Lesson 17 - Green Teeth and Ants

Kids are awesome.

They are innocent, tiny, adorable, caricatures of the people they will one day become.  I say “innocent” not because they never do “bad” things, but because up till a certain age, “bad” isn’t their motive.  They don’t hate.  They don’t understand much of anything.

Most importantly, they say all kinds of crazy stuff.  

This makes sense because they really haven’t developed any filters yet.  If it pops into their heads with enough force, it ricochets out of their mouths.  It’s often embarrassing (to the parents) which makes it awesome for the rest of us.

Parents to friends of parents:  “Ya, Suzy/Sally/Molly/Tabitha is going to start riding lessons next week.  She’s really been on this kick about horses and has been begging us to let her try.”

Friends of parents:  “That sounds like fun.  What do you think brought that on?”

Parents:  “Who knows.  We just hope she takes it seriously.”

Suzy/Sally/etc:  “I saw mommy pretending to ride a horse on daddy in bed, and I like horses.  I want to have fun like mommy.”

This is the point when the yelling and laughing starts, and mommy and daddy start talking to therapists.

Kids don’t understand “inappropriate.”  And for those of us who find it funny, we are sort of “fine” with that.

But I think there is something in there worth looking at.  They will say stuff that is not well thought through, but it isn’t usually out of malice.  I know, some kids can be mean.  But most kids are not.

They think they are being friendly, or intelligent, or honest, or helpful.  Or funny, even if they don’t understand why it was funny.

Often they are simply curious.

I remember going to the doctor as a little kid.  I don’t know how old I was, but definitely before I entered school.  My pediatrician was a really nice older gentleman who was always friendly.  He would talk to me and ask me questions like doctors do.  One day I had a question for him.  

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, Tony, what is it?”

“How come your teeth are green?”

He started laughing profoundly.  My mother was considerably less amused.  She was so embarrassed and kept apologizing for what I had said, making me also apologize.

I remember not having any idea why I was apologizing or why I was now “in trouble.”  (I really wasn’t.)

It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question.  The dude had some discolored teeth.  He was a doctor.  Weren’t doctors in better shape than the rest of us?  Or so the logic went.  His teeth should be much better than mine, but they are not.  I bet the reason might be interesting or funny.

Or so the logic continued.

Later on we learn that there is something called “tact” and “consideration”.

Perhaps a better term would be “compassion.”

Compassion can manifest in lots of different ways.  How we act, what we say, how we say it, whether we do or say anything at all… so many different things are guided by compassion or the lack of it.

The same kid who “rudely” asked about the green teeth (ahem) was also the same kid who used to get so upset with other kids when they would step on ants.  It seemed so wrong and unkind.  What did the ants do to them?  The ants had a right to roam around the grass and travel across the sidewalk.  Leave them alone.

Many years later, married and grown, I decimated countless ants in the “Great Ant Wars of 2006-2010”.

So many ants died by my hand.  And spray bottle.  And ant trap.  And poison.  The little guys wouldn’t stay out of my home!  They came in by the dozens.  Sometimes hundreds.  Nothing we did helped for years, till finally we started finding the external source and basically doing everything all at once and committing genocide.  (Antocide?)  They still kept coming, but they didn’t make alive into the house.  

It was so bad.

They were so persistent that I decided that they were magical teleporting ants.  They would just appear.  In my living room, kitchen, pantry, bedroom… I suddenly decided my compassion for the ants was outweighed by my revulsion of having them in… everything.

I still felt bad.  I remember being so frustrated one day at about 6am when my wife woke me up as she was leaving for work to tell me that they had invaded our everything in the middle of the night.

They were mostly all over our kitchen pantry as they had wandered in through a vent in the middle of the house, trekked across the floor, into the kitchen, into the pantry, out of the pantry, and out the front door.  Thousands of them.

I was so frustrated as I was trying to spray, wipe, sweep, vacuum, etc., that I started yelling at them.  “Why won’t you just stay outside?!?  I will leave you alone if you just stop coming in my home!!  What is wrong with you?!?”

I had been very sick, hadn’t slept well, probably medicated, and rational thought wasn’t winning.

I suddenly had zero compassion.

But it’s ants, right?  Who cares about ants?

That’s the thing about true compassion.  It has no boundaries or end.

In all of our change and growth and self reflection and striving, if it is devoid of compassion, it’s all meaningless.

I’ve seen people get so caught up in their “personal growth journey”, that they completely ignore the people around them.  People like their spouses and children.  It’s a self-centered, selfish spiraling of “me me me everything is about me.”  My problems, my needs, my journey, my path.  It’s not selfless at all.

In all of our strivings, we can never forget our context and environment.  The life we live and the people around us.  They didn’t stop mattering simply because we had an epiphany.

We aren’t little kids who don’t understand the difference.  We aren’t innocent and ignorant.  It’s funny when they don’t get it, it’s not funny when we don’t.

They aren’t nuisances like insect invaders.  Simple annoyances to be eradicated in singular fashion.

If our growth and change harms the people around us, perhaps we should question if our path is a good one.

In the process of growth, improvement, journey, spirit, enlightenment, call it what you will… we must walk our path in the middle of our life.  We’ve made choices.  Many of which are irreversible.  We have to live with them.  And they weren’t all bad choices.  We can’t turn our good choices into bad ones.  The people we love and who love us, well, we need to still love them and be there for them.  We can’t alienate or isolate them for the sake of an “easier outlook.”

I realize that sounds pretty stupid to most of you.  Perhaps you are thinking “that doesn’t happen.”  But believe me when I tell you that it does.  More often than anyone would like to admit.  People reinvent themselves, or renovate their belief system, and as they jettison their old baggage, they toss out their families with it.  Their friends.  Their responsibilities.

In the striving for a better way, don’t confuse a fresh start with starting over.  One happens within your context.  The other happens without it.

One is driven by compassion.  By wanting to be a better person for yourself AND for those around you.

The other thinks only of you, damn the consequences.

They can both feel like the right choice, but their motive is completely different.

Compassion is an inseparable part of good character.  Where ever you go, and however you change, it should always stay with you.  It should drive your choices, not be removed from them.  Spur your growth forward, not be absent from your presence.

      If what we become is a full grown adult, speaking without compassion and still “stomping ants”, what might that say about us?

Lesson 16 - Homework Is Not Fun

Did you know that (depending upon the study you read, sometimes less, sometimes more) the average college student will change his or her major 2 times before they graduate?  So, if you are doing the math properly, they will have tried out 3 different majors before graduating.  

Again, some change less, some change more.

That sounds like a lot but if you think about it, it sort of makes sense.  Really, how many of us truly knew what we were doing in school, and knew who we were going to be once we were done?  We had experienced such a small portion of reality and yet were expected to just “know” what we were going to focus on for the rest of our natural lives.

It’s a pretty impossible decision.

Add to it the pressures that come with the actual COST of college, and suddenly making that decision becomes even more stressful and impossible.

At the same time, coming to that decision to change ones major midstream could be considered pretty brave when you factor in the previously mentioned considerations.  Is the change going to cost me extra before I’m done?  Probably.  Is it going to cause me to take longer before I’m done with school?  Probably.  Is there any guarantee that, one, I will be any good at it, and two, that this will be the last time I need to change based on the outcome of number one?

Choosing to make a change is serious business.

Which means, the reason for our change had better be very clear and very honest.

“Well, duh.” I hear you say.

Well said.

But remember, before we are less than honest with someone else, we’ve usually lied to ourselves first.

Being clear about what and why we are doing something, and honest about it to ourselves and others, is kind of a big deal.  We will often tell ourselves we are doing something for one reason, when in fact, we are doing it for another.  We realize maybe it’s not the best reason, so we convince ourselves we’ve thought it through more thoroughly and come up with some other reason that sounds more, um, reasonable.

When I went through college, I changed my major once.  I started out as pre-med, but ultimately graduated with an art degree.  How did I go from “I’m going to be a doctor” to “I’m going to starve for a living”?

It’s simple.

By not having great motives for change.

When I decided to apply myself, I was a pretty good student.  I received good grades when I decided I should probably do that.  But, then you make friends, get involved with the ladies, and suddenly getting 4.whatevers isn’t at the top of your list anymore.

But what really sent me off to the registrars office was an event that happened after I’d been in college for a couple years.

Here is where I do something strange.  I’m not going to tell that story.  Don’t worry, it’s nothing scandalous.  It’s just that, it would be disingenuous and disrespectful to the people involved and those who were close to those involved.  And, honestly, the details of the story are completely irrelevant for the point.  Perhaps one day it will be appropriate to talk about it.

What I will tell you is that one of my friends died.  It was a horrible time for everyone who knew this friend.  It effected everyone profoundly and we all suffered in various ways, many worse than I did.

The semester it happened, I was changed.  Whether I liked it or not.  My world changed.  And not in any perceivably good way.  I’m sure if I was super creative I might be able to find some… thing… that I could twist and contort and say “well, if it hadn’t been for that, than I wouldn’t (insert positive thing: here)”  But I’m not going to try.  I’ve never tried.  I never will.  It would be of poor taste, and quite frankly, this far removed from that time, it would be pointless.

What matters is what happened after.

I pretty much stopped studying.  Sometimes I went to class.  Sometimes I didn’t.  Finding motivation to be in class was difficult.  It seemed so pointless and meaningless.  Who cared if one could program their calculator to do advanced Trig equations as my professor was so excited about?  Or if you could make crystals grow in a glass dish simply by mixing chemical A with chemical B and adding fire to it?  (Actually, all of those are awesome.  Now.)

What I wanted to do most, was just hang out with my friends.  I needed to be with my friends.  To see them, laugh with them, have random idiotic fun with them.  Skip class and go give plasma so we could eat Taco Bell and read comic books.  Or see a movie.  Or play video games.  Or literally do anything else.

Who cared about home work?  There were people to see and relationships to nurture.  The people mattered, lab write ups didn’t.

So, I did something that made one of my teachers very happy, and the rest of my teachers confused, and my family groan a little.  I changed majors.

I decided to study art.  Commercial Art.  Drawing, painting, airbrushing, sculpting, desktop publishing, graphic design and layout.  Art history.

There was this one art class that everyone was required to take.  It was fun.  And, as it turned out, I was pretty good at it.  My teacher kept telling me I should pursue art more seriously.  I said “thanks”, but told him I was busy becoming a doctor.

Well, he was pleased when I told him I was going to be changing majors and he helped me work out my schedule and all that goes with it.  And, I was pretty good with the art thing.  Not the best.  I’m not THAT arrogant.  But better than average.  It came pretty easy to me.  Ever since I was a kid, I loved to draw and had an aptitude for it.  I could focus for hours on a drawing.  I had talent.

Now, do you want to know the real reason I changed majors?

It’s because I could complete the rest of my college experience with virtually no homework.

That’s right.  I changed majors simply so I could avoid homework.

I only got away with it, because I was actually good at it, not because I had this overwhelming passion that I just couldn’t quench.

I didn’t want to study anymore, so I found a way around it.  I wanted to goof off with my friends more.  It’s the thing that truly mattered to me.  Not art.  Or school.  Or my future.

One could argue being people focused is good.  And it is.  But there needs to be some responsibility in there as well.

I changed the course of my life because I simply didn’t care about school anymore.  

Now, we could argue that it turned out for the best.  And, perhaps it did.  But not because I was making good decisions at the time.  Maybe I should have changed majors.  Maybe Art was the right choice.  Maybe.  But not for the reasons I did it.

Change, for the sake of change isn’t necessarily good.  Change for the sake of selfishness is definitely not good.  Change because you want to cheat the system is probably a little suspect as well.

Change should happen because it needs to, and because you desire it to, AND because you’ve thought it through and it’s the right thing to do.  Because it’s the best thing for you.  Not because it’s the easiest, but because it’s the best right thing you can do.

Selfish change changes nothing.  It’s simply a mask.  It’s an illusion of growth.

What makes it so tricky is that sometimes, we actually have good reasons behind those bad decisions we make.  In my situation, I probably really did need to make a change.  I don’t know if I truly needed to change majors or not.  Maybe I did.  Maybe not.  I’m very happy with how things have turned out, but they didn’t turn out good because I was making sound decisions at that time.

Recognizing that something needs to change is profound.  Making sure the reasons are honest and correct is wisdom.  Getting these things to align properly is a sign of character and integrity and maturity.

Choose to change.

        But choose to change wisely.

Lesson 15 - Guacamole Is Awesome

     I really like to eat.

    If there is one thing my wife and I have in common, it’s that we like to get our grub on.  Some people eat because they have to.  We eat because we love to.

     As a result, we’ve had to make some significant changes to the way we approach food.  If we hadn’t done so, our combined weight would have begun to throw off the planetary alignment.

     Instead, we’ve forced ourselves to exercise, watch our portion sizes, and keep an eye on nutritional value.

    You see, as we got older, we noticed how the pounds didn’t stay off on their own any longer.  We recognized that, perhaps we had a “problem” (not the food… the food is heavenly precious and yummy filled… you know you like it too…), and decided to make changes that would make our lives better.

     It’s not always easy, but we do it.  And we are glad we’ve done it.

     But there is a period of adaptation to any change.  It’s rarely an instantaneous success.

    Previously, I have mentioned my time in chemotherapy.  But I haven’t said much about it other than it sucked horribly.  One day I will tell you all about it, but it hasn’t been pertinent for this discussion.  Instead, I will tell you one of the side benefits it gave me.  You know, other than not being dead.  That was a good benefit as well.

    I do not like avocados.  It’s not personal.  They have never wronged me.  We just disagree on some fundamental things, like, what good food should taste like.  And we’ve had this mutually agreed disagreement all my life.

    They just don’t taste good.  As a result, I have despised guacamole for an equally long period of time.

     Then I went through chemo and something curious happened.

    When you are taking heavy doses of chemotherapy, it becomes hard to eat for two main reasons.

    One, you are nauseous all the time.  If you aren’t careful when you put something in, it will almost certainly come right back out.  If you like good vomit stories, ask me about chemo induced vomiting sometime.

     Good times.

    Secondly, all those chemicals running around your body will give you strange “aftertastes” in your mouth that are constant and never ending.  This means, anything you eat tastes “not good.”  The more bland it is, the worse it tastes.  Water, the thing I needed the most, tasted the worst.  But even worse was how the way my taste buds perceived taste, shifted.  Foods that I loved, suddenly became completely disgusting to me.  Every day it became harder and harder to find food I could get down.

    One day my wife brought home my favorite burrito.  It was something we were sure was going to be ok.  But I was able to make it about three bites in before I just had to put it down or else “bad things” were going to happen.  It tasted horrible.  It was like trying to stuff the most disgusting thing I could imagine into my mouth and choke it down.  

    It was frustrating.  Probably even more so to my wife than it was to me.  She was in a non-stop mode of trying to find food I could stomach because I needed the nutrition.  Well, as I sat there staring at my burrito, I noticed my wife was eating some chips and guac.  Seeing the guacamole, I suddenly had the craving for it unlike anything I had ever experienced for food.

     I didn’t just want her guac, I NEEDED it.

    So I stole a chip and dipped it in and shoved it in my mouth.  My world was transformed, the planets aligned, and the babies sang songs with angels.  It was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.  Ever.

     Mind you, until that moment, I had hated the taste of guac.  Now, it was amazing bliss.

     Just like flipping a switch, something in my brain changed, and now I could eat guac.

   Once treatment ended and my taste buds eventually reverted to normal.  My yummy burrito became yummy once again.  I can drink water with glee.  However, for some reason, I STILL love guacamole.  I don’t know why it didn’t revert back.  I was changed in some permanent way and I can’t eat enough of it.  Oddly, I still don’t care too much for plain avocados, but I also don’t despise them as much as I used to.

     If only change was always that simple.

    Believe me when I tell you, I wish it was.  There are so many things in my life I wish I could change instantaneously.  But it’s hardly ever that way.

     Usually it’s the opposite.  Sometimes, it’s even worse than the opposite.

    I once knew a cat named Tristan.  This is an actual cat, not some person who is a real cool “cat” like they’d say back in days of Swing music and prohibition.

    This guy I know is a cat dude, and a number of years ago brought home a new kitten he named Tristan.

    Tristan as a kitten was absolutely the cutest thing you have ever seen.  I don’t care if you love cats or hate them, a kitten is just adorable.

   However, it became clear in a short period of time that Tristan was, how do I say it… insane?  Perhaps not insane, but definitely had some “issues.”  For example, the cat had this ingrained need to hunt everything.  The blanket.  The chair in the corner.  The wind.  Himself.  Constantly stalking, hunting, eating everything.  If you walked into any room in my friends house, you seriously had to do it with your guard up because this cat would launch itself at you every time with the intent of ending your existence and then feasting on your bones.  Once you proved that you had foiled that particular attempt, you were “allowed to live” and he would leave you be till the next time you moved.

     One second good and friendly.  The next hoping to drink your blood.

     The other thing Tristan did as a kitten was to expend energy like a full on firehose.

     I remember cat sitting one time and this kitty would just run laps around the living room at full speed.  Across the floor, bound off wall, on to couch, run across the vertical surface of couch back to the floor and round and round and round always at Mach 7.  It would do this for a few minutes just non stop.  Then, suddenly, Tristan would stop, fall over on his side, and fall asleep.

     A few minutes later, he would wake up again, and start all over.

     This cat repeated that cycle pretty much non stop the entire time it was at my house.

     As he got older, he mellowed some, but never really stopped trying to kill everything and break speed records in the process.

     My friend never really found out why, but one day he came home and found that Tristan had died.  It appeared as though he dropped dead in mid stride doing whatever he was doing.  The suspicion was that his body just gave out.  I don’t even recall if Tristan lived two years.

     It was super sad, because in spite of his insanity, he was a cool cat.

    Sometimes we as people are sort of like Tristan.  We are living in a way that is putting terrible stress on ourselves.  Be it emotionally, physically, or spiritually.  But instead of seeing the need for change, we just keep up the same cycles and habits until something breaks.

     All the while, we just keep hoping things will spontaneously change on their own.  Things will just suddenly happen.  But that is rarely the case.

     Tristan probably never knew anything was abnormal about him.  But we aren’t cats.  We have the ability to be sufficiently self aware to see our need to change before we draw blood in others, or simply destroy ourselves.

     It doesn’t have to be that hard.

     Change may be hard, but the decision to change doesn’t have to be.

     You are more than just your programming.  You are in control of that.  It can be changed.  You can change it.

     The question is, do you want to?

Lesson 14 - Know Thyself

Hindsight is a funny thing.

The ability to see the thing that happened clearly once it’s past, even though we couldn’t see it well in the moment.

Good decisions, bad decisions, relationships, arguments… all of these things have much greater clarity when seen through the lens of hindsight.

In the moment we are oblivious.  We are blinded by fear, doubt, lack of perspective, anxiety, panic, and arrogance, for starters, but once the moment is past and the emotions settled, it’s easier to take the time and rethink the whole thing.  Clarity explodes into our vision, the blindness lifted, and understanding takes hold.

Those foggy moments of decision can make our motives equally fuzzy.  We blind ourselves to our real motive and ultimately blunder through not really understanding what is driving us.  Once hindsight kicks in, we are often found chastising ourselves for not seeing the whole picture or not making a better decision or not thinking things through well enough.

We didn’t know ourselves.

Gnothi seauton.  That is the Greek/English transliteration for the phrase which translates “Know Thyself.”

Humans are great deceivers of themselves.  We don’t always see ourselves for who we are.  Only who we think we are.  Or who we’ve been told we are.  But rarely who we actually are.

If we did, it would be much easier for us to regulate our motives and see the path we are walking.  Is it the path of greed?  Ambition?  

Love?

It’s easy to think it’s one thing when in fact it’s another.  This is because there is a part of us that knows what it should be, and we are rarely the “villains” of our own stories.  We are always the good guy or girl.  So, we alter our perspective of the details of any given situation to fit that idea of ourself, instead of being honest with ourself and altering our actions.

If you are driving your car and you get a flat tire and find out you ran over a nail, you immediately think back to where you might have hit it.  (Well, hopefully, you immediately pull off the road.)  This is because, if you had known there was a nail in the road, you would have tried quite hard to avoid it.  You wouldn’t purposely run over a nail.  That would be stupid.  Obviously, you had no idea there was a nail in the road.  You simply didn’t know.

But had you known there were nails all over the road, if you could see them clearly and then just drove right through anyway instead of circumnavigating or clearing a path, well, that would just make you look bad.  You would never do that unless you had no other choice.  It’s simply bad decision making.

Usually, however, in that particular example, we never know there was any problem with our path until the tire is flat or close to it.  We have no idea till it’s upon us and too late.

I remember when I was a kid, we would go out to the west coast to visit family.  I have a number of family out that way… cousin’s, uncles and grandparents.  One summer we went out to visit the grandparents and spent a lot of time helping grandpa remodel their house.  New room addition and New roof.  I was pretty young, so I did things like sweep up dirt and pick up trash.  My memory is again hazy, but I think I was in the vicinity of 7 years old.

That summer I met one of the neighbor kids.  His name was Bruce.  Well, I’m sure it still is Bruce, however, I’ve never seen him again since that summer.  Bruce was friendly and would come over and watch the work.  He and I became great friends.  And as it turned out, like my friend from last week, he also was an aspiring ninja.  He even taught me how to make “nunchaku” (nun chuks, for those of you who speak American.)  They were popularized in American culture by Bruce Lee movies and are martial arts weapon comprised of two cylindrical pieces of hard wood connected usually by a small strong chain. 

We, of course, didn’t have either.  Instead, we used a broom handle sawed into appropriate length pieces, connected by a leather shoe string nailed into the end of each piece.  We were quite resourceful for poor ninja.  My father, however, didn’t think so when he went to use the broom and found it to be significantly shorter than when he had left it earlier.

However, we were undeterred.  Off we went teaching ourselves the fine art of the nunchaku.  We looked ridiculous.  (Awesome… I meant awesome… umm…)

All the things you can do when your play ground is more or less a construction zone.  And it was nice to have someone to play with instead of being the grounds keeper for our entire vacation.  My brother and I basically spent a lot of time helping dad and grandpa pick up all the wood and nails that came off the old roof and walls so that no one would step on them or otherwise injure themselves.  

We did a pretty thorough job too.  Even my dad was impressed.  However, as you all know, you always miss that one thing.

Bruce and I were practicing our ninja skills with the nunchaku, which included learning to use them on the run and also the art of scaling fences.  There was an old fence between his yard and grandpa’s and we would pull ourselves up onto it and leap off, landing ninja style on the other side.  

Ninja style landings, as everyone knows, means you land in a crouch, either two footed or one foot and one knee, and with one hand on the ground and the other on your weapon.  I actually can’t prove this is the “official” ninja landing, but we were convinced at the time.  

One fateful attempt, I made a stunningly beautiful landing (uh huh…), got up and kept right on running.  I only realized later, as I saw blood running freely from my left palm, that I had land and planted my hand on a nailed piece of wood that we hadn’t found, which was laying in the tall grass into which we had leapt, and drove that nail mostly through my hand.

I hadn’t felt a thing.

It wasn’t until I saw the blood that I realized anything had gone wrong.

Once I did, I cried like baby, mostly from shock and fear.  Because I hadn’t even notice.  Hadn’t felt a thing.  Didn’t even know it had happened.  Not until I saw the blood.  

Last week we talked about shifting our motives and intentions to love.  That this love change is the beginning.

Most people, however, would argue that this is how they view their lives.  And, I’m not going to argue about who is or isn’t using love as their motivator in all things.  I’m just going to say that none of us are as awesome in this department as we think we are.

And this is often part of our problem.  We think we are something we are not.  We think we know ourselves, but we don’t.  We think everything is cool and our motives perfectly fine and that nothing is wrong.  And if that is true, how can we ever know what and where or even if our motives need shifting?

That answer, is both hard and simple at the same time.
     You will know when you see the blood.

Lesson 13 - Mad Ninja Love

Have you ever asked a kid why they did something stupid and had them respond, “I don’t know.”?

I’m sure you’ve experienced that phenomena at some point.  As young kids, there are lots of things we didn’t think through well.  We had a plan and a reason for doing it, but the moment it went sideways on us and we were called out on it, we suddenly couldn’t remember what that good reason was.  Or maybe we simply recognized it wasn’t a good reason in the first place and decided it was better to look ignorant than stupid.

That sounds like a lot more credit for quick thinking than most of us deserved as children.

I remember this one time as a kid when my friend from next door came over and decided he needed to learn how to become a ninja.  I don’t remember exactly how old we were.  I feel like 10 give or take is probably close.

Well, I remember thinking that this was a brilliant idea.  We both needed to become ninjas.  Ninjas are hard core.  You don’t mess with ninjas.  They are masters of various forms of martial arts, masters of stealth, masters of swords and throwing stars, and they can dodge bullets.

We new this was all true because the movies said so.

And one of the most important things we needed to be able to do in order to qualify as ninja was to do the one thing that every ninja could do.

Catch an arrow out of mid-air, mid-flight, aimed at your face.  

It was a pivotal point of many of the 80’s ninja movies.  The hero, or sometimes villain, steps up just as an arrow is shot at him (sometimes her) and catch the arrow a split second before it would have punctured his (or her) brain.

We knew this was true.  It was ninja fact.  So said the movies.  Then, once you catch the arrow, you are suppose to break it with your bare hands in front of everyone so they could be shocked, gasp in your general direction, be impressed, then frightened at your mad ninja skills, then either run away in fear, or initiate mortal hand to hand combat that they would inevitably lose.

This too, was ninja fact.

It was decided that we should start there.  Step one.  Catch arrow out of the air.  Not, “learn martial arts”.  Not, “start exercising”.  Not, “learn how to spell ‘ninja’ properly”.  Nope.  Step one was clearly “learn to catch arrow out of mid air.”

Now, we weren’t stupid.  We didn’t start off by shooting arrows at each other.  There were two reasons for that.  One, we figured we should start with them coming at us a bit slower than warp speed (the official speed of ninja arrows).  It would be safer this way.  And two, neither of us were overly accurate with a bow and arrow.  

Yes, I know there are all manner of logic problems there.  Apparently 10 year old ninja don’t need no stinking “logic”.

So instead we practiced by throwing arrows at each other “javelin” style.  It’s a lot like “football” style, but less stable and less accurate.

If you happened to live in our neighborhood on that particular day, and you happened to go for a walk or drive or magical broomstick ride (I don’t judge), and you happened to go past our houses, you would have seen two 10 year olds throwing arrows at each other.  We would take turns throwing the quiver full of arrows so that the other could attempt catching them.  

At the speed with which a 10 year old can hurl an arrow, we actually had a number of immediate success.  Let me tell you, when you snag your first arrow out of the air you feel all kinds of ninja awesome.  It’s as though the spirits of our ninja ancestors… blah blah etc.  Mostly, we were just excited we hadn’t lost an eye.

Which reminds me, I should clarify.  These were not high grade “hunting” arrows.  These were more like your shoot-at-hay stack arrows.  They were blunted but still pointy enough you didn’t want to get shot by one.

We learned this when the inevitable finally happened.  I tossed a finely placed arrow toward my ninja friend and his superior ninja speed caused him to reach so fast for the arrow that his hand got there before the arrow arrived.  Palm open, he achieved “blocking posture” with his hand.  This allowed the arrow to do what arrows do, and stick into his hand.  Not all the way through or anything horrible like that, but enough to draw blood as it punctured his skin and bounced away.

The first question that was asked was, “what were you guys doing?!?”

The answer of course was, “practicing to become ninjas!”  As if this was a perfectly reasonable thing.

The follow up question was, “why would you do that?”

To which we responded, “uhhh, I don’t know!”

As was stated, we expect kids to do crazy stuff.  It’s part of growing and making decisions with brains that aren’t done yet.

It starts to get less cute when we as adults start giving the same reasons for our bad behavior.  Or beliefs.  Or anything.

I have actually had full grown adults give me this as a reason when I asked them why the did thing “X” after they came to me wanting to talk about the difficulties they are having because they did thing “X”.  

As one who’s job it is to listen, you don’t judge or criticize.  But you do ask questions that you hope will cause them to consider more deeply what was happening in their heads.

Sometimes the answer is “not much.”

But the truth is more messy than that.  The truth is usually something pretty selfish.  Their motives were all askew.

But instead of admitting that up front, they come back with “I don’t know.”  

Ignorance over stupidity.

If you keep talking, they will eventually confess to varying combinations of reactionary selfishness as the motive for thing “X”.  And the truth is, all of us reflexively want to go down that road.  Many times we stop ourselves in a brief moment of clarity once we see the consequences of our future decision looming before us.  But only because.  Otherwise, we’d go through  with it.

But there is another path.

There is a path that takes reactionary thought out of the equation.  A path that takes selfish desire out of the equation.  A path that allows us to detach ourselves from the heat of the moment and make a good decision not out of fear of consequence, but out of desire for a better outcome for all involved.

Love gets a very bad rep.  It’s seen either as flighty idealism or fluffy nothingism or that thing that will get you to the sex.

But love is actually none of those things.  Not real love.  That flighty, fluffy, sex driven love is the product of myth, movies, and teen/young adult novels.  Real love is something more.

If you ask theologians, they will break love down into three Greek components.  Eros, philadelphia, and agape.  Eros, the word for sexual desire, Philadelphia, the word for “brotherly love”, and agape, the word for neighborly concern.

These are fine concepts and they have their place.  They were categories that the ancients created to help explain an emotion that was bigger than words.  I can’t claim to do better.  But I do have an alternative that embodies these ideas into a simple sentence.

Love is the benevolent desire for someone else’s good.  It’s not about sex or family or neighbors.  It’s simply about desire and people.

Don’t misunderstand.  I like my neighbors and family and the sex (not with the neighbors or the family.  That’s just… eww).  But ultimately they all fall under this banner of benevolent desire for someone else’s good.  The minute we make this our motive and intention is the minute our perspective begins to change about everything.

The way we make decisions changes.  The actions that come from them change.  The purpose of our life changes.  The meaning of our life changes.

For many, they may find meaning for the very first time.

Love is not some fluffy concept.  It’s the hardest thing you will ever do.  Anybody can follow rules and guidelines.  With practice they can even do it well.  And the whole time they can be emotionally devoid.  Going through motions.  Making habits.  Habits without personal meaning.

Monkeys can be taught to do tasks.  Sociopaths can do good things.  But monkeys usually just want the reward at the end, and the sociopath typically has some sort of selfish motive for his/her good dead as well.

Love takes self out of the equation.  It forces you to care for someone who hates you.  It ends conflict by making it one-sided.  It removes the fuel of the fire.  But it’s hard.  Going out of your way for people who drive you mad, is hard.  Caring for someone who doesn’t appreciate you is hard.

Love is not fluffy or flighty.  It requires ninja-like dedication.

Love requires purpose and gives purpose.  It changes lives and the course they take.  Love moves mountains and changes futures.

When love is not there, people will eventually give up.  But when love is present, they never give up.  They will do anything for that person or thing that they truly love.

If you want grow, to be changed and transformed, if you want to find fulfillment, then love is what you need.

Love is the beginning.