Waking Up for Life

Getting comfortable with discomfort doesn’t mean putting ourselves in unhealthy situations or pushing ourselves past safe limits, physically or emotionally. It means being open and willing to meet what is true, with gentleness and care toward ourselves, even when it’s unwelcome or uncomfortable.

Sometimes looking our demons in the eye does take away some of their strength. Sometimes, not resisting an unwanted experience softens its grip.…

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Have you ever felt the urge to do less, acquire less, have less, worry less, attempt to control less, think less … the list goes on. I have had this urge foremost in my being for over a year now.

Even though I work part-time these days, I still feel quite busy. I have many interests, and they all seem to have a limitless amount to learn about…

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The other day, I had the most trivial of experiences (seemingly) in a restaurant. Yet it taught me, reminded me, of an important lesson I’ve worked on for years: the practice of not abandoning myself. Not going into that trance of unnecessarily putting up with something, when changing my situation for the better is easy to do and would not negatively affect anyone else.

It comes from a lifetime of conditioning. Being taught as a child not to have needs, to be quiet and not make a fuss, to be essentially invisible…

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I recently heard a talk by the poet Mark Nepo that gave me insight into how one season of life forms and readies us for the next and the next. His talk was on aging with creativity and drew on his excellent book, The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life. (Mark’s Substack is here.) Mark’s message is relevant to adults of any age because he talked about being open to changes in direction and doing something new, having a beginner’s mind.

‍Mark used two analogies that resonated with me. Maybe they will with you too…

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Today I was in my happy place: walking along the beach ankle-deep in the surf on Sanibel Island on a sunny, warm day…As I walked along the shoreline, looking at the vast ocean (Gulf of Mexico) and open, clear blue sky, I practiced with the Five Remembrances. I’ve written about Buddhism’s Five Remembrances before, and I continue to practice with them almost daily…There is one phrase that really stands out for me in this particular setting:

“Everything and everyone that I love is of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.” (Sometimes it’s written: “no way to escape losing them”.)

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“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree, and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying, ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so, I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.” -Ram Dass

Over the past week, I watched both the 2025 movie Nuremberg and the older 1961 movie Judgment at Nuremberg, each depicting the trial of various Nazi officials and judges before the International Military Tribunal. Both movies did a good job of presenting the complexity of that effort, asking the nuanced question of who was aware of and responsible for the actions of that regime. At one point in the trial, both films showed actual footage of the worst of the atrocities committed in the name of patriotism and nationalism. That footage was very difficult to watch. Chilling. Horrifying.

It made me wonder, and the films wondered this too, what conditions led to that widespread capacity for such cruelty and disregard for human life and dignity …

The drawback of assumption-making

I used to have a dismissive if not disapproving attitude toward ChatGPT – the AI-driven chatbot (technical term) so widely used for fast information gathering. What can take hours of Google searches and link-following can now be done for us and delivered in a clear, cohesive, and hopefully mostly accurate readout. It’s just scraping the internet for information related to the question or topic you present, and there is a lot of data out there to be scraped. It laces it together in a personable conversational manner. It good-naturedly asks, “Would you like me to expound on x, y, or z part of your question?”

My attitude was dismissive because …

I’ve been thinking about that energy of wanting, of craving, of leaning forward into what’s not here, the energy of grasping after and clinging onto, of holding on tightly so things don’t slip away. This is sometimes called desire, but I like using the word thirst …

Someone suggested that I write a follow-up to my last essay about my unexpected arm pain, and let you know how things are now, several weeks later. So many of you expressed concern, which was lovely and kind – thank you!

After the initial week of severe pain all down my right arm, and seeing two doctors, it was thought, best-guessed, assumed, that what I had was an inflammation of the nerve bundle in the shoulder, called the brachial plexus, that controls the arm and hand. Maybe there was a shoulder impingement as well. In any event, the steroid I was given was a miracle cure. After six days of taking it, the pain had significantly decreased, and I could use my arm again, carefully. After another week, the pain was completely gone and has remained so to this day. Of course, steroids are not to be taken lightly, but in my case, this gift of modern medicine came through for me, and I am grateful.

So, what did all this teach me?…