The blessing of the seconds

Yesterday afternoon, I finished the day with some particularly mind-numbing testing that seemed to make the clock move more slowly than I do on a run. During a particularly uncomfortable stretch this morning, I glanced at the clock and wondered how only 20 seconds had gone by.

Some day–maybe years from now or later today–time will run out for me. Whatever comes next, I’ll maybe think of the time yesterday afternoon or this morning or all the time I spent waiting, wishing time would speed up.

I’ll want that time back.

Even if I had a time machine, when time is up, it’s up.

The seconds are finite. The clock is ticking. Like sand through the hour glass, these are the day of our lives.

At some point, that privilege will be revoked. Then, even that uncomfortable stretch or the mind-numbing testing will seem precious.

Each second of existence is a blessing. It’s a privilege.

I’m not the opinion police–and that’s a good thing

I posted this on Facebook yesterday:

Bob Costas popped off about Trump supporters. Some guy I never heard of said Taylor Swift is Satanic. Neither of these things affect me. But I find myself having to work to not care about them.

We’re told we need to care about everything. If we don’t oppose the appropriate things with the appropriate vigor, we’re condoning those things.

In reality, Bob Costas is a semi-retired sportscaster who likes to pontificate. Unless you figure everyone has to agree with you, his opinion of Trump supporters is as meaningful any other guy you’ll probably never meet.

And the guy who bagged on Taylor Swift (someone named Shane Lynch) is a Christian artist with a fringe following. He’s probably gotten more publicity over his opinion about Taylor Swift than about his own music.

In a free society, Bob Costas and Shane Lynch get to have opinions. Like certain body parts, everyone has one.

I’m not the opinion police.

Right now, it’s 6:30 am and I’m already tired. I have a mild headache, it feels like someone hit me in the ribs with a lawn dart, and my fingers feel they’ve been injected with molten lead. Why should I care what Bob Costas and Shane Lynch think? Would my opinion about them make any difference to anyone?

There are things I care deeply about. From time to time I use this blog to opine about them. But Bob Costas and Shane Lynch don’t make the cut today. They aren’t worth my outrage.

The effort to not care about their opinions is well spent.

I am enough. You, too.

I once had an onyx ring set in gold that I treasured. It was my grandfather’s–a man with whom I had a special relationship. Unfortunately, he passed away when I was in elementary school. I lost the ring in my early twenties. It hurt to lose it, but life forces you onward. The sun came up and I went on.

I was thinking about that ring this morning as I went about the morning routine. And about all the other things I have.

I like my things. As much as I’m fond of them, my life would go on without them. I like them. I want them. But I don’t need them.

Similarly, I don’t need approval from others. I don’t need my job. I don’t need to comfort food I’ve been leaning on. All of those things are nice, but they aren’t necessary. They’re bonuses.

As much as good health is a wonderful thing, the limits I’ve faced over the last six months have shown me that I don’t need that, either.

If you strip these things away, they don’t impede my essence. I can go on without them.

Therefore, I’m working to be more grateful for all these blessings. I also recognize that they’re not mandatory. If the house burns down today, the sun still comes up tomorrow and all the rest of the days.

Contentment comes from within, not from external praise or from the things we currently possess. For me, it includes a relationship with God. You may take a different path.

But still waters are a gift to ourselves and those around us.

Reframing Monday as an opportunity

Most of my career, I worked because I had no choice. I couldn’t walk away because I have responsibilities. It was a fate I was assigned, like almost everyone else.

If that’s how I view work, my approach doesn’t matter because I have no choice. Why bother trying to choose? I’m bound to this cursed existence.

What if I worked to make a difference in what you do, and the money was just what I get in return–something useful, considering my responsibilities? What if the goal of my work is to make things better? To make a meaningful impact in the lives or others?

If that’s the case, Monday’s an opportunity, not a burden. The people who come to me aren’t zombie-like hoards, who would take my soul from you if they can reach it. Instead, they’re people seeking my help because I’m good at what you do.

Work is what makes the world better. We have food, clothing, shelter, and progress because people worked–and I’m one of those people. Collectively, we make things better.

Yes, there are abusive workplaces–I’m not referring to those. But many of us don’t work in those places. We’re blessed with a decent job that helps us meet our needs–and gives us the chance to use our skills to make things better.

Passing the Doritos test

Last night we had a lovely night with some friends. We went for drinks at a swanky bar in Tampa, then to dinner. At the end of the evening, I was both content and satisfied.

In the old days, I’d have gotten up this morning, seen a week of work ahead of me and bemoaned the fact that last night was just a blip on the radar. It’s like eating Doritos. You have one, and it’s good, but you’re never quite satisfied. You want another, and another, and pretty soon, you’ve mowed through the entire bag and you still want more. You aren’t satisfied.

This concept has come up three or four times in the last week in a book I was reading and a radio show I listen to. As much as Doritos (or in my case, spiced jelly beans) are great to eat, you never quite reach the point of satisfaction. You always want one more. Then another one after that. You never quite get there.

What if you took that one Dorito and savored it? What if you allowed yourself to slow down and notice the texture in your mouth? What if you let the sound and feeling of the crunch cascade over you? What if you took the time to enjoy the sensation as the chip started to break down in your mouth, spreading flavor in its wake?

If there were only one Dorito, we’d probably take that time. But there’s a whole bag full.

It’s the same as a seven-year-old opening a Christmas present, then immediately wanting another one without fully experiencing what they just opened.

I’m not seven. And life certainly isn’t Christmas. Unlike the bag of Doritos or the tree besieged by presents, there’s no guarantee of another wonderful evening. There’s the one we enjoyed last night and though we can plan another, there’s no certainty that’ll happen.

If it does happen, so much the better. If it doesn’t I had the experience of last night as something to treasure and be grateful for.

The powerful message of the book of Job

The book of Job has always terrified me. Every time I read it, I worry it’s a forerunner to a season of misery. If nothing else, it’s a reminder that crap is inevitable. Health issues. Interpersonal relationships. Job and financial stress–including losing your job.

If you’re like me, you’ve suffered all of those things at one point or another in life. That’s the entire subtext of Job. He loses everything, including his health. His wife tells him to curse God and die. Then his friends come and take turns telling him he’s responsible for all those bad things because he’s a bad person (he isn’t) and karma’s a bitch. Then some young guy who doesn’t know as much about life as he thinks lays into the friends for not being harsh enough. If that’s not enough, God smacks Job around.

If you’re like me, you’ve felt like you’ve been there, too. If you share my faith, Jesus was clear that life would sometimes suck, that we would know trouble in this life.

Job’s experience isn’t foreign to us.

But his story is powerful.

On his Daily Stoic podcast, Ryan Holiday shares the story of how novelist John Gregory Dunne said he didn’t think he could do this, as he and his wife, Joan Didion, rushed to the hospital to attend to their daughter who had pneumonia that would turn to septic shock. His career was crashing at the time and the load felt overwhelming to him. She turned to him and said, “You don’t have a choice.” Though it sounds cruel, it was delivered be someone going through the same things. By someone standing next to him. She knew, because she didn’t have a choice, either.

For whatever reason, God allows us pain and agony. But He didn’t spare himself the same pain and agony. Jesus lived in a difficult time. His murder was an act of torture engineered to be agonizing, shameful, and to force your body to betray you on the way to death.

So when we find those Job-like times in life, like Dunne, we don’t have a choice. We have to face them. Like him, we have someone standing next to us–someone who has been through all the same things. His statement that we don’t have a choice comes from experience. It’s applied with love and empathy, not disdain. Soothing as a lie would be, the lie that we can avoid difficulty is among the most harmful.

Job’s story illustrates the choice we do have. Difficult things will come, but we hold the choice of how to deal with them. Keeping our humanity, as Job did throughout his ordeal, is the freedom we still have.

It’s hard. It can be soul crushing. It’s a demand to be reasonable at a time when the world makes your soul throb. Time gives us no choice but to continue. The only way out is through. We can allow the experience to make us bitter and brittle. Or we can choose a different path.

Job is a model of choosing that path. In that, his story illustrates that power, whether we believe or not.

Just knowing that choice is there is the first step to weathering the storm.

Gratitude for what others can do is a better thing

The feeling came unbidden and shocked me a little.

I was walking this morning–felt good enough to take a step up from stretching–when a guy came running past me. That’s when jealousy forced its way in. A dark jealousy that almost gleefully stepped over the line to hate.

I pushed it away immediately. Why should I hate this guy for doing what I want to do?

Jealousy is a different animal. Logically, if there’s something I want to do, but I’m not physically able to do right now, why shouldn’t I envy someone who can do it?

Then I thought a little more. Running is work. On Florida summer mornings, it’s unpleasant work. But it makes things fit together, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. I’m a better person when I can run.

If running makes me a better person, then why would I not be thrilled for someone else who has that experience? It took some effort to be grateful for what circumstance brings me. If empathy means being in solidarity with someone else’s struggle, wouldn’t it mean to be in solidarity with their joy?

Here’s a guy–someone I’ve never met before–who’s doing something that brings me joy. Why not be joyful for him? Not be happy for his experience, almost as if it were my own?

I don’t have the choice to run six or seven miles in the morning, but I can choose how to approach what life has given me. And I can be happy for someone else’s joy.

Gratitude for what I can do is a good thing. Gratitude for what others can do is a better thing.

Stress and the golden rule

As previously noted, I was in a bad place relative to The Fibro at Christmastime. December had been a busy month. I was away from home. I felt like ass. I was tired, in pain, and stressed–and that stress caused more fatigue and pain, which caused more stress, which…well, you get the idea.

Though stress is unavoidable, it’s bad for me. Unmanaged, it’s bad for everyone.

Chronic illnesses are typically invisible. Most people don’t brag about them, either. That means when I’m stressed out and my stress leaks onto others, I might be making it worse for someone in the same or worse condition than I am–and not even know it.

Stress tells on itself, one way or another. If you dam it up, long enough, that dam will burst and then the peaceful village in the valley gets wiped off the face of the earth.

But if you heroically hold that dam together when it would have otherwise burst, that adds stress. And that stress makes it more likely your stress will leak or even explode. Then when the dam bursts, it causes an even bigger mess.

Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you becomes do unto other and then split.

As someone who has a chronic illness, I have a responsibility to not make someone else’s chronic illness worse. But people don’t just face chronic illnesses. What if you just had a death in the family? Or lost a job? Or you’re an Oakland A’s fan facing a year of putrid baseball?

In that case, the actions I’ve taken to reduce my own stress level (blogging, journaling, exercising, meditating) don’t only pay off for myself, they pay off for others, too. They reduce my overall level of stress and help me not dump it on others.

This adds meaning to my struggle. Should The Fibro decide to leave me alone, the skills I learn will still be valid. They’ll enrich my life and stop me from dumping a steaming pile in others.

What stands in the way becomes the way.

What to do with pinheads

“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil…none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

It’s hard to keep a charitable view of people when other things are going wrong. For me, it’s pain. For others, it might be a difficult situation at home, financial stress, or just a crappy job. Life is difficult. People are difficult.

You know this when you get up in the morning. The days when someone’s steaming pile doesn’t spill over to (or get willfully placed in) your lap aren’t the norm; they’re a blessing. Appreciate them when the come. Be ready when they don’t.

Someone will get themselves in a bind, then dump their mess on your lap, covering their mess with insolent demands that you fix it right now. They will view you only as the solution to their problem then throw you away like a spent Kleenex.

How you respond to them says more about you than it does about them.

Jesus says that we’re supposed to love our enemies and pray for those who do us wrong. How can you do that to someone who just showed themselves, you, and the world that you exist only as a solution to whatever problem they created?

Is that all you are? Do you buy into their fantasy that you exist solely to resolve whatever mess they created on their timeframe under their rules? If so, that’s your problem, not them.

If not, why do you care? Do your job to the best of your ability (something you have a lot of) and let the chips fall. In five years, you won’t remember today’s insults. But if you act with grace and confidence, they may remember you. They may feel a slight discomfort and handle the next mess with a little more grace.

Note: If the word you seems pretentious, I’m writing this to myself. Gearing myself up for the day. I’m not hectoring you, the reader.

I am not my body

It’s odd when it feels like your body’s waging war against you. We’re aligned–one. We aren’t supposed to be two things–we’re supposed to be the one thing we are.

What if that’s not true?

It’s not as odd as it sounds.

On a run, I’ll often encourage myself. You can do it. It’s just another mile. When you’re done, then you can rest. My mind is aligned in wanting to complete the run. It’s my body that doesn’t want to go anymore. So there’s a separation.

I spent most of last Wednesday in bed because of pain. I was trying to work, but my mind just ground to a halt. I still knew what to do, but the cost of doing it was immense.

My body betrayed me that day.

The separation’s important. As I pondered whether to keep grinding or give it up for the day, I worried that I wasn’t doing my part on the job. It was just pain. Nothing was physically wrong with me. I just had to muster up the fortitude to do the hard thing.

If I don’t create a separation between mind and body, I’ll question my worth–as I did last Wednesday morning. Suck it up, buttercup. Do the hard thing. Be a man. Show a little courage. With that mindset, if I can’t perform, I’m what’s wanting. It becomes a value judgement on my worthiness.

Separating me from my body separates my essence from the pain. I didn’t cause that pain. All things considered, I’m doing quite well in spite of the pain. I’m overcoming the situation my body (that bastard) has put me in.

Anger is a byproduct of chronic illness. You can’t do the things you want to do. You can’t function as you’re used to. It’s logical to question your worth. You get angry at the thing reducing that worth–you.

I’m not the one who reduced my worth. That’s my body. That’s The Fibro that invaded my body. If anything, I’m doing remarkable work by persisting through pain that might cause others (and previous iterations of me) to collapse under its weight.

I’m the one showing up every day to work. Blogging every day. Meditating every day. Journaling every day. Exercising every day. I’m the one putting in the reps to build resilience so I can still be successful, even if my body isn’t directly contributing right now.

That’s not bragging. It’s part of building the resilience I seek. It’s an emerging track record. It’s proof that I can produce, even through this setback.

Though I’m no expert in this practice, I’m starting to view the pain differently, too. It’s my body experiencing pain. It’s not me. If I can distance that pain from my essence, I’m less likely to turn bitter and angry.

I’m not saying I’m good at it. You don’t master this in a few short weeks. But if I’m to live a rich life in the context of my condition, it’s a necessary step.

I am not my body.