Into the Future

In response to my cousin Rik’s son Forest going off to college in a few weeks, I pulled out my copy of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran and looked for some inspirational passages. In the chapter on children, I found an interesting thought: “You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.”

Somehow the quote took me by surprise. I certainly don’t remember it. All my life I have heard people talk about the “good old days” and why kids today should be more like the speaker’s generation use to be.

After skimming through The Prophet I had to return a book that was overdue, but still within the three day grace period. The library was closed, but it has a book drop. There had been a sign warning that overdue books put in the slot would not be given the three day grace period. In the sign’s place was a new one: “24/7 Automatic Book Drop.” I pressed a button. A hatch opened and light beams raced across the surface. Good. Bad. Ackk. Am I going to do this right? My brain flicked to all sorts of thoughts as I tried to read the directions. I got warnings a couple of times. All I knew was that I put two books through the hatch and a receipt with two sets of numbers came out of the machine. As I went to my car, I watched a little girl of about eight skip to the book drop and return her books. No problem. I got home and accessed my library account on the computer. Both books were credited to my account and no fine for the slightly overdue one, just like would have happened if I had returned it when the library was open. Isn’t technology wonderful!!!

In the world that Forest and the little girl will live in, technology will have totally taken over most mundane tasks. In the future, a lot of things will be different. Some of the things we can anticipate. Others will catch us totally by surprise. I, for one, want to start orienting my thinking toward the future.

Kindness, honesty, compassion, and other values will hopefully never be obsolete. One of my favorite lines from a current song is: “Everything will change, but love remains the same.” Best wishes to Forest.

Integrating New Ideas

In the last few years I have begun to realize that I can easily find good ideas in books. Actually practicing those good ideas until they become integrated into my life is the real challenge. Evidently I’m not alone in this.

In the Heartmath Solution, Doc Childre and Howard Martin write:

“People who start out to accomplish changes more often than not don’t carry them through to completion. This is especially true when what they’re trying to change involves attitudes, ways of thinking, and emotional behavior. We’ve probably all had the experience of feeling our initial passion for a change wane—and then lose the impetus for change all together. The initial heart directive that inspired us gets lost in day-to-day mind processing. Sometimes we have to go back and reactivate our commitment to earlier realizations until we have a progressive momentum going—and then we can supplement our initial appreciation with appreciation of the progress we’ve made!”

I appreciate the inspiration.

Grace

The local Presbyterian Church had an interesting sign this week: “Be Grace. Don’t just say it.” Food for thought.

Fading Flowers

My maternal grandmother loved to garden. Despite having nine children together, after chores were done on the farm, my grandfather could be seen helping my grandmother with the flowers. It was their special time together. My grandmother died sixteen years before I was born, yet I often feel her presence when I am in my own garden.

Lately, I have been overwrought with sadness. I mourn friends and relatives who have passed away. I see the bodies of living loved ones grow twisted. I see them in physical and emotional pain. I witness their memories failing. Some of them are shells of the people I once knew and loved.

After my mother passed away, my oldest cousin’s family gave me a Peace Plant. In the past few weeks, I have watched a white flower sprout, blossom, and fade. It is now a cylinder of drying seeds. This morning the plant gave me a great sense of peace. Like the flowers, we all have a life cycle. Some of us are just beginning to open. Some are fading. Yet others are almost nothing but drying seeds. My grandmother lovingly dried the seeds in her garden and then stuck them in envelopes to use for next year. While acknowledging my sadness, I am also given the option to harvest the seeds that my loved ones have created through their lives: a love of crystals, an appreciation of nature, the ability to make someone feel special, etc. Now I need to prepare the soil, as my grandparents did, so that I can plant the “seeds” for the next generation to enjoy.

Information Hangover

I woke up disoriented this morning. I managed to get in the Sunday newspaper and then I just let the world dance around in my head, like the final number of a large production where everyone comes on stage. My brain was foggy. My throat and sinuses felt like I had been frolicking all night with dust bunnies. Usually, I can trace mornings like this back to eating half a bag of chocolate or too many pieces of some really wonderful coffeecake. Nope, not this time. Can a person have an information hangover?

In all honesty, I started yesterday slightly dehydrated. I was out of fruit juice and didn’t listen to my intuition when it told me to grab a bottle of water as I ran out of the house to go to Tai Chi. I am a bit wary of plastic bottles since the scare in the news lately. But I think the real cause of my discomfort is all the information I have been trying to absorb. Tai Chi in itself is usually challenging. This semester Bob has been discussing the “Ten Essential Principles” during chalk talk and then yelling them out for us to apply as we practice the form, a nice mental workout. But as I go about my days, I have also been trying to apply the spiritual and psychological principles that I have been reading about lately. Friday and Saturday I read Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer by Gregg Braden and finished up reading The Power of Now by Eckhard Tolle. I am also cycling through reading The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, The Master Key System by Charles Haanel, Around the Year with Emmet Fox, and How to Let God Help You by Myrtle Fillmore. While I was waiting in line for my car’s emission test, I read from Living Your Purpose: Truth in Practice, a Unity publication. All of these books encourage their readers to change their habitual thinking. This is just as intense as trying to apply the ten principles in Tai Chi.

So today, I am barely functional. I am drinking plenty of water. When I tried to do the daily jigsaw puzzle, I finished two minutes over the average; usually I am slightly under average. I gave up on actually trying to go to church. Ironically, I plan on reading People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks this afternoon, at least it is fiction.

Silence

Last Saturday we began our Tai Chi class, as we often do, with eight Chi Kung breathing exercises. Usually this is the time when a number of people straggle into class before we start practicing the Tai Chi form for the day. Yesterday was different, though. On the eighth exercise I became aware of a rich, peaceful silence. I wish there had been some way of preserving it so that I could bring it out to experience again on some future day when life got too stressful.

Beginner’s Mind

Sometimes beginners are useful for regaining Beginner’s Mind, the attitude that makes us receptive to learning.

I woke up yesterday morning not particularly receptive to going to Tai Chi. I was tired from a week of fighting winter. Why should I go? After eight years, I pretty well can predict what our instructor Bob will teach on any given week based on where we left off in the form the previous week. The part of the form that he would be covering was not one that I found particularly challenging. While I admit I always pick up a handful of points to help me refine my practice, the thought didn’t give me a lot of motivation. Why should I go? “Because,” I told myself. So, I switched on a comedy sketch in my head to give me some energy as I got ready and drove to class. Thank goodness for a good imagination and that article about the Miami Marlin’s Manatees.

We have a class of students of mixed experience levels. Some have been coming to Bob’s classes for over ten years. Some are in their first year. Most of us are in the middle. Yesterday, when Bob asked for questions before we moved on to the new material for the week, one of the first year students raised her hand. In a nutshell, she said that what we had been learning in the form recently made no sense to her. We had learned about all these wonderful spirals in the beginning of the form and how energy in Tai Chi is circular. Now we were doing all these kicks that didn’t seem to have any circular motion at all. Her questions woke me up. I had never thought about these ideas. Her questions renewed my curiosity about those darn kicks, my nemeses. Her questions also made me pay more attention in the rest of class. As I left for home, I felt that I had just enjoyed a very worthwhile session. Why had I ever considered not going?
Most of us are aware that the more experienced students help the newer students. In our class, Bob will often put the senior students in the corners of the group to use them as points of reference as we do the form. But, I think some of us forget about the contributions that the newer students make to the group. They open us to questions we may have never considered before. They get us out of our “been there, done that” attitude. They renew our excitement about learning.