One Life to Live

You have one life to live. Yes, you are born and you die. A life is finite and measurable. But I don't want to talk about the we only get one chance aspect of One Life. I want to talk about the the only life you have to live - as in you can't live anybody else's.

This is what I realized recently:

First, as Sting sang, "free, free, set them free...if you love somebody, set them free".
Second, as we are often told, "you have to love yourself before you're able to love someone else".

Ergo - you have to set yourself free if you are going to love yourself. And how, you're probably asking, am I going about setting myself free? Well, by following a quote which 21 years ago changed my life: "If you don't live it, you don't believe it." By living according to my values, by looking hypocrisy in the face at every turn, by being grateful and by understanding the insignificance of this One Life, I am free.

I love myself and am setting myself free. I can once again set the people I love free. And isn't that a beautiful thing - to be surrounded by people who are free? People who are free to love you and to be with you?


After note:
These are the things I think of as I'm riding my VFR and when I'm lifting weights alone. I talk to myself and all these things seem so interesting and reasonable. I don't know if they are, but damn, this one is important to me!

Riding tomorroow

October 15th of any year is a good day to ride. No doubt about it being autumn. Likely it's gonna be cold. But 2010 just keeps offering up these incredible fall days.

I know it will be cold in the morning. But that's just a good excuse to sit at the Johnson Creek Kwik Trip and have a cup of coffee and a breakfast bar. They have a little counter where you can sit and watch people pump gas. I like it there - they always say, "see you next time!" What confidence.

Speaking of really, really good corporate scripting...

Here's one thing I love about Harley Dealerships. You show up on a Honda and no one gives you shit. They just stand there looking cool in their HD motor clothes, making a lot of eye contact and then, "ready to trade up?" I love that.

A topic I'm going to write on soon: you only have one life to live.

Good night Gracie.

Hate me if you must!!!

So I woke up recently and weighed in well under what is a comfortable weight for a strong man. Tonight I am commiting to gaining 10 pounds by the end of the year. My program will be based on:

1. Eating food. Not junk. Just more food, more regularly.



2. Lifting weights. Never once in my life have I regretted lifting. So more lifting, more regularly.



3. Living. Man, life is just too short not to.



4. Short runs (3 - 5 miles) to keep my heart pumping.

I'll post pictures of my skinny ass self soon. And I'll report progress in a month or so.

Amelioration redux

Fog. Like a dream I stepped out of the fog into... denser fog. My vision wasn't obscured but my ability to see was. The connectedness of everything was imbued with a lack of value, future, foundation. Where the hell was I?

The twilight zone? Rod S. is that you? What was real? What hadn't been? What wasn't? Isn't?

Then a discovery. Another man's words:

"We are in a similar scary place, if not physical then perceptual, faced with challenges that seem insurmountable. We need to keep moving, keep making decisions, which are possible only through constructive dialogue with our adversaries across cultural boundaries.

Movement is knowledge, a conversation with the unknown, a path to salvation - not an attachment to the past. We can't stand still and we don't have the rope to get back to where we were."

On a long, hot ride last Saturday on some of the twistiest, hilliest roads I've ever ridden, I got tired and didn't know where I was. So, I stopped and rested. And drank water. And realized that not knowing where you are is different than being lost. The sun was out so I reckoned my location and started riding again. "Movement is knowledge."

I rode out of the fog.

Amelioration

Fog is the worst weather condition to ride in. You can't see well and you're unsure if other motorists can see you. Time and space devolve into a level of singularity where presence is absolved and forward movement, progress becomes difficult; indeed at times the time/space continuum stops. It is unsafe to continue; indeed you can't continue.

Patience. Time. A little sunshine. Always something to focus on. The path. The destination. The ride.

I appreciate good metaphors. I hope you do too.

So many topics...

I love good metaphors and I've been thinking of writing about "a new coat of paint" and "what's in a name". But I have to throw the metaphors away because I'm carrying the weight of "telling people what they don't want to hear".

I've been on the receiving end of this before, but more often I've been the one telling. So, "your shift is changing", "your work assignment is changing" and "you're not performing your job well" has been my focus for a few weeks. Fewer than 20 of 115 have had to hear me say it directly, but it carries heavy on everyone.

Day care, second jobs, spouses, families, obligations - life. Number two. That's the unspoken truth of my message.

It's my job. It makes good business sense. Better utilization of resources. Consistent with strategic plan.

When did I become this guy?

Zen Stories

What do patient satisfaction, motorcycling and competition have to do with Zen Stories? Short answer - I'm intimate with all three.

Long answer - I attended a "lunch and learn" meeting last week with a group of people seeking to improve patients' experiences at the hospital where I work. The theme for the hour was "Zen Stories" and was facilitated by a beautiful woman who works in the Lab as a phlebotomist. I won't retell the Zen Stories here but I will summarize that they all had to do with people being "fully present". We talked a lot about what "fully present" means and I think we reached consensus that, at least in the realm of patient care (customer service), it implies a singular focus and broad receptiveness to the reality of a shared now. We are asked to do this repeatedly throughout the day as we tend to one patient's needs and then tend to another patient's needs. The first patient never loses importance in our minds, but our conscious mind must continually re-focus on the "now" patient.

The motorcycle both allows and requires the rider to be fully present. Extraneous external stimuli are muted - phones, radios, snacks and beverages - but senses stimulated into awareness. Each deceleration, acceleration and curve; each stop sign, car, truck and deer requires that elapsed moments be allowed to flow into the past so that the present is the focus.
(Bad buddhism, bad Zen. Sorry)

And competition...

'Competing gives purpose to my training and allows comparison of my efforts with those of other men. It’s also a relief not to be typecast by Parkinson’s. There’s no “PD” placed after my name on the whiteboard in the list of competitors. There’s no-one telling me to “rest if you feel tired.”'

This comes from a post on Stumptuous.com. Here's the link: http://www.stumptuous.com/shaky-man-in-the-gym-2-keep-on-shakin

"PD" is Parkinson's Disease. I think this gentleman gets the same thing out of competing that I do. Read this story and the shaky-man-1 and you'll learn of a man improving his future by focusing in the now, and by refusing to adhere to the tenets of his pathology.

Peace man.