Page 148: NOW, Just in Time

When I was a child, the only moment I ever paid attention to was the one I was in...I was eight years old for a lifetime. I was nine years old for a lifetime. I turned ten, and that year lasted a lifetime, too.

But to be a parent is to live in the past-present-future all at once. It is to hug your children and be intensely aware of how much smaller they felt last year. When I hear people say that time moves faster as you get older, I think they have it wrong. It's not that time moves any faster; it's that it collapses altogether.

-- Dr. Youngme Moon, Harvard Business School, Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd

One of the most valuable lessons I ever learned came from Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now. In it, he skillfully articulates the dangers of living in the past - thinking about it, longing for it, or regretting it - as well as the folly of living for the future: worrying about it, fearing it, or just obsessing over it. If you want to maximize your happiness, Tolle argues, "live in the now." The thought is profound. The notion is very close to a foundational thought from Buddhism, that most human worry, or "suffering" as articulated there, comes from our tendency to want to hold on to the present, to make it last. We don't want things to change and experience worry and fear about the future and the changes it might bring.

But change is inevitable. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, "you can never step in the same river twice." The water flowing in the river is constantly moving, swirling, and changing.

Thirty years ago, Philip Brickman studied lottery winners and happiness. He found that while winners were elated at first, afterwards they were no happier than they had been prior to winning. Brickman coined the phrase "hedonistic treadmill" to describe our tendency to set new baselines in life. We humans have a remarkable ability to feel entitled today to what we were so excited about and thankful for yesterday.


What I make out of it is this:

Visit the past to remember valuable lessons and great memories. Don't obsess about the past or it will own you and your future.  Plan for the future, but never obsess over it. To do so wastes valuable time in the now. You'll live so many days worrying about the future, you'll sacrifice the present.

Embrace the inevitable change in life. Kids grow up. Parents age. Find the beauty in the Now and when you let go of anxieties about Past & Future, the Now becomes a much brighter, happier place. Live each day finding the good things in life that over-shadow the bad. The light side of life is always brighter. Always.


I had the pleasure of hearing Don Miguel Ruiz when he was in Austin a couple of years ago. Don is the bestselling author of the The Four Agreements and a modern day philosopher descended from a centuries-old line of ancient Toltec shamans. He is respected around the world as a thinker and modern day mystic philosopher. He said it best:

“Life is like dancing. If we have a big floor, many people will dance. Some will get angry when the rhythm changes. But life is changing all the time... The best path to happiness is learning to change as rapidly as life does."

Page 147: Gettin' Back on the Horse

Well, I haven't been in the blogosphere in many moons. It's like getting back on the horse, krs. Just start writing again! Just step back up into the saddle and -

With "Spot," age 5, 1968

Cowpokes. I grew up on a horse.  Literally been knocked down off a horse on many occasions, by everything from tree branches to the horse itself. In the 6th grade, I was riding a 2 year old spirited filly named Sandy. My dad asked me what I thought about my new cap. "Love it," I said, taking the cap off and waving it for effect. Bad idea. As it turns out, Sandy didn't really like caps being waved above her head -- in fact, Sandy thought that a cap being waved around her head was tantamount to attacking marauders, so microseconds later I found myself airborne, flying through the atmosphere toward my landing pad: a rusty galvanized aluminum watering trough atop a thick pile of corral dirt. As they say where I am from, it "knocked the wind out of me" and for what seemed like life and death seconds that turned into minutes, I was sure I was going to die from suffocation as I struggled to get my breath back. Despite the ample blood and scrapes, nothing was permanently broken. "Doc said I was gonna live."

As my dad tells the story, "Kirk was done with horses after that." My illustrious cowboy career was officially ended, and it was only 1975. I was still an 11 year old kid growing up out in the country in the hills of Central Texas, but I had gotten off that horse the hard way, and to quote my dad, "he never got back on one."

July 1971 -- the horse's name escapes me

But actually, I did. It wasn't that I was scared to get back on a horse. I was just completely disinterested, as the the cowboy life was never my thing -- I was into my telescope, chemistry set, electronics, and books, sort of a country spun original geek. But I DID get back on a horse, and actually do love horses and wish I owned one. When no one is looking when I am at my parents, I go back and hang with the horses, just like the old times. I didn't grow up around other kids; we were in the ranchlands. But I did get to spent a lot of time with these magnificent animals when I was a kid, and to me horses are the most "human" of all animals -- I think they are amazing. So intelligent, so much more so than dogs or cats, and each has such such a distinct personality. I'll own one again someday, but please don't tell my dad. He is a very youthful 70, but if he knew this, such a level of laughter at any age is dangerous and he might die laughing. 

So, this writing business is a lot like that. I haven't been writing for a while, simply because I had nothing to say; there was just no reason to get back in the saddle. I've spent much of the past year thinking instead of talking, about Life and what it all means and where I'm headed. Plus, it's discouraging; everyone is all riled up these days about things like politics and religion. Not me. Silly wabbits. Don't you know that all that angst, whatever fence or side of the fence you straddle, is far from healthy and way beyond your control? You can't even convince your closest non-like minded friends you are right and they are wrong. Why in the world would you expand valuable time and energy railing on these topics? As I like to say, "all that venom is not lengthening your life."

If you are the kind of person that sees things from only one point of view and it's all black and white, find some kindred others and support each other up a storm. You'll be much happier, but I would argue, probably more full of fury than happiness on a regular basis. Brain science has uncovered some surprising fundamental about the way our brains work. None of us are as objective as we think. Our political leanings have everything to do with our particular style of brain chemistry and what lights up our neurological tree. Our religious leanings are similar, and it has little do with what is absolutely Right and Wrong.  Like so many others, I discovered that "Right" was relative many years ago. When you understand this, you can release a lot of angst about all those "others" who are so wrong and clueless about everything, who happen to see politics or religion a different way than you.

This is why I don't hesitate to weed maniacs out of my garden, but instead, cultivate wonderers, thinkers, and the heartfelt tolerant as true prizes. The people in your life either give you energy or subtract it. I cherish the former.

As far as we can prove, we are only here once. I feel a gentle breeze on my back again. There are some things I want to say, and I will steer clear of any semblance of anything too serious. Because it took me half a lifetime to learn that it doesn’t take half a lifetime to learn that you shouldn't take life so seriously.

If you have come this far, thanks for reading. My energy and inspiration comes from the thoughtful people like you who would take the time to consider the thoughts of another. Life itself is a miracle.  To lose touch with that is to miss the entire point. Now, let's have some fun and get the life party going.

Namaste.