The Promise of Adventure and Happiness

The Sunset is Fearless, It Knows It Foreshadows and New Dawn - Severn River - Annapolis, MD

I tell many lies but am always believed

if the worst happens, I'll be greatly relieved

On the day you were born, I poisoned your heart

I'll still be here on the day you depart.

Deepak Chopra speaks this little riddle through the voice of his main character in Why is God Laughing?, and when the answer is given it stopped me short. Fear is a liar, and when I’m honest, every little bit of this ditty is true in my life except the last line.

It’s taken me far too long, but I’m grateful that I’m finally becoming more aware of the attitudes and outlooks that have largely shaped my life over the last four decades. I hope that awareness will give me a fighting chance to adjust my path and in turn shape my journey.

I know now that I’m being drawn to the cross country walking pilgrimage that my lifetime friend and I have been planning over the last couple of years. I don’t know how I’m going to earn my keep, but I’ve grown weary of earning my living. The walk we’re planning from Newport, RI to Newport, OR represents an opportunity to take a chance on adventure and happiness. I’m drawn to it in a way I can’t logically defend.

What great adventure have you been setting to the side? If you’re like me, there are a thousand reasons not to pursue your dreams. If you’re like me, all of those reasons are really just fear in disguise. Fear’s a sneaky adversary, but I encourage you to take a chance on adventure and happiness. What’s the worst that could happen?

I'm not sure what will happen tomorrow, but I'm going to try to take a chance on adventure and happiness.

Separation From Friends

Today was another taxing, but productive day.  The early morning ambulation came off without a hitch and the universe treated me to quite a light show as the sun peeked up over the horizon. It was a great way to start the day.

Sculling on the Anacostia

The water was glassy, and that's the first time the reflection set-up has been this spectacular for a very long time.

Anacostia Light Show

As the dawn progressed, the colors got deeper, and the hint of fall in the air begged an easy pace to enjoy the show.

Anacostia Waterfront Halo

Sunbeams shot through the clouds creating a halo over the post industrial section of the Anacostia Riverfront.

Sky in the Water - Anacostia River

The river pulled the sky under the surface and did its part to enliven the palette.

The rest of the day was a little more taxing, but thanks to the practice of fitness, starting the day right, and some help from my friends quite a bit got accomplished. Tomorrow we send off one of the very best of us from the day job into retirement. I'm happy for his upcoming change of pace, grateful for his untiring support over the last two years, and saddened to see him part company with a group of folks who have ground it out to bury our critics in success.  I'm looking forward to how the day unfolds, and I hope that the universe grants me the strength and wisdom to honor this great man's contributions to his county, his service, and our little band of merry brothers. It's going to be epic.

Third Floor Sunset

My resistance against getting evicted probably played the last round of cards today.  From here on out any additional action will probably be confined to calling, raising, or folding. We'll see how it plays out.  Now that I've gotten my case together (for the most part) all in one place, I'm looking forward to shifting my focus on being happy rather than being right.

The first step in supporting the resistance through optimism approach was to bear witness to the sunset from the third floor of my current (and soon to be ex) quarters.

Third Floor Sunset - Annapolis

The colors were splendid, but frankly, there are better vistas to be had within easy walking distance. My likely new landing spot actually splits the distance between two of the finer locations. If the accommodations meet the approval of the roommates, I'll be money ahead. It will be good to put this whole unfortunate episode in the rearview mirror.

Now that we've gone the final round of bolstering our hands, I'm looking forward to what the flop holds for all of us tomorrow.  It may not happen then, but I'm sure it will be something worth writing about. The universe is pretty capable of delivering the goods if I get out of the way and let it perform.

Gratitude Thursday

As has become my occasional habit when I tend to run low on inspiration, I fall back on the good old gratitude day to tide me over until something else grabs my attention. Today is one of those days.

I am grateful that I woke up this morning. I rediscovered a new little nook at a slightly different time of the day, and this is what I saw.

Anacostia Waterfront at Daybreak with the USS Barry

I am grateful for the visionaries, the financiers, and the people with a dream that have transformed Southeast Washington, DC from a run-down, crime blighted area into something that is going to be truly stunning and mostly publicly accessible. It already is very nice, and I'm looking forward to attending summer concerts in "The Yards" park. They were good last year, but they will be particularly interesting this year when the water access via the new recreational boating docks are finished.

The Yards Park Bridge framing the Setting Moon on the Anacostia

I'm grateful to have been born in a country brimming with opportunity.

I'm grateful for the freedom to fail and still manage a recovery in relatively short order.

I'm grateful that I'm learning that happiness is a choice and is within the grasp of just about anyone. This is a lesson that I had heard, but I've finally gotten enough life experience to begin to feel the truth of it.

I'm grateful for the folks at work that put up with my speechifying, passionate outbursts, and even my brief stints of moodiness.

I'm grateful for a budding spiritual connection to the larger universe, the fact that walking has made this transition local and not overwhelming, and being surrounded by a group of seekers that are pursuing this connection in their own way.

I'm grateful that I finally learned to skip the television and get out of the house and start living.

I'm grateful for working cats.

For a day that felt a bit bereft of inspiration, I'm grateful to be able to fall back into this occasional part of my daily practice and come out on the other side feeling inspired. This gratitude thing really works, and as always, I'm looking forward to what tomorrow may reveal.

Looking for Beauty

Today on my morning walk, I was listening to a TED Talk listed under the broad category of Beauty that centered on happiness and how humans related to this particular feeling.  As TED products go, this one was middle of the road for me in terms of inspiration, but the speaker did address an interesting result from a study associated with happiness in relationships. Apparently, one of the conclusions of the study was that it took five positive comments for every one negative comment for people involved in a relationship to characterize that relationship as happy. The speaker's thesis was that this skewed result is due to the fact that we, as humans, are hypersensitive to negative input as a survival mechanism. This survival technique was really very useful out on the plains 10,000 years ago, but it is less valuable now when physical survival is not nearly the front and center concern that it once represented.

Later during the walk, I was talking to Rory, and he suggested that he'd awakened and was a bit down in the dumps. We talked about that for awhile, and eventually, he got around to asking me one of his standard questions in the wee hours before twilight. "What are you looking forward to at work today?"

I've been doing the same job for about two years now, and the bulk of my actions are mostly associated with keeping bad things from happening. It's important work, but if I'm honest, it's not very inspiring work.  It is the day to day attention to detail that I'm pretty good at executing.  It'a also a far cry from what I'd characterize as being an exploration, experiment, or adventure. I've known periods where all of my existence seemed like one, two, or even all three of those things. Those periods were both exhilarating and intensely rewarding. Working the problems using my wits, knowledge, and sometimes brawn (such that it is) and dexterity against unknown odds in the face of uncertainty is what I always imagined I was training to do when I was growing up.

Alas, things aren't always high adventure, but right now the truth of the matter is that I'm not going out of my way to look forward to much of anything at work. The things I look forward to facing are the walks, the learning through reading and listening to smart people, jogging, creating something new, experimenting in the kitchen, etc. My work now facilitates my ability to do the things that I look forward to doing.  I do look forward to getting out on a ship underway for trials and any opportunity to travel, but that's about it as far as work is concerned.

In response to Rory's question, I asked him what sort of beauty he expected to encounter today. He said, "Good question. I don't think I've ever put that much thought into that before. I'll have to think about it."

Moonset on the Anacostia

Since I started walking, I think about encountering and appreciating beauty on a regular basis now. The recognition of beauty started slowly at first over a year ago, but I've found that once I started observing it all around me, it was almost impossible for me to not approach the observation and appreciation in a deliberate manner.  I find that unlike the speaker suggested in the TED Talk, I'm less sensitive to negative situations, and I'm more attuned to positive circumstances. Looking for beauty has changed the way I view the world and my life is much better for the happy accident that evolved into a deliberate seeking of the goodness that flows all around us.

Sunrise over the Anacostia

Today I saw beauty in the moonset and sunrise over the Anacostia River. I also saw beauty in the architecture, air, dogs, fellow humans, and some pretty sweet cars in between these two events during the course of my walk.

I even recognized beauty in the chuckle brought on by a joke, and the happiness shining from the face of a newly married bride and groom as I ground out the pedestrian (no pun intended) task of oiling the gears of the bureaucracy to make sure they kept grinding along.

I don't know what I'll encounter tomorrow, but I am looking forward to and seeking the beauty.

Something to Do While Walking

Walking is its own reward.  Through my walking over the last year I believe I've become more observant and less critical.  I've embraced the concept that there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.  I have a much better idea what people living on the street have to face, and I've gained a higher level of empathy for their circumstances.  I've learned to appreciate finding a bathroom, a cool drink, and the little chemical hand warming pouches.  I've gotten to see things that I never imagined even existed in the neighborhood where I live and where I work.  I've been accidentally caught up in a Mardi Gras parade.

One of the more beneficial aspects of walking is that I've found extra time that I never knew existed.  I'm not quite sure what I was doing with this time before...probably watching television or something equally unproductive.  Having this gift of time gives me the space to create something to do while walking.  Some of this time...actually quite a lot of it, I've spent talking to Rory Conlan.  I've spent a fair amount of time on the phone with other people.  I've listened to some music, and recently, I've been listening to the extensive library of TED Talks.

Street Art Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe in Annapolis, MD

Today, I was listening to a talk by Louie Schwartzberg titled "Nature. Beauty. Gratitude." given at a TEDx conference in San Francisco, CA.  Mr. Schwartzberg is a nature photographer who specializes in taking time-lapse photos nature, but that's not really captured my attention. What really grabbed me was the gist of a project that he was working on in 2011 that dealt with the gratitude of living in the moments that make up a single day.  One of the narrators pointed out the unique nature of every moment. That when we open our eyes, hearts, and minds there are endless things that enrich our lives and make mindfulness of gratitude an easy and natural state of mind.

My shadow on the trail...feeling grateful

To open my eyes and observe is to break the bonds of generalization.  Weather becomes what's happening in the moment rather than something to be clinically described by a weather predictor on the television.  The currents in the air, the moisture or dryness, the clouds in the sky that show apparently endless variation, or the nature of a particular rain.  They're always different and always interesting. This talk I was listening to reaffirmed the sense of wonder that's come back into my life since I hit the trail a little over a year ago.

A Water Tower and the Sky - Annapolis, MD

Observing the day like it is the first I've ever seen and the last I may ever see is the sense of wonder that I relearned while out on the trail. Looking back, I'm not sure when that lesson began to sink in and I began to recapture that sense of wonder we're all naturally born with, but somehow, seems to fade with the intervening years.  By recapturing the wonder of life, the gratitude for the gift of the experience seems to naturally rush back into my consciousness, and a sense of contentment and happiness follows closely in its wake.

It was another great day, and I hope for the privilege of another tomorrow.