Don’t veer from the norm of what you do on a regular basis. In my case, before writing I spend time doing some warm up letting whatever comes to flow from the mind to the fingers to the keyboard. No reason to do anything differently. Don’t hold back, no judgment, only truth. Let truth come forth in the way that is meant to. Not clouded by judgment, people pleasing or some other unconscious need to be loved or right.
If I'm not okay with myself, I am certainly not okay with others. True? Yes. Mean? Not necessarily, but that depends upon how people construe through the lens in which they are reading this.
So often people are thin skinned, overly sensitive, lacking confidence, and their reaction is taking offense, going on the defense or simply being mean-spirited. That is beyond my control.
It is in this spirit of writing that I find my truth letting it come forth, pushing the boundaries, plunging the depths, not holding back.
I am drawn to people willing to question power and the status quo. To shake things up. I will always remember a quote (not his original) from a recovering alcoholic priest who said, “I am not here to comfort the afflicted, I am here to afflict the comfortable.” We are not meant to be comfortable. We are meant to change, grow, help, be, allow, love and find our truth. It is an uphill battle, and yet it is everyone's calling if they choose to listen. Is it comfortable? No. At this point in life it doesn’t matter.
Sometimes just stating the obvious that is right in front of you is the place to start. Looking out over the outdoor Starbucks table on this day, the weather is beautiful. A cool, perfectly clear sunny day. The mood near the station is on the festive side thanks to the weather. People are full of energy, you can see it in their gait.
I sit here under an awning writing and observing people coming and going. It is what I have always enjoyed doing, spending time watching the world go by. I like to use this time to take a break as I wait and let the next set of words well up before putting them down. It seems to be my style. I cannot force words, only let them come up and take shape as I see them in my minds eye before arriving on the keyboard. It is creativity. I have always been fascinated and now I am living it.
I just finished watching for the second time a documentary that won the 2012 Academy Award called “Searching for Sugar Man.” It's about an obscure Bob Dylan-esque musician by the name of Rodriguez from Detroit who put out a few prolific albums in the 1970s. For whatever reason they never really sold in the US. My theory is that the record industry machine gatekeepers never really allowed him in and singers like Dylan overshadowed him, despite his songs being just as poetically prolific.
Even though he was never popular in the United States he sold nearly a half a million records in of all places, South Africa. I will stop here. If you have never seen the documentary, I highly recommend it. It's heart warming and offers insight into a truly creative genius who creates by putting his music out there with no pretense. What I mean by that is that he creates for the sake of creating.
To me that is what it is all about, putting it out there. If people read, watch or listen to it, so be it. If not, so be it. The chances of anyone being on par with the likes of Dylan, Rodriguez or even getting people to truly pay attention is not an easy task. In this twitter world people have to be loud, obnoxious, over the top or create some sort of hook or giveaway just to reel them in, rather than trust what they are saying is of value.
I don't know maybe I am old, old-fashioned, but I still appreciate genuine creativity. I am discerning in what I read, listen to and watch, most is mediocre at best.
Someone like Rodriguez brings me hope in a less hopeful world.
I am hearing the other voice often these days. That is the one from my ego. Sometimes it is loud, other times soft, but it always, if I let it, runs a dialogue in my head. What makes it the voice from my ego? It is judgmental and quick to anger. It is controlling and wanting to take over.
I give it room to do what it does, look at it from a distance, smile and thank it for sharing and being a part of my life. It is part of all of us. So why deny it? By denying it you end up creating more issues and a stronger ego voice. It just needs to come to the fore once in a while and let itself be heard. Nobody said you have to act on it.
People are like that, just wanting to be heard, whether it is their ego speaking or from that place of the heart. It is definitely a different feeling between these two places. The ego is less connected to the emotional life, and tends to hang out in the intellectual territory using justification to sound good. This I know very well.
When speaking (writing too) from the heart people really feel it. There is truth, honesty and an emotional foundation. No agenda, justification or rationalization.
I am coming to a conclusion that many people are just not connected to their voice in that heartfelt way. Many people say, “This is the way I am and cannot do anything about it. I have no choice.” In Japanese there is a word for this, “Shouganai,” meaning no choice. As in, I have no choice in the matter. This attitude removes one from taking responsibility to change, to let go of ego and learn to be in that place of the heart. It takes work, courage, patience and a willingness to confront the darkness and issues of our lives in order to make room to go there.
While I may no longer be acting and using my voice in the same way I experienced during the voice workshops I wrote about from my previous post, I have gotten in touch with the voice in a different way through words, the words you are reading now.
I write, put it out there and what happens after that is beyond me.
I used to be an actor many years ago in both Minneapolis and New York City. During the time in Minneapolis, I attended a voice workshop. The workshop was run by a member of the Roy Hart Theater Group, located in a mountainous area outside of Montpelier, France. This was no ordinary voice workshop, actually I have no idea what an ordinary voice workshop would even be like. All I know is the experience I had in only a few hours time had an impact on not only acting, but my life. This is where I discovered a voice I never knew I had, and compelled me a few months later to hop on a plane to attend a week long voice workshop at their artistic center in France.
As you know explaining and experiencing are two very different things. I will try to paint the experience as best I can with words. Picture eight actors standing in a circle. The Roy Hart teacher sitting behind a piano off to the side instructing us to to raise our voices and match the high notes he played on the piano. The notes are so high there is a strain and a break in our voices. He then works his way down the scales having us match the notes all the way down to the lowest. A different kind of voice strain and break in the voice. He works his way back up the scales, as do we with our voices. Then back down doing repeating this a number of times.
Suddenly, out of the blue the teacher chooses me out of the line up of eight. I have no idea why, but I go with it. He continues going up and down the scales as I follow along with my out of key voice. He keeps my voice in the high range pushing the limits and my breaking voice. (This is not quite singing by the way, and it doesn't matter if the notes are exact. We are “exploring sound and discovering voice” is how he put it.)
Then for some reason I do not quite understand at first, he asks that I sing the following, “Who took my vodka?” He plays around with the range of notes again asking me to repeat over and over the same phrase, “Who took my vodka.” He finds a place where my voice matches the notes he is playing and asks that I stay in that range and continue to repeat the phrase over and over.
Suddenly without warning or planning, the phrase I am repeating is now in a Russian accent and I spontaneously find myself running around the circle of seven actors asking each of them “Who took my vodka?” while the teacher continues to play the same notes over and over. I am lost in the character, I am the character, a Russian in search of vodka.
As he slowed down the piano playing the Russian character recedes and I am back to being myself. When it came to an end the room burst with applause at the reality of what they had witnessed. I was shaken to the core having been fully committed to the Russian character.
Afterward, I came to learn that the teacher looks for students whose movement and voice are “ready.” He intuitively chooses those who are in the process of discovery and proceeds to explore with the individual on a deeper level the notes and phrases that come to him. Apparently, he saw a Russian in me, and he was right!
After the workshop I spoke with the teacher and he suggested I consider coming to France to explore in-depth voice and character. Of course I did and it was an incredibly magical experience that I will share in detail in a future post.
I am no longer an actor, but that workshop experience and all the work I put into being an actor continues to inform my life today, including my teaching and writing.
Welcome to part 2 of a 2 part series. If you missed it you can readpart 1 here.
Last paragraph of part one ... After a few days of whining to myself, I just let it go and learned to step out of the way and be on call. For the first six months I was never called upon, which did not help my self-esteem in any way. I wanted to know exactly my role. I’m one of those guys who refused to ask for directions when lost and the same goes with asking my wife what I am supposed to do. The result, a lot of standing around and annoying looks from the women of the house.
With reluctance I accepted this fact and self-relegated myself to being the breadwinner – a label I could wrap my head around. Don’t get me wrong I never became one of those absentee fathers in Japan I used to hear so much about. These are Japanese business men who work long hours including weekends for the sake of the company. The company first, family a far second. Sure the money may be good and the camaraderie among peers in the same boat is reassuring, but what awaits them at the end of the tunnel (retirement) they hadn't a clue.
This older generation put their trust in the company for job security sacrificing family life. For many, after retiring they came to the realization they no longer had a bond with their wife or children and ended up spending their remaining lives gambling during the day at pachinko parlors (gambling halls) and drinking in the evenings at izakayas [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izakaya) (Japanese style bars). Then one day while walking home from a night of drinking keel over from a dark epiphany in which they could no longer deny reality; lack of connection or direction in life.
Worse case scenario, jump in front of a fast moving morning or evening rush hour train with two objectives; put an end to their miserable life and disrupt as many commuters as possible while the train line grinds to a halt to scrape their remains off the track. They usually choose the very same train line they used to take for thirty plus years of their working lives. (As of 2019 the suicide rate – 19,959).
Now what I have said up to this point is not some sort of anomaly. This is based on experience being on a train where a jumper ended his life and also supported by my English Circle community center class I taught for more than eight years to mostly retired men and women. In the case of the men, they have found meaning in retirement. They are the outliers choosing to engage with a hobby, learning and studying English among others.
The women in the class over the years have offered insight into the reality of family life. While privacy is held to high esteem I have had the privilege to have been give the inside scoop. It seems over the years they have come to trust me. I would add that Minnesotans tend to be trustworthy folks. “We are good peoples,” as my friends like to say.
At times it does seem the English class has become both a place of language learning and therapy. While I do not necessarily plan the class, I prefer to let it develop organically and on occasion when it airs towards therapy I have become privy to family life, mostly in the form of complaints from the women. Love is not part of their lexicon, it’s more like annoyance. They would prefer that their husbands continue after retirement to remain outside of the house for as long as possible. This explains pachinko parlors and izakayas.
Don’t get me wrong the men in the class are inspirational. These men realized somewhere along the line during and after their careers that while they had to follow the cultural expectation of work life, they knew deep down that there was more to life than that. These guys not only study English regularly, but have been and continue to be engaged with their families and have other hobbies such as tennis, cycling, and hiking. One eighty-two year old in my class even after retirement returned to school to learn acupuncture at age sixty-two, graduated and has had a practice ever since.
Bringing it back to my family life. I want to end on a positive note. That is I have learned never to let work life interfere with my soon-to-be ten year old son. To always be engaged in his life and to make that a priority over other things in my life.
If you read the most recent post on death, you are probably thinking, “What is it with this guy and his preoccupation with dying?” This is partoneof a two part series. Read on if you dare.
When my son was first born ten years ago (his birthday is February 15th). It was of course both a glorious and frightening time. Glorious because we had a miracle baby. Sure all parents say that, but in our case it was true. My wife was forty five years old at the time. We tried numerous attempts at IVF with no success. To top it off, it was our last egg and so much could have gone wrong in the process. Beginning with the last egg and leading to complications related to age for both mother and child. I think it is fair to say he was a miracle baby.
The terrifying part had to do with not only the myriad of potential problems along the way, but also selfishly my life would change forever. Don’t get me wrong at forty five years of age as well I had already done most of what I wanted to do in life and felt settled down. I heard life would never be the same after a child is born. It isn’t until you experience it firsthand that you know what it means.
My son was born in Japan, so there’s that added piece of information. This extra bit gave new meaning to the word terror. You see, my wife went into mother mode and I was relegated from top dog to whiny puppy having no idea what I was doing.
In Japan, when a child is born the wife's mother comes to help out. I heard horror stories where the mother would stay for months at a time. If the relationship between husband and mother in-law is fraught with tension, this makes for an especially challenging period of time. I was spared this experience because her mother was only ten minutes away by car and we got along great.
My problem, I hadn’t a clue my role in all of this. Sure the label Father applies, but being an American raised on independence, with a dash of pull yourself up by the boot straps and a pinch of the male get of out my way and let me do it, did not apply in Japan. I was outnumbered and out-languaged.
After a few days of whining to myself, I just let it go and learned to step out of the way and be on call. For the first six months I was never called upon, which did not help my self-esteem in any way. I wanted to know exactly my role. I’m one of those guys who refused to ask for directions when lost and the same goes with asking my wife what I am supposed to do. The result, a lot of standing around and annoying looks from the women of the house.
Part 2 of the series continues tomorrow ...
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Nobody is immune. You can be the richest man or the most popular, well-loved person in the world. The reality, you will die. When? You never know. I wrote this just after reading the headlines in the New York Times that basketball legend Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash.
Having retired after 20 years of basketball, suddenly his time was up. I am not a basketball fan, but I was moved. Not by the loss of such an iconic player, rather by the reality that it doesn't matter who you are.
Then a colleague from a university who was within two weeks of retiring died recently. While he was not iconic in the sense of Kobe Bryant, he did have an impact on the world around him. (See “The Burden of Gift Giving for his tribute). It does not matter who we are, we make a mark in the world around us.
Over the next few days you will see a lot of eulogizing and remembrances of someone who played basketball very well. While it is sad for the family (his daughter passing along with him) his friends, the people he entertained while playing the game and all those he made money for, that's not what this post is about.
Why sugarcoat the reality that death is inevitable. You may be thinking, “Of course I know I am going to die.” My reply, “Stop, take a breath and say this to yourself slowly letting it sink in. “I AM GOING TO DIE SOMEDAY.” Some may not want to say it. Others may say it quickly, pushing past the feelings that come with this reality. How does it make you feel? Scared? Worried? Not me! I am motivated by the reality that death is part of the deal. It may be because I have lost family members, brother (suddenly), Father (not as sudden), sister in-law and all my grandparents. While it makes me sad and I miss them all very much, my life is changed forever. You never get over loss, rather it becomes a part of you. And here is the great part of that, death motivates you to live, if you so choose.
There is a choice to live a full rich life of what you are meant to do. Death is a gift that motivates one to take risks, to care less, to love more, to be of service and live simply.
Death has motivated me to put my house in order by untangling the issues of life. Untangling the personal issues has allowed me not to take myself so seriously, to know that we are all on a level playing field and to appreciate all that life has to offer. Untangling issues with others is letting go of resentments and surrounding myself with like-minded supportive friends and family. And death has taught me to be of service to others based on my experience, strength and hope.
I wake up every morning with gratitude for another day above ground. When I start the day with gratitude things go much easier.
Seeing my son off at school, saying goodbye from a place of loving kindness is what it is all about. I try as best as I can to be that way with everyone in my life. I am not perfect, but when I read headlines like the sudden loss of someone, I am always brought back to this place.
Death is like that, reminding us to live, love and let go.
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I love this saying, ORDER DISORDER REORDER, rather than a midlife crisis or some western tinged psychological description. I take no credit for this viewpoint only inspiration. It came from an author, speaker and Jesuit by the name of Richard Rohr and the book “Falling Upward.”
While life is far more complicated, distilling it into three simple words is truly amazing. Allowing room for all of us to have our own stories and experiences in the order phase. We hold on for as long as possible keeping things in order until something comes along to disrupt that order. This can be in the form of illness, divorce, death, but usually along the darker side of life.
This shakes your order to the core causing disorder and reminding us that life is change and we cannot hold on forever or we risk an internal death. This internal death is something like a defeat. Giving up and unwilling to change thus settling in for the long haul until the physical death.
If we do let go, allow the process of disorder to occur and dive into our own personal abyss, we get the chance to confront those shadows and issues that we kept at bay by maintaining order. On the other side, what awaits is change, marvelous change as we take risks and dive into a divine abyss.
Here is where we get a chance to reorder our life in a completely and meaningful way knowing full well that it is finite. The result is a prioritization of what really matters, letting go of what doesn’t so that we can enjoy the richness of the simple things that life has to offer.
Many, dare I say most, do not go through all three of these phases. Sadly they hold on to the order well into the disorder chapter of life, usually around middle age. Or some do not even get a chance to experience order because in this day and age life is more or less in disarray. So even in the order phase of life it feels chaotic and in disorder.
I do wonder what are the implications of living a life of constant disorder? If that is all you know then how do you get to reorder if one has never experienced order in the first place? Does one just accept this fact and remain in the place of disorder? I don’t think so.
What I can say is speaking from experience having gone through all three stages, while it was difficult and painful being on the other side there is nothing quite like it.
Okay let me preface today's post. I am not religious, spiritual I guess in some sense if sitting on a cushion feeling your breath come in and out of your nose not trying to grasp thought is considered spiritual.
I don’t know if it is true or not but the other day it felt like I was visited by my deceased family members. Having just finished classes for the day I was walking to my bike when I had this overwhelming feeling of gratitude and love followed by the images or rather faces of my brother, father and grandparents all watching over me. They were smiling and felt like in their way rooting for me. Followed by a ponder-able question, “Are people close to us who have moved on watching out for us?” They make sure things are taken care of and do what they can from that other place.
I don’t know if this is true, but it sure was a strong feeling and picture I experienced. Whether it is true or not, I do know that the feeling in my heart like all the many other experiences from that place are real and not made up. And for that I am grateful.
I am very blessed to have had the journey thus far in life. If it were to end I would be grateful and thankful for a rich full life of experience. The only thing is that I would miss is seeing my son growing up helping and supporting him along the way.
If I am not around then I guess I would join my family members above looking down, rooting for him and lending a hand whenever possible.
For now I do what life is asking me to do. Sometimes I feel like I am crazy. But it just could be that I am still not accustomed to the well that runs deep with things to say.
Enjoy it while you can. And for god’s sake don't question it, just do it!
Start from there and see where it goes. I am not sure what to write, but I will.
Looking at the Pepsi on my desk beside me, it’s what’s they call a tall boy, more than 12 oz. It packs a punch with a ton of sugar. A treat instead of my usual afternoon coffee.
For some reason on occasion after a hard day of cycling, funny my favorite band The Replacements line from a song just came in mind, “After a hard day of nothing at all.” Is this telling me something? I certainly do not live a live of nothing at all. Not that important for sure, but I do tend to do things. Many things truth be told. I have a laundry list what I get done in the morning, including laundry. And you know what? I am never really tired. I have a ton of energy. I do love my naps though.
Okay where was I? Oh right Pepsi. I am drinking this as a treat after a kick-ass bike ride with two Frenchmen. Their nationalities don’t really matter, just that they are French. Ok I lied, one is French Canadian and the other is French. Both have accents though and really good guys. I don’t know why I mentioned their accents. Really we all have accents. I get on with them very well. They are strong riders and challenge me. Usually we have a coffee afterward and always interesting conversations.
Now back to my Pepsi and writing anything, something.
Do As I Always Do
