Real Joe

I’d read something recently on the Putting Family First weblog about the importance of just enjoying your kids, playing with them for the sheer pleasure of it, rather than with the primary motive of teaching or improving them. Or maybe it was a newspaper article — I can’t seem to find it now.

And then I read Kent Nerburn’s blog about how he’s trying to raise money for a cemetary headstone – a child whose mother he discovered at his gravesite one day and wrote about in one of his books.

Kent blogged this:

I firmly believe that we are all called to live a life of service. But very often, the service is not something we choose, so much as something that chooses us. This particular small act has chosen me. It chose me on the day I first saw that grave with its decorations and wondered what it was all about. It has been mine ever since, waiting for me to have the courage and initiative to make the gesture that it demands.

It’s an interesting story that’s still going on, but its effect on me lingered and bore fruit in two odd ways when it meshed with the “liking your kids” stuff.

I play racquetball with a single dad whose teenaged kid, now 18, sometimes hangs out at the club and plays. I saw the dad in the lockerroom last week and while we were chatting, the kid called him on his cell. They engaged in some good-natured banter and when the dad hung up, it suddenly occurred to me to say something to the dad about how much he seems to like his kid. I’d noticed it before plenty of times, but now, under the influence of Nerburn’s prod, I ventured outside my comfort zone a teeny bit to tell him.

It triggered a long conversation about the history between the two of them, and ventured into the dad’s relationship with his own dad. I think the guy was pleased to have me notice and to talk about it — he didn’t say so but he seemed to talk about it with pride. I can relate. I like my kids and always have and it’s a source of pride, too.

And all this came together as I sat in a bookstore, collecting my thoughts before having dinner with my sibs. I was anxious, like I always am before we have dinner, as we’re not close. And then it occurred to me that I didn’t have to have a specific outcome. It was enough to just enjoy having dinner with them. Yeah, we had some problems to talk about but that needn’t get in the way of a pleasurable good time. Increasingly, I’m aware that there’s a lot I like about my brother and sister so why not just go for that?

And my anxiety dissipated.

We chatted over dinner for nearly 3 hours and would’ve gone longer but the restaurant was closing. Cool.

I’ve got a new post to Ego Orgasms titled Mental Arm Candy.

I don’t know whether this kind of advice-giving is appropo or not. I have a couple of quotes relevant to it that I read several times each week. It’s my attempt to make sense of these quotes and apply it to my daily life. I could be going about it the wrong way, though. I just have to pay attention enough to see if I’m getting feedback.

When we see, we ourselves become living lights for others to see by. – Polly Berrien Berends

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. – Albert Schweitzer

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. – Albert Schweitzer

I got a thumbs-up on my knee from my orthopede on Friday. He doesn’t want me playing competively because the knee isn’t quite ready to absorb impact from someone who runs into me. But the since the likelihood of that is pretty small, I played my first racquetball game yesterday since early September. I wore my brace and stuck to singles.

I didn’t play too badly and was having a grand time, but then, sonuvabitch, my lower back started hurting. Ahh well, maybe that’s my body’s way of getting me to follow my surgeon’s advice.

A guy I just met a week ago told me yesterday that he’s active in AA and has been sober for many years. He’s been divorced a long time and began telling me about his dating struggles. He said he recently asked his sponsor if he’d ever find someone and if he did, would she be beautiful. He said his sponsor told him that he would find someone but that the woman would only be as beautiful as he deserved.

This struck me as wrong-headed advice and for a moment I hesitated on whether or not to say so. But since he was going out on a limb a bit with me, I thought I’d go out on a limb a bit, too.

I told him that I thought if he did find someone, he’d attract a woman who was about as beautiful as he was handsome, and that hoping for anything more than that was just an ego orgasm — a false belief that having arm candy will somehow make him happy, heading down the path that Donald Trump or any other number of aging celebrity geezers have trod. “Stinkin’ thinkin’” I said, using one of AA’s helpful mantras.

I asked him if he’d used on-line dating services and he said he hadn’t, that he’d considered it but that it seemed desperate — that his sponsor told him that serendipitous meetings are the way to go. Hence, he’s joined various clubs and groups hoping to meet someone.

I said I knew many people in town who’d found their partners through on-line dating services, that I thought it was a more straightforward, honest way to meet someone rather than joining a group pretending to be interested in the activity but really on the prowl.

I paused, thinking, “What the hell do I know about all this, having been married for 30 years?” But then I figured, I know a minor version of this ego orgasm all too well. It doesn’t necessarily go away even though I’m happily married. I still succumb occasionally to trying to make smiling eye contact with attractive women strangers and if they smile back, I have a little ego orgasm — mental arm candy. I’m making a little progress, though. Half the time now, I’m able to catch myself afterwards with an “Ahh, there I go again,” a gentle whack, smiling at myself just as Eckhart Tolle predicted:

One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it. – Eckhart Tolle

I’m always a little surprised when I get into a funk and don’t seem to notice it for a few hours. I keep thinking I’ve gotten to a point where as soon as I’m bothered, I’ll realize it and take time to figure out what goofball thinking I’m entertaining and change gears.

On Monday, I started mentally stewing about our finances and recurring cash flow shortages. It was a background anxiety that I wasn’t really aware of and then at some point it got louder in the form of thoughts like Shit, maybe I’m not cut out for this self-employed life and Why am I so lousy at managing money? and If only I could get my book done and start generating some recurring revenue, then we’ll turn the corner and I’ll be at ease.

And then it hit me that this thinking was the source of my suffering, not my money situation. New message to self: There are things I can do to improve our situation now, so just do them. And besides, we are among the richest 1% of the people in the world already. If I get beyond these minor money problems and don’t change my habitual thinking, there will be a new set of problems to stew about. Martha Stewart and Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant provide helpful daily reminders of this.

Ahh, that’s better.

Last night, I was leaving the racquetball club and whining to a buddy about my knee being more sore than it was 2 months ago. “It’s been almost 4 and half months… I should be ready to start practicing hard, getting in shape for April tournaments. But it’s not going to happen at this rate. I might not even be ready for trials season.”

As I left the club, it occurred to me that this kind of thinking had been in the back of mind all week. And then I readjusted my brain with, This is a ridiculously minor problem. Just last week my friend Mike cut off his index finger with a table saw and a fellow trials rider had a truck on a hoist drop on his chest, crushing all sorts of internal body parts. There are probably a thousand people who were informed last week that their cancer has returned. My own wife has had a very bad week with her severe tinnitus that’s never ever going to go away. I’ve got access to the best health care in the world and I’ve got full mobility as it is. Time to knock off the stinkin’ thinkin’.

Ahh, that’s better.

My birthday dinner with my sibs didn’t happen as planned last week as my sister got sick. We’ve rescheduled for next week.

My wife challenged my Ego Orgasms blog post last week re: my rationale for not participating more with my son’s canoeing after he wrecked his knee on my motorcycle. I said it was my sciatica problem. She contends I was just not that interested in canoeing and not willing to do less motorcycling. Ouch. I do remember my sciatica being an issue but she’s right, I used it as an excuse, too. Back then, my ego was running my life. Good thing I’m beyond that now. heh.

DL writes:

“… tonight I was at church rehearsing with a trumpet quartet. I’m an average player, but the guys I play with are excellent. I also play a pretty decent piano, but of course I know many who are better – there is my inner critic working – it’s always been there throughout my life – no matter how good I’ve gotten at something. (I’m much better at recognizing it now).

I can pretty much handle these – but then I see one of the guy’s kids – a 2nd grader – playing the piano very well and a very bright kid. My son, in his 3rd year of piano, can’t play anywhere close. Where my mistaken thinking comes in is comparing my son to his son and to his life in general (you know – lawyer, talented, family seems perfect, etc……). But mostly to what I perceive as limitations of my kids. Griff – did you ever deal with that when your kids were young? I hope so much for them – but they are who they are and they have their limitations. Again, my inner critic comes in saying what could I do as a parent to make their lives better – or what haven’t I done?”

There’s a point at which my natural parental pride in my kids goes too far and becomes an ego thing. And that’s when there’s a mistaken idea lingering somewhere, that somehow, I’m deficient, and therefore my kids need to make up for it.

I remember this most clearly when my oldest son Collin tore his ACL on my trials motorcycle at age 13, just as he was starting to show some real talent in the sport. He never rode again. I’d often get little “ego orgasm” pangs of envy when my good buddy Jim would show up at events with his two sons. At some point, I let it go. He got into canoe racing and though I didn’t join him in that because of my sciatica, we stayed connected through his teen years till he left home.

In retrospect, I think the key was finding ways to be with one another in which we both ended up enjoying one another. Camping, bicycling, frisbee, board/card games, computers. The pure enjoyment of his company ended up being stronger than my desire to have an ego orgasm over his performance at something important to me.

It helped to know that my own father desperately wanted me to become a model Catholic, that he couldn’t enjoy being with me in my adulthood, that it not only got in our way of enjoying each other, but also prevented him from having any kind of decent relationship with his grandkids. I could understand how he got to that place, but I really wanted to avoid a similar fate.

My response [expired link] to a dad who’s struggling with his mistaken thinking about his son’s performance.

Real Live Preacher is working on a book, based in part on stuff he’s posted to his weblog. Which means he’s got a new hat to wear that’s he’s not entirely comfortable with:

Here, at the end of a long year of writing, I can actually say the words I’ve never been able to say before, though I still want to run and hide when I say them. I am a writer.

I think I’ll follow his blog more closely, as I’m struggling with the same task — getting my Small Business Blogging book done.

Kent Nerburn is using the January dagger and lack of social contact to get his book done.

On the my Ego Orgasm blog [defunct], I posted this definition last November:

An ego orgasm is whatever I do or happens in life that I think gives me a psychological boost but that turns out to be false. Mistaken. Often times destructive. And once it’s over, unless I see the mistaken thinking behind it, the hunger for another one quickly returns.

Here’s Eckhart Tolle’s definition of ego in his book, The Power of Now:

As you grow up, you form a mental image of who you are, based on your personal and cultural conditioning. We may call this phanton self the ego. It consists of mind activity and can only be kept going through continuous thinking. The term ego means different things to different people, but when I use it here it means a false self, created by unconscious identification with the mind.

To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it — who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfillment there. It says: “One day, when this, that or the other happens, I am going to be okay, happy, at peace.” – Eckhart Tolle

The “seek some kind of release or fulfillment” in the future that he describes is the orgasm that seems to be tripping me up most of the time. Current example: “When my knee heals and I return to racquetball and trials, THEN I’ll really be…” What? Somebody! Oy. Whoever that ’somebody’ is must be rooted in my past, and I’m trying to keep it alive with this mistaken thinking about the future.