My Favorite Parable

The Story of the Two Monks (borrowed shamelessly from Fish Eaters):

Two monks were making a pilgrimage to venerate the relics of a great Saint. During the course of their journey, they came to a river where they met a beautiful young woman — an apparently worldly creature, dressed in expensive finery and with her hair done up in the latest fashion. She was afraid of the current and afraid of ruining her lovely clothing, so asked the brothers if they might carry her across the river. 

The younger and more exacting of the brothers was offended at the very idea and turned away with an attitude of disgust. The older brother didn’t hesitate, and quickly picked the woman up on his shoulders, carried her across the river, and set her down on the other side. She thanked him and went on her way, and the brother waded back through the waters. 

The monks resumed their walk, the older one in perfect equanimity and enjoying the beautiful countryside, while the younger one grew more and more brooding and distracted, so much so that he could keep his silence no longer and suddenly burst out, “Brother, we are taught to avoid contact with women, and there you were, not just touching a woman, but carrying her on your shoulders!” 

The older monk looked at the younger with a loving, pitiful smile and said, “Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river; you are still carrying her.”

A Heroic Realization

I went golfing with my wife the other day. The sun was shining, the clouds had rolled away and the golf course was quiet. We never felt rushed. The day had all the makings of a stress-free outing.

However, I still managed to get upset.

I have long had the goal of playing golf competitively. No pipe dreams about joining the PGA Tour or anything like that; instead, maybe a few amateur tournaments in the area every once in awhile. My game has improved immensely while having this goal in mind, and I am certainly an above-average golfer. Certainly much better than I used to be.

But now I struggle to actually enjoy playing the game. I have this vision or expectation in my head as to how I “should” play. That vision almost never materializes because as soon as I hit a bad shot or have a bad hole, my confidence and enjoyment suffers. I actually get emotional. Such was the case during this round with my wife.

I remember taking a step back and looking at a tree near our golf cart as my wife walked to her ball. I noticed how the wind was blowing through the leaves. I watched a bird fly onto a branch, yell something at me and then fly away. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face and arms. I looked back at my wife — who was struggling with her shorter platinum blonde bangs blowing in her face — as she chipped her ball onto the green. She gave me a smile knowing she hit a good shot.

She never had to say anything to me. All she did was smile and show me how proud she was of herself for accomplishing her goal. She brushed her bangs away from her face again, but she was still smiling.

Sometimes I get my priorities mixed up. I know it is a good thing to have dreams and goals, no matter how difficult they may seem. But when those goals get in the way of enjoying the present moment with someone you love, it may be time to hit the reset button.

That day I realized two important lessons:

1) Frustration and anger can cloud your eyes to the great things that are happening all around you;

2) I married my hero.

Stay Centered

I’ve been taking golf lessons for about two months now. While I am learning many different things in each lesson, the biggest takeaway to this point is staying centered over the ball during my swing. I have to keep my head still, my weight balanced and completely in control over what I’m doing at that moment.

No, this isn’t my golf blog. But one of the many reasons why I love golf so much is because I can relate it to my everyday life. The idea of staying centered is one example.

We only have so much control over what happens at any given moment. When I make a golf swing I am only controlling the time it takes me to take the club back and hit the ball forward. That’s about three seconds. Everything else that happened before the shot and everything that will happen after the ball is struck is out of my control.

In life, you only have control over what is happening this very second. Our minds will wander and our worries will fight to grab our attention. We’ll begin to remember our failures of the past or become engulfed in the fear of what has yet to come. It is a challenge that everyone deals with. 

In golf, there are many hazards waiting for us to make a mistake. Sand bunkers, water hazards, wind, trees and a dozen other things are there to test the golfer. However, none of those things matter unless we make them matter. The bunkers aren’t getting any closer. The lakes aren’t jumping out at us.

All the golfer has to do is swing the club for three seconds at a time. The golfer’s mind will see all of the “what if’s” that could happen in front of him, but those things don’t matter. In fact, even if the golfer hits his ball into a bunker, he has a tool to get himself out.

Until then, stay centered. You don’t have to worry about anything else in the world.

A Disabled Nation

Another podcast, another blog post.

This week’s episode of This American Life covered a topic that is about as controversial as one could hope: Americans on disability. It’s a subject on the tip of every politician’s tongue and lawmaker’s pen. Are people cheating the system? Why do so many people go on disability?

In listening to the podcast, I was prepared to hear stories of how people applied for disability despite being fully capable of holding a job. I was prepared to become angry. I was prepared to write my congressman.

When I started hearing the numbers associated with the small Alabama town profiled in the podcast, my expectations appeared to be justified:

•  150,000 new jobs are created each year in the United States since 2009
•  250,000 people apply for disability each year during that span

“People are just getting lazy,” I thought as my 3o-year old self drove to work in Corporate America. “You offer someone a handout and they will take advantage!” As fair and balanced as I try to be in my thinking, I am just as prone to jumping to conclusions as anyone else.

A doctor known for approving disability claims was profiled. During  typical office visit and following a full physical exam, this doctor would ask the government-funding-hopeful a question you’ve probably never been asked by a medical professional: “What grade in school did you finish?”

The doctor’s rationale for asking this question was astounding: If the patient did not finish high school, what kind of job — in a world saturated by college graduates and younger applicants —  would hire him or her? Because of this hiring struggle, the doctor would recommend his patient receive disability payments. At the very least the patient would receive some kind of money. This enraged me.

As the podcast continued and more interviews with people from the small town poured through my car stereo, a different picture began to form in my mind. One interview in particular sticks out.

An elderly woman was asked by the podcast reporter why she was on disability. The woman reported that she had suffered a legitimate back injury as the result of a car accident years before. After numerous attempts at doing various jobs that involved lifting or moving heavy objects, she applied for and was granted disability benefits.

Since the woman said she would prefer to still be working, the podcast reporter asked what job — considering her physical limitations — would be her “dream job”. The woman replied that she would love to be the “lady who sat at the Disability Office desk to weed out those people who are cheating the system.”

An honest answer, right? Not because of why you are thinking.

This woman wanted to work at the Disability Office not because of the noble cause she reported, but simply because she would be able to sit down all day. She later told the reporter that she had never heard of a job where you can sit.

This blew my mind. Was it possible that someone in the year 2013, regardless of where they lived, could never see a single job that required employees to sit during their shift? The podcast reporter asked the same question. She also reviewed the town’s current job openings:

McDonald’s cashier

McDonald’s janitor

Occupational therapist

Factory worker

Well wouldn’t you know it? Turns out that depending on where you live, there is a very good chance that the majority of available jobs require workers to be on their feet most of the day. Many of these jobs only pay minimum wage, as well.

So many Americans who are deemed “disabled” (legitimately or not) have a choice that opened my eyes to a whole different reality:

• Work a minimum-wage job and make approximately $15,000 a year (no benefits)
• Go on disability and receive $13,000 a year from the government (including full health insurance)

Is this really even a choice?

(Note: As was expected, the podcast is now under fire for what some say is a “misleading” report on disabled Americans.)

Night Terrors

Night time has always been a wild ride for me, especially when I was a child.

Growing up my sister and I were often babysat by our neighbor’s daughter. She was a very nice young lady and did a great job all around, especially considering the ridiculousness I would subject her to on occasion. While I wasn’t a bad kid by any means, I had an extremely overactive imagination that often made bedtime a symphony of horrors in my mind.

Shadows on the wall became demons in my bedroom. Creaks made by our house settling were believed to be monsters crawling up from the basement. You get the idea.

I vividly remember one evening when I was lying in bed sound asleep. Mom and dad were out for the evening and my babysitter was in the living room watching television. My bedroom was just off the living room toward the front entrance of our home on the east side of Joliet, near a train freight yard.

Suddenly, I was awoken by a loud crashing sound. A few seconds later I heard another crash, this time louder than the first. My eyes darted to my bedroom window when a third crash rang out. The sound was coming from down the street!

While the obvious source of this racket was train cars being loaded in the freight yard, my young imagination contrived a different explanation entirely: a Transformer was walking down the street and coming to get me.

I pictured the large robot’s movements perfectly in my mind. Each crash was obviously the result of the Transformer’s feet crashing down onto Landau Avenue. As the crashes got louder, that simply meant the evil, child-killing robot was getting closer. I remember crawling to my window, slowly picking my head up to the blinds and peering out to see the horrors that awaited me.

CRASH! I screamed when the loudest “footstep” echoed throughout my soul.

I told this to my babysitter in a panic. I was convinced a Transformer was coming to kill me. I still remember her clamping her lips tighter to hide her laughter and smile.

On Being

What does it mean to “be”?

When you think about everything that you know — everything that you see in front of you or have seen in the past — how do you know that “thing” actually exists? What about stuff you’ve never seen be have only read in books or seen on television?

Oddly enough, this is one of the weird things that I think about laying in bed at night. Some people count sheep. Others make salsa (I’ll explain it to you if you ask). Sometimes I think about existentialism.

Turns out, people have been thinking about this question for thousands of years. What is the meaning of “being”?

The Eleatic Xenophenes, a wandering rhapsodist (which we all know to be the best kind of rhapsodists), believed that something exists when it is impossible for it to not exist. Likewise, it is impossible for something to exist that is non-being. A tree in front of you that you can see, smell and touch is “being” while an imaginary object can not “be” because it doesn’t exist. Pretty simple, right?

Well, let’s say that imaginary object was a unicorn. Now you have the image of a unicorn in your mind. Isn’t that image of a unicorn now something that “exists”? Obviously someone made the idea of a unicorn to exist thousands of years ago, because everyone knows what a unicorn is.

So does the mere thought of something cause it to be true? Of course not. Thoughts are not tangible objects that you can touch.

Aristotle believed that in order to “be”, that which is being (verb) must be a being (noun) that is actually being (verb). This is an intentionally broad definition for an equally-broad concept; however, it is adequate in hitting all the different arenas (or as Aristotle preferred, “genus”) that being falls into. Furthermore, he believed that everything in life can fit into one of 9 buckets he called species. If something fit into one of those buckets, then it exists. If not, then it cannot “be”.

Confusing? Absolutely.

What this all boils down to is the idea of substance. If a thought, object, person, place, idea or anything else has a level of substance, then it is safe to say that it exists and therefore is a “being”.

So how does this translate to our lives?

Humans have the desire to be known, whether they admit it or not. No matter how private, shy, muted or quiet you may be as a person, you cannot survive (and therefore thrive) as a living being without attention. When you were born, you required the assistance and attention from others to live. When you die, the same holds true (yes, you actually need other things to happen in order for you to die). Throughout the time you are an embryo to the day you become dust, you require attention from another being.

Because of this fundamental belief, we are all connected in some way. None of us would be here without the massive amount of beings around us. Air, water, oxygen, dirt, sweat, happiness, sadness, safety, danger, love, hate… all of it is necessary.

If you ever have the notion that you are alone or that nobody will remember you when you are gone, dispel that thought immediately.

If it wasn’t for you, none of this — the greater this and all of existence — would not be possible. We all play a role whether we know it or not.

Don’t work for free… all the time

You may have seen or heard the following quote at some point in your life:

“If you can help it, don’t do any work for free.”

I both love and hate this phrase for many reasons.

On one hand, everyone would love to make a living doing what he or she loves. It may be music, photography, playing sports, or (in my case) writing. The phrase “Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” also comes to mind. It is the American Dream: to do something you enjoy for employment.

Up until just recently, I never got paid for any writing I did on the internet. I usually just spewed some words on an online blog, not really expecting anyone to read it let alone pay me to do it again. Over time this changed, the right people read what I’d written and I eventually became a “professional blogger”. Yippie!

A funny thing happened, however, when I started getting paid for my online journalism.  I was no longer just “doing it for fun”; I was doing it for a paycheck.

Suddenly, people had very real opinions on what I was writing. People who mattered. People who were paying me money.

As a result, writing started to become less enjoyable and more stressful. Deadlines drove my writing sessions instead of being enlightened to publish a new article. Everything became more robotic, in a way.

If you are asked to complete a project, build a gadget or write something, consider doing it for free again. It’s a good way to reconnect with the passion that lead you to success in the first place.

Zach of the Silver Snakes: We Will Never Forget

Came across a hilarious column on SB Nation today remembering the legendarily-horrible kid’s game show, Legend of the Hidden Temple.

For those who don’t remember, two kids would be paired together to run through what can only be described as a gauntlet of fear, puzzled disappointment and agony. While the set was incredibly designed — rivaled perhaps only by the American Gladiator arena — it was literally designed to have contestants fail.

In fact, out of the 120 episodes on the show, only 32 Temple runs were ever completed successfully. That’s a win rate of only 26.7%.

However, every generation has its heroes. Not unlike Jason and his Argonauts and King Arthur of the Round Table, children of my generation were privelaged to witness Zach of the Silver Snakes.

(He’s the second kid in the video)

Please note the first YouTube comment for the clip:

Zach grew up to be a Seal team 6 member lol

Reading Your Former Self

Maybe you had the following homework assignment at some point in your school career: write a letter to former self.

There are different variations to the assignment, but the main point is to reflect on your past in a way to somehow educate your current self. 

Over the weekend I stumbled upon an older blog of mine from college, roughly 2001. I spent the next three hours reading my old blog entries, becoming more disgusted and shocked on how… uneducated I was at the time. Twelve years never seemed so much like a lifetime to me before re-reading those posts.

Despite the volume of bitter, expletive-filled sentences in each post, something interesting happened while reading: I understood how much I’ve matured in so many areas since then. I also realized how much I fall back on poor habits.

Having the opportunity to look back on one’s life in writing is humbling, to say the least. I could tell that I was very passionate about my blog topics back then — even to the point of angering others — and it was nice to see my opinions on some subjects stood the test of time. Overall, however, I really had no idea what I was talking about.

What was most surprising was how much I worried about certain things, only to now realize none of that stuff matters. Looks like I survived, after all.

Have you ever wished you could go back and have a conversation with your younger self? Ever wonder what you used to care so much about? What sacred you? What worried you?

I highly recommend writing down your issues, storing them away for a few months and then re-read what you wrote. 

It is very powerful to realize exactly how strong you can be over time.

Snow Days

Winter turns all of Chicago’s children into screaming, energetic balls of excitement and stupidity.

I vividly recall my grade school days when I would shake in anticipation of the 5 AM news radio broadcast the morning following an overnight snow storm. After not sleeping a wink the night before, I would roll over in my Ninja Turtle sheets to flip on my Sony boombox to either WGN or WBBM, hoping to hear the words of which every school-aged child dreamed:

“The following is a list of today’s school closings….”

Unparalleled suspense. Unrivaled drama. Heaven’s prayer inbox overflows.

Winter also introduces all children to the highs and lows of gambling. For me, attentiveness and the ability to remain awake in class after an all-night freak out was my wager. “If this doesn’t pan out,” I would tell myself. “You’re going to be one tired kid the rest of the day.”

I remember my sister and I huddling around that Sony stereo, toes and fingers crossed, eyelids clenched in some sort of prayerful concentration while keeping an ear tuned to the radio. Our hearts would jump at the mention of any word that sounded like “Saint Joseph”, the name of our school. I’m positive these panic-stricken wish-fests subtracted no less than three years off the lifecycle of my heart.

The loving pit boss for Snow Radio Roulette was always my mother. While her children were busy wishing their morning routines down the drain, Mom would always be running around making lunches, getting dressed for work and shouting reminders that “we had better get ready for school! Our truck has four-wheel drive, dammit!”

I often wondered what would happen if we piled into our Chevy Blazer, drove to school and discovered the doors were locked and parking lot empty. I’m 90% sure my mom would not leave us at the school with a book a her own homework assignments. Ok, 80% sure.

The moment our grade school’s name was uttered over the radio will forever be one of my favorite memories of my sister. You would have thought we won the lottery, a gold medal in the Olympics, the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes and won the war against “Zee Germans” all at the same time. We would go absolutely bat-shit insane. It was beautiful.

My only hope is that one day I will walk into my children’s room to see the same.