If You’re Going….

A friend of mine is planning to spend the summer in San Francisco, and I think she's looking forward to it. She's a much better writer than I, so I am hoping she'll write a sort of travelogue describing her experience. It's all for purely selfish reasons, as I am planning to spend a week there in October and would like someone to screen it for me so I only see the best parts—we don't have all summer, you know. For now, the best way I know of to share the experience is to pretend it was really me heading there. For reasons I do not understand, music is often the first thing that pops into my mind when I picture myself traveling somewhere. I am not a musician, and, while I enjoy listening to music, I don't take the time to work it into my life with ear buds or stereos. I'll listen in my car, but, living on an island, I am blessed with a life of only brief car trips in my leisure time—twenty minutes is a long car ride.

Anyway, back to the task at hand, it is not "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" that comes to my mind first (old fogeys come in degrees, and that one is just a few degrees older than I am). Instead, I remember this is the 45^th anniversary of "the Summer of Love" and the tune that comes to mind goes like this—

If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you're going to San Francisco
You're gonna meet some gentle people there

For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
In the streets of San Francisco
Gentle people with flowers in their hair

Yes, it's Haight-Ashbury in the 60's. Newly formed hippies (perhaps as many as 100,000) flocked to this old bohemian neighborhood in SF, seeking an ideal some never found, some found and lost, and some found and still retain. There were skyrocketing ideals, and lowlife experiences. As Bob Weir, guitarist for the Grateful Dead, puts it: "Haight Ashbury was a ghetto of bohemians who wanted to do anything - and we did, but I don't think it has happened since. Yes there was LSD. But Haight Ashbury was not about drugs. It was about exploration, finding new ways of expression, being aware of one's existence."

The musical artists they flocked to hear still reverberate in my head, among them the The Doors, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Otis Redding, The Byrds, and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin.

But, with all that said, I wouldn't seek the hippie experience. I loved the music, but…. Even by October after that summer, homelessness, drug abuse, poverty and more set in.

Yet today, we still spend more time asleep to the present moment, reliving the past, and pre-living the future, and missing out on the real present. Still, it's the mindfulness and the awareness I seek. Being in the present moment was a part of all that and probably the only part worth keeping. It's still worth seeking for as long as we still breathe. So, if you're going to San Francisco, you can wear some flowers in your hair (some of us look better than others that way), but better yet, be mindful of the precious moments you have and aware of where you are.

Taking A Chance

Early today, someone told me a story about three statements he heard one day in a hospital room, and he asked me to think about them—"Why am I here?" Then "It must be something important." And finally, "I don't have much time left." The point is, spending a bit of time with these questions can be worth your while and might make a difference in how you live.

"I don't have much time." Without being morbid about it, none of us knows how much time we have. Surprises happen.

"Is it something important?"I am not among those "who feel that life is but a joke." There have been just a few too many meaningful and rewarding moments to let me believe what we do doesn't matter. I prefer to view that one on the smallest of scales—there are people I can directly touch and that has added meaning to my own life. So "why am I here?" and am I on the right track?

Someone reminded me today that every time I've made a change or moved, I've wound up better off. Now, these are life-changing choices I'm talking about. This comment was made on the anniversary of a lucky change I made many years ago. There have been thirteen since the one I just mentioned—some of them overlap--moves from job to job, company to company, house to house. I count nine jobs, within three companies, in ten different places we've called home. Counted that way, it's twenty-two. Either way, I regret none of them. Oh sure, I wish I could have avoided the equity drain from my current house, but who has been able to avoid that one, besides renters?

Choices. As you might have guessed, I am facing a couple of them right now. I'm sure it's time to just get on with it, but still I wish I knew for certain which way to move and when. But, if I reflect on most of those choices, I was just ready to roll the dice. It often had to do as much with what I was leaving behind as it did with what I was moving toward. Oh, I know you aren't supposed to be running away, but I know it was a factor at least four of those times, maybe more. Only once was there no clear evidence I expected the change would improve my life—a lateral move motivated more by who/what I was getting away from than what I was moving into. Ironically, that move proved to be a real game-changer, perhaps the best move I ever made.

So, today I'm making the first step in a two or three step change. I know what I'm leaving behind, the good and the bad about it, and I know an increasing part of my motivation is coming from a desire to leave it behind. Leaving it will entail some sacrifice, but I think it's time. The first step is really making this change possible. But the focus is still on what I'm leaving to an extent. So, where to? I think I'll figure out why I'm here just by taking a chance.

How Well Do You Know Your Brain?

Earlier this week, I received an email with the question above in the subject line. It prompted several thoughts, none of which landed anywhere close to the subject of the email message which was sent by Web MD. I am not sure if Web MD has me pegged as someone interested in brain research, or if they were just trying to attract the attention of all their email subscribers. In any case, it was a quiz on brain research. I started it twice and, the 2^nd time I had 88% right, and was branded 'an Einstein among responders,' for answering 88% of the questions correctly. That's 15 out of 17, but I guessed right on three of them, so I could as easily have scored 70% and been an 'also ran' like anybody else.

The truth is I thought it was a message about knowing yourself, a subject I don't suppose even occurs to modern email publishers, including those at WebMD. Reading a PR expert recently, I came across the notion that the best speakers aren't those with the best content, but those that share a little bit of themselves when they speak. It reminded me of Thoreau, who famously wrote "I should not write so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.' People can engage with writers like Thoreau, not because they like the woods, but because they know they will get a bit of Thoreau himself in the mix, and they keep coming back for that—at least I know that's what I come back for. The facts about the woods surrounding Walden Pond hold no particular interest for me. There's a pond back of my house I could walk around, but Thoreau wouldn't be along sharing what enters his mind.

The other thought all this gives rise to is Socrates' oft-repeated dictum—"know thyself." It is inscribed atop a famous building from that era, too….OK; I looked it up—the Temple of Apollo at Delphi… There are at least a dozen ancient Greeks to whom scholars attribute the statement, but Socrates spoke about it a great deal. One of the many takeaways from Socrates on the topic was the folly of attempting to learn the seemingly obscure things without first attempting to know oneself. You simply don't have a reference point for all those factoids you assemble. Makes a lot of sense to me. All too often, I hear people drone on and on about some obscure notion, but they never relate it to themselves (and thus don't reach me).

But another lesser-known aphorism Socrates liked was "nothing too much," a concise way to say "all things in moderation." So, enough about all this.