Our species is unique in its obsession with the future (worry) and too often enslaved to the past (regret).

For better or worse these obsessions likely proved to be highly influential selection factors.  Those who were obsessed with tomorrow were more likely to be prepared for it and more likely to have existed long enough to have offspring wired and brought up to have this same obsession.  Those who ruminated on the past were less likely to repeat failures and more likely to learn from them.

But at what cost? 

I would suggest the price has been our inability to live in the present, to experience our NOW without labeling, comparing, and planning.

This is a tricky point to make because I do not want to be misunderstood to suggest that either of these traits are innately evil.  After all, studying the past and thinking forward into the future has resulted in the advancement of our civilization and quality of life.

As with most things, what is the question is degree, and thus the question of obsession.  Obsession is often defined as “an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind.”  It is the “preoccupying” and the “intruding” that we must guard against.  

We must own the reality that our ability to think on the past and the future are tools that nature selected for us.  These are wonderful, powerful tools, just as a hammer is a wonderful, powerful tool, and yet not everything in life is a nail.

Knowing our proclivity to obsess and overindulge in the use of our natural talents, we must learn to teach ourselves anew how to balance learning and planning with living in the NOW.  It is here that meditation becomes an invaluable tool.

YESTERDAY has ceased to exist. Learn from it but live beyond it.

TOMORROW is a hope. Prepare for it but do not count on it.

NOW is all you have. Never let it be a slave to what WAS, but IS not, or what may BE, but is not YET.

Balancing hindsight with foresight while still leaving ample mental space to simply observe the NOW is not easy, but it is worthy.  It may help to remember that all of life is not a rush to a destination.

Arriving at a destination on the floor is no more the point dancing than getting to the end of a song is the point of music.  Enjoy the dance.

You are the maker and destroyer of your world.

Every minute, every hour, every day, we must protect our world from ANTS. Automatic Negative Thoughts are a poison of habit. A habit that hobbles.

To speak a thought is to give it strength, to make it more real than it was before, even if it was never true. Be careful what thoughts you cultivate, they will become your truth, they will become you.

Be careful of your self talk, you are listening.

It is one thing to learn from failures, it is another thing to pass permanent judgement on ourselves.

Too quickly, we often look backwards to a failure and say “that is me.” In such cases, isn’t our retrospection short sighted? Why look back only as far as our last failure? Why not look back beyond that failure to a time when we were supposedly “pure” and “praise worthy” and in doing so, judge ourselves approvingly?

“But there were failures before that,” you reply.

Well then, why stop there? Keep going.  The problem is, before long we find ourselves traveling all the way back to the womb and for what? Our past actions (or inactions) say more about our PAST inability to be fully AWARE and in THAT MOMENT from the past, than they will ever say about who we are NOW in THIS MOMENT.

One might next respond, “But I don’t want to forget these failures, lest I repeat them.”

I am not suggesting we forget or ignore failures, rather I am suggesting we acknowledge them, learn from them, and move on. It is possible (and preferable) to acknowledge a reality without LIVING WITH IT DAILY.

For example, I can acknowledge the reality that a bear has crept out of the woods and into my front yard, and respond appropriately; however, acknowledging the bear is NOT the same thing as inviting it in to live with me inside my cabin.  I have options…

It would be foolish to pretend the bear was not there, doing so could cost me my life.

It would be foolish to invite the bear in to live with me, doing so could cost me my life.

I could panic, and lose control of myself at the very thought of this bear in my yard, freezing up as I imagine thousands of scenarios in which this visit ends terribly.  Doing so, I might likely live my last few moments in frozen panic, as the bear slowly makes its way into my home to say “hello” with its incisors.

Alternatively, I could acknowledge, that like me, it is part of the natural world, and as such, circumstances have brought it into my front yard. It might be prudent for me to consider whether I have done something to encourage this unwanted visit.  Maybe I unintentionally “baited” or encouraged this bear to come calling.  If so then I should note the behaviors that beckoned the bear and not do them in the future, unless I want to have tea with a grizzly.

I would suggest, the best course of action is simply to acknowledge the bear, appreciate the place and purpose it has in the world, my world.  Consider what has brought it into my yard (circumstance or personal actions, intentional or not) and then take precautions to not let it inside my home.

Rather than responding to my bear with paralyzing fear or crushing guilt and dismay, it might be more prudent to simply observe the bear for a moment, note it’s presence, resolve to not invite such a visit again, while also appreciating, that in spite of my best efforts, circumstances may still bring such a visit in the future.

Having given the bear a moment of my mental space, having taken appropriate precautions, I should then focus on something else and move on.  The bear’s home is not my yard, it too will move on unless I act foolishly and invite it in, or fail to acknowledge its presence at all, and walk out to become its dinner instead.

Those things that are the “bears” in our lives need not cause us panic or guilt, and they certainly should not be invited in to live with us daily.  Acknowledge your “bears” and note what (if anything) encouraged their visit.  Once we have observed and faced our “bears”, taken prudent precautions, and come to peace that bears are just part of living… then we should GET ON WITH LIVING.

Imperfect visitors, such as bears, need not live with us daily and “imperfection” as a category need not be viewed as wholly negative.

To me, some of the most beautiful things in the world are beautiful because of their imperfection.  Often the imperfections in wood bring a natural character and beauty all its own.  The flaws in the woodgrain often have the effect of bringing focus to the beautiful grain that is strong and perfect around such flaws. This does not suggest one should seek out flaws in order to improve their “beauty” as a person, anymore than a great oak seeks out insects, weather, or genetic flaws in order to make its finished wood more beautiful.  A piece of wood, artificially and intentionally made imperfect through scarring or distressed is often seen for what it is… a fake.

In the end, in may ways, we are all great oaks.  Flaws will often appear naturally without any inducement by ourselves, and it may also be that our choice of where and how to grow might intentionally or unintentionally invite flaws. Grow wisely. Acknowledge that bears walk in the woods. But most importantly, GROW!

The growth through, and around, our imperfections is what brings beauty and strength to our grain and it will provide a stunning view, high above the bears, and the forrest floor.

It has been said…

“The patterns in our lives reveal us. Our habits measure us.”

We are “strange loops” cycling back around, pattern after pattern. When I look back on my life thus far, I see a myriad of patterns… some I am proud of and others I am not.  

It is curious (and too often disheartening) how automatic our responses are to various stimuli.  Those who know us best can with unnerving accuracy “play our part” and predict how we will react to this event or that circumstance.  We never have to worry too much about showing those around us who we are… we do it every day through our patterns and our reactions.  Our interests (or lack of interest) is shown in what we make time for, what we do, day-after-day, we weave a pattern, a self-portrait, and then we are surprised when someone reads it so well and holds a mirror to the patterns we have drawn for ourselves, of ourselves.

Fortunately, our past does not have to define us.  We can change that which needs changing and reinforce that which will make us a port of calm and refuge for ourselves and those we love.  This will be the most difficult thing we will ever do.  Change is always hard, but change-of-self, breaking a pattern and creating another, is EXTREMELY difficult.

I might argue that the patterns we weave, started long before we were mature or self-introspective enough to make well thought out decisions about those actions.  The family we were born in to, whether you were the oldest, middle, or youngest child, whether you won the lottery and were born into a zip code that provided opportunity and wealth, or scarcity and poverty… all of these things influence our early pattern making.  It is here that the last part of the quote above becomes so important.  The patterns in our life reveal who we are but it is our habits that measure us.  

As is often the case with a good quote, there is a bit of word-play, going on here… our patterns are our habits, so why the distinction?  

The word “patterns” seem to denote that which is automatic, unplanned, a natural state, however; the word “habit” seems to be colored with a sense of choice.  We choose our habits.  This is why I love this quote… it speaks with truth to the past (all of which we can not now change and some of it things we never had any control over to begin with) and it speaks with truth to the NOW and the future, which we make with the habits we choose.  

We our not measured by what we are given, we are measured by what we make of what we are given, the habits we grow and the habits we kill.  

Our life is a garden for which we had no “say” in its placement or its early plantings.  In time though, this garden becomes ours to weed, ours to plant.  The rows of our garden may reveal our early self but the habits we plant to fill those rows will measure us.  Let us plant wisely.

I have heard it said…

“If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you must do is wake up.”

We often use the words “dreams” and “goals” interchangeably.  This practice probably causes no intrinsic harm but this quote made me wonder.  Could it be that deep down we understand the nuanced difference between these words, and then by allowing ourselves to use these words interchangeably, we allow ourselves to be lazy and fumble the ball short of the goal line?

A dream is an idea, often a bit abstract, often hazy, and all too often rather general.  Dreams figuratively and sometimes literally float in our mind as something we would love to do, love to be… and like a cloud they are beautiful, they can morph from one object into another in our “minds-sky”, and they are tied to nothing but the breeze of our imagination.

That is not to say that we do not from time-to-time have very specific detailed dreams for our life.  We do… but in my personal experience, something I refer to as a “dream” is usually something focused on a “destination,” something I see as my “moment of arriving.”  It is very rare that I characterize the step-by-step (often mundane) process of getting there as “my dream.”

A goal, on the other hand, seems to come with a slightly different but vitally nuanced color to it.  When I call something a goal, this goal is rarely contemplated without also contemplating the plan directly associated with that goal.  A goal requires a plan.  The basic definition of a goal is something that results from the execution of a plan.

We casually use the words “dream” and “goal” interchangeably, but I now wonder whether doing so degrades one and gives an undeserved sense of accomplishment to the other. Having a dream is easy… just fall asleep or daydream about something you love, would love to do, or would love to be. Having a goal is hard. To have a goal (a real goal) requires a plan to get you there, and making plans, much less seeing them through, is VERY difficult.

I can hear you now… “You are just playing semantics!”

You would be correct.
I am.
But that’s my point.

Words matter.  The ones we use to describe our world, ourselves, our actions, all come with underlying ideas and meanings. If we refer to something as a “goal” but have NOT done the hard work of putting a plan together to get there, then we are essentially “building a roof, without first building a foundation”… and somewhere deep inside of us, that lazy part of our brain throws a party and says… “See there, progress, we are getting things done, we have a goal, which means we have a plan, which means we did some real work here people, and one day soon this dream will be a reality.” Nope. More times than not, what we have is a DREAM, not a GOAL.  No work is required for a dream.  It is something we fantasize about, something we would like to be a reality, but because we have no plan, because we prematurely call it a “goal,” we never “wake up.”

A dream will never come true unless you wake up and live it. Ideas without plans are just dreams, they are pretty clouds, but good luck ever grabbing one.  A cloud looks like a real, very defined object from the ground, but if you have ever flown into a cloud you have experienced the reality that it is often VERY difficult, if not impossible, to tell where a cloud begins and ends.  Dreams are like that… they are pretty clouds.  They float n our minds-sky without any real definition or a plan to get there… and even if we did arrive at the cloud, the cloud is so ill-defined that we wouldn’t really be sure whether we had arrived or not.  Dreams, like clouds, condense out of the heating and cooling of our emotional passions.  They can be beautiful, but they can never be a destination. You can’t truely live in the clouds.

Dreams that you wake up from, and then formalize into a plan, become GOALS, and the journey to that goal, that one step at a time process, is what brings reality to our desires. Dreams are made real by waking and working. Dreams are made real by persistent, unrelenting action that follows a plan, that leads to well-defined places in the real world.  The sooner we wake to the realities of the world and realize that there are no benign fairies that will make magic happen, no genies granting wishes, and no living in the clouds, the sooner we will wake to a reality (that with with work and planning) CAN BE .

Now wake up… dreams are for sleeping 🙂