We Gotta Laugh

I called my best childhood friend, actually my only childhood friend, whose love has followed me through the years and into this very moment. She wasn’t able to talk because she was at the audiologist, preparing to be fitted for hearing aids.

We had a good laugh, acknowledged that God had, in fact, created hearing aids for this very purpose, for this very moment, and agreed to talk later, when she could hear better. I hung up the phone, chucking to myself and not chuckling at all.

Hearing aids? Wasn’t I just ten years old a few days ago?

And how does one age with dignity and grace in our culture?

I don’t know about you, but I as I get older and older, I am FEELING IT in my body. I look at my aging dog’s face, so grey, eyes filled with cataracts. Me, too. He, my Zac Joe Doodle, is such a mirror to my own aging terrors.

The Terrors these days do seem too many. Let’s demystify them by calling out a few of those suckers:

• Democracy—how is that working out there?
• The State of the Free World—what’s up?
• Planet Earth—are you happy with our choices?
• Human Rights and the Arc of Freedom—oye………

There are so many potential horrors, I do believe, added into the blur of my aging, the disjointedness of retiring/rewiring/working less (does this mean working the same amount for less money?). During this week I have clearly reached the zone of TOO MUCH.

TOO MUCH AND TOO MANY FREAKIN’ HORRORS.

Folks, we have to, we must, we absolutely got to lighten up. We must laugh. In pursuit of lightening up my day, with blessed synchronicity, this link landed in my email with the cryptic message, “Watch this. Now”. I am still laughing. And laughing again. This guy, JP Sears, is a “yoga comedian”. You must, you are compelled, I am forcing you to watch this one-minute-forty-five-second clip. Watch this. Now:

Right? The pink sweatshirt. The little dance. I do hope you are still laughing. Taking ourselves seriously, especially on the path of yoga and mindfulness is a counter-intuitive slippery slope. How easy it is to think that spirituality elevates us to a special, holier-than-all zone.

What about laughter? Here is some data from Harvard Health Publications, the consumer health publishing division of Harvard Medical School, collaborating here with HelpGuide, about the physiological benefits of laughter:

• Laughter relaxes the whole body; it relieves physical tension and stress, leaving your muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes.
• Laughter boosts the immune system; it decreases stress hormones and increases immune cells and infection-fighting antibodies, improving your resistance to disease.
• Laughter triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals, which promote an overall sense of well-being and can temporarily relieve pain.
• Laughter protects the heart; it improves the function of blood vessels and increases blood flow, protecting you from cardiovascular problems.
• Laughter burns calories; laughter for 10 to 15 minutes a day can burn about 40 calories resulting in three or four pounds over a year.
• Laughter may even help you to live longer. A study in Norway found that people with a strong sense of humor outlived those who don’t laugh as much.

We know this. The only question seems to be: HOW CAN WE CREATE THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH WE LAUGH MORE?

I dare you—I double-dutch-super-triple-dare you to take on my famous Prance-o-Meter-Laughing Challenge. (Please don’t ask me about that name. I just made it up and have absolutely no idea what it means.)

What can you do today to laugh? How can you bring laughter to others? What’s the most outrageous laughing experience you can have, that you have had? Pass it on. I challenge you, reader-person-out-there-YOU, do this challenge for one week, starting right here, right now.

And dear friends, keep me posted. I am aruni@rnetworx.com

With a lighter heart,
Aruni

…we have come to our real work…*

The sound roared out of nowhere from our usually silent basement.  It could have been the remaining seven buffalo that munch on the plains in Richmond, Ma., galloping through the basement.  Or it could have been the locomotive from behind our house, detouring and creating a new transcontinental route through our house.  Or perhaps it could have been 110 pots and pans tossed onto the floor by one frustrated heavenly chef.  The noise was undefinable, massively loud, and a little scary.

We looked at each other.  Nobody moved.  Silence settled.  Unable to hold the stillness, I jumped up and scurried down the steps.

Yep.  The wall fell.  Not the whole wall, and not all of the walls.  The tiles.  It appears that the heat-proof tiles behind the wood stove un-adhered themselves from their twenty-year-old place of stability.  They lie on the floor, scattered around the wonderful wood stove, in a variety of chunks and sizes and pieces.  The tiles, the outer wall, shattered into pieces.

I had seen it coming over the last year or so, little puckers of un-adhesion bubbling up.  I chose to fully and totally ignore the signs.  I could have intervened, I could have gotten our brilliant handy-man-guy come and attend.  But by doing nothing, I chose to allow life to shatter itself.

Once the area literally cooled down from the fire, I busily cleaned up, swept up, picked up the pieces, dusted them off, making tidy and neat the devastated area.

Wait.

Why am I so committed to tidying?

Why do I have to pick up the pieces?

Massive walls of my life are crumbling; they are crashing down.  I’ve been so busy “tending to”.  What if I just left the pieces to lie as they might?

If I do just a little less—if I let go just a little more—what new pattern might be formed on the now blank walls of my world?

What new pattern might create itself, through the power of non-doing, through the grace of non-action, through the possibility of perfection and flow?

I have no clue.  It frightens me to do less; it disrupts my illusion of control.

Yet I commit to allowing the destruction to continue, as painful and different a behavior as that is for me.

On a concrete level, the physical breaking down/acting out around me is ridiculous:

• the new rice cooker, imitating Old Faithful, spews water in a five-foot radius
• the land line that has a mind of its own, deciding who to continue talking to or not
• the cell phone, never mind, I won’t violate our confidentiality
• the precious website, out of intensive care, healing from conflicting messages within herself, resembles not herself at all but some orange stranger with dashes and dots of code all over her forehead

WTF?

On a more emotional level, professional, energetic, and physiological level—I am aging.  The machinery of my being is slowing, shifting, sagging.  It is time-appropriate.  It is age-appropriate.  The walls are bubbling up.

So?  My commitment to you, to me, to all?

To do less.

To allow the pieces to lie.

To remember it’s okay.

To relax and breathe in these powerful words by Wendell Berry:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and that when we no longer know which way to turn,
we have begun our real journey.

~~~

And you, dear readers?  Is there falling apart?  Is there unraveling, literal or figurative, around you?  What are you noticing?  Please keep me posted.  I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings,
Aruni

*opening line by Wendell Berry

Do you consider yourself a good patient? I certainly do not qualify as a skillful one. I am still haunted by my mother’s always and inevitable dictum, “What did you do to get this cold?”. Following that, she forever would offer the ultimate curse of the 50’s, “Did you go out with wet hair?”. Wet hair had the potential to wipe out my entire generation; as children, it was our 1950’s Armageddon. I was always prompted to own my responsibility in illness, my negligent partnership with those germs. I, the co-instigator, I had helped to create this cold. If I were a better child and made better child-choices, I would not be sick.

Come to think of it, I did go out with wet hair this last Friday, coincidentally the day I did get the cold. It wasn’t exactly wet; perhaps it was damp. It was, more accurately, slightly damp, hardly damp hair. And the temperature was relatively balmy, and I had on hats and gloves and scarves and sweaters and all sorts of wool-ish apparel. Nevertheless, I did get a cold. My mother was right. From beyond her grave, my mother was right. And to pile deception on top of irresponsibility, when asked by my wife if I went out with wet hair, I instantly replied with a boisterous and busy, “No, of course not”.

So, I got a cold. I spent the weekend prone, overdosing on my cocktail of immune strengthening remedies, tempting my grumbling stomach with just one more dose of each. Lying prone, with the remote control bungeed to my hand, as part of my healing process, I found myself strangely compelled to watch hideously bad made-for-Netflix movies. I am a committed Netflix fan; I will always celebrate the streaming process, bringing us instant and ultimate gratification. But, oh, no, these movies I was forced to endure, as if by some internalized collection of mean germs, were hideously bad. Somehow, they were part of my healing process. This is what illness makes me do, throwing viewing discretion to the winds, renouncing choice. Before streaming, daytime television existed as my doorway to healing. Now Netflix streaming is the portal to physical and emotional recovery, offering me deep surrender.

Out of the entire weekend of binge-healing-horrible-streaming movies, the one echo of decency and value was Seeing Allred, a thoughtful documentary about Gloria Allred, the civil rights’ attorney who has specialized in representing women and all victims of injustice and abuse. Although the press has maligned her as a publicity-seeking money-hound, the documentary focused on her commitment to righting injustice, stemming from her personal history of struggle and abuse. Gloria’s career has been dedicated to creating equity for women and insuring legal change for all.

Listening with one ear and watching with one squinted eye, I was awake enough to keep somewhat attentive. One line she said, however, during an interview, riveted me into an actual upright and seated position. She said, as a paraphrase:

In earlier times,

we women hoped and tried to become

a fortunate exception

to the discrimination around us…..

A fortunate exception! I was chilled through with the truth of this insight for me. I have been a fortunate exception to much oppression.

• Unlike so many, I have not had to endure sexual or emotional abuse from men.
• Unlike so many, I have not had to endure workplace discrimination.
• Unlike so many, as a recovering addict, I have not had to endure relapse, although the odds are stacked against me. (Data from the Journal of the American Medical Association tells us between 40% and 60% of people in recovery do relapse.)
• Unlike so many, I have not had to endure the curse of an economically oppressive per diem teaching status until this past year.
• Unlike so many, I have married a woman and live within legal sanction and emotional safety.
• Unlike so many—the list could continue.

Am I simply lucky? Did I pull the right karma cards this lifetime?

How do I live with my blessings in this time-of-trump, this time when those most vulnerable and least fortunate among us are under literal attack?

How do I appreciate what I have, relax into the bounty, while reaching out to those who are bounty-less?

How do I give back that which has been so freely given to me?

How do I assuage my almost-survivor’s-guilt, how do I abide my own entitlement, to be able to show up with more clarity and more purpose for another?

I practice.

I stumble.

I fall.

I feel embarrassed.

I feel privileged.

I show up again.

My Twelve Step program reminds me that more will be revealed.

I’m counting on it.

~~~

Dear Folks, what is your response to these ideas? Entitlement? Service to others? Managing privilege? Please send all responses and ideas onward. I am aruni@rnetworx.com

All blessings!

*Gloria Allred