This is the week we are supposed to give thanks. (At least Americans are; for the rest of you I suppose it's optional.) I'm guessing that there will be hundreds (thousands?) of people on LJ making lists of the things they feel grateful for: home, family, friends, pets, food, health, money, nature, God, freedom, sunsets, and the like. And let me say right now that I too am grateful for these things.

But what I want to discuss today is a different sort of gratitude. Grudging gratitude, you might call it.

I was talking with a friend recently, who rather nonchalantly said something about “All those things you wished for and didn't get, but got something far more wonderful instead.” She said is as if it was a fact of life, a birthright, a law of nature. Like all you needed to do was make daily a “To Wish” list instead of a “To Do” list, and then sit back and wait for the spectacular results.

Trying to uphold my end of the conversation (I do better listening than speaking, but I've learned that I can't remain silent too long), I racked my brain for an example of such an event from my life. Just one. But I couldn't come up with a single instance.

Take gifts. For birthdays and holidays, I've wished for wonderful things. Elaborate, expensive, blow-your-socks-off things. Never got them. Oh, I've received very nice gifts over the years, and I truly thank the friends and family who gave them. But nothing even close to my imagination.

Career. Like most people, I wished to do something great, something memorable (or at least interesting), something to help the world. I ended up with a job that paid the bills and even a little extra in a field that nobody ever heard of. The moment I explained it, people yawned. Not that I'm not grateful, mind you. But reality turned out to be orders of magnitude below my wishes.

Family? Parents, siblings, and orbital relatives were all okay, but nobody did anything extraordinary. Nobody dispensed the wisdom of the ages (and nobody was an ax murderer either). Each had their own truly annoying qualities that I mostly learned to put up with. Husband and children? I've been blessed with both and am eternally grateful. But truth to tell, we're just part of that vast silent majority.

Family gatherings? Travel? School reunions? Exhibitions of my talents in various ways? We all know these can be far less enjoyable than what we wish for. Sometimes they are downright painful.

Like I said, I could not come up with a single part of my life in which reality came anywhere close to my imagination, let alone exceeded it. I always wished for the stars, and I always got mundane, practical, commonplace results. And as I've aged, I've begun to realize that this was the wisdom of the universe. That in my everyday work, family, and pursuits, I was given the gift of grappling with life.

I've grudgingly started to give thanks for this type of life. It's real, it's gritty, and it's what we're here to learn and experience. The gift is what we make of it, not what is handed to us. I understand. Still, just once, I think it would be nice for the universe to surprise me. Don't give me gaily wrapped but practical socks and underwear, don't even match the wish I have in mind. Rather, blow out all the stops and overwhelm me with something so extraordinary, I could say to my friend, “Yes, there was this time I wished for _____, but wow, what I got instead was _____!” And we'd shake our heads in wonder.

Topic For the Week: Do you have an instance where you really wished for something, didn't get it, but got something way better instead? If so, will you tell us about it?

“Tired of Feeling Unappreciated? Now You Have a Choice!”

This was the headline for an ad in the newspaper. “Wow,” thought I, “what a great service! A way to purchase appreciation, and even have a choice in how it is packaged!”

Who doesn't feel unappreciated? Who truly feels like they have enough love, affection, appreciation, and support in their life? Nobody I know. Certainly not me. Most of us are constantly needy, never fulfilled. We might even get a few moments of nirvana, where everything is complete, satisfying, and lovely. But they don't last. Within days – or even moments – we are back to our eternal need for more.

Of course, we know the answer. We can never find enough external love, appreciation, and support. It has to come from within. The Bible is wrong: It's not enough to love another as you love yourself. Most of us love ourselves so poorly we would be ashamed to give only that paltry emotion to others. The key is to love yourself the way you would like to love others. You can only give what you already have inside you, whether you're giving to yourself or your fellow man.

Nevertheless, I scrutinized the ad, ready to grab the phone. Even though the Beatles told us you can't buy love, I was ready to try. And here's the rest of the wording:

“Towing Done Right! Here When You Need Us! 24/7.”

Topic For The Week: Are you one of those rare people who generate love from within, rather than seeking it externally? Or are you among the needy masses, always seeking but never getting? What if we could buy love and appreciation? What kind of world would that be?

Being flexible makes life easier, right? Physically it makes you more agile. Mentally it makes you smarter. Socially it helps you to get along with people. Emotionally, being flexible helps you deal with more situations. And in contrast, being fixed, rigid, and inflexible tends to make life more difficult.

Overall, I think I'd give myself a 5 out of 10 in flexibility. I don't throw myself into new things constantly, but I'm open to trying them from time to time. I like to meet new people (not whole bunches at once, just one or two). I try to listen to what others are saying to understand their viewpoint. Mentally I'm rather agile: I suspect my brain is my most flexible organ. So a 5 is good enough, I suppose.

Except for physically where, at best, I'm a 2. I've never been flexible. Not as a child: other kids could flop around and get their legs into positions that looked contorted and painful to me. And not as an adult, despite being involved in sports, exercising, and stretching my whole life. I'm in good physical shape, just not flexible.

I believe there is a connection between our physical selves and our mental and spiritual selves. That being inflexible in one suggests a similar inflexibility in the others. And conversely, simply trying to become more flexible in one area will spill over into the other areas automatically.

So over the years, I've dabbled at yoga, hoping to increase flexibility. Most of the classes I've tried have been too hard for me. In a “good” class (for me), the teacher shows several ways to do each pose, including one easy enough that I can attempt it. Most teachers don't even come close. They just do their impossible poses and say, well, simply do your best. As if. After a recent class with yet another new teacher, I was joking with the only person who was worse than me (an ancient heavyset lady who looked like she hadn't moved out of her chair in years). We agreed that the only thing we were likely to get better at was “pretending to do yoga”.

Topic For The Week: Do you think our various flexibilities go hand-in-hand? If you increase or decrease any type of flexibility, will the others tend to follow suit? Or can you be rigid in one are and loose in another without any problems? In what ways are are you flexible? As you've aged, have you become more flexible or less?

“What do you need to say that you haven't said?”

This question is from an article by Bernie Siegel. Most of the article was just a rehash of the old idea that we co-create our lives. If we do so from a loving point of view, we create a better life than if we come from hate. Yes, but that's hardly original. Siegel admits this, saying “My writing and today's books have nothing new to say. We may have new stories but they are only repeating ancient wisdom.”

But the article provided some questions to provoke thought and enlightenment, one of which I've quoted above. This question got me thinking.

Most of the time, we feel compelled to say the same old things we've been saying all along: favorite complaints, wishes, stock emotions, or whatever. (When we've known someone a long time, we can often anticipate their next statement, and, to be honest, they can probably guess ours too.) But we still feel the need to say these things. They make us comfortable. They sound right to us. Perhaps we think if we say them long enough, the world will change. That's not likely, of course, because all we're doing is reinforcing our existing beliefs and thereby reinforcing the world we've already created.

But what about things that we need to say but haven't said? The hidden things. The things that are too emotional, too scary, too shameful, too “out there,” too unspeakable to admit to others – or even to ourselves. We've never said them. Why not?

Some thoughts may be new, but I think a lot will be extensions to the same old stories we've been telling. They are “alternative endings” – something that might force us to take a new look at our core beliefs – the ultimate in scary.

Just one personal example. I frequently think to myself: “I must do something significant with my life. A mundane life is a wasted life. I must work harder to become significant.” But the alternative ending that I never say is: “Probably I will never do anything significant. I haven't yet and the years are marching on. Unless something changes, I am and will be a complete failure.”

Well, there it is. “Unless something changes.” I've been trying my whole life to do significant things, but haven't achieved any. Simply trying harder is not a change. The change, if I care to make it, needs to be in my core beliefs: “A mundane life is not a failure. There are other ways to define success in life than being notable for some achievement. Think about that.”

Now, I haven't actually changed my beliefs at this point. Not only do I still see myself as a failure, but I see most other people as one too. But making myself come face to face with this belief at least makes me begin to question it. And maybe change it. And if I do so, perhaps co-create a different life.

Topic For The Week: What do you need to say that you haven't said?
Ponder this for a while. What do you avoid telling yourself? What might happen if you spoke it aloud?

Our big brains are two-to-three times the size (weight) of our nearest cousins, the apes. Four times the size of chimps' brains, and don't even try to compare cats and dogs to us. Clearly we've spent the last several million years growing our brains and then finding new uses for those extra brain cells.

There are lots of theories about why and how our brains grow. I love reading that sort of thing and want to share of it with you. Ready? (One theory is that we breed for bigger brains partly because we are excited by new information and want more places to store it. So maybe you're expanding your brain just by reading this.)

Two physical facts come into play. First, gram for gram, brains require way more energy than any other part of the body, even the biggest muscles. Second, to walk upright with complete balance and have full use of the back and arms for carrying stuff, you need a relatively narrow pelvis. And that means that there is a limit to a baby's head size at birth, so that a narrow-pelvis woman can it, and also that the human gut must be smaller than other comparable animals (apes) so that it will fit in the pelvis.

So, assuming our ancient ancestors with the biggest brains were the smartest and therefore the most likely to survive and pass on their genes, and that they had a big incentive to walk upright and use their hands and arms all the time, you had to solve two problems. One, how to deliver babies with small heads, but let them grow up to have big brains. Two, how to ingest enough calories to feed the big brain every day with only a small gut to digest whatever you swallow.

Current research suggests that both problems had the same solution: process and cook your food. Raw food, whether meat, vegetables, or fruits, requires a lot of chewing and a lot of digesting. Both of these slow down the process, take a lot of gut space to occur, and burn up calories. (They also require heads with huge mouths and big strong teeth, which is the opposite of what you want if you use a language that involves sounds more intricate than grunts and squeals.) But if you process your food (chop it up, remove the tough parts, etc) and cook it (which in effect does some of the digestion for you), you can extract far more calories much more quickly, even with a small gut and tiny teeth.

Thus, advances in food preparation (think fire and flint knives at first) let adult humans feed their big brains and, perhaps even more importantly genetically, have babies with small heads and then bombard them with the calories they will need to grow their brains to adult size. In addition, prepared food allowed humans to have mouths, tongues, and throats that are only minimally effective for food ingestation (we are the only animal that routinely chokes while trying to eat and drink) but maximally effective for speaking.

It's likely that certain of our small-brained ancestors who happened to be smarter than average figured out ways to cook food, which then provided the calories for their entire tribe to feed their brains and breed more, rather than the other way around. Probably you don't develop big brains and then use them to solve your problems. No, you try to solve problems and that helps you develop your brain further.

One thing I find interesting in all this is that it was probably the women who figured all this out. Cooking, food preparation and storage, and having and feeding babies is almost always women's work. Presumably the men were out hunting, and if you were smarter, you might be a better hunter. But just hunting more wouldn't allow your tribe to grow bigger brains. The extra meat might help your tribe live longer, but it was what the women did with the meat (and the vegetables and grains) that made the real difference. We see the same thing today. Societies that hold their women back, through laws, lack of education, bad medical care, etc, stunt the society's growth in every way. But societies that encourage women to use their brains to the utmost tend to flourish economically and environmentally, and often in peace.

Topic for the Week: Thoughts? Comments?
 

Those Were the Days
Mary Hopkins – 1968

Those were the days, my friend.
We thought they'd never end.
We'd sing and dance forever and a day.
We'd live the life we choose,
We'd fight and never lose,
For we were young and sure to have our way.

Anyone alive in the 60's remembers Mary Hopkins' plaintive ode to the past. With its haunting melody and easy-to-sing lyrics, it sounded like an oldie the instant it came out, and immediately became the number one drinking song around the world. I heard it the other day and can't get it out of my head. (Forgive me if I've now done the same to you.)

I took the song at face value in 1968: we'd all grow old and have to look back to past pleasures because we'd have none in our dottery present. And since I was then “young and sure to have my way,” it didn't bother me much.

Today I hear the words and wonder why we can't “sing and dance forever and a day”? What's stopping us? Do we believe we aren't allowed to? (Not manly, not seemly, not adult?) According to whom? Feel we have to do it perfectly or not at all? Hog wash. Can't move without a walker or even get out of the chair? Singing and dancing happen primarily in our minds anyway. Don't even like singing and dancing? Then why not do whatever it is you do like?

Most of us have to earn a living, do housework and other chores, and attend to spouses, children or pets. But why should this matter? First, we can sing and dance while doing most of that. In fact, we probably should. Second, even if singing and dancing are firmly forbidden in our workplaces and homes (because we live on Planet Dreary), those activities needn't take up our whole day. If we are truly willing to do them, there is time to do the things we love.

Topic for the Week: Do you sing and dance and do other things you love routinely in your day? If so, how does it make you feel?

If not, do you feel limited as to where and when you can do them? Why is that? Do you feel you must obey some outside rules or authority? Feel you'd fight and always lose? Or do you have a self-sensor you can't bypass? Maybe you have to have an appreciative audience to “perform for”? Is it just easier to put on the TV and watch someone else do it? Too much effort to sing and dance yourself these days?
 

Humans have told and loved stories forever. As long as we have any record of our ancestors, they have been telling stories straight out of their imaginations. Stories about gods, nature, animals, and other things that they have no “rational” knowledge of.

We still love stories today. We have more names for them now: novels, gossip, movies, blogs, religious tracts, fairy tales, epic poems, and more. As in the past, these stories might have some basis in the life around us, but then they take the big leap into the imaginary. In fact, one useful definition of a story might be that while it doesn't completely exist in the outer reality – making it a lie – it tells the truth at some inner level.

So what is this all about? Stories seem so embedded in all human cultures that I would guess you could not sustain a culture without them. Clearly they are passageways between our individual subconsciouses and the rest of the world. The story teller is trying to bring structure to events around him that seem random. He puts feelings, emotions, fears, delights, mysteries, and love into words. He might take his listeners (readers, viewers) to places they will never visit in their real lives and explore alternative ways of living. Maybe he lets them hear the thoughts and beliefs of characters quite foreign to themselves.

And perhaps there is even more. Maybe new ideas start only when we tell stories. Maybe we need stories to “firm up” our flighty imaginations so that our ideas can emerge into the real world. Perhaps the mother of invention is not necessity, but stories. Before anything can change, we have to tell a story about how things might be different.

I love to read stories and write them. I quickly become morose if I'm deprived of fiction to read. At one point, I was taking a very difficult university program. It required so much time and attention that I gave up reading novels for several months to try to get all the work done. My inner being became so disturbed, I decided to drop out after the fall semester. Friends and relatives convinced me to return, but over the winter break and even for the first week or two of school, I holed up in my room reading novels until I felt strong enough to face the work again. I eventually finished the program and got my degree. And I learned that no matter what else is going on in my life, I need stories.

Topic For the Week: Do you love stories? How do they manifest in your life? What purposes do you see in stories? Can you imagine life without them?

For most of us, being needed is very important. Whether this is simply human nature or it is the way we were brought up, many people feel they could not exist without being needed by someone or something.

Being needed is different from being loved, although a lot of people confuse the two. They feel they are loved because they are needed. For example, a wife might think that her husband and children love her because of all the things she does for them. A man who devotes a lot of time and effort to help others might think that they love him, not just need him. But we love people for themselves, not for what they do. We may appreciate what they do, but that's not love.

Still, I think many people would rather feel needed than loved, if forced to make a choice between the two. In some ways, you can control need. You can make people more dependent on you, more needy of your services. And if they need you, you might believe that they will take care of you, that you are less likely to become homeless or impoverished or die. Love is different. It can't be earned; it's either there or it isn't.

So we spend a lot of our lives trying to make others need us. We seek to become more essential at our work. We volunteer to help others. We raise children, who certainly need us. Perhaps we teach or mentor others. Or we provide a service that is needed, which brings people to our door. We might take a lot of pleasure in these activities. We believe our actions are helping the world. These activities make us feel productive, good, and needed. They embolden our ego's image of itself.

Anything we do that is needed is only needed if we are trying to keep the world the way it is. If we don't mind the world changing, then much of what is "needed" may no longer be needed at all. To some, changing the world might be a good thing: they believe the world is going to hell in a handbasket on its current course. Thus, being needed is a matter of opinion, of your basic beliefs about reality.

Topic For The Week: How important is being needed to you? Does it help you feel good, secure, and loved? What would happen if everything you felt you were needed for suddenly ceased to need you? What would be left of the real you? Assuming you still had food, shelter, and other essentials, do you think you would survive not being needed? How much love would there be in your life if you eliminated "need" from the picture?

Most horoscopes are like Chinese fortune cookies – general enough that almost everyone reading them can see something that applies to their lives. One newspaper, however, carries what it calls horoscopes but are actually twelve interesting sayings or pieces of wisdom each day. They don't even pretend to tell you how to govern your life. Recently, for example, I read one about things we think we want. These are usually symbols for things we really want but can't or won't acknowledge to ourselves. (I wish I had the actual wording to include, since it was nicely written. But I tossed it.)

This prompted some thought. Like most people, I worry about money and wish I had more. But money is only a symbol. Whether paper, metal, shells, precious stones, or squiggles in a bank's computer, money can't keep us warm, feed us, or keep the rain off our heads. It's merely a convenient way of storing purchasing power for future food, clothing, housing, entertainment, and other things.

When I'm honest with myself, money isn't what I really want. Right now, I don't want meals that might appear twenty years from now. They couldn't make me happy in the present. So what is the purchasing power of future meals a symbol of? Security, perhaps. A belief that I will have meals in the future. But deep down, I know that money cannot guarantee future meals or my ability to eat them. A germ could fell me tomorrow. A war could start. I am only as well fed as I am right now. I can't eat tomorrow's food today.

I might say having money makes me feel more secure, more safe, but even that's only a symbol. Feeling safer is a sign that I will remain alive longer. Having money makes me believe I will not die. That I will have interest in future food, entertainment, and the other stuff of life. I acquire money in the hope that it will release me from my basic fear of annihilation.

Fame? Power? Trinkets (like diamonds and cars)? All a sop for that terrible dread inside us all. Not just that we will become nothing, but that we already nothing. I think the horoscope is right. We can't even acknowledge that dread, let alone understand why we try to bury it with the trappings of life.

Topic for the Week: What do you want? Food? Alcohol? Money? A house? Golf lessons? Publish your book? Applause from others? Do you ask yourself why you really want them? Do you get any good answers?

I recently got an e-mail from a friend about making a difference in people's lives. You've probably seen it or something like it. First it asks you to list various "famous" people from the past, such as yesteryear's Miss Americas, sports heroes, best-selling authors, movie stars, Nobel Prize winners, politicians and such. For most of us, unless we had a particular interest in the subject, it's hard to come up with even one name per category, especially more than a couple of years back.

Then it asks you to name teachers who helped you over the years. Friends who provided strength or comfort. People who gave you words of wisdom and perhaps even changed your life. A boss who took the time to mentor you. A relative who believed in you and helped you along.

Naturally, it's much easier to name people in this second group. They touched us personally and emotionally, and so we remember them. They might not have even known how kind they were being; they may have acted that way to everyone, simply because that is the way a good person handles life. (And besides, it wasn't asking you to name all your old teachers, just those you remembered for some reason. Naming them all would be just as hard as listing old sports heroes or authors.)

The "lesson" in the e-mail was that it's more important to be kind and helpful to those you know personally than to great or famous stuff. After all, that's what you'll really be remembered for.

I found myself both agreeing and disagreeing with this. Yes, the way we treat those around us has a profound impact on the world. If everyone was kind to those they met, no matter who they met, the world would suddenly become a pleasant place. So much of our misery comes from all the hate and unkindness in the world.

But then I though about the books I've read that had an equally profound impact on me. The great thinkers whose ideas I've grappled with. The wonderful artwork I've seen that made me see the world in a different light. The music that inspired me. Scientists who created something that has made my life completely different. Surely these people were also important to me, even though they didn't know me. Might be dead, in fact, but I'm still benefiting from their work.

So I came away thinking, yes be kind to others, but why not strive for greatness as well? Why does it need to be one or the other?

Topic For the Week: How would you do on completing a list of famous people in the categories above over the last 20 years? How many names would you include on a list of people who had a great impact on you personally? How many of those would be officially "famous" for their work and how many simply friends, relatives, and business acquaintances?

Last week I mentioned a phrase I liked: "Gratitude is the doorway to abundance." I've been thinking more about it, and I can see at least two ways this could be true.

The first way is rather obvious. Without changing anything in the world around us, if we simply begin to notice things and give thanks for the ones we like, the world will seem more abundant. Birds, plants, a cold beer, stars, kind people, forests, good health, gas for the car, chocolate brownies – just start naming things you are thankful for, and the world suddenly seems overflowing with goodies.

A second way requires a leap of faith that perhaps by being thankful we actually make our corner of the world more abundant.

Assume for the moment that the universe isn't something "over there" while we're "over here". Rather, we are all part of the same thing, not separate from God/Universe/Spirit (pick your own word). Or to put it in Biblical terms, we aren't just made in the image of God/the Universe, but we are God/the Universe. Maybe just a small part of it, yes, but my little hunk of God and your little hunk are just as valuable and authentic as anyone else's.

So in certain fundamental ways, the universe is just like us. It makes sense that things that are pleasing to you, to me, and to people in general are probably also pleasing to universe as a whole. And just as we like being thanked and appreciated for our efforts and generosity, so does the universe. If someone notices what you do and thanks you, don't you usually want to do more for them? If we thanked God for the gifts already surrounding us, wouldn't he be more likely to provide more?

Topic For the Week: Does this thoery seem reasonable to you? Are there other ways besides these two that gratitude might cause increased abundance? When you are exceptionally thankful, do you feel like life becomes more abundant?

Sometimes the universe, with a little help from its human friends, sends you a message that is anything but hidden. Whups you upside the head, actually.

For example, a tea bag had a message for me recently: “Gratitude is the doorway to abundance.” Nice thought and elegantly expressed. Makes me wonder, does the person who writes the fortunes in fortune cookies also pen the notes for tea bag handles?

Then too, a church posted this message on its marquee: “Love others as you love yourself”. Actually, I think this sums up the biggest problem with the world – people don't love themselves very much and so are incapable of loving others any better. Hence so much hatred and cruelty in the world. Oh, people are plenty selfish, boastful, and arrogant, which they interpret as loving themselves. They brag about their exploits and push to the front of the line, demanding all the goodies in life. But all these are signs of self-hatred. If they really loved themselves, they wouldn't do such things.

That same church never uses punctuation on their signs, which led to a previous message: “Hurting Jesus Can Help”. Forgive me if this offends you, but I broke out laughing when I drove by it the first time. Made me wonder if hurting Moses or St Paul would also help. Then I debated how you'd go about hurting Jesus, since technically he's not here. Nasty prayers? Ugly graffiti on a church? Their signs usually stay up a few weeks, but this one came down in three days. Guess I wasn't the only one who “got the message”.

Topic For the Week: Do you enjoy the overt signs the universe sends? Do you think the universe has its own sense of humor? Did you ever get a simply great message spelled out in front of you?

On my recent visit to the gym, the young woman at the check-in, get-your-key-and-towel desk was reading a book. Because I generally like readers, I asked what it was. Turned out the author was Joanne Harris, one of my favorites. I commented on that and the woman told me about another author, Susan Straight, who she thought I would like, since I like Harris. We chatted a bit more about wanting to stay up and read all night, and that was the end of the conversation.

This encounter got me thinking about the notion that everyone we encounter has a message for us. You may or may not believe this, but some people do.

No matter how brief an exchange we have – even a glance – it contains something we should know, if we choose to know it. Most of the time we choose to ignore the other person, but as in the case with my reader buddy, there may be a gem waiting to be disclosed.

But here's the really interesting part. The message can be hidden from the person sending it. Most likely is hidden, in fact. It's probably not some pompous statement or even helpful advice offered by the other. Rather, it might be some throwaway line, a little aside, a small hug, or just something the eyes linger on longer than anything else without any comment at all. The person saying or doing it may have no recollection of sending this message. Certainly not intensional on their part.

I continued to muse. If that's the case, then the opposite must be true too. We are each sending secret messages to everyone around us without intending to. It's in our smile, our walk, whether we pay attention to the other person, how impatient we are, the little joking phrase w toss out, or possibly even in something we say on purpose.

Maybe we're all walking radio towers, constantly sending and receiving. I suspect it's how we build our communal world.

Topic for the Week: I try to look at people, at least some of the people around me, more closely than usual. Then I ask myself, "What do I know, having seen and perhaps spoken to this person?" Is there a hidden message here?" And sometimes if I strip away all the baggage I load on others with my assumptions, something jumps to mind. Does this ever happen to you?

At some point in your life, you probably contemplated the question, “How would you spend your time if you knew you only had a few days/weeks/months to live?” (The question doesn't work well for “a few years” since all of us basically know we only have a few years here on earth.) And in your own way, you probably decided you would spend most of your time with your favorite friends and family members. You'd be very nice to them and tell them you loved them, and they'd do the same for you. Oh, you might also check off a couple of the things you'd always meant to do: read that book, see that movie, enjoy that sunset, taste that food. Whatever. But your primary plan would be to cut back all the extras and focus on loving what matters most.

That answer makes pretty good sense. Love is always important, but when time is short, starting to write a symphony, meditating on the leaves in the forest, or learning Chinese becomes less so. Buying consumer products seems idiotic.

Still, this answer raises further questions. First, if you believe in an afterlife that includes perfect love and you are trying to recreate as much of it on earth as you can in your few remaining weeks, you might begin to wonder, why wait? Why sit in imperfect love here when you could have the real thing in heaven?

Then it raises a second question. If the short time left is hypothetical and you might actually have many years to go, is simply being with beloved friends and family all you want to do, perhaps for decades? Writing that symphony and buying a new plasma TV begin to sound like fun again. Maybe the very short time frame is skewing your answer too much. Maybe it's not a very useful answer.

A different question might help. “How would you spend your time if you had all the time in the world?” Or to rephrase it, “How would you spend your time if you lived in the eternal NOW and didn't even think about the future?” These might suggest a more balanced answer.

Topic For the Week: How would you spend your time if you had all the time in the world?

I hope I'd have a lot of love in my life, close friends and loving family. I'm working on those: sometimes it goes better than others. I'd also like to continue exploring this physical earth. Looking at stuff. Hearing it. Tasting, feeling, and smelling it. Enjoying the beauty of nature. I'd want to do things for others and do things for me. I'd want to create and to experience what others have created.

I'd be far less fixated on the outcome of what I was doing. I'd work in the garden because right now working in the garden felt good. Of course I might hope to get some vegetables or flowers from the garden too, but that would be of less concern than the wonder of playing in the dirt. I'd make fewer concrete plans and jump from one thing to another far more easily. Hmmm. I think I'm saying that I'd become more childlike. More open to experience. Probably even weirder than I already am.

What about you?

I recently saw a newspaper filler photo with the following caption: “Eighty-six-year-old Luis Cruz of Houston plays the violin on the side of a road in Houston on Tuesday.” The photo shows Luis Cruz, a small elderly man in jeans and a straw cowboy hat, playing his fiddle in what appears to be a parking lot under one of the Houston highway overpasses. Mr. Cruz is obviously doing exactly what he want to do. He is in the moment and has the most beatific smile on his face. My guess is that he has no further expectations, no goals, no other rewards for this activity. He simply loves doing it.

The photo reminded me of something a Buddhist monk once wrote: “Grow old quickly.” Grow old to the place where you can forget all your ego-driven expectations and simply play your fiddle under a Houston overpass with a huge smile on your face. And do it quickly. Don't wait until you're 86.

This is so directly in contrast to our society's aims! We are bombarded with messages all day every day about how to stay young. How to keep our skin from aging. How to loose weight. How to “think young”. How 60 is the new 40. How people with years of experience can hide it on their resumes so they can compete for jobs with those with no experience. How to flatten your stomach. How to live with your parents when you're over 30 and avoid all commitments. How to have children when you're 40, 50, 63. (Just saw something about a woman who gave birth at 63!) How to avoid aging at any cost.

The ego speaks: Stay young! The monk speaks: Grow old!

I don't think the monk is saying you should look old. Or young. I think his point is that it doesn't matter how you look. If you reach the place where you are truly in the moment, you will look exactly like you are supposed to look without any effort. You will experience what you should experience. You will receive what you should receive and give what you should give. And you will love it all because it is exactly right in this moment.

Topic for the Week: I'm going keep the picture of Luis Cruz to remind me where I hope life is going. Someday I hope I'll have a smile as wide as his. Someday soon, maybe, when I stop worrying about everything and realize that life is perfect. That it is always perfect. That we can make changes and it will still be perfect. That it can't be any other way. What do you think?