Destiny and beauty

This is how I'm feeling recently:

"If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."
- Joseph Campbell

Do you believe in destiny? Do you feel you're riding the wave you want to ride and are 'supposed' to be on? How do you know? In my life, I've had times where everything went wrong and times where everything went right-- almost as if I was just riding the tide to wherever it was headed. The difference between the two has been largely due to how stubborn vs. how open I was. The more pig-headedly I stuck to something, the more likely I was to hit wall after wall. When I was open to possibilities I might not have expected, incredible vistas opened before me. So, I'm trying to be open now, and we'll see where this current wave goes. (This doesn't mean sitting around and hoping dream-come-trues will fall out of the sky; it means you, as one of my writing instructors suggested, plant seeds and see what grows.)

On a lighter note, I got this quote on my google page and thought it was funny:

"I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?"
- Jean Kerr

Have a beautiful day! May unexpected opportunities for bliss come your way.

Too much connessione?

Last night, some students told me about a pair of twins at Tufts who have the same name. I thought they were girls, and they may be, but here is the only article I came across that mentioned same-named twins. Anyway, this shows that at least one set of parents chose to do this to their children.

The female twins mentioned supposedly live together, are inseparable, applied to college with a 'take us both or we're not coming' ultimatum, and both want to go to dental school. And they share an email account and chat as one person. Now, I've seen twins who live together and spend a lot of time together, but sharing an email account? Wow.

Going back to my research on fairy tales (because I'm interested in writing children's fiction), I once read that a child's biggest fear was being left all alone in the world, and that's why their favorite ending is 'And they lived happily ever after.' Not he or she, but they. So, these twins are born with someone who potentially understands them (no small feat) and who can be their best friend for life. In a way, they are born with 'they lived happily ever after.' Why go out and find new friends if you already have a super awesome best friend right at home? Why go look for a soul mate if you've been born with one whose loyalty you don't have to question?

Which begs the question: if you share email and do everything as one unit, wouldn't dating be a little awkward? (I'm ignoring the salacious smiles.) And of course, why do some twins make a concerted effort to differentiate themselves while others relish in every possibility of twinhood?

We talked last night about how the twins might not learn much from spending time together if they were so similar, that a complementary partner might be more enlightening from a yin-yang perspective. But what if they just want to be comfortable? And understood? I can see the temptation. Many people choose mates who are very similar to themselves, and I can see the argument, 'We're so often misunderstood; you do what you can to find someone who will understand you.'

Some twins are even physical mirror images of each other, I learned last night, where one's heart will be on the left side, and the other's will be on the right side. Here is an LA Times article on this and a mother's blog about her mirror-twin sons.

Being a twin must be incredible in so many ways, but it also affords the luxury of having an incredibly high standard of intimacy. How could a new friend compete? How would a potential dating partner ever stack up? I guess, as with all things, it just takes time.

I used to wish I had a twin for the sole purpose of being able to pull off incredible pranks. As I got older, though, I got over this and valued being an individual. Did you ever wish you were a twin? Would you want to be one now, knowing everything you know?

Connessione

I got How to think like Leonardo da Vinci (my birthday twin) on my google page, and it reminded me of my 2004 trip to Thailand:

I decided to try a seven-day fast, and on the sixth day, a woman came, offering a free workshop on the Essence of Being. I had really savored lounging around, reading in a hammock on most afternoons, but this sounded interesting, so I gave it a shot. We went to her home, which was a beautiful open-aired deck of a tree house. It was all made of wood, beautiful golden slightly twisty wood (I am clearly no wood expert), and there was a handmade wooden railing that overlooked a palm tree forest, with the water glistening just beyond. It was amazing. Prior to that moment, I wouldn't even have conceived of living in such an incredible (and totally simple!) home. (There was only electricity during the day, and aside from the simple dwellings, the land and water felt untouched.)

A group of about twenty people gathered on her balcony, and she asked us, 'Who are you?' Some answered with their names or where they hailed from, and there were a few different ways people identified themselves, usually with something external: a country, a career, their role in a family structure, a fan of a sports team, etc. Whatever the answer was, she would tell us to strip that away. Then, she'd ask again, 'Who are you?' And then tell us to strip those next descriptions away also. So, after a few rounds of this, once all those labels fell away, and we were left naked, without an identity to cling to, she started talking about how we are all nothing and everything, no one and everyone, how insulting anyone else was insulting yourself, how putting yourself down was insulting humanity. Everyone was still, and we could hear the leaves blowing in the breeze.

I left feeling floaty and kind. I wanted to dive into the soft cloud that I felt was the world at that moment and throw marshmallows in the air in celebration. Even thinking of it now, I can't push the smile away.

For all of our idiosyncrasies, we are all beautiful vessels of possibility. And we're all part of this nebulous existence together, in for the crazy ride we call life. I love it.

Personal vs. professional success

Though these don't have to be mutually exclusive victories, it does seem that one tends to dominate (and not necessarily by choice). I guess time forces us to prioritize. It's like time and money, where people tend to have one or the other but not usually both. How much money is enough? How much time does one need in order to enjoy said amount of money? What constitutes personal success? Professional success? What does 'success' mean to you? How will you know you've achieved it?

Curious to see what Professor Internet would say, I googled it. There was a lot of mushy and expensive self-help stuff to wade through, but there were also some interesting pieces. Here is The Hindu's advice. Another article referred to Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, which seems to provide a good starting place.
When you work with college students, this is always a helpful reminder for balance. Exercise and sleep are always the first to go when students get busy, and when you're young, it's easy to not notice the effects of an all-nighter (or two or three) for a while. You may think you've got it all under control, but your friends notice you become unusually cranky. (Cough, cough. Not that I was guilty of this. Cough, cough.)
This chart also reminds me of my correctional facility students. When I proposed community service, their initial reaction was expletive, expletive, when did anyone ever help me out, why should I do anything for anyone else, etc. Given most of their family stories, I could definitely see why they felt bitter. They hadn't had many of their basic needs met; why help others? It's like the oxygen masks on a plane: you're supposed to put yours on first, because if you pass out, you surely won't be of any use to anyone else.
On the other hand, community service could be just the thing many of the incarcerated teens needed to get a little perspective. Many felt, even as seventeen-year-olds, that it was 'too late' for them-- but for the kids, all right. (They were no longer kids, they felt, because of what they'd been through.) We created the Community Peace Project, in which they brainstormed for ideas that would really help their neighborhoods and then sent these letters to the media and government officials. Of the 40+ letters we sent, three wrote back. But I still considered it a success because, for a brief moment, they were all excited, open and hopeful.
I guess my lesson learned today was that even thinking about the difference between personal and professional success is a luxury. And maybe if we give everyone their basic needs, people will want to be altruistic in order for their lives to have meaning. Or at least, if people get to fulfill their potential as a (insert dream vocation), we all benefit.
I was very ambitious when I was younger, and I've mellowed with age. Now, my idea of success is simply raising a good family and enjoying time with them. If I get to be a bestselling author and award-winning screenwriter, terrific. If not, and I become a full-time mom or go back to teaching, I'm okay with that, too. I'm learning to go with the flow more often now-- do your best work, put it out there, hope people like it and let go. I've decided what matters most to me are people, especially the people I love, so if I had to choose, I'd tell my twenty-year-old self yammering on about professional success to stuff it and take personal success, which I define as a loving, productive family.

Parents

So much for 'The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.' Here are three stories of women and their families.

1. My girlfriend is a teacher and one of the most conscientious people I know. Her family is über successful, and though they are warm and kind people, they inadvertently squash her ideas and dreams and make her feel 'less than.' As a result, she often doesn't see how much good she is doing by educating our youth and how much she has to offer the world, in general. In spite of her well-intentioned but ego-crushing family, she sings to her students, laughs a lot, and loves nature, art and being creative.

2. A student who could easily be described as a hippie (from Berkeley, no less) who I've known for over two years just happened to mention during dinner the other night that all four of her grandparents were survivors of the Holocaust. My student is as grounded and solid a young woman as I know, and despite her legacy of surviving genocide, she loves traveling, is completely open-minded and wants to work in a non-profit when she graduates from college.

3. A woman I work with describes her very conservative Catholic parents as sullen (her father) and foul-tempered (her mother). Her parents don't approve of her boyfriend because he married very young and then got divorced, and her parents don't approve of her sister for being a lesbian. In order to keep the peace, both sisters simply keep their personal lives to themselves. Her sister has gone so far as to rent a separate apartment so that when her parents come to visit, she can say she lives there (and not with her partner). This ruse has gone on for years and years (I think it's nearing a decade now), and it blows my mind. Again, in spite of this family dynamic, the woman I work with is funny, generally cheerful and shrugs off just about anything someone might find shocking. For example, she described this all very matter-of-factly, as if she were talking about the toaster not working again.

Since I don't have children yet, I can't speak authoritatively on being a parent, but I can only imagine that all of these parents do the best they can. ('If you lived their life, you'd do what they did,' like #2 in this post.) As I grow older, I have more and more sympathy for parents. It must be one of life's greatest challenges. And we expect perfection from our parents, so who wouldn't eventually fall short in some way?

What I gleaned from these stories is just how resilient people are and how everything is a choice ('life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it,' as in this post). I know there have been psychology studies that have found that people can bounce back from just about anything, be it the death of a loved one, divorce or any other (insert awful seemingly insurmountable event), and eventually return to their former state of happiness. It is still inspiring to see it in practice, though. These three women are intelligent, successful and generally positive, and it makes me want to pull those old-sticks-in-the-mud (we've all met some) up and say, "Look! You, too, can be empowered and in charge of your own life!"

How to live in the moment

This wikihow appeared on my google page, and I thought it was actually quite good. Instead of 'How to live in the moment,' I think it could simply be titled, 'How to be happy.'

I got on the wrong ship

Being new to blogs and a selective perfectionist, I tried to learn how blogs were 'supposed' to be. I was told that people don't want to read too much text, want pretty pictures, etc. What I realize now is that a blog is simply a reflection of the person who writes it, so I should have stuck to my guns. What I wanted to write was a daily serendipity berry report: having a public blog made me accountable, and if I said I was going to be a serendipity berry, trying to sweeten someone's sorrow in some small way each day, then I would really have to make that happen. So, out with the fluffy stuff and in with the challenge.

I once tried to count how many people I was happy I'd met in life. I came up with the number two hundred. I said then that I would try to have at least one positive interaction per day, and it could be as small as exchanging smiles with a passing stranger. And not some flimsy, polite smile, but a real Duchenne smile. I figured I wanted to live to be a hundred years old, and if I could be happy about meeting at least one human being per day, I would die feeling I'd encountered tens of thousands of nice human beings. (I know: quantity vs. quality, but they aren't mutually exclusive, so in this case, you can have it all.)

So, after veering away from what I felt was my natural path, I'm returning to it now, and my goal is to offer little 'serendipity berry' anecdotes of sharing sweetness (usually a rewarding two-way street). I've decided what I find most beautiful in this world is when someone shares their vulnerability with me. That is the ultimate gift: to share of yourself. So, here are three little stories:

1. One of my students seemed like the 'quiet one' among his friends, who were all varsity athletes. I was surprised to discover that this economics concentrator (Harvard speak for major) was really into fantasy fiction, and when I showed an interest in learning what made great fantasy for the purpose of potentially writing a fantasy novel myself, he lit up. It was almost like seeing a mummy throw off his wrappings and come to colorful, animated life. He shared some of his thoughts, gave me a list of what to look for and even lent me two of his favorite books. I knew I had to take good care of them because there was not one crease in the spine, not one wrinkle on the cover or pages, and I felt like I had been admitted into a special club by his sharing what must be a prized possession with me. I've read that 'great conversation' often means simply listening, and what a gift it was to hear someone talk about what they were passionate about. Educational, too.

2. I have a girlfriend from my days in Los Angeles who became very successful. I don't watch television, so I didn't even know she had become a celebrity. I had a brief encounter with fame, and I hated it. People who never acknowledged my existence were my suddenly new best friends, and I was lonelier than I had ever been. It was a wake-up call to how dear my real friends were, and I hope that my now superstar friend has real strong love and support in her life. We had been classmates, and we always liked each other, but we were by no means best friends or anything, so I felt a little silly reaching out to her again. It was my own insecurity that made me feel she might wonder if I wanted something, if I, too, was just trying to be a 'suddenly new best friend.' I looked within myself and did an honest assessment, and yes, she did look a little cooler now that she was this big public figure, BUT I loved her more because of who she had been as a classmate. Supportive, hilarious, talented, and most of all, kind. Had I not already appreciated her personality, I would not have wanted to contact her. My own ego appeased, I emailed her and congratulated her on her success, and I'm guessing I was three or four years behind when she really became successful. She wrote back, remembered I had been working on a novel (I'm embarrassed that I let her read that early draft of it -- eek! screams the ego, who believes I am a much better writer now and wants to go on and on about how those early drafts were just practice, blah blah blah, but then I remember to shut my noisy little ego up and return to her) and was the same woman I remembered loving back when we were all struggling together. So, I probably don't have much to offer her, but I will try to be a true friend who likes her for who she is without the bright lights and fancy makeup and wardrobe, and I'm guessing that will be nice and refreshing.

3. I spent an afternoon having tea, carrot cake and a long chat with a new girlfriend whose father had passed away a few months ago. I am well-versed in sticking my foot in my mouth, and somehow, her father kept coming up. We were in a little cafe, so I knew it wasn't the place for her to let it all out, but I wanted to make things better, take that sorrow away from her and absorb some of the shock. It was clear that there was so much pain and heartache, and I wanted to wrestle it away from her, but I also thought it wouldn't be very respectful to do that if she wasn't ready. But are we ever ready? How does one best help and support a friend who has sustained a huge, seemingly insurmountable loss? Again, her vulnerability and openness made it hard-- no, impossible-- not to love her, to want to make everything better for her and hug her sorrows away. So, I think it would be trite to send something like this and hope it fixes everything-- but I want to help! I want this beautifully kind human being to stop suffering, and while she looks especially lovely when she tears up, I don't ever want to see her this heartbroken again. I guess it will simply take time, and all I can do now is try to make more tea dates with her, letting her take conversation where she is comfortable and hugging her and loving her and supporting her as well as I can.

Things that inspire me

1. My favorite quotes:

"Be the change you want to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." - Marianne Williamson

"Success and excellence are competing ideals. Being successful does not necessarily mean you will be excellent, and being excellent does not necessarily mean you will be successful. Success is attaining or achieving cultural goals, which elevates one's importance in the society in which he lives. Excellence is the pursuit of quality in one's work and effort, whether the culture recognizes it or not. Success seeks status, power, prestige, wealth, and privilege. Excellence is internal—seeking satisfaction in having done your best. Success is external—how much you have done in comparison with others. Excellence is how you have done in relation to your own potential. For me, success seeks to please man, but excellence seeks to please God. Success grants rewards to a few, but is the dream of the multitudes. Excellence is available to all, but is accepted only by a few. Success engenders a fantasy and a compulsive groping for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Excellence brings us down to reality with a deep gratitude for the promise of joy when we do our best. Excellence cultivates principles, character, and integrity. Success may be cheap, and you can take shortcuts to get there. You will pay the full price for excellence; it is never discounted. Excellence will always cost you everything, but it is the most lasting and rewarding ideal. What drives you—success or excellence?"
- Christopher Parkening, "one of the world's most accomplished classical guitarists," known for practicing at least three hours per day, even after he was celebrated as one of the greatest guitarists

"And if Grandma were a bus, she'd have wheels." - Chuck Weiss, my friends' dad. I think this is a good antidote to the coulda woulda shoulda disease.

2. My favorite ideas:

My wise friend, Neal, says that all of the world's problems are caused by insecurity, and I can see how this would apply to both big-picture conflicts (religion, land, resources...) and small disputes (jealousy, trying too hard, being selfish...). When I am about to lash back at what I perceive to be obnoxious behavior, I can sometimes stop myself and remember that they are probably just as insecure and silly as I am and trying to get attention, feel liked, etc. It makes me more forgiving when I remember that we are all trying our best to navigate through this fast-paced, unforgivingly interconnected world, and I remember another nugget: "If we lived their life, we'd do exactly what they did" (not sure who said that).

Related to the first idea is the idea that it's important to take into account where people come from. One could say that people operate out of either love or fear (or ignorance, which usually leads them to act out of fear of the unknown), and if people are being mean or offensive, it is likely that they are operating out of fear. So, it follows that rather than retaliate with anger (the loud version of fear), the real antidote is love. And if one acts only out of love or fear, then to be truly fearless means to always operate from a place of love. A little hokey-sounding, perhaps, but pretty powerful, I thought. And an excellent challenge.

3. Our new president. :-)

This is my favorite speech so far. Set to music, it makes me cry. Most of you have probably seen it already, but it's nice to revisit. A good serendipity berry to elevate the spirits. Enjoy.

Change is here...

and I can't wait to be a part of it.

Art by Patrick Moberg.

Jumping for joy (and the right to vote)

Lest people think this blog is all depressing stories, all the time, here is another photo essay. A 100% happy one. Seeing people jumping makes me happy, and I hope it brightens your day a little, too. Enjoy!

Yay for Election Day! Here's more silliness:

Republicans are red,

Democrats are blue,

Even though I'm 100% OBAMA,

No matter how you vote, I'll still love you.

Serendipity berries for everyone! Now, go out and VOTE!

"Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote."

- William E. Simon