What About Love?

I have not been able to shake the thought that love is for young people. That the mad, passionate, take your breath away feelings are the sole province of the young. And, the more pedestrian, routine feelings of affection and perhaps companionship are for everyone else.

In support of that proposition, I’d offer this- name one great work of art (music, poetry, painting) about love that was created by someone older than their mid-thirties. Go on, take your time; I’ll wait.

There, I bet you have not come up with one. Or, if you have one, I doubt you have two. And why is that? Why are the feelings around love so much more powerful when we are younger? I’m glad you asked, because I have some theories, none of which are mutually exclusive-

1. Maturity, whatever that means, dulls our emotional senses.
2. As we age, we have more important things to worry about (kids, bills, career).
3. Long-term relationships are sustained by the less explosive feelings, like companionship and contentment (complacency).
4.  There is something hardwired in us, evolutionarily, to settle down and to make a family. It doesn’t mean we don’t care for the person with whom we have done that, but rather that our motivations have changed from pursuing the greatest love (stop it, Whitney!) to rearing children.
5. We have given up on love, as in the idealized notion of love that we had as younger people. We cast it aside as whatever relationship in which we found ourselves seemed good enough.

I could go on, but you get the gist of my argument here, I assume.

One more point that I would like to make though is about the conflation of love and happiness. Certainly, they can feed into one another. But, one can be happy without love and the opposite is clearly true (see, for example, every sad song/ breakup song ever written).

I think this is a point worth emphasizing because I would guess that many of you are thinking, “but Justin, I am happy.” And I don’t doubt that you are happy. But being happy is not the same as having explosively intense feelings of love for another person. It just isn’t, no matter how much you try to reason that it is.

I would love to hear your thoughts. I plan on writing more on this topic in the coming weeks (as I am trying to get back in the practice of writing regularly), and I hope that you will follow along, even if you think I am dead wrong. Especially if you think I’m dead wrong.

 

My Own Shame

This will be, for me, the most difficult post I have ever written over the course of four blogs and over ten years of writing. But it is something that I have been silent about for far too long. Here is my story…

In the 8th grade, a new student came to our school. Given that our town had a military base, there were often new kids who would come during the school year. Sometimes they stayed for years, other times for months. If my memory serves me correctly, she was only there for a year.

This girl was a bit different than most others. She was from the South, with an accent to prove it. She had a funny name, which I believe came from the Bible. And, she was black, in a school that may have had three or four other children of color.

She was in my history class and sat toward the end of the column of seats in which I was at the front. (At the time, that was not a remarkable observation to me.) I was a bit of a smart-ass and often would do and say things that I thought others would find funny. And what I decided would be funny would be to make my lips look larger, using my tongue and turning down my lower lip. I would do this when I would pass back papers, making sure that she saw me.

I don’t think she reacted the first few times, maybe in hope that I would get bored and move on to something else. But, when I made that face, others saw it and laughed. So I kept doing it. Eventually, she told our teacher. And she would say it out loud, with her Southern accent, which I would then mock.

I know that I was admonished by my teacher. I may have even been threatened with a consequence, but I do not remember it ever being pointed out to me that I was being racist.

I certainly didn’t think I was a racist. I had black and mixed race friends. Most of my favorite athletes were black. I would have been puzzled if you had told me back then that I was a racist. And, maybe I wasn’t. But my actions were those of a racist, whether I knew it or not.

I cannot imagine how it must have felt for her, not to feel accepted in her new school. She was a thirteen year old kid, who had moved hundreds of miles away from her previous classmates, friends and community and I not only made her feel unwelcome, but I made fun of her because of her race.

I don’t know where she moved to next, or how she’s fared in life. I know that I did not make her life any easier. I had made her dread history class on a daily basis. I made her hope not to pass me in the hallways because maybe I would tease her there, too.

I wish I had been a better person then. I wish I had been as smart as I thought I was and knew better than to tease someone about her race. I hope that my racism did not lead her to believe that all white people are racists. More than anything, though, I hope that she’s had a good life surrounded by good people who accept her for who she is. That’s what we all deserve, regardless of our age or race or gender. And I did not give that respect to her all those years ago.

For that, I will always feel shame.

Moral Judgments and Public Policy

Our social safety net is tattered. Our jails are overcrowded. Children are hungry. Families are homeless.

For the past few decades, at least, our civil discourse on these issues has been framed in terms of deserving versus undeserving. This applies whether we are talking about food stamps or young black men being gunned down by police. Do these sound familiar- “Michael Brown was a thug who stole from a convenience store” or “I see people at Walmart with their EBT cards buying cigarettes and alcohol”? In other words, Michael Brown got what he deserved and most SNAP recipients are lazy fraudsters. (Leave aside that FDA regulations, enforced by grocers and retailers, limit what items may be purchased to food and seeds/plants for producing food.)

There are deep moral judgments involved in how people speak about the poor, hungry, homeless and anyone else who relies upon income support programs for a significant portion of their income. (Again, ignore that EVERY single person receives a multitude of benefits from local, state and federal governments.) A not small portion of Americans believe, or at least support politicians who believe, that the needy are really only that way because of some deeply flawed moral decision making.

Single mom struggling to make ends meet? Should have closed your legs.

Unemployed man who now lives in a shelter? Shouldn’t have done drugs. Should have stayed in school.

Minimum wage worker who receives SNAP (food stamps)? Get a job that pays better!

Woman who needs reproductive health services at Planned Parenthood because you’re poor and/or uninsured? Stop being a slutty baby killer!

A certain worldview underlies all of the above responses to need- it’s their own fault for making bad decisions, which can only be explained by poor morals. After all, don’t all “good” people have jobs, homes, food on their table, etc.? If only these needy people were decent people, raised by decent people, making good and prudent decisions over the course of their lifetimes they would not be needy.

This type of argument is not only simplistic and wrong, but allows its adherents to feel morally superior. And who does not want to feel that they are living a life of moral honor? Never mind what just about every religious text says about one’s duty to others or its counsel against moral judgments.

If the only outcome was that the needy in our society felt moral scorn from their neighbors, it would be bad enough. But it poisons our politics and leads to shortsighted public policy. Moral judgments do not leave room for public policies that work.

Moral judgment about abortions leads to efforts to defund Planned Parenthood even though providing abortion accounts for a small part of the services provided and the Hyde Amendment prevents public dollars from being used to fund that service (except in cases of rape, incest of life of the mother). And what happens when we make reproductive health services less accessible? More unintended pregnancies, which means more abortions (especially those outside of the regulated medical sector) and more unwanted children. Do either of those predictable consequences sound like a good policy option? (I will not even touch on the fact that those same people who oppose abortion also oppose comprehensive sex education, the ultimate in lose-lose policy.)

Moral judgment about welfare (TANF, SNAP and other income supports) leads to drug testing recipients. It does not matter that all of the available data indicate that welfare recipient drug use in states who have tested ranged from 0.002% to 8.3% while the national rate (general population) is 9.4%. States have spent (wasted!) millions of dollars in order to save a few bucks. Does this sound like good policy?

Moral judgment about crime leads to a prison population that is the largest in the world (per 100,000) at a cost in the tens of billions of dollars per year. Criminal justice policy, driven by moral judgments, emphasizes punishment at the cost of rehabilitation. After all, why should we provide education and training to morally bad criminals? Does locking people up without any rehabilitation, thus increasing recidivism and cost, sound like good policy?

There are dozens of examples of policies driven by moral judgment that lead to some very deleterious (and predictable) outcomes. All of these policies, though, find support, often at a certain place on our political spectrum. It does not matter what evidence is presented regarding how counterproductive these policies are, or may be, because moral judgment is, most often, immune to reason, logic and debate.

When moral judgment is substituted for reason, life becomes simpler. Its adherents/advocates do not have to deal with the complexity of this world. People are either good (like them) or bad (unlike them). It does not matter how perverse the consequence of a policy may be.

There are people who support spending millions of dollars trying to find hundreds of dollars in waste or fraud. And they will explain their support by either challenging the data or, if they’re being honest, by arguing that it’s about the principle. And what principle is that, really? That they are better, more morally upright, than those others.

That should make everyone who cares about public policy and/or morality incredibly distraught.

 

 

Becoming Love

“Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Not that you are in love – now you are love.”- Osho

This is one of my favorite quotes from Osho, as it captures the essence of being. All of the major religions have, at their core, this same message- love. Love one another. Love yourself. Love the world around you.

But what does it mean to become love, and how is that different from loving someone or just being in love? It would be impossible to quantify the difference, as it is at once infinite yet infinitesimally small.

When you love someone you feel as if your heart may burst every moment you see the object of your love. It does not matter if this person is your partner, your child, your best friend or whomever. When you are truly in love, you feel as if you may not even exist, or that your heart cannot beat, except in the presence of the one who you love. You think of next to nothing but your love, when you are apart. The one you love becomes the center of your universe, in many ways. You dream of that person when you’re asleep and when you daydream.

Others will notice that you are in love. You will project that energy into the world around you. When you and your lover are in the same space, others in the room will feel the love between you. Your love is tangible, to both of you and the people within your orbit.

But this love is limited. It is focused on a particular person, or people. And while you project the warm glow of someone in love, you do not, and cannot, bring that love to others. You have limited your ability to love to a certain person or people. This is the way we are taught to love- to project that feeling onto another person. That there is some number of people who you may love, including yourself. Even the words we use to talk about love describe something outside of ourselves- I love her; I love my kids; I’m really in love with him- rather than a feeling we have.

When one becomes love, there are no limits. Love itself is limitless; we just think it is a zero sum game. As I have become love, I have become surrounded by love. This is what becoming love does- it brings forth love from everywhere. I do not have to look for love just from my family or close friends. Love comes to me from strangers- in the smile of a child in the grocery store; the sparkle in the eye of someone for whom I held open a door; the appreciative wave from the person who I let in front of me in a line of traffic.

When one becomes love, one will see all of the love in the world. It is like removing a blindfold. What has changed is not the love in the world, but your ability to perceive it. And it becomes as tangible, and as obvious, as the hand at the end of your arm. When you are only in love, you are able to feel and see the love you get from your lover, but you miss all of the rest.

Once you become love, you will never be without love. Once you become love, you will wonder why you ever lived any other way.

Cataloging Our Partner’s Sins

I had initially titled this “Cataloging the Sins of Our Loved Ones,” but as I gave the topic more and more attention, and thought over some examples, it occurred to me that we do this primarily, if not entirely, to our partners. It may happen, at times, with close friends and maybe even relatives. However, I believe that we are much more likely to keep in mind the “transgressions” of our partners.

Ask a random person to list off the last three bad things their partner did, or list the three worst things they did, and you are likely to get a quick response. Ask that same person to name the last three good things, or best three things, and you may be waiting a bit longer for an answer. Why is it that us humans are so much better at recalling the negative words and deeds of our partners than their good ones?

At least part of the answer has to do with our amygdala, which is the region of the brain that controls emotional memories and responses, among other things. Research has shown that the details we remember about a negative event are much more accurate than those we remember about good events. This is likely because our brains have evolved, for good reason, such that they focus on specific detail during negative events. This helps to prevent us from placing ourselves in the same harm repeatedly (hopefully). Conversely, our brains are not wired, or have not evolved, to focus that same way with positive events.

From an evolutionary standpoint this makes a lot of sense. Remembering fine details about an event is time consuming work for your brain. And, while we may all wish to repeat pleasurable (good) events, we would be, from a purely evolutionary perspective, quite fine without these repeated experiences. But, repeating events that are negative (dangerous) come at a great cost, maybe even life. So the brain has become good at tuning into the fine details that will keep us from harm and alive.

Evolution, though, is not destiny. Let us take as given, that our brain, particularly the amygdala, is better at remembering bad events than good events. Does that mean that we are not able to overcome this bias? I believe that we are able, and should expend effort, to change or at least ameliorate this situation.

Clearly, when our partner disappoints us or causes us harm it is much less life-threatening than a bear or a lion, generally speaking. Is it that a life-saving function, evolved over millions of years, has become reoriented to detect emotional harm in the same way it was once utilized to protect us from physical danger? Maybe.

The counterargument, from an evolutionary standpoint, would be that this emotional harm detector, if set too sensitively, would make human cooperation more difficult. And, nearly all that we know about evolutionary psychology points us toward a species that thrived under conditions of cooperation, resulting in more offspring, every species’ prime objective.

(I will not launch into a description of potentially competing evolutionary aims, and our own role in such a process. Suffice to say that I believe our choices and preferences affect our evolutionary trajectory.)

As should be clear by now, I am not convinced that our wiring is the sole cause of our tendency to catalog our partner’s sins. Rather, I believe there is an interplay between our amygdala and our cognitive/emotional tendencies that lead us into this swamp of negativity. How else to explain our different treatment of partner’s sins and those of others in our lives, even those who we are nearly as closely tied emotionally? Further, how are some able to overcome this problem altogether?

I would not deign to explain why we would want our emotional upset detector set in such a sensitive position. The reasons are limitless, and span the typical spectrum that runs from nature to nurture. It could be chemical, genetic, conditioned response from early traumatic events, etc.

For me, the more important question is why, if we are aware of this tendency, don’t more of us (nearly all) expend more effort to overcome it? And, what would we need to do, what habits might we cultivate, to improve our condition?

I think that the answer to my first question has at least a bit to do with lack of self-awareness. That is, many (most?) people give almost no thought to this problem. Interestingly, I also believe that most people would accept the idea that they do recall negative events better. Yet, even while agreeing with this proposition, how many will try to improve their condition. Not many. So, what I think accounts for much of our lack of effort is a combination of lack of self- awareness, which may just be laziness masquerading as something else, and hopelessness/helplessness. How many people feel, at their core, that they have the ability to overcome their tendency to catalog their grievances? Again, not many.

So, then, how do we change all that? We can’t really. The best we can do is to change ourselves, and hope that in so doing we are able to inspire and educate others. The human brain has an amazing amount of plasticity. That is, we can essentially rewire pathways and synapses with our behaviors, our neural processes, etc.

In short, we need to think differently. This requires us to be mindful, to be aware of how we are thinking and that we are running a tab of our partner’s sins. Some of this can be captured simply by adopting what has been termed the positive perspective. Being in the positive perspective is a habit, one that takes time to develop and cultivate, but it is one that has the capacity to dramatically change our lives.

As we call our mind to focus on the positive words and deeds of our partner, we may cause new neural pathways to develop. Over time, and with repeated effort, these pathways will grow stronger. We could, quite literally, rewire our brains so that our amygdala, and its evolution-developed threat detector, becomes less powerful.

We face a clear choice here, I believe. We can either remained mired in viewing our partners in the least favorable manner, or we can focus our mind on their good deeds and actions. With the latter, we will be happier, our partners will be happier, humanity will be happier.

If you do not believe me, try this experiment for 10 days- each night before bed, recount 5 positive words or deeds of your partner; do the same when you wake up. After 10 days are up, see how your overall feelings toward your partner have changed, but also how your overall feeling of happiness, or lack thereof, has changed. It’s amazing what 100 good memories of your partner can do for you, and your relationship.

Be good to each other.

Violence, Coercion and Manipulation in Relationships

Violence, coercion and manipulation are three of the main ways individuals use to control the other person, or persons, in a relationship. We have identified violence as the worst of the three, for good reasons. However, I believe that we overlook the prevalence and significance of manipulation in our relationships. And there are real consequences, on a relationship level, but also on a societal level.

Violence

Violence, whether by deed or word, is utilized far too often in our relationships. (Let’s leave aside those whose pathologies incline them to violence because I believe they are distinct from the general population, in their motives and their ability or willingness to control their behavior.) It is important here to recognize that violence by word can be, and is often, as powerful as physical violence. Think, for example, of a child who is not once struck, but is threatened with physical violence on at least a daily basis. Would we say that this child was less of a victim than one who is spanked? Some might, but I would argue that each child’s neurological development will be affected and each may present, at times, with symptoms of PTSD.

Why, then, if we are able to recognize the physical and emotional consequences of violence, do we utilize it too frequently? My belief is that violence is often brought on by an individual’s inability to express their emotions in a healthy manner. Take, for example, the lover who does not feel secure in her relationship. She has concerns over her partner’s fidelity, but is afraid to ask.  So she bottles up her feelings of insecurity, worry and concern. This goes on until one day, her partner comments on a female friend. She snaps and throws a glass at his head. This happened because she never aired her concerns. The comment about the female friend may have even been completely anodyne, but she did not actually hear the message. What she heard were all of her concerns rushing out to her hand that held a glass. If she could have expressed her feelings of insecurity within the relationship, this could have been averted.

Again, to return to our verbally assaulted child example. What is behind her father’s threats? Perhaps his feelings of inadequacy as a parent. How hard is it for an adult to admit vulnerability, especially to his child? Instead of talking about his feelings, they come out as verbal violence toward his daughter.

I am leaving aside, for now, a discussion of how the desire for control underlies most violence, coercion and manipulation. But you should feel free to think of your own example of violence brought about by someone feeling out of control, or in control of their partner.

Coercion

Coercion is another tactic used to shape our relationships in ways that, for our own idiosyncratic reasons, we desire. I want to be sure that here we are separating the threat of violence from coercion itself, as I do think many people find the threat of violence to be coercive (and it is). Here, I want to focus on what might be called unspoken quid pro quo. Partners or parents do not often explicitly tell their lover or child that if they do not do x that they will withhold their love, affection and companionship.

But we use coercion so often in our relationships that we likely do not even recognize it. Here, a controversial example- if you don’t eat your green beans, you cannot have dessert. How many parents have said something similar? Just about all of us have, at one point or another. We think of this as applying a rule or providing an incentive for a child to finish their vegetables, but it’s no less coercive than any other example we might come up with. We may also think of it as striking a bargain where both parties win- the parent gets vegetables into their child’s diet; the child gets dessert.

That is not unlike “deals” that partners may make with one another. For example, if you go to this concert with me I will watch Orange is the New Black with you. Again, both parties have “won.” Maybe it is not coercion if both parties had some willingness to engage in each other’s preferred activities, and the trade off was merely a sweetener. But, what if neither party really wanted to do the other’s activity? Are we then more comfortable labelling it coercion?

To me, coercion may not always be bad or wrong. I am sure that there are an infinite number of potentially coercive acts that we could all agree were not quite a bad kind of coercion. And, if we are to avoid all such “good” coercion, I am not sure that we could function as a society.

Manipulation

We have now arrived at what I believe to be the most insidious of the three methods of relationship control- manipulation. In general usage, coercion and manipulation are not too distant cousins. I would distinguish one from the other by saying that coercion involves some sort of threat, implied or stated, while manipulation is more covert and deceptive.

Manipulation can take many forms, some of which have pleasant aspects, such as flattery. Underneath the pleasant veneer, though, is an ulterior motive. Maybe you flatter your partner as a way to distract them from some bad act you have done, or are about to do.

More frequently, manipulation focuses on the emotions, thoughts and beliefs of a partner or a child. For example, making a lover feel fat, so that they come to believe they are undesirable by others and have no choice but to remain in the relationship. Maybe a parent making their child feel stupid to reinforce their power and dominance in the parent-child relationship. Sometimes we make others come to believe that our needs, wants and desires are also theirs, stripping away their individuality and personal agency.

That this happens so covertly, and over a long period of time only adds to its power. unlike violence, which is clearly visible, and coercion, which may not be as clear as violence but is still readily discoverable, manipulation is so cleverly disguised. That is what makes it the most poisonous to relationships and to society.

Manipulation, when discovered/detected, reduces our ability to trust a loved one, be they a partner, child or close friend. Multiply that over billions of people, and we can start to see why there are so many problems in our world. What begins in close relationships serves to undermine one of the cornerstones of society- trust.

Without trust, we cannot truly and deeply love others. Without trust, we cannot live peacefully and securely. Think about how little the average person trusts- others and institutions. It’s not a lot.

Bringing It Together

We engage in violence, coercion and manipulation in order to exercise control. Control over our relationships, control over our loved ones, and illusional control of ourselves. In doing so, we betray ourselves and others. We destroy trust, in ourselves and the world around us. Without trust, we find it more and more difficult to not want to be in control. There has to be a better way.

That way is to practice non-possession and acceptance. When we stop viewing our partners and our children as possessions and we accept them for who they are, we can know happiness. We can eliminate violence, coercion and manipulation. When we break free from our need to control, we can truly love, without condition. We can love ourselves and others, for who they are.

It is not an easy task, nor is it a path that is always comfortable. As you make your journey toward your best self, others may not be on theirs. Or they may be at a different point on their trail. You may get hurt along the way, and your instinct may lead you to want to exert control once again. While that may seem like a quick solution, it is not. When you return to violence, coercion and manipulation, you are also returning to heartache, disappointment and lack of peace.

Until you can free yourself from possession and attachment, you will not know happiness. Until we can free ourselves from possession and attachment, we will not know peace.

Sukhi Hotu

Attachment, Possession and Jealousy

As a Buddhist, I take seriously the teachings on non-attachment and impermanence. Yet, I am also a human and am subject to the same human emotions, actions and states of mind. Aside from being present in each moment, much of my practice focuses on overcoming attachment, whether to a thing, a condition or a person.

Attachment is inextricably linked with possession; and loss, or fear of loss, of our possession brings about jealousy, and sometimes anger. We possess many things- our car, our clothes, etc.- to which we may become attached. Maybe you really love your iPhone. You possess it, you are attached to it- how else will you stay connected to the world, and you would become angry if someone were to take it away from you, and may become jealous if your friend has the latest model when yours is two years old.

If I were to speak with you about your attachment to your iPhone, you would, I hope, easily understand why it may not be good to be attached to this material object. But, what if I were to instead focus on your attachment to your partner? You may not think in such stark terms as you possess your partner, but you can certainly recognize your attachment, and are likely able to see that through to jealousy. But think about how we talk about our loved ones- my wife, my husband, my child, etc. Is the use of the possessive determiner my merely a convenient way of talking about a loved one, or does it indicate that we believe, on some level, that we possess that other person? I’m not sure.

How about attachment to something more abstract? Here, a personal example is illustrative. I was, for a very long time, attached to a routine/schedule/structure that I, mistakenly, believed to be a part of my practice and a precondition to happiness. The routine provided me with a level of discipline that I felt was needed in my life. At some points in time, I was probably right. However, I became so attached to that notion that I was unable to see how it was damaging my life and of those around me.

My routine had become something that I was not only attached to, but it grew into a possessiveness about my schedule, which was not to be altered. When life happened, and my schedule was not adhered to, I became angry, even a bit jealous that I was not doing what I was “supposed” to be doing. I struggled to be present, and I had placed my attachment to my structure above the needs, wants and desires of the people who love me.

For me, and I suspect many people, jealousy tends to make itself known in the context of a relationship with another person, particularly an intimate one. And while most will acknowledge the feelings of jealousy they have experienced, very few walk that feeling back through possession and attachment. We are often content to shrug our shoulders and say being jealous is part of the human condition.

I am not interested in an argument over whether jealousy is or is not natural or part of the human condition. To engage in such a debate only gives power to the idea that we, as humans, are hardwired for jealousy. If that is true, then any effort to reduce or eliminate jealousy from our lives is unnatural. The next logical step is to claim that attachment is also natural and something we ought not to pay too much attention.

That, I believe, would be wrong. Attachment, possession and jealousy factor into so much unnecessary unhappiness. Think about the level of distress, sadness, and frustration we feel when we lose our phone, or when the person who we love becomes interested in someone else, or our child makes a decision with which we do not agree. All of that is caused by attachment. We are attached to our phone. We are attached to our lover. We are attached to the notion that our children should always be who we want them to be.

Life, much like the earth, is always in motion. It is always changing. No matter how much we would like to make everything stay the same, it is simply not possible. When we try to hold everything constant, we are holding ourselves, and others, back. We are not allowing ourselves to grow, to adapt, to become the person who we want to be. And we expend so much time and energy on staying the same, on holding ourselves back. We are, in effect, jailing ourselves. Attachment is the enemy of freedom.

Is letting go of attachment easy? Of course it isn’t. If it were, I would not be writing about it here. And millions of articles and books would not have been written; countless dharma talks would have been shorter; countless numbers of artistic productions would not exist.

Maybe I have convinced you to think about your own attachments and how they impact the quality of your life, and of those around you. I suspect, though, that many will still doubt that we can truly become free from attachment, possession and jealousy in our relationships. In many ways, this is the most difficult attachment to eliminate. We are bombarded with messages about love and partnership and responsibility that we have internalized over our lives. The messages themselves have become ingrained into our culture and, in some ways, our laws.

To me, there is no more crucial task than to practice non-attachment with those you love. I do not believe it is possible to truly love someone to whom we hold an attachment. How can two people grow together if they each hold on to a version of their partner from weeks, months, and years ago? Perhaps small changes do not trigger a negative reaction, but anything significant surely ought to. To expect a partner to stay the same forever is to hold them hostage to your attachment. That is not love.

There is a quote from Osho that I think is fitting-

“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up.
Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love.
So if you love a flower, let it be.
Love is not about possession.
Love is about appreciation.”

When we practice attachment, we are picking the flower.

Living Without Regret?

There is no shortage of quotes about regret and how one should live without it. Those are all fine, as far as they go. But is it possible to live without regret? I do not believe any human can live a life without any regret. The benefits of hindsight are such that we may always find something we wish we had done better, or said differently, or didn’t do at all.

I do not mean to say that we cannot limit or reduce the amount of regrets we have. When we are our best selves, the people we wish to be, we are much less likely to have regret. That means living with our heart fully engaged, and with us in touch with our true self, our best self.

We must not only dare to dream, but to act on those dreams. It is when we do not act in accord with our dreams, our best self, that we experience much of our regret. This is the regret many of the inspirational quotes try to address. The message is essentially- be fearless; act with hope; act with belief; act with confidence.

The other form of regret is the actions we do, or words we speak, that are not rooted in love. Everyone has said something hurtful to someone who they love, or done something vindictive or mean to a loved one. This is also not our best self, not the person who we wish to be. Acting and speaking with an engaged heart, full of love, is one of the surest ways to limit these regrets.

If we are acting and speaking to limit regret, what else can we do to live in a manner consistent with who we want to be? We can transform regret into a powerful impetus for change. Remember, hindsight has its benefits.

We can use hindsight as a cudgel with which to beat ourselves up, or we can use it to appreciate our mistakes, as they present a great opportunity to develop our ability to be the person we want to be. When we go the cudgel route, we not only lose out on a magnificent opportunity for growth, but we may push ourselves further away from our best self. Just as the student benefits from constructive criticism, so do we. When we use the cudgel of hindsight, we tear ourselves down. We have transformed whatever bad action or words that we may have done or said into a knife aimed at our own heart. Does the person who was the target of your words or deed become better off by knowing that you now have beaten yourself up at least as much as you did them? Of course not.

However, when we encounter regret and transform it into a force for change, we benefit not only ourselves, but everyone else in the world. We transform the suffering into joy. There is real suffering when we are not our best selves and we are able to recognize it. By using hindsight, we can see where our actions or words were not consistent with our best self. This knowledge is more powerful than all the learning in the world.

We can take this knowledge and use it as a guide for how to better connect with our best self. We can begin to understand how fear, anger, jealousy, and a host of other emotions, in their extreme, can divorce us from our true selves. When we understand why we acted or spoke in that manner, we can resolve never to do so again, when faced with a similar circumstance. Not only are we able to do better in that given situation the next time, but we begin to understand how we react when faced with anger, fear, jealousy, etc. In this understanding lies the path to living a life without regret. Instead, we live a life where we are constantly aspiring to be our best selves.

Be Here Now

To be present, in this moment, ought to be one of the simplest states of being for humans. Think about that for a second. Then think about how difficult it is for you, or anyone, to actually achieve. We live in a world of distractions, to be sure. Yet, what really keeps us from being present is ourselves.

Why is being present important? Imagine a person driving a car, while texting. Is that person present? Is she able to attend to the task of driving? Maybe not, and she may end up in an accident. Or, a more benign example, imagine sitting outside on a beautiful spring evening with the sun setting, bursting with oranges and purples and reds. But you’re busy worrying about something that happened at work earlier in the day. Are you present enough to not only see the sunset, but to enjoy its beauty?

The difficulty we have with being present can bring about any number of consequences, some of which may be life threatening, while others just diminish the quality of our lives.

So why are we so bad at being present? Is it part of the human condition? My work with young children leads me to believe that we are born with an amazing capacity to be present in each and every moment. As we age, we learn, through our socialization, that thinking is really where it’s at. We tell our children, adolescents and ourselves that we are incredible thinking machines, capable of great mental feats that fuel society’s progress.

Some of that is undeniably true. We ARE amazing creatures, with big, beautiful brains. But we live most of our post-latency years from the neck up. We spend more time in our heads than any place else. And it has disastrous consequences, for the individual and for society.

Living in the mind, we miss out on the little joys that life brings us each and every day. We also create unnecessary stress, which leads to numerous health consequences- physical as well as mental. Our brains are trained to look for problems and for ways to solve them. We are so good at this task that we see or invent problems that do not actually exist anyplace other than in our minds.

And, we are so conditioned to this mind/thought-centric world that to break free and bring ourselves back to the moment is such a difficult task. Think about this for a minute- we have seminars, books and courses on how to be present. We have become so divorced from our true selves that we have to learn a skill that we are, I believe, born with.

If you doubt this, spend an hour with a child under the age of seven. Every moment is a new one to a child. What just happened is in as distant a past as the juice box they had last year. It is this capacity to be present, in this precise moment, that makes children so resilient and happy. The smile you just gave that five year old made their moment. And they will show you how much joy they have, in that moment.

Children laugh and smile at the smallest things not because they are not developed enough to know how little value the balloon has. They laugh and smile because they know the precise value of that balloon to them, in that moment. Children do not yet overlook the world around them. They only begin to ignore the balloon as society tells them it’s a kid’s toy, not worthy of their attention.

What we tell ourselves, as adults, about which things are worth our attention and/or time only serves to further alienate us from the thousands of moments of joy that are there, in our lives every day. Our inability to be truly present in each moment robs us of happiness and connection. It separates us from a true life, one in which we can still marvel at the moon or smile at the stars.

But we can change that. We can be present in this moment and each moment thereafter. We can live a life filled with joy, wonder and connection. All we have to do is be here, now, and not wherever our brain wants to take us.

BE. HERE. NOW. 

The Glass is Always Full…

We pay too much attention to that which we can see and not enough to that we cannot.

I posted that on Facebook last night, and received some likes. But I want to further explore the meaning I take from this saying.

Some read this as an admonition to stop paying attention to looks and start paying attention to personality. Others see it as a call to optimism or even others as a statement about perceptive abilities. They are all correct, as their truth is as valid as mine or yours.

What I mean to convey with this message, though, is different, and may take a piece from each of the other interpretations. For me, the message is that the things we are unable to see matter more than those we can see with our eyes. The glass, and everything else, is always full whether it be with water or air or tissue paper. There are so many things that can fill a glass, yet we focus solely on water. Why?

What if someone presented you with a glass stuffed with tissue paper and asked you whether or not the glass was full? If you are like many/most people, your initial response would be one of confusion. You may think the question is absurd, or that the questioner is playing a mind game with you.

How do we see love, passion, empathy, kindness or other personality traits? They are often the air in the glass. Sometimes we “see” these qualities in the actions of people, thus transforming them into the tissue paper.

As a society, we are focused on the water, the outward appearance, the tangibles. We determine the goodness or badness of a person based upon the easily viewable. How often do we pause for a moment and really think about who a person is?

It is not always easy, to be sure. There is no simple way to determine if someone is good or bad, like you or unlike you. In order to see the unseeable, we must look, and listen, with our hearts. If kindness resides in our hearts, we will see it, hear it and feel it in others.

This all takes time and our society is so fast paced that we have developed an entire toolbox of techniques to make quick decisions about others. Our world is beset with animosity and tribalism. Sure, those two demons have always existed, but our brains have evolved a great deal since then.

It is up to us whether we will use these advanced cognitive abilities to expand our circle or to make snap judgments that further isolate us from one another.