Instant Karma

Life has been a great privilege: all the rich and resonating experiences that change us constantly and permanently. Just about the time we get a handle on what is going on, a new landscape appears and off we go on a new adventure.

It swirls around us, among us, within us, the spirit of astonishment and wonder. We try to pull meaning  from life and reign it in.  That's probably where the concept of karma originated, and the notion that as we interact with the world we lay a foundation that finds its way back to us somehow.

The Secret is essentially the same: that through our thoughts, actions and reactions we exude good mojo that somehow encapsulate us. It would be kind of cool to be masters of our fate with secret karma! I would love to only have to think good thoughts, be nice and considerate and all that, recycle and don't cause a forest fire, and know I'm pretty much home free.

But when you believe that, how do you dispose of the radioactive byproducts? Things like arrogance and self-importance, and believing you own the outcomes of the whole world?  When you don't believe anyone deserves credit for your good fortune, there is no grounding, and there begins the metamorphosis to what you most despise.

We all secretly relish the darker side of karma. We want to believe that those who hurt and take without conscience are going to get it in the end. We don't want to wait for a lifetime to see it come back around: no, we want it now. Bring on those missed promotions and failing health for the bad guys.

We don't say that, of course. We just carry around the heavy burdens of hatred, envy and judgment and have no peace from it. We begin to hope for the misery of others. We have judged them and they deserve it.  And so all that negative thought and action creates the exact thing we are trying to avoid. We contribute to the bad karma that is out there, completely unaware of the difference and the truth that we are in over our heads.

God can equalize the playing field all by Himself. He's very good at these Truth or Consequences Judgment Day events.  He doesn't want us to get bogged down by routinely sitting in judgement of our fellow man. 

He still pays the gas and drives the bus. It is up to us to use our time wisely to model the Christian virtues that will bring a positive change in the world. That is our arsenal.

Gains and Losses

Spring is always a little bit melancholy for me. Living in a mild climate is like eating chicken every night for dinner. And so when something happens, anything at all weather-wise, I love it.

I'm sure you think I have lost my senses to want to celebrate any change, no matter how slight. I'm sure it's because I have lived here most of my life where nothing happens. I've never really had the opportunity to glimpse an actual textural change of seasons (except for that brief touchdown in Ohio for 10 months and thank you for not bringing that up).

My beloved Arizona was a huge disappointment, weather-wise. It boasted something like 300 days of sunshine - so much so that we had to run the air conditioner on Christmas Day in order to have a fire going because it was 75 degrees. And yeah, it's sunny but it's also 115 in the summer and who can enjoy going to the grocery store with an Igloo cooler in the trunk so your frozen food can make it home on the 10 minute drive without thawing?

Another thing with a mild climate is that none of the bugs die. So flies and mosquitos and spiders just keep multiplying year-round. The pest control companies love it, but I'd prefer to witness a cycle of life thing.

I want to plan things around what the weather is doing. I want to tune in at 5pm to hear what tomorrow will be like, or later tonight. I want our weather people to have something to do that draws our attention for more than sixty seconds.

And so for as beautiful as the cherry blossoms are, Spring isn't the season for me anymore. I've got a hankering to head East this year to see a real fall for a change. Maybe this year we will actually go.

Learning As We Go

I stood with family as the sun came up on Easter Sunday, listening to the words from a minister about the opportunities of the day and Christ's eternal sacrifice for us. It was a beautiful morning, overcast and darkened by black and gray clouds except at the horizon. The sunrise is proof that God kept his promise to us.

My eldest is traveling to Mexico next week via a $500 motorcycle he found on CraigsList. He is driving from the SF bay area to Cabo San Lucas and back, on some of the more well traveled roads, he tells me, with a loosely planned itinerary. He is an inexperienced motorcyclist with a wild card bike. He will be traveling down with one friend, who plans to fly home after the vacation; a second friend will fly down and ride home with him bringing back the second bike.

All of us have been reading about the drug cartels in Mexico at the moment, and there are plenty of stories of them attacking and taking from people their vehicles, their money and their lives. It is indiscriminate violence as the cartels exert control over a spreading region horizontally across the northern part of the country nearing the US border but also working south into the country. In recent months missionaries and buses of locals have been slaughtered and mass graves have been unearthed along the roadways and young men taken by force and into servitude for the drug trafficking trade.

I have a friend with a son in South America, without a plan, or an itinerary, or a way to call. He occasionally posts pictures from his travels and is spending time in the company of kind people he meets along the way. I am going to give her a call and see how she does it.

I accept that life is about learning as we go, but I cannot process and come to terms with the anxiety gripping my heart. I do not want to hear it will be a fun adventure. Do not tell my son in my presence that boys will be boys.

There is no contingency plan, no international cell phone, no experience on a bike and only a marginal understanding of the language. When something goes wrong, how will we search for him? And what if he finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time? I have a feeling this is going to be a very long two weeks.

Lord, Hear My Prayer.

Bet the Farm

Started this blog; rewrote midstream; no, this isn't right; so it's refreshed again.

Today would have been my 34th college reunion had I gone. I had a great time in high school and learned a lifetime of lessons in college, but I'm not much of a clinger. I gleaned some great friends: my Debs and Marcias and Alannas and Lauras.

I envy those who can stick with it, though. They are the girls in my college class who are besties with six or seven girls after all these years. I wish I believed you can live in that place without it changing, even after new experiences overwrite our lives, but I don't.

Life seems more efficient than that. We'd be like Thidwick the BigHearted Moose if we tried to carry absolutely everything along with us! Before we knew it, we'd be knee deep in people hanging off our antlers that we can't possibly hold. And so our memories hang onto the stories and recollect them from time to time.

That depressing divorce statistic was in the news again -- 50% of couples who marry also dissolve it. That only makes me wonder if every other person I meet is walking around in a haze from a life that just came crashing down. It's discouraging, is what it is. They don't inundate us with the bleak statistics of people playing the lottery, do they? Marriage has way better odds than that.

I'm coming around to this constantly changing cosmic life plan concept. No, not at the moment it happens: change is uncomfortable and scary until we settle back down. But I like the idea of knowing the inhospitable parts will pass on eventually. That's a relief!  Knowing that definitely helps me remember to savor the joys.

And then there's that big old soft pillow of love to tuck us in. The peace of it, the camraderie and optimism helps to be less fearful of life's unpredictability. Love (the good kind) captures and transforms us through devotional selflessness and patience. It sets us free to become strong.

Love brings us into the moment because that is where it resides. It never fades when we part. It changes us from the inside, growing until it spills into others. The more we give, the better we feel.  

For all the things we search for and desire, love is the noblest. People that are focused behind or ahead might miss it at the door, but if love finds you, I hope you throw off those useless statistics and bet the farm.

The Crisis of Change

I ran into a former co-worker the other day, both of us having made hair appointments around the same time. We hadn't seen each other in person since 2008, although we did keep in touch via email and FB.

When I was off work, I knew several gals in the same boat, so I kept an eye out for them as well. Anytime I ran across something that sounded like an interesting opportunity, I sent it along to my buddies. People wondered why I would share jobs I was applying for, but I looked at it this way: in an Employer's Market it's anyone's guess, so if I didn't turn out to be what they are looking for, maybe one of my friends would be.

Looking for work is one of the hardest jobs to have. There is a hollow feeling when you feel squeezed between responsibility and idleness. And even if the dismissal was a bottom line issue and your skillsets and work ethic were not the cause, it's hard to accept.

And then there's that Catch 22: how do you afford to keep up appearances (haircuts and nails and nice interview clothes and gas) with no money? You can't successfully interview without confidence. You cannot show your desperation, although the interviewer knows you are. It becomes a cruel game where the applicant is more heavily invested in the outcome because their life hinges on the decision. And often it comes down to ~ Do you get on with the interviewer? Balance their staff temperaments? Have the right skillsets? Laugh at the right times? Look and dress the right way? Happen to be in the right age group?

My co-worker's situation has become acute now that unemployment benefits have run out. She has to move in with her daughter's family. There was desperation and sorrow in her face and the tiredness   seemed to have seeped into her bones. Our parting hug was probably for good, and as much for safe travels as for regaining her independence.

There is a point no one talks about where discouragement overtakes the spirit and even opening up the work search engines seems futile. The out of work get a lot of criticism for this, that somehow they should soldier on despite days and weeks and months and years of failure. There is a misnomer that if unemployment benefits were not paid out, those out of work would find something sooner.

I don't agree. Discouragement is debilitating to those trying to find work. How many resumes will it take before we are like Pavlov's Dogs and begin to change our behavior: 200? 500? 1,000 or more? Anyone who has read Who Moved My Cheese knows that any crisis forces us into a corner of accepting and adapting to it, or not. We are, after all, creatures of habit.

I wake up grateful every day for the opportunity to work, the company that is such a pleasure to serve, and the people who have inspired and supported the process.  Unemployment was a great teacher of humility and self-discovery. Unemployment got my attention that my house needs to be in order going into retirement.

And so a seismic shift is beginning to occur within Randy's and my life, a refocusing on futures and what we will need when work is no longer a choice.  What will we do? What hobbies will fill our time? How will we afford the things we need and live an enriched and vibrant future?

It is never too late to begin.

The Consumer

We've been watching the Kennedys mini-series this week, staying up later than usual to walk through what we remember in our youth of the Boys at the Top and how they waded through the dangerous waters of change.

The show is a drama, meaning there's too much information and some of it is untrue. I've read some of Joe Sr previously, but what I am surprised by is the amount of time devoted to him and his unrelenting control and ruthless ambition that drove his sons into the White House and the grave.

Joe Sr. was a bootlegger, with probable ties to the Irish Mafia. He was a bully to his children, his family, his colleagues, his wife. He goaded his boys into such fierce competition that the eldest was motivated back into the war to be decorated and was killed. He gave permission for a frontal lobotomy to be performed on his daughter Rosemary without his wife's permission, which reduced her mental capacity to that of an infant.

He groomed his first son for the Presidency; after Joe Jr's death, he forced Jack into the role and Bobby into a support role. Many times I wondered how the children could emerge to be public servants at all. The boys went on to change the course of history, even change our expectations of what a President should be, but not of their own volition.

It is truly ironic the Kennedy Mantra is 'family is everything'. He brow beat and belittled his daughters-in-law. He was an unapologetic womanizer, a habit that he unfortunately passed along to some of his sons. Every one and every thing fed his cancerous ego and ambition.

How different the world would be had the Kennedy brothers lived outside of their father's grip. 

People talk of the Kennedy Curse and the bad luck that has befallen the clan. But I believe it was their father's harsh upbringing and the enormous pressure brought to bear on the sons and grandsons that put in motion events that ultimately led to the tragedies.