No Rules?

I just bought a book by the Dalai Lama, called How to Practise (it's the British version, thus the different spelling of "practice").  It's a bit perplexing, because it doesn't read like the other material I've read by the Dalai Lama--it reads like a rule book, telling us that in order to do this, you have to do that.  And you have to do it in the right order.  It's like a prescription for a "meaningful life," with all the directions you'll ever need to make your life meaningful.  The book is irking me because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense--there are no real rules to life, no way to guarantee yourself certain outcomes in the areas of happiness and fulfillment.  That's just the way things are.

I think that my reaction is a result of a couple of things, having to do with instinct and intellect.  Instinctively, I know that we're all doing the best that we can, and that what's necessary for me more than likely isn't going to be necessary for you.  Because life is fluid and ever-changing and dynamic, not static and predictable.  It's not like combining water and flour to get glue, or adding sugar to something to make it sweeter.  There are certain concepts and ideas that seem to be universal, but the key words there are "seem to be"--the true test of universality is that they work the same way for everyone, and that's always debatable.  Yes, there are some universal principles (kindness is a positive part of life), but they're always relative (kindness in certain situations may make things worse than sternness or self-assertion).

I think that the most important thing that I'm taking away from the book is that even the Dalai Lama can stumble--something that he, himself, admits to doing in the text.  And that it's very important that I listen to my instinct and my years of studying such material to recognize something that isn't really going to help me at all.  Not everything that has been written is going to be useful or helpful to all of us, no matter what the source.  I simply feel that this book doesn't serve me in the place I am right now.  Perhaps if I were thirty years younger, I might find that the claim of a need for rules would be more amenable to my situation, but right now, my mind constantly goes to the idea that my life has been improved constantly by the times when I didn't "follow the rules," when I allowed my passions and my instincts to help me make decisions about what I should do in certain situations.

Not following certain rules is risky, of course, and I have experienced setbacks, but even the setbacks have been great learning experiences for me.  I can't help but feel that if I had focused always on following the "rules" of life, I wouldn't have been able to experience most of what I've done in life--the good and the bad, the agony and the ecstasy, the positive and the negative.  And to me, life is about experiencing all that we can, without harming others in the process, or at least doing our best to learn how not to harm others when we do the things we do.

Yes, there are certain principles to life that we should follow if we want to be good and caring and loving people.  There are things like love and hope and awareness and mindfulness and giving that almost always will provide us with experiences that add to our happiness and well-being if we make them parts of our lives.  But these are things that we need to approach and learn about in our own unique ways.  I know people who love much better than I do, but if I tried to do things that ways that they do them, I would fail miserably because I wouldn't be expressing my authentic self--I would be trying to be them.  And I'm not them.

Perhaps what we need to do is make up our own rules.  Maybe we need to realize that even if we want things to work out in certain ways, the prescriptions that we've been given by others won't work--they'll simply provide us with a close approximation to what we hoped and expected from them.  I would say that as long as we follow one important rule--don't harm others--we'll have a very good chance of finding happiness and contentment on our own terms, rather than finding it on someone else's terms.  So let your life shine in the decisions that you make, and don't worry a bit if your decisions aren't the same ones that other people have made.  You're not those other people, so their decisions won't necessarily help you a bit.  Besides, it's more than likely that a lot of those people are dissatisfied with the decisions that they made, and they wish that they had made a different one.  Make yours different now--follow your instinct and your heart rather than the voice of the crowd or the teacher or the prophet.

Who I Am Not

The path of awakening is not about becoming who you are.  Rather it is
about unbecoming who you are not.    -Leonard Jacobson


I don't know if this quotation speaks to me more about awakening or more about unbecoming who I am not.  I think it's the latter--though over the years I've gotten to be pretty good about trying to be my own person and not trying to be what I think other people want me to be, it's still quite a difficult task, that of dropping all pretenses and simply being the person I am.

One of the major reasons for which I definitely want to be truly who I am is the fact that I teach high school students, and I want them to see me as being an authentic person--whether they like me that way or not.  We keep telling young people that they should be themselves, that they should let themselves shine through all they do, and then we model completely opposite behavior, acting in inauthentic ways because we're trying to get others to like us or approve of us.  It's ridiculous, when all is said and done, but it's something that we keep on doing.

But who am I not?  I know that ethically, I'm not a liar, I'm not a murderer, I'm not a thief.  But I can think of situations in which I would tell an untruth for very good reasons; I can think of situations (such as defending loved ones) in which I might actually kill someone; and I can think of situations in which taking other people's stuff may be not just justified, but necessary.  I don't say these things to muddy the waters or to justify bad behavior, but simply to illustrate just how difficult it may be to define just "who I am not."

I think that what Leonard is getting at, though, is our tendency to try to pretend to be something in order to get other people to approve of us.  It's about us trying to become something other than our authentic selves in order to fill some role that we think we want to be in.  Who among us hasn't said or done something that we don't really believe in order to impress that girl or that guy?  Who hasn't smiled at something that we don't consider to be funny in order to possibly get that job?

I've done this sort of thing many more times than I like to admit.  Fortunately, I've lived long enough not just to realize that doing so wasn't a good thing for me, but also to start to live my life in a different way and to stop doing it.  I've been able to change my behavior and my perspective, and I can now act just the way I feel like acting, without worrying a bit what others will think of it.  And that's not a bad thing.  I still avoid doing things that harm others, but not because I want to make an impression--now I don't do such things because I truly don't want to harm others.  I obey laws not because I'm afraid of getting caught breaking them, but because as a member of my communities, I feel a responsibility to obey them.

We like to pretend, and we like to act in ways other than our authentic ways.  It's a way for us to protect ourselves, to make our lives easier, to accomplish certain things that we wish to accomplish--in ways that are easier on us.  But any time that I act as I am not, there's a great deal of tension between the person I am and the person I'm pretending to be--and that tension affects me and the other people in my life in negative ways.

Who are you?  It's a great question to ask, but perhaps the better question may be, "Who are you not, and who are you pretending to be?"  If we can be truly honest with ourselves and realize from time to time that "that's not me," we have a chance to live much more authentically, much more happily.  Perhaps it's time for all of us to take some time to reflect on the ways we act and the things we do, with an eye towards finding out what we're doing or saying that's not really us.  Because if we keep on acting as people who we are not, then just what can we hope to accomplish with and for the other people in our lives, those who are dealing with a person other than our authentic selves--and who thus can't truly trust the people we seem to be?

Weather I Like

Traveler:  What kind of weather are we going to have today?

Shepherd:  The kind of weather I like.

Traveler:  How do you know it will be the kind of weather you like?

Shepherd:  Having found out, sir, I cannot always get what I like,
I have learned always to like what I get.  So I am quite sure
we will have the kind of weather I like.   -Anthony De Mello


It's taken me a very long time to reach a point of being able to accept almost anything.  One day I hope to be able to accept anything, for I know that if I ever reach that point, my life will be much richer and much more enjoyable.  I don't want to act like everything is acceptable and let people harm other people just because they're doing so, but I do know that until I accept something, I can't do anything to change it or improve it.

Today's weather is what it is.  There's nothing that I can do to change it, so why shouldn't I just enjoy it for what it is?  If it's too cold for me to go out and do something, I'm very blessed to have a home with heat where I can relax and enjoy the day; if I have to go out, I'm blessed to have a coat and scarf and gloves and other clothes to keep me warm while I'm outside--so I can not just enjoy the cold day, but actually like it for what it is.

I get a lot of students every year, and not all of them are all that easy to deal with.  Some of them actually make my life a bit difficult at times, but there's really nothing I can do about that except continue to be myself and to do my best to help them to learn, as they are.  And while they don't make my life any easier, they do test me--they test my patience, my skills, and my ability to deal with adversity.  In that way, they help me to grow as a person, so even if there are some negative aspects to my relationship to them, I can still like them.  And when I factor in my knowledge of some of the adversity that they've faced in their lives that has caused them to develop into problematic young people, it's hard not to like them, because at least they're still in school, and still trying.

If I were to get to know you, would you like me to accept you as you are, or to find you lacking in some areas and try to change you to fit my ideas of what you should be like?  I think we both know the answer to that question, so we have to ask ourselves whether we're accepting of other things and people as they are, or do we judge and wish things were different?  Sometimes we think something or someone should change and we don't take things just the way we are; when we do this, we become less than tolerant, less than loving, less than accepting.  Just because we think something should change doesn't mean that it should, no matter what our egos may tell us about how right we are.

If I like you as you are, I can relax and enjoy your company.  If I like the weather, I can relax and enjoy the weather.  There's no need to complain about it, no need to wish it were something different.  With this kind of acceptance in our lives, we can eliminate tons of dissatisfaction from our daily experiences, and we can add a whole lot of love and encouragement and compassion.  All it takes is a shift in perspective, as the shepherd above demonstrates.  What kinds of things might we actually learn to like, if we were to stop complaining about them and start accepting and even liking them?

http://livinglifefully.com/acceptance2.htm

Troubles, or Experience?

If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that
every experience develops some latent force within you, you
will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse
your circumstances may seem to be.
-John Heywood


I think that it's far too easy to get caught up in our troubles.  It seems that we somehow get so caught up in what we see as the negative aspects of our problems that we don't even see that they can be some of the most important elements of our lives.  They're the things that most help us to grow and to learn; they are what allows us to become stronger and more compassionate people.  Without problems and troubles, our lives would be very bland, it seems, and we would often find ourselves without a sense of direction, without a sense of purpose.

If we could get in the habit of calling all of our experiences just that--experiences--then I think we could avoid many of the problems our own minds cause us.  When we see something as a problem, we give it a lot of power over us.  We allow it to diminish much of our energy, especially when we see it as a major problem.  We allow it to cause us a great deal of worry, and we may even lose sleep or start behaving differently when we're dealing with such experiences.  We fear that they will overwhelm us, that we'll end up having nothing, losing everything that we have or all that we've worked for.

As with so many other things, though, this is mostly a matter of perspective.  Perhaps the issue that just came up does have a drastic side to it; perhaps it can mean that we'll lose a job or a relationship or a place to live.  Experience tells us, though, that sometimes losing what we have is the absolute best thing for us--we lose a relationship because there's someone else who's going to come along who is much better for us; we lose a job because there's a job out there waiting for us that's much, much better than the job we have now.

I think that in my life, the worst part of focusing on troubles rather than experiences has been the amount of time I've lost to worry and depression and fear.  There have been many hours that I could have enjoyed, that could have been rich and fulfilling rather than miserable.  And I realize in retrospect that most of the time, I was making myself miserable by the ways that I reacted to troubles.  They weren't making me miserable; I was.

And all these lost hours, too, I chalk up to experience because I know that I lose far fewer hours now because I learned many valuable lessons from the time I caused myself to "lose."

What kinds of experiences are you facing and having now?  How are you responding to them?  Are you giving them power over you by making them stronger than they really are?  Or are you learning from them, trying to become a better person with the help of the things that life is throwing your way?  It's very important that we keep in mind that when we see our trials as experience, we know that we can learn and grow from them.  We are always given the chances to become better people, but often we refuse to see the best learning experiences because we see them more as threats than as teachers.  It's time to allow our minds to help us, to let us learn from experience so that our lives will be richer and fuller.

As Rainer Maria Rilke once said, "Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses, only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave."


http://livinglifefully.com/experience.htm

What Can I Achieve This Year?

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.     -C. Hoppe

What shall I achieve this year?  I guess that depends on what I try to achieve, and whether or not my focus is on things that will benefit only me, or things that will benefit many more people other than me.  I can achieve a lot simply because I'm a human being and I have many chances to affect other people, but do I take advantage of those chances, or do I squander them in favor of doing other things, in favor of playing things safe all the time, in favor of withholding my help in an effort to make life easier for me?

How can I leave the world a better place?  It's tempting to think that I can't, since I'm simply one person in a very large world filled with billions of people, animals, and plants of all kinds.  When I think on that scale, though, life can seem to be overwhelming, and we may get discouraged before we even start trying to do anything.  Life is much easier if we're able to look at our own worlds and decide what to do there--do we work with other human beings?  Then we have the chance to encourage them and help them to see their own value, and we can trust that there will be a ripple effect of goodness that will affect their children when they get home, and other people whom they encounter.

Do we see something that we know is wrong?  Even though it's a very small thing, something that I feel very good about is the number of times that I've stopped to pick up the glass of broken bottles, for I know that it's the right thing to do.  It's made the world a better place in a seemingly insignificant way, but I don't need to be trying to make the world better in broad ways that are significant to millions.  Picking up broken glass is an achievement and a contribution to the world, and a decent one at that.

When we go to restaurants, my wife and I like to actually talk to waiters and waitresses, and find out something about them.  We like to compliment them and try to add something positive to their work time.  It's a very minor act, when all is said and done, but if we can make someone feel better about being at work, perhaps that achievement will also have ripple effects that we'll never know about.

I also try to take risks, though the risks I take are hardly earth-shattering.  Last summer I decided to move from teaching at college to teaching high school once more, because I knew that there's much more of a need for teachers in public schools than there is for college teachers--and that as a public school teacher I can make much more of a difference in my students' lives, especially academically.  Teaching college is much easier, but when I teach high school, my contribution is much broader and much deeper.  The risk was real because the job is extremely difficult these days, but it was worthwhile because I know I have the chance to do much more good for many more students.

There are many things that we can achieve that can help many others in very simple ways.  We can plant trees.  We can compliment sincerely and provide encouragement to those who need it.  We can stand up for someone who's being treated poorly.  We can pick up litter and recycle.  We can volunteer at an organization that helps others.  We're only limited by ourselves, really, and our fears.  What can you achieve this year that will be good for others?  What can you do to contribute to this world in a very real way, even if it is also a very small way?  It's important to remember that even the tiniest contribution is much more helpful than no contribution at all--so what will your tiny contributions look like, and how might they add up to or grow into something much larger?

What, Me Worry?

Worrying is carrying tomorrow's load with today's strength--
carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow
ahead of time. Worrying doesn't empty tomorrow of its
sorrow, it empties today of its strength.   -Corrie Ten Boom


I have to be the first to admit that I spend much more time worrying than I want to.  This is a rather frustrating trait of mine--one that's been with me since childhood, it seems--especially since I've done so much studying about how destructive it is, how useless it is.  I worry about lots of things, and though I worry much less now than I used to, I still worry much more than is healthy or helpful to me, and much more than pretty much any situation warrants.

I believe that one of the reasons that I worry so much is that I have a heightened sense of responsibility for pretty much everything.  Again, this is something that I used to feel much more than I do now, but something that I believe will be a part of me my whole life long to some extent or another.  I want things to turn out well, and I often feel that it's up to me to make sure that they do.  If I don't make them turn out well, of course, then other people will be disappointed in me, or they'll criticize me, or both.  And I don't want that.  I want people to be satisfied with what I do and how I do it, so I worry about how tomorrow's going to turn out, or whether or not I'll have enough money to pay something important, or whether the students in my classes are going to do well on their tests.

But worry doesn't help anything at all, I've learned.  In fact, it hurts a lot of things--I could be spending a beautiful, restful Sunday, relaxing and reading or going for a long walk and thinking about pleasant things; instead, I'm so worried about tomorrow that today has a dreadful cloud hanging over it, yanking me from the pleasant present moment and dropping me into the worry about things not going well tomorrow, or about not having the resources to do what I need to do next week.

And this worry doesn't do a thing to help the future situations!  Maybe I'll work a little longer to prepare if I'm worried, but still, I'm preparing more instead of enjoying right now.  I've learned over the years that often, the best way to prepare for tomorrow is to relax and enjoy today, and that way I end up entering tomorrow's situation in a much better frame of mind.

Worry seems to have a very antagonistic relationship with the present moment, so it's best to keep them in separate rooms since they can't play together well.

Since I can't seem to shake worry, I've done the next best thing--I accept it as part of my life.  Once I've accepted it, once I tell myself, "I'm worried now," then I can follow that up by saying, "I am worried, but instead of letting that worry control me, I'm going to force myself to reject it and do something fun."  And then I read a good book, or go for a run or a walk, or call a friend, or make a cup of coffee and listen to some good music.

Some situations, of course, are so important or so drastic that they deserve our concern and our effort.  But they're fairly rare, and generally fairly easy to recognize.  For all our other worries, it's important that we find a balance between paying attention to them, being concerned about them, and letting them go because our attention would serve no real purpose.  Life's too short to spend it worrying, so we need to develop strategies to deal with worry when it rears its ugly head--and it will do so.  We don't want to be people who never show concern about anything, of course, but we also don't want to allow our lives to be held hostage by worry about everything, even the trivial and unimportant.

Worry will happen, but how far do we allow it to go?  Personally, I don't want to let worry control any parts of my life, so I accept it for what it is and deal with it.  I've developed ways to compensate for worry, and they're very effective--not just in dealing with the worry itself, but also in making me a happier, healthier person.

Challenges Ahead. . . .

I've got an interesting year coming up, one that's going to challenge me on several different levels.  Most of the challenges will be professional, since I'm teaching at a high school that has virtually no materials for me in a district that simply doesn't value literacy much.  My job is much more difficult than it would be at a school in a district that showed stronger academic support for their students, but now that I've gotten to know the students who are being underserved by their district, I face a very difficult dilemma:  if I stay, I may be part of the problem, contributing to the low quality of education that the students are receiving, but if I leave, then I'll be--in a way--abandoning the very students who are most in need of extra help, help that I know I can give them.

So my year promises to be full of conflict, at least internally.  But that's okay by me, because when I decided to return to teaching high school, I knew that I would be facing some difficult challenges, and I was okay with that.  This is an advantage to me, for I know that whatever happens that's negative, I'll be facing many of the problems that I already knew for sure were going to arise.  I knew that I would have difficulties with materials, I knew that I would have difficulties with other teachers who aren't really teaching much, and I knew that I would have difficulties with administrators who are okay with things like not having any textbooks for students, and who have extraordinary expectations of teachers, who are paid rather little but who have huge responsibilities--and more and more of them every year.

Because even though I knew I would have difficulties, I also knew that I'm a good teacher, and that I would be able to help young people learn many of the things that they need to know about reading and writing.  I knew that I would be able to encourage them and help them to grow in ways other than academically, too.  I knew that I would be able to prepare them for college in ways that other teachers struggle with, mainly because of my extensive experience teaching at both levels, as well as my extensive work in earning three master's degrees and a doctorate.  These aren't things that I brag about, of course--I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to achieve these things--but I do recognize them as strengths and I know that they benefit the young people I work with.

Challenges always have their bright sides.  Bright sides always have their challenges included.  I think that one of the things that helps me get through life well is that I keep in mind that challenges aren't there to bring me down--they exist to help me to become better at what I do.  I don't hate challenges, and I don't try to avoid them.  I face them and I do the best I can, either in spite of them or by turning them into something else.

I haven't always had this perspective.  I used to see challenges as unfair obstacles, things that brought me down and added to problems I faced, such as depression.  I used to try to avoid them when I could, rather than face them and learn from them.  Fortunately, I didn't continue with that behavior.  Now, I welcome challenges because they help me to learn much more than unchallenging situations do.

In this year ahead, I'm going to face frustration and aggravation.  I'm going to be overworked and undervalued, and I'm going to have people criticize what I'm doing in my classrooms because it doesn't fit what they think I should be doing.  I'll have students who do little work and then complain when they fail my class.  And all that's okay.  It will wear on me, and by the time summer comes along I'm going to be in desperate need of a break.  But when all is said and done, it will all have been worth it because of the contribution that I'll be able to make to the students who do the work that will help them to improve their skills; I know that if they simply do what's asked of them in class, they'll be much better prepared for college and for the work force that they'll eventually be entering.

I have challenges ahead, and I'll face them.  There's really no other way to deal with challenges if we want to make the most of these lives we've been given, for when we face them, we learn from them and we grow.



Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you;
they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

Bernice Johnson Reagon