Zen, attainment and goals

A friend asked me,“Do you think more goals come along after achieving hyper-focused goals we’ve had for years? I’ve been chasing my goals so long that I literally do not know what I would do once I achieve these goals. I’m like a dog chasing cars- what would I ever do if I caught one?”

Did you see the Disney film Tangled? We’re like Rapunzel. She had a dream to go see the lights. Along that journey, her experiences stacked up and built her into a new person, so that once she had seen the lights, she realized that seeking that goal had led her to a new goal.

You cannot make a new joy the one thing you set up to seek. A boy dreams of becoming a pilot but when he goes to flight school he finds out it is hard work. He perseveres because he wants to fly. When he does get his dream, he enjoys it for quite some time, and he always does enjoy it, but the novelty does wear off a little. Suddenly he discovers photography and uses his plane for aerial shots. He has a new dream to pursue.

To Seek Joy makes Joy a noun, a thing we can attain or lose. To Enjoy is a verb- it’s a thing we can keep doing over and over again.  I think we can have more Joy in Verbs than in Nouns. I mean: A Thing is passing- Doing is continual.

A man and a woman fall blissfully in love and decide to get married. One morning she wakes up and realizes she no longer feels that “old thrill” about him, and she doesn’t feel the way she did when she married him. She is not “In Love”, but she thinks about how they care for each other, and decides she still loves him, and that she will continue to. She realizes Love as a Noun is a thing you can lose, but To Love as a Verb is something she can do. She talks to her husband, and he agrees- that “spark” is gone, but as they say, nothing lasts.. Should they quit their marriage because they lost a thing they had? They decide instead to find new “sparks.” They take a road trip together, do new activities, spend time together, and discover new ways they can love each other. They spend over 50 years discovering Loving as a Verb, discovering ever new horizons of caring and connection.

People who try to make one pivotal experience last forever and be their true satisfaction are often unhappy because they are trying to make a moment last forever. The true value of those moments is that they are rare and precious- that they do not last. Instead of despairing because we cannot make a moment last, we might find more joy in just savoring the moment. As we savor it, it becomes part of us, and even when it is over, we have it always.

Every joy we do not try to prolong artificially leads us to new joys.
What we grasp and cling at, we lose- what we let go of, we find we can keep forever.

(sourcing CS Lewis more than perhaps a little here, go read Mere Christianity or The Problem of Pain. )

walkies

I love my dog…. but I love my bed. But I love my dog more.

She needs walkies. I treasure our walkies together. But but butbutbut…. BED. Augh I did not get enough sleep. 

Come, fluffy cute thing, we shall walk together. 

And so you know what I mean, this is the dog in question:

I mean how could you not want to play with her forever?

Maddie is a 15 yr old American Eskimo Dog, which is a German breed formerly known as Spitz. Their name got changed when we went to war with Germany. The breed has less than nothing to do with the Inuit people.

She is 15, yes. Years, not months. Her breed looks like a Samoyed puppy their whole lives. It’s stinking adorable.

Her closest relatives are the other Spitz dogs of NW Europe, like the Pomeranian, the Schipperke, the Finnish Spitz and the Samoyed. If you’ve ever wanted a Husky/sled dog breed, but do not want 80 + lbs of powerful adult sled dog, the Eskie is a good bet. Just be ready for being very firmly The Boss of The Dog or they will turn into a nasty lil’ tyrant, and for OH CRAP THAT’S A LOT OF FUR. 

Getting crap done with Depression

Some of the people who follow me might find this useful.

With Clinical Depression, you’re not sad exactly. Your feelings are BROKE. They don’t work properly. Now we are conditioned in this modern world and in “western” culture to let our FEEEEEEELINGS rule our lives. 

"Do what feelz right!" "You gotta feel it!" "I just wasn’t feeling it today, so I didn’t do that thing I was supposed to." "I know, it I just feel it!"

So what do we do when our feelings are medically borked? What other people in many cultures, including our own in the past, used to do or have been doing- they had other motivations. Duty, family honor, personal decisions, or just the fact that there’s no one else gonna do stuff for you, so you Get Sh^# Done.  Necessity is the Mother of Holy Crap Look What I Did.

One of my favorite book series is Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and his characters often get told by each other, “Get past ‘I Can’t’!”

I am not saying that some kind of positive thinking crap will make the depression go away. It probably won’t. But what it will do is get you moving, even without happy feelings, it will get you to go do that crap. Kick the day in the teeth even if it’s just, Hey, I got up, I showered, I put on clothing and went to my class. Like a boss. Now I am doing my homework. And now I am going to rest, take a hot bath and watch netflix until bedtime because I did hard things today.

This is how I narrate to myself when I know my feelings are not being helpful. I look right at what is in front of me, and make my hands just do it. 

In Which I Am Like a Star Shining Brightly, and My Neck and I Have an Argument

Shining for the whole world to seeeeee...
I am doing okay. More than okay, I am GOOD. For the first time in years, really, truly, genuinely, Good. Not ecstatic or anything, just quietly radiating contentment in general. Sure I have some stressors, but they are as blips on the radar of life compared to the goodness in my life right now. Better than I've been in five long years.

Also, I wuv my puppeh dog.
I'm keeping our family's dog while they are finding a house in Utah. She is a floofy white American Eskimo who thinks she's a puppy and is actually around 12 years old. Senior doggeh. But she is very clever and sweet and loveable, and we go for walks every day. She's always happy to see me, and now that she has had a trim and a bath she is sooooo SOFT. Everywhere we go everyone remarks on how beautiful she is. They're right. I love my puppeh dog.

And now for something completely different.
I have knots in my neck and shoulder. They've been slowly forming over the last week in spite of my attempts to persuade them otherwise. They refuse to cave in to threats of force. Nothing I've been doing all day will get rid of them, and they have yet to even make a statement of their demands for negotiation. Uncivilized anarchists, I'll see them destroyed, just you wait. I can feel them plotting a migraine, so I am authorizing a preemptive strike with naproxen sodium bombs. Let's see how stiff you are after some Aleve, you disturbers of peace, you!