Showing posts with label kindness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kindness. Show all posts

What I Stand For

An online community I participate in regularly offered up a probing question of the day recently: "What do I stand for?". 

Such a powerful question! I have a feeling this isn't a complete list, but here it is so far:

I stand for kindness: To myself, to others, to the earth and everything that lives on it.

I stand for justice: The recognition that we have had generations of injustice and deep, compounding harms that mean some people start out in a hole dug by official policies and actions and face a steeper climb than others. (Here's a graphic from the LA Metro Design Studio that illustrates equality, equity, and justice much better than the one you may have seen with kids shut out of a ballfield. I don't use the kids-on-boxes graphic, which still leaves the kids outside the fence.)

I stand for accountability: For recognition of my own privilege that I didn't understand until I started unlearning and relearning, and for what I do with that privilege to make a difference. (A couple of my blog posts on privilege and bicycling: Riding Thoughts: Privilege is a Tailwind and Privilege and Biking: It Takes More than a Bike Lane to Start Riding)

I stand for mother love: For my daughters. my stepchildren, and former stepchildren I'm still connected to, and for encouraging them to grow into themselves, not some version tied to what I think they should or shouldn't be or become.

I stand for love: My love for my husband, and every human being's right to love who and how they love.

I stand for friendship: For being someone who is there for hard times, not just fun times, and someone who nurtures friendships with time and attention.

I stand for engagement and connection: In my neighborhood and community, in policy and politics, in philanthropy and volunteering, in the everyday connections I can foster by connecting people to other people, resources, and ideas.

I stand for freedom: For the right to control our own bodies, for the right to be who we are in the world without fear.

I stand for environmental action, both personal and systemic: That is, I make individual choices to live more lightly on the earth but I know that even if everyone did the same we can't offset the actions of corporations and governments that engage in widespread damage and policy decisions that make things worse, rather than better. I'm fortunate that my professional life enables me to truly make a difference and gives me a wider platform, I vote for people who will move us forward toward survival as a species, and I shop locally, including food, to support local living economies.

Fundamentally I stand for making the world a healthier and more equitable place for all: Both close to home and far away, I support with words, actions, and cash the people and organizations making a difference.

Years ago I wrote a post about the 4-H pledge that somewhat relates to this question.

I expect to keep pondering the question and may come back.

What do you stand for?

Related reading:

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Walking in March: Of Woods and Work

My February walk in the rain forest at Lake Quinault involved soaring trees, mosses, quiet trails, and the sound of water. And guess what—I have all those within a 15-minute walk from my front door. 
Photo looking up through a circle of tall evergreens at blue sky overhead

Well, technically not the rain forest label. But we're fortunate to have found a house very near Squaxin Park, which offers up over 300 acres of woods, a mile of shoreline, and trails that wind through and connect to offer any number of ways to wander.

Back up over two years ago to when we still lived in Seattle, in a corner of the Top Hat neighborhood with no sidewalks, no big natural park within an easy walking distance. 

Photo at the junction of two paths in the woods coming together at a V. Large ferns cluster at the base of the tree trunks. When the pandemic struck the state of Washington before any other state, our governor and the state agency I work for responded swiftly. In my journal I noted March 10, 2020, as the first day of 100% working from home. 

In those early days as we pivoted to the online work world we needed to figure out ways to stay connected and stay up to date on the unfolding emergency. Our leadership instituted a weekly call for senior managers. Each call ended with encouragement to make sure we were taking care of ourselves and our coworkers while we continued to serve the people of Washington under enormous strains and shifts. The call often ended with the words, "Be kind. Be kind to yourself, be kind to others."

One of the ways I found to do this was to make that particular meeting a walking meeting. Now, usually a walking meeting involves walking and talking with other people. I had those other people with me via the headset I wore as I walked laps around the outside of our house, carrying my phone so it could count my steps.

This got me moving if I'd been sitting or standing too long in one place, staring at the screen and typing typing typing. It also made me a much better meeting participant. Why? Because while I was walking and listening I was only walking and listening. I wasn't reading and answering email with half an ear attuned to the meeting. I wasn't trying to multitask, which isn't even a real capability of the human brain. I was being kind to myself.

Photo of a small water feature made of wood and stone with water falling into a small basin. Evergreen trees, shrubs, and other undergrowth stand behind it.[Side note on my various forms of privilege that show up in this story, including my ability to buy these homes: I fully recognized then and know that my ability to stay home, warm, fed, and powered relied on the work of thousands of people who kept going into workplaces, being exposed to a virus we didn't understand for which we had no vaccine, and dying at higher rates than those of in these white-collar desk jobs. It still does, they still are, they still do, and I don't forget that.]

Just over three years later teleworking is still my daily reality. Our agency goal is to maintain a high percentage of teleworking so those of us whose jobs lend themselves to that format continue to reduce those vehicle miles traveled by not traveling them at all. I could go into the office occasionally if I wanted to, but the building is mostly empty; it doesn't have the "juice" of those chance hallway conversations that enrich our work by giving us a new idea or an insight into a different way of thinking about what we do.

Photo of a large tree in front of which a plywood stand holds a beige rotary phone mounted vertically and a sheet of paper that explains the phone. At the foot of the pole holding the phone, a thick scattering of rose petals and a variety of small objects cover the ground. Walking meetings are also still part of my work life. I select a meeting that doesn't require me to view a lot of slides on screen, although I can actually look at those on my phone if I need to. I put on that headset and head out the door. Within a few blocks I'm in the woods, listening with focused attention to the meeting content and resting my screen-worn eyes with the trees overhead, the water below the little footbridge, the offerings people leave at the Telephone of the Winds in memory of loved ones who have died.

Another way I make walking part of my work life while being kind to myself: Occasionally on a lunch break I put on a podcast and head for those woods. Listening to smart people interviewing interesting guests on a variety of topics yields some of those insights, those new ways of approaching a topic or a scenario that I might have gained from a hallway conversation. I listen to some that are quite obviously "about" work, in that they focus on transportation. Others that aren't transportation-focused stimulate my brain with new knowledge. I'm stepping away from that direct task focus and giving myself permission to let an idea or a question simmer a while before coming back to pin it down. 

Photo looking up from below into two purple flowers with the blue sky behind them.

This time of stepping away is a critical part of brain work. Einstein is famously said to have come up with the Theory of Relativity while riding his bicycle.* The movement of my body through space and my brain coming along for the ride may not yield world-changing science, but it makes me feel better, think better, live better. I'm balanced between woods and work.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.  
— Albert Einstein

Related listening
Don't tell the hosts, but I don't listen to every episode of every podcast I'm subscribed to. This list is a sampling; over the years I've subscribed to others and the list is ever-evolving. What am I missing that you think is a must-listen, and why do you think that? What makes it a good companion for a walk?
*Snopes says there's no attribution for this Einstein statement about coming up with the Theory of Relativity while riding his bicycle. But the American Museum of Natural History included it in their Einstein exhibit so I'm going with them. Their description of how the insight ties to riding a bike makes sense to me: "No matter how fast Einstein rides his bike, the light coming from his headlight always moves at the same speed." Snopes says the statement about how life is like riding a bicycle is a paraphrase of something he wrote in a letter to his son Eduard dated Feb. 5, 1940.


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Walking a Path

In the span of three days, in three different books and websites, I read these three quotations.

The path is what happens--
it is not an end in itself.
In order to walk the path,
you have to become the path.

̶ Gary Snyder

When we are fully on one path, we are indirectly preparing another.

̶ Ryúnan Bustamante 

No matter what you do, no matter what happens,
it is impossible to leave the path.
Let me say that one more time:
No matter what you do, no matter what happens,
it is impossible to leave the path.

̶ Teddy Macker, excerpt from "A Poem for My Daughter"

I didn't go in search of statements about paths. You might say that without seeking the path, I found the path.

That's what happens, isn't it? You're proceeding along living your life. You turn around and consider what lies behind and there it is: the path you made. Short. Long. Direct. Circuitous. Branching. Rocky. Smooth. Monotonous. Scenic. 

Whatever it is, it's yours. Making the path that brought you to this point made you who you are. 

I imagine we all have pieces of ourselves we leave behind, and other pieces we wish we could leave behind. When I think about choices I wish I had made differently I have to remind myself that no matter how often I might think about something that happened or something I did, that doesn't change the past. It doesn't change the path I created. It brought me to who and where I am now. I have become the path.

If on the whole I like who I am now I have to recognize that I am this person because of everything on that path. Everything. 

If I am kind today it is not only because my mom emphasized kindness. It is also because at times I was unkind and I remember that and am ashamed. I don't spend time beating myself up for those moments. There is no point in being cruel to ourselves; the world does enough of that for us. I simply take the lesson learned: "Be kind. It is who you want to be and how you want to remember yourself when you look back at this moment from farther along your path."

More than one writer has said something along the lines of, "We find what we look for." That is, if I want to review the path behind through a framework in which I consider myself a person who makes mistakes, I'll definitely find mistakes to dwell on. If I want to review it through a framework in which I consider myself a kind person, or a caring person, or a person who likes to try new things, I'll find those moments as well. 

What's on the path that I enjoyed and that I want to experience again as I move forward? What are the qualities I have acquired coming to this point in my life that I want to reinforce, and which qualities do I want to consider setting down and leaving behind? What path am I preparing?

Related reading




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2018 Blogging in Review

January: I started 2018 off with a post on a topic I often return to: Kindness Matters. I was then perhaps less than kind in taking apart some sloppy reporting and misunderstandings of crash data in A Bit of a Rant on Data + Data Rant Continued: What a Tangled Web + Slice and Dice Data Rant: Who's Really Number One?

 One of the highlights in January: Attending the TRB Annual Meeting for the first time after years of conference envy created by the #TRBAM content I saw via Twitter. A second highlight: Discovering that my social media work had become data points in a research project.

February: As "The Grey" continued (what passes for winter in Seattle) I chose to think back to bike rides I've enjoyed and look forward to more with Washington Counties Challenge: A Statewide Bikespedition To-do List, then updated my musings on modal advantages with Bike, Transit, Car: Three Transportation Perspectives from Seattle.

March: Bike challenges get rolling in March thanks to errandonnee and I spent some time pondering the nature of public commitments, which really worked for me this month:
Oh So Challenging: 'Tis the Season to Track Your Riding
Keep that Streak Going: #30DaysOf Something that Matters to You
Errandonnee 2018: The Initial Plan
Keeping Another Streak Going: #30DaysOfYoga
Errands by Bike Are a Breeze (and Sometimes Breezy): Errandonnee 2018

April: Why 30 Days of Biking? (Or More) -- because Surgeon General Warning: Bicycling Can Be Habit-Forming and because Beating the Bus, and Other Bicycling Benefits. A couple of posts on the WSDOT blog about getting ready for National Bike Month: Bikeways Aren't Just for Bicyclists and Clean Sweep: Trail maintenance on the list to prepare for National Bike Month, major events.


May: I rolled into Bike Month with a game -- Play Bike Bingo! Great Excuse for a Bikespedition and a report on 30 Days of Biking 2018: Rolled All April. And then it was vacation time on a bicycle tour with my sweetheart, with a side of Reclaiming Yoga.
On the Road Again: Getting Ready for a Washington State Bike + Ferry + Train Vacation
Day Two: Mukilteo to Port Townsend
Day Three: Port Townsend to Port Angeles
Day Four: Port Angeles to Lake Crescent
Days Five and Six: Lake Crescent to Victoria, BC


July: I looked back on the bicycle tour with Bike Tour Planning: (Relationship) Lessons Learned So Far and examined one aspect of what crash statistics tell us in The First Question Is Always WHY? on the WSDOT blog.

August: Too many instances to count led me to write Event Planning 101: It’s Transportation + Accessibility Information, Not Parking Information. In a gentler mood I looked at how my reading habits have evolved with technology in How I've Been Reading.

September: This month was packed with travel to conferences so if you want to know what I was thinking and learning, search Twitter on @barbchamberlain and any of these hashtags: #bikeshareconference #walkbikeplaces #aashtoAM (and check out my November post below). Meanwhile I did squeeze in a call to update our usage in Hey (We’re Not All) Guys! Why I Don’t Use “You Guys”.


October: Social media takes so many hits that I decided to provide a different take with A Little Love Note to Twitter. Just in time for the State Trails Conference I published another goals list, Trails in Washington State: A Bikespedition Goal. Toward the end of the month I couldn't resist updating 13+ Reasons Bicycles Are Perfect for the Zombie Apocalypse (and Other Disasters).

November: Thanks to Better Bike Share Partnership and the North American Bike Share Association, video from the national bikeshare conference enabled me to create a transcript of my closing plenary speech in Give Your Power to Truth: What Story Are You Writing for Your Life?. As we rolled into the Season Of Overeating an evening hosting #bikeschool on Twitter inspired Happy Holiday + Awesome Alliteration.

December: We're back into The Grey, although it's strangely sunny in Seattle today with blue skies. Given the usual winter wetness this month I offered up how-to winter bicycling tips in Wheeling through Winter, Riding in the Rain: Bicycling Gear ABCs to Keep You Rolling. My Bike Style Gift Ideas: Three Products I Love and Why I Love Them post is good any time of year -- tuck it away for inspiration around birthdays, Mother's Day, Valentine's, "Just Because Day" gift-giving.... And like many others I put together some of those Big Thoughts for the end of the year in #BikeIt: What’s On Your List? and More or Less.

Looking back on the year reminds me of posts I meant to write (like a list of books I loved this year) and ones I started but didn't finalize, like some thoughts on bicycling in New Orleans from my trip to Walk Bike Places. That's a good one to run some grey day to cheer me up with memories of bopping along on a bikeshare bike through the French Quarter, eating beignets with Naomi, listening to live jazz, and other great experiences. For now I'll leave you with this moment of Zen from a bike ride on the north bank of the Spokane River.







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More or Less

It's that time of year.

You know, the time of year when we pretend that an arbitrary mark on a human creation for tracking the movements of the earth on its axis and around the sun means we can become a different person.

A whole new you. Shinier. Better. Healthier. Calmer. SOMEthing-er.

As a teen I made lists of the many ways in which I was going to upgrade myself to some impossible external standard really only achievable via airbrushing and lies.

Not that I think there's anything wrong with setting goals or trying to change or improve. But "Live Your Best Life" is a pretty high bar. Exhausting, really. Some days it's a win if it I lived My Pretty Darn Good Life, or even My Reasonably Acceptable Life Given that It's Only Tuesday.

And I'm one of the very fortunate ones. I have someone to love who loves me back, children who bring me joy and some -- ahem -- insights into my tendencies, a job I enjoy that I'm good at and in which I make a difference, a solid home, easy access to healthy food, clean water to drink and hot water in which to bathe, transportation choices, an extended family and friends who can give help if I need it -- on and on. So much goodness. So many things that make my life easier rather than harder.

Mock road signs on a pole. top sign: White background, arrow pointing right, word MORE in black. Bottom sign: Orange background, arrow pointing left, word LESS in black. Blue sky with puffy clouds in background.
I'm not going to make resolutions with a capital R. As Betsy says (I quote Betsy pretty often), if you think of something you want to change you could just do it now, not wait for January 1 as if that date has some kind of magical quality.

I am going to make some lists of More/Less.

More forgiving. Less absolute.
More realistic. Less all-or-nothing.
More pragmatic. Less puritanical.

Like this:

MORE              LESS         
Salad                 Sugar
Moving             Sitting
Mindfulness     Impulse
Kindness           Judging
Sleep                 Late-night reading

This is a start and doesn't include every idea I had in thinking about this structure. What would you put on your version of this list?

 Related reading
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Kindness Matters

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." While the source of this quote is a bit fuzzy the meaning for me is crystal clear. The world could use more kindness.

It's an underrated virtue, one thought of as weak. But I think it takes strength to start from a place of kindness. It's much easier to react, to be defensive (or offensive), to respond either like a pillbug that rolls into a little ball or a porcupine with quills a-bristle in every direction. Any of these responses lets you stay focused on you.

Most people have things going on about which you know little to nothing. These invisible realities affect how they think, act, and speak. We in turn respond based on our own invisible realities. This can become a downward spiral of assumptions (you remember what you make when you assume, right?).

What if instead we approached interactions grounded in kindness? What would that change in ourselves, in others, in the world?

I find that when I act grounded in kindness I'm happier, and there's research to back this up. So hey, you can selfishly be a kind person and it's not an oxymoron.

When I start from kindness I give people the benefit of the doubt. I rephrase a question in an email before sending it to eliminate the negative connotations in a word choice. I ask if someone needs help, whether they're looking for an address or an item in the grocery store. I smile with sympathy at the parent on the bus dealing with a tired, cranky child and give "peekaboo" a shot to see if it works; I've been there, it wears you out, and the last thing you need is total strangers looking at you as if you're a bad parent with a bad kid.

It can take time and effort if it's not your usual starting point. Even if it's a common "setting" for you it can still get lost if your defenses go up or someone comes at you with their hair on fire. If it's not already a reflex or if you're in an especially challenging situation kindness requires mindfulness--that moment in which you take a breath and think before reacting so you can choose your response.

Kindness isn't just something for other people, either. The concept of "ahimsa"--compassion or non-violence--includes compassion towards oneself. It's like putting your own oxygen mask on first; you can't help someone else if your own air supply isn't flowing.

There's a quotation attributed to the Buddha about happiness that for me also applies to kindness: "Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."

How does kindness show up in your life? Are you kind to yourself? To others? How can you increase the overall kindness levels in the world?

Related Reading

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The Words You Speak

I wasn't going to immortalize this exchange because it's the kind of thing I'd rather forget. It didn't add to the stock of positive energy in the universe, except maybe a very little, at the end. I couldn't tell.
But then these three quotations came my way and I thought I'd tell the story. Maybe one day when you're inclined to snap at a stranger you'll remember this instead of your mom's admonition about sticks and stones.

"The words you speak become the house you live in." --Hafiz, Iranian poet
“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.” --Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
"My father would say profane words proceed from a profane heart, kind words from a kind heart, and loving words from a loving heart." --  Ron Sims, former King County Executive and Deputy Secretary of HUD

I was riding home from work on the Burke-Gilman Trail, heading toward north Seattle. The trail is great but lacking in signage in a few places to tell you what street you could get onto if you left the trail at a particular spot. In several places the street that intersects the trail has a name, not a number, so you don't know how far north you've gone unless you've memorized the map or you pull out your smartphone.

Thus it was that I left the trail at a paved intersection with a quiet street, knowing I'd passed the spot where you can leave the trail around 93rd but not sure whether I'd gone as far as the streets that climb, brutally steep, toward 123rd, which I wanted to avoid. The streets I faced had names, not numbers, and wound fairly steeply upward, but didn't seem to be as bad as I remembered being the case at 123rd the one and only time I've encountered that spot.

I was pushing my bike as I climbed to the intersection of what proved to be Exeter St. NE and 113th, where a woman stooped, working in the yard of the house at the southeast corner. She straightened her back to look at me.

"Is there a way to get up and over?" I called, gesturing over the hill behind her.

"What do you think?" she said abruptly, pointing to the Dead End signs.

Taken aback, I responded, "Well, I just thought I'd ask."

"Can you read?" she demanded. (I wonder now how she would have felt if I'd said no at this point. Adult illiteracy is not vanquished.)

"Yes," I replied patiently, already turning to push my bike up the hill to my left, away from those signs and from her. "It's just that sometimes they're a dead end for cars but there's a way through for bikes."

From behind me I heard her say sarcastically, "Only in Seattle."

I pushed my bike a few more yards, then called out, "Have a nice day!"

A bark of laughter came from behind me--whether she was startled into recognizing how her tone had sounded or laughing in disgust I don't know.

I pushed my bike to the top of the rise in front of me. As I prepared to mount and keep climbing I hesitated, thinking about going back to introduce myself by name and explain that I'm still relatively new to that part of town and learning my way around. I thought that perhaps if I put a name on the encounter she might not react that way to the next person with a bike who climbed that hill and asked her for directions.

It's so much easier to be mean to someone in the abstract than when the person is right in front of you holding out a hand, so much easier to see a label rather than a person if you don't know someone's name.

But I really didn't want to face that meanness of tone, the absolute absence of any hint of kindness toward someone asking for a tiny bit of help in the form of information. Although she was a complete stranger the encounter stung; the tone seemed so out of proportion to my simple question and I'd been having a really great day up to that point.

As I rode I imagined reasons for her to sound so crabby. There's no signage at that point on the Burke-Gilman so maybe she fields a lot of questions and she wishes people would figure out their routes before they get on the trail.

This was shortly after we'd had some high wind and maybe she was dealing with downed limbs and clutter and seething about the yard work while I was out enjoying a bike ride (albeit one caused by working on a Sunday).

Hey, maybe she's even recently widowed and it used to be her dead sweetheart who dealt with this sort of chore so she's mourning that loss while she rakes leaves.

I can come up with a thousand of these excuses when someone seems to be acting out of a very negative space because I really don't want to believe people are acting deliberately when they're like this. My husband will tell you I do the same thing when we're driving somewhere and someone passes us driving recklessly. "Maybe he's on the way to the hospital, honey." (I attribute this response pattern to my mother, who often made empathetic remarks about the kind of situation that might prompt someone to behave in a less than optimal way.)

Of course, thanks to the magic of the Web I can look up the address for my encounter and discover that someone just bought the house in July of this year, paying almost three-quarters of a million dollars for it. The house has 5 bedrooms and 3+ bathrooms. With its proximity to the trail its property value is higher than homes farther from the trail and it's already worth more than she paid for it. None of which apparently was making her happy in the moment of our encounter, however....

I told myself to forget about her. Regardless of the reasons behind our respective attitudes, I was clearly having the better day. I don't know her story--it could be far worse than anything I imagined or it could be she's just like that to everyone, all the time, in which case she is very, very lonely.

Either way, I'll take "Have a nice day!" over "Can't you read?" any day of the week and remember that when I speak, I'm creating a little piece of someone else's world, just for a moment.

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A Life Manifesto. Or, as Oprah Would Say,

Live Your Best Life

For me the word manifesto has distinct political connotations. Wikipedia backs me up on this. Seeing it these days attached to “life” as in “life manifesto” has felt a bit funny, even for someone like me with a long history of political awareness and engagement. Am I supposed to nail my 95 political beliefs to the door somewhere? (Confirmed as a Lutheran in high school—can you tell? It didn’t stick though.)

But then hey, it’s the new year. Time for a fresh start and all that. Resolutions? Nah. Too trite, too frangible, too much effort followed by guilt. Manifesto? Hmmm.

Mousing around yesterday I encountered Gwen Bell’s piece on preparing your life manifesto. A lot of these pieces have you creating visions of the future life you want to lead, very specific goals (which have to have deadlines to count as goals), or the life list/bucket list of things to do before you die (the ultimate to-do list with the Grim Reaper running the timer).

Her article is no exception. It does have fun options from the artsy-craftsy magazine collage approach (Eldest Daughter is all over this one) to the techno-enabled Lululemon Goaltending free worksheet for goal-setting.

These all have a fatal flaw for me (plus Eldest Daughter has all the good magazines at her new apartment). They seem to be about doing rather than being. We are human beings, not human doings.

Rather than the to-do list approach I think it’s more useful to have a to-be list.

As in, what kind of person do I want to be? Then I will just be that person in whatever “doing” circumstances life happens to hand me or I develop myself (which, as I’ve pointed out here and here, I have a tendency to overdo).

Another way of describing this list is as a set of values.

My career and life pathways may explain my preference for this kind of manifesto. Setting out without any specific career goals beyond “I’d like to work in publishing” and “I think politics and public service matter” with my two bachelor’s degrees from Washington State University under my belt took me to some amazing and wonderful places: VP of a (really really) small publishing company, the Idaho state legislature, short-time history teacher and later chairman of the board at North Idaho College, grad student, and my current role of nearly 13 years heading up communications at WSU Spokane, where we’re building the health sciences/medical campus of the future despite the rocky economy.

I usually describe my career path as serendipitous. Then I go on to say that serendipity is what happens to people who are paying attention. The readiness is all, as Hamlet noted, whether your personal sparrow is falling today or next year.

If I had started out with a really specific career goal and focused only on that I might have missed some wonderful opportunities. Being open to the possibilities and saying yes when it scared me a bit has had tremendous value.

The key linkage between things I’ve loved doing—serving in public office, teaching, communicating, drumming up support for bike commuting and active transportation—is that all of them require that I master a body of specialized knowledge and information and communicate about that content persuasively to other people in an effort to convince them to support a specific action or direction. That’s me. So I’ve got the “doing” part of Barb Chamberlain pretty well nailed.

The upbringing I received from my parents is worth a post of its own. That and all I’ve learned from all this doing have shaped my to-be/values list. The kind of person I want to be—and on my best days am—will (for starters):
  • Pay attention and give time to the people I love. Every day.
  • Understand the impact of my actions and purchases on the environment and choose to live lightly.
  • Care about the living conditions, earning power and families of the people who make things I purchase and choose not to exploit people who aren’t lucky enough to live where I do.
  • Think about the well-being of my community and the ones around us and invest my time in organizations and efforts that make this a better place to live.
  • Treat every person with the dignity and respect we should accord each human being and create meaning in relationships.
  • Be kind.
  • Add value.
  • Breathe.

Or, as someone much wiser than I explained it, I will strive to live with right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration (the Buddhist Eightfold Path, for those who may not recognize it).

Note that you can’t cross these off and be done with them. A to-be list is much, much more challenging than a to-do list.

Your turn

What am I missing? What kind of person do you want to be, and how will that shape your doing?

Related posts:
Bonus item: A really relevant cartoon that is posted on Flickr (c) all rights reserved so I'm just linking, not embedding.

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Yet another 11 little secrets

Read this post by Christopher Penn (@cspenn) and this post by Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder), then come back. With one exception noted below, these are right in line with what I do to feel happier and healthier. In fact, they were so good it was hard to come up with 11 new points here….
  1. Give the gift of time to things you care about. It’s easy to click a link to “like” someone’s statement on Facebook, become a fan of a page endorsing a political position, or hit the retweet button on Twitter. It’s more difficult to haul yourself down to City Hall to testify or show up for thankless committee meetings for a fundraiser to help feed people. Your effort input provides one of the multipliers in the psychic reward calculation: More in means more out. If you’re motivated by payback in the form of a paycheck, consider that you might end up connecting with a job working on whatever it is you care about through establishment of a reputation as a hard-working volunteer.
  2. Choose to be amused. Life is full of warts, wrinkles and speed bumps, any one of which can trigger grumping and growling. Or it can trigger a wry smile, a shrug, and an “Oh well, things happen.” Entirely up to you. Laughing is a whole lot more fun than sobbing any day of the week.
  3. Eat vegetarian. You may not want to become a vegetarian the way I did several years ago, but by making room on your plate for more plant fiber and less muscle fiber, you’ll lose weight (if you don’t go crazy on the cheese sauce), lower your fat intake, cholesterol and blood pressure, decrease the size of your carbon footprint, and discover amazing new taste sensations. Your mom will be proud, too.
  4. While you’re at it, eat real food. I already blogged about this, inspired by Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. If you’re eating meat, buy it from someone you can look in the eye and get meat that doesn’t give you a dose of antibiotics and growth hormones. Shop the outside edge of the grocery store and you’ll cut down (way down) on cost, sodium, weird chemical-ly additives you can’t pronounce and don’t understand, and packaging waste that you pay to have hauled away from your house.
  5. Ride a bike. Regain the feeling of freedom you had as a kid, when those two wheels meant you could get somewhere under your own power instead of waiting around for an adult with car keys. Even if you don’t make it your primary form of transportation, you’ll probably be amazed to learn how many destinations lie within a mile or two of your home if you live anywhere in or near a town. (If you live in the ‘burbs you might have to go a little farther to find a destination—that’s a choice you made. But little coffee shops and your local library might well make a pleasant loop on a Saturday afternoon.) Sure, you can walk—I’m all for walking—but if you’re the impatient type you’ll appreciate how much farther and faster you can go on a bike.
  6. Schedule time with friends.  That’s right, I said “schedule.” If you leave it to chance your calendar will fill up. So don’t leave it to chance. I had the incredibly sad experience recently of losing a dear friend who was far too young. I literally had her name on a list in my Outlook Tasks (yes, I’m serious) labeled “Set coffee or lunch” because I hadn’t seen her in a while. I was too late. She was inspiration for a girlfriend group I started up years ago that’s still going strong and so many of them have said how much they like having a regular time on the calendar to sit and talk. Make a commitment.
  7. You love people. Tell them. We tend to reserve “I love you” for our romantic attachments. If you’re like me, there are special people in your life you love for all the gifts they’ve given you: understanding, a sympathetic ear, advice that grounds you in who you are, side-splitting gut-busting laughter, late-night discussions over a glass of something nice. Yes, it took the death of a friend to remind me of how short life is. Don’t pass on chances to tell people  you care about how deeply you appreciate having them in your life.
  8. Sing even if you’re lousy. I’m betting it’s been a while since you sang just because you felt like it. Don’t be shy. Unless you’re regular in attendance at some sort of religious service or you get paid for your awesome pipes, you probably have few occasions to sing. Some people sing along with a radio or iPod—that totally counts since I can never remember all the lyrics to songs I think I know. I live with two daughters who have beautiful voices that leave me in awe when they sing. They did not get this ability from me.  Nonetheless I sing (granted, sometimes with apologies for my unplanned key changes).
  9. Slow down. If you’re eating something delicious don’t fork it in as fast as possible. You’ll get more flavor sensations if you stop between bites. If you’re driving, time the difference in one of your usual trips between driving over the speed limit (you know you do it) and observing the speed limit all the way there. Bet you’re not cutting as many minutes off as you think you are. If you’re reading an amazing book (I’m really guilty of devouring books rapidly), stop a minute to reflect on how the author managed to create such vivid scenes. If you’re about to send an angry email—this one’s a biggie—stop, reread it, and think about how you’d feel if you were the recipient instead of the sender. Savor the flavor.
  10. Smile. At people you don’t know, neighbors out in their yards, the guy who holds the door for you on your way into the store, the person behind the customer service counter who’s going to sort out this whole gnarly warranty mess you’re holding. Smile when you’re on the phone—it makes a difference in your voice.  I already said you can choose your response to life's hiccups, but this is about the physical act of smiling. It appears that our brains actually "listen" to our bodies to develop our mood and emotion, so smiling when you’re not cheerful will help you cheer up. (Seriously—there’s research on this.)
  11. Be kind. As I've said before, this is a lesson I learned from my mother. There is too little kindness in the world. Add to the supply.
  12. (Bonus item!) Create your own version of “what I did on my summer vacation” that does not involve electronic communication. Do it. I took a long blogging hiatus last year. The list of things I did instead of hanging out excessively online reflects my idea of the good life. You have your own. Live it.
In case you ignored my original directive because you wanted to plunge straight into the awesomeness that is my blog, here are those two posts again:
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3 Things My Mother Taught Me

My mother turns 88 today—September 13, 2009. Born in 1921, she grew up through the Depression, taught school, married a dashing World War II bomber pilot and hometown boy, raised six kids, had a brief stint as “Mother Trucker” working with my dad in a truck dispatching office after his retirement from a lifetime working for Potlatch, had some seasons as a snowbird heading to Death Valley with Dad and going on an Alaskan cruise—and got dementia.

Now everything from her long life is gone, except for her love for my father.

The number of her children and our names and faces: Gone. When I visit, my father does a good job of saying hello in a way that reintroduces who we are and how we fit into her life. She always smiles her best hostess-y smile when we arrive, but it’s clear that she doesn’t really recognize us.

Her actual age and what has and hasn’t happened already in her life: Gone. Sometimes she refers to her mother , dead in 1986, as still living. Sometimes she talks about whether or not she and Dad should have children since they haven’t had any yet. Sometimes she’s living in Spokane, although they’re in Lewiston. Sometimes she lives in the big house they used to own outside Lewiston, instead of in the dementia unit at Guardian Angels.

What she just said and where a normal conversation would go next: Gone. I like to describe it as running a lot of laps around a very short track. (I've written a bit before about what this is like. This means I'm repeating myself. This is of some concern.)

Her looping would be familiar to anyone who has spent some time with a dementia patient. As soon as she finishes a sentence—if she does, and if she uses English rather than throwing in a few Klingon words created by the strokes that cause her dementia—she might pick up that thread of thought and start all over again. And again. And again.

Fortunately, the thing she repeats more than anything is how much she loves my father and how well-suited they have been for each other through nearly 65 years of marriage. She repeats things about how they met or things they did together, and often gets those right: “He was always such a good dancer,” with an arch look and a smile.

If she has to forget everything else and repeat just one essential element of her life ad infinitum, at least it is love.

This essay is my birthday present to her, although I don’t know if she can still sustain enough cognitive continuity to read much.

How sad that makes me, when she turned me into an incredibly fast, retentive reader with her teaching skill. She posted names of things on flash cards all over our house so that I learned to see words as entire and intact units, rather than painful constructs of sounded-out syllables. This makes me a good proofreader because I know at some subconscious level that the shape of the word is wrong, even before I can tell you where the typo is.

The best gifts she gave me, though, were lessons in how to lead my life. Because of her, I have these qualities:

I’m a feminist. She told me stories about my grandmother—to be told here another day—to illustrate why I should be able to take care of myself as an independent woman before I married. Admittedly, she did assume I would marry and have children. Her wish for all her children was that we have a marriage as happy as hers (we all got there eventually).

I believe in service to my community. Long before I ever heard of the notion of privilege or paying it forward, my mom gave me both those concepts. She told me how lucky I was, to grow up in a home with two parents who loved each other, plenty to eat, never any fear of losing the roof over our heads, a college education.

More important, she told me there are lots of people who don’t have all those things and because of that, they may not be able to do and be everything they want in this world. So I need to use the gifts I’m given and whatever talent I have to contribute, because I can and because some doors will open for me that may not open for others.

I try to be kind, and I look for the good things that abound. Kindness is underrated in this world. My mother was kind and she taught me empathy.

If we saw someone who had any kind of problem that made life more difficult—say, someone with a disability, or someone who was morbidly obese—Mom said something like, “Oh, life must be so difficult for them. Think what it’s like just to try to go see a movie” (or whatever seemed relevant).

This wasn’t said in a patronizing way—it was said to help us put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.

My mother was almost always cheerful, too, and I have her sunny optimism most of the time. My dear and sometimes brooding husband knows I’m his Sally Sunshine. (Every marriage should have one.)

Thanks to Mom, for me the glass isn’t half-empty, it’s half-full, or maybe you need a glass that’s a different size, or we’ll get something to drink later instead of right now. The lines “We’ll just make the best of it” and “Things will turn out all right in the end” can carry you through many of the bumps in life’s road.

These were good lessons. Thank you, Mom.

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