In Boston, the press referred to areas like these as “death zones” — a specific reference to the rate of infant death in ghetto neighborhoods — but the feeling of the “death zone” often seemed to permeate the schools themselves. Looking around some of these inner-city schools, where filth and disrepair were worse than anything I’d seen in 1964, I often wondered why we would agree to let our children go to school in places where no politician, school board president, or business CEO would dream of working. Children seemed to wrestle with these kinds of questions too. Some of their observations were, indeed, so trenchant that a teacher sometimes would step back and raise her eyebrows and then nod to me across the children’s heads, as if to say, “Well, there it is! They know what’s going on around them, don’t they?”
Of course they do. How can they not, especially if they have access to television? And to think that these were his observations in 1964. Nearly forty years later, no progress has been made.
Equal opportunity?
By the way, I consider Kozol one of the more articulate voices on the issues of poverty, culture, and education. He won the National Book Award for Death at an Early Age.
The last four days were packed with intensity as we searched for housing that was a) large enough to accommodate some of our possessions (we’re already paring drastically) and b) a rent that we could afford. We were very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and lucked into a cute little house. It’s smaller than our current house (which is also smaller than most, not quite 1500 square feet). It has lots of nice touches, and I think I’ll like it there. The exact date of our move remains unknown until we have a chance to consult with the mover.
I do believe I’m going to like life in the bay area. (Is that considered a proper noun? Should I write Bay Area?) The climate — physically and culturally — feels right. On our last full day, we drove up to San Francisco and then to Muir Woods. You can see a couple of photos below. It was very foggy, so I didn’t actually see the Pacific or the headlands. Soon enough, though, they’ll be within easy reach. Continue reading →
I once heard a reading from Ray Lynch’s Truth Is The Only Profound; the piece, What to Remember to Be Happy, written by Avatar Adi Da Samraj, was read by a child. It pierced me, brought me to tears during my morning commute. The innocence of the child’s voice, combined with the wisdom of the message, made me very aware of the Mystery. What I pasted below are excerpts from it, slightly rearranged according to how I remember it sounding.
Nobody, not Mom, or Dad, or Grandmother, or Grandfather, or big Sister or big Brother, or teachers, or doctors, or soldiers, or athletes, or lawyers, or TV stars, or any people who are working, or any people who are playing, not even a President, not even a King or Queen, not even people who love each other know what even a single thing Is. And it seems to me that no matter what we name it we still do not know what things Are. Truly, you and I don’t know what even a single thing Is. Do you know what I Am? See. And I don’t know what you Are either. It is a Mystery. Doesn’t it make you feel good to feel It?
Did you ever ask somebody where this came to be? Some say, “I don’t know”, and saying this makes them feel they are being very honest and truthful. Others say something such as “God made it” or “It comes from God.” And such people are also being very honest and truthful when they say this. How can they both be telling the truth? It is a great and more than wonderful Mystery to all of us that anything is, or that we are. And whether somebody says “I don’t know how anything came to be” or “God made everything”, they are simply pointing to the feeling of the Mystery, of how everything is but nobody knows what it really Is or how it came to be. As long as we go on feeling this Mystery, we feel free and full and happy to others. This is the secret of being happy from the time you are small until the time you are old.
You are the Mystery! Yes. And you don’t know what you Are either! Yes. There Is Only the Mystery! And you yourself in your Heart and up and down and in and out Are the Mystery. It Is All One Feeling.
If you will remember every day to feel and breathe the Mystery, and if you will remember to feel that you are more than what you look like, and if you will remember to Be the Mystery Itself, then you will be happy every day. And all kinds of more than wonderful happenings will come up for you. You will feel happy and you will always help and love others, even those who are having trouble feeling happy and are even trying to make you forget the Mystery.
It is good to spend a lot of your time talking about the Mystery with others, instead of talking about unhappiness and things that happen when we forget to love. People who also feel the Mystery and love It are the best friends to have.
Just remember this, or remember God, which is the same thing. Keep on remembering God, or the Mystery, and you will feel happy and act happy to others, and so you will keep on loving and helping others so the world won’t get all afraid and stupid and unable to sleep or play or work.
If you do this all the time, you will have lots of amazing and more than wonderful experiences until you go back to sleep. And if you remember the Mystery even when you are going to sleep, then you will go to sleep all happy in the Mystery too. And all your dreams will be about the Mystery until you wake up again. Remembering the Mystery is a way of being everything you always already are. When you sleep you are something different than when you wake up. And when you dream you are different too. The way you seem to be when you wake up is only one of the ways you are. Someday you may meet someone who has felt the Mystery really strong for a long time, so that person feels the Mystery all the time and is always happy. Such a person is the best person to learn from about happiness and life and love.
I hope you will remember to feel the Mystery every day, as long as you are awake, forever. The best thing to tell anybody is to remember to feel this. I have been doing this for a long time, and it is the best and most important feeling of all.
I am very happy I could tell you this. Maybe someday we will meet face to face. Maybe. Anyway, at least you and I will always know that at least one other person somewhere is remembering and feeling and breathing and loving and Being the Mystery right now.
Having only returned on midnight of Monday, I’m still catching up with my life. With the impending move, posting may be light for the next few weeks.
Summer is often a time for traveling, so I decided to try something new. I picked a bunch of cities that came to mind and then wrote down whatever occurred to me for each city. If you want, use this list and see what comes up for you. If you have a blog, post it and provide a link in the comments! The list is below, and my answers are in the expanded entry.
Atlanta
Oakland
New York
Philadelphia
Indianapolis
San Francisco
Tampa
Cleveland
Green Bay
Nashville
Pittsburgh
Los Angeles
Chicago
New Orleans
Miami
Dallas
Houston
Memphis
Washington, DC
Detroit Continue reading →
I tried to live small. I took a narrow bed. I held my elbows to my sides. I tried to step carefully And to think softly And to breathe shallowly In my portion of air And to disturb no one.
Yet see how I spread out and I cannot help it. I take to myself more and more, and I take nothing That I do not need, but my needs grow like weeds, All over and invading; I clutter this place With all the apparatus of living. You stumble over it daily.
And then my lungs take their fill. And then you gasp for air. Excuse me for living, But, since I am living, Given inches, I take yards, Taking yards, dream of miles, And a landscape, unbounded And vast in abandon.
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
Today is my birthday; I’ve been alive two score and one year. As each year passes, I am awed at the speed of time. It seems to increase the longer I live.
In a recent post I wrote about a major life decision that I needed to make. It pertained to a move to California. Well, yesterday that decision was made, as well as another one. I am now a fianceé, and we will journey westward together. Yesterday was a Big Day, in terms of decisions and events.
One decade ago on July 9th, I rolled into Austin in my two-door Eagle Summit to start a new phase in life. I had left a job of ten years and my hometown of 31 and took a leap of faith. My brother and sister-in-law live here, so I knew two people. However, I didn’t have a job, just a little money saved and a lot of hope. These ten years have been full and rich, sometimes with very great pain, and often with very great joy. I am sad to leave, yet at the same time I embrace what is manifesting, including the grief of good-bye. One life lesson I’m absorbing is how to hold two contrasting states at once in my being. I used to live with an either/or worldview. The both/and perspective permits so much more.
Anyhow, it feels symbolic and meaningful that in the next month I’ll be making a huge move again. This time it will be different in significant ways, most especially that I’ll be journeying with my best friend. I am grateful for life.
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite well that just to be alive is a grand thing.
–Agatha Christie
Update: In case there is confusion, let me clarify that I do intend to keep posting on A Mindful Life. The grief of good-bye to which I refer is about leaving in-person loved ones and places that hold sweet memories.
For many people, run-ins with a supervisor stirs up old conflicts with parents, siblings or other larger-than-life figures from childhood. Dr. Mark Levey, a psychotherapist in Chicago who consults with corporations, said that nasty bosses often elicited from subordinates defensive habits that they first developed as children, like reflexive submission and explosive rage.
“Once these defensive positions lock in,” Dr. Levey said, “it’s like people are transported to a different reality and can no longer see what’s actually happening to them and cannot adapt.”
Sad people are nice. Angry people are nasty. And, oddly enough, happy people tend to be nasty, too.
Such (allowing for a little journalistic caricature) were the findings reported in last month’s issue of Psychological Science. Researchers found that angry people are more likely to make negative evaluations when judging members of other social groups. That, perhaps, will not come as a great surprise. But the same seems to be true of happy people, the researchers noted. The happier your mood, the more liable you are to make bigoted judgments — like deciding that someone is guilty of a crime simply because he’s a member of a minority group. Why? Nobody’s sure. One interesting hypothesis, though, is that happy people have an ”everything is fine” attitude that reduces the motivation for analytical thought. So they fall back on stereotypes — including malicious ones.
For the past six months my life has been in flux. My boyfriend/life partner has been looking for another job; it’s been slow locally, so we agreed to expand the search. In the past few weeks he was tapped to interview for a company that would be a once-in-a-lifetime offer for someone in his field (geekdom), and today an offer was tendered.
It excites me to see something happening. The wait has been draining. My practice has been on hold for several months. We may not accept the offer; there is much to discuss, since this would be a huge move to an expensive state — California.
The downside to moving will be losing my practice and my ability to have a license, since California does not yet have licensure for professional counselors. To attain the only license they have — Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist — will require returning to school, completing a 3000 hour internship (again), and taking and oral and written exam. This is reinventing the wheel, since I’ve done this already. Such a move will require new ways to conceive what I do and call myself professionally. It’s not impossible, but it calls for fresh thinking. In addition, I will miss my clients. I love them; they amaze me, and I am gratified to be of assistance. Goodbyes are difficult, but I recognize life is transition.
The other disadvantage to moving is that it necessitates leaving a handful of very close friends and family. It took about five years to happen across the close friends I have, and I love them dearly. I will miss them. And making friends — truly compatible ones — does not happen instantly.
In any case, this is what’s been simmering for awhile, which is why in part I’ve taken breaks from blogging and slowed the pace of posting.
Last year Austin hosted the national JournalCon, which I attended and enjoyed a great deal. I also moderated a panel on the implications of writing online and the consequences, both positive and negative, of putting forth personal material for public consumption. The various panels and social events were well-attended. Some of us had so much fun we decided to do it again.
This year’s national JournalCon will occur in Washington, DC. We don’t want to steal their glory. It’s just that Austin has such a concentration of web writers that we thought a workshop might be of interest to the community. As a result, seven of us began meeting a few times a month to locate a venue, set a date, and create programming.
We want to offer a workshop that will generate interest among local online writers, and so we’re calling upon them for their input. The steering committee has designed a survey with the intention of gathering suggestions and ideas, which will help us create programming that will appeal.
If you live in Austin and write on the web, please stop by and participate in the survey. We do appreciate your assistance.
I read about sallekhana in a magazine, and I was curious to learn more.
In this article the author considers the grounds for a voluntary death vis-a-vis an act of suicide as it is understood in the Jain religion. The author argues that there are conditions and expectations which must be in place if a voluntary death is an acceptable practice. There are also references to the positions of other religious traditions.
