November Going Out with a Surge

A Pacific surge, that is. North spit, Humboldt Bay.

Barack in my Dreams

Last night I was taking care of Obama, he was exhausted, after some big speech or meeting. So he was napping in my bed, fully clothed (nice bed, nicer that our actual bed!).
When he woke up, I noticed he looked very young, boyish even. So I said, "What do you think? Is all this going to work out OK?" He looked tired and said, "I doubt it." Then he thought a bit more and said, "But we might as well give it our best shot, anyway."
Sounds about right to me!

The Downside of Self-improvement

Talking to an old pal last night about “Now What,” I started getting clearer on the parallels between what Louisa is interested about (“natural” movement vs. disciplined exercise) and what I care about: extending the meditation/mindfulness process into all of life, see my latest entry on my other blog

http://chsz.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-like-itbut-is-it-meditation.html

It all comes under the heading of, “Lighten up, people!” That this culture is brilliant at providing opportunities to beat ourselves up for never quite being good enough. Life is often presented as one long challenge--when we’re small, we learn how to add, but that’s not enough, next up is subtraction. When we get that, no time to rest on our laurels, it’s multiplication. And on and on, right through school, degree (maybe), job-career, engagement, marriage, home (good luck, these day), kids…one challenge after another to be overcome.

Life was more of a challenge, back in the paleolithic age, when the architecture of our brains was being tested against real-world conditions. What worked and what didn’t work was simply a matter of (in the long run), which design was most successful at passing genes on to the next generation. That’s when (I assume, it’s all anyone can do) the “life as challenge” model presumably got embedded in our brains, and here we are today, 21st century bodies with paleolithic brains. More or less--theories abound about how much brain modification has been possible, especially since the two big events of the last few million years, (1) tool use and (2) language. (Brain size has actually decreased slightly during the last 35,000 years.)

Whatever. Seems to me we sure have taken the self-improvement message to heart. I’m all for it, but not at the expense of the corollory, that if I need to improve myself, I must be inadequate now.

More later…

Lowry and McWhorter, "The Age of Obama"

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/15831

This 30 minutes discussion between two powerhouses of black thought--John McWhorter and Glenn Lowry--is fascinating, inspiring, challenging. Can't recommend it enough.

Apology for "Mission Accomplished"?

I've long viewed George W. as a Walter Mitty* character. I think B.H. Obama is a realist. Finally!

To his credit, and five long years later, Bush admitted his error:

In November 2008, Bush indicated that he regretted the use of the banner, stating in a CNN interview, "To some, it said, well, 'Bush thinks the war in Iraq is over,' when I didn't think that. It conveyed the wrong message."

* The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. If you've never read James Thurber's classic short story, do. On line at

http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=100

If you don't, be warned: coreopsis will set in.

Everyday Mindfulness

I just posted to my other blog, on Consciousness and Happiness:

http://chsz.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-like-itbut-is-it-meditation.html

This embodies a large part of what I want to promote in our post-election world. As ever, comments warmly welcome.

Charter for Compassion

I've long been a fan of Karen Armstrong, whose writing on comparative religion has consistently emphasized the similarities between faiths. I particularly appreciated her bringing atheists into her fold with this:

...some of the most eminent Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians and mystics insisted that God was not an objective fact, was not another being, and was not an unseen reality like the atom, whose existence could be empirically demonstrated. Some went so far as to say that it was better to say that God did not exist, because our notion of existence was too limited to apply to God.

I do commend this 3-minute video to you, featuring Karen and several other speakers, all promoting common cause among religions:

http://charterforcompassion.com/
.

90 Years On: The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month

In the midst of the giddiness of the events of November 4th, 2008, I'm thinking of another anniversary. Tomorrow marks the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I (The Great War, until 1939), when an armistice between the Allies and Germany was signed in a railway carriage in Compiègne Forest.

Another debt of gratitude: thank you.

Lots of Ideas

I had the good fortune to interview Linus Pauling in 1992, two years before his death at age 93. I was in the process of researching for my book Everyday Wonders, and since his institute was a five-minute bike ride from our home in Palo Alto, it wasn’t too much of an effort!

Pauling is one of a handful to have been awarded two Nobel Prizes, and to mind his spearheading of the effort to ban atmospheric nuclear testing (which won him the Peace Prize) is one of the most important actions ever taken by an individual. One reason I wanted to interview him was that he seemed to exemplify the particular quality I was exploring in my book, i.e. wonder, or curiosity. If a prize were ever awarded for curiosity, he’d win it hands down. He was interested in just everything.

I asked him how he’d come up with so many good ideas. He replied, “I come up with a lot of ideas. Most of them are wrong. A few turn out to be correct. The main thing is to start off with a lot of them.” (I’m paraphrasing slightly.)

Most folks would call this “brainstorming.” Louisa and I use it a lot: throw out any and all ideas, don’t stop to evaluate or criticize (especially the latter!), just ping-pong thoughts back and fro, writing them down as they are voiced. And that’s the idea of this blog. Ideas, all of them, throw them all into the ring. Plenty of time to figure out what’s workable and what isn’t later.

So in that spirit, thinking about the topic of meditation (as a step in feeling gratitude for what we've got, by-passing the brain's insistence for more), for a book, and article, a speech…here’s what I’m coming up with:

Sit Down and Shut Up!
Fault-free Meditation for Body and Mind

OR

The Why, Who, How,Where and When of Meditation
The Natural Approach to a Healthy Body and Mind

OR

There’s No Such Thing as Bad (or Good) Meditation
The Natural Approach to a Healthy Body and Mind

“First time anyone’s told me I’m doing it right” story—you can’t do it wrong.
http://chsz.blogspot.com/2006/11/thursdays-at-jail.html

Psychological benefits of meditation
Other benefits: good for creativity, big-picture thinking,
What meditation isn’t (religious, flaky,
How to meditate
Difficulties—physical pain, frustration,
Solo vs. group
Meditation at work
History of meditation (Hinduism, Buddhism). Meditation vs. prayer

Why meditate?
Who meditate?
How meditate?
Where meditate?
When meditate?

Says It All

Reuters/Jason Reed

I Love this Woman!

Incoming email yesterday--

"P.S. My "morning reading" is a book by Barry Evans. I like it partly because it takes the "big picture" helping to put our election in perspective, partly because of the pornographic pictures, and partly because it is well written, entertaining and meaningful."

She's talking about "Are We Here Yet?"

Details from barryevans9@yahoo.com if you're curious!

Pat Oliphant Nov. 5

I should, of course, get permission to post this, but I'm sure Pat Oliphant won't mind.

The Day After

Louisa and I have two short shorthand questions we pose each other with some regularity. One is, "Now?"-we'll be walking on a trail somewhere, or sitting watching a sunset, or just sitting, and one of us will pose the "Now?" question. That is, what, as best as you can tell me, were you thinking the nanosecond before you heard that word? It's sort of an exercise in self-awareness, to go instantly from "just being" to "just thinking"-about what "just being" means. We hold no copyright on the exercise, it's yours, with our blessing.

"Now what?" has almost the opposite connotation. We'll have finished something-a hike, a get-together with friends, a meditation session, and the question here, instead of asking, What was just happening with you, asks, "What's about to happen to you?" (or perhaps, with us?). I woke up this morning, November 5th, 2008, with two phrases ringing in my brain: "We won!" and "Now what?"

We won. How sweet it is. What a relief. The eight long years of distorted reality are almost over. Eight years of never knowing what the Bush administration was going to pull next. Eight years in which time we saw the invasion of not one, but two, countries which weren't threatening the U.S., the ugliness of Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot Act, a saber-rattling foreign policy and a mean-spirited domestic one-the list goes on. Healing from all this will take a long time. Not to mention the long, hard grind involved in getting the economy back on track.

So now we have the promise of a smart, thoughtful, reasonable, young, articulate and energetic guy who we trust will lead us out of the wilderness. Louisa cried last night as we watched his acceptance speech with our roomful of friends here in Eureka. She was crying for her mother, Sarah Flinn Rogers, who died thirty years too early to see a black man win the presidency-Sarah's life cause was to eliminate this country's long legacy of racism (she and Tom met in the early civil rights struggles). So Louisa was much more aware than I was of Barack Obama's color, and all that signified, what a powerful statement that conveyed about how far the country has come. I think of him as a smart guy who happens to be black, she sees him as a black man who happens to be smart.

The election brought us, here in California, one big win and one big loss: a fledging "bill of rights" for farm animals, including chickens and veal calves; and loss of the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry. We celebrate one and mourn the other.

So now what? For the country, and for President-elect Obama, it's going to be a rocky road ahead as euphoria gives way to reality: a faltering economy burdened by a ten-trillion dollar debt, two unwinnable wars, continuing use of fossil fuels even as the fact of global warming become obvious to the most skeptical conservatives. Well, we're just gonna havta git busy, as Sarah Palin would say.

And us, Louisa and me? How are we going to be affected by yesterday's pivotal election? How can we take advantage of this dramatic political win to create a personal win? That's the big "Now what?" for us. How can we integrate what we're already working on, what we believe in, what we know, with the way we want to see the country move?

* Xenophobia-how can we use our travel-savvy to break down some of the us-versus-them mentality in many Americans, especially by encouraging them to travel out of the country?

* ...Specifically, Mexico. How can we leverage our house in Guanajuato and our love of that country into breaking down the barriers between the USA and its southern neighbor? (Especially changing the knee-jerk reaction that we often hear regarding the plight of illegal immigrants from Central America.)

* Movement and fitness. The country's getting fatter and more unfit. Louisa's got a lot of great answers-how do we get them out into the world?

* "Affluenza"--the belief that more stuff will make us happier. So many of this country's problems stem from "bigger and better"-cars, homes, TVs, you-name-it. The last fifty years have seen a doubling of average wealth, while average "happiness" has marginally dropped, according to most surveys. My answer is to take great note of, and be thankful for, what we actually have, versus what our (paleolithic!) brains tell us we need. How do we promote that oh-so-obvious solution?

We invite a dialog with everyone and anyone. Comments, questions, solutions. We're wide open to re-thinking where we're at ("Now?") and where we're going ("Now what?"). We'd love responses--you can reply directly here to the blog.

In any case, we encourage you to ask yourself the same question we're asking ourselves: how can we leverage yesterday's win into personal wins?

Yes we can...but can what?