The Healing Power of Laughter

Keep on dreaming even if it breaks your heart

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 10:36:00 +0000

“We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It's just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.”

Ben Okri

Heard a great story the other day. A young guy shot 16 under par on the golf course. Some were even calling it “the greatest round ever played” http://golfweek.com/news/2012/may/17/greatest-round-ever-played/

Although I was certainly impressed with this guy’s score, that wasn’t the part of the story that captivated me. When asked about his round, Rhein Gibson, the golfer in question, described how he had a song stuck in his head all day by the Eli Young Band called “Keep on dreaming if it breaks your heart.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-5GnZYxI4M

Great title.

Side note. I’ve always been fascinated by how songs get stuck in our heads. I vividly remember my mother playing the song “Caribbean Blue” by Enya after a friend of hers passed away. She said the song gave her a sense of peace and helped her make sense of her friend’s passing. That memory will always stick with me. I’ve had many such songs in my hit parade that have effectively made up the soundtrack of my own life. Music is wonderful that way. It gives us an anchor to remember things. To reconstruct time and place and memories in a way nothing else really does. Although he was mad as a hatter, I’ve always agreed with Nietzsche’s comment that, “without music life would be a mistake.”

I was however, particularly struck by this golfer’s story, because his dream was so close to my own. In my life I’ve dreamed of travel, and to be a comedian, and to write books, and to be a psychologist. I’ve accomplished all those things. But there was one dream that eluded me. I always wanted to be a professional golfer. I spent hundreds of hours as kid practicing and reading and playing and dreaming. But it never happened for me. Yet somewhere in the back of my mind, the dream is still alive. I’m old and I’m paunchy and I’m busy. But I haven’t given up. Not completely.

In pursuit of this improbable dream. I practice. A lot. I even moved out to the country so I could practice and play a little more. One particular little spot is my sanctuary. It’s a little practice green next to a cornfield off of a quiet country road. I spend hours out there chipping and putting. It gives me a sense of peace. Will I ever really be a pro? Probably not. But something struck me the other day that helped me make a little more sense of all of this.

Second side note. I’ve had a recurring dream for as long as I can remember. It’s of my grandparents old farm in Washington state. In the dream I am young and happy and contented. It’s a nice feeling but I always wake up a little saddened. To me the dream conveys a sense of longing to return to a simpler time in my life without all the worries and responsibilities. I’ve tried to make sense of it many times, but never quite get there. C.S. Lewis called these kind of things “tantalizing glimpses.” I think he was right on the money.

I bring this up because the other day I was in a bad mood. I was feeling sorry for myself, and decided to go out to my little spot and work it out. I spent an hour or two practicing as the sun began to set, and then I turned around and made a stunning realization.

I had walked into my own dream.

Seriously. There it was. A farm and a red barn and a cornfield and a place to quietly do something I’d always dreamed about.

It was kind of amazing really. I sat down and just kind of took it all in. How had I missed it for so long? Was I living my life completely on auto-pilot?

It was all right there…

I sat there for a while longer, and was eventually filled with a sense of gratitude for the moment of recognition. For a while at least, I understood something. Maybe dreams don’t come true exactly as we conjure them up, but they still can come true. Sometimes we may have to tilt the lens a little, shift our perspective a little, but they still might be there..

I hope I can remember this. Even more so, I hope I can help others see how their own dreams may have materialized in ways they may not have completely foreseen. Much like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”, sometimes we have to go out into the world and stumble a little before we realize we have all of the things we need right in our own backyards.

I’m gonna try and remember this..

In a New York Minute

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:11:00 +0000

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Mary Scmich

"Regrets are illuminations come too late."
Joseph Campbell

One day you will get a phone call that will completely change your life.

And you won’t be ready for it.

Maybe this call will be about your own health, or that someone close to you has a fatal illness or been in an accident. In the worst cases that someone has died. I don’t point this out to be morbid, but instead as a reminder that life can truly change at any minute. In these moments we ask ourselves, why did we take everything for granted? Why didn’t we make peace with people we had wronged? Why didn’t we appreciate our youth, our health, our family, until they were gone?

Why am I bringing this up??

It’s silly really. In anticipation of the coming golf season, I was changing my spikes with a large hunting knife, (I’ve never been hunting). A moment later this same large knife was stuck directly in my hand, an inch from a major artery. I stood there for a moment and just pondered the absurdity of the situation. Is this the way it all ends? The Psychologist, in the kitchen, with the hunting knife? It seemed like such a crazy way to go..

Ultimately I was okay, but it really got me thinking. How many times in our daily lives do we flirt with disaster like this? That car that swerves out of the way when we are inches from an accident. The strange dream that leaves us gasping for breath in the middle of the night. It’s a fragile world we live in, and some people don’t in fact get lucky in these situations. As we get older we seem to know more and more people who die in accidents, or far too young from a medical condition. Life as we know it can change at any time really.

In a New York minute…

I’ve sat with far too many people who have been on the wrong end of these phone calls, and in some cases, the news they receive casts a shadow over their lives that they never recover from. In the end, it’s not ghosts or spirits that we are haunted by, but regrets, and as Mr. Campbell says in the opening quote, “regrets are illuminations that come too late.” Death and illness and tragedy teach us that there is no room for pettiness, spite, apathy, and laziness, and, although we all may agree in spirit with this idea, we always seem to forget. Then the inevitable questions begin to repeat in our heads. Why didn’t I tell my brother how much I appreciated him? Why didn’t I tell my mother I loved her? Why didn’t I call and say I’m sorry before it was too late?

If you have a chance to do these things, do them now. From my experience working with people who live with regret, it is clear to me that it is not the dead that haunt the living, but instead the living that haunt the dead.

But their illuminations have come too late..

It took a bumbling and idiotic episode with a hunting knife to remind me of these things, as I too tend to forget. Life can change at any minute. It has inspired me to create an “in-basket” for my life of things I kind of know I “should” do, but never really get around to. This week I’ve reconnected with two old friends. Today I’m going to reach out to someone I’m in a stupid argument with and try to mend that fence. That will be a good start. It’s amazing how much of this unfinished business we accumulate over the course of a lifetime. Still, I want to have my illuminations now rather than later, and if that means working through a little discomfort, then so be it. This whole little life that we’ve built for ourselves is inherently breakable. This I know to be true. Everything can change in an instant.

In a New York minute..

Be Here Now

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:56:00 +0000

“It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.”

George Harrison

You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking how you'll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
― John Green Looking for Alaska

Hung out with some old friends the other day that I hadn’t seen in a long time. We laughed and talked about old times, and even made a point of visiting some places where we used to make our rounds so many years ago. It was a nice trip down memory lane.

But it was a little different..

I think we were all thinking that maybe just getting together would make it like it used to be, but it wasn’t so. We’re older and more responsible (they are) now, and not as young and foolish as we once were. Not that we haven’t gained some wisdom in the meantime. We have. It’s just interesting to me that we have such an interest in recapturing the past. Why is that?

I know for me it is a fleeting feeling that I have been chasing my whole life. I’ve traveled and worked all over and had all kinds of experiences, and I often find myself feeling a kind of intense longing to return to places and people that I once knew. Only it’s more than that. It’s a feeling of wanting to be young again and make discoveries again and take life as it is unfolding without knowing exactly what was going to happen next. But maybe the way I remember it is part of the problem also. Surely I had worries and regrets and bills and problems then as well. As Proust says so well, “Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” I’m sure that’s true. We often remember the good and forget a lot of the bad. Why do we do this?

Phillip Zimbardo explored this idea a great deal in his book The Time Paradox. In this book, he proposes there are six distinct ways we look at time, the first being what he calls a “past negative” which describes people who are anchored to negative experiences from their past. The second is what he calls “past positive.” These people instead remember all of the good things from their pasts, often at the expense of the present moment. The next is the present hedonist This is the type that lives almost exclusively in the now, indulging their every need in the moment without much thought for the future. We also have the present fatalist, who believes they are simply victims of fate and what it will bring, and that they have very little control over what happens in their lives. Then we have the future-oriented person, who believes much more in saving up for a rainy day then indulging in the present moment. And finally we have the transcendental future type, who lives in anticipation of a spiritual future removed from the pressures of this earthly realm.

So which path is the right one? Zimbardo feels that the healthiest perspective combines a positive view of the past with an ability to both enjoy the present while also making decisions that will benefit our future selves. Not an easy task to be sure. Want to know how your view of time compares to this ideal? Take the time inventory and see for yourself. http://www.thetimeparadox.com/zimbardo-time-perspective-inventory/

In thinking about this idea, I realized that maybe my longing to revisit the past was actually more of a philosophy than an actual desire, and it reminded me that there are still plenty of opportunities in the present moment to make lasting memories that will likely be part of some future longing. It’s a complicated idea to understand ourselves in flux, and it’s one that we often get wrong according to Dan Gilbert, who recently wrote about what he calls the “End of History Illusion.” In describing this phenomenon he reports, “Middle-aged people — like me — often look back on our younger selves with some mixture of amusement and chagrin. What we never seem to realize is that our future selves will look back and think the very same thing about us. At every age we think we’re having the last laugh, and at every age we’re wrong.”

This is a fascinating concept to consider as it relates to our understanding of time. We always think we are done changing, even as we are continually evolving into a different person on a daily basis. It’s only by looking back that we understand this though. I look back at myself as a teenager and think, “man I was an idiot back then.” Not realizing that my 60 year old self will probably say the same thing about who I am now. It’s interesting reading and definitely worth checking out. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/science/study-in-science-shows-end-of-history-illusion.html?_r=0

The takeaway for me is to remember that perhaps the most important thing I can do to have both a memorable past and a productive future is to continue to be here now. To not get lazy with exploring new ideas and nurturing my sense of adventure and not falling into the trap of thinking that getting a little older means I’m done exploring the world. Sure I’m not as young and maybe my energy level isn’t what it used to be, but I do have a little more money now, and realize that there’s nothing wrong with staying in a hotel with a little hot water. All of life has tradeoffs. As much as I would like to think of my younger self as a swashbuckling James Bond type back then, pictures tell the story of more of a disheveled Chris Farley.

In truth I was never that good at picking up chicks. Past, present, future, amen..

So, in closing I want to remember to take some time and think about what the day will bring. I can’t revisit the past, and it’s a mistake to look too far towards the future. I know for me at least it’s often about finding ways to create meaning over the course of the day, even while my mind continues to drift both backwards to the past and forward to the future. As Ram Dass says in his book on the subject,

“The question we need to ask is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that's happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization.”

I love that. “Acting in ways that are at least not contributing to further destabilization.” Not the loftiest of goals to be certain, but a reminder that we can at least remember to remain calm, and think about what it is we are doing today. Maybe we will create some meaning in our lives, or meet someone who completely alters our destiny, or make a memory that will be an indelible asset to our future selves in some significant way. We don’t really know. The best we can do is keep our eyes open and stay here. Stay in the now. Be here now.

S.A.D.

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:37:00 +0000

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”

Albert Camus

I have a confession to make.

I hate February.

Not just hate the way some people hate mosquitoes or brussell sprouts or their in-laws, but really vile and intense hatred. Sure it’s only 28 days, and there’s a couple of Mondays off in there, but for me it’s little comfort. Each day is like living time in dog years. I don’t sleep well, I eat carbohydrates like an overweight cat lady, and I’m not that fun to be around.

And I’m not the only one. Therapy offices fill up in February. Christmas is over, bills are here, and the snow is still falling. There’s about 4 hours of sunlight to get things done. People get irritable, cranky, and depressed.

And I am one of them.

All kidding aside, to live in a place like Chicago is to experience some piece of the ebb and flow of nature’s rhythms. I get that. But this year, for the first time, I came to understand that I do in fact suffer from seasonal affective disorder, or “SAD” (nice name!) to those of us who like to use acronyms. It’s not a joke and it’s very real to people who are experiencing it.

A quick definition of this disorder, indicates “Symptoms of SAD may consist of difficulty waking up in the morning, a tendency to oversleep and overeat, cravings for carbohydrates, and weight gain. Other symptoms include a lack of energy, difficulty concentrating on or completing tasks, and withdrawal from friends, family, and social activities and decreased sex drive. All of this can lead to depression, pessimistic feelings of hopelessness, and anhedonia, which characterize a person suffering from this disorder.

That about covers it.

Although people have successfully used light therapy and vitamin D supplements to treat this disorder, I think it’s the “pessimistic feelings of hopelessness” where we also have a lot of control. Winter actually feels like it’s never going to end at certain points, but a part of us also know these feelings are a lie. Spring eventually shows up. First with little moments of sunshine, then, eventually with the first glorious day where the weather breaks for real. It’s a great day in Chicago. The outdoor patios are full of people talking and laughing and drinking, and a LOT of people feel no immediate urge to go to work. FINALLY we have our city back.

Soon enough we are complaining about the heat...

In any case, for myself at least, I am going to take these last couple of weeks of winter and try and work on my attitude. I can’t make the days last any longer and I can’t stop the snow from falling, but I can try and share my experiences with others, and hope we can create a kind of virtual campfire of warmth through sharing our experiences. As with all kinds of depression, we often isolate ourselves when we are feeling like this, and this is a dangerous approach to the problem that almost certainly makes it worse. This is the time to embrace your friends, get out in public, join a group, do whatever it takes to weather the storm. For many it means scheduling an appointment with a doctor to actually treat this depression, and this is something I also encourage. This thing is real. I know it. I’ve lived it.

And now I’m going to go outside and look at the snowmen the children have built, and try and resist the urge to make yellow snow as a sign of protest..

Tomorrow is the last day in February..

It's always something

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 23:00:00 +0000

I always wanted a happy ending... Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.

Gilda Radner

“And that's how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there. . . . And at the end of your life, your whole existence has the same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.”

― Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

Found myself thinking today about one of my favorite comediennes, Gilda Radner. She's the author of the first quote here. Delicious ambiguity. What a great turn of a phrase. How did she come up with it? Turns out it’s a story worth telling. She met the love of her life, Gene Wilder after a lifetime of struggle. It was love at first sight. They fell quickly in love and got married. A year later she was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer.

Life can be cruel sometimes.

She wrote an autobiography during this period of her life. The title has always been embedded in my brain.

It’s always something.

In the end, I’m not sure there’s a better description of life. It’s always something. We spend so much time worrying and fretting and putting out fires, and in the end it’s all an exercise in futility. We never have complete peace in this life. Not really. As one flame is extinguished, another one begins to spark. So it goes.

So what are our choices? Do we accept that life is a never ending series of struggles and surprises, and stoically plug away? Perhaps. But maybe there is another alternative.

Maybe, just maybe, it isn't the end of the world. Perhaps it’s a question of perspective. What if, on a long enough timeline, all of our little worries and problems and conniptions are simply elements of a longer narrative that have yet to completely clarify themselves? I know from monitoring my own absurdity, that time does in fact heal things in the strangest of ways. It doesn’t take years either. Sometimes it can take hours or minutes, and, when we’re really attuned to our own emotional reactions, even seconds.

How do we ever get to this place? Each one of us has stood, humbly in regret, and considered how our emotions have been hijacked in the wrong direction. Perhaps we said something awful that we couldn’t take back, or acted impulsively when we were hurt, or made a decision based on emotions rather than reason. We all do these things. All the time actually. We (I!) throw these minor temper tantrums in our heads all the time. Why do all the traffic lights turn red right when we get to the intersection? Why do the unexpected bills come right when we get a little ahead?

It’s always something.

What can you do but laugh at these things? As Captain Jack Sparrow says so eloquently in Pirates of the Caribbean “The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem.” Amen Captain Jack.

So perhaps the takeaway from Mrs. Radner’s philosophy lies in her advice about “Delicious Ambiguity.” We never really know what direction our day is going to take. There are surprises everywhere, and some of them are good, many of them seem bad, and all of them come regardless of what we think we “deserve” out of life. Attitude is where we have our power, and, although we can’t often predict all of the plot twists, it does in fact allow us to chose if the little movie that is our life is going to be a tragedy or a comedy. The line is thinner than we often think.

And now, I have to wrap this little essay up, and take care of a couple of things. My new white shirt has red wine on it, I’m out of clean underwear, and I’m pretty sure I left the lights on in my car last night. Any of these things would be enough to drive me crazy on most days, but for now I’m going to laugh, dig my way out of the mess I made for myself, and soldier on.

It’s always something.

Learning to accept feedback

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 03:37:00 +0000

Welcoming in 2013 this week, and thinking about New Year’s resolutions. Like most people, I think about things I’d like to change. I’d love to lose some weight, stick to an exercise plan, and in general manage my life a little better. Who wouldn’t, right? These are things most of us struggle with. But they’re not on my list this year. It’s been done to death.

No this year I want to work on something a little more internal. It occurred to me that I am not good at accepting constructive criticism. Or criticism. Or even feedback really. It’s a bad character trait and one that I know holds me back.

Why?

I believe because like most people, my first reaction to any kind of criticism is to defend. Sometimes even defend AND attack. We often take critiques as a blow to who we are as opposed to something we’ve done, and this activates our defenses. The shame in this is we don’t take the time to really listen to what is being communicated and use this information to improve ourselves when this happens.

When looked at from a long enough perspective, all of life involves feedback. When we smile at a pretty girl in a bar and they don’t smile back, that’s feedback. When we tell what we think is a hilarious joke and people nervously chuckle and drop eye contact, that’s also feedback. (Those two are fresh in my mind after New Year’s Eve).. Every laugh, smile, nod, and even raised eyebrow communicates something to people, and we are all constantly in a state of reinforcement and communication with each other. It’s kind of fascinating actually.

A caveat to accepting feedback is that there ARE people out there who seem to exist for the sole purpose of snuffing out the dreams of others. These people don’t create anything themselves, but are quick to constantly belittle the work of others. If you have someone like this in your life, do your best to separate yourself from them. Their attitude says a lot more about them than the things they say about you.

But ultimately, when we do create something, we have to understand that not everyone is going to “get” something in the way we intended. Maybe we didn’t communicate it very well, or glossed over something, or were too obscure in the way we made our artistic choices. When this happens we have an opportunity to listen closely and try and understand where we lost people. This is how we get better.

It rarely seems to happen that way however. We get hurt that people don’t appreciate our efforts, and we use a whole series of defense mechanisms to deal with this hurt. We may attack the messenger because we dislike the message. Or we may rationalize that other people’s opinions don’t matter, or that they are simply mean-spirited, or not creatively minded.

This doesn’t apply only to artistic creations either. Most of us like the kind of feedback that reinforces our view of the world as well as ourselves, but get very defensive when this feedback goes the other way, which it invariably does. But maybe this is when we should start paying attention the most. Carl Jung said “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” Think about that for a moment. I know personally I often get irritated by loud people who try and steal the center of attention. Hmmmmm..

Not hard to figure that one out.

I would guess if we think hard enough we could all think of someone like that, and if we think even harder, we may eventually come to understand some things we’d like to change about ourselves. That’s feedback. And when we really put aside our own pride and defensiveness, there is a whole lot of instruction there as to how we can begin to improve ourselves. We don’t always KNOW how we are being perceived, and often because of this, we can get locked into our own perspective. Perhaps Anais Nin said it best, “We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.” Seems pretty accurate.

So personally I’m going to work on this a little this year and try not to be defensive when others have opinions about something that differ greatly from my own. Although there is often a temporary sting of rejection when we take in criticism, we can use this as a motivation to change things for the better, which is a goal that can benefit almost anyone. I know I could certainly benefit from listening a little more closely. I think we all probably could.

Remembering the good times- RIP to my cousin MIchael

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 01:14:00 +0000

It's funny how when you're a kid, a day can last forever. Now, all these years seem just like a blink-

Hearts in Atlantis

“When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn't the old home you missed but your childhood

Sam Ewing

I woke up today in a very sentimental mood. Something about being home and seeing so many old familiar faces wakes up a kind of nostalgia, which is rare for me because I am more of a “present” oriented person.

I started the day at my grandpa’s old farm, pictured here-

I had so many good times here as a kid, and for years I had a recurring dream about returning. I even featured it in a book I wrote called The Empath. It’s funny seeing it now. What’s left of it anyway. A whole childhood of memories and now it’s just a rundown old barn. I wonder if the current owners ever think about the history of the place. If they knew what a pleasure it was for my brothers and sister and I to play in there and feed the animals, and look out into the almost endless backyard and watch the sunset. Probably not. That was our time, and now it’s their time. Still, every house has a million stories. This one certainly did.

As I was sitting here thinking about these things, I got a text from my mother, telling me my cousin had died. I was shocked. Although he had been sick for a long time, he was a young man. Younger than me even, and it didn’t seem possible. People from my generation aren’t supposed to die. Not yet anyway. I found myself angry at the randomness of it. It just seemed kind of unfair. Eventually my feelings drifted from anger to sadness, and I cried some tears for my cousin Michael. We had a lot of fun growing up when I saw him, and I wanted to try and remember that.

So I found myself driving to my other grandparent’s home, where he and I and my family had spent the most amount of time with him, pictured here.

It seemed so big growing up, and now it just looked like a little house on a little street. I could see a Christmas tree in the window, and guessed that a family probably lived there now. I probably looked pretty strange just sitting there parked in front of their house with tears in my eyes, but I wanted to remember. Remember the good times, and the trouble we used to get into and the many, many Christmases I spent here growing up. I wanted to go back again, to be young, and dumb, and free from my responsibilities and bills and worries. But mostly I wanted to go back so I could see my cousin Michael again.

Eventually I had to start the car and move, as a strange man sitting parked probably looks a little odd to people. They didn’t know. We never really know. We pass by people and nod and smile and wave, but we don’t really know how their day has been. What their pain is, and what it is they might be struggling with.

Mostly I think about how my cousin could possibly be gone. The last time I saw him he was a kid, and now he had three kids of his own. I hoped that they knew that fun guy I used to know as a kid. That they laughed a lot and made a lot of memories and that he taught them some things that they would pass on to children of their own. That’s all life really is in the end. A lot of little days, and moments, and memories, that somehow in the end all adds up to a lifetime.

It goes too fast.

At least it did for my cousin Michael. I do believe there is a kind of our immortality in our shared memories however. We pass these little moments down from generation to generation, and do our best to remember. For me today it was about remembering the good times with my cousin. Rest in peace my friend.

The Little Things

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 15:19:00 +0000

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Marianne Williamson

“You know we just don’t recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they’re happening. Back then I thought, well, there’ll be other days. I didn’t realize that that was the only day.

Field of Dreams

I’ve been thinking lately..

I’ve been thinking a little bit about pride. How it makes us a little snobby, a little guarded, a little slow to say things, and get involved, and reach out and reconnect with people.

I’m convinced this is a mistake.

I’ve been thinking this because I don’t think it’s a good use of our time. My time anyway. I’ve been thinking this because I know, in my heart of hearts, that we don’t have an unlimited amount of time.

I’ve been thinking this because lately I’ve become more attuned to the little things. It took some big things to make me think like this. A visit with my aging mother. A frank look at my own health. A horrific school shooting. It led me to a deeper understanding of my own mortality. And what I concluded was something a little unexpected.

I have a tremendous amount of power. Actually we all do.

I realize this because I got a letter the other day from a person telling me so. I didn’t expect this, and frankly, I didn’t realize I had even affected this person. It reminded me of something I keep forgetting. We have a LOT of power when it comes to influencing the lives of other people. Somewhere, right now, there is somehow longing for an encouraging word, a compliment, an affirmation about how they are living their life. Somewhere there is a person in need.

And you have just what they need.

This is where our power exists. All of those things we would love to hear? We can wait around for them or we can give them away instead. When we give, we get back. That’s how it works. Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but it comes back around.

So personally, I vow to make 2013 the year of the little things. The year I don’t take things for granted. The year I take the time to notice when someone I normally don’t notice is in need, or in pain, or just needs a kind word. I’m not gonna wait for them to ask anymore. I’m gonna try and stay ahead of the curve, and not get complacent or lazy or apathetic.

I realize this because I think the universe has a kind of rhythm to it. Like we have our own personal soundtrack designed just for us if we only take the time to put our ears to the ground and listen.

I had a personal experience with this last night in a most unexpected place. Yesterday I wandered into a little bar. A place I never go, but oddly, felt a little drawn to. I wasn’t even going to go out last night, but all day I had a feeling I just couldn’t shake. I felt devastated by the news of the school shooting in Connecticut, and I felt I needed to be around people. So there I sat. Alone. Sad. Disconnected.

And as I sat there staring at my beer, a most unexpected thing happened. I heard the door rattle, and all of a sudden there were 40 people inside, and they spontaneously burst into song. Christmas Carols. Just a lovely little pick me up that was exactly what I needed to feel a sense of hope for the human race again. 40 people who had given up their Friday night to sing. To make Christmas a little nicer for other people. I was one of those other people. It was one of the nicest things I can ever recall actually.

It was just a little thing..

So I make my vow to pay it forward. To remember that somewhere there is a person in need of some little thing I can do to make their life more bearable. You get what you give. You can sit around waiting or you can be the change you want to see in the world. I hope I can remember this. I need to remember. A little thing can change a path. Alter a life. Right a wrong. Maybe even save a life.

I’m gonna try and remember..

In search of the Binary Sunset

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 18:04:00 +0000

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”

Norman Cousins

“A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you . . . Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question . . . Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use.”

Carlos Castaneda

Growing up with the original Star Wars franchise, I remember being completely enthralled with the worlds that were created for me to watch up on the screen. At one point I made a homemade light saber. My brother had the coveted model Millennium Falcon. Star Wars was a big deal in our house.

One scene I remember in particular was where Luke, anxious for more adventure in his life, steps out at dusk and sees a binary sunset. The scene conveys a sense of longing for something more that was one of the most powerful in movie history.

And watching the scene, I always wondered if I would ever have an adventure, or if I was doomed to spend my life longing for a life different than the one I seemed stuck in at the time. I wanted to grow up, to move away, to be older and take trips and get out of my little town and my little life. Sometimes I would even look up at the sky in search of the binary sunset.

I never did find my sunset, but I did manage to see the world. I realized a lot of my dreams while some others never quite materialized. And now I find myself working as a Psychologist in the city of Chicago, a place I always wanted to go to growing up watching the Cubs play on WGN. It was one of the places I always wondered about on those evenings such a long time ago, and now I’m here. The dream materialized, but I still kind of feel the same. When is SOMETHING going to happen?

What I have come to realize is that nothing ever happens when we don’t take the initiative to make it so. Watch any movie and you are reminded of this. The hero doesn’t get the pot of gold without failing, probably getting his ass kicked a few times, and falling down, and the pretty girl doesn’t just fall into your lap. You have to go get these things.

What separates those who do get these things is that these people demonstrate an unusual ability to persevere, despite the setbacks. These are the Michael Jordans, cut from their High School basketball teams, who go on to become the greatest ever in their sport. The Ray Krocs, who failed over and over again, who ultimately created the most successful restaurant of all time. Ultimately this is the quality that seems to predict much of success. The ability to endure. Too many of us, including myself, have a tendency to give up when things get hard, and our gratification is less than immediate.

But this life is fraught with peril. We focus on what’s wrong with our lives, our families, the world around us, and our lives become one constant complaint about the things that we don’t have. Perhaps George Bernard Shaw said it best, “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

I sometimes catch myself being one of these “feverish selfish little clods of ailments and grievances” and when I do, I usually laugh at my arrogance and try and make an attitude adjustment. I ask myself, what are YOU going to do to change the circumstances in your life? No one else cares that much.

So ultimately, I think I have come to find my own adventure in helping other people try and find their own. Of course I understand that people truly suffer from depression and anxiety and any number of other conditions, and I will continue to treat these things with the seriousness that they deserve. In the end though, I hope we can all come to better catch ourselves in the moments when we are pouting and whining about how the world won’t change itself to make us happy.

It’s just not how it works.

My hope is that at least one person who reads this will contemplate how their own personal adventure may have gotten derailed, and the personal choices they can take responsibility for to begin fixing these detours. It’s not too late. It’s never too late. So if you’re hesitating, enroll in that class you’ve been thinking about, volunteer somewhere, get to the gym, extend a kindness to someone, pick up the phone, get out those old paintbrushes and find a canvas.

It’s your choice..

And may the force be with you..

Listening to the drums

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 16:01:00 +0000

“Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.”

Mitch Albom

I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn't a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time... For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars... And yellow leaves, from the maple trees, that lined our street... Or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper... And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird... And Janie... And Janie... And... Carolyn. I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday.

Lester Burnham- American Beauty

November is a big month for gratitude, especially in the Facebook era. There seems to be a lot of it going around, and frankly, when it’s sincere, I personally believe gratitude is one of the most proactive tools we have. Maybe life can be best understood as one large continuum, with appreciation for all of the little moments and people in our lives on one end of the spectrum, and resentment and cynicism on the other. We can always find things that don’t seem quite fair in our lives, and when we focus our attention there, that’s resentment. On the other hand there are plenty of things in our lives that, if we look closely at, make us incredibly lucky. When we focus our attention there, that’s gratitude.

As a counselor, I temper my own understanding of gratitude with the issue of loss. I’ve sat with people who would do anything for one more day with the people they’ve lost, and yet their time has passed. And when we are confronted with these moments, and rest assured we all will be one day, we start to ask some nagging questions. Why did we waste so much time? Why didn’t we say all of the things we had to say when these people were still living?

One day these questions may keep you up at night..Trust me on this.

What I have learned from this, is that real gratitude is not simply writing things down that we are thankful for, although that’s fine as far as it goes. Take a long look around at the holiday table this year. One of those people may be gone next year. I know it seems morbid to think about, but I think it can also lead to a greater sense of urgency about what it is we are doing here.

I had a chance to practice what I preach a little this Thanksgiving, when my own mother came out to stay in Chicago for the week. As I was preparing for her visit, I got a text from a close friend who had lost her own mother over the previous year. She wrote, “Enjoy every minute with your mom, I'd do anything for another moment with mine.”

Although I am certainly happy to see her, I have a tendency to get a little impatient, and reading my friend’s text slowed me down a little. So this week I took some time to appreciate the little moments. Although I’m not exactly sure how it happens, most years my holiday persona more closely resembles the Grinch than it does Jimmy Stewart, and this year I decided to change that up a little. So we played games, and drank (lots of) wine, and bought gifts, and made 2012 one of the best Thanksgivings I can remember. This shouldn’t be a chore, but I’d gotten a little complacent over the years, and I needed a little reminder that all of this time with my mother is coming to an end. It helped me understand the seriousness of fleeting time, which ended up making this time a lot more fun.

And perhaps most importantly, I remembered to have some respect for the fleeting nature of my own time. Maybe I will be the one who won’t be sitting at the holiday table next year. It’s something I’m going to think about. The Buddhists talk about how we should meditate on the reality of our own deaths each and every day. Again, sounds morbid on the surface, but I think hold a great deal of wisdom regarding taking the time we have remaining a little more seriously. That doesn’t mean LIVING seriously, and in fact to me, it means the exact opposite. For you it may mean something else, but I do think there is value in contemplating the question.

I was reminded of all of this recently while watching the Blue Man Group, whose entire show seems to be about the concept of living your life with a greater sense of urgency. In one particular sequence the Blue men started pounding the drums as they were holding up various signs. The drums got louder and louder until they finally reached a kind of fever pitch that ended with the signs , YOUR LIFE, (loud drums), IS PASSING (even LOUDER drums) YOU BY!!!

And it is! These drums have been pounding in my head ever since I saw the show, and I hope they will continue to play. They remind me to live a little more mindfully, and to spend less time on cynicism and more on gratitude. They remind to not be lazy with my time, cheap with my affection, and complacent with the people in my life.

The drums have been a welcome addition to the soundtrack..

Bullied

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 03:50:00 +0000

“Bullying is killing our kids. Being different is killing our kids and the kids who are bullying are dying inside. We have to save our kids whether they are bullied or they are bullying. They are all in pain.”

Cat Cora

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”

Kahlil Gibran

I must admit, I usually enjoy writing these little essays. I find myself jotting down little notes from time to time, and, over the course of a couple of weeks, they just kind of come together into a collection of (mostly) integrated ideas. It’s a fun process and something I usually look forward to.

Not this time though. No this time I felt compelled to talk about something that has in many ways been a huge issue in my life as a kid, then a teenager, and now as a child psychologist. This issue is bullying.

I've been on all sides of the bullying continuum. As a kid I was teased for my appearance, mocked relentlessly and humiliated. Later, as a teenager, I dished out plenty of the same. I teased just about anyone in my path, and this went on for a while. Maybe this was a way of dealing with my own experiences. One thing I know to be unequivocally true, is that this kind of stuff leaves scars. I've got plenty of my own, and am sure I've created a few myself. As much as I enjoy working with kids, I've often thought that it was my penance in this life to try and guide kids through their own troubled times as a way of making peace with my own past.

An image that will always haunt me came from one of my first experiences as a counselor in my early days as a psychology student. I had an assignment at a school at the end of the summer and it was hot. Not just warm, but summer in Chicago hot. A skinny kid came in wearing a baggy sweatshirt, and I made a sarcastic remark about him being overdressed. He managed a little smile, sat down, and we talked for a while. He talked to me about his parents, his neighborhood, and then finally what it was like to be gay in an Irish-Catholic neighborhood. I was very touched by his story, and told him to please come back again.

As he got up to leave, he took a long look at me, and then slowly rolled up his sleeves. There were knife marks across and all up and down his arms. Not little ones either, but long and ugly scars from years of cutting himself.

“This is why I wear long sleeve shirts in the summer” he said quietly.

It was a statement that I've never forgotten.

I never saw this particular kid again, as my assignment ended shortly afterwards, and he never showed up for his next appointment. I've always wondered what happened to him, and I find myself hoping that he somehow hung on. Still, his scars ran deep, and there were a lot of them.

Unfortunately those weren't the last scars that I've seen, but it was the last time I ever made a sarcastic comment about a kid wearing long sleeves. It reminded me of a lesson that I often forget. Words matter. Sometimes they matter so much that they make vulnerable and scared children run knives across their arms, sometimes fatally. It’s all a little terrifying actually. You want to tell these kids that this stuff is not going to last forever. That one day they will be out of High School and free from small minds and mean people.

But you really can’t promise that.

What you can do is listen and try and understand. You can give them a place where they can talk about the isolation and the confusion and the humiliation. And some of them will survive and become the “massive characters” that Kahlil Gibran discusses in the above quotation. Many of the world’s great success stories start in this very manner. But some of them wont. Some of them will spend the rest of their lives thinking that they aren't welcome in a world that has been so hard on them.

What we can also do is advocate for those who have yet to realize the power of their own voices. Personally I've come to see this as my duty and responsibility. Bullying has become one of the most serious epidemics of our generation, and it’s killing our kids, both literally and figuratively. If you are in a position to influence a child in your life, please take the time to talk to them about this.

A life may depend on it.

Navigating your emotions

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 15:19:00 +0000

“If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart.”

Pema Chödrön

Ever have one of those moments when your emotions get away from you? If you’re like me it probably happens at least once a day. I’m a psychologist. I should know better, but I promise you it happens to the best of us. I've nearly lost my mind in Chicago traffic when I’m running a little late for work. Sometimes even on the way to teach an anger management class. Ahh the hypocrisy.

One of the better books I’ve ever read on the subject of managing emotions is called ‘Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman, who calls it “emotional highjacking” when feelings such as anger take over the brain of an otherwise (reasonably) rationale person. The emotion in this case overrides the thinking, reasoning part of the brain, and, for a short while, the emotion takes over instead. Ever wonder how a normally calm person can sometimes turn in to a completely different person when they are triggered in a certain way? Or wondered why people just seem to “snap” in certain stressful situations? Emotional highjacking explains a lot of this.

All of this has to do with the way our brains respond to fear. When we experience fear, our fight or flight response summons us to the present moment and makes sure we are paying attention. It’s the brain’s way of saying, “This is real, this is actually happening, and you have to address this NOW.” All of this happens in a matter of seconds. The problem is that our brains can play tricks on us sometimes. Often times we go on high alert when a thoughtful moment of reflection would have sufficed instead. I see this all the time while doing marriage counseling. A comment is made that sets off a person’s alarm system, a threat is perceived, and a person goes on the attack. Their partner attacks back, and within seconds everyone is at defcon five.

All of this can start with a comment as seemingly innocent as “does this dress make me look fat?”

One explanation for this is that these kinds of threats can be a blow to our entire sense of self. If a marriage is a huge part of someone’s identity, and a comment is perceived in a way that is threatening to the marriage, it also can pull the rug out on a person’s entire sense of self, which can lead to confusion, fear, and often even rage.

All of this is interesting to consider in relation to the “iceberg” theory of personality. What we see above the surface of the water may be substantial, but still, 75% of the iceberg is beneath the water. An example used in Goleman’s book was two kids in the backseat of a car driving along with their parents in the front. The Beatles song “Help” is playing on the radio. All of a sudden there is a fight in the front seat, and dad reaches over and smacks mom. The kids are terrified in the back seat, and duck their heads and hope that the fight stops as soon as possible.

Bur that’s not the end of the story.

These kids grow up, get older, but still, every time they hear the song “Help” they are overwhelmed by a scared and uneasy feeling. All of this happens just out of their immediate awareness, but the feeling comes over them and their well-being is at least temporarily disrupted. This is how emotional triggers can work, and by the time we reach adulthood, we may have accumulated thousands of them.

This is an important concept to understand, because it also provides an explanation as to why we often tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. Freud called this the “repetition compulsion” after observing people doing something a second time, even after it caused them pain the first time. His best guess was that we continue to put ourselves in situations like this again because we want a different outcome this time around.

It rarely ever happens that way.

Ever wonder why a person who just got out of an abusive relationship tends to pick a guy just like that again and again? Why a man with a nagging and impossible to please mother would marry a woman with almost exactly the same personality? Or perhaps a woman with a cold and distant father keeps choosing men that can’t meet her emotional needs?

The repetition compulsion explains a lot of this, as our emotional wiring keeps steering us in a direction that leads to more pain. It’s somewhat like a pilot with a bad navigational system, who is trying desperately to get to Florida, but keeps winding up in New York instead. Until we can better understand our emotional tendencies and reactions, we repeat mistakes over and over, without always understanding why. And truthfully this can go on for a lifetime.

So how DO we break this cycle and begin to better understand our own navigational system? The answer I believe lies in training ourselves to focus our attention specifically to the present moment. To understand when we are susceptible to these emotional “hijacks” and to bring ourselves back to the present moment, which is the only thing we have any real control over. As Victor Frankl puts it in his wonderful book Man’s Search for Meaning, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

In pursuit of helping others find more of these moments in their lives, I would like to recommend a couple of things. First, acquaint yourself with the idea of mindfulness meditation, and perhaps start with the book Full Catastrophe Living by John Kabat-Zinn which may be the best book written on the subject. Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence is also a fantastic read, and one that personally helped me a great deal. Sometimes now, (not all the time) when someone cuts me off in traffic, I remember what is happening, take a deep breath, and laugh at my own reaction. I’m still a work in progress. All of us are. But as long as we are drawing breath, we can get better at making choices that empower us to be personally responsible for our lives.

That’s the best we can do..

3 A.M.

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:01:00 +0000

It's 3 A.M. I must be lonely

When she says baby
Well I can't help but be scared of it all sometimes

Matchbox 20

In my age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I realize that from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race--never quite sane in the night.
- Mark Twain

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense-

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For as long as I can remember, I have woken up in the middle of the night. Sometimes I will go a few weeks sleeping soundly through the night, but always, at some point, my 3 A.M. wake-up call returns. Being up at this hour evokes all kinds of things in a person, including fear, loneliness, solitude, and occasionally even serenity and a sense of hope.

Although it has often felt like I was alone in the world at 3 A.M., I know I’m not the only one. I've talked to dozens of people in counseling who have reported their own experiences at this hour, and their stories always make me think about what it is about 3 A.M. that seems to stir people.

There is some research that suggests that we were never really meant to sleep in 8-hour blocks. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2105490/The-myth-hour-sleep-How-scientists-increasingly-agree-rest-better-you.html Apparently it was perfectly common for our ancestors to wake during the night, be up for an hour or two, and then go back to bed. So, some of what we think of as “insomnia” may actually be a part of our inherited adaptation to sleep.

At one point, I thought insomnia was about existential crisis. Those moments all of us have from time to time where we think about what it is we are doing here. Who am I? Where am I’m going? These are the kinds of things that come into your head at 3 in the morning. Life can feel a little rudderless when you’re awake with your own thoughts at that hour, and those questions can be a little harder to answer when no one else is around.

I also think 3 AM. has a lot to do with anxiety, which is a future-oriented fear about business that is yet to be transacted. We worry about money and our jobs and our health, and just about anything else that has been rattling around in our heads throughout the day. These things bubble to the surface at 3 A.M., sometimes even interrupting our sleep. It can feel like a cruel trick at times, as we are not in any kind of position to solve these problems at that hour. So we worry. And think. And run the same tape deck of thoughts over and over. Sometimes we even count the occasional sheep in between the ruminations. Who among us hasn't made some kind of “sleep bargain?” “If I fall asleep now, I’ll still get 5 hours."

That never works..

An Indian man who specialized in meditation once told me that “the body takes sleep as it needs it.” It was little comfort at the time, but in retrospect I think he had a point. Although I've certainly experienced grogginess, fatigue, and poor concentration after a night of interrupted sleep, I have found that eventually the body always succumbs when it’s had enough.. In the past I've slept for what seemed like days after hitting one of these walls.

The real question seems to be, what can we do to quiet our minds down at 3 A.M. and what steps do we need to take to “finish each day and be done with it” as Mr. Emerson recommends? I believe the antidote to restless sleep lies somewhere in answering this question.

In the meantime there are several techniques we can use that can help us power down our minds in these situations. One of my personal favorites comes from Andrew Weil, who quite literally wrote the book on breathing. The second exercise here, http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART00521/three-breathing-exercises.html the “4, 7, 8” technique is the best one I know to elicit the relaxation response that helps people sleep. A commitment to doing this exercise a couple of times a day will do wonders for your ability to feel more relaxed. I guarantee it.

I would also recommend a couple of thought-stopping techniques. One of these involves imagining your thoughts as being part of a river and letting them flow away as they come into your mind. Another bit of imagery that helped me was to imagine my thoughts as pop-up adds that come up when you’re on your computer. Just because they come into your awareness, you don’t have to click on every one. It’s okay to simply let them go.

These are techniques that are useful as short-term interventions, but still, I think the question of insomnia also has a philosophical component. How do we finish each day and be done with it? Some of this involves a bit of self-forgiveness. Sure we did and said some things we may have regretted, but so has everyone else. Often we extend all kinds of understanding and forgiveness to our friends when they stumble a little, but we are unwilling to extend the same courtesy to ourselves. What’s done is done. You can take responsibility for changing it, accept it, or let it go. Those are your healthy options. Ruminating on things is a waste of precious time and energy.

We can also wake up each morning and do the things we say we are going to do. Write them down, make a list on your Ipad, tie a string around your finger if you have to, but do everything in your power to accomplish a few things that make you feel like you are moving towards the person you want to be. It has been my experience that unfinished business is a big piece of what keeps us awake at night, and reaching small goals throughout the day is a wonderful antidote. Research bears this out.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am writing this article at 3 A.M. Often when I have an idea rattling around in my head, it stays there until I do something about it. Not all thoughts should be ignored, and sometimes the ones that come back are trying to tell us something. In my case I woke up and started typing. Perhaps I will learn something from a fellow 3 A.M. person, and maybe I’ll even help someone get a little sleep. In any case,

It’s done..

In search of the Golden Valley

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 21:48:00 +0000

From the movie Shadowlands

Joy: Is it someplace real?

CS Lewis- I think so. It's called the Golden Valley, I believe.. Somewhere in Herefordshire. –

Joy: Somewhere special?

C.S. Lewis- In a way. It was on our nursery wall when I was a child. I didn't know it was a real place then. I thought it was a view of heaven. Or, the promised land. I used to think that one day I'd come around a bend in the road...or over the brow of a hill, and there it would be.

C.S Lewis-Shadowlands

“Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.

Thích Nhất Hạnh

I’ve always been fascinated by C.S Lewis. At different incarnations in his life he was an atheist, a philosopher, an intellectual, a born-again Christian, and a children’s book author. I love the idea that one man could be so full of constant contradiction and evolution. It’s something I can definitely relate to.

The above scene from the movie Shadowlands about his life always stuck with me. I’ve had a few “sacred” places in my life like his beloved Golden Valley. The top of a mountain in Ireland, the bottom of the Grand Canyon, alone on a lonely and solemn September night, and a lovely valley in the Orosi region of Costa Rica, pictured here.

Today was the first time I’ve ever returned to a sacred place in my life, and it was something I’ve always wondered about. Would the place have the same meaning to me if I was to one day return, or was there something specific about the way I was feeling back then? Would it still have its magic if I returned?

So I sought to answer that question today, and walking through the hills in the Orori Valley, I had the oddest feeling of simultaneously being in two places at the same time, as the memories and my current incarnation began to intertwine. One burgeoning area in my field is called “Ecological” psychology, which explores the effects certain kinds of places have on our lives. It’s a fascinating idea that these places can act so powerfully on our mental state, and, having experienced it on such a personal level, I wanted to explore the mystery a little deeper.

So I ventured into the mountains of Costa Rica in search of this feeling, wondering as I did if these are the kinds of things we can force, or if we just need to let them happen organically. I took in the beauty of the rolling green hills, and as I walked a feeling of calm and serenity came over me as I became totally invested in the moment. In this time, in this place, all of the regrets of the past and the worries about the future dissipated, as I simply appreciated how fortunate I was to be in this beautiful place.

As I continued to walk, I stumbled across a little village up in the mountains and decided I would forgo my experiment for the moment and take a little rest. The first thing I noticed was how small and run down the homes were, and for a moment I felt a little saddened. I took a seat in the town square and watched families and friends gather together to talk and laugh. I watched four generations of families kick a soccer ball around in a little field. I sat and just took in their lives, and eventually I came to understand something that was different than what it was I came for.
.

Costa Rica was recently named as the happiest country on earth in a survey called the "Happy Planet Index." This index takes into account a variety of factors such as longevity, health care, pollution, etc. As I sat on my little bench watching these people in this little town, I began to get a sense of why this place earned the ranking that it did.

What I observed was that on this summer Sunday afternoon, everyone was totally in the moment, enjoying their friends and their families, and simply taking a little time to be completely in the here and now. It’s a quality that is very elusive in the hustle and bustle of American life. Everyone seems to be somewhere else. If you don’t believe me, watch a group of people out at a bar or a restaurant the next time you’re out and about. Half the people will probably have a phone in their hand, texting or calling someone else as opposed to being in the moment with the people they are supposed to be out with. It’s a troubling trend in American life that I myself am also completely guilty of.

So as I watched these people I realized that, although I had gone off in search of some kind of transcendent experience in nature, I had found a different kind of life lesson about staying in the moment. Sometimes it seems like life is always about getting more. Get the newest phone, move to a bigger house, get the newest gadget and by all means stay on it at all times to justify the purchase. It’s an exercise that I believe leads to a great deal of anxiety.

But not here. Here in this little valley my gadgets didn’t work, I had nobody to text, and I just had the pleasure of watching people enjoy their lives as they existed. Although their houses weren’t large and their clothes weren’t new, and none of them had the newest ipad, they were happy, and it made me happy to sit and watch for a while.

Eventually I returned to my little hotel and looked at the pile of gadgets I had sitting there, and wondered if I shouldn’t just leave them all behind. They were the tools I used in my life back home, but for a moment they seemed like heavy baggage that perhaps I didn’t need as much as I thought I did. I am a Psychologist, and my job is to be with people in the present moment as I bear witness to the various struggles in their lives.

I don’t need four different Apple products to do this..

Eventually I went home with everything that I came with, but also with a new approach to living in the moment that I had always understood on an intellectual level, but no so much on an emotional one. I wanted to find and bottle what those people in that little mountain village had, but knew that all of this started by taming the distractions in my own mind.

And in the end, I think I also helped answer my own question about why certain places in nature are so sacred to us. Although the places themselves certainly have a kind of power, ultimately I believe it is the state of mind we are in when we observe them that helps contribute so much to their influence over us. As John Milton said hundreds of years ago, “The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven.” I vowed to keep that in mind as I touched down on US soil again.

For now, I am grateful for the time I have been given today.

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone..

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 22:20:00 +0000

Such a long long time to be gone

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 14:23:00 +0000

Such a long long time to be gone
and a short time to be there
Grateful Dead- Box of Rain

All the people we used to know
They're an illusion to me now
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenter's wives
Don't know how it all got started
I don't what they're doing with their lives

Bob Dylan- Tangled up in blue

How do we reconcile the past with the present,
when we don’t feel comfortable in either one?

October Road

Every summer I get this odd kind of feeling. There’s something so fleeting about it, and sometimes in the middle of a summer day, I start thinking about all the places I’ve been. Sometimes I even sit and time travel for a moment as I watch the sun go down. I think about being 18 and sitting by the river in my hometown, wondering if I was ever going to get a chance to leave. I think about being on top of a mountain in Yellowstone Park, or drinking beer in a crazy Montana bar, and I go back for a short while to those places.

And then the moment passes. I take measure of where I am, and wonder what happened to all of the people I used to know and have such good times with. You get so close to people and make such amazing friendships, and then one day you look up again and find yourself in a completely different incarnation. Seasons change and people come and go, and we are often left wondering what happened.

Modern technology has helped a little bit. We can use Facebook or something similar to catch up with people or to take a glimpse of the lives they are living now, but sometimes this doesn’t really scratch the itch. Many memories get frozen in amber, and we have a hard time reconciling how the people we used to know don’t seem to be the same anymore. We want them to stay the way WE remembered them, and when the way they are now conflicts with the way we see them, a strange loop of perception can occur, where we are left wondering if maybe all of our experiences were just some kind of a dream.

In thinking about this issue, I thought about an exercise I sometimes give people in counseling, where they are instructed to write their own obituaries. Although it sounds a little morbid, it sometimes helps people clarify what it is they want to accomplish during their short stays here on planet earth. How would you like to be remembered, and what would you want people to say about you? “Bob spent his later years mostly eating Doritos and playing Xbox 360, he died in his beloved sweatpants he had worn for 27 straight days.” Probably not. Probably you would want the people you had shared significant experiences with to remember you and say something about the good times you had together.

Which makes me wonder why we don’t just go ahead and do these things while we are still drawing breath. Stephen Levine posed the question, “If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?” Why DO we wait to do these things, and where does this apprehension come from? I think we get trapped in our comfort zones at times, and settle into a kind of complacency where we just kind of survive on auto-pilot rather than think too much about it.

I recently read an article called “The top five regrets of the dying” which was written by a nurse who had spent a lot of time with people at the end of their lives. Two of the five items involved courage, which I think informs so much of our happiness, but it was another item that really caught my eye. The item was “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.” In explaining this item, she writes, “"Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."

Powerful stuff, which I think speaks to the point I’m trying to make about stepping out of our comfort zones and picking up the phone. I know for me personally I have vowed to do a little more than examine the pangs of nostalgia I feel and take a little more action. So what are YOU waiting for? Pick up the phone and call an old friend you haven’t talked to in a while. Make peace with someone you are having a silly and stupid argument with. Make plans to visit a place that has special memories for you. Pick up that guitar that is gathering dust in the closet and give it another shot.

Such a long long time to be gone, and a short time to be here..

Bang the Drum Slowly

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 15:01:00 +0000

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

~Victor Frankl

But I tried didn’t I? At least I did that.

~Randall P. McMurphy- One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The Pacific Northwestern salmon beats itself bloody on its quest to travel hundreds of miles upstream against the current, with a single purpose, sex of course, but also... life

~Drew Baylor ~Elizabethtown

When I was a young man in my early teens, I became interested in a movie called “Bang the Drum Slowly.” It was a baseball movie, where Robert DeNiro plays a young catcher dying of a terminal illness, who has one last season in the majors before his illness takes him. Something about the movie and this phrase captured my imagination, and sometimes during particular moments that I thought life was moving too fast, I would repeat this phrase to myself. Bang the Drum Slowly. Slow down a little life, and let me enjoy the moment. I’ll get older soon enough.

And sure enough I did. I had all kinds of dreams as a kid that didn’t exactly materialize, but some other ones came to fruition instead. So here I sit, a psychologist, not quite old, but not exactly a young man either, trying my best to help other people realize their own dreams, or at least make the kind of changes in their lives to find some kind of happiness.

I was reminded of all of this, because this week one of my patients passed away when her heart simply didn’t work anymore. It was my first death since I’ve been a psychologist, and it hit me pretty hard. This is a letter I got from her a couple of months before she died.

I share this on these pages, because in many ways I was incredibly proud of this woman, and her willingness to make changes in her life, even as it was coming to an end. She could have simply thrown in the towel and kept on doing what she was doing, but instead she chose to try and change a few things in her life and take responsibility for her own happiness. It’s something so few of us are truly willing to do, although if you ask people they will usually tell you otherwise. What we really often want is someone else to change. In reality however, the only way we change the temperature of our own happiness in any kind of lasting way, is to make some internal changes in ourselves. The people and places can and do change, but in the confines of our inner worlds, the song remains the same. Confronting and changing these inner workings is difficult work, and in this case, a very brave woman was able to do this. Right at the end of her life, sure, but still, much like McMurphy in Cuckoos’s Nest, she tried goddamnit. At least she did that.

The saddest part of the story was that she had so little time left after she decided to make these changes in her life, and I couldn’t help but wonder why the drum couldn’t have beat a little more slowly for her. So much of life seems to work like this. We thrash and we struggle and we flail, and in the end we find we held the keys to our own prisons the whole time. This woman found this out at the end of her life, and, although I wished for her to have more time to enjoy herself, maybe I missed the whole point. Maybe the happiness she found at the end of her life was the culmination of a lot of suffering that eventually crystallized into wisdom. Although it would be nice to think we can have one without the other, I’m not completely sure that’s how it works. In any case, she found her peace at the end, and, in dying, left me with my own new lessons to contemplate. Am I taking responsibility for my own happiness, or have I grown complacent and cynical? Am I actually walking the walk, or am I just saying the words? These are questions we should ask ourselves again and again, and personally I’m starting today. Thank you for this one last lesson my friend.

Memories and Gratitude

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Mon, 28 May 2012 14:52:00 +0000

“Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.”
― Paul Bowles

Memorial Day weekend has always been a favorite of mine. Having slugged though another long Chicago winter, it marks the beginning of summer and all of the good times that come along with that. After 3 days of basking in this summer fun, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the holiday has a more serious purpose and more important meaning.

For many, the day is a reminder to step back and acknowledge all of the service people who gave their lives fighting for their country. It reminds us that a price was paid for us to live the way we do, and that this price involved a lot of other people actually losing their lives in pursuit of this freedom. Courageous people paved the way for us, and the lives of convenience we enjoy today involved a lot of sacrifice. It’s an important idea to remember, and perhaps this idea can also serve to rekindle our sense of gratitude in an age where many of us have grown a tad entitled to the lives we live today.

Beyond the military aspect of the holiday, I think this day also offers a wonderful chance to think about where we came from. Although they may not have been the kinds of choices that cost them their lives, our own mothers and fathers made tremendous sacrifices to give us a better life, and as children we rarely stop to acknowledge this. As the quote above attests to, it is only later in life, “when the skin sags and the heart weakens” that we begin to fully realize how our own lives are also part of a much larger story. Many of our grandparents and great-grandparents came to this country from somewhere else, and faced down tremendous fears to start a new legacy for their families, and we are the ones currently reaping the benefits of their acts of courage so many years ago. To me it’s a powerful thought, and one that makes me a lot less inclined to complain about the wide array of “first world problems” that seem to seep into my life on a daily basis. My biggest problem is losing my remote control, but somewhere in history it was a matter of literally finding food, clothing, and shelter. Kind of puts things in perspective.

In my own life I think about my own mother working multiple jobs so her kids could one day have a life better than her own, and I am grateful. I didn’t say it a single time growing up, but now, as a doctor who has all kinds of options in my life, I realize someone else paid a price for me. It’s humbling and I am grateful. I suspect we can all think about a similar choice our parents made at one point, and I hope in these moments we can continue to choose gratitude. Parenting is like being a participant in a relay race, where you take the baton as far as you can go, based on the best information you have at the time. You hope your kids will run faster and run further, and one day their kids will run even further than that. Like I say, we’re part of a larger story.

All of these thoughts come to mind today, because I do believe we have entered an age of entitlement, and sometimes it makes me a little sad. I know I am personally almost constantly taking things for granted, and in these moments, I try and think about where I came from and where I’m going, and what the original authors of my story would think about my whining and complaining. In these moments I often end up laughing at my own sense of self-importance, and remind myself to keep on moving the baton. Remember the sacrifices and be grateful. A simple mantra, but one I think we all could stand to repeat once in a while.

Somehow we forgot to dance

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:28:00 +0000

Somehow we forgot to Dance

Our lives are better left to chance

I could have missed the pain

But I'd have had to miss the dance

Tony Arata

If you watch youtube videos long enough, eventually you find a gem. This is one of those videos. Music and life. It’s a great metaphor really. All of are involved in some kind of Opera. Some are comedies, some are tragedies, and most are somewhere in between. By the time the fat lady finally sings, most of us have seen plenty of both.

I particularly like what he says at the end. It was a musical and we forgot to dance. I think that is true of so many of us. We somehow get trapped between jumping through hoops and living up to other’s expectations of us, and all of a sudden the record is over. Oliver Wendell Holmes said it like this, “Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.”

Why is that? Are we all conditioned to continually try and unlock the next accomplishment? Having seen a number of teenagers in counseling over the years, I’ve certainly had a front row seat in witnessing this dynamic. Get on the honor roll, study for the SAT, get into college, and on and on. Smell the roses later, but for right now finish your essays..

The problem with this idea, is that much like Mr. Watts points out, it doesn’t end with college. Most of us will spend the rest of our lives chasing the next milestone we feel we are “supposed” to accomplish. A lot of this is about what our family and friends think about us. There’s a whole lot of research about this actually. It’s called “Social comparison theory” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_comparison_theory, and it explains a lot about how we compare ourselves to other people as a basis for our own happiness. When we have what someone above us has, then we can finally be happy. Meanwhile we continue to spin on the hamster wheel, in constant pursuit of targets that never seem to stay still.

In reflecting on this idea, consider the words of Fr. Alfred D'Souza, “For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.” These words ring pretty true to me. As we stress about the future and lament the things from our pasts, our time in the present is melting away like one of Salvador Dali’s clocks. Many of us learn this lesson too late.

So how do we extract ourselves from this trap and learn to dance to the music? It’s really kind of a tough question. Regardless of the things we tell ourselves, none of us live in a bubble, and for better or for worse, our lives are intertwined in the same big ball of tangled knots with everyone else. Although we often admire the outlaws and the icons, we are much more comfortable when we are all playing by the same rules. It gives us a sense of order.

In my own life, I’ve come to find that to remember it is a dance, I need to remind myself to laugh. All the time. To laugh even when I really don’t feel like laughing.. To me a sense of humor is indicative of a constant choice to reframe perspective. To keep the music playing regardless of our personal little dramas that constantly threaten to scratch the record. Perspective is a difficult thing, and in my experience something that takes sustained vigilance to achieve. Our minds like to slip back into the tragedies. This is a choice, and one that we can change anytime we gather the strength to accept personal responsibility for our own happiness. Ultimately all we have is our perspective, and by accessing our humor I truly believe we can learn to dance.

Kids, Dreams, and Encouragement

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 02:04:00 +0000

I said, that's life
And as funny as it may seem,
some people get their kicks, stompin' on a dream.
David Lee Roth – That’s Life

“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”
Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Children crave encouragement like plants crave water.
Rudolph Dreikurs

Because I spend a lot of time working with kids, I’ve picked up on a few things. Over the years, my video game skills have gotten pretty adequate. I can name a few rappers beyond MC Hammer, and I can intelligently discuss the merits of the various Spongebob characters if I was truly pressed. Does any of this actually make me cool? Probably not. Still, I think it’s important to try and meet kids where their worlds exist right now. Getting them to adapt to us is an exercise in futility.

Beyond toys or movies or games, I have also come to understand that what kids really want, is for someone to be truly interested in their lives. Kids really do crave encouragement like plants crave water, although we as parents, teachers, and counselors may sometimes miss this. All of us that have interacted with kids at any level have at one time or another felt uncool, it’s just the nature of the beast. Sometime this stings a little, as our pride always takes a little hit when we realize that the same kids that used to look up to us, now see us as a little less than hip. We’re supposed to be the bigger person in these scenarios. It doesn’t always work like this..

Despite these occasional hits to our own pride, I truly believe that we can never forget that kids need our encouragement more than anything, regardless of how tough or disinterested they may sometimes appear. I’ve spent plenty of time working with the future version of these kids. There really is nothing sadder than someone who fails to realize their potential because they never got the encouragement that they needed, but in some way, this is a part of all of our stories. It’s been my experience that sometimes four little words such as “I’m proud of you” can make all of the difference in the world to a person who needs to hear it. This doesn’t end in childhood either.

Perhaps even more startling, is that there are plenty of people in this world, who not only fail to give this encouragement, but actively seek to snuff out the light in other people. The song says it well, “As funny as it may seem, some people get their kicks, stomping on a dream.” Perhaps this is what happens to a number of people who failed to receive encouragement in their own lives. Hurt lingers, resentment builds, and they work to pull others down in the same way that they were. It’s a sad cycle that takes active and mindful excavation of our own pasts to consistently stand up against.

So for all of us who interact with children, as counselors, teachers, and especially parents, we have to realize that we are in fact leaving imprints on these little people that we interact with, and learn to put aside our own disappointments and remember what it is these children need from us. And perhaps, beyond the children, it’s not too late for the grown-ups in our lives to also rekindle their own dreams with a little bit of much needed encouragement. Many of us are still these same kids now in larger sizes. But we still have our dreams. Every single one of us. And without the idea of these dreams, an important part of us begins to die. So take the time to tell a kid you’re proud of them. They want to hear it very badly, and these little words can shape a child’s future in ways far beyond our comprehension.

Scar Tissue

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 04:25:00 +0000

I don't want to die without a few scars.

Chuck Palahniuk

Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.

Henry Rollins

Had a truly enlightening conversation with a man last night who had just lost a friend of his in a motorcycle accident. He told me about how his friend had been an alcoholic for most of his life, but had been clean for five years when he died. He was killed by a drunk driver, a fact that left this man both angry and confused about God and fate and the futility of making plans, when the world seemed to him to be a series of unpredictable accidents. He was difficult to console, and while talking to him, it occurred to me that a scar was being formed that would take a long time to heal. Even as a (very off-duty) therapist, I doubted that there was much I could say to him that would help this scar heal any faster. These things take time.

And I’ve got plenty of my own scars as well. Memories come back sometimes that remind me of painful experiences, and in these moments, I think about what these things have meant to my own story. Sometimes these memories are powerful, and I wonder if I would be better off if they could be completely eradicated from my mind. The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. They are actually quite close to developing a pill for this now. Seriously..

Ultimately however, I think I’ll take a pass on this pill, even if they do finally get it right. I’ve come to understand that these experiences have shaped me in ways, both good and bad, that inform my decisions in all kinds of powerful ways, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has this to say on the subject, “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

I think there is a tremendous amount of wisdom in these words. Although I don’t claim to be one of these “beautiful people” I do know that I became a therapist for several of the reasons that she mentions. When you’ve overcome pain in your own life, you feel a kind of calling to at least try to help others who are in some of the same emotional places. This is often exceedingly difficult, as human change is much more complex than simply sharing a story with someone. It takes patience, resilience, and most of all, simply time, and many kinds of pain can be especially resistant to change. We can become quite comfortable with the devils that we know, and yes I know this from a great deal of personal experience.

When change does happen, it occurs to me that it is akin to scar tissue that is hardening, and pain is slowly being transformed into something stronger, and in these moments a kind of wisdom is also being created. Perspective develops that allows us to see our painful experiences as part of a larger and more complex storyline. This is how we grow.

So in my own life I know that I will continue to share my own past experiences with others, while also thinking about the baggage I haven’t quite made peace with just yet. It reminds me to be patient with others, and perhaps more importantly, be patient with myself. To fully engage with this life in love and fate and moving in the direction of our dreams, is to make ourselves vulnerable to pain again and again and again. Sometimes we’re gonna get hurt. There’s just no way around it. But as we get older and wiser, we perhaps come to see that Mr. Rollins is right in the quote at the beginning of this essay, Scar tissue IS stronger than regular tissue, and we need to realize that we have survived these kinds of things before, and we will again. Any kind of life worth living is going to have some pain in it. It’s what we do after that matters.

With this in mind, I attended a wake today as a guest of the man at the beginning of the story. Not as a therapist, or really even a friend, but rather as someone who has lost some friends, felt that pain, and lived to tell the tale. I thought I was there to help him, but in the end, listening to the speeches, music, and stories, I learned at least as much as I taught.

Inspiration comes in all kinds of places..

Bill Murray, Endless Loops, & The Groundhog.

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:01:00 +0000

Groundhog Day. Such an odd and silly little holiday when you think about it, and one that is now synonymous with the movie starring Bill Murray, where he gets stuck repeating one endless day. When the movie came out it was considered a modest hit, but over the years something changed, and people started to look at it as perhaps a kind of masterpiece. Buddhists celebrate the film as a metaphor for many of their teachings. Prominent Catholics commented on the movie as being representative of the concept of purgatory. Beyond the commentary from these lofty places, nearly every one you speak to can relate to this movie in one way or another.

Why is that? Perhaps because at its core, the movie gives us a glimpse of someone who is truly and completely stuck, which, from my experiences as a therapist, I would guess is almost a universal feeling. Who among us hasn’t felt like we were repeating some version of the same day over and over again? A funny example of this comes in the movie “Kingpin” where Woody Harrelson’s character asks an old man drinking wine, “How is life?”

“Taking Forever” is his response.

An odd footnote to this movie is that former best buddies and collaborators Bill Murray and Harold Ramis had a parting of the ways after the movie was done filming. Murray thought the movie should have been more philosophical in nature, and Ramis thought it should be a comedy. It might seem like a small thing for two such brilliant friends to be fighting about. It wasn’t to them. They didn’t speak again for twelve years.

To me their argument speaks to the very premise of feeling stuck in this life, right to its very core. Fr. Alfred D’Souza weighs in on the side of life as the philosophical tragedy, saying, “For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin, real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."

A powerful argument to be sure. Life often feels like never-ending unfinished business, where new fires begin to burn even as the old ones begin to smolder out. Perhaps Father Alfred was right. John Lennon seemed to think so as well, reminding us that “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

On the other hand..

Maybe this is really just a comedy after all. It is kind of silly to think that our own self-importance means a whole lot considering how short our little stay here is. Most of us believe this in at least some way. About other people. Our own problems we don’t find so funny. Mel Brooks said it pretty eloquently, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”

So what does all of this have to do with Groundhog Day? Perhaps the answer lies in how Murray finally breaks free from the endless loop, as it slowly dawns on him that he is never going to escape. He surrenders to his fate, while also oddly becoming a wonderful source of inspiration to his fellow captives. By directing his energy away from himself and more towards others, he begins to feel a kind of emotional freedom, despite the fact that he feels like he will be stuck forever in the same day. Why would he do this? If there is no accountability, shouldn’t we just make ourselves happy and take whatever it is we want from life? People seem to voice this opinion often, and Murray in the movie also first takes this approach. It doesn’t seem to work for him. Or for most lottery winners. They’re usually broke again in a few years.

So maybe it is really as simple as the movie makes it seem. If we all have felt stuck in our lives, and we’re all here together, then it stands to reason that we could at least help each other carry the weight of these feelings. Self-absorption as a response to feeling stuck often feels like the right way to go, when in fact it’s like spinning our tires deeper into the quicksand. When we chose to give instead of get, we often get back much more than we ever could have expected. And what we get back is not simply quid-pro-quo, but instead something much more powerful, which is freedom from the little prisons of self-obsession we build in our own minds.

And really, that’s the only kind of freedom that matters.

Walkin' in Memphis

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:51:00 +0000

Walkin’ in Memphis

Just pulling out of Memphis Tenessee. Had a wonderful weekend full of adventure. I got up on stage with BB King’s band and played (flailed at) the trombone,. I stood at the very spot where James Earl Ray gunned down Martin Luther King. I held the microphone where Johnny Cash recorded his first song. I sat and mediated at the spot where Elvis played “Unchained Melody” a couple of hours before he died. I’m not ashamed to say I cried when I stood at his grave, thinking 42 was too young for him to leave this mortal coil.

Travel is good for the soul. I’ve always known that, but sometimes in the hustle and bustle of life, I forget it. There is something about being in a strange place that challenges you to snap out of your comfort zone and start again with new people in new places. It helps you grow. I’m sure of it.

So on a whim I went to Memphis. I picked this place after reading a story about Marc Cohn, who wrote the seminal hit "‘Walkin’ in Memphis" back in 91’. Much like I did, he decided to visit this city to see Graceland and find out a little more about the King. While he was there, he had what he described as a “spiritual awakening.” Here is the story,

“Cohn wrote this song after traveling to Memphis to check out Graceland, which is Elvis Presley's mansion and a kitschy tourist destination. He made sure to see an Al Green sermon when he was there, but it was a trip out of Memphis along Highway 61 where the meaty part of his journey took place. In the desolate Delta, he saw a sign that said "Hollywood," which turned out to be the Hollywood Cafe, which is a small diner/music joint in Tunica County, Mississippi. This is where Cohn smelled the catfish and encountered a black woman in her 70’s named Murial who was at the piano. After watching Murial play a variety of spirituals and Hoagy Carmichael songs for about 90 minutes, he spoke with her when she took a break.

Cohn's mother died when he was just 2 years old, and he lost his father at age 12. He spent a lot of time reconciling his childhood, which often comes out in his songs. Speaking with Murial, he got maybe the best therapy of his life. Cohn described this conversation in his 1992 interview with Q magazine, saying: "She was real curious, she seemed to have some kind of intuition about me, and I ended up telling her about my family, my parents, how I was a musician looking for a record deal, the whole thing. Then, it must have been about two in the morning, she asks me up to sing with her and we do about an hour, me and this lady I'd never met before, playing a song I hardly knew so she's yelling the words at me. Then at the end, as the applause is rising up, she leans over and whispers in my ear, “You've got to let go of your mother, child, she didn't mean to die, she's where she's got to be and you're where you have to be, child, it's time to move on."

I was so touched to read that. I think in many ways we are all trying to reconcile things from our past, and the more we resist it, the more it comes back. Stephen King said it like this, “So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the corners of our eyes, if we see them at all. The idea that they have been waiting for us rarely crosses our minds. Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little. “

So I found myself in Memphis, trying to reconnect with a piece of my own past. Once upon a time I was a young kid at loose in this city. I was practically broke, in love for the first time, and dazzled and a little amazed to be in a new place. I remember at the time reading a story about a young Bruce Springsteen jumping the fence at Graceland because he wanted to show Elvis a song he had written. It always resonated with me. I aspired to be that bold.

As I walked the streets of Memphis all these years later, I heard the song “always something there to remind me” playing in my head. I remember being young and wistful, and I miss those times. But for better or for worse, I have gotten older, and in this and all other incarnations, I play the hand that is dealt. Perhaps Oscar Wilde said it best, “the soul is born old but grows young, that is the comedy of life. And the body is young but grows old. That is the tragedy of life.”

So aside from all the comedies and tragedies of my own life, I had a bit of my own spiritual awakening while I was walking the streets of Memphis. And it wasn’t because I learned something new or came to a different kind of understanding. Instead, I remembered something and someone I once was, and I realized I am still very much that same person. I came to understand that age, at it’s core, is really nothing more than a concept we conceive in our own minds We place limitations on ourselves based on what we “should” be doing, but ultimately the only person we have to account for is ourselves. Of course we try and improve ourselves along the way, but in the meantime, to find any kind of happiness, we have to find a kind of self-acceptance.

So that’s what I found in Memphis. A kind of understanding that in many ways I still am that young, brazen and hopeful young man I once was, while also being a little older and wiser as well. All of the stops on the timeline have their purpose, and shape us in ways we don’t always fully comprehend. The truth is that a life lived well is one we can come back to over and over again. To create these memories we just have to find our courage to try something new and do something different. This is why travel is so therapeutic. So farewell for now Memphis. I shall return.. Thanks for the memories..

Same Old Lang Syne

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 21:40:00 +0000

2012. I really couldn’t even fathom such a date when I was a kid. Yet here we are. I’ve heard a lot this week about resolutions and change and starting over, and I always wish people well when they make these promises to themselves. Change is perhaps the most mysterious force in the universe. We vigorously fight it and resist it while also craving it desperately. Either way it happens though. Everything is in a state of renewal and decay. Particularly we humans. As R.D. Lange once said, “Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.”

It seems to me that although we all talk about embracing change, mostly what we are talking about are the changes it is that we want. It’s the other kind that terrifies us. A change that we didn’t plan for or expect often induces a much different kind of feeling. This is the kind that makes us adapt and adjust and step out of our comfort zones and places of safety. This is the hard part. In the words of Tom Robbins, “Real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness. Real courage is risking one's clichés.”

So as a therapist who bears witness on a daily basis to these struggles with change, I’ve come to a kind of a realization. Lasting changes in one’s life are not evidenced by being 20 pounds lighter, or a new gym membership, or an exciting new relationship, although all these things certainly make us feel good. For a while.. I have however found our brains have this unsettling tendency towards slippage. Slowly and insidiously we give back the gains we make, and settle back into our old selves. Anyone who doubts this should check out a gym the first week in January. It’s packed. Then come back in April. You’ll see what I mean.

The takeaway is that change is not about resolutions and promises, but rather those small, internal moments when we realize that all of the choices and externalities of our larger world stem from the little thoughts that originate in our own minds. When we’ve compiled enough evidence about what doesn’t work, and come to a place where we understand that we are the architects of our own lives, finally, we can begin to take the reins and confront our own way of thinking. This involves risking our clichés and altering our belief structure, and this is often extremely uncomfortable. Our minds become comfortably habituated to all of our personal little opinions and beliefs, and will quickly slip back into these old ways of thinking without sustained vigilance. But there’s a choice. As Victor Frankl puts it, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

So in my own life I vow to work on myself in this manner over the coming year. A wise man once told me that it was the job of the therapist to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and right now I fall l into the second category. I will not lose weight this year, but change the way I think about health, hedonism, and how my choices are all affecting my future self. I won’t just make more money, but pursue ways to be happy in my working life without tying it exclusively to financial gains. I will try and confront my own pessimism, cynicism, and fatalism. I will take more chances in love, career, and health, and when I fail, I will think about what it all has to do with my own thinking rather than blaming it on timing or laziness or someone else. I will risk my clichés..

I did rejoin a gym though.. Hope to see you there in April…

A Weary World Rejoices

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Guse) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 16:14:00 +0000

Went to Midnight Mass last night for the first time in about 20 years. I wasn’t drawn for any particular religious reason or obligation, but rather out of a sense of curiosity. Would it be the way I remembered it? Somehow I always went kicking and screaming to those kinds of things, but last night I actually went a half hour early to see the choir sing Christmas Carols. Maybe I’m getting a little sentimental in my old age.

I was particularly struck by their version of “Oh Holy Night,” which has always been one of my favorite Christmas songs. I listened carefully to the words,

‘Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.’

I think perhaps what draws me so much to the song is it emphasizes a sense of renewal and hope. Although I’m not personally as invested in the spiritual aspect of the song, as a psychologist I spend nearly all of my working day trying to cultivate a sense of hope in the people I see, with varying degrees of success. This song conveys it so simply, and I am a little jealous.

What I saw however, as I scanned the eyes of people singing along with the choir, was that this hope, however fleeting it may be, is a real thing. Although other holidays such as Easter are more associated with renewal, I think Christmas contains a lot of this quality as well. For me personally, I also wanted to feel this sense of hope. Looking back on Christmases past, I know I certainly didn’t get everything I asked for, but somehow it was all still okay. A lot of people had taken time to think about me and buy me presents and give me a bit of their attention for a day, and that was enough. My own worries could wait for another day. Christmas was about fun. Kids spend hours and hours of their energy in pursuit of the things they want, and the look on a kid’s face when their presents finally arrive is really kind of a wonderful sight to behold. Sure you can argue about commercialism and the reason for the season and all of that, but still, it’s fun to watch the kids with their toys.

I think the phrase “the weary world rejoices” applies a lot more to the parents though. You can see it in their tired eyes that they’ve spent a lot of time shopping, worrying, wrapping presents, and generally doing everything in their power to make sure their kids have a Christmas to remember. The end of the season brings a kind of relief and a sense of being finally able to let go of the rope. Right or wrong, parents have gotten through another Christmas. The weary world rejoices. Now pass the eggnog..

So I found myself at Midnight Mass wanting to borrow some of this hope and relief. Somehow in trying to dispense these things to others, I found my own battery had been drained a little. Seeing people belting out the songs and smiling and enjoying each other, I felt a little like the Grinch, down from the mountain to sing with the people in whoville. By the end of the mass I found, rather unexpectedly, that I had joined in the fray and the chaos and the handshaking, and yes, even the singing. Life is not a spectator sport. It’s a platitude I always preach to my clients, but often forget to apply to my own life. Yet here I was, mingling, socializing, IN A CHURCH… One thing I certainly learned last night, was that I still have the capacity to surprise myself. It’s a wonderful realization.

Hope comes in many forms…