grow into the best version of myself, somehow.  Personally, my best introspection comes during long runs and long bike rides--that's when I need to focus on where I'm going and I'm able to clear my mind of other things and think of things like who I am and what I want to be.  How do we know if we're becoming the people we hope to be?  Only through introspection, only by overcoming the fear of being alone and realizing that even if I am, that's fine as long as I'm a good person alone.

Never a Bad Weather Day--A Paragraph a Day

It's raining a bit again today, and it's supposed to rain more over the next few days.  Someone at school mentioned the "bad weather," and I immediately thought of the idea that there really is no such thing.  Weather is weather, and it does what it does each day.  We need the rain just as much as we need the sunshine and the wind and the snow, so it's difficult to see what kind of weather can be "bad."  It may not be the kind of weather that we prefer, or it may be weather that prevents us from doing something that we want to do, but that doesn't make it "bad."  It simply is what it is, and over the years I've learned to see all kinds of weather for the beauty they hold.  Cold dark rainy days are great for sitting inside and reading and drinking hot chocolate or tea; hot and humid days are also good days for finding shelter and staying there with a good book or movie.  I may not be able to go running if a freezing rain is falling (though I have done so at times), but I sure can enjoy being cozy and warm in my home.  I think that pretty much anything that we judge to be one thing or another is simply what it is, and not what we judge it to be--our judgement does more to shape our perception and determine our personal level of satisfaction or happiness than does the thing that we're judging.  Yes, tornadoes can be destructive and even lethal, but they're part of the world we live in and they have a certain powerful beauty that really is undeniable.  Weather is weather, and whatever word we put before it is simply judgement.  Perhaps it's time to stop judging and start accepting, and see where that leads us.

Opportunities Abound--A Paragraph a Day

There are many, many problems in this world we live in.  There's violence, hunger, greed, hatred, prejudice, anger, and so many other negative things that we could truly bring ourselves down if we were to think of all the bad all the time.  But that said, we also have to recognize that there are many, many wonderful opportunities, also, especially for those of us who live in countries that tend to be rather wealthy.  My wife and I are going to Germany this week to attend a funeral--something that wouldn't have been at all possible just 100 years ago--or at all affordable even 50 years ago.  We have an opportunity to do something that is very important to us, and we're able to afford it without going broke.  We have opportunities to work, to meet people, to travel, to eat great meals, to have wonderful things in our house like sofas and music and bookcases and books, to go for walks in neighborhoods that are safe, to call family members who live almost two thousand miles away--the list is very long, and it includes so many things that it's hard for us to wrap our minds around just how many opportunities we actually have.  I hope that by the time I leave this planet I'll have taken advantage of as many opportunities as possible, and that I will have squandered as few as possible.  And now that I'm older and (supposedly) wiser, I hope that I'm able to recognize even more of them and take advantage of them.  Perhaps that should be one of our major goals in life--to get good at recognizing legitimate opportunity and making sure that we don't squander it when it shows up.

Flowing with Life?--A Paragraph a Day

Sometimes life doesn't flow as smoothly as it does other times.  We go through periods of time when it's more difficult to focus, when things feel useless or hopeless, when there doesn't seem to be any "normal" to life any more.  I know that for me, these periods are marked by my inability to focus strongly on just about anything, and a lack of a sense of purpose in what I do.  These feelings used to disturb me and make me feel uncomfortable, but since I've learned to recognize them and understand that they're merely symptoms of something else, they don't bother me a bit.  I simply try to accept them and I accept the fact that for a certain period of time I'm not going to be as productive as I normally am, and I'm probably not going to accomplish much.  And that's okay.  One of the most important things I can do for myself as a person is to give myself a break when things aren't going perfectly and not expect more out of myself than I'm able to give at any given point.  As long as I'm not just rationalizing a desire to be lazy, then I'm fine with being unproductive, and I enjoy allowing life to take its twists and turns and to take me with it.  As Longfellow said so long ago, "Some days must be dreary," and I've come to accept those dreary days as being just as important as any bright and shiny day may be.

The Couch in My Bedroom--A Paragraph a Day

If you were to go into my bedroom (and I'm not sure why you would, unless we were giving you a tour of our house), you'd find my wife's twin bed and a couch.  The couch is where I sleep.  It took quite a few years before I was willing to take the step of putting a couch in the bedroom, but I finally did, and it's been wonderful.  Why? you ask.  It has nothing to do with the inability of my wife to force me to sleep on the couch if she gets mad at me, because I already do.  Rather, it has to do with the fact that for most of my life I've had some pretty nasty back pain to deal with, and it took me a very long time to figure out what was causing it.  Quite simply, I like to sleep on my stomach--that's the most comfortable position for me, and I've pretty much always slept that way.  The problem is that my back doesn't like it--there's something about the position that causes my lower back to kind of sag, and I end up having terrible back pain the next day, which is pretty much every day.  I discovered, though, that when I sleep on a couch, I can't sleep on my stomach as easily, and I tend to sleep on my side.  Ever since I've discovered this, I've slept on a couch as much as I can, and we finally took the step of putting the couch in the bedroom, where I sleep for good now.  And I very rarely deal with back pain, and it's great!  My point?  When I was a kid I was given a bed and told that that was where I would sleep, because beds are where everyone sleeps, right?  It never entered anyone's mind that the bed might not be the best place for me, and I never thought that something so "normal" could cause so much pain.  And I have to wonder what else I've been taught is "normal" that has been causing me undue pain simply because I choose to accept what everyone else has told me because I've never actually considered whether or not it was best for me or not.

Laughter Is a Great Medicine--A Paragraph a Day

I don't watch television much, but  I do like to watch funny shows.  Not many of them, of course, but I like to laugh, and it's important to me to laugh in order to lower my stress levels.  I find that when I laugh, I feel better about just about everything.  I don't know why, but it does work.  One of the things that I most appreciate are the people who write comedy because when they do it well, it makes my life brighter and more enjoyable.  Life can get difficult and sometimes the stress can build up so it's important that we have some sort of strategy that can help us to lift ourselves up and make ourselves feel better.  A good laugh doesn't cure anything, of course, and it doesn't change situations that are difficult or stressful, but it can give us a sense of perspective and help us to see things in their right place.  If we dwell on stress and problems, they can drag us down.  If we have a way to relieve stress and make ourselves feel better, our problems can't bring us down.  It's not super easy, of course, but having something in your back pocket that can help you deal with life is a wonderful way to help us see the world in positive and productive ways.

How Quickly Things Change--A Paragraph a Day

A paragraph a day?  Hardly.  This past week has seen no entries on this page at all, mostly because of the death of a very good friend in Germany.  In addition to the news of the death, time has been filled planning flights and hotels and time off from work so that we can attend the funeral.  I've always been one of those people who aren't all that taken by funerals--after all, my friend is gone and she won't know whether I go or not--but I recognize that I'm going to this one because I care about the family who's left behind.  I don't feel that I'm going for the friend who passed away at all, but for my friends in the family.  I don't feel a need for closure through a ceremony because I always did my best to let her know that I cared for her while she was still alive, and because her death wasn't a complete surprise.  But it will be nice to see my friends and offer them my support and compassion, because after all, isn't that what we're here for?  Offering kindness and compassion to others, including those people for whom we care?


I am not going to die.  I'm going home like a shooting star.

Sojourner Truth

Not What We Expect--A Paragraph a Day

Sometimes I'm kind of surprised at the way things turn out.  It's spring, so I can finally start doing long bike rides again.  The roads are dry and the air isn't too cold for it (this morning for my ride it was up to 35 degrees!).  What surprised me about the ride, though, is the same thing that surprised me last year about this time, and the year before that, and the year before that.  When I go out for my first long ride of the year, I expect by butt to hurt after two hours on the seat, and I expect my legs to hurt after two hours of steady pedaling.  But I find that the part of my body that suffers the most discomfort are my hands.  They're simply not used to being "stuck" for two hours on a handlebar, steering and absorbing every little shock that the bike experiences.  I think that life's like that sometimes--we know what difficulties we expect to face, but it's possible that some other difficulty may be more challenging.  Perhaps we simply need to expand our awareness a bit and recognize that something like a bike ride--or a career, or an education, or a relationship--is definitely going to give us some challenges, but they may not be in the areas that we expect challenges in.  Perhaps if we're ready for something different, if we're able to keep in mind that things may not turn out the way we expect them to, we may be ready to deal with such surprises effectively, and not let them overwhelm us.  And who knows?  One day we may even be able to prepare ourselves for such things and not even have to worry about them happening at all!

Why Can't We Be Tolerant?--A Paragraph a Day

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every person present his or her views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population.    -Albert Einstein

Boy, we sure haven't learned this lesson, have we?  When I was younger, I used to think that things could only be better, that by the time I got "older," we'd have a much more tolerant, much more diverse society.  I never, ever would have guessed that things could actually be worse, that intolerance and prejudice would be even stronger in the world.  But things are, indeed, worse in many ways, and many people are treating each other worse nowadays than I've ever seen before.  Of course, in many ways there have been improvements, but in our world today people have somehow legitimized prejudice and turned it into something positive simply by using different words for it.  And that makes me very, very sad.  We're all human beings and we all come from the same sources.  We are all born equal--little babies who need the help of adults just to survive.  We're born without bias or prejudice, yet many of us learn those things as we grow up, and they cause us to treat other people differently than we normally would, and differently that we should.  My personal hope is that we somehow reach the point of "tolerance in the entire population," and that all human beings benefit from it when it happens.  We're all going to have a better life when we do our best to help others to have better lives, no matter who they are.

Oh My Goodness!--A Paragraph a Day

Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are.
To be good is the great thing.    -Edwin Hubbell Chapin

I think that pretty much all of us want to be good at some level, but that some people just aren't very good at being good.  They've become hardened, or afraid, or unsure of themselves, and they put on a hard front to try to impress other people or to make themselves feel stronger than they actually are.  This isn't necessarily their fault, of course--the ways that people act come from a whole bunch of different influences, and people have learned coping strategies from all sorts of different people in all sorts of different ways.  Personally, I would love to think that I'm a "good" person, whatever that means.  I would like to be good to others, someone who helps rather than hurts, someone who gives more than I take.  I don't know if I achieve this or not, but I do try, even if I'm not always focused on trying to be good or on trying to do the good thing in any given situation.  But I think that Edwin makes an extremely important point above--while my focus on being good is usually on what I'm doing to and for others, my efforts may be better directed towards making myself good in my heart, in my core.  If I can do that, of course, then whatever I do will simply be good because it comes from a good source.  And that would be very, very good, wouldn't it?

Taxes--A Paragraph a Day

It's tax season again--can you feel my stress level going up?  Not because we owe tons of money (we don't, because we don't make tons of money), but because the forms that we have to fill out are simply horrible, full of directions that often need three or four readings to be clear, and even then I'm never completely sure that I'm putting in the right numbers unless I'm copying them straight off a W-2.  Once I get past that stage, I have to depend upon my interpretation of the directions I'm reading, and I'll be honest--I'm never completely sure of what I do.  It's that unsureness that causes me the stress--am I doing this right?  Am I leaving something out, something that could cause me to owe more money, or something that could potentially get me a larger refund?  I'm not stressed about getting caught doing anything wrong, because I do try my best to be accurate and to do things right, but I constantly wish that things could be simpler for people like me.  My wife and I make modest amounts of money, and all the calculations that go into the forms are like some form of torture for those of us who aren't mathematically inclined.  Charge me a tax based on my income and that's that, okay?  I look forward to finishing up every year and getting this stress out of my life, and I look forward to the next ten or eleven months of not thinking about taxes again.  My life is much fuller and richer without the added stress of trying to do the math accurately and responsibly, and I wouldn't have all this extra stress if the process were just a bit simpler.  Since the stress is here, I have to accept it and deal with it, but I sure can wish that it weren't here, can't I?

People Who Give Me Space--A Paragraph a Day

I've been running most of my life, and I can tell you that at times, it's rather dangerous.  Unfortunately, the danger isn't something that's inherent in the activity; rather, it's caused by drivers who choose not to give runners (and bikers, of course) enough space on the road.  I can be out on a country road with no other cars in sight anywhere, running on the road, and a car will pass me and give me absolutely no extra space at all.  This is dangerous because of things like the mirrors on cars that stick out farther than drivers realize, the small obstacles that we face like bad pavement and potholes, and the possibility of tripping or falling.  There are many, many drivers who are courteous and considerate, and they do all they can to give me as much space as possible.  They cross the double yellow line in order to make sure that they pass me safely.  On the other hand, there are many drivers who simply refuse to be as safe as possible, and they often pass within inches of me even when there's no oncoming traffic at all.  It frustrates me and sometimes scares me, but that's life, right?  I try to take the lesson from those who are considerate and do what they do in such a situation--always give as much space as possible and keep everyone as safe as possible.  The double yellow line is there for a reason, but when there's no oncoming traffic, the line means nothing at all, and many people understand that as a rule of life, it's much better safe than sorry.  And I very much appreciate them.

Too Much Self-Improvement?--A Paragraph a Day

The ego will always be able to find ways to keep the aspirant
busy in self-improvement, thus binding him or her to the
fact that the self is still there behind all the improvements.
For why should the ego kill itself?
-Paul Brunton


There's a part of me that's not really too interested in self-improvement any more.  Of course, I still want to become the best version of me that I can be, but that doesn't mean that I constantly have to keep improving.  Rather, at a certain point we simply have to live, to experience our lives for what they are without thinking of the shortcomings we have that we want to demolish.  We have to remember that when we seek to improve ourselves, there's an implicit assumption that there are shortcomings that we have to somehow "fix."  Perhaps we don't need fixing, though.  Perhaps the most important thing that we can do is simply let our lives be our lives, and live them as best as we can.  Maybe it's important that we remind ourselves constantly to be kind and gentle and compassionate, without thinking about a bigger picture or some sort of abstract ideal that we wish to attain.  I really do want to live my life to the fullest, but I think that in the past I've understood that to mean in some way that I have to fix my flaws.  Perhaps when we devote ourselves to our daily lives fully and completely, those flaws either fade away or become completely irrelevant.  Maybe we don't need to fix anything at all.  Maybe we just have to live our lives.