insert profundity

“I can always kill myself tomorrow.”

That actually sounds really depressing, doesn’t it? But those six words helped me survive a deep depression and they help me on the rare occasions when it feels like too much again and I start looking for ways out.

When I was at my lowest, I would always look for one more thing I wanted to do, one more book to read or restaurant to try. I would think of fun times I’d had with my friends and how I would probably have more. I’d think about the projects I wanted to try, sewing and writing. I’d think about how good food tastes and how I’m not yet ready to stop tasting it.

Once I started thinking of a few things, more and more would come. I always found some reason why it made sense not to die at least until tomorrow.

Eventually I got well enough that I didn’t have to do that very often. Now I only need to on occasion.

There is a world of possibility out there. Sometimes it’s really hard to see when all the crap and the nothingness builds up. But today is not the day to die. There’s something good, something mildly pleasant at least that you can do if you keep going. At least I always found it.

Saturday night when I was straightening up, I ran across a book on Buddhism (now I can’t recall which of the several it was…sad isn’t it?). I flipped it open and ran across a passage describing a form of meditation where one breathes in and visualizes breathing in the sorrows, pains, and suffering of others. Then one breathes out and visualizes transforming that suffering into peace, happiness, freedom from suffering.

Today I read about the practice of intending actions. For example, I might dedicate my meditation practice to help free others from suffering and the causes of suffering. Or by making a small gesture like holding a door, I might intend it as part of a larger gesture, again for helping others be free from suffering.

What struck me this time was not the description of the practices, but the realization that many people do indeed practice this way.

Given the number of people who practice forms of Buddhism at least some of the time, there are many times in a day when someone out there is wishing you happiness. There are many someones out there wishing you happiness in different ways. Not just an abstract “humanity” but you, yourself.

When that dawned on me, I felt a great sense of peace and connection. Sometimes life is busy and it seems like we’re all in our own little bubbles. But we’re more connected than we realize.

This is the time of year when people give up on New Year’s Resolutions. They went into 2009 with optimism…this was going to be the year! But as January draws to a close, they’ve failed too many times, decided their goal can’t be achieved. “I just don’t have enough time.” “It’s too hard.”

Fair enough, maybe you don’t. Maybe it is.

The question, though, is “Why?”

There are many things I wish I did more often or was better at. I’d like to be a better musician, but I “don’t have the time” to practice (I’m also self-conscious about the walls of our apartment).

Why don’t I have the time to practice? Because I spend my time doing other things, things I apparently value more than practicing. I spend 8 hours of every weekday working. I spend about 35 minutes commuting each way. I generally watch a half-hour of Simpsons with my dinner and then go running, blog, read, meditate, clean, cook, watch my favorite tv shows, try my hand at writing, or do consulting gigs.

On weekends, I may find time to practice, but the things I do in my evenings can easily expand into a day’s activity, especially if I throw in having company.

So what does this tell me? Apparently I value the things on the list above more than I value being a musician. Apparently, I also value the times when I surf-pointlessly online. Maybe I value it more because it’s fun, but I expect that I value it because it’s a habit. Habits are familiar, even if they aren’ always fulfilling.

Is it a bad thing to run, blog, read, meditate, clean, cook, watch tv, write, or consult? I don’t think any of them is bad. Some have a bigger payoff than others. Cleaning isn’t much fun, but a clean house makes me happy. Staying current on a tv show may be a great time for me and my husband to bond and discuss our favorite characters, or it may be an hour that feels wasted just keeping up-to-date.

If I decide that being a musician really is important to me, I’m going to have to figure out what I care about less. Is there a tv show I could drop? Could I limit my reading time to my (mass transit) commute and weekends? Could I do it intentionally on the nights that I don’t go running, or does cooking/cleaning get in the way on those nights?

What about you? If there’s something you’d like to do, you’ve been meaning to do, but you simply don’t have time to do, try figuring out what you’re doing instead. It could be that you value other things more and aren’t willing to drop them. In that case, don’t beat yourself up but recognize your life as being rich already.

What would it look like if I got more obsessed with my own life?

I was probably born to be a fangirl. Ever since I can remember, I’d see a good movie or (later on) tv series and get completely involved. I’m the person who knows character bios, actor bios, in-world trivia AND other trivia. I’ve got a fairly good memory for quotes and will know if you’re using the proper inflection. These objects of my obsession have included Star Wars (13-14), Star Trek (13-16?), Buffy (last year), and Torchwood (current fave).

So, a few days back, as I was thinking about some new piece of Torchwood trivia I picked up, the thought popped into my head, “What if I got this involved in my own life?”

What would that look like? Would I spend more time with my friends? Would I spend more time making new friends? Would I make more free time for things like meditation or reading or hobbies? Would I spend more time using my life to help others?

Or is being a fangirl a perfectly legitimate way to be involved in my own life? The same things that make me a factor are the ones that make me a blogger or that make me see a future in libraries. I like information, I love to gather and process it. This is just a way that I express those same talents in my day-to-day life.

What do you think? What would it look like to be more obsessed with your life? Are your current focuses distractions, or are they manifestations of your talents and abilities which make you happy?

By obsessed with one’s own life, I don’t mean self-absorbed. Instead, I mean focusing on living the life we have now instead of spending all our time in the future or caught up in things that aren’t even related to our lives.

When you were a teenager, did you ever try to imagine what the perfect job would be like? I know sometimes after considering “what I wanted to be” I would just sigh and think to myself that a perfect job would be doing nothing…and getting paid a lot for it.

You know, I got that “perfect job” once. It wasn’t paid a lot lot and it wasn’t entirely nothing, but I had a good 4 hours a day sitting at my desk with no responsibilities.

It was the most miserable time I’ve ever spent.

Our souls thrive on work, on purpose, on creating things…even on reorganizing filing cabinets if we can see it as part of something bigger. When we do nothing, they fade.

Because I was at a job, I didn’t have the freedom to truly explore my hobbies. I couldn’t bring in sewing and while I did some writing I always had a vague feeling of guilt about it. If the company had said “Here! We’ll pay you to sit at this desk and do whatever you want for 4 hours as well as doing normal office tasks for the other 4″ then I would have felt fine.

Since I had to be available to answer the phone the 5 or 6 times a day that it rang, I couldn’t leave the desk and because my desk was in a large, open room I felt too self-conscious to meditate. With help, it’s possible I could have found something to do, but being on someone’s time made me feel very limited.

Would it have been better if the job had really been getting paid for doing nothing (including going to work)?

I think that I would need at least a part-time job to keep me engaged. Perhaps I could take up an unpaid volunteer position. Or I might focus on some specific writing goals.

Getting paid regardless of what we do might be awesome. But having nothing to do (being restricted so that we can’t make use of the time we have) is horrible. I eventually left, after exhausting a series of possible ways to pass the time. My current job offers something to do almost all of the time. Whenever the item start piling up on my desk, all I have to do is think about the old job and I immediately feel grateful.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged.” (Bible Matthew 7.1, KJV) I grew up with a very simplistic take on these words: If you judge people, God will judge you.

Pretty scary, especially when it’s very human to have uncharitable, unfriendly thoughts about people that we meet every day.

So I accepted the verse in a fatalistic way. I was going to be judged, because I did judge other people. Other than trying not to, I didn’t see what I could do about it. I tried to push the whole thing away.

But over the last few years, the phrase started intruding on my consciousness. It demanded to be recognized as something more than a…judgmental…pronouncement. I’ve come to believe that it’s a description of the way things are.

As I said above, I have a problem with judgmentalism. I say it’s a problem because a) I don’t think spending time judging others is healthy and b) I think I probably do it more than most. It likely stems from a defensiveness born of bullying, but that’s a whole different story.

“What kind of person thinks these things?”I find myself mentally criticizing people. Random people. On the subway going to work, I may judge someone by their book, their coat, their hair, their laughter, their inability to move to the center of the car… Some days I’m shocked by my own harshness and ask “What kind of person thinks these things?”

After spending some time with the question, I realized that I was pre-empting their criticism of me. Because if someone thought I was ugly, it wouldn’t count because she had bad hair. Or if he didn’t like my shoes, it didn’t matter because he was obviously shallow.

The phrase “Do not judge, and you will not be judged” kept coming to me as I thought about my judgmentalism. At first, I thought it was just another guilt trip. Eventually I began to see something much deeper.

Putting “Judge Not” in a New Light

On the days when I’m engrossed in my book and don’t even pay attention to the people around me, I never worry about being judged. The need to defend myself doesn’t even cross my mind. And on days when I do judge the people around me, I never start by thinking “Oh, she’s judging me,” I make a preemptive judgment about her just in case.

“Judge not” describes the circle that forms once I get started. If I’m mentally criticizing people, it only makes me feel insecure and defensive, so I do it even more. The longer I keep it up, the easier it is for me to imagine that everyone on the train is evil and hates me. Which is ridiculous because they probably haven’t even noticed me. Odds are that most of them are decent people like me, imperfect but perfectly human.

If I’m not judging, I don’t feel judged at all.

So what happens if we don’t take that as a pronouncement and instead as a description?

Then, instead of condemning us for every time we think something unkind, this saying gently reminds us that when we judge others, we open ourselves up at least to feel judged as well. But by refraining from making negative judgments about others, we feel less paranoid about our relationships with friends and strangers and open ourselves up to more possibilities.

If you do not judge others, you will worry less about being judged by them.

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6.37, NRSV)

I walked into the classroom, sat down, opened my backpack, screamed “Bugger it all to bloody hell!” (yes, I’m an American but prefer British profanity) and marched out. About 10 minutes later, I returned with the textbook I’d left in the cafeteria. The professor looked up quietly and asked “If you can’t be compassionate to yourself, how can you be compassionate to others?” before continuing with a lesson.

That didn’t lead to an epiphany; I felt that my explosion was legitimate. In the 20 minutes before class I had a) discovered that I was using an inadequate, er, sanitary device and my favorite jeans were bloody, b) dropped my cell phone in the toilet while attempting to remove said bloody jeans for cleaning (yes, it died) and c) left my very heavy textbook somewhere which required an extra trip. I was still wearing the wet, though hopefully clean, jeans.

After the jeans dried and the anger and frustration of that day ebbed, his words stayed with me. Perhaps it’s because despite being a literature professor, he seemed more like a Buddhist teacher. Or perhaps it’s because the word “compassion” always triggers a flag in my mind.

I would like very much to be compassionate. I prize it above all other qualities, I think. My name, Ruth, has several possible meanings, but they all are somehow related to compassion and companionship. I grew up with a framed calligraphic print above my bed which read “Ruth. Compassionate One. ‘She stretcheth out her hand to the poor, yea she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.’” (Rocking the KJV there…)

But being compassionate has also been hard for me. I don’t know if it’s my temperament or my desire to live up to my name that gets in the way more often.

It took a while for the professor’s words to soak in, but I realized that he was absolutely right. He knew that as a straight-A student, I was often merciless on myself. I beat myself up for every A- and couldn’t accept anything less than perfection from myself. I knew it, too, but I had never seen how it connected to how I related to anyone else.

Over the last few years, I’ve grown to realize that I expect the same perfection in others that I expect from myself. If I have an efficient method for doing something, I don’t understand why others won’t do it too. Or I expect them to be good at things I fail at, because I expect myself to be good as well. Until I start to work on forgiving myself for doing stupid things and on allowing myself to be less-than-perfect (while still striving to do my best), I’m always going to have trouble practicing compassion for others.

I’m nowhere near being fully compassionate with myself yet, but I’ve gotten started. What about you? Is how you’re treating yourself affecting how you treat others?

I made only one resolution this year: start picking up things immediately instead of leaving them around. Sometimes. More often, anyway.

I’m a neat soul at heart, but I’m also lazy at times. I tend to clean the apartment in fell swoops instead of keeping it pretty tidy most of the time. I don’t think that’s a fault, but it makes me unhappy at times so I’d like to change it.

I thought about making giant resolutions like keeping the apartment spotless at all times. But I know how my resolution pattern works:

Phase 1. I make a sweeping resolution. Feel very charged and optimistic.

Phase 2. I start off great but then something happens. I have a hard day at work. I don’t get enough sleep. I get home late from a night with friends. So I don’t do it. Then I try picking up where I left off. Then something else happens.

Phase 3. Eventually I’ve gotten so far behind that I just give up or give in to apathy.

Limiting Scope to Increase Chances of Success

So whether it’s for exercise, meditation, or cleaning, I’ve given up on major resolutions. I don’t even make New Year’s resolutions (this is one that I made before the new year). Instead, I make mini-decisions. I decide that for now, I’m going to do this when I can.

I limit the time frame to “for now.” And I say “when I can” instead of setting a rigid schedule. This means that every time I do pick something up, I feel good about myself. I think “hey, I’m doing it again!” I don’t feel pressured never to let the apartment get messy ever again.

Small Steps Build Big Habits

I’ve already had this method work in other areas of my life. One of the biggest examples I can think of is flossing. Even though everyone told me it was the thing to do, I couldn’t scare or resolve myself into flossing. I just wasn’t interested.

So I told myself “Ok, self. You’re going to floss tonight. You don’t have to do it again, we’re just going to make sure things are fine now.” The next night I said, “Last night went well. Why don’t we floss again.” At first I would miss a day here or there, but it’s become second nature to me. Now I can’t imagine brushing my teeth without flossing first.

I’m hoping that the same thing will happen here and I’ll become one of those people who instinctively picks up items they’ve dropped instead of letting them lie there.

This path may not be right for everyone. Some people need structure or they’ll never do it. Knowing how your mind works is invaluable. It’s taken me years, but I’ve learned that taking off the pressure gets things done. My brain is too likely to give up if I don’t break things down and be compassionate with myself.

It’s a slow path, since every habit takes a while to get used to. But I have the rest of my life to continue building good habits.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an apartment to tidy.

Whether through random browsing or through providence, I ran across a blog called Operation Nice. It’s run by a young woman, Melissa, who is determined to be as nice to other people as she can be and started the blog so that others could be involved in it too. She gives out periodic Nice Assignments and shares stories of acts of kindness.

Melissa started the blog after a random act of kindness got her thinking about the scarcity of courtesy and kindness.

Sometimes books or blogs like this come off as far too perky and simplistic to me. But while it’s perky, Melissa’s site also gives a strong sense of authenticity. She doesn’t make any outlandish claims, she simply encourages us to do what we already know works: being nice really does make us and others happier. Most of the time. I think following her blog really could lead people to be nicer to their families, friends, coworkers, and strangers.

So check out her site and you just might be inspired to join the movement too!

Want to hear a story of how being nice inspires others to be nice? I lent a lady my cell phone today. Her battery was dead and she couldn’t find the friend she was supposed to meet. In return, she asked if I’d like to sit in her car while I waited for my husband, so I could get out of the rain. Kindness begets kindness.

It’s funny and rather sad how we attempt to predict the future. Back on December 30th, I was struggling with insomnia. When I realized that there were less than 5 hours left until I had to wake up in the morning, I started thrashing about until my husband woke up and held me. He then told me to do zen breathing and fell back asleep.

I was angry. I felt betrayed by my own body. I decided that the next day would be horrible and I’d be a zombie. I got about 4 hours of sleep. (For some people that’s enough, my body needs at least 7.)

So the next morning, the last day of the year, I woke up expecting the world to suck. And it didn’t.

Walking to work after I got off the metro, I was treated to one of the most beautiful skies I’ve ever seen here in [city where I live]. The air was fresh without being too cold on my face. There were street musicians. I felt happy.

When I got there, I remembered it was the morning our staff gets a breakfast delivered, fruit and pastries and whatnot. I had a perfectly ripe pear and a croissant. My boss stopped by to tell me that we would probably go home early because management tended to do that on holidays. My inbox wasn’t nearly as full as the two days before. We ended up going home at 3:30 and I got to take a nap.

Not everything was perfect. The lack of sleep had made me pretty brain-dead, so I had to do most tasks much more slowly than usual. I also made numerous mistakes, but caught them because I was going so slowly. I’m pretty sure no mistakes left my desk. I even caught a huge screwup that my predecessor had made and got that straightened out.

I had made myself so miserable the night before, imagining how bad my day would be. I’m sure that contributed to my further insomnia. And yet on the grand scale, it was a pretty decent day. All the good things balanced out the exhaustion.

How often do we convince ourselves that nothing good can come out of a bad situation, that we’ll never be happy because of some bad thing? Life has such a vast array of causes and effects that it’s silly to expect one factor to make such a dramatic difference.