A Mount Diablo Morning

Today has been a busy social day, and I'm not a social person. I had breakfast with some friends, then stopped at another friend's open house, then met some people through meetup.com. It was a lot of people time, which is what I think I have to do if I ever want to meet a man ("You have to get out there"), but it wasn't really what I wanted to do, and I didn't meet any eligible men either.

At breakfast, the woman sitting next to me didn't like blonds - I'm a blond. I have blond hair like my Russian father, who looks like his Russian mother, who looked like her Russian grandmother... This woman recently lost her husband in a motorcycle accident. I understand that she's struggling with grief, and sometimes when we grieve, we revert to our "base emotions". We are more reactive, and less reflective. I understand she's struggling, and hurting, I just didn't want to be the brunt of her hurt.

People like to remind me all the time that you create the world around you, and I believe it, mostly. I don't believe I created myself sitting next to a grieving woman who hates blonds. And later at the open house, when no one wanted to talk to me, I didn't create that either, but it hurts. It hurts when you go to a party, and the host is busy, and the guests are talking, and no one wants to talk to you. I'm always alone, so the couples who are always sitting or standing within a fingers length of each other, do not want to talk to me. I'm a blond after all, and I'm alone. I was showing some cleavage too - OK - that I created! I'm sure they thought it would be better to ignore me. I don't believe I created that. I ended up having a good time, but I wonder why people are so unfriendly - especially at a party - when we are there to celebrate. No, I didn't create that either.

The highlight of my day was driving to the breakfast. When I turned onto highway 680 going south, the view of Mount Diablo was spectacular. The thin clouds above the mountain opened up to let in the sun that was hidden above them, resulting in beams of ethereal light streaming through. Each beam of light focused on a different part of the mountain: the blond hills, the Black Diamond mine, the peak. For just an instant the light, gentle, warm, and loving, reminded me of the presence of God. Reminded me that God is all around us. And I am part of God, and this world.

For only a brief moment, which had nothing to do with people, I was moved by light shining through the clouds, on a mountain, on a morning before the rain. Simple. I wish I had more moments like that. Moments when I felt so connected to the earth, to life, to what really matters. Moments when the color of my hair, my sex, or my smile don't result an imagined betrayal by others.

I don't think I'm asking for much in the world: respect, appreciation, love, health, happiness. Of all the people I met today, I felt separate from most of them, but the air, the clouds, the sun, the beauty of nature embraced me and made me feel whole, if only for an instant. And never in that instant did I think, I created this. But I loved being a part of something, and the feelings that ran through me from seeing one instant of spectacular beauty. It is my choice to remember this moment, to see true beauty, and connect on a deep, spiritual level.

The Opportunity of Death

I recently found out that I have to have an ovary removed, but why not remove the other one too? I had breast cancer and it turns out there’s a connection between breast and ovarian cancer. No ovaries, no risk of cancer. No ovaries! It has felt like a death sentence ever since my oncologist first mentioned it. The idea of taking something in my body and removing it, makes me feel like I'm dying. I imagine my ovaries in some red plastic pan, casually dumped into one of those containers that has printed on it “Bio-Medical Waste”. The cyst on the ovary isn’t big, but it can also cause cancer. Maybe it’s time.

At least it’s time to think about the opportunity of death. Tonight as I was leaving work the wind made a sad sound through the dried stems of dead leaves still clinging to the vine on the parking structure. I thought I heard the sound of death, and I said to myself without hesitation, “It is a song I have heard all my life.” I’ve had a lot of hardships. More than anyone I know. When you lose something in life it often feels like a death. Or when we face something new, there is that feeling of “I’m going to die!” But we make it. We make it when we come to school for the first time and have no friends, when we fall in love and the person doesn’t love us back, or the love ends. Endings are a death.

Death is something that is unknown. Even when it’s good, like when a horrible boss dies and your new boss is great. It’s still an unknown. There’s still grief and fear, “How did that happen?” “Why?”… It’s really that way with life too, we just see the good as an opportunity and the bad as, death, unlucky, cursed… Death can be an opportunity too. A time to re-evaluate what matters. Also a time to let ourselves be completely vulunerable and get comfortable with that.

A friend noted on facebook awhile ago that he felt so good when a stranger helped him, even more so than when friends had helped him. I tend to think that’s the magic in life – that’s one true example of how we are all connected. It's a testimate to another unknown - how life works.

If I feel like there’s a loss happening in my life from losing my ovaries (I say "losing" like I had them in my Hello Kitty purse and I mistakenly left it in the woods while I was brushing snow from the face of my doll). The fact is, I don’t know what’s on the other side of not having ovaries. I don’t know what’s on the other side of losing my father, or what I was going to do when my best friend carelessly forgot to care about me recently. What I do know is that of all the horrible, and I mean absolutely horrible things that have happened to me, I have gotten through. I am changed though, and I’m changed in a way I had no idea of would be changed. It’s all a death, but it’s also a growth. The more I think about it, I’m not sure which one it is more: death or growth.

When I look at life like this, I feel like a grownup: someone who can manage complex issues. But I think I’m more of an evolved person, who has decided that my attitude makes a bigger difference in life, and this attitude is up to me to create. I also see a spiritual side in all this: Being in a place of not knowing creates a lot of fear in us. Now, if I can be in that place and not be afraid, I would find a power within myself few really know.

In her book, “The Places that Scare You”, Pema Chodron describes the teaching of fearlessness in this way, “To the extent that we stop struggling against uncertainty and ambiguity, to that extent we dissolve our fear. The synonym for total fearlessness is full enlightenment – wholehearted, open-minded interaction with our world… By learning to relax with groundlessness, we gradually connect with the mind that knows no fear.”

If I can relax with the groundlessness of my decision, of “why me” of “why now” and the feelings of loss, then I can evolve, to the other side of fear. Like tonight, when death once again sang its song... a sad song blowing through the dried stems of dead leaves on a vine circling the parking structure. I follow the music and I take the hand of uncertainty. On the other side I will find some peace, maybe others like me, and soon things will seem familiar. So familiar that I will cling to it all again, if only for a very short time, before I hear that song that reminds me, it’s time to let go.

Five Good Friends

A wise woman recently told me, “If when you die you have had five good friends, really good friends, you will have lived a rich life.” I agree with her. These days, when “friends” are simply the numbers that you collect on your Facebook page, I realize how precious good friends are. The kind of friends you can tell anything to, “I have cancer”, “I feel so alone”, “I’m a sex addict”, “I’m broke.”, “He doesn’t love me.”… And that friend will listen, care, even help, and then they stay in your life despite the darkest fears that shadow your soul.

How does anyone find these friends? So often I find women who I think are amazing, only to find out later, they were just pretending. One friend I had, Maddy, was so much fun, had a great personality, and had sex with all these guys, even though she was married. I was single and I never met men, but she could not stop meeting them. I wish she had given me some advice or support or encouragement. There could only be one love life, and that was hers.

Recently, I let a friend go named Cathy. She seemed to have a lot of soul and depth, but it was just an act. Again, the only person who mattered was her. When it came to me needing her support because I was moving and depressed, she didn’t care. And that was supposed to be OK with me, but it wasn’t. I spent so much time with her, and I thought she was kind, but she became as rude as her mother accused her of being. One year of my time and energy gone, for what?

How do you keep friends? I care about my friends, no I really love, yes love my friends. But I don’t get that back. I feel a lot of uncertainty from friends. They aren’t willing to extend even a complete sentence between us to create a bridge of acceptance. Why? What will happen? When I’ve been in love with men, I’ve never regretted it. But women are so insecure about friendship. And they lie. They pretend to be who they think you want them to be. And they want you to pay attention just to them. That's not friendship. Not the friendship I want. The only person I want to answer to is myself and God. I sound so high-minded, so idealistic, then where did I go so wrong with people? How did I go so wrong with finding friends?

The one good friend I’ve had for a while now, has a husband who simply cannot control his desire to make fun of me in some way. I think anyone who needs to put another person down is unhappy with themselves. Let’s just state for the record what we all know: He doesn’t like himself. And I know that by how he treats me. Fortunately, I see him only once or twice a year and the last time was just recently, so at least for awhile I have one less person who wants to dump on me the ugliness they feel inside.

It doesn’t seem like enough: Five good friends in a lifetime. I don’t think I’ll find that many. I wish I could say I already knew that many friends who I could trust to hear these words and really understand me. Understand how lonely it is to be without close friends. Not husbands or lovers, but good friends. I find people are caught up in their “doing” and “done” “I’m doing this now. I did this last week….” It doesn’t matter that much. I wish I knew, how I could find one person who wants to stay in my life, allowing the time together to pass. I’d like to see that friend look at me and know that they see the person I know myself to be. A good friend. Someone who takes the time to listen, to care, and to stay friends with me, through our lives together, no matter what.

Signs of Life

More and more as I drive around town I see people on street corners holding up signs exclaiming an amazing sale I shouldn’t miss. Some days it seems these people are everywhere. Each time I see one of these sign holders I think, “That is life.” That’s why I look, because that person is a living human being and I can see their light that is life. But then that’s my choice. I think most people see these sales people and think less of them for having a job that makes them stand on a street corner instead of working in a plush office.

I will never stop wanting to gaze at the miracle that life is. In a world where so much importance is put on things, these people remind me that first, we are all people. We all need to eat, sleep, we need love, hope, we all dream of a better life for ourselves and our families. How can we ignore that in each other? How could we put things above the light of a human spirit standing before us?

I often say to myself, “I want to shine.” I want to shine in my job, in my writing, in playing tennis - I want my light to shine in this world. And when I see the light shining in myself, I see it shine brighter in others. The light that is within us is in all of us all of the time, but it is up to us to become conscious of that light and consciousness is a choice. How easy is it for all of us to judge someone on what they have? Using things to raise ourselves above others is all about the ego and its need for recognition. But the ego is only looking out for the ego. Awareness and consciousness rely on our higher intelligence and our ability to derive meaning. In turn, it feeds our spirit and with that our ability to be compassionate.

The word, “Namaste,” which is a common greeting in South Asia can be translated into "The light within me honors the light within you." When was the last time you saw the light of someone? When was the last time you saw the light in yourself?

As the days grow shorter and we move into the holidays, the darkness calls on us to look at the light inside ourselves to share it with those we love and care about. We can make a conscious choice to see the light of life in others, by simply recognizing that their light that shines in this world. All of us are miracles. All of our lives matter. The signs of life are all around you, if you choose to see them.

It's What You Say

People can be very clever with what they say and think they are making you believe that they are their words. Recently, a woman at work told me that she had a stronger work ethic than me. She said, “I would resign myself if I wasn’t doing my best.” She mentioned this when I was talking to her about a problem I was having with another coworker. It was clever of her to slide in an arrogant remark, meant to impress me and insult me at the same time. When I started talking about my cancer she said, “That’s treatable.” She made it clear that she knew everything. In what she said there was always a wall that kept her arrogance far from my humanness. And she did it all with words. It was simply what she said.
I belong to a support group of cancer patients. It’s been one of the most amazing parts of having cancer because I have become part of a community. We help each other, we laugh together, we try to solve simple and complex problems, We share our fears, joys, successes… This exchange of thoughts and feelings creates a deep, rich, wonderful connection that is so satisfying. By sharing my deepest feelings and by others sharing theirs, we experience "intimacy" as group. I feel like they actually know me and I can’t say that about many people. Yet, at the same time, I know very little of the superficial things about them. Everything is turned around: We are close in the closest ways, and superficial in the superficial things. We don’t ask each other what do you do for a living or what kind of car do you drive or where have you traveled to this year – those things don’t matter – such things will never create a real bond between people. This group provides me with the human experience I wanted in life – to share real feelings and completely be myself with a group of people where we all accept each other for who we are.
When my mom died a friend of mine gave me a book on grieving. I was in such shock that I was in shock that I didn’t really know how to deal with her death, but the book was exactly what I needed. I took time to cherish that my friend, “Gave this to me to help me. She wants to help me.” Knowing I had a friend helped me feel safe in the face of death, but to have a friend who really thought about me, what I needed, what it must be like to lose a parent, a friend who wanted to help me, was the start of my healing process. It was like someone had wrapped a blanket around me and said, you are going to be OK. And I could believe it because of her friendship had already helped me.
Words are an important way to communicate, but communication more than the words we say. The words have to show what we mean, what our intentions are, and show some truth about us. Those things are a big part of what we say and easily forgotten when the speaker conveys certainty or demands attention. One of the blessings of cancer for me is that I can better see people who just use words as a means to convince me of something, usually some lie. The woman who said she had a better work ethic than me, spent that afternoon clipping her nails at her desk. She isn’t fooling me or impressing me with statements about who she wants me to think she is. She appeared unbelievable, unreliable, and selfish. She did help to remind me that I want to share my life with people who have experienced life, who live richly, who value people, honor the individual, and who stand behind the words they say.

Why Are Things Like This?

You know that we are dying. I think about it more since I was diagnosed with cancer. Because I think more about dying, I think more about living and what I want to make of my life. I suppose there's still time for a once-in-a -lifetime love, a moment of greatness, or even a chance to change the world. It's this last one I want so much: the chance to make a difference. I think about that as much as life itself. But what happens for me is, life gets in the way.

I just found out that I owe almost $2000 in taxes. Then there's a bill for my recent mammogram, another bill for a visit with my surgeon, and another bill for a visit with my oncologist and I have to pay all of these because they are part of my deductible. Why are things like this? How can it be that in one moment I owe thousands of dollars that days ago, belonged to me? I have health insurance, I save money, I'm barely part of the middle class, but this immediate demand for my money, not to mention my regular bills, rent, new tires for my car... has made me feel completely overwhelmed.

It made me think how easy it would be to become homeless. After all, rent is my biggest expense, and without a job, I couldn't pay for any of these expenses. Did I mention it's overwhelming? Then I go back to the cancer, and how this moment is really the only moment we have. I had a glass of wine, a sweet Riesling (it's been in my fridge since last October), ate a healthy dinner of salmon, rice, and broccoli, and had a kiwi for dessert with a bunch of chocolate and I laughed. I laughed about my house being a mess, I laughed about this cold weather, I laughed about another movie staring Angelina Jolie, I laughed with my father over a long phone conversation, and to myself, and I told myself everything is going to be OK. It's going to be just fine. I have to keep thinking about my health and being well, not being too stressed, and just being alive. It's really something to just be alive. In our day-to- day existence that's where we make the greatest difference - from how we treat others to how we treat ourselves - we affect those around us and the world around us. I don't know why things are like that, but when I see the world this way, I am happy with the way things are right now.

Tales of Narcissism

Sometimes it seems like everyone is a narcissist: "Look at me!" they say. I honestly believe that these are the most boring people in the world. It's as if the more a person thinks they are the best, the more boring they are. Recently, I was interviewing a man about his past. He rewrote my notes, for grammar, and it turns out that past tense and present tense were the same to him. He constantly contradicted himself, but if I pointed this out, he'd raise his voice and talk in all capital letters. Did you know that the louder you talk the more correct you are? I could not wait to get out of this arrangement that I had made, and it wasn't easy. He walked me to my car, rubbed his finger on a spot of bird poop on my car's windshield and licked his finger. "I have more I could tell you!" He said. Although he was an elderly man, I really felt like I was leaving a child. It was awful. I can't even trust if what he told me was true because he was so narcissistic. And I thought he'd be reasonable.

Later, I got an email response from my aunt. I had written her to tell her I was thinking about her and just wanted to say hi. She wrote back and wanted me to know that her grandchildren are in the 98 percentile of the smartest children in the nation. Who cares? How has that ever made a difference?! Did Gandhi make this claim?

I spent the rest of the weekend hiking. What a contrast the clean, spring air was compared to the shouting of a self-centered, grouchy old guy and... I could hear my own voice, and see the world for myself. I could walk as far away as I wanted. On my path were so many amazing things: a grey squirrel sitting on a post eating a nut, a rough-skinned newt walking carefully through the tall spring grasses, blooming buckbush that smelled as sweet as time that only the sky can measure. I saw flowers that were red and shaped like Christmas trees growing in between ferns. It was all so beautiful. And it meant something! It mattered! It is a place we can all go to and enjoy. It is a place I will always seek out when I want to see what is right in the world, especially when everything and everyone seems so very wrong.