Four Word Self Help

Patti Digh has taken an interesting idea and turned it into a delightfully rich little book.

The concept: compile self-help directives which are exactly four words long. How much insight can be delivered in so few words? When I first heard about her intention, I tried myself to concoct four-word sentences which carried valuable insights into living a life. It's not easy to do!

She has succeeded in not only delivering great, impactful statements of such brevity, she has also used those statements to invite a deeper level of reflection.

One of Patti's strengths is her ability to offer up new ways of considering our daily lives, to step back and feel the implications of the decisions we make each day and the cumulative effect not only on ourselves, but on those with whom we interact.

Her professional background in diversity training and consulting informs her more-personal work, what began as essays written for her daughters years ago, became a blog, then a book (Life is a Verb), and now is an ongoing and ever-enriching journey which she has offered to open to anyone wishing to walk along.

On a personal note, it was three years ago today that Patti and I began corresponding as a result of a comment I left on her blog, 37days. I had dived in for the first time a couple of days before and read many of the existing essays, works she was posting once a week. She responded to a comment I left, and we still are in contact to this day.

It was my great pleasure to be an attendee at the first Life is a Verb retreat in September of 2008 and to meet Patti in person and play with her Circle Project partner, David Robinson. I wrote about that experience here and here.

Four Word Self Help is a little book packed with a great deal of the Digh magic, a wonderful adjunct and a complementary eddy to the main flow which started with Life is a Verb and continues next month with Creative is a Verb. While it is a delight to read on its own merit, I do heartily recommend reading it as a companion to Patti's other books, as they set a philosophical framework within which this little book carries even more weight.

Besides, Life is a Verb contains within its pages the only published illustration I have ever created. That, alone, is reason enough to get a copy and become a fan of the work of Patti Digh!

About a month to go

Julia and I are moving to Raleigh, North Carolina in about a month.

Of course, when you have a month to get ready to move from a house you have lived in for nearly 11 years, a house with a full basement and a family with a slight tendency toward accumulation of stuff, you need to stay busy with sorting (this goes with us, this is trash, this is...oh, look! What is this? I better spend an hour paging through this material which has had no importance to me at all for the last ten years!) and boxing for shipment or tossing into the trash/recycle/giveaway piles.

And, if you are the Hamricks, you take a two-week break right in the middle and drive 1350 miles to the cottage on the lake.

We have a perfectly reasonable explanation: there is work to be done in the house to make it ready for renting to some loving family who will take care of our home by making it their home for as long as they want. The work can happen more efficiently if we aren't in the way.

Any reasonable explanation for heading to the lake (Lake Michigan, really an inland sea) is one we accept and dutifully act to align with.

It means we need to be really productive between now and head-for-the-lake day, and we will need to be really productive when we get back, but we both know that the break will do us a world of good.

We invested a tremendous amount of energy in launching Choosing Easy World, Julia's new book which was released a month ago today and is doing very well (thanks for asking!), and to go straight from that project to the moving-prep project was looking a bit too much like not-easy to us.

So, we will do all we can do until it is time to leave for Michigan, take our break and enjoy it just as if every day there is one which offers us all that is nurturing, fulfilling, and refilling of the reservoirs of energy, then come home and pick up stakes.

It is an exciting time. Julia is going home, as she has lived the majority of her life in North Carolina, and I'm going to my ancestral home--I was born in Chapel Hill, but have lived 95% of my life elsewhere, most of it in Denver--where both my dad and mom's families of origin put down roots.

I've been a Denverite since I was junior-high age, and giving up the familiarity and comfortable feeling of a place I have called home for more than 40 years is worth it, but it is also scary. It is sad to be moving so far from my mom, too, but that's why God made Skype. My kids are already gallivanting the globe, so us living in NC is just another stop for them as they travel all over.

We are very lucky to have found the ideal place in Raleigh for us, and that's what prompted the move to take place now. Julia found the house, I said no--too much money--and she called the number anyway.

After instantly bonding during that phone call, she and the owner's son started working to figure out how to make it possible for us to rent his mom's home. They got it figured out well enough that I was able to get on board, so now we have a signed lease and a home in Raleigh! (as you can see from the not-great photo grabbed from the Google street-view images, we are in a grade A location [groaning and rolling of eyes okay])

The house is in a beautiful, tree-filled area which has no through traffic--the enclave has one way in, and you exit right back that same way--rural-feeling streets with no curb and gutter, just asphalt and grass, and a pretty little lake only a block from our place.

The house is bigger than our Denver place, although without a basement we won't be able to stash nearly as much stuff. This is a good thing, if adding to our current challenge a little.

This new chapter is one we have been anticipating for a long time, and now we are turning the page to see how the chapter starts. I know it will be filled with adventure, joy, thrills, and satisfaction in all ways possible. There will be opportunities to grow and chances to learn more of our own courage and determination. All in all, it will be one more chapter in the book we started writing about the middle of last century. Julia and I each wrote many chapters, and only since 1998 have we cowritten them. This means our shared chapters have an interesting flavor of new mixed with experienced, still learning about each other mixed with the "here I go again...how many times does this lesson need to revisit my life?" feelings which come with the stuff we find to be our companions. Maybe this chapter, we learn some of those life lessons and move on to the next level!

The Battle

The battle is joined
forces aligned in opposition

The horn sounds
and peace breaks out, unbidden

Julia hits the big time

We are now almost two weeks into the life of Choosing Easy World, Julia's book which details her own journey into the magical realm where we are designed to thrive.

On the way to this, the 13th day since publication, we are having media adventures!

Early on the morning of the 11th, Julia was on TV.


Later that same day, Julia gave a talk and signed copies of Choosing Easy World at the venerable and much-loved independent book store, the Tattered Cover. It is the single-most-famous indie between Chicago and San Francisco. If you are an author and want to sign in the best book store in Denver, you seek to sign there.

Here's the exterior of this, the third edition of Tattered Cover, located south of town.

Julia, holding a copy of Choosing Easy World, awaiting the appointed hour at which she will give her talk.

And, the line forms for folks who want her to sign their pristine new copies of Choosing Easy World.

As you can imagine, since we were at the TV studio before 7 a.m. and did not leave Tattered Cover until close to 9 p.m., followed by a small celebration at Indulge Wine Bar, it was a day we enjoyed to the hilt and one we were ready to close so we could move on to a good night's sleep.

First, though, we had one more impromptu Easy World adventure to experience.

As we drove home on a route different than the one I intended--the freeway on-ramp was closed, so we chose to drive up a city street instead of looking for another place to get on the fast track home--Julia noticed that there was a patrolman partly hidden by foliage on the side of the road. I noticed I was going faster than the posted 35 mph limit. As we passed him, we saw his lights come on, so I immediately pulled over.

He was from the county sheriff's office and was very polite and patient as we searched in the dark for our insurance card in the glove compartment. I'm good at getting those important documents into the little place, but not so good at removing old ones. So, we kept pulling out more and more pieces of paper, all expired.

The officer finally said, "Let's just go with this one which expired last year." He went back to his patrol car and did whatever it was he did. In the six or eight minutes he was in his car, Julia and I sat. She was invoking Easy World, and I was simply resigned to whatever was to come. In a way, it is Easy World, too, just without any rainbow. Allowing is a huge part of moving into Easy World.

When he came back to my side of the van, he said, "I'm going to let you off with a warning. All you need to do is take your proof of insurance to the county office, and they will dismiss this citation for not having it available for me. There is no fine, and there will be no points once you prove you have insurance."

We drove home with big grins on our faces.

At some point in a couple of weeks--the deputy mentioned that it might take that long for the citation to be available on their computer system--I will need to drive ten miles to the office and get the ticket dismissed, but that's small potatoes compared to the impact my mistake of going too fast could have had. I'm happy to run the errand when the time comes!

Oh...and I have cleaned out the glove box. Only current documents are stored there now!

Helping by staying out of the way (My Sacred Life, Sunday)

It has been a long time since I have written a formally acknowledged Sacred Life Sunday post.

This morning, I reached a tipping point which inspired this.

The world is a big mess. All those folks on the other side of the political chasm are jerks and worse. We are ruining the planet with uncaring and irresponsible actions, best illustrated lately in the Gulf of Mexico. Needless killing continues all over the globe, and we in the United States are providing both cannon fire, and cannon fodder.

What can I possibly do about it all?

My own path to peace--a path so short I can traverse it even as I type, and the keyboard will never be out of reach--is my way of helping.

Becoming a beacon, a human Klieg light intensely lighting the way from where I am to where I am peace, is my own salvation from despair. It is far more than that, though.

By making that journey of a single breath and shining my light, I grant others implicit permission to do the same in their lives, lighting their own lamps.

The very lighting of the lamps provides just what is needed to heal the wounds we have inflicted on each other and on Mother Earth.

The level at which all of the perceived troubles of our existence will be solved is the level we reach when we pause, accept our divinity, and create ourselves as peace, as Love, as accepting beings who know all is well.

The beauty of it is that no knowledge of deep-water drilling or insurgent engagement or dietary requirements for the starving is required.

We help by getting out of the way. It is by allowing all that is, to be, that we come to the aid of our fellow beings. Stepping away from the anguish allows infinite compassion. Radiating Love allows endless capacity for healing.

Breathe.

Relax.

Allow.

Enjoy.

In gratefulness, I remain your good and faithful servant in the Great Game we call life. See you next time around the game board.

I live in Easy World

I have had a thought ripening in my head for a week, and I believe it is now time to let it burst forth.

Even as there have been times during the last month, as my wife and I have done all we know how to do in order to make the launch of her book Choosing Easy World as successful as our little Earth-bound selves could make it, that we have stressed out during the process, there have been long stretches of time when I have been flowing along without a care or concern, going about my chores in Easy World.

I do the family grocery shopping, usually with the largest amount of it done early on Saturday morning. A week ago, I drove to the grocery store where I start the odyssey--I shop at three stores on the average Saturday--because it is the one which opens at 6 a.m. and is virtually deserted at that hour. Plus, they are not stocking shelves as they are at my main destination store so it is less of an obstacle course.

What was unique about that drive to the store was that I did not stop all the way there. It's about four miles, and the route includes ten or more traffic lights. One, in particular, is always red if I make the three lights just prior to arriving at that intersection (hey, a computer guy has to do something with all that spare brain power when he is out of work! I track traffic signals and remember the patterns). A week ago, it was green. Heck, all of them were green either in time for me to breeze through or in time for me to slow a bit but not stop and wait.

It's exactly the kind of thing many people would miss! I noticed it because of my, uh, unique passion for such things, and because when you are in Easy World, you are much more aware of RIGHT NOW. You are not trapped in your past or wasting energy worrying about stuff which probably won't erupt into your life at all.

[Editor's note: Rick gets carried away by stuff most people find excruciatingly meh. Skip ahead if you are not fascinated by parking-lot pull-thru's]

Last week, in addition to my "make all the lights" experience, I noticed at my first stop as I drove into the parking lot that the parking place I chose was a pull-thru, which is an opportunity to pull into a spot and keep going so that you are in the spot which would have been occupied by a car facing toward you...only, there is no car there.

I like pull-thru spots because you are heading out, therefore no backing up is necessary when it is time to leave. I really don't like backing out of parking spaces in grocery-store parking lots. It's just scary, as I have thousands of pounds of metal under my control, and the pedestrian I might not see is vulnerable to significant injury if they don't see me coming and I don't know they are there.

At the first store today, I had parked in a spot, a regular spot, and expected to need to back out of it when I came out of the store. In other words, there was a car in the spot opposite me, meaning I could not pull on forward.

Lo and behold, when I come out of the store, the car which had been blocking me was gone. I had a clear path to pull forward, and then head on out of the lot without any backing needed.

Look out! The Hammer is in Easy World!!

Next stop, I see the same situation, in that the parking spot I chose has an occupied opposite spot. No problem! I'll get my stuff in the store, come back out, and the person will have left. I'm understanding all of this now. I have this figured out!

When I finish shopping, I come out to discover that the car blocking me is still there.

Oh, the agony! The car blocking me is still there.

I have fallen out of Easy World!!

Thank goodness I was able to let go of that initial impression easily. I had fallen for a Difficult World Dictator trick, which is to lure us into thinking that we are able to control/drive/predict exactly how Easy World will deliver the goods for us. Of course, we are not. If we fall for the trick and think we are in control, our first conflict with reality will sell us that the DWD was right. Life is not easy! It is hard, hard, really hard.

Wrongo, moosebreath!

Easy World is totally autonomous when it comes to playing out how something happens when we are there to witness it. Think about it! If the way to Easy World is paved with ALLOWING tarmac, you gotta know that allowing is a required action in order to stay put in easy, breezy, lemon-squeezy, twice-as-nonsneezy world.

That's where I had booted myself to the curb. I had decided that my first experience of the day, where the opposite car was gone when I came out, would be replicated at store # 2.

When my expectation wasn't met, when the car opposite was still in the way and I had to back out, I doubted at first. Practice in this tricky "allowing" thing made it possible for me to get over myself and continue on my route. Before I had traveled even six blocks, I was rewarded with another light sequence made which normally is red, and I noticed a traffic policeman on the side of the road awaiting speeders in time to make sure I was at a legal speed (not that good, law-abiding Rick would *ever* exceed the posted limit!).

Every single item on the grocery list my lovely wife had made was found with ease and acquired without the slightest difficulty. This is not always the case! Do you think it is easy to find free-range, organic spring mix? Most of it is grown in captivity, not allowed to roam. [grin]

Bottom line: Easy World thrives on residents which allow it to do its work, to provide exactly what is needed at exactly the proper moment with exactly no drama at all.

We are the source of all of our drama! When we allow our lives to unfold while, at the same time, holding to our passions and seeking their expression, we are in a sweet spot, a divinely designated place, a matrix I like to call Easy World.

Our Baby!

Sometimes, a baby is born who simply demands that you get out of the way before said baby steps on some part of you and makes you cry.

Then, after the baby has tromped through the house and gone outside by making a baby-shaped hole in the wall, you cry.

Julia and I celebrated our baby's first walk outside, admiring the hole in the wall, at about 9:30 last night.

Here is our first baby picture.

Allowing, allowing, allowing

Anyone who stops by here more than once a year is aware that my delightful and exquisitely beautiful wife, Julia Rogers Hamrick, finished writing her second book quite some time ago. Through the quiet auspices of the very reality matrix which is the subject of the book, we found an agent, and then a publisher, and both in record time and without drama or angst.

Tomorrow is the culmination of the long journey from "We're under contract!" to "Look! You can buy the book at that store, right there, that very store!!"

August 3, 2010 will be a date which will be deeply embedded in our memories forever.

Choosing Easy World.

It's not only a book title, it is being in the very heart of an action, of choosing. Easy World is our phrase for being in the zone, being in the flow, being your Self and shining your light full-on. Choosing Easy World is deciding, consciously, to go to that place where flow is normal and miracles are everyday occurrences.

That's the coolest part of what Julia discovered three years ago, when she heard Easy World whisper to her at 4 in the morning as she tossed and turned. We can consciously choose to be there!

It is a good juncture at which to mention that Julia makes no claim to having created this stunningly joyful and peaceful reality. She simply rediscovered it. It has existed forever. In fact, it is the very infrastructure which supported the Garden of Eden.

When the Garden was no longer available to men and women, it was not gone or lost. It was waiting patiently for us to return. In Julia's first book, she discussed exactly how we can do that.

Now, with Choosing Easy World, we are given the tools and techniques, simple ones anyone can use, to facilitate that return.

I'm happy to point out that you can still sneak a peek at the book. For a few more days, you can read the first three chapters for free by giving us your name and email address. If you want to sign up, get the free chapters, and remove yourself from our mailing list, we're fine with that! Just click the link which we include in every message we send which allows you to remove your info from our list. We will be sad, but we will get over it.

It's up to you now. You can choose Easy World, even doing so at no cost whatsoever, or you can choose to keep doing things the way you have been doing them. If that's been working for you, great! If not, give Easy World a shot.

Julia Rogers Hamrick interviewed by Káren Wallace

Check this out!

My good friend Káren Wallace, she of http://thecalmspace.com and my buddy from Joyful Jubilant Learning, sat with Julia in a virtual space filled with joy and laughter.

This is the resulting chat.

Enjoy!

Death, that's all you got?? I scoff at your cowl!

How do we deal with the tender horror, the awful truth of our approaching departure? We're all dying. It is the inevitable end to the achingly beautiful adventure we are born into.

There are a million tactics which folks choose. Some seek to deny that they are ever leaving. Some spend their entire lives in fear of that final day. Most find a middle ground between the extremes, doing the best they can even as, deep inside, they acknowledge the temporary nature of the experience. We're only visiting.

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie-Mellon professor who was diagnosed with terminal cancer shortly before he gave a lecture in a series which was supposed to be an imagined "Last Lecture", what the featured speaker opines as the most-important message to pass along to those in the audience, is an amazing resource when one considers this topic.

This morning, I was guided to watch a series of videos, some of interviews he did with Diane Sawyer--meeting her is on my personal bucket list--and some snippets from the Last Lecture itself, an event which became a Youtube video which has been viewed millions of times.

What sticks after all that video viewing is this: the man was insanely stubborn. His persistence in staying with a lifelong commitment to having fun teaches me that I'll be okay. I'm only half as stubborn as was Randy Pausch when it comes to having fun.

He said this:

"Don't tell people how to live their lives. Just tell them stories, and they'll figure out how the stories apply to them."

...and this, specific to his addiction, his marvelous addiction:

"I don't know how to not have fun. I'm dying and I'm having fun. I'm going to keep having fun every day I have left."

And, as powerful a message in a sentence as he ever gave, he said this:

"I've never known a situation which anger made better."

Randy Pausch died two years and three days ago, on July 25, 2008.

That's not the end, of course. I have to decide what to do with the inspiration which Mr Pausch delivered to me this morning, more than two years after he died.

Today, I will have fun. This is not an intention. This is a freakin' guarantee. I only used "freakin'" as a polite gesture. That's not the word I would use in adult conversation.

Today, I will work intensely and with full energy and a big-ass smile on my face to alert more and more people to the amazing opportunity they have just in front of them.

"Just in front" means right now, not a month or a year from now or "when I get the the promotion" or "once the kids are grown" or "when we can make time for it" or any other excuse we are using to postpone our joy.

See, that's the magic of knowing we are dying. It's the sweetness of life today balanced by the sadness of the end which is coming. It is that balance which works best for me. I need the slightest hint of salt to perfect the ideal chocolate taste. The knowing can impart a certain determination to move now, not when the circumstances line up exactly as our fearful little selves insist they must. We have all day, but we don't have forever.

Odds are very high that today is not my last dying day. I'm confident that I am not, today, already in the 37-day countdown which my buddy Patti Digh has used to frame her work in the world. But what if I were? Am I doing anything today which I would not do were I to learn that I will die in two weeks? In five days? Today?

Nope.

Today, I will spend every creative spark born in me to help people learn of my wife's mission in life. Why? In the small, human sense, in order to sell books. In the broader, what's-in-it-for-all-of-us sense, I do this work because it will help people. Lots of people. It will help people in ways that Julia and I have never considered. It already has, and it is not born, officially, until next week.

That's what I will do today. If I see tomorrow, that's what I will do then, as well. That's far enough to project for right now.

What will you do today? Why will you do those things? Are they what you would be doing if you knew your remaining time was finite and the end was approaching?

I want, more than anything, to feel at the end that it has all been worth it. That's all. If the end is today, I'm good to go.

Easy? Not easy? Who chooses?

I was struck this morning by the delightful juxtaposition sent to me as a result of a Google thingy which tells me when the phrase "Easy World" is discovered on the internet.

Take a look.

As you can see, two different folks have quite different opinions. Jill says it isn't an easy world to live in. Greg, on the other hand, finds that it is an easy world to live in right now.

Who is right?

They both are.

Here's how it works.

Every single one of us has a choice to make, each moment, about what kind of experience we are going to have. If we choose to see things as hard, harsh, dangerous, and scary, that's what we will find as we live out our day.

If we choose to see the entire universe as our creative playground, a place we can make fun stuff and meet fun people and flow Love all day long, that's what we are going to see.

What do you choose, right this instant?

Michele Woodward: I Am Not Superwoman

Michele Woodward has compiled a powerful and intelligent look at life, at happiness, and how the two are actually quite compatible if given the chance to work together. Her book, "I Am Not Superwoman: Further Essays on Happier Living" is a collection of 40 essays written over the past couple of years which originally appeared on her blog, Life Frameworks.

Right from an early essay in this book ("Mama Ain't Happy"), Michele emphasizes the importance of being real with yourself in order to enjoy the fullness life has to offer. And, she got me right away by mentioning  "...my fabulous guy readers" who she enlists to help the women they love. I read lots of stuff written purportedly for women--the writers are often more willing to be vulnerable and advise from a place of cooperation rather than the Mount of High Advice Most Professional which many guys come from--and I appreciate it when the writer acknowledges the few who are reading who are not women.

Michele gets it. She understands that, while it is seldom spoken of, we all aspire to a greatness which hides our faults. She espouses a different greatness, one which exalts our strengths while acknowledging our weaknesses. Not Superwoman or Superman, just the happiest, most-fulfilled "us" we can be, and we get there by doing lots of what we love to do.

Here's the thing: Michele's version of great is sustainable. Any attainments built on a false impression are not. Michele's concepts are life-fulfilling and energizing. Coming from an invented persona is depleting and depressing. Pretty clear choice!

She includes essays on the Important, the Mundane, and the mundane things which turn out to be vitally important. What I love about this collection are the many ways of connection which are offered the reader. Different people will discover their own "Aha!" moment in different places within the covers of the book.

For me, the essays which address the topic of getting unstuck--and there are half a dozen which touch on this to a greater or lesser degree--proved to be the most helpful.

Still, the overarching message, and what I wish to close my little review by focusing on, is that fear is not where we must stop, but a road marker we can note as we fly right past it. Love is the destination, the fuel for the vehicle, and the connecting bond with all those close to us.

When we learn to become aware of how fear is controlling our decisions, we can face the fear which underlies the made-up nonsense we pretend is our justification, walk toward it to see its true, scaredy-cat nature, and become enamored with Love as fear's replacement in our lives. When we start in a place filled with Love, our choices are easier, less complicated, more powerful in moving us forward, and we can provision a happy life for ourselves and for those we come into contact with.

And, while this is not something Michele directly addresses, when I become happier and more fulfilled, I provide unspoken permission for anyone who sees or knows me to do the same. This is how things get better for all of us: one happy person at a time, influencing others to reach for that state by letting go of fear and becoming Love.

I heartily recommend Michele's new book, and if you are not already reading her blog, check it out. I read it regularly.

Choosing Easy World

As we kick off the last two weeks preceding the launch of Julia Rogers Hamrick's new book, Choosing Easy World, we have created a contest which will result in some random entrant winning a $300 gift card. Lots of other prizes, too!

If you like to play on Facebook or Twitter, you can get additional entries in the contest by helping us get the word out.


Twitter, enter via this link -- http://wildfireapp.com/twitter/233/contests/46677 -- and then tweet using the special link which will be yours alone and is given to you on that page. When your tweeples enter, you get additional contest entries, too! 

Facebook: go to Julia's fan page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Julia-Rogers-Hamrick/355243384767) and you can enter there. You can also invite your friends from the same entry page.

Come play with us!

Presence? All it takes is a toe

My buddy Kelly of Kikipotamus the Hobo is a consistent blogger, making her quite different than I am. Yes, I am capable of it--heck, I wrote every day during the month of June because I had committed to doing so--but it's just not a passion of mine. Love to write, not so clear on writing on any set schedule.

I am, though, a consistent reader. Kelly writes in such an accessible style about matters of interest to me that I find her blog irresistible.

Just yesterday, she made the point that, by awakening earlier than is her norm, she was able to greatly influence the way her entire day went. Everything happened in more of a flow than it sometimes does, and she noticed that she felt more present, more in the life she was living all day long rather than running along side it.

My own technique, recently experienced, was not intentional, but it has worked very well.

A week ago today, I stubbed a toe which was still recovering from a vicious stubbing of some months back. I don't know how common it is to abuse one's fourth toe, but that's the one which has suffered repeatedly at my hands. Well, not 'at my hands' but you know what I mean...more like, 'at my furniture.'

It was not pretty (note to self: no photos!).

Here's the thing, though. For every minute I have been ambulatory this last week, I have carefully paid attention to what was going on around me. Admittedly, I was most attentive to anything on my right side which required negotiating my right foot around. Still, I have noticed, again and again, how present I have felt, and more deeply than is typical.

I find it a curious irony that my own Self, that larger-than-Earthsuit part of me which is not only my guiding light when I am smart enough to allow it to be, but my always-on connection to All That Is, is more available to me...because of a stubbed toe.

There's a lesson in here somewhere, and I'd welcome your opinion as to what it might be, exactly. All I know is, I am deathly afraid of even touching my offended toe in any sort of offhanded way to anything I have not already calculated to be softer than baby's breath--and I'm talkin' actual breath from babies, not something you embellish your rose bouquet with--and that fear has helped me be fully in the moment for most of the last week.

It has been a startlingly amazing week, too. Crazy, in-the-flow stuff has happened in both the mundane--traffic lights I have never made in ten years, I suddenly find green as I approach--and in the spiritual/ethereal. Serendipitous events are commonplace, and stuff just seems to line up if I allow it the leeway to do so. My efforts are more about allowing than they are about striving to complete tasks.

Yes, some of this is a consequence of simply paying more attention to what is happening right before my eyes. Like the day recently which opened with this, less than 30 minutes after sunrise----->

...followed by this, same day, about 13 hours later!
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     V

My bottom line is not dependent upon cause, but upon outcome. We can each believe whatever suits us, and what we experience will likely reflect much of the energy of that belief system. I have learned what works for me--what actions and attitudes on my part result in the outcome I find preferable--and I have been experiencing more of it with my stubbed toe than without.

For next week, my goal is to learn the same kind of presence without having to abuse any part of my body. We'll see how it goes.

Hanging Lake

You can rest easy, as this is not about to become a travel-and-leisure site.

Still, I am willing to post stuff which would smack of that genre if it is applicable.

Hanging Lake is such an amazingly anomalous place, an almost-tropical environment encapsulated in a high desert.

It is something like 60 miles from Vail to Glenwood Springs, the last fifth of that journey one which is so magical that we talk about it still today, more than ten years since we lived it.

Reconciling NOW with Earth

As anyone who has stopped by here can testify, I'm a big believer in the experiential, in being fully present with whatever snippet of life happens to be transpiring right in front of your nose.

Taken to its extreme, it becomes problematic for those who also want to be proficient at getting along and getting what they want in this world.

Of course, my railings are about those at the other end of the spectrum, so focused on the "gimme gimme gimme" aspects of life-successes that they are flying by the real truths life offers in a small voice which is easily drowned out.

Balancing the BE HERE NOW mantra with the mega-successful, jet-owning, four-houses-in-prime-locations-around-the-globe aspiration that lots of people have is not a challenge...it is darned close to impossible.

Here's the thing: balance starts with the assumption that one wishes to find a place in one's life where conflicting motivations can coexist. Some of us have no such wish! Halellujah, good for you, please tip your waitress generously and the valet will fetch your car for you as soon as you exit to the right. Be the monk, be the Wall Street millionaire. Your choice. Bless you and safe journey.

Others of us seek a peaceful place where these motivations can lay down arms and be calmly accepted.

It's for this audience that I'm scribing today.

Beginning the balancing process is simple. Stop judging either presence-in-now or achievement-and-acquisition as good or bad.

This is important, because no one wants to balance good and evil. I like to think of it as healthy and not. It is healthy and life-enhancing to pause and relish a rainbow. Equally, it is enjoyable to do a job well and be rewarded for it. So, there are aspects to either which are fine, healthy, enjoyable.

Take either to the extreme, and you make living among the regular folk problematic.

The next step is to recognize that balance doesn't mean stasis. It means maintaining a flow which includes yin/yang, earth and sky, NOW and GIMME. Both present, sometimes one at the fore, sometimes the other, but both clearly part of your life. Think pendulum. It swings one direction and then back the other, but the average point at which it resides is the center. It doesn't stay there (unless one allows it to stop, and that would be death, so let's not focus there for now), but it passes through that spot with great regularity.

What happens with those of us who want to live a spiritually centered life and have less desire for things and acquisition of them is that we get anxious when the pendulum swings out of the area where we are comfortable.

Exactly the same reaction occurs when the Type-A person discovers a sudden urge to let down their guard and pause to enjoy the clouds passing overhead. The pendulum has swung into foreign territory and uncertainty reigns.

Here's the secret: patience. Just wait, it will all return to where you are more comfortable.

It helps a bunch to keep this back-and-forth nature of the flow of life in mind when trying to understand and get along with folks of the other tribe. Even someone seemingly very different in their motivations and goals will, at times, be on the exact same page as you are.

Touch them then.

Our successive best

I'm reading a book my buddy Lyn recommended--she of "Lynilu" and a frequent visitor here--called "A New Kind of Christianity."

I opened the book randomly, and my eyes fell on a paragraph which described the extension, over time, of man's understanding of god. Here's the phrase which caught my eye: "...our successive best." I take this to mean that each of us builds upon the insights of those who came before. As we each do our best to add to the understanding, acknowledging the work of those who came before us and upon which our own work begins, this phrase fits wonderfully.

In some ways, it harkens to my own beginning thought each morning when I awaken: Start where you are. What day of the week is it, what plans are in place for the day, what work do I need to fit in around existing plans, and, most importantly, where do I hope to be by the end of the day? Walking is great, but walking toward is better.

Tomorrow morning when I awaken, "start where you are" will find me in a different place at least in my own mind...and on the calendar, of course.

The germane issue tomorrow morning will not be if I am in the right place, but whether or not I recognize where I am. It's a small thing, but vitally important. As much time, energy, and angst as most of us invest in reviewing things and beating ourselves up or bemoaning our fate, many of us don't note where we are RIGHT NOW.

While it might seem otherwise in the aftermath of some human event we lived through recently and are still processing in our emotional bodies, the single-most critical few seconds we can invest are those needed to jerk ourselves out of our memories and into full presence.

Start.
Where.
You.
Are.
NOW.

Life, explained (7)

Saturday, the day before yesterday, started out as many Saturdays do, with me preparing for my early-morning trips to the grocery stores.

We frequent several stores, and I usually shop at two each Saturday. It was three this time. It's all about which store has sales on items we need, and which stores we know have particular produce we are seeking.

As I came out of the first store, a new chain which just opened in Denver, I saw a sight not seen in Denver: a rainbow at 6:30 in the morning. Since the great majority of our rainfall comes from afternoon storms and we otherwise have so little cloudy weather, it's unusual for the conditions needed to birth a rainbow to happen early in the morning. In fact, I cannot recall seeing a morning rainbow so soon after sunrise.

Since I did not have my camera with me, I hustled home to get this photo before the rainbow was gone.

The day itself was fairly typical, other than the USA playing in a World Cup knockout round game--we don't usually get that far, and it showed. I watched some of the game, and I did what I usually do on the weekends, getting chores done and goofing off.

As early evening arrived, so did a storm. It was not violent, just a gentle rain which lasted half an hour, and then the sun broke through. I was sitting at the dining room table when I looked out the window to the east. Dark clouds. I could also see the sunshine lighting up the back yard from the west, and I knew! I grabbed the camera and got outside quickly to get this shot.

I didn't do a great job of panning the camera so as to create stitchable pieces for a panorama, but that's not what matters. If you get past the amateurish photography and dive into the scene, you can be where I was in that moment, enjoying it with a great big grin on my face. The rainbow was a stunner, with the main bow intensely colored and the second rainbow fully visible from one end to the other.

The bookends of my Saturday, these ethereal markers were.

Life is funny. It offers up such moments as these, and we can decide to pause and note them or to just glance up and move on. I considered enjoying the early-morning rainbow by standing in that grocery-store parking lot until it faded, but I'm glad I decided, instead, to leap into the car and hurry home so I could capture it. I'm relieved, in retrospect, that no traffic cop saw me in my mad dash. Can you imagine explaining my speeding to some grizzled veteran policeman?

"Yes, officer, I realize I was exceeding the speed limit. You see, I was hurrying home to get some pictures of that rainbow."

He could have told that story in the precinct house for weeks.

But it was not a day for funny stories or unusual human events. No, it was a day for Nature to show off silently and beautifully in the early-morning light, the evening sun, and in my mind's eye.

It was a mundane Saturday. I loved every minute, and I really loved the day's bookends.

Little joys, slight smiles, happy heart

There is a great deal which takes place for me out of the sight of others. In other words, I'm introverted enough that my life experience, much of it, is lived out in the space where my sense of self resides.

The way it works for me is to make forays out into the world to collect experiences and touch/be touched by the lives of the folks who I meet as I wander, and then to return to solitude to cogitate.

The thinking may or may not be directly about the experiences I just logged. Certainly, the processing I do is influenced by what I have learned.

It can be simple, small changes in perspective that I allow to flow through the semi-fixed foundational structures which support the story I am writing, the story which is me becoming.

At times, it gets convoluted and impossibly recursive. It is at those times that I am best served to remember that life isn't either. I have created a trap and then willingly stepped into its maw.

Oddly, we are least able to step back and gain the perspective of distance exactly when we are most in need of it.

My wife, Julia Rogers Hamrick, has developed tools which help to find the exit and step out of the self-created trap. It's a good way to handle it: build mechanisms while you are able to do so which help the troubled you find the way to the light when you have forgotten how to.

It is amazing how resistant our self-in-crisis can be to proffered assistance. I know that, for me, there are times when I almost get comfortable in that sense of helplessness and doom. Yes, I always come back to knowing who I am--who I am becoming--and I pour a little more energy into the support systems I have in place for myself each time.

It would seem that, for all of us in Earth suits, there is a requirement for delving into the animal, the physical, the dirt and mud and grass-stained direct experience. We don't have to be there all the time, though.

Are you willing to step out of the mundane, to touch the miracle barely below the surface? I’m not asking you to do anything, just to consider if you might be willing to.

Life, explained (6)

One of the best aspects of the arrival of the maturation of one's offspring into gone-from-the-house people--I was going to say "adults" but I'm not comfortable with that label myself so I won't weigh my daughters down with it--is that there is more time for quiet reflection.

That's not to say that the space available is not often filled with busy-ness of the silliest degree, almost busy for the sake of busy itself, but the space is there.

I talked last time about the journey becoming more and more important as one realizes how much of it is now behind when compared to the journey remaining.

It is now that the search for meaning commences.

Cleverly, the Universe hid Meaning where we would least expect to find it, and that adds up to most people ending up as clueless as they were at the start.

Going on a "search for meaning" adventure!

Here's the thing: meaning is not an external entity of any sort. It is, instead, an assigned value consideration which each of us cooks up in the cauliflower-looking organ between our ears.

Over the centuries, brilliant men and women have expounded at length and at short--pithy is the new black--about what life means. While I have enjoyed a great many of these works of explanation and elucidation, I remain unconvinced that anyone else's is more than a small influence on what I will end up with.

I'm not planning on ending up with anything for some time to come, but you know where I'm going. My "meaning of Life" statement will be ever-evolving and, with any luck, ever-enriching for those who are exposed to it.

By the same token that my own result is only slightly influenced by that of others, I have very modest expectations as to the effect on you which you can attribute to visits here to Hamguin's little nest.

Let's get specific.

My joy in writing, particularly in writing this ongoing series on how I would explain Life, is in the sense of calm confidence it leaves me with, knowing I am doing what is mine to do in the world. My pleasure in your reading is in my mind's eye where I see you nodding as you understand where I am coming from. If you take anything from here with you as you leave, take a peaceful knowing.

The knowing is not knowing everything, but knowing that it is perfectly okay not to know much about anything, as it is our curiosity which keeps our hearts beating. We're curious to know more about the unseen parts of Life. We're curious to learn how we can steer. We're curious to know why it seems to work out better for us in the long run if we can let go of that urge.

Life goes on. So will my explanation.