On kids and their instinctsJune 14th, 2012

My dog and i were out for a walk the other morning on trails behind our house. To set a relevant context, I’ll tell you that dogs run free on those trails and that my dog, though poorly trained and maybe overly enthusiastic, is  small, weighing in at 18 pounds.

We don’t usually meet anyone out there in the morning, much to Rosie’s dismay. She loves to jump up on people’s legs, and she loves to terrorize other dogs.

On this morning, i saw a woman,  maybe 50 metres up ahead on the trail, doing something funny with her arms. We got a bit closer and saw there were kids behind her, and she was holding her arms out front towards us, and crossed, like she was fending off a vampire. She was crouching a bit, too, as though preparing for some martial art i don’t know about.

Is everything all right, i asked, as we got closer.

I’ve got little kids behind me, she said.

I see, i said.

The whole school is coming, she said. Hundreds of kids.

It took a minute to understand that she was afraid of Rosie being free around the kids. Which seemed ridiculous to me, and evidence our protect-us-from-all-harm-and-all-fun era.

I put Rose on the lead.

Here’s the bit that freaks me out.

We passed 200 kids, and perhaps 20 teachers, or teacher’s aids, or educational assistants (whatever they’re called now). Every time a group of ten or so passed us, the kids went wild, wanting to pat Rosie.  Of course they wanted to.  Open hearts like each other.

And the teachers, for the most part, did not want that. You could hear it in their voices. Danger!

But they didn’t say that. Instead, they said this: Leave the dog alone. The dog wants its privacy!

Another one: Don’t touch the dog! The dog is not a part of this walk!

Another one: Stay away from the dog! It doesn’t want your hands all over it!

Etc.

All the while, Rosie was straining at the lead, doing her best to be touched by them, putting on her cutest face and her cutest tail wag.

One kid, held back by her teacher, shouted, I WOULD REALLY LOVE TO KISS YOUR DOG! I could have kissed her for saying what she felt.

And i thought, oh, man, there is a lot of dishonesty going on here. I get the safety thing, and the liability thing, but pay attention to what that dishonesty is doing.

Don’t tell children that the dog wants privacy! That teaches kids that their excellent instincts are false and off the mark. Surely the purpose of any education is to teach us the opposite.

This went on for roughly 199 kids.

Trailing behind the entire group were a teacher and a boy with cerebral palsy. The boy adored Rosie. He got so vocal about it that i took her over to meet him. His teacher looked on cautiously and quietly. The boy stroked Rosie, and I wish you’d seen the change that came over his entire body. Although i didn’t understand every word that came out of his mouth,  it cracked my heart in half, it was so beautiful.

It’s not that i don’t feel for the teachers and their  responsibility. But i feel more for those kids.

Many thanks to that one teacher who let that one kid follow his instincts. You are a gem. And many thanks to all of those kids for showing me what it looks like to shout, I WOULD REALLY LOVE TO KISS YOUR DOG!

I hope we all find our way back to our instincts, one way or another. It feels as though everything important depends on it.

Thanks for the conversation,

kristin

 


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‘Tis The SeasonDecember 1st, 2011

“Are you ready for Christmas?”

What the hell does that mean?

What a season. Sure, we sing Christmas tunes. And things sparkle. For the religious, there’s the whole Jesus thing, which is probably satisfying.

But. Over twenty years in a health care practice, I saw this as a season of huge stress.

The Joy bar, if you can imagine one, is raised. You’re supposed to feel jolly, bursting with good will, eager to be with your loved ones (even the drunken aunts and the bigoted, pedophiliac, shoplifting, arsonist, B&E in-laws), and, most of all, willing to shop for all of the above. There’s nothing like an elevated expectation of joy to make you feel less joyous, to make you feel like a Scrooge-y underachiever in the realm of happiness.

Families get together, which is wonderful and not. Combined families do the absurd and hugely complicated Cirque du Soleil thing in order to be at all twelve turkey dinners around the country, stuffed to the resentful, guilty wishbone by the end of it all.

People spend themselves into debt that amounts to carrying a fat, loaded sleigh for the rest of the winter.

I drive by the mall, stare at four bizillion cars in the parking lot, and head to the library instead. I’ve done this twice in the last week. I’ll be well read, if not “ready” at all, by Christmas.

So what does it mean to be “ready” for Christmas?

Here’s my checklist:

1. Am I listening to my own values? (Do I even know what my values are?)

2. Am I doing what makes me happiest or am I just doing my best not to offend my mother, my father, my lover, my husband (same thing in some cases, but not for everybody this Christmas – talk about Cirque du Soleil stress), my kids, my in-laws, the guy who delivers the mail, every starving kid in Africa who will die because i just wasted $20 on a hat that no one will wear, the clerk who has asked me 600 times to donate an extra dollar to a cause I have no interest in?

3. Am I allowing my kids and lovely man to make their own decisions about what makes them happy (or am I pressuring the hell out of them to do what I want)?

4. Am I finding time every day to remember who I am? To breathe and be sane? To remember that Love is the Point?

Ahhhhh, that’s it.

The moment I remember that Love is the Point, I’m ready.

Are you ready? What’s the point for you? And is it easy for you to remember your own point this season? I’d love to hear.

Thanks for the conversation,

kristin


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Light Passing ThroughOctober 6th, 2011

“You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

This is Steve Jobs, of course.

During meditation, if we’re fortunate, we experience a kind of life-altering nakedness that permanently affects our perspective about what we are and what we are not.

What it feels like to me is the dissolving of my body. By the end of morning practice, my understanding is that I’m a body of energy that happens to be passing through this less significant physical body.

It’s a feeling that stays through the day. On a good day, I see everyone around me as the same kind of energy, and we feel like family.

One of the best consequences of this shift in perspective is that it makes me brave. When I know myself to be light passing through this day, I lose my fear of failure (light can’t fail), of humiliation, and of rejection. I lose my small-minded need for security.

I follow my heart more easily.

I don’t know whether Steve Jobs meditated. This is important, because meditation itself is not the point, any more than my physical practice of yoga is the point.

Freedom is the point. Waking up and discovering who we are is the point. Recognizing that we’re part of all that is, is the point. Living bravely from that perspective is the point.

It just happens that meditation and practice on the mat are excellent signposts saying, ‘Hey! You beautiful smacking whack of radiant light, you! Look this way! Here you are!”

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks to Steve Jobs for the reminder that we are light passing through.

Thanks to you, always, for the conversation,

kristin


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Truth is an Inside JobAugust 18th, 2011

The other day I mentioned that meditation is a fantastic way of detaching from the opinions (often called truths) of those around us: family, church, work, media, health care, and peers.

At a family reunion on the weekend, I saw my oldest brother for the first time in years. He escaped the “opinions” of his parents by moving across the country thirty years ago. We laugh at that, but it’s true.

In the church I grew up in, we were born sinners.

In my sister’s workplace, you’re not really working unless you answer email until 11pm. You’re not really working unless you’re overworking.

The media tells me that loving self-esteem at my age means injecting my forehead, whitening my teeth and hoovering the fat from my thighs and rear end.

Easy enough to laugh at these provided you aren’t buying any of the above.

But many, many people are.

And lots of us buy milder versions: we colour our hair, we donate to causes we don’t believe in because we’re afraid the cashier will think we’re shmucks, we pour attention into ridiculous things – grammar, hyper-antibiotic cleanliness, the car, the labels on my clothes, what our spouses say and do in public, the front lawn, our toenails, the kids’ extra-curricular activities, the dog’s food. And on and on and on.

Why? Well, it’s possible these are expressions of who I truly am. It’s possible.

More often, I suspect they’re camouflage designed to make sure the world finds me desirable.

Only I know the difference. (The hair colour is camouflage for the most part.)

So what does meditating do? It gives me quality time with myself. It helps me peel away the layers of not me.

It brings me closer to the certainty of my truth in my gut, rather than my spouse’s truth, Oprah’s truth, my doctor’s truth, the newspaper’s truth, science’s truth, etc.

It may be the only time during my day when my truth is the focus.

In order to be sane, stable, and deeply happy, we have to detach from outside opinions/truths/perspectives and find our own.

Have you done that? Are there layers and layers to discover? Is it easy or difficult? Are there consequences when you find your own truth? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for the conversation,

kristin


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In Praise of Losing Your HeadJuly 8th, 2011

In designing-your-ideal-life circles, coaches love to ask this: What do you love that makes you lose complete track of time?

Maybe you lose track of time brushing your teeth. I don’t know. But having wasted great chunks of my life being compulsively early and time-obsessed, the answers to that question are HUGE indicators of where I ought to be running as fast as courage will take me.

So what does it? And I mean really lose track of time, like holy time warp, Batman, is that sunset out there? I haven’t brushed my teeth, for God’s sake. That’s what I mean.

There were years  when I had no answer, which would be pathetic except that those years generated the certainty that being among the living dead would not do for me.

Here are my answers now:

1. Rehearsing for a great play as an actor. It’s the discovery process. All rehearsals should be 27 hours long. Without a break. I can never understand why anyone wants to stop.

2. Rehearsing for a great play as a director. Same thing.

3. Speaking with and entertaining groups of people re: making ourselves well by making ourselves happy. I think it’s the communal discovery thing again.

4. This one is recent and is the reason I’ve been thinking about this: Kundalini yoga. I’m mad for it. I read yoga DVD reviews like Southern Baptists read bibles, over and over and over till the sane people around me cover their ears and roll their eyes back a decade. I do two classes a day and would do more if I could still hold my arms up. I fantasize about upping that to three or four and calling my entire life a Kundalini transformation camp. The dog will only sit through one class a day with me. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.

Those are it for me. I’d love to hear yours. And not just for fun, although I’m all for fun.

I suspect there’s something healthy in losing our heads, our allegiance to the almost constant got-to-have-to-tick-tock-love-to-but-can’t-even-contemplate-it-tick-tock filter through which make our choices every day.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

Thanks, always, for the conversation,

kristin


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Everything I Need to KnowJune 13th, 2011

I’ve just returned from acting and directing at a theatre festival. Wish you’d been with us.

Here’s what came up.

1. We think healthy and not-so-healthy thoughts, we feel healthy and not-so-healthy feelings. I do better when i welcome both, and let both go.

2. The crowd may love me, the crowd may not. There’s no point in getting too bent out of shape by either of those.

3. There is nothing as good as sinking into right here, right now. Best thing about being an actor, as far as I know.

4. I’m human. Some days that pisses me off, but it’s the truth.

5. Celebrate everyone’s work, their efforts, their willingness to be here and open, and their limitations. If I’m lucky, they’ll be as generous with me when i need it.

6. What I know about myself matters more than what anyone else thinks, as long as what I know about myself has to do with being gifted, loving, and loved.

7. Javier Bardem is the best actor in the world. This has nothing to do with the weekend, but I’m in the middle of a crush, and am proud I resisted mentioning him in the first line.

8. Love wins. Loving myself. Loving the people who are easy to love. Loving the people who drive me mad. Loving my work and play. Loving whatever is in front of my face right now.

9. Whatever I need to know is right in front of me. Every time.

Hope you’re having a wonderful day.

Thanks for the conversation,

kristin


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Why Meditate? Got a Grudge?May 25th, 2011

I had a grudge going this week. Full-out, personal, justified, thorny, supported by anyone to whom i presented my case, consuming, blood-pressure-raising, unattractive yet perversely seductive, impossible to let go, and exhausting.

That’s one truth.

Here’s another. I know that a week from now i’ll feel differently. In fact, if i don’t feel differently a week from now, if i haven’t moved past this, i’ll have no interest in living with myself.

That’s a funny thing about grudges. You’re okay with them in the moment. They feel good in some awful sliver-in-your-finger way, but jesus murphy, you don’t want to identify yourself as a grudge holder, you don’t want to be one of those semi-permanent bitter folk. (I picture rollers in stringy hair, gnarly knuckes, a wrinkled face under fluorescent factory lights, and cigarette smoke curling up from a thin, bitter mouth. Evil Bette Davis eyes. This could be me, i know it could.)

This is why i meditate today. In order to remind myself that who i am is deeper than a grudge, deeper than who’s to blame, deeper than the temptation to judge. Deeper than all the stuff I get right and all of the stuff I get wrong. Deeper than success and failure. Deeper than most of what goes on all day long.

Who i really am hums with a different crowd: with love, peace, good will, compassion, beauty everywhere i look, and peace.

When i don’t meditate, i fight my grudges.

When i do meditate, i remember who i am and wrap my grudges in love until they look like love inside and out.

Is that reason enough to meditate? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for the conversation,

kristin


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Everything I Need to Know I Learn from TheatreApril 9th, 2011

We’re in the middle of rehearsals for a play called “Talking With…” I wish you could be here with us, because the learning is fantastic. Here are today’s “lessons to self”.  (One of the  beautiful things about theatre is that it is not prescriptive.  I learn whatever i’m ready to learn today. You may learn something completely different.)

1. Truth is gorgeous. Trust that your truth is enough. Stop faking anything in the hopes that it’ll make you more substantial, more interesting, more charming, more successful. It doesn’t work.

2. Sometimes it takes horrible courage to give yourself to an audience or anyone else. Be bwave.

3. Stay open, no matter how tempted you are to close the windows, the doors, the gates, and the drawbridges.

4. Every single trait in every single human is inside you somewhere. Resisting that is a waste of your beautiful energy.

5. Joy comes from committing to your choices, not from endlessly assessing the merit of those choices with your squirrelly mind, which will never be satisfied and which doesn’t know the first thing about joy.

6. Your instincts are gold.

7. Not knowing is all right. Often preferable.

8. You’ll be an idiot to yourself and others some days. Practice instant forgiveness.

9. We are extremely fortunate to be able to play with others. Many thanks for that.

10. Cats and snakes are better actors than we are, given their inability to be anything but truthful. Don’t be discouraged by this.  Don’t be discouraged for long about anything.

Thanks for the conversation,

kristin


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Who Are You?March 21st, 2011

I was at a funeral on the weekend. A very charming, intelligent friend of my lovely man took off the tight shoe sometime last week after a full 82 years.

Here’s what whacked me: His body was there. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything but an urn at a funeral. Jeez, it’s unnerving, a bit like being in a wax museum except that Johnny Depp and Marilyn Munroe are absent and we’re all pretending this body is the real thing. We’re pretending this is Ferg.

“He looks good,” someone says.

Who looks good? The thing, the entity in the casket? At the risk of going all Abbot and Costello, there was no who in that casket, there was a what.

It makes me want to sit in a circle with everyone I know and ask, “who are you, to the best of your knowledge, without the bits you’ll leave behind?”

If I have nothing to do with this body, this face, these eyes, and this voice, and nothing to do with the bodies around me ( my kids’ bodies, my friends’ bodies, or suits, or whatever they actually are), who am I?

I’m clear (I think) about not being my profession,  my passions, my stuff, my stories,  my massive inadequacies and inadequate strengths, my tastes, my crummy habits, my humour and my dead seriousness, my absurd affection for my dog, and my not-so-absurd affection for my kids and lovely man.

What’s left?

I can only tell you what I suspect. I suspect that I come from capital-L-Love, that i’m a drop in the ocean, a photon in the big sky of Love, and that my bit of Love operates through this body and all its occupations.

It’s not much, but I like the implications.

  1. If I’m right, you are also a drop of capital-L-Love, which means we’re practically identical twins whether or not we like each other or are bombing the nuclear hell out of each other
  2. I’m comforted by the recycling potential, by the idea that my drop can come and go and come again, perhaps in a different suit, perhaps in the suit of someone  who will not be bombing this time around.
  3. When I take care to create good relationships, I’m closer to  the Truth of Love (and the truth of who i am) than when I am diminishing you in any way.  I feel great when i act from Love.  I feel like hell when i don’t.
  4. I like the combination of humility and grandness inherent in being a drop  in the ocean of Love. No big deal on my own, but the source of all life when I    remember who I am.  Feels good being tiny and enormous.

Last thing.  I have evidence.  If i came from Portugal, Portuguese cooking (those huge sardines, say) would rock my socks.  I’d love it or hate it or have some significant response to it. Same goes for the language, the smells, and the sounds of Portugal.  I’m fairly sure i don’t come from Portugal.

But Love! At Ferg’s funeral, someone read a poem he’d written to his wife a year after she died.  A love poem for a woman who’d been gone for a full year.  The house wept.  That’s because they recognized Love.

I struggle with the distant relationship i have with some of my brothers.  I suspect i  struggle because I come from Love.  I’m homesick.

I can only contemplate work that builds bridges and raises self-esteem (yours and mine).  It’s the only skill set that matters to me, because i come from Love.

My heart hardens, softens, breaks, and breaks wide open in response to Love. Over and over and over.  In movies, in friendships, in the news, at weddings, at funerals.  Portuguese sardines do not do this to me.  Love does.

So.  The truest answer i can get to is, I come from Love. I’m a wee bit of Love and i recognize Love when she shouts  out the window to my homesick heart.  I am Love’s kid, Love’s hope, Love’s chance on this planet, Love’s sappy-happy acolyte.  That’s good enough for me.

Who are you? Are you Portuguese?  Are you Love? Are you just a large sardine who doesn’t care one way or the other?

Thanks to Ferg for not being in that body, and for coming from Love, which is a great home town.  Thanks to you for the conversation,

kristin


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Why Meditate? To Go to the WellMarch 6th, 2011

I wake up with a circus in my head. Forgot to call the sound guy yesterday (theatre), have to start practicing with the snake (theatre), lots to do today including a conversation I’d rather not have (theatre), worried about one kid (parenting/love), concerned about my lovely man (partnership/love), all with a mild caffeine-withdrawal headache.

This is not the best of me.

So I go to the well.

Which means I get a coffee and sit on the living room floor to breathe.

From the start, it feels as though the job is to become aware of my breath and what it’s doing in my body until my head shuts up. That is what happens. That’s half the story.

The other half is the magic part. Not to get all Hogwartsy, but I don’t know what else to call it.

After breathing for a bit, I feel as though I’m sinking into another place. It is just like looking at those weird pictures they used to hang in dentists’ offices, the ones that look abstract squiggles until you let your focus go wonky, at which point you see a lake, and mountains, and deer.

When my head gets quiet enough, my perception changes. I go to the well.

What’s it like? Quiet, open, huge (vast, VAST, I don’t know a big enough word), with a feeling of peace and connectedness.  Love is there, but not the personal i-love-you kind of love. It’s a huge love. It resolves a kind of ambient homesickness I carry with me everywhere else.

I suspect the well is always there, always waiting for my arrival, and that the well is where I really come from. Certainly the best creativity comes from there. And the best answers to all my concerns, except that by the time I get there, I don’t have any concerns. I’m aware that my worries about lighting, sound, snakes, kids, and lovely man have nothing to do with who I really am. (When I re-emerge from that place, I have excellent answers to the questions I no longer am so worried about.)

Meditation, then, is just me walking toward the well every day. Clearing a path.

Why tell you this?

Because you might have your own version of finding your way to the well, in which case I’d love to hear about it. Because I suspect meditation is a great tool (at the very, very least) for becoming sane and staying sane in a nutty world.

Mostly, i guess, because of the desire to point to beautiful things.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for the conversation,

kristin


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