Das Ziel meines Blogs, auf Deutsch

Mein Blog geht um "das ehrliche Leben," das, was ich durch meine Erfahrungen gelernt habe. Manchmal schreibe ich über Philosophie, und erzähle auch ab und zu Geschichten aus meinem Leben. Das Ziel ist nicht etwas Kluges oder Interessantes zu sagen, sondern mich mit den Lesern durch meine Worte irgendwie zu verbinden. Ich glaube, wir haben alle dieselben Sorgen, dieselben Ängste, dieselben Wünsche... aber die amerikanische Kultur ist so, dass wir nie miteinander darüber reden, und deshalb fühlen wir uns ganz allein. Ich will diesen Irrtum, diese falsche Vorstellung, aufklären.

Coincidences or Lucky Accidents?

I try to follow my intuition at all times. If my gut doesn't tell me what to do, then I know something is wrong. Usually it's that I don't have enough information to make a good decision.

I think this is why I love coincidences so much. I suppose whether coincidences are actually meaningful in any way is a mystery, but how do you explain that strange and unique feeling you get in your heart when they happen? When you notice a coincidence, your reaction is unlike any other. Are the events in our life ultimately objective or subjective?

In Psalm 46 of the King James Bible, published in the year that Shakespeare turned 46, the 46th word is "shake" and the 46th word from the end is "spear." Isn't that WEIRD?!

I choose to believe that when a coincidence invades my life -- large or small -- I'm in the right place at the right time. It's a kind of signpost. I first encountered (and became mildly obsessed with) this theory of synchronicity after I read James Redfield's book, The Celestine Prophecy. It's easy to make a good decision when a coincidence occurs because that's the purpose of coincidence: to point us in the right direction. There's something there I need to take advantage of. Every time you turn towards something, you turn away from something else. But how do you best decide which way to turn? Some people think I'm crazy for not thinking through my options more thoroughly, but usually my thought process is subconscious. My intuition brings to light the decision I would arrive at anyway, after long, troublesome hours of contemplation. And I have never been steered astray by this gut of mine. What I've discovered is that the more often I take advantage of whatever coincidences have to offer, the more often coincidences happen to me. I'm living well. But if I ignore the signpost and let opportunity pass me by, then life just marches on like it always does. I want my life to be special, but that involves taking risks and chances and leaps of faith.

If there's even an inkling that "this might not be a good idea" in my mind, I won't do it. I hate regret because it makes you live sorrowfully in the past. This is not to say I have never made a bad or just plain wrong decision. But on those occasions, I learn from my mistakes and grow out of the experience. I choose not to dwell on the past and consider all the other myriad choices I could have made. What's done is done. That's a pet peeve of mine, when people can't let go of something they've done or someone else has done in the past. You can only affect the present, so if you're going to make any headway or solve any issue, you won't succeed by dwelling on what already transpired. You have to move ahead and fix the way things turned out -- and THAT is within your power. I hardly ever think about the way things might have been.

We all must agree, though, that everything happens for a reason. This is true of our world whether or not you choose to ascribe mystical significance to those reasons. In the end, everything is conditioned. Nothing is uncaused. Every action has a reaction, and the interaction of all action in the universe, while complex, is thus not chaotic. Everything is connected in a delicate balance.

All of this sets me up to discuss another topic at a later time: fate. If a coincidence is simply a confluence of events (events bumping into other events due to the complicated web of interaction in the universe), are they inevitably going to happen, or do we have a say in the matter? Could our own decisions be fated?

If you're interested, you can read more here: 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200407/the-power-coincidence 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ambigamy/200911/everything-happens-reason-simple-phrase-opens-worm-can-wonder

Fear and Truth

In a 2005 Gallup poll, a national sample of adolescents between the ages of 13 and 15 were asked what they feared the most. The question was open ended and participants were able to say whatever they wanted. The most frequently cited fear (mentioned by 8% of the teens) was terrorism. The top ten fears were, in order: terrorist attacks, spiders, death, being a failure, war, heights, criminal or gang violence, being alone, the future, and nuclear war.

I fear sometimes that I lost my religiosity for the wrong reasons, that God and Jesus really are the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that I am jeopardizing my soul's eternal well-being by my agnosticism. I fear that eternal judgment may well exist.

I worry that I should be setting my sights higher than being a humble (yet noble) teacher. I am very conflicted about this. People have told me that they "can't wait to see [my] name in lights someday" since I was a child, and my friends and family always said that I had the potential to cure cancer or end world hunger or do something really incredible. But I've always felt like the incredible things start with something small, and I enjoy having a small effect on a lot of people. In 50 years, my students will (hopefully) remember me, their crazy Chinese teacher. That's powerful stuff. And if they go on to do quote-unquote "amazing" things, I will have had a part in all their success. Another part of me thinks that I should be doing those great things. Just what they are remains a mystery at this point, because the definition of success and greatness is so relative... What, exactly, does 'incredible' mean? At the same time, I also have the feeling that I am on the path towards greatness. If my experience has taught me anything, it's that being on the right path is sometimes enough. You don't have to go searching for the opportunities because they'll come find you if you're open to them. Put your desire out into the universe, and you will be answered. Is it really that easy? Well, if you want something that badly, then every decision you make (whether obviously or obliquely related to that desire) will bring you closer to your goal. Everything you do is tied to it. That's why it's so important to figure out what you want, even if it changes. You can't go through life not knowing what you want, for then you'll wander aimlessly. Follow the signposts, the coincidences, and you'll end up where you're meant to be.

I fear losing sight of what's really important. If you haven't read or seen the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder, you should do so immediately. I'm resolved to read or see that play at least twice a year for the rest of my life. Act 1: Daily Life. Act 2: Love and Marriage. Act 3: Death and Eternity. It's a play about seeing your life from a future perspective, about living your life one day at a time, considering each new day as your last, and truly appreciating and taking advantage of your time here, the people you meet, the experiences you have. Life should be valued, "every, every minute." Most people don't realize life while they live it. "The saints and poets, maybe -- they do some." What amazing gifts life and consciousness are! What amazing gifts family and friends are. But do I really think about that all the time? I think I should, and I fear I don't enough. Like everyone else, I get wrapped up in other things ... selfish things ... and I make silly decisions based on silly reasoning. I fear that one day I will regret not being able to be a true Buddhist about life, so I really want to reach Nirvana soon! I'm on my way. I should talk to my family every day. I should write long emails and have long phone conversations with people I care about as often as I can. I should visit friends and be an active communicator. I should tell people how much they mean to me and how lucky I feel to know them. I should take time at the end of the day to do a self-examination and relive my life, analyze my interactions with people, and regroup. But culture and misplaced values and pleasure of the moment get in the way. So in a way, I see living in the moment as a paradox, and I fear not being able to balance the paradox properly.

I fear that I'm not being healthy enough (eating right, exercising, etc.) and that I'm going to pay for it later.

The most important thing in life to me is that I never lose sight of these fears ... discarding them because it's easier to forget about them than it is to grapple with them. In other words, the most important thing to me about life is the truth. Genuine honesty. And sometimes the truth is hard to understand. Sometimes the truth doesn't make sense. Sometimes the truth isn't fair. Sometimes the truth takes a long time to accept. Sometimes the truth is hard to find. But "the Truth shall set you free." In truth is peace. I believe, for example, that if you can truly put yourself in someone else's shoes, you could never be angry at them. Wars would cease. But accepting other people's truths is very, very difficult. So I search not only for my own truths, but for other people's, in the hopes that I can see the world from many different perspectives. I love the idea that God is God because he sees the world through every single eye that has ever existed, exists now, and will exist in the future. That's why he's omniscient... that's why he's omnibenevolent... and that's why he's omnipotent. If everyone on earth prayed for the same thing at the same time, it would happen! So when people talk about seeing the world through God's eyes, I think they actually mean through others' eyes. And NOT through your eyes through other people's eyes (like what would it like for ME to be you for a day), but actually BEING someone else. But if everyone 'wants' peace and happiness, why do these tenets escape us most of the time? Because we're unwilling to let go of our own personal truth and admit that other people might be right. I think disagreement is fine -- and totally natural -- but judgment is not. And humans feel the need to judge others' truths as lesser or just plain wrong. This is exclusionary and narrowminded.

I think everything I enjoy doing, I enjoy because it taps into this idea of truth seeking. The books I read, the movies I watch, the conversations I have, the people I meet, the places I go, the subjects I teach... Buddhism, yoga, eastern philosophy, meditation... Making real connections with people means discovering their personal truths and respecting them and discussing them and pondering them. That's the marrow of life. That's what get's me up in the morning.


http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/

Choose love!

I always used to find love songs and love poems cheesy. I used to ask myself, "Why do artists and great minds spend so much time pondering this 'love' thing, trying to put it into words?"

Well, then I fell in love, and I realized exactly why. Love is ineffable. It's so unbelievably powerful. It's magical. It changes you. I mean, I had known the love of family and friends, but this strange emotion was something otherworldly. I could hardly do or think about anything else. I was dissecting everything. Everything else in my life (work, friends, hobbies) took a back seat. I became a communication addict. An extremely impatient one. Love is very time-consuming. I don't mean to claim that I am a poet or any sort of great mind, but I eventually found myself contemplating love continuously. I would try for hours to try to express my feelings in a specific and sensible way. I was reading love poetry voraciously, listening to cheesy love songs and actually EMPATHIZING with them, beaming and sighing! Gross, right?

Why is the urge to express love so strong?

From what I've gathered, a primary motivation we humans have in life is to expand our selves and to increase our abilities and effectiveness. We are inherently social creatures, so naturally we do this in conjunction with (and thus in relationships with) other people. Love is particularly exhilarating because not only do we discover the potential of self-expansion for ourselves, but there's also another person who's interested in working with us, investing in our own self-expansion, who finds us attractive enough to spend copious amounts of time with. It's an infinite feedback loop, and it's thrilling. Love is selfish; we become obsessed. Love is wonderful; it makes us feel good. Love is enticing; life seems more beautiful.

But love never creates pain. Attachment, expectation and needing the other are the cause of that pain. It's easy to love those who give us what we want. It's much harder to continue loving once things get tough. That's why, in the end, it's a choice. I vow to pursue love all my life. It makes life worth living. Neither career nor money nor success nor any other goal can hope to compare with what love has to offer.

I wrote this once: "Days are so much longer with you in them; time seems to elongate because I will it to, because i want more time to think about you, to spend with you, to hold you... If I know what love is, it is because of you."

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. (Ingrid Bergman)

Love makes mutes of those who habitually speak most fluently. (Madeleine de Scudery)

You know you're in love when you see the world in his eyes, and his eyes everywhere in the world. (David Levesque)

Love feels no burden,
thinks nothing of trouble,
attempts what is above its strength,
pleads no excuse of impossibility...
It is therefore able to undertake all things,
and it completes many things,
and warrants them to take effect,
where he who does not love would faint and lie down.
Love is watchful and sleeping, slumbereth not.
Though weary, it is not tired;
though pressed, it is not straitened;
though alarmed, it is not confounded...
 
- Thomas A. Kempis

Real life revisited

A wonderful friend of mine made some great comments that I'd like to share with you. I've paraphrased them somewhat, but I find these words inspiring, challenging, and important.

Make your blog about 'real life.' Life is life, and all of it is real.  There are definitely stages like childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, and on and on, but there is no part that can be separated from the rest.  I think it all has to be acknowledged and accepted as part of what we have experienced; part of what has made us who we are.  "Real life," as you use it, has no meaning for me.  I remember as a student, probably in college, but possibly still in high school, reading that the poet Goethe in later life was ashamed of some of his earlier writings and disavowed these.  I always considered that strange.  I note you say the same thing about your earlier blog.  Now both you and Goethe are much, much more creative than I can ever hope to be, and perhaps that's the difference, but I do wonder about disavowing parts of one's life as later stages overtake us.

I may look at things this way because of my experience in AA and alcohol and drug abuse.  Part of what is called the promises of AA states that we shall come to a point in our lives where "we shall neither regret the past, nor wish to close the door on it."  To me that means that, if we understand and are contented with what has gotten us to where we are in life, then we have a chance at contentment at present.  Contentment here does not mean 'happiness.'  Rather it signifies that we are at peace with what has led us to where we are.  Even though the past may be filled with tragedy, embarrassment, and pain, if we learn from all this and accept it, we are better armed to confront our present circumstances and perhaps even the future.  That is reason enough to be content.

We are all in some ways at the same point.  We are still learning from our experiences and making necessary adjustments in our lives, just as we did when we were five and entered school, 13/14 and entered high school, 17/18 and entered college, and on and on.  All those points were/are very real, and all part of our lives.

So I suppose I should say this: to be completely honest, one of the main reasons I decided to start this blog, the major life event that gave me permission (I suppose) to begin again, is the recent breakup I went through. It was an extremely loving, long, dare I say perfect relationship. Why did it have to end? I have already learned a great deal about myself and the nature of love and life from that heartbreaking experience, and I plan on sharing -- from the heart -- more and more as I feel able.

Χαλεπον δε το φιλησαι

χαλεπον το μη φιλησαι

χαλεποτερον δε το παντων

αποτυγχανειν φιλοντα

Open Communication

Happy Black Friday and belated Thanksgiving greetings to you all. Just woke up from a nap after my eight-hour shopping marathon (12am-8am). Just kidding. I hope you enjoyed some good food and company yesterday.

My conversations at the Thanksgiving dinner table yesterday have prompted me to write about our (i.e. human beings') need to share ourselves with each other. We are inherently social creatures, and the world continues to shrink thanks to the advent of technologies such as the internet and the cell phone. Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Tumblr, OkCupid, text messages and many more have all made intercommunication a snap. Literally.

In a lot of ways, this is really great. I can log onto facebook and instantly see the statuses of all 951 of my friends. (Godspell opens tonight at Turtle Lane!) I can look at recent photos of the wedding or party that I missed and comment on them.  (Glad I didn't go to that one...) I can instantly see what's going on inside my friend's head even though he lives in California. (What kind of presents do you open on Thanksgiving, though??) I can meet tons of people online, learn about them, and then perhaps even meet them in person. (Cool or creepy?) I could go on and on. These are all wonderful distractions.

What worries me is that everything is designed to happen quickly, and people seem to be losing patience for anything that might be more time-consuming, such as writing a thoughtful and well-composed e-mail to a friend. Much easier to go to that person's facebook wall and write a quick remark. E-mail is literally overwhelming these days. Between my two main jobs, list serves, extracurricular groups and automated stuff I receive from Barnes and Noble, Macy's, Groupon, E-Bay, United Airlines (even though I try to unsubscribe from these services, they still send me e-mails!), I easily read between 50 and 100 emails a day, and I have to respond to and keep track of the majority. Madness! You need to write this course description. When can you meet to record the Christmas music? When are you free to rehearse? Please update me on my child's performance in your class. I can't be at choir this Sunday. Can you come to my party?

I thought getting a BlackBerry would help me keep up with it, but it turns out that I've just become addicted. I have no excuse now not to respond almost immediately. See? Just as I wrote that sentence, I just checked to see if someone had responded yet to an important email I wrote. Nope. BUT he did respond to another email that I sent around the same time. Why not to both? And of course, some people are just horrible communicators, and this trait is virtually unacceptable now in an age where all you need to do is press a few buttons and *BAM* you've communicated. Patience wears thin much more quickly than it used to.

So these technologies add unnecessary aggravation and stress to our lives in addition to making them simpler. And there are more philosophical questions here that intrigue me a great deal:

1) What do we choose to share with each other, and why? Is anything too private?
2) Does our online life affect the way we interact with people offline?
3) How does what we see and do online shape our perception of people?
4) What constitutes a "friend"?
5) How did we survive before, and could we go back?

The truth is that people are so complex that they are impossible to circumscribe in categories (likes, dislikes, favorites), yet our culture loves to categorize because doing so purportedly makes things easier to understand. Oversimplification is problematic! There's not a lot of room for change anymore. Once we say it, whatever "it" is, it's out there, and it's hard to take back. And it's too easy. Online media create the impression that people are mere snapshots of themselves. Snapshots are like statues. They aren't real. No one has it all figured out. Everything is a process. Everyone has issues they struggle with, questions without clear-cut answers, uncertainty... You might think that all of this newfangled technology should help us open up and talk, let each other know that we're not alone, but I think it just helps us hide more easily.

I still participate in all of this online hubbub. I just wonder if I'm warier than most.

What do you think?

New Beginnings

I used to write a blog. It's now rather archaic, and I'm quite embarrassed by it. I used it as a journal that anyone on the internet could read. I suppose this was back when blogs were just nascent, so I can't be judged too harshly.

I'm at a much different stage in my life now. You could call it a renaissance of sorts. I'm rediscovering a great deal - myself, the world, meaning, family, friends, lovers - and unfortunately for me, these revelations get me down from time to time. I often feel a general malaise about my current condition, and this feeling is relatively new to me. I always used to consider myself an optimistic, lighthearted person who could let things slide off his shoulders and thus seldom worry. I guess "real life" has set in.

And that's exactly what I want to blog about: my life. Certainly not in the way my first blog worked -- a day-to-day accounting of events -- but rather through an amalgam of musings that are hopefully a bit more analytical, and perhaps more meaningful. I would guess I'm not alone with these thoughts. Therefore, I welcome comments and discussion. I hope my writing will prove thought-provoking and perhaps even inspiring, although that is not my purpose. I invite you to comment, discuss, and ponder along with me! I've been told that I have interesting things to say. I don't pretend to be wise, because wisdom can only come with age, but I am definitely a deep thinker. This gets me into trouble. Maybe I'll write about that someday.

But right now, since I'm just starting anew ... again ... I find it only fitting to write a bit about Life. The meaning of human life for me? Society. Relationships. Learning, discovering, creating in tandem with others, hopefully for the better. Life ultimately means what you want it to mean. The more you give, the more you get. Its inherent value comes from our ignorance of whether or not there is more to life than what we have here in front of our eyes. So do something great with your life if you can. You might only have one chance.

When does "real life" start? When I was younger, it seemed to me that life would start after school ended, and that was always a ways off. This was a magical time when everything became clear. The future would be much more certain. Actual decisions would be made. Things would happen. A lot of people postpone that time by attending graduate school, earning higher degrees, staying in academia as long as possible, living with ideas and scholars and research and books. I don't know if I'd ever have the patience to earn anything greater than a Master's Degree. I also don't know for what end I would do so. Prestige? Intellectual fulfillment?

But even after college and graduate school and post-docs and residencies and clerkships (all of these things seem to postpone life), "real life" still may not start. Will we ever really know what we want to do? I definitely do not. I thought I did. I thought I had it all figured out (twice), and then, as they say, life intervened. Things happened. Turned out I wasn't so sure about everything. Clarity disappeared. I lost faith in a lot of people and things. Is this what it means to grow up? Is this when life begins -- when you discover that there is no clear cut answer to anything?

There is no magic moment when "real life" begins. Life started a long time ago, and it's going on right now! Seize the present moment and do something grand with it. All those clichés mean something: carpe diem; no time like the present; yesterday is history and tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift; etc. The only time we can control (if we can control anything... but free will is a whole other issue) is right now, so take advantage of every moment you possibly can. "Real life" starts when you are there marred in it, conscious that it's happening as you breathe. During life, nothing is ever completely finished or decided. There are always second chances. Life begins anew every day, every hour, every moment. We seem to lose sight of this very easily, and to our detriment.

We also have this notion that we are the same people from birth until death. We have the same name, same family, same (immutable?) personality, same interests, same basic abilities... But in reality, we are necessarily different people over the span of life! We learn, we grow, we change, we have new thoughts and experiences, we meet new people, we move around... If we let ourselves, that is.

So if "real life" never actually starts (at least not in the way we think it should because of social constructs or the media or whatever foists this fallacy upon us), we have to realize that we can do basically anything we want to do, and at any time. That's at once exhilarating and mortifying. There is no one out there giving you permission to go ahead with your scheme. Why should I stay [ever] at my current job? Why should I [ever] stay in my current city? Complacency is easy, but it's also dangerous because it can be extremely comforting and thus enticing. But when you can finally see that life starts again with every decision you make, you start to look at complacency and comfort in a different light. As much as I love being comfortable, I am not willing to let life happen to me. I want to make life happen for me.

So let's begin. Let's make it happen!