Waking Up for Life

Today I was in my happy place: walking along the beach ankle-deep in the surf on Sanibel Island on a sunny, warm day…As I walked along the shoreline, looking at the vast ocean (Gulf of Mexico) and open, clear blue sky, I practiced with the Five Remembrances. I’ve written about Buddhism’s Five Remembrances before, and I continue to practice with them almost daily…There is one phrase that really stands out for me in this particular setting:

“Everything and everyone that I love is of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.” (Sometimes it’s written: “no way to escape losing them”.)

Read the whole essay …

“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree, and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying, ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so, I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.” -Ram Dass

Over the past week, I watched both the 2025 movie Nuremberg and the older 1961 movie Judgment at Nuremberg, each depicting the trial of various Nazi officials and judges before the International Military Tribunal. Both movies did a good job of presenting the complexity of that effort, asking the nuanced question of who was aware of and responsible for the actions of that regime. At one point in the trial, both films showed actual footage of the worst of the atrocities committed in the name of patriotism and nationalism. That footage was very difficult to watch. Chilling. Horrifying.

It made me wonder, and the films wondered this too, what conditions led to that widespread capacity for such cruelty and disregard for human life and dignity …

The drawback of assumption-making

I used to have a dismissive if not disapproving attitude toward ChatGPT – the AI-driven chatbot (technical term) so widely used for fast information gathering. What can take hours of Google searches and link-following can now be done for us and delivered in a clear, cohesive, and hopefully mostly accurate readout. It’s just scraping the internet for information related to the question or topic you present, and there is a lot of data out there to be scraped. It laces it together in a personable conversational manner. It good-naturedly asks, “Would you like me to expound on x, y, or z part of your question?”

My attitude was dismissive because …

I’ve been thinking about that energy of wanting, of craving, of leaning forward into what’s not here, the energy of grasping after and clinging onto, of holding on tightly so things don’t slip away. This is sometimes called desire, but I like using the word thirst …

Someone suggested that I write a follow-up to my last essay about my unexpected arm pain, and let you know how things are now, several weeks later. So many of you expressed concern, which was lovely and kind – thank you!

After the initial week of severe pain all down my right arm, and seeing two doctors, it was thought, best-guessed, assumed, that what I had was an inflammation of the nerve bundle in the shoulder, called the brachial plexus, that controls the arm and hand. Maybe there was a shoulder impingement as well. In any event, the steroid I was given was a miracle cure. After six days of taking it, the pain had significantly decreased, and I could use my arm again, carefully. After another week, the pain was completely gone and has remained so to this day. Of course, steroids are not to be taken lightly, but in my case, this gift of modern medicine came through for me, and I am grateful.

So, what did all this teach me?…

I woke up the other morning and couldn’t move my right arm without wrenching pain. What is this?? I wasn’t aware of hitting it or injuring it, but something happened in the night, and now I couldn’t use my dominant arm. The day ahead included flying, then driving, to a mountain village in Colorado for a family celebration for several days. The celebration was beautiful, as were the mountains, but my arm got steadily worse. When we returned from the mountain town to a bigger city, a visit to urgent care suggested I had damage in the nerve plexus that controlled my arm. They gave me a sling and some medication and sent me on my way.

What was interesting to me about all this was the experience of life without the use of my right arm; it had to be completely immobile or I’d have searing pain…

I must note that this essay is not particularly weighty or profound, and when the world is burning, anything less than profound seems downright irrelevant. But, every once in a while, it’s good to come up for air and swim in the waters of the more mundane with a little amusement toward oneself.

Indecision. Does this plague you as much as it does me? What is behind this compulsion to weigh each option over and over? Fear of making a mistake? Fear of missing out (FOMO) on the thing not chosen? Fear of imperfection? …

Have you ever wondered exactly what a weed is? Even if it flowers, we still don’t call a weed a flower or buy a bouquet of them. I looked it up - a weed is merely a plant that is unwanted. It’s entirely subjective. I love this quote from cyberspace: “A weed may simply be an unloved flower.”

I have some lovely flowering bushes in my yard, which are very pleasing to the eye. However, some of these beautiful plants seem to have sprouted other plants in their midst that look different, like they really don’t belong there. They are not at all pleasing to my eye. But why not?

Is it just because of my belief that they don’t belong there? … Is it that they disrupt the homogeneity of their host plant’s space? Or is what I believe ‘the right way’ the yard should look somehow spoiled by their presence? …

One afternoon, during my recent self-retreat in Sanibel, FL, I sat outside on the deck to read, and I noticed a colorful bug about three inches long, which Google later told me is an Eastern Lubber Grasshopper. I decided to just watch and see what he (or she?) did. He did nothing. Well, every couple of minutes, he would wave one or two of his front legs in the air, but not move from his spot there, affixed vertically to the wooden railing.

I began to wonder about him. What was he doing – digesting a meal, sleeping, wanting to find a mate, sensing into where he could hop next, or was he just … being? What would that be like? …