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Posts Tagged ‘mindfulness’

Cardinal Sin

Posted in Culture, tagged , , , on 14 Apr 2024| 4 Comments »

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been two weeks since I last went to work . . .

In recent conversations with my sister, the word “shirking” was mentioned a few times. Growing up, shirking—the avoidance or neglect of duty—was Mortal Sin #1 in our mother’s book (followed closely by “imperfect result or performance”). Every day, every waking hour, was to be filled with purposeful activity. Productivity was the point. Recreation (where allowed) usually had a secondary educational goal.

My father was not as involved with this mindset. Though he worked long hours, and his off-days were regularly spent making repairs, improving our home, keeping cars in tune, and such, his recreation had no ulterior motive. His enjoyment of the 49ers’ football games was pure, and I long suspected that the point of his lazy Saturday’s spent surf-fishing was not, in fact, to catch fish.

But Dad’s counterpoint to Mom’s stricter zeitgeist really didn’t stand much of a chance and, in the end, didn’t make a dent in our training. As a result, my sister and I always and still find it difficult to stand down, take a breath, chill, relax. Everything must have a goal, a purpose.

Two weeks ago, I retired, ending forty-six years of employment, and in the time since, I’ve been busy. I’ve been doing chores (cooking, groceries, paying bills), handling situations (rolling over the 401(k), confirming insurance switchover), and even embarking on some larger projects (traction strips for the front steps, installing new raised beds). But I’ve also (usually at my wife’s suggestion) been taking time to enjoy some shows, read a little, and take walks. I thought I was doing pretty well.

But last night, my brain screwed up and showed its hand.

I was in bed, prepping for sleep and took a few minutes to plan the next day’s activity. The internal dialogue went something like this:

• Okay, tomorrow’s Sunday; the weather is supposed to be fine—mostly sunny, high of 62°F.
• Don’t want to waste the weather; outdoor activity should be a priority.
• I could work more on the front steps, scrape and grind to prep the surfaces.
• Should also see if we have any of that paint color left . . . Adirondack Brown, was it?
• Don’t want to get too deep into that. Don’t start anything that can’t be left for a while.
• Hmmm, what? Why?
• Only one day to spend on it; gotta go back to work on Monday. It’s been a nice two-week break, though.

At this point I heard/felt a click, in my head, like a physical switch being thrown.

Brain, you’ve been busted.

My subconscious had obviously not gotten the memo about our retirement; it was still operating as if I was only on vacation. It’s as if, deep down, I don’t really believe I’ve retired. That, or retirement is just too foreign a concept for my lizard brain to comprehend.

So, subconscious and I had a conversation wherein we discussed both the nature of forever and the fact that not every moment needs to have a goal.

Obviously, this is going to take more time than expected to truly sink in. The longest time-off I’ve ever had was a three-week vacation, so as far as I can tell my subconscious is now working on that premise, and we’ll need to have a similar conversation next week. But if that’s needed, we’ll have it, and again the week after, if required.

I’ll get there. Even if I have to drag my subconscious along, kicking and screaming.

k

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Pole Reversal

Posted in Culture, tagged , , , , , , on 29 Jun 2023| 7 Comments »

I’ll be honest. Death has been on my mind. For a while.

This is not unusual for someone in their early-mid-sixties (i.e., me). In the past decade, my folks died, my brother died, and friends have died. Others we know in our cohort are battling cancer (successfully, we’re glad to hear), surviving strokes, and dealing with the trials of getting older. It’s not like I thought I was immortal, before—I always knew I’d die, someday—but it just wasn’t ever . . . real, y’know? It was an eventuality, but never registered on my radar.

Well, for the past few years, it has been a distinct blip on my screen, and it is now impossible to ignore.

And again, to be honest, I’ve lost sleep over it. A lot of sleep. How long do I have? What quality of life awaits me? What am I doing to improve what’s ahead? What am I doing that is eroding my future? What can I change? What benefits will they bring, and what costs, and would they be worth it?

It always hit me at about 4AM, too, and thus, the lost sleep. Which probably didn’t help things. Vicious circle.

I’m nine months from retirement—the final act in my grand opus—and I am definitely looking forward to it. Except, that is, for all the fretting about mortality.

But (oh, come on; you knew there was a “but” coming) then I remembered something I wrote, a passage from The Year the Cloud Fell. In the opening scene, the heroine is fighting the onset of a vision. She is afraid of it, and she is struggling against it. Her grandmother is at her side, and counsels her to give in, to accept what is inevitable.

“If you fight it, you will only get sick.  Then you will have the vision, and you will be sick, too.”

I realized that I was only compounding my problems. Yes, I am mortal. Yes, I am going to die. Yes, I am powerless in the face of that inevitable outcome. And all I’m doing with this fretting and “what if”-ing is making it worse. I’m stealing time, from myself.

The magnetic polarity of Earth flips every couple hundred thousand years or so. But it isn’t like flipping a switch. It’s not like, next Tuesday, we’ll wake up and all our Norths will now be Souths. It takes time. It’s gradual. It staggers around, meandering closer and farther from true polar coordinates until, after a few thousand years, our magnetic north is somewhere in the Antarctic.

This shift within me, it’s kind of like that. Seeing each day not as another step on the path to decrepitude and demise, but as a finite commodity to be cherished and enjoyed, it takes time. And effort. I have to choose to see it in this light. And yeah, I fail, and it’s usually around 4AM when I do fail, but I’m failing less and less.

My days don’t have to be stellar, red-letter days to be precious. Just the sight of a wild rabbit in the back garden, the smell of petrichor, learning something new, a hearty laugh are each more than enough to make a memorable.

Gratitude for the gifts nature has given me—breath, life, senses, emotions—make each day worth the trouble.

Onward.

k

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A Whole Lotta NOT Goin’ On

Posted in Culture, Politics, tagged , , , , on 25 May 2023| 2 Comments »

As often happens when performing mundane tasks, I was surfing through samples of bathroom tiles when it really hit me. The thought has been coming for a while—several months, if I’m honest—but even so, yesterday’s version was a mule-kick.

Strokes, heart attacks, cancers . . . relatives, friends, icons of my time: Death has been stalking my cohort, scything us down, bringing in the sheaves.

When combined with retirement broaching the horizon (I retire in a little over 300 days), it has become impossible not to look ahead toward my own end game. Facing facts, if I’m lucky, I probably have about twenty years before I hit my sell-by date. Twenty years. That may sound like a long time to some of you but let me tell ya, by the time you hit 65, it’s a blink, a flash, a mere moment. I’ve been working for fifty years. I’ve been married for forty years. I’ve been working for the same company for thirty years. I’ve lived in the same house for over twenty years. And those years, with all their challenges, their dreams, their lessons, they’ve sped by in a breathless rush, leaving only dusty memories.

So, twenty years does not feel like a long time, especially when it’s the final act of my story. It’s not like I had lofty ambitions. It’s not like I’m afraid I won’t “make my mark” or “live up to my potential” in my remaining time—I gave up on those tropes long ago—but I did expect that the path we’d all been traveling for most of my existence would plod along in the same basic direction, rather than taking the sharp U-turn that it has.

I think I can be forgiven for having had faith in our progress as a species. My earlier life saw increases in protections—for minorities, for women, for the environment, for consumers—and ever-greater acceptance of people as individuals. We survived wars and riots, assassinations and upheavals, and emerged confident, devoted to the betterment of society and cooperation between nations. Things were still far from perfect—far from acceptable, truth be told—but steps were being taken, and progress was being made, and I had faith in the trendline; I could see its upward arc and imagined my future, following it as a guide.

All that has changed. Or perhaps it only seems to have changed; more likely, I simply misjudged the breadth of human compassion and the influence of our “better angels.” While some . . . many . . . still work toward a society of inclusion and mutual respect, of peace and shared prosperity, many others live the dogma of exclusion, bent on the imposition of control over those unlike themselves.

Too many are now governed by the philosophy of NOT.
NOT this. NOT that. Thou shalt NOT.
–Thou shalt NOT teach about bad things in our past.
–Thou shalt NOT allow those unlike yourself to have the same opportunities as you.
–Thou shalt NOT even respect the facts.

The trendline of the next twenty years—likely my last—has been pretzeled into a knot, a strange loop from which we may not emerge while I live, if ever. And that’s a bitter pill.

The thing is, it’s so easy to be kind. In fact, it’s easier to be kind than it is to be hateful, angry, cruel. All that rage, it takes energy; it eats away at the psyche, corroding the soul.

I don’t have an answer, other than to be kind myself and advocate for kindness. Conflict has been with us forever—it’s part of our nature—so there will always be times when being kind is a challenge.

But it’s better to fail at being kind than never to try.

k

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Look Back, Walk Forward

Posted in Culture, tagged , , , on 05 Jan 2023| 3 Comments »

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. However, as someone who’s been developing software for thirty-five years, I am one for retrospective reviews, and just like deploying a new app to a production environment, hanging up a new calendar on the kitchen wall has always seemed an appropriate time for retrospection. After all, by this time the holiday hubbub has dissipated, the gardens are still asleep, kids are back in school, the days are short, the nights cold and lengthy. What better time to look back with an eye toward the future?

But, rather than setting goals, I look at trends in my past behavior and decide whether I’m on the right path, or want to implement a course correction.

For instance, last year I read a pitifully small number of books, less than one a month. Looking further, I see that this is a downward trend, and I want to correct it. But why did I read fewer books in ’22? The simple fact is, I was busy. With all the renovations and events and projects I had on my plate, I simply did not have enough time to sit back and relax with a book. Also, ’21 was COVID Lockdown year, with nothing in it by way of travel, family events, or DIY, so I had plenty of time then.

Unfortunately, this year is going to be a busy one, too. We’re still consolidating parts of our life, still fixing up the house, the gardens need upkeep. And I have to get serious about my coming retirement, figuring out what I need to do with Medicare, talk to our financial advisors, and wade through tons of info from HR. We’re also taking care of some medical stuff while we still have top-grade insurance.

So, seeing all that ahead, am I going to make a resolution to read a book (or more) a month? No. That’s setting myself up for failure, as too much can happen that might devour my free time. However, I am going to try to correct that trend, which means I need to apply a bit more discipline as regards my unstructured time.

This will seem silly to some, and as serious anal-retentive overkill to others. I don’t mind, though, because another trendline I’m fostering is not giving a damn about the opinion of others. It works for me, and I’m the only one for whom this needs to work.

Despite what Yoda says, I think trying is a worthy endeavor because life is rarely binary, and incremental progress is still progress. So while I’m not going to “resolve” to lose weight, learn Italian, or give up playing video games, I am going to encourage myself in certain directions, to wit:

  • Continue to Improve
    • Weight loss program
    • Healthier food choices
    • Regular exercise (workouts or garden)
    • Household improvements
    • Writing letters closer to monthly than quarterly
  • Course Corrections
    • Read more books
    • Read less news
    • Employ more social media “fasts”
    • Visit more with people IRL

May the new year bring you all much happiness.

Onward.

k

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Seeking the Light

Posted in Culture, tagged , , , , , on 07 Apr 2022| 2 Comments »

With my posts here, I attempt to include (or find) at least a smidgen of hope or goodness, even when the topic is difficult or life gets me under its boot. Lately, this has been a challenge. (OK, it’s been a challenge for at least a couple of years, but this year has presented me with exceptional challenges.)

At times, the best I can do is show you my distress, thinking that (if nothing else) readers may empathize and see that they’re not alone in their own near-despair.

This doesn’t always work. Not for me, and undoubtedly not for you.

In such times, I need outside help to encourage me to keep treading water. For this help, I keep a small list of “inspirers”—so much more than an “influencer,” whose goal is merely to be seen and sell stuff, an “inspirer” is someone who rejuvenates my desire to keep breathing, just by being who they are.

I limit my list* to about three names and I pull them from realms such as education, art, science, and (surprisingly) even politics. To make it on the list, the sole requirement is that, by the person’s actions and attitudes, I find myself feeling grateful to be alive at the same time as they.

Think about that for a second. Who, in your experience, makes you glad you’re alive to experience their presence, even if you have no real connection? Who—famous or not—makes you feel good about being alive? Who, when you’re faced with the tragedies and brutalities and existential crises that we all face these days, can make you stop, reflect, and perhaps say, “Yeah, life sucks, but at least we’ve got them.” Pick three names from all the teachers, relations, friends, public figures, celebrities, activists, and others you know or know of; who makes you glad that you’re alive?

Admittedly, I don’t look too deeply into who these “inspirers” are on a personal level. We’re all humans and, thus, flawed in myriad ways. If you look for perfection you will be disappointed. And so, the list changes over time, as people rise and recede from public view, and as their activities move from the inspirational to the merely admirable.

But having these names, keeping them near to mind, has helped me through darker days, so if this rings any bells for you, give it a shot. Or, if you already have a few names you keep close by for this purpose, please share who they are and why, as there are many people worthy of this title, and we can’t know of them all.

k

*For the record, my current list of three “inspirers” is:

  • Sir David Attenborough
    • The man’s love of the intricacies of the natural world is unbelievably infectious, like “sense-of-wonder measles,” and I catch it each time I see one of his productions.
  • Lady Gaga
    • I don’t listen to her music (generally) but every time I see her—in interview or speaking at some event—her ineffable kindness and love for others fills me with joy and gratitude.
  • Jon Batiste
    • This gentle man exudes an incredible vibe of peace and love and acceptance and honesty; he’s hard to resist, and I choose not to make the attempt.

–k

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