Tag: Musing

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Treating Handwriting as a Form of Practice

For most of my life, I have carried an identity of “having bad handwriting.” This is somewhat ironic, as I write by hand on a daily basis and fill multiple notebooks in a month. Having stayed in practice with so much writing, one would think that I would maintain a modicum of legibility. Yet even I struggle to read my own writing.

I was reflecting on why I stick to this identity. Why, exactly, do I need to write so small, so cramped, so quickly? What, exactly, is the value of saving space by cramming in my writing? Why does it have to be done in such a hurry?

Ultimately, I realized that at the root of “I have bad handwriting” is simply yet another form of “rushing.” My handwriting is poor because I “have to” write quickly, to get it all down before it’s too late.

But this is not necessary. It is not founded on any real concern of “losing something” if I slow down. It is simply conditioning.

Writing by hand can be another form of meditation. One can flow, engage fully in the physical act of writing, sit with and marinate in the words being written. My writing could be made beautiful and efficient. Ultimately, all of that would be much better than the cramped rush I have been committed to all these years.

There is no rush. I can just enjoy the act of writing. I can treat it, too, as another way to express art, to be fully present.

I shed this identity of having bad handwriting, and my need to be in such a rush while writing.

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The Dichotomy Between Memento Mori and Future Planning

Zorba the Greek poses a key question:

Look, I was passing through a small village one day. An old fogey ninety years old was planting an almond tree. ‘Hey, grandpa,’ I say to him, ‘are you really planting an almond tree?’ And he, all bent over as he was, he turns and says to me, ‘My boy, I act as though I’m never going to die.’ I answered him in my turn, ‘I act as though I’m going to die at any moment.’ Which of the two of us was right, Boss?””

You certainly want to keep death in the forefront of your mind. You can easily forget that the future is not guaranteed. You can easily trade the present moment for an uncertain future. As Marcus Aurelius stated so succinctly:

You could be good today. But instead you choose tomorrow.

But this does not mean that you forego planning for the future entirely. You do not know when your death will come, and you may be blessed (or cursed) with a long life. It would be a mistake to ignore the future in your calculations.

This is the dichotomy between memento mori and the need to consider the future. You want to adopt a middle road, if you can find it. Plan and invest as if you’re going to live forever (plant that tree, continue to invest in learning). At the same time, keep your death firmly focused in mind. Enjoy the present – for that is all that you are ever really given.

One perspective cannot be allowed to dominate the other.

References

  • Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
  • A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine

    As Seneca notes, “If God is pleased to add another day, we should welcome it with glad hearts.”4 And after celebrating having been given another day to live, we can fill that day with appreciative living.

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How is the Story of Jonah Relevant Today?

I was reading to Damien about Yom Kippur, and there was a mention that it was common to read the book of Jonah at this time. So, I took a moment to read the book (it is very short) and asked myself a question: how is the story of Jonah alive in my own life?

An odd question for a story about a man who runs from God and gets swallowed by a fish.

However, I am certainly familiar with the experience of being called to do something, feeling fear in response, and running/hiding from that calling for as long as possible. This is Steven Pressfield’s Resistance at work. And, like Jonah, whenever I ignore the call I encounter calamity. A storm appears in my life. Even worse, those around me tend to suffer along with me, like Jonah’s compatriots on the boat. But this storm is my own creation, just as it was Jonah’s – I am hiding from “the call”, from “the voice”, from “the will of God”. The burden of not doing something I know I should be doing is difficult to bear. And hiding for too long leads to destruction and ruin.

Like Jonah, I do not always react favorably when something doesn’t play out in the way I expected. I also give in to anger. I let it consume me and cloud my reason. I, too, have been known in my anger to echo the words that Jonah spoke: “let me die!” God’s question in response to Jonah is one that I would do well to repeat in my own life: “Do you do well to be angry?” Of course, God, Jonah, and I all know that question is rhetorical.

Where Jonah serves as a model for us all is his reaction to the situation he is in. When the storm threatens the ship, he willingly goes overboard to ease the burden on his compatriots. After three days and nights in the belly of a fish, he does not curse God. Instead, he offers his thanks, and he finally picks up the mantle that has been thrust upon him. He repents, and then he is delivered (as the Assyrians are too).

He might pout, he might be angry at the outcome being different than what he expected, but that shows his humanity. Surely, Jonah will atone for his anger and once again reach the state of “at-one-ment” that is the goal of Yom Kippur.

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The Planetary Organism

Some days I wake up and I can see the world-organism. An entire planetary system breathing and eating and thinking. I can feel the long, slow pulse of each day. 

The internet is a grand experiment, and it increasingly reminds me of this image of the world organism. As humans, we need to converse to think. The world is too complex for one mind. The internet allows us to converse across boundaries, to broaden the scale of our thinking and knowledge. We are creating a single mind on a planetary scale.

We feel like individuals, but how separate can we ever truly be?  We are inescapably connected. Now more than ever.

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Prioritizing Self-Care

We hear it all the time: you must take care of yourself before you can take care of someone else. And yet, this advice is ignored so often. How many relationships have fallen apart because someone violated this single maxim?

I’ve certainly destroyed a few by failing to heed it.

But now the stakes are too high. I have a business. I have a wife. I have children. I have a house to maintain. I have land to maintain. I cannot afford to go off the rails. When I do go off the rails: things fall apart, time is wasted, and I have to dig myself back out of a hole. The pattern can’t continue like that.

I have to take care of myself because so many other things depend on me being in tip-top shape.

So what do I actually need?

  • Time to work on the business so that I can support myself and the people who depend on me
  • Time to work outside – to prepare the yard, produce food for my family, get some sweet vitamin D, and to refresh my spirit by spending time in the boundless beauty of nature
  • Time to work out so I can maintain my physical fitness, reduce stress, and improve my thinking
  • Time for meditative hobbies: bonsai, growing mushrooms, and playing music. Excellent outlets to cultivate learning, focus, intensity, absorption, and beauty.
  • Time to write: to express myself creatively, reflect, ponder, and document

These are the activities that I need most of all to feel grounded in my own being. And when my body and mind are nourished and refreshed, I am capable of helping others.

The next task is to make sure that I am actually making time for each of these crucial self-care activities each week. Of course, there are many time pressures with a family and a business. That is no excuse. Self-care has to come first, or else I am a ticking time bomb.

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Gratitude for My Home

I live in a great place. A safe place.

I walk around alone, unarmed, without fear. This is true even in the dark, even when the nights are completely fogged in. This is true even in a city where homelessness is rampant, and car break-ins happen on a regular basis, and everyone’s windows and doors are covered with anti-human bars.

For me, there is no need to worry.

My water is clean, or at least as clean as it can be in an increasingly polluted world. I can even afford a secondary water filter.

Our house is warm. We are never cold. We might complain about the cold, but it is just the whining of the rich.

It is just the same for food: we are never hungry. Our food is nourishing and plentiful. We have never truly known hunger or starvation or privation.

We can afford substances that alter our mind in a variety of ways. And we can afford the time to use them.

We can afford the time to loaf and complain and explode over tiny meaningless offenses. Because that is how wonderful our lives have become. We find problems in the mundane and minute.  

We can read all day.

We have endless power.

I can feel the presence of the ocean in the air. I can even walk to the ocean and back in a day’s journey. That can be shortened to mere minutes with a car, of which we have a luxurious one.

Every morning, I have a difficult choice to make: which park do I walk the dog to? There are 8 options that immediately come to mind, and I’m certain there are more I’ve yet to discover.

It is a beautiful country we live in.

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The Leadership Principles of Glover Johns

Below is a set of leadership principles I transcribed from Jocko podcast episode 87 (The Clay Pigeons of St. Lô). I loved them and wanted to share them with you. In episode 341, he revisited these rules and dedicated the entire podcast to discussing them.

While Jocko was focused on Glover Johns’s book during the episode, he wraps up his coverage by reading from David Hackworth’s book About Face, who was covering a farewell speech by his idol. 

David Hackworth on Glover Johns

“He was a leader who taught by example.” 

“to hear in a single speech this great man’s basic philosophy of soldiering was like being let in on the secret ingredients of some magic formula.”

Leadership principles of Glover Johns

  • Strive to do small things well.
  • Be a doer and a self starter.  Aggressiveness and initiative are two most admired qualities in a leader, but you also must put up your feet and think.
  • Strive for self improvement through constant self evaluation.
  • Never be satisfied. Ask of any project, “How can it be done better?”
  • Don’t overinspect or oversupervise. Allow your leaders to learn through mistakes in training so they can profit from their errors and not make them in combat.
  • Keep the troops informed. Telling them what, how, and why will builds their confidence.
  • The harder the training, the more the troops will brag.
  • Enthusiasm, fairness, and moral and physical courage: four of the most important aspects of leadership.
  • Showmanship: a vital technique of leadership.
  • The ability to speak and write well: two essential tools of leadership.
  • There is a salient difference between profanity and obscenity. The leader employs profanity tempered with discretion, he never uses obscenities
  • Have consideration for others.
  • Yelling detracts from your dignity. Take your men aside and counsel them.
  • Understand and use judgment. Know when to stop fighting for something you believe is right. Discuss and argue your point of view until a decision is made, and then support the decision wholeheartedly.
  • Stay ahead of your boss.

I transcribed the quotes, so there may be differences from what the book says.

References

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Time Enough at Last

My second realization in this year of enough is that I actually have enough time.

Complaints about never having enough time abound in today’s world. Examples throughout history can be found too, so we might even venture to posit that it is fundamental to the human condition.

Lines from Chinese Zen poet Stonehouse come to mind:

“A human life last one hundred years but which of us get them all”

As well as these lines from Chinese Zen poet Cold Mountain:

“A man lives less than a hundred years but harbors cares for a thousand”

It is true. I harbor cares for a thousand years. And yet, even the less-than-one-hundred that I am most likely to receive are enough.

We can’t have it all. Aren’t constraints an essential element for creation? Why bemoan what we cannot change?

In my own life, I spent last year feeling like I was stretched thin. Between a new born child, a business, cooking three meals a day – there never seemed to be enough hours in the day to accomplish everything I wanted. Fitness fell by the wayside. Projects languished. I did not play music. I never gardened.

At the same time, I spent 8 months of the year not working at all. I spent time with my wife and son. I spent time preparing beautiful and loving meals that were enjoyed by friends and family. I spent time with my father on his birthday – whole days, uninterrupted by any other cares of the world. I spent time with my father while he was dying, making it so that he could leave this world without the pain that had been haunting him for years, ultimately building into a final, unbearable crescendo. I spent time focusing on honoring my father’s life, arranging a beautiful service, and celebrating him with our family.

What I had was too many cares, not too little time.

Moreover, the past two weeks have proven that I do have enough time to fit everything that I want. Perhaps that was the ultimate trick: changing my concept of time and admitting that I have enough of it.

I can fit in five hours a day of work, 3-4 hours a day with my son (allowing mom to work and to have a life), I work out five days a week, I spend 1+ hrs a day walking my dog, I play music, I read books, I still prepare 2-3 meals a day, and I am working in the SF Japanese Tea Garden once again.

I have enough time, and it is glorious.

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Can I Get a Mulligan?

I was my father’s primary caretaker during the last four days of his life. I dressed and undressed my father. I walked with him. I prepared food for him. I gave him medicine. I changed his soiled sheets. I combed his hair after he died.

He was in excruciating pain. He did not want doctors or hospitals. Luckily, we successfully talked him into hospice. That helped me reduce his baseline level of pain.

Right now, my mind is running a continual visual loop of errors and lessons. I think of a thousand moments I could have executed more skillfully. To create a better experience for my father. To reduce pain. To prevent hurt. To instill confidence. To serve as a good example. To remain level-headed. To reduce anger.

I have been through the most painful, important, and present duty in my life. 

I was there. The whole time. Doing nothing else. Now that it is done, I am plagued by the ways it could have been much better.

We just didn’t know any better.

I know that I did my best. I relieved my dad’s suffering. I put everything I had into it. There were no distractions.

But now I know so much more.

I wish I could give him the benefit of that knowledge. He could have had an even better end.

That’s what I find myself wishing for each day.

A mulligan. A chance to run the scenario again. It could have been so much better.

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Reactions to My Father’s Death

Sometimes, I want to scream

Others, to destroy

Others, to make love

Others, to laugh

Mostly I feel as if I am in a dream that I can’t wake up from. A dream with walls, like a cold prison that traps me. It already feels unreal, is already a faded memory. 

But I lived it so intensely! How could it fade, and fade so fast?

I was there for every moment. It took so much. I never want to lose those lessons, those memories. What if you need them again?

And at some level, it’s all I have left of my dad.