A Nice Passage on Attitude

It is not the events of today that happened to you that matter (such as that you lost something or something went wrong or someone forgot you or spoke to you harshly, etc.), but how you reacted to it all--that is, what states of yourself you were in--for it is here that your real life lies and if our inner states were right nothing in the nature of external states could overcome us.  Try therefore to distinguish, as an exercise in living more consciously, between inner states and outer events, and try to meet any outer event, after noticing its nature, with the right inner attitude--that is, with the right state.

And if you cannot, think afterward about it--first try to define the nature of the event and notice if this kind of event often comes to you and try to see it more clearly in terms such as "This is called being late" or "This is called losing things" or "This is called receiving bad news" or "This is called unpleasant surprises" or "This is called being ill."  Begin in this very simple way and you will soon see how different personal events, and so how in this respect one's outer life, are changing all the time, and what you could not do at one moment, you can at another.

Maurice Nicoll

Hard Times, New Habits

I read a story in the paper recently about a man who has moved into a smaller apartment nearer to his job because of the current recession (and even though some economists claim the actual recession is over, most of the people I know are still living through it).  He now walks to work most of the time, and he doesn't have nearly as many possessions as he used to.  He seems pretty happy, too, which isn't a surprise because this recession is causing him to do many things that many people say lead to happiness--even if he isn't following a pre-planned program.

One of the most common paths to happiness is letting go of possessions.  When we let our possession rule our lives, then we can't reach a point at which we're free from them.  And possessions can take us over and rule us when we place too much importance on them and their maintenance.  When my wife and I spent a year living in an RV, we had one of the best years of our lives--we had almost no possessions at all, and it was great.

He's also walking or biking to work, which gives him the chance to improve his health on a regular basis.  He's not tied to his car, and he's not spending much of his money on fuel for that car, giving him much more financial independence.  He probably also is noticing more about the world around him, and the nature that surrounds him as he sees the differences in air temperature, types of weather, types of wind, and all the things that affect him much more now that he's out in the fresh air much more often.

He's also learning to be satisfied with less--less space, fewer possessions that will fit in that space, and so on.  After all, it's not what we have or where we are that determines our happiness, but whether or not we're able to find satisfaction with what we have or where we are.

I would in no way say that this recession is a blessing, especially considering the ways that it was brought about by people who cared more about money and profit than they cared about ethics and honesty.  But it is what it is, and we can do ourselves a great favor by looking for the positive in anything that is, for there most definitely is positive in there.  It may be hard to find and it may not be obvious today, but it is there.  What good can come from difficult times?  Well, it changes for each of us, and we all have to do our own looking, our own reflecting, and our own finding.

A Little Exploring

My wife and I went for a walk today around a beautiful mountain lake.  It was a great day–the weather was warm, the sky and the water were brilliant shades of blue, we had a nice breeze, the smell of the pines was almost intoxicating–everything was perfect.  The only thing that seemed out of place was the fact that we had never been on a walk at this beautiful place before, even though it’s only about fifteen minutes from where we live.  We’ve lived here for almost ten months now, and even though we had been to the lake once before, we never had taken the time to get out of the car and spend some quality time there.

Whenever something like this happens, it gets me to wondering just how many other beautiful places are nearby.  How many places are within a quick drive from where we live?  There’s so much beauty in the world, and so much of it is so close to us already, yet we so rarely take the opportunity to go out and actually see it and enjoy it.  Sometimes we don’t even make the effort to find it in the first place!

Now, my wife and I do explore–we’ve seen plenty of other beautiful places in our area.  And we both work quite a lot, with relatively few days off together, so we don’t exactly have every waking moment to explore.  But if we do want to get the most out of where we live, it’s important that we find out just what we have to take advantage of in our own back yard!  I’ve never lived anywhere that didn’t have some beautiful places within walking distance, or at least a short drive or bus ride away.  It’s so easy for us to accept what we know as the limits of our potential experiences, and when we do this, we close the door on the possibility of discovering new and beautiful places that can help us to get more out of the days that we pass on this planet.  Today we watched a bald eagle soar and we felt a cool breeze while we gazed upon a beautiful lake, and our day was exceptional because of it.  Then we stopped at a charming restaurant that overlooks the lake and had coffee and cake.  All in all, it was a beautiful experience.  And all this time, all this was just ten or fifteen minutes away.

It gets me to wondering what might be twenty or thirty minutes away in another direction.

Just what might be fifteen minutes away from you that may add significantly to your life?  I’ll bet if you were to do some exploring, you just might find something quite special. . . .

Reaping What We Sow

It's harvest time in much of the world.  Apples are being picked, grain is being harvested, and many other gifts of the land are being taken from where they've been growing to places where they can be processed so that we can eat them.  Farmers in many different parts of the world are reaping the benefits of all that they sowed many weeks ago, all that they've cared for and nurtured during the growing season, all that they've put so much effort into growing.

It's harvest time in all of our lives, too, but this is a harvest that goes on every day.  Each day of our lives we collect a harvest of the seeds that we've planted, be it a harvest of positive things from the seeds of love and compassion and honesty or a harvest of negative things from seeds of anger, envy, greed, or deception.  Each moment in our lives we choose what types of seeds we're planting, or just how we're going to nurture the plants that are growing.  Are we going to nurture a relationship with honesty and sharing, or are we going to harm its growth by putting dishonesty and greed in it?  Are we going to create the right environment for our professional selves to grow and develop by nurturing the work we do with honest effort and attempts to learn more about our work, or shall we simply give it the bare minimum of nutrients and water for it to grow into a sickly, pathetic thing that will offer no sort of harvest at all?

Harvest time is a beautiful time on this planet.  It's the fulfillment of a promise, the result of faith and caring.  It gives back to us in amazing ways, giving us the nutrients we need to continue with our lives and to make something more of ourselves in our futures.  But we don't grow just from gathering and using the harvest--we grow also from helping the crops to develop into a harvest of which we can be proud.

A Nice Passage

My Symphony

To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury;
and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable;
and wealthy, not rich;
to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;
to listen to stars and birds,
to babes and sages, with open heart;
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely,
await occasion, hurry never;
in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and
unconscious grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.

William Henry Channing

Nothing in My Pockets

I've just spent a few days at a workshop up in the mountains, living for those days in a small cabin in a small camp.  The first thing that I did when I got there was to empty my pockets--I took out my wallet, my keys, my money--everything went into a drawer in the cabin for my entire stay.  It was an incredibly liberating experience.  I felt free, unencumbered, untied.  I wasn't obligated to have anything with me like my driver's license or money, because I didn't need anything at all.

I told a colleague who was there with me just how good it felt, and she got a strange look in her eyes.  "I wish I could say that," she said.  "It made me nervous not having all that stuff with me."  It was a response that I never could have imagined hearing.  What was freeing and pleasant for me was stressful and unpleasant for someone else--even though there really was nothing inherently stressful about the situation at all.  Do we get so tied to our accouterments that we start to attach our identity to them?

I'm happy to say that by the third day, she was feeling much better about the situation, even enjoying it and feeling the freedom that I had felt.  It was a great experience to experience reality without the burdens that we somehow come to call "necessities" in our lives.

Can you put yourself in situations in which you don't need all the "stuff" that we so often think that we absolutely have to have?  It's nice sometime to spend a night or two in a hotel where you can do nothing but go for walks and return to your room, not driving anywhere or doing anything that requires the credit cards or the cell phone or the laptop.  Just be you.  Just enjoy each moment as it comes.  Don't feel stressed, and don't be nervous--those things aren't necessary to your life or to your identity at all.  You are you and you are beautiful, and perhaps without the many distractions that we carry around so much, you can start to discover just who is the marvelous creature that you are.

Decisions

One of my students and I had a short talk about decisions today.  She wants this new semester to be much more positive for her, with much higher grades and much better work and far fewer cut classes.  Basically what she wants to do is make better decisions in her life, and to see better results because of her better decisions.

I can relate to where she’s coming from.  I watched her sabotage herself all last semester by choosing to do things that didn’t help her at all, and that ended up hurting her pretty constantly.  When I watch kids do things like that, I can see myself in many different times in my life, making decision after decision that were more harmful than helpful to me.  I would decide to say certain things that ended up hurting others, I would decide not to go to certain events and end up losing a chance to meet other people, or I would decide not to take risks and end up missing out on some pretty cool things.  I could decide to buy something on credit even though I knew I wouldn’t have the money.  I sometimes decided to put off important things in favor of doing something else that was much less beneficial to me.

I don’t say these things to chastise myself, but just to help myself to keep in mind the importance of the decisions that we make.  In my case, it became very important to me to develop some guidelines for my decisions–and once those guidelines were in place, many decisions became much easier.  Some guidelines are very simple.  If something will be harmful to someone else, then I can’t do it.  If I would need to compromise my principles just for some sort of gain for myself, I won’t do it.  Other guidelines are more complicated–and almost impossible to describe in words.

The bottom line for me is that I’m coming closer to not making any decisions without being conscious of two things: first, that I definitely have a decision to make, and second, that my decisions will cause results.  This awareness has helped me to make my decisions more carefully rather than just automatically–almost by rote–deciding things arbitrarily or capriciously.  And it has improved my quality of life as well as the lives of those people who are affected by my decisions.  I just have to look at my students who are still making bad decisions because they’re still unaware of the concept of decisions having consequences, and I realize that I’m very fortunate to be conscious of most of the decisions that I make.

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore

more precious, than to be able to decide.

Napoleon Bonaparte