Blame

Blame serves one major purpose: To resign ones own responsibility for something.

As soon as I blame someone else for something that is happening, something I am going through, or something I am feeling, I relinquish my own responsibility for it and hand that responsibility over to someone else. At least, I do that in my own head. But the problem with blaming someone else is that when I relinquish my responsibility, I also relinquish my ability to change the situation or make it better. I let go of my own ability to take action. Responsibility = response-ability, the ability to respond. When I blame other people for problems, I completely lose my own ability to create solutions.

What I Learned in College

I graduated from college a little less than five months ago. During the last days of my undergraduate education I thought very much about my experiences. And I prepared for the inevitable question that I knew to expect from my father. "What did you learn in college?"

I knew to expect this because every time I had seen him during the past four years he would ask me about what I was learning. And graduation being the culmination of four years of learning, I planned on my father asking the most important question he could think of (besides "what are you going to do now," which we all knew I didn't really know the answer to - in fact, I still don't).

But first it might give a little insight into this situation if I provide some background information on my dad. Ever since I can remember my father has loved asking questions. When I was in grade school, any time my friends were over for dinner, my dad would engage in what became a potentially excruciating tradition. Rarely was this potential met, but it always lurked in the realm of immediate possibility.

The tradition was this: My father would ask us Freed children and our guests math questions at the dinner table.

That's right. He would ask us math questions.

He always did it with good-hearted, though perhaps a bit stubborn, intention, and it helped us learn our squares and square roots pretty well. Ask any of my siblings what the square root of 289 is, and as if they were telling you their birthdate or middle name, they will spit it out without hesitation. Except, perhaps, to wonder why you asked that question.

But every time we had friends over for dinner, the call for dinner-time meant several youngsters slowly descending upon the table with the trepidation you might expect of people headed into a haunted house: Yes, they have an idea of what to expect, but they will still be surprised and may end up dashing out the door at the first chance they get.

But nothing bad ever came of these dinner-time pop quizes, and besides learning our squares and roots and times tables, all of us children have learned to ask a lot of questions. And we learned how to answer questions.

Which prepared me on graduation day to respond to my father's imminent querry. And I came up with a delightfully short answer: In college, I learned that the best way to lead is by example and the best way to teach is from experience.

I learned lots of facts and ideas, but these two statements about how to live and work will guide my actions for the rest of my life. I will build any lessons I ever try to teach on my experience, and if ever given the chance to lead people, I will lead with my life and my actions.

Also, this answer to my dad's question represents the crafty question-answering I learned partially thanks to his inquisitions. I gave him a short and to-the-point answer which suggested deep lessons and wisdom, avoided much further questioning, and required little from me in the way of explanation or excessive mental activity on the day marking the end of such silly things.

Muscles Hold My Unconscious Thoughts

(This essay is a work in progress. If you have any helpful criticism, please share it with me. Thanks)

I don't mean to give away the entire gyst of this writing in the title, but I have discovered that my muscles hold my unconscious feelings. Sometimes conscious ones too.

A person I greatly respect recently suggested to me that tension, the kind that builds up in our shoulders or legs or back, is caused by fear. Fear causes constriction. This constriction becomes tension.

For instance, when I have an unconscious thought such as a fearful reaction to something, whether it is a fear of being judged or of being beaten or of dying or of failure, my body manifests this. In an entirely logical and scientific sense, fear changes my brain and body chemistry. What we know as the emotional or mental state of fear is also a chemical state characterized by changes in levels of certain chemicals and alterations of chemical reactions and biological processes. The changes in my mental state brought on by fear, are accompanied by changes in physiology. One of the things that happens on the physical level during the experience of fear is constriction. Muscles contract. Then they often stay contracted, at least for a while. And just as I do not immediately stop thinking about something after it seriously frightens me, so too my body does not immediately reverse its reaction to the fear.

The fear that tends to cause constriction is generally unconscious fear. It is a series of thoughts that are not consciously reasoned out. This fear often contains an element of instinctive reaction, but it also is usually characterized by thoughts, mental equations that take place below the radar of the conscious mind. Often these thoughts are conditioned reactions to things.

For instance. At work I get very self-conscious. I have noticed that I have a fear of the judgement of my supervisors and co-workers. I am afraid of being perceived as stupid, eneffective, etc. I recently realized that on good days when I was feeling great and working really effectively and solving problems and melting under the praise of those around me, I did not feel much tension. But as soon as I made a mistake, or felt like I was going too slowly, or thought I sensed criticism in somebody's voice, I started worrying. I worried about being judged, about being seen in a negative light. And I realized that it was during these times that I developed tension. During the hours when I felt scrutinized by people in my office or criticized I became physically uncomfortable and felt tension developing in my neck and back and head.

When I saw the pattern developing, I started making connections in my life and my self. The thoughts were not conscious thoughts, and still are not entirely. But I started to see the thought patterns that I held. I started to see my fear-based reactions to my perceptions about other people's actions. I started catching glimpses of thoughts and fears that generally lay beneath my conscious mind's line of sight.

To sum up this story, I realized that the physiological actions in my tissues were working to imprint my thoughts and feelings on my body. My unconscious thoughts which were centered around self-worth and fear, became manifest in my physical body. And in fact, they became stored in my body as a tension that lasted throughout the day and week.

One of the major points that comes out of this realization is the understanding of the effect of habitual unconscious thoughts on my wellbeing. If I am constantly fearful of something, than my body will be constantly expressing that. The physiological effects of my fear-based, unconscious thoughts will build up in my body and over time, have a profound affect on my physical state.

I can see this in people all around me. I see decades of feelings and thoughts in the hunched backs of old men. I see the years of physical storage of thoughts and feelings in the gaits of young men and women. Our bodies become records of what we think and feel. After enough observations, I think that a person can learn to read bodies like open books. Physically we expose our deepest thoughts, the ones that we often cannot see ourselves.

This does not just happen with fear. It happens with every unconscious thought. Each thought that my brain creates unconsciously is accompanied by physiologically happenings. And over time our unconscious thoughts write themselves into our physical bodies. Anger, fear, hatred, spite, all manifest in our bodies. And over time bodies become bent and crooked by years of negative feelings and thoughts.

But not just negative, harmful thoughts and feelings are accompanied by physiological sensations. And conscious thoughts and feelings as well as unconscious ones have physiological elements.

Kindness, compassion, love, happiness all write themselves into our bodies, but in very different ways than negative feelings. The chemical and biological processes that acompany positive feelings tend to have relaxing, calming, strengthening effects on the body. This is no surprise. It feels good to feel good.

And conscious thoughts can have just as powerful an effect as unconscious thoughts on our physiologies. I have noticed that when I focus my mind on positive thoughts and feelings, thining about things that are relaxing, people whom I love, and experiences that were very fullfilling, my body feels better. In fact, when I really focus, I can alter the way a part of my body feels directly. On good days, when I really focus, I can link positive thoughts with certain parts of my body. For instance, I can begin to feel my ankle physically. I pay close attention to the physical sensations taking place there. I focus my mind on my ankle an slowly become more and more aware of it. Then I begin thinking very positive thoughts and generating very positive emotions. I put those thoughts and emotions into my ankle and end up releasing tension in my ankle area and creating an overall more-positive, good, feeling. And this process is rooted in an understanding of how my mind and body work together.

The implications of all of this lead in a very specific direction. Self-awareness leads toward greater control over our lives. Is I become more self-aware I reduce the amount of unconscious mental and emotional activity. By doing this I reduce the effects on my body and self of the activities of my mind which I am not in conscious control of. At the same time I give my conscious mind more control over how I feel. The process of becoming self-aware is a process of gaining understanding of myself as well as personal power. I slowly gain the ability to direct my life from moment to moment. I have more and more choice over how I will feel, think, and act.

But I am no expert. I am just now entering into an exploration of self-awarness. And from what I have learned, I have tons of uncoscious mental activity going on. I have many, many, many thoughts and feelings that I am not aware of, and becoming aware of them is a slow process. But it has proven, in the short time I have been working on it, to be very interesting and empowering.

Shades of Day

I do not have eyes to see only shades of gray. The colors of brick and concrete buildings do not paint my feelings. My words are not a wall behind which I hide my self. My heart is not meant to just feel a dull ache throughout the day.

I will not compromise the meaning and beauty in life for the sake of being safe in the corner of my mind.

Boston Cross

One of the first things that Sarah and I observed when we were out here in Boston was the traffic situation. I'd been told that Boston was a horrible city to drive in, and I had assumed that people said that because they thought the drivers here are bad. But after walking around Boston for a rather brief time, it became apparent that there is another major reason for traffic trouble in the Bean Town. The streets are, how do you say... really dumb?!

They say you can't make four right turns anywhere in Boston and end up where you started. Now, I don't know who this "they" character is, but "they" are certainly on to something. The streets here seem to intersect at every imaginable angle except a right angle. The only thing around here that's even close to 90 degrees is the temperature on the train when I get on in the morning on my way to work and have to shed multiple layers in order not to sweat out all the vodka from the bloody mary I had for breakfast.

Honestly, the poor street design in Boston plays a major role in the bad traffic. And parking is a whole 'nother mess! But strange angles of intersection (that sounds like a good song or album title) are not the only peculiar thing about the Boston streets. If I want to cross the street from my apartment to the other side of Commonwealth Avenue (or, as we here in Boston like to say, "Comm Av"), I have to cross 8 (eight) lanes of traffic. That's right. Just outside my front door are 8 lanes of traffic. Commonwealth Avenue itself has two lanes running in each direction for a count of 4. But there are also two sets of train tracks to cross, bringing the count up to 6 alltogether. And add to that the two one lane, one-way streets that run parallel to Comm Av on each side and you've got 8 lanes of traffic total. Right outside my front door!

This situation is a perfect example of where the term "Boston Cross" originates. Sarah and I came up with this on one of our first days in Boston, and it refers to the harrowing-but-fun-if-you're-a-little-bit-crazy game of trying to cross the streets in Boston. The prevailing attitude is a little bit like that of brave, soldiers who have been left behind enemy lines and know they have no cover and no help on the way: "What the hell, let's go for it; and if we survive, great, we can go to Filene's Basement!"

And don't worry about the walk/don't walk signs when you try to cross the street. When Sarah and I first moved here, we would wait until the little walking person made of white lights lit up before we would start to cross the streets. That's what we'd do back in lil' ol' Rohnert Park! But here the little walkie guy means about as much as a Giants baseball hat (you're not the Red Sox and you're not the Yankees, so it doesn't really matter who you are) - people just don't care about it!

So every day Sarah and I engage in that age old threat to sanity that can be referred to generically as "crossing the street in Boston." But we call it the Boston Cross - BX for short.

That Old Saying

You know that old saying, "alcohol makes everything better?"

I don't know if that's entirely true.

Quality of My Life

Having a lot of stuff, or always getting more stuff does not increase the quality of my life nearly as much as being thankful for what I have.

Thankfullness makes each and every thing and experience into something meaningful and important. Hot water, shoes, the little money I do have, my thoughts, being able to ride the train from my apartment to work, being able to walk on concrete instead of mud - there are so many things that I can be thankful for in my life, everyday. And the sense of gratitude that I develop when I think about this virtually infinite list brings meaning to the simplest of experiences. Feeling gratitude calms my mind and opens up my heart. The sense of wonder that comes from this gratitude makes me feel like a child discovering the world anew. It gives me a sense of appreciation for my life and everything around me, and this vastly increases the quality of my experiences, of my life.

From

What is the greatest freedom?

Freedom from fear. This is a freedom that only I can provide myself, and it is one of the toughest things a person could create for himself. But freedom from fear frees my heart and my mind, and gives me the potential to live more fully than any other freedom.

Strength

Many people think that strength is the ability to hurt other people and to not be hurt by other people. Often, however, real strength is the ability to not hurt oneself.

Jersey Preacher

In thinking about my life here in Boston - how it is different from Rohnert Park, what characterizes it - I realize that it is not my jobs, it is not my apartment, it is not the street I live or work on that really give the feel of my experience. It is the little stories, the curious things I see during my days, that paint the colors into the portrait of my life.

About once a week on my way home from work I see the Jersey Preacher. He is not from New Jersey, he wears a jersey. And he doesn't preach so much as tell stories.

He stands on the Boston Commons, between the two entrances to the Park Street subway station. The spot he chooses sits somewhere between the fried dough stand and the Boston t-shirt stand, and is in the center of an area of heavy foot traffic. I think he comes there after work, maybe before. He usually wears a hockey jersey or a football jersey, the kind with full-length sleeves. He wears sneakers and jeans most days, and his hair cut and mustache are reminiscent of certain 80's grooming styles.

His voice is loud, but he doesn't shout. As I walk along Tremont Street towards the subway entrances, because of all the noise floating through the city air, I cannot pinpoint his location until I am about twenty five feet away. Once I get close enough I am always a little amazed at how loud his voice is. Like I said, he doesn't yell; he projects. And what does he project? Like any good preacher, he reads the bible. But he doesn't just read it out, word for word as if biblical pros themselves will transform passers by into true beleivers. He takes apart every sentence. The Jersey Preacher breaks every idea down into simple terms, and he tells stories. He tells lots of stories, enough so that each time, the text he is working from gets lost on the winding path of the plot and moral. Not to say that he is not good at what he does. I like to listen.

I like to listen because he is doing it because he feels passionately - he really enjoys talking about this stuff. He is out there speaking about what he believes in on his own time, maybe after a long day of work. And he is not blindly following dogma, he is exploring texts and ideas. He is not asking for money (if he is, I haven't given him any), he is asking to be listened to. And I listen to him. Not because I am Christian. I'm not. But some of the stories are good, and some of the morals are good. And, he sees the socialist ideals in Christ's life!!!

So, about once a week on my way from the office to the subway station, I stop for five minutes to listen to the Jersey Preacher. Most people just keep on about their daily business, walking right by the preacher man, maybe embarassed that he is even there. But I like to stop and listen. Maybe because I find this sort of thing so novel after living in a suburb for a decade plus. Maybe because it reminds me to pause and avoid getting swept up in the hustle bustle of my city life. But also because the Jersey Preacher is very interesting, and he tells good stories, and this sort of interesting thing doesn't happen every day in everybody's lives.

Some days I get really carried away with completing spreadsheets, catching the train and doing the dishes and I forget the life is really interesting. It's nice to remember.

Love.

Test Run

This is my first blog posting. In fact this is one of the first trendy things I have ever done. I am usually a few years behind or ahead of trends, and in both scenarios, mostly by accident.

So, the question is begged, why blog?

I decided to start my blog for numerous reasons: 1. I want to keep a descriptive diary of my new life in Boston 2. I want to put my thoughts about the important things that my thoughts are about out in a place where people can read my thoughts and decide whether or not they are important 3. I want to keep in touch with those wonderful folks on the West Coast whom I don't get to see or hear from very often anymore 4. I want to write more because I like writing and I think that I may want to have writing play a large part in my career(s), whatever it(they) may turn out to be 5. It seems fun and silly.

I plan to try to write an entry every day, but I don't particularly expect that to happen - I try to brush my teeth twice a day, every day, but that don't really happen all the time neither. And don't get me started on showers!

So, please, if you are looking for an interesting tid bit about my interesting tid life in Boston, MA, check the blog. Or if you are bored and in front of a computer with internet access, check the blog. Or, if you are looking for words of wisdom... then don't expect too much. In any case, if you are reading this, I am grateful.

Love,