Lin Wilder's Blog, page 61

Happiness: Is There A Key?

“So, how exactly, do you decide to be happy?” My friend looked bemusedly at me as she replied to my statement that I thought happiness was a decision we made.

“LOOK at that tree!” I exclaimed loudly and with vehemence, knowing that my reply to her question required more than a little explanation.

My psychologist husband entered the fray by asking “Lin, when was one of your happiest times in your life?”

Silent for a moment, I thought about his question and reviewed major events in my life; hallmarks of ‘happy’ events asking myself if there were any times I could recall as being especially salient of happy times- graduations, becoming a Catholic, our marriage and then repeated what I’d said to our friend earlier but with different words. Happiness is a state of being achieved through will, like faith, like love.

One of the difficulties about happiness is that it’s definitional. Happiness is unique to each of us because, by definition, each of is solitary, exclusive, an individual, with widely varying interests, skills, goals and desires: the desire for happiness is however, universal: We each want to be happy. We even wrote it into our Constitution: The ‘unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness,” Jefferson wrote, as if happiness were an object we must chase, hunt, inferring perhaps, an elusive goal.

The strong belief I have that happiness is a decision does not preclude any of the constantly varying emotional states that wander in and out of my psyche; rather happiness is a constant, a grounding, an undercurrent on which emotions appear and disappear, like the clouds in the sky. One of the obstacles to achieving a state of happiness is the belief that happiness is a feeling. A confusion which permeates two other decisions which are often confused with feelings for many of us: Love and Faith.

My non sequitur reply to my friend’s question encompasses in four words what I consider to underlie the wisdom of happiness taught to me by a man earnestly in pursuit of a happiness which was eluding him, causing him to walk away from his ordination as a Catholic priest, to search for his own happiness by teaching young students like me what he was learning about happiness.

Frequently quoting Santayana’s short poem or warning as it seemed to me back then,

Most people live their lives in the basement of a three story house

my teacher taught me and invaluable lesson about happiness at a time in my life of great, deep and painful unhappiness and it is this.

If you want to be happy, then act as if you are, take time to …LOOK at that tree!” Over time, the feeling will come, the knowledge that yes, I am happy….exactly like faith and love. The actions must be first.

Although his admonition was metaphorical, there were many times during that phase of my life when nothing was clear and when I had no ground to walk on, no clue as to how I wanted to spend my life, only vague resolutions, that I would pull over to the side of the road and do exactly that. I would LOOK at that tree.

 

The post Happiness: Is There A Key? appeared first on Life In The High Desert.

Interstellar:The Dimension of Love

Since I like Matthew McConaughey a lot, I knew I would like his new movie, Interstellar a Christopher and Jonathan Nolan film. But three days later, I’m still thinking about the film, for several reasons:

The cinematography is stunning.
Remember the Nolans’ 2010 film Inception? Interstellar is like that-we work to grasp what is happening.
From the very first scene of this movie, I was hooked-the apocalyptic scenario is strangely credible.
Lately, Hollywood writers seem more interested; perhaps more open to the actual presence of God: The benevolent ‘They’ living in a five dimensional world may be as close as many 21st century citizens can get to an acknowledgment of God- it’s a start.

Cooper: You don’t believe we went to the Moon?

Ms. Kelly: I believe it was a brilliant piece of propaganda, that the Soviets bankrupted themselves pouring resources into rockets and other useless machines…

Cooper: Useless machines?

Ms. Kelly: And if we don’t want to repeat of the excess and wastefulness of the 20th Century then we need to teach our kids about this planet, not tales of leaving it.

It’s an unnamed year in the future and planet earth is running out of food; the bread basket of the world, the American mid-west, can grow only corn and even the corn crop is endangered. The entire world is as desperate as is the US; so desperate that there are no longer any standing armies-things are reduced, world-wide, to the elemental.

Ms Kelly: We didn’t run out of planes and television sets. We ran out of food.

The conversation between Cooper, a farmer played by Matthew McConaughey and his daughter’s elementary school teacher, Ms Kelly, personifies the shrunken world view of the American people; Cooper sadly observes that

We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.

Ironically, it is Cooper, farmer and former NASA test pilot, who is asked by a top secret remnant NASA team headed by Michael Caine to leave his two children in order to pilot an interstellar spaceship  in search of sustainable environments for the threatened human species.

Combining relativity and string theory with a dying earth, Christopher and Jonathan Nolan create a visually spectacular journey that is challenging on each of the intellectual, allegorical and spiritual levels. My brain cannot wrap itself around the notions of dark matter, black holes, worm holes and event horizons but the Nolans did a splendid job of cloaking what feels like oxymoronic concepts in excellent satire like this interchange between Cooper and his younger daughter, “Murph.”

Young Murph: Dad, why did you and mom name me after something that’s bad?.

Cooper: Well, we didn’t.

Young Murph: Murphy’s law?

Cooper: Murphy’s law doesn’t mean that something bad will happen. It means that whatever can happen, will happen.

But the most powerful punch of this most intriguing film takes place in a discussion;perhaps an argument between Cooper and Brand, another astronaut, well played by Anne Hathaway. Desperately searching for a ‘path’ through the unimaginably immense space that can be traveled in time to save the threatened humans on the rapidly dying earth, Brand suggests love as a dimension they can use to return. Initially, her statement that love is the one thing that transcends time and space is interpreted by Cooper as illustrative of Brand’s inability to be objective. Later, near the end of the film, Cooper understands Brand’s explanation in defending her stance-‘

……’it’s because we are out of theories, we have no more theory to use;’ touching her heart as if in surprise, ‘my heart, I want to follow my heart’.

The post Interstellar:The Dimension of Love appeared first on Life In The High Desert.

Thinking About Camino

Until about five, maybe six years ago, I had never heard of the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James. For over 1200 years, pilgrims have been  walking the Camino Frances or one of its many less populated variations: A 500 mile path from St. Pied du Port in France to Santiago, Spain where the apostle James is buried. There are many paths but the most popular is this 500 mile trek most people make in 30 to 35 days with daily hikes of between eight to ten miles per day.

My good friend told me about a talk she heard from a woman who had decided to celebrate her 50th birthday walking the Camino.

By the third day, the pain in my knees was excruciating, walking hurt so badly, I was in tears. Other pilgrims stopped to advise me and all of them told me to lighten my baggage. But I carried only water and mascara, in case I met a cute guy. There was nothing to lighten. It took time and intense pain for me to see that the baggage I was carrying was not physical.

It has been years since my friend told me about this woman’s talk but the power of her metaphor intrigues and frightens me still- I have touchy knees which can erupt into almost crippling pain if I get careless.

Pilgrimages are not new to me. In the years since I’ve been a Christian Catholic I have done many pilgrimages; three of which I did not want to do; Camino feels like them.

I had no desire to spend the time or the money for ten days in Mejudgorje, The Colonias, a thrown together series of hovels for Hispanic emigrants southeast of Tijuana or a Benedictine Monastery in Virginia but knew these places to be trips I needed to make, alone. During none of these ten day pilgrimages did I have an ‘experience’…a vision or any answers to questions I was battling with; in fact I was not sure why I had gone; my only sense that those things about which I have the most fear are generally the things I must do. I suspect that Walking the Camino may not be all that different. But ten days is nothing compared with over thirty days of walking-thirty days of walking and thirty nights of sleeping with strangers.

Meanwhile I have watched the recent films, The Way and Camino de Santiago, and wondered at the renewed interest in this centuries old tradition by young and old; religious and those with no religious belief at all; wondered at the universal call to something more in an age and a culture ostensibly rejecting all things religious.

 

 

 

 

 

The post Thinking About Camino appeared first on Life In The High Desert.

Ebola and Exercise

Ok, I’ll admit that the title is a ploy to get your attention but it’s no lie. Exercise is the best antidote to stress of all types; regardless of whether the stress arises from fear of Ebola or from anxiety induced by a more imminent danger, exercise is the best antidote.

Recently, I have had a good deal of contact with the media due to my publicist’s creative ‘pitch’ with the media. My training in public health and experience as a Hospital Director made the publicist’s idea of jumping on the Ebola induced media frenzy sound like a great way to promote my latest book. What seemed like a no-brainer to me turned rapidly into a need to take a few steps back to consider just how far I would go to generate publicity; very quickly I realized that for most reporters, television and radio show hosts that my ‘hot’ background cooled off to total disinterest once they received my talking points: Once they were told that I had no interest in joining the crowded fray of experts decrying the actions of the beleaguered Dallas Presbyterian Hospital.

Instead, what I wanted to discuss were the behaviors we needed to take very seriously because of real and present danger, rather than a manufactured one. The numbers of interested people dropped precipitously almost overnight.

Why?

Because health is boring.

Disease is exciting….sexy, particularly with a new and morbidly fascinating disease like Ebola. In one of the interviews conducted with me by a holistic health show, the interviewer was intrigued by my statement that we needed to get some perspective on this thing; that as a society, we needed to talk publically about the risks to health that are real, are of imminent threat and are mostly in our own control.

Heart disease has been the number one cause of death in this country for decades. For one out of two of us suffering from heart disease, the first sign is death. That frightening statistic has not budged for years. The incidence of Diabetes has tripled in adults over the last twenty years and has increased exponentially in children. The data demonstrating the significant positive effects of consistent exercise upon cardiovascular health are overwhelming and most Diabetics who exercise and learn what and how to eat can be cured of their disease.

But our media prefers to sound an alarm about a disease that at present time will affect only those caring for Ebola patients or traveling to Africa with the real epidemics undiscussed.

When my holistic health reporter spoke with me, he asked me what I thought was the most important way to minimize risk of contracting Ebola. If one researches this question at the CDC web site, one reads that the health of the individual’s immune system is the most important criterion in determining risk of contagion.

What is one of the most serious risk to the health of the immune system?

Right, it is stress. Over many decades studies have shown the inimical effects of stress upon the immune systems of laboratory animals from the time that Hans Selye pioneered the concept through decades of excellent work by Norman Cousins, beginning with The Anatomy of an Illness in the late sixties.

And the safest and most effective antidotes to stress?

Right again: exercise.

 

 

The post Ebola and Exercise appeared first on Life In The High Desert.

Communion, Consolation and Church

The church was packed: St. Patrick’s Church in Arroyo Grande had a Mass of Remembrance -Communion and Consolation-at six last evening for All Souls Day. I expected there to be very few people there, after all, it was time for Sunday night football but there was almost no room by the time the priest began the Mass. In the back of the church was a small family with their son; immobile on a hospital type bed, completely paralyzed with a machine rhythmically providing humidified air through his tracheotomy.

We worshipers looked like an ethnic soup: Asians, Hispanics, Filipinos, Blacks and Anglos, young and old, a large number of farm workers and I thought of the remark a friend had made in reply to my observation about the number of Catholic Churches here in the central valley of California…’It’s because of all the illegal immigrants, they’re all Catholic.’  He was right of course, the growth in the American Catholic Church is in large part due to the influx of Hispanics, true in Texas, California, and I imagine, in most of the border states.

This church has a unique starkly white ‘crucifix’ that is not at all a crucifix hanging on the wall behind the altar; rather it is an emerging resurrected Christ, head and torso visible but the lower half of his body still tightly wrapped in a shroud with only bare feet visible. The overall image highly reminiscent of a chrysalis; I have never seen anything like it and I stare at it frequently during the two Masses I have attended at this church. Last night, the metaphor was even more fitting as the priest talked about the belief we have as Catholic Christians, a belief that the world does not understand, that the world often ridicules: We believe that the relationship we have with those who die does not end with their death. As he speaks, I recall the decision of the early Christians to use the word cemetery- the word meaning bedroom for our burial places. We believe rather, the priest declared, that these souls can intercede for us and we for them in a way, perhaps, more real than all that we  think normally comprises reality. We are invited, the priest reminds us to pray for the dead so that their souls may be reunited with our Creator; our prayers matter- as does their absence -to this mysterious Lord of ours- this man who chose to empty himself of every shred of divinity so that he could walk the paths we walk, each and every one of us.

After his homily, the priest sat and one of the parishioners stood to address the congregation to explain how this remembrance would be conducted: Each family is invited to take a candle for your loved one who died this year or many years ago, whisper their names to one of us and place the electric candle on the altar, she explained. And so we did. Hundreds of us lined up as all the names, the dates of parishioners at St. Patrick’s Church now dead were shown scrolling down the wall of the church to the left of the altar, we whispered the name and carefully placed our candle; hundreds of tiny lights blinking like stars throughout the Consecration.

The disorientation is at times, overwhelming, complete. One minute exultant because of the Patriots’ victory over the Colt’s; Brady over Manning- Yes; the next, this otherworldly Mass of Remembrance celebrating a community of immigrant pickers, tattooed Hispanic young men, aged Filipinos, the Community of Saints -ever present and eager to help- and me.

“Holiness is not the privilege of the few, but the duty of all.”

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

 

The post Communion, Consolation and Church appeared first on Life In The High Desert.

Halloween and All Saints Day

Maybe because of the very few people at this morning’s Mass-not obligatory because it fell on a Saturday, I thought of a comment my husband made about this life we are living a few weeks ago, This is not a game.

Surreptitiously, I glanced around the less than half filled church to see the faces of men and women there to worship; many of whom I knew had lost a daughter, a husband, a wife, or a mother and thought of John’s comment once again. Many of the gazes had a sheen of tears and more than a few faces were wet with tears. Rows of smiling photographs of loved ones no longer here were carefully placed in front of the altar.

Carefully explaining this morning’s liturgy, the priest remarked that this liturgy is familiar to us; these are the the psalms and the readings we hear at the funeral Mass. We are here to celebrate our ‘local’ saints, pointing to the rows of photographs arrayed there and then he carefully, reverently read out the long list of names of the husbands, wives, daughters, sons and mothers who are no longer here because they died this year.

I heard a whispered question from a woman sitting next to my husband, “Did you get many trick or treaters last night?” The ironic clash of the profane and the sacred playing as loudly as cymbals in my ear.

In some surveys I read that Halloween has become the favorite holiday of many Americans. Reflecting that change, Halloween decorations, costumes, parties have become quite elaborate. While in Houston, the decorations in some yards looked ornate, more ostentatious even than Christmas. The genesis of the holiday, All Saints Day Eve evident only in skeletons and scary movies and costumes; painted with stark clarity on the faces of those grieving today at the Mass for the dead…All Saints Day the Mass that celebrates the Christian belief that our physical death is an illusion; a doorway to our real destiny.

Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners: but you are fellow citizens with the saints and the domestics of God, Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone: In whom all the building, being framed together, groweth up into an holy temple in the Lord.  In whom you also are built together into an habitation of God in the Spirit.

This is not a game. I am grateful for the reminder.

The post Halloween and All Saints Day appeared first on Life In The High Desert.

Picasso at the Lapin Agile

Einstein and Picasso meet at a bar….

Who could resist going to see a play with an opening lure like that?

For the San Luis Obispo Little Theatre, the Sunday afternoon performance was the last of the run of a play by Steve Martin called, Picasso at the Lapin Agile and it was sold out. Martin writes that when he saw a self- portrait of Picasso Au Lapin Agile  painted in 1905, he began to wonder about the story that led up to Picasso’s painting, about a bartender named Freddie, about the characters who may have wandered into the bar in 1904, taking some liberties with the nine characters who appear in the ninety minute play, he created a play that in no way disappoints.

I had no idea that Martin had ever written a play; we were so intrigued by the notion that we appeared an hour before the play was to open, hoping for no-shows. And were rewarded along with the five others who were standing in the wait line. We got in.

The characters in the play speak a most delightful, thoughtful and rare combination of humor, satire and profound dialogue.

“Yeah, well, we’re all writers, aren’t we? He’s a writer that hasn’t been published, and I’m a writer who hasn’t written anything.” Freddy quips in response to Einstein’s revelation that his book on relativity is written but not yet published.

And then there is this:

Picasso: Well, I see other painters struggling with it, killing themselves over it even. And I donʻt get their worry. I put the pencil to the paper, and it comes out. Not the craft, mind you, that was difficult to get. The ideas are a different matter. The ideas swoop down on me, they fall like rain; they land with a crash.

Einstein: They “thunk,” too.

Picasso: Absolutely! They thunk.

Einstein: You too?

Picasso: Yes. And pop.

Einstein: Well, pop all the time, that goes without saying. They never seem to flow though.

Picasso: Never. Flowing is a myth.

Einstein: Never flow. Well, sometimes.

Picasso: Yeah, sometimes.

Freddy: Where do they come from?

Picasso: Before me, artists used to get ideas from the past. But as of this moment, they are coming from the future, fast and loose.

Einstein: Absolutely from the future.

Picasso: I think in the moment of the pencil to paper, the future is mapped out in the face of the person drawn. Imagine that the pencil is pushed hard enough, and the lead goes through the paper into another dimension.

The San Luis Obispo Community Theater prides itself on over sixty years of plays, making it one of the longest running community theaters in the country. Until we experience the intimacy of small theater, it is all too easy to lose ourselves in the tempting but frequently far less satisfying panoramic movie screen. Commenting on that point, in an interview with a Chicago Tribune reporter, Martin remarked, “In general, yeah, I think comedy is completely overlooked. I mean, most young actors think that real acting is when you’re shooting up heroin and crying and ranting and raving and flipping out. Actually, I’m getting tired of some of these films. I think they’re ugly. I looked at something the other night-not Jean-Claude Van Damme, but somebody like that-where they were blowing people away. And I just thought, `What a silly thing to do for a living.’ “

The post Picasso at the Lapin Agile appeared first on Life In The High Desert.

War Dog

” So you’re a war dog.”

I was talking to the beautifully marked German Shepherd standing next to a second brown and white fairly large second dog; both were tethered together by the RV and were looking toward the owner of the pair of feet, the remainder of his body hidden by the red pick- up truck the crouched man was attaching to his trailer. At the sound of my voice, the happy brown and white dog grinned and started wagging a long tail while the German Shepherd turned to fix dark eyes on me. If he wagged his tail, it was imperceptible. In my imagination, I could visualize images of the story I had been told about  this  war dog Tim and the ex-soldier Dave in the nine years the two had spent in what had to have been countless hell-holes in Afghanistan.

One can only imagine the horrific  images the man and the dog live with….and know with certainty, that the worst of the images we can conjure up come nowhere close to those residing in the psyches, minds and hearts of the man and his dog. In this perfectly sunny clear and peaceful morning here at the Pismo Sands RV park in Central California where we all are staying, the dissonance of the images are surreal.

Appearing at the back of his truck, the tall lanky former soldier smiled, “Meet Tim and Doofus, Doofus suffers from a rarely and newly diagnosed syndrome, IWOT.”

At my unspoken question, the smile widened, “Involuntary wagging of the tail”, he explained, “I think most of the time he is totally unaware that his tail is wagging.”

Unable to bear the phrase that seems so inane and meaningless, “Thank you for your service,” I said, “I am so sorry at the hell that the two of you must have endured.”

At that, he turned away and toward the dog, Tim, “It’s what we sign up for in my business…” then catching himself, “at what used to be my business.” Looking at the two dogs, Dave remarked, “It’s amazing how well these two get along, even though they are two males. They really love one another, sometimes, people stop to watch because they are practically laying on top of one another in their bed. ” His face soft, the love for his animals shining through his features Dave continued, “Doofus keeps Tim grounded…we rescued him and he fit in from the first day.” The implication of just who rescued whom was crystal clear in the simple statement.

Replying to my questions about the war dog, Dave said, “I got Tim when he was six months old, I did all of his training.” I refrained from asking about the many times I had been told the dog Tim had been shot and said simply, “I lost my Doberman last March 13th.”

Smiling in recognition, Dave replied,”If you had a Dobie, you know what it’s like to have a velcro dog. Tim is adhered to me.”

It took me a second to get his allusion and then I smiled back. “Yes, you’re right, good description.”

He explained that they were heading to the Baha Peninsula for the winter and then would decide where they would go next…maybe they would go down to Mexico. After wishing them safe travels, I walked away and within ten minutes, Dave, Tim and Doofus were gone…with a few of my prayers, I noted that Dave had never introduced himself, only his dogs. I learned his name that night from my neighbor, John.

Last night, I told John who had told me some of Dave and Tim’s story about our brief encounter that morning.

“Does he seem all there to you?  ” The question seemed rhetorical so I didn’t answer, ” The dog made me really wary, not a dog you want to pat.” Thinking for a while, John added, ” All alone, he’s a good-looking guy, still young but all alone.”

 

 

 

The post War Dog appeared first on Life In The High Desert.

The Interview: Lessons in Humility

Once I realized that writing was exactly like other businesses my husband John and I had done together; some extremely successfully; others not so much, I  accepted the fact that promoting this new novel will be no different. Therefore, I hired a publicist to help promote the events planned for the Texas trip. Wisely, the publicist  suggested that she could promote the novel through my writing what she calls ‘by-line’ articles on subjects tangentially related to the book but not directly. Writing the articles was easy but I was unprepared for the lessons in humility which would follow once the interviews began.

Speaking to her live about potential directions for the ‘pitch’, we decided on two provocative articles, one on retirement, the second about medicine and health, they were written and promoted nationally and locally in time for the Texas trip. While in Houston for the two week blitz of events, the sales training learned the hard way through extensive study, trial and error and loads of practice during the last ten years came back readily. But responding to reporters and hosts of radio shows for the 21st century interview was different:When I listened to the link to the audio download for the first live interview done while still in Houston, I cringed.

Strangely, it has taken a while for me to determine why the twenty minutes was fraught with too-long pauses, use of non-words and over use of ‘well..’ to begin my reply are all clear evidence that I am a novice. Speaking with small and large audiences has been a part of my life for most of it. But responding to interviewers, reporters, hosts of radio shows has not. For years I have addressed those wishing to learn a new skill, or understanding of a complicated subject which I have mastered with something like this phrase, ” become a student again” in fact, I did so in this first interview.

The words are so very easy to say but the reality is quite different; like everything worth doing poorly, at least at first. I have re-learned the consequences: Wincing when we hear ourselves sound like what we are, novices, all lessons in humility.

Lessons that are most probably the most important ones of all; humility is reality…we want, no we need, to be real.

The post The Interview: Lessons in Humility appeared first on Life In The High Desert.

I Flunked Retirement

Last Thursday night while still in Houston, I did my first live interview.

Although I winced at some of the ‘wells’ and the ‘ums’ in the beginning, not all bad for the first in a very long time. I think these talks are sort of like riding a bike; despite the fact that my bike riding skills were never totally awesome, I know I’ll get better at quickly formulating a reply without the need of the non-words.

The host of the show Health, Wealth and Wisdom could not have been more gracious despite a few times when it sounded as if I had stopped talking, taking too long to formulate my next comment.

He could have become annoyed but did not. Here is the link should you wish to download and listen: http://seniorvoiceamerica.com/2014/10/09/flunk-retirement-elder-fraud-runs-rampant/

If you do, would appreciate comments!

 

The post I Flunked Retirement appeared first on Life In The High Desert.