life, after death

I am not so arrogant as to think the universe has singled me out to teach me a lesson, but there are times when the plot twists are so perplexing that it would be arrogant not to search for one. In the last two months, four people close to me have left the world as I know it. Until now, I had been mostly fortunate to have avoided the harsh realities of mortality, but as the saying goes, when it rains, it dumps an ocean on your unsuspecting ass. I feel as if my very foundation has been swept away, flooded with new possibilities of finiteness, loss, compassion, regret. Stories in the news of someone dying are no longer abstract. The connection with someone who has also lost a parent is palpable, a calling card of uninvited, unrelenting wisdom. Petty concerns are infuriating, confusing, and altogether the perfect distraction when the pain and uncertainty is just too much. My reality is both more empty and more full. A paradox of better understanding the nature of the universe and coming to terms with the fact that it makes no sense. 

I think most of us are born with, or adopt or are taught, the delusion of permanence. Our parents will always be there — we have to believe this because if not, we will die. Even if that’s not entirely true, it’s how we feel. They are the source of life, of security, of happiness, and coming to terms with their human-ness is hard enough, not to mention their mortality. I always knew intellectually that losing a parent was a rite of passage of sorts, something impossible to truly understand until it happens. The loss of a friend, particularly someone who showed no signs of sickness or even weakness, someone who loved life and loved his friends, is another puzzle that can only be solved once the pieces are in front of you, if at all. Even the passing of someone who fought in wars decades before you were born is a shock, because somehow once someone has lived to the ripe old age of 96, they appear eternal. I suppose it feels as if we will all live forever, until we don’t. Death is something impossible to grok until you face it, and by then it’s too late. And those of us who are left to witness the impermanence of our loved ones, our heroes, and even our enemies, can only honor that loss by questioning the very purpose of this absurd and beautiful opportunity called existence. 

Even the youngest of Tibetan monks learn to meditate intensely on death and impermanence. Although they believe in an afterlife, the uncertainty of what form that will take gives added weight to the importance of the human experience and living a meaningful life. While it's impossible to know what comes next, I find it practical to hedge my bets. In other words, if there is an afterlife, I hope I will have done enough good in the world to have earned a good rebirth; and if there isn’t, well then I hope I did enough good in the world to have left the place a little better than how I found it. All I know is that my soul, or whatever “stuff” I’m made of, has the opportunity to experience life now — in all its confusing, complex, painful, and messy magnificence. I was sharing with a friend recently that I was feeling guilty that my dad might have waited for me before he finally passed, that I had participated in prolonging his pain. He fought so hard for every breath, just as he had fought so hard for everything in his life, and never, never complained. My friend replied, “life is pain.” And it’s true. Why would I want to take that away? We shouldn’t shun the pain. It’s how we know we’re alive. We simply have to learn to be with the pain, to not be afraid of it, and to embrace both the emotional pain of loss and the physical pain of pushing against our boundaries. Pain is training to live, comfort is… well… the opposite. 

There came a tipping point for me, in the midst of a cycle of sorrow I thought I might never climb out of, when I realized the source of much of my suffering was the unwillingness to accept uncertainty. My whole life I’ve been trying to control, to predict, to keep myself safe — from harm, from making mistakes, from losing people I love — but it’s a rigged game. There is no possibility of controlling these things and there are no winners when you try. Getting what you want only reinforces the delusion that it’s possible to control and that our attachments are worth using all our energy to keep. Targets are good, don’t get me wrong, but in the end, it’s not hitting the targets that matter, it’s the number of arrows you've shot. If you spend too much time waiting, lining up your shot, worrying that you might miss, you will most certainly miss the most important thing of all — you. I’ve realized now that instead of hitting a bullseye, I’d much rather have the target, and everything surrounding it, covered in arrows, broken, backwards, buried. Who knows? I might hit a target I didn’t even see! Didn’t Schopenhauer call that genius? Whether it’s the wind that carries it astray, my own poor aim, or someone else’s arrow, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we shoot. What matters is that we try. There is so little we can really control, perhaps nothing beyond our own experience, and even that would be debated by Pavlov. 

So maybe it’s not so much a lesson I’m looking for as it is a new way of moving through the world. Paying attention to the details but not getting lost in them. Caring about what people feel, not what they think. Doing things today that can be done tomorrow. Striving for the things that matter to me, not what’s written in my programming. Having the self-awareness to question even my strongest beliefs as well as the humility to change them. Facing adversity with vulnerability and compassion, for I am not alone in my fear, but if I run away, I will be. Death, I guess you could say, has planted the seeds to understanding the nature of aliveness. All I can do is water them with my tears and hope that from the darkest shade will grow the most beautiful garden, which one day too will die, making it all the more precious and alive. 

remembering to care

I was really nervous to go see her in the hospital. Even though we’d shared so much, spent whole summers at each others' houses, riding our low-rider bikes around town, co-ordinating our outfits, and playing Super Mario Bros on bean bag chairs that spilled their styrofoam guts everywhere. We had gradually grown apart in high school. I resented her unsubtle attempts at fitting in with the “popular” girls. I wasn’t willing to be, what I perceived as, humiliated the way she was. Even if I did want them to like me, I would never have admitted it. She changed the way she dressed, started listening to different music, drinking a lot, and even obeyed their juvenile orders when they said she had to walk 10 feet behind them. I wasn’t sure who I hated more: them for doing it, or her for letting them. Either way, even though she started to hang around with them more and abandoned her social status as a “skater” (a label I’m still not sure I’ve outgrown), I maintained the feeling that she was my friend more than anyone else’s. Maybe because she was my friend first, or maybe because I felt like they didn’t understand her the way I did, or maybe because I just wanted it to be that way. Yet when I visited her in the hospital, I felt like I was visiting a stranger. Words abandoned the part of me that speaks them.

She sat propped up in her bed. A television mumbled from high up in a corner. I remember it being bright, she could see out into the world, but not truly be in it. I can only assume she spent months in that bed, as that’s how long she was gone from school, nearly a year. I remember the fact that her toilet had a bucket in it to catch whatever went in it because she wasn’t trusted to use it responsibly. They measured and regulated everything that went inside and everything that went out. I never asked her what that was like. I never asked her why she did it, or what she was afraid of. I probably just talked about things that were going on at school and asked her about the other girls on her floor. Talking about other people is always easier than talking about oneself, especially when the truth is uncomfortable. But the thing I regret the most is not telling her how much I missed her.

I began to miss her even before went into the hospital. I missed her when she started acting differently, losing weight and dramatically giving away all her food at school. She wasn’t the girl who had tried to drink milk through her eyeball or left fart bombs on my pillow. She wasn’t the friend who would skateboard with me for hours before going inside to eat white bread cucumber sandwiches. She wasn’t the person who did a wicked imitation of her Scottish dad: “Go shite up a trrree ya wee harry!” She was different. She wasn’t just losing weight, she was losing herself, and I was losing a friend.

I didn’t know it then, but I wasn’t a very good friend to her. I didn’t tell her how I felt, I just pretended I didn’t care. Pretending not to care is so much easier than feeling the pain, the loss, the heartbreak, but it limits your ability to love. Thinking back, I realize it was my own petty fears that got in the way of being there for her. For the same reason she stopped eating, I stopped expressing how I felt. What would people think? Will I be rejected? Will they think I’m weird? Get mad? That age comes with a bag of insecurities, and I let mine weigh me down.

It’s incredible to think about how much time we spend creating fears about these things, rather than sharing ourselves with the people we care about most. Or most importantly, just experiencing ourselves, in all our beautiful quirks and imperfections. I may never know what that year was like for my fifteen-year-old friend in the hospital, nor the years that followed when she went to new school and started a whole new life for herself, but I do know that I want to be the type of person who thinks about it. And cares.

be nice to your _______ (self)

I just re-read the very first interview I did ever. I’m collecting press for my visa application and it’s proved a special kind of challenge—reading about yourself and the things you’ve written. A pressure mounts gradually, fuelled by petty fears and insecurities. A type of pressure typically only relieved by hearty belly laughs between friends, or a cathartic cry over the helpless nature of it all. In this case, I did both. And then I read the interview. Whatever judgments lingered were quickly dissolved when I read the part where I said my age: 21. That’s seven years ago. A quarter of my life ago. I was a baby. My words were laced with innocence and I read on with the curiosity of a mother reading her child’s poetry. No need for perfection, only subtle cues indicating where I was at, how I was feeling and what makes me me. It ended up being a really cool experience. I felt like I could accept a part of myself I’ve always avoided looking at. The innocent part. The part that really wants to do well, sound smart, have people like me, whatever. But that’s not who I am. Who I am is in my decision to even share myself in that way, my desire to make meaningful connections and continue questioning what I’m doing and why. I thought it was a sweet interview in the end. And it inspired me to think about why it takes seven years to be able to feel compassion for my journey, to not need to meet some ridiculous standard. Why not look at what I did a year ago, a month ago, a minute ago, with the same acceptance and understanding? It’s said that time helps put things in perspective, but how much time? By the time we even become aware of our experience, it’s already in the past, so we always have a choice of how you want to feel about it—with light-hearted curiosity or the fear-driven control of an over-protective mother. Whether it’s an important presentation or a macaroni necklace, we’re all doing our best to find ourselves and create meaningful expressions. So be nice. I’m certainly going to try.

If you’re curious, you can read my interview here.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine Saint-Exupery

mad world

I just got off the phone with a friend of mine in Vancouver. No, that’s a lie. After I hung up the phone, before I sat down at my computer, I wept. The events that took place after last night’s hockey game have left many in shock and despair, myself included. I feel shaken and disturbed by the gravity of the violence, but most of all, I feel humbled. We like to consider ourselves civilized. We walk around and talk as if we’ve evolved past our most primitive instincts, and yet it is clear we have not. You can put shoes and lipstick on a lion, but it does not make her any less vicious. It is in a lion’s nature to be violent and fight for survival. Humans also have the capacity to be violent and at some point it did help us survive as a species. However, we have also developed this incredible gift called intellect. This gift allows us to save food for the winter, to work together and share resources and, arguably, it allows us to love. We have this incredible ability to project into another person’s experience, to imagine their struggle as our own, to empathize and want to help them—these are uniquely human qualities. In my opinion, they are what make us human. When we suppress this nature, when we indulge in fear and anger, I'm not sure I know what we are. We certainly aren’t embracing our humanity, but I'm not sure I'd say we’re animals either. An animals’ intent is pure, they are simply doing what they need to do to survive. We, on the other hand, have the luxury of living with the fruits of intellect: technology, science and entertainment. We no longer need to live in fear of being eaten by a lion in the middle of the night. We no longer need to kill a boar with our bare hands. In fact, most modern citizens couldn't bring themselves to do such an act. So if we have this beautiful capacity for compassion, what does it mean when we don’t use it? Or beyond that, when we destroy it? It would be arrogant for me to blame the rioters. I can’t say I don’t feel angry, but mostly I feel a deep sadness. To imagine seeing the world in my own image and wanting to destroy it so desperately and passionately must be a painful existence. To live a life with that much repressed anger and aggression is almost beyond my comprehension, but still I try to understand. It’s not a simple problem; certainly not one with any easy solutions. But in order to understand it, we must not isolate the so-called perpetrators. There are the people enacting the violence outwardly and then there is a society that supports repression and socially acceptable violence. Our media is infested with violence, and I don’t mean reports on murders. I mean gossip, dishonorable discourse and objectification. On some level, I am embarrassed at how shocked I am. Why should I be? The signs of our deluded sense of civilization are everywhere. We are constantly being told we’re not good enough, smart enough, good-looking enough, rich enough, whatever enough—we are essentially fed fear. Then we are taught to be tough, to control our emotions, to be polite, follow the rules, but at what cost? Sure, we have a false sense of predictability, but as we now see that only holds so much weight. If we’re taught never to question and understand ourselves, how can we know what to do when we feel deep feelings of loss, isolation and despair? It may seem trivial (and on some level it is) to get worked up over a hockey game, but to many it’s so much more than that—it’s a sense of community, of belonging, identity and power. When you mix the fear of losing those things with effects of alcohol, you get a recipe for primitive angst. Not to mention, a sprinkle of unexpressed and misunderstood male hormones.

I have stopped weeping now. The act of writing has helped to some extent, though the more I contemplate it, the more I realize how complex an issue it really is. It is easy to find reasons or explanations and it feels good to believe it could be that simple, but it’s not. To truly understand why violence and destruction exists, we need to close our textbooks, abandon our theories, and look inside. It exists in all of us, in different ways, in different forms, and to deny it is to stifle our only chance at evolving through it. Judging those with less emotional maturity, less emotional resources, and less intellectual vision is not the answer. Uncovering those parts of ourselves and learning to love is.

As for my friend in Vancouver, her car got trashed and torched. Her computer, wallet and the clothes inside were burned to a crisp. She and others have been collecting photos of the culprits doing the act, including one of a girl flashing the peace sign in front of the burning vehicle. I feel sad for my friend and her loss, but I know she’ll be okay. I know she will learn from it and work to build her emotional fortitude because of it. I’m not so sure what will happen to the people in the photos though. I can only hope they will also learn from this experience, that the weight of their acts will awaken their conscience. I also hope the weight of these acts will awaken consciousness in all of us. We are not as civilized as we think, and we need to grow up, otherwise we’ll end up destroying ourselves.

His Holiness and His Humble Heart

"My message is the practice of compassion, love and kindness. Compassion can be put into practice if one recognizes the fact that every human being is a member of humanity and the human family regardless of differences in religion, culture, color and creed. Deep down there is no difference."-- Dalai Lama

Recently I had the rare privilege of meeting His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and listening to his public address on “Compassionate Ethics in Difficult Times.”  The significance and meaning of such an honor is still settling in, but I would like to express a few thoughts on my experience in the meantime.   Obviously, I was incredibly moved and left with many a concept to ponder, but as I listened to him speak, I saw a man who not only has a remarkable understanding of the human condition and capacity for compassion, but who embraces every atom of this experience we call being human. His humbleness and his ability to express a genuine love for all human beings is awe-inspiring.

Despite my uncanny ability to feel undeniably average in every way, I still find it a challenge to relate to those I perceive as not like me.  And yet here is a person who has experienced the most horrific of hardships, who has had the responsibility of running a nation under attack since the age of sixteen, who was forced to flee his country and live in exile since the age of twenty four, and here he sits, joyful as can be, empathizing with the woes of our daily lives and teaching values of kindness and compassion.  If anyone should have the right to judge our superficial struggles and first world “suffering,” surely he has the authority to do so.  But no, he seems to understand the true essence of human existence, seeing beyond the content of our individual confusions with reality, and to the essential nature of what unites us all.  After all, we are all doing the best we can within the context within which we were born; and within the reality we continue to co-create.  So as I continue to digest the complexity in his heart-felt words, I take comfort in the simplicity of his so-called “religion of kindness.”  For it is easy to talk in new age idioms about being present, unattached or non-violent, but to truly connect with our deepest selves and see all others as expressions of our shared humanity, now that is something to strive for.

The World Ethical Foundations Consortium