Fire By Sea

We strive for simplicity, yet so often we get entangled in complexity. Trying to raise a family, for example, is nothing but complexity, though the simple part is just to love. Running a business is also complex. So is trying to be happy day in and day out.

There are things you can do to simplify your life, taxonomies and modes of organization you can follow, but sometimes the best way to simplify is sit in silence and meditate. Detach from attachments and focus on nothing. Enjoy the silence.

I’m often surprised how quickly I slip into a different consciousness when I meditate. It’s a clean, well-lit place with nothing more than pure consciousness. I know it’s just the base level of transcendental meditation, but it nevertheless cleans me up a bit.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m going about things the right way. Why am I not successful? Do I not work hard enough? Not smart enough? Am I half-assing it?

When I feel good, when it’s a good day, the solution seems so simple. On bad days, like today, I’m behind a shut door. I can’t see the forest for the trees. This is not acceptable, and meditation, sadly, doesn’t do much.

I’d like to overcome the up and down syndrome and become more effective and getting things done, writing with force and clarity and moving on to the next stage of life (for I am clearly worn out on the present one).

It doesn’t seem to matter if I make small changes (say, like cutting coffee out of my diet), but rather it all comes down to attitude. The right attitude can align all your dreams, goals and aspirations into one clear and uplifting path. The wrong attitude compartmentalizes those things and shuts them away from each others, so that you end up feeling like nothing is possible.

So, a good attitude: simple or complex?

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. day, and the question posed to us by the good reverend is: what are we doing for others?

I have to admit I’m not doing enough. I seem to be absorbed in my petty microcosm, but it’s starting to slowly change. I’m realizing that a life of self-absorption is not a very worthy one, and that true fulfillment comes from service to others.

Just in the past few weeks, upon the new year, I’ve begun to feel lighter, less heavy, because I’m emerging out of my shell and into the world among people. I feel the need to work with people towards great progress. Take a stand in the world. Trade in some intellect for sweat equity.

There is no substitute for hard work. This I know. Right now I’m faced with the most formidable challenge to work my way out of the shadows and into the light, to a better life. Says Barack Obama today (and this confirms my long-held convictions):

We became enraptured with the false prophets who prophesized an easy path to success, paved with credit cards and home equity loans and get-rich-quick schemes, and the most important thing was to be a celebrity; it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you get on TV.  That’s everybody.

And so the message of the day is two-fold: work hard for yourself and for others. Don’t accept an easy path. Stick to your faith and principles.

It’s so easy to wake up every day and course through life expecting people to take care of you. Your leaders, your community, your job, your family. But it doesn’t work that way. While there is a structure in place (usually), that structure is no more than a foundation for us to improve upon, to evolve and make better for others in the future.

Therefore, it’s important to treat what good we have as a gift and a challenge.

Listening to the inspiring ideas and stories of others is often the endpoint for people seeking to better their lives. The latest rage to riches story leaves us believing our success is just around the corner, just around the next corner.

Of course that’s not the case. Many of us just like getting high on the idea that we can succeed. The addiction is enough to slink though life under the false confidence that sure, we can do it, too. That kind of life is not worth living. You might as well renounce all progress with conviction, and proceed to slowly kill yourself.

I’m no exception, though I’m really working on changing that. I’ve found out that after you read these stories, you get the jist of how it’s done, and it’s really quite simple: you get a great idea or some divine motivation, then you work you ass off until it materializes.

Excuses become toilet paper. Bad days become higher hurdles. Difficult people become your teachers. Friends and colleagues become team mates. You become the weapon, and time and money become your ammunition.

It’s not enough to have the right attitude, though it is vital. You have to also learn to ignore distractions, not just the overtly harmful ones but also the ones that once seemed helpful. The ones that make you feel like you can do it, too, if you just take the time to listen.

All of this talk of getting things done is in context of a life of greatness, of being a warrior. Warriors learn to take only what they need to further their mission.

Not all warriors live in theory like me, and I one day hope to get out there among the people. Do something meaningful and lasting, something for others. Get to the point where all this theory becomes practice.

No matter how crappy a day goes, it shouldn’t be regarded as a throwaway. Much easier said than done, I know.

Some days just aren’t meant to be enjoyed. They exist to test the upper limits of your character and fortitude. They pass the way a bus would splash you going through a big brown puddle. What else can you do but keep walking? Anything else expends precious energy and slants your attitude downward.

I’m having such a day. The connections I seek just aren’t being made. People are irritating me. The future feels hopeless. Progress seems unthinkable.

The only salvation is in writing these scant words. Intentional writing like this can’t be desecrated. In fact, it invites the soul to make an appearance from its hiding, its virulence of daily routine.

So as the soul looks on, even from a distance, it becomes clear that there is a guiding purpose, a meaning to it all. The soul whispers something barely audible, so quiet you have to dampen your own rage to hear.

Keep letting go. Follow the path you know to be true. Don’t give up. Keep everything in balance. Stay faithful and diligent.

Not so bad, I guess. I can probably hang on another day.

One ending thought: how many people, I wonder, think more about how they can serve others before themselves. How many more are asking “What can I offer?” rather than “What’s in it for me?”

Something that has always bothered me are people who are only concerned about how comfortable they can be or how well life should work out for them. It’s never about “What can I do to help?” or “Where I most needed?”

Anyway it’s worth taking notes on people and their conversations, if anything just to see where they stand how close they’ll be to where you are.

This Haiti tragedy is as real and as terrible as it gets, and I find myself wondering how to do it: How do we feel and show strength and resolve when there is so much soul-bruising death and destruction? The images are totally heart wrenching, like the dad my age holding his dead daughter my daughters age, and the look on his face…

So I wonder and I search for that middle ground. Obviously it does no good to cry and cry and cry — there is plenty of room for the real victims to do that. What they need now is our help, our strength to get them through this. The dead are gone.

The reason I ask this important question is because, as someone pursuing greatness, I need to know what people would assume of me in such a situation. A good place to start is my family and children. They need to see me as someone who 1) Cares and will not turn a blind eye, 2) Acknowledges the horrible loss of life and the sadness that comes with it, but 3) Recognizes that life goes must go on and people must pull through and rebuild.

All three of those are vital. In fact, for simplicty sake, you could combine 1 and 2, then say Acknowledge and Do Something. I suppose that what makes us human. We cry but we also heal. We fall but we also get back up.

That is a condition of goodness, of greatness. The ability to feel deeply without hiding from truth, then turn the pain into a fight to overcome it. All of this, of course, for the sake of others.

Obama said it. “Haiti, you will not be forsaken. You will not be forgotten. We are here for you.”

Sometimes in life you find yourself backed into a corner, armed with nothing more than a butter knife and a waning candle for light. A wretched black beast is snarling at you, its fangs seething with hunger for your soul.

These are the situations we must overcome in order to permanently alter the course of our life. And this is a situation I find myself in right now: Buried in debt, wholly dependent on one authoritarian source of income in a small town with no other opportunities, kids settled into private school because the public alternative is a pedagogic disaster.

While most may say I should just be grateful for my health, my family, my neighbors and good, simple life, I’m more driven than that. There is a place for people like me who see beyond the everyday cycles and rhythms, and that place is somewhere far away, physically and metaphorically (how far would have Obama gotten had he stayed in Honolulu — maybe private practice lawyer?).

Right now I have not much more than my intent to get though this and my will to make it happen. Maintaining that is important, because if that gets lost, so does everything else.

But there’s something else, too, something deeper and beyond individual capacity, and that’s faith in what’s to come. Belief that it’s not our destiny to merely live this life, that perhaps something equally determined is travelling towards us. Is major epiphany imminent?

Whether it is or not, work must be done and vigilance maintained. Surely being totally focused, determined and efficient will pay off at the right moment.

As I write this there’s been a most devastating Earthquake in Haiti. People are truly suffering at this moment, and it hurts all around.

I imagine that in much simpler times, ancient times, humans were connected to each other on much deeper levels. There were no countries, or factions, maybe even no warring tribes, and as a common species we sought to love, protect and preserve each other’s life and link to the Earth.

Of course now is much different. I don’t even need to get into that. But what about the good that’s left in people? Does it represent a majority? Do we live in a society that glorifies glory and triumph but brushes tragedy under the rug?

Triumph and tragedy are one and the same, cut from the same cloth. They require the same attention. As great as it feels to witness or participate in something beautiful and moving, it is equally great to participate in helping others through their tragedies.

I’ve been pretty lucid and clear-headed lately, and I can say with total conviction that I am hurting because people in Haiti are living in an unimaginable hell far worse than the hell they were in to begin with.

This is empathy, not sympathy. There is a significant difference between the two. Empathy places you in the shoes of others while sympathy cuts a safe, sterile distance from others.

You don’t need to have experienced a deadly earthquake to have empathy for Haitians right now, you just need to feel the loss everything around you—even if just for a fleeting second, all you can muster.

So just as triumph brings people together, so must tragedy. The thread of humanity is just that—a thread. Anyone who chooses to wake up from their complacent slumber and live, truly live, should grab onto that thread and never let go.

To commit to something means to go through with a decision. This is a very loose, definition, though, because the more casual a commitment is, the less effective and rewarding it becomes.

True commitment starts in a spirit resolved to start and finish something without intentional or unintentional wavering. I decide to do something and then I do it. While I’m doing it, I don’t stop halfway or partway and think of how I can change what I’m committed to doing. I don’t think my way out of it.

There are micro commitments and macro commitments, but they all require the same passion and spirit.

Micro commitments are the little things we do each day, such as me sitting down to write this piece, or in the case of earlier this morning, going surfing: I committed to go surfing and be back in time to write this, and because I stuck to the commitment, it is happening.

I paddled out and concentrated on getting waves. I did not release my concentration or energy to the other surfers who were casually chatting, or to sitting around waiting for waves to come to me.

I went out and caught waves (this is different than waiting and hard to explain). I was spirited and committed to what I was doing. My body was committed. It was a whole experience.

At the end, when I knew it was time to go in, I focused on getting one more good wave. It came immediately and I rode it well (on the back of the board for better turning). I got out of the water at exactly 9:00:00 am on the dot, but not before starting to paddle again but then turning around upon realizing the commitment I’d be dishonoring.

Macro commitments are life-long commitments, or at least ones with long lasting results. I’m committed to showing my wife love everyday. I’m committed to making enough money this year—$10K/month to be exact—so we’re out of the trap we’re in. I’m committed to be a more selfless person.

I could even apply macro commitment to surfing, in that I put my surfer spirit into it whenever I go, like I did today. [It doesn’t mean I have to do it everyday or religiously].

When we go through with our commitments, things falls into place and a cleaner system of living emerges. Things get done.

Money is one of the most difficult and formidable obstacles for me to overcome, and I often wrestle with what the proper way to make it is.

One approach I can’t stand is The Easy Way. The Easy Way is a cleverly packaged sales pitch by marketers to make you believe that money is the end all of life’s accomplishments: “If you could just make all this money, imagine how your life would be jetsetting here and yachting there and driving this and having so much time, blah blah blah…”

Now there nothing wrong with acquiring wealth. It’s a necessity, actually. Especially if you want to do great things in the world.

But why does it seem that great and noble work pays less, unless you’re one of the lucky few who invent something like the credit card machine? Why do Easy Wayers seem to do so well while people with strong integrity (good, honest, hard working folk who put duty, craft and loyalty first) seem to struggle so much? Is this a short-sighted observation?

This question will continue to bother me until I find an answer. The answering I’m searching for, of course, is wealth without compromising value. Wealth while pursuing greatness, not putting it on the back burner while I go out and make my fortune.

One blessing almost too obvious is the free market I live in. I wake up everyday with an opportunity to do whatever I want to become wealthy. This is a good start, and it’s free.

The challenge is listening to the right people and appealing to the right people, and having faith in myself to do this.