Recent Posts

You might as well dance

2/26/2015

As a writer and a long distance runner, I spend a lot of my day in Starbucks locations across the city, and for years I've had a massive pet peeve about their condiment stations. Anyone who has ever navigated one of these stations knows how poorly designed they are in that you are compelled to reach in front of someone else in order to get a lid or to grab the milk carafe. I've never understood why Starbucks, the masters of uniformity and efficiency, couldn't design a better station.

Having said that, you can imagine my surprise when just last week, this petty daily resentment suddenly left me, and it’s with somewhat of a heavy heart that I admit to you that I’ve come to love this impromptu "milk-lid dance" I participate in several times a day. No matter how much of a rush I’m in or how lost I am in my own little world, this shuffle, reach, and bend dance encourages me to make small talk—fleeting though it may be—and to maintain civility with other folks in my city. Come to think of it, maybe Starbucks has much more business savvy than I gave them credit for.

So what do you think brought about this radical shift in my thinking? Although I’d like to say that it was my “enlightened” choice to let go of a niggling daily frustration, it really is nothing more than a simple shift in my perception. But even more, what this has made me realize is that much to my dismay, I’m actually a “happy person”, not the melancholic tortured soul I’ve always considered myself to be, some romantic ideal of a man making his way along the margins of society.

Like anyone else who makes it to middle age, I haven’t arrived without swimming through my fair share of setbacks, trauma, and disappointments. There was a time in my life when I looked upon these experiences as something that left me broken, fractured, or in some way askew. I now see adversity as something that shapes me and to all account, strengthens me. There is no doubt that in a crisis, you meet a different part of yourself—and quite often it’s in this meeting of yourself, that you truly come to find yourself.

In an age of 24/7 connectivity, we very often feel a desperate need to carve out our own individual space amidst the endless stream of “likes”, “shares”, and “reposts”. In so doing, we erect artificial barriers around ourselves, thereby depriving us of the one thing that can liberate us from much of our sadness—a recognition of the universality of human suffering. Despite the many knocks against social media being nothing more than mindless chatter about the mundanely egocentric comings and goings of our lives, I believe that the flipside to these “superficial interactions” is that they inadvertently open a window to the universal daily grind we all endure. I know that I mine a lot of inspiration from the people I engage with on social media, and this has happened to such a degree that it has caused me to redefine what I think “courage” means. Courage has nothing to do with “not being afraid”. In fact, it’s the complete opposite—It entails all that you will yourself to do when “you are afraid.”

Deep down, we are all in search of a little inspiration, a little hope. I was discussing this with a friend yesterday, and he told me that he sees “HOPE” as an acronym for Hearing Other People’s Experience. I was blown away by the clarity of that concept, and how it perfectly encapsulates the power of connection and its ability to make us reach for greatness. So once again I find myself in need of a slight change of perspective. Instead of railing against the constant influx of digital connectivity, maybe it’s time for me to really listen to and gain insight and inspiration from the experience of others. Today, I strive not to be remembered for making the most noise, but for creating the silence on which others can paint their words. Hope lies in connection, and in connection lies freedom.

3 Comments

"The leaper is not unfamiliar with pain."

2/17/2015

1 Comment

By far the most horrific experience of my life arrived the day I woke up with the realization that I had been betrayed by my own mind. The world I had constructed to insulate myself from past trauma had come crumbling down around me. But what I wasn’t aware of was how surprisingly easy it is to live a lie, to convince yourself that your past is not connected to your present, and that you can build a sarcophagus around your hurt with no threat of the radioactive ooze leaching into your life.

What we often forget to acknowledge is that falling apart may in fact not be as catastrophic as we think because in actual fact, what is more than likely happening is that we are falling together. It all comes down to perspective, and believing that nothing falls apart that wasn’t in some way fractured or unstable to begin with. It takes us a while to see things as they really are because we humans are hardwired to either run away from discomfort, or numb ourselves to avoid acknowledging its presence. In either case, there comes a time when we must confront that which doesn’t sit right in us.

After the initial dissidence of coming to terms with our inner demons, we arrive at a calmer place that I like to refer to as an “emotional oasis”. An oasis is an isolated area of abundance and fecundity that starkly contrasts the barren lifelessness around it. We see these in nature, precariously located amidst the most unforgiving terrain, and we can also see these as people, thriving in the most toxic social, political, and even familial environments. For me, running served as my oasis—my reprieve, my haven that permitted me the time and space to thrive until I became strong enough to delve into the work that needed to be done to acknowledge the trauma I experienced as a child, and the fractured and convoluted behaviors I adopted to keep this trauma at bay.

Don’t get me wrong—an oasis can be a beautiful place to be, but there is no denying that it is but a temporary reprieve. Sooner or later, you’ll need to step foot into the inhospitable terrain that surrounds it. In the immortal words of the poet John Donne, “No man is an island.” We long to be connected to one another, to love and to be loved. But how do we go about reconciling with our “brokenness”, and more importantly, how do we give ourselves over to the vulnerability to allow others to witness our brokenness.

For years I was baffled by what it would take to get to a place where in forgiving myself, I permitted others the space to forgive me. True, by inhabiting my own little oasis, I had distanced myself from much of the discord, the haunting of my past, but there is a marked difference between “distancing” and “addressing”. I knew that within the discomfort and the discord, lay the solution. It wasn’t until very recently when I stumbled across something that John Steinbeck wrote, that I discovered what I already intuitively knew. Think of it like the Big Bang Theory, but related to knowledge in general. In the words of Steinbeck, “The flame of conception seems to flare and go out, leaving man shaken, and at once happy and afraid. There’s plenty of precedent of course. Everyone knows about Newton’s apple. Charles Darwin said his Origin of Species flashed complete in one second, and he spent the rest of his life backing it up; and the Theory of Relativity occurred to Einstein in the time it takes to clap your hands. This is the greatest mystery of the human mind — the inductive leap. Everything falls into place, irrelevancies relate, dissonance becomes harmony, and nonsense wears a crown of meaning. But the clarifying leap springs from the rich soil of confusion, and the leaper is not unfamiliar with pain.”

I can’t even begin to tell you how jarred I was by those simple words, “the leaper is not unfamiliar with pain.” It all comes down to learning to inhabit your own world but from a different perspective. You can’t really expect to slip out of your skin, but you can turn it inside out and wear it backwards, or as one of my favorite writers, Henry Miller says, “One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

So if you’ve turned a chapter on a challenging part of your life, and you see yourself standing firmly in your oasis, perhaps you’ve reached the point in which you have fortified yourself so that you are now strong enough to step back into the dissonance and launch yourself towards new growth. It’s a never-ending process of healing and stretching and healing. Every solution we come to opens the door to yet another question.

When it comes to such esoteric subject matter, I am often at a loss for words, so I can think of no better way to end this than to leave you with the words of the great English art critic, John Berger. “The arrival to an answer, to an insight, is nothing more than the demarcation point of yet another question. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.”

1 Comment

Three Things

2/9/2015

1 Comment

It was the great Carl Sagan who said: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” And let's not forget in that universe, you and I are nothing more than specks of dust dancing around, sometimes bumping into one another, often times drifting our own separate ways. What unites us all is the purpose of legacy—that which imprints our presence on the lives left behind.

Each and every one of us leaves a trace, be it the lives of our children, a stubborn patch of earth lovingly tended into a garden, or even our nascent words or music brought to life on a page. Try as I might, it’s impossible for me to ignore my inheritance, the gnarl of an index finger, but a vestige of my mother, the nervous tick of rubbing my brow, none other than a direct legacy of my father.

There are those things too, that we take with us—we dare not leave them behind. Some are too precious to release from our grasp; others too unspeakable to be breathed into words; and still others left unbirthed and uncharted, from a life unfulfilled.

All of this has got me thinking about my legacy and how I would choose to craft it. I’ve divided it into 3 things I want buried with me, 3 things I want to leave behind, and 3 words I want engraved on my headstone.

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “You can’t take it with you.” Well, that might be the case, but selfish as it may be, there are a few worldly possessions I don’t want to let go of. My one-year medallion from Alcoholics Anonymous means so much more to me than to anyone else who finds it in their possession. When I received it 17 years ago, I remember the weight of it in my hand and feeling so upset because they had engraved the incorrect spelling of my name. All these years later, I see the beauty in that imperfection, and how it has come to define my life in sobriety. The second item I would like to take with me is my finisher’s medal from the Comrades Marathon in South Africa. To this day, I’m still in awe at the amount of courage it took for me to step completely out of my comfort zone and head halfway across the world to run 89 km up and down the unrelenting terrain of South Africa. The final item I want to take with me to my grave is my pettiness that has been my undoing on so many occasions in my life—the world would be a much better place with less of that negativity left to linger.

I had a much harder time deciding what 3 things I’d choose to leave behind. My first choice would be my wedding ring, and my hope is that it finds its way to my son. To me this little band signifies all the valleys my wife and I have climbed out of and all the mountain peaks we have reached together. The best advice I could give my son is to not find a partner who “completes you”, but rather, find someone who helps you “find yourself”.   My second choice to leave behind is my depth of strength that comes from being a survivor. I honestly believe that in this life, we are only given what we can manage. There are times when we feel that something is beyond us, but those are the times we mine the parts of us that make us superior to circumstance. The final thing I would leave behind is my sense of humor; albeit tinged with irreverence, it has buoyed me through some very tense moments throughout the years.

And last but not least are the 3 words I’d like engraved on my headstone. Every life is marked by two dates and a dash, the year we came in and the year we go out. Today, my life is all about “living the dash”. The 3 words that anchor me to that dash are: gratitude, surrender, and resilience.

I invite you to find a quiet place, sit down, and craft your own list of three 3s.

1 Comment

Softening into things

2/2/2015

0 Comments

Even though I’ve been clean and sober now for almost 18 years, without a doubt, I continue to move through life with the mind of an addict. And what I mean by that is much of my thinking over the years has been nothing less than binary. Everything in life was good or bad, black or white, stoned or sober, flying high or crashing down.

I don’t want to live a life like that anymore—a life that comes with an endless jarring as you fluctuate between the extremes. Over the past two years, I’ve immersed myself in the field of mindfulness and mediation, with the expectation that learning to be “fully present”, might just be the antidote I need to escape my binary disposition. By no means has this been an easy practice for me to adopt, as I’ve been struggling with the fact that the more present I become and thus more in tune with what really is, the more aware I am of what really isn’t.

And it wasn’t until a few days ago that I stumbled across a quote by Kathryn Schultz that perfectly explains what I’ve never been able to put into words. “The miracle of your mind isn’t that you can see the world as it is. It’s that you can see the world as it isn’t.” So it’s in this space that I struggle most, the dichotomy of knowing that where you are illuminates and gives you the clarity of where you hope one day to be.

It appears that even mindfulness—something universal in its simplicity—is neither black nor white, but shaded in grays. In fact, it’s the gray areas I inhabit most these days. I’m continually reminded of this fact when I brush up against adversity. It’s the knowledge that any trial or unpleasant circumstance can either destroy you or open you up to growth borne of resilience. What we take from that experience is entirely up to us. Instead of pushing away from the discomfort, I’m learning how to soften into things.

It’s been said that no matter where you go, there you are. The “me” that gets in my way the most is my ego. My ego is definitely a big room I can easily get lost in. It’s a room in which the windows don’t look out, only in. Everything in this room is constructed of grandiosity and self-pity. I may not use drugs or alcohol anymore, but I still suffer from hangovers of my own doing. My ego run amok ensnares everything in its path, while simultaneously pushing everyone and everything important in my life away. For me, learning how to “soften into things” means learning how to quiet my ego, the presence that convinces me that in order to build myself up, I need to tear someone else down.

By getting out of my own way, I open a channel for love to come into my life. What is love other than commitment—It’s having the faith to be present with another person and having a willingness to live with an unresolved conflict. It’s knowing that I didn’t choose to love you just for this moment, but for a culmination of all the moments that have yet to arrive.

This process of stripping away and being present takes an incredible amount of energy, and learning to sustain this way of navigating life requires we constantly replenish our resiliency stores. I always thought I was an extrovert, gregarious and thriving in community. It wasn’t until I heard an interview with Chris Kresser that I realized that even the binary labels of introverts and extroverts can be misleading. Chris described introverts as being people who get their batteries recharged when they are alone. It really has nothing to do with not enjoying being in crowds and being the center of attention. That totally describes why I’ve always thrived when I can strike a balance between quiet solitary restoration and chaotic communal interaction.

So I guess what I’m really trying to say is that maybe the “gray areas” aren’t so bad after all. Learning to “soften into things” is moving me further away from a life of either-or. It’s my ability to sway and sashay through adversity that invites love into my life. In the words of the American Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön: “If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility. That’s the true practice of peace.”

0 Comments

Dancing Through Your Why & How

1/20/2015

0 Comments

There is a part inside each and every one of us that just doesn’t seem to sit right. We find a disequilibrium that given enough time and circumstance, can derail us, demobilize us, and at worst, if allowed free dominion—destroy us. We are so preoccupied with the trials and tribulations of life that we feel almost incapacitated at the prospect of tearing into that space inside that we have been so careful to anesthetize, bury, and ignore. But what if we really did take ownership of everything inside us, not just the face we show the world, but the darkness, inadequacy, and fear residing in that place of disequilibrium?

I’m reminded of a quote by Frederick Nietzsche, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” As I sit here writing this, two very conflicting emotions are running through me. There is a deep sadness for giving free reign to a fear in my soul that allowed so many years of an unfilled life to pass by. And at the same time, I have an immense sense of gratitude and optimism for finally realizing the truth in Nietzsche’s words—knowing my “why” in this life makes me superior to any temporary circumstance I may find myself in.

Two years ago I dug into that space of disequilibrium inside me and I began unpacking all the darkness that comes with being a survivor of child sexual abuse and rape. As I pealed back layer upon layer, all I found was fear in all its manifestations. I’d been traveling this geography of numbing and avoiding for decades, and my not so subtle companion this entire time was fear, something that had been lying on the surface like an oil slick—thick, claustrophobic, and dark. We walk around telling our stories to ourselves, and in so doing, not only do we bear witness to these stories but also we internalize these stories as our reality.

The only thing more heartbreaking than living a life of fear, is living a life of regret. I’ve gotten old with fear, and to be honest, it’s overstayed its welcome. Before I can jettison fear from my life, I need to figure out what "fear" really is, and what it isn’t? On one hand, fear is discomfort, anxiety, and disquiet, all of which are feelings that by their very nature are unpalatable, but not crippling.

On the other hand, fear is entwined in expectation—My projection of what might happen, but most certainly hasn’t come to pass. Therefore, if I approach fear with an absence of expectation and simply deal with what’s in front of me and not what I envision might unfold, it becomes much easier to wade through the disquiet and anxiety. By having the fortitude and reliance to wade through these tumultuous moments, it allows us to transform the disequilibrium inside us into personal growth and beauty.

Where I am apt to get hung up is in feeling that the growth and change within me is not moving as fast as I’d like it to move. And once again, I can sabotage my wellbeing by relying on outcomes and desires as my metrics for personal growth. Often we limit our potential, by lowering the bar we set for ourselves, when we allow our fear of not reaching our goals in a timely manner to govern our actions. My way around this mind trap is by aligning myself with a broader vision of feeling whole and of service to my community. It’s an extension of my faith, not in any religious sense, but in a deep communion with an understanding of my true purpose, vision, or what Nietzsche referred to as my “why”.

If the proliferation of self-help books that top the bestseller lists is any indication, selling people on the idea of personal growth and transformation is not really an issue. I think the real question comes down to whether or not it is reasonable to expect to bring anyone along with you, be it your partner or friends and family? Any change that comes from within you is bound to disrupt the homeostasis of the relationships that you’re involved in. Even a recognizable positive change can leave those around you feeling threatened and insecure, both of which are deeply rooted in their own fear of abandonment.

A dance that my wife Mary-Anne and I have had to navigate in our 28-year marriage is learning how to coexist in various periods of extensive personal growth when one partner is in flux while the other has yet to adapt and respond. If I interpret change in my partner as an assault to my contentment, I run the risk of trying to interrupt, and disrupt, that growth in order to hold my partner where she is. I try to comfort myself in that what I may perceive to be an act of rebellion may in fact be an act of creation. Ultimately, it questions the notion of “I love you for who you ARE not who you WILL BE.

The more I delve into that space of disequilibrium inside and begin to acknowledge and transform the fear I uncover there, the more I realize that the most beautiful parts of me, and those around me, are contained within the darkness of that disequilibrium. There is indeed a wholeness in knowing that each of us in his or her own way is incomplete. Like shaking the dead leaves out of tree, it’s by inviting those around us to witness the transformation inside us, that we come to realize and acknowledge who amongst that group allows us the space to grow. Just as there is a deep disquiet in a life left unfulfilled so to is there immense sadness in relationships that never grow. I’ll leave you with the haunting words of Nelson Mandela: “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

0 Comments

I came in looking for a way out

1/13/2015

0 Comments

No one, and mean no one, walks through the doors of their first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting feeling “happy, joyous, and free.” The prospect of spending countless hours in damp church basements and community centers, in the company of other twitching, coffee-swilling addicts doesn’t do much to warm the soul.

By the time I found my way to the rooms of AA, I was desperate to try anything, but truth be told, I came in looking for a way out. There was no denying I had a drinking problem, but like most people in recovery rooms, my addiction was merely a symptom of a much more deeply rooted problem. Alcoholism is cunning in that it is an illness that continually whispers and enchants by trying to convince the addict that you are different; you can have just one, and this time you’ll be able to control yourself. The irony is that the alcohol never solves anything—It just buries problems and feelings that invariably bubble their way to the surface like a festering boil.

And here in lies the problem—every alcoholic is an unwitting player acting out his or her part not in a tragic comedy, but in a comic tragedy. The best description I’ve ever read about the insanity of alcoholism comes from Dr. Vincent Felitti, who said: “It is hard to get enough of something that almost works.” That is certainly how it played out for me. From the first drink to my last alcoholic binge, I was chasing a solution that never quite worked. It is in this space of “not quite working” that the greatest devastation unfolds in the alcoholic’s personal and professional life. There is not an active alcoholic on the planet who doesn’t cause collateral damage. Like ripples in a pond, the chaotic dissonance is far-reaching.

When I finally reached that point of being sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, I grudgingly agreed to give Alcoholics Anonymous a try. Although I was willing to go to any lengths to get my drink or drug, the same could not be said for my foray into recovery. I’m an addict, so naturally I want the quickest fix possible. I called the 1-800 number in the phone book, and asked the polite lady on the other end of the phone if she could send out some AA pamphlets to me in the mail. At that point, I was still convinced I could get sober simply by reading the “How To Guide”. Surprise… It doesn’t work that way. The volunteer on the phone asked me where I lived, and she told me that there was a meeting just down the street from me starting in a couple of hours.

When the time came, I walked down the street towards a group of men and women smoking and laughing on the sidewalk near the side entrance to the church basement. Careful not to make any eye contact whatsoever, I slipped past the group and made my way to the door, where I was greeted by a guy, who must have been a bouncer in his former life, who said: “Welcome to the Friendly Group. Grab a coffee and grab a seat.”

Many of you may be wondering what an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting looks like, so let me give you a quick AA primer. I’ve been to meetings throughout North America and some in Europe, and generally, they all follow the same format. There are two types of AA meetings: closed meetings and open meetings. Open meetings are exactly what they sound like—They are open to alcoholics and to anyone else who wants to attend. Typically, after the initial announcements, and the reading of the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, one alcoholic will come up to the front and share his or her story of strength, hope, and recovery. On the other hand, closed meetings are for alcoholics and for those who think they may have a problem with alcohol. These meetings also begin with the reading of the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, and are followed by a group reading or discussion based on one of the steps or traditions, or a topic related to recovery.

I’ve been attending AA meetings for almost 18 years now, and in that entire time, I’ve managed to stay clean and sober one day at a time. After the thousands of hours I’ve spent in recovery meetings, I can say I’m certain of only a few things. First, despite what many people believe, AA is not a cult. It’s just a group of alcoholics trying to figure out how to stay sober by helping the next guy or gal stay sober. Two, no matter how shitty I feel before walking into a meeting, I always feel a little better after it’s over. Three, going to meetings is like holding up a mirror to your sobriety. It’s impossible to see the changes in me since I’ve stopped drinking, but by looking around the room at others with different amounts of sobriety and encountering varying struggles and joys, I’m able to see myself in each and every other person in the room. And finally, having to sit in a chair for 60 or 90 minutes and listen to other alcoholics as they listen to me, is a much needed lesson in patience.

18 years later, I still have days where I desperately want a drink, but I remind myself that no matter how bad I’m feeling and no matter what problem I have, if I pick up that first drink, I’ll still have that problem, but now I’ll be right back in the caustic belly of my addiction. Today I consider myself a grateful alcoholic, and I now realize that I don’t have a drinking problem—I have a living problem.

0 Comments

Margins & Wordless Wonder

1/7/2015

1 Comment

For most of my life, I numbed, ran away, and avoided, always hiding on the margins, too afraid to confront my demons and too ashamed to reach out for the help I so desperately needed. But through all that time, I was a seeker—longing to find a way back into a place where I didn’t loathe the feel of my own skin, a place where I could simply disappear because I was normal. I know it’s ironic that I wanted to fit in, yet disappear at the same time, but I knew that unlike the soul-destroying self exile that had governed my life for so long, this form of disappearance came hinged with a warm enveloping feeling of acceptance and communion.

My story has been one of fighting my way back from the margins of society—one in which I never had a clear picture or understanding of what I was doing, what I was moving towards, or more accurately, what was moving through me. One of the champions of the marginalized was Thomas Merton, the American Catholic writer and Trappist monk. I’ve always admired his poetic voice and his strong social conscience that appeared to walk the tightrope of contradiction.

There’s a passage from Merton’s The Asian Journal that I find particularly illuminating in what I’ve come to believe as the purpose of everything I’ve battled through in my life.   "I stand among you as one who offers a small message of hope, that first, there are always people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating existence under a state of risk. And among these people, if they are faithful to their own calling, to their own vocation, and to their own message from God, communication on the deepest level is possible. And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech and beyond concept."

What I’ve had to accept is that I can’t expect “social acceptance” as a precondition to my recovery, be it from the sexual abuse in my past, my battles with depression and suicide, or my continuing struggles with addiction. Somewhere along the way the bruises I tried to conceal by pushing everyone away, became battle scars I am proud of. In rescuing myself, I began to build bridges to others who trust in my path, and it was in this wordless dialogue, that others began to see hope in my story.

This transition has in no way been graceful, or in any sense self-aware or scripted. Much of the time I’ve spent trying to figure out what I should be like, and sound like. I’ve felt like an actor trying to find a way into his part—trying on this voice or that voice, experimenting with different mannerisms. It wasn’t until I threw away everything I thought a survivor should be, and embraced everything I naturally am, blemishes, missteps and all, that I finally found the voice of hope inside that I wanted to display to the world.

Subtly has never been my strong suit, and I wear the mantle of being a slow learner proudly. For me, substantive change has only come on the heals of repeated roadblocks and a lot of vain attempts trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. In biblical terms, I’m waiting for the lighting bolt or burning bush to signal something demands change.

One such burning bush arrived in my life a little over a year-and-half ago, and like most biblical parables, mine appeared in the beauty of nature through the eyes of an innocent child. I had recently begun an extended medical leave from my job as a teacher in order to deal with some recurring issues related to post traumatic stress. Not only was I unable to function in my normal duties in the classroom but also my complete inability to maintain any form of attention span meant that reading and watching television were frustratingly impossible. My only solace was an Adirondack chair on our front porch that offered a sheltered view of the comings and goings in front of our house. Anyone who has lived in a big city is well aware of the frenetic hum and busyness of urban living. But for the first time, I was now so disconnected from my plugged-in, super-charged life that I became a casual observer, an interloper.

We live in a quaint little pocket of Toronto just north of the eastern beach. It’s a community known for its postage-sized front gardens—a natural oasis amidst the tarmac and concrete. Like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, I sat transfixed to the intricate tableau unfolding in front of me. My cool mornings and warm afternoons were spent sitting on the porch watching the world continue on without me, neighbours heading off to work, dog walkers pounding the pavement, and parents walking their children to and from school.

One sunny morning a father and his young daughter walked by on their way to the elementary school down the street. As is typically the case when parents are in a hurry to hustle their children to school, those little minds are in a world of their own, and are easily distracted by everything and anything along the way. The impatient father decided to try to speed things up, so he walked on ahead. It was at that point, that the little girl stopped on the sidewalk in front of our house, and she reached into a makeshift concrete birdbath that we had at the edge of our garden. Living in an area literally overrun with cats, there was not a hope in hell that any bird in its right mind would venture down to what would more than likely be certain death in our birdbath. As a result, the birdbath became a de facto repository for decorative stones we picked up at the beach and various fallen twigs and leaves that I was forever picking out.

As I heard the father’s increasingly frustrated pleas for his daughter to hurry up, the little girl reached into the concrete birdbath and took out one of the more colourful stones. By that point, her father had walked back to grab her, and then, he saw me sitting quietly on our porch. I knew exactly what was going through his mind, as he was embarrassed because his daughter had climbed in amongst our flowers. He immediately scolded her, and told her “she should stay out of people’s gardens." The little girl turned to her father and said: “Mommy lets me do this every day. It’s my wishing bowl. Every day I take a stone out and make a wish.” The father looked like he just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I’m sure he felt like crap for ripping into the little girl, who didn’t understand why her father didn’t grasp the magic in what she was doing.

After they had walked away, I felt as though I had been jolted awake—It was my burning bush moment. The words uttered by that little girl kept echoing in my head, and the more I thought about it, the more I believed they were the most beautiful words I’d ever heard.

You have to realize that I’d spent the past few weeks feeling completely lost, purposeless, and alone, but in the simple actions of that little girl, I began to realize the simplicity and power of hope and faith in our world. All I needed to do was to figure out a way of silencing all the noise around and inside of me, and begin to focus on the beauty of a moment, the belief in the wonderful.

I decided to latch onto this idea, so I got up from my chair and I searched around the basement for some old wood to use to make a sign, but all I could find was an abandoned wooden cheeseboard, cracked and warped sitting dusty on a shelf. I grabbed the board and a Sharpie marker and fashioned a little sign to place beside our concrete birdbath. In my squiggly penmanship, the sign read:

     “WISHING BOWL”
    Take a stone out to make a wish….
     Place a stone in to let go of a problem.

As I look back on this, my only motivation for going through all this effort was to see the expression on the little girl’s face the next time she walked by our garden. What I didn’t expect was the reaction our wishing bowl would have on our entire community. The reaction was immediate; as people were rushing by on their way to work, school, or the store, they would stop and read the little sign, and then they would smile, reach down, and take a stone out of the bowl or place one in. Within a week, people were carting stones from God knows where to place into the bowl to “let go of a problem”. Our little wishing bowl that had started its life as only a few decorative stones was now overflowing with pebbles and rocks from the community.

To this day, if you sit on our front porch or catch a furtive glance through the living room window, you are bound to see people stopping at the now famous wishing bowl. I have to say the most surprising thing for me has been the reaction of the groups of teenagers who parade past our house every day on the way to and from the high school down the street. Teenagers seem to unabashedly love the wishing bowl, and it doesn’t appear to matter that they are doing it in front of their friends. We have one elderly man who stops by every morning and takes a rock out and carries it with him for the day. On his way home, he drops another rock off to our wishing bowl. I’ve had countless parents stop and tell me that their kids love the wishing bowl, and how it reminds the hurried adults to slow down for a bit and appreciate the world through the wonder of a child’s eyes.

I believe that there are angels who come into our world to teach us the lessons we are too blind to take notice of. That little girl was one such angel. She opened up a part of me that had been closed for far too long. She reminded me that underneath all of the noise and trappings of our adult life, lies the one thing that so many of us spend our lives desperately seeking out--the glimmer of hope. As I sit down to write this, I began thinking about the difference between the words wish and hope. Most of us use these words interchangeably, but there is indeed a subtle difference. A “hope” refers to a person’s desires, and it is attached to strong emotion with the expectation that something is doable with a little effort. For instance, I “hope I get the promotion at work,” whereas a “wish” is often associated with magic, sorcery, or a strong yearning. You wish when you blow out birthday candles, or when you hold your breath and silently dream of good fortune. When you think about it, wishes are boundless, and they are magic in that they are not steeped in, nor weighted down by typical adult pessimism.

As I become more comfortable sitting with that voice inside that whispers to my soul, I’m learning that serenity can be found in the midst of adversity by “wishing” more and “hoping” less. If this means going against the grain and continuing to reside in what Thomas Merton lovingly referred to as the “margin of society”, I choose to live a life steeped in magic and optimism, and if that borders on blind naivety at times, then so be it. Our little wishing bowl is not just a neighbourhood novelty; it’s become a metaphor for a more joyous way of life.

I’m not going to lie to you; there are definitely times when I feel that my new way of life is counter to everything that the mainstream world operates on. There are times I feel frustrated, lonely, and utterly despondent, but it’s in these moments that I remind myself that I found my voice and my passion on the margins of society. Once again, I can seek solace in the words of Thomas Merton: "Do not depend on the hope of results. …You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself."

And it is here, in this space of endlessly falling but never hitting ground, where I need the most faith in my direction. When I quiet myself long enough to hear that whispering in my soul, I’m resolute. I intuitively accept that despite wherever we are now in our lives, in the face of what might appear to be insurmountable pain and struggle, deep down we are all worthy of love, and are without a doubt, superior to circumstance.

1 Comment

Coming Apart & Falling Together

1/5/2015

2 Comments

With the holidays behind us, overindulgence leaving our clothes feeling a little tighter, and a new year underway, we eagerly await what lies ahead. This year I have chosen to forgo the customary list of resolutions for one guiding principle instead—I will work towards removing the word blame from my vocabulary, and hopefully, my actions. Blame, by its very nature, is a dysfunctional word because it implies that we can in some way control the behavior and actions of others. It’s a powerless word that more often than not, traps us in a state of victimization.

2014 was by far the most difficult, but ironically, best year of my life—A tumultuous year in which I finally sought professional help for the physical and sexual abuse from my childhood, and for a violent rape that occurred during my adolescence. After almost four decades of blaming others, and asking why did this happen to me, I realized that I had been asking the wrong question all along. What I should be asking is what can I learn from pain and tragedy? In essence, I was stuck in what was no longer, and as a result, it was impossible for me to entertain what might be. I think Marilyn Monroe, whose beauty often overshadowed her business acumen and her way with words, said it best: “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”

We are all dealt our cards in this life, but what we often fail to acknowledge is that our trump card is only revealed to us when we stand knee deep in chaotic turmoil, in those times when it feels like our world is crumbling around us. Instinctively, we put our head down and do whatever we can to bury, deny, and avoid the discomfort we are in. It’s a timing thing—we can’t force it to run its course; it just has to run its course. The discomfort of the disequilibrium can feel unbearable, and it can arrive at the least opportune times in our life. As Alan Watts says, “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

If I’ve learned anything this past year, it’s about learning to do the opposite to what my comfort zone brain is whispering to me. Instead of turning away when things appear to be coming apart in my life, this is the time when I need to be extra attentive, a time to be present and seriously take stock of what this undoing has opened in me. We typically look at pain as something to be suppressed; when in fact, it is a direct channel to something that does not sit right with us in our soul. By adopting this new way of looking at pain and sadness, instead of a tragedy, it becomes an opportunity, or even a gift that has unearthed a lesson inside me.

As it’s been said, “Wherever you go, there you are,” so the sooner you make peace with the fact that you are not just the “driver” but also the “passenger”, the sooner you’ll be spending less time escaping from your life and more time living it. My life has become less about distancing myself from painful memories, and more about making space for those memories to ride beside me like wise and faithful passengers. Our pain comes from wanting and expecting things to be different than they are. By acknowledging, “what is”, I am given a choice. I can learn to make space for it, thereby lessening the friction in my life, or invite something else into my life to take its place—Either way, I am fully present to where I am right now.

As the playwright George Bernard Shaw pointed out: “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” I can’t imagine a more beautiful, life-affirming way to begin not just the New Year, but every day of my life. So, in the absence of any resolutions for the year ahead, I will remind myself of these three questions to help govern my actions.

1. How can I make space in my life?
In this, I begin to let go of any negativity I might have about possessions, even people, or myself. If I really believe, as George Bernard Shaw said that I can “create” the life I want, then that means I have permission to leave more space for the people and things that nourish my soul.

2. How can I live in solutions not in complaints?
It was Shannon Alder who said, “The art of being wise is the art of knowing that solutions don’t come from individuals, but rather experiences.” I believe that complaining is the lowest form of communication, and it inevitably fosters more complaining. Far too often I look to others for the solution that lies within the experience inside me.

3. How can I build bridges and tear down walls?
Compassion lies in connection because it reminds us that deep down, all every person longs for is to be seen, to be heard. No matter where I am, commuting on the subway, passing a homeless person on the corner, or even standing in line waiting for my coffee, I have the opportunity to reach out and connect with somebody.

I’d like to leave you with the words of Albert Schweitzer. “In everybody’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle our inner fire.”

2 Comments

Darkness Illuminated

12/22/2014

1 Comment

With the winter solstice come and gone, those of us who live in the northern hemisphere can now expect increasingly longer days and shorter nights. I can fondly remember how much I looked forward to this time of the year as child—a prolonged escape from the confining classroom, a vast swath of unstructured time, and of course, the prospect of presents to unwrap.

But something happened along the way—I grew up, and more importantly, grew away from myself. As an adult, I have come to associate the month of December with scheduling commitments, commercialized-induced angst, and frazzled families. December demands our attention, so it’s bitterly ironic that this is the time of year we are least attentive. When we were children, we lived in the moment and seemed to roll with whatever came our way, the scraped knees, unicorns, and sugar highs. But now that I’m an adult, December has become a time when I look back and survey the year that was, and anticipate, sometimes with dread, but usually with blind optimism, what lies ahead. Overall, the one thing I seem hell bent on not doing is keeping as busy as possible so as not to focus on the now.

This year, more than ever before, I’m fighting my natural inclination that whispers to me to step out of the now for the endorphin rush of expectation around the corner.   I’m reminding myself that renewal, growth, and serenity are the gifts that are found when I slow down long enough to let my life catch up with me. There is an invigorating sense of peace that comes whenever I learn to be comfortable with where I am now, especially when every nerve ending in me is screaming to turn away.   As the poet Mary Oliver has said: “Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”

Mary Oliver's words awaken me, as they attune me to the idea that being attentive even in the darkest time of the year, fortifies my soul. The darkness of these winter months is not something to retreat from, but rather, something to be embraced. Even amidst the darkness, our silent companion—the moon—illuminates hope is ever present.   Metaphorically, darkness envelops us and dulls our visual sense. But as one sense is dulled, the others are heightened, and with distractions removed, clarity arrives.

I’m learning to accept that by staying present in the periods of darkness in my life, I in fact am blessed to see what really lies around, and inside of me. Darkness shrouds and isolates us from much of the pain in our lives, a byproduct of our interactions with others gone astray. Our jealousy, resentment, anger, and irritation cannot thrive when we sit alone and endure our darkness. All we are left with is our truth, and our truth is that we are governed by our fear—our fear of abandonment, worthiness, and forgiveness.

By disentangling all the ancillary emotions and seeing my fear for what it actually is, I step into my present and get a glimpse of how this is the doorway to my future. When I no longer turn away from the discomfort of my own darkness, I take ownership of my life, and in so doing, clear a passage for authentic connection with others. We are reminded by the American Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, that darkness is what opens us. “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”

So as this year draws to a close, I invite you to spend less time looking at the year behind you and composing the New Year’s resolutions that lie ahead. Instead, look around, and inside where you are right now. By really seeing yourself, you open the possibility to see others for what they really are too. I’ll leave the last word to Elizabeth Gilbert. “To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.”

1 Comment

Insatiable Seduction

12/17/2014

2 Comments

Whether I attribute it to something gone haywire in my orbitofrontal cortex, misaligned or misfiring opiate and dopamine receptors, or even the sexual violence incurred in my childhood, the answer always comes out the same--I am an addict. Being ensnared in an active addiction is a tortuous death spiral, a soul-sucking spiritual thirst, a cantankerous craving, an insatiable seduction, but most of, an anxiety-fueled obsession that’s all about self-negation.

I’m coming up on 18 years of being clean and sober, yet I’m ever so vigilant of how tenuous my sobriety can be. The longer I go without a drink or a drug, the more susceptible I am to getting lulled into complacency. It’s a daily reminder that while I’m going about rebuilding my life after drugs and alcohol, that snake called addiction is just off in the distance, slithering and snarling, waiting for me to take those first steps into the doorway of denial.

How can I describe what addiction is to someone who isn’t an addict? In my mind, the closest anyone has ever come to capturing the entrancing enticement of addiction is Dr. Vincent Felitti when he said: “It is hard to get enough of something that almost works.”

I used to think my struggles with addiction were all about my craving to fill an insatiable void inside me. I’m only beginning to understand how mistaken that thinking was. Addiction has more to do with what I’m trying to avoid than it does with any void inside me. In fact, I no longer subscribe to the belief that, like the hole in a doughnut, we all have an empty space inside of us that desires to be filled. It’s self-defeating going about your life thinking you’re in some way broken, or walking around with this aching cavern in your soul that screams out to be filled.

We are indeed all “whole”—The real issue lies in what, and whom, we permit to fill those crevices inside us. We’ve all been given limited space to work with, so if you want to welcome more joy, love, and forgiveness into your life, you’ll need to make space for it by purging some of the anger, hate, and self-pity from your life.

For years, I’ve wrestled with what recovery is supposed to look like. Are we ever really recovered from an addiction, or are we treading a path of recovering, of which we are given a daily, and sometimes hourly reprieve? Alcoholics Anonymous has held dominion over the recovery field and its 12-step offshoots for decades. And if you follow their direction, there is no such thing as cutting down, only cutting out. It feels almost blasphemous to second guess such a rigid direction that has managed to keep me sober this long, but I wonder if given the resources, support, and self-knowledge, if more addicts would internalize less shame, and thus have a better hope of recovery were a less stringent program in place.

This brings me back to the idea that addiction, a universal human condition, is simply a matter of not making space for other people and things in your life. Sometimes the volume is just turned up too high, and we fail to see the need to purge toxins from our soul. And these can take many forms—friends, family, substances, and behaviors. So how do we go about burrowing into our addictions and making room for goodness to enter our lives? It starts with getting honest with yourself and admitting that someone or something is standing in the way of you feeling whole. Next, you come to the realization that the addiction is merely a symptom to a much deeper problem in your soul. All the alcohol, drugs, shopping, work, and sex you use to numb your problem, in time, will no longer soothe the discomfort in you that can’t be silenced, only unearthed. At this point, you’ll need all the help you can get to fortify yourself to keep pushing through when its ever so easy to slide back into numbing and denying. Here’s when you’ll have to rely on the easiest “most difficult” thing in the world--forgiveness. You don’t have to be the person you were, but if you want any hope of wedging that addiction out of its foothold in your soul, you’ll need to find forgiveness for yourself and those who may have hurt you. And finally, once you’ve cleared that toxic space inside you and you’ve allowed joy and love to take its place, you’ll have to take responsibility to fight like hell to keep that addiction from slithering back in.

I’d like to leave you with beautiful words of Naguib Mahfouz: “The problem is not that the truth is harsh but that the liberation from the ignorance is as painful as being born. Run after truth until you’re breathless. Accept the pain involved in re-creating yourself afresh. These ideas will take a life to comprehend, a hard one interspersed with drunken moments.”

2 Comments

<< Previous

Archives