A guy I know had his life turned upside down a few years ago by certain actions of others so that he lost what was most dear to him. It’s a dilemma older than Job–how to manage when our suffering seems inexplicable, or worse, can convincingly be blamed on someone else?

In order to keep from falling into the pit of bitterness, he decided on something we came to call radical responsibility, that is, the recognition that while he has no control over the free will of anyone else, he was solely and completely responsible for his own state of being. Happy, sad, mad, bitter, victimized, whatever he felt, however unbidden these feelings arose in him, they were his responses, his moment to moment experiences, and no one else’s. He couldn’t blame anyone for them.

If he took 100 people off the street and told them his story, I don’t doubt that all of them would join him a chorus of betrayal and revenge if he asked. That he resisted convention, and risked another way, through pain and ultimately to relief and resolution, was a marvel and inspiration to see.

There’s no place like home…Arrived back from a retreat in India Jan 13.

Thank you for your patience with my absence.

There were many wonderful things about this trip to India. Most had to do with the retreat itself, but many also had to do with simply the astounding change in perspective that inevitably comes with plopping down in a different culture. I particularly appreciated being only one of two Americans in the group of 120 or so people attending this retreat. There were many Indians, of course, but also there were Nepalese, Indonesian, Chinese, Australian, Burmese, Sri Lankan, Canadian, Thai, an Englishman, and a devoted young Finn who came to meditate.

It is so easy, living in America, to overestimate its dominance in the world, and it was refreshing, inspiring actually, to be among so many people for whom the U.S. had very little significance. There are so many perspectives, and all of them reflect, if not embody, some truth.

When it comes to making movies which are the most personally riveting, the most apt to take a mere idea and “bring it to life”, the Best Director Award without a doubt goes to ourselves. We’re so good at it that fiction becomes fact, and we can’t tell real from reel. Indeed, we don’t believe this is movie making at all. It’s real! It’s actually happening! And of course something is happening, but not the movie that’s going on in our head.

But if we have confused fact and fiction, how do we know we’re making movies, and how do we tease apart reel from real? Start with the known and move towards the unknown. Often we are aware of some emotion that is out of proportion to the circumstance. That’s a good place to start, as it’s a pretty sure sign we’re at the theater eating popcorn. Say there’s a strong reaction to a co-worker, he or she just drives you crazy. If you’re like most people, you begin to spin out a tale that’s part fact, part fiction. The fact part is this person said such and such or did this or that. The fiction part is everything else, all the character, plot, value and meaning we ascribe to make our reaction to what they said or did seem reasonable and more importantly, unworthy of independent investigation.

Our story is so compelling that we believe our reaction naturally comes out of the plot. He is a real jerk, can you believe he did that? So, of course I’m upset. It’s much harder to see the extent to which we get upset and then get busy with the plot line to cloud a better understanding of our reactivity. Facing that reactivity on its own terms, although sometimes very unpleasant, and often humbling, is ultimately a much richer and rewarding story because it involves a deeper sense of ourselves. Making movies just adds layers of drama and confusion to our lives. Claiming our reactions with understanding and compassion helps get us out of the movie business.

I was talking the other day with a guy who’d just gotten back from a nice, long, sunny, warm (need I go on?) vacation. We were wondering how to describe those qualities that are so exquisitely felt when we’re relaxed and away, and how to bring them back home. We came up with three: A Slowing of Time, An Expansion of Space, and A Decrease of Import.

Time: Sooner or later on vacation, we start to slow down. Ahhh…Really, I think we simply begin experiencing the passage of time. In our regular lives, it’s so easy for  time to be marked not by experience, but by a conception of how many things we have to do in a particular packet of time, be it an hour, day, or a week.

Space: This is about perspective, distant vistas. It’s the cave man first lifting his head up to the stars. There’s something about experiencing the space around us that brings a broader perspective and helps us to slow down. And as with Time, our regular lives can so easily close in on us and limit our horizon. We may glance up, but not really experience. We simply reference it, and hurry on.

Import: Another nice thing about vacation is that the most important thing we usually have to decide is where to go to dinner. Vacation decisions rarely have the same urgent, critical feeling that decisions tend to have in our regular lives. There are obviously important things we have to deal at home, but agitation can build up to the point where which bank line we stand in, or what shirt to wear, feels way more important than it truly is.

Our regular lives tend to compress time, shrink space, and inflate importance. Vacations tend to do the opposite. So how to bring the vacation home? This may sound naive, but it works: slow down, look around, remember what’s most important. It sounds naive because it’s a simple thing to do for a moment. But it doesn’t work if only done for a moment. And it’s very hard to do for 10 straight moments, incredibly hard for a 100. But making the effort to do some number in between will change your day for the better, guaranteed.

When it comes to New Year’s Resolutions, it could just as well be a Revolution. Because it is a kind of revolt we are often hoping for as we begin again. A revolt against our own status quo. Habits we’ve gotten into, or one’s of long standing that we still haven’t shaken. We long to overcome the tyranny of those parts of ourselves that seem to have control over us, or at least our behavior at times, and maintain a conflict between our experienced selves and the self we think we should or could be.

We usually think this conflict is solved by attaining the desired goal, but a Resolution will really only be successful if it lessens our conflict. That is, a good Resolution is one that is in that sweet spot of “not so hard” so as to inflame the tyrant within, and “hard enough” to experience some measurable success. The inspiration that comes from “succeeding” at the tiniest change over a whole year is of incomparable value to any size of change that lasts only a few weeks. Most of us way overshoot the mark.

So, if you’re contemplating a Resolution for yourself this year, it helps to pick a “degree of difficulty” that seems too easy, almost trivial. The trick is to then use that easiness to insist on sticking to it for the whole year.

Good Luck! And Happy New Year!

I’ve spoken with a number of people “going home” for the holidays. This experience is often both positive and negative. There is hopefully joy and comfort, but at least a familiarity that provides a sense of belonging, however irregular or tentative is our membership. At the same time there are deep habits of mind that we re-enter in “going home” that pull us into a way of being that is not our own. We are pulled into what I call the family trance.

It’s trance-like in that we tend to abdicate our conscious will to a set of rules other than that which we normally live by. These rules came into being when we were young, too young to participate in their making. This quality of operating unconsciously is strengthened when the family only gets together once in a while. As the years roll on, having only a few days a year around those we grew up with, means that our lives mature much faster that our family relationships. In “going home” we tend to “pick up where we left off.” There will be a greater potential difference in how we are in our own lives from how we are expected to be in our family. Tension will arise if at some level we feel we have to choose between the self we’ve become and the self our family expects.

If this resonates and in fact takes place to any degree, it is incredibly useful to be aware of it, to learn to recognize trance from non-trance, and to strive to stay out of trance as much as possible. It’s a useful mission for any family visit, but especially over the holidays, when hopes and fears about family and where we truly belong tend to be more intensely aroused.

Probably sounds like a lot of work and not much fun the way I put it. But to me what’s not fun is maintaining such important relationships with a ghost of myself, relationships where I plan visits according to “how much I can stand.” That’s exhausting. Staying aware, staying out of trance, and insisting that the set of rules by which the family operates continue to evolve saves gobs of time and energy in the long run. And it’s a lot more fun.