The Challenge to be Happy

It hit me today as I stood in the pouring rain by a rushing waterfall.  It was a thought that I was thinking for either the first or thousandth time, but was really thinking it today with an impact that sent my heart racing: I nearly died.  I nearly died.  I had something inside of me that nearly killed me.  And then I went through a whole bunch of shit to try to make it not kill me.  But the speeding locomotive, the leering specter, the grim reaper's scythe... swooshed by, a hair's breadth away from me.

And, this time, it missed. 

And, one time, some time... for sure... it won't.

I was walking in the rain to my morning muffin at Rosie's.  I was walking with an umbrella and no one was around to tell me it was a stupid idea to walk in a downpour rather than drive.  No one was around to make me bundle up.  No one was around to talk to me and distract me from the absolutely glorious feeling of walking in some actual weather, next to a river, in a place that is distant and yet familiar.  No one was there to buffer me from this thought, that came to me as I stood by this waterfall.

And I realized that the challenge for me going forward is not to just keep avoiding that scythe.  It's to make every moment count.  To allow myself moments of thinking these thoughts.  To change the way I look at things, so that being ... for lack of a better term... happy is imperative.  It's doctor's orders.  It's the way it's gotta be.

So, like, what is happiness? I don't know the answer to this, precisely.  I don't think it's cheerfulness.  Or chipperness.  Or optimism.  It's not running around laughing and having fun all the time.  I think it's just feeling a feeling that makes this journey worthwhile.  It's paying attention and feeling like you're really part of the story.  It's like not killing precious time, no matter what you're doing.

Happiness, to me, is defined like this: On that day the grim reaper's scythe does not miss, how am I going to look back and understand the journey I am about to complete?  Will I have regrets or will I be satisfied overall with how I spent my currency of ... well... currency?  Was I there?  Did I pay attention?  Or did I space it out, try to escape or sidestep the icky parts, lose myself in things that I felt I should have been doing, rather than what would have made me truly happy?

I don't think I'm suggesting that happiness can only be found by going off to the Bahamas and maxing out my cards in an endless quest for physical luxury. I think happiness is not about physical indulgence, although for some it may be.  So I'm looking at myself carefully, to figure out what gives me that feeling of being really a part of my life.  And, because I'm out of town and have the ability to do whatever I want for a few days, I'm looking at how I'm spending my time up here.  And thinking about what makes me feel good, alive, and like I'm paying attention in the right way.

So let's talk about the shoulds vs the wants.  Yesterday, I had a whole day to my absolute self.  Total solitude for about 12 hours.  I had perfect dispensation to do whatever I wanted with it.  Sleeping, watching movies, reading, just sitting and watching the fire.  Perfect and total dispensation.  So how did I spend it?  Well, for about half of it, I fucked around with my new phone and tried to wrap my head around iTunes and getting my music set up.  For the rest of it I sat, absolutely riveted with attention, putting the opera company accounting information into QuickBooks.

Now... let's look at those two activities.  One looks, to the outside world, meaningless and indulgent, and the other looks, to the outside world, like work.  One would be something permissible (maybe) on vacation (if you were 20 years old), and the other one wouldn't.  You could also argue, that one would look like a total waste of time, and the other would be termed "productive."  But ...I'm going to disagree with those categorizations.

First.  As I was fucking around with iTunes, I was thinking how I never have figured out how to manage my music because I feel like it's somewhat unseemly for someone so... old???... burdened with responsibilities?... busy?... to fuck around with music.  Fucking around with music is something for kids to do.

But why?  Why is music fuckaroundable with for kids, but not fuckaroundable with for me?  Do I not get to enjoy music?  Do I not get to enjoy the beauty of a good (or even functional) playlist?  What is it about their time that gives them dispensation to fuck around with iTunes, while my time is meant to be spent on important stuff, like working at a job to pay the mortgage and the cable bill so they have room and space to fuck around with iTunes?

What am I telling me about myself when I don't take that time to fuck around with iTunes, if I'd really enjoy a good (or even functional) playlist while I'm driving or on my bike?  Am I telling myself that my time is best spent servicing the responsibilities of life?  You bet your ass that's the message.  I exist to row the boat.  I exist to crank the butter churn.  I am the mother and the wife and the worker bee, and I have no business fucking around with iTunes just because it'd be pleasurable to me to have my music somewhat sorted out.

Hate that message!  I HATE it!  (For the records, I also kind of sort of really hate iTunes because... really people... it should not take me four hours to just get music on my phone, wading through hundreds of duplicate songs and trying to figure out what is going to happen when I press the Sync button.)  I should have just as much right to have music on my phone as my kids do.  So.. fuck it.  I spent half of my day fucking around with iTunes.

So... is that a waste of time or not?  I don't know.  It was annoying as hell, but it was also kind of fun.  And now I have a few good (or even functional) playlists on my phone, which I'm really enjoying the shit out of.

The rest of the day I spent putting transactions into QuickBooks.  This, again, is probably something that someone would give me shit for because it looked a lot like work.  And non-paying work for a non-profit that I seem to have spent my life thanklessly supporting, to boot.  But no one was around to give me shit, so I did it anyway.  Now... what's the message there? Well, apparently, I like to work.  And I like to spend my time on a thankless non-profit.  Apparently I wanted to do whatever it was I was doing, because I did it with absolute happiness for hours.  I must, on some level, enjoy running the opera company.  I must enjoy working with figures.  I know I love making order out of chaos.  I must enjoy this so much that I will spend my vacation doing it, rather than watching a movie or taking a nap.  So be it: I enjoyed it immensely, and spent hours in front of the fire putting numbers in little rows.

So, is that happiness?  Well, it kind of must be.  And writing is happiness.  And walking in the rain is happiness.  And building a fire and walking to Rosie's.  And I have happiness in my job, when I have the ability to actually do it.  And I have happiness taking care of the people I love.  I think all of it can be happiness when approached with a certain mindset.  Even the stupid shit that's unavoidable: I think that can lead to a certain kind of happiness if done in a way that is wholehearted and strives to find meaning.

The challenge for me going forward is not how to stay alive, so much as how to make staying alive meaningful.  A meaningful, happy life, is going to produce a body that is more in homeostatis, that can fight off threats more effectively, that will allow me to be here longer.  Being happy along this journey is no longer something that will come, by accident, when outside forces converge to jar me out of my rut.  Being happy... in this sense of being present, and feeling like there is meaning as the sands of time run through the hour glass... is no longer optional.

Which means I no longer can see taking care of myself as an indulgence.  It is imperative to keep my qi moving, inside and out.  Internally, by writing, doing yoga, engaging in a daily sitting practice, and infusing my thoughts with compassion for myself and all the other in-process human beings struggling on their own journey's path.  Externally, I need to move.  I need to interact with the real three-dimensional world by walking and biking, and sailing, and touching nature from time to time.  These are things that keep me healthy.  These are the new imperatives, trumping the litany of simply churning the butter and pulling the oars.  The days of delaying my soul's gratification are over. 

I believe there is time enough on this journey to take care of these things as well as the daily responsibilities of life.  I believe that, if I am able to pay attention and live in balance, that there is time enough to get the shoulds done even when I get the wants done first.  I think that putting energy into things that my inner compass is yearning for will beget more energy for things that might not be as gratifying.  People do need me.  I am, and always will be required to do things that are on other people's schedules, or at other people's request.  But that's OK.  I think that when I'm feeding the soul then the whole system feels better, and that produces the energy and desire to do the rest.

The challenge is to be happy.  To spend the time I have with a sense of purpose and an attitude of paying attention.  That creates joy.  Joy promotes health.  Health enables me to stick around longer.

And if I stick around long enough, maybe someday I'll figure out iTunes.

Being Made out of Time

I am up in Oregon, staying with an old friend of mine from high school.  He's a high powered kind of guy in his professional life, but he's also a down home simple guy at heart.  We used to travel together a lot in college and have been in each others' lives so long that we barely need to talk anymore.  We have similar rhythms and outlooks, and it's always been very easy to fall into a groove.  This vacation has been no different.

One of my friend's favorite phrases (always said with deep sarcasm) is "Do I look like I'm made out of time?!?!"  And we always laugh because life is always too busy and there is always too much on the plate.

But this week up in Oregon, has actually made me really think about time in a whole new way.  In this very peaceful atmosphere, in a house that is not my own, with a family member who is not (really) a family member... there really are very few responsibilities or things to do.  And by very few I mean NONE. 

There is nothing to do up here.

Like, really.  Nothing.

There is no TV.

There are screens bigger than a laptop.

There is one night time restaurant in town (a pizza parlor).  There is one morning restaurant in town (a cafe with killer muffins and wifi). There is one pharmacy, stocked with things that people who have nothing to do but kill time might want to buy (chiefly board games, jigsaw puzzles, and an array of pharmacy stuff). There is one gas station.  There is a Circle K.  I can walk from one end of town to the other, leisurely, in fifteen minutes.  That's it.

It's really bare bones.  And life gets very simple when there aren't a ton of options.

We keep the fire going.

We figure out what to eat for meals.

We read.

We check our email and keep in some kind of touch.  But that's kind of more joyful because it's not squeezed in between a bunch of other distractions.  It kind of feels good to do something productive, because that something productive has a margin of a lot of empty, relaxed space around it.

It's the difference between having an infinite stack of cash and being able to spend as much, or as little, of it, whenever you want.... and being completely overwhelmed by credit card debt and scrambling the pay the minimum all the time.  With the whole pile of cash, the options are all about doing what you want to do with it, while with the credit card scenario the options are all about doing what you need to do with it.

And here's what's interesting.  Besides just feeling a whole lot happier, I'm still being productive.  The time stretches out to accommodate the various activities... and the more time I spend just doing things that are completely non-productive, the more time it feels like I have time to choose to do something that would otherwise be called work.

I know this is an unnatural scenario.  This is not reality and probably will never be reality.  But.  It's interesting.

For example.  When I got here I cleared my entire mental plate of all To Do's.  I only needed to do things that were healthy and pleasing to me.  At first I figured I'd just sleep all day.  But, in actuality, I slept about 10 hours the first night, and 9 hours the second night, and felt good all day afterwards.  So obviously, in reality, I do not need to sleep all the time.

I did want to keep my body moving.  So I started walking to the cafe in the morning.  ("Morning" is loosely described as that part of the day after waking up and before nightfall.  But generally it happens before noon.)  I have no agenda in getting there, other than desire for the killer muffins, so I usually take a pretty long route to get there and a longer one coming back.  It's not about needing to get in x number of minutes or distance of exercise, it's because the body likes it and I like being out in the world.

When I get back, sometimes I take a shower.  Showers feel good.  I enjoy the whole process, even more so because it's not required (strictly).

Options feel better than requirements.  Interesting.

Then what?  Well, there was the jig saw puzzle day.  I have to say that, in terms of intrinsically non-productive activities, I think putting together a puzzle is one of the best.  Of course, it scratches a deeply satisfying OCD itch in me to create order out of chaos, but it's also just... wow... so much fun.  For me at least.  It's like extremely low stakes problem solving that is guaranteed to succeed over time.  It's three dimensional.  It's analog.  It requires spatial skills (which I have in spades and find inordinate joy in exercising).  It requires depth of visual detail: the further you get into the dharma of the picture, the more you can see between the atoms.  You start analyzing things based on negative space, patterns, infinitely small nuances of color. 

Doing a puzzle is just great.  There are no screens.  No electronics.  And I hesitate to say it, but it kills a whole bunch of time.  But "killing" is just not the right word.  It's more (dare I say it?) meditative.  It's engrossing.  It's present moment.  It's about the thing itself.  Not a whole lot more, and not a whole lot less. 

I have to say that the ten or twelve hours I spent on that puzzle were probably the most restorative time on this vacation so far.  Between that and the walking, I've really started to forget the unpleasantness of last year.

So: what is a waste of time?  Maybe the things that "waste" time are simply things that we do without thinking about.  Maybe the simplest and least productive things, when done with attention, give us back far more than the high powered and complicated things do, when done in a hurry or to just tick them off the checklist.

We are all, of course, made out of time.  We are more made out of time than anything else.  And the time we are made of is finite (at least as far as we can tell in terms of living in our bodies).  Looking at what I'm doing, when I'm doing it, makes time feel like it's going both slower and more deeply.  Racing through or (god forbid) "multitasking" saps my energy, races the clock, leaves me breathless and unsatisfied.

I think it's interesting to play with the elasticity of time this way.  Paying attention is one way.  And approaching the tasks based on wants vs needs is another way.  Maybe I want to do something non productive for awhile.  My fear is that I will want to set up dominoes in a line and knock them over for ever, once I get started.  So I tried that last night.  Yup: fun.  But... I didn't end up wanting to do that forever.  Doing it a couple of times was fun and slightly engrossing.  And I felt better for having done so.  Not so deprived.  Not so "I'm the person who never gets to line up dominoes and knock them down because I'm a grownup and grownups don't have time to do stuff like that."  Nope.  I let myself play with dominoes until I didn't want to anymore.  And when I stopped playing with the dominoes it was because I didn't want or need to do that any more.  I wanted, more, to look at email and think about touring options for the opera company.

Yes.  It would be great if all of life could be this easy and simplified down.  I think there's a lot to be said for touching base with this feeling periodically.  I know that sitting in meditation for ten minutes a day is kind of like this.  It's an acknowledgement that, behind all the hurry, there is peace.  In between the wildly spinning atomic mass, there is space.  It starts to all feel like a big list of musts and have tos and high priorities.  But there is space in between those things.  There must be.  And paying attention to what I'm doing, and paying attention to what I want to be doing, has to be a key way to finding my way inside that space.

As Ferris Beuller says: Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.

Now.  There's a guy who really was made of time.

Future. Tense.

We have an interesting relationship with our future.  When I was young, in my twenties, I mortgaged off my future like it was a house with infinite equity.  I would refinance daily, trading one more beer at night for the risk of feeling somewhat less than par in the morning.  I would refinance weekly, opting to work (or play) excessively, rather than keeping my life balanced with exercise and rest and a proper diet.

In my thirties, I did pretty much the same, except that I started to realize the interest rates were climbing and maybe the equity was not going to last forever.  I started bicycling and exercising more, but basically I still lived like I would live forever and trained myself to be impervious to any ill effects from fatigue, stress, or taking on too much of the world all at once.

In my forties, things started to get cash and carry.  The days of endlessly borrowing from tomorrow were getting less attractive.  My body was starting to feel the strain and my brain was all too aware that I was officially in midlife. No matter how hard I tried, I was not going to get any younger.

Fifties.  Suddenly there's that knock on the door.  The mortgage man is there, demanding that some principal start getting paid.  All those years of putting things off were finally adding up.  I started getting used to feeling a little off, then a little crappy, then pretty much somewhat crappy, all the time. I could no longer drink alcohol without immediately feeling bad.  If I had equity in the bank (a good night's sleep, some yoga, and not too much daily stress), I felt pretty good.  If not, I didn't. 

Then, suddenly: balloon payment.  Which is what the last year was all about.

It strikes me that we don't really truly understand that there is a direct link between present and future until we've squandered a good portion of it.  It is very easy to sell out the self of tomorrow for a little more comfort for the you of today.

I heard an interesting story on NPR awhile back.  It turns out that people of some nationalities generally save more money than people of other nationalities.  For example, the Finnish and Chinese save about 25% of their income, while Americans and the French save about 10% of their income.  And it turns out that if you take the languages of the big savers and compare them to the languages of the little savers, there is one thing that stands out: the language spoken by the people who save more don't have a future tense.

WTF?  That's weird, right? 

Another thing I read the other day.  If you give someone a project in June and say it's due in December, they will get on it faster than if you give someone a project in July and say it's due in January.  Ditto with the days of the week.  If I give you a task and tell you it's due first thing next Monday, chances are you'll put it off longer than if I told you it's due by the end of the day on Friday.  Assuming you don't intend on working over the weekend, it's the same time frame... but Monday feels so far into the future that it matters less to us than Friday does.

The analysts who noticed the savings correlation say that when you have a built in sense of the future, it puts it off to a comfortable distance.  The further away tomorrow feels like it is, the more you can convince yourself to ignore it and play more today.  Our western culture certainly preys on that impulse:  look at credit cards and how they seduce us all with the idea of free money, easily attainable, the conduit of so much immediate gratification.  So what if it comes with a 17.99 rate?  We can worry about that tomorrow.

As I get older, I've moved from hoping that that tomorrow will never come, to hoping and praying that it does.  In our youth, we don't want that day of reckoning to ever catch up with us.  Now as we see our parents aging and start experiencing some of that payback ourselves, tomorrows are good and coveted.  We cherish all the candles on our birthday cakes, because someday we know we are going to run out.  Each one signifies one more victory lap.

So yeah, I'm feeling yesterday's victory laps on the beach today .... but happily so.  Some excesses are positive and healthy, and I was glad to pay the price today.  I am still recovering, and that's fine.  I did more yesterday than I have in a long time, and I will do more tomorrow than I did yesterday.  Someday that will turn around, I guess.  But for now, I want to put as much equity into the account as I can, and borrow it later... if, and when, it becomes necessary.

Ballona Creek

If you're looking to read all about the horrors of radiation and how my skin was necrotic and peeling off like over BBQ'd chicken two weeks ago, you're going to be disappointed.  Because my life is great.  We are so over all that.  And I'm feeling good.

This is rapidly going to turn into a blog about cycling.  If you really couldn't care less about how much I love my bike, and how good I feel after a ride, and how I love my little Garmin computer, and how I'm actually really happy about my decently-paying job because I have realized it's not a means to a mortgage end, it's also a means to a bicyclist's goodies end, then hey... go find another blog to read. 

It seems I have turned into one of those entitled people who dares to do things for themselves on the weekends, instead of running around taking care of everyone else.  I feel oddly justified in wanting to be happy now, because happiness will promote health and, yessir, I now have a really good excuse to want to be healthy. So I'm paying for my goodies with my earned income, and I'm periodically taking time off from every one of my responsibilities to be happy and healthy.  I'm now one of those people riding a cool bike with the expensive (and well padded) bike shorts and all the gear and the little computer.  I'm exactly that kind of person.  And if anyone asks me what I did to deserve a little time in the sun, and how I get off doing things to make myself feel good these days... well, you know, they can just pucker up.

I was thinking it could just be the feeling that comes when you stop whacking yourself in the face with a ball peen hammer.  I mean, no matter how you felt about things before you started doing that, you're guaranteed to have a much more positive outlook on life the second you stop.  It could just be that not having people poisoning, radiating, cutting, or poking me on a nearly daily basis is enough to invoke some major euphoria.

Or it could be the bike.

Did I mention that I rode 22 miles today?  And that I'm training for a 25 mile ride in February?  Twenty-two miles is a whole fuck of a lot further than I have ridden in many many many years.  Or decades.  I used to bike a lot (for me) in the '80s.  (That would be in the century prior to this one.)  I was fit and felt great.  I had Centurion 10-speed and rode it all over the place.  Mainly Griffith Park.  I believe I took that bike on the longest "fun ride" I ever did, which was 50 miles.  Didn't really train for it and, yes, it was pretty fun, but I wasn't a serious cyclist.

Although, really... the way cyclists are serious these days absolutely didn't exist back then either.  I mean, back then, if you went really crazy, you could dump $500 into a bike that weighed about 10 pounds and was so cool you wouldn't dare ride it out on the actual street.  These days, you can't buy a tricycle for $500. 

Back then, if you wanted to really protect your nether parts (highly recommended) , you could buy some shorts with a little bit of padding.  These days, there are dozens of options of clothing: streamlined sleek duds that fit you like shark's skin and have all sorts of magic space-age properties.  They have built in compartments for your cell phone and slits for your ear buds and you are spared all the inconvenience of having actual pockets in your jeans for your keys.  Now you slip them into one of the secret compartments and proceed to slip through the air like a fucking stealth bomber.

I rode the bike path down by the beach today.  In the late afternoon sun, the sounds of the drum circles and the volleyball games and the beat boxes all stirred up into this absolutely serene distillation of the best of what it is like to live in Los Angeles.  It was like the gelato of the California dream... the absolute essence... perfect 65 degree temperature, the harmonies of people blending with that wacky edgy Grateful Dead throwback vibe that hasn't changed in decades, the endorphins kicking in from the ride... I passed people and grinned like a holy fool.  This is heaven, I thought.  This is where they got that concept. Someone rode their bike on this bike path through all these crazy people, and came up with this idea of an afterlife that feels just like this.

At first I was just going to go from above the Santa Monica pier down to the breakwater past the Marina and back.  That's my default loop and it's a good 15 miles.  I was excited because plans that were going to keep me indoors fell through today and I had a chance to continue my training.  Fifteen miles felt a little ambitious still, as I have only done two nine-milers since Christmas and, you know, cancer and all that.  But as I rode, I felt strong, and as I neared the breakwater I thought... hmmmm.... I could go another little bit past the breakwater, like 2 1/2 miles, and then come back.  Even if I felt super stupid and tired coming back, I'd have no choice... and then I'd have hit 20 miles. 

That was so very tempting, and I was feeling so very good still, that I did just that.  Went another couple and a half, stopped, took a little selfie to memorialize the moment, and turned around... into the wind.... and headed back.  Yeah... the way up and the way down are not the same on that trial, as I suddenly remembered, but I hunkered down, used my gears, and started the trudge north. 

I got back to the bridge, still feeling strong, and then pedaled back down the spine of the breakwater...just feeling so incredibly alive and healthy and vital.  So alive that when I saw the turnoff to the Ballona Creek path (that my son calls Baloney Creek), I decided to aw fuck it and took a small mid-way victory lap along the creek.  A mile up, a mile back.  The endorphins were now so potent I was kind of hallucinating.  The clouds were tinged with that bastard amber glow, orange and pink against the blue sky.  The sailboats were taking down their sails as they slid into the marina.  The birds flew overhead in a kind of Terrance Mallick magic hour insert shot, and my legs continued to pedal and carry us forward.

After awhile, you become fused with the bicycle.  My son Spencer says you become a centaur, head raised, tires spinning, slicing through space melding flesh with steel and rubber, almost capable of flight. I am certainly not a legitimate cyclist yet, but I am learning to ride my new bike.  I got to a point today where riding felt like the norm, and stopping felt awkward and weird.  Sure my neck hurt and I needed to blow my nose every mile or so.  And yes, it will be interesting to see what my muscles have to say to me tomorrow.  But while I was out there, it was like finding my wings again, remembering back to a time when life was truly alive, all senses attuned, body/mind/spirit in alignment.  Coming back I rode into the setting sun, my shadow flying behind me like a flag of victory.