Consider the Output

"Perhaps in our search for personal satisfaction and pleasure, we've dug so deeply into ourselves that we've forgotten each other"

Wiggington in Introduction to Foxfire

Muffin (not his real name) is one of the 12-year-old swimmers who I coach five days a week.  He asks me if he can race a girl in his lane to see who's faster.   I tell him he should stop thinking so much about beating his teammates and work together with them to get faster instead.  I tell him to stop worrying so much about competition.  Muffin asks,  "Isn't that the point of swimming?"

My heart breaks.

I so do not blame Muffin for thinking that competition is the only reason he steps onto the pool deck every day for practice.  In fact, I guess while I had been dedicating my entire adolescent life to athleticism, I thought the same thing.  It feels good to win.  But really think about it for a second: How does beating someone fill our hearts with joy?  How much can we really get out of saying we are better than someone at something?

Competition is a villainous contributor to much of the anguish and hate that exists in our country.  It builds hierarchies and kindles jealousy.  Americans are increasingly fixated on climbing corporate ladders and obtaining a better career status than our neighbors.  Competition is the reason all industries in the US have become centralized and the reason that bigger toys that cause mass destruction are always required.  It is the reason capitalism is so successful, and it is a void-filler of insecurities that dwell everywhere.

There are also plenty of benefits to competition, and of course it is a valuable element of being a swimmer.  But it should not be the entire point of anything, as Muffin claims.

The truth about competition is it's fun.  It feels great.   Showcasing a well-deserved performance after  training for it rigorously is an awesome feeling.  That moment of glory is usually worth all the sweaty input.  But what is the output?  How has all of that invested time had a positive impact on the world?

I scold Muffin for thinking that swimming is only about competition, and I walk away (slipping embarrassingly a little on the deck as I do so) thinking Wait a second, what IS the point of swimming?  Why am I investing so much of my time in coaching this sport?  


The questions have haunted me all weekend.  I've decided that on Monday I will have a conversation with all my swimmers and discuss the many values of being on the YMCA swim team.  I've come up with plenty of my own, but I want to hear what they have to say.  Kids often astound me with their brilliance, and we definitely don't credit their intelligence enough.  Maybe they'll come up with better reasoning for the sport than I have.  But here's what I've discovered:  


By participating in a sport or extracurricular activity such as swimming, an athlete will form long-lasting relationships, remain physically fit (depending on the input, I suppose), learn effective time-management skills, and acknowledge the benefits of genuine hard work and commitment.   Of course athletics can be applicable to everyday life.  Most importantly, though, success can be used as a tool to make positive things happen. 


If an athlete's goal is to maximize community output, their input can be an extremely powerful tool.  For example, swimming has allowed me to acquire a position of influence as a swim coach.  A gifted cyclist could arrange a cyclethon to raise money for a good cause.  An amazing football player could inspire high school boys to abandon their video games and go outside to toss a football.  


It all depends on how you decide to construct the projection of your output based on your input. So at the beginning of practice Monday, after we discuss the values of swimming, I will urge the swimmers to do one thing as they dive into the water:  Consider the output.  

Leaning In

The product of a solved dilemma is a choice. Unless you just got the $250,000 question correct on Who Wants to be a Millionaire or something along those lines, there is really no way to know if the right choice is ever made.  So we can only do one thing once our minds have been made and we've cooked up our favorite solution:  Lean into it and hope for the best.


Lately I've struggled with something many educators have debated over in the past.  Scholars have resiliently examined whether or not the concepts of educate and activate can ever exist in the same classroom.

As a result of some intense reading and research that I've been doing for one of my classes, my mind has conceived a tiny man who likes to drill me with questions about my future vocation.  Hundreds of pages about sweat shops, environmental damage caused by a generation dependent upon convenience, and the ignorance of mankind has left the little man in my head begging for the answer to two questions:  How can I become an activist and a teacher at the same time? And are my priorities really where they should be?


Specifically, I wonder how the plan I've laid out for myself (graduating from Penn State, maintaining my job as a swim coach, pursuing a teaching career) will help the world.  I wonder how teaching about Mark Twain or how to swim the breaststroke the right way will ever help to build community.

In other words, I'm faced with a dilemma.  When I can't decide whether to abandon modern society entirely and visit a third world country or to just appreciate the opportunities that I've been given and shut up, I need to remember that all the things that make me itch about the world cannot be solved with one simple scratch.  It all has to start with practical, tiny solutions.  And it all starts now.

We can either allow ourselves to be sucked into the intoxicating vacuum of an egocentric, fast-paced society, or we can dismiss it all and create our own lifestyle.  I look at the way my life could go in the future, and I see phenomenal opportunities.  Instead of trapping myself in the mindset that my job cannot possibly teach the values that I believe in, I embrace what I've chosen to do and decide to suck all the juice out of it that I can get.  I decide to lean into it.  


I coach a wonderful group of swimmers between the ages of ten and twelve.   Instead of just drilling perfect technique into their brains or helping Johnny become the fiercest competitor, I establish a goal for myself to help these swimmers become the happy, loving people that I'd like to see more of in the world.

Today we met each other, and I asked all the swimmers to write down something interesting about themselves and what they really needed from the swim team on a notecard and pass it in.  "I've gotten 3 bullzeyes in a row with an airlift pistol, I want to break a record," and "I like to play hide and go seek, I need an escape from school" were some of the answers I received.  My favorite was "I have model trains and I can shoot fairly well.  I'd like to go to states."

In reflecting on this exercise, I realize that each swimmer--each miniature human--has a specific need and has the potential to accomplish a dream.   I am given the opportunity to inspire these children; their successes or failures could very easily reflect my actions.  This is an enormous responsibility.  How will I choose to inspire them?  Will I be the change that I want to see in the world?

The product of a solved dilemma is a choice.  I've chosen to form relationships with students and swimmers and inspire.  I haven't joined the Peace Corp, and I have been guilty of using too many disposable paper products.  What I have to do now is channel all my energy toward helping the world within the limits of the plan that I've laid out for myself; I need to  lean into it with enthusiasm and make it happen.

 

A Freight Train Through the Abyss

"There is something beautiful about the billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz."

-Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz

My boat cuts through the water of Lake Wallenpaupak and I melt into the seat beneath my blanket as the wind filters itself through my hair.  The stars swirl in the blue like jazz above me and I embrace this moment I share with my family.  

I'm in Limbo.

Limbo is a place that I visit when concern escapes my mind.  It's like there are absolute value bars around brief periods of time where I don't have to think about anything at all.  Right now the bars are up because I just finished at my summer job, I don't have classes for a week, and I am at peace. It's like I'm in that infinite Limbo land from Leo's latest movie, Inception. 

Beyond my immediate state of being, I am also in a four-year long limbo between worlds.  The first is a world of comfortable familiarity, and the second is an exhilarating abyss.

I'm in college.  

In other words, I'm on a four year vacation from responsible reality.  The daunting truth about limbo is that you eventually need to come out of it. And that scares the pants off most people.  

Starring into the majestic night sky from my boat, I am reminded of the exhilarating abyss of adulthood that approaches like a hungry freight train.  I remember that all my life, I have associated darkness with unpredictability and excitement.

As Kenny Chesney puts it, "Everything gets hotter when the sun goes down."  The sun goes down and people dance.  They paradoxically wake up and live more intensely, because the darkness dares them not to sleep and do something more exciting before the mother sun comes back to check up on things.  

There are plenty of reasons for me to remain attached to pre-limbo childhood.  I am very lucky to have had a wonderful relationship with the first two decades of my life.  But as I creep closer to post-limbo independence and responsibility, I think about darkness, and how I'd rather skip through the dark than sleep through it.  

I'm not afraid to surface from my limbo.  I'm coming at adulthood like a hungry freight train, instead of letting the train threaten to crush me.  Adulthood is an exhilarating abyss - unpredictable, energizing, and pretty freaking cool.  

Shalom!

A woman touched my arm, a friend whipped me up a smoothie, and a professor invited me to dinner on Thursday.

The pages of Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz have convinced me to strip myself of self-absorption. Clearly I'm really good at it, considering that the three thoughts I listed above were the only memories that came to mind when I reflected upon my week.  (Not).  I've already used personal pronouns (I, me, myself) over seven times since I started writing this. Super.

"If we could fix our self-absorption, we could end a lot of pain the world," Says Miller.

Truth. Imagine what kind of world we could create if everyone became literally others-centered? It would resemble something like the description of the hebrew word "Shalom:" a harmonious interdependence and joy among all parts of creation in absolute wholeness. It's a wonderful theory, but it's also damn near impossible to actually execute.

Most people would consider themselves the main characters of their own life stories. Most think that they are the static protagonist around whom everyone and everything else is meant to orbit.   Innate good conscience tells me there are probably better things to orbit our lives around.  Like other people, perhaps. Or God. Or both.

It is excruciatingly difficult to maintain an others-regarding ethic. As much as I've been trying to master putting other's needs above my own, I think about myself a whole heck of a lot.  I figure only practice can salvage me.   Being others-centered means putting other people's interests above your own because it makes their life better in some way.  It's hard to be altruistic, but it's even harder to do nice things for other people without expecting anything in return. Frustration!

Here are some of the ways that I'm trying to fix this in baby steps. When I enter into a conversation with someone, I try my best to glorify them and find out their life story without interrupting them to announce my own personal agenda. Furthermore, I don't waitress for tips.  I try instead to make the customer's dining adventure an enjoyable experience (this is an excellent strategy for tip-making actually). When I want to buy shiny lipgloss, I don't do it.  I actually started a "God Fund" just like Donald Miller did, into which I throw a few dollars occasionally to save up for some higher cause.

Why did the memories that I mentioned earlier resonate so much with me?  I think I was touched by the others-regarding ethic that motivated those people's actions. While waitressing, the woman I referred to inspired me to join her at a nearby Church in Bethlehem and patted my arm as I hander her the check. I marveled at the positive effect that brief physical contact can sometimes have on human interaction and how kind she was to insist that I join all her friends at church. My smoothie-making friend had begged my younger sister to come hang out with us, and proceeded to provide exceptional hospitality for us as we gulped down delicious homemade beverages. My English professor was thoughtful enough to consider my diet habits when she asked me to join her family for dinner this week by promising to create a savory vegetarian meal for us to enjoy.

When you become the spotlight who shines a light on someone else, the impact of this gesture can be tremendous. Hopefully soon I'll get to the point where I can recall all of the wonderful things I did for other people throughout my week when I reminisce, instead of recalling only nice things that were done for me.

Shalom!

Pleasant Gloom

“In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted.”
- Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love

I think I’ve been in love with rain ever since my childhood friend used to tell me that fairies come out when it rains.

Since then I’ve developed a more profound appreciation for precipitation, though I guess I can’t really prove that little winged creatures don’t actually come out in the rain. My infatuation with rain exists not because it gives me an excuse to indulge in a sappy chick flick while feasting on some highly caloric treat (although this is a handsome bonus), but because of its beauty.

Lately I’ve struggled to develop a coping mechanism for all of the atrocities I've read about. How can I live peacefully, for example, knowing that so many animals are tortured on factory farms each day after reading the book Eating Animals? And even worse, how can I continue to live a privileged life while human suffering exists in every dark corner of the world? I can’t actually see the insidious oil spill, but how can I ignore all the damage and all the pain it’s causing?

One of the aspects that I really enjoy about Christianity is the idea that because Jesus died for us and chose to take all of mankind’s suffering upon Himself, He can serve as a sort of ashtray into which we can shake all of the ashes of the burnt-out problems that we cannot possibly cope with concerning life on Earth. Though I still struggle with several aspects of Christianity, I believe there must be a God who can serve as a depository for the corruption of humankind and who can heal it with His grace. Timothy Keller writes, “Though Christianity does not provide the reason for each experience of pain, it provides deep resources for actually facing suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair.”

So I asked God if He could please harness all of the hurt that I have been feeling for the victims of suffering in the world and try to cook up some kind of eternal euphoric treat for them out of all their struggles for when they reach the gates of heaven.

Then the falling rain showed me its beauty.

When the Earth is hot or just fed up with all of the stupid humidity, it simply decides to cool off with a shower. Precipitation is cyclical, in case you didn’t know. Plant roots soak up groundwater and transpire into the air while water evaporates from bodies of water to create condensation, which leads to the precipitation that moves us to our couches and cancels our picnic plans. It’s sorta crazy how all that works out in perfect succession every time (Hmmm - maybe there’s Somebody behind all that).

But more than all that, rain itself is beautiful. It’s too easy to be happy on a sunny day. Rain presents a challenge to humanity: Will you allow nature’s gloom to impede upon your mood, or will you dance in the rain?

At work the other day, I discovered that other people share my passion for “dreary” weather, so I asked them why. One of the cooks said, “A sun is just a plain piece of paper, you know. Rain’s got attitude – it’s got personality.” Another said, “I like my Vitamin D in small dosages. A good rain is refreshing.” He said he embraces the gloom that everybody else hates, and I do too.

I also like the rain because it gives us more freedom. Sometimes our freedom must be limited in order to experience new freedom. That may seem illogical, but when you think of a fish whose freedom is limited to water (on land a fish would suffocate and basically “drown” the way we would in water), it might make more sense. The fish is able to experience new freedom in its limited environment. Another example of this is when I start to run out of money at school and my meal selection is limited to bread, yogurt, and frozen veggies. I start to get really creative.

Rain creates freedom by limiting it. We seek shelter and get our bills done on a rainy day, or we play a boardgame with a family member (I wish boardgames were still cool). We invite a soggy companion to share the tiny space underneath our umbrellas and endure the falling fury of the sky in tender closeness. We finish a puzzle or we invite our friends over for a warm dinner that we may not have cooked if it were too nice out. And what about mudslides or extreme mud-fighting? Awesome.

So in the midst of all the troubles in the world, beauty is sometimes the only thing that makes sense.

And rain is beautiful.

Glee Formula

“Be your best friend yea I’ll love you forever, up in the clouds we’ll be higher than ever. Eh-eh, eh-eh, so happy I could die.”
-Lady Gaga

Sometimes I feel so happy that I don’t know how I’ve ever felt sad or could ever feel upset again. That state of mind is called euphoria – one that many drug addicts seek to discover through artificial means. Then, naturally, there are times when I feel so depressed that all I want to do is lie motionless and watch re-runs of Friends for hours while feeding myself cake.

But whereas these feelings of hopelessness used to drag on for several days at a time, they exist now only in fleeting moments. My frowny moments are only fleeting because I’ve learned how to make every day of my life euphoric.

Invigorating the ordinary has become simple for me because I’ve finally mastered a recipe that I have been seeking to refine for 20 years. I’ve been very fortunate that the ingredients for happiness have been readily accessible to me, because for many these ingredients are quite scarce (or might be just a lot harder to find). People ask why I’m so chipper all the time, and they wonder what it would be like to visit ‘Meghan La-La Land,’ which apparently is a happy paradise that exists only in my mind. While I understand that the ingredients of any individual’s happiness will be drastically different from another’s, I thought I’d share the secret behind my annoying smiley face in case maybe one of my ingredients could add a nice flavor to your own mixture of contentment.

Like any other edible creation, happiness tastes different to everyone. And like any other recipe, all the ingredients of this creation must be evenly distributed – if just one ingredient falls out of balance the whole product is screwed. That’s why I liked the idea of presenting my glee formula as a recipe.



Personal Recipe for Euphoria:

Mix the following ingredients into a 24-hour day, 7 days a week in moderation

1. Love
2. Gratitude
3. Others-regarding ethic
4. Laughter
5. Zen habits
6. Knowledge expansion
7. Healthy thoughts
8. Exercise
9. A vegetable-based diet
10. Positive Communication
11. Organized living space
12. Suffering
13. Sleep

Heat under sunlight, let cool under moonlight.
Always tastes delicious.



A brief explanation of each ingredient:

1. I will love myself, others, and God. Every single time I look in a
mirror, I will tell myself one thing I love about myself and one thing I am thankful for. Loving others makes the world a better place – but to love others I must first love myself and God. Loving God strengthens the
connection between human life and eternal bliss, which is the only
connection that we truly need.

2. I will thank everyone and be thankful for everything. Every morning
when I wake up I will feel intense gratitude for the pleasures in my
life. As I step out of my bed I will say “thank” as I put one foot
down, and “you” as I put my other foot down.

3. I will always help people and orbit around others instead of
asking others to orbit around me.

4. I will laugh, because laughter – even if forced – always improves a
person’s mood.

5. I will live in each moment as it comes. I will immerse my entire self
in the now.

6. I will read until my eyes bleed.

7. I will only harbor healthy thoughts. There is never value in a
negative thought.

8.I will make time for my body to release endorphins and get the attention
that it needs.

9. I will eat to fuel, and eat for pleasure only in moderation. I will
cut out useless bulk including meats and most dairy.

10. I will play the annoying child game with everyone I know (ask fifty
questions about every person, because everyone has a story).

11. I will maintain control of my environment and not let a messy
environment alter my stress levels.

12. I will work hard and allow sadness to penetrate me fully when I need
to experience it so that I can detach from these feelings once I recover.

13. I will give my mind and body as much sleep as it needs to incorporate all of these ingredients in my day.



What is your own personal recipe for euphoria? It was fun creating this one. Make your own list and spice up each day with some flavorful cheer.

Everything will be delicious.

Mind: 'Shhhhh! God? Is that You?'

“Yoga is the effort to experience one’s divinity personally and then to hold on to that experience forever. Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul your attention away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future so that you can seek, instead, a place of eternal presence from which you may regard yourself and your surroundings with poise.”
-Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love

My first meditative experience went something like this:

I bookmarked my page in Eat Pray Love and shut the novel that had just inspired me to try something a little crazy. In one of the best books I have ever read in my life, Elizabeth Gilbert describes her experience in India when she meditated amongst an assorted arrangement of spiritual followers. According to Gilbert, Yoga is translated in Sanskrit to mean “union,” and can refer to the union of our thoughts and the source of our thoughts, of a teacher and student, of an individual and God, or of the mind and the body. “The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitch of the human condition, which I’m going to over-simply define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment.”

Also, Yoga is not necessarily about speaking to a God or obsessing over the discovery of a divine presence. Gilbert describes yoga as the act of listening to any God that you believe in, whether it be a spiritual leader or a spirit within your own heart. Or both. Personally, I do not believe in just one God, but I do believe in a ubiquitous Godly presence. Lately I have struggled with my own religious beliefs, but I generally lean toward practicing some kind of hybrid spirituality between Christianity and Buddhism. Maybe my state of utter confusion could be more eloquently referred to as “traveling down the path toward spiritual enlightenment." Who knows.

So after reading a whole chapter about this stuff, my thoughts had basically dwindled down to: Well, what the heck.

I've tried Yoga before. But given that about 90% of my blood is caffeinated and that yesterday I compared myself to an incessantly flapping Hummingbird, my mind cannot be easily settled. But when I couldn’t adequately answer the question of ‘why not?’ for myself after putting the book down, I decided to sit up in my bed and give yoga one more try.

The alarm was set on my new phone (actually a vintage flip-phone because I dropped my nice one down a mountain) to go off exactly ten minutes after I shut my eyes. Soon after, I started repeating the phrase “Ham-Sa,” which translates to “I am that” (I am divine, I am with God, I am not separate, I am not alone, etc) like so:

Inhale... Haaahhhmmmmm... Exhale... Sahhhhhhhh. Just like Gilbert does.

I concentrated on absolutely nothing but the chant. My focus became so fierce that I soon forgot the words that I was supposed to chant. After a while, my breathing slowed so intensely that I found it unnecessary to inhale for a freakishly long period of time.

I know — impossible. Maybe I was in a trance? But I seriously required no inhalation at one point for over a few minutes (at least it seemed like it). When I awoke from whatever state I had entered, it was 26 minutes after when I had started, but I was under the impression that it hadn’t even been 10 yet because my phone alarm had neglected me. Apparently, I set the alarm but didn’t actually turn it on.

I then fell into the deepest six-hour slumber that I’ve probably ever experienced. My body required absolutely no more sleep than that – six hours – because the quality of rest was so intense.

Meditation is said to reveal heaven on earth. Gurus and intense Yogis live in an enlightened state of bliss, while dedicated, practicing Yogis are said to achieve a similar bliss in very little time once they begin their meditation. I bring up this point not because I feel that I have discovered heaven on earth (in fact I’m very far from it), but because the first song that played when I turned on my radio in the morning was “Heaven is a Place on Earth” by Belinda Carlisle — And I’m not kidding. Not kidding at all. As I belted out the tune alone to my dogs (poor girls - dogs have sensitive ears), I experienced a delayed revelation about the irony of this coincidence. I really have no further comment on the song incident, except that I am rather superstitious and do occasionally believe in supernatural and spiritual signs if they present themselves.

The sickness that I had begun to acquire the day before (I felt that familiar sick taste in the back of my throat accompanied by drowsiness that usually leads to a week-long cold event) had totally vanished by the morning. My run early this morning was terrific; I felt like I was moving on air. Maybe all of this vigor is entirely inside my head, but I’m not really sure that I care if it is. Results don’t lie.

So to recap — I tried something I had read about, and it may or may not have had a direct causal relationship with the disappearance of a foreboding illness, a splendid night of uninterrupted sleep, and an energy that nearly levitated me as I ran five miles this morning.

I think I’ll be trying Yoga again.

3 Ways Acting Invigorates the Ordinary

A few weeks ago I pinned a guy against the wall and seduced him to get into the shower with me.

You’re thinking, wow, this chick’s blog just got super personal super quick. Though that opening sentence maintains its integrity, I had only actually been “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances” as I did so for an acting class.

Today I watched some videos of the final skit productions that we had performed for my beloved theater class. The glamour of acting was introduced to me before I had taken the class when I saw my sister in a few high school plays, but I had never really appreciated the depth of its charm until I actually did it (or tried to do it) myself.

The first thing that I discovered when I started acting was that I had absolutely no talent for it at all. My performance as a treacherous seductress in my final skit probably made a few of the audience members sick. But that’s okay! I tried it. And learned from it.

What gives acting its allure? As an entertainment-based culture, we give our unlimited attention to Hollywood stars and many fight hard for a spot in the industry. All civilizations in the distant past appear to have enjoyed some form of ritual dance, song, and storytelling as well. The greeks may have ignited the first flames of theater with their dithyrambs earlier than 335 BC, but I can definitely imagine even cavemen playing some prehistoric form of Charades in their caves way before that. So what makes this art so appealing?

I feel that I've discovered the true allure of acting. There are many lessons that I hope to apply to my life both as a future teacher and as an individual after taking several theater classes. The following are just 3 ways that acting has taught me to invigorate the ordinary:

1. Exploring Perspectives

To perform a convincing acting role, you must learn to literally put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Some actors may take this a little bit too far (RIP Heath Ledger), which is called immersive acting. But regardless of the depth to which an actor may devote himself to a role, on every occasion he must dive deep into the character’s experience to really identify the character’s mindset. Children do this all the time; they allow their imaginations to be so vivid that they actually believe what they imagine. Acting means knowing the whole story about someone, as opposed to making assumptions or accusations about why a character may behave a certain way.

2. Being Mindful of Your Objectives

Our acting coach taught us that every single character must always have a very specific objective; they must need or want something out of another character. Acting also requires a character to invest all of their energy into said objective. It requires an elevation of the stakes. Why shouldn’t we raise the stakes for ourselves in reality? Our next objective (whatever it may be) should always be specific, and should always be something that we invest ourselves entirely in. Acting means giving action a purpose.

This concept also reminds me of Ruiz’s third agreement – to never take things personally. Since everyone has their own objectives in life, it makes sense that we can never be responsible for the actions of others; we are only responsible for ourselves. Additionally, a good way to discover someone else’s objective (in a relationship, in a job setting, in a murder trial), is to focus on a person’s actions rather than on their words. In any acting scenario, a character’s actions tell the truth and their words often tell a lie.

3. Letting Go to Learn

A good actor feels no shame. They release their inhibitions and they express themselves fully in the roles that they play. But how can we express ourselves by acting like someone else? Our own identities are affirmed offstage by establishing an identity that is different from our own on stage. The best way to learn from life itself is by doing things that we’ve never done before. Acting gives us a chance to do this and to explore another’s identity which we can then compare to our own.




These are only fanny-pack sized messages that I will carry with me, because the full backpack versions of what acting has taught me are too long to incorporate on a blog entry that most people just like to skim through. Also, acting doesn’t have to take place on stage — as a waitress, I put on a performance every day. Of course as a waitress I only act as myself, but I’m still selling a sparkling version of myself to my audience with eager hopes of earning some massive tips. We are all actors, but I encourage you to discover the meaningful intricacies of this art next time you’re in the spotlight.

Invigorating the ordinary means exploring perspectives, establishing specific objectives, and practicing expression through self-discovered learning.

Acting means giving action a purpose.

Lamb to Lion

“Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions”
-Robin Hood

These words appeared in more than four scenes of the new Russell Crowe movie, Robin Hood. My brain engines emitted exhaust fumes as I played with this phrase over and over again in my mind throughout the movie. I desperately wanted to land on a satisfactory meaning of the phrase so that I could pay attention and not have to ask my dad which British guys were fighting themselves and which ones were fighting the French at the moment. But later on in the movie, my agony was mitigated as Robin explained to one of the characters that the quote means “to never give up.” So I realized that the phrase can be whatever its beholder wants it to mean.

This unique assembly of words probably has a biblical origin, seeing as Jesus Christ is known as both the lion and the lamb; He is the “Lion of Judah” in heaven, but He then appears to us as the “Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world.” It could also have a capitalistic undercurrent which would encourage the pursuit of one’s own success and integrity. It could also just simply mean (as Mr. Crowe articulates for his popcorn-eating fans) to never give up.

I’d like the phrase to mean that we experience an internal transformation from lamb to lion as we persevere through hardship, and that we must rise and rise again, through joy and through pain.

We get up and we face each day. We get up and we make decisions and do lots of work and resist temptations. Well — maybe not every day. But for those days that we fight, and for those days that our tiny sorrows or relationship dramas become our own scarlet battlefields, a lion begins to replace the lamb inside each of us.

The internal lamb is a mass of insecurity, immaturity, inexperience, and weakness, surrounded by a thick coat of cushiony wool. As the lion of hardship sinks its teeth into the permeable woolen membrane of our weaknesses, we become stronger and wiser. Something larger is born within us, something with more girth and ferocity. The lion doesn’t let us surrender in the face of turmoil — he helps us to rise again. The lion’s hot blood is a powerful liquid that bleeds perseverance and moxie. He is not bothered by distractions; his gaze is focused and deliberate.

But the lamb is still a part of us. It becomes the lion; it does not get overtaken by the lion. The lamb’s becoming qualities are thus salvaged. Its tenderness, its affection, its sentimentality, and its charm remain unscathed. But it has transformed into a mighty creature: one that can transcend constraint and demand liberty as king of the jungle.

As Dianne Setterfield puts it, “we all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weights, and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all.” The color of grief is the hemoglobin of our internal lamb. It bleeds when we bleed; it carries our troubles beneath its wool. And though our troubles never disappear, the silent metamorphosis will gradually enable us to cope easier with life’s afflictions. The lamb’s excrements become the lion’s fuel as we eventually forget our fears and allow the lion’s ferocity to present itself as self-confidence to the world.

Invigorating the day means that I need to put faith in the lion to help me rise and rise again. It means that I need to savor the versatility of experience and approach life with an informed confidence. As I train with a Born to Run style of running, my exercise follows this path naturally. As I try to live by the Four Agreements, I must remember that the mastery of these four pathways will only come with practice, and that I can only ever do my best without expecting immediate results. By doing our best and living with love, we feed the lion. By depleting our bodies, dwelling in insecurities, and practicing hatred and pessimism, we unintentionally throw the weaknesses of the lamb a celebratory welcome-back party.

What does this phrase mean to you?

4 Ways to Live Like a Dog

“The lesson I’ve learned from dogs has been that rules are meant to be acknowledged, and then ignored. They do everything exuberantly, joyously, and with an abundance of life.”
-Derrick Jensen in Walking on Water

Doggie-dynamics are extremely fascinating.

Yesterday I brought my chocolate Lab and my Alaskan malamute to a dog park to socialize. The dog park is easily one of my favorite places in the world, and it costs absolutely nothing (except a willingness to clean up excrements in public). It is Doggy Disney World; it is a happy place. I discovered a lot about the personalities of my own two dogs as I watched them interact with others, just as you can analyze human socialization to determine someone’s likes and dislikes.

For example, my wolfish malamute enjoys guarding the dog park watering hole with acute diligence. There were 7 watering dishes in the corner of the dog park. She stood over all of these, growling whenever another parched, jubilant mutt would approach for a refreshment. She was also very social, however, and developed a romantic attachment with a giant poodle. My Lab’s body wiggled sufficiently when she would first meet the other creatures inside the park, but her loyalty lied with me shortly after as she proceeded to nudge her ball into my ankle and demand that I throw it for her repeatedly.

Dogs are probably the happiest creatures on Earth. Why is that? Probably it's because they’ve mastered 4 simple steps to happiness without even trying. I’ve always tried to be a good person so that I can be reincarnated as a dog, but what if I don’t have to wait for reincarnation? I want to live like a canine. Here’s how I think they do it:


1. Live exuberantly, joyously, and with an abundance of life

If you had a tail, would it wag more than it would droop? Pretend you have a tail to wag and live like an exuberant, joyful puppy who only concerns itself with the present. Why worry about the thorn in your mind if it doesn’t affect you that very instant? A dog lives always in the present, and it allows no heavy concern about the past or the future to dampen its mind.

2. Be man’s best friend

Labradors, Retrievers, and many other breeds absolutely thrive on human contact. They go to almost any extent to please people (unless they are in mischievous puppy mode), and they tend to place unfaltering trust in the omnipotence of their owners. This trust-based relationship is simply anti-human in its strength. Most dogs see the best in people first, because they assume that a person will pet them or give them something yummy to eat. They never make assumptions or stereotype, and appearances mean nothing to them.

3. Be who you are

Dogs care less about what others think of them than they care about what time “Dancing with the Stars” is on. Imagine if you could strip away all your concerns about how others perceive you. Dogs are never slaves to societal scripts. Sure they have to understand the rules of what it means to be a dog (no soiling the carpet, no sinking your teeth into pedestrians), but they never hold back in regards to their personalities and never pretend to be something other than who they are meant to be.

4. Run to run

When dogs don’t get to run, they are denying their nature and their nature erupts in some other, uglier way. Wouldn’t all our troubles disappear if we stopped denying out nature and lived as the Raramuri (the running people)? Canines mimic the Raramuri: They run because they love doing it, and they run because they need it. They are strong, explosive, and free. They ask nothing from their running, and they get pleasure and liberation in return.

I just looked out of my bedroom window and saw my Alaskan malamute roaming near the road in my front yard. In case you were not aware, malamutes are innate escape artists. Apparently, she picked the lock on the gate from the back deck where she had been quarantined to lick her jar of peanut butter clean in peace. I just chased her down with a bag of treats. Conversely, my lab has been sitting next to my foot the whole time that I have been writing this, staring me down with her eager “play with me or I’ll self-combust” eyes.

Be an escape artist like my malamute and escape human conventions. Be who you are. Show your love unconditionally and assume the best of people before you get to know them. Live exuberantly, joyously, and with abundance of life.

Be your own best friend.

Cleaning to Cleanse

Yesterday I experienced a natural high.

The old, slobbish me would have never believed the current Meghan if she were to tell her that this high arose from cleaning her entire house.

Two days ago, the sliding door that leads to our deck had caused four of my family members to scrunch their faces up in agitation because it kept getting jammed half-way through the act of opening it. I watched as stress consumed each of these individuals for a few seconds after they wriggled it open, and then watched as they proceeded to walk through it and ignore the jam.

This is a common theme among many fast-paced American families. We pass by a clock that wears the time of two hours past or we put up a picture to cover a conspicuous hole in the wall when we don't have time to mend our environment because we're too busy trying to mend ourselves. In order to invigorate the mind, however, we must invigorate our living spaces.

I hunted down a can of WD-40 in my garage after witnessing the fourth display of door-provoked agitation. I greased the bottom of the door, and the door suddenly began to slide like a bar of soap on the bottom of a bathtub. I had fixed it! I actually fixed it. It required maybe two minutes of effort to save my family the stress of having to constantly pry open an annoying door whose original function was to slide.

I was inspired by the door crisis, and spent the next two whole days re-modeling and de-cluttering the whole house. My room was targeted first, as I attacked all the furniture and threw away useless junk that had accumulated there for years. Random vines that used to hang from the ceiling (I had a jungle theme) and tacky plastic stars that cluttered the walls now reside in large black trash bags, and everything is more organized.

The rest of the house required that I seriously step up my game. The disorganization in my home does not occur because we fail as a household to maintain order; it is just a result of many minor instances of laziness that are 100% preventable. My mother labors constantly to keep her house clean with painstaking efforts, but wherever there are two men and two dogs occupying the same space there are inevitable sanitary emergencies.

It's so easy to be a slob when you believe that there are more important things to worry about in life, but the reality is that your environment directly impacts your mood. If I want to live by the four agreements and feel like I am born to run, I can't expect to give myself entirely to these tasks unless my living space encourages me to do it. Clutter overwhelms and stresses, while an organized, clean area invites action and healthy living. But what is the one ingredient for an organized paradise? Self-discipline.

Self-discipline makes us stronger people. If you concentrate fully on any task that you do and let each moment consume you, you will never miss a chance to live. If you procrastinate, your mind will grow heavy. There is plenty of time in each day to devote your mind to self-discipline and to then allow it to recuperate at a later period. We are fully capable of applying the amount of self-discipline that maintaining a clean home requires, but sometimes we get lazy. This is why I decided to create reminder notes.

In order to encourage self-discipline in my household, I planted florescent reminder notes around my house in formerly clutter-concentrated areas. I actually made signs that say "clutter-free zone" for open spaces and "take me out when I am full" for the underbelly of our trashcan lid. We definitely don't need these notes, and most people would say they are excessive and ridiculous. But reminders can’t hurt. I want the makeover of my home to last because clean living space actually gave me a natural high.

During my run yesterday, I felt like a champ. I burst down the road for a 4 miler, and didn't slow down until I reached my front door again. I couldn’t fathom how having a clean area to live in could actually energize me, but now I realize how this was possible. If you let your environment get out of control, you feel like a failure on a small level. Letting your home get messy means that you have surrendered to external pressures, because you have allowed them to make you feel that you don't have enough time to take care of your living space. When you regain control of your personal setting, you regain control of your life. Why shouldn't we give ourselves time to make sure doors are fixed and floors are clean? We deserve it.

Nurturing your environment is a harmless drug that can bought with self-discipline. WD-40 something. Clean to cleanse yourself and you will feel fabulous.

Invigorate your living space, invigorate your mind.

Celebrate the Me, the You, and the We

"How much you love yourself and how you feel about yourself
are directly proportionate to the quality and integrity of your word."
-Don Ruiz in The Four Agreements

I celebrate myself today.

In the midst of preparing for large events, transitioning into new phases of our lives, or stressing because of work, it's easy to forget how awesome we are.

In the spirit of finishing finals, I reflected on how great it is to celebrate one's self each day. After I finished my hardest final today, I took a picture of the twelve novels that I had read for one of my classes (yes, I'm a dork). But isn't that great! Twelve novels. Maybe it's not so great, but I can choose to believe that it is. And by choosing to give myself lots of credit for it, I feel empowered.

Capitalism...football...and American Idol. In America, we strive to be the greatest. Competitiveness thrives, and there’s always someone who we need to be superior to in order to get ahead. Judging our own abilities against the talents of others can be good only if it serves as a catalyst for increased work ethic. But we often get disappointed when we compare ourselves to others, because we realize that there is always someone who is just a little smarter than us, or funnier, or more athletic, etc. So why compare ourselves? It amazes me to realize that we are all extraordinary individuals. Each one of us has a completely unique set of accomplishments that no one else has. And each one of us has an assembly of physical and internal characteristics that is completely self-exclusive. Not one organism on planet Earth shares the exact same genetic makeup with you (clones don’t count).

Walt Whitman knows what I'm talking about. In Leaves of Grass, his poem "I Celebrate Myself" elaborates beautifully on this idea. And Hawthorne lifted his brow in the nineteenth-century as he wondered why "it is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiences, than of their available gifts" in The House of the Seven Gables. Our insecurities govern our thoughts and our actions so much that we forget what amazing creatures we truly are. You have given a piece of yourself to everything you have done and everywhere you have been, and so you are connected to all the goals that you have achieved. Any time you walk up the stairs (why does this kill me no matter how good of shape I'm in?), show someone affection, or read a new book, celebrate yourself! When a group of girls rode up an 1100 ft high mountain on bikes with me last week, I told them that we needed to be way more impressed with ourselves than we already were. We are beasts.

When we're not celebrating ourselves, we should be celebrating others. Or, as Dr. Heather Holleman points out in her Live with Flair blog entry(http://livewithflair.blogspot.com/2010/04/ask-this-question.html), "when you can't be in the spotlight, be the spotlight." Shine a light on someone else's beauty! By celebrating others we can destroy jealousy, battle insecurity, and conquer inferiority.

Mother's day is coming up. Moms, you should give yourselves an infinite number of pats on the back. Your endless supply of selfless devotion is absolutely astonishing. Those who haven't mothered a child should celebrate these domestic overseers for anything and everything they have done, and thank them with their utmost sincerity.

Life will be a party if we celebrate ourselves and others.

Let no tiny triumph escape your radar.

I am super awesome for writing this.

Nautical Discovery

"Taking action is being alive."
-Don Ruiz in The Four Agreements

How often do people say they want to do something and then never do it? I'm not sure I ever want to discover the repercussions of living in a world where everyone always did what they said they wanted to do (yikes!), but a little more follow-through of desirable activity could be supremely uplifting.

Yesterday, my friends and I did something we've been saying we've wanted to do for quite some time. On our bike path, there is a wide-ish river that extends pretty far into a nearby county, and every time we bike past it we say we should tube down it one day.

Oh, did we tube down it one day.

After I had nearly wiped out all of Walmart's tubing supplies, (you can find tubes there for $2!), we were river-bound. We parked our car along the river and eased into the water one-by-one, feeling very much like characters from a Mark Twain novel.

Our first ride down the river was brief but eventful. During this early excursion I discovered that it is possible to do a summersault in very shallow water without getting concussed (do not try this at home), and that rivers tend to steal people's sunglasses. We floated for a small distance past a "no trespassing" sign until we saw two very sour-looking fishermen who appeared to be trying to eject us from the water with their withering stares.

The real adventure ensued after we decided to march as far up the river as possible to see where it would end. We never reached the end. Fatigue and filth had consumed us; wearing a white bathing suit was a terrible idea. Trudging up the river, however, we became Tom Sawyers on a brave expedition. We overturned rocks to find critters, we took a break to skip rocks (I maxed out at two skips - so depressing), we practiced agility (rocks hurt), and we found a dirty wooden plank. While none of these events seem overly interesting, it was a wildly entertaining escapade that involved a lot of falling and treacherous navigating. Once our butts hit the tubes after battling upriver like a fierce school of salmon, we marinated in the sunlight and laughed the whole way back.

Humans are curious creatures. If we do not feed our curiosity periodically, our minds become stale. This is why adventures are therapeutic. Every so often, turn yourself into an explorer. It is not necessary to travel far in order to discover. You can discover so much in your immediate surroundings. You can investigate the details in something you've never analyzed before. Whatever you may choose to explore, you will inevitably find something new. How refreshing. Our minds and our bodies need to be woken up sometimes. Routines are fantastic, and there is plenty of beauty in tradition. But life is too short to let the brain go stale. Life is too short to say you can’t wait to do something and then never do it.

Take action to feel alive.

Investigate, Explore, and Discover.

A Teacher, Taught

I have been tutoring a 56-year-old Korean woman for a whole year, and today was our last lesson together. During the past year, we had established a pretty stellar tradition of swapping English lessons for homemade banana bread. Since it was volunteer tutoring, she had elected to fill my belly twice a week in compensation.

But she had unintentionally given me so much more than just the tasty homemade “cake” as she called it. A teacher/tutor must possess a fierce thirst for knowledge, because teaching is the greatest way to learn. The powerful insights that I have gathered from my lessons with Chae-Hee can be summed up in 4 ways:

1. How to Welcome Silence:

Chae-Hee and I would occasionally go to lunch to celebrate major learning improvements that she had accomplished. While dining, I learned that it is okay to be silent. From what I could deduce, Chae-Hee feels incentive to speak only when necessary. So many of the words in our culture (gossip and curse words) are useless and unnecessary. She taught me that profound comfort can exist in silent exchanges between individuals, and soon I stopped feeling the urge to say random things to fill the silence.

2.How to Use chopsticks:

I had learned to utilize these instruments before, but Chae-Hee taught me how to use using them. Chopsticks make you slow down when you eat and force you to appreciate every mouthful of tasty chow. I was so used to using my fork as a shovel that I never realized the enchanting powers of chopsticking. This might explain why many Asians who use chopsticks have beautifully slim figures.

3. How to Nurture and love

Chae-Hee would tell me how she would go to the grocery store literally every day and cook a meal for her children three times per day. Today she planned to cook Lamb for her son upon request. She doesn’t feel the need to occupy her time watching television or surfing the web because her biggest priorities are to take care of her children and to make sure that they stay healthy and well-fed. She puts all of her energy into nurturing and loving others, while she rarely takes into consideration her own needs. One day we discussed what we both thought we were good at, and she couldn’t come up with anything to say about herself. I said, “Are you kidding me? You are an incredible mother and a brilliant chef!” She said, “Yes, I think maybe I am a good mother.” Another time I gave her a writing prompt that questioned what she would do with an invisibility cloak, and she wrote, “well I would go to a bank and I would get much money and would give to poor people.”

4. How to Construct Meaning and Set High Standards

In January, I handed Chae-Hee a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and asked her if she would like to challenge herself. Back at the beginning of the year in September, Chae-Hee made me repeat the words “How are you?” because she wasn’t sure what they meant. Yesterday, she finished reading Harry Potter. I was a walking exclamation point when she told me she had finally finished. I thought, wow; if this broad could read an entire novel in a foreign language, I could do anything I set my mind to. Every week, we would read the summaries she made about each chapter and discuss the questions she had about the book (Rowling invented an absurd amount of vocabulary that couldn’t be found in her Korean-English translator). And every week, her summaries were dead on. I was baffled, and she knew it. We watched the movie during the second last week of class and I bought her the second Harry Potter movie as a reward for completing the book. She needed no reward, however, but to know that she had completed such a remarkable feat. The smile she bore as she flipped through the pages to show me just how many she had read will brighten my day every time I think of it.

Another life-lesson I took away from the Harry Potter success was that we can construct meaning by connecting the events of our lives. I always made sure Chae-Hee was aware that she did not have to understand every single word when she read them; she just had to make her own connections between concepts or words that she did understand. Her summaries proved that she could accomplish this handsomely, and she found this advice to be extremely helpful. In life, we will never understand everything that happens to us. But by developing a positive mind, we can connect all the seemingly meaningless events that pass us by each day and construct meaning out of them. “Going through the motions” stops immediately when you give everything in your life a purpose and try to analyze or connect the things that bring you joy.

Check out a story that we wrote together in the post below this if you liked this entry. Our story might be a bestseller one day, so there’s your sneak preview.

In Chae-Hee’s thank-you letter to me (she is moving back to Korea but we will still be pen-pals), she wrote:

I had fun studying with you. You taught me how to study English and understand it. I think my English improved. You are very kind and smart, and warm-hearted. I think you will be a great English teacher. And you were a great teacher to me. Thank you very much, I will miss you very much.

I wish that I could tell her what a great teacher she was to me.

Maybe I’ll send her this entry one day and make her play with her translator again once her English has gotten rusty over in Korea.

I’ll tell her that her banana cake tasted delicious, but her inspiration tasted even better.

A Story by a Korean Woman and a College Student

At the beginning of the year, my tutee and I wrote a story together, alternating who would write (line by line). Here it is:

The Evil Turkey Sandwich

By: Meg McGinty and Chae-Hee Chong

Ming Su went to school one day, and his mother packed his lunch. Ming Su always wants to eat meat food. His mother put vegetables in his lunch, and he threw them away. Ming Su thinks “how can I not eat vegetables?” after a second he has an idea. He decides to trade his vegetables with another student’s turkey sandwich. After school he lies to his mother. “I ate my vegetables almost.” But then, Ming Su was sick with a stomach pain for the rest of the night because of the rotten turkey sandwich. His mother worried about Ming Su’s health so she took him to the hospital. He takes a medicine for stomach pain. Ming Su never again lied to his mother, and always ate his vegetables.

The End

Manipulating Circumstance

"Your life is the manifestation of your dream; it is an art. You can change your life anytime if you aren't enjoying the dream."
-Don Ruiz in The Four Agreements

Yesterday was a dreary day.

The fact that I have lost 3 unfaithful umbrellas to the weather of State College, PA illustrates the typical gloom that yuck-ifies our area. State College bathed itself yesterday in a familiar drizzle as I roamed the streets umbrella-less. My refusal to buy another umbrella in anticipation of it falling victim to more of Mother Nature’s abuse was actually quite “refreshing.” When other nice people see a soggy female strolling through the rain without protection, they usually offer their own umbrellas. This was very comforting. The intimacy of the umbrella is pretty wonderful — you are forced to share a tiny diameter with another human being, which usually only happens in a romantic relationship or in a street fight (in acting, the rule is if you get this close to someone on stage you either need to punch them or kiss them). But the umbrella requires neither situation; it just brings people together in order to achieve cooperative protection from an exterior aggressor.

The crappy day ended with a cathartic episode, however, because I felt that I needed to light a flame somehow. I spontaneously decided to do an intense outdoor track workout at 9PM in the rain. (There might have also been a little incentive to burn off the cheesecake and 3 cookies I had after dinner, but it was still spur of the moment).

If you have never done a track workout alone at night, I implore you to do so. Standing there by myself staring at the giant maroon canvas that was inviting me to clutter it with my footprints, I embraced the moment of solitude. No one was watching. There was a vague discomfort induced by the chill of the rain, but there was peace in the absence of comfort because it was my discomfort, and there was no one else to share it with.

There’s also something magical about running as fast you possibly can for an uncomfortable amount of time. I will do this on occasion when I feel overwhelmed or stressed under life’s many pressures (finals are coming up). As I gazed at the light reflecting off the puddles of water that had accumulated on the track, I let the frustrations of the week energize me in preparation for a speed-burst. Once I had gathered enough steam, I took off and ran as fast as possible for two laps, several times.

There is a source of strength in all of us that is just waiting to be tapped in to, and it often tastes the best when it is explored for absolutely no reason at all. I probably ran faster than I ever did during cross country season training last night on the track because I just ran for the hell of it. I was exhilarated by the rain, the darkness, and the peculiarity of my decision to run in those conditions.

Very often, there are circumstances like rain or stress that will bum us out, or make us want to consume massive amounts of ice cream and remain sedentary. But we have the ability to reframe each circumstance to make it work for us. In The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James illustrates this concept beautifully in the opening chapter of the novel by portraying a scene where the characters move all their furniture out on to the lawn to create a new setting to dine in — an artistic way of demonstrating that humans control circumstance, and not the other way around. I’d like to do this more; it added some excitement to an otherwise lackluster day.

Being born to run means moving the furniture to the lawn and running in the rain because you can.

It means circumstance can go to hell.

Out of the Frying Pan

"Do your best to fulfill the needs of your body."
-Don Ruiz in The Four Agreements

I apologize for the length on this one, but I promise it's good stuff. From now on entries will be short and sweet.

It was 8AM, and the sound of my alarm made me want to ring someone’s neck. What kind of world did I live in that would force me to leave such a comfortable assembly of cotton sheets? Lying in the darkness of that morning’s gloom, I almost convinced myself to cancel life for a day. Then a flood of thoughts cascaded violently through my lethargy. A most unwelcome collection of unfinished business inundated my mind, forcing me to leave my bed and head straight for the coffee machine. I frantically began to plan my day and pack up my life in a bag that wasn’t fit to hold it while I simultaneously completed a mental checklist of everything I had most likely forgotten to do already. My beloved peanut butter waffle sandwich tasted delicious but there was no time to savor it. The tornado of my morning preparations had left my room a mess but there was no time to clean it. I feared that my fish might suffocate and drown in the filth contaminating their tank but there was no time to change their water. After I exited the apartment and bolted down three sets of stairs, I realized that I had forgotten my wallet. The fish held their breath in anxiety as I dashed into the room, reunited with my wallet, and dashed back out again. The day had begun.

It was during this murky phase of my life that I had let my perception of living “fully” determine how I should live; I was both the subject and the artist behind the portrait of a life that I thought would be meaningful. Mortality became a reality all of the sudden and I was under the impression that I needed to do more with my life. I wanted to live life intensely — but life was intensely beating the crap out of me. My mind oscillated between the desire to suck all the essence out of life and the struggle to love all the essence that I was sucking. A sinister thirst for learning, for doing, for seeing and feeling possessed me with intoxicating force as I entered my sophomore semester at Penn State University. I wanted to meet and experience and involve and work hard and play hard and exercise and… never sleep. Then there was the egg pan.

The dreary day that followed the morning I have described proceeded to echo the chaos of that morning’s activity. After sitting through five classes, writing an article for the newspaper, tutoring at a writing center, tutoring at Panera (while feasting on delicious pastries), and draining myself at a two-hour swim practice where I nearly drowned because someone kicked me in the face, I went to make myself an omelet. There had always been a separate pan that I used specifically for cooking eggs in because when I cook them, my impatience causes me to burn the eggs, leaving a permanent crust on the bottom of the pan.

I whipped out my trusty egg pan, but then turned on the lights to suddenly stop and search the inside of the frying pan for a reflection of myself that I had somehow lost. Crusty egg residue blotted out my face. Normally, I would have overlooked the egg pan. I would have cooked/burnt my omelet and devoured it in less than a minute. As I peered through the egg residue at my distorted face in that moment, however, I was thunderstruck.

Two days later I quit two of the major activities that I was involved in at Penn State and I got rid of my egg pan, upgrading to a new and improved system of egg-scrambling. Starring into that egg pan was like looking into the eye of a hurricane; it was a brief moment of sublime inactivity. Suddenly I realized that in all my attempts to live fully, I had stopped living entirely. My health had been deteriorating and I was sick more often than I was healthy. My body was demanding that I slow down. I was doing all the activities that I loved to do, but I left myself no time to love doing them. Thinking of it now, I am reminded of Lady Gaga — the global pop superstar who passes out at concerts because she tries to take on more than she can handle. It became clear to me that I was letting external pressures control my life and that I needed to drastically alter my situation to correct that. I was a struggling dog, and all the outside forces that I had arranged for myself were holding the leash that walked me. I needed to hold the leash.

To put it simply, the egg pan somehow taught me the power of simplicity. In taking a moment to analyze the absurdity of the fact that I even owned a pan designated to burn my eggs on because I never allowed myself time to fully cook them, I discovered that I had lost myself in a demanding whirlpool of productivity. I realized that living fully is not about how much you do, it’s about how much of yourself you invest in every single action that you take. Cutting back on my activities illuminated the idea that to do everything at my own pace would be a much better way to live. It’s like riding a bike: you can’t be overambitious and choose to charge up a hill in a tough gear, or you might end up rolling backwards.

I learned that when you overdo, you deplete your body and go against yourself, and it will only take you longer to accomplish your goals. My fear was of missing out if I slowed down. The reality is that once I slowed down, I gained irreplaceable vigor and missed out on nothing. Soon after, my lifestyle changed permanently. I was no longer concerned with daily output, but rather with daily input. I began to appreciate the little things and magnify each experience and each relationship that I made to get the most out of them without trying to tackle too many at once.

I now cook my omelets slowly and diligently on a pan that I cook the rest of my food in. The meal tastes better than ever. I have lost my health only once in the past year, and I have learned to designate time in each day to reflect and to channel my attention toward taking excellent care of my body and mind.

I surfaced from the frying pan and switched gears to appreciate the light in each day.

Invigorating life means living at your own pace.

Simply.

Food for Thought

“Eat as though you were a poor person.”
-Christopher McDougall in Born to Run

Buffets and fast-food restaurants try desperately to conceal the secret formula that I am about to reveal to you about healthy eating. There are five easy ways to always feel fit, stay healthy, and look slim, and they all revolve around one concept: eating like a poor person.

The basic gist of this theory is to maximize the amount of nutrients that you can obtain from the smallest amount of calories possible. Diets don’t work. They are short-term. In order to feel better, to be more energized, and to eliminate any excess storage of fat, we have to change our lifestyles.

My dad is living proof of this; a few years ago he went vegetarian and is now running almost as fast as he did in high school at age 43. He also lost about 20 lbs and looks like a chizzled beast. He met with success because he determined to make a lifestyle out of vegetarianism — not a temporary diet. Personally, I feel healthier than I ever have and I approach each day with more energy than I had the day before it because I have chosen a similar lifestyle. There are five easy eating tricks that have improved my overall well-being. There are five simple ways to eat like a poor person:

1. Eating to Fuel

In the super-sized, convenience-based, buffet-style society that we live in, it is easier than ever to overeat or just feast for pleasure and convenience. Instead, our bodies should be treated like an automobile that needs to be gassed up to run efficiently. Each time we over eat, we abuse our bodies and we give them something that they don’t need. This is often the hardest part of the lifestyle (because things like Cheez-its and potato chips exist), but it can have a tremendous impact even if it stands alone as a singular lifestyle change.

2. Cutting Down on Meat Intake

If we base our diets on fruits, veggies, and whole grains instead of red meat and processed carbs, this would easily be the most empowering lifestyle change. We would be getting the maximum nutrition from the lowest number of calories while adding no useless bulk to our bodies. All the myths about not being able to sustain a healthy diet without meat and protein are absolutely false; the substitutions are endless. In fact, the average american eats over twice the recommended daily allowance for protein intake. The ultra-runners in Born to Run base their diets largely on vegetables and grains, and they are able to run hundreds of miles without passing out from a low protein intake. Moreoever, research has shown that adopting a vegetarian lifestyle can actually add SIX TO TEN years onto your life. More on a vegetarian lifestyle to come.

2. Savoring the Taste

When you sleep, sleep. When you study, study. When you eat, EAT! Savor the taste. Let no flavor escape your taste buds and appreciate every bite that you take. My family likes to shovel everything in so fast that we usually forget to breathe while eating. Slow down and delight in the nutrients that you are feeding your body.

3. Eliminating Distractions

Treat each meal as its own individual activity. I thought that my favorite way to eat was to sit in front of the TV watching Gilmore Girls (I have every episode on DVD sadly) while feasting. But then I tried sitting at the kitchen table with the TV off to devote my undivided attention to the food I was ingesting. It can be an entirely different experience, and it usually prevents overeating.

4. Never Starving

Starving is probably the worst way to approach weight-loss, yet unfortunately it is also the most common. Starving yourself severely slows your metabolism and often results in binge eating at a later period anyway. Eating small portions five times a day can satisfy your hunger and leave you lighter than ever without feeling food-deprived.

5. Becoming the Chef

This technique is probably what I struggle the most with. I’m culinarily challenged. But there are so many ways that restaurants or fast food places can manipulate the food that we eat, and the best way to prevent this from happening is to cook our own meals. Treating each meal as an event and taking the time to actually cook the food we eat can make all the difference. Many of the nutrients and flavors of the food are maintained this way, and we feel that we have accomplished something after we prepare our unique creations as well, thus completing the whole “meal experience.”

The poor person analogy makes sense. I can especially identify with it because at this point I am pretty poor. If you were poor, you would savor the hell out of every meal because who knows when you'd get your next one. You wouldn't have the luxury of distractions or of a 10 oz steak, and your only option might be to eat merely as fuel.

I don’t want to waste time feeling like crap because of the food that I eat. Life is too short to abuse my body and to make harmful nutritional choices. My body is the weapon that I attack each day with, and I want it to be strong. I want to feel good, look good, and run good.

So I eat like a poor person.

A Challenge on Wheels

“We say the rarájapari is the game of life. You never know how hard it’ll be. You never know when it’ll end. You can’t control it. You can only adjust.”
-Christopher McDougall in Born to Run

I often think about that quote. It refers to a game based on racing to a ball that is thrown for the Raramuri runners in Born to Run, but it also reveals a very sublime truth about life: we can only ever adjust to our given circumstances.

This past weekend my bike Marge was overworked. Marge is not used to performing very rigorously, so as I enslaved her to carry me further than usual this weekend she bitterly reminded me of her exhaustion by squeaking her parts at me in a fury. I’m really not a frequent biker, but somehow I was peer-pressured into doing a race on Saturday and a 30-mile death-ride the next day.

On Sunday I think I lost my soul on a mountain. Two of my friends and I decided to tackle a 30 mile course with a 3 mile vertical climb (1100 ft)in the middle of it while mixed precipitation fell from the sky. I’d like to invite you briefly into the state of mind that I fell into during those 3 tragic miles.

Temperatures were low, so while we sweat we saw our breath. While I desperately fought the urge to get off my bike and walk, I also had to deal with the misfortune of having Hannah Montana's “It’s the climb” song stuck in my head the whole way up the mountain, which increased my pain exponentially. Every few seconds or so, I glanced to the woods on my left expecting to see the skeletons of bikers who lost the will to live while fighting their way up that hill. A porcupine lay dead on the side of the rode and I began to analyze the origin of the word porcupine (it means thorny pig) because I wanted to stop thinking about how much more hill I needed to climb. Just as my vision began to blur from hunger and fatigue, I finally reunited with my fellow cyclists at the top of the mountain where my friend Kathleen announced, “I feel like the baddest of asses.” It was true; I felt invincible.

Biking is like the rarájapari and the game of life. When the road ahead of you changes, you are forced to adjust and switch into a different gear in order to manage. You also have to learn to trust your bike, just as you have to learn to put faith and trust in the people you meet in life. You clench your handlebars until your knuckles go white hoping that a squirrel won’t run out in front of you and send you to the hospital, but anything could happen at any given moment — so you’re senses are heightened. Our everyday problems are our mountain climbs, and the downhill rush that concludes each climb echoes the relief that we feel after we have accomplished something worthwhile. Biking forces you to constantly be in-tune with your body, your senses, and your immediate situation — a fine recipe for healthy living.

Sometimes I like to go extreme. It is equally pleasing sometimes to invigorate the ordinary, but changing up the routine every so often can truly revitalize. I was just going to stay home and do homework all day on Sunday, but instead I had a near-death experience up a mountain that I never thought I'd be able to climb. That bike ride totally justified eating three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner.

Challenging yourself is fun; it invigorates the mind.

Service with a Smile

“If you take action because you have to, there is no way you are going to do your best. Then it’s better not to do it.”
-Don Ruiz in The Four Agreements

Never invest in a Tinkerbell alarm clock.

This piece of wisdom will save your life. It will prevent you from supporting the Tinkerbell industry, which I think is ridiculous. Though she might be a cute little sassy fairy for most of the movie, she also has a lot of attitude that goes unnoticed and almost gets Peter Pan killed because of her egoism. And why is Peter merchandise so hard to find in Disney stores? All I ever see is Tinkerbell. Perhaps others are like me, and have always imagined flying away with Peter Pan – not Tinkerbell. She nevertheless hogs consumer's attention. Moreover, the advice will save you from interrupted sleep. The Tinkerbell on top of my alarm clock has mischievously deceived me in a very characteristic way. She decided to meddle with the components of my clock to alter the time while I was asleep so that it would wake me up a whole two hours earlier than I was supposed to wake up (I got up at 6:30 AM, got ready for my bike race and then realized the actual time). That is the only explanation that I can devise as to why my clock was suddenly two hours off this morning. Clever little inanimate bitch.

Recently, I have been struggling with an urge to quit my job. I waitress at a steakhouse in a golf resort that receives very little action during the winter months, which usually means that I go home miserable and broke. However, business has picked up again for spring and stricter management has thus ensued. Busting my butt all night for people who refuse to tip 20% lately has made me seriously consider becoming a hippie and cultivating my own crops to eat and sell for a living. I’m also not fond of criticism or confrontation.

When I waitress, I have this excruciating fear of making mistakes. College has taught me that if I am not careful I could be labeled as a perfectionist. This label does not interest me, as I would condemn this characteristic in anyone else. I understand that beauty often exists in imperfection. But I just don’t like to do things unless I can do them well.

Clearly, I was in need of a serious mental makeover on this one. I decided to reframe the way I thought about working in the restaurant, so I thought about it for what it’s worth instead of why it pisses me off. I acknowledged that work is where I earn the money to eat (a college diet of peanut butter & jelly and tuna fish sandwiches), where I establish new relationships with co-workers, where I practice my theater skills (a waitress is an actress), and where I can appreciate not sitting in a cubicle all day at another job (if I were sedentary for more than an hour my life-long caffeine intake might actually kill me). It’s easy to be depressed about the downfalls of working and to feel anxiety about pleasing others. But it’s a challenge to derive only positive aspects from the experience, and to actually look forward to taking orders and performing quality manual labor.

Seneca writes, “He who takes orders gladly escapes the bitterest part of slavery – doing what one does not want to do. Let us set our minds in order that we may desire whatever is demanded of us by circumstances, and we may reflect upon our end without sadness.”

I went in to work yesterday excited to take orders. I re-taught myself the entire menu to feel extra confident and decided to have fun with all my tables regardless of any errors that I might make. The attitude with which I approached doing my job made the night go by quickly and painlessly. I was glad to do my work well; I was happy to perform.

While I only made about six dollars an hour total, I didn’t take off several years of my life stressing about being perfect this time while doing it. I had fun with it, and my tables loved me. I felt accomplished. Don Ruiz reveals that you should never do more or less than your best and that doing your best is taking action because you love it — not because you expect a reward from it.

Doing our best is all that we can do. Love every action that you take, and it will give you more than you ever thought possible. Complainers suck.

Thank you Ruiz for the 20% tips.

Age is just a Number

"You don't stop running because you get old. You get old because you stop running."
-Christopher McDougall in Born to Run

Twenty years ago, I met a hero.

He did not impress me at the time; I only acknowledged him as someone who was constantly nearby and who seemed very fond of the woman who fed me.

At age 43, this man set a world record in a 4x800 relay in Master’s track. Later that year, he astounded his fans as he crossed the finish line of a mile race in 4:29. Read that again. 43 years old…. 4 minutes and 29 seconds for a mile. Should not compute. I can’t even get my running shoes on that fast.

Surprisingly, this human track-machine was not born with a whole lot of natural talent for running; he worked his butt off to compensate. In an age of facilitative technology and accessible convenience, genuine hard work has almost become extinct. Not to say that people don't work hard, but it has become easier to work hard in a way. Olympic swimmers put on their Fastskin LZR racer suits to out-gear their competitors, and tracks are now banked for runners to gain maximum speed as opposed to competing on the prehistoric gravel tracks of about twenty years ago. Steroids in baseball make for a whole different "ball game."

This oober-fast runner embraces hard work. He thrives on it. The asthma that flares up in him and the absence of color in this guy’s face when he finishes a race leaves a spectator wondering first if he’ll need an ambulance, and second how an old dude can put such an incredible amount of effort into every single competition that he does. And somehow, there’s always a man about ten feet in front of him who he decides to mercilessly pass right at the very end of his race. His kick is incredible. I suggested that he probably pays a man each time to stay ahead of him until right near the finish line just so he can put on a show for his fans. He laughed, but he didn’t deny it.

His life inspires everyone around him. He could have easily contented himself with the 4:15 mile record he’s held for 20 years at his high school and retired himself to a luxurious life of television and golf. Instead, he chose to live with a purpose. A few years ago he decided to try going vegan; meat hasn’t hit his lips since. He says “screw you” to old-age every time he ties up his sneakers, and he loves doing it. Why do we assign such a negative stigma to old age? As people grow older, they grow wiser. Wisdom is a beautiful thing. And in terms of distance running, people actually get faster as they get older. What if we all live like my hero, and stop letting age dictate how we live our lives? As author Lucius Seneca writes, "to have lived long enough depends neither upon our years nor upon our days, but upon our minds." Attitude can change everything.

This was the case of one man who defies inability with excruciating labor just to do what he loves. Embracing life can mean running till you want to die in a track race to please nobody but yourself, or it can mean becoming part of a community of people who share your interests. This man tackles both with his master’s track career – and he does it in style.

My dad lives with a purpose.

He was born to run.