Memento Mori

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

~Alfred D. Souza

Never forget that you must die; that death will come sooner than you expect... God has written the letters of death upon your hands. In the inside of your hands you will see the letters M.M. It means "Memento Mori" - remember you must die.

~J. Furniss, Tracts for Spiritual Reading

Every August, usually right in the middle of the month I get a feeling. It’s a strange combination of melancholy, longing, and remembrance of things past. Maybe it’s because my birthday is at the end of the month. Or maybe it’s the memories of summer dwindling away and that pang of youthful remorse that you didn’t quite accomplish everything you set out to over the summer. That time was slipping away and life was about to speed up again.

It’s not my favorite feeling.

In thinking about why this was, I thought about a memory I had years ago when I happened upon a church when I was traveling through the European countryside. The church had bones, real human bones, all over the walls. There were three male corpses outside the church, and over their heads was an inscription, it read,

“What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.”

It was one of the most powerful things I’d ever seen.

After asking around a little, I discovered this was a common theme a few hundred years ago. Memento Mori. Remember you must die. It was a reminder to people that in the face of disease, sickness, war, etc. that they were going to die. It was more than that though.

It was also a reminder to live.

In thinking about this idea, I also came to a better understanding of what my mid-August melancholy was all about. It wasn’t so much a desire to recreate the past, but instead a reminder to live. We only get so many summers and we need to make them count. Personally I used to measure a great summer by the places I’d traveled and the things that I had seen. That will always be important to me, but lately I’ve come to a deeper understanding. It’s not about the places, although that’s wonderful as far as it goes. It’s about the people. Our relationships and the connections we make along the way that create the hooks we hang our memories on.

We need to learn to appreciate the good times while they’re actually happening.

So I thought about my afternoon at the church all those years ago, and started to remember. In actuality I was traveling alone, a little worried, and a lot lonely. I spent the day in a little bar in the country and I talked to people. A Scottish man on a eurorail pass who made me laugh all day telling me stories about how they drink in Scotland. A Spanish girl who had been traveling alone after a breakup who eventually joined us in our conversation. The owners of the hotel I was staying at, who cooked us a little lunch when they saw we were quickly progressing to being overserved.

People. People just like me who for an afternoon found themselves needing someone to talk to.

So in thinking about the concept of Memento Mori, I think it’s not just about remembering that you must die, but also to remember that you must live. And the best way to do this is to continue to cultivate relationships and appreciate our fellow travelers here. Especially those closest to us. In the end, know one cares about how much money you made, or how many women you were with, or how many cars you owned. All those things are fleeting.

Much like those corpses in front of the church who were once young and healthy and hopeful, we too will get sick and get old and start to decay. This will probably happen sooner than we think, and before we are ready.

In the meantime we have a choice, every day and every moment to live a little more authentically.

There are 20 more days in August.

Maybe there’s still a little summer left..

Battles

The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of us, but those who win battles we know nothing about

Be kinder than necessary to everyone you meet. Everyone is fighting some kind of battle.

Plato

One of the most dangerous things we can do is make assumptions about people. We see a man in a nice suit, or a perfectly manicured attractive woman, and think they must have it pretty good. And maybe  they do, but we never really know. Maybe they don’t have a care in the world, or maybe they are having the worst day of their lives.

Why do we do this?

It’s a quirk of our human nature to complete things. We see half an image or hear a small part of a story, and we fill in the blanks. We do this with people as well. We look at their clothes, or their job, or their appearance, and we begin to fill in the blanks about them. It happens in an instant.

But sometimes we’re wrong. Very wrong actually. I know this from my time working as a counselor and seeing some of these people.

That cheerleader? The one who thinks she’s so good looking and never talks to anyone? She’s painfully shy and also struggles with an eating disorder.

I’ve seen her.

That guy in the $3000 dollar suit with the beautiful wife? He must really have it made, ha? The guy seems like a real snob. That guy hasn’t slept in days. He has a severe anxiety disorder and suffers from depression. He’s attempted suicide and been to rehab. More than once.

I’ve seen him too.

 That kid who gets all A’s? Who seems to succeed at everything without cracking a book? He’s so lonely he’s in tears most of the time when he’s not at school. He spent so much time on his schoolwork that he never learned how to play, or laugh, or be a kid.

He’s been in my office.

This list could go on and on. Everyone is fighting SOME kind of battle, and some of them are much more serious than we will ever know. For one person, speaking in front of a group of people comes very naturally. For another, simply getting out of bed in the morning, driving a car, and filling out a job application is a monumental act of courage.

Which is where I think the “be kinder than necessary” part comes in. People are out there struggling with fear and worry and depression, but this may not be the part of themselves they are willing to show us. We work so hard at creating impressions for people, but sometimes this gets exhausting as well. As Nathaniel Hawthorne said hundreds of years ago, “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”

True. Very true.

I think we can start to get past this by occasionally revealing our own vulnerability. By asking for help when we are struggling, patience when we are having a day when we are not quite ourselves, and understanding when we need a little compassion. Relationships of any kind are a two-way street, and the judgments we make about others are not much different than those people have made about us.

Which leads us back to the idea of fighting battles. Who among us hasn’t wished that someone would cut us a little slack, or give us a break when we haven’t given our best, or just been a little nicer than usual on a day we could have used it? I bet every one of us. Maybe the answer isn’t to wait around for these things, but to instead extend them to others when we are feeling okay.  

Be kind.

Everyone is fighting some kind of battle. 

The Power of One

“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you. 

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

 That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Walt Whitman- Leaves of Grass

One of the joys of living in the time of youtube, is that you can find things from your youth that you thought you would never see again. For me it was finding old “Schoolhouse Rock” videos, or commercials from my childhood that really took me back. Maybe I’m just a sucker for nostalgia.

There was one video I saw as a child that completely changed my life. It was called “Powers of Ten” and it started with a couple having a picnic in Chicago. Then it magnified out by ten, over and over again, until, finally, it was in the deepest reaches of space. It made me realize how vast the universe we inhabited really was, and how small my little life was in comparison. At the time just going to Chicago seemed like going to outer space to me. The vastness of the universe was too large to comprehend.

And yet, cut to years later and I was living in Chicago myself, right by where the couple in the video was having their picnic. I even went and found the spot they were sitting and laid down and looked at the night sky, remembering as I did how powerfully the video had affected me. At least I’d made it to Chicago! Who was to say I wouldn’t make it even further someday. I was young and in a new city and the world was full of possibilities. It was very exciting.

I recently drove by the same park again, and I remembered what it was like to feel so young and full of promise. I don’t live right in the city anymore, and sometimes forget to look up and admire the tall buildings and architecture and wonder of the place, and that makes me kind of sad. Did I lose my enthusiasm somewhere along the way, or did I just kind of get acclimated to extraordinary things over time?

How could I become that star-gazer again?

I went back and found that old video, and thought about the title. “Powers of ten”, a reference to magnification, but maybe also something else. What about the power of one? What could ONE person do in the time they have been give here? How many lives could one committed, active, passionate person really touch if they devoted their life to such a cause? How many chance meetings and happy accidents and casual conversations changed a day, diverted a path, even altered a life?

I’m certainly not the first person to contemplate these questions. The great 20^th century architect Buckminister Fuller once also walked along the shores of Lake Michigan, bankrupt, drinking too much, and contemplating suicide. He asked himself these very same questions, (not far from the very picnic in the video). He decided that his life would be an experiment in the power of one.

He went on to be one of the great inventors and thinkers of the 20^th century.

The lesson here is that we all have this light, this power, this ability to alter a number of other lives. The possibilities are endless really if we stop and actually think about the implications. To do this we first have to release ourselves from the tyranny of our own regrets. Maybe you don’t like your job, or your friend didn’t text you back or you didn’t get a break that you thought you deserved. All little things on the surface, but they make up the soundtracks of our thoughts, and, over time, our thoughts define our reality.

We can get trapped there.  

Personally I’m challenging myself to think about this a little more. The next time I begin complaining about my life in my own head, I’m going to reframe the question. Forget about the things I don’t feel are “fair” about my life, how can I use the time and opportunity I have been given to help someone else?

So today, starting now, I decided to make a change. In honor of the fourth of July, and the sacrifices our soldiers have made for me to eat hot dogs and drink beer and watch baseball games, I’m going to offer to counsel our nation’s veterans. For no charge. If you know of someone who is on foreign soil, or is back from oversees, or needs a letter, a kind word, or more extensive counseling. I am available. I have two offices in the Chicago area. I am available via skype @joeyguse. My gmail address is joeyguse.com. I have contacted my local VA and given them my information to pass on to whoever may need assistance.  I pass this on not to brag, but to hopefully inspire someone else to explore what their power of one might be.

For me it was time to start practicing what I preach.

It’s a start, and I hope people will contact me. 

Hurt People, Hurt People

“Hurt people hurt people. We are not being judgmental by separating ourselves from such people. But we should do so with compassion. Compassion is defined as a "keen awareness of the suffering of another coupled with a desire to see it relieved." People hurt others as a result of their own inner strife and pain. Avoid the reactive response of believing they are bad; they already think so and are acting that way. They aren't bad; they are damaged and they deserve compassion. Note that compassion is an internal process, an understanding of the painful and troubled road trod by another. It is not trying to change or fix that person.”

Will Bowen

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

Neil Gaiman

As a “one-stop shopping” kind of counselor, my day can take all kinds of turns. I might start with an elderly person struggling with grief issues, then deal with a couple of AD/HD kids who try and tackle me, and then, somewhere by late afternoon, sneak across the street for a big gulp and a hot dog, (I’ve never outgrown the 7-11 lunch). My last patients are usually couples, and I usually find this to be the most challenging part of the day.

Why is that?

It has been my experience that usually by the time a couple makes it to marriage counseling, there has been a lot of polluted water under the bridge. You can bet that the couple has said some very hurtful things to each other, and that there is probably going to be a lot of anger on both sides of the couch, (they rarely sit together).

There are differing opinions as to how to proceed as a couple’s counselor. The original thinking was that if you could improve the couple’s communication skills, you could then improve their relationship. Others such as John Gottman had a different view, and instead focused on the importance of understanding differences, emphasizing what was positive between couples, and developing a healthy understanding of what it means to “agree to disagree” on some subjects.  

In the end however, I personally have found that most of the time it is often about people who are feeling hurt, and, as the author states so eloquently above, hurt people, hurt people. This is especially true in a marriage, where people have taken vows signifying someone is going to be their partner for the rest of their lives. It’s a massive commitment, and one that requires an amazing amount of trust and vulnerability. I include the Neil Gaiman quote above because I think it explains that sense of vulnerability almost perfectly. When you love someone you give them the power to hurt you, sometimes very badly, and when this does happen (and it always does) we are left with a kind of hurt that gives quickly to rage. WHY did I let myself do that? HOW could I fall into that trap again?

Some people at this juncture choose to never love again, or at least love very cautiously. This is certainly one solution. But in the end there is no real love without this vulnerability, and one could argue, no real life without love. We either take this leap of faith, or stay out of the pool completely. Each road has its peril.

But what are our choices when we have been hurt, and how do we then understand our own emotional reactions well enough to stop hurting others? It’s a difficult question. I’ve seen some of the most intelligent people I know turned to angry children when they have experienced the pain of hurt and rejection. In these cases we lose the ability to take perspective and lash out as a result of our own painful experiences.

This idea does not simply apply to marriages either. The world is full of hurt people who go on to hurt others. Look hard enough at criminals, addicts, and abusers, and you will usually find a history of someone who has been badly damaged in some way. This is not to excuse behavior, but to instead try and understand. Often those who have been hurt in their relationships go on to poison their children with this same anger, and this can then continue the cycle for another generation. As Mitch Albom says so eloquently, “All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”

So what is the answer to dealing with hurt? This is a question that becomes very difficult to answer. The solution lies in our ability to access our own emotional intelligence, and maintain a sense of perspective and awareness, even as our anger begins to rise. It’s a predictable pattern, this relationship between hurt and anger, and we must come to realize that even the brightest of us are not immune to it. In thinking about dealing with our own reactions, here is some advice from Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence about how we have a choice to respond in these situations.

1   1.  Self-Awareness- The next time you’re feeling a really strong emotion, try stepping back and just observing that emotion as it is. Ask yourself, “What am I feeling? What am I thinking? What physical sensations am I experiencing with this emotion?”

2.  Self-Regulation- Channeling an emotion in a new and constructive way, such as through exercising, writing, or painting.

-Avoiding triggers – such as certain people, situations, or environments – that are more likely to bring out a negative emotion.

-Seeking positive experiences to reverse negative ruts (such as watching a comedy movie when we are feeling down, or listening to motivating music when we are lazy).

3. Empathy- Empathy is our ability to see things from another person’s perspective – and to take into account their individual thoughts and feelings about an experience. Another powerful tool for improving empathy is perspective taking. This is a mental exercise where you literally imagine yourself experiencing a situation from another person’s perspective to better understand them.

I know I personally have had to fall back often on these techniques, as I have hurt plenty of people myself. The goal is to get better as we go on, while also understanding that as humans and thus fallible creatures, we are going to make the same kinds of mistakes again and again and again. The next time you are about to jump off the cliff in an argument with your significant other, try and think about these ideas. Am I acting out of hurt? If so can I recognize this emotion and try and deal with it rather than saying something I can’t take back? All of this is easy to grasp when we are calm, but so much more difficult to implement when we are truly angry. Managing, naming, and harnessing these emotions is however a wonderful tool for creating relationships that can endure through the inevitable moments of hurt and anger. 

Return to Pooh Corner

But I've wandered much further today than I should
And I can't seem to find my way back to the Wood

Kenny Loggins- Return to Pooh Corner

But time makes you bolder
Children get older
I'm getting older too 

Stevie Nicks- Landslide

Every May I get this sad kind of feeling that something is about to change. As a psychologist who works with children, this is when school is over the year, and often times I lose a number of kids to the summer breeze. The crises that have arisen during the school year have passed, and now it’s their time to have a little fun. I can hardly blame them actually. I used to look forward to summer all year long. Almost from the opening bell.

Still, I always feel a little like Christopher Robin when I say goodbye to the kids. Some of the kids have outgrown me, and won’t return again. Maybe this makes me more like Winnie the Pooh. I am certainly built a little more like him. Some kids do come back however, and it’s always interesting to see how their perspectives have changed as they continue to grow older and (hopefully) wiser.

Return to Pooh Corner

The romantic poets thought childhood was the most magical time of life. Discovering the world for the first time with a sense of innocence and wonder was an irreplaceable event in their eyes, and many of their works reflect on the inevitable loss of excitement as children begin to lose their sense of discovery. It’s a sad outlook, but not altogether untrue.

When I’m saying my goodbyes, I always ask kids what they’ve learned during our time together, (and yes, I have received ‘nothin’ as an answer.) Sometimes however I get a truly enlightening answer. And it’s rarely one I was expecting. In the second part of this exercise I try and tell kids the things I have learned from them. They are always surprised to hear this, but never once have I failed to learn something from a child in therapy. They are all in their own ways little scientists, figuring out the world for the first time, testing hypotheses, and drawing conclusions. Sometimes these choices lead to disaster, other times they work out, but in every case there is some kind of lesson to be gleaned from the experience. That’s my job really. To listen, treat them with respect and talk about the results of their discoveries. Sometimes I may interject something they may not have thought of, but in every case I learn something about the way children operate in the world.

In the end, it really is a great privilege, and working with kids does wonders for my own perspective. Much like the narrator in “Return to Pooh Corner” I sometimes wander too far from my own sense of play. I get cynical and grumpy, and forget to maintain a sense of gratitude for all of the good things in my life. That’s when the kids often bring me back.

Which also speaks to the fact that being a parent is such a tremendous opportunity. It offers a second chance to regain perspective and truly see the world through new eyes again. What was old becomes new again. It’s supposed to be one of the great joys of being a parent, but sometimes parents get lost in the woods as well. Their kids seem ungrateful, they feel unappreciated, and tempers begin to flare. Families lose their way. Although counseling is certainly no cure-all for everything, it is one of the ways families can begin to find their sense of gratitude and appreciation again. It’s a wonderful thing when it works.

So here I sit, contemplating the approach of June and summer and my own sense of perspective. I’m retracing some of my own steps this summer. Going back to the great American west where I had so many wonderful memories as a young kid in my early twenties just starting out. Maybe I’ll find a little stardust. Who knows? 

What I do know is another school year has passed, and I have to get ready to say my goodbyes.

It’s never easy..

Keep on dreaming even if it breaks your heart

“We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It's just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.”

Ben Okri

Heard a great story the other day. A young guy shot 16 under par on the golf course. Some were even calling it “the greatest round ever played” http://golfweek.com/news/2012/may/17/greatest-round-ever-played/

Although I was certainly impressed with this guy’s score, that wasn’t the part of the story that captivated me. When asked about his round, Rhein Gibson, the golfer in question, described how he had a song stuck in his head all day by the Eli Young Band called “Keep on dreaming if it breaks your heart.”


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-5GnZYxI4M

Great title.

Side note. I’ve always been fascinated by how songs get stuck in our heads. I vividly remember my mother playing the song “Caribbean Blue” by Enya after a friend of hers passed away. She said the song gave her a sense of peace and helped her make sense of her friend’s passing. That memory will always stick with me. I’ve had many such songs in my hit parade that have effectively made up the soundtrack of my own life. Music is wonderful that way. It gives us an anchor to remember things. To reconstruct time and place and memories in a way nothing else really does. Although he was mad as a hatter, I’ve always agreed with Nietzsche’s comment that, “without music life would be a mistake.”

I was however, particularly struck by this golfer’s story, because his dream was so close to my own. In my life I’ve dreamed of travel, and to be a comedian, and to write books, and to be a psychologist. I’ve accomplished all those things. But there was one dream that eluded me. I always wanted to be a professional golfer. I spent hundreds of hours as kid practicing and reading and playing and dreaming. But it never happened for me. Yet somewhere in the back of my mind, the dream is still alive. I’m old and I’m paunchy and I’m busy. But I haven’t given up. Not completely.

In pursuit of this improbable dream. I practice. A lot. I even moved out to the country so I could practice and play a little more. One particular little spot is my sanctuary. It’s a little practice green next to a cornfield off of a quiet country road. I spend hours out there chipping and putting. It gives me a sense of peace. Will I ever really be a pro? Probably not. But something struck me the other day that helped me make a little more sense of all of this.

Second side note. I’ve had a recurring dream for as long as I can remember. It’s of my grandparents old farm in Washington state. In the dream I am young and happy and contented. It’s a nice feeling but I always wake up a little saddened. To me the dream conveys a sense of longing to return to a simpler time in my life without all the worries and responsibilities. I’ve tried to make sense of it many times, but never quite get there. C.S. Lewis called these kind of things “tantalizing glimpses.” I think he was right on the money.

I bring this up because the other day I was in a bad mood. I was feeling sorry for myself, and decided to go out to my little spot and work it out. I spent an hour or two practicing as the sun began to set, and then I turned around and made a stunning realization.

I had walked into my own dream.

Seriously. There it was. A farm and a red barn and a cornfield and a place to quietly do something I’d always dreamed about.

It was kind of amazing really. I sat down and just kind of took it all in. How had I missed it for so long? Was I living my life completely on auto-pilot?

It was all right there…

I sat there for a while longer, and was eventually filled with a sense of gratitude for the moment of recognition. For a while at least, I understood something. Maybe dreams don’t come true exactly as we conjure them up, but they still can come true. Sometimes we may have to tilt the lens a little, shift our perspective a little, but they still might be there..

I hope I can remember this. Even more so, I hope I can help others see how their own dreams may have materialized in ways they may not have completely foreseen. Much like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”, sometimes we have to go out into the world and stumble a little before we realize we have all of the things we need right in our own backyards.

I’m gonna try and remember this..

In a New York Minute

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Mary Scmich

"Regrets are illuminations come too late."
Joseph Campbell

One day you will get a phone call that will completely change your life.

And you won’t be ready for it.

Maybe this call will be about your own health, or that someone close to you has a fatal illness or been in an accident. In the worst cases that someone has died. I don’t point this out to be morbid, but instead as a reminder that life can truly change at any minute. In these moments we ask ourselves, why did we take everything for granted? Why didn’t we make peace with people we had wronged? Why didn’t we appreciate our youth, our health, our family, until they were gone?

Why am I bringing this up??

It’s silly really. In anticipation of the coming golf season, I was changing my spikes with a large hunting knife, (I’ve never been hunting). A moment later this same large knife was stuck directly in my hand, an inch from a major artery. I stood there for a moment and just pondered the absurdity of the situation. Is this the way it all ends? The Psychologist, in the kitchen, with the hunting knife? It seemed like such a crazy way to go..

Ultimately I was okay, but it really got me thinking. How many times in our daily lives do we flirt with disaster like this? That car that swerves out of the way when we are inches from an accident. The strange dream that leaves us gasping for breath in the middle of the night. It’s a fragile world we live in, and some people don’t in fact get lucky in these situations. As we get older we seem to know more and more people who die in accidents, or far too young from a medical condition. Life as we know it can change at any time really.

In a New York minute…

I’ve sat with far too many people who have been on the wrong end of these phone calls, and in some cases, the news they receive casts a shadow over their lives that they never recover from. In the end, it’s not ghosts or spirits that we are haunted by, but regrets, and as Mr. Campbell says in the opening quote, “regrets are illuminations that come too late.” Death and illness and tragedy teach us that there is no room for pettiness, spite, apathy, and laziness, and, although we all may agree in spirit with this idea, we always seem to forget. Then the inevitable questions begin to repeat in our heads. Why didn’t I tell my brother how much I appreciated him? Why didn’t I tell my mother I loved her? Why didn’t I call and say I’m sorry before it was too late?

If you have a chance to do these things, do them now. From my experience working with people who live with regret, it is clear to me that it is not the dead that haunt the living, but instead the living that haunt the dead.

 But their illuminations have come too late..

It took a bumbling and idiotic episode with a hunting knife to remind me of these things, as I too tend to forget. Life can change at any minute. It has inspired me to create an “in-basket” for my life of things I kind of know I “should” do, but never really get around to. This week I’ve reconnected with two old friends. Today I’m going to reach out to someone I’m in a stupid argument with and try to mend that fence. That will be a good start. It’s amazing how much of this unfinished business we accumulate over the course of a lifetime. Still, I want to have my illuminations now rather than later, and if that means working through a little discomfort, then so be it. This whole little life that we’ve built for ourselves is inherently breakable. This I know to be true. Everything can change in an instant.

In a New York minute..

Be Here Now

“It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.”

George Harrison

You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking how you'll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
― John Green Looking for Alaska



Hung out with some old friends the other day that I hadn’t seen in a long time. We laughed and talked about old times, and even made a point of visiting some places where we used to make our rounds so many years ago. It was a nice trip down memory lane.


But it was a little different..

I think we were all thinking that maybe just getting together would make it like it used to be, but it wasn’t so. We’re older and more responsible (they are) now, and not as young and foolish as we once were. Not that we haven’t gained some wisdom in the meantime. We have. It’s just interesting to me that we have such an interest in recapturing the past. Why is that?


I know for me it is a fleeting feeling that I have been chasing my whole life. I’ve traveled and worked all over and had all kinds of experiences, and I often find myself feeling a kind of intense longing to return to places and people that I once knew. Only it’s more than that. It’s a feeling of wanting to be young again and make discoveries again and take life as it is unfolding without knowing exactly what was going to happen next. But maybe the way I remember it is part of the problem also. Surely I had worries and regrets and bills and problems then as well. As Proust says so well, “Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” I’m sure that’s true. We often remember the good and forget a lot of the bad. Why do we do this?


Phillip Zimbardo explored this idea a great deal in his book The Time Paradox. In this book, he proposes there are six distinct ways we look at time, the first being what he calls a “past negative” which describes people who are anchored to negative experiences from their past. The second is what he calls “past positive.” These people instead remember all of the good things from their pasts, often at the expense of the present moment. The next is the present hedonist This is the type that lives almost exclusively in the now, indulging their every need in the moment without much thought for the future. We also have the present fatalist, who believes they are simply victims of fate and what it will bring, and that they have very little control over what happens in their lives. Then we have the future-oriented person, who believes much more in saving up for a rainy day then indulging in the present moment. And finally we have the transcendental future type, who lives in anticipation of a spiritual future removed from the pressures of this earthly realm.


So which path is the right one? Zimbardo feels that the healthiest perspective combines a positive view of the past with an ability to both enjoy the present while also making decisions that will benefit our future selves. Not an easy task to be sure. Want to know how your view of time compares to this ideal? Take the time inventory and see for yourself. http://www.thetimeparadox.com/zimbardo-time-perspective-inventory/

In thinking about this idea, I realized that maybe my longing to revisit the past was actually more of a philosophy than an actual desire, and it reminded me that there are still plenty of opportunities in the present moment to make lasting memories that will likely be part of some future longing. It’s a complicated idea to understand ourselves in flux, and it’s one that we often get wrong according to Dan Gilbert, who recently wrote about what he calls the “End of History Illusion.” In describing this phenomenon he reports, “Middle-aged people — like me — often look back on our younger selves with some mixture of amusement and chagrin. What we never seem to realize is that our future selves will look back and think the very same thing about us. At every age we think we’re having the last laugh, and at every age we’re wrong.”


This is a fascinating concept to consider as it relates to our understanding of time. We always think we are done changing, even as we are continually evolving into a different person on a daily basis. It’s only by looking back that we understand this though. I look back at myself as a teenager and think, “man I was an idiot back then.” Not realizing that my 60 year old self will probably say the same thing about who I am now. It’s interesting reading and definitely worth checking out. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/science/study-in-science-shows-end-of-history-illusion.html?_r=0


The takeaway for me is to remember that perhaps the most important thing I can do to have both a memorable past and a productive future is to continue to be here now. To not get lazy with exploring new ideas and nurturing my sense of adventure and not falling into the trap of thinking that getting a little older means I’m done exploring the world. Sure I’m not as young and maybe my energy level isn’t what it used to be, but I do have a little more money now, and realize that there’s nothing wrong with staying in a hotel with a little hot water. All of life has tradeoffs. As much as I would like to think of my younger self as a swashbuckling James Bond type back then, pictures tell the story of more of a disheveled Chris Farley.


In truth I was never that good at picking up chicks. Past, present, future, amen..


So, in closing I want to remember to take some time and think about what the day will bring. I can’t revisit the past, and it’s a mistake to look too far towards the future. I know for me at least it’s often about finding ways to create meaning over the course of the day, even while my mind continues to drift both backwards to the past and forward to the future. As Ram Dass says in his book on the subject,


“The question we need to ask is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that's happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization.”


I love that. “Acting in ways that are at least not contributing to further destabilization.” Not the loftiest of goals to be certain, but a reminder that we can at least remember to remain calm, and think about what it is we are doing today. Maybe we will create some meaning in our lives, or meet someone who completely alters our destiny, or make a memory that will be an indelible asset to our future selves in some significant way. We don’t really know. The best we can do is keep our eyes open and stay here. Stay in the now. Be here now.

S.A.D.

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”

Albert Camus

I have a confession to make.

I hate February.

Not just hate the way some people hate mosquitoes or brussell sprouts or their in-laws, but really vile and intense hatred. Sure it’s only 28 days, and there’s a couple of Mondays off in there, but for me it’s little comfort. Each day is like living time in dog years. I don’t sleep well, I eat carbohydrates like an overweight cat lady, and I’m not that fun to be around.

And I’m not the only one. Therapy offices fill up in February. Christmas is over, bills are here, and the snow is still falling. There’s about 4 hours of sunlight to get things done. People get irritable, cranky, and depressed.

And I am one of them.

All kidding aside, to live in a place like Chicago is to experience some piece of the ebb and flow of nature’s rhythms. I get that. But this year, for the first time, I came to understand that I do in fact suffer from seasonal affective disorder, or “SAD” (nice name!) to those of us who like to use acronyms. It’s not a joke and it’s very real to people who are experiencing it.

A quick definition of this disorder, indicates “Symptoms of SAD may consist of difficulty waking up in the morning, a tendency to oversleep and overeat, cravings for carbohydrates, and weight gain. Other symptoms include a lack of energy, difficulty concentrating on or completing tasks, and withdrawal from friends, family, and social activities and decreased sex drive. All of this can lead to depression, pessimistic feelings of hopelessness, and anhedonia, which characterize a person suffering from this disorder.

That about covers it.

Although people have successfully used light therapy and vitamin D supplements to treat this disorder, I think it’s the “pessimistic feelings of hopelessness” where we also have a lot of control. Winter actually feels like it’s never going to end at certain points, but a part of us also know these feelings are a lie. Spring eventually shows up. First with little moments of sunshine, then, eventually with the first glorious day where the weather breaks for real. It’s a great day in Chicago. The outdoor patios are full of people talking and laughing and drinking, and a LOT of people feel no immediate urge to go to work. FINALLY we have our city back.

Soon enough we are complaining about the heat...

In any case, for myself at least, I am going to take these last couple of weeks of winter and try and work on my attitude. I can’t make the days last any longer and I can’t stop the snow from falling, but I can try and share my experiences with others, and hope we can create a kind of virtual campfire of warmth through sharing our experiences. As with all kinds of depression, we often isolate ourselves when we are feeling like this, and this is a dangerous approach to the problem that almost certainly makes it worse. This is the time to embrace your friends, get out in public, join a group, do whatever it takes to weather the storm. For many it means scheduling an appointment with a doctor to actually treat this depression, and this is something I also encourage. This thing is real. I know it. I’ve lived it.

And now I’m going to go outside and look at the snowmen the children have built, and try and resist the urge to make yellow snow as a sign of protest..

Tomorrow is the last day in February..

It's always something

I always wanted a happy ending... Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.

Gilda Radner

“And that's how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there. . . . And at the end of your life, your whole existence has the same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.” 

― Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

     

     Found myself thinking today about one of my favorite comediennes, Gilda Radner.  She's the author of the first quote here. Delicious ambiguity. What a great turn of a phrase. How did she come up with it? Turns out it’s a story worth telling. She met the love of her life, Gene Wilder after a lifetime of struggle. It was love at first sight. They fell quickly in love and got married. A year later she was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer.

Life can be cruel sometimes.

She wrote an autobiography during this period of her life. The title has always been embedded in my brain.

It’s always something.

In the end, I’m not sure there’s a better description of life. It’s always something. We spend so much time worrying and fretting and putting out fires, and in the end it’s all an exercise in futility. We never have complete peace in this life. Not really. As one flame is extinguished, another one begins to spark. So it goes.

So what are our choices? Do we accept that life is a never ending series of struggles and surprises, and stoically plug away? Perhaps. But maybe there is another alternative. 

Maybe, just maybe, it isn't the end of the world. Perhaps it’s a question of perspective. What if, on a long enough timeline, all of our little worries and problems and conniptions are simply elements of a longer narrative that have yet to completely clarify themselves? I know from monitoring my own absurdity, that time does in fact heal things in the strangest of ways. It doesn’t take years either. Sometimes it can take hours or minutes, and, when we’re really attuned to our own emotional reactions, even seconds.

How do we ever get to this place? Each one of us has stood, humbly in regret, and considered how our emotions have been hijacked in the wrong direction. Perhaps we said something awful that we couldn’t take back, or acted impulsively when we were hurt, or made a decision based on emotions rather than reason. We all do these things. All the time actually. We (I!) throw these minor temper tantrums in our heads all the time. Why do all the traffic lights turn red right when we get to the intersection? Why do the unexpected bills come right when we get a little ahead?

It’s always something.

What can you do but laugh at these things? As Captain Jack Sparrow says so eloquently in Pirates of the Caribbean “The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem.” Amen Captain Jack.

So perhaps the takeaway from Mrs. Radner’s philosophy lies in her advice about “Delicious Ambiguity.” We never really know what direction our day is going to take. There are surprises everywhere, and some of them are good, many of them seem bad, and all of them come regardless of what we think we “deserve” out of life. Attitude is where we have our power, and, although we can’t often predict all of the plot twists, it does in fact allow us to chose if the little movie that is our life is going to be a tragedy or a comedy. The line is thinner than we often think.

And now, I have to wrap this little essay up, and take care of a couple of things. My new white shirt has red wine on it, I’m out of clean underwear, and I’m pretty sure I left the lights on in my car last night. Any of these things would be enough to drive me crazy on most days, but for now I’m going to laugh, dig my way out of the mess I made for myself, and soldier on.

It’s always something. 

Learning to accept feedback

Welcoming in 2013 this week, and thinking about New Year’s resolutions. Like most people, I think about things I’d like to change. I’d love to lose some weight, stick to an exercise plan, and in general manage my life a little better. Who wouldn’t, right? These are things most of us struggle with. But they’re not on my list this year. It’s been done to death.

No this year I want to work on something a little more internal. It occurred to me that I am not good at accepting constructive criticism. Or criticism. Or even feedback really. It’s a bad character trait and one that I know holds me back.

Why?

I believe because like most people, my first reaction to any kind of criticism is to defend. Sometimes even defend AND attack. We often take critiques as a blow to who we are as opposed to something we’ve done, and this activates our defenses. The shame in this is we don’t take the time to really listen to what is being communicated and use this information to improve ourselves when this happens.

When looked at from a long enough perspective, all of life involves feedback. When we smile at a pretty girl in a bar and they don’t smile back, that’s feedback. When we tell what we think is a hilarious joke and people nervously chuckle and drop eye contact, that’s also feedback. (Those two are fresh in my mind after New Year’s Eve).. Every laugh, smile, nod, and even raised eyebrow communicates something to people, and we are all constantly in a state of reinforcement and communication with each other. It’s kind of fascinating actually.

A caveat to accepting feedback is that there ARE people out there who seem to exist for the sole purpose of snuffing out the dreams of others. These people don’t create anything themselves, but are quick to constantly belittle the work of others. If you have someone like this in your life, do your best to separate yourself from them. Their attitude says a lot more about them than the things they say about you.

But ultimately, when we do create something, we have to understand that not everyone is going to “get” something in the way we intended. Maybe we didn’t communicate it very well, or glossed over something, or were too obscure in the way we made our artistic choices. When this happens we have an opportunity to listen closely and try and understand where we lost people. This is how we get better.

It rarely seems to happen that way however. We get hurt that people don’t appreciate our efforts, and we use a whole series of defense mechanisms to deal with this hurt. We may attack the messenger because we dislike the message. Or we may rationalize that other people’s opinions don’t matter, or that they are simply mean-spirited, or not creatively minded.

 This doesn’t apply only to artistic creations either. Most of us like the kind of feedback that reinforces our view of the world as well as ourselves, but get very defensive when this feedback goes the other way, which it invariably does. But maybe this is when we should start paying attention the most. Carl Jung said “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” Think about that for a moment. I know personally I often get irritated by loud people who try and steal the center of attention. Hmmmmm..

Not hard to figure that one out.

I would guess if we think hard enough we could all think of someone like that, and if we think even harder, we may eventually come to understand some things we’d like to change about ourselves. That’s feedback. And when we really put aside our own pride and defensiveness, there is a whole lot of instruction there as to how we can begin to improve ourselves. We don’t always KNOW how we are being perceived, and often because of this, we can get locked into our own perspective.  Perhaps Anais Nin said it best, “We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.” Seems pretty accurate.

So personally I’m going to work on this a little this year and try not to be defensive when others have opinions about something that differ greatly from my own. Although there is often a temporary sting of rejection when we take in criticism, we can use this as a motivation to change things for the better, which is a goal that can benefit almost anyone. I know I could certainly benefit from listening a little more closely. I think we all probably could. 

Remembering the good times- RIP to my cousin MIchael

It's funny how when you're a kid, a day can last forever. Now, all these years seem just like a blink-

Hearts in Atlantis

“When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn't the old home you missed but your childhood

Sam Ewing

I woke up today in a very sentimental mood. Something about being home and seeing so many old familiar faces wakes up a kind of nostalgia, which is rare for me because I am more of a “present” oriented person.

I started the day at my grandpa’s old farm, pictured here-

I had so many good times here as a kid, and for years I had a recurring dream about returning. I even featured it in a book I wrote called The Empath. It’s funny seeing it now. What’s left of it anyway. A whole childhood of memories and now it’s just a rundown old barn. I wonder if the current owners ever think about the history of the place. If they knew what a pleasure it was for my brothers and sister and I to play in there and feed the animals, and look out into the almost endless backyard and watch the sunset. Probably not. That was our time, and now it’s their time. Still, every house has a million stories. This one certainly did.

As I was sitting here thinking about these things, I got a text from my mother, telling me my cousin had died. I was shocked. Although he had been sick for a long time, he was a young man. Younger than me even, and it didn’t seem possible. People from my generation aren’t supposed to die. Not yet anyway. I found myself angry at the randomness of it. It just seemed kind of unfair. Eventually my feelings drifted from anger to sadness, and I cried some tears for my cousin Michael. We had a lot of fun growing up when I saw him, and I wanted to try and remember that.

So I found myself driving to my other grandparent’s home, where he and I and my family had spent the most amount of time with him, pictured here.

It seemed so big growing up, and now it just looked like a little house on a little street. I could see a Christmas tree in the window, and guessed that a family probably lived there now. I probably looked pretty strange just sitting there parked in front of their house with tears in my eyes, but I wanted to remember. Remember the good times, and the trouble we used to get into and the many, many Christmases I spent here growing up. I wanted to go back again, to be young, and dumb, and free from my responsibilities and bills and worries. But mostly I wanted to go back so I could see my cousin Michael again.

Eventually I had to start the car and move, as a strange man sitting parked probably looks a little odd to people. They didn’t know.  We never really know. We pass by people and nod and smile and wave, but we don’t really know how their day has been. What their pain is, and what it is they might be struggling with.

Mostly I think about how my cousin could possibly be gone. The last time I saw him he was a kid, and now he had three kids of his own. I hoped that they knew that fun guy I used to know as a kid. That they laughed a lot and made a lot of memories and that he taught them some things that they would pass on to children of their own. That’s all life really is in the end. A lot of little days, and moments, and memories, that somehow in the end all adds up to a lifetime.

It goes too fast.

At least it did for my cousin Michael. I do believe there is a kind of our immortality in our shared memories however. We pass these little moments down from generation to generation, and do our best to remember. For me today it was about remembering the good times with my cousin. Rest in peace my friend.