You Are Nothing More Than A Pebble On The Beach

I admit that I probably am too much of a romantic, given my rough-and-tumble background.  But, walking along the beach near my cottage yesterday, I couldn’t help noticing, not the endless wave-driven layers of pebbles blanketing the sand, but the variety of pebbles in the collage.  Millions of pebbles.  No, more like hundreds of millions.

Our lake is unique.  Lake Winnipeg has been gouged out of the landscape by Ice Age Lake Agassiz.  It left a sizeable depression in the prairie, making it the third-largest Canadian freshwater lake, and the eleventh largest in the world. But Lake Winnipeg is found right along the dividing line between the limestone rubble and bedrock of Manitoba/Saskatchewan and the pre-Cambrian shield granite of Ontario.  Accordingly, on the sandy beaches of this lake, we find an eclectic mix of pure quartz, feldspar, mica, slate, shale, granite and limestone (fossils included).  Each rock type has a different density than the other, and different flaws, strengths, cracks or fissures.

I picked up stone after stone for nearly an hour, examining these rock fragments that had been buffeted by the same water, the same ice and the same wind and rain as every other pebble on the shore.  Not one was the same as the next.  Nor did I expect them to be the same.  Yet, I could not help marvel at two things:  1) How supposedly the same items, in the same environment could be so uniquely different and 2) How we generally look along these lakeshores and see sand, or rock or water, as a conglomerate, but fail to appreciate the differences in each granule, and the beauty in the individualism.

As hard as rocks may be, they are eventually shaped into something special and different.  Yet, as fragile as we humans are, we expect that everyone will think like us, agree with us, and conform to our standards and beliefs, regardless of their backgrounds, the buffeting they took through life and their particular toughness or weakness.  We expect others to be us, but resent it when they usurp our special place in the world.

Anyone in a medium-sized family can attest to the truth that no two children – even those born as identical twins – end up precisely the same.  That is because there are nuances in the way that they experience life, the way they are treated and the information that they absorb.

Don’t believe it?  Step into your living room, and take a picture.  Now go to the other side of that room and take another one.  Upload them to your computer, and examine them.  Do you see precisely the same thing in the same way in each picture, or is everything viewed from a different perspective?

The problem with each of us is that, no matter how close we may be to another, each hears and sees the world from that specific vantage point.  An identical twin talking to her mother in the kitchen may not be heard by her sister in the next room, or the mother’s response may be missing a key inflection of the voice, or the nuanced hand gesture that went with a comment.  So now that twin has a unique experience that impacts uniquely on that person.  It is the proverbial Chinese cliché regarding the beating of a butterfly’s wings.  Everything thereafter has been altered, regardless of how miniscule the change may be.

In our own lives, realization of that impact of minor adjustments to experience is critical to finding our oasis in life.  We all need to seek out, not our neighbour’s dream, but our own.  We are special.  We are unique.  We have ideals and aspirations that we may not have fully understood, yet.  But to attempt to mirror the supposed successes of your friends is only to invite discouragement, when you discover that it is not as fulfilling for you as it seems to be for someone else.

Your co-worker has a Lexus.  So you must need one, too, to be happy.  Your doctor vacations in St Kitts.  So you must go there, too, to be a success. You read about this life of excitement living in the Far East, so off you go, only to find that you are lonely and disheartened, because your family and friends are more critical to your enjoyment than you realized.

You are nothing more than a pebble on a remote beach.  I, too, am nothing more.  But, for me, that is more than enough, because I have learned that, being a pebble, I am unique, individual, marvellous and irreplaceable.  So are you!

Lead a Life That's Fulfilling, Not Filling

Many of us are dissatisfied with our lives, but have no idea how to change.  Many of us, too, have no idea that we are dissatisfied, but we wake up lethargically, plod through the day, plop ourselves on our couch after doing the mandatory dinner, and fade off to a restless sleep.  We don’t live: we exist.

Of course some of us are driven.  We work hard and long. We strive for material acquisitions – the markers of success.  But they are markers only for external observers.  Inside, we still plod, intent on achieving and acquiring, but not knowing what our target or where our finish line is.  Indeed, the finish line keeps moving, and we are forced to continue the marathon of hopelessness.

It is not reaching the pinnacle that creates dissatisfaction: it is not knowing that we have reached our pinnacle, or, worse, that we are climbing the wrong mountain.

When I was twenty-two, I married for the first time.  For the three years that the marriage lasted, I climbed four rungs in the corporate ladder, built my own house, purchased new vehicles, new RV, new furniture, and so on.  I started my own business, while still working full time.  I went to night school to obtain a diploma in Business Administration.  All this, to prove to my father-in-law and myself that I could be a success, beyond what he had achieved.  And, all that, simply because he had the lack of class to tell his daughter that she could do better, that I would not amount to anything. 

So, I succeeded, financially and materially well beyond what he ever achieved, in less than four years.  But, more importantly, I failed myself, and I failed my wife.  Material success meant no time for any social interaction or family time.  In the end, I learned that money really meant nothing to me, and that the milestones and markers that others set for me were worthless and insignificant.  I needed to find my own route to becoming a whole “me.”  That learning process did not come quickly, cheaply or easily.  It has taken a lifetime, but it has been the most valuable (make that invaluable) acquisition that I could have made.

It is simple, yet difficult to discover and implement the strategies that are most fulfilling in one’s life.  There is a huge difference between fulfilling and filling.  Like an obese man gorging on food, we can fill ourselves and still not feel fulfilled.  Mountains of toys, gadgets and luxurious material possessions can fill our lives, but create a void inside us.  How we define fulfilling may vary, but it rarely is defined by measurable, visible markers.

I live a minimal lifestyle, by choice.  Having built multi-million dollars businesses, I have achieved.  Having hit rock-bottom financially, I have failed.  At the same time, when I owned those successful businesses, I was a failure, and when I had no money, I was a success.  The difference is that, by allowing external forces to determine what we see as success, we give away control of our lives.  When we willingly live a Spartan lifestyle, we may (but not always) take back that control, and that feels like success to me! 

Locus of control: internal versus external.  Pop psychology often defines one as the willingness to blame and give credit to outside forces for events in our lives, from Satan to God, from other people to events themselves controlling us.  Pop psychology defines internal loci of control as taking credit and blame for every thing that impacts on us, from the way we respond to the world to the way our behaviours, in turn, control the world outside. 

How ludicrous is it to suggest that Satan made me kill someone, while God made my favourite team win the big game?  If we believe our religious teachings, we have free choice, so to blame or give credit to God, Allah or the devil is preposterous.  Similarly, to suggest that, because I did something that I shouldn’t have done at work, my wife or child became ill suggests that I overinflate my own significance and power.  In truth, balance in belief is necessary.  We – all of us -- need to see ourselves and the world more dispassionately, and acknowledge that, at times, we control events, and at others, events occur regardless of our impact. 

The very first step in achieving a greater level of true satisfaction in our lives is to recognize that, when it comes to measures of success and greatness, it should not be what others think or see about us that matters, but we see in and think about ourselves that counts.  However, that inner assessment needs to be tempered by understanding that we are a part of, not the centre of the world around us, and that we have a role to play in the outside world, while it has a role to play inside us.  We need balance, and we need to establish equilibrium between internal and external loci of control.

The next step in achieving an enhanced level of true satisfaction is to separate what is needed in our lives, from what is wanted.  That, for most of us, is the hardest step.

Yes, I live a minimalist lifestyle, and drive an eco-friendly Prius.  Yet, I do not begrudge those that drive Hummers and own lavish homes.  Each chooses his own route.  But to own the Hummer because others will think you to be successful is as equally weak-kneed as living as a minimalist because all your friends think better of you for it.  Those choices should be a matter of internal reflection.

In my book, The Last Drop Of Living, I described the steps to living simply.  The methodology by which we de-clutter our living space, enjoy less more fully and simplify the world around us can be applied effectively to increasing our satisfaction levels in life.  It may not be tough, but it likely will be challenging; like giving up all sweets in your diet. However, the key and inaugural step in reaching that level of comfort in your life is straightforward.  Recognize and acknowledge that you can take control of how you see life and the world, while also accepting that many aspects of the world cannot be altered by you. Tackle the areas that are important to your feeling of wholeness, and refuse to be channelled by those outside forces that should not impact on you.  Accept responsibility and gain freedom in the process.

Newton Was Wrong: (Human) Bodies Do Not Tend To Stay At Rest!

Newton postulated that a body at rest will tend to stay at rest.  Witticisms aside, that principle clearly does not apply to human beings.  Rest is merely a reprieve from living. Those of us that seek to stay at rest are not seeking that oasis in life that allows us to feel fulfilled and satisfied, but are seeking to avoid the challenges that interaction with the world demands.  Yet, many of us describe our idyllic oasis in terms of doing nothing!

In my articles on finding your oasis in life, I have focused, to date, on self-realization.  Self realization principally enables us to recognize who we are, what we want and how we relate to the world around us.  It is self-actualization – the endeavour to become the best we can be – that provides the fulfilment necessary to being comfortable with ourselves and our lives.

In the early 1900s, Abraham Maslow proposed his hierarchy of needs.  This schematic implied that the most basic needs must be met before we could hope to climb the eight-rung ladder to self-actualization.  More recently, psychologist Steven Reiss suggested that there are sixteen basic desires that all of us seek to satisfy.  Psychologist Clayton Alderfer revised the Maslow model, and formulated his Existence, Relatedness and Growth theory.  He subsequently added in a regression component, saying that, when higher needs such as self-actualization and self-esteem needs are not met, we redouble our efforts to achieve lower-level needs.

These theories all imply that humans have needs that are ongoing, and that we, internally and externally, seek to have those needs satisfied.  We all, therefore, are seeking that oasis where we can regroup and renew our attempts to reach self-actualization.

Ironically, as we near the self-actualization level, our concerns begin to focus more on our role in the world around us, and our perceived needs begin to give way to the needs of others.  Social responsibility becomes one of those integral elements in self-fulfilment.

Many people, altruistically, place others well ahead of themselves.  My mother, for instance, would sit up into the wee hours of the morning from September to December, making presents for children who needed to have a Christmas gift.  She ached to provide for “those people who are less fortunate.”  However, she failed to consider herself to be one of those less fortunate, even though our household income never exceeded $3,000 in a year, our 450-square foot home sheltered six family members, one of the rooms in the house had no floor, and she was dying of cancer.  Others came first, for her.  Most of the year, she lived an embittered existence, but, as Christmas approached, she found her oasis.

As I was preparing this article on motivation and self-development, I took time to view a documentary on Harry Belafonte.  I was in the midst of writing about achieving self-satisfaction.  But the documentary changed that focus, dramatically.

In one scene, a starving child lay passively, as flies crawled over his gaping, listless eyes.  And I was thinking of how we should seek out tranquillity?

In another clip, Belafonte and Martin Luther King struggle to make the Kennedys understand how unjust the treatment of blacks in America was at that time.  And I was considering ways to escape from the world around us, to alleviate the angst and stress?

Neither Belafonte or King reached the point where they could say that they were satisfied.  King never saw the progress that he stimulated.  Belafonte has never been satisfied to say that he has done enough.  Yet, each reached a point in their lives that very few of us ever even strive to reach.

Finding your oasis, consequently, should not be about finding a level where one can be at perpetual rest.  It is not human nature.  Finding your oasis must be as much about enduring the travails of the desert, so that one can pause, look around for a few moments and say, “I’m ready to continue my journey of being a better person.”  Without satisfying those higher-level human needs, we are doomed to continually attempt to slake our human thirst to be better by turning to our more base, self-serving needs.  That, in turn, makes us no better than the animals around us.  Our oasis can only be found when our focus is on being a better person, and a better part of humanity.

Your Bad Day Rarely More Than 5% Bad!

www.robertflee.com
So you think you’re having a bad day?  Perhaps, the worst in your life!  Hyperbole aside, bad days rarely are truly bad.

Think of your morning commute.  A fifteen-minute delay in traffic.  Perhaps a rude driver cuts you off.  10 seconds, at most. That’s a mere 910 seconds out of a day of 86,400 seconds. The “bad day” has consumed no more than 1% of your day.  However, the delay puts you in a foul mood for the entire forty-minute drive, and the first half-hour of your workday. In turn, you snap at a couple of coworkers, and may make a mistake or two because of your elevated stress levels.  This consumes another ten minutes to correct. You’ve added eighty minutes of “bad” to your bad day!  Not only that, you’ve helped to ruin a few moments of your coworkers’ days; perhaps even more than that.  One percent has become 6.6%, very quickly. 

Still, if your “bad day” has no more than six or seven percent negative in it, that’s far from disastrous.  93% is still okay to great, if you adjust to the circumstances.  Unfortunately, many of us let the bad moments fester, and our day goes downhill.  It is all a matter of attitude, and yours is leading to unpleasant experiences.

In 1986 (June 6, to be precise), I had a relatively bad day, that started at about 10pm.  At that time, I was heading to my house with my children.  When I arrived, I found the door locked.  A moment of stupidity followed, where I pounded on the leaded glass window of the front door.  Hard.  Very hard.  It broke.

My arm went through the glass, and then the glass went through my arm, with a sharp spear about six inches long in the bottom of the frame slicing into my forearm, precisely at the wrong point.  My instant, reflexive reaction was to pull back.  That raked the flesh, muscle, tendons, nerves, artery and vein back toward my wrist for a distance of about five inches, into a messy pile.  Blood spurted like a wildcat oil well.  My hand flopped wildly back and forward as I flinched.  That was bad.  Less than three seconds, and, including the angry moment, less than thirty.  Out of 86,400.

Now that bad day had potential to get a lot worse, with the vast amount of blood I was losing.

I rushed into the house, to my dresser (or, more precisely, to the last drawer in the dresser that did not contain my wife’s clothes.  Ripping open the drawer, I grabbed one of my cotton tee shirts to use as a tourniquet, wrapping it tightly around my forearm, and slowing the flow.

I thought it was my tee shirt.  My wife, unknown to me, had commandeered my last drawer, and I had used one of her white tops.  I heard about it from her.

This still had potential to be horribly bad.  I needed to get to the hospital, quickly.  And my wife was screaming at me for ruining her $15 top!  That was when the fun started, as I saw it.  It even seemed grotesquely funny at that moment!

My wife had been home, but was disinclined to unlock the door for me.  The good luck was that she was in the company of a friend, who saw the urgency, quickly got me back into my car and drove me toward the hospital.  On the way, we intercepted a police car, heading for, of all places, a snack shop.

Local police generally are not supposed to transport emergency victims to the hospital.  They are to stabilize the patient, while summoning the ambulance.  I was not going to wait.  I was able to get out of my car, and made my way to the cruiser, opening the rear door myself.  The police re-entered the car and looked at me.  Didn’t put the car in drive, didn’t look to help this profusely bleeding individual.  Just looked at me, one by turning around, the other in the rear view mirror.  I knew my colour was pale.  But when I fell against the side of the door in weakness, the male cop turned more white that I could ever have been.

“Drive, drive, drive,” he screamed at the female cruiser pilot.  She drove.  That, too, was funny.

Within eight minutes, we were at the hospital emergency entrance.  However, neither cop seemed to have the strength or will to get out of the vehicle and assist me.  Both, now, turned to stare, terrified, at me.  I was trapped in the rear, bleeding to death.  I could feel the air conditioning start at my feet and well up my legs.  I could not release my grip on my left forearm, largely because I could no longer feel my hands.  The top of my head felt air-conditioned.  I knew what was happening, and, somehow at that moment, the absurdity of the situation was not particularly funny.  It was, in retrospect, but not at the moment. 

My good luck was that the cops had forewarned the hospital that I was arriving.  An orderly was waiting at the entrance, and, after a minute, stepped forward to let me out of the car.  The cops sat there, and as I looked back at them, they were staring in revulsion at the bloody mess that I had left behind on the rear seat.  I found that slightly amusing.

As I was wheeled to the intake desk of this newly renovated emergency area, I took note of the bright carpet in the area.  So did the intake nurse.  She gasped, when she noticed the blood that I was dripping onto the carpet, and quickly wheeled me onto a linoleum-covered area.  That, I confess, was morbidly funny, and I pondered why any sane  administrator would put down carpet in an emergency entrance.

The rest of the night was a mix of bizarre, tedium and graveside comedy.  The only doctor-in-residence on shift that night came in an hour after I had been wheeled into a quiet area, a compression bandage applied, and painkiller offered.  I had declined, because I absolutely was terrified of needles.  The doctor entered, lifted the compression bandage briefly, shuddered, uttered “ugh,” and left.  I never saw him again!  That was both absurd and somewhat frightening. Ten hours later, at 8 am, my plastic surgeon arrived to begin the reconstruction.  He was introduced as Dr. Robert Grafton.  What a marvellous name for a reconstructive surgeon!

Nine hours later, I saw him again, as I emerged from the anaesthesia.

“What kind of job did you do?” I asked him.

“Not as good as you,” he replied.  It was intended as humour, and I laughed.

The next day, I met my roommate, who had been asleep when I had usurped his territory on the ward the previous late afternoon.  He was a marvellous character, who had had his left elbow shattered by a baseball bat when he went to the assistance of a young man who was being beaten by several attackers.  From his left ear to the tips of his left fingers, he was a beautiful, translucent purple, with the skin so swollen that it looked like the balloon that was his arm would pop any second.  He spent a great deal of time on Demerol.  Anyone who calls the centre of nerves at the back of the elbow a “funny bone” should discuss that choice of words with my roommate at the hospital.  I felt pain just looking at the injury!

That was Sunday morning.  The entire weekend had been a Monty Python marathon on television.  We both, it turned out, loved Monty Python, and we both devoured episode after episode all day, well into early morning.  Neither of us bothered with any painkillers, from early Sunday afternoon, until the next morning.  We laughed so hard, so long, so loud that the nurses frequently came into the room to threaten to evict us from the hospital. It was not that other patients were being disturbed, as our door was shut.  It was merely that the staff wanted to be part of the experience of these two patients, supposedly in extreme pain, enjoying the night so fully and vivaciously.  That day was one of the best that I had had in years, throughout my crumbling marriage.

I learned from that accident that I can do a great deal with only one hand, and practised for months at improving those skills.  Prior to the accident, I loathed sales.  Because I could not return to my old occupation for many months, I took training in sales, and became a very successful salesperson. 

I found, most of all, that bad days – even as supposedly terrible as June 6, 1986 – most often are not bad.  I had less that 2% of my day that could be categorized as “bad.”  I saw a lot of unique situations, and even enjoyed a lot of laughs along the way.

The day would have been bad, if I had not reacted to staunch the negative flow.  By interacting with positive experiences, my bad day became a great one (albeit mightily inconvenient), and I grew, as a person, as a result of what was supposed to be a bad moment.

Before you let that jerk who cut you off ruin your day, and the days of those around you, think.  How many seconds really have been ruined?  Then get on with enjoying the rest of your day, even with its few not-so-great moments.  Have a great day!