Step 4: The Gift of a Fallen Branch

"Use the talents you possess - for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except for the best." ~ Henry Van Dyke

In that tangled tree diagram of life options, I had assumed that my life would unfold a certain way this week. Instead, the option I considered least likely came to be. The trouble, or perhaps the beauty, is that this unlikely branch is entirely under-developed. Beginning today, I get to imagine a future I didn't think I'd have just yet.

Brian and I talked tonight about the idea of prana, the intelligent undercurrent of energy that makes itself at home beneath of the narrative of our lives. In times of authenticity, that current supports our actions. When we're acting against our nature, living our lives to a lesser extent than what's possible, our prana breaks through, making room in the world for our true selves to emerge. Try as we might to suppress it, our prana will not be kept down for long. Eventually, we will have no choice but to live our lives to the fullest. We have to show up in the world and be everything we are capable of being.

I was willing to take the other branch, to remain in a holding pattern that would delay where I really want my life to go. Today the universe took that option away. No more delays allowed. Sometimes not getting what we wish for is the best gift we can receive.

The photo above is not my own. It can be found here.

My Year of Hopefulness - Spirit on Bone

"Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What appears bad manners, an ill temper, or cynicism, is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone." ~ Miller Williams

I was struck by the last line of this quote by Miller Williams because it relates perfectly to a situation that a friend of mine encountered this week. My friend was in town for a business meeting, and when he went to say good-bye to his boss, his boss pulled out a holiday gift and card for him. The card detailed everything he admired about my friend, and given my friend's talents, I am sure that the list of admirable qualities was long. The oddest thing about this encounter is that my friend's boss never gives Christmas presents, never says what he admires about others, and would be hard pressed to give anyone a heart-felt compliment unless there was some personal gain to be had from doing so.

My friend's boss was saying good-bye with this gift and card. It appears that his boss's time is up at their company, and parting is a difficult thing for someone who thought he was playing the game by all the right rules. He probably was; the trouble is that with this economy the ground shifts so quickly, and with it the game and subsequent rules change as well. It's just that no one tells you when a change has occurred. My friend's boss learned this lesson the hard way.

For about a year, I've been upset with my friend's boss. He's been manipulative and cruel, someone who took some kind of sad, sick pleasure in making someone else feel small. He was the consummate bad cop. Now, I'm not so sure. Maybe that bad cop was a front. Maybe there was always a good guy underneath that tough veneer. Maybe there was a heart there all along.

I guess we never really know what's going on inside someone's mind and soul. All we truly know are their actions and words. I suspect that my friend's boss was motivated by fear, and that caused him to behave so badly for so long. Now his number's up, and he's regretting some of his actions and words, wishing he could change them and knowing that it is far too late to fully make amends. The gift and the card is the best he can do, and perhaps that's enough.

A number of years ago, I had a boss who impressed me with one lesson that I think about all the time. A team member of ours was horribly rude to my boss, in public, and a few days later the team member came into my boss's office to apologize. My boss accepted the apology, no questions asked. I was stunned.

"How could you do that?" I asked him.

"Christa, asking for forgiveness is the hardest thing we do in life. You have to let someone apologize. If someone has the courage to come to me and apologize, then I can have the courage to forgive them."

It was one of those light bulb moments for me and I try to keep it close to my heart, even when someone has hurt me terribly. We have to let people say they're sorry, in their own way, in their own time. Sometimes it's in the form of a present or card, as it was between my friend and his boss. Sometimes it's a phone call, or an email, or a simple face-to-face conversation. By asking for forgiveness and granting it we can help one another to ease any tension that arises where the spirit meets the bone. And that might be the greatest gift we can ever give or receive.

The images above is not my own. It can be found here.

My Year of Hopefulness - Treasure Hunting

Life is a treasure. The deeper you dig, the more you will find. You've got to get underneath, find out what brings about true joy, what opens our hearts, what inspires us to go further than we ever thought possible. In December I always feel compelled to keep on digging right through to the new year. The lights that fill New York's streets at this time of year match the light I always find in my own life during the holidays.

December always seem to fly right by me. I blink and it's New Years Eve. Maybe it's the jobs I've had. Maybe it's that I always seem to be in the middle of a personal project during this time. It could be the incessant countdown that seems to get faster with each passing day this month. Most likely, I think it's the fact that time flies when we're enjoying ourselves, and this is my very favorite time of year.

I always find that my sense of hope is renewed in December, too. My faith in the benefits of hard work, determination, and steadfast empathy is met with continual new opportunities for learning and personal growth this month. I often find myself skipping down the street, driven by an overwhelming sense of gratitude for my good fortune. In other words, it feels like Christmas.

This year, I'm making a pact with myself to seek out the treasures in my life, hold them up to the light, and give thanks for each of them in a way that I never have before. To spend as much time with friends and family as I possibly can. I'll forgo a little more sleep than usual. I'll take long walks, even though it's cold outside, so I can soak up every bit of cheer I can find. I'll sing and dance and groove to my favorite Christmas tunes. I'll watch the specials on TV, bake cookies, trim a tree or two, and donate time and money to causes I care about. That's my gift to myself this year: the treasure of joy, and as much of it as I can muster.

My Year of Hopefulness - The high value of giving

Finally settled into my dear friend, Rob's, apartment for the week, I am feeling an immense sense of calm. As the last of my belongings were expertly ushered out of my old apartment with the greatest of care by the movers, I was doing a little dance of gratitude.

My friend, Dan, was one of the people who recommended Flat Rate Moving to me, and I texted him to ask how much I should tip them. We went back and forth several times about an appropriate amount. Finally, Dan said "In these situations I reason that they need it more than I do, so I round up." I emptied my wallet to double the going industry tip rate (which Dan also looked up for me on the fly, as well as surveying everyone in his office on the spot.) They deserved it.

I swept up the last of the dust bunnies, and grabbed a cab cross-town to Rob's. Given the gridlock traffic, I had a lot of time to think about giving more than the going rate for exceptional circumstances. Whether it's a tip to movers or the amount of time and attention to a valuable friendship, it feels good to give far beyond the usual.

So what if we always gave a little more than what was warranted? A little more care, energy, effort, passion, time, and money? What if we shared beyond what would ever be expected by others? Imagine how much further along we'd be. It seems to me that the only way we're ever going to have a life and a world that's exceptional is to give and give and give again. More than we're asked, and maybe even more than we think we're capable of.

My Year of Hopefulness - The Things We Keep

I’m in the midst of packing up my apartment. I’m amazed at the stuff I’ve got hanging around – old yearbooks, varsity letters from high school, cards, photos, letters, journals, magazine articles I meant to read once upon a time though for the life of me can’t remember why I was interested in reading them in the first place. It’s amazing what we accumulate.

I have two large closets in my front hallway that I have dreaded packing into boxes. I knew it would be a long, arduous process and therefore put it off as long as I could. Finally, I couldn’t sleep because I was so worried about packing them up so I just got up out of bed and started the inevitable sorting, tossing, and packing of their contents. Some of the memories they contain are painful, though most of them are happy. And thankfully, the contents are so old that my mind has gleefully erased most of the sadness, loss, frustration, and unhappiness that some of their contents used to trigger, leaving behind only the good memories in their wake.

I got my love for cards and letter writing from my grandmother, Sadie. She sent cards for every occasion from birthdays to Valentine’s Day to Halloween to First Day of School. I found a stack of them in one of the boxes crammed into the top shelf of my closet. I’d know that handwriting anywhere. My grandmother passed away 9 years ago, and still I miss getting those cards in her perfect cursive handwriting.

As I re-read the cards this week, I was overwhelmed with gratitude that I kept them. It’s my own little piece of her that I can always have. I hear her voice through those cards and am reminded of how much she loved me and cherished me. It’s things like these cards that have become my most cherished possessions. They didn’t cost a lot of money and they didn’t take a lot of time to create. Their simplicity and heartfelt emotion are the only gifts I ever really needed.

My Year of Hopefulness: Showing others what they're made of

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli

In many instances, it’s easy to share. All we need is a bit of motivation and some generosity. Write a check to a charity, show someone how to do something you already know how to do, share knowledge by posting on a blog. Sharing is a small, often painless and free, gesture. Anyone from any socioeconomic level, of any age, in any geographic location on Earth can do it.

What Benjamin Disraeli is talking about is more substantive. It requires more commitment, more dedication, more patience than sharing alone. Revealing your own gifts and using them for the benefit of others is done over and over again every day in every corner of the world. To help someone else realize their own potential, to cultivate someone else’s knowledge and creativity, to give them the confidence to go out into the world and make an impact is something that needs much more time, intention, and attention.

The payback for helping an individual or an organization help others is immense, much greater than if we only share what we’ve got. There’s a multiplicative effect. We help someone help several others who in term each help several others and so on. Consider it a pyramid scheme of generosity, something the world desperately needs now more than ever.

Of course the best of all possible scenarios is that by sharing what we’ve got, we inspire others to share. Think about teachers, writers, and artists, and how they inspire the imaginations of others. Consider how small acts of kindness inspire the “pay it forward” mentality. While giving and sharing are important actions for each of us to take, we also need to encourage and teach them to others in our lives.

Madonna had it right

How many times have we heard that giving of ourselves is much more in the holiday spirit than stopping off at a retailer to participate in the never-ending American consumerism. Great sentiment though what’s a company based on selling “stuff” supposed to do with it?

Enter the HP Activity Center.
http://expressioncenter.wetpaint.com/page/Holiday+Gifts+in+Under+One+Hour
By creating the WetPaint Wiki (http://www.wetpaint.com/), HP provides easy templates and instructions to create unique items from ornaments to cookbooks to toys to calendars to gift wrap. This is the Make It Yourself trend to the extreme and allows all of us to tap our inner artist. Additionally, you can share your creations and creativity tips with the WetPaint community, allowing you to not only make your own wares but show them off as well.

“Express yourself” never had more meaning…

The moment of giving

"Generosity lies less in giving much than in giving at the right moment. — Jean de La Bruyere"

The saying "It's all in the timing" tends to be related to a stroke of good luck, a serendipitous moment that occurs quite by accident with some great fortune attached to it. I am a huge fan of surprises. When I think about acts of kindness that I have experienced in my life, they came in the form of a surprise. My memory of the kindness has nothing to do with the actual gesture, but with the time that the kindness arrived.

My friend, Alex, is a fan of sending cards and little surprises in the mail. She sent me a magnet that I just love when I moved into my new apartment in New York. And she sent me a card during the summer I spent in Atlanta, which was miserable for a variety of reasons. She had no idea how much I needed a smile those days, though her timing was impeccable.

Even a well-timed, unsolicited compliment becomes an act of generosity. Occasionally I change out my picture on my blog or my Facebook page and I am always so touched when someone writes to me to say how much they like the new picture. The same goes for friends of mine who read my blog and reference it to me. I feel so touched when I know they've taken time out of their day to read what I'm thinking and writing about.

Simple phone calls do the trick, too. I am always excited to get a surprise call or voice message from someone I wasn't expecting to hear from, especially when it's not around a holiday or my birthday. I love those cards, emails, and messages that arrive just to say hi, for no reason in particular except to say "hey, I was thinking about you."

As I consider gifts I'll be giving this season I'll be thinking about the experience they create, how much joy they'll generate afterwards and hopefully for a long time to come. And this quote also gave me a third dimension to consider, timing. While the secret to a happy life may be to have low expectations, it may also be that we can generate happiness for others by providing unexpected generosity just when we sense that those around us need it most and expect it least.

Granting wishes

The season of massive gift giving has arrived! And with the season comes the litany of holiday TV commercials. It's tough for retailers to cut through with a unique message, though some are doing just that. I saw one this morning that made me reconsider the list I'll be checking twice. In the past, we've focused so much on getting gifts for people, the focus being the product we wrap up in shiny paper.

As retailers shift their business model to dually focus on the product and the experience of purchasing the product, consumers also seem to be focused on not just giving a gift but creating an experience for the recipient. Granting a wish.

We do put ourselves into the frenzy of mass purchasing - pictures of consumers dashing into retailer doors that open at 6:00am or earlier. But if we take a look back, and think about someone as a whole person, and find a way to give them something that's not just a box with a bow on it. One of these commercials shows a family that redid their dad's garage because he spends so much time touching up everyone else's room. Another one shows a little girl who loves fashion though until this year has had to wear a uniform to school. They bought her new sets of fun, funky clothes to celebrate her transition to a new school in which she can wear her own outfits. Both sets of gifts celebrate the core of the person they are given to.

We spend a lot of time gifting, though how much time do we really spend paying tribute to people who make such a difference in our lives? If we focused on this later part more often, we may find our gift lists transformed from simple packages to truly extraordinary gifts, and incidentally may find that the holiday season is filled with a lot more joy and a lot less stress.