When my cousins Ron and Joan suggested my 88 year old mother June create a “bucket list,” she reluctantly agreed. She had seen the movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman and knew the term meant a list of what she’d do if she only had a year to live.
She only came up with two items, both revisiting places she had lived in and loved, upstate New York in the fall and Washington DC in the spring. Ron and Joan, lifelong world travelers, told her she didn’t get the concept. “You’re supposed to put down new places, new experiences, things you’d really like to do but never got around to.” June stayed firm. “I’ve done lots of interesting things,” she said. “Now I’m only interested in things that have meaning for me.”
Lao-Tzu wrote:
Living people are soft and tender
Corpses are hard and stiff
The living grass, the trees, are soft and pliant
Dead they’re dry and brittle
So hardness and stiffness go with death
Tenderness, softness go with life
And the hard sword fails
The stiff tree is felled
The hard and great go under
The soft and weak stay up.
-Tao Te Ching Chapter 76
Is this strange idea the way the world really works? Though it’s a comforting thought for those of us who aren’t “hard and great,” it often seems the hardest of people are ruling, while the soft are ground underfoot. But lately I’ve seen that people who seem beaten down and hopeless can indeed prevail, if they are flexible and resilient. They may suffer for years or generations, but they stay up, even triumph.
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Tagged adaptability, Bali, courage, Darwin, Lao Tzu, Native Americans, patience, peace, resistance, survival, Taoism
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Ten years ago, my brother bought a bumper sticker: “Don’t believe everything you think.” I thought that was amusing. How can you not believe what you think? Later on, I saw it as a reminder to lighten up. Admit you can be wrong sometimes.
But lately I’m seeing that this may be the most important advice I’ll ever receive. Happiness and peace seem to depend on stepping back from our thoughts, realizing they are just one view of the world, and frequently a wrong one, so not taking them too seriously. Without attaching to my thoughts, the world seems a much friendlier place. Apparently, other people have even more healing experiences. Here are a few of them…
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Tagged Byron Katie, emotions, happiness, Heaven, Hell, Jill Taylor, Loving What Is, OCD, optimism, Taoism, thought-changing
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Lady Li was daughter of the border officer at Ai. When captured by the Duke of Jin for a concubine, she cried so hard and long she completely soaked her robes. But when she reached the Duke’s palace and experienced the comforts there, and tasted the delicious foods, she felt foolish for her tears. – Chuang Tzu, Chapter 2
At first I didn’t like this story. Is it about how shallow women can be, how easily they can forget their families if given a warm bed and good food? But I missed the point. Now I see it’s a parable about how the things we fear most can turn into positives. Even our worst nightmares can redeem us.
“I saw a chimpanzee gaze at a particularly beautiful sunset for a full 15 minutes, watching the changing colors, until it became so dark that he had to retire to the forest without stopping to pick a pawpaw for his evening meal.” – Adriaan Kortlandt, wildlife researcher in Congo
So how come this chimp, threatened by leopards, searching for food in an endless “struggle for survival,” can stop to appreciate nature’s beauty, and we don’t? Well, according to a great book I just finished, Pleasurable Kingdom by Jonathan Balcombe, that’s what animals do. They play; they relax; they may even love. They enjoy life. The endless struggle for survival is real, but it’s far from their whole story.
Do you ever have the feeling of “too much to do; too little time”? Really takes a bite out of the pleasure of life, doesn’t it? If the stress of time ever weighs on you, here’s a reading that might relax you for years to come. It’s a different way of perceiving time. It gives me peace; I hope it does the same for you.
Mental illness can feel like a life sentence in solitary confinement, without possibility of parole. There’s just no point. But even in the most hopeless lives, having just one positive thing to do, one activity to focus on, can change everything. Here are two rather amazing stories about finding that saving grace, and recovering from major mental illness.
Lao Tzu says, “Teach without talking.” I had a teacher like that once, who showed me the meaning of support. This teacher was different from others I have had, in that it was green and didn’t move much, let alone talk. In fact, it was a rubber plant who had had a bad childhood. Its previous owner had kept it in a dim corner for years, and it had to grow way out to get some sun. The trunk or main stem gradually became so bent that the slightest touch could send it toppling over, spilling dirt on the floor.
Eventually the strain of fighting gravity wore it down, as hard lives will do, and it became infected with no less than three fungi or molds. It had white spots, gray patches and black growths on every leaf. When I took some leaves to the nursery for diagnosis, the staff said, “don’t bring those things in here! They’ll infect our whole stock!” They sold me some antifungal spray, but advised me to throw out this plant to protect the others.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I’ve never understood that. How can you “be” a change? But I think I’m starting to see. People’s being, the way we are in the world, often has more effect on others than the things we do or say.
Gandhi was right, because our emotions, actions, and thoughts spread to others like waves in a still sea. Sometimes, this effect can work at great distances in time and space, and it can be for good or ill. My partner Aisha used to work at a day treatment center for emotionally disturbed children in San Francisco. One afternoon, the center’s staff meeting was completely disrupted by a family’s presence, even though they weren’t physically there.
Help is out there, often in unlikely places. One afternoon, I was riding a MUNI bus through a working-class San Francisco neighborhood. Seated across from me was a group of young African-American men, dressed mostly in sweat clothes with basketball shoes. An apparently homeless man pulled himself laboriously up the steps and showed the driver his transfer. He was dressed in dirty slacks, a ripped shirt, and a light sweater riddled with holes, little protection from the SF fog.
