Old Dog - New Tricks

I don't know about you, but I like things to be their normal comfortable selves. I've been using this blogging site now for several years and it has a certain look and a certain feel that I like. I've gotten used to it. We're old friends - we know each other well. And now... now... they have gone and changed the user interface!! It looks different, paler and blander. It feels different, commands are in different places. It's just different. And I don't like it.

I could resist it... I could go back to the old look... for as long as it will be around. I could kick and scream and send nasty emails to the developers and say "Why? Why muck with something that looks perfectly fine and isn't broken??" Sigh... I've done that in the past... when Google Mail changed its look... of course it did nothing. All of my resistance and kicking and screaming did nothing. And now I'm using the new Gmail look and I can live with it. Partly because various people have created various plug-ins for my browser that allow me to claw back some of the features that I liked so much. I like colours... bland and pale colours don't do much for me. I like to have rich colours so that I can recognize things quickly.

Maybe the blogging interface will get some plug-ins soon... that will allow me to keep some of the features that I like. Or maybe not. The world changes... and we either change with it... or we stagnate I guess. I resisted smartphones for the longest time, not wanting to become one of "those people" who were forever checking their email at dinner and in their cars. But I eventually capitulated and here I am - not quite one of "those people" but... I see the benefit of the smartphone.

I suppose it's really how I view the change... is it a "good" thing or a "bad" thing... if it's a good thing (at least in my eyes), I usually embrace it. If it's a bad thing, I fend it off. But what I'm finding is that good and bad are quite relative. I generally see all change as bad, at least initially - later I might change my story - but in the moment... it seems bad... and I resist it. Perhaps it is to alter the way that I see something... it's not good or bad... it just is....

Free at Last

Have I mentioned lately how relieved I am to be out of the Catholic Church? Too much politics within those walls. Too much bigotry and prejudice. Too much of all that is not life-giving and fulfilling. So sad really...

Was reading a Robert Fulghum story today and he was talking about his baptism at the age of 12 as a Southern Baptist. He is now a Unitarian Universalist minister. And he is a firm believer in one of the immutable laws - nothing is ever lost. Matter is not lost, it just transforms into something else, energy or light. Nothing disappears... not really... not even our souls.

Imagine if that became widely known... that our souls cannot be lost... ever... might put the Church out of business...

Cycle of Life

Nature is a source of great creative inspiration for me. I'm not sure how it works, but oftentimes, seeing something in nature creates a chain reaction and I quickly get an insight into some aspect of my life or life in general. Sometimes it's the reverse... I experience something and immediately see a connection with nature...

The other day, we were doing a guided meditation, essentially a review of the day... without judging anything that had happened. We were to be neutral observers of our day... and I had an insight of our lives... of life in general...

At some point, we've all learned about the water cycle... water evaporates from the ocean to form clouds, which move over land rising up and cooling as mountains are encountered, falling as rain, which then seeps through the soil into streams and rivers which flow back to the ocean.

It came to me that our lives are like that... we come from a vast Oneness (ocean) and are brought into this world as infants (drops of rain), living our lives for whatever length of time (streams and rivers) before finally joining the Oneness again. Some people live very long lives and are like very long, old rivers which meander as they slowly approach the ocean. Some people live very short lives, dashing down the mountains as creeks and rivulets, joining the ocean shortly after birth.

Our lives, like streams and rivers, are full of obstacles and set-backs. Sometimes we end up coasting for a long time (lakes), other times we are tumbling through a torrent of life (rapids and canyons). Sometimes it seems like our spirit has dried up entirely and we are just suffering through life (underground flow).

Like rivers, our lives can be fruitful and nourishing or wildly damaging. We can suck people into our vortexes or bear them up gently. Rivers and our lives shape the surface upon which we flow... Sometimes we go with the topography of life... sometimes we burst our channels and go elsewhere. Ultimately though, we all end up back in the Oneness... from which we do it again, in a different way, in a different lifetime.

Trust in Life

We had a saying at university - "life's a bitch and then you die"... which seemed like an interesting thing to say before exams. A fatalistic view of life in the face of a perceived threat/danger (exams). But is that really what life is like? I suppose it really depends on how we view life. Do we trust life? Is life something to be endured? Or is life something to be ventured?

The truth is... life will show up in exactly the way that we believe life will show up. If we believe that life is a struggle... then life will be a struggle. If we believe that life's a bitch and then you die... then that will be how life will show up for us. If we don't trust ourselves... we won't trust life.

Ultimately it's up to us as to how we handle life... sure, bad things happen... but the question is, how do we handle them? Do we resist them? Accept them? Move through them? Let the past go? Or are we always going through life looking for the next bad thing? Cause if we are... then we'll find it.

I'd rather move through life in a venturing way... or adventuring way... life has all sorts of opportunities... for exploration and newness and discoveries... that's my view of life. What's yours? And it's not to say that one is right and one is wrong... there are as many ways of moving through life as there are people on this earth... but some ways lead to pain and suffering and some ways lead to joy and fulfillment...

Building Trust - one Link at a Time

The other day I came across a very simple, but seemingly effective method of encouraging us to do what we say we're going to do. It comes from Jerry Seinfeld, a show I never watch... and it's called, Don't Break the Chain.

Quite simple really... get a calendar... maybe the one that you got for free from the pharmacy or the garage. Choose what it is that you want to do... exercise every day, drink 8 cups of water in a day, meditate... whatever it is... and then for every day that you follow-through on your commitment to yourself, put a big red X through that day on the calendar. And the next day... and the next day. The idea is to create a long, continuous chain of big red X's as you consistently do what you say you're going to do. Just don't break the chain. And if you do break the chain, then start over again.

This is not a new idea. Factories and other workplaces often have signs that say "We have 723 days injury-free". They don't want to break the chain either!

I use a website called www.750words.com to write my "morning pages" (a la Julia Cameron) every day. The idea is to do it everyday... to create a consistent chain of writing. I started out as an Egg... after 3 days, I earned the Turkey Badge... after 5 days, the Penguin Badge... after 10 days, the Flamingo Badge... after 30 days... the Albatross badge... and at Day 52, I missed a day through forgetfulness... and went back to being an Egg! Now, the little virtual badges might not work for everyone... but they sure work for me... The ultimate goal at this point is 500 days of consecutive writing to earn the lofty title of Space Bird.

It's all the same idea... create an unbroken chain of doing whatever it is that you want to do... and do it. One day at a time. That's all it takes... just do it for today - don't worry about tomorrow. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other... and a mountain can be climbed. And with each footstep, our trust in ourselves rises...

Self-Trust

Ah, now here is the kicker... Do we actually trust ourselves? Hmmm... that is a big one. Because we don't just make promises and agreements with others. We make promises and agreements with ourselves. We say that we are going to do something... and what happens then if we don't actually do it?

Yeah... we lose a little bit of trust in ourselves. That would see to be fairly common sense. And we can also build trust with ourselves. Some days the trust level goes up... some days it goes down. It's really up to us though. Whereas our trust in others is dependent to a certain extent on their actions (driving erratically)... our trust in ourselves is solely dependent on ourselves and our actions. We're it... And ohhhh... we don't like that sometimes!

We can come up with all sorts of excuses as to why we break our word to ourselves - I'm tired, the weather is bad, the news is bad, I don't have enough time, I had a hard day, I deserve a pick-me-up. Yeah... we use a lot of them... But really, the only person we're injuring is ourselves.

Building trust in ourselves is a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute process. We have a choice in each and every moment as to whether we are going to choose an action that is going to raise our trust level in ourselves... or whether we are going to choose an action that will lower it.

We make a commitment to meditate every day - and if we do that... our trust level rises. We make a commitment to go for a walk every day - and if we don't do that... our trust level decreases. I suppose the real question is this... do we want to trust ourselves? Do we want to build trust in ourselves? What is the price we pay if we keep losing trust in ourselves? Does that affect our trust in others as well?

Basic Trust

Where does trust come from? Is it something that is built? Is it something that we just have? Can trust be strengthened or diminished? By what?

I was musing about that the other day as trust seems to be a sticking point in many areas of our world. Do we trust our politicians? Do we trust our condo boards? Do we trust our neighbours? Do we trust the other drivers on the road?

And it seems to me thusly... we all start with a basic level of trust. We have to... otherwise we wouldn't leave the house. We would stay inside, in our basement bunker, shivering in fear. We have a basic trust as we leave our driveway that the other drivers out there are going to drive responsibly. We have a basic trust that politicians aren't going to run our country into the ground. We have a basic trust that our bank manager isn't going to embezzle our money.

Now, having said that... once we are out there... our trust metre can either go up or go down. If we say a driver weaving erratically down the road, our trust level goes down. If we see them run a red light and narrowly avoid a collision, our trust level goes down even further. And once it's down there, it will take quite a bit for that trust to be rebuilt.

If we repeatedly experience a lowering of trust with one particular person, then that trust might never be rebuilt. If someone is repeatedly late for meetings or appointments... our trust goes down. And re-building that trust can take quite a bit. It's very easy to lose trust... much harder to regain it.

Conversely, if our trust level increases over time.. as someone demonstrates that they are consistent and worthy of trust, then there might even be a bit of room for a misstep here and there. Once in a while is one thing though... over and over again is another thing.

Which makes me consider... how trustworthy am I?