If you can't say, "Hell, yes!" try "Hell, no!"

  The other day I saw a notice on a community bulletin board about boulevard plantings. There’s been a bit of a dust-up in my small town since city leaders decided that all plantings on the boulevards have to go: no flowers, shrubs, bushes, rocks—everything has to be pulled out. A group of residents is committed to working to get a more reasonable stance negotiated with the city.

And I started thinking. “Oh, I could help with that. I could help draft language and help meet with the city leaders and help formulate a workable plan with these other good folks willing to step forward. I care about this; my neighbors and my mom have great boulevards and they’re worth preserving. Besides, my philosophy is that more plants are better.”

All of which is completely true. But recently, I’ve been trying something new when I’m about to plunge into another commitment. I’ve been using this handy new phrase that a friend of mine told me about and that I’ve adopted. It’s a great decider.

It goes like this: If your answer isn’t “Hell, yes!” then it has to be “Hell, no!”

This clever, simple little phrase is transforming my thinking about how I do things. Of course there are a million things that are worth doing. But I can’t do everything I want to do so I’ve got to pick the ones that matter most.

I won’t be working on the boulevard work. Even though it is important. Even though I believe in it. Even if my mom’s boulevard has to change.

Alas, I have to constantly remind myself of the finite number of hours and limits of energy in a single day. Does anyone else have to do this so regularly? And in a moment when I’m about to jump in with an email, or a phone call, or when I’m asked to do something, I can do a gut check: Is this a “Hell, yes!”?  Because there are plenty of those.

This is one of the reasons that organizations benefit from strategic planning: you lay out all the millions of things that you want to do, and then you start the difficult work of finding the themes and coming up with just a few key, overriding plans or strategies. Everything you do day-to-day fits under the category of one of the strategic planning points.

Most of us regular people can benefit from going through the same kind of planning. It’s so easy to get pulled into work and fun and thinking and doing that doesn’t really support our reasons for being here. And if we’re doing work other than our own most important work, our own most important work doesn’t get done.

Because no matter how good you are at juggling and making the best of every moment, there are some realities that we all live within: there remain 24 hours in a day. The days quickly pass into weeks, months, years, and then, a life lived. We get a short time here together to do some things. I want to make my time count every single day.

For me, that means loving my kids and giving them the best support I can, loving my friends and family and people I meet, and helping connect people to themselves and to better ways to live. Everything I do falls under these few ideas. My key ideas are broad and can encompass everything from working to change the food system, to working to alleviate poverty and internal family strife, to helping families grieve death well, to making pizza and ice-cream sundaes on a Friday night. All in a day’s work.

There will be, for me and people like me, always more that pulls me than I can actually do. So I’ll pause before I react with a simple “yes.” Gotta make sure it’s a “Hell, yes!” 

Everything is temporary

My father is in the hospital with pneumonia. Again. He’s been unwell for years. Late stage diabetes is a horror. In and out of comas, falling to the ground, hitting his head, losing a little bit more memory every time he recovers. His multiple back surgeries keep him fairly immobile. His congestive-heart failure makes it hard to breath.

And the pneumonia is persistent. This is the fourth time he’s been hospitalized with pneumonia in the past few years. This guy has been through it.

I ask him how he’s doing.

“Compared to what?” he shoots back.

He’s not doing so well, he says, after getting in his classic answer. He keeps getting worse, he says. He keeps ending up back in this place. The disdain drips from his mouth.

This hospital where they poke him and make him sit up and tell him what he can or can’t eat and where they don’t allow him to get up without help. This place that is there to help him but where people wake him up all night and it’s loud and the lights are terrible.

He hates it there.

And he knows that he doesn’t have much time left, hospital or not. I said it was clear that he is a fighter, having beaten pneumonia three times before.

“That’s not what my chart says,” he said quietly.

Then he told me about the Do Not Resuscitate order in his medical records. He hadn’t told me this before. I am happy to know it; it’s been a very tough few years for him.

Lately, though, he’s seemed to have a little bit more to do. He’s got an excellent care-taker and she has given him more will to live than anything else I can remember. He’s been going out to movies, something he hasn’t done in years. He hasn’t gone anywhere in years except to the various doctors’ offices.

But my dad is seeing his time dwindling. We talked about him moving to be near me. We talked about my childhood and walking in the woods or by Lake Michigan together.

When it was time to go, I asked him to please take care of his lungs, of himself.

And then my father, my cantankerous, impossible, beautiful, and wise father said something that we both knew wasn’t about his lungs or whether he’d make it back out of the hospital this time or whether we’d ever walk together again anywhere or whether, even, we’d see each other one more time.

“Everything is temporary,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a long temporary, but everything is temporary.”

I said goodbye to my father. The phone call didn’t last so long; just a few minutes out of my busy morning. It was here, and then gone: temporary. But I sure am glad for it. 

Reading your own body language

I’ve spent a couple of days out flat: coughing, sneezing, and miserable. But this illness is cake compared to how I used to get sick. Like the time I was at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for some exhibit I couldn’t miss. I could barely stand I was so sick. I was coughing like mad, and I kept pulling a bottle of Robitussin DM out of my bag and swigging from it like a drunk. I don’t remember now what the exhibit was.

And this was after I got sober. Maybe you know—when you get yourself good and whacked out like I did, it takes a long time to unwind the messiness. It can take years to change things. Back when I was an active drunk, you couldn’t have talked to me about taking care of myself. At the worst of it, I drank a lot and almost every day. I smoked two packs a day. I took speed to stay awake and I smoked dope to ease the jitters; I slept inconsistently and not enough. I ate candy like an impulsive 10-year-old let loose in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. I took enormous risks. I suffered a lot because of my recklessness, and so did the people who love me.

Bodies can change. Lives can change. Why not? photo: Diego Delso

But I got lucky.

Early on, I got some help and I quit drinking and taking drugs. The change in my life was vast. Just like that—snap—I always knew where I was in the morning when I woke up. I didn’t have to avoid people because I didn’t remember what I’d said or done around them. Or maybe worse, did remember.

What I didn’t recognize until years later may seem obvious to you in this short telling: my body was a mess. Without the ever-present assault, my body had a chance to rebalance, to regulate, and to do what it is so good at doing: helping me cope with life.

In those early days, I was just unlearning ineffective and damaging coping mechanisms. It took longer to develop good ones. I didn’t know what a fried-out adrenal system meant, and I couldn’t recognize how it felt to have a nervous system so overwhelmed that my only response was to ignore it and keep on moving. I didn’t understand that I was walking around holding my breath, my muscles tensed, and my mind reeling a million miles a minute. I didn’t recognize this jaggedness, but my life certainly reflected it. 

I was young and young bodies can take a lot of abuse and keep on going. When I started paying attention and taking care, life in my body and mind began to smooth out. Over time, I would learn to love the relative tranquility of my body without the influences of alcohol and other drugs.

But learning to grow that tranquility has taken most of my life. Sure, I got rid of the most obvious obstacles to steadiness, but there were more. Over the years, I quit smoking cigarettes, I quit using caffeine, and I quit binging on candy.

Life gets better every step of the way and I've learned tons. Still, I am me; I’ve had a habit of learning things the hard way. Sometimes I don’t know when to back off.

Flashback 26 years, to a car accident that has meant chronic pain ever since. I’ve had surgeries and rehab and ongoing body work to deal with the issues from this accident.

So I dance and do yoga to keep strong and stay fit. But a couple of years ago, my right leg went numb from the knee down and the most impressive pain of my life came to stay with me. I spent almost six months with an inability to get up and walk around for more than a few minutes without excruciating pain taking over.

Here’s the thing—leading up to that injury I remember being in yoga class, my leg up around my neck, and saying to myself, “Wow, my hip hurts even though I’m doing all these hip-opening exercises. I wonder what I need to do.”

Uh…how about “Stop that!”

I don’t think that answer occurred to me. I wanted to do what I wanted to do. Who doesn’t? Plus, I felt like I was doing good things, helpful things. So I didn’t listen to the obvious answer that my hip was looking for.

I learned a lot about bodies during those months of lying on my bed staring at the ceiling. About patience and being quiet. About not pushing so hard; about being gentle and letting things come and go. During that time and since then, I’ve deepened my ability to treat my body with respect, and to honor what my body needs. 

I don’t say this as some highfalutin ideal. It’s practical and time consuming work every single day. It takes practice and it takes energy. Sometimes, I tire of the work and get exasperated with having to deal with it. But I know the cost of ignoring it. So when the nerve damage is acting up in my leg, I stop and listen. What is the stress here? Why is this coming now? What do I need to know?

This works for all kinds of body sensations. Even something as mundane as a cold has something to say. So I listen. I meditate; I mentally scan my body for stress and ask what it’s about; I pay attention to my breathing; I watch the way I hold the muscles in my body.

These days, when my body starts to show signs of jaggedness, I cancel appointments, get still, and give my body the care and attention it needs.  

Inevitably, in the listening and allowing, the pain or illness changes. This process of paying attention, and breathing into what’s there, and allowing it to inform me gives me more relief than a painkiller. It’s amazing how quickly you can get over an illness if you rest. We’re talking days, not weeks. Who knew?

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that our bodies know a lot not just about pain and illness, but also about tension, fear, anticipation, and joy, happiness, and contentedness. Our bodies don’t hide what we can’t or won’t pay attention to. They tell the story whether we are listening or not. It’s a story worth hearing. 

What are you doing with your new year?

Early this morning, I looked up and saw the bright, clear moon shining in the dark sky. Wasn’t it moments ago that she was full? But she wanes and the night sky darkens as she disappears again.

And now it's the New Year. It’s 2013 and we’re all still here. I love the joke running around with the woman who says, “I don’t want to brag or anything, but this is like the fifth end of the world I’ve survived.”

My brother had the idea of printing up t-shirts saying, “Okay, it’s December 22 and the world didn’t end. Now, will you shut the *&#) up?!”

Yep, we’re all still here. New beginnings and fresh starts and time to consider just what we’re doing here. New years lend themselves to that kind of contemplation.

I remember hearing once that what you do at the beginning of the year, you’ll do all year long. It’s just an idea, of course. We can change what we do whenever we feel like it.

But still, I’ve planned this day based on what I want to do the rest of the year. I’ll spend some time writing, some time doing yoga and meditating. I’ll see some good friends, and hug my kids. I’ll practice my guitar and tell people that I’m glad they’re in my life. And I’ll watch the moon as she rises again and notice how quickly things change.

Happy New Year to you!