Right/Wrong vs. What Is/What Is Not

I’ve been expending a lot of emotional energy as of late because I’ve been moralizing various circumstances in my life: I’m being a bad son for not having planned a bigger celebration for my mother’s 60th birthday. I should be sticking to a more consistent fitness routine to take care of my body. I should be getting more sleep. I make work deadlines into crises by working up until the eleventh hour on them. … There’s a host of choices I feel I’ve made that were either “right” or “wrong.”

When I stop to think about it, there’s really no “right” or “wrong” in the world. There’s simply “what is” and “what is not.” Everything else is just subjective value we place on something, a value that can change depending on the social milieu.

When I can just deal with “what is” and “what is not,” rather than “right” and “wrong,” I free myself up to deal with what is in front of me, rather than arguing with myself.

Discerning What’s Next

Lately, I’ve been finding myself trying to discern what the next steps in my life, especially in my career, might be. In the African diasporic wisdom tradition, which I practice, it is believed that before coming into the world, we each come before Olodumare (God) to make an agreement about how we will evolve in this life and to choose the circumstances that will help us to stay on track with this evolution.

As I go through my thirtysomething discernment process, I am reminded of three questions Deepak Chopra offers us on which to reflect:

• Who am I?
• What do I want?
• How can my unique talents be used in service of humanity?

As I am knee-deep in this process, there is definitely one thing I’ve discerned: There are no right answers about what we do with our lives. The most important thing is that we do something that matters to us and to the world.

And the best way to discern what matters is to stop thinking and talking about it, and to simply listen. …

Choose or Be Chosen

My cousin, Donna, and I had an enlivening discussion this morning about the nature of goals and the relationships people have to their goals. As an overachiever, I come from a place where I just grab the bull by the horns and ride it till I get thrown off. Then, when I do, I dust myself off and ride again. And I do it, because goals are like strength training: You stress your life towards your goals, then you relax a bit, and then you keep going. Yet, for some people, the experience of goal-setting, pursuit and achievement can be fraught with stress to the point of shutting down.

Regardless of where one falls in relationship to their goals, I have to ask myself: To what extent am I consciously choosing for my life? Am I making choices, based on who I am, which move me closer towards my goals? Or am I acting by default, coming from a more reactive place?

Some might assert that sometimes, the right thing to do is to surrender and not act. I agree, and that’s a choice that one makes. I’m talking, though, about living a life with full awareness, versus allowing life to toss me about like the flotsam and jetsam in a turbulent river.

In the end, I tend to think that, one way or the other, if we come into this world with a particular purpose to fulfill, either we choose how we get there, or life will choose for us.

Moving Towards the Horizon

One of the distinctions from Landmark Education that speaks to me is the notion that “The present is being given by the future into which we live.” That is to say, the present really has nothing to do with the past; rather, who we are today is shaped by the future into which we think we are living. For example, if I aspire to be a successful writer, I will take actions today that are consistent with the future of “being a successful writer,” e.g. writing daily.  If I want to climb Mount Everest, then I will train for endurance, save up money, etc., such that I can realize that future. And for the most part, what has happened in the past has very little to do with my ability to be a writer or to climb the world’s tallest peak.

What happens, though, when it feels like there is no future, when you can’t see past the present moment? Even in that case, there is a future. It is the future that “There is no future.” And the actions we take and don’t take are consistent with that future: We get sad, frustrated, and despair. We become reactionary and short-tempered. We begin to withdraw or shut down. We defer our ability to act powerfully to the overwhelming power of our circumstances.  And all of these reactions are as automatic and knee-jerk as a doctor striking our funny bone.

It is in these moments that I must remember that it is my hands to create a future worth living for, one that inspires and enlivens me. And the thing about that future is that it never comes… like any other possible future, it resides beyond this moment, always moving away like a horizon. … The only thing I have is the present moment, shaped by this future towards which I am moving. Hence, I must consciously live, … choose with awareness, … to bring alive this possibility until it is finally realized.

Creating My Experience of Love

To get myself grounded in a technology that works for me, I reviewed an audiobook series from Landmark Education. One idea really stood out for me: We create the experience of Love for ourselves. The most wonderful relationship, filled with all sorts of blessings, might be unfolding right before our very faces. Yet, if we are operating from a space where we can’t see Love’s expressions in our life, then there is no amount of loving that can go out to make up for that.

Our experience of Love corresponds to our mental projections of Love. Whatever we believe about how Love should look is how Love occurs for us. Therefore, we have a lot more say in how Love shows up in our lives than we might take responsibility for.

Past the Machinery

There’s so much in the energy right now. Lots of people with a lot of things to say. And what people aren’t saying, it’s still showing up anyway in what they do. Or it’s just simmering just under the surface, waiting to erupt at the most inopportune moment. Some of this can be chocked up to astrological turbulence.

I would assert that a portion of it has to do with our human resistance to change. With so much upheaval, we simply are overwhelmed. And in our overwhelm, we say or do things we would not do in moments when we have cooler heads prevailing.

In these moments, I have to remember that most of what people say or do is a conditioned reaction to a similar situation from the past. Someone’s reaction is based on a prior experience in which they were hurt/blamed/angry, etc.; hence, the reaction has more to do with the other person than with me. So why take it personally?

At the same time, if it is the case that most of what I do is reactionary machinery, where do I get to find authentic power, a new way of being in a situation in the past would elicit a particular reaction from me? In those moments when my back is against the wall, I have to ask myself: Who is choosing here? Is it me as a powerful being, or the automatic/knee-jerk part of me? And then I have to ask myself, Is this what I really want to choose for myself? Or am I allowing victimhood or blame to dominate my life?

Slower Faster

Sometime this past weekend, Noah tweeted about slowing the process down. It was quite a beautiful nugget of Wisdom at just the right time. Between exploration of where I’m heading professionally and learning to be with whatever is unfolding for me with Noah, there’s something to be said about not needing to be anywhere but now.

We are told that if we want to get something done more quickly and effectively, we must take time. “Spend 90 percent of your time planning,” say schools of priority management.

To get somewhere faster, we must slow down. For slowing down creates the space and perspective to make clear, powerful choices.

Choosing Life

I was bemoaning to my friend, Andy, recently about how I feel like my life is at a crossroads. Circumstances in my life seem to be pointed in a particular direction. Many of these circumstances feel like they were not of my choosing, and my resistance to this has caused me much suffering. Then, there are those things about which I am absolutely excited, yet I feel like I don’t have the courage to have enough traction to do something to realize them.

Andy wisely reminded me that, when it comes to the the things about which I am passionate, I don’t have a choice: Life has already chosen me. And when I think about the difficult circumstances in my life, I think that, on some level, even then Life is choosing me.

The question is: Am I choosing Life?…

It’s Enough

As I was commuting into work, I happened to look over the shoulder of a gentleman who was reading an e-book on his iPad. When he got to the end of his chapter, I saw the following quote in bold: “Decide today that what you have is enough.” Later, I checked my L.A. Times horoscope for today, which read: “There are so many things you could or should do. Do what you can, and be confident that it’s enough.”… Got it!

As I wait for my father to get out of his operation, I am deeply connected to the sense of enough-ness in my life. Life is too short to wait for “sometime in the future that is enough.” That time will never come. We’ll always want more. The present moment is the seed for our wildest dreams. We just need to choose that we have enough now.

The Choices We Make

Growing up, my alcoholic father was verbally abusive, calling me derogatory names like “faggot” and denigrating my mother. When I was 12, my mother brought me along to confront my father who was in bed with another woman. When I came out to my father, it was at the end of his rifle. I have every reason to dislike my father.

Now, my father is preparing for a procedure to excise a 2.5-cm tumor pressing against his pituitary gland. The only father I have is confronting the worst threat to his life since his days trudging through the swamps of Vietnam. The situation compels me to examine all the places in which I have not extended Compassion and Forgiveness to him.

What I’ve found in the search for Forgiveness and Completion is that I had an unfair expectation for my father. I got upset with him, because he made different choices than I would’ve had I been in his situation.

As much as I want to control what’s happening around me, the reality is people are different. When I can accept and begin from the place that people will have different reactions to and make different choices about situations, I free myself up to extend Compassion and see the Love in others.