Another Door Closes

I said the big goodbye to another friend last week. As I complete another trip around the sun I find myself contemplating what a stupidly short amount of time we all have here.

Death is not something I fear, it is the logical end to the journey that has been my life. It is the yang to the yin of my birth. One cannot exist without the other.

Time. I have wasted so much of that precious resource. Moments have slipped by without me even being aware that I was there. It is not as if I have a list of things to accomplish before the deadline of my death. I just want to be present, truly present, for every moment of every day.

“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” - Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941)

Self Talk

We all have that voice in our head - telling us we’re not good enough, we don’t have what it takes, we’re just going to make a fool of ourselves.

I know for a fact that thoughts affect action and negative thoughts can cripple any chance of positive action. Controlling negative thoughts is imperative for positive growth and progress.

No one can snap their fingers and eradicate negative thoughts. Once those thoughts have been generated, it is difficult to get rid of them. The best course of action is to not allow them to formulate in the first place. For me this means taking ownership of the words I use. Positive words produce positive thoughts, and positive thoughts produce positive actions.

Several times a day I challenge myself to analyze how my words serve me and my goals. This self awareness goes a long way in nipping negative thoughts.

"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890)

Cognitive Dissonance

Last year there was a news item on the BBC about a litter of piglets rescued from a fire that were later served as sausage to the firefighters who had rescued them. The farmer predicted that vegetarians were not going to be happy with the way he showed his appreciation but in fact it was mainly meat eaters that were appalled with the situation.

Six years ago, an American passenger jet on the tarmac in Washington had to be towed out to the runway for takeoff because it could not dislodge itself from the holes its wheels had sunk into from the extreme heat.

Coal-fired power plants in the US have been temporarily shut down because the waterways that they draw on to cool their machinery were either too hot or too dry.

The cognitive dissonance that is at play to allow us to be appalled by piglets saved from a fire being slaughtered to feed the firemen who saved them is also at play when we use more fossil fuel-burning machinery to get another fossil-burning piece of equipment dislodged from a tarmac that is increasingly overheated due to climate change so that it can go on its fossil fuel-burning way.

Cognitive dissonance or not, the chickens are coming home to roost.

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to accept what is true.” - Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855)

Thanksgiving

I had the opportunity to ride my motorcycle for the first time in a few weeks on Friday night. I did not realize how much I missed it until about ten minutes in. My best meditative moments come while I am on a bike. My mind empties and I am precisely in the present moment. I need more moments like that.

Sleep has been difficult to come by in the past few months. My concern over the future my children face is never out of my thoughts. We have already crossed a tipping point where the catastrophic consequence of global warming is no longer something we can avert. It is not a matter of if, it is just a matter of when - and, from what I am seeing, when begins now.

Thanksgiving is a heartening reset bringing gratitude, and gratitude is always a welcome anchor to the present moment. I have a lot l am grateful for and despite the carnage being inflicted upon my children’s future, I will strive to use this holiday to inspire my gratitude to stay in front of me beyond the opportunity this weekend provides.

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” - Thich Nhat Hanh (b. 1926)