Conscious Living

I know everyone is telling you to donate money to the Haitian earthquake relief effort right now. So, um, have you?

When a huge tragedy occurs, sometimes I donate money and sometimes I don’t. What motivated me this time was the realization that there are people in Haiti who are just like me. Mothers with 7 month old babies who are just trying to get through the day and take care of their kids. Except their day is really, really awful and the stakes are totally different. Here I am thinking about Dylan’s naps and making sure he has developmentally appropriate toys, and there are mothers in Haiti who are just trying to keep their babies fed, healthy, alive. Of course if we could find out about every person affected by any large-scale tragedy there would inevitably be someone for each of us to identify with, but for some reason this time that thought really hit home for me. Haiti is a really poor country. If we (we being the people from the moneyed countries) don’t step in to help them out, who will?

Even if you think you have no money, you have enough to give something. It is very easy to feel bad and say a prayer for all of the people who are suffering in Haiti right now. But guess what? It is almost as easy to donate money to help them! I suggest choosing a large, established international aid organization, but I’m sure there are smaller organizations working in Haiti that are also legit.

Donation Resources
The NPR website has a brief list of organizations that you can donate to.

CharityNavigator.org and NetworkForGood.org can help you evaluate charities and make donations to a broader range of NGOs.

And if you’re texty, you can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross relief for Haiti (that $10, plus standard text messaging charges, will be charged to your cell phone bill).

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Now that we’re a solid week into the new year I figured I’d better get my resolutions sorted out. Maybe some day I will be one of those bloggers who has their new year’s post, complete with previous-year-in-review and resolutions for the new year all ready to go on December 31st. Ha, whatever. I haven’t even done resolutions the past few years because, for the record, I am not a big fan of the idea. They generally turn out to be ridiculous lofty aspirations that are forgotten about by spring break anyway, and I think goal setting (and achieving!) should be a year-round activity.

That being said, this year I’ve decided to do resolutions because I am in the mood for goal setting! After an 18-month period that involved moving three times (twice over distances greater than 2,500 miles), getting pregnant, having a baby, and breaking my back I was just done. Tired, you know. Granted the moving and getting pregnant were definitely part of the plan, but going through all of those experiences in such quick succession did not leave me with the mental space or physical energy to live as consciously as I wanted to. But, Dylan will be seven months old this week and I’m ten weeks out from the back breakage, and I’m starting to get that itch again. That ambitious type-A only child itch to set some goals and achieve them! Yeah! I’m not one for letting the tides of life sway me, as y’all well know.

Without further ado, my new year’s resolution for 2010:

Be authentic, radiant, and fabulous.

Yep, that’s it. I initially started out with a little list of things that I wanted to accomplish this year and realized rather quickly that the list didn’t accurately represent what I was after in terms of self-improvement and transformation. I needed something bigger, grander, and all-encompassing. Now I know that a good goal is measurable, and I have not yet figured out how to measure this resolution, but it feels like a very accurate way to communicate the kind of change I want to see in myself this year. Let’s break it down:

Be Authentic. To me this means to be my authentic self. According to Merriam-Webster, one of the five definitions of authentic is “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character,” and I think that sums up my feelings exactly. Maybe you are one of those people who always behaves authentically in every situation. I generally do a pretty good job but could certainly do better. I’ve definitely let circumstances influence my choices more than they should have at various times in my life. (Example: working in a career I hate just for the money. So NOT authentic. For the record, my current job, stay-at-home-mom, rules and is very true to my personality, spirit, and character.) The gist of being authentic means to be my truest self at all times. The practical application, as far as I’m concerned, involves heeding my intuition and not sabotaging my gut instincts and true desires by being lazy or cowardly.

Be Radiant. This is just a fancy way of saying “look good,” which luckily I can accomplish simply by purchasing the correct beauty products. Ha! Just kidding! What this really means to me is to shine my light out into the world. To radiate my unique flavor of positive, uplifting, inspiring energy so that others may benefit. The practical application involves setting a good example in terms of my behavior, and being supportive of others rather than critical. That last part is what’s hard since I am very improvement-oriented by nature (that’s a nice way of saying I’m critical). A big part of sharing my positive energy involves giving other people the space to benefit from it in their own special way, and not trying to force a certain result. So I’ll be focusing on being a ray of sunshine for those around me and not getting caught up in the outcome.

Be Fabulous. Uh, does this one really need explaining? It means feather boas and glitter all the time, bitches! It also means having fun, making my own fun, making the best of things, laughing a lot, and being the best version of myself that I can be while forgiving myself for the many mistakes I will surely make. Technically the word fabulous means “of an incredible, astonishing, or exaggerated nature,” and I intend to have an incredible, astonishing, exaggeratedly awesome year. I want to look back on my year and be like “Day-am!” or “Wow!” I did it last year, so this one shouldn’t be too hard.

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The team over at 37signals writes a pretty awesome blog. It is mostly tech-focused since they make web-based software, but I find that a lot of their topics have broader applications as well. Take today’s genius post about the suckage to usage ratio, for example. The basic idea is that when creating a product, it’s okay for some features of the product to suck if they are not the most important or frequently-used features. So often the pursuit of perfection, in software, in projects, in life, can get in the way of progress. As a recovering perfectionist, this concept really resonates with me. Focus on what really matters and don’t worry so much about the rest.

There is an eternal contest in my mind between the following aphorisms:
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing half-assed.

Mostly I try to side with the last two in that list, lest I drive myself and everyone around me insane. I predict that the suckage to usage ratio will become another tool for me to use to combat the inertia that comes along with the pursuit of perfection. Focus on what really matters and don’t worry so much about the rest. Focus on what really matters and don’t worry so much about the rest. Focus on what really matters and don’t worry so much about the rest. Practice makes perfect, right?

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I’ve spent a lot of time looking forward lately. In one sense it’s a great tool to help me stay positive amidst the daily struggle of dealing with my injury. Like, “Oh, in just a few months I’ll be able to…” and fill in the blank with any number of things that I can’t do now. Thinking this way gives me hope and reminds me that my situation is temporary. And then I feel very lucky and grateful.

The downside of all this looking forward is that it takes me away from the present moment and all of the joy I could experience now if I weren’t so focused on what’s next. Over the years I’ve read a lot about spirituality and pretty much every text I’ve studied espouses Living In The Moment. It’s the key to happiness, didn’t you know? I find the practice of Being Here Now exceedingly difficult. My mind is always cranking away, thinking about the past a bit but mostly planning and hoping and just generally focusing on the future. The optimist’s curse. I suppose it’s the pessimist’s, too, but I’m not much for worrying about everything that could go wrong.

In the aftermath of my injury, and now that the long slog of recovery has begun, it’s only natural for me to look ahead to what will undoubtedly be happier times, right? Well, yes and no. I started realizing that I was doing this and it made me think, are my current times not happy? Hmmm, no. They are happy, actually. Very, very happy. Will the future times be even better? Maybe, but who’s to say? In that context, it seems very silly to just toss away the happiness I could be feeling now by concentrating so hard on how much better everything will certainly be down the line.

All these years of trying to push my thoughts out of my head and just Be, with no success (literally, none–the harder I try the worse I fail, and if I don’t try at all I somehow fail even more spectacularly. Wrap your minds around that conundrum, spiritual gurus!), and now, suddenly, I’m enlightened. In the last two weeks, I have spent more time just existing in the present without thought to what’s next than in my whole life prior to breaking my back. I feel remarkably peaceful. It’s weird, and fantastic.

I believe a lot of my recent success with just being in the moment and appreciating it has to do with the very deep sense of gratitude I feel. Maybe you are like me and have spent a lot of your life knowing that you are fortunate and feeling like you should be more grateful and happier than you are, and wondering why it’s so damn hard. I have finally realized that intellectual gratitude is very different from actually feeling grateful. I am not sure whether it was the sudden realization that life can change in an instant (yes, I know this, you know this, we see evidence of it all the time in the paper and on the news, but for me it did take a near-brush with disaster to fully understand), or whether it was that combined with all of the emotions and responsibilities and perspectives that come with being a mother, but I feel so effortlessly thankful these days. Like, I don’t have to try, and that is the trick. I just am grateful, therefore it is easy in each moment to just feel happy.

Perhaps it sounds hokey, but I finally really do understand and believe that every instant is a new chance to choose happiness. I have long believed in our ability to choose our emotions much like we can choose our thoughts, but I’m a fiery one and that sort of conscious choice can be a challenge. In addition, I haven’t ever had much luck with trying to make myself feel one way or another. Sure, I’ve gotten better with practice, but until you really internalize this stuff it’s like putting on a mask and pretending to be someone else. I am not sure what the point of this post is. I don’t know that I have any real practical advice to help you get the place where I am, if you are not there yet. It requires a shift in perspective, and I think that while I was on the path (especially since Dylan was born), it would have taken me quite a while to arrive here had I not had my recent near-miss.

This is not to say that I am now perfect and never feel frustrated or sad, or never think about tomorrow or next week or next year. I still look ahead and feel hopeful because I expect better times. However, I’ve also managed recently to slow down enough to experience my life as it is happening, and it gives me such a positive and peaceful feeling. I encourage you to take a look around your life and notice the good things. I’m not necessarily talking about big things, they can be small, they can be anything. What are you thankful for right now at this very minute? Think about it, and feel happy.

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When Dylan woke up yesterday morning he had a bright red rash on his cheeks and chin. He had started a medication for thrush two days before, and I was worried that he was having an allergic reaction. I paged his pediatrician and described the situation for her. She was certain that it wasn’t an allergic reaction–apparently that would have likely happened sooner and covered more of his body–so she wasn’t too concerned. He wasn’t bothered by the rash, so there wasn’t an issue there, either. She then told me to keep an eye on it and to call her if it got worse. Then she told me to go get a hydrocortisone cream to apply to it. Huh? So, you want me to watch the rash to make sure it doesn’t get worse while I’m superficially suppressing the inflammation with a steroid cream? Also, just to be clear, you want me to apply this steroid cream to my infant even though the only problem seems to be that it mars his appearance a bit? Oh, okay. That makes perfect sense. I’ll get right on that.

After I got off the phone with the pediatrician, we headed out to buy luggage for an upcoming trip. Our first stop was a strip mall, where there was a fundraiser for juvenile diabetes research. Guess what the fundraisers were selling to raise money for juvenile diabetes research? Cake. I would love to buy a piece of cake to support a disease that has reached epidemic proportions in the US largely because we eat way too much sugar. That sounds great! It would be even better if the cake was the kind of flavorless, sugar-laden, artificially-colored specimen you get from a cheapo grocery store bakery. That would be excellent! I think Brian summed it up best when he said, “What? Are they trying to promote diabetes?”.

We then decided to go to Costco. We thought they might have deals on luggage, and we figured if they carried grass-fed beef or wild salmon then it might be worth it to buy a membership. We should have just turned around and left when we saw the streams of people walking zombie-like out of the store, pushing their supersize carts full of supersize crap. We were reminded of the people in the movie “Wall-E” who float along in their motorized little pods, constantly consuming, oblivious to their surroundings. I felt very naive once we made our way past the jewelry, electronics, and lawnmowers and started checking out the food. Why did I ever think Costco would have grass-fed beef or wild salmon? We walked around a bit, in awe of enormous packages of everything, disturbed by the fact that it is possible to buy mangos, vacuum cleaners, and jeans all in the same place, and then we left. Walking out of there empty-handed felt like the greatest escape. Like, we went to the mecca of over-consumption and didn’t consume anything. Yesss! I just don’t understand how Costco manages to trick people into thinking they are saving money when really they are just buying a bunch of stuff they don’t really need.

The whole experience of our day was sort of jarring, a reminder that we are living a very different life than most Americans, probably different even from a lot of our friends, and that we can be horrified and confused all we want but that doesn’t help anyone. We can complain that everyone else is lazy and uninformed, but unless we are actively trying to motivate, inform, and set a good example of what conscientious, engaged living looks like in a world that is more focused on what is easy than what is healthy or smart, then we are just like those people who were selling cake to support diabetes research. Only worse, because we know better.

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