Tag: Buddha

Compliance Is Vastly Overrated

Compliance Is Vastly Overrated

I had no intention of complying with the request I knew she was about to make.

Sitting in a large auditorium and it is Awards Night. Many area schools have gathered together to celebrate both individual and ensemble outstanding music theatre performances from this year’s season. As the host began to announce the award recipients she did ask the audience to please old all applause until after all the names have been called.

I’m sorry, but when they call your kids name there is no way I’m gonna keep my mouth shut.

And I didn’t.

I wasn’t being defiant. I was allowing myself to celebrate a moment, a special moment, giving myself the space to instinctively express the joy such a special moment had brought me. Fully present, fully human, raw, authentic, and unfiltered.

I’ve held my applause for most of my life. The special moments weren’t special enough, I guess. Or maybe I didn’t allow myself to be present long enough to notice. My always searching for something else made what was special somehow unexcitedly ordinary, not worthy of celebration. I told myself I’d celebrate when I finally got to wherever it was I felt I needed to go. I never got there because that space never actually existed outside of me.

When I allow myself to be present and simply notice the world around me, I see life is actually full of special moments worthy to be applauded. Some spectacular, some mundane. All for me to define if I chose to. All for me to experience if I allow myself the presence required to do so. 

Fully present, fully human, raw, authentic, and unfiltered.

Kinda feels a bit defiant, doesn’t it?

Compliance is vastly overrated.

The Emotional Freedom Of Letting Go

The Emotional Freedom Of Letting Go

The instructions make it look fairly simple.

Doing so is anything but.

If life is a book full of lessons I need to learn, I’ve reached the chapter called Detachment. Detachment, as in releasing outcomes and expectations.

How hard could that be, right?

For most of my journey, desired future outcomes served as an aspirational distraction from me being where I told myself I didn’t want to be. The future destination gave me something to look forward to, gave me something to work towards. The journey was always rife with impatience, Continue reading “The Emotional Freedom Of Letting Go” →

Deciding To Smile Anyway

Deciding To Smile Anyway

Though he’s never spoken a word to me, his presence is a source of daily inspiration.

He’s been sitting in my garden for a few years now. Indifferent to the rain, snow, heat, or the cold, he just sits there. Smiling and laughing, without a care in the world.

I guess it’s pretty easy to not have a care in the world when you’re six inches tall and made out of concrete. And that’s exactly what he is, my cracked yellow Buddha, a small piece of statuary I found on a dusty shelf at a local closeout store. Cracked, because he’s been exposed to years of wet winter weather. Yellow, because I painted him in a failed attempt to protect his porous surface from the wet winter weather. 

There’s something wonderfully imperfect about a cracked, yellow Buddha. Maybe that’s what Continue reading “Deciding To Smile Anyway” →

The Magnetic Nature Of Expectations

The Magnetic Nature Of Expectations

The quote arrived in a social media feed.

“Expect nothing. Appreciate everything.”

The appreciate everything part…I can learn to do that. But the expect nothing part?

Is that even possible?

I’m not sure where my expectations come from, but they’ve always been there in one form or another. Expectations for myself as well as expectations for others. Especially the ones I had for others. Buddha warned that unmet expectations certainly can be a source of great suffering.

That’s exactly what they’ve been for me.

My problem with my expectations is they would often contradict reality. It was me not accepting What Is in favor of how it is I felt it Should Be. Or needed it to be. Forcing is a form of fear, a need to control that which is out of your control. Yes, a perfect breeding ground for a great source of suffering to flourish in.

Releasing expectations is a pathway towards peace, but for me it’s been a bit of a rocky road. Having no expectations means no one can disappoint you nor let you down, right? But many attempts to expect nothing proved to be nothing more than jaded, passive aggressive attempts to defiantly deal with my Continue reading “The Magnetic Nature Of Expectations” →

Buddha, Red Meat, And A Salad Fork

Buddha, Red Meat, And A Salad Fork

So, how do I not eat meat?

For a full year?

New Year’s Day for me falls in October. Because that’s my birth month. I’ve started getting far more intentional about what I want to accomplish in the 12 months between birthdays. Far too many years have come and gone and the only thing I got was older.

I don’t want to just be older.

This past year the goal was to do 20,000 push-ups, which worked out to be 55 push-ups per day, every day, for 365 days. I still don’t really know why I wanted to do it. I guess the Continue reading “Buddha, Red Meat, And A Salad Fork” →