I have a couple
of books to add to my "favorites."
One is Eckhart
Tolle's "The Power of Now," for which I received at least three
recommendations. It's about keeping your mind from constantly dwelling on the
future and the past and living in the only reality there is: the present. The
past is only memories; whatever was real then isn't happening now. The future
is only imagination; whatever will be real then isn't happening now. In the
baldest terms, we simply can't afford to live in regret or anticipatory dread.
They poison the joy of the present.
The other is
Walter Farrell's "The Myth of Male Power." I missed it the first time
around, in 1993. Farrell takes a very fresh and enlightening look at the
"facts" surrounding what "everybody knows" about men. After
25 years of feminism, he can make you feel good to be a man again. He's also
appropriately sympathetic to the plight of women - as long as they keep their
facts straight.
I've also got
to mention "Men's Health" magazine again. Each month, amid the
fashion, sex, and body-building articles, there's some other gems. Like health
alerts, articles on courage or leadership, or (in the October issue) an article
on some old-fashioned values like community service, loyalty, friendship, and
the like. I know this mag won't be every man's stein of beer, but I think it's
worth checking out.
You probably
know the old joke: Kid to old man carrying a violin case: "How do you get
to Carnegie Hall?" Old man, "Practice, son, practice."
Practice is an
essential part of learning anything and maintaining skills at it: the violin,
making chip shots, speaking a foreign language, kicking field goals, tying
flies. It can have other, sometimes deeper, implications, too: practicing
medicine, practicing a spiritual discipline.
I think one of
the ways we can be happy is to have a set of practices that we follow
faithfully. Here are some ideas.
Physical
There's a
well-known overweight and obesity epidemic going on in this country, and lack
of exercise is cited, along with junk food (and super-sizing of it). It's
damned easy to come home after a stressful day, kick back, and veg out. But
it's killing us. Here's the most general advice: find something you like to do
and do it every day. Walk around the block. Jump rope. Run. Anything. Build
from there. The benefits are more than physical: people who exercise are
generally happier.
Mental
Usually we
associate "use it or lose it" with physical abilities. Guess what -
your brain needs exercise, too. If your job is stimulating and keeping your
mind sharp, fine. If you're not learning anything new, it may be time to add
some "recreational thinking." What seems to keep the brain lithe is
the novel and different. Read a book that's not in your field. Take foreign
language courses (for the hell of it or because you want to retire to, say,
Italy or Spain someday). Do the daily crossword puzzle. You may find that you
not only stay sharp mentally, but that you feel younger. That old mind/body
thing.
Spiritual
It's easy to
see and track (and for scientists, to measure) the benefits of regular physical
and mental exercise. What about he spiritual? Even if you're a regular
church-goer, you may be going mostly because of the social aspects, for the
sense of community, or because of the kids. What does a spiritual practice
involve? In almost every tradition, it involves (1) quiet and solitude; (2) a
release from the internal "noise" of constantly thinking; (3) a
surrender of the idea of "self" to something bigger - a deity, a
higher or truer self, and so on. This is not just blissing out. It's a kind of
"grand pause" in which you get in touch with something not bound by
time and space.
The Baehr
20-Minute Rule
It's really
hard to get started and then keep up any practice. I have no problem with the
daily crossword puzzle; it's part of my breakfast ritual. But sometimes I have
to force myself to start my daily walk, and sometimes my daily meditation.
Often, the early part of my daily walk feels horrible - I'm stiff and sore, or
just logy. But things smooth out after 20 minutes. The walking gets almost
effortless. Same thing with meditation: totally distracted for 20 minutes, and
then a peacful calm settles in. If only I could dispense with the first 20
minutes and just go with the last five! But one leads to the other.
What if you
have only ten minutes to spare? That's fine. Even if you're logy - physically, mentally,
or spiritually - you can put up with some discomfort for ten minutes.
Two Out Of
Three Ain't Bad
Three 20-minute
(or more) sessions of practice can eat up a lot of your day. How about
staggering things a bit? Try to do two a day. Close your eyes (after you read
this sentence) and imagine how you could fit 40 minutes into your day. If your
day is so harried you don't have 40 minutes, you might want to have a broader
look at how your life is going! But you can also try some micro-practices: Isometric
exercise while waiting for the light to change. Adding license plate numbers or
making up words from their letters when you're stuck in traffic. Closing your
eyes and breathing deeply for a few seconds when you first get to work or when
you're washing dishes.
Synergy
The main buzz
word of the 70s has lost a bit of its cachet, but there is, I think, a potent
enhancing effect of engaging in more than one practice. A standard one is
"walking meditation," in which you pay quiet attention to your
breathing and body movements as you walk.
Results
We're in a
results-oriented culture: everything has to have some kind of measurable
outcome. I don't recommend that you keep score of how good or faithful you are
with your practices, but it's a good idea to be attuned to changes. Do you feel
calmer? Are you eating or sleeping better? Is there more of a bounce in your
step? Are you less crabby and gloomy? Do you smile more - and do people smile
at you more?
What makes you
happy? Newsweek recently published an article about the "science" of
happiness and had some interesting things to say about research into what makes
people happy. Interesting on one level, but a bit ridiculous. Investigations
into happiness have been going on probably since men and women gathered in
caves and talked around the fire. I wonder if you would agree with the
following observations:
Happiness
involves the following factors:
1.
Knowing
the difference between wants and needs. Needs are pretty finite: once you have
food and drink, physical safety (usually shelter and clothing), and loving
relationships, you've got it made. Wants can expand infinitely. Recognizing
wants as nice-to-haves and not got-to-haves can prevent a lot of unhappiness.
2.
Selflessness.
It's a paradox: for a happy self, get rid of the self. Two interpretations:
selflessness through altruism (helping others) and selflessness through
surrender - to some greater Being, to a universal Oneness with the universe,
etc. When we concentrate only on the self, there's a constant striving for
satisfaction, and we don't get much.
3.
Beauty.
An ability to create or appreciate beauty through music, art, cooking,
photography, writing - almost anything done from the heart.
4.
Some
kind of practice or discipline. We humans, at least, with our churning,
thinking brains, need to develop some sense of intentionality about the first
three factors. See the article in this issue.
Why do people
who seem to have little and who tend to help others seem to be happier than the
rich or wannabe rich strivers? When do the strivers know they've arrived?
What about the
four factors above? Are they necessary for true and enduring happiness? Are
they sufficient? Do they stand the test of time? Are they flexible enough to
work across cultures? The big problem is that, for all their simplicity, the
factors are very hard to put into practice.
What makes you
happy? Not for the next five minutes (a candy bar or a shot of bourbon can do
that!), but as a baseline of contentment nearly all the time?
We are all born
with an essential inner core. I call it a heart, but I'm not referring to the
meaty muscle that pumps our blood. The way I envision it, it's the essence of
who we are; it's paradoxically both what makes us individuals and what ties us
to the infinite, the divine, the oneness that unites us all.
This heart has
(metaphorically speaking), four spinners of thread to wrap itself in.
The first
spinner is joy. The joy of a baby or young child spins outward and bends gently
back, enveloping the heart in a glowing, gossamer skein. It cradles the heart,
lets it bounce around a bit. It's impossible for the spinner to produce so much
joy that the heart is obscured; the skein simply expands to accommodate it.
The second
spinner is grief. This comes usually from pain, from injuries and wounds to the
heart. Even babies experience some of this: hunger, thirst, fear of
abandonment, and so on. In boys it may include circumcision. Unless the baby or
child is abused in some way - by its parents or by war, poverty, or the like,
the grief threads are vastly outnumbered by the joy threads.
But one
characteristic of grief threads (and of all the other threads) is that they
grow up through the other skeins of threads. Joy still enwraps the heart, and
the threads of grief grow up through the wrapping of joy and eventually can
surround it.
Life provides
many opportunities for grief, because life can be painful.
For some
people, the source of grief is sudden and severe: Abandonment - physical or
emotional - by our parents. Outright abuse. Loss of a loved one through
illness, accident, or violence. Severe illness or injury.
For some
people, the source of grief is slow and grinding: Dull routines. Living with an
uncaring spouse. Repeated disappointments in love, work, friends. Gradual
decline in health. Ongoing, pervasive racial or gender discrimination. Poverty.
For women, the grief may come from feeling undervalued - increasingly in both
the workplace and at home. For men, the grief may come from feeling undervalued
- as a replaceable cog in the commercial machine and as an open wallet at home.
In any case, a
skein of grief can envelop the joy, and the heart is lost inside.
The third spinner
is anger, or rage. Anger is very useful. It propels us, activates us, makes us
want to change things. And it is certainly efficient in covering over the skein
of grief. The sources of anger are similar to those for grief, and sometimes
the threads don't make neat layers; the two skeins become intertwined.
If the skeins
of grief and anger are allowed to cover most of the joy, the situation becomes
intolerable. Anything that rubs up against them sends painful shocks to the
heart it has covered, irritating or reopening old heart-wounds. Joy, once a
gossamer cradle, shrivels up against the heart as grief and anger press in.
So a fourth
spinner has been active almost from the beginning: numbness. Sending threads up
from the core of self, this spinner attempts to protect the heart from the
things that rub up against grief and anger by weaving a sturdy, impervious
shell around the whole thing. That way, further insults to the skeins of grief
and anger can't get in.
We all have
this protective shell, thick in some places and a bit thin in others. A child
turns away from abuse and builds a fantasy world inside the shell - or simply
goes inside and forgets. A wife turns away from her husband because his shell
seems to shut her out. Men - and now many women - turn away from the world when
they discover that they cannot show rage, grief (or in some cases even joy) and
still keep their job.
Our society
puts a very high value on this numbness. It takes a certain amount of numbness
to do repetitive work, or even simply to show up at work every day, day after
day, away from family and home. It takes a certain amount of numbness to live
amid pollution, destruction of the environment, injustice, and war.
Historically,
men have been most encouraged to spin this skein of numbness. That way, they
can be ordained into - or honored and flattered into - being the protectors,
the stalwarts, the danger workers. Even salesmen and office workers have bought
into this ethic. When women in the past twenty years or so told us we had to
get in touch with our feelings, we just stared blankly (didn't we?) and
thought, "What the hell is she talking about?" Now more and more
women - single moms and executives both - are finding out what men have faced
since the beginning of the industrial era. And their shells are getting almost
as thick as men's.
The shell has
another great economic value. Because of this numbness, it becomes harder to
activate any remaining joy, so we're willing to pay more and buy more things,
just to give joy an occasional tickle.
Some of us even
try to get numb from the inside, soothing the heart directly. We use drugs,
alcohol, television, shopping, and a myriad of other devices. Society promotes
this, too: numbness from any source has its utility. The problem with the
internal numbness is that the heart eventually shrinks, and the skeins of grief
and anger wrap themselves tighter around it, crushing even more joy.
These attempts
at numbness can look very pathological. But the heart shows a kind of loving
wisdom in this. It is making a desperate attempt to preserve its joy and its
connection to the divine. But the numbness can become so complete that
worthwhile aspects of our lives - spiritual practices, creation or appreciation
of beauty, loving relationships - become distorted or impossible.
Every once in a
while, a thread of anger, maybe intertwined with grief, works itself up through
the shell. It whips around, slashing at anything in reach. A parent roars at or
hits the children for a minor infraction. A boss belittles a valued assistant
at a staff meeting. A cop clubs a homeless person sleeping on a bench.
Sometimes the thread breaks loose and does its damage unconnected to its
source; shrinks call it passive-aggressive behavior. Sometimes the thread turns
on its host. Then we have car accidents, insomnia, depression, physical
ailments up to and including heart attacks and cancer - and suicide. If we
manage to stuff the anger-thread back into the shell, it's a bit thicker and a
bit stronger.
What happens
when we start trying to undo the layers? Some of us have done this in therapy,
some in men's groups. The first thing that gets exposed is the anger skein. One
of the great dangers of the early men's movement was that it stopped at that
point. Having liberated their rage, some men went home from retreats in silent
seething or open rebellion.
A lot of the
rage was against women, or against one particular woman. Sometimes, after a
short outburst, a man stuffed the anger back into the shell and went on with
his life, a little more depressed than before. Sometimes the outburst lasted
long enough to cause great harm, savaging a relationship or ending a marriage.
If some grief
threads started poking through the anger, men were both angry and raw. Many men
struggled along, covering their anger, living with grief, and hanging on to
relationships any way they could.
I think the
men's movement has been maturing a bit over the past decade. We've been
discovering that rage and grief are intimately entwined; if we want to unravel
anger, we have to deal with grief. We've discovered we can, with the right
group of men, release the anger and grief and grab handfuls of joy - through
fellowship, play, zaniness. This isn't the touchy-feely stuff of the seventies,
which seems to have tried to weave yet another skein - of gentleness and
softness - over the numbness, the seething anger, and the grief. Men today are
discovering the wisdom of going down into the anger and grief, fully
experiencing it, and finding and releasing joy as a result.
Without a safe
place to do this work, the anger and grief would be unbearably painful.
Retreats like the annual Men's Wisdom Council, and other men's retreats, create
a place and a community of men to give the work a sacred context. The work
involves some specific techniques: ritual, music, breathwork, dance, poetry,
discussion. Gingerly at first, and then with increasing boldness, men unwrap
their numbness, and then their anger and grief, exposing deep wounds. With
brothers as witnesses, the work takes on a joyfulness. Wounds, once hidden in
shame, are displayed as healing badges of courage and survival. There may be
tears, but to me they've always seemed to be tears of intensity, not despair.
It would be
impossible to unwrap everything all the way to joy - or to just the heart and
ultimate union with the divine. Life just doesn't work that way. But I've seen
how much joy can be exposed in the space of a week or a weekend, and how
enduring that joy can be over time. We benefit, of course. So do our families
and colleagues. Our communities, from our home towns to the entire planet,
benefit when, out of joy and confidence, we begin to right some of society's
wrongs.
Copyright
notice
All original
materials are (c) Copyright 2002 by Tim Baehr. All rights reserved. All signed
materials are copyright by their respective authors.
Warranty
I am not
responsible for the contents of Web sites I list or recommend.
Personal
correspondence:
Tim Baehr
tbaehr@aol.com