Archive for September, 2007

>    Last week, on my way to visit my 91 year-old mother in Florida, I purchased a special edition of U.S. News magazine at the airport that is dedicated to advice for high school students on applying to college. I certainly support being prepared in advance for application to institutions of higher learning. However, I think that somewhere along the way we scrambled our priorities and, perhaps, have actually lost our way.
    I am the mother of a 14 year-old daughter who starts high school this morning…so I’m in the trenches on this one. We had to juggle her school schedule with after school lessons in piano and voice as well as math tutoring. Jazz dance lessons are out this semester because of a time conflict. The theater program, of which she is a student, will require that both she and her parents sign a contract stating that if she is in the school play, all other commitments are secondary to rehearsals (piano, voice, tutoring, doctor and dentist appointments included, just to name a few) and that missing one rehearsal automatically removes her from the play. As the performance approaches, rehearsals can last until 11 P.M. on school nights. Team sports have a similar contract so its one or the other, not both, for obvious reasons.
    Our daughter’s schedule is not nearly as “booked” as most of her friends. On the academic front, some of them took a prep course and practice SAT’s (college entrance exams) in 7th grade! Early application and early admissions are now the norm…so their really not “early” anymore, are they?
    As I said, I’m all for advance planning when it comes to college. I went to college and law school and am an advocate for higher education. But when did we stop allowing kids to be kids? When did age appropriate learning and fun become subsumed to the race for who is the smartest…with the most activities on their application…and who gets there first?
    Our next door neighbor has three children under the age of 12. I notice she is tired and stressed a lot. Yesterday we were talking about school starting and she was near an emotional break point telling me about all the required things she had to do for each child. Even her youngest about to enter kindergarten was required to have (among a list of other things) ten glue sticks. Really, 10? Almost as ridiculous as our daughter being required to purchase a $140 calculator in 8th grade. (As an aside, while my neighbor and I were having this conversation, her 9 year-old daughter was yelling that she hadn’t yet gotten the cell phone she’s due).
    The technology has accelerated our lives in so many ways we’ve lost count of them and simply try to keep up…or catch up. The pace and the pressure is hard enough for the adults. As for the children, I suspect the damage is accruing over time…like too many sunburns at the beach when you’re 15 that later turn out to be skin cancer…we are stressing out the children, perhaps beyond repair, and the children are the future.
    I hope our daughter continues to develop her academic mind and creative interests. I know we’ll support her in whatever ways are needed to continue to help her grow to becoming a contributing member of society. But I have to tell you that in the end, I won’t care if it’s Harvard, The Restaurant School, an art Institute or any state college. In the end, I’ll care if she is joyful, compassionate, respectful of all living things and able to appreciate the miracles of life that occur all around her each and every day.
    As of this writing, there is no course selection or after school activity being offered in “Life Appreciation and Right Thinking.” Until there is, my husband and I are teaching that one.

>    I am just returning from a 10 day vacation and notice that the reported news is bleak…still. Hurricanes, terrorists, a U.S. Senator lacking personal ethics and a national football player lacking common sense and respect for life. Pretty much the usual fare. How to cope with all this negativity and stress remains one of the most important questions of our time… so I’d like to share a possible method for dealing with it.
    Thousands of years ago Buddha suggested that our suffering originates from the mis-perception of who we really are and our resulting separation from all things when, in fact, separation does not exist. Judaism has an equally liberating thought passed down through its mystic tradition of Hasidism that says every word we speak creates movement in the world of matter. I think the blending of these two views of how we use our Consciousness provide an excellent pathway for “right” living in difficult times.
    According to Buddha, when we see a reflection in a mirror we forget that we are the mirror, not the reflection. Our tendency is to think we are the “stories” we repeat over and over about ourselves. “I am a lawyer”…”I am a mother”…”I can’t sleep at night”…”I’m not good at drawing”…”I gain weight easily”…”My work is boring”…”My brother and I can’t get along.”  These “stories” are how we define ourselves. Like the actress Marilyn Monroe, who lost who she really was to the character she created, we lose who we really are when we forget that all of our “stories” are just images passing in front of the mirror of our Consciousness. Who We Really Are is the Consciousness, not the images. The images are transitory. Consciousness is boundless and eternal.
    According to the Hasidic tradition, Rabbi Nachman said, “All thoughts of man are speaking movement, even when he does not know it.” So how and when we use our thoughts, and words…even the very words we choose to use, not only impacts our reality…they create it!
    Now if words create our world, and there is no separation, then what we say about ourselves and others forms the reality we personally live in but also forms the greater reality as well. 
    And if the stories we tell about ourselves and others are not who we are or who they are but simply transitory experiences passing in front of our collective Consciousness…then perhaps we need to think less, talk less and feel more.
    In both thought and speech, our ego has its greatest power. Ego is nourished by separation. It’s sustenance is derived from self-importance. When we move out of our minds and into our hearts, our feeling centers, we are able to step outside of ourselves and our ego to connect with others through identification and compassion
    The “stories” that we are fed daily about natural disasters and terrorists and Senators and football players are just transitory images passing in front of the mirror of our Consciousness. Let’s not get frozen in those images and forget who we really are.
    Who We Really Are is a fragment of the whole spectrum of possibility that exists anew each and every second of existence.
    When you sit with that thought and really feel it…all those stories we tell, and are told, get really small.