Jason Garner's Blog

(versión en español abajo)

“It’s just me now and my famous aching heart

under the stars — my heart that keeps moving like a searchlight

in its longing for the hearts of other people,

who in a sense, already live there, in my heart,

and keep it turning.”

– Tony Hoagland

“Step by step in the dark, if my foot’s not wet it found the stone.”

– Zen koan

 

I wrote this piece in May, what feels like a lifetime ago. It felt too raw to share at the time. Perhaps now is right, as the year gently slips away … 

 

The scent of the jasmine over my front door goes to my head like the evening I spent watching Metallica accompanied by the San Francisco Symphony­—it’s intoxicating, it’s got something to share, and it’s loud. I close my eyes. I linger in the fragrance like the bees in the floral canopy. Something, perhaps a lizard, scurries across the dry oak leaves left over from winter. All that remains is the perfume and the tingle in my spine. It’s springtime in the Santa Cruz Mountains and it almost seems as if all is well.

My brother-in-law died from the Coronavirus last week. The illness started as a cough and a fever and the decision to self-isolate. When it got worse my sister took him to the hospital. Nurses met her at the curb in HAZMAT suits. She never saw her husband alive again.

Hillary is the daughter of my mom’s second husband, Alex, who’d been our family’s pediatrician. As a little boy, the story goes, I once took his rubber mallet reflex-checker and tried to check the reflexes of his groin. Years later he married my mom and we moved into his home. He was black and interracial marriage was uncommon in the 70s. The odd looks and cruel remarks stung my heart. I hid Alex from my classmates, telling him he didn’t have to come to conferences and assemblies. The marriage wasn’t any easier for Hillary who was made to share her father and former home with her new white siblings. During her weekend visits we performed impromptu talent shows, rode bikes and watched Sunday morning TV shows. My first kiss was with Hillary as we acted out a scene from “I Dream of Jeannie.” I remember debating the naughtiness of kissing a girl, before settling on 1) we were siblings and 2) we were actors. A few years later our parents divorced and our family dissolved.

I was 40 when I heard from Hillary again. Alex had died. She called to tell me she planned to list my sister and me amongst his surviving children. That gesture touched me. I texted her a few years later at the holidays. She was nearby, visiting her mom. We spent New Year’s Eve together, laughing and reminiscing. On this visit I met Hillary’s husband Lloyd and my niece MacLemore. Lloyd, an actor who’d starred in two Super Bowl ads, bridged the awkward silences with jokes and stories. He didn’t let you get out of a conversation without saying something deep and profound. In Brooklyn, they ran a bakery that was part restaurant and part neighborhood sanctuary. People came to Bread Love for Hillary’s baking and Lloyd’s advice and guidance. Like most performers he was also hiding pain. We talked about the death of our mothers and the gateways their deaths had been in our lives. We did New Year’s Eve again the following year, then a visit in New York. We patched our family back together.

Sitting in a dark corner of my room at 4:30 am, I watched the mosh pit in my mind—there was Lloyd alone on a respirator struggling to breathe; next were the cancelled concert tours, a year of work had disintegrated in a matter of days. Then the stock market crash, then it rebounded, and then it crashed again. My friend Rigo, uninsured, was injured at work, his employer refused to help. My oldest kids were locked down with their mom, who is bedridden with MS. My chest tightened; my pulse began to race. I felt a sudden flash of heat and sheets of sweat puddled under my hoodie which had the words “Namaste – 6 Feet Away” written across the chest. I wanted to get out, to be anywhere but here. It was a panic attack, like the ones I’d suffered on planes after 9/11, when I’d lie in the galley, pleading with the flight attendants to leave me alone until my mind settled down. In those days I’d worried I might die. Now I just rode out the panic, reminding myself that this too is the spiritual life.

COVID had turned the world upside down, and it kept turning. Every day I’d get up in the morning and spend the entire day stumbling around looking for the floor which, by bedtime, I’d believe I’d found, only to awaken the next morning to find my world flipped on its head all over again.

In those early days of the pandemic, I’d tried to comfort a client whose global tour was up in the air. “It’s going to be fine,” I’d said attempting to convince us both. I felt the staleness in the gap between what was actually happening and what I was saying. So I offered something true: “I don’t know,” I said, which was hard because I felt I was supposed to know. I’m the guru now, the industry vet, but I didn’t know, I don’t know. It’s hard to admit when I’m lost, but I can also feel how vulnerability is the beginning of being found. “Not knowing is most intimate,” an old Zen story says.

The dark thread of global trauma has connected us, pulling us near. Not in the usual ways—a basketball game with a friend, my wife’s surprise birthday party, seats by the stage at a Coldplay concert. We’ve been united by anxiety, fear, and the fragility of this life we all share. We’re sharing both a virus and our human response to it. There’s a sweetness in that connection too. People are staying home to save one another. We’re posting videos to say, “Hey I’m alive,” songs and dances, news clips, and funny reminders about how to wash our hands. We’re all afraid of the same thing and that’s reminded us that inside we’re the same too.

This isn’t to say our lives are the same. People of color are dying at much higher rates than people who look like me. COVID is tearing through prisons and retirement homes. Mexican immigrants have been deemed essential workers, which simply means they get to risk their health working the fields while I shelter in place eating organic strawberries.

It’s too soon to tie a bow around this moment and declare the coming of an age of oneness. In fact that misses the point. Which is of course to be here, in this moment, as we are, and to be aware of what it’s like to be alive. What’s it like to be you? What’s it like to be me? What’s it like to be an immigrant suddenly deemed essential in a country that calls her a criminal? What’s it like to be alone in the ICU struggling to breathe? Or to be a nurse watching many, many die, while fearing she might die too?  We’re here together, witnessing this moment in the dark, united by pain and fear––as real as it gets. There’s something vulnerable and true when we just feel life without rushing to an artificial end.

After my brother-in-law’s passing, the neighbors came together for a candlelight vigil. Hundreds gathered in the streets of Bed-Stuy. They shared memories and tears while maintaining social distancing in respect for the virus that had claimed his life. “He Helped Everyone,” a local paper’s headline read. Another compared him to Mr. Hooper, the friendly neighbor from Sesame Street. His friends and family filled their Facebook pages with pictures and testimonials of the man who counseled strangers and “saw the possibility in all things and people.” And 500 people donated to a GoFundMe campaign in under 48 hours. “It’s all so wonderfully sad,” my sister wrote me in a late night text.

Lying in bed I gaze at the moon. I text with my sister as I run my fingers through my wife’s hair, coaxing her to sleep. Fledgling barn owls pierce the silence asking for a midnight snack. It may be dark, but we’re not alone. Step by step, we discover this life and ourselves together.

 

Field notes for walking in the dark:

Life is unfolding without regard for our directions and plans. Allowing doesn’t mean inviting. Instead we’re opening ourselves to the natural rhythm and flow of life. The invitation is to actually show up for the lives we have.
Many of us have never stopped before now. We haven’t known how. The pandemic has removed our masks of busyness and our vulnerability has been exposed. This is a step toward intimacy with our inner lives.
Our inner voice can be harsh. We know this because our exterior voice is harsh too. This shows up as violent thoughts of the way we ought to be and criticisms of how we are today. Meditation is a move away from that violence and toward the experience of okayness that pervades all life.
Spiritual practice doesn’t mean we always feel great. It’s okay to feel shitty. What we’re practicing is authenticity and acceptance, not arguing with our lives.
We need space to grieve what’s been taken from us, to mourn what we leave behind as we grow, to accept the way life sometimes breaks our hearts. Grieving is an acknowledgment of the importance of our lives. It’s an act of love.
Being at peace doesn’t mean my life has no problems. It’s more like I don’t go to war with my problems. Which, of course, is another way of saying I don’t go to war with my life, or with myself.


 In this moment, without adding or taking anything away, what’s it like to be you?

versión en español de Jorge Esquinca

Sólo estamos mi famoso corazón adolorido y yo bajo las estrellas, mi corazón que sigue moviéndose como un reflector en su anhelo por alcanzar los corazones de otras personas que, en cierto sentido, ya viven ahí, en mi corazón y lo mantienen girando.

– Tony Hoagland

Paso a paso en la oscuridad, si mi pie no está mojado es que encontró la piedra.

– Koan zen

 

Escribí este artículo en mayo, parece que hubiera transcurrido una vida entera. Lo sentí demasiado crudo para compartirlo en ese momento. Quizás ahora esté bien, ya que el año se desliza suavemente …

El aroma del jazmín sobre la puerta de mi casa se me sube a la cabeza como la noche que pasé viendo a Metallica acompañada por la Sinfónica de San Francisco: es embriagador, tiene algo que compartir y es fuerte. Cierro los ojos. Me demoro en la fragancia como las abejas en la florida enramada. Algo, tal vez una lagartija, se escurre entre las hojas secas del roble que dejó el invierno. Todo lo que resta es el perfume y el hormigueo en mi espalda. Es primavera en las montañas de Santa Cruz y casi parece que todo va bien.

Mi cuñado murió a causa del coronavirus la semana pasada. Comenzó con tos, fiebre y aislamiento. Cuando empeoró, mi hermana lo llevó al hospital. Las enfermeras se reunieron con ella en la acera con sus trajes para materiales peligrosos. Nunca volvió a ver a su marido con vida.

Hillary es la hija del segundo marido de mi madre, Alex, que había sido el pediatra de nuestra familia. Cuenta la historia que, cuando yo era niño, una vez cogí su martillo de goma para comprobar los reflejos y traté de comprobar los reflejos de su ingle. Años más tarde se casó con mi mamá y nos mudamos a su casa. Él era negro y el matrimonio interracial era poco común en los años 70. Las miradas burlonas y los comentarios crueles aguijonearon mi corazón. Escondí a Alex de mis compañeros de clase, diciéndole que no tenía que venir a las conferencias ni a las asambleas. El matrimonio no fue más fácil para Hillary, obligada a compartir a su padre y su antigua casa con sus nuevos hermanos blancos. Durante sus visitas los fines de semana, nos gustaba improvisar concursos de talentos, andar en bicicleta y ver los programas de televisión que pasaban los domingos por la mañana. Mi primer beso fue con Hillary, cuando representamos una escena de Mi bella genio. Recuerdo haber debatido sobre la travesura de besar a una chica antes de decidir: 1) éramos hermanos y 2) éramos actores. Unos años después nuestros padres se divorciaron y la familia se disolvió.

Tenía 40 años cuando volví a tener noticias de Hillary. Alex había muerto. Llamó para decirme que planeaba incluirnos a mi hermana y a mí entre los hijos supervivientes. El gesto me conmovió. Unos años después, durante las vacaciones, le envié un mensaje de texto. Ella estaba cerca, visitando a su mamá. Pasamos la víspera de Año Nuevo juntos, riendo y tejiendo recuerdos. Fue entonces cuando conocí a Lloyd y a mi sobrina MacLemore. Lloyd, un actor que había protagonizado dos anuncios del Super Bowl, nos ayudó a salvar los incómodos silencios contando chistes e historias. No te dejaba salir de una conversación sin decir algo realmente profundo. Ellos tenían una panadería en Brooklyn que era en parte restaurante y en parte templo del vecindario. La gente acudía a Bread Love por la repostería de Hillary y por los consejos y la orientación de Lloyd. Como la mayoría de los actores, también ocultaba sus penas. Hablamos sobre la muerte de nuestras madres y las puertas que esas muertes habían abierto en nuestras vidas. Al año siguiente, en la misma fecha, nos reunimos de nuevo. Luego una visita en Nueva York. Volvimos a unir a nuestra familia.

Sentado en un rincón oscuro de mi habitación a las 4:30 de la mañana, contemplaba el baile frenético de mis pensamientos: Lloyd conectado a un respirador luchando por su vida; las giras de conciertos canceladas, un año de trabajo que se había desintegrado en cuestión de días; la caída de la bolsa de valores, que se recupera y se desploma otra vez; mi amigo Rigo, que no tiene seguro médico, se lesiona en el trabajo y su patrón se niega a ayudarlo; mis hijos mayores confinados con su madre, postrada en cama con esclerosis múltiple. Sentí una fuerte opresión en el pecho y mi pulso comenzó a acelerarse. Un súbito destello de calor me invadió, capas de sudor formando charcos debajo de mi sudadera que tenía las palabras “Namaste – 6 Feet Away” escritas en el pecho. Quería salir, estar en cualquier lugar menos aquí. Era un ataque de pánico, como los que había sufrido en los aviones después del 11 de septiembre, cuando me acostaba en la cocina, suplicando a las azafatas que me dejaran en paz hasta que mi mente se calmara. En esos días me preocupaba morir. Ahora simplemente acompañe el pánico, recordándome que esto también forma parte de la vida espiritual.

El Covid había puesto el mundo patas arriba y el mundo seguía girando. Todos los días me levantaba por la mañana y me pasaba el día entero dando tumbos, buscando el suelo que, a la hora de dormir, creía haber encontrado, sólo para despertarme a la mañana siguiente y encontrar mi mundo puesto de cabeza otra vez.

En esos primeros días de la pandemia, intenté consolar a un cliente cuya gira mundial estaba en el aire. “Va a resultar bien”, dije, tratando de convencernos a ambos. Me sentí atorado en la brecha entre lo que yo decía y lo que realmente estaba ocurriendo. Así que opté por ofrecerle algo más realista: “No lo sé”, dije, lo cual fue difícil porque sentí que yotendría que saberlo. Ahora soy el gurú, el veterano de la industria, pero no lo sabía, no lo sé. Qué duro admitir cuando estoy perdido, pero también puedo sentir cómo la vulnerabilidad es el comienzo de ser encontrado. “El no saber es lo más íntimo”, dice una antigua historia zen.

El hilo oscuro del trauma global nos ha conectado, acercándonos. No de la forma habitual: un partido de basquetbol con un amigo, la fiesta sorpresa de cumpleaños de mi esposa, asientos junto al escenario en un concierto de Coldplay. Nos ha unido la ansiedad, el miedo y la fragilidad de esta vida que todos compartimos. Compartimos un virus tanto como nuestra respuesta humana. También hay dulzura en esa conexión. Nos quedamos en casa para salvarnos unos a otros. Publicamos videos para decir “mira, estoy vivo”, canciones y bailes, noticias y divertidos recordatorios sobre cómo lavarnos las manos. Todos tenemos miedo a lo mismo y eso nos recuerda que por dentro también somos iguales.

Esto no quiere decir que nuestras vidas sean iguales. Las personas de color están muriendo en tasas mucho más altas que las personas que se parecen a mí. El Covid está arrasando en las prisiones y en los hogares de ancianos. Los inmigrantes mexicanos han sido considerados “trabajadores esenciales”, lo que sencillamente significa que arriesgan su salud trabajando en los campos mientras yo permanezco en mi refugio comiendo fresas orgánicas.

Es demasiado pronto para atar un lazo alrededor de este momento y declarar la llegada de una era de unidad. De hecho, eso no tiene sentido. Sino, por supuesto, estar aquí, en este momento, tal como somos, y conscientes de estar vivos. ¿Qué se siente ser tú? ¿Qué se siente ser yo? ¿Qué se siente ser una inmigrante a quien de pronto se considera esencial en un país que la llama criminal? ¿Qué se siente estar solo en la UCI luchando por respirar? ¿O ser una enfermera que ve morir a muchos, muchos, mientras ella también teme por su vida? Estamos juntos aquí, presenciando este momento en la oscuridad, unidos por el dolor y el miedo, tan real como parece. Hay algo vulnerable y verdadero cuando simplemente sentimos la vida sin apresurarnos hacia un final artificial.

Después de la muerte de mi cuñado, los vecinos se reunieron para llevar a cabo una vigilia a la luz de las velas. Cientos de personas se congregaron en las calles de Bed-Stuy. Compartieron recuerdos y lágrimas manteniendo la sana distancia por respeto a la enfermedad que le había costado la vida. “Él nos ayudó a todos”, decía el encabezado de un periódico local. Otro lo comparó con el señor Hooper, el amigable vecino de Plaza Sésamo. Sus familiares y amigos llenaron sus páginas de Facebook con fotos y testimonios del hombre que daba consejos a extraños y “vio el potencial en todas las cosas y las personas”. Y quinientas personas hicieron donativos a una campaña Go Fund Me en menos de 48 horas. “Es todo tan maravillosamente triste”, me escribió mi hermana en un mensaje de texto a altas horas de la noche.

Acostado en la cama, contemplo la luna. Le escribo un mensaje de texto a mi hermana mientras paso los dedos por el cabello de mi esposa, consintiéndola para que se duerma. Los polluelos de las lechuzas perforan el silencio pidiendo un bocadillo de medianoche. Podrá estar oscuro, pero no estamos solos. Paso a paso, descubrimos esta vida y a nosotros mismos juntos.

Notas de campo para caminar en la oscuridad:

• La vida se desarrolla sin tener en cuenta nuestros itinerarios y planes. Permitir no significa invitar. En cambio, nos estamos abriendo al ritmo natural y al fluir de la vida. La invitación es para hacer acto de presencia en la vida que tenemos.

• Muchos de nosotros nunca antes nos habíamos detenido. No sabíamos cómo. La pandemia ha removido la máscara de nuestra prisa y nuestra vulnerabilidad ha quedado al descubierto. Es un paso hacia la intimidad con nuestra vida interior.

• Nuestra voz interior puede ser dura. Lo sabemos porque nuestra voz exterior también es dura. Esto se manifiesta con pensamientos violentos acerca de cómo deberíamos ser y con críticas sobre cómo somos hoy. La meditación es un movimiento que se aleja de esa violencia y se acerca a la experiencia de bienestar que impregna toda vida.

• La práctica espiritual no significa que siempre nos sintamos bien. Está bien sentirse mal. Lo que estamos practicando es la autenticidad y la aceptación, no a discutir con nuestras vidas.

• Necesitamos espacio para llorar lo que nos han quitado, para lamentar lo que dejamos atrás al crecer, para aceptar la forma en que la vida a veces nos rompe el corazón. El duelo es un reconocimiento de la importancia de nuestra vida. Es un acto de amor.

• Estar en paz no significa que mi vida no tenga problemas. Es más bien que no voy a la guerra con mis problemas. Lo cual, por supuesto, es otra forma de decir que no voy a la guerra con mi vida, ni conmigo mismo.

En este momento, sin añadir ni quitar nada, ¿qué se siente ser tú?

Some friends come by for a visit with their 18-month-old. After a few minutes of peek-a-boo and smiles behind daddy, she’s running around the house. Laughing. Falling down. Crying. “Doggie!” She screams and my dog jumps. She runs and cries some more. “TV!” She wants to watch Elmo. I buy an episode. “Melmo!” She giggles, throws her arms up, and sways along. She’s adorable, a tornado, the Energizer Bunny with dimples and a diaper. The whole house is exhausted. “Does this stage last long?” Her mother asks earnestly.

My son is moving out. He’s turned 20 and over the last year I’ve observed how the safety of our home has become a prison for him. He has new ideas, morals and philosophies. I’ve been careful to allow space for his opinions but we disagree sometimes, which is new for us. He’s told me I’m patriarchal, capitalist, racist. I try to listen and learn, and can sometimes see his point, but mostly I hear, “Dad, I’m leaving,” which is something he hasn’t known how to say another way. He’s found a job in Kentucky, assisting the author and feminist philosopher bell hooks. He adores her, he’s thrilled. He’s leaving in a few days.

I’m happy for him, and I’m sad.

I was meditating recently, sitting in a chair by a window, listening to the flow and fall of a nearby stream. Time disappeared, replaced by the hollow sound of water crashing upon itself. I sat like this for a bit until the thoughts returned. I had a call to make. I reached for my phone on the table beside me and caught a glimpse of my children on the cover of a photo book my wife made one year for Father’s Day. The kids were tender like the fawn of spring. “I miss them,” I thought with a tear and a sudden flash of warmth.

I notice when I say that: I miss my babies, it feels true. I miss holding hands. I miss tickles, silly songs to learn math, the way they gazed at me at night as I tucked them in and told them all the things they could be. When I say I miss them, it’s real. An authentic expression of a slightly broken heart. I also notice when I say how proud of them I am, how my heart is full of joy for the paths they’re uncovering, that feels true too.

“I’m happy and I’ll miss you,” I tell my son. Holding those two truths together is sweet and seems to draw us closer to one another, and to life.

I’ve been through this before, when my eldest daughter moved out and started film school. That was different though. We were following a time-honored path from home to university, and we were battling. I was scared, unsure how to be a dad to a teenage girl. I held on too tightly and the fear closed my heart. I forgot that the young woman in the backseat of the car on the way to high school still needed my love even as she reminded me I was no longer her knight in shining armor. My life was chaotic; I was working hard, marrying, divorcing, “too busy for this shit.” When she moved out we were both relieved. On a recent father-daughter road trip we talked about this. We cried a bit. I’d done my best all those years ago, but defending myself didn’t seem important. My job is to show up with open ears and heart. And she opened her heart too. “I’m sorry and I love you,” I said.

When I moved out, I was driven and righteous, and cruel to my mom. Her life seemed small and I thought there was nothing left for me but to escape. We had a fight late one night and I left for good. I didn’t fully come back until she was dying. By then there were so many other things to say and do that “I’m sorry I was cruel to you” seemed minuscule. I talk to her still. “I’m sorry mom,” I whisper under my breath and wipe my eyes.

Just as I’m thinking how happy I am I don’t have to do this again my 16-year-old pops into the room. She’s flying to LA to see a Harry Styles concert … with my old friends from Live Nation. She’ll dance. They’ll take her backstage. Her heart will swell. She’ll swoon a bit. “The man of my dreams,” she writes in the text below a picture hugging the artist. She grows up just a little on that trip. Moving closer to the day we’ll smile and cry as she moves out too.

Fall is drawing near in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The white-spotted deer who just this spring bounded irresistibly through the oaks, don’t look like Bambi any more, stumbling with their new, awkward antlers. Wild turkeys, prehistoric and gangly, squawk and scratch craters unearthing my daffodils. They bear little resemblance to the chicks that waddled and pecked behind their mothers. Young hawks, shriek on their patrol, performing ineffectual dive bombs on rodents who seem to always be one step ahead. And the amaryllis have sprung to life too, pushing through the soil with an explosion of pink and red.

My son and I drive quietly to the airport in the early morning darkness. The first rays of sunlight strike through the shadows of the redwoods lining the two-lane road to town. Occasionally one of us pats the other on the back or reaches for a Kleenex when the tears get to be too much. It’s notable that life doesn’t require a spectacle – a speech, or grand gesture, or some other dramatic effort – to emphasize a meaningful moment. We sit in silence, without adding or subtracting; sharing the raw feel of moving on … life in all its seasons is enough.

 

A few questions to explore around growth and goodbyes and being a parent:

– What is being known? In moments of change we might notice the difference between the thoughts in our head and the feelings in our body. Where our thoughts tend to dramatize by adding to the experience, our bodies feel what’s actually going on. We can ground ourselves in the authentic sensations of our bodies through deep breaths, placing our attention in our feet, and mindful physical movement. Aware of our bodies we might ask, “What is being known?” and notice what we find. This is a doorway beyond the world of concepts, into a more authentic experience of our lives.

– What is my role? As our children grow we become aware of how little control we have over their lives. This may be why we cling to images of them in infancy, a time in which it appears we have more control. As they mature our influence lessens. We find ourselves one voice among many – friends, teachers, tweets from around the world, YouTube personalities. We may worry and find ourselves struggling to find our place amidst it all. Wondering, “What’s my role?” or “How do I fit in?” Just knowing we can explore these questions is the beginning of mindfulness. We become aware of areas we’re holding too tightly. We notice the fears we cling to and project onto our children’s lives. It’s safe to let go, to breathe, to allow life to unfold, since that’s what it’s doing anyway.

– Who am I? We’re confronted with the temporary nature of our lives. Our parents age and pass on. Our children grow and move out. Our lives change dramatically from one moment to the next. We’re no longer children, nor quite parents in the way we once were, and we face impermanence head on. The Buddha called this lack of a solid reality emptiness– an acknowledgement that our lives are fluid and ever-changing, that there’s nothing to hang on to. This tends to challenge our sense of self. For me it comes as the question, “Who am I?” This exploration of our identity (or lack thereof) is a classic spiritual pathway. It calls us to look beyond external comings and goings. The question draws us inward to the tender space in our heart, which is ultimately an opening into the vastness ahead.

– Where am I going? We have an interesting relationship with time. We tend to view it as something we move through on our way from here to there. Until, of course, we get there and find ourselves wishing we could go back in time and live it all again. As our children grow we mark milestones and measure against the norms – first steps, kindergarten, middle school, spelling tests, driver’s licenses, did they get into a good school? Then they’re gone, and the moments are gone too, and we might wonder, “Where am I going?” now. The journey is to inhabit this life, to feel your feet on the ground, to breathe the early-morning air, to take in the new orange blossoms on the tree in the park where you email clients as you powerwalk … and to smell the blossoms too. Where we’re going is here.

– What’s it like to be me? Waking up when the kids have grown we might notice the quiet. After years of running around, being on call, caring for others, the stillness can be welcome. It can also be lonely, eerie, and bring up the interesting (and uncomfortable) question,“What’s it like to be me?” This is a gateway to our uncharted inner-life, a calling to explore our own hearts, to show up for ourselves as we have for our children. This exploration can be frightening because it’s about intimacy, the thing we seek, the vulnerability we fear. Within the darkness there is an unnoticed light. It calls us inward. This is home.

 

Big hugs of love,

Jason

 

 

I spent last week on meditation retreat in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I’ve been on retreat a lot this year and I’ve noticed that my life seems to wiggle a bit more while I’m away. As if in order to clear up any confusion about retreat being outside everyday life, the universe stirs things up, releasing thoughts and emotions that crawl around excavating truths and forcing me to open my heart, even as I sit with eyes closed. This retreat was no different: an old friend at a medical crossroads, a friend of a friend dead in a plane crash with his young children aboard, a cancer diagnosis for another friend’s dad, the eighth anniversary of my mom’s death.

I remember when my mom received her cancer diagnosis. The doctors gave her six months to live, which she did, nearly to the day. It all seemed so cut and dried. My mom wasn’t interested in fighting too much. I don’t think she believed that was her role. So we spent that time gathered as a family. We went on vacation to Mexico and took trips to the nursery looking at roses and ferns for my yard. One day, gathered in my living room, my daughter Nataly offered my mom a movie about the power of a plant-based diet in treating cancer. My mom smiled gently and politely declined, “I love you Nataly. But you have to let me do this my way.”

I knew my mom was going to die even before she refused to continue with chemo and settled in to spend her final months at home with her wife. She’d spent her life caring for others and wasn’t going to allow the tumor in her stomach to change that. It was sad, but it was somehow okay too. In her last days and nights I’d drink a bottle of wine, crawl into bed and stroke her hair with my fingertips and cry. Then I’d get up in the morning and get back to work … it’s all I had back then. I didn’t know how to help her, which made it easier in a way.

I’ve learned a bit since then, and developed some new tools. I started by watching that movie my daughter tried to give my mom. Then I watched more. Many more. I read books. I went to health conferences. I befriended the experts … I even married one. I became a vegan. I went to the Shaolin Temple. I’ve spent countless days on retreat, meditating, watching my mind. I get lost on summer afternoons amongst the redwoods looking for mushrooms and herbs for medicinal teas. I’ve built a practice around health, wellness, and spirituality that I share with my family and friends.

And people I love still get sick … and sometimes they die. And that’s hard, especially when I think I can help.

Prior to this retreat I spoke with a friend. We were reviewing something I’d written — the first draft of what became this piece. “It’s okay that our friends die, Jason,” he said. “It has to be.” That stuck with me as I sat this past week and received news of sick friends and funerals. I knew this already, of course, that my friends are allowed to have a life of their own. I know there’s no use arguing with reality. But I don’t like it much some days. I rather enjoy my friends and I’d prefer they live long healthy lives and not go away. When they do it hurts. I miss them like I miss my mom.

I’ve wondered this week, while meandering in the hidden corners of my mind, if perhaps all this learning I’ve done was part of a secret agenda I wasn’t sharing even with myself. A plan to save my friends — and myself — from all the suffering of life. As if, having watched my mom die, the little boy in me had a plan to stop the suffering of the world by getting really healthy and sharing what I learned. And maybe by doing so, somehow I’d save my mom, too. There’s a sweetness in that naiveté. It makes me smile because it reminds me of my mom, who was always looking to help. It’s a piece of her in me, a little insecurity, wanting you to know I love you, and wanting to know you love me too … sure if I help you’ll see just how good I’m not sure I really am.

I notice though as I think about saving the world, it all gets really small. As if the world were squished down and squeezed into my head, right between my eyes, burning a hole in my forehead as I try to out-scheme life, and death. I also notice when I sit openly with the way things are, when I turn towards my fear and look at my pain, the world opens up. When I think of my friends’ health and say “I’m afraid” I can feel in my heart how we’re connected. When I say, “I miss my mom” it feels more intimate than when I say I wish she didn’t die. When I think I have to have all the answers, my loved ones feel far away. And when I say “I don’t know” I notice how we all get to play together.

Another way of saying this is that it’s okay to live. Not just to be alive, but to actually live this life we have. In some ways that’s been the biggest lesson —that my life is worth fully living, worthy of investing the same time and attention I invested in my career. It was scary when I realized I was on the road to end up like my mom: dead at 58, my kids missing their dad. I knew I had to stop, but I was afraid. I didn’t know how. Who would I be? What would my life look like without all the stuff I’d masqueraded as an authentic expression of myself? Or as I said to my therapist at the time, “I’m afraid if I stop and look honestly at my life I’m going to realize I can’t do this any more. And that scares me.” I was right. When I looked honestly I didn’t like my life much. I realized I couldn’t do it any more. So I stopped. Or life stopped me. And that was terrifying. But I didn’t turn away. I knew deep down I had to keep looking. And I’m still looking today.

The more I practice the kinder my gaze becomes. My practice, once motivated by fear, is based now more in love — for myself, for life, for you. I understand that caring for my body is a worthwhile endeavor and that motivates my food choices, so I eat plant-based foods and supplement them with Chinese herbs. I know that my body works when energy and nutrition flow to my organs, so I stretch, take walks, and long, deep breaths. I’ve learned that watching my mind helps me understand and accept life; that’s why I meditate. I’ve experienced that sharing gives meaning to it all, so I write and connect with those in need.

On retreat I’ve been reminded of the okayness of life. It’s okay for our friends to die. It’s okay for my mom to be gone. It’s okay that all this sometimes seems too big for my tiny human heart. It’s okay that I’m afraid. It’s okay I sit and cry with the weight of it all. It’s okay to not have all the answers. It’s okay to wish I did. It’s okay even in all the darkness of the world to see the light. It’s okay to allow pain to be a portal. It’s okay to turn around. It’s okay to find a better way. It’s okay to live. It’s okay… it just is, this life, the one we have, yours and mine … it may not be fair, or even pretty, but it’s okay.

A few notes on okayness:

1) Okayness has a quality of self-compassion, holding our own hand in the dark. When life turns upside down this means accepting what’s hurting while lightening the load by supporting the parts of your life left standing upright. This might look like drinking extra green juice and taking long walks while in the midst of a divorce. Or going on meditation retreat after a cancer diagnosis. Or having a tea with someone you love after getting fired from your job.
2) Being okay doesn’t mean inviting struggle. There’s no inherent value in that. The value comes from finding our way in the dark when struggles present themselves — being okay with what we find in life.
3) Sometimes being okay means accepting that we’re not okay with what’s going on. It means meeting ourselves where we actually are. When facing uncertain health it may be too much to ask to be okay with a pending diagnosis, but we may be able to admit to being afraid and be okay with that. Sitting at a friend’s funeral we might find that we’re not ready to be okay with death, but can meet ourselves in our grief and be okay that this is one of life’s tough moments. Okayness isn’t fake or forced but a genuine place we discover we can face life and feel okay about it.
4) Okayness in the body is sometimes available even when mental or emotional okayness isn’t. Cellular joy comes in the form of deep breaths, superfood smoothies, nutrient-dense meals, a shot of wheatgrass as we hold our nose. This runs contrary to the conventional practice of numbing our pain with a beer or a pint of Haagen-Dazs. But caring for our bodies in the midst of mental or emotional anguish can send a message from the cells up that we’re safe, healthy, and okay.
5) In meditation okayness often comes from seeing that our problems aren’t quite as solid or solidly ours as we once thought. While sitting and observing we might notice thoughts of our problems arising and then disappearing on their own. We might see that things we once thought to be ours to solve aren’t really in our control — our son’s new girlfriend, a war on the other side of the world, my wife’s concern about a sick friend. In meditation we see these issues and face them, while also becoming aware of their slippery and transparent nature.

Here we are together. And it’s okay.

Big hugs of love,

Jason

A two hundred year-old oak tree fell in my yard. It was eighty feet tall and fifty feet wide and it fell with a crack and a thud that shook the ground and jolted me from my sleep. It was raining and dark and hard to see. I stood at the window until my wife woke and asked what was going on.

“The old oak fell.”

“Oh no,” she said. “Not that tree.”

“I know.”

Her eyes filled with tears, I felt her even in the dark.

The next morning I went out to survey the damage. Mud, limbs and leaves were strewn all over. The many kinds of daffodil my son had meticulously planted in the summer were crushed. The tree had landed with such force it had unearthed some of the bulbs, sending them flying like floral hand grenades. The tips of the upper-most branches rested on a stone statue of the Buddha of Compassion, which stood at ease.

I was in disbelief for a few days. It wasn’t news that everything dies. But I had not applied that knowledge to this tree. I missed meditating under her shade, watching the squirrels float from branch to branch and the hummingbirds zip about. She had been a symbol of sorts—with her deep roots, her wide branches and her great steady trunk.

I thought she might live forever … and that I might too. Now she was firewood and I was surprisingly sad.

An arborist and I stood together, looking. “I can’t believe it’s dead,” I said, with a touch of drama.

“Oak trees fall Jason,” he said. “It’s one of the things they do.”

“Of course,” I thought, ‘that’s it too.’ That was a glimpse of light in the broken branches of my old oak tree.

I spent the day with the arborist and his crew, “cut here, not there,” removing the small branches and leaves, the limbs perched, perilous and unsteady. In the end, the grand multi-pronged trunk remained, the carcass of a giant. It had become a memorial to a fallen friend. “There,” I said looking at the remains of the oak and the blooms of the daffodils. “That looks like real life.”

There’s a sense of loss in the world right now, innocence lost with the realization that we don’t live in a perfect world, the greatest country, or the most advanced time ever. I feel some embarrassment that I ever believed we did. It seems we’ve all tuned in at once to the fact that our era is as imperfect as all the eras of the past, and perhaps as imperfect as the eras yet to come. We’ve been left with the dead trunk of our dreams looking longingly for some hope, only to find the plain face of life looking back. Here we are.

There’s a Zen koan that says: “My friends, do you think I’m hiding something from you? Actually, I am hiding nothing from you.”

Sometimes when life’s been hiding from us for a while—or we’ve been hiding from life—we don’t like the truth when it shows up. We think racism doesn’t exist where we live, or our stressful lives aren’t affecting our bodies, or that our oak tree will live forever. And then a friend calls. He’s cowering in his house with the lights out because immigration is raiding his neighborhood. Another friend gets a diagnosis and that could have been me. Or my favorite tree falls in the middle of the night. It’s easy to think this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. And yet it is how it is … and therefore, must be also how it’s meant to be. How else could it be? And just as I begin to despair at the bleakness of it all, I see my teenage son hug a homeless man and give him money for a meal. Or I change my diet and move my body and find my health improves. Or I spot the new daffodils, with creamy-white petals and a bright yellow center, blooming amidst the ruins of a dead oak tree. That’s truth too.

That same koan asks: “Can you smell the scent of the sweet olive blossoms? … You see, I’m hiding nothing from you.”

This winter, with its torrential rains, howling winds and fallen trees has brought me to a realization. I don’t live in the most beautiful place on earth. I live in the land where oak trees fall. Where politics can be crazy. And people I love get sick. It’s also a place where daffodils bloom, where my family loves me, and where random acts of kindness warm my heart. I live here, real life is what I’ve got, and life hides nothing from me.

A few thoughts to consider:

1) There’s a physical tenseness that shows up when we’re hiding from life. It appears as holding our breath, clenching our teeth, or a leg that won’t stop twitching under the table. Often the first step is to not hide from those signs but to become aware of what we’re feeling in our body without trying to apply an antidote. We might approach our body with a breath and a question like, “how are you?” or “what’s it like for you?” Just noticing is a way of showing up for ourselves and facing life. Paying attention opens the door for intimacy.

Paying attention opens the door for intimacy.

2) Sometimes hiding is disguised as asking life to hide from us. It’s the sense of not wanting to know the truth, even when we do know it. A desire to bury ourselves under the covers and not face our lives. We might catch ourselves telling our kids how they ought to feel instead of asking. Or find ourselves longing nostalgically about times we think were better than today. We might avoid reviewing data that shows a business plan has failed until it’s too late to fix. Or cancel our follow up with the doctor to review the lab results. This can be hard to see because we tend to shrink-wrap our life to prevent it from showing us truth that’s too painful to see. We might approach ourselves with a hypothetical, “If I were missing something what would it be?” or “If there were to be a surprise in my life, what would it look like?” These questions create a crack that’s safe for a truer version of life to seep through. 
3) Life is hard. We don’t often give ourselves credit for what it takes to just get up each day and live our lives. We make life more difficult by treating ourselves harshly—judging, berating, or placing the bar so high we can never win our own approval. This instills a lack of trust within ourselves about facing life. We end up afraid not just of life but of our own reaction to it. When we practice small acts of self-compassion we start to reverse this pattern. Taking time to breathe, recognizing and celebrating our achievements, caring what we put in our bodies and taking a walk outside, smelling the sweet scented daffodils in the garden; these are ways we establish an inner friendship, learn to befriend our own lives, and build the trust to face life openly.
4) Meditation is a playground for allowing life to show up and ourselves to show up too. The basics of meditation—showing up, sitting down, not running away when our thoughts get scary or painful—are practice for doing the same when life gets real. It takes courage to sit when the whole world seems to be running in circles. When we show up and do this consistently, it builds those muscles in us and we develop the skill of facing life.

Can you smell the scent of the sweet olive blossoms? You see, I’m hiding nothing from you…

Big hugs of love,

Jason

I spent Halloween night in the ER. On a metal cot in a room constructed of retractable curtains amidst the casualties of Halloween excess, I lay breathing waiting for a diagnosis of the intense abdominal pain and febrile seizures I was experiencing. Staring up at the harsh fluorescent lights I remembered a poem I love by David Whyte called The House of Belonging:

I awoke

this morning

in the gold light

turning this way

and that

The image of bright light is a common one in spirituality. It’s especially prevalent in the Zen koans I have been studying as of late. Summarized by the great Zen poet Linji who wrote, “have trust in the light that is always working inside you,” light is used as metaphor for our inner okayness. But light can also be a reminder of our connectedness, our common life experiences — a reminder that we all share the same light regardless of our external differences.

Laying in the hospital I reminded myself of that light. Keeping a conscious hold on my innate wellness and breathing steadily so as to no slip too far into the sickness that bled through the curtain walls, I listened to the scared mom lecturing her daughter’s friends about their excessive drinking as her daughter cried and loudly vomited on the hospital floor. I had been that parent once or twice in my life; and I’d been that drunk young person too. Their goings on were annoying, but the light reminded me that their lives were mine, and mine was theirs. I overheard the story of the homeless man across the way who police had found unconscious after an overdose on a downtown corner. His panicked screams pulled me out of my conscious breathing each time he awoke from his drug-induced slumber, unsure of where he was. I had been that man too. Never homeless or overdosed, but lost in a haze of life, not quite sure of who I was, or how I’d gotten here — that sensation I knew all too well. I found the light in the eyes of the emergency room staff, clinging to threads of compassion while dealing with the impossible and often incurable pain that surrounded them. And, perhaps most strongly, I felt the light from the loving touch of my wife who held the hand of her husband, masking her fear behind the medical knowledge she’d dedicated her life to.

Laying there, surrounded by it all, I wondered if all the superlatives I’d heard about the light and its “luminous and effervescent” nature had missed the point. It certainly didn’t feel like any of that encompassed this moment. This light was gritty and real and full of all the dark matter of life. And yet I felt the light nonetheless. Like the moon in the dark night sky, this light was inseparable from the dark it illuminated. Its lines weren’t crisp or clean, it wasn’t clear where the darkness ended and the light began. But it was there. There in the puke on the emergency room floor, there was the light.

thinking for

a moment

it was one

day

like any other.

But

the veil had gone

from my

darkened heart

and

I thought

it must have been the quiet

candlelight

that filled my room,

it must have been

the first

easy rhythm

with which I breathed

myself to sleep,

it must have been

the prayer I said

speaking to the otherness

of the night.

And

I thought

this is the good day

you could

meet your love,

this is the black day

someone close

to you could die.

My day had begun like most. I woke up early to meditate and stretch before drinking some Chinese herbal tea and going for a walk with my wife and son. Those walks together, surrounded by so much love, I’m always reminded of how lucky I am. The air of the redwoods is the air of gratitude. It’s never lost on me how much my life has changed. How just a few years ago I’d felt so heavy, so lost … trapped under the veil of aloneness in a world I wasn’t sure I belonged to, with no visible way out. Yet, here I was.

The last few weeks had been hard on my circle of friends though: a death, a suicide in the family of another, a couple of health scares, a painful divorce, an old friend’s aunt had been kidnapped in Mexico, a couple of friends in financial trouble had needed loans. And they had all called me. Which I hoped they would. And which I hope they will… always call … as long as I can be of help. But it was heavy in my heart nonetheless. I walked a bit slower carrying the sadness of my friends.

When I got home, I felt the first pain. It didn’t feel like much, perhaps a strain from the walk, or maybe I just needed to stretch more. Mostly I was tired, so I went upstairs to take a nap and sleep it all off. When I woke up it was worse. I limped downstairs and asked my wife to do some checking. Both of us thought it was just a passing thing. Then the naseau, vomiting, febrile seizures, and the ever-increasing pain in my right abdomen. “It might be appendicitis,” my wife said. “It can’t be,” I thought. “I don’t get sick.” But I was, and when the symptoms didn’t let up, my wife told me it was time to go.

This is the day

you realize

how easily the thread

is broken

between this world

and the next

After several hours lying on my back in the ER breathing, surrounded by the dark light of the real-world on Halloween night, the diagnosis came back. My appendix was infected. A stone had blocked its flow and stagnation had turned septic. Surgery was set for the following morning.

I fell asleep while my wife rubbed my back. When I woke up a few hours later I remembered my mom and her friends praying over each other when ill, sending white light to surround their bodies and make them well. I wondered if I should do the same. But it didn’t feel quite real. I just breathed, in and out. I wasn’t really scared. I’ve been scared by far less in my life, yet here I was oddly at peace. I breathed some more and I realized that this is what I practice for. Not just for bringing me peace on lazy Sunday afternoon strolls in the forest, but to see the light when it’s not so bright. Over and over I’ve written and counseled my friends that our practice isn’t to control our lives, but to shape our response to it. “So here I am,” I thought. “This is my practice.” I didn’t have to think magic thoughts, I just had to breathe. I didn’t have to distract myself from the pain, I just had to accept the moment.

and I found myself

sitting up

in the quiet pathway

of light,

the tawny

close grained cedar

burning round

me like fire

and all the angels of this housely

heaven ascending

through the first

roof of light

the sun has made.

After surgery and a couple of hours of rest, I began plotting my escape. “Can we get you anything?” the nurse asked. “I’d like to go home and heal,” I replied. “Well,” she replied with a smile. “You’d have to be up and walking and eating and … passing gas … before the surgeon comes to check on you tonight.” So that’s what I did. I started drinking the green juice and Chinese herbal tea my son had brought from home. Then I got up and walked, and each time I passed the nurse in the hallway I’d smile and tell her I’d just passed gas.

By the time the surgeon arrived the staff was convinced that their meditating, green juice guzzling, gassy patient was ready to go. The surgeon agreed. And 24 hours after arriving at the ER I was on my way home.

When we arrived home I lay for a while, alone, looking out the bedroom window at the stars.

This is the bright home

in which I live,

this is where

I ask

my friends

to come,

this is where I want

to love all the things

it has taken me so long

to learn to love.

This is the temple

of my adult aloneness

and I belong

to that aloneness

as I belong to my life.

There is no house

like the house of belonging.

“This too is my life,” I thought. It has taken me so long to learn to love it all. Perhaps, I never quite will. But I do know I belong. For the first time I want to be here. I want to live this life, the one I have. I want to feel it all … even appendicitis on Halloween night. There is light. There is dark. I’m learning that I belong to it all. And so do you.

This too is our life.

This is our house of belonging.

Big hugs of love,

Jason

I got angry with my wife this week for being too happy. It feels strange to write that here where I share so much about loving others and ourselves. But it happened and I thought it would be cool to share in the vein of “we’re all human,” but also like, “what the hell’s wrong with me?” Which, perhaps, are two ways of saying the same thing.

My wife, Dr. Christy, is almost always happy. She doesn’t let a day go by without telling me how much she loves our life, our home, our children, our dogs, the garden, the trees, and even my occasional crabbiness. When we met, I assumed her giddy nature to be the product of the Minnesota sun, of Midwest values, and of the simplicity of the small family farm on which she was raised. That was superficial of me, my geographical bias dictating her experience of life. Her happiness is, in fact, hard won, a resolve to find the light that’s endured divorce and single motherhood, patients who’ve suffered and some who’ve died, and a cruel world that often didn’t understand the woman with a fierce mind and tender heart who spent her days caring for the sick while longing for a safe place to rest her head at night. My wife, an accomplished woman in so many ways, is a child at heart. A dreamer, a romantic, a little girl in a field of sunflowers looking for a playmate to hold her hand and invite her to dance. So she smiles and laughs and tries her best to remind the world, and me in particular, to lighten up and play a bit. Often when I go off and write she’ll appear with a giggle and a shake and say something like, “I just had a love burst and I needed to kiss my husband,” before giving me a smooch and floating away again. Her happiness is a way of drawing me out into her light so she knows that I’m okay and that we’re still connected.

My means are slower. I brood a bit more and let life seep in. I like when things drip deep inside and touch my nerves, raw and with a tinge of pain. Pain, for me, has been a gateway to the unrefined rhythm of life — the primal bass line hidden within synthesizer beats. So I meditate, and contemplate, and slow dance clumsily with the stuff that’s not safe to carry on my sleeve as I waltz down the street. Then I go off alone, behind the door of my bedroom or amongst the tall oaks in our garden, and write it all down. And then I’m happy. But my wife skips all that method acting and just gets right to the happiness.

The other day I forgot that I enjoy the contrast: “Stop being so happy!” I said, and then stomped away to the closest place I could find to stew, which turned out to be my bedroom closet — the place I store my hoodies and linen pants and, on this day at least, the place I went to pout and to be alone. I sat for a while, in self-imposed exile, wondering how she could be so rude with her smiley face and love bursts and kisses interrupting my loneliness. I closed my eyes and touched the pain where my loneliness lives, then I took out my iPhone and wrote down a few lines hoping to describe how it felt inside.

Loneliness is a state I have to practice regularly to maintain. It’s there, for sure, on its own, lurking in the corner, waving me over to commiserate in its solemn companionship. But on the way from where I am to that dark corner I pass a lot of other things hanging around too. Flowers, sunshine, children dancing in the yard, a wife who loves me, pictures of my family on the mantel, my dogs curled up on the floor, all the lovely things that live on the outskirts of the corners where loneliness resides. To be lonely I have to ignore them all, and look the other way. Loneliness, like everything else at which we’re proficient in life, takes intention and focus, requiring that we block everything else from our sight and just gaze at it until it consumes us, until we get really good at it, until it becomes a safe place to hang out in the pain.

The best I can tell, we’re all living in a closet of some kind; the place we hide all the messy stuff of life so the house looks clean when the neighbors come for a visit. We all have secrets, guilty pleasures and things we’re ashamed of. We’ve broken lovers’ hearts and our own. We’ve had sexual triumphs and embarrassments. We’ve tried to parent without really knowing how. We’ve cheated and lied, smoked pot and done lines in the bathroom with the lights turned low. We’ve stolen money from our bosses and had fights with our wives. We pull our hair, drink too much, and binge-eat Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream when life gets to be too much. And some of us have gone to Vegas with the boys when we said we were going to Boise to visit old friends. Or at least I have … done a little of all of that. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that we’re all the same. We think we have our secrets but that’s not quite true. What we have is our humanity, and that means I’m just like you — feeling lonely because I’ve lived a life I’m sometimes not proud of without realizing that you’re telling yourself the same lies as me.

We’re all living in a closet of some kind; the place we hide all the messy stuff of life.

I know this to be true because I write, which requires that I look inside this closet of mine and take inventory of my mind and then write it all down and have the courage to press send, something I do every few weeks wondering how it’ll be received. Wondering if you’ll still like what you read and if I’ll like what I see when I look in the mirror at the end of the day after baring my soul. Something funny happens in that process though: you write back to me and open your closet too. And that’s how I know we’re all lonely about the same things we’ve been hiding in the closet being afraid others might find out. Not exactly the same things. We have different things crammed in there. I’ve got a rug my dog peed on and you’ve got the cushion you burned smoking cigarettes while your wife was in the bath. But we share the reason we crammed it all in the closet in the first place. We have the same desire to be good, to be loved, to be accepted and understood. And we’re worried that were not. Not quite good enough, or worthy, or ever going to feel loved.

In that commonality we can find a call to connect. To practice sharing with one another. To come out of the closet and compare what we’ve got hidden inside. When we do, our loneliness doesn’t get pushed away or replaced with a sappy artificial grin. Instead, loneliness itself becomes the place where we intersect. We bond around our human vulnerability and all the juicy ways we’ve lived our lives.

This week I invite you to look in the closet and poke around. Ask some good questions, perhaps like:

Where does my loneliness live?

What beauty lies between here and there?

How might my stuff be like the stuff of other people I know?

Then share what you find with a friend … or two. See what you have in common. Experience the connection of shared humanity.

Solitude is inevitable. At one point or another we all will have moments when we’re alone. Loneliness, though, can be optional, a result based largely on what we choose to practice in life; when we get to know ourselves; when we look in the closet and get comfortable with what we find; and when we share around our human fragility. Then solitude becomes a place of solace, and our experiences — no longer secrets — become old friends.

Big hugs of love,

Jason

My friend’s dad died this week. We spoke for a bit while the pain was still raw in his heart and the tears were still fresh in his eyes. He told me that perhaps he should have gone to be with his dad as he died, though he didn’t think that’s what his father had wanted. In fact my friend asked him, and his dad said no. But now with nothing left but memories and regrets, he wasn’t so sure. His stepmother called him angry and released the pain of her loss through the phone into his ear and his heart. “You should have come!” she yelled. Though a more accurate translation would probably have been, “I’m in so much pain. I’m all alone. Won’t you come?” My friend asked me what I thought — if he should have been there with his dad. I told him that I believe it doesn’t matter anymore, perhaps it never did … that’s one of the things about death: it leaves us only with what is. And then I shared with him a poem that had touched my heart when I stumbled upon it earlier that morning. Something Parker J. Palmer had written about death, loving from a distance, and taking our last lonely breaths:

Waving Goodbye from Afar

One by one their names have been exhaled

in recent weeks, fading into thin blue air on

their final breath: Angie, Ian, Vincent, John.

I talked, laughed and worked with them, we

cared about each other. Now they are gone.

No, they do not live on – just watch the world

keep turning in their absence, a tribute here

and there depending on the fame of the fast-

fading name. I’ve always thought it would

be good if a few who loved me sat with me

as I died. Now, as I learn of friends who’ve

taken sudden leave, I’m glad all I can do is

wave goodbye from afar, knowing they can’t

see me. It feels right to offer them an unseen

last salute, seeking no attention, unable to

distract them from a journey each of us must

make alone. It must be a breathless climb, the

kind I’ve made many times in the mountains

of New Mexico. The last thing I wanted there

was someone who just had to talk when it was

all I could do to climb, to breathe, then stop –

marveling at the view, wondering what’s up top.

My friend told me that the poem had given him solace. He read it as he eulogized his father at the funeral. I thought I would share it with you today, on Mother’s Day, another day that causes many of us to remember, reflect, and regret.

For some, like me, today is a day to reconnect with old memories of times with our moms. We find remembering to be a way of being together, if just for brief shards of time, with our mothers who have left us here, alone as we navigate our lives. Some memories are beautiful, like sitting on my mom’s lap as a child reading Curious George and the Man With the Yellow Hat; or sitting again, later in life, at the beach in Mexico, holding hands tightly knowing her life was slipping away, but also knowing that we had that moment, each other, and the sea. Other memories bring more pain, like her cancer diagnosis and the image stamped in my mind of the coroner, his gurney, and the black plastic bag he zipped her body into before carrying her from the house. I didn’t wave goodbye from afar like my friend, but here I am, waving from a distance nonetheless, saying hi and goodbye, depending on the moment, and the memory.

I have friends whose moms are alive and well yet, they too, wave from a distance. Separated by land, or time, or emotions that are too deep or too hard to cross. I wonder if today is more painful for them than it is for me. After all my mom is gone, there’s nothing I can do, nor she. But they, on the other hand, can be tormented by the thoughts of should I call? or I wonder if she’ll write? Other people I know are at home, right now, sitting with their moms talking and carrying on and still they feel alone and empty inside, misunderstood. Physically close, but emotionally waving from afar. Some moms I know are alone too. Their kids too busy making a life, or an excuse, to stop by with a bunch of roses for a kiss or a meal. Others sit in regret, wishing they’d put in the time to be there when their kids were young, or not done some of the things they’ve done, that left them there alone on a day we’re told is meant to be spent together.

I know this doesn’t describe us all. You may be spending the day with hugs and smiles and happy stories told by those you love and by whom you’re loved. This isn’t for you. Not that I’m not happy for you, I am. In fact, it’s what my wife and I and our three kids were doing right before I snuck away to write down these thoughts. So for those of you who don’t know this pain, I know that you feel complete and whole and not in need of any of these words. But I also know that the little boy inside, the tender soul who lives in me beyond the smile and dimples my wife and children see today, is a little sad and a bit alone. This is for him and for you, if you’re sad too. This is for all of us, those for whom Mother’s Day is bitter and sweet: Parker J Palmer’s poem, and the knowing that we’re not alone as we share Mother’s Day from afar.

Big hugs of love,

Jason

I think whales are graceful. That’s a funny way to describe a giant moving through the ocean. Whales remind me of my mom. She wasn’t particularly graceful either. She wore crazy socks and tie-die shirts. But she moved through life with a giant heart and an ability to see past the cruelty of the world to find hope in nature. My mom loved whales. I remember eating popcorn with her and watching Jacques Cousteau documentaries on PBS. I’d glance at my mom in between buttery handfuls and see the joy in her eyes. Sometimes she’d even cry. That used to make me laugh. But lately I’ve begun to understand. Nature has graced my heart too.

I read an article recently about giant ocean tankers colliding with whales as the tankers steam across the ocean bringing goods from one side of the globe to the other. It was originally thought that the whales didn’t see the ships. But apparently they do. In fact, they’ve even learned to dive to avoid them. But the ships keep getting bigger and faster and the whales simply can’t evolve quickly enough to keep up with the growing aspirations of a global economy. We want cheap goods fast. So we trade life for expediency.

This trade off – immediacy in lieu of nature – is weaved throughout our culture. As we forget to take time for the whales, we often forget to take time for ourselves. We demand that products arrive overnight at any cost, and we demand the same of ourselves: staying late at the office, ignoring the cost of missed little league games, school plays, and walks in nature with our spouses. When it’s not safe to care for ourselves, it’s impossible to care about each other. In so many ways, a world devoid of nature is a world devoid of love.

When it’s not safe to care for ourselves, it’s impossible to care about each other.

How is it that little boys and girls grow up to build boats that kill whales? What happens in the process of growth that causes us to forget the joy of rolling in the grass? When does getting ahead become so important that we’re willing to plunder life around us? Or as the great poet Mary Oliver asked in prose: “Listen – are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”

Clay Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor and author, answered in this way: “I look at my students who graduate every year, not a single one of them has a strategy to go out and get divorced or to raise kids that hate their guts. And yet a shocking number of our graduating students actually implement that strategy that they did not intend to pursue.” We tend to invest our time in things that pay off quickly. Our need for approval and validation is so strong that we are always looking for the activity that gives us the most immediate evidence of achievement. Making something, shipping something, doing something quickly fills this need. Taking the time to care for a whale doesn’t… nor does caring for ourselves or others.

I’ve applied these questions looking back on my life, wondering what happened to that tender little boy who loved whales and shared popcorn with his mom. There came a time when it was no longer safe to be tender. It became easier, or perhaps safer, to win approval by doing big things than by having a big heart. So like most of us, I embraced our warrior culture. I got a warrior job, I ate warrior foods, and I played warrior games. Being a warrior gave me a quick fix, the immediate sense of achievement, approval from my peers, and the trophies of success. But warriors often end up in a wasteland alone without compassion.

Compassion is slow. It’s born through mindful attention, the antithesis of the expediency of warrior life. The meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg, often quotes a seven-year old boy who, when asked what mindfulness is, replied by saying, “Mindfulness is not punching people in the nose.” Another way of looking at mindfulness might be that we learn to stop punching ourselves in the nose. We connect with our tender nature. We become aware of our need to be loved, to be appreciated, to have meaningful connections with friends and family. We remember the joy of walking outside. We find success in the slow things, sitting in the garden, sipping hot tea on a cold morning, slowing down to allow the whales to pass. We tend to believe that our failing in nature is born from incompatibility, or blind ambition, or even the rapid advance of our technology, but it’s not. The choice isn’t between progress and compassion, but simply between caring and not caring. We love our lives and nature by being mindful to their unfolding.

The choice isn’t between progress and compassion, but simply between caring and not caring.

Since moving to the mountains I’ve been slowly reconnecting with the tender boy inside whose mom taught him to love nature. It’s time to plant our vegetable garden and my wife has been busy making trips to the nursery. I like to spend time with her so I often go along and sit off to the side observing the goings on: the workers who know the particulars of plants with a peculiar precision; the way my wife listens to the whispers of the plants before choosing which ones to bring home; the buzzing of the bees in the wisteria lounging on the fence by the bathroom. I’ve learned the names of plants in the process… the Aptos Blue redwoods in the wooden boxes in the corner, the coral-bark maples taking refuge from the afternoon sun beneath the big-leaf magnolias, the difference between a pineapple-guava and an olive tree. There’s an intimacy in knowing a plant’s name. It’s a slow process, a relationship, like knowing that the guy behind the counter at the coffee shop is actually Stephen, a college student who likes to read Thoreau when he’s not making lattes. We care by being mindful of the nuances of life, and of each other.

So I’ve gotten to know the plants and it’s why I know we can move tankers through the ocean without killing whales. It’s also how I know we can make money while still caring about life. I know these things because the man who charged through life unaware of his impact is in the garden now. I know this because I’ve taken time to pause, and to care and I’ve witnessed softness blossom in my warrior heart. I’ve felt the tenderness bubble to the surface and express itself as tears and essays on nature and compassion. I know there’s hope for the cruelty of our world because I too can be cruel, and still springtime in the garden brings me hope. And I know the names of plants. Nature’s taught me that compassion is possible when we take the time to care. Perhaps that’s why my mom loved whales.

Big hugs of love,

Jason

 

photo credit: Kevin Garner 2016

This morning I woke up early. The frogs have been quite noisy lately outside my bedroom window. I’ve read up on their croaking trying to figure out why they make so much noise and, more importantly, hoping to find a kind way to help them simmer down. One thing I’ve noticed is that they tend to go quiet when people or animals are near. This has added the ironic twist that in moments in the night when they are quiet I find myself wondering what kind of large creature is prowling around my house and kind of wishing the frogs would croak again. Lately I’ve decided the only thing to do is accept them as they are. It is what it is, after all. So when they wake me I get up and meditate, write or — lately — check my phone to see what Donald Trump might have posted on Twitter overnight.

This particular morning I got up and went downstairs to have a warm tea and meditate a bit. I sipped my tea, smiling as its warmth greeted my organs. It’s something the Taoist grandmaster Mantak Chia taught me, saying good morning to your organs. So as I sipped my tea I began quietly: “good morning kidneys, good morning liver, good morning heart” and then I sat in silence amidst the chorus of the frogs. My mind wandered from the frogs into the dreamy space of my thoughts until I became aware of a new sound, a thudding on the ceiling above my head. It reminded me of the sounds the upstairs neighbors at my first apartment would make when they fought. They were deaf and unaware of the noise generated when they stomped and stormed about the house. When it would get to be too much I would knock on their door and ask them to quiet down, after which they always looked at me bewildered, as if I was making the whole thing up. Today’s noise was like that, just not as angry. I thought about going back upstairs to see what was going on but I was a little too lazy, and besides I already had the noise of the frogs.

As I focused on the thumping, I began to notice a beauty and rhythm to it that I had initially missed. It wasn’t just banging; it was purposeful yet free. I soon realized I was hearing my daughter’s feet hitting the floor as she danced. Jadyn, our youngest, is a talented artist. She sings, plays piano, writes music, and most recently dances. She takes classes in ballet and hiphop dance at a nearby studio. We set up her room to allow her to practice and bought her a ballet bar. It’s common for me to see her prancing around the house calling out exotic-sounding dance terms like tombe padebure lisa assemble. But it was a new experience to hear her dance. The thuds and banging became an enchanting soundtrack to my morning as I imagined the joy in her heart and the smile on her face as she graced the dance floor of her dreams.

The Zen teacher and author John Tarrant once told me something interesting. We were meditating together at my home when my dog began to bark. He sensed my agitation and said in his rich Tasmanian accent, “Don’t be snobbish about sounds. They’re all just sounds.” Those words have stuck with me. We tend to get very picky about noise in meditation. We consider particular music, or chimes, or chants, “beautiful,” while the noises of everyday life are a “distraction.” It’s like another teacher told me once as he instructed me to open my eyes during meditation: “We exclude so much of life when we close our eyes.”

That tends to be a major theme for most of us in spirituality — trying to use spiritual practice or beliefs to exclude the parts of our lives we see as bad. In fact, if we’re honest, a desire to tune out all the stuff we don’t like is usually the motivator for tuning into spiritually in the first place. I learned to meditate for that reason. I wanted to be like the images I’d seen in movies where the blissful monk floats above the issues of the world seemingly oblivious to anything but the angels strumming a golden harp on his shoulder. It’s what I imagined I’d find at the Shaolin Temple until I got there and found monks with iPhones and the same hopes and dreams and fears as the rest of us. They just practiced skills to navigate it all.

There are lots of stories in the spiritual world about gurus with special powers. Most of my teachers were students of those gurus and many have amazing tales of what they witnessed at the feet of their teachers … miracles we might call them. I like those stories and I tend to believe most of them. But I also chose long ago not to make that the basis for my practice. I never wanted a fantastic story or magical belief as the foundation for my spirituality. It’s just too easy for it all to fall apart that way — with a scandal or exposé or a bucketful of cold reality. I chose instead to find teachers who I identify with as people and who live life in a skillful way that I wanted to emulate. In short, I chose practice over parables.

I learned this as a young man working at the flea market. The owners were the first millionaires I’d met. Early on I attributed myth-like status to them. They were, after all (cue the bells and whistles) … millionaires. In time though I got to know them as people. Real people just like me. There was nothing special or magical about them. Not that they weren’t unique and interesting, it’s just that they weren’t out of this world. This realization allowed me to fathom for the first time that I too could achieve what they had, because they were just humans who’d developed a set of skills for success.

This was the same experience I had with my mentor Michael Rapino, a brilliant, strategic, and powerful man whose leadership amazed me but who never put on airs or thought of himself as “above” the rest of us. His humanity, more than any other trait, is what drew me to him and caused me to want to learn from him. He taught me the skills to become a leader while not allowing my ego to get out of check. To this day, despite all of his achievements and proximity to rock stars and business luminaries, the notes he sends me are usually about simple human experiences, helping a coworker, spending time with his kids, making a difference. The unwritten message is always that he’s human … just like me.

There’s no area where this is more important than our spirituality. While I enjoy the stories of fantastic feats of enlightenment, I admire, on a more human level, the stories of real-life mastery. Sharon Salzberg doesn’t walk through walls like her teacher Dipa Ma is said to have, instead she rides a taxi through midtown in rush-hour traffic to her meditation classes while practicing the skill of mindful living. Guru Singh can’t manage the weather with prayer as Yogi Bhajan may have, but he braves the storms of life while practicing the skills of teacher, husband, father, and grandpa. Wang Bo hasn’t grown any special powers to levitate or punch holes in trees as the monks of Shaolin are rumored to have done in times gone by; instead he’s navigating growing into a man in Los Angeles while practicing the ancient teachings of his temple. My teachers, in all their glorious humanity, allow me too to be human, they make spiritual mastery possible in real life as they invite me to focus on the practice of opening my eyes and heart to the world around me and not be snobbish with my spirituality.

The meaning of spirituality is realized through the practice of finding meaning in every-day living.

That experience — that we’re in this together, that we share a common humanity, that even as we learn and grow we’re already worthy — is why I write. It’s what I want to share and it’s what I hope you feel when reading my essays. I want to return the gift that life has given to me, the lessons of Michael Rapino, Guru Singh, Sharon Salzberg, the experience I was given at the flea market: that we’re all human, that we’re doing our best, and that ultimately the meaning of our spirituality is realized through the practice of finding meaning in every-day living.

Big hugs of love,

Jason

If you’re a dog owner looking for a compassionate way to quiet your barking dog –
I invite you to check out my son Kevin’s new Bark Solution by clicking here.

A friend of mine recently experienced a couple of entrepreneurial hiccups that have left her emotionally and financially drained. Those experiences have shaken her ego a bit and provoked some deep internal reflection. She called me this week to talk about the insights she’s gained from probing around in the dark shadows of her psyche. “You know,” she said, with the kind of raw emotion that often accompanies the discovery of hidden truths, “I think the hardest thing for me has been letting go of the dream I was clinging to. I really wanted to create these great businesses and lead a team to victory. But it didn’t turn out that way. It’s been really hard letting that dream go …”

The author Té V. Smith wrote: “No one warns you about the amount of mourning in growth.” I’ve been thinking about growth and mourning lately. It’s the part of growth that we don’t consider much when we say we want to grow up. Like the way we used to dream of being adults as kids and now, on so many days, we long to shed the complexity of our grownup lives and go back to the playground. Recently, while on a family vacation in rural Minnesota, I reflected on letting go and stepping forward, and wrote some thoughts down. I called it, New Shoes. I guess it’s a poem of sorts.

New Shoes

I meditated, eyes open, looking out the window into the fog that rested on the water of Lake Superior. Staring across the lake into the window of my soul, I cried. Not because I was sad but because I was growing. Like a new pair of sneakers, we know we’re growing because our toes poke the edges of our shoes — I cried as my growing awareness poked the limits of my being, expanding my tiny heart … opening my constricted soul. It stretched my consciousness, and stretching hurts. But it pales in comparison to the pain of being small. Like cramming my size 13 feet into size 10 shoes, it hurts. So I cried and I was growing. And the fog was lifting. Or perhaps it was being lifted by the rays of the sun, which one by one — isolated and alone — seemed to descend and lift a layer of fog. And I cried because growth is a process of losing ignorance and all loss hurts. But new shoes are fun. And so I cried with joy. And the fog slowly lifted as I stared across the lake …

Getting new shoes as a child was a traumatic event for me. My mom had very little money and I had very big, crazy feet, which seemed intent on wearing through my shoes faster than the feet of other boys did. My poor mom did the best she could to save enough money to keep up with my growing feet, but, inevitably, I’d end up wearing my shoes until I wore holes in the sides. My mom would patch the holes with duct tape and send me back to play in my patchwork shoes until my feet just wouldn’t fit in them any longer. I patched a lot of holes in my life that way — finding interim solutions that never really fixed anything but allowed me to keep going. Two divorces, bad food, good wine, and a life of bells and whistles became my adult version of that duct tape on a lifestyle that, like a pair of old size-thirteens, was wearing thin.

We don’t often associate mourning with growth. We know growth can hurt — no pain, no gain — and that breaking through barriers and going places we haven’t gone previously can be scary and painful. But what about all we leave behind: stories, jobs, trophies, friends, old belief systems? The stuff we say we’re not but, in so many ways, actually are. Our lives are a complex web of identifiers, things we point to as proof of our unique existence. As we grow some of that gets lost, making the experience of growth one of moving forward, but also a death of sorts. The closing out of old chapters as we move on to new ones requires we make peace with what we leave behind … and to do that we have to mourn, which can hurt. I think that’s what Té V. Smith meant when he said that no one warns us about this mourning. It just kinda sneaks up on you one day as you’re going along happily growing. Like a painful skit in the Jackass movies, life catches you by surprise and smacks you square in the heart with the realization that a part (or parts) of who you thought you were no longer are.

Recently my wife, who’s on a sabbatical from her medical practice, called a company for whom, a few years prior, she had built a complex diagnostic protocol. She identified herself, “Hi this is Dr. Christy!” expecting the usual familial response. Instead the person on the other end of the line paused before replying in a puzzled tone, “Sorry … Dr. Who? What’s this regarding?” I noticed a sadness in Christy that night. I gave her a hug and asked what was wrong. She shared the story with me and then said, “I know it’s silly. But it hurts.” I remember the first time I called Live Nation and was asked by a new secretary to spell my last name. It felt like someone had taken my ego out for a long ride into the Vegas dessert and roughed it up. Like Christy, I felt silly to feel hurt by something so intellectually insignificant. But it hurt nonetheless. All mourning does.

In this way, growth provokes mourning, but mourning also provokes growth … the growth of letting go and leaning into life and its lessons. This is why the mourning is important. It’s why we can’t fake our way through life’s lessons with a politician’s grin and a nonchalant “it is what it is.” Life certainly is what it is, but what’s equally true is that it’s not what it’s not. And growth is very often not easy. So we mourn, and through the mourning we learn the lessons life has to share and, perhaps equally important, we learn how to be there for ourselves in times of need.

Many of us are going through some kind of growth right now, moments in which life is asking us to let go of an experience, a person, or a dream that we’ve been holding onto tightly. This comes to us in the form of divorces, job changes, foreclosures, diseases, missed targets at work, watching our children grow up, or saying goodbye to loved ones who’ve passed on. This week I invite you to be authentic to those experiences. To admit that letting go is hard. To allow the truth that growth brings mourning and to allow yourself the space to grieve as you grow. I invite you to be there for yourself, just as a good friend might be, to hold your own heart with the tenderest of thoughts as you slowly let go, and to grow … supported by the knowledge that we are all in this together.

Hold your heart with the tenderest of thoughts as you slowly let go… and grow.

Big hugs of love,

Jason