Season's Greetings

May you and yours...

      have a wonderful holiday season 

and 

all the very best for the New Year.  

Thank you for your support this year. 

This Precious Time...

     I can’t believe this year is almost over.

     For some reason, probably age related, this year I’ve been very conscious of how quickly Fridays seem to be coming round.

     The word that keeps coming to mind is “Precious”.

     Realizing that time is moving on and there won't be an infinite number of tomorrows has really driven home the preciousness of the time we have with each other right now.   So why not celebrate in a most heartfelt way?

     During this year’s festivities, we can make the people in our lives feel how special they are to us.  Life is fleeting; life is precious. 
     Time spent together, in spite of moments of irritation and hurt is indeed valuable. Our life paths intersect for a limited period in a lifetime.  For some relationships it may feel interminable, but in reality it is brief.

     This holiday season we can do more than just share our home, food, and presents with each other; we can share our presence.  We can take the time to connect in a meaningful way with the person who’s flown across country, or just driven across town be with us.  

     If sharing deep feelings is uncomfortable, then simply expressing gratitude and appreciation through gestures, expressions, touch, and when you feel strong enough through words is the most treasured gift we can give each other.

     May you seize this holiday season to truly enjoy the people in your life. 

Relating to Relatives

     Thanksgiving is coming up…

     And some of us are thinking that we already know it is going to be exactly like every other Thanksgiving.

     The same family members: some charmingly funny and others less so, sitting around the same table, eating the same food, and -- arguing over the same issues from past years.  Having this mindset predisposes us to see only what we are already looking for.  For e.g.  when you are hungry,  and because you have food on your mind, everywhere you look, you’ll see food.  In the same way, worrying and ruminating that “Uncle Bernie is going to argue with Aunty Tilly at the table over their choice for president, or their religious leanings, or over whom the fall of apartheid most disenfranchised in the new South Africa” is what you will mainly see. 

     Granted it can be irritating and upsetting when these things happen, but if that’s paramount in your mind, you’ll miss out on the other things that are happening too.  When things can’t be changed and we wish they were different, we end up feeling bad.

     This year, to help us have an even more enjoyable holiday season, we could try approaching it from a different perspective.  A really powerful approach is to change our thoughts, and that will in turn change our reaction.  In other words, we can relate to an old situation in a new way. 

     By keeping an open mind (not liking or disliking), seeing what’s actually happening, and realizing what’s changeable and what’s not, we can skillfully negotiate the holiday season to make it a success for everyone.  We can choose to notice the kids’ enjoyment, the moments of laughter, the playful teasing interchanges, and the pleasure we gain from being with people who love and know us well.

     The real power here is that the situation may not change, but we instead can change our response to it. Start with noticing your thoughts.

     I won’t keep you…you have much shopping and preparing to do for your family Thanksgiving dinner.  

     May you enjoy the holiday, your family, and your shared meal.

Mindfulness Helps you See Miracles

     What would it be like if we could never experience satisfaction, relief or respite? Or better still:  have you ever thought about how amazing it is that we are able to feel satiation, appreciation, or change? Have you contemplated such a situation?

     Right now, some of you are thinking, oh I know the feeling of being unsatisfied, and it is surely one I don’t want to contemplate any further.  It’s true some of us struggle with recognizing the changes taking place for us.  The fact is change is always happening – sometimes these changes are wanted and sometimes they aren’t, but it nonetheless occurs. 

     Change comes in all shapes and sizes.  It is the miniscule, nondescript and ‘ordinary’ ones that we most easily overlook.  For e.g. our feelings change many times in a day and we often don’t realise it.  A perfect example is when we feel thirst.  We can drink water and that feeling of thirst is quenched.  Even if you can’t, for whatever reason, drink your fill of water, you are still able to feel a slight lessening of the discomfort of thirst when you sip some water.  The same goes for hunger, tiredness, or restlessness.  Imagine how dreadful it would be to never experience change or respite from these feelings?    

       And yet, in reality we do.  We do experience change.  And that is the miracle.  An ordinary, everyday mundane miracle.

      This past weekend I was helping coordinate a retreat.  The days were long and even though I had eaten several meals I was hungry much of the time.  As uncomfortable as the pain of that hunger was, there was also the awareness that I would be eating soon, and that that pain would and could go away.  Truly remarkable was realizing that not only would the hunger pain dissipate, but that the taste of the food itself would bring some pleasure with it.  I was stunned when this insight hit me.  Eating could be just a perfunctory function of sustaining the body, but it’s more than that – we are able to enjoy the food as it lessens hunger.  This daily oft repeated activity in many our lives is capable of awakening appreciation in us.  Do we see that?

     When we think about it, how is it that water is able to quench thirst and food stunt hunger, and simultaneously produce feelings of enjoyment and relief? 

      To see these little miracles, we need to be paying attention to our bodies, thoughts and the happenings in our lives.  Miracles are happening all the time, and if we are absent or dismiss them as ‘ordinary’ we miss out.

       Perhaps this may better illustrate my point.  Apparently kittens are born blind.  When they open their eyes, after a few days, the pathway for sight is instantly created.  If the kittens are blindfolded at birth, they are blinded for life even after the blindfolds are removed because the neural connections for sight weren’t established.  So even though there’s a world with sights, colours and textures, these kittens are never able to see it simply because their nervous systems weren’t “prepared or trained” to see it. 

      Like the kittens, we may overlook the miraculous in our lives because we haven’t created the pathways and neural connections to help us see the miracle in the ordinary.  Unlike the kittens, however; we can change our situation.  This is where mindfulness comes in. 

      Mindfulness trains us to be present and to notice.  And every time we do so, the brain and nervous system make new connections to help us see clearly.  In paying exquisite attention to the seemingly ordinary, overlooked and mundane, we begin to open our eyes to the wonders within us and around us.  Then in the midst of the turmoil and upheaval of our lives and the world, we begin to see the amazing creatures we are, the wonder of life, and the beauty of our world.

       May you learn to see the miracles in your life.

Why Being too Comfortable isn't Good For Us

    Our world becomes very small, tiny, in fact, when we avoid the things that unsettle us.  The drive to have things always go our way: food sufficiently salted, air temperature just right, traffic lights always green for us, shopping lines always empty – is our way of trying to be happy.  We know how unstable this kind of happiness can be.  Reality has a different agenda from our agenda.  Even though our striving to be comfortable is a natural inclination, it isn’t good for us.  It makes us complacent. 

     Balance is necessary:  being able to rest, relax and be comfortable is important for our nervous systems and mind and body.  So is pushing and opening ourselves to what we don’t want.  Our mental, emotional and physical health and resilience depends on some level of stress and discomfort.

     Years ago I remember looking up the definition of doldrums.  It is the ocean conditions in equatorial regions where there’s a ‘stagnation’ and persistent calmness.  There’s no wind and the ocean waters are very still.  In the days of sailing ships, this posed a big problem.  If they got stuck in the doldrums, they would have had to wait days on end, until the winds picked up to move them along.

     Being too comfortable in life is akin to being in the doldrums.  The smooth mundane waters of the doldrums, or of always being cozy, dulls the senses and makes one listless.  The sapping of our spirit and energy causes us to lose interest in and curiosity about life.  We also go into a slump whenever we retreat to the past through reliving happy occasions, or by fantasizing about the future.  Such escapism stops us from being present in the moment, and causes us to overlook the wonders unfolding before us.  Our vibrance and vitality stems from the excitement of meeting challenges.

     A river is ‘alive’ precisely because of the blocks - rocks, falls, logs, and mud banks - it encounters on its path to the ocean.  If it didn’t have these obstacles, it would simply be a sluggish stream of water.  Similarly being too comfortable and having everything going our way robs us of the opportunity to percolate and dance with life. 

     The brain’s tendency to efficiently categorize and store information about our habits, patterns, and routines somewhat hampers us because we then rely on, and expect things to go as we’ve previously experienced.  What this means is that we then effectively operate in default mode.  Or we could say we live in the past.

     Life is persistent change, even if that change is imperceptible to us from moment to moment. Our distress, pain, fear, and anxiety arises from this struggle with change. Life’s dynamism forces us to be responsive.  To respond to what’s occurring, we have to actually be in the here and now, observing what’s happening.  It means we have to:

·         be alert to the changes taking place within our thoughts, emotions and feelings, as well as the external environment of our friendships, work relationships, and casual encounters;

·         recognize we can’t rely on what worked in the past to necessarily work in every future situation.

     To broaden our world and open ourselves to experiencing what life brings each moment is the full engagement of life at all levels of our being.  Responding to change in this way, we grow. 

          The upside to being adaptably present is we appreciate life more when we notice how we cope and deal with difficulties.  This recognition empowers us to see the options available, to notice how everything changes and to appreciate the value of patience or waiting, and to understand how our stress levels pivot on the interpretation of our experiences. This is responding.  This is growth.  This is the full engagement of life. 

     To live a fulfilling and happy life is to accept life’s ups and downs and contradictions.  Take a moment now and contemplate all that you have experienced, which has helped you grow and learn about life and yourself.  You may find that those experiences both challenged and exhilarated.  From a bodily perspective, the sensations of fear and excitement are very similar – racing heart, sweaty palms, butterflies in the stomach, alertness. 

     Isn’t life amazing? Aren’t we amazing? 

     May you be brave and discover aspects of your true self today.

Working with Anger without Blaming

         As a follow up to the last article, I thought to talk about how to work with anger without blaming.

        Every day we see things that upset us – homeless veterans begging on the street, children being trafficked, animals suffering cruelty, neighbors pouring paint down street drains, which run to creeks.  I just received a notice on my neighborhood blog.  Someone was upset at a man for filling water into two five gallon bottles from a park drinking fountain; the person who posted this notice was clearly outraged because they titled the post “Stealing Water”.  So there are many things in a day that can trigger us.  How do we work with the feelings that arise, and still keep intact our own and the other person’s or peoples’ humanity?

     Anger arises when we witness an injustice.  The awakened face of anger is the ability to clearly see a wrong and to feel the pain of that injustice.  This wisdom aspect of anger also has the insight to see what is right and needed, so as to bring change or undo wrongs.  Throughout history, changes in all arenas of life were brought about by this innate drive for justice, and to end suffering in the world.    

     But anger that arises out of vengeance and the need to harm a perceived “enemy’ is the kind of anger that causes us to assign blame. When we blame, we not only harm the other person, but also ourselves.  Blaming causes us to think the other person is ‘bad’, and makes us believe we are better, different, and separate from another person.  The fact is anger is an inherent part of our nature.

    Our minds can fixate and ruminate on the wrongs we or people we love have experienced and this traps us in a continuing cycle of misery.  A story will better illustrate this point:  two monks were walking through a forest.  They saw a woman trying to cross a fast moving river.  One monk picked up the woman and carried her across the river.  His friend followed.  Later on that day, the monk who had followed said to the other monk, he couldn’t believe he’d broken a vow by touching a woman.  The other monk replied:  “I put her down hours ago but you are still carrying her”.  So our tendency to replay the wrongs we’ve endured or witnessed can bog us down in anguish and unnecessary suffering.

      By changing our perspective, we can start to work on not pointing a finger at ourselves or someone else.  And we always start with ourselves.
    We begin by getting ourselves out of the misery of ruminating the same blame story over and over in our minds.  Even when we can clearly see someone is causing pain, we work on our approach to that person or situation.  This is difficult to do.  But if our priority is to end suffering, then compassion is the wisest approach to ending it.  We remind ourselves that this person is also suffering.  Pointing a finger only increases suffering

      Anger also increases our own suffering.  Suffering exists in life; it’s not a personal failing when we suffer.  Our minds and bodies endure huge stress and damage when we are angry. 

     Change and growth typically occur in difficulty or with struggle.  So right in the intense heat of our fear and rage is when we are most challenged to remember compassion, and the shared suffering of all human beings.  But that is exactly when we need to let our innate kindness and understanding surface.

    To work with our anger and to not blame:

·         We first intend not to cause harm.

·         We don’t ignore or dismiss the fact that a person or people are causing harm.  We pause and then say no to the pain and injustice we witness, and then work to change it. 

·         We act with compassion. We remind ourselves that just as we may injure others when we are hurting, we understand that the other person must also be suffering.  It helps to think that the person doesn't know how to deal with his/her suffering, and therefore causes suffering.  Happy, safe, and peaceful people don’t willfully harm others.

·         We don't repress or act out our anger on others or ourselves, but we mindfully sit with the intense emotions roiling through us.  This means investigating the nature and texture of our anger, becoming familiar with it.  To do this requires courage.
      We pay extra attention to the stories we make up about the other person.  Our thinking causes us to ruminate and justify how we are right and the other person is wrong.  This fuels the flames.

     This entire process requires bravery, and willingness to fully face ourselves, to change, and to recognise we are no longer willing to keep repeating painful patterns.
     In working with anger in such a way we are making a choice.  We are choosing to lift our gaze away from blame and see a bigger picture;  the picture that we aren’t willing to perpetuate our own suffering and increase the misery in the world.  In our small, or maybe not so small, act of kindness and compassion, we can change the energetic pattern of aggression that is reverberating throughout our planet. 

          Our choices affect us and the world we live in.  No matter how small or private or personal we think our decision is it influences us and our interactions in the world.  And as we all live on this one tiny planet, we all experience the consequences of our individual decisions from moment to moment.

    May your choices free you from anger. 

The Difference between Critical Thinking and Judging

      I don’t enjoy cooking every day.  On the other hand, my sister, a chef, loves cooking.  She doesn’t mind coming home from a long day at work, and then to begin cooking many dishes, and even making time-consuming Indian flatbreads (roti). I laugh because even though she’s working outside the home, and I’m home all day, she will sometimes send food home with me. 

     So when I look at her industriousness in the kitchen, and I think how easily I could eat cereal for supper, I judge myself – why can’t I be different, more hard working and less lazy.  But is this helpful?

     Such thinking arises out of our ingrained, unconscious judging habit that is operating constantly.  Things are either good/bad, right/wrong, black/white, sinful/holy.  We rarely see the world and our lives clearly and without bias.  Everything is processed through the colored lens of our desires, aversions, or indifference.   Our experiences aren’t immune to such judgments -- everything we experience, do, think is being rated by us --- all the time!  And typically our conclusions are that we or others are lacking or deficient in some way. 

     So how does critical thinking differ from judging? 

     Critical thinking is the ability to see clearly what’s happening.  For example: critical thinking can be observing one car is faster than another, or that one person is more outgoing than another person.  It is a necessary and important skill for good decision making and success.

     Judging is observing, comparing, and then degrading one of the things as lesser than or lacking in some way.  So in the car example, it’s noting that one car is slower and then condemning the slower car as weaker, not well made, or flawed. So with judging there’s always negativity attached to the observation.

     The Buddha talked of laying judgment on top of pain as the two arrows.  In my case of not enjoying cooking:  the first arrow is noticing that I don’t enjoy cooking, and this is painful to me because it’s a daily task.  The second arrow is the shaming or mental anguish layered onto that original pain.  So we increase our suffering through insults added to the original injury.

     When we judge, we become myopic.  Judgments skew our ability to see the bigger picture or to healthily relate to something we’ve deemed inadequate, a failure, unfair, or wrong.   Basically we write a situation or person off as no longer being of value. Our tendency is to walk away.  We stop looking and then fail to see that every situation and person has a lesson to teach us. 

     So if we want to learn what we are here to learn, and to live our lives to their fullest potential, we need to be willing to face life’s challenges head on.  This requires that we train ourselves to remain open to difficult situations and people even when we would like to walk away.  At the core of this recognition is the understanding that joy isn’t separate from the messiness of our lives.    

     We can learn to stay with our initial pain or challenge without adding mental suffering to it by:

·         Staying present – notice when your mind wanders into the future or past; see what kind of thoughts you are having, and then come back to the present moment.

·         Getting interested in your perceptions – be curious about how your mind makes up stories and judgments about people and circumstances.

·         Staying with and exploring whatever arises in you – sit with feelings of fear, sadness, pain, anger, hate or even love, joy and tenderness.

·         Growing grateful – notice what’s going right in your life.

·         Helping others – extend a hand to someone in pain or suffering.

·         Knowing that challenges stretch us – recognize we are strong and resilient.

·         Forgiving – be gentle and compassionate with ourselves and others for judging.

·         Choosing to respond – engage life more healthily from a broader open perspective.

     And if all of this is difficult to do (which it may well be), then notice the pain that arises from struggling to become less judgmental and more mindful.  Then with kindness and humour, keep plugging away at it.

     By praciticing these steps a little bit every day, we can begin to change life-long habits of judging and harming ourselves and others.  

    May you meet your next challenge as a friend.

Pavlov's Rings and Pings

       About three weeks ago, I got my first ever smartphone!  One day while scrolling through the many available screens, I saw a couple of friends had left me voicemails.  Here’s the thing:  I had been checking texts, emails and WhatsApp, but hadn’t realized there was a separate voicemail feature from the phone feature.

      There had been all these pings, bells, and tinkling sounds, but I didn’t know what those sounds were signaling.  So I would hear them, and then simply return to whatever I had been doing before I got distracted by the sound.  When I mentioned to Stephen that I didn’t know people had left me voicemail messages, he teased me that the Pavlovian conditioning hadn’t yet kicked in for me.  I laughed with him.

       The things is I can’t say I was being truly mindful by not reacting to the sounds.  I heard them and knew they were summoning me, but I didn't know where to look.  After a while I just heard the sounds and ignored them because they made no sense to me.  I began thinking of them as arising phenomena, which I noticed and then dazedly ignored. 

       Now that I know what these sounds mean, how will I respond?  Or will I react?

       Will I give in to the conditioning that every time there’s a tinkle or bleep, I’ll drop whatever it is I’m doing, and move my attention to its summons?

       This is how habits are formed.  The association of one thing with another, and the automatic repetition of an action.  In this case, sound with the shifting of attention and the body towards the sound.  The actual hearing of the sound is a moment of mindfulness, as it is an arising phenomenon in the moment; i.e. something has altered or changed the environment around us and we notice this change.  The reacting would be to stop what you are doing because you are compelled by habit, curiosity, worry, or fear to immediately find out what is summoning you. 

        With mindful awareness, you can sit with the thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations that arise when you hear the sound, but don’t immediately get up to attend to it.  This trains you to notice the cascade of reactions that happens as a result of one stimulus occurring.  A sound happens, your ears hear it, there’s an associated thought and a bodily feeling, and then you act. Every time you do this, you strengthen the habit.

       When we pay attention to what’s happening in our internal and external environments, we grow knowledge about how we are influenced by our thoughts, feelings, emotions and sensations, and by other people, situations or relationships.  This knowing grows our emotional intelligence.

       Emotional intelligence is knowing our inner and outer worlds and what affects us, and managing our behavior or actions accordingly.  After recognizing what’s happening in and for us, we will become attuned to recognizing similar feelings, thoughts, and impulses in others.  In this way, we begin with ourselves and then the practice of being attentive, responsive, and compassionate spreads to our relationships with coworkers, partners, children, and parents. This is how we improve both our inner and outer relationships.

       Getting back to the phone: obviously you need to do what you need to do.  But the next time your phone beckons you with a ring, song, chirp, or bell --  take a breath and observe what's happening in you.  At the very least, by breathing or waiting a moment you can lessen the habit of reacting.

      Life is a series of moments – moments of choice to respond or react.

      Which one will you choose when your phone next calls out to you?

If you are interested:  there are mindfulness apps for your phones; see the links tab on my website!!

 May you meet this moment consciously.

7 Steps To Freedom

        Do you know that person who says “better the devil you know than the one you don’t?” How about the person who is game for whatever comes up in the moment, and always seems to make the best of situations?  Ever wondered what the difference is between these two types of people?

       When I was in college, I arrived early each day because parking was a nightmare.  I used the time to catch up on research and writing.  Another habit was to arrive a half hour early for my writing class.  I’d flop down  outside the door, tense and anxious for the morning session to let out.  Usually I was the only ‘early’ arrival.  This was odd behavior.  Not only was I early but I was very anxious to be early.   I realized I was struggling  to maintain what I perceived to be a comfortable situation for me – to get the front row middle seat.  I was determined that no one should take what I was inwardly calling ‘my’ seat.  That seat was my comfort zone. 

       We all have comfort zones.  Our favorite seat on the sofa or train, our familiar local restaurant, our favorite food, our comforting weekend activity, our set of friends.  These ‘habits’ define and shape our lives.   According to Dr. Judith Sills in her book “The Comfort Trap”, comfort has a physical component where the body feels contrasting reliefs – hot/cold, loose/tight, rest/effort etc.  If we just felt cold all the time or hot all the time this would be unbearable for us, so we need cool when we are warm and vice versa.  The emotional component of comfort known as "fit" is much harder to explain; it partly arises out of routines.  Every time we create a routine or habit it’s so that we can feel emotionally comfortable in an activity, place, or with a person.  Fit is something that feels familiar and feels like us.  Based on our routines, we create countless little comfort zones throughout our lives.

      Even though routines help us get through the day with less effort, their adverse aspect is they can easily stop being satisfying or helpful. The agonizing appeal of staying in unhealthy marriages or jobs is that they are familiar to us.  Such routine comforts become limiting ruts.  Anxiety and fear keep us trapped in untenable circumstances because it takes courage and practice to leave the safety of our cocoons, and to make change.

       When our comfort zone is too narrow, our chances of feeling inconvenienced, ill at ease, or disappointed rise accordingly.  Conversely flexible people who are comfortable in any situation are able to go with the flow, handle the unexpected easily, and take more risks.  Their attitude allows them the opportunity to have more good and bad experiences in life.  And this helps them to better know both themselves and their coping ability in various situations.  Because they've grown their ability to face discomfort, they can see themselves clearly with all their imperfections. 

         In order to live a successful, meaningful, fulfilling life we have to be willing to leave our comfort zone.  Exposing ourselves to new experiences includes mindfully attending to our own minds and bodies, and this grows our emotional intelligence.  The willingness to clearly see and accept our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and impulses trains us to be with the discomfort of being a fallible and simultaneously beautiful human being.  Even though we’d love to avoid the space where we are uncertain, and in the unfamiliar, it is vital to move towards it if we want to grow.  

       The fact is there is no way around our fears, heartbreak, or sadness:  we have to look at them, be in them, and go through them.  And none of this is possible without courage.  Oddly it is in practicing kindness and compassion for whatever we encounter in ourselves that grows our courage and bravery. This acceptance of ourselves exactly as we are also helps us be kind to others when they fail or stumble.  When we know ourselves, our intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships improve.  

      The first step towards change is awareness. 

      It is important to know what change you want and why you want it.  This intrinsic motivation will give you the courage and strength to face uncertainty and persevere toward your goal.  As with all new things, you’ll encounter discomfort and anxiety. 

      To break out of your comfort trap, get you moving in a new direction, and towards greater satisfaction in life, here are Dr. Sills':

      7 Steps to Freedom (p. 22) - 

1.      Face what hurts: Look for what’s missing, frustrating, or stifling in your life or current comfort zone.  We distract ourselves from this pain by fantasizing or denying what’s happening.

2.      Create a vision: what do you hope to gain or where do you want to end up?

3.      Make a decision: when do you change or leave?  How do you arrive at this decision?  Is your current situation working?

4.      Identify your pattern:  Look to your past – have you made changes before? How did you do it in the past?  What can you do again this time?

5.      Let Go:  identify the emotions that are holding you hostage (guilt, obligation attachment) in your current situation.  Are there any losses you will suffer with this change?  Can you minimize the losses?

6.      Face your Fear:  Know what you are afraid of and what makes you anxious.  It is what stands between you and your goal and heart’s desire.  You must know what you are facing.

7.      Take Action: consider your next steps to get you moving. You will need to act so what will you do, say, choose to get moving?

As scary as change is for us, we are all capable of it.  We just have to be willing to be affirm our heart’s wish over our fears.

May you be free from fear to fully enjoy life.

REFERENCE:

Sills, J. PhD. “The Comfort Trap: or What if You’re Riding a Dead Horse.”  Viking Penguin Group.  New York, NY.  2004.  

Weeds of Wisdom

     I would like to tell you a story about a plant that could teach us about life…

   

 The oxalis (wood sorrel) blossom is a paper-thin delicate flower on a skinny stalk.  Its lemony scalloped-edged petals with deep orange stamens contrasts strikingly with the bright green stem it sits atop.  This flower evokes feelings of spring and joy.  As it flutters in the breeze, its subtle fragrance invites you to come closer to sniff – a hint of jasmine. When we were children we called it magical clover, and were fascinated when we sucked on the straw like stem that we were rewarded with a sweet sour nectar.

      However, many people consider it a weed.  In my neighborhood, you can’t walk anywhere without seeing it growing wild in people’s lawns and flower beds. In spite of the pejorative label, oxalis has utility and beauty.  A couple of weekends ago, we needed to mow the wilderness of our back lawn, which had taken off after the rain and warm weather. I decided to pick the flowers for a table arrangement.  From experience, I knew some wild flowers don’t do well as cut flowers, so I wondered how long they’d last.

     It was mid-afternoon when I gathered the stems, and as I placed them in vases of cold water, I noticed the water began to get cloudy.  During dinner, I saw the water was opaque.  By sunset, most of the flowers had curled up, as if to let us know it was bedtime.  They looked like tiny golden flutes. When I sniffed them, there was no smell.  

     The next morning, their fragile heads were still drooping when I opened the blinds.  Later as the flowers began opening up, the water seemed clearer.  And this is what piqued my curiosity:  was the plant releasing sugar or sap when it was going to sleep, and then reabsorbing it when it needed energy?  It occurred to me that this little flower was responding to and following the sun, even when it was cut and in a vase.  It hadn’t forgotten its need. 

     Here was a stark reminder to me:  to be present, to notice what is needed and to respond to that need. Can we heed such a lesson from a weed?

     Often when we’ve deemed something to be unhelpful, a bother or irritating, we forget that it is valuable and could teach us. Most people think of wood sorrel as useless.  In fact, this plant is edible and has health benefits.  It is a thirst quencher, diuretic, cooling to the system, and soothing to the stomach.  It can be used in salads, soups, and when sautéed with onions, chilies and garlic, makes a delicious tangy accompaniment (recipe below) to fried fish.  Its flowers make simple stunning bouquets that incidentally lasted almost a week in the vase.

     Our lives are so busy, we rarely have time to pay attention to what’s happening in the moment.  In the process, we overlook our needs that are also subject to changing seasons, weather and circumstances.  But we can use everyday things – flowers, children, birds, animals, trees – as reminders that we also need nurturing.  This way, we won’t have to expend so much energy using our willpower to remember what we love and need to nurture ourselves.  We can make paying attention a habit that puts us in touch with ourselves.

     So the next time you look at a weed in your garden, stop before you yank it out.  And really look at it.  Consider what this ‘insignificant’ plant may be able to teach you about responding to life. And then consider your response: to heed its lesson or dump it into the yard waste bin. 

     May you be awakened by the overlooked and ordinary.  

Wood Sorrel (Sour) Chutney Recipe

4 tablespoons oil

1 medium onion chopped

½ tsp of mixed seeds (mustard, fenugreek, cumin)

1 green chili chopped (depending on how spicy you like it)

2 cloves garlic chopped

Little salt

Big bunch of oxcalis greens (washed; large stems and flowers removed)

Heat oil in an enamel pot (not a metal pot).  Add seeds until they splutter.  Add onion and saute until brown.  Add green chilis and garlic till fragrant.  Then add greens, salt and cook on low until soft.  Greens will discolor.  Cook on low for about an hour until all the water evaporates and the oil begins to surface.  Use an immersion blender to lightly puree the mixture.  Good accompaniment with seafood dishes because of its lemony taste.  

Interpreting our Way to Greater Happiness

     Some situations in life aren’t taught to us, and yet when faced with them, we assume we should somehow know how to deal with them.  How do you handle such occurrences in your life?  How many “shoulds”, “musts”, “have tos” do you impose on yourself?  And how does the interpretation of “should have done”, or “would have to,” influence how you feel about yourself and the situation you are facing?  

  The interpretation we ascribe to a situation directly contributes to how much or little stress we will feel.  We can ask ourselves: “are my interpretations of occurrences in my life beneficial or harmful to me?  Do they ease or burden my life? 

  When we approach every situation with the attitude that we should know how to deal with them, then we are setting ourselves up for high stress.  All of us had to, at some point, learn to walk, drive, interview for a job, cross the street, answer a research question – we weren’t born knowing these skills.  And right up to this very moment, some of you may be learning new information from reading this article.  So the acquisition of knowledge is an ongoing skills-building activity that is a lifelong process.  Indeed our 'success' in life depends on our adaptability and open responsiveness to unfolding life situations.  So consider this:  do we understand the crucial difference between taking offense versus being harmed? 

  Sometimes realization can come in the simplest way.  I'm remembering an incident from many years ago that brought home the difference between being offended and harmed, and simultaneously awakened my inner critic : “how could I have not known this before?”  One day I was complaining to a friend about my awful job situation and she replied, “you take things too personally.”  I instantly defended my position.  Later on, however, I pondered her odd remark.   

     Even though I had reacted by righteously defending my interpretation of the situation at my job, I will always be grateful to her for that comment.  Its incisiveness cut through to my blind spot – it showed me that in life there’s always another possible interpretation or response.  I might have intellectually known this, but I hadn’t really understood it.

     Typically our interpretations are reactions born out of our beliefs, attitudes, and conditioning.  A reaction naturally precludes other perspectives.  Its swiftness swallows up the gap of space to breathe, be present, and reflect on what’s occurring.  In short, reactivity shuts down possibilities. 

      So let’s return to the difference between being offended and being harmed.  According to Lou Marinoff in his book, “Plato, Not Prozac,” the difference is essentially one of interpretation.  He explains it this way.  If someone slaps you in the face, then this is being harmed.  There’s only one interpretation possible.  If, however, someone said you were lazy and useless, here there is more than one possible interpretation.  You will have to do some self-reflection and then determine how true the remark is or isn’t.  In this instance, you CHOOSE whether to be offended or to simply shrug off the remark.  The latter is largely dependent on your interpretation of the accuracy of the remark, whereas the former is determined by the physical pain you experience, which isn’t subject to interpretation.  You may have already know this, I didn’t and was very glad for the reminder. 

     The disadvantages of applying the “should know” interpretation is that we –

·         fail to see and appreciate what’s actually happening in the moment,

·         expect perfection from ourselves,

·         become combative with and judgmental of ourselves,

·         don’t learn from the situation or about our coping ability,

·         don’t allow all possibilities to come to bear in the situation.

My friend’s timely comment helped me see an option existed to respond i.e. to interpret the situation so as to benefit me and possibly the other person too.  This is helpful in building healthy relationships, as we don’t live in isolation.  Our lives are constantly intersecting with people who hold vastly differing ideas and attitudes, and in order to peacefully coexist and successfully interact with them, we need skills that can benefit us to this end.

 Mindfulness helps us to notice our own reactivity whether it is taking offense, verbally and physically retaliating, insulting ourselves and so on.  In the practice of mindful awareness, we use ourselves as the training ground for growing our responsiveness.  We allow and accept whatever arises in our mind and emotions. With time, inch by inch we grow to accept ourselves, as we are.  When we accept ourselves, we become more able to clearly see and flow with whatever life brings us – pain or joy.  And the more clearly we see, the clearer our interpretations of life will be.

May you interpret your way to happiness. 

Simple Steps to Practising Gratitude

       It’s another new year.  But just like any other day or year, it arrives in a moment.  We can use this moment to approach the year with a grateful eye for all that we’ve been given.

       I visited an office, and a woman there who knew that my mother had passed away last year immediately reassured me that this year was going to be a better one.  We hugged and I was touched by this warm big-hearted person who was trying to make me feel better.  The fact is though no one knows whether this year is going to be better than last year.  What we do know is -- what we can do to make it better!

Drinking it in

       And one way to enjoy the moment and the year is by growing our gratitude.  If we paid close attention, we’d realize that many things in our lives work out, fall into place, manifest, are realized, are enjoyed, function, turn on, and go smoothly.  In other words, more often than not things do go right for us.  What blinds us to this fact, is our wish that it should always and every single time go our way.  Our tendency (negativity bias) is to focus on where we’ve failed or how people and things have disappointed us. But only looking through the distorted lens of failure or disappointment blinds us to how well things normally unfold.

       In the spirit of New Year's resolutions, consider experimenting with being grateful for the things that work out and for the setbacks in your life.  If we were to consider just how much goes into each moment to help us function we’d be astounded.  For instance:  right now I’m writing this article to share with you. I’m able to do this with the help of a computer to capture my thoughts; the chair that helps me sit upright to type; the home, provided by my husband’s job, in which I can write; the food I ate to nourish my body and mind; the sun lighting up this room; my cousin’s suggestion to write about gratitude and happiness; and the list goes on.  In any given moment, there’s so much working to support us, and to help us be, experience, and participate.  The desire to always have it be the same i.e. everything always being as we wish it, causes us to overlook the contribution and bounty right before our eyes. 

Steps to Practicing Gratitude

       The path to growing our gratitude is through expanding our perspective and awareness.  We do this by paying attention. Noticing what’s happening in and around us and taking it all in with the eyes of wonder.  To actively engage our curiosity we can ask ourselves these questions: “what are all the things that are supporting me in this moment?” or “what am I receiving right now?”

Appreciation

       Try not to overlook the ordinary things. To illustrate: even a mundane activity like making a cup of coffee requires the contribution of many energies and beings – the coffee bean and grower, the soil the plant grew in, the water and sun, the microbes in the ground, the store owner, the water company, the plumber who laid the pipes in your home, the electricity to warm the water and so on.  Through this kind of observation, we begin to learn about interdependence and from it gratitude will begin to flow.

       We can also practise gratitude by paying attention to our feelings.  The feelings we experience when we are chilled and wrap a warm blanket around ourselves, or when a friend hugs us in a difficult time, or the feel of cool grass under our feet on a hot day. These experiences remind us of our ability to enjoy and receive.  We’ll also begin to notice that, for many of us, we tend to receive more than we give.  This gentle nudge can move us to show more gratitude to the people around us.

       And as hard as this may be to swallow, we can even learn to develop gratitude towards unpleasant experiences, emotions and people.   Less than desirable situations and emotions by their nature shake us out of our complacency.  They throws us onto unfamiliar ground, which despite making us fractious and unhappy can also serve us. If we practice only being grateful for the things going right in our lives, we’ll automatically disregard the value inherent in the encounters that challenge us.  So be grateful to your friend who insists on ripping the wool off your eyes, or the stab of fear you feel every time you think of a undertaking a new experience, or when your colleague insists on something that you disagree with.

        These experiences are like a splash of cold water – they can wake us up.   They force us out of our default operating mode, and try to broaden our perspective away from “me and my desires” to a more expansive picture of the world and its beings. In this light, we begin to recognize our interconnectedness with the world around us, see our and others' contribution to our life experiences, and feel empowered to contribute more to our and others enjoyment and happiness in life.

      

  May you experience many surprise moments of gratitude this year.   

Happy New Year!

May you have a wonderful New Year filled with

 love, health, friendship and laughter. 

Thank you for your support and for reading, 

sharing and commenting on the articles.