Café Philos: an internet café

Yesterday, Thanksgiving, I had a pleasant surprise. A friend I hadn't seen in over two years showed up on my doorstep, healthy and happy.

The healthy and happy bit was very much part of the surprise. Suzanne has suffered over many of her 28 years from a nearly debilitating emotional disorder. But yesterday she was quite happy and seemed healthier than I remember as being usual for her.

So far as I know, Suzanne is the world's only former Victoria Secrets model to join a traveling circus.

She lasted a year in the circus job, which is a long time for her to last in any job. She's energetic, exceptionally intelligent, and hard working. But then there's that emotional disorder thing. It impairs her judgment, and she tends to screw things up with the result that she's had very little stability in her life.

She was 16, I was 39, when we first met at a coffee shop. It's been a dozen years now, and that circus stint is still the longest she's held onto a job. She says she's known me longer than nearly anyone else in her life outside of family, and I believe her. I've lost count of the number of apartments and rental homes she's had. It's as if Suzanne repels stability.

Like so many people with an emotional disorder, Suzanne has been in a protracted abusive relationship. He was twenty years her senior and the sort of man who habitually preyed on much younger women. Quite charming at first.

She had two sons by him. She finally left him when he began to abuse her sons, too.

I've always admired Suzanne's buoyancy. No matter what else that emotional disorder has done to her, it hasn't taken her resilience. She always bounces back. And maybe her buoyancy has something to do with the fact she and I can laugh together at even the worse of her misadventures. Yesterday, during her visit, we laughed so hard recalling her miscalculations and misjudgments that I had to wipe my eyes -- several times.

I don't recall who started it, but there's a running joke between us. It's a bit crude, and she's a bit more likely to express herself crudely than I am, so maybe she started it. At any rate, each time I bail her out of some distress she's gotten herself into, she swears she owes me a blow job for it. In return, I tell her that I'm not feeling like one at the moment, and so I'll put it on her tab. Yesterday, she reminded me that she now "owes" me 53 blow jobs for the number of times I've bailed her out of some mess since we started that joke years ago.

In truth, Suzanne has taught me a great deal about giving. Even before I met her, I had learned to give without most strings attached, without most expectation, or most hope, of gaining anything in return. But there was something I hadn't yet learned. There was something I still expected to come from my generosity.

I expected improvement.

Without being consciously aware of my expectations, I hoped when giving to someone that they would learn from their mistake -- from whatever mistake put them in a position to need a hand out -- and that they would improve themselves. I even unconsciously considered a gift wasted if the person did not learn from their mistakes.

Someone once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. That's a pretty good insight into what a severe emotional disorder can do to a person's judgment. Suzanne is like that.

Suzanne will repeat a mistake again and again, without being aware that she is doing the same thing over and over with only insignificant variations. Her disorder is a cruel one.

At first that frustrated me. When I examined my frustration, I saw it was because I expected her to improve. When I thought about my hope she would improve, I discovered my hope for her was a string I was attaching to my gifts to her. And then I was struck by how unrealistic and unfair to her it was of me to do that.

It was through giving to her I learned to give without even that expectation of any reward for my generosity.

If you yourself make a practice of giving without strings, then you know how liberating it is to do so. And because I myself know that feeling of liberation, and value it, I am grateful to Suzanne for helping me realize it. Perhaps that's her greatest gift to me. If so, it's a good one.

She has many fine qualities, and there's nothing genuinely evil or humanly indecent about her. If life were a child's fantasies of life, then life would be fair; and if life were fair, the Suzannes of this world would never be afflicted with cruel emotional disorders. For someone with her talents and abilities could accomplish a lot of good, both for herself and others -- if only she were healthy and not such an habitual screw up.

On a forum I frequent is a person who wants to be your guru. He's had some mystical experiences (He claims they are beyond counting), and has reached firm conclusions about the nature of god, the self, and the universe.

Whoever doesn't agree with him is a fool, he says, because he has had so many more profound experiences than they. Better yet, he's even brighter than they are too. How can you beat such reasonable qualifications?

Some of the people on the forum are even impressed by this man. He's witty in his put-downs, you know. A sure sign he's the Buddha.

Some years ago, I did a stint as a firefighter. In the ready room, the room where we waited for the calls, the men would bullshit. "Captain, what do you think of abortion?"

"Simple! Abortion is always wrong."

"Lieutenant, what do you think of abortion?

"It's murder, plain and simple."

"Anderson, what do you think of abortion?"

"There's no two ways about it: A woman has a right to choose."

The men would bullshit like that until a call came in.

Then they'd get real.

A fire does not favor firm conclusions. Fighting a fire is a game of odds. A game of probabilities. You cannot be certain what the fire is going to do. You can't bullshit a fire.

In a fire, you calculate the odds, take your best chance, and go with it. You don't look for absolute truth. There is none. You don't reach absolute conclusions because you're not a fool. You stay alert. You remain open to the changing reality.

Reality is always changing. It's just that most of our time is spent in the ready room where we don't notice it changing. So, we relax and bullshit. We speak with absolute conviction. We even call that kind of talk, "being serious". But it's light years from being serious. It's light years from reality.

I suppose it's possible that "seeing god" somehow leaves a person with absolute convictions about god, the self, and the universe.

But if I had to bet on that, I'd bet those absolute convictions are simple, fundamental misinterpretations of what he or she experienced. I'd bet what they really experienced was just as uncertain as dancing with fire.



(Photo courtesy of Ernest von Rosen, www.amgmedia.com)

Earlier, Don and I drove out of town south into a hazy fall afternoon. We speculated the haze could be coming from the large California fires, for there seemed no other source for it. It's happened before that smoke has drifted hundreds of miles into Colorado from large fires as far away as California. Was that happening today?

No way of to be certain. But the distant mountains to the south and west were obscured by the haze while above us the sky still embraced the royal blue depth of a perfect autumn day.

I hadn't driven south of Colorado Springs in well over two years. You forget how beautiful the hills and canyons are. The colors are mostly understated and subtle in the fall. Olive junipers dot the yellow grasses, cling to the sandy red cliffs like freckles. The deeper greens of Ponderosa and pinon pines crowd the junipers, and the scrub oak has copper leaves. All respectable earth tones. But then along the water courses, the light bursts as it falls into the luminous yellow leaves of the cottonwoods.

Gorges and canyons, mesas and buttes. The land seems eternal here. It's hard to believe people own it -- you think more of the land owning them.

There's defiance of the land in some of the houses people have built. Houses whose architecture is traditional in distant parts of America -- in the northeast, for instance -- but not here in Colorado. You can't look at those houses without imagining some newcomer has tried to transplant a bit of the lush eastern United States, complete with well watered bluegrass lawns, to the rocky, thin soils of the arid west. Maybe he got homesick for a more congenial landscape. Maybe he's in denial he no longer lives in Massachusetts, Georgia or Kentucky. Whatever the case, it's not really your problem -- yet in this land, his home is an alien.

Some miles south of the Springs, Don and I turned off the main road and, after a few miles, entered Phantom Canyon. Phantom Canyon is a narrow gorge whose rock walls rise 150 or 200 feet. It winds for miles up into the Rockie Mountains -- right into the heart of the high gold country. The road changed from asphalt to gravel, and then from gravel to earth. The walls were mostly red rock deeply fractured by the weather, like an old man's face; and brilliant cottonwoods lined the floor of the canyon.

It's strange how in some parts of Colorado you can see everywhere the evidence of people -- you are after all, traveling a road built by people -- and yet you almost feel you are the first person to explore the land. Twice in the Canyon cars passed us coming from the other direction and each time the occupants waved to us as if we were the first people they'd seen all month. I think that feeling of being a little bit beyond the boundaries of society doesn't just come from the scarcity of people on the Phantom Canyon road. I think it comes from the way the world rises up 150 to 200 feet above you. I think it comes from the way the trees, the grasses, and the brush obey their own laws -- not some gardener's laws. I think it comes from the uncivilized quiet that confronts you when you finally stop and step out of your car. But whatever the source of it, the effect is to give you a slightly different perspective on yourself.

It's not the beauty of nature that most inspires me to reflect on myself. Nature is not always beautiful. But nature is always indifferent. And it's that indifference that inspires both thought and feeling about the human condition.

You can never really put what you learn about yourself from nature in words because what you learned, you didn't learn from words. Rather, you simply experienced a truth. You can write all the commentaries you want about your experiences, but you cannot recreate them through those commentaries. Words never brought a fractured rock cliff into existence.

At times, it seems that societies revolve around the ego. Perhaps it can even seem they are huge conspiracies to make the ego primary in this world. I think the ego is just as much a part of us -- of who we are as a species -- as our eyes and noses, and I reject any ideology that calls for the annihilation of the ego. Yet, I don't think the ego is of primary importance. I think it has its place, but that place is not central.

I believe I see that most clearly when I am out in nature, away from society, away from its tendency to make the ego primary. Yet, it is also out in nature when I feel I am being most true to myself. Is that a paradox?

The wind sounds so beautiful this morning. Now and then, it brings a burst of rain. With the windows open, I can smell the rain and feel the chill of Fall.

I know I shall refuse to close those windows until at last it becomes too cold this year to leave them open. I don't want to miss the change in the seasons -- not even when I'm inside. Not even for a moment.

I wonder this morning why that's so. What is it about the change in seasons that I love it so much? It's more to me than just the novelty of a new season.

Sometimes I think it's the absolute proof of nature's power I love so much. Inexorable, nature puts me in my place. Only our egos, it seems, want us to be the biggest thing in the world. Something else, something much deeper than ego, wants only to have its proper place in this world. Perhaps it's only when we have found that place that we can connect to the world -- authentically.

Suppose your favorite deity commanded you to do something that was not true to yourself? Would you be justified in not obeying your god because s/he commanded you to do something that was not true to yourself?

Suppose you believed your favorite deity had created you, and that, consequently, you are being true to your deity by being true to yourself. If you believed that, and your favorite deity commanded you to to do something that was not true to yourself, would you be justified in not obeying your god?

Thirty years ago, I took a course called "Images of Man" in which we studied and discussed some seven different models of human nature. That was a very exciting time of life when I was discovering all sorts of grand ideas.

I was discovering ideas that I had until then only heard rumors about -- such as what time was to a physicist, what the subconscious was to a psychologist, or what culture was to an anthropologist. It had not occurred to me before taking the "Images of Man" course that our notions of human nature were human inventions. Indeed, when I look back on my growing up, I am astounded at how many very obvious things I had to learn.

Naturally, there was a woman involved.

No one at 19 should be forced to learn about time, the subconscious, culture, or any of a hundred other grand ideas without being in love. That would just be cruel. Worse, it could lead one to become a neoconservative.

Until I fell in love with a woman in my "Images of Man" class, I was very confused about love -- I really didn't know the difference between simply loving and possessively yearning. So, to me, love was heartbreak, a miserable state, something to be avoided, and when impossible to avoid, to be cursed. Then, of course, I met Alison and discovered the extraordinary affirmation of life that naturally comes from loving without expectation of any reward.

One of the models of human nature we studied that term introduced me to the concept of enlightenment. Have you ever considered how close enlightenment is to love? I don't think I really grasped much of the concept of enlightenment from that one class, but I would have grasped far less of it had I not been in love.

When compared to the torturous confusion of mere yearning, love is simple, clear, non-possessive, and straight-forward. When compared to the torturous confusion of non-enlightenment, enlightenment is simple, clear, non-possessive, and straight-forward. Perhaps the two are even inextricably entwined.

It even seems to me now, thirty years later, that I learned more about certain aspects of human nature from loving Alison than I did from studying the various models of human nature presented in the class.

Sometime in the 1920's, a cousin of mine established world records in two sports. My mom, who earlier today told me his story, is 89 and cannot recall offhand which two sports he excelled in. I might ask her someday to look it up in the family genealogy -- she has the records -- but I didn't want to put her to that trouble this morning. At any rate, my cousin's prowess in those two sports earned him an invitation to participate in one of the Olympics.

Unfortunately, after the invitation was extended, it was withdrawn upon discovery that my cousin was not that well rounded. He was indeed a superb athlete for his day, but it seems he lacked in academic accomplishments. That's to say, if his shoelaces had required a working knowledge of algebra or history for him to tie them, he would not have been able to tie his own laces. So, the Olympic Committee took back it's invitation. To understand why, it might be useful here to quote from Wikipedia:

The English public schools of the second half of the 19th century had a major influence on many sports. The schools contributed to the rules and influenced the governing bodies of those sports out of all proportion to their size. They subscribed to the Ancient Greek and Roman belief that sport formed an important part of education, an attitude summed up in the saying: mens sana in corpore sano – a sound mind in a healthy body. In this ethos, taking part has more importance than winning, because society expected gentlemen to become all-rounders and not the best at everything. Class prejudice against "trade" reinforced this attitude. The house of the parents of a typical public schoolboy would have a tradesman's entrance, because tradesmen did not rank as the social equals of gentlemen. Apart from class considerations there was the typically English concept of "fairness," in which practicing or training was considered as tantamount to cheating; it meant that you considered it more important to win than to take part. Those who practiced a sport professionally were considered to have an unfair advantage over those who practiced it merely as a "hobby."

Those were the good old days: When athletes were expected to be gentlemen and gentlemen were expected to be well rounded. My cousin might easily have beaten the other competitors at that Olympics -- his records show that -- but that would have missed the point back then.

Today, most of us could not care less whether an Olympic athlete is a well-rounded gentleman or lady. For us, the Olympics are about athletic excellence, rather than virtue. And that attitude permeates all of society. Most of us admire a self-made millionaire for his business acumen even if he is only half-competent as a human being. We admire the famous for being famous without demanding they be more than marginally decent. We vote for politicians who are shrewd political operators but whose wisdom and understanding in all other matters borders on imbecilic. We are a world in love with the expert and the specialist. But we no longer love the gentleman, the lady, the well rounded amateur.

I do not know if that is a good thing or a bad thing -- overall. I can see strengths and weaknesses to both approaches. So, what do you think?

Unless you are trying to pass a class in metaphysics, whether god ontologically exists or not is trivial at best and more likely irrelevant. It's true that discussing the issue can, if done well, exercise the brain and sharpen one's thinking, but so can many other issues exercise the brain and sharpen one's thinking. Overall, wondering whether god exists or not is nearly pointless -- except perhaps as a way of distracting ourselves from dealing with more authentic challenges of living.

Underlying the mistaken notion that god's existence or non-existence is vitally important are the assumptions that god, merely by god's ontological existence, saves us from meaninglessness, makes sense of our suffering, preserves us from eternal death, is with us in times of need, and so on and so forth. Yet, not one of those things can be demonstrated -- not to you, not to me, not to anyone.

The mere ontological existence of god implies almost nothing about the nature of god or god's relationship to us. For instance, suppose that tomorrow someone finally proves the universe must necessarily have a creator, and therefore god must ontologically exist. Fine. But would it necessarily mean anything to us? Would it mean there was salvation from eternal death? Would it mean god in any way cares for us? Would it tell us a thing about whether god has a purpose for us or not? On what grounds could anyone answer "yes" to those questions?

Yet, it is crucial to point out here that some people experience god. To be precise, they have an experience of something they choose to name "god". Other people, having similar experiences, choose to say they experienced the Tao, the Buddha-Nature, the Great Spirit, the Void, the Ultimate Weirdness, or some other placeholder. It doesn't much matter what people call their experiences experiences of. That seems to be more determined by what society, religious tradition, or culture they come from than by anything else. What matters is those experiences are so often transformative.

They are transformative in ways the mere ontological existence of god is not. For instance, someone who has had such experiences might find they no longer fear dying. Not because they now believe in a life after death, nor because they now have a reassuring theology, but simply because they have changed, been transformed, into someone who doesn't fear death. Likewise, someone who has had such experiences might find they are now capable of much greater love. Again, not because they believe god ontologically exists and has commanded them to love, but simply because they have been transformed into someone who is more loving. While the ontological existence of god (or the Tao, or whatever) is at best trivial, the experience of god is often profoundly transformative.

The question of whether god exists or not is insignificant compared to the transformation that can occur when one experiences god. Moreover, that transformative experience does not come about from believing in god. You can believe in god to your heart's content, but all your hours of belief will do nothing to bring about a transformative experience of god. Why is that?

"God" is just a symbol -- no more, no less. To say you believe in god is quite the same -- and just as trivial -- as saying you believe in the star that represents Paris on a map of France. It is just as insignificant -- and just as trivial -- as saying you believe in your wife's name. Nor does it matter in the least how elaborate, sophisticated and complex your notion of god is. For does it matter whether you say you believe in the star that represents Paris on one map, or you say that you believe in the more detailed street map that represents Paris on a different map? In both cases, your mere belief will not be the same thing as an actual experience of Paris -- regardless of how passionately or fervently you believe.

For those reasons, belief in god is quite often mere escapism. It is like reading a map of Paris rather than visiting Paris. It can be no more than a longed for daydream.

At Andersonville during the American civil war, the Union soldiers who were held prisoner there by the Confederates lacked salt. When you go without salt, you begin to crave it, and the craving of some of those soldiers became so intense that they would cut the world "salt" from their Bibles and chew the word. It did nothing to preserve their lives -- they starved for salt anyway. But it had a psychological effect on some of those who ate the word. It comforted them.

For many people belief in god is just such a comfort. It does nothing to really nourish them spiritually, it is by no means as transformative as experiencing god, but it does give them a morale boost -- just as eating the word "salt" comforted some of the soldiers who did it at Andersonville. Perhaps ironically, I think most of us would prefer the comfort of believing in god to the experience of god. That might be why we place so much emphasis on whether we believe or not.

"Nobody today is normal, everybody is a little bit crazy or unbalanced, people's minds are running all the time. Their perceptions of the world are partial, incomplete. They are eaten alive by their egos. They think they see, but they are mistaken; all they do is project their madness, their world, upon the world. There is no clarity, no wisdom in that!"

- Taisen Deshimaru



This might be the first time I've seen a Zen Buddhist so lament "people today". I confess I largely agree with him! I think he might describe most of us to one extent or another. Yet, I don't recall ever having read in any accurate history of an age when his lament would not be true of most people. Those who are not "a little bit crazy or unbalanced" have always been as rare as monks -- maybe even as rare as Buddhas. The notion there was a Golden Age in which people in general were fundamentally much better and wiser than they are today is a myth, rather than an historical reality.

Yet, does that mean we should forgo trying to be as wise and sane as possible? Of course not! The fact there are some very wise and sane people in this world means it is possible to be very wise and sane. Maybe the vast majority of humanity will always be -- as humanity has always been -- "eaten alive by their egos." Yet, that does not mean all of us need be.

Had the Buddha been a god, like Christ, people would say, "Enlightenment is only possible for gods", and "Only the Buddha was fully authentic". They say those things about Christ, you know. "Only Christ was perfect." And, "Only Christ could love everyone". To make your mentor a god is a form of escapism. It's a way of denying your potential.

"[A]ll they do is project their madness, their world, upon the world." Your enlightenment will not solve all the world's problems. But perhaps it will mean that you become aware -- deeply aware -- of when you are projecting your madness, your world, upon the world. Then you can at least choose wisely whether to do it or not. As near as I know, that's one of the things enlightenment most does for you -- makes you wise and sane.

It does not make the world's problems go away. If you have no skills and are unemployable before you are enlightened, you will have no skills and be unemployable after you are enlightened, etc. But perhaps you will have a realism, a wisdom, and a sanity about your situation that you never had before. And that, of course, can help you meet your challenges quite a bit better than you have ever met them before.

Krishnamurti observed that no one seeks enlightenment until they get into trouble. It's only when we suffer, and wish to escape our suffering, that the possibility of enlightenment becomes a burning, passionate goal. Yet, as Krishnamurti once again said, when we seek enlightenment as an escape from suffering, enlightenment will not come. We will find some escape, but it will not be enlightenment.

Most of us will always want to live as the people Taisen Deshimaru laments. We will never experience a crisis so profoundly unsolvable that we are forced by it into enlightenment. For some say enlightenment comes only when every form of escape has been exhausted. Perhaps that is why so few people are enlightened and why every age has a right to repeat Taisen Deshimaru's lament.

Brian was an unhappy worker. He hated his job and was one of my least productive salespeople. By the time he got 12 sales, the group average was 36. He kept showing up at the office because he needed the money, but his heart just wasn't in it.

I first tried to retrain him. That didn't work because the problem was not his lack of understanding how to sell, but his absolute distaste for it. I was afraid I would have to fire him. I didn't much like Brian, but as his manager I considered it my duty to do my best by him. So I wracked my brain for some work -- for any work -- that I could reassign him to rather than fire him.

About that time, the monthly accounts receivable report crossed my desk and I noticed that the receivables were getting out of hand. The percentage of people who were agreeing to buy our product, but who were then ignoring the bills we sent them, had taken an upswing -- most likely because the economy was in recession. Something had to be done about it.

I don't know how long it took me to put 2 and 2 together to get 4, but I eventually did. That is, I decided to create a new position -- bill collector -- and assign Brian to it.

At first, Brian was just as pessimistic about his new job as he had been about his old one. But that suddenly changed sometime in his very first week. When I dropped by on Tuesday to ask how things were going, Brian grinned so broadly that I thought he was going to bite me. And by Friday, Brian was collecting as much money from the past due receivables as some of our salespeople were bringing in from new sales.

Brian began to change. He no longer bitched about everything from the office carpet to his fellow workers. He started coming in early, and was no longer the first to leave. I was convinced he had more energy than I'd ever seen in him before. And, perhaps most astonishing to me, he told me he loved his job.

By hit or miss, I had somehow managed to take Brian out of sales position that played to his weaknesses, and instead place him in a collections position that played to his strengths. In doing so, I had not only avoided firing him, but I had actually helped to make him a happy and productive worker. I will never forget how dramatically Brian changed when he was finally asked to do something he could do well.

According to the scientists who study what makes people happy, there are many factors involved in human happiness, but one significant factor is for people to play to their strengths, rather than to their weaknesses.

Playing to your strengths means that you position yourself to make the best use of your talents and skills. When you do that, the task you set yourself to perform becomes comparatively easy -- like bicycling downhill. But if you are unfortunate enough to play to your weaknesses, then just the opposite is true -- you might as well set yourself the task of always bicycling uphill through life.

So, there you have it. Whatever the obstacles, anyone who is at all concerned with their happiness would do well to pay close attention to themselves in order to figure out both their strengths and their weaknesses -- and then as much as possible always play to their strengths. That is often easier said than done. In a future post, I plan to offer some suggestions about how to play to our strengths and avoid playing to our weaknesses.

If you had to choose between writing something thought provoking and writing something profound, which would you choose?

I'm tempted to say that anything which is profound is thought provoking. But saying that breaks the rule because we have been asked to pretend the two can be separated and do not overlap.

Well, then, I know when I was much younger I would have chosen to write something profound. Among other things, it can be good mental discipline to try to write something that's profound. You end up questioning every one of your assumptions in an effort to dig deeper and deeper into the subject. You become like a child who asks, "Why?", "But why?", in response to every answer you come up with.

All that digging might not make you an entirely profound person -- you can still be someone with surprisingly shallow feelings, tastes and inclinations -- but it certainly helps to make whatever you write profound. I know that's true, because I married my first wife solely for her looks the very same year I was routinely getting compliments back from my professors along the lines of, "This is among the most profound papers -- published or unpublished -- I have ever read on the Bhagavad Gita. I realize in the cosmic scheme of things that does not matter. But in a warm, earthly way, I just wanted you to know."

That professor was right, of course. In the cosmic scheme of things, the reward -- in this case, the pride -- we might take in writing something profound does not matter, except perhaps in so far as that reward or pride becomes a burden and a hindrance. Instead, what we do, we should do true to ourselves. And what is true to ourselves can change.

Sometime in my 40's -- most likely in my late 40's -- I began feeling a need to give back to my community something in gratitude for all the good things my community had given me.

Such a feeling is sometimes confused for selflessness, but it is not selfless. I fully wanted to use my own unique talents and skills -- that is, to use my self -- to give back to my community. Nor had I any desire to give back to my community in a way that was not true to myself. I suppose that around the same time in my life, my answer changed to the question, "If you had to choose between writing something that was thought provoking, and writing something that was profound, which would you choose?"

Today, I would choose thought provoking. But I think for you to understand why, you must recall the silly rule we began with: Namely, that we should pretend a writing cannot be both profound and thought provoking at the same time, and that therefore we must choose one or the other. If you go by that rule, then it's reasonable to ask, "Which is better for people?" The way I see it, it's better for people to read something that provokes them to think, than it is for them to read something that is merely profound.

For one thing, it is more fun to think about something than it is to deeply understand something. Thinking is like traveling: The joy lies in the unexpected discovery. While understanding something is like staying home. The happiness is more akin to comfort than joy. Only homebodies would give up thinking about new things for deeply knowing something.

For another thing, thinking keeps the mind fresh and alert. It's good exercise for the brain and prevents its deterioration. But I've seen even quite profound people deteriorate rapidly in their mental capabilities when they stopped seeing things in new and interesting ways.

Last, when thinking becomes a habit, the politicians, preachers, pundits, and advertisers are much less able to manipulate us to suit their own agendas. So, there too, you are giving something back to your community when you provoke people to think.

There you have it. My answer to the absolutely most pressing question of our time. When I was younger, I would have easily chosen "profound". That was being true to myself yesterday. But today, things have changed -- I've changed. And I feel I could best be true to myself by writing something thought provoking.

Yet, how would you answer the question?

"If you had to choose between either writing something thought provoking or writing something profound, which would you choose?"

I was cruising the internet the other evening, recklessly swerving my way from one blog to another, happily dashing down the electron road, when I crashed into a notion. The notion I crashed into -- on blog after blog that evening -- was that unless God exists, life is meaningless. Several people were saying they had lost their faith in God and now felt "empty", "hollow", "full of angst", or "devoid of meaning". I checked, and none of them were teenagers. Teenagers typically mistake horniness for existential despair. But these folks were adults and it can be presumed they were not simply mistaking the emotional effects of testosterone for a crisis of meaning.

What all the bloggers shared was having been raised as Christians in churches where it is common to teach people the meaning of their life comes from God.

That is, the idea seems to be that without God, our lives are meaningless because after a few decades at most they end in oblivion, rather than continuing on in some fashion. Thus, it is argued the meaning of life depends on whether we -- that is, our soul, metaphysical spirit, or true self -- endures for all of eternity.

Yet, is it actually true that life has no meaning unless we continue on in some fashion after death?

I sometimes feel fortunate that I mostly escaped ever harboring the notion my life was meaningless without eternity. As a child, I attended church because my then agnostic mother believed it was important to expose me to the dominant religion of my culture -- Christianity (She also believed it was vitally important to get me out of the house Sunday mornings so she could stay home and indulge herself in the wonder of a few hours without having me under her feet). My exposure to Christianity led me to think quite a bit about it, but my exposure failed to make me a Christian -- except for a single month while I was in middle school. Other than that one month, I grew up agnostic like my mother. So, it was quite some long time ago that I examined the question of whether eternal life made temporal life meaningful and somehow I never bought into the notion that it did. Thus, I did not feel "empty", "hollow", and so forth upon leaving Christianity after my one month gig with it. But the bloggers I swerved into the other evening at one time certainly bought into that notion because giving up God and eternity for them has resulted in their feeling life is meaningless.

Our assumptions and expectations have much more to do with whether we feel life is meaningless than we might at first suppose. If we are successfully taught at a young enough age that life is meaningful if and only if we last forever, then we will feel life is meaningless as soon as we give up our belief we last forever. Yet, if we do not assume the meaning of life depends on how long we endure it in some form or another, then we look elsewhere for the meaning of our lives -- and many of us will succeed in finding a meaning (or meanings) for our lives that satisfy us.

Being true to oneself is a skill. It might even be the single most important skill we can acquire. A Zen poem beautifully expresses the emotional import of being true to oneself while expressing the art of it in the simplest terms possible:

I eat when I'm hungry.
I drink when I'm thirsty.
I sleep when I'm tired.
How wonderful!

For many people, the very closest they will come to being true to themselves happens during the earliest days of their lives when they cried when they felt like crying, puked when they had to puke, slept when they were tired. Yet, those days soon ended. As they grew, they were increasingly taught to ignore themselves and their own wants and needs. To sit still when they wanted to move about. To be quiet when they wanted to yell. To learn subjects they did not want to study. To pass exams they did not want to take. To hold jobs they did not want to hold. Much of what they learned about denying themselves was necessary, of course, for them to live and function in this strange world.

Yet, it's surprising at times to reflect on how much we unnecessarily deny ourselves. And if that is surprising, then it is absolutely astonishing to ponder all the ways we unnecessarily deny ourselves.

Sometimes those ways are obvious. I'm reminded of a friend whose father was a senior executive of an auto company. Early on, the father decided his son would become the Chief Executive Officer of a large corporation -- hopefully, General Motors. From that moment forward he pressured his son to conform to the ways of an executive in training. Nothing his son wanted or did was innocent: Everything must have a purpose and that purpose must be to produce an executive. Consequently, my friend grew up deeply confused about who he was and what he wanted for himself. How could he not have grown up confused? He was never taught how to find out who he was.

Yet, many times the ways in which we learn to deny ourselves are not quite as obvious. Today, consumerism is the prime example of that. Corporations, their advertising agencies and public relations firms are constantly teaching people in consumer societies that being true to yourself means little more than buying a brand. While that is a shallow, artificial and ultimately misleading way of expressing yourself, it is the primary way in which millions -- and soon billions -- of humans will simultaneously "express themselves" and deny their true selves. Consumerism merely promotes narcissism, and substitutes it for self-realization and accomplishment. In that respect, it is just another way of denying your true self. And how can you be true to yourself if you deny your true self?

So, broadly speaking, we have so far discussed only one way in which being true to yourself is skillful. That is, there is skill involved in avoiding the many and various ways of unnecessarily denying ourselves.

Besides the many and various ways in which we deny ourselves, there are other challenges to being true to oneself. For instance: To be true to yourself, you must, of course, know yourself. That is an ongoing process without end. We never complete the task of knowing ourselves: We merely get better at it. Because we never complete the task, there is always some uncertainty about who we are.

Yet, many of us avoid knowing ourselves precisely because knowing ourselves involves uncertainty, and uncertainty is uncomfortable. Instead of maintaining the open mindedness to genuinely learn about ourselves as we go along in life, many of us try to fashion personal myths about ourselves that we can cling to in order to avoid the discomfort of uncertainty. "I am such and such a person", we tell ourselves -- even though we do not act that way, or at least haven't acted that way in years. Paradoxically, to know yourself, you must be willing to live with the uncertainty of not knowing yourself.

There are many ways to learn about oneself, but perhaps the best way is to watch what one does as dispassionately as one would watch someone else's child at play, or a stranger on the street. That requires considerable skill because it is not at all easy to dispassionately watch ourselves. Yet, that might well be the best way to learn about oneself.

Being true to oneself is not effortless. It is instead a skill that requires development. To be skillful at it, one must combine the insight to give up the many and various ways of unnecessarily denying ourselves with the will to learn about ourselves. I believe, however, that it is impossible to be genuinely happy in this life without being true to oneself. Thus, being true to oneself might indeed be the most personally valuable skill we can acquire, for it leads to genuine happiness.

I can't recall if I've mentioned this before, but I prefer to think of humans as like snowflakes. All snowflakes are made of the same thing -- water. But each snowflake is shaped differently, so that no two flakes are precisely alike. In the same way, isn't it true enough that all humans share in a common human nature, but that no two of us manifest that nature in exactly the same way?

We all share something in common, and yet we are all unique. And therefore, I have often thought that many political ideologies misrepresent us, because they either over-emphasize our commonality, or they over-emphasize our individuality. They either pretend there are no significant differences between people -- and we can all be treated as interchangeable cogs in a social machine -- or they pretend there are no significant commonalities between people -- and we must be treated as rugged individualists who can at best barely tolerate living in a community. Where in either extreme is there realism?

That humans are unique individuals sharing in a common nature is not a paradox to me but merely a summary description of what seems most obvious about us.

All too often, when someone tells you they have "high standards", they mean they have only one standard -- a narrow one -- that they try to fit everyone into. The ancient Greeks had a wise myth about that. Procrustes was the fool who had only one standard, and thus became a monster.

When travelers stopped at his house for the night, he would offer them a bed. If the bed was too long for the traveler, Procrustes would take a hammer and pound the man out until he fit the bed. But if the bed was too short, Procrustes would take a saw and remove enough of the man's legs to fit the bed.

When we apply only one standard in judging people, we not only become monsters, but we become unrealistic monsters.

You cannot genuinely understand human brilliance if, like an IQ test, you hold everyone to the same standard. Some people are brilliant in how they see shapes and spaces -- perhaps they become architects or sculptors. Some people are brilliant in how they see words -- perhaps they become authors. Some people are brilliant in how they see human relationships -- perhaps they become counselors or leaders. I could go on, but you get the picture.

I have never met a person who was deeply appreciative and knowledgeable of human talent and skill who had only one standard by which to judge human talent and skill. There can be a decided lack of realism involved in having only one standard for folks.

Would an enlightened person know they were enlightened?

If so, how would they know they were enlightened? Would they reach the conclusion they were enlightened from observing their behavior over a period of time -- very much like they were observing someone else? Or would something in the nature of enlightenment itself clue them in about the fact they were enlightened?

Would it matter to them that they were enlightened? If so, how would it matter to them?

Last weekend, I managed to get up into the mountains. Spring was just coming to them. The peaks were still snow capped, but the days were warm and bright, and some tiny wildflowers were in bloom. I would have liked to stay for a week or two, because it can take me that long to get into the rhythms of the wilderness.

You don't notice it too much when you're in the city, but your senses go to sleep in the city.

You notice it when you're in the mountains for a few days -- then your senses wake up again, sharpen, become more alert than you had imagined they could be.

I figure your senses go to sleep in the city to protect you from all the noise, odors, confused movement, and subtle chaos that are the nature of cities. If your senses were really awake in the city, you'd be overwhelmed.

When I have spent a long time with nature -- enough time to feel a part of it, rather than just feel myself a visitor -- I often have found in myself a sense that the pace, the rhythm, the sights, the sounds of nature are what we are really born to understand. Deeply understand. It seems so much easier, up there in the mountains, to understand life, to accept it for what it is, to want nothing more than what it offers.

I don't mean to trivialize nature. A life lived in nature is hard, difficult, often short, frequently pained. Yet, for all that, our species did not evolve for cities, but for the wilderness. And part of us shall always be asleep in the city.

Some years ago, when I was new in Colorado, I frequented a coffee shop near my apartment that was the hang out of kids from the local high school. Consequently, the first 200 or so people I met here were almost all of them between the ages of 15 and 19.

Several of those kids befriended me, and took to inviting me on road trips, or to parties, sleep-overs, concerts, plays, movies, rock climbing expeditions -- just about anything and everything they did together.

I came to know over time perhaps a 100 young men and a 100 young women, some of them quite well. And it seems to me that I noticed a difference between many of the young women who had fathers and many of the young women who didn't.

In general, the difference was this: The fatherless women were less self-confident around men than the women with fathers.

For instance: The fatherless women were less likely to assert themselves. They were less likely to let men know what their boundaries were. They were less likely to be strong individuals around men.

On the other hand, the fatherless women were more likely to be relatively obsessed with their boyfriends. They were more likely to be emotionally dependent on them. And they were more likely to cling to relationships in which they were being abused.

It seemed to me that one thing fathers tend to do for their daughters is help them be self-confident when dealing with men. Does that make any sense?

We should accept who we are.

That is so easy to say and so difficult to do.

It is difficult in part because society makes it difficult. Much of society is geared towards helping us be just about anything -- except who we are.

Perhaps you couldn't care less about prestige, but you have a job in which it matters that you drive a prestigious car. You know you are going to work harder to buy that prestigious car. And you know you are going to sacrifice the vacation to New Mexico in order to buy that luxury car. In one way, it's worth it. Who cares if you have to make little compromises like that every now and then? What matters is you have a job you like. If it means you need a prestigious car for the job, so be it.

Yet, in another way, the example is more disturbing. It's not just about that one car we don't want. It's about the way society so often expects us to be someone we are not. Today it's a luxury car. Tomorrow it might even be a job we don't really want. And the day after, something else. The danger is that sooner or later we have made so many little compromises -- and sometimes big compromises -- that it's become a habit with us to act like someone we are not. People loose themselves over the years in a thousand little acts: In a thousand little compromises between who they are and what society expects of them.

Society isn't the only force that often works against our accepting ourselves. Not by far. There are many other factors too. You could write a whole book on the problem of society alone. But if you wanted to be truly comprehensive, you would need to write whole companion volumes on other factors as well.

You cannot clip the wings of a falcon and still have a falcon.

That should be a lesson to lovers who would try to clip each other's wings. You can call a clipped falcon a falcon and say it's the same bird as before, but you are only deluding yourself. In truth, your flightless falcon is only similar to the bird it once was. Why don't we see this?

A large part of the answer is language. We think we have the same bird as before because we call the bird by the same name as before. We call it a falcon when it could fly, and we still call it a falcon when it cannot fly, so we think we have the same bird. Yet, the bird behaves differently, we interact with it differently, we experience it differently. If we went solely by what we actually observe -- and did not rely so much on language to tell us what we should observe -- we would concede that a clipped falcon is not the same bird as an unclipped falcon.

I have seen in my 50 years that many lovers try to clip each other's wings. Perhaps they think they can clip each others wings and still have the same person as before; the one they fell in love with. Yet, every so often, those lovers wake up one morning thinking, "He's changed. I don't love him anymore."