wishbones & dandelions

I once read about a woman who was at home with her son when her son somehow got a sharp pencil stuck in his heart. She could see it move when his heart beat. You can imagine how she felt. Not good. Luckily, she was a nurse and had the presence of mind to not pull the pencil out of his heart. Life is always changing and although one of the last things you’d ever want is a pencil stuck in your heart, what you want even less than that is for that pencil to be taken out of your heart before there’s a surgeon around to catch the blood. The boy flew in a helicopter to a hospital that was 100 miles away with a pencil in his beating heart. He had heart surgery and survived. So the next time you have a pencil stuck in your heart, or when something else bad happens, don’t panic so quickly, and look for the good in it. It might just be the key to your survival.

You can read about the Nathan King and Lorri Earley story here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,996419,00.html

Sometimes I’m not happy. And I know I’m not happy because I live right next-door to happiness and I can smell their dinner cooking. Their grass is greener, their people are prettier, and nothing keeps them up at night. They don’t walk down the street wondering what I’m having for dinner. And I think that’s probably the secret to happiness: To enjoy what’s on your plate and eat your dinner. Chances are that your other next-door neighbor looks upon your lot in life with envy, and maybe even the same neighbor that you envy envies you, at least in certain ways. Maybe they’re a better cook but you’re a better mechanic, or something like that. Anyway, you’ll never be happy if you always think that happiness is next-door. Your grass is green. Smell it.

A few years ago, at a social event for my sister’s college, I met her friend’s brother and as we got to talking, I told him that I was currently a bartender in Hawaii, and quickly started to add that I was just taking break from school and that I planned on going back to school soon. As I was saying that, he interrupted me and said, “You don’t have to explain anything to me—I think that’s great.” He thought it was great that I was a bartender. I think that’s great. Why should I (or anyone else) have to explain anything to anyone else? After all, there’s lots of thirst people out there. And they tip well. So, whatever you’re doing, I think that’s great. Really great.

When I first started being vegetarian, I felt that all my sandwiches were missing something. Meat. It didn’t matter how much other stuff I put in there—it could have lettuce, tomatoes, onions, avocado and alfalfa sprouts, but my mouth was missing chicken and bacon. BLTs aren’t the same when B is for beets. When I mentioned this to my friend, Rhys, he didn’t really feel sorry for me. He told me that when he was growing up, a neighbor of his used to grow lettuce in their backyard and when it was time to pick the lettuce, they would feast on lettuce sandwiches. “There’s nothing like a good lettuce sandwich,” Rhys told me. I thought he was out his mind. “Just lettuce?” I asked. “Oh, sometimes we’d have it with some butter,” he said with a straight face. So there you go. Life’s not missing anything. Lettuce sandwiches. Sometimes with butter.

I have a theory about thoughts that helps me relax a little. The theory is that thoughts orbit around my head. When I can’t see them it’s because they are behind me and when I can see them it’s because they’ve come around to be in front of me. The more important the thought is, the smaller its orbit is, and the more often it is in front of my mind. So “You need to buy toilet paper,” is on a smaller orbit than “You need to buy ketchup.” The reason I like this theory, apart from the fact that it seems to be true as a metaphor, is that its truth allows me to let thoughts go. So if I’m in a swimming pool while I remember that I need to buy toilet paper, then I can just let that thought go and figure that it will pass by again while I’m at the supermarket or at some other point in time before I’m down to my last square of toilet paper. It’s kind of freeing because the fewer thoughts that are in your mind, the easier it is to swim.

I played volleyball in high school and one day we played against a very good team with a very good setter. In one play, their setter hit the ball over himself, rather than setting up one of his teammates, which is what setters usually do. I reacted very quickly to this and got to the ball to quite easily. I think we ended up winning that point. What’s interesting is what happened next.

When setters hit it over themselves they are trying to catch the other team off guard. This didn’t work for him that time because I reacted very quickly. I didn’t notice him do this at the time, but he made a mental note: Mitch reacted very quickly. A few plays later, he looked as if he was going to do the same thing again—hit it over himself. I started to back off the net in anticipation of him hitting it over. But then he didn’t hit it over. He set up his teammate, who I was supposed to be blocking but now couldn’t because I had backed off the net prematurely. I was out of position because he faked me out. I think they won that point.

The point of all this is a lot of things that seem bad are really just information. Their setter took the information that I reacted quickly—the information that thwarted his plans once—and used it to his advantage in a new plan. He didn’t let it phase him. He was just observing and adjusting, observing and adjusting.

What people often call “failures” are really just part of the scientific process. Trial and error, trial and success. While trying to figure out what works, it would be silly to expect everything you try to work. So don’t.  : )

Today I was laid off. Before you react to that piece of information, here’s a Chinese tale for you:

It seems that the moral of this story is to not draw conclusions about the goodness or badness of things. But I think that the answer to “Good or bad, who can say?” is not that no one can say—it’s that YOU can say. The farmer didn’t say anything but the neighbors said something, and you can say something. The horse runs away—good or bad? Bad, because it will take more work to run the farm. Or good, because it might come back with 5 wild horses. The horse comes back with five wild horses—good or bad? Good, because they can help run the farm or be sold for a profit. Or bad, because wild horses are dangerous and might break the son’s leg. One of the horses breaks the son’s leg—good or bad? Bad, because the son can’t help on the farm. Or good, because the son won’t have to go off to war. The son is not drafted into the army because of his broken leg—good or bad? Good, because he might have died at war. Or bad, because he might have saved more lives than the person who got drafted instead of him.

Whatever happens, you can say. Good or bad.

This weekend I went snowboarding with some friends. I’m no expert, but one of my friends is a novice and so he thinks I’m good. He was surprised when he asked me how many times I fell that day and I said, “Probably about 20.”

“20?!” he gasped. Then he said something like, “If I fall 2 or 3 times, I’ve had enough.”

And at that moment it struck me as very peculiar that he was counting the number of times that he falls. What does that have to do with fun?

Get up and go again!

When I lived on a farm on Molokai, I felt like I discovered the true speed of life. It’s mostly pretty slow. Except for when you’re about to be run over by a car. That’s kinda fast and stressful. At least, that’s what this chicken seemed to think. I was leaving for work (bartender at a hotel) and the first part of my driveway/dirt road had a fence on the right side and some shrubs on the left. I saw the chicken and so I was driving at a slow, non-life-threatening pace. The chicken didn’t see it that way. It was running for its life. The first chance it got, it broke left through a gap in the bushes and sighed a big sigh of relief, I’m sure. And that’s when I figured out a little bit about stress. I thought, “I’m the chicken. And stress is the car behind me. But the car is not chasing me. It’s merely behind me.” You know that scene in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark when he’s in a tunnel running for his life from a boulder? I think stress is like running away from that boulder—except that you’re not in a tunnel. You’re just on a hill. So all you have to do is do what the chicken did: Step to the side and watch that big heavy thing roll on by. Whew. Chicken 1, Nissan Sentra 0.

I’ve played soccer pretty much whole life. One day I was playing on a field called the Meadows in Edinburgh with the guys that I always played with and while I was dribbling the ball, I slipped on some dewy grass, fell down, and lost the ball. I pounded the grass with my hand and shouted at myself and while I was doing that, my teammate John shouted something else at me. He shouted, “Get up!”

Of course I was going to get up. But he meant get up now. Don’t hit the grass, don’t shout at yourself, and don’t feel bad. There’s no time for that. If what you want is the ball, then you could be getting up and chasing down the ball that you just lost, instead of hitting the grass. Good point. I got up.