We always get a sense of simply surviving the holiday season these days. It just isn't what it once was - which has good and bad aspects. It's good that we don't waste a lot of time and money shopping and buying things that are unneeded and unwanted, but its sad that we don't find the magic in the season that we once did as children. Grotesque decorative indulgences that would have delighted in early years now produce only wonderment at the motivation that causes these garish scenes to appear.



I think the reason the whole season once produced such enchantment is the lapse in hostilities that occured within families, when there could be generosity and cheeriness that was not available the rest of the year. There was also the perception of security in an activity that offered continuity from year to year, amongst a lot of changes and insecurity during the other months. The familiar decoration, customs, smells, and tastes provided a reliable confirmation that there was something predictable and comforting amongst all the uncertainty and dreariness that preceded and followed.



I've been learning that there really isn't any security to be found in external activities or objects. And now, I try to find opportunities for generosity and delight all year. Christmas is to these things what New Years Eve is to drinking - amateur time for binging. I wish everyone would just try to be kind and cheery all year, and give to people who need things and support when their needs are discovered. Instead of indulging once a year while being manipulated mercilessly by commercial interests, we could all become generous with all that we have to offer, all the time.



Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

I think now is a good time to comment on the realization that real acceptance of our eventual demise can be a means for finding release from so much of what drags us down from day to day.

As children and teens we generally have a pretty solid perception of immortality. Intellectually, we know that the end will arrive one day from a pretty early age, but we don't really feel threatened by it for a long time. Then as we grow older and start to see deterioration in ourselves and our peers, and some of our friends and family of similar vintage start to actually expire, we start to grow increasingly uncomfortable about our grip on life. I believe this precipitates the 'mid life crisis' and a lot of unproductive and unhealthy behavior and attitudes.



It's odd - as has happened so often in recent times a lot of things observed and experienced seem to coalesce making some concept more whole or clear.

Recently I re-started our Netflix DVD subscription, and one of the first things to arrive out of my queue was the first season disc of Six Feet Under. This is a a fine HBO drama series directed and produced by Alan Ball, who also created the wonderful film American Beauty for theatrical release. This series deals on many levels with death and dying...and living. It offers an interesting framework for so many of the insights and observations that have come to light recently from other reading and listening.

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The Buddhist body of knowledge and wisdom is full of references to confronting the inevitability of death as the ultimate expression of the impermanence that governs existence. The view is that our resistance to all manner of change and obsessive desire to find and hold bits of security in life has the effect of trapping us in futile and unproductive struggles. This thrashing about results in a lot of unhappiness, and probable hastens the ultimate outcome of our born-live-die cycle with all the resultant mental and physical stress. Everyone so concerned with where they've been and where they might be headed - not much opportunity remains to relax and enjoy the ride as it happens.

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Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts grasp this central issue in their efforts to bring us to a workable view of sanity and quality of life. Here are a few comments from Watts out of a taped lecture series called "Out of the Trap"...

"...there simply is no point in straining to prevent this from happening... get-off-the-strain, the general up-tightness about preventing one's own demise. And you'll live longer....for you see, it is through the acceptance of death that you become suddenly charged with life. I say if you give up the impossible task, you have all the energy that you've been using to strain against the inevitable, to do something great. So that you become alive in the degree that you accept death."

Dr. Watts isn't suggesting that we stop driving carefully, or taking care of our health as best we can in practical ways like exercise and diet. He is simply saying that the way we deal with each other, and material things, and our work and our politics are often influenced by our sublimated fear of death.

"The current fear, paranoia, mistrust of everyone and everything is itself the process of destruction..."

Watts points out the obvious, which we somehow manage to deny in subtle ways - that there is no point grasping at things that might provide the illusion of permanence and immortality - when a lot of what seems important doesn't really matter since no one will ultimately survive. This fact can be life-affirming and oddly comforting.

We have so much trouble opening up to the world as we perceive external actiactivity and influences to somehow threaten us, as though resisting what we encounter could somehow make immortality more feasible. We could take some of that energy we devote to hostility and defending ourselves, and apply it to more useful thoughts and actions that bring more happiness and peace into our lives and the lives of others.



It may seem implausible, all this discussion of death to better affirm life - but Watts reminds us that the aviator only experiences the joy of successful flight with the benefit of an intimate understanding of gravity.

Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

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Work is going well this week - I am getting deeper into router and switch configuration than ever before, and there is a tremendous amount of documentation to do where none exists or what there is does not reflect the ways things are put together. I'm not as afraid of being unable to deliver high performance in a job, and unable to cope with everyday life as I had been in recent weeks.

Part of the reason these activities - and various other facets of life - are seeming more like fun and not some sort of punishment is the way all the reading has converged on the subject of reducing the amount of time spent mentally dwelling in the past and future. Between Pema Chödrön's "Comfortable with Uncertainty" and the "Power of Now" book by Eckhart Tolle I am seeing this basic requirement for a happy life and emotional health presented in a variety of convincing ways.

Add to that a careful watching of an old recording of Dr. Wayne Dyer and his Power of Intention program and Alan Watts in some intriguing cassette lectures from the beat era, and you have an unavoidable confrontation with some fundamental tenets of the human condition. All of these sources tap into thousands of years of demonstrated benefit from a more honest and straightforward relation to existence than what we are so often saddled with by our conditioning.



One of the most powerful of the Buddhist teachings is that as long as there is struggle to achieve or avoid something, it will never be brought into or kept out of our lives. Once one is able to peacefully abide, things have a way of happening as they were meant to in the grand scheme of things.

And no matter what takes place, at least there can be peace of mind and some appreciation for the life that happens while trudging along the path.



Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

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A couple of days ago I received an note from a dear person I have known for over twenty-five years, shortly after I sent out an email to him and other friends with my contact info and a reminder that my blog recounted recent experiences and history leading up the them. I guess I hadn't realized how neurotic I sound at times, as I was surprised by his suggestion that I seek Professional Help to help me find direction and bring more happiness into my life.

The truth is, while I have described (to excess?) my distress in reaction to various circumstances of recent months, I perceive this time of my life as a real opportunity to grow and find better, more realistic and honest ways to relate to the world and life. I am fascinated and illuminated by much of what I experience, even though there are troubling episodes along the way. I have no aversion to the Couch, and have benefited mightily from time spent on it in the past, but don't feel compelled to seek relief from it currently.

My friend comments...

"All this talk on your blog........ One day it's contemplation on what constitutes a fulfilled life and the next its talk about geography."

Well - I have to agree. I do meander around with my tone and choice of topic - sometimes I am trying to share a valuable insight as eloquently as I can, because it helps me assimilate it and I hope to offer some inspiration to others. Other times I indulge in half-baked frivolous speculation about things. Readers can decide if entries do either. And hey, it's a blog. My novel will come later, in case anyone is waiting for something to option a screenplay with.

"In the first you sound like you might be absorbing some of the information you read (which mostly makes sense to me). In the second you sound like you never read it. Very curious."

Sigh. I too experience this contradiction - up close. I read and understand intellectually some wonderful concepts that are obviously universal and indisputable in their truth, yet I find myself acting and thinking as if I never had those insights. To me, this is simply part of the experience of learning and growing, and as long as I am gentle and compassionate with myself over these lapses, and continue to evolve at a more fundamental level I am happy and gratified that I am at least on the right path.

"I get the sense that you are very unhappy with your life and casting about for a solution. I also get the sense that you (maybe willfully) are not going to stop thrashing about long enough to learn what you really want - the key words being 'you' and 'want.'"

Here is where I feel I have really failed to convey my fundamental optimism and - yes, even joy - that I have this opportunity to finally grow up, become more compassionate and generous, and make peace with life while there is still some remaining to experience. How tragic it would be to reach the end of one's time on the planet without having an opportunity to live a substantial portion of it at peace with impermanence and the inevitability of change and the eventual end of this life.

Impermanence - and unwillingness to accept it - is what has caused so much of my negative reaction to circumstances. It is the cause for misery and unhappiness on a global scale - sadly a prominent part of most human experience. And yes - I am willful, as my dear friend knows all too well from the days long ago when our lives were so deliciously and intricately intertwined.

Really, I think I am beginning to understand that the problem is not that I don't know what I want - the problem is that I spend too much time plotting and fretting about the future - and evaluating and grading past actions and aftereffects - instead of appreciating and joyfully experiencing what is available and happening here and now. Just becoming aware of this fact makes it possible to alter the old conditioned patterns of thought and behavior.

Sooner or later some decisions will need to be made that will shape the circumstances of our future lives. The quality of those decisions will be higher if they are not merely a result of desperate efforts to control the uncontrollable, or hide from pain, or grasp at pleasure to mask directly dealing with things as they are.

Thank you friend, for your concern and your advice. It was helpful, even if not exactly in the way you intended.



Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

I've been listening to an Alan Watts tape while driving between home and work recently. Today, I was making a second pass through his tape "Out of Your Mind", which is more or less about Zen and the evolution of Western thought - about man's relationship with creation and existence, and the intelligence behind the universe. The very nature of reality.

Dr. Watts believes that we need to give our incessant thinking a rest now and then to save our sanity - certainly a timely message for me. So much of discursive thought is wound up in judging the merits of past events, and worrying about the future that there is little energy left for experiencing what actually matters - the moment to moment reality that is in many respects all that actually exists. Everything else is just a mental construct of some kind, spun into personalized stories colored by our previous conditioning.

Here is Watts on the subject:



"A person who thinks all the time, has nothing to think about except thoughts. So - he looses touch with reality...and lives in a world of illusions. By thoughts I mean specifically - chatter in the skull, perpetual and compulsive repitition of words, of reckoning and calculating. I'm not saying that thinking is bad - like everything else, it's useful in moderation. A good servant, but a bad master.

And all so-called civilized peoples, have increasingly become crazy and self-destructive - because - through excessive thinking they have lost touch with reality.

That's to say - we confuse signs - words, numbers, symbols,and ideas - with the real world."

Dr. Watts points out further that as we run about engaged in frenzied activity believing we are going to somehow accomplish things that will help us find pleasure and avoid pain we are doomed to endlessly repeat the cycles of Buddhist samsara - where we are unable to just peacefully abide with what - is. He quotes Aristotle; "..."The goal of action is contemplation."...in other words, busy busy busy busy busy - but what's it all about?",

What we fail to realize as we scurry around trying to arrange the universe to our satisfaction and going somewhere we hope will be less painful and more pleasurable, is that in many respects we're already there. We're just oblivious to the fact.

Again, Watts;
"One cannot act - creatively - except on the basis of stillness - of having a mind that is capable from, time to time, of stopping thinking."



Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf
Alan Watts quotes from "Out of Your Mind", a two-cassette audio lecture from Alan Watts Electronic University.

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When we decided to return to California from Denver, it was with the belief that we should stabilize our situation, with at least a few months of working and living in a stable rental - to have a break from the wild uncertainty that developed toward the end of our time in Colorado.

There were times during those last few weeks in Colorado when we discussed having our belongings hauled out of storage for delivery to the temporary rental just so we could have a massive yard sale to clear the way for an immediate journey to Mexico of indeterminate length. We also considered leasing a longer-term house, and still might have considered buying if the right place had come along, but with the new uncertainty about our work prospects and general dismay with the prolonged groundlessness we were fairly quick to just embrace the California work opportunities and reluctantly bail out of Denver.

So in fact, things have worked out as we anticipated with California. Pat is trying to make his work responsibilities portable so we have the option to relocate elsewhere. I was also offered a position as a contract network engineer with the same company, which I accepted. All of this sets the stage for - something else - in six months.



The problem is (if it is indeed a problem) we don't yet know what it will be that happens next. We're in that stable eye of the hurricane for the moment, but it doesn't make sense to stay here paying big rent in California and working in stressful and demanding jobs indefinitely. The most likely options are shaping up as:

• Buy a house in Alameda. Very expensive, with huge tax burden and risk of declining value if the real estate bubble finally starts to deflate. Also, we don't envision wanting to be in California more that a couple of additional years, and the risk of declining value in that period along with transaction costs if sold make it seem an unlikely option. Even if values continue to appreciate, we could never rent the place out for positive cash flow if we wanted to hold it but relocate elsewhere.
  
  
• Return to Denver and buy an appropriate house in one of the nice neighborhoods we scouted. One third to one half the cost of California houses, with more upside potential (we think) and 15-20% of the property tax burden. Pat might be able to continue his work remotely, traveling out of the big hub airport as needed. I should be able to find contract or full time employment there. However, I might also be able to work on fixing up a rental property or our own home - enhancing its value for future rental or resale. This might be more valuable than working at a job. We would be close to Mona and Clark and the ranch in Wheatland. Downsides of the Denver move include the anxiety of returning to the scene of an initial setback, and harsh winters we don't look forward to.
  
  
• Buy a piece of property in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Pat works as above, I keep an eye out for a local opportunity in Cheyenne, and otherwise as above for me. Only an hour from Wheatland. Property even less pricey than Denver. Harsh winters. In the case of both Denver and Cheyenne, we would try to eventually make this a summer residence, with winters in Mexico - Merida or elsewhere. Or we could rent the place out for later income, and eventually sell for a profit.
  
  
• Tough it out here in Alameda for as long as we can, then liquidate our stuff and head for Mexico. This could be to Merida, with its brutally hot weather at times, in which case we would probably treat it as a real estate investment opportunity and also look for a place later in a more temperate part of the country. Maybe split our time between the two places. Or - as above - spend summers in Colorado or Wyoming and winters in Mexico. We might also consider just heading south for a large and long tour of different areas, including Guadalajara/Chapala, Morelia-Uruapan, Michoacan, and the more appealing West coast locations like Puerto Escondido.
  
  

As (if) you consider the above options, keep in mind that leaving here and heading for Mexico would mean freedom from the requirement to be employed - it's cheap enough living in Mexico to pull this off with a little luck, caution and courage. Any other scenario requires at least one of us to keep working.

Well, that's about all I can speculate for now. Time to go to the gym and farmers market in Oakland. If anyone wants to check in with an opinion by all means do so. Maybe we should set up a little web poll or contest - "Pick a plan for Pat and Stan".

As I experience fear and hesitation about whatever might happen in the coming year, I guess I should keep in mind the Western interpretation of the two Chinese characters wei and ji - one means danger, and the other means opportunity. Together they mean crisis. As life becomes (or is revealed to be inherently) uncertain and the ground beneath our feet shifts and subsides, this can be our opportunity to move on to what we really want to experience, or be available for.

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In the end, Mexico is as good a (probably better) place to be deceased as any. That is the inevitable outcome of our time here on the planet - the ultimate impermanence. Maybe accepting that fact fully will clear the way for some easier decisions near the end of the coming spring.



Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf

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