Max Shares the Meaning of Life

After reading this article, I had a few questions about it's philosophy. The article is about being present, (oviously - as the entire blog is). It instructs us to stop living in the past and not to worry so much about the future. We have today.

I discussed this at dinner with a friend and we both came up with the same question, "why shouldn't we worry about the future?" and "how can we not?" I didn't feel so dumb wondering this, since she wasn't sure of the answer too.

I had commented on the article that afternoon with my question and after dinner, I came home to the answer. Upon finishing the last sentence of the response, my brother Max walked in the door.

I turned to him and said, "I'm reading this stuff and everytime I bring up the subject, it's something you either already do or have an opinion about. So tell me this... do you live in the moment? Like, do you just do what you have to do today and then the future works out for you?"

He dropped on his bed opposite the computer and said, "like, the past is history, the future is a mystery kind of thing?"

"Yeah, what do you think of it?" I asked.

"Well the past is done so that's that and you can't predict the future so you just do what you gotta do today," he answered. He sat up and looked at me, "life is about purpose. If you have a purpose, then you get it done. Everyone has a personal purpose that they make for themselves."

"Okay," I said. "What about that kid that killed himself that you knew?"

"He was a waste of life," he answered. "But! He achieved his purpose. That kid came into the world and his goal was to be miserable and to die. He dropped the ball and boom - when it hit the ground his personal purpose was fullfilled and his life was finished because he fullfilled it."

His point wasn't really negative or possitive, just facts of how he saw it. He explained that this life is about survival of the fittest. If you couldn't contribute to society or have quality of life then you were wasting your time on this planet. The scary part of this was that his reasoning made sense to me.

Yes, I realize my brother is incedibly pessimistic but his views are based on how he functions in society. He may be a jerk at times but he is a prime example of purpose and living in the day. He goes to work and goes to school. He'll graduate and become an electrician. But he's not thinking about his apprenticeship today. Today he's on vacation for a week and going to work - that's it. He knows he will finish and he'll be in the flow.

"Athiests will tell you we are just on earth to procreate to keep the human species alive," he said, hanging off the bed with his face to the floor.

"What's the point of living then if it's just to make babies and die?" I asked.

"Well, I didn't say I agreed with them. There is no answer to why we are here but since we are, the best bet is because we were given the most advanced brains so that we can give ourselves purpose. It's all subjective vs. objective reality Carolyn," he said nodding to himself, proud that he had the answer to that. I just looked at him.

He may be an ass, but he's not a dumb one.

A Singing Subway

I don't know why I hear it or if I'm just loosing my mind but sometimes... I can hear public transportation making music.

When I stepped out of my car this afternoon, I focused on the hum of the 18 wheelers behind me. The highway wails at me even through my window as I sit at this desk. Yesterday the subway rails sounded like a woman singing a sad note. These things catch my attention and stick out.

Remember in the Broadway play Wicked when Elphaba, (the wicked witch of the west) realizes she can make the broom fly? The broom didn't sing of course but the ladies sang and Galinda sings, "you're having delusions of grandiure".

But Elphaba wasn't. She rode away on her broom and the music got louder.

The Perils of Change

I wanted to sit down today and write something meaningful and insightful but today is a blah day; a perfect Friday. Everyone's excuse is the name of the day and not much work gets done. Naps seem like a great idea and writing emails takes president over getting that batch done for accounting.

Billy Joel's 6th concert was last night and everytime I hear "New York State Of Mind", I get a little sadder. I can't figure out if I'm terrified to go, or if I'm afraid it will loose it's magic if I live there or even if I'll just run out of money and be lost. Still, I must've been a New Yorker in a past life. Ho hum.

I guess today's post can be about change and what it means to us as people. God, do we hate it. I wonder if it's because we are such 'creatures of habit', consistant beings that disrupting the flow, disrupts us. Whatever the reason, they hate it. Even within a familiar environment, like my job for example. Even a change in procedure on how things get to my desk, can have everyone up in arms.

So I'm 24 next month and while change should still be part of the woodwork of my life; it isn't. I need a new location, new job and new ways of thinking. But the reality for most, like myself, are the practical and vital things that are pulling fear into us. Like medical insurance for example. How terrifying to move to a city with no job and then no medical insurance for 3 months. Just this morning, without warning, I had my head between my legs in pain.

We're not just talking about being uncomfortable with a new setting and the people in it. We are talking about how danger can play a role in making decisions about change. Now, of course, with medical insurance or without, it doesn't matter. A hospital will treat you. But what about the damage afterwards when the bill arrives?? In a failing economy where everyday living is becoming more and more of a struggle, where does a $2,000 bill fit in to ever be paid off?

I've never been a person to put much emphasis on money until I ran out of it. But looking at my bank statement the other day and seeing $300 in gas in one month made me wonder where on earth rent money will ever come from.

I think money, or lack there of, is the main ingredient when people make changes like location or career. This isn't high school anymore folks, it's the real world and the real world is brutal. To every person who just graduated high school, they'll get a little taste of it. To those who've left college, get a friend and hold their hand... it's going to be ugly.

I can't tell you what I would give to be able to roll over and ignore the alarm clock. To not have to call my boss in the morning when I'm sick and tell them I'm sick. Oh and to have extra credit to make up for slacking... Yes, those were the days. But, BOOM! Real life is here and there ain't going back.

I worry that the new responsibilities of living in the real world is what's keeping me from stepping forward. I'm so worried about my insurance, my bills, my paycheck, my... security, that instead of taking that jump to something that might be amazing, I'd rather stay stuck and 'secure'.

Michael would probably tell me I'm completely predictable, one of the millions, a textbook version of human behavior. I'm certain it's true but... it still sucks.

So I'd pose the question, how does one get out? Of course the answer is to "decide to get out". Why is it that these decisions of happiness, awareness and movement turn out to be so hard to, well, decide? And what makes it easier?

You vs The World

Giving advice is something I've done for years upon years. Of course, I am young, but you still can't laugh at my 'years'. The amount of time, energy and personal study of people that I have dedicated myself to, truly speaks for itself. I spend a great deal of energy in finding out people's histories, their woes, their hardships and the joy that came out of them all.

Because I had great story tellers in my high school years, the men and women who told me about their lives helped to shape my own. For each person who spent a great deal of after school hours with me, I kept a book. They were teachers, they were people and later became friends. I would write about what they were telling me about life so that I would have something were I to go through a similar hardship.

Maryann would say, "it took me twenty years to figure that out."

I would think to myself, "now I have twenty years to figure something else out because I have the answer to this."

When I wanted to know about people and they were distant or quiet, I began to study body language. This was incredibly fun because human behavior is so predictable. I realized more and more the importance of really paying attention to what people did with their bodies, not only in silence but even in discussion.

My study evolved through others, to bodies and then to myself. Self help books littered my shelves and I read them but they all felt like dead ends. I know now that you're not really going to help anything with those books, unless you're helping your simple mind.

Home remedies for happiness and relaxation are equilvelant to take out instead of a home cooked meal. Nothing tastes better than something you cooked with your own two hands. That's where real happiness happens; in your hands. Not in a bottle, not in a pill and no, not in a joint. Happiness is the hard work and tears you put into your weeks to gather months of smiling. It has to be rich; cultivated from your feet, all the way up.

Studying people plays an important role but studying myself in this recently new format... is blowing my mind.



Studying your own habits makes everyone else's habits kind of make sense and in that I'm furthering all areas of study, seamlessly. The rule of loving yourself first may sound corny, but it's the most beneficial road to take, in order to discover the rest of the world.

Can I Be Still?

In "Meditation isn't for sissies", we are reminded that we're not going to a happy place when we close our eyes, we're not going any place at all.

In all the creative outlets I have available to me, none have proven to be as comforting and easy to run into as "my happy place", as Adam Sandler would say. I can draw a picture if the mood strikes me, I can create an illustration as close to my thought as possible (though they are rarely the same). I can write a good story and describe everything in detail. But even if I sat here and wrote about how fat, loud and strong the rain was, I am the only one getting hit in the face with it, inside the screen. I could tell you about the cool air, the thunder and the flashes of lightning but I'm the only one who can smell the grass and feel the hair on my arm stand.

But imagination is increasingly powerful with practice and when my hands were too tired to draw and my eyes were too tired to read, I could always close my lids and simply imagine.

Sitting in the dentist chair I've concentrated on the same boat picture since 3rd grade. While drills roll inside my head and metal scrapes, I am fishing. I am on the dock having pizza or I am breezing through the ocean in the background.

When I was mad at home, at school or at work, I simply switched off from reality and willed myself into another existence. I wanted something to distract me. I guess most people refer to it as day dreaming. I thought of it as displacement. As I sit here, the thunder cracks and the neighbor roots for the sound. The rain is ruthless against my deck but I am in the jungle somewhere sitting in a tree hut and the darkness of my back yard is really cloaking miles of thick rainforest. When I sit in the shower in my bathroom, it is the same feeling.

I've often wondered if what I were doing all these years was some kind of cliff note to what a sip of meditation would be. These past few weeks I've come to see the difference is ruthlessly far apart. Michael only puts in words what I couldn't when he says this practice is, indeed, the hardest.

The sliding door of this bedroom is open a crack so I can hear the rolling and screaming of the sky. That is the reality of this night and instead of disappearing to another country, I should be taking joy that the beauty is litterally in my back yard.

My mother comes to the door and tells me to switch off the computer. Lightning travelling through the computer is reality too. It happened to us once.

So the moral is that while far off places seem beautiful and peoples faces seem more intricate in other lands, it is a simple case of "the grass is greener on the other side". It is with intent open eyes that we should stop looking past the back yard and appreciate the very wood of the deck we are standing on.

Until I can see the deck as a deck and not a tree house, I'm not sure if I am ready to sit on the deck and just let it be nothing... not even a deck. If I've been substituting things like the deck for tree houses, I must first work backwards and go back to seeing them and appreciating what they are, no matter how simple.

Once the deck is a deck, then I can go a step further and forget the deck exists altogether. Is that when I can be still?

Grocery Shopping Monks

"Joey, Bag of Donuts" or "Joey Bags", as we called him, was the first man I saw everyday for a year. He worked in the back of the market with me in the warehouse. His name wasn't Joey at all, it was Richard. He was 5 foot even, fat, New York native, Italian mess who never took his baseball cap off because he was bald.

One morning, after stealing us breakfast, Joey came running into the back room. With a hot croissant hanging out of his mouth, his raspy voice sputtered, "you'll neva believe this honey, two dudes with dresses in the milk isle!"

"Dresses Joey?" I asked following him out to the store.

"You know those meditating people," he threw his hands up.

I watched from a short distance as the two men in question, headed towards Joey and his stained apron. They were draped in red cloth over one shoulder and wore brown sandals. Each of them carried a wooden bowl.

"Can you help us shop, Sir?" The taller, and obviously American, of the two spoke to Joey softly. He explained that he was from our town but went over seas to become a monk. He went on to tell Joey that he could not touch the food they wanted to purchase, or the money to buy it with. They needed Joey to walk the store with them.

Joey, being the curious thing that he was, thought this was hilarious and volunteered to help them with a smile. He started asking questions right away.

His first question was if they had any underwear on. The American monk laughed and said they had shorts on. Joey went on to ask what they did all day? Weren't they bored? No tv? No SEX? He was the most mortified that they couldn't even touch themselves!

As you could've guessed, Joey was NOT a shy man, nor did he leave out details of a hot date to anyone, or even how he handled his morning wood. The monks came back every day for one week and always asked for him.

They were interesting and I looked for them every morning. They were quiet but they stood out. The older man with his beautiful skin color and their wine colored robes. Someone the American knew would leave money at the booth and they would use that to pay. When they bought fruits or vegetables that had seeds in them, they had US pray for them because they would be eating them later and depriving the seeds of thriving.

They had told us that one morning they had forgotten to pray for their oranges and went to the neighbors to ask if they would pray over their fruit and the neighbors weren't very kind to them about it. I wonder why people freak over differences.

At the end of the week, Joey and a few others had helped the monks with their shopping. Joey had asked them all the questions he could think of, even tried to persuade the American to come back to our culture, telling him he was missing great movies and good sex. The young man laughed and left Joey with a book that I wish I had taken from him. And Joey had sent them off with smiles and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos before I could stop him.

"They'll like those Doritos," he had said to me, proud he could give them a treat.

"Joey, they can't HAVE Doritos, it's unnatural!" I told him.

"Whatever! They have to now because then it'd be wasting!" He laughed, cramming stolen Lays into his mouth, peices falling on his belly. The only monk-like thing about Joey was that you could compare his belly to the fat Buddha. He's make an atrociously ugly Buddha with absolutely no moral fiber in his body. But the thought still makes me laugh.

The moral is, with talking about religion and spirituality, that rituals separate belief. If I can remember all the things Michael said today, which was ALOT, then I'll be able to keep perspective on not getting lost in the rules but instead get lost in the feeling.

For those two men, devine devotion to their craft... to their journey, is what they chose. For me, my path is what happens. I will eat Doritos and seeds, if it doesn't kill me. They say you're not supposed to seek out drugs to bring you to different experiences but I like doing that too. I feel like my own rules will be okay with this new thinking because this thinking is about me; about what I want. And as the guru always says, "if no one is dead, bleeding or on fire... it's okay."

(And yes, that is our Blue Buddha from our garden that my mother has had her whole life. The irony.)

Feel Yourself At Summer

It's a time where shoes are not required. Where kids grow restless, knowing that school's almost out and dogs are rolling around in the grass out in the back yard.

When it was time to start shopping for a new place to live, although everything was dead and it was cold outside, each house I stepped into I transported myself to summer. While my mom was bundled up with her flashlight, looking at pipes with the salesmen, I was looking at the back yard and imaging friends and cookouts and gardens. What would this house look like on a summer night? That was how I gaged each place. Would it be nice to walk through in the summer and lounge?

Summer is my season for all the right reasons. No shoes, I hate them. I love bare feet burning on hot tar. Bathing suits pass for attire and even though I'm a lot skinnier than I would like to be, I'm still comfortable enough to enjoy walking around half naked; go me!

I hate being cold. I must have lived another life in the south, in Australia or Africa. I was never made for the cold and I'm only now rolling up my electric blanket and putting it away. Cold is the worst feeling. So warm is the absolute best.

I don't mind the sweating, unless you are in work clothes, but other than that... freedom! Summer is full of warm nights in car rides, people on the beach and life HAPPENING. I'm excited to be back in my element as I am a child of Cancer being born July 18th.

It's good to be home. House and Earth.