Nat

Two of my friends spoke to me yesterday about taking a risk. They are facing some financial uncertainties and decided to spend some money on themselves anyway. For one it was to have an organizer come in and help her arrange files in her office. She knew this would give her peace of mind that she could find important records if someone asks to see them.

For another, it was to rent an office so he would have a place to work away from his house. Neither of them had to spend the money, and the thriftier choice would have been not to spend. Still, they have both been practicing how to expect abundance. They each felt that spending the money was going to take them closer to what they wanted to achieve. My friend with the organizer was smiling so broadly I could feel it over the phone.

Each of them told me that I could learn a lesson about how to have faith. When we stay on the lookout for what will move us toward joy, we will be rewarded with greater courage. It is not the risk itself but the motive to move towards one’s dreams despite the risk that gives us a greater sense of power and freedom. Faith will do that for them. It can do it for you and me.

It amazes me when the right book comes to me just when I need it. Last week a friend recommended Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat. Pray. Love. I had read the reviews and walked by it in bookstores for months, thinking that I would probably like it, but when I received the recommendation last week, I was particularly desperate for advice about reaching out to God.

For those of you who haven’t read it–and I strongly recommend that you do–Gilbert opens the book sobbing on the floor of her bathroom, desperate for guidance about whether to leave her marriage. She asks God for help, and receives a clear answer back. The answer is, “Go to bed, Elizabeth,” and what she writes about this is that she recognizes it as wisdom. “True wisdom,” Gilbert writes, “gives the only possible answer at any given moment” (p. 16).

It’s a great definition. Typically I expect that real insight will allow me to solve all of my problems at once. I know this is ridiculous when I am being rational, but suffering has a way of making me want to know everything all at once. Gilbert’s reminder that we only need to know the best next step strikes me as great advice, both because we can only take one step at a time, and also because it reminds us to narrow our focus on a problem to the tiny portion of it that we can handle right away.

Brilliant. (Plus, the rest of the book is funny and charming.)

A friend of mine lost his job not long ago, in a layoff. It’s hard for him to talk about without getting angry and sad. Eventually in some conversations he gets around to the question why they didn’t see the value he brought.

I don’t have an answer to his question, and I wish I did. I would like to peer into the future and see what his next job will be, to reassure him that the future is bright, that he will be fine. He doesn’t want to hear that from me, even if it is the truth.

Which brings me to the question: how do you respond to personal difficulties? Do you look for a silver lining, live with your disappointment and try to figure out the cause in something you did or didn’t do?

Here’s a quote from Ben Stein, which I found yesterday and love: “It is inevitable that some defeat will enter even the most victorious life. The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated - it is finished when it surrenders.” While I don’t want to preach platitudes to my friend, I believe in Stein’s line. We cannot surrender.

How do you do that in your life? What have you survived?

When I am around my friend Renee, I feel that wonderful things are going to happen. Perhaps it’s her quick sense of humor and easygoing affection. Regardless, it’s great fun to be around her.

Some people make me hopeful, because of their sheer determination to make the world a better place. That’s how she is, and the funny thing is that she makes the world a better place just by showing up.

Renee and I were talking about the future and what we would want it to be like. I want many of the typical things: to exercise more regularly, to learn to play a musical instrument, to watch what I eat, and to love what I do. We talked about the fact that all of these desires can be met. None depends on anyone else. The future is liberating.

Another inspiring story from USA Today this morning. Nancy Berry teaches first grade in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, and she draws on unusual, experiential learning techniques to instill love of learning, good manners, and curiosity in her pupils. She has an entire area of the classroom devoted to milkweed plants, which free roaming catapillars in the room eat. They eventually become free-flying butterflies.

Her classroom sounds like a thrilling discovery. I loved that she places equal weight on science and writing, and I really loved that she says of her teaching approach that she tries to give five minutes of praise each day to each student. She uses imaginary friends to help teach manners and classroom behavior.

USA Today runs a series on All-USA Teachers, and Ms. Berry certainly stands out as an innovative, loving teacher. Children fortunate enough to have this kind of teacher early (and I had many of them) start life with a great advantage: they tend to see the world as a long series of promising discoveries.

What a way to want to engage with the world. Hats off to Nancy Berry and her “berries.”

(Red Sox win Game 2 in a nail-biter, 2-1. Woo hoo.)

Today’s Boston Globe carries an AP article about a program for inmates in Missouri prisons to cultivate vegetable gardens. The produce from these gardens is donated to food pantries for the elderly poor in the state. The activity is one of the elements of a program called “restorative justice.” Under this label, which was developed in the 1970s, prisons offer inmates the chance to study the impact of their crimes on crime victims and to find ways to make amends.

In Missouri, several participants grew up on farms, and they are now teaching skills to inner city prisoners while reviving their own interest in producing food. One of the prisoners, James Burton Jr., says of the restorative justice garden, “This is almost like being free here. I like knowing I’m giving to the elderly.” The article goes on to quote a cook at one of the food banks, who says that the produce donation has cut her food costs by a third.

I love projects like these, which encourage people to make amends by doing something good. This program is so practical in meeting two needs at once. It was very inspiring.

Today was my stepdaughter’s last day of junior high school, and we attended the student awards program. I loved the way the staff spread the prizes among a relatively large group of students. They gave awards in every subject, for the arts, and for good citizenship. I’m very proud that my stepdaughter won three prizes.

I’m proudest of the award she won for citizenship. It acknowledges a student each year who serves the school well at school and who represents it well in the community. The principal, a lovely woman who is retiring from a 35-year career in education today, talked about Catherine’s cheerfulness and her smile. She mentioned that Catherine brightens the school with her attitude and friendliness.

Nothing matters more to me than this trait, and I’m thrilled to pieces that she receives praise for demonstrating it. Mrs. Conlon, the retiring principal, started today’s assembly reading a quote from Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. In it the prince meets and befriends a fox. When they part, the fox tells the prince, “Remember that there are two ways to see, with your eyes and with your heart. The only way to see well is with your heart.”

It’s a lovely reminder, and Catherine needs no one to remind her. She sees with her heart every minute of every day. She is special. We are blessed.

What I’m finding as we deal with a loss in the family is that our personal strengths have been amplified. I am fundamentally optimistic and forward looking, and that has never been more true than now. It is the only way I know how to find the determination to press on. There is really nothing else to do.

I think that is the mental trick, or demand. I can’t afford to live with the saddest part of loss for too long at one time. For starters, I want to be part of a legacy we can all be proud of.

When I was 20, one of my friends, a talented, vivacious woman named Maryann, died in an accident. After the funeral, her father, a profoundly wise and compassionate man, gathered her friends together and said, “I want to ask you to do one thing for me. Whenever you have the chance–for the rest of your lives–to do something great, or not to, choose to do something great. Remember that Maryann won’t have the chance. If all of you do this, I will have the comfort of knowing that dozens of people are doing more than they otherwise would.”

I haven’t always lived up to that advice, but I’ve never forgotten it. That’s how I think of loss now: the best way to honor someone we love is to do the most we can to honor their life.

The new Time Magazine has Al Gore on the cover under the headline “The Last Temptation of Al Gore.” Obviously the teaser headline focuses on whether or not Al Gore is the perfect Democratic candidate for president in 2008 if the current front runners stumble. Gore himself, though, shows much keener interest in the major challenges facing our society: first, global warming, and second, the crisis of irrationality in American politics, about which he has written his new book, “The Assault on Reason.” In that book, which Time excerpts, Gore writes that the rise of television in the last 50 years has fundamentally eroded our country’s ability to debate the most pressing issues we face.

His conclusion is startling and hopeful: we can take steps to resolve this issue, and the Internet may be a key to how we do it. He also quotes Gandhi’s concept of a “truth force.” The truth force posits that humans have an innate ability to recognize the most powerful truths.

The article is remarkable on many, many levels, starting with the way Gore has emerged from the personal pain of losing an election in which he won the popular vote, to become a spokesperson for attention to climate change, an Oscar-award winning filmmaker, a board member of Apple and a senior advisor to Google, as well as a best-selling author.

I have to confess that Gore didn’t inspire me at all when he ran for president in 2000, but that’s not really the point. What thrills me is his example of reacting to an enormous setback to re-invent himself as an even more interesting person than he would have been had he won.

In the Time article, Tipper Gore describes her husband as having complete freedom to do what he wants, in the way that he wants to do it. She makes it sound pretty grand.

Meanwhile, Gore believes resolutely in Gandhi’s notion of our collective ability to recognize the truth we need to learn. The entire article made an inspiring case for the future: a person can respond to disappointment and failure with growth and energy, and our society can recover from the apathy cultivated by over-indulgence in television.

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world … as in being able to remake ourselves.” Mahatma Gandhi said that. It is both reassuring and intimidating at the same time. It says we can be great without looking beyond ourselves and also that we have no excuse not to be great.

I like that notion of accountability. We are accountable for who we become and what impact we have on the world. I worry about these two things pretty often now. It isn’t enough just to drift from one experience to another. I want to feel my life has consequence.

Most of my friends care deeply about the notion that their lives will mean something. The only challenge is to sort out first what we consider meaningful and then to find a way to move in that direction.

Gadhi’s life meaning came to him on the day a racist train conductor mis-handled him in South Africa. That was enough of a push to make him an influential social revolutionary. I conclude from this that we should pay close attention to what makes us feel very strongly.