Shocking Yourself into 2016

As I sit to think about and write this blog post, I can’t help but have in mind the countless social media postings, memes, lists, and reflections that I’m about to see on my friends’ pages.  I will get a chance to see their “Years in Review,” their “Friends’ Favorite Pictures of them,” and perhaps more than a few words about how good or lousy 2015 was to them.  That’s all fine and good because often the end of a year simply causes us to reflect on our most recent pasts and our quickly approaching futures.  The end of a number – because, after all, what else is a year but an invented number in the endlessness of universal time? – immediately causes us to think linearly and to see the results of cause-and-effect, and get us to think about what we did right or what we did wrong. 

              What I think would be much more helpful for all of us is to think of the next week and a half as a time for reflection.  I don’t mean the simple thinking about what we could have done better.  I mean the profound contemplative reflection that only a true act of introspection can bring. Introspection is not something one does in a minute or even an hour.  It is a process, sometimes painstakingly real, and it is a process that too many people have no idea how to face.  What I propose is simple, think about the past year in terms of lessons learned and connections made (or broken).  As Sandy, an exemplary young woman most recently realized, sometimes the best and most important lessons are those born out of experiences that shock us into thought and into self-evaluation. Don’t be afraid to be shocked into thinking about things greater than yourself and about the material world around you. Don’t resist the call to evaluate yourself and your role in the universe.  After all, is there anything more important than the realization that you are part – a cog perhaps – in what is the great machine we call life?  Let this be the opportunity in which you do that for yourself and for the people around you.

              So, how to think about the past twelve months? The reality of 2015 is this.  It was a year in which you learned how to love yourself just a little bit more. The year taught you a little more about what you like and what you don’t like, about what you can tolerate and what you won’t, about what your dreams should be and what they no longer are.  It is a time to raise that glass to everyone you knew throughout the year simply because each one of them – even the haters – taught you a little more about yourself, and it is that little bit that might just be enough to get you through this arduous journey called life, however long that might be.  Each one of those persons has contributed to the person you are today. Each one has caused you to react, to respond, to care, to experience emotion, to relate, to socialize, and to live.  Each one, existentially speaking, lives in you whether you wish it to be true or not.

               Look, then, at the year that’s about to end differently.  In 2015 you learned who your real friends are.  You learned who loves you for who you are and not for what you can do for them.  You learned that each breath you take leads to an action, a thought, a word that you can never take back.  You learned that you’re paying today for the decisions you made yesterday.  You learned that tomorrow’s decision has to be based on your experiences.  You learned that you’re capable of surviving what you most feared this past year.  You learned that you’re stronger than you thought.  You learned to prioritize yourself and your life just a little more.  You learned that the world does not end just because you lost a love.  You learned that you are who you are regardless of what life throws at you and, at the end of the day, no one can take that away.  That is exactly what your gift to the world is:  you…and the talents, the dreams, the motives you bring with you.  Hopefully, these are what will make the world a better place tomorrow than when you go to sleep tonight.  For 2016, utilize and manipulate these shock experiences to get you to be the solution you so desperately want to see in the world.  You have exactly 365 days in which to do it.  What will your small contribution be?  What lesson are you going to make real for the rest of us to witness?  In the end, it’s your call.  Make 2016 yours.

Its Coming For You!: Karma

I’m not a superstitious man. 

            O.K., I’m not often a superstitious man.  Occasionally I’ll wear a pair of lucky socks or perform a small ritual before a seminar or competition.  Experience, however, has taught me a few things that I didn’t necessarily believe when I was 21, 31, or even 41.  The concept of Karma, for example, is one of them.  Karma.  Now, there’s a good lesson!

            The ideas of every major thinker and religious teacher- Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Gandhi, Buddha – can be summed up in one word: respect.  I honestly don’t think this is a coincidence.  Instead, I believe it boils down to a very basic and intrinsic truth about being human: that the universe works as one, and that all things affect all others.  Thus, Judaism’s Commandments, Christianity’s Golden Rule, Islam’s Five Pillars, or Buddhism’s Noble Truths have all taught us exactly the same thing:  be good to others and treat them as you’d like to be treated.  So, what should this mean for me as an individual?  What does it mean for us as a species?

            There is one thing I’ve come to appreciate about life over the last few decades and that is that what goes around comes around.  And, it usually comes full force.  In fact, the older I get, the more I see it in action, and everyone – in one way or another – gets his comeuppance for the way he or she has treated others.  I don’t care whom you see getting away with things or if you believe that “it’s ok if you’re not caught.”  I believe the universe (call it God, if you like) has a basic law in which all things are connected and must work together to create harmony.  It’s the reason for why we become disgusted by the ways we see people being tortured, or discriminated against, or executed, or bullied.  There is an innate abhorrence or hatred to those actions that we don’t consider human. C.S. Lewis (yes! that C.S. Lewis), the author of Mere Christianity and an Anglican-become-atheist-become-Catholic, argues that we human beings are burdened (one might say blessed) with an instinct to feel guilty when we don’t do the things we believe are the right thing to do. Why didn’t I help the old woman across the street?  Why didn’t I give the homeless man the dollar?  The possibilities for guilt are endless, yet they’re there and they don’t go away except through desensitization and apathy.  We have to lose part of our humanity in order to escape the pressures of that instinct.

            Treating others as we want to be treated is such a simple thing.  Yet, we all too often get caught up in the ridiculously petty and inconsequential “crap” of our lives.  We get offended by the woman who cut us off on the highway, or by the guy who didn’t rack the weights properly, or by the child who doesn’t seem to stop fidgeting in the seat behind us.  I’m not saying I’m not guilty of any of this, but sometimes it’s just better to count to 10 (or 100!) and breathe before we act or say something we regret.  The way we want to be treated, with respect and dignity, is something that everyone deserves and, assuming they haven’t done anything grotesque to lose that right to respect, ought to receive wholeheartedly.  After all, we don’t ever really know what’s going on in someone’s life or mind.  They could be having a really, really bad day.

            I often tell my students to be proactive and to be the one good thing in someone’s day.  “Be the first to say good morning.”  “Be the one to hold a door open regardless of the other’s gender.”  “Do good just because.”  As a psychotherapist and as a human being, I am often upset by people who walk past me and don’t respond to my “good morning.”  It’s something I just don’t understand, yet I continue to wish them a good morning each and every time I see them.  I hold the door open for them even if they don’t thank me (which surprisingly happens quite often).  I refuse to let them be the cause of a bad day, because deep down I know that my reactions and the way I respond to the people around me contribute to my overall sense of self and well-being.  The more good I do, the more positive I am.  The more of a listener I am for someone who simply needs to vent helps center me in a way that I don’t think many people consider.  It boosts my self-esteem.  It makes me more confident.  And, it makes me grow as a nobly good person despite my many imperfections.  It makes me feel as if I’m trying. 

            Karma does come around, and it very often comes in unsuspected ways.  I don’t want to be on the receiving end when Karma decides to go on a break or when it “decides” that someone “has to pay.”  So, in order to simplify my life, and to just be in harmony with the things around me, I do what I can to be the best part of someone’s day.  It’s all I have to offer sometimes, and perhaps one day I might need someone to be the best part of my day.  I can only hope that that someone thinks this is something small they can do.

            So…for this holiday season – whatever it is on this Earth you celebrate – try doing some good.  Make this a more gentle world.  Leave it tomorrow just slightly better than it was yesterday.  You might be the very reason why someone decides to keep on trying, to keep on keeping on, to keep on living.  Don’t let Karma bite you in the ass because one day – sooner or later – it will.  This I’ve learned.