Living on the Top of a Hill

There is a free spirit in all of us that screams out to express itself in our lives. That yells out to us to do something that everyone else will tell us is crazy or insane or makes no sense to them. And sometimes, we actually do that thing, whatever happens to be "our thing," because it is something we simply have to do, if our lives are make any sense to us.

A very good friend of mine lived all his life in cities. He was city boy if anyone was. Norman and his family had lived in Houston, Miami Beach, Oklahoma City and Denver. He had been an educator for most of his working years. Sherry, his wife, had worked as an office administrator. As they neared retirement age, they told me that that they had bought a piece of land near San Luis, Colorado, which is in the middle of nowhere somewhere near the New Mexico border. Their property wasn't in town, but fifteen or twenty miles away from San Luis and about the same distance from the next nearest town in the opposite direction.

When the time came they moved onto their land and lived in a mobile home, while they built their house. This was a couple of years ago. The house has been framed in and has heat, but they still need to use the bathroom in the mobile home. And they love it where they are. The live at the top of a desert plateau that they share with a couple of deer and horses that come by from time to time.

Norman and Sherry seem to be very happy with their isolation and their having put some distance between themselves and civilization. We ought to applaud them. They are actually doing what they want to be doing, living well outside of what was their comfort zone during the working years of their lives.

I have to tell you, what they have chosen to do makes absolutely no sense to me. I am as urban a person as you are going to find. I am so used to living in a noisy, crowded city with impossible vehicle traffic that I would feel completely out of place in a small town, much less on an isolated, lonely hilltop. I need that fix of hearing people about me and being able to go down the street to the grocery store or the drug store if I need something. A lot of people are like me and need the fix that an urban environment provides. To tell you the truth, I feel alive in a busy, noisy, impossible to live in city. I feel that way here in Houston and I felt the same way when I visited my daughter in London. But that is just me.

Truthfully, how many of us would be willing to give up so many of the creature comforts of our lives? How many of us would walk away from the certainties of our lives and trade them for something unknown and risky? How many of us could deal with the almost absolute quietness and solitude of where Norman and Sherry live? And how many of us would not be completely freaked out by knowing we were at least fifteen or twenty miles from the closest human being?

What they have had the guts to do has forced me to think about things outside the box that I would like to do in my wildest dreams. Taking a couple of years to just travel the world with my wife, letting the wind take us where it does and not planning where we will be two weeks from today... that would be nice. I haven't asked my wife what she would like to do, but I already know she wouldn't even give the question much serious thought. She is, you see, a very practical person. But it has occurred to me, that all things being equal, it would be exhilerating to just set aside all the responsibilities we take on as we get older and just do our thing, without thinking about it too much or asking ourselves if this is the right thing to do. Just thinking about that possibility makes me want to get a little crazy and just sail off into the sunset to see the world, as I have always wanted to do.

In essence, that is what my friends, Norman and Sherry, did. Hats off to them. And, you know, it just might not be so bad to live on the top of a hill, far away from the maddening crowd.

Living in the Moment - A Simple Truth

It has taken me a very long time to figure this out. We have to live fully in the moment... this very moment. The moment I am writing this entry or the moment you may be doing something entirely different. The rest of our lives will depend on what we do right now or what we choose to put off right now.

What I am saying makes perfect sense. At this very moment, each of us has a goal, something we are trying to do. That goal may be very significant or not very important in the larger realm of things. Whichever is the case, that is our goal. To successfully complete the task, we need to be focused on the immediate task. We need to be aware of whatever it is we are doing, for in some cases our very lives may hang in the balance if we don't. Until we have finished the job at hand, all else has to be on the back burner. Then, we move on to the moment at which we turn to the next item on our list of things to do.

Of course, our lives are never that cut and dried. In reality, our lives seldom travel in a straight line. If necessary, when we have to make adjustments to our game plan because our realities or circumstances change, we do so. However, even when we have to change course because the wind has changed course, that only proves my point. The moment that the wind changed direction, we have to make a decision. We have to adjust our sails or risk having our lives momentarily capsized. By living in the moment, we are constantly aware of what is happening to us and around us. That awareness enables us to get through the moment in one piece and to move on to whatever happens next. In my mind, that is one definition of success.

There is always an element of uncertainty in whatever we set out to do. We are never guaranteed that our plans will turn out exactly as we have laid them out. That there will be glitches is the rule rather than the exception. The only thing that matters is that we are sufficiently alert and aware, so that we are not blind-sided.

I am not saying we don't need mid-term or long-term goals. We do. But we live our lives one day at a time, one minute at a time... one moment at a time. If we stumble at any point along the way, the best laid of plans can be at risk. It is that focus, awareness, commitment and flexibility I spoke of that will enable us to navigate the moment just ahead. Maybe if we are very fortunate and all other things are equal, we may even come to realize some of the most important goals in life.

What Have We Done?

It is a cultural crime that the modern world has committed. In our hands we hold wonderful tools for communication... television, radio, music magazines and newspapers. And of course, the computer and the internet. And we have squandered all of these mediums of communication. If the medium is the message, a statement about who we are and what we are, then the foolish and pointless use we have made of all of these inventions speaks badly about us.

Look anywhere and there is an endless supply of pointless and gratuitous sex being peddled. The music that comes at us from every direction has been dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. Those who produce television shows have taken the path of least resistance and doled out to us one reality show after another. They produce too many television series without merit or value and sitcoms that just are not clever or even worth watching. Even the ads aren't very interesting anymore. Newspapers no longer serve to inform us very well and are starting to disappear. Magazines are shadows of what they used to be. Magazines now have a lot more pictures and a lot less text and are mostly about the newest things one can buy out there in the marketplace. Even the venue of Broadway has been dumbed down.

The public wants to be entertained and the media folks give them what they want, in increasing measure with each passing day. Even the news broadcast has to be entertaining enough to garner the highest ratings possible and the news broadcasters have to be easy on the eye. The latter part is more important than their ability to bring us the most important news of the day.

The world changes so quickly these days. Somehow, in all this change and transition, something very significant and important has been lost. The ability to express ourselves coherently and intelligently. The capacity to think and analyze what is happening to us and our world. The capacity to feel and to be compassionate and to care about others in a meaningful way. Such things don't seem to mean very much anymore. So long as the media moguls keep us laughing or singing along with the latest stuff that passes for music today, most people are happy and pacified.

So much has been lost. This is not progress.

The Plan

I have been searching for myself lately. Amidst the chaos of our economy and of my own life, for a time I have found myself lost, or more precisely, at a loss, in my own life. These are confusing times. These are difficult times to navigate. These are difficult times in which to maintain one's focus. And these are certainly uncertain times during which it is occasionally very difficult to think clearly, especially when more and more, surviving even the day becomes the most pressing problem.

What is at risk in the process is our humanity, our dreams and our aspirations. Somewhere among paying the bills, keeping a roof over our heads, keeping gasoline in the car and making sure there is food on the table, doing those things which we most long to do, ceases to be a priority. We we are forced to do whatever it will take to survive the moment. I am no different than anyone else these days. Day to day, I am just trying to survive until the economy recovers. There is that awful sense that really significant parts of my life are simply shutting down. Life has become a bit darker and depressing.

Still, always on the tip of my tongue are the words, "And yet...." And yet, what? We pay a price when we fully abandon dreams. We pay a price when we just set aside our personal aspirations, in the face of a personal crisis. I fully believe that no matter how seriously chaotic or disruptive are the times in which we live, we still must never fully abandon or forget the shining hopes that inspired us to become more than we are today. It is that element of hope that enables us to keep going, no matter how bad things may get. It is that hope that allows us to rise above almost any situation and to somehow give hope to others or to continue to make a difference in the world.

I am, like everyone else, a unique person. I possess certain unique talents and I have the potential to touch the lives of other people in my own particular way. There is no guarantee that my partular personal attributes or my skill sets will enable me to make a comfortable living or make survival in these challenging times any easier. But, for me, individual survival is about much more than monetary considerations. No matter what, I need to sustain a healthy level of self-esteem, to retain the capacity to love others and be loved and to maintain a healthy sense of humor. I do not care how stressed out I become, I never want to lose the capacity to be compassionate and caring. I never want to lose that hope that someday I will realize at least some of the dreams I have for my life. Even if my life is difficult and limited today, I never want to lose that hope that in time, it will get better.

When life is bumpy, it is very easy to lose these qualities, amidst the struggle to simply survive. So at the end of a tough day, I try to remind myself to remember those qualities and hopes that make life bearable and worth living. At the top of my to do list, are reminders to tell my wife and my kids I love them and to go out of my way to help someone else. I am not being noble or particularly wonderful. In fact, I am doing something for myself. I am preserving my own humanity and bringing light and joy and happiness into my life. By doing that, I can partly dispel the darkness and cynicism that difficult times bring with them.

Well, I have made it to the end of yet one more day. I am still in one piece and I am not yet defeated. But tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow, at the end of the day, I may well have to remind myself yet one more time about never giving up and about being kind and compassionate to other people and all the other items I listed above. It may not be rocket science, but it works for me.