D i e n u

I’ve thought a lot about what I should do for Lent and was all set to give something up. Until a couple people mentioned the idea of adding something good instead of subtracting something bad.

And I thought that was a fabulous plan, especially for me. I struggle a lot to imagine the world as a place of abundance, rather than a place of scarcity. So instead of taking something away, I really like the idea of adding something good to all the abundant wonder surrounding me.

The only question is, what to add? I want it to be something I don’t do usually, but something that is really good for me. And, considering Lent is a religious tradition, even though I’m not particularly religious, I wanted it to be something that helps me connect in a deeper way with myself and the world.

So I’ve decided that I’m going to write in my journal every day. Not this one (though I will still write here when the mood strikes), but the paper journal that sits neglected on my bedside table, the space I’ve always used to figure things out, to get myself out of my head and to get a more balanced perspective on the world.

Thanks for all the suggestions and for reminding me that, sometimes, sacrifice isn’t the answer.

(Things I have done are in bold. Things I have not done are everything else.)

1. Started your own blog

2. Slept under the stars

3. Played in a band

4. Visited Hawaii

5. Watched a meteor shower - 3:30 am, with my hubby before he was my hubby.

6. Given more than you can afford to charity

7. Been to Disneyland

8. Climbed a mountain

9. Held a praying mantis

10. Sang a solo - I sing one in the shower every morning.

11. Bungee jumped

12. Visited Paris

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch - Knitting counts, right?

15. Adopted a child

16. Had food poisoning

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty - I went to NYC with my best friend when I was 12. Thanks Aleia!

18. Grown your own vegetables - Do herbs count?

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France

20. Slept on an overnight train

21. Had a pillow fight

22. Hitch hiked - I was dumb in high school.

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill

24. Built a snow fort (I’ve never lived anywhere cold enough!)

25. Held a lamb

26. Gone skinny dipping - and posted the picture to prove it!

27. Walked a Marathon

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice

29. Seen a total eclipse

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset

31. Hit a home run - Yeah, Wii baseball!

32. Been on a cruise

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors

35. Seen an Amish community - We bought the lumber for our cabin from them when I was little.

36. Taught yourself a new language

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

39. Gone rock climbing

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David

41. Sung karaoke

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant - Randy and I were eating breakfast next to two ladies in their 50s, one of whom was having a birthday. We told the waiter to bring us their check. It was neat.

44. Visited Africa

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight

46. Been transported in an ambulance - Broken collarbone in 12th grade.

47. Had your portrait painted - Coolest wedding present ever!

48. Gone deep sea fishing

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling

52. Kissed in the rain

53. Played in the mud

54. Gone to a drive-in theater

55. Been in a movie

56. Visited the Great Wall of China

57. Started a business

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia

60. Served at a soup kitchen

61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies - For two days, until my mother conveniently decided Girl Scouts violated her feminist principles. She always was a tricky one, that mom of mine.

62. Gone whale watching

63. Got flowers for no reason

64. Donated blood, platelets, or plasma

65. Gone sky diving

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp

67. Bounced a check - Due to a mistake not a lack of fundage.

68. Flown in a helicopter

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy - Lazy Bear FTW!

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten Caviar

72. Pieced a quilt - Two squares of one, anyway.

73. Stood in Times Square

74. Toured the Everglades

75. Been fired from a job

76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London.

77. Broken a bone. - Collarbone. 17. Ill-advised decision to prove to the boys that girls “could so play football.”

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person

80. Published a book

81. Visited the Vatican

82. Bought a brand new used car

83. Walked in Jerusalem.

84. Had your picture in the newspaper

85. Read the entire Bible

86. Visited the White House

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating

88. Had chickenpox

89. Saved someone’s life - 1996. Florence Dover. Had crashed her car into a ravine and broken both bones. We drove by just as her hand reached over the crest of the highway. We called the authorities and stabilized her until they got there.

90. Sat on a jury

91. Met someone famous

92. Joined a book club - It was a rather short-lived one, but still.

93. Lost a loved one - Too many of them.

94. Had a baby

95. Seen the Alamo in person

96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake

97. Been involved in a law suit

98. Owned a cell phone - Owned six, actually.

99. Been stung by a bee

100. Read an entire book in one day

101. Seen a ghost.

(Thanks to Jamie for the inspiration. Also, I need to travel more.)

My dear friend Sara is a preschool teacher, which, I’ve discovered, makes her a master at understanding and manipulating human behavior.

I’ve heard her talk about how she deals with the kids in her classes, but I never understood it. Until, that is, she worked her magic on me.

Among my friends, I’ve developed a bad, though well-deserved, reputation for never listening to the voice messages people leave for me. I’ll call you back (usually a couple days later) and say something like, “Hi!” and then you will say, “Did you get my message?” and then I will respond with a string of awkward ums and uhs and wells before confessing that, actually, I have not listened to your message.

Most of my friends react to this character flaw of mine by saying, “Fine. I’m just not going to leave you any more messages!” A threat they never really follow up on, fortunately for me.

But Sara, wise from years and years of convincing preschoolers to go along with her plans without even noticing they’ve been had, she came up with a different strategy.

A couple months back, she called me and left a message. A message I, being me, never listened to. So I called her back and, after chatting for a few minutes, she very casually asked me, “So, did you get the secret word I left at the end of your message?”

I was horrified. There was a secret message! A password! An answer that I didn’t know! I hated to admit it, but I had to confess that, no, I had not listened to her message and consequently, I did not know the secret word.

Fast-forward to two days later. Sara had called while I was at work. She left a message. Did I ignore the message in favor of calling her right back? Hell no! I listened to all three minutes of her message because I was going to be damned if missed the secret word this time. And at the end, there it was.

She wound up her message, said “Well, call me back when you get a chance.” But right before hanging up, she dropped her voice to just above a whisper and said, “The secret word is: Crepe Myrtle.”

I called her back, dialing as fast as I could. She answered the phone and I didn’t say “Hello.” I didnt say “What’s going on with you?” I didn’t even give her a chance to say a word. I just said.

“Iknowthesecretword!It’screpemyrtle.
IlistenedtothewholemessageandIgottheword
andit’screpemyrtleYAYAYAY!”

She laughed for a second, then said, “Hey, I’m at the post office right now. Can I call you back?”

The moral of this story? Next time you have a habit you need help breaking or an interpersonal conflict that’s driving you crazy, instead of going to a therapist for help, you might want to find yourself a preschool teacher.

They can help you in the most creative ways. And they know really fun songs.

I used to think it’d be neat to be a freelance copywriter instead of doing the full-time agency thing. Freedom, the quiet comfort of working at home or typing away at a cozy coffeeshop — I’d imagined all kinds of romantic scenes of professional contentment.

Now I know better.

There are some days at my current job when I don’t have to be physically present in the office, as long as I’m available on e-mail and send in my copy when it’s due.

I’ve been taking greater advantage of those days, so I don’t have to deal with the 30-minute drive into work.

And I find that I do get a lot of work done when I’m at home. Productivity isn’t the issue.

Then what’s the problem? The problem is that, when I’ve been working from home all day, I somehow become this slovenly lump of mopey.

In my fantasy world of freelancing, I would spend most of my day at a coffeeshop or some other public spot.

Which would be great. Except one has to actually get dressed in order to visit such establishments.

But when I’m working from home, changing out of my jammies just seems like an unnecessary exertion of effort.

Like right now. My company observes MLK, so I technically have the day off. But Randy still had to work and I still have a ton of work to do, so this is pretty much like one of those working-from-home days. It’s 11:15 and I’m still in my pajamas. I haven’t brushed my teeth. I haven’t gotten my lazy bum off the couch to do anything other than refill my water glass and use the restroom.

Which, by itself, is kinda slobby but not really a big deal.

The problem is that, not only do I get lazy, I also get all mopey.

Something about being in the house all day, just me and the pets, with no human contact and my eyeballs pasted to the laptop screen for seven hours — it brings me down.

You’d think that, once Randy gets home, I’d perk up right away. Human contact! Someone to talk to! Hugs! A reason to get off the couch!

But no. I just kinda shuffle around the house (literally, because even at 5pm, I’m still in my jammies and slippers), heaving these big, self-pitying sighs.

I kind of have to laugh at my own ridiculousness. Maybe I should just get up and take a shower.

But maybe I’ll just sit here and work for a while longer.

When I added this item to my 101 in 1001 list, I imagined something like a weekend trip to a spa. Something relaxing. Maybe a little indulgent.

Well, it wasn’t quite like that. But it was a trip by myself. That’s for sure.

I went to Kaufman, Texas for a ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat. It’s hard to put into words exactly what the experience is like, so I’ll start by sharing the daily schedule:

4:00 am Morning wake-up bell

4:30-6:30 am Meditate in the hall or in your room

6:30-8:00 am Breakfast break

8:00-9:00 am Group meditation in the hall

9:00-11:00 am Meditate in the hall or in your room

11:00-12:00 noon Lunch break

12noon-1:00 pm Rest and interviews with the teacher

1:00-2:30 pm Meditate in the hall or in your room

2:30-3:30 pm Group meditation in the hall

3:30-5:00 pm Meditate in the hall or in your room

5:00-6:00 pm Tea break

6:00-7:00 pm Group meditation in the hall

7:00-8:15 pm Teacher’s Discourse in the hall

8:15-9:00 pm Group meditation in the hall

9:00-9:30 pm Question time in the hall

9:30 pm Lights out

Yep, you are reading that correctly. We woke up at 4am and meditated for a smidge over ten hours every day.

Waking up at 4 in the morning is hard, but that fact that you wake up to the sound of a gong vibrating in the predawn darkness, well, that helps a little.

Did I mention that we did the entire retreat in silence?

For the entire time, all students are asked to observe “noble silence.” This means that, not only do you do not speak to your fellow students, but you do not look at them, do not gesture, do not smile, do not communicate in any way.

The point of the retreat is to get inside your own head and stay there. So they take away anything that could distract you from that goal. Like speaking. Or reading materials. Or iPods. Or cameras (which is why you won’t find any photos in this entry). Or any communication with the outside world. No calls home. No e-mails. No letters. Nothing. They even segregate men and women at all time, so you won’t be distracted by a good-looking meditator across the dining hall.

It’s just you and your thoughts. For ten days. And it is hard and boring and miserable at times. But at times it’s also liberating and joyful and calming and incredibly exhilarating.

Which is the whole point.

What I learned at this retreat — the whole point of learning this form of meditation, in fact — is that there are things that feel good in life and things that feel bad in life. But none of these things, the good or the bad, none of them last forever.

So instead of wasting your time running toward things that feel good and away from things that feel bad, Vipassana teaches you to just watch, to observe the moment, without judging, without trying to run toward it or away from it. And by watching, you learn that everything passes. And you learn that it’s not worth it to get worked up about much of anything, once you understand how ephemeral it all is in the first place.

I learned on this retreat that I can stay quiet for ten days. I’ve learned that, surprisingly, I enjoy periods of silence. On the very last day, noble silence is broken and you’re allowed to talk to your fellow students, to share your experience and hear what it was like for them. And while I was glad to hear what the other women had to say, after a while I had to escape to my room for some quiet. Which was a new, but not unwelcome, experience for me.

But it wasn’t about the silence. That was just the means to the end.

What I really learned is a lot bigger than that.

I’ve spent most of my life looking for something to make me happy and running from the people and places I’ve blamed for my own unhappiness.

I think that’s probably true for a lot of us. We grow up believing that people and things outside us will make us happy or unhappy.

The right job, the right house, the right spouse — if we can only get everything just right, we’ll be happy.

And if we’re not happy? Well, there must be something outside of us that is causing us pain. We must be in the wrong job, in the wrong house, in the wrong marriage.

Vipassana teaches you to stop looking outward and to instead look inside, to see that happiness is a choice we have to power to make. That’s why the technique requires you to sit quietly for a long time — because the process of sitting is a metaphor for this bigger idea.

There is pain in life — the technique doesn’t pretend that it will spare you from pain. That’s why you sit. You sit until your back hurts. Until it is burning and throbbing and you think you could maybe cry if you let yourself.

So you shift and try to run away from the pain.

Which works for a moment.

But it always comes back.

And you moan and cry and whine inside your head. You think to yourself “what the hell am i doing here? Oh this hurts so bad. Oh i can’t handle it. Oh will the hour ever be finished? Oh my
god it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts.”

And, of course, you are miserable.

But then, sometime around day three, you sit down to another hour of pain and you close your eyes and you decide, “Fine. My back hurts. My back hurts and it would be nice if it didn’t hurt but it does and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. So instead of whining and crying and trying to move into a better position, I’m just going to suck it up and see what happens.”

So you do. You sit still. When the pain comes, you don’t try to shift your position. You just sit quietly and watch it. And you are shocked to realize that, if you just watch and wait, the pain eventually fades away. It will come back, yes, but then it will go away again.

And you realize, for yourself, directly, what the teacher has been saying for three days when he says that everything in this world, good things and bad, everything arises and passes away. Arises and passes away. And you realize that the pain in your back was nothing compared to the pain you created in your head. You realize that you took the pain and you held onto it and you magnified it and you made it a hundred times worse than it had to be.

You start wondering what could happen if you tried the same thing in your life. If you refused to hold on to the negative stuff. If instead of magnifying your unhappiness and feeding the flames, you just let it go. Just sent it back from wherever it came.

Well, I tried it. And it works. It takes a lot of practice, but it works. On the way home from my retreat, I had a three-hour layover. Not a big deal. I used the time to write in my journal and catch up with the people I hadn’t spoken with in ten days.

Then the plane got delayed another hour. In the past, I would have thrown a fit. I would have heaved a bunch of loud sighs. I would have called home and bitched. I would have slid down in my airport chair and felt all kinds of sorry for myself.

This time, I just shrugged and kept on reading my book. Because I’d learned that me being upset about the delay wouldn’t make the plane come any faster. So why waste my energy on getting upset?

The retreat was amazing, one the hardest and most intense and most important things I’ve ever done.

But the hard part is just starting. Because it’s easy to be even-minding and calm when you don’t have to talk to anyone and your only job is to sit quietly for ten hours a day. When the entire program is structured around meditation, it’s easy to make time for it.

I’ve found that the technique only works if I practice. That I have to meditate every day if I want to really remember, deep down where it counts, the things I learned at the retreat.

But I’ve also found that I want to practice, that I want to stay in the peaceful place I discovered. Even when it feels like the rest of the world is on a mission to get me fired up.

If you even think you have an inkling of trying something like this, I say do it. It’s amazing. And it’s free to attend. Every student’s retreat is paid for by a student who has taken the retreat in the past. You are not even allowed to pay until the course is over. And there’s no dollar amount expected — you are asked to pay whatever you think you can afford and whatever you think it is worth.

And I can tell you that it’s worth a lot more than I could afford to pay.