Nat

For the third day in a row, I am absolutely exhausted. It seems like two weeks since I returned from Colorado, and that was only on Monday. Part of dealing with exhaustion is figuring out whether it is physical or emotional. I think it is both. I have really struggled this week to deal with the challenges in our office with good humor and optimism.

Sometimes I wonder whether well-being and joy are made in moments like these, when we feel they are far removed from us. How do I reach out and pull them to me? I think Esther Hicks and the Abraham guides would say this is where you reach for the better feeling thought. I agree that it helps to think of something that is better than I am thinking right now.

Right now I am thinking, it really still hurts where I was chewing a pretzel stick and jammed it into my gum. What is better than thinking that? My wife went to a charity auction tonight and won us tickets in a luxury box to see a Boston Celtics game in December. What a treat to spend the night in the city with my wife after a fun night out. That’s a much better thought.

Even thinking about my situation, I can find my way to “it is almost the weekend and there is the chance to sleep in and choose what to focus on for at least a few hours.” Maybe I will clean up my office. That would feel good and would take no more than 5 hours. It’s about simple steps.

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?

I have started a new journal exercise: each evening I write about the worst moment of my day, and then I write about the best moment of the day. The idea, when I started this three days ago, was to observe the challenge and start to identify a pattern or think about ways to avoid that kind of moment the next time I confront something like it. The idea for “best moment” was to appreciate the good that comes my way and to recollect how good things are in my life.

An interesting thing happened on yesterday. I couldn’t think of a “worst moment” to record. Of course, if you had forced me to, I could have picked a moment that was worse than all the others, but the point was that a bad moment didn’t easily occur to me.

I’ve tried to draw conclusions, but the obvious one is that, when I knew that I would be reviewing the day later for worst moments, something in my knew to avoid them during the day. What a great lesson that will turn out to be. If merely recalling consciously throughout the day that I am going to have to scrutinize what didn’t go well and try to find some way to avoid or improve upon this experience in the future keeps me from stumbling toward bad experiences, this exercise will prove almost magical.

Either way, I like the discipline. It’s especially wonderful to recall the best thing that happened (last night the Red Sox won a game to take them to their second World Series in four years!). I will keep doing this for awhile.

Blogging has been very difficult for me this summer, following my father’s passing in May. Although much of my study and effort to address this loss spiritually and emotionally are related to the core mission of our work at Cloud 9000, I frankly felt that blogging about them would be a betrayal of my family’s privacy. Yet finding renewed joy and purpose in the face of sadness and loss has been the great work of this summer.

One of the lessons is that small gestures of sympathy and kindness from friends and acquaintances carry enormous power to comfort and uplift. I am the fortunate recipient of hundreds of these attentions, and they have delighted me again and again. I can’t thank these people enough for making the effort.

This may be the greatest lesson of all from the summer: that our efforts to serve others in even the smallest ways can make profound and lasting impressions and deep impact. Buddhists would call this effort compassion, Christians might call it charity (in the Bible it is translated from the Greek as “lovingkindess”), and I think the Hebrew term “mitzvah” describes acts of kindness like these, although there may be a better Jewish term for this act.

Whatever the name, kindness to those in need is a fundmantal principle of organized religions and is a basic human need.

I welcome any comments here that describe kind acts that have been offered to you this summer.

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.

David Brooks of the New York Times, wrote this in his column today, which explained why Catholic “quasi-believers” are so successful in our society:

For there are at least two things we know about flourishing in a modern society.

First, college students who attend religious services regularly do better than those that don’t. As Margarita Mooney, a Princeton sociologist, has demonstrated in her research, they work harder and are more engaged with campus life. Second, students who come from denominations that encourage dissent are more successful, on average, than students from denominations that don’t.

This embodies the social gospel annex to the quasi-religious creed: Always try to be the least believing member of one of the more observant sects. Participate in organized religion, but be a friendly dissident inside. Ensconce yourself in traditional moral practice, but champion piecemeal modernization. Submit to the wisdom of the ages, but with one eye open.

One eye open. It’s an interesting notion, and it may well be that this recipe predicts success in our society right now. But it only rings true for me if by “one eye open,” you mean that you are looking to supplement the wisdom that one tradition teaches you with additional wisdom.

I prefer belief to skepticism. My belief in a powerful God has often been the only reassurance that got me up and out of bed in the morning. Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree and waited for enlightenment. He wasn’t evaluating options; he was looking for an answer to explain human suffering. As far as suffering goes, I believe that God doesn’t bring it to us.

I don’t have all the answers, but I don’t feel the need to keep one eye on the possibility that God has suffering in the works for us. It’s a better world if he doesn’t.

“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.

Last week, I found myself sitting on the floor in front of the television until 1:00 in the morning eating ice cream out of the carton for several nights in a row. When I was at the office, I wanted to be at home, and when I was at home, I wanted to be in bed. I get this way sometimes when I’m wrestling with decisions about life priorities. Should I learn an instrument? Should I try to write a book? Should I train for a triathlon. The more options I consider, the more I fret about how little time I have, and then I spend what free time I do have wondering how I can get more.

This mood and behavior have now hit me often enough that I can observe and recognize the pattern, but I can’t always snap out of it. Fortunately, my wife–an immensely patient and highly persuasive woman–has mastered the art of helping me break the pattern. She doesn’t make light of my confusion, but she isn’t impressed by it either. What she did was to sit me down and ask what I really wanted to achieve and to help me make a plan to achieve it. She then pointed out, methodically and plainly, that I could easily fit those projects into my schedule if I chose to. She suggested I try it for a month and see how it went.

Thank heaven for her. There are many great benefits to being married to my wife. This is just one of them, but it makes me immensely grateful that she married me.

Another great piece in The New Yorker describes the effects on people with long commutes. The article characterizes people who travel 90 minutes or more each direction as “extreme commuters.” Under this definition, I am just under the limit, thanks to my company’s moving 20 minutes closer to my house last year.

In a nutshell, the article quotes research by several social scientists, which asserts that most long-distance commuters eventually suffer from social isolation for two basic reasons: first, the time they spend commuting is time they can’t spend socializing with their friends, and second, if where a person lives, works, and shops are too far from one another, it’s harder to establish a single community.

The article also points out that humans tend to have a hard time comparing the relative advantages and disadvantages of the material things we gain from a job and the more intangible costs the job inflicts. So we don’t know how to make a healthier emotional choice.

The article made me really sad and anxious, because I’ve been feeling after 10 years commuting more than 30,000 miles a year that I can’t bear to do it any more. Sometimes I think it’s less painful to be ignorant of the imperfections in one’s life, and today, I realized I didn’t want to ignore this frustration any more.

The author also stated that most people stick with a difficult commute not because they love the job, but because they either don’t see an option or don’t have the energy to pursue one. I want to find the energy to have options. Don’t we all?

What’s your secret for storing up that energy?

I’ve been feeling a little sorry for myself over the last few days, but my friend Gilda found a great way to pick me up. She reminded me that electrons need to gather precisely the right amount of energy before they can make the leap to the next level–the quantum leap, in other words.

So, she said, think of yourself as waiting where you are to gather the energy to make the leap to the next level.

It sounds simple, but it was exactly what I needed to hear to believe that there was a good reason why things seem to be the way they are right now. I’m so grateful to have friends and family who know me well enough to say just the right thing. To be understood and reassured is both a relief and a joy.

If you know of anyone who needs this kind of pick-me-up from you right now, please pick up the phone or sit down at your keyboard and let them know. They may be desperate for it.

I was.