12 June 2022

I think it’s nice to age gracefully. OK, you lose the youth, a certain stamina and dewy glow, but what you gain on the inside as a human being is wonderful: the wisdom, the acceptance and the peace of mind. It’s a fair exchange.
Cherie Lunghi

This might seem obvious, but I’ve been thinking about it because I fear I might be coming across as glib in how I’m approaching the situation I’m in. If I were, say, 30 years old, I might be asking of this blog’s author “What the [bleep]? This guy can’t be real. So how can he just sit there and lay bad jokes on us about the fact that he’s got this shit in his body and he’s not worried about it?” When I was in my 30s or my 40s or my 50s, I doubt I would have approached the situation as calmly as I think I’m currently approaching it.

I say this, my friend, out of respect for however YOU might approach a potential crisis situation. My way of doing this isn’t for everyone…it’s simply how I’ve learned to come to terms with what’s happening at the moment. Having created a respectable amount of suffering for most of my life both for myself and others through drama and manufacturing fantasies of horribleness for a future I knew nothing about (see my post below on fear), I decided at some point enough was enough and that it was time to make different choices. (THAT was a verifiable runon sentence, but I’m too lazy to fix it.) Making different choices took intention, work, practice, meditation and vigilance over thoughts to transform my approach. It was just a choice. The benefit? A LOT less suffering, a LOT more peace and joy in my life, and more capacity to focus on and support others. As the quote above states, “It’s a fair exchange.”

I’m not quite sure why I’m sharing this message. It came out of a concern that perhaps I’ve been sounding a bit arrogant, like “Look how chill I am…my body has crap eating up its bones, and I’m, like, waaaay cool about it. And, nyah, nyah, I bet you couldn’t be that chill.” No, that’s not quite my message. As I say in other places in this blog, I’m just having fun in sharing my thoughts, and the exercise helps me stay on track in keeping those thoughts going in a life-affirming direction. A number of friends have said that they appreciate what I’ve written so far and how I’m opening up in this way. So I figured I’d do another ramble here.

I really appreciate that a few people are checking in here. I suppose I should post on a regular basis, like every Tuesday at 2:15 pm Greenwich Mean Time. But I’m retired so I don’t have to do crap like that any more. To those of you who do check in every now and then, thank you for your patience and forbearance. I’ve been thinking about other stuff I’d like to share, so I do hope you keep coming back every now and then…and feel free to leave a comment if you’d like.

And I really mean what I say at the end of every post…
Whoever you are, I wish you health, peace, joy and love.

Tend to the garden you can reach.
Attributed to the Buddha, but then he gets blamed for a lot of stuff he never said

8 June 2022

I can’t change what’s happening in Ukraine or China or North Korea or Russia. I myself can’t prevent the nearly weekly mass shootings in my own country that have killed hundreds of innocent people. So the point for me is, as it says above, to tend the garden I can reach. It’s up to me to show up, to be kind, to have whatever impact I can. That’s what this blog is about. I have no idea if ANYONE is reading it, but all I can do is put out a message of peace, love and kindness. Maybe it will have an impact on someone. I recently came into a contact with a Katie Couric interview with Rabbi Steve Leder of Los Angeles about this very issue and about how to address the pain we feel at what’s happening in the world. I invite you to view it. And I also invite you to join me in including the people of Ukraine and the people of Russia in a regular lovingkindness meditation.

One other thing…if you’d like to support the people of Ukraine in a tangible way, here’s a link to a site that lists many organizations that are providing aid to the Ukrainian people. It’s a bit overwhelming, but I’d say just pick one or two and go with it.

Finland is Europe’s hidden gem way up in the upper right corner of the European Union. For the last five years running, it’s been ranked as the happiest country in the world. Its educational system is consistently rated as the best in the world. Together with its Nordic neighbors, it’s rated as the least corrupt country in the world. It has universal health care. University education (highly rated for quality) is free for both Finns and foreigners. It is a stable multiparty democracy with full freedom of speech. It has a thriving business culture with nearly the lowest business tax rate in the EU. And the country is the beautiful home of forests, lakes and clean, safe cities and towns. The Finns have also built a strong military and a series of fortified underground bunkers to shelter the entire population in the event of a Russian invasion. Oh, there are challenges as well. Although officially welcoming to immigrants, Finland struggles with racism and multiculturalism, but recent racist comments by right-wing politicians have sparked mass protests against racism.

Why do I go on about this? To show that it’s possible. Finns certainly have disagreements, but they listen to each other in rational debate. Politicians in Finland tend to place the country’s welfare ahead of their own. And they look for real facts, not lying bullshit thrown out by demagogues in the media who wish only to instill fear in their viewers and listeners and to make money off of them. Can we in other countries (especially the United States) go where Finland has gone? I hope so, and I continue to offer that vision to the universe.

Thank you for reading through my entire rant. As I said above, as I work with a personal challenge, it’s so important that I keep it all in context. Mine is only one life among billions, and even if I live to be a hundred years old, my time here is infinitesimal. Compassion, however, is infinite.

Whoever you are, I wish you health, peace, love and joy.

True Friends are never apart, maybe in distance but never in heart.
Helen Keller

7 June 2022

Part One:
I’m overwhelmed by the messages of love and support I’ve received from friends in many places…Thailand, Australia, Canada, Finland, from across the USA and from just down the street. Whoever is reading this, I suspect you’d be surprised and deeply touched if YOU were to reach out and contact your many friends and acquaintances. Many of us wonder if we make a difference. Whether we’re willing to accept it or not, we do. You make a difference.
And thank you, all my loved ones. I had no idea…

Part Two:
OK, so I had the biopsy yesterday, and it MAJORLY illustrated the uselessness of fear and catastrophization (probably not a word, but damn it’s cool, isn’t it?). If you’ve read my last couple of posts, you know that I was nervous about the procedure, all the time knowing that in the past the folks at Kaiser have always taken excellent care of me.

Here’s what transpired: I arrived with a slightly knotted stomach and was greeted warmly by a nurse named Suzanne. As always, everybody involved in the whole thing was lovely. The doctor came in all energetic and fully explained what he was going to do. I told him that he was dealing with a total pain wuss (screw the maintaining manhood thing), and he reassured me that the worst was a lidocaine sting. So they wheeled me into a CT Scan room and zapped me a couple times to figure out where they were going to stick a long, scary needle in my spine. After that, they shot me up with joy juice and I began to feel really nice. The next thing I knew, Suzanne was telling me it was done and I was free to go. I’d missed the whole procedure. HAH! Stupid man! I was nervous about that?!?!? The only aftermath is a tender area on my back that’s gradually getting less tender.

And, oh yes…the results. Right now, your guess is as good as mine. It will take anywhere from three days to two weeks for my doctor to find out what’s happening. Wouldn’t it be nice if it turns out to be small deposits of marzipan that happened to have escaped into a few bones? Can you imagine the buzz that would create in the medical community?

Whoever you are, I wish you health, peace, love and joy.

Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.
Rudyard Kipling

4 June 2022

When I was still a useful and productive member of society (that is, before I retired), I worked as a training and organization development consultant, mostly delivering classes on communication and personal/management development to folks who worked for the State of California. I would often challenge class participants with this: “Think of the times you’ve lain awake at night worrying about something that you thought would happen. How often did it actually happen, or if it did, how often was it as bad as you had thought it would be?”

Of course, there’s always a caveat. Some folks get so attached to their vision of horribleness associated with a prospective event that they’ll make damn sure that, first, the event actually takes place and, second, that it’s at least as horrible as they had hoped it would be. Oh, how we hate to be proven wrong.

Think about fear in the context of past, present and future. How can we be afraid of something that happened in the past? It’s already happened. We survived it. “But Mike,” you might protest loudly, “it could happen again.” Hold it! That’s not the past. “Happen again” ain’t got nothing to do with the past. It’s an expectation of the future, which leads to the tricky part. Do any of us really KNOW what’s going to happen in the future? Unless you have special powers in a woo-woo area, you have to say no. So our fear is based on a fantasy, a mental construction of what we THINK will happen and what we THINK it will be like. BUT WE DON’T KNOW! To get personal then, my approach to what’s ahead for me in this whole cancer adventure comes from a place of total ignorance. I don’t know what’s going to happen, so it makes no sense for me to make up shit about it that will only make me and others unhappy. Not that I claim to be sensical. I make up shit anyway, but I have tools to give myself reality checks that flush the shit out of my mind in a healthy way. (Oh, incidentally, if you’re made uncomfortable by the crudeness of my language, my apologies, but you’ll have to deal with it. It is, after all, my blog.)

So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to list some of my current fears and how I approach and defang them. Articulating them is really for my benefit, but I invite you to go along and give some of your own fears a reality check.

• I fear for my beloved wife Joan and how all this will affect her.
  In a way, this is disrespectful of her. She’s both strong and brilliant, and she’ll weather this as she’s weathered many challenges. I can’t control her experience: that’s up to her and she knows it. My job is to minimize the impact as much as possible by remaining strong and supportive and to actually practice all the stuff I’m throwing at all of you here.
  How I can approach it: Back off and trust Joan to do her thing.
• I’m a bit scared about the biopsy coming up in a couple of days.
  So they’re going to have to drill into the bone to get some tissue to analyze. Will it hurt? (See the pain item just below.) How long is the recovery period? Will they find something that can be treated effectively? Well, folks, I have no idea about any of this, and, you know, I’m pretty sure I can address anything that arises.
  How I can approach it: Don’t make up shit in a state of ignorance.
• I’m afraid of experiencing a lot of pain.
  I’m a total wuss when it comes to pain. And, ultimately, I don’t know what will happen in this area. I’ve been told that there are many effective medications to relieve pain, and I don’t even know what or if pain will be involved.
  How I can approach it: Don’t make up shit in a state of ignorance.
• I’m afraid of losing mobility and being confined to bed or such.
  Might happen, but might not. No way of knowing at this point.
  How I can approach it: Don’t make up shit in a state of ignorance.
• I’m afraid of having only a short time to live.
  I, like everyone else, have only a limited time to live. That’s the deal. Short or long it’s up to me to make the best of what time I have. No sense whining about it.
  How I can approach it: Just live and be totally grateful for what I got…focus on gratitude.

There’s more, believe me, The fears come and go, but using this approach really helps. It at least keeps the fears from digging in and taking permanent residence to torture my mind.

Whoever you are, I wish you health, love, peace and joy.

2 June 2022

It’s always a good day.

Kill ’em with kindness.
Grandma Frannie

1 June 2022

So there’s potentially troubling stuff in the body that I inhabit. They call it cancer. Some folks say I should fight it, but I’m a lover, not a fighter. Oh yeah, I can get assertive when necessary, to protect myself and others, to respond to cruelty and injustice. (OK…that’s the bit where I felt it necessary to defend my manhood.) But I see this differently. The body is prone to disease, and at some point it will even stop working. So this disease thing is a natural process. I accept it. That doesn’t mean, however that I’m about to roll over and welcome death.

I recently came up with an approach that works for me…to see these cells scattered around the bones of this body as angry beings. How painful it is to live in anger, and I see that pain with compassion, so to the best of my ability I’m sending love and calm to all those areas, letting them know that there is no need for them to be angry. I imagine them calming down, shrinking and reintegrating themselves sweetly into the rest of the organism, leaving their anger behind and transforming it into life-giving energy. I also use the Lovingkindness Meditation to augment this visualization, and I invite you to join me in that.

Then there’s the side of me that reads over what I just wrote and thinks “You’ve got to be kidding. What are you, St. Michael?” Nope. I really AM doing this stuff, and my challenge is to get past my own cynicism and give it a chance.

I just had a biopsy scheduled for Monday, June 6, when my wonderful medical team will hopefully figure out what’s happening so we can put together a treatment plan. More later.

Whoever you are, I wish you health, love, peace and joy.