vignettes

Split

I once knew a man who claimed he was in love with two different women. Equally. One was his wife, and the other, his soul mate.

Each day that would pass, he held this conflict inside of him. I watched as it ate through him from the inside out. Every morning he would leave his first love at home (his wife) to spend the day at the office with his second love (his colleague). And at the end of each day he would do everything in reverse.

The next day he would start all over again.

He asked me once to tell him what to do. But I wouldn't. Because I couldn't. My heart just doesn't work that way. I have never been so fortunate (or perhaps, cursed) to have two "equal" loves. One always feels a bit closer to the Truth. One always feels a bit closer, a bit more true, to me.

It took me a while to see that his heart didn't actually work the way he thought it did, either. The conflict that tormented him was not the conflict between two "equal" loves. The conflict was between the man he thought he was (a man of duty) and the man he wanted to be (a man of will).

I find that when I am having to make a (seemingly) difficult decision, I am always best served by consulting the feelings in my heart. In the quietest moments, I know they will guide me in the direction that best serves the person I am becoming. The person I want to be.

When deciding how to live, how much of you is shaped by duty and how much by will?

Truly

"Every person is destroyed when we cease to see him."
—Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove

I once knew a woman who lost her sight. I cared for her one or two afternoons each week as I paid my way through college.

I helped her read her mail.

I helped her make tea.

I kept her company.

I watched her, and she "watched" me.

I remember the day she shared with me her story. She woke up, looked out the window, and said to her husband with a sigh, "what a grey day." His silence confirmed what she had long been fearing. The day was bright blue and sunny.

They say that when one sense falters, we rely more on the others to help us perceive our world. So what we may first consider to be a weakness, could actually be the very thing we need to build our strength.

Every so often, I think of Mrs. Zelditch and her journey of learning to "see" again. Her journey of building new strength.

Through her hands as they held your own and as they studied your face, finding the truth in you.

Through her ears as she listened to your words and the spaces between them, looking for hidden messages that you weren't even aware you had.

Through her heart as she felt the weight of your presence, measuring the mood you were in — your level of joy or worry or sorrow.

In other words, Mrs. Zelditch only had room to take in what really mattered: the essence of you.

A little more than two years ago my days went grey, figuratively speaking. I realized that I had forgotten how to see. So I bought a camera and I went on a journey.

And 100,000 shutter clicks later, I have learned (once again) how to see. People, mostly. People I love. People I respect and admire. People I meet in cafes or on the subway or on the street. People pursuing Truth and Beauty. People who inspire me.

And when I am with them, I look for clues. To who they truly are.

I look for their love.

I look for their joy.

I look for their passion.

I look for their purity.

And when I see it, I click.

When you look at your world and the people in it, what do you see?

True nature

"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." —The Hobbit

I live between worlds: the artistic and the analytical, the rich and the poor, the old and the young. I am, and always have been, somewhere in between. Which means I am much more comfortable living on the edges of society, than living in its center. I find comfort and safety in the unknown, rather than the assumed, conventional, or expected.

I am more comfortable here. In this space that relies on self recognition and self worth, rather than the often biased judgment of others. This is how I create safe space. This is how I honor who I am.

When you know your true nature, life gets a lot easier. Everything is a little bit simpler, a little more clear. We are better able to draw boundaries, inviting the right people in, and keeping the not-so-right people out. Because life is just too short to compromise.

What stands between who you are, and who you could be?

What if

What if we took as much time to grow up as we took to grow old? That, as children, we would be encouraged to be children, with clean faces and pony tails and hide-and-seek and keds, instead of being seduced way too soon by the provocative (and often misleading) promises of adulthood.

What if we learned to live our lives whole, leaving no part out? That we valued our setbacks and failures as much as we valued our triumphs, and realized that we hold within us the power to create an even better future by bringing forward everything that we learned and experienced in our past. That it is our whole story that makes us interesting and authentic, not just the carefully edited highlights. That we could just be ourselves, in every moment of every day, and regret nothing.

What if we learned to see in each other art and possibility instead of rank and commerce? That we would separate the substance (who we are) from the window-dressing (what we do and what we have) and stand before each other — equal, naked, vulnerable, exposed — with only the feelings in our hearts and the ideas in our heads to bring us together. That we would make room for each other, creating a world where each individual is visible and valued for who they uniquely are. That we should each feel a deep sense of belonging to this world, and to each other.

What if we learned to stand still? That we valued the journey as much as we valued the prize. That we learned to hold this one moment — step inside of it, even — and honor it above the one that comes before and the one that comes after. That we allowed it to stretch and grow and carry us with it wherever it goes.

What if we all got quiet? That we stopped speaking to be heard, and spoke only when we had something meaningful to say.

What if we valued the possibility as much as we valued knowing?

What (kind of world would it be) if?

The age of innocence

When I was six, the world opened up to me.

It happened the moment I discovered the math inside my A-B-C's.

I remember vividly, the first word I spelled by myself: d-a-y, "day." And it was in that moment that I knew my life had become my own.

That I could create my own world, my own future. That I could begin to imagine and author the events and adventures I might have. That my life was not bound forever to the limitations into which I was born, but could reflect my own dreams, imaginings, and desires.

Words quickly became my trusted friends. They protected me from a world of chaos and confusion and carried me to new places of growth and discovery. They have given me a life of opportunity and learning, and they have never let me down.

When we are six, we are standing at the outer edge of our innocence. We are aware of our person, and we haven't yet learned to be embarrassed by our circumstances, or afraid of our differences. We still wear our feelings on the outside for everyone else to see.

When we are six, we are as free as we will ever be. Unless we learn to live our lives deliberately.

Who were you when you were six, and where is that person today?

To free, or not to free?

Yesterday, I lost a battle with my television.

I tried to free myself from its soothing company, only to discover that I still needed it, flaws and all.

The saga began after a week's visit to Prague, city of enchantment and endless beauty. It was a feast for my senses and I found it effortless to keep them occupied.

Over the course of seven days I watched the castle glow pink and green at night and the sun make silhouettes of the saints lining the Charles Bridge in the morning.

I listened to the Vltava river whisper secrets to the birds that took refuge along the water's edge, and I woke up before the sun (and everyone else) so that I could hear my footsteps mark time against the cobblestones as I made my way along Nosticova Street to catch the invisible hands of the invisible person who rang the morning bells of the monastery nearby.

I listened to every combination of harp, cello, bass, violin, piano, and soprano as they filled the air and lifted my soul to the ceilings, the frescoes, and the stained glass windows of St. George's Basilica, the Lichtenstein Palace, St. Nicholas church, St. Michael Monastery and the inner steps of the Narodni Muzeum.

I sipped Cafe Vienna at the Cafe Savoy with a Czech mate who wore a fedora and a miniature felt flag around his neck, and bore chiseled cheekbones and a cleft chin and discussed the merits of romantic servitude as the chandeliers sparkled overhead.

I found companionship in the pages of Bohumil Hrabal, the other Prince of Prague (next to Kafka), weeping for the raw simplicity of his most popular work, "I served the King of England," and packing three more titles in my suitcase to keep him alive long after I left the music and the spires and the bells behind me to come home.

In the span of a week, I found my sensibilities and habits altered. It was as though my very DNA had changed, that Prague's magic and beauty had somehow seeped into me.

I came home purified. Vowing that I would fill my waking hours in San Francisco the same way that I filled them in Prague. I would rid myself of nutrient-poor stimuli and fill the void with more books, more movies, more art, more writing, more "together." And the first step would be ridding myself of my television.

What I learned is that habit has a way of silently enslaving us. It quietly slips into our lives, lulling us into a passive existence by swaddling us in the comfort of predictability, and all the while deceiving us with the illusion of choice. And that even when we are fully aware of the habits that steal from us our time and our lives, we are unable to rid ourselves completely until we have something (or someone) better to substitute.

We are all captive to something. 

Who (or what) holds you in captivity?

The metronome

"Life is long if you know how to use it." —Seneca

I have always held other people's expectations for me a bit suspect.

While I believe that others have the best intentions for me, I think that our hopes and fears for each other are often colored by our hopes and fears for ourselves. This makes the task of finding our own way much more difficult and complex because, in the process of making ourselves happy, we run the risk of making those around us unhappy. Once-beloved relationships become the unintended casualties of our need to find harmony in ourselves.

In writing the soundtrack of our lives, we must decide how fast or how slow we want it to go, when we seek to create harmony, and when we don't, when we borrow influences from others, and when we invent a whole new rhythm or chord. But the one thing we cannot decide is how long it will play.

Time is the only resource in each of our lives that is truly finite, and with each day that passes, we have even less to work with. It quietly slips away, measured by this silent metronome that keeps ticking in the background even while we sleep. And yet we live as though we were unaware.

We spend our time doing things that do not make us happy and we don't make enough time to embrace the things that do. Until something happens that startles us awake—a tragedy of our own, or a tragedy of someone else's—that restores our sense of urgency to do the things that make this life worth living, and make us worth remembering.

Where is the music in your life?

 

Why we love the underdog

"It's only after we've lost everything, that we're free to do anything." —Tyler Durden, Fight Club

I love the underdog. And I know I'm not alone.

Some of the most famous and beloved stories are based on the triumphs and tragedies of the outranked, the disenfranchised, the social misfits: David and Goliath, Oliver Twist, Rudolph. These stories are translated and shared around the world, and passed from generation to generation, because they hold in them a universal desire—we all want to believe that good will ultimately win, no matter the odds.

And while the made-up stories entertain and inspire us, it is the true story that actually gives us hope, for it provides evidence of something that feels very much like a miracle, telling us that we, too, can author our own possibilities: James J. Braddock (The Cinderella Man). Robert Kearns (Flash of Genius). Ernest Shackleton (The Endurance). Susan Boyle (Britain's Got Talent). Barack Obama (President of the United States).

We love the underdog because they take the risks that we won't. Inspired from within, they demonstrate extreme levels of courage, braving the unexpected and making themselves vulnerable to other people's judgment and ridicule. They fight the good fight, and they will continue fighting long after we've all gone home. They do this because they believe that what they have to gain is far greater than what they have to lose.

Security can be a double-edged sword. The more we have, it seems, the more we're afraid to lose. Whereas the underdog is motivated by love (of an idea), the rest of us are motivated by fear (of failure).

What motivates you?

The bean field

"What shall I learn of beans, or beans of me?" —Henry David Thoreau

Last year I painted the interior of my apartment.

I scraped, taped, primed, and painted, and in between, I waited. And in this way, I came to know myself and the space I was living in.

I chose to do this work myself because of what the experience might teach me. I find that I am most alive when I am in the process of discovery. And for this stretch of time, my walls became the teacher, and I, the student.

It took me eight months, 150 yards of blue tape, 12 paint samples, 2 synthetic paint brushes, 1 large roller, 1 small roller, one dozen roller heads, 10 gallons of primer, 8 gallons of paint, 7 plastic tarps, 50 yards of kraft paper, 1 ladder, 1 metal scraper, 1 plastic spatula, 4 sheets of sand paper, 2 pints of spackle, 7 plastic paint dishes, four long weekends, four vacation days, countless hours, and two do-overs.

Each room became a new lesson in discovery, presenting me with fresh obstacles that challenged my endurance and ingenuity, and teaching me that the best adventures always lie in the unknown. That if we don't stay vigilant every day, pushing the boundaries of our world as we know it, we run the risk of assuming knowledge in place of experience, and watching life from a balcony rather than living it in the streets.

In a world of ready-made conveniences and help-for-hire, how do we fully appreciate what we do not fully earn?

*Walden, p. 168, Henry D. Thoreau, Yale University Press

The missing peace

"It was missing a piece, and it was not happy. So it set off in search of its missing piece."*

I love the Stoics. Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius. I like to think of them as the "Buddhists of the West."

I stumbled upon them by accident, and found in them something that had been missing for me: a philosophy about personal happiness. It was simple, pure, complete. But most importantly, it was accessible. Because these were real people who lived real lives and toiled with this thing we are all navigating, celebrating, suffering to the best of our individual ability—the Human Journey.

I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if we each became more accountable for our own happiness.

Instead of blaming each other for not being better parents, lovers, siblings, or friends, we would be more accepting of everyone for who they are and what they bring, celebrating what is and letting go of what is not.

Instead of measuring the value of our lives in terms of milestones and material things, comparing our lot to the lots of others, we would be grateful for what we have and stop romanticizing what we don't.

Instead of reliving the past or fixating on the future, we would accept that wherever we are in this moment now, it is the result of choices we made to craft this life and no other. That this one life is the reward. And every opportunity—good or bad—gives us a chance to learn and grow and give back to the world around us.

If we did these three things, it would mean that we would no longer look to the outside world for answers to the question of what makes us happy. Instead, we would turn our attention inward and look no further than ourselves.

Where do you find your peace?

*The Missing Piece, Shel Silverstein