Monthly Archives: December 2014

Seasons of Loss

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I know a man who has suffered a great loss and is showing courage and compassion as he navigates painful and turbulent waters that are always down stream of such a huge loss.

My Random Act of Kindness related to the blog to follow was that I ordered gift baskets to be delivered after the Holidays for the four veterinary clinics that have been the primary providers for my dogs and cats during the last decade. A small thank you for all the caring and compassion they have shown these animals I have loved.

There is a quote from the 1992 Western/Film Noire “Unforgiven” which has continued to resonate with me across these 20+ years (although I recently discovered that I often misquote it…..correct message, just wrong words).
Little Bill Daggett (A sheriff of questionable morals played by Gene Hackman) has just been mortally wounded by Will Munny (A hired gunman of questionable morals played by Clint Eastwood).
Little Bill: “I don’t deserve this… to die like this. I was building a house.”
Will Munny: “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

By my count I have had 13 dogs in my life. All of them were good dogs who had their pros & cons; Elly is my favorite of all time (Don’t tell Etta or she will come back and haunt me). This last week, on Tuesday 12/23, one day after her 9th birthday, Elly (who underwent successful surgery for mast cell cancer late last summer) was diagnosed with an osteosarcoma tumor which has wrapped itself around the C2-3 vertebrae in her neck, innervating the bone & spinal canal. Given the location and type of tumor, there is no treatment. The focus is on pain management, keeping her comfortable until I have to make the decision to put her down. We have a few days? Maybe couple weeks? I hope I will have the courage to not be selfish by forcing her to stay with me when I know she is suffering. I dread losing her.

I have been thinking a great deal about loss the last month or so. Cheery topic for the Holiday Season, right? Ho, ho, ho! Elly’s diagnosis brought the topic of loss into even sharper relief for me. Although I largely spent the first couple of days post diagnosis crying and snuggling with Elly, I also know how lucky I am to have been given warning of her impending death (Yea modern veterinarian medicine and me having access to it) so I could be mindful of the short time we have left together.

I am sure there is a larger message here about mindfulness and awareness of how short and unknown our time is with those we care deeply about and vice verse, but I am not in the mood to be that Hippie today.

It is the time of the year when we are obligated and indeed culturally-bound to review our year, assess our wayward behaviors, and renew our vows to be ever more awesome.

In taking stock of my year, it has been a rough one, adding to a string of rough years. There have been many wonderful events too, but here is a partial list among many difficult events from this last year: the end of a long term relationship was confirmed, another short but potentially wonderful relationship ended, friends died, I supported friends while close family members died, a close family member with whom I have a difficult history has Alzheimer’s Disease and has declined sharply (More impending awful to come), I put down 2 cats I had longer than any intimate relationship (I am sure that says both questionable and good things about me), lost a beloved dog to cancer, and have another lying next to me as I type who will not be long in my world. These words don’t do justice to heartbreak and searing pain associated with these events. Much loss, much isolation and sadness, much sense that important pieces of my life are falling away. I am in a Season of Loss.

I want to scream, “It’s not fair! Look at how kind, giving, empathetic, hard working, “nice” I am.”
Then Clint says in an angry, gravelly voice, “Fair’s got nothin’ to do with it.”
I want to break something and breakdown crying, “I don’t fucking deserve this!”
Clint: “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”
God damn it, Clint. Fuck you. Yeah, you are right…… I still think you are a dick when it comes to politics…. I like your jazz compositions, and you have some serious Movie Director chops….. But still El Dicko politically speaking….. And still right about that deserve’s-got-nothin’ thing. Fuck.  Sad face.

Given that he is right (Still a dick though), all in all it was a year of….. a year of being a human. Nothing special, and nothing less. The Buddha called it the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows. But let’s not get too Damn Hippie about it.

What do I do with this sorrow and the knowledge all this sorrow is not particularly unusual or special? Somehow I need to both not entangle myself in the narrative of this last year and those before, while also allowing the grief. And somehow I need to not entangle myself in the grief while allowing the narrative. A “WTF?” from you would be appropriate at this point. What am I trying to say here? Uuuuhhhh……how about this? I need to find a way to somehow fully embrace that my experience of this year was one of repeated intense emotional loss, grief, and struggling to find a way to not fall off the cliff and sort through all that rose from the depths these events churned up AND know, really know, that many other kind, wonderful humans also had a Season of Loss, a year of intense, bone crushing loss and grief, AND that the world is not defined by loss, is not a cruel place. It both is and is not about what has happened in my life. To some extent we are all struggling in our streams, some times those streams turn to rapids in which there is a real danger of drowning.

Where to start?  I have no clue if this will be helpful to you or even make any sense or even be helpful to me, but RAK has suggested some things to me (OK, Clint probably played a role too (Dick!)) and I am trying them on for size.  By its very nature of requiring me to be aware of Others and then to strive to genuinely connect with them, RAK has made me more aware of the suffering and struggle of Others, seeking ways to be present with them, be gentle with them, help in small ways while trying (emphasis on “try”) to reduce my judgments, assumptions and own…..”self-ness.” Ironically, sustaining random acts of kindness across these last 4(?) months has had the effect of making me more aware of my own suffering and struggles, encouraging me to be more present with myself, gentle with the myself, suggesting there might be value in stepping back from the judgments, assumptions and all the tangled, gooey, sticky, primordial soup that contributes so much to how I touch and sense the world around me.

A big step for me is to step back from trying to decide if my emotional response to loss is “justified.” Part of my struggle is that I “know” there are people in my life, let alone the World, who have had more horrible losses than I have, so how much suffering am I allowed? Hmmm, OK, so if I am only allowed a moderate amount of suffering given that others deserve more, then the suffering I am feeling is just me being selfish and greedy (taking extra portions when the Suffer Platter is passed around).  I am such a bastard….,but wait!  Look at how much that person is taking!  There is no way what happened to them is anything like what happened to me and they took way more than me!  WTF??!!!  Oh, crap, the person who “really suffered” is looking at my portion, compared to theirs.  I KNOW I am being judged.  Would it be gross to put some suffering back on the platter?  Does it now have Erik germs on it?  No, no, no, that would just call attention from everyone about how much suffering I took.  Maybe I could slide some to the dog?  What if I got caught doing that? That would be embarrassing. Shit, I guess I will sit here and feel bad about myself, and I vow that next time I will not be so greedy at suffering.

But, if I my experience is not worthy, if I am not allowed to feel this amount of suffering, why do I feel like I really am suffering?  Why do I feel so bad?

A Clinical Psychologist I have a great deal of respect for observed that loss is cumulative, trauma is cumulative. Among the implications of this, it means that our responses to a single event are colored by all the events that have gone before. I don’t know the history of those around me in enough detail to ever know what a specific loss “means” and how much pain is evoked. Everyone’s suffering is worthy of compassion and gentleness without the event being weighed for how heavy and painful it is or is not.  It also means, I think this is a biggie, that suffering is not a contest with some people being more deserving of being “allowed” to suffer than others when we assess the recent events in their lives.  There is no “right amount” of emotional response to an event. How we feel is how we feel. Denying the response doesn’t make it go away.  Believe me, I spent decades mastering that technique only to have a really gross, deeply infected emotional cyst burst. Let’s just say it was a mess and I have needed a lot of assistance in cleaning it up.

I think the trick, and I have not mastered this one, not sure I ever will, is to find a way to balance being fully present for whatever response you have to whatever loss you encounter with the core belief that your suffering is real and legitimate, but it is not all that defines your world.  Allow your self to be in that yucky, awful space to the extent that you can (and back away when it is too much) and to somehow know that this is a completely deserved response to this pain, AND also know your suffering is not special.  The good news is that you are not alone.

Please note that I am saying I think it might just sort of work this way, and it is a path I am trying out. I have no idea if it will work, and I can assure you I have only taken the smallest of baby steps.  Truth be told, it is hard for me to imagine I can find this balance, but I guess we will find out.  I can also assure you that when Elly dies, I will be a wreck.

But, hey! New Year’s and renewing our vows to be ever more awesome. My resolutions are to quit smoking (I don’t smoke so I always include this as a guaranteed win) and lose 5,000 pounds (a nod to the many resolutions that have never been realistic to obtain).
What are my *real* resolutions? I think, when you get down to it, I just want to be a less crazy person (while still being the brilliant visionary, hilarious, and “nice” guy I am). Less seeing the world through the ghosts and demons that roam the halls and cellars that are me; more able to really listen and hear what the people in my life, especially those I care about but others I cross paths with as well, are trying to say in their words and beneath their words; better able to be present with the horrendously awful and the amazing beauty this year will bring me because that is how the Universe plays this game. You know, be less crazy. If I fail at that, at least I gave up smoking.

Odd Moments of RAK

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I know a woman and her husband who I am thinking of and sending wishes for a holiday of peace and hope.

There is an insightful and well-done YouTube video of a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace. He does a wonderful job of capturing elements of what I believe play a key role in being able to live a life that involves Random Acts of Kindness and sheds some light on my own RAK of today. It will be 9 minutes and 22 seconds of your life well invested. Trust me on this one.
This is Water https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKYJVV7HuZw

BUT, be sure to scurry right back to my blog. Such fun things to discuss today…..

This morning I went to the grocery store early. One of Haley’s sisters from her other family is visiting and I wanted to pick up a few things before they woke up so I could demonstrate what a good father and host I am.  I was feeling rushed and jittery, and not adequately caffeinated for doing something as complicated as grocery shopping and being generally friendly to the other mammals I would undoubtedly encounter at the store.

The store was of course almost empty as it was stupid early, but because the store was almost empty there were only 2 check out lanes open. In front of me there was a young woman who appeared to have suffered a stroke with marked paralysis on her right side.  She was struggling with the payment system, which is set up for right-handed people (one of those things that must affect Lefties everyday of which we Righties are blissfully unaware.  Sorry, Haley!).  The clerk was doing an admirably gentle job trying to help her, but as English was not her first language, the transaction was experiencing some bumps.  Behind me was a couple who were bickering. Bickering, bickering, bickering in that special way that only married couples have mastered which has the calming effect to those in earshot of aluminum on the fillings in our teeth.  They were bickering about whether they had sufficient security software on their home computer.  She obviously did not care.  He obviously did not know what he was talking about. Neither really seemed to have their heart in it, but apparently bickering in public was on the to-do list and they might as well get it out of the way (Bickering in Public: Check!). There was something about how the young man who was bagging groceries moved, interacted and looked that suggested there was a medical, possibly psychological, diagnosis in there, but what it might be was not readily apparent.  For the record, in addition to being friendly and courteous, he was a monster grocery packing machine.  To round out the cast of characters, there is me; under-coffee-ed, anxious to be the “good host/father” so doing that dance people do when they really need to pee but someone else is in the bathroom.

Here we are; Young Stroke Woman, Bickering Couple, Middle-Aged English-Not-Her-First Language Cashier, Monster Grocery Packing Kid, and Pee-Pee Dance me. Such a great star-studded cast to be really, really annoying and frustrating (Coffee, damn it! I need coffee and you people are preventing that from happening!).   And then it struck me.  I don’t know why.  I don’t know how. Perhaps I had briefly acquired magically powers?  Perhaps it is a nasty side effect of repeated random acts of kindness?  But it struck me: This is a “moment.”  For this short space of time, our motley crew was crammed together in this life boat that is Lane 6 at the front of an almost empty grocery store.  What a weird group of Annoying Others who were complicating a task I was anxious to complete so I could be in a different moment than this one (I am sure they thought the same about me), who were also a group of fellow humans, bobbing along, maybe even floundering, in the currents of their streams. Somehow in my own bobbing and floundering, my rigid self-expectations of what it meant to be a good father and good host, my burning desire to be out of this store, my not wanting to leave the safety of my personal hamster ball and interact with these freaks, I was able to step back and recognize what a unique, odd and charming moment this was.

Here is what I did with this moment.  Using all my inadequately caffeinated willpower, I tried to hold my inner pee-pee dance self as still as possible and pretend I was calm and in no hurry.  I gave the young woman in front of me extra space so she would be less likely to feel rushed.  Although inside I was quivering like a chihuahua who has stolen my much needed coffee, when she cast a worried eye in my direction, I smiled back and tried to look relaxed and calm.  My turn to check out: I chatted with the cashier. When the manager had to join us because one of my items wouldn’t scan and she asked if I knew how much it cost, I suggested $10,000.  We all had a nice laugh (I am hilarious!) and they seemed relieved (apparently some customers get really unpleasant when something doesn’t scan. Who knew?).  We negotiated for the same amount as a similar item in my groceries.  I genuinely thanked the Grocery Packing Guy for what truly was an impressive packing job.  We wished each other happy holidays and the moment was gone.

The Bickering Couple?  At some point they decided to jump lines.  Unless you are someone who is blessed with good Line Karma, this is always a bad idea.  The line they jumped to came to a screeching  halt  and they were still in line when I left. Suckers.

SO what is the point?  (You: Since when do your blogs have a point?  Me: Sigh.)  I am not really sure what the point is (You: There’s the Erik we have come to know and love. Me: Sigh) but I know what it is not.  It is not that this was somehow some sort of amazingly special RAK, not something I am expecting a prize for (Although, Santa, if the sleigh’s not completely packed yet…).  I think the whole point is that it is not a dramatic moment, it is common everyday, often annoying, who-are-these-gross-people-blocking-me-from-getting-what-I-want-and-preventing-me-getting-out-of-here-so-I-can-just-get-on-with-my-day-and-try-to-take-care-of-all-the-shit-I-have-to-take-care-of-because-it-is-hard-to-be-me moment. White bread moments, easily ignored and so forgettable.  Small, stupid moments constructed of annoying and petty frustrations. The moments we all encounter every damn day, and, if we can somehow catch the edge and pull back the wrapping paper a bit, it is an opportunity to be something different than trivial and touch the world with our open hand.  This is water.

Maybe it matters. I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter.  I don’t know.  I am just a gloriously complicated person filled with a ridiculous amount of contradictions scampering around my skull who is stumbling through a year of trying to do random acts of kindness.  Oh, in case you are thinking I am some sort of amazing zen-like guy who is so centered, I got really pissed off at the idiots who were the other drivers I encountered driving home.

Holiday Drift

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Random Acts of Kindness: a one year challenge

I know a woman and her husband who have offered me a precious holiday gift.

My random act of kindness this last Friday was stopping to talk to a homeless man and giving him some money.

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 The balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade have fascinated me for as long as I can remember.  I would watch that parade on TV and look at those massive balloons in wonder.  Not so much at the characters captured by the balloons (although who could not feel the world was a better place when Snoopy, Underdog or Bullwinkle floated into sight?), but for how gracefully they floated along and how calm their handlers appeared, smiling and waving at the crowd as they walked in the parade, dozens of people holding individual ropes with ease, as a team tethering and grounding these huge beasts.

IMG_1685.JPG I was downtown Friday morning for a meeting with a friend as part of my ongoing quest for Global Public Health Domination.  Holiday decorations were everywhere, mostly tasteful and festive, occasionally not so much.  Yes, I know, judging.

 

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It wasn’t super cold according to the temperature but the wind was intense as it plowed its way through the man-made canyons between the office buildings.  It was the kind of wind that did a super good job of finding any crease or nook where you hadn’t quite adequately encased your skin, then snuggled down into it, like a kitten. Only in this case it was a freezing-ass kitten with sharp teeth.  All in all, unpleasant.

As I navigated my way to the Metro, I saw a homeless man, fairly well bundled but not enough to protect against the vicious kitten that was the wind, curled against a museum stairway banister to get out of said kitten wind.  The banister was ironically decorated for the holidays. Given that his task was to get money from people passing by, he repeatedly had to uncurl from his kitten wind protection to engage passersby. Friday was a sucky day to do that.  In part this was because what little body heat he was retaining was lost when he uncurled, and because when passersby are all bundled with an intense focus on minimizing exposed flesh and moving quickly to the next warm place, it is easier to ignore homeless people.  In all fairness, many people probably didn’t even see him as their kitten-wind protective clothing created tunnel vision. I probably would have missed him myself, but I didn’t.  I wish I could say it was because I was on the prowl for RAK opportunities and keenly aware that the weather would be causing my fellow humans to be suffering (Go, Fierce RAK Warrior, go!). However, the truth is I was playing this silly game with myself where I was trying to listen really closely to the sound the wind made as it cruised the canyons, so I didn’t have a hat on……No, I have no explanation for that one.

Anyway, I did see him, and what was going on, and felt how cold it was (Stupid vicious kitten wind), and that the money-gathering cards were not stacked in his favor that day.  So I stopped. We talked for a few moments, mostly about…..wait for it…..the weather.  I gave him a little more money than I typically do if I choose to give in the vain hope it might help to make up for what was likely to be a low intake kind of day, we looked each other in the eye, smiled, said our goodbyes, and I stepped back into my nice safe warm stream.

Back to those holiday decorations…..which mean Holidays…..yeah…. I have been meaning to write about that.  Why not now, you sarcastically ask?  What a great idea, I sarcastically say.  Where to begin? Back when I was a wee lad……that may be a bit too far back. Let’s just say that for most of my life I have loved Christmas.  Not so much because of the presents (although, Santa, if you are reading, I am a big fan so don’t think I am unappreciative), rather because of all the accouterments: the tree, the lights, the ornaments, the way people decorate their houses, the “holiday classic” movies (especially love that “A Christmas Carol” and who can watch the end of “A Wonderful Life” without crying?), the music, the chance to sing with others, the pageantry, the ceremony.  All of it.  I embraced it with a child-like wonder and have clear memories of the sensation in my heart as I soaked it up (remember I am the sentimental, Norman Rockwell, Hallmark Greeting Card guy).  And, Christmas is not even my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving is. Sharing food, being with people you care deeply about, let’s not forget the annual release of the Beaujolais, and, yes, I make people say one thing they are thankful for when at my house.  It is also the holiday my daughter, Haley, and I spend together, and have done so across pretty much her entire life. Christmas is with her wonderful mother and her loving other family. Thanksgiving is ours.

You: Sounds lovely and hokey.  Why are we talking about this?

This year I was in the Philippines for Thanksgiving.  The work was important (Hippies! Global Public Health Domination!) and it was a rare opportunity.  Last year, there was a wedding in Haley’s other family (I think that’s what it was) so of course I encouraged her to go. Christmas is her mother’s and I would never want Haley to miss the magic that is Christmas with her other family, so in my mind “swapping holidays” has never been an option to even consider.

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What about that Christmas thing in my world? Yeah, I have been thinking about that quite a bit lately, especially in the context of not having celebrated TWO Thanksgivings in a row, and have come to a realization. Somewhere along the way, I have drifted from Christmas and I worry I am drifting from Thanksgiving.

I have had a pretty intense last few years with some pretty intense “challenges” in that time.  I have had some wonderful times as well, including loving offers to share in other families’ holidays and amaze-balls holiday meals with a person who was pretty intensely special in my life, but I can see I have clearly drifted. There was an understandable, if pretty intense, triggering event related to a relationship ending that started my tumble off the Holiday Path and down the hill, but, somewhere in the midst of those multiple years of pretty intense, I didn’t try to stop myself from tumbling, didn’t try to get back on the Holiday Path.  I have had many opportunities to re-engage with Christmas and its magic, but I didn’t.  I have never been Bah Humbug! but I have been completely disengaged and apathetic. I didn’t have any negative feelings about Christmas, I didn’t have any feelings at all about Christmas. Fucks given: None. I became a Macy’s Parade balloon (I am thinking Bullwinkle) and for various reasons, one-by-one my handlers let go of the rope. Untethered and ungrounded, I have floated across the last few years of my life, watching Christmas (sometimes from quite close), marking its passage, but never engaged.  I couldn’t engage because I was floating (which did not feel like too bad a thing to be doing), and because I was floating, I didn’t care about Christmas…..or New Year’s….or Valentine’s Day….or even Groundhog Day (Yes, not even Groundhog Day).

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So who cares?  Why does it matter? Except for maybe Groundhog Day, these are “just days.” But no, no they are not “just days.” They are days that have meaning, meaning that is derived from our connectedness to these other globs of flesh we call humans, the people in our lives, the people we have bravely mingled worlds with, even the people of our chance encounters (Good will toward Man and all that). So, fuck, it matters, it matters in all kinds of ways, but here is the one I think is most relevant to Random Acts of Kindness.  Why did I drift from a holiday that has been so meaningful, if in the most goofy of ways, for almost my entire life?  Why am I flirting dangerously with drifting from my favorite holiday, one that has bound my daughter and me in a fundamentally important way for almost her entire life?  It is humbling and painful to admit, but I became afraid of fully caring about people, of being truly open and vulnerable with those I loved most.  To my core I am generous, caring and “nice,” and have become afraid of the vulnerability that is needed to truly connect, truly love. Truth be told, I doubt I have ever been a rock star at the being-truly-open-and-vulnerable-with-those-I-love-most bit, and, untethered and ungrounded, I have drifted even further away.

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Random acts of kindness.  Fucking random acts of kindness.  Turns out I can’t fucking do fucking random acts of kindness as I have defined the game without striving to be fully present with my fellow flesh puppets, and I can’t be fucking fully present while happily drifting untethered and ungrounded.  So the last several months have involved (and I don’t think I gave informed consent about this), among many other discoveries, becoming increasingly tethered and grounded, increasingly present, increasingly vulnerable, increasingly accepting (maybe) of whatever floats into my stream or whenever I climb into an Other’s stream to explore.

So for the first time in 5? 6? years, I am stopping to notice the Holiday lights, appreciate the colors and decorations, listen to the music, and I may even sing.  Perhaps oddly or perhaps not oddly, I find that I am experiencing sadness as that certain sense of wonder returns as I work to ground Bullwinkle, a sadness I believe I will have to more fully embrace to understand (sounds like fun, right?).

And I have an overwhelming appreciation for what turned out to be the Random Act of Kindness by a woman I know and her husband that started me on my own RAK path. Words cannot express my gratitude to them.

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Gardens and Trash Cans

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Random Acts of Kindness: A one year challenge
I know a woman who, along with her husband, have given me the unique chance to step back and consider lessons to be learned from current & past events in my life.

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I am going to start today’s blog with a sappy metaphor.
You: Nice to get this out of the way, as opposed to you ambushing us part way through as you typically do with the sappy and/or thinly structured. metaphors.
Me: 😛 This is the emoticon for me sticking my tongue out at you, in case that was not clear.
As I was saying before you rudely interrupted, I hope you will see beyond the surface of what I acknowledge is a trite metaphor and look for the potential value to the exploration on RAK that lies beneath the sentimental veneer. Remember, I am extremely sincere in my sentimentality so roll with me here.

Our histories plant the gardens we walk through in our day-to-day lives (You: Oh, for fuck sake! Are you kidding me? Me: Hear me out). What grows and what we must navigate everyday are from seeds planted by others, often long ago. The foundation of what has grown has little to do with us or our choices. There is a tiny percentage of us who get amazing, well-cared-for gardens filled with flowers and plants carefully nurtured (I vote we hate those people out of sheer jealousy). Some of us get poorly tended, or even abandoned, toxic gardens completely choked with overgrown weeds, weeds so high you cannot even see that there is a garden under all that tangle. the kind with big, sharp, nasty thorns or leaves that can burn your skin such that it blisters. Most of us fall somewhere along this continuum. At some point the garden becomes our responsibility, there is the potential to reduce the weeds, cut back the overgrowth of vines and poison ivy, plant things lush & beautiful, but that is dependent on our ability to become effective gardeners. Just because it is now ours does not mean we have a clue how to tend this garden anymore than those who planted it. Of course to add to the cruelty of this situation, the more toxic and weed-choked our garden, the less likely we are to be able to become the kind of gardener who can change the landscape in which we must exist.

You: Okayyyyyyyyy…….
Me: Now back to random acts of kindness.

Right before I left for the Philippines a couple weeks ago, it got quite nippy in DC as Winter did a test drive through the city, completed a few laps, then drove off again with a hearty “Woo hoo! I’ll be back soon.” It was nothing like our brethren across the northern tier states experienced but plenty cold enough to remind me that as much as I like wearing sweaters (and I really like wearing sweaters), I am not that big a fan of the freezing-ass weather that justifies sweater wearing. I guess we will see if I can man up or if we are in for a series of blog posts where I whine about the weather (as opposed to what I usually whine about).

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There is an old woman (like maybe 126 years old? It is hard to tell after a certain age) that lives a couple houses from me. Given the cold of the week, one of my random acts of kindness was to bring her garbage cans back to her yard after the guys came by and smooshed the neighborhood’s trash with that big trash smoosher they have on their truck. Side note: I once saw the trash smoosher eat a large sleeper sofa with a heavy metal frame. It was awesome.

As I did my RAK, I was reminded of a similar event a few years back, long before the RAK Challenge, where I was the recipient. Some context: The house next to mine used to be a rental that was occupied by a middle-aged woman who was raising some of her grandchildren while their parents struggled with the ugliness that is addiction and life on the streets. At various times, grandchildren and their parents would come and go as the family suffered through the roller coaster of recovery and relapse. Overall we got along well.

One day as I came home from work, her son was just leaving and we stopped to talk. It turns out he brought my trash cans in that morning, a nice neighborly gesture, but what struck me at the time, and has stayed with me over the last several years, was his description of the experience of having done this. He was bringing his mom’s trash cans in, saw mine, thought about it for a bit and then decided “oh what-the-hell, Erik’s pretty nice to my mom, I’ll go ahead and do this.” It was clear from our conversation his doing this type of act was a really BIG deal and a rare occurrence. This act was out of character for him and out of the norm for his world.

I would like to point out that I had to walk down the street a couple houses (well just 2 houses) and it was freaking cold when I did my RAK, while he didn’t have to walk and the weather was lovely (Whomever calculates the scores, you see I am angling for extra credit, right?), but when you get down to it, we did the Exact Same RAK. For me it was a small act of kindness in a chain of acts of kindness within the context of being a giving, empathetic, “nice” guy in general. For him it was a really BIG deal, a rare event, one that left him surprised at his own behavior and which he continued to mark as highly noteworthy hours later.

This story has nothing to do with one of us being a better glob-o-human than the other, one RAK being more or less worthy, with me being some sort a righteous, upstanding member of the community and his being a some sort of thug momentarily off the streets. No. None of that is true. Don’t get me wrong. Assuming I was the one rated the better person (the likelihood this would be the assessment is open to much debate), it would be super cool if it was true because I could be smug and use the comparison as a way to tell myself stories about how much more valuable and fundamentally kinder I am. Seems a great strategy for shutting up some demons calling nasty and hurtful names from the basement. However I, sadly, knew to my core none of that is true. And what a valuable and useful interaction it still was.

For me the value of that interaction back then and juxtaposed to my own recent trash can act was the awareness that popped. Sometimes there are things that happen, encounters we have, that make you realize just how narrow your vision of the world is. My neighbor’s son and I may have both been standing in my driveway, but we were in different universes. That moment between us was the smallest of glimpses into a place I have never been. And that small glimpse revealed the vast gulf that existed between the basic assumptions we each had about the world. I became keenly aware that the very ground we walked on each day was a different earth beneath our feet.

How did our earths become so different? Do I get to win some cool prize for living a morally better life? Sadly, no, no prize for me. From the perspective of the metaphor we started with, he and I were gifted very different gardens. It is not hard to imagine that his is on the end of the continuum of toxic with massive, thorn-laced weeds. Amazing and meaningful that, even if for a moment, he took a step on a path of thinking about an Other considering he had to fight through denser and more vicious bracken then I ever would. I was touched then and am even more so as I tackle a year of RAK.

My garden? What are the planting in the earth I walk through? In surveying the landscape it is apparent I have a history which planted many difficult, pain-inducing weeds, and also planted space to navigate those weeds and lovely plants. I have been working hard to stay on top of and reduce the weeds through chopping, weed-killing chemicals, and pulling (only the smaller weeds thus far as the largest are still rooted too deeply, maybe some day) while trying to plant more flowers.

I look at this mess that is my garden and I know I am lucky, lucky for the spaciousness, lucky for the flowers and plants, but most of all I am lucky for the repeated chances I have been given to learn how to be a gardener.

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