The magic of no agenda

Yesterday, I went with my son Sam’s fourth-grade class on a field trip. We went to Madison on a bus. That’s more than four hours in a bus with 32 nine and ten-year-olds. If you haven’t thanked your kid’s teacher lately, you may want to consider doing that right this minute. It was a beautiful, and exhausting, day.

There were all kinds of fascinating things to learn and watch on the field trip. We went to the state capitol, and to a couple museums. But for me, the most entertaining and enlightening aspect of the trip was the kids themselves. 

I had a group of five boys that I was responsible for. Five high-energy, curious, ever-moving, impressionable, and expressive boys: Cole, Gabe, Andrew, Ethan, and Sam. By the end of the day, we were a team, always looking out for one another. The rest of the kids orbited in and around all day, especially on the bus, where tight quarters can make for more intimate card games or books read or stories about our families.

Ten-year-olds have their own set of stresses and worries, their own social norms and acceptable-conduct code. They are also learning the norms and codes of the larger world, and the rules that are created, for the most part, by adults.

So it’s not that they are without stress or carefree or any of the other fantasies that adults sometimes pile on childhood. But ten-year-olds are also a rather expressive lot. They don’t necessarily have a lot of filters holding them back from saying what they think, from asking for what they want, from following every whim that enters their minds. Climb the capitol wall? Why not? Push the “speak” button on a senator’s desk? What could go wrong? It’s a beautiful thing to be a part of if you can remember how lovely it is to be that uninhibited.

And field trips are out of the ordinary, anyway. They are a time when the daily routine is broken and there is, perhaps, a less stringent adherence to the rules and regulations that are required in everyday live. Kids can move and explore new relationships, or strengthen the ones they have. Field trips are a time when a boy can maybe get a few minutes with a girl he’s been thinking about for weeks. A time when a girl can finally ask a boy a question she’s wanted to ask but couldn’t find the right moment. It’s a time when two girls can discover a common interest, two boys can figure out a game together. It’s a time and space away from regular life. The rules seem just a little bit different. And the magic that happens between humans is given a space and time.  

I saw all these things happening with the fourth-graders, and I was impressed by the ways that this group rose to the occasion. They were respectful of each other, and still had room for gentle teasing and fun. They laughed and were eager to learn about a mining cave, to touch what could be touched, to fully absorb the idea of a historical teddy bear with bright blue hair, an old prize from a game at a county fair. The bear was a link to a previous life, a life not so unlike the children's own lives.  

They experienced all the exhibits fully—recoiling from a stuffed snake, delighting in a periscope that showed the world outside the museum, and touching in wonder the ancient fossils embedded into the marble walls of the capitol. Despite the rush around them, the cacophony of dozens of kids screaming through the halls, these kids were seeing, with each other, the world laid before them. They will take some part of that day with them through the rest of their lives. There was good information and interesting stories in the museums and the capitol.

But I suspect that what many of the kids will remember most is the time together on the bus. The time with the rest of their class, spending hours with no agenda, no place else to be, no lesson before them. Just each other, away from the daily routine, playing King’s Corners, and telling of world records, and of their brother or sister, and of the book they are reading, and what their favorite food is, and when their birthday is, and of all the conversations I wasn’t part of and that will forever remain a mystery to the adult world.

I suspect that what they’ll remember most is the connection they made with their friends, old and new, curled up next to each other, exhausted on the way home. Because having time with nothing else to do except be with other people can be such a great way for a kid—for anyone—to feel a part of the group, a part of something important, a part of the world. And that’s some of the best learning around.

Trayvon Martin: A case for pain management

Like a lot of people, I’ve been reading this week about Trayvon Martin, a young man gunned down on a street in Sanford, Florida.

And as I try to breathe through the anger and overwhelming sadness that this case brings up for me, I recognize another prominent feeling: frustration.

How is it that the man who killed him, George Zimmerman, wasn’t even arrested? How can it be that witnesses weren’t gathered and questioned? How can it be that Zimmerman can just walk around with a gun? How can it be that this family, these friends, these classmates and teachers, this community, this world, has lost this young man in a moment of apparent madness that hasn’t been reconciled in any way?

How can we live with each other like this?

Trayvon Martin's parents Tracy Martin and Sabrina Fulton talk about their son's killing. photo by David Shankbone.

The entire situation is reminiscent of a child’s puzzle in which the goal is to find all the crazy or out-of-place things. There are so many things that don’t make sense in this situation. It can’t be that a young black man, talking to his girlfriend, carrying nothing more than Skittles and iced tea could be threatening enough to kill. Surely, this man who was out of line will have to account for his behavior?

It’s easy to spiral into despondency or despair when we consider a loss like this and what it means not only for the immediate loved ones of Trayvon Martin, but also for the world as a whole.

Years ago, a situation like this would take me down for days. I would become paralyzed by the grief. These didn’t have to be my crises particularly. They simply had to involve human weakness. The start of another war, the shootings at Columbine, the indecency of the Catholic Church. I fumbled for a way to live in the same world next to these realities.  

But during a crisis of my very own, I learned of the power of sitting with the pain and then systemically processing it. Suffering can morph into compassion.

What I learned about is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist process called tonglen. This practice is closely associated with loving-kindness, a systematic practice of sending people love and kindness and wishes for ease.   

In tonglen, we learn to use our breath: on the in-breath, we receive the suffering of another, on the out-breath, we send them peace and happiness. We picture the ones who are suffering, we attempt to alleviate their suffering by carrying and taking some of their pain.

Mettā, or loving-kindness, is a meditation that sends love and ease to an ever-expanding list of people:  ourselves, a loved one, an acquaintance, an enemy, and finally to everyone everywhere.  

These practices have been around for thousands of years and practiced by millions of people. More people are discovering them today as many modern teachers are showing people how they work. People resonate with their simple, true, and practical way of coping.

You don’t have to be a particular kind of person to meditate. You don’t have to be a Buddhist. You don’t have to “be” anything, just a human being dealing with suffering. Cultivating a loving-kindness for ourselves and others is the work of all people, everywhere. Some of us just don’t know it yet.

We all struggle with the pain of living. These two practices give us an effective tool for helping ourselves through the pain. We can turn to these simple and powerful tools when a situation threatens to overwhelm us. A situation like Trayvon Martin’s.

Do we know that these meditations help the people that we are considering? Ah, the mysterious ways of the universe. Who has that answer?

One thing for certain is that by using these things, the people using them become better able to bring peace and love to the world. For themselves and their part of the world. That counts. When we send loving-kindness to Trayvon’s parents, when we take some of the pain in and send it back out into the world as compassion. Bit by bit, we transform the sorrow.  

A young man is dead. The failure of the police to fully investigate that death is a flagrant betrayal of justice.  

When we look at the faces of Trayvon Martin’s mother and father, we can see the pain over the loss of their boy. 

We can push for a proper investigation. We can continue to consider our gun laws. We can work to educate people about the damage of fear: between different races, between different generations. We can do many practical and useful things in this situation to transform this reckless waste into a moment of learning how to do things differently. Using loving-kindness and tonglen can be an effective part of the work.

Tend the Fire: in Red Wing, MN starting in April

I have just announced a new workshop series and I want you to be a part of it! In just a few weeks, we’ll be in Red Wing, Minnesota, working on the five keys to Tending the Fire Within and there’s a place for you.

These workshops give us a renewed enthusiasm for our lives as we develop powerful and practical ways to create the lives we want. Are you ready for some changes in your world? Come and do this work with us!

We usually spend our weekends working on the yard, or at our kids’ games, or doing taxes, or cleaning the garage, or doing maintenance on everything but ourselves.

When’s the last time you invested a chunk of time on developing your inner landscape? On getting clear about where your life is going? On learning about new tools to help build your life?

A Tending the Fire Within workshop is a great place to stoke the fire.

People walk out of these workshops and see immediate and significant changes in their worlds. The work leaves people not only revived and ready to recreate their lives, but it also gives them the tools and the community to support them in doing the work.

Each workshop will gather a small group of people delving into the ideas that make life worth living. Come and ponder and participate, talk and listen, play and write, imagine and practice new ways of being in the world while we learn to find our path and practice ways to stay on it.

What I offer is a lifetime of experience in finding the path. Any number of things brought me to this work: My parents’ divorce when I was young, undergoing drug and alcohol rehab, traveling overseas, working in the corporate world as well as at a nightclub, being a stepmother, working as a staff writer for a major metro daily newspaper, writing a book, being married, getting divorced, not dying, flying through a windshield, learning to walk, understanding pain, having children, finding yoga, understanding mediation, loving people, losing people, finding solace among trees and water, living for months in Mexico, smoking instead of breathing, understanding the power of a group of people working toward a common goal, finding a path that helps me shine, sharing my discoveries and reinforcing them along the way.

This work is my work. If you’ll come share it with me, I know that you’ll find your own exhilaration, your own peace in your own life.

At my core, I’m a reporter and a teacher.  I’ve taken the experiences of my life, fleshed them out with modern research and ancient tradition, and come up with five keys to doing the work and staying on your best path. We will write, and create art, move, work alone and in pairs and groups. We’ll find the ways that life works well and we’ll focus on how to keep doing those things. We’ll support one another; we’ll create the energy and enthusiasm for walking down this path together.

And we’ll do it all in the plush St. James Hotel, right on the Mississippi River. We’ll have great nourishment, both for the body and the soul. Maybe we’ll step outside and see a bald eagle soaring overhead. I hope you take this time to invest in your life. 

Being our best selves is about caring for our bodies; it’s about continually training our minds to separate out the chatter and focus on something worthwhile; it’s about getting quiet and still so that we can hear the true voice of our best self; it’s about paying close attention to the important moments and people in our lives; it’s about pushing past fear and anxiety and complacency to creating something brilliant, and beautiful, and fresh; it’s about giving our best to our families, our work, our communities; it’s about developing a trusted and supportive community. Creating our best lives is an on-going process.

Come and tend your fire with me. I can’t wait to see you.

Click here to sign up for the workshops now.

Feeling foul? Why wallowing works

The other day I woke up annoyed. I was irritated by the sock in the middle of the hallway; I was overwhelmed by what winter had hidden on my lawn. I was vexed by my teenage daughter’s eye rolling and deep sighing. An old hip injury was painful. I had a pile of writing and speaking work to be done, my fridge needed cleaning out, and I kind of wanted to run away.

There wasn’t anywhere to run.

So I did the next best thing: I sat in it.

I know all kinds of people that say wallowing isn’t such a good idea. But I find it rather useful.

In a world where “buck up” is almost a mantra, this thinking requires some further explanation. I used to believe that wallowing was a bad thing, too. I grew up in this culture that says things like, “Think positive!” and, beyond the grammatical problems with that statement, I always suspected that the people who were trying to think positively were struggling against so much that it was like trying to hold a dam in place with wild, rushing waters threatening any minute.

When I used to get annoyed, I would compound the problem by becoming irritated at my annoyance. I’d start to say things to myself like, “Hey, life is good, knock it off, and get over it.” Or, I’d repeat some of the classic lines that not-so-helpful people have recommended, “If you would just relax, everything would be fine.” Oh, yes, women, just relax. Can we get a new record, please?  The pressure behind that dam would build.

If I still couldn’t suppress my little fit of feelings, I would remind myself that there are other people in the world that have it a lot harder than me. I should feel grateful. The dam would start sprouting leaks.

And if none of that worked, the damn dam burst free. I’d lash out at the people around me, generally, the people I love the most.  Then I would add a layer of guilt and shame and anxiety for being horrible to people.

Whew. How completely exhausting.

photo courtesy of Becky Wetherington

I just want to say right here that I am not a particularly neurotic person. I am pretty sunny most of the time, pretty steady, and pretty clear, even if I do say myself. Most people who know me might be surprised to see these internal workings. I point this out for all of you who are taking this opportunity to distance yourself from the ramblings of a crazy woman.

Likely thing? I’m no crazier than you.

Most people have their own version of the dam. What would happen if we disassembled the dam? Because we can spend a whole lot of valuable energy holding that thing up. If we have the feelings, they need to be dealt with in some practical way.  

Over time, I realized that the dam wasn’t my friend. If I’m going to have decent relationships, if I’m going to be productive in the world, if I’m going to be real, the water has got to flow. That means that all those feelings have to be set free.

This brings us back to the wallowing.

When I pay attention to, and accept, and clearly identify my annoyance or my anger or my depression or my whining or my complaining, a funny thing happens. The hard feeling dissipates a lot faster. It feels a lot better. It is a lot more real.

Of course these kinds of big feelings generally aren’t welcome in polite society, and sadly, not in many of our families. It can be hard to be around difficult feelings that we’ve been programmed to avoid and even shun. But you know what? Human beings are going to get pissy. It’s just part of the deal. So how are we going to deal with it when it happens to us?

Most people can handle me saying, “Hey, I’m having a tough morning. Nothing to do with you.” In fact, that’s often a relief to hear, since often it’s obvious anyway. Note, too, that that statement takes full responsibility for the foul mood. Our foul moods are our own creation. No one does it to us, we do it to ourselves.

So wallow a bit. Recognize and name all the stuff that’s going on: annoyed about this, raging mad about that, sad about the other thing. Maybe write a list of all the things swirling around. It’s there anyway. None of it will go calmly away if you ignore it. Calling it what it is often has the power of softening it. Recognition and acknowledgement is often all that we need from each other. We need the same thing from ourselves.

When we deal with the reality of our foul moods, they start to lose their power. With experience, we can delve in and find the reasons behind our anger, our sadness, and our annoyance. Can we do something differently? And then, yes, we can relax into the discomfort. We can think good thoughts.

Last week, I knew right away why I got into a foul place: not enough sleep, too much work, not enough meditation. If I don’t take care of myself, my mind and my body are great at pointing that out in clear and recognizable terms. Our bodies and minds are an excellent self-correcting system. We just have to listen to it and not shove it all away when it’s letting us know something isn’t right. When I am well rested and cared for, I see and interact with the world really differently. It’s like wearing an entirely different set of eyeglasses. Another day, a sock in the hallway wouldn’t have fazed me. I’d have seen the buds on the trees instead of the toys on the ground. I would marvel at the great vocabulary in my teenager’s tirade. Same world, different perspective. This is, of course, what people want you to do when they tell you to “think positive.” But you can’t see the beauty of the world if your internal landscape isn’t well-tended.  

The world persists as a jewel waiting to be admired. When we’re well cared for, we don’t have to work to see that.

Rx for trust and connectedness? Eight hugs a day

photo by Jesslee Cuizon, Wikimedia Commons

If you knew an easy way to help yourself become more generous, more connected, and more empathetic towards your fellow humans, would you do it?

Because Paul Zak, a neuroeconomist at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA, knows how you can do that.

The more we hug each other, the more oxytocin we produce, the more connected we are. How simple is that?  

Zak and his team have been studying the hormone oxytocin for the past decade. Until they started studying this “love hormone,” most of our understanding about oxytocin has been in other areas. Oxytocin is the hormone responsible for the milk “let-down” during breastfeeding. And oxytocin plays a critical role in labor. Oxytocin is also released by both men and women during sex.

These are vital functions in a life, sure. But Zak wanted to know what oxytocin was influencing in our everyday lives. And what he discovered is that when we are producing oxytocin, we feel more connected, more loving, more cuddly, more generous, more trusting, and more empathetic.

Who couldn’t stand a little more of all that?

Zak’s research includes a lot of in-lab experiments. For example, Zak had people play a classic research trust game. Two strangers sit in different rooms. They’re each given $10 for coming to do the experiment. One person is given the opportunity to give some of his money to the other. Whatever he gives will be tripled in the second person’s account. The second person then has the opportunity to send back some of the money to the first person.

The first person giving the money has a financial interest in being generous. Whatever he gives will be tripled and perhaps he will gain some money back. But the second person has no financial interest at all in giving any of the money away. And yet, in these experiments around the world, the second person almost always gives some of the money back to the first person. Don’t you just love that?

Zak’s research twist was adding oxytocin to the mix. He found that 95 percent of the second people in the experiments gave money back. The higher the levels of oxytocin, the more money people gave away.

Maybe because he’s been sniffing oxytocin (and here would be a good time to distinguish the hormone from the addictive painkiller OxyContin), Zak has done some untraditional research to show the power of oxytocin.

He actually went to a wedding, took blood from everyone in the wedding party before the ceremony, and then immediately following. He found that the bride had the highest increase in oxytocin levels, followed by her mother.

Zak has a huge fear of heights, but he strapped himself to another person and jumped out of a plane with a parachute. Huge jump in trust levels. Huge oxytocin increase.

So, Zak says, our biology is designed to connect us, designed to help us feel loving and trusting of each other. Of course there are all kinds of things that interfere with our properly-functioning oxytocin system, from stress to lack of proper nurturing or abuse. Well, yeah. We can always screw up our perfect bodies. Let’s try not to do that, okay?

And what about the ways we can increase oxytocin in our systems naturally? Not all of us are ready to jump out of a perfectly good plane.

But we don’t have to. We can get a massage, we can read a great poem to someone we love, we can even connect on Facebook (he studied this; I’m not making it up.) I wouldn’t be surprised to see little oxytocin bottles at every check-out register soon. But wait. We don’t need that. One of the easiest ways to increase our oxytocin levels? Hug people.

Zak says eight hugs a day and your world will be a better place. The whole world will be a better place. I happen to live in a community that must have one of the highest hugs-to-people ratios in the country. There hasn’t been any research, but I can tell you that there’s a lot of oxytocin flowing in these hills. I think Zak’s got this thing nailed. I love the implications of this knowledge for the world. I could just hug him.

When you screw up: Duck for shelter or stand up straight?

Years ago, I was in a large cafeteria and watched a scene unfold that I’ve thought of again and again. A young man, probably about twenty-years-old, was leaning against a large cart of silverware. The cart was about six feet long and about two feet deep, and clearly not stable. But he leaned against it. And when he straightened up to walk away, the cart began to fall.

As the cart tipped, hundreds of metal forks, knives, and spoons clattered spectacularly to the tile floor; they rang out in the tall-ceilinged room like a brief concert, ending with the loud crash of the cart on the floor. The noise was impressive and everyone in the room seemed to stop. In that moment of stillness, the young man’s voice was clear, “That wasn’t my fault.” He turned and basically ran out the door.

I don’t remember people groaning or shaking their heads, but I imagine both when I replay this moment.

Over the years, I’ve come up with different responses he might have made. Such as, “And for my next number, I’ll play a quieter, sweeping kind of tune.” Or, “Just for today, eating with your fingers will be considered socially acceptable.”

Or even, “Oops. Sorry.”

I thought I understood his reaction: the mess he made was causing him such embarrassment (shame?) that he wanted to distance himself from it immediately. And there was no distance. Amazing how we will try, even when the circumstances are so obviously piled against us. In his case, he created the distance by fleeing. I can’t imagine his response was very satisfying to him. It surely wasn’t to anyone else in the room.

What he’d done wasn’t really so terrible, after all. He interrupted people’s lunch momentarily and made some extra work for the staff. And it was embarrassing. But certainly, this was not a crisis of unmanageable proportions. The thought of someone blaming him, though, was more than he could bear in that moment.

The reason I’ve thought of this scenario over the years is that it is familiar. Maybe the silverware cart example is more obvious than most, but we can often see people making basically the same pronouncement—“That wasn’t my fault”—with the same lack of credibility. We see it in businesses, in government, and in our relationships.

There’s no question that we’re going to make mistakes, be thoughtless, and even screw up royally. The only question is how we’re going to handle it when we do.

When we can gracefully acknowledge our mistakes, and do what we can do to fix them, we feel better and the world hums along a little more easily. When we try to blame someone else, or try to justify our behavior in some way, it can be maddening for those affected. And we know better, too.

Sometimes, our inability to simply take responsibility for what we’ve created is more problem-making than the actual creation. Why don’t we just own up?

That answer seems pretty obvious. People can be harsh and quick to jump on any infraction, real or perceived. When we live in a world that doesn’t allow for mistakes, we want to duck for cover; it’s a smart strategy. If we want people to own up to their screw-ups, we have to figure out how to be compassionate when people do screw up. Because they will. Because we will. A genuine acknowledgement and some kind of restitution are so much more satisfying for everyone involved. It’s so great when the world can just keep humming along.

That’s the biggest thing I’ve wished for that silverware guy over the years. I’ve wished he could live in a world where he could laugh at his minor infraction, help clean up, and then sit down to enjoy his lunch. Humming right along.

International Women's Day: Share the love

 

Irene, my thirteen-year-old daughter, struggles with a first-world problem; she sometimes feels guilty for all that she has. Good food, warm home, decent clothing, a fabulous education, the love and support of many. In this country, we sometimes forget to mention the resources that others desperately need: clean water, clean air.

When Irene doesn’t want to practice her violin, she knows that she’s tossing her head at her privilege. And she feels badly about it. But sometimes, she just doesn’t want to practice. I get this. One of the luxuries of the privileged is to be bored or irritated by our abundance.

I don’t want Irene to feel guilty about her life. But I do want her to understand her role in the world. So I tell her something that I believe, something that I hope she can understand and use to ease this issue in her life. And that is this:  

If you live a life of privilege, part of your work is using that privilege to help others. It’s very simple: take a bit of your comfort and pass it on.

There is no time like…well, today.   

Today we are meant to celebrate women; it’s International Women’s Day. It’s been just more than 100 years since we first marked this day. My how things have changed. Especially in the United States, women have more freedom, more choices, more opportunities, and more power.

And yet someone like Rush Limbaugh can still rock the world with the fantastic garbage he spews at women, about women. And yet we’re still arguing about whether women should have access to birth control. Here, in this amazing country of privilege.

So imagine if we had to walk several miles to get clean water for our babies. Imagine that we couldn’t risk being seen with a man or our entire world would turn against us. Imagine if we didn’t have what we need, let alone luxuries like our cell phones.  

But the world is a changing place and we’re ready to just keep the changes coming. We’ve come a long way, baby, but you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Today, like every day, we can do our part to keep women moving ahead. We can do important things in our world in a million ways to appreciate, honor, and advance women’s causes.

Because women’s causes are the world’s causes. No difference.

So, here are five things you can do today (any day) to advance the world. How cool are you?

·         Donate. Money lets people do good work. Some of my favorite places to spread the comfort:

o   Kiva More than a billion people live in extreme poverty and Kiva says that 75 percent of those people are women and girls. Kiva facilitates micro-loans directly to women so they can start their own business. Right now, you can start for FREE with help from Dermalogica, who will give you $25 to donate to any profile you like. Go now!

o     The Global Fund for Women does amazing work all over the globe. Spread the privilege, baby.

o   Act locally. Find your local community action program. These programs were started in 1964 as part of the War on Poverty. There’s been improvement, but the gains of the previous 40 years are under deep attacks. The war is still on, folks, and these programs are on the front line, giving people “a hand up, not a hand out.” You can find your local program here:Community Action Partnership People living in Southwestern Wisconsin can go directly to Couleecap. (Full disclosure: I’m on the Couleecap Board of Directors.)

·         Write Rush Limbaugh a brief letter. In 500 words or less, tell him a story from your life about what being a woman means to you. If you’re angry, fine. But a story of your role as a real human being—a woman—may be more effective. You can contact him at ElRushbo@EIBnet.com (Share these with me, too!)

·         Thank a woman. Somewhere along the way in your life, a woman has meant something good for you. Probably, many women. Sometimes it’s surprising for women to hear how much they impact a life. Take a minute today to consider this woman and send her a note, make a phone call, or make a list of why she matters to you.

·         Encourage a girl. Find something genuine to say to a girl that doesn’t have anything to do with the way she looks.

·         Check out Miss Representation and their campaign against unrealistic and damaging portrayals of women and girls in the media. Okay, this is number six. But it’s worth it. 

Have a great day. Be a great woman. Be a great man. Make a great world.