See Double You

Having finally conquered the fun that is moving seedoubleyou.org from one host to another, and I won’t bore you with the nerdiesque (new word!) details, I can once again vent some creative energy…

The last few weeks have brought about some interesting challenges to our lives, all of which we approached with wisdom, courage and compassion.

A good friend of a friend, somewhat a friend of my own, someone who I had only memories of being a kind man with nothing but goodness in his heart, passed on at the young age of thirty-four recently.  Upon hearing word of his death, my feeling was shock and a bit of sadness.  It also reminded me of how impermanent this life is, and how important it is that we do everything we can with each minute we have.  A brilliant high-school teacher and someone who had created many wonderful memories with many friends, he will certainly be missed and holds a place in many hearts.

After work the day I heard the news, I did what I thought to be the best right-action and went to find my best friends who I knew would be grieving the loss of their friend.  Fortunately, I not only found them both and gave them comfort and compassion, but the evening turned into a night where my family and theirs spent time over a wonderful impromptu dinner, a bottle of wine, a six-pack of beer, and celebrating the memories we had of this kind man.  Initial tears and sadness were transformed into good food and happy songs around a summer night campfire.  By reaching out and opening our home to our friends, we had turned this sad event into an evening of happiness and appreciation for the love that friends have for one another.

One of the most important things to any parent is that our children have the best possible education available to them.  I was going to go off on an anti-government/public school rant here, but I’ve since deleted all that as that’s not the point of this post.

What is important is that my wife and I decided to send our daughter off to a private school where we believe she will receive the education she deserves.  With this decision has come the magic pair of scissors that has made that hole in our wallet significantly bigger.

After spending several days pretty bummed out that we were going to have to cut way back and go on what my wife likes to call an ‘economic freeze,’  we both put our heads down and dug in, much like we had in the past, to trim the fat and cut expenses as much as possible.  In addition, my wife decided that after spending the last five years playing mommy and housewife, that it was once again time for her to rejoin the all-American workforce, even for a couple nights a week.  After spending a few days working hard to find any chance at a weekend or weeknight job, coupled with some dedicated and serious Buddhist affirmation and inspiration, Alicia found herself not only employed almost immediately working as a home-care companion for the elderly, but within a week she was turning down opportunities that had arisen from her hard work.

Because of this, I am now blessed with several more opportunities to spend “daddy time” with my children during the course of a given week, and my wife finds herself with a bit of “me-time” that she often longs for.  Our financial woes have not disappeared, though they have diminished by my wife and I showing courage and wisdom to do what is right for the good of our home and we have created a beautiful experience from one that could have brought our family down many more unfortunate paths.

By “making lemonade out of lemons” and remaining mindful enough to create a positive experience from any challenge we face through the use of wisdom, courage, and compassion, Alicia and I have learned to take each moment as an opportunity to grow as individuals, and to help those around us to learn to live their lives the same way.  I often wonder what would happen if the global mindset were similar…

but that’s for another post…

When I was growing up, my Mother strictly forbid me from playing with toy guns, nor did she allow anyone to give me a toy gun as a gift.  Somehow though I would always find a way to make a gun, whether it be from legos, lincoln-logs, or sticks found in the yard.  No matter what Mom the 60s flower-child tried to do, she couldn’t keep her young boy from playing war.

If it wasn’t actually pretending we were fighting ourselves with sticks, legos and rubber bands, we also had many other ways to play war.  Plastic red Indians and white cowboys would battle for territory on the bedroom floor, while the little green army men would wait their turn to battle their grey German counterparts when the white cowboys emerged (as they always did) victorious from their own skirmish.  The late-70s Star Wars, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica craze paved the way for imaginary space battles between good and evil as well, but it was never as fun as the battles between the cowboys and Indians or axis and allies.  Marketing geniuses of the late 20th and now 21st century turned those of us who grew up this way to video games of the same nature.  Good versus evil, black versus white.  Granted, some of these battles we pretend to fight were just, but some were (or are) not.

A year or more ago, a basket full of these plastic figures, including red Indians, white cowboys, dinosaurs, tigers, and perhaps a smurf, appeared at our house from my in-laws.  My children have yet to really embrace these toys, yet I now see how my mother felt more than thirty years ago.

As I was standing in the shower this morning, I noticed that one of the white cowboys was laying down in the soap dish as if he had taken an arrow or bullet from some unknown foe from perhaps the direction of the vanity.  I then remembered that there was in fact a red Indian stationed over by the sink with his flaming arrow pointing in this direction.  Both of these toys of course had been left behind by the children, neglected from one of their many sessions in the big bubble bath.

Standing there in the shower, I contemplated what these toys represented.  The white cowboy, hero, pistol drawn and at the ready to level any nasty bad guy that dare cross his path.  The red Indian, proud warrior, arrow ablaze and bow drawn, ready to burn and destroy.  It boggles the mind how insensitive the civilized world can be, all in the name of marketing and what we have learned from Hollywood and history books.  When my deeds were done in the bathroom, I picked these two little warriors up and put them inside the medicine cabinet.  There was no need to send them off to pollute a landfill, but there was also no need to display these symbols of violence in my home.

I know that it is impossible and probably not advisable to completely shield and protect my children from the realities of war and violence.  In fact, I think that it is probably more healthy to expose them to some of these realities so that they can gain an understanding of what humans are capable of doing to one another, why it just isn’t right, and what better, non-violent solutions exist.  Putting Mr.Cowboy and Mr.Indian (or Native American as we’ve only too late learned to label them) in the medicine cabinet was only one small step in molding my two small bits of clay into people who will create the world we’d all like to live in.

“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

\  On a comical aside…  I would like someone to explain to me why all my best ideas come up in the bathroom.  Not in the car, not lying in bed, not anywhere else where I seemingly have the same solitude, just in the bathroom where most of the time, it is at least my pants that are off.  Anyone?

Kindness and compassion for every living thing improves the life state of the subject, as well yourself.

On our way home from Newark we stopped off for bit to eat, hungry from a long afternoon in the car.  While soaking in the atmosphere of this restaurant on a busy Friday night, I took notice of the person responsible for clearing and cleaning tables.  A short, somewhat stocky girl, she zoomed around the restaurant hefting heavy tubs full of dirty dishes on her shoulders over and over while we the patrons sat and enjoyed our meals.  As our meal came to a close, she happened to notice my empty plate and asked me whether or not it would be alright to take it.  “Absolutely” I replied, and followed that up with a compliment regarding how great of a job she was doing and how I had noticed how hard she was working.  I then asked her if anyone else that night had also told her this to which she replied “no” in what appeared to be the shy and quiet tone of someone not used to interfacing directly with the customer.  I reiterated my compliment and she went off with a smile to resume her duties.  Shortly thereafter, we payed our bill and got up to leave for the rest of our ride home and just then, a quiet voice caught my attention, “have a good night” it said.  This same, shy girl, taking an extra couple seconds from her nightly routine, wanted to ensure that we, the same people that  had done the unexpected and paid her an unexpected compliment, returned the favor with words of kindness as we left her place of employment.  For me, not the good food or the good beer, that was the best part of our meal.

Cliche’ as it may seem, I have learned that being mindful to give these random acts of kindness whenever possible not only improves the lives of those you might otherwise ignore or take for granted in your day to day life, but in turn, it improves your own.  From the tollbooth operator in your commute, to the co-worker you pass in your day to day, to the old lady you hold the door for at the grocery store, it is amazing how often and easily these opportunities to improve your life state present themselves.

With an inability to come up with one particular thing to write on, and a desire to not post a visual commentary this time, I came up with an idea to post some things I’ve learned lately. Hopefully it will become a reoccurring thing…

1. Eating vegetarian, at least part-time, isn’t that bad at all. But I still don’t have to like tofu, and you can’t make me. To go along with this, all Germans don’t eat wienerschnitzel and all Americans don’t eat just meat and drive big fat SUVs.
2. Renovating a room or two isn’t as simple as HGTV would like you to believe. This corresponds to an earlier post of mine. Kill your television. ITS EVIL!
3. As cliche’ as it sounds, the best thing we can do for our children is teach them well. Even if it means going flat broke.
4. Snow tires make all the difference in how well your car performs in the snow.
5. Daylight Savings time sucks. All it does is make you late for a week (or more).
6. Don’t assume you can figure out how to get around in downtown Boston your first time there. Everything is connected by tunnels and one-way streets.
7. Drunk drivers are dangerous to themselves and to those on the road with them. If you see one, call the police. You’re paying them, and they’ll thank you.
8. Even in today’s fear-addicted society, it is still possible to see the good in a total stranger, to trust them enough to invite them into your home, and to create with them a wonderful experience that enriches the lives of everyone involved.

With life as seemingly “full” as it is these days, I somehow manage to stay free and clear in mind and heart. Considering the fact that the house is a shambles due to the mayhem that comes with having children, but mostly to the fact that almost every room has some sort of major or minor renovation project underway, I seem to be avoiding the typical feeling of overwhelming anxiety to expediently return this chaos to order. Outside the realm of what I would consider within my control, things around the world continue to be caught up in a never-ending whirlwind of significant chaos. While Hurricane Dean plows a path across the the Gulf of Mexico, destroying homes and changing lives, many countries around the world continue to demonstrate their ability to test how to reach global peace and unity regardless of the amount of pigment in our skin, which Deity we choose to worship, which language we speak, or who we pick as our favorite sports team.

All of this, in my opinion, is due to fear and an ignorant ego and sense of self-importance.

I’m not going to rant. The Internet has made that too cliché and does nothing but perpetuate the issue.

I asked my wife this week if she thinks the world has just recently become absolutely nuts, or if its always been this way and we’re just now old enough and aware enough to recognize it. The latter was the best explanation we could come up with. The fact that for as long as we humans have walked the earth, our highly EVOLVED brains have led us down this path of ‘i’m better than you for (x) reason.’(no, i’m sorry folks, the Baby Jesus and his Father really didn’t just *POOF* make us appear one day)

With that fact before me, I realize there is very little in the grand scheme, though actually quite a bit, that I can do.

I possess two lumps of clay. By molding the two lumps to treat themselves and others with unconditional love, respect, and compassion without reservations or discrimination, I give the world two more chances to reach the peace and unity I think it ultimately is searching for. In my own travels, I too do my best to demonstrate these qualities in my encounters with all the other lumps of clay I encounter, thereby leaving a positive impression and perhaps an impact on the greater good.

Consider your pet. No matter how long you neglect to fill its food and water, or clean its litter box, or take it outside for a walk, or demonstrate any sort of treatment that would be a lack of compassion and kindness towards this faithful companion, that animal still demonstrates unconditional love towards you, its faithful companion, no matter how you’ve treated it.

Perhaps we highly evolved humans should learn from our pets to behave this same way towards each other.

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