Living in Potentiality

Inspired by the example of a good friend who whittled down her possessions to a duffel bag and a couple of boxes so that she could live in her VW van, I have been on a multi-year quest to “simplify.” 

Last year, moving from my 10-year residence in California to a smaller apartment in Dallas, I discarded, by various means, maybe 30% of my accumulated schtuff. 

(“Schtuff” is my word for superfluous possessions.  For example, a bicycle is something you use purposefully, as you do a computer.  That’s not schtuff.  Things that sit on shelves, all shoes beyond the third pair and furniture that can’t be slept on... that’s schtuff.)

I paid a distressing amount of money to have some professional movers transport the remaining 70% of my schtuff to Texas.  Upon arrival, I then discarded another 10% because it just flat didn’t fit in my smaller space. 

Alright.  Down to 60% now. 

For some reason, I’m not happy at 60%.  I want really serious simplification.  Furniture, appliances, home deco, books, clothes... all down to barest bones.  At this point in my life, I want to be a turtle.  I want everything I own to fit on my back.

It seems I am far from alone in this mindset.  The book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo is an Amazon #1 bestseller right now.  Tidying and simplifiying is an idea whose time is right.  Maybe we have finally become glutted with all our schtuff!

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering-Organizing/dp/1607747308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425995876&sr=8-1&keywords=marie+kondo 

The author has made a lifetime’s work of the science of tidying up.  She advocates radical de-cluttering, all in one great fell swoop.  None of that gradual, moderate, one-room-per-week sort of thing.  She insists that storage solutions just promote more hoarding.  Get rid of it.  Just do it.  

Kondo’s criterion for keeping or discarding something is one simple self-aware question: does this item spark joy?  If it doesn’t, into the bag it goes. The moment you touch an item, you know.  It either sparks joy, or it doesn’t.  Simple as that. 

The end result of discarding of great amounts of schtuff is that you are surrounded by things that do give you joy, with no distraction or stress or overstimulation by the many, many things that don’t. 

I have long been drawn to the Japanese aesthetic, which appreciates stark beauty, simplicity, transparency, natural materials and the grace of open space.  There are no tchotchkes, knick-knacks or gewgaws to draw your eye, collect dust and subtly agitate you.

This is a Japanese teahouse.  It has a focal point; your eye is drawn to the purpose of the room, the teapot.  Transparency is achieved by glass windows.  The walls are unadorned so as not to distract, the materials are natural and untreated.  It feels like a haven of peace.  

Here's an American-style bedroom with a similar aesthetic.  The purpose of the room is to sleep, so the bed is the focal point.  The floor is wood; the blanket is woven.

What interests me most about this bedroom is that the shelves are EMPTY!  Most of us could not rest until we filled up those shelves with something.  Anything, just don’t let that space go empty! This is how things like doll collections get started.  

The discipline of leaving shelves empty could be a grand mental experiment.  There is potentiality in empty space.  Maybe leaving empty space around your physical body allows your mind some room to play.  Maybe that is our own personal potentiality.  Who knows what might come of it?

I yearn for peace in my life and my home. But perhaps the deepest reason I am discarding my schtuff is the memory of how happy I was as a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago.  I carried only the necessities of life and only in such quantity as I could wear comfortably on my back.  The freedom I felt from being so unencumbered was far more fun than any possession I have ever owned. 

One day on the trail, I saw an abandoned castle on a hill behind a town that I wasn’t even planning to stop in.  I made the instant choice to climb up to the castle and explore.  It wasn’t in the guidebook, and I was all alone in the medieval ruins and I spent a most magical morning there.  I could do that because I was entirely self-contained.  Wherever I went, there I was.  I didn't have to be somewhere in order to catch up with my possessions.  Everywhere was home.

My pilgrimage experience lasted only 5 weeks, but it is a metaphor for life overall.  We’re, none of us, taking any of our schtuff with us.  Your schtuff will likely not mean much to the people you leave behind because they have their own schtuff and probably don’t have the physical or mental space for yours.  We are all pilgrims on this earth, and an overabundance of schtuff just distracts us from that simple fact. 

Pilgrimage was the happiest time of my life, and I am convinced that it was not a one-off opportunity.  As I discard more and more schtuff, I am poised to go explore any castles on hills that I might encounter.  I don’t want to miss anything because I have schtuff weighing me down or distracting me from seeing the opportunities that dance by.  I want to live in potentiality.

A Man Who Lives Fully

Last August, I moved back to Dallas to help my parents as they dealt with my dad’s diagnosis of an incurable blood disorder.  My dad employed me to help bring some closure to his business and personal affairs.  For several months, he felt pretty good and we got a lot done in his office, and had some fun times in between chemo weeks.

Then the disease began to get to him.  There were trips to the hospital, multiplying medications, Hospice and home care, and finally death.

It seems strange to talk about death in a blog about health and fitness.  But death is coming to every one of us and avoidance of the subject does nothing to stop it. I want to talk about it because it seems to me that my dad did it right and that his death might be instructional.

Here’s why I think he did it right:

He lived fully every day of his life.  He pursued his passions tirelessly.  He flew his airplane, he fished and painted and wrote pithy essays.  He made friends with everyone he met.  He got over hurts quickly and didn’t bear grudges.  I don’t think he ever thought things like “What a wasted day!” or “I wish I had taken that chance.”  He took full advantage of opportunities, every day.

When death began to creep up behind him, he didn’t have a long list of things he needed to do before he left.  He’d been living his bucket list all along. 

His relationships with people were as clear as water.  There weren’t a lot of regrets, explanations or apologies that needed to be made.  He stayed current in his friendships.  He allowed himself to be moved by the struggles and dreams of others.

One of the most striking things he said to me was that, looking back on his 80 years, he’d like to live all those experiences over again.  That’s how much he loved life. 

Not because it was easy; my dad had plenty of heartaches.  People who betrayed him.  Business deals that went south.  Things, as in every human life, that just didn’t turn out as expected.  Some of his disappointments were severe, but he never stayed in that regret-place.  He didn’t torture himself about what he might have done differently.  He picked up and moved on. 

And this is part of his legacy to me: always get up and keep moving. No matter how grave the error or grievous the loss, pick up and move on, with love and hope intact, because this is the blueprint for human life: we fall and we get up again.

Lest you think that too simplistic, let me say that I have known people who did not get back up again after a fall.  They gave up the whole endeavor and declined to try again, or they allowed their hearts to become bitter and negative.  Either way, it’s not moving forward. 

So it’s worth saying: when you fall, get up.  Get your body up, your spirit up, your hope and expectations up. 

I’d like to die as my dad did.  Well-loved and trailing a huge adventure of a life behind him.  Having experienced the whole bold undertaking as a glorious expression of love.  Coming to the end with peace because I’d always done my best.  And then resting in the comfort that God will take care of the rest. 

To come to a death like that, I have to live a life like that.  We die as we live.  If daily life is full of self-doubt and recriminations and fear, death will come heavily.  If life is full of exploration and daring and unrelenting hope, death may come as lightly as it did to my dad, my hero in life and now in death, too.

A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

- Mark Twain

Rabbits, Love and 2015

My friend Karen and I have been choosing our “word” on New Years Day for about 20 years now. 

We used to pass Southern fluff novels back and forth and comment on their proper use of Southern manners, correct preparation of grits and the inevitable “gumption” of the main character.  In one of these, we found the then-new concept of choosing a “word” for each new year.

We’ve been choosing our words every year since then, and often found that the words we chose had mysterious and unpredictable manifestations in the unfolding year.  I blogged about this phenomenon last year at this time.

This year, Karen and I have chosen the same word.  It’s a special word.  Completely unique. To my knowledge, no one else has ever taken this as their New Year’s word.  It's worthy of two takers in the same year.  The word is...

 Elwood

Now some pitiable people have never seen the movie, “Harvey.”  And some people just vaguely remember something about a white rabbit.  But some of us absorbed it into our hearts and souls, in a way that made Elwood P. Dowd a personal friend, a mentor and a most enjoyable companion. 

I first saw the movie at an early age when I was simply tickled by the notion of a 6-foot (3-1/2 inch) white rabbit who was always up for an adventure and had fun wherever he went.  Who knew my name without even being introduced.

I saw "Harvey" many times after that and at some point became entranced with the whole philosophy of life that is contained in that movie, like the white crème in the middle of a Hostess cupcake.  Here it is in a nutshell:

"Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, 'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant.'  Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant."

Now I have nothing against smart.  In fact, I love smart!  But sometimes “smart” is just enough information to make a person unhappy.  What possible good is any information unless you can use it to add happiness to this world?

The one thing every human being desires is happiness.  Why is it in such short supply? 

How many truly happy people do you know?  Chances are, they're not the people who have the most money or the best bodies or the top jobs.  If happiness depended on external circumstances, no one would be reliably happy, because jobs and stock markets and health are always changing. 

Happiness has to be some internal decision, some viewpoint that is stronger and more appealing than “reality.” 

That’s where Elwood comes in.  He says,

"I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor,

and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it."

by which he means, 

“I always have a wonderful time, 

wherever I am, whoever I'm with.”

For that to be true, a person has to be truly open-hearted, receptive and appreciative of whatever they find in other people.  That means I can’t have an agenda; I can’t be looking for something in particular from another person.  I have to take every person as a gift.  They are the joy given to me for that moment of that day.  That’s Elwood in a nutshell.

I don’t think Elwood is just agreeably amiable, just pleasantly simple-minded.  He has found the secret of love and loving.

“Elwood” is going to be a hard word to live up to.  Maybe even harder than the year Shantel rashly chose “impeccable” for her word!

I will fail at Elwood.  Probably before noon.  But I’ll keep trying because Elwood is all the important things in life: joy, peace, contentment, openness, appreciation and the certainty that life is good.

Happy New Year, friends!

Mailman: Beautiful day... 

Elwood P. Dowd: Oh, every day is a beautiful day.

Back to Basics

It's been two months now since I left California for Texas.  I'm as settled as I'm ever going to be, and therefore have no further excuses for poor nutrition.  The move is officially over.  

The culture shock is nowhere more dramatic than on the plate.  The regional diet of Texas is so vastly different than California's.  In San Luis Obipso, there were 3 donut shops in town.  In Dallas, I saw 3 donut shops on one single intersection!  I'm not kidding.  

It's not that you can't eat healthy in Dallas.  It's just that the fried, fatty and fabulous foods are in so much ostentatious profusion here.  Even my weekly Toastmasters meeting is held in an All-U-Can-Eat Chinese buffet.  Try making a speech with the aromas of fried shrimp and wontons wafting through the room.

Food is everywhere!  What's a weight-watching girl to do?

Answer: go back to the basics.

WATER.  Use the 8x8 Rule.  8 glasses of 8 oz each, which is approximately 2 liters per day. 

FRUITS & VEGETABLES.  At least 5 per day.  And I don't mean starches, no matter what Texas restauranteurs try to tell you.

ACCOUNTABILITY.  Any method of counting and rating your food intake will do.  My personal preference is the Weight Watchers point system, but lots of people are using My Fitness Pal successfully, too.  The third-party weigh-in at Weight Watchers is the objective scorekeeper I need.

DAILY EXERCISE.  It was 103 degrees when I got here in August, but October is a perfect month to be outside, even in Texas.  Whatever it takes to get exercise every day is worth it, for mental as well as physical fitness.  

I'm on a campaign to get to my "race weight" by the end of the year, in time to ramp up training for the Cowtown Marathon on March 1.  Care to join me, for the weight loss campaign, the marathon or both?

Say Yes

I was going to give this post a dramatic opening like, “Sometimes life gives you an opportunity to start over.”  But then I realized, Life is ALWAYS giving us chances to start over!  (I frankly think that Life has given me more “Start Over” passes than I really needed, but I’m not the Grand Hoohah in Charge of Everything.) 

Every moment, every situation is a decision point and we either say “yes” or “no” to it.  Most of the time, we just keep doing what we’ve done in the past, so it doesn’t FEEL like a “yes” or a “no” but it actually is.

When you got up this morning, you fixed your coffee.  You could have had green tea.  You could have had water.  You could have had Jack Daniels.  But if you’ve made coffee every morning for decades and decades, well then, you probably had coffee.  But it was still a decision. 

Let me more accurately say, then, that sometimes life’s circumstances more or less force you to make a decision to start over.  And it’s not easy, ever.  Even if you had the chance to move to the French Riviera and work as a sous chef while living on the yacht of a benevolent millionaire, it’d still be hard because you’d be leaving where your comfort is.  Your home, your friends, your habits, your niche in the world.  You’d be going out to carve a new niche in an unfamiliar place among strangers. 

Human beings resist change.  We just do.  In travail were we born, and in travail are we re-born. 

I believe most of you know that I have packed up my toys and moved back to Texas, where my family lives.  I had always planned to return to Dallas when needed; I was only "on sabbatical" in California.  But after eleven years in the Golden State, it is a grand-scale starting over for me.  And I’m not going to be a hero and say that it’s easy.  It’s stretching me way beyond my tensile strength.

But here’s what’s great about starting over.  It strips away all your faces, who you are to friends, what you’re good at, what you like to do, who you know, what others think of you.  When you leave everything behind, all you have is you... the you so far below the surface as to escape notice most of the time. 

It’s desolating to strip away all the coverings, to be simply and solely myself, not any role I might have played as a friend or employee or member of a group.   But starting over gives me the chance to just “be” for a little while.  I’ll get busy soon enough and feel like an adult again but for now, I’m just my interior self, a child. 

There is something profoundly good about that state, despite the ache.  It’s the state to which we are all destined: going forward into the unknown with nothing to recommend us but who we are inside.

I wouldn’t have asked for this, my insides fought and resisted it, I was scared silly.... but it is good to be a child, a blank slate, in the loving hands of One who has promised to be with me and for me, now in my practice forays, and later when I leap into the unknown for the last time.  Life is giving me the chance to say “yes.”

Back Up on the Horse You Go

When I was a Weight Watchers leader, I remember talking to many people who’d fallen off their personal wagon because of various life stressors, family issues, unexpected upheavals.  And of course, I always counseled getting back on the horse, as soon as possible, before overeating became one more issue in a long list of issues that would need solving.

You can think you’re solid on local whole foods and mega fruits and vegetables and gallons of water, but life can throw things at you that make you yearn for the simple comfort of a hot (white) roll dripping with butter.   Why are useless carbs and fats so comforting?  I have no idea, but there it is. 

It just happens.  I am there now, trying to deal with issues that have no answers aside from endurance and acceptance.  No wonder garlic breadsticks look so good... they take little effort to digest, the salt and garlic wake up my senses and the bread is like a soft pillow upon which to lay my heart. 

Broccoli isn’t doing it for me right now. 

So I’m enlisting the WW Me to counsel the beleaguered Me.  The WW Me says, “I understand.  You’re overwhelmed.  And weight is one of your least concerns right now.”  Phase I... empathy.

“Are you happy with your body weight right now?  Do your clothes fit comfortably?  Do you have sufficient energy with which to face each day?  Are you sleeping restfully?”  Phase II... reality.

“What do you need to do to be at peace with your body so that you can deal most adroitly with your life at the moment?”  Phase III... brainstorm.

“So you’re saying that if you get exercise every day, drink at least 6 glasses of water and have at least 5 fruits and vegetables every day, you will feel better?  If you make your own physical self a treasured and finely cared-for instrument, then all the other challenges in your life might be best answered?  That the genuine love and nurturing you spend on your very own self is perhaps exactly what you’re looking to the hot roll and butter to provide?

And for today, only today, the next 24 hours, you can exercise, get water and fresh produce and give yourself a dollop of self-appreciation?”  Phase IV... commitment.

Alright then.  Get out there and do it!  Because only you, in the whole world, know what you know, can carry what you carry, and can appreciate the entire cost and effort of your life.  So go be truly, extravagantly good to yourself.  Get back up there! That horse is going to take you where you want to go, even if you can't see it yet.  

Comfort

We all get knocked about from time to time.  Our hearts get broken, friendships are lost, loved ones develop medical problems.  As Roseann Roseannadanna used to say...

For some reason, when our hearts hurt, we want to eat.  And not just any food, but comfort food... hot bread, macaroni and cheese, cookies.  Poor us!  We want the food that brings back our childhood, when we depended on someone else to solve our problems. 

I don’t know anyone who flies to Swiss chard or hard-boiled eggs to make their hearts feel better.  It’s more often high-fat, high-carb combinations.  I suspect it’s something built into us for survival. 

When our well-being is threatened, as when we lose a loved one, the evolutionary response is flight-or-fight.  Built into us is the hardware that is able to burst into a sprint from the saber-toothed tiger or turn to fight it.  The flight-or-fight response is heavily dependent on fats in the bloodstream to fuel that instant strong response. 

So when you heart breaks, it makes a weird kind of sense that you might drive yourself down to Old West and order up a giant cinnamon roll with double white icing. 

And it actually does seem to work in the very short-term, which is all that flight-or-fight response is meant for. 

But then we have to notice that comfort food does not actually solve the pain.  It doesn't take it away; it postpones it, and very briefly, at that.

Isn’t it interesting that when we suffer emotional pain, it registers in the body?  We try to solve our spiritual pain with a physical solution... food.  What we suffer in our minds and souls is also somehow a part of our bodies.

Here’s the other side.  There really can be a physical analgesic to emotional pain.  You know what I’m going to say.  Activity.  Food is the easier, more immediate go-to, but we all know it only lasts a few moments.  A hike, a bike ride, a jog around the block lasts so much longer and has nothing but good consequences, whereas a food fest... well, you know the consequences.  Guilt, remorse, recriminations. 

The consequences of seeking comfort in activity are strength, serenity and a fatigue that helps you rest at night.  All things that really do help us survive difficulty in life.  It's harder to get up and do it when your heart aches, but so worth the trouble.

If you see me walking up and down the Irish hills at all hours, riding down Los Osos Valley Road into the wind, running circles till I drop… it lasts longer than Chips Ahoy and it's less expensive than therapy!