1, 4 and 20 Year Lesson

Yes, yes, one and all, it is that blessed time of year again. Winnipeg has turned green and warm and beautiful. It's been a full year since I returned to Winnipeg to shift careers. It's Manitoba Marathon season. Those of you who know me at all will know that I am planning to run the 1/2 Marathon event tomorrow for the second time. Those of you who know me well will also know why it is that I am running this event.

It isn't because I love running for its own sake, that's for sure. Running is difficult for me. I'm not fast, I find it exhausting, and there are many days when I would rather have a root canal than put on my shoes and run out the door. If I didn't have a serious reason to be motivated, I can guarantee you that I wouldn't be doing it. So what is the reason, both for you that know and for you that don't know? I run in memory of my Dad, Joe Janiski. It's been four years today since he lost his life to cancer at age 51, and I'm writing this afternoon to let you know a little bit about him through a lesson I've been learning from him, my Mom, and all around me in life.

So.

This story starts for me at or around age 5. I was dealing with some sort of trivial disappointment, maybe a lost game. My Mom said to me: "You must accustom yourself to the hardships of life. It builds character. If you never experience the pain of being sad, you will never fully appreciate the beauty of happiness." I certainly didn't understand that at the time. I have heard those words in several permutations over the years, but as I mature, I am realizing again and again just how true they are.

So.

This story is about to take a turn to the sadder and more painful side of town, but it's ok. We must accustom ourselves... Character... Happiness.

My Dad's name was Joe. This day, this time, 4 years ago I visited with him for the last time, in person at least. He was in rough shape. A once fit and very strong man, he could no longer see, put a spoon to his mouth, or form speech because cancer had degraded his energy so severely. It had been about two years since he had found out about his illness, and about two months since he had found out that it was actually killing him.

My Dad had it tough. I don't know of anybody that had it worse than him growing up. The details do not matter for this story, but most of us will never live through what he lived through. If anybody had a reason to be mad at the world, or mistrusting of other people, it was him. But he wasn't like that at all. In fact, all of my memories of him laughing, smiling, or being happy are some of the purest expressions of true happiness in the moment that I have ever seen. He delighted in simple things, like good food, being outside on a beautiful day, a really good piece of candy, a well performed card trick, or just being in the same room with me. I remember vividly as an angry twelve-year-old that this would irritate me, as if he was too happy for something so trivial. What did I know about character? Nothing. No. Thing.

When he was sick, my Dad joked with the nurses and laughed about silly things, even when I was sitting there angry and depressed about the situation. Don't get me wrong, he had bad days. He definitely had days where he was upset about what was happening to him. But what strikes me today is the contrast between that and the lighter moments that we had during those weeks, and how he lived his life in contrast between sadness and happiness. Whatever his emotions were, he experienced them fully. He never articulated this to me verbally, and I don't think that he really thought about it all that much. Any lessons that I've taken from him have been through example and demonstration, rather than explanation.

Over the last year, I have experienced a lot of strong emotions regarding the many changes that have occurred in my life. I am trying to take a lesson from my Mom and Dad, to experience the sensations of life for what they are, as both pain and joy are are strong indications that something important has happened and I'd better pay attention and live it while it takes place. These days, new and exciting experiences are happening for me, and I'm very happy about this. When I think about where I was a year ago, four years ago, I'm very excited about now. Thank you for that, Dad.

What strikes me today is the contrast between the sadness of losing somebody and the happiness you can feel from realizing that they are still teaching you. Whether you believe in something after this life or not (I do), the simple fact that we can continue to learn from people who aren't here in this life anymore is incredible. A literal afterlife. I think that lessons like this, learned through the experience of happiness and sadness are the foundation of character. My Dad had a lot of that, character. I hope that it lives in me. Happy Father's Day.

'He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own.'

-Walt Whitman, 'Song of Myself'

L!FE & M!RRORS

It's been a while yet again! Turns out that it's hard work to write a blog! Time passes, things change, and before you know it, months have gone by and you wonder how the heck you got here.

These last few months have seen me through changes that have made me question a lot of things. It's been almost a year since I embarked on this "career change", or "shift", or whatever label fits on a given day, but really, this last year has seen a shift in most everything I thought I knew. I live in a different city, I study at a different school, a deep and wonderful partnership has ended, and I spend a large amount of time every single day feeling confused because I am new to what I am studying. Any one of these changes can seem overwhelming in and of themselves, but jam them all into a year and you have a recipe for some forced and intense self-reflection!

The good news is that I have learned a TONNE about how I learn. Turns out that I make the same mistakes while trying to solve Statistics problems as I do trying to master the Ein Heldenleben excerpts for an audition! I suppose that shouldn't be as surprising as it felt when considered on a purely logical level, especially from the girl that keeps saying that it's all connected! I suppose somehow I thought that since I was starting something that was seemingly so different, I would not make the same types of mistakes. Turns out that the study of Music Performance, the study of Chemistry, the study of Human Nutrition, and the study of Statistics are specialized terms for the study of Problem Solving. A supreme art, indeed. Figure out how to solve the problem, and you can do anything. Any. Thing. Sounds simple, no?

Realizing this again and again as the year has progressed has given me the opportunity to TH!NK about what all of this is saying. What if life experiences are really a type of mirror that can tell us something about ourselves? Isn't it true that lessons are there if we're if willing to receive them? Isn't it true that a person will likely repeat the same mistakes over and over again if they do not learn the lesson the first time, the second time, the third time? Isn't it true that it's a matter of perception and readiness to learn?

If it's true that I make the same types of mistakes while trying to solve Chemistry problems as I do when preparing a piece of music, is it also true that I make those same types of mistakes in my financial decisions? In my relationships with the people in my life?

Don't get me wrong, I am not the type to regret my decisions or experiences. Everything that I've experienced in my life, good and bad, has shaped who I am, and most of the time I'm really happy to be that person. I wouldn't trade that for anything, but I do wonder how much the pattern influences my problem solving skills in other areas in my life. If it does, at what point will I learn the lesson?

Thoughts on this?

I Versus Myself

I am back after a month long hiatus! These past four weeks, I completed my first round of science exams and am now enjoying a much needed holiday. The good news is that the exams went well and I am continuing on! There is room to improve for sure, but with some lessons in hand about how to tackle this stuff from first semester, I am looking forward to January 2009.

Human Anatomy turned out to be a very challenging and fascinating class- who knew there was so much to the human body? The course I took this fall included more information than any other class I have ever taken, and even so, it barely scratched the surface of what we're made of.

The class involved a lot of pure memorisation, and as I puzzled over the different layers of membranes that cover internal organs, or the structure of tunics in a blood vessel, I felt overwhelmingly inspired by the complexity of it all. How is it that all these seemingly different systems, organs, tissues, cells and chemicals come together to form a perfectly united and conscious living person? Like 'Zen and the Consummate Chemist' (an earlier post I wrote, scroll down if you want to read it) , I was fascinated by the notion that my classmates and I were all trying to learn this stuff, yet we all know it on its most intimate level. We experience it constantly for our entire lives without thinking about it. We live it. Fascinating!

How could a person ever think of themselves as un-coordinated, stupid, clumsy, or ugly with all of this going on?

I've posted before about the mind and the body being completely inseparable and beautifully entangled in one another. I really believe that our best learning and our best experiences happen when we stop trying to treat the mind and body as two separate entities. This anatomy class started to scratch the surface of just how true it is that the body and the mind rely completely on one another.

The example of this that struck me the most this past semester was in the last unit of the course, the nervous system. As we learned about the different tracts (bundles) of neurons that start in our cerebral cortex, continue through our spinal cords and end in all different parts of our bodies as nerves, we were reminded that 90% of these tracts cross over one another in the medulla oblongata (part of our brain stem that blends into our spinal cord). The proper term for this is 'decussation of the pyramids'. We are all familiar with this concept from having heard that the right side of your brain controls the left side of your body and vice versa. Why our brains have developed this way is not entirely clear. To me, it looked as though our brains purposefully entangle themselves in the body as much as possible, like a permanent embrace. The crossing tracts seem to me like the arms of the mind wrapping themselves in their own way around the life giving body, making sure that the two will never be apart.

The body, in compliment, provides everything the mind needs to keep the whole dance going for as long as life continues. If something threatens one or the other, both are affected. When something great happens, both react together.

It is interesting to reflect on how we separate mind from body in everyday decisions. A good example of this is to look at a professional athlete versus PhD historian. Athletes are often thought of as having great bodies and great talent, but are not necessarily admired for their intelligence. The opposite is true of the historian. She may not be terribly athletic, but is highly regarded in society because of her intellectual intelligence. One may admire or look down on the other because they may consider themselves to be opposites. Are they?

Is athletic ability not an obvious form of intelligence? Who's driving the bus here? We all know that the body does what the mind tells it to do, whether that be conscious or not, voluntary or not. Ask any great athlete or any great musician, or any great artist if all of what they do is owed to "talent". It's insulting to many, actually. Most will say that they are blessed with certain inherent abilities, but that will only get a person so far. After that, it's the person's commitment to their craft, their ability to learn from their mistakes and their ability to focus under pressure that allows them to enjoy the success that they achieve.

Ask the same question to any great intellectual. Is the success that they achieve owed only to the fact that they are smart? Likely the person will say that while yes, they are "smart" and may be inclined to learn some types of information more easily than others, their ultimate success relies on their commitment to what they do, their ability to learn from their mistakes and their ability to stay focused under pressure.

The great intellectual may not be able to shoot a ball through a hoop with any degree of finesse, but the act of reading, writing and processing PhD level papers require a phenomenal amount of mind/body coordination when you think about it. The athlete may not be able to write a paper for submission to a peer reviewed journal, but the constant stream of decisions that they have to make in performance to compete in a game require great smarts.

All of us are able to walk into our homes late in the evening and turn on the lights without being able to see what we're doing, most of us drive cars, and all of us can read and write. These simple acts that we perform without even thinking require great coordination and intelligence and yet so many people spend their days talking down to themselves and reprimanding themselves for not being better, fitter, smarter or what ever else. Just who do we think we are to talk to ourselves this way? Often people will verbalize this is terms of "I was talking to myself". Well, who exactly is 'I', and who exactly is 'myself'? For the sake of argument, let's say that 'I' is the mind and 'myself' is the body. Does it make any sense at all to place them in opposition to each other when they are incapable of functioning without one another?

You TH!NK you know this apple? You don't...

I've written several posts now about the importance of living in the moment because it's where our lives really take place. It's well and good to say that and intend to do that, but where to start? Not everybody is into meditation, and that is totally fine. If you are interested in trying to be more present in the moment and shutting off the internal chatter to see how it feels, I have a simple and delightful exercise that might interest you. It takes only a few minutes of your time, and is best done alone.

The point of this exercise is to bring your full attention to the moment and allow your senses to communicate with you. One of the largest barriers to this experience of the moment that we encounter in our day to day lives are the assumptions that we carry around with us everywhere we go. Assumptions are part of human consciousness, they help us to orient ourselves in everyday situations and form a major part of our continuous decision making processes. Often, though, our assumptions can lead to missed opportunities, or worse, can be destructive towards other people. I don't want to get into that in this post, but I am sure that we can all think of at least one situation where we've assumed something about a person or place that turned out to be completely unfounded.

In a very simple scenario, like having an afternoon snack, these assumptions can make us gloss over the experience of what we're eating and we barely even taste it! Before we know it, we are hungry again and the next snack finds its fate, all too quickly eaten and not worth remembering. Are we actually hungry, or just bored?

For this exercise you will need only 2 things:

1. A quiet space where you can sit and feel relatively undistracted.
2. Something of your choosing to do the exercise with. For the purpose of explaining I will use an apple, but you could choose a nice cup of coffee, a favorite sweater, a piece of chocolate or a short and simple piece of music that you enjoy. It can be virtually anything, but I like trying it with food because you can involve all of your senses.

Step One:
Make yourself comfortable and make sure that you have a few minutes to dedicate to what you're doing. It doesn't take long, but it doesn't work if it's rushed.

Step Two:
Start by just looking at the apple. Let go of everything that you know about it. A normal encounter with an apple might involve an expectation about what it might taste like and how long it takes you to eat it, how its flavour might compare to other apples that you've had, etc. Let go of all of that for the moment and just look at the apple. Observe its colour, its shape, the texture of its skin, its stem. Just let yourself see it. The truth is that this apple is different from every other apple you've ever had or will have again, so take some time to really see what it looks like.

Step 3:
Once you have seen the apple, take it in your hands and see it with touch. Observe the curvature of its shape, the feel of its skin, the firmness of it, the weight of it in your hand. What does it smell like? Again, gently let go of all pre-conceived notions that you have about what an apple is and your previous experiences with apples. Allow the apple to penetrate your senses.

Step 4:
If you have spent a few minutes with the first three steps, you are likely very interested now in what this apple tastes like. Observe the sensations of that. When you feel like you're ready, take a bite. Listen to the sound, feel the texture, taste the flavour. What is it telling you? Take your time, and eat the whole thing. Wait until you are completely finished with one bite before taking the next. If you find yourself thinking about something else, gently let go of it and turn your attention back to what you're doing. How does it taste? What does it feel like to chew it? What about to swallow it? When you're done, take a good look at the core. If it's not too flouncy for you, you might even want to say a little thank you to the apple for letting you eat it.

So that's it. It's so simple, it seems silly. But if you allow yourself the experience, you may well find it intensely delightful. The same type of thing can be done with music, with a nice bath, with anything really. When we forget everything that we think we know about something, it is able to tell us what its really like and it becomes infinitely more interesting.

Imagine if we treated all the people in our lives like that. Imagine if we treated the environment that way. Imagine if we treated ourselves that way. I think it's pretty cool.

L!NK to follow up

I follow another blog called Zen Habits, and this morning's post seemed to compliment the point I was getting at yesterday, so take a second to check it out:

http://zenhabits.net/2008/11/relax-in-second/

This post was written by a psychiatrist, so she would definitely have a more detailed understanding of the effects that taking a moment for yourself than I could articulate.

Let the trees help you get what you want

While I think the experience of "rocking out with the barren trees" is enough of a reward in and of itself (they really are quite lovely!), there are over-reaching benefits to turning off the internal chatter. At the top of the list: it can help you to achieve goals that you set for yourself.

We all know that being able to pay attention to what we're doing is important, but often, even when we think that we are paying attention, there are still a host of other thoughts that are running through our minds. We may still be able to get a lot done, but will often take a little longer to do it, or may miss some little details that we would not have missed had we been truly focused.

I fall victim to this when I practice for sure. I catch myself going over the same thing again and again, tiring myself and not actually getting anything valuable done. It is most likely to happen when I'm hungry or tired, but often it's simply because I'm distracted by other thoughts about what I should be doing or what I already did that day or what I will be doing later.

So a little bit of wasted practice time or a wasted breath of fresh air in the morning is not too big a deal, right? What about when the pressure is on and it's really important that you give your all? For most of us, true and complete mental focus is difficult to just turn on and off. The times when we need to focus the most can be times when we experience more internal chatter than ever. If we are unable to focus on the important issue in that moment of performance (be that music, a game, a speech, and important conversation, an interview, etc.), we are far more likely to miss out on opportunities for success, or, at the very least, miss out on the full enjoyment of that moment if it is successful.

You can likely see where I'm taking this: practicing mental focus, being in the moment when there's no pressure is not only intensely rewarding on its own, it can pay massive dividends when you need to have your "game face" on.

The mind is incredibly powerful when it is focused, but we often don't take the time to truly develop that power to its full potential. Believe it or not, taking the time to say "No, thank you." to the mindless conversation that we have with ourselves all day and just allowing our minds to live in the moment strengthens our ability to focus when it counts.

People who want to practice this mental focus specifically and in isolation may choose to meditate. I personally find that a short meditation session in the morning is hugely beneficial to the way I think and feel for the day. That sort of time commitment may or may not be of interest to you. What everyone can afford to do, though, is take a few minutes during the day, even when busy, to just experience the moment. Get out of your head and look around. It sounds cliche, but when you're in the grocery store and you pass a bouquet of roses, take a second and really smell it. Or when you're next in the shower, take a moment and really feel the warm water on you. Our mind and our senses delight in pure experience, even if they are simple ones. Treat yourself.

Rocking out with the barren trees!

I would say that the largest goal of my life is to fully experience it for however long it lasts.

This seems like the simplest thing to say, but I am amazed at how often I catch myself worrying about some future that does not yet exist. A typical scenario could go like this: I am walking to the bus in the morning, the sun is out, the air is fresh, and the day is young.
The stream of consciousness: "I have SO many things to do this week! I'll never have time to get x, y and z done. What am I going to eat for dinner? I must remember to get change for the washing machine, or I won't have any clean socks left for tomorrow. I can't believe I broke a glass today, I hope I didn't miss any little pieces... bla, bla, bla"...
Equally as often, I catch myself doing the same thing about the past: "I should have planned my morning better, now I don't have time to call back so-and-so until late this evening, and I can't really remember locking the door when I left the house. Did I leave my towel and pyjamas on the bathroom floor? I hope I get home before my roommate so I can be sure to pick them up... bla, bla, bla...."....

I get on the bus, sit through my first two classes and by the time they are done, I have started the process anew, this time lamenting the fact that I would love to just take a 5 minute breather outside and smell the air. Well what was I doing when I had the little walk this morning? I frittered away that time thinking about things that either have already happened and I can't do anything about (and therefore do not really exist), or things that have not yet happened (and therefore do not exist). I missed my lovely moments of outdoor freshness for that? Pretty silly I would say to myself.

In fact, there have been entire days or even weeks where I have been out doing neat things, but hardly even remember them because my mind was somewhere else at the time. Does this sound familiar to you?

The big point here, and I think one that is HUGELY overlooked in our mile-a-minute, information overloaded, be available by phone, email, text message, snail mail and carrier pigeon 24/7 is that our lives take place in the moment. Miss the moment, miss your life. It's as simple as that. John Daido Loori, a former chemist turned Zen monk who has written a ton of great books describes the concept of "coming home to the moment" because that's where we really are. Nothing else really exists for us but our moment to moment experience. If we spend too much time worrying about the past and future, we miss the moment-to-moment experience and, ultimately, our lives.

I am trying to minimize the amount of time (that I will NEVER get back!) that I spend locked inside my own stream of thought and not experiencing the lovely life that is going on right. this. second. now. I am able to do it more and more often these days, and I practice it by taking the time to meditate. When I am able to leave all of the millions of ultimately pointless thoughts that stream through my mind all day, things seem to come alive that I never even noticed before, like the trees along the property at the Legislature. They're leafless now, looking like the inside-out lungs of the planet, being exactly who they are. I have noticed that each individual tree has a completely different look to it, a different character. I feel happy to see them when I walk by, sort of like seeing a nice acquaintance. They have been there every day that I have walked past (and for a long time before that), going through their seasonal cycle, hiding nothing about what and who they are, I just didn't see it because I was too "busy". Now my 5 minute morning walk seems like a nice visit with the day.

I still catch myself (often) thinking of things that don't really matter, and I am making a conscious effort to walk away from that. I have a challenge for you: give it a try for a day. Try to consciously turn your attention away from all the internal chatter and just experience the day. Get all the things done that you need to do, just make an effort to experience a few moments without the endless stream of thoughts, value judgments, and preconceived notions. Please write back and let me know if it feels different from the usual.