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

I meditate almost every day now. I used to be able to judge the days by when I meditated, now I can judge them by when I don’t. My interpretation of life is clearer when I meditate. It is the only discipline I have ever practiced that actually has the power to change my mind. Don’t get me wrong here, changing my mind is a continuous journey, not a destination. Even after 200 days, the practice is the thing. We move closer to our true selves when we can be quiet enough to listen for what we deeply know.

The most challenging step towards that inner knowing is suspending all the noise and distraction that populates our working mind. The Buddha once said, “Meditation brings wisdom; lack of mediation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what hold you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.” He believed that practicing mindfulness, which is the ability to be conscious and aware of what is going on in our world. By learning how to be more present to the moment we are in, we simultaneously detach from our perceptions of pain, suffering and anxiety.

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“The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth.”  ~Chinese Proverb

I visited the grave of a dear family friend today with my sons.  The anniversary of his death, already two- years- old just recently passed and the flowers on his grave were dried and dead in a tipped over vase. We sat and talked about our friend and his neighbors, each with a name and the dates of the beginning and end of life. The whole of  life and all the wonders and emotions that made up their lives is represented only with a hyphen.  In 1827, two brothers, Augustus and Julius Hare wrote, “Life is the hyphen between matter and spirit…”  which pretty well sums it up.

As we lay in the grass, looking up at the sky, missing him and thinking of what he would say if he could have commented on the day, made me realize again how much of the small essential things in life I so often take for granted. Lost in the myriad details of the days, taking the time to fix what breaks, overcome with frustrations or anguish about things that won’t last or even matter in a few days, I forget to pay attention to the small things at the heart of life.

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“Marriage is not a noun; it’s a verb. It isn’t something you get. It’s something you do. It’s the way you love your partner every day.” Barbara De Angelis

I have told more people than I can count the one irreplaceable piece of advice that has kept my marriage going for decades. Sometimes, like today, I have to go inside myself with a pick axe and dig it out for me. The advice came from Bob, the best marriage counselor in Seattle, when we were just into our 7^th or 8^th year together. He said, “Mature love, the kind that outlasts the wide and frequent swing of feelings and even the painful ups and downs of cohabitation is the ability to hold what you love about someone side by side with what is most annoying about them.”

This is not that hard to do when you are feeling the love for them. It is really hard to do when all you can see is what is annoying about them. Our grievances about our partners have some weird balloon effect inside of us. As soon as we hone in on what is missing, defective, overwhelming or otherwise provokes you to want to leave the room screaming, it is hard to wrap your hands around the part of them that you love. For me sometimes, the distance is so large that for moments I wonder if the love that I hang onto is just an illusion.

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“Love is a fabric which never fades, no matter how often it is washed in the water of adversity and grief.” -Unknown

Our relationships are truly the fabric of our lives. Living in a big family with so many people in the process of individuating can make for a compelling laboratory. It is rarely dull, although not frequently full of drama. The one rule that I have imposed relentlessly on my children is that of kindness. I never tolerated or allowed them the liberty of unkindness. Beyond the admonition that we have all heard repeatedly,”if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all.” I have worked hard on my children’s conscience about their relationships with their siblings. Stony silence is not acceptable either. I have expected, they might even say demanded, that they love each other.

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“Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.” ~Rossiter Worthington Raymond

I stood at the grave site of Lilly’s father today. I had only met him once when we looked at the life stories of eleven-year-olds filling the gymnasium of the middle school where our daughters are good friends. We marveled at how the children reflected both the mundane and the depth of their lives, often without recognizing it. I had known of his cancer, but at first didn’t recognize him for how well he seemed.

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“Even if you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.” -Mary Pickford

Now that I have managed to really listen to the words I am saying, the next logical step is to listen one step back to the thoughts. Not saying the negative thing is an improvement, not a small task, but getting to the thoughts is really the foundation of the change. I still have a lot of negative thoughts that I am not saying, yet surprisingly I am also having more room for positive thoughts.

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“What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That’s a pretty good idea. I’ll give you the moon, Mary.” -George Bailey

I just recently viewed December’s Sustainable Love Movie of the Month and from the first time to the thousandth time I still hold it in a special place in my heart. Frank Capra’s “It’s A Wonderful Life” (1946) has already been put on a dozen of classic movie lists for it’s wonderful casting and terrific director, among other reasons- now here’s why it’s on our list.

The film follows the life of George Bailey, played by James Stewart. George Bailey is a man with high ideals and lust for adventure forever trapped in the pitfalls of life in a small town. He is an incredibly kind person and is always putting other people ahead of himself, sacrificing his college education and worldwide trip to maintain the family business after his father dies. Along the way, he helps a variety of people in countless ways. But when a crisis strikes, he questions his very existence and is shown the light not only by an angel, but also by the people who love him most.

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‘Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.’ ~Lazarus Long

Holidays are challenging times for many people. Rather than a storehouse of loving memories, for many of us holidays serve as annual reminders of the dysfunction and pain that characterized family life. As unique as the stories are between families, the feelings of loneliness, disappointment and worthlessness associated with a history of failed holidays is universal. I have spent much of my adult life breaking the ties to my past by building rituals around the holidays for my own family. Yet, I am still caught off guard, each time the holidays come around by the persistent small voice in me that continues to miss out on the fantasy of warm extended family gatherings and feeling twinges of envy for my friends whose families come together year after year.

Perhaps it is because of the bittersweet nature of my childhood holiday memories, but I have long been intrigued by the endings in life. Although my fascination with endings was probably initially sparked by fear and insecurity, I have come to value my need to ritualize endings as a gift, one that serves to continuously remind me to be grateful even in the face of difficult relationships. The truth about life for all of us is that things are continuously coming together and falling apart. When you pay attention, every day offers opportunities to acknowledge the endings that capture this flow of connecting and letting go. They are the turning points in life that are easy to miss, but have the power to create and carry heartfelt meaning in our days.

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“Adversity causes some men to break, and others to break records.”- William Ward

Heartbreaking is a word often associated with soccer matches that come down to shoot-outs after long extended play has not been able to decipher a winner. Five players against the goalie; whoever scores more goals wins. It is a terrible win, hardly reflective of the fact that it is merely luck that decides the winner. The moment of the kick after the whistle blows is seconds long, but similar to car crashes where time slows to a halt the ‘in’ breath lasts a while. Reaction time between players is clocked in milliseconds, like how Olympic swimmers win races; time as long as a fingernail.

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‘All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.’ �Buddha

Life can throw a punch. Things happen. Relationships with people we love can challenge our ability to love. How we think about what is difficult in our lives makes them what they are. Negative emotions are a slippery slope for many of us. An offhanded comment in a small dispute can snowball into internal warfare and the destruction of hard-earned intimacy without even seeing it coming. ‘How could she call me insensitive? � All I do is think of her needs� How am I going to keep this going if every time I turn around she�. I should never have gotten married�’ The initial remark is long out of view in moments and the internal dialogue has slipped out of control. Scientists came up with the term negative bias to describe this phenomenon where bad feelings create and naturally link to more bad thoughts, entrapping the mind in a quick downward spiral.

We ruminate. Our attempts to work through difficult situations in our mind can and often do turn into obsessive dwelling on questions that don’t have answers, that link easily and quickly to negative ideas that you didn’t even consciously conjure up. Minds work this way, they link things together based on the tone of where you start. Feel a little sad, ruminate a bit and you will be depressed. Anxiety with a dose of rumination and you get a panic attack. How common are the angry exchanges in the world linked to ruminated frustrations? Sexual issues with a dose of rumination can extinguish the passion between people for weeks at a time. Experiencing negative emotions are a normal and grounding part of living on earth, building a script out of them is how we suffer them.

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