Clothes – my nemesis

Let’s just say I’ve never been a clothes horse.

I was thinking about this today when my friend Steve Graham posted on Facebook a very funny description of his fruitless search for an acceptable new pair of pants—oh, how I sympathize! It was hard enough finding decent, comfortable clothes when I lived in the USA, but here in Brazil it’s well-nigh impossible.

The women’s clothes here are either riddled with spandex (hate, hate) or covered with studs, embroidery, appliqués or a ton of other doodads (despise, despise). The women’s pants (including shorts and pjs) have waists that start just above the pubic bone (so uncomfortable) and are usually very form-fitting (aka pinchy tight).

tomara-que-caia

Even T-shirts aren’t exempt from decorations, printed mottoes in bad English, and necks so wide that one of your shoulders is always hanging out whether you want it to or not.

And then there are the underpants. I don’t even want to go there. I still order mine from the USA, I confess. The G-strings are bad enough, but even the so-called “regular panties” have no room for a normal butt, and are always getting stuck you-know-where.

My first act of revolt was to start buying clothes in the men’s and boy’s department. I actually did find a couple of decent pairs of pants (I don’t wear jeans—too stiff and hot) and some plain T-shirts. So now my wardrobe plays out like this:

Winter: slacks, long-sleeved T-shirts

Summer: men’s boxer shorts, short-sleeved T-shirts or tank tops

But I still long for a simple pair of cotton pants with a draw string or an elastic waist. I’ve been searching for them among the websites for medical scrubs, but most of them are at least 50% polyester. Sigh.

On the up side, though, Brazilians do have some funny names for clothes. Strapless tops or dresses are called “tomara que caia,” which means “I hope it falls down,” and men’s boxer shorts are “samba-canção”— an old-style of music, meaning that only geezers wear them.

samba canção

Funny thing is that I really enjoy looking at high-fashion clothes at the runway shows in São Paulo and Rio—but to me those aren’t actually clothes, they’re art. That’s different.

For my day-to-day wear, I want something super comfortable that’s almost like wearing nothing. Or maybe I should just wear nothing (when I’m inside, of course). Or maybe not. I remember one time my mother decided that she would do all her housework in the nude in the summertime. That lasted for exactly one day. She said it made her feel “too vulnerable.” So much for nudism. I’ll just suck it up and stick with my boxer shorts, plain pants and T-shirts.

Never give up – ever

By now, practically everyone knows who “Arthur Never Give Up” is. For those who don’t, Arthur Boorman is the disabled Gulf War veteran who suffered knee and back injuries and was told by his doctors that he would never again be able to walk on his own. The video about his amazing recovery has gone viral on YouTube with 7,606,340 hits as of today.

So what really happened to Arthur? After the doctor’s predictions, he became depressed and gave up. He took the experts at their word and accepted the fact that he would never walk again without support. So Arthur, at age 47, became a couch potato and kept gaining weight until he had packed 297 pounds onto his 5’8” frame.

I’m just guessing at how he must have felt—maybe a combination of desperation and apathy. Maybe because of the doctors’ predictions it never crossed his mind that anything could help him. Maybe he just felt resigned.

But then something happened. Something shifted in his thought and he “stumbled” on an article about Diamond Dallas Page, a retired professional wrestler who invented his own Yoga hybrid system—DDP Yoga. Arthur started watching videos and trying to do DDP, falling down and getting up countless times. He also sent Dallas an email telling him his story.

If you’ve seen the video (posted below), you know what happened. Arthur recovered completely. He lost over 100 pounds and now can not only walk, but run. So what happened?

It seems to me that the spark of life that’s in all of us just wouldn’t be silenced. Arthur’s intuition told him that his life was worth something, that he was worth something. It wasn’t just that he suddenly decided to do Yoga. Before he even got to that point, he must have sensed the importance, the sacredness of his own life, even if he wasn’t fully aware of it.

And he didn’t give up after a few attempts. He doggedly kept at it until he saw success. He developed his natural God-given strength through persistence, obedience and patience. What an example! In this day and age of instant gratification and premature quitting, this is exactly what a lot of us need to see and embrace.

Can’t each one of us at least try to do as Arthur did, no matter what the challenge? Before you say “Impossible!” consider that every life is valuable, and that means yours and mine. And that mental attitude is the most important thing, not what your body might be saying (or screaming). I know that his story has had an impact on my own life—he’s a great inspiration to me. Happily, Arthur’s story is now being made into a documentary, Inspired: The Movie, that also includes stories of other people who overcame seemingly overwhelming obstacles. I’m sure it will encourage people who are confronting daunting situations. Thanks, Arthur!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX9FSZJu448

The ring

Today I was rummaging through my tiny jewelry box and found a little ring I’d nearly forgotten about. I’d dragged it back and forth between Brazil and the US many times without even being aware it.

It’s an ornate little silver ring with an oval-shaped blue stone in a raised setting. It’s quite a pretty ring, really, and as I looked at it—nearly black with tarnish—I wondered why I hadn’t worn it all these years.

Then I felt a little stab in my heart. And I remembered the day I got the ring. And then, at the same moment, I recalled an event many years before the ring, when I was playing piano in a trio at a fancy hotel in Boston. There were couples dancing on the floor, and I could hear a young woman, pretty and blonde, as she and her partner danced by me, saying to him: “Stop looking around. Look at me. Pay attention to me. Don’t look at the other women!” She seemed really distraught, but was obviously trying to control herself and “lay down the law” to the young man with her, who looked confused and slightly irritated.

I’d felt a stab in my heart that night, too.

Now I’ll tell you about the ring. I was in my fourth marriage, and not happy at all with myself, my husband, or my marriage. I felt overlooked, ignored, and worthless much of the time. I wanted so badly to have a good marriage, and I felt that this was my last chance after three previous failed attempts. In my desperation, I tried to force my husband to pay attention to me, just like the hapless blonde dancer. I made him go with me to an open jewelry stand in the train station and buy me an inexpensive ring. He went along reluctantly, his mind on other things. When we got to the stand, I couldn’t find any ring I really wanted—they didn’t have one with a green stone—so I settled. I settled for the little silver pinky ring with the blue stone, just as I’d settled for a marriage that wasn’t working and never would.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to the pretty blond girl and her partner, or husband. I can’t imagine that it could have turned out well, and my heart goes out to both of them. Her for her neediness, him for feeling cornered.

I forgive myself for being so needy back then, and I forgive my ex-husband for not understanding. I didn’t understand then that everything I really wanted and needed was in my own thoughts, dreams, and feelings, and not in other people’s actions.

So I polished the little ring with the blue stone, and now I’m happily wearing it on my pinky finger.

Which open door is the right door?

Yesterday a Facebook friend posted this on her wall:

This is an honest question, something I’m pondering, and I’m curious to hear others’ thoughts on the topic. It has generally been my approach to accept opportunities that unexpectedly fall in my lap or doors that swing open without too much effort on my part—I tend to take that as an indication that it is the right path for me. But I wonder…should one bypass those open doors and strive for something bigger sometimes? Where does a disjointed series of open doors lead? Is it like a dream deferred? And if there isn’t a clear alternative to the door that is open….hmmmmm. Generally the doors that open aren’t the ones I hoped would open! Sometimes I put a lot of effort into prying open doors that stay shut.

Over the years, I’ve found that opportunities tend to appear whether we’re actively seeking them or not. Sometimes there may be a dry spell, but then something will pop up, sometimes to our surprise. When I’ve been surprised by an opportunity that seems good, or at least reasonable, sometimes the temptation is just to jump on it before it slips away. And I’ve done that with things that seemed possible for me to do, that might bring in a little money, and that sounded at least somewhat interesting. So I’ve accepted some of them, and done them for awhile, and then moved on. But I don’t think this is really the issue my friend is touching on here.

Just because something appears unexpectedly without our making any effort, does that mean it’s necessarily the right thing? It depends on what we mean by “the right thing.” I happen to know that the friend who posed this question is a person of considerable and varied talents who often finds herself in jobs that have nothing whatsoever to do with her talents. Sure, I know we all need to earn money, but let’s be careful that we don’t confuse the need for a “day” job to keep us going while we develop our talents, with the real and genuine need to bring out and utilize our talents to the fullest—to make our dreams come true and do what we really LOVE.

I’ve been confronted with this dilemma my entire life, and I can’t say things have turned out exactly the way I would have liked. But I refuse to give a “day” job the importance in my thought that I give to my dream. And when it comes to picking a job out of the various opportunities that present themselves, I do take the time now to consider whether my choice will be manageable or whether it will suck my soul away and keep me away from my dreams. We all do the best we can when it comes to taking care of our basic needs, but we need to be alert to protect ourselves, especially if we are creative types.

I must say that when it comes to my dreams, even if I’ve tried to pry open doors that have stubbornly remained shut, even if I’ve been rebuffed and ignored, that still won’t stop me from nourishing my dream, working at it, loving it, valuing it, seeing that it is deserving, respecting it, protecting it, caring for it, appreciating it, offering it.

If it seems as if there’s no alternative to the doors that are opening to the “day” jobs, just keep cherishing the dream. Those doors don’t open to the dream, so they don’t really matter all that much. Keep them separate. Isolate them. I believe that our true job is to know that the gift we’ve been given comes with its own fulfillment, and if we’re patient and diligent, eventually the real doors will open to us.

The secret is not to identify ourselves with the jobs that we may have to do along the way to sustain ourselves. This doesn’t mean we don’t do our best at them or that we approach them with a negative attitude. It’s kind of like cleaning the house. It’s something that needs to be done, even though we may not feel like doing it. So we do it as cheerfully as we can, but we’re not thinking the whole time: “I’m a house cleaner. This is who I am.” Our identification should always be with our God-given gifts, no matter what other things we may have to do along the way to keep ourselves going. This is where we belong.

Vegan—who, me?

Over the past year or so I have found myself gradually eating more and more food that might be styled “vegan.”

I wasn’t looking to be vegan—in fact, I wasn’t consciously doing anything to change my eating habits. I was just going with my gut. The first thing my gut told me was, “Ew, I don’t like cooking chicken any more, and I’m feeling kinda squeamish about eating it.” OK, out with the chicken. Then it was the fish. Fish had always seemed fine to me, but it started to seem just a tad nasty. Why? If I knew, I’d tell you. It was just a feeling I had, and I went with it.

Finally, it was the dairy products. I bought some Brie cheese and it grossed me out so bad I had to throw it away. What was happening to me? What would my friends think—that I was losing my marbles? So out went the dairy, too—the milk, the eggs (nasty), the cheese, the mayo, etc., etc.

I had already dumped red meat over thirty years ago, and had also been macrobiotic for seven years in the 60s and early 70s, as well as eating vegetarian food off and on over the years, so it was no chore for me to start eating vegan-type food. I say “vegan-type,” because I’m not really a pure, 100% card-carrying vegan. Although I’m appalled at the way animals are treated in the factory farms, I can’t say that I’m really convinced that eating meat in and of itself is wrong, and I’m not an animal rights activist—a sympathizer perhaps, but not an activist. I’m not any kind of activist, that’s just not me. The vision of the “lion lying down with the lamb” is a very appealing one, but I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon, at least not on this planet.

Anyway, I started getting into eating vegan, investigated some different kinds of soy and rice milk (not a whole lot of vegan “specialty” foods here in Brazil), and joined a couple of vegan groups on Facebook—one Brazilian, one American. The Brazilian group is really fun and the people are friendly and pretty easygoing. See, I’ve heard that vegans can sometimes be kind of militant and uptight, and I’m sensitive to that. So you can imagine my horror when the person who runs the American group posted this less than a week after the terrible attacks at the school in my hometown, Newtown, CT: “In his press conference the other day, our president said that we must oppose ‘a culture that all too often glorifies guns and violence.’ — At a dinner function that evening he ate a steak dinner, the dead cow on his plate violently bolt-gunned from existence.”

Hello?!? I immediately dropped off the group. OK, says I to myself, I’m going to eat this food, but I absolutely refuse to be a fanatic. Who’s to say that I won’t eat a piece of chicken or fish ever again? I just can’t get on other people’s cases about what they eat. It’s none of my damned business. When you get down to it, self-righteousness is worse than eating meat.

So I’m enjoying eating my beans and grains and veggies and fruit and chocolate (oh yeah, chocolate!), but if someone has me over for dinner, I’m going to eat what’s set in front of me and be grateful. I know that the judgmental vegans can’t help themselves—I used to be that way about macrobiotics when I was much younger, so I can’t get all up in their faces, either. I’m just gonna mind my own business and see if I can pick up a few good recipes along the way.

What’s my motive?

The other day I got caught up in a delusion of grandeur, and believe me it was just as awful as seeing myself as a worthless loser. I imagined myself in a certain role, way above others, and raising them up and enlightening them with my wonderful insights and perceptions. Ha! What a joke! It only took me about a minute to wake up to see how twisted that was. I knew better, because I know that any ideas that have really elevated mankind never came from arrogance and self-righteousness, but from humility and love.

Who am I, anyway? —I thought. What, for that fleeting moment, made me feel that I was so special, so much better than anyone else? Well, I like to think of those thoughts as “nowhere” and “nobody” thoughts, because they certainly didn’t come from the Creator.

I’m a firm believer in the Creator. I know in my gut that we didn’t just spring out of nowhere into existence. There’s no doubt that we exist. We are here. We are conscious of ourselves, so Something or Someone must have created or manifested us, outpictured us. And like snowflakes, there are no two of us alike. I love to think of that—countless snowflakes dancing and swirling, each one doing its own thing in its own unique way.

But you know, there isn’t a single snowflake that’s better than any other snowflake, or more worthy, more interesting, more special. You get the picture. Each one is different, like us, with its own role to play, its own style, and even though some snowflakes might be BIGGER than others, they’re still from the same source. They’re made to enjoy themselves, hang out together, and do the dance of life—just like us.

If I’m full of myself—my attitudes, opinions, and so on—how will I ever be able to see-hear-appreciate what anyone else is doing? It just kind of draws a veil over all the brightness that everyone else is expressing, and I end up missing out.

So let’s imagine that I really do get some great, mind-bending, life-altering idea that I think I should present to other people. Well, first of all, I need to check my motives. Am I honestly doing this to help others, or just to show them how amazing I am and make them like me or worship me? Will it really have the effect I think it will, or will it end up hurting people and making me look like a jerk? This is the time to make sure that my idea came from the Creator, aka in this case, my spiritual intuition. If it did, then, like a snowflake dance, it’ll create harmony and joy, instead of bumping into the other flakes and dragging all of us to the ground.

Grow up? Why?

I won’t grow up,

I don’t want to go to school.

Just to learn to be a parrot,

And recite a silly rule.

If growing up means

It would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree,

I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up

Not me!

- From “Peter Pan” (Jule Styne/ Carolyn Leigh/Mark “Moose” Charlap)

Do we really have to grow up? Is it a good thing? What does it actually mean, to “grow up?”

If it means taking responsibility for everything, carrying everything on our shoulders, making sure we discipline ourselves to a schedule every day and “act like an adult” (whatever that means), then I think I’m with Peter.

Once we believe that everything comes down to us—our decisions, our actions, our behavior, etc.—we’ve already put ourselves into a tight little box. Boxes are dark inside, which means that the light can’t get in.

Remember when we were little kids? What did we do? We played. Yep, and it was serious business, too. But not the way we think of serious business as so-called adults. We were curious, eager, filled with wonder, ready to try something new, generally unafraid, and ready to have fun. But as time went by, all of that changed…

“You’re gown up now…it’s time to act your age! What are you going to do with the rest of your life?” If we didn’t have some kind of schedule worked out to the grave, then we were judged as irresponsible, immature, even lazy.

I ask you: Where’s the fun in that?

Recently I’ve had the eye-opening experience of becoming more like a little child, just trusting that my spiritual intuition will lead me rather than my human reasoning, and guess what? Not only am I a lot happier and more relaxed, I’m actually getting a lot more done—and having more fun doing it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ8nPYSNobg

Doing nothing

Are you one of those people who always has to be doing something? Does the idea of doing nothing make you uneasy? Well, you’re not alone, I’m sure. Even with all the current popularity of meditation, there are still lots and lots of folks who just can’t stop their perpetual motion, not to mention the constant static going on in their minds.

I used to be one of those people, and sometimes I’ll still have a wakeful night in bed when I just can’t seem to turn my “thinker” off. And after a lifelong habit of being convinced I always had to be busy otherwise it meant I was lazy, only recently have I come to the conclusion that rushing around like a waiter covering a dozen tables really wastes time and doesn’t accomplish much of anything.

I read a book awhile back that encouraged doing nothing from time to time. The book was aimed at artists like myself, but I really think it applies to everyone. I know some fellow musicians who practice every single day and transcribe solos from jazz records while they’re riding on the bus or eating lunch, and I guess that’s OK for them, but I’ve found that taking breaks provides openings for your creative intuition to get in, while constant activity tends to shut it out.

There have been periods during my life when I’ve stopped playing music altogether (one time for seven years), and when I came back I was not only fresh and full of new ideas, but I seemed to be playing things I had never played, or even thought of playing before. It was as if all the things that were going on in my life during my absence from music had actually contributed to my store of creative fodder, ready to spring into action when I was ready to go back.

Those of us who were raised with the so-called “Protestant work ethic” or something similar, have been programmed to feel guilty if we’re not always doing something, always producing. Even during vacations or entertainment breaks, we feel that we have to be busy at something every single minute. It took me decades before I was finally able to sit down in a chair and do absolutely nothing for a period of a half hour. No book, no laptop, no iPod, no food, no cell phone, nothing. After getting into this new habit, I discovered that there was a freshness, a newness to my thought, as if I were opening a door into something much broader and deeper than my limited little thought patterns. If you’ve never tried this, I highly recommend that you do. You don’t have to meditate on a mantra or even say a prayer. Just be still. Be quiet. You’ll like the results, I promise.

Distractions. Really?

I was chatting on Skype with one of my oldest and dearest friends the other day. Stephanie Crawford is a jazz singer living in San Francisco, and even though we’ve often lived great distances apart, we always manage to stay in touch.

We rarely talk about things like other people, what we did today, what was the last movie we saw, what we ate for lunch and so on. No, we always get into the nuts and bolts of our lives—what’s going on with us in the most profound sense, and what things are changing, or not changing in our thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Sometimes we talk about the past—about our musical careers (we used to work together when we both lived in New York), where they’re going, and how they’ve transformed over the many years we’ve known each other. During this recent chat, I found myself grumbling about how the many distractions in my life—marriages, kids, having to do various “day jobs” to support the kids, etc. —had kept me from devoting myself more fully to my musical career. Stephanie knows about this, because she has been following my life since 1981, when I first moved to New York and met her. But the distractions had been going on for a lot longer than that.

I went on to say that I admired her because she had never swerved from her dream to be a jazz singer. In the middle of my crabbing, Steph interrupted me and said: “Wait! Wait! I LOVE that you did all that stuff! I LOVE that you got married four times and had kids and did all those things you did. They just made your music RICHER, don’t you get it?” Well, that really shut me up. The word “GRATITUDE” seemed to pop up in front of me in billboard-sized letters.

I knew that Stephanie’s path had been anything but smooth, and that she had lost her way more than once, even though it seemed to me that her focus was so laser-like. But I’d never heard her complain it. She just kept changing herself and moving on. After that chat, I swear never complain again about the way my life has unfolded, you can be sure of that! Thanks, Steph.

Finding ourselves by ourselves

I think most of us have had a desire to be part of a group—a bunch of people who make us feel accepted and loved. Maybe we’ve looked for it in our family, or a social club or religious organization. And maybe these group, or groups really did fulfill our need, at least for awhile.

If you’re anything like me, though, sooner or later you discover that you have to leave the group, or that it leaves you—sometimes abruptly, even cruelly. It took me years to realize that this was not a bad thing. If you’ve got the spark inside you nudging you on to your true, spiritual life and self, there’s one thing for sure: the group won’t get you there. You have to go it alone, like it or not.

But this seemingly lonely trek has a happy conclusion that actually ends up including not only your groups, but everyone on the planet. Why is this? Because the truth about our spiritual life and self is divine Love, and this Love is infinitely bigger than any human emotion. It includes everyone and everything, despite often deceiving appearances.

Before you can see the universality of it, though, you have to approach it on your own, through contemplation, meditation, prayer—whatever you like to call it. It’s strictly between you—your individual consciousness—and the universal consciousness called divine Love or infinite Mind.

During this process, groups can’t really help you. In fact, they can actually hold you back, especially if you’re looking to them for validation, support and comfort. That’s not where those things come from. They come from the one Light, and that’s where you need to spend your time—living in that Light, or Love.

But, someone might say, the spiritual-minded help their brother man—they aren’t selfish. Certainly it’s true that there are countless people doing their best to help their fellows, and of course this is a good thing. But seeking the Light is not a selfish pursuit. Once you become aware of its embrace, love naturally pours out of you to others—nothing can stop it. It becomes an expression of grace, and not an exhausting human effort. Then groups, organizations, tribes, collectives, families, and so on, all naturally fall into their proper places.

Let’s not put the cart before the horse. Our oneness with Love comes first.