The Smiley Light!!

Dear Diary:

I live in a smile-and-wave community.

I just love it. People say hello (it seems to me) a lot. Total strangers smile-and-wave, smile-and-wave. It happens often. Sometimes it can be a little annoying. I don’t know these people. I’m either not very threatening or I look like I need a friend. Maybe I have unconsciously taken on the characteristics of my Labrador retriever and everyone just assumes I’m friendly. Alright, to be honest I start a lot of this stuff – it makes me feel good.

I remember playing a game with my peers once when I was in high school, only they didn’t know we were playing a game.

The optimal time to play this game was when I was walking down the hallway alone and I would encounter a fellow student. I did not play the game with teachers or school administrators. They were generally hard-wired and auto-response driven and were not a reliable indicator of a decisive win.

Also, I wouldn't play the game in a crowd as it did not work in this bastion of puberty, due to the extremely high levels of hormonal static and the risk of fatal stigma shock. This meant early morning or after school hours. In order to play my game, a student would have to have 1) just come from some mandatory penance or make up exam, 2) a rigid scowl plastered across his or her face, and 3) at least two frown lines ingrained across their forehead.  The name of the game was, “I can make you smile.” This is how I played it.

Spotting the unsuspecting player I always made the first move and shifted my path slightly so as to deliberately invade their personal space which for a high school student is about a 5 to 8 foot radius in every possible direction. At a juncture that synchronized their full body scan of me, my full body scan of them, and my pace with their pace, I locked onto my target and our eyes would meet.

At that instant, in that fleeting micro second between eye blinks and not a moment too soon or too late the eyes must smile. Not the mouth so much, but the eyes must emit The Smiley Light!! 

This, my friend is ultimate power and something you must experience to believe! This force has been known to disarm every cranky pants in its path! This is what Pinky and the Brain never figured out in their quest to take over the world. This is what the Angry Beavers failed to conceive of.  This is what Ren and Stempy used to have before Ren stopped taking his medication.

Anyway, across the board game continuum that were my high school years and even beyond into the early days of career building I played The Smiley Light game until I forgot how and the busy, dawn to dark years had their way with me.

Fortunately, in my neighborhood, everybody plays and sometimes I even get to be the cranky pants.

Signed,
Chuckles

Hokusai Says

Hokusai says look carefully.

He says pay attention, notice.

He says keep looking, stay curious. 

Hokusai says says there is no end to seeing

He says look forward to getting old. 

He says keep changing,

you just get more who you really are. 

He says get stuck, accept it, repeat 

yourself as long as it is interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says every one of us is a child, 

every one of us is ancient

every one of us has a body.

He says every one of us is frightened. 

He says every one of us has to find

a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive -- 

shells, buildings, people, fish, 

mountains, trees, wood is alive.
Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.

Everything lives inside us.

He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn't matter if you draw,
or write books. It doesn't matter
if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn't matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.

It matters that you feel.

It matters that you notice.

It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.

He says don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid.

Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

- Roger Keyes

Shadows

Living like a shadow shifting, eyes closed in the passing of another's light.

Pushing off the notion before it breathes, that what you are is excellent.

Caving to a swagger you think is better.

Heading towards the exit before the show begins is somehow better than an aisle seat.

Convincing to the world underneath.

When is the light that you are enough my friend?

Waking up, instead of tossing restlessly amid all that sacrificial spin.

Bowing in humble gusty servitude or absorbed in maniacal gesticulation.

Shadows waver and then slowly vanish.

Where are they once night falls?

Let your heart open, afraid as it is.

Rush in, beneath the windy spacious sky.

Are you waving at me?  Are we shadows of each other?

  

Who do you think you are?

Self righteous thoughts give me a lot to grasp and lead to a good deal of suffering.  The whole notion of, I am right, they are wrong, is like a massive rock that I am attached to.  It pulls me down into a murky, miserable place where I feel alone and sad and angry.

To be free of this crushing weight I first have to see it.  The tiny boat of morality and judgment I am floating in bumps into the right and wrong within my perceptions.  But how accurate are my ideas of things?  And, even if they are correct, what really matters most here, my response or what I think another being should be doing?

Discernment is wisdom.  Grasping is everywhere and everyone does it.  Daily I have opportunity to empty the boat that I perceive as confronting my own and let go of the urge to shout at those other boats I inevitably bump into.  I can be angry with someone or I can try to listen, watch, and respond without a mind caught up in the wrongness of that other boat.  I can be still.  Quiet.  Speak late and less.  Answer when asked.  

Not with disdain or malice then I can ask myself, "Just who do you think you are?"  The answer will be without judgment and swaddled in compassion and loving kindness.  I can put down my rock.  I can rest on this path.

Transitions

The little girl never knew how small and vulnerable she was.  She lived in a world that seemed to her both vast and uncomplicated, immense in scale and minute in detail.  And all this within herself, coexisting in perfect balance.  For a long time she never saw a problem with this arrangement.  The boldness of innocence swept her along past the mirrors of social  acceptability.  

Small things were just as weighty as those considered large.  A grain of sand was a mountain waiting throughout eternity to meet her on a sunny summer day.  A small smooth stone had patiently existed through countless sunsets for a moment of marvel in the palm of her hand.

And so, without being a partner in the scheme, she seemed to be okay.  No need for raucous hilarity, pious solemnity or cataclysmic despair.  There was air to breathe and poetry to write and birds that sang every morning.  And then one unremarkable day the whispers came.

The gut level inkling that the previous rhythm had lost its place became a constant companion.  Was it when the mean girl pulled her hair and followed her after school to taunt and tease?  This mirror was, she thought, a fearful nuisance and if ignored it would surely go away.  Which it did.  The content of its incidence was so beside the point that it was hastily forgotten and never mentioned to anyone at home, shifting naturally out of the moment while in the same instant quietly present with her tormentors.  

The mystery of transition is that it is always happening.  At times rapidly, always an eternal event and sometimes difficult to perceive.

Tormentors abound obvious.  Woe to those who pause to acknowledge and collapse exhausted and sad from the din of those who pester and annoy.  Woe to those who ignore their attackers, waiting out the onslaught, all the while expecting to be jumped and beaten to the ground.  The only question really, is, “Will I, should I fight back?”  The answer will arrive when it is needed.  Meanwhile, transition happens, continues unceasing and needing no help from anyone.

Little girls transition to bigger, older little girls.  The world is still vast and minuscule, simple and complex, simultaneously filling up each living being.  Continuance requires change.  The transitory is always with us.  Ignore it and it will not go away.

Doorways and Anchors

Another experience of separation came to teach me this week disguised in the sudden death of a beloved pet.  What I took for granted, expected to exist and cared for every day, was gone in a matter of seconds.  How do we, how do I bring the truth of life's frailty into a shared space with the pain of separation?  Acceptance and helplessness seem joined at the hip in some circumstances.

The Buddha taught that impermanence will cause separation from everything and everyone I care for.  Pain will occur in some shape or form, in every living being.  Suffering, however, arises from grasping for what cannot be, and also for what can be.  We do not have to suffer.

These teachings are beautiful, simple truths.  As I live out my days in these latter years of my existence my feelings seem more intense than ever.  And as I make a space for my experiences to dwell, I am learning to hold them and regard them with loving compassion.

Without judgement, I look at them all; the anxious thought, worry, sadness, peacefulness, joy and acceptance as they appear.  No longer do I entertain negative self-talk as I did for so many years.  Shaming, chastising internal dialogue has been exposed and abandoned.

Where there is love, kindness and self-acceptance alive in me, all these can then be available to others, genuinely.  Life in this moment is our agent for joy, peace and hope.

Another loved one passes through the door of earthly time, and what I feel is what it takes to anchor them within my heart forever.

Waiting

Waiting for something real, better, more fulfilling or true can occupy a lot of emotional real estate.  Looking forward to the future is fine if the looking does not evolve into living for the future or in the past.  Neither exists really, so where does that leave you?

While you wait for, oh, the sun to rise or the fog to clear, your one true love to appear, examine what is now.  Open your eyes and look intently at what is sitting here beside you, beneath and around you.  Do it again, and this time without the help of emotional intoxicants.  Watch what happens as each thought is set free.  

If you will, forget about the time for now, since now is the only time that is.  Now is where everything happens, while you wait.  Just sit down, right here.  Breathe.  Be.  Watch what happens.  

Mind states keep us all busy with one speculation after another.  Memories run roughshod over the heart in rampant profusion dragging psychic energy behind them.  Are the fortunate ones those who can forget most of their lives?

In a moment this moment will be over and behind you and perhaps this life will glow again with hope and happy times.  It is never too late to begin again.