guest post: big apple zen

Hannah is a fellow Class of 2011 Ole now living and studying for her MSW in New York City. When she first moved into my realistic radius, I invited her down for a "small city" weekend to share a little home. We talked about social responsibility and responsibility to ourselves and finding home and peace in the midst of instability and unfamiliarity. Hannah is a smart, thoughtful woman and I have been eagerly awaiting blog-ready insights from her for months now.

So, brew a cup of tea and enjoy!

I had talked to Clara about being a guest blogger this past summer on a particularly helpful trip to Delaware. I had just moved to New York and was feeling a little overwhelmed, lost, and lonely and my trip to see her provided comfort and some much-needed revitalization.

Since that visit I have thought at length in regards to what I might want to write about. Maybe it’s because I’m in busy with school but every time I sat down to write I had trouble seeing the forest for the trees. My sentences came out long and jumbled and I couldn’t seem to express thoughts with any semblance of clarity.

Because it’s the New Year and because I was just spoiled with an outrageously long winter break, I’m feeling relaxed, inspired and in the mood to take another shot at this guest blogger thing.

The past few weeks in the Midwest taught me something about the beauty of simplicity, which was rather humbling and helpful for a girl occasionally consumed by the glamour and romance of New York City.

My nephew, who is just shy of being one year old, was the guiding force of this revelation. Hanging out with him for copious amounts of time so that my sister and brother-in-law could get some much needed rest allowed me to be goofy and uncomplicated for large portions of the day.

With the exception of time spent getting more cups of coffee, snowshoeing and loading and unloading my parents’ dishwasher, my days were spent reading baby books, blowing raspberries, and hiding behind various objects in pursuit of his peek-a-boo laughter (an especially contagious variety of laughter). When my boyfriend came over, I noticed that he was not immune to this infectious play and I often caught him doing the Macarena or building and subsequently knocking over block towers to induce more fits of giggles.

In a class I once took on mindfulness, my teacher described children as the ultimate Zen Masters. For parents I’m sure this sentiment involves all manner of patience, courage and faith. For me, my nephew was the Zen master of pure and simple joy.

With some intentionality, I hope to bring this wisdom to Manhattan, so that instead of being perceived solely as a student/intern in a competitive rat race, I can present myself as someone who’s willing to lay on the carpet with a bowl on their head while blowing raspberries at an animated 10 month old, because that’s the version of myself in which I feel most authentic.

Don’t get me wrong, my aspirations will and have led me to institutions where professional demeanor is required, but I hope my multi-dimensional presence will be evident no matter where I work or study. And while I am not ready for parenthood, Aunt-hood has come at a valuable time. Not only do I love and cherish my nephew, I also value his teachings on staying put and keeping it simple.

With him my defenses are down and my heart is wide open.

posted from Bloggeroid

guest post: the mission of moving forward

“The point, what I've got it down to, is there are only two questions worth asking: 

Why are we here, and what should we do about it while we are?”

– John Lloyd

Particularly strong during the mysterious and often overwhelming years of early adulthood, I sense within me an ache with an eager pulse, demanding that I discover what the hell it is I'm going to do with the rest of my life. Back when I was first asked this question of vocation, I recall my eight-year-old self considering gas station attendant a worthy calling (candy being the main motivator). Then, after years of school, it evolved from a question about work into a quandary of passion. I felt the need for a calling or at least a path that would eventually lead me there. So I went to a college that claimed it launched people into the real world with real skills, majored in political science, graduated, and then...splash!

As a member of the current class of twenty-something's spelunking my way through these years, this question of calling/splashing has plunged itself deep within me since I left St. Olaf. A month after graduation I began working for a large healthcare software company in my home state of Wisconsin. I found things to like about the work and travel involved. I felt challenged, enjoyed my colleagues and put in good hours with good output. And then it started to feel stale. Would working here for five years lead me to happiness and fulfillment? I thought not and decided to make my first major detour of adulthood. After two years of full-time work, I quit my job in order to travel aimlessly through the Western U.S. and Asia for an indeterminate amount of time.


I'm currently a month into that trip and although it still can feel ostentatious when I describe what I'm doing to friends, family and strangers, I think it was the right move for me. To get away and exist in an unorganized way, divorced from the routine of an adulthood I had barely experienced, is totally worth the lack of income or certainty in what exactly it is I'm accomplishing each day. I know that “taking a year off” is classic Stuff White People Like and I decided against maintaining a blog of my own after more than a few friends jibed, “Oh, you're not going to start a blog about finding yourself on the road, are you?” But the fact is not having anything to do other than what I choose to do has jarred me out of the way I was thinking for the last two years. It is affording me the time needed to reflect, reconsider and reengage in the mission of moving forward.

The first step was to accept that I am who I am and the world is what it is. I have made the conclusion for myself that the healthiest way to consider existence is as a collaboration between two basic elements - chance and choice. Sam Harris explains in his book Free Will that “you can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.” His basic premise is that although we may have the ability to make choices, the situations we experience and how we arrive at them, as well as why we make the decisions we do, is all determined by a chaotic web of outside factors that we definitely do not choose or create. Chaos, though we would rather have order, is the stage on which we must act. It was by chance that at a certain time, in a certain place and with a certain set of circumstances, genes and socioeconomic factors, all of us became a living, breathing element of humanity. And this “luck of the draw” has a major influence on everything that follows. Being born a healthy, white, male citizen of the United States in 1988 meant a far different set of future opportunities than what one experiences if they are born an ethnic minority, lacking basic resources, in a time and place mired in violence and/or famine.


The element of chance continues to play a significant role throughout our lives, but I still think that the ability to choose A or B means we still have some power to construct our own identities. Choices we make are constantly altering our life's trajectory, and so with everything each of us does there is a slight bend and ripple to who we become.

Since chance is not under anyone's control, choice seems to be the element to consider closely. Choice is how we navigate through the dizzying amount of options the modern world provides us. Choice determines whether we talk to people we know via our smart phones when we find ourselves in social situations with people whom we don't know. Choices make things happen that would not have otherwise happened.

Choices we make are also vastly unequal in importance and differ in the level of conscious thought we employ while making them. Each of us engages in the repeated, physical tasks of daily life – choosing what to eat, what to wear, what to buy, when to set the alarm, or whether to set an alarm. There are also the more fluid and gradual choices that manifest into our goals, personalities and philosophies – deciding how to use our time and who to use it with, what to learn, what to believe, where to focus our energy and passion, when to move on to something else – decisions that we tinker with over an entire existence.

We all make millions of choices during our lifetimes and most of them are never considered again (many of them are not even consciously considered at the moment they are made – our subconscious brain is just that good). You will forget most of them, yet some choices will be so pivotal that the person you were set to become is completely rerouted into someone else. When I dropped I.B. chemistry in high school, it was unlikely that I would try again in college, and furthermore that I would ever become a physician. We all think about choices in the past we would like to change, imagining the different ways it would alter our current state. We think about the choices we can make now that will lead to the future we hope we hope to create. We always want to make the right choice, even though the amount of options available to the average citizen of the Western world makes the right choice harder to find and even more difficult to accept as the correct one once you have made it. Perhaps life is easier with a penchant for minimalism, eliminating the clutter of choices that are not truly important to happiness and are merely taking up time that you could be using to do things that actually matter to you.


I recently read the story of a man named Arthur Fields who spent fifty years taking pictures of people as they walked past him on the O'Connell bridge in Dublin, Ireland. He would take candid pictures of unsuspecting pedestrians and then attempt to sell them the instant color print, hopefully making enough money to buy film for the next day. This is how he supported his family and the reason he got out of bed each morning. Taking pictures was clearly what he loved and wanted to do. His sons claim he never even went on a vacation. He didn't take his camera to exotic locations, let alone find a different street in Dublin, for a span of time that resulted in over 180,000 photos. It would seem that this man had no second-thoughts about his choice in vocation, nor any reason to try something else. For fifty years, Arthur's career was immovable and unchanging.

I wonder if we all need to make a similar choice in order to feel fulfilled with how we use our allotted time on earth. Committing in such a complete way is a tricky decision to make. Where do we start? Most people have hobbies that inspire their quest for knowledge and skills, but there are also the jobs we do that absorb the most productive part of the day, some of which may have nothing to do with our actual passions. Can the thing you love also be the work you do? Clearly some people make this a reality, but still so many others are unable to find that happy balance. I don't know how to distill the fascinations I have with music, photography and writing into as pure a path as Arthur's yet, but this is what we all seem to be looking for as we drift through periods of employment and hobby. I think we are all determined to make our lives meaningful and that usually means finding a focus; being great at something is earned only after making many choices to first of all become better.


I visited Glacier National Park last week as part of one of the main goals of my trip to visit the majority of the national parks in the western U.S. and to strengthen my photography with the assistance of gorgeous landscapes and night skies unpolluted by light. Although my vehicle and current home, my mom's Roadtrek camper van, is both large and ornery about going up steep inclines, I decided to give Going-To-The-Sun Road a shot. Many switchbacks later, I made it to Logan's Pass with a few hours of daylight left. Feeling triumphant, I disembarked and found a hike to an overlook of Hidden Lake. I took to the path without pause. I counted the many people I passed who were descending back to the parking lot, their faces appearing pleased with what they had worked to see. I said hello to them as they walked by and they responded in kind. I passed other people, some much older than I, who were walking up the path with me. There were still others who had decided to stop halfway, laying on rocks, looking out over Logan's Pass and marveling at the beautiful scenery that had been carved by glaciers millions of years earlier.

When I reached the overlook, I joined others who were taking pictures and enjoying the view of the lake and the receding peaks beyond it. I watched as two young men judged a sign pointing to a further hike down to the water below, which stated that it was “very steep” and to “use caution.” They shrugged at each other confidently and continued on anyway. On the way back I joined a group of people taking pictures of a baby mountain goat and it's mother who were munching on grass a few feet from the trail. I noticed one man who I had passed going up retreating back down the trail to encourage his wife, who had decided to sit down short of the overlook, to come gawk at the goats with him. As I reached the parking lot I heard an old man say to his wife that the view was “so scenic and visually stunning – why do we need to walk up that mountain and sweat to enjoy what we can see right here!”

And so I noticed then that even on a single path there were still many choices to make. Even when there is a destination, something halfway there might feel better. Even when there is a sign telling you it's steep ahead, maybe it's still worth following. Even if a path is there in front of you, perhaps it isn't worth taking if you appreciate the view from where you are. And even when life seems vexing and the path isn't clearly marked and you wish you knew what to do, you always have the ability to live in the present moment and enjoy the small steps forward.


The lesson of mindfulness taught by the Buddha is very useful when I find myself wanting something to strive for and can feel that acute, aching anxiety because I don't know exactly what it is yet. To be mindful is to simply appreciate that you are alive, connected to the things happening around you and to be present and focused amongst it all. Rather than being lost in one cacophonous head-space, treating the world as an entity that you are a part of - rather than a separate actor in - can feel like a purer form of existence.

By practicing mindfulness through meditation and yoga, or at any time of day – standing in line, sitting on a bus, or in those moments when you feel overwhelmed by all the things you have to do - you can actually choose to have a more peaceful outlook. I can choose to be me right now instead of thinking about a non-existent future-me. This leads to far less time worrying and far more time doing what feels good. I realize that a calling isn't necessarily something you can choose first and achieve second. And I think that if I feel happy (or unhappy, which is a necessary part of life) with what I'm doing now and have a sense that I'm moving in a positive direction, I can accept that I have no idea what I want to be doing in 2018, 2024, or 2050 (if I'm even here at that point).

And with all the chance and choice involved from now until then, it would always be guesswork.

* * * * * * *

Jordan is a friend and fellow St. Olaf Class of 2011 grad. He was born and raised in Wausau, WI. His favorite job was the summer he delivered pizza. Kurt Vonnegut is the reason he loves reading and writing.

guest post: getting off the couch

I think inspiration is circular.  Scratch that, I know it is.  I have certain friends who habitually respond to my posts in ways that completely floor me.  For example, today I got this message on Facebook: "I just read your blog in ITALY!"  Awesome.  I want to highlight every person I know, because you all are incredible.  That particular person has a several-month-long gig playing cello on a Mediterranean cruise!  I also have friends in France, New York City, Portland, San Francisco, India, D.C., and pretty much anywhere else, who wrestle with the same exact issues I wrestle with here in the State-That-Was-Never-Really-Supposed-To-Be-A-State.

One person I have a really involved, ongoing, and absolutely invaluable dialogue with is my friend Andy, who is conquering the world from Seattle, Washington.  He contacted me out of the blue back in October with a pretty freaked-out text message asking for advice about moving to a new, unfamiliar place, a place that offered him his dream job, a place located several thousand miles from home.

Ever since then I have found myself wondering, regularly, why he asked me for advice.  Because everything I can think of to say, he seems to have already taken to the next level.  I admire his gumption and apparent fearlessness.  Every day there is a new adventure.

I have been meaning to share this exhilarating email he sent me, and subsequently blogged on his own site, for weeks now, but I only just remembered after a fantastically adventurous weekend here in the mid-Atlantic.  Granted, my adventure (a hike at White Clay Park on Saturday, and Sunday spent cheering J and his twin brother in Philly's Broad Street 10-miler) doesn't quite measure up to Andy's thrillers, but the point here is that we inspire each other.

Here's the moment of truth: What is your Reaction?

Reaction: a study in touch

This post is my reaction to "a study in touch" by Clara on secondsetofbabysteps.  Check it out, take the message, run with it, maybe naked.  Anyway, this is part of an email I sent to my friend Clara after her post reminded me that there's stuff going on right outside the door, maybe in your own back yard, maybe just a 2 hour drive away.

Clara,

Love the post about touch, it really played into what is going on in my life lately and I dig it.

I've been trying to soak up life like it's water and I'm a sponge, but the sponge needs to get off the couch to find the water (funny thing is, it's as easy as getting off the couch!).  After I went snowboarding in Canada, I realized how easy it was to check things off my bucket list ... My life got 5 times more interesting the other day when I bought an avalanche shovel.......

So the story goes:

After an inebriated weekend at the TELUS Ski and Snowboard festival in Whistler, British Columbia, it was an intensely unproductive week at work.  This week was interrupted by meeting during (and after) work with my peers to work on a proposal that was due Friday ... we were all stressed out wearing suits and everyone was wishing us luck when we left to make the presentation.  Our boss showed up in the audience for support and the judges really liked our entry proposal.  Not being able to concentrate after that, we went to check out happy hour at a new pizza place that two of my friends from work found.  Dollar beers and $5 pizzas, clutch.  While relaxing, I brought up an idea that I had tossed to them the week before. 

     Me: "We really should grab our boards and hike up Rainier, find the snow and make a little kicker."

     Mike: "What are we doing tomorrow?"

And then that not-awkward-but-epic silence when we look at each other and realize that this shit is going down tomorrow.

We broke and headed to REI to get an avalanche shovel.  Walking out with that thing is like putting on a parachute at an airport, anyone who sees you is going to know that you plan to do something intense.

The next morning when we needed to decide who would drive, it happened that Garri was taking the windows and roof off his jeep wrangler.  If he didn't want to drive, that was the kiss of death because honestly, top down for a 2 hour drive to the highest peak in the (contiguous) United States?  I think so.  

You had mentioned that you try to remove the barriers between your senses and the world.  This is a great thing indeed, so I tried to take off my sunglasses as often as I could.  We eventually were down to t-shirts and no gloves.  The result is an incredible sunburn.  I never though I would see 75 degrees with snow under my feet, but there I was, exhausted and working my way about a mile or so up the mountain with my board and all my gear.  We stopped a few times and scoped out a place to build our jump off a natural ridge.  We took less than a dozen runs.  They mean so much more when there is no chairlift, plus, it's exhausting.  I thought about you and what you said when I was up there, you'd be a good guide, maybe not for hiking Mt. Rainier specifically, but a guide through life for sure.  Not because you're old and wise, way better; you're the best of us at groping in the dark (she is, read her blog).

After a hot and sweaty ride down one of the longest runs I've done, we jumped in the Jeep and enjoyed the sunshine and the wind beating against our ears with our arms outstretched.  High-fives were had by all.

Cheers,

Andy

Video games might not desensitize us because of high-fidelity murder and explosions, but it might be because we are inside on the couch when we play.  Take our advice and go for a hike.  Send pictures.

Cheers,
Andy

guest post: things i've learned since i left college

I got an email a few days ago from my friend and St. Olaf classmate Kyle, basically a quick check-in on post-grad life.  The meat of this message was the following list, which pretty much speaks for itself.  And now, without further ado...

Things I've learned since I left college:

• That nobody is going to be impressed by you bragging about how many hours/week you work. 
• That college stories seem significantly less funny when you try and tell them to post-college friends.
• That Sunday is suddenly the best day of the week.
• That a quick 10 word text from a distant friend means a lot.
• That you might still feel weird while bringing your 12-pack of beer from the car to your house.
• That you will realize that you were way more stressed out at St. Olaf than you realized at the time
• That there are plenty of attractive, smart, and fun people off the Hill, but they are much, much less concentrated.
• That everybody has a tough adjustment. 
• That if you come back for Homecoming or for Fest and ask old friends how they are doing, almost invariably they will answer, "I'm fine."
• That "fine" is not bad. 
• That St. Olaf was a much stranger place than you thought, when you compare it to the rest of the country.
• That sometimes you'll be walking across the street and a memory of some dumb thing you did in college will pop into your head, and you will laugh like a fool, and that this is a good thing. 
• That you're probably not going to stay in touch w/ Olaf friends as well as you want to.
• That infrequent communication in a long-distance friendship isn't a reflection on the importance or authenticity of that friendship
• That you will have absolutely no obligations much more frequently, and that this is a wonderful thing.
• That reading for pleasure is much, much more rewarding than reading for class. 
• That there may come a time when you have this perverse itch to write an eight page paper, footnotes and all. 
• That professors really do like it when you keep in touch with them.
• That your parents are actually fairly wise and cool.
• That having to make a plan for how to get home at the end of a night is a huge pain in the ass.
• That St. Olaf was way more homogeneous than you thought, no matter what Admissions says.
• That bars are way more intimidating when you don't know everybody's name.
• That the anonymity at these bars is quite nice sometimes.
• That the food in the Caf was really, really good.
• That online dating is rough.
• That spending time alone is not only permissible, but even healthy.
• That most musical ensembles are much less in tune that the St. Olaf ensembles.
• That, in all honesty, you're not sure if you would go back to Olaf, even if you could, wonderful as it was.
• That there is no dream so beautiful as the dream of living within 1/2 mile of your 40 closest friends again.
• That making new friends is easier once you realize most recent college graduates are looking for new friendships, just like you.
• That St. Olaf taught you to work hard, to listen, and to question, and to truly seek understanding
• That your boss may not appreciate the last two, but hey, s/he's the one who hired a Liberal Arts graduate.
• That the "glass half full/glass half empty" maxim is shockingly true and important to think about every day
• That some days are just going to suck.
• That some days aren't.
• That drinking on a Tuesday night, or a Wednesday, or a Monday, isn't as bad an idea as it was in college. 
• That drinking on a Sunday night is still a pretty bad idea.
• That there isn't chapel time, but you can (and should) make chapel time for yourself every day.
• That happy hour always sounds like a great idea, but then you're just groggy for the rest of the day
• That you don't need to be happy all the time to be doing well.*
• That you're really grateful to your professors for teaching you how to think/write/create/whatever.
• That having a little bit of money is actually pretty fun.
• That most jobs don't have an interim break.
• That there are people who went to lower-ranked schools who are way smarter than you. And vice-versa.*
• That, when thinking back to college, you tend to forget the crappy times and just remember the awesome times.
• That this selective memory, while pleasant, can be dangerous.
• That it's good to remind yourself on the days you hate your job that there were days you hated your college classes too. 
• That St. Olaf will mail you something every two weeks.
• That, if you give a gift to the college, they will send you a thank-you letter, including a pre-stamped envelope asking for more money
• That you'll get through whatever you're going through.*
• That having somebody else clean your bathroom was really nice.
• That not having to share a bathroom is really nice. 
• Finally, that "Fram Fram" isn't just the school song. It's the mission that got inside of you during your time on the hill. Forward, Forward. 

Kyle is a fellow band'o'lier (legacy from a haphazard sophomore year spring break trip to New Mexico, before which I really didn't know him) and St. Olaf Class of 2011 graduate.  He is currently doing a year of AmeriCorps service with Admissions Possible in Omaha, Nebraska.  For a quick glimpse into what he's been doing since May 29, 2011, check out the blog post that made my heart soar, with pride for my friend, hope for my classmates, and faith in community.

*Starred comments are the contribution of another 2011 Ole, affectionately known as "JoePa," who is currently studying at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey.