What Does Happiness Sound Like?

For the past 11 weeks I have been working through the new book by Julia Cameron, "It's Never Too Late to Begin Again: Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Midlife and Beyond." Many of you may remember her phenomenal best seller of 25 years ago, The Artist's Way, which helped millions of us find our creativity and give it a voice. Now she is focusing on folks who may have put off birthing their creativity until the kids were grown and gone, and their work life became their retired life, or for those who never believed they were creative to begin with.

As she did before in The Artist's Way, Cameron arms us with the tools we need to find our way on this journey, namely her ever famous Morning Pages and Artist Dates to which she had added walks and, now, Memoir. In Memoir, she asks us to break our lives down into smaller spans of years and to write about them. Just so we do not become overwhelmed at the prospect, she guides us with a series of questions that we are to write the answers to, and then feel free to elaborate on them and see where they take us. The questions ask us things like: Where did you live at this time? Who were the significant relationships during this time? What major changes occurred at this time?" However, being the brilliant teacher that she is, she asks us to use all of our senses: "What is one smell you remember from this time? One Taste?" For me, those were easy. Growing up in an Italian family, smell and taste had to do with food, and the feelings and memories I associated with them. In our home, food was a symbol of love. I can remember the smell and taste of my Mother's spaghetti sauce bubbling on the stove on Sundays, or the aroma of chicken soup on a cold, rainy day. Then Cameron threw a new ingredient into the recipe ... what is one sound you remember from this period!

Sound? I grew up in New York City. We didn't have "a" sound, we had a cacophony of sounds, a symphony of cars, buses, horns, sirens, people. trains, and the bells of the Good Humor Man. So I found it difficult to single out one sound that reminded me of what I had thought of as home, or even happiness. It wasn't until I got to that part of the Memoir where I moved away from the city and out into rural America that I had no problem answering the question. In fact, two answers sprang immediately to mind: the sound of crows, and the sound of silence.

Crows. There is no problem identifying the sounds of crows. They make their presence known. My sister once studied with a Native American Medicine woman who told us, whenever a crow came into our presence, to ask it: "Brother Crow, what do you know?" The first morning that I awoke to the sounds of cawing over the corn fields surrounding my home, I was filled with a feeling of warmth, of belonging, of happiness. I felt like I was truly home. I felt it in the roots of my being and the song my heart was playing. I felt connected to the crows, the corn fields, and, yes, even the smell of the cows on the hillside. I felt connected to it all. It sounded like happiness.

Now, you may well ask, what exactly is the sound of silence? Well, Simon and Garfunkel had it right all those years ago. Silence is our old friend. Silence calls to our very core to come out and play. Silence opens the doors of perception. It is where inspiration and creativity live. There are moments here in the country when the birds have finished their morning travels, the little critters have gone under cover until dusk, and the farm equipment has stopped for the day, and there is a silence so profound that it wraps itself around the heart and introduces itself to us: "Hello, there you are!" Perhaps that is why I love meditation so much. If prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening for the answer, and that can only be found in the stillness and silence within. I take my hat off to the folks still living in the Big Apple who have found a way to meditate amidst the sounds of the city. Here among the crows, the cows and the critters, the trees and I have found that place of stillness inside that anchors us.

The corn is just starting to show itself in the field across from my writing window. Soon the crows, who have been busy raiding everyone's gardens, will be paying me daily visits. I will listen, as I was instructed to do by the medicine woman, to see what the crows have to tell me. It will, undoubtedly have to do with coming home. While I wait for their arrival, I will tune in to the silence and listen for the guidance I need for the day. It never fails to lead me where I need to go.

And so it is.

Choosing Joy

Look at that face! If that's not the picture of joy, I don't know what is. This face says, "I have a full belly, a dry bottom, and my Mommy is singing a happy song to me. Life is good."

When we're babies, joy is our natural starting place. We don't look for joy outside of ourselves. We know joy to be a state in which we feel happy, safe, and cared for. We look at the world, not as something to seek approval from, but as a marvelous adventure, a land of magic and exploration, and with each new discovery, we become even more joyful. In this context, it's all about us.

Then we grow up. and we make our joy dependent on people and things outside of ourselves. We seek approval and when we don't get it, we blame others because they have taken our joy away. I am reminded of a story that the late Dr. Wayne Dyer always used to tell. He said that when we were in our mom's tummy, we trusted in our nature to come out with all of our fingers and all of our toes. Then we came forth into the world and society said, "Great job, God, perfect, couldn't be better ... we'll take over from here." Therein lies the end of our trusting in our own nature which is love and joy. Our culture bombards us with messages that tell us if we want to be happy, we have to seek it outside of ourselves. In baby language, we're hungry, we're wet, and nobody is singing us a happy song!

We need to move back to that place of self direction where we choose joy for ourselves, not because someone else says we deserved it, but because we deserve it regardless of anyone or anything outside of ourselves. Joy is our fallback position. Joy is our birthright. Joy is our choice. Even if it means treating ourselves with the same radical self-care that we would shower on a baby. After all, as one very smart man once said, "Who loves you, baby?"

And so it is.  

Keeping It Simple

My 9 year old granddaughter came to spend the weekend with me on Friday. On Saturday she helped me with some garden work and for all that she is skinny as a toothpick, she can haul huge bags of potting soil with the best of the boys. On Sunday she helped me in the kitchen to prepare some salads and desserts for Monday when her Mom and the rest of the family would be coming up for a July 4th cookout.

I have to say she is becoming quite the little cook and even knows how to marinate and bake Grandma's tofu. As I was chopping up celery and onions for the macaroni salad, she asked why I just didn't use the slicer on the food processor instead of doing it by hand. I told her that even though using the food processor would be faster, I actually enjoyed chopping up the vegetables by hand. Sometimes there is a sweet nobility in keeping things simple.

Every time I chop up garlic for my spaghetti sauce, I feel my mother standing at the kitchen counter chopping and talking to me. I can remember coming home from school and doing my homework at the kitchen table while she chopped and stirred, and got dinner started. That's how I learned to cook, from watching her work while I sat there with my spelling words and my multiplication tables. The first time I got to do the chopping myself, under her very watchful eyes, I felt as if I had been inaugurated into a very special sorority that went back to all of my female ancestors. The simple act of cutting, chopping, slicing and stirring went back to the beginning of time. It connected me with all the women who came before me.

I feel that same way about gardening. Sure, I could spend a fortune on power trimmers and all kinds of gardening contraptions, but there is something so noble about my hands into the dirt and working up a good, honest sweat. Not only does it connect me to generations of folks who worked the land and grew their food (and still do), but it beats the cost of a membership to a gym and you don't need special workout clothes ... a pair of old pants, a t-shirt and some good muddy boots will do! Sometimes when digging out a new hole to plant something, I wonder how far down I would have to go to touch the soil of  the first settlers in these parts, and I hope their spirits know that there are those of us who still keep the traditions alive.

After we were done with our gardening the other day, my granddaughter watched me as I sat with my mending pile and took care of a few rips and open seams. "Why don't you just buy new pants or a new shirt instead of trying to fix the old ones?" she asked. I think about this child, and all children, growing up in such a throw-away society, of people as well as clothes, and I am glad I am still here to answer that question. I tell her that these pants are my favorite yoga pants and that even though they have some tears in them, a little thread and patience will make them usable again. I can still do a Downward Dog in mended pants. As for the shirt, well, they have a picture of wolves on the front and she knows how much Grandma loves wolves. She asks me if I will teach her how to do this miraculous thing with a needle and thread so she can sew her dolls' clothes. I make a mental note to pick up a smaller thimble at the store.

Keeping it simple for me is keeping the lessons and traditions going from one generation to another. I don't need all the bells and whistles. I just need a good chopping knife, some needles and thread, and the memory of my Mom sitting in her favorite chair with her darning egg mending yet another pair of my Dad's socks and wondering how he managed to put so many holes in them. Simple is good. Simple works. Simple is home.

And so it is.

To Be, Or Not To Be

Last Tuesday, June 21^st, was World Yoga Day as voted on in a resolution by the United Nations. Programs, classes and interviews with the world’s leading teachers and inspirational leaders were broadcast online all day and well into the night due to the time differences. I spent the day awash in the beauty of the teachings, the fluidity of the movements, and the yearning in my heart that the music and chanting uncovered. One teacher in particular seemed to reach out to me across the air waves and hold me in his words and his eyes. His name was Mooji. I was so taken with him that I looked up his website and found that he had dozens and dozens of free video sessions, or “satsangs” as they are called. In one of them, he was talking to a young man who was trying to live his life spontaneously instead of always having to live by a plan. Mooji turned to his students and, looking out at them, invited them to throw away the life they planned and learn to “just be.”

The next day I took some time to ponder on that and made it the focus of my morning meditation. At first my mind balked at such a thing. Sure, it was okay to do that once in a while, or even to make some time each day to just be as I was doing at that moment with my meditation practice, but to live your whole life that way? It seemed irresponsible to me at first. So I sat with it a while longer. Opening my eyes I looked out into the garden and sat in perfect stillness, with no noise except that of the birds and the farm trucks that passed on the road. For almost an hour, I sat … and sat … and sat. I looked at a patch of daises that had popped up out of nowhere this year and were waving their faces in the morning breeze. Those daises, I thought, have no plan. They do what they need to do to survive, like reaching for the sun, and taking in water and nutrients from the soil, but they do not plan to live, they just live. I looked at the purple spires thrusting up from the Lamb’s Ear plants, and the hummingbird that was going from one to the other getting what it needed. It had no plan for the day. It didn’t say, “Well, I’ll go visit the Lamb’s Ear this morning, and then I’ll go over to the farmhouse across the street after lunch and see what the lady put in the feeder.” No, he simply went about his business being a hummingbird. Sure, he had a job to do which was to feed and protect himself, just as we all do, but he didn’t agonize or obsess over it. He was just “being” a hummingbird.

As I look back over my life, I am amazed at how I managed to arrive at this ripe old age intact and sane. How many years I wasted as I drove myself to distraction with planning my life. It is certainly okay to have dreams and goals, but if we don’t allow ourselves the space to just be who we are, and be okay with it, we cut ourselves off from our real lives. In the end, as Mooji told us that day, we don’t really need anything to be happy, but we do need something to be sad. It takes no energy to be the Self, but a lot of energy to be a person. I’d rather be a happy self than a sad person.

I still get up every morning now and do my morning prayers, my chair yoga and my meditations. I still make the bed, wash the dishes, sweep the kitchen floor and attend to my daily responsibilities. I still show up at my keyboard or journal and write. The difference is that I don’t do any of it according to any plan or timetable. I do it as it comes. I don’t fret over it or complain about it. I am just “being.” And when the time comes for me to sit, I give myself over to the Self that witnesses all, sees all, and needs nothing. Not a bad way to live, don’t you think?

And so it is.

P.S. For those of you who read my post about Doris the Morning Dove, I have an update: she's found a boyfriend! All of that lonely cooing and calling paid off in the form of a stout-looking guy who follows her everywhere. Let this be a lesson to all of the ladies: when you send out love, love flies back to you!

The Right Stuff

When I was a little girl, these were my heroes - The Mercury 7 Astronauts! You could have your cowboys, movie stars and superheroes. I could not imagine anything braver than going out into space, the great unknown, to see the stars up close and look for life on other planets. That was the kind of stuff that heroes did. Little wonder that some years later, the move, "The Right Stuff" became one of my favorites. However, none of these brave men were my very first hero. My very first hero was my Dad.

My dad was not very big in statue. He claimed to be 5'9", but I don't think he ever made it past 5'6". He was the youngest of three brothers with one sister who was the actual baby of this Italian family back in Brooklyn, New York. My grandfather, his dad, died in a work related accident when my father was only 11. Born in 1903, those were the days before workers' comp or social security so there were no death benefits. It was also before child labor laws and mandatory school ages were imposed. So at the age of 11 my dad left school to get a job along with his brothers to help support the family. He kept up his math and reading skills on his own and taught himself how to be an auto mechanic by apprenticing with someone. By the time he was an adult, he had taught himself enough to open his own service station which he kept up and running for over 40 years, and which supported his wife and children until he retired.

We were a family of 3 girls, so I, being the middle child and, therefore, neither the oldest nor the baby,  became the son he never had. He was always patient with my endless questions as I watched him work on cars, or fix things around the house. He would explain the different parts under the hood, what they did, and what they were supposed to sound like when they were working well. If I didn't understand something, he would draw me a picture to show me how it worked. He let me handle the tools and he never talked down to me because I was a girl. He treated me as a person in my own right. I repaid his kindness by being the one who sat with him on Sundays to watch his westerns and war movies with him, even though he had seen most of them a dozen times and usually fell asleep half way through them. Hey, you can never get too much John Wayne!

Even though he worked long hours and did not have a great deal of time to spend with us, he always asked how we were doing in school, what we were up to, and how our friends were. He always "showed up" to be a dad, even if it wasn't as often as I would have liked. He would be the peace keeper in disputes between myself and my mom, or myself and my older sister who was 2 years older than I (my younger sister came along when I was 8 and I became her self-appointed second mother). He was always calm in an emergency, always looked for the logical solution to a problem, and always told us that no problem lasted forever if we just let it go.

We lost my dad in 1991, right before his 88th birthday. Before the dementia and Alzheimer's claimed his memory and personality, he gave my mom a very special Christmas present, a Fisher-Price little boy doll named My Buddy. He told my mom that it was the son he was never able to give her. When my mom died 10 years later, Buddy came to live with me and has the place of honor on my bed - my little brother!

The first heroes in our lives should be our dads, and I salute all those men who "show up" and take on that responsibility. I know it isn't easy to raise kids in these days of terrorists and wars, and hate-filled politics. Our dads need to be the ones who let us know in no uncertain terms that he has our back and that we are safe. So for all of those dads out there who have The Right Stuff, I say Happy Father's Day. May you raise sons that follow in your footsteps, and daughters who marry a guy just like their dad.

And so it is.

Always Stay Humble and Kind

"Hold the door, say please, say thank you.

Don't steal, don't cheat and don't lie.

I know you have mountains to climb,

but always stay humble and kind."

Time McGraw

The first time I heard this song, I was so struck by the words and the intentions. Sometimes a song comes along that just stops you in your tracks and makes you listen. Like the song "Happy" that went on to become such a phenomenon, "Humble and Kind," by country superstar Tim McGraw calls to us to find the best in ourselves, and remember that love, kindness and compassion should be a way of life, not something out of the ordinary. Kindness breeds happiness, for the giver as well as the recipient.

I can remember a time when holding doors, saying please and thank you, addressing people as Mr. Miss, Mrs. and Sir (and yes, even Ms) was the norm. Saying excuse me, pardon me, and the big one, I'm sorry, came as easily as breathing. Where did that all do? When did we decide as a nation that kindness, compassion and even common civility was not longer needed? Have we been so hypnotized and addicted by technology that every day, decent, human interaction has been marginalized to the back row?

Call me old fashioned, but I still believe that peace in the world begins with peace in the home and the community, and all of it begins with kindness, compassion and civility. I even say "excuse me" when trying to get past a fur baby blocking my path in my apartment, or disturbing them when I need to turn on the vacuum cleaner (they hate that). I understand that everything and everyone responds to kindness. Yes, I am one of those people who talk to their plants, the neighborhood animals both wild and domestic, and perfect strangers. I am that person who will smile at someone walking down the street, or at the girl behind the counter at Dunkin' Donuts, or to the checkout lady at WalMart.  Mine could be the only smile they get that day, or the only kind words they hear. I like to think that I am doing my part for the healing of the energy on Mother Earth and all of her children. It doesn't cost you a cent to be kind, but the return on your investment is beyond measure.

We all have problems. We all have "mountains to climb." Doesn't the climb get a little easier, though, when people are kind to us? I know I see things much more clearly and with a much more positive perspective when I have been the recipient of unsolicited kindness. I'm not talking about anything huge. I'm talking about the simple things like having someone hold the door, letting me get ahead of them in line if I only have one item, serving me in a restaurant with a big smile of welcome. When you do that for others, it makes them feel special. They feel seen, validated ... they feel that they matter to someone.

So what do you say? Let's start a Humble and Kind Campaign! Let's make it a priority to see how many times during the day we can be kind and polite to a total stranger. Maybe we can start a Facebook page called Humble and Kind so we can post our list and the reactions of the people who are on the receiving end. Who knows? Maybe we can start a world-wide phenomenon called Humble and Kind. Stanger things have happened.

By the way, thank you. No special reason. Just because you're here.

And so it is.

On Which Side Of The Road Do Your Flowers Grow?

Sometimes a book just kind of falls into your lap that quite simply steals your heart. Such is the case with the book: "On Which Side Of The Road Do The Flowers Grow?" by Wendell E. Mettey. The author is a minister who has compiled a collection of stories about some very special members of his church who came into his life with a special gift to give that even they didn't know they had. The title of the book refers to a story he tells at the beginning of the book that sets up all of the essays to follow. I will paraphrase the story here:

     There was once a servant who was given the job of water carrier by his master. The job entailed carrying the water jugs to the village each day, filling them at the well, and carrying them back. The servant thought that the master had made a mistake as this was the lowest job in the house and the servant was too smart and resourceful for such a lowly task. Every day as he went back and forth to the village for water, he grumbled and complained. He didn't even spend a few moments talking and exchanging pleasantries with the women who gathered at the well every day. He was convinced that his master had made a mistake and that he deserved better.
     One day as he was walking into the village he was struck by this thought: what if it wasn't the job that was the problem but the servant himself? What if he decided to not only do his job without complaint, but to become the very best water carrier that his master, or anyone else for that matter, had ever seen? He decided then and there to do just that. He started by carving a yoke from which to hang his water jugs. That way he could carry two at one time, one at each end, and carry even more water than before. 
     From that moment on, he became a better servant, and a better man, than anyone in the village had ever known. Not only did he treat his job with respect and mindfulness, but he took the time every day to stop and speak with the women at the well and travelers he met on the road. He would listen to their problems and concerns, and give them his advice and blessings. He soon became a blessing to the entire village.
     When the time came for him to pass, the entire village came to pay their respects. They even went into the shed where he kept his precious jugs, thinking to do his job for him. They were surprised to see that along with the new, well kept jugs were jugs with cracks in them. One good jug was tied to one end of the yoke, and one with cracks were tied to the other. When the townspeople asked him why he carried cracked jugs and wasted so much water, he told them that when they returned to the village, they should look to see which side of the road the flowers grew on. Indeed, one side of the road from his master's house all the way to the village was a bounty of beautiful flowers. His cracked jug had grown beauty for everyone to enjoy as they made their way up and down the road.

 The moral of the story, of course, is that we do not need to be perfect because it is from our imperfections that beauty is born. And so the rest of Rev. Mettey's book is filled with stories of imperfect people, some of them with many, many cracks, that watered the spirits of all who came in contact with them.

  Perfection is the realm of The Creator. Just look at a flower. For the rest of us, we just have to do the very best we can with the cracks we have and know that it is through the cracks that we water the flowers of not only our lives but the lives of everyone around us. We just need to listen, learn, and then water where needed.

And so it is.