Goodbye, Good Boy

School came easy to me.  I was a good student, at least measured by grades and behavior.  I don't expect anybody to feel sorry for me because of this, but it turns out that excelling comes with its own set of baggage.  Who'd have guessed?

We all want recognition for how we carry ourselves in the world.  But recognition, in the form of regular praise, top grades, and awards, can be addictive.  Do X, Y, or Z - get the cheese at the end of the maze.  Do it again, bigger and better, get more cheese.  The feedback loop seduces even as it subtly (or not so subtly) affects behavior.  Failing to do X, Y, or Z, taking a chance on, say, doing Q, feels risky because the rewards and consequences are unknown or unpleasant.  In high school, on track to be valedictorian, I didn't take typing, even though it would have been useful, because it most likely would have blown my 4.0.  Consequently, I am typing this blog entry using four fingers and a thumb.

By getting caught in the good feedback loop I learned to avoid taking risks.  I learned to follow rules and expect rewards to follow.  I was juiced up on the praise and acceptance of others (although it turns out that jealousy of others was an almost acceptable substitute).  I learned how to be a "good boy," which served me well in life, right up until it didn't.

As an adult, being a "good boy" just doesn't work.  Careers, relationships, passions, social engagement, spiritual inquiry - none of these are successfully negotiated by someone who cares too desperately what others think of him or her.  Life, it turns out, holds no truck with black and white rules.  Rather, life is a multicolor, paradoxical, mind-blowing endeavor that calls to us to embrace it, even as it chooses, at times, to chew us up and spit us out.  It's all part of the great dance of the universe.

In order to live life as the good man I aspire to be, it has become necessary to say goodbye to the "good boy" I've tried to be.  This means I can no longer afford to act from a place that tries to please everyone. 

"What can I do today to make the world a better place?"  This question stares me in the face every time I open the refrigerator to feed my face.  It's a reminder that deciding not to please others doesn't give me license to ignore them.  It's a reminder that, to be a good man, I need to act from that deep internal place that calls me to serve others even as I care for myself.  I need to joyfully jump onto the universe's dance floor and dance my butt off.

Places for the Third Act

There are worse places to set the scene for the third act of your life than Boulder, Colorado.  The Chamber of Commerce promises 300 days of sunshine a year, a statement that if not true at least isn't much of a boast.  You can hardly turn the corner without running into another brew pub serving really good beer.  Restaurants abound, and the norm is for them to serve organic and/or local food to the extent possible.  You can hike, bike, walk, run, ski, and enjoy beautiful and sometimes rugged nature.  You're 30 minutes or less from Denver, 45 minutes to a few hours away from stunning mountain towns.  Entertainment, meditation communities, education - all that and more is here.

I moved to the Boulder area last September after living in the Lansing, Michigan area for more than 20 years.  I miss the people and communities (theater, church, yoga) I left behind, but have otherwise not looked back.  Boulder has called to me since I was six years old, a phenomenon I wrote about in a post in 2009.  That it took me more than 50 years to answer the call is the stuff of life.  But when I turned 60 last month and took my place for the third act of my life, I was in Colorado.  I was home.

I've taken the first nine months here as a sort of "self-funded sabbatical" to make the transition.  It takes a lot of work to move.  You have to transfer licenses and registrations, find new doctors, discover where to shop and where to go for other services.  I'm on my second dentist, my second hair stylist, and my second yoga studio.  I've bought some new clothes more appropriate for a climate where the weather changes four times in a day.  I've joined some groups to help me meet new people and to learn the ropes of hiking the open space, the Flatirons, and the front range.  I've broken into the local theater community and will perform in "Spoon River Anthology" in a couple months.  I've grieved the end of my marriage to a woman I still care about deeply.  I've gently begun the process of looking at what meaningful work I can do to make a living, work that will pay the bills and help make the world a better place.  And I've spent lots and lots of time with my daughter and her family who moved here a month before me.

 I'm not sure how exciting my third act will be.  I hope to work and write and act and do yoga and hike and fall in love again and travel and do any number of things.  But a lot of the act will feature me not doing, but being - resting into the beauty and wonder of a universe that has been there all along, hiding right behind the busy-ness I constructed for most of my life.  The third act will be about resolution, love, and service.  The critics might not approve, but they had too much to say about the first two acts for me to bother with them now.  (Especially harsh was that judgmental bastard in my head.)

"Wherever you go, there you are," so the saying goes.  Well, yes and no.  Some places support you in ways that others cannot, help you live more authentically.  Since moving here last fall this has happened to me more times than I can recall:  I turn around for one reason or another, see the mountains spread in front of me, feel a fountain of gratitude rise up in me, and spontaneously say, "Thank you."  Maybe it's just the sentimentality of a guy getting on in years.  Or maybe it's the sound a soul makes when it is finally home.

Doing it Write

For 2012 I resolved to meditate for at least 10 minutes every day, work out for 45 minutes or more at least five days a week, and write for an hour or more at least five days a week.  In order to keep myself honest, I've set up a "resolution tracker" in my Bento data base library. There it is, every day, three boxes to check (or not check) and two explanation text boxes to describe what I wrote, if I wrote, and how I exercised, if I exercised.  Here at the midpoint of February, I can proudly say I'm still on track.  The biggest challenge, I've found, relates to the exercise resolution, not because I don't want to exercise, because I do, but because of travel or illness.  I'm not a runner at heart, especially in really cold or really hot weather.  Running would be pretty easy to do while traveling.  But workout facilities in most hotels I are not that great and room carpets are gross enough that I hardly want to walk on them, let alone get down and do calisthenics or Pilates on them.  I've needed to count long walks as exercise to meet my goals while traveling, a small concession in the overall scheme of things.


Of all my resolutions, my writing resolution has surprised, and delighted me, the most.  I started out the year working on a one act play that had been kicking around in my head for a few months.  By following my resolution, I had a very credible first draft done by the end of January.  I'm now moving ahead with a private reading, to help me hear my words and make the next round of edits, and planning a public reading later in the spring and a full production in the summer.  An hour a day, five days a week, is all it took.  But it took a commitment to do that, a discipline.


I like to describe myself as a writer, even when I don't write often.  I come up with lots of great ideas for plays, sermons, essays, blog posts, and so on, and turn them around in my head endlessly.  That's writing, isn't it?  Well, no it isn't.  I came up with a great idea for another play nearly two years ago and, as of today, not one word of it is on paper.  Admittedly, I've done a lot of "pre-writing" work on it, including research on religious fanaticism, bible quotes supporting violence, and so on.  I've done an outline of the plot and come up with character names.  But I haven't started writing the play.  Why?  There are several good reasons, reasons that I bet I share with other budding writers:

• I'm afraid the words I put on paper won't be as good as the concept I have in my head.  This fear probably has a lot of truth to it, but if I'm committed to improving my writing, the fear is no excuse for not getting started.
• It is a lot easier to read than to write.  I love to read.  I read novels, newspaper columns, non-fiction books, spiritual and self-help books, you name it.  The effort it takes to read 75 pages is roughy equivalent to the effort it takes to write about five. Right now I'm reading "The Devil's Star" by Jo Nesbo, one of a fantastic series of crime novels featuring a brilliant alcoholic Norwegian police inspector named (unfortunately, in translation) Harry Hole.  I could have read at least 25 pages in the time it's taken me to write this much of this blog, and don't think I wasn't tempted.
• Knowing good writing when I see it, I'm afraid I'll never measure up, so what's the point?  A side effect of my voracious reading habit is that I know good writing when I see it.  I know I'll never write the "great American novel."  This blog can't hold a candle to what Gail Collins, Tom Friedman, Maureen Dowd, and Paul Krugman write in the New York Times every week.  My plays do not make Edward Albee or Tracy Letts look over their shoulders.  But I don't need to be a huge success or make a lot of money for my writing to be of value to myself and others.  There is something about the endeavor that is its own reward, and reaching only a relatively few people with my writing, and affecting their lives with it, is enough for me.

So the resolution has made me write despite my excellent excuses not to bother.  As always, the process is teaching me something valuable about myself, my fears, my insecurities, and also my capacity for joy.  The challenge of staying on track will go up next week when I start rehearsal for a new acting endeavor (Peppermint Creek Theatre's upcoming production of "Next Fall").  I'm looking forward to seeing if time spent at one passion can give me energy for another, rather than stealing energy from it.  I think I already know.  Some day, in order to honor my commitment to write, I may even share the answer with you in this space.

Post Chrysalis

No posts for six months.  It's not that I did nothing.  In fact, I was pretty busy.  Work, travel, writing a play, preparing for and acting in a play, and so on.  Busy or not, I had the time to write posts in this blog, but I chose not to.  I thought I'd try to explain why (mostly for myself, but read along if you'd like).

 Over the last six months, the metamorphosis I began a few years ago intensified and shifted.  Almost every morning I get up early to have "Brad time," an hour and a half or so of time to read, meditate, do Sudoku, drink tea, and establish an intention for my day.  (I wrote more about this in an earlier post; see "In the Morning Hours" posted on December 13, 2008.)  In contrast to the years I spent rushing headlong into my work day, this morning time gives me an opportunity to slow down.  I get to "be" for a bit before I "do."

Despite the calming influence of my morning time, but perhaps because of the avenues of introspection it offers, I began the year deeply unsettled. I felt alone, lonely, cut off, somewhat depressed.  I needed only to think of my Dad, dead since Halloween of 2006, to tear up and ache in my heart.  The news that I received from my daughter in the late winter, that she was expecting a baby this summer, filled me with joy on the one hand, but intensified my malaise on the other.  How could this be?

I finally figured it out when, at the urging of my friend Alan, I decided to start the ten week regimen of the "Presence Process."  The Presence Process is described in the book of that name by Michael Brown.  It is not particularly difficult to do, but it does require patience and commitment.  For ten weeks a person is asked to do "continuous breathing" (aka meditation) for 15 minutes first thing in the morning and last thing at night, read materials in the appropriate chapter of the book, and keep an activating statement in mind whenever possible.  The Process is designed to take one backwards first through the body, then through the mind, and finally into one's emotions, the very stuff of life for infants and young children.  The Process is not an exercise in blame, but an opportunity to understand, feel, forgive, cleanse, love, and respond (rather than react).

What I discovered in the Process was this (and it was a visceral, not mental, discovery): a profound gratitude to my parents for the love they gave me, a better understanding of what they couldn't give me (or what I thought they couldn't give me), compassion for them in the many ways that their lives were unfulfilled, and a sense of peace in my relationship with them.  I also discovered a better understanding of how my own emotional struggles impacted my daughters, generating emotional experiences for them that will affect them throughout their lives.  The next time through "The Presence Process" I hope to find the means to forgive myself for the many ways I failed to act out of the unconditional love I have always had and will always have for them.

My granddaughter was born this last Wednesday.  She is beautiful and my love for her was both immediate and complete.  When I was telling Shayla about my granddaughter at the farmer's market this morning (Shayla is one of the farmers), Shayla said, "This is a whole new phase of life for you.  It will be wonderful."  Maybe by being in touch with the earth Shayla is particularly in tune with the energy of those she meets.  Or maybe, fresh sprung from the chrysalis, I am still glistening with soul as my wings get ready for flight.

At My Table

We had a new solid oak table delivered today. It was much needed. We have six big chairs that fit comfortably around it, even without one of the two leaves in. With both leaves in place the table looks like an aircraft carrier. At least that's the way it looks when compared to the table it replaces.

I got my old table in August of 1992 when I separated from my wife. I can't remember where I got it, only that I ordered it from a catalogue and had to put it together, along with the four chairs it came with. It was a sturdy, square, blonde wood table with a high sheen and four cloth covered chairs. It had leaves that pulled out of the end and settled into place, as if by magic. It wasn't big or fancy, but I didn't have room for big in my new apartment and I didn't have the budget or the taste for fancy. (Anyway, I consider myself a better cook than host, so what money I could afford as I set up my new household I put into good pans and knives.)

So, no, my old table was nothing to write home about. But here's the thing: it was my table for more than 17 years. At my table I shared meals with my daughters as we navigated, clumsily, the whole split family situation. Mealtime was the one time I had a fighting chance to connect with them, really connect with them, because they liked the food that I cooked for them or that we cooked together. We made individual pizzas on my table with their friends and colored Easter eggs. Eventually we shared my table with their guys, too.

At my table I shared meals with my Dad and Grandma (his mother), now both dead. I took over the role of holiday and Sunday meal maker when my parents were divorced n 1984, a role that became a legitimate inheritance once my mother died of cancer in March of 1992, five months before I got the table. At my table I watched my Grandma, normally a very modest eater, pack away my food and watched my Dad take as many helpings as he needed to "make stuff come out even."

At my table I shared candlelight dinners with women I dated, and loved in my way, women who helped me learn how to feel and how to risk again. Even if our relationships foundered, and they did, what we shared at this table was intimate and real. Finally, at my table I shared meals with Cary as we fell in love, and with her family once we did. At my table my soul found its way home after so many years of restless searching.

And yet, it is right that we bought our new table. It is right that I let the old table go, like certain other remnants of my past, remnants that served me well once but don't serve me well now. New is fun. New is exciting. New is what keeps us changing and growing and open to the wonders of the world. But the old is what reminds us of where we have been, who we have been. Old keeps us grounded and gives us perspective. Old is familiar and oddly "safe," even when it is something that, as I said, no longer serves us (like an addiction or a psychological defense or a career that has lost its meaning).

"I'm excited to get our new table today," Cary said as we ate breakfast this morning. I grunted out my assent to the sentiment. But what I should have said is this: "I will be, too, tomorrow. But today I need to grieve the loss of an old companion." Silly, right? It's just a thing after all. But at my table I lived, I loved, I laughed, I cried, and I gave gifts that were well received. At my table.

Smoke and Mirrors

I remember, 45 or 50 years ago, going to the grocery store with my mother and sister. Up and down the aisles we went, my mother trying to fend off our non-stop requests for cinnamon sugar Pop Tarts and the like. As we shopped, my mother smoked. That's right, she smoked in the grocery store, crushing each spent cigarette beneath her foot on the linoleum floor in aisle 3 or 5. She wasn't alone. A lot of people smoked in the grocery store. In fact, I still have nightmares about women pushing grocery carts, their hair "put up" in wire rollers, cigarettes dangling from their lips as they fished cold cuts from the refrigerator case.

I remember other smoking conventions that now seem hard to believe. I remember smoking sections on airplanes, as if the smoke knew to stop at row 25. I remember smoking being allowed at sporting events, smokers and non-smokers packed in the stands together, smokers holding their cigarettes aloft in an attempt to minimize the bother to others and non-smokers risking furtive glances of displeasure, but saying nothing. Not that long ago people could smoke in the common areas of malls and in movie theater lobbies and in the general seating areas of airports. Allowing smoking in business offices was the rule, not the exception. And when each of these "smoking rights" was lost by legislation or corporate policy, it was met with dismay by smokers. But in each case, within five years or so of the change, smokers and non-smokers alike could hardly believe that the old ways ever prevailed.

Both of my parents smoked, and smoked heavily, all of their adult lives. Both of them also died of lung cancer, my mother two weeks shy of her 60th birthday, my father four and a half months after his 74th. (His mother, my grandmother, lived to be 92 despite her five cigarette a day "habit.") I smoked myself, off and on, and generally on the sly, for almost 30 years; I did this despite years of pleading my parents to quit, years of being car sick in the backseat as my parents smoked in the front, and years of hating that my Mom smelled like smoke when she kissed me goodnight when I was a child. I did it even after my mother died of lung cancer. Our family relationship with smoking was complex, its hold on my body and psyche strong. My Mom smoked, at least some, when she carried my sister and me in pregnancy. My six pound two ounce full-term birth weight (despite my 22 inch length) gives proof to my very earliest relationship with nicotine. Smoking was literally and figuratively "in my blood," as they say.

This past week Michigan became the 38th state in the nation to ban smoking in workplaces, which of course include restaurants and bars. The battle to achieve this legislative milestone has been hard fought and long. "Big Tobacco" has poured a lot of money into the battle and done its best to couch the issue as one of libertarian rights: Big Tobacco's spoilsport cousin, Big Government, telling all the boys and girls how to live their lives. My mother would have been hopping mad at this legislation, as she was at earlier restrictions, and would have very vocally opposed it. Her passion is carried on by other smokers, including one theater-Facebook friend of mine who feels, I think, singled out and unfairly discriminated against. "People eat fast food and drink liquor and do a host of other things that give them a greater risk of dying - why is it okay to take my rights away and not theirs?"

I don't think that this legislation is primarily about taking the rights of smokers away. It's about balancing the rights of smokers with the rights of those who serve them or work with them in the workplace. As a consumer I have a right to not frequent a business where the atmosphere is too smoky. In fact, I haven't gone to a local blues bar, the Green Door, for years for just this reason. But it is a little too cute to dismiss waiters and waitresses or others who are forced to work in a smoky environment and breathe second hand smoke with the sentiment, "They don't have to work there. They can get a job somewhere else." Well, maybe they can't. And maybe they shouldn't have to. Sometimes the rights of individuals conflict with the rights of others, and the conflict must be resolved.

Times change, social conventions change, and approaches toward resolving conflicting interests change. I feel for my smoker friends and I acknowledge their right to smoke, at least where their smoking does not harm others. I acknowledge this even as I pray that they will look through the smoke into the mirrors of their psyches and examine their own complex relationships to the practice. I have no right to judge them, but I have every right to love them and to hope that they will be my friends for a long time.

Time, Dad, and Gravity

Here it is, Halloween, 2009. Seems like just yesterday it was Halloween 2008, 2007, 2006. Halloween 2006, the day my father died from cancer at the age of 74. He'll never be older than 74, no matter how much older I get. Even if I live to be 92 (as my grandmother, his mother, did) or older, my dad will forever be 74. Three score and fourteen years - that's what he had to sample life, to live through ups and downs, joys and sorrows, successes and failures. Not nearly enough, but more than my mother had. She died just shy of her 60th birthday.

I am 55 (and a half). Like many folks my age and older, I now remember key personal events first in terms of the number of years that have elapsed since them. 37 years since high school graduation. 34 years since my first marriage. 30 years since graduating from law school and starting my career. 27 years since my first daughter was born and 25 since my second daughter was. 17 years since my mother died. Six years since meeting Cary. Four years since getting married to her. Three years, today, since Dad died.

I recently told Cary that every time I blink another six months passes by. This is an exaggeration, but not much of one. A friend recently told me that there is a bio-chemical explanation for this phenomenon, that as we age we have more or less of one enzyme or hormone or something with the result that times seems to go faster. I found this interesting, but not interesting enough to spend the 20 seconds it would take to Google it and learn more. No, I know why time is moving fast for me. I've been grappling with a tag team that climbs into the ring with me every day now - mortality and purpose (the stark reality of my own mortality coupled with the pressing desire to use my remaining time in service of something of value, something with purpose). I have a profound desire, as Parker Palmer and others have said, to find that place where my own talents and passions intersect with the world's great needs.

Bit by bit I'm getting closer to that place. I haven't yet had that "Eureka!" moment of clarity, and maybe I never will. But I've at least developed an internal geiger counter that clicks with joy when I am doing something aligned with my mission and is shamefully silent when I just go through the motions of life. My father was a man of comforts and routines, not passions. He was a man who blessed the world in small exchanges with ordinary people, but did not quest to find a deeper purpose for his life. He was a man who was interested in learning interesting new facts, but not in transforming himself or the world. I loved him so very much, and I miss him so very much, that a part of me wants to emulate him. I feel a gravitational pull to be the kind of man he was, instead of the kind of man I am meant to be. Dad wouldn't have wanted this for me. He wanted me to live my life on my terms. But the pull is there. Blood is as salty as the sea, and pulls and pushes with every bit as much force.

Halloween ghosts and goblins don't scare me. Freddy Kruger "wannabes" don't scare me (although I still blanch at the sight of someone begging as Dick Cheney). No, as one Halloween rapidly follows another, what scares me is this: the passing of another year since the day Dad died and the realization that if I am to live an "undivided life," as Parker Palmer says, I had better get on with it. I will honor my Dad on this day every year not by measuring how much like him I am, but by measuring how much like me I am. It's what he would have wanted.

I love you, Dad.