in so many words

Cancer and the Cure II

2012-02-11T11:12:00.000-05:00

Maybe I was wrong: http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/athletes/lance-armstrong/Its-Not-About-the-Lab-Rats.html

Armstrong has his detractors and what appears to be a legion of defenders (Take a look at the long list of comments following Bill Gifford's Outside article). The thing I find interesting is that whenever anyone in any magazine or newspaper or website questions the person behind the image such as any figure as popular as Lance Armstrong they are attacked as journalists with a personal vendetta. Attack the questioner; never hold one's idols up for scrutiny in the name of objectivity.

We are always free to disagree with what we read and it is healthy to hold writers to high standards. Is their thinking as expressed in their writing logical and does the writer attempt to find facts, even while expressing an opinion? To question some one's motives because they say things we don't like to hear or which we find distasteful is myopic. People should know there is no such thing as complete objectivity (Hence the ascendancy of Fox News). We all come to every activity with our own perspective, history and philosophies. Our own baggage. Even, ahem, writers and journalists.

It's troubling to me that Armstrong and his attorneys felt the need to call Gifford up early in the morning and excoriate him for what he wrote. Why did this particular article bother Armstrong so much that he had to angrily call Gibson if Gibson hadn't hit somewhat close to home? Do we call up every person who ever says something about us we don't like? And why should Armstrong care what Gibson writes if he is secure in what he is doing? It won't be news in 15 minutes.

I have my own internal battle with separating my admiration for Lance the athlete, the cyclist, and all his achievements both on and off the bike, from this developing picture of an egotistical, manipulative and insecure demi-god who has opportunistically taken advantage of his achievements in the cycling world to line his pockets behind a shield of a legitimate cancer organization.

Much ado about nothing. If Lance Armstrong is that worried about his legacy, he could spend more time focusing on his stated mission of raising awareness for cancer survivors and enjoying his status of one of the world's premier athletes (whether he is a cheater or not). As a cancer survivor myself, I'm certain I would give a hell of a lot to have Lance Armstrong's world stage.

Thanks for reading.

Catastrophe and the Cure

2011-12-22T09:59:00.000-05:00

In 1982 my mother died of pancreatic cancer. She suffered greatly to the end. A year shy of thirty years since my mom's death, I was diagnosed with kidney cancer. My cancer experience was much different from hers; she felt the misery of radiation and chemotherapies and ultimately medicine's failure to cure; I went into the hospital one day and simply had the tumor--and my left kidney--excised. Cancer gone. Cured. Catastrophe averted.

In fact, it's almost as if my cancer diagnosis and treatment were a book I read or a movie I saw. It was over so quickly. I often forget that my health was tripped up by cancer until I look in the mirror in the morning and see the four scars on my stomach that are the only sign that I was even sick.

I thought about this today as I shuffled through the webpages of Livestrong. (http://livestrong.org/). Livestrong is filled with some of what you might expect from a website dedicated to a specific illness. There are sections on understanding the physical and emotional impacts of the disease from experts, avenues for information for cancer patients, their families and for practitioners, including a hotline directly to the Foundation for information, the inevitable requests for donations, and a store where one can buy t-shirts, hoodies, backpacks and technical running clothing from Nike emblazoned with the Livestrong moniker.

And the famous yellow wristbands.

The iconic yellow band is as symbolic if not more than the pink ribbon in the fight against cancer. Once as ubiquitous as fancy coffee travel mugs or cups from Starbucks are today, the thin yellow rubber straps don't seem as prominent now. In fact they are scarce compared to when every movie star and celebrity, even President Barack Obama, wore one. I bought a small cache of them when Nike first issued the wristbands during the mid-1990's when Lance Armstrong, who started the Foundation, was battling testicular cancer.

Not long ago, I stopped wearing my own Livestrong wristband. I associated the wristband not with the Foundation and its efforts to assist cancer patients and their families in the war on cancer, but with Lance Armstrong himself. To me Armstrong has always been Livestrong. But the Did-he-or-Did-he-not controversy surrounding Armstrong's alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs and techniques during his run of Tour de France victories tainted both the athlete and the Foundation he created. I found separating the good work of the Livestrong Foundation and the national attention it garnered to cancer, not to mention the money it raised, from the idea that Armstrong cheated his way to seven TdF wins simply too difficult. Lately, it seemed, Armstrong's detractors had been able to amass enough evidence that the nagging doubts I had about how clean he was and which I buried out of admiration for him grew too large. Armstrong, I came to believe, is a doper like so many pro-cyclists. My disappointment was so great that one day I ripped the iconic wristband off and vowed never to support Armstrong Inc. ever again.

I was wrong.

On the Livestrong website are stories of cancer survivors who have been helped by the Livestrong Foundation and who continue the good fight against cancer. Ordinary people whose inspiring stories provide hope for tens of thousands of other cancer patients and their families. The reach of the Livestrong Foundation is amazing and the stories of cancer survivors are heartwarming.

Then it occurred to me. I, too, am a cancer survivor. I didn't endure the hardship of endless trips to clinics to get shot with radiation or a cocktail of dangerous chemicals pushed through my veins. But does the fact that my treatment was less taxing mean that my cancer story is less valid? (I'm currently working on an essay about my cancer story but that will wait for another time.)

I have decided that I can legitimately wear the yellow Livestrong wristband because I have authentic personal experience as a cancer survivor, both as a family member who lost a loved one and as a victim who actually had cancer. I might be fooling myself separating the work of the Livestrong Foundation from the rumors and innuendo around Lance Armstrong the athlete, but it works for me for now. Whatever truths are borne out in the controversy about Armstrong's alleged doping, for me the work of the Livestrong Foundation will stand on its own, untarnished and worthwhile.

We cancer survivors deserve our symbols I think and I'm again wearing my Livestrong wristband. My friend Harrie said to me, cancer survivors "belong to the best club in the world that no one wants to be a part of." Whether I like it or not, I'm a member of this club and, in a way, tied to those cancer survivors who have told their own stories on Livestrong.org.

Thanks for reading...

Stair Porn

2011-12-15T08:43:00.000-05:00

Stairs. Simple. Functional. Uninteresting?

My fiancé and I are working on our home. It's a simple tri-level ranch that was commonly built in Ann Arbor in the 1950s. It is one of four or five different styles of similar ranches in our urban neighborhood about a mile from downtown.

Their simplicity makes them a perfect base for thoughtful renovation. Some of our neighbors have renovated, added, painted or done something to these cool structures, thus imprinting their own unique design aesthetic. But we have also been surprised that more have done nothing.

Our simple ranch is evolving as a reflection of our design sense too, some just by painting. But we've added some other touches too.

Now we are stuck on stairs. It would be easy to be content with stairs' simple function of serving as a way to get from one level to another. But they are so prominent in our main living area they are the perfect element with which to get creative.

Stairs, we have learned, can be art. They can be a design statement on their own or, as in our case, an integral design element reflecting an overall design aesthetic.

We recently came across a couple cool websites that talk to this design approach. Here are two:

http://www.eestairs.com/en/

http://www.stairporn.org/

It might seem crazy to give so much attention to stairs. After all, they are just, well, stairs. But after looking through magazines, websites, even other peoples' homes and sitting on our couch looking at our own stairs, we've realized how significant they are. We don't take lightly the opportunity to use the space they take up to complement our vision.

I have come to think of the most incredible staircase designs a sort of "elevation art." We have salivated often over the pages of Atomic Ranch http://www.atomic-ranch.com/ and Dwell http://www.dwell.com/ where we have seen extraordinary design. Usually with a price.

I have explored costs of designing and building a custom staircase out of metal and wood with a mono-stringer. One company would charge me more than $6,000. A grand per step? Really? But I was able to get an architect friend involved in a simple design using a CAD process. Then I found a local metal fabricator who would build it for about $1,200. I'd have to transport the pieces (another challenge). The design is simple, clean and blends well with other elements in our home. Is spending so much energy, effort and money going over the top? We have our limits. Yet if one thinks about it, and certainly in our case, the stairs are such a prominent feature of our main living area, not giving them attention seems like a crime.

Our next project?

I've found that design and renovation has a certain pace. I get so jazzed when I come across what at first appears to be a fucking cool idea. Then I begin adapting to our home and jump into solving all the challenges posed in making the renovation a reality. Every project poses new problems that need solved in the process of getting from napkin to completion. Every time I've allowed my zealousness to overtake patience, I've made mistakes. As I tackle larger projects, I've found more patience and thought--a kind of renovation zen deliberate-ness--prevents my tendency to bumble from being disastrous.

So the stairs haven't been completed yet. Financial issues and some other life stuff have gotten in the way. But the design is here on my laptop and in my head. And I have the estimate from the fabricator in a file somewhere. I'm certain it will happen. In time.

But wait until you see our next project...

Thanks for reading...

Take care, take care, take care.

2011-08-30T19:58:00.003-04:00

I am noodling on my bike. Noodling is a good term for what I do, which is something close to commuting to work. If I were committed, I would be a true bike commuter regardless of obstacles such as weather or daylight or simple laziness. But I am only testing the waters right now because the weather is good and the ride is mostly downhill. It’s reasonably convenient because I don’t need a car to get to other places from work at the moment.

Noodling is what you do when you haven’t figured things out. You try something. It doesn’t work well or look right and you try something else. You keep doing that until it becomes too difficult and you suck it up because it gets into your skin and you accept it, or you quit and drive your car to work.

My goal is to go until Oct. 2, the day after my boss will supply me with a bus pass. Once the cold weather settles in I wonder how committed I will be to being environmentally conscious. Right now I feel a smug pleasure peddling my bike into town as the less environmentally aware truck by with their fancy commuter coffee mugs and their air clogging SUV’s. Will they be smirking their comfortable smirks at me and the few who stick to cycling when it’s in the 30’s and the rain and snow come? Or will my commuting become a May to October thing, like a flirtation with eco-cycling culture but not a true adaptation? How much am I willing to suffer (and risk) for a mile and a half each way?

Then there is the dark. I already have noticed a change in the quality of light in the late afternoon as I leave work and get onto my bike amid the rush of cars leaving downtown. The light in late summer and early fall has a mellow, soft ebb into darkness. Come the middle of October it’s as if someone turns a switch on the sun at 5 pm and I will find myself cycling in the dark uphill amid the ribbons of bright headlights and the glow of red tail lights.

I bought a tail light I’ve attached to the rack on the back of my bike. It has a couple settings that flash “Watch out! I am here!” as I ride amidst the cars on the road. I hear stories frequently about cyclists getting “curbed” or shoved off the road by drivers too absorbed in NPR and their own lives to pay attention to cycling idiots like me. I have to admit that I was guilty of that same lack of awareness once.

The first notion I had that cycling culture was cool was when I read a book back in 2000 or 2001 called “The Immortal Class” by Travis Hugh Culley about bicycle messengers in Chicago. The book was controversial among the bike messenger culture because it purported to be an authentic memoir of what it’s like to slog through icy slush in Chicago during the winter and endure $2 runs, sore, aching muscles and immense fatigue during the summer. But bike messengers accused Culley of being a poseur dressed in messenger clothing. Nevertheless, Culley’s words inspired me to think about the bike as a way of life. My mountain-cum-commuter bike has has transitioned from a toy I occasionally played with on trails to a legitimate mode of transportation. Well, almost.

Like I said, as long as the weather remains less than miserable and I can avoid assholes and potholes I will strive to do my part to not contribute to the deterioration of the ozone. But after Oct. 1 all bets are off.

19 april 2011 tuesday

2011-04-30T11:01:00.000-04:00

I sit in a library, surrounded by millions of words on pages, yet my words won’t come. Why can’t I write? Cold outside. Not spring as it’s supposed to be. My heart is black. Stacks and stacks of books, novels, great stories, accomplished writers and novices alike. They who wrote and published will be kings. I am a wasteland. Not a teen age wasteland. Old. Unaccomplished. Gave up. Where is the work ethic? My mind is made up. No it’s not. Lost without being a writer. Searching. Searching for meaning. For something to write about. Novel? Hell no, there’s not one in here. Empty. Vague thoughts. No clarity. Only failure. Building momentum like a train on a track/cliche. Yay, now I can use only cliches. My head aches, no, my heart aches for the words to come. Am I stupid? Why can’t I write? Not too many things I’ve really wanted to do. Run. Write. Laugh. Be funny. Get lost in stories and let time slip by. Nothing else very important. Talk. Have coffee. Go to desk and write. Here in this library. This could be my desk. If I had a thought. Frustrating. Thirteen year old daughter writes better. Yay! Good for her. Old man can’t write. Can’t do shit. What is he but a waste of air and resources? So much trying and do little doing. Nothing getting done. Don’t you wish you were going to Walloon on full scholarship. That would mean some hope for you. But nope. You suck. Better chance of becoming a carpenter or a rocket scientist. Losing. Stepping farther away. That dream just took the downtown bus and I am headed out to the suburbs where no thinking happens. You suck. You suck. No story. You will die without ever having written your story. Only one in you? Nope. Not even one. Zip. Nada. Plenty of people have written more and better than you. You gave up. You quit on yourself. On your dream. Too hard. Too hard. Yet it eats your insides. Eats you all the way up. And down. Hopeless wannabe you are. You never lived up to your promise. It feels too late now. What about your blog. You haven’t looked at that for months. Yes, that’s because I don’t want to write any more dreck. Tired of filling the web with crap. Why contribute when you have no eloquence nor relevance. Stop it. Stop it. Rattle on. Rattle and Hum. Name of a U2 Album I think. Yes I know. Can’t see the story. Can’t hear the story. Can’t see the story. Getting farther away. Won’t ever grasp. Gone. Gone. Gone. Baby. See ya! Bus left the station. Cliche again. Cliches are easy because they are easy. Kill them. All cliches are to be executed. Nothing executed by you. Only sentences that peter out. No short story. No novel. Too hard. Unfocused. You haven’t focused. When do you write? When I’m upset. Once in a while. Take your pick. It’s supposed to be your job to write. Write. Write. Right. Write right. Right write. People have written books and you haven’t. Read more you should. Yoda would. Association by association. Connections. Words become sentences become paragraphs become stories become novels through connections. Read more. Read more. Write more. Read more=write more. Simple. Complex. Complex web we weave. She has kit kats on the table. wafers and chocolate. Sugar. Don’t need sugar. Need a run. Back to what running was. Pure. Simple. Pleasure. Strong. Not complicated. Not painful weighty. Releasing. Peaceful. Clear head. Run. Swiftly. Through the forests. Can’t touch me. I’m gone. Can’t harm me. Hah, you missed. I’m gone. Too swift. Silent. Can hear my breathing. Can hear my heartbeat. I’m alive. Still.

Owning our baggage

2011-01-28T10:44:00.001-05:00

Colin Cowherd, known for his radio show on ESPN "The Herd", is among those media types who likes to say, "Own your baggage." He berates callers who support sports figures, coaches and players alike, who don't live up to the standard of taking responsibility for their behavior. Which I take to mean be responsible for your own choices and decisions. I think it's worthwhile advice regardless of what one thinks of Cowherd, or ESPN or the whole sports-military-industrial complex.

I have to own up to this myself. A good friend recently shared with me that she just got a great job with a particular company that I once worked for and have had substantial disdain for ever since I left. She was ecstatic, having been offered one of a small number of positions that thousands had applied for. She had a right to be enthusiastic. It's a great move for her career.

Yet I found myself delivering a less than enthusiastic response, using phrases like "Be careful," "It's just a big corporation like any other corporation" and, "They just use people and spit them out." While my intentions were certainly not to squelch this great moment in my friend's life, I have to wonder if I wasn't simply trying to salve old wounds with my words. After all, I left this company under less than ideal circumstances. Okay I was fired. And it broke my heart. It was, at the time, a dream job with my dream company. A pinnacle in my industry. I left, as they say, under a cloud.

Twenty years ago.

Yeah, I know.

Is it possible that I looked upon my friend's awesome career opportunity as a chance for me to feel bad? Or worse--jealous? Ick.

So I've been thinking about how we as a people go to great lengths to minimize or even shirk entirely our own garbage when giving advice to others. How many of us are really very good at owning our own poor choices, our own bad thinking, our own situations that go awry? Me? I'm often crappy at it? Or, I can go the other way: I can be so good at owning up to my responsibilities I'll take on yours and that person's sitting next to you at the espresso bar right now. It's an escape hatch that in some twisted way makes me feel better because I'm so magnanimous in a backasswards way.

I should have been more aware of my own feelings regarding what happened to me twenty years ago and stepped away enough to appreciate how good my friend felt about her career opportunity. In effect, I took away her journey and superimposed my own. I get reminded of this all the time by my close Bu-Jew friend regarding my children.

As parents we often forget that our children are each on their own journeys. Time after time, we parents lay on our own baggage carried from our own childhoods onto our poor kids like they are the ones who caused us problems. Often I have to stop and remind myself to sort out what is my stuff from my past and what isn't.

I am genuinely happy for my friend (and maybe a little jealous too). This is an outstanding career opportunity for an outstandingly qualified person. I am sure she will make contributions to this company's success. Her experience working at this company will be hers. Mine ended twenty years ago. My own baggage.

Thanks for reading....

Anti-corporate culture?

2010-12-12T08:34:00.000-05:00

I don't watch much TV but I'm aware of a reality show that's premise is having the CEO or boss or owner secretly work with street-level employees who are unaware that this person is really the big cheese at the company.

It's billed as a huge learning experience for some out of touch CEO who re-learns what it's like for most of his employees and a chance in the end for the employees to show the exec the challenges and difficulties they face every day.

My girlfriend works at a place in Ann Arbor where the owners have no out-of-touch issues. In fact, I just heard one of the owners say to the employees nearest him, "It's great working with so many great people. I love working with you guys." This particular owner shows up just about every day, grabs a table near the back, samples the coffee to ensure it's up to snuff, and sits to write for a while. He also observes and interacts with employees, holds meetings, and manages this, one of six or seven businesses he and his business partner co-own. At night he walks through the restaurant they also co-own and fills water glasses.

He also writes books and with his business partner is involved in community projects in Ann Arbor. Neither of these owners couldn't be said to be out-of-touch with their businesses or their employees even though they have scores of employees across the six or seven businesses.

It is pretty easy to compare this work atmosphere to my current job or to other places at which I have worked. There is very little if any of the typical corporate hierarchy here. Employees are trained in all phases of their job responsibilities and taught about the other businesses in the company. They are also given the power to make decisions with affect the experience their customers have with the business; they worry about discussing why the employee decided to solve that customer's particular issue later.

When so many people are out of work and so many people are worried about keeping their jobs, it's an interesting contrast to this place where employees feel a bond, feel empowered and cared for. That they were hired because of their unique gifts and the contribution they make to the business that is uniquely their own. I've worried about the safety of my job plenty of times, especially after being laid off in the tumultuous economy of the past couple of years. As much as I hate to admit it, I've thought about the how being laid off affected me emotionally and psychologically--as well as financially--plenty of times in the process of doing my job in this, my second experience with the company. It's affected at least to some degree how I approach difficult situations with customers because I've realized that there will be people back east in the home office that might look at my decisions critically and, worst case scenario thinking here, pull the plug on me. Back to job hunting. Back to eyeballing my fragile bottom line.

So I often come to where my girlfriend works to breathe some of the air here and to do some of my own observing. To watch the employees interact with their guests. To watch the employees interact with each other.

They are a diverse group but also seem to have some thread in common: they remind me of some of the less popular kids with whom I went to high school. The ones who seemed tuned into a different song than the rest of us, who were more into conventional stuff. They seem even now to be people who are on the fringe of society.

They seem less concerned with climbing corporate ladders and the resultant demands and pressures of mainstream corporate life. The pay here is decent but not high, but the benefits are great. But it's the culture here that seems the big attraction. While the food in this place and throughout the businesses is lauded and attracts the guests, I suspect the culture is as much responsible for the businesses' overall success. Cool people are attracted to working here and word of the culture seems to have spread enough that it has become self-sustaining. The business continues to attract the same off beat types that attract the customers that keep the businesses a commercial success.

I'm aware this winning formula for the climate comes from the top. It makes me wonder about all the companies in the world and how they create their internal culture. But it makes me wonder even more why more places don't copy this formula to create their own winning culture too.

Thought for the day...

2010-12-02T09:15:00.000-05:00

by Ansel Adams

It's more than being happy. It's putting in a life's worth of work into a life worth's of time.

What am I?

2010-11-30T10:52:00.000-05:00

Today I am an as yet unpublished novelist still working on his craft....

Like grasping mist...

2010-11-19T12:21:00.001-05:00

I read recently that counter to prevailing wisdom happiness precedes success in our careers and life rather than the other way around.

The connection is in fact so strong that it cannot be denied based on countless studies, large and small, across a diverse set of parameters. Happy doctors diagnose illness faster and more accurately. Engaged, happy employees are absent from work less and are more productive. Four-year-olds are better at picking out details in pictures if they are happy.

The question becomes how to find genuine happiness and not just say "I am happy" when you are really not. For some people finding sustainable happiness can be like finding the holy grail while others seem to the rest of us to cruise through life on autopilot with smiles on their faces. There are things we are advised we can do to make our lives happier--meditate, exercise, perform kindnesses for others. The suggestions seem so simple as to be almost insulting to those of us wanting real happiness but I know enough people who swear that these activities help. And my own experience with running has proven this is true for me.

T. C. Boyle was once asked whether he needed a lot of conflict in his life to write well. He replied that it was exactly the opposite. He found that when he was happy he was the most creative and productive as a writer. And if I think about it, I know my engagement with all aspects of my life is significantly higher when I too am happy. I am more engaged with my kids, more on top of my work, and more energized by my running. Accomplishing anything when you are down in the dumps is a bitch.

Yet I have found happiness to be elusive and difficult to hold onto. Like trying to grasp at mist. I have learned a lot about myself the past couple of years through experiences that forced me to look at some of the choices I have made, people I have encountered, and situations I have faced. That awareness has caused some sorrow and a few blows to my ego. Yet it has also yielded some valuable insights that, once I stopped being so sad, actually made me feel happy about my life.

Being happy requires a certain emotional dexterity with the challenges we face. It's too easy to get pissed at the guy cutting you off on the highway or planning some way to make the coworker who dissed you to your boss disappear. I'm convinced you have to avoid getting too caught up in the everyday troubles and take a larger view. A friend calls it taking a picture from 20,000 feet. Distancing oneself from the immediate drama when things go awry so that we don't react to a situation but pause and respond intelligently serves us best.

Sometimes I am better at this than others. Other times I fail miserably and repeat the same behaviors that caused my problems in the first place. It's a work in progress this awareness-happiness thing. I've noticed with practice the things that used to cause such huge problems for me seem to be less bothersome, or last a shorter time. Maybe that's the road to finding happiness.

I suppose we ultimately realize happiness more in retrospect than in the moment. Of course there is nothing wrong with looking back and feeling good about where you've been but it sure would be nice to appreciate now and find that elusive happiness today.

Thanks for reading....

Retreating....

2010-10-18T10:09:00.000-04:00

"We are all alone and no one can save us."

Those were the words a psychology professor wrote on the chalkboard the very first day of a close friend's class. Rather than scare his young graduate students to death, he was trying instead to liberate them from their very blackest fears.

If we know that we as individuals are responsible for our own behavior, our own choices, indeed, our own happiness then maybe we will act in ways that are in our best interests over our lifetimes instead of sabotaging ourselves by relying on--or blaming--others for whatever is our lot in life. To go a step further, if we can realize it for ourselves, we could also understand it for others, that they--not us--are responsible for their happiness.

This is not a rebuff of the idea that we can enjoy, even need, other people in our lives to feel joy. I'd argue that we need to feel love and be loved, to have something to focus on as our "work" that usually involves some sort of fulfilling relationships with others to thrive. It's the level of need that trips us up. I think a lot about these things.

My immediate instinct is to retreat when I get depressed over the course of events in my life. I have to fight that instinct to withdraw into myself and away from the people and activities that give me joy. I withdraw when I am full of fear and guilt and just plain sad. I've come to think of my depression and all of its related behaviors as habits rather than biological, organic and intrinsic to my being. That is, I get depressed because I have always reacted this way.

It's as if once early on in my life I walked through a door labeled "Depression." And, instead of turning right back around and walking out that same door as I faced life's inevitable difficulties, I plowed ahead into another door, and another and another until I got so far down the path I couldn't find my way back out that first door.

My "depression" is the result of intense self-awareness and examination with occasional bouts of denial and weakness. Conditioned and reinforced responses to things external. It becomes so automatic as to be unthinking. I need to reset my internal compass rather than allow external forces and people run me. I need to remind myself I am alone and no one will save me...but me.

The instinct to retreat when I feel this way is a response to feelings regarding events in which I am involved. And the events and my responses become my focus--inward--that can gain their own momentum. In effect, I am so drawn inward in my focus that I lose sight of the activities and people which make me happy. The obvious question becomes why don't I fill up more with the things that make me happy?

This is where the retreating can be so damaging. Whom am I waiting for to rescue me? If I buy into what I'm saying, that we are alone and we alone are responsible for our own happiness, wouldn't I see that no one is coming to rescue me from my own despair and sadness?

The answer is yes.

One of the greatest aspects to human behavior is the plasticity of the human brain and, therefore, our responses to the things that happen in our lives (notice I didn't say, "to us"). We can learn new ways of responding when things go awry. I've had to learn and re-learn this truism countless times in the past two years due to my divorce. Early on, I responded automatically with blaming--myself or her--for things that happened. And guess what I got? Anger. Guilt. Sadness. It was so easy to get caught up in that same cycle over and over again and forget that I alone could break it. I'm reminded of Phil Donahue, the former talk show host, who would often ask his guests regarding the subject of their behavior in response to some crisis, "How's that working out for you?"

It's become a question I often ask myself when I'm locked in crisis: What have I done to contribute to this and how can I respond? In the answer I'm learning to look at how I've responded in the past and how that worked out. Crisis can become a learning experience.

Relying on others always to make us feel better, to fix the things wrong in our lives is a prescription for depression and failure. There always will be things that go wrong in our lives. People will disappoint us. We will not live up to our own expectations. Life is not perfect. I'm learning to not place heavy expectations on others--my children, my girlfriend, my relatives, my coworkers--for my own happiness.

Taking hold of the reins from others is a long-term project. But I look forward to walking side by side through life with those whom I love rather than expecting a piggy-back ride.

Thanks for reading.

Something tripped me, took my legs out...

2010-06-16T07:49:00.004-04:00

It has become apparent to me why conflict between people, say between divorcing spouses, is so prevalent and often so heated. You say, "Duh. That's why they are divorcing."

Fair enough. I'm not talking about minor shots fired at each other across former familial bows. What has become evident to me is that conflict in divorce and war and everywhere else is the result of fundamental, deeply rooted philosophical differences and expectations.

I've written that in my post-divorce life my ex-wife and I continue to have conflict. Most of it is minor he said, she said crap that is like gum on the bottom of your shoe. It's a nuisance but eventually it gets ground in enough that it no longer gets noticed. There are still moments of significant disruptions I am convinced stem from fundamentally, even wildly different points of view about life. And I find that if that is the case, how the hell could there not be conflict? What's more, to borrow Tyrone Wells' phrase, "Seems like a battle. How can anyone ever win?"

She and I see almost everything about life in fundamentally different ways. The conflict that led to our divorce has magnified post-divorce. It's as if we each possess a window on the world and her glass is tinted purple and mine is...orange. We could look at the exact same thing and see it differently. Until we are looking through the same glass we will continue to differ.

It becomes very easy in war to say the other person is wrong. But are they? If they are reacting to what they see based on their own set of experiences and interpretations of life, looking through their purple window, isn't what they see valid for them? To her, I've damaged the kids and blown up their lives "because I was happy about 5 - 8 years of my life" and spent the rest of the time depressed (according to her not her fault). To me, I've rescued my soul and my life and given my daughters a chance to see and experience a more authentic person in their father. Hopefully I will be a better parent and give them more of what they can use from me.

Who is right? Neither of us? Both of us?

I'm beginning to think there can be no conflict, or at least not the warring, heated, fuck-you battling if one or both involved can see through the other's tinted glass. But I'm not always so evolved. Often when the moment comes I forget to pause, catch my breath, and realize where she is coming from. Our divorce stemmed directly from our fundamentally different philosophies in life. Why we didn't see it before we got married is probably a subject for many, many bottles of wine or years of therapy (check both).

I am averse to conflict. But I also realize sitting here listening to John Mayer's "Heartbreak Warfare" that these differences are inevitable. People just see things differently. Our experience is based on what we see. And we all react to what we see.

So for all of us out here who are evolved, we have a homework assignment. The next time your ex-spouse tries to lock you in a battle over something you did while you were married or since your divorce, pause and take a look through her or his window and see if you can see what they see. You may not. But it will certainly lower your blood pressure and allow you to let it go.

Duh.

Thanks for reading.

Divorce and lessons learned

2010-03-18T10:33:00.007-04:00

Divorce sucks. It does for everyone involved. But every once in a while there are lessons offered that contribute greatly to one's understanding of life.

My former wife and I are going through the post-divorce period right now and things have not been easy. She blames me for just about everything that is going wrong, particularly regarding our three children. And I have to accept some of the responsibility for her anger.

We recently had a heated exchange regarding how poorly two of our girls are doing with life after our split. She told me some things about why she believed our relationship deteriorated and as hard as it was to hear what I did wrong during our nearly 20-year relationship, I realized she was giving me a huge gift.

Gift? Hell yes.

Anytime you are given the opportunity to get into someone else's head it should be viewed as a phenomenal opportunity to understand. Getting perspective delivered in its fiercest and most raw form about what someone else sees gives one a chance to question one's own reality. How I see is not the same as how you see. See?

I was struck during our conversation by just how differently we interpreted what we both went through in our relationship. How could her experience be so different from my experience when we were both living the same marriage? It's nothing less than hubris to believe that one's own experience is identical to everyone else's and therefore everyone else's point of view should be the same as ours. Hearing her elaborate on my faults in the marriage and why our children were doing so poorly now--again my fault--dredged up a ton of angst and guilt for me. And I learned that when I stopped holding onto my bruised ego and actually listened, I could see me from her point of view.

And somehow it all made sense.

What she said she experienced in our dealings with each other both during our marriage and now post-divorce gave me a little psychological kick in the ass. It turns out that neither one of us was getting what we needed from the other. Big surprise. Isn't that how nearly all marriages end?

What I do with the wisdom I gain from exchanges like these is to be seen. As scary as the time in her head was, it has helped me put what happened into perspective. I can now more easily take responsibility for my parts and let go of what I don't think I'm responsible for. That's a great ease on my conscience because despite my former wife's claims, I have been taking on guilt for everything.

Lessons learned that will be valuable in building a better life for my kids and me post-divorce and beyond. At least that's the hope.

Thanks for reading.

Experience

2009-10-10T11:14:00.000-04:00

I have to turn this experience into something...

On running long

2009-09-28T19:28:00.005-04:00

The whole day seemed to be “up.”

I was just more than 35 kilometers (about 22 miles) into my first 50k trail race, headed up to Bald Mountain, the highest point on the course. And there, in front of me, as if strewn carelessly like some infantile giant’s marbles, the trail was awash in rocks and boulders.

Blocking the way “up.”

It wasn’t, I told myself, simply another opportunity to rip an ankle or do a face plant and wind up with a broken jaw and maybe some broken ribs. It might as well have been a couple hundred meters of boulder-marbles.

The run had taken a greater toll than I had anticipated. And I was physically and mentally exhausted, despite nearly eight months of the best training of my life. In fact I had nearly quit when I pulled into the aid station a few minutes earlier at 22 miles. I told my partner that I didn’t know if I could go on. I felt confused and a little dazed. I was tired of “up.” It was a strange feeling. She didn’t know what to do. I realized shortly that the woman who just passed me had been right: You have to eat food out here or you will break down.

So I looked behind me, back down the trail toward where the aid station and a warm blanket and food and my partner lay. Then I looked ahead at those damn boulders and words she had told me in a card she gave me the day before rang in my head: “You aren’t afraid. You keep moving forward--putting in your time, your determination…You run and run, not away, but forward. You persevere. You never, never quit.”

And then I knew: I would not quit. I would finish this run. I deliberately and methodically stepped across the field of boulders, and the next, and the next and up the trail until I got to the top of Bald Mountain where I downed some cheese and a couple cups of Mt. Dew and Coke.

When I got back down to my partner and the next aid station just four and a half miles from the finish I felt renewed. The confusion and daze were gone. I was determined. “Let’s finish this thing,” I told her.

There is something about faith in a good outcome that gives us the patience to weather bad times, whether in a long trail race or in life. Because I hadn’t paid enough attention to how rigorous the trail run had been and didn’t take in enough food, my body was crashing. And somewhere along the trail I lost my faith that my training had been good enough to finish this adventure. There would be no good outcome, I had thought.

The Mt. Dew and the Coke and the cheese helped me recover enough to get to the finish line in reasonably good shape. But I believe it was the patience to hear what was inside me that did as much to keep me moving forward. When I stood quietly on that trail in front of those boulders, and listened to the wind and the rain and the voice inside that said “never, never quit” I was able run again.

I crossed the finish line in 6 hours 46 minutes. A decent effort for my first 50 kilometer race. It seems Mr. Disappointment won’t be wagging his finger at me after all.

Thanks for reading.

Disappointment

2009-09-22T08:46:00.004-04:00

Disappointment is an unfortunate but inevitable part of life. Learning that for ourselves is hard enough. Teaching that to our children is even harder.

Some of my personal trials over the past year have taught me disappointment is as everyday an aspect of life as joy.

Through all the years running has taught me how to handle disappointment and mine the experience for hidden value. People beat us in races. We are disappointed. We can’t run as fast as we used to. We are disappointed. It’s raining or it’s too cold and we don’t want to run. We are disappointed.

In fact, each time I step out my door to run or to race is another opportunity to be disappointed somehow. On the flip side, it’s also an equally great opportunity for satisfaction or joy.

This coming weekend is an example. Saturday I will run my first competitive 50K race. And by the time the sun sets in the mountains of southwestern Virginia I will know which--the glow of joy or the weight of disappointment, or both--will sit with me.

Though I’ve run the 31 miles in training, my training has been confined mostly to gently rolling roads. The course I’ll run has 8,800 feet of elevation change, including a climb of 2,500 feet over 10 miles. This race offers a buffet of opportunities to somehow fail and therefore face disappointment.

It’s a lot like life. Each time we reach beyond the things we already are good at we risk disappointment. Each time we engage with others, each time we put ourselves out there in a relationship, there’s a chance for humiliation or embarrassment or pain. Things don’t turn out the way we hope. And disappointment is right there wagging his finger at us saying, “I told you so.”

But the rewards are even greater. Sure, people disappoint us. We risk disappointment stretching beyond our comfort zone or the people we hang around all the time. But the reaching also gives us the chance to see ourselves in a different and better light, to grow. The rewards for mastering something new, for meeting someone new seem far greater to me. Just as getting up and running every day and seeing what I can do could be. Just as stepping up to that starting line on a crisp fall morning in the mountains of Virginia and running for six or seven hours might be.

Thanks for reading.

Original and Authentic

2009-05-31T11:29:00.004-04:00

Original and authentic. These words have become my mantra. They provide a litmus test by which I can evaluate all the choices I make on a daily basis.

I realize there is very little I can control in life. My response to what happens is the only thing I can control. Am I responding to what is true and original about me when faced with a choice or am I simply reacting? What are my best choices in any given situation? What would be the most desired outcome in any situation? What short-term pain might I cause myself making an authentic decision that is in my best long-term interests?

My focus has changed a lot over the past eight months or so. I used to spend a lot of time looking at the years ahead at all the possibilities. And an equal amount of time looking over my shoulder at what happened in the past, mostly looking at all my failures. But being committed to becoming original and authentic demands being aware of where I am right now. Being present without venturing too far forward or behind doesn't come naturally. It's too easy to daydream about where I might be in a month or in five years. It's even easier to go to Negativetown on my past, which is littered with so many mistakes and failures they lay like land mines on my psyche. If I spend too much time there I'm bound to step on one of them.

I have developed this theory: we are creating tomorrow's memories right now. The best way to feel good about our past is to live authentically and originally in the present. We can't control the future and can't erase the past. We control only our responses to right now.

Original and authentic.

Thanks for reading.

No Man's Land?

2009-05-27T08:15:00.005-04:00

Ultra purists will scoff. My non-runner friends will just shake their heads at my insanity. Ultra veterans don't even get their heart rates up for anything less than 50 miles, the threshold most of them believe where the term "ultra" even starts to be applied. Other runners don't see any reason for running farther than 26.2.

I have been training since February for my first 50k. I'm logging about 50 miles a week around Ann Arbor building a base that will carry me to around 70 miles a week in July and August. But I'm in sort of a runner's No Man's land. The math says 31 is more than 26.2. But 50k doesn't carry the same weight as 50 miles. I don't want to diminish the achievement for anyone who runs 50 miles. That is a long, long run. But does that mean those extra five miles beyond the marathon are worthless, worthy of being left like abandoned children on the trail to true Ultra-hood? Is it written somewhere those extra 19 miles between the 50k and the 50 miler is where the moniker of Ultra runner is earned?

I'll be pondering the significance of this running math on the trail in Virginia this fall. I know I'll feel the extra miles too, regardless of what the purists say. My "coming out" so to speak and joining a more exclusive community of runners who have looked beyond the marathon is an important step in my evolution as a runner. One more leg in a journey that began with a so-so experience with Cross Country in high school. And maybe venturing beyond what I'm accustomed to as a runner can serve as a metaphor for life. Something about being willing to take on something bigger and more difficult.

I might not yet belong to that most exclusive of running clubs--the Ultra runner. But, come September 26, I will be more than "just a marathoner."

Thanks for reading.

2009-05-02T09:52:00.002-04:00

If I get up early enough, as I often do, I get to watch my girls sleeping. There is something especially endearing for a parent in the face of a sleeping child. Maybe it's the peace we witness, the cheeks flushed, the blankets wrapped way up around their chins, a smile on their lips.

I see them and all my troubles float away as smoke and I wonder why I wear my worries in the first place. To see your child sleeping contentedly is to feel safe in the world oneself as if their very sleep puts a protective ring around one's home. Who could harm a slumbering angel?

My girls sleeping also reminds me of my role as provider; I am expected to take care of them, feed, clothe, house in the least and help mend broken hearts, wipe away tears, clean up scrapes, offer insights into the world in the most. I sometimes find it ironic that rather than fear the challenge this higher role provides, I relish it. The chance to be responsible for molding little hearts and minds. The opportunity to learn from my own experiences in the questions my girls pose. The chance to question the wisdom earned from those very experiences, and to examine my values, philosophy, and attitudes.

When I watch them sleep I feel more authentic and less a poseur. It's as if in their rhythmic breathing I find I am less concerned with my own hang ups and problems and more at peace with life. There is enough difficulty in life now and I find solace in the faces of my sleeping daughters. Hope flows. Scars on my heart fade. And the sun rises.

Thanks for reading.

THE PLACES THAT SCARE YOU

2009-03-31T17:01:00.003-04:00

Why is it that we get so bogged down by our feelings? The things that make us human and help us explore our existence are often the very same things that lock us up in myopic and self-damaging patterns of thinking. We are often afraid of the very things that will save us; places in our souls we are afraid to go.

I am going through a divorce. I have of late become so weighed down by guilt and remorse that I had begun to only feel like a villain, never anything else. There are children involved and most of my guilt over being the one who initiated the breakup of my relationship with my wife was focused on how I was "destroying" the family for these young hearts. A good portion, however, also lay in the hurt I had caused my wife by being the one who started the breakup.

Guilt is not necessarily bad, as I have learned recently, because it shows us whether we are living up to the standards we expect of ourselves and acts as a sort of weather vane pointing us in the direction of how to be the type of people we want to be. Guilt can be something we feel and process, like a bird sensing a change in the direction of the wind. Or, as had been my case recently, become an almost unendurable companion, relentlessly burdening us with our mistakes, bad choices, hurts, like a computer with bad code that keeps running through an endless loop of rebooting only to fail time and again. We try to "re-boot" by examining all the possible reasons for our guilty feelings and rooting out the "bad code" as we recount and recast events and choices we've made. And we wind up in the same spot, like Bill Murray on Groundhog Day.

A way to short circuit this endless re-booting and cycle of guilt is to look at whether we are lumping certain feelings and aspects of our behavior together that really are separate. Take for example grief and doubt. The experts tell us that a few things in life cause enormous psychological pain; the death of a parent, spouse or child (been there), sudden job loss (ditto) and, ahem, divorce. In fact, the experts say, the grief caused in each of these life events are remarkably similar. Plain and simple: divorce causes grief.

I've actually been grieving (even though I couldn't label it) over the loss of the security and familiarity of family--the rituals and routines of daily family life along with all its joys and sorrow, the loss of the house I devoted so much hard work with my wife to restoring, and the closeness of a relationship that crosses years. In my grief over the end of all these things, I hurt.

I lumped my grief with some doubt over whether I was on the right path, which became loaded with guilt over the hurt that lay in the wake of the divorce and voila--I'm in shitsville.

It's understandable why all these feelings--grief, doubt, and guilt--might be tied in my psyche. They are closely related. But fusing them caused the relentless cycle of re-booting and increased my downward spiral. But...

A wise friend and advisor instructed me that maybe the grief I was experiencing was totally normal and should not be hanging out with my doubt and that shouldn't be in bed with my guilt. All three are quite normal for people going through divorce to feel, especially those who initiate the divorce, and that each feeling can be experienced, appreciated and honored separately as you experience them. It doesn't necessarily follow, she explained, that my because I'm feeling grief over the losses inherent in the divorce, that I should feel greater guilt over the hurt felt by my family and others and that, in turn, should not necessarily increase the doubt I may have felt over why I initiated the divorce in the first place.

What I was afraid of doing--this is the places that scares you part from the title of this blog--was admitting that I felt grief over the losses I've experienced because of the divorce. And this is the hardest part: just experiencing the grief and the sadness of the loss. I blunted it. I ran away from it. If I didn't admit that I hurt because of what I lost, then maybe it would go away.

The fact that I will never again sit on the front porch that I built on Sunday mornings after my run drinking coffee and watching all the good Catholics go to their weekly guilt session hurts. The fact that I won't be able to walk into any of my daughters' bedrooms in the middle of the night just because. That my 400 square foot apartment is a poor excuse for a "home" but it is my home for now. That it will be a long time before I experience the simple routines and rituals that make up the everyday lives of intact families.

Losing all of these hurt.

And in my grief, I felt doubt and even more guilt for "wrecking the future."

But now I've re- re-booted my thinking. And I'm allowing the grief to come in and be my companion for a while. Then I'll show it to the door. And then I'll sit with my guilt for a bit and let it tell me what I did wrong. And then, he too can head out the door. And last I'll take my doubt for a run then send it down a different street when I head for home.

Each of these feelings and countless others we feel are a natural part of the experiences each of us faces in life. And each feeling makes us more human in our own way. Instead of mindlessly lumping them all together and trying to hide from them we can be more Buddhist and accept them as a natural consequence of whatever is happening to us. We can experience the "bad" feelings the same way we experience the good feelings and then let them pass. We don't need to be locked up by our feelings.

As my advisor gave me a hug on my way out she recounted a saying that she has passed on to others feeling pain: "You are where you should be."

Thanks for reading.

This business...

2009-02-01T09:58:00.006-05:00

Life is lived forward but perspective is only gained looking backward.

Some personal and professional setbacks have allowed me the rare chance to sit exactly in the x between a life moving forward and perspective gained by looking in the rear-view mirror; A pause in the neverending rush to meet the daily demands of jobs and kids and bills and the cell phone.

I suppose I'm not the only one who woke up years into an occupation that seemed to take on a life of its own. My vocation as an accidental salesperson, dropped into a series of sales jobs because I was sort of good at it and they met some financial needs and someone liked me enough to hire me, now seems like some cruel joke in light of my recent layoff. The truth is that I've spent 15 or 20 years in the sports and fitness industry because of my passion for running. I love running. I love talking about running. I love reading about running and writing about running. I love to meet new and old runners. I love advising new runners on how they too can make this wonderful activity a constant in their lives.

One of my greatest thrills has been becoming friends with boyhood heroes like Steve Jones, the Welsh-born marathoner who for me at least epitomizes all that is great about running, not just the sport but the pursuit. Jonesy, as some like to call him, achieved because he worked harder at training and racing than anyone else of his time. He didn't whine when he had to go out and do hills. He didn't complain when he had to do speedwork. Steve Jones relished the opportunity to slip on his Reeboks and go run. It didn't matter whether it was training or racing. Jonesy loved to run.

I discovered running in the tenth grade at Seneca Valley High School because I wanted a school letter and knew I couldn't play football. I ran one season of cross county in the fall of 1974 and then stopped running for seven years because my knees couldn't take it. Then my Mom got cancer and I rediscovered running out of my anger and frustration and awareness that I couldn't stop her from dying.

So it seemed natural to me years later when I became dissatisfied with my newspaper career that I could pursue something that combined running with making a living. Then by chance while doing something else I met someone who helped me get my first real job in the sports and fitness industry. Those early days for me at Nike were the most wondrous I thought I would ever have. I worked with a group of people who shared my passion for running. Some came at it from a competitive view, having run in cross country and track in high school and college. Some did it because it helped them get in shape for football or basketball.

So while I did the job at Nike, I was really talking about and sharing my experiences on running. Or so I thought. I was really selling more shoes for Nike. My naive point of view came crashing down after a couple of years when I was shown the door under the Nike Swoosh and asked not to return (because I also had this awful habit of questioning authority and like the old Everly Brothers song, "I fought the law and the law won.").

I floundered for a couple years, got married again and had a few kids and found myself again in the industry, at first with a smaller company, a challenger brand, and then with a multi-billion dollar behemoth that surprisingly had a really weak running business. Hired with five other new running specialty representatives, we saw ourselves as a vanguard that was going to right the ship and change the world--or at least build this behemoth's run business back up to respectable levels. For nearly three years I traveled six states in an evangelical mission to get people who sell running shoes and clothes to buy into my passionate advocacy of this brand. "We're serious about the running business," I told them in my pitch. "We want to build a successful brand with your help," and "You can count on us to be there for the long run" I would say in pitch after pitch to the run dealers in my territory.

And I was good and passionate and they started to come on board. Many became friends. We would go for runs together and drink beer and eat burgers and talk about running shoes and races and all the fun things that surrounded our relationship as a salesman and buyers.

Then the behemoth, who was sick and weak and dysfunctional and narrow-minded and nearsighted at the top, decided none of what my five colleagues and I were doing was worthwhile.

We were laid off. If you've never been laid off--a frequent occurrence today--congratulations. It's not exactly like getting fired because I've had that happen to me before too, but it's close. The suddenness of being unemployed, of figuring out what to do with one's days, hits with the same impact. It's a deer-in-the-headlights kind of feeling. And once one gets over the daze, there's the anger. Anger at the company for dropping one like a stone. And anger at oneself for not reading the signs that the layoff could happen. There's plenty of that: "Why didn't I see...." and "How could I be so stupid as to not recognize what was going on?"

Some, like one friend, take a long time to get over that. They go between the dazed state of not believing the layoff happened and an even more difficult state of "what the hell am I going to do next?"

The layoff, coupled with my recent personal setback, served as a double blow. Though those on the other side of my personal predicament will say I brought the personal issue on myself, that and the layoff have placed me exactly on the x I spoke of at the top. A proverbial crossroads.

Here I am six months shy of turning 50 and, like many others in this economy, I'm facing trying to figure out the next chapter of my life. Like my laid off colleagues I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to pay a mortgage (and now rent along with some other expenses) and what I'm going to do during the day for work.

It has occurred to me in the past two-and-a-half-weeks since the layoff that I have a love-hate relationship with my occupation. I love the relationships and the shared challenge of building a business. I love working with these dealer/friends to build something where there was nothing before. I hate the deadlines and the travel and the convincing and being on stage all the time. I've spent more time on my butt driving to Chicago and Columbus and Cleveland and Indy and Peoria than I care to think about. Gazing out a windshield is so familiar to me that if I do something else, I will probably have to spend some time just driving around Ann Arbor in my car or experience withdrawals like some sort of highway junkie.

What I hated the most was putting out the fires. Even if I did everything well, followed all the procedures and crossed my t's and dotted my i's, and brought my dealers on board, someone working at the behemoth inevitably didn't do their part. It is easily the most frustrating feeling to have to apologize to a dealer who has become one's friend, who trusted one, for something that was entirely out of one's control. Whether it was laziness, or lack of attention to detail, or a lack of passion for one's job, things always seemed to go awry. That's what caused the acidic burning in my stomach and the sleepless nights and, yes, even the tears.

I wasn't alone in this. The thing that marked this work was the passion my five colleagues and I shared for what we were doing. It was akin to the passion and recklessness and vigor one feels as part of those high school and college cross country teams. All that shared struggle and training and setbacks create a singular sense of community and sacrifice that our work experiences rarely give us. We would share our successes and setbacks via cell phone conversations and emails. Or when we would get together for events or meetings. It was just like I was back on that Seneca Valley High School cross country team in 1974, all nervous stomachs and gangly legs inside our oversized green and gold singlets and shorts before the start of the regional meet.

I may not stay in this business. It may be time to put running back into the personal folder of my life. It may be time to grow up and look for a job.

Thanks for reading.

A System of Beliefs

2008-12-09T15:17:00.005-05:00

Anyone who has ever stopped to wonder why they do certain things has the opportunity to examine their belief system. Calling the collection of fundamental assumptions and convictions about how we engage the world a system is probably a decent way to describe how our core beliefs define us. Our core beliefs define us because it is from these beliefs that all of the choices we make--all of our behaviors--flow. That is, we are what we do.

Most of us are not willing, however, to get down on our hands and knees to dig deep enough into the earth of our psyches to get a close enough look. A cursory examination is usually enough to confirm that we are right and they are wrong. Maybe we have other things to do like polishing our Ginsu collection or playing WarCraft and don't see the value in questioning things we could just take for granted. If you're one of those people, I can't help you.

But what if it isn't? What if someone wiser than you asks you to put down your can of Bud for a second and to become aware of how some of your basic beliefs have affected the choices you've made in different situations throughout your life? And, more important, what if together you both discover that some of your most closely held beliefs are faulty? What if when you really get down to it, your core beliefs about yourself and the world have prevented you from being what you could have been--Bud-drinking, La-z-boy-lounging, Springer-watching poster subjects can turn off here--that is, better?

It might be something about the way you relate to others in certain situations, say, when confronted by your spouse or loved one over some emotional issue. Do you run when confronted or do you stand up and fight? Do you place your needs and desires beneath those of your loved one or do you meet aggression with aggression? Or it might be a career choice you made out of expediency rather than passion or how your interact with your kids on a regular basis or how whether you stuck with something or someone when things got difficult.

I would argue that no matter how painful or worthless examining the fundamental ways in which we engage the world might seem, it is an eminently worthwhile exercise that has the power to change one's life.

It is a process that's a lot like reading a reference book. You open the pages and read awhile, maybe you are scanning for a specific answer to one of your basic questions. Then you close it up and chew on what you've discovered to see whether it fits before going back and reading some more.

Examining your core beliefs is like that. You can't possibly dig and digest all at once.It requires patience. Thorough reflection of your belief system takes place over time, looking from different angles and asking a lot of what ifs? along the way. It's more fun to do with a bottle or two of a good Merlot and some Dubliner but my reflective PBR-drinking buddies would argue that a six pack and some Cheezits do just as well.

It also assumes the ability to not flinch when you see ugly, when you realize how many times you messed up because your belief system was bogus. Going through one's past is such a mixed bag and it's easy to flinch; to let yourself off the hook or be too hard on yourself when you figure out that how you approached certain life situations yielded a less than positive outcome. It may have not seemed that way at the time but now that you can look at something in retrospect you come out coughing up hairballs because you were absolutely convinced that letting that co-worker's boss know he was looking for another job out of the company was the right thing to do. It made you feel better at the time so it must have been a good thing, right?

I've screwed up so many times in my life that the mistakes just blend together into a stream like a bad Steven Segal movie. (Okay, I can't name a single good Segal movie, but you might get my point). I've hurt others and myself through cowardice or insensitivity or a conviction that I had to have something. I've embarrassed myself and been humiliated by others. But it's only in retrospect that I can see those situations for what they were. And try as I might, I can't go back and change them. So what's the value?

The value I see in a thorough and often painful examination of my belief system is awareness so that when I am making choices on those beliefs I can be aware of how they are affecting my behavior at that moment (I'm so Buddhist), instead of sometime later when the damage has been done. It might be that there are several good choices to make and by being aware of my beliefs about the situation and what my choices are, I could choose better.

Maybe all of this makes little sense. Maybe you are one of those lucky few who has cruised through life and is exactly where you want to be. Maybe you should pass me a PBR and some Cheezits and we can get back to watching Segal beat the crap out of the bad guys. Thanks for reading.

Why run?

2008-11-25T09:17:00.003-05:00

I run. It's one of the things I do. And I do it no matter what. For 27 years now I've run all kinds of miles in all kinds of weather. This morning I ran 4.81 miles (according to my friend Rich's Garmin 305) in an embarrassing 9:40 overall pace. It was sloggy at 5:30, my term for snow/ice/rain mix where the footing sucks and it's difficult to run faster. There were stretches we pushed at 8 minute pace, and that feels more normal. My two running partners, Rich and Dean, aren't training for anything. They just run. The same paces over basically the same courses. I am training however for some races next year--a marathon likely in the spring and a 50K sometime later in the year, after I turn 50 in July.

Running has been one of the major metaphors for my life. Through all the pain and joy, through the births of each of my precious daughters, through job losses and new jobs, through fights with my wife and the death of my mom, through every good and bad thing I've experienced, I have always run. I remember running in Portland along trails above the city when I got fired from Nike. I remember running through Tukwilla outside of Seattle in the 1980's as a flight attendant on layovers, running in the rain. I ran on the Fourth of July along the Potomac in Washington, D.C. when it was 95 degrees. I got so dehydrated during my 14 mile run that I ran into the shower with my running clothes still on and stayed there for 40 minutes. And I've run in Ann Arbor when it was 5 below zero amazed that more people weren't out enjoying the quiet and the beauty of the city's neighborhoods during a snowfall.

The question inevitably arises during my 5:30 am runs with Rich and Dean: Why are we running?

When the warmth of our homes and several hot cups of coffee (and a few warm donuts) calls, when we could be snug in our beds still asleep, when we're dodging morning commuters on the roads because the sidewalks are covered with snow (and Rich gets sprayed by a passing car), when the wind blows snow horizontal, why, exactly, are we out here?

I run for the potato chips and the cookies and the pizza that call to me like a Siren. I run to keep the knees and joints from stiffening into locked up intersections of bones and cartilage. I run because the mind demands it. It is perhaps the one time of the day that I have total control over what I feel and think. Running allows me to examine what has happened and what I want to take on in the day ahead. It allows me to forgive myself for my mistakes and wrong-headed choices. It allows me to dream and to conjure.

I have some good friends, five or so guys I work with, who are all runners. Most of them ran in college and one was a national champion in cross country. Each of them is faster, fitter and stronger than I. When we travel to meetings or conferences to work together, we always run. And though we start out together, it doesn't take long for their legs to carry them far ahead of me. Their slow, easy pace is my max. Keith (http://kelrock.blogspot.com) can run as fast backwards as I can run race pace forward. They can enter and win local races. I can only hope to place in the top 10 in my age group in the smallest of local races. But we share a camaraderie born of a passion for running, for the movement and the fatigue and the pushing of our bodies beyond what we thought we could do.

That's why I run. And I will never, ever, give it up.

Thanks for reading.

The pain of change

2008-11-24T08:34:00.002-05:00

All my life I've been conditioned to avoid pain, as if pain were something you could mitigate by doing something else. The equation always was: if x causes pain, then do y. As a society we are trained in the West to avoid pain. I can't say I qualify as an educated Buddhist but some things going on in my life have forced me to examine all of the assumptions I've been living under for nearly five decades. Among them, avoiding pain.

Recently I read about the idea that pain can be a friend, and that in life there are truths that all things come in pairs; light and dark are opposite sides of the same coin. Just as pain and joy are. So with joy, we can expect some pain. We wouldn't run from joy, why do we run from pain? I've heard it said that pain is weakness leaving our bodies. And until recently, I've always thought that if I were in pain (the psychological kind) then something was "wrong." In panic I would run through my regular checklist of what was going on and quickly seek to change whatever I figured was causing the pain. Instead, one might pause and breathe and take a moment to examine the pain. How deep? What is the source? Then, is this a bad thing? Can I control its source? Should I control its source or does it serve me to feel this pain?

These questions might seem silly on the surface. But if one thinks about it, how many times have we had doubt, unhappiness, a sense of despair and tried to avoid those feelings instead of pausing and letting them be? I know I have operated that way all my life. Whenever something "bad" has happened to me, whether it was failing a test in school, or getting dumped by a girl, or not getting the job I wanted, I felt pain. Rejection, fear, disappointment, a whole range of emotions. And as a society we turn things like disappointment and rejection and fear inward and wonder what is wrong with us and how do we dispel those emotions, make them go away.

In the Buddhist way, these types of pain would be welcomed opportunities for growth. Pause and breathe and let them be present. Then, let them go and just go back to being present, aware, mindful.

So much in the world could be better if we all operated this way. Instead of lashing out at our rejectors, we could pause and just absorb what was going on with us. By lashing out in a similar way to those who cause us pain, we give them power. There's a story in the book, When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, about a warrior who was instructed to go fight Fear. As she went into battle with Fear, she felt small and Fear felt big and formidable. She approached Fear, bowed three times and asked for permission to do battle with Fear. And she asked, "How do I do battle with you?" Fear thanked the warrior and told her, "My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say, If you don't do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don't do what I say, I have no power."

What I take from this is that rather than reacting as we always have when fear is present and we feel pain, if we pause and look at the fear, we might, just might, be pausing long enough to see exactly what it is causing the fear and that it is us who are giving power to fear rather than some thing or some one. Then we can respond genuinely and authentically instead of react. And we can grow.

I don't know. I might be completely wrong and I don't always operate this way by a long shot. But now I have awareness and that, I believe, can go a long way toward helping me make truly lasting change in my life amid the current and future personal ordeals I face. Think about it. Thanks for reading.

2008-11-21T10:09:00.000-05:00

11/21/08: More than two years since I've created this blog and no posts....Time to start again.

Beware the fury, the title of this blog comes from a quote from John Dryden, an 18th century philosopher, writer, thinker. It also happened to be the sub-head on a Parade Magazine article in the late 70's about a boyhood tennis hero of mine, Harold Solomon. Solomon was only about 5'6" tall, maybe 135 pounds. The bigger, more powerful stars of the 70's and early 80's when I was growing up were people like Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, Roscoe Tanner, Ilie Nastase, Guillermo Vilas, Adrianno Panatta. They possessed bigger weapons like deadly serves and deft volleys.

Solly was just willing to stay out there longer than anyone else. Some of his matches would last 5 or 6 hours. He could moonball opponents to madness. They could fire a serve at 130 mph and Solly would chase it down and patiently flick a seemingly lame topspin over the net, deep into his opponent's corner. Again, it could come back on fire, and again, Solly would chase it down and push another moonball deep into enemy territory. Until his opponent became so frustrated that his best couldn't beat Solly and he slammed a backhand into the net.

I always admired his internal strength. He lost matches. But he never gave up. And he made you pay to beat him. His will was often stronger than those of his opponents, even when facing an opponent who on paper would wipe him off the court.

There is a lesson to be learned I think about this. Maybe it's another take on David v. Goliath but I don't think it's that melodramatic. I think there are thousands of moments for people all over the world who quietly go through their lives and instead of giving in, they persevere, even when things appear stacked against them. No big pronouncements. No big excuses. They just dig in and keep lobbing moonballs no matter what gets thrown at them.

Thanks for reading.

2006-04-26T16:17:00.000-04:00

this is my first entry on this new blog. I will add to this with pics and stories later.