So What’s Enough?

 

Over the past few weeks, as we have settled into our new home, I have noticed an emotional push-pull that surprises me. We have found the perfect home. We are astounded daily by treasures that are unexpected. From the blue heron who was fishing in the pond last night, to the overwhelming abundance of herbs that grow freely, our dreams unfold right before our eyes.

With our challenges of finding this home behind us, I expected to feel nothing but contentment. Mostly that is how I spend my days. I have noticed, though, that there is the faint hint of restlessness poking up. At first, it is so out-of-place that I didn’t notice it. Recently, my ongoing practice of taking stock of how I’m feeling revealed this hint of “wanting more”.

What is the root of this thread of discontent? Ahh, it’s simple, I realize. I have spent most of my life looking ahead. I spoke about this in my March 22^nd blog posting, The Challenge of Looking Forward or Backward. Frequently, I am thinking about what comes next. When I pull myself out of the present, there is no possibility for contentment.

I can feel a gnawing fear that if I don’t look ahead I will be surprised. Again, I know this is an error. I can never know what is ahead anyway. What I can do is attune my abilities to sense everything that’s going on in the present moment, and act, when necessary, in response to what’s happening RIGHT NOW.

Sharpening my attention to the present moment pays all sorts of dividends. Relationships always blossom when I am present with those I connect with. Being present brings no assumptions from the past with it. Not assuming allows me to see the truth of the moment and act with precise clarity, often sidestepping potential problems and allowing me to take advantage of opportunities I might otherwise miss.

Good reminder as I settle into contentment at the end of a perfect day!

What’s In a Name?

Once again, our four-year old Michael shows what an amazing teacher he is. We have recently moved from suburbia to southwestern Wisconsin. This has been a dream of my wife and I for some time and we are very content with our move. As with any new location, we are finding some of the local peculiarities that people may have forgotten to mention the sixty times we visited the area.

I was traveling (fortunately for me) one September day, when I called home to learn from my excited wife that our home was being invaded by asian beetles. These lady bug look-a-likes were pouring into our home from any crack that was bigger than a pin head. I am not exaggerating when I say pouring in. The windows and doors of the house were coated with these little creatures. Hundreds were making their way into the house, in fact, my wife resorted to using a vacuum cleaner to hose them up as they sneaked in through the doors and windows.

We found out that this is a normal occurrence each fall. We also discovered that a small population of these beetles make a permanent residence in your home until the spring.

If this wasn’t enough, we also experienced the fly emergence. Flies are the fall companions of the asian beetles and anytime a door is opened, they invite themselves in for our hospitality. In addition to vacuuming beetles, we also had fly strips up in logical places, like light fixtures and ceiling fans.

Most of us were pretty annoyed with these squatters in our private space, but not Michael. Michael liked these little beetles. In fact, he liked them so much that he started calling them “Burts”. Like, “there goes a Burt up the wall”, or “look at that Burt on our dinning room table”. He even felt like the flies should have a name too, so they are Freds.

About this time, our 11 year old, Kamran was at the farm for the weekend. He is not fond of insects at all and these beetles were really annoying to him. When he heard Michael calling the beetles Burt, he stopped his normal complaining about the bugs. He started talking with the Burts in the house and his frustration with flies seemed to dissolve as well as he followed Michael’s lead and called them Freds.

This relationship with the beetles (Burts) and flies (Freds) continues into winter. There are still a small cadre of Burts enjoying the warmth of our home and when they crawl onto the table or land on our heads, we smile, invite them to go somewhere else and that’s that. Just yesterday, Michael came in to the kitchen holding a Fred and said with great reverence, this Fred died. I am going to take him outside now.

So what is the lesson of Michael? He has shown me that if I can identify personally with something in my environment that I might normally want to either marginalize or treat in an inhuman way, my whole experience changes. Rather than treating something as an anno

ying thing, I realize that it has value and should be treated with respect. Yes, even insects are living beings. They may not have a mind such as ours (actually, that may have some advantages at times), but they are still a wealth of mystery. How do they know when to awaken from their long sleep? How do they know how to find food and water. How do they find others of their own kind? Mysteries that I can’t explain.

Michael shows me that there is benefit in engaging these insects rather than being focused on their elimination. Even the death of a fly can be an event that is treated with reverence.

How does this play out in a broader context? I first think of the term “collateral damage” that is used by the military and politicians to explain civilian deaths and injuries in a military conflict. It can also be used to explain the displacement of people because of war. When I hear about collateral damage of over 1 million in Iraq, what do I feel? If I don’t have a personal picture of those who are affected, its not much more than words to me. How can I personalize something that I knowis not in keeping with my values so that I am aroused to action?

Thinking about the lesson of Michael, I know that I can use my intuition to have a sense of the people impacted. I can remember that they are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, grandmas and grandpas. I can remember my grandparents or parents. It is in that moment that I begin to get a sense of the impact of what has happened, and I know I can’t stand idly by.

This awareness extends everywhere. Since I am a middle class white guy, how can I feel what its like to be poor or disenfranchised? I can talk to those who are and get to know their stories and from that understanding I can remember that everything is personal.

This is a beginning for me. I will continue to work with the lesson of Michael as I become more aware of the places where I act with inhumanity and change that behavior, as soon as I know it is happening.

I would love your comments on the lesson of Michael.

Until later,

Thomas

You have to be Present to Win – Chopping Wood

I am not going to engage the title of the new book  (You Have to be Present to Win) in this blog (I know that the phrase “to win” has many interpretations that create the potential for misunderstanding the intent, and that’s OK).

I am going to talk today about an experience I had early this morning. My wife, Sherry, and I purchase a woodstove in the late fall. We had been talking about this for a few years and Sherry was concerned that we have a reliable heat source if our power fails for some reason in the dead of winter.

The day the woodstove was installed, we knew we had done the right thing. It is a cast iron stove that has an exterior of soapstone. The stone is slow to heat (which took some getting used to for me); however, when it gets hot it stays hot. We have found that even on very cold days, we can heat to an acceptable level our two-story home, even though the woodstove is not in the best possible location for air circulation. But I digress.

One of the pleasures of a woodstove is the morning ritual of chopping the kindling, organizing the fire in the belly of the stove, and then… bringing this potential for heat to life. What a joy to watch the fire catch the wood, watch it heat the draft and draw in the air it needs to intensify its heat so that it can sustain itself through the day.
This morning, our 10 year old was up early and I invited him to start the fire. I volunteered to be the one to wield the ax and chop the oak into the right size for building a great bed of coals.

I put on my gloves and grabbed the ax from the shelf on our sun porch. I searched through the woodpile to find the perfect piece of wood. I grabbed a number of pieces and, each time, my intuitive response was, “Not right.” Finally, I found a piece that felt perfect.
I propped it up vertically on the adjacent woodpile and put the ax in my right hand. Without a thought, and with a complete sense of peace and deliberateness, the ax came down on the wood with a single chop and a perfect piece of kindling flew off to the left. I continue this process of putting smaller and smaller pieces on the edge of the woodpile and chopping.

At one moment, my brain kicked in. It said something like, “Wow, this is easy, I wonder why?” That simple distraction changed the flow of wood chopping. The next downward chop missed the mark and bounced off the wood. This continued for a few more chops until I realized that I was trying to chop wood by thinking rather than feeling.

It was a moment of recognition about how many times I have entered into some area of life with singular purpose and the ensuing experience was either “hard” or did not turn out at all like my intention. Could it be that I was allowing my thinking to distract me?
Yep… thinking that is not deliberately engaged is distracting every time.

After I realized that “my best thinking” was making this wonderfull experience “hard”, I took a deep, deliberate breath and felt peacefulness return. I then finishing chopping all the wood we needed for the fire. When I brought it in to our young fire tender, he said, “Did you cut all that wood just now?” I smiled and nodded.
Life is easy when I don’t try to think my way through it.

How about you? Have you had experiences of “chopping wood” and found a lesson that covered your whole life? If so, I would love to hear about them.

Until later,
Thomas