Patience…

To be patient.

To have patience.

To want more of it.

Except, when you look at the Biblical translation for the word patience, what you find is this definition:

Long suffering.

Makes sense, right?

Patience being nothing more than long suffering; something to endure until the suffering is complete and one is rewarded for enduring it.

You can suffer a little or a lot, but you’re still going to suffer until you get there. To be, to have and to want patience is really an invitation to invite pain with the hope it will be relieved in a big way.

Thus, all of us have patience… just some of us deal with it better than others.

Let’s talk about meditation for a moment.

There are numerous claims about the health benefits (mental and physical) of participating in such a practice, while also sporting hundreds of different claims about the “proper” way to do it. Most of that is marketing as all meditation really needs is a slight image adjustment so it’s not relegated, and associated, to a practice of the whacked out hippies of the 70s.

Or some esoteric practice of monks in the “east.”

Anyway, at its heart, it’s a spiritual practice.

One of many.

And like any spiritual practice that requires both commitment and discipline, it can produce positive results. Which is where the problem of spirituality resides.

The expectation is these practices will physically alter the landscape of reality. Somehow, through enough dedication, you will be able to read minds, walk through walls or heal people instantly with your touch. I cannot remark on the claims of those who say this is true (the story always seems to be about someone else’s eyewitness instead of a firsthand one), but it is a bad expectation to set.

Spirituality alters the way you perceive the world, getting you more comfortable with the vastness of the universe in relation to the minuscule viewpoint of our brief moment of existence. In other words, it puts the world (and you) in a much different perspective.

It doesn’t solve the issues you have, the problems you face or reaction to things that set you off. It can help, but nothing really changes on the outside. It’s all interior and therefore, very personal.

Each person’s mileage will vary.

This is why the mystics of religious traditions veer away from any literal explanation of their experiences and provide poetic metaphors instead.

Spirituality is an invitation for a shared perspective of reality, but it will be experienced in many different ways. It’s worth diving into, as long as you really know what to expect.

…and when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever it want. What do you call it, freedom or loneliness?

Charles Bukowski

Twenty years ago, I moved into a single bedroom apartment in a new city that would become my home.

Before that, I grew up in a busy household with three siblings, two parents and a revolving door of family/guests. There were always people around and having any form of privacy was laughable.

In the year before the move, I travelled across Canada with nine other people where things like privacy and personal space were merely words—much like theoretical concepts in physics. Possible to understand, but never likely to observe it personally.

Moving into a single bedroom should have felt like the freedom I had always longed for and bask in every moment I was there. As an introvert, it’s the dream, right?

Except… I was truly alone.

No friends.
No contacts.
No residence floor of similar people in my position to connect with upon my arrival.

Nobody.

The first two weeks were spent doing a lot of walking and reflecting. A lot of sitting on my balcony and listening to the city. A lot more walking.

Yes, I was incredibly free… but also incredibly lonely.

This was also a time when social networks and data plans (even cell phones) weren’t around to distract an individual from their circumstances. You had to live with it.

Yet, even as I longed for the freedom and silence of having my own space, and kept living in single bedroom apartments, I found myself taking every opportunity to be with people. Eventually I would connect with people, grow my social circle and start my own family.

And even though I enjoyed the freedom of being alone, and even though I long for moments of solitude now, the loneliness that comes with it isn’t worth it.

It’s only through other people that we bring out the best of each other.

It seems odd that in a world where our life expectancy has gone up, automation has made tasks quicker and access to information is instant—we’re running faster than ever.

We’re working more hours, packing more in our days and bombarded with messages about keeping up.

As I prepare for another school year, I look at my curriculum packed with enough content to last years, yet the expectation is to fit it in a semester.

It’s known that stress is the conduit for illness (especially the proliferation of cancer cells), but our solution is to suggest paltry activities crammed within an overpacked schedule to combat it.

At what point do we say enough?

A slower pace of life requires less and gives more. I think it’s time we all move towards it and, more importantly, demand it.

Sometimes the world seems too chaotic and unbearable.

The constant bombardment of how awful the world is and how much worse it’s getting, combined with the dire situation many of us find ourselves in, only exasperates the idea that humanity is at its end.

And maybe it is—who knows?

We’ve only been around for a few hundred thousand years (best estimate) and the way we treat each other makes it seem like that’s long enough. Besides, the universe has no regard for our posturing or grandiose sense of self-importance.

All we can do is the best we can and leave with as much peace in our hearts as we can find.

Go for a walk along a trail.

Sit on a balcony or porch and just relax.

Throw rocks in the water.

Take the time to consider the trail beneath you will change, the air you’re breathing is the same as the monarchs of antiquity and the water you’re throwing rocks in once gave sustenance to the dinosaurs.

Let nothing interrupt your moment while you pause.

I’d like to be one of those people who can say they have no regrets about anything in their lives. I really would.

Unfortunately, I do have regrets.

And every single one of them are times when I lost my temper.

Now, growing up in an Italian household, lost tempers were just par for the course. Emotions always ran high and extreme because… I guess we feel passionate about life? But even in those situations, I still regret it.

There’s a time to be angry, and anger can certainly be used as a fuel to take charge, but to completely fly off the handle never ends with me thinking, “I’m glad I did that because it got a desired outcome.”

Sometimes, they would be over the most menial of things, and the shame of those outbursts afterward would have me shaking my head for days on end. Not once, could I have stopped and taken a breath?

It’s taken an active and conscientious effort to undo this programming, which is still years away from where it needs to be, but I keep going because I don’t want to live with any more regrets. With whatever time I have left, I want to keep going and enjoying every step along the way.

Even if they’re tough.

1. Turn it off.
2. Walk away.
3. Go live your life.

Background: this video, which so beautifully illustrates the problem with nice people and their perception of the world.

Not to split hairs, but I think it’s time we make a distinction between being polite and being nice.

Being polite is a societal ideal in which we should all strive for in order to make the world a better place for all of us to function. It’s a code of conduct, but not a prescription for a particular set of values. You can be a polite person who believes in all sorts of things.

Being nice, however, comes with a few issues.

While I certainly won’t advocate we avoid being nice to each other, I think it needs to come with some pretty clear terms. We’ve loaded that word with a passivity baggage, where being ‘nice’ means allowing others to dictate what happens while you remain silent. It locks a person in with their own emotions, where they feel they cannot express how they really feel because it “wouldn’t be nice.”

As the expression goes, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it at all.”

Okay… but if a person is being an absolute jerk face jerk, you need to say something. Especially if that person doesn’t know they’re being a jerk face jerk.

If something is bothering you, people may be able to pick up on something being off, but no one can read minds. As a former magician, I can testify that if anybody does claim to be able to read minds, or have ESP, you have my permission to roll your eyes at them in a polite way.

Most important, however, is if something is wrong, but people are being too nice to do anything about it, it’s only going to get worse.

I say this as someone who suffered from this syndrome for decades. Having always felt it was too ‘unkind’ to tell people how I really feel, I never learned how to express myself. This is a problem I’ve had to rectify (and continue to do so) after many years of recognizing the problem and working at it.

Sometimes I would over correct and other times I would slip right back into passive mode.

You could see it in my writing as well.

There was a hesitation in the words and an anxiety about how it might be perceived the wrong way. I suppose this is the reason my friends would always tell me my best writing came when I was angry because, well, in my anger I was honest.

Yes, we need more kindness.

Yes, we need more politeness.

And yes, we need to people to be nice when it’s needed.

As any married man will tell you, sometimes (borderline always) you do need to keep your mouth shut and just say ‘yes.’
As a friend, sometimes you need to accept there are things you don’t care for that your friend(s) love.
But overall, as a person, there’s a problem with always being nice and it’s going to hurt you… if it hasn’t already.

Years ago, I was sitting in a Starbucks when a gentlemen at the next table engaged me in conversation. After a few pleasantries, and discovering he was originally from Florida, he asked what I was working on.

“My Master’s Thesis in Religious Studies.”

That’s when he closed his eyes and shook his head. Having seen this many times before, I knew my reply struck a nerve.

“I left the foolishness of Religion long ago.”

He then proceeds to tell me about his upbringing in one of those megachurches his family attended. Growing up, he was always told that if he wanted something, he had to pray for it, and if he didn’t get it—he wasn’t praying hard enough.

Now it was my turn to close my eyes and shake my head.

I have always been extremely skeptical of those megachurches. I have absolutely no time for this stupid idea of the “Prosperity Gospel” (God will reward you with riches if you donate enough money) and I certainly have serious issues with so-called ‘faith healers.’

This gentlemen I was speaking to is the end result of that horrid Theology, which essentially boils God down to this:

A genie that grants wishes if you wish hard enough and appease it with praise.

I told him that if I grew up with that kind of understanding of God and Religion, I would’ve walked away as well. However, there are much better understandings out there and the one I appreciate the most was outlined by a philosopher named Baruch Spinoza.

In coming to my own understanding of faith, it dawned on me that if I’m going to believe in a creator of the universe, something so unbelievable massive and beautiful that we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s out there, I’m going to need a bigger God than what I was taught.

Enter Spinoza who presents God as the sum of all the natural laws of the universe and the substance of which it is all made of, rejecting the idea that God is some identity or creator just waiting around to intervene for some humans on a single planet who want a new pair of shoes.

To understand the natural world, essentially, is to understand God. “God or Nature” being the operative quote.

There is a lot more to it (and it’s very unfortunate his philosophy has often been ignored for hundreds of years), but it was a beautiful summation of an idea I was after. Some atheists have even expressed that if they were to believe in a god, it would be Spinoza’s.

However, if you were to press me even further, I think that now… in the twenty first century… we should just stop using the word ‘god’ all together.

We have much better language available.

There seems to be a rise in interest over Stoicism and while I don’t care for the commodification or commercialization of such interest (I don’t see it ever getting as bad as yoga), it brings up a few considerations.

First is those who look deeply at the tenets of the philosophy of Stoicism, they find remarkable similarities with Buddhism. I’ve heard it said that Stoicism is Buddhism with attitude, which isn’t entirely off the mark.

The next is its connection to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Having spoken with people who have gone through this form of therapy and found it very helpful, their remarks for how they feel afterward are incredibly… well… stoic. I would even argue it’s just repackaged ideas.

However, one of the most important and key lessons is that all things are transient.

When you have bad crap going on in your life—that will pass.

When you have good things going on in your life—that will pass, too.

We live in the moment, but shouldn’t find ourselves wrapped up in the idea that this moment is all there is and will be. Unless, of course, we’re speaking about the Christian concept of eternity, but we’re obviously not there.

If you think about it, most of us are forgotten within two generations. I mean, how often do you sit around and tell stories about your great grandparents?

This isn’t meant to be a depressing thought, but a freeing one because it gives us the freedom to let go. The universe will continue on and whatever is happening—shall also pass.

Let it.