It is what it is.

I got out the old tablet tonight to work on the shop logo, but I'm a bit rusty. All my letters look like kid's handwriting! But instead of getting frustrated, I just went with what I really wanted to draw.

This one is a rainbow having a lot of fun on a trampoline.

This one is two clouds in England drinking tea together.

I sometimes struggle with the pull between being disciplined and going for my goal, and doing what I feel inspired to do or what I want to do. But I think sometimes doing what you feel inspired to do does actually help get you to your goal, it's just not always obvious the route you are taking to get there. 

Terrorism is about terror.

I was going to write a nice little write-up about the Chelsea Flower Show (100th anniversary!) that I went to on Wednesday, but I got home to the startling news that two men had murdered a British solider with a machete in the streets of Woolrich as a political act.

Having come from the country, I am unaccustomed to confronting random violence like this.  When I saw the images of blood streaked across pavement, saw the video of the killer's bloody hands casually holding his soaked butcher's knife, my heart was seized with adrenaline pulsing fright. It suddenly made sense that we call it terrorism. It is actually terrifying.

I'm struggling to process the events and to feel safe in its aftermath. Woolrich is actually not in London proper, so I would not say that my fear is particularly rational, but it is closer to me than an act like this has ever been before now. It was a visceral act to begin with, but that it is actually in the place that I live has made it all the more real.

I've been reaching out to my fellow city-dwellers, both here and in New York City, for their thoughts on living in places where things like this happen and how to get over the terror it releases. Almost all of them have said the same thing: it probably won't happen to you, so you just don't think about it. Worrying about it isn't going to help you feel or actually be safer. There's no benefit to being scared.

I do see how this thinking is more helpful than being scared. And I do see how it allows us to keep living in and enjoying the wonderful cities where we choose to live, but I am still unsettled. A 1/8,000,000 chance that you may die by a machete attack is still more than 0/2000 which is what my odds were living in a tiny, bucolic town in the Hudson Valley. Of course 1/8,000,000 comfortably rounds to 0. We have to go back 7 decimal places to find our first non-zero number. This number is so tiny, it cannot be statistically significant. For all purposes it is 0. And yet, in this case, .000000125 does not feel like 0.

I can't help but wonder if by ignoring the fear we are missing out on something important, for example, why did this happen? What caused these two men to be so angry and fed up that they felt they needed to murder someone to be heard? A lot of the rhetoric coming out of the news is that the crime is heinous and the assailants are insane. I suppose if we do not "let terrorism win" this is the only response - to ignore what they are trying to say, trying to get us to think about. But is this the most affective way to prevent it from happening again?

Do they have a point? Did they write a treatise? It was clearly an act for political attention. He made a speech after the killing. They waited for the police. He said we should not be in his country, killing his people. He was sorry women had to see the killing, but women in his country see this every day.

War is atrocious and it's embarrassing our collective world culture has not moved passed it. I wish the media would take incidents like these as opportunities to urge for constructive peace. If we weren't all stealing resources, power, land, money from one another, perhaps we would engender less hatred between us? This could be such a powerful moment for self-reflection on the way that the western world lives and how that life is fueled. Is it fair? Is it sustainable? Do we want to keep living this way? I find it really frustrating the media's response is to blindly and stoically condemn.  Most of the personal reactions I have seen are terror-driven complacency. How do we express our fears and anger within our culture? There must be a better way to digest and move on from events like this. Can the media not play a role in expressing our concerns while also making way for constructive dialogue and not fear mongering or painting a black and white moral portrait?

I don't know what the answer is. I certainly don't want terrorists to think that murdering people in the countries that they think are oppressing them is a way to get heard or get their concerns into the national dialogue. But there must be a better way for us digest what's happened than ignoring it or allowing ourselves to be terrified and brainwashed to hate The Other by the media.

Having said all that, I am so so sorry for the victim's family and community. I cannot imagine the amount of grief and anger they are feeling. It's unfair.

Is fear real?

I had a great opportunity through work to attend a short lecture on timid souls this evening. It ended up actually being a talk about courage. The lecturer and author interviewed lots of people she felt were courageous and then wrote a book (and the lecture) about what she found. Her spectrum was fairly broad - everything from women giving birth, to dare devils and fantastic-feat-doers, as well as political and social heroes. She looked for common threads among them all and found a few. Here are a couple of the notes I made.

• Courage is as infectious as fear. 
• When someone tells a story of a time they were courageous, they often start it out from a point of fear. So fear is a necessary ingredient and has a yin and yang relationship with courage. It's important to stay balanced. 
• Being brave looks like a true and real thing on its own from the outside, but in reality, everyone is just pretending to be brave. If you aren't afraid, then your courage isn't actually real. There's no need to be brave if there's no fear. 
• Courage only really appears during the story telling. While you are living the moment, it can feel like it's only fear. 
• Being brave is only about pretending to be brave. It's about telling yourself a story and believing it. 
• Training yourself makes the courage come more automatically in fearful places. 
• Although it feels like courage can be about being confident in yourself and your own abilities when you are afraid, it can also come from a place of service to a group (think - "no man left behind" in the army). Both are equally powerful. 

The last thing I wrote down was, "Is fear real?" After thinking about the process of fear - courage - joy, it's hard to think that it is real. It's just something our mind throws in our way, a stepping stone to the actual truth of joy.

Of course, fear feels pretty real. Sometimes it feels physically oppressive it is so real. Maybe it's more like a different state. Just as an ice cube turns to water and then steam, so fear turns to courage and then joy. They are all pieces of each other.

It's really cheesy, but the whole thing made me think about my days in Hawaii. I had to face so many fears on that trip. One of my friends there was helping me with my fear of swimming in the sea. I was getting really freaked out in a gentle sea where I kept getting picked up and put down by waves such that I kept losing my connection to the sand with my toes. He encouraged me to just go with the motion and when he saw I was visibly terrified, he kept repeating a mantra, "joy is the other side of fear." So true! After defeating that fear, you are elated and courage is the only way through it.

I had many opportunities to repeat that mantra on that trip whether it was swimming in the sea, jumping off cliffs, performing music, or just making the best out of a bad situation. These days, I find myself faced with far more emotionally terrifying places. A wise person has given me the mantra of "patience, courage, stillness." Such a simple reminder, and yet so powerful.

I think most of all patience with oneself is the biggest helper to courage and is something I often forget about. Patience with other people comes so naturally, but to see that I am being impatient with myself requires an observation of self at which I am not yet practiced. Having it as a tool is powerful though and has already fortified me in so many ways.

What does work mean?

One of my favorite people at work recently decided to leave us. She was feeling like her job was becoming more of a grind and less of a passion, so it was time to move on. She has no concrete plan nor is she seeking another job immediately. She's going to take some time to decompress and then make moves to find her next adventure. Her brave ability to follow her heart is inspiring and definitely has made me think critically about what I do to sustain myself every day.

I'm very lucky that I work for a great company doing a job that I am actually passionate about and enjoy doing. But even the most enjoyable job has its downsides, and the ones in my job make it feel like it's not entirely what I want to be doing with my life every day. How do we continue doing the same job every day without becoming jaded or exhausted? Does the perfect job exist of which you will never tire?

This article, "Buddhist Economics" by E. F. Schumacher got passed around work recently and it has some really enlightening ideas. This paragraph in particular struck me:

The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.

I love the idea that work has a purpose far beyond satisfying the worker's monetary needs. That work is an opportunity to connect with others through being a team seems so obvious, but the value of that connection and collaboration is highly underrated (or perhaps better put as "ignored?") by both workers and employers.

I can imagine working for a group of people that divvies up work and designs position for maximum fulfillment instead of maximum monetary efficiency. I would be very interested to compare organizations that work along these two paradigms and see if there is any long-term financial disadvantage to the more "Buddhist" approach. I'd hypothesize that whatever short-term monetary inefficiencies occur would be made up for in increased creativity, productivity, cross-departmental communication and collaboration, and company loyalty.

I also love the idea that working hard is honorable and important, and in the spirit of duality, gives real meaning to leisure time too.

What is the perfect job? One that leaves you enough freedom and time for leisure and self-directed explorations whilst allowing you to work hard along side other people building something you are passionate about. Or at least, that's what I'd start with.

I'll end with this little guy who visited me in the garden today. Adorable!

Summer Fades In

Today was the first day in London that it has been warm enough to wear just a t-shirt without a sweater. Hallelujah! To celebrate, I decided to get into the parcel of Rit Dyes that arrived on my doorstep Friday.

I started with the traditional ombre from bottom to mid-line and then ventured into stripes. They're in the washing machine now. I can't wait to see what they look like on!

Blossoming

After a very long, dreary winter, the sun is shinning again. Spring has finally sprung in the UK, and with it all the perfumes of renewing life. 

We put on a Wedding event at work this weekend and there were some flowers left over. I was lucky enough to snag two bouquets. They look lovely on my lil mantel piece, even if they are in pint glasses!

 I had no idea that tulips would open up like this!

Our neighbors have amazing lilacs that drape down over our front door. Their amazing fragrance is enough to drive a person mad. I keep a branch of these on my desk at home and very nearly get drunk on their loveliness.  

Our back garden has come alive with beautiful flowers and birds.

The beautiful tree across the street from our house has dropped all its petals into this lovely carpet.