The connection is there for all of us – in any language, on our own or with help, no matter what color our holy book or science journal. Some find the connection through meditation or prayer; some while contemplating a spectacular starlit sky or holding a child; some only after experiencing a dramatic injury or other traumatic event.  The connection exists whether you intentionally seek it or not.  Sometimes the connection serendipitously finds you. The connection exists no matter how you define God, and even if you consider God a fiction.  If we spend our lives squabbling over the semantics and details, we can miss the value of the connection altogether.

In this beautiful TED talk, neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor talks about her discoveries as the result of her 1996 stroke:

Click here to view the embedded video.

More information about Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor and her book, Stroke of Insight, is available at DrJillTaylor.com

Special thanks to Larry Glover at Wild Resiliency who reminded me of this TED talk in a beautiful, candid memorial post he wrote after the death of his father: A Father’s Lessons on Living and Dying.

A Word on Statistics

Out of every hundred people,

those who always know better:
fifty-two.

Unsure of every step:
almost all the rest.

Ready to help,
if it doesn’t take long:
forty-nine.

Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four — well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.

Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with:
four-and-forty.

Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.

Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it’s better not to know,
not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life except things:
thirty
(though I would like to be wrong).

Balled up in pain
and without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three, sooner or later.

Those who are just:
quite a few, thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand:
three.

Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.

Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred—
a figure that has never varied yet.

-Wislawa Szymborska
(translated from Polish by Joanna Trzeciak)

via Psychologically Speaking

First, forget what time it is for an hour.
Do it regularly every day.
Then forget what day of the week it is,
and do this regularly in company for a week.
Then forget what country you are in,
and practice doing it in company for a week,
and then do them together for a week
with as few breaks as possible.
Follow these by forgetting how to add
or to subtract.
It makes no difference.
You can change them around after a week.
Both will later help you to forget how to count.

Forget how to count,
starting with your own age,
starting with how to count backwards,
starting with even numbers,
with roman numerals,
starting with fractions,
with the old calendar,
going on to the alphabet,
forgetting it all until everything
is continuous and whole again.”
- W. S. Merwin

W. S. Merwin was appointed United States Poet Laureate this year – an act significantly bright enough to counterbalance several of my serious disappointments with the Obama Administration’s other progress thus far.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“In the end the aggressors always destroy themselves, making way for others who know how to cooperate and get along. Life is much less a competitive struggle for survival than a triumph of cooperation and creativity.” – Fritjof Capra

Video: 

Video by: http://vimeo.com/blu
sountrack by ANDREA MARTIGNONI

via rebekahsilverman.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Wherever human beings have been around and done their thing, you find rectangles.”

YouTube Video by markwatts02

pontificate 2: to speak or express opinions in a pompous or dogmatic way -  merriam-webster.com

I had one of those interesting wonder-if moments after my post on quieting down. I wondered if conversational fatigue is a natural part of this path through and beyond middle age. After all, middle age is as much about attitudinal change and gaining perspective as it is about chronology. Doesn’t some part of the getting of wisdom involve developing a certain laissez-faire equanimity about a lot of things that seemed overwhelmingly important when we were younger? Perhaps, I thought, everyone quiets down as they age.

Ha!

Just circumstantial evidence supports the opposite. The very afternoon of my musing, I ran into Liz, the 80-year-old antithesis of my theory. I share a 90-minute, parking-lot conversation with Liz about once a month. Liz was a next-door neighbor when I was growing up in Seattle. She moved to this area after her daughter bought a property not far from us (one of those small-world serendipities.)

A contemporary of my parents, Liz is one of those people who NEVER stops talking (as is her daughter I’ve discovered). At this point in her life, Liz’s monologue is rife with a long thread of what’s-wrong-withs – what’s wrong with the world, the country, our small town, the internet and all associated technologies; and on down to her favorite subjects – what’s wrong with her children and grandchildren.

I do have to give Liz this much – she is a colorful and somewhat gifted orator with a well-developed (if consistently judgmental) sense of humor. She was a cocktail waitress in her formative years – back in the day when all cocktail waitresses wore – well, not much. Her bawdy, occasionally-profane tales boost my tolerance of her stream of complaints. With time and a change in my own perspective, she’s evolved from just a gossiping busy-body into something of a tolerable character. I like characters. (I’ve been told I am one.) When I run into her, unless there is something truly pressing, I give her my time and my ear. We always end our conversation with her invitation for me to come by for tea. I haven’t so far. I guess I’m not quite that tolerant.

I have to admit that for us quiet types, effusive blabberers can be a conversational boon – all we have to do is listen and nod occasionally and “conversation” takes care of itself. And although Liz is an extreme, she is certainly an excellent reminder that not everyone values quiet serenity as a life goal. (In fact, a little googling leads me to suspect quieting down as a function of aging is rare – just another behavior on the list of hermit idiosyncrasies.)

But back to Liz. As entertaining as Liz can be, I always feel a little sad when we part after a conversation. I always think I should take the time for tea; after all, it won’t be too long before we won’t be meeting in parking lots anymore. I’m saddened that she’s entered what’s probably the last chapter of her life so dissatisfied with the way things have turned out. I’m saddened that, given the very peripheral nature of our friendship, she confides in me as much as she does. Perhaps I’m the only safe forum she has for her complaints.

Perhaps she’s lonely. Her judgmentalism may have set her up for that. I certainly would not want to be one of her children – or grandchildren. It sounds like Liz tries to micro-manage her whole family, down to the smallest circumstantial details, often using financial rewards or threats as the pivot point. Many of the behaviors Liz disapproves of in her children are, in fact, part of my own routine. Liz doesn’t know that, of course. She doesn’t actually know me very well and when we talk, I don’t need to talk.

Unfortunately for Liz (and in spite of her occasional entertainment value), Liz tops my list as the kind of elder I don’t want to become: the judgmental pontificator. The source of much inter-generational divisiveness, the loudest pontificators seem quite certain that, having lived a certain number of years, what they’ve learned must surely be gospel.

I’ve got news. What you’ve learned through experience is not gospel – it’s just a chronicle of your experience within the circumstances of your life. Yes, we do learn from experience, but much of what we learn that way cannot be taught. By the time our children enter high school, most of what they learn is coming from their own experiences, not from our pontifications. Yes, they’ll still need a few more years of guidance, and parenting is really a lifetime commitment, but the rapid change of today’s world almost guarantees that many of our children’s life experiences will be very different from ours. Most of our pontifications later in life (certainly by the time our children reach 30), especially those in the realm of specific circumstantial formulas that worked for us, already don’t (or soon won’t) apply at all. Let it go. The world is not going back to the way it used to be. The happiest among us find ways to celebrate that, even participate – not continually denigrate.

There’s a word for the belief (or desperate insistence) that everyone else (including your adult children) should do things the way you always have, make the same kinds of choices you always do, and live their lives as a reflection of the way you live your life. You may think the word is caring, but it isn’t. Most often, the word that best describes those manipulative, mini-me expectations is CONCEIT.

The good news is it’s never too late to stop trying to change others, especially other adults.  It’s also never too late to consider changing yourself – the one part of the equation over which you have some real control.

Share wisdom if you’re asked, but skip all the petty circumstantial stuff – what car to drive, what clothes to wear, your preference for certain neighborhoods or professional choices.  The kind of wisdom to share is the stuff that holds up beyond culture, fashion and clique; the stuff they’ll need to survive the greatest changes and the direst circumstances – the health crises, natural disasters, wars and economic downturns -  the inspirational stuff like courage, tolerance, love and compassion. But even that kind of wisdom is best taught by demonstration not with a diatribe of empty shoulds.

Demonstrate serenity and acceptance. Demonstrate inclusivity, not exclusivity. Overcome judgment. Demonstrate peace. Demonstrate love without circumstantial conditions and expectations. If you can train yourself to consistently prioritize and demonstrate any of those (or even a couple of them), not only will you be happier and healthier, you’ll probably mysteriously discover you’ve also overcome most of your complaints about the way things turned out.  Don’t be surprised if your need to pontificate declines accordingly.

I’m not pontificating, mind you. All I really know is what works for me.

solar eclipse

“Anyone who has probed the inner life, who has sat in silence long enough to experience the stillness of the mind behind its apparent noise, is faced with a mystery. Apart from all the outer attractions of life in the world, there exists at the center of human consciousness something quite satisfying and beautiful in itself, a beauty without features. The mystery is not so much that these two dimensions exist – an outer world and the mystery of the inner world – but that we are suspended between them, as a space in which both worlds meet . . . as if the human being is the meeting point, the threshold between two worlds.”

- Kabir Helminski, The Knowing Heart

Quote via Whiskey River

+

+

“There can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection.”
- Gustav Niebuhr, Beyond Tolerance

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Healing cannot be accomplished in the past, it can only be accomplished in the present to release the future.” – ACIM

John Lennon’s Imagine (1971) sung by Scott Bakula

YouTube Video by strode416

+
+

I know. Who knew Scott Bakula could sing?

The wordiness of life has been bugging me more than usual lately.

It’s been almost six weeks since I’ve written anything for this blog and I have to confess there were moments when I seriously considered abandoning the endeavor.  I’ve talked about these phases before. The unusual element this time is I abandoned other writing as well.

Initially I thought it was just my standard hermit reaction to a recent surge of activity with Tools-n-Gizmos.com, our online business. I’ve always been someone who seeks quiet in response to the noise of making-a-living – I suspect it’s a recuperative balancing act necessary for many introverts.

But business has leveled off (for some reason it always does as summer approaches), and my psyche is still predominated by a very specific contemplative thread on the value-of-quiet vs. the silliness-of-CHATTER. Even when out “conducting business” my people-watching is repeatedly drawn to others’ noisy exchanges of (to me) useless irrelevancies – a large part of many conversations it seems. Then I reflect on the potential irrelevancy (to others) of my own chatter. I apologize if this post is rapidly becoming a self-fulfilling demonstration.

Maybe it’s a life phase thing based on the over accumulation of redundant verbal experiences.  Buddy Kathy and I did one of our periodic art studio tours a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I’ve felt restlessly drawn to re-prioritize painting over writing. I am only a recreational painter and my attraction to painting has less to do with artistic inspiration and more to do with exploring  the wordless – fresh reflective ground. Quiet reflective ground.

Or perhaps it’s just that when us quiet types quiet down, we ultimately seek absolute zero. The call to and need for silence may be the basic hermit motivation. The lucky among us have arranged our lives to accommodate that need, at least periodically.  I keep coming back to Thomas Merton’s words at the end of the short video I posted about him:

“This solitude confirms my call to solitude. The more I’m in it, the more I love it. One day it will possess me entirely and no man will ever see me again.”

I’ve already discovered something by writing this much:  just as talking-about-love is not the same as love, talking-about-quiet is not the same as quiet.

I’ll keep you posted – I think.

“Can we connect our empathy to a single race writ large in a single biosphere?” – Jeremy Rifkin

Click here to view the embedded video.

www.thersa.org
via @gregorylent