Lesson 21 - Knowing

Have you ever met that person who seemed to know everything?  And by “seemed to know everything” I mean, they acted like a know-it-all?  And you wanted to harm them regularly and endlessly?

Perhaps you see them coming and you roll your eyes as you groan quietly because you know what is coming.  They will engage you in a conversation, and no matter what you say, they will claim to know more, or claim that you are incorrect, or both, and proceed to dazzle you with information that not only is suspect, but in many cases you are 100% certain is actually incorrect.

Ya.  You know exactly who I’m talking about.  You probably immediately had someone come to mind the moment you began reading that description.

It is entirely possible that this describes me as a younger person.  Or now.  Probably both.  But much more so when I was young.

You can’t prove otherwise.  Umm…

I remember one time when I was pretty young, I think 8 or 9, I was over at my grandparents house while my parents were away doing something that didn’t involve me.  And I, as all children, made sure I had all my prized possessions with me to ensure my time there was not full of the boring.

One item in particular that I had with me was a car magazine.  I didn’t read a ton of books at that point, but I read car magazines in the same manner as an alcoholic consumes, well, you know.  They were my favorite things.  Cars, and anything that talked about cars.

The issue I had was Car and Driver’s “Complete Automotive Lineup” edition.  What that means is, it contained in it all the cars offered by all the car companies relevant to America, with brief outlines of what they were and a statistics portion detailing all the goodies you want to know.

As far as I was concerned it was, in fact, the greatest thing ever printed on paper.  Or anything else for that matter.  I wasn’t restricted to just learning about a couple cars at a time, I could learn about all the cars being sold that year.  

It was glorious.

I read that magazine non-stop.  I poored through it.  Breathed it in.  I memorized every page.  Every car, every contour, every specification.  I could tell you everything about every car in that magazine.

As I sat at grandma’s table reading through the magazine, again, grandpa came home from work and saw me flipping through it.  He came over and looked at one particular page containing a Cadillac Eldorado and said, “Wow, those Coupe Deville’s sure are nice.”

I said, “No grandpa, that is an Eldorado.”

He said, “No, I’m pretty sure that’s a Coupe Deville.”

I said, “It’s an Eldorado.  I know it is.”

He said, “I’m sorry, I’m quite positive that it is a Coupe Deville.”

Believe it or not, this went on till we were both angry and he finally just walked away.

But I didn’t care.  I knew I was correct.  I knew everything in this magazine.  To prove it to myself I looked back at the magazine and scanned down to the car and read it’s name.

Cadillac Coupe Deville.

I was confused.  How could it be a Coupe Deville?  I had memorized everything here.  I knew what a Coupe Deville looked like and what an Eldorado looked like.  How could I have gotten this wrong?  

Of course, it had never occurred to me during that entire argument to look at the actual name of the vehicle.  I was so self assured of my knowledge it had never crossed my mind to double check.

I thought I knew.

While I am sure none of you have ever taken it that far, I’m sure you have experienced that moment of befuddlement when you realized something you were so sure of wasn’t what you thought at all.  It happens to everyone eventually.  Over time we begin to realize that we really don’t know all that much at all.  As we mature, we accept that it’s best to double and triple check our facts before we stick our heads too far into the noose.

When it comes to the fact in life, and often even of life, we know that there isn’t too much that we can truly know for certain.  At least, not in the details.

But I want to share something that I believe you can know without even a hint of doubt.  It is illustrated quite well in the lesson of the seed.

However, to tell that story, I have to tell you a different one first.

How many of you have ever heard of “physics”?  Yes, yes.  I’m kidding.  Of course you all know what that is.

There is a pretty knew theory in physics called The Amplituhedron Theory.  I’m not going to bore you with all the details.  You can look it up and read all about it.  It is changing the way physicists look at the universe in a number of fundamental ways.  One of those ways is how we view time and space.

If you are a physics geek I both applaud you and then ask your patience with me and forgiveness as I proceed to butcher the idea here.

Up until now, physics has maintained that time and space are fundamental components of reality.  However, with the discovery of a new geometric math model for doing calculations, they are beginning to believe that time and space are NOT fundamental components of reality.  They are not the CAUSE of anything.  They are more akin to an EFFECT.  They are dependent upon other factors.  And depending upon those factors, may not be what we think they are.

This is a big deal.  Time isn’t what we think it is.

The calculations are so good, they have been able to simplify their math from multiple pages full of equations down to a single sentence.

And they work.  More importantly, they work better.

This is huge in the world of physics.

What does this have to do with the seed?  Let me try to pull this together for you.

Have you ever taken a small seed, let’s say an apple seed, and really thought about what it is?  Inside that seed contains everything needed to grow an entire tree full of seed containing apples.  The entire blueprint for that tree is inside that seed.  All you need is water and dirt.  The tree is just waiting to come out.  All of it’s energy and potential is all there inside that tiny seed.

For those of you who are Bible readers, you have probably read the verse about “having the faith of a mustard seed, and you could make the mountains jump into the ocean.”  If you haven’t read the Bible, there is a verse that says this.  Now, you don’t have to believe in the Bible to get the point I’m working toward.  But if you do, maybe this will be fun.  Or you will disagree.  In which case, I’m sure I’m right always about everything and shut up.  (I think we covered my know-it-all tendencies earlier.  Please forgive me.)

Normally this verse gets interpreted with the idea that all you need is faith the size of the a mustard seed (or apple seed?) and you could do crazy impossible things.  But I would like to suggest that is not what Jesus meant.  If you are a Greek scholar, you will note that there is nothing in the original text that implies size.  Neither does the English.  We just assume so because we assume we understand the greater context.

Let’s go back to time.  Even though physics is just now beginning to suggest that time isn’t what we think it is, the ancient spiritual disciplines have been saying that for millennia.  That time isn’t what we think it is.  That time is an illusion and that the reality is something else.  Now, we can argue if they are really meaning the same thing.  It isn’t my point.

The entire life of that tree is written inside that seed.  It “knows” what it is.  The Greek word for “faith” also implies “knowing”.  That seed “knows” what it is.  From a certain temporal, or perhaps extra-temporal, perspective (one could argue that Jesus speaking as God would have this perspective, should you believe in Jesus),one would know that the seed does NOT know that it is going to become a tree.

The seed “knows” that it already is the tree.

There is no “doubt” in that seed.  The period of growth is irrelevant.  The seed IS the tree.  And, if you prescribe to the idea that all time is actually one moment, then it become literally true.  But I’m not pushing that one way or the other.  It’s again, not the point.

Whether you believe in a creator and design or whether you believe in reactive evolution, humans are so much more than we see ourselves as.  You are so much more than you see yourself as.  You can be so much more.  The potential of what a human is capable of is profound and mind boggling.  The things that science is learning every day about the capability and potential of the human being is breathtaking in it’s wondrousness.

But the truth isn’t in knowing what you could become.  That is not the lesson of the seed.

     We need to know that we already are.

Lesson 20 - Lies From Your Eyes

 Hey all.
So, last week I wrote my post from the seat of an airplane high over somewhere. As such, it was a bit more disjointed than usual. I felt the need to continue the topic. I may yet again in the future. However, as such, todays post is a bit shorter than usual. Just a heads up. That said, here you go.


 Do you know what I like about illusions?

Everything.

They are just fun.  And not just the slight of hand illusions.  I love the visual illusions.  The geometric shapes that do not follow standard progression logic.  The things that you stare at and they start to do funky things.

Like the one where you stare at the white page full of blue dots with the black dot in the middle.  As the rules dictate, you stare at the black dot for about 30-45 seconds.  As you do, suddenly, all the blue dots vanish.

Poof.  All gone.

Until you shift your gaze and suddenly they are all right back where they were.

The dots, of course, didn’t actually go anywhere.  Because of your focus (and perhaps the color of the dots), your brain made them not register anymore.

There is also the one where you stare at the black spiral on the white page.  If you stare right into the center, the spiral will appear to swirl.  It isn’t swirling, but your brain started telling you it was swirling.  As soon as you shift your gaze, everything goes back to normal.

Our eyes and brain can play all manner of tricks on us.  They can create a perspective that isn’t quite as accurate as we think it is.

Just ask anyone who is color blind.  They know this as well as anyone.  Is that a red sock?  A green sock?  A blue sock?  A brown sock?  Black maybe?  You and I take the simple ability of seeing colors, perhaps, a little for granted.  Imagine if suddenly you couldn’t see them correctly.

I know one guy who is completely color blind.  He only sees shades of grey.  No pinks, blues, yellows, greens, or orange.  Only grey.

Learning traffic lights was tricky.  Especially when they started turning them sideways and not telling him which way they tilted it.  

He has adapted remarkably well.  So well, in fact, that you would never know he was color blind.  He admits that every once in a while he picks out that shirt that isn’t the color he thought, or gets the socks swapped, but it’s rare.  But when you have NEVER seen a color other than grey, you learn to perceive the shades.  The subtleties of grey and black and the nuances of non-color.  He is so good at it, that whenever I try to stump him on a color, he almost always gets it correct.

One time I held up an object that had lavender in it.  He guessed correctly.  I was pretty impressed.  

Apparently there is more to sight than simply color.

But not everyone is that proficient at it.  A color blind person knows that things are not always what they appear to be.

As we talked about last time, we don’t always perceive things the way they truly are.  Often, our mind fills in the blanks.  It will add things and subtract things, but rarely ever keep the whole picture in tact.  Usually the additions and subtractions are dictated by what we want to see or not see.

Police officers know that if they interview people at a crash site, they will get many versions of the story.  Similar, but different.  Everyone seeing one event different from another who saw the exact same event.

We rarely see what we think we see.

We have a responsibility to ourselves to reevaluate our perceptions and perspectives.  Of ourselves and others.  Learn to see the shades.  Learn to shift our gaze.  Learn to not let ourselves become so focused on one thing that we cease to notice anything else.

        Learning to see is not always about sight.

Lesson 19 - A Peeping Tom

Have you ever done any “people watching”?  If you have, you know that it can be some good times.  

People do strange stuff when they think no one is looking.  Sometimes they do strange stuff even when they know.

You’ve been driving down the road and perhaps glanced across at another driver just in time to see him or her knuckle deep in their nose.  Or you’ve been in a store and observed the people as they go about their business.  Some of them take less care with their attire than others.  The people walking around with with almost a full length of butt crack hanging out.  The people who have been a bit creative with their personal grooming and hygiene (read: none).  There are entire websites dedicated to the observation of the crazy around us.

I remember one day while I was still a designer, I was helping out in the bindery where all the product gets put together into it’s final physical form.  As I was back there this other guy says “Whoa, check this out.”

Our building was a one story building with large glass windows all along one side.  Across the street were small, residential houses.

I looked to where this guy was pointing out across the street.  At first I didn’t see it, but then I did.

The window in the house across the street had the blinds open.  And the super hottie who slept in that room had apparently come back from the shower.

And she apparently was oblivious that were blinds were open.  She proceed to wander around naked in her room, exposed to anyone who drove by, or as it turned out, may have accidentally noticed from across the street and immediately made sure not to stare.  Not, of course after a couple minutes of gaping mouth staring.  I mean, who would do that?  That would be wrong.

Moving on…

Perhaps you’ve watched people struggling with problems and you can look at it and you know exactly what they need to do, but they can’t seem to figure it out.

We are all great observers when it comes to the things outside of us.  

We are not great observers of ourselves.

With others we can be relatively detached from the story happening to them.  We can look at it, see the different sides to it, and find multiple scenarios in which the story can play out.

But with ourselves, we can’t see the whole story.  We only see the part we are playing and become consumed by it.  We are so close to it we can only see the one part.

Once upon a time I was an art type person doing graphic design and other such things.  When you have a digital project on the screen, sometimes you have to zoom in real close to work on different aspects of the layout.  The programs often allow you to zoom in so far that all you can see are a few pixels of the picture or layout you are creating.  When you do this, all you can see are one or two colors of a greater spectrum of pixels.

At this range, you have no idea what the whole thing looks like.  If someone were to walk by and look, they wouldn’t have a clue.

However, if you zoom out, suddenly that one pixel becomes lost in the sea of pixels, and a larger, more complete picture reveals itself.  

Something else that happens when working on projects like that is, we may have to problem solve while working on the layout.  You are trying to accomplish goal X, but can’t quite see the solution.  After banging your head for hours, you go do something else before you start breaking things.

But then something strange happens.  When you come back later and take a look, you suddenly see the solution to your problem staring you in the face.  It was there the whole time, but you just could not see it.  

You were too close.

You weren’t observing the entire picture properly because you were consumed by the problem.  It happened more than once that while I was banging my head, someone would come buy and instantly see the solution that I could not see.  All because they were not caught up in the problem.

Our lives are exactly like that.  We can’t see our way through something because we are simply too close to it.  We are not observing the entire picture.  

We only see the one pixel.

We only see the problem.

We simply have no perspective on the situation.

The other side of this is also true.  Sometimes we refuse to see that there is a problem.

This happens all the time when editing a project or written work.  You can spend hours pouring your heart and soul into the work.  Maybe you have a blog (um…) and you spend all kinds of time pouring words into your computer.  You know exactly what is suppose to be there.  But being the responsible person you are (ahem…) you go back over it and proof read the whole thing.  Two and three times even.

By the third time you stop finding mistakes.  Sometimes you stop finding them after the first time.

Then, happy with your final product, you place it in your blog, save it, and hit the “post” button.  

Then, someone reads it.  Immediately, they find the half dozen mistakes you couldn’t see.

It happened all the time when I was doing layout for a living.  Although never with my blog.  (Shut up, I know there are all manner of errors in my grammar and spelling.  Let me dream…)

I would proof it over and over, and then hand it too my boss and ask him to have a look.  He’d hand it back covered in red ink.

It turns out, I’m terrible at proofing my own work.  And, as it turns out, so are most everyone else.  It’s actually a thing in the editing world.  It’s why editors exist in the first place.  The person who creates something can’t see the “mistakes” because they know what was suppose to be there and their mind fills in the rest.

If you hand me someone else's work, I can find all the mistakes.  But hand me my own, and I find only some.

Interestingly enough, if I come back to it at some later date and re-read something, I start finding all kinds of mistakes.  This is because my brain has moved on to other things and isn’t filling in the blanks anymore.

And, again, this is true with us in our lives.

We are messing things up and we are causing ourselves problems and we can’t even see it.  The people around us are going nuts because of us, but we are oblivious and think its all them.  They are the problem.  They have the problem. 

But not me.

My brain is superimposing a fiction over the reality based on our intentions and our perception of what we thought was going to happen.

No, I wasn’t acting like a moron.  I handled my excess sugar or alcohol or crack just fine.  I don’t know what you are talking about.

What?  I wasn’t out of control.  I wasn’t the angry person.  I wasn’t being a jerk.  They are just stupid.

It wasn’t my fault my kid/wife got hit.  They were out of control.  If they’d just do things like they are suppose to and get it together, it wouldn’t happen.

No, I’ve never hit my wife or nonexistent kids.

But this is how we rationalize things.

Or, just as wrongly, this is how we not see the truth of our lives.

We have to become dispassionate observers of our own lives.  Learn to step back in our heads and take a broader look.  Let the thoughts flow through, but instead of letting them rule us, step away and see what they are.  Our thoughts, our emotions, our impetus to action.

One must learn to take control of their own head.  Learn to slow things down.  Learn to detach ones self from the situation and observe just like you would if it were anyone else.  Learn to not let the situation rule us.  Learn to not let our thoughts rule us.

All of these things are creating a story of who we are and what is happening to us.  But we need to ask ourselves if we are in charge of the story, or if the story is in charge of us?  Can we see our lives clearly, or are we living in a shadow and fog of illusion?

Whichever it is, there is good news.  You have the power to control how this works for you.  Once you accept that, suddenly you see how anything can be changed.

        But first, you have to see it.

Lesson 18 - The Toilet Blog

Let me start by explaining the title of this post.  

Before I sat down to write, I told my wife I was going to call this the “Bathroom Blog” or “Toilet Blog” and then tell everyone that this is where todays post was conceived and executed.

Her reaction was less than positive.

I told her I was doing it anyway as walked off toward the bathroom.  Going to kill two birds with one… well, you know.

And while we all know by now there is a good chance that if I had done that, I’d have no problem telling you from hence this post came, I did not actually do that.

But she won’t know that till she reads that paragraph.

So, yay!  Fun.

That did make me think of something else, though.  Don’t worry, it’s non poo related.

You ever told someone or people or anyone that you were going to accomplish task X at which point once they were not paying attention you accomplished task Y instead?

For example…

“Ok, you have a good day at work.  I’ll be here working on that (insert job related thing, here.)”  At which point you start binge watching Netflix the moment you are alone.

“Ooo… all 10 seasons of Stargate!  I bet those are important…”

Or something else that I’ve never done.  (shifts awkwardly in chair…)

We all know how super easy it is to get distracted.  Especially in this age of everything and anything being available at the tips of your Google typing fingers.

I can’t tell you how many times I sat down to specifically find one thing of importance for work, only to catch myself 40 minutes later watching videos on Youtube because some random thing caught my attention and I just had to find it and see what it was all about.  At which point the things I’m watching have nothing to do with the original thing or even the original distraction.  

Looking for historical information on early Mayan spiritual beliefs.  Oh, they played sports.  I wonder if anyone still plays their games?  Hey look, is that new Assassin’s Creed artwork?  I bet Pinterest has more of that.  Hey, who posted a car video under comic and gaming art?  Ooo, it’s a link to Top Gear (British, of course) on youtube.  Oh sweet!  They have at least 200(million?) different Top Gear clips!  Hey, I didn’t know they tested out that car!  I wonder what they thought of it?  I wonder how much those cars go for used?  Hmm, still pricey… hey, what’s that car?  Oh ya, I remember liking those.  Those were good cars.  I had forgotten about them… holy hobbies!  Look how inexpensive they are now!  I wonder if I could justify that purchase?  Let’s calculate some…

And on it goes.

At some point I look at a clock, or I get hungry, or the sun sets and I remember what I was trying to do in the first place, and proceed to hang my head in shame.  

I suspect at least one of you knows exactly what I’m talking about.

It happens.  Especially if you are like me and don’t have an official “office”.  It’s easy to do.  But as long as the work gets done, we tell ourselves…

And then someone asks you, “So, what did you do today?”

And you reply, “Uhh, heh heh… um, you know, stuff.  I had that, um, thing.  But hey, tell me about your day?”

And then inside, you hang your head in shame.  Again.

But there is a funny thing about shame.  And guilt.  They sink their claws in and never let go.  Those two guys are not our friends.

That’s why we have to murder them.

*Gasp  “He just told us to murder two dudes!!”

What?!?  No.

And yes.

Guilt and shame?  Those two are, well, shameless.  They are not your friends.  They do not have your best interest at heart.  They do not want you to succeed.  They do not want you to change.  They want you to stay right where you are so they can feed off you like pathetic little vampires till there is nothing left of you but an empty husk.

But I hear you ask, “But aren’t guilt and shame tools for us to help keep us on the straight and whatever?”

Yes.  

“Um, what?”

Yes.

“You make no sense.”

Exactly.

(Now I’ve lost my train of … oh yes, I remember.)

You and I?  We are guilty.  Of many things probably.  Some of them are shameful.  When thought about, we are filled with shame.

Now, take that, learn from it, and let those things go.

“Eh?”

When something makes you angry, should you choose to stay angry forever?  If something makes you sad, should you stay sad forever?  Negative emotion begets a negative life.

Be clear.  Emotions are good.  Just make sure you use them properly.  Because they are also very powerful.

Let me try to clear all this up.

You do something stupid once, you feel dumb, then move on.  Then you do it again.  And you feel more dumb.  Then you do it again, and you feel super guilty for making bad choices.  It feels bad.  That’s shame.  And you are consumed by it and you get a little depressed.  This gives you a bit of tunnel vision as you keep looking at the mistake.  You can’t let it go.  You can’t forget it, and now you feel like crap all the time.  Every where you look, you see your guilt whether it’s there or not.

Then we keep spiraling, as long as we keep fueling the guilt and the shame.

Guilt and shame are markers.  Letting us know what’s up.  And once we see it, and have that “Oh, ya.  Oops.” moment, we have to let it go and move on.  Learn the lesson, make a better choice, and then stop dwelling on the mistake of the past.

We can’t change them.  We can’t undo them.  What’s done is done.  Let it be.

It’s ok to be guilty and to feel shame for it.  This tells you that you aren’t actually a bad person.  But if you let the guilt and shame overwhelm you, you become useless.  You don’t function well.

And the worst part is, there is no good reason to let those two jerks rule you.  The more you feed them, the more powerful they become.  Pretty soon, you see nothing else and your life is out of control and you actually start letting yourself make bad choices intentionally because, hey, I’m already way down that road, what does it matter now?

This is the path to many bad things.  Addiction is not the least of the bad things.  It’s also not the worst.

Shame and guilt will kill you.  Literally.  That is not an exaggeration.  People who live under shame and guilt for extended periods of time start suffering health problems, which if not addressed, will kill them.  Unless they become addicts first, in which case, that may kill them instead.  Do I need to mention suicide?

We all know how stress kills.  Guilt and shame are stress multiplied by a billion.  (Not an actual scientific fact.  Just assume it’s “bad”.  That’s close enough.)

If you are caught in the spiral of guilt and shame that continues to feed off you and each other, it’s time to step off that path.  Nothing good will come there.  It is an unnecessary road.  What’s done is done.  Let it go and walk away.  You have problems?  Fine.  So does everyone else.  Yours are worse?  Fine.  That changes nothing.

The crazy thing is, it is super easy to let it all go.  At the same time, it is super hard to recognize that it’s super easy to do it.  You can’t imagine how anything could change or get better.

I wish I could tell you how.  But the truth is that it’s different for everyone.  A therapist would walk you through all kinds of counseling till you had your epiphany.  But that’s the trick.  It has to be your epiphany.  You have to see it.  Truly and finally see it.

Guilt and shame have no control over you.  Those guys only have the power you give them.

        Perhaps it’s time to take that power back.

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.