Author: bondjanet

July 23, 2024

L’Chaim!
To Life!

“In your time of reflection, you have to clarify constantly, even if it’s only intellectually: “Why was I born? Why am I here? What is the purpose of my life?” Then keep on asking, “Am I pursuing that purpose? And how am I pursuing it? Is this the best way to pursue it?” If you need help, have the humility to ask for it. Resort to prayer, worship, meditation – whatever will help.” (Swami Sivananda Radha Time to be Holy)

While the Lahaina fire stirred up a wave of worry and sympathy for that storied town, it was but a ripple compared to the waves of emotion and nostalgia that assailed me when our beloved town of Jasper suffered a similar fate in recent days. Looking online for news of the Alberta fires, I instead encountered images of other global disasters; earthquakes, floods, landslides and wildfires that I never knew were happening (in what one son calls “my room of ignorance”) but which are in fact equal or greater tragedies effecting hundreds or thousands of people unknown to me. How to integrate this ever shifting tableau of disaster into the world as I know it? How to reconcile these images and scenes into my sense of reality?

As I write, I’m surrounded by the vibrant greens and burgundies of alpine shrubs and trees, not to mention the riot of colorful flowers and herbs in the planters that mark the periphery of my outdoor “room”. Its impossible to concieve of this scene reduced to blackness and ash, not to mention the structural log cabin that has housed our busy family since long before any of our grandchildren were born. It’s impossible to imagine all of it being “never more”. Impossible to imagine me being never more. But that is reality.

Likewise, l’chaim, a Jewish toast to life carries with it the implicit “l’mitah” or “to death” that some say harks back to the Garden of Eden:

“According to one opinion, the Tree of Knowledge was actually a grapevine. Accordingly, Adam and Eve’s imbibing of grapes (or perhaps wine) brought death into the world.”

In whatever context we place them, life and death are two sides of the same coin; both inescable facts with which we wrestle more urgently when witnessing the destruction of what we hold familiar and dear, or when threatened with the loss of our own precarious existence. At such times Swami Radha’s questions become that much more pertinent. In fact her entire approach to personal growth is to ask question after question, each one aimed at loosening the ties that bind us to inherited or acquired — but ultimately inhibiting — beliefs. The Buddha held a similar approach: “Deliberate and analyze, and when it agrees with reason and conduces to the good of one and all, believe it and live up to it.” Socrates, too, held this view when he said “True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us”.

And of course this brings us to the ego, the part of us that thinks it knows, the part of us that identifies with our bodies and the constructs we have built around the physical aspects of existence – life as we know it through our sense perceptions and the state of mind that interprets them. But what do I really know of life? Or my purpose in living it?

In a practical sense, I know that life animates all the growth I witness around me. Life struggles for a place in the light, or sun from which important nutrients come. This is seen in the way flowers turn their faces toward the sun, and in the contortions a tree makes to escape the shade of its towering neighbours.

It’s also true that some seeds will only germinate in the wake of a fire. Called pyrophytics, “Some plants, such as the lodgepole pine, Eucalyptus, and Banksia, have serotinous cones or fruits that are completely sealed with resin. These cones/fruits can only open to release their seeds after the heat of a fire has physically melted the resin.” (Britannica)

Such is the case for humans, too. As part of satsang (worship) at Yasodhara Ashram those present would pass their hands over a small flame and recite: “When the oil of ignorance is destroyed in the fire of wisdom, may we know our oneness with the Light”. We cannot know this oneness unless the hard shell of our constructs is broken open and admits the light of a higher wisdom. And that wisdom can only be accessed when we’re willing to un-know what we think we know.

And that’s all I know about that!

PS Cuticle cream makes terrible lip balm…

Animal, Vegetable, Human?

“We create our mental afflictions by creating these narratives—comparing ourselves with others or comparing our performance with what we think it should be. The Buddhists believe a comparing mind is one of the greatest sources of suffering. An animal doesn’t do this. When a beaver builds a dam, he doesn’t think about whether it’s as great as the other dams. He just keeps building.” (Martha Beck)

I’m going out on a limb here, for lack of internet access/confirmation, to reminisce about a guessing game I used to play called animal, vegetable, human.

Ok. Internet is back up. It’s actually animal, vegetable, mineral, and sometimes human. Apparently there are variations, but the game is the same. One person in the game chooses an object and tells the other players if it is an animal, a vegetable or a mineral (or human). All other players ask questions to help determine what the object is.

What interests me today relative to this game is a minor epiphany I had about human nature: according to life coach Martha Beck, we’re a small part rational, thinking human and a large part instinct-driven animals. The main thing that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom is the neo-cortex. According to Beck, “This amazing structure allows us to speak, imagine, calculate—and lie. Humans are better at lying than any other creature on earth. And I don’t just mean deliberate, conscious lying. Our brains are so tuned into social expectations that we often lie to ourselves without even knowing it.”

Why would we do that? Why be so concerned with meeting external standards and expectations that we ignore and even betray our true nature? The answer seems simple enough. Because we are essentially pack animals, and because our sense of security/belonging is based on remaining in said pack or tribe, we often — albeit unconsciously — override our own intuition, feelings and needs. The pack mentality can be found in religions, politics, educational institutions and especially shaped in families. If you are born into a family of athletes you might feel vulnerable or even censored for wanting to pursue stamp collecting or building popsicle stick villages. Depending on where and how you are raised, what transpersonal anthropologist Hillevi Ruumet calls “the social matrix in which we are born”, you may never be exposed to other options than those being pursued around you.

If nothing else, the evolution of consciousness depends on your being able to question the concepts and beliefs upon which you have been operating. Or on which you have based your sense of reality.

In her chapter on Evolution and Maya [illusion], in Time to be Holy Swami Radha writes:

“We evolve through these various kingdoms – mineral, plant, animal, human. It takes billions of years, probably, and millions of births. Even at the human level, we see many people who are closer often to the animal kingdom than to what we normally call human. We can only assume that consciousness came into existence somewhere, and then evolved through individuals who were willing to take a chance. We can only speculate that life has some sort of meaning within which we can make our own individual lives as meaningful as possible.”

That is a question I have been pursuing throughout my years of spiritual discipline and practice, how to make my life as meaningful as possible. I often despair at what I observe in magazines or on tv, and even moreso by the casual cruelties I witness closer to home — kids being bullied at camp or on the playground. counselors or coaches being oblivious or favoring their own. At times like these I go back to “mineral, vegetable, animal” and ground myself in the natural world. I haven’t come across any beaver dams lately, but doing my mantra practice outdoors at a cabin in the mountains does me a world of good.

I watch tiny birds flit from branch to branch. Squirrels chasing one another up tree trunks, and bees buzzing industriously in the flowers beside me. Minding their own beeswax, as the saying goes. While observing them, I remember reading about how bee “dances”, are important forms of communication:

“By performing this dance, successful foragers can share information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water sources, or to new nest-site locations with other members of the colony.”

All of these natural scenes calm my mind as I ask myself “what is my own bees’ wax? What is mine to mind?” Swami Radha wrote about making a positive contribution to the world through selfless service, service offered without thought to personal glory or reward:

“Selfless service is also your protection in these times when the obstacles to Higher Consciousness can have a devastating dimension. Krishna in his last message to the world says, “Whenever people suffer at the hands of others, I will destroy evil.” To the evildoers, he says, “If you remain hard-hearted, I will destroy you.” Today there are millions of people suffering at the hands of others. How do you protect yourself in such times? By practising selfless service, for that is what will make you divine. It is the road to return to the Light, to your inner being.”

As the bees remind me: “Just do what I can with what I have where I am”.

And dance, dance, dance.

SELF-ACCEPTANCE

“Maya is a very complicated thing, and it is maya that prevents evolution. Whether you can accept yourself or whether you feel you have to do certain things in order to survive in the world – these are two quite different ways of thinking. Sit down and think them over. Find out where you are. Do it again six months from now, and next year. Find out again and again how much your thinking has advanced, how much stronger and more courageous you have become about accepting where you are, what you are.”

As I cleared the dinner dishes from the outside patio to the kitchen this evening, I was greeted by the pungent smell of fresh rosemary that I pruned from my herb garden late this afternoon. Having just returned from three weeks away, I’m grateful that our container garden (thanks to irrigation) survived the two plus weeks’ heat wave in B.C. As I drove to the pool today I noted the yellowed leaves falling from boulevard trees, and the bone dry grasses that lent an autumnal note to my first morning back home.

Grateful that we live in a condo and that our planters are well-irrigated, (I must confess that we never adhered to Vancouver’s water restrictions while living in our single family residence) I noted a lack of colour and lustre . As it happens, we had no grass on our former property, so, but for a suspiciously green boulevard that nobody commented on, we were able, during the occasional heat wave, to enjoy the shade of trees that had been planted some twenty plus years prior. No longer a rare occurrence, a series of hot, dry summers have seen forest fires raging across British Columbia from June to October. So far that is not the case in 2024, but the summer is still young.

I am not.

This fact occurs to me as I try to stay awake until after 8 p.m., notably because I’m far from finishing today’s blog. Which is why self-acceptance comes to mind. One of the hardest things to accept is how a mere five and a half hour plane flight and three hours’ time change wreaks havoc on mind and body. I woke this morning disoriented and unmotivated, stuffy-nosed and sneezy. As is my habit, I began with my spiritual practices — mantra chanting, journaling and any inspirational readings that seemed relevant to how I was feeling.

I gravitated to Martha Beck’s blog on the “Best Strategy for Self Motivation”:

“Martha began by advising her new client to get in touch with her gut—literally—by breathing deeply and focusing on physical sensations. “If you pay attention to your body, you will feel physically pulled toward what’s right for you,” she said. “What would make you feel joyful and relaxed?””

This is not too different from what a favorite yoga instructor asks her students during quiet intervals: “What do you sense? What do you feel?”

All of these ideas lean to an acceptance of ‘what is’, in contrast to the tendency to compare and compete with a younger version of me. My decision to head to the pool, despite feeling sluggish, was motivated by knowing what brings me both relaxation and joy. One might not think plunging into a chilly ocean for half an hour or so would be relaxing, but it always clears the cobwebs and leaves me feeling invigorated and alive. Quite the contrast to how I woke up! The relaxation comes during coffee with fellow swimmers and friends, and joy comes from having transcended my inclination to stay in bed. Which is where I am now headed.

Sweet dreams everybody. 😇😴🧚🏼‍♀️

July 8, 2024

WAX ON: WAX OFF

“A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, except insofar as it is acted upon by a force”.
(Newton’s First Law of Motion: Wikipedia)

This past week the expression “wax on/wax off” kept popping into mind as I pondered topics for my next blog. Having given myself permission to write only ”if the spirit moved me”, I was inclined to ignore the message entirely and stick to a series of mindless beach reads, the nemesis to any productive activity. Stirred out of my stupor by a restless eight year old asking to go to the beach, I brought my iPad along and reflected on how unlikely it was that the spirit would ever actually move me. And, voila, I had an example of wax on/wax off.

Reading several blogs and other commentary on the meaning of wax on/wax off, I came up with my own clever catchphrase: preparation (waxing on) is the gateway to inspiration (waxing off). Several times in the last week I have had interesting ideas come to mind, always thinking I’d remember them when I had time to write, only to have the ideas dissipate in the minutea of my day. Waiting for inspiration to come knocking was and is a surefire way to remain in that unproductive, semi-inert state. Hence why Newton’s law, roughly stated, that objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and objects at rest tend to stay at rest, unless and until some force acts upon them, comes to mind. In my case, rest begat more rest begat a general physical and mental torpor. Easy enough to achieve in the summer’s heat and humidity. The force that broke my inertia was a combination of guilt that I’d whiled away my writing time, and empathy for an eight year old waiting on us big people to grant his wish to go to the beach. What does this have to do with wax on/wax off?

In the popular 1980’s film Karate Kid, Master Miyagi “begins Daniel’s training by having him perform laborious chores such as waxing cars, sanding a wooden floor, refinishing a fence, and painting Miyagi’s house. Each chore is accompanied with a specific movement, such as clockwise/counter-clockwise hand motions.

“Daniel fails to see any connection to his training from these hard chores and eventually feels frustrated, believing he has learned nothing of karate. When he expresses his frustration, Miyagi reveals that Daniel has been learning defensive blocks through muscle memory learned by performing the chores.”

For me the chores are more arbitrary (and not defensive in the least) but it is through performing small, everyday tasks, paying attention to detail, and doing the best I can with what I have where I am, that I develop positive habits that effect everything I do in life, including writing.

As I see it, inspiration will only come when I lay this groundwork of self-discipline, consistency (which is why I vowed to post a blog once a week) and impeccability that I apply to small tasks like making beds, doing dishes, washing clothes, and other chores that are entropic and potentially boring.

It may seem beside the point to organize drawers and pick stuff up off the floor (with five grandkids visiting that’s an endless chore) instead of concentrating on my blog, but it applies metaphorically to how I sort and organize the thoughts, and particularly emotions in my mind. If my living space is cluttered and disorderly, my thoughts and actions tend to fall into those same categories. Thus it’s very effective to align my intentions for writing with my actions in “real time”. If literally ironing or waxing, I can add the suggestion of smoothing out convoluted thinking, or polishing my written or spoken speech. For ideas to go from fleeting insights to coherent writing I exercise the discipline of sitting down with a blank “page” and allowing my intuition to express itself (without the interference of ego) just as “grasshopper” learns the karate skills he needs through an entirely different — and what his ego considers irrelevant — medium.

So it is that, after a trip to the beach, a rousing game of Marco Polo and collecting more wet towels than I thought we owned, I have carried this momentum into today’s blog on objects in motion tending to stay in motion. And how it vaguely relates to waxing on and waxing off.

Now to go feed my inner grasshopper a bowl of popcorn.

(Or 105 depending on who’s counting)

STAY IN YOUR OWN LANE

“To know the universe as a road, as many roads, as roads for travelling souls,

“If the terminus of all roads be God, then what matter what road we take?

“But hail your fellow travelers from a distance. Don’t try to catch up and keep step.

“Yell Cheerio across the fields but stick to your own particular path…

“Be it paved or grass or just plain old dirt, it’s your path and it suits your make of boot.” (Walt Whitman)

I think two weeks is a long enough break from blogging, and I find myself with a five hour plane ride in which to concentrate on the next installment of leading an examined life (with a healthy dose of curiosity), so here I go.

I figure curiosity will give me the objectivity I need to sustain me through an uncertain and sometimes frightening future, which is why I was drawn to the phrase “stay in your own lane”. That and the fact that, en route across town to swim the other morning, I was almost run off Lions Gate bridge by a fellow motorist who decisively did not stay in his own lane. By decisively I mean he didn’t hesitate for a second as he drove straight into the curb lane in which I had the right of way. Having already been in that lane (but apparently demanifestly — something I’ve been trying to achieve in my spiritual journey) I had no other option but to jam on the brakes and vent my irritation with colorful language and expressive hand gestures. Since that day I’ve been cautious when approaching what is sometimes a merge (when we are down to one lane southbound) and sometimes a right-of-way (when we have two southbound lanes).

The metaphorical take-away from that near-accident was realizing how necessary it is to stay true, as Walt Whitman wrote, to my own particular path. What has caused me an unnecessary amount of pain is a tendency to compare and compete with my former self, moreso even than with the other “motorists” around me. The person I see in the mirror is seldom the one I see in my mind’s eye. The person I see in my mind’s eye is one who continues to do and be what I have always done and been. When I don’t like what I see in the mirror, am I saying I don’t like who I really am, and will this not manifest in a future me that I don’t want to see or be seen? How to mitigate this self-deprecating tendency?

In June of 2011 I attended a school reunion in New York City, the second since we all met at “finishing school” in the late sixties (don’t judge me…). In a journal entry written on June 19, 2011, I wrote:

“I hoped the reunion would allow us each to see ourselves in the mirror of the other attendees, to see who we used to be [in our late teens] and reclaim that which we’d forgotten about ourselves but which will serve us well on our journey, our next steps.”

I then proceeded to record the minor epiphanies I had gleaned from the feedback of my fellow alumni, all of whom saw each other differently, and much more favorably, that we saw ourselves. At the time of this reunion I’d been married for forty years, our four children had moved out, and in some cases moved away, to pursue their independent futures, and, I suspect, I was experiencing a time of transition not unlike the one I’m now in.

To better locate myself in this transition I turn to the four life stages or asramas in Ayurveda that I described in an earlier blog:

“Brahmacharya (student, ages 1-25), Gṛhastha (householder, 25-50 years), Vanaprastha (forest walker/forest dweller 50-75 years), and Sanyasa (renunciate, 75+).

Approaching my seventy-fourth birthday in a couple of weeks, I’m well on my way through the stage Ayurveda describes as Vanaprastha, or that of the forest dweller:

“The retirement stage, where a person handed over household responsibilities to the next generation, took an advisory role, and gradually withdrew from the world. Vanaprastha stage was a transition phase from a householder’s life with its greater emphasis on Artha and Kama (wealth, security, pleasure and desires) to one with greater emphasis on Moksha (spiritual liberation)”.

From there, I’m meant to be moving into Sanyasa:

“The stage marked by renunciation of material desires and prejudices, represented by a state of disinterest and detachment from material life, generally without any meaningful property or home (ascetic), and focused on moksha, peace and simple spiritual life. Anyone could enter this stage after completing the Brahmacharya stage of life.”

While I have a healthy skepticism regarding the Eastern (indeed all) teachings that I have explored over the past few decades, I do draw some encouragement from the Ayurvedic approach because they assign different growth tasks for this age than those of our western culture and education. Whereas most of my adult life was focused on maintaining a home and raising a family, I consider myself lucky to have encountered writings that lent depth and purpose to life beyond the obvious markers of success to which we subscribe (for lack of anything different, or better) in the West.

I’d like nothing better than to tie up this blog with a bow and advocate Ayurveda as the way to navigate any life stage. But personal growth, spiritual life and/or the evolution of consciousness are not one-size-fits-all. Within your own heart and soul are the steps you need to take, the directions you need to go. You can follow the Buddha’s advice to “deliberate and analyze and if it agrees with reason and conduces to the good of one and all, believe it and live up to it.”

But be sure to stick to your own particular path…

June 10, 2024

SMALL CHANGE

“When we draw a line down the center of a page, we know who we are if we’re on the right side and who we are if we’re on the left side. But we don’t know who we are when we don’t put ourselves on either side. Then we just don’t know what to do. We just don’t know. We have no reference point, no hand to hold. At that point we can either freak out or settle in.” (Pema Chödrön Six Kinds of Loneliness)

One thing about reaching an unprecedented situation or life stage is that, by virtue of its being unprecedented, one is at a loss for signposts or reference points from which to get one’s bearings in this unfamiliar territory. As Pema Chödrön well knows, this lack of signposts or certainty can be deeply disorienting. And frightening. I don’t like being disoriented any more than the next person, provided they’re anything like me and don’t go in for change in a big way, but I am seeing a path through this disorientation that offers encouragement and even novelty versus the urge to crawl under a rock until it blows over. The latter might’ve been an option if I thought this aging thing would blow over, but I’m afraid the only way that is apt to happen is one that I’m not too keen to contemplate.

So, on to my novel new idea about embracing versus avoiding change, aging, uncertainty, unpredictability, general unpleasantness etc etc. I’ve decided to let curiosity be my approach, or guide. I suggested to myself that I could start by trying one new thing a day. Not sky-diving or rock climbing, but any small thing that takes me out of my routine. For instance, the other day I wandered down aisles in the grocery store that normally never interest me. I’m an around-the-edges sort of shopper, the produce section, cheese and deli display, the flowers, and occasional chips or dairy forays. While looking for puff pastry from which to make pizza to use up the pesto sauce I made the other day (a first), I spied frozen butter chicken and other Indian dishes that I’ve become more interested in since attending a Sikh wedding, and reading a trilogy of Alka Joshi’s books on the lives of some feisty Indian women. Even this recent reading marks a departure from my usual authors, folks like Alexander McCall Smith or Amor Towles, Elin Hilderbrand and several nonfiction writers . My “curiosity move” of that day was to take home the frozen butter chicken with the intention of finding a recipe for jasmine rice, such as we enjoyed at the wedding, with the addition of a few more green things to complement all the red sauce.

Today’s departure from the norm was learning how to let myself into our condo building using my phone instead of my keys. It worked very well, but the feedback screeching caused by holding my phone too close to the intercom compels me to keep using my keys in future. At least I now know how to remotely admit visitors to our building!

The interesting discovery is how the least shift in my perspective or routine tends to give rise to more and more discoveries; just by doing things that I’d put off indefinitely, like buying better fins to aid me in the ocean swims that are infinitely more rewarding than endless laps of a too-crowded or always-booked pool, net gained energy. (Today I was actually daring to go in the ocean alone, so out of synch was my timing with my usual buddies, but luckily I met up with three other swimmers who, after our swim, even offered to share the lane they’d booked to finish up their distance.

In the process I made two new swimming acquaintances and learned about an event taking place in Kelowna this summer. It would take a great leap of courage for me to swim across Lake Okanagan, (no doubt at its narrowest point) but it’s something to which I will now give careful consideration, versus my tendency to summarily dismiss it as unrealistic: too much training, too many logistics, or too great a leap of faith. That I would even contemplate such a commitment has me wondering what has become of me, and in what other ways am I apt to roam beyond my comfort zone. For leaving my comfort zone is the only way out of what Pema Chödrön calls “samsara”.

“We hear a lot about the pain of samsara, and we also hear about liberation. But we don’t hear much about how painful it is to go from being completely stuck to becoming unstuck. The process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality, like changing our DNA. We are undoing a pattern that is not just our pattern. It’s the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution. We can have whiter teeth, a weed-free lawn, a strife-free life, a world without embarrassment. We can live happily every after. This pattern keeps us dissatisfied and causes us a lot of suffering.”

Making small consistent changes is one way to overcome the attachment to creature comforts (otherwise defined as the devil I know) and limiting beliefs (or fear of the unknown). Besides, who knows what I’ll find on the rest of those mystery grocery aisles?

June 3, 2024

VATA TIME

“You may find it challenging to avoid giving in to the temptation to rush, particularly if you have acclimated to a world of split-second communication with cell phones, emails, and overflowing agendas. Yet, the sense of continuous accomplishment you lose when you slow down will quickly be replaced by feelings of magnificent contentment. Your relaxed tempo will open your mind and heart to deeper levels of awareness that help you discover the true gloriousness of being alive.” (Daily Om, 03/07/24)

En route to the pool shortly after dawn the other morning, I slowed to let a couple of adult geese amble across the road to join what looked like a gosling nursery. At a quick glance there appeared to be over two dozen goslings, just starting to feather out, while a much smaller number of adult birds circulated among them. These I designated the parental geese, still supervising their rapidly growing youths. On the opposite side of the road were what I deemed the slower, senior geese, content to leave “child-rearing” to the younger, more agile birds who could, in a pinch, get out of the way of less mindful motorists. I noticed that this phenomenon only takes place at dawn; later on, as traffic builds the geese wisely head for the beach. Of course, this anthropomorphizing is my way of placing my own “seniority” in the context of another facet of the natural order.

In Ayurveda (think India’s version of Traditional Chinese Medicine) the lifespan of a human being is roughly divided into three stages, or doshas, that are named kapha dosha, or youth; pitta dosha, or middle age; and vata dosha, or old age. (Incidentally, Vedanta philosophy, also from India, divides the human lifespan into four stages: youth or student stage; householder or career stage; retirement or spiritual seeker; and, in ideal cases, the sage or enlightened stage.) Having been steeped in these eastern teachings for close to four decades, I’ve lately been drawn to the latter in search of a context for, and road map through, the unprecedented time of life that I am now experiencing.

Since getting my hip replaced in January (if not before, during the months that I couldn’t bike, hike, do yoga, etcetera) I have had rude awakening upon physical rude awakening. My orthopaedic surgeon’s glib remark that I could expect to resume my previous level — or at least variety — of physical activity at around three months post-surgery, set a bar that I’m not even close to achieving. In fact, rather than the steady improvement I anticipated, I’ve hit one figurative speed bump after another.

I need not elaborate on what are, at best, minor blips on the scale of world problems, yet these setbacks have effected my general outlook to what I deem an unhealthy degree. As I observe the senior citizens (my contemporaries) who populate much of West Vancouver, I register with some chagrin the varying degrees of disability that seem to presage my imminent future. This in turn threatens a mental slide into an “Is this all there is?” defeatism that is potentially more crippling than any physical difficulties.

A first step in getting my mind off this negative trajectory is to simply be curious. In my journal I note what’s happening physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Curiosity gives me the count-to-ten objectivity that I need to calm any “catastrophic thinking” I might be doing. Using a few key words that I remember from Ayurveda in an internet search, I find a wealth of information on the Vata time of life. I realize that few people of my acquaintance have heard of Vedanta philosophy or Ayurveda, but I’m in no doubt that many of us at this age and stage are struggling with similarly discouraging infirmities, and are vulnerable to the negative thinking that we build around these. One pundit calls this double suffering: we have the physical pain of, say, a sore hip, and the mental pain of imagining it never getting better! My particular narrative goes something like: “Will I ever be able to bike again? Should I just sell my bike and take up monopoly? Dominoes? Mah jongg? I don’t have the concentration required for playing bridge, or the New York Times crosswords. Whatever am I going to do?”

This is why it was so encouraging to read the positive spin that Ayurveda puts on Vata time. In Ayurveda, this stage of life sees a silver lining in the physical decline and even decrease in cognitive abilities. Instead of climbing new external mountains and seeking ever greater external achievements, the individual is encouraged to step back from worldly concerns and learn to savour “the true gloriousness of being alive”.

This is not as easy as it sounds, but I am learning to adopt a gentler, more introspective pace. Hopefully more purposefully than those seagulls who go nowhere, slowly. More like the geese who stay on the beach-side of the street!

May 27,2024

MEMORY LANE
…is a dark alley

“Unlike his family, for whom flight is a means to an end, Jonathan treats it as a spiritual quest, and he gradually comes to live by the mantra: “The only true law is that which leads to freedom”. As he flies at ever increasing speeds, he learns: “the gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly.” (Paula Bardell-Hedley, Feb. 2, 2020)

We have a resident seagull, an elderly one, I assume, due to its snowy white plumage and somewhat bulbous shape, though that could just be because it’s now comfortably huddled on top of the outdoor heat lamp looking warily in the direction of our windows, as if knowing one of us will soon come charging through the sliding doors and “run it off the property”. This morning I can’t be bothered, though yesterday we hosed down the heater’s metal shade on a thoroughly rainy day, to rid it of the unsightly remains of the seagull’s “latrine”. Initially I had left it alone thinking a seagull wouldn’t poop in its own roost. I was wrong.

What kind of a mixed message am I sending that our seagull, dubbed Jonathan after his famous antecedent, can watch me watching him while not stirring to chase it from its roost? It’s as if I’m granting it permission to stay as long as it wants. At any rate, having named it Johnathan I’ve anthropomorphized it into something like the little fox’s rose in St. Exuperay’s The Little Prince, and now I’ll have to reread Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, not to find out why a seagull has come into my life, (that’s easy, we have a convenient, solar heated perch from which it can survey its world), but to remind myself of the iconic book that defined the mindset of the ‘70s.

For those of you who don’t know of it: “Jonathan Livingston Seagull is an allegorical fable in novella form written by American author Richard Bach and illustrated with black-and-white photographs shot by Russell Munson. It is about a seagull who is trying to learn about flying, personal reflection, freedom, and self-realization.” Wikipedia

That’s a lot to ask of a seagull. Even the publishers were surprised that the humble novella captured the imagination of several generations, and has sold over 44 million copies since its publication in 1970.

That said, having now finished rereading it, I tend to agree with Bardell-Hedley:

“Jonathan continues to represent for many the consummate symbol of an individual seeking to take control of his or her destiny, leaving behind the hegemonic, narrow-minded community from whence they came. With this I would agree. While I found the experience of rereading Jonathan Livingston Seagull a rather less profound experience than I did in adolescence, it still gladdens my heart, and it served to remind me that the tribe, while ostensibly offering safety and reassurance, can often be petty, cossetting and cruel to those who deviate from the norm.”

What gladdened my heart were the fond memories I recalled of the ‘70s that were perhaps seeded by my recent visit to the iconic Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, founded in 1971, within a year of Bach’s book being published, which I consider quite the coincidence. I could go down a rabbit hole thinking this too is a sign, and I’m sure it is, of something. If nothing else, it comes as I’m reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that my grand-daughter is now the age about which I’ve been reminiscing; she poised to embark on an exciting new life chapter, while I mull over the suggestion of “unfinished business” that may just be at the root of these compelling memories.

This suggestion stops me in my mental tracks. I find myself consuming about a pound of pistachio’s (raw, unsalted, which is why I know they’re a distraction) as I tread carefully over misty memories that are time-altered and subjective. Coming to terms with illusions is a tender business. Though it may once have been “dream worthy” as per the Mamas and the Papas, California is not now the land of milk and honey I believed it to be in the ‘70s. In fact, it never was. For starters, the Beach Boys never even surfed. While Jonathan Livingston Seagull was waxing esoteric, Berkeley students were protesting the Vietnam War, racism, and the subjugation of women. To name a few.

Suffice to say, I’m better off making peace with whatever unfinished business is shading my perception of the present than harboring illusions about how my life coulda, shoulda, woulda been. That strikes me as a good way to go nowhere, slowly.

And, with our ten year old grandson’s baseball game starting shortly, I do have places to go, things to do, and people to meet. Lucky me.

BELONGING

“Most of us pride ourselves on our self-sufficiency. We like to be responsible for taking care of ourselves and pulling our own weight in the world. This is why it can be so challenging when we find ourselves in a situation in which we have to rely on someone else. This can happen as the result of an illness or an injury, or even in the case of a positive change, such as the arrival of a newborn. At times like these, it is essential that we let go of our feeling that we should be able to do it all by ourselves and accept the help of others.” (Daily Om May 16, 2024)

The theme of belonging has been topical for me in the couple of weeks since returning from Hawaii, where I have a built-in family, or Ohana, in the small community that we call our home-away-from-home outside Kona. The fact that half of this Ohana is staff doesn’t detract from the sense of belonging and inclusivity, and Aloha that I experience in Hawaii. It just means I have easy access to conversation and group activity, should I feel a need. Not so in West Vancouver, where I’ve yet to make any new friends or experience the reassurance of having a “tribe” behind me. This perceived lack has generated no small amount of anxiety as I’ve often felt anonymous, outside of family, in this seemingly indifferent city. At least that was the case until yesterday.

I’ve often been asked why I swim on the opposite side of English Bay in our old neighborhood of Point Grey, when there is ocean access right across the street here at Ambleside Beach. And indeed I do see the occasional group of cold water devotees as I walk along the sea wall, but I gravitate to the folks I’ve swum with at Jericho, and the constant I I have come to count on: there will always be someone familiar swimming anywhere from 6:15 to 8:00 a.m. (on weekends) and, even better, someone to chat with in the hot tub.

I think I took this constant for granted until yesterday morning. Unwittingly, I used the wrong anti-fog drops in my swim goggles, and within the hour my eye was an itchy, swollen red mess. There’s nothing like being unable to see out of one’s eye that makes one feel helpless and vulnerable. And not a little impatient and short-tempered! Rinsing it out under the filtered water faucet did nothing to soothe the burning sensation, so one quick-thinking swimmer volunteered to get me some proper eye wash at the drugstore. Others expressed concern and offered solutions from their own experience. One friend even tracked down her brother, an Opthamologist to get his opinion, and a retired emergency room doc urged me to seek help at UBC hospital. Most of the people at the pool got involved one way or another.

Ultimately, a fellow swimmer drove me to Emergency where, over the next couple of hours, the chemically burned eye was flushed with four or five liters of sterile saline solution. Since I was unable to tolerate the too-big eye rinse cup, a nurse volunteered to manually rinse the eye while I held it open with my own hands. Without the drain that’s attached to the eye cup, I was soon lying in a pool of cool water, soaked to the skin from head to waist, while other nurses scrunched blotter-towels around my shivering body.

When they’d done all they could at UBC, the next stop was Vancouver General’s speciality opthamology clinic that keeps a skeleton staff on deck for weekend emergencies. Such as me. The words of Thursday’s Daily Om post came back as I waited anxiously to be seen:

“The first step is accepting the situation fully as it is. Too often we make things worse either by trying to do more than we should or by lapsing into feelings of uselessness. In both cases, we run the risk of actually prolonging our dependency. In addition, we miss a valuable opportunity to practice acceptance and humility. The ego resists what is, so when we move into acceptance we move into the deeper realm of the soul. In needing others and allowing them to help us, we experience the full realization that we are not on our own in the world. While this may bring up feelings of vulnerability, a deep feeling of gratitude also may emerge as we open to the experience of being helped. This realization can enable us to be wiser in our service of others when we are called upon to help.”

Yesterday I learned a great deal about accepting the situation as it was, and setting aside the ego that probably would have gone straight home (if I’d been able to drive) rather than lean on other people. Had I done so, the damage to my left eye would likely have been irreparable.

When all was said and done, I realized that ‘belonging’ has a lot to do with admitting vulnerability, and accepting help and advice from the people around me. Knowing how much it meant to be on the receiving end of so much care and concern taught me a great deal about how to be of service to others in need. And above all, it taught me that however anonymous a part of me may feel, I am not on my own in the world.

Now to light my gratitude candle…

May 13, 2024

GRATITUDE

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate the beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch Or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I’m sure there’s a joint somewhere in my body that doesn’t ache, but wherever it is, its neighboring joints are complaining so loudly that the quiet ones go completely unnoticed. Welcome to COVID. Round two. I may never fly again. That seems to be all it takes. No sooner did I post Monday’s blog that I went down for the count. It took about a nanosecond for those two red lines to stand out loud and proud. Well, boldly and unequivocally, anyway. I didn’t need the test to convince myself. I needed it to show other people around me that I was/am deserving of sympathy. As if it wasn’t disorienting enough coming back to reality (albeit a sanitized West Vancouver variety) after four months in the tropics. No, instead I had to have fever, coughs, chills, the trots, with a side of itchy allergy eyes and an alternately stuffy/runny nose. Oh. Did I mention a throbbing headache? And heartburn?

And those are just the physical symptoms. The mental-emotional components? Including an embarrassing amount of “why me?” self-pity? Let’s not even go there. Suffice to say I can relate to Judith Viorst’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I can’t remember how that story ends but I’m imagining it has to do with how Alexander’s day eventually improves. Well, on Monday, MAY 6, I gave myself until Friday to get over COVID. It seemed like the requisite amount of time for this to blow over. As of Mothers’ Day it seems I’m just getting started with dizziness and nausea.

To add insult to injury, I missed my early Mother’s Day tea last Tuesday, which I thought was a great way not to compete with every other mother-daughter combo in the city who, along with their extended families, will be packing out all the brunch/lunch/dinner options in the vicinity. And there aren’t that many.

Which is why it’s a good thing my son gave me a Gratitude Candle (complete with instructions) for Christmas. Instinctively I lit it at the first sign of symptoms. Initially, I’d forgotten the message that came with it but I knew it was something I needed to do to transcend the pity party that was gaining momentum in my psyche. So the other evening, when I opted to blog about my sorry state of being, I fished out the card that accompanied the candle and thought its message was worth sharing:

“This isn’t just a candle, it’s a ritual designed to brighten your day in more ways than one.

“The Gratitude Candle was inspired by the idea of habit stacking. For thousands of years, humans have been lighting candles. Every time we light a candle, we eventually need to extinguish the flame. Blowing out a candle has become an automatic habit. The Gratitude Candle invites you to stack a new habit on top of that one.

“Here’s how it works: whenever you blow out the candle, take that as your cue to think of something from your day that you are grateful for. It’s as simple as that to begin cultivating the research-backed benefits of gratitude in your daily life.”

I’m grateful I don’t have a houseful of toddlers to tend to while I focus on rest and recovery. I’m grateful those toddlers grew up to be stellar adults who produced ten of my favorite little people. I’m grateful I have someone who will do our grocery shopping and bring soup for dinner. And flowers. Grateful for a stretch of gloriously sunny spring weather. (Even if the blossoms make me sneeze). Grateful for advantages too numerous to count. And grateful that I have a blog Ohana to whom I feel accountable for practicing what I preach. Namely, for tearing my gaze off my navel and getting on with my (albeit somewhat circumscribed) Mothers’ Day.

Now, on Monday morning, it’s time to habit stack my chai excursion onto a walk outside, with gratitude for a negative COVID retest.