Two of a Kind

I started thinking about Christopher Columbus when I ran across a mention of an important anniversary observed on January 9th this week. The event took place in 1493, but let me back up a bit. I want to talk about Christopher Columbus. He was a remarkable man in many ways. I say this even as history has tarnished his image as the “discoverer of the New World.” He was a phenomenal navigator, sailor and even astronomer. Four times he sailed across the uncharted Atlantic and returned safely. Each time, he found his way back to the very island he first claimed for Spain in 1492. Hundreds before him sailed off into the Atlantic, never to return.

Until now, however, I never realized how much he had in common with Don Quixote, and not just because both spent a great deal of time in Spain. Throughout his years of adventure, Columbus was, like Quixote, an idealist. He encountered many things, and, just as the Man of La Mancha did, he chose to believe they were something more noble.

To Don Quixote, Aldonza the serving wench and part-time prostitute became the Lady Dulcinea, and Aldonza’s dishrag a silken scarf. Sancho, the manservant, became a squire. A barber’s shaving basin became a helmet that granted the wearer the miraculous power of invulnerability.

To Christopher Columbus, the Dominican Republic was Cathay or China, the island of Cuba was Japan and the outskirts of paradise were in coastal Venezuela.

Don Quixote had a quest and so did Columbus. His was both a material and a religious quest. In the preface to his journal on the first of his four historic voyages, he says (speaking of Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain)

“…Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians… thought to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the said parts of India, to see those princes and peoples and lands…and (showed me) the manner which should be used to bring about their conversion to our holy faith and (you have) ordained that I should not go by land to the east by which way it was the custom to go, but by way of the west by which down to this day we do not know with certainty that anyone has passed…”

And so he sallied forth, four times between 1492 and 1504. While he explored much of the Caribbean, Central and South America, by all accounts he never found China or Japan, or the passage to India, but you wouldn’t know it by reading his journals. To the very end, he persisted in his claims to the contrary. It seems he spent his time convincing himself and the sovereigns of Spain that what he found was indeed the dream he had set out to pursue. He returned each time from his journeys with gold and other treasures. But he dreamed of finding Solomon’s mines in the areas he had explored on his earlier voyages.

He believed he was close to Solomon’s realms of gold when he explored the outer regions of earthly paradise (Coastal Venezuela as it turns out). But another story persists about Christopher Columbus. The one I learned about him earlier this week. Let’s drop in on him for a moment.

It’s early one evening, some months after Columbus and his ships have discovered San Salvador, Cuba and Haiti, which he renamed Hispaniola and claimed for the Spanish Sovereigns, Columbus is standing on the deck gazing out to sea, about to leave for Spain. He is mentally composing the day’s entry in the ship’s journal.

“When the winds once again become favorable we shall sail for Spain. I have indeed found the way to Cathay, and have explored the outer reaches of Japan. What else shall I report? (PAUSE) Oh Ho! Look, there they are! I see three mermaids. I see their eyes and eyelashes. And there, see their tails! With each movement, their great fins break the surface of the waves. Come closer, sea creatures, so I may look upon your beauty. Whoa, you’re not nearly beautiful enough to lure a sailor to his watery grave, are you? In fact, you’re quite homely. (Looking around now) Is anyone else around to see this? Hmmm, they’re all below deck. I am the only witness.”

With that Columbus rushed to his quarters and made this entry in the voyage record:

“Ship’s Journal, January 9, 1493. I have finally seen them with my own eyes—mermaids. They aren’t half as pretty as artists portray them on canvas.”

Columbus returned three times in his search for a strait that would give passage to India, but he was never to find it, and he never again reported a mermaid sighting He was convinced he had come quite close to Solomon’s fabled city of gold, his insistence led the Spanish Sovereigns to fund multiple trips for him. Each time he returned with more treasure, but never the big hit. He returned from his fourth voyage a beaten man in some ways. He’d been denied entry into Hispaniola by its new governor, Queen Isabella was dying, and he would never again enjoy the same favor in the court of Spain. But, like Don Quixote de La Mancha, he kept his vision—that he had found China and Japan, and explored the outer regions of Paradise.

He faced many doubters, but he steadfastly denied discovering a “New World.” In one of his final letters, he lamented the doubters but remarked “at least they never claimed I did not see those mermaids.”

Historians, those myth-busters, point out the mermaids were, more likely, manatees, commonly found in the warm waters of the Caribbean. Would Columbus ever know or admit those homely mermaids were manatees? Did the Man of La Mancha ever stop seeing the Lady Dulcinea where the wench Aldonza stood?

Rules and the Joy in Life

“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

Now I don't know about you, but I am a little surprised to hear a leader of a nation, albeit in-exile, and a religious leader suggesting breaking rules. Most of my religious education in early days was about commandments you had to follow, and rules about when you could eat and what you could eat on certain days. Being told to learn enough to break them effectively may have been my natural bent, but it was "bent" and that was some of the fun of breaking rules. It was getting away with something that was attractive about lots of the things I did in my youth--why else would a teenager take up lighting rolled up dead leaves that came with names like Lucky Strike and Camel and sticking them in his mouth if breaking the rules wasn't fun? And who liked the taste of beer in the beginning? Not me (although you'd never know it now).

I have retained that penchant for wanting to break the rules for most of my adult life, too. I enjoyed being different, not conforming to what others expected, surprising people, being the contrarian. Not that I didn't learn to be the quintessential organization man. I made up for not always following the rules and living up to what was expected by working hard to ensure mostly I was above reproach. But there was always that moment I would seize when I could surprise someone or myself, by doing or saying the unexpected.

It would syphon off every bit of the joy in life if I had to conform all the time. Maybe that's what he's talking about--that little spark of joy that comes from upsetting the apple cart. For a while I was not so sure. I looked up the Four Noble Truths, they are all about suffering, its causes and putting it to an end. I went on to look into the Noble Eight-Fold Path to Nirvana. They are all about wisdom, ethical conduct and concentration--not much room for rule-breaking at a quick glance. I did notice one thing casting about for an answer--I never once saw a picture where the Dalai Lama wasn't smiling. I think I know why.

Goodbyes and Hellos

It's easy to start, harder to stop. Most people begin forming habits without thinking about it. What's a habit but a groove worn into your mind and body, conscious and unconscious? (Merriam-Webster says : a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiologic exposure that shows itself in regularity or increased facility of performance b : an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary, as in 'I got up early from force of habit'). I'm looking at habits while I think about resolutions.

A friend of mine told me yesterday that good lists of resolutions include decisions not to do certain things. Which reminded me of Johnny Cash's hand-written To-Do List recently purchased for $6,400 at a charity auction.

 

Now there's a list that includes things you can stop doing! I am going to include a few things I will say goodbye to as well.

Goals guide habits most fundamentally by providing the initial outcome-oriented impetus for response repetition. In this sense, habits often are a vestige of past goal pursuit. Habits become part of the problem when they are only vestiges of not-so-good goals, like "I think I'll be lazy today, sleep in and not exercise. Hmmm, that sleeping in felt good yesterday, and today is Saturday, why don't I just take weekends off?"

Habit has allowed you to tie your shoes without thinking, If you seem to forget after wearing slip-ons for half your life, you can recapture the ability to tie your shoe, by setting the goal of mindfully tying your shoes. Tying the shoe is a goal-directed behavior now, and no longer relies on the habit mechanism.

This implies to me that goals ought to be routinely adjusted to ensure the brain does not rely on habits for control of day-to-day activity.

So, with this motivation in mind, I will focus on developing a goal-directed approach, using higher goals and sub goals, and developing a higher level of mindfulness needed to act mindfully in pursuit of these goals. So today, I'm choosing Twenty-Eleven habits to which I will say goodbye.

TWENTY ELEVEN GOODBYES

• Sitting in the same chair,
  
• Walking to work the same way.
  
• Eating meals quickly.
  
• Eating left-handed.
  
• Overeating
  
• Evening sweet or salty snacks.
  

 

And some new activities for the coming year.

 

TWENTY TWELVE HELLOS

• Practice of meditation daily,
  
• Tracking mindful actions each day on calendar dedicated to that use.
  
• Mindfully performing daily exercises.
  
• Regularly learning new exercises.
  
• Initiating conversations.
  
• Smiling
  
• Kissing my wife (thank you Johnny Cash)
  

 

You can see it's a work in progress, but so am I.

 

Internet shopping vs. brick and mortar shopping

Count me among those who believe Internet shopping will never eclipse brick and mortar shopping. Oh, I don't think internet shopping has reached its peak, but there will always be brick and mortar store shopping. Here's my top ten list of the reasons--

No. 10. Whenever my wife wants girl time with our female house guest(s), shopping is the perfect means to ditch the husbands.

No. 9. No one ever had to stop for lunch while out internet shopping with said female house guest(s).

No. 8. Provided you are not foolish enough to offer it to a sales clerk when asked, you will not receive a lifetime sentence--er, subscription--to the store's email newsletter when you shop in person.

No. 7. The thrill of buying something that "must have been mismarked--it rang up even cheaper than I thought." You won't find that on the internet.

No. 6. The experience of instant gratification far outdistances the excitement of getting a package at your door.

No. 5. Sales clerks generally don't repeatedly fail to complete a transaction because the 16-digit code is incorrect, the security code has not been entered, an invalid email address has been entered, you/they have timed out, you have forgotten your user id,

No. 4. Your memory or typing skills don't produce any of the following barriers to just buying the darn thing: you have forgotten your password, your password has expired, your password is case-sensitive, your password does not contain a !@#$%^&*()+ etc.(although your vocabulary might).

No. 3. You can't read tabloids waiting in line at your computer.

No. 2. The ultimate compliment—the sales clerk admiring your purchases—cannot happen via the internet

No. 1. Returning items purchased on the internet doesn't require/allow another outing with lunch.
 

I think you get my drift.

Health Is…

We get awfully attached to being healthy. We even expect the earth to stay healthy, with that expectation fueling the environmental movement. "The earth will last forever if we take better care of it," they seem to say. Yet we know the universe is winding down and that our sun will someday burn out and go dark. These cosmic events are so comfortably distant we don't see the immediacy of it. But I have to admit I have always thought of health and death as opposites. Fact is, health and death define each other.

For years I have read much about Buddhism, primarily Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and Vipassana meditation. I have also spent a fair amount of time meditating, though not nearly enough to learn what I need to learn to understand impermanence, but I have worried the edges of my attachments.

Now, I regard myself as a much more healthy-minded person than my parents were, especially in the area of exercise. At my age, my Father had bad knees and usually came home, sat down and read the paper. He rarely moved from that chair. At this time of year, we recall how he spent each New Year's Day glued to the television, watching football. He was rarely physically active. My Mom was much the same, keeping watch on him. She was all about healthy eating, but not exercise. I eat healthier than my father did, and I exercise roughly five hours a week. I note my life expectancy is longer than my father's, but now I have to face the truth that health is merely a slower means of dying. I think the statement has some irony to it. We expect health to be the means to outwit death, but we know in our hearts there really is no escaping it. But still, the older we get the more we pursue good health as hard as we can.

As parents, we have assumed our thirty-something son will become more health conscious when he gets a little older, more mature, wiser, etc. We tell ourselves it's maturity. If he will only get a little more mature, he'll take better care of himself. I wondered why we seem to become more health-conscious as we get older. Not hard to figure, is it? We are watching death approach, so we are getting attentive to our health. Not so we can feel better, or live forever, we just want to slow the rate of dying. The Dalai Lama marvels at us humans who make plans and prepare for everything, but get squeamish about being always prepared for death. It's not attributed to him, but I am sure he'd agree, "Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which you can die." So, health is a rate at which death happens. There is no denying it, but how will you live your life differently once you really wrap your mind around it? It means more than trying to be healthier, doesn't it?

When Santa Is Generous With Airplane Time

On my 103rd flight this year, I got some extras. First, we got an extra stop. After circling Atlanta for an hour, we were running low on fuel. This gave us the opportunity to visit Nashville. Amazingly enough, Nashville looks exactly like any other city from inside the plane. Our pilot optimistically predicted we'd be back in the air in no time, which in pilot-speak is something a tad longer. We spent a very pleasant hour there, during which time we lost only one passenger, who bailed, realizing he would not make his connection and that Nashville is closer to his final destination than Atlanta. Most of us just shook our heads, thinking we would still make our connections and that he was just a pessimist.

This gave way to a pleasant conversation I had with my seatmate, a 17-year old from Milwaukee, on the merits of being fundamentally pessimistic and thus pleasantly surprised most of the time with how life plays out. I told him I barely remember being seventeen, but that I believe I had chosen pessimism at least that early. (I made a hotel reservation in Atlanta, assuming I wouldn't make my connection.)

It's not that we are negative, just that life is not a big disappointment if you don't see things turn out exactly as you wanted them to. Is this compatible with Napoleon Hill? Probably not. But I think the two can coexist. I have a book entitled What Would Napoleon Hill Do? And the topic is covered objectively in my opinion. To me, his whole segment on profiting by failure is an endorsement of a healthy pessimism. Pessimists are just covering their bets and maintaining an attitude that allows them to maintain when things don't turn out optimally. "Oh, I thought that might happen." Is an easier proposition to accept than "I don't believe this is happening!" Pessimists anticipate failure, not defeat. Hill even points out the language of defeat (not failure) must be one we don't understand, or we wouldn't repeat self-defeating behaviors all the time. Failure, on the other hand, offers lessons from which we can learn if we are prepared to do so. Pessimists are just better prepared to learn from failure.

But back to airplane time—after we discharged our pessimistic passenger, we promptly took off for Atlanta as promised by our optimist pilot. Who knew? We headed straight in to ATL, and landed just 35 minutes later. I quickly turned on my phone and tracked down the flight status on my connection. I had more than 20 minutes. With luck, and a gate less than a mile's walk away? I probably won't make it, I thought, but I might. We taxied in. It took us about ten minutes, about average in Atlanta. When we turned into the lane between the concourses, our old pal, the optimist pilot, comes on to tell us our gate is occupied, but he is sure we'll be assigned another soon. A full hour later, we arise from our seats to get off our plane, which has now been our home in the sky—and on the ground—for five and a half hours. At this juncture, I have plenty of time to make my connection—tomorrow. Merry Christmas

G-men’s Beginning

They waited a long time. In a sort of platoon of two dozen, they waited for "the season." How they came together is something from ancient earth, and beyond understanding to many. But they wait to take birth. Slowly it begins, a door opens, a search begins. The list is written down somewhere, of course, but by now it is part of memory that reappears each time the season begins. Each item on the list has been stored, but the supply must be enough. From time to time, the stores are drawn down between seasons, for good uses, but never in service of what the platoon awaits.

Whatever is found to be in short supply must be replenished, and it is obtained in ways that obscure its true source in ancient earth. But it is assembled just the same. There may be more than one stop in the journey to lay in those supplies, but it all must be done. All the while, they quietly watch and wait. It has begun.

What will happen in this process? How will we look? Names are considered. All considered must begin the same way. Some are ancient and traditional, such as Gerald, Geraldine, George, Georgeanna, Gina, Genevieve, Geoffrey, Gerard, Giovanni, Giselle, Giuseppe, and, of course, Ginny. Others come and go, like Geraldo, Genifer and Giancarlo. Still others arise like Gary, Gil, Glenn, Gordon, Goldie, Grace, Gabriella, Greg and Gloria.

The season has arrived with its onset of chills. The birthing team had quietly set the date. On the eve of the formative day, the day when all will take their immediately recognized form, the mixing begins. Their assembly comes in stages. This is where the characteristics they will display take root. There are sensory imprints—texture, body size, even aromas are more often than not determined at this stage.

Finally, the day arrives. They begin.

In this form of existence, they will be aware or conscious beings. As such, their awareness includes aspiration—one, to delight in appearance, decorating the lives of others, or, two, to attain completeness and benefit others by satisfying their desire. In either case, they will last less than an entire season. They know when they take this form what is in store, death of a sort—being consumed or discarded by season's end. They could not achieve their aspiration without doing so. But still this is seen as a favorable form of taking birth.

First they are rolled flat, then cut in a traditional shape. Their form is decorated, with face and features and clothing. There are buttons, large and round with a hard shell coating. Then the firing begins and they take birth, some for the first time in this form, others yet again. Soon eyebrows, hair, eyes and mouth arrive like frosting on a cake,

The secret to a favorable rebirth is one's state of mind at the moment of death. Much time is spent waiting for that moment, being consumed in service to others.

So do they think of this death and worry? By and large, they subscribe to what the sage said, "If there is a way of avoiding death, then there is no need to worry, but if there is not, there is still no need to worry." Oh, the life of a gingerbread man.