Whip It: A Flow Chart

Happiness, Revealed

If you watch anything today, make it this.

"And so I wish  you will open your heart to all these blessings, and let them flow through you. Then everyone who you meet on this day will be blessed by you. Just by your eyes, by your smile, by your touch. Just by your presence. Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you. And then, it will really be, a good day."

Let 'er Roll!

A little humor to celebrate what would have been Lucile Ball's 100th birthday...

Something Worth Listening To

My DVR decided I needed to listen to this particular TED talk. I'm glad it did.

Around the Garden: Early Summer Edition

The View From Here: Infinite Light Edition

 Yesterday proved to be a particularly rainy and grey day. It seemed like a perfect day for a trip to the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. Who knew the museum was such a happening place. I got there shortly after it opened and there was already a line waiting to get up the front steps of the museum. Despite being crabby at the crowds, it was reassuring to see that art still matters for so many people.

The museum, by the way, has recently undergone a major expansion. The new architecture provides some great places where the outside is brought inside. The image pictured above is a view from a hallway.


Anyway, there is an exhibit going on in galleries 278B and 278C entitled Heaven and Hell in Japanese Art. It really caught my eye. The sculpture to the left was constructed in 1737 of carved, lacquered, and joined wood, and inlaid rock crystal eyes. It pictures Amitabha, the Buddha of infinite light. It is said by some that Amitabha greets those who have died and helps them see through various kinds of illusions so they can be born in a "pure land" and become Buddhas and Bodhisattvas themselves and help more people become enlightened.

In contrast to this carving of Amitabha, there was a silk screen entitled "Inevitable Change." It pictures an aristocratic looking woman wearing red. She is surrounded by cherry blossoms. She is pictured again looking recently dead and beginning to decay. Pictured a third time her eyes are dead and bulging. A fourth image shows her body being eaten by creatures. The fifth and final image shows little more than an eroded decayed skeleton. The silk screen is a good reminder that the one constant in all of our lives is growth and decay.

I didn't go to the MFA to see this particular exhibit. I'd seen it already the Buddhas. I wanted to see the Chihuly glass exhibit. I'll have to plan another trip to the museum to see the glass. A rainy Saturday is apparently not the ideal day to see the work. I had gotten in line but realized the wait would be well over an hour. Seeing that I was already saturated with what I saw, it didn't make sense to stay in line to see glass that I wouldn't really be seeing.

I did get two glimpses of Chihuly's work. The image above was captured from a window in the new Art of the America's wing of the museum. The image below is one that I took during the brief period of time I waited in line to see the exhibit. The image doesn't really capture the scale of the yellowish green thingy. It stretched from floor to ceiling--nearly three floors.

Even in the Summer the Ice Doesn't Melt

After a exceedingly long winter, I've eagerly awaited my gardens to wake up from their long nap, push threw the earth, and brighten my mood. This morning I woke to an April Fools day surprise: my gardens are covered with snow.

I'm likely not to see my early spring plants again until next year: their tender fleeting beauty will be hidden again until next spring. However, baring some sort of environmental calamity, my plants will persevere: they will grow, bloom, flourish, and eventually die. I'm not so sure they even notice the snow. If they do, they don't tell me. They just do what they do.

Can the same be said for people? Can we live our lives in such a way where we don't notice the weather? Can we just do what we do?

Several years ago I worked with a college student from the West coast. Outside my office window I had a view of an area that was densely populated with old trees. She frequently comment on those trees. At first it would be about the fall colors of the trees. As the first tinge of color would appear she talked about how excited she was to see her first autumn.

As the autumn of her first year of college progressed, so did her first experience with depression. Rather than excitement about the oranges, yellows, and reds, her mind became consumed by fear. Do the trees die in the winter? Do they every forget how to grow leaves?

As the long winter progressed we kept looking out the window. "I know you said the trees are still alive," she said. "What happens if winter is too long?" We kept looking and kept talking. Sure enough, the tender spring buds appeared. As the trees just started showing signs of life my client asked, "what if it snows in the spring and the tender buds all die? Can the tree grow more buds?"

The trees of course did come back to life. My client did too. Right before she left for a new school she presented me with beautiful handmade card. She fashioned a replica of a particular gnarled old Magnolia tree out of construction paper. The tree was alive with a mass of tender pink blossoms. She was alive too, fully in the spring of a new life.

I'm glad she came back to life and that spring came so quickly. For some, however, spring comes slowly--if it comes at all. David K. Reynolds writes:

Feelings shouldn't be ignored--how could we ignore a snowstorm, anyway? But when you have to go out in a blizzard, you go out. That is the way it is to be human. The feelings are there, but we do what we have to do. Even in the summer, when the ice hasn't melted, shivering, we do what we have to do.

What is certain is that I am sometimes this, sometimes that. Sometimes pleased, sometimes not; sometimes confident, sometimes not; sometimes compassionate, sometimes not. the ice doesn't melt at my whim. It doesn't melt no matter how well I understand its origins or believe I understand its origins. It may not  melt despite my persistent efforts to change the circumstances that I believe to be maintaining it. In such cases what else is there to do but shiver and go on about living?

 What do you think?

365 Days of Mindfulness

This summer I've been thinking about travel. Vacations are a wonderful opportunity to travel together with family and friends, share an experience, create common experiences that can last a lifetime, and deepen and nourish relationships. Vacations can be about learning something new (traveling to historic spots, visiting museums, or learning a new hobby) or about play (getting away from it all at the beach, unplugging from the electronic devices and sleeping under the open sky, or sitting under in a comfortable chair reading a good book).

Vacations can be long or short. They can be far or close to home. Sometimes a vacation might even take the form of a mini-mental vacation. In DBT, one set of skills that are taught are those that IMPROVE the  moment. Improve is an acronym, and the v is for a mini vacation.

Overwhelmed by feelings? At the end of your rope? Try taking a mini-vacation. Close your eyes, use your imagination to fantasize what an ideal peaceful place would be. Perhaps it's a beach, a mountain top, or your favorite comfortable chair. Whatever the case is, a few moments spent on a mini-vacation there helps us slow down and think before we react rather than reacting without thinking.

There is a place near where I live which is an ideal place for me to think about when I take a mini-mental vacation. The local reservoir is a generally peaceful place. Neighbors walk their dogs there. A group of dedicated men and women tend to an ever-growing butterfly garden. Despite being in the middle of an urban environment, birds flock, deer roam, and I can let the natural environment nourish and recharge me when I'm tired, crabby, or down.

I've decided a few days ago that I'm going to start a little project for myself. It's a cross between a mini-vacation, a mindfulness practice, and a photography project. Maggie and I generally go for a walk every morning. Rain or shine, cold or hot, we'll start our day with a few trips around the local reservoir. We've done this for a year now. It's been enjoyable for both of us. I've met lots of neighbors, learned all the local gossip, watched flowers blossom and wither, and seen the seasons change.

I got to thinking that it would be interesting to spend a moment in the same spot every day for a year. What would it be to stand and watch the seasons change? What would I learn from taking a moment to observe every day?

Off to the right I'm adding a slide show widget where I'll upload the pictures as I go along. It's apparently going to take awhile for the slideshow to work: I'm having a few technical difficulties here on Blogger. The images will all be as I see them: no photoshopping, cropping, or editing. In the meantime, while we are waiting for my difficulties to be solved, here is day one of the 365 Days of Mindfulness project. I took the image on July 12, 2010.

What do you notice as the images change? Perhaps you are inspired to do something similar. If you are, make a comment here or send me an e-mail and share what you discover.

The View From Here: About Last Night Edition

I was inspecting my rooftop garden last night. There is a small overhang above my front door with a wrought iron fence around it. When I moved here it was the beginning of my gardening. Since then, I've taken over the whole yard. This remains my favorite place to garden. This year I have three different types of basil, three different kinds of coleus for color, rosemary, nasturtium, a stray pumpkin (I think!) that self seeded from an Autumn scene that I created last year, and a single morning glory plant that self seeded from last summer's window boxes.

Anyway, I was greeted by this glorious cloud. As I stood there watching it grew an arm as if to wave at me. Apparently I wasn't the only one looking up into the sky yesterday: Last Night's Sky.

Cloud watching makes for a useful activity. I frequently use it as a metaphor for mindfulness. In mindfulness, I explain, our thoughts become like clouds. We certainly wouldn't try to control a cloud or fashion it into a particular shape. We can learn to watch our thoughts in the same way: not trying to control or direct them at any way but let them pass in and out of our  mind like a cloud passes through the sky.

Grover Always Gets it Right

I still have my Grover from when I was young. I believe him to be hiding in a box somewhere in storage. He remains as wise now as he was when I was young.

Free Hugs

Need a Break? 15 Minute Mindfulness Walk

The sun was out this morning and rather than run the errands that I've been meaning to run, I did something far more enjoyable: take Maggie for a walk. If you haven't noticed spring has arrived and everything is blooming. It makes for a great mindfulness walk.

Overwhelmed? Get up from your desk and go for a walk. Set an alarm for 15 minutes and focus your attention on counting how many different kinds of flowers you see in bloom. You could also just count the number of flowers you see (though I'd suggest a smaller amount of time, like 60 seconds). If a stray thought comes into your mind, just let it pass by and focus on counting flowers.

In 15 minutes I counted 23. Maggie got in on the action and tried to eat a particular variety of daffodil that I counted. I needed to interrupt my mindfulness practice to retrieve it from her mouth.

Here are four different kinds of flowers that I found. What did you find?

Photo of the Day: Spring Views Edition

Photo of the Day: Blue Sky Edition

East Boston Camps

Apparently I'm developing a thing for abandoned and/or repurposed places. First I spend the better part of a morning researching the Varnum School. Now, after a long walk with Maggie, I'm interested in the old East Boston Camps in Westford Massachusetts.

The camps reside on 286 acres of land. The western portion of the camps is the Stony Brook River and the eastern portion is bordered by Keyes Brook. The middle of the camps is Burge's Pond. There is a lot of different wildlife and plants: birds and mammals, wildflowers and towering pine trees. I was there once last summer: the mosquitos are something fierce.

The camps were founded in 1937, funded by Isabel and Sarah Hyams. Their brother, Godfrey Hyams, grew up in Boston and attended Harvard. He was a metallurgist, engineer and financier. His career included the development of the Anaconda Mining Company and the Virginia Railway. Active in social work in Boston, the sisters used money that they had from a charitable trust their brother had set up.

The sisters founded the camp to provider inner-city children a "Fresh Air Camp" which was something popular in the 1930s when tuberculosis was particularly deadly. Interested a a more complete history? Check out this PDF file.

The camps are now a public area to be enjoyed by residents of Westford as well as those from surrounding communities.  The East Boston Social Centers are still in existence, though no longer offering "Fresh Air Camps." You can check them out on the web here.

What a great re-use of land.

Gone adventuring yourself? Find anything interesting? It's a great way to engage in some distress tolerance skills. A long walk spent thinking about the place + time spent at home researching your discovery = time well spent engaged in a productive, healthy activity. Try it, especially when you are focused on something negative, stressful, or painful.

Summertime Distress Tolerance

After a month of so much rain and cool temperatures that I thought I might start to rust, it's finally become more seasonable in New England. That means hot and humid weather. I fled my under-air conditioned home to look for a cooler spot.

I went to Target looking for a few electronic items and started to wander around looking at end caps. It became more interesting for me to wander around looking at people who were wandering around looking at the end caps for bargains. I got to thinking that this is a great summertime distress tolerance activity.

Distress tolerance, simply put, is any activity that can help someone get through a crappy experience or sensation without making the situation worse. Any tool that is healthy and non-destructive that helps distract from an unpleasant, intolerable, or not resolvable in-the-moment situation is a distress tolerance skill.

Target keeps the air conditioner on full blast, so it was nice and cool. Maneuvering a cart with one hand, holding a diet Pepsi in the other, I roamed the ends of the aisles totally absorbed in looking for interesting items--or people.

What a great way to lose track of time, distract from unpleasant situation, and make a positive non-destructive choice? A perfect distress tolerance skill.

Distress tolerance skills don't solve the problem--they just help us tolerate the problem until the crisis passes or until we can get into a space where we can make more effective choices.

As I come across interesting, unusual, or particularly effective distress tolerance skills I'm going to post them on this blog. I'll label the posts "distress tolerance" so they can be easy to find.