Choosing Our Thoughts

Choosing our thoughts each day is a lot like choosing what outfit to wear.  We have total control over them, they both influence our behavior, and, though they are immensely personal, they both ultimately affect how others think of us and how we think of ourselves.

So if we choose all of our thoughts, we should always be happy. Easy!  Right?  

No. We allow circumstance to dominate our thoughts or allow something we hear to manipulate our minds all the time. Mastering our thoughts, in other words, is easy for no one.  

Letting circumstance govern our moods, however, is like letting our clothes tell us what to wear. It's like relinquishing our intellects and soaking ourselves in worldliness.  We all live like this to a certain extent, but I've seen people whose moods depend entirely on what's going on around them. We should stop allowing externalities dictate the way we think and feel.    

Our internal minds can shape the external so long as we have mental anchors.  We must first anchor our minds with truth in order to make them inpeneterable to circumstance.  Only then will nothing harm us.  Whatever your most fundamental life-truth may be, only with God as my achor can I ever hope to transcend circumstance.  

God has given me a pretty impressive deflective shield.  As God dwells inside me, certain things just ricochet off my inner shield with a meager little "Zing," and that's that.  I embrace and search for the good, I repel and bravely confront the bad.  

Our minds are totally free.  True, ideology and culture seem overwhelmingly inescapable, but nothing can ever enter into our minds and alter the way we think unless we allow it access.  If our minds are not fertile ground for manipulative externalities, then harmful seeds cannot grow. 

Self-actualization happens when we master our thoughts.  With it, we can transcend just about anything.  To get there, though, we must practice.  For someone as neurotic as I am, this means actively relinquishing control.  This means not acting as if I own time and space. 

We might get pissed off when someone interrupts our "quiet time," for example.  We might get frustrated when, after we've had a long day, someone unexpectedly shows up, wanting to connect a little bit before the day ends.  These situations are not aggrivating.  We are aggrivating.  We aggravate ourselves by acting as if time and space were ours to begin with.  We should never regard any moment, or any item, as "ours."  We should rid ourselves of this egotistical sense of possession and realize that each moment – and everything that fills each moment – is a gift.

Also, when something really annoying happens, or traffic delays our travel time by two hours, we shouldn't frustrate ourselves by asking the questions, "Why?" or "How?"  

We should, instead, only ask the question, "What now?"

At the very moment that anything occurs, all we can control is how we perceive the situation and the consequent actions we take as a result.  We should acknowledge that anything that falls outside our control really does fall outside our control. This simple truth really frees the mind, because excess worrying exhausts our energy.  Why bother?  Let's worry about only what we need to worry about.  Let's be completely in charge of our thoughts.  

Our clothes should never tell us what to wear.

The Vortex

A friend and I went for a run today on a new trail.  After a nice warm-up, we launched into some sprints.  Well he sprinted, at least – I’m not sure what you would call what I did.  For some reason, something in me hinders my ability to accelerate.  I never start tasks full-throttle or sprint fast initially.  He, on the other hand, ran as if he were sprinting over shards of glass.  

Even more peculiar than my pathetic lack of acceleration is the observation that we make on the way back to our “starting line.” We look back and notice that our gravelly foot prints seem to start very far apart until about halfway down the trail, when our prints curiously merged together.

Later, during our final sprint, I inadvertently tucked in right behind my friend as he sped off ahead of me, merging our trails once again.  

My speed-demon friend proceeds to give me a chemistry lesson.  He jokingly says that the wake of his lightning-speed running is like a vortex – like suction filtration.  Suction filtration is conducted when the force of water pulls air out of an apparatus creating a great deal of suction.

– It’s like Niagra falls, he says.  Ever been?

– Yep.

– Know how you just feel eerily drawn into toward the falls when your near them?  It’s the force of the water.  The vortex.  It sucks you in. 

Well of course, my tendency to over-analyze and produce metaphors kicks in.  Could we all live like the Niagra waterfalls?  Can we all produce so much energy – such power and force – because we harbor such passion for purpose that others will gravitate toward us because they’ve been inspired?  

My friend is pleased with his new nickname; I can tell.  “Vortex” is a cool name.  Sounds like a super-hero.  Just as he sucked me into his speed-wake, Vortex attracts people in all aspects of his life because he radiates with spirituality.  He is constantly aglow with love and generosity.   If we are passionate about something, others want to know what secret we have that they don’t.  If we live for something, our enthusiasm radiates.  We glisten with purpose.  

I don’t want to be lukewarm and drift through life.  I don’t want to be an algae-infested, stagnant pond.  I want to be passionate and commit fully to my life’s purpose.  I want to be Niagra falls. 

Solidify, Boil, and Flow

"Down here all the fish is happy, as off to the waves they roll.  The fish on the land ain't happy, they sad 'cause they in the bowl."

- Sebastian in The Little Mermaid

I'm almost certain that I'm only three-fourths human.  

If a mermaid is 1/2 fish and 1/2 human and I am 1/2 mermaid, that makes me 1/4 fish and 3/4 human. My parents like to deny that one of them secretly reproduced with a mermaid (or merman) to create yours truly, but I'm not stupid.  

Just as water makes up about 60% of my body, it'd be fairly accurate to say that water has consumed approximately 60% of my life as well.  If my mermaid theory proves false, then I theorize that I have an absurd affinity to water not because I've been surrounded by it all my life (as a swimmer, lifeguard, and coach), but because we are all natural aquatic-romantics.  We fall in love with water, especially when it suits our mood.  We relish in a perfect swim, a refreshing beverage, a romantic skate on a frozen pond. We also depend on it to survive.  In Moby Dick, Herman Melville writes, "As everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever."  The absence of all worry, the freedom of the mind, and the sublime serenity associated with meditation, in other words, can best be achieved through aquatic means.  

Last time I swam a workout, the pool-water shared some interesting metaphors with me. 

Water, for example, automatically conjures plenty of biblical images when I contemplate its value.  Baptism washes our sins away and we are reborn through Christ.  We are cleansed, and we are forgiven.  Water obviously connotes purity for many of us because liquid water cleanses.  But beyond these typical, powerful connections I usually make with water,  the great deep blue (of the 5 foot pool) revealed to me some truths that I'd never thought of as I invaded its substance with my flawless streamline.    

We like open water, for example, because it makes us feel free.  In his song Wildflowers, Tom Petty tells his lover, "you belong in a boat out at sea.  Sail away, kill off the hours… you belong somewhere you feel free."  Melville's narrator "loves to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts." The sheer enormity of the open water captures our intrigue.  Water "whets" our curiosity.  But ultimately, like our inescapable nature, the water we sail on must conform to whatever shape confines it.  Despite its versatility and "freedom," water must ultimately conform to whatever shape contains it.  

Similarly, though we may have the freedom of mind to make meaning for ourselves in life, we  ultimately can't ever escape ideology and circumstance. To put it another way, we exist within time and culture.  We cannot free ourselves of temporality anymore than we can free ourselves of cultural influence, as much as we may try.  Like the unlucky fish in Sebastian's disney tune, we're a bit "sad 'cause we're in the bowl." But this reality isn't sad unless we let it be.  Faith and criticality invigorate the fish bowl.   

On a lighter note, swimming is a weird sport.  Demetri Martin jokes, "To me swimming is a confusing sport.  Sometimes you do it for fun, but other times you do it to not die.  When I'm swimming sometimes I don't know which one it is. I gotta go by the outfit. Pants: uh oh.  Bathing suit: okay.  Naked:  we'll see."

But I really value teaching people to swim, whether I'm teaching them to use proper stroke technique in the water or just teaching them to not die when they land in it.  I believe in the water's ability to wash away inability and insecurity and to soak us, in place of these things, with self-reliance. 

Ben Franklin famously advocated for the autonomy with which water "refreshes" us.  Did you know Franklin was the only founding father in the swimming hall of fame?  He taught himself to swim in an age when swimming wasn't prevalent because he valued self-reliance and physical activity.  When I heard he was the first political figure to suggest that everybody should learn how to swim, I wanted to fist-pump him.  

Learning to swim means that we can remain "afloat" through adversity.  It means we don't sink.   It means we tread through turbulent waters and keep our heads above the surface when all we feel like doing is drowning.  

Water can solidify, boil, and flow.  It can toughen us, boil away fears and insecurities, and cleanse.  

Water whets our appetites for life.  

In or Out

The transformative powers of one particular life-simulating and rather archaic activity are immeasurable.  The allure of the game I speak of is so powerful that it causes people to emerge from all recesses of the earth to come join in, wherever it is played.  It surpasses all in simplicity, intensity, and charm.

Four-square.

Yes, four-square.  What else?

You know the rules.  Or if you don't, you did at one point, I'm sure. Anyone who needs four-square instructions can e-mail me immediately.  

You will love four-square.  Here's why.

I'm good at it.  In other words, the common man can excel at this game – everybody has a chance to be "king"for a time (spaces are labelled in a clockwise formation as a monarchial hierarchy).   It takes minimal skill but maximum focus to thrive in a four-square challenge. In fact, I've encountered more than a few adults who, in exasperation, have wondered aloud why little girls have been able to annihilate them on the court.

More importantly, though, we can find plenty of life-metaphors within the game.  Each one of us, for example, exists within our own little boxes – our own little life-squares.  We put up our walls and we try to keep others far, far away.  But ultimately, we need other players to join in the game.  Nobody wants to play one-square.

Also, like the basic reward/penalty system that drives the game, we certaintly value "staying in."  At least I want to stay in.  I don't want to check out, to view my life from the sidelines.  I want to live now, I want to be in-gaged. With God as my anchor, I can transcend the crumminess of everyday life yet remain grounded all at once.  I don't wanna get out.  I want to be fully engaged and embody each moment fully; I want to participate fully in every aspect of my life.  

And what of the unpredictability of the ball in four-square? Focused and ready, we never know which direction or velocity the ball will enter our square at.  We can never be totally ready for what comes our way – we can only ever adjust.  Sounds familiar.

Another exceptionally cool aspect of the game is the way the four chalk-boxes call forth the inner child within each of us.  I've conducted a mental experiment to verify the amount of time it takes someone to challenge another player about whether they are out or not.

Four minutes.  Fiery banter erupts on a four-square court in four minutes or less. The four-square court looks more like a Judge Judy court after only four minutes because nobody wants to relinquish their chance at becoming king.
We're survivors.  We're self-preservationalists.  When the ball hits a line, we leap at the possibility of a re-do.  When I make an error, my senses heighten and I fight for my life on the court.  In that moment, all that matters is staying in.  Getting "out" stings.

My favorite part of the game, though, is the merciful re-do.  How often to we come across second chances in our life-squares?  Or forgiveness?

You get to "re-do" the round if the ball hits the line, if it hits your feet (chicken feet), or if there's virtually any confusion at all as to what just occurred.  How cool? In four-square, we allow second chances.  We allow for imperfections.

Springtime ushers in new opportunities for outdoor entertainment.  Four squares await you.  Are you in or out?

The Shackled Ballerina

“The chains which have held us are only the chains which we’ve made"

 - Jewel

Sometimes language sucks.  It doesn’t always have the capacity to say what we really need to say.  It can be frustratingly insufficient.  

I'm going to attempt to use language to convey two ideas that have helped free my mind. To illustrate my claim, I’ve created a short fable.  You can read it, but you don’t have to.  I’ll explain its significance before you read it as an attempt to allay any hasty impressions that the fable is totally dense and weird (thought you're perfectly free to still think that even after I try to explain it). 

The ballerina in the fable frees herself from her chains simply by doing two things: suspending judgment and suspending telos.  To suspend judgment, one must recognize that we can only affirm the values that we believe in and realize that we have absolutely no right to judge another human, because we have not created them.  They must also realize that we have more in common than in difference with everyone we meet.  Telos is a greek term that means the end term of a goal-directed process.  In other words, telos is what we strive for.  A problem arises, however, when we forget to thrive while we strive.  A teleological suspension would thus mean fully embodying each moment to our fullest capabilities.  It would mean living for the present instead of living for the future.  

The ballerina (who has presumably lived a very light, easy, graceful life until she was cursed), has been shackled by her own tendencies to judge others and to live for the future. She frees herself from her first chain only when she pauses in front of a man whom she had always regarded as creepy and inferior, but finally recognizes herself in the man. A wind blows through both characters to suggest that the universal currents of life flow through us all, connecting us inseparably.  Tellingly, the man sells marbles, which have extremely dense histories and stories of their own that have led to their intricate designs. The ballerina realizes that beneath the quiet man’s crooked stare lies a story and a life, similar to the life of a marble, or, perhaps, to her own.  

Her final fetter (or shackle) self-combusts as she awakens to the present moment. Suddenly, she feels everything for the first time and stops going through the motions of her day just to desperately get to nighttime, when she can be alone with her music. The marble can be said to have caused this awakening, because often when we make one of these movements of faith (judgmental suspension vs. teleological suspension) it will cause us to naturally move onto the other as well. 

The ballerina’s kinetic freedom finally restored, she struggles at first to embrace it.  It takes time to train ourselves to suspend judgment and to stop living for an end result.  Initially, she manages to transcend, but clumsily stumbles her landing.  When she says yes, or when she affirms all life, she has finally transcended life but has figured out how to embrace ephemeral life simultaneously.  

Like the ballerina, we can free ourselves from the chains which we’ve made.

Enjoy the fable.

.....

There once was a ballerina who hated her chains.  Shackled by a curse, she lamented her fate.  By day, she drug herself to the bakery to buy her family a loaf of bread.  By night she locked herself in her chamber and freed her hair from its angry bun. Alone, she listened to old ballet tapes, allowing music to drown her sorrows.  Each day she lived only for night, when she could shut out the world and allow for a familiar song to conjure a pleasanter image in her mind.

Today the quiet man with the crooked stare looked especially perturbed as she spotted him from a distance.  As a reflex, her eyes shot to the ground for the approach , always careful to avoid his awkward, prickly gaze.  She was sure he stood behind his insipid booth selling his silly little marbles and staring as always.  Each day when she passed him en route to the bakery she cringed a little, thinking if anyone could be less than she, it was he.

Suddenly possessed by an inexplicable force of curiosity this day, however, she stopped in front of his booth. Her eyes, startled, found his, and detected a kindness in his gaze. 

A sharp wind jostled her from behind and blew through her skin as if she were stitched of an open weave.  She watched the quiet man with the crooked stare wobble, too, before she carefully laid her hand on his shoulder. He smiled a crooked smile, and handed her his most precious marble.  Black and silver danced across this objectm coalescing to produce a sickeningly cool species of design. Expressing her gratitude for the treat with a gentle squeeze of his arm, she carried herself  off to the bakery.  

Within several steps, one of her shackles burst and lie conquered on the gravel beneath her.  An enormous weight having been lifted, she proceeded rather lightly toward the bakery.  

The marble awakened the girl; its absurd design challenged her senses.  In the bakery, she felt the warmth of the bread, smelt its pleasing aroma and sighed.  Walking home, she felt the pebbles under her feet, embracing the sensation.   Immediately her second and final chain dismantled itself, abandoning her ankle once and for all.  

She danced to her tapes that night when she took down her hair.  At first she rejected the joy because couldn’t think what to do with it.  She leapt into the air and stumbled, landing awkwardly.  When she finally said yes, however, she leapt and landed gracefully on her toes, forever grounded and risen all at once.

....