Hard things are hard: 4 years later, 3 days before the 2020 election

 

Photo by Pete Souza (@petesouza), Former Chief Official White House Photographer for President Obama

On November 6, 2016, I wrote a blog called “About my America” That day, like millions of others, I felt anxious about what that, 2016 presidential election will mean for our country.  In that blog post on November 6, 2016, I worriedly asked:  “Will America be alright? Will the world be alright? Will there still be freedom of speech? Or will I have to tell my child that for "everyone's safety," it's best to keep our views private? Will I have to hide that I am an immigrant, a refugee, a woman, a person of Jewish descent, or that I have an accent? Or that I am an American citizen? Or anything else that makes me who I am?” and several others…Many at the time said that I was being hysterical and was overreacting.

Four years later, three days before the 2020 presidential election I once again find myself pondering, with heaviness my soul, what awaits us.  

There is so much to say and yet, like over the past four years, I am so often at a loss for words. Does living through a pandemic completely rob you of the ability to coherently express yourself? Possibly. For example, how does one comprehend the deaths of 1,190,661 in the course of several months (as of today) many of whom died alone and not go completely mad? I just don’t know.  It is simply impossible put into words.

Michelle Obama said a few months ago that she developed a “low grade depression”. According to Harvard doctors the symptoms of low level depression (a.k.a. dysthymia) are:

•        feelings of hopelessness
•        overeating or loss of appetite
•        insomnia or sleeping too much
•        tiredness or lack of energy
•        trouble concentrating or making decisions

Is this what we are collectively and individually experiencing? Possibly.

But it is not just the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic in the context of US, the world’s political climate and actual physical climate, in fact, feels more like a gut punch which renders you completely breathless…and near lifeless but still alive to experience the full range of emotion and pain.   

But there is more. Something has changed within me over the past four years. The sheer volume and variety of painful, excruciating, heartbreaking and outrageous circumstances definitely do something to the psyche. How to describe this change? I am not sure. I know for sure I have not lost my ability to feel. Otherwise, I would not be this anxious today. But something changed. I see the signs:

~ I am experiencing a constant buzz of anxiety running through my veins

~ I cry more easily and I laugh more freely

~ I'd like to think that I love more deeply 

~ I care much less if at all about the judgements of others

~ I became an expert in doom scrolling

~ My tolerance for the regular every day, pedestrian bullshit has diminished significantly (those who are closest to me may say that it has become non-existent)

~ I think of my grandparents and my mom even more often than ever. And since I can't ask them directly anymore, I mentally ask them “Are you worried about me? Do I still live up to your expectations of me? Are you still proud of me? How did you survive all the things you had to live through?”  

~ I have seemingly lost all ability to pretend (especially to pretend that everything is fine)

~ I have gotten older…

President Barak Obama had a plaque on his desk at the White House and it read “Hard things are hard.” According to Pete Souza, Obama’s photographer, this plaque was given to President Obama during the fight to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2010.  I have been thinking about it a lot.  My best guess is that the biggest thing that change is just this: I have developed this hardened vigilance and an irreversible realization that life does what it does regardless of our wishes. And that reality is inescapable and, in fact, is meant to be lived no matter what is the set of circumstances are set before us. And that hard things are hard, and the only path forward is through.

I heard someone say that this kind of pre-election anxiety, the kind I am experience along with many others, is akin to waiting for biopsy results. Does our country have an incurable cancer? Will we need chemo therapy? Will we simply go to hospice to die? Or is it a small nodule that can be easily removed and with some homeopathic therapies we will be back on our feet? I just don’t know.

So what’s my point with this rare and, arguably, not the most eloquent blog post? Do I have words of wisdom, inspiration, encouragement? I am afraid I do not.

I just wanted to say if you are anxious, I am with you.

Even if we are anxious for completely diagonally opposite reasons, I am still with you.

My spirit honors your spirit even if my world and political views do not match yours.  

What I now know for sure is that hard things are hard. And there is no way around, just through. And so,  no matter what happens this election or any other day, we must persevere. 

We still have a life to live, families to raise, a country to cherish, art to create, a planet to save from a climate catastrophe and so much more.

May America choose wisely this November 3^rd and may the best in us prevail. Amen.

Wisdom Notes and Quotes 2019

Here we go! Sharing some of my favorite quotes and notes of all the wisdom I gathered (or reminded myself of) in 2019. If you think this is a long list, I promise you, I painstakingly cut it down from many, many, many more pages! For example, I attended an amazing mindfulness conference in 2019 called "Wisdom 2.0" and those notes and quotes deserve a whole separate blog post... 

Hope you find a quote that touches you or get inspired to listen to a podcast or read a new book. 

May your 2020 be filled with beautiful life experiences and.... wisdom.

Rina. 

“Nobody knows enough to be pessimistic.”

~ Daniel Goleman, “A Force for Good: The Dalai Lama's Vision for Our World”

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 “The end and means are one. If the means didn’t contribute to the human happiness neither will the end. The end result will carry the energy of what it took to get there.”

“You never experience the future as the future, you always experience it as the now. The future is no more than the extension of now.”

“What you do isn’t that important. How you do what you do is most important.”

“Whatever you identify with is your ego.”

“Whatever you experience repeatedly externally reflects your inner life”

“Whenever you feel inferior or superior to anyone that’s your ego at play”

~ Eckhart Tolle, from his books and conversations with Oprah on SuperSoul Sundays

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"May all your weeds be wildflowers."

~ Life is Good.®

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 “There is my business. There is other people’s business. And there is God’s business.”

~ Byron Katie with Oprah on SuperSoul Sunday show and podcast.

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 “The audacity of hope of rooted things.”

~ Cynthia Bond, “Ruby”

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 “Rational optimism” “Happiness is the joy you feel moving towards your full potential.”

~From a live appearance at UCLA’s Royce Hall, New York Times best-selling author, happiness expert and Harvard-trained researcher Shawn Achor says that pleasure isn't the only thing that brings people happiness.

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Three happy lives

1. The Pleasant life
2. The Good life (pleasure vs flow)
3. The Meaningful life - use your life in the service of something larger than you are

~ MartinSeligman, psychologist

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“Sometimes you need to be beaten up to be tender enough to feel.”

~ David Brooks, in a conversation with Oprah on the SuperSoul Sunday show / podcast 

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 “Self-control is the ability to align your behavior with what you want.“

~ Freakonomics Radio Podcast 

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“The mob is where people go to take a break from their conscience”

~ Jeff Daniels on Broadway, playing Atticus Finch in the heart-wrenchingly poignant and timely “To Kill a Mockingbird”

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 “Power doesn’t necessarily corrupt. Power reveals. The way people use power shows their pre-existing values.”

~Adam Grant,  Podcast, Understanding Humans in the Wild 

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“Comfort can be dangerous. It provides the floor but also a ceiling.”

“In our society we do horrible things to one another because we don’t see the people it effects, we don’t see their faces. We don’t see them as people.”

“Traditional man wants a woman to be subservient. But he never falls in love with subservient women. He is attracted to independent women. He is like an exotic bird collector. He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to only put her in the cage.”

“Then I realized that the police weren’t who they said they were. They were men first, police second.”

“Relationships are not sustained by violence but by love. Love is a creative act. When you love someone you create a new world for them.”

“Growing up in home of abuse, you struggle with the notion that you can love a person you hate or hate a person you love. It’s a strange feeling. You want to live in the world where someone is good or bad. Where you either hate them or love them. But that’s not how people are. “

About the beatings “they were sporadic enough so you would think they won’t happen again but frequent enough so you had never forgotten that they were possible.”

~ Trevor Noah, “Born a Crime”

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“Kids know at the very young age when they’re being devalued. When adults aren’t invested in after helping them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as Unruliness. It’s hardly their fault. They aren’t bad kids they’re just trying to survive bad circumstances.”

“My grandfather lived with a bitter residue of his own dashed dreams.”

“The need to situate someone in his or her ethnicity and the frustration that comes that it can’t easily be done.”

“A safe harbor of female wisdom.”

“Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It’s vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear.”

About her mom: “Advice when she offered it was of the hard boiled and pragmatic variety.”

“Every move she made I realize now was buttressed by the quiet confidence that she raised us to be adults.” (About her mom’s parenting)

“I understand now that even a happy marriage can be a vexation, it is a contract that needs to be renewed again and again. Even quietly and privately. Even alone.”

About Barack Obama “He steered himself with certainty which I found to be astounding.”

“I craved permanence..[...] I wanted to grab every last thing I loved and stake it ruthlessly to the ground.”

“It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does. It can hurt to walk down the hallway or open a fridge. It hurts to put on a pair of socks or brush your teeth. Food tastes like nothing. Colors go flat. Music hurts and so do memories. You look at something you’d otherwise would find beautiful. A purple sky at sunset. Or playgrounds full of kids. And it only somehow deepens the loss.”

“’Almost home’ was not a geo-locator but a state of mind”

About her daughters “I didn’t want them ever to believe that life began when the man of the house arrived home.”

Speaking about her career as a woman “You’ve got to be twice is good to get half as far.”

Friendships between women as any woman would tell are built of a thousand small kindnesses [...] swapped back and forth and over again.

~ Michelle Obama, “Becoming”

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There is a correlation between incompetence and a sense of self confidence

~Dunning-Kruger Effect

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“Stop pushing against what is.”

~ Oprah

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“I really need for people to take responsibility for the kind of energy they bring to me.”

— Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard-trained brain scientist, describes how a massive stroke gave her a second chance at life. “My stroke of insight”

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“Things change when you change.”

~Eckhart Tolle

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 “Your world has never stopped changing, and it never will. As you read this, everything you know and everything you are is dropping away, and away, and away, into the irretrievable past. Sometimes it’s fairly easy to ignore that, of course. You create a career, a relationship, a child, and you tell yourself things are as they should be, forever. It’s a lovely fantasy while it lasts, and it can be hard to let go when the illusion of stability inevitably ends.”

~ Martha Beck (author of “Finding your own North Star” and “The Joy Diet” and many others.)

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“Life will give you whatever experiences which is most helpful for the evolution of your conscienceless. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment." 

"The ego wants to want more than that wants to have. And the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting."

"The past can not stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that. What is a grievance? A baggage of old thought and emotion."

"There is nothing that strengthens the ego than being right. For you to be right, of course, you need for someone else to be wrong."

"Anything you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you."

“'I am ruined' is a story. 'I have 50 cents in my bank account' is a fact. Facing facts is always empowering."

"Awareness is the greatest agent for change."

"Mastery of life is not a question of control. But about finding the balance between human and being."

~ Eckhart Tolle, "The New Earth"

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“Maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts” 

~ Poet and philosopher David Whyte

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"There’s no such thing as lack of adversity. It doesn’t exist. As the old saying goes 'wherever you go there you are.' Same is true for adversity and failure. No matter where you go there’s a 500 pound load of sh-t waiting for you. That’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t getting away from the sh-t. The point is to find the sh-t you enjoy doing." 

"Responsibility and fault are not the same thing. Fault is past tense. Responsibility is future tense."

"If it feels like it’s you versus the world, chances are it’s just you versus yourself."

~ Mark Mason, "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F-ck"

  

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Manson's Law of Avoidance

The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid doing it. For example, the prospect of becoming a well known artist nobody likes is far scarier than an artist no one has heard about.

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“When I die, I want people to remember how my love affected them. Not how many shows I did.”

~ Oprah

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“Our mind might be the most brilliant piece of machinery in the Universe. But it requires adult supervision. This means we have to assert what are the right things for us to do or not do. We have to battle thoughts that are un-useful or harmful or damaging to us.”

~ Guy Winch, psychologist, TED Radio Hour podcast

Inspiration and Wisdom - quotes and notes

Instead of my annual list of quotes from the books I've read this year, I decided to share inspiration and wisdom quotes and notes from various sources I’ve gathered in the course of 2018. Many of these are from Oprah’s Supersoul Sunday or Oprah's Supersoul Conversations podcast (highly recommend both). While other quotes are from the books I've read a long time ago, but only now fully embraced their meaning.

Hope you’ll find some nuggets here which will uplift your spirit, make you think differently and more expansively, and, most importantly, be inspired to live your life to the fullest.

Happy New Year 2019!

Life is good.

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These are some of the best questions from Oprah’s “soul to soul” interviews. Imagine answering them for yourself in 2019 or interviewing someone using these. Try it! It could be a very powerful experience.

• What is your definition of God?
• What is a soul?
• What happens when we die?
• Is there something you are still striving for spiritually? What is that?
• When do you feel your life’s mission is most potent? When do you feel most fulfilled?
• What is your definition of a hero?
• What is the lesson that took you the longest to learn?
• What do you think is the world’s biggest wound?
• What is the best advice you have ever been given?
• Who has been your greatest spiritual teacher?
• What do you want your legacy to be?
• What do you think is the purpose of the human experience?

Finish these sentences:

• I believe in ____
• Life is _____
• The person I most want to be proud of me _____
• I am ready to forgive ____
• The purpose of forgiveness is _____
• I feel the presence of love when _____

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“No judgment. No expectation. Don’t be attached to the outcome. Just trust.”

~ Caroline Myss, New York Times best-selling author and spiritual teacher

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“Perfection is mathematical concept not a human concept. Humans by nature are not perfect.”
“If you don’t transform your suffering, you will transmit it.”
“Suffering = not being in control.”
“To fall in love means to give the power to change you.”
“Love has to expand.”
“God doesn’t love you because you are that good. God loves you because God is good. That’s the experience of radical grace and unconditional love.”
“Don’t take successes too seriously. Or your failures. Or yourself too seriously.”

Richard Rohr, author, writer

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“Everything that materializes, de-materializes. Focus on the internal.”

~ Dwayne Dyer, was an American self-help author and a motivational speaker

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“Think higher, feel deeper.”
“I dedicated my life to fighting indifference.”
“What is life but a sum of memories.”
“I define myself more by my questions than by my answers. Answers come and go, but the questions remain.”
“To listen to a witness is to become a witness. [talking about the experience of Auschwitz]”
“We can’t live without friendship.”

~ Elie Wiesel, a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

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“People who need help often don’t look like people who need help.”

~ Glennon Doyle, an author, activist, philanthropist, creator of the online community Momastery, and founder and president of Together Rising, a nonprofit for women and children in crisis

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"It’s not that God wasn’t speaking to me, it's just that wasn’t listening."

~Wes Moore, CEO of Robinhood

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“Luxury isn’t a matter of all the things you have, but all things you can do without."

~ Pico Iyer, best-selling author and travel writer

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“Mindfulness: When you stir the pot, just stir the pot.”
“What we are really trying to do is live our life as if it really matters. Because it does.”
“Next time you are in the shower, check that you are really in the shower. Or is your whole Monday morning meeting is in the shower with you?”
“As long as you are breathing there is more right with you than wrong with you.”
“Pour energy into that which is right with you.”

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn, an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine

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“Honor the tears that you carry."

~ Jack Kornfield, one of the leading Buddhist teachers

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“Coaching is spiritual work. It’s peeling the layers. Removing the veil.”
“Look for a way to lift someone up.”

~ Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder and senior adviser of Omega Institute, the largest adult education center in the United States focusing on health, wellness, spirituality and creativity.

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In the book "Proof of Heaven,"which is the account of his personal near-death experience, Dr. Eben Alexander shares some of the wisdom he brought back from the realm of pure consciousness: 

“You are loved and cherished.
You have nothing to fear.
There is nothing you can do wrong.
We are each eternal beings and when we die a physical death we reunite with our higher soul which has always known the truth and purpose of our existence.
The single most important force in the Universe is unconditional Love.”

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“Spiritual intelligence is much more important than a high IQ.”
“Spiritual intelligence is recognizing your purpose. It also correlates very closely to one's sense of truth and beauty. A good sign of strong spiritual intelligence is a strong sense of ethics.”

~ John Mackey, Whole Foods co-founder

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“When people tell you who they are, believe them.”

~ Maya Angelou, was an American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist.

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“To be broken is no reason to see all things as broken.”
“All things are true. Not that all things are right. Or that all things are fair. But that all things are true. Only an open heart can make sense of how. When we keep choosing between right and wrong, we spend our lives and energy sorting life rather than living it.”
"We have to give up what no longer works to stay close to what is sacred.”
“Our culture has let excellence get ahead of thoroughness of being. Full immersion is the reward for expression not excellence.”

~ Mark Nepo, a poet and a spiritual adviser 

About my (infrequent) blogging

Just the other day, I looked back at my blog and my last post is from June 2018...the only one this year.

I asked myself: does the frequency of my blog posts put into question the very idea and purpose of having a blog? And why do I write so infrequently lately? Do I have nothing to say anymore?

This blog post is my way of checking in with myself and with all of you out there. How are you all doing? I hope you are all doing well. Today I offer you a lovely meditation mantra I recently learned, because something kind is always worth spreading:

May you be healthy,

May you be happy,

May you be safe,

And may you live with ease.

And as to my questions for myself, here is what I think:

Is this still a blog if it only has a handful of entries a year?

I say yes. Because who makes the rules? I make the rules - at the top of each page it says “my life as I know it.”

And do I have nothing to say anymore?

No. That’s definitely not the case. I have a lot to say. In fact, at the moment I have too much to say and all of those things are crowding my mind and, at times, crushing my soul. But here is the challenge and a dilemma: All of these thoughts seem life-altering, critically important, searing into my psyche AND, at the same time, I can’t seem to find the right words to describe what I am feeling/thinking. Current state of the world and life, seems to be incompatible with my language skills.

So, for now, my dear friends, until my left and right brain hemispheres will be again be on “speaking terms,” I will simply leave you with a quote from Elie Wiesel, a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. This is from his last book (he died two years ago) called “Open Heart.” Because Elie Wiesel's wise words are ALWAYS worth repeating.

“We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it. Between inflicting suffering and humiliation on our fellow man and offering him the solidarity and hope he deserves. Or not. I know—I speak from experience—that even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. That it is possible to feel free inside a prison. That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor. That one instant before dying, man is still immortal. There it is: I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehension rather than contempt. It is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console.”

About blindness

“Don’t turn your face away.

Once you’ve seen, you can no longer act like you don’t know.

Open your eyes to the truth. It’s all around you.

Don’t deny what the eyes to your soul have revealed to you.

Now that you know, you cannot feign ignorance.

Now that you’re aware of the problem, you cannot pretend you don’t care.

To be concerned is to be human.

To act is to care.”

Vashti Quiroz-Vega, writer

New York City subway often offers me incredible insights into the human condition (not to mention a whole range of odors). 

Just the other day, I saw a relatively young man, who got on the subway at the same stop as me. His appearance was unremarkable aside from a long cane. He was blind. This man got inside the car and stood not far from the entrance, I am guessing, to make sure he could more easily get off at his stop.

The train was delayed. One minute, three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes passed by. During all that that time more and more people got on. 

The blind man was pushed and shoved, and at times berated for standing “in the way.” It was hard to watch. But the man just smiled and said “I am sorry” to the people who shoved him. A few times people asked the “crowd” if the train stops at the stop X or Y. And he answered those questions, looking directly ahead. And then others would ask if the train was delayed and how long it’s been “sitting at the station.” He answered those questions too, articulately, in a quiet and clear voice. 

Eventually, it was time for me get off the train. As I was getting off, I said to this man, almost inaudibly: “I am sorry.” And he responded: “It’s alright.” And then the doors closed behind me. A heavy feeling landed in my heart.

“It's all a matter of paying attention, being awake in the present moment, and not expecting a huge payoff. The magic in this world seems to work in whispers and small kindnesses.”

Charles de Lint, writer

Since then, I just keep thinking - who was actually blind in this situation? The man who was physically blind? Or all of us around him who appeared to have been emotionally and spiritually blind?

I understand that those were not just some especially heartless people who all happened to be gathering in the R train at the Courtland street station. They were regular people, just like you and me, who had things on their minds, who were in a rush to get somewhere and likely annoyed at the MTA for a dirty, delayed service. But...

How blind are we to people around us? What suffering or joy are we not noticing accidentally or willingly? How oblivious are we to our fellow humans at home, at work, daily, hourly, for a lifetime? Why don’t we see what’s around us? Self-orientation? Self-preservation? Disinterest? Apathy?  I don’t know. 

But I do know this: I want to do better. I want to be better.

‘If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

Leo Tolstoy, writer