The Middle Way

Hurrying Through Life

 

Mouth of Columbia River at Astoria, Oregon

I remember my excitement as my 16th birthday approached and with it, that all-important American rite of passage -- getting my driver's license. Cars, the open road, Bruce Springsteen on the radio: those were the days.  

There was another side to my driving experience, though, and it wasn't pretty. Behind the wheel, I became enraged at the smallest infractions of other drivers, frequently sending blistering curses their way. I set a terrible example for my younger brother and sister, something they still mention 40-odd years later.   

This is particularly worthy of mention because in no other area of my life did I exhibit such rage. I know now that I was dealing with a lot of other rage-worthy things in my life. For some reason, though, the only place where I could release that anger was behind the wheel of a car. 

I am a much more balanced person now than I was then. I've learned healthier ways to deal with life's stresses and rarely suffer from eruptions of rage, whether driving or otherwise. I'm still an impatient driver, though, and am easily irritated by the poor behavior of others (which is never in short supply). When I feel that impatience come over me, I invoke a word we came up with last year while spending two weeks in the Pacific Northwest: pacifica -- peaceful. It reminds me of the meandering route we followed along the Pacific Ocean, from the farthest northwest corner of Washington to the Columbia River gorge. 

It also reminds me of a less intense driving style than I'm used to. For two full weeks, I experienced very few of the driving behaviors that most annoy me: tailgating, neglecting to signal turns and lane changes, driving at speeds well above the posted limits on residential streets, speeding through yellow (and red) lights. No one who drives in the more cutthroat eastern half of our country can help but notice this more polite style of driving, and it had a calming effect  on my own behavior.   

It didn't take long to lose that peaceful feeling upon returning home; my own challenge with patience and equanimity remains a work in progress. So it's as an offender myself that I notice the inconsiderate -- and at times dangerous -- driving behavior I see on a daily basis, both from behind the wheel and on long walks through my neighborhood. Things like speeding up to beat yellow lights and weaving  in and out of traffic at dangerous speeds. As a pedestrian, I've learned to pause before venturing into crosswalks despite having the Walk sign; people in my neighborhood regularly run red lights, turn right on red during hours when it's prohibited, and speed excessively on both residential streets and major thoroughfares.    

Within the past week, I've had two cars nearly hit me at speeds far in excess of the posted speed limit on local highways, underestimating how much distance they had between me and other cars.  And I had one heart-stopping reminder this same week of what's at stake when our impatience gets the best of us.  

It happened like this:  I turned onto one of the busiest main arteries in my neighborhood at about  9 on a weekday morning. As I rounded the bend, I noticed a young child, no more than 2 or 3, on his plastic bicycle in the opposing lane. Both I and the cars in front of me stopped, and a young woman in front got out of her van, scooped the child up, and took him to safety. Just then I saw another woman racing across the lawn towards the street. The two women exchanged a few words and then the woman in the van handed the child to his mother. Traffic resumed. 

As I slowly drove away, I remembered my own active toddler -- the Harry Houdini of car seats. He routinely slipped out of the straps, including in places where I could not easily pull over to buckle him back in.  And it wasn't just car seats that failed to restrain him;  by 18 months old, he could throw one leg over his crib rail and silently slide down and scoot off, only a flight of stairs away from potential calamity. Some thirty years after the need for hypervigilance has ended, I remain a light sleeper.  

So I have great sympathy for the young mother whose child wandered off. I also know it only takes a blink of an eye, a few seconds of inattention -- and a car, exceeding the posted 30 mph speed limit by 10 mph or more, as they routinely do on this stretch of road -- for disaster to strike. It's sheer luck that I wasn't one of those unfortunate mothers painted as neglectful when my own very active toddler was growing up.  

Consider this my plea that we all bring our better selves to bear when we're behind the wheel of our cars. I know we're all in a hurry to get to where we're going, but at what cost? Is it worth rear-ending the car in front of you when they stop suddenly because a deer has entered the roadway and you're tailgating? Or causing an accident when you suddenly change lanes without paying adequate attention to other traffic around you?  

We can't make all the idiots go away, but we can all do a better job of making sure we're not behaving that way ourselves. Please -- slow down, and be careful out there.

I'm Home

A couple of weeks ago, I met my friend, Claire, at a local craft brewery. We hadn’t seen each other in a while and had a lot of catching up to do. Our conversation ranged from the revelatory to the ordinary – new directions for her, the latest home improvement project for me. It was an emotional evening and, like all our deepest conversations, one that could have only happened with my very English friend in a pub over pints of beer.

As I laid out my plans, Claire asked, “Why do you spend so much money on your house?”

I heard curiosity rather than judgment in her question. She knows I’ve forked out a lot of money in the last 18 years on a house most would consider a starter home and moved out of years ago. If not for resale value, then what?

I couldn’t answer her, or not with anything that made sense to me at the time. Over the next few days, her question stuck with me, working its way through my mind during long, meditative walks. I began to realize it’s all about the imagery of “home” for me.

During 20 years of a difficult marriage, I had recurring dreams about houses. One in particular: a ramshackle place, but with a door that opened into a beautiful series of rooms I’d completely forgotten about. “Why don’t I ever come in here?” I’d ask myself, feeling the sense of peace and happiness I drew from this space.

Over time I realized the dream house was a metaphor for myself, the forgotten rooms those parts of me I hid from the world because I didn’t feel safe enough to express them within my marriage.

Why that came to be is a story for another day. It’s enough to know that I grew into an adult lacking a strong sense of self, learning instead to be the person others wanted me to be. That began to change after the birth of my son when I was 32. Tensions in the marriage increased during my pregnancy and after my son’s birth, and spilled over into my relationships with my parents and siblings. During a particularly spectacular confrontation between my husband and the rest of my family, my tenuous sense of self became shockingly clear to me. As my family pulled me one way and my husband another, I realized there was no “me” other than the one they each called theirs.

But were either of these Barbaras the real me? Who did I think I was? I couldn’t answer that question, either – but I began on a journey to find out, one that eventually led me to leaving my husband.

Divorce removed the chaos from my life but it left a hole as well. Relief at finally being free coexisted with pain and sadness. My deepest grief? Knowing that my son, just 10 years old, would spend the rest of his childhood dividing his time between two homes. The pain of not having him under the same roof every night was visceral.

I found solace in turning the home that had been ours into mine. Slowly but steadily, the house evolved from the drab and dreary place of my dreams into the warm and welcoming place I longed for. At the same time, I began exploring those forgotten “rooms” of myself and – tentatively at first – letting them surface. Many years later, the pain of those days is a distant memory, but the work on my home (and myself) continues.

It’s as difficult now to remember the dowdy house I began with as it is to remember the anxious, uncertain person I used to be. The sense of contentment and peace I feel as I look at the home I’ve created mirrors the satisfaction I feel with the woman I’ve become: the two are intertwined.

The same week I met Claire, I had a houseguest on a cross-country journey of self-discovery. She’s about the same age I was when I began this process and like I was then, she’s looking for home. As we talked, she told me over and over, “I LOVE it here. It’s so warm and welcoming and full of love.”

Well, of course it is – that’s who I am.

 

What I Learned On My Summer Vacation

First, some background: 

Facebook Entry: July 4, 2012

Much to my own surprise, the competitive spirit I didn't think I had has been awakened by a program at my gym. Although I didn't join the Spring Fever program for the competition (or rather generous awards), I've consistently ranked #1 since Day 1. Enter my nemesis, whose name I've smudged out. With only 4 days to go, we're running neck and neck. It's down to the truly crazy, like wearing my Polar tracking device while we walked all over Boston yesterday (including up the 297 steps of the Bunker Hill memorial). But -- it put me back in the lead. 

I am determined to win this thing now :-)

I titled this screen grab “My Nemesis”

Epilogue: despite my enthusiasm and determination, I lost. It was a combination of factors: an equally determined competitor who – like me – wanted to win. And late in the game, a dark horse who waited until the last minute to add lots of points (including one workout she claimed burned 2500 calories in a single day).  

But before I knew about the dark horse, and before I thought all was lost, I spent my last two days in Boston -- on vacation! -- attempting to regain my lead. Crazy squared: I walked 10 miles each day, an expenditure of 5+ hours and 2000+ calories. Had I entered the second day’s walk before we left Boston, I would have come in second. But clued into how to play the game now -- hoard your uploads until the last minute to confound your opponents – I opted to wait until we got to our family rental in Rhode Island, which promised an internet connection it didn’t deliver. I wasn’t able to upload my last day’s walk in time for the contest cutoff. 

Although I was disappointed by my loss, I was also surprised by how this competitive urge spurred me to increase my level of exercise. If you’d told me two months ago that I’d go out and walk 10 miles at a pop, I would have said, “Why?” Now I’m doing it at least once a week. In fact, I’ve upped the time devoted to exercise by at least 50% most days.

Other than discovering my inner competitive spirit, what did I gain from this experience? 

1. I’m capable of doing more. I’ve been exercising an hour a day, five times a week for three years (and regularly but less frequently before that). Along with a healthier diet, it’s one of the ways I’ve lost 40 pounds. Until my gym’s fitness challenge, though, I hadn’t challenged myself to go beyond my regular routine. Once I did, I learned I could do far more than I thought. (This applies to other areas of my life as well.)
   
   
2. I need to eat less than others -- and exercise more, too. Two years ago I joined a program at my gym called “Commit to be Fit,” a 12-week program of exercise and diet pitting teams of people in a friendly competition to lose the most weight. It worked so well I ended up participating two more times, and really cementing healthier eating and exercise habits.
   
   
   

   The worst thing I ate on vacation: the Boot Mill sandwich at Arthur’s Paradise Diner in Lowell, Mass. Eggs, cheese, bacon and potatoes on a bun. (We won’t even talk about how much wine and beer I consumed.)

   ---

   The program also included a test that confirmed what I already suspected: I have a low metabolism. My resting metabolic rate is only 1500 calories a day -- 1800 when you add in the average for daily activity. Through experience, I learned that number is closer to 1600. And to lose weight, I need to stay at the low end of 1200-1400 calories.
   
   So…to both lose weight and maintain that loss, I’m stuck with consuming fewer calories and finding ways to turn up the furnace. Adding an extra hour (or more) to my daily exercise regimen did just that: I lost 3 pounds on vacation, even though I was indulging myself more than usual. And I’ve maintained that weight loss since I came home.
   
   
3. It’s not just about exercise. It’s the daily activity, too. While I was on vacation, I traipsed around tourist sites, biked, hiked, walked and just generally moved around a lot more. I watched zero television and spent far less time sitting in front of a computer. It’s hard to maintain that level of activity since I’ve come home – but I’m going to work on it. 
   
   
4. Feeding the good wolf. I’m going to steer clear of saying “good” and “bad” habits and just say I have some behaviors that contribute to greater well-being and some that don’t. The option to exercise more only came about because I’d already made a commitment to exercise in the first place. Likewise, I don’t stray very far from my healthy eating patterns before yanking myself back again. And the very best way to encourage myself to continue practicing well-being is to remind myself of my successes – not my failures. Success breeds success; continually berating yourself for your failures just serves to keep them at the center of your attention. If you’re like me, that’s a sure recipe for bringing on the exact behavior you want to see less of.

As I took what ended up being a 10 mile walk this morning, I recognized the unique factors that allowed me to do all the things I’m writing about. This includes the privilege of being semi-retired, the legacy of my long career at an incredible company whose retirement plan made that possible. And being 58 with a grown child and no other household or family responsibilities.

I would strongly dislike it if anyone reading this beat up on themselves for not doing more. Instead, I would say practice your own well-being where you are right now. At another time in my life, that meant jogging at pre-dawn or working out at the gym in my office after lunch so I could minimize the time away from my son. 

And – challenge yourself as circumstances change. You might find yourself as surprised as I was with what you’re capable of doing.

 

Snowed In

I have never outgrown my love of snow. I feel the same wonder and delight today that I did as a child, watching it fall and muffle the sounds of a noisy world.

I know few share my love of snow, especially in a winter that's already seen more than usual. Here's something for those who do.

 

Shoveling Snow With Buddha
Billy Collins

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

A Poignant Lesson on Attachment and Loss

This past Monday, I left my bracelet in the locker at my gym. Taking it off in the first place was a hard habit to get into; I never remove it except when I must -- my few hospital stays, airport security checkpoints and now, when I swim.

But that day I left it behind when I gathered my things. I realized it was missing about an hour after I got home, and rushed back to retrieve it. It was gone: whoever found it did not turn it in, nor has it shown up in the days since.

There’s a story behind this bracelet, and a story behind that story. The story is this: it belonged to my grandmother, who bought it from a Native American on the side of a dirt road somewhere in New Mexico or Arizona in the 1940’s. She and her husband had moved to Colorado after the war and explored much of the American southwest and Mexico by car, camping by roadsides. The bracelet is sand-cast silver and has the signature of its maker – a small bird – on the inside.

Like me, my grandmother always wore it.  It’s one of my earliest memories of her. She gave it to me during a last, long visit I made to see her – another in a series of solace-seeking trips for some trouble or another I was going through. The bracelet had begun bruising her thinning skin and she felt it was time to pass it on. Among all her granddaughters, she chose me: the one she always felt was most like her.

The story behind the story is that of my grandmother. Born at the end of the 19^th century, she lived a fascinating life. From her early days of privilege to the cash-strapped years of her teens, she had a fierce intelligence and independence.  Before her marriage in 1918, she was a dancer in Greenwich Village and acted in plays written for her by a doting playwright. She was also a member of the Socialist Club, best known today from Warren Beatty’s film, Reds, about one of its more famous members, John Reed.

Her marriage ended abruptly in 1929 when the car she was driving collided with a train at a crossing in Nyack, New York, on a foggy April night. My grandfather and another couple were killed; my grandmother spent 3 months recuperating in the hospital. She never walked properly again.

She remarried in the 1940’s and moved to Colorado. Max was Swiss and had also lived in South Africa before moving to the U.S., and he and my grandmother took many trips together. Often their transportation was as exotic as the trips themselves – tramp steamers and cargo planes, a reflection of Max’s thriftiness. I always loved to visit them; their home was filled with African masks, Peruvian pottery, Indian cloth and Chinese paper paintings, and smelled of spices and faraway places.

Now I’ve lost the most visible connection to the grandmother I admired and adored. It’s a visible, visceral loss and I feel tears pricking my eyelids every time I think about it.

The bracelet may yet turn up. Whether it does or doesn’t, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Buddhist concept of attachment.

It’s a complex concept that’s often misinterpreted, but the explanation in this article does a reasonable job of summarizing: “Attachments are sim­ple beliefs … that have become solidified as ‘truth’ in our minds. They also partake of the energy of desire, which is based on the underlying belief that without some par­ticular person or thing, we can never be free from suffering.”

My attachment comes in equating this bracelet to my grandmother, and feeling like I’ve lost a part of myself in losing it. It comes in giving up the warm fantasy of passing it on to my own granddaughter someday, along with the stories that accompany it – my grandmother’s and my own.

In the end, it's just a thing, not a substitute for my life memories of my grandmother. I'll always carry those with me. Or so I remind myself as I once again unconsciously reach over to adjust the bracelet that's no longer around my wrist.

When Procrastination meets Mindlessness

It's not yet noon and I've been having one of those mornings that defines having a bad day.

Because I was intending to take my son's car to the shop for service following my morning swim, I grabbed his key and what I thought was a house key on my way out the door this morning.  I didn't take my mobile phone, thinking I wouldn't need it. 

I noticed when I got to the gym that in my rush to get out the door, I'd not picked up a house key but my son's extra car key.  This would not have been a problem had the outside device for my garage's remote control been working.  It wasn't because I hadn't bothered to get it fixed.

I called my neighbor (who keeps an extra key for when I'm out of town) from a lifeguard's phone on the chance she was still home.  No dice.  Maybe I'd left a front window unlocked so I could break into the house through one of the windows facing my front porch?  Nope.

Next, I made the 40 minute round trip drive to my mother's house since I knew she had a key to my place.  Except when I got home, I found out she'd given me the wrong one. 

I finally remembered there was a ladder under the deck that I could use to enter an open window one side of the house.  Finally, success!  

Wait -- there's more. 

As I was walking back up the drive after putting the ladder away, I saw my son's car rolling down the driveway towards me. I couldn't stop it before it ran into the back yard and (thankfully) came to a stop just shy of the shed, whose low stone wall had stopped it before it could cause any damage. 

I had to stop and just breathe for a couple of minutes after that. Sometimes, that's all you can do.

Even before the car came rolling down the driveway, I knew that my inattentiveness in combination with a tendency to put off dealing with things as they arise had combined to create a perfect storm of unpleasantness.  At other times in my life, such a series of events would have put me in a funk for the whole day.

Instead, I took this for the lesson in mindfulness I obviously needed. Mindfulness can be described as full-minded awareness, paying conscious and purposeful attention to what you're doing from moment to moment. 

It's easy to go into automatic pilot and unconsciously go through daily routines.  Maybe you're tired or stressed out from work or personal issues, and you just aren't really "there."

Recognizing I was having a problem with being fully present, I made myself slow down and consciously consider what I was doing next, and next and next.  I got the car delivered to the shop without further incident, and back home safe and sound. I called the company that installed my garage door opener, where they told me I likely just needed a new battery for the outside fixture and talked me through how to install it.

And I have an extra house key I'll put in my son's car, just in case something like this happens again.