How do you feel about chronic complainers? Would they be allowed into your view of heaven? I drew this cartoon because I felt sorry for Kathy:

 
 

cheerfulmonk. Creative Commons license.

 
What do you think? What would your view of heaven be like?

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
—Albert Einstein

When I say “driveway” in the title I don’t mean the pavement in our apartment complex… I mean the unpaved half-mile road/sledding run going from the plowed road up to our place in the mountains. The above picture shows our family last Christmas Eve, trudging up to cut down our tree. In order we are

1. Andy, my husband,
2. Banshee, a granddog,
3. Torben, my son-in-law,
4. Sammy, my other granddog,
5. Kaitlin, my daughter, and
6. Me, of course, taking the picture and not shown.

Sammy and Banshee are city dogs, and Kaitlin and Torben drove them all the way from Illinois to New Mexico so they could have the experience of running free in nature. We hoped the dogs would love it, and we were not disappointed.

Taking Time to Look
It was a natural topic for my contribution to this month’s What I Learned From…. project. When Robert Hruzek announced it he asked us to

pick a spot, stop, and take a genuine, in-depth look around you…. Is there something; some scene, object or incident that catches your eye? Does it tickle your fancy? Remind you of something? Spark a lesson or example of something interesting?

We ended up taking three trips up to the land, and in addition to getting the tree we did some sledding and snowshoeing. I put some of our pictures up at Flickr, but the ones that touch my heart the most are these two by Torben (taken after Andy plowed the driveway the first time):

They remind me to stay connected to that feeling of wonder and awe, the magic of being alive.

What About You?
Can you pick a spot, “take a genuine, in-depth look around you” and share the experience with us?

My husband has been getting the Wall Street Journal for years. He reads most of it…I look at the headlines and will read an article or two of special interest. It’s one way I keep in touch with people who have different values from me…the current financial crisis has come as no big surprise.

I read the headlines the first thing in the morning, when I’m rested after a good night’s sleep. Now, as the news gets even grimmer, I heat myself a mug of hot water first. I’m not a tea or coffee drinker, but it turns out the warmth of the liquid is the soothing part. It keeps me in touch with the warm, generous part of myself…a great antidote to fear and to the anger about the greed that caused this present mess.

Why this sudden shift to a cup of warmth first? Because of a recent study showing how warmth affects the insular cortex, the part of the brain that triggers trust and cooperation. I don’t want to shut myself off from other people and the world, so I glance through the Wall Street Journal to keep a broad view of the world, and I balance it with a cup of warmth to make sure it doesn’t shut me down and keep me from connecting with other people.

What About You?
I suppose the study should come as no surprise…drinking a hot cup of tea or coffee, especially with friends, is an age-old tradition. But it is fun to understand the science behind the effect. How does a cup of warmth affect you? Is it a part of your day-to-day life?

One of my all-time-favorite birthday cards was from Peanuts:

Linus: Don’t think of it as just another birthday! Think of it as another year spent mastering the intricacies of a rewarding and demanding life!

Snoopy: Well, that sounds better than “There goes another year down the tubes!”

Hmm…. Not a bad concept to ponder at the turn of the year.

Robert Hruzek’s writing challenge this month is What I Learned From 2008. I was supposed to pick one post per month and give a brief description of it, but instead I decided to look at both of my blogs to see which pictures and posts resonated the most. The picture above was at the top of the list…it shows my husband and me with my daughter and son-in-law at their wedding last May. It warms my heart every time I look at it.

My favorite posts were

From Transforming Stress:
Life As a Shared Adventure
Honoring Our Comfort Zones
Can You Take Yourself This Lightly?
Bringing Out the Best in Ourselves
Following the Path, One Step at a Time
Don’t Forget to Laugh!

From Cheerful Monk:
I Saved a Human Today
What’s Your Favorite Photo?
Living Deeply By Writing
The Joy of Being a Blockhead
This Mystery Called Life
Slipping Into Sacred Space

The posts are about living deeply and writing about it… and about loving, laughing and sharing.

I also love this picture, taken last April, because it combines the themes:

Summary
This past year had its challenges and achievements, but in the end that’s not what was important. If I had to summarize 2008 in one word, that word would be rich.

So was it just another year down the tubes? Oh, no. I think not.

What About You?
What was your 2008 like? If you had to describe it in a word or two, which word(s) would you use?

A friend sent me this picture…I don’t know who took it. It’s of a dog and a cat in the midst of a storm. The lightning was flashing, the thunder was booming and the lights went out. Someone snapped their picture on the couch.

It’s a reminder that it’s great to have friends in hard and scary times. I don’t know about you, but for me hugs help a lot.

In Building a Solid Foundation (over at Cheerful Monk) I mentioned that one of my favorite teachers in high school had hitchhiked around Europe. That sounded like a great experience to me, but I couldn’t imagine doing anything that adventuresome myself. It was too far-fetched to be even a dream.

It just goes to show how little we know. A gazillion years ago I went to Stanford-in-Germany for two quarters and at the end I had five weeks before I had to fly home. A friend of mine had a contact to visit in northern Denmark and planned to bike down the Rhine and then up to Denmark. It sounded like a great adventure and he was happy to have me share it. So we each bought a three-speed bike and took off.

Now one would expect that biking “down” the Rhine would be fairly easy. I mean it had to be downhill, right? That’s certainly true, the river did flow downhill. But the road next to it, the one we biked on, was up and down, up and down. It sure seemed more up than down for our poor out-of-shape legs. We probably would have continued anyway, but by the time we got to Cologne it was clear we were going too slowly. So we revised our plan. We sold the bikes and hitchhiked instead. Hitchhiking! My too-far-fetched-to-be-even-a-dream trip. I vaguely remember it wasn’t always comfortable, but that part of the experience wasn’t important enough to stick in my mind. What does stick in my memory is the people who gave us rides:

1. The Ranter–One of our first rides was with a German who hated America. He knew we were Americans so he expounded the whole time about how bad America was and how he hated its foreign policy. (Again, this was a gazillion years ago, when most Europeans looked at us fondly.) He even continued his diatribe when we stopped at a pub for a break and he bought us soft drinks. I still smile when I think of him. Even though he hated our country, that didn’t extend to us.
2. Truck Drivers–A lot of people wouldn’t stop for us, of course, but truck drivers often would. Their semi-trailers had a bench seat in the back of the cab, which they were often happy to let us use. When they didn’t have guests they would use it for sleeping, but I remember one time pulling off to the side of the road so the driver could sleep sitting up. That struck me as the height of hospitality.
3. The Family From Hamburg–The picture above is of a family in Hamburg…we met the father in the middle of the night on a ferry from Denmark to Germany. The truck driver who had given us a ride to the ferry had told us he couldn’t take us any further, so we had to find another ride while on the boat. The fellow in the picture offered to take us to Hamburg. It was much too late to go to a youth hostel, so we figured we would find our way to the train station and spend the night there. We had done it before…the seats were hard but at that time it was safe and no one would bother us. Instead of dropping us off, though, the fellow took us to his home and let us sleep in his living room. Not only that, he and his wife invited us to stay for a couple of days so we could see Hamburg. I can’t remember their names, but I’ll never forget them.

What I Learned
This post is a contribution to Robert Hruzek’s writing challenge What I Learned From the Generosity of Others. What I learned from hitchhiking was

1. That there were many people willing to reach out and help two kids on a youthful adventure.
2. And that I was profoundly touched by their generosity. I hadn’t realized before how deeply I cared about friendliness. Partly because of this experience I eventually understood that one of my main goals is life is simply to make my little corner of the world a more friendly and loving place.

Our culture tends to worship achievement, money and fame. I can’t think of anyone I admire more than the truck driver who slept sitting up because he was letting two kids use his bench seat, or the family who shared a bit of their lives with two adventurers. I’m still grateful to them for helping me keep my priorities straight.

What About You?
Have you ever been touched by the generosity of others? How did it affect you?

A friend is someone who brings out the best in you.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.
—Mother Teresa

Two weeks ago in How Do You See Life?, we talked about the pitfalls of seeing the world as a dog-eat-dog place, where we constantly have to be in the top of our form to compete and survive. I never fell into that trap because I didn’t measure myself against other people, but until my early thirties I had excessively high standards for myself. I still remember the day my attitude changed. I was on my way to work, waiting for a shuttle from the parking lot, when it suddenly dawned on me… I was accepting and understanding about other people’s foibles, but was always critical of my own. How arrogant! How stupid! The fact is, I thrive on love and appreciation and was foolishly depriving myself.

So as soon as I got to work I went into the bathroom, looked myself in the mirror and promised myself that no matter what happened, I would be there for myself. I would be a supportive friend rather than a critic. I’ve kept that promise ever since. I’m much more like the duck above, admiring himself in the mirror than I am the hostile dog. Sounds a bit silly? Maybe, maybe not. It is lighthearted. “Yea, Jean!” is my favorite saying when I’m facing challenges. As I’ve said, that’s the attitude that energizes and inspires me. It brings out the best in me. It seems to me it would be more silly not to do it.

What About You?
How serious or lighthearted is your view of life? How do you bring out the best in yourself?

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
—Lao-tzu

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it.
—Thich Nhat Hanh

Last week’s post, What I Learned From Losing Loved Ones, was a heavy piece, and my husband’s brother has recently been diagnosed with cancer. He’s dealing with chemotherapy as well as the after effects of an invasive (5 hours in surgery) biopsy. I can’t do much for him and his family except to let them know that they’re in our thoughts and prayers, but I can work on my own equanimity and courage.

As I mentioned last week, the thing that works best for me is connecting with other people, with life as a whole. And this doesn’t have to be anything big. It can be as simple as sharing pictures and/or being understanding when dealing with insurance matters.

Goddard Is Back!
Goddard, the dog in the photos, is the first thing that comes to mind. Tom, one of our local Animal Control officers, sent an e-mail to the volunteers in Friends of the Shelter. It was entitled Goddard is back! He reminded us that Goddard often has issues with other dogs, so be careful when we take him out. Goddard was adopted last year and was doing fine in his new home, but he’s a victim of the housing bubble…his owners had to give up their home and move into an apartment.

After Tom sent the e-mail, he received a slew of responses saying how affectionate Goddard is and how much the volunteers love working with him. So I found these three pictures I took last year and shared them. It was a simple gesture, but looking at the photos again warmed my heart, and the father of the girls in the pictures hadn’t seen them before. He wanted to add them to his collection. Of course.

Dealing With Insurance
Keeping track of health insurance matters is often a bit of a challenge, because it can take months for the paperwork to come back, and it’s often incorrect. Even the representatives don’t always understand the system. Sometimes a phone call will clear up the matter, sometimes it won’t. I had a case this past week where the representative said absolute hogwash. There was no way his story made sense. And that was all right.

I’ve finally learned to be patient and to remember my interaction with a fellow human being is more important than straightening things out in one phone call. One question that helps is “How can I connect with sacredness in this moment?” I cheerfully admit, it’s an off-beat approach, but it works for me. So in cases like this I thank the person for his time, then I make another phone call later to get more information. I keep trying until I find someone who understands what has happened and how things should work.

It took me a long time to view dealing with red tape as an opportunity to make this world a slightly more loving place. And doing my small part, no matter how modest, to do just that is the best way for me to handle stress and mourning.

What About You?

What are your greatest sources of stress? What are your greatest resources? What works for you?

They know how to mourn the inevitable losses in their lives.
—The Traits of Stress-Hardy, Resilient People.

I cheerfully admit, I’m hopelessly sentimental. Buddhist non-attachment doesn’t come naturally to me…I even mourn when a favorite article of clothing wears out. So when Robert Hruzek asked us to talk about a time when we’ve been shaken by a stressful situation, I thought of the time about 13 years ago when my best friend, my uncle and my mother died within 7 weeks of one another. In fact, their deaths were the least of it. The process of dying was the hardest part.

A Very Rough Autumn

Mary, whom I’ve written about in a previous post, and my mother both died of cancer.

Mary
Mary had ovarian cancer and had been fighting it for several years. She didn’t suffer much pain, but by the fall of 1994 it was clear she was losing the battle. The doctors had removed her small intestine to prolong her life, so she could no longer eat food…she was nourished by intravenous feeding. She had family to care for her, so all I could do was to phone her a few times a week. That was hard, because she was understandably depressed and there was no way to cheer her up. All I could do was to tell her a few things that might interest her and let her know I cared. I know she appreciated the calls, but it was hard to know what to say with so little response from her.

The thing that really helped me during this time was my daughter wanting a special sweater. I hadn’t knit in years, but when she had showed me a picture of the style she liked I offered to knit her one. When she came to visit at Christmas we bought some red wool yarn and a basic pattern for me to modify and I went at it. It was just the therapy I needed because

• the very act of knitting is soothing,
• it was challenging to figure out how to modify the pattern to match the picture, and
• I was doing it for someone I loved.

That last part was crucial.

My Mom
In the meantime, my mother, who had a great tolerance for pain, suddenly was having severe problems with her upper back. X-rays indicated it was degeneration of the spine, so the doctors sent her to a chiropractor. It didn’t do any good, and the pain killers messed up the rest of her body, so she lived without them…sleeping in a recliner in the living room because it was torture to lie down. I couldn’t do anything about the pain, but phone calls helped some.

February/March—Passing Away

I worked hard on my daughter’s sweater and aimed for her to have it for Valentine’s Day. I mailed it off February 2nd, and that evening received a phone call saying that Mary had passed away. That Saturday my mother phoned to say she was going to the emergency room but first wanted to tell me what to put in her obituary. She also reminded me I had promised to give the eulogy at her funeral.

In fact, the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with her and sent her home with some pills. I won’t even go there! A week later she went back and they finally did a chest x-ray. She had terminal lung cancer and the pain had been from fluid in her lungs pressing against nerves in her back. (A useful piece of information…x-rays of the spine don’t tell anything about back pain. Some of the worst looking backs have no pain, and some of the better looking ones can have severe pain.)

When she was released from the hospital Marvin, the love of her life, and I decided we wanted her to be able to go back to her own home. With the help of some hospice care he and I could take care of her. It was only for a little over a month total, and after the first week Marvin said he could handle it by himself for a while. I could go home and he would tell me when he needed more help. We kept in close contact by phone, talking several times a day. It was actually a cheerful, loving time… Mom and I had a long history of good telephone conversations, and these seemed just like a continuation of what we had always been doing. She and Marvin were making last minute arrangements (she from her bed), rewriting the will, etc., and seemed to think of me as the emotionally stable Rock of Gibraltar. In fact, I was spending most of my time lying in bed knitting and trying to get my stomach to accept some food. The phone calls were as therapeutic for me as they were for them.

It was during this time that my uncle, my mother’s brother, died of a heart attack sitting in his chair watching TV. He had been having trouble with congestive heart problems, so it wasn’t a big surprise. He had been visiting her regularly, so it didn’t seem sad…somehow it seemed fitting that he passed on about the same time. And he passed away painlessly, a blessing to us all.

One day my mom was telling me everything that was going on about his funeral when she started running out of breath. The thing that sicks in my mind was she was so cheerful. When she had to stop she said, “I could talk all day. I do truly love you!” That is, without a doubt, one of the best gifts anyone has ever given me.

That period couldn’t last forever, of course. Soon enough Marvin phoned to say he needed help and I flew back. When I arrived at the house and walked into Mom’s bedroom she reminded me of a little kid. She was surprised to see me. Her face lit up and she said, “Oh, you came back!”

Of course I came back. There was nowhere in the world I would rather have been at that moment and during the next few weeks as she gradually lost awareness and slipped away.

What I Learned

Even though the next few weeks were physically and emotionally exhausting, I felt privileged to be there and to help. The details don’t matter.

It took me over six months to get back to eating without effort, and my stomach still seizes up as I write this. But it’s a small price to pay for caring. This wasn’t a new lesson for me, but it reinforces what I figured out years ago, that if I cut myself off from emotional pain I’m also cutting myself off from life’s deepest joys. That would not be a good bargain.

This experience was also a great illustration of a little-known aspect of stress-management. So much is written about fight or flight. But what works for me, like many other women, is tend and befriend. I didn’t want to fight or run, I wanted to connect, to help. I’ll be forever grateful that I had a chance to do that.

What About You?
Have you ever had a period of great stress in your life? How did you handle it? What helped?

I’ve been reading a lot lately about how when we’re stuck in a rut, we have to get out of our “comfort zone”. That doesn’t describe what happens to me. When I’m “stuck in a rut” I’m not comfortable at all. Words like bored, restless, frustrated and depressed would be more accurate. I feel most fully alive when I have the right amount of challenge in my life. It might be scary, but it feels right as long as the new experiences are balanced by relaxation and feeding my soul.

I usually think in terms of the optimizing challenge graph:
 

This curve is useful when I choose my challenges…I try to pick something big enough to be exciting but not such a stretch that it’s overwhelming. But there’s also something to be said for the Yin-Yang concept of complementarity, illustrated in the first picture above. It explicitly honors the periods of rest and reflection that our fast-paced, achievement-oriented culture tends to regard as a waste of time.

It’s hard not to be swayed by this attitude at times and start to feel I should be “doing more”. That’s why I appreciated B. Wilde’s recent post about his Grandpa Dwayne:

Grandpa didn’t believe that his self-worth was tied to being an overachiever. When driving his truck he looked at his surroundings and enjoyed the ride. When he passed the waterfalls in the Uintah Mountains he always stopped to take a look. And when he set out to accomplish a task, he liked to plan for trouble. But he never went about frantically trying to accomplish a list of self-imposed urgent tasks that, when completed, measured his value as a person. Fortunately, I learned this lesson from him before he passed away two years ago.

Thanks, Bryan, for reminding me to keep my priorities straight…to remember that life is about ebb and flow, not just the constant striving for more. So, I’ll continue to enjoy my quiet times and comfort zones, and not be thrown by our out-of-balance culture.

What about you? Is your life in balance? Do you appreciate your comfort zones as much as the excitement of challenge and achievement? Please share with us.