My Mission Statement

Last March, I posted an entry entitled “Really: Who Are You?” – an essay where I attempted to outline, as clearly as I could, some views on the meaning of my existence. Since that time, it’s been a summer of continuing reflection as I significantly changed most of my vacation plans in order to address health issues and to confront, once again, the matter of my mortality.

As I was browsing some of my older computer files yesterday, I came across a document composed sometime in 2004. [That was the year I found myself struggling to redefine my identity after being involuntarily displaced from long-term employment (with the Oregon University System) and commenced a process of job-search (and high stress) that ultimately lasted three and a half years.] I entitled that 2004 file “Personal Mission Statement” – which I restate here:

The multiple purposes of my lifetime on this planet are to:

• Nurture my intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual selves

• Have deep and meaningful relationships

• Experience life to the fullest and live until I die

• Show up, be present, and tell the truth

• Be involved, yet free of attachment, and, above all things

• Be true to myself.

Amazingly, I still stand by these statements of purpose.

This is my life.

Man plans, God laughs

I have a European friend who, like me, at this moment, is on vacation. And, somewhat parallel to my experience, it appears that her time “on holiday” is not exactly all red roses and vanilla ice cream. (Whatever that might mean...I just made that up.) I know of this through her tweets...as I listen to her voice (on Twitter) speak of tears and pain.

Now, my vacation does not feel as viscerally low as hers sounds. However, I did schedule my vacation time this summer to relax, re-charge, and re-energize. And it’s not turning out that way at all.

Life: how cunning and clever you are. Mentsch tracht, Gott lacht. (Man plans, God laughs.)

My first week of vacation was scheduled for the week of June 22, and I had plans to re-visit Santa Fe and take lots of photos. Well, you know what happened then...June 22 was the day I ended up scheduling my prostate biopsy. The entire week was devoted to that procedure and my recovery. No break there.

I tried to be philosophical and say, “well, I’ve always got the time away in Oregon and two days of the Oregon Country Fair!” This weekend was supposed to be another photo-filled few days for me in my old stomping grounds, at one of my favorite events in the universe.

At the time of my biopsy, it didn’t much occur to me that I’d still be recovering this far down the line (it’ll be three weeks tomorrow from the day of the procedure). But, recovering, still, I am.

Because of the rather unpleasant symptoms associated with this bumpy recovery process, I’ve been advised to limit my physical activity. And, since my visits to the Country Fair typically involve hours of walking with heavy camera equipment, I decided against attending at all.

Bummer.

Not that my time in Oregon has been a total waste. Actually, quite the contrary. I’ve had time to visit with a few of my favorite people in the world, which has been quite delightful.

However, here’s what I recognize: I’m not rested. I’m not relaxed. I’m not re-charging. And, I’m mildly depressed. My body issues have tended to dominate both vacation periods, necessitating a change in my photography plans (my preferred time-off, relaxation activity).

I feel out-of-control and cheated. You know, the “life is not fair” kinda thing.

One of These Days

The line, that pesky line, between “healthy” and “unhealthy” is amazingly thin. One minute, there you are...feeling fine and as if the world is mostly working. The next, a complete reversal of fortune strikes and you’re hanging on for dear life.

I was reminded of this again this week when, on Thursday night, in the middle of the night, about 2:00 a.m., I awoke with a blazing attack of sciatica. Of the constellation of body aches and pains I typically deal with, this is not one of them. So the whole episode was a very big surprise.

I eased out of bed in a pain-induced haze to try and figure what was going on, and practically fell flat on my face – as the left leg and hip would not tolerate any weight at all (without a pain level high enough to bring me close to unconsciousness). I may have screamed, I can’t actually remember. Surely inside my head I was screaming: what the fuck is going on here?!??

I had to go to the bathroom, so I gingerly, ever-so-slowly-and-agonizingly, made my way there to do my business. And, then back to bed. There wasn’t even a hint of this problem during the day or evening on Thursday. Yet, here I was...thinking about an emergency-room visit (not likely: I couldn’t possibly drive), or cortisone shots, or back surgery. Anything to rid me of this curse.

The next time I had to get up, I made my way to the computer and sent an email to my Feldenkrais practitioner to see if she had time to see me on Friday. I knew I wasn’t going to be making it into work in this kind of condition.

Before 7:00 a.m., she had replied, saying that I could come in at 4:00 p.m.. I took the day off, improving enough during the day so that I could actually make the drive to her office. And, as I sit here in Starbucks on Sunday afternoon writing this, I feel mostly “normal” again. Although during the night Friday night, and then again last night, the mere act of lying down in bed aggravated the condition. I’m fairly sleep-deprived at this point, but mostly pain-free.

But, I’m still thinking about that line and how quickly I’d slipped over it.

And, I’m pondering the chronic-pain-filled life of Amy Silverstein. I just this week finished reading her memoir entitled Sick Girl. In this excellent work of autobiography, Silverstein relates the story of her heart-disease diagnosis at age 24 that led, very swiftly, to a heart transplant. This is an eye-opening tale of what the life of a transplant patient is like after the operation. It’s truly not pretty, what with the twice-daily doses of obnoxious medicine that’s needed to fight organ rejection as well as the constant, unrelenting feeling of having something foreign in your body: and of never feeling good, right or normal again. Surprisingly, she’s survived this way for over twenty years now (despite being told that the heart would likely last ten).

At one point, Silverstein makes the observation that, sooner or later, we all face death and dying, and, for many, there’s the possibility of long-term illness along the way. She suggests that the longer we can live without having to face a life-threatening disease, the luckier we are.

And she’s probably right.

For my part, through all my issues with chronic pain, during the past few years especially, I have been pretty lucky. Nothing I’ve had has been essentially life threatening. And I’ve been incredibly successful in healing myself enough to function, these days, more-or-less, normally.

Nobody gets out alive, though. Nobody. And my anxiety level is raised lately with the prospect that I’ll be faced with a prostate biopsy in a couple of months. But, in the aftermath of a rather brief bout with sciatica, and knowing the first-hand experience of a heart-transplant patient, I feel fortunate. We’ll see how long my luck holds out, however. When is it going to be my time?

One of these days.

Soundtrack Suggestion

Well that’ll be the day when you say goodbye
Yeah, yes that’ll be the day when you make me cry 
You say you’re gonna leave me, you know it’s a lie 
’Cause that'll be the day when I die.

(“That’ll Be The Day” – Buddy Holly)

Really: Who Are You?

Introduction

I have a new friend who lives far, far away. She is so distant, in fact, that it’s entirely possible we may never meet in person. She knows me through Twitter, this blog, frequent emails, and the occasional IM session. She has a lot of information about me available to her, of course, as I’ve laid out the good, bad, and ugly details of my life on the internet for three and a half years now. Reportedly, she’s read a lot of this material; and I know she reads my long and intimate emails as carefully as I read hers.

I feel as if I’ve recently been significantly challenged by her, though. It’s as if she’s digested everything about me, including the two “This I Believe” essays (“On Being Present” and “Listening and Leadership”) and is saying to me, “yeah, yeah, yeah, Jim ... I know that’s what you believe.” And that she’s read the other stories, rants & raves – ridden the emotional waves – and is still waiting on me for more: “yeah, yeah, yeah, Jim ... I know that’s what’s happened to you.”

And, now, she’s asking me, “tell me more, Jim ... what do you really believe? Who are you, really?”

And, so, this essay is the result of the attempt to organize a few thoughts along those lines. I’m not sure that what you’ll find here are actually answers, though ... you’ll have to decide that for yourself. For even after you read this, in all probability you’ll still be left wondering ...

By providing this analysis of “who I am,” of course, I’m anticipating that the portrait I paint is consistent with the information you’ve already seen ... and, in fact, that an inductive analysis of the mass of qualitative data provided in these pages would lead to the broad themes I outline below. Please! ... do not think, however, that this is a “scientific approach” to talking about my life’s mission; it decidedly is not. In fact, what I’m doing here is reaching down into the bowels of my being and attempting to convey some ideas about what I believe about life, and how I go about living this life.

I’ve had a little bit of practice writing in this area. When I began studies for my counseling master’s degree, one of the essays I was required to produce was entitled “The Nature of People.” This was an assignment that required all of the newbie aspiring counselors to outline, as explicitly as we could, how we believed people “worked” (i.e., if you’re going to help people with their problems, you must have some underlying philosophy about their basic “nature”). I toiled and toiled away on my assignment for a few weeks, then had one of the doctoral students critique my draft.

“Well, Jim, this looks like a good start,” he said. (As, head down, I returned to the typewriter.)

So, perhaps, what I’ve outlined for you here is merely another good start. Let’s see, shall we? Of course, I’m aware of the risks of self-disclosure on this level: you may end up thinking that my entire belief system is wholly superficial, no more profound than “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” (I confess: I offer no new ideas here.) Even more on point, though, might be the observation that everything I have ever needed to know about living, life, and the spiritual path, just might have been gleaned from an old bootlegged Ram Dass audiotape (“The Seasons of Our Lives,” from the late 1970s) – a recording that I’ve listened to over and over again throughout the years. [Much of that material is also to be found in Dass’ book Grist for the Mill (Unity Press, 1977).] Then, you’ll discover below that I’ve pulled some quotes from Angles Arrien’s Four-Fold Way: a worldview that has been influential in my thinking about what a life’s work entails.

Therefore: here I go with some ideas about “who I am” by examining “why am I here?” For the purposes of this essay, I’m going to treat the questions as equivalent; that is, by examining why I am here, I’m suggesting that this is who I am. I’ll let the philosopher in you, the reader, argue (or not) with that premise. It will be obvious that I’m not speaking from any “religious” orientation ... in fact, this a highly eclectic spiritual (and/or philosophical) model I espouse. And, of course, since this is an essay for a blog, the points I outline here are mostly short and to the point. (Who likes book-length blog entries, anyway?!)

Why Am I Here?

I believe that we humans are spiritual beings who take form on this earth for a purpose: that we are incarnated and take on bodies to “do our work.” And that everyone’s work is different. I am certain of my purpose, and simply put:

I am here to learn and grow.

Of course, you may ask, isn’t everyone on earth here to learn and grow? In my opinion, it’s just a matter of where those items fall among life’s priorities from person to person. For me, the emphasis on “learning and growing” should be readily apparent, for if you know anything about me, you realize that I’ve been in school a lot of my life and collected four college degrees along the way. You might say I have an obsession, or lust, for learning, in all its forms: from classrooms, books, life experiences, career changes, relationships, emotional risk-taking, physical pain, and heartbreak & depression (to name a few) ... I take my learning wherever I can find it. My learning is not only for the purpose of intellectual development, but for the other dimensions of my life as well: growth in the domains of the physical, emotional and spiritual.

Now, to be slightly more specific, I briefly outline below some of the areas of learning that I think about all the time, and tend to be near the top of my consciousness-level as I go about my daily routines.

I am here to learn how to be present, open my heart, and offer my love.

I have written here previously about my belief in the importance of “being present.” It is a primary mission for me to live in the present: to be aware of myself and my surroundings, and, at all times, strive to know what I am thinking and feeling. Concurrently, it is my goal to tune in and be there for others on the most basic of levels: one soul to another. I open my heart, accept others as they are, and aim to love them unconditionally.

Ram Dass implores us thusly: “I say to you very simply, and very directly, what happens to another human being in your presence is a function of who you are, not what you know. And who you are is everything that you’ve every done and all the evolution that has occurred thus far. Your being is right on the line every time you meet another human being. And what they get from you through all the words of love or kindness or giving is very simply a function of your own level of evolution ... What we do for each other is we create a space ... that allows each other to do what we need to do ... we each have our own work to do in this incarnation.”

My beliefs and Dass’ words appear to be consistent with Angeles Arrien’s Way of the Warrior or Leader. This is described as “showing up, or choosing to be present. Being present allows ... access to the human resources of power, presence, and communication ... the way of the Leader [is expressed] through appropriate action, good timing, and clear communication.”

I am here to learn to live honestly, openly, authentically, and with integrity. I am here to learn how to lead, and more importantly, to provide a model for moral leadership.

I am not here to keep secrets about who I am. I am here to be open and let the world in: to tell you what’s going on with me, honestly, and in the moment. It is critical for me to live consistently within the framework of my dearly-held and inner-most beliefs and values (which is what I am trying to express here). I do not compromise my principles for the sake of expediency or personal gain. When I’m in a leadership role, which is my typical situation, it’s with a high sense of moral responsibility and obligation: to provide the most evolved model of leadership of which I am capable.

Arrien’s Way of the Visionary or Creative Problem Solver suggests that we aim “to tell the truth without blame or judgment. Truthfulness, authenticity, and integrity are keys to developing ... vision and intuition ... expressing the way of the Visionary through personal creativity, goals, plans, and the ability to bring life dreams and visions into the world.”

I am here to learn how to heal myself and others. I am here to learn how to be the best possible version of myself.

I have lived a huge portion of this lifetime learning and living with an inadequate model for giving and receiving love. And I’ve learned other dysfunctional ways of being that have led to profound experiences of physical and psychic pain. It’s my mission in this lifetime to learn about these unhealthy paths, to overcome them, and learn about living “right” and “healthy.” I believe it to be my obligation to teach others about my struggles and the “solutions” I’ve discovered. I know that when I am living in pain, I am not displaying the best possible version of myself. I am here to learn how to live with a minimum of pain and to share that person, my best possible self, with the universe.

Ram Dass reminds us: “And the injunction given to the physician ‘heal thyself,’ is right at the mark because we are here to talk about our own work on ourselves, because that is our gift to each other and it’s also what we’re doing here on earth in the first place.”

Arrien’s Way of the Healer or Caretaker is to “pay attention to what has heart and meaning. Paying attention opens ... to the human resources of love, gratitude, acknowledgment, and validation ... [and] the way of the Healer is expressed through ... attitudes and actions that maintain personal health and support the welfare of our environment.”

I am here to learn how to let go.

I have had a tendency toward over-control in my life: believing and acting as if I could actually change another person, determine the outcome of a situation, and/or just generally “be in charge.” I am still learning, often painfully, to accept that there is really nothing I am able to control: not another person, not their perception of or feelings about me, not any situation, nor life crisis. Nothing. Learning to invest myself completely in another person or in a situation, and then letting go of outcome, is one of the most significant of my life’s lessons; it’s perhaps the one I’ve struggled with the most. My tendency toward perfectionism, and my desire for “justice” and “rightness,” have led me down a path where it’s been difficult for me to let go of outcome. I am here to learn to be not perfect, and to let go.

Ram Dass advises: “The implication of “perfect,” if you want to deal with the concept of God ... if I say ... ‘God, what are you doing, why are you screwing up?’ ... I, who have this little teeny limited vision, mainly controlled by my rational mind, which is a little subsystem of a little subsystem, it isn’t even a very interesting way of knowing the universe, I sit there like this little ant on an elephant and say to him ‘you really blew it that time.’ I say ‘you really blew it that time’ – you know where I say that from? – I’m saying it from my own fear of death ... If I’m attached to you being other than the way you are now, I’m saying to God, ‘if I had made him, I would have made him different than he is now,’ and I [then I hear] my guru saying ‘don’t you see that it’s all perfect?’”

And Angeles describes that the Way of the Teacher or Counselor is to “be open to outcome, not attached to outcome. Openness and non-attachment help ... recover the human resources of wisdom and objectivity. The way of the Teacher is expressed through ... constructive communication ....”

Summary & Conclusion

So, to summarize, I know that I am here to learn to: be present, open my heart, live authentically, model integrity and moral leadership, heal myself, let go, and to love. It’s my way of approaching the universe, a lifetime’s worth of busy-ness. These are the lessons I have to learn, the tasks I need to perform. It’s the “who I am.”

But is this all that I am? All that I do, all that I have to learn? Well, no, but it’s what comes to mind right now. (And it’s a start.) I’m tempted to add some additional thoughts about how the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism play into my philosophy of life, and their relationship to the learning areas described above ... but this monologue has gone on long enough. And I have touched on the Four Noble Truths in at least one previous discussion (see “Freedom and Release,” for example, from January, 2006).

In conclusion, I am compelled to observe that I feel extremely unfinished as a human. There’s so much to learn, so little time. For, as Jimmy Buffett suggests “... still twenty four hours maybe sixty good years, it’s not that long a stay.”

Soundtrack Suggestion

Well, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?) 
I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?) 
Tell me, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?) 
’Cause I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)

(“Who Are You” – The Who)

On Being Present

Inspired by NPR’s This I Believe series...

I’ve always prided myself on my openness, my honesty, and my emotional availability. Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve frequently received favorable comments regarding these qualities. This despite the fact that I’m a guy and I know lots of men (maybe most) who have absolutely no clue what the term “emotional availability” might mean. Or how to invoke it.

These particular traits are consistent with the guiding philosophy of my life, namely: I believe in being present. In expressing this belief, I’m talking about something a lot deeper than Woody Allen’s quip of “showing up is 80 percent of life.” No: I intend something decidedly more profound — of much greater difficulty level — than simply being physically located in a particular place at a particular time.

In truth, I believe that being present is the secret of life: that without the ability to be present, I’d really be missing out on what the total human experience has to offer. Being present takes energy, though, so it’s likely the reason that most people avoid it, don’t practice it, and just generally find some other way to go about their business.

The way I see it, being present is manifested both in my relationship to self and my relationship to others.

In my relationship to self, being present means that I’m aware in the moment. I’m tuned in to my emotions. I know that I’m breathing in and out. I have a keen sense of my surroundings. I sense all that’s going on around me and what kind of meaning I’m making of these events: realizing that my experience is not necessarily “reality.” Being present means that I’ve left all previous moments behind...and that I’m not wasting energy anticipating future ones. It’s living in the here and now. It’s making the most of the time I have been given. It’s a paradigm that guides me to take advantage of every single instant of this preciousness called life.

I also believe, however, that the highest level of being present takes the form of being available for someone else. Being present for another may take the form of simply silently sitting. It surely involves total focus and really listening when they speak. It means not interrupting. It’s immediacy: it means seeking deep understanding of the other person’s experience in the moment. It’s being curious about them and setting aside all judgments. It’s eye contact and empathy and softness. And maybe the occasional touch. It means being available for another person to share themselves. Totally. With complete safety. In my presence.

Being present is not “the truth,” though I believe it is “the way.” I believe that being present, for yourself or another, is the greatest gift you can give. Or receive.

Soundtrack Suggestion

Mornings in April 
Sharing our secrets 
We’d walk until the morning was gone. 
We were like children 
Laughing for hours 
The joy you gave me lives on and on. 
’Cause I know you by heart.

(“I Know You By Heart” – Eva Cassidy)