Wednesday Whiteboard Quote - March 4

"We spend a lot of time looking for happiness when the world right around us is full of wonder. To be alive and walk on the earth is a miracle, and yet most of us are running as if there were some better place to get to. There is beauty calling to us every day, every hour, but we are rarely in a position to listen." Silence p. 3

This past weekend, I attended an Association retreat in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. After driving through arduous traffic, the last few miles of which included winding up and around (and up some more) a narrow mountain road, I finally arrived at our "rustic" bed and breakfast. As I turned off the ignition and opened the door, something immediately hit me. It wasn't something unfamiliar so much as something often forgotten and nearly impossible to hear in an urban city of over 6 million people. Silence.

We avoid silence like the plague. Our radios are constantly on while driving, TVs blaring at home, TVs in restaurants, music in elevators, the sound of videos on our phones in the bathroom, watching TV at dinner, AirPods to ensure we can be in noise to not hear the grunts and moans of others at the gym. It’s a noisy world.

It seems we chase that noise because it is usually sufficient, at least momentarily, in drowning out the annoying inner roommate we have called the mind. You know, the part of us that is never ok (at least when it's thinking about I/Me/Mine). The mind constantly notices and lets us know what's wrong, and how we should fix it, and where we should be heading in life, and how we aren't doing enough, and how that family member should be doing this, and how that person talking loudly on the phone in the supermarket line should learn to have some respect for everyone else. Is it a wonder we never feel ok?

Because we haven't learned to be ok with this noise, we go out drinking with our friends, we turn on the TV to get lost in a movie or show, we scroll social media, we give in to that addiction. We do anything to drown out the cacophony of desires/preferences/shoulds/shouldn'ts/if onlys/etc that make life a living hell.

It's not the silence that is uncomfortable, but the mind that constantly fills the silence with noticing whatever is wrong. It's within our ability to build a healthy relationship with the mind through mental fitness, where we learn its tendencies and get to know it. Will this ever leave us in complete bliss and silence for the rest of our days? Nope. But it will provide us the mental strength to find the silence in and around whatever is happening.

The silence, stillness, and calmness are always there, no matter what the mind is saying. Our task is to listen for, hear, and find it. I look forward to meeting you there.  

Wednesday Whiteboard Quote - February 25

"Coming from a giving place means you aren't waiting to receive."

We hold the door for someone and get slighted when they don't say thank you or acknowledge us.

We give a friend a birthday present and feel disappointed when they don't reach out to us on ours.

We are always the friend who reaches out first, and we get frustrated that nobody ever initiates with us.

As the Stoics would say, looking for something in return is chasing the third thing. The first is you doing something for someone, the second is them receiving it, and the third is when we chase a certain response from them. Chasing the third thing is what transforms an act of selflessness, giving without looking for anything in return, into a prison.

"Nobody ever says thank you anymore..."

"I must not be memorable enough for them to know my birthday..."

"Nobody must like me since they never reach out first..."

We must seriously ask ourselves whether our giving is genuine or only because we are looking for something in return. Giving is easy and a joy when we don't need anything from it.

Wednesday Whiteboard Quote - February 18

"I've told people something that sounds a little cruel. Everyone should experience temporary blindness, to see how our vision can give us such hangups, how we judge and condemn, and what that does to us all. Like that [blind] boy with the birthday cake. There was a blind girl that he had fallen for. Then someone said she was unattractive. He stopped seeing her. It brought tears to my eyes. He'd been seeing fine." How Can I Help p. 144-145

It's easy to get trapped in a way of seeing the world that is based entirely on what we've learned from others. Have you felt the limited, judgmental nature of living that way? It's within our power to become aware of and remove the dirty film that covers our seeing, revealing insights we had never considered.