Having Enough (In a Have-It-All World)

As part of a winter solstice/new year ritual, my Unitarian Universalist fellowship passes around a basket of words that we each select to serve as our theme, personal and collective, for the year ahead.

So, today at Sunday services it was time to draw our words. The word chosen for the fellowship was “expectancy.” Words individuals chose were “education,” “exploring,” “patience,” “risk.” Doing this other times I’ve drawn “humor” and “willingness.” So, you get the idea of the kind of words we’re talking about.

It was a rare treat to have my DH sitting next to me at the service today, our DD playing happily in the nursery. DH and I closed our eyes and drew our words together. By instinct (or many years of doing this together with fortune cookies), we each held ours upside down until we’d both picked. Then, he turned his over. “Power,” it said. And I turned mine over. “Obedience,” it read.

We burst out laughing. Obedience?! Not a word either of us would choose to describe what I would strive for this year (or any year since, uh, birth). Nor would the concept of a power/obedience relationship ever be used to describe our partnership. “We might as well just switch,” DH joked. Then he made a guy-like crack about posting them on the refrigerator or bedpost.

The minister had us all say our words aloud, all together, and DH nudged me jokingly as I sheepishly mumbled, “Obedience.” After the service, I went up to her and told her of our words. She gasped and laughed. A fellow feminist who knows of our egalitarian marriage, she understood the oddness of the words for us. “As a feminist, you can just reclaim it, right?” she joked.

Then she told me that the first time she had participated in this tradition years ago, the first word she drew was the same as mine, “Obedience.” Unhappy with that word, she put it back, danced around the winter solstice bonfire again, and selected another word. “Trust,” was what she got.

All afternoon I’ve been thinking about this. While I’m not one to take a newspaper horoscope too seriously, I do have some faith in these kinds of intention-driven rituals, in the universe giving us signs in subtle ways about ways we can grow. I’m a fan of drawing runes and paying attention to patterns or signs we notice in our lives.

So, how on Earth could “obedience” be a theme for me to focus on this year? Obedience to what? To whom? I, of course, went to the dictionary and found “submissive to the restraint or command of authority” as the definition. OK, submissive, ick. Can’t really embrace that.

However, I was all right with the definition of a synonym, “amenable”: “a willingness to yield or to cooperate either because of a desire to be agreeable or because of a natural open-mindedness.”

A willingness to yield or cooperate. Perhaps this is something I could learn from. (Reclaim, right?) I do sometimes resist things at first, particularly the unexpected or an idea that’s not immediately exciting to me. I like to create my own way of doing things, which sometimes can make tasks more difficult than they need be. It’s something I work on. And could surely continue to work on. Finding a balance between being a creative individual with strong ideas about the world and being a pleasant person to work and live with.

One of the things I love about these kinds of rituals — and participating in them as a person who wants to grow — is that they often don’t deliver us what we think they will. They don’t tell us what we want to hear.

So my word for the year isn’t “humor” or “leadership,” it is “obedience.” I will accept it, with my own caveats, of course. And see it as a call to work on my willingness to yield or cooperate. To stop and breathe before I respond or react in opposition. To think of the desires of others before I think of my own. To find a healthy balance between the two. (This will be especially helpful with a two-year-old!)

This concept will also surely apply in ways I haven’t yet thought of. I remember the obedience I had to adopt when diagnosed with gestational diabetes during my pregnancy. Unexpected, but necessary. The obedience to study for my grad school comp exams. A drag, but so satisfying when completed. I’ll pay attention now, to what shapes this word takes on for me this year. I’m game. I’m willing. I’m cooperating.

Of course, my DH can find his own nuanced meaning in “power” as his word for the year. And I have faith that he will. We needn’t get stuck in the traditional definitions. We never have before. It makes a funny story, our words, for those who know us, and an interesting lesson for me.

Happy New Year.

I dig a book that makes me eager for free moments so I can sneak pages, and The Reincarnationist by M.J. Rose, my second MotherTalk review book, was one of those. I opted to review it not because I’m a big suspense reader (I’m not) but because I find the topic of reincarnation fascinating, and this novel promised a juicy plot about this topic.

Here’s how I tie it to the bigger questions of this blog: Is this life “enough”?!  And if there’s more to our karma than meets the present-tense eye, wouldn’t that tie into our notions of success?

Back to the novel, M.J. Rose combines her own experience and research with reincarnation, some in-depth historical research, and her obvious flair for sizzling, lusty plotlines to create a 400-plus-page book that I gobbled up in three days.  I appreciated the authenticity in the experiences of the characters, and I found myself wishing I could see people’s auras through my camera lens the way main character Josh Ryder could.  Is there more to our souls’ journeys that we could understand now?  I like that this book made me wonder.

Now, this is not to say I didn’t have some problems with the book, which I did. The hero, Josh Ryder/Julius, is torn between lives in the present and in ancient Rome. This dichotomy is well-developed, but I must say I wish Rose had connected certain plot pieces in the end that she did not. (I’m not looking for a pat ending, but I tend to go by the filmmaking theory that if you show the viewer a purple shoe, then you later need to follow up with the purple shoe.)  In other words, there were a few things that begged to be connected in the end that were not. (Is she planning a sequel, perhaps? I’d pick that up.)

Then there is another storyline of Percy, Josh/Julius’ reincarnation in the 1800’s, which doesn’t quite mesh with the otherwise well-woven plot until the very end.  This 1800’s plotline felt a bit like that tacked-on “gag” story they always had on Friends or Seinfeld (yes, I went to college in the early 90’s!) – there wasn’t much meat there.  It answered some key questions late in the book (so hang in there with it), but it felt as if chunks of it had to be left on the cutting room floor, or else it wasn’t fully developed.

Still, despite those minor frustrations, I kept turning the pages because I wanted to know what happened to these characters. That, to me, is a successful read.  And, of course, I appreciated Rose delving into the topic of reincarnation in a novel, and the fact that she made me think again about those moments in life that I’ve said to myself, “I know this person” when we’d barely met, or “I’ve been here before” in places I hadn’t visited in my conscious memory.

Any book that pushes beyond our narrow understanding of life has the potential to open our eyes to things we haven’t noticed before.  I’ll be watching for auras when I next tote my Nikon around — looking for more than I’ve seen before in my viewfinder — and I’ll be paying more attention to deja vus.  For me, that’s “enough” to make this novel worth the three-day read.

My father-in-law recently sent a book for my husband, which I grabbed first and couldn’t put down. It’s called The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin.

Waitzkin was the child world chess champion who inspired the lauded early-90’s book and movie, Searching for Bobby Fisher. As a young man, he also became world champion several times over in the martial art of Tai Chi Chuan (related to Tai Chi, which my father-in-law practices religiously). Now 29, Waitzkin writes with the wisdom of one many times his age.

The book was fascinating on many levels, and I highly recommend it (DH can’t put it down now!). Waitzkin writes on the premise that he is “not good at chess, or good at Thai Chi Chuan, but he is good at learning.” Then he painstakingly breaks down his learning processes in becoming world champion in two very different pastimes — and becoming a happier person in spite of his titles, not because of them.

Here are just a few messages that struck me from this book:

1. Understand the true nature of success.

Waitzkin writes in the introduction, “I had won eight national championships and had more fans, public support and recognition than I could dream of, but none of this was helping my search for excellence, let alone for happiness.” He realized young that fame is “profoundly hollow,” he says. The love of chess he started with began to dissipate the more tournaments he won.

It’s a familiar warning, one we see often — as in lately with poor Britney Spears in her miserable fall from the height of fame. Waitzkin, unlike many young celebrities, though, had the good sense (and good family) to pull back and try to rediscover what made him happy. He understood that it is a deep sense of inner joy that makes one feel successful, and no amount of external praise or rewards can create that. This knowledge led Waitzkin on a mental, physical and spiritual journey that he outlines in the book.

2. Have a certain attitude toward learning.

As a recovering overachiever and a parent, I was particularly interested in Waitzkin’s research on a certain theory of intelligence and learning, which categorizes people as either entity learners or incremental learners. In brief, entity learners see their skill or intelligence level at a given task as a fixed entitity (as in, “I’m good at cooking” or “I’m bad at drawing”). Incremental learners tend to attribute their successes or failures at tasks as attributable to their amount of effort or work, truly believing they can master anything with enough energy put in.

Entity learners tend not to take risks, and tend to get emotionally crushed by any type of defeat. Incremental learners have been found to be much quicker to accept a challenge they may not succeed at, and don’t tend to take defeat as a personal failing. They push themselves farther, and enjoy it more.

Please read Waitzkin’s discussion of this, as I’m not doing it justice, but here is the bottom line: Most of us are entity learners. We don’t risk a lot of tasks we are afraid we may not be good at. We let failures destroy our self-confidence. We don’t truly believe we can do more. And there is another way!

I admit to being an entity learner (witness my first-grade failure story and discussion of overachievers); and my husband, too, finds himself in the description. (He remembers a teacher telling his mother in fifth grade that he wouldn’t try anything he didn’t think he’d be good at. This describes many an overachiever I know!!). It’s like taking the easier class because you know you can get an “A” instead of the class that’s unfamiliar and more challenging.

I’d love to learn to become an incremental learner. Mostly, I’d love to encourage our daugther to be one. It simply opens up a world of joy and possibilities we simply miss out on by saying “I’m bad at ______” or by being afraid to fail.

3. Flow calmly amidst chaos.

Waitzkin has a real Buddhist sensibility, and uses Eastern principles in his training. A key principle for him is understanding that success comes when one allows chaos and change and the unexpected to happen, and works with it, rather than against it. To remain calm and present in every moment.

He describes dirty tricks in both chess and martial arts competitions, designed to get competitors angry or distracted, that often work. (Chess players kicking their opponent under the table; martial arts officials changing the rules for foreign teams at the last minute…)

Then he outlines how he learned to see these dirty tricks for what they are: opportunities for him to dig deeper and concentrate harder. How many of us really see mean people, unfair actions, or major annoyances as opportunities? It’s much easier said than done. But Waitzkin explains in a way I haven’t seen before exactly how he does it.

There is so much more to this book than I’ve written here; it truly got me and DH thinking. I’d say it will do the same for anyone open to it. (And all 27 Amazon reviewers gave it five stars!) Please, if you read it, let me know what you think!

And, in the spirit of the book, I offer you these questions: How much of success do you think is internal, rather than external? Do you think you are an entity learner or an incremental learner? How do you handle the unexpected “dirty tricks” that come your way in life?

I admit it, I’m chronically sleep-deprived and having a rough week. A combination of tantrum-prone, sleep-fighting, growth-spurting toddler; a pile of work and bigger pile of unanswered emails in my cluttered office; raging premenstrual/nursing hormones; back-to-work husband with late meetings; sore hip and low back from sleeping on aforementioned toddler’s floor; and shortage of close-by girlfriends to have tea with has put me in a bit of a foul mood. (But who’s complaining?!)

In my right mind, I am grateful and content and I know this is just a mood that will quickly pass. But, I succommed this week to my self-pitying mind, the one that fantasizes about getting away from it all for a couple days, having a life of leisure, or at least someone swooping in on a gold helicopter like a motherly Wonder Woman saying, “I’ll take care of all this, dear; you just go have a bubble bath and sleep twelve hours.”

Then I remembered an article I had read recently in the Fall catalog from Kripalu, the renowned health/spiritual/personal growth retreat in the Massachusetts Berkshires. In the article, “Can I Live a Fulfilled Life?”, Stephen Cope, Kripalu’s Senior Scholar-In-Residence for more than 15 years (and a psychotherapist and yogi) writes about the fallacy of retreat — or, more accurately, the truth behind the retreat fantasy.

Cope uses great literature, psychological studies and his personal experience of working with “seekers” to drive an important point home. Retreat, he explains, is meant to put us back into our lives with renewed perspective — but going back to our lives (not getting away from them) is still the real goal.

He quotes a brilliant poem by Mary Oliver, “A Dream of Trees,” which says, in part:

There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,

A quiet house, some green and modest acres,

A little way from every troubling town…

I would have time, I thought, and time to spare…

And then it came to me that so was death,

A little way from everywhere.

In the end, Oliver lets go of her dream of living quietly among the trees, choosing instead to live in her town and deal with the noisy complications of life. Cope explains that this is what most seekers he has worked with ultimately discover. Being in constant retreat, always at leisure, is not ultimately satisfying, nor growth-producing.

“Retreats don’t change our lives as much as they change where we stand in relationship to our lives — and our capacity to see the hidden possibilites there,” Cope writes. “It is our fantasies about what life should be that we need to leave behind.”

Cope cites studies that illustrate how people are happiest “when meeting a challenge — when bringing skillful, concentrated effort to some compelling activity for which we have a true passion.” (Case in point: I feel better already writing this!)

Too much leisure time tends to make people feel “considerably more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied,” these studies show. (It makes me think of the studies of retired people, which show that they get sick and die more quickly if they are not involved in productive activities they enjoy.)

Even the veritable god of retreat, Thoreau, returned to Concord from Walden Pond, realizing that his hometown “was already full of everything required to live fully and passionately,” Cope explains.

And, while even Cope himself sometimes wants to retreat from his retreat, he says, realizing that the point of getting away is to return, renewed, to our life’s work (wherever and whatever that may be) helps him keep perspective. And now, describing Cope’s insightful piece to you, I feel I have more perspective, too.

So, this weekend, I will take retreat in the form of a morning yoga class and a splurge acupuncture/massage hour for my bad hip/back (and maybe a little shut-eye on the table!). Then I will hopefully return, renewed, in a better mood, to my lively toddler, easygoing husband and interesting work. Would I trade my life for anyone else’s? No way. But, being human, sometimes I’ll still complain, cry and dream of doing nothing and eating bonbons all day.

I think it is not about not having retreat fantasies, but more about what Cope says, keeping perspective on these fantasies. And putting less energy into dreaming of a different life, and more energy into making sure our life and work are filled with challenges we are passionate about.

Then when we “get away,” in reality or daydreams, we know we are doing it with the goal of returning to the life we’ve created, and living it more fully.

DH and I just watched the movie Peaceful Warrior, about a college athlete who gets injured and discovers a new way of looking at life. It’s very Buddhist, although not called that. A little Castenada and Karate Kid, too. It is basically about the lesson of living in the now, being in the moment, not attaching to an outcome, a future or a past, and missing your life. DH thought it a bit cliche, but I love this stuff, and never regret spending my moments remembering this lesson. (Perhaps I just need it more than he does!)

I spent a bit of time looking up Dan Millman, whose book the movie is based on. And, not surprisingly, he writes and speaks about success, among other topics. I’m going to see if my library has some of his books, as my curiosity is piqued.

Clearly, the movie tells us that success is not winning the gold medal, but being present and awake in our everyday lives, that the journey is the reward, and learning to appreciate the journey leads to more contentment than attaching to a specific outcome. Nick Nolte, who plays the gas station attendant/teacher called Socrates to Millman’s cocky, young athlete, speaks a phrase anyone who reads anything Buddhist knows well, “When we don’t get what we want, we suffer. When we get what we want, we still suffer.”

A good reminder for me, another permutation of which I also bookmarked in Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart, on my nightstand at the moment (for my probably tenth time reading it). Chodron writes about it brilliantly. We think we will be happy “if only…” — if only this were to happen, or that. If only we had this, or looked like that. Even those dedicated to some “higher path” can get stuck in this — if only we meditated every day, ate perfect food, never got upset, “turned swords into flowers” in our life, then we would be content, happy, successful.

Nope.

Perhaps DH sees the cliche in Peaceful Warrior because we hear these lessons spoken of often. But how much do we actually live them? How much can we actually be present in our lives, stop focusing on the past or future? It’s a hard task, and writers and teachers I like to listen to will tell us that even they have not perfected it. There’s no such thing in this life. That’s what makes it this life, and not death (see Chodron for more on this). We will never reach perfection here. So we may as well accept the suffering and enjoy the ride.

I saw a bumper sticker that plays on the “I’d rather be… sailing, golfing, etc” stickers and license plate frames. It said, “I’d rather be here now.” Be here now. The real secret of success? For Millman and Chodron, and many teachers of various faiths, I think it’s safe to say a good place to start.