Pamela Stead Jones

lift the veil
that obscures
the heart

and there
you will find
what you are
looking for

– Kabir

Why is it that we get so caught up in wanting things that lie just beyond our means?  Every day we are bombarded by ads for the newest, updated electronics.  We hear about cars that nearly drive themselves.  We learn that last year’s clothing is seriously outdated and in need of replacement by something fresh and of a different color.  These things are not intrinsically bad. but we are sold the idea that if we possess them we will be happy.  The next thing you know, we’ve stretched that message to mean that without them we can never know happiness.  We search the whole world, again and again, hoping to finally find the magical item that will fulfill us and end our searching.

This is particularly problematic during the difficult financial times that many of us are experiencing.  We have learned to rely on instant gratification through buying the latest gadget to distract us from the empty feeling we are trying to fill with yet another thing.  Apparently this is not a new problem, since Kabir wrote his poem in the 15th Century.  He tells us not to look around us, but to “lift the veil that obscures your heart.”

Why is it that we go to such lengths to avoid lifting that veil?  Are we afraid to see what really lies inside of us?  Rather than lift it, we buy the latest, newer and better veil and we layer it on top of last year’s model so that the burden our heart must bear becomes heavier with time.  It is time to simplify our lives and remove the things that obscure our truth.  Instead of accumulating more and more things that make it difficult to walk the path to our hearts, we need to remove the clutter piece by piece so that our hearts may beat freely without the weight of unnecessary things.  We need to stop feeding our egos and instead feed our souls; and all we need for that is right at the heart of each of us.

I offer as a closing another of Kabir’s poems:

hiding in this cage
of visible matter

she is singing
your song

“Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,

But he with a chuckle replied

That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one

Who wouldn’t say so till he tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin

On his face.  If he worried he hid it.

He started to sing as he tackled the thing

That couldn’t be done, and he did it.”

– Edgar A. Guest

Today marks the birthday of Edgar A. Guest.  My great-aunt Essie loved his poems; and she often would recite them at appropriate moments during my childhood.   His down-home brand of wisdom, presented in verse provided many a moment of learning for me when I was young — both in his message and in the way the words moved rhythmically and sounded almost musical.  As I went on to study poetry in school, I learned that the poets of my childhood — Edgar A. Guest, Sam Walter Foss, and later Ogden Nash — were not considered particularly great in literary circles.  I really don’t care, because it was their poetry — minus the obscurity of symbols that required abstract thinking — that created in me an appetite for more.

There is something magical about the way poetry falls on the ear.  The use of meter can create a soothing rhythm that makes us feel like we are rocking on a boat in the sea.  It can hurry and gallop and take us riding on horseback into adventure.  It can sigh and sing softly and bring us to tears or draw us upward in joy.  I didn’t learn these things in a college poetry class.  They were taught to me by the less acclaimed poets whose words carried a child’s mind to thoughts within its grasp.  It couldn’t be done, but he did it.  From that I learned that tenacity could overcome an obstacle.

Robert Louis Stevenson took me on wonderful journeys through childhood and changed “I like to swing” to the marvelous, flying,

“How do you like to go up in a swing?

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it’s the pleasantest thing

That ever a child can do.”

When the time came for my own children to ride on the swing as I pushed them, I would recite those long-ago words and feel their excitement once again.  And the words would fly every bit as high as the swing itself…”up in the air I go flying again!  Up in the air, and down.”

Sam Walter Foss taught me something about being human :

“Let me live in a house by the side of the road,

Where the race of men go by;

The men who are good, and the men who are bad,

As good and as bad as I

…I would not sit in the scorner’s seat

Nor hurl the cynic’s ban,

Let me live in a house by the side of the road

And be a friend to man.”

Those words, recited by Essie, certainly became a force that shaped my philosophy of life.  It is sad that we have lost touch with the practice of memorizing and reciting poetry.  In my family, it was one of the ways that traditions were passed from one generation to the next.  There was a shared bond between the adults and the children as the young ones began to recite the familiar words along with their elders.  I invite you today to step back from worrying about whether or not something is good poetry and just enjoy the memories of nursery rhymes and down-home wisdom presented in rhyme.

Happy Birthday, Edgar A. Guest!

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

– Anais Nin

How is it that we see the world around us?  What criteria do we use to judge the people we meet?  How do we want others to see us?

The way we see the people and things that come our way each day depends upon us.  Although none of us would like to be called judgmental, we do make judgments about how the world works and about other people.  I suppose this is part of being human — part of the process of learning through experience and then applying what we have learned as we grow.  This often is not a bad thing.  I have a painful childhood memory of using logic to figure out whether my father had left for work or still was in his bedroom dressing for the day.  Every morning, as surely as the day would dawn, my mother scrambled two eggs for my dad’s breakfast.  She used the same pan on the same burner and quickly washed it and put it back in the cupboard.  I was pretty smart for a young child, because I concluded that if Dad wasn’t in the kitchen and the burner was warm it would mean that he already was on his way.  What I didn’t think of at such a tender age was the possibility that I could burn my hand on a hot stove burner.  I learned that day to consider all burners potentially dangerous unless I could prove that they were safe.

I have had many experiences with burners since that morning, but I suppose you could say that the original information I took in about them is seared into my memory.  Through other, less painful, experiences, I learned that I could replace my fear with respect.  This seems like a rather simplistic example, but i do think we can expand on it and see how our early learning — both through experience and through the input we receive from others — can color the way we view life.

I grew up in a small town where houses sat on enough land to warrant maintaining a lawn.  Although my own view of green includes more plants than just grass, I was taught very early on that dandelions were noxious weeds that would take over a yard if not controlled.  There was even a special tool designed with a tip that resembled the claw at the end of a crowbar set on a straight shaft, and it was meant to dig under the root of the dandelion and pop it out of the ground.  Problem solved.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that dandelion root is considered an herbal remedy that removes toxins from the kidneys and liver and promotes good digestion.  My ideas about dandelions were challenged when I learned this; and I needed to take another look at the way I see them.

And when I looked more closely, I discovered that they really are quite beautiful — it was my own prejudices and my limited knowledge of dandelions that defined them for me.  It certainly was worth another look.

We do the same kinds of things with people.  I remember a kindergarten bully with red hair.  Knowing her cause me to develop an aversion to redheads, which luckily had been resolved by the time I met my red-haired husband.  We are taught to fear people who are different from ourselves.  We see skin color or the way someone is dressed or how much they weigh or how many wrinkles the years have given them, and before we ever truly see who a person is, we’ve coated them in the assumptions we make out of our prejudice and limited knowledge of who they really are.  Are we really so insecure that we want to make everything and everybody fit into our own identity and mirror the qualities we see in ourselves?  Does it make us feel secure when someone else reflects back a mirror image of the person we believe ourselves to be?

When I look at the people I call friends, I can see that there are common interests, common views — common ground — that we share.  This is what encourages us to maintain our relationships beyond the first meeting and, hopefully, to take the time to dig deeper and discover what lies beneath our views and really defines who we are.  My dearest friends are those who challenge me to rethink my position or to take another look, from a new perspective, at the way I see the world.  They are the friends who love me not only for who they see today but for who I am becoming as I expand my own horizons.

This defines for me the way I would like to be seen.  I would like others to see my surface, because it gets their attention in the first place and makes them aware that I exist; but I would also like them to look more deeply at the person I am becoming.  This is the way I would like to strive to see others, too.  I want to look deep into their eyes and see who they are, separate from their skin or their weight or their age.  We make our world small by excluding people and things based on our limited learning and experience.  I want to greet my world with my eyes wide open and always looking to see just a little bit more than I saw the first time around.  When you look at me, try to leave your assumptions behind.  I want to begin each new day as though it were the first day I laid eyes on the amazing world that lies around me.  There is so much to see if we keep our eyes fresh and unfiltered by the things we assume to be true.

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.  Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

– Buddha

Summer is beginning to slip away.  There are signs everywhere.  The fruits of late summer are ripe for picking.  Birds are beginning to leave their solitary nesting places and flock from place to place as they prepare for their migration to warmer lands.  School buses roll by as the drivers determine how much time it will take to collect students and deliver them to school.  And the sun still sleeps, although I am awake.

I have loved the summer days, in spite of the record temperatures we have endured this year; but the one thing I miss most during the season is the chance to see darkness turn to light with the rising of the sun.  As I begin to enjoy that luxury once again, it occurs to me that maybe I love it so much because it reminds me of who I am.  There are heavy clouds hanging in the sky this morning, but even they cannot completely keep the light at bay.  As I type this, a glance toward the eastern horizon reveals a strip of bright red light glowing beneath the flat, black cloud.  Red sky at morning — storms are on their way — but still the sun brings light to the world and another day begins.

Hope is a lot like the sunrise.  I think of times when we have lost power during a storm and the whole house suddenly goes black.  We feel our way to the matches and light a candle and set it in the middle of the table.  With darkness all around it, that candle creates a glow that draws us all near to it and assures us that the darkness will not prevail.  At a time like that, what is it that commands our attention?  It is not the darkness, but the one small point of light in the midst of the shadows. It would seem that we were made to seek light; and I think I love the sunrise as much as I do because it reminds me of the hope that endures — even at the darkest hour.

We can be the bringers of light, too.  I might wish that I could be like the sun and return daylight to the entire world; but I am only one small point of light — one candle — and no matter how much I try to shine, I can only sit in the center of the table and bring a tiny bit of hope to those within the reach of my light.  I was thinking last night of a long-ago campfire on the last day of camp.  As the night grew late and the fire began to die, each of us held a small, white candle glued to a tiny wooden boat.  We had prepared them for this special evening; and now we stood in a circle around the embers of our time together and waited.  Our leader lit her own candle and turned to the girl next to her.  She passed the light to that girl, who passed it to the next; and before long it had made its way around the entire circle.  There we stood in the darkness, a circle of light that illuminated the sparkling eyes of each girl as we shared the wonder of the moment.

Then we did a most amazing thing.  We carried our candles carefully to the shore of the lake and launched them at the edge of the water.  Before long, our little boats had carried them in the current, and it seemed as though the whole lake was glowing with the light of just one candle — passed along again and again until it made quite a glow.

With stars shining above and candles glowing on the water, we said our good nights and retreated to our tents for the last time.  We had learned something that night, although the whole truth may have taken many years to really reveal itself.  None of us can be the sun and bring light to the whole world single-handedly.  But each of us has the potential to be that candle in the storm that draws others out of the shadow and into the light of hope.  Each of us has the potential to offer that light — or to choose to light our own from the hope of another and carry it on through whatever darkness the world may offer.  Imagine, if you will, the dying campfire — the end of the light that we had loved — and then, in the midst of the darkness, one tiny candle whose flame ignited many others and soon brought a light to the lake that rivaled the stars in the sky.

“Don’t pay any attention to the critics — don’t even ignore them.”

– Samuel Goldwyn

I’ve always loved the quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson where he warns that no matter what direction we choose to go there will always be critics who will tell us we are wrong:

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”

It does take courage to march to your own drumbeat and find that your steps are out of sync with the mainstream of society; but without the kind of people who are willing to risk blazing new trails, our world would remain very routine and very small.  I was delighted to find Samuel Goldwyn’s words, because they elevate Emerson’s idea to a new level and raise my awareness.  I have to wonder whether the movie mogul from MGM considered when he spoke that he was sharing something profound.

Like Emerson, Goldwyn knew that there was no way to make a fresh mark on the world if you allowed critics to distract or dissuade you from your goals.  When he adds “don’t even ignore them” to his advice, he really captures my attention.  Don’t even ignore them.  How often do we invest all kinds of time and energy that we could use to pursue a goal in looking over our shoulders and purposely choosing not to do things the way another person is doing them?  Why is it that we need to compare our own choice with another one that we have decided is wrong?  Where is the courage in needing a backdrop of something worse in order to prove that what we are doing is better?

How often do we point out someone else’s mistakes in order to convince ourselves that we are on the right track — simply because we recognize that one mistake and have decided not to make it again?  It takes real courage and incredible focus to plot a new path and stay with it.  Critics will always abound along the way and be more than happy to point out our mistakes.  What is important is that we see our own mistakes — and we will make them — and use them as opportunities for learning that drive us forward with clearer vision toward the goal we have set.  Let us have the courage to combine our dreams with action and walk the path that leads to their fulfillment.  Let us have the courage to be our own honest critics and accept our mistakes before another person feels the need to show us where we have erred.  If I need to ignore you, then I still am giving you my attention — and that attention belongs on my own task, not yours.

To blaze new trails and walk in courage requires that we follow our hearts, follow our dreams, and listen to the drumbeat that keeps us walking.

“All men dream, but not equally.  Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.

– T. E. Lawrence

Dream along with me for a bit.  Close your eyes and nestle into your pillow if you must; but if that is the way you choose to dream, I wish you restful sleep.  I want to talk to those of you who dare to dream with eyes wide open.  We all have dreams.  Some come in the night when our mind is in receptive mode; and we are left to scratch our heads when morning comes and try to decipher their meaning.  Some dreams are nightmares, and they jolt us awake and leave our hearts pounding and our eyes afraid to close again.  Some dreams take us soaring and flying high above the land and tumbling through the sky without a care.  We swoop and climb, ever higher, and feel free of the limitations of the physical world.

Some people lend great meaning to their dreams.  Others see them as inconsequential.  Some, like me, even solve problems while dreaming and awaken to find that they have the solution that yesterday had eluded them.  T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, tells us that those who choose to dream while awake are dangerous men; and during his exploits in the desert, I am sure that “dangerous” would have been the correct word.  Apart from the context of war and subterfuge, I think we can dig beneath the surface of the word and discover the power that drives a person to bring dreams into waking hours and act on them in the light of day.

I think of all the things we dream of changing in the world.  I think of all the dreamers who sit in isolation and pray for peace and seek to promote the wishes that work toward the greater good of all humankind.  I think about the idea that our thoughts are powerful and direct our thinking and drive our choices toward the manifestation of our impact on our world.  I can see why Lawrence called the dreamers of the day dangerous men.  When we dream intentionally and then choose to act on our dreams, there is no denying that there will be results.  We must choose carefully the dreams that call us to action.

The Butterfly Effect returns again to my thoughts, and I try to imagine the collective impact that dreamers of the day might have on our lives as each of us dreams our own dream and sends it rippling out into the world.  I dream right now of a world where each dreamer fills her heart with love — unconditional love — and dreams that the greater good of all will be served and that all human beings will learn to live in peace.  I dream that the dreamers will act on their dreams and find solutions that save our environment and keep our planet healthy and green.  I dream of a time when the abundance that the earth has to offer will reach every person, and none will be hungry or in need any more.

We must not be deterred by the nightmares that sometimes seem to be all around us.  They are the results of dreams gone awry; and they swirl and whirl until we feel dizzy and disoriented and helpless to change them.  It is time to claim the power of our dreams and send them, while we are awake, to combat the chaos that threatens to be our undoing.  Like the rising sun on a cloudy morning, our dreams can carry goodness and light that will cause the clouds to clear and allow a new dream to unfold for our world.  Dream with me.  Stay awake.  No need for a pillow — just fill your heart with love and let it overflow.

“The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.”

– Julia Child

After spending several hours yesterday dicing peaches and packaging them for the freezer, you might think that food would be the last thing on my mind.  This would probably be true except for two things.  First, I have a basket full of tomatoes, squash, and peppers on my kitchen counter from an evening trip to my garden.  Second, today marks the birth of everyone’s favorite French Chef, Julia Child.  I was delighted to discover that today was her birthday, because it brings back many fond memories of young adulthood, when I would pour a glass of wine and watch her cook on TV.  The wine was essential, both for mood and to loosen me up a little so I could laugh at her quirky way of presenting the recipe du jour.

Years have gone by, and Julia is no more; but for my birthday this year, my Favorite Child (Emily) gave me a DVD of the recent film, Julie & Julia.  Whisked into the story of a blogger who cooked her way through Julia Child’s cookbook in a year, was the story of the remarkable woman who defied the odds by leaving her role as housewife to join the great chefs of Europe — all men — in culinary school.  It was a delightful trip through the unconventional life of the woman whose name has become a household word.  Had I known her story in my younger years, I would have saved that glass of wine for the end of her broadcast and toasted her with a hearty “bon apetit!”  I suppose you can tell that I think you should find this movie and give it a look.  It may inspire you to persevere in the pursuit of your own dream.

I’m thinking now of the garden veggies on the kitchen counter, and also of the basketful of pears that sits ripening next to the back door.  I think it’s fortuitous that Julia was born at the time of the harvest, because now I am inspired to take some of that bounty and create a magnificent dinner in her memory.  I am not a French chef, but I can grill a mean supper on my Kenmore deluxe.  How about some foil pockets with sliced squash, green peppers, and cherry tomatoes?  I’ll add a bit of chopped onion, some fresh mushrooms, a touch of cilantro, and — for Julia, of course — a tablespoon of butter.  It may be time to learn how to poach a pear or two and serve them on a bed of lettuce with a bit of cheese on the side.  My mind floats dreamily through the possibilities, and I try to remember whether we have an appropriate bottle of wine tucked away somewhere.

I worry that Julia might see my menu as diet food, but then I remember that she might have been referring to something more than dinner when she spoke those words.  She also is quoted as saying:

“Life itself is the proper binge.”

When you take her words in that context, they convey a different message about diet food.  Let us follow Julia Child’s example, and when life serves us a banquet with unlimited choices, let us remember that this is no time to be on a diet and stand by the relish tray crunching on a carrot stick.  Be adventurous when you come to life’s banquet.  Pull up a chair and savor the flavors.

Bon Apetit!

“Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,

The bee’s collected treasures sweet,

Sweet music’s melting full, but sweeter yet,

The still small voice of gratitude.”

– Thomas Gray

Peaches.  Oh, how I love their fuzzy sweetness.  Each summer I wait and watch for the local orchard to announce that it is picking time; and I pull out my well-used baskets, load them into the car, and spend a morning pulling fruit from the trees.  Call me corny — or fruity, as the case may be — but the whole idea of food literally growing on trees still blows me away.  What a great plan!  And there is no other time of year when I enjoy that awareness more than I do in August.

Monday was the first day for picking this summer, but a visit from old friends took priority.  Tuesday was a reading day with Ivy in preparation for her imminent return to school, and Wednesday was consumed with appointments.  By the time Wednesday evening came, I was so filled with anticipation of my trip to the orchard that I could hardly settle down and go to sleep.  I put the baskets by the back door and lined up my garden sneakers next to them.  Tomorrow would be the day that I would fill two baskets with enough peaches to keep my freezer stocked through the long winter and spring until the next time that food grew on trees.

I sprang out of bed the next day, ahead of the alarm, and looked out the window to see rain.  Rain on peach-picking day?  We have spent a good bit of time this summer obsessing on water.  With the dry spells that have challenged us to keep our gardens growing and our lawns alive during 90-degree days, we have prayed for rain.  With the oil spill in the gulf commanding our attention to our need for clean water, we have been more thankful than ever for  miraculous, life-giving rain.  It falls from the skies through no doing of our own, and lends its magic to the sustaining of life.  It is no less miraculous than food growing on trees; and without the rain, there would be no trees at all.  Still, after all these weeks of hoping for rain, I found myself feeling a bit betrayed that it would arrive on peach day.  I started thinking of when I could reschedule my picking; and I began to realize how full my calendar really is this month.  Suddenly, my most-awaited day of the summer was beginning to feel stressful.

I will risk dating myself here when I tell you what began to play in my mind.  I heard Herman’s Hermits singing, “Don’t go out into the rain, you’re gonna melt, Sugar, oh no,” and I thought, ‘wait a minute, I’m not that sweet.’  Is there any law against picking peaches in the rain?  The last time I checked, getting wet was not the end of my world.  I loaded my baskets into the car and began the twenty-minute drive to the magical world of tree food.  The rain started and stopped along the way as I drove under clouds and then into clear sky.  By the time I arrived at the orchard and made my way to the trees, the slowest intermittent wiper speed was more than enough to handle what was falling.  Seldom have I felt so smug about making a decision.  Here I was with the rows of trees all to myself while other pickers stayed at home and feared the rain — and it really wasn’t raining at all, was it?

I walked to the far end of a row of peach trees, to the place beyond the limits of most pickers, and found trees that just begged to be relieved of their burden.  I reached up my hand and pulled the first luscious peach from its branch, and suddenly I was pelted with all the rain that had clung to the leaves during the early morning showers.  I remembered the Butterfly Effect and thought, ‘if you pick a peach in Pennsylvania, it will start a rainstorm in…Pennsylvania.”  No longer feeling smug, I found myself laughing out loud, all alone in an orchard and enjoying the miracle of peaches growing on trees and rain sustaining life.  It is moments like these that make me realize how much I love my life.  How wonderful to be a part of a world with miracles hanging everywhere you look — and all you have to do is reach out and grab them.  Sweeter still, by grabbing one miracle, I was gifted with another — no, not the rain, “but sweeter yet, the still small voice of gratitude.”

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.  The mind is everything.  What we think we become.”

– Buddha

Greetings to those of you who have taken the risk and decided to get out of bed today.  Welcome to Friday the 13th.  I’ve put on my hockey mask and had some breakfast, and now it’s time to get to work.  No, that’s not how it goes.  We really don’t want to be part of the mass hysteria that causes half the world to go bonkers today.  I think I’d rather go with Buddha and his definition of the self-fulfilling prophecy that is so succinctly stated above.  We all know that thinking negative thoughts can lead us to making our worst fears happen, but how often do we think of the potential for thinking good and positive and successful thoughts?

I was mulling this as I took my morning walk today.  Suddenly I noticed that the palm of my hand was itching.  Cool!  Someone’s going to give me money!  Wait…maybe I’m going to meet someone new and shake their hand.  Which palm is itching?  Left.  Good.  That’s the money one, because I would shake hands with my right.  I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to meet someone, but I’m having a kind of bad hair day and a little extra cash is always welcome.  I got so caught up in figuring out what this omen meant that I became distracted and stepped on a crack in the sidewalk.  Great.  Now I’ll have to call and apologize to Mom for breaking her back.  It might have been a line, though, so I’d better check on Dad’s spine as well.  And I need to remember to go buy that pregnancy test today.  We were driving home last night and I forgot to lift my feet when we crossed the railroad tracks.  Now I like kids and all, but I’m getting a bit old to be taking these risks.

How many superstitions can you think of that people have passed down from one generation to the next?  ”Sing before you eat, and you’ll cry before you sleep.”  ”Sing at the table and you’ll be disappointed.”  ”Break a mirror and you’ll have seven years’ bad luck.”  The list goes on and on, doesn’t it?  And what is luck anyway?  I like to think that we make our own luck.  I really do think that Buddha has the right idea.

I am fascinated by the concept of Energy.  Every time I think I’ve nutted down all the ways that energy exists, I have a new awareness of another form that expands my thinking.  We act on the world we live in through the use of our energy.  We eat food and store its potential energy in our body’s cells until we need to move.  Then it becomes kinetic energy.  We burn fuel to heat our homes and convert one form of energy to another that produces warmth.  These physical examples are easy enough to see and understand; but suppose that there  are more subtle forms of energy at work that pave the way for the more obvious ones to be seen.

My mind at rest holds a great deal of potential energy that I can focus to form a thought.  Once that thought takes shape, my emotions might become involved and add another layer of energy as I decide how I feel about what I am thinking.  I then make a choice that determines the direction I will go with the energy that originated in my original thought.  It isn’t hard to see how we can determine what we will become through the sorts of thoughts we bring to our days.

Suppose you woke up this morning and looked at the calendar.  It’s Friday the 13th, and you’ve learned that you should expect bad luck today.  Thought:  Oh, no!  Friday the 13th!  Something bad will happen today!  Emotion:  You could be so fearful that it paralyzes you; you could be so upset that you become distracted; you could feel hopeless and depressed and think that it is futile to attempt anything today.  Choice:  If you are afraid, you might call out sick and stay in bed.  Better to be safe than sorry.  If you decide to face the day anyway, but are distracted by the possibility of bad luck, your distraction might leave you open to accidents that you ordinarily would avoid.  And anyone who has been depressed can tell you that if that is your attitude, you will be unable to see any good that might come your way when you are looking at your day through a dark cloud.  The worst part about superstition is the way it feeds on our fear and convinces us that it is true.  If you stay in bed and nothing bad happens, then that becomes the plan for another Friday the 13th.  After all, it worked, right?  And any little accidents or perceptions of bad luck will convince us that Friday the 13th is a force beyond our control.

I prefer to start my day with a rousing song at the breakfast table followed with a thought of all the good things my day holds in store.  We must use our energy for growth so that we can become the people we hope to be.  So cross your fingers and throw a little salt over your left shoulder!  A wonderful day lies ahead!

“If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.”

– Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Edison was a remarkable man.  We tend to think of him as possessing a sort of genius that others might aspire to but never attain.  What sort of remarkable mind can invent so many new ideas that they lead to more than 1000 patents?  As I read the things Edison has to say about his process, I see such things as:

“I never failed once.  It just happened to be a 2000-step process.”

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.  The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

He also says that everything he ever did was fun.  Fun.  Do you bring that attitude of excitement and enjoyment to the parts of life that challenge you to stretch beyond your current limits?

We are the generation of instant gratification.  We have lost our ability to embrace the process in our desire to see results — right now.  As I read the things Edison had to say, I tried to remember the last time I did something that required me to embrace a long process, endure failed attempts, renew my enthusiasm, and ultimately succeed.  I suppose I could make some analogy to child-rearing, but I’m not sure that would be fair, since children tend to find their own energy and take over the process long before the parents see it through to completion.  Sadly, the best example I could find was working a jigsaw puzzle.  Now there is something that taxes my brain, feels like fun even though it is challenging, and causes me to persist in trial-and-error until I reach my goal.  It seems a bit trivial to talk about jigsaw puzzles in the same breath with Edison’s thousand useful inventions, but I do believe that the process may be related.

I ask myself what kind of puzzler I might be.  Am I the one who chooses a 25-piece puzzle because I have better things to do and little time to invest in meeting a challenge?  Do I choose a 500-piece puzzle and stick with something within the boundaries of previous success and predictability?  My mother taught me to assemble the straight edge pieces first, beginning with the corners, so that my work would lie within a framework that would define it.  What have I taken with me from learning to work inside the lines?  There are things I would like to accomplish — dreams I would like to pursue — that I have not yet managed to produce.  At least three full-length books clatter around in my mind, begging to be brought to life.  Is the problem that I am looking for a 25-piece puzzle instead of challenging myself?  Am I trying to make something new and more far-reaching fit within the boundaries where I have lived my life so far?

Maybe it is time to do a puzzle with a mountain of pieces that are not defined by a number.  Maybe it is time to start with random pieces and work my way in all directions — and maybe the edge will not be straight if I ever find it.  As I write these words, a restless excitement begins to grow in me.  There is creative energy that is begging me to release it and to stay with the process until I discover what it is that I have to invent.  I envision sleepless nights ahead with my mind filled with the excitement of working and re-working an idea.  I picture frustration and needing to re-think things again and again; and I wonder whether I can maintain the enthusiasm that will make it fun.

We all have dreams.  Maybe the difference between someone like Edison and the rest of us is the willingness to accept that our dreams may come to be after 2,000 attempts.  We don’t like to feel the unsettling feeling of hitting a wall and needing to begin again; but Edison tells us that restlessness may be a good thing.  He says:

“Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress.  Show me a thoroughly satisfied man, and I will show you a failure.”

We need to learn, once again, that it is the process — the sometimes painful process — that will give birth to the dreams we bring to our world.  We must harness our restlessness and know that it is the catalyst for progress.  Once we become satisfied with our present boundaries, we can no longer hope to grow.