I Can Choose

Day Two of my personal introspection retreat came at the end of a tough night.  I had a very hard time falling asleep, and then I tossed and turned for what seemed like most of the night.  Drifting in and out of consciousness, peppered with several bathroom stops, I struggled.  Lying on the cusp between consciousness and sleep was a big rock I'd turned over during Day One: happiness.  (For more on big rocks, see yesterday's post.)

In the stack of books on my nightstand for months (maybe years) has been Authentic Happiness by Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D.  When I finished two others from the stack yesterday, Authentic Happiness awaited me.  Instinctively, I knew that this was a big rock.  I knew this, in part, because I'd read the book before.  I also knew it because I've known I wasn't really happy for a long time.

For most of the last 35 years, I've thought I was a happy person, despite what the Universe threw on my path, and it has thrown a lot.  But, somewhere along the way, something shifted in me.  I couldn't say exactly when it happened or why, and while I've certainly had moments of pure bliss (mostly on the dance floor,) happiness has drifted further from my consciousness.

Not long before going to bed last night, I took a short assessment of my happiness at the start of the book.  What I learned is not that I am unhappy much: I'm not.  Perhaps more distressing to me is that I spend an overwhelming percentage of my time in "neutral"--not happy and not unhappy.  The scripture about spewing lukewarm water out of our mouths came to my mind.  Neutral?  Is that the best I can do?  Neutral is certainly the lukewarm water of happiness.

So I slept.  More accurately, I tried to sleep.  The thought of being neutral passed in and out of my consciousness.  Unhappines is unpleasant enough to force action--to make me change something in my life.  But neutral isn't uncomfortable enough to motivate movement.  I just steep in it.

Well, mostly I steep in it.  Over the last 12 to 18 months, I've been increasingly distressed with my work situation.  I could say that has been about the people I work with, and to a significant extent that would be true.  Yet, in my heart of hearts I have known there was more at work than unpleasant people who intentionally attempt to make my life miserable, which they do.

I've been bored.  Is that neutral?  I think so.  I've had conversations with my boss and with her boss.  I have so much more ability and experience.  I could be making a much greater contribution.  They've pretty much said, "Making a greater contribution not your job here.  Do your job."

Last night as I started my reread of Authentic Happiness, I got it.  Now, since I know I've read all or at least most of this book before, I must have known what Seligman describes as "the good life," but I certainly couldn't have told you yesterday morning what it was.  He describes the good life as "using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification."

Signature strengths are those things we are good at that are "deeply characteristic of us," and mine are all the things that I am not using at work.  My bosses have been kind in telling me what an excellent job I do, and I was recently recognized by a regional professional organization for one effort.  But, being "excellent" at what I do is another signature strength: whatever I am given, I choose to do it well.

That a large percentage of my life in neutral is a function of not being able to utilize my signature strengths, or if I do, only for short periods and not as a part of a unified whole piece of work.  It should not come as a surprise then that I've been job hunting pretty seriously almost since the earliest of my conversations about my work.  Tomorrow I have a job interview.  Understanding that using my signature strengths will make it much easier to decide whether this is a job I want.

There's another thing about being on neutral: it seems to have robbed me of my life force. Furthermore, it has robbed me of energy to even exercise my signature strengths when I am not at work. I come home exhausted and drop on the couch, mindlessly watching TV and often falling asleep. Writing is one of my signature strengths, and more often than not for most of a year, I've neglected writing for this blog. For years, I was called "Little Mary Sunshine" by friends and coworkers.  Mary hasn't been seen for a long while either.  Neutral has pervaded every corner of my life.

More important, though, is the truth that floated in during my first meditation this morning: "I choose."  Each of my first two books included significant portions about being of choice, giving credence to the old saw that we write what we need to know.  I've chosen to be in a job that doesn't allow me to use my signature strengths for over five years.  My choice--a choice driven not by my passions or what will make me happy, but a choice driven by my financial planner. Really?  I've let her decision position me for a neutral life.

But there is more to "I choose" than the place I hang my hat for 50-60 hours per week.  If I am going to go there and give my life energy to my agency, then I need to choose to be happy about it. The choice about not writing has been mine; I have no one else to blame that on.  Life is too short to be on neutral most of the time. It is time for me to own responsibility for my happiness.

I have no idea if I will be offered the job for which I will interview tomorrow, and I have no idea whether I will accept it, if I am.  What I do know for certain is that wherever I am, whatever work I choose to do, I will choose to be happy.

Bathed in Love

Day One of my retreat is complete. I have been taking several days in personal reflection for 25 years, and while I will be the first to say there is no "normal," I have certainly experienced patterns.

Generally, I read something introspective in the days before or even on Day One, as I did part of today. Most of the time lessons are thrown on my path in the days before just to stir things up a bit. Almost always I do a lot of journaling, which, more often than not, leads to some emoting--I cry because I recognize a flaw in me that I don't like. (News bulletin: I am human.)

Sometime on the third or fourth day, after I have looked at my ugliness, I have usually had an almost other-worldly experience of feeling God's love and light move through me. The experiences have always been extraordinary.

Three or four hours into my reflections today, a recurring image presented itself. A large opulent round room with 12 to 14-foot high ceilings and gold silk moire wallpaper has popped into my meditations off and on for at least a dozen years. The particularly interesting feature is that all the way around the room are almost equally tall doors...without door knobs. There I stand in the middle of this beautiful room with no apparent way out.

Over the years what happens next has varied, but today as I stood in the middle, slowly pondering my plight, suddenly one door swung open inward, then another and another. As the did, what each revealed was what I can only describe as looking like golden walls of water as it opened. While I instinctively braced myself for a force that I expected could knock me over, as the forces moved toward me in all directions, they were as warm and gentle as the first morning's light as they embraced me. I was literally being bathed in the light of God's love. This was what I "normally" would have expected in the final days of my retreat, not the first.

Hmm. I felt so loved, safe and warm, like there was absolutely nothing in my life that wasn't perfect. Well, I thought, where do I go from here?

I have to fall back on a garden metaphor to describe my retreat experiences. When I pick up rocks in the garden, more often than not, creepy, crawly things await me underneath. Not exactly scary but also not pleasant either. Depending on what I find, sometimes I just put it right down and try to ignore it. So it is with lessons I need to learn. Sometimes there's scary stuff that reveals itself when I begin turning over the rocks of my life.

Over the years I've dispensed with a lot of those metaphorical rocks. Others are life lessons that I have explored over and again, just in different manifestations.

I believe my experience of being bathed in God's love so early in my retreat this time was to give me courage to turn over those really scary rocks and to know that it would be okay. No matter what I find, I will always be safe with God beside me.

The journey continues...

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An Instrument of Peace

It was with heavy hearts that many of our congregation gathered today--our normal rituals disrupted yet again by the ugliness of American racism. I assume that other Caucasian parishioners shared my awkwardness as we greeted our African-American friends, feeling that we just didn't have the vocabulary to say the pain that was in our hearts over yet another shooting spree this time in a church.

At some point in his remarks this morning, our assistant rector expressed the outrage in our hearts that people who had simply gathered in prayer could be shot while doing so. As his message drew to an end, he asked us to open our prayer books and read the prayer of Saint Francis together.

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.

I've always loved that prayer. To my mind's eye, this is the essence of what it means to be whole and human. For a very long time, these words were the very last thoughts to cross my mind before falling to sleep.

Somewhere along the way I just stopped. I'm sure there must have been a reason. Maybe that was about the time I started praying the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic--also a profound prayer. But Saint Francis' plea recognizes our flawed state as humans and offers an antidote that every one of us can choose each day to improve the human condition.

I don't begin to think that my solitary choice will lessen the pain of Charleston. I do believe that if every one of us lived in that way, we could change the country. No, I don't believe that; I know it.

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Preparing for the Plunge

For many years I took a four-day silent retreat twice a year.  Recently, I realized that I haven't done one for at least 24 months.  I made that discovery because I was feeling scattered and without clear direction, spiritually exhausted.  I plan to take a Staycation for the week before the Fourth of July, and while I really want to get outdoors and have some fun, I know that I must devote some of that time to looking inward and soul searching.  I decided I will meditate for the first two days.

I believe I started doing these retreats in about 1990, and what I continue to be amazed at is how reliable the Universe is in getting things stirred up as my retreat approaches.  Since we are now a week out, I've had books thrown on my path, events in the news, job prospects that take me in different directions, and even a "flower reading" which was a Christmas gift that finally just occurred yesterday.

"Consider the vastness of possibilities," reader Robin Masiewicz had said at one point.  Funny that she said that because I've increasingly felt boxed in by the possibilities my life seems to hold.  That, you see, is why I need these retreats: they seem to open new and vast possibilities that I miss when sucked into my day-to-day routine.

So, I am being very intentional about embracing all the things on my path that I know will fertilize the meditation process, knowing that vastness is out there somewhere and soon will be in me.

Three Pennies...and God

Our pastor told a story this week about Mother Teresa.  In the story, her younger self had a dream about starting an orphanage with three pennies.  Upon waking, she was so moved by the dream that she went to her Mother Superior and told her that she wanted to start an orphanage with three pennies.

The Mother Superior was incredulous. "You can't start an orphanage with three pennies. You can't do anything with three pennies."

Mother Teresa is supposed to have responded, "Oh, I know I can't, but with three pennies and God I can do anything."

It has been happening for so many years that I am not sure why I continue to be surprised when similar messages come to me from several directions at the same time--the same spiritual lesson that I am supposed to learn at that point in time.  The Mother Teresa story was on the heels of some reading I was doing just before I went to bed the night before.

A couple months ago I wrote about my quest to complete my reading of several books on my nightstand before starting any new ones.  With the fast approach of summer-reading season, the pressure is on.  I finished two last week, and I am nearing the end of Marianne Williamson's A Return to Love.  The book has probably been on my night stand longer than any others, perhaps two to three years.  I am not sure why I struggle with it.  Perhaps it is the writing style because I resonate with the messages, and every time I pick it up what I read is a meaningful reminder. Maybe I just need to pick it up periodically for a message.

In last night's reading, Williamson quoted A Course on Miracles, "If you are trusting in your own strength, you have every reason to be apprehensive, anxious, and fearful."  Then, she writes, "...none of us have the capacity to work miracles, with the power that is in us but not of us, however, there is nothing we cannot do." (P.188) Hmm!  Remarkably like starting an orphanage on three pennies and God.

Clearly, there is a miracle that I should be thinking about delivering with God's help.  However, since my business crumbled so painfully in the dot.com Bust, bringing my personal life down with it, I have not allowed myself to dream of making miracles happen.  I haven't made a conscious decision not to dream.  The ideas that used to flow almost continuously just haven't been coming.  My hope-generator seems to be semi-permanently stuck on "off."  Quite frankly, I don't know how to flip its switches back to "on."  What comes to me is that is the miracle for which I should be enlisting God's help.

On further reflection...

I wrote yesterday's post about the need to create a memory every day at the very end of my day. After I shut down my computer, my head kept spinning in different directions about the topic.  

I've fallen off the daily gratitude journaling in recent weeks (months?) but I had the thought that gratitude journaling has a common purpose.  By taking time to reflect at the end of the day to identify things for which I am grateful, I also allow myself to remember each of those occurrences.  The remembering has the impact of creating a memory.  Actually, it has the impact of creating several memories--exactly however many things about which I journal.  Then I don't have to worry any longer about wasted days.  Abundantly grace-filled days flow naturally, every day.

At the same moment, I recollected that when I was writing posts for this blog daily, I was also creating memories--ones particularly valuable to me.  The purpose of this blog has been to serve as a shared platform for me to wrestle with the questions that I encounter on the path of my intention to live consciously.  

On tests of motivation, I consistently score highest for learning and growing and making a contribution. (I've never understood being motivated about getting stuff.) On the days that I write in this blog, I am learning and growing, and, for those who receive value from the posts, I am making a contribution.  From my perspective, that is the stuff from which real memories are made.  I am receiving a gift of value and giving one.  

Last night I restarted recording gratitude in my journal again.  I was sure to include that I wrote in my blog, and I learned something about myself.  Furthermore, I had an entry for the side of the journal in which I record gifts that I've given.

A Wasted Day

During a media interview this morning, I heard a man say, "A day without a memory is a wasted day."  He really grabbed my attention.

Almost simultaneously I had two follow-on thoughts:

1. Most of my days are consumed with almost mindless routine.
2. In order to have a day that isn't wasted, I will have to find something memorable in the sea of routine days.  At least for some moment during the day, I will have to be conscious of something that is memorable.

I have to admit, I had this sinking feeling that many years of my life must have been wasted with the same routine.  Get up, bathe, brush my teeth, do my make-up, stretch, make coffee, make oatmeal, race out the door so I am not late.  Once I get to work, there is another routine.  At 7:30 I boot up the computer.  While that is happening, take my lunch to the refrigerator and maybe go to the restroom. Then settle in to answer dozens of emails before I start into back-to-back meetings.  You get the point. My whole day is that way.  Somewhere around 5:30, I sink into my chair and think that I really ought to do some creative work, but usually that is dismissed because I am too tired to be creative.

There are exceptional days. In fact this has been an exceptional week. On Tuesday, I received an award for a piece of change management work of which I am very proud--three years of focus...and someone noticed. Wednesday was annual performance review time, and for the first time in five years, I felt like someone actually noticed my work.  (Could it be because of the award I received the day before?) On Thursday, my favorite teammate--and maybe my best-ever co-worker--left our organization to take a different job.  Friday my retina specialist reported that the impact of my surgery 15 months later has been sustained. I also received an apology that meant a lot. Today I had lunch with a friend, and we talked a lot. Then, I started cleaning off my desk--now that is an endeavor worth remembering.

The funny thing about this exceptional week is that when I started to write this, I thought, "I can't even remember yesterday, except that I know I didn't stop."  Then I focused on each day and discovered it had been a week of pretty memorable days.  I think that in order to have memories we have to focus our intention on giving attention to what is memorable.  I have to choose to make a memory.  Without this thought, I might have let this week slip by like so many others--lots of wasted days.

It also occurs to me that I might even mix up the routine a little bit and create so memories.

So, tomorrow, I will choose a memory.  Monday I will choose a memory.  In the process, I will assure that my life is not wasted, but instead is rich with memories.