The time for kindness

I do not have what most people would call "a strong personality."

Distinctive, yes. Unique, probably.

My friend Evan often describes me as "a girl whose axis is on a tilt." (cue group sing-along of this epic song)

Strong, though? Not in the way this culture defines that word.

Yesterday, the sangha continued reading the new book by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, The Shambhala Principle. Full disclosure: I haven't read this book beyond what we've discussed as a group at the center, but I've got a pretty good sense of what he's talking about from the bit I've read, and it's really resonating with me so far.

Grouches like hugs, too

We're living in a time when the majority of humanity is suffering from sickness. Our politicians are obsessed with power, and it's making us sick. We're obsessed with technology-- so much that we have become confused about what is real  and what is constructed (hint: it all is), and it's making us sick. Our food comes from hurt, and it's making us sick (literally). We value industry over environment, and it's making us sick. We value money over meaning, and it's making us sick. Sickness everywhere.

But most of all, we've lost touch with ourselves. We have lost faith in our basic goodness, as a species.  We get bombarded with stories of violence, every day, at every angle. We believe that when we are angry, we are showing our "true selves" and "aggressiveness" is something to be rewarded. Anger and aggressiveness are emotions that are "strong."

This is not an anti-society rant. This is not even one of my anti-technology rants (though I do love to have those). This is a call-- a plea-- to begin curing ourselves.

We have the antidote to this sickness. Humanity is at a crossroads-- it all comes down to a choice, and it begins with one simple action:

Be kind.

Be kind to each other. And be kind to yourself.

I know I sound a little nuts-- do I really believe we can save the world by being more kind? Yes. Absolutely. It's simple, but it's not easy.

Here's where I want to challenge our society's notion of what it means to be strong. It takes strength to be kind. It''s easy to be aggressive and unaccommodating. It's easy to just be totally pissed off all the time. It's easy to be in a hurry, to be too busy to care.  Those emotions allow us to build a wall around ourselves-- we don't have to think about anyone else in the world.

Be excellent to each other!

Kindness is hard. Random acts of kindness are often not received well. People don't think they deserve kindness, and so they're skeptical when someone gives it out for free. At best, we'll get called naive or maybe crazy. At worst, we will be on the receiving end of some anger.  But don't let that stop you.

Be kind and without becoming attached to a particular outcome (this is what my yogi friends call "karma yoga".) Be kind without desire for reciprocity. One simple, random and even silly act of compassion is enough. Kindness is one of those great things-- by making someone else feel better, we feel better ourselves. 

It was one of the first life lessons I learned from psychology-- if you want to like someone, do them a favor. If you want more kindness in your life, be kind to others. 

Go pass out flowers in the park. Buy a stranger's coffee. Tip really well (and write a haiku on the receipt). Smile at someone who looks lonely. You'll feel silly, sure, but you'll also feel better, I promise.

The time I was asked to speak my truth

"Every shelter is for men" B tells me, emphatically waiving her hand in the air and looking down, as she always does when making a point. "There is no other place for women to go. That's what makes this place stand out so much."

The DWC does stand out. It is one of the first permanent supportive housing facilities, and the only center in Los Angeles that is dedicated to serving the needs of homeless and low income women living in Los Angeles' Skid Row. B explains to me that, back in the late 70's, the center was originally a day center for women (the only one in LA). The woman who started it actually took her savings-- the savings she kept for buying her own house-- and used it to build the center instead.

Every other week, another volunteer and I visit the DWC and gather with a small group of women to talk about a book. This week's book was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  The conversation quickly turned from the plot of the book to their own experiences of moving around frequently and seeking community-- as children and now as adults.

I began to wonder if this is part of the human experience-- something we all share no matter what level of privilege we hold. Are we all just looking for community?

Out of the conversation comes a very quiet voice. D, sitting back in her chair, looks directly at me and asks "So, I want to know, how do you see life?"

Every eye in the room turned to me.

And I had no idea what to say. The sheer expansiveness of that question really threw me for a loop. In what context? Could I talk about spirituality here? Could I say it's empty without sounding depressing, but also without having to give a lecture on existing in Maya? Plus, it's been a rough week, and I'm not the happiest little elf in the forest at the moment.

"Well, I think of life as an adventure" I began "and I think wherever you end up, there's a lesson to be learned. Some of these are harder than others, but there's always something to learn from a situation." I paused, afraid I sounded like some sort of bratty college kid. But all the women were nodding and smiling, so I continued. "I think it's important to just be where you are, at any moment. Just be aware of what is going on around you. There's always something."

It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. How would I summarize my philosophy on life? I don't think I really can, because I create it in real time. The narrative of my life, as adventurous as it has been in the past, is always evolving. Stagnation is the breeding ground for attachment and suffering.

Current take on life, in 5 words: "Eyes to the horizon. Onward."

But on further reflection, I think what shocked me most about this question is that she asked it of me in particular. Not the whole room. Not the other facilitator. Just me. Usually, I intentionally take a back seat at these discussions and make sure everyone around me feels safe to speak. I don't share unless someone asks me to, or if there are tensions in the room. I have so many opportunities to be heard everywhere else in my life. This is their space, their home and their community. It is their time to speak, and my time to listen.

Something happened this evening. It seemed like D was curious about me, and it felt nice to be thought of in that way.  For the first time at this center (and really, for the first time in a while), I felt like I was being let into a little community. Not full membership, of course, but the door has been opened slightly for me to peek inside. Yes, it's only for a moment, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Unpublished love poems-#1

It was recently brought to my attention that it is both painfully trite and achingly romantic that I have a book of unpublished love poems collecting dust on my hard drive. Some pieces are well known to my friends (and fans? Do I really have those? That's weird) and some have truly never seen the light of day. So here's one for you:


Aham Prema

I write these words in remembrance of your endless summer sunlit laughter:

I. Love. You.

They are not yours nor my own,
But in memory
Of life suspended in the spirals of time
Ever since that moment you asked it to “stop”.
We thought it didn’t work,
But there it is.
Glass bottle. Sunlight. Three short words.
Suspended.

I. Love. You.

You knew it then,
it existed in the beats between words.
It still does.
This love is without constraints
Without words
An ocean of time and distance
Endlessly evolving, lapping between our shores.
It is a love that makes no sound
Unless it crashes against the rocks.

This love for you is silence
Crashing upon your sunlit shore.

I write these words in rememberance of your endless summer sunlit laughter
Your barefoot beatific ramblings through darkened streets at unholy hours
Singing to the stars
Singing to the stars
You were singing to the stars.
And to think I was embarassed of you.
Dadum- dadadum- dadadum- dadum
Dadum- dadadum- dadadum- dadum
And you spun me around like angel dancing on cloud
Drop me down and catch me before I hit pavement
Laughing like child cherubs
Oh god how I missed, it even then,
As you sang me dizzy and kissed me drunk.
 “Let’s live under the stars” you proclaimed suddenly
“Here we will be young, always.”

What tricks are these?
These symbols of time misleadingly linear-
These battles between analog and digital.
But you and I are skips in time
Waves to their lines
Holes in their sky.
We rain down champagne
And when it lands, we cup our hands
And drink a toast to life fully lived,
And to the return.
We turn these unwashed streets
Into pathways of gold.
These words.
You’re endless.

You’re an endless summer.
Driving top down,
sunlight kissing red bruises into your shoulders
Endless highway streets paved of gold.

I. Love. You.

These words are carved into the endless expanse of time that is your body
When it is alongside mine.
These words are silence, skips in time, unrecorded sound.
These words are poloroid snapshots, fading at the edges.
These words are childhood love memories, sepia toned.

These words are expansive like the ocean.
Let them crash onto you.
Feel their sound.

The time I saw an invisible man

There's this little gas station by the beach that is always full. On any given day, at any given hour, there is a dangerous cluster of cars on the side of the road trying to get in line for the pump. It typically takes me about an extra 15 minutes of wait time at that station, during which I am completely and silently flipping out in my car, hoping that dude with the fancy smart phone and aviators doesn't back his ridiculously expensive ride into my honda civic. Because that would suck.

So the other day, I finally got to the pump (after dodging a motorcyclist with dog-in-tow... don't ask). I hopped out of my car and started purchasing some fossil fuels, when all of the sudden I hear a voice behind me

"If only it were that easy, right?"

I spun around and came face to face with a man wearing faded fatigues, carrying a huge bag of bottles and cans on his back. The others at the station around me glanced at him warily, and then continued about their business, making a point of turning away from him. I, too, quickly looked away. I don't know why.

"If only it were easy enough to just live a simple life, baking pastries. Not taking orders from nobody."

 It took me a moment to register what he was talking about. I realized he was referring to my silly Johnny Cupcakes t-shirt that read "Make Cupcakes not War". I had mindlessly put it on that morning in a half-baked attempt to avoid looking like a teacher.

Suddenly, I felt a tug inside me, and turned to look at him again, directly this time. His hair was long, and he wore it pulled back, revealing a face tanned and slightly streaked with dust. His eyes were what caught me off guard. While the rest of his face seemed weather beaten and tired, he had the most brilliant and youthful blue eyes. They were playful, and seemed to smile on their own.

"Yeah, you're absolutely right" I said. "It would be nice if things were simpler."

"I've got a lot of buddies that are up there," he gestured at the sky "looking down and wondering what the hell is going on in this world. Wondering why we still take orders, making the same damn mistakes.  Things are just so fucked up. No one seems to notice or care. It's like I'm invisible. It's like it's not even real."

He said all this gently and without the slightest bit of defensiveness in his tone, as if he knew he didn't have anything to prove to me. As if he just knew I was there to listen. And it's a good thing too, because at that moment, all my words failed me. My mind filled with questions:

How does this happen-- how do we let human beings fall through the cracks? What does it mean to serve your country, and then have your country turn its back on your suffering? What does it feel like to be unheard and unseen? To be perpetually ignored and denied person-hood, day after day?  Do you begin to believe the world around you-- do you start to think you are actually invisible, that your pain is somehow deserved? Do you forget that you exist at all?

After a few moments, the pump indicated my tank was full. Before I got back into my car, I looked back at him. He smiled at me, gave me a little wave and said "Have a beautiful day. God bless you." I smiled and waved back, got into my car and drove away.

I know this doesn't sound like an awesome, positive story, but it was a really beautiful moment of connection that I've been reflecting on over the past few days.

We live in such a rough world, and it is scary for us to acknowledge how easy it is to slip through the cracks of society. I think that's why people are so uncomfortable when interacting with the homeless. Looking at them in the face, means coming to terms with the fragility of our own situation.  In an admittedly uncomfortable way, I feel connected to that man. It's like he was holding up a mirror, reflecting an alternative-- but very real-- reality. We are separated only by a very thin thread of circumstance.

I think at our core, we share the same nature. We all do.

((According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) ,  62,619 veterans are homeless on any given night.  Nearly 13% of the homeless adult population are veterans.
Approximately 12,700 veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation New Dawn (OND) were homeless in 2010. For more information, see http://nchv.org/))

The time 10 years seemed like 10 minutes, and 10 minutes lasted forever.

Today was hard.

I woke up at 3am with this feeling of anxiety. It's been happening a lot recently, and I've been embracing it as a sort of early-morning reminder to keep breathing.

Sometimes, life seems to get way ahead of me. I forget to eat. I forget to breathe.

The best part of my day is spent conjuring up inspiration. Just taking a moment to imagine what the world could be like.

I maintained this practice of imagining possible futures when I was in high school. I did it so often, in fact, that it became really difficult for me to imagine anything further than 2 weeks in the future because I had opened the door of all possibilities. At any given moment, I could imagine at least 6 possible futures.  What if... yes, but what if....

These days, I have to make space to imagine things. Inspiration has to be set as an intention every morning. I want to say the world is rougher than it was when I was in high school, but really I know that's not true.

The truth is, I am.

10 years ago I ran the Boston Marathon. I was coming off of 6 months of intense training, and 4 weeks of touring around Italy (my first of many European adventures). I was about to graduate, and completely unable to imagine anything about my future. Nothing was certain, but everything was happening. I felt like I was going over a waterfall-- I was completely out of control.

In addition to all the stress of being a high school senior, 26.2 miles is nothing to sneeze at either. They say some crazy things happen to your brain when your body is under that kind of stress.  You might think that after a while the physical pain would pass, but it never really does. It just becomes less and less shocking.  It was amidst this consistent discomfort that I had a really major breakthrough about the fragile nature of humanity.

Weird. I know. Let me explain:

I was about halfway through the race, when I suddenly started running toward (what I thought) was the nearest T station. Eventually, I coaxed back on course by my running buddy, who assured me that my parents would be waiting for me at the finish line in a few hours. I kept running on course, but I couldn't shake this feeling. The feeling that pulled me away from my path was the realization that life is beautiful and fragile and fleeting.

Life is Beautiful. Fragile. Fleeting.

This was no passing thought. It completely overwhelmed me. It consumed me. I realized that I only had a few years to be alive, and yet it could so easily be wasted with illusions of "doing something more important." 

(What if.... What if... )

Finishing that race, 6th form formal, graduation, college, graduation, grad school, job... it all flashed before my eyes in a dull blur.  I wanted no part in these "important things." Every single moment is an eternity, filled with possibility. Why was I wasting my time running a race?

What if... what if life is actually something other than all these things?  

I finished the race. The pain stopped. I lost all my toenails (ew).  But that desire to veer off the path completely remained. It's still here.

When bad things happen, it seems like all the suffering of the world is pouring down on us. Pain is scary. It's incredibly sad. It is also really important to explore. Today, a bomb went off at a wedding in Afghanistan. A car bomb exploded in Baghdad. LAPD probably shot someone a few miles from here. And yes, bombs went off in downtown Boston, in the very same area where my family stood waiting for me to cross the finish line 10 years ago.

I'm writing this post as a reminder of the importance of pain, fear and discomfort. It shocks us into examining what is truly important. It forces us awake, shakes us into looking at what we actually are, and what we actually could become. From this space of fear and discomfort, we can examine our possible futures. What path are we on? What world are we living in? What kind of world could we live in?  

What if?

This is a challenge to see the world as it is. It is a challenge to see the world as it could be.

Imagine with me, for a moment.

And then let's get to work.

The time I made time to ride a bike

Sometimes, life requires me to wake up early.

Like. Really. Early.

So early that even the car-crazy LA people around me haven't started their morning commute to work. No one is on the road. I can ride around on my bike without fear.

It feels good, once I convince myself to get out of bed.At 5:30am, my neighborhood smells like flowers. It's so quiet that I become conscious of the sound of my breath and heart beat. It's still cold here in the mornings, and it reminds me of autumn on the East Coast.

When I ride closer to the Marina, the air changes to a damp, spicy eucalyptus smell. It reminds me of Australia. Funny how scents just take you back to another time and place.


I like making time for morning bike rides because it puts me back in touch with myself. I think I spend way too many hours staring at a computer screen. The thought of being computerless at work makes me panic-- how would I get anything done? It is tragic that our productivity-- and actually, life in general-- is so deeply dependent on technology. My kids will hate me, but if they're bored, they'll have to read a book, or play an instrument, or learn a sport. No video games. No Facebook. There is something to be said about learning who you are at your core, before plugging into some alternative reality. There is so much to life beyond technology.

I suppose this is what it is to be a 20-something-- still figuring out that life does not equal work, that you're not your job or your instagram. I've never really needed to remind myself of such things, but it's strange to see how easy it is to fall under that illusion. While I certainly care about my current job, it does not define me, and it should not take over my life. Especially since I've got big plans ahead.

The time I remembered why I love narrative

The thing is, I love stories. I love the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. I love watching someone realize that everything they think they know about themselves all spawns from one small moment buried deep in their past.

I can't even tell you how much our high school selves influence our adult selves. The triumphs and pain we felt in our adolescence often can haunt us-- carving out paths for us without our explicit permission. I know this holds true for me, anyway.

People get this incredible look on their faces when they pinpoint the exact moment in their history that determined their path. Sometimes it's a really big doofy smile, and their whole faces light up. Sometimes it's this look of complete shock, and their eyes get really big and solemn, like they're staring off at some distant horizon. Sometimes people start crying. But whatever the initial reaction when recounting this story, it's like watching a major weight being lifted off of their chests. Or a veil from over their eyes. Like suddenly they're seeing themselves as the complex and rich beings they truly are.

It's funny, I was worried that working in the non-profit sector in a field only tangentially related to my own would somehow distract me from my passion for narrative. It seems that it has only strengthened it.